Post Your Dreams Here

Last night I dreamt that my employer decided to put refreshment stations at every cluster of desks. These kiosks featured not only soft drinks, but coffee drinks, snack bars, vending machines and a small ice cream & topping station.

The reason they did this is that it was free to them. The cost was covered by advertising -- the kiosks were covered with logos for Coke & Pepsi & Starbucks & Mars & Nestle & Hersey, and Disney, and Ben & Jerry's. The logos weren't just stickers, either, but flashing neon signs and bright lights and little video screens that played non-stop TV ads.

Rather loud ads.

I wondered aloud how this would impact our work. My boss replied, "Don't worry about it. It's a new profit center for us!"

Three scenes from much longer dreams.

I am clinging to the inside of a volcanic cauldron, a nearly vertical cliff with a tiny lake at the bottom. I'm not scared, as I seem to be "mountain climbing" on purpose which is very unusual for me. However I'm stuck on the cliff face and can't move up or down or sideways. I look down and see a person down by the lake, which is pitch black.

I am swimming in the volcanic lake. The water is black, like ink, but does not stick to my skin like ink. I reach the edge of the small lake and crawl out. All around me are vertical cliffs rising hundreds of feet straight up. There is no way out except straight up -- a terrifying and unimaginably exhausting climb.

I am trying to sell a pair of shoes to Dave Magorty, a guy I worked with 25 years ago. He tells me he just bought a pair, and pulls out some baby-sized sneakers. I say, "Dave, you should have tried them on first."

NoCoPilot wrote:

Three images from a series of nonsensical dreams.

A giraffe with black and white spots like a Dalmatian.

Christmas weekend my surviving sister stayed with me. One of the things we did was go through the bins of crap we hauled out of our dead sister's house and our dad's house. She spent a couple hours reading love letters my dad sent his fiancée (our soon-to-be mom) during WWII. I spent a while reading birthday and Christmas cards sent to my sister (neither one of them ever threw anything away).

A lot of old memories. Cards I myself had sent as a teenager.

Including one of a Dalmation dog surrounded by twenty white cats painted with Dalmation spots.

A dream that awakened me last night at 12:17, and wouldn't let me go back to sleep.

A woman with a huge goiter on her neck, a nasty red swollen thing the size of a football. Funny thing is, there was a cat clinging to it, with all four clawed feet, and it would not let us remove it from the goiter. The harder we pulled the more it dug in, and the woman was in pain from the claws.

Somebody explain that to me, I dare ya.

Dreamed about my dad again last night. Been doing that a lot lately.

I miss him.

I was running with some dogs across a swampy field to the water's edge, where we began playing in the water. The splashing attracted the attention of a juvenile seal, who came up to us and wanted to join in the splashing around. He was just a little guy, no bigger than the dogs, so we had a grand old time.

But I noticed the mother hovering a few feet further out, watching to make sure her baby was safe. I waded in to reassure her -- at which point she turned from a seal to an adult doe, and I became worried that she'd try to kick me with her strong hooves. But as soon as I reached out and stoked her side, she calmed down and relaxed, and just let me pet her.

Sometimes a dream arrives so fully formed, so powerful that you can't believe its not reality.

I just woke up from one.

A group of four of us were listening to a version of Brian Wilson's "Wonderful," from Smile. It was slowed down a bit, simplified, and sung by a voice that sounded very much like the young Brian Wilson. It was so fucking GORGEOUS that all four of us stopped everything, and by the end of the song were crying.

If I could recreate what I heard in my dream I'd have a hit.

I dreamed I was taking an intelligence test.

The first page was a series of 5 or 6 short puzzles, the answers to which were the letters S, J, G, P or M. At the top of the page is a picture of a room, with bins stacked two high along the walls. There are maybe a dozen and a half of then. You are asked to put the resultant letter answers into the bins, one letter in each.

The next page has more puzzles, more letter answers. Some of the answers are letters we used on page 1, but some are new letters. At the top of the page is a different view, from a different doorway, of the same room with its bins, you must place the letters in the bins, like letter with like, new letters in new bins. So you must not only solve the letter puzzles, you must remember which letter you put in each bin and identify it from a different view of the room.

