Nocturnal Admissions

Mister.

2009-12-25T02:37:00.003-06:00

I'm married to Danny Glover and any attempts at marital intimacy are thwarted by a little girl running into our bedroom and yelling about ghosts in her closet. I am very frustrated.

Oh God, please NOOOOO

2009-01-16T01:38:00.002-06:00

I have to walk into my parent's church holding a child that is not mine. I know the explanation is too outlandish to be believed about why I have a baby in my arms. Still, I sheepishly walk in (late) to the Sunday School class and make my way to the back as everyone stares.

I see faces I recognize and a few hushed whispers reach my ears.

As soon as I sit down, the damn ball of flesh starts crying. It's not loud, but oh it's there. I try to hush the child. Nothing works. I'm getting anxious and sweating a little. Makeitstopmakeitstop!

Running with Oprah

2009-01-03T12:04:00.003-06:00

I am, for whatever reason, running the Las Vegas Marathon. It's held on a series of boats somehow connected via an elaborate system of stairs and ramps. I pass Oprah and a gaggle of girls content to run behind Oprah. Oprah is gracious and wearing the most ridiculous running outfit I've ever seen: "stylishly" disheveled overalls and boots. She's making good time, though, despite her silly getup.

I take a wrong turn and end up going up an escalator. The adjacent escalator coming down contains a couple that sees me in my flimsy running gear and warns me that the escalator comes out in Korea and it's very cold. I get spooked and hope the banister and go back down. And then I think, When am I ever going to get to see Korea? I apparently am not concerned about North vs. South and which Korea I would be popping in to. I hop the banister again and go up and through the big wooden door and see a gorgeous mountain range and green things and then, over to the right, some sort of construction area and a very tiny wooden block emblazoned with a swastika. I see Megan Morris there, taking pictures, and I say to her, "Hey, I think I've seen that (the swastika) on a website somewhere!" meaning Google Earth or whatever. She seems to know exactly what I'm talking about, and resumes reviewing her digital photos.

I notice that it's not as ridiculously cold as I had imagined it would be, and think it seems slightly odd that a boat in Las Vegas would provide passage to a mountain in Korea, but whatever.

I go back down the escalator and try to resume the marathon, but it becomes harder and harder to choose the right paths, and there's usually no one around to tell me which way to go.

Ballsy

2008-11-19T11:52:00.003-06:00

I'm staring up at the cloudy night sky, amid some sort of turmoil, and I scream, "I HATE YOU!" into the darkness above me.

Que hora es?

2008-11-18T15:21:00.003-06:00

I'm standing on my parent's porch from their previous home. It's wintery and I'm talking to a girl that I don't know in real life, but am in a relationship with in m dream. I can't recall her face, but she's wearing a dark colored peacoat and a fuzzy scarf with red and gray stripes. We're saying our goodbyes...possibly after a date. I catch myself saying something that seems out of the ordinary for me and question whether or not I might be dreaming. I turn to see what time it is and have a hard time reading the red digits on the alarm clock. It's 10:48...no, it's 49...no...the numbers keep changing. I can't seem to keep the clock in focus. Before long I can make out that it's after 11 and the numbers just keep ascending. I tell myself "Now, I know I'm dreaming." as I recall the whole not being able to read time thing in Waking Life.
I wake up and look around my room. It's my bedroom from the house before the other house. I still can't see what time it is and it's starting to freak me out. I feel like I want to wake up now that I know I'm dreaming. My mom is walking around with a basket full of laundry. She sits down on the edge of the bed and we begin talking. She asks me a question and my response startles me. I try to explain to her that it's normal because I'm dreaming. I explain that I know I'm dreaming because I can't see what time it is. I ask her for the time and she looks astounded when she can't focus on the clock.

Then I wake up. For real. At least I hope. I'm looking at a clock right now and it isn't dancing around.

Silverback

2008-11-09T22:39:00.002-06:00

Last night, I was a gorilla on the run from people trying to put me back where they thought I belonged. It was some area of Africa full of rain forest and residential development.

I ran for my life, swinging from trees and leaping over obstacles with ease. For a while, I was sailing over vast expanses of forest, occasionally reaching for another branch to use on my next swing. I carried with me an animal who also needed to be rescued. I don't remember what animal it was, but it was small and fragile.

The next moment, I was struggling to find my way through half-constructed houses. Most walls were concrete with window holes cut through.

The houses were haphazardly built and rickety scaffolding obscured some walls. It was dusk and the only workers I encountered were trying to pack away tools and go home. None of these houses were complete. It was just a series of walls in no particular pattern.

I knew someone was chasing me and I knew the objective was to capture me and move me to another place. I didn't care if it would have been harmless, I didn't want to be near them.

Abruptly, I found myself in a house that was structurally complete. The walls were up and there was a roof. The tile floors were cool against my feet, but there were no furnishings in the house whatsoever.

I was standing in an entryway full of teenagers milling about. Few seemed to notice me or recognize that I was an animal and not a human. I released the small animal from my arms and it trotted away as someone, a somewhat disheveled boy, approached me.

He talked to me for a bit while I said nothing. He seemed enchanted with me even though I couldn't respond. All I wanted was for him to remain calm and not seek out anyone who might aid in my capture.

Then it was like we were pals. He took me around with him and insisted that we stay together. He liked to be hugged and I kept at least one gorilla arm around him at all times. He laughed at each hug and stayed close to me as though there was some maternal connection. No one bothered us. His friends all smiled at me and greeted me as though it was normal.

not quite

2008-11-07T09:44:00.004-06:00

amy ten years from now is humming to herself in the kitchen, tidying the counters and preparing food. she stoops to open the oven door and pulls out a rectangular glass baking pan. there is steam rising from the dish, it swirls thick like words. she smells the contents and pricks it with a toothpick.

i try and float towards the ceiling to see what's in the pan. she looks over at me (even though i'm not really there) and says, 'it's not quite ready.' i stare at her, and then the pan. 'it's your true name,' she smiles as though i were a very silly child for not knowing this. the steam comes into focus for an instant before she replaces the pan in the oven, 'know me' it reads. before she closes the oven door, i catch a glimpse of what it holds.

Dream or past life?

2008-11-01T19:59:00.005-05:00

Voices clatter and clammer in my head.

They tell me to do various things. One time, I shoved a zebra ornament up my vagina. Friends always tell me, "Edith, you're one crazy Victorian bitch." I usually respond by flinging pickled cabbage in their faces.

"Improper," they say. "Edith Fitzgerald is an improper Victorian lady!" Hogwash. Absolute hogwash. At least, I know I'm alive.

Occasionally, I'll run around downtown Dublin in my knickers. The town constable furrowed his brow and talked about indecency and moralistic jibberjabber.

Granted, I'm not the most popular Victorian-era woman on the block. Mrs. Reingald doesn't invite me to her prim-and-proper tea parties with her sophisticated dollies, chintzy china and half-baked crumpets. Whenever she sees me on the street, she turns up her nose. Hmpfh. Hmpfh.

What Mrs. Reingald doesn't know is that I urinated on her hydrangeas one October morning after drinking a pot of fresh cider.

Uninvited guests

2008-10-25T13:02:00.002-05:00

I am passed out drunk on the couch and I hear my dad's voice and realize that he has somehow gotten into my apartment despite having no key. He comes into the living room, followed by my mom and my brother — the 12-year-old version of my brother, that is — and they are looking around at the mess and I give them hugs and try to wake and sober up and am just stricken with embarrassment and guilt that they've caught me in a severely mortifying moment.

apocolyptica

2008-10-21T10:16:00.006-05:00

is it any wonder that i believe my fate lies in the gnashing teeth of the risen dead?

we were in a compound along with three other families that we didn't know. we had built up walls and fences around what looked like a small suburban neighborhood. my mother rushes in to our house and starts sobbing and thrusting family heirlooms into my hands while saying 'don't forget any of them. put them in your bags and keep them safe'. and i do, even though i think she's being irrational and impractical. i don't know why, but i know that we have to leave soon.

we are all waiting in the boat house for everyone to be prepared to leave. i'm bored and cold. there's a tv playing staticky re-runs of a 1970's sitcom and some of the guys are playing cards.

suddenly, there are zombies filtering through the barricades we'd set up. they fan out over the compound grounds and some find their way to the boat house. i can hear gun shots and banging as the zombies break down the large sliding door. they are slow, but not rotted. they are very strong. there are more of them than us and two men fight off a cluster at the entrance. i'm up on a large fishing boat and i start to panic. then it happens, not in slow motion, but more deliberately than i would have thought. i don't have anything to fight with, so i'm pushing the zombie's head into the gear shift of the boat and trying to shake its grip. i think to myself that once i've killed this one, i'll be fearless and able to kill anything. i'm the last one wrestling with my foe and they are gathered around me, encouraging me but also waiting to jump in if it takes a turn for the worse.

it is at the moment that i succeed in pushing my fist through its forehead that i realize i'm also the only girl left alive in the boat house and my first thought when i wake up is of my mother's heirlooms.

I got worms

2008-10-15T18:22:00.002-05:00

I wake up, either from an afternoon nap gone awry or way too early in the morning. On my way to the bathroom, I encounter my male roommate in the hallway. He's wearing boxers and a t-shirt, which does nothing for my inability to gage the time of day because he's so damn peppy and in my face. (I've never met this person in real life, which is a symptom of dreaming I always find creepy. Who are these people?)

"What's up with your face?" he says.

I go to a mirror and find that each and every one of the pores in my face is oozing a wiggly, threadlike worm. I sit still to make sure they're moving and not some overnight curse of oncoming middle age. Sure enough, they're moving the way worms and Stevie Wonder do. I turn back to my roommate, who has moved on to something else in our happy homestead but is still available for shouting at from another room.

"It's cool," I say. "They wash right off."

I get in the shower and, sure enough, they do.

Closeted

2008-10-13T11:23:00.003-05:00

My friend Jay is sitting in a closet. I come up to him and begin kissing him. I notice that my mouth is dry. He kisses back and we make out pretty passionately for a while, hands going everywhere. He pulls back and looks me in the eye, smiling intensely. He does not leave the closet, though.

A Steven Spielberg production

2008-10-09T12:35:00.003-05:00

Last night, I had an alien dream. It wasn't just aliens running all over the place either. It was like a movie was playing out the way areas came into focus.

I was at a lakeside house along with some blond guy and a bunch of friends. I guess he was romantically linked to me although we didn't act that way. Everyone else called on me with issues related to the guy.

It was some sort of typical college-kid party where people carried red Solo cups and "rebellious" music played in the background.

Something was wrong with the blond guy's dog. He and I were in a room where the dog's leash was attached to the wall. The leash ran down the length of the room on the floor, out some sliding glass doors and down a floor to the sandy beach below. The dog had plenty of lead to run and play on the beach, but it was laying down close to the house when I looked.

As the guy told me how the dog approached some creature he'd never seen before, the leash rose off the floor as though charged with an electric current. Lights began dancing outside like something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the camera view shifted from the second floor where we were to pan down behind the dog. The lights out on the lake danced behind some trees as the dog barked furiously.

The dog had enormous ears like no domesticated species and a horribly short, wrinkly face. It raced toward the trees where the light emanated and pulled the leash taut.

The scene shifted back to the second floor where I was with the blond guy. His eyes had become red and alternately flashing like a child's toy. I was sitting on the floor as the blond guy crossed the room, his eyes flashing, saying, "I told the dog not to go over there. Stupid dog. I don't want to lose it, though."

All at once, the dog stopped barking, the lights stopped flashing and the blond kid dropped to the floor. His eyes had returned to normal colors and he could not breathe. He laid clawing the carpet and at his chest trying to take a breath.

I called for help and knelt over him as he grew more frightened. "Breathe!" I bellowed. He took one gasp. "OK, you can do this. Come on!" I encouraged. "One, two, three, BREATHE!" and he took another gasp as other people entered the room curious as to what was happening.

I SAID DO NOT TOUCH MY SCREEN

2008-09-26T11:06:00.004-05:00

Last night I dreamed that CA columnist Geoff Calkins walked up to my computer to tell me something, and leaned over, and put his finger on the screen (just underneath the sign that says, "This screen with eat your fingers if you touch it") and rubbed it vigorously, the pixels swirling and going mad, as if to taunt me.

I screeched and smacked him in the face, which he didn't like very much.

Lightning crashes

2008-09-15T09:15:00.003-05:00

The great thing about not being able to sleep soundly is that you have a shit ton of dreams in one night. Or, well, I do.

So on my second round of trying to sleep in the wee hours this morning, I dreamed that my family and I were at Wal-Mart, outside in the parking lot. A storm rolls in and rains so heavily that Wal-Mart has decided to close. These huge chainlink fences slide closed around the store, locking everyone out. I pull out my Blackberry and try to photograph the action and send it to Twitpic and Flickr. (Yes, I know.) We get inside our vehicle to wait out the storm and lightning flashes around us. I realize that the lightning is actually hitting vehicles in the parking lot when I see these creepy trails of smoke leading from the ground to the sky, which is seemingly churning with anger now.

I see lightning strike a truck a few rows over, and then another vehicle closer to us. There's a slight flash of light near the ground right before the lightning bolt hits its target. I assume that at any moment, our car is going to be smote. I decide we've got to get out of there.

And get out of there we do. We're driving through a corn field, the storm still raging around us. We're following my dad, I think, and I keep wondering where mom is. My sister tells me she's behind us, and I can tell by the tone in her voice that she's doing something my sister disapproves of. The corn field, I notice, is faded and withered, which means it must be October.

Choose your own adventure

2008-09-15T09:00:00.002-05:00

There was a scene in Mad Men last night that I was sure was going to play out like so: Man falls asleep on couch, man opens his eyes and is suddenly dreaming, man stands up and things happen that the audience understands are dream things, etc., man wakes up. Except it didn't pan out that way; man woke up. But it's a common scenario in movies and television — the falling asleep and dreaming that one is in that sleep position, "waking", and then doing dream stuff. I thought to myself, that doesn't really ever happen to me, self. I never really fall asleep in my bed and then start dreaming that I am in my bed as a starting point for a dream.

Which means, of course, that that kind of happened in my dream last night. Kind of.

Last night in real life, I left my friends D and A's apartment and drove home, like, half a block away.

Last night in dream life, I had a few false starts from D and A's apartment, trying to get home.

During the first one, I was in my car and completely, completely drunk. I couldn't find my way out of the parking lot so I turned around and took some convoluted alternate route and ended up driving over a median and puttering out into the street, unsure if traffic was coming or not. I think I made it home.

Scenario No. 2 had me stumbling out into the parking lot with friends Ay and B, and B lagging behind because he had found something electronic blinking in the grass. He realized it was my Blackberry and handed it to me. I'm grateful, of course, because clearly I dropped it and would have left it behind forever and ever. And then I realize that I must have dropped it hours ago, because it's busted as hell — keys missing, panels warped, screen cracked, not functional at all. I instantly start freaking out because I don't have insurance on it and even if I did, would it cover stupid drunken mishaps like dropping it in a parking lot and people running over it with their cars? Doubtful.

Scenario No. 3 has me leaving D and A's place and getting on some kind of shuttle full of bona fide creepy freaks. I'm sitting in the back of a standard van — two people up front, three in the middle row, and then me and someone else in the back. The driver looks in his rearview mirror straight at me and saying, "Hey, baby, where you headed?" and other barely masked innuendos. He goes on and on and I try to stand strong and silent and wait for my stop. The person sitting beside him turns to look at me and I see what I can only describe as a Satanic nose, pierced by a huge, tribal-looking nosering. The van finally stops at McLean and Poplar and I get out and try to walk quickly across the parking lot of the strip mall there, but the driver of the van is walking briskly to catch up with me. Ay and B are walking close behind and B wants to know what's wrong, so I start yelling at the van driver, who is some skanky old dude with long blonde hair, "You can't just look at a girl like that and say 'Hey, baby, where you heded?" It's creepy!" B's all, "What!? Yeah, man, you can't do shit like that!" I'm screaming at the skanky dude and B and Ay try to console me as I break down into tears.

I don't know if I ever got home.

When in China

2008-09-10T11:08:00.003-05:00

I am visiting Fritz at Fuckleberry Hound's place, except that they're in a house and not an apartment, and they're in China, not Harlem. The place is really quite spiffy and Fritz and I can't stop gushing over how nice it is. He shows me where he does yoga in the bathroom and I swoon; the bathroom is huge and his yoga mat is a big blue comfy looking thing. I imagine him meditating there on the bathroom floor and instantly want to do yoga again.

