Snow

Unfortunately, last nights dreams faded quickly. Especially as it had one of my favorite themes: snow. What bits I do remember involved being in a large garage with several automobiles inside in various states of disrepair. Outside was snow. Alot of it. The garage was up on a hill looking down over a large mountainside lot. The snow was deep on the mountain. Several feet in some places, and very chunky as if it were piled up there by big machines.

There were a few people at the garage. Adults and children. I am really not sure what they were doing there. At one point however, a pair of lions appeared, coming up the hill towards the garage entrance. I exclaimed that they needed to get the children inside the car. Next, I noticed the lions were focused on my dogs, Stout and Eleanor.

I directed Linda to take them into an orange vw beetle that sat atop another car. She had to enter through the sun roof which was opened. Once inside, she struggled to get the soft top closed. Frustrated and fearing for the pups, I leaped at one of the lions, knocking it back. Remembering my bear training, I tried to appear as large as possible (because, if it works on bears, it should work on lions ). It did work, or at least, they became disinterested enough that they departed.

This is where the dream became fuzzy. We needed to head down the hill. I pointed out that it was easier to ski down, basically sliding, then to try to fight the slick snow and ice. After that, I don't recall what happened.

Skiing, and snow, are one of my reoccurring dreams that I really enjoy having though. On occasion, I will dream that behind the elementary school that I attended as a child, there is a ski hill. It always starts out that there is enough snow for skiing, however, as I move down the hill, the snow becomes sparse, and eventually, it is mostly grass with patches of snow. Despite the grass, I always try to continue down the hill.

It is funny because despite feeling sad about the snow, and then the lack of snow, it is a dream that I always feel good about when I wake up.

Some old themes...

One of the dreams I had last night was from a theme that I have not had in a while. I was in a department store of sorts, being pursued. The pursuit seemed to be in the form of a game of tag. One of my co-workers, Gil, was it. He is a very fit black male whom I've worked with before.

He was chasing me through the store in the clothing department. There were circular racks of coats, shirts and pants that I would duck into and move from rack to rack. At one point, I made it into the drop ceiling of the building, moving amongst the ducts and light fixtures suspended up there. He knew I was up there and occasionally I would see him lift a tile and raise his head in there looking for me.

I eventually managed to find a way onto the roof. The route to the roof was impossible to find, so I knew I would never be found up there. I relaxed while I let him search in vain below. Eventually I made my way back down to hear him announce that he was yielding, quite impressed that he was unable to find me.

It has been awhile since I last had the dream of being pursued through a building or a shopping center. It always makes for quite the interesting dream. Usually it is one or the other, and usually the shopping center is a grocery mart (usually the old Farmer Jack's that was near my house as a youth).

The next dream started out on a new path, but found an old theme quite quickly. I was going to a series of presidential parties and needed a suit. I had one suit on already, but it was for the follow on party and I needed something more formal for the dinner event. I returned home to get a different suit, but not to my home. It was to my parent's home.

No one was there when I went inside. I went up to my old bedroom to look through the closet for a suit. It was dusk outside and I noticed someone walk down the street towards the house. The figure stopped in the street just in front of the yard. It was Heather. I called down to her to ask what she was doing.

She announced that she had been looking for me so I called her in. She had been waiting all day for me. After talking, she mentioned that she had seen people go in and out of the house earlier in the day. No one should have been there and I realized that someone must have broken into the house.

At that realization, I walked down the hallway to what was my sister's old room and noticed someone laying down on the bed in there under the covers. They were aware they had been detected as I hurried back to my room to get my gun. The intruder opened fire on me through the wall and I returned fire. We exchanged shots until both our guns were empty.

As I went to my closet looking for ammo, I found the loaded clip I kept in the side table drawer. At that moment, I realized that the intruder probably did not plan on a running gun battle. I was correct. Out of ammo he charged the room and I shot him dead.

Another fragmented night....

Unfortunately last nights sleep was continuously disrupted as it had the potential to provide some great dreams. The few I did have were quite vivid, but have been fading fast.

The first took place at what was my parents house, only not the house they are in now. There was a party going on with friends and family present. In one of the rooms, I saw someone I did not know light up a cigarette in the house. I was besides myself that someone would just assume they could smoke in here, or worse, that they knew it was not allowed but chose to anyhow.

