Tag: Dreams

I am on retreat and taking performance workshops. I sleep in a building that sits by a rocky beach along a large body of water. A fence runs along the beach and marks the retreat’s property. I can still see a beautiful beachscape on my walk to the workshops.

In the practice space, we end the session with a bit of physical improv. I sit on the floor and sip an imaginary bowl of soup. I eventually make loud sipping noises. We take a break for lunch and I sit on a picnic table while an older black woman makes a group of us laugh.

Walking back to my room along the fence, I look over to the amazing view while I set my bag down. Behind a large object that is on the beach, I see a whale tail breach the water. I get excited and run back to my bag to get my camera. I frame the shot, focus the camera, and notice the details of the scene.

Sharks are in a frenzy, eating the flailing whale. The object in front of this grisly scene is a beached whale. I drop the camera from my view and look down the rocky shore’s horizon. I see beached whales fading into the sunny haze. I look out into the water and see ships. They seem to be trying to avert the whale catastrophe.

Someone on the beach walks up to me and opens a section of the fence. An old, skinny man thanks the person and goes out to the beach where the whales are located. He is a scientist and did not have any other way to get onto the beach. I go over to him and ask him some questions, but I do not go near the animals.

As I watch the emergency unfold, I realize that I am at this retreat for a while longer. I wonder what the smell of rotting whale flesh is like, and if it will be strong.

May, 18, 2011

Recurring Dream Fragment:

A woman with long red hair keeps stealing red packs of Pall Malls out of the old pantry in the mortuary apartment’s den. I was speaking with someone near where my dad’s recliner would be. The woman walked in with an Asian man who was holding a shadeless lamp. As they walked to a van packed with stuff, she shook her head and told the man “No, it’s too much.” Then she turned and walked to the pantry, about ten feet from where I stood.

I usually do not catch her stealing the Pall Malls. This time I yelled “stop!” “Those aren’t yours, you bitch!” She grabbed them and began to walk away. I tried to chase her, but she disappeared in a dream-time blur.

I decided not to let this happen again, so took out a pencil and a piece of brown paper to leave a note to B and A. The note said, “Hide your cigs!” I couldn’t read it on the brown paper, so got a pen and rewrote the note on a piece of white paper.

This was the first time I attempted to stop her stealing cigarettes in the next dream. And the first time I actively tried to stop her.

While on a road trip with A., we stop to buy food for a picnic. A. announces that today is his birthday and begins to cry. I ask him why is he crying on his birthday and he answers “I hope that my children are celebrating it.”

….

My parent and I move in to a one-room apartment. I have a few possessions to move in. There is a community cafe where the customers all pitch in to help run.

….

My parent’s white car is in the garage.

….

Walking back to the apartment, I see a line of odd fish (with feet) and fish bones curving past the entrance to the apartment. The line goes to the storm drain. I walk into the apartment and it is empty. My parents are gone, and I cannot find my things. So I walk back to the cafe which looks different and is full of new people. I walk to another building and find a few of my things. I realize that this place is cursed and I need to get as far away from here as possible.

I put my butterfly knife in my pocket. I go through a chest of drawers and find a pair of my father’s glasses. Some of the drawers are in upside down. Realizing that I have lost my parents, I walk on to the street and try to hitch a ride far away.

Lock the back door.

Turn out all the lights.

Tonight a long-dead lover

comes to visit.

You must ignore the doorbell

and hope that the windows don’t get tapped.

You latched the windows, right?

The phone rings instead.

Deciding to pick it up,

you hear your sister on the line.

March 23, 2011

I walk into a train station and see AE playing keyboards in the middle of a bike repair shop. He introduces me to some of the people there and then points to a soft ball that recently went through a window. The power goes out so AE packs up his gear. We walk to the tracks to catch a train. A train pulls up and is full uniformed men. A sign on the side of the train says “for observation only. A second, one-car train arrives behind the other one and we get on.

………..

Three men walk by three men sitting in front of a house. One of the seated men takes a pistol and shoots at the walkers. As the walkers run away, the last walker gets shot in his upper left arm. He sits down in an empty chair. The injured walker looks at his wounded arm and then sticks his right hand into the wound. Either in shock, or not phased from the shooting, he starts a conversation with the sitting men.

May 14, 2011

A monster lurks in a building. Only later the monster turns out to be an octopus. Confused, it refuses to come through the door and hides under furniture instead. In the second dream, babies (or siblings) are discovered hiding with the octopus.

………

On a road-trip, in the back of a station wagon and trying to sleep. Catch glimpses of cityscapes, foggy landscapes, and so decide to get up and crawl into the passenger seat. We enter north, to brown overcast skies. The driver aggressively navigates traffic, almost driving us off a kudzu-covered embankment.

……….

