Things to Run Away From Really Fast

07/08/10

Inanimate objects make for poor antagonists.

I stand surrounded by pillows, my stance guarded. I'm lucid, I tell myself, grinning; it's been a week since the last one.

The pillows remain immobile.

They're supposed to represent enemies, I think mournfully. I pick up the pillows and throw them into the air, trying to goad them into an attack. They fall in a flurry, and a few hit me on the way down. Other than that, they remain pillows. I'm very disappointed.

(Also, a dream with the Na'vi from Avatar. Earth has become entirely uninhabitable, but the Na'vi can fly through space. They twirl through the toxic orange clouds that comprise the earth's atmosphere.)

Fluff. Scare Factor: 1.

07/06/2010

During a half-asleep almost-dream, I become convinced that I am a pot. Like, one of those black with white specks pot-roast pots. As the pot, I began to dream.

In this dream within a dream, I am a person walking through a dark alley. I'm set upon by three muggers. I try to reason with them, but they aren't hearing it, since I don't have any money for them to steal. I dispatch them quickly, and fade into the shadows.

Later, I'm standing on the roof of a school building, hanging out with a parkour group. Most of the walls around me (there are higher levels of the roof) are covered in graffiti. There's a couple of hard-to-reach spots that are blank, and I try to figure out how to get a mural up there.

I go inside, but the main hallway is "Closed for Reconstruction". I walk down a hallway across from the dark, closed one. The closed hallway turns into bedrooms, and later turns into meeting rooms for visiting politicians. I get to the end of the hallway, which looks like the lobby of a bank.

There's a woman who looks like the elemental from Chronicles of Riddick. I go talk to her.

Pots and Kettles. Scare Factor: 1.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

I wander a city, searching for my skydiving class.

I'm in a plane about the size of a crop duster. My mom is piloting. We're angling to land on the top of a mountain, where there's a gas station.

I'm trying to get to a weekend course on skydiving. We wonder if I have to jump out of this plane to get to the course.

We land, avoiding the cars in the parking lot (on top of a mountain). I kick off of a maroon minivan in the parking lot, adjusting our course so we don't hit it.

We talk to the people inside, but this isn't where the course is. We have to keep flying.

Back on the plane, I wonder if we have enough of a runway to take off again. My mom shrugs and we go flying off the cliff. We stay in the air.

It's a tight fit between two pillars of stone. I'm worried we might hit, but my mom effortlettly steers us through them. Wow. She's better at driving than she usually is in dreams. I mean, there was this other dream with the truck where she kept almost hitting other cars...

(How did I miss that?)

I check my backpack and find an oxygen mask and a parachute.

We're back on the ground, in a car. I still have no idea where I'm supposed to go; there's no map in the brochure. Hours fly by. I was supposed to be there in the morning, and it's now 1:00PM on a Friday.

We stop at a store. Ben says his friend lives above the shop. They're selling Halloween costumes.

Perfectly Good Airplanes. Scare Factor: 1.

I was amused to note that my tag cloud this morning said "boring sex".

I go grocery shopping in the kitchen.

I'm cooking dinner for my family, but I'm missing a few ingredients. Fortunately, our kitchen is in the middle of a grocery store.

I run around the grocery store, grabbing vegetables mostly. I'm very happy when I actually manage to find some sesame seeds (which are in short supply around here).

I start scanning the items through an empty checkout, but one of the employees says she needs to help me with that. We try to figure out if we should scan the eggplant, which has already finished cooking.

I'm in the living room of my oma's old house in Ixburg. We're playing a game that's kind of like pictionary or sharades, except you're writing keywords on a chalkboard. My dad throws a VCR tape of Star Wars under the chalkboard, and I try to remember what the rules are.

"Dutch word for 'father'", I write on the chalkboard. My teammates don't get it.

ETA: Also, a Sailor Moon-related fragment. Serenity may have been involved. I don't know; something was trying to destroy the world again.

Eggplant. Scare Factor: 1.

Fragments: Snape writing a letter to Voldemort about how annoying Harry is, and how Voldemort probably should have chosen Neville as his arch-nemesis if he actually wanted to win.

Walking through a pathway in a zoo that is filled with snakes. I name cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, and coral snakes, which I peer at carefully, trying to decide if red touches yellow. I refuse to walk down the path while barefoot, because I like snakes, but I don't particularly want to die, thanks.

Running into Vicki from boxing; apparently she lives on the top floor of what might be my apartment building. It's an open dorm, so I recognize her while walking through, and consider waking her up. Or would that be creepy? She wakes up anyway.

End Fragments.

Alternate Squamish. I'm watching video footage from a couple years ago, when apparently the downtown was flooded with green and black clouds of swarming... things.

I'm walking through back alleys and crab-walking (crawling) over gravel, for some reason. I look over a fence and see two-police officers disappearing around a corner. Deja vu. I've been at this fence before. I think I had trouble climbing it, since the fall down one side seems so steep. I try the sequence again, jumping over multiple fences through a back yard. One is a metal railing that seems too tall, and I climb over it, disappointed at the interruption.

I get to the other side, and a woman interrupts. She asks if I have an appointment. I remember that I do. I follow the woman into the building and slip off my shoes. There are change rooms. I think I'm the main character from #59: Ghost Ship, Jade. I follow the person who I have an appointment with. She's a really hot girl whose strawberry-blonde hair is tied up into a ponytail. A few strands fall attractively over her face. We've met before. Apparently she's painting my nails? I'm calling her Elle.