Moving

2008-09-08T11:57:00.002-05:00

I am in a new apartment, one that's quite roomier than my current home, but one that's still strewn with moving materials and my usual packrattery. I walk around and look at the place with some confusion; I vaguely remember my ex helping me move into the place, and I feel guilty about having asked him to do so. But mostly I can't remember how I picked this place, or why. It's sufficient enough, and I'm digging the roomier bedroom, but as I walk outside onto the stoop, I see some things lining the stairs that I know are not mine, and that would seem to have belonged to a previous tenant.

There's an owl figurine, and some kind of dusty flowerpot. I get the distinct feeling — the fear — that the woman who lived here before me (I can feel that it's a woman) must have died in the apartment. I wonder how she died. And why I got to move in so quickly.

I am suddenly struck with another fear — how easy is this place to break into? I peer into the bedroom window and see my bed, and wonder who else could have been watching. I don't feel unsafe, necessarily, but I also feel like I might be at risk. Especially since I have no idea where these apartments are located and their reputation for safety. They seem nice enough, but looks can always deceive...

Then I remember my old apartment and can't recall ever giving my building manager any notice that I was going to be moving out. I imagine him and his wife walking into my empty, echoing living room and wondering where I've rudely run off to.

Good aim

2008-09-02T15:22:00.003-05:00

I'm at a gun range with a friend of mine. Said friend has taken me to a gun range before in real life where I performed rather poorly.

This time, I'm hitting the high point areas of the target repeatedly. I'm shooting through some of the same holes, enlarging the rip in the paper, with a very sleek .45. My friend is thoroughly impressed.

He offers at one point to help me with some of my aiming. I take another few shots that hit the target in close to the same spot every time. There's a gaping hole to the left side showing I don't need any help.

"Nah," I reply. "I think I'm doing just fine." I grin and empty the clip.

I think I already know what's going on with this dream. I had been wondering for the past few days if I should trust my instincts on my evaluation of this friend or consider that maybe I've misjudged him. My subconscious apparently thinks I'm right on target.

2008-08-27T11:27:00.006-05:00

This is just fragmentary. Some things were seen, others were understood. I was someone else in this dream. I think I was in high school or college, but definitely a student since some of the dream took place in a school building.

"Weird" light isnt necesarily better than the dark, but the dark is still scary. things can seek us out better in the dark when they have the lights. sort of like turning on your high beams in a deer field to blind them (i've never done this, but i understand it's popular with poor hunters).

innate uneasieness when you're in the dark, even in populated areas. "watch the edges around buildings at night, and shadows from large objects and even telephone poles, but mostly big areas of darkness like the woods and fields." (i saw the quoted part in text form, like i was reading it in a book.) when you can see distant city light but you're not there yet, that's the most dangerous because the things that want to find you stay close to people but are in larger groups on the outskirts of a city.

i have a close friendship with a teacher who reminds me of kathy bates. everyone thinks she's a lesbian, including me. i dont have many friends and am apparently troubled. when i get stressed out, she lets me come sit in her private office after school to write and she talks to me. every afternoon the older, black dean comes into her office to have a scotch and talk with her. one day i understand that they are quietly in love with each other and have been for 23 years but it has always been secret for reasons not revelaed to me. i think he is married. when i realize that they should have been together all this time, i tear up and start crying. it's the saddest thing.

im with a good friend, a female. we are going through some sort of outdoor cafteria line at night. maybe for a drive-in? i'm disgusted with the country fried steak. the operation is student-manned. the cashier, jose, whose employee number is 6579, is acting obnoxiously and singing. he's slowing down the line. people are going to call and complain. i am still just grossed out by the food but i get a country fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, and a roll with a tiny tub of country crock spread. i head toward the car. i stop at a friends car to get something. am aware of something like headlights beaming on us from a nearby field but am not very troubled. i open the friend's car door but she appears to be sleeping so i go back to my other friend's car, the friend im staying with. it is chilly but not cold. she tosses a blanket toward my side of the car. i open the door and balance my food while grabbing the blanket to spread over me after i sit down. we sit down and begin eating. the light is getting brighter. i suggest that we turn on our own headlights, for no rational reason. the headlights dont immediately turn on and we get outside to check them. the other headlights flicker, grabbing our attention. there are strange loud whooping noises, many of them, all around but mostly coming from the direction of the headlights, which are rapidly becoming blinding. i understand that something is communicating with like others out there. i say for us to jump in the car. we do and hurry to roll up the windows. i start screaming to turn on the interior lights. it occurs to me to keep our lights on while simultaneuously blocking theirs, so i hold up my blanket to my window.

i wake up.

i fall back asleep.
*****WARNING: THE FOLLWING PROBABLY CONTAINS TOO MUCH INFORMATION, EVEN FOR A DREAM. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*****

I'm myself, but I'm an actor or some kind of performer. I'm in a dingy-looking place, and im being filmed. im with another woman and a man, and we're on a bed. the man looks like he is asleep and i understand that we are acting and that i am supposed to mourn him like he's dead. the other woman sits on the edge of the bed with her back towards us. she smells really good. i fake-cry and run my hands over the man's face. i lean forward and kiss him. i notice he has an erection and im vaguely attracted to him, but much more interested in the woman. i continue my fake grieving and the man who is filming calls cut and leaves the room. the man i was mourning sits up and smiles. he makes a comment about his "wood" (his word) and i just kind of nod. it's gotten much bigger. im scared of it. it's grown in length, to where it is almost under his chin. he says he wants to kiss me. i say ok. but he says he also wants to kiss the other woman. she walks over. i see that she and i are both naked. the man is topless. the woman is beautiful but she looks very sad. she sits down and we both kiss him. he focuses on me and pushes my head down. he coerces both of us into fellating him briefly. i feel disgusting and i just want to hold the pretty girl. he finishes and im left with a mouth full of semen, an incredible amount. i spit it out and lay my head on the woman's shoulder. i reach out to stroke her back in a comforting way, and the man slaps my hand away.

Overly friendly

2008-08-21T11:13:00.006-05:00

I have apparently gone to visit my friend James* in the UK. He is living in a huge house that is absolutely bustling with people. Diverse people, in and out, through every room, so much so that we find ourselves unable to procure any place in the house where we can be alone to catch up. Everywhere we go, someone is watching. Even when we go into the bathroom, I realize that the damn door has windows in it for some reason.

I see Fritz asleep on the staircase in what looks to be an incredibly uncomfortable position. I ask James if there's no better place where Fritz can go to sleep, like maybe James' bed, and he hesitates and tells me that even his own bed is in a high-traffic area.

James tells me that it's always like this in the house. People he doesn't know sleeping in beds in shifts, rotating out, lying around on couches and floors, crap piled everywhere. It freaks me out. I ask him how he can live like that, thinking to myself how much I cherish the solitude of my little apartment. He mostly shrugs it off, though I can tell he doesn't exactly love it either, but perhaps has no other choice.

He leans in to kiss me, and I kiss back, except he won't remove his tongue from my mouth, even when I make the "I'm pulling back" head motion/lip tightening action. I keep kissing him, thinking he must just be really into it, or maybe this is a new style of kissing in which you can't breathe or move, but his damned tongue is just a slab of concrete in my mouth, and I find myself really confused by his sudden inability to kiss well.

*Name kind of changed to protect the dream innocent

Agustus Gloop

2008-08-02T12:43:00.003-05:00

I'm back in school at what I guess is the local university since I know I'm still in town. At the beginning, I sat in a lecture that was pretty nondescript although the seating was much like an arena rather than a regular classroom. Those lovely desks with the desk part you have to swing up after you sit down were arranged in a circle around a dais.

After that, I walk with a few people who are talking about classes they have and when they're going to exercise. At this point, I realize I'm wearing clothes for cooler weather to disguise how fat I'm getting.

I also realize I don't know my way around this university and the people I've been tagging along with are annoyed I'm there. I drop back as they walk away and wonder to myself how I'm going to get through this year.

Later, I see one of the members of that group I had walked with running in a race through an area with which I'm familiar. I think to myself that I could easily go run out there and not feel so fat any more. Happily, I go to the lecture hall.

At first I sit one desk away from a chick who immediately rolls her eyes and says "oh great ..."

"Fine," I say and move one row back. As I'm sitting there, I unwrap chocolates I have brought with me and eat them. Every time I unwrap one, people nearby turn and throw annoyed looks at me.

The chocolates are soft and I'm licking my fingers in between eating them as I scribble a few notes and generally don't pay attention to the lecture. After a few chocolates, I'm keenly aware of just how fat I am and how much people around me hate me.

Log cabins

2008-07-30T10:59:00.003-05:00

My family is broken into two groups, and each group has its hands full, trying to move two large log cabin-type houses across a makeshift bridge made of wooden pylons and planks of plywood. The bridge is busted, segmented, and not meant to be traveled, it seems, although there is some construction going on, which makes our passage even more perilous. Below us, there is some dirty, shallow water measuring possibly two feet deep.

It's slow going, and I'm in the first group. I look behind me to check the progress of the second group, and see my mother trip and teeter and then finally hit her heads on the edge of one of the pylons, and then fall into the water below. My father, who's the head of my group, yells to my brother and me to take off after her and make sure she's breathing, because she has a concussion.

Somehow my brother dives into the two feet other water. I drop feet first and get to mom before my brother does. She's ling on her back under the water, unconscious. I lift her out of the water — she's heavy — and wonder how I'm supposed to get her to breathe. I don't know CPR. "Shake her!" someone yells, and I do, and she starts breathing. I'm yelling at her to stay awake, because she's drifting in and out of consciousness. Not sure what I'm supposed to do, I look up to see the family continuing to carry the log houses across the rickety bridge.

I suppose they cross the bridge successfully, because soon they are all beside me as I stand there trying to hold mom up. One of my nephews or maybe my brother — I can't remember which — starts going off on me for leaving chairs out in some building, presumably where the log cabins were taken to be stored, which is why it took them so long. I yell at him to back off. I feel completely helpless with my mom nodding off in my arms. We're both waterlogged.

I look up to see another family carrying another wooden log cabin across that confounded bridge. Someone makes a misstep and the wood cracks and collapses around them.

Good luck with that, I think.

I have no title for this.

2008-07-28T11:18:00.004-05:00

I'm helping Mom and Dad at the visitor center. I feel out of place because I don't have a nifty ranger uniform like them, but I'm not a ranger so I can't even borrow one. The phone rings, and I answer as I've been instructed to. It's Tamara's mother. She wants to know what I think of TB's upcoming handfasting (which is purley in dream-land). I jump up and sit on the big slate counter at the welcome desk and watch out the back panorama window, looking at the fountain while TB's mom vents her frustrations and worries. I have no idea why she's called me to discuss this, but I'm cool with it. For some reason, there's a a contraption now next to me on the counter that looks like a wagon wheel, only just about a foot and a half tall, and it has glass compartments over the spindles that look to be filled with assorted types of colwslaw. There is a box of toothpicks labeled "for sampling" on the counter. I don't really like coleslaw, but I go for it anyway. Tabasco coleslaw, seafood coleslaw, mixed berry coleslaw. Then she says something that makes me terribly angry (I don't remember what it is), and I reply with something like, "Well as long as she's happy, I don't think it's my business or yours." She starts yelling at me and I realize that my mom is gesturing toward me to turn around. I do, and the visitor center is full of people. Mom needs help in the bookstore immediately. I carry the cordless phone into the bookstore, listening to TB's mom. I start to ring customers up, noticing that the bookstore must have been expanded because it's huge and there is a ton of new stock, and mom hip-shoves me out of the way. She angrily tells me to go help dad if I can manage to get my name-tag on straight. I'm about to cry and I tell TB's mom I'll have to call her back.

Can't sleep, bad dreams will eat me

2008-07-28T04:11:00.002-05:00

I can't sleep in my childhood bedroom anymore.

This has been a problem for a while now. Every time my head hits the pillow and my eyes flutter shut in the darkness, I see shit in the dark. Shapes of things looming. Eyes watching. When I finally get ahold of myself and drift off to sleep, this absurd cycle of anxiety-ridden dreams and nightmares gets started.

Just now I had entered that delicious limbo phase when the conscious mind starts powering down and starts churning out all those nonsensical phrases and imagery than turn into dreams, and I went through no less than three bad dreams that I forced myself to wake up from. The last one is the only one I can really remember. I am leaving a building — work, presumably, because I look down and see my badge on a lanyard — and walking briskly in a parking lot. It's dark out. The breeze kicks up and takes me with it — straight up, like I'm on an invisible elevator. I realize I'm dreaming and decide to just go with it and will myself ever higher (what's the worst that could happen?) and my eye level gets nearly flush with the top of the building, which is old and made of bricks, and I see something that I can't quite make out. It's moving, and it's menacing.

I woke myself up when I cried out.

That's fucked up.

But dreams like that ALWAYS happen to me in this room. I've documented some of them. I hate sleeping here. Hate it. The whole night is fraught with pointless peril and I have no idea why.

The thing is, there is no reason for me to have issues with this room. I don't recall anything bad ever happening to me in this room. (Or anywhere else, really. I had a good childhood.) Nothing bad has happened to anybody else in this room, as far as I know. I have made a lot of really good memories in this room. Granted, they've painted the walls and redecorated completely, so it doesn't look anything like the Pepto Bismol-pink monstrosity I adored as a kid, but it's still the same damn room. What gives?

Perhaps it's all this violent Civil War art all over the walls. Or the weird dissonance between that and the unicorn collection on the dresser. Maybe it's the furniture. Maybe it's the mattress.

I don't know. But it's 4 in the morning and I would like to go to sleep. But I'm scared of what's waiting for me on the other side.

Trippin' — South African edition

2008-07-25T09:47:00.003-05:00

By the looks of it, I'm in a jungle. I'm following a long line of people who are traversing the tricky terrain, but especially on my radar is this young black woman with kinky hair that kind explodes from her head in all directions.

It kind of feels like I'm watching a documentary, or perhaps making one, as I listen to her talk about how much she loves the cacao bean and what kind of effect it has on her. I turn around to see her demonstrating, taking what looks like a standard black beanstalk (not what real cacao looks like) in her mouth and sucking out the insides. She becomes delirious — seriously, seriously high — and falls to the ground in a fit of ecstasy. The ground, I notice, is muddy and covered with trampled tropical leaves. Tall grass surrounds us. The young woman's eyes roll back in her head as she trips. Someone tries to help her stand — we've got to keep moving — and she simply keels over and does a straight-up faceplant into some mud and grass.

That's when I notice the bugs — giant, huge, ENORMOUS bugs, crawling over her at lightning speed, on their way to places more interesting, presumably. These bugs are everywhere in the grass. I can see them — roaches the size of lobsters, beetles the size of chihuahuas — leaping in and out of the grass and skittering over people's feet. I restrain my horror and think to myself So this is what South Africa is like.

(In all reality, wouldn't it be more likely that I was in South America, what with the cacao and the jungle? I dunno...)

Before Disassembling...D'oh!!

2008-07-22T15:44:00.002-05:00

I have dismembered a body under cover of night, and have wrapped each part in white garbage bags and secured them with twist-ties. I am loading each piece into an open trunk. I apparently have partners in my crime, but it's so dark I can't see who they are. When I'm done I turn around and realize that I am right in front of a Walgreen's, and there's a security camera pointing right at me. I panic, but realize that there's nothing I can do. I am caught, and I am going to jail for the rest of my life.

3 Nights ago...

2008-07-22T11:40:00.002-05:00

In my bedroom far...far away. I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. It's been a while since I've posted so you have to humor me...right?

I'm on a set of damp, cool concrete steps in a stone stairwell. A nice breeze is blowing through and the air smells sweet. It seems like above them there sits a nice outdoor courtyard full of trees, flowers, singing birds, pedestrians, and people taking their lunches outside. It seems that down below there's another courtyard...that's also in the sun. I'm not sure how that's possible, but it's full of the same things. The atmosphere seems almost collegiate, but I know I'm actually at work. I get the feeling I'm leaving work. I think I'm heading down the stairs, but I can't be positive I wasn't going up them. The important thing is that I bump into my old boss, the former art director of the C.A. and we start talking. He's in his biking shorts and a t-shirt and he's a few steps above me. He's very fit. (He's very fit in real life) He somehow knows that I have no vacation days or personal days left and there are still 6 months left in the year. He tells me that I have to quit for a year and go with him...that my health depends on it. He's a good friend and I trust he knows what he's talking about, but I'm baffled that he knows how many off days I have left when he's been gone for over a year.

