Dream records: Courtesy of Queen Mab

My old Art Nouveau picture disappeared so this is my replacement: Mab's Chandelier......

MERCUTIO: O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate stone

On the forefinger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Over men's noses as they lie asleep;

Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,

The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

Her traces, of the smallest spider web;

Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;

Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;

Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm

Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid;

Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,

Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;

O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight;

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;

And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail

Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,

Then dreams he of another benefice.

Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two

And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night

And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled much misfortune bodes.

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.

This is she!

Or, as Stephen Dedalus would say, when the dreams were coming back:  I'm almosting it!!

A song to go with dreams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EmSK-tloIw

I love dreams.  I love the very idea that we can dream.  They are messages from somewhere.  They  make life bigger.  Secrets. Even nightmares  fascinate me--not when I was a kid of course, although I seem to have outgrown mine--does everyone?

 I was a real mess as a child when I had nightmares--stayed awake all night just to avoid being sucked back in to the same world, which I knew was only a neural eyelid twitch away.

 One of the worst I had  was when I grabbed a book off my family's shelf in the T.V. room, one of the few I'd never read--The real Grimm's Fairytales--no idea why we had it because apparently no one else in my family had ever read it, as my mother's actions that night would confirm--probably it was a Good Housekeeping item of decorum, because it did have a nice gold embossed cover.

 It contained a terrible story about  a boy who  was beheaded by a drawer (his step-mother slammed it on him), then he was sliced up and fed to his step-sister who cried the entire time as she was eating.  I couldn't even finish the story, and consequently pulled my first all-nighter as a 9-year -old, terrified of the sleep world this would influence.  My mother told me it had a happy ending, but I never had the guts to re-read it to check if she was lying to me.

Haha--a google search finally gave this story back to me!   It is called, usually, depending on the version, "The Juniper Tree" (no wonder I could never find it).  I'm amazed that after all these years I had the details pretty close, except that the sister cries while they're cooking, and it's the dad that eats the boy.  Or maybe I read a different version: there seem to be several.  Also I'd forgotten how the bad step-mother tricked her daughter into thinking she killed her brother.  My mama didn't lie; it had a happy ending--to do with metamorphosis, bones, birds, beautiful songs, presents, and instant karma for the bad mom.  Funny, I seem to remember my mother telling me something about the boy's spirit? vapor?  something, going up the chimney and turning into a bird.  Or maybe that was part of my nightmare...

As I'm getting older, I'm having a hard time remembering my dreams, or at least, I'm not making time to remember them.  So.

I tend to have recurring dreams, and maze-like dreams filled with Labyrinthian rooms in old secret houses, often supposedly mine in the dream, full of rooms I didn't know I had. I think this manifests my insatiable curiosity, my desire for new, untrodden lands and landscapes--worlds beyond my knowing.  But they do cause me fear, and come with a price.  I have regular dreams about school and time, and not being able to find something or get somewhere I'm supposed to be.  But sometimes the endings of the recurring dreams changed, as if I was working something out.

One of the earliest of  these recurring-changing dream sequences I remember (Guildenstern:  "No, what's the first thing you remember, after all the things you've forgotten..?")  started out as a nightmare.  It had to do with my Italian relatives of whom I was rather afraid as a child: they were frequently cranky, sarcastic, and seemed to dislike children. They reminded me of the witches in fairy tales.  Boney, pointing fingers. They only spoke in Italian around us, which I didn't understand at the time. 


The nightmare started in their house, being lost, going through rooms, and someone insisted on me climbing up onto this very high  ladder, then a bunkbed, which I was afraid to do for some reason. Eventually, through subsequent versions of this dream, that bunkbed became mine at home, but it had a helter -skelter type slide (an impossibly long one)attached to it. The great unknown yawned at the top of that slide, through a passage in the wall, and I was being pushed to go down it. The pusher changed with variations on the dream, which sometimes made it less scary. Eventually I ride the loops of the helter-skelter, which of course, turns out to be very exhilarating  and colorful.  Best of all, my weird old grampa is sitting at the bottom of the slide, and when I bump into him he says, "Hoopa!"  (Which is something he said often in real life).

Obvious dream about general fear of the unknown?  Hasn't recurred in years, for the record.


10/04, 2012:

A Dream that came with musical extras:

In this dream, everyone in my family was crazy about this Polar bear they wanted to keep for a pet..  BTW, in the dream we were living in a fairly large New York City garden apartment. 

I disliked the bear and wanted to get rid of it.   Also there was some other odd, smaller, but also dangerous animal roaming around somewhere in the house, also being kept by the pet-lovers, but I was concentrating on the bear.  So  when everyone else left for awhile,  I managed to trick it to go outside, and then I shut the door on it. Done.

Nope.  Somehow the damned thing managed to get back inside, just in time for the others to figure out I had let it go.  So I try logic--you can't have a wild animal like that here!!!

They jus wouldn't listen to reason---I feel like I live in the crazy zoo.

10/14, 2012:
Last night I had a dream which I realized has been recurring.  In the dream I am walking to the school bus stop in my usual haze--not really paying attention to where I'm going, doing what I think of as automatic walking--letting someone else be the guide.  So I can think about other things. I am walking with my friend Mary (in real life I probably haven't seen her in 20 years, and I don't think she rode the bus with me--her mother drove her--she was a little spoiled).  Anyway, we get to this bend in the road where I'm thinking the bus will stop, and Mary disappears.  I look around some trees and bushes, some houses, all the wrong places, wasting time and getting frustrated.  At one point I start walking up the street again, and as I did this it suddenly occurs to me this has happened before.  The bus stop is actually around the corner, and I missed the bus the last time.  So I start running, see Mary next to the bus motioning to me, and it starts to pull out.  This time I scream out..."WAIT!"  The bus driver , a woman with shoulder length black hair, looks right at  me, makes some sort of confusing gesture, and I'm not sure if she's going to stop for me.  The dream ends on this uncertain note.  In the last version, she didn't look or I didn't see her face, and she left without me.

My real bus driver from elementary school, Mill, would have stopped.  (We had the same bus driver all through our school years, one of the nice things about small town life.)  She would have stopped, and then let me be the "Door-girl",  who got to stand next to driver, hang on to a big metal pole there, and push the big hydraulic handle to let the passengers in at each stop.  I liked Mill and she liked me, even though she accidentaly killed my Scotch terrier in first grade.  It wasn't her fault--he was one of those dumb dogs who was always chasing cars to read what the tires said.

I had another vaguely remembered dream last night that had something to do with my eye--it felt cloudy or gummy or something, but I was out of my house and busy running around for some reason. I was in Paris? I was worried about it, and I kept trying to find something reflective so I could see what was wrong, but couldn't get a picture of it.  (shoulda used my I-phone).  At one point I saw a distorted image of it in a shiny, metal pipe of some sort: it was my grey-green eye alright, but with some sort of milky blue film over it like a cataract.  Ickch.  Like a horror movie scene.

Oct 18--I have developed a sty. 

Oct 19, 2012

I had a crazy-people morphing into each other sort of dream last night.  It started  at some sort of performance in a big hall in an unfamiliar big city.
I was there with my family/friends(?) but told  them I would have to leave for part of the performance, and I would be back. 

The city element was interesting, because it was definitely an urbanscape  which  I did not know.  Yet I didn't feel too apprehensive about going out and navigating the city's public transportation system alone.  It wasn't any city I know, San Francisco or New York or Chicago: it felt smaller (actually less modern is what I mean--stone, tile,   and brick rather than steel and glass) and more European or old world--possibly Arabic?, with narrower brick streets, something like St. Augustine (and a small bit touristy in that way) but with a subway system, like Roma?  But it wasn't Rome. Nor St. Augustine, which I know like the calluses on my left hand.  I'm not sure if I knew the language--it sorta seemed I didn't because I was navigating by place recognition rather than reading anything?  I was getting by ok, but feeling a little lost--recognizing buildings but not sure if I was going the right direction?  I was supposed to be meeting someone to give them something.  I also had a bag with a rectangular red and white box, but this wasn't what I was giving.  That was incidental.  Yet had something to do with a meeting.

I see who I am looking for, but the person immediately disappears and seems to be replaced by my 2nd  ex-husband. (Tell me crazy love is a good thing). Here's what's weird.  I went through a long period of absolute panic in real life, at the sight of him  (he went through a period of stalking me for about a year), and subsequently had the same panic in dreams--over and over again until they finally subsided. These were really the last big nightmares I've had. It was so bad that  my heart would race and thump even when I saw someone in a crowd that looked the same type:  Very tall and lanky, big mop of long, curly dark hair--deep booming voice.  Or heard a similar, distinctive voice--he had  a DJ's voice, and was a big talker with a huge vocabulary, for a construction worker.

That is all gone now, and in the dream I greet him cordially, even pretend that he was the one I was supposed to meet--he grabs the bag with the rectangular box as if he expected it was for him.  There is nothing romantic about this meeting: in fact he has someone else with him: Isabella Rosselini (David Lynch's wife, I think?  She was in Blue Velvet, anyway. and is Ingrid Bergman's daughter).  Anyway, they are getting on like a house afire, talking like people who are getting to know each other, and I think thank god, now how do I get out of this situation?  Because now I realize this is not where I'm supposed to be, where I want to be.  Luckily they are not really paying me much mind, so I am able to just cut off into a subway station (a beautiful, paved sub station with a wide tunnel, beautifully painted and decorated unlike any I've ever seen in real life. Now  the dream becomes about getting back to where I started, before I ran into these people.  I recognize some storefronts and businesses, good, I'm on my way..but I wake up before I ever return..

I have no ideas that make sense of this dream.

For dream context--(I agree with Jung that so much of our dreaming is personal, not some silly token, reductable id/ animalistic crap like Freud thinks):

This part isn't a dream--it really happened--\/

The last time I saw my 2nd husband alone (after, we were in court and he was still trying to convince me to stay-- and later he actually did jail time {3 months} because he couldn't be convinced) , he had gotten into my house after one of his crazy road trips.  I never knew how it was that he had hitchhiked so often and successfully ( I imagine he had criss-crossed the country this way over a dozen times), because he had the worst sense of direction of anyone I've ever known.  Once he was out of our neighborhood he had no idea where he was--he could make it as far as the 22nd Ave Home Depot and that was it.  Yet, he got around, on the beneficence of others.  What can I say, he was a good talker.  He once told me this great story about buying a raw  side of beef and convincing the trucker who picked him up to roast it in aluminum foil on the engine--said it was magnificent.  He was imaginative, I must say.  My worst bad boy.

When he came back that last time, he had a present for me.  Oh, the man knew me and my taste, even better than I did myself.  Here's what he claimed, and knowing him it was probably in large part true:

He claimed seeing this beautiful piece of jewelry in an art museum in New York City, and that it should be hanging on  one place only to do it justice-- my wrist.  He was haunted by the idea of giving it to me, so he hitchhiked to NYC  (not sure which museum, MoMA?)  and got it.  I can just see him talking sincerely to every ride he got, about how he was on a sacred mission, to save his marriage, how he had fucked up, and his woman was a goddess (this was how he talked)--deserving of more riches than he could ever provide, and he had to get this one small token that was the full expression of his love, and they all probably smiled at him and drove faster for his sake.  He was that good.  I half imagine that he stole it--after he had chatted up the blushing salesgirl enough that she didn't care...

I wish I could say this bracelet was ugly.  But it was exquisite.  The most beautiful I'd ever seen, obviously expensive, and obviously crafted by a radiant artist.  Well.  It was supposed to save the baddest marriage on record.  It almost did.  For about 3 stupid seconds.  I pined  for that beautiful little thing , like William Morris himself had made it.  It had coral color pearl and colors that reminded me of the deepest water , deepest ocean...in fact it reminded me of  Shakespeare's most sensual  lines, about what nature has done to a much loved man drowned at sea:

 Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Yes, that bracelet was rich and strange.
I had it in my sights for about 30 seconds.  It did impale my memory.  I could imagine it on my arm. But at what price?  Well, my daughter for one.  It never touched my skin.

No.

  I admitted how beautiful it was.  Had to be impressed by the ridiculous trip to New York.  But, it was a deal with the devil.  This was the same man who had stayed awake all night, staring at me as I slept, paranoidly convinced I regularly took off in the middle of the night to meet someone.  Believe me, I was too tired dealing with him and his crazy to meet anyone.  This is the man who lined my bedside with beer bottles and glass jars he collected, so he would know if I got up in the middle of the night, in case he fell asleep, so that I couldn't even use the bathroom without an entire rearrangement of the floor decor...

He was unique.  And I pray to God he loves me no more.


Why is it that I keep encountering people that acquire paranoid ideas about me?  There must be something in my eyes that appears like I'm willing to do anything.  That is not true.  I know stuff by reading, listening, watching, imagining, maybe even dreaming.  Doesn't mean I'll do it.

Summer, 2013:  I'm pretty sure I saw ex-bad boy John again:so he's still in Florida.  Why?  I saw him at the DMV on 66th Street--classic place to see him.  He was, typical, rapt in some crazy conversation with someone involved in a petition drive.   I would bet he wouldn't recognize me now anyway because my hair is so long--I had punk hair when we were together (together?  Not spirit-wise, more like bondage). But if I hadn't been careful, I'm sure he would have recognized my walk, something.  He's pretty intuitive.

  In fact, I sorta laugh to myself about this irony of my disguise--he was always trying to convince me to grow my hair out, "like my college pictures",  and I would cut my hair yet again to rebel and piss him off.   His hair is longer too, but turning gray, almost shoulder length--he still looks kinda cool...HET!! Bite my tongue!!  Il diavalo...I knew for sure it was him when I saw the dump hooptie car he was driving..some late 70's, big-ass old Chrysler sedan with faded paint, mismatched tires, making noise not to be cool, but just because the car was completely beat.  There's a part of me that would love to follow him around invisibly--because the man does live an interesting life.  If he could get it together, he would be an incredible writer.  he does read good books.  But he is toooooo scary.

Oct 23:

Here's how fragile dreams are.  I know I had an interesting series this weekend.  I remembered them, and consciously said, I gotta write these down.  But I didn't --figured it could wait.  It can't .  The more real life gets in the way, the further the dreams go...cirrus clouds floating off the horizon.

Nov.  3:  Someone recently sent me a picture that reminded me of the unusually wide -aisled subway station in my dream, also because it's so light and well lit--where is the real one?  Moscow.  Near all the Bulgakov memorabilia...the city in my dream looked more bazarr-like, however.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Mayakovskaya_after_renewing_2010.jpg

Dec 16:  Last night I dreamt I slept on a floor in Moscow.  How did I know it was a Moscow floor?  Just did.

Dec 19. 6:50a.m.:   From the middle of last night, suddenly remembered--details fading...I was on a bus, going somewhere good, can't remember where, with someone I'm close to, can't remember who.  Not a city I knew.  Our bus driver starts getting aggressive in his driving, with another driver on a 2nd bus.  Seems like the 2nd bus started it, but at the beginning I wasn't paying attention.  So our bus had got ahead, leaving the other guy in the dust, crisis over.

Now we're in the middle of a big city, and in some sort of hairy overpass curve, when here comes the 2nd bus, trying definitely to not just cut us off, but force us off the road, like I've seen truckdrivers do up in the Smokies  (once to me!)  I guess our driver is good: he keeps the bus on the road.  The 2nd busdriver, however, has clearly built up a big head of aggression, and attacks yet another city bus ahead of us:  they both crash in an intersection, and our driver weaves around them, barely missing the chain reaction crash by threading the needle of traffic.  There's coincidentally a car crash in the next intersection, but we get around that and continue on our way.  The End.

Why the hell am I having all these dreams about cities I don't know?

Dec 24:  several dream fragments.  One was like watching a TV show--I wasn't even in it except as an observer.  Some 11-12 year old black kid, who'd just gotten out of the hospital, was showing me? the audience?  the portable music device they had given him as part of his rehab from surgery---but the music on it wasn't 12-yr-old black kid music, definitely not rap.  He had classier taste, although I can't remember what.

Fragment #2--helping someone make money to continue a trip, my son, although he keeps disappearing on me and I keep finding our belongings scattered in dangerous places.   Again a foreign, old city--in Morocco, or someplace like that?  I did just watch Casablanca...  At one point we are going up and down this set of stone steps, up from an underground room where women in Muslim dress were working--they weren't allowed to leave, I think?  We are carrying the cloth they are making up the steps to a man waiting at the top in an open, outdoor patio.

Fragment #3 After a long trip, I just go there--walk right in. 3 are home, I am essentially ignored, probably for the best.  Then I get all groggy from the long trip, start to fall asleep on some sort of music box on top of a piano--it is playing some sort of pleasant, ancient music.   Eventually I decide to leave and announce this, walking into another room.  My hand is taken and kissed several times in response--so unexpected and moving.  Days of the week, plans are mentioned, on the downlow.

Dec 29: Labyrinthean House dream, but slightly different than the usual ones. 

Somehow, I have appointed myself watch-dog for a strange little girl, with some sort of unusual talents that are being dissipated.  She is not attractive, mostly because of her grim facial expressions rather than any particular feature--which gives most people the creeps, including me.  But I've decided I can channel her.  It's a two way street--we can have a positive creative thing with each other.   (It has occurred to me that this weird child is actually just another manifestation of myself--whatever.)  People in the dream all say they've given up--but maybe I?

So, the goal of this dream---so many of my dreams always seem to have some final target or goal--what is that?  Usually that fails.  The goal is to get her cleaned up and ready for some festivity, hopefully that will inspire her (and me) and give a creative outlet.  She lives, and apparently, I am staying, as well, in this broken down old Victorian wood house--in massive disrepair--I recall multiple times climbing these vertiginous, splintery wooden stairs outside  to get something done in the dream.  Definitely in America, this time, I think.

 However, something about this house has the feel of an orphanage, or boarding school, some kind of institution.  At the very least it's the home of one of those gigantic Catholic families that I grew up with, so large the parents don't have the time to keep track of all the kids.  (I went to school with two families that had this situation--one had 18 kids, the other 20--can you imagine?  One family lived in three houses in a hollow near the river--the oldest girls lived in one with some of the middle kids.  The family with 20 lived on a farm way out on Airport Road--the youngest had Down's Syndrome.)  So my strange little girl was one of these uncared for creatures.  Either way, I think we were supposed to be related. Maybe I was her aunt?  She's not any of my real nieces, though.

The house/family/institution was full of systems and people with routines that were getting in the way of my plans.  In the dream we kept going to this one large room, which had multiple uses.  But others were always using it.  At one point it was a room that had multiple bathtubs--so I was trying to get Weird Child to take a bath, which she was resisting, and I needed one as well--but for a particular reason.  But the bathtubs were frequently being turned into beds for naptime for other kids--babies, really.  So we would be redirected elsewhere and told to come back later. 

At one point, Katie, my real daughter, became involved in this enterprise.  One of her Fun Ideas was to squirt some sort of shampoo/dye on all our heads, to make our hair blonder.  I agreed to this for some silly reason, but then realized we had no water source to rinse off the dye.   Eventually, we all trudge back to the bathroom/naproom, up those rickety stairs first--and at some point I lose track of Weird Child.  When we get in the big bathroom, the naps are over and the room appears to be empty, so I go to get the baths ready.  The first is working fine.  But when I get to the second bathtub, I find something gruesome, floating face up and stiff, in the water.  It is the corpse of a dead baby.  One that had seemed to be there awhile, as its eyes were sunken and withered to brown pools of sludge.  I close the curtain, because I don't want anyone to see this.  Katie I know would never get over the sight.  I go to look for the now lost Weird Child.   I know there's more--several more strands of this story--conversations with other adults, etc.  But this is all I remember.  As usual, I never got where I was going.

Jan-2013:
  The thing is, in this dream, I was asleep outside--on the grass, near a sidewalk, street, park, waterway, something with a curb. Cars slowing hissing by?  I didn't really open my eyes.  Came up and started fooling with the floppy dumb hat I was wearing, and sat down. Close.  Felt the presence but wasn't sure who it was until I heard the voice.  Nicest dream I've had in a while.

Jan 21:  So,  I'm just guessing how it could work.  The past week I've been trying to do the controlled dreams thing. Lucid dreaming? When I go to bed.  Early in the morn.  It's not really happening, at least for not more than a few seconds., or maybe minutes..so hard to tell.. Feels too self conscious..where's the line between imagination and dream?  And there's too much noise in my bedroom to concentrate..or, rather, not concentrate.

Jan 24:  I think it's been over two weeks where I haven't remembered even a single fragment of any dreams I may or may not be having.  Are there some nights when you don't dream at all, or does it just seem that way?  I feel like my own mind is blocking me to avoid---something.  Odd.  Jan 29:  yup still nothing.  Maybe I'm saving up for something big.

Feb. 3:   Finally, a remembered dream.
I'm standing at a ticket booth, at a mall, I think, one of those box style ticket booths with multiple sides. A pleasant looking man with gray, almost white hair , with some kids, all boys, says to me familiarly, like he's known me a long time--"You're from the Reilly family.  Remember us?"  I say yes, then I recognize the kid with him, his son,  Matt M., who was a middle schooler on my ex's soccer team, and with whom we were pretty close  at the time.  We even went on several trips together, because of the soccer team.  The kid (who looks something like Malcolm from the Malcolm in the Middle show--sorta all-American boy with brown hair, eyes, and a freckled, apple pie round face) starts jumping all over me, my back, etc. the way kids do that  feel friendly to you.  That's it.

But when I wake up from this I remember a few odd things.  First, Matt would probably be in his late 30's -early 40's by now, but in the dream he hadn't aged.  Also, they would have known me by the name Harte, not Reilly.  And here's the strangest part.  When I knew Matt, his dad had recently died--I never met him or even saw a picture of him.

Feb 14:  Dreamed Ken kissed my sister. When we were younger. I got mad.  Told Ken in real life:  he said, "Ew."

Feb 22:  Had this dream in St. Augustine. Have lost much of the details--phone too cumbersome for recording.  The most important detail is lost--who was this person?  someone real in my life--a paternal figure.  He--definitely a male--had coerced two younger ones who should have been in his trust into his night bed.  Here's the horrible part.  Their faces (ungendered--mark-- but definitely young), were gauzed and taped to keep them from experiencing the fullness of the reality of their situation.  No ideas who.  Bloodless violence was implied.  Haunting.  He--whoever the manipulator was--seemed oblivious to outside feelings about this.  Is it from my book's influence?  Atypical dream for me. Nightmarish.

March 14:  "Last night I dreamed, that..."   I was pregnant, and someone was pressuring me to get an abortion.  It was definitely not my husband's.  It was definitely the child of one of my past loves, but the weird thing was I hadn't actually been with any of them.  It was like some sort of supernaturally conceived baby, from the past.  Even odder is the fact that it's pretty impossible for me to be pregnant now, but it's possible that this dream was supposed to be in the past....I have a crazy theory...a crazy notion, right here in my mind...

Mar 20:  Dreamed this a few days ago.  Again with the babies.  I'm going to go abstract I say this is more about the creative process.  This time I'm carrying the baby--it's Katie--cute as a bug.  I'm tired of holding her though.  Yet I feel sort of surgically, primordially attached, the way you do with your own baby that first year, as if you are still one flesh.  Someone else in the room has another baby, too, and gets someone else to hold hers....stupid dream, why remembered?

Mar 22:  Finally got hold of the CC book.  And the weather has been absolutely perfect for sleeping..my favorite kind of weather.. sunny but with hazy clouds, a chill in the breeze through the open windows so that you need a sweater, even in the house.  Well, my house, anyway. I slept like a cold stone in a bed of moss. Till 10-11am, both days.   My dreams were rather oddly shaped.  I know I had a lot of these--hundreds maybe but could only capture one for posterity. 10-20 seconds each. I don't think any of them had a story-line, almost like a series of disjointed, slow- moving pictures.  Tarkovsky-like. The one I remember went like this:
      I push open this big old door--now I can't remember if it was a metal, industrial type or more like a big medieval thing.  ( was watching this old Russian movie Stalker  last night and it seemed like something that could be in that--that weird mix of medieval and industrial you see in the Soviet countryside, I suppose).  I am completely surprised by what I see inside--its room with a ceiling so high it's out of frame, like a castle's or a factory (same weird mix. )  All that is inside is a huge pile of garbage, maybe two stories high, at least 5 times taller than me, anyway. 
     But, it is very neat garbage,  It doesn't smell, (or I couldn't smell in the dream) and it's all cubed and smashed up, in a symmetrical pile.  In fact, even the edges of the pile are squared off and neat, almost like you could sit on them..  It gave me the feel of some sort of modern day version of a pyramid.  Now writing about this, although it didn't occur to me while I was dreaming, that perhaps this is Pelevin's influence on me..
    Yeesh.  That dream was so short, I thought I'd write one sentence on it, but look.  I'm into the better part of three paragraphs trying to describe it accurately.   The density of dreams.I tried to bring it back this morning, but no go.  Instead had a stupider one of my classroom, just staring at the open pages of one of my textbooks.  Something I do almost everyday--how boring.  But was it in Russian?  Or English?  I think English.. Russian woulda been cooler.

Mar 24:  Weird harmonics.  I'm reading Carlos Castaneda, not fully sure why.  Multiple reasons..because of what I believe about the nature of dreams. Some as research for ideas I want to explore in my writing. However, this book is nothing like I anticipated..it is so bogged down in some technological details about how to control your dreams, that the imaginative aspect of dreams seems almost unaddressed or unimportant, anyway.  And that's my favorite part of dreams.   I don't see myself indulging in the time it takes to do these practices if they in fact, work.  However, several things in the book have resonated with me, and seem to even be influencing my dreams--or lining up with them, anyway.  My subconscious playing?  Coincidence?  Me reading too much into things?

  1)  The first night I read, I must have had, as I noted, a hundred little dreams without narratives.  The dreams in this book are without narrative, whereas mine usually follow a story of some kind.

 2) The whole concept of how to focus on a detail in a dream--I recall an odd moment in a dream two nights ago. It involved a younger version of my son, Joe, trying to engage me in something--a book, an idea he had, and I indulged him, but what I remember more in the dream is turning towards the wall, and focusing intently on some pattern on it --a very old wall, with layers of brown, possibly water stains --so layered, in fact, that they looked rather beautiful and intentional.

 The walls in my son's room are sorta like that--decades of paint bleeding through the awful pepto-bismal pink that was thrown over the the entire house before we moved in.  His is the only room that hasn't been painted over, not that I haven't offered.  He seems to prefer the decay, even posted pictures of it on-line.  It is definitely not your average boy's room with airplanes, rock gods, and trains.  Well, maybe I'm a little proud of that,  like him, of the idiosyncrasy.

  3)  This is not from a dream, but from  my writing, which can be observed on this blog.  One of the reasons I wanted to read The Art Of Dreaming Was to get ideas for a scene in the story I am writing--"The Closet Artist".  I wanted to have a scene where some sort of transformation to another realm happens, in a closet.  So what has been the most intense moment in this CC book for me?  Two lovers,  making love, in a closet, are transported to another world, navsegda...forever.Also the iridium is resonating.

April 21:   Not many good dreams lately.  On horrible one involving dis-embodied male organ and hot dogs--don't want to talk about it...ugh.  I do think I will involve a dream sequence in my LRC script--pretty brief, got the idea this morning.  Mother's Milk.  We'll see if it has staying power in the light of day..it is really an off- the- seismograph idea.  I just puts hints here to remind myself--won't write the idea on the blog itself.

April 28:   Another Russian dream: this time on a school trip.  Lots of people I know in this dream: Rob, Kelcey, of all people, my favorite Russian, avoiding direct contact per usual.  We were all there together to see a play, marveling at the amazing old architecture.  In one part I remember Rob and I having a conversation about the weather being surprisingly mild and beautiful--we were standing in the roof of some old building, with odd shaped turrets, looking out on a landscape that was reminiscent of a Tarkovsky film....all those vivid blue-greens with black.  Odd that I used those colors in my forest painting last year.  In the dream we sit down in the theatre, but never actually see the show.  That's the second time in a dream this year I go to a show, but don't end up seeing it.  Feeling frustrated like Coleridge in that.

May 23:   So, someone just sent me a piece of music that reminded me of something--sent a video of a little Russian all girl group singing the Billy Goat song from The Sound of Music.  I had forgotten the dream. In it, I was supposed to play Maria from The Sound of Music--with almost no rehearsal.  It was like everyone just assumed I could do it--you know--you saw that movie a thousand times when you were a kid--don't you know the songs?  I was literally going to go on stage with no music, no lyric sheets, just my pitiful memory of a movie i haven't seen in 15 years.  Plus,  Julie Andrews has such incredible range---I knew I couldn't match her.  And on the wing?   Nightmare.

And here's what the dream's telling me:  say no.  What's the point?

Jun 1:   Vaguely pleasant dream turned horrible nightmare:   Very vivid, in fact, this morning I cannot shake the feeling that I'm still dreaming--even as I am typing this.

I was with people at school, but we were at some huge conference, like the one we went to at Disney once--I just mean it was in a big-citylike complex--for some reason it reminded me of the dream, at first, where I ended up in the Russian subway.  But this was not a foreign country--I have to say, the way it was laid out seemed almost CGI manufactured, now awake I looking back and getting a sort of Matrix /Inception vibe--like this is a world I frequently go to but it becomes different things, somehow.  Shades of Carlos Castaneda dreamworlds one builds oneself.

It has a somewhat Mexican/Moroccan/Middle Eastern feel, if that mix is at all possible--clay-colored adobe, rounded arches, restaurants, storefronts, big public spaces, open market bazaars that might actually be indoors, brick and stone flooring--but this time it all had that phony corporate feel.

