memorable

First off, I'm really sorry that this is SO long. It took me half an hour just to type it all up- and I type fast! But it was really one of the strangest dream experiences that I've had. This is the first time I've ever played around with any of the dream techniques that I've read on this site, so I'm excited about it. The first part of the dream, I was non-lucid and it's really long. Then I became lucid for a while. Then I woke up briefly and attempted a WILD.

In which a chance encounter with Julian Assange causes me to get mixed up in his trial…

I’m riding in the back of a chauffeured car with my husband. We see Julian Assange hitchhiking on the side of the road. He is wearing a black suit with black shades and he has a Blue Tooth in his ear. He looks like a Secret Serviceman.

We pull over and offer him a ride. He climbs in the front of the car and asks us to take him to the Austin capitol. He says that he expects there to be a huge crowd of curious people lined up along the way to see him, and that we will probably have to fight our way past people at the capitol too. Then he spends the remainder of the ride alternately texting on his Blackberry and talking on his Blue Tooth. Meanwhile, my husband and I roll up the divider between the front and back seats and we have sex.

We arrive at the capitol. There are no members of the general public waiting at all, but the place is swarming with media. The capitol building is also a courthouse, and Julian Assange presents himself to the judge. My husband also drops me off at the capitol as my workplace and my school are just a few blocks away, and he takes the car and continues on to his own job. I’m walking with my backpack when a crowd of reporters surround me and usher me into the rotunda. They are all asking me questions about having sex with Julian Assange. Apparently someone snapped a blurry picture of me having sex with my husband in the car, then they saw Julian Assange and me get out and assumed I’d been with him. I try to clear up the confusion, but everyone is shouting at once and I can’t get a word in.

One of the reporters puts a television camera in my face and a microphone. Everyone else goes silent because this guy is with the BBC. He asks me very loudly, “Did you have consensual sex with Julian Assange?” I know this is live television and I’m flustered and embarrassed. I look into the camera and say, “No.” The crowd of reporters erupt into gasps and howls. I’d meant “no- I didn’t have sex with him” but they interpreted it to mean “no- it wasn’t consensual”. I heard them screaming accusations at Julian Assange and they were asking me if I planned to press rape charges. I tried to leave the crowd, but they blocked my way.

Finally I become disgusted with the whole thing, and I want to put an end to it as quickly and easily as possible. I announce in a loud, clear voice that we had consensual sex, that he did not rape me and that there was no story to be had here. Just two adults having consensual sex! I ask them to leave me alone. They lose interest and allow me to leave.

Off in one of the side wings of the rotunda is a short, plump friendly looking lady dressed in gypsy clothes. She is leading a mule by its reins. A young gypsy girl stands next to her, dressed in a colorful shirt and a black lace shawl. The woman calls me over to her. She explains that Julian Assange is the father of the young girl but that he refuses to pay child support and she asks me for help. I tell her that I hope things work out for her but that I have no connection to either Wikileaks or Assange’s sexual assault case. We shake hands and I turn around to leave.

I exit the rotunda and the grounds outside are covered in sand. The area is completely empty, but as I start to walk to the street, I see my brother sit down in the sand with a plastic shovel and some pails.

“Are you really going to build sand castles?” I ask him in disbelief. My brother is in his 30s so this seemed very strange to me. He looks embarrassed at first, then adamantly maintains that there is nothing wrong with an adult building sand castles. We laugh about it. I ask him why he is here.

“I heard that Julian Assange was going to appear in court today and I figured there’d be a big crowd here to see him so I came to witness the public circus. But when I got here, there was no one here but reporters,” he explains.

“Yeah, I was surprised too. Last year, when the pope came to visit, there was a huge crowd,” I answer.

“Well that makes sense,” my brother says, “since the pope is really famous. But I saw an even bigger crowd here a few years back when ABBA came.”

Then for a little while we discuss ABBA and how they have some really great songs despite their reputation of being a cheesy disco group. Then I tell my brother that I have to rush home to call my mother-in-law as she was sure to watch BBC and get upset when she hears me saying that I had consensual sex with Julian Assange. I need to go home and call her to explain. We say goodbye and I walk home.

In which I fly around the mountains and become lucid…

This is a continuation of the long dream above.

My house is a one-room cabin with large windows. I look out the windows and see beautiful and imposing mountains lining the landscape. I think for a second that it is odd to see such majestic mountains in Austin and I wonder if I’m back in the Himalayas. I stare at the mountains carefully though and realize that the peaks are too low and smooth to be Himalayan peaks. They appear to be snow-capped, but when I look more closely I realize that the snow is actually the color of caramel and it is spread along each softly rounded peak like icing on a cinnamon bun. This is such a beautiful sight that I lean far out the window so that I can look up and see the top of the mountains.

From this vantage point, I’m able to see that actually there are three ranges of mountains with valleys between them. The second is taller than the first and the third’s jagged and steep peaks reach high up into the clouds. Mountains this tall don’t exist outside the Himalayas, I think to myself.

For a moment, I consider how I went so quickly from Austin to Nepal, but then I’m too rapt with the sight to wonder about this. I step out the window and start to fly to the mountains. I am daunted by the steep face of the third range. I realize I don’t have the skills to climb it and that if I tried, I’d fail embarrassingly, but I’m pretty sure I could conquer the second. Looking for a good path, I fly along the ridge that connects the first low range to the second. It seems like an easy hike up the first and then it is just a matter of walking along the ridge until I get to the final climb up the peak of the second. I fly around this peak looking for the best climbing path. I decide that it might be easier to see it all if I go up higher than the third peak, and I soar up above the clouds and look down. Suddenly I see an amazing sight.