I approached them and told them they could not smoke in the house and they reluctantly extinguished the cigarette. Just then, almost defiantly, someone nearby lit one. I reached over and took the cigarette from them and put it out. I could not believe the nerve of these people. Angry, I walked into the kitchen where I saw several people smoking, including members of my own family, including my mother. My grandmother, who was also smoking, told me I was being unreasonable.

I was furious. My grandfather was there as well, looking quite young with a full head of hair (which is really odd as he never really had any hair). He said somethings hoping to settle me, but it was too late. I was so put off by all this that I was leaving.

It was an odd thing to be so put off by, however I was moving out. It was the final straw. I started packing what I could and I was headed back off to school.

First vivid dream in days...

There were three distinct story lines from last night.

In the first, Linda and I were opening some kind of store in a small town (presumably Clare, MI). The shelves were mostly empty and we were just fussing about. Then I noticed I had a hair in my mouth. I pulled it out, but there was another, and another. Then I finally found the last one and it was very long and went along my tongue and down my throat. It felt awful as I pulled it as I could feel it traveling up my throat. At one point, the hair was caught on my tongue so I had to snap it off, and grab it again from where it broke. As I pulled the remaining few inches, I found that there was a fishing hook on the end.

I was amazed that I was able to pull this fishing hook from my stomach, up my esophagus without becoming lodged along the way. I was also bothered as to how the hook came to be at the end of this hair and how it ended up in my stomach. Two women then appeared in the shop, one young and one older. They were the previous owners of the store. The younger one was excited for us while the older one was bitter. Somehow I knew she was responsible for the hook incident and I confronted her. I threatened legal action. Oddly, the small hair with a tiny hook on the end was now a large hook on a length of burlap twine.

Men started filing into the store. We had a sign up sheet there for a baseball game that was going to happen. We were a bit overwhelmed at the number of people that came, but we instructed all to head over to the fields.

The baseball park was set up on two levels. The upper area a circle with three diamonds, the lower a partial ring following the circumference of the upper, also had three diamonds. The bottom fields had games in progress so we headed for the upper, which our house happened to back up to.

As we approached the diamonds, I became dismayed as I noticed their layout. They had just completed construction of these three fields. They formed a triangle, two of them faced the dropoff and the third faced the other two. Any long balls would either end up over the edge or in one of the other two fields.

Next, we went tuna fishing. It started with swimming in the water and seeing tuna swimming. I then proceeded to work the fish into a boil. Next, we boarded a large commercial charter boat with alot of people. Everyone was standing on the deck. The customers on this trip were not the typical salty tuna fishing community, however appeared to be made up of yuppie couples on their first fishing trip ever.

Linda and I were there with the dogs (at least Stout) and Kitty Kitty. I realized that with all these novice fishermen, I should take advantage and find a bottom bunk so the animals would be close. Long distance tuna fishing charter boats have sleeping quarters that are in the hull of the boat. Typically two or three bunks high. This boat had two sleeping areas, three bunks high for a good 50'.

As I descended into the sleeping quarters, all the bunks were taken. I quickly departed to check the other side but found the same to be true. Linda had already secured a small bunk for herself and the cat. A very small middle bunk. I went with Stout to the deck where the crew was busy readying the boat. Oddly, it was not a typical fishing crew. It was more like the crew of a cruise liner, well dressed and well mannered. I told the captain all the bunks were full (read, the ship is overbooked). He said if I wanted, I could sleep on the deck.

Normally, on a fishing boat, sleeping on the deck would be wet and uncomfortable. This boat was very large and there were several locations that would make for nice sleeping. I was pleased with the thought of being able to breath fresh air as the holds of these ships can become quite stale with so many occupants. As he showed me the spots he suggested, he thrust open a curtain to another area of the deck. There were huge tables with amazing arrangements of food. Giant platters with enormous works of art crafted of all varieties of meats and vegetables.

As I stood there shocked, the captain told me that it was intended to be a surprise for the guests. I told him I had never seen such a lavish table and that this was quite gracious of him.

With this, Stout and I headed to the stern of the ship. This was the first time Stout noticed the water, and at the back of the boat, it was very close. So close in fact that Stout decided he would jump right in. In a panic I shouted, "man overboard! Stop the motors!" I shouted "man overboard" rather then "dog overboard" to avoid any confusion. Just as I did, I noticed that the boat was not even moving. I ran to the front of the boat to see why. Right away I noticed a tropical island about 100 yards off the front of the boat and people were swimming near the beach.

