Ok, I gave the people names, and wrote it down. Here's what my dream was...
John has been invited to a sleepover at Megan's house, along with Alyssa and Alicia. He is in his room, getting ready to go.
John lazily threw together a night bag in his room. He put in his toothbrush, and one shirt, it was really all he needed to bring to the sleepover. It all haphazardly fell together in his old duffel bag from little league baseball from years ago. Nobody was home, so he just locked the door and headed out.
He fumbled in his pockets for a few seconds and got his keys out, and started up his old green chevy. It sputtered for a second, then fired up as he let it roll out of the driveway.
John popped in a CD from a live concert he'd been to a few weeks before, and drummed his fingers on the wheel, imitating a keyboard on it as he drove along in the dark. The car powered through the muggy summer night, and it was still damp from the rain earlier that day.
Pulling up to Megan's house, he saw the girls there already waiting for him at the door; he figured he was going to be a little late. He cut across the grass uncaringly and they let him in.
"So, why were you a little late, John?", Megan teased.
"Well, mus've been because my clock'sa little slow" he mumbled back.
"Oh, all right. come on up stairs then"
They clamored up the wide wooden stairs to Megan's room, passing her brothers' rooms as they went.
"Where's Jeb 'n Chris?" John asked.
Alyssa said "Oh, they're up on the roof with some new automatic bb gun or something they got at a shop today. I don't know what their deal with it is but it looked kind of dangerous. I don't think it's a bb gun..."
Ever since he was kicked out of army training Jeb had loved collecting weaponry anyways, so it really wasn't much of a surprise to John. Chris always just tagged along to watch, as he was more interested in the actual mechanics of the weapons rather than shooting them.
The night progressed on, as John sat in Megan's room with the girls, just sort of hanging around wishing Jeb would at least drop in. He didn't. Eventually, Megan's phone rang.
"Hey John, why don't you take this call? Hehe".
"Whut? It's not my phone, who do you want me to talk t'..."
"It's this major creeper Anthony who won't leave me alone. I think he got my number by stealing my school schedule and reading off my number. Here, it's still ringing, tell 'im to fuck off, I'll listen in with Alyssa on her phone".
John took the phone reluctantly and put it to his ear.
"Why hello girls. You might want to call 911".
"W-what?" John was confused. "...Why's that?"
Gunshots rang out on the other end of the line, the machine's noise was so tremendous it made the speakers cackle in protest.
"Holy shit dude, are you all right?"
"All right? Oh yes, I'm fine...I had to pay a visit to Alyssa's house"
"What's going on..."
"Just call 911. Is this John? Perfect. I'll be...right over"
Megan broke her cover listening in and shouted, "Ha! Good one. You don't even know where I live, you creep".
"Oh, I do. Just be sure to call 911".
John, being the paranoid type, had had enough and shouted "Just fucking do it Alyssa! Just in case... we don't know what's going on..."
"Oh, I'm here...hehe" The other line clicked off. John flew outside the front door, his feet barely touching the ground. He ducked behind some shrubs. A figure was approaching.
Anthony was calmly and cooly walking towards the house at a slow pace. He had what appeared to be some sort of machine gun strapped to his back, and a pistol in his left hand. John knew what to do. He whistled three short whistles, then one long low pitched one.
This was Jeb's signal. They had both agreed that the call was only for desperate times. He did have an automatic on the roof, and it sure as hell wasn't a bb gun.
"Chris", Jeb addressed him
"Yeah?"
"Shoot to kill"
At those words, bullets whizzed out from the top of the roof like rain, and Anthony was a red mess, his body shook violently as if he was seizing and he fell down flat on his back, his mouth spurting blood.
He weakly held up his pistol, squinted his eye, aimed, and shot up at the roof once more before collapsing dead. The shot tore right through Jeb's arm, and he was writhing in pain. The girls came out of the house, and saw what the commotion was about...
Didn't make too much sense, but that's what went down. It was very unsettlingly realistic. The dream was in John's point of view.
In part one, I invented a means of playing a Game Boy game on a piece of paper (tested and verified with a dream version of Pokémon Yellow). You start the game on the Game Boy, then insert the paper flat between the cartridge and the game system. When you slide it out, the game image appears on the sheet of paper and you can tap underneath it for the buttons. This was, obviously, freakin' amazing, since paper doesn't require batteries, so I was able to walk down the sidewalk with my Pokémon Yellow paper game. I was still wearing my pajamas, and it occurred to me that I was planning to get some Christmas shopping done today (in fact, that was what was pre-planned for today, which made my subsequent waking up from the dream really confusing as I thought I had missed my window of opportunity).
