sep 07 the doctor explains

There was a fire nearby, and we were staging at the fire station. Two Red Cross helicopters flew over, and I ran out on the street waving my arms to show them we were here. One helicopter dropped a box of supplies, and the next dropped a parachutist. The parachutist caught the box in the air in a show of superb skill. He was a hot shot. He came over to us and we saw that he had severe callouses all over his hands,  and he said it was from sticking his poles while extreme skiing. He looks at me intently and I turn away.

 

Ryan S. comes over to report that the red cross people are staged too close to the fire, and Steve H begins to move to rectify the situation. Steve and I were in a boat, the streets were flooded. Steve said he’d come, but he was having trouble getting out of the boat. He asked Ryan for help. I said I’d help and steered the boat to the curb where it was easier for him to get out.  The boat was then submerged. I looked at it and it was made of fine wood. There were parts on it that needed to be salvaged. I go away and come back and three young boys have rescued the boat, and have installed a paddle-boat sort of mechanism in the bottom and they are having a swell time playing with it. I tell them that they really shouldn’t be playing in it, that I had to put it away. It was a liability. They said no, no, that they’d spent 10 dollars on the paddle mechanism, and they were having so much fun, I said I’d give them 15 minutes.

 

A male authority figure was heading out to the fire, and I asked him to tell the boys very sternly that they really only had 15 more minutes to play in the boat. He said o.k. and went over to do that. After 15 minutes I went back and the boys were out of the boat, lying on cushions on the floor. Maybe napping. Something about the boys sends me to a doctor. The doctor tells me that whatever I came for was not a problem, but the tests had shown that I had a childhood sexually transmitted disease. I said I hadn’t even had sex in years, how could I get it? He said it was transmitted in childhood. He said from now on if I ever decided to have sex I absolutely must use a condom. I asked him which STD it was and he rattled off a name I’d never heard before. I gave him a notebook and a pen and asked him to write it down. He handed it back to me and then spoke the name very carefully and slowly and I tried to write it down. As I wrote I realized that I could probably figure it out if I saw it written. It was dara___  sinusit____ leucostikis. As I wrote the last part he and I both laughed because it was obvious that the ending of that word was derived from Greek, he had pronounced in a modern way, so the transliteration “stikis” looked silly.

 

The doctor was sitting a little behind me on my right side and I couldn’t quite see him, but knew that he had a stocky build and curly, sandy hair. He had a foreign accent. He was exceptionally kind and gentle, and I really appreciated that he took such care in helping me understand the disease. I really enjoyed exploring the medical terminology and recognized that this intellectualism was precious to me. I loved listening to his soft voice and learning. He demonstrated something about the disease by having me hold a poesy of five small flowers in my cupped hands in front of a tree trunk. He re-arranged the flowers to show me the disease process.

 The sunken boat is my inability to cope emotionally at some point. I’ve resurrected it, but some parts of me still enjoy that coping process, so I give them 15 more minutes to play. The nearby fire is more emotional danger and three different men emerge to positions of authority: the dare-devil whom I reject, the fire chief whom I use as a proxy and the doctor who is my “center”.

Not long ago I had another dream in which there was a fire sort of “off screen”, and in the city the streets were flooded. i think the fire’s just a symbol of trouble that is not currently present, and the water is the emotional response to that trouble.  I’ve had a lot of dreams lately with specific  numbers in them – 15 minutes, the fifth of December, 105 of something – and I don’t really have consciously accessible associations with those numbers.

In my nurse’s dictionary there are two entries with ‘leuko’ +s: leukosarcoma (which has a Greek derivation) and leukosis. The first is a cancer and the second is an abnormal proliferation of leukocytes. “Leukotaxis” sounds like ‘leukostikis’ , but its an adjective, not a disease. If I develop a dara/sinu/leuko disease, you heard it here first.

The doctor is my internal self helper, as was the guy who held my hand sweetly in a previous dream, and led me into the dump to look at old things. I think the childhood STD is pretty darn obvious.

sep 07 girl buried alive

     There was a young girl who was buried alive. They thought she was dead, and she even had rotting flesh, but she came back to life. I was watching this on a screen of some sort; I could watch her even though she was underground. First I saw a series of screens closing in on her decaying flesh, and there was poetry either on the screen or being read aloud about the pearly tears on her face and other features. Those screens started going too fast for me to take them all in. Then her eyes flew open and she and I were both absolutely horrified and sickened by the situation. I tried to think of ways that she could get out from underground but couldn’t imagine any. I knew that in a moment she’d try to breathe, and hoped that there was a pipe to breathe through. I hoped she’d be able to scream loud enough to bring the people back.