Things changed as we were back at my house drinking at the bar. Things from here become somewhat fuzzy. I said something and Bob started singing Irish drinking songs. Then Stacey showed up with a bottle of some horrible alcohol. She insisted that she liked it but cringed each time she took a drink. We tried to add some root beer to it to help the taste, but her glass was nearly full to the brim, leaving little room to add anything.

As I looked under the bar for another glass, I saw a glass skull. I said, "wow. I forgot I had these." I then noticed a variety of bottles with skulls as part of their shapes. Just then, Stacey calmly mentioned that when she went home to get her liquor she noticed someone had broken into their house. She said, "they really didn't take anything" and pretty much dismissed the event entirely.

She had found the tip of a nail file in their front lock, and looked this 'style' of burglary in a
book that analyzed burglaries much like a book of dreams. The book said that this burglary was most likely committed by a neighbor who had recently been slighted either directly or indirectly. Stacey's expression changed to suggest she knew exactly which neighbor this would be.

Realizing the time, we gathered ourselves to goto the mall to see a movie. I don't recall where it came from, but I was going to ride a scooter to the mall. Linda did not want to ride with me, so Theresa did. It was a small Vespa style scooter and she rode in front of me on the seat. I steered from the back, although she was trying as well. She pointed out that the person in front usually steers, but I noted that I was bigger and this would be easier.

As we approached the mall parking lot, there were huge balloons or floats or plastic statues of winged pink elephants and rhinos. Stacey said this was some Disney display. They moved about the parking lot slowly. As we passed, I caused one of the smaller displays to fall over. An elderly lady came and tried to take my bag, siting it as the cause of the disruption. I held it behind my back, trying to walk past and then I woke up.

People, Places, and Things

So, upon starting this blog, I have realized that many of my dreams are incoherent. Okay, that might seem obvious, but as with everything, there is a certain relativity for adjectives. Last nights dreams were rather spotty, but did reveal that there are some places I enjoy 'visiting'.

For instance, a short dream I had last night took place at Elk Lake, where my family summered while I was growing up. In the dream, we were swimming. Oddly, by the trees rather then the beach. I have always had an aversion to touching lake bottoms that were not sandy and firm, and by the trees on Elk Lake, the bottom becomes rocky and has plant growth.

While we stood over there (I really am not sure who the people were) someone returned in a boat from across the lake. They had come into possession of a water/air pressure powered rocket. The rocket piece was only a cone, but it had tremendous range and accuracy. I target a group in a small rowboat a good hundred yards out and launched. The rocket shot almost straight up in the air, and landed right next to the girl sitting in the middle of the boat! It was amazing how accurate it was, and also a little frightening that I almost hit someone with it. Oops.

Elk Lake is one of my favorite places to dream about. The dreams are almost always about being in the lake, swimming or boating. Like traveling through time.

The dream shot to a bizarre scene of a small lake, more like a pond, where I was loading up a small fishing boat onto a trailer. It had the feeling like many of my boat dreams of late. The water was drying up, and it was almost a race to get the boat from the water before it ended up 'beached'. In this small pond, however, someone was fishing. They were salmon fishing, and the water 'seemed' really deep although it was only about 12' or so at it's deepest. When fishing for salmon on Lake Michigan, we would run the lines to depths of 80+ feet. And that is where the confusing part of this pond rested.

The fish were deep, yet I could see them. And the fisherman's hook. I noticed his jigging caused the fish to go into a frenzy. I yelled that they were starting to boil and I threw my line in as well. I battled the first one to the shore. I had never seen a salmon, or any other fish, fight so hard. I managed to get it ashore, and into the boat. I had four fish in the boat when I finished up and was ready to leave.

The theme of the disappearing water is one I have often in different ways. Usually, it's on Lake Powell, on a houseboat. Venturing into different canyons along the lake. The geography of the lake in my dreams suggested that each canyon was essentially a small lake unto itself. The boat had to cross over a shallow 'lip' as it entered. Once inside, the water level would be very low. Grass and seaweed was exposed along with wet sand that had only recently been under water.

In other dreams, I would be in a cruise ship navigating shallow waterways. These were always exciting as they often required the ship to generate great momentum to overcome the patches of exposed land along our path. The ship often had the feeling that it's occupants were displaced persons, looking for a new place to settle. In a couple of dreams, the huge ocean liner would have to gain great amounts of speed in an attempt to horizontally descend a waterfall.

