dream fragment

1. I am in a house watching a TV with a horrible reception. Someone changes the channel to the weather station. It is the forecast for New York. I tell everyone in the room I used to live in New York. I begin to feel nostalgic listening. I wish I were back in New York, but realize if were, I'd probably grow restless and wish I were someplace else.

2. I am on a trip with a National Guard unit. I have a big duffel bag that gets lost. It was in a Hummer that left and now I have nothing but the clothes on my back and a small transistor radio I am carrying (a dream sign). I try to find another Hummer but all are already occupied. The rest of the unit and I are stranded at a Home Depot. It is uncertain why we are there. It appears we are waiting for a bus to come get us. The store supervisor meanwhile comes and puts us all to work. There are big swinging pendulums and lots of mechanical equipment all around us. I go to the customer service desk to ask the girl if I can rent a locker for my radio. She tells me there are no more lockers, but she could store it in her car for me for five bucks. People behind me in line are now growing impatient. She tells me she has to leave soon, and if the bus doesn't come before she leaves she'll put the radio on a shelf under a clock. I thank her and yell to everyone in line "She's going to make some money!" and give her the five bucks for her offer.

Everyone from my unit is gone when I return. I search the entire store for them in vain. I think the bus came while I was at customer service. From here, I somehow end up in a hotel room. I am partially naked and without my radio. I decide to wander around the hotel to look for cards or newspapers or anything to tell me what city I'm in. For some reason I'm thinking Waco. I take an elevator down to the spa. I realize I'm holding my clothes in my arms and lost my room key. I press the button to go down but instead the elevator goes up -- all the way up to the top 16th floor. The door opens and there is a person in a wheelchair looking at me. I step around him and go down a short flight of stairs and suddenly realize I am inside a private room. The walls are decorated with violets and roses and ornate designs. I pass a kitchen. A Hispanic lady is inside it speaking to her teenage son and daughter in Spanish. I ask her where the 'public television' is and she points to the back of the room. It is obvious there is no 'public television'; the TV in the back of the room is hers along with everything else in this apartment. I turn on the TV and she comes over and stretches out beside me on a long ottoman. We strike up a conversation. She asks me if I'm a writer. I tell her yes, in a way -- I keep a dream journal, if that counts. She becomes enthusiastic and tells me how much she loves to dream. I ask her if she's ever had a lucid dream. She doesn't know what they are so I explain: "It's when you wake up inside of a dream." As I tell her this I focus on the details of her face and contours of her attractive body on the ottoman. I find her face very average, but her body smooth and fit. I begin to grow aroused and the dream fades. Dreamt 3/8/2017

1. I am climbing a tree which is growing upside down. Either that, or this is a world where reverse-gravity is in effect and I am grasping the limbs for dear life. If I let go, gravity will pull me up and I will "fall" into the sky and into deep space ad infinitum. I am with two other people. They are also holding on to the branches for dear life.

2. I am driving a vintage old car, like a 1920's Ford. It has a crank-shaft. The cabin only has room for one; it resembles a dragster. Some hot Spanish girls pull up beside me in a modern car. The driver gets out and walks over to a bunch of gang-members. She tells them in Spanish I've been "giving her attention". A gang member grabs a pipe and starts walking towards me. I run back to my vintage car and also pick up a pipe from the front seat and turn to face him. Recall fades.

Dreamt 2/16/2017

I am flying somewhere over the United States in an F-16 fighter jet. I am not the one actually flying the jet; it is being flown by a guy with dark sunglasses who looks like Swedish heavy-metal guitarist Yngwie J. Malmsteen. We are flying at night. I am very glad I am not the pilot, as I have no idea how to operate an F-16. I do have a job, however: my job is to control our altitude. I do this by shifting an M-16 assault rifle which is sticking up between us like a gear shaft. Leaning it down makes us go down; pulling it back makes the F-16 go up higher. The position of the barrel determines the direction of our altitude. I look out the window and see the terrain spread out beneath us like tiny twinkling Christmas lights. We are cruising at super-sonic speed, and Yngwie is very cool and relaxed behind his dark shades.