In part two, I wandered past a pub, still in pajamas (first time I've experienced continuity across two dreams, as far as I can recall). Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich of Radiolab were demonstrating how you can teach a cat to retrieve a firehose for firemen, and were segueing into an episode of Radiolab generally about cat training. I sat next to them in the pub as they wrapped their interview recording, after which Krulwich told me my portion of the show would be recorded tomorrow. My dream self had apparently won a contest prior to the dream's initiation but thought the recording would be today, but I wasn't too off-put by it.
I never remember dreams in such detail, so I thought it worth relaying.
I have found that strange dreams hit me much more reliably when I wake up at a more normal hour, and then go back to sleep for a couple more hours. Late morning dreams are common and also pretty weird.
I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason to when these ridiculously detailed dreams hit me, but I had another cracker about a week ago.
The first part of this dream that I can remember was me in a somewhat dark bedroom in a huge house. I think that all of my family, both nuclear and extended, was in this house, but we were all doing our own thing. The only thing I remember was waking up and peeking out of a crack in the door to see my cousin standing on the opposite side of the hallway in front of her door in a matching pink pajama set. But for some reason there was this weird architectural feature where my feet were exposed, so I backed away because I felt really embarrassed, like I was spying.
The next thing I did was take off my shirt and I had this very unusual and quite frightening set of six-pack abs. But it was more than that.. I had those bubbles of muscles all over my body and this weird ridge, like a spine, running down the center of my front. My aunt came in and I don’t think she really said anything about it. Somewhere in here I was also disconcerted to note that I had breasts, and I could see them in the spaghetti strap top that I was wearing. But it was more that I had them because I was too fat, so I decided to go for a run. After this my body wasn’t part of the picture anymore, so I assume that it went back to normal.
So I get my running outfit on and step outside. We’re on an EXTREMELY crowded beach. This must have been some gigantic resort or something. So I turn to the right and start running, but I had to turn around immediately because the beach suddenly got a lot smaller that way and dead-ended into a beautiful stone cottage’s driveway or something. I think there was also a mythical beast chained up there, so I couldn’t go that way.
So I turned around and started running the other way. I kept having to dodge people as I moved further up the beach away from the ocean, so I started to go toward the ocean to the harder-packed sand. This worked for a while, but it was still slow going and I was walking most of the time. Finally I get to this big waterpark-esque part of the beach where tons of people are playing volleyball at a variety of different nets. Megan is there playing volleyball with her family (none of whom look like anyone in her family). I try to get her attention to tell her that I’m going out running, but she’s too absorbed or something so I just go off. So as I run down this beach, there are more and more buildings on either side of me. I think it now may have turned into some sort of river or lake with a beach.
This part gets a little fuzzy, but I think that I took an escalator up into one of the buildings where the ocean used to be. I then went up to this weird balcony and my companion who was with me (at this point it was a guy, I think) looked out over it. There were these stickers that you had to peel off, and I think the gist of it was that you became the person who was on the sticker. So I think I pushed off my companion, peeled off a sticker and threw it down at him (this balcony overlooked the river from the earlier part of the dream) and peeled off my own and jumped off.
I’m not sure how I got out of the river after this, but jumping off that balcony put us in a really weird sort of dark twisted version of the place we were in. It was getting dark and everything was scary, kind of like a haunted house but, you know, real life. I think I recall seeing a sign that called it the Alley of Broken Fingers and Noses or something like that. But now we were trying to figure out how to get back to the normal world of the beach and the big huge house, so we went to this house for downtrodden women. It was very Sweeney Todd-esque. Inside, we sat at a table and talked to a few women. They all looked very strange.. I think it may have been something to do with their eyebrows and their bone structure. At the table we sat at there were three women like this and two people next to us who were just hooded heads with no visible faces. We tried to get some information out of these women (and at this point my companion was a woman about my age who was somewhat fairy-like, like she had some intimate knowledge of this realm. She seemed reminiscent of my college crush Ana) but then the two hooded figures started having various faces appear in their hoods and apparently these hooded figures always gave false information to bring you deeper into despair and keep you in this realm. But there was something dangerous about them, so I think we decided to try our luck with the balcony again. So we started going through the city and lots of freaky horror-house stuff happened, like this guy emerged from his house as we were walking by and threw an axe into the house across the street.