          The scene cut to one many years later, when she was a young woman. She was riding a motorcycle with her boyfriend, and he wanted to marry, but she said she just wasn’t able, and she thought back to being buried alive. That experience prevented her. There was more about everyone else around them getting married.

          In another thread I was with a group of people in an office. We were the QRU. A man who was a member of the team came in and looked directly at everyone but me, and said, very seriously “Come with me. I need to talk to you.” We all left with him, and as we filed past I overheard another of them say in a stage whisper that we were all nominated for some award. We went to the old log school, and the place was absolutely decked out with red carpets, decorations, tables with linen and flowers, and there were hundreds of people there. I milled around with the rest of them, and tried to find anyone I recognized, because I was still uncertain if I should be there. I knew that these were all QRU people, and wondered what would happen if there was an emergency in one of their districts, since the responders were all here.

          There was candy all around, and little kids were running around, finding it and hording it.  I noticed that some of the candy dishes also had rice cakes and carrots in them, and was pleased at this nod to better health. Finally I sat, and observed a conversation between some women. They were saying that the officials were still out visiting everyone’s studios. These women were very sure they’d win. They were college students, and their dorm-mate would be sure to let the officials into their studio, which was perfectly clean and nice. I said the officials wouldn’t even know where my studio was, much less get into it.

          Then I was in my studio, working with slabs of clay. Sharron M from L.V. came in and plopped a wad of wet clay onto the slab I was working with, so I tried to move my things out of the way. She started asking me if I had had any pieces featured in magazines, or if I’d had a solo show in a prestigious gallery. She talked on and on, and it was unclear what she wanted or what she was trying to say. I started to tell her that some of the best artists sometimes don’t get shown, and some of the best galleries show junk, but she wasn’t listening to me. There was another woman in the room and she said “she’s not even listening”. I asked “are you even listening?” and Sharron just kept blathering on.

          Later I was playing with a helium balloon, letting it float up, then catching it and bringing it down again. I found it hypnotic. Then I let it go and it floated up to the ceiling. When it hit it exploded with a huge bang, which woke me up. I was aware that I didn’t want to see the buried girl again so I woke myself up.

 The girl is me as a teenager. I was told at that time that I was a bad person again and again. Several days ago I heard from my brother that his teenage daughter was suffering the same way, and was considering suicide. I guess the QRU/potter prize bit was symbolic of a sort of free-floating anxiety about not belonging, and not being good enough. S.M. showed up on the sidelines the other day when I was giving demonstrations of throwing techniques. I saw her briefly and then she disappeared. She is very uncomfortable around me.

sep 07 madwomen and pterodactyls

          I was travelling and staying in a motel. I needed to get some work done on my chain saw, and walked to a shop for that, but it was Sunday and it was closed. I walked to another and a woman was walking in ahead of me, as I followed her in she stopped me and pointed to the sign which said that on Sundays customers had to go to room 905 of a nearby hotel. On the way Sue K. told me that he was grumpy on Sundays so I should be sure to bring him some coffee filters. I went to the store to buy some, and got distracted by this and that, and wound up going to several stores and buying two big bags full of groceries, plus a small, blue and red fire hydrant and a large arborvitae tree [ you could do a comedy sketch pretty easily with this list….].

          I found myself on a ledge on the outside of a building. I was about two stories up. I was studying how to get down, searching out different routes, and evaluating my chances. I had all that stuff with me. I saw one story down and a little bit away a group of people, apparently having a sort of block party on their large balcony. I left my stuff except the food and went to them, to ask if I could just stick my groceries in one of their fridges and come back for them a little later in my truck. They were mostly, if not all women, and mostly they appeared retired or maybe on disability payments. Subsidized apartments. They accepted me cautiously, and then took out some of the food. They asked me about all the breads I had gotten. They made a çoban salatası and were all eating my food. I got impatient and asked how we should work this. Who had room in her fridge? They laughed at me and said of course they wouldn’t take such a chance. I became angry, furious that they were so duplicitous. There was one younger, dark-haired woman named Rachel or Leah or… something I associated with Jewishness. I told her I thought she and I could become friends in different circumstances, and that I couldn’t understand how even she could be so petty and mean. I sarcastically took her hand to kiss it in farewell, and then I took a careful, vindictive bite from her hand.

