DoubleHelix

April 21, 2014: I am one of three men in a car driving to a location to meet a woman performer whom we would like to back financially and promote. Unfortunately, the persons we had approached to actually provide the financing did not come through, and some other individual or group ended up picking her up instead. We meet her in her dressing room. The woman we meet is Emelia Clarke, the actress who plays Daenerys Targaryen (Dragon Mother) on Game of Thrones. She appears just about ready to go on and do her act/show. We have a short conversation wherein we tell her how great she looks and how extremely well she will do even with the other backers, not us, and that we are sorry that we can’t be involved in promoting/representing her. We each give her a warm, earnest hug and leave.

We are now getting back in the car, which is a large, forties-style black mobster-type car with rounded fenders and roof. There are shirts and/or suits on a hanger hooked on the driver’s side rear which has to be held aside by me so I can slip into the back seat behind the driver. We drive off.

As we drive we pass what appears to be a cheap, salt-box hotel or low income housing on the left side of the street. A plane - a greatly scaled up version of the Wright Brother’s airplane which is as large as a modern-day jet liner barely clears the building. The plane has a long horizontal row of blindingly bright landing lights. I make a comment on what a disaster it would be if the plane crashed into the building. I wake.

April 20, 2014, Dream #2: I am hanging out in the third floor on-call room of a hospital along with some medical student with a longish face who is wearing a white lab coat. The room has floor-to-ceiling windows and looking outwards through the windows I can see directly and clearly into an administrative-type office with five women in it, one floor below and perhaps thirty feet away. The women are dressed in business attire and approximately 25 years old each. They all know each other and are comfortable together, like good friends or BFF’s. Two of them start to kiss fairly passionately, to the amusement of the other three. I continue to watch, also amused, not shocked or disturbed by this in any way.

There comes a moment where one woman notices me watching, and calls it to the attention of the others. I give them a wave, “intentionally coy” to convey the non-verbal expression of “I see/caught you” and also simultaneously conveying my non-judgmental amusement, identical to their own.

One of the five women is kind of hefty, but quite pretty. She is the one who picks up an old-style corded phone receiver from the desk, and calls into our on-call room. The phone she uses is plain black and has the old-style illuminated clear plastic push-buttons for switching between multiple lines. She clearly knows of our room, where it is in the building, and that it looks down into their own office. She obviously also knows the extension to reach us. I answer the phone. Her voice is not clear. It is breaking up like a bad cell phone connection, yet I understand that she is asking me if I would like to come down and meet her. I am married, but I don’t tell her that for the reason I am saying no. I just tell her “no, not right now.”

When the conversation ends, I turn to the medical student/ resident in the lab coat and ask him if he wants to come with me on rounds to see the post-op patients, write orders and pull chest tubes while Dr. T*** is in the operating room. He says no. I say, no problem, I remember what the work load was like while I was in medical school and I can sympathize with how tired and overworked/overwhelmed one can get by the program load and testing. I wake.

April 20, 2014, Dream #1: I am walking, carrying my long wool winter coat on a coat hanger. I squeeze through the opening of a chain-link fence that is sloppily locked with an over-long chain and lock, allowing my body to fit through sideways. The place I am leaving as I slip through is an otherwise empty baseball field/park. I find myself turning a corner to my right to continue down an urban street, and now a chain-link fence is on my left, right at the border of the curb and the street for as long as I can see up ahead. On my side of the fence is an African-American man, seemingly nice, but a stranger. He says something to me about taking a shuttle if I have things to carry. Tall buildings are on my right. Behind me, on the street side of the fence, subways and buildings disgorge thousands upon thousands of people, all intent on going home at the same time. The size of the crowd is stupendous.

As I walk on my side of the fence with relatively few people on it (maybe fifteen) a businessman in a suit starts exclaiming he was stuck by a needle. His concern seems to be it might have been contaminated with H.I.V. He makes quite a fuss. Out of all the possible people who did it is a blonde woman in the crowd who is with two or three other women. From a window three or four stories up, a shower of short human hair (as from the floor of a barber shop) rains down at the same time the man is making his fuss. I wake.

