Dream Log: February 19, 2001

There was something on the TV guide about a science fiction film, and it was showing excerpts. Two hundred years ago aliens froze human bodies. Then I was in a shoe shop in a mall, and saw the aliens take shoes: a weird light beamed down and the shoe (a wrinkled bootee) rose up, to the surprise of the member of the staff who had taken it out of the box. I thought it odd they were only taking odd shoes.

Then one of the staff was taken, and rose up jerking. There was no terror in it, just curiosity. The boss of the shoe shop came along and talked with his staff. They were joshing him about something, or where he had been last night.

The boss came over to us, to C and me, in a long room, where we discussed the previous night, where he and I had gone. He couldn't tell his staff because he had been dressed as Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, as indeed he was now; and I had been something similar.

He told C of who I had been snogging at this dinner or event: he knew they were a couple of people from my past, except that he didn't know their names. I had remembered some nice snogging at some time with someone but couldn't match them to his descriptions. One of them had had a small dog, called Hobo(?). I did regret not being able to remember this nice stuff. Apparently I had been fairly drunk. Well yes. C was tolerant of my foibles, which pleased me.

We now stood by the fireplace of the long room, and another couple joined us. There was a distinct amount of the old loin gratification reflex between C and me under our clothing, which it would have been nice to gratify in full. Some other people were talking about children nearby and making suggestive comments about holes.

---

I lay in bed, looking around at the familiar objects in the dull early-morning light. One thing struck me as odd, a cigarette. (I don't smoke.) I wondered who could have left it there, and when. As I considered more, it became apparent that it was still smouldering. Then it was still alight, half way through, and in danger of burning a jumper.

I realized someone had just been there, and left it: to taunt me? In fear I leapt up and drew back the curtains.The window was wide open. I scanned the garden but there was no sign of anyone. I turned back to my room to see what else had been added, changed, taken, violated.

---

I lay in darkness waiting to wake up. After that bad end to the dream I tried to work out what I would see if I opened my eyes, to test whether I was awake, because that other dream room had been nothing like my real room. But I lay there unable to think where I lived, what my bedroom looked like, what stage of my life I was at. I had no idea.

---

Later (after genuine waking) there was something about the genealogy of Robinson Crusoe.

I wake up and find myself on a couch in an apartment in Brazil (no idea how I knew it was Brazil; it just was). And it felt right. I go over to my host (who doesn't look vaguely familiar) and smalltalk for a while, then say I want to go out and eat. He nods and says "just remember, we're house 303" (with no street name). I ask "ok, but I don't know Portuguese. Is this a problem?" He says "no, everyone speaks English here." So I leave.

It's night and there's some fog in the air. It's a warm night in Brazil and I'm not wearing a jacket. I'm alone on the street, with some open fields around. I'm afraid of Brazilian cannibals or wild animals attacking me, so I'm walking fast. I see what looks like a restaurant on the right side of the road, past some swampland. There's no parking lot and there's grass growing straight up to the door.

I enter the door and it looks like a typical American truckstop, with a few people seated and eating. I ask for "cheeseburger, but no fries". The cook nods and a few seconds later, I'm eating my cheeseburger...somewhere in Brazil.

End of dream.

(background: I've never been to Brazil and have no desire to really go there. The number 303 doesn't mean anything to me...it's the area code for Denver, another place I've never been. And well...I like cheeseburgers I guess)

It was the weekend. I wanted to waste some time, and it was 2:00 in the afternoon, so I went down to the train station in a nearby city and got on a train. I didn't have a ticket so I lied and said my family was going on a trip to France (and the way to do this would be by train...) so she wanted to know where my first destination was because all the different sections went to different places. So I said "Conway". She laughed and said, "Silly goose, you're already in Conway." So I made up some place. She told me to go ahead and find my family on board. I now had this bottomless pit of loneliness in my stomach.

I had my own cabin on the train and I sat staring at the wall. Then at one stop, my boyfriend comes on. I'm now happy and my bottomless pit has ended and has been filled. I ask him how long he can stay with me. He says he can go to Orangeburg (or some town I have never heard of) and back because the trip is four hours long. I look at the clock and it is already six in the evening. I know he will be back by ten, but I won't be back until midnight and I will not be calling my father to tell him where I am. But at this point, I don't really care.

On the way there, we are reading Frankenstein together, and near the end of the trip this rather obscene part comes in that doesn't match the mood of the rest of the dream where we have agreed to stick our hands down each other's pants. I'm aroused and he's disgusted by how wet it feels. But I never do the same, and that part of the dream just ends.

Now we have reached Orangeburg, and we decide that we should continue on. I asked him where we should go. He says Columbia. There is a large list of cities. I ask, "East or West?" "East." The guy says the train is leaving in 5 minutes. I pull out my credit card to pay for the tickets. I say something like, "Good ol' trusty credit card!" We both laugh and get back on the train. Only this time we're separated on the train and the train looks like a hotel. I want to find him, but I can't. We get off at Columbia and we are now together.

We're in Walmart, and his sister is there. We're trying to hide from her because he told his parents he wouldn't be home tonight, but they don't know that he has came with me to Columbia on the train. Anyway, so he runs away and tells me to stay where I was. So I'm crouched behind tins of cookies and his sister and her friends see me. She is wearing a sweater of mine. She says, "Hey, there's my brother's girlfriend. Let's go beat her up." So I run away as well. Together Ben and I run back on to the train.

The ride home is much shorter. I ask him if we shall do this tomorrow. He says maybe. The next day, I look for him on the train, but I can't find him anywhere. I wake up.

