A Writer's Dream Journal

I was in a church and I ran down the steps, while the last medicine man was leaving. He was carrying a small backpack and looked me right in the eye. I walked down the hallway towards a figure standing directly in the center of the aisles. He looked at me and pointed a finger towards the medicine women. For some reason, I knew that I needed change. I created six coins with my own hands and then walked towards the spiritual dances in the center of the church. One woman was sitting on a high podium in colorful garb and chanting “good woman” to me as I walked around the various tables. The first one that I stopped at, there was a small Thai/Japanese looking woman in a black cloth rag that covered her entire body except for her face. She was chanting, humming, and dancing in circular movements. She had a beautiful knitted and woven silk cloth on a tiny pedestal on the table that was above an even smaller knitted black container. I turned my hand over and held the coins tight. She saw them, and opened up the top of the tiny container. Inside were magic coins, small mushrooms, and delicate objects. I placed two coins inside and she looked at me intensely. Then, she took out a long, orange circular elongated tube that appeared to be knitted and put one eye through the hole and the other still staring at me. She began to chant and look at me and I switched back from seeing her eye outside of the tube and the inner workings of the tube with her black eye at the end. Then, I looked around and saw various knitted and silk cloths, some were extraordinary in color. One woman had just finished hers and the sunlight poured through the windows to highlight its orange/yellow color. To me, it looked like the sun itself. I traveled to the second and third tables where there were two Japanese children that I had a memory of. I remembered them losing pieces their scalps and I had thought of them as already dead. They were each sitting on different tables and I was deeply disturbed watching them. Both, nearly dead, had pieces of their scalp knitted back on to their heads just as the centerpieces at the other tables. One of the children, a boy, had his head knitted back but in a very large, conehead shape. He had various decorations and beads attached to the top and sides of his head. He was lying sideways on the table with eyes half open. The girl had one of the containers tied to the top of her head. I didn’t want to open the top to see what was inside. I felt tears rush to my eyes and then moved to the fourth table. On this table, was a boy with beautiful red, black, and yellow decorations covering his head and body. He had three containers and before I opened the tops, I read the outside of each. The words “Fear, Pain, and Hope” were woven on each, respectively. I put the rest of my coins in the “Pain” jar just as he turned around and vomited all over the floor. When he turned around, I was already gone back up the steps. But I still heard “good woman” being chanted by the woman on the podium.

I am sent to the depths of the forest to make a special soup. I am walking through the dense woods and find a small, brightly lit kitchen that stands on the forest floor. I look in the distance and see my sister sitting on a rock on a mountain peak. She is watching me and it makes me feel very comfortable and secure. I walk into the kitchen and there is a pot sitting on a stove and a fly catcher next to it. I take the fly catcher and turn on the bright lights. I begin catching fireflies, particles of dust, and everything that I can see with the light. Then, I pour it into the pot with warm water that is spurting from a spout that is attached to the wall. Then, I stir and continue finding ingredients. Sometimes I use the fly catcher as a wind shaft to attract nature to me, and other times I use it to catch objects. I kneel on the forest floor and pick wild mushrooms, various plants, fruit, and bugs, mixing it into my soup and stirring it with the warm water. I realize that an Italian chef is suddenly cooking near me and he is making a special pasta sauce. I hear the sauce bubbling and particles of it are flying into the air. I take my fly catcher and secretly catch sauce particles and add it to my soup. I am jumping around, being inspired by the woods around me and the soup is getting higher and higher in the pot. It is an enchanting summer night. There are so many flavors and objects stirred into the warm water. I stir it in big circles and then take a large spoonful up to my lips. I wake up.

I am standing in a convention center flooded with people of all ages. There are various games being played and entertainment all around me; groups singing and dancing, different craft activities. I am slowly walking around, taking in all of the activity, when suddenly I peek behind a large, thick pole in the center of the room and observe a group that is standing from their chairs. One of the girls in the group is laughing and everything becomes silent in my mind. I can no longer hear anything around me but her laugh. Suddenly, I glance at her teeth and my eyes become a magnifying glass and close in on her teeth. They are very sharp and I see trails of blood along her lip. I realize that they are vampires. They slowly walk towards the center of the room and their faces become pale. Everything looks to them and I know what is about to happen. I find an axe on the floor and run to the back door of the center and start smashing the windows and locks open. As I run out the door, everyone is following me and I turn around to see a mass of people running and screaming. I turn around and in horror see blood everywhere, vampires violently ripping people’s necks open and limbs flying towards the ground. We are all running towards the woods and I am the leader. The woods are a dark red color and there is mass chaos occurring. As I run to the edge of the red woods, there is a bus attached to a gondola wire. I go on the bus and it begins to move. As I look towards the back of the bus, I see various vampires hissing and staring at me. They have unusually thick necks. I run to each seat that they are in and violently twist their heads one by one and take their eyes out. Then, I move on to the next. I use my axe to smash the back door of the bus open and run into the red woods. I hear hundreds of people screaming behind me. The red woods turn into a vertical forest. It is entirely black the forest itself is like a cave that you enter into and it works its way vertically, almost like climbing a tunnel of branches higher and higher. I am climbing to the top and look down to see various people, vampires, and death all around me. I find a small cave within the forest and step into it but soon realize that they would be able to smell my flesh. I continue up the forest and come out of a hole. I jump out of the hole and suddenly enter brightly lit meadows. I am running through the meadows with a steadily decreasing number of people behind me. I jump head first into a cool river and begin swimming. I duck my head underwater and see a horrible face coming towards me. Then, I realize that there are vampires ahead of me in the river. I come up to the surface as the current carries me and twist the neck of the vampire but am too weak to finish the job. A man behind me with a long ponytail takes the eyes out. We continue this buddy system down the river, me twisting the heads and my friend ripping the eyes out. We end up at the end of the river and it simply stops with a large patch of grass continuing onward. All of the survivors, about ten total, are sitting on their knees in the river and facing the opposite direction. I do the same and then suddenly see myself slowly and slowly from more of a distance. When I am seeing myself from a sky perspective, I feel a sensation in my hands and it slowly focuses out to my own hands holding a tiny screen that holds this image. Then, I wake up.

