Hedgehogs and Heroes ~ 12/30/2020

I dreamed that my friend's daughter had asked for a hedgehog for Christmas. I went to visit them after the holidays, and they had an aquarium all set up, since baby hedgehogs were like tadpoles, and lived in the water until they had grown.

The aquarium had shimmering blue gravel at the bottom, and lovely little water plants, and some bright fuchsia shrimp to keep it clean of algae. And there, flooping around happily, was the tiny pink hedgelet, with its pale, pliable spines and just a hint of calico fur starting to show vividly across its back. I kept trying to learn its name, but instead its proud new mama told me lots of facts I didn't know about hedgehogs, though she was uncertain, and I was able to assure her, that they were, in fact, mammals and not amphibians.

I left hedgehog aquarium central to travel to Cornwall. I had a ticket to visit Tintagel while a film crew was shooting a new Arthurian film on site, and I'd get to watch some takes with the lead actors.

I had been to Tintagel before, with my university marching band. The MOB had played a pep concert there about five years before, but I was looking forward to being there on my own with time to explore. The main tourist site was on an island near the south east shore of a broad lake. It wasn't the true early Middle Ages site, but a "replica" built in the 19th century during a neogothic revival. The site billed itself as Brittan in a nutshell, saying the narrow channel between the island and the lake shore was like the English Channel.

I arrived mid-morning on an overcast day. The lake gleamed like pewter in the fitful, pale light, and mist drifted from its surface. Everything was shades of gray, from the dim sky to the mirror-like waters to the fog-bound crags along the lake shore. I crossed over the bridge to the island, and the great hall of the neogothic castle loomed ahead, jutting like the prow of a ship out onto a promontory overhanging the lake on the west side of the island.

I went into the keep, and a polished gray marble floor stretched out before me to the towering glass windows to the west, like the nave of a cathedral, only featuring a view of the lake rather than an altar and tabernacle for the host. There was a stone table, though, where the altar would be, with the sword Excalibur carved into it. All along the sides of the hall were windowed niches like cathedral side chapels, holding pale gray statues of knights and ladies and dragons. The walls were buttressed with rosy pink granite, lending the only color to a scene that was otherwise in hues of silver and shadow.

There was a high balcony on one of the western columns framing the huge windows at the hall's end. I was led up to it, to look down into a yard beneath the hall windows on the little triangle of land that lay between the hall and the tip of the prow-like promontory. When I had visited before, it had been walled, but the walls had been removed so that filming there could capture the panorama of the lake and hills beyond. There "King Arthur" was declaiming a stirring speech that was at the climax of the film. Chris Hemsworth was playing the king, with grizzled beard and long blond hair. I couldn't really hear what he was saying, but his voice rang and echoed in the rafters of the hall.

After they had finished their morning takes, my guide led me to other parts of the site, including a museum and teashop. He was an older gentleman with strawberry blond hair going mostly gray, a strong, square jaw, tanned, weathered skin, and bright blue eyes. He looked familiar, and I asked him if he'd been there before when my band had played. He laughed and said yes, he remembered that, and it had been so much fun.

He sat me at a table that was patterned with teacups and bags of flour and food tins, and asked me to puzzle out what that theme was doing there as a decoration while he went and got me some tea. Of course, it was King Arthur Flour in the bags, and I guessed the other goods were branded King Arthur as well. We talked some more over tea about the lore of the site, the building of the anachronistic castle, why the film crew insisted on using it, ahistorical as it was, my previous visit, and what I would find in the museum, which I hadn't had a chance to visit before. Then he left me to wander on my own.

The teashop and museum were a huge contrast to the stark rose and gray of the hall. The walls were a warm cream color, the floors a golden amber wood, and everything was warm and cozy. One passage in the museum led me to a little turret stair of golden sandstone, and I followed it down to a postern door that opened onto the lake shore. I was walking along the water's edge, over deep, blue-black, wave-smoothed stones, looking out as the sky cleared a bit and the lowering sun flamed the edges of the mist and clouds to fire and gold. And then I woke up. 

