Dream Log: August 2, 2000

Very clear and disturbing.

I dreamed I was moving out of a large, very lovely rented house with the help of my wife. All was going well, until we realised that the large number of boxes outside the front door were already going to fill the small car to capacity. When we found our bikes in the shed, she put a mattress on the car roof as a substitute roof rack.

It was then that we discovered a couple of bulls in a pen in the back garden. One bull was large and aggressive, sporting two large horns on its head. The other was smaller, black and friendly. In fact it looked rather more like a big dog than a bull (but it was a bull in the dream, I'm sure). With no prospect of fitting these animals in the car it was very fortunate that my parents showed up to help us move. They live in the country so I thought they would appreciate the free livestock. They declined though, showing me (by the magic of dream travel I was suddenly in their garden) that they already had 20 or so baby bulls. The word for that is probably a calf, but they really were wire-haird baby bulls complete with horns - although still cute.

I asked my mother what on earth she was going to do with so many little (cute) animals. She said
"Oh, we'll just sell them to a farm. Either that or rip them up and dump them in the river"

Woke up feeling a bit queasy.

There's a wall in front of me. It's a gigantic graffiti with a painting of the directory structure of ftp.es.debian.org. The wall (or is a big curtain?) ripples as if moved by the wind. Folders open and files move around.

I know this is a soft nightmare, caused by a hot August night, because it produces some sort of incommodity, without being too distressing.

It seems that I am not physically in this dream; this happens often when I dream about highly logic things like computing, which I dream about often. Soon I am immersed in this indeterministic ftp, trying to figure out the folder I need to download, seeing folders as they change of name, and the files disappearing. I can't understand the file structure of this site...

I wake up and still sleepy, I seat in front of the computer. The ftp is still downloading the whole contents of ftp.es.debian.org/pub/linux/debian/dists/potato/main/binary-i386. 800 MB downloaded, and still two or three directories left. I look at the screen and everything seems normal, I take a shower and go to work. I'll check the files tonight... and maybe I'll dream again.

Dream 1:

As I approach the bus stop, I'm real thirsty. (Last night I played laser tag three times, and was pretty parched) Anyway, I don't have any money on me, because I have a bus pass, so I don't need to pay for the bus ride. It's August first. There's a food/drink dispenser machine right by the bus bench. I ask a lady, or she offers, to help me out on some sort of drink. She gladly inserts the money, and asks, "what do you want, a Snickers?" and presses the Snickers button before I can even reply. I don't like Snickers, I don't want Snickers, or any kind of chewable food product--I'm thirsty.

The bus arrives. As I'm about to get on, I realize that my bus pass is a July bus pass, and it's now August. I'm screwed. So I ask the same lady for money, and explain to her my situation in about a tenth of a second (you can do that in dreams), and she angrily gives me three dollars, even though the bus fare is $1.75 or $2.00, depending on the bus. As I get onto the bus, the driver asks me if I have a drink in my left poket. That's where the Snickers was, and I can't even begin to imagine why she'd think I had a drink in that pocket, as a Snickers doesn't really leave a big bulge, like a can would. No drinking or eating is allowed on the bus. I show the lady that it's a Snickers, and she's alright with it. Had it been a drink, it wouldn't have mattered either, were it a closed drink.

When I sit down, I see the bus driver's face in the mirror up front. She's staring at me evilly to check and make sure that I don't eat the Snickers. I wasn't planning on doing that anyway, because I was thirsty, not hungry.

Dream 2:

I see Zack, Joaquin, and I think Sean walking toward me. Zack is crying his eyes out, which is hard to imagine because he's this huge football playing jolly green giant jock type. Anyway, his parents had given him some sort of warning that if he were to smoke weed ever again, he'd be really punished. Zack and his friends had arrived at Zack's house at about 11:30 the previous night. Zack figured his parents were going straight to sleep so he and his friends began to smoke. Anyway, at about 11:45, his rents realized that he had forgotten something (I want to say Cracker Jacks), so they entered his room and caught him and his friends smoking. Busted.