So, I was wandering around, killing time between meetings, sitting with various groups of work acquaintances, when someone tall with almost black hair goes by quickly through a big archway, looks directly at me, out of this whole crowd, and waves.  I wave back, without thinking, assuming it is Mark P., my good friend.  But then I thought for a minute, said to myself: that guy was too skinny to be Mark, and his hair was darker and longer.   It dawned on me it was John, my crazy Cajun ex.  Oh shit.
I go back to sit on the floor with a bunch of people I was with, taking a coffee/water break.

Next thing I know, I wake up, in the same spot on the floor, and I am sitting surrounded by someone else--their long legs and arms wrapped around me, in sort of a trap.  I realize it is John, and realized he had drugged me to get me in this position--the people had disappeared.  I turn around and hammer him in the face (he's a wimp for physical pain), and lay him out, then run away.  Eventually I meet up with Ken, who is being so overly cheerful I know something is wrong.  By this time we are outside on the street.  I keep asking what's wrong.  He says, finally, after a lot of hemming and hawing,  that back home, Someone, someone, left the front door open....And??? I say?  He's delaying, but then I notice he has a new guitar on his back (of all things, in a burlap sack like Johnny B. Goode)  It has a head I don't recognize , almost arrow shaped, with three tuning machines on each side, not 6 in a row like a Fender. I immediately sit down on the curb and start bawling and wailing in a hideous noise.  I knew my cherry Telecaster, Holden was stolen---irreplaceable.  Horrible empty feeling in my stomach and heart.



Fortunately, I woke up right after this, ran downstairs, and see my guitar exactly where I left it.  Dream hangover, however.

Jun 26, 2013:

I am in DC.  There is a party coming up that I'm supposed to attend, in real life.  So, of course, I had a dream about difficulties getting the party together, and literally getting there.  Katie was still here in the dream--we were trying to entertain ourselves with art field trips around the prep...which is how we ended up having some sort of problem getting back to the place of the party, and changing clothes.

Weird:  seems like this ought to be another of my weird subway dreams, since I've been riding them a lot the last week.  But this time the labyrinth was the halls and rooms of the museums themselves that I was having trouble navigating.   I remember--twice--having to climb a big pile of clamshells--like an Indian middens--because the party room was on the other side.  I remember thinking I had to put my dress on, and at some point I accomplished this--but I knew I was too late to wash my hair (which I went to bed last night thinking I'd need to do).  Vivid, yet boring, dream.

July 7, 2013

Tons of odd dreams last night--let's see if I can remember any.   Oh, yeah, this was the weirdest .  It started with me waiting for someone--some unknown someone, but a really close friend.  When this person arrived was unknown, he was just suddenly there.  The place kept morphing in my dream--in one part it was supposed to be my parents' house, another point, my classroom.  The strange change was the part that was my parents' was actually more like the house Katie was born in (my favorite house)--a plain, but very solid bungalow with wooden floors, and open rooms that open one into the other --the "shot-gun" effect you hear about with bungalows.

In the classroom part of my dream I was waiting for my son, Joe.  This kid, Staas, who I get along with and who joined the Marines- BTW--he's not a marine in this dream, just an AFA student--anyway, he's goofing off, laying on the floor of my classroom, and giving me the impression he's pranking me.  Turns out he is--he's laying on top of Joe so I can't see him (Joe is very young in the dream ,and has been squashed flat--in a cartoony kind of way--but pops back slowly after Staas gets off of him.

Then the setting shifts to the bungalow, and I am naked, but getting dressed with all the doors open--Staas has disappeared, but Joe is around somewhere, as is the friend I've been waiting for.  This is odd because I'm usually pretty self conscious about being undressed, and Joe is not exactly nonchalant about this stuff, either.  But in the dream we are.  I think he's now actually supposed to be my brother in the dream, because he suddenly runs in and says,"Mom and Dad are home!"  This completely shocks me into self-consciousness, and I look past the door to another room to see my friend also has nothing on---trying desperately to hide this situation !! It seems almost comical, and as I logistically try to figure a way out of this mess, the dream ends.

I had another dream where I was going through the (again labyrinthian) building of a big school, rather beautiful, like maybe a Brit boarding school. Earlier I had been with some kids, who were gonna go do some sort of activity involving a sing-a-long. They were excited about it. They implied I could go, too, but I thought they were just being nice, so I said, you guys have fun--it's not really my music.  Seems like Mario was in that group, maybe Katrina or Hailey?

 Somehow I had lost my shoes, and I was trying to find them, when Ed Lillich appears, with another older gentleman I don't know, and he makes a wry comment about my hair, which is in one asymmetrical braid, like I was wearing in the car yesterday, and points out my shoe from a pile on the floor. I say, that's not mine, I have Birkenstocks--he points out my foot, which is wearing a non Birkenstock high heeled sandal like the one he said was mine.  It was at this point I realized I was dreaming, and I shoulda gone all Casteneda on that, but instead I don't remember anything else.

July 19, 2013:  Off the wall dream.  I was in some sort of spacecraft--maybe just a plane, but you could walk around, and I was part of the crew?  But it wasn't all spectacular and Star Wars/ fantastical.  Just a bunch of metal doors, insulating tubes, (Like the vacuum cleaner ones), heavy clear plastic sheets for doorways.  I'm wondering if Solyaris  has something to do with this dream, but I don't feel that, really.  I don't know if I'm the only woman on the crew, but I only remember a bunch of balding, middle aged men.  This is sorta funny, but gross.  Toward the end (why do I always remember the end more?)  the men were standing by this door I was trying to get through to the outside (you could go outside?  But it was just to some sort of port--I was looking for a bathroom: you'll see why) .  The reason they were all by the door was they were getting sick, motion sickness.  I'm thinking, I can't look, or I'll get sick too, but then I start to think it's kinda funny, all these important men getting sick.  And I'm feeling kinda smug, cos I am not ---normally I have an incredibly weak stomach.  Then I realize some of their puke has gotten on me--which is why I go look for the bathroom.  I clean up, more or less, and come back to the ship.

Aug 12, 2013:  Cirrus clouds floating off into the horizon.  Something-something about a little Russian girl who has become a US citizen....talks to me and??

Aug 14, 2013:  How totally screwed up is this dream?  I dreamt I sorta impulsively, for no apparent reason, took an axe and hacked a small sliver of my head.

(???????)  So then, I immediately thought, in the dream, why did I do that?  And I kept touching the part of my head that was cut..it was missing hair, but it didn't bleed.  I kept wondering, why doesn't it bleed?  (we all need, someone, we can bleed on...)  It must have looked so ugly, and me so vain about my hair...but all I cared about was why isn't it bleeding?  I never even looked at myself in the mirror or anything.  Later, in the dream, I started oozing this brownish-red blood, and I felt this weird relief--oh, it is bleeding.  I was so glad to wake up and feel my head in the same place to realize it was only the stupidest dream I've ever had.

August 26, 2013:

Last night, I dreamed.....
So weird, I know.  Please come back, dream...something about animals.. birds...surreal pillow dream.  Aga!

Sept 7 :  Long time dreamlessness-- only thing I can give is a weird half conscious daydream I had today when I was extremely tired--where I was sort of subconsciously willing my teeth to melt--like stalagmites in a cave--not really realizing the long term consequences--then suddenly realizing it and thinking--What? Why would a rational person not understand the consequences of that?

October 16-17:  I have started to notice that I seem to have better, or more intense dreams, when I make a conscious attempt to pay attention to them.  Maybe Castaneda is right, somehow.  I need to get back to that kind of consciousness--The Idiot sort of called me in that direction.  It's this damned new class schedule, keeping me from relaxing and enjoying my own sumashedshiy.    Hah!  This just popped up on my VK database---"Please don't wake me..Leave me where I am--I'm only sleeping."   The Beatles..."I'm Only Sleeping".   I swear, sometimes the universe is listening to me.

Ok--all I had to do was pay attention. Another hotel dream, another big city--fancy hotel, this time.  At the end I was locked out of my room--forgot my key, all ID's--everything, basically.   Was at the desk trying to convince the clerk who I was when I woke up.

It's time for me to go heavy into my dream world again.  What I've always wanted to do---sounds crazy--is share a dream with someone.  Any dream.  Sounds crackers crazy.  Is.  But more things in heaven and earth....it would have to be an extremely vivid, visual dream, I think.  An odd one.  The thing is, it seems like I've had so many life-shaking dreams, that were either premonitions, or psychologically insightful to my future, or something.  I know the scientists will want to objectify this.  Let 'em.  They don't know everything, obviously.  I feel something coming.

October 28, 2013:  ah, good sleeping last  night, pleasant dreams.  Just can't remember them.   Must be the cooler weather--love to sleep then.  Ploxa dyehn, in contrast--oh, well.  Drama.  But my boss gimme attaboy .   )))

Nov 2:  Only one image remembered from a dream…a person with a paper bag for a head.  It wasn't that he had a bag over his head, but his head literally was one of those brown lunch bags, cut out like a jack'o lantern.  Silly.

Nov 9:   Dream: come closer.  Sharper.  Stronger.  I know there's more to you than this:

I was at some outdoor gathering--not too huge, like church/school/park size.  There was this natural amphitheater like we had in the old Boy Scout camp, but oriented differently, not on a lake---in a big field and park--more like the kind they have around DC with bike and hiking paths .  I had been there for a while and some kinda weird shit had gone down.  I was standing at the top watching, sorta some people below me who I was sort of wary of.  There was a bicycle near me--not sure it was mine, but all of sudden, it fell sideways and sort of skidded down the rather shallow stone steps of the amphitheater --I felt bad, cos I knew it wad gonna hit someone: probably a kid.  But I also knew there would be consequences.
  So I started to move away, not even thinking about recovering the bike (it didn't look at all like my real bike--thinner, like a ten speed racer all black, looked like a guy's or a negative of those ghost bikes you used to see in NYC where crashes happened).
  Too late, I get surrounded by people I've had trouble with before.  There is some sort of cattle truck, like we used to have at Mary Help  (that we idiotically and in defiance of all sorts of insurance and safety regs, I'm sure--used to take middle schoolers to Busch Gardens!!! )  Anyway, that truck--just a huge open bed.  I knew I was gonna be dead or hurt if I got forced in.  Come to think of it, the people in this dream perhaps looked a bit like the characters--in Twilight  --(It's been amusing that some of my hardcore UNROMANTIC boys have been insisting on watching it this past week when X man lent it to me as a back-up for movie night).

(Adam's in the back with me, playing guitar.  Or looking at dead rock stars--what they would have looked like if they hadn't bitten it at---27??)

Well, somehow I didn't get in the truck, and the dream ended without any bad consequences.

Nov 24:  A few dream fragments, pretty random:

1)  all visual:  one of those old cash registers, the kind like you saw in the wild west movies.  But, where those metal plates that register the money go?  Instead there is a drawing of a bright green snake. Great image.  Sellin' sin.  (Ooh, just remembered where this is probably from..my Slytherin pin).

2) This one's more a story--I'm in a hardware store, buying something with someone, maybe the band guys?  School people? Anyway, we're absorbed in some detail of something we're trying to fix. Then, my boss walks in with two or three coaches (I think)  .  The oddest thing is they are wearing these very medieval-looking priests' robes--I can picture them very clearly--they are made of clean, new thick grey corduroy--I could practically tell you how the texture would feel--wide-wale corduroy.  They even have hoods, and some sort of undecipherable black logo, somewhat cross-shaped, in the medieval way of the Pax sign you would see on a Catholic priests' robes..I don't think it's supposed to be religious, more like a sports logo!  haha, very funny.  But something about these outfits look more like the sperm-men in that Woody Allen movie, or something in an Auktyon video.  As odd as they look, my boss looks at me like I'm the strange one, as if to say, what the hell are you doing?  Story of my life.

3)  I'm at a convention.  I spot this light-skinned African- American couple in the first row of seats. I think I know them (now in the light of morning, they are complete strangers.)  For some odd reason, I stoop down and whisper to the husband, reminding him of our past meeting, with my mother-in-law).  I wanted to tell him that my mother-in-law was very taken with his wife, thought she was beautiful.    She, by the way, was middle-aged, short, round and cute, with a very short graying haircut and a round pleasant face.

4)   I'm on this damn computer..shoot, it's even invading my dreams.  I'm trying to return a Skype call .  A very small black box has appeared in the top right corner, I suppose it signifies a failed connection.  It's not what my computer really does in this situation.  Funny how dreams are.

5) Later, the word Kraccibaya appears in my dream--close to consciousness--enough for me to say, oh I'm right, I have dreamed in Russian…which answers a daytime question!  I actually saw the word written out, but in western form, as above?? No, I think it started in Cyrillic and quickly transformed.  Now, I wonder if I pronounced it correctly in the dream, and I wonder if it's an echo of the previous dream fragment, or, ( the cute middle-aged black woman) even yet, an echo from the Flaming Lips song I'd been listening to?

Nov 25:  It's gotta be true--beautiful, deliciously crisp cool weather last night--open windows with a little chill, and I slept and dreamed heavily last night. In fact, I remember a much longer than usual dream-  possible influences:  watching the beautiful To Have and Have Not--written by Ernest Hemingway, screenplay by William Faulkner.  No wonder they don't make movies like that anymore.  Rear Window might have played a part too--the cut up body thing..

So, In the dream, I think I'm in sort of basement where a killing has taken place.  I didn't do it, but now, circumstances are forcing me to be involved and help deal with the aftermath.  Much of the dream is taken up with these details, which involved cutting up the freshly dead and very bloody body, cleaning the floor, the furniture.  It was all in real time, took lot of time, which would probably be boring to recount here.  It didn't gross me out so much, I think because 1) it wasn't my house, so it didn't feel as personal 2) almost everything was made of wood and pretty easy to clean, with buckets of water.

I'm not really afraid of the people who killed the man, mainly because I seem to think they had very compelling reasons for it.  Maybe there was war going on?  Anyway, they weren't like crazy criminals or anything--people with a violent nature.  There was regret, and diligence in making sure the clean-up was thorough, which was mainly why I helped. I didn't have to do any of the awful cutting, just saw the results, which is why I hardly remember the whole person who was killed.  I had other dreams, but can't remember them as well.

Nov 29: 

Some dreams remembered.   After school, (or not?)  A 30ish, brown haired woman-girl is in my classroom, showing some of my kids how to play some new songs.  She's got a good vibe: I'm assuming I brought her in from outside?  She plays well, but simply.  Then she starts to play "Cortez the Killer" and I'm like, I wanna know that!  I go to grab my guitar out of the closet, but the dream shifts to some weird nonsense with my sisters, where I seem to be mixing their personalities in my dream--my 2nd sister taking on my youngest sisters's pushy personality, reading over my shoulder, butting into the bathroom.  Well, it's Thanksgiving:  I'd talked to them, about them, on the phone yesterday.

Dec 8:

Last night's dream. It's one that I know began waa-aa-aaa-yy further back, but this is what I've captured, memory-wise.  I was doing something public--teaching?  performing?  directing?  Anyway, it required all my attention and focus, and I was being interrupted by an outsider, who at first was making positive comments, but then started being a bit creepy, too intrusive.   Then he went away, after I said something about being busy and I couldn't talk.   A bit later, I  decide I need a break, and go for a walk, on some sort of public trail, like the Pinellas Trail, but more interesting, going through more varied terrain, plus some city parts, and rather overblown tres-modern suburbia with fountains and pools, five story buildings with turrets and things.  It was definitely a dreamscape, in retrospect.

Anyway, I am relishing my freedom and enjoying the scenery when I hear a voice behind me.  It's the creepy guy.  "I thought you were too busy ," he says rather snidely.   I realize my instincts were right about this guy--he's one of those nuts with no sense of boundaries--who gets some strange notions he should direct your life after one simple exchange of words, based on whatever demented feelings of possession he is having.  I seem to run into my share of these kinds of weirdos.  So, I abruptly cut off from him, no polite explanations, and walk fast in another direction.  He follows, still complaining about my "deception".  This is why you can't just be polite to a guy like this: I know from experience.

 At some point, I realize I'm on a bike, thinking, now I'll make some time away from this nut.  But somewhere he found a bike too, and was still following.  So now this becomes like a movie chase scene: albeit a rather elegant, leisurely one--I figure I'll  lose him by being willing to get wet in a fountain's spray, but he's still back there, if trailing a bit farther.  I am losing him slowly, however.  At one point, (my bike has disappeared somehow)I see this sorta fake-lake beach thing, and decide he's far enough behind he won't know where I went if I go in it.  So I do.  It's fake, because the bottom is actually concrete , but it doesn't have edges like a "cement pond".  It looks like something Disney World might dream up, surrounded by quaint woods and perfect buildings behind that.

I had another brief one, of taking a kid to a test (SATs yesterday!)  But, I was in the passenger's seat in the car, so I guess I was the kid?  This one didn't go anywhere.

Dec 15:   Last night I dreamed….I walk into my classroom.  All my stuff is gone.  I mean, all.   The furniture, the posters, my beanbags, my photographs, desks, tables chairs.   A small pile was stacked in the corner of unidentifiable stuff.   The room has been universally painted, over my Shakespeare and Hemingway quotes, this shiny, ugly, bland, eggnog yellow-cream sorta color.  I'm thinking, did they just want to repaint and forgot to tell me,  or something more devious?

Hope this is not one of those "message" dreams…

Dec 18:

Last night's dreams--this one feels like it's been part of a series, where  I kept finding my rooms vandalized, pretty much always the same way, with someone spray-painting, in black, the same word in the same handwriting: "FUCK".  So I have this dream again, but this time it happened while me and whoever was with me, my husband, I suppose, but it wasn't our real bedroom, so was it necessarily my real husband?  Anyway, the walls of this room were white (mine are painted like the sky, with wispy clouds, sorta), and it was more modern than mine, like the suburbs, or something.  Except for the black "FUCKs"  sprayed on every available space, not just the walls, but the furniture, doors, windows, curtains.  The last straw was some brand new shirt I'd just bought, ruined with a big "FUCK".

Well, I decide to go do something about this, and I get up with my partner (whoever he was--it was a he)  and we hear a noise in another room, another bedroom, or the bathroom.  It's these two idiot teenagers, a boy and girl,  not Sid and Nancy, but all neglected and gnarly looking, with wild tangled hair and dopey looking eyes, still spray painting , caught red-handed.  Finally, the mystery solved.

The second dream is fading…I had it an hour ago, fixed in my brain!! well, here's one image, not sure if it's from the same dream, which was about something cool, imaginative, not school, or family or…well, the one picture is all green and gold--kinda like an old photo from the 70's.  A young girl, maybe 12?  Is standing with her back to me, long golden hair--fixated on something in the distance, out in nature.  She's either on a dock, a path in the woods with weeping willows behind?? The sunlight is illuminating everything in that odd, California, reflective way of a winter sun, like the light is hitting indirectly, at an angle.
That's all.   The other won't come back.  Maybe I'll dream part II tonight.  Dream weather, when it's chilly like this…!!Oh, yeah, I just remembered, at the end, for just a second, that dream turned lucid, because I realized I was dreaming, and I got the girl to turn around, like I was controlling my dream:  it was something like that moment in Inception when Leo finally gets his kids to turn around.  But, the framing was totally different.

Dec 19, 2013:

I am in a weird, old room, very bare, very castle, medieval looking, but it was probably built to look that way--yet still in a state of decay,.  Seems like a room, one of those faculty dorm rooms, perhaps, in Farragut.  So maybe around 100 years old.  If someone's living in it, they aren't into decorating or care about giving it personality.   I'm doing something sort of secretive, alone, dunno what, just that interior mind set I get when I don't want anyone to know what I'm doing, thinking.  I think I remember Calvin coming over the P.A. , in fact, saying something about film society meeting and guitar club???  He never does this in reality.  Maybe it wasn't Calvin, and we don't have film society anymore--maybe on second thought it was woman's voice.   It's just background noise: I'm not really paying attention to it.    Anyway, in the middle of that,  there is suddenly a loud knock on my door.  I'm sorta far from it, not totally dressed, I think?  but I answer the door.  Too late.  No one there.  There's this creepy, claustrophobic, all dirty-white stucco stairwell to the right of the door: it kinda looks like the upside down ones in The Poseidon Adventure; it's the only place anyone could have gone, but I hear and see nothing, no footsteps--whoever it was had completely vanished.  I don't think I even bothered to yell to them because of the emptiness, even though it seemed like it should have been important.  I should mention that earlier when I was lying awake, before this dream, I had the weird sensation that someone briefly squeezed my shoulder--I was alone.  it probably was some sort of muscle spasm.

Dec 24,2013:  Lots of colorful, plotless dreams last night, mostly going through my old houses. One part had to do with someone using my dad's bronze baby shoes (which in reality are on my mantel)  to smear some kind of gloppy junk????  No real story line, but several times I became aware I was dreaming--not really able to control, though?  At one point, when I became aware, it seemly I went through the lame conflict of looking for a lost purse.  Is my life really this boring?  Even my dreams are boring.

Dec 27, 2013:   This one almost got away…..something reminded me, like seeing the baby shoes yesterday..

Well, the remembered part of the dream started with me being at work, on a non-teaching day, so I was wandering around.  Of course, as usual, the place was a dream-version of my campus, not the real one. I was stopped in front of a building that was either being built or renovated.  It had KEEP OUT signs all over, and construction noises within.  However, there was a lot of big windows in the front, covered with black paper, kind of like you see at malls where a "Coming Soon!!"  business is being readied.  There may have even been announcements to the effect, can't remember that detail.  So, as I'm standing in front of these windows, curious to see in, someone on the inside removes the barriers temporarily so I can see in, and I can see the inside is beautiful, with pillars decorated in purple, gold and silver, like some fancy department store with elegant furnishings--multiple rooms.. for some reason, for the holidays, maybe New Years'?   I only have a short view of it, because suddenly my boss is at my side, saying--"I want to go in, do you?  Let's go!"

So we go in, but he does this really weird thing.  He says, "I'm a little afraid to do this, can I hold your hand?"  I give him my hand, but from this point I don't look him in the face.   I think it's kind of cute he did this: it makes me like him better. We tour around the different rooms, which is in the process of a party, people dressed up very formally, like a big New York City expensive gala, and everyone is looking at us like we don't belong.  At the time, I didn't even notice how I was dressed, so I don't know if that was it.  Seemed like it was more WHO we were , which is really odd, as my boss is the sort of guy who gives off a vibe of belonging with the best,  hob-knobbing with the elite.   Oddly, later, when I finally take a second to look him in the face, I see it's not my boss at all, but one of our other administrators, a very humble guy, for whom non of this would be in character.   That's as much as I remember.

Dec 28, 2013:

Dreamed I was with my family walking a narrow wall over water.  My father, who can swim, falls in.  We all look at each other--my mother was there and obviously not going to be the rescuer.  The water is cold.  We can clearly see him, unconscious, underwater.  Dead-looking.  I debate then decide to jump in, but at that moment, his body disappears.  Later, we find him wrapped up in a blanket, in a room.  He's alive, but looks kinda  bad, wooden, frozen in an expression unlike him.  I feel a bit guilty. but ...

2nd dream:  School, but not school, more gothic landscape, more Lord of the Rings, Pacific Coast Highway, giant trees with gnarly roots, with multi-story apartments wrapped around the roots.  Of course, it becomes labyrinthian, as my dreams do.  The first scene I remember is me trying to teach MacBeth, as creatively as I can, but searching for a page in a book I no longer have…within minutes of the lunch bell.  Next scene: Lunch.  Miraculously, I am there early, get my food before the crowd.  Then realize I am missing some item?  A key? A something??? It's the MacGuffin that seems to appear freakishly in my dreams to drive the plot, and keep me moving through the labyrinth.  This was one of my better labyrinths, with excellent, gothically wood trimmed apartments, like a Grimms' fairy tale, perilous floors built of plywood, Bridge of Sighs, strange industrial elevators--a 19th Century kitchen with cast iron accoutrements and a dangerous floor scape worthy of a Lemony Snicket unfortunate event.    Otherwise? Unnoteworthy, unlike the existential moral angst of the first dream.

Dec 30, 2013:
I did have dreams last night, and woke up after, early in the night, and remembered them then, but can't recall them now.  something might trigger them yet, however, they are that close.

But mostly want I want to discuss was, after I had dream about my father drowning---"Full fathom five thy father lies.." ---I want to stress after I had the dream, which again makes it a little hairy for me, I read this quite strange, dreamlike David Foster Wallace short story from a book called Tales of Hideous Men, which rather seems to consist of men behaving badly in their own minds, or wishing for confirmation that they are not really bad, or something.  This particular story is called "Church Not Made With Hands."  It is dedicated to a 10-year old who died, I'm assuming, who perhaps reflects the girl in the story.  In this story, a young girl named Esther (Echo Esther Williams, the swimming star?) falls into a swimming pool, almost drowns, and is not saved by her father who can see her through the clear water.  He does not know how to swim. She doesn't die, but suffers permanent brain damage.  Although, she remembers the rainbow? The ending of the story builds on previous images in the story, in a surreal, almost Marc Chagall, stained glass sort of way, melding colors and church windows and swimming-pool-water,stained-glass giants, canvas paintings,3 dimensional phone-bills,  and dandelion seed heads---and the girl is lifted up through all these images in a reverent manner.  Weird vibes to my dreams, once again…and my father is coming to visit.

Jan 3, 2014:
After watching Orange Is the New Black I dreamed I was in prison..but I think a prison for the criminally insane, judging by the other inmates.  This place made the Orange prison look like a institutional high school or something.  For one thing there were no bright colors like orange;  everything was this sort of muslin-y, over-washed beige.  Victorian. I keep getting moved to different rooms, apparently for things I did, but the logic behind the moves I just can't fathom.  I just keep trying not to rock the boat.

Everywhere I go I keep seeing these spinny-eyed inmates (both male and female, BTW) who are hiding weapons.  One girl gets wheeled into the smallest room I'm in, in a sort of Victorian, industrial hospital bed, right up against mine,  and the first thing she does is fling this big ol' Bowie knife to my bed.   I'm thinking, nuh-uh, I'm not taking the rap for your illegal weapon! And I pitch it somewhere else, but then I get moved again, this time to a classic row of cells.  In the hall of cell doors, I see these two twin, middle-aged brothers,  maybe 50-60?   Balding, gray-looking , with crooked smiles and staring eyes --one looks directly at me and shows me he's holding a straight razor, one of those old fashioned, Sweeney-Todd things.   Before the dream ends I make sure to tell someone about the crazy twins and their razor--probably would have gotten me killed if I stayed in the dream…

Jan 5, 2014:

Dreamed I was a kid wrestling with some of my long past students?  Something about a story I made up for jollies about a hole in the floor with something weird that then turned out to be true.

Jan 13, 2014:  No idea when I had this dream…just remember this fragment.  Not sure what it was supposed to be, but it had the feel of some sort of interactive performance…which makes no sense, except in the construct of performance art? 

So, I'm watching this thing , the set looks like 3 stalls in a women's restroom, with one being the larger, "handicapped" stall.

Real life, not dream life, connection: {After all these years, I'm still confused about this…are ordinary non-handicapped supposed to use this, officially?  I mean, everybody does, but what's the rule?  For posterity.  I just wanna know.  How far we go.    Digression….I was in the Publix HC stall, and heard all this irritated throat-clearing, impatience outside the stall, which , I am ashamed to say, only made me move slo---o-o-w-w-er --I shall not be moved….so I finally go out to see who this rude asshole is ( I wasn't that long, maybe 2 minutes?)  and get stared down by an overweight woman in a wheelchair, who gave me the death-stare, as if I had just compounded the misery of her life single-handedly ----I felt bad for a short bit, but then thought, why is time a factor here?  Why is her peeing more crucial than mine?  Which brings me back to my original dilemma--and there is that dumb modern entitlement mess to factor in here}.  Anyway, I walked away, not liking this person.}

Back to my dream.  3 stalls.  Painted a perfect, ungraffiti-ed, unchipped,  enameled pink, like a recent professional manicure.  Someone in each stall, and we outside are either 1) waiting or 2) an audience at a piece of performance art.  Small stalls contain and hide slightly embarrassing, yet ordinary acts.  The "handicapped" stall, tho, is the one where the big top action is apparently happening…direct your attention ,  ladies (and gentlemen) if you will, to the center ring, where Harry the Horse will perform, as- yet-unseen-by-human-eyes!-- feats for your pleasure…..

So, under the pink stall, the bottom opening frames naked calves akimbo, and some sort of shallow, large dish, the kind that would be under a large outdoor plant.  There is a boatload of undefined, mumbled, and somewhat amusing, swearing…the muffled whirr of a motor, then some heavy metal object dropping inelegantly into the dish.  I decide it is a large metal and plastic vibrator, judging by **clunk** it makes.  (Not a fan, BTW).  The audience reacts with sidelong glances at each other, and sideways-smiles.  For some stupid reason--so unlike my waking persona-- I decide to "break the 4th wall" ,   go sit "onstage' next to the handicapped stall, chuckling to myself, but not really sharing my thoughts with the rest of the audience.  I sit approximately parallel to "the action" but don't really react to it, in fact, rather ignore it after my initial sit, with my knees up, and my arms dangling over the top of my knees, rocking slightly on the heels of my boots as I wait patiently for the show to end.  I'm probably wearing my earbuds, listening to some rhythmic music… to which my boots react.

Jan 18:  Dreamed I saved my cat from drowning.  But in the dream she kept getting smaller and smaller, and more ginger.  She's only about a third ginger in real life.  Odd looking, but pretty, cat.

Jan 24: Watched the happy Taiga people, and then dreamed about hunters living off the land, with scruffy beards, frozen fish, and dogs.

Jan 26:  Dreamed it.  Crazy that you can put together experiences you've never had, and still they seem so real, in a dream.  It was in the wings of a theatre stage--the show had ended.  Quite detailed in the feel.  It was a beauty--stayed with me for days.  If I can imagine feeling something that strong, I can also potentially feel it in real life, da?

