The Kestrel's Dreams

April 25, 2015

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My New Mommy
I was in class with the kids but we were in this weird room. I sat in the corner with my computer, and I greeted the kids as they came in because the door was right in my corner. I remember that the room was made with light wooden floors and walls, and was very open to the outside; there were big windows. We all had on headphones with microphones that were all connected, so all we could hear was each other. I was checking kids' papers (we did research papers) and sources. M and T had the same source for their paper about women's suffrage. I walked around a little more and then sat down and turned on my headphones. K said "if i loose my mom and I'm all tragic will you be my new mommy Ms. Kestrel?" And I pretended I didn't hear it, because I wasn't sure what an appropriate response would be...

I was with K, T and M later at recess or something and we walked around the back of the school. There were interesting stairs and weird structures so I climbed the stairs and came to a pretty hill overlooking an orchard of sorts with some forested areas surrounding it. It was sunset and very pretty. It reminded me a lot of the space Zukin and I found in Germany while biking one day.



The Next Level Cult

I was in some kind of survival game, or a spiritual/intuition test. A bunch of people were let into a big room with about 7 holes in the ceiling and ladders hanging down from them. We had to pick one of the ladders to go through. N (one of my students) was there but I don think I recognized anyone else. He was trying to reach one of the ladders but couldn't because he was too small. I lifted him up to it and then went to a spot where two ladders were in the far left corner. Almost everyone was choosing the ladder that had a platform to reach it, but something drew me to the other one. It wasn't a lot harder to get to or anything, so I didn't know why everyone was going up the other one. I had to fenangle just a little bit to reach it, and climbed up...

I came up into another room with a really tall ceiling. There was also some ledges. It was as if the room before had a huge box over it, if that makes sense. There was a very short (maybe a foot tall) fence down the middle of the room, which was made of spaghetti, or something else that wasn't all that strong. There were about 15-20 people on my side and lots of people on the other side. There was a voice through a speaker somewhere. It told us that anyone who tried to cross the fence in the middle would be thrown off the edge, into something deadly... The voice also told everyone on the other side of the room to go back home. Then the guy in charge of this event came up the ladder on our side, and greeted us as people who had good intuition. The ladder test was to weed out the people whose intuition wasn't good enough for the following tests and trials.

We all sat in a circle and he explained the point of this all to us. He said we would be feasting tonight... he was sitting between me and a guy I had met and been chatting to, and he seemed to be favoring us, like talking mostly to us, or at least looking at us more. Anyway, he said we'd be feasting and then looked right at me, ran his hand down my back to my waist. "Feasting," he repeated and I was just like "No." Very firmly.

He seemed put off but in a good way, as if I had impressed him, and moved to the girl sitting next to me and said "feasting?" She said hesitantly no. He tried a few more girls and then said something about us "not liking vampires too, I guess." I rolled my eyes and we were all thinking, ugh, Twilight. The Master said, "well, I mean, I read the first books." I had to confess that I had as well in high school. Then he talked about Bella birthing Renesme and this is where it got even weirder... He got on the floor and spread his legs, pretending to be giving birth, scooting around on the floor on his butt and making weird faces. "You'd pay to see that, right?!" We were all a little disconcerted. "Right?!" He was a little crazed here, and then he zeroed in on me again which made me feel super uncomfortable. It was as if he was targeting me more now, and planned to get me pregnant, then keep everyone here for 9 months to watch me have his baby... That or like he knew I was already pregnant or something. I was starting to think this guy was an insane creep... But this test was somehow important to complete.

We moved on to a new conversation though I can't remember the topic. I know that we broke off to do a series of tests but that whenever the Master stood up and held out his hands we were to create a linked circle. It got more and more cultish. Eventually we ended up at my house; we were competing in my driveway. One of us had a little chocolate-ish blob and the other was supposed to try to squish it. I was partnered with H (one of my students) who had just appeared there. H's blob started going down the driveway hill and I was able to pretty easily squish it, so I won and started up the driveway again. It had been all nice and warm and spring-like, but once I got to the top of the driveway, in front of the garage, there was snow on the ground. I was walking through it barefoot (we were all wearing barely anything by now; short shorts and tank tops with hair pulled up) and then the Master threw snow at me and it got in my left ear. He started throwing snow at all of us, and we weren't quite sure what to do about it. None of us were sure whether this guy was a mad creep or a genius.

