non-lucid

In which I watch a silly Kurosawa film with E…

I live in a big house with an entertainment room set up with large, cushy couches and expensive electronic equipment. A giant flat screen TV is on my wall with speakers hanging all around. I’ve rented Rashoman, a movie that I’ve never seen but always wanted to.

(In real life, my house is nothing at all like this and I have seen Rashoman, but anyway this is a dream so let’s roll with it.)

Just as I’ve dimmed the lights and settled down on the couch with a bowl of buttery popcorn, there’s a knock on my door. I get up and open the door: it’s E, H and C. They ask what I’m doing for the evening, and I tell them that I’ve just sat down to watch a movie. H and C say they don’t want to watch it, and they ask if they can just hang out in my backyard. E, on the other hand, seems interested. He asks what movie it is and I tell him it is a Kurosawa flick. He says he’s never heard of Kurosawa, and I ask him if he’s seen Seven Samurai. He says he hasn’t, but he’s heard of it. I tell him that Rashoman is also a samurai film, and he seems excited to see it.

We go back to the fancy, entertainment room, and I tell E that Rashoman is a samurai adaptation of children’s TV shows from the 60s and 70s. He thinks this is really strange but I point out that Kurosawa made a few adaptations like that. I mention that Yojimbo was a samurai adaptation of Fistful of Dollars because I know that he really likes Clint Eastwood. He said he once saw a samurai adaptation of Macbeth and I said, “Yeah that was Kurosawa too!” We can’t remember what that movie was called though, and we think about it for a long time before remembering that it was Ronin. We talk about how much we love the scene in the end in which the archers all shoot arrows at Robert DeNiro.

So we sit down to watch Rashoman, but the first problem is that the subtitles are not in English. We can’t read what the people are saying, but that turns out to not be such a big problem as the plot is abstract anyway. First we see cartoon samurais singing the Ladybug Picnic song from Sesame Street. Then we see samurais in squares like at the beginning of The Brady Bunch. Then a bunch of samurais in miniskirts start dancing like on Laugh-In. Finally, a group of samurai sitting are around on beanbags drinking mate. Toshiro Mifune is one of them and he is wearing a fedora.

E tells me that this is ridiculous and that he doesn’t want to watch anymore. I’m embarrassed because I was only recently singing praises about Kurosawa. I tried to construct some argument about how he was making an ironic statement, but eventually I had to admit that the film was stupid. E went outside with H and C, and they all three called for me to join them. But I told them that I was going to finish the film since I’d already sat through half of it. E responded that I was just hot for Toshiro Mifune. Maybe so, I thought. He was a good looking man in his youth, I said, but I sure wish he’d hurry up and start killing people.

The phone rings and I get up to answer it. I'm not sure what happened then, but the next dream started with a phone call (though in a different setting) so I think they were back-to-back.

In which R is in the hospital…

A continuation of the dream above, I think.

I'm in line at the bank and I get a phone call from my mother and rush to the hospital because R has been in a car wreck. My grandmother and brother are there too. My mom explains that he has broken his neck and one of his vertebrae is lodged into a part of his brain. She says that he is in surgery to have it removed. This is expected to be successful and he should have a total recovery.

After his surgery is finished, we are admitted into his hospital room. His face and head is swollen and there is a large contraption, like an Xray machine, attached to his head. His limbs are being held down with belts and there are tubes coming out of his arms and chest. His eyes are open and he is looking around the room. I walk over to him and touch his face and tell him that he’s been in a car wreck but that he is OK now. He just looks around the room and doesn’t respond. I ask him if he is comfortable or if he has any pain. He still just looks around and doesn’t respond.

My mom is with me. She’s a nurse, and I can tell that his silence makes her nervous. I say, “maybe he can’t talk with all these tubes coming out of his chest.” She nods, cautiously. Then I lean over, close to his face and say, “R, can you hear me? If you can hear me, blink your eyes.”

He still just looks around the room randomly and I start to think that he doesn’t even see me or know that I’m there. This is terrifying, and I grab his head between my hands and shout at him, “Blink your eyes! Blink your eyes!” but he does nothing at all.

