Dream Log: September 18, 2000

I dreamed of spiders. Everywhere. But they were intelligent on a level I could understand. Perhaps my recent shedding of my arachnophobia caused this dream, or perhaps it's because Santa Barbara seems to be drowning in 8-leggies this hot summer, but spiders ruled the earth in this dream.

I spent the dream trying to understand why this was so.

I spent most of my time in the dream speaking with a very large wolf spider, who was weaving a tale of his family, his innumerable offspring, his mate, and his webs. I found beauty in the tale, and didn't want it to end.

But it had to, as I was overcome with a compulsion to kill a number of smaller spiders that were living together in the same web. Egg sacs were everywhere in the web, and I felt guilty for wanting to kill the unborn with poison. My friend spider split into four distinct creatures, each representing a reason why I should not destroy the smaller spiders.

The head, which pleaded reason and rational thought, telling me that to kill is wrong.

The legs, which told me I could run away, and if I ran far enough, I'd find a different world, telling me that I didn't belong in the world of the spiders and I had to run to find my own place.

The abdomen, which said it ruled emotion and that it was sick and dying. It said I would become it if I gave in to my urges. It didn't want me to be sick, or to die. It wanted me to live.

The eyes, which were six, wanted me to see the beauty in all life, and so I took them, and placed them into my own eyes.

The next thing I know, I'm in a small room, sitting on a bed with steel legs. Wrapped around one of the legs was a spider, sleeping. I didn't want to wake it, so I woke up instead.

I am sitting in a hall, or auditorium, or some other largish, dark room with a screen in the front, such that I can’t see anyone else, for the time being, and that programs can be projected at the front.

We are here in between some events, waiting for something else to happen, and it has fallen to me, reluctantly, to choose the program to be viewed while we wait. All I am able to choose is a CBC documentary. It’s not what I would watch, if I had anything else to watch, but I don’t. The rest of the audience isn’t any happier.

Then the program changes, and I realize I’m no longer in control of the diversion, not that I mind. I also realize that the woman to my right is in the program, and the cast is all women. The audience likes this program much better, as I don’t like it as much. And I realize they are all women.

Then there is a baby is on my left. He is alone and not very happy with things. He looks at me, and reaches out. I reach out to him, and he takes my finger. He is happier.

An older woman, his grandmother, comes to get him. She puts her hands on him, looking none too happy--she wants to be part of something that is happening elsewhere. He’s unhappy, too.

I say "Let me take him." All of us understand it is just for the duration of the program. She agrees.

I take him in my arms. I hold him. He puts his head in the crook of my neck, on the left. We stay like that for a while--happy.

I know somehow--I don’t know how--his name is Young Evil, or Young Wicked.

We talk somehow--I don’t know how. And I ask him, "Is your name really (Young Evil/Young Wicked)?" He says, "Yes."

I ask him, "When you get older, will your name be (Old Evil/Old Wicked)?" We laugh.

After weeks of intense dreams that I forgot as soon as I rose from bed, I had a feature-length dream:

It was my first day as a transfer student at MIT. I had transferred in mid-semester. My first class was in a very old building. There was some excitement because a ghost had been seen. I was sitting near a small group of people. We introduce ourselves. One was a tall good-looking brown haired guy, and he whispers in my ear something in Spanish. I tell him in Italian to speak slowly, because I only understood a word here and there, and he whispers in a warm voice the whole thing all over again, just as rapidly as before. It's clear that he likes me.

I know what's behind the "ghost" so when they sent us out of the building (which was about to be condemned) I lead our small group to a little house. An oldish woman answers the door, and at my request she shows us the ghost: a little ground monkey covered by a sheet. The monkey is very small, and someone steps on it, killing it. A little boy upstairs is quite upset. The old lady goes up to calm him, but I hear her saying, "Ouch!" at intervals of a couple seconds. I step back to see what's going on in the balcony, and I see that a long narrow white snake (yes, I know) is biting her. She gets very agitated, and a whole chorus of snakes and serpents rise up to strike her. Me and my friends - we get the hell out of there, closing the door behind us.

