Outbreak ~ 12/27/2013

It was dark and gusty outside, and we were all holed up in a large old house on the edge of town trying to decide what to do.  There were reports of a deadly new virus springing up on the edges of the state, though none reported near us, as of yet.  There was a team of immunologists in one room, working on a vaccine.

The big danger to us was that people carrying the virus were bound to be blown into town by the storm, and the wind pattern would carry them right to us during the coming storm.  A coworker showed me, in detail, how air currents tended to start a large swirl around the extreme northwestern tip of Louisiana, which, when looking at a map, rose like a tall thin mushroom along the Texas border, separating Texas from Mississippi, which was tucked in the middle of Louisiana. This swirl of air would hook down along where the outbreak was, then come over us in the eastern part of the state.

The doctors had found a vaccine, they said, and were going to start distributing it widely. They went back into their room, and a heavy mist began to seep up from holes in the floor.  But, wait! When I peeked into the room, they were all wearing gas masks! Was the mist the vaccine, or was it the virus?

Quickly we locked one door to their room on the outside, and I ran around to another door, wedging it shut with my weight against it.  We had to keep them in there until their respirator air supply ran out, so they'd have to breath the mist all around us, too, or until they explained exactly what was going on.

Over and over again they shoved against the door, which opened no more than a few inches, then slammed shut on them as i pushed back against it.  They didn't know I was there, and were confused, but not panicked.  Eventually, I realized that I was the only one left in the house, besides them.  And I also realized the mist hadn't hurt me, so maybe it was the vaccine, after all.

Then all three of the immunologists pushed against the door, where I was slumped, now too tired to even really try to keep it open, and I decided to play dead.  They shoved the door open wide enough to come out, stepping over my limp figure wedged against it on the floor.  They put me inside the room where they'd been, and shut the door on me.  Somehow I knew they'd try to come around and lock me in the way they'd been locked in. The other door was unlocked again, for now, for some reason, so I jumped up quietly, slipped out, and ran to the back door, out to the yard, and into my car, before they could come around and lock me in.

I got in my car and began to drive out to my remote farm house out in the country, where hopefully I'd be safe from people infected with the virus, or keep people safe from me, if I was infected, or just relax if I'd actually been vaccinated.  The wind was still tearing through the fields of tall grass, that would be golden in sunlight, but were silvered by starlight and moonlight under a sky luminously gray-violet as dawn approached.  The air felt fresh and cold, and I turned the heater on in my car. And then I woke up with the worst tension headache I've had in years.  I wonder why.

Fun and Games ~ 12/19/2013

I was playing an un-televised, street corner version of a game show game where rows an columns of pictures scrolled down a wall-sized screen, sort of like a giant slot machine, but slow enough to see the pictures as the passed. Each picture was worth different points or prizes, and you collected them by touching them before they scrolled off the bottom, but you had to collect a certain number to get the prize, and some pictures would wipe out your totals for some prizes. At more advanced levels, with better prizes, there were pictures you did NOT want to touch because they would negate all your collections, and, at the end of the round, however many storm troopers you'd collected on accident would appear and have to be fought. Fun times.

I was about done playing the game when a couple of my acquaintance showed up with their toddler son and infant daughter.  The husband was someone I'd been good friends with for a while, but apparently his wife and I didn't get along.  She challenged me to a fist fight, and I took her ass DOWN, without really hitting hard, just hard enough to startle her and keep her off balance until I knocked her to the ground and pinned her. After that I let her up and she left me alone, and I went to go play with the kids for a while.

Suddenly we realized we'd been snowed into the bar where the game was.  I think we were in Virginia or something, but we were snowed in.  There was a little bedroom, next to a dining room and kitchen that looked just like my grandparents' house.  Someone's Uncle Rudy came downstairs just as we were putting my friends' children, along with three other little boys about five years old, down for a nap.  Uncle Rudy wanted to take a nap, too, so they all piled into the king sized bed that took up most of the bedroom.  But Uncle Rudy was NOT very genial, and he started pushing the kids out of the bed.  The older boys did fine, but it was a good thing I went to check, because I just barely caught the toddler as he went head first off the mattress, and I was able to grab the baby girl before she followed.

At least by then the snow melted, so we all headed out to go see Westminster Abbey.  There was this viewing platform out in the middle of a gorgeous tropical bay called Sapphire Shoals, because of the deep blue color of the gorgeous water.  I had along with me a little companion animal.  It was about the size of a teacup chihuahua, but... it wasn't a dog, and... it wasn't a cat or a rat or... well, anything I can identify.  It was gray and had thin silky fur, and ENORMOUS ears, and it could talk in a tiny, high voice, in its own language, which I had learned.  It's name was Pipsqueak.