I am standing in a thick swamp with a heavy fog surrounding me. I look to my right and left and see my family alongside me. It is a beautiful summer day and this swamp is surrounded by a dense woods and the sound of frogs and wood thrushes. We are swimming in the mist and I dive underwater. I can actually feel the softness of the weeds and algae moving against my cheek. The water is murky but a perfect temperature. The water itself feels like silk against my skin and its contents are deeply refreshing. As we swim down the waterway, I see an elf pop out of the water. He is wearing the algae and he has large ears and a friendly smile. He briefly speaks to me and points a long finger in a direction that cannot be seen because of the heavy fog. So, we continue onward in his direction, having brief moments of swimming underwater and seeing nothing at all. We eventually come to a clearing and the swamp turns into a beautiful, small lake that is surrounded my rolling hills. My family and I turn around on our backs and swim with our legs kicking as we watch the sunset over the swamp. I can feel the silky waters underneath my arms and feel the sun beating on my face. I feel entirely free at this moment. I look to my right and there are old fisherman standing on a hill on the water’s edge and waving to us. I can see them become shadows as the sun is setting through the trees. I am the leading swimmer and I can see behind me my entire family. The sun is reflecting on their bodies. This is when I wake up.

I am in my own apartment and there is a new garden in the backyard. I sit in the garden and I am warned by a family member that there is a Bengal tiger who dwells nearby. I pay no attention and figure that he is tamed and sit there anyway. I am sitting in a lawn chair in this garden and I see a small underground tunnel where the garden door should be, which is now completely smashed in. I look down the dark tunnel and I see a set of large eyes and hear a low growling. I realize that it's the tiger, and he could attack at any minute. I quickly leap up and run through the door, slamming it shut. I tell my family but nobody pays any mind to it. Then, I go back outside to investigate. My mother is already sitting out on the lawn chair and suddenly I see the tiger jump up through the whole in one great leap. He is incredibly large with a fierce growl and I begin to run away. The tiger eyes me and sets forth for me. He jumps on my back and attacks me, severing my arms and hands. Trainers suddenly appear and take him back, chaining him against the walls of our garden. I have severe injuries but as I walk inside, they suddenly disappear into scars. I look outside the back window and see everyone cuddling with the chained tiger that had just attacked me. Once inside, I get a phone call from a man who tells me that I am to go on a journey with seven other people who have had miracles happen to them. Since I survived a tiger attack and healed so quickly, they wanted to do an experimental journey and take us to a different reality. Suddenly, I am in a different world: the people are futuristic and come from nationalities that I have never seen before: green and blue skin, metallic head wear. We begin in a field on top of a cliff, with the largest city I have ever seen below, surrounded by miles and miles of ocean. We are wearing stilts and have to walk through the fields without falling. I am the second to go. The first person wanders through the wrong path, being bit by various plants along the way. The instructor yells at him and tells him that he will not be seen again. A pack of demon-looking creatures carry him away in broad daylight as he kicks and screams. We walk down the path that leads to an underground cave. Inside the underground cave, there are thousands of people at work and sweating, also there is a convention center attached with various movies playing. We all walk down, and he tells us to walk through a long hallway in which there will be dozens of elevators and we must pick the right one. As we walk down the hallway, we enter door # 2 containing elevator # 2. I explore down the hallway a bit and see people disappear in different elevators. Some are group members that we were with. We have a group meeting inside the second door and everyone agrees that this is some sort of sick game in a sick world. I still believe, and tell them, that it is for good reason and it means opportunity. We enter the elevator and rise up and up to the outside world we had previously been in. Now, we are much higher up and on top of a cliff with the ocean an incredibly far way down. Now, the instructor tells us that we all have to jump and fly across to the connecting piece of land that seems miles away. Some brave souls jump and sure enough, they begin to fly. I jump along with them and fly also. We are flying across, although unsteadily, and I realize that I am flying on top of someone. I feel as if I might be hurting them, so I move to the side and break free from them, and suddenly start falling at a rapid rate. Everyone who was also parallel to me begins falling at a rapid rate and we all hit the water. The instructor is yelling, "fly! fly!" and we are swimming as fast as we can in the water with everyone above us. As we get closer to the edge of the land, our wings work again and we fly up and up, landing on the edge of the other cliff. Now, we walk through beautiful fields and mountain peaks to enter our final challenge, so our instructor says. We are on another cliff, with a wooden structure in front of us. There is a small bar near our knees and then further more, a square wooden hole, just big enough to fit our bodies, containing a chemical substance which floats through the shape and connects to each side of the wood. We are told that we are to jump through the hole, simply that. We figure that this is another flying exercise. The first person runs and jumps, making it perfectly through the shape. He takes some of the chemical with him. As he jumps through, he disintegrates into thin air. The instructor tells us, "that's because he didn't believe in himself enough. That is what will happen." Now, frightened as we all are, the second person runs and jumps, starting out as a butterfly but then disintegrating once he is above the ocean. "He never had enough faith in himself" the instructor says, grinning eerily. Now, it is just myself and as I now realize, my childhood friend left. Apparently, everyone else had done something wrong and died or disintegrated on our journey. My friend breathes in and out and then jumps through, taking most of the chemical with her. She turns into a beautiful blue butterfly, the color of the sea and as large as a prehistoric bird, and flys away, happily fluttering in the air. Now, I am the last to go. This is it. There is suddenly a countdown visible in the chemical. It counts down from 30 and then restarts itself. I can't seem to jump yet. Then, I look to the last remaining chemical bit that I must jump through, at the bottom of the wood, and it reads "undisclosed". Then, I realize, I must jump through it. I breathe, look at my healed scars from the Bengal tiger, get a running start, jump, and then it's over.

