lucyoncolorado

Two stress dreams. The second one was extremely vivid and emotionally very disturbing. I woke up distressed.

In which I visit a labyrinth-like bookstore and get trapped in a net...

R and I are in the city running errands and we drive past a small, locally owned bookstore. There is a book I want, so I ask him to stop for just a second while I run inside to see if they have it. I'd rather give them my money than Amazon, I explain.

R parks outside of the store, and I hop out of the truck. Then I realize I'm not wearing shoes. I enter the store anyway and apologize for my bare feet. The owner tells me that there is an extra pair of shoes upstairs that I can wear. I say that I'm just searching for the new book on Afghanistan, and I ask her if she has it. She says that she can't look for it unless I put on that extra pair of shoes. This irritates me a little bit, but I comply.

I walk through the store, which is designed like a maze with bookshelves making the walls. Finally I get to a large staircase and go up, expecting to find the shoes. Instead, I enter a fine dining establishment. There are waiters wearing starched white aprons pouring wine for bejeweled patrons enjoying candlelit dinners. I'm conscious of my bare feet. I ask a waitress if the extra pair of shoes are up here, but she just grabs me by the arm and removes me to the kitchen. She looks a lot like Sandra Oh, and I'm about to ask her if that is who she is when she ushers me over to a slide that she says will lead back into the bookstore. We go down the slide, but it empties into a giant nylon net in the yard out in front of the bookstore. All this time, the waitress is holding a big round tray above her shoulder.

She sits patiently in the net as if she does this everyday, but I'm really frustrated. She keeps telling me to calm down and explains that someone will be along sooner or later to let us out. Meanwhile, I see R in the truck in front of the store. He can't sit on the road for this long, and he starts to drive around looking for a place to park. I decide to make my escape. I pull out a pocket knife and cut through the nylon, ignoring the waitress' demands that I stop. Then I look all around to make sure no one saw me. The busboy is walking into the yard and he must surely have seen me, but I run fast towards the truck where R has just parked. He has already turned off the engine, but he is still inside. I run up to the passenger side, shouting all the while to start up the truck to make our escape.

We get away, but R is annoyed with me for causing a scene. He wants to know why I always forget to wear shoes in the first place.


In which brainwashed cult members throw rocks at my dog and I try to save two of them but they end up making me feel terrible about myself...

I'm sitting in my study in the back of my house when I glance out the window and see four men standing in my backyard. One is an older man, who looks just like Ian Holm, wearing a black duster coat with embroidered button holes over a pair of dark blue jeans and ornate rocketbusters. His black cowboy hat is pulled down low over his white hair, and he stands calmly with his hands in his pockets while my dog and my mom's dog run around excitedly, wagging their tails. A middle-aged man stands next to Ian Holm, dressed more like a farmer than a cowboy in a long-sleeved denim shirt, jeans and practical ranch boots. He is balding. The other two men are younger, tall and lanky. They run around with the dogs. They both wear old clothes, jeans and boots like the older men, with dusty and torn denim jackets. The taller man has longish hair, hasn't shaved for a while and wears a round felt hat; the shorter man is ugly with bad skin, red hair and stupid eyes.

I know who these men are, and I feel my heart start to panic. I calm myself for the dogs' sake and walk calmly outside. Just as I'm stepping onto my back porch, the red-headed man pretends to throw a ball for my mom's dog, Mott, but instead tosses a large cinderbrick. Mott runs out to catch it, and time seems to slow down the way it does when you are about to be in a car wreck. I know that if she jumps up to get it, it will smash in her skull. But meanwhile, Lucy is running towards the Ian Holm cowboy and I know that he is evil and will kill her. For a second, I wonder which dog I should call towards me and feel like I'm in a tricky situation. Then I decide just to distract them both and scream, "HEY!" and stomp my feet. It works. Mott turns to look at me and the cinderblock misses her head by just an inch and smashes to the ground. Lucy stops in her tracks and does not run up to Ian Holm. My heart is still pounding, but I want to act calm in front of the men. The two younger men are laughing hysterically. Ian Holm tips his hat but I don't acknowledge him yet.