          She followed me out to my stuff, and helped me to hide the tree, but she worked really hard to fake out the others, saying that they would surely be watching, and the minute I left, they’d steal everything. She took the fire plug up a hill, and I followed her, but missed her trajectory, and wound up in the apartment of two other women. They were shocked to see me and I apologized and started to leave, then Rachel came in. They knew her and said that when she had first come here she was very hard. She had said “….some two word set phrase in English…” but it came out so hard she had to practice again and again how to slow down. They had a visual aid that showed the two words pulsating slower and slower.

          We were then on a snowy road and she was guiding me. I had a long tube coming out of the back of my back pack with hydrolic fluid in it. At the end of that was a flat, brass rod of some sort. It acted as a sort of tether or extension cord. It was necessary and rented. She led me across a road just before an enormous road grader passed by, and I escaped being hit, but it severed my brass thing as it passed over. I called to R and she said to do whatever I could to get uphill, to drain the hose of its fluid. She said I could hitch a ride. I climbed on a passing fire engine, but the nook where I was sitting was too tight to coil the hose up as we traveled. I looked up, and there was a man on the roof who was kindly coiling my hose from the other end. I smiled at him and said thanks.

          Later I was in the back seat of a car, and two younger, good-looking men were in front. I saw some curious birds flying nearby, with long, rudder-like tails. I asked the men if they knew what the birds were. They turned around and scanned the skies and the one said ‘oh, that’s a pterodactyl’. I said I thought they were extinct. He said almost. One flew very near to us, and I could see that it had a dark strap coiled around its body. We were then sitting outside, and the bird came close. I could see that now it was white, and looked like a flying pig or porpoise, and the now light-colored strap was all over its body. The man said that they were not really wild, but allowed to fly around and then go back to the sanctuary. There was an implanted portal for giving the animal intravenous feedings or drugs. It had tiny little wings just behind the shoulders. It stopped just in front of me and lay down. It was so used to humans that it just leaned casually up against my legs. I was heartwarmed to see its trust and feel its warmth.

 

If the multiple personality theory is applied here (contending that various dream characters are actually alternate personalities, created the same way they are in Multiple Personality Disorder, but confined to the dream world), Rachel would have been created when I was “hard” or “mean”. She’s capable, independant, saavy. That was a time when I was on a ledge, looking for a way down. I suppose lately I’ve needed that personality trait in dealing with contractors and banks.  Surely all the groceries and stuff is emotional baggage.

The pterodactyl is ancient emotions. The shape of a dolphin, and the strapping are suggestive of a swaddled infant. Interesting that this bit came right after the hard Rachel.

sep 07 my truck is impounded

I was at home in the morning. My neighbor was having glass replaced in his house, and I looked out my window and saw that there were panes of glass strewn all over his yard and mine. There were swarms of workers all around, and a lot of them were in my yard. They were running my hose, and playing with some dogs in the water, leaving large puddles around. I was upset because my water is metered, and that was wasteful. Also the workers had taken my neatly stacked lumber and spread it all around, getting it wet.

I hastily got up and grabbed a pair of jeans, and was trying to get them on when one of the workers walked into my house. I shouted “get out! get out!” at him again and again, but my voice was muted. The man seemed unperturbed and not even aware that it was unacceptable to walk right into a stranger’s house.

I left the house to go unhook the hose and fix the lumber when a dark haired man who was known to be crazy or marginalized in some way (I knew he was under someones special care) came by and took me by the hand, drawing me over to an old dump. He said he had something really special; an antique of some sorts to show me. He kept hold of my hand in a way that was very sweet and simple. He showed me an old pump and some old switches. Linda S. showed up, and she was going to write all the information down. The articles had part numbers stamped into them, but they were very small and I had trouble reading them to her. The man kept lifting the parts so I had to raise my head even higher to be able to look through my bifocals. I look at my watch and it is 7:05. I tell them that I can only stay five more minutes because I have to go to work.

Then we are in the mountains in my old black diesel pickup, with a long trailer. We are going to cut firewood.  I realize that I will be late getting back to work, as my lunch hour ends at 12:30, so I’m impatient to leave. Linda is maddeningly unconcerned. We discuss how to get me back to town; the logistics of driving this truck back, then another car somewhere else and I’m increasingly frustrated and impatient.

