dreams

Another night, another weird dream I can recall bits of.

I am in a skyscraper that may or may not be the World Trade Center (the original). The dream has nothing to do with terrorist attacks.

Instead I find myself drawn to climb out onto some kind of spout structure on one of the corners of the building that paradoxically curves upward at the end. This isn’t at the top of the skyscraper but it’s at a decent height. After looking around for a bit I decided I’ve seen enough and go back. Except that, due to dream logic, it is impossible to climb back up the spout. The only way off the spout is down. I look down and am comforted to find there is a large grass lawn below me, verdant green and welcoming.

I then notice that I’m perhaps up a little too high, probably at least a hundred feet, and landing on grass from a hundred feet up will likely result in serious injury, death, or both. I consider my options.

Using one arm to hold onto the curved portion of the spout, I use my free hand to pull out a flip-phone (maybe this is 2001 or earlier, after all) and calmly call 911, requesting rescue. I then wait.

A little while later I am rescued and though I don’t remember exactly what happened, I think I was helped into the bucket of a fire truck and then deposited on the nearest floor of the building, rather than being brought safely to the ground for a good scolding about climbing one-way spouts on skyscrapers. When I am safely inside I look down through a window/balcony/deck and think, “It wasn’t that far. Pfft.” The ironic part here is that I am a big-time acrophobic under the right (or more accurately, wrong) circumstances. If I was grasping onto a spout a hundred feet in the air, off the side of a skyscraper, I would not be calm, I would be in a state of shock or pooping my pants, or pooping my pants while in a state of shock. Like the previous night’s bear-chase dream, I find myself in a situation that should be terrifying and act with utter nonchalance, like this stuff happens all the time.

I kind of like it. I’m not sure what it means. I’m not sure I want to know. But maybe I do.

Last night I had a myriad of dreams, most of them the usual dream sort-of nonsense, though a few too many were work-related. They weren’t bad dreams but I’d rather not have dreams about work when I’m, you know, on vacation.

I woke up from one and found it so dumb I had to record it before I forgot, so I padded into the bathroom, my eyes scrunched up tight from the bright light, and tapped out the dream on my iPad, using the Drafts app. Technology is grand.

In the dream I was walking west along Trunk Road, one of the longer roads in my hometown of Duncan. For reasons I never determined my hands were spackled with moist dirt, as if I’d been planting a garden. Perhaps that was the previous dream.

I strode up the street with my dirt-covered hands and headed toward the McDonald’s near the intersection of Trunk Road and the Island Highway (no such place exists in reality, though there is a McDonald’s further down the highway). As I got close I suddenly realized I’d forgotten my uniform. Yes, apparently I worked there, it was my first shift and I’d forgotten to wear my uniform. I turned around and headed back to get it. And possibly to wash my hands.

A short distance ahead of me I spotted what appeared to be a medium-sized black bear. In comparison to me this was still gigantic. It was snuffling through some overgrown bushes in a yard. I began to back up, hoping the bear would not see me before I could get somewhere bear-proof. Alas, the bear did see me so I picked up the pace, hoping my head-start would serve me well and also hoping bears couldn’t run faster than people. As I ran some guy off to the side yelled out that if I had [something] I could use it to distract the bear. I can’t remember what it was–food seems a likely choice, though given dream logic, it could have been anything. Whatever it was, I didn’t have it so I kept running.

I came upon a parked car and ran around it to the front, leaping onto the hood, which was to serve as my refuge. The bear immediately jumped onto the hood behind me, my refuge lasting about a tenth of a second. I then curled into a ball to at least make it more difficult to gut me and waited for whatever would happen next. I wasn’t scared because I was confident the guy who yelled about distracting the bear with [something] would somehow distract the bear.

I woke up at this point, so I’m not sure how it turned out. I’d like to think I didn’t get eaten.

Also, why I was going to work at McDonald’s in Duncan is a question I won’t even try to answer.

A later dream found me talking with people at work about something (or maybe [something]) and suddenly I couldn’t breathe properly. I began snorting and struggling and woke up to find I was snorting and struggling because my sinuses had completely blocked with the position I was laying in and I couldn’t breathe. It’s a bit freaky when dreams work that way.

A few nights ago I had a dream in which I was at a meeting at work and a group of us were gathered around a large conference table. Standing at one end was a former Academic Dean and she had donuts. But how do you distribute the donuts to people sitting around such a large conference table? In Dreamville you just use a device specifically made for just such a dilemma.

It consisted of three parts:

• a long piece of narrow, rounded wood
• a tube similar to a Pringles potato chip can, but about twice as big around
• a fishing rod-style reel to act as a winch
• and donuts

The donuts were loaded onto the piece of rounded wood. Sadly this meant no Boston Creams or other yummy filled donuts. The loaded donut “stick” would then be inserted into the long tube and at one end of the tube, the donut deliverer would use the reel/winch-like device to slowly push the donut stick out of the tube across the length of the table, allowing people to grab donuts as they slowly went by.

In the dream it was brilliant and everyone found it quite clever. In reality, it would work best if the laws of physics could be suspended, people didn’t care what type of donut they got and everyone was too lazy to just get up to grab a donut from the box (which would at least burn 5 of the 250 calories the donut would ding you).

This is apparently what happens when I go over a month without a donut.