When we walk outside, I'm wearing a spa-like fluffy housecoat. Elle has her hands on my shoulders, pushing me gently through the door. I look around, amazed. One of the mountains extends over this part of the town. The stone is made out of a glassy black rock, like obsidian or onyx. Water falls in torrents into the ocean around the peninsula, surrounding the area with a fine white mist. Behind me is an eastern style wooden building, complemented by the sleek metal and glass railings running around the deck.

I follow Elle over pathways leading back and away from the ocean. Everything is sunny and the effect is much less impressive. We go to sit down at a picnic table.

My character falls asleep on a bed inside the building.

Cut to a group of people back at the picnic table area, randomly deciding that my character is a werewolf, and she needs to die.

The real me is listening in, sitting a table away and reading a book. The book is describing everything that's happening. I have to wonder why I'm only identifying with the parts written in first person (Jade's part), rather than the parts written in third person that have Elle in them. I concentrate on reading the book and getting back into the story.

I wake up, back in the building, as Jade. I'm highly annoyed by the inevitable running that's about to occur.

Nail Polish. Scare Factor: 2.

I think this dream means I have a crush on my hairdresser.

I'm Dean Winchester (again), and we're on a hunt. We have to go through Lady Gaga videos frame by frame. Apparently there's a reason for the scene in "Bad Romance" where she's crying.

Also, I had the song stuck on a loop in my head after waking up. Ugh.

Lady Gaga. Scare Factor: 10!

Okay, 2. Scare Factor: 2.

I'm looking out over a seaside city, viewing it from the cliffs above it. In dream, I decide this is Medicine Hat, AB. Which makes no sense. Groups are moving into formations of rows and columns along the ground. Zooming in, I can see marks on the ground showing the spots for certain group members to go.

I step into place.

There are hopscotch-style chalk lines on the ground. An oval makes up the centre ring, divided in the middle. Another, bigger oval goes around it, again with the dividing line in the centre. There are four members of each team, one in the middle and three on the outside. They play something like volleyball with two sets of balls - they have to stay inside the lines and can't land on the ground.

I'm in the middle. We're alternately playing with bouncy balls, tennis balls, water balloons, and bell peppers. The outer group has another set going. Theirs are just smaller than volleyball size. I have to work to ignore the outer set and keep focused on the water balloons and vegetables.

We keep smashing up our water balloons and peppers, so we have to keep tracking more down as the outer team keeps playing. I'm not very good at this game.

Dream Games. Scare Factor: 1. Reaction: Bored.

Things to Run Away From Really Fast #7: Allegiant Little Kids
I'm browsing the forums here, thinking about dreams. Then there's something about the library here. Which reminds me, I need to return an overdue book.

I walk into a bar, where, apparently, Lindsay is bartending. I order a drink, and end up sitting down with her and a few friends while they eat supper. We talk about the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and discuss parts of it that probably didn't exist in real life. You know that one girl, who really didn't want to go to the Brown's house for Christmas Dinner but would rather have gone to New York for a Broadway show? Yeah? Why couldn't she have done that? That would have been cool.

There's four or five of us, and we start walking. Shift. We're in a playground. I look around, trying to place it.

"Aw, man." I say, "We're in Ixburg! Quick, someone think of somewhere nicer."

A couple people glance back at me, bemused. I give up and strike up a conversation with one of the girls, who has red-brown hair, a ponytail, and glasses. I try to ask her name, but she says it so fast I can't understand it. I ask again and try to repeat it back to her. One of the other girls laughs and tells her to stop teasing me.

We're still standing outside the school at this oint, and a teacher comes out to yell at hus. "Ixburg sucks!" I shout, assuming there's a game going on right now.

Little kids come out and throw rocks at us. We take shelter in a non-existant frame of a shed just outside school grounds.

"So," I say to Lindsay, "Next time, you pick the setting."

Allegiant Little Kids. Scare Factor: 1 for banality.

March 2010

I'm one person in a large group of people who have collectively decided to go swimming. When we appear at the swimming hole [that never really existed] outside of my hometown, most people stand around, looking suspiciously at the water. A guy who I remember being a grade younger than I was [whose name I saw in a journal entry yesterday] jumps straight in to the south side of the pool.

I'm wearing a red lifeguard t-shirt, and one other lifeguard and myself are inspecting the north side of the pool. Some days you can swim in it, other days it's really just a puddle of stinking mud. Like today. I lose my balance when the edge of the crowd jostles me. A few titters, and I exchange words with one of the bystanders.

Obviously, I'll be swimming in the clean side of the pool then, if only to clean off.

The clean side has Jay using the natural rock formations on the other side as diving boards and such. I don't pay mutch attention to him. Rolling my eyes at the group that collectively won't even get in the pool, I jump into the clean water and eye the rock formations on the other side. From where I was standing, there was no way to walk across like Jay did, so I need to do some rock climbing to get to the impromptu diving board.

I'm in my element when I get to the other side and pull myself out of the water. It's been a while since I got to do this [because it's very flat and boring where I'm living now]. There are plenty of easy handholds in the rock, and I work my way to the left, where I'll be able to climb up to the ledge.

High School Classmates Near Water. Scare Factor: 7 because I hated high school 2 for normality, with a point for the fun of rock climbing and annoyance of public humiliation.