Another reoccurring dream that really has no relation to anything I dreamt about last night is one of war. Of a huge invasion, almost as if from another planet. Huge ships made attacks from high up in the atmosphere. You could see them at night like brilliant satellites orbiting the planet. And horrible ground assaults with tanks and warbots. Almost always I was at my father's house in Michigan, hiding and defending. It would always be dark, disturbed only by the glow from the fires in near by neighborhoods. These dreams always give me a sense of fear and calm.

Sadly little to post today...

It was a rough night. Nothing like being woken up around midnight and unable to fall back asleep soundly to squelch dreams. There were some, but they were fragmented and hazy. One was about being in Las Vegas with Bob. We were at some dive bar early in the day, possibly near Old Town. And one of my high school classmates was the manager (of the casino?) I barely remember his name, but he remembers us. He starts to talk to us, at first because of our ties to high school, but mostly because of a letter of complaint Bob had written about our visit to the establishment. He really didn't seem interested in making things right, just reviewing the complaint and putting it to bed.

After that we returned to my condo (in Vegas). It was like a penthouse suite on a low rise (say, 15 floors or so?) It was not very big, about 1000 sf, but was fabulously appointed. About one third of the living space was the balcony, which was lavishly appointed with overstuffed chaise lounges and various plants. There was no door or physical divider between the patio and the inside of the home.

Just inside was a large circular bar with huge aquariums dividing it down the center. Traveling behind the bar, beyond the aquariums revealed a smallish room, (12' x 18') with more aquariums. I had actually brought my classmate here to show him this. Each aquarium was large, at least 200 gallons. And each had different species of fish or different sizes of the same species. They were tiered in twos and threes and essentially covered the walls of the room around to the bar. He acknowledged that it was impressive, but felt a little over done for such small living quarters. Apparently using 1/3 of one's living space for aquariums is compulsive.

This is where the dreams started to fragment. Next I was driving down 5 mile road in Michigan and there were turkeys in the road. On each side was a circle of turkeys, at least 70 in each circle. At first I thought they were flat so I accelerated just to get past the devastation, only to find that they were mostly in tact, but seemingly dead. With a lot of horrible thumps and bouncing the truck rolled over the fowl. Aghast, I pulled over at the first street where there were a few onlookers discussing the tragic fate of the turkeys.

At this point I was across from the turkey farm, and few birds remained behind it's fences. They said during the night vandals opened the fence allowing the turkeys to enter the roadway. They continued by stating that whomever was responsible has been repeatedly targeting the turkey farm and nearby neighborhoods with acts of vandalism. This infuriated me so I decided that I would try to catch them in the act and intended to park across the street overnight and wait.

The dreams jumped again... further fragmented and blurred. Working for Bernie again in San Diego. I wired something together for him only to find that it was incorrect. Not that what I had done was incorrect but what I was first instructed to do was. Easy enough to fix.

First and foremost

So another blog. This one has several purposes. For starters, I want to try out the blogger hosted templates. They offer a few additional options and I want to see if a) they are any good and b) if I may be able to replicate them on my main blog.

I also have alot of dreams. Every night. They fascinate me. Each dream is very vivid and has alot of detail. For instance, last night, I dreamt that I was in St. Edith's parking lot, in the back seat of a car. Naked. I was fooling around with some woman, then for whatever reason she had to go. The parking lot was empty, but people were filing in for xmas mass. It was snowy and gray out. The patrons were all wearing their winter clothes.

I was trying to quickly cover myself up, when two girls came upto the car and started looking in the windows. They started to make fun of me and laugh, calling attention to the church goers what I was doing. I quickly covered myself up with a tee shirt and a newspaper and exited the car insisting the girls were lying. Oddly enough, this demonstrated that I was indeed dressed and the church goers vowed to inform the girls parents that they were causing trouble.

Next, for what ever reason, I was in the church. Stout, Eleanor and White Kitty were all in there. I needed to gather them up and exit before mass began. People were taking their seats and the pastor asked if I wanted to stay. I pointed out I had the menagerie of animals to contend with. He did not object to that, but I still felt I should go.

As I slowly gathered my self and my pets, I saw Mrs. Gage, my neighbor from my youth (and my father's neighbor to this day). She was sitting alone near the front of the church. She did not notice me and that made me both releaved and sad. I was just as content removing my self with as little attention as possible at this point, but also disheartened that she either did not recognize me, or that she chose to ignore me. I had to assume the former, as she has always been a caring individual. But I also wondered where her husband was and feared the worst.