Jan 31: Last night I dreamed....

First, I dreamed, briefly, that someone was looking in the window at me in the gap in the curtains I had left open. It wasn’t creepy, because it was someone I knew, and we were sort of flirting. It was Mike (my first kiss) J. but he looked like he did when we were kids, that is, not bald, as I am told he is now. I think it was here in the Augustine hotel?? You know how dreams are for place. Weird, since I’ve always considered him a pretty messed up dude: knew that even when I was 13. Me and my dark side...

2nd dream:  One of my typical, traditional, since childhood----in a speeding car.  Passenger says, at the top of the very/very/very/very steep hill, "uh. oh.  The road ends."  I have had these vertiginous death dreams all my life.  More later.

They always seem to be back home in Illinois where the terrain is hairy: hilly, random cliffs,  curves you can't see around, so learning to drive was a bit frightening there. (Earthquake land, like California). Especially since I learned  how to drive on a stick --on a Volkswagon Bug.  I've driven lots of manual transmissions since, and I will  argue that Volkswagons are still the hardest, especially on 45 degree hills.  Florida is a piece of cake in comparison.

Also, we had this awful old steel bridge we had to use to cross the Mississippi.  For one thing, it was about 4 stories above the ground, mostly over land.  Only a short part was over the river.  It was 2 lanes, poorly paved, with massive potholes, and one thin set of railings on its sides that only came up about to the wheel wells of the car.  If you were a kid in the back or passenger side, you could literally look over the edge and feel sick.  Or I did).  Worst of all, about halfway along the bridge's approach, there was inexplicably this wicked curve, maybe 120 degrees on an angle, still with that thin, useless railing.  You just knew if you went too fast, slipped on a random patch of ice (which it frequently had), well, you could practically envision yourself sailing through those railings, and the ground was far enough down that you also pictured the car flipping upside down and landing on its roof on the baseball diamond below.  Also, the speed limit was 45, just in that zone where some idiots think they need to go highway speed instead.  Man, how many nightmares did I have about that bridge, and sometimes the road became like a uncontrollable roller coaster.

Finally, after I moved to Florida, and heard someone did go through that railing, at night.  A young teacher.  Brrrrrhh…..

3rd dream: It was Stilyagi Bob, the one who teaches Mels to dance Boogie-Woogie style. He asked me, something. That I can’t quite remember. It was of a romantic nature: I was one of the Stilyagi girls, not a particular one, although I do heavily identify with Polza--the rep without the benefit of the fun. Looking for something deep in life. I can see the conflict in me and Bob right away--he’s comfortable, interesting,passionate in his own way, cut from the same cloth. It would be nice. But not soul-searing, killer love.

I think I must need some romance.  in all the wrong places.

Feb 2, 2014:

The one I remembered----I was picking up one of my children from daycare.  A baby girl? Whoever it was, she'd been going to this woman's house for over a year, if not more.  It was not my real, old babysitter for Joe, who had been red-haired and overweight.  My oldest never went to daycare as a very young baby, because I'd stayed home with her--punk mommy!!!  This babysitter was probably in her 30's, cute, medium length black hair, light eyes, thin.  She had a sorta Northern California vibe--like a cross between Rachel on Six Feet Under, this French actress I've recently seen in some movie whose name now escapes me--the actress' and the movie's--{LATER--Charlotte Gainsborough-Nymphomaniac, et. al} , the doctor girl on Sons of Anarchy  who is also the Jewish dept. store owner on Madmen, and the British ladyI hit it off with and I talked to at length, who was about my age (ish)  who owned a cool boutique in St. Augustine--she had great taste: I bought 100.00 worth of stuff from her shop. Sorry, my digressions can be a bitch to navigate.

  Anyway, the dream was, as always, strange.   I go to pick the baby up, and the sitter asked me to sit down for a heart-to-heart.  I sheepishly think about what a hurry I had been in in the morning, and knew I put some weird crap in the bag, bad stuff,  non baby stuff, like an ashtray full of my cigarette butts????  (in reality, I, of course never did this-- and it would have never survived the trip intact anyway, instead of resting on top of the pile of baby gear….) .  So Sitter says she's concerned about some changes in baby/ toddler's?  behavior--did I want to tell her anything?  She is now sitting bundled up in a hippie mom crocheted thing in a rocking chair, looking very serene and earthy.  I demure to talk about my messed up life (???--how is there always so much subtext in a dream???)
And here's the thing I remember most strongly about this dream, what she says to me in response, all earth mother nice, exact words:  "You know, I always wanted to thank you for letting me take care of xxxxxxmuffled baby's namexxxxxxxx  when she was so little, trusting me like that.  I think breastfeeding is the only love we single girls get these days."  

Seemed normal in the dream, I swear, and I felt both gratitude and a twinge of jealousy, but I kinda understood her POV.    The truth is, though, both of my kids were breastfed by me and no one else.
Where do I get these crazy ideas?

Feb 9:  Last night's dream featured a big family gathering, that had some of my real relatives, like my dad, my son, some of my sisters, I think?  and for some odd reason, Adam, sitting at the table full of people--I think I was doing dishes or food prep or something.  We were talking together about some sort of abstract topic that everyone was getting heated and opinionated about--but something stupid:  tennis, sports, some political/cultural thing?  Maybe the internet? Old TV skits?  I knew what it was when I woke up this morning, but now I've forgotten.  I don't think it was skulls (see new short story on CA in progress--based on a true story of a family gathering I thankfully missed!).  Anyway, much of the conversation was trying to be clever and charming for Adam's benefit, the newbie. I wasn't in the conversation, much, just listening.   Boy, your subconscious sure does throw some wild mashed potatoes together to make a dream.  Amusing.

I almost forgot this dream until I went to the grocery store and saw this dish brush that reminded me.  It was one of my 3rd person-observer dreams, like I was watching a movie.

  In the movie, there is this guy in prison, youngish, maybe 30?  The "prison" was in this small one story, stone, old-fashioned  house, right on an alley like street, almost looked medieval in scale.  I think he was maybe Jamaican or something, with a sort of Basquiat hairdo.  There was some sort of parade that was going past the prison/house, and the man's wife would be in it--he hadn't seen her for a long time, and wouldn't be allowed to talk to her, only see her from a distance, and she him.  He didn't have anything else to show her he still loves her, so he takes the only things he has around, which is a bottle brush, one of those dish brushes that looks like a mop of wild hair on the end, and a few other kitchen implements, and makes an impromptu bouquet--what mostly makes it look this way is how he is holding it in his hand, in this chivalrous gesture.  That's it.  A maybe 15 second dream.

Now this brings up an interesting point, about how dreams work, how your brain works, and how language works in your brain and dreams.  There was no narration in this story, the man in the prison didn't talk, and there was no other person in the dream.  So how did I gather all this background knowledge about this man's history and what was happening?  It was like I just knew.  Odd.

Feb 10:  I think this was last night.. I had some sort of Veteran's Day dream, for some reason.  There were all sorts of different groupings of vets, some were people I knew.  Strange that in one group I see prominently this guy I used to never get along with (who tried to imply he was my boss, but he wasn't)--we all called him the DEAN.  What's odd is that although he had this overbearing military attitude, he was never in the real military.  His dad was a famous football player.

FEB 16:  Ok, this was a very long dream that started out really cool, then turned bad.  So, I was living in this place that was really beat up, but really cool. Kind of an old stucco or stone 2 story building, with a wooden porch wrapped around  a courtyard.   I had a room on the 2nd floor, but where I hung out was the courtyard on the floor below, which was sort of set up casually for all sorts of people to hang out, use their electronics, play music---sweet,sweet creative vibe.  Bunch of kids and creative types, kinda punk a bit.  It was actually my place, somehow, but somehow all these people knew about it and came to hang out.  I didn't really know or recognize them . Mixture of strangers and semi-close friends.

So I was downstairs on some sort of bench/chair thingy, doing something on my Mac Air.  I was really concentrating, and not paying much attention to all the stuff going on around me. Various people, maybe some I know, but nobody I care about specifically, are coming up briefly to talk to me.

I'm making something.

There is actually a  pile of laptops on the chair I'm working from, and someone comes over to talk, and I get up briefly and go around a corner with them, but then come back within a few minutes.  So I go back to the chair with my laptop, but it's not really there anymore.  In fact, it's been replaced by one that almost looks like it, superficially, but isn't.  In fact, it's pretty beat, with some kind of rubber footprint pad thing (looks somehow like a dumb guy's laptop) .  When I pick it up I see it has been divided in half for some crazy reason, and I am doubting I even know how to use it.

Now, I am pissed.  And distraught.  I retrace my steps, thinking maybe I put it down somewhere.  People keep coming to talk to me, and I'm explaining I'm busy because I'm looking for my laptop--have they seen it?  Deep-down, I think someone swiped it because it was set up perfectly for this thing, whatever it was, that we were gonna do...it was the important computer in the house..They swiped it, and left that atrocity in its place, thinking I wouldn't notice.   No one else seemed to care.

 I go back to the ugly laptop,  search through the pile to be sure I just didn't overlook mine, open old ugly up, thinking I'll salvage something from this mess. And my worst fears are confirmed.  Someone made a purposeful swap, because what is sloppily taped on the left hand side?  My old DIY cyrillic paper keyboard that was on my AIR--no one else would have that on his laptop.  This was a sign of a dirty deed.  The rest of the thing looked like it came from Mad Max broken, post-apocalyptia.  It was almost illegible, and my Pablo Picasso quote was gone.  So was my !!ACHTUNG!! warning. Now, I spend the rest of the  dream trying to figure out how to salvage my life without my precious.  Boy, was I glad when I woke up and realized it was all a dream.

Feb 25: I read a short article that said studies done in France on human brains conclude that there is some sort of correlation between people with high dream recall and people who react strongly to sound.  Some of the speculation takes into consideration that hearing noise while sleeping perhaps takes one out of dream state to semi-consciousness, increasing awareness of dreaming and the content of dreams.  But, they say the correlation also exists for people sensitive to noise when awake as well. I'm wondering if this also includes people, like myself, who are sensitive to, and respond more, to music?  I don't know if my dream recall is unusual or not.  Seems like more than the people I live with..they are surprised about how much I remember my dreams.

MAR 1, 2014: Last night was a heavy dream, night: I could feel it as it proceeded.  No interesting details float up, although it seems it was a lot about school  -- I remember discussing something with Alyx, for example.

Mar 12:  Ambiguous dream:  after some big social gathering people were sleeping Whereever..(hangover from the Bunuel movie--?  about charmed life of Bourgeois ?)  I was on a very large mattress with sleeping family members to my right, but on my left, someone smoking a cigarette.  Who shared it with me.

Mar 16: Crazy dreams last night, remembered some in the middle of the night but not now.  A man named George?  And this odd image of climbing in a window and being stopped by a female mother dog, whose rather tender and small nipples were planted right in the window's sill.  I just remember looking at them, nothing else, and I saw no puppies.  I have no precedent to explain this one!

Mar 17:  I suddenly remembered this--for a bit I couldn't believe it was in my head, not just some movie I accidentally saw--So, I'm walking by this business, at night.  It was a really high end club--very posh.  Full of disco lights,etc.   What was its name?  I don't even want to say...let's say it's a part of female anatomy, there's a punk girl band in Russia with this word as half its name.  It begins with P....am I being too coy? By the way, I dislike this word, can't remember the last time I've said it out loud, even just in referring to a cat.  The poster logo was..you guessed it, very big, close-up, like a Georgia O'Keefe painting.  At least it was a drawing, not a photograph!  All dark reds, touches of pink, and black.  Almost like a Rorchach test.  So, for some demented reason, I go into this place, ALONE.  I would never do this in real life---

Inside, there is a sort of day bed in an ante room.  There is no one there at all.  In the distance I can  hear music thumping, and first I try to imagine what's going on inside, and then I decide, no, I don't want to think about it.  Since no one is coming or going in the room I'm in, and it's relatively quiet, I decide to have a lie down.  The daybed is soft, almost feminine and frilly, and clean.  I think this is funny, considering the places name, and after I'd flopped down and got sleepy, it occurred to me the acts that must have been performed on that bed.  Who cares, I think.  Soon,  I think a few girls come through to get to the disco, but we don't really pay attention to each other.  I'm really too sleepy to care--so I guess I fall asleep.  Next dream...

Mar 20:  A full, luxurious dream that I went to visit Russia.  Oh, my, it was so beautiful.   And, for some reason, it was also my birthday in the dream.  I was traveling with others, one who knew what was going on, but was rather elusive.  I was eternally 3 steps behind, trying to ascertain what was going on without looking too out of it.  I was also supposed to be attending classes?  with the others and they were my transportation.  We spent a night, not in some big city, somewhere in the country--supposedly the family of one--but in the dream there is a brother, and the brother was showing me lots of attention.  You know, maybe, at the beginning of this dream, maybe I wasn't necessarily in Russia--maybe it became that---because I was just staying/visiting in a big house with lots of people in it, especially a lot of blonde children.  I don't recall any language problems in the beginning.

Because it was my birthday, I had changed clothes twice, and I keep putting too much on.  I keep thinking, you should wear your favorites on your birthday, not this, you look terrible!  So I was rummaging through all my luggage looking for the items I wanted--I think maybe jeans and some favorite shirt that I cannot find (oddly, none of it was any of my real clothes--including what I'm wearing which is some sort of patterned skirt  or jumper, and shirt, and some third thing with a big odd-shaped collar).   I am doing this outside, in a field??  My suitcase was on one of those portable stands you find in hotel rooms.

 The brother who was showing me attention was trying to help me-and although I knew he was Russian, we didn't seem to have any trouble communicating somehow.  He was nice-looking, tall, thin, wiry muscles, a shock of light brown hair falling over his light colored eyes--he was wearing an open collared shirt.  He reminds me somehow of Keith Carradine in Nashville--"I'm Easy"--but Russian--maybe Andrei Rublev?  No, less intense than that guy.   But it was the other one I was waiting for, my transport, and finally he comes by in a short- sleeved black Italian shirt (don't question my logic in this--I knew it was Italian), all business-like with a cart with suitcases, ignores me, while a bunch of other people attach on and ask him questions.  I think, he'll leave before I am ready.

Then the scene switches, and I know I'm definitely in Russia because the language suddenly becomes a problem for me.  I'm inside a big rambly brick public building,  and I'm looking for the bathroom.  I know a Russian word for bathroom--банная  (or is it ванная?)  but, I'm thinking, that's not how they will mark the public restroom, (I'm remembering something about bathrooms literally having a bathtub) and how will I know the men's from the ladies' ?  Now this will be hilarious to check later, to see if I'm just making stuff up in my dreams..Here is how I sort out my problem  I find two similar doors,  almost, but not quite , next to each other. They have signs, and caricatures  on them.  The one with the male caricature says (Mo), and the one with the female caricature says (Vo)--that last makes absolutely no sense from any Russian I actually know--Russian roots for things womanly  is Жена  - the whole word is Женщина--I suspect its origins probably have to do with bringing life--the similarity to the Russian word for life.  well, they start with the same letter, both have an N..

Well, anyway, I go in( Vo)--I clearly remember the parentheses--and, it  now occurs to me, outside the dream--they were not Cyrillic letters--which probably fueled my confusion.  Inside, the bathroom, it is huge, with different areas and compartments, not just stalls like in an American public restroom, , but walled off areas around corners and things.  One section I vividly remember was obviously for socializing--it had low seating on cushioned stools ( some seem to have patterns on them to mimic the onion tops of famous church spires in Moscow).  The cushions and stools were placed rather haphazardly around a low structure with a chimney-it looked like it could be used to make a small  fire.  There were even hand drums among the stools, and I thought , how lovely.  What a lovely culture, lovely idea, to take life's necessities and throw some leisure in. There were no women to demonstrate how this area was used, but it had the aura of having recently been so--it was not a museum piece.

I also remember  Russians use a Cyrillified equivalent for "Toilet" , and since I read Cyrillic pretty easy, I doubt I would have really had these many problems finding the bathroom in real life , not Dream, Russia.  Dream Russia has beautiful, saturated color.  I would blame watching Andrei Rublev last night, but most of that 3 hour movie is in Black and White--except for a small end part featuring his paintings--which, I would like to see in real life.

Well, now I'm going to do a google translate to see what it says for "ladies' room"--here's what GT says:" дамский туалет"--not (Vo)!!  I was closer on the men's room:"мужской туалет" !! ( I was pronouncing it Moo and Voo in my head)) .

This is also interesting to me--to keep from losing this dream--I got up, to write all this on my laptop,  but kept my eyes closed as much as possible to keep the dream aura going--only looked enough not to bump into walls or fall down the stairs.  In this state, my house looks beautiful, the greens ann blues envelope me in intensity, like I am swimming in them, my woodwork all looks rich and exotic.  I think, this could be a Russian country house, too.. well, my house does look more beautiful in morning light.  And when I'm alone.  Plus, I'm sick, and I'm wondering about what I've read in books and poems about people having vivid, feverish dreams.

Mar 30:  Last night's travel dream was about: Norway?  And all sorts of weird kind o fish to eat??  It's Lillyhammer....

Apr 4:  Some strange dream about sitting on the floor talking to someone for a long time, but the other person eventually comments on where my hands are?  Making fun of me.

April 13:  Ok, so this morning I was in bed, re-reading my Dylan autobiography--really digging the way he puts things.  Almost makes me think I'm really on the right track with my creative life--no, my LIFE.  It's not finger-snap easy, what I want.  (xaxa- I think it's funny how in Russian that sounds like a sneeze--Я хочу--in English pronunciation that sounds like Yah kha-CHEW --heavy emphasis on the sneezy CHEW part).

Here's a sample of Dylan's words to show what I mean--where he's describing his own process, which partly involved going  to the NY Public Library and reading old newspapers from the Civil War days on microfiche , to soak up the vibe and get ideas for songs :

  "I crammed my head full of as much of this stuff as I could stand, and locked it away in my mind out of sight, left it alone.  Figured I could send a truck back for it later."

I think that's why I'm writing down these dreams--send a truck back for 'em later.

While I was reading, I kept drifting in and out of sleep, almost immediately into some weird dreamland not exactly like what Bob was on about, but some  parallel universe.  They were cool, but I wasn't remembering them, even seconds after my conscious came back.  So I needed a long deliberate sleep--I could tell my head was in that right dream place.  So when I came to the end of the chapter--I put the blanket over my head , ground into my pillow, and had a doozie.   Here it is:

So, As usual, in medias res,  I can't remember what came before, but there definitely was a before.
This dream has many locations-- a field in the plains, Tarkovsky like industrial ruins reverting to nature--but more in open spaces than the woods he favors.  Outdoor school property, but more collegiate than high school, and some weird trippy school at that, without a plan or bells, just people seem to spontaneously start working together or just hang out.  There's some undertow of "an idea" a goal hanging in the background, but it isn't verbally articulated. I can't tell how old I am, sorta ageless, I suppose, but I'm not a teacher or a student--

At the beginning there's this small group I was hanging out with.  We were making something, had finished a major component?  We were taking a break, having a picnic.  The terrain was sort of like amphitheater steps, but with enveloping  trees, grass growing, rolling hills--it was a landscape where it was hard to get from one place to the next without a lot of hill climbing,  actually it was a lot like Alton.  There was this youngish blonde guy (not anyone I really know, BTW) who had taken a shine to me--I liked him, too, and now he was becoming more overt about his feelings--silently, that is.  He came and sat up  against me, making little personal jokes for my benefit--other people were around too, but we were sort of in one of those little mini cocoons of atmosphere that happens between people who are magnetized to each other.  He was doing things like putting his head on my lap, doing stuff to my hair.

  I was semi enjoying it and semi-uncomfortable--decided I could come back to it later.  I get up at one point, because there is something going on, at the bottom of the amphitheater/stadium.  There's this concrete wall with a track--this is where it really looked like some of the old public school works around home, but this had the feel of abandonment, overgrown grass, weeds and upheaved concrete everywhere.  But this "school" or whatever it was, had people at it--using it in its dilapidated form, to organize artsy stuff.

At one point, I leave the amphitheater area and go inside this building..someone had brought me there.  Not the blonde guy, a new person I meet.  We go into this narrow dark space and he/she says, "This is it--this is where we have the class.  I squinch my eyes at the darkness, start to see things I recognize--it's like a backstage area filled with old abandoned props, banners, paintings on cloth, a really dark and narrow space.  "Oh, I remember this place!" I say, and in my head it is some random back room at my college's theatre department, and a weird little Tim-Burton staircase that leads to the Drama teacher's classroom .  (The truth is, I never did take a theatre class at this  college because It wouldn't jive with my schedule.  But, in my dream, I had.  And this room wasn't real--slightly reminiscent of Prof. Trelawny's in Harry Potter--a weird out of the way space, like an old abandoned closet.)

So, curiosity pulls me down the unlit gloomy stair (maybe something like you would find going into a basement in the Village) and it feels like people are gathering--I know I shouldn't normally be there, but I think, what's the harm?  Then the teacher shows up--hilariously--a real person from my past who was not a drama teacher, but my old PE teacher from Marquette High--memorable name, Jadwiga Cooke.  Maybe my dream stuck her here because she was such an unlikely PE teacher, very theatrical, and much too old to demonstrate anything to us for gym class--she always needed a surrogate student.  She also had this huge, athletically unfriendly beehive hairdo with a million pins stuck every which way, wispy and foggy looking like it was enveloped in its own mist, a fading brown mixed with grey.  Her eyes were light and marked with enormous brown freckles --gave her a sort of otherworldly look, and she rarely looked you in the eye.  She was famous for showing home movies of her daughter giving birth in Health class--it was an all girl class in my school.

So ol' Jadwiga  (that was her high school slang name)  sees me violating her space on the stairs and confronts me in a cold manner--"Who are you..what are you doing here? "  I explain I was once her student--doesn't she remember me? And I came to see the old place.  I get a glimpse of the room at the bottom of the stairs which is surprisingly bright and intense with fluorescent light--it looks something like the chaos of the workrooms on Project Runway, the designer show.  She doesn't seem to recognize me and rather politely escorts me outside.

I am now desperate to get back to where I started, the amphitheater and my picnicking friends I had so cavalierly abandoned.  But they are hard to find, the terrain forces walking around embankments , stands of trees, around corners, over hills.  At some point I'm walking with a new faceless friend--towards the practice of a performance it is suggested I see.  It's back at the track, the stadium concrete wall.  There is a line-up of girls in sparkle magenta and nylons--the kind of thing you tend to see at public high school events of various kinds.  They are doing a choreographed, broadway-style routine--well executed, but not my cup of tea.  But then, suddenly at the end is a tremendous grand finale---the girls face one direction,  form this sort of colorful tunnel of bright material and hoops, like something in a parade . Chinese Dragon Parade, w/ an American twist: there is a blur of activity, and suddenly something jumps out of the tunnel, and over a person on a motorbike--all decked out like Evel Knievel, at the end of the tunnel.

I go up to get a closer look, and see--the guy on the bike!  It's Adam!  In that Knievel gear, taking off his helmet.  Out of all the people in the crowd, he looks instantly to me--I smile in approval, and he nods his chin up at me like he does and says, "I think Efim's here."  I turn away from him and start scanning the stands, which is now a bit more crowded, and see Yef sitting in a front row, his dark hair sticking up in a 1000 directions.  I wave, he waves back, I walk toward him, but I never get there, somehow.

Actually, while I was writing this, I was having trouble remembering which scene melted into the other--did the Knievel scene come first or Jadwiga?  Not sure it matters.  This is sort of starting to have the feel of that life changer I had in the 80's--not quite there yet, though--seems like it will come differently this time.

Apr 19: ea dream: less elaborate--party at a casual restaurant, daytime.  One wearing an olive green army field jacket , red plaid flannel shirt , jeans.  The other in dark t-shirt and slim sports coat.   Two words in Russian spoken to me:  I can only understand "мне"...the other I had never heard before..like I was watching some movie in Russian, catching only half the words-- which I did last night--Nightwatch.  Not as fulfilling as I thought it would be, but not surprised that's one of the Russian movies packaged for American consumption.

April 24 :  It is true, you know, I sometimes have dreams  I don't post here.   Some things are sacred.

May 5:  Not telling all of this one.  Up on parallel bars.  Someone I knew long ago opposite.

May 6:  Just wanted to remind myself of all the nightmares Ive had over the years about my teeth--falling out, breaking, etc.  Reminded by DFW--Infinite Jest, since Hal Incandenza dreams that kinda stuff, too.

May 11:  My body refuses to allow me into my brain's dreams.  No access.  Frustrating.  I think I will write a song called Nocturnal Interruptus.

May 16:  Mab?  Listening?  Слушь??  --send me the dreams I want.  You know what they are;) 
Tonight's the Night.

May 18:  Not a very interesting dream--road adventure to the airport,  Somewhere I was looking at my ticket to figure out which airport to go to, which turned out to be Baltimore??  Two cars were going, I'm disappointed to be in one with some male authority figure who is uninteresting: and all the people I wanted to be with ended up in the other car, ahead of us, while I was fussing with Joe Rotondo, my drummer, of all people.  He was off-topic as usual, telling  he could say "Stop Sign"  in Italian.  He said something like stop snak, or sneeek or something.  I said, I think that's right, to him as we were trying to stuff something, and maybe him!, in the trunk of the car.  Waking, I realize an Italian stop sign says "Fermi", and what he was saying was probably more like Russian...god dreams are weird, even the boring ones, for discovering what you know and don't know subconsciously .

May 20:  Some wispy, ethereal dream with talking flowing in and out--where was I?  Dunno, no place I usually am.  The conversation surrounds me and мой друг working with some sort of light sheets of fabric, all white, blue , soft and light--we weren't really discussing what we were doing--the doing was sort of intuitively happening around the conversation, which I cannot remember at all.  We were wrapping it around something?  It was almost like coming in the middle of something that you missed the initial thread, so the logic totally evades..somehow, it makes me think of that Renata Litvinova movie--Goddess, or whatever it's called.  Need to watch that again, great soundtrack.

May 23:  Hangover, huge trouble sleeping-for days really.  Finally got a hard sleep after 6am.  Had a kinda boring dream about working with someone on my laptop ,working on the song I'm writing.  In the dream,  I'd already done the vocal, and I hated it, and wasn't getting much positive feedback.  In reality, I haven't done the vocal, cos I can't find the melody.  I'm thinking of switching the key to see if that helps.

At least  was in the room.

May 29:  dream fragment, again in teatro, and this was so silly--some student or actor of mine was playing in drag, in a comedy.  Somehow, when he got his hair done, in some sort of silvery-grey 60's flip with one big swoop on the side.  There was something very eye-catching, and funny about it.  My ghost was there again, just hovering in the background, saying nothing, but present in sympathy.

Jun 4:  Long, serpentine dream.  Started at work, before vacation.  There's going to be a faculty baseball game, but I wasn't playing.  It was 12:00 I remember exactly, in the dream, and the game was going to start at one. I foolishly start gushing about how I want to play, too, and my boss, who was getting the game up, erases some french lady's name (??French lady?  We ain't got no french lady?)  anyway, he erases her name off the list and puts mine--says be back after lunch, at one.

So I go to lunch, but for some bizarre reason, I go to lunch in Illinois, actually St. Louis.  I have some mission in mind, some rare item I want to buy (can't for the life of me remember what it was, but it was big, unwieldy, full of metal tubes and such, on wheels?) Some of my real family were there in the background, giving advice on how to get it back to Florida, to the game.  I'm thinking  I'm going to be late to the game))  Somehow I think this contraption is gonna make up for the lateness, but I am a bit worried.  Someone, my mother, I think, points out the main difficulty will be carrying it over this old rickety bridge with steps??  Funny how "home" is always associated to me in my dreams with old rickety bridges.

I sense this whole thing is maybe some elaborate metaphor for all the impossibly complicated summer plans I'm trying to make.

Jun 8: This has to be the most direct--my day- bleeding-into my-night dream I think I've ever had--and it's a hilarious one really, and quite short.

Because---Last Night I Dreamed--about Morrissey.  I shit you not.   Very briefly.  It was really just a perfect visual of what I heard him say in a documentary--noting the one time he thought-- "Meat would not be Murder"---this is his snarky side.

So, the dream went like this--at the seaside, I'm guessing some L.A. beach since that is where Morrissey now lives.   He is playing soccer in the ocean, rather gleefully, and with a macabre item--a man's head.   See, he had asked for the head of Elton John on a platter, ala John the Baptist.

Jun 15:  Been waking up, off and on, thinking ,sadly,  I haven't had any dreams worth remembering .  But suddenly remembered this, from who- knows- what trigger:

It's a rainy, overcast-grey day.  I'm feeling sort of sad, lost.  Looking for something to occupy myself, I start wandering around my yard (which in real life has gotten ridiculously overgrown).  I go inside the fence in the back by an alley, and find this nice surprise.  I very small corner of my garden has been meticulously replanted, with dark, loamy earth contrasting small dark green and dark-blue green  plants.  The ones on the edge are all the same, with tiny neat leaves, perfectly spaced apart.  Behind, in a second row,  are bright green plants with angular form--at first glance I thought it was  just neatly arranged St. Augustine grass, so I think--this will run wild.  But just as I'm having that thought, I focus in closer, and see it is not grass at all, but some plant I've never seen before--it has no stem or flowers, but has this organic arrangement of V shaped leaves arranged in a clump, so that one V fits inside the previous one.  It's coloring is beautiful, with subtle green wide stripes. Everything in the new garden is small, neat, and sweet.  I think, who did this? And hear a sound from the alley, and I know who--this makes me feel warm and pleasant.