I walk with a group around the edge of a wooded area. We feel a strong force. Is it held in the larger box-like structure? The cables stretched through the trees. We walk into a theater and go on stage. Feeling the force we begin to move, casting our bodies’ shadows on a large screen.

May 13, 2011

Two men, one dark-skinned and the other white, drive through the rain in a light-weight Toyota truck. They have already broken down once, and the passenger worries that it’ll happen again in the rain. The truck approaches a bridge without railing. Entering the structure, they hit a patch of standing water. The truck lurches left then swings right, barely reaching the road on the other side. It then spins around and slides into a field. A back corner of the truck crunches into an embankment. The passengers are lucky; no one is hurt.

While trying to pull the truck out of the muddy bank, the passenger finds a cold, dark spot in the forest. Spirits of brown-skinned natives exist in this spot. The passenger also sees three blonde-haired children with the spirits. One of the children approaches the passenger (who is light-skinned).

“You’re afraid of us. You haven’t crossed the property line.”

A native spirit sits down among the children and kisses the outspoken child with an open mouth. The truck passenger crosses the line and embraces the children.

…..

The truck passenger rides a horse on a small road that goes along a marsh at the edge of a forest. He feels the same dark, cold space, so dismounts and walks into the woods. He sees a small house, approaches it and goes inside. Inside, the truck passenger finds the children, the spirit that kissed one of them, a large dark man, and my actual friend M.

The spirit pulls out a gun, exclaims that he is real, and leaves the house. The large dark man gets a phone call and says he has to go back to jail. M. stands at the end of a table and takes his pants off. The truck passenger leaves the house and walks into the forest.

He walks by a hollow tree and the spirit is in there with the gun. The passenger goes back into the house, grabs a gun, and hides behind a bar counter. The spirit uses the large dark man as cover and approaches the house. The passenger peeks around the counter, sees the large man, and then wishes that he’d placed mirrors on both sides of him.

11/23/2002

A one-story Dutch hotel sits in the countryside and is a popular place to stay. I check in and have some problems finding my room. The hallways seem to wind and turn like they would on a cruise ship. Cup-holders line the walls in the hall and they have smoothy drinks in them. The drinks are either smart drinks that enhance drug trips or they have drugs mixed in them.

Walking down the hall, I meet a couple who live in the hotel. They’re friendly. The man cracks open a smoothy, puts something in it, and gives it to me. I leave them, put the drink in a holder on the wall, and open a door into a dark room. I stick my head through the doorway and it disappears completely. I appear in a room where fleshy, stringy stuff hangs all over the place. A pretty woman in a blue bikini walks towards me from the opposite side of the room.

“Are you afraid?” she asks.
“No,” I reply.
I disappear and reappear outside the hotel on the lawn. I go back inside, find my smoothy and bags and leave the hotel.

Three people, two men and one woman, have just checked into the place. They found a large amount of money in their room and are trying to figure out how to deal with it. The woman goes to the same room I walked into and opens the door. She walks in and disappears.

Days pass until the men find the woman on a door stoop in front of the hotel. She looks horrible and tells them that she wandered in the woods, unable to eat for 8 days. She finally kept some food down and made it back to the door stoop.

They pull their new truck up to load their things and get the hell out of there. A policeman arrives. They take him into their room and explain the pile of cash. They then coax the cop to check out the strange room. He sticks his head into the dark room and it disappears. Then his body vanishes.

The cop sees stringy flesh all over the room as the beautiful woman appears, walking down the wall opposite the policeman.
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes,” he answers.

She suddenly appears next to him, blurs and quivers like TV static and gets sucked into the policeman’s mouth. Before he can react, he blurs and flickers. His stomach expands and appears to explode.

The woman suddenly stands beside him again, but she is ragged and stringy; distorted and not whole. She walks towards the cop and puts her huge, exaggerated lips close to his. He becomes ragged and stringy and his lips protrude towards hers. He wants to scream but he cannot.

The two men and woman drive away.

…. Dec. 3, 2002

I am a powerful wizard in a world that is similar to this one, yet full of magic and witchcraft. I have become a zombie, or perhaps a partial zombie. I can tell because my irises have turned white and my pupils are shaped like a cat’s pupils. I have pale skin and I am eating someone’s brains.

Startled from this dream within a dream, I wake up… chewing on a severed hand. Disoriented, I look around my room. It is large and ornate, so I must be a successful wizard. I realize that I am not at my house but am a guest at a friend’s mansion. I help them prepare for a party, and a powerful witch stops by. She seems startled when we meet on the porch. “Maybe it is my eyes,” I wonder.

I nonchalantly put my hands to my face. I am holding something. Looking down, I see the severed hand from my dream!

I get sent on a party errand. After walking past dark pools and hot tubs, I head down a dirt road. A person stops me and tells me “I know a way to cure your zombie-ism.” He unfolds a large piece of newspaper. One side has text and graphics laid out like a movie poster.