I managed to get to the lobby with all the animals, and oddly, this was a very familiar place. For whatever reason, this is one of the places I often return in my dreams. To this church, the lobby, that parking lot, that block of the city. I walked home in the dream although my memory of that journey is clouded. It seems it was now late and snowy. Walking through the neighborhood in dark of night. Memories from when I had a paper route and the solitude I felt delivering the Observer in the winter.

Next the dream jumped as dreams tend to do. I was in some office building on some mission of destruction. The short of what I can remember is, Tom Chatsworth and myself were there to turn off the cooling system for the server room and take down the buildings computer system. I remember we were walking into the office very casually met by a couple of women who were flirtatiously curious as to who we were and how we arrived on the floor we did (apparently it was a secure floor/building).

Tom, as he is prone to do, becomes more interested in their flirtation rather then their suspicion. I became deeply concerned that his behavior was going to compromise our mission. At the same time, I found the younger of the two women to be remarkable. The scene jumped again, and one of us managed to disable the fans. We needed to leave quickly. For whatever reason, I had my dogs again. Tom was still half distracted by the flirtatious behavior of the women and lagging behind.

At that moment, I decided to ditch him. Let him get caught, serves him right. I took my dogs and found an elevator. It turned out to be a freight elevator. Stout hates elevators, and was really going to hate this one. Being that it was a freight elevator, the friendly maintenance man that just happened to have come up on it offered his assistance. He told me I made a good choice and that it was not only a freight elevator, it was express so it went extra fast. Stout was REALLY not going to like this. As the elevator dropped, I had the sensation of weightlessness. I gave Stout a reassuring pet. He seemed to be taking it in stride.

The door opened and we exited out the back of the building into the parking lot. The office building shared it's lot with a Mexican restaurant. I decided to head there for quick cover. As we headed over, I spied a large German Shepard in the lot. He was unattended and unleashed. I gathered up Stout and Eleanor's leash to better control them, hoping this dog was not aggressive. Just as I did, the dog came over, and turned out to be VERY friendly giving a stern face washing and allowing Stout and Eleanor to 'investigate' him.

I noticed he had a collar with a couple tags. I checked the first tag, a generic looking bronze colored round tag, for a phone number and found none. I announced aloud that I found it strange that such a well behaved well bred dog did not have the owners number on his collar. Just as I went to check the second tag, a heavy square tag that shone of silver, a man approached and huffed that there was INDEED a phone number on the collar, and that it was his dog. I was a little put off, and wanted to explain that I didn't see the other tag, and etc etc etc....

I also was concerned that this man was not really the dog's owner, but the dream disallowed that thread to continue so I went into the restaurant. Inside I sat at a large bar. There were three bottles of tequila left at the end of the bar where I was at, one nearly empty. The bottles were slumped low and had a blue/silver fleck in the heavy glass. I grabbed it and filled a shot glass with nearly all it's remains, leaving only drops in the bottle.

A patron sitting across the bar stared at me with bemusement. I imagined he wondered who I was that I could just grab a bottle off the bar and start pouring myself drinks. Just then I heard people singing a birthday song. Bob was there leading them on. They were singing to me I realized. I started to insist that it was not my birthday. That they were early by two weeks, at least. And that, was really a stretch as I realized it was only March. I decided that nothing good would come from correcting the mistake, and if anything, I might lose any opportunities for free drinks.

The funny thing was, Bob sang some new birthday tune. I can not recall how it goes now, but I was singing it all morning as I readied for work today. The dream then concluded with overhearing some woman exclaim aloud that she was frustrated, and ready to 'move on' if only someone would give her a zip code. "85023!" I shouted from across the bar. She smiled a peaceful smile. Then my alarm sounded.

There are even some details that don't fit anywhere in the story, but lurk in my memory. On the walk home from the church, it was not directly home. Linda then joined me as we walked up Comstock. We noticed that the house 2nd to the end of the block was for sale. Next to Don Portman's house. I commented about how I owned that house along time ago, and we became excited at the prospect that in this down economy, it might be cheap. It was. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $70k. Linda pointed out that, from her memory, the house was in shambles and would not be the home I remembered so we passed.

There are also other fleeting memories of the people we encountered while walking the neighborhood. Random events that reoccurre in my dreams. These are the things I hope to capture. It's almost like having a second life that I live. The memories are as vivid as events that happen in real life, and the experiences feel as real. I would imagine these are stored no differently then actual memories, so I am hoping to exploit them into doubling my experiences as long as I can.