April 19, 2014 Dream #2: A dilapidated car pulls aggressively into our semi-circular driveway at our current home in ********. My 26 year old son Scott is casually lying down on his right side in the driveway, and the car containing at least one angry man (the driver) goes around and behind him, stopping abruptly. I grab at Scott's shirt dragging him upwards and order him to get up. I insist he stand up and take a defensive posture. The driver’s window is open and I very calmly and diplomatically approach and address him. I observe a second man is present in the rear seat immediately behind the driver on the same side of the car as I am standing. He is Caucasian and needs a shave, but doesn’t appear to be particularly animated or angry, nor does he make any move towards getting out of the car.

The driver does not get out either. He goes from being Afro-American initially, to being Caucasian when I look back to him after scrutinizing the passenger in the rear seat. The driver starts asking me questions about “Scott’s sister" (A**** my daughter). He wants to know if she is taking Ambien. I start to tell them there must be some kind of mistake in identity because my daughter is living in South Korea (as she is in reality) and they couldn't possibly know of her or be the subject of their anger, but Scott does not want me to tell them any details about her. I wake.

April 19, 2014 Dream #1: I am at my ancestral home in *******, New York. I am quite young, perhaps ten years of age, as is my younger sister Joanne, who is the only other dream character present. We are each mulling about at the top of the three step concrete stoop that leads to our home. I decide to peel off an improbably long piece of black electrical tape from a roll I am holding. I throw it towards the M****r’s yellow and white split level home all the way across the street, where somehow it adheres diagonally across their entire home at an angle from 11:00 to 5:00. The roll of tape is now virtually empty, but the cardboard inner roll in my right hand now appears to be unusually wide - about three inches. It has about 3/4 of a turn of tape left, and I throw that towards the house also. It ends up where the M****r's driveway meets the house.

Suddenly I am concerned that I will get in trouble for what I’ve done. I usher my sister into the house and shut off the lights so no one can see us. When the lights are off on our side of the street the interior lights of the M****r’s home are readily apparent. Through the glass covered windows and doors I can see the interior of much of their home, their lamps, furnishings and rugs. No one from their family is silhouetted against the windows or doors inside looking out, and I conclude no one saw that it was me that threw the tape and near-empty roll onto their property. I wake.

April 16, 2014: I am inside a large canvas flap tent at what appears to be a Hawaiian Luau. There is a large number of Hawaiian / Calypso performers and singers assembled on a low, broad multi-tiered stage at the front of the tent. The flap used to enter and exit is to the left as seen from the audience (stage right). The smallish audience - we barely outnumber the performers - are seated on rows of grey metal chairs arranged in an arc. Patrick Swayze is seated in front of me. His shirt is off. He gets up and passes through the tent flap, exiting the performance just prior to its commencement. Following this, a man straightens out the flap closure and the music starts. I wake.

April 13, 2014: I am at a block party or outdoor gathering following some sort of contest or sporting event like a baseball game. I am happy with the outcome of the game, not so much because we won, but because of the poor performance of someone on the opposing team as his mistake(s) caused them to lose.

I leave the gathering to take a break from the party crowd and find myself negotiating/pushing my way down a crowded urban sidewalk, like 7th Avenue in NYC. I pass a movie theater. When I left the party, I did so without any money, phone or wallet, which, in my dream, I normally keep in some kind of wooden box on my person, as I did not expect to want to leave the party as I had done, nor did I expect to be gone for long.

I decide to go for a jog and end up on far eastern Long Island - Montauk Point. I run to a place on the edge of a body of water which is murky and crowded with reed grasses and bog-like plants typical of the edge of a wetland. As I stand there gazing into the water, what appears to be a large fish, perhaps 6 - 8 feet long, swims towards me, then, reaching a too-shallow spot, turns to its left and returns out of sight to deeper water. Before it is lost to view I can make out its large, plate-like scales and the mud-brown color of the fish. As it swims away I realize it is too big for a fish, and from the way it swims I realize it is an alligator. Although I see only the one, I know the water has many more of them in it.

In order to leave where I am standing, I must cross a decrepit, poorly maintained dock/bridge made out of pilings and planks, many of which are missing. The alligators appear to be aware of this and in my mind I strongly suspect that they are lurking beneath the dock waiting patiently and unseen in case I stumble and fall into the water. I run/jump competently and safely across the decrepit dock even though I am afraid and now I can continue my journey/quest which I now realize was to re-trace the final steps of a friend who had recently died.