As we wandered this shadow world, I think someone must have told us that we needed to eat the cake from the café in the building under the balcony. I think we may have returned to the downtrodden women’s house to find out this information. So finally we see the familiar building, which was well-lit with vending machines outside. We were very happy to have found this and we talked about falling into bed together once we got home and making out all night (at this point it was a mixture of Ana and Megan. It was like, I knew it was bad that we would be doing stuff together, but the girl talked and walked like Megan). Finally we enter and there’s this little Starbucks-like establishment with three types of cake. They all looked fancy, and I was getting my money out and choosing a slice when I woke up.
Last night (or rather this morning) I had that dream where your alarm goes off and you can't shut it off (since it's going off in the real world and you're trying to shut it off in your dream.) Pretty standard stuff, really, except that this time I actually realized what was happening and tried to wake myself up while I was still dreaming. Nothing really became of it, but it's the first time in my life that I actually considered the fact that I might be dreaming while in the dream itself. Usually it only occurs to me the moment I wake up.
Yeah, I only ever realize that my dreams were dreams once I'm awake. I'm often very relieved because lately I've been having a lot of dreams where I'm in an awkward situation.
I had another weird one last night. Maybe Scott is right about writing down dreams, so here I go.
This dream had two distinct parts. The first part was earlier in the night, so I don't remember it so well. But the big thing I remember was that I was exploring this GIGANTIC underwater world, I suppose in some sort of underwater craft, and it was in video game style partially. Though everything looked real, I had a cursor that I was using to select points on a map of this huge underwater world that could take me deeper or toward the surface. Unfortunately, all I remember of this world was a huge-ass fish/shark thing that was just swimming around and... something about combining gold and this sparkly blue rock and unleashing a gigantic pestilence of small insects or something. I think that last bit may come from the factory system of Rogue Galaxy, which I'm playing now.
The second dream was a bit more realistic and I remember it better. I was taking piano lessons and was learning this one song that probably doesn't exist. I can see the sheet music (at least the beginning) in my head, and I was making good progress. But I was at home practicing on my mom's piano and the keys kept sticking. So I opened up the top and was looking at all the parts inside and I thought to myself that I'm really well-suited for this because of my time working at my grandfather's piano company (which I actually did, so I know quite a bit about the insides of pianos).
Then, suddenly... I'm at Ryan's in China. And someone else is visiting with me. He had a small little apartment with a balcony that overlooked a foggy city, and all I could see was one pagoda-like building rising out of the mist. Everything else was obscured. I was anxious for him to take me out and show me the city, but it was getting dark, and I got the impression that you don't want to be out after dark.
Luckily for us, there was a piano in Ryan's apartment, so I used my newfound skills (which weren't that impressive) to play a wide variety of popular songs on the piano. Strange thing is, I knew that I was just experimenting and trying to find the notes on the piano, but I kept doing it right. I played... the End of Heartache by Killswitch Engage, the X-Files theme... and that's all I can remember.
It was hard, though, because all of a sudden I was trying to play through bedsheets. It was like someone had put sheets and a blanket over the piano. So I tried ripping them off, only to find that the keys were embedded into the side of a mattress, and some of them were obscured. I thought about trying to rip the piano out of the mattress, but thought against it.
Then, there was this strange dark figure that started prowling around outside. The best way to describe it is like that shadowy thing in Spirited Away that eats a ton of shit; it was all swathed in black and it had a silver face mask on its head. Thing is, we all knew it was just a person dressed up, so it wasn't threatening. Apparently it was just some Chinese cultural thing. So we watched it, and it entered the apartment next to Ryan's. For some reason the wall joining the two apartments became transparent and we watched the figure enter the other apartment. Inside, a man sat at a table eating from a bowl and didn't pay the figure any attention. Then it turned, saw us watching, and walked out on the balcony and came toward Ryan's door.
I asked him if the door was locked and he nonchalantly replied "No, I don't keep it locked." Then the figure opened Ryan's door, silently padded inside, and walked toward the corner with the TV. He grabbed a box; it was my Donkey Kong Jenga (given to me by our own Adam as a Christmas present). He started to walk out with it. I looked at Ryan, puzzled and a bit annoyed, and said "Dude, get it back." So Ryan sighed, walked over to the glass door which the figure had just walked out through, and turned on a long fluorescent tube light. The figure then walked back into the room without his mask; it was just a Chinese guy. He put the box down, and bowed; I dream-knew that this was the custom. You turn on a light for them and they release what they've taken. Then I woke up.