Pipsqueak and I had a great time on the boat out to the viewing station, listening to my friend Kerri talk about the summer she had worked there, and the excursions and tours we could take from the platform.  Then this thing swam by that completely freaked us out. It looked like four long rectangles of rubber, like six feet long and five inches wide, joined in pairs partway along one end, black on the outside and white within.  and the joined together end was the head and it undulated like the sides of a sting ray down the length of the flaps, and for some reason I thought this looked like the rubber car wash flaps, and someone told me it was, indeed, called the car wash skate. So, yeah, Pipsqueak and I were pretty mesmerized by this thing until I woke up.

Dust to Dust, and Flying Spider Snails ~ 12/10/2013

I met my mother and sister in Seattle.  Mom had heard of a retirement community she was researching for future purposes.  This place was condos built in among cemetery plots.  You could buy the condo and be buried in your back yard.  And these weren't just any old square chunk of lawn cemetery plots.  One of them was a tiny rounded scoop of land about the size of a small dining room table, surrounded by picturesquely moss-covered gray stone. The moss almost disguised the somewhat ominous, jagged, tooth-like sharpness of the ring.  Almost.  But the focal point was an ancient looking gray headstone with a lovely hand-carved inscription.  Another plot, an empty one attached to the three story split-level condo my mother fancied, included a small gold-fish pond surrounded by... turtles... dozens of tennis ball to salad plate sized turtles in pale pink and oxidized-copper green, all kind of piled around and over each other to form the decorative edge of the pond.  And as we viewed all of this somewhat eccentric luxury in the golden light of a summer afternoon, something stirred in the goldfish pond.  While my mother and sister went to take another look at the condo, and at the map to decide how best to get back to their hotel, I bent over the pond to investigate.

And from the murky, jade green depths arose a strange, glistening spider, bigger than my hand, covered with actually quite beautiful soft, golden hairs.  Its abdomen was housed in a delicate, iridescent shell, a plump round spiral like a giant land snail's, with an ivory lip and an exterior streaked with pink and aquamarine and silver and canary yellow.  A strange, floaty membrane like the mantle of a cuttlefish pulsed around the opening, and undulated gently as the spider rose to the surface of the water, it's eyes glistening like emeralds and sapphires.

Then the god-damned thing KEPT RISING.  It hovered majestically over the surface of its little pond, drip drying in the warmth of the sunlight that scintillated off of shell and hairs and softly dripping water.  Then it started to FLY AROUND THE YARD, zipping faster and faster to catch flies and darting down the grass to scamper like a hermit crab on cocaine, then leap like a huge jumping spider onto tiny mice hiding in the grass.  I started calling for my mom and sister to come and see this, because there was NO WAY I was letting my mother move to a place where the spiders not only skittered and jumped, but swam and FREAKIN' FLEW.  not to mention that they came with armor.  But the darn thing sank lazily back into the pond as they came to see what I was yelling for, and they absolutely wouldn't believe me, and I absoLUTEly wasn't fishing around for the thing with my bare hands.

We went and looked into the house some more, and then I got lost trying to drive us back to the hotel.  I was just too blown away by the creature who completely eclipsed the strangeness of retirement condos built around a cemetery designed to resemble a luxury miniature golf course.

Bilocation ~ 12/8/2013

I dreamed that I found two little boys on the side of the street.  I took charge of them and cared for them while they looked for their family.  One of them looked just like Monster (my friends' little boy).  I definitely loved my new little buddies, and wanted to do everything I could for them, and they came to love me, too. We wandered the streets of New Orleans, looking for the people they'd lost, and I made sure they ate healthy meals and were tucked in warm each night. The happy day came when we finally located their parents and other siblings, only then I learned that while the other little boy belonged to the family, Monster didn't.  He was actually a homeless orphan that the other little boy had befriended while he was lost.

The family was amazing, though, and immediately took in my Monster, just as though he were their own.  He was happy to have found a forever family, and to stay with the small brother who had adopted him first, but he was so sad to leave me, too.  And I was, of course, sad to see both my boys go, even though I was glad they'd found their good people.

At the last minute, Monster ran back to me and asked if he'd ever see me again.  I told him I didn't know, that I hoped so.  But I told him, even when he couldn't see me, if he ever felt worried or scared or unsure of himself, or ever wondered if I'd forgotten him, there was something he should always remember.  Miss Laura was NEVER going to forget him, and was ALWAYS going to be out there somewhere, loving him SO MUCH.  We both cried a little, and hugged each other *tight*, then I walked with him back to his new family, and he sighed and fell asleep in his new daddy's arms.

But, somehow, he wanted to be with both me and his new family so much, that he spontaneously bi-located, and suddenly, even though I could see one little boy in the arms of the man walking away, another little boy was holding my hand and asking if he could stay with me always.  It was more than just an astral projection, though.  Both little boys were real, corporeal, separate little boys, though somehow psychically linked.  So he really *could* live with both families, and I agreed to adopt my Monster, too, and keep him as my own little boy.

And also amazing in the physical flexibility department in this dream, I found I could just bend over and touch my toes. Crazy!