We go into the city (which is New York) to look for a clue. We make our way through a very narrow access space to a dirty elevated subway platform. We are almost even with the roof of a famous performance hall. The name on the building is "Gordon Hall" but that's not what New Yorkers call it; just the way that no New Yorker says "Avenue of the Americas" although that's what the street is clearly labelled - they call it "Sixth Avenue".

One of the group, an Asian, who in real life is an ex co-worker of mine, is dressed as a policeman. In real life, his children are always ill. In the dream, the child who died in the snake episode was his son. He knows the name of the concert hall, but for some reason he won't say it. "Carnegie Hall?" I say, knowing as I say it, it's wrong.

"No," he says, and makes his way rapidly down the access space. I have trouble keeping up.

I woke, and later fell alseep to find myself dreaming part of the dream again. I entered the old lady's house and said to her, "Listen, don't bring out any animals to show us, okay?" Puzzled, she asked, "Why?"

"Because I've seen this movie before, and I know how it comes out," I told her, looking around nervously.

I had a night terror for the first time in about a year. I kept thinking I was awake and couldn't fall asleep and then I would notice something odd, like that I was jerking back and forth as if i was a passenger in a standard automobile, and then I would realize I was asleep and dreaming and I would wake myself up. Then I would think I was awake again but really asleep something odd would happen, like I would hear my father(who is not in the house where I live) laughing just outside my room, and I would wake myself up. As this happened over and over I would look at the clock and time would be going forward and backward between these episodes and I would want to cry because I knew I was in the loop of not being able to tell where the dream began or stopped. Then it gets scary. The fear builds up and what can only be described as an anxiety attack occurs. I become paralyzed and lose the ability to speak. I can hear words in my head but when I try and speak nothing comes out and the effort causes tension and stress in my head and throat. When I try and move I know my brain is sending the messages but nothing moves. Then evil sets in. Last night it was a swirl of Grey on the side of my wall. The swirl was a rift and with it came a deep threat of evil things. I prayed for strength and reminded myself it was not real. A hand came out of it, I know I’m dreaming but it feels more like being awake then dreaming, I’m still paralyzed and the hand reaches out and just hovers, dripping with a Grey sickness, palm and fingers spread hovering above my face.

I spoke with my mother in the morning about it. She had the same type of dream last night. Constantly waking up but really being asleep, ending in paralysis. For her the evil was the essence of rape. Hovering. When I told my mother the dream she was almost sick.

I dreamed last night that I was out shopping at this mall. It wasn’t any mall that I can ever remember going to. But in my dream I knew my way around. I had come to the mall for a reason, but I can’t remember now what it was. I remember going into among other things the software store, (my personal favorite store) I also remember having the ever popular “the cookie stand is not part of the food court” debate. I ran into my girlfriend at the mall after I had that debate with my roommate.

My girlfriend was coming out of this women's underwear kind of shop. One of the Victoria Secret kind of places. I asked here if she found anything good and said "yes" but he she wouldn’t show it to me then but maybe latter.

She left and me and my roommate headed of to the video store for some anime. Where we saw some of my friends. They joked that they wanted to rent Tentacle Sex number 6. But the other said they hadn’t seen One through Five and it wouldn’t make senses to come in the middle. We laughed about that for a bit and then I woke up just before I got to look at the anime they had.

I rarely remember my dreams, but this one was a doozy.

I was out at some sort of block party with my family. Seemed like there were a lot of stereotypical Italian families there, eating spaghetti and singing songs and suchlike. It was getting late, and things were winding down, when this old, battered, ugly, green-painted pickup truck pulled up. The word "HELL" was painted on the side, and the implication was clear: the pickup was one of the company vehicles for the Big Underground Sauna, and the driver was none other than the Prince of Darkness himself. The window rolled down, and at the wheel was Bill Gates himself. So I got in the truck with him, and we drove off. My mom called out, "Be home in time to type up some job letters!"