Visions in the Dark

I am young than I look now and wearing a grey and red poncho. I am in some sort of museum or cultural center focusing on North American Aborigonal Societies. I am there to participate in a vision quest and arrive late in the afternoon to recieve instruction on what to do. I am told by some Elders that this vision quest is more like a savenger hunt because I have to obtain seven various items from safes that are hidden around the facility. The safes are locked with complex systems that require finding the right item to open them, and not all of the items are plain keys, which are also hidden from plain view.

I see that there are several other young people in the meeting room, some I know in real life and some I know in the dream. They have already completed their vision quests and are just visiting the facility. One of the coditions of the vision quest is that I must find and do everything alone and cannot ask for help from anyone. I go over and say hello to some of the people I know but many of them outright ignore me or are reluctant to talk to me.

Evening comes and many people leave but I want to stay as late as I can and get as much of my vision quest done as I can. I walk through the facility and looks along all the walls and corners for hidden safes. I find one but it is locked and I do not yet have the key to open it. At first I am closely observed by some Elders who follow me around and take notes on my progress and discuss it amoungst themselves, but I lose track of them at some point and left to explore on my own.

I find by self on the second floor of the building and come to an area that is open to the floors below and is crisscrossed with wooded suspention bridges. The only way to the other side is across the bridges and as I start to cross I notice two Tolkien inspired elves standing in the middle of one, observing my movements and loudly discussing me. One elf looks like Peter Jackson's version of Elrond and the other is a dark haired elf with a stern look on his face.

I cross the bridge and explore some of the rooms that have many indegenous artifacts on display and see two of my friends who are First Nations peoples. One of them I know completed their vision quest years before and the other says that he is just starting his, which confuses me because I thought I was the only one. It dawn on me that this is now a race because if he obstains the items before I do than I will obviously be unable to collect those items. I do not tell him that I am also on my vision quest. They move on and I continue searching the display cases until I find a gold token, which I hope can be used to open a safe.

Finding nothing more of unterest in the remaining rooms of that area I head back towards the wooden suspension bridges where the two elves are there and still watching me. They are having an argument about something and as I cross the bridge and walk past them, the Elrond looking elf grabs my arm, leans in and tells me tells me where to find the next safe and how to open it. I pull away, plug my ears and run because I am not supposed to recieve help from others and I don't want to get in trouble.

Back on the ground floor though I go straight to the safe he told me about but it will not open. Nearby in a potted plant I find another gold token. I wander around some more and find an arts and crafts room that has a safe sitting on a table. Down the hall from this room is a women's bathroom and another safe. The safe on the table contains a coin operated locking system but which I put my two gold coins in, they are immediately spit out. Ayoung boy working on a craft in the room tells me that I need three tokens to open that safe and the the item and key inside will open the safe down the hall.

Just then my friend who is also doing his vision quest walks in the room and inserts his three gold tokens into the safe which pops open and reveals a green jadestone medallion and another key. He then uses that key to open the safe down the hall and loudly declares that he has completed his vision quest. Several Elders and other people enter the room and congradulate him and they all walk out to celebrate somewhere. Just then the public announcment system plays a message that the facility is closing. I watch everyone in the building leave via the main exit, but I am crushed by my failure of the vision quest and I hide in a women's washroom that contains a lounge and cry.

I suddenly have a backpack with me and I open it and find several key chains with lots of keys on it, some stones and shells, a picture of my first cat and various other random crap that seems pointless and meaningless to me because they would not have helped me on my quest anyway. Many hours pass and a cleaning man discovers me sleeping in the bathroom and alerts security. A friendly brown haired security man wakes me up and offers to drive me home. We hop into is light blue 1956 Ford pickup and drive through the country. I don't talk to him because I am very despondant and depressed. We approach some train tracks and despite the warning lights that a train is coming the security man just keeps on driving. I fear that we will be hit by the train but cross just before it does and it misses the truck by just a few feet.

Dream fragmented, I can't remember much.


- can't remember any of the the beginning, but it was lengthy.

- driving in Mercedes on parkway outside of city with with mom and dad.

- dad turns off road and onto elevated monorail/train track.

- real train coming. We get out of car and mom and dad go down to ground.