Hard Work ~ 12/14/2020

I dreamed I worked in a big office building. I’d just been moved to a new area. I was supposed to sit at a desk in office 2001, with two other people. We were all given the same work and whoever finished first got the credit for the assignment.

The office was crowded with computers and monitors, but I couldn’t log into mine. And I couldn’t do the work without being logged into my computer. I kept having to walk down to IT, but the IT department was in a different part of the building every time.

There were also several corridors labeled as leading to the 20s office block. Only one actually led to the one I needed, but I was new, so when the route I was used to was blocked, and I took another corridor, it was very confusing, because I couldn’t find my office. 

Instead, I ended up outside. Beneath a wide highway overpass. Shuffling through deep, dusty dirt. Having to go around a herd of hundreds of wild ponies. Who were lying around everywhere beneath the overpass like seals on a beach.

I got around the ponies and found myself in a park where a rock concert was in progress to celebrate Pony Day, which was the day every year when the migratory ponies would settle under the bridge. Across the park I saw a side door for my office building, so I headed back in that way.

Thankfully the door opened right into the right set of 20s offices. I got back to my desk, logged into my computer, and was finally able to complete and hand in an assignment I would get credit for. 

By then the work day was over, so I left to go to my friend’s book signing. There were so many people there, which was really gratifying. I got into line to have my copy signed and get a photo. I was near the front, right behind another friend.

We had to go through a dozen different crown control gate points, then wait for a stoplight to turn green, but finally we got to where my friend was. She laughed when she saw me and opened my book to where she’d already signed it. Only to find that I’d somehow gotten someone else’s personalized copy.

I said not to worry, I could sort it out. And we stood together for a picture, but other people kept wanting to also be in the shot, and then they wanted to make a circle, and pretend to be doing a forest dance, but I told them we wouldn’t all fit, and they wouldn’t all be able to face the camera, and the cameraman agreed, so they turned around to face the camera, but then they were blocking me and my friend, and then I woke up.

Safe Space ~ 11/3/2020

 I dreamed I was in a sort of live-action Minecraft world, where I could build and dig and collaborate with friends, and develop tools and different building items using some basic starting objects. I was part of a group of people who were given a choice of starting points, and could from there build out a space to live in, so I picked an area and started digging. 

I had to change areas a couple of times, because people around me were working faster, and kind of cut off the parts where I was trying to expand. I also was not paying a lot of attention to collecting the sort of stone oblong that were the base material to make certain tools, like better shovels. And I wasn't doing much to hunt up the different stations around the area that would give you the crystals that could combine with the stone rods to make keys or window panes or door knobs, or the small motorized wooden blocks that could be used to make vehicles to help move around quickly or haul materials.

I kept breaking through into other areas and having to reroute, but it was okay at first, because I could always go back and fix it. Some of them weren't owned by anyone, and I could also incorporate them into my design. There was a library with scarlet velvet curtains and high windows, and I decided I would keep that. I mostly just needed to define an area, then work on getting it closed off to others and established as my place. So, I had to secure my entry way, and all of the doors leading out of the library.

To do that, I needed to find a router block, which was one of the oblongs of stone. They were porous, like pumice, but polished smooth. They had a flat surface down their length, and were rounded, sort of semicircular in profile along that. They were irregular, organic in shape, and could be combined with these rectangular, smoky gray crystals, in several ways to make several different items, including keys.

But there was a guy whose whole strategy wasn't to carve out his own structure, but to develop tools and objects fast. He figured out how to make, not just a regular key, but a super key that would transform doors into doors only he could lock and unlock, forever. He decided he wanted the house I was building, and that he also wanted to terrorize me for fun, so he started stalking me.

He chased me out of the best parts of what I was building, and I had no where to hide. My friends tried to help me get my own super key so that I could wall off his doors and install my own. But because I had broke through so many places, there were all sorts of areas where he could still gain entry into any area I tried to carve out and secure. At last I was just running, and trying to dive into caves and throw up secure doors behind myself, but he seemed to have an entire map of the area, and found back ways into my caves, and doors in rooms that I hadn't secured yet. 

