this was a weird one

image via lots more cool art there.

I haven't posted a dream here in a long time, but this was a particularly strange one. (I still write them down as I remember them, but I rarely post them here. Dunno why.)

At any rate, I've never been dead in a dream before, I don't think, and that was definitely the sensation in this. Text follows.


Dream:
I had a dream I had died. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. I was saddened, I suppose for my own loss, and my need to leave this world, but I also woke up with tears in my eyes for the loss of Mena. I think she had already gone on to some other realm.

I was standing on the edge of a farmhouse yard, I think, nighttime. I was with another person, a male but no one I recognized. He had died too, but somehow was more privy to the way these things worked. We gazed out over the edge of the cleared land, over a fence and dried stalks of October-dead corn blowing in the cool breeze. Beyond lay blackness, not just night but pure black, no stars, not even any ground or hills or differential between sky and land.

As we walked slowly toward the gate that opened onto the blackness, I asked once more if this was it, the only choice, if this was the way it had to be. My companion answered yes, that there were no choices any more. We stepped up to the gate, he stepped through and I began to follow. That’s when I was struck by sudden, overwhelming sadness at the loss of Mena.

I watched the other guy disappear into the gloom ahead, and took one tentative step forward, not yet through the gate but nearly there. Then I awoke.

I still miss you girlie.

dream

Dream 07.15.08

Again with the nicotine patches. That always makes dreams weird and especially vivid.

there is a place, a huge, bustling metropolis that is also a large outdoor market of some sort, the size of a small city perhaps. There are indoor-ish areas where there is refrigeration and groceries are sold, but there are also wide avenues and streets you walk down to get to other sections of the supersuperstore. It is as if Wal-Mart has taken over every type of retail there is, and enclosed an entire city under a dome.

I am working, but the sense is one of killing time, as if it is more a lark for me than the others. I feel like I am only here temporarily, and tagging these coats and moving around these cantaloupes is something I might as well do while I am waiting for whatever is going to happen.

I am working with an older woman who I don’t really know, but with whom I am comfortable. I don’t really know any of these people at first, but they seem familiar anyhow. I keep running back to the bathroom way far out near the entrance to the mall/dome for some reason. It’s like I am doing coke, but I’m not. I’m not sure why I keep doing that.

Soon, Denise F. comes to find me, with a credit card receipt for vet bills I owed her. It seems I filled it out for $419 when I actually owed her $819. She is upset and an accusatory, and I tell her I don’t have enough in my account to cover the difference, she keeps nagging at me and I finally tell her I will call the bank so she can hear what my balance is, and that I will pay her in a few days. She continues to press, and I finally tell her I am disappointed that she doesn’t seem to believe me, or that she thinks I might have deliberately ripped her off.

She has an assistant walk along with me to hear the bank message, a nice enough kid, and I am dialing when she catches up with us as we are walking back toward the entrance, saying she might as well go this way, as it is lunch break and everyone is heading that way. I give her a dirty look cause I am really pissed with her, and I say, ‘well, you two go on a ahead then. I’ll go somewhere on my own.’

Earlier, and this might be why the whole communal store situation developed, I was living at a place that was almost like a compound of log cabins out in the woods. It is a familial, communal atmosphere, with adults, children, older folks. It’s almost like it is a former city of log cabin structures, but one that has fallen in disrepair in places, with some houses abandoned and dusty. There is snow on the ground and I need to get the car down to the other end of a long ‘road’ that runs along in front of the houses. There is snow on the ground, plenty of it, and only one or two tire tracks in the extremely narrow path. And although there is an easier way, if I had just followed my friends as they went around to the front of the first row of cabins to the main street, for some reason I decide to plow ahead in my truck.

Which I soon regret. The road narrows to the point of the ridiculous, with rock outcroppings nearly scraping the sides of the vehicle, and still with miles to go. I look back, though, and it seems like I have come as far as I still have to go, and so I press on.

At some point I pick up passengers, other friends from the log cabin commune, and as we are getting ready to debark and go into the building we were trying to reach, I see that Ben has snuck aboard the truck. I grab him and ask someone to hold onto him tight while I park the truck.