Then I wake up.

Marauding

2008-07-19T12:13:00.002-05:00

I'm with my sister and a few other people. We're dressed in what can only be described as rejects from the Mad Max costume line.

As we drive through a field, we hear of a group of marauders running through the area. That's our cue to intercept the group and kill them.

We come upon a band of middle-aged and elderly suburbanites walking across a grassy meadow. There are the balding males with bermuda shorts, polos and sandals on. There are one or two grandmotherly figures in the group wearing pop beads and obscenely bright floral tops.

My sister, who is right next to me, has already pulled out her weapon. She's ready to roll.

I pull out an elongated knife (or maybe it's a short sword) and hop off the vehicle. We circle around the group that has now reacted like a herd of cattle. They're facing outward, wide eyed and panicked.

From the left, someone starts hacking into the group and I know it's go-time. Quickly, I dispatch two with a few deep cuts. They go down with very little noise and almost no blood issuing from the wounds.

As I circle around the back of the group, I see my sister bending down over an old woman who is on the ground near breathless after screaming, searching frantically for a way to get out of there. I'm strangely passive to her fear and nearly laugh as my sister asks her "do you want to go quickly?"

She repeats the question a few times before the woman finally nods. My sister steps on her chest and begins cutting in a way that would not bring quick death. The woman never screams. In fact, she lays there looking up at my sister patiently awaiting her last moment.

I come upon a middle-aged guy with his gut hanging out significantly over his shorts who continues to face me even as I circle him and says to me, "I never knew you were so good with those weapons." I slice into him twice very quickly. He drops to his knees as blood starts seeping into his mouth. As he falls over, he asks, "are you good with all of them?"

"Half," I reply. "I'm good with about half."

He nods and expires.

Always unprepared

2008-07-13T13:18:00.003-05:00

The first dream involved the other side of a long-distance relationship finally getting his ass in my general vicinity. He finally comes to see me and my place is packed with people I keep trying to get rid of. I tell them all that he's coming to see me and they need to go away.

He arrives. They're still everywhere. I'm not ready for him to be here, but I do my best not to show it as I continue to try to shoo people away.

Somewhere in there, we're in a park sitting in this bench contraption that forms a square with two other people, one of whom is one of my bosses. The boss and my guest start up a conversation while I notice my guest has very strange feet. His toes are incredibly short and stumpy even though the size of his foot is normal. It's like his toes had to be cut from the slab of flesh at the end of his foot.

The boss ignores me completely and I wonder if anyone notices I haven't even taken a shower.

...

The second dream involved traveling to Europe with a group of people including my mother and a certain person of interest I can't seem to get out of my head. The person, we'll call T, is leading the group around a tour of Germany and keeps looking to make sure I'm right there with him.

I realize I forgot my watch even though we had been explicitly told before the trip started that we would need to bring one.

Then, I realize I forgot my camera. My mother begins to gripe at me that I should have taken more time to pack since I forgot two essentials of travel. This makes me wonder if I remembered to get my suitcase at the airport when we landed. I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Meanwhile, T keeps coming by and tapping me on the shoulder to get me to pay attention when the group moves.

I try to stay lighthearted on the outside and pretend I don't feel like a complete moron or worry that I'm disappointing him.

Sometimes I don't know my own strength

2008-07-10T18:05:00.003-05:00

I am scraping something -- you know, just one of those general gritty annoyances you get from time to time -- off my tooth, and I feel my fingernail inadvertently take a chunk of tooth and catapult it from my mouth.

I search everywhere but can't find the missing bit of tooth.

Comedy and Musicality

2008-07-06T08:50:00.006-05:00

I am working on a production with a huge company. We are going to play an open-air arena; one of the biggest in the country. We have a huge budget, and we keep adding hilarity and stretching out the show until the very last second. People who aren't writers start to add things. Brandon Holloway writes a skit and puts it in without my permission. What has been raucous laughter up until this point dries up and quiets as he and another guy put on a farce involving destroying an upright bass, singing falsetto opera, and other buffoonery. As soon as the rest of the regular show goes on, the laughing resumes. I'm in the wings with my headset and belt pack and I'm fuming to crew members about Brandon's intrusion. There are people from my high school in the production. Then I am way out in the audience, and there is a man with a gun holding up people for their belongings and souvenirs. I watch as he forces and father and son to remove their 2008 Olympics tee shirts. The father says, "We really were at the Olympics. These are irreplaceable." I decide to put a stop to it. I am suddenly center field, and the stage is gone, and there's just a football gridiron. I am speaking into a mic about the mean robber, and somehow my deciding to tell the audience at once causes him to lose his robbery power. The audience has dwindled, and the stadium is much smaller. I can see faces.

I am sitting in a big building whose walls and ceilings are a band room, but whose floor and
furniture are my grandparents' house. I am sitting beside Cindy Haffly, who has out her tenor and is examining three new altissimo keys that have been added to the sax, but in keeping with the auxiliary F key, not the palm keys. I have my tenor in my lap, and I'm looking, too. I start playing the notes and then using the new keys, comparing intonation. Apparently we are making a chart of which fingerings to use in certain settings. When we're done she straightens her collar and pulls at her button-down shirt and says, "I'm getting the hell outta here! I'm starving!" and walks out. I laugh, and continue to play. I am playing when I hear a staticky interruption. I stop playing and hear Rick Shaw's voice filtering through the speakerphone on the desk. "Tamara! Tamara!" he's shouting. "Yeah?!" I say, irritated. "Listen, I have some bad news for you." Bob Besant has joined Rick, wherever he's calling from, and is snoring loudly into the phone. He sounds like Butthead sleeping. "When you go in to play for Dr. Mroz, he's going be like, 'Okay, hi, where ya from?' and you're going to say 'Senior high,' but the thing is that I forgot to tell him you're coming, and he doesn't like to take senior high." I scoff. "Great!" Rick continues. "Just say, 'Dr. Mroz? I'm going to be your daughter-in-law-" Bob interjects, "'with your kind permission,'" and Rick continues, "'-so if you'd give me the chance to play I'd really appreciate it.'" I stand there, not replying, trying to figure out who the hell it is I'm supposed to be marrying that Dr. Mroz would be my father-in-law.

How did I get here?

2008-07-04T10:41:00.004-05:00

I find myself at my friend A's place. I'm in my grey ARMY T-shirt and nothing else, and I'm unshowered, and it becomes clear that I'm there alone. Let's just say that I don't know A nearly well enough to be at his place in such a state, and I start to wonder where he is and when he'll be back.

The thought to leave never occurs to me, so I snoop through his things. One of the things I can vividly remember is his porn collection, which I remark is very classy: It's on vinyl (how that works exactly, I don't know) and instead of each cover featuring sex acts barely obscured by cartoon explosions or black boxes, there are simply artistic illustrations of bodily forms, designed with care and aesthetic calibration in mind. I approve, and think to myself this must be some really old porn. I can only hope the porn itself is as thoughtful as the packaging, if that's possible.

I look out the window and see a bus pass by. It's as if my eyes are equipped with zoom lenses because I hone in and see A's face in the back seat, laughing at a joke someone must have just told. Oh shit, I think. He's home. With friends. What am I supposed to do? I am acutely aware of how weird he is going to think it is that I am in his house.

I go to the next room and peek through the door as people file into the house. I catch A's vision and wave sheepishly, and he looks surprised to see me. I feel awful for being there. I sit down on some low-lying chair, trying to obscure my lower half, which is without pants. His friends come into the room, one by one, and occupy open seats. A takes a seat just on my right and introduces me to each person. I do my sheepish wave thing. His friend L sits down on my left as if she knows me too. I recognize her from the internet in real life and am happy she's being nice enough to sit next to me even though I probably smell bad.

A's looking at me, but I'm afraid to look at him or talk to him because I feel gross. I try to explain to him why I'm there and how I got there. "I think I honestly might have sleptwalked over here," I say, "because I cannot remember coming over here. I'm wearing my PJs and I haven't showered either," I say, embarrassed. A is leaning in to my neck, smelling my hair and the curve of my skin. I wonder if he's trying to get a whiff of my pheromones or something. I tell everyone, by way of explanation for why I'm there unannounced and possibly uninvited, that I've been reading this book called Snoop, about how to determine personality types by hidden clues in people's personal spaces (it's a pretty interesting book that I really am reading right now).

A surprises me with a kiss, and he runs his hands quickly but sweetly over my hair and my chest, before I pull away. There is no way I can make out with him when I've not even brushed my teeth.

Attack cats

2008-07-02T11:42:00.003-05:00

I am hanging out with my friend T at his place, which is not his place in real life at all, but some sort of dingy, creepy, dark dream place that makes me uncomfortable. He has three cats (again, not in real life) and as I'm sitting on the floor, they are creeping nearer to inspect me.

One of them -- a dark grey beauty -- reaches out and just thwacks at me, for no reason. I've done nothing to instigate it. Its claws make contact and scratch me, catching on my clothes. The others get closer and more aggressive, and the grey cat continues reaching out methodically with the same paw, scratching me aggressively.

I yell to T that his cats are attacking me and think to myself how pathetic must a person be to get attacked by cats?

Dreamy Indiscretion

2008-06-28T08:10:00.003-05:00

I am drinking with a guy friend of mine at a party, and he and I end up being the last people up. (This would never happen. This entire dream would never happen. He and I just would...NEVER.) We are continuing to drink and laughing about how it's always us that stays up, you know, because we really want it (I think "it" was referring to having the ultimate party experience or getting really intoxicated). We went out on the balcony and looked down at the rainy night. The bottom balconies were halfway underground, and they had filled to the brim with rainwater. Our neighbor-lady's balcony flowers were drowned in six feet of crystal clear water. The orange street lamps reflected on its still surface. Guy Friend and I sat there and he made some remark about how she was hard to handle and that the rain water'd better brace itself. Then there is some commotion and we are being chased through stairwells. Then we are back in an apartment and we are pouring beers with the same care one would use to defuse a bomb. We are laughing about our skill. We share a laugh and Guy Friend leans over and wraps his arms around me and we laugh more. I can tell he is moving his face closer to mine, and I am suddenly all for it. But we are frozen, clamped to one another in an embrace, and our breath is in each other's face and our lips are barely apart...but we still just embrace. And then I touch his lips lightly and we are back to beer business. But then he moves over and sits by me and puts his arm around me and then we really kiss. And then we start to undress each other amid laughing banter and beer drinking. For some totally inexplicable reason, I notice that he is uncircumcised. We are in full embrace and I wake up.

Totally weird! Never in a million years would this happen or would I want it to, but in the dream I was all like, "Yeah, okay, I'm all right with this!" Ugh.

I didn't mean it, Brendan!

2008-06-18T13:28:00.005-05:00

I couldn't tell you circumstances or setting, but at some point, I insulted Brendan Fraser.

I was talking to some people and said something along the lines of, "I know he's supposed to be the next (some actor I forget) but he's just not that hot."

Then, right beside me, Brendan turned around with a sorrowful look in his eyes. "You don't think I'm that attractive?"

I apologized profusely, but he was deeply hurt.

If you want to sing out, sing out

2008-06-14T07:36:00.004-05:00

I'm 100-years-old. Crinkled and worn, but with a slight vibrancy.
A freshly scrubbed college student is interviewing me about my life:

Does true love exist?
"True love exists, but sometimes it's messy. I takes over every fiber of your being. It doesn't have to be with a human being, per se. For instance, I love my cat. This tree. I water it everyday." I finger a bottle of Chardonnay at the base of the table.

What is the meaning of life?
"The meaning of life to live each day fully and to learn something new each day. You have to live it fully." Pregnant pause. I take a sip from my chalice. "I spent a large portion of my twenties going around half-assed. Young man, do not go around half-assed. Live it; love it; learn it."

But what if you're unhappy?
"I recommend smoking a little bit of weed everyday. But make sure you mix it with some anti-depressants. I recommend Zoloft. Buddhist chants help as well." I take gulp of Chardonnay. "Live it; love it; learn it."

Something topical, and then complete randomness

2008-06-13T10:30:00.005-05:00

1.

We've spotted a menacing funnel cloud close by. We're in some kind of large factory — the paper mill? — and are told to head for the belly of it. We take the winding corridors and finally end up in a portion of the place that looks nothing like a basement, but instead seems to be a wide-open area with a murky yellow sky. I ask if we are actually indoors, and am told yes. Essentially we're in some kind of huge underground warehouse. I look down and my watch has begun glowing in pulses. I realize this means it's go time. Sure enough, we hear a rumble and there are shouts to take cover. I grab some pipes nearby and wince as the storm gobbles up what it can from above. There are two people beside me. I watch in horror as the three of us rise from the ground from the force of the winds. Rise and fall, air and ground.

The storm passes.

2. I'm in some kind of amusement park that is painfully empty. The rides are running on auto-pilot, but there are no people in them, despite the fact that there are a scant few people running around the park. I climb the queue for the park's equivalent of the Old Mill Scream (large boat climbs hill, rushes down hill, splashes water everywhere, the end), thinking I'd like to ride it. I get to the top and watch the boats crest the hill near the platform and then take off without even a pause for a passenger to board. I get spooked and decide I'd rather not jump into a moving boat. Lighthouse Pilot walks up to the platform, wanting to ride the ride as well, but sees the predicament of the moving boats. I caution him not to do it when I sense that he's thinking about jumping into one of the boats. We decide that they must be moving so fast because there's no one here working the ride and literally putting a foot down to slow the boats so people can load. The boats keep cresting the hill and falling rapidly as we watch them, wondering why there's no one there controlling the ride.

3.

I'm at church, and it's packed. It's so packed it feels like a suffocating madhouse. There are people I've never seen before, and lots of children. It's bustling and loud and completely unlike any church I've ever been in. I have to take a seat up front, only to look back and see my family slide into a pew several rows back. My patience with the whole ordeal grows thin, so I grab my bag and slip out. My dad calls out after me, irritated that I would leave.

I navigate my way through the teeming crowd and realize the bustle is because there's some sort of festival going on. A revival-slash-festival of sorts. I don't want to be there and the contempt is bubbling up inside me, so I push my way toward the door until finally I'm outside. It's nearly dark and poorly lit, but there are people everywhere running around and playing. I push my way through the thick darkness, trying to get away from the church, when I hear a FWOOMP and look down next to me.

It's a javelin. A red javelin. I peer into the darkness and realize that there are people out there playing lawn darts with javelins, and launching the giant spears into the crowd with little regard for, uh, safety. And they are gearing up to hurl another one in my general direction. I backtrack and head toward the church again, my eye trained on the horizon. I see a javelin in the air, getting bigger all the time, and carefully plot my next few steps to avoid it. This happens two more times before I'm finally back at the church. I go inside and start telling people, "They've got lawn darts out there!!" but no one seems to understand the urgency.

I'm told my grandmother requires me in one of the rooms of the church, and when I go to find her, I realize I've been duped and my dad just wanted a chance to scold me for leaving.

In retrospect, it wasn't that great ten years ago, either.

2008-06-04T21:01:00.003-05:00

I'm watching TV and a commercial for Olive Garden comes on, and it's totally the same style as every Olive Garden commercial you've ever seen, only they're using a cheerful, pop-ish version of "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" as the music. I'm not so much surprised as I am even more disgusted with the Smashing Pumpkins. I clearly think "Bad call, Billy."

Conversations in Bed

2008-06-04T11:37:00.002-05:00

Me:I had a really terrible dream last night.

Boyfriend: Oh, I'm sorry.

Me: I cheated on you with Judge Reinhold. I was devastated.

Boyfriend: Didn't you have that dream before? When we were in Memphis?

Me: No? Did I? You're bullshitting me.

Boyfriend: No, you did.

Me: I went to an underground sex club located in a strip mall. Judge Reinhold was there. He was like a sex god. Women and men swarmed around him, wanting to touch his penis. I remember that Judge Reinhold had a really big penis. It was massive.

Boyfriend: That's interesting.

Me: But yeah, I was totally devastated.