Finally, I was cornered, and he was right behind me, and he had hold of one side of the door, and was trying to shut it, because he couldn't secure it with his key unless it was fully shut and latched, and I was clinging to the handle trying to keep it from closing, but also blocking it so he couldn't come in and throw me out. And I was sobbing for him to just leave me alone. And then I woke up.

Hungry Hungry Hippos ~ 9/11/2020

I dreamed I had a little brother, and he was trying to poison me. He had rosy brown ringlets and bright, round brown eyes, and everyone loved him, and couldn't believe any ill of him. I loved him too, and wanted so much for it not to be true, but he was definitely trying to poison me. Primarily so he could have the bathroom to himself and not have to share it with me, I think.

He had this plan, to put a special cream on one side of his face that would protect him, and then he put poison on his left cheek. He wouldn't let our mom or dad kiss him on his left cheek, but wouldn't let me kiss him on his right. I stole the stick of barrier cream, and used it, and kissed him, and then I ran away. I took a sample from my lips, and turned it and the barrier cream stick over to a private detective. Then I ran away.

I was swimming along a river as part of my departure, and a huge male hippo waded into the stream ahead of me. I knew he was a male, because he had small, shiny, black horns. He seemed to be in some kind of harness. An enormous female hippo (no horns), also in harness, followed directly behind him, and then I could see they were hitched to a sort of wagon. In the bed of the wagon were two young hippos, and the cart was pulling a sort of flexible corral containing four tiny baby hippos, each the size of a medium dog.

As I watched, the enclosure hit a bump, and jostled around, causing the water to froth. Then it was up and out on the opposite bank, following the wagon, and I could see that now it only had two baby hippos in it. I struggled through the current and found the two other babies writhing and bawling and trying to keep their heads above water. One after the other I got them on shore, and we all rested while I tried to think what to do.

I found some watermelon, and I was glad they seemed able and happy to eat it. We sat while I fed them slices of watermelon, and I called a friend and asked for help. My friend said she knew some animal rescues near where I was, and she'd see if any of them knew who might be moving a hippo family. She found the hippo rescue center who had been expecting them, and let them know about the two lost babies. The babies and I wandered around near the river, waiting for the rescue workers to come back and get them.

There was a soccer stadium nearby, and so we went to see what the concessions were selling. I a huge sack of popcorn, and me and my hippo babies found a place in the stands where we could sit and eat and watch the game. They were calm now, and the sun had gone behind dense clouds, so their skins weren't being burned away from the shade and water of the river. They snuggled against my side, and I stroked their pudgy heads, and we were very content.

I knew I would miss them when they had to go. But I didn't count on them not recognizing their momma when she came for them. She recognized them, and was so happy to see them, and carried them like a mother cat does, to put them in the wagon that came to pick them up. But they cried and ran back to me, and it hurt to pick them up myself and put them in the wagon, because they were so sad to leave me. But I knew it was best, and they'd forget me soon, and be loved and love their mom again.

And then I woke up.

The Queen of England ~ 4/9/2020

I dreamed I was a little girl named Alice. I lived with my parents on a little farm by a river, just outside of a small town. We were peasants, and our cottage floor was hard-packed earth, but I was loved and we were happy.

Then one day three men came while I was home alone and my parents were working in the manor fields. They were identical triplets, and wore the same suits and ties, had the same dark hair and the same cut of beard. They said they were my Uncle John, and I needed to come with them. My parents had died that day in a horrible accident, and I was going to live with my other family.

They took me to a luxurious hotel. We sat at a table in the gold and amber light that drifted across the Art Deco ground floor restaurant. The walls and pillars were of a honey-rose marble and the lamps were all shaded behind paper-thin plates of tortoiseshell. They told me this was my home now, and soon I would meet my grandmother, who lived in a penthouse suite. I wouldn’t be living with her there; there was a second floor suite prepared for me.

We had to wait a long time, so my Uncle Johns began explaining to me my new family ties. I thought I saw my parents, then, behind a large man who was hustling them out of a back door. I couldn’t be sure, though. I was about to get up when the Uncle Johns told me that my real name was Mary, and if I agreed to marry a man named William when I was old enough, I would become Queen Mary 2.