Jun 17:  S>D>W>H--woke up before..  Whole night full of odd little images, fairly pleasant.  I may not be done yet--still in bed, didn't go until 1:30 am and read Moz, who is brilliant.  Sleep sommemore......

Jun 18: School dream--teaching college?  In a very old wood-paneled traditional school with many floors. At the beginning of the dream I was with students, sorting something out, and the idea in the back of my mind was that I didn't have my schedule memorized well enough to know when or where my next class was.  as they leave and no one else comes in, (I don't have a set classroom like I do at AFA)  I figure I better get somewhere to find out where I'm supposed to be--although I have this vague memory from the previous dream day that I have a free period.  But I'm not sure.  I go out in the hall and start climbing stairs, up.  The closest thing that describes it is a bit like Hogswarts, but more wood paneling, less stone, less castle-like.  It is brighter, more sunny, the woodwork gleams and is polished.  Why I am going up is a mystery to me...admin stuff in most buildings is usually below?  Maybe I'm looking for a master schedule to confirm my free time.  As I round a corner on the stairway, this little round end table shoots up at me from many stories below, by virtue of stretching it's central pedestal , and starts talking to me, saying my presence is requested (somewhere).  It's like something from Looney Tunes, but the table doesn't look at all cartoony--just like a real table with a very long pedestal.  It doesn't have a cartoon mouth or anything; the voice is merely coming from it.

Man , do my dreams come up with some elaborate and strange interiors.  I should be a set designer.

Jun 22:  Mini-dream.  Dead Jim Morrison coming towards me as a ghost.  Haha, Ghost Song.  Chilly.

Jun 23:  Now, I think I know why it seems like my dreams go on for so long.  They do, sometimes.  Last night, I woke up from dreaming I was an 11 year old boy.  I had chin-length thick brown hair, was very serious, and had a friend who was practically my twin.  We had some enterprise we were busy with.  Hours later, in the night, I awoke again, and I was still in that same dream world, still that boy.   I am guessing this dream's source is Ivan's Childhood,  Tarkovsky's first movie--a powerful one, shorter, about a boy, Ivan, who does dangerous spy missions during WWII, and is quite a unique, and lovable character--much of the story is about his relationships he has with soldiers who become like fathers to him.   Ivan is very blonde, has shorter hair than my dream persona, but otherwise is quite like.  Tarkovsky always invades my dreams: it is a bizarre phenomenon.

Jun 25:  1:53 am.  I just had this terrible dream that my sister just had some sort of psychotic episode, where she seemed to lose all sense of reality.  She was babbling and moaning, using some otherworldly language, completely oblivious to the world of the kitchen she was standing in.  hysteria.  I tried to put my arms around her, to calm her down.  That's when I woke up and realized it was a dream.

Jun 26:  Another dream about sis.  This time I was staying with her; we were watching a movie on an old, small TV like no one has anymore.  I think the movie was Footloose, the old one.  I just remember watching the credits.

Jul 4:  Dreamt riding the metro with Y.  talking about life and stuff.

Jul 7:   Dreamed I was at a party с моим другом из России--we wandered around this big old mansion pretty much ignoring everyone else there.  Finally he started говорить c какой-то русской девушки с воласами брюнетка  (Russian in my dreams again!) Later, I first hear, then see, him at a microphone  горовит по-русский--(I'd know that voice anywhere) -trying to persuade her to try it, too.  I spent the rest of the dream opening random doors, and finding people sacked out asleep in almost every room.  End of dream

July 9:  Quick dream last night--at a carnival or fair?  There was one of those game booths filled with prizes, but the prizes were all the same little round Chinese doll.  Very colorful.  Don't remember any particular people in it.

July 11:  Dream dialogue:

Q:  I guess you need to go.  To go take a shower?
A:  What do you think I'm doing now?


July 19, 2014: The night after my sister’s funeral, in which I got about 1.5 hours sleep.

I had a pretty long, clear dream (despite short sleep last night?) about being with Yef in some corner of a late night bar/restaurant. We were in one of those longer, freestanding, but enclosed booths, pretty rustic, like it was made of wood. ( was just at a similar place at home--not exactly the same?)  Seemed like we were in Alton, or at least the midwest? Hah..fat chance of that! We were sitting at a table next to each other,  at perpendicular corners, talking very intently about something—don’t remember what.  Maybe a continuation of a real life one last night?  I tend to dream about really immediate things sometimes.  It was heavy whatever it was. I think there was someone else, a guy, at the table—possibly my brother Jay, possibly Adam, not sure, but whoever it was, he was not as involved in the conversation.

At one point I got up briefly and left my bags and stuff with them, to go talk to Ken, I think, or Joe, or both. But when I came back to get my bags, there was a sort of over-made girl sitting with someone else at the booth, and I crawled under the table to get my stuff. I said to her, “Excuse me, but was there a guy sitting here, did you see him by any chance? Uh, yeah, he’s Russian? "  She said, “ Oh, yeah, him, he was here but left. He was kind of a jerk...” )))).   No he isn’t…you must be near-sighted.

July 26:  Last night---I had a long, leisurely, and pointless  dream.  In it y and I were just walking around in one of my amazing dream landscapes--some big property with outside parts, gardens, and old buildings, not even sure what country,  just enjoying each other's company: both очень рад.  Talking our usual nonsense about our pet topics.   The tension was gone, the affection was genuine and casually demonstrated---and this probably went on for hours.  Pointless, like I said, but quite nice--I could have stayed in that dream forever.  Towards the end, it morphed into an AFA graduation/some sort of formal gathering, so we had to temporarily part, each to play some part.  It was nothing like the real thing, not even military at all, just some banquet tables and people to sift through.  It wasn't his graduation or anything, just for some reason wanted to be there.   Still light and airy--it seems insignificant, but I've the feeling it is not.  It felt like where we all belong.

July 31:  I tend to have these, right before school starts--school dreams.  This one (from two nights ago) is slightly more interesting then the usual anxiety-driven, did I do this, can I handle this? kind of dreams.

One thing,  it is not in my real classroom, but in a better one, and, interestingly, one I have apparently dreamt of before, perhaps frequently.  My room is in sort of a multi-storied, free-standing building in the woods, with a long stairway to climb to enter.  Inside, there is a sort of vertiginous platform with no rail (I hate that no rail thing--Grand Canyon!), and another wide  stairway to go down to the classroom proper.  A two story, loft-like room. While you are standing on the upper platform, you would be looking at this hand-drawn map of a foreign, Asian? country, apparently put there by a teacher who'd used the room for something else, and I get the sense that I have the same fleeting thought every time I enter this room in my dreams--"I gotta paint over that with something cooler."

The room sort of has a stage-like platform at the bottom that could be used for various types of performances, but certainly wasn't state of the art: no black walls, no black curtains, lights or sound equipment.  Not hardly any student desks.  In the dream I'm doing the usual school stuff, talking to students, getting organized.  It seems to be a no-class day of some sort, and kids keep coming in to ask me if they can leave xyz in my room?  I definitely have a memory of talking to Myles B. ,  my play lead last year,  and later finding a huge, floppy tray of 30-40 roasted chicken breasts, with the bone in!  sitting on this strange furnishing I have with drawers, a table, and, oddly, a piano.  Again this dream seemed to last hours.

Truth be told, I'd rather have this classroom space--weird as it is-- than the one I have.

August 5  (I think?  A few nights ago, didn't have time to record):  Ken shaves off his beard but puts on a fake one to try to cover up the fact.  The fake one is darker (and shorter?) than his real one.

August 10:  Had an incredibly good dream last night (to balance out my shit life))) :  ok, another walking around с мойм другом (seems to be a regular thing now the night we Skype)  talking--this dream got better in the end.  It started heating up when we realized we were on a movie set--walking though different scenes.  At one point we get to this big outdoor scene, like at the convergence of a very wide river, like a big "y" stretched out in front of us,  and for some reason I recognize it as a Russian river, but not in a city--more like on the outskirts, with some industrial looking buildings off the banks--Tarkovski, Брат opening scene??
Weird thing is it's muddy like the Misssissippi...all I do is look at him and look at the river.  No talking.  We see recognition in each other's eyes. So what does he do?  He jumps in, as if he can just be there by walking onto the movie set--it was a sort of awesome moment.  Now, I have no idea where we were supposed to be in reality, but where ever it is it's cold--in fact, I am wearing two shirts and two sweaters to stay warm.  (So I guess we're not in LA or FLA).  So now he's soaking wet because he's in the middle of the river, all tangled up in driftwood near the shore (in my world, there's driftwood in rivers)) .  So now I'm starting to worry--come out--it's not real--although I hate to mess up his fantasy.  Finally, he comes out on his own, shivering.  I keep offering one of my dry shirts and sweaters; he refuses, and refuses, and refuses.  Finally he agrees to take one shirt, one sweater, so I take them off and give them to him, and try to warm him up.  We go sit somewhere--some weird outdoor room with bench like seating.  Kinda dark.
Soon after, Adam and two other guys show up.  They had acquired a gig playing classic rock somewhere, and needed the Russian guy to help.  Adam plays a recording of what they're working on, so he can learn it, and Adam says to me-"-you'll like this one--you remember it?"  I do: it's obscure stuff from the 70s, but their version is much slower and labored sounding--weird cos Adam usually plays so fast.  So, the plan  is we're all going to go to the gig in a half hour or so.  Now, here's a dumb intrusion of reality in my dream.  Last night I stayed up way too late, and this transferred to a worry in my dream--I've been out so long, will anyone care?  I decide I'm going to ignore the clock and enjoy myself, but the dream ends anyway....

August 17:  I lay awake in bed this morning, thinking I had no dreams last night when suddenly this image popped into my brain---a clock, like a schoolhouse clock, on a wall with some kind of cloth wedged behind it.  Then the dream kinda came back albeit quite fuzzy and vague.

I was in someone else's house, purging things, cleaning.  Deciding what should go and what should be kept and better displayed.  I hate to say this, but I think this was actually supposed to be my sister Tina's house (who recently died), and in the dream I was getting a room ready for her to come back.  She was never in the dream, though--other family members.  (I think in reality she would have hated this gross invasion of her space)).  Anyway, the strangest part of the dream was when I noticed the clock and the cloth.  I stand up on some piece of bedroom furniture to get a better look, to pull it out.  What is there?  A pair of satin under drawers --navy blue satin with pink roses, a memorable pair that I actually owned a few years back!! The only real item in this entire dream sequence--and still new -xaxa.   Must've been some wild party I was involved in).  

August 23:  I have been sleeping horribly lately; almost felt like I had jet lag last night.  School?  New things in life?  Uncertainty?

But, in the early hours realized the dreams were pretty rich, pretty sweet.  There was someone who I was with, in half-bored comfort, feeling safe, cared for, domestic blanketification, tea/coffee rainy Saturday drowsiness with old movies and music playing in the background---in other words, the life I want, not the life I have.  There was some weird central moment in the dream where some person I barely knew, with a noticeably triangular tongue?  came up and gave me a long, deep soul kiss.  Odd. The unfamiliarity made me a little restless, but it wasn't totally unpleasant.  Trying to search my brains for guilty feelings...

August 30: Two half-cooked dreams this morning.  One involved meeting one of my online friends: live.  Which one?  Who knows, a pastiche--I mean, I have actually done this in real life, in San Fran.
I was feeling pretty friendly with this one, but, it was almost more like someone I knew here, Dick or Bruce?  More like Dick.  Always feel more on a similar wave with him than Bruce, although there are cool things about Bruce too.  John?  Leo?  Like I said, a non-specific mix, but nice.

So nice, at some point, I hand over my inner most feelings, which I think, are actually the various pages of this blog--(they are still a bit hidden, heheheh.)  But, it was the same thing in handwritten, journal like form.  I hand it over confidently, but, suddenly At one point, I realize how much I am revealing, and pull it back---"Ah, it's boring--you don't want to look at all of that."

2nd dream--quick.  It's a dream that is drawn , like a cartoon.  The cartoon more or less captures a bedroom, like mine--big wooden sleigh bed, night table full of books on the right.  Here's the plot.  A hand-drawn spider crawls over the books, across a glass of water...into frame.  A huge, inky cross-hatched , out of proportion thorax with a manga-grade patch of white light.  Crawling harmlessly across the bed.

September 6:  Only remember one part of last's night's long dream.  I was in some big house, probably old?  with big windows, in a big busy city. A lot was going on, inside and outside. I was very busy doing something, I don't remember what.  Someone or something tells me to stick my head out the window, so I do.  Some guy on the street is yelling up to me: my body is framed in this big square window so that probably 3/4 of myself shows.  (It's a very cinematic dream).  But from my angle, I see the street, and people walking, this hipster-y guy in a hat asking me questions, and although at first I think he's just being friendly and asking my opinion, I realize he's writing down what I'm saying.  Then I realize that there's this big semi truck parked next to him, with a tiny hidden window in the top, with a camera sticking out of it.  They were filming me, too.  Big Brother in my dreams.  I'm suddenly very self-conscious of the opinions I'm giving (which maybe was about my job? Or life in general?)  anyway, my last thought was, is this going to get me in trouble.

September 19:  I think I've been sleeping too good lately to remember any dreams...I'm pretty sure I've been having lots, but my brain won't let me in again.   One small image--a kid with very light, sort of strawberry blonde hair, who must have had shoulder length hair, but then got himself a Number One (very short)  but left these random long, thin pieces all over his head--gave him a sort of rag-doll effect.  Dunno where he came from.

Lorca poem about not dreaming:

Lorca’s Sleepless City (Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne)

Posted on April 9, 2010

“Sleepless City (Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne)”
[1940]
by Federico García Lorca, Greg Simon and Steven F. White, trans., 1998
from Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn

Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
Lunar creatures sniff and circle the dwellings.
Live iguanas will come to bite the men who don’t dream,
and the brokenhearted fugitive will meet on street corners
an incredible crocodile resting beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
There is a corpse in the farthest graveyard
complaining for three years
because of an arid landscape in his knee;
and a boy who was buried this morning cried so much
they had to call the dogs to quiet him.

Life is no dream. Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!
We fall down stairs and eat the moist earth,
or we climb to the snow’s edge with the choir of dead dahlias.
But there is no oblivion, no dream:
raw flesh. Kisses tie mouths
in a tangle of new veins
and those who are hurt will hurt without rest
and those who are frightened by death will carry it on their
shoulders.

One day
horses will live in the taverns
and furious ants
will attack the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cattle.
Another day
we’ll witness the resurrection of dead butterflies,
and still walking in a landscape of gray sponges and silent ships,
we’ll see our ring shine and rose spill from our tongues.

Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!
Those still marked by claws and cloudburst,
that boy who cries because he doesn’t know about the invention
of bridges,
or that corpse that has nothing more than its head and one
shoe—
they all must be led to the wall where iguanas and serpents wait,
where the bear’s teeth wait,
where the mummified hand of a child waits
and the camel’s fur bristles with a violent blue chill.
Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
But if someone closes his eyes,
whip him, my children, whip him!
Let there be a panorama of open eyes
and bitter inflamed wounds.

Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one. No one.
I’ve said it before.
No one sleeps.
But at night, if someone has too much moss on his temples,
open the trap doors so he can see in moonlight
the fake goblets, the venom, and the skull of the theaters.

September 20:  Odd little postage stamp picture dreams last night--one quite surreal--I was following this kid--he's that actor Frankie Muniz?  I think from Malcolm in the Middle, only he's older and dealing with being lonely, has compensations.  There's a group of us in his bedroom, and he rather sincerely, not very shyly or embarrassed--sort of determined and intense, shows us this foam head that he uses for fantasy--it's pretty grotesque, but looks like some sort of discarded horror movie prop.  A severed head.  I has blood on it, particularly on the back of the skull. The weirdest thing is it has a very realistic mouth you could open, with lips, teeth, a tongue.  This seemed to be the draw of the thing:  but oddly the mouth was not in the center, but where the left side of the jaw should be.  Oh, yeah, it was a male head...other people's fantasies....hm.  But my dream?  Where is my mind?

2nd Dream;  also small.  I'm at an AFA banquet--dunno, alumni??  Big circular tables.  Kowako comes sits at the table next to me so we are sort of parallel to each other, can chat.  Right away, one of my UAE students, Mansour, brings him two extra big servings of the best dish, plus a special slice of pizza (I remember in the dream that all this food was bright lime green for some reason!) As if he's some sort of honored guest. Kowako nods rather regally, and we catch each other's eye..."still king"  my eyes say, and he smiles.

September 25:  Another garden dream.  This one proves absolutely that I dream in vivid color --I can  close my eyes and see the colors of the flowers--actually, I don't have to close them; I can remember them in some sort of double-vision daydream that I cannot explain.  Oooh.  "Double-Vision Daydream":  good name, idea for a song.  One dream flower I'm pretty sure was not a real flower in the real world: it had the pagoda-like design of a Texas blue bonnet (which is obviously blue), except that it was fire engine, vivid red, with the little stalk-like, future seed-bearing stalks with stark black and white tiny orchid flowers.  In fact, "my" whole garden was bursting with strange color in spite of my late negligence:  fruit of years of past attempts.

  Now, I know a helluva lot about flowers, because I probably obsessed over gardening for a good ten years:  at one point I could tell you even the Latin names for a bunch of plants--with a little memory jog, I probably still can.   I used to go gaga over flower catalogues, sighing longingly for the vivid ones that wouldn't survive Florida--haa, for a while that didn't stop me from trying.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised  to have some strange hybrids lurking in my weeds these days.  I feel a little ashamed of the present state of my yard, but I've just plain got tired of the upkeep and am no longer inspired.  I need to clean it up some on the side---I did find a night blooming Cereus---most amazing plant!  A cutting made years ago and now finally mature enough to do its weird midnight dance.  The bloom I found is roughly the size of a regulation football, and it looks like it could eat you when it blooms -- I gotta remember to go outside after midnight this week to watch it.  Does it need full moon for this??

Back to the dream--one little divided section of the garden was a bloom  holdout--no blooms at all, just some tangled brown and green-going brown dead matter--like a garden looks up North after the first freeze hits.  But then I look closer : there's some weird globular, pod-like thing poking up out of the mess in the back, ready to spring up into some new weirdness.

Definitely a life metaphor of some sorts--all the seeds I've been sowing for years--

чёрт:  I missed my Night-blooming cereus--probably while I was busy dreaming about this crud.

September 27:  So last night I dreamed about guitar club--my present day guitar club, that is, although I can't really be sure who exactly was there.  Here's the standout moment--we all stop for a minute to look at the clock, to see how much time we have left.  (I don't know about anyone else, but for me guitar club time always just flies by--two hours seems like ten minutes.)  So, we look at the clock, and this crazy thing is happening.  The numbers on the clock have become "unglued" and are spinning around the dial with the second hand, occasionally getting stuck on top of another number.  The weird thing is, the one number I remember that was unglued was a big round 0--but, there is no O on a clock--except with the ten??   2nd Dream:  nope, it's gone, can't remember --also something schoolish.

October 5:  Dreams aren't coming out easily, but maybe this week, with the cool air and open windows!! This morning, though, I remember this dumb thing--in my dream/half awake state some sort of Viking, burly Game-of Thrones warrior type,  walking around talking about his title, which is illustrated on a thick Iron Age chain around his neck--the Earl of Potato.  I am not kidding:  where his pendant or crest device or whatever usually hangs at the end of a chain, is--a potato.  A real (well, dream) potato, not like a a gold or silver replica or anything--a real, edible potato.  Where do I get this stuff?

October 15:  I know I've been having lots of dreams lately, but it's the remembering that sinks me.  I remember last night's however.  Again reflecting the here and now--Yef and Adam come to visit, but at my house, not my classroom.  We are just hanging out, Yef also telling his problems, but it is nice. We may have played a little music? The house keeps changing from my house to my parents' like dreams do, (but of course it looked like neither one looks in reality--it looked more like some sort of rich Turkish flop palace with cushions and whatnot).   I kept anticipating other people coming home, but no one else ever came --so we just carried on....

October 18:  Shoot, I know I had some great weird dreams this morning--but silvery-green, gold and black in a square is all I remember.  Not a garden. Some art thing? Maybe a hotel?  Something I don't usually do, not a house dream, school dream, guitar club dream.  Ken was in there somewhere.

October 19:  Okay, some of this may have been from the dreams I couldn't remember yesterday, because there seemed to be layers to this awesome dream.   I think I was supposed to be in grad school?  or leaving grad school and moving out of an apartment, and for whatever reason I was pretty happy and not worried, so I guess I knew where I was going next.  I had long hair like now, because I remember going to the trouble of curling it, in my dream, something I never do now,  In real life in grad school I'd had short punk hair.

I lived in this amazing apartment, apparently with one of my high school best friends, Barb, who in the dream is a neat freak and quite stylish.  We have all sorts of cool stuff we've collected all over this apartment (so in a way, this makes "Barb" seem more like my real friend Mary, who is more into collecting and has an excellent eye and taste, and who I really once lived with--I think I got some of my influences from her).  We truly grew up in a magic time, where people were discarding beautiful, beautiful things we could buy secondhand for nothing, so that part isn't that unrealistic.  The apartment, however, seems like it's in a big US city, maybe Chicago or New York City--high end Manhattan, judging by the size and niceness of the apartment.   Yeah, right, nice dreaming!!

Anyway, at the dream "entrance " that I remember, all the women in my family are coming to help me move, and they'd never seen my place.  They are oohing and aahing.  Barb has already moved out, but, she was in some earlier permutation of this dream that I remember, hanging around and making suggestions while I was taking all my closet clothes out and put them in a suitcase.  This basically is the only thing I had finished.  I was thinking about what to do with the rest, like thinking, practically, that I should just leave the clothes in my dresser in the drawers, and move the drawers separately.  This was when my family showed up, and I was worrying that there was too much for them to do.

Now the dream starts to take on the family gathering feeling.  Most memorably, my sister Tina was there, up front, first in the door, and! very pregnant.  I remember rubbing her belly--she had that strange quality of looking like a pregnant child, because she was so small and the baby bump so big.  In the dream, I rub her baby bump, and murmur, ,"Hi, Baby.."  while smiling at Tina, who looks very content, like a cat, in her little blue girly maternity dress.  It's odd that in the dream I have no inkling she is dead, or will die--it's just her like she used to be.  I tell the women I have most of my clothes under control, it's just the little stuff around to deal with--apparently, in this dream I have no practical items--no kitchen equipment, no toiletries , no computers, electronics, music equipment or players --how very unlike me.  Just glass nicknacks, tchotchkes--elegant, museum quality ones.  (Must be my visits to the Lightner Museum haunting me.)

To distract the women from bothering me, I show them this room with an ornate, round wood  18th Century? polished display table full of these glass pieces, catching the light from beautiful windows.  One my mother goes for, a  blood-orange glass punchbowl, really unique, and my sister Vicky eyes a matching pitcher.  I say, "Take them, they were Barb's and she's gone--must not have wanted them."  Other women in the background fuss over the beauty of the collection.

That's it.  Later, I dream about going to a street festival with multiple musical acts, probably because that's what I really did last night.  The festival in my dreams was, of course, better and more colorful than the real one.  The real one featured black.

October 25:  Only remember the post morning dream, Ken dressed up like some eccentric Asian from a dark comedy, trying to get my attention.  Me trying to teach someone else how to dance.  A room with quilted cloth divisions and rows of 19th Century white beds, covered with piles of other things to sort through.  Not sure why..flash dream.

November 3:  This screwed-up little dream has to do with a 'performance" that according to the dream logic, is part of an album, like a Pink Floyd or a Bauhaus album?  Someone is doing it for a contest.  A chair is involved, one of those modern 60's tweed things that consists of two cupped ovals perpendicular to each other.  There is dialogue between a man and a woman, but not much music.  I'm not sure this is from anything that really exists, or if the dream just made up the whole thing.  Feels weird, and I'm typing this at 4am, still half in dream state.

2nd dream:
Ok, I don'r remember the beginning of this one, or how I got where I was.  I brought myself, intentionally, I know, to an old boyfriend's house.  I keep hoping to see him, have him see me, but he's having a huge party in his big old mansion.  In fact, it feels a little like one of Jay Gatsby's parties (in reality, this guy is not really this rich, and in fact, he may represent someone else, dunno.  He seems to represent some archetype in my dreams, and, in reality, I haven't seen him in 25 years-also in the dream he's still only like 25, so  maybe me too).

There is craziness/music/ videos/gameplaying/ romancing going on all over this house--and apparently everyone is invited to sleep over: just find a cosy spot.  My ex-friend is holed up in a big suite, watching movies with a big group of friends.  Earlier he had done a walk-through the central part of the mansion, and I know he saw me, and thought I didn't see him --he obviously recognized me and smiled to himself, but not at me.  But he's an impolite, self-absorbed type, so of course he didn't come speak to me.  Why I wanted to be there is beyond me, but it was some inner drive I had.

I kinda sleep for a bit, after walking into this huge industrial sized kitchen, super nice granite-topped and sparkling, full of tier-trayed, catered sweets.  There are a few  foodie type people  there, insisting I need to try this, and this--a once in a lifetime treat!  So I take one small something that is very good--something along the lines of tiramisu.  Now I'm worried about getting home--my car is?  So I go off to try to figure how to leave after my big adventure.  I don't want to be trapped again.

Hah!  Just realized the connection to this dream and watching Sunset Boulevard last night.

November 6:  I just realized something that I  subconsciously thought had happened was actually a dream. It involved Hugo, my Russian sax player, and maybe a few other music kids.  Somehow I had come up with some stupid way of learning the scales, which involved making up a melody, or borrowing one from elsewhere, that begins with each note in the scale--it was just some sort of improv exercise or something.  Does it really work?  We were really into it in the dream, and having fun, but in the light of day it doesn't seem so great.  What does interest me is that I am trying to be so creative in my dream life when my real creative life sucks.

I am finally remembering to write this down---I remember having a dream several weeks back that Liam, one of my old, rather fashion conscious, students, put on a lot of weight in college then he came back for homecoming.  This leads me to the perennial question--why would I dream that, and, especially, about him?  It's obviously not really gonna happen.

November 14:  Well, here's some proof I'm not entirely crazy.   Townes Van Zandt claims he dreamed a song, got up, with a pencil, wrote it down.  It was called, "If I Needed You"  here it is:

http://vk.com/audios190926478

November 16:  ok, parts of this dream fade in and out--it was a prep for an event dream with me wandering through a bunch of crazy places, as usual.  Early in the dream I made some food, but left, because later I came back to the house to find a huge pile of bacon swimming.  I want to say in a swimming pool, that much, but maybe that's just some sort of dream logic.  One of my places to stop was at a costume-maker's/ seamstress?  She had a store: she was some sort of European.

She had all these live models outside in front of her store/house, all dressed to the nines like some sort of 1950's Hollywood movie.   The house was on a mountain, overhanging a big cliff.   In front of one big bay window that overlooked the cliff there were a number of these doll-like children, standing perfectly still, like little Lego people, and of mixed races and ethnic backgrounds.  I started to feel bad for them, cos as I looked out the window I noticed one was sweating in the hot son under his costume (AFA parade?)  One kid, who looked Hawaiian or Eskimo, was dressed in this elaborate turquoise brocade robe, and he was sort of strutting around.  I say to someone inside the store--"I hope that kid stays away from that cliff--I couldn't even tell how far down it went.

So, of course, right when I say that, the kid makes a beeline for the edge and jumps, in his turquoise robe and all.  The lady shrugs, "He does it all the time."    I step closer to follow his trajectory: he's just dropping like a stone to some equally turquoise water edged with black stones with hollowed out spaces.  He lands adjacent to a huge rock/ledge that looks like it should have killed him, but the water is so clear, it's hard to judge its depth from my angle. Eh, I guess he does it all the time.

  Then I go back home and find all that bacon.  I must be hungry from not eating dinner last night after our gig.

November 26:  This dream--totally fragmented from this perspective--was one of those people morphing dreams.  The beginning--for once I remember the beginning!  I was feeling sorta gross-looking because my hair needed washing (from real life) and I was wearing my glasses? and dirty unwashed clothes?  But, still I went out to the real world, saying, fuck it.  There was a DAM/NS morph?  I was looking for and avoiding.  Something about a guitar--a very hollow guitar.   Whose?

Dec 7:  Last night, dreamed I was in my classroom on a Saturday, and for some reason a whole roomful of kids showed up, just to hang out.  There were some adults too, because i was laying on some sky blue formica table and saying this is where I sleep.  I was kidding, but I think my audience took me for true, and i let them believe it.  Later someone jumped up on the table and collapsed the Parson style legs, so part of the dream was attempting, and failing, to fix this.  Before we had some sort of laid-back project happening.  Somewhere in this dream  night I recall trying to sing harmonies with someone: Yef, I think?  The first bar sounded pretty good, but then he quit singing, and I said, "Why'd you quit, it was good?"

Dec 10:  I had some weird dream about almost getting caught in public with someone--then trying to be all casual about it.  The thing is, I cannot for the life of me figure out who the other person was: can't even remember, male or female?  There was a sidewalk and a sheet--what a silly ass thing. Probably reflecting stupid things kids recently did...not me.

Dec 15:  I remember just a fragment of a dream, where I was touring with some minor band.  (Not my present band).  There were some sort of sparkly outfits I didn't approve of, but the music was heavy.  We were having some sort of minor difficulties we were sorting out.

Dec 23 dream threads: Best, cutest.  I'm looking around through a bunch of old weird stuff in my house--wooden boxes,  scraps of old rich cloth that were left over from some of my past projects.  So in one box I find a navy blue piece of sateen cloth, wrapped around something egg shaped.  I mean big egg--ostrich sized.  As I'm looking at it, in the box, trying to remember what it is, it starts pulsating, and soon oozing out this moss-green liquid--almost like the green ink in my school pen.  Soon it's covered the entire egg, and I call "Joe?  Joe!!" because I know he would want to see this!