Crossposted at Manhattan Project

Scene from inside a nap

2008-05-31T15:58:00.002-05:00

I'm in China, riding in some sort of cart that's being pulled up a steep steel contraption by a pulley system. It's some sort of rigged-up public transportation system. For tourists. It dawns on me how unbelievably unsafe it is, and how there is probably no federal or state or municipal oversight of this ride's safety. And how you always read about freak accidents in China where tons of people -- including clueless tourists -- were killed. I was going to be one of those people, because I thought I saw a runaway cart come slowly creeping over the hill, at which point it was going to careen into our cart, which was slowly climbing the hill.

I don't think I actually saw it, though. I just dreamed that I thought I saw it.

Color-changing fun

2008-05-30T13:30:00.003-05:00

I don't remember much of the dream except for the encounter with the lizard.

I'm back at my childhood home looking out the dining room window at a back yard full of palm trees, which aren't there in real life. On the tree closest to the window is a gigantic lizard that has changed color to blend in.

It doesn't quite look like a chameleon. It's more like a cross between a gila monster and an iguana, but it's freaking huge. It's massive. The thing is somehow perched along one of the leaves and its tail extends back to wrap around the trunk of the tree. In my estimation, it's about 8 feet long.

Somehow, the trees are changing color a little bit and unmasking the lizard. This is how I first noticed it. I start watching it blend back into its surroundings when a sense of foreboding comes over me. This lizard is a wretched monster, I realize.

I call over some people (I think a few were family members) and show them the lizard. "We have to get rid of this," I tell them. Their concern mirrors mine. The monster moves and stares at us. We freeze in fear, watching for its next move.

Who needs college when there's Jenny McCarthy?

2008-05-29T11:14:00.005-05:00

I am really behind on dream posting. This is from a couple of days ago. I dreamt that I was at Al's, but there was a new manager, and I was effing up everything that I touched. All the knowledge I had had been stripped from my mind - I didn't know what clefs instruments read, I couldn't read a tenor clef, I couldn't work a cash register, and I couldn't turn on any lights. I stood in the dark pressing buttons on the cash register, and the receipt was in a shard of streetlight and just kept coming out wrong. I kept voiding everything, and the manager kept yelling at me. The store was dark, but it was fully staffed with strangers. People gathered around after their shift and I chit-chatted with another employee. The manager walked up to the back counter - which was still the actual back institutional sales counter but was located in a restaurant back room of some sort - and set down the botched up receipt and made a remark. I was fearing that he was about to fire me. He said something quietly that sounded like, "Get the hell out," but I didn't really understand him and I was afraid to ask him to repeat it. He turned to go, but I stood frozen. After a second someone said, "I thought he was going to fire you." Another said, "He told us that he was, so I don't really understand." I was livid that he had gone behind my back. I threw open a back door I've never seen before and stomped out into the rain. I am sloshing across the parking lot when a tall blonde asks me what the matter is. She's partly a character named Lane from Curious Wine, and the rest of her is Jenny McCarthy. I go into the spiel about my boss and the manager being dicks and gossiping about me and she says, "You should come work for me." And I return jokingly, "Yeah, personal assistant to Jenny McCarthy might look really good on a resume." She smiles and looks at me hard. "Really?" I realize that she is offering me a job. I realize I'm about to get fired anyway. "Yeah," I say, summoning my courage and tromping through the downpour to where she's standing under the awning. "Great! You can start tonight!" she says, and my gut sinks in horror as I realize that I will now have to blow off my next shift at Al's because she's Jenny McCarthy. She starts circling things in a planner and looks at me and hands me an umbrella. "First, you hold this umbrella for me while I get to my SUV," she says, and points to a big silver tank of a truck. I realize I have no idea what a "personal assistant" position entails. "You'll do fine," she assures me, reading my mind. I scurry along with her, but keeping the blue umbrella centered over her proves challenging. Then I'm back at Al's, and the unhappy group is surrounding me, and I'm sweating and trying to explain why I blew off my shift.

This Isn't Technically a Dream

2008-05-28T14:56:00.002-05:00

But I kept waking up last night and this morning thinking I was lying in a pile of Crackberries and Sarah's and Lindsey's pictures. These were waking dreams, I guess. Then I woke up a few times thinking that I was lying on top of Lindsey and Sarah, and I was embarrassed and sat bolt upright and started to apologize before realizing that I was just in bed. Thoughts like these made my sleep last night fitful and confusing.

Not Just a Game

2008-05-28T13:27:00.002-05:00

(I had while sleeping at a Rest Area on the drive back up from Tennessee to New York): I am with a group of people in an office building and we have decided to play a Game. It comes in a box, and once you open it you are bound to the rules - no cheating - which basically confines us to the building we opened the box in. You can't leave until the game is finished. We are running around and playing the game jovially with the miniature robots that come in the box. Apparently the game consists of frolicking about and challenging the robots with trivia and answering when they challenge us. Suddenly a woman bursts into the room I'm in and says, "They aren't losing," with such finality and doom that I realize that we're going to die because of it. I turn to see the little robots shooting lasers at their human opponents, and random bodies flying through the air and exploding. I make for the exit, panicking, but a voice suddenly says, "No cheating." That's when I realize that the no leaving part is what ends the game - everyone must stay present so everyone involved can be killed. Once everyone is killed the robots will return to their box and the game will be over. If someone leaves the robots will unleash a death spree on the unwitting public. I resign myself to my fate and lock myself in a room with others to wait. Then it becomes a refugee situation, as if we have been in that room for years. Three naked men with pot bellies choose from the group of females to be that day's sexual partner. A large, swarthy man chooses me. I am numb to it by this point.

Sunday School

2008-05-27T13:02:00.002-05:00

I'm back in my parents' church again. This time I'm doing the "churchy" thing going to several Sunday School classes.

I start off in the college/young singles class and sit down on the end of a row. Then I notice this certain person who has been a part of my life fairly recently has walked through the class. He smiles at me, says a few words to the teacher and leaves. A couple of people look at me with serious expressions. I stare straight ahead.

Then later, I walk down the hall to the 5th grade Sunday School class. I've been asked to join the class for reasons unknown to me. I go in and sit down. The same man walks through, smiles at me, says something to the teacher and leaves. I feel like he's following me.

Then I'm asked to wait in the hall while the class discusses a few things. I go out into the hall and wait with another girl who was asked to do the same. While we're waiting, the guy I keep seeing is out in the hall talking jovially with some church members.

The girl with me gets called back into the classroom and I hear the teacher asking her about how she lies. I wonder what the hell I'm doing out in the hall when I'm called back in.

The teacher holds something like a cordless phone to my face as she starts asking me about the affairs I'm having. I'm stunned into silence. Then people start milling around like class is over.

This is the most obvious dream I think I've had in my life. Good grief.

The More You Ruv Someone

2008-05-25T16:00:00.005-05:00

I'm listening attentively to a kabuki-style lecture series on the persecution of Asian-Americans at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville, Tenn with my high school AP English class.

"Welcome, Engrish shittirens," the lead Asian-American says.

Right in the middle of the lotus flower presentation, a corpulent young man begins teabagging me. But it's not a fratty John Belushi-type teabag. It's more of a wink-wink type teabag.

I don't take too kindly to this. "This fat young Asian man is raping me with his scrotum," I cry out loudly.

The kabuki performers are aghast. Faces turn in the crowd.

Finally, my beloved English teacher Kristen Carwile escorts the teabagger to the nearest exit. Once outside the Belcourt Theater, a muscled Village People-esque SWAT team proceeds to beat the shit out of him.

Late May marathon dreaming

2008-05-24T09:35:00.004-05:00

I had another night packed with insane dreams last night.

The only bits I remember clearly:

• I'm on a plane and apparently we've got to jump the interstate to get to our runway. There's no overpass; we just have to do a miniature takeoff and landing to get to the other side of the road. And then when we do, suddenly we're on the interstate itself, trying to take off from there in between those huge green exit signs. Harrowing.

• I'm in a grimy public restroom, peeing, when I see this frumpy middle-aged dude walk past me (apparently there are no stalls) and ogle me. He continues to watch as he walks away. I am simultaneously enraged and embarrassed, and as I berate him for being a creepy asshole, I tell him, for some reason, "I'm sorry." When I come out of the restroom, I find my dad and he wonders what took me so long. I tell him about creepy asshole guy and dad gets so pissed off that he is shaking. He wants to kill the guy for treating his little girl that way.

• A very portly gentleman is telling me something about America and colonial political theory. He says, "Benjamin Franklin felt that everyone should be able to fly whatever kite they wanted, but that no one should be able to see your key." He leans back and begins unbuckling his belt, and I freak out, thinking he's some kind of perv. He reassures me that no, he just wants to show me his belly, which is portly because there's a baby in there. He cups his right manboob and tells me that he's lactating.

I wake up to the sound of a loud thud and realize that one of the five books on my bed has made its way to the floor. There's no one in my bedroom but me, so perhaps I was thrashing around and knocked it off.

FUBAR

2008-05-21T13:11:00.002-05:00

I'm changing out the lenses on my camera and I look down and realize I've gotten an amazing amount of dirt and dead leaves in the interior of my little kit lens. I blow into it, thinking I can just dispense with the mess, but when I look down again, there's even more debris inside the lens. I tug on some kind of string, thinking it will pull the bad stuff out, and the entire guts of the lens come tumbling out into a pile.

There are people around — presumably people who know how to deal with camera equipment — and as soon as I show the lens (what's left of it) to a white-haired older gentleman, he shakes his head as if to say Too bad, that lens is FUBAR.

I set about trying to reassemble the lens shortly before realizing I have no idea how a lens' interior should even look.

I feel like a total fuckup but I'm not too disappointed because I've been wanting to get a new primary lens for a while. And yes, I did think of that exact lens in the dream.

Red Candy Apples

2008-05-12T12:39:00.002-05:00

Prince Harry and Prince William delivered an impassioned speech on land mines at my alma mater, Page High School.

They stood in the parking lot with little oil-caked tykes bobbing around them with their arms outstretched. The children looked like little skeletons dripped in wax. You know, the sort made famous in those damned Sally Struthers infomercials at 2 o' clock in the morning.

Anyhoo, I didn't give two shits from a gnat's behind about Prince William. Of course, I wanted to prod Prince Harry's red candy apples. Always have. But I chomped my lips at the bit, instead.

My Mom drove over to Prince Harry and asked if she could make a donation.

"That's be great," Prince Harry said.

So my Mum swung open the driver side door. In the process, she smacked a little oil-caked tyke in the back of his head.

Prince Harry didn't seem to notice.

One big cart

2008-05-07T12:16:00.002-05:00

My parents' church tends to be a recurring scene set in my dreams. This time, I'm in the parking lot with several people I know from that church including a recently married couple.

We're getting ready to make a trip somewhere, and the husband is having a hard time getting his large family to give him enough space to get ready to go. He has been loading a shopping cart with food items we're supposed to take with us.

The large family comes over to bother me for a while. At one point, they gather around me holding hands in a circle and start singing. I freak out and break away from them.

The wife tells us to all jump into the shopping cart, which is now empty of food items. It's the couple, one other girl and me. I don't know the other girl, but she's ridiculously underdressed for as cold as it is. We talk briefly and I ask her how she stays warm in her purple sweater dress. She replies that she's wearing Spanx.

All during this time, the wife is moving back and forth putting the foodstuffs back in the cart. She's doing a remarkably good job in her feng sui as I don't notice a decrease in available space at all. When she's not nearby, her husband is being ridiculously affectionate toward me. He rubs my shoulders, kisses my head, and does all sorts of sappy little touches that seem to be reassuring.

I'm really ignoring this, not because I feel any sort of guilt or embarrassment. It just seems like nothing to me and I don't give it another thought. I don't reciprocate and I just watch where we're going as the cart coasts around the parking lot closer to the SUV we're going to take on our journey.

Floods.

2008-05-02T06:55:00.003-05:00

Ocean flood/tsunami dreams for the past two nights. Both with my family nearby, though in one I was mainly hanging out with Jessie and her husband. Last night I was on the beach when the water pulled out and when I saw the big wave coming back in, I hauled ass up a hill, scrambling and tugging at vegetation, to get away from it.

Lindsey doesn't need any sushi

2008-05-01T20:04:00.002-05:00

I was at my grandparents' house in Cerro Gordo, apparently living in my sister's room. I was getting ready to go somewhere, and the blue early morning light was streaming in the window. I got dressed and looked down at my heels to see if they matched okay, and then got a text alert. It was a telemarketing text, and I replied, "No." Only, somehow I forwarded it to Lindsey, because she texted back, "No pa hai need sushi, y no pe ha any sauce, either, but thanks." I read it and understood that she was texting in Japanese, even though once I woke up I realized that it was clearly Spanish-inspired gibberish. I was embarrassed that I had forwarded the text to her, and didn't know what to say in return, so I just threw the phone on the bed.

Bad weather and a wedding

2008-05-01T10:40:00.004-05:00

My father instructs me to get all gussied up; we're going to a wedding in less than an hour, and would I mind getting ready even earlier because we have to stop by the store for something on the way? The wedding is happening at the Parkers' house. I played softball with the Parker girls throughout my school years and we were always good friends (I've not seen or spoken to any of them in years; I don't think they're on Facebook). Apparently Faye (Jo Ann's mom) has cancer (that's true in real life) and even though Jo Ann just met this guy thirty minutes ago, they're getting married immediately and everyone's got to get dressed up to come to the house and watch it.

So I do my best to put my dress on and look pretty and it's tense because we're running late because of me. We pile into the car and my cousin Keri — a younger version of her — has to sit in my lap and I'm afraid she's getting mud on my skirt because she's just a kid.

The weather has started to get nasty out and we are trucking it over backwoods hills, topping them with no tires on the ground, screaming for my mother, who's driving, to be more careful each time we meet another speeding vehicle at the crest of the hill. We have so many close calls that eventually something happens and we're all exposed to the elements and we're wet and my hair is all effed up.

The sky is the heaviest color of dark grey, like it's ready to just flatten us all.

[][][]

I'm in a high rise, in what I've come to understand is my editor in chief's office. It's super swanky, with its own little breakfast stand and attendant in the lobby. There are jars of candy on the stand, as well as doughnuts. The office is sparsely decorated, but seems incredibly, frighteningly open because it's surrounded completely by giant plate glass windows. And glass for a ceiling. The storm is still raging outside and I wonder who would want to work in a place like this when the weather gets sour. I notice a small, black, high-walled, completely enclosed cubicle. It is there that the editor actually keeps his desk, I discern.

I imagine a tornado sucking the entire thing out the window and carrying it across the fields that surround the building.

Dream love is dream real

2008-04-30T20:48:00.002-05:00

This guy I like but don't know very well is proclaiming his love for me and telling me I'm the one. It'd odd hearing this from someone again. Odd, but nice.

Haunt me, you beautiful man

2008-04-28T18:24:00.003-05:00

I implore ya'll to hop on over to a dream blog way better than ours (but only slightly). There's a couple of special somethings for the old folks as well.

Bath time

2008-04-23T21:40:00.003-05:00

I'm living in a new apartment. I don't know how long I've been living there, but things are mostly unpacked and settled -- even though I don't recognize any of the trinkets or knick-knacks as mine -- so presumably it's been a while.

The apartment is housed inside some kind of huge mansion owned by an older lady who lives there with her family. She seems like a typical middle-class Southern lady: freckled from years of sun damage, and wearing cheesy granny clothes. She's even wearing a sun visor.

The bathroom in my apartment is rather large. It has expansive windows on two adjacent walls -- one side looks into the mansion's giant indoor pool room, and the other side looks onto a grassy courtyard.

There's a jacuzzi tub in the middle of the room, made of slick, dark material. I want to strip down and take a bath in it so bad, but I don't want to be seen, either by the family inside, splashing around in the pool, or any passersby who might happen through the courtyard.

I walk over to the drapes dressing the windows facing the courtyard and close them with a great flourish (they are huge -- the size of stage curtains). They glide shut and I realize I've lost all the natural light and the bathroom is suddenly quite dark. I open the curtains back up and close the sheers instead, but worry that people might still be able to see me inside.

