Dream Log: September 5, 2000

From last night I remember two long blocks of dreaming. Memories from the first one vanished as soon as I got up to let the cat out. I remember it was nice though. Nothing irritating, frustrating or really weird.

Second block of dreaming, between 5.30 a.m. and 7.30 a.m., continued my two last nights' dreaming about old friends. Tonight it felt like saying farewell to some of them, although there were no explicit goodbyes. It was a good feeling; strange coincidents with people I rarely see just walking into "the scene". I guess all this has to do with my thinking a lot about emigrating and stuff during the days.

I hardly ever remember my dreams. I know I have them, but I wake up gasping for air, trying to clear out the fog of sleep. I usually air out the dreams instead. This is a shame, because when I dream, I dream about wonderful head twisty things that make me appreciate the subtleties of reality. I never have nightmares or bad dreams.

Lately, however, my psychoses have been holding their annual convention in my subconscious. I thought this was over a month ago, when, at night in my head, a good friend told me she has never felt any positive emotion towards me and my father started decomposing before my eyes, his skin hanging off of him like melted wax.

Just a few minutes ago, I had a dream that made me not want to go back to sleep. I almost never wake up before six. It started out simple enough, almost like an American sitcom. I'm pretty hazy on the events leading up to this, but a friend of mine and a crack team of doctors had to preform surgery on a stranger to make sure his baby wasn't born sideways. I sat in the waiting room, talking with old friends and reading mid-seventies Playboy spin-offs such as Oui when I heard the doctors talking in the next room. I walked in. Everyone was drinking coffee.

"Mel? You don't drink coffee," I said to my friend.

"I do now."

Everyone was joking, talking about golfing. The operation was a success. The Mel mentioned something about a brain tumor and everyone was quiet.

"What's wrong, Mel? Did the guy have a tumor?"

"No," she said. "I do."

She said it with such venom that I thought she was kidding, but it was obvious by the expression on her and the doctors' faces that she was serious.

I remember thinking at the time, "Oh my god. This is like 'the notification of death via email'," which, I suppose, in a way it is, but I interpret this as meaning I need to get out more. My first reaction in the dream was to break down and cry.

I'm sure I've fallen asleep crying a few times. This is the first time I've ever woken up in tears.

My first thought upon entering the realm of consciousness: "I need to check my ICQ histories. That couldn't have been real. Mel can't be dying."

My second thought: "I need to pick up that subwoofer today." Such are the mysteries of the human mind.

I spent half an hour reading old e-mails and routing through ancient ICQ messages. Mel isn't dying. A dreamer will believe anything, I guess.

Possible causes:

• I haven't seen Mel in a while. She lives in Las Vegas, which is a long way away. I'll be at her wedding next year, but I almost never see her more than once or twice annually, and this is a pretty sore point sometimes. Combined with the tragedy of her dying before her wedding, too, is the fact that she's young -- she just graduated from high school. She's also a really good friend.
  
• I've been having trouble distinguishing sarcasm lately, especially when in a venue packed with intelligent people. I see this as a major fault, and, to take up the slack, my defenses kick in and I assume everything anyone says is sarcastic. What is worse, though: missing a joke and being laughed at, or assuming everything is a joke and hurting those that have taken you into confidence and need help?

I dreamed last night that my parents where all worried over money. Seems that because of some cattle problem they where going to have money issues. Which is only slightly strange in that my parents live in a big city and have never owed cattle. I had a fight with my parents concerning the money and how it should be used.

I don’t remember how the fight ended just that the next thing I remember I was in the rec center working out. I was trying to hit on (very unsuccessfully I might add) on this girl on the stair-master next to me. When I turned around and my girlfriend was there. She was so mad at me. She went off on how she thought we where going to get married, have kids, and live happily ever after. After that I awoke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.

I think the last part of my dream came from the fact that early that day I had a long talk about get married, kids, and the happily ever after thing. As for the first part about cattle, that I just don’t know. I guess my mind is just messed up like that.

I was in Amarillo, on the same weekend I was supposed to go with Oscar Hill to some kind of concert in Carthage, Texas.
I was visiting the twins, Ronny and Randy Nall, when I realized this. Amarillo is roughly 375 miles from Carthage. I told the boys, right after I arrived that I was gonna have to leave already, they were not happy about it, but they understood. I said goodbye t them, and the girl that I stay with when I go to Amarillo, Cassie Lax. The boys said they would ride with me to the edge of town. We all loaded up in my truck and headed toward Carthage.
Somehow we got sidetracked and wound up mudhawging on some backroads in Amarillo.
Next thing I knew, the plane I had taken to get back to Carthage on time, was coming in for a landing. Looking out the window, I could tell that the plane was coming in at too wild of an angle. One of the other passengers said, "Oh my God!" At that point the plane was strafing down the runway, turning more onto it's side. Seeing that we were all about to die, I leaned back to Cassie, who was all of a sudden behind me. I kissed her, a good long passionate kiss, as the plane continued it's slow motion destruction. The other passengers realized they could not fight what was going to happen, so they started to applaud, and shake each other's hands. Then, nothing...