Bell Curve ~ 12/5/2013

I'm pretty sure I was in Seattle.  It *looked* an awful lot like New Orleans, but I was SURE it was Seattle, and there was a tour guide training seminar in town.  It took the form of a sort of scavenger hunt, scouring the city for historic landmarks and all the coolest places to visit, and some of my tour guide friends were there, along with Captain Malcolm Reynolds, to lead groups of trainees and random interested and paying customers like myself.  We may also have been supposed to save Seattle from alien invaders, but I didn't really catch all the details on that part of our mission, and I never saw any aliens.

I know I went out with a group, but suddenly I was wandering alone.  I finally decided, as I hesitated in the doorway of the Pere Antoine Restaurant and Bar on Royal Street (because of course I was in New Orleans, silly), that it was time for lunch, and I'd never eaten here, for some reason.  So I went in and sat down.  I ordered a Diet Coke and contentedly sipped my soda, enjoying the warm yellow ocher walls, the dark wood and gleaming mirrors and chandelier prisms, the white linen and shiny flatware on my table.  And I started reviewing the pictures I'd taken with my phone.  There was definitely one of St. Louis Cathedral, it's pale walls and dark slate steeples strikingly monochrome against a deep, clear blue sky, above bright green trees, where it perched on sea cliffs looking out over the Atlantic...  And somehow I'd manage to take a photo that was completely recognizable and conveyed every aspect of that, even though the primary point of focus was a single dark window in the white wall, near the entrance, in a study that looked more like a collection of abstract rectangles than a building.  There was also a photo taken through an arched window showing a barn-like building painted in coral and tan, with deep sepia beams visible, separating planes of painted plaster. The angles of the roof came down to overhanging eaves that, with the archway, framed a statue in the distance. Or they would have perfectly framed the statue if I'd held my phone just a little lower, and paid better attention to the angle, because the eaves actually obscured the very top part of the statue.  I was very frustrated that I'd missed such an amazingly composed shot by so little, and that I couldn't take it again.

Also visible in the photo, somehow, were myself and an old-fashioned baby buggy, in which I was pushing around a baby that was somehow my responsibility.  But somehow had not made it to the restaurant with me. I put my phone away to look for the baby, but was distracted by the little pig-tailed girl sitting in the desk next to me.  There I was, drinking my soda and observing a class in an elementary school Uptown.  The room was bright and airy, with a wall of open windows looking onto a concrete courtyard.  There were at least thirty desks arranged in rows around the room, all facing the teacher's desk in the center of the window wall. None of the children paid any attention to me, but instead were listening to the teacher, except the girl beside me.  She asked me politely to pass her the strange object she'd been sending sliding around the classroom floor, that was now lodged on the other side of my chair.

This object was shaped like a three-dimensional bell curve, and was wobbly like a jellyfish.  The edges were colorless and translucent like frosted glass, rising up into a bulbous, crystal clear center, in which floated dark green blobs like the floating globules in a lava lamp.  I somehow knew that this was a very strange variety of jello shot, that the clear center was filled with vodka and a green, sugary syrup that refused to mix.  The whole strange conglomeration was melting in the heat of the room, making it very slippery, and one component of the frosted edges and bottom was encapsulated dry ice, that was sublimating and lifting the jiggling mass up off the floor, allowing it to slide around the classroom like an air hockey puck.  The teacher had asked the class to keep it moving around the room and observe it as it bounced off of objects while she continued to teach the math lesson.

I passed this thing over to the little girl by nudging it with my toe, and joined the class in keeping it moving, whizzing across the tiled floor, ricocheting off of chair legs and walls with sloshy, gurgly noises that made us all giggle, until it got stuck under my seat again.  The teacher finally called an end to the game, and the kids began to file out to recess.  I picked the strange, slippery thing up to hand to the little girl to put in a container she had, but it slipped out of my hands and hit the edge of the container and burst, the vodka and syrup streaming onto the floor, and all the fizzy dry ice buoyancy somehow evaporated in a moment.  I'd broken it!  And then I woke up.

Odder Otter ~ 12/4/2013

I dreamed I was an otter.  A river otter floating on green-gold waters between sandy banks under willow trees.  A time traveling river otter with black fur.

My best friend was a swimming chicken.  Or a floating chicken, who bobbed beside me, floating on the currents, whom I probably had to keep from drowning.  An all white chicken, feathers ragged and wet, floating at my side, looking for adventure.

It's all kind of hazy from there, but I think we invaded a fancy hotel, trailing mud and feathers through the penthouse suite, over quilted satin counterpanes. Is that enough bat-shit crazy for one post?

Hi!

I'm Laura, and this is my mind on not a single drug at all.  I'm not sure yet what format I'll follow here.  Probably nothing solid for a while.  Will my dreams have titles? Maybe.  Will I be sure to include the date, probably.  How often will I post? I have no clue. Will they follow a linear progression? Not at all!  I have dreams recorded in the past that I plan on posting at some point. Will I include commentary or interpretation?  Probably not, but you're welcome to do so in the comments.  I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

So sit back and enjoy!