 I carefully pick up the egg to unwrap it, but it is already falling apart from hatching, and the liquid has dried up.  In the empty shell, covered so thick you cannot see the bottom, are thousands of newly hatched baby bats.  I know, bats are mammals, and don't hatch, but in my dream they did.  They were awesomely identical, jet black with the same two white dots on each papery wing.  In un-dream life, I realize they are probably something more like an exotic moth, but in my dream they were bats, and I called Joe to help me take them outside and release them..to eat up all those Florida mosquitoes.

Yesterday I had a dream that my father had somehow figured out a way to hear all my messages on his phone, and I was listening in on him-- listening in on them.  I was pissed at this privacy invasion.
Realize--not really my father.

Jan 2:  I had one of those long, epic dreams last night, that pretty much seems a distorted echo of my waking life.  In it, I'm on some sort of vacation, at some non- existent relatives, who lives in a big old rambly house or hotel? that sort of reminds me of Rochester's in Jane Eyre,  with dark woodwork, especially in my bedroom, surrounded by dramatic landscapes and windswept winter fields that I am enjoying getting lost in--I have all my winter clothes with me for this vacation.  I am procrastinating about something, some small, easy piece of work I need to do for school, which I am prolonging by trying to read from some pink cloth book, (all cut up with some sort of eyelet design??? But in the dream it is not unreadable for me, except that I keep getting interrupted, by people telling me I need to get ready to leave...)  Yeah, yeah, yeah...my usual denial response to time.

I'm semi-working on packing, trying to locate all my coats, jackets, sweaters.  At one point I manage to somehow be at a desk that's supposed to be in my classroom--it is artistically covered in graffiti from the same etched pen, from my former students --their memorial to me, but ironically I don't see anyone I actually remember or care about that much--(In the dream I look for those names, but they're not there).

I do not really want to leave--go back to my real life, but at the end K & J appear to collect me,  K impatient as usual, me dragging my feet not wanting to leave my idyll.

Jan 4:  The dream you don't really want to have.  I am driving somewhere far away.  To a strange coast, with calm waters, bridges of flat rocks, bluish-green, almost uniformly turtleback shaped, very uniform but with plates of different sizes, piled up like an archipelago , arching out into the water.  I am there to pick up John, and have serious misgivings about the whole thing, yet I keep going.  I see him walking in the distance--I'm trying to understand the circumstances, and the best I can come up with is he's being let out of prison.  I sort of instinctively don't want him to spot me, yet I continue going toward him.  I even get out and walk across those turtle rocks, toward him, toward my fate...  the dream ends before we ever talk.

Jan 6:  This dream was supposed to be about old stuff in my house not working correctly.  Old plumbing, in particular.  I think I haven't showered for a while because the old tub/shower wasn't working--was rotting, even.  Someone else had been working on it, though, since I last looked, because the bottom of the tub is full of water; it's the shower spigot that doesn't work.  I decide I need  to clean up, and can just use the water that's already in the tub--it's one of those old scratched white clawfoot things from the turn of the century--I get some sort of liquid soap and pour it over me (I rarely use this in real life?) and just use the tub water to rinse.  Later, I find another big old fashioned white shower in another part of the house  (another of those houses that are SUPPOSED to be mine in the dream, but aren't like my real house).  I think, why didn't I shower here?  This dream seems like a melding of memories of old fashioned bathrooms/tiled rooms:  my old Crescent Heights farmhouse, our present one, Kate's California cottage, a bigger version of the Orange hostel's where I stayed in LA, and Renata's diner in Goddess.  What a crazy attic my brain is.

Jan 14:  Figured out where my little paper bats came from..they're on the cover of Day Watch.

Jan 16:  Two dumb, quick dreams from the past week.  #1:  Looking in the mirror, staring at my naked belly--somewhat happy that it's thinner than it was, except there are two little rounded mounds under my belly button--I punch it, and realize it's pretty hard muscle rather than fat.    True ?  Well, I've been doing 500+ sit-ups ever week for the past 6 years--there is hard muscle there.  Unfortunately, it is layered over with a thin? piece of fat.  Could be worse for someone my age...

#2:  Riding somewhere, with a kid, I think, a young kid, maybe twelve.  Smart kid.  Eyes closed, but then I open them and stare at some sort of domed, wood-trimmed tunnel ceiling we are riding through.  Like a subway tunnel? But in an open car.  Odd.

Jan 17:  Last night's stand-out dream--like a movie with different scenes.  I'm staying in a hotel, (what's with all the dream hotels lately?) and I have a very young child with me, a baby, really, not even walking yet, I think.   Not mine--I think I'm baby-sitting for someone. We are either waiting for someone or waiting to go somewhere.  The hotel room is pleasant, modern, plain, and perhaps a bit upscale.  It has a 60/70's minimalist feel.

Then the scene changes.  I'm walking outdoors, at first with the kid, but eventually the baby disappears with someone--I recall it happening in the dream, but I can't remember the details.  For some reason I still feel responsible for it--worried about it in the crowd, for example.  But the tone of the dream is rapidly changing.  I knew the place I was going was a bit strange, but I didn't know much about it, what to expect.

The atmosphere has become extremely carnivalesque.  What was that Jane's Addiction/Perry Farrell concert/circus thing in the 90's?  Lollapalooza ?  Like that, with a bunch of costumed circus freak type people...except that it was truly becoming rather overtly sexual.  There were all sorts of strange looking folks running around calling attention to themselves, exposing themselves.  One guy with a rather dramatic, effeminate voice was pulling apart some sort of skirt-like or harem pants attire to demonstrate that he had girl-like genitalia.  Some brazen woman was naked from the waist down, and was spreading herself out in this strange way to show that her lower bits looked something like a wet hot wheel track, with grooves and everything.  Red and Yellow?  So weird.   Fascinating, but I keep thinking--what should I do about the kid being here somewhere?  He/she shouldn't be here!!  So I start looking to make sure he/she was no longer on the premises: thinking I won't be able to enjoy this weirdness until I am sure that issue has been taken care of.  Never mind if this was real life I'd realize the kid was too young to either understand or remember.  Then oddly, I run into my sister (the one who died).  And I think, oh, no, now I have to deal with you, too!   That's the last part I remember.  I was hoping this would go somewhere else)).

Jan 19:  Great, Inception-like dream....layers.  I'm not going to describe it chronologically, but by the layers.  The bottom layer didn't come until the middle, and even immediately after I kinda forgot it so everything still seemed real.

Bottom layer:  I'm sitting on my husband's lap, outdoors.  We are on some sort of old-fashioned wooden folding stadium seats, the first row, like the kind one used to see at old ball parks.  There is grass, trees a play area in front of us, so it's more like a kids' park or a public space rather than a professional ballpark.  He is cuddling me.  But, it's at this point I'm aware I'm dreaming, and I realize who I am being romantic with is morphing, and the degrees of my feelings are changing with the realization.  It was a really strange sensation.

Higher layer: I'm living with a bunch of people in a big house.   We are all fairly young--20 to 40?  I have no idea how old I am.  I'm not married, and I am wearing some robin's-egg blue robe of some sort, nothing else, not even shoes, and I'm laughing and joking around with the other people in the house.  I'm half expecting a guy to show up, but he's one of those free spirit types that one can rarely rely on--anyway, it seems we have some sort of half-assed commitment to each other, but we do not live together.  He seems to live with a group as I do.   He kind of looks like someone I once knew long ago:  Brown hair,  not very tall, pale, sloppy,  sort of ordinary face, but with a rough look in his eyes, and a wicked gleam.  He seems fun.  And intelligent..

 I didn't think of it this way in the dream, but I guess it had some sort of hippie vibe going--not music or decor or clothes or anything, just the lifestyle.  I suppose it could be hipster.  There's not much furniture, but some built-in shelves and things we're sitting on.

Anyway, as I'm joking around, my boy shows up, with an entourage of male friends.   They are all wearing nondescript casual clothes: jeans, T-shirts, flannel--nothing special.   They stay in the background sort of grinning and shuffling while he talks to me--he is obviously their ringleader.
He says to me in an affectionate way, like we are really close--"Hey, I meant to stay, but I actually only have 5 minutes.."

He mumbled something about work and making the 5 minutes really count, so I'm game for 5 minutes, show him some love while his friends chuckle in the background.  We go walking around outdoors: It's a beautiful, country-like property I'm living on, next to a small river or big stream. (Certainly nothing as big as the Mississippi.)    Then he and his friends go off to their "commitment", and I decide to continue my walk outdoors, in my robe and barefoot.

After I walk quite a while, enjoying the beautiful weather, I suddenly look across a much wider part of the river, and see my boy with his entourage of three.  It looks like they've made some sort of woodsy campsite, with a fire pit, etc.  They were just sitting around smoking and drinking, maybe.

So, I wave and yell, really loud, so they can hear me all the way across the river--"Five minutes, eh??!!"  My voice echoes off the trees in the woods. The three other guys bust out laughing, and their laughs echo across the river to me.   It makes me feel good that they think I am funny.  There are still a few people on my side, so I decide I'm going to position myself so only they can see (I still only have the robe on, and it doesn't seem to have any belts, buttons or other closures of any kind)  so I can flash them, (the camping guys across the river) with the nothing I have on underneath.  Unfortunately, this is where I wake up.

Jan 25:  Late in the evening, I'm having a hard time separating my morning dreams from my morning fantasies.

Jan 26:  Two detailed dreams:

      #1 :  It's a morning getting-to-work-on-time sort of anxiety dream, but not that rushed. For some reason I get up extra early, and I'm walking around my neighborhood on some now forgotten dream errand.  I'm trying to walk back home.  For once in my dream it's my real neighborhood, my real street, with some exceptions.  As I turn the corner to my street, I see headlights in an odd place, not on the street but the sidewalk.  I realize a car is speeding up the sidewalk toward me, oblivious.  I get off to the side between houses so I don't get hit, think, that was weird, then start back towards my house.  But then  second car appears on the sidewalk, and this one seems more intent on hitting me, even leaving the path to chase me.  So, I dodge into a building/house.

So, in the dream it turns out there's this sort of old fashioned, 50's juke-joint right on my street in a house with a little side patio.  It has linoleum floor, diner stools that spin, and, of course, a juke box.
Which I go up to.  and here's a strange detail:  there are these little cellulose plastic and metal labels you're supposed to move over the song you want--but here's the weirdest detail.  They have words on them--the one I pick up says, I guess in Russian! играет .  That means he,she or it plays in Russian, so it's probably not grammatically correct for the purpose, which maybe should have been играть (to play) or играете !  ( the imperative ?)  I think that would be better.  Anyway, in the dream I don't even notice that it's in Russian, I just put the magnet back and  leave.  Dream over.

#2:  I have been cleaning my house in real life, so this is spillover.  As I'm sorting through stuff, I find my Telecaster in a strange state--with a vague memory of having it at school.  There is some sort of long prayer bead thing wrapped all around and tangled in the strings--what a mess for untangling.  It's Owen's--this is Owen's doing!! Grr.  Then I realize it's covering up a problem.  The electronics from the volume and tone knobs have all been removed, and stuffed with some sort of fiberglass insulation.
This was a dream I was glad to wake up from and realize it was only a dream.

Jan 31:  Last night's fiasco.  I know it's the remnants of my black mood over potentially losing all my music computer files, etc, if my computer has been killed.  So, in the dream, It's present time, and most of the story is focused on damage I apparently did to myself, because nothing else makes sense. I either hit someone, or a wall or something, because I was so mad, and now I probably should go to the doctor's or a clinic.  See, two fingers on my hand are basically mangled above the top joint, so bruised and bloody, it's beyond black and blue: it's just black--even the blood had dried dark, dark black.
  And at first I didn't notice this, but further down in the more meaty, fatty part of my left arm is this huge open gash, hanging open in a sickening way and puddling up with a thick coagulated amount of liquid black blood, contained from spilling out by a thin membrane of dried blood-skin, you know, like how boiled pudding skins over? Gross.  I keep holding it up and looking at it so it doesn't spill over  and get all over everything.  Somehow, though, like one of those weird treadmills to nowhere, I just never manage to get to the doctor/clinic/hospital.  Proof that I did the damage myself is that everything's on the left--like I did it myself with my favored hand.

Feb 8:  Short fragment.  Walking through a Renaissance church (in Europe)?  With Yef in tow.  The funny thing is the church has all those arches, like at the aqueducts in Rome.  What's weird is what they are made of--that fake plastic composite countertop stuff that was so popular in the 90's before granite countertops blew up as a trend--Corian, is it called?  I think.  My mother had a white version, but this was sort of a dark terra cotta color with light flecks. And shiny. Maybe it has something to do with our conversation about virtual realities last night.

Feb 16:  Two dreams.  One:  I run across a scrap book, with my name on the cover, and realize someone has been secretly taking pictures of and souvenirs from me, and putting them in this fairly thick book.  Apparently it had been going on for awhile.  At the beginning of the dream it was one person, but later it became someone else --one of my old friends from college.

Two:  I walk into this sunny, clean house.  It has the empty, uninhabited feeling of a museum--there is furniture, but it's not really set up for use, more like for display, or maybe cleaning. There are no signs of life or for the things being used for any domestic activity.  There are two empty pieces of nice wooden furniture--one I recognize .  It it the little 19th Century cubby-hole desk my mother used for a jewelry and make-up table, but the stuff she kept crammed in it is all gone. Even the  flip-up door is off its hinges.  I realize the house is the one I grew up in, and go off to explore, thinking things like--yeah, this WAS my brother's room.  I try to find my room, but realize something is wrong, because the stairway has turned into one of those California split-level things--the stairway leads back outside, and my room is not there.

Feb 22: My dream last night involved yet another vacation.  It seems like I was with my mother--we were in a big city I knew and they did not, it was crowded but also mountainous--not sure what city, but in the dream I recognize this building, and said--"Oh, we should go there!  It's really cool!  The bottom of the building was flat and modern, with blocks of colors, in particular green and rich blue, but it had these weird layers to build it into the mountain terrain.  I know in the dream I called the building MOMA, but it most definitely was not!  Anyway, my mother and I climb this steep outdoor staircase (in reality, I think she couldn't, and we realize this is a section of the attraction you can see for free, so we decide to look around it before committing to going in. It's really up high, like one if those narrow mountains and ravines you see in Japanese landscapes, or maybe Hawaii. Here it's not anything like an art museum--maybe a botanical garden?  I explore the area, and suddenly come to a steep ledge of coral and greenery--I have nowhere to go but jump in the ocean.  I do, and I'm so high up I go so deep in the ocean I have a hard time getting back to the top.  I really think that I will drown, but the dream suddenly shifts, without explanation, to me being back on land, back with my mother, on the high cliff. And my mother and other people keep asking--why'd she do it?

Feb 26:  Weird deep secret dream last night.  Started online, went live, with family.
Mar 3:  Another very clear dream, my parents with me at Seminole Music.  ??  Introductions.

Mar 28:  Strange this popped up today after weeks of me not remembering dreams--but this morning I did!  And bonus!  I dream with Russian words.  But плохо--you will see why)).  So I'm on some trip with my kids, in a hotel room, I think, and for some reason all the kids I brought were Russian and were speaking together in a corner--Tugs is the one I remember  because he is talking, and I hear him say, "Стару---"  So I turn to him and say, "Hey, Tugs, are you calling me old? " And smile.  In the typical dead-pan bluntness he is famous for, he looks at me sideways through his glasses  and says, without inflection--"Yes.  You are old."  To which the other kids start to punch and protest to him for his rudeness.  Per usual, just another thing to carry on about.

Awake--I realize for once the Russian word in my dream is correct--Старуха.  Is an old woman.  Why Tugs issuing this verdict--he is my most non-poetic student in years, one of the few Russian kids I don't really connect with.  Mongolian, really.

Then I get up, and find this poem by a poet, Mark Strand, and I feel fine:


Old Man Leaves the Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

This guy who is dead but was a professor at Columbia University, writes beautiful, dream-infused poetry that мне очень нравится.  He writes about the sacredness of our aloneness, about where we connect to timelessness and eternity In a way I find profound and true, in my secret self.  Here's another:

For Her

Let it be anywhere
on any night you wish,
in your room that is empty and dark

or down the street
or at those dim frontiers
you barely see, barely dream of.

You will not feel desire,
nothing will warn you,
no sudden wind, no stillness of air.

She will appear,
looking like someone you knew:
the friend who wasted her life,

the girl who sat under the palm tree.
Her bracelets will glitter,
becoming the lights

of a village you turned from years ago.

Mar 29:  This one almost got away.  Thankfully, I've been in heavy, full dream mode again lately:
I'm somewhere,  going somewhere.  There's an art vibe.  It's now, when I'm the age I am--that isn't always the case in my dreams.   There's some unusual people milling about.

This youngish man comes up to me, very serious.  His attire is quite gothic punk--long greasy unnaturally jet-black hair, sort of Nick Cave-ish.  His clothes are more studied punk than Nick Cave, though, who tends to go for a more elegant, understated vampire style--dark plum brown suitcoats, etc.  Nothing very flashy.  This guy is a bit more flashy with the iconic studs and leather, but he wears it naturally and without irony or self-consciousness, like a baby crocodile might be born to its own skin.   I think he even has some sort of unnecessary gloves, and his hair might be mildly tossed and mohawked.  He has very serious, penetrating eyes.  He comes to me and hands me a flier, which I see is full of information about upcoming punk shows, including his.  There must be 30-40 listings, but he takes the time to circle his, and explain it a bit--I say I definitely wanna go, so in the next scene I do, and the time to look at his advert more closely.

It's then I notice the logo--It has sort of 9 windowpanes, maybe a bit like the Microsoft logo, but flat, and all black and blue.  Their name is something  unpronounceable like DW ? Con, with a weird little drawing in the place of the ?   But with more concentration I realize what it is--the Time Machine--the Tardis.  From Doctor Who.  So now I really wanna see this weird band!

April 4:  I know last night I was having some rich, rich dreams.  The long, persistent one had to do with friends who had created a successful band and were touring.  I was in the background, not in the band, unfortunately.  At one point I was backstage at a show.  Everything was going great.

Now, this second dream also had a long weird thread, the theme of which was somehow smoking.  In it, yes, I was smoking again.  And here's this really crazy, illogical detail.  See, someone had invented this idea, a water cigarette.  I'm not kidding.  For some reason they had targeted me to try it, and I'm like--there's no way this really works.  But all these people in the dream are saying, yes, try it, you'll see.   I remember at one point, unwrapping this single, white cigarette, from some plasticky container.         The cigarette is normal, but the end near the filter is very wet. I pick it up, holding it filter down, and like a long, streaming thread of water runs out of the end onto the ground.  So I'm thinking, this damned thing won't even light.  But I try.  I have my old zippo.  It lights--weakly, but it stays lit.  I pull on it, breathing in, and--it works.  Mellow.  crazy mellow, no coughing, soft.  So I smoke but think, I cannot start this again!

April 5:  At this long dream I was at camp--some kind of camp.  I'll just say band camp, cos that's what I want to to be.  There was all sorts of random organizing out in the woods, but there was indoor things too.  Here was one strange piece--in the evening there were old fashioned movies set up, with an old time projector, and here's the weird thing--they were showing the campers' home movies from when they were kids.  Meaning, the camp was actually for adults? Proof of this?  When I'm looking at my home movies, I say to whoever was standing next to me--"My god, I haven't seen these in twenty years!"

And here's another odd thing--I'm the real me in the movie, at maybe 8-9?  With my silly little China chop hairdo with thick bangs, my longer sideburns tucked cutely behind my ears tomboy style--and I'm even wearing the real, red footed pajamas I know I was wearing the year my parents went to Europe and tried to make black and white passport pictures in front of our bathroom door--before they realized they had to make separate pictures of each of them--how silly they were!  They took pictures of us, too, that night, me in my red pj's--they were solid  red on the bottom, with some sort of white background atomic print on top--almost unisexual except there were some small yarn pompom balls dangling from the neck.  Tina had a similar blue pair--we always had things that matched.  By the way, this was no real home movie we ever made.

Anyway, that's what I was wearing in the film, (I can't really call it a video due to the format) and we were playing some sort of game that was fairly show-off--typical of my family.  I think it was some variation of charades, and I was just flitting by in the background, and my sister Vicky was the one in front--but actually she was too old, almost 5?  for how old I am.  And, it's supposed to be her, but she has the wrong hair (too blonde, too short, too curly) and it's not really her face (dark brown eyes?).  Even if I'm a realistic version of me in the dream, she isn't.  She's wearing a too big velvet stovepipe hat, and is apparently trying to sing something, but there's no sound.  She's just jumping around and looking cute--pantomiming something for someone just off screen.  In real life she's not a good singer, nor does she like to sing.  There are a bunch of kids, probably our neighbors, jumping in and out of frame.

Later, at the camp, we're trying to get organized for some sort of event that required us to bring grain?   Luckily, I have a paper bag--with flax and sunflower kernels, and maybe uncooked popcorn. But when I accidentally dump it out, there's like three dead cockroaches inside, among the grain.  One drops in the dirt between some picnic benches and I freak and start stomping on it--for some reason this makes it come to life, apparently because it was molting (I know in real life cockroaches don't molt!!)  and that was protecting it from my stomps, but I'm determined to kill it and chase it right out of my dream.

April 11: Five second dream--at a carnival, which is ending.  One of the acrobats does this insane thing.  He jumps on some high velocity ride, like a fast ferris wheel or something.   The force of the ride's movement flings him in the air where he executes a very graceful, rapid somersault in mid-air, but then flies to the ground, splat! right into some heavy metal legs holding up the machinery of another ride.  I mean, instantly his body explodes in brokenness and blood.  Horrible.  But, for some reason I don't wake up thinking this was a nightmare or anything--just an ugly thing to witness.

April 19:  I dreamed last night I was putting on a play--it was something that got overgrown, with too many moving parts--half-way through we call an intermission because everyone got amnesia about the 2nd half--then I suddenly remembered--wait!  The Mermaid dance!  That's the best part!  (It was, all sorts of glittery costumes and cute dance steps (I'm having a memory of the non-existent rehearsal in a dream--how strange do minds work...)

The mermaid dance? How do mermaids dance? How ridiculous is this idea?  I know this dream was much longer, but this is what I recall.

April 23:  I dreamed about my dead sister, last night, briefly.  She wasn't dead in the dream.  I was working on my Mac Air, actually reading texts, I think, when she came snooping over my shoulder.

"Whatcha doing?  " she says, and my impulse is to close up shop in an act of indignant privacy violation.  (I seem to be the only member of my family who believes in this, BTW--that is, the family I grew up in were all a bunch of snoops, which caused me to withdraw into privacy even further.  I remember finding evidence my grandmother had ransacked my bedroom drawers).  And my sister --who is herself an open book who regularly tells people things we DO NOT want to know--expects the same openness in others.  Oddly, they are all a suspicious lot, too.

Anyway, she keeps pestering me to tell her what I was doing, who I was talking to, what was I reading--I ignore her.  Now in retrospect I shoulda launched into a big analysis of the latest book I was reading and arguing about online--that would have shut her up.  But it's only a dream.  She's dead.

April 25: Of the million dreams I was having this morning only one sorta surfaced--I was riding in the back of a big roomy old car, not quite a limo, but in a big city I didn't know. It was winter, because there were a lot of layers of wool coats and such. The intelligent mixed-race  man next to me was very close, and at one point I realized he was sort of attempting to molest me, whispering to me, and so I had the existential agony of trying to decide whether or not to acknowledge this--I remember consciously thinking he's just a smooth-talker, full of shit, I don't need this--that's it.  I don't remember how it turned out --maybe that's where it ended.

Next.  This was weird and made me think odd things about how your brain works.  I open my classroom door, see two kids near my desk, one at my computer, with their backs to me.  Jay and Ivan.   How I knew it was them without faces, I don't know--something about the shape of the backs of their heads--Ivan's kinda smooth and bullet shaped, Jay's more round and broad with bristly black hair. That's it, it was almost like a polaroid camera shot, from a particular advantage point. I immediately recognized it was a dream image, and I try to remember if I ever saw them like that together in real life.  Don't think so, but the image just then dissolved.

May 6:  It's rather marvelous, how good my dreams are at hiding my feelings.

May 9:  Beautiful, labyrinthian dream of the sort I find most satisfying to remember. Surprising considering how tired I was last night. Sometimes I wish there was some sort of videocamera that could record your dreams and preserve them.

I'm once again away from home, on vacation, but with my family--again there seems some confusion at how old I am, because I think "family" may be referring to, in part, my father, who I remember at one point being worried, like a kid, of "getting in trouble"  for breaking curfew and being AWOL.   But you know how dreams go..

So, I'm staying at this beautiful, artsy old hotel, full of high ceilinged domes, twisting stairs, arched doorways, soft lighting, heavy tapestries, thick walls, luxurious bed-dressings.  There is lots to look at, and I don't want to be stuck in my assigned room, so I go wandering.

  Also, somewhere unspoken in my mind is a meeting with a sympatico friend, in a different wing of the building.  We do meet in a public place first--there's some sort of guitar performance that's supposed to occur, but I don't recall that it ever does.  There are several with guitars in this room, but no one's really playing yet--the atmosphere seems a little tense there, like it's some sort of audition or something, my friend too.  But later, we go off, occasionally accompanied by others, in search of a quiet place to talk about some decisions, problems,  the future.   We end up in a quiet room away-very beautiful, relaxed and comfortable, but others keep coming in and interrupting the conversation.  Somehow we get our thoughts across without a big elaboration.  I feel movement towards.

May 10:  Oddly, this dream continues, but the person changes. /\

Другой Мечта:  Friend comes along in a new used car.  Hilarious because it is not at all what would be expected:  some old beat-up twenty-five year old wagon, the plain paint fading and scraped like an old whitewashed fence.  The back bumper is so out of alignment, there's a place where the wheel is wearing away the plastic or fiberglass, or whatever it is,  in an arc (Dream logic, right?), and underneath the primer is showing through like old clay.  Could be band equipment transport?

Yeah, my dreams are getting scarily decent these days.  I have this feeling they are digging for fire.

June 9:  Almosting dream!!  I think I'm either in late high school or college--anyway, like in reality I'm partly asleep but in the dream, unlike in reality, I'm working in my head on some presentation or performance I have to give in the morning  I really do do this in real life--my early morning dreams often give me ideas, directions, help me organize, if in fact I can remember the details later.

So, someone starts calling me..to get up...Mcbvvvnnyj is here to take me--I just made up a name cos it's not a real person--maybe a pastiche?, but in the dream it's either a very close friend or boyfriend--even that is unclear, as nothing really happens to clarify.  There's something vaguely Miles about him, friendly, upbeat, open, energetic.  He's all up about my presentation--maybe he's part of it?  It really is not clear what kind of thing it is--speech, play, monologue, music, singing?  With me it could be any of these.

So I'm so groggy and into my planning consciousness I get up very reluctantly.  I notice I was half -dressed, for some reason went to bed in some really ugly nude, baggy pantyhose, which are pulled all out of shape and flopping off my feet.  M is in the background, amused at my wanderings.  I'm not sure what else I have on--something up top, but since dream is truly from my perspective and I don't look in a mirror I can only see vague cloth above the baggy hose.  I  keep thinking (this is from reality)  I need to wash my hair to look presentable--I had put it off yesterday--but I don't think I have time?  Fuck it, just a rinse in the shower, then go.

This is turning into one of those I-can't -get-ready-in-time-for-something-important dreams..anxiety, but I'm kinda blasé about it.  When I get to the shower, my sister Tina (I think, it might be Vicky) is just getting there, and instead of complaining I just let her go first, and see a bathtub full of water--I think-this will be faster, just jump in and out.  End Dream?

It seems to have a vague relation setting wise to the dream I had --the bathtub vaguely resembles the one with the dead baby I had long ago, but the feel of this dream is much less melancholy. No dead babies!!  Oh, yeah I remember saying the word ничего  somewhere at the beginning, and the male character giggling at it, I'm wondering if I pronounced it right but get no answer from him.

June 12:  Birthday dream from the gods--all my people seem to conspire to give me what I really want--haha!  Like that would happen in real life!!!  I look up, in some institutionalized building,  to see two go past, my heart hits,  no acknowledgement--it's like that movie The Sting; everyone knows what's really going on.  So I go in a room, escorted by my son!, to find my heart's center.  Everyone else quietly spirits themselves away--knowing what is wanted. But later as I am climbing in my car to enjoy this unexpected day (my car is like something out of the London office of MI-6, BTW, like a sleek silver bullet with 1970's chrome) ,  my car is taken for a joy ride with me hanging on for dear life on the outside trying to get in.  Story of my life.  But all for fun---wish I hadn't woken up so I could see what happened next.

June 22:  Image from a dream this morning...poem or song worthy--will put it that way?

         --The sidewalk is long
            She is far along, and turned away
            Holding a big bouquet
            Which she sets on fire.
            Burning,
            She flings it back
            For him.

June 23:  weird dream image--at a party where some bread was shaped like a high-heeled shoe?

June 27:  Tarkovsky consistently invades my dreams  the night I watch him.  Last night's was exceptionally vivid.  I go to the Zone (from Сталкер).  I think I might be the Stalker?  Or at least I'm supposed to have been there before.  There may have been more people at the beginning, but at the end, when we get to the Room (Камната)  where you're supposed to get your desire, I'm alone with my father-in-law; everyone else has gone.  This is why I think I'm the Stalker, because i'm just helping him, and he's asking me questions.  Also, it's not me all churning inside about whether or not I should find out who I am and what I want.  It's him.  So, he asks me to get in this car that appears, his car, a dark car, like some old caddie or olds,  and I'm thinking, okay, we're just leaving, going back home.  There's a huge, deep lake along the road, and suddenly he turns and drives straight into it.

