Dream Log: June 28, 2002

My flight to France was just about to depart but I wanted to have a piece of cake or a dessert like that. So I phoned a cake service which would have brought the cake to the airport. However, the plane left before the delivery of the cake and of course I couldn't wait.

But there was an intermediate landing and the delivery service sent the cake after me. Still, they were slightly behind us and all I could do was to watch from the window how a guy with the cake was scratching his head wondering what to do.

Finally I arrived at Paris and the cakeman caught me up. However, I couldn't eat the cake because I would have choked as I saw the bill: 123,20 euros! The delivery was only three fourths of the total cost but. I couldn't believe it and a lawyer appeared. He tried to handle the situation and I staggered away my head fuzzing...

If you should follow a certain road through the forest, eventually you would come to a grassy field. And next to that field, among the normal trees of the forest, is a garden. This is the garden of Led Zeppelin.

I walk down the road towards the opening in an old wooden fence to enter the field. The sound of a gentle waterfall is the only thing missing from the total serenity. When I enter the field, I notice the enormous trees scattered about it. Their leaves form a canopy which filters the mid-day sunlight. The light comes down green on gold, the color of summer.

Where the edge of the field meets the forest again, the sunlight reaches through the canopy of the field. A bit deeper into the forest, I can see one of the trees in the garden. It is tall and reaches above the other trees around it, the brances bearing dark scarlet flowers. I know that each plant in this garden that was created from Led Zeppelin's music, and each one represents a single songs. I can't tell which song that giant tree is, but I know it's a beautiful one.

I lay down on the grass bordering the forest and lift the low branches of an evergreen, looking for another song. To my joy, I find one. It's only a small plant, with a single stem and broad, solitary leaf below the red flower on top. I wonder what song it is.

A meandering insect accidentally flys into my ear. Startled, I fall to my back in the grass and brush it out. When I sit up, two feet away through the branches, I see the head and neck of a rouge African gazelle staring at me. It thinks I don't see it. I chuckle at it.

"Go away."

It still stands there, hoping it is undetected, and I chuckle a bit harder as I wave my arm.

"Hey, I can SEE you! Go away!"

The gazelle gets the hint and sprints away, and, unfortunately, I wake up.

I was in a game, only it seemed more real than it ended up being. There was some kind of strategy; I had a goal, but I don't know what it was. I only know that I had to shoot people and get past them.

So, I got the gun out of the trunk of my car and loaded it. All I had to do to reload was pull the thing back -- you know the thing? I don't know the name for it. But by sliding it back toward me, all the chambers were somehow reloaded, like in the arcade game where you shoot people, and then you have to shoot over to the side to reload your gun. I thought of that, in my dream, while I was reloading.

The gun I had was a revolver that I kept calling a Glock. There was a clear plastic casing over the chamber, and I could see the bullets in there. I shot at someone, and the gun fired but nothing happened. It was a friend of mine, but nobody I know in real life, just a dream friend. I wasn't convinced that the bullets weren't real, so I was glad I missed her because I liked her and didn't want her to get hurt.

For a long time, I was shooting at my friend. Whenever I aimed correctly, a bruise would appear on her face or blood would seep out of her clothing. She let me look up close, even though that wasn't good strategy for either of us, and I couldn't tell how it was makeup but she said it was and that it didn't hurt.

She was shooting at me all this time, too, and every time she hit me I got a little light-headed. Then we realized that we were standing still and shooting at each other, so we started running back and forth, steadying our right hands with our left forearms and still shooting. I thought it would look cool if I pretended I were in a John Woo movie and held my gun sideways, but I didn't because I wouldn't be able to aim as well and I wanted to win.

All I needed was to hit her one more time in the head and she'd have to fall down and I could move on to the next part of the game. But when I pulled the trigger, nothing happened. I could see through the clear plastic casing that there was one bullet left, but it wouldn't shoot. I kept trying to reload, and no bullets showed up. This went on for a very, very long time. Me firing and firing and no bullets coming out and then trying to reload and firing again...

Finally, I lifted the plastic casing over the chamber and rotated the chamber by hand. There was a plastic cog there for this purpose, like the ones on paper towel dispensers for when the paper towels get stuck. The last bullet finally fired and I was able to reload the gun. I still couldn't hit my friend, though. The overall tone was one of frustration. I never did manage to kill her.