So last night, my douchebag neighbors were being loud again, so I put in my earphones and listened to music while I slept.
While I dreamt, it seems my brain was uncomfortable with this new outer stimulus. Whatever plot my dream originally had planned was derailed by my dream self's frustration that I had earphones permanently affixed to my head. Whenever I pulled them off, a new pair would magically be reaffixed to my head instantly. And because no other person in my dream could hear the music in my brain, my dream self began to believe he was going crazy. All in all, not a good night.
I'm just glad I fell down in a sparkling clean, spacious stall all by myself, and not some crowded station bathroom with urine and diarrhea surrounding the porcelain hole.
Another vivid dream last night that's notable for its meta-dreaminess:
Occasionally I'll have a dream where, for some strange reason, I'm back in high school as my present self. Either there was some mix-up with my degree or the classes that I took, or whatever, but I find myself going back to high school with all these people who are WAY younger than me. Usually those dreams don't last very long and are more fuzzy than vivid.
Last night I had a similar dream, but it was much more vivid. I was back in high school, but so were the same people that I actually went to high school with. We all were back because of some mass... thing. I don't know. As usual in these dreams, I was running late and arrived in English class near the very end. The teacher gave a jovial yet snarky remark about me being late and I said we could talk about it after class. Then I sat down and started chatting with some people that I knew. I remember that we all started talking about how weird this was, since we've always had dreams about having to be in high school again, but this time it was finally REAL. Strange how dreams come true sometimes. After that comment (and this dream really DID feel real, and I could distinguish it as more real than those other dreams felt), I started expressing my doubts about the class. After all, I have a master's degree in English literature, so what would this class look like? Would I be bored to tears? Would I have to just have to hold back on my commentary and discussion on the text since I've had experience being in graduate-level seminars? (somewhat pompous on my part). Mostly I just reflected on the silliness of it; why did I have to retake this class when my schooling has clearly gone beyond it?
The dream then flashed forward. I was sitting in my room, which was apparently located IN the school. I got the sense that because of my special circumstances (apparently my other classmates were out of the picture at this point and it was a usual "I'm 7-10 years older than everyone else here" scenario) I was allowed to live in the school. Suddenly I realized that I had parked my car in the student lot that morning, and I felt that my car may have been towed since most student cars are meant to be gone after school lets out.
So I walked out of my room, which seemed to be located at the back of some sort of small food serving area, since there was a big gate that could be raised or lowered that blocked it off. As I was closing it and going out to check on my car, two of my old students ran up to me and tried to get my attention. One was the gothy/animu girl from two semesters ago, and the other was the theater girl that flirted with me incessantly from the same class. Animu girl had her boyfriend with her (she's single, so I don't know what that means) but theater girl ran up and gave me a big hug and looked really happy to see me (this really happened a few weeks ago; we ran into each other on campus and chatted for a minute). Then the three decided to go with me.
So we walked out of the school and toward the downtown area. Theater girl was officially at my side and occasionally trying to hold my hand, and I reciprocated. I also realized at this point that she was quite a bit taller than me. I looked down and saw that she was wearing heels, but even without them she would have been taller than me. If I remember correctly, she's either about my height or shorter than me by a little bit, so again, no idea what that means. Even still, as we walked, she rested her head on my shoulder. As we got closer to the downtown area, a car started coming down the road toward us. I moved into a stairwell to the side, and theater girl put her hood up and made a... whooshing sound, I suppose (not with her mouth, but like a magic power as you'd see in cartoons), and sort of faded into a mass of shadow, and flew up the stairwell. I tried to pull my own hood up, but the hoodie I had on was far too small and the hood wouldn't go on properly and putting the hood up made it expose my lower back a bit.
Dream that I was back to school in January. Teacher gave us a pop quiz on "Victorian Farm Christmas", which started out simply enough. What did this character use beets for, that sort of thing. But question 7 was a doozy. I had to recreate the famous painting, "Tiger and Lion", which features the two big cats mating, embellished with gold foil. And I was to recreate it using four show cats.
My husband helped me in trying to position the cats, and I figured the key to getting this question right was exactly where the male and female cats were placed in the pile. But four unfamiliar cats don't tend to get along. The tortoiseshell ran off, the persian ran in the other direction.
Revisited the extra fancy cafeteria in my dream this morning. Last time I just couldn't quite get the sushi on my tray. This time, it was Mexican food!