I think it is my mom who finally takes him and says, ‘Oh, I’ve got him, I’ve got him.’ I try to explain how much he hates being held, and that he is very squirmy and wily, and apt to escape, and that out here in the woods away from home, I’m not sure I’d be able to get him to come back. She swears she’s got it covered.

But as I am backing the car up, I hear her yelling, in a panic, and I know she has lost him.

Explain that, Dr. Freud.

Oh! Almost forgot: I had had one earlier, from which I awoke with my heart racing and unable to go back to sleep for a while. It is that sad, near-twilight hour, on perhaps a Sunday. Everyone has stuff to do tomorrow, and so all have said good-bye, and I am more morose for not having anyone around than happy for the time I spent with them earlier. I am inside, in the basement apartment, only the architecture is somewhat askew. And I see a man’s feet outside my window on the stairs, and for some reason I hug up against a wall, hoping he won’t see me. There is a mirror on the opposite wall, however, and I see that he has seen me. He lurches his way easily down into the apartment through the window, but casually, as if he enters this way all the time. He is a dumpy, bespectacled, nerdy looking guy, but with two huge knives strapped to him, one nearly the size of a machete.

He slowly, threateningly eases one in and out of its sheath, saying something totally casual like ‘Oh, hey, thought I’d stop by...’

I think about dashing for a weapon but realize it’s too late for now. of course, i watched 'funny games' earlier that night before, so a dream about a casual home invasion isn't all that unlikely, i guess. :)

dream

cat? what cat? i haven't seen the cat.

Dream 07.02.08

Patches on again, and so dreams getting weird again. This one I’m sure stems partially from last night when I got the dogs back from Erica, after she had a little doggie vacation for them down in pueblo for a week. I picked them up in downtown Denver after a rehearsal, and so that’s kind of stressful in and of itself. Then the drive back involved about 30 minutes of sitting in traffic at one of the many, many wonderful places our state dept. of transportation has decided to tear up on I-25 this summer. So with panting, thirsty dogs in the back, and a frustrating drive, it kind of makes sense that I had this weird dream.

I am in a frat house of some kind, but it’s out on a green heath, away from anything. It’s a gray late afternoon day. Like early winter, with snow coming soon from a heavy sky. The house is packed with frat-type guys, who are busy extracting money from people for various bullshit things. Eric is there, and he has gotten in trouble with these guys over something, and I am trying to get him away from them. But they are playing like they’re all Tony Soprano, and saying even though he wants out of the deal he had originally arranged they were going to charge him a ‘cancellation fee’ of like $50 or something. He looked like shit, like he was strung out or something, and I finally paid them, I think, and told him to come on, but he kept delaying by the door waiting for those douchebags to do something or give him permission to leave.

Finally I get him out of there, and we walk up a hill toward another building, where I am going to get my dogs from someone. When we top the hill, it turns out that it is actually Folsom Field in Boulder. We are in the building attached to it and looking down into the stadium, and among the seats there we can see that the frat guys have a bunch of dogs on leashes, two of which are Sabi and Mena. They are kind of mocking everybody, holding the dogs and saying we are going to have to pay them to get them back.

I am pissed.

I go back into the building I think to find a way down to where they are. It them becomes one of those ‘you are almost lost, but you know where you need to get, but there is no way to get where you want to get, and time is running out dreams.’ It kind of faded out from there, as the dream-wiper was hard at work.

evil I-25

so, i'm driving back down to denver last night, for callbacks for '18 holes,' and somewhere between windsor and the first loveland exit, the car in front of me runs over a folded-up, mangled old sign. it flaps up and i am on top of it before i can do anything about it. but whereas the thing burst out from under the car in front of me, when it got under my car (a ford exploder, mind you, with some pretty high clearance) it gets jammed into the frame right by the rear right wheel.

so i'm looking back out of my rearview, hearing this godawful scraping sound, and i see sparks flying out the back of my car.

lovely.

i pull off the freeway, and attempt to dislodge the sign, but it's jammed in there pretty good. finally some guy stops and gives me a hand (thanks, random stranger in the white pickup) and we get the thing free. of course, now i don't know if the brake line or fuel tank or anything unimportant like that has been damaged, and i'm not going to find out on the way down to denver.

so i didn't make it to the callback. :( i'm going to call the director today and see where they are at, if they are doing another round of callbacks or what.

ah well. at least the thing didn't fly up off the road into my windshield.