I start to cry and my mom pulls me away from him. R moves his arms around and gurgles. I look at him and realize that he is an empty shell. He is not conscious of being a person or that there are other people around him. He is simply an organism responding to external stimuli- whatever made him a person is gone.

I go out into the hall with my mother. My grandmother is waiting there with me. The doctor comes by and explains that the surgery was successful in that R can breathe on his own. But he has lost most of his brain functioning and now has the cognitive abilities of an earthworm. He says that it is a miracle that R survived, and that I should look at this as a gift from above to learn about compassion.

This makes me hysterical. I start screaming at the doctor that his practice is a modern day torture chamber. There is nothing miraculous about this- it’s a horror. R is dead and only his body is left over, kept alive by their interference. If there is no hope that he will ever recover then there is no miracle at all. It’s a miserable situation and I don’t want to hear any b.s. about miracles and gifts of compassion. My grandmother tries to comfort me.

I’m alone now thinking about everything I took for granted- all the days that R and I had together in which I didn’t tell him how wonderful he was and how happy I was to be with him. It was really a horrible feeling. I was also overwhelmed thinking about what to do next. He could live out another 40 years in this condition. He had not made a living will, so the hospital would probably keep his body alive even though he was dead. It seemed like a prison sentence to me that I would have to spend the rest of my life taking care of this hollow shell. Then I thought of the expense and how I’d never be able to work again, and I started to wonder if I could make him a ward of the state. When I asked a nurse about this, she told me that I was being selfish. But I told her that she was being foolish. If there was any hope that he could recover or that he could be aware of anything going on around him, then I would do anything I could to help him. This situation is hopeless though. He will never have any more consciousness than a slug. It’s cruel that he is being kept alive and also cruel that I should have to spend the rest of my life in poverty to take care of him.

Then I realized I needed to tell his family what had happened. R’s cell phone was destroyed in the wreck, so I didn’t have anyone’s phone numbers at the hospital. I didn’t want to go home because I didn’t want to leave him for that long before I figured out what to do and before I talked to his brother. So I decided to go to the hospital Internet café and send a FB message to his brother telling him to call me at the hospital. My brother was there, and he came with me to show me how to use the new computers. These computers looked like leaves with very long vines at the end that had to be connected to a large living stalk. I told him that I wished that technology would stop changing so fast. He connected me to the Internet and then left me alone.

I thought that R’s brother doesn’t check his Facebook page that often, so I decided to send a message to many people- V, A, S, R, and G. Once I’d compiled the list, I struggled with the words. If I just wrote “Tell V to call me- urgent” then I might put a lot of people into the horrible situation of not knowing what had happened. They would imagine all sorts of things and think that R might be dead. Normally when people need to talk about something like this, they say “Everything’s OK” or “R is doing fine” but in this case, it wasn’t true. He was not dead, but he was not doing fine. The news I had to share was so horrible that I couldn’t figure out what to do. I didn’t want to put any of them through the horror of wondering what was wrong while they made their way to a phone to call me. Sometimes the unknown can be worse than reality. But at the same time, I didn’t want to come out and tell them what had happened because it was so horrible that I wanted to do it over the phone- not on Facebook. Then I thought of R’s poor mother and how devastated she was going to be about all this. Really, this was all so upsetting that I couldn’t do anything so I closed the leaf computer and just put my head on the table and cried, wondering what to do. I couldn’t fly all the way to Delhi to tell them because I couldn’t leave R for that long. So finally I decided to go home and get my address book with all my phone numbers.

I asked my brother to take me home. We went down to the parking garage of the hospital and walked to his truck. It was smashed in the front, but the engine was still running just fine. My brother explained that this was the truck R was in when he got in the wreck. I looked at the truck in amazement. It hardly had any damage. How could he have injured himself so badly in a vehicle like that? My brother explained that the truck had rolled over several times so R had hit his head on the ceiling. But I looked at the roof of the truck and could see no indication that it had rolled.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I told my brother. He lit a cigarette and stood outside the truck. We were parked on the side of the road in front of the hospital. There was traffic all around us.