Tacos, deep fried shrimp/crab balls, simple enough. Then I noticed two Bichon Frise dogs sitting on the food counter. I asked the chef about them, and he mopped one in basil/spinach leaves for me and explained how you clip off chunks of its white fur, bathed in the green leaves' water, and eat it. Somehow the dog ended up on my tray and I purchased this delicacy.
And then I realized what I had done. After I eat the fur, I have to keep the dog as a pet, because I won't be killing it. Shit, I don't want a dog! I didn't even want to eat dog fur in the first place, what the hell
The other night I had a dream that I was in my boss's office for the daily end-of-the-day briefing. Naturally I was looking for my opportunity to get out of there, but none was coming up. He wouldn't stop talking. Then President Obama walked in with his secret service and a bunch of news cameras, and he whipped out an accordion and started rocking out on it. I figured that was my chance, so I stealthily sneaked out of the office while my boss was distracted.
Last night I dreamed (is drempt a word?) that I was drafted into an evil government organization (or rather I joined it unknowingly). I succeeded in escaping but could never shake my followers.
It was awful, and sort of a nightmare, except for two things that just made it weird:
A) In it, I was a cute, fairly large-breasted girl with very long braided pigtails; The evil organization was basketball.
Comments
John has been invited to a sleepover at Megan's house, along with Alyssa and Alicia. He is in his room, getting ready to go.
John lazily threw together a night bag in his room. He put in his toothbrush, and one shirt, it was really all he needed to bring to the sleepover. It all haphazardly fell together in his old duffel bag from little league baseball from years ago. Nobody was home, so he just locked the door and headed out.
He fumbled in his pockets for a few seconds and got his keys out, and started up his old green chevy. It sputtered for a second, then fired up as he let it roll out of the driveway.
John popped in a CD from a live concert he'd been to a few weeks before, and drummed his fingers on the wheel, imitating a keyboard on it as he drove along in the dark. The car powered through the muggy summer night, and it was still damp from the rain earlier that day.
Pulling up to Megan's house, he saw the girls there already waiting for him at the door; he figured he was going to be a little late. He cut across the grass uncaringly and they let him in.
"So, why were you a little late, John?", Megan teased.
"Well, mus've been because my clock'sa little slow" he mumbled back.
"Oh, all right. come on up stairs then"
They clamored up the wide wooden stairs to Megan's room, passing her brothers' rooms as they went.
"Where's Jeb 'n Chris?" John asked.
Alyssa said "Oh, they're up on the roof with some new automatic bb gun or something they got at a shop today. I don't know what their deal with it is but it looked kind of dangerous. I don't think it's a bb gun..."
Ever since he was kicked out of army training Jeb had loved collecting weaponry anyways, so it really wasn't much of a surprise to John. Chris always just tagged along to watch, as he was more interested in the actual mechanics of the weapons rather than shooting them.
The night progressed on, as John sat in Megan's room with the girls, just sort of hanging around wishing Jeb would at least drop in. He didn't. Eventually, Megan's phone rang.
"Hey John, why don't you take this call? Hehe".
"Whut? It's not my phone, who do you want me to talk t'..."
"It's this major creeper Anthony who won't leave me alone. I think he got my number by stealing my school schedule and reading off my number. Here, it's still ringing, tell 'im to fuck off, I'll listen in with Alyssa on her phone".
John took the phone reluctantly and put it to his ear.
"Why hello girls. You might want to call 911".
"W-what?" John was confused. "...Why's that?"
Gunshots rang out on the other end of the line, the machine's noise was so tremendous it made the speakers cackle in protest.
"Holy shit dude, are you all right?"
"All right? Oh yes, I'm fine...I had to pay a visit to Alyssa's house"
"What's going on..."
"Just call 911. Is this John? Perfect. I'll be...right over"
Megan broke her cover listening in and shouted, "Ha! Good one. You don't even know where I live, you creep".
"Oh, I do. Just be sure to call 911".
John, being the paranoid type, had had enough and shouted "Just fucking do it Alyssa! Just in case... we don't know what's going on..."
"Oh, I'm here...hehe" The other line clicked off. John flew outside the front door, his feet barely touching the ground. He ducked behind some shrubs. A figure was approaching.
Anthony was calmly and cooly walking towards the house at a slow pace. He had what appeared to be some sort of machine gun strapped to his back, and a pistol in his left hand. John knew what to do. He whistled three short whistles, then one long low pitched one.
This was Jeb's signal. They had both agreed that the call was only for desperate times. He did have an automatic on the roof, and it sure as hell wasn't a bb gun.
"Chris", Jeb addressed him
"Yeah?"