There is a ridge connecting the tallest of the first, second and third ranges, and on each peak is a hexagonal landing pad of some sort. They look like helicopter landing pads only they are much larger. Each pad is connected with a runway. This is impossible to see from the ground. You must be up in the sky above the mountains to see it. I marvel at this for a little while and keep flying higher and higher.

Then from behind the third range, I see a gigantic house towering over all the tallest peak. At first, the house is beautiful. It is made of brightly colored panes of glass. But when I glance away from it for a second, it changes. Now it is made of pieces of scrap metal, old tin roofs and garbage. It looks like millions of shanties from the Dharvi slum stacked on top of each other up into the clouds.

I stare at it for a while and ponder all of it. It is absolutely impossible, I realize, for any of this to be happening. At that moment, I become lucid.

I fly down into the valley in front of the tower and see all sorts of huge mobile statues made of scrap metal. Most of them are beautiful, and they all move in the wind. Most of them contain spinning flowers and pinwheels. They are fun, colorful and creative. I’m absolutely delighted to be dreaming these things. I fly back over the lowest mountain range, the one with the soft, rounded peaks covered in icing. They are gorgeous. Even though I know I’m dreaming, I really feel how beautiful nature is and I’m very happy.

Then I see another mobile statue. This one is metal pole on which many shelves have been welded. The shelves are connected to the pole with gears that look like clockworks and they all spin around. At the end of the shelves are giant but dainty multi-colored tea cups. I fly up and down this mobile statue and realize that I’ve dreamt about this before. I try really hard to remember when I’ve seen it before, but thinking about this causes the dream to disintegrate and I wake up in my bed.

In which I attempt to WILD and possibly succeed…

I have just woken up from the dream above. I have an atomic clock in my bedroom that projects the time on my ceiling. It is almost 5AM. I’m laying on my back, and I can see the window by my bed and feel my husband’s body next to me. I think about what a cool dream that was and also how my body still feels heavy with sleep. I have not moved at all. I know the alarm clock will go off in a few minutes since we have it set for 5. I close my eyes again and think about what I read on this website about WILD. I’ve never tried WILD before, but since I’m so relaxed and heavy with sleep, I figure this would be a good time to try.

I let my body relax some more but I keep thinking to myself “I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming”. This goes on for a little while and then my body feels like it is jerking awake- the way you feel when you fall in a dream and it jerks you awake. Then for a little while the room feels like it’s quaking and I hear a really loud sound. It is similar to what is sounds like when as a child I used to stand underneath the trestles and watching a train pass by above me. This went on for a very short period of time and then it stopped. I could feel myself still in my bed with my eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or not.

I opened my eyes and I was still in my bed beside my window, but I was in a different room. Strangely enough, I was very calm at first. I just lay there and looked around. Then I got up. From then on, I had this strange compulsion in my body- I could not slow down or be still. I felt like my body was in a constant state of movement and all I could do was steer its direction. It was like I was hovering above the ground.

I went over to the door and decided to see if I could pass through it without opening it. I did, and it was easy. Then I was standing on a banister of a spiraling staircase in a three story house. I went down the first flight of stairs and heard someone moving around below. I shouted “hello” to whoever it was, but no one answered. My voice sounded really loud and it echoed. I could feel my vocal chords vibrating in my throat, and I wondered if I really said hello in my real body laying in bed. It took a lot of energy to shout and I was afraid that I’d wake myself up if I did it again so I decided not to talk anymore.

I was still standing on the second floor and I looked out the window. I decided to try to fly, and I leapt from the banister out the window and flew out of the house. Then I was standing in the yard. It was dark, the stars were bright and there was a pine tree beside me. I looked up at the sky and decided to fly towards the stars. They were big and beautiful and shining. I flew and flew as high as I could, but after a while I got tired. They were just too far away so I started to sink back down.

It was lovely falling slowly through the sky back towards the earth. I passed a satellite along the way and it had a microphone on it. I leaned over and shouted “hello!” again. It sounded strange again and it took a lot of energy.

At this point, I became a little giddy and silly. I don’t know what happened, but I started to feel like I was losing control. Part of the problem was this constant state of compulsion that my body felt. I had to keep moving and I didn’t know how to slow it down so that I could think. My mind started racing and I got really crazy. I started doing loops in the air and just laughing hysterically.

I was falling in standing position with my feet towards the ground. When I was eye level with the roof of the house where I started, I saw a giant purple and pink plush rabbit sitting on the roof. It had to be 15 feet tall. It was an Easter Bunny stuffed animal but it had a menacing face. It was wearing a top hat. I hovered in the air around it for a while and wondered where it came from. I was pretty sure I did not dream up this rabbit- but here it was, as real and detailed as can be. I was also surprised that it did not scare me. I knew I was dreaming so I wasn’t afraid of it despite its menacing face.

I flew back down to the ground and entered the house through the backdoor on the first floor. There was someone in the shower and I decided to go see who it was. I ran in a crazy way towards the shower, pulled the curtains back and shouted “Boo!” but before I could see who it was, the alarm clock went off and I woke up.

This whole dream took just a few minutes though it felt like an hour. After I woke up, I started to question the whole thing. To be honest, I don’t know if I really had a WILD experience or if I just dreamed that I did.

After several days of not remembering my dreams, I had an active dreaming night last night. Unfortunately, I had to rush out the door this morning and did not have time to write them down or tell my husband about them which makes them harder to recall. Instead, I lay in bed an extra five minutes or so and recounted them in my head so that I could record them tonight. There were four dreams that I seemed to remember vividly this morning, but only one has stuck with me through the day- and I don't remember it as well now as I did this morning. That's how it goes! I really need to just get back to writing down key words. But this one dream was really weird so it is worth recording even though I don't remember it all.