I am in Australia at the olympic volleyball championships. I am in the sand and surrounded by miles of beautiful ocean. My friend and I are told that we are to sub in for two injured players. We know nothing about volleyball. We walk in to play with the rest of the team, and as soon as we know it, the game is started. Every time the ball is hit to me, my hand won't move correctly and the ball moves only an inch and lands on the ground. This happens three or four times. The team looks frustrated every time that we have a break. We are in a tiebreaker now and my friend and I must hold our own to help the team win. Suddenly, I realize that I have the ball. In my own hands. I know that catching the ball is completely incorrect but the team stands in this tribal-like circle and tells me "the ball is hot! you have to pass it to someone using an overhead pass!" I am confused but I do it anyway and then that person spikes it over the net. We win that point. I don't know what I just did but apparently it worked. Now, it's the last point and the ball is coming towards me. On a loudspeaker, a person yells, "that person is going to have to slide to get that one" and I slide on the sand on my knees, trying to make it to the ball. I finally get to it but bump it far away, into the ocean. It's over. The team walks to a large mountain of sand where other spectators are, and plops down. I walk with my friend and we go up to this hill. She is snapping photos at the top of the incredible open space with miles and miles of blue ocean ahead of us. I simply stand there and let the warm breeze hit my face, amazed that this place even exists. As she snaps photos, the team members talk to one another, and the spectators relax, I stand there, shoulders straight, looking at the ocean, and repeat five times "I want this to be my home".

I was at a public school and trying to use these ladders that you ski up one by one. Once you reach the top via skis, you can ski down a fake slope that they had built. Before I got to the top, someone whispered to me “this place is going to be raided soon, there is going to be a school shooting”. I was frightened and ran through the doors of the school. The doors suddenly went on lockdown and there were security guards at each one. I tried to get back in and there was a man with a machine gun standing next to a man without one. He told me that he lost his. He was standing with his son. He asked for my ID but I didn’t have it so I couldn’t get back in. I had to wait at the doors. Suddenly, I looked ahead outside and saw a group of 10 clowns with angry painted faces. They were giants, at least 9 feet tall. They started terrorizing people and looked violent. I screamed and ran back into the school. Everywhere I looked, they were shooting people. I ran out to the back of the school, where everywhere I looked, it was lush, green grass. I started running past children, although slowly because my feet would not move fast enough. I could hear gun shots in the room and every chance I had, I would tell people that there is someone bad in there. They didn’t listen. I was using my hands to crawl up grassy hills, one by one, slowly getting further from the clowns. I was on my fourth hill and there were two kids playing baseball, one black and one white. They were in this little crevice of the hill and I remember feeling at peace for a moment. I ran above the hill and onto the road. I was running down a tree-lined street that looked dark because of all of the shadows that hit it. I ran into someone’s house and started crying, nobody was home. I was filing through unknown papers. I ran to another house that had a junkyard in the front, right next to a pond and I hid behind a tree. A junky car came roaring into the driveway and they spotted me. I started crying and told them that I needed a ride, just five minutes down the road, to a place called Coventry (this is where I live in real life). They told me “okay, no problem” and I tried to tell them that there was a massacre happening at the school. They paid no attention to me. As we were driving, the car started floating up and then back down every once in a while. It was like a feather. We pulled into my apartment complex and suddenly I saw the clown car drive by. They pointed into my complex but then shook their heads and kept driving. My heart stopped. I thanked them and ran into the building, to try and hide the commotion. I ran in and my “neighbors” (I have never seen them before) were greeting me, all very friendly. They walked into my apartment and started spraying water everywhere for some reason. I particularly remember one woman, she had short blond hair and was always smiling. I glanced out the window and saw the clown car coming. They got out and started having some sort of parade with their guns and were deciding where to go. They pointed up to our apartment where our faces were visible in the window and started running towards the door. I screamed and yelled to go to the back office. We went through but the door was locked. We could hear a clown slam the front door and yell “ta-da”!. I pummeled through an old door and we looked down to see intertwined pieces of wood that were near impossible to get through. I tried to squeeze through one and the blond woman was screaming “faster, faster, please, I’m so frightened”. I looked at her and she had lost all of her hair, she was bald. She began talking with the clown but he did not yet kill us. I looked further behind the clown and saw a heavy prostitute smoking a cigarette. Suddenly, I ran across the boards of wood and jumped out of the window. The other neighbors followed me. My sister, mother, and father were also with my at this point. We were running and got to a grassy hill. They started shooting at us so we took off down the hill. We were all running in slow motion and I was like an animal, clutching the grass, to try to get more speed. I remember having a feeling that the running was beautiful, all in slow motion with feet sometimes levitating up and back down again. The grass was almost blurry because of a light fog that was over it. I turned back to see how much feet they had gained on us but they were sitting on the hill. I asked my father, “why aren’t they following us”? “they never go to the clown shop, they refuse to go there” my dad said. We ran into this small store that had clown supplies in it. Many masks, clown suits, and makeup. I was fascinated by a particular mask and wanted to bring it with me to wear. It was a painting of a landscape at night but drawn in the form of a face. I took it with me and we started running, only to look behind us and see the clowns pointing at us and running towards us. We made it to a young boys’ baseball game. All of the kids were excited to see us and we told them that we were in trouble (as we were running). Everyone separated and I was with my sister, alone. As we were running, I remembered that we were supposed to drive to the ocean tomorrow. I knew that we probably wouldn’t survive today, though. We got past the baseball game, past the crowd, and were walking up a hill towards another school. We slowed our pace, even though we could hear the clowns in the background coming. Suddenly, a beautiful and slow theme from an Italian opera started playing. We were surrounded by bright apple trees. My sister said “we can try to climb up one of those apple trees if you want”. She looked tired, though. I said, “yeah, maybe”. The song was still playing. She looked at me, smiled, and said “so what is the best part about the ocean we’re going to” and I looked at her, thought for a minute while trying not to cry, and said “the waves”. We walked on towards the apple trees and the music was still playing in the background. I remember looking at the top of the tree and thinking that both of our bodies wouldn’t hide behind the small leaves.