Third page. More puzzles, more letters, yet a different doorway into the room. You must orient where you are. The bins are unlabeled. A couple letters are repeated from page 1 that weren't on page 2, so you have to think back.

Fourth page. Five more puzzles, five more letters. This time your view of the room is blocked, so you must be able to identify where each crate was without seeing it.

Fifth page. I woke up in a sweat.

I was in the apartment, not doing anything special, but I could hear a dog growling. (Dogs aren't allowed to live in our building, so this was unusual, to say the least.) I couldn't make out where the sound was coming from, but I assumed the dog must be in the hallway outside the apartment. So I went to the door and looked through the peephole, trying to see. But the hallway looked empty, no dog. Maybe the dog was small? But the growling sounded like a big dog, a Rottweiler or something. I was getting worried. And then I woke up.

The wife was snoring. She'd got into a rhythm that sounded just like a dog growling. I couldn't stop laughing.

We traveled out in the country to visit a renown amphibious cat enclave. For some reason, on this one little farm, feral cats had evolved to love the water.

When we climbed down the enbankment we saw a couple dozen cats playing together in a pool. They would climb up the banks on either side of the pool then slide down the muddy slopes into the pond. The splashed around together then went back to sliding. It was odd, to say the least -- not only did the cats love the water, but they played together in a rather large group.

However as we watched we became aware that there was even more to this scene. The cats were all different sizes. In addition to normal size cats, there were smaller mouse-sized cats, perfectly proportioned (not kittens) but smaller. There were even smaller cats, the size of insects, crawling through the grass. All of these cats enjoyed life around the pond. We had to watch where we stepped to avoid squishing any cats.

Why do some dreams seem to strike a chord, and haunt you for days?

A couple days ago I dreamt I was stuck in a big downtown building, trying to find my way out.  All of the doors that looked like exits just led to other hallways.

Finally I found a stairway and made my way to the basement -- only to find it was some kind of morgue.  There were stretchers everywhere, each one containing a naked dead body.  Hundreds of them.

Eerie and creepy (and probably having to do with my Nazi book).

Then this morning I dreamed about Donna, my first girlfriend, from junior high.  We met accidentally and she remembered me.  She had age-advanced in my dream to about 22 and was still absolutely gorgeous.  She was so happy to see me she threw her arms around me and kissed me.  We held each other and talked like old friends.  I didn't have the heart to tell her I'd been married to somebody else for almost 27 years and had a daughter older than her.

Donna was a good person, kind and level headed.  She had long (waist length) straight red hair, which became the template for my desires for years afterward.  I sometimes wonder what became of her -- but she'd be my age now, not as she was in my dream.  Hopefully she's happy and still gorgeous at 61, with many healthy grown kids.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Why do some dreams seem to strike a chord, and haunt you for days?

I know those. They stay with you like a scent, you get "whiffs" of the dream for days to come. Those are the ones I pay attention to, they are so evocative for some reason even when they don't make sense.

Last night we owned an animal shelter, that had very strict visitation rules.  People could only come in and visit their pets if the pet had only recently been picked up, and then only for five minutes at a time.

We decided that was a cruel policy, and decided to open it up.  Anybody, who had a pet in there for any amount of time, could come visit and stay as long as they wanted.

Very quickly we discovered that some people were staying 24 hours or several days, and our visitation facilities were quickly overrun.

Wait, was this an animal shelter or a jail?  In my dream they were one and the same. Watching too much Orange is the New Black I guess.

For several years, I have not been remembering my dreams. The last few years, I have been having "two-stage" dreams. During the dream period, I will awaken - still dreaming - and recall the dream I had been having. After I truly awake, I can recall the false awakening in the dream, but nothing about the "first stage" of the dream. I do recall that sometimes during the first stage of the dream, I am aware of the fact that I am dreaming. Odd.
Sometimes after actually awakening, I will remember a person, or an object, or a place in the dream, but with no context whatsoever.

Last night I was taking a remedial math course -- me, who used to be a TA for RM -- and the teacher was getting very very frustrated with me. She described the problem I was to solve:

You're installing a Pfaff Pkg and all you have to measure is a 4.31 meter stick. What percentage of the stick do you need?

"What's a Pfaff pkg?" was my first question. She looked at me incredulous. It's the kit that hot rodders put on street cars to raise the suspension, tighten it, and stabilize the car at high speeds. Everybody knows that.