I went into the porch but noticed a circle gathering in the garage, so I dropped my stuff and went to join the circle. We were all standing. The Master was standing opposite me and said, "everyone sit down." But even though i heard him clearly, at the same time there was a crystal clear, loud, strong voice in my left ear that said "Don't. Move." So I stayed standing. 3 or 4 other people stayed standing and the rest were sitting. All the sitting people closed their eyes and seemed to be asleep. The Master looked at each of us (one of them was the guy I met at the beginning and had a slight crush on) and was about to give further instructions (I knew now that I had passed some sort of spiritual or other-worldly test... I had been chosen, but I don't know what for) but I woke up.

It's strange, because I think I was in and out of waking throughout this whole dream. Like, I knew I was awake in bed even as I was in the dream. Two places at once, almost. It was strange.

December 01, 2014

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I was a new resident/member of a co-op that doubled as a comedy theater troup... I was going to be in a skit with two others for the next show, so I was trailing them to get used to the place. It turns out basically the whole troup is involved in some kind of scandalous murder, even though they didn't know it. There was a group of them that was orchestrating it all, using the other members as pawns in their schemes. The two I was with were the only ones who knew about it and tried to stop the baddies. We went to the leader of the troup, who we believed to be unaware of what was going on. We told him about it all, and he was really worried and told us to keep on our toes and watch out for ourselves.

Our assignment for chores that day was to clean downstairs, so the two of them and I went downstairs to clean. We ended up near the boiler room, and we heard the voices of the baddies, and scattered. I ended up in the boiler room, alone. It was pitch dark, and hot. Suddenly there was a faint red light from across the room. There were stairs there, and someone was coming down. It was the leader. He came up to a spot in the pipes and there was the REAL leader, hanging in the pipes. He had overgrown facial hair and looked really ragged. The Fake Leader said something like, "There you are, you little fool. You want your food, eh? Here you are. You little fool." He talked to the real leader like an animal in a cage. The real leader was like a savage now. His eyes were like an animal's and he was tearing at the food. The Fake Leader was patting him on the head and grinning.

Then I heard screams from upstairs, and left in a panic, but unseen and unheard by the Fake Leader, who stayed with the real leader. When I got upstairs, everything was fine. Turns out, it was because of the skit at dinner. Apparently that's what they did there; there was a skit during dinner every day. The crowd was screaming/laughing at it, but I had only heard the screaming from downstairs. I met my two friends who were alright and already at the table. They had been worried about me but were glad to see I was alright. I told them I had to talk to them later, and went to get some food.

All the food was in a bus for some reason. The buffet was set up along the back wall of the bus. I was trying to get specific kinds of lettuce from the bowl of salad, but they kept falling to the floor when I did. I gave up on it and decided to just get some pizza squares and a piece of the cake. Just as I was putting the last bit of food on my plate, the bus started moving. Apparently we were going on a field trip in the mountains. I was trying to make sure my food didn't spill, and apparently I was sitting in the "adult seat," which was undesirable. It was higher up and the table in front of it was too low. Oh well. I set down my food and looked out the window to watch the scenery go by. The bus was on a high bridge over a valley with lots of buffalo in it. I took my spoon and pretended to scoop up the buffalo. Like, every time I scooped them, the buffalo there scattered. It was like I was controlling them from my seat in the bus.

Then, I was flying over the heard. In another valley, there was a heard of humans, too. I flew over them as well, along a river gorge. The landscape was green and grassy and at the same time somehow red-dirt desert-y. It's hard to explain.

I flew closer to the ground now, and saw a group of people at the top of the next hill. There were lots of children and some people I know, so I landed there and milled amongst the people... I saw a small elephant being tackled by some kids. It was actually a little disturbing, as it reminded me of that picture of the little elephant being attacked by some lionesses. I watched this elephant go by me, and then walked up to the ledge of the river gorge, where there were a line of children sitting down. I looked over the ledge; it was very high up. I saw my mom's high school friend, H, nearby. I called her over, and asked her when the bus would be back, and where it would pick us up. She shrugged. She told me that the bus driver would call her when they got there and tell her where to meet them. She handed me her phone and asked if I wanted to keep it so I would know when and where to go. I shook my head and gave it back to her, wondering if I should just make my way back down to the road and wait there. But I didn't know if the bus would come right up to the cliff to pick us up, so I stayed there for the time being.

I walked through some scattered trees to a little plaza with a fountain. I sat on a stone bench that circled the fountain. There was an annoying mascot thing with a huge hunk of cheese trying to get me to take a selfie with it. I turned around to face the rest of the mountain above us (we were about half-way up the mountain here). It was beautiful; the mountain side was all bare except for these tall, skinny, wooden animal figures. They were made with different colors of wood and stood along the mountainside, all looking as if they were walking in the same direction (to my right). There was a vast landscape of them, and something about them was tribal, though I can't pinpoint what it was. I took out my phone to take a picture of it so I would be able to see it forever, but every time I hit the button to take a picture, the view would switch to front-facing and take a selfie. The stupid mascot thing was in all of them, too. It was getting in my way, and I was convinced it was the one making my camera do that. I elbowed it in the stomach to make it go away, and turned back to the mountain above us. But it was different. There were large, almost junglish trees scattered instead of the animal figures.