In which I travel through the woods and meet an authoritarian blob who tells me I'm dreaming but I stay non-lucid anyway...

I'm in a dark, thick and slightly scary forest. It's a fairy tale type of forest, like in Hansel and Gretel, where the trees are so dense that they don't let in much light. The ground is moss-covered dirt, tangled with roots. I'm not me, but a dark haired woman with bobbed hair. An atheletic woman with curly shoulder-length hair is with me. I have to dig a box out of the hard ground.

After a lot of labour, I pull up a soiled old red box about the size of a shoe box. I open the box and there are some objects inside that aren't very valuable, but I can't remember what they were. The athletic woman and I are happy because these objects are necessary for us to enter the clearing.

We come out of the forest and into a clearing. We are standing in front of a cabin or a house that has a large, covered side patio with a few tables and chairs. There are a few people sitting out on the patio. The "man" who owns the house comes out. He is sort of a Jabba-The-Hut type character though I can't remember exactly if he was a man or another kind of creature. He rules over this area, and we are allowed to enter since we have these objects. He is an authority figure and we are under his control, but we are somehow grateful to him.

We are in the woods again and now having the objects from the box is not enough. To enter the house, we have to also agree to be naked. I strip off my clothes and am walking through the woods naked. I get up to the house and the authoritarian blobby man tells me that the objects are enough and that I don't have to be naked. I can put my clothes back on.

I argue with him and tell him that he required us to come naked or else we'd have to stay in the woods. He argues back and says that I'm trying to change the course of the dream by inserting this naked requirement into it when really we are welcome to enter the house anytime. At that point, I notice that I am me again, not the bobbed haired lady. The bobbed haired lady is sitting on the patio with the curly-haried lady. I tell the bobbed-haired lady that I was dreaming that I was her. She told me that I'd been there the whole time, but that I didn't realize I was dreaming.

All of this makes sense to me in my dream, and I even think about how I need to remember to write this down in the morning. But I never really become lucid. For example, I stayed naked even though everyone else had clothes on. I sat at the patio with the rest of them feeling insecure and embarrassed. The authoritarian blob guy seemed really irritated with me. The two ladies were nice, but disinterested.

This is the closest I've come to a lucid dream in a long time, but I haven't actually ever tried to have one. It was such a strange dream that I think I might actively try to induce a lucid dream when I get a chance.

This is the first time that I’ve written down keywords for dreams as I remembered them in the morning. These are all dreams that I had between snooze hits on my alarm clock. I've been wanting to do that since I started this journal but I either kept forgetting or I didn't have time. It has significantly helped the recall of my early morning parade of dreams, but I can’t remember any of the night-time dreams. Anyway, that’s a start! Just for kicks, here is what my sheet of paper says:
work, posters, shredded Chemistry
boy in linen closet
5 cats
14 shots
my stool
pilgrim hockey
“colorado”

In which I destroy work property, quit my job and almost watch Star Wars…

I’m at work and I have a bunch of butcher paper on which is written everything I need to learn to pass my Chemistry exam. I’m in a work room by myself but the fourth wall is a window through which I can see people walking up and down a hall. My husband is in the next room, also working.

I pull out a razor blade and start slashing the butcher paper into shapes. I’m going to make a jig-saw puzzle out of all the Chemistry notes. I decide that putting this puzzle back together will be the best way for me to study. As I’m slashing it up, my supervisor comes to the door. I step outside in the hall to talk to her. She asks me how much longer I’ll be using the butcher paper posters because she needs them for a meeting. I realize that I was not supposed to destroy them, so I make an excuse to use them for a little longer and keep her out of the room.

After she leaves, I return to the room and stack the pieces up so that people walking around in the hall don’t see that I’ve destroyed the posters. I then go to the room nextdoor where my husband is working to ask him what he thinks I should do. He is in the middle of a presentation and I don’t want to disturb him, so I go back to my own work room.

I realize that it is hopeless. There is no way that I can put the posters back together and I will probably lose my job. I decide to leave the workplace forever before I’m identified. I step out into the hall and hear the theme song for Star Wars. I stop and listen for a minute and realize that it is the first one, Episode 4, and that it is being played in a theater. I walk around in the halls until I find a theater and I look through the window in the door to see Darth Vader and the storm troopers boarding the rebel ship, looking for Leah. I’ve never seen Star Wars in the theater before. I go in to watch, but then I see my supervisor in the audience so I decide to leave.

In which I find a boy in my linen closet…

I’m in my childhood home, walking down the main hall which has bedrooms on the right and left and ends at a linen closet. I open the door to the linen closet and tangled up among the tall pile of folded and stacked blankets is a young boy, maybe six or seven years old. He favors my brother with pale skin and blonde hair, but I know he is a different boy. His head is resting on the top blanket while his arms and legs are folded between the blankets below. He is sleeping peacefully.

I glance away, and when I look back, the boy is deformed. His limbs and neck are twisted around the blankets because he has muscular dystrophy and can’t straighten himself out. I realize with some horror that he has been stuffed in the closet to hide him. I reach in to help him out and touch his arm: he is dead. I panic. There is a dead body in my linen closet and I start to worry that the police will blame me for murdering someone. Then in a flash, I fear that I’ve put the boy’s body there. He resembles my brother so much that I start to worry that it is my brother. I force myself to look at his face carefully, and he opens his eyes and grimaces.

In which I have five cats that are mostly reincarnations of cats I‘ve had in the past…

My husband and I are in our bedroom unpacking our suitcase and five cats jump out. Three are large, fluffy adult cats and two are small adolescents, not quite kittens but not adults either. Our dog immediately tries to chase one of the cats, but we tell her no and make her sit on her bed. Then we explain to her that the cats are “puppies” and that she has to be friends with them. She decides to sit in her bed and observe for a while before trying to play with them.