Finally we are driving to town. I’m driving. The man says that when we get to town there will be delays because there is a procession of some sort on the streets. We get there, and it turns into a walking mall, but we’re driving through it. Its very crowded, and once I have to back that huge truck and trailer up through the crowd, and I’m proud of myself for doing it well. We finally emerge from the mall to a more open commercial district, but Linda and the man, who is now Rick H. have gotten out and are lost in the crowd. I park and go find Linda and she says Rick is back there talking to an old flame. He’s flirting, but it won’t take too long.

I stop at a booth and ask the attendant for directions on how to get the pick up out and he points some things out on a piece of paper which aren’t very helpful. I turn to go find the truck and its gone. I ask a lot attendant if she’s seen it, and she says they are just now loading it on the tow truck. I run over there and the driver is just getting back into the driver’s seat and I shout “please,please, please!” He has a piercing right through the tip of his nose. He says he can’t, its already been done. I’m overwhelmed with distress at that and wake myself up.

The “special” guy is an alter, showing me the old source of my anger and frustration. Next time I’ll have to listen more closely to him, rather than running off.  I’m feeling pressure right now to get a building project done, and it isn’t going as fast as I’d like. I rode in an old diesel pick up just like my old one recently. I spoke with Rick H. recently. He has a new girlfriend. Linda is someone whose motivations are often illogical, whose abilities are marginal and who has an inflated sense of self. Just the sort of person to push my buttons.

aug 07 in chicago

I was in Chicago, at a hotel or home with a lot of rooms – like a suite, but filled with personal items. I was sleeping, and woke to go pee. I had to go through Sonia’s room to get to the bathroom. Dad’s room was on the other side of the bathroom. Sonia was sleeping, but she was thrashing around violently in the bed. So much that I was sure I would have woken up had it been me. She was twisting impossibly, with her legs turned under her and back out of sight. I could see her vulva clearly and was a little shocked and sickened by the sight, but I kept watching. It was shaved bald and I said “she shaves!!” I was surprised.

          I went into the bathroom and lifted the lid on the toilet, and the bowl had shit in it. The shit was encased in a clear plastic box. I wondered why that was, and if it would flush.  I could smell it. I thought whoever shat it, left it there so as not to flush and wake people, so I just peed in the bowl and left.

          My room is deliciously cool because I have the window open. As I walked down the hall from the  bathroom I had heard the furnace running, and I felt a little guilty for keeping the window open. I had a radio on, and really, really liked the song that was playing, so I leaned over to read the screen and see who it was. I had trouble focusing my eyes, and had to look for a long time from various angles, but then saw it was by “Sebastian and the 7^th (somethings)”.

          I go for a drive. I feel a little decadent because I’m driving for pleasure, which is wasteful. As I drive through Chicago I see sights I’d seen before, and I’m starting to get a sense of the city. It is surprisingly compact and interesting, with colorful low buildings and pleasant surprises. I like this city. I drive on the freeways, and am not used to going so fast. I have to change lanes at the last minute and its harrowing, but it’s a good challenge. I’m not sure how to use it, but I see a mouse pointer on my windshield. I try to point the cursor toward the lane lines, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

          I find myself getting to the outskirts of the city. The freeway is dwindling to a smaller road. I see a sign that says route 12 to Amherst and Springfield is to the right, and I’m surprised because I’m supposed to be in Chicago, but I’m also intrigued. Maybe I should go see my hometown. I start to turn right, but the road has turned to a dirt track and weeds. I turn and the next road is paved, but as I drive along I start realizing that I have an appointment back in Chicago at one o’clock, so I decide I’d better turn back. I find a place to make a u-turn, but there’s workers working in the intersection, so I get detoured to another intersection, where there are many roads converging and one-way roads and lots of traffic. I’m concentrating intently, and feel challenged but not worried.

          I manage to get through the traffic, but then I’m lost. The road I wanted to be on is not this one, and now I’m not even sure I’m going in the right direction. I pass a huge complex of orange and red buildings with an enormous cathedral in the center, and now I’m sure I’m lost. I see a shoreline nearby, so I’m sure I’m in Chicago, not Amherst, but I’m lost. I think about calling Sonia or Dad for directions, but I don’t have their mobile phone numbers. I’m on a local street now, and there’s construction in one lane so I move to the left lane, but there is a woman in purple trying energetically to start a motorcycle. She jumped up and down vigorously. I came to a stop near her, and it turned into a man in fatigues, who was also on his cell phone. He looked at me and I realized he was a thug or Mafioso or something, and I started to worry that I’d anger him inadvertently. He was not about to get out of my lane so I cautiously tried to thread my way around him, and my car stalled. I restarted it, and a code appeared on the dashboard. I pushed on the accelerator and not much happened, but I got around the man on the motorcycle.