I point the barrel of the M-16 down and we start to descend. We suddenly hit some turbulence and the jet begins to rock and bounce around in the clouds. This frightens me. Suddenly I am not so sure what I am doing with my M-16 assault rifle altimeter. Should I go back up? Continue on course? I think to myself, one slip up and I'll kill us both! To my great relief, Yngwie grabs the barrel and lifts the entire gun out of its boot and puts it on his side. The jet stabilizes. We are safe. When we eventually land, I notice it I am in a vaguely familiar place - I recall the neighborhood from some prior dream fragment. Dreamt 2/7/2017

Overgrown Weeds

I am at my old childhood home in Hollywood, Florida and notice all the houses in the neighborhood have nice, manicured lawns. But the lawn in front of my old house is all overgrown with weeds. The weeds are huge, towering. They look like gigantic sheaves of wheat or grain and they put out a golden glow against the blue sky.

Surgical Ward Transvestite

I am in a hospital surgical ward, dressed like a drag queen. I look at myself in a mirror and think, "I make a pretty damn-good looking woman!". A pregnant Russian lady who speaks English very well is on the floor, and she is with a male friend. She sees me and starts questioning her own looks. I think she is beautiful; she, however, doesn't think she is. She continues to seek confirmation of her beauty from me. I do everything I can to boost her self-confidence. Meanwhile, I am looking for the bathroom, but can't find it. I decide to lift my skirt and urinate in the surgical waste bucket in the corner of the hallway. A surgeon sees me pissing in the bucket but says nothing, giving me a contemptuous look instead. Embarrassed, I halt my piss mid-flow and decide to keep looking for a proper bathroom. Another surgeon comes out of the surgical station, clutching his groin and asking where the bathroom is. I tell him it's just around the corner (not true - I'm still looking for it myself), but the first surgeon walks over and points to a door right in front of us that says, "Lavatory" on it. Then he gives me another contemptuous look.

Dreamt 1/29/2017

The House at the Bottom of the Hill

I am with a short woman and we are visiting another woman who lives at the bottom of the a hill in a rural town. The area we are in reminds me of Pembroke Pines or Miramar in South Florida when I was a kid. We've both been to this house before, in another dream fragment, but now we are back. It is not clear why. And we don't quite remember how to get to the house; all I remember is it is at the bottom of a hill. I recall walking with this woman, side by side, down a road as we approach the top of a hill. I find it strange there are hills in this area, as South Florida is known to be flat. We get along well and laugh as we walk down the hill. I notice she is wearing tight, faded blue jeans.

Sumo Marriage Counselling

I am in an underground men's locker room with my wife. I am trying to explain to her why we, as guys, get upset when we feel women are trying to "push our buttons". The conversation with her gets heated, and we begin airing our dirty laundry for all the other men in the locker room to hear. There is a very heavy, muscular black guy in the corner with a towel strategically wrapped around his lower torso and groin area. He looks like a Sumo wrestler. He is staring at me and listening to us go back and forth. The way he is looking at me, I begin to fear that he will take my wife's side of the argument. Instead, he closes his locker and says a few words of comfort and walks off. My wife and I stop fighting and feel at peace.

Dreamt 1/28/2017

I am in a huge underwater amphitheater with my father. The amphitheater is a glass dome under several hundred feet of water. Along with me and my dad there are several groups of people sitting in the bleachers. We are all waiting for a show to begin. Mozart begins to play as prehistoric-looking sea creatures in mid-evolutionary stages begin to walk out from a side door. The Mozart music is original hypnogogic permutations from my subconscious of his German marches from the Opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail"