“I thought we went down to the parking garage?” I asked my brother. He turned around and looked at the hospital and the garage behind us. I realized that he didn’t really look like my brother.

“This is a dream,” I told him. But I felt buried down deep in it. I wanted out of the dream, but it seemed so heavy. I can’t really explain this feeling- it doesn’t make sense- but I felt like I was covered by the dream.

I started swimming in the sky up out of the dream. I could see the hospital and the road behind me. I swam up and up until I could feel myself inside my body in my bed. I was stuck in sleep paralysis. I tried really hard to wake up because I knew that I had to hurry up and find R’s brother’s phone number. I tried to swim up some more and finally woke up. It was 6 AM on Martin Luther King Day. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to discover that this was a dream. It took a good hour to shake off the horrible feeling.

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.

In which I explain the difficulties with getting PIO status in India to my brother-in-law...

My brother-in-law and I are sitting in his living room. I'm telling him how the Indian government has changed their tourist visa laws. Used to be, you got a long-term tourist visa that allowed you to stay in the country for 180 days at a time. After that, you had to cross over to Nepal or some place for a day and then come back into India to continue another 180 days. Now, that option is no longer available and a tourist must stay out of the country for a longer period of time between 180 day spurts.

He argues that the government has created this rule because so many people were living in the country on tourist visas by taking advantage of this system. "Lots of burnt out hippies are just hopping the border twice a year and living here indefinitely." I acknowledge that this is true, but I argue that if the bureaucracy were not so corrupt then such a thing wouldn't be necessary for many people. For example, I'm fully eligible for residency PIO status, have all the appropriate paperwork and paid all the necessary fees and yet my application was caught up in the inefficient system. I spent days running between FRRO and immigration offices only to deal with one "stone-walling babu" after another. Eventually it just became easier to remain on a tourist visa and take a biannual trip to Singapore or Nepal than to deal with the bureaucracy or pay the bribes.

My brother-in-law tells me to calm down that I'm working myself up over nothing important, especially since I don't even live in India anymore. He says every country has its problems, and at least the Indian government is not trying to run the world with a massive and corrupt war machine.

OK... about this dream- it is pretty boring but what is astounding to me is the detail of the conversation. There was no action in this dream, just conversation, but it was so precise and detailed. In the dream, my brother-in-law really used the words "burnt out hippies" and "hopping the border" and "massive and corrupt war machine" and in the dream I used the words "stone-walling babu". Also, all the details of the change in immigration, including the number of days a tourist is allowed to stay in India and the recent change in policy, are true. I'm just really surprised at my dream's ability to sustain such a detailed and accurate conversation, especially since this is an issue that has not concerned me for over a year!

In which I attempt to make four children sleep in bunk beds...

I'm in my bedroom but there is a bunk bed where my own bed normally is. Four toddlers, two boys and two girls, are running about the room. They have worked themselves up into a hyper frenzy that I find very annoying. I'm trying to regain control of the children and I'm telling them that it is bedtime. They are all blondes. The two girls have curly blonde locks and little red skirts and the boys have short blonde crew cuts and wear overalls.

After a lot of shouting and threatening punishment, I herd the children into bed. The boys are on the top bunk and the girls are on the bottom. Just as I'm turning out the lights, one of the boys suddenly leaps off the bed with his pillow and starts screaming at the top of his lungs. He randomly hits things with his pillow. One of the girls starts to cry but the other two children also jump up and start a pillow fight. Feathers are flying everywhere.

I'm livid at this point and I lose my temper. I yell at the kids that they are being brats. I yank the boy who started the pillow fight up off the ground by his arm and throw him onto the top bunk. I do not intend to hurt him- I'm throwing him onto a soft matress. But his head hits the wall and he rolls over backwards, twisting his neck.

I panic. I think that I've injured the child. I rush to him where he is laying with a twisted neck and start to cry, but he looks up at me and sticks out his tongue. He is not in any pain and he gets up and starts running around in circles, playing with the pillow feathers. I make him calm down and stand in front of me where I inspect his vital signs to make sure he really is OK. His neck is red, but he is not harmed.