The punishment? Zack's parents take him to a church (I want to say Mormon or Evangelican) and register him as a new member. Whatever religion they registered him into uses a different calendar / aging system, so Zack is no longer 18 like he is in real life. By his religion's standards he's 7. His parents then take him to the police, which gladly accept him, because he also qualified for some sort of treatment / punishment program, being only 7. Were he still 18, they wouldn't have been able to do anything, and Zack was officially an Evangelican, so he was screwed. He was to be in jail for many years.

I proceed to get scared out of my wits, even though I hadn't smoked anything. In the dream, I thought I had, though as I look back, I hadn't.

• A 14-year old Jackie O opening her mouth wide so someone ( a dentist?) could look in her mouth.
• There were several new refrigerators at work. One was mine. I found out that each had a name on end of the freezer door; mine was joyless. The others had names like ironsides and whatnot, but joyless - hey, that's swell.

1st Dream:

I was going on a road trip with my dad and his girlfriend's family. Not even a mile onto the road, we make a bathroom break. First, only my dad gets out of the car, but I decide that I should use the bathroom too or else I'll be complaining later (common sense). I walk into the diner where we have stopped, and I use the bathroom, and returning to the door, I see my dad sitting in a booth eating a sandwich. I grab a soda and down it then decide it'd be best to use the bathroom again. As I look at the bathroom, I realize it's a huge child's playpen and people can watch you use the bathroom. The boxed-in area looks like a sauna, without the steam. I sit down on a bench and am trying to use the bathroom, but I know this is most inapropriate behavior and can't manage to go. People are laughing at me, boys with balloons are standing outside watching me. I'm angry at myself because I've been here for fourty-five minutes and my family is waiting in the car. I then notice that there is a bathroom after all and that I've just been trying to pee in front of everyone just for the hell of it. I relieve myself and walk back to the car, parked too far away for me. The dream ends as I get back into the car and we take off.

2nd Dream:

This one started where I was in downtown Myrtle Beach with my dad's girlfriend and we were driving around. She was going to go to a nightclub and would drop me off in this area that I had never seen in my life, with a statue and a small park like you would see in a normal, middle population city. But I never went there, and she never went to the nightclub, and instead we went to this novelty shop, a very small one, that looked like the Bazaar you see in Zelda 64: Ocarina of Time with all the items hanging on the wall behind the counter. There were gag lingerie items and when I looked back at Lisa, she was buying these things. It looked like a Viking helmet, but she told me it was something you put on the top of your sunglasses frames, and it makes horns on the side, something strictly for the Vikings (the football team, not the explorers) fans. She was buying my dad these so that he could wear them on his sunglasses while he watched the Vikings play in the Superbowl.

My dad's not a Vikings fan and the sunglasses he wears are nothing like the ones in this dream, so I was baffled. Why would anyone wear sunglasses indoors while watching football on TV anyway?

We left the shop, and as we were walking to the car, I could see Robert (Lisa's 8-year-old son) playing baseball in the imaginary park. He had John Stamos with him, (who was a terrible pitcher might I add). Lisa invited John home with us, and he accepted the invitation, and started asking me questions on the drive home about my cat, Juicy. When we were at home, we were going to play baseball in the living room. Robert was at bat, and John and I were deciding who should be what. I told him I refuesd to play pitcher because I'm deathly afraid of being hit by the ball, so he suggested that I play catcher. He was about to throw the ball, when the cat came in the room, and he dropped everything and picked it up, hugging it. My cat was the equivilant of Michelle on Full House. He was in love with the cat. He wanted to feed the cat some sort of baby formula, and asked me if we had a baby bottle. I said yes and went into the kitchen to find it, but couldn't. I looked in the refrigerator and saw that it was in there filled with amoxicyllin (the liquid form). So I ran into my dad's bedroom and asked Lisa what that was for, and she said that it was for the ear infection Scarlet (my other cat) had.

She was lying on her side on the bed. I started rubbing her stomach, and I asked why a cat would be taking an antibiotic. She wanted to know why I cared so much and I explained that John wanted to feed Juicy baby formula. She thought this was as weird as I thought Scarlet taking Amoxicyllin was, so I left and went back in the kitchen and improvised. I found a Squeezit bottle and asked him if that would work, but he shook his head no, so I went through all of these things and in the end... he never fed the cat. So... I don't know. It was over before I could even give a damn.