Prison and Spy Missions

2008-04-22T21:37:00.004-05:00

Dream 1: I have gone to prison for what seems to be a DUI, but I have befriended a male guard who coddles me and gives me special privileges and generally treats me like his granddaughter. I walk in and out of my cell as I please. Inside my cell is a hospital bed, and I'm in a hospital gown, and I feel fragile as if I've been in a wreck. I know I haven't but that my health is failing for a reason no one can determine (I actually left work early Monday and didn't go at all today for health reasons). I dread telling Al that I've been incarcerated for the DUI (poor health) because I've been sick so many times lately. I wander behind a barn while dreading telling Al about the DUI. I can't even begin to think of how to word it. I go back to my cell and see the male guard leaving out a utility door. I wonder if this will present a problem. I see Jeff's phone sitting on my tray table. I think, "Oh great! I can text while I'm in here. I prolly need to tell him I'm in jail, anyway." Then I realize that if his phone is there how can I get in touch with him? I have a moment of panic. I whirl around, looking for my phone.

Dream 2: I am looking at a photograph of a former teacher of mine - we'll call her Ylffah Ydnic for the sake of Google and my own very fragile pride - that Lindsey has taken for me on a spy mission. It is a face shot, and although the back part of her hair has gone gray, I notice that the front strands have not, even though Lindsey plainly told me that it was completely gray, and the hair around the face usually goes first. I am mystified and enchanted as the photo comes to life and begins to say something. But before she can get a word out I wake up in my own bedroom and can't figure out where I am for at least an entire minute. Then, when I do, I lament that I freaking missed what she had to say.

UPDATE: I just saw the real photo Lindsey snapped for me on her real spy mission and my dream was right! It's not totally gray around the face. It's salt and pepper. My dreaming brain was right! Also, if I may add, she looks so, so hot. SO hot.

Dream within a dream.

2008-04-21T09:19:00.004-05:00

I'm at Lindsey's place, only it's completely different. It's a house rather than an apartment, and there's carpet in most of the rooms. She has a live-in boyfriend (husband?). We're hanging out and chit-chatting while I help her move the furniture so we can shampoo her carpets. For no reason, a girl I used to see on the sly back in high school (we'll call her Jamie) walks in and it ain't no thing. It appears that she and Lindsey are at least aquainted with each other. Lindsey has to go to take her man some lunch and a package of paper, and encourages us to take a break while she's gone. Jamie and I sit down on the couch and start talking, but then she's Tamara, and Tamara is talking about how much she misses Jamie. I'm like, "I thought you didn't even know Jamie!" to which she replies, "Everyone has a Jamie." Then she is Jamie again. Lindsey is back and she says that since all the stuff is out of the way, ____ (her fella) will finish when he gets home. She said his name but (sorry!) I didn't absorb it or I can't remember it. I stand up and bang my head on a low shelf. Suddenly Mom and I are driving through Germantown and something in my car goes wrong. I have to pull over and Mom says that we need a specific tool from a specific store, and points to an upscale-ish department store, which is closed but we see people inside. One of the people opens the door for us and then we're coming off the escalator and into a beauty-counter area. My attention is drawn to the Chanel counter and I trot over to get a spritz of some Allure, Luke's favorite on me. Out of nowhere, there's a singing man in my way. I immediately recognize him from high school; he was a total jock, one of the "hot guys" and he had a big thing for me which of course was pretty much ignored at school, since I was not exactly a cheerleader. I stopped talking to him because what I needed was a friend and he was disturbingly horndoggish. He never got in my pants, and I think that through high school there was some lingering resentment about that even though he was basically nice to me. We'll call him AJF. Anyway, AJF is between me and the Chanel counter, singing and dancing around. His singing voice isn't too bad, kinda like Michael Buble and in that style, but he looks like a damn fool. And he's singing about all the women he's looking at, making up the song as he goes along. It's creepy; he's singing about all the asses and thighs and how he just can't help himself. He's using the "p" word constantly. I'm the only one who notices him. He's danced off to another lady, so I start looking at the pretty perfume bottles and making a mental note to look for a new atomizer. Then he's back, and he's making a big, grand sweeping gesture with his arm that knocks over and breaks all the pretty bottles. Undaunted, he sidles up really close and says, "Hey, funny-face! My funny valentine! Dance, funny girl?" and breaks into a jig and starts singing about the tall redhead (that's me) whose lady-parts he never knew but still wants to. I'm impressed by his clever rhyming but he still looks like an idiot and I still think he's pathetic. Then I'm suddenly back on Lindsey's couch. Jamie and Lindsey are looking down at me and I realize that when I bumped my head and conked out and that I had been dreaming. I say to Lindsey, "Oh, man... I need to write down my dream quick for Nocturnal Admissions! That was crazy!" and she agrees and starts rummaging through things for a particular dream notebook she keeps. She rummages into the other room and Jamie starts rubbing my shoulders. Then she touches my face and leans in to kiss me and I stop her. I'm very confused and I don't want her. I get mad and tell her she doesn't want me in particular, she just generally wants everybody. She starts crying. Lindsey walks in and hands me the notebook. She notices Jamie crying and looks at me like, "What's her deal?" and I roll my eyes and shrug. I flip open the notebook and start flipping to find a blank page. We hear her significant other pull into the driveway and come up the walk. I flip to a page that has a picture pasted to it, a picture of Lindsey and her ex, and there's a poem to go with it. She gasps that she thought she had thrown it away. Jamie storms out. Lindsey's guy, who is too dream-blurry to identify, comes in and sees the picture/poem in my hand, yells "Goddammit!" and walks back outside and sits in a chair on the front porch. Lindsey gives me a hateful look and I feel really low, like I've gotten her in big trouble. She goes outside too and that's when I wake up.

Big Kitty.

2008-04-19T21:23:00.003-05:00

Last night I had another bout with a scary sleep paralysis situation, only this time it did not involve the hag I usually see. Instead, I dreamed/hallucinated two small slightly glowing eyes in the crack of the bathroom door, and I either then saw or understood that they belonged to a big cat, like a mountain lion. I credit this completely to having earlier viewed a forwarded e-mail of a mountain lion/cougar on someone's back porch. I couldn't move or scream (duhr, because that's what happens with sleep paralysis) but of course I awakened just before the cat pounced. This is obviously a clear case of a picture just getting lodged in my head and popping back up later. Its significance to me is that this is the ONLY time I can remember the hag not being part of the s.p.

Dreambits

2008-04-19T11:59:00.003-05:00

1.

Theogeo started a new career as a call girl.

2.

A coked-out feline chases me up a metallic staircase. It clacks up the stairs, mewling and meowing the entire flight. Finally, it leaps on my face and starts clawing my nose to shreds. In real life, I jolt out of sleep only to find myself punching a nearby pillow.

3.

I'm wearing a pink gazebo balloon animal to my sister's wedding. I'm completely naked except for the pink gazebo balloon animal wrapped around my midsection. "That's so gay," a wedding guest says. I begin stroking the pink gazebo balloon animal. I look up at the guest plainatively and say, "it's a part of me."

Wow, brain. Wow.

2008-04-17T10:41:00.005-05:00

Last night I dreamed that my brother and sister were murdered and buried in a shallow, shared grave in my parents' backyard.

I remember going through the initial grief, and then trying to maintain my composure, doing well for a while, and then thinking about being an only child for the rest of my life. I remember standing on the grave without realizing it, and watching the dirt — red clay — shift to show a bit of someone's sleeve beneath it. Then I remember having a complete sobbing breakdown on the floor/ground, complete with heaves and honks and drool and snot bubbles and convulsions. I remember my parents trying to comfort me.

There's more, but it's all gotten quite foggy and I'd rather put it behind me anyway.

This may be the most fucked-up dream I've ever had.

Shock value

2008-04-16T11:32:00.003-05:00

1.

We are riding on a bus, heading who knows where. It's packed with kids I don't know and kids from my senior class. And Jack White, fresh from either the De Stijl or White Blood Cells album. He's sitting in the seat in front of me, next to the aisle, chatting and laughing it up with the more popular students. His hair is delightfully mussed and he's wearing a red shirt (as if you couldn't have predicted).

I suppose I'm trying to get his attention in any way I can. So I'm babbling loud mnonsense to my seatmates, who are giggling at my lack of shame. Suddenly, I blurt, "GOD IS A PUSSY."

Hahaha, I'm cracking up right now even writing that because who the fuck says that aloud, much less in a dream? I'm a horrible person, clearly.

My exclamation fails to get Jack's attention but everyone around me reels in shock that I'd ever let such blasphemy cross my lips.

2.

I am at the Young Avenue Deli with my old friend Amy F. (whom I haven't seen or talked to in real life in a few years). I've just trekked there through what is definitely not Cooper-Young but more dense and old and cobblestoned (probably some Parisian street I saw and internalized when I watched Paris, Je T'aime the other night). I'm ordering food from a plump young lady with short red hair. She is utterly bored with the task of punching my order into the computer and ringing me up. As I stand there by the bar (in this dream, unlike in real life, the food cash register is near the bar, not in the other room; in fact the layout of the place is all jacked up in the dream so I won't even try to explain), Amy and I are talking about newspapers and she begins going off on designers who insert errors into stories and make reporters look bad. (Amy, for the record, is not a reporter and as far as I know, couldn't give two shits about journalism.)

We get in a tiff in which she basically calls me out for ruining one of stories way back when, and she demeans my very profession in the process. I'm devastated that she would be so hard on me for making a very human mistake, which I explained was the result of several people's errors, not just mine. She continues berating me as I look over to the side room and see the popular kids from high school (what is with all the high school dreams lately? yeesh) getting drunk off of bottles of wine (including a magnum of Hogue White Harvest, yum). I've had my fill of being made to feel like shit, so I tell the cashier lady to forget about my food, even though I've already paid, and I stumble out onto the street like I'm drunk, even though I've not been drinking, and try to make my way back home through the cold, damp streets.

Performance anxiety

2008-04-15T10:23:00.003-05:00

My dreams were all about the zombie walk again. Specifically, how I've managed to fuck it up or not do a good job.

This time I'm in a huge movie theater full of people. It's an IMAX theater, it seems, with massive stadium seating, and we've just watched a promo movie hyping the next zombie walk. It's over and people are scattering, but I feel like I need to say something to them, so I rush down to the front of the room and attempt to yell over the din, but my voice doesn't carry at all. Someone hands me a microphone. I can hear my voice coming out in a comically distorted tone once I start speaking.

"Wow, I don't think I really sound like that, do I?" I ask the crowd, most of whom are ignoring me. I keep talking and talking and listening to my voice through the microphone and wondering why it sounds so hilariously obnoxious. Finally, someone changes the settings and my real voice starts coming out.

I make my announcement — I don't even remember what it was — and then go inside an equipment closet with my fellow organizers. Inside the equipment closet is a small spiral staircase. We go up it, and it gets smaller and smaller until it just ends.

Then we come back down.

Yep.

There's also some stuff knocking around in my brain about how we had some video that didn't get done on time, and there's a point at which I'm standing in the middle of a busy highway intersection.

Yep.

from 2003

2008-04-13T18:47:00.001-05:00

I was running. I was running from Jim Carrey. I had become entrapped inside a mid-revolutionary battle house during a nuclear holocaust, and Jim Carrey was my torturous captor. Bombs exploded outside, in all worlds, through and through, reality was unraveling, and I was skipping from world to world, lost from my own, in a warp zone tree infested modest two-story home. With my crippled pit bull in tow, I leapt from limb to banister in fevered and breathless panic in hopes of completing my mission and escaping back to my world with my dog. I found a warp hole and shimmied through into a vine-entangled jungle room. A suitcase bomb took out some flooring of the room in the next world, and my viney floor dissolved into a yawning gap between the trunks of two gigantic trees. My dog became laboriously heavy in my leather satchel, but I continued in frenzied haste down the tree house sidewalks towards a glass exit door. It was an exit to the outside. I could see shrubs, and a paved parking lot with modest sedans of grayish blue and maroon – it was my world! I crawled on my belly through the door and paused at the edge of the brick building, relishing in the edificial fire cover it provided against the turrets. I rested my dog’s satchel against the wall and positioned myself to peep around. Explosions, screaming, bullets shredding, my heart pounding; I inched the outermost corner of my left eye around the wall – too see a pair of army boots. I looked up in terror to see Jim Carrey smiling sadistically as he pulled back a long sword, then buried it in my skull.

Darkness surrounded me, and a deafening toll sounded. My heart pounded as I slowly became aware of grey contours about me. I lurched upright and stared at my blaring alarm, whose face dutifully read 5:14. Oh. The dim melancholy of my small upper room reminded me that there was no revolution, and I was curled on my sunken brown couch under a star-covered afghan having a nightmare.

When you suddenly remember a dream you had...

2008-04-13T02:16:00.003-05:00

...or at least the feeling you got from the dream itself and you feel as though it was a dream you had a long time ago...and possibly more than once...Are you remembering a dream you really had a long time ago or are you suddenly remembering a dream you only had the night before...or at least more recently than you think...and it only seems as if it's old?

Earlier this evening I was passing through the little swamp just before you get to my parents' log house in Hernando when I saw something that triggered a visual sense memory. It was around 6:15 or so and the sun was still out, but the sky was beginning to fill with semi-vibrant pinks and oranges...which reflected on the surface of the water. The water is also rising down there. It isn't necessarily as high as it's ever been...so says my mom...but it's getting high enough that they were forced to purchase flood insurance. There are several bridges you have to cross before you get to their house and lately, they've been closing them more frequently with our freakish April showers.

Long story short...I see the colors of the sky in the water and I remember a dream that I had at some point in my life...I feel like it was years ago...where I'm forced to travel across a very thin pathway...which is sometimes underwater and sometimes barely above...and sometimes very high above the water...so high that to fall off would most certainly result in me being rendered dead. BUT the one constant is that there is always water. At times my family is with me...maybe other people who I don't know now, but whom I was familiar with in the dream. We're travelling somewhere. Sometimes I feel like we're in a car and sometimes we're going on foot. Our path was once a road, but not much is left of it. Sometimes I feel like I'm swimming. The colors are very vibrant. There are blues as pure as cobalt from a tube...pinks and oranges. They seem like sashes that sort of flow in the breeze or in a current if they're under water. All I know is that I'm on some kind of important journey and despite being scared I have to continue.

So within a few seconds of seeing the colors on the water today...all of this sort of comes rushing back and a question forms in my mind. What if...and it's a big what if...but it's an interesting what if...What if the Big Bang or whatever formed our universe was a sort of controlled event...not by like an intelligent designer...no...not that...but the kind of explosion that is the result of an event...the kind of result that could be predicted. For instance if we mix two chemicals we know what type of reaction will play out. What if everything...man evolving from sea creatures, man developing the wheel, and ultimately becoming what we are today...is all some sort of predictable...controlled reaction? What if dreams are glitches that occassionally act as metaphors to the real journeys we're taking in life? What if that old dream (which I forgot to mention seemed like the road to my parents' house) is some sort of a clue about my life's ultimate path...if it has one? What if? What if we're accidentally catching a glimpse of a pre-destined roadmap for our lives? Maybe?

Deep...I know.

Maybe one day I'll write about the dream I had in the 10th grade where I (in the dream) dated Kelly Kapowski from Saved By The Bell (Tiffany Amber Theissen-sp?) for the better part of a month. When I woke up I felt dissoriented and when I realized it was only a dream I felt like I had been dumped. It really hurt that much. That residual break-up feeling lasted for a good week. I'll never forget the time we had together, Kelly. Never.

Edge of a crater

2008-04-12T12:31:00.002-05:00

The same dream with the crazy storm has now progressed to where I'm sitting on the edge of a very large crater alongside my father. The ground is very spongy and I feel like I don't have a good grip. I feel like any second now I'm going to tumble down off the side into the crater and die. I continue sitting with my back to the crater, looking over my shoulder and trying to dig my fingers into the spongy earth.

Someone next to me on the other side points across to somewhere inside the massive indentation and says "that's where it hit." Lucky for me, my sarcastic mind never skips a beat even when pumped full of adrenaline at the fear of falling. I think to myself, "It's a crater. The whole damn thing is where it hit, genius."

Mother nature hurls Crayola colors

2008-04-12T12:10:00.003-05:00

I'm at a beach with a lot of people I know including my sister who is out in the surf while I walk on the beach looking around at people and wondering about the menacing clouds approaching.

The clouds are not the average dark grey thunderheads. They're rather brown and resemble something more like a sandstorm than rainclouds.

About as soon as they're over the beach, softball-size drops of mostly yellow paint come falling out of the clouds and making big "sploosh!" sounds in the water. People start screaming and running. I'm looking around and realize these paint bombs aren't bursting and dissipating very much. They're actually rather gelatinous and they're ensnaring people in the water and on the beach.