Two of the cats look just like pets from my childhood. One looked like my childhood cat, Dusty, a large Siamese who my parents already had when I was born and who died the year I started high school. I was very close to this cat. The other cat looked like Doofus who was my grandmother’s old blind grey cat. The two similar cats who popped out of my husband’s suitcase were newer versions of the older cats. I explained to my husband that when I was a baby, I had a stuffed Snoopy doll that I loved very much and carried with me everywhere. I couldn’t say “Snoopy” so I called it “Poopy”. By the time I was three years old, it was torn and dirty. My parents bought me a new stuffed Snoopy doll to replace it but I loved the old one so much I wouldn’t let it go. Instead, I started carrying around both the old and the new dolls and loved them both. One was called Poopy and the other was Snoopy. These cats were just like those dolls. They were not Dusty and Doofus but were newer versions of them. Their names are Gusty and Goofus. When I petted Gusty, she curled up in my lap, dignified, and wanted to be petted over the top of the head and under the neck just like Dusty. Goofus wanted to explore the room by herself and be left alone.

The third adult cat was a really fluffy fat long-haired cat that looked like a Persian. He was a lover, and I told my husband that he had the same personality as McKenzie, the cat I got in high school and had through college when I met my husband. The new cat looked nothing like McKenzie except that he was just as fat, but he acted just like him. He playfully batted at our hands and rubbed his body against our legs and arms. I named him Lover Boy.

The two younger cats confused me. They ran around together as a pair playing and bouncing off one another and were not very interested in us. I told my husband that one of them must be a reincarnation of KittyCat who was McKenzie’s companion and lived until very old age. But neither of the kittens looked or acted like KittyCat. And I had no idea who the second young cat was. We wondered at this for a while and then decided to name them Kip and Kiddo.

I played with the cats for a while and woke up.

In which I still have five cats and a crazy lady tries to give me 13 injections…

Even though I woke up for a while, I fell right back into the cat dream.

The five cats now had a really bad case of fleas that was affecting our dog too. We figured it was because they’d been in the suitcase for a while and hadn’t had any flea treatment. But we didn’t want to double dose them with Frontline if they’d already had flea treatment as too much Ivermectin can cause problems in some animals. We called a veterinary nurse practitioner who makes house calls.

A fat brown haired woman in a purple sweater arrives at our house. She smells of dogs and cigarettes. She looks at the cats and says she will have to take them in for testing. We help her round them up with a butterfly net. Only Goofus seems distressed. I’m worried about the cats while they are away and make the woman promise that she will not give them any treatment until she consults me first.

She comes back the next day with two large duffle bags. She unzips the first bag, and dozens of cats jump out. There are cats of all shapes, sizes and colors running around the house. I tell the lady that we’ve become cat women. I’m happy to have all the cats running around, but the lady speaks to me accusingly. She says that these are all the kittens of my five cats. She said that I’ve been an irresponsible owner and didn’t neuter and spay them. I argue with her because this is untrue. Gusty, Goofus and Lover Boy have all been neutered and spayed, and Kip and Kiddo are too young to have babies. The veterinary nurse practitioner admits that I’m correct and explains that she had me confused with someone else. We then run around looking for my five cats to separate from the others which she will have to take back to someone else’s house. Lover Boy is easy to find because he comes when I call him. Goofus is anti-social but wise. She has already figured out what is going on and she is waiting by the bedroom door. We put them both in the bedroom and herd the other cats into the living room. Gusty then rubs herself on my legs. I tell her that she can stay out in the living room but that she has to stay close to me so that she doesn’t get lost in the crowd of cats. The fat lady and I are left searching for Kip and Kiddo. They are lost in the mass of cats. She pulls out her butterfly net again and starts gathering up cats, inspecting each scoop for Kip and Kiddo, and then dropping the other cats into her bag. Finally, we find my two adolescent cats and put them in the bedroom with Lover Boy and Goofus.

The fat veterinary nurse and I sit down at my kitchen table. My dog Lucy sits under the table at my feet and Gusty sits on the table near my hand. The lady opens her second bag and pulls out a bunch of syringes. She drops one on the floor and my dog picks it up with her mouth. I take it from her and notice that it is a giant needle - the sort that doctors use for spinal taps. I hand it to her and notice how chaotic and unhygienic her practice is.

The lady explains that fleas are a super organism like ants or bees. The live in colonies and share a large consciousness. She says that the fleas that have inhabited the cats are the same as the ones who live in the carpet and on my dog and even on my own skin. She says that we can kill any of them and this will eventually kill them all because they all must stay alive for the super organism to function. The tests she ran on my five cats reveal that they’ve already had a recent dose of Ivermectin so she doesn’t want to give it to them again. Instead, she wants to inject me and my dog with some flea treatments, and it will eventually spread to the cats.

First I protest because I’ve never seen flea medication given as an injection. Usually it is topical or in a pill form. She says that we have a serious infestation and this would not be enough. Next I argue that I’m not sure if it is safe for people. She makes me feel guilty for putting something on an animal that I’m not willing to put on myself. I agree to take a shot.

I look at the syringes strewn out across the table and ask her which one she is going to use. I’m really worried about that giant spinal tap syringe. She explains that she is going to use all of them. I count them and see that there are 14. I tell her that this doesn’t make any sense and that I must be dreaming. She argues that I can’t be dreaming because in a dream, I don’t know how to count. I accept that this is true and then get really worried about what to do. She says she is going to put seven shots in one arm and six in the other. I tell her that this is only 13 and she says that the 14th, the spinal tap syringe, will go to my dog.