I said, "WHAT GIVES. It's different!" And then I realized, and said, "WAIT. Haha! I'm dreaming!" I looked down at my hands and confirmed that I was dreaming. I grinned. There were so many children around, and I wanted to try the task from last month about telling a kid they were in a dream. It was too late for that one, but I still wanted to try it.

I walked up to a kid who was sitting on the crest of the grassy hill, and said, "Hi! My name is Ms. Kestrel. What's your name?"
"Nathan..."
"Hi Nathan! Where are you from?"
"I'm from BC. Where are you from?"
"Oh, I'm from around there! I'm from K."
"Oh, nice." Nathan smiled.
"Actually. Do you wanna know something?"
"What?"

I said, "You know how sometimes you are dreaming, and you realize you're dreaming, while you dream?"
Nathan brightened up and nodded. "Yeah, I've heard of that!"
"It's called lucid dreaming. This is my lucid dream right now. That means you're from my subC, actually."

I watched for his reaction. At first he was just blank, but then he says, "Maaannn. Oh that's just TERRIBLE."

He sounded dejected but also detached, like he didn't actually care. I patted his back and stood up. Now, I wanted to do at least one of the December tasks. The one that came to mind first was to throw a snowball at a DC.

I looked around. No snow here... But I was on a mountain, and snow was normal on a mountain. All I had to do was go higher up and I was sure I'd find snow. I jumped up to hover a foot above the ground. Once I was sure of my stability, I flew close to the ground up the mountain until I hit the road above us. I turned to my right, where the road curved over a bridge surrounded by trees. The trees created a sort of tunnel around the road. I hovered through this tunnel and on the other side, I heard a different stream. It sounded cold somehow, and I was happy to see some snow on the railings at the side of the road. I scooped it up with my hand, but it was all powdery, not good for a snowball. It actually felt more like fake snow. I kept taking samples, getting closer to the river, which was mostly frozen over. I kept getting powdery, fake-ish snow. I turned to the trees, and saw a clump of snow gathered in the branches. Powdery snow wouldn't clump like that, so I was hopeful for this patch. I scooped it up, and packed it into a nice snowball. Perfect. Now I turned back up to the road, and turned back to the direction I had come from. I flew back through the tunnel of trees, and then left back to the plaza. There were stone stairs downward. The fountain thing was to my right, and there was a stone tunnel ahead of me, where I saw all the kids leaving.

I called out, "HEY KIDS!" And Nathan and a few others turned right as I threw the snowball. They were looking at it like I had thrown an angry, venomous snake at them, not a simple snowball. They shrieked and some of them cried. Until they realized it was a snowball, and it missed them. It landed on the ground between Nathan and another kid, and powdered them all with snow, rolling along the ground with un-dampened velocity as far as I could see, leaving a line of snow where it rolled and showering the kids with snow as it passed.

The kids all started laughing and cheering, and said "THAT WAS AMAZING!!" And started playing in the snow.

I was pretty satisfied with that, and decided to just fly upwards until I lost the dream (I could already feel it was ending soon). I didn't make it very far before I woke up.

July 17, 2014

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Math Test and Hot Dogs

I was taking a math test at the elementary school... I hadn't studied at all and had been dozing off too much in class, so I was completely unprepared. During the lesson, my back and neck were hurting, and so I was doing contortions, bending back in my chair so my forehead touched the ground, making my toes touch my head under the desk. One of my classmates and some random weird guy noticed and started staring at me. During the break just before the test, I went outside and started walking around. I saw one of my old friends with a girl, and they were holding hands. I followed them for a little bit, but then had to go back inside for the test; I almost got locked out because I didn't have my school ID to swipe at the lock (even though it wouldn't work IRL anyways lol). But there was someone going in right behind me, and they warned me to bring the card next time.

As I reached my seat, my teacher, Tim, was saying something about how we were all a team, and so we couldn't start until everyone was there. At first I thought he was referring to me, but then I noticed a few other people were missing, too. They had gone outside, too. About five minutes later, they came in and apologized; they had gotten locked out, as well. It seemed like all of our student ID cards were out of date now, or had been turned off somehow.

Tim passed out the test and we all took it. I don't remember actually taking it, but I remember turning it in and then going back outside. I walked around the school more, and saw the friend and his girl from before, and followed them some more. I called him over at some point, and talked to him for a bit, and then someone called the girl over, so they were split for a while. I took my friend and walked around with him because I had a crush on him. I almost kissed him, but decided not to, because he'd looked happy with that other girl. I told him to wait somewhere and went to find his girl, and told her where he was waiting for her.