The creatures march to this music in the underwater amphitheater, and pause so we can pet them. Some of them look like gigantic mollusks. Others look like horseshoe crabs the size of dogs and huge, mutated crocodiles. They lumber across the aisles in perfect synch with the music. Among them is a big sawfish with legs. These are all prehistoric creatures. Sitting next to me with her arm around me is a sexy blonde woman. I have no idea who she is. She leans in very close and I can feel her breath against my ear. I am wondering who her boyfriend is, and also worried that my wife might see us. Meanwhile, the prehistoric creatures are crawling all around in front of us. I have to lift my legs to let them pass by. In the dream, I remember this as a strenuous exercise. My father is sleeping next to me. He is sprawled out across two chairs. He is wearing a shirt with back lettering, but the words keep shifting as I try to read what they spell. As I reach out to try to stop the letters from moving, he drowsily awakens and tells me to stop touching him. He actually says, "If you keep touching me, I'm gonna lay you out like I am." After he says this, three men in shorts come over to where we are sitting and try to wake him. They say, "Hello" to him at the same time, intentionally loud and obnoxious. He jolts awake. As they laugh, I assure my dad I had nothing to do with this prank. The Mozart, meanwhile, has gotten more pronounced and my attention is directed toward the gorgeous music. In a brief glimpse of lucidity, I realize this music is not real Mozart, but a figment of my imagination. I marvel at how beautiful and realistic my subconscious rendition of his operatic marches are.

Miscellaneous fragments from the same night:

1. I am explaining to my son how vitamin C works in boosting the immune system. I explain that the vitamin builds a wall through which the microbes are unable to pass. In my dream mind, I see a bubble wall collapse on a bunch of marauding bacteria.

2. I am on vacation in Russia, returning to the bungalow I rented. I am somewhere down by the Black Sea I think, in a coastal resort area. As I enter the door to my place, I notice some people on the road watching me. The walkway from the road to my door is a short wooden bridge, resembling a boardwalk. When I get inside my bungalow I look at myself in a mirror. I look like a pathetic tourist: red hat, white American tennis shoes, preppy shorts and a Hawaiian-themed shirt. No wonder people are looking at me! I am suddenly very conscious I may soon be robbed. Dreamt 1/27/2017

I am investigating an area on earth where there has been recent alien activity reported. There is a huge Chinese or Korean space satellite floating above me in the sky. I am in a quiet village that has become a ghost town, going from home to home and looking in the windows. It is night and the homes are all dark and empty. There are stickers on the outside window panes of the houses that warn of recent alien abductions in the area. I come across one sticker that has a photo of a famous actor who has recently disappeared. It is assumed this actor was abducted by aliens. As I go from home to home reading the stickers, I look out over a field (the village park) and see a luminescent, glowing butterfly which flutters to the ground and slowly transforms into a human figure. The human figure stands up in the distance, glowing with neon radiance. As it walks through the dark park, I can see through its body transparently: the creature's muscular and skeletal systems are fully visible with incandescent lime-green bones and electric orange-neon muscle. It is a beautiful, surreal sight to withhold. I transfix on it as it strides through the park. I am not afraid. While watching it, I suddenly become lucid, check my hands, and discover I am dreaming. But the intensity of the dream is such, that I am totally paralyzed by the awesomeness of the sight and cannot move. My recall fades shortly thereafter. Dreamt 1/27/2017

A very fat man is talking to an old, Italian Godfatheresque character. It looks like they are negotiating a deal. The Godfather suddenly takes out a penknife and proceeds to slice the man, separating his thoracic cavity from his ribcage with clean precision. As the fat man lay on the ground dying, another man comes to finish him off by strangling him but a parade of children march between them, stopping the act. I wake up momentarily and begin counting, "1...I am lucid dreaming...2...I am lucid dreaming...3...I am lucid dreaming..." and slowly drift back to sleep. After several moments of HH, a new dream scenario begins to unfold:

I am back where the killing took place, but this time within a prison of concrete walls and corridors. I walk the length and breadth of the prison, focusing on the cement pattern in the walls. I keep putting my hand on the walls, trying to push through. Although I am seeing my hands, I have not done an RC yet. Yet I keep thinking, "If this were a dream, I could go through these walls..." My hands then begin to meld into the walls, like soft butter. I realize I am lucid. I quickly spin around and leap into the air and begin to float around the prison. As I levitate, I try to remember my dream goals and go over everything I want to do: sex, time travel, etc. but the dream suddenly darkens and I begin to lose control. As I fade out, I hear a girl's voice tell me that the counting method is a bad technique. Dreamt 1/21/2017

I am working at an old funeral home in New Braunfels, Texas -- my old place of employment IRL. I am back on call with the other funeral directors and embalmers, rotating the nightly death calls. I am in the prep room (the place where all the embalming and cosmetic restoration goes on) talking with my co-workers and they are glad to have me back. I too am glad to be back. I am looking forward to embalming again (embalming was very relaxing and even therapeutic for me IRL). One thing keeps nagging at me: my embalming and funeral director licenses are all expired. I never renewed them after I left the industry three years ago. I now regret letting them expire.