I suddenly think, "Oh, no!  This is what he wants, he wants to kill himself, and take me with him!! Why?"  I panic a little but just go with it.  Then mercifully, the scene shifts, just like movie magic.

We're back home, but we had actually gone  through this thing: it wasn't a dream or anything.  We're sitting alone at a kitchen table--no one else knows what happened.  I ask him, "Why?  And why did you take me there too?"

He doesn't tell me entirely why he did it, but explains that I was the only one he thought was ..now I can't remember the word he used--real ? I would understand the reason?  I wouldn't panic?  Something like that.

Now I'm thinking he did it, not to die, but to see what it was like, so he wouldn't be afraid.  Or something.  

One more last night: in an airport.  See Y.  He can see me, I can tell, but he makes no sign.  so, I go in obvious sight to say hi or something--he looks at me, but says nothing.  The look is neither cold or warm, very hard to read.  A complicated look.
         
July 20:  This is from a few days back.  Every once in a while, I have a dream that I wish was my real life.  This was one.  In it, my online reading friend Leo, from Norway, comes to hang out with me.  We're making a big celebration of it, in a sort of casual way, making sloppy plates of food, and drinks, and I keep screwing up stuff--dropping it on the floor or whatever, while he follows and helps me right my wrongs with excellent good humor.  I don't know if this is what he's like in real life, although he's pretty upbeat and optimistic--most of the time.  (However, he does like some dark weird shit, like me, so who knows?)  Once again the setting is much more elaborate--modern, even, than my real house.

It's very strange to have a dream about someone whom you've never actually met, to hear them talk, to watch them walk around and make gestures.  In my dream he looked kind of like a young David Bowie (this is how he looks in his pictures to me), very thin and tall, but much less flamboyantly dressed than DB--just jeans and a kinda sloppy button shirt, the buttons half undone.  Blue--his clothes were mostly blue.  He laughed a lot, bent over a lot,  leaned in then leaned back to laugh--his accent was a sorta British Scottish mix--well, I probably got that right , as he's Scottish and went to school in London.

In the dream other people (invited?  just expected, like family?)  kept showing up so there's kind of a gathering/party feel, but something must have been entertaining them, like a game or show cos no one's really bothering us too much.  For some reason I'm sort of most anxious about my hub coming home and seeing Leo there, like it will bother him, not to mention all the others.  He hates unexpected company--well, mostly he just hates company, which is a major personality clash between us--I love spontaneous gatherings.  Anyway, he does finally come, and nothing big really happens--the dream just sort of peters out.

I had another dream with Mark--on one of our trips, I guess, and we're in a hotel talking about life and relationships.  Not uncommon for us, but this was more personal?

Aug 15:  For over a month I have had no dreams of any consequence.  When this occurred to me, and I tried to more consciously follow my dreams CC style--  here's what I came up with.    This morning, I was dreaming, almost stagnantly, about some stupid gold band.  Not a ring or jewelry.  More like, the kind of thing one might use to connect a rubber hose in a car to ... something.  Only gold.  The only   movement that happens in this dream is that the gold band seems to becoming more and more tarnished.  Slowly.  Is it a  car part, wedding band?  Well, mine is platinum, not gold, and has a leafy, seed filled motif.   A symbol of fertility, the lady said--xa.  It's one of my favorite "things".  A part of me--but not for reasons you might think.

Aug 18:  This morning dreamed of my first boyfriend.  He was just the same as decades ago.  And in his mind, as well, apparently, as he made confession to me in the dream.  How very convenient for me for him to be unchanged.

Aug 22:  Nice Dream:  another working at some weird creative camp? or something, where I didn't have too many responsibilities and a unofficial favorite partner helping.  It's not for music, possibly visual arts? but in one my usual amazing dreamscapes in an old mansion, property withe lots of natural light and outdoor spaces--one room looks like it at one time was a very formal ornate dining room, but now repurposed for art, casual discussion.  Mostly I'm just exploring with favorite guy in the uncharacteristic red shirt-maybe plaid?  some faint pattern--also at one point wearing dark leather gloves like the ones I really have..

August 28:  Hilariously odd dream where I'm convinced one of my friends was photographed for Rolling Stone, one of those iconic cover shots.  What's hilarious is who the subject is--Jose Hercher, with his big crazy smile and bald head, a blue shirt, and a big old red Gretsch semi-hollowbody, f-holed, guitar.   !!    Why??  ))

September 6: Absolutely smashing dream I had last night--one of those that seemed liked it lasted hours, and I know I will never do it justice.  The idea:  I have agreed to partake in a sleep experiment, that is meant to create the ultimate sleep experience. I am most notably happy to be sleeping in a bed alone, among other things.   I have the feeling this is really about me escaping something else in my life.  So, I'm supposed to go in this particularly hermetically sealed room.  It's almost like I'm supposed to go in, and the edgers of the room will be sealed, like the aluminum of one of those Hormel hams,  melted with a blow torch, or something.

The thing is, I keep doing things that keep the optimal "sleep" experience from happening--not allowing the dark to come, for example, not laying down, moving around too much to relax, in fact, it's not very long into the dream where I moved out of the supposed "sleep" room together.  But the feeling I have is to become increasingly relaxed by virtue of doing exactly what I want to do, rather than "sleep' in the traditional way--it's almost as if I am sleeping by not sleeping--like going into a dream state without laying down.  If that makes any sense at all--i know it doesn't, not on a practical level.

September 24:  Weird snippets of recent dreams: #1-talking with a former student who I didn't completely recognize, but who looked familiar--he'd grown this abnormally huge nest of blonde hair, and wrapped in places with tiny blonde braids--no , not dreadlocks.  #2-chasing and then swimming with some huge creature that doesn't normally swim.  #3- in bed talking, quasi-romantic, seemed like  dream about the past, but the other unrecognizable?

October 3:  Most pleasant, rambling dream, of the kind that keeps me alive.

I was somewhere , where people were displaying their wares.  No, not Vanity Fair.  Anyway, it was outdoors, partially, but also had some big buildings for specific items.   So, maybe like a gigantic, well established flea market with semi-permanent buildings.  At the oldest part of the dream, which went for awhile, the focus was music, for a bit.  I was in some sort of dreamlike trance, with a specific friend, and we were listening to, and commenting, conspiratorially, on the music being piped in, which wasn't all that bad.  It was a bonding, shall I say, affectionate, moment.  We were quite happy in our little world of two, until we realized, there were others, with swarming opinions.

We separate for a bit, I think at my instigation.  And I am enjoying myself, taking time to look at what I like that others might not appreciate.  Eventually, I see my friend, looking at Harley stuff at the next outdoor booth, so I reconnect. The other person says, peevishly and uncharacteristically--where did you go?   I say, you could have texted.    I say...you have to see this, you will love it. I know.  And, we go off together, continuing our time in a bubble.

October 13:  Last night I dreamt that Somebody loved me..for real. Strange wavy  красное acid-cut shorts: I see mice elf in white lace with button-boy's shirt.  Then, there was a baby tiger roaming around the house, playing with the cat.

October 24:  Whole mess o' dreams this morning, hardly memorable.  Only one remember a little, where I was off sorta indifferently doing my own thing, is a sort of semi-defiant state, to come home to find our apartment(?) not house, mostly packed up by Ken.  Then I felt bad that I shoulda helped.  This is probably displaced from gig road-crew duty since we of course do our own.  we play tonight in the neighborhood.

October 28:  This is from several days ago, so I lost most of it (actually, right away). I was working with some group or business or political entity, maybe a group doing an artistic thing? Anyway, there were some material that needed to be delivered to far away places, for some reason, and this was going to be accomplished through this ridiculous tube transport system we had, like maybe a melding of those pneumatic tubes that old department stores used to have for paying to the central office upstairs(like the one I saw in Sligo, Ireland--kinda really shades of Brazil!) with something like the ones from the Jetsons' or the "beam-me-up" machine in Star Trek.  It was smaller and more closed up like the Irish one, though, not glass, and went into the wall like an old laundry shoot.

So, jobs and destinations were being parceled out, and I was designated to do the all-important Russian mission--why?  Because I spoke some Russian.  I tried to explain that I wasn't really that good, that I would not be able to explain anything complicated, but no one was listening;  I was still considered the best we had for the job.  So, instead of being excited about finally having an excuse to go to Russia (For Free, apparently!)  I was instead apprehensive.  Not because of this crazy tube system: that I didn't even question.  What I was worried about was going alone, and making myself understood to whoever was on the other end.

October 31: Says Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky:  "My dreams  are a cruel joke--they taunt me.."
I haven't had any astounding, lucid ones in a while.  But I know i'm having lots of little ones, close to my life, perhaps?  No upheavals.

November 3:  Dream that felt somehow recurring.  Particularly Long.  Only caught a snatch.  I apparently had a long standing habit of catching a ride in the car of un amico caro, who would then take me to work/school.  Seems this has gone on for enough time that I realized the experience was mutually pleasing, and would continue indefinitely, to the gratification of both.  Apparently, in the past this was a personal concern.  Lovely conversations would ensue.

November 8:  Long and winding dream, early morning style.  I was on some school trip that involved teaching various survival tactics--not usually my thing, but, all good things to learn in life, eh?  So one of the drills was to learn how to survive a high fall (like from off a bridge) into water, and avoid drowning.  I really don't remember the details of the drill--opening a window, opening a door,  before you  hit the water and are trapped by pressure?--something like that.  So, luck would have it, at the end of this dream, some psycho drivers drive us off of this extremely high cliff--think the White Cliffs of Dover--into the sea.  I remember my training and survive, and act sort of all--well, of course I didn't panic, just did what I learned.  !! (Real life me, yikes??!!?? )  Didn't even bother to check out to see who else had survived the ordeal--so indifferent, for some reason.  But, what does upset me, afterwards, is finding out I have problems with my laptop, which turns out, once again, to not be MY laptop, and my life apparently becomes all fuck all.

GODDAmn .  It.  Laptops featuring in my dreams, again.  What a waste.  Can't I just have a good sex dream instead?

November 13:
This may be interesting to check out:   http://www.dreambank.net

or, maybe this one will be better: http://sleepanddreamdatabase.org/dream/namedsearches

Dec 1:  While I was in California, I had a dream about walking around, finally ending in some hall for transportation: train station, metro, airport?  And there he was, waiting on a bench--for significance.

December 17:  Haven't been remembering much, but this one has faintly stayed with me--another airport dream, one where I first see someone there,  we talk briefly, friendly and later get obsessed with wondering where this person and family were, since I apparently had a long wait till my flight.  There was no actual flight in the dream, though.   I do see them again, passing in a terminal on the way to a gate, at a corner.  It seems odd that this scene now echoes somewhat what I just read in Дневного Дозор ,  but I had the dream before I read this--thinking about who else is in the airport while waiting for a flight is what is similar.

December 18:  One of my strange dreams last night:  there was some sort of evaluation taking place. The evaluator was male, rather a high-filutin' dude, and there was a mild air of derision  about him, like a nervous teacher.  There were other people of mixed ages and gender in the room.  The attention was on a middle aged woman that the man was evaluating--seems he was evaluating her body for some reason.  She was calmly and with dignity removing layers of her clothing, but not at all in a sexual, strip tease kind of way.  It was like she was letting the evaluator take in each layer.  Her look gave the impression  that she was expecting him to be surprised by what he would see, because on the outside she looked like a pretty average, dowdy middle aged lady.  She was sitting in a plain chair.

There were other females in the room, including me, and with some sort of unspoken, conspiratorial pact, we are all taking off what we're wearing at roughly the same pace as the woman in the chair--in an equally non-sexual way.  Finally the woman is naked, and she is in much better shape than she appeared in her clothes--not like a Victoria's Secret model or anything, but definitely with muscular curves pleasant to look at--finally she reveals her breasts which were strangely football shaped, and with strips of layered muscles (almost like tuck and roll upholstery) that I now on awaking realize is impossible, given what women's breasts are made of.  Now I'm sitting naked at the evaluator's table, a bit self-conscious,and with a towel over my lap.  But  attention is only on  the  evaluated woman.  I'm thinking to get dressed, and the dream ends.  Weird dream.

December 25:  but this dream two nights ago-- I suppose it means I'm not yet done!  I woke  after experiencing dream-fueled passion from a dark haired man--someone I don't think I recognize.  Just when it was  becoming something approaching the otherworldly--rare moment, things were sadly interrupted.  Someone was brazenly filming, from another room--my ex, looking craven.  That level of privacy violation should be considered immoral , even in one's dreams.  Shows what I think of him, still.   "Last night I dreamed, that somebody.."

January 9, 2016: from a few nights back, trying to piece it together.  Setting:  Winter vacation in some snowy place--like Colorado?  Gathering in a big room at night, fireplace.    Yef is there interviewing one of my friends for something?:  Leo or Marc?  Rupert?   I'm amused because most of the words are coming from the interviewer, not the interviewee.

Jan 11:  Horrible dream...where I am being used by someone, who I don't wish to be.

Jan 17:  Opposite dream, being hugged warmly and completely from behind while looking at old things: pictures? chats?  not sure.  Someone I only know through social media sitting next to me on the couch, sleepily buried in blankets with a "do not disturb" friendly look.

Earlier this week I had some weird, now fading dream--I think I was in Russia,  and crazily I completely understood the language, although I think my dream was actually in English?    Wut, crazy dream logic--at some point was translating English into English..talk about your wish fulfillment dreams--always around the holidays, too.

Feb 11:  It's been very cold, and I know, from the few times I've broken consciousness in the middle of these beautiful sleep-nights that my dreams have been very good. Long, wonderfulseaweedpoems of dreams.  But slippery.  I can't remember them, because I am sleeping so hard.   Too bad: I'm trying to write a story.

Feb 25:  Dream piece:  once again, I'm looking for a bathroom in some industrial gigantic complex--university size.  A worker, a stranger, points me down a a gray hall to a particular door.  I walk through it and think he must have made a mistake.  It's just a cavernous, empty gray room with concrete, unfinished walls.  In fact, it looks like some sort of unfinished construction--more like an unfinished basement from the 1970s.  It even has the rebarb reinforcements and wooden edging for the concrete molding still in place.  But then I notice one corner of the room.  Has a seam.  Wait, no, it's like the calyx of a plant--something can grow from that.  I go back out, but suddenly I recall what the worker had said, not that it was the lavatory, but the something room--a sort of latiny name: the Peristolsis room, the Cambiotic Room wait, the Mitocondrion Room?  Was that It?

  But suddenly in the dream I got it--it's a room that will change to suit your needs and  desires.  I return and subconsciously focus on the organic seam in the corner--and it begins to blossom with life, radiating out shiny turquoise colored tiles from the calyx seam, as the room transforms into an elegant washroom.  I feel happy at my success.

Thinking about it, now that I'm awake, I realized this is a grown up version of the idea that's in Harry Potter..

March 2, 2016:  I wonder how often I have variations on the same dream--this one I've had before, I realized after I woke up.  In it, I am driving   somewhere on the beach down one of those long Florida beach bridges:  St. Pete Beach, the Corey Causeway, from Madeira--somewhere like that.   I'm driving and someone (like my mother?) is in the passenger seat.  Out of the corner of my eye I start to see something unusual--I point to it, to my passenger--"Wow, what's going on over there! "  It looks like an explosion of some sort, lots of blue, gray  and white smoke, maybe some steam, water streams shooting up.  Suddenly, this whole area, the size of maybe a huge hotel complex, goes up in a big firey flame.  I start yelling, Oh my God, Oh my God, what's happening??  and feeling really upset at the confusion and destruction.  Then I noticed it was subsiding and resolving---it wasn't a real explosion.  It was some sort of tourist attraction stunt, a hologram or something, of an explosion just being done for advertising.  No explanation how I figured this out.  I was mildly pissed at getting upset for nothing, and felt a little stupid.  This seems like some sort of metaphor to me for modern life.
Mar 6:  Snapshot in a dreamish state:  a guitar that was its own case??--plus it was ebony colored--It had shiny gold fasteners on  sides like a case, and a big ol' tremelo bar that matched.  What would be the practical point of this?  It was very shiny, approximately the look of my dad's old ebony Wurlitzer  upright piano that I learned on.  Damn, this is making me feel guilty about how much I've let my piano skills deteriorate again--no practice.  Well Ш lost the nice keyboard I was practicing on, and our old Victorian is so out of tune with sticky keys, it's just not fun to play.

Mar 8:   International Women's Day, I was just reminded.
Had a dream last night that K married someone else, someone younger, but in the dream he was married to both of us.  After the ceremony, she was sitting around the party naked, and body-wise, looked kinda like me, but she had shorter, darker hair.  He was much more affectionate with her than me, touching her face, etc.  

Mar 19:  So, had some bad dreams in the early am, or rather, frustrating dreams.  In it, I was telling K what I had done the evening before, but when I said the words he had loud music playing (that I didn't particularly want to hear), so he misheard me.  Later, when I repeated it, he acted like I was lying because he thought I said something different---but I hadn't, it was the fault of the music he was playing.  So then whatever happened next in the dream I was irritated with him because he didn't believe me or at least had his usual negativity about my POV.  And today I was imagining he was playing me music with hidden messages--not sure he does that, though.  It would just be thoughtful if he'd occasionally let ME play what I want to hear.

Mar 25:  Ok, so some of my boring dreams last night involved the bathroom, and at the end, I see my phone (actually, a smaller, whiter version of my I=phone) in the bottom of a toilet.  Lotta boring dream time spent with me trying to remember methods for drying out electronics, like putting them in bags of rice, or using those little packs of dessicants that I've been advised to save for just such an emergency...probably the source of this stupid dream.  Later, I am helping someone sort out beads?  putting a group in a glass display case with some in a wooden box I'm carrying.  For some reason I can't get the person to understand I could do this much faster if they just took the bloody thing out of the display case..

March 31:  I'm ruthlessly dissecting the logic of this dream, one of your generic, I'm late to school, can't find my room, missing this and that, totally unprepared sort of dreams.  Because I normally would know how to fix 90% of the problems this dream made...

I'm getting ready for college; it's the first day, and apparently my brother and sister are going with me--which makes no sense, because they were always so much younger than me we were rarely in the same school. Not even high school.  But, I think we're adults, and it seems like I had already had lots of college experience cos I'm giving advice, trying to get organized before I go, help my brother, whose usually the most disorganized.

So suddenly my sister runs in and says:it's time to go! Ten minutes till class!  I'm like, huh? how did that happen, I thought we had lots of time?  So now I kind of thrash around, looking for a notebook or something to write in, as if the thought hadn't even occurred to me I'd need one.  Nothing.

I'm also looking for the textbook, which I apparently don't have, and seem to feel I'll  just find the right one on the floor somewhere..

I go to other rooms, for some reason, Mark P's, which is nearby???  I think he's roommates with Jalazo and their place is a mess, full of papers and books on the floor.  I find some a bag or folder full of half-used tablets of graph paper and grab one of those. The next minute (no transportation necessary, apparently!). I'm in a big hallway of a school, trying to get information about where my class is.

So I'm trying to look it up, but everything is like a foreign language.  I have no idea about the teacher's name, and only a vague idea about the name of the class--Language Something Something--totally useless.   I have no idea what building, what department, what room number. Somehow from the person at the big marble hotel-looking desk my professor is a woman, and the name Vostock?  sounds vaguely right.  In the next scene I miraculously find the right place, how, I dunno, and I am relieved because the first "class" turns out to be one of those party-like meet and greet sort of things, so in my mind I didn't really miss much.

So much stupidity in this dream--who takes a college class , without knowing the name of the class, the professor,  even the room number? And I know you never need the textbook on the first day--they usually even tell you not to buy it until the professor tells you what to get. And,  how would I know what time the class meets if I didn't know all that?  all the jumps in logic that just resolved themselves without explanation, and, I might add, without resolving my anxiety about them.

Now if i couldn't find a room, I'd just go straight to the department, or the professor's office to try to find out where to go, rather than wandering helplessly around.  But I didn't even know what kind of class I was taking in this dream, no idea about the department.

This dream reminded me I must have had a dozen more over the last few years about signing up for classes I kept forgetting to attend, got far behind on, felt anxiety over because I forgot to do something for prep.  That's strange because I don't think I've EVER done any of that in real life, but because of these dreams I have this nagging hangover of a feeling that I have a flotilla of broken classes in my wake to make up for, prove myself against.  Interesting.

If I was really going back to college, it would probably take Russian, and maybe Russian Lit.  For fun.

April 4:  This snapshot dream left me with a really eerie feeling.   Like it was really happening, but on some other plane--it didn't help that it was pretty close, at least in space-time, to where I really was, which was early a.m. worrying about how much time I had left on my alarm clock while I was alone in bed--K having already gotten up and gone downstairs.  So in my dream I get  up, look at the clock, and realize by the clock I have almost another hour to sleep, when I thought I'd have to get up, like now, or even 10 minutes ago.  So I happily climb back into bed, snuggle up in the cool morning into my warm blankets, and realize--also happily, someone, a voice very familiar, but unknown, is right behind me, spooning up against my more or less naked backside.  Mystery Man murmurs--"so warm and soft, always", and starts to get more intimate---  and  I am enjoying the hell out of this moment when evil consciousness interrupts as usual.  Why does my own brain hate me to enjoy myself?  The eerie-ness is based on how real it felt, like it really was happening (or had happened).  I have this bizarre thought that someone else was having the same one at the same time, or sent it, or something.

So I wake up--thinking, I really do need to check the time, and realize it's almost exactly the time it was in my dream.  How does that happen?

April 24:  This weekend's dream--a downshift.  Well here was one of my typical ensemble dreams, featuring yet another happy, raucous group gathering of all the people who mean  something to me,  some ephemeral  (pun) in my life...  Big huge friendly house/hotel... many people of my acquaintance there for some unstated purpose--cosmic glue.    As usual, I'm supposed to be somewhere,  a time crunch, which short-circuits the brief, but sweet times --minutes, actually, with the ones I want to really be with.    They don't feel the same pull, maybe, or at least don't show it, for whatever  temporary reason--which is then, temporarily, tragic for me.
So I recover, and  somehow take some magical quick journey to my friend Mary's farm, where she has been having a bumper crop of fertility in her gardening (this is happening in real life, as she has posted on FB.)  She and I share this very warm hug--as if it will be a long time before we will see each other again, and we will go through a lot of tough times.  In real life Mary and  I are close, but not big huggers.  In my dream I'm just trying to get back to my room, which is next to what I really want.
April 25: Last night I dreamed..yeah, again..old boyfriend, but with a different personality.  We woke up early, realized the alarm was wrong--decided to sleep longer instead, after a nice, warm kiss.

April 30:  Saturday morning dreams:  First, the typical teeth dream.  This one at first featured one, then two, then three of my front teeth suddenly turning to mother-of-pearl--one front tooth,third  one canine, and a  third in between.  That doesn't sound that horrible, right, mother of pearl is that stuff inside shells.  But this was the abalone kind--you know, with this striated  shiny layers of black, grey, blue--iridescent, yeah, but with the tiny little holes shells get in them.   Made my smile look like it was going rotten.   And very fragile, apparently--at one point, the canine broke off all jaggedy, and then fell out altogether.  Spent the rest of the dream waiting for the other two to fall out.

The rest of the morning was a sort of semi-conscious imaging of a house/one big roomstudio I'd like to build/have.  Ridiculously minute details along with some, not enough, big picture stuff, like, city? Or country mouse?  I keep picturing one big room with a wooden floor, high ceiling, corner "bedroom'"with maybe privacy curtains, a stove or fireplace.  Where?  And how much for the recording equipment?  Are high ceilings good for sound?

May 7:  A sort of vacation? dream, with my family.  We are somewhere far away and exotic, sleeping outdoors up against a big cliff trail, solid grey, smooth rock against our backs.  It's not uncomfortable--we have blankets and whatnot. Sort of a less steep, less perilous version of  LOTRs.  I get up at  one point and start wandering by myself: the mountain road quickly becomes an old town, this walkable squares and pedestrian roads, more like you'd see in older villages, cities in Western or Eastern Europe, Italy.  There are hoards of people coming in, foreign to the city--they wear dark clothes that cover them up.  I think they are Muslim. They seem excited, and in the town's square some sort of joint activity --not quite dancing, but there is rhythm, and chanting.  I'm listening to the language they are speaking, and it definitely has some Russian elements to it--I hear the word хорошо, for example, in various forms, several times--нравится?  люди? --Anyway, at the end I leave the square and go back to the cliff where my family is still sleeping.

May 17:  Flash dreams--a room in an old attic of a big substantial house, with this giant wheel, like what you would find piloting a big ship, wooden like that, but parallel to the floor, not upright like a ship's wheel would be.  It is attached to a rod that  drives into the center of the earth, and here's the insane part.  It is used to turn back time--hard but possible.

The other dream was about me visiting home, my parents.  I brought my guitar, and I'm trying to teach my father, but I seem to have left my pick in Florida--durakkk!  In reality, I'm seriously thinking of buying my father a cheap used guitar for his birthday/father's day.  He's a musician, but not sure if he'll take to a stringed, rather than a keyboard, instrument.

May 22:  Unexpectedly had another Russian dream--that is, a dream that I was in Russia.  I think it was supposed to be Moscow, but it looked more like Petersburg, 18th Century buildings, not modern glass skyscrapers.  And stupidly, as dreams do, signage all in English, no Cyrillic even, and everyone speaking unaccented, perfect English.    This became most apparent (and still didn't tip me off it was a dream?) when I was at some giant, old apartment building owned by a family I know--it was called Barony, but in English, not Барону --and I specifically noticed this in the dream and noticed there was no Сyrillic anywhere, even tried to will it to change?--Google Translate goes virtual!!   We were hanging out in a big courtyard--waiting for something--  meeting various family members with varying degrees of closeness and distance, but  mostly within view.   At one point I was all wrapped up in a sheet.  Strange, other than the old buildings there was little that seemed Russian about this dream, but it definitely was where I was supposed to be.

May 29:  buncha crazy dreams last night going round--only remember this: Kate is a baby, like 2 or so, but she talks like she does now with big words, etc., so she wakes up in the morning and complains about how her diaper keeps disintegrating in the middle of the night and making an explosive mustard mess--and why can't America make a more substantive diaper?

Jun 4:  Two dreams--one, I had a new close friend, possibly romantic? dunno.  Not anyone I know in real life, a nondescript fellow, brownish hair, short, stocky..I had involved him in some sort of trip, or a mission, really about which I seemed quite determined, but frankly was not really srticulated in the dream.  But, it involved going to some huge canyon-like crater with no railings that was being man-made.  My friend was all excited when he saw our goal and raced to the edge, which, of course I hadn't anticipated due to my extreme fear of edges over great heights--I always assume other people feel the same and don't push me to edges with them...so I guess I next had to explain all this.

2nd dream was smaller, involved an alphabet I found that had solid, thick Vertices and human cartoon arms for appendages.  For example, an E would have one upright, straightedged, vertical piece, but the 3 horizontal short parts were blue (they were all Smurf blue, for some reason) arms--oh, and they moved like arms and fingers do to facilitate the words' meanings.

Jun 17:  Cool dream--about my old beau, Dan.  He appears frequently in my dreams, in strange forms--sometimes a force for good, sometimes bad--it seems as he represents something, I'm not sure exactly what, and is usually nothing like what he probably is in real life.  In real life, according to my sister, who keeps track of such things (I don't, I'm more anti-social!)  he moved back to MA,  married a blonde smart lawyer, they traveled some and apparently couldn't have kids so adopted two young Russian kids (how strange is that!).

As usual, in my semi-platonic-romantic dreams, there is no explanation about how we happen to be together-it just is--hard part solved.  So it's basically a catching-up dream--what are you like now?  So I'm at his house, which is sort of eccentrically modern, looks sort of home-built with rooms designed specifically for whatever weird stuff he does for hobbies--lots of outdoorsy stuff.  (I am just now remembering another dream where I was at his condo, and that one was more James Bond-y masculine--all leather and black, sleek--that was more the him I knew. )

This house is more sunny, with lots of unfinished wood, a homemade platform bed with curtains.  I am apparently staying, and at first there is some sexual tension which slowly dissipates as the dream goes on.  For example, at the beginning he strips off a lot of his clothes to show me all his new tattoos--he is now covered in them, plus ones he didn't get that instead got put on stray pieces of furniture and wood laying around.  Dan was always a big one for "making his mark"--that is, writing and drawing  on things, himself, to manifest who he was--both an endearing and annoying trait simultaneously.

His new tattoos are surprisingly political in nature--some environmental, even.  They strike me as somehow diluted from the original, much cooler and idiosyncratic images of earlier Dan tattoos derived from hardcore music--we surprisingly talk little about music we like.  There are no kids around.

At one point there is a very young, wispy but sensual blonde girl in transparent  long bedclothes in his bed--she says virtually nothing in the dream, but now her presence is felt, like she's tracking our movements throughout the house.  I don't think she ever gets out of the bed, and she seems more like window dressing to the setting.  There's a whole load of random junk laying about, including a lot of electronic equipment: black coils of cords, metallic boxes. I suddenly notice that his fingernails are covered with these fake clear plastic nails--I only have one assumption about boys with nails.  "Have you learned to play guitar, Dan?"  He mumbles something that is a semi-affirmation, but when I press him to get his guitar (I'm just picturing it's overwrought style)  he deflects the request.  I probably just want to show off all I've learned since the old days anyway, so I let it pass.