I am far from home with no car, no money and no phone, so my only option is to continue jogging west towards home. I run through a series of ground-floor patios at what appears to be a cheap beach-side hotel/motel, passing underneath the balconies of the rooms on the second floor. The balconies are supported on their outer edges by what looks like raw, unpainted 6" X 6" wood studs. I jog leisurely past **** (name deleted-old girlfriend), who is talking with, and in the company of a man who is kind of young for her. I say something to him (which she can also hear) about her being unable to give love to him to discourage the relationship, because it seemed to me to be the truth. Neither of them seems particularly upset by my statement.

I keep jogging and encounter two women, one of which has a car. I ask her where she is going three separate times and she responds the same each time but I do not know/am not familiar with the town she specifies. I say “One more time?” and she says the name of the town one last time. This time I hear the name of the town but it does me no good because I do not recognize it or where it is in relation to ***(my home town), which is where I want to go. Since we are so far east, I conclude it is a virtual certainty that wherever she is headed has got to be generally west and will bring me closer to home no matter what, so I get in her car. In order to get in the car, I need to remove three sacks of what appear to be bags of concrete, which we leave on the side of the parking lot.

It is at this point that I realize that I have been jogging and visiting places trying to uncover the last movements of my friend before he died. When I exit the car, I meet with a man who was a mutual friend of the deceased who is also my friend as well. I begin to tell him about my efforts and journey and all that I learned about our mutual friend. He puts his arm across my shoulder as we walk and talk. I wake.

April 6, 2014: I am in a large parking lot, like a drive-in movie. I want to speak with an old girlfriend but I can’t seem to get at her. I go to take a shower, and I do. I need a towel, so my wife Lynne says I can use one of hers. I do, then wrap myself in it. I walk around and come upon a woman reclining in a chaise lounge or couch. I want to be physical with her, but when I caress her breast she complains that it hurts, so I give up.

There is a room with multiple small children on metal bed/cots with thin mattresses. They appear to be of African descent, and look malnourished and sickly. I am taking care of one, and other people are taking care of others. I want to use a stethoscope, but I don’t have mine, so I use one that seems to belong to the patient.

There comes a time when I want to leave, so I go to get my car. At the parking garage/lot, there is a wooden board with a clear Lexan cover, inside which the keys are hung on numbered posts. I pay my fee and give the attendant a $5.00 tip. The system for dispensing my key (# 111) doesn’t work right. The pin is supposed to retract, dropping the key to the bottom, and the bottom is supposed to open so you can retrieve your key as from a vending machine. A husky, dark skinned, foreign-looking guy behind the counter comes around and opens it from the top. Instead of being handed my keys, I am handed a plastic model of a car. I wake.

April 5, 2014: I am in a college dorm-like setting, looking for a place to wash up. I enter a bathroom which is pretty crowded with people and sports a wall of multiple sinks and mirrors, all in a line. I go to the crowded sink area and put down a tube of toothpaste behind the faucets and turn on the water. A guy speaking gibberish seems to object, but I gesture in a way that calms him down so I can soap up and scrub my face.

I wander around and the dorm-like scene morphs into more of a glass faced store front-restaurant with tables and chairs. I am deep inside this fairly large place 2/3 the way to the back right corner. Some gangster-like people come in and start shooting the place up. I lay down so that the bullets are blocked by a low concrete block foundation wall (about 2 -3 courses tall), and the bullets that go over the wall miss me completely. They are shooting a machine gun/automatic weapon that sprays bullets, but they do not enter more than a few steps into the restaurant, and they do not seem interested in seeing if or who they killed, so they step back outside. I am fine.

Now the store seems more like a Sleepy’s mattress store and I am laying behind a long impenetrable (by bullets) mattress, not a concrete block wall. As the gangsters prepare to leave the scene, I whisper to a woman who is also cowering nearby that people I refer to in my dream as “my girls” will get them. Lynne (and others?) arrive in an armored Hum-Vee-like vehicle with a gun mounted on the roof and seemingly save the day like an FBI Swat Team. Back in the store, it morphs back into a college-like setting where I decide that I will not take an experimental “psychedelic #2" (or “psychedelic B”?) due to these recent upsetting events.