I was moving to a three-bedroom shack in the ghettoes of Guatemala. During my move-in day, I was walking outside to explore the streets. I walked past a destitute looking man with his daughter and son. The daughter came up to me, tugged my shirt, and asked for change in Spanish. I told her that I didn’t have any and walked on. I started to walk through town and everyone seemed to be looking at me. I was dressed in a black dress and a fancy red hat tilted sideways. The girl was following me and she had dirt on her face. She kept tugging at me shirt and getting progressively more violent asking me for change. I told her that I didn’t have any and started to get frustrated as it was my first day. I became violent and was throwing her away from me every time she asked. The whole town was watching and was horrified. Then, I walked back to my house and saw the same man again with his children. They were watching me as I looked out the window and still asking me for change. I suddenly welled up with emotion and yelled “NO DINERO, NO DINERO. MI CASA EN AMERICA---and then I pointed to their shabby apartment. “MI…PAUVRE…PAUVRE..NO DINERO!” and was almost in tears. I locked my door but realized that the windows were still open (these windows had lace curtains and opened up to my living room). I went to the bathroom to hide but saw the little girl peeking in the window and looking around. I screamed at her but she came in anyways. As she came in, twelve other impoverished Guatemalan children came in. They were looking around and I was trying to keep them under control, telling them not to touch anything. There was a wall that I had with fancy necklaces and earrings, dozens of them, hanging on pins. The girls were so interested in the jewelry and had never seen anything like it before. Suddenly, I saw the first little girl who had tugged on my shirt with one of my necklaces on. I was so angry but then told her to keep it. She sat on my couch silently and was no longer annoying. She was so content and looked so beautiful in that moment. Then, I saw the other girls on the couch looking forlorn. I looked to the wall and then looked towards the first girl who was very shy. She pointed to an elaborate pink necklace but for some reason I did not give it to her. I wanted it for myself. Then, I saw another equally beautiful necklace that I had 10 of. I took it off the rack and gave her one, clasping it around her neck. She smiled shyly and looked so happy. As she felt the necklace with her hands, I could hear the light clanging in my mind. Suddenly, I realized that someone from my childhood was now older and watching over me behind the couch. The next girl looked to me but she didn’t have a preference. I found a beautiful jade-beaded necklace and placed it around her neck. She felt so beautiful. Then, I looked to the next girl. I was trying to find a necklace for her but she told me that she preferred earrings. As I looked through earrings, I found a beautiful blue pair. She looked to me and said “not so Parthenon". She told me that she wanted something more low-class for her daughter. I looked through a catalog that I had but was interrupted by the boys playing around. Then, I looked to see that they were taking a famous baseball jacket from my wall and then carefully putting it back. They were not as bad as I thought. Finally, the parents found them in my house, apologized, and we all had dinner. As dinner was eaten in a screened in room that was partially outside, I was watching it from the outside and from a distance. I heard the phone ring and someone answer it in the room. It was a travel agency who thought that the family was not treating their new neighbor correctly. They just said “well, we already had her make us dinner so things must be going right” and laughed but the woman was very serious and didn’t think that the country was a good fit for the new neighbor. I figured that this was me until I saw a black girl about my age cooking dinner frantically as a slave for them. I ran into the town that I walked through before and looked over a cliff into the sea. I was going to swim home. I jumped into the blue water and found myself at the bottom of the ocean, scared. I began to swim up and attempted to swim like a fish so that I fit in. But, through the sunlight on the surface of the water I saw two great white sharks swimming together, searching for food. I suddenly swam back down, out of breath, and they came charging towards me. When they came closer, their faces appeared to be human-like. I started hitting them in the head with the pole and they stopped immediately. Then, they got into a cartoon-like ambulance at the bottom of the ocean and drove away in it with the lights flashing.

Suddenly, I was in a building with many rooms and had on my black dress and fancy black hat. I had stayed out all night and it was now 5am. I looked very tired but kept trying to find home, walking through bridges I had never seen and passing by old monuments that I had never seen before in my hometown. I walked under a bridge that was named after an African prince and there were holes in the ceiling that caused sunlight to pour in under me. I remember how beautiful it was; the contrast between dark and light. I was walking through a meadow and saw friends that I hadn’t seen in years, one being the girl that was behind the couch in Guatemala. They wanted a photo with me but I was embarrassed about how I looked. They took one anyway and I kept walking. Something led me up through this bar where there were very down and out people in and up these stairs that smelled like urine and vomit. When I got up, I somehow knew the two photographers whose studio I landed in. They told me that they wanted to do some test shots and I said “okay” even though I knew how I looked. They started shooting and I began posing although I felt so weak. The guy shooting smiled and said “this is going to be in Milk magazine”. I replied “MILK? THE MOVIE MAGAZINE?” and he smiled and said “yes, you’re our next fortune 500 baby”. I was so excited and he called other models for me to meet. They walked in and exclaimed “wow” when they saw me (this all confused me very much) and shook my hand. They were all incredibly short and alternative looking. I was confused but went along with it. Then, I took my fancy red hat and walked back down the stairs with a load of confidence and dreams in my mind.