And that’s what happened. I grew up in that hotel, which was on Canal Street in New Orleans. I met and married William, and I became queen. One day I went out for a ceremonial meeting with a Highland pipe and drum band. One of the Scots looked like Jonathan Van Ness. He was particularly angry to be there and to have me there, and he led the band in an army song. The lyrics he sang were full of anger and profanity, and I just sat there smiling blandly because that was my job. I made a note to have a meeting with him later so I could see if there was anything I could do.

As we arrived back at the hotel, it was such a beautiful sunny day, and I told my assistant how sad it was that I lived here in New Orleans, which people came from all over the world to visit, but I could never wander the streets and enjoy the sights like they did. I just have distracted my assistant, because instead of pushing the elevator button for my second floor suite, she pushed the button for the ninth floor, where she lived and had her office.

We rose passed the second floor before she could push the button. For the lower floors, the elevator ran up a well in the front of the building, but in the upper floors, the elevator was in the back. After we passed the third floor, the whole elevator slanted to run along a diagonal before straightening up in the rear well. My assistant apologized profusely the whole time. As we started back down, some people got on the elevator. I pulled my har down to hide. It turned out that the elevator couldn’t stop at the lower floors on its way down. It had to go all the way to the ground floor in the back of the building. To get back to the front and the elevator I needed, we had to ride the airport shuttle van. I got into the van, and then I woke up.

A Whole New Game ~ 2/25/2020

I dreamed that I only needed a few more credits to get a history degree, so I went back to college. I ended up registered for a history class about the history of bowling and a math class focused on crossword puzzles. After only remembering to attend one class my first week, I went to the campus store to see if they had wall calendars so I could write down my schedule and remember better.

I ended up only finding the campus store departments that sold athletics gear and memorabilia and canoes, but I couldn’t find books and stationary. I was running late for work so I has to leave. I worked at a bar run by the guy who played Sam Merlott in the True Blood series, but his real name was Bill Stewart. He was a great boss. His birthday was coming up, so we were all planning a party.

I was supposed to organize some party games, so I decided to invent a bowling/crossword puzzle mash up. The idea was, you bowled a ball across the floor to the wall where either a bunch of pins were lined up or some skee-ball holes were installed. If you knocked over a pin or sank a hole, then you could try to guess either the down answer or one of the across answers arranged on the wall above that pin or hole. I planned to create a puzzle with clues all relating to my boss.

I had everything mostly set up, the drinks and snacks were ready, and guests were starting to arrive, when Robert Downey, Jr. walked in. We learned it was his birthday, too, so I started to rewrite the clues to the crossword to include him. I was very pleased that one of my answers was “Bran Stark” because to the original clue, “Fantasy character with the same initials” as my boss, I could try to work in a Tony Stark reference as well. But then I woke up.

A Mostly Victorian Adventure ~ 2/11/2020

I dreamed I lived in a historic American city, in about the 1920s, and my life was a sort of mashup between Middlemarch and Gone with the Wind. I was a cross between Scarlet O’Hara and Rosamund Vincy, and my Dr. Lydgate/Ashleigh love interest had a medical practice on 9th Flu Street and was engaged to my older, uglier sister.

The doctor’s name was Neville Clair, and I knew he preferred me, but he was a very upright, principled, honorable man, full of high ideals. To make my sister angry, I would call him her Angel Clair, after the Thomas Hardy character. He would turn red when he heard me, but she never got it. She just thought I couldn’t remember his name.

I wandered away from my mother while she had me out shopping for a bridesmaid dress to wear at my sister’s wedding. I made my way through a luxurious hotel and scandalized everyone by entering the colored areas. But on the other side of the hotel was the 9th Flu Street office, and I was determined to win the doctor away from my sister.

When I found the doctor, I tried to start flirting, but he hurried me out of the shop to find my mother and sister so he could take us all on some outing. We were all walking along a lake when I saw two puppies treading water a ways from the bank. They were too little to swim well, and weren’t making any progress toward the shore. I jumped in to save them, and the doctor jumped in after me, and we brought them in to safety, and I decided to keep them.