It's strange, too, the color of these things. They're mostly bright yellow, but there are swirls of red, green, blue and purple in them that occasionally appear. The water has since turned from blue to an Easter-like pale yellow with rivulets of other colors.

My sister is screaming and crying as she tries to climb out of the surf and onto land to flee. I see a few people move to try to help her and I turn away to keep running. I've been hit by two or three of these Crayola blobs that I've shaken off as I climb over a breaker and stumbled down into some long soft grass.

I start clambering up an embankment full of flowers, grabbing and tugging at them to help myself up to the path. I yell at people to head east. "You have to head east before you go north!" I shout.

Your guess is as good as mine

2008-04-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

1.

It's New Year's Eve. I don't know this just yet, but it will become apparent in just a bit. There are people everywhere. I'm not sure where I am and I don't really recognize any of the people around me. Some dark-haired dude I've never seen before comes up and starts cutting my hair with very large, very frightening shears. He is cutting in such a way that I am afraid he's going to slice me open. I tell him to be careful, and I close my eyes tight in fear. Suddenly he kisses me square on the lips and I open my eyes and realize it's because it's midnight on New Year's Eve. Everyone starts cheering and celebrating and I realize that he has cut my hair into a ridiculously short bob*. This distresses me a great deal, as I'm quite attached to my long hair and I tend to look weird with short hair. I freak out and leave the place.

Outside, it's dark, and there are people perched next to cars, poised to take photographs of the people who come out of the building. Like paparazzi. I cover my face and lament that I will look so lame in the photographs thanks to my short hair.

2.

Amber is sitting at a table full of girls I don't know. They are all dressed in mid-'80s garb — acid-washed balloon overall shorts sets, for god's sake — and all of them clearly think they're onto a trend. Amber's wearing more jewelry than I have ever seen, and I note to myself that I have got to borrow her awesome dangly fuschia gem drop earrings. She's also wearing a hot pink cat broach, and a yellow dog broach (I did have one of these when I was a kid), as well as layers of necklaces and bangles on her arms. Her hair is cut short again.

Several of the girls at the table look uncomfortable. I don't know if they all know each other or not. I call out one of the girls for wearing all that '80s crap and not even liking it. She stands up to confront me and ends up being 9 feet tall.

* Yet another dream for which I pulled content from that day's events. My friend Ashley just got her hair cut really short and told me about it over e-mail yesterday at work.

Dreambitapalooza

2008-04-10T12:19:00.002-05:00

It was a veritable carnival of anxiety dreams in my skull last night. Bollocks, I can't remember many specifics of any of them.

1. It's zombie walk day and not very many people have shown up. Worse yet is that the ones that have shown up don't seem too terribly excited, and are underdressed and underwhelming and guess who feels like a total failure? No, come on. You can guess. That's right. THIS CHUMP.

2. I am riding in a car with a blonde-haired European dude who looks like some kind of weird Elijah Wood knockoff. He is being a pretentious asshole about something ... though I don't remember what ... and I'm trying to console him by telling him it's not really as bad as he thinks. And as soon as I reach out to touch him, he acts repulsed and freaks out and wrecks the car. We are careening off the road when I force myself to wake up.

3. I'm in an odd and foreboding version of my great-grandmother's house. It seems like there's some sort of permanent darkness outside. I'm hiding out from someone. Someone who feels drunk and violent. I try to lock myself in the bathroom but spend several harrowing seconds trying to get the door to latch and then lock. It doesn't matter anyway; the door feels thin like it's made out of balsa wood and could be smashed by a single pissed-off fist. Whoever's looking for me gets in the house ... and I remember having to leave the house and get into a car ... feels like there may have been rain. I don't know where we ended up going.

Brain update

2008-04-09T13:12:00.005-05:00

For the very first time in months, my brain dislodged the high school test mememe.

In last night's dream, I was finally on time for once.

It could be that my subconscious realizes that I will disparge it publicly on the Internet if it doesn't get its shit together for once.

Late Registeration

2008-04-07T21:32:00.004-05:00

I've been having this recurring and deeply cliched high school examination dream.

Says Dream Moods,

"To dream that you are taking an exam, indicates that you are being put to the test or being scrutinized in some way. Such dreams highlight your feelings of being anxious and agitated...You may also experience the fear of not being accepted, not being prepared, or not being good enough. You feel nervous, insecure and tend to believe the worst about yourself.These dreams also suggest that you may feel unprepared for a challenge."

Christ. It's like they're living in my brain.

In my test dream, I'm always stoned or late for this exam. Last night, I dreamt that after smoking a spliff, I waded through a gang shooting and tornado en route to high school.

Oh...it's cool that my cat is my car too.

2008-04-07T19:24:00.002-05:00

Actually...the line from my dream was "Oh...it's cool that Heinrich is my car too." But see...I knew none of you guys...ok...like only two of you guys...the two I know...would know who Heinrich was.
SO...I'm on my way to a friend's house for something important. I pull up into the drive...which is somehow inside a house...and realize that despite my little red hatchback being tiny...it still has its ass hanging out in the road...which might be a hallway since we're actually in doors...but I can't tell. The driveway is maybe...MAYBE 2 feet long. Right in front of my car is a bookshelf of about 4 feet in height and on the other side of that is a long slab that runs 12 to 15-ish feet on into what now seems like a dining room/garage. My logic dictates that if I continue driving forward my wheels will drive up the bookshelf so that my car is diagonal and no longer in the road. Somehow it works, but when I go to step out of my car it changes the dynamic and the car begins to roll backwards. My friend/student Cody is there now with his handlebar mustache and he's helping me try to figure out what to do. My car's wheels are now really close together...like the wheels of an ab roller (shut up) and I'm able to pick it up and set it onto the slab/table thing. Only...now, my car is green and plastic and the wheels are white. I see my cat Heinrich running by and am concerned that he can't fit in the garage as long as my car is there...but then my car turns into Heinrich and runs away...to which I respond "Oh...it's cool that Heinrich is my car too."

I'm just not this frisky.

2008-04-06T16:26:00.004-05:00

Without going into a lot of small detail and TMI, I've recently had a crop of vivid sex dreams, mainly starring people I am not attracted to/don't even know. Most notably, Bret Michaels. The night that I encountered the Rock of Love itself was also a night fraught with sleep paralysis and nightmares, though I have to admit that, surprisingly, Bret wasn't too shabby of a dream-partner. Other people who have shown up lately include but are not limited to: ex-coworkers, members of bands I like, and even a politician. I have no idea what any of this means. I've never had so many of this type of dream, so close together. (It should also be noted that there is little-to-no pleasure with these dreams, during or after. They're just fuckin' weird.)

The Asslicking Bandits

2008-04-06T14:25:00.005-05:00

Criminal Activity

Unknown suspects have been breaking into houses in Williamson County. The suspects have been trussing victims up like a Christmas turkey and performing acts of anal penetration on said victims. The time of occurrence for the majority of these crimes has taken place between lunch and dinner hours. One of the suspects has been described by the victim "TvontheFritz" as an Asian-American woman in her mid-40s who bears an uncanny resemblance to Margaret Cho.

Cobwebs

2008-04-06T11:12:00.002-05:00

I'm in the house in which I grew up and I notice there are a fair number of cobwebs in the corners and around the place.

Then, this one woman I don't recognize is telling me that there are in fact spiders everywhere, but I haven't been looking at them.

So, I start looking around and I realize ... she's right. There are spiders building webs all over the place. In fact, I'm surrounded by them. It's a labyrinth of webs and I'm stuck in them. To get out of the house means I'm covered in webs and spiders.

I look down and realize two light brown monsters have already made their way onto my clothing. I pull off a shoe and fling them off me, then beat them to pulps once they land. Then, I start swinging my shoe through the air, clearing the cobwebs and killing spiders in the way.

I have a nice bubble around myself cleared only to realize ... I haven't been seeing the smaller filaments. Now I realize there are still more around me as I furiously swing my shoe in an effort to clear them.

Then, in the ultimate brain-telling-itself-that-this-is-psycho moment, several people walk up oblivious to the webs and spiders and ask me what I'm doing. "I'm clearing the spider webs. Don't you guys see them? They're everywhere! And spiders, too!"

"No," they say ...

Straightjackets on sale only $29.95. I swear ...

Something borrowed, something ... doesn't add up

2008-04-06T10:53:00.005-05:00

I dreamed that my mother was planning some sort of all-day extravagant wedding celebration for herself and her new husband. They were going to get married in the morning, kick back and relax in the afternoon, then have a huge celebratory reception at night.

This night thing was supposed to be black tie. In my mind, I had already picked out what dress my mother should wear. It was daring but it's elegant. It was also very expensive.

My mother, on the other hand, was worried about costs and seeming snobbish spending all this money. So she picked out this kimono looking shapeless dress with pants underneath. It was white with black designs on it and it looked like pajamas. I mean it was like polyester made up to look like silky fabric with folds and creases still in it. And the pants underneath are just a smidge too short from where they should be.

Then she's wearing these abominations she called "shoes" that looked like she was trying to cover up bandaged feet and still wear wedge heels.

All this leads me to the conclusion that my mother is crazy and doesn't want to go through with the ceremony.

Bo-day-ga

2008-03-31T18:31:00.000-05:00

I'm on a couch in the middle of what looks like a Washington Square-sized coffee shop. My favorite professor, Dr. H-K, is leading a class behind me. I've got a story to tell him, but one of his students needs my seat. I move to another couch and sit next to Danny Glover. He'll have to do for now. I tell him the story instead:

I was walking in the mountains when someone stole my pickup truck and began to chase me. Before the bad guy could run me over, a woman in a Chinese bodega-TCBY combo shot a poison dart up through her ceiling, hitting the thief in the ass and saving my life.

Gifted

2008-03-29T22:14:00.004-05:00

I am hanging out with my gifted class -- as well as a few other people from high school who were not part of the gifted class -- and we are riding in a moving restaurant. It's like a reunion of sorts, as everyone seems to be the adult version of him/herself. I haven't seen most of these people in eight years or so.

The moving restaurant is moving fast. It's almost like we're in train cars, but we're bustling through city streets. I see tall highrises around us. It's night and the city is twinkling. Things are getting jostled around from the speed at which we're moving. I can see into the kitchen and the line cook is swaying with the dining car as we make a right.

Everyone sits down at a long table -- we seem to have stopped moving or perhaps moved to a stationary outdoor table. We're talking (about what, I don't know) but Brandy T. shows me a painting I apparently gave her back in the day. It's a rudimentary and very bad version of a painting I did for Amber (the one whose background is based on a pattern that can be found on a pair of underwear I have) in real life.

At some point, everyone's mellow is seriously harshed because we realize that Jacob H. is not with us. Because he's dead. Electrocuted, to be exact. He is apparently the first of our group to have passed away.

***This is an example of dream content for which my brain plucks situations directly from real life and turns them into barely filtered craziness. The gifted class bit comes from my conversation with Palm Tree last Friday night, when we drunkenly mused about the good old days and how we'd love to reunite with Mrs. Gilchrist's class again just to see everyone. And the electrocution bit had to come from my conversation with Lighthouse Pilot yesterday about being electrocuted: by fences, by wires, by Coke machines. And the bit about the dining car no doubt was taken from my excitement yesterday over learning that you can go from Memphis to New Orleans for $50 each way on an Amtrak.***

Crime scene

2008-03-28T10:20:00.004-05:00

I have found myself and two of my friends — X and Y — in the hospital, though I don't think any of us are sick or hurt. X is wearing hospital garb, though, and reclining in one of the room's twin beds. She seems in good enough spirits, and I find myself wondering where her boyfriend is, as they're usually together. I also notice that Y has a sister there with us, although in real life he doesn't have a sister at all. I also realize that Y's dream sister is the real-life sister of my first boyfriend Jeremy (I'll call her C.A.).

We're hanging out in the hospital room, being generally goofy and making each other laugh, which is what we normally do in real life. Y does or says something — I don't remember which — that is so perfectly amusing that I can barely contain myself and lean over to give him a quick smooch. He quickly turns and presents his cheek to me, and then reconsiders and kisses me on the mouth. We don't think another thing about it, but X gets really upset and starts berating us. She storms out of the room. The three of us are left wondering exactly what we did to incite such a lecture.

Somehow we discern that there's a commotion going on outside. We leave the hospital room and follow the labyrinthine corridors to the hospital's back exit. There are tons of people doing exactly what we're doing — going toward where the action supposedly is. We reach the outside and continue walking along the sidewalks of a residential neighborhood. I see my mother walk right past me, and I stop her "Mom! momomomommom! Hey!" — and hug her and walk with her, even though she's acting incredibly distant and very much unlike how my mother would act if she randomly saw me out somewhere.

As I'm walking with her, I notice I'm leaving Y and C.A. behind, but I figure I'll catch up to them later; it's my mom! We finally arrive at where the supposed action is and I realize there's been a horrible murder and everyone is standing around gawking at a crime scene. I briefly glance in the direction of a house surrounded by police tape, and see a body under a white sheet on a stretcher. There's blood flecked on the sheet and pooling on the stretcher below. I look away and don't notice anything else about the crime scene.

I infer from the conversations around me that there had been a horrible knife fight in the house, and many people had been carved up. No one seemed to know the victims. Or the killer. I notice that Y and C.A. are gone, so I tell my mom bye and head back to the hospital to tell them what I found out. Once inside the hospital, I can't for the life of me find the outpatient corridor. It's a swank hospital. Think something done in the design style of CSI: Miami, except classy. I rush past the nurses' station and head down a hallway toward surgery. I double back. I head down another hallway, and find a fucking aquarium. Double back. Two more false starts down unfamiliar halls and I finally find the outpatient hall beneath the stairwell. I don't remember which room we had, but I find one that has a post-it with "Lindsey Turner's blog" written on it. Um, okay.

I go inside, and Y and C.A. are there, but X is still nowhere to be found. C.A. has blood all over her face, except it's theatrical blood — bright red and goopy — so I don't think much of it. I tell them all about what I know about the crime scene, and C.A. asks me if I saw the other bodies. No, I said. But she did! She said one of them had "xoxo" carved into the chest.

Somehow I missed that.

My name is Lindsey, and I have an inferiority complex

2008-03-27T10:37:00.005-05:00

I am at Amber's place, only it's unlike any actual place she's ever lived in. It's more like a dorm or compound of sorts, where lots of people live crammed into a small space. There's sleeping bags and living accoutrement everywhere. I make my way to a small space behind a curtain — a dressing area perhaps — and hey, there's Chan Marshall (Cat Power), wearing all black. She sees me take a pair of green striped workout pants from my bag, and she gestures to them as if she recognizes them. I tell her they're my ex's.

A flicker of recognition passes over her face. "You're Lindsey," she says, as I realize she somehow knows Phil. She has some kind of muddled nearly British accent, which is weird, because she really doesn't.

"Who do you love now?" she asks me. A hundred thoughts flash through my head, but I tell her that I can't possibly get into that. It's too complicated.

The group — Chan, Amber, and a couple of unidentifiable people my brain sorta made up — heads out for a night on the town. I shove some piece of important paper into my back pocket, throw my purse over my shoulder, and hurry out the door. I feel rushed and unsure. We walk a few blocks (it feels like we are in the city, presumably New York, but what part, I have no idea; later it feels like we're back on Long Island) and get to this outdoor concert space where, apparently, Led Zeppelin is playing. We can't actually see the band, but we can hear them and we can see the lights reflecting off the partial walls around us. Wow, they sound just like they do on the albums I have. Hmm.

The concert venue is oddly shaped — there are big rectangular slabs of slate interrupting the flow of the place. I feel like I need to draw exactly what it looked like to accurately describe it. It doesn't really seem like a music venue at all, but more like a public park art sculpture. Occasionally, and to our subdued amusement, we will see the guitar player — Jimmy Page, presumably — walk on the slate walls for an extended length of time, and the round a corner out of our sight. Ordinarily, people walking on walls would creep me out, but it was a rock show, so it was awesome.

I realize that I don't think I locked my car. I just imagine random passersby trying the handle and being delighted when it opens. I fumble around in my enormous and noisy purse for my keys, and manage to accidentally dislodge the important paper in my back pocket. I quickly hit the lock button on my remote, in the hopes that I'm still within remote range. And then I see the piece of paper skitter along the ground toward a giant fountain. I run away from the group, which has more or less been ignoring me anyway (we don't know each other very well) and chase the piece of paper. Every time I grab at it, it lunges toward the fountain a little quicker. I just know the damn thing is going to end up in the fountain and I'm going to lose whatever essential info was on it. I can feel people watching me and silently judging my stupid ass. I make one final leap and nearly go careening into the fountain, but I catch myself and the note, and for one triumphant second, I don't care what people think.