I’m about to submit, to accept that this woman is a professional and that I should trust her when I remember that I do have free will and that I don’t need to be bullied. I tell her that I’m uncomfortable with her explanations and that I can’t trust her with something so potentially dangerous as injecting substances into my body and my dog’s body. She tries to make me feel guilty and says I just won’t do it because I’m afraid of all the shots. I admit that I am afraid of the shots too, but that I’m more afraid of getting a staph infection or brain damage. I tell her to leave and help her gather up her syringes. She doesn’t even remove the needles from them and she pokes herself once.

In which I rediscover a childhood possession and wake up crying…

I wake up (in my dream) thinking about the little stool that my great grandmother made me when I was a little girl. It was a multi-colored embroidered round seat standing about a foot and a half off the ground on four little wooden legs. She gave it to me when I was only six or seven years old, and by the time I was in high school it was so wobbly that I couldn’t use it to sit or stand on anymore but kept as a sentimental item. I know that I held on to it through college, but I’m not sure what happened to it after that. I lay in bed thinking about it for a long time and then remembered that I planted it in my garden. I realized suddenly that this was foolish since it the exposure to the elements would destroy it, so I ran outside in my robe and started searching my garden for it.

My garden was a multi-layered biosphere. Up above my head was a tree canopy with tall flowers sticking out. At eye level were the tops of rose bushes and tropical plants. Below this were shrubs, holly and nandina. Ground level was ivy and daffodils. Frogs jumped about the garden and I followed them because my great-grandmother loved frogs and I knew they would lead me to her stool.

I found the stool beneath an umbrella of iron plant leaves. I’d planted the wooden legs in the ground and had to dig it up. I carried it inside and got back in bed with it. My husband and I examined it from our bed.

The embroidery on the top had faded completely and the cloth had a small tear from which some of the stool top’s stuffing was visible. I touched this stuffing and was surprised how soft the material was. My husband stuck his hand inside it too, and it expanded. Beneath the embroidered surface cloth were dozens of pieces of fabric including fine silk saris and down quilts. We pulled the fabric out until we were buried in our bed under a mountain of colorful cloth.

My stool appeared to be destroyed. I picked it up by the four legs and set it on the ground, now deflated and without a stool surface. But then I saw that the bottom of the stool was hardwood and that it contained a leaf inside like a dining room table that can be expanded. I pulled it open and my stool became a beautiful hardwood table, about four feet by two feet. Folded down over the table was a delicate metal music stand made of a fine pattern of intertwined roses. I flipped it up and sat in front of it, smiling.

“Look,” I told my husband, “now I can sit on the floor and play my guitar in front of this!”

In which the houses on our street turn into pilgrims and play hockey…

I step outside on my front porch. I look at the houses across the street. They all turn into giant cartoon pilgrims. They have top hats, beards, buckle toe shoes and farmers clothes. They are a long row of identical pilgrims. All at once, they pull out hockey sticks and start playing street hockey.

In which my safety word is “Colorado”…

I was engaged in a relatively tame sex game with two men I didn’t know very well. I don’t think the details are appropriate to explain here! But what I thought was really interesting is that I told the guys that my safety word (which is the word you say to end the sex game) was “Colorado”. Once I woke up, I realized that this is also my name here on this website so I must’ve been thinking about dreaming at some level. I don’t live in Colorado or anything like that so I don’t think it could mean anything else.

I had a little to drink last night (in real life) and therefore my dream recall was poor. A bunch of fragments.

In which I build a house with slides instead of stairs...

I'm building a cabin on our family land in Louisiana. I add a second story loft which has two doors. One leads to a second story patio and the other leads to a slide that exits on the ground level. I forget to add stairs, so the only way to enter the loft is to climb up the slide.

In which I show up for a family dinner half-naked...

I'm at my in-laws house in their guest bedroom. My mother-in-law calls me to dinner. I'm wearing only a pair of pajama pants and no shirt. I'm comfortable so I casually decide not to put on a shirt. I walk into the dining room and sit down at the table, naked from the waist up. My in-laws look at me with shock. I realize I've made a very big mistake and that there is no way to take it back. From now on, they will think I'm crazy.

In which Bob Dylan babysits my forgotten child...

I’m walking around downtown when I suddenly remember that I’ve had a baby and I don’t know where it is. I can’t remember the last time I’d seen it. There begins a long and boring stress dream in which I first must find some quarters then find a payphone, then remember phone numbers to call various friends and family members. Then I had trouble reading the numbers on the phone and my fingers were like Jello and couldn’t press the buttons. I called my mom and a few friends and no one had any idea that I’d had a baby.

I decide to walk home and of course my legs will not work properly. I spend a lot of time dragging myself down sidewalks and trying to run. Eventually, I get to my house. I live in a small cottage with a picket fence around an overgrown garden. There are weeds and vines growing over the walkway and the patio. As I step onto the front porch, I can hear a baby crying through the screened door.

I enter a dark living room with the curtains drawn. In the corner, a ray of light shines in from a crack in the wall to reveal dust particles in the air and an old, pencil-mustached Bob Dylan sitting in a kitchen chair in his performance jacket and cowboy hat with one steel-toed boot rocking a crib in which a baby cries. He looks at me disapprovingly. I apologize for forgetting about my child. Bob Dylan shrugs his shoulders and leaves without saying a word.

Three dreams last night- one long and vivid, one stress dream, and one short funny dream about my dog. Actually, my dog appears in all three dreams.

In which a rich elderly man is frustrated by his unrequited love for Cameron Diaz...

I'm not actually in this first dream. Sometimes I felt the experience from a third-person observer point of view. Sometimes I was the old man and sometimes I was Cameron Diaz. In the morning, my hubby told me that next time I'm Cameron Diaz, I should wake him up.