"Shoot to kill"
At those words, bullets whizzed out from the top of the roof like rain, and Anthony was a red mess, his body shook violently as if he was seizing and he fell down flat on his back, his mouth spurting blood.
He weakly held up his pistol, squinted his eye, aimed, and shot up at the roof once more before collapsing dead. The shot tore right through Jeb's arm, and he was writhing in pain. The girls came out of the house, and saw what the commotion was about...
Didn't make too much sense, but that's what went down. It was very unsettlingly realistic. The dream was in John's point of view.
What an interesting dream, too.
In part one, I invented a means of playing a Game Boy game on a piece of paper (tested and verified with a dream version of Pokémon Yellow). You start the game on the Game Boy, then insert the paper flat between the cartridge and the game system. When you slide it out, the game image appears on the sheet of paper and you can tap underneath it for the buttons. This was, obviously, freakin' amazing, since paper doesn't require batteries, so I was able to walk down the sidewalk with my Pokémon Yellow paper game. I was still wearing my pajamas, and it occurred to me that I was planning to get some Christmas shopping done today (in fact, that was what was pre-planned for today, which made my subsequent waking up from the dream really confusing as I thought I had missed my window of opportunity).
In part two, I wandered past a pub, still in pajamas (first time I've experienced continuity across two dreams, as far as I can recall). Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich of Radiolab were demonstrating how you can teach a cat to retrieve a firehose for firemen, and were segueing into an episode of Radiolab generally about cat training. I sat next to them in the pub as they wrapped their interview recording, after which Krulwich told me my portion of the show would be recorded tomorrow. My dream self had apparently won a contest prior to the dream's initiation but thought the recording would be today, but I wasn't too off-put by it.
I never remember dreams in such detail, so I thought it worth relaying.
The first part of this dream that I can remember was me in a somewhat dark bedroom in a huge house. I think that all of my family, both nuclear and extended, was in this house, but we were all doing our own thing. The only thing I remember was waking up and peeking out of a crack in the door to see my cousin standing on the opposite side of the hallway in front of her door in a matching pink pajama set. But for some reason there was this weird architectural feature where my feet were exposed, so I backed away because I felt really embarrassed, like I was spying.
The next thing I did was take off my shirt and I had this very unusual and quite frightening set of six-pack abs. But it was more than that.. I had those bubbles of muscles all over my body and this weird ridge, like a spine, running down the center of my front. My aunt came in and I don’t think she really said anything about it. Somewhere in here I was also disconcerted to note that I had breasts, and I could see them in the spaghetti strap top that I was wearing. But it was more that I had them because I was too fat, so I decided to go for a run. After this my body wasn’t part of the picture anymore, so I assume that it went back to normal.
So I get my running outfit on and step outside. We’re on an EXTREMELY crowded beach. This must have been some gigantic resort or something. So I turn to the right and start running, but I had to turn around immediately because the beach suddenly got a lot smaller that way and dead-ended into a beautiful stone cottage’s driveway or something. I think there was also a mythical beast chained up there, so I couldn’t go that way.
So I turned around and started running the other way. I kept having to dodge people as I moved further up the beach away from the ocean, so I started to go toward the ocean to the harder-packed sand. This worked for a while, but it was still slow going and I was walking most of the time. Finally I get to this big waterpark-esque part of the beach where tons of people are playing volleyball at a variety of different nets. Megan is there playing volleyball with her family (none of whom look like anyone in her family). I try to get her attention to tell her that I’m going out running, but she’s too absorbed or something so I just go off. So as I run down this beach, there are more and more buildings on either side of me. I think it now may have turned into some sort of river or lake with a beach.
This part gets a little fuzzy, but I think that I took an escalator up into one of the buildings where the ocean used to be. I then went up to this weird balcony and my companion who was with me (at this point it was a guy, I think) looked out over it. There were these stickers that you had to peel off, and I think the gist of it was that you became the person who was on the sticker. So I think I pushed off my companion, peeled off a sticker and threw it down at him (this balcony overlooked the river from the earlier part of the dream) and peeled off my own and jumped off.