But then I come back to reality and realize that I am a mess. I feel frazzled and disorganized and uncool and frumpy and unattractive and unworthy of hanging out with these new people (this is a feeling I often have in real life, yay). So I take off walking around this harbor/marina-type thing, gazing off into the misty distance, at the boats and the gulls and the ropes. It's beautiful, and I just sort of take it all in. I feel someone behind me, and turn to see it's Amber, who's come to check on me. She's following close behind me, mimicking my steps, trying to make me laugh.

The dream parade made a stop in my skull last night and the grand marshall was a demon who tried to possess me

2008-03-24T11:01:00.005-05:00

You ever think that maybe certain locations are more fruitful when it comes to dreams? Like your brain feeds on the residue there -- if it can pick it up -- and just runs with the craziness?

I ask because any time I spend the night in my childhood bedroom, I seem to have lots of dreams, and some of them fill me with anxiety. Like, not run-of-the-mill anxiety, but life-and-death-of-my-soul anxiety.

So last night I'm having a sweet fix of a dream about a boy (whose reality I knew was hopeless to be had), when suddenly a metaphorical night falls on me and I feel hunted by evil forces. I wake up -- or do I? -- and realize that my mouth is slightly open and A) I am being observed by something malevolent and B) some evil force is possessing me by pushing itself into my open mouth. I can't move my body (damned night paralysis!) so I exhale to expel the evil -- and I make the craziest moan/growl noise in the process. But I feel the evil leaving me. My heart is racing and I lie there and wonder why I always have these horrible demon-related dreams at my parents' house. Because really, I can't think of a time when I've had a demon-related dream anywhere BUT my parents' house.

I finally fall back asleep (if I was truly awake at all) and go into another dream or two ... which I swear I remembered until I started typing this; maybe they will come to me and I can come back and fill this in (stay tuned).

...

And then I am sitting at a table with The Harmony Brothers -- the full quartet -- and I am apparently drunk. We're at some sort of celebration. I don't know that I've ever been drunk in a dream before, but I am totally drunk and unable to control the volume of voice. When I can focus long enough, I realize that Jeff and Jeremy are giving me the most humiliating looks I can possibly imagine -- it's pure disdain mixed with just a hint of embarrassment at how pathetic I am.

I realize that I shouldn't be around them so I scoop up Felix and run inside my parents' house -- much to Phil's protests about how of course I should be there -- and lock myself in the bedroom where there's a window overlooking the party and where Felix can roam around freely.

Squishing

2008-03-19T00:44:00.003-05:00

There is some kind of bug on my floor — a centipede or something — and I can't seem to catch up to it quickly enough to smash it. It's running all over and I'm searching for things to use to thwack it. I finally settle on something — something sturdy like a can — and squash it. When I pull back, the damned thing keeps running. I try to kill it again and again. I don't remember if I ever succeed.

I wore my smoking patches again last night

2008-03-14T10:52:00.007-05:00

The abridged version:

After the bucktoothed, spittoon-toting pastor delivers a fire-and-brimstone sermon at an asbestos-ridden Presbyterian church in rural Tennessee, my mother feels moved by the spirit.

She retreats to a backroom to get saved, but ends up with the pastor groping her chest. Furious that the pastor is a lecherous old perv, my family decides to go all I Piss on Your Grave on his ass.

I begin conversing with a ham sandwich shellacked in careful detail as a shrine to the Nativity scene with the little sprigs of lettuce denoting a goodwill Olive branch.

"The Nun Bun doesn't have nothing on my ass," the shellacked Nativity scene sandwich tells me.

For some reason, I become convinced that this sandwich is Jesus.

At the last minute, right before my family exacts revenge, a cavalcade of cops barrels through a side door. They arrest the pastor on embezzlement charges.

As the end credits roll (end credits?), I grapple with the death of Sandwich Jesus. It seems that one of the cops has chomped him to bits.

"Oh, my Lord," I wail as I comb through pieces of lettuce and Swiss cheese. "Father, I have forsaken you."

Dream residue

2008-03-13T08:06:00.003-05:00

So, I can't remember much of what I dreamt about last night, but I can remember that I had a lot of fitful dreams that made me wake up repeatedly. I remember waking up at one point because I flailed my arms around and knocked my glasses off my passenger-side pillow and onto the floor and the clattering woke me up.

I'm almost positive I had a lucid flying dream, though, and another dream where I was trying to focus my eyes but couldn't see anything. I'm not sure I've ever dreamed about my horrible vision before.

Oh, and I kissed the same dude again.

Baby, my snake is a shark tonight

2008-03-12T11:03:00.003-05:00

I had a long and meandering dream last night. I've mostly forgotten all the details, except this bit:

I'm hanging out with this guy I like, and we're just sort of sitting there, kind of facing each other casually. There's not a lot of distance between us. I'm petting my cat Jack, and Jack goes in for some headbutt nuzzle action, and I oblige for a minute. And then I just sort of lean over and kiss the guy straight on the mouth. He seems surprised, but not weirded out at all. In fact, I begin to hesitate and apologize for being so forward, but he tells me, no, it's totally cool. Really. And he kisses me back.

It's a good kiss, too.

Murder and Botox

2008-03-12T06:44:00.002-05:00

I am working in a hair salon with Alicia and another woman, who is the only one allowed to "cut" hair. I think to myself, wow, I finally got into a creative career I can get into. And then I think to myself, but it's hairdressing. I walk in and am having fun goofing off with Alicia and fluffing the locks of happy clients. Then I am at the Hippy Shack, and I am alone playing pool, but I feel like Jeff is around somewhere. I am waiting, hoping someone will show up. I raise the cover of my piano and look at the strings. Inside is a compartment. I open it and my Dad has a secret CD stash there. I wonder why they're secrets and open the padded, zippered pouch to inspect them. I look at the first one, which is a purple disk, and I hear people on the porch. I thrust it back in, quickly, and wince when I realize that Dad will notice it's unzipped. It's Mom and Carolyn, although Carolyn looks like someone else. "What are you guys doing here?" I ask. "We's wantin' to see if you and Jeff wanted to play some pool," Mom answered. I said, "I'll ask him - he's just over in the main house." But I meant another segment of the Hippy Shack that wasn't attached to the pool room, not my parents' actual house. I opened the front door to the Hippy Shack and it was pouring down rain. "Oh, wow," I said, and Mom answered, "I know." I jumped off the front porch and made for the carport but it seemed to take longer than it should've. Mom was in the background, screaming, "Faster, Tamara! Faster!" But when I got under it I was in the middle bathroom of my parents' house. Jeff said, "No, I don't want to play pool." He looked like he was in serious mode (like last night at his high school band's concert). "The last thing I have time for right now is playing pool with you and your mother." Then Mom was beside him, nodding at me as if to say, "Duh, Tamara, why would you even ask him?" Then I realized that I was sitting on a toilet, needing to pee. "Could you guys get out? I'm trying to use the bathroom." Then I was locking up the Hippy Shack, and on the way out I noticed a large blue planter with a coat of maroon paint on the inside. I remembered trying to take it with me once, and a policeman wouldn't let me, saying they were using it to look for evidence of a murder. He was laughing, but I wasn't, because I realized that I had killed my late uncle with an electric drill, drilling a hole in his head, and then chopped it off and faked a car accident. He was still all jokes, staring at me in the rain in his soaking wet police uniform, "You shoulda said to 'em, 'Djew find a head inside of it? Alright, then, I reckon I'm taking this planter.'" I faked a brief smile and headed for my car. I knew he was suddenly suspicious of me, but I looked up at the pear tree's leaves swaying in the rain and thought, I guess these are the feelings you deal with when the choices you make in life include drill-killing and beheading your uncle. Then my dad's friend Hop pulled up in his truck and I tried to rush into my car but he jumped out and said, "Tamara, I need your number. I need to talk to you about this." [In my last dream, my mother told me not to talk to Hop, and I remembered this.] "Let me give you my mom's number," I said. "This is really between you two." Then Mom appeared and they were talking out of my range. I started to drive away, but I thought Dad would be mad that I left her. Then I started to just get in my car and wait to escape the rain, but I thought that would be rude. Then I'm sitting outside of my hair salon, and I inject myself with Botox, right on the chin. I didn't want to - my mind was telling me how I didn't need it and it was poison and there was no rational reason for me to do it - but I just uncontrollably stabbed myself with the needle and pressed the plunger. Then I thought, Oh great, I am SO going to have a bad reaction to this. My mind answered, "You? You of all people will have a terrible allergic reaction to this. There's no way your body will tolerate it. You'd better take supplies." I dig in my purse, realizing with embarrassment that Other Lady in the salon is swamped, and staring at my car outside, wondering what the hell I'm doing. I'll be even more embarrassed when I tell her. I open a set of instructions, like it was a haircolor kit, and notice that what I injected was malleable, and I was supposed to manually sculpt it inside my skin. I look into a mirror and think, Great, just what I need - my lip area to be BIGGER. Then I hop out of the car and hurry around to the passenger seat to grab my stuff. It's dark and raining. I think, Well, Alicia isn't here yet, either, but then I see her maroon car parked there. I think, Shit.

The Bottom of the Well

2008-03-09T14:44:00.004-05:00

My teeth are falling out again. According to the FreakyDreams.com, this translates into a "loss of honor, fear of failure and feeling out of control." Spot-on. They're like the frickin' SparkNotes of Subtext Becoming Rapidly Text.

I'm standing in my family's foyer. It's Christmasy all around. Sweet Baby Jesus is lying in the manger. My cousin is a six-figure MD, sitting out on the porch with his recently Botoxed missus. My other cousin is a Baptist preacher.

And I'm standing in my family's foyer with my pants bunched around my ankles, smoking a pathetic looking spliff through cud chewers.

But at least, I seem happy.

Worst. Doctor visit. Ever.

2008-02-27T09:08:00.004-06:00

We are sitting in a psychiatrist's waiting room. Beside me is a quiet middle-aged man. In front of me, in a chair against the wall, is another middle-aged man, reading a magazine. He's got a weird, ruddy texture to his face, like he's been burned or had bad acne as a kid. He looks up from his magazine and sees the man next to me, and a flicker of recognition lights his face.

"Hey, you're [so-and-so]," he mumbles, unsure of himself.

The man next to me grows surly when he realizes he's been spotted. He mutters something rude under his breath, something in the vein of leave me alone.

The man in front of me keeps looking at the man beside me, and his confidence grows. I get the distinct feeling that the man beside me does NOT want this dude to ask for his autograph. Which he promptly does, which causes the man beside me to say something really rude and confrontational.

Both men are standing now, and I'm just sort of watching them from below and the man with the weird face takes a swing at the famous man's face. He connects, and suddenly I'm trying to get out of the way of this brawl in the middle of the waiting room.

Some older man starts clearing everyone out and sending us home. Crystal Wade and Tamara are there in the parking lot, and they offer me a ride. I turn them down because I drove my own car. They leave and I walk to the area of the lot where I remember parking, and see that my car and several others have been placed behind a makeshift barrier of corrugated metal and barbed wire. Like a junkyard fence. I sigh a thousand sighs and go back inside the clinic to get someone to let my car out.

The front foyer has been completely closed off with tall walls of Plexiglass, and the far wall has some kind of scared-looking black dog perched on the top of it. I see that the dog is on a leash, and the leash leads to somewhere behind the wall. I wonder how the dog stays balanced and what happens if it falls. Wouldn't it choke?

Suddenly I'm somewhere else — presumably behind the wall — and I'm being ushered into a dark room, like a bedroom, and made to wait — presumably for my car to be let loose. I wait for a long time, long enough to eventually find myself wearing pajamas, when someone comes in and I ask him if my car is ready yet and he acts like it's been ready for freaking ages and what was I waiting for?

Broken

2008-02-26T09:33:00.003-06:00

We are in some kind of run-down hotel room. My grandmother is in the bathroom showering, and my brother and I are in the living/sleeping area surveying the place. I'm going from window to window, closing the blinds and then the sheers and then the drapes. I get everything closed and then realize that the door in and out of the room is a huge sliding-glass door. There are no blinds or anything on it. It looks out onto a courtyard — a busy area spotted with dark, damp soil and clumps of grass.

I go over to the door and attempt to open it, when I look down and realize that the thing has shattered and I've sliced my finger open. I can't really say that it hurts too much. I decide that my brother — in the dream, he's young, maybe 12 — and I need to go to the office to report the breakage so maybe they'll move us to a different room. We peek outside the room, down the courtyard, and see a skanky-looking hand-painted sign pointing us to the office. Suddenly it feels like we're in the poor, rural part of another country, possibly Mexico.

We traipse down to the office and attempt to explain what happened to the door. The clerks — who are old with deeply grooved, tanned faces — don't seem terribly swayed. In fact, they want to turn it around like we should have to pay for the damage, which I'm not even sure we caused.

I try to convince them that they are the ones at fault. I even brag that I was cut, implying that I could sue their asses. They are utterly nonplussed.

Grandma wants to watch horror movies.

2008-02-26T08:18:00.003-06:00

My Grandma Charlie is visiting from California, and she announces that today is special grandma-granddaughter bonding time. This usually means a fun day full of shopping and heart-to-hearts over her chardonnays and my lattes, so I'm stoked. Then she tells me that she wants to watch some scary movies. I'm immediately even more stoked, but then I think Wait, she probably has a way different idea of scary than I do. And she's in her 70's. Let's take this easy. She just doesn't do horror, at all, so this is a big deal. My dad has to run an errand at Lowe's and, for some reason, we go with him. There's a big bin of previously viewed movies there and she starts going through them. I'm thinking she's going to go with something like The Uninvited (1945 version), which is cool with me because it's an awesome movie and I dig cheesy 40's one-liners. No. She comes to me with her arms full, with titles like Hellraiser, Return of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Omen (1976), Sleepaway Camp (!), Poltergeist, and... Labyrinth. She really wants to watch Dawn of the Dead. I quickly mentally scan through it. 1.5 sex scenes, some swearing, gratuitous zombie violence-goodness. Ok. But I really, really want to watch Labyrinth, and I think it's cute that she mistook it for horror. Understandable. We never get to decide on one because that's when I woke up.

Third Wheel

2008-02-26T01:50:00.001-06:00

I dreamt I was asleep in my bed in my apartment. Then Jordan Cox, from Scrubs, came walking in like she lived there and said, "Perry was masturbating in the shower! Let's pretend we're having sex." So then the bed was on the opposite side of the room and she was on top of me and we were making out. We got tired of waiting for him to stumble upon us, and then the bed was back in its place. Just as she was getting up and saying, "Maybe he'll," Dr. Cox came sauntering in in sweats with a towel around his neck and said to his wife, "Your friend needs to get the hell out of here. She's not paying rent and this is ridiculous." I realize suddenly that this isn't my apartment after all, and I haven't been paying rent, and I wonder what the hell I'm going to do. I accurately recall the balance of my bank account and realize that it won't cover a security deposit on a new apartment and still cover my bills, but I still start to get up out of bed and collect my things.

Waking life ... asleep

2008-02-24T22:07:00.002-06:00

All night last night, Wiley Wiggins kept trying to make out with me. Which was fine, it was just weird because I didn't know him in the dream and suddenly he wanted to be my boyfriend? Weird.

And I saw some kind of giant tower of dead and mutilated deer, positions in the middle of the downtown area of a city. I just kept wondering how the people whose windows gazed out on the thing felt.

upping the Warcraft ante

2008-02-24T13:12:00.004-06:00

I'm so excited I finally have a dream to post. It's rare that I have a dream and even more rare if I have one I remember long enough to talk about.

I'm so embarrassed my dream was similar to World of Warcraft. I play the game, but haven't had time to log on in quite a while. So I'm a little surprised it showed up in my subconscious.

Anyway, I dreamed I was a mage (a class I never play) and I was going through soon-to-be-added game content as a beta tester. Only instead of sitting at a computer and playing, I was outfitted with a suit that actually put me in the game.