          I get back to work, after being on vacation for a week. I realize that I’ve missed my appointment at one. I see my workstation, being attended to by a replacement worker, and I’m gratified to see that the woman is known to be quite competent. I move on to somewhere else. A woman approaches me and says she is very anxious to meet with me privately. She say’s she is (a boy I knew in college. In the dream I knew exactly who it was; a boy I knew a little bit but not well) so-and-so’s mother. She is then showing me and some other people some intricately carved, wooden statues that are somewhat grotesque. She calls them the Rome Icons. She has a long story about them, but as she speaks I realize that she’s trying to sell a sort of religion, and its all a sham. A cult or pyramid scheme.

 The theme of being diverted from my road and threading my way through maze-like situations has been very prevalent in previous dreams, but this time I feel confident and that the challenge is a good one. I’m not sure I’ve ever been aware in dreams of actively liking anything in particular. Here I liked the city and I liked the music. I’m also pleased that my replacement worker is competent.  I don’t think the bathroom part was a function of actually having to pee, but about our “shit” in the family being encased in plastic; it stinks, but its taken care of. It’s been shit and contained but unflushed so as to disturb no one. Sonia, of course, has had trouble dealing with the shit she experienced in the family, and is all in a twist over it. She made it into a big deal. Interesting that I walk away from the shit, and that I feel guilty for simple pleasures. But I let it go and just enjoy, don’t I?

aug 07 snowstorms

          I was on the third floor of an office building, working on a computer. Every time I left the computer even for a short time it would go into “sleep” mode, and I was annoyed. A coworker came by and said that these computers were no longer able to access the internet, and I asked which ones were? But I didn’t need to be on the internet just then. I was reading a type-written letter that was four pages long. The writer had something interesting to say. I think the writer was a woman, and I think she was explaining something. I was very interested in the letter, and read it carefully.

           I opened the drawers of the desk and found a lot of medical equipment. That reminded me what I was supposed to do. I took out some small brushes and started coating the tips of the fingers on my left hand with a thin paste. Bob R came by and laughed at me, saying that I only had to paint certain fingers, not all of them. I said I know, I was just getting carried away. I was to poke my finger with a kind of wire and then conduct a test.

          I got up and looked around and realized that everyone was gone. I peeked around a corner into another room, and it was empty. The big, open work room was empty. I saw that outside there was a terrible storm. There were palm trees blown almost parallel to the ground, and snow swirling through the air. I was surprised that I couldn’t hear or feel the effects of the storm. I figured that everyone had gone to the basement.

          I started to go there, and passed the room of a woman I knew. I looked in the room and it was empty, but I noticed that she had a full-sized bed, and I gathered from that that she slept alone. I remembered having seen her at another time, carrying a baby on her hip. She was quite old for having a young baby: maybe in her late fifities or sixties. I also remembered that she had once been out in a small boat when a huge storm came up, and everyone had to mobilize to go rescue her with her baby.

          Later I was driving down a steep, snowy road very slowly. Ahead of me a school bus had slid off the road down a steep slope. There was flashing lights of the sheriff and tow trucks behind me. At the bottom of the hill was a pull off to the left, and I slowed very carefully and turned on my turn signals, but a bunch of cars whizzed by me on the left; annoyed that I was going so slowly. Finally I turned into the parking area where there were a lot of other cars, some disabled.

          I waited there for an appraiser to show up. The parking lot turned into a building. Bonnie N was there, waiting with me. A man showed up, looking as if he had just been hiking or working outside. He had been measuring my property. Bonnie and I wondered why we hadn’t gotten it surveyed before then, and we figured it was because the corner pins were all under the snow. Then a woman showed up who was a realtor, and she conferred with the man. They came back to say that my property was worth 50,000 dollars. I said that was way too low. I told Bonnie that I knew she had a different opinion from mine about the value of my property, but it was certainly worth more than that. I then realized that the woman was the wrong one to appraise it because she was actually in competition with me.