That was it, I did not wake up, but the dream had ended. I later woke up, and could remember nothing, except for random parts as I continued through the morning. There was much more of it too, however this is all I can remember for the moment.

walking along a wall which separates boardwalk from beach, but the wall is high. there are stairs up and over periodically, but each time i come to some, the beach on the other side is either too rocky, too polluted, or too brackish to bother. finally i find a perfect stretch of beach, but the way up and over is monopolized by a woman in a wheelchair (who may or may not have been my mother) complaining about the lack of wheelchair access. instead of waiting, i jump down from the top of the wall only to find that the sand is contaminated by small white worms which are sticking to my skin, then burrowing in and which will eventually destroy my liver. they are covering my hands and arms.

discusted by the beach, but still wanting to swim, i find an indoor pool. as i pass by the hottubs, i see two (sorta) friends lounging out. One of them is asleep, his head almost completely under water. he might drown, but i don't like him enough to call attention to that fact. the other, named laura, offers me a bathing suit, but she is quite bigger than i am and so i doubt it will fit properly. somehow it does. as i am getting into the hottub, she calls me "pegalicious" which annoys me, so i strip off her bathing suit and leave, not realizing until i am outside that i am naked.

A potpourri of dreams...

Dem bones kicked me out of his house

Me and another noder came to visit the wise old dem bones to ask him about something (don't ask I don't remember). Bones was portly fellow who half bald with tufts of curly green hair (like a clown wig) on the sides of his shiny dome. When he had heard our question he snarled and asked us to leave his house. It was raining. I don't remember who the other noder was.

They were in black suits and shades

The dream starts with a guy coming around the corner with both his pistols blazing. The fellow was in a black suit and seem to be shooting everyone else around me. As I followed the guy into the men's toilet (don't start) I realised he was my partner and I too was in a black suit. We went around all the cubicles and shot all the bad guys who were in black suits too wearing shades (yes even on the toilet). The last guy took a long time to kill. I noticed that although sparks were flying from the pistols I didn't actually see bullet wounds in my victims.

Me and my partner ran down a corridor at which point we arrived to the entrance of a cinema theatre. I voluntered to flush out the "bad guys" while my bud provided cover fire. There was a film showing, so the place was shrouded in total darkness. To make my job harder there were civilians so I couldn't just let rip with my guns, I had to selectively pick off the bad guys one by one. Soon enough I had done the bug cleaning and made a run for the exit.

Unfortunately my bud told me that the boss was still back in the cinema and I had to take him out too. Before I ran back in my bud stuck in ass in an empty projection window, I don't know why... On the way back in I clocked the boss it was Ted Danson! Worse still he was brandishing an Uzi.

I was scared...real scared.. I knew that if I got sprayed by that thing I would be torn to shreds. So I hid behind the self-folding seats waiting to make my move. But everytime I went to fire at him my gun would jam.

Finally I realised that my gun was not jammed it wasn't cocked. So I cocked it, but Ted is like frigging bullet proof. He's right in front of me and I'm really scared. I decide to ask him if he'll come quietly, he agrees but before I place the handcuffs on him he asks to see my maglite torch.

Now the maglite was one of those big long jobbies at least 12" long. I let him examine it, at which point he proceeded to unscrew the battery compartment and take out the batteries. I realise what he's about to do, he's going to throw the batteries at me (why he didn't just bludgeon me with the torch itself I'll never know. Before he can do that I stop him.

FIN.

Reconstructing Adolescence

Both of my parents are present in a darkened bedroom that is something like a hodgepodge of all my various childhood and teenage bedrooms. My mother is talking, in her usual matter-of-fact way, about the fact that I need to begin wearing a bra, while discomfort with this conversation positively radiates from my father. Why he remains present is a puzzle, as does my mother's lack of concern with his presence for this conversation, though in fact she could at times be startlingly direct about many things that other kids parents seemed to tiptoe around ro try to deal with more "discretely."

I too am slightly embarassed by the setting, and by the timing of this conversation, particularly his presence, but most of my discomfort is for him, or at least is provoked by the looks of discomfort I am getting from him. At the same time I appreciate and admire her sometimes extreme directness, maybe because it's something I've never felt quite so adept at, but a quality I greatly admire (and have often been jealous of) in her.

And perhaps I also enjoy a little the way she seems to be trying to embarass him with this conversation.

I don't actually seem to see my body during this conversation (I rarely do see my own body in dreams, unless I am dreaming from the POV of someone else). The light is very low, but I assume during this conversation, from context and the emotional tenor of the moment, that I am wearing practically nothing, and am certainly topless, since the sense I have is that the conversation must have started when my mother noticed that I'd begun to develop breasts.

An odd thing is that I am aware of being significantly older than I would have been when anything like this conversation might have actually happened, and, of course, the dream does not reflect at all how this was dealt with when I was developing.