End Of The World (Again)

• I'm driving through an unfamiliar city, on my way to visit my friend, Jennifer. I get caught in a traffic jam composed of honking cars, crowds of pedestrians, wailing police and ambulance sirens. It looks like the aftermath of a riot. I finally get through and arrive at her apartment. The door is open so I walk in. I hear Jennifer upstairs and I walk over to the sink to wash my hands. I grab a scrub brush and am cleaning my fingernails (who knows why) when she comes downstairs and welcomes me. Later on I meet her two roommates, one of which looks a lot like Elizabeth Hurley. She even tells me how much she looks like her and shows me a magazine photograph. I agree that the resemblance in remarkable. Some time later I'm alone with the roommate in the bathroom. She's taking a bath and I'm undressing, about to join her. I turn and throw my clothes towards the other side of the room. When I turn back she has vanished into thin air. Behind the tub is a large window, standing open. But we're on the second floor. I guess she went out through the bathroom window.

  I'm tripped out by the strange event and run out into the living room to tell Jennifer. At the same moment a man busts in through the front door. It's the missing roommate's boyfriend and he's been searching for her. He's extremely agitated when he sees me in my birthday suit and instantly knows what's up. He stares at me crazily, "This time I brought a gun." He grabs something out of his coat and points a plastic toy gun at me. He collapses in tears.

• The North Pole. A white wasteland of snow and permafrost. I'm part of a dogsled expedition and we're searching for a missing member of our party. She disappeared yesterday but I don't remember who she is or even why I'm out here. In the distance I see the colors of brown earth and green trees rise up out of the mist. We are headed straight for this oasis and as we draw closer I feel the temperature lift along with my spirits. I feel I know this place. I realize we are returning to our origin not reaching a destination. As we cross the edge of the singularity, I regain my memory of where I am. Haven. Kind of a commune at the end of the universe. It was founded a few days before the Apocalypse using a combination of yogic techniques and advanced technology. Haven exists at all points in time preceding its founding, making it a special kind of giant time machine. Thus Time doesn't pass in Haven. I grow no older and have no idea how long I've lived here. We've all brought our friends and loved ones (living and dead) to live with us here. We've also resurrected some of the great figures of history, Plato, Mahatma Gandhi, Terence McKenna, et al., to help us create and maintain our Utopia. There is not much structure to our community. With time out of the picture, we eat, sleep and fornicate just for pleasure. We do not reproduce so our population is stable (quite an important issue when you are immortal).

  I just came back from a foray into an Ice Age. Since Haven is not of this time, when you're away from Haven your memory of it fades as well (I suppose in order to maintain causality). With my memory now restored, I remember that I am one of the founders of Haven; and it is good to be home. I play around with some kids, balancing an assortment of objects into a teetering sculpture. It all falls down and my mother scolds me as if I was twelve years old. Everyone laughs and there are no hard feelings. Another founder, my friend August, joins us. It's time for some esoteric activities vital to maintaining Haven's existence. You see, Haven is not perfectly stationary in time. It has been inching forward from the moment it was founded. In fact, at the farthest temporal point that Haven exists, there are only a few minutes left until the Eschaton; inside Haven, it will take centuries before we touch it, but even though our ability to slow time gets better as we go on, we seem to be drawing towards an inevitable conclusion.

  August and I walk to the edge of Haven and perform some technoshamanic rituals to slow Haven's movement in time. Right now it looks like we're in the middle of a jungle. When we finish the rite, an extremely human-like ape leaps over the wall, grabs a pile of garbage and scurries back into the jungle. It happens sometimes. August and I have been discussing the Eschaton problem for some time now and decide to take a quick look at the actual Present. A few seconds mean decades to us but they may give us insight into our dilemma. We transport Haven to the Present and quickly stick our heads out for a peek. I see an enormous transparent shockwave rippling the sky and everything in sight. I see green hills burn to black cinders then back to green hills in the space of a moment. We bring our heads back in. I have a strong intuition that what we just witnessed was a Good Thing. August thinks the same thing. We decide to exit Haven and watch the Eschaton.