"Why do I need a measuring stick?" was my next question. She was exasperated. If you're not going to take these questions seriously you're not going to learn.

"Who the heck uses a measuring stick fifteen feet long?" was my third. That's it, she said standing up, come back when you ready to be serious.

In my dream last night I attended a Circuit Benders Convention.

Circuit bending, if you're not familiar with it, is a real sub-genre of electronic music where folks take little circuits like oscillators and filters and mess with them until they output weird little noises. This was originated by Bebe & Louis Barron for the movie Forbidden Planet -- most of their circuits self-destructed in giving up their noise. I think this is considered a bonus in the circuit bending world.

Anyway, the convention was held in a large hall, with maybe 50 people sitting at tables laid out in rows. Each person had a pile of little plastic boxes on his table, which he (or she) tweaked until they let out a squawk or a series of squawks. Everyone was working simultaneously, but the rarity of making a sound meant that there were stretches of silence pierced by sudden bursts of noise. Occasionally two circuit benders would overlap, but rarely. Mostly it was just one long silence interspersed with vastly-different bursts of sound from all over this huge hall.

It was... interesting.

What's the difference between a gnome and a troll?

I dreamed I was watching a TV commercial about the importance of marking the emergency exits in a building, "because fire trucks are very important to trolls."

At the end of the commercial, a short green man in a pointed cap came on, and said, "Fire trucks aren't important at all to gnomes."

Last night I was laying in bed, in my dead sister's room in the house where we grew up.  I woke up and she had stuffed animals, cosmetics, clothes, schoolbooks, and various other crap all over the bed, pinning me down and keeping me from moving.  I was hot and wanted to get out of bed dammit!  I started flailing at all this stuff on the bed to get it off me.

I heard a couple whines from the bed -- apparently the stuff didn't LIKE being thrown off.  As I came into consciousness I realized I had two dogs and a cat snuggled up to me in bed, I WAS hot, and dammit they didn't want to move!

Last night I attended a comedy club open mike night with a friend of mine, he'd decided he wanted to try his hand at stand-up.

Well, he wasn't very good, and left the stage feeling a little deflated. I mentioned this to another friend I was with, who it turned out was friends with the club owner. The club owner then got several well-known comics and celebrities to write notes and cards of encouragement for my friend. I remember being amazed to see a hand-written note from Louis C.K. saying "I thought your set was really good. Keep it up!" Who knew Louis was even in the club?

Of course on waking I realized he needn't have been.

LSMYT

In February I attended a performance by The Flying Karamazov Brothers, the juggling troupe from Portland OR. After introducing themselves, they turned up the house lights and asked the audience members to turn around and introduce themselves to the person sitting behind them.

Of course, nobody realized until it happened that the person directly behind them was facing away, trying to introduce themselves to the person behind them!

It was a paradigm shifting, fooled-everyone moment.

I post this next item under "dreams" although it was really just a wild idea that popped into my head as I was trying to fall asleep last night. I believe it was a direct result of watching the 1 Giant Leap DVD, which had a chapter entitled "Sex."

Here's the idea: Let Someone Masturbate You Today.

Human culture is hypocritical in our treatment of sexuality (as the DVD pointed out) -- everybody has a sex drive but we all pretend it doesn't exist. Religion was designed to subjugate and sublimate the sex drive (again according to the DVD) so any open expression of sexuality -- which is one of the few things all people share -- is considered sinful.

If, on the other hand, we were more like bonobos, and used our inherent sexuality to build common bonds, break down social barriers, treat strangers with compassion then our society would probably be a lot less warlike, a lot more caring, a lot more compassionate.

Hence, Let Someone Masturbate You Today.

By making it personal -- Masturbate You -- it's a lot less threatening than Go Masturbate Someone Else. If strangers or even acquaintances allowed another person to give them genital pleasure, imagine the positive energy that would be shared. If our own orgasms were joyously shared with the world, instead of hidden away in darkness, imagine the ....

Oh nevermind. On waking the whole idea's a little creepy.

Dreamt about work again. Wish I would stop doing that -- I'm retired now! I do it almost every night. At least last night was a little lighter.