I am parking a car with my sister in Washington, D.C. and we are rushing to find a highway that we need to get on. We are on foot and running into a park where there are millions of people sitting on the grass and listening to various speakers preaching to them. We stare at one guy with a microphone and he is yelling in a very religious tone. I turn to my sister and ask, “is this that cult that we read about?” and she nods her head. The man is very tall with a booming voice and long ponytail and he follows us through the park. He is suddenly hovering over our shoulders and yells “ARE YOU AWARE OF THE NATURE VS. TRANSPORTATION DEBATE?” and we quickly run away from him while everyone is watching us. We finally find a patch of snow and as we dust it off, it reads “DEC highway”. I say “this is it”! and we see a slide up ahead. The slide is large and winds down into something that we can’t see. We both hop on it and as we are sliding down, there is a large blanket of snow on it. Yet, the blanket of snow feels cloth-like and does not move. We slide around a curve and end up side by side and begin laughing. Suddenly, we bump into one another and it pushes us off the side of the slide. We land in a large blanket of snow in the middle of the woods. We slide further and further down a vertical slope and are screaming. We are gripping on to the snow, seeing the slide get further and further away. Finally, we land towards the end of the hill and see a small shack deep in the woods. Out of it come two wolves and a woman who appears to be the Virgin Mary but with a snow-covered cloak over her face. She looks distressed. Then, one of the wolves cry: “you are the two who stole my virgin”. And at that, her image disappears. The wolves run up to us as we deny it and start batting at us with our claws. It becomes violent and I yell “we were on our way to the highway and we didn’t take your virgin, we don’t know where she is”. The wolf looks suspicious but then believes us and the two wolves claw their way up the mountain. My sister and I work on getting back up the hill in the woods before the wolves come back and keep us there. We keep sliding back down and clawing our way back up again. Finally, we get up halfway but one of the wolves comes back. We find a hallway with many doors parallel to us and we hit him, shove him into one of the rooms and slam the door. He is crying out for the other wolf to come to his rescue as we finally reach the slide and jump onto the side of it. The other wolf comes running towards us as we are sliding down the slide. He begins to hop on too but then disappears. We finally make it to the bottom and continue on our journey. Yet, I watch us from afar and through a crack while still halfway up the slide, gripping on to its plastic covering.

I am traveling to the ocean with a childhood friend that I no longer know. We are sitting on the sand and looking at the waves. There are hundreds of people at the beach this day. There are umbrellas set up everywhere, and children running around. We begin to swim and dive in at the water’s edge. When I step in, the water is already deep. I look down at the water to see a tail going down in the water and flapping in the breeze. I become worried, thinking that it might be a shark. It is just a dolphin and it looks directly at me and smiles. The sun is reflecting on its back and it makes a whimpering noise. It swims over to a little girl who is standing on a small cliff. It jumps out of the water in one great leap and stands next to her. It turns into a mermaid yet still also a seal. It touches her nose with its nose and she giggles. Then, it graces her with a necklace from the sea. I turn back to my friend. We get out of the water and sit on the sand. We are talking about our current situation and she starts talking about law school. Feeling unaccomplished, I begin talking about my more alternative experience with traveling, writing, and looking for grad schools. She suggests that I continue traveling but I tell her that I want to go to grad school and say that it is my next “stepping stone”. She walks away as I am speaking and I begin to walk away from the ocean. All of the sudden, I hear people screaming, see a crowd towards the shore and ropes beginning to be assembled. I run towards the water’s edge and see a great whale that is washed up at shore. He is flailing his tail and making horrific noises, thrashing on his side with his great mouth open and the last bits of water coming out. I am crying my eyes out in horror. Someone yells “grab the rope” and I see a rope swinging by me. I grab it and start running at full speed backwards. People are pulling the ropes in all directions, some high and some low, like a circus. I am running faster than I ever knew and nearly running into umbrellas as I pull the rope back with the whale’s low moans as my motivation. As I pull it all the way back, there is nothing else that I can do. There is a concession stand attached to the ropes and people are buying food. I run back down to the water and watch people standing in the ocean screaming “PULL, PULL” as it turns from side to side with its great mouth open and pain in its eyes. I am crying and I suddenly feel just like the whale; stuck in some unknown place and just wanting to get back to where I was. With one great last pull, he makes progress back towards the ocean and begins to sink underwater. Just as he does, he looks me right in the eye. As people are applauding in the ocean, I look at their shirts and realize that they are from an organization that I turned a job down from. I feel solemn and watch them jump around, feeling so accomplished.

I am in a park with beautiful walkways through the woods and a family member asks me to go on a hike. I say “no” and that I just want to sit by the small bit of ocean that exists here. I am sitting on a concrete hill that has a small concave surface with ocean water inside. The concrete that I am sitting on is surrounded by a roving wilderness. My family and I jump in the water and it becomes very rough. This bit of ocean is the size of a pool but there are massive waves and wind coming on. I am tossed around and my family looks as if they might drown. I am enjoying the chaos; I swim below the waves, tasting the salt on my cheek and touching the bottom with my fingertips. I remember it being a hot day and the coolness of the wild water was a perfect contrast. I see my family further ahead, clawing their way back up to the concrete, completely drenched and unhappy. I am still happily swimming in the rough waters but climb back out to join them. They begin talking about the terror of the experience, how they almost drowned, and wondering how it could have been so rough on such a calm day. They also mention that there are sharks in the water and that they could have been eaten alive. I tell them how much I loved the chaos, being tossed around back and forth, not knowing where I was going to end up. I also said that the sharks were probably so confused from the madness that they probably wouldn’t even notice my body. As we are speaking, the ocean begins to drain. The water is sinking into nothing and becomes a thin layer, so that we can see all of its contents. There are animals everywhere: baby alligators, octopuses, squid, and different kinds of fish both small and large. I tell my family that I don’t see any sharks anywhere. They say “no, but there are alligators”. A baby alligator comes up to me on the side and charges me with its mouth open. I run away and it plops back down in the water. Then, as everyone else goes for a hike, I sit on the concrete side and watch the different animals all struggling to survive in the tiny layer of water that is left.