"Come, dogs" I call, and Mott comes running towards me but Lucy does not. Lucy starts towards Ian Holm again. My heart sinks, but Mott is very close to me so I grab her first and put her in the house then run back out to get Lucy. Ian Holm is just about to touch her, and I know that if he does, it will kill her. I scream at her again, "LEAVE IT!" and she can tell by my voice that I'm serious. She cowers down in the grass at Ian Holm's feet, but I grab her collar before he can touch her. I put her in the house with Mott, take a deep breath, then go back out to talk to the men.

The two younger men are still laughing idiotically, but Ian Holm is calm. He doesn't care anymore about harming the dogs than a normal person would care about killing a fly. The situation has already left his mind, and he is ready to get to business. He will try to convert me to his cult. I'm one of the few people in the neighborhood who has held out and refused to join his cult.

I lead him into the dining room and he sits down a the head of a huge table (that I really wish I had in real life). It's made of thick cherry oak with hand-carved patterns of intricate vines and flowers over-laid with mother-of-pearl. The middle-aged farmer stands behind Ian Holm and hands him some blueprints and other rolled up papers. They tell the young men to wait in my kitchen. My father enters the room, and we sit down at the table with Ian Holm.

Ian Holm tells me about his cult. He makes persuasive arguments about the current unhealthy speed and stress of life, about the wastefulness of our cheap throw-away culture, about how selfishness and individualism leads to isolation and how we should embrace simplicity and community. He looks into my eyes deeply. It touches me and I tear up. I think of the power of charisma and this brings me back to my senses.

"Don't you realize I can see your sadness? Don't you realize I offer you relief?", he says. It makes my blood run cold. This man is evil. I'm too upset to talk calmly. All my arguments and learning are not available. I just want to shout and throw things. But I control myself.

"I understand what you are saying," I tell him, "and you have made good observations and identified real problems. I'm not arguing about that. I disagree with your solutions. You aren't the first person to realize these things," I tell him. "There is an entire history of social movements and philosophies that revolve around these problems. You are ignoring all that context. There are other solutions to these problems outside of the two sides you see."

His soft, penetrating eyes look at me coldly and I see a flash of evil and violence behind them. I feel triumphant. He didn't know who he is dealing with. My father intervenes before things get ugly.

"Go wait in the kitchen," he tells me. I leave, a little worried, because Ian Holm might just convince my father to follow him. This troubles me.

In the kitchen, I ask the two young men how old they are. The taller one with the hat tells me he is 25 and the ugly one says he is 40. I look at him and tell him that I don't believe that he is 40. He says he is old enough to be my father and that I should respect him. I laugh in his face and tell him that I'm a lot older than I look and that it would be impossible for a 40 year old to be my father. I ask how old he is again, and he admits that he is only 23.

"You're both children," I tell them. "Babies. Why are you following this old man?"

They start to spout a bunch of dogma about community and devotion and freedom from having to make choices. I can see that they are not well-read and that they have not thought very much about any of the things they are saying. I want to help them, so first I ask them if they have jobs or girlfriends and wouldn't they like to have their own money to do fun things? They respond by telling me that even King Soloman grew tired of all those things. I feel ashamed of having made such a lame argument. I wonder why I said all of that. These men are stupid, but it's even more stupid of me to have tried to convince them this way. Then the taller one asks me if I have a job and money. That was the lowest blow. I admit that I quit my job two months back. He looks at me and says, "So you are unemployed? You live here off your husband's money? What do you contribute? Who are you to lecture me about how to live?" He's right. I feel like a loser. I try to defend myself and explain that I worked for years until recently and that I'm going back to school now to change careers, but they just laugh at me.

I get very upset at this point and the dream becomes stressful and deteriorates because it starts to wake me up.