The poster has a large photo of a zombie’s head. While looking at it, waiting for the cure, another passerby says “I can cure your zombieness.” He takes out a pen and colors in the pupils and iris of the zombie in the poster. He and his buddies laugh at this.

The man holding the large piece of paper flips it over. The other side shows voodoo and shamanistic items with dotted lines around them (so they can be cut out). I see a necklace, ankle rattles, wrist rattles, etc. They are supposed to be worn by a human. Text for spells and directions for usage surrounds all the items on the page.

………….

Another flash of the dream shows me standing in the mansion next to my friend. I am needed for something, so I climb out a window and over a fence to go to another house.

Recorded: 11/25/2002 Whittier, CA

We live in a world where the government ruthlessly hunts and kills zombies. Helicopters fly over, searching for them with powerful lights and shooting them up with huge guns. One male zombie has found an empty part of a group apartment to hide in. He stays in part of the apartment that is behind the fridge and separated by large pieces of plywood. At one point, during a party, the plywood falls over. The zombie gets up and adjusts it into its right position.

He eventually befriends some of the men that live in the apartment. He seems to think on a child-like level, and does not appear to be hungry for brains. They offer him human food, which he takes. When the government discovers this zombie, and go after him, he is protected by the humans. Not human, yet not a pet either, the zombie relies on the humans for protection and safety.

They wonder if he might be a new evolutionary species of zombie. One that can live among humans in peace.

Two young brothers live on a ship with their distant parents (the parents never physically appear in the dream). Much of the dream concerns the oldest boy’s issues with reality. Are he and his brother being haunted by a girl and a boy on the ship? Or are they alive? The older brother must look at his sanity as he has to get more violent with the ghosts. First, he throws the girl off the ship without any reaction from his parents. Then he throws large monkey wrenches at the boy ghost, knocking him in the head and forcing him overboard. The younger brother must deal with the horror of what looks like death/murder of their tormentors. During this, the parents seem like selfish voices concerned with not being interrupted from their sleep or eating. The final scene shows the two boys trying to crack on glow sticks they found in a box. “They’ve all expired,” one brother says. They then try to plug in a string of pink “Christmas” lights, but they don’t work either. The boys walk over to a stairwell, with bannisters that have small, hydraulic pumps, and nod to what sounds like a clunking washing machine. The sound comes up from the deck below them.

Far below the clouds, a kingdom rolls along the hils of a distant land. From a bird’s eye, we descend into the kingdom and see a large walled castle. This isn’t a typical castle, for most of its inside area is covered with an enchanted lake. Flying closer, a grey dot appears in the center of the water. Closer still, the dot turns into a piece of land large enough for an adult human to recline and sleep on the hard surface. And on that island, a young man awakens.

He has been dreaming of another place where he has a bed and parents who love him. Here on the island, he has no food and no shade. In the sun’s glare, he looks across the impassable pool and sees the familiar patch of dirt that stands before a large, armored gate. The gate suddenly swings open. Two leering guards half-drag a beautiful lass. She tries to hide her fear of the men, but he can see it in her deep green eyes all the way on his island. An older man walks behind them, slouched and frowning. The guards drag the lovely woman to the edge of the water and then force her down on her knees.

“Tell me the secret!” the sniveling man yells out into the open expanse of the castle lake. On the small island, the young man scrunches his face and yells back “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Don’t tell them! Please don’t tell them!” the woman shouts. A guard grabs her wavy brown hair and jerks her back. She screams.

“Please don’t hurt her!” he pleads.

“Then you’ll have to tell me the secret!” the old man snorts.

“I don’t know any secrets worth telling!”

The guards drag the screaming woman back towards the doors. The slumped man follows.

“Tomorrow you tell me or she’ll really start hurting!”

The gates slam.

Night falls the prisoner has a dream. Instead of the city by the ocean, he dreams that he is flying. What an exhilarating experience. The lake drifts away as he swoops through clouds and seems to dive into the starlight. But he hears crying, so flies back down towards the castle where the beautiful woman is held. The crying seems to be coming from a tall tower, so the man comes to the only window that opens into a small, dark room.

“Hello?” he asks.

“Oh, you found me! Now you can remember. You must remember, so that you can save me and save yourself. Remember the secret!”

He looks into the window and sees the lovely woman, her face wet with tears of sorrow and now joy. He then looks down at the island and sees a serpent-like dragon curled up where he should be sleeping.

With a crack of wakefulness, the man comes out of his dream and finds himself back on the island. Instead of feeling hopeless, he feels a sense of possibility. He looks around and then finds himself about ten feet above the island! He’s flying. Without hesitation, the dragon darts straight to the tower. She awaits him with smiles and laughter.

“I knew you’d remember,” she says as she hugs his feathery face. She climbs on his back and pats his neck.

“Time to leave the miserable place.”

(a dream I had in the early 1990s)