I leave the funeral home on a motorcycle. This motorcycle has manifested before in other dreams (I do not drive a motorcycle IRL). I drive out to the country to be by the water. I roll up to a gothic-style iron fence. The fence has sharp spears on the rails and it surrounds a heavily-wooded estate. The mansion of the estate is located deep within the woods somewhere. A man suddenly appears at the fence. He is a brown-skinned Latino guy who reminds me of Paco Hewlette, a Puerto Rican kid who once lived next door to me. He is the neighbor of whoever lives behind the iron gate. He invites me over to his place. I park the motorbike beside the iron gate and walk over to his house, which is right on the water. He has a dirty swimming pool in the back of his house next to the lake. He invites me into the pool. As I sit across from him in his dirty pool, I see that the water in the pool is actually crystal-clear; it only looks dirty because there are strange dark objects floating in it. I am not able to define what these "things" are, but they do not defile the water. We are safe, and the water is clean. I am very relaxed. We are drinking good beer from glass bottles and smoking Cuban cigars.

I hear a noise and look over to see a city parade going down the road where I had parked my motorbike. There are all kinds of exotic animals in this parade: horses, llamas, goats, bears, elephants. The animals are dressed up in brilliant gold costumes and march down the road in obedient precision. I realize this is Paco's parade (or whatever the name of this dream character in the pool with me is). The house, the land, the gate, the animals all belong to Paco's father. There are people gathering along the sides of the road with cameras, and spectators are stopping their cars to get a glimpse of the parade. Suddenly, people are everywhere. This parade, it turns out, is a big event and it happens at this time every year. It's a famous parade, a staple of the community. Looking at all the exotic animals march down the road, I turn to my friend in the pool and say, "I guess this what you can do when you have more money than you know what to do with." Fade recall.

Other isolated fragments from the night include:

(1) I am with a friend walking around in the "underground district" of some unknown city. We are trying to get into a mysterious club after hours. The outer walls are made of stone, and the archway entrance resembles a Mediterranean garden (2) I am driving around the same city with a short-haired pug dog on my lap. I love the dog. He feels good and warm on my lap and he really enjoys me petting him. (3) I am in an apartment on a military base somewhere. Suddenly, from out in the distance, I hear a loud "Oorah!" as someone guns an engine and a car peels away. Marines are here on the post, apparently, and there is a party going on somewhere. Dreamt 1/09/2017

I am at my home with some guests. One of the guests is this guy named Greg, an employee of the company I work with. Several other people are there. My daughter wrote on the new table we are sitting at with indelible ink and she also left deep scratch marks in the wood. I become enraged. My wife tries to calm me, but I am inconsolable. I have a temper tantrum and start hurling books against the wall and cussing up a storm. I don't care that we have guests over. Everyone leaves and a lady comes and takes my daughter away. She may have been CPS.

I have a scooter (motorbike) and someone gave me a bunch of helmets as a gift. I use the bike to get to and from work. I keep the helmets in a closet where there is a strange makeshift bathtub on the ground. There are towels at the bottom of the tub and water is running continuously on them. I put on the helmets, one by one, trying to decide which one looks best. I am aware if two things before my recall fades: (1) This closet is in my house, and (2) someone is in the bathroom with me.

Dreamt 1/09/2017

I am looking into a special monitor that tracks people via a hidden camera as they enter and exit a room. As I look into the monitor I suddenly see a couple of Mexican girls enter a hospital room from a camera underneath a bed. As I continue to watch the girls, they begin to morph into my own children. Fade recall.

I am given a gift of a solid 24 ounce gold bar by a black man who resembles the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He tells me that in time I can use the gold bar to insert myself into a FPS video game as the hero-shooter, but, as he says, "You'll have to work up to it." With the bar in my hand, I walk out on a balcony to see my children using it (the gold bar teleported from my hand to theirs) for a carnival game. They fasten it to the "Hit the Bell with the Hammer" game, as the metal piece that slides up to bang the bell when they hit the pad with the hammer. Fade recall.