Usually I'm doing some long incredibly tedious project, like adding up by hand columns in a spreadsheet, or balancing two lists of figures, or arranging hundreds of boxes of something. I always awaken with relief that it was only a dream (even though I've had plenty of real examples in my career).

Last night was somewhat different. I was working at an insurance company above the Seattle waterfront, and everybody on the floor left our desks to line up in a conference room to get a good view of the Seafair parade -- which wasn't for a couple of hours. No matter -- we were more interested in getting a good view than working. I seemed to know all my co-workers from previous jobs. We took a picture together.

Oh, and my little white & brown cocker Sophie was with me at work too. She never left my side if given a choice. Why can't people bring pets to work? We should be able to.

A box for everything and everything in a box.  I was systematically naming everything in my world, and once named, items acquired a transparent crystal shell and stayed where you put them.  By defining them, you also defined their place so everything became orderly and stayed where you put it. The crystal shells fit together like Legos or columns of a spreadsheet*.

I was in a rush to get everything named and arranged because everything was too chaotic in my life.  I couldn't rely on stuff to be where it belonged.

I hate disorder.

Let The Naming begin!



* - I'm working on a big spreadsheet in real life

I was in a big building, it might have been my daughter's school. I needed to use the restroom so I went into the men's room.

I noticed a lot of people standing around one of the toilet stalls. I looked in, and there was a caiman or a small crocodile standing by the toilet. It was just standing there. Nobody seemed to know what to do.

So I grabbed a towel and threw it over the caiman. It didn't flinch. I picked it up and it still didn't struggle. In fact it relaxed.

I uncovered it a bit and it looked at me. I stroked it. This was obviously somebody's pet, comfortable around people, not dangerous.

So I carried it outside, with the intent of letting it loose in the parking lot so it could find its way home. Somehow I accidentally got on the bus with it, and we went downtown to the hospital where my mother worked. I asked her what to do with it. She said I should put up flyers like a lost puppy. All this time it was snuggling up to me -- "Typical reptile," I said, "it likes the heat."

I set it down to look for something to feed it, and before I could stop it, it ran into a vent in the wall of the hospital.

"Well," I told my mother, "that's that. It's not my problem anymore."

I've been having epic long complicated dreams at night, but on waking they make little sense and quickly fade from memory.  Most have revolved around my parents or sister or ex-wife, all now deceased.

For instance, last night the middle of my dream had me swimming in the ocean with my sister, when we noticed that the sea was full of tiny iridescent blue fish (I think they're called neon tetras?)  There were millions of them swimming in schools.  I said that probably means that humpback whales would be arriving soon to feed on them (?!) so we climbed into the wooden fishing boat we'd come from.  Inside, the boat resembled an old wooden schoolhouse, and we began remodeling it so it could be used as a movie set.  A big wide stairway became famous as the opening scene of some TV show, and after that everyone wanted to shoot on our staircase.  It won some kind of Oscar as the best location.

It went on from there, but that's all I remember.

This was another in a series of apocalyptic dreams I've been having.

I was working at some kind of underwater research station, where my crew and I had just surfaced after an extended stay on the bottom of the ocean. We were stretching our arms and legs, enjoying breathing real air for the first time in a long time. We were chatting away, happy to be on dry land again.

It was overcast, but all of a sudden I noticed a bright light behind the clouds. It was moving, and causing the atmosphere to roil. It moved across the sky at a pretty good clip and then went over the horizon.

That was odd, I thought. Some kind of asteroid or comet coming through Earth's atmosphere?

Then I noticed the sky continuing to roil. It was like a huge wake in the sky. Uh-oh, I said aloud. That wasn't a small asteroid.

I said, I expect we'll hear sonic booms any minute.

An eerie silence fell over us. Quick, I yelled, everybody find cover. As I said this, the horizon suddenly lifted, a huge black line with immensely bright fire underneath it. It shot upwards and out of sight.

Oh Jesus, I cried, everybody brace for a shock wave. We scrambled to get behind buildings, behind anything solid. We'd seen the films of the A-bomb tests. I ran to get behind an upturned wooden table, the sturdiest thing in my vicinity. I knew it wasn't much. I felt the air pressure drop suddenly as the shockwave wave approached.

At this point I woke up.