Cameron Diaz and a friend are on her private island. (She is Cameron Diaz, but in my dream she is not an actress but an heiress.) They are sitting in beach chairs wearing one-piece 50s style swimsuits and broad-rimmed shades. Between them, a black lab sleeps in the sand. The two women are drinking martinis and facing the sea.

Suddenly a yatch appears and an old man, in his late 70s or early 80s, walks up to the sunbathing women. He is wrinkled and balding but in good health. He's dressed in a white Polo sports shirt and white slacks. He and Cameron know one another from some time in the past. She recognizes him but seems neither pleased nor unhappy to see him.

The old man doesn't mince words. All at once, he asks Cameron Diaz to marry him. She smiles, sips her martini, and declines. It's apparent that they've had this conversation before. She tells him that she doesn't love him. He pleads that he can make her happy. They are perfect for each other- they both love the sea. She prefers it from her island, she argues, while he prefers it from his boat. He flirts and smiles nonchalantly, but inside his heart is breaking. He gets back on his yatch and leaves.

Four years later, Cameron Diaz has had her island repossessed. Something horrible has happened- perhaps a war or a major depression- and she is now a laborer on the island that she once enjoyed. She wears a handkerchief to hold her hair back from her sunburned face while she picks peppers, collecting them in the apron of her hand-made farmer's dress. Her hands are rough, and she thinks of Scarlett O'Hara when she goes to visit Rhett in jail after the war.

The yatch appears again, and the same old man from before disembarks. He's wearing a fine blue suit with a top hat and a monocle. He carries a cane. Seeing Cameron Diaz in her poverty clothes doesn't phase him at all. He drops to one knee in the fruit field and offers her a diamond ring. He tells her that he is a billionaire and can buy back the island for her and make her rich and happy if she will only marry him. He says he loves her now just as before.

Cameron Diaz still declines his proposal. She insists that she can't marry him because she doesn't love him. The old man falls down into the dirt, clutching his heart. Cameron calls for help, and she and her laborer friends carry him into a small hut and put him in bed. There, by candle light, she nurses him back to help. When he is recovered enough to talk, the old man tells Cameron Diaz that he has already purchased the island back from the person who took it from her, and now he will gift it to her with no strings attached. He asks Cameron Diaz why she has always refused to marry him, and she explains again that she just doesn't love him. He asks her why, and she says that she is offended because he never shaves his legs. He pulls back the covers and looks down at his legs: they are my legs only they are very hairy and have many bruises.

The old man has my dog Lucy with him, and Lucy plays with Cameron Diaz's black lab. While the old man recovers in bed, he likes to watch Lucy and the black lab playing out his window. One day, he notices that the black lab has large tumors growing on its back. He worries that Lucy will catch a disease from him. He asks a doctor to check the dog out, and the doctor explains that the lab has ringworm. The old man is relieved because Lucy takes ringworm protection monthly.

In which I walk out to get coffee and end up stressed and left alone...

I walk with my dog Lucy to get some coffee from the local cafe. The cafe keeps moving and I have to walk a few miles just to get the coffee. I get two cups and try to walk back home, but I'm tired and I keep spilling the coffee because my dog keeps pulling on the leash. After a few blocks, I stop at a payphone and call my husband to come get me. He agrees. I keep walking alongside the road. I figure I will see him as he comes towards me. But just as he turns onto the street I'm walking on, an 18 wheeler passes between us and blocks his view of me. He does not see me and keeps driving. I wave at him, but he turns the corner and heads in the direction of the cafe. I try to chase after him, but he is too far down the road.

In which my dog falls into a river but I rescue her...

I’m walking my dog Lucy over a bridge. She starts to chase a fly and runs off the bridge and falls towards the rushing river below. There just happens to be a basket bobbing along at the moment that she falls, and Lucy lands in the basket. I run off the bridge and race along the bank of the river as Lucy floats down it. For a moment I’m hysterical with terror that something is going to happen to her. Then I attain a very fleeting lucidity and realize that this is only a dream and that I would not allow anything bad to happen to Lucy in my dream. There will be a solution.

As I run alongside the river, lucidity lost again, Lucy looks at me with desperate eyes. Her paws are on the rim of the basket. I see another bridge up ahead, and I run fast so that I can get there before she does. I make it just in time. I lean over the side of the bridge with my hands reaching towards the water just as Lucy is rushing underneath. I grab the basket and snatch her out of the water.

In which my husband and my fear of time paradox interrupt my date with Tom Waits...

I’m standing on a street corner, well dressed for the fall in knee-high leather boots, a woolen skirt and a sweater with my hair curled pin-up style. I’m waiting for my date to pick me up.

A maroon 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass with a cream colored canvass retractable roof pulls up beside me. I open the passenger door and look down the long vinyl front seat to the driver who is crouched over the steering wheel like a vulture. He’s wearing black jeans and is turning to look at me from beneath a bowler hat. It’s a young Tom Waits.

“Are you C--?” he asks.

“That’s me,” and I slide in, shutting the door behind me. He’s excited as he drives and says we’re going to a restaurant he knows that is unique. I’m a little star-struck but also confused.

“Don’t you have a wife, Tom?” I ask, thinking of his famously successful marriage to Kathleen Brennan.

“Not yet,” he answers. “It’s only 1978.” Ah, of course. I’ve time-traveled again. This must mean that I’m dreaming. I gain lucidity for a moment, but then I get lost in the implications of time-paradoxes. I start to worry that if I alter the course of historical events so that Tom and Kathleen don’t marry, then I could wake up to a world without Swordfishtrombones and Mule Variations. Dinner with Tom Waits isn’t worth that risk.