I am in a large expanse of open sky and land for an official celebration of the 4th of July given by the United States. People are sitting on these massive ships that are floating on the sea and I am relaxing, enjoying the celebration. At times, I hear shots ring out in the sky and I assume them to be fireworks. But then, I look to a tower that is nearby and see snipers shooting. Confused, I walk towards the tower and wait in the lobby. People are stuffed inside; two old women, a young boy holding his cat, a mother and her two girls. I wonder why they are inside and looking so worried on such a beautiful day. Photos are being snapped outside of families and I turn around and walk up the stairs of the tower. As I enter, I recognize a soldier that I know. There are about a dozen soldiers standing guard of a lookout of the tower. Suddenly, bullets come flying in and I see them hit sides of the lookout and fall beside me. “We weren’t expecting this but it just happened” he shouts to me and I watch crouched down with my head under one of the stairs as the guards in their black uniforms are shooting machine guns out into the air, with bullets coming back towards them. I want to shout “who is it?” but the sounds are deafening. Suddenly, an entire wave of bullets comes crashing into the lookout and they begin defending themselves with shields. As the bullets hit sides of the building and float in mid-air, I watch a soldier catch them all in his hand like candy. Looking further ahead out the window, I see fireworks being set off. Again, I look outside and see a literal tsunami of bullets come forward towards the tower and as they do, the chief soldier turns around, looks at me, and says “here’s Hollywood for you I guess” and shoots a bullet of fire towards the bullet wave coming towards us. The entire thing explodes and suddenly everything is in slow motion. The entire building that I am in is collapsing and I can see myself being thrown down the stairs. Amid all of this, I hear a man laughing whose voice seems to be the chief solider. My body is being thrown in so many ways and I see bits of stair and ice mixed together. I somehow land at the base of the lobby and land in water. I swim towards the entrance and see a little boy running out. I run back in, crawl up the burned stairs, and find a computer with my dream journal on it. I start writing this beginning in my dream journal. The little boy runs up the stairs and yells “you can’t be here, it’s going to blow”, followed by a soldier. I go downstairs and swim outside of the lobby and the entire land that we are on has sunken into a near freezing ocean. People are already pale and shivering, others screaming. Most of the people are naked and their bodies are caved in ice. I recognize my life jacket that I left tied to one of the sunken boats and it is floating exactly where I left it. I swim towards it and pull it on. A girl my age cries “I WAS GOING TO GRAB THAT LIFE JACKET FIRST, IT’S MINE” and gets upset. I tell her that it was mine, that I left it there. Although she is black, her entire body is pale and she is covered in ice, shivering. I feel bad and then swimming with her, cry out “there are just sometimes when you need to save yourself, nobody else” and I am now crying and shivering, swimming towards something. Then, I see three objects floating and an old childhood friend sitting on one. “come here, this way” she yells and the air is very foggy. I swim towards her and bring the girl that had been upset and we see that there are floating chairs in the water. I give the life jacket girl the nicest, largest one and I take a smaller one. “See! It’s going to be alright” I reassure her. We are floating along and talking about being rescued. We decide that since it is the official 4th of July celebration given by our country that everyone will know what happened and soon enough we will be rescued. The water that we float on turns into underwater sand and we start walking on it. I look ahead and see the childhood friend waving her arm towards us silently and frantically. I turn around to see hundreds of lost people behind me. Then, I look to my right and see shadows walking towards us in the mist. I begin walking, though incredibly slowly, toward my friend with the life jacket girl and we are tiptoeing on the sand, floating up and down underwater. Our footprints are heavy and as soon as we walk, the water washes them away. My childhood friend looks very distraught and intends on hurrying. I look and see a dog running towards us slowly on the sand. More the shadow of a dog. Everything is silent and shadowed. I see him and smile but my friend urges us on. I look to my right and see shadows turn into people, soldiers, and understand at this moment that we are in Iraq. I suddenly have a flashback of what would have happened had I not listened to the boy. I see myself writing in my dream journal and the boy telling me that I can’t be up there, along with the soldier. I reply “too bad” and run partially downstairs, and then go out the back window. I am hiding behind the building and the ocean now, and see dozens of houses and a quiet street behind me. I look around the corner and see an Iraqi soldier showing the boy a gun. “Do you know what this is?” he says and the boy sticks his thumb in his mouth and shakes his head “no”. I quietly walk towards the street behind us and am safe. Then, I am flashed back to the present. I run towards my friends and we see a few columns attached to computers with desks. I look at the screen and it is a deep blue with interesting graphics and the words “home train schedule” on it. We are frantically entering our dates of birth, location, and home address, desperately trying to find a train home from where we are before the soldiers come. Then, I see a soldier coming. I quickly hide behind one of the columns but he pulls me out, along with the others. Now, the hundreds of lost people from the celebration are showing up through the fog and there are other civilians from the country that we are in and they are speaking in another language and laughing at us. I am frightened. A man comes over to me and says “you want to host a T.V. show, eh?” I nod my head yes and he motions me over to him. Yet, I know that he is a very bad person, just by the looks of him. He looks me up and down, smiles, and takes my hand. There are five other sketchy looking men with him who come along. We are walking towards a tavern with broken walls and dim lights inside. The life jacket girl comes with me. I smile at her, reassuringly. We enter the tavern and a woman seats us. She asks me what I want to drink but she does not understand me so I just wave my hand as in “I’m good”. The men are all talking and laughing, eating their meat vigorously with juice dripping down every time they fork it. The main guy keeps looking at me and smiling creepily. The waitress gives us plates and I notice life jacket girl is already eating. “That chicken looks great” I say, but she is staring at her plate, motionless, not speaking to me. I get a plate and the waitress smiles and says “brains”. “Ohhh, sounds good” I nervously say and she puts them down next to me. These are all mini brains and I can see the internal nerves that are now cooked and floating outside of it attached to little strings. On the end of the strings are what appear to be tiny eyeballs. I just stare at them, knowing that I won’t eat them. Then, I see a table with a tiny window ahead that holds various coffees. I point to an iced one and smile and the waitress nods her head. I return to my table with my now mute friend and strange men and wonder how I will ever find my home.