  I have the sensation of standing on the roof of a moving train. The strange rippling fills the world and invisible landscapes flash in and out of being. As the final seconds tick away, all the people of Haven come out to join us. However many millenia had passed inside, they came to the same inevitable conclusion: the end is unavoidable. Then I see, coming up the road, a woman on a bicycle. It's Leslie, August's mother, who didn't enter Haven with us. She calls to us, "there is no such thing as 'the end'." Another intuition hits me and I turn to August, "The end is the beginning."

  I wake up in bed with a final image in my brain: hands in a sink, cleaning my fingernails.

Story of Andonte`

I slept deeply that night, deeper than ever before…Perhaps I knew what was to befall me in my sleep as I turned off the light switch and plunged myself into the dark abyss of sleep. Darkness. It surrounded me, became one with me, until I again held the human form. I was a boy, in a town that was broken and fading, crumbling beneath it-self. And I was a son, my father was certainly a man of importance, but this irrelevancy means nothing in this tale. An Evil One had come for me, and I was trapped by Him, though, I cannot recall how, brought into His home. I cannot remember any completely enclosed area, other than the property itself, surrounded by the barrier of crumbled building walls, entrapped within a dead grass courtyard.

I tried to escape, I know this, but He was too powerful, this man, this evil who stands present within my every fear. I believe He wore a robe of a dead gray brown, with evil symbols embroidered upon it and I felt a silent laughter that emanated from within him.

My father came for me, and though I heard no sound other than a deathly low hum, I knew that he demanded that I be released at once from my imprisonment. I cannot remember any clarity, the colours were dull, dead, without life, and I could see the anger upon my father’s face as he was denied. And somehow we both understood what was happening, and that he would not be allowed to leave this prison alive. I understood what was happening as he violently brushed passed my captor, making his way hastily for the exit.

Ever so slowly the Evil One pulled a hood over his head, shrouding his face in darkness. And even as he did so I heard softly above the growing hum the repetition of an evil chant that grew louder and louder: “A dark hood is twenty-six evil eyes, a thousand lost souls staring at you.” My father reached the pathway towards the large steel exit and halted as eight dark hooded figures surrounded him, the chanting was almost unbearable, as if all the voices of hell were crying out in one loud chant, “A DARK HOOD IS LIKE TWENTY-SIX EVIL EYES, A THOUSAND LOST SOULS STARING AT YOU!!!”

My father with anger and fear on his face again violently brushed passed the two blocking his only exit and started sprinting for the door. The chanting was now akin to sharp claws scratching at a chalkboard, or rather the interior of my brain, crushing it within itself. I could no longer see anything but the outside of the door, two tall menacing steel doors, and as the chant became one loud voice saying “NO ESCAPE, NO ESCAPE, NO ESCAPE!” I saw blood, spill through the cracks surrounding the doors, dark, lifeless blood, showering onto the crumbling, city street.

And I was alone, there was no help for me anymore, no help but myself.

Years passed and my slavery continued until one day, I was allowed to escape. But he was still following me, this I knew, and I ran, ran for days upon days, ran until I could run no longer, until eventually my story was heard and I had found some friends who felt an urge to protect me. They traveled with me, for I always felt the urge to keep moving, as far away from the Dark Hood as possible. We traveled until we reached a wooded clearing, and I heard faintly a chant, a chant of evil that had only one meaning for me.

I warned my friends, I told them we had to run, to hide, to leave before it was too late. One of them ran into an old shack that was erected near by, but even as he did so I saw a dark hooded figure enter into it at an incredible speed, as if he were floating. I heard a scream escape just before I saw massive amounts of blood spilling out of the shack. Silence, hardly peaceful, surrounded me and Andonte` came upon me, stretching out his hand…

I awoke from my slumber drenched in a cold sweat shivering as if I were a terrified child once more, and slowly I felt the words forming in my head: “A dark hood is twenty-six evil eyes, a thousand lost souls staring at you.” And forever after that night, when I turn out the lights, I can almost make out the form of a dark hooded figure standing over me. And as I slip slowly into the dark abyss of sleep, I feel His presence awaiting me, biding its time, until it can return to haunt me once more.