I am observing a lady sitting by a lake who wants to be alone with a book. A friend soon joins her, and they both walk out on the frozen lake and sit on the ice. I decide to join them. I've brought a ball with me. I kick it hard and it sails far away. The lady with the book gets up to retrieve the ball. Fade recall.

Dreamt 1/06/2017

I am flying in an airplane, way up above South Florida, and I can see the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean below me. The terrain lines keep changing every time I look out the window. Almost as if the land beneath me is alive and morphing and moving like some kind of wide, flat monster. I decide to land the plane and investigate. When I get out of the plane, I am joined by a minister of a Pentecostal church. As we both look down at the dream representation of the Florida coastline, the minister proceeds in "straightening out" and manipulating the terrain, as though the shape of the coastline were liquid or made of hair. He uses a knife to cut off and trim unneeded portions of the coastline. The unneeded portions are then swept away, like hair clippings on the floor of a barbershop. At this point, my recall fades but I do remember Cake's rendition of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" playing in my subconscious (and I awaken with this tune playing in my dream ears).

Now, I am with my wife and our two nieces. We are wading in the water inside a little roped-off section of a canal near the pier. It seems we are waiting for someone, and as we wait, we swim. My nieces in the dream are young -- toddler size. IRL they are both in their mid-twenties, but this is how they looked back when they were babies. One of them -- the youngest -- has a floatie and she is kicking around in the water like a duck. My subconscious measures the depth of the water to be 10 ft. My other niece suddenly transforms back to her mature body and goes underwater. My vision underwater is clear and exact. Observing her, I sense she is in danger, and I come to her rescue. I bring her to the side of the pier. As she turns her back to me and lifts herself out of the water, I marvel at her body and think of how she's become sexually active and has already had children. I ruminate this as I think of her younger sister in a floatie beside her, who is still the symbol of innocence. It is a bittersweet, sentimental feeling.

The place where we are swimming is divided into sections designated by color. We are in the "blue" section. This "blue" water area somehow corresponds with the airplane trip and terrain manipulation I dreamt about earlier. The surrounding climate is sub-tropical. I look down and see a mapped coastline similar to the one the Pentecostal minister had manipulated earlier with a knife. Only this one was color-coded. I see different "blue" and "red" designated areas, and I find our "blue" swimming area on it.

I teleport to another section of Florida, this time back to my old childhood home (a dream sign). A pregnant girl is there with me, and we are waiting for someone. With us are three other guys. They are sitting at a table between my old bedroom and the laundry room. I am restless, walking back and forth, to the laundry room, back to my bedroom, back to the laundry room and around the table, over and over again. I tell everyone that while we wait, I'll start drinking. In the dream, I drink beer. Two of the guys at the table are hugging each other, and the other one is now standing behind them. They are friends with the pregnant girl, and although the girl is familiar to me, I do not know who the guys are. Dreamt 1/06/2017

I am inside an airport, watching security people accost Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion of chess. At every turn they are pulling at his shirt and wrestling him against the wall. He is trying to leave the airport to get to his limo. I am told they are attacking him because he is the world champion. The scene at the airport fades and I am teleported to a sports stadium with Garry Kasparov. We are sitting in the front row and watching a chess match take place inside a boxing ring. I hear the announcer say, "Max Dlugy" and it appears Max is a coach for one of the fighters. One of the fighters is sitting on the ground with pink-dyed hair. His native language is German. In turn, this pink-haired fighter is himself a coach -- and he is coaching a female player.