 There are a lot of elements that simply reflect events in my waking life here: the computer problems, the “medical” testing with Bob and the land deal. It has suddenly become a lot cooler out, so maybe that’s why I dreamed of snow, and hurricanes are in the news; thus the palm trees? I feel, though, that the storminess, and the danger of the snowy road reflect a feeling of danger being all around me. I’m not sure what to make of the woman with the baby. She’s sort of an anomaly, as is the way I remembered her story in the dream. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had that sort of relationship with time in dreams before. Usually I think if I “thought” of something in a dream, it would just manifest. The same is true with reading the letter. I can’t remember the content of the letter now, but in my dream I definitely learned something from the letter which, again, suggests an awareness of the separation between self and other which is not usual in dreams.

aug 07 getting stuck

I was at a work site, where a lot of dirt was being moved around. There was a sandbar by the sea, and workmen were trying to build it up to reclaim land. Two men were working by hand, digging square patches of dark brown soil. One man stripped to his underwear because it was hot. I noticed he had a nice body. Another man was driving a tractor along some train tracks, moving dark soil and manure with the front end loader. I was crossing the tracks when I slowed just while he speeded up, and I got caught under the bucket. I was trying to move out of the way but the tractor kept moving slowly and surely, and I was stuck. The driver called out that the train was coming, and that he knew I would move out of the way just as he would. I couldn’t call out to him and he couldn’t see me, so he didn’t know I was there. I felt the bucket starting to rise, to get out of the way of the train, but I couldn’t get into the bucket to get safe.

 

I was in the PO and had washed the windows in the dark, so they were streaky. Joanne H. and Jan H. were there, and asked if I had window washing materials and I said I had vinegar in a spray bottle and paper towels. I gave them to them, and they began to work, but the inside of the windows had gotten frozen over. A commotion began outside and I thought it was the mail arriving, but it was a whole string of caterers. They trooped into the back office, where they were going to prepare a fancy meal. I offered to help them, but the head woman, who was excessively calm, controlled and serene, said they knew exactly what they were doing. She was setting places at a table with red and green napkins arranged preciously.

 

I was walking in a hallway with a lot of men around. As I passed each one, they would ask me: “is it Mike Clark?” I’d say no. The next would ask me “is it X?” Nope. They were asking who my love was. I had none. There was a complicated series of events that involved these men, who were all tall, young and handsome, and boxes of pottery. At one point they wanted me to help put things down on the beach, and I was to put a box of pottery down there, but as I walked I had to squeeze past the corner of a table and couldn’t quite make it. One man was urging me to put my box in a certain spot but I couldn’t make it. Then there was a segment about a library book I had taken out, which had been taken by these people, then lost, then found again. I was indignant, complaining to them, saying ‘see, it’s a library book. How could you have taken it?’

 

I have gotten a whole tray of mail meant for Denton. I called the plant to report it and the supervisor there was indignant, claiming that it was impossible. I must be mistaken.

 

I was watching a dog or a person… a being who was watching a white pipe, which came to life and struck out at the being like a snake. I said “that, too is a snake. These dreams have been full of snakes!” And I remembered a number of instances in this night’s dreams where snakes or snake-like things had manifested.

 

In between waking and sleeping I was aware of images coming together and melting apart on the dark backdrop of my closed eyelids. At one point many types of creatures were outlined in the dark with faint, richly gold outlines and glowing red eyes. Then I saw a white series of thick lines and as I watched the basic shape of those lines became lakes or mountains seen from the dark sky, and then they became something else. I was aware that I was experiencing visuality the way that visual artists do. They can see an essential shape or image that is an expression of truth whether it is dressed up to be a picture of mountains or any other thing: the essence of the visual experience is as descriptive of truth as any words or meditative state. My normal concept of truth is an idea, and here I was seeing that it could be not an idea, but an image.  I was also aware that I was neither awake nor asleep.

 

Allie has gotten into the back seat of a car with a cat, and she is attacking the cat. I’m horrified and take off my shoe to beat her, to make her stop, but my blows are thwarted somehow. I try to go around to get at her and get her to stop attacking the cat, but I can’t quite reach her. Finally she is separated from the cat and I hissed at her that she knew she shouldn’t have done that. I thought that I would come back for the cat, which was white, short-haired, with patches of sort of salt-n-pepper on its back and paws. I wanted to take the cat home.

 

I was in a house that had had a lot of young men staying in it. It was a mess. I was just getting up, and the last of the men was leaving. I got up and asked him if he was leaving. He said yes, and I said don’t you want to stay for a cup of coffee? He was pleased and came back. I tried to find the stove and to put water on for coffee, but the stove had been moved. Then the controls for it were a distance away from it and I had trouble getting the right burner on. Then I found that I had put a plastic water jug on the burner, and it was melting. I hastily pulled it off, and was shocked because I knew that I had done it , and knew that I couldn’t remember doing it. It was frightening because I knew I was not in control of myself. More people came in, and they were moving all the stuff around, and I had a hard time getting this coffee made. I had produced just a few drops of it, and the man wanted to taste it, but it was by then cold. The people had by then made some progress cleaning up the mess, but the coffee was still not made.