April 4, 2014: I am in a house along with Lynne, but the house is not our own. There are other people there, and the plan is for us all to stay there overnight. I grow concerned and embarrassed that we may not be sleeping in the same bed, or even the same room and that people will know this.

I find out that a bicycle that I like was left by Lynne at a near-by beach. I go there to get it back. I park my car in the nearest available parking stall at the beach right at the curb near a sidewalk that separates the parking lot from the sand of the beach. My spot is very close to a kiosk of sorts. The spot I park in has a lot of sand on the asphalt, but the sand does not obscure the painted yellow lines, and I can tell I am legally and properly parked in a designated stall.

A male and a female park employee are at the kiosk-like structure, and they have the bike. The park people will not let me have the bike until I pay a fee for it. I get upset and make an argument that Lynne took the bike without permission and maybe even left it there on purpose because I had spent a lot of money fixing it up and making the pedal-bike resemble a motorcycle.

There is another woman at the beach who is willing to give the park people minimal money for the bike, and I shame her with words about trying to get something for nothing. The lady park person asks me if Lynne and I maintain two households (live separate and apart) and I say (truthfully) “yes” because evidently in the dream world we don’t live together happily like we do in real life. The woman park employee appears to soften towards me and whether she will give me the bike and is starting to grow convinced Lynne may have left the bike intentionally out of hurt/anger to punish me. I wake.

April 3, 2014: I and my crew are one of two factions aboard an airplane which is lost due to someone intentionally scrambling the original navigation start position and then making large, frequent unrecorded heading changes. I trust myself and my crew, but not the other faction.

We fly past a deli I recognize and I think I know where I am, but I’m not sure since the direction of flight is still unknown. I want to sleep but I don’t fully trust anyone who might be awake to make decisions or notify me of any maneuvers or position fixes made while I sleep. I wake.

March 26, 2014: This is the last fragment of a longer dream which I can’t remember: I am with a group of five or so people in a crowded place which seems like a street fair, outdoor festival or concert. We need a place to stay...but everything has already been booked. I say to the group that my wife has a place nearby, and we are suddenly there. The woman who plays Bernadette on the Big Bang Theory TV show barges into the ground floor apartment/condo which contains a bunch of things that a male occupant might have in his room, only no one is there at the moment. The door is evidently not locked, and Bernadette enters the apartment. One of the many things the male occupant had in my wife’s apartment was an abnormally long automatic assault rifle, which Bernadette comes out holding/wielding like a professional, but without firing it at all. I wake.

March 23, 2014: I am the driver of a car with two passengers on our way to a hobby shop. The hobby shop is located in a strip mall. I make a right turn off the road intent on going around or past a gas station, as I am not interested in filling up. Somehow, I end up at a gas pump in the gas station anyway.

I get out of the car to tell the black gas station attendant I don’t need/want gas, but he already has the filler hose in his hand so I release the gas cover lever/lock and allow him to put gas in.

Now we are in this hobby shop. My friend Mal S. is the proprietor. My companions and I spend some time in the hobby shop and I leave with several objects in my pocket, one of which looks like a sleeve of electrical wire staples with black plastic insulators which I think actually belongs to one of my companions.

Next, I find myself “at home” but it is strange and not altogether familiar house. My companions are gone, but they left on numerous lights in various rooms. I purposefully wander from room to room and shut off the lights, which all seem to shut off normally in response to their various switches, including a bedside table-lamp with the old-style brown plastic cylinder that you push “through” the bulb holder from one side to the other to operate.

I walk through the house after shutting off the bedroom lamp and I am chewing on a black plastic zip tie like a farmer with a piece of hay in his mouth. I wake.

March 22, 2014: I find myself in a comfortable medical setting. I have just referred someone to the doctor in whose office I am present. I am in the company of a somewhat obese Hispanic female. I am undressed, but not ashamed, and we speak while I get dressed. I do not have to search for my clothes, they are right there, and I step into my underpants, which are more like board shorts.

They want me to go see my own doctor - I’m not sure why. The unseen doctor seems friendly and concerned that my visit to my own physician will make me anxious so they offer me a prescription for a new, mild sedative with which I am not familiar. I say no thank you, but if they give me anything, I’d like Xanax. They are willing to give me a prescription for only two of the Xanax pills, which is fine with me. I wake.