Last night (technically early this morning) I had a type of dream that I haven’t had for many years. No, not getting chased by vampires, mummies, robots or driver-less vehicles (the staples of my childhood and I still have no idea what was up with that), but rather, I dreamed that I was flying.

I would normally associate flying dreams (at least ones where I don’t plummet to the ground) as something positive my subconscious is surfacing and while things have not been going badly for me of late, work has been very busy, I don’t have an idea for NaNoWriMo yet and I have other assorted smaller worries and concerns. There’s a lot on my mind, in other words.

And yet last night I dreamed I was flying over a park (a park was the location of one of my previous flying dreams, too). Sure, the people in the park didn’t seem to notice or care but it was still spiffy. The flying seemed to rely on momentum and inertia, so running and jumping into the air definitely helped. Once airborne, I remained upright and could swoop back and forth, sort of a fast hovering motion rather than using a Superman-style pose.

At one point in the dream a guy started following me. I didn’t know who he was or if he was dangerous but he definitely appeared to be trailing me. I should point out that I was suddenly not flying any more. I was instead scrambling up a steep hill covered in crumbly dirt and rock, the sort of thing that I find difficult to climb in real life. The dream mirrored this aspect accurately. The guy was going to catch up to me but I had to be careful, lest I fall right into his possibly evil clutches. When I made it to the top it seemed I remembered I could fly and so I started flying around again.

I don’t remember anything else after that, but still, it was neat to have a flying dream again.

Last night I had a dream. No, not a vision for a better future where all people are truly equal regardless of color or orientation or anything. Just the regular kin of dream you have at night when your subconscious is doing its daily housecleaning. I knew it was a dream because the day was sunny and warm. On this sunny and warm day Pearl Jam was playing a concert in a park somewhere. I have the first three Peal Jam albums, which I rate roughly as Love It (Ten), Like It (Vs) and Listen to Songs From It When They Come Up On My iPod’s 2200+ Song Playlist (Vitalogy). This is to say that I like Pearl Jam so my brain wasn’t actively trying to punish me by having them put on a show for me. I believe this may have been an acoustic show of some kind because I do not recall the wailing of electric guitars. Eddie was a bit soft and flabby. The crowd seemed very sparse, so maybe it was a secret rehearsal or something.

The weirder part is that I was onstage and it was clear that Eddie and I were a couple. I was also a musician of some sort or at least someone had handed me a mike. At one point I made a comment to the crowd as an aside, pointing out how I loved it when Bob Dylan did this certain song. Because Bob Dylan was also there (to the left of Eddie and me). The show was interrupted at one point when a softball came bouncing in near the stage. A couple of apologetic ball players came by and took it away. The concert continued, with Eddie being just a generally nice guy and kind of smitten with me. This was definitely not the lean, growling “Jeremy” era Vedder.

It was a pleasant little dream and I thank my subconscious for not hooking me up with someone dead like Kurt Cobain, which would have been all kinds of creepy.

Recently I recounted how I had dreamed that I was thrust back into working at the Locarno Beach concession, something I last did 12 years ago. My brain or more specifically, the subconscious part of it, has apparently decided to use sleep time to revisit all of my previous jobs in chronological order.

Last night I found my dream-self back at the store I used to work at. At one point I asked about the schedule, to which the assistant manager of the computer department gave a coy, non-commital answer I did not care for. I had visions of barely getting enough hours to make ends meet. And Ramen noodles. I suddenly found myself outside, in a gravel parking lot, looking toward the ocean, except blocking the view was the Locarno Beach concession, with the stand opened up facing toward the road and not the beach as one would expect. It was clear that I was still working there, too. The joy of 11 hour days covered in grease and the happiness of working a low-paying retail job, together at last!

I woke up shortly afterward. If things keep on track my next dream job will take me back to my days of telephone technical support. I can’t wait!*

* yes, in fact, I can wait. More to the point, I would like sexy dreams of daring adventure and not the dregs of my past jobs. Dear Brain, please comply. Thanks.

I am trying to remember my dreams again and have been doing a decent job of recollection when waking up. What I haven’t been doing such a decent job of is writing the dreams down after waking up. 😛

Here are a pair of recent snippets. They’re not very interesting but perhaps putting them down will help me to remember more.

Dream #1 featured Robert Reed, best known as Mr. Brady from The Brady Bunch. The dream seemed to be set back in the 70s and Mr. Reed was being a bit of a jerk (as himself, not Mr. Brady). I have no idea what exactly he was doing, why he was being a jerk and what kind of presence, if any, I had in the dream. I also have no clue why I’d dream about Robert freakin’ Reed. The guy is about as far off my radar as possible. Or so I thought!

Dream #2 took place in a small town and at one point I remember nimbly dodging a set of road construction equipment on my trip to…somewhere. The other part I remember from the same dream was being assembled as part of a group in a large auditorium that was serving as a makeshift movie theater. We were there to watch something I vaguely recall as educational but the stage area had no screen so the film was projected on a small section high up on the back wall of the auditorium, forcing everyone to twist in their seats to look backward in order to watch. No one seemed to mind, though. The one image I remember from the film was of a submersible of some sort. I believe this was triggered by the R.E.M. song “Sing for the Submarine”, which I’ve heard several times recently.

That’s all for my two most recent dreams. More subconscious nonsense to come!