Then I explain to the children that they are crayons and that the bunk bed is a crayon box and that it is time to stop coloring. They all lay down on the floor straight, stiff as logs with their hands by their side. I pick them up one by one and slide all four of them into the top bunk as if I were sliding crayons into a box. I put them in alternately head to foot. They are inanimate objects now and do not move or make a sound.

In which R and I discuss Chilean goldfish...

R shows me a picture of a man holding a giant goldfish. The fish is the size of a small car. I ask him if it is real, and he says that it is a Chilean goldfish. We go to the Facebook page of the man in the photo.

The website explains that Chilean goldfish grow up to be 25 feet long, though the average size is only 2 feet. R says that Chilean goldfish are not really goldfish. They just call themselves that to fool people. He says this is sort of like how Chilean seabass is not really a bass.

In which I'm really sorry about something...

I'm outside a beach house under a full moon looking at the house stilts. R is up in the house, and I'm downstairs in the sand crying. I'm full of regret about something but all I can remember is the feeling.

In which I have two phone mishaps...

I'm recording phone numbers from my caller ID to my little address book because I'm always losing phone numbers and having to call around to get ahold of people. The first number on my caller ID is K's number, but to see it, I have to press a button. When I press the button, it calls K's phone. I hang up instantly because it is the middle of the night and I don't want to disturb her. But it doesn't hang up, and when I turn on the phone again, the line is still connected. I assume it is her voice mail, so I just hang up again. Then when I pick it up again, the line is still connected and I can hear K talking. I say hello and she responds by saying, "It's the middle of the night, why are you calling me and hanging up?" I explain what I'm trying to do and apologize. She is a little irritated, but we disconnected.

Then my phone rings. I pick it up, expecting it to be K again, but it is a man's voice.
"What are you wearing?" he asks.
"Shorts and a tank top," I answer.
"Wha- really?" he asks, surprised.
"Yeah. Who is this?"
"Wait a minute. It's December right?" he asks.
"Yes. But it's in the 80s today," I answer.
"Damn. I need to stop prank calling you and move down there. It's cold here."

In which I'm planning for a dinner party...

R and I are planning to cook an Indian meal for a dinner party. H, E, S, C and K are all present. We decide to make it vegetarian but also rich since many people who aren't used to eating Indian food prefer to get the saucy curry type dishes. I go to the Asian foods store in town and pick up some paneer and then I search for Indian green peas. American peas aren't as good and S explains that this is because Americans don't snap their fingers while growing them.

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.

In which I lose an expensive gun...

I'm in a field of tall wheat. It's an expanse of several acres, but out in the middle of the field are some low walls of stacked stone that mark property borders. I'm carrying a rifle and a heavy chrome semi-automatic with a scope. As I walk across the field, the rifle goes off accidentally and scares me. I jump in the air, and then sit down on the stone wall, thankful that the bullet didn't hit me. I examine the rifle and see that it is not loaded and that the safety is on, so I keep going. The rifle fires again, and this time I think that it must be possessed so I toss it away from me. It lands beside one of the stone walls. I keep walking until the grass is low and I'm standing on a hill looking down into a valley. I crawl on my hands and knees and peer over the hill at the deer below. I aim to shoot one, but at the last minute I change my mind. The deer are too pretty and I can't kill them.

I walk back to my father's cabin. When I get there he asks for his gun. I realize I've left it behind. I walk back through the field to the stone wall and pick up the rifle gingerly. It has a feature like a revolver in which it can be taken apart, so I dismantle the rifle so that it won't shoot at me again. I carry the pieces back to my father but he just tosses them in the dirt. He's angry. "This is your brother's cheap rifle!" he says. "Where is my semi?" Apparently the gun with the scope is worth several thousand dollars. I realize that I left it on the mound. I walk back across the field again and come to several mounds but I can't distinguish one from the other and I don't know which is the one where I left the gun. I look all over for it, but I can't find it. I feel like a loser.

In which silent movie stars make an Apple-type ad...

Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino are standing side by side in a white room like the two guys in the Mac vs PC ads. Each is arguing the merits of his product over the other's, but I can't remember what they were pitching.

In which I act like a brat when I can't get a meal...

My husband, another woman and I are living in a carnival of some sort. For some reason, I'm made to skip dinner and I'm very hungry.

We go to an old-fashioned circus type big top. There are folding chairs arranged in circles around the center stage as if it is an auditorium. Huge lights shine down from the center of the umbrella big top on to the stage. No one is there except the three of us. I decide to make a pizza.

After chopping up some peppers and sausage, I find my uncle's cat, Byron, and strap a pre-cooked pizza crust around his back like a saddle. Then I apply the sauce and toppings. I release Byron cat to walk around the center stage with the pizza upright, and it is natural that the toppings will cook under the big top spotlight. I sit back in the folding chairs with my husband and the other woman, and we wait.

Suddenly a kindergarten teacher enters with a class of dozens of five year olds. They descend to the stage and start dancing, freaking out Byron cat who runs around and knocks the pizza off his back. My dinner is destroyed.

I yell at the teacher and the children and leave the big top in a huff. Outside, I'm in a mall with lots of escalators and crowded halls of people rushing around. My husband and the woman are chasing behind me but I tell them to leave me alone. I'm going up the escalator to get to a bakery, but the escalator stairs move slowly and I become impatient. I start pushing my way past the people standing on the escalator, including a woman who is holding a toddler. As I'm going past her, she accidentally elbows me in the ribs. I turn around and scream at her, "I'm so sick of you people getting in my way!" My husband and the woman, who are trying to catch up with me, hear me and I feel embarrassed that I'm acting like such a brat. I try to think about why I'm throwing such a temper tantrum, but all I can focus on is how hungry I am.

Finally I get to the bakery. It is a beautiful French style cafe with lots of fresh bread in the window and baker's cabinet. I deliberate between some yeast rolls stuffed with bree and a warm sourdough loaf sprinkled with white flour. There is no one behind the counter and I can't find anyone to sell me the bread. I shout out into the kitchen, but no one responds.

I step out of the bakery and am now standing in an Asian style urban food court with a ring of food stalls encircling tables with umbrellas. The food court is very crowded, and the lines to all the stalls are long. I find the shortest line and wait my turn. When I get to the stall, I discover that they are only selling bubble tea and green tea flavored ice cream. I purchase these items and then find my husband and the other woman. They think that I'm behaving like a child and I tell them that I'm very hungry.

In which I'm working at my old job...

I'm back at the job that I quit in September. I'm sitting behind a computer in E's classroom reading a non-work related blog. The students are coming in, and E says that I need to walk around and assist them with their work. I feel a little guilty that I had to be redirected. I know better than to waste time at work like that. But when I get up to help the kids, I remember the conflict I had with them and I'm embarrassed to be around them. I start to think about how much I hate the job, and I remember that I've already quit. I ask E why I'm there, and she tells me that I'm dreaming. I become lucid and decide that if I'm dreaming, I can just leave and go somewhere else. But when I walk out the door of the classroom, the dream ends.

In which my uncle and I carve up a dead cow...

I'm at my grandmother's house and my uncle and I are in the kitchen carving up a dead cow for dinner. It's really messy and we are wearing butcher's clothes, including the long, heavy black plastic apron.

In which there is a ghost in my great-grandmother's house...

I'm at my great-grandmother's house, though in the dream she is already dead. I'm in her living room sleeping on the couch, and my uncle is in the armchair nearby, reading. (I think this dream is a continuation of the previous one about the cow carcass though we are at my great-grandmother's house and not my grandma's.) My brother comes into the living room and wakes me up. He tells us that there is a ghost in the back of the house.

We go to the back bedroom which used to be my great-grandmother's bedroom. My brother and uncle ask me if I remember a ghost ever haunting the house before. They want my opinion on the matter because when I was a child, they tell me, I was a spirit-medium and frequently communicated with ghosts. (This is not true in real life, by the way, but in the dream I accepted it as true.) I told them that I did sense a presence of a hostile male ghost.