***

anyway, here's a dream i had last night. i think i might be under some stress...

03.11.08

I am leaving a late-night party of some kind that has gotten out of hand. It is a night of celebration all over the city, perhaps the world. But I left the place where I was and decided to walk home, although it was a couple of miles.

The city/town seems to be State College-esque, dark streets lined with older, conservatively built houses. I cut through a wooded area at one point, and slog through some mud, but I am of high spirits, and dial my phone to inform someone I am on my way home. I come out of the woods behind an old strip mall/office complex, a low, long building made of brick and steel, circa 1965. I circle around the building and am walking through its narrow parking lot along the street when I see the car for the first time. it is a long, older vehicle, perhaps a Taurus or something like that. It is careening back and forth across the roadway, with only its parking lights on, not changing speed or seeming to even attempt to avoid parked cars. I watch and begin to back away from the road as it continues its approach when I realize that it probably isn’t going to stop, and that it certainly wouldn’t stop just because a person was on the sidewalk.

The car finally slams into a triangle splitting the road into two, and comes to rest on the curb there. I tell my friend that I will call them back, hang up and start to dial 911 as the driver gets out. It is a big shirtless white guy, completely out of it, but with a drugged determination about him. He gets out and stumbles toward the building, where people have now come out to see what’s going on. I am at the far end of the building, and so I am not in his line of fire as I tell the police dispatcher there is an obviously drunken man who wrecked a car. But then he begins to harass the bystanders, berating them, asking what they’re staring at. He begins to get physical, shoving some of them around, and threatening them, and I duck around the corner of the building and make it clear that the situation is more urgent for the police. When I peek back around the corner, he is swinging a hoe or a rake or something at some people in the crowd, when finally the flashing blue lights pull up.

Next we see the man, now hastily dressed in a ripped green sweater and a t-shirt he found somewhere being pulled out of the basement of the building in cuffs. We (the crowd) commiserate on the situation, relating our versions of the story, pat each other on the back etc.

At some point, however, I am at a huge, sprawling chemical plant. I get out of the car, an old Thunderbird or some such, with a guy who looks suspiciously like a young Ray Liotta, and who holds a gun on some guy. We lead him toward the back of this plant area, which is seemingly abandoned, past several fences and gates that are wide open, and past a final row of curtain-like cloths that are hanging from a line a few dozen feet before we reach the back wall.

I hang back as my partner takes the guy back behind these flapping curtains, which don’t really cover up what is happening back there, and he shoots the guy in the head.

I remember I wasn’t really disturbed by this; it was an inevitability.

But I turn and am walking back toward the car when something goes wrong. The plant’s sirens and lights begin to flash as if there is a shutdown or something. A crew of workers streams out into the yard, which is a muddy, rocky, rolling area, and proceed to throw the football around. They are diving in the muck, sliding through the standing water, not caring.

But my partner is trapped somehow behind the curtains at the end of the plant’s grounds, and I have to get the car and drive up there and get him. I get in the car and start to ease my way past the workers and their game, across a gulley and up a rock face that protrudes from the muck. At some point I explain to the footballers what’s going on and they get out of the way gladly.

But by the time I get the car near where I need to go, the next round of plant procedures has started. There are sirens and lights a plenty now, and gates swing closed. The footballers, when I look back, have all disappeared, taken shelter somewhere. The car gets stuck and I proceed on foot, only to be stopped when a giant sprayer, like an agricultural watering system sprays out a huge burst of pink, jellied fluid, like a thick antifreeze, spraying down the whole area like a lawn sprinkler. I turn and flee, passing through several of these sprinklers, and make it outside the gates. I go back in several times, but I am beaten back by the jellied chemicals every time.

I have no idea how I will save my partner now.

dreams

hiya. here's a dream and some thoughts from last night/this morning.