In my dream, a friend of mine just happened to be asleep in my bed. I was also asleep in the dream, and viewed the entire first portion from a third person perspective. The friend (we’ll call her Kate) was wearing an alarm on her wrist, sort of resembling a large and clunky plastic watch. There were three different lights on the alarm, each standing for a different stimulus. For some reason, Kate had it set to SNEEZE, which had a corresponding red light next to it.

This alarm caused her to violently spasm and lash out whenever someone sneezed within earshot or her. Well, being oblivious to the obvious, I watched myself sneeze in my sleep. Kate immediately responded with a powerful donkey kick with her legs, landing it square on the right side of my face. I didn’t wake up.

The next morning, I was myself again and viewing the world through my own eyes. The right side of my face was numb, and I had no idea why. It later started to throb and hurt like a bitch, but I still didn’t know why. I asked Kate if she had any idea, but she turned bright red, started crying, and ran home. I then asked my mother, who replied “It’s not important. Leave Kate alone.”

I became suspicious. I went to find Kate, and asked her if she had donkey kicked my face while we were asleep. This was just a random, yet intuitive, guess as to what may have caused the extreme pain I was experiencing. She tearfully admitted to committing the crime, and promised never to set the alarm to SNEEZE again.

Later on, Kate and I were driving around the school parking lot in her little Cabrio. She let me drive for a while, when we saw my parents' purplish Jeep Grand Cherokee go racing past. I felt a sudden rush of resentment and anger. I decided to express my emotions by parallel parking. This would show the whole world how upset I was.

What I learned from this dream: it’s okay to parallel park your parentally-directed teenage anger away after getting donkey kicked in the face by a childhood friend while sleeping.

I find myself in a cave. It felt prehistoric. I was 10 years old again and an ex-cousin of mine is next to me. We walk through this cave which is very well lit and we see an adjoining cave. I walk in and there are a bunch of dinosaurs in there mostly brontosaurus. They are all standing still like in a museum. Out of nowhere one of them bends his head down and asks if we would like to take a ride. We both hop on and the next thing we know we are outside of the cave and walking toward some trees. The next day nobody believes that my cousin and I went for a ride on a dinosaur. I turn and ask her to verify what I said and she says she doesn't remember doing any of that. I was so embarrassed.

I've had this dream many times and it always turns out the same.

i'm sitting in a tree in a public park in russia somewhere, and i'm looking down at a huge black roulette wheel, which is full of doves. there are couples walking in the park, an old man sitting on a bench...there is a bright star next to the sun. suddenly the wheel begins to spin and the doves fly up to join the star. as though the birds had been blocking my view, i can now see through the wheel to the mechanisms that turn it. working the devices that turn the wheel is a great brownish monster remarkably similar in form to classical representations of grendel (from _beowulf_). i hear shouting, and i awake...cold and slightly damaged, lying on the bathroom floor, for reasons i cannot recollect.

I am backstage at a recording of some famous daytime talk show host's show. I'm not a guest, I'm simply wandering around the back as everyone who keeps the show going run around me. In my wandering I come across a box filled with small metal containers. Each is small and bullet shaped, and has a strange little pull-tab at the wide end. A stage-person sees me handling them and explains that they are the host's moods is liquid form. I open the one I'm holding a drink it down. It's very sweet and I begin to feel thoughtfully ebullient.

---

I am making a trip I have made thousands of times before but all the roads have changed and I soon become hopelessly lost. After pulling into a gas station I notice that my car appears to have been beaten up quite badly. It looked fine when I left, I have no idea what happened.

---

The large parking lot outside where I live has been converted into a swimming pool. Anywhere where there was asphalt there is now chlorinated water. Even the walkways are water, in the place of sidewalks are brightly colored canvas strips that one can walk on and not sink.

A man that I seem to know is acting like a television cliché of a domineering father and husband, telling his teenaged son that there is something wrong with his swim suit and that he is a disgrace. In passing I tell the man to lighten up and he says that when he gets done with laps he's going to break my face. I think about deep-sixing him while he swims but decide against it.

---

I'm driving again. The road suddenly turns to dirt from blacktop and I am in a brightly lit forest. The road keeps getting worse, and soon the hills become too tall to surmount. I pull into the dirt lot of what appears to be a furniture store. The store is on the shore of a beautiful river, and as I watch a Mississippi paddle boat steams by. In the shop I run into my girlfriend's father, who says he's been waiting for me. I tell him that I pulled in just by chance, but he dismisses this with a nod and asks if I still have the bed frame. I go out to the car and sure enough, there is a disassembled bed frame behind the front seats. He remarks that my car looks really beat up. I look again and the car actually looks better than it did the last time I looked. There are still dents everywhere and the bumper is splintered, though.

I was in an apartment which reminds me of how I imagined the main character's initial apartment in Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang. It was large and was a place for communal living. I was there with Angelina Jolie, an actress that lots of people I know find quite attractive but to me is just a set of tits and lips. Nonetheless, in this dream she was eerily attractive on many levels, not just physical, and for some reason she was momentarily intrigued by me. I realized that in order to keep her attention I would have to act fast and decisively, so I began giving her oral sex. This was quite enjoyable for both parties until a dry knobbly protuberance emerged from her crotch.
Despite this turn of events she was delighted and immediately pronounced me a member of her coterie. The entire reason I am recording this dream is the intense feeling of satisfaction I received when my oral sex skills managed to get me in Angelina Jolie's in-crowd, something which in the waking world doesn't seem so great, but in the dream clearly symbolized something else. I woke up with a continuing feeling of satisfaction that was not sexual. Hmm.