NBF's DJ

In this segment of the dream, I've just managed to pry a bat off my shoulderblade. (Note: I have chronic pain in my shoulderblade and last night, for the first time, I tried an Icy Hot patch on the area. It seemed to be making my bed cold and wet whenever I woke up during the night, so I was worried about it.) I've also seen a mini-bat, a sort of cross between a black bat and a dragonfly, slip under the door to try to get to me. Then I feel sharp pains in my left shoulder. (Note: The Icy Hot Patch is on my right.) It feels like something is biting me. When I turn around, I see that there is a snake looking up at me from the floor. She's a pale-orangey kind of colour, the colour of a cake baked with orange zest. (Note: I'd baked madeleines the other day and part of the recipe called for orange zest, and I'd been unsure whether that meant all of the orange peel or just the inner flesh under the peel, so that had worried me.) The snake is looking intently at me as if she's on a mission. I try to shoo her away. I try to run away. She keeps getting to me and rhythmically striking at me - in the same spot. She finally says to me, "Look, I'm trying to help you. I need to give you the scars for the electrolysis." I think about it for a moment, but I don't know what she means. I'm not even planning to get electrolysis done. So I continue to run away. She always catches up with me. When I get out of the house - which looks a lot like my grandmother's house from when I was a kid - I'm finally rid of her. I go around to the back to get into the kitchen, which I do from an upper window. The people in the cast of my film are there, cooking on the stove, and Aunt Janet from the Road to Avonlea series is there baking. Aunt Janet starts to scream bloody murder when she sees me come in. The ceiling corners above me are dirty and covered with strands of cobwebs.

I was listening to Apollo 13 on the DVD player all night while I was dreaming, and I could hear the movie in my dreams. In this dream, I'm staying at a detached guest house about 45 feet from the main residence. It's 2:00 in the morning. I'm looking up at the stars, I see Betelgeuse, and I send a wave of love to it because I know Adam is there. Then it occurs to me that we haven't advanced far enough in technology yet that he would be in another star system. I just know he's far away.

I go to the house, which I usually do at 2 in the morning when it's quiet just to sit in the living room. This time, it's filled with young science students who are trying to figure out a project. There is a lot going on. They're trying to save one of their buddies who is stuck on a spacecraft. I say this would make a good screenplay and one of them smiles, but they're all clearly more serious than that.

They keep working on it, and I notice a green messenger bag that John has given me. He's taped the notes for a theatre project onto the flap. I remove the paper with the notes, and it occurs to me that when John sees that I've done this, it'll be a daring move.

The guys in the spacecraft are eventually saved, everyone cheers, and one young man in the next car gives me a Spock "live long and prosper" sign. I smile and give him one back, conscious that anyone who sees this will think we are geeks! He smiles back, and shows his other hand (his left hand), which has only three fingers that are naturally arranged in the Vulcan peace sign - and he says, "This is the only way I can make my hands look even." It's clearly a joke. I smile in acknowledgement and then drive away with whoever's driving the car I'm in.

For one of these rare times, I simply haven't a clue what any of this means in my life. Edit: Oh, except the thing with John's messenger bag. Removing the theatre project notes symbolizes removing the guise of working together on a project. The simple messenger bag, without that embellishment tacked on, symbolizes us simply being together without a reason other than plain, simple desire. That thought is so scary that it had to couch itself in the symbolism of the green messenger bag. By removing the theatre notes, I'm boldly giving him the message that the messenger bag is a personal gift, not a utilitarian one. Brassy move. I'm sure I couldn't say something like that to him in real life...or possibly even say it to myself.

I have a principal role in a film (not the lead, but a major supporting) and the crew has suddenly decided they’re going to put everything in helicopters and go to shoot the rest of the film in Scotland. I realize I don’t have all my wardrobe!! I left it at home! We’re in Stormhaven, my home town, so I tell the production manager and she immediately gets behind a wheel and drives me out to Quartz Beach. We still only have a cottage there, not a full home (in real life we built a full home in 1979 when I was 15). I’m fretting the whole time because it was simply my negligence; I had the wardrobe for a play I just did and I guess I was so tired after the last performance that I threw it over a chair and forgot to put it in a bag to bring to set. Anyway, we’re on the clock, because in four hours, at midnight, we have plane tickets to Scotland.