1.04.07

a short and quirky dream I had just before waking: my friend L is at her job, but it’s not the shop where she actually works. It’s some converted older house, with a screened-in porch and broad old fashioned stairs that lead to a gallery on the second floor.

She is sitting at a table on the ground floor, with a newspaper spread open and scattered all over the table, as if she has read it several times already. On top of it, she has a roll of Lifesavers, the minty kind, out of the package and she is examining each of them one at a time, and explains to me in great detail the intricate differences between each one, and how one should go about eating them.

“I haven’t had any work to do for hours,” she said, “so I’ve been going over these. See, this one has a slight crack on the top edge...” -- how she could tell the top edge from the bottom edge, or any other edge for that matter escaped me -- “...so when you bite it, it will crack along there. Then there’s these two, which are stuck together, and that’s a bonus, but also very unpredictable. You never know what will happen.”

Not much happened after that.

***

I worry about copyright infringement in my dreams.
I worry that I might get sued for the images I dredge up.

No, but it is interesting and notable that when I do dream these days, the heavy, almost panicked sense of being lost, or more accurately of needing to find a place that I fear I can’t get to is essentially gone. This has been true for some time now. When I find myself in situations that are bizarre, and in which I sense that I am indeed meant to be somewhere else that is inaccessible, I sort of have a sense of just going with it, rather than a loss of control, and desperation to regain it.

I don’t know if this change correlates to quitting the restaurant or not, or if I consciously feel better about where I am in life during my waking hours, but it’s been pretty consistently that way for a while.

Come to think of it, houses and buildings always seem to figure into my dreams, almost as if they are silent characters waiting to be discovered, or with whom I must communicate on some other level. There is the older, wooden-floored house of the above dream, there is the decrepit factory of the “blocked passageway” type of dream, and I‘ve had a few involving a large, almost communal type of house, one where dozens of people live, or at least stay from time to time, passing through. A sense of family, but an extended one.

Ah, fuck it. I’m probably just insane.

***

AH! Now it’s come back to me, the other dream that occurred around the same time as the Lifesaver dream: I am in Florida, I guess, at a Magic Kingdom type of place. There is a new, much-anticipated display/ride/event about to be unveiled. As we approach (I have no idea who I am with, but I know them, in the sense of when you go to a concert with a bunch of friends of friends that you don’t really know, but who you shared a ride with) we can see that the thing we’re about to see is a long series of huge iron buildings, a la the Eiffel Tower, strung together in a line. They are somehow suspended above everything else, and there is a series of stairs leading up to the display.

This is a hot ticket, lots of people milling around, and I ask the guy walking next to me where we go to buy tickets as we mount the stairs. He says, “tickets? We don’t need tickets--I’m press.” And he flashes me his press pass, and I also notice his cameras strung around his neck. I say something clever like, “Oh, I love having press passes! I also get to--” and he kind of tolerates me but doesn’t really acknowledge what I’m saying, as we are now approaching the press area.

It is a screened-in porch, with astroturf carpeting, plastic lawn chairs and shitty little tables, all occupied by fat and cynical looking older people. My photog friend manages to squeeze into a single chair along one wall, crammed in with a bunch of other attendees. I try to do the same but there is no room. So I cross over to the far side of the room, looking for a chair I can grab, weaving between these people as best I can, though it is a tight fit. I reach the far side of the room and grab a chair, and make my way back.

But when I go to set it up, it turns out the chair is some terribly convoluted, arcane thing involving strange, origami-like foldings and unfoldings, and I quickly give up and instead sit in a shitty, broken lawn chair listing to one side that was already there. The long bridge of iron buildings is now being lit up by fireworks and a light display, but you can hardly see anything from the angle of the room we’re in. the other press people don’t seem to care--too cynical I guess.

But I want to see more, and I get up from my sunken, broken chair and lean in closer to a window across someone’s table, wondering if there is a place one can stand outside on the walkway to get a better view.

