vignettes from a different world

i had a dream early in the night but i don't remember it at all. i will edit this if i recall any details.

later i am in the dining room of the townhouse. various people are here. i have gotten 7 or 8 identical tattoos on my hip. they are tiny outlines of men. i colour them in with a pink marker to make it look like they're naked. a girl laughs and asks me if it's my halloween costume. suddenly i realize that it is halloween. i want candy but i do not have a costume so i go to my room and find a pair of bunny ears. i put them on and leave the house (it is night) but i only get a few steps before realizing i've forgotten to get something to hold the candy. i go back inside the house. there's a long segment here that i don't remember much of. all i remember is that i was carrying a purple nightgown with bleach stains and i saw an identical nightgown on a shelf, which creeped me out a little, and people were discussing times? i went upstairs to get a pillowcase but for some reason went into the bathroom instead. i heard someone talking about slenderman downstairs. then i entered my room. i grabbed a pillowcase and put on a glove shaped like a bunny's paw. the dream ends here.

around 9 am i had the following dream: i am visiting my mother in an unfamiliar house. we get into an argument, the details of which are a little personal and so won't be posted here. i end up screaming at her, throwing a stack of paper in her face and leaving.

edit: remembered another part of the last dream. this occurred prior to the argument. my father and i were in an apartment with white walls; a lot of stuff was made of wood. the room was filled with blue light. there were parts coming out of the walls that created steep hills and inclines and we were trying to climb on top of them. at the same time that these represented parts of the room they also represented a landscape and at times they would become much larger in scale and look, for lack of a better description, like real-life video game platforms; at one point there was an elaborate gothic church on top of one. yet they were still components of the apartment.

comment: these simultaneous perceptions feature commonly in my dreams and often make it difficult to write down an accurate description. the best way i can describe it is that they add layers of depth to the dream world.. that is to say a table in a dream is not just a table; it may occasionally be perceived as an object that is functionally or structurally related (eg a chair because it's used for dining, a dog because it has four legs and is brown) or, if not fully perceived this way these sorts of associations will persist at a subconscious level and colour the dream experience. the mechanism behind this, i think, is an intensification of associative thought. i have experienced similar perceptions in waking life w/ the use of marijuana.

i am lying on the couch in the living room of the old townhouse. it is night and the room is lit by lamps. i feel very ill and feverish. my mother is here. she tells me to get up and go to school. i reply that i can't, i have meningitis and i should be in the hospital. she screams at me and we have a long argument. i am intensely angry. later i wonder if i am going to die and think about what my boyfriend would do if i did. (i was violently ill before i fell asleep which probably accounts for the focus on illness here).

in the next scene i am walking to my high school. it is snowy and i am with my father. i find an iphone sticking out of a snowbank. i ask my father if it's ok to take it. he says yes, so i do. then i am inside the library at my elementary school with some other people. we are watching a movie on a projector screen. at one point there is some starbucks product placement in the movie and starbucks gift cards pop out of the screen and onto the floor. the other people and i scramble to grab them up. they keep coming, along with some lollipops and -- hydrocodone pills... i grab several pills and remark to C.W. that i'm surprised it was legal for the filmmakers to do this.

then i am working at a daycare for disabled children. i am standing on a large circular mezzanine in a domed wooden building with a rustic/old-fashioned atmosphere. there is a matronly black woman here. later i am taking a bath while covered by a white canopy to research therapies for autism?

finally i am outside, on a beautiful rocky coastline. i am listening to a lecture about canadian geography from a disembodied voice. i sprinkle green powder onto a moss-covered slope which i recognize to be british columbia. the voice is now talking about aboriginal tribes: "our friends, the mogwai, are dead..." finally the subject of the lecture changes to buddhism. i don't recall what the voice said.

the general atmosphere of these dreams is unpleasant.