The bed is pushed up against the middle of the wall of the square room. The wall containing the door to the hall is on the left of the bed. The wall containing two windows facing the street is on the right. The wall containing the closet door is directly in front of the bed, and my great-grandfather's hospital bed is in front of it. On the closet door are stickers of drumming soldiers, partially faded with time. The way the room is set up is accurate to real life, but the stickers are actually in the guest room in real life- not in my great- grandmother's bedroom. I point them out to my uncle and brother.

"Those stickers shouldn't be here," I tell them. "They belong in the front bedroom." We go into the front bedroom to see if the stickers are where they should be, but they are not. I explain that I have only recently found out that our elder uncle B did not put the stickers there. They were there when our great-grandmother bought the house and belonged to the boy who lived here before. I told them that I think that boy's ghost is haunting the house.

They ask me if I think it could be the ghost of either of our great-grandparents, both of whom died in that house. I tell them that this is not possible because they are at peace, not wandering the earth like ghosts. I tell them that I remember feeling the ghost's presence before. That boy is now an angry young man. I explain that this is why my great-grandmother's secret bathroom has been locked up for years. He killed himself in there.

My uncle and my brother seem surprised that I know about a secret bathroom. They ask where it is, and I show them a panel on the wall which can be removed to reveal a door. We open the door and find a tiny little bathroom, so small that a large person could not fit inside. It's a scary place, and we immediately close the door and replace the panel.

Afterwards, I walk over to the two windows and turn the blinds up so that people outside cannot see in. I explain that this will prevent the ghost from entering the house again. Then I notice that there are American flags hung up on the wall between the windows. The flags are mirror image to the way they should be.

"I guess Grandmother couldn't tell that they were backwards," my uncle explains.

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.

The past few nights, I've had a few dreams in which famous people appear. Several of them have included musicians that I like plus the inexplicable appearance of Cameron Diaz. I've dreamt about famous people before. Usually I have a dream like this three or four times a year. But for whatever reason, it's happened a lot very recently. I'm not really a fan-boy or a celebrity watcher, and while I enjoy music a lot, I'm not the sort of person to obsess over stars. I guess because it's happened a few times and I've written it down here in my journal, it is on my mind more than usual and so I keep having these dreams. Sort of like a feedback loop. Anyway, I'm explaining that because I dreamt about Jimi Hendrix and about Bob Dylan again last night, and it's a little embarrassing that I keep having celebrities in my dreams. I thought about not recording it here since I'm disappointed in my apparent recent lack of imagination, but that wouldn't be honest, so here it is.


In which I help an elderly Bob Dylan navigate an airport and he asks me to dinner...


I'm at the airport in Austin. An elderly man in a cowboy hat gets off the plane. He appears to be about 90 and he walks with a cane. He is dragging a large suitcase but one of its wheels has broken and he is having difficulty balancing the luggage and his cane. I ask him if I can assist him and he gladly hands over his suitcase. I realize right away that it's a future Bob Dylan.

I help him to the escalator and he asks me about the local music scene. I tell him about a few gigs in town that I know of, but none of it interests him so I start suggesting restaurants instead. He's excited about the mole at Curra's. On our way to the bus stop, we must walk through a kindergarten classroom. The teacher makes us all line up at the door and demands that we wait with "bubbles and duck tails" which is teacher talk for putting air in your mouth and keeping it quiet and for crossing your hands behind your back. I struggle with pulling Bob Dylan's luggage while walking with my hands behind my back.

In the classroom, the kiddos sit at their tables as if they are immigration officials. They require us to color a picture before we can pass. They are impressed with my pencil shading and with Bob Dylan's color scheme. We tack our pictures on their blackboard and walk to the backdoor which exits at the bus stop. Just as we are about to exit, the teacher stops us and asks, "Aren't you Bob Dylan?" He looks embarrassed. I have not acknowledged that I recognize him yet. I jump in and answer, "Don't be silly. This is an old man who happened to sit next to me on the plane, that's all." The teacher and I laugh at how silly it'd be if Bob Dylan was flying coach.