 There is certainly a lot of thwartedness here. I’m stuck in front of the tractor, I’m stuck trying to place the box of pottery, I’m unable to get to Allie to make her stop, my library book has been stolen and I have no redress, and I can’t get the coffee made. There’s also a lot of male alters, with the exception of the female caterer, who seems to be a “center”. I think Joanne and Jan are just representative of those good wives and women who clean a lot. I’m not one of them. The day before these dreams I got really angry with Allie. That day was, on the whole, a bad one, with me feeling fed up with the idiotic, puerile antics of people around me.  There is a little lucidity here, with the insight into visuality and the understanding that I can do things that “I” am not aware of. Schizo! 

sep 07 plane crash

I was in Phoenix, walking along, when I saw a red and white aircraft flying close by. It dipped precipitously, making a screaming cartoon noise, then it tipped up and flew straight up, and then it tipped over and spun downward, and crashed into the ground. There was a sharp, loud bang and a fireworks-like spray of sparks. I was shocked. It had crashed so close to me. I worried that it would start a forest fire. I walked toward the town, and I could see that one of the survivors, a young man, was walking toward town, too. He pulled up his pants restlessly and looked back at the crash site. He said there weren’t many survivors. As I got into town I heard a man arguing that it was senseless to go down there, as there weren’t any more survivors. He had reason to know.

 

Downtown crews had opened up manholes and put pumps down in them. They were pumping water up onto the streets to mitigate fire danger. I asked another stander-by if it was really necessary yet? Shouldn’t they just have the pumps in place in case the fire came close? I had parked my white pickup and realized that the man – or it could have been Allie – had to climb over the driver’s seat to get out because I had parked so close to the guardrail. My phone rang and I talked to someone. I felt somewhat important. I was walking toward the crash site -and I was riding a bicycle with low tires which made that squishy noise low tires will make on pavement – and the power went out. They had turned it off in case of fire.

 

The darkened streets were blissfully quiet. I got a few more phone calls, and they were all the more jarring because there was not all the background noise normal in a city with electricity. Sharon M. called me and wanted me to give her friend the combination to a lock I had put on a sort of bridge I made out of green wood. It spanned something in a remote, rocky area, and her friend worked for a water utility or something and needed to be able to unlock it for his work. I didn’t want to give it out because he really didn’t need it, and too many people would get access, but then I realized that I didn’t even need the bridge any more. The last time I used it I tipped it over and then just picked it up and righted it, thinking that I needn’t have even bothered since I was abandoning it, but I did it anyway. Sharon had put her daughter on the phone who was blathering on about the reasons the friend needed the combination, and I just said that the combination was 5244. She didn’t quite hear because she was so busy arguing. The power came back on and it was noisy and crowded again.

 

I got to an area by the water. I had to get to a doorway across the water, and there was a barge-like thing that was almost close enough to the doorway. I stepped on the barge and found that there was a woman and her daughter who may have been homeless, and living on the barge. I walked across the barge to see if I could nudge it close enough to the doorway, but as my weight tipped it, it moved quite a lot, and even turned completely around. The woman and her daughter had left.  The barge now sped out of control and zips across the water. A gust of wind got under it and lifted it into the air. I was terrified and had no idea how to gain control or get out of the situation. Somehow I did come down and when I “came to” I realized that the woman’s stuff had all tumbled out of the paper bags in which it had been stored. I tried to put it all back.

 

I was then traveling with a group of people in two cars. The front car was filled with a big, happy sub-group of our group. I realized that I hadn’t known they had this affiliation, and that they were, in fact, all living together in a small flat, but their love for one another was such that they couldn’t stand not to be together. I had had no idea. I got in the second car which was driven by Melanie L. We drove along freeways for a long time. When we were perhaps 60 miles – or six hours? – from San Francisco Melanie stopped at a motel. She said we had to wait because a rainstorm was coming up, and she didn’t want to drive in the thick traffic in the rain. We’d wait it out. I was in one room and they were in another. I was annoyed and impatient. I really wanted to get home. My apartment was half way from here to s.f. My room was filled with my stuff, but somehow I couldn’t pack it because we weren’t moving. I fiddled with things, lining them up so that when the time came I could just throw them into bags and go. I went to Melanie and asked if we couldn’t just wait out the storm at my place since it wasn’t that far, and she got really angry at me. She was firm and threatening when she said “no. We will stay here.”