slept 11:30 - 9:00, awakening and falling back asleep several times between 7 and 9

i am in a large, dark house with some caribbean women who appear to be in their 50s-60s. they are acting strangely. someone tells me that in their culture, it is considered polite not to acknowledge strangers. later i am cutting myself in the bathroom (similar to townhouse bathroom) and the blood is getting everywhere. later still, the women and i are in a room with a young red-haired child. he keeps changing in size, from the size of an average 4 year old to the size of a mouse. he crawls around on the floor. the women are thinking of adopting him.

then i am in a "hospital", which is similar to the house in colour scheme. there is a lot of wood. i am a nurse here and i am watching over a middle aged man. his hospital room is a huge cylindrical tank with transparent walls. he is sitting in the far end of the tank, attached to many machines. he is wearing a sports jersey. i leave the room and report to the doctor, a tall young woman, that he is doing ok. she decides to initiate a different treatment. the tank is filled with water and numerous small, pink, swimming creatures. i go into the tank to explain the treatment to the man, but the creatures keep swimming into my mouth and it feels very uncomfortable. i leave. the doctor tells me to prepare a powerpoint on cellular respiration and photosynthesis.

in a fragment i can't place, i am at some kind of religious ceremony. the "church" seems to be underground and has a domed ceiling with pillars that fan out at the capitals; everything is hewn of grey-beige stone. somewhat gothic architecture?

in a different dream, i am playing with dogs in a park. it is hilly, with yellow-brown grass: beside the chainlink fence is a stone chasm and then a road. a beige concrete overpass stands further away, over the road, and in the distance, a cityscape can be seen. the sky is bright blue and clear. occasionally i see a massive red balloon rising over the city. it is very beautiful.

my final dream begins as a video game but the perspective changes. it is night in a cartoonish landscape; the land is pine green, the sky dark blue and full of stars. there is a little boy here whose pupils are shaped like crosses. he sees an area where the land slopes down, inwardly-curving, to a beach; but the slope has been separated from the level land, creating a vertical cliff. he realizes that he must push the cliff and the slope back together to save the other children. there is a segment of this dream which engenders a strong bittersweet feeling inside me, and repeats several times: the boy floats up into the sky among the stars, holding on to a red balloon.

did not sleep at all previous night. napped from about 4:30 - 6 pm, took 30mg temazepam + 100mg trazodone and slept from 10pm-6:30 am; still tired upon waking.

i am on a bus with soldiers who are returning from war. they are meeting their newborn children for the first time. the babies all have square sections of their skull cut out to reveal coagulated blood and unidentifiable tissue underneath. there are black tubes coming out of the centre of these sections. in the dream, this is not disturbing to me. i just assume the babies have recently had surgery.

later i am in a large basement, which is unlike any basement i have been in in real life but which has featured in my dreams before. there is a tall french man talking (in french) about farts.

the imagery in these dreams was not as vivid as my dream imagery typically is. sometimes my vision would fade or objects would turn black.

in the first dream i am logging back into the neopets account i had when i was like, 8.

in the second dream i am taking a bath, but the bathroom and the adjacent hallway soon fill with several inches of water. on the floor of the hallway is writing in finnish.

fitful sleep tonight. various fragmented dreams. not well recalled. content is quite shallow except for the last fragment.

------------

my father and i are driving in the country at night. in a recessed area on the side of the road sits a dollhouse & a wicker shelf that was in my childhood bedroom. the shelf is full of stuffed animals -- i remember one was a dragon. i take some of them with me because i understand i will be going to the hospital soon.

i am then at "the hospital"; it's a distorted version of the townhouse i lived in most of my life. the lights are off. the stuffed animals aren't with me. there's nothing hospital-like about the surroundings; it's just the main floor of the townhouse. there are 2 bro kind of guys visiting a middle aged woman who has tuberculosis. they talk about how she is defecating blood.

i decide to escape. i am suddenly in bright, sunny, warm-hued "downtown toronto" -- nothing like downtown toronto really, just big glass buildings and an immense urban atmosphere -- adrenaline rush, i'm running through beautiful streets, i crest a hill on a cobblestone road and i yell "santa maria! santa maria!"