Outside, Bob Dylan gives me his phone number and asks me if I'd like to come to dinner that night. I accept the invitation and feel really cool. But once I get home, I read on the news that a stalker is harassing him and that the authorities are looking for a woman who helped him carry his luggage at the airport. It turns out that the police think that I must have given the stalker his phone number in exchange for some money. I present myself at the police station and explain that I never gave his phone number out to anyone. They believe me, but it takes a few hours and I'm tired afterwards. I decide not to go to the dinner or to call Bob Dylan himself to explain. I figure the best thing to do is just to let it all go. Besides, I'm really tired of driving after flying and then dealing with the police, and I just want to get home.


In which I warn Jimi Hendrix about drugs...


I’m picking cotton and putting what I collect in the apron of my dress. I’m wearing pioneer clothes, including a bonnet and lace-up boots. It’s hot, and I look at the marigolds shining on the roof of my mud house. I wonder if cotton grows on the Great Plains and then realize that I’m in the past. I’ve time-traveled again, I think to myself, but I do not realize that I’m also dreaming. I drop the cotton and walk towards the mud house, looking for the time machine. I find a post hole in the ground before the house, make a wish, and jump in. I decide to attend the Monterrey Pop Festival.

I don’t remember seeing the show. Instead, the dream picks up after the concert. I’m standing in front of the stage, sweaty from dancing all night, when another time traveler approaches me. He asks if I’d like to go backstage with him. I agree, and am delighted to discover that he is buddies with Jimi Hendrix. We all go to a diner afterwards for waffles and coffee. Jimi Hendrix is smoking a lot. He’s wearing a purple feather boa and he tells me he likes my pioneer bonnet. I tell him that I’m a time traveler and that I got so interested in the concert that I did not have time to look for time-appropriate clothes. I then warn him to moderate his drug use.

He laughs and says, “There’s always three or four people at my concerts who claim to be time travelers, and they’re always telling me that.” Everyone at the table laughs.

Two nights- don't remember any dreams except one tiny fragment. We are holidaying out of town- different eat and sleep patterns so that's probably why I don't remember anything.

In which I cook Thanksgiving dinner...

I'm rolling out dough for a pie. When I get a nice, flat layer, I pull out a basket of tin cookie cutters. They are shaped like zoo animals, and I cut the pie dough up into animal shapes.

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.

I had several dreams last night but I can't remember any of them except these two short ones. This is frustrating because I remember waking up from one and thinking that I needed to remember it. Then it was lost.

In which I'm rescued from a desert isle but my mom isn't happy to see me...

I'm stranded on an isolated jungle island with my dog Lucy and my mother's dog Mott. The first year is the hardest but eventually I build a straw hut and learn to fish and hunt. Lucy and Mott start spending more and more time with a pack of wild dogs. By the second year they come to visit me rarely, and by the third they've gone completely wild. I give up any hope of being rescued and succumb to loneliness. I sit down to die, staring out into the blue sea.

Suddenly, a helicopter drops a rope ladder right in front of my face. They've come to rescue me and fly me back to civilization. First I search the island looking for Mott and Lucy. I see them in the distance running happily with their dog pack. I call to them, but they do not come. I return to the helicopter and climb the ladder, leaving them behind forever.

At home, my husband and parents rush to embrace me. Television reporters put cameras in my face and ask me to talk about my ordeal. My mom asks how the dogs died. I explain that they didn't die. They are still alive and happy, but they've gone wild. Suddenly her face changes. They're alive and you left them on that island? She looks at me accusingly. I try to explain. I called to them, but they did not come. They aren't pets anymore. They are wild dogs. But she won't have it. She shouts that she never wants to see me again and runs off crying.

In which there is a toilet connected to my bed...

I dream that our bed (which is pushed up against a window) is connected to an Asian style squat toilet in the window. I need to go to the bathroom, so I get up and squat at the window. Theoretically, the waste will then flush out into the yard. I'm having trouble balancing myself over the toilet, and I fall back into the bed. The falling sensation wakes me up and I realize my bladder really is full. Luckily, I wake up enough that I go to the real bathroom.