I enter the dungeon and immediately start screaming, whirling, floating and hurling bolts at enemies in the dungeon. I kill off a few until one runs and triggers animation on another. In the game, this is called getting adds. So suddenly, across the way, mobs (as the enemies are called) start throwing maces outfitted with very sharp blades. One whizzes past me and I realize this form of beta testing could kill me.

I lay down on my back flat on the walkway using the castle-like border as my shield. Maces are flying over and embedding themselves in the wall. Then, I'm suddenly talking as though there is another entity listening to me while I'm in-game. Now that I think about it, I think I was talking to myself ... outside the dungeon. This makes me feel very very crazy.

I say I'm going to have to blink out of here since I can't make a portal. (These are two in-game abilities. Blink moves the mage several yards in whatever direction he or she is facing. Portal allows the mage to travel to a set destination using a spell reagent. Yes. nerdy.)

I start moving along the floor several yards at a time, tilting my head to see where I'm going. After a little while, I'm out of the way of flying maces and I discover this other person I have been talking to is inside the dungeon as well. She's trapped and I'm supposed to get her out. I tell her "I'm going to have to use that spell." Somehow it's understood I'm going to use an ability that will turn me into an entity entirely made of energy. I would become an indiscriminate killing machine. The Other nods and walks over into another area.

I float up and shift into this thing that looks like a purple ball of lightning and start rushing at one mob in the room all while screaming like a banshee. I make the mob explode from the inside out. I move on to another and another, causing the entire room to erupt in screams of terror. Any remaining mobs run out. My ability has not faded, so I move to another room.

Bad move.

In here is a boss with his minion. I think about how fantastic my run in this dungeon has been going so far since in the game no class, let alone mage, would be able to solo an upper-level dungeon. I alight close by the two and suddenly, my pure-energy ability fades.

Now in real game play, I would have been dead. Lucky for me in dreamland, my brain just shifted to a different kind of playing field. Now all the area around me is cubicles with their 3/4 walls and desks. The room I'm in is empty of people save the boss and his minion-now-secretary who are hot on my heels.

I run over and suddenly I'm in Corporateland in some generic office with generic people and generic office plants amid a flurry of activity. I'm still talking to the Other telling her "don't worry. I'm going to get you out."

The dream progresses into something rather sinister and bizarre, so I'll end here. The corporate world is a scary place.

I blame the lunar eclipse

2008-02-22T09:21:00.002-06:00

I'm selling my shoes at an indoor neighborhood swap. It's time to leave and I forget my purse. (Put that aside for a moment; we'll get back to it.) My grandparents, mother, and I get into a very modern, mass-produced-looking spaceship and fly to another planet. I look out through the sunroof and see that we're approaching a lovely, perfectly round ball of orange light. We arrive at what seems to be my grandparents' condo, a cozy space obviously created with the future in mind, despite the lack of obvious futuristic technology like the Jetsons had. The condo's designer was clear about where he or she was building, but there are no signs of robots or automatic whatsits. There are nooks with rows of bookshelves and a tiny opening to a rather large bedroom with minimal furniture. Everything is white, but I can see a few glimpses of my grandmother's feminine style on the countertops and in the fabrics.

Once we've settled, I find out that someone has taken my abandoned purse and stolen my identity. I can get on the computer and watch a young woman spend my money. She spends thousands of dollars on flowers. I can't stop crying and spend my entire vacation on another planet trying to get the fraud department to shut down my credit cards. I can feel that my family is annoyed with me; they think I'm being dramatic. This hurts.

Bits and pieces

2008-02-17T10:22:00.006-06:00

Lots of little dream bits last night.

[][][]

I've trekked into unfamiliar territory, by car or by foot or by combination of both, to a building where a kind of informal committee resides, to try to apply for the zombie walk permit (this is something I'm in the middle of doing now in real life). I'm having to appeal to a group of elders to get approval. I tell them all about our plans, and the date (last Friday in April). They get a little iffy about it and point me to the CA's M section, where there's a story about Native Americans coming from all over to gather and pay their ancestors' respects downtown that day. I feel gross about hundreds of people lurching around as a zombies while people are spending the day mourning their ancestors, so it occurs to me that we might ought to move the date to the end of May. I find Sharon and Leah, two of my fellow organizers, and tell them what's up. They're really disappointed (Sharon rolls her eyes in a moment of Oh yeah, I think I knew about that!!!), and while I'm explaining what's going on, it occurs to me that it might not be a problem after all. I check the CA article and see that the bulk of the Native American ceremonies will take place around noon. Our march will be after six.

We breathe a sigh of relief.

[][][]

I find myself trying to get back to somewhere and being confronted with an ocean and a beach. I'm standing on a concrete landing, under a pavilion. I can either go back to wherever I'd come from, or go forward and inch along the side of a cinder-block building, against the angry waves of the ocean aggressively lapping at the side of the building. I imagine a swell of salty water and drowning there, trapped. So I go back the way I came.

[][][]

It's like I'm watching Flavor Flav's show. He's welcoming the camera into his crib in New Orleans (did I gank any of this from real life?). There's a butler at the door of a shotgun-style mansion (it is the definition of "ghetto fabulous") whose facade is an icky green color, with peeling paint and a cagey wrought-iron door. I get the feeling that Flav's house has been recovered after being mostly destroyed by Katrina. Inside, everything is damp and the walls are plaster and buckled and peeling. The long hallway runs parallel to some other hallway where a pulley system has been set up with all of Flav's clothes hanging on it. The clothes move along and he can choose what outfit he wants at the door at the end of the hall. I (or the camera?) make my way down the hall a bit longer before suddenly we're in Flav's dirt-floored basement and it feels like we're making a music video. Featuring zombies. Fucking zombies! That you can only see with night-vision goggles. It's exceedingly creepy. Luckily my brain does not supply any Flavor Flav musical stylings.

[][][]

I'm at a guy friend's house (I'll not mention him by name in case he reads this, so I'll call him Tom). It's actually probably his parents' house. It has a parents' house feel to it, even though no parents are to be found. We're having some sort of small gathering of friends. We're lounging around, watching TV (I'm on the floor), when Tom sort of scoots over to me and says something — god, I wish I could remember what it was — and then kind of nuzzles my neck and kisses me below my right ear, in that crook where you can, if you get close enough, tell easily enough if you have chemistry with a person. You know the crook I'm talking about. I get a little short of breath and feel slightly self-conscious in case others are watching, which they don't seem to be. He puts his cheek just near enough to my face that I can flutter my eyelashes against his lips. He smiles.

It's a sweet moment. He smells good.

[][][]

I'm on some kind of truckbed tour of something ... either a city or an event ... I can't quite explain, but it ends with us driving around this church where all the members are around, cloaked in red robes and holding burning crosses. There are also burning crosses used as torches on the side of the brick church. The people are singing and it's obvious that they see nothing wrong with what they're doing. I get prickly at this; why would they need to burn crosses? Don't they understand the racist implications of burning crosses, even if it's their stupid church tradition? I bitch loudly when the truck stops and I can get out and walk away. There are a lot of people in red robes (with hoods!), holding burning crosses. I can feel the heat from the group of them.

High school candle caper

2008-02-14T12:28:00.004-06:00

I'm having a shit ton of dreams lately. This could be because I'm sleeping in shifts now that I'm going to the gym late at night. First round of sleep comes between 3 a.m. and 8. Second round comes after I've gotten up, fed my whiny-ass cats, checked my e-mail, farted around, and then gone back to sleep from 9:30 to 12:30.

Today's naptime dream featured me and everyone I ever went to high school with plus everyone I work with now (roughly), at work — only it's a hugely expanded version of work. I've got two candles lit: a little Glade Scented Oil candle that I fancy in real life, and a little cinnamon tea light. I blow them both out before realizing that doing so is going to set off the sprinklers.

So I grab just the tea light and try to cup my hand over it and rush it to the bathroom, where I figure I can extinguish some of the smoke under the tap. It works, sort of, but the damage has already been done. Plus I left that other candle smoking on my desk. D'oh.

I return to the newsroom to see that the sprinklers have, in fact, been triggered, although the alarm's not going off. People are trudging away from their desks and evacuating the room. I notice that most people are in their Sunday best. This makes me feel really bad. I'm no doubt ruining a lot of nice clothes.

I feel embarrassed that I made such an obvious blunder — the candles were contraband for this reason — and can't decide if I should just shuffle out with everyone else and pretend to not know what's going on, or if I should make sure everyone knows I did it and I'm sorry. I go with the latter, figuring it's more honest.

We evacuate to some sort of large auditorium where some kind of elaborate kindergarten pageant is going on. The kids and adults on stage are wearing ridiculously fancy sequined getups with huge headdresses. Their show fades into the background as people I went to high school with fill up the auditorium steps around me (no seats, just curved steps).

Cary Duncan (whom I've not seen or spoken to in years) comes up to me with a baseball cap turned backward on his head and a stupid nerdy fratboy swagger in his step, his posse surrounding him, chuckling. I am clearly the butt of a joke. He asks me to sign this big swatch of cardboard that says something about labor (as in work, not baby labor). I can see that others have signed this thing a la a yearbook. I circle one of the big words in the phrase and draw an arrow out to the place where I'll make my signature. I write something snarky and sign my name. Except I misspell my last name and have to scribble it out and try again. I'm slightly humiliated, and I want to kick Cary in his teeth.

(I blame Cary's appearance in this dream and, hell, the entire high school scenario on the fact that the last song I listened to before I fell asleep was a Weezer song off of Pinkerton.)

I see police officers working their way through the crowd now. I suspect they're looking for the perps of the great office sprinkler caper. I decide to 'fess up. I find an officer and see that she is confiscating everyone's candles — big, fancy expensive ones among them — and I feel horrible. Candles aren't cheap. "Are you going to give them back?" I ask. She says no. Instantly I know some people are probably very pissed at me.

I follow another officer — another girl I went to high school with, except she looks nothing like I remember, and her hair is pink and silver like Jem's, but short and in a bob — into a long, spiraling staircase that you might see in a castle ... if it had a dungeon. Luckily, the officer tells me to sit on the stairs. She's holding a baby, and tells me she's keeping it for someone, and asks if I can hang on to her for a while. I oblige, and sit there holding this big baby on these steep stairs, thinking how unsafe that is.

(I think I dreamed of a baby because just before falling back asleep, I looked at some pictures of me and LP with Luke.)

I look at the baby's face and see drool pooling on his/her chin. In it I can see the spiderweb pattern of my black Nightmare Before Christmas pillowcase. And then I'm awake.

Space cadet

2008-02-14T08:32:00.005-06:00

Amber and I are in a space shuttle. It's weird, because it's just a giant, open, cylindrical space lined with padding and wires and other spacey things. We're not strapped in. We're just kind of hanging out. And whoever is driving the space shuttle — later I'll see that it's one of our photo editors — is having trouble getting the thing into space.

We'll feel a rumble and then see from the tiny windows that we've got liftoff, and we'll see the earth beneath us begin to rotate (I doubt this is how actual shuttles lift off) only to, a few seconds later, find ourselves on the ground, outside the shuttle, waiting on the technicians to fix whatever problem we're having.

At one point, we're sitting near train tracks and I start telling Amber all about how Regina Spektor read a short story written by one of my other friends, and how she loved it, and halfway through, I realize I'm telling Amber her own story and I feel so embarrassed and ashamed.

I look over and see the aforementioned photo editor tossing big crates around outside the cockpit in order to solve whatever takeoff problems we're having.

Then we're back on the shuttle. I have some vague memory of us storing food in a tiny fridge even though none of the other passengers thought to bring anything. I feel slightly gluttonous because of it.

We have liftoff again. It occurs to me that we are probably going to die on this shuttle, and I suddenly want very much to be off the shuttle or to wake up (I realize I'm dreaming, but it doesn't go lucid on me because I can't control anything). Once again, the ground outside starts spinning around us as we rise toward the sky. I imagine with horror of what it must be like to be in a shuttle explosion. One minute things are fine, and the next ... what? Does everything just get white hot and you stop existing? Death makes no sense to me, even in my dreams.

I wince as we meet the horizon and rise up through the atmosphere. Out the window there is blackness and stars. And then everything kind of happens in a montage — as I'm standing there, looking out the window and thinking about the relative pointlessness of space travel, I see what human space traveling has wrought on the galaxy (I see giant oil rig things on distant planets; it's unclear if it's Earthlings who struck out to look for oil, or if it's just the technology we shared with other cultures in the galaxy). And while it's really freaking cool seeing all that crap, I feel that at any minute the whole thing's going to explode and I'm going to die.

I said no, no, no

2008-02-13T12:50:00.004-06:00

I'm in what looks and feels like prison, but I'm surrounded by young people. I quickly realize that I've been sent to rehab. I have no idea why, as I'm not going through any type of withdrawal. All I know is that the place is dingy and muddy and disgusting, and I'm standing in line to have the contents of my bag rifled through by a very cross black lady with short hair, glasses, and big teeth. She pulls out two pairs of underwear — both of them, I understand, are brand new, and one of them seems to be a custom job and is, if I may say, really adorable: It's chocolate brown with light blue and pink and yellow stitching curving around the hip — and tells me that I can't take them inside. I'm incredulous; I can't have underwear in rehab? No, she tells me, it's not like that. It's just that I can't have that particular pair. (Perhaps it was so cute that it would have caused a disturbance among the menfolk? I don't know.)

No suddenly I'm in a train car, and not one meant necessarily for human passengers. It's dark and the walls are made of rickety wood, with a generous amount of space between each plank so that I can see the world whizzing by outside. There are other people in the car with me. Everyone seems just as downtrodden and miserable. A fellow passenger gets up and walks to the far end of the car, where there seems to be some sort of makeshift kitchen set up. He crosses a particular spot and I see what must have been an invisible barrier light up red and set off an alarm. The guy doesn't seem to care that he's about to get in trouble. Trouble never comes for him.

It occurs to me that I need to wash my hands. Badly. But the only way to do so is to cross that alarm-rigged invisible barrier. I decide I've got to do it. And when I do, sure enough, the alarm screeches but I wash my hands as planned. Although I can't quite remember the details, I'm pretty sure that I get in trouble even though the other guy did not. I've lost a lot of details here.

The last thing I really remember is being issued a car (they give us cars, but my underwear was unacceptable?). I get in mine, and drive myself and several passengers up an incline and around a curve to a grimy parking lot sitting atop a concrete hill that overlooks the dirt-packed courtyard of the rehab facility. I notice that the lot is, with the exception of my car and a Saturn, full of brand-new Fits. I point out how odd this is, but no one seems to care.

I need to cut back on the voodoo.

2008-02-12T11:44:00.000-06:00

I'm attempting to go back to Voodoo Village in Memphis, by myself this time. I have no idea why. It's dark and misty, and I'm really scared. I seem to be coming in from behind or something, because I'm not on the road. There are banging noises coming from the houses, and it looks like flames behind the windows, but no one is coming outside. I get too scared and decide to run away. I turn around and start running, and trip over a tombstone. Looking up, I realize I'm in Lafayette cemetary, the one in New Orleans. Somehow this is still part of Voodoo Village. I don't know how I know that it's specifically Lafayette and not some other random cemetary with above-ground graves, but I do. I'm suddenly thinking , "Shit, shit!" and other gotta-get-out-of-here thoughts concerning witchcraft and crime rates, when I'm approached by a mean-looking yellow lab. He stands in front of me and growls at me, and I start cying and explain that I'm lost and I just want to go home. He stops growling and says (yes, he talks) that it's ok, that it's just his job and he's not going to hurt me. He suggests that I sit down for a minute and collect myself, and he'll give me directions. This seems reasonable to me, so I sit and we begin talking. He tells me that he's not really a dog but that he has been in this dog's body for a long time, so he's just gottten comfortable now. We have a long talk and does give me what seem to be good directions. I stand up to leave and he nuzzles my leg. I look down at him and he has a pen and paper in his mouth. He drops them and asks me for my phone number. I figure it's the least I can do, and give him the number. He says he'll look me up on Myspace. I say that's fine and I start walking away. I can hear him crying behind me, but I don't want to turn around. I mean, he IS a dog and I honestly feel that he's trying to force a connection. I keep walking and end up in a baseball field, where Tamara is sitting on the pitcher's mound and trying to build one of those ship-in-a-glass-bottle things. I ask her how it's going, and she looks up and tearfully thanks me for coming and tells me that she has to get this done before her wedding.

*I blame most of this dream on a combination of actually going to VV and having been reading The Witching Hour right before going to sleep.