Suddenly it was very snowy. I think the dream was blending into a different one, because the location was different, but I saw a fire hydrant on a corner that I'd seen on the first walk-around, before the test. I went to inspect it, as it was now covered in snow, and realized it wasn't a fire hydrant anymore. It was a group of about 7 people all huddled under a tarp or burlap of some sort, which was piling up with snow, faster than would ever be natural. They all looked out at me, and I asked them why they were under the tarp. The main supporter of the tarp said they were experimenting with something, and I turned away.

I was now on a pedestrian mall. The people under the tarp had walked away, leaving a bare spot of pavement which soon got completely covered with snow, as if they had never been there. The row of shops behind me all looked rather antique. I heard a honk, and looked up; my mom and dad were there to pick me up, and I waved and smiled, having expected them. I was now fully in the other dream. The snow fell and the wind howled. It was a blizzard.

I got into the car, and shook off my hair, even though no snow had accumulated on me, oddly. I peered over at where I'd been standing, and saw an old, crotchety man come out of the building directly behind where I'd been. He wasn't wearing much, just pants and an undershirt, but he didn't seem to be cold, even through the blizzard. A passing man in a thick coat threw a pack of papers unceremoniously at the crotchety man's door; a delivery. The man grumbled and picked up the papers, walking up and down the street a bit and complaining to the wind and snow and buildings, anything that would listen.

My dad started driving, and commented on how bad the weather was. I scoffed and said, "Oh, this is nothing."

After a few more blocks, dad continued, "Oh, and we just bought a Fridge. A round fridge."
"What...?"
"For the hot dog place." Mom said.
"Again, what are you talking about...?"
Dad explained: "We bought an old hot dog establishment. It was the original in a small local chain, but closed years and years ago. The location's perfect, though." So they were going to restart this hot dog place...

We turned right, and as we drove, the weather gradually got more summery, and it also got slightly darker. We arrived at the Hot Dog Place and got out of the car to meet some family friends. By now, it was almost sunset and comfortably warm, but not too hot. The storefront was round, and the building was looking pretty neglected. Mom and dad had a lot of work to do here. The round fridge was neatly in a corner inside, all shiny and new amidst all the dilapidation.

We all went on a walk, heading along a road parallel with the beach (did I forget to mention this was fairly close to a shore-line?). Not too far from the Hot Dog Place, I saw a huuuuuuge colorful sphere. It was a huge 3D trampoline-type thing with tunnels and whatnot. There were basically two spheres; and inner sphere and an outer sphere, and between the two spheres was a series of tunnels and obstacles. I wanted to play on it so fudging badly. I asked mom and dad if it was alright if I left them, and they thought it would be fine, since they weren't going much further anyways. I scrambled into the giant, rainbow sphere, and so did the daughter of my parents' family friends. She stays near the entrance, a little more tentative than I am; I am already climbing up to a tunnel entrance near the very top of the sphere. I notice that the walls are a bit elastic, and hold onto the wall while pushing off and up from it. I grab onto a handle at the very peak of the sphere, and start to bounce between the two spots I was holding onto. I looked down, and then let go of the wall, pushing off from the very top. I just barely reach the bottom of the sphere, and grab a handle there, as well. So now I am bouncing between the top and bottom of the sphere, and it's great fun, but I soon level out a little below the center of the sphere. I was a little scared to let go of the top because it was such a large sphere that I was fairly high up, but I also didn't want to let go of the bottom and be stuck at the very top, so I let go and bounced off the bottom a few times before settling. I asked the other girl if it was possible to rent one of these things for an event or something, and she said "maybe, but probably not one this big."




Sex Tape

I was with my aunt, in my Oma's basement; we were watching a youtube video on the TV downstairs. The video was basically a sex tape starring one of my friends from a class last year.




Scandal

I was with my cohort at a Botanical Garden/Water-Park/Hands On Museum for Adults (a place I've dreamed of before). They were having a special night for to-be-teachers, with a free open bar. So we were all drinking and such. Things got really... interesting. In my dream, D (the only guy in the cohort) brought his girlfriend, who was faceless, and I was so jealous of her. I kept hanging around D and getting him more drinks and such. At some point, he wanted me to take his camera and take a picture of him doing something or other. I thought I took three pictures, and told him, but he only saw two, and so we were sitting next to each other at a table, and he was leaning on me, showing me the camera and how there were only the two pictures. I was feeling very victorious, but then he got up and started hugging his girlfriend. I was going to try to hook up with him anyways. I was so bad.