Apparently, this is a match where the coaches are directly involved in the competition. The players fight the players, and the coaches fight the coaches. And each player has a coach and each coach is coached by someone else. It reminds me of an onion, unfolding more and more layers. Or those bulbous Russian Matrioshka dolls, where one doll fits inside another, which fits inside another, which fits inside another, et cetera. Kasparov is standing next to me and I am thinking of joining in the competition, even though I am nowhere near the strength of the other players. But I figure I'll still have a fighting chance, since Garry Kasparov is my coach. Dreamt 1/05/2017

I am at my uncle Dominic's house in West Palm Beach, Florida. The house has long, dimly-lit corridors in the dream -- corridors which do not look like this in reality. There are rooms off these corridors which are also unfamiliar. Guests are over for dinner. I don't know who these people are. I excuse myself to use the downstairs bathroom (there is no "downstairs" in his actual home). There are scorpions crawling around everywhere in the bathroom: all over the floor, on the shower curtain, in the bath tub. There is also a leak in the plumbing and water is pooling up on the ground. I am afraid that if I use the toilet, the bathroom is going to flood even more after I flush it.

I decide to go back upstairs to use the toilet there. On the way upstairs, however, I get sidetracked and venture outside where I run into his neighbor, an African-American lady sleeping on a hammock on her front porch. I awaken her to ask if she would like to have a new roof put on her house. The back of her house sports a beautiful Spanish-style tile roof; the front, however, is missing shingles and has no decking. It looks as though a tornado had destroyed it years ago and it was never fixed. She tells me she is interested. At that point, I remember I had to use the bathroom, so I tell her I can help her get a new roof, but first there was something I needed to do. As I head back over to uncle Dominic's, I notice I am completely nude (a missed dream sign). I am determined now to do two things: use the bathroom, and find my clothes.

As I enter into the house, I pass an Italian-looking guy who looks like he's in the mob. He is talking to my uncle in the kitchen, using his hands to gesticulate. An attractive older woman is standing next to him. I go upstairs and use the bathroom. While sitting on the toilet, I look around and notice all different kinds of clothes hanging from the walls: jeans, slacks, shirts, etc. All the articles of clothing are of the same color and pattern -- red and black striped -- and all the clothing is in pairs. As I am wondering what this means, a young kid enters and says he needs to get his clothes. His clothes are in very close proximity to me; some of the articles are even touching my legs and arms as I sit on the commode. As he collects his clothes, I try to help him by reaching out to the articles nearest to me. As I do this, other people begin entering the bathroom, including the Italian guy. He pulls up a chair opposite from me and tries to engage in conversation. Other men join in, and suddenly it seems all my uncle's guests are up here in the bathroom with me. I want to get up and flush, but am too embarrassed to do so, given the circumstances. My hands are covering my groin and I feel trapped. Fade out.

In this next fragment, I am seated in a restaurant with a group of friends. We are planning our night out on the town. A nagging thought keeps hitting me: My time would be better spent studying and preparing for my exams so I can fulfill the requirements needed to graduate (another missed dream sign). Two geeky guys are sitting across from me. They lean over and whisper in my ear that I if play some jazz guitar tonight, they'll hook me up with some girls looking for action. Dream recall fades. Dreamt 1/04/2017

I am staying at an old seaside mansion in the antebellum section of a historic city (New Orleans, perhaps), and I am there with a group of people. A man is fencing in white breeches behind the mansion, down by the seashore. He is by himself, practicing his parries and thrusts. He is not wearing a mask. He has thick black hair and is in excellent physique. He is very graceful and very handsome and moves as smooth as a ballet dancer. I walk up to him when he stops and tell him that Paul Morphy was an expert fencer too, and that he never lost a match -- in fencing or in chess.

Note: Paul Morphy (1837-1884) was an extraordinary chess genius who became the unofficial world chess champion at age 21. After which, he retired from competitive chess and went insane. In this dream it appears I am staying at his mansion, which would account for the odd statement made by my subconscious to the DC fencer.

In the dream, I continue bragging on Morphy, my hero, but the people with me -- including the fencer -- seem uninterested. I cannot determine if the mansion belonged to his family, or if he lived elsewhere. I look at the sea and wonder if this was where he used to walk out on the sand. As I ponder these things, I am translocated from the seashore to a dank industrial building, akin to a warehouse where an attractive foreign woman is sitting at a table and staring at me. In my hand is a WWII German Luger pistol. As I continue to examine the pistol, the woman gets up to leave the room. Without thinking, I raise the pistol and fire at her back as she walks out the door. Nothing happens; it appears the gun wasn't loaded. The reason I tried to shoot her was because I wanted to hear how the gun sounded. Dreamt 12/31/2016