It is raining outside and I am in a dark house watching a movie alone. I am curled up on a white couch and the shutters are blowing open and closed with the rain and wind howling around me. As I stare at the beginning of the movie, I suddenly become an outside observer in the movie. It begins with two men in old war uniforms at a tavern. They say “he’ll never get out. You did your job captain, let’s toast to that.” A bartender spreads five identical drinks on the table; they are in the shape of a military tank with the straw in the shape of a cannon. Then, smiling with cigars in their mouth, they toast and drink. It closes in on the older man’s eyes and he says “jimmy’s never getting out, we put him on lockdown a long time ago”. Then, it flashes to a cold, isolated jail cell. You can see what appears to be Jimmy pacing back and forth in his cell. He is making terrifying noises that range from a low growl to loud hissing. The wind is pushing rain into the windows of the blue hallway of the jail and it is dark. Two guards come up to the cell and in an instant the man rips through the bars and starts attacking the men. He rips through their necks with his teeth and there is blood everywhere. Then, he flies out of the window and now has a black cape and a mouth full of blood. The scene flashes to the streets of London. There are pedestrians coming out of a late night movie with long umbrellas and old garb. They look to the top of the street and see a man standing there silently. Suddenly you hear hissing and see blood spurting out of his mouth through the streetlight. People begin screaming and running but it is too late. He jumps from person to person, ripping through their necks and sometimes spitting the flesh out, sometimes eating it. I am in horror as I see people thrown in piles half-alive, half-eaten. Blood is literally running through the streets and into the gutter along with the rain. Then, as everyone appears to be dead and collapsed on the wet streets, one heavy woman in a dress screams and then realizes that he didn’t see her hiding behind everyone. She screams “NO, NO NO!” The man in the cape turns around at the top of the street and his black hair is illuminated in the streetlight. He grins, wipes his mouth with the end of his cape, and quickly flies over to her. She is hiding behind the dead bodies of her friends. He throws her out onto the empty part of the street and slowly bites the side of her cheek, close to her ear. There is a waterfall of thick blood rushing down her cheek. He then smiles and watches her expression. At this point, I see a close-up of her terror and just want it to end. He is playing with her. Then, he bites a little bit closer to her neck and releases another heavy stream of blood. He spits out her skin and leaves her lying there, helpless. She will bleed to death. Then, he flies up to the highest quarters of a tower where I know that there is a bar and I know that the two men from the beginning are rejoicing. Then, I am back in the lonely house and shivering from the cold. I look at the time and see “12:46” (Note: I have never seen time on a clock in my dreams before!).

I was on my way to a yoga studio to visit the man that I love’s girlfriend. We were walking together and as we enter the studio, there are shining brown hardwood floors and walls with century portraits and artifacts covering them. Everyone is sitting in a circle in red plastic chairs and I walk over. He sits down next to his girlfriend and I immediately shudder but try to ignore it and introduce myself to everyone else. Everyone’s faces become blurs and I focus in on hers-very delicate and pretty, she has soft red hair, blue eyes, and a skinny waist. “Damn” I think. They are holding hands sitting together so I look to my left and pretend not to care. Sitting next to me is a half-child, half-furry creature of sorts (covered in thick red fur and with wheels for feet but a young child’s face). “Hello there! Let’s go play” I tell the “thing” and take it to a yoga mat on the floor while everyone else talks. I am thinking that I should secretly show him how well I am with children so I start playing with the thing on the floor. It suddenly multiplies itself into three other identical creatures and I am rolling a ball on the floor and petting their red fur. Then, the man that I love stands up and walks over. I am sitting, he is standing, and he stretches his arms down to me on the yoga mat and I grab hold of his arms as high up as I can reach. It reminds me of how much I love the softness yet strong grip of his arms. Then, he pulls me up and we walk down a narrow hallway, passing his girlfriend on the way. She smiles brightly at me and I try to smile back, although feeling the motions of it I know that it is a “I’m trying to look happy but I’m really in pain” sort of smile. As we walk down the hallway, the man that I love becomes smaller and smaller until he is a child. Someone is yelling at him at the end of the hallway and he begins crying and putting his thumb in his mouth. “Don’t worry, it’s okay!” I cry and pick him up. His head is against my shoulder and he is only five. His face is wet with tears and I tell him that I will buy him a cookie later. He smiles and nods his head. As I walk back to what was then the circle of chairs, there are now wooden chairs in a classroom formation. I sit down at one as an old man with thick glasses speaks, eyeing me and grunting, and I give my lover a big hug and tell him to sit down and that everything will be alright. He nods his head and walks away. Then, I am informed that the wedding is soon to commence. I do not know what wedding this is and immediately worry. We step outside to a beautiful lawn surrounded by rolling hills and willow trees. The plastic chairs are now metal and seated in the formation of a wedding ceremony. We sit down and a band begins to play as people slowly walk up to the wedding arch. I see his girlfriend, but in a black dress, and her red hair is now combed and gleaming in the sun. Yet, I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize that it is not her who is getting married. I zone out during the ceremony and stare at one of the trumpet players of a jazz band that is playing. He looks nervous and the trumpet is covering his entire face. In between songs, he tells everyone that they are from out west and working on new songs. The jazz songs are beautiful and I am immediately attracted to him. He says that he wrote one of the songs in Chile and realize that we have that in common. After the band plays, we stand in a circle guarded by a large willow tree. I feel hands on my back and turn around to see the Chilean trumpeter putting a large coat around my arms. “Oh thank you” I say and smile over, though I cannot stop thinking about the man that I love. I say “so when did you go to Chile?” and he smiles and says something that I can’t make out but with a worried face. His body begins to disintegrate as he calls out and the last thing that I see before he disappears is a finger pointing to the sky. I turn around and hear someone scream “TORNADO” and look to see a massive tornado ripping through the hills and coming right for us. I am frightened and begin running towards the main studio building, with people screaming in crowds and running all around me. I run into the first room that I see, a bedroom, and there are four people huddled under the blankets and holding on to the bed posts. I hold on to the bed posts. There are two beds that are intertwined, so places to hold on everywhere. A little girl yells “HERE IT COMES” and I look outside to see a black and red sky. I scream “CAN WE CLOSE THE PLASTIC COVERING”? and they tell me that I can try and so I close a tiny plastic covering the blinds and screen. Everyone keeps saying “here it comes” but not much happens. Then, something falls over in the room and the sky clears. People begin to laugh and say “that was it?” until we see a little black girl floating through the air outside and holding a potted plant. She is literally flying and holding this plant with a very serious expression on her face. In the plant begins a tornado, rising up from the dirt. She floats into the bedroom and places the plant, as the tornado is forming above it, on the floor next to me. Everyone screams but I say “don’t worry, there is nothing to generate the chaos”. I walk over to the plant and watch the tornado swirl down, until it bubbles in the dirt and goes down and rises up to the surface, over and over. I place the plant on a blanket on the floor and it twists the shape of the blanket into a smaller, more manageable size. Then, I wonder if the tornado plant is changing the reality of things or just our perception of them. I ask where the man that I love and his girlfriend are and a little girl replies “they ran off together, we don’t know where they are”. I feel very sad and remember that he always looks to signs for answers and the fact that a tornado hit a non-tornado region during a wedding ceremony and they happened to run off together would be a sure sign that they should be together. I take the tornado plant and watch it bubble strangely and take it to the main studio. It is warping paintings, the floor, everything that it nears, twisting the shape of it and playing tricks on the eyes. I place it on the ground and walk towards the bedroom. This is when I wake up.