Jun 29:  Just got home from a trip from Colorado that required a red-eye flight (With two! crying babies!) Consequently, I slept a dark, hard sleep last night until 3pm.  Dreams reflect the trip.  I was on some sort of adventure in a vehicle--my friend Lori was sometimes driving.  It was all mostly outdoors, sometimes through difficult terrain--rivers, mountains, but we were also making frequent stops into various weird places--it didn't totally look like Colorado, more like an apocalyptic movie set.  The most interesting part to me is I had a love interest-- a big tall guy, about 40?  with light coloring, and of all things, dreadlocks.   Sometimes?  In some parts of the dream I didn't notice them. He was all dressed in outdoor gear, and sat next to me in this big weird vehicle we were in, all cozy and affectionate.  At one point we got separated during a stop with confusing road/waterways, but when he saw me again, he made it clear he was glad to see me even though I was trying to be cool.  In fact, he kissed me three times.   Funny how satisfying this can be even in a dream.

Jun 30: Nap dream- someone whispered a Russian word in my ear that seemed perfect at the time.   Романтика.......Now I can't remember--was it  Стал?  или Стоит?? или Отстается?

July 22: behind on my dream recording, so this is over several days time--strange as I am reading Finnegan's Wake, a so-called "night" book with an attempt to record dream logic.  It doesn't do it the way I would (did?  One short story, anyway) .  So, over the course of a few nights:

Another in prison dream.  This time, an all women's prison, and nothing like OITNB.   It was like high-school, the same horrible mean-girl pecking order somewhat based on appearances.

Somewhere I had a dream that someone smashed one of my old favorite acoustic guitars--I was not too upset in the dream immediately, but kinda knew I would be later--it was one of those throw-it-up-in-the-air-and-reduce-it-to-splinters thoughtless acts.  Ugh.

But then another dream made me realize "it was only a dream" because the guitar appears ok in it, and I say to another person, hah thank god, I dreamed someone broke that guitar!  Dave H. featured heavily in this dream, and for some reason we lived behind this really urban Pakastani (I think?) market near a dock, with all sorts of (dead) fish all over the place.  At the beginning of the dream Dave just showed up really late at night, so of course I was the only one up, half dressed, and he was all excited at first to watch something on TV, but he lost interest.   The normal me would have been more desperate to entertain him, but for some reason I was being pretty laissez faire.  At one point some Hispanic/Italian? lady  came in and realized the situation--that it required a party atmosphere, and she made it her business to get J&K and whoever else was in the house (apparently there were lots, including some of my old, now dead Italian relatives (the females).  I was running in two directions--offering to make Dave food, because he had gone out into the market looking for some with a sad look on his face...and then I got shortly distracted by the idea of getting rid of a bunch of beaded, nice, but not my style, necklaces that I'd gotten almost for free at some craft show.  I was trying to get my nieces to wrap them up for the older Italian ladies.  Then back to trying to feed Dave--why didn't I give him a guitar to fool around with?  It's not like we don't have a hundred laying around the shanty.

Augusto 7:  So I had a great dream, don't remember much of the surrounding moments much, but the main visual was band practice--not OUR band practice, but band practice with my favorite musicians..

August 8:  Dreamed someone (my son) threw up some sort of white floury stuff all over my bathroom and other places.  Later, this dream morphed into a 3rd person observation, about 3 or so people prepping for a mission of  some sort.  The female was wearing what I kept calling a chandelier necklace--a big hoop of metal around the neck, with torso-long dangly pieces hanging off of it--looked uncomfortable and you'd have to be tall to carry it off.

August 20: This is just weird--a hangover dream.  What I mean is, one of those dreams you can't shake as being "just a dream".  In it, I strongly suspect that my youngest sister has disappeared because she committed suicide.  Shit.  In the dream, a large group of my family are looking for her, and have all these optimistic excuses.  But I think I know more--can't remember why I think this.
But like I said--can't shake the feeling.

September 4:   vivid ensemble dream with a lot of the people of my life.  In theory I'm supposed to be visiting my family, packing, etc involved at the end of a trip, but people who don't really belong there were there, with guitars! and it was sort of a placeless dream--just a random big house.  I was waking up, and still in my nightgown when someone with a new red guitar motioned me to come in another room for an impromptu concert.  Good dream.

Nov 20:  I've had a bunch of cool dreams I haven't recorded--getting mentally lazy.  Partially due to body fatigue?  Old times with hus, other more labyrinthian times with others in a typical Tracy dream, all convoluted rooms and moves to orchestrate some sort of  five minutes of heaven that never materializes.   With my faceless droog, who is my closest human companion, who never fails to return.  My life is certainly much more exotic in my dreams.

Dec 15:  Dreamed I went on a very strange double date.  This morning dreamed I was in my classroom trying to sort out what to salvage from the chapel when two new cleaning people came  in and started yelling at me.  Not really in a negative way, though?

Jan 2:  This is a very atmospheric dream, a reflection of part of my vacation that never happened.  The meeting i wanted happened much differently in my dream.  Instead of having a satisfying reunion with an old friend, I got an unexpected shadow.  One with long hair, who did not feel comfortable speaking.  But, clung to me for a long period, like I had something to give. this is pretty unexpected, and nice.  Spontaneous, and beyond knowledge.

Jan 26: was sick with a decently high fever this week, which is strangely a feeling I kinda like, if no one makes me get out of bed.  I am convinced: Nyquil (or cheapo equivalent) plus fever equals spectacular dreams.  I swear I had a million of them, and after I felt good enough to get out of bed, I jumped up and had the energy of a twelve year old.  I even tried to kick a desk cross the room to convince one of my half ass actors how to pretend to be angry...  What were the dreams?  Well, oddly enough one was all about getting at the root of the problems of this flaccid skit with potential, that the actors apparently didn't believe in enough to do in front of a crowd.  My dream was about giving them ideas to juice it up, and the next day, I kinda got up and did my dream...that's kinda cool, isn't it?  I know there were others--dreams about my family, my sister.   Anyway, for whatever crazy reason I feel my creative juices flowing in total synchronicity with the best of all creative collaborations--the one of my dreams..Don't Fade.  Jung is soooo right.

March 6:  One of those soo happy dreams I love.  In it, I was eloping with someone, on a bicycle, of all things, meaning he was carrying me on the bike to our destination of finally being together after a long, long time of uncertainty.  In fact, the major emotion of this dream was total happiness due to breaking through a lot of masks, to truth about love.  I knew.  Knew.   And it made me feel totally open and alive.  The road was pretty, too.

April 17:  What the hell ppl having inappropriate dreams about me.  Why do I cause this?  No seriously--do I do something to cause this?  I don't think so.

April 29:  Vivid dreams this morning--one, I was in some exotic, probably third world, dangerous place with some people I knew (not real ones).  We were working on something in this big long empty room with irregular brick walls and a few small windows.  It was almost like a tunnel, except for the windows, and at the beginning there was some sort of procession coming through, maybe with kids? that we were supposed to deal with. But somehow, it had stopped, and we were standing around, waiting to hear what was happening.

But suddenly, I got this bad feeling.  It's because---War.  I looked around the room for something to hide behind, but there was nothing.  I went to the furthest corner of the room, where one entrance  was diagonal from me across he room, the other along the same wall further in front of me.  I was estimating this was the least likely place to get shot, since I didn't want to leave the room.  I could here violent action outside it, and everyone who had been with me earlier had disappeared.

I crouched down low under a window--a very low window, so I was practically lying down.  I was figuring out the aggressors were really just kids--I was seeing them run by hurriedly with weapons, in dark blue and black robes of some sort--this didn't seem a very practical fighting outfit.  I was hoping the silence of my big hollow room was keeping attention from it.

Suddenly a girl in one of the blue robes appeared in the diagonal door--she had seen me.  I prepped myself for being shot, instinctively turning to protect my heart.  But she didn't have a gun.  It was a black rectangular box that I assumed had an explosive in it.  She threw it and ran quickly, without seeing where it landed--the awkward shape kept it from going too far.  I saw it land with a thud, and quickly ran for the entrance along my wall.  I did not hear it explode--a dud?

Now I'm outside and more vulnerable.  It's darker where I am, the road is muddy, and people are running away from where I am, but largely ignoring me.  It seems to be quieting down here, so I decide to stay put.  I also start cursing my blonde hair, because I know it will make me stand out in this place, an obvious target.  So I get the idea to cover it up, but I have nothing.  So I start the messy task of covering my hair with the mud from the road.  I have never felt so alien, so disposable, in my life.

Not long after the mud, I see a group of people approach me: with relief I see the leader is a woman with blonde hair--American.  She and the group rush up to me in my filthy hole by the side of the road--it's some sort of passageway.  She gives me a big smile of relief.  I don't recognize her, but she seems to recognize me.  She says something like, "Thank God, you survived too", and we all come together in a brief and subdued moment of celebration for our fortune.

Oddly, parts of this dream almost seemed like a video 1st  person shooter game, although I didn't have a gun, and I never play video games.  My son's gun interest is rubbing off on me?  Hope not.  Weirdly, I don't even recall wishing for a gun anytime in the dream, just to avoid being shot, and I didn't see any bodies, either.

 I also seem to remember an earlier in the night dream, that had something to do with an experiment that involved learning how to remove ( a robot's I think, or some non-human thing) an eyeball from it's socket properly without damage.  It seemed non-human because it was bright cobalt blue--the whole thing, the membrane, the "ball"--Somehow I knew how to do this and I was showing a young girl how.  She thought it was gross, but was also intrigued, and there was some compelling reason why she was supposed to  learn this quickly... odd again.  Wonder if this was derived from the V-sauce video we were watching in Drama about what would really happen if someone "shot their eye out" with a beebee. (We've been working on slapstick comedy routines and how not to really hurt someone, but make it look like they were). They used a cow's eye, but it wasn't cobalt blue!

May 21:  I always have these group enterprise dreams--in a space with a bunch of people from my life.  This one was the missed alarm dream --we were supposed to get up at 7:30, but look!  The clock  says 9:29!!  Shiiittt! Get up everybody!! But then, once everyone is up (we're all laid out, cushion and sleeping bag style, in the same room) someone realizes it's only 9:29 at night--we can sleep much longer!  But now everyone's up ((((

May 23:  I know I had one of my good dream landscapes last night, all crazy patterned floors in beautiful buildings, good, relaxed "work" happening.  But the only part I remember is the end, going into some sort of dive bar/restaurant with a friend, and accidentally happening upon John Waters standing at the end of an L shaped bar, laughing with 3 or 4 guys, and somehow I knew he only liked three of them, who left, while the fourth guy tried to chat him up, while John quickly dodged out.  I laugh to myself that I would have had no chance of a conversation.  This makes me think, what would I really say to some famous person I met?  I think the worst thing would be to go all gushy:  "wow, I love your work!" , etc..they would have no connection to your experience of worship.  Best to just treat them like anybody--say something sorta oblique or interesting,  in the moment,if possible.   Like, what the hell do you think that thing is, hanging on the wall, and why?

Jun 21:  apparently in the Dream world Joe has an enormous attic bedroom with a wooden floor painted the color of old carrots.  Katie was telling me to go look at it ( older boys' bedrooms often blocked territory for moms) because the floor was sinking in--I went up and looked, and it was, in weird contrast to the modern black computer station Joe had set up for himself close to the brink of the sunken rectangle.  I didn't want to look long, and K calls after me that some metal support beams are buckling, too.  Something, something about trying to get ready for something, and feeling in slo-motion.

2nd dream set in a trailor park, where an old paramour, DAM lives.  Hah, that's the last kinda place he'd ever be.  He's older and crotchety, wandering around shirtless in baggy shorts like some old dude who doesn't give a damn.  He's complaining because I'm half-dressed, trying to find a way to take a shower--find one that's practically outside, and for some reason I only disrobe for the shower to the waist. I have to sit down, or contort my body in some strange way to fit??  In the meantime D is grousing about the neighbors watching or the trailer park manager or someone--another old dude who comes by while I'm in the shower, and starts on some sort of mild harangue.

July 17:  Two of my weird circular dreams the past two mornings, both involving thwarted conversations.  The first was concerning ENS, who appeared out of the blue, and seemed to be in need of some sort of talk with me, which keeps getting interrupted--somehow we're moving around a lot, doing something, not sure what, maybe just looking for a quiet place to talk.  At one point Luke M. is the interruption, talking to me about how he quit the Army and why, and me trying to gently tell him it's time to get his shit together (not in those words, of course).  E is not his present day self, more like his high school age, and somehow like a pantomime version of himself, going in circles.

The second dream was far more disturbing.  K and I were with his mother, and his mother and I were talking.  She was being pretty reasonable.  Well, K came in acting extremely weird, saying sentences that made no sense, and eventually evolving into pure jibberish.  L looks a bit shocked, and then K does the strangest thing of all.  He starts to try to get intimate with me, pulling up my shirt, etc., and describing sexual stuff right in front of his mother.  Of course, I protest and tell him this is an inappropriate time and make him stop. ( Made even more weird by real life on this issue).

So, I'm realizing this is the show down moment, to tell L all that has been happening the last few years, because now she's seen it with her own eyes. "That was very strange," says she.  We go off together, again to wander around looking for somewhere to talk.  We have suddenly all this gear with us, bags and a baby carriage? At one point we come to a swimming area, and L in her impulsive way says, let's swim!  In the meantime, I've only gotten out about one or two sentences in my talk.   At first I say no to the swimming,  but then realize I have a suit on under my clothes, so why not?  Except this then turns into one of these endless loops of not being able to complete something--I'm trying to deal with putting my extra clothes and shoes somewhere and dealing with the bags and buggy.  At some point I start worrying, did we have a baby with us?   Why?  And then why if not, do we have a baby buggy?
I couldn't remember and I was panicking that the baby was being neglected in our distraction about K, maybe had even gotten into the pool? L in the meantime has disappeared.  I was glad to wake up from this mess.

Sept 2:  Movie watching dream. uck.   Some guy (twice!) grabbed a young girl, from the movie perspective, all you could see was her limp hands, dripping blood, over a man-hole cover drain.  (Twice.)   Awful.  I don't normally dream this.  Seemed more like a movie I accidentally watched, but didn't want to.

Sept. 8: I dreamed last night that my mother found all my blog posts and was intently reading them all.  But for some reason they were all hand written posts, with some big loopy handwriting like I had maybe in early high school, and she had xeroxed copies?  When I asked her about it she just glanced at me and kept reading.   haha.  I think in real life she would't be that interested, wouldn't take the time, know how to find them, maybe not even understand a lot of it, especially all the music posts!

posting Sept 13, but actual dream was probably Sept 11?:  in the middle of the hurricane, but after we knew we weren't going to get it as bad as was predicted...my state of mind?  Tense, stressed, relieved, sad for my adopted state and places I love like the Keys and St. Augustine.  And lots of my friends still being impacted by this storm.  Me, just a little--restaurants closed, gas limits, picking up my yard, etc...but the dream:

So, I was somewhere I regularly visit:  DC makes the most sense because it was cold and everyone had on coats that covered them up.  However, I never have any reason to be walking around a bad neighborhood in DC?  Wherever it was, I had walked to this bad situation after getting lost.

So, I realize I'm not where I want to be, and I'm in some strange blocked off section of a dangerous city--it kinda reminded me of the HUD housing in The Wire.  Off in the distance I see a bunch of really young kids: 8-11.  African Americans, but too young to seem threatening.  Until I realized they had gotten a hold of some guns.  Still, I'm not afraid: they are such kids.  Not white supremists).  And they were just randomly pissed off.  They are firing randomly at anyone.  Then I realize   they are firing at me--but they are so far away.  I figure I need to get out of this maze of a neighborhood--some nice people are telling me what's going on and giving me advice.

Then comes the worst part. I'm near a fence, and being told the shooters are right around the corner.  There's a black kid, laying on the ground, maybe 14, and he's been shot in the neck--blood is pouring from what i imagine is his jugular vein, and I go up to help him, try to stop the flow.  But he motions to me with his eyes--the shooters are just on the other side of this fence we are laying next to, no more than five feet away.  I look down at my left hand, stretched out to the other kid, and I am gushing blood from a bullet hole, in that muscle between my thumb and index finger.

 The shooter is crouched down in front of me, just around the fence, the other kid is dead or passed out.  I lunge at the kid, tackle him, and rip the gun out of his hand--then point blank shoot him up close.  I think I killed him, and I look down at my left hand--Where the bleeding hole was there is already a closed- up, atomic star- shaped  scar.  It's at that point I realize I'm dreaming because that isn't possible.  So I don't really have the stress of being chased by people with guns or having killed a kid.  Thank god, but it does make me wonder if that really is a choice I would make in that situation.

Sept 28:  last week I recall I had a long dream featuring my droog, but for once he was not elusive.  The dream was unmemorable, however, just noting the change.

Nov 20:
 Haven't been remembering too many dreams lately, but have had a few over the last few nights.  Here's two that seem related.  In the first, my hub has been living in a room by himself, albeit inside our house.  It's out of the way, and in the dream, I've never actually been in this room.  So, then I have some reason to go in there, and I'm surprised by several things: First, it's pretty clean, dusted, rather minimal in furnishings unlike his real tendencies.  2nd, he has a room-mate--Newman from Seinfeld. Newman is slightly mellower than on TV, and weighs less, although still a little plump.  He has an array of well tended antique oddities that seem somewhat useless and eccentric in modern life, but also are endearing.  I remember thinking rather casually what was the real nature of their relationship? Two weirdos?

A 2nd dream also featuring my hub took place in one of those cosy bar/restaurants, all wood tables, slightly noisy--maybe the kind of place hub doesn't necessarily care for unless they have a particular draw for him like some super gross mega greasy  burger.  Anyway, I am there with friends/ colleagues--I suppose from work, and K walks in with a different entourage-no one I know: there a some women ,but no one I actually register or know.  I go over to say hello, try to figure out if I should join them or not..dream ends.

I was having some weird dream this morning that involved having fun playing music--not with our band, a more improv session. I think it sort of started with me thinking, in a semi-awake stage, about Jimmy Page, Jack White, and the Edge in that movie It Might Get Loud, which I rewatched yesterday, and thinking how nice it would be to be working like that-- showing each other their secret tricks--all so different in style--but I think as things fugued into dream-state the players changed more to people I know more personally?  Plus me of course.  Wish fulfillment.  I noticed in this movie this time that, although they trade off demonstrating each others' riffs, they only play one blues jam and one fairly easy old standard (which surprisingly, its Page that knows..."The Weight". )

Nov 22:  
Continuous vivid dreams last night.  All with an old boyfriend --at first we were just sleeping, first in two big chairs? or something, but after one dream interruption it was just in a regular bed, and sometimes mixed up with my hub, who is less affectionate.  But the big part of the dream became an out of town trip--the set up of the town had a St. Augustine vibe, mostly walkable and wooden-y old, but I think it was more out West, like several mining villages strung together where you could walk from one to another through all sorts of back doors and alleys.

So, we get up, plan the day, then realize we don't have each other's text #s since it's been so long!  I get out my phone to enter his, but my phone is suddenly this poofy pink kiddy looking phone, and in the dream I lament that my mother bought it for me, and since it's so new I hardly know how to use it (BTW, that phone disappears from this dream at this point and never reappears.  The next time I go searching for my phone in the dream it's pretty much my real, steele-blue I-phone.  I guess it's kinda good that in my dream world I so seldom use my phone it gets lost.)  Next, we walk to this wooden meeting place, with several doors to get in and out. Not not sure if it's a restaurant or a bar or what, but we see this guy we know there--I swear it's some semi-famous character actor, maybe from old westerns--a gruff dude, but can't remember who--recognizable face, however.   We sit down at a wooden table and talk, maybe planning to play cards?   At some point I get up, thinking I forgot something and need to go back.  I say I'll be right back, besides, we have the text #s.

Now's when the dream turns into the usual labyrinthian mess for me--10,000  sidetracks deter me from getting back, including forgetting the name of the place and what street it was on.  Besides this, it turns out we're on this trip with a whole entourage of people, including mostly grown kids, and for some reason I'm hauling around some of their gear, all of which is sorta messy and hanging out of openings, etc.  I keep running into, overhearing, people talking who are part of my entourage, and I piece it together that there is a big spontaneous event planned:  George from our group is going to debate some tough guy we all know, and everyone is all excited about this prospect: what will they say?  (So I partly think this is a school trip, or maybe a trip organized by people who've graduated?  It doesn't feel like I have the full responsibilities of a school trip, the organizing, etc.

But mostly now I'm focused on trying to get back to my boyfriend--I think I found the right place, but he and the other guy aren't there.  Later, I see the gruff old actor guy:  he tells me my friend is now at the Robespierre (where the hell did my brain get that name?)  So I figure I'll look it up on my phone and go there to him.  I stay to sort out all the gear I'm carrying under a tree outside the building, (and find my phone) and a few girls I know show up to help..for some reason the pile of junk has grown exponentially, like stuff for a flea market or something.  I give them some of it, and concentrate on my phone, which I finally find, then I wake up.  Unclimactically.

Nov 24:  Went to bed too early last night and consequently had trouble sleeping:  got in some weird cycle of thinking that kept replaying iterations of a grammatical phrase, my brain trying to work some damn thing out.  What?  I don't think it was Russian, but was some sort of problem solving thing, involving three words, which now I cannot remember.  Later, I dreamed I asked Siri to  find the source of some music I was listening to, and as a result she killed my VK account on my laptop.  Turns out it didn't really happen, конечно.  But lately, on my phone only VK limits how long it will let me listen.

Dec 9: Yet another group traveling dream (inspired me to buy a new suitcase today--carry-on size).
Also another where I got separated from the group, which is from all sorts of language backgrounds, so my kids.  But it's Panuthos' trip--he tends to take the white American kids. Some American girl, an actual student at our school, who I can't place just now--sorta obnoxious, is walking around in front of me through a crowd showing off two words in Russian she's learned:  she keeps calling out, "Привет! извините!" whenever she sees one of our group, which sorta makes no sense--in English that would be "Hi! I'm sorry!"--I suppose it would make sense if she was bumping into people or something, but she's using it like a greeting.  Odd.  I'm just looking around, and eventually I see Panuthos eating at a bar with some other adults on our trip--they make room for me, but Mark is engrossed in some (sports, I imagine) conversation with some dapper gent in a nicely tailored black blazer and shirt--nice looking, with neat salt-and-pepper hair.    I'm guessing he's a parent.  I tune out their conversation, check the place out, look at the menu.  At one point I say, is it kinda hot in here?  Then I realize, it's my bedroom that's hot, and I have a 1000 blankets piled on me unnecessarily.  That wakes me up/.

Dec 16: Fantastic dream last night--I was at my school, which had morphed into this wonderful castle-like property with a big park in the middle.  I was doing review with Kirills and Daniel (in reality not in the same class), and  few others.   Then there was a break, and I was just hanging out in a park that was part of the property.  This is the best part--these little kids-who I didn't know--had set up for their band, and they start jamming out Iggy's "I Wanna Be Your Dog"--and they were really, really good!  They had made their own arrangement, even one or two of the instruments.  Like one kid had some kind of improvised guitar with one string that he was playing a steady baseline on. It looked like something Kowako would have made.  They couldn't have been more than 10. No one was listening to them except me.  They had stopped in the middle, right as I had got up front to cheer them on and sing along.  Two of the kids were black, the drummer and a guitar guy.  When they quit, one of the black kids ran over in the grass and curled up in a ball like he was mad about something.  I went over to him and said , "You guys are really, really great..  Where'd ya learn THAT song?!"  And he uncurled himself and hugged me around the knees, like a really small child would.  The greatest moment of the show was the end --which I can't figure out how it worked in with the interruption in the middle, but, hey, dream logic!  the last bar of their song consisted of the one-string kid pulling out this mysterious box, sticking a wire in it, running his hand over it with something, and making this incredible wailing sound, pretty much like a pedal steel.  All in perfect time.

Dec17:  This was a sort of dilemma dream.  I was again hanging around outside with some of my kids (on the weekend? odd...def after school hours).  Suddenly JR (whose been sending me his city diaries lately)  appears, saying, "I told you I might show up!"  I can smell him quite strongly--proof you can smell in your dreams--and he looks very thin and childish. He's also clean-shaven, which he wasn't in the last pic he sent me--dressed in his self-proclaimed "stylish hobo" fashion. He looked, facially,  almost like when  he was in school, except his jaw and cheekbones are quite prominent. This is also not how he looks now: he's 40.   I take his face between my thumb and index finger, mom-style, and say--what have you been doing to yourself lately?  You look too skinny. " He says I'm right, and starts to tell me some nonsense about himself.  The kids have gone off.  I go about my day, he comes and goes, off exploring or something--he's hard to pin down. I'm relieved, thinking school would not too happy to have him around--are we at school?  Not literally, but in the dream is it?  Later, in a little grove of trees I meet up with him again, seemingly accidentally, and he wants to give me a big goodbye hug.  I'm thinking about the smell, but I don't want him to be hurt.  He gives me a long, very warm and cozy hug, then says something about debating kissing me--I say no.  He seems satisfied with this and goes off into his further adventures.  Later I find he left a "present" in the corner of one of the rooms I'd just been in (not mine, some sort of big empty public room)-- a nice sloppy pile of what looked like refried beans, that had been, em--intestinalized.   Always the uncivil rebel.

Dec 28:  This dream shows you what I think of my boss, and how he treats me...how much he cares about academics....

So, it's a new semester so I have all new classes, and they are packed.  I have a different room?  So, it's the end of one class, which went fine, Drama, i think, and a new class comes in.  I take one look at them, all white American kids, a mix of boys and girls, about 30 or more of them!  So I say, kinda casually--you guys must be drama too.  They all shake their heads and speak, almost in unison something that sounds like "Classical Intervention!"--sounds like your typical bullshit elective course admin would come up with.  I'm pissed about being left out to hang in the breeze here with no prep to go by, so I gear up into inventive mode.  For some reason I make the kids all get up and go to this outdoor classroom (which we don't have in reality),and I start racking my brain for how to instantly organize this class and play off that I know what I'm doing.  I decide to format the class like an argumentation and debate course, which I've done in the past, and doesn't require a book or materials.

I wanted the green outdoor chalkboard so I could solicit topics from the class which would become the basis for the arguments.  Seems I had a long time finding chalk for the board, and some of my students got lost, and suddenly there was a small circle of others playing and singing loud music, was it something disco-like, maybe "Shaft" or something like that.  I ask them to turn it down so we could hear, and realize at the center of the group was one of our former admins, RW, who got fired generally because he had mental and substance abuse problems.  End o dream.

Dec 31, 2017:  Weird snippet of a dream that seems to be part of some longer series I've had in past?  Just one of those strange things where I'm living in a big building with many other people I know, including my old Russian musician friend.  There is some sort of strange bathing system in this place where you strip, get your oversized towel, and shoot through this winding tube through various parts of the building.  I'm doing this and land around the corner  from said Russian friend, where he is talking rather intimately with a cute girl.  I don't think he saw me, I'm thanking god, but then hear him say to the girl he feels uncomfortable about something...I shoot off, end up outside covered in a towel, when I randomly run into Adam who smiles and laughs at my big towel get-up, like it's no big deal.  Fin.

Jan 30:  my brain really does hate me won't let me have the money in my dreams. This one was a "we musta fixed the conjugal problems", but I only know this b/c of some seepage in my nether regions, not the pleasant part.  Hey stupid catholic puritanical brain, how bout letting one loose, cos I don't believe all that nonsense that you've been trained to believe???????

Jan 31:  So I dreamed I was traveling, with a lot a gear, stopping at a train station or something where there were places to walk around, relax, have a drink, eat, listen to music, a pretty cool scene, really.  We must've had a really long layover time, maybe days even, because I don't feel rushed or anything, like I might miss a transport or something.  There's this big central area where it seems like some musicians were hanging out, and there is a lot of expensive guitar equipment just lying around and not being stolen or anything.  I realize the stuff this kinda rock-star funky looking girl and an overweight, long-haired musician looking guy are looking at is actually K and I's gear (although not what we have in real life?  K appears and said we're gonna play soon, just for fun--totally unlike he would do in real life--he's not one for the group jam.  But I'm happy about it.  There's this smaller dark red electric guitar--not a classic shape like a Fender or Les Paul--It has some crazy chrome trim on it in the shape of a loose, curly X.  It's supposed to be Ken's but he doesn't really have anything like that.  His Gibson H. Roberts is somewhere around, and people are looking at it, admiring it, but it also is red, not the yellower tobacco color it really is.  I'm looking around for my guitar(s) but don't see them anywhere--K tells me to be patient, he's getting them.  We never actually sit down and play, is the thing, just  get ready.  Again, no money in my dreams((.

Feb 17 (two nights after the Parkland shooting):  Totally freaky dream.  So we were having one of those down days at AFA, and for some reason I had some of my more rambunctious study hall kids outside; for some reason we were hanging out near this storage shed (which doesn't really exist, BTW) and the door is open--I'm kinda nodding in and out, since I am in reality, asleep!  I shake off the fuzz in my head to realize the kid next to me has found a rifle in the shed, and what had actually brought me back to consciousness was the fact that he'd shot two rounds randomly in the air...I'm like, what did you just do?  It's a kid I like, so it really throws me for a second, realizing how much shit this has put me in, and I'm in the middle of telling him--'You gotta go tell them what you did, take responsibility (Hank Moody breaks in and adds, muthafuckah!!), when all of a sudden the school fire alarm goes off, and kids start pouring out of every building.

 I'm like see?  See what you did, they heard you..."  But while that statement is hanging in the air, I suddenly notice through the trees this weird looking flying machine, sort of an orange and khaki retangular box, hovering over the 5th Ave side of school, where my classroom is.  For a second I thought it was some sort of rescue helicopter or something, even though it wasn't very aerodynamic. It hung midair, sorta like a big, heavy drone, then suddenly dropped to the ground.  Now I'm asking the kids around me--did you see that?  And by now most of the school seems to be on the football field (smaller dream version) where we go for fire drill formation, (which is a lot smarter than what we used to do, which was form up next to the school, which in theory would be burning...)