As the doctor was driving us home, I got him to promise to marry me instead. Then I asked him why the city had a 1st Flu Street, a 3rd, 5th, 9th, and 10th Flu Streets, and whether it had anything to do with a series of flu epidemics in the 19th century. He said that was exactly it, that each street marked the limit to which that numbered epidemic had spread. Then I woke up.

The Surreal History of the Pink Carnation ~ 1/28/2020

I dreamed I was going to a costume party, and I had a tartan dress and a heavy brass great sword, and would be going as a sort of Scottish Joan of Arc. But as I was walking through a red sandstone canyon to get to the party location, I changed my mind. I decided I should go as Turnip Fitzhugh masquerading as the Pink Carnation. I figured I could make it work. I had most of an elaborate outfit of buff pants, black boots, a brocade waistcoat and coat, a flowing cape, and the sword with me, which for some reason all seemed in character.

I decided all I needed was a mask. So I went to a general store near the party site that had a sewing sundries section. I bought some elastic cording, and I snagged a paper plate and some crayons from where the party was setting up, in a small-town community center. I drew pink carnation petals all over the plate, with a hint of green stem and sepal at the bottom. I cut eye holes and threaded the cord into small holes on either side, and my mask was done. It seemed like a quite clever costume to me.

But then I realized that my boots and a really great hat were in my closet in Houston, which was a 2 hour and 45 minute round trip. I decided I had the time, and it was worth it, so I got in my car with a friend who wanted to come, and we set off. I had a really hard time steering and breaking. It was an awful trip. Right outside of Houston we hit a detour. It led us to drive up a grassy, overgrown track, then onto a narrow bridge made of plywood. The detour ended in a residential back yard, where the car would be moved out to the street in front, but not with us in it; we had to walk through the house.

The family didn’t seem to be home, or at least wasn’t downstairs in their kitchen or living room or front hall. We hurried through and we’re almost to the front door when a white Pomeranian and a basset hound bounded into the hall and started barking at me. I turned to make friends, but then I woke up.

Travel by Dolphin Boat ~ 1/19/2020

I dreamed my high school was turning the band hall into a multi-use facility where there would be band practice, standardized testing, and rented office space. The company I worked for was renting space, so I was back at my old school.

As part of getting things set up for our office, we started finding a bunch of drawings and poems I’d done, that had gotten tucked in the back of my instrument cubby. So that was kind of embarrassing. But I also found out a community band was going to use the space in the evenings, so I joined up, and started playing my trumpet again.

I decided to go on a trip then, and ended up on the southeast coast. I planned to take a boat home, and there was this company that rented boats that were towed by river dolphins on their migrations down or up river. I was in luck, as I needed to go down river to Houston, and it was a down river time of year.

Part of using this method was being part of rounding up the dolphin that would pull your boat, so you would know what was involved in hitching the dolphin up and letting it loose in an emergency. So I helped the handler catch three river dolphins. They were leaner and more fishlike than I was expecting, with pointed, streamlined faces. Still, they were definitely air breathing, and their tail flukes lay horizontally, not vertically. They were a shimmering, glittering, deep, electric blue color across their backs, and a pearly silver underneath. Their skin felt cool and smooth.

One dolphin had no marks from previous hailing’s, and there was a rule that no new dolphins would be taken, so that one got released. The other two had markings and scars along their tails showing where they’d been rigged for hitching before. I helped the handler remove an old hitching stud that bolted on either side of the tail.

Very early versions of the hitching gear had involved piercing through the tail muscles with gradually larger gauges, until a thick rope could be passed through. If a dolphin still had the large gauge hole, this could still be done. So the handler had some fittings for this. The fitting was like a large, thick bolt, about two inches in diameter at the head and an inch and a half at the shaft. The heads had a groove and a complicated quick release mechanism which was still more humane than the early methods of just bolting the lead cord through the dolphin’s flesh, but they looked just brutal, and I was glad I wouldn’t be using them.