I move to Egypt on a whim. I buy a one bedroom apartment that is on the outskirts of a market and the apartment is literally a box that I cannot move in but all of my necessities are there. It is made out of clay and wood. There are hills of desert sand and the sand is a deep golden color. There are women walking around with clay bowls turned upside down and strapped to their heads with string. The string is elaborately tied around their foreheads. They are 10 or 11 feet tall with dark brown, glowing skin and piercing blue eyes. They are the size of giraffes but have small camel humps on their backs. Their limbs are very long and wrapped around their legs are gold sandals that strap up to their thighs. They walk uncomfortably yet gracefully and the sand is blowing among them. I am looking out of my apartment window. It is just a hole. I walk outside to the market and try to buy fruit. The woman does not understand me so I walk back to my apartment. Two men are there and stealing my belongings. I yell at them and they run out with my things but then ask me why an American girl lives in such a small apartment, that it doesn’t make any sense. I try to speak but my hands reach out of the doorway and no words come out. They walk towards the horizon and once again, I step outside my apartment, which now looks like a tower, and walk towards a grassy hill with patches separated by sand. I place my hand on my forehead and look over to the setting sun. Everything is quiet and I see people walking in the distance beneath the horizon. The sand is blowing gently and I watch the sun go down.

I am in a room with two women; one that I know is an authority figure and the other a stranger. The room is decorated with elaborate scarves and dresses. There is a bowl with tiny turtles the size of my pinky fingerprint and I have to pick them up, without crushing them, and place them in a dark container with a small hole at the top. If I finish this task, I know that I will get a dress to wear for the ball that evening. I am gently touching my fingertip to the mini turtles and dropping them into the hole. They are holding on for dear life. One by one, I finally finish and the authority figure hands me a large book. I open the cover and with each page that I open, an unusual dress flies out of the paper and onto the floor. I have five dresses to choose from; they all look like they are from the 1930’s. I remember in particular a vivid blue one with ruffles going down the front and a tight neckline. The stranger gets the same book with the same dresses and I wonder what will happen if everyone ends up wearing the same one. I am excited for the ball but prefer to stay inside. It is raining and I enjoy watching the tiny turtles.

I am in Peru and sitting in the courtyard of a small park that is housed by a circular path. In the middle of the circle is a large pool of black water. It is getting late and I am watching a tennis match between two women. I am sitting on a bench and looking up into a very starry sky. I hear someone scream my name from a distance and I look up into this glass box that is floating in the sky. It is pitch black in the room except for two flashing lights that look like eyes. I realize that someone has glowing binoculars and they are following my every movement. I cannot see a body attached to the eyes. I get up and begin running around the circle to let go of some pent-up anxiety and pass an old woman sitting on a bench. She is holding a quiet baby and she looks up at me and says “hello”, smiling. As I run past her, her eyes follow me and she is watching me as I sit on the bench. The woman that I am routing for is losing to her own clone. I get up and walk around again and it is now very dark with only dim streetlights allowing me to see. As I walk around again, I pass a woodsy area that gives me a chill and once again walk by the old woman. As I walk by, I look at her nails and they are unusually long. She looks up at me, smiles again, and says “hello”, this time tilting her head. The baby still has not made any noise. “Hi” I say, slightly friendly but slightly scared, and return to my bench. The match is now over and the players retreat down a long, winding road. I run around the circle again but this time, when I pass the old woman, her nails have grown to a frightening length and have a yellow color. She smiles again at me and I run to where my bench is. I turn around and she is smiling, releasing her baby to the ground. The baby slowly walks on its own and very crooked towards the edge of the black pool. The woman is watching him, then me. The baby looks at me and tilts its head and then keeps staring at me as he thrusts himself into the black pool. I run to the edge of the pool and dive in, swimming furiously towards him as the old woman watches me. I am frightened and do not know what is beneath me. I take hold of the baby and lift him out of the water while swimming towards the edge. The old woman is cackling. I place the baby on the side of the pool and run towards the long, winding road. I turn around and look to the woman and she points up to the sky with her long fingernail, and smiles. I look up and see black clouds rolling in and a massive storm coming.

I am working in a children's hospital and it is dark. The walls are narrow and everything is cold. Suddenly, an alarm goes off throughout the hospital. I look to the ceiling and see a red light flashing and spinning in circles. A woman tells me that there has been a red alert and that it means a child has been stolen from the children's hospital. My heart sinks and I rush upstairs. I am running up flights of stairs and the lights are slowly dimming. I walk outside to the top of a stairwell that is thousands of feet high. At the top, there is a demented looking man who is severely hunched over and wearing glasses that are so thick, I cannot see his eyes. In front of me, a woman in a long black Victorian style dress whose face I cannot see, throws herself off of the porch. I watch her fall into an abyss and there are leaves trailing behind her. The layers of her black dress are floating up with the wind. Now, I am on a playground and the sun is setting. I am very scared. I turn around and the hunched over man is standing with his arm around a little, sick boy. I still can't see his eyes. He has his arm around him and is touching his chest. I am absolutely terrified. I want to save the boy but I am too scared and I start running. The sun is setting and as I am running through a path covered in leaves, I hear the echo of the man's voice: "I'M GOING TO GET YOU LITTLE GIRL".

I woke up from this dream crying hysterically and shaking. This is by far the most afraid I have ever been after waking up from a dream.