As I rise, I realize I am naked, of course. And an older lady with great huge Jackie-O sunglasses and a jet-black bouffant hairdo notices and points and twitters. I am not really struck by any kind of modesty, however, and decide to just waggle it at her in a playful way. I am feeling quite comfortable being naked. Her entire table laughs good-naturedly, and someone tries to aim a camera at my junk and take a picture. Just as the flash goes off, my hand covers the essentials. We all share a good laugh. Then I’m with L examining Lifesavers.

But I think I’m dressed. Hmm.

***

dreams, lost and found

images from dark passage, explorations of abandoned buildings

so, i've long been interested in dreams, what they mean, etc. but i don't subscribe to the literal translation of dreams; that is, i don't own a 'dream journal,' or any books that purport to 'interpret' your dreams for you. instead i think that what you feel when you are having them, and the emotions you have as you awaken from them are the most important thing, not, 'you dreamed of an oven--that represents you mother.' or 'an open umbrella is a woman.'

not buying it. it isn't that simple, i don't think. if dreams are your subconscious mind playing around with images, thoughts, and emotions that you experience in your waking life--that is, images, thoughts and emotions that you normally process with your conscious mind--then there is no real way for your conscious mind to logically deal with them. they are pure creations of the subconscious, a place that, by definition, we cannot get to consciously. therefore, any attempt to fence them in with conscious thought is worse than useless--it alters the pictures and feelings by forcing them to fit into categories for which they are simply not meant.

one of my favorite authors, william burroughs wrote an interesting and strange (believe it or not :) book about dreams late in his life, called 'my education.' in it he posits that the dream world we sometimes get to see in our sleep is the real world, and what we are living in from day to day in our waking hours is fake, a construct designed to confuse and hinder us, to prevent us from understanding 'reality.' he refers to something he calls the 'dream-wiper,' who comes along in the morning to wipe away your tiny glimpses of reality, and place you squarely back into your fake, grey, unimaginative world.

i'm not sure i agree with all that, but i think he is onto something with the notion that there is a world in there that is separate from this one, and that it is one we cannot fathom consciously. and, the book is especially interesting in that, as a writer who wrote so eloquently of strange, almost mocking worlds that mirror our own, burroughs has seen some bizarre and powerful images--whether they were in his head, or the result of heroin withdrawal is really immaterial--that have populated his books throughout his career, and which somehow resonate even more than so-called reality.

so, i admit it: i do like to write down dreams, when they are clear and when they seem to be particularly disturbing/resonant/emotional. i use some of the images and feelings in stories; in particular i seem to always have dreams in which i am trying to get somewhere that i really need to be, usually through some large and unpopulated building, perhaps somewhat crumbling, with many twists and turns. (that might be why i like that dark passage site so much; the images almost seem to have come from my dreams.) interestingly, there is almost always a door or passage i go through which is the wrong way to go, and through which i cannot go back, like a one-way door.

analyze that, mr. freud. :)

anyway, here's one from last night. don't ask what me what it means, and please don't try to have me committed:

12.4.07

two very distinct and sharp dreams, the first of which I recall better. There is a conference of some kind, a work retreat, and I am in a strange town with a bunch of people from work, only I don’t know a lot of them. There are some people from coop’s, sandi, specifically, but I don’t recognize most of them.

We are at some large and sprawling complex, many low-lying buildings with almost a military air about them, or at least with that cheap, government feel, like old state universities used to have. At first we are all hanging out in a common area, talking casually about what we are here for and what is going to happen. It seems there is to be a restructuring of the way we do business, whatever business it is (although there are coop’s people here, the workplace we all share in the dream isn’t the restaurant.)

Soon we are called to the meeting, and everyone takes off. For some reason, I have to go elsewhere before I go to the meeting, and I am separated from the group. Naturally, this leads to me being unable to find the room where this big ol’ important meeting is taking place. I search through this desolate and broken-down compound, and often the doors are unavailable to me, so I end up crawling through windows. at one point I see a car that is jammed up against and part-way into a building’s window, so I crawl into the car, and attempt to get through its safety glass which has been replaced with a plastic board of some kind. Every room I get into is desolate, unlit, and dusty, and has no egress into other areas of the building.