Just as I’m about to protest, he parks the car and we get out to walk around a field of giant tulips. Butterflies fly around above our heads and then swoop down to circle us. The tulips are easily eight feet tall, and Tom Waits explains that the flowers grow so high here because the sun is closer to the earth at this spot. I look up in the sky and see that the sun is a massively huge yellow and orange swirl. Its spiraling rays seem to touch the ground. We start walking along a path towards a tower in the distance that is a mosaic of pieces of colorful glass bottles, marbles and bicycle rims. Its windows are stained glass like a cathedral.

“That’s the restaurant,” Tom tells me. He starts to tell me the history of the tulip park, how it was discovered and how the restaurant owners grow all their own food here. He’s very excited about all this and keeps stopping along the path to point at something or wave his arms around, caught up in his narrative. I’m delighted.

But then my husband suddenly appears. He is surprised to see me here. I introduce him to Tom Waits. Both men are polite to one another but obviously it is awkward. My husband looks at me, puzzled and a little hurt. I feel guilty, but my immediate concern is how to save face. After some platitudes, my husband says he’ll be on his way. Tom politely asks if he’d like to join us for dinner, and my husband accepts.

We continue our stroll towards the restaurant as a trio, but it is obvious that Tom Waits is feeling awkward and confused. The moment is ruined. I feel deeply embarrassed. I ask Tom to excuse us for a minute and I step aside with my husband. I consider the problem. I want to complete the date, but I also want to protect my happy marriage. Trying to think of a solution, I realize again that I’m dreaming. Armed with this lucidity, I tell me husband to leave. He looks sad, but I explain that I will not feel guilty about it because it is only a dream. My husband turns around to walk down the path away from us. I continue on with Tom Waits, but I’m not having fun anymore and the lucidity is lost once again.

Tom and I walk in awkward silence for a little while, and I realize that he is only being polite now. He no longer has any real interest in taking me to the restaurant. Also, I’m worried that I’ve damaged my marriage. So I tell Tom that it was not meant to be- too many time paradoxes and spouses to carry on. He agrees, relieved that he doesn’t have to go through the charade of taking me to the restaurant. And I run down the path after my husband.

In which I'm an epic bad guy...

The first was some sort of epic fantasy type dream. I can't remember much about it except that it involved battles and tricksters. I got the feeling that I was the bad guy.

In which I'm too ethical to snoop...
The second was that I opened by email only to find that my account had been swapped with my husband's cousin HC. At first I was alarmed that someone else must have my account. Then I realized that there was nothing personal or important in my email anyway. So I decided to snoop around in HC's email account. After about a minute of this, I started to feel guilty and logged out. I called him up and told him about it. This was a very boring dream, but I thought that maybe the emotions in it might be linked to the first. In the first dream, I was some sort of bad guy. In the second dream, I first got alarmed when I thought someone else might be reading my emails then realized I don't have anything to hide. I start to snoop and then correct myself like a good girlscout. So I just wondered if the two were related, emotionally anyway.

In which my father and I are in a jail cell with some thugs and my high school boyfriend...

My father and I were arrested. Apparently we'd done something stupid and illegal while drunk, but this took place before the dream plot started so I never knew what it was. The dream starts with us sitting in a holding cell. It's a wide cell like in old Western movies. There are iron bars on one side with a brick wall exactly opposite. The two short sides connecting the bars to the brick wall each have a small wooden bench. We are drunkards, snoozing on the benches. The bars slide open with a loud noise and we wake up, hung-over. We ask the cop if he is going to let us out, but he ignores us as he pushes in three other men. One is a chubby guy with curly hair. One is short and lanky. The third one, I can't see. The chubby guy sits down on the bench next to me, the lanky guy sits next to him and the third guy sits in a shadowed corner on the bench by my dad.

We've never been in jail before so we aren't sure how to talk to new cell mates. I ask what they are in for. They explain that they've beaten someone up and leer at us menacingly. I'm not afraid of them as we are in a jail cell and there are police officers all around. They give us the details of how they jumped a guy and beat and kicked him until he spat blood, broke his ribs and his teeth fell out. They think it is funny. This makes me feel really sad, down deep in my gut- the way I feel when I hear about serial killers or people who torture animals. It's sort of a sick hopelessness. I decide to ignore them and think about something else just to avoid how horrible I feel when I think about their victim. To distract myself, I start looking at the cops who are processing some more people- standing them in front of the camera for the mugshot and taking their fingerprints. I think to myself that I must've been really drunk when I got arrested because I can't remember any of that. With a shock, I notice that one of the new people the police are processing is my ex-boyfriend from high school- a guy I have not seen or thought about for years. We make eye-contact: me behind the bars and him standing for his mugshot. I look away fast and try to pretend that I didn't see him.

Meanwhile my father is telling the violent trio about how if they don't just shut up right now, he will beat each of them until their teeth fall out. They laugh at him and he laughs too, but his laugh is so crazy that it makes them get quiet. Then he stands up and in a maniacal way starts to act out and describe exactly how he will beat them up if they persist in talking about their victim. My father is not a violent guy and I've never seen him fight anyone, so I was really surprised to see this. He told them, "First I'll attack you, Big Curly Man" and then he explained how he'd jump the guy so fast that he wouldn't know what was coming and he'd be kicking in his skull by the time his friends tried to intervene. Then he'd impale the "Creepy Guy" with a piece of pipe he'd found in the cell and squish the "Little Fellow" with his free fist. By the time he'd finished acting this out, all the while shouting and laughing hysterically, the trio were silent. Nobody knew what to think of the display.