Then it’s my sister Bren behind the wheel. Bren is the problem solver of our family. First she goes through all the tops I have with me and we find one that’s reasonably close to the top I was wearing in earlier takes, but not by any means an exact match. Same colour, different cut. I try to explain to Bren that it’ll be quite noticeable in jump cuts because it’ll appear as though I’m wearing a different outfit from one second to the next in the same conversation. We do have the tights I wore on Total Recall, my Mary Jane shoes, underwear, and the sweater I wore on Total Recall, but not the top I need. All we need is a rose-coloured button-down top.

We get to the cottage and I rifle through everything and can’t find the top. Then suddenly there’s a party full of my parents’ relatives and friends, so I can’t leave yet until they all catch up with me. Bren, unsympathetic, is beside me saying, “Smile.” (In other words, the family's concerns for appearances are more important than my career in the film industry.) I manage a tight smile. Bren, unconvinced, gives me a disgusted look.

Then I notice we’re in a school. An idea occurs to me and I voice it: “What if they held the Academy Awards in a school like this?” (I think I meant I’d like to bring my ideal world into my real world.) Bren thinks this is a great thought and shares it with Mom, who is on the other side of her. No one seems aware that I need to be on a plane in two hours.

We get into Stormhaven and for some reason, we need to stop off at our town home. I’m getting more and more frustrated and scared of production’s reaction to me if I miss the flight and hold up shooting. There’s something I need to get. Yes – it’s the top, which as it turns out is in the house in town, not the cottage. I find it and throw it in my bag, which already has a twin-size mattress in it so there’s not much room.

Then we’re in a Canadian Tire store and we’re looking at huge old-fashioned brick-like cell phones that can only call one number. (They're set up like one of those cylindrical devices on The DaVinci Code, mechanically rather than electronically programmed, where certain tabs are depressed and others aren't, so when you press the one button it only dials the one number.) Everyone wants one. I get one so I’ll have it on the plane and be able to update production on where I am.

Then we’re cartoon characters bouncing along a sidewalk feeling guilty for all the evils in the world. We’re children playing. I realize by this time that I’m not getting to Scotland. All my friends bounce away and I lose track of them. I yell, “Hey! Consciences! Come back!” – but the only one who hears me is a funny-looking cartoon character in a top hat with a cane. He isn’t one of my friends, so I ignore him.

I haven't posted here in some time because of concerns about my being in the entertainment industry, where you're in danger of becoming well-enough known that any of your Internet postings are summarily outed. I was advised to stay off the Internet as NavyBlueFlower. I'm back on now, inspired by the immortal words of Dr. Emmett L. Brown: "Well, I figured, what the hell?"

Background to the following dream segment: I'm a lifelong sufferer of OCD. It's been diagnosed, but never directly treated. I am approaching 50. My therapist believes I'm an early-arrival Indigo Child.

Sounds about right to me.

The dream segment: I wake up in a house in England. I don't know the area. It's the home of a friend of my sister's, probably in Wimbledon or thereabouts. I have no idea really where I am - I've just been shuttled over there. I wake up and it's just before sunrise - and I feel a malevolent, sickly-evil presence in this room! I can't see it - I can feel it as if it were an invisible oil slick creeping and hovering through the air about me - an oil slick made of thought. Terrified, I try to turn on a light - but the lights aren't working. I jump out of bed and tear through the house - none of the lights are working. It's pitch dark. I run out of the house and down the street - the sun's beginning to come up and the pre-dawn twilight is softening the world. Birds are chirping shyly. The presence stays in the house.

The next thing I recall is being in the house next to the presence. It's about to enter me, but I muster all my thoughts and point them at the thing, and it balks. It rolls away. Victory.

Trouble is, it enters into the head of my 93-year-old grandmother. (She was 93 when she passed away in 2003. She'd be 101, had she lived 'til today.) I can't prevent it from doing her harm.

I know this dream has to do with my OCD. My OCD has to do with fear of loss of control, fear that things will hurt me and I can't do anything about it (except come up with childish "magical" rituals to prevent it), and "butterfly effect" anxiety that everything I do must be very specific or it may cause harm. This ties directly into fear that if I push evil away from me, it has to go somewhere, and it might harm someone I love. Which is directly related to the Christ-complex I had as a little child, that I'd be a good person if I took on as much evil as I could just to take it away from the world and save everybody else the pain. That, my toddler self felt sure, was a sure way to earn my ticket to heaven!

This dream may have sprung from my recent re-examination of that old belief - and my tentative wonderings that I may not be responsible for others' happiness, and that I may DESERVE good things to come my way in this earthly life and they WON'T bar my way to heaven. Obviously there'd be a lot of fear associated with a change like that in one's thinking.

Or... was there really a presence?....