At one point I do encounter a sort of reception area, where busy people are running around and there is a front desk type of situation, but I don’t ask anyone for directions. I am walking down a hallway, thinking I am making progress toward my goal, when it suddenly occurs to me that I can use my cell phone. I call Nikki, and as I am asking her directions, the phone cuts out. I try in vain to get her on the phone again, but to no avail. Then I hear her voice on the intercom saying, ‘Kurt? Can you hear me? You want to go down the hall to the left…’ etc.

I follow the instructions as best I can, and end up on a lawn with all the people from before, who were attending this meeting. They are on a break of sorts. I ask sandi what’s going on, and she says that they didn’t want to start without me. Apparently darth vader is leading this meeting, and he just stood at the front of the room shuffling through papers, waiting for me. The other thing sandi informs me of is that it looks like I might have been chosen to lead in the new configuration of the organization that is being announced today, because everyone else attending got only a thin folder with a form paper inside, whereas they held back a crystal orb of some kind that it seemed like darth was waiting to give to me.

in the dream

reading about the family that came out in support of the SCHIP legislation and was soundly thrashed by the right-wing attack dogs for it. a 12-year-old child recently out of a coma beaten up in the media for saying it was, oh, 'good' that his family had help to pay his medical bills. crazy left-wing nut.

i was thinking about how far we've come as a species--and also how far back we have reverted, or at least how far we could still go. and i thought of a dream i had a while back.

in the dream there are groups of ragged, frightened, and beaten-down people foraging in a world much like ours, only fallen even more to seed. vines snake their way around lamp posts, broken windows like blank eyes stare out of dead buildings, weeds sprout hopefully out of cracking pavement, seeking the light of a pale sun in a smudged sky. civilization survives, but just barely.

these foragers try to stay as hidden as possible, they scurry in packs from dark place to dark place. alleyways and empty lots are their home turf--unless they are on the hunt. mostly they squabble among themselves, fighting over scraps and bones. fits of violence periodically burst out, settling internal power struggles with thuddings of crushed bone and broken flesh. new leaders emerge, with blood on their hands, leading by fear and intimidation.

but although they are by nature fearful creatures that take cold comfort in the violent ethos of the group--hiding as best they can within the herd and hoping it doesn't turn on them--they regularly erupt en masse from the dark places and set upon unwary people who are not of their tribe. they sense weakness in others as they sense their own weakness, and they know that their only power lies in moving in a herd, a bloodthirsty pack lashing out away from itself so as to distract from its members' individual shame and aloneness. they sense when their beliefs are being challenged, and shown to be wrong, and it sends them into a rage. with bloodlust in their eyes and slathering jaws, they rend the unsuspecting who dare to speak out against their bleak and hopeless ways.

there are others, people who live in the light places as best they can, people who struggle upward, who try to hang onto the things that made us unique among animals--the books, the art, the words, the empathy and the community. they seek to uplift each other rather than beat each other down. but they are still unable to see. they at least are aware that there is something to be seen, they know something is changing, they can feel it in their bones. but there is a blind spot, a sense of something glimpsed out of the corner of the eye that disappears when you turn to fully face it.

and there is a child. the child is born without the blind spot--he can see what we can become, what we have the potential to be, if only we are able to take that path.

this is a new stage of evolution, the precipice upon which balances the future of the human race. we stand to move forward into a new kind of enlightenment, or sink ever-lower into the slime.

the dark, violent lizard part of our brain fights mightily against obsolescence. it is the part of the brain, the part of us as humans that allowed us to scrabble our way out and up, away from the rest of the animals to actually become human in the first place, and it won't easily be cowed or put aside. it is the hunter, and that which was once hunted and at some point stood up on hind legs and refused to be hunted any longer. it is the oldest part of us, and refuses to go gentle.

and for the unimaginative, that narrow mindset is the easiest to which to default. but it is on the verge of becoming obsolete, and that is why it fights so rabidly--all it knows is fighting for survival, and so that is what it does.

but the child, the child. he has seen what we can become, what we can choose. and certain people of the other group have caught glimpses of it too. and they will fight too, in their own way. they must persevere, or we will slowly, unerringly sink back into the killing muck from whence we came.