Other incidents followed, mostly an extended shopping trip, as I recall, but this is the only fragment I had a distinct memory of once I awoke.

I was sent to the e2 editors building to have a confrence with Nate - Like being sent to the principal.

Each editor had their own level in the building and it was decorated differently for each person: Jet Poop had all metal and steel with a big confrence table, Dem Bones had brick, Yossarian was all blue glass with a little waterfall, and jessicapierce had cement. Then I passed Sensei and it was all white with only his cat in the middle of the room. "Wiintrrsmeeet!", said the cat.

The end - I never got to see Nate, which all the other ladies assure me is a shame indeed.

I dreamed my cat jumped out of the window. (This is a constant fear of mine; I leave the windows open anyhow.) "AHH! TOBY!" My boyfriend and I rush out to find him. He smugly walks out from behind a bush, tail high, and leaps in to my arms. As we walk back up to my apartment, he begins to talk to me, telling how he is a time traveller, and how he once took some of my fake viking coins and sold them for $300, then invested them on the market in futures. (Being a time-traveller, he had some hot tips.) When his investment paid off, he went back in time and took $300 and deposited it to my account. "Oh yeah. I was wondering where that came from." I absentmindedly took an inventory of my fake viking coins. I had them in a big binder in plastic sheets. Some were chocolate and some were metal, but since they were all covered in gold foil, you cold only tell which was which by weight. My cat flew around the room for a while, finally landing on my boyfriend's head. He stayed awake for three hours, wanting to go to sleep, but afraid to disturb the cat. I wake up, idly thinking I was in world war one era missouri. Sigh. Too much Heinlein.

Ok, I just woke up from napping (I have a much easier time remembering my dreams when I nap). Anyway, this one was a lucid dream. I thought I was awake, and I kept going over to the computer to check my ICQ messages and they were all gibberish. There were a few word phrases, but for the most part it was just random letters put together, like something created by a 3 year old banging on the keyboard. Somehow that clued me into the fact that I was dreaming, so I did my typical lucid dreaming things like flying and creating giant monoliths and all that. I even took part in a real-life game of Team Fortress Classic in this dream (cheating, of course since I was the God of this dreamworld). It was all very exciting for me.

The weird part about this dream was that I had the whole "dream within a dream" thing going on. So, after I got through doing all the stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph I thought I woke up. So I went to tell all my friends about the dream I was having. I've never had anything like this happen before so it seems really convoluted to me at the moment. After discussing the lucid portion of the dream with my friends, we went to eat at some vegetarian restaurant, but it was closed. Then my alarm clock went off, so I woke up for real. All in all though it was a pretty good dream.

So I'm driving a tricycle down the highway. Don't know where I'm trying to go, I guess this is better than walking and is almost like driving a car because I'm going at an incredibly high speed. Zoom zoom! I'm driving a tricycle recklessly down the highway, I keep skidding off the road, and cars around me can't predict what I'm going to do next. I hear voices on the CB radio, "Steer clear of the tricycle kid! Man, she's like a pony waiting to gamble in these waters!".

I turn off the highway and into a gas station. I'm hot and sweaty and I don't know what I want. I stare at the drinks in the freezer knowing I don't have any money to buy... LIQUID HAGGIS??? Maybe I was lucky not to have any money. An old woman comes out and offers me some lemonade. She's wearing wristbands, a headband, and by the look of things, she's been sweatin' to the oldies. "I hate exercise. I feel for you little girl!" She shoves a teddy bear in my hands. I instantaneously start crying as she strips her body of her old woman apparel and reveals that she is actually an "Aimee"gate spy. I guess my driving was a political scandal but I had no idea it was this bad. I heard a code repeated over an intercom that had been wired into different parts of the building, Outside I hear a space shuttle landing on a big helicopter landing pad, and what I conceive to be my friend James and even harder to believe in this dream, Mat Catastrophe have stepped out of the space shuttle. James wants me to go to school with him, which I am actually oppposed to, but can't say in this dream because it may conflict with the "Keep Aimee's Tricycle Off The Highway" campaign. Mat Catastrophe is trying to tell me that there is a new Atari GX console or something and .. I quote.. how "systematic revenue of the company may be the downfall of the Roman Empire." (I'm not quite sure if that's exactly how it went, but I'm pretty close I hope) I asked what this has to do with the Aimeegate campaign. He said tha the Romans were not on my side.

My brain chips off a piece of my memory and now I am at school with James. He has wire and he is binding our bodies together by wrapping it tightly around us. The Romans charge in, in stereotypical war costumes, and start attacking us with pushbrooms and other janitorial equipment. Among the Romans, you guess it, was Mat Catastrophe again. This time he dressed in a general's uniform and is holding a shotgun which he is about to blast into the sky. He counts to 7 in German and shoots. Everything in a 10 foot radius around him spreads out. He stands silent for a moment. Still tied to Jaymz, I grasp for a piece of dirt and fling it at a Roman. One of the many Romans on the scene explodes on touch and everything fades out.