i am back in the "hospital", i don't remember how this happens. i'm in the darkened townhouse kitchen. there are two nondescript tall men watching me -- the guards. i understand i am here for mental reasons. i think i am fine, but i accept my hospitalization with equanimity. i open the fridge and eat some kind of pastry with a raspberry on top. i hear a voice narrating lil wayne's current medical situation. i wake up.

later: something about a girl at school, i don't quite recall what she looked like - generic teenage girl, probably around 13? she's very bubbly and excitable, a little obnoxious, but she takes an interest in me and i'm glad that someone finds me nice to be around. we are rehearsing something and she starts rubbing her body against mine. i am a little uncomfortable. i point out that it seems dirty; she laughs. next we are talking to each other on a bus. i remember that her backpack is very focal in these scenes. it's a jansport style backpack, mainly white with yellow, lilac and blue thunderbolt designs. we get off the bus with some of her friends and we are in a dark city area. one of her friends is wearing - hard to describe this - platform shoes with the platform made of hard black plastic; they are hollowed out in increasingly smaller concentric circles, like the pattern of a mining pit - goes clear through to the other side. i remember thinking this is really cool, actually i still do. we walk through a bridge-tunnel. we realize that the bridge has no railing and is thus illegal to walk on. the girl comments that she should have removed her shoes (they have a specific name -- it's very german -- i understand that its named after the guy who invented the pattern) and now the people on the adjacent, legal bridge would know she walked on the illegal bridge, because the opening of the tunnel has the same pattern as her shoes. i find this remarkable. a boy with us comments that he's seen the same pattern in greece and i understand that i'm in some kind of european country. the atmosphere in this scene is very nice, everything's lit by soft incandescent streetlamps.

then i am in a distorted version of a thrift store i frequent. my stepmother is getting married, today, and she wants a pink themed wedding. she gives me 5 dollars to buy a dress and she also wants me to look after a young girl (age 3-5, black hair, olive skin). i notice that the girl is wearing lipstick and eye shadow and i think to myself that her father is awful for making her look like a slut. i ask her if she likes wearing eye makeup and she says yes. i can't find a pink dress at the thrift store so i go to a version of the victoria's secret pink store. i find something and i try to steal it but i fail somehow. then an employee asks us to leave. i am frightened for a moment but then i realize it is just because the store is closing.

then i am inside of a south park video game (??) it looks terrible, like some awful game you'd see on newgrounds in 2005 or sth. top-down view, white background (snow) with a grey line representing the road and brown blocks representing buildings. i understand that it was made to be terrible on purpose. i have to go somewhere in the game but every time i try to go there i am transported back. this goes on for a very long time.

finally i return to real life. i am in a different store. this one has bright wooden floors, white walls; it is very open and spacious. the girl and i are standing in front of a white shelf which houses a scattered assortment of strange toys. she takes interest in a toy which seems to be some kind of japanese thing based on jersey shore?? i realize i have spent a very long time in the video game and i should have returned the girl by now; my stepmother must be wondering where she is. the girl's face has changed - her eyes are very dark and there is a swollen red area under her eyes (similar to the famous picture of omayra sanchez -- if you're going to look this up be warned that it is disturbing).

the room has darkened. my stepmother appears. the girl is lying on the ground. stepmother is angry. she tells me that the "death squad" has been informed and people from all over the world are searching for her. i break down crying. i understand that the police will be coming to talk to me.

i walk over to the edge of the room and beyond a short banister is a beautiful landscape. it is hard to describe its beauty in words. i am high above the ground; i can see the peaks of mountains and clouds moving through the deep & light blues of the sky. below me, miles below me, are vast rolling hills and lush greenery. rivers flow through the land. the immense scale is very very difficult to describe. i understand, somehow, that this is Iceland. i want to get closer. there is a very thin wooden tree trunk that i jump over the banister onto. the landscape more beautiful now and I understand that this is not only iceland but Heaven. i almost cry.

i know the police are coming for me soon and my life will be awful. i debate whether to let go of the tree and fall into heaven, or face real life. heaven is so beautiful. i let myself slip a little but then i grip the tree again.

i wake up.