The cops pulled open the bars a second time and pushed in my high school boyfriend along with another guy who I didn't get a good look at. My high school boyfriend is a loser and an odd-looking guy, but I have a soft spot for him even though he is a creep. It might be pity. He looked terrible- dirty and haggard with rough skin and wild hair. He obviously hadn't shaved in days. I glanced at my father to see that he did recognize him. At first, my ex just pretended that he didn't recognize me, and I thought that was nice of him. He was giving me the opportunity to ignore him. But I decided to be mature and civil, so I stuck out my hand and shook his and told him that it was really weird to see him here. He agreed and lit a cigarette. I thought that it was really bad for him that he is still smoking since he has asthma, but I didn't say that. He looked sickly and coughed. I have asthma too so I asked him not to light up in the cell. It was a small space and if he smoked, it would make it difficult for me to breathe. Besides, I was pretty sure it was against the rules. He complied and put out his cigarette, but the member of the trio in the corner lit one up almost immediately afterwards as a sign of juvenille defiance. I rolled my eyes and went to stand by the bars to breathe the fresh air. I was going to let it go, but my dad stood up and walked towards him, snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and then stomped it out with his boot. The shadow guy said nothing.

Then the police came over to say that my husband had bailed us out. Things get fuzzy after this. We left the cell and had some discussion about what we had done in our drunken state the night before. We'd have to appear in court. I can't remember this part, but I remember feeling like it was something really stupid and dangerous though not harmful to anyone. My father went home, and my husband and I went to my mom's house. She was having some sort of party and asked us to help her curl the ribbons on the balloons using scissors. We sat on high stools at a tall round table that was full of craft supplies in a room that looked like a school workroom with lots of cabinets. There were a lot of people there, but I couldn't identify any of them. We worked at the ribbon curling and I told the story of what I did while drunk and how I got arrested. People were amused but also disapproved. I can't remember the rest very well- there was more after that but I don't remember it.

Taken with the other two dreams below, there is an obvious emotional link between them all. In all the dreams, I've done something wrong. In this one, I broke a law. In the boring one, I did something unethical. In the mostly forgotten one, I'm a bad guy in a battle.

Hi. I think I'm in the right place. This is my first dream journal post. I'm excited to keep a log of my dreams and to look at yours! If I'm in the wrong place, please let me know!

In which I seek the help of a Korean snake oil doctor to heal my husband's beetle-infested head wound...

I’m sitting in the living room waiting for my husband to get out of the shower. He walks in, wet with the towel still around his waist. A large clump of hair has fallen out of the left side of his head, leaving a huge bald spot above his ear. He is not bothered by it and explains that it is just male pattern baldness. At first I try to be polite and supportive, but internally I’m struggling with the fleeting nature of youth. I’m only 32, not old enough to have a balding husband! I start to really regret ever taking advantage of having a young and good-looking husband, and I feel like it is all downhill from here.

My husband tells me that I’m being shallow and immature. He points out that there are plenty of attractive bald me. He mentions Captain Piccard and Amir Khan- even David Beckham is balding. I agree, but I tell him that he looks ridiculous with only one big bald spot in an otherwise thick head of black hair. We decide that the best thing to do is just shave it all off; nothing looks worse than a comb-over.

I grab the shears and get ready to make peace with aging, but when I move closer to his head, I see that actually there is a large gash deep in his skin, revealing parts of his skull, and full of marble-sized translucent beetles. He can tell by the look on my face that I’m disturbed, that something is terribly wrong. I won’t let him look in the mirror and instead insist that we rush right away to the ER.

We hurry out the door only to realize that we are living down on of Seoul’s confusing and crowded back alleys. None of the signs are in English and before long we are lost. Eventually we make our way to a main road where we are forced to hail a cab. A golf cart responds, and we hop in the back and make our hopelessly slow way through the city traffic to a hospital.

The clinic is on the outskirts of town in a Japanese style house with a large garden in front full of snakes from all over the world. There are dangerous coral snakes, cottonmouths, slithering rat snakes, giant yellow Burmese pythons, coiled rattlers, colorful boas dropping from trees and herds of tiny garden snakes wiggling between, over and under all the others. Bright blue and orange fluffy cats mingle with the snakes in the yard, sometimes leaping straight up into the air with their backs arched, hackles raised, tails poofed and toes pointed like the typical black Halloween cat on a fence post. The golf cart cabbie explains that the snakes are for the doctor’s snake oil and the cats are to guard the clinic and keep the snakes outside. He drives up into the yard, dodging the cats, with the wheels of the golf cart thumping and thudding on the snakes beneath the tires.

Two volunteer nurses rush outside and help us in. They take one look at the beetles infesting my husband’s head wound and explain that these are contagious pests like lice. We rush my husband off into his own private and isolated room where he must wait for the doctor, and then they warn me to wash my hands and burn my clothes.

I’m walking back down the hall towards the washroom when I notice a young man hiding in a dark corner holding a bobby pin. I ask him what he’s doing, and he explains that he is going to become a master burglar, thief and outlaw. He looks like he is about 14 years old with blonde hair and blue eyes. He reminds me of Leonardo DiCaprio on “Growing Pains“. I ask him why he doesn’t go to school or work towards a more hopeful future, and he explains that he wants people to sing songs about him, like Ned Kelly. I start to question his knowledge of folklore and his romantic misunderstanding of poverty related crime, but I decide it is not worth it. I go to the washroom and scrub my hands. When I come out, I see him at the end of the hall trying to pick the lock on my husband’s door. I punch him hard in the stomach and consider turning him into the police, but he looks so young and clueless that I feel sorry for him and instead let him go out the back door of the clinic. I even warn him about the yellow python.

Back in my husband’s hospital room, I pull up a chair by the door and sit and wait for the doctor. The dream then disintegrates into a discussion about the Krebb’s Cycle which I’m studying in real life.