- I pick up the two tonne Mercedes by the bumper and hand it down to my dad! It's as light as a feather, though in the dream my thought was that it was "light as a wicker basket."

- mom and dad disappear when I get down to ground. I am now in some sort of sidewalk market. The streets are empty until four Native American people appear, surrounding me.

- greeting/bowing ritual with four natives. I think there were two Innuit and two Ojibway. Ritual consists of me standing between the two Innuit, linked arm in arm, and bowing down on my knees to the Ojibway. Repeat same bow a second time only linked arms with Ojibway and bowing on knees to Innuit.

#1) In the first dream there was an old lady travelling through a thick temperate forest on a ship. The ship was magical and it could sail across both water and land. The old lady was hunting down an enemy that she had been pursuing her whole life.

She comes across an old man who is stranded in the middle of the forest and offers him a ride on her ship, which he gladly accepts. Through their ensuing converstaion it is revealed that the old man is the enemy that the old lady has been hunting for, though they do not fight because they are too old and too tired. The forest clears and the ship sails away on a large body of water, and the dream ends.


#2) The second dream takes place on a peice of land owned by my Aunt and Uncle, out in the eastern coast of Canada. There is some sort of gathering and we (both friends and family, as well as some random unrecognizable characters) are all sitting around two fires on opposite ends of the open space, wrapped in blankets or doing various activities. The sky is overcast and it is "spitting" rain, but the gathering continues despite the slight chill coming off the ocean.

I am sitting on the ground near one of the fires when a shadow falls over me. I look up and there is an elderly Native American man standing over and staring down at me. He is dressed in the traditional clothing of his indegenious clan (though I cannot recall the name of the tribe) and radiating a pleasant warmth. It becomes quickly apparent to me that no one else can see him. The dream becomes fuzzy here and I cannot remember any more for a bit.

Later in the day the drizzle has stopped and there are a few partings in the clouds where the late afternoon sun shines through. The gathering is still going full strength though I am laying down on a blanket away from everyone else. Through half lidded eyes I again see a shadow fall over me. I open my eyes and there are three native indians in traditional clothing huddled together and staring down at me. There is a young woman who seems strangely farmiliar though I cannot place a name to her face. There are two young men, one who looks like someone I used to know named Mike (but with long hair), and another whose face is shrouded in darkness. I am not afraid or worried, though I am a bit uncomfortable with all of them staring at me in silence.

I get up and go over to my Aunt Dorothey, and ask her who the three strangers are, even as they continue to watch me. Again, though, no one else can see them except for me and my family silently thinks that I am eccentric. For some reason I know what my family thinks of me. The dream ends there.


#3) The third dream takes place in a busy city with narrow streets. There are two people with me; a young woman and a young man, and though we are friends in the dream I do not recognize them as anyone I know in waking life. Everything about the city seems very dreary and grey and takes place in the Chinese section of town. I think it's raining.

The young woman and I give our hair scrunchies away or something and then convinced the young man to come along with us to buy some new ones. We all went into a store that had three stands filled with hair elastics. Even though it wasn't necessary or whatever, my friends and I wanted to buy bigger and more poofie scrunchies.

There is an old man in a grey trench coat standing in the entranceway of the strore. No one else sees him except me and we make eye contact. His look unsettles me and I am afraid to leave the store because I know the old man is waiting for us. I cannot remember any more of this dream.


#4) In the last dream I was a beautiful Chinese movie star who had just been signed on to a new movie. The filming location was deep in a temperate forest and was difficult to get to because there were no paved roads. There was a shallow, rushing river near the filming site that I had to be carried across because there was no bridge and I did not know how to swim. For some reason I was already in a bright red film costume when I was carried across the river. I could not see the face of the man carrying me across, yet he smelled farmiliar.

Filming eventually begins but is quickly halted when it suddenly starts to downpour. The cast and crew try to take cover in the equipment tents. As it is raining, the director adds a sex scene to the film, starring my character, and doesn't ask if I am interested in participating because he just assumes that I would. I refuse and say that my stunt double can do it, but she refuses also. I storm out of the tent and into the pouring rain after I quit because the director would not stop harassing me about doing the offending scene.