The small stud we replaced was part of the release for the more modern harness. This was rigged around the dolphin’s tail, then hitched to my boat. A crowd of children gathered as we were hitching the dolphin up, and most of my job of helping was continually shooing the kids away from the dolphin and our equipment. Over and over again. The little brats just wouldn’t listen, and one of them almost drowned after they spooked the dolphin and got tangled in the rigging as the animal thrashed.

Finally everything was hooked up, and we paid out the line to give the dolphin room to be comfortable. It wasn’t so much about harnessing and controlling its motion as taking advantage of the energy it would already be using. By then it was night, so I bedded down in my boat. When I woke the next morning, the handler had unmoored me and I was on my way.

I traveled slowly and steadily westward, giving a light pull on the lead every so often to judge from the tension how the dolphin was swimming and whether debris was tangled in the line. The river banks were grassy, muddy, marshy, stony by turns as we went. We made good time. The next day, as evening drew on, we entered a channel of sand as white as sugar. The water was a brilliant turquoise around us.

I thought about staking down an staying the night here. Staking down involved wrapping the line around a stake with a sort of rounded M for a head. The downward legs of the M on either side were spikes to anchor the lead line, passed through the M arches, firmly to the ground when the stake was pounded into the earth. But the sand was too soft and loose, so nothing could be securely anchored there.

Not far ahead the river went through a city in a series of canals. I knew my dolphin knew the way and would stick to the best course. The boat rental company had a deal with some lodgings in the cities along the route, so I decided to stay on land instead of in my boat. I tied off at the company’s anchorage and walked up a cobbled path into a lamp lit courtyard.

There was a coffee shop there, and I saw a friend sitting at one of the tables. I sat with her as she read the paper, because no one behind the counter seemed to hear me when I tried to talk with them. I knew they had a shuttle to a hotel I could stay at, but when I asked they ignored me so I sat with my friend and drank a coffee she ordered for me and fetched new sections of the paper for her.

I finally decided to go back to my boat, and as I stood on the quay, a wavering, red light sprang up down the street. I looked over to see one of the brick townhouses halfway down the block was on fire! As I watched, the building next door to it, closer to us, caught fire as well. We yelled for the people in the coffee shop to come out, because the fire was now only two houses away.

I figured my dolphin was the safest creature around, but I followed the line down river to check on it. I found it had used its slack to swim into a deep canal that ran beneath a hill. It had been shepherding a bunch of street urchins to safety down here. There was a little girl with long, tangled, dark hair, crouched at the water’s edge, sobbing with fear, as the smooth, blue head raised out of the water to look at her. And then I woke up.

The Wild Things Are in Texas ~ 1/10/2020

I dreamed I was in my back yard in the Hill Country when I came across a mother animal with her litter. The mother looked something like a young wild pig, but with thick soft fur, brown with white spots like a fawn, and darker stripes, like a chipmunk. And she could fly. Her litter was about half fuzzy yellow ducklings and half fuzzy yellow golden retriever puppies. I sat with them for a while under the night sky.

When it got light, I got up to visit friends. On my way to Houston, I stopped at a Hogwarts themed cocktail bar to visit with my sister. There was a gift shop and winding corridors labeled things like, “Dungeons, Potions, Slytherin,” and, “Griffendor, Charms, Hospital Wing, Library, Restrooms.” You’d think it would be gray stone walls, like a castle, but it looked more like holes left when the roots of a giant tree have vanished, burrowing through golden sandstone, with a veneer of Lisa Frank colors. I had a pale pink cocktail that involved grapefruit juice, gin, and rosemary.

I continued on to Houston to visit my friends the Welshes. They told me all about the audiobook Erik was narrating, loosely based on their family. The main characters were a royal family of elephants, except the mother was a special magical space elephant. They were all very excited about this production, of course. We were all going to drive up to Dallas, where Erik was going to do a recording session.

Then my mom called me to let me know she wanted to have me and my sister’s family all do a family photo with her the next day. She wanted to meet in Weimar, TX, at the church. So I went there instead of Dallas, and sat down for the church service, and then I woke up.