I’m not sure how I got out of the river after this, but jumping off that balcony put us in a really weird sort of dark twisted version of the place we were in. It was getting dark and everything was scary, kind of like a haunted house but, you know, real life. I think I recall seeing a sign that called it the Alley of Broken Fingers and Noses or something like that. But now we were trying to figure out how to get back to the normal world of the beach and the big huge house, so we went to this house for downtrodden women. It was very Sweeney Todd-esque. Inside, we sat at a table and talked to a few women. They all looked very strange.. I think it may have been something to do with their eyebrows and their bone structure. At the table we sat at there were three women like this and two people next to us who were just hooded heads with no visible faces. We tried to get some information out of these women (and at this point my companion was a woman about my age who was somewhat fairy-like, like she had some intimate knowledge of this realm. She seemed reminiscent of my college crush Ana) but then the two hooded figures started having various faces appear in their hoods and apparently these hooded figures always gave false information to bring you deeper into despair and keep you in this realm. But there was something dangerous about them, so I think we decided to try our luck with the balcony again. So we started going through the city and lots of freaky horror-house stuff happened, like this guy emerged from his house as we were walking by and threw an axe into the house across the street.
As we wandered this shadow world, I think someone must have told us that we needed to eat the cake from the café in the building under the balcony. I think we may have returned to the downtrodden women’s house to find out this information. So finally we see the familiar building, which was well-lit with vending machines outside. We were very happy to have found this and we talked about falling into bed together once we got home and making out all night (at this point it was a mixture of Ana and Megan. It was like, I knew it was bad that we would be doing stuff together, but the girl talked and walked like Megan). Finally we enter and there’s this little Starbucks-like establishment with three types of cake. They all looked fancy, and I was getting my money out and choosing a slice when I woke up.
I had another weird one last night. Maybe Scott is right about writing down dreams, so here I go.
This dream had two distinct parts. The first part was earlier in the night, so I don't remember it so well. But the big thing I remember was that I was exploring this GIGANTIC underwater world, I suppose in some sort of underwater craft, and it was in video game style partially. Though everything looked real, I had a cursor that I was using to select points on a map of this huge underwater world that could take me deeper or toward the surface. Unfortunately, all I remember of this world was a huge-ass fish/shark thing that was just swimming around and... something about combining gold and this sparkly blue rock and unleashing a gigantic pestilence of small insects or something. I think that last bit may come from the factory system of Rogue Galaxy, which I'm playing now.
The second dream was a bit more realistic and I remember it better. I was taking piano lessons and was learning this one song that probably doesn't exist. I can see the sheet music (at least the beginning) in my head, and I was making good progress. But I was at home practicing on my mom's piano and the keys kept sticking. So I opened up the top and was looking at all the parts inside and I thought to myself that I'm really well-suited for this because of my time working at my grandfather's piano company (which I actually did, so I know quite a bit about the insides of pianos).
Then, suddenly... I'm at Ryan's in China. And someone else is visiting with me. He had a small little apartment with a balcony that overlooked a foggy city, and all I could see was one pagoda-like building rising out of the mist. Everything else was obscured. I was anxious for him to take me out and show me the city, but it was getting dark, and I got the impression that you don't want to be out after dark.
Luckily for us, there was a piano in Ryan's apartment, so I used my newfound skills (which weren't that impressive) to play a wide variety of popular songs on the piano. Strange thing is, I knew that I was just experimenting and trying to find the notes on the piano, but I kept doing it right. I played... the End of Heartache by Killswitch Engage, the X-Files theme... and that's all I can remember.
It was hard, though, because all of a sudden I was trying to play through bedsheets. It was like someone had put sheets and a blanket over the piano. So I tried ripping them off, only to find that the keys were embedded into the side of a mattress, and some of them were obscured. I thought about trying to rip the piano out of the mattress, but thought against it.
Then, there was this strange dark figure that started prowling around outside. The best way to describe it is like that shadowy thing in Spirited Away that eats a ton of shit; it was all swathed in black and it had a silver face mask on its head. Thing is, we all knew it was just a person dressed up, so it wasn't threatening. Apparently it was just some Chinese cultural thing. So we watched it, and it entered the apartment next to Ryan's. For some reason the wall joining the two apartments became transparent and we watched the figure enter the other apartment. Inside, a man sat at a table eating from a bowl and didn't pay the figure any attention. Then it turned, saw us watching, and walked out on the balcony and came toward Ryan's door.
I asked him if the door was locked and he nonchalantly replied "No, I don't keep it locked." Then the figure opened Ryan's door, silently padded inside, and walked toward the corner with the TV. He grabbed a box; it was my Donkey Kong Jenga (given to me by our own Adam as a Christmas present). He started to walk out with it. I looked at Ryan, puzzled and a bit annoyed, and said "Dude, get it back." So Ryan sighed, walked over to the glass door which the figure had just walked out through, and turned on a long fluorescent tube light. The figure then walked back into the room without his mask; it was just a Chinese guy. He put the box down, and bowed; I dream-knew that this was the custom. You turn on a light for them and they release what they've taken. Then I woke up.