Suddenly there's this massive BOOM!  And I see this fireball consuming the opposite corner of the building my classroom is in.  The two floors are instantly reduced to black smoke and bent blackened girders sticking out of charred cement , a la 9-11.  I just stare in disbelief for about a minute.  Is this really happening?  I keep thinking over and over...plus simultaneously thinking, well this gets my kid out of the shit, I guess...

Mar 3: Man, was I crazy dreaming last night!!  Good times.  The most vividly remembered was this gem:  So I must've either been on a beach or on a boat, can't tell from my pov.  This big cruise liner goes by.  Some dummass  is up on the fore part of the deck, you know, like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate in Titanic.  But.. he has this very small baby, maybe 6 months old, and he's holding him/her--(it turns out its a her later in the dream) over the side "to see" kinda like dumb Michael Jackson did with his kid on that high-rise balcony that caused such a stink.  I'm watching--this scene reminds me of those parts of Un Chien Andalou where it almost feels like your surreal dream eye is willing things to happen, like that girl getting hit by a car.  Creepy.  I'm thinking to myself, "this boat is going so fast, that guy is going to drop the baby over the side, when it hits a tough wave, holy crap.    And then it happens.

The baby goes flying over the side, and I jump in the water, thinking, don't let it go under the boat to get hit by a propeller!  I swim toward the baby, which for some crazy reason I can see moving toward the back of the boat, near the biggest propeller, kinda trying to estimate how long the baby has been underwater, when it might drown.  Miraculously, I find the baby (that water must've been crystal clear! )  and swim with it to the surface, bringing it out of the water.  It's a little stunned, but okay.  Her eyes and mouth  are moving, but she looks a bit like a fish does when you pull it out of its cozy home under the sea.  Not crying, which is somewhat worrisome.  From this point on I do about 100 wrong things.
  I know in real life from CPR and other training I've had to be a teacher, swimmer (I'm actually not that great a swimmer in real life, so it seems questionable I coulda done this in reality) .. Anyway, in reality I know that if you think a baby has water in its lungs you're supposed to hold it face down and pound its back to release excess water, unlike the older swimmer's drowning --or is that for the Heimlich maneuver ?  I mean I guess the thing is a baby is small so you can hold it easily to clear its passageways..

One thing I do do right is wrap the baby up in a blanket and hold it against my body to keep it from going into hypothermia--that  little thing was really cold, like a fish on ice.  So, somehow, in dream time, I'm suddenly in the backseat of a car with this poor thing, trying to assess its health, and not really telling my other family members, the driver, especially (my husband)  what is going on--everyone is much younger, my kids, me--I guess that was why I was more agile and could swim easier to save the baby.  It's still not crying, or anything, and I'm just biding my time to signal when I should say we have this emergency situation.   One of my kids, maybe Joe?  was in the backseat with me with big eyes, but not asking any questions.   I never called emergency numbers--I'm pretty sure though that this was supposed to be before cell phones--and I'm not sure why I wasn't  shouting about the emergency situation to all the surrounding roofs.  I was sorta beginning to wonder why no one had seen me save the baby--a whole boatful of people?  And why no one was following us or anything.  I was starting to imagine that the dumb father was drunk or too distraught to tell anyone what had happened on the ship, and I wasn't too keen to have him back in the picture.   It seems we're heading to town, in the right direction for help, and I know that near the end of the dream I was telling "the driver" what was happening.

My question is why I even hesitated, and I know why.  It speaks volumes to my relationship with my rather solipsistic and tuned-out husband.  He has to be brought into difficulty very gingerly, and often can't be counted on, while simultaneously insisting on being in charge.  My life with a control freak.

I think the baby turned out to be okay.  That's how it felt, that I saved it. There's some sort of end montage of her getting older, which makes me know the gender.

Mar 17:  Dream Fragment, only part I remember--I was with a male friend--can't figure out who, now that I'm awake.  We had an evening alone.  For some reason.  He was lying on the couch, watching a movie or listening to music or something.  He had asked me, or I had offered, to do something (can't remember  what now) that required getting very close to his face--something non-sexual or grooming or something.  While we were close, it became one of those climatic movie moments--should we, or not?  In fact, he said, are you sure you want this to happen?  And I'm thinking well, this will be big...don't recall if we did or didn't, because the dream fades on that spot, and left with the ominousness of the moment hovering...

March 25:  Dream about a family gathering, and I was supposed to wear this white eyelet dress
I have, no, really, I have a snow white eyelet dress.  I like it.  But, in my dream, my dress is covered in bright red bloodstains.  On the shoulders,around the waist.  Like 5 big hand-print sized stains. Was I shot?  I'm not hurting.  My main concern is to get to my bathroom to the spray bottle of Oxy-clean, which we all know performs miracles on organic stains.  I find it, it starts to work, I guess I can go to the thing without being embarrassed.

March 31:  Man, I have been having some specific, and colorful dreams lately!  Over the last few days I have dreamed about a Russian lady entrepreneur trying to jettison her English language knowleddge into something else (I'm writing a short story based on that one--might not be totally faithful to the dream),  I had a long, protracted sex dream about an old beau, who looked the same but didn't entirely act the same --who sincerely told me he loved me in the middle, but then diluted it by asking me to do him a favor, which as take a picture of his -----: the dream exploded right there.

And last night's was very elaborate, multi-layered, I feel like I have only a few snapshots I took away from its wandering quality.  I think overall, I was supposed to be on some sort of family gathering or trip  (on my mind lately since two are coming up)  So I was staying somewhere other than my house, in another town, with either my sisters or Katie, and there was some sort of big historical celebration going on in the city:  like something to do with St. Augustine or Gasparilla or Mardi Gras, only moreso.  Some people were dressed in period costumes, sort of 15th, 16th Century, perhaps, but not everyone.  There was a lot of activity going on in the street, and I wanted to go watch it.  First I had to get showered and dressed myself, which I did in this big ancient,  decaying white bathroom, where it seemed miraculous that the facilities worked.  I showered in a spot that once had a tub, but now didn't, and I recall being worried that the water wasn't draining properly, probably a hangover from talking about our 1920s tub with our construction guy, Brian, who came by yesterday about some work we want him to do.)
  Anyway, I follow the water trail, and although it's kinda long (it's a big open room), it does seem to be going down a drain.  So, no one I'm with is interested --or maybe someone, like K is with me)  so I go out on the street by myself to explore, because the place we're staying is right on a main drag where people are already up and parading in crazy outfits, with vehicles of various kinds, too.  The atmosphere is quite smoky, like someone had been shooting off fireworks or gun powder or something--the sky is lit up all orange and eery looking.  The street kind of winds uphill, blocking my view, so I follow it up to see more of what this celebration has to offer.  At one point I see a big white aristocratic house on an embankment above me--it's on a fairly large piece of property, and now that I'm awake I think it maybe reminds me of the house in The Virgin Suicides  which gives the impression of being very stately and proper, but has some weird vibe going on underneath.  The house is having a huge yard sale, but all of floaty women's clothing, mostly white linen-y thin dresses, with light pink or lavender  prints that might have passed for Victorian undergarments.  Somehow I knew the people of the house were British, which disorients where my setting possibly is?  I have a few of the "whites" in my arms, but I'm trying to get to the other racks behind this row where I think there might be clothes more suitable for me...

Later, I'm in some indoor space, something reminiscent of  buildings down by the waterfront of Charleston, cobblestone floors and stone arches overhead, like an old French  cellar structure.  Re-inactors are all over the place, and I am especially seeing black men lounging around in various period costumes, on benches and the floors.  It almost feels like some weird movie set with actors--half expecting someone famous like Johnny Depp to appear.  There is a wall, half made of wood, the top half windows seemingly made for viewing.  There is a commotion going on on the other side of the glass, and it appears that there are several men, sort of  20 something frat boy types, dragging or forcing forward, another man who on closer inspection, is African-American, or just African,  who is encumbered with chains and an iron bar behind his back.  I simultaneously notice that one of the men involved in his "capture" or whatever it was, is my friend Mark P., and the whole situation makes me feel terrible--even if this is re-inactment or whatever, why this?  Then I notice that the black men who had been lounging on my side have noticed, and have gotten up with angry comments, apparently intent to do something about this.  I'm thinking--Mark's gonna get it; he won't fast talk his way out of this.

Apr 2:  Woke up around 8am, but decided, last day of vacation, to try to sleep again to perchance dream, since I didn't remember anything from last night.  It worked, had  a doozy.
Setting:  It seemed like some big multilevel flea market of the types we have all over Florida--but it was also apparent I was there for some school function, and expecting lots of school people to be there--but it was so crowded.

 The main point of the dream is that I meet up with my fellow namesake English teacher, and realize that maybe there's something wrong with her, healthwise.  She's not acting like herself, more silly than businesslike and in charge as she usually is, and some of her sentences seemed unframed and random.  I'm thinking she's having a stroke or something. When I ask how she's feeling, she puts me off, but starts looking for a place to sit, so I guide her to a place, basically begin treating her like a sick child, holding her hand,asking if she wants something to drink.  everyone around us is sort of ignoring this, even when I try to point it out and ask for help.  They all seem kinda snarky and stifling guffaws, actually, which is making me feel very uneasy.

 I have a cell phone in my pocket, but it's not mine--ask TF if it is hers and she laughs--"with those princess decorations?  C'mon that's a kid's--you must have confiscated it!"    Well, I start searching for some school people to help us--finally spot one of our robo-cops, with relief--telling him my suspicions, and he implies he's right on it...but then he disappears.  Completely.  I wait , staying with my friend and talking to see if she's acting better. she seems a little.  Then, suddenly I spot our gregarious and bombastic male Spanish teacher--thank god!  Tell him what's going on, T immediately starts acting like he is her father or something, putting her head on his shoulder, etc.  I say to him, "I think we should call an ambulance or something,"  he agrees and says he's going to go take care of it--but then he disappears for good!!

 I go back to T after talking to him, and see she's trying to smoke some brown cigarette she found--I take it away from her and say, "You shouldn't have that now!!"  I think I took a puff before I threw it on the ground, but she doesn't fight me.  I walk a bit away, to see if either a cop, or R or any medical people seem to be looking for us, but see nothing, just more oblivious people. I go back to T again, and she has gotten much worse, sitting with a glazed look, and her face drenched in unnatural sweat.  I find some napkins to mop up her face, and think, this is ridiculous, I need to call 911.. I look around for someone to do it, wonder where my phone is, then  ...wake up.

Apr 3:  I know there are those dreams... you wake up and really just want to go back.  This was slightly different.  Some mixed feelings, but mostly pleasant.  Seems these days a good percentage of my romantic/sexual dreams revert to one old person, one who for a time made me feel a passion I rarely felt.  Never was sure it was mutual, which was killing.  But he was one who in the right moment could bring the passion, (but unfortunately could not sustain it, once he got you to sign on to his lifestyle).And was deceitful.  This will probably tell it, but from a cock-eyed perspective...

Anyway the dream begins in the middle of something already happening.  I'm in a bed, with him.  It's more cuddly and romantic than sexual, but what's odd is we're not alone.  There's another woman, apparently his woman, which I most certainly am not.  She's, I think, talking to him from the next room, maybe a little upset, but not like you'd think --it's like she's used to this sort of thing.  He's saying, "Look, I really need this; it's inevitable--it cannot be stopped.  So just accept it." (Stuff like that).  Then acts like I'm his long lost love.. I'm partially enjoying the attention, partially feeling bad for his girl, while simultaneously being now worldly wise skeptical of his ways--knowing tomorrow will be different.  I take it for what it is, something I would not have been capable of in the past.  In the morning, he's ready to let me go, and I oblige, get out of his orbit.   So here's where a little morphing happens--this guy in real life  loved music but didn't play guitar--but he bought me an electric one in a moment of generosity--among my favorite gifts ever.

So, I know its time to leave, but before I  go I say--just want to play your guitar a little--and I pick it up--it's Excalibur from my classroom--not anything he ever really had, but in my dream he's an amazing guitarist who somehow always has the patience to listen to me.  So I play a little, and even say," Old Excalibur!" while he listens then suddenly I notice the guitar is broken--a big hole has destroyed the machine head of the fifth string, so the string is totally loose and unplayable.  I apologize profusely and feel terrible, because in the dream Excalibur is his guitar, not mine, like it is in real life.  But he's totally cool about it, says don't worry, it's old he has others , he hardly plays it, etc.  So I start to leave, and I'm going down a staircase when I feel a weird breath, a ghostly presence, cozying up to me.  Now here's the really weird part.  It's the ghost of John Lennon.  Not John Lennon himself--but his ghost, and he tells me he's been watching how I am for awhile and he is besotted.  Now I feel like I have somehow attained the version of myself I had always wished for, and we go back for a guitar to enjoy,  walking past my lost beau who seems to be expressing the emotion that he wish he'd made different plans....

Now this seems like the kind of a dream where, you wake up and feel great from its expansiveness.  But I didn't, because I didn't remember it at first--I got up for a moment then started to try to go back to sleep, when I suddenly remembered it and felt glad.  I had hoped to go back, but alas..

May 8:   NIGHTMARE.
Me and my empathetic imagination. This dream dedicated to Stormy Daniels, Madame de Tourvel, and Melania. 
So, I only have the vaguest remembrance of last night's dream.. but I know it was a long one.  I dreamed that somehow (there was no linear explanation how I got in this situation; it was in medias res)  I somehow , ended up one in a long line of some hideous man's sexual obsession.  A Donald Trump, a Harvey Weinstein---closer to an aged, DT.   In the dream there were all these groomers, making this happen--some were former similarly entrapped women, including the one who would be released upon my capture.  I was dressed for a certain entertainment.   I don't know why I felt like I had no options, but in the dream I didn't.  Good reason to hate myself.  With exponential loathing.  I just have this disgusting memory of being unwillingly kissed by his weird nasty pink fish-lips, and a tongue.  The next part was a little better, because it involved an attempt to bring me to unexpected pleasure--odd and unexpected.  I could be a bit detached from that, if concerned about the next part...but then, reprieve!! For whatever blessed reason, but people coming over suddenly for some non-boudoir  event, that meant the impending doom was not going to manifest.   Thank god, now I can regroup my dignity and plan an escape.  Cos I'm smarter than this reptile.

Jun 17:  More proof that dream me is seriously irresponsible and disorganized--not helped much by my dream world....

So, I was with my sister Vic, and I was trying to get ready to go to the doctor's, an appointment I'd been anticipating for weeks.  We were staying in some super big condo or hotel building for some reason, with lots of maintenance going on (probably reflecting my real life situation).  There was a strange moment of sexual tension?   So a driving factor in the dream was I really needed to pee--so Vic and I were realizing the toilet in my room was non-functioning--in fact it was gone.  Hers was in pieces, and every single bathroom we came across had the toilets taken down somehow.  And I am aware of the tick-tock of being late to my appointment. So, I remember that there is a school building next door: Tampa Catholic, to be precise, not a place I've actually been very often in my life, and over a decade ago--is it all boys?  well not in my dream, and it's a very urban school, right on a city street, with no security or anything to stop me.

The place is a hive of activity--apparently I've shown up in the middle of a show or something with kids running around in various outfits.  The school seems organized on a system along one long track of hallways, and there are banners to orient you, loosely blowing in different colors from the ceiling--primary school, middle school (in Real Life TC is a high school only).  So somewhere after the middle school hallway I find a bathroom--and what a horrorshow it is.  First, it looks like it was some sort of makeshift utility room left over from WWII.

All the walls were mismatched and broken, dirty.  Exposed red brick with wires extruding, and garish half-dismantled pink formica stalls and walls, a very dirty, industrial looking window with some sort of obscuring glass.  The room was packed with mean looking African American teen girls, some smoking, some dancing, two completely bare-chested (with beautiful breasts, model worthy, I might add).  So, this pack descends on my intrusion and tries to intimidate me.  I can't believe I do this, but I walk up to the meanest looking one, who has this big curly mop of Rosanna Annadanna hair, put my hands on both sides of her head, grabbed some hair and pulled.  There's some grumbling reaction from the crowd, but I just go about my business--use the facilities, and give her hair another yank on the way out.  No one follows--as I suspected, this was the only arena they had to act this way.  Out in the hallway they would become different people.  Odd dream. I've personally never had any problems with black girls, so that's strange--I did have a class of SAT prep once at SPJC that had black girls as a majority, and I could feel from the energy in the room that they had automatically decided to dislike me, but no one was every really blatant or ugly to me.

July 1:  Super crazy dream that is reflective of the nutzo-koo-koo State of the United, and its effect on one oppressed individual, me.  So there are multiple things going on in my life that are sorta what's really going on here:  in the background I bought a "challenging" house that is being renovated while I'm away somewhere doing some sort of crazy, high stress creative and highly public job with a terrible, unpredictable misogynist and tyrant boss, sorta like a Rupert Murdoch, and also that old!

There are tons of people working on this project, which seems to have some sort of stress point coming up, a showing, a product roll-out, a performance, something with a lot of moving parts, and almost every person on the project feels oppressed and is definitely unsympathetic to the boss's politics and point of view, which are somehow part of said project.  So, there is a lot of underground grumbling and sotto-voce discussions about how to incorporate protest emblems that they think the boss won't understand, but which would telegraph to a larger audience  disapproval of those we work for--welcome to Trump's America.

 I figure my part is small enough to go completely unnoticed by the bossman--it's some sort of curtain that will be in the background, pieced together with multiple panels with sayings and symbols embroidered in the patches.  The other employees have shown a lot of approval for this beautiful piece I made, and especially, showed secret admiration for a particular panel that might be of questionable messaging for the company/boss.  (I have no idea what it said in waking life, not sure I even looked on it full on in the camera lens of my dream, but I knew it was there, sorta hidden amongst the rest).  I am confident that it would take a lot of digging to understand the subversion.

Another odd element to this dream was this strange, artsy couple who had originally promoted me for this project.  They were involved in some sort of side project that entailed an outdoor performance in heavy costumes.  In fact, their personal costumes were kinda bizarro and off-putting, in the guise of being cute and appealing to kids..one was a full animal suit, with one of those oversized head pieces that require interior air-conditioning --maybe a black and white panda with little red overall shorts?  The other gave the impression of a female anime character, white face and jet black hair, but short and round, with a sort of flowered Eastern European folk  costume--in fact, I'd say she looked something like a cross between one of those Matroshka Russian nesting dolls and a Japanese anime heroine with oversized head and eyes. The overall effect was kinda creepy, and they weren't in costume when I first connected with them, and when they were praising me, but by mid dream they stayed in costume, even after their performance, which I briefly saw from a distance.

So, at some point, apparently some traitor in the workings had drawn attention to my curtain, and the bossman himself showed up to exam it.  As he was checking it out, there were lots of others around, I thought defending it, and he asked lots of questions, few of which I felt I got to answer myself.  I was feeling conflicted about whether or not I was receiving credit for the work I'd done, or if maybe under the circumstances that may be a good thing? At one point I had a hand on it, thinking he'd be too old and weak to pull it away, but the next thing I knew it was gone, and a fellow worker told me he had taken it.  "Strong ol bastard," I thought to myself, and began worrying that this was the beginning of my end here.  I look over and see my former supporters in their weird anime costumes with an obvious changed attitude, and they avoid me as they go off to their performance.  Something tells me the avoidance was due to something besides the curtain, which they had earlier praised?

So, I'm about to travel, I think with one of my kids, possibly Joseph, younger than he is now, but very much off in my peripheral vision.  On the way, I am passing the outdoor festival/performance that the anime heads are just finishing, and when they see me, they rather guiltily scurry off in the opposite direction so that I can't talk to them.

  Somewhere in here I am with Ken, and this boisterous and opinionated Texan has corralled both of us into attending some meeting with him, or that we have to attend anyway,  that he seems to think K will like, but will bother me.  He has a definite prejudicial like for Ken and dislike for me, although he knows nothing about either of us, and he is automatically projecting his own beliefs onto both of us, assuming Ken is sympathetic to him, and I in opposition.  He says disparaging things about me in front of Ken, who basically says nothing, per usual, about any of it, probably just trying to work out the situation at hand.  At the meeting we are sitting in church pews, Ken and the Texan in the row in front of me, and me behind.  Weird.   At one point, Ken pipes up out of nowhere, responding to the speaker who is saying something that is tangentially of a god-fearing nature, and Ken (who is essentially non-religious and possibly atheist) says some comment that contradicted the religious comment, and the Texan says, "Boy, now I see how this wife of yours has influenced you into that type of thinking!!"  Very cocky and sure he's right.  To which, I tap him on the shoulder from behind and say, "Yeah mister, that's yet another thing you've got wrong--I'm the Catholic in this!". Then I get up and that scene ends.

I'm back to trying to get, with Joe, to the house renovation.  I think in the dream I've bought this house alone, against everyone's advice.  It's old, spooky looking, up on a hill with some dead looking trees around--alà   Gone With the Wind--don't think it's in Florida.   Definitely not my present house--more white with a black roof, wooden, imposing.  The grounds are huge. I've been worried that the project is somehow jinxed, but it seems like a lot of improvements have transpired during my absence.   Maybe it's something like Shirley MacLaine's cottage in The Trouble with Harry--that plain, American Gothic style, but bigger than her little bungalow.   That feel and color palette.                  

So, it's late at night when I arrive, and outside the house looks ok, maybe a small bit of landscaping had occurred (where did I get all the money for this??)  And I go inside, checking out some details that are happening in a positive way, while Joe seems to have gone off to work on some personal thing of his own .  The house is somehow full of people, however, and although I am much relieved that things look much better than I feared, suddenly my dad is there, doing his usual nit-picking and complaining.  He's obsessing over some major thing that he thinks is going to fail, and oddly, he blames me "and my drinking" as the source of the problem.

 This is odd, because I've never once had my dad accuse me of drinking too much--he does do that to my mom, but more because he thinks "her wine" costs too much, more than he think she's a drunk.  He himself drinks pretty regularly as well--even if he occasionally abstains to send some sort of self-righteous message to mom.  However--  in real life--it's him I recall being quite stinking drunk on two memorable occasions in my youth--1) when he came home after bowling angry and beat the shit out of my mother by smashing her head on the wooden trim of our front door--(an incident that changed my mind about him forever-- I was maybe 5)  and,  2) him coming home from work, from across the river, totally blotto, and throwing up at my feet  about 6 p.m . on the night of the rehearsal dinner for my wedding.  There was also a pretty sizable dent in the fender of the car that hadn't been there that morning.

So, I once again think this is another example of me being treated in an unfair and hypocritical  manner, and throughout this whole dream it seems there are repeated incidents of male oppression and aggressiveness that seems uncalled for.  This seems to be the state of my mind, here in the middle of year two of DT, July 1 2018.  I'd rather be having sex dreams.

July 26:  Holey Manaoley--the greatest dream I've had in ages!!!! So, I dreamed that I found out David Bowie was my neighbor (not in Florida, but in some sort of pre-gentrifying, interesting part of some big American city, but somehow looked kinda like 30s era Chicago, LA or NYC, all wooden two story flats with stoops out front.  ( Watched The Sting last night, and Bowie was in the movie, The Prestige that I watched the night before...)The sort of excuse to cross the street (he was literally sitting on the wooden stoop looking bored) was that I knew he had this vintage guitar for sale for $3000. Was there a sign in his window maybe, like a funny nod/wink?  That's a lot of money for me for a guitar, but I had some sort of plan to buy it for someone else as a surprise or something--that part is a bit fuzzy except for the very clear $3000!

       So, I cross, and without introduction or making a big thing, I just said something like--"So tell me about this guitar you have for sale..."  He was dressed pretty casually, for Bowie--nice clean crisp white open-collared shirt and some sort of neutral colored trousers, no shoes, no hat , like a kid waiting for action, except this  definitely was older Bowie.   So he starts telling me details about the guitar, which are somehow interesting, like a good story, about its provenance rather than all its specs and hardware---we just launch into this very interesting and intimate conversation that tells me we just clicked like you do with some people.  We smoke a cigarette.

 And I was not being all fan crazed--You're David Bowie!!!!-just talking to him like he was a regular, but very interesting guy...in fact, not really acknowledging that I knew who he was, until hours into the conversation I said something like, so, when was the last time you wrote a song?  By this time he's invited me inside to this big loft-warehouse of a facility that's behind the stairs he'd been sitting on, and it is a wild hive of creative activity of all kinds. He seems slightly miffed like I'd called him out for slacking off in the creative department, and said, "Well you know, "Jack the Ripper"...  I'm like --"That was maybe 2112??"  I guess for the first time telegraphing that I was in fact someone who knew his music  (but here's the funny part--in the dream this was definitely a Bowie song I know, but now that I'm awake I realize it's actually a Morrissey song!  Oddness..)  But I guess in the dream world I'm right, and David looks askance, which may have been acting, a dodge, because we all know he wrote this tremendous Blackstar project to be released near his death---quite the drama.

    So he invites me in a conspiratorially way  to watch the creative stuff he's working on--seems like it wasn't really a song so much as coordinating with some of his team about more art driven stuff, maybe it was for a play or stagecraft or  a video  or costumes--everyone there is interesting, friendly, not uptight, but there was a lot going on, and I was invited to hang around, contribute, watch...at one point while David is busy I sneak across the street to my place supposedly for some old pack of cigs I'd hidden somewhere but couldn't find..

I love this dream, and I wanna go back there.  It's not that anything gripping was going on, it was just the atmosphere was perfect--the sense of creativity and intelligence, of purpose that something never before was being done--I could live forever behind those stairs.

Oct 14:
Hmmm.  Surprising, how a certain person stays alive in my brain--perhaps more as an archetype than for himself.  A certain Bostonian.  Implying in the dream that he lost something in the past.  Only passing sexuality, by virtue of close quarters.

I enjoyed it, nevertheless.

Nov 3:  Haven't been keeping track of dreams too well, although having them, if not terribly vivid.  Last night's:  Yet another big group trip, somewhere.  For some reason, Ken was on this one, and as usual, he managed to make things difficult for me (along with myself contributing) by being finicky.

Early in this "trip", Pantyhose was there, and he pulled me aside to ask if there was some way he could make the trip better for me--like would I want more time alone, or be in charge of something--like I've said in real life, he knows something's changed.  I just flat out told him, "It's none of that--it's Robo, that guy is obnoxious, and I don't know what you see in him. You can't talk to him."  He walked off in PH confusion, saying, "Ok.ok.." like he does, but I know gender will win. The males, I mean.

Then, there was getting into our hotel rooms.  Some generic organizer lady who had made the room assignments had given K and I a "better" room--IDK, I never actually saw it in the dream, but the door was first on the hallway, and was sort of angled instead of flat, implying it was somewhat bigger.   The lady was saying she had given this special room to K knowing he was--oh, she said something diplomatic, like, "appreciative of quality" or something.  K has the card to the room, and refuses to go in, and goes off to hassle someone about it, leaving me with a pile of luggage.  I call after him to ask where he's going and what he's doing, but he ignores me.

So I take all the stuff back down to the lobby where a big part of our group is sitting, and ask one of our guys if I can leave some things with him while I go find K.  I'm thinking it will only be a minute or two.  But, it turns out, this hotel is inside of a mall (At one point a recognizable landmark for me is this two story bowling alley!?) somewhat near the hotel.  The mall is indoor/outdoor, and at one point I'm on a city street that doesn't seem too far off from Brooklyn in feel--I do occasionally see members of our group like Robo, and ask if they've seen K, but everyone says no.  At one point (for some reason I  have this thing with me, plus my purse) that's something like a sleeping bag, and I decide to get on this fire escape and wait, but I fall asleep there.  When I wake up, i think, well, damn, I'll just call him, but realize for some reason I don't have my phone with me. Now I panic, and try to find my way back to the hotel, but I'm kinda lost until I see the bowling alley entrance.  But then I can't find where the hotel is next to it.  End dream.

I think this is a remake of my day yesterday, which was stormy in the afternoon, and I had been invited to happy hour by a big group.  There had been several tornadoes that touched down in Pinellas.  Because of the weather, Ken took the extra car, Joe had the other for work, and I of course had to walk.  Heather gave me a ride to happy hour, and I was anxious to not hold her up, if the storm was going to brew up again, so I left my keys on my desk in my rush.  I was supposed to rely on a ride home from either K or Joe , and Joe said he would come get me and have dinner with me( I had invited K but he sorta said no).  Well, when I called Joe because the others were leaving, he said he was busy, and he'd send K.  When he showed up and didn't want to stay, I'm like, well, I haven't eaten now--I was planning to eat with Joe!

 It didn't help that we were at a huge corner table, the waitress was an ex-student of two of the teachers, who she was chatting with off and on all evening, and since I was in the far corner she was sort of ignoring me--the place was pretty loud.  That's when I realized I didn't have my keys as well.  I decided to order a burger to go, since everyone was getting ready to leave, but I had a helluva time flagging down the waitress, and no one else was helping, off in reveries about some TV shows they were watching.

K was getting all pissy about waiting for me to order food, so I told him to leave and come back if it's such a hardship for him.  I wished I'd instead told him to fucking walk home and leave me the car.  What a privileged bastard.  I know how my stomach gets with alcohol and no food.   But anyway, suddenly Joe showed up apologizing, and I told him what a mess he had made of things, that the food I'd ordered was here--did he want to order something too, and told him about the key problem.  He took me to school to get my keys, after I had to get the security guard to unlock my door, and they were right where I'd left them--the whole day wore me out so much I went to bed at 9:30 after doing HQ trivia with Joe.  I slept for almost 12 hours--unheard of these days!  So I guess my dream would've turned out alright too.

Sometime this weekend I'm going to go see Bohemian Rhapsody either with Heather and the girls or Joe.