Dream Log: April 20, 2001

I am a female CS major at Purdue who goes by the name Wuukiee. I have been programming *all night*, and I am *hungry*. And the pizza delivery service refuses to serve me right now because they think that my dormitory is on fire.

Some phenomenon of the atmosphere makes it appear from a distance that the dorm is completely engulfed in flames. Apparently this is not at all out of the ordinary in West Lafayette, Indiana, so there is really *no excuse* for this. I angrily slam the phone down and get back on my computer, my haven (along with SCA) from the cruel world of non-geeks.

I now create a computer program to simulate the previous experience. The program is an animated sequence portraying a burning dorm room that is empty except for an angry computer monitor. And then the world hazily transforms itself into the nonsensical void of REM sleep.

I was in some tall building, and I was approached by someone to do some data entry. When I went to go do this, one of my bosses came to me while I was waiting for the elevator. She told me that some of my friends were in the bar shooting pool, and told me to go over there. When I went over there, sure enough, my friends were there, along with two of my college professors who were shooting pool at another table. 'Tis strange.

I had flown home to Virginia. My mother, brother John, and Uncle Joe were in the car, which was now without explanation, a soft-top Land Rover Defender. I was sitting in the back as we made out way down Bishop Road to the junction with Coal Bank Hollow, the road to Brush Mountain, where we live.

It was afternoon in late spring. New leaves were on all the trees, with that yellow-green color that the new leaf has, the chlorophyll having not yet cured into that deep dark green of summer. In the low angle light of the setting sun, the trees were glowing green gold. It was as if they were fiber-optic, taking up the light of the sun. In the dream, a huge surge of emotion came over me. I became aware that my memory of the mountain where I grew up was perfect, that despite the fact that I had lived in North Carolina for 10 years, and now lived in California, that my memory had supernatural fidelity, and that on my deathbed, I could pull up this image from deep storage and see the mountain perfect and irradiated with the living light of the sun.

I started to cry. I got a lump in my throat, eyes puffed up. It was really that beautiful - I was in a kind of religious rapture. It was joy and loss at the same time, a fear that this was lost to me some how. I told myself that I needed to get control of how I was emoting. I remembered Uncle Joe in the front seat (left hand front, as the Defender had English controls). I recalled that he had not even cried at Granny's funeral (his own mother, and my maternal grandmother). He was a big ex-marine, a big man with a heart of gold, and I didn't want to have to explain what was happening inside me. The joy I felt rose to a high pitch as I looked out over the hills, thick with trees, bursting with the force of new life, and that was it.

~Eleven years of cleaning she still was never satisfied and stood there between Dad and I. Too late he was leaving for days, once again my time with him had been squandered away by the wild yellow cycle of pleasing her.

~Running late for Monday morning class, Travis stopped me in the hallway to show me the green construction paper book with picture languages. In black marker was a note written to his best friend by drawing fingers and toes. Tossing it in the garbage he returned to his locker inside the janitors closet. I slipped the retrieved note into my desk planning to get it to his friend by the end of the day. The class was restless whispering to each others in clichés among themselves.

I've come to bury my plans, not to garden them. came from under her breath.

Enough. I decided to take them down to the beach. I walked along the pink flagstone covered beach while the class dissipated. Get a job and that's just the way it is. Raw and damp wind whipped the dress tightly around my legs while shivery motes of sand bit into the back of my calves and eyes riveted on the hospital buildings knowing it was time to go back.

There was a big booth-like tent in front of the CFA, with something sexual going on inside it, I don't know what, but there were definitely some adults in charge of the place and they didn't particularly approve. And for some reason the whole campus was now on a small desert island.

---

I am at my Mom's house, looking forward to my eighteenth birthday on May 1^st and the opportunity it will afford me for copulation with females. (Nota bene: In reality, my birthday is September 2^nd, and on my eighteenth I did little more than household errands.) So my Mom's boyfriend Ron is teasing me about my lack of scoring.

Walking across the front lawn with my Mom and the dogs. She is drinking a cup of tea. Kitana, our anatolian shepherd, is the same as ever, but now there's a new dog: a white one that looks like a cross between a brown dog, a polar bear, and a mountain lion. I suppose we're going to look at something up in the hills. But halfway across the lawn, just on the edge of it, across from the shed, Kitana attacks me. She knocks me onto the ground and bites my arm. I'm certain the incisors have penetrated my skin. Then the other dog rears up on its rear legs and falls flat on top of me. I'm doing my best to fight them off, but they continue to tare my tooth, flesh, and bone. Mom tries to help, but accomplishes nothing with her empty rhetoric. The teeth are removed from my arm temporarily, but I see no hope for this situation.

---

Wake up to more chastising instant messages from Mom. "How are you? Have you been taking fish oil? How was your diet today?" I felt pretty clever about avoiding heartburn, but I doubt she would be impressed. It occurs to me that I will not be talking to that cute girl in my math class any time soon. Also, I find it interesting that this dream mentions colors other than red.