While I dreamt, it seems my brain was uncomfortable with this new outer stimulus. Whatever plot my dream originally had planned was derailed by my dream self's frustration that I had earphones permanently affixed to my head. Whenever I pulled them off, a new pair would magically be reaffixed to my head instantly. And because no other person in my dream could hear the music in my brain, my dream self began to believe he was going crazy. All in all, not a good night.
Occasionally I'll have a dream where, for some strange reason, I'm back in high school as my present self. Either there was some mix-up with my degree or the classes that I took, or whatever, but I find myself going back to high school with all these people who are WAY younger than me. Usually those dreams don't last very long and are more fuzzy than vivid.
Last night I had a similar dream, but it was much more vivid. I was back in high school, but so were the same people that I actually went to high school with. We all were back because of some mass... thing. I don't know. As usual in these dreams, I was running late and arrived in English class near the very end. The teacher gave a jovial yet snarky remark about me being late and I said we could talk about it after class. Then I sat down and started chatting with some people that I knew. I remember that we all started talking about how weird this was, since we've always had dreams about having to be in high school again, but this time it was finally REAL. Strange how dreams come true sometimes. After that comment (and this dream really DID feel real, and I could distinguish it as more real than those other dreams felt), I started expressing my doubts about the class. After all, I have a master's degree in English literature, so what would this class look like? Would I be bored to tears? Would I have to just have to hold back on my commentary and discussion on the text since I've had experience being in graduate-level seminars? (somewhat pompous on my part). Mostly I just reflected on the silliness of it; why did I have to retake this class when my schooling has clearly gone beyond it?
The dream then flashed forward. I was sitting in my room, which was apparently located IN the school. I got the sense that because of my special circumstances (apparently my other classmates were out of the picture at this point and it was a usual "I'm 7-10 years older than everyone else here" scenario) I was allowed to live in the school. Suddenly I realized that I had parked my car in the student lot that morning, and I felt that my car may have been towed since most student cars are meant to be gone after school lets out.
So I walked out of my room, which seemed to be located at the back of some sort of small food serving area, since there was a big gate that could be raised or lowered that blocked it off. As I was closing it and going out to check on my car, two of my old students ran up to me and tried to get my attention. One was the gothy/animu girl from two semesters ago, and the other was the theater girl that flirted with me incessantly from the same class. Animu girl had her boyfriend with her (she's single, so I don't know what that means) but theater girl ran up and gave me a big hug and looked really happy to see me (this really happened a few weeks ago; we ran into each other on campus and chatted for a minute). Then the three decided to go with me.
So we walked out of the school and toward the downtown area. Theater girl was officially at my side and occasionally trying to hold my hand, and I reciprocated. I also realized at this point that she was quite a bit taller than me. I looked down and saw that she was wearing heels, but even without them she would have been taller than me. If I remember correctly, she's either about my height or shorter than me by a little bit, so again, no idea what that means. Even still, as we walked, she rested her head on my shoulder. As we got closer to the downtown area, a car started coming down the road toward us. I moved into a stairwell to the side, and theater girl put her hood up and made a... whooshing sound, I suppose (not with her mouth, but like a magic power as you'd see in cartoons), and sort of faded into a mass of shadow, and flew up the stairwell. I tried to pull my own hood up, but the hoodie I had on was far too small and the hood wouldn't go on properly and putting the hood up made it expose my lower back a bit.
Then I woke up.
My husband helped me in trying to position the cats, and I figured the key to getting this question right was exactly where the male and female cats were placed in the pile. But four unfamiliar cats don't tend to get along. The tortoiseshell ran off, the persian ran in the other direction.
Tacos, deep fried shrimp/crab balls, simple enough. Then I noticed two Bichon Frise dogs sitting on the food counter. I asked the chef about them, and he mopped one in basil/spinach leaves for me and explained how you clip off chunks of its white fur, bathed in the green leaves' water, and eat it. Somehow the dog ended up on my tray and I purchased this delicacy.
And then I realized what I had done. After I eat the fur, I have to keep the dog as a pet, because I won't be killing it. Shit, I don't want a dog! I didn't even want to eat dog fur in the first place, what the hell
It was awful, and sort of a nightmare, except for two things that just made it weird:
A) In it, I was a cute, fairly large-breasted girl with very long braided pigtails;