 

Later the women and I were putting together a meal. It was catered or a box-lunch sort of affair. I picked up two of each thing, and balancing the plates on my arms started to take two meals to Duane and Mary. I had to climb down steep stairs by the table and it was precarious with the plates balanced on my arms. When I got down I realized that they would probably come to the table, and I turned and made my way back up the steps, but it was difficult. As I got back to the table one of the women asked me if I was allergic to peas, or if was only…. I supplied the answer for her: I’m only allergic to walnuts and brazil nuts. Not peas. There was a plate of cheeses and rolls going around and that was what I really liked eating. I kept going to it and getting the expensive, nutty, aged cheese. Melanie also ate those cheeses. I got the last of the good cheese and took one slice off, then gave the rest to Melanie. I looked around but all the rolls were gone. Melanie produced a big bag of rice cakes, which I knew were mine, but I was glad she was sharing them. I really enjoyed the rice cakes.

 

Its nice to know I can abandon the bridge I made. For some reason I think this is a good thing. The barge/bridge, on the other hand, got out of control. The car journey is another symbol of  being ready to move on, but not being quite there. I sometimes feel that of all my friends Melanie is the most closed to me, so that may be why she is representing the stern aspect. I’m puzzled by the presence of Duane and Mary. They are kind people, but what are they doing in my dream?

sep 07 star trek

I was watching an old Star Trek episode, but I was present in the scenes. It was like being an extra on the set. In this episode all the characters were dressed in costumes from the old west. They boarded a train and I watched each character get on, and was guessing which of the regular characters they were, since they looked so different in the old fashioned clothes. Then it fast-forwarded to a futuristic setting, and the characters were hiking down a trail at dusk. A space-ship landed in front of them, and they were bathed in white light. They were wary and started backing down the trail. The space aliens were off-screen, but I’d seen this episode before and knew that the aliens will take possession of their bodies. There was a canal next to the path with wavy, concrete walls and greenish water. I swam in the water, under the influence of the aliens. Dolphins were also swimming, and they skitted gracefully back and forth from one side of the canal to another, and I followed. The aliens allowed me to do this. From time to time I brushed up against the dolphins and noticed that they had an interesting smell.

 

We had all gotten to a camping spot in an open meadow. It was dark. Two of the women had brought tall glasses of dark beer with them. One of them simply spilled hers, and was upset, but not too much so. The other one had her glass in an insulated sleeve, and at the bottom of that sleeve she had a packet of cigarettes. I asked her for one. She hesitated because she knew I had quit smoking, but then she got the pack out, but in the process she spilled her beer. Some of the cigarettes got wet. She was looking for a match to light mine, but I was really anxious to light up, so I took the smoldering butt of a cigarette she had just finished, and lit mine with that. I smoked for a short time and then put it out. It wasn’t interesting to me.

 

Later I was standing on a hillside, by a twisty mountain road, and Barrack Obama was with me. I started to tell him all about the Star Trek dream, and had told him that “it was like a large-screen TV; filling up all the space around me” when he just started walking away. At first I thought he was just walking a little bit away (to examine a flower, perhaps, while listening), but then he just kept going. When I realized that he was going away and wasn’t listening at all  I stopped speaking. I thought it was surprising and a little funny.

 I don’t think he’s got my vote. Trains may represent segmenting, compartmentalizing or reviewing various phases in life, which sounds right, since the dream encompassed the past and the future. I’m in it but not in it. I’m trying to think of this in terms of alter egos or personalities. MPD people often feel as if they are observers of themselves.  Swimming through a curvy canal has got to be a birth dream. Dolphins are a symbol of spirituality, and often thought of as spiritual guides. The smell of them was sort of musty, a little sweet, and … I definitely associate it with something, but I can’t put my finger on it. Vibernum flowers?  The water (intuitive, emotional self) was clean and greenish (fourth chakra, the heart, love and compassion), and I felt that I was in harmony with the dolphins. Aliens can be symbols of an alter I’m not in touch with, or a guide.  The cast of characters (my alters) are the same but hard to recognize in the past and in the future.  A camping spot is a temporary phase. That was the (long) one in which I smoked.