TBTT#34 Navigating by Committee ~11/11/2013

I dreamed I was in a committee meeting, talking about how to get back to New Orleans from Houston, with a few stops along the way.  One part of the group traveling was going to drive I-10, but then go south on Hwy 37, then East on Hwy 101 (are these even roads in LA?) to make a particular stop. 101 would take them through a sandy, hilly, wooded region, with lots of metal truss bridges over small creeks. The other group was going to take I-10 all the way to New Orleans, then take Hwy 64 down to 101 to meet the first group, but they’d drop me off just before crossing over to the West Bank.

I ended up in a wide region of abandoned warehouses along the river between the French Quarter and Uptown, with no CBD or actual Warehouse District in between.  There were fields of parched grass along the levee, and rusted metal culverts running into concrete banks along the river.

There I was supposed to face some sort of monster or challenge with magical powers, and I could see my own human abilities in my mind like a translucent orange and white gingham mesh, the tiny squares each a human asset or a power or a small advantage.  Everything I did to try to improve my chances resulted in an exactly equal increase in the magical capabilities of my opponent, visible in my mind like an olive green gingham matrix exactly overlaying my own orange one. Then I woke up.

Epic ~ 4/7/2018

I dreamed I was spending Thanksgiving in a small town in west Texas. They were known for putting on a little Shakespearean festival every year at that time. What they didn't advertise was that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint always showed up to join in the actors. So I got to watch the Harry Potter stars perform in Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night and Hamlet. It was absolutely grand.

Then, as I was packing up at the end of the weekend to leave, I fell through some sort of crack in time and space, and found myself in a dense, ancient forest. The buildings were still there, but instead of being desert dry and dusty, they were covered by vines and ivy. One courtyard was now a meadow, sparkling with dewy grass. Tiny baby rabbits, only about two inches tall, hopped and scampered around, toppling dandelions ten times their size and cheerfully munching them down to nothing, like rabbits do. I went out into the courtyard meadow very slowly. I lowered myself to the grass. Slowly, slowly, slowly I reached out a hand. Some of the rabbits skittered away, but on stayed, and stretched its tiny, whiskery nose up to sniff my hand. I scratched its little head with the very tip of my finger, and gently lifted it up to my cheek. It snuggled against me, softer than soft, and we became friends.

Suddenly there were sounds of people tromping all around, and all the other rabbits whisked away, and my friend ducked into a pocket in my shirt. A Bronze Age people were on the march through the forest, returning to their homeland after a long foraging trip, and they had stopped at the ruined buildings to shelter for the night. They were as startled to see me, someone completely alone, and they were suspicious at first, but then the Lion tribe said if I wanted to join them, it would take me in as a lowest ranked member, and give me a chance to prove myself.

The daughter of their leader agreed to tutor me on their ways and my new duties. There would be long marches, and unexpected and unexplained tests. I would go through the same trials their young people faced when they came of age. She told me as much as was allowed, but she emphasized that the first rule was to keep up with the march. Anybody was allowed to stop and rest any time they wanted, but while the tribes were on the move, wherever you found yourself in the ranks at the end of the day was your new rank in your tribe. The tribes marched in a ranked order, too, and if you found yourself behind members of a lower ranked tribe three nights in a row, you'd have to join that tribe, if they'd have you, and you'd start at the bottom of their ranks the next day.

Since only Lion tribe was currently willing to have me, falling too far behind would pretty much get me kicked out and abandoned by the whole people. So the next morning, I shouldered my pack, and I marched. The headman's daughter, Jessica, was kind enough to start at the bottom of her tribe, so I could follow behind her. The first day was grueling, and I willed myself to only stop when she stopped. She didn't stop much. But toward the end of the day, I think she took pity on me, and since we were ahead of at least half of her tribe, she took a few breaks just for me. This was very kind of her, really, because no one had made any guarantees that she wouldn't lose her own high rank if she fell behind on the march because of me.

I woke up on the second day aching in every bone and muscle of my body, and I was pretty sure I'd fall really far behind as soon as we started. I told Jessica that she was absolutely not allowed to wait for me if I did. Her father, the leader, overheard me insisting on this, and was pleased at how considerate and concerned for her standing I was, even at the risk of my own. So he insisted in turn that I be part of my first trial that morning. In this trial, all of the young people would be left behind, and couldn't start out for an extra hour. But whatever rank they achieved by the end of that day, they would retain for three days, regardless of where they finished in the marches those days.

They left us in a large clearing, lit with torches since the woods were too dense to let in much sun. As we waited with a few elders, there to mark the time, I noticed the warm golden torchlight glinting off of metal near the edge of the clearing. I went to investigate, and found a small pile of machinery bits. They weren't overgrown, and looked too shiny and well maintained to be abandoned, and I thought they might be part of a surprise testing, so I knelt down to start going through them.

A few of the more curious young people joined me, though a lot of them took the opportunity to just rest a little longer. I found that some of the pieces seemed to fit together. When I tried to assemble them, they snapped right into place. I began hunting out more pieces and fitting them together, along with the others, but when the elders called our hour of waiting was up, everyone else grabbed their bags and plunged into the woods after the tribes as fast as they could.

But the machinery seemed important to me, so I stayed behind and kept fitting pieces together. As I did, I learned that these people were much more technologically advanced than they appeared to be from day to day, because what I was assembling was definitely a vehicle, something between a motorcycle and a four-wheeler. It was light and maneuverable, but hard to topple. I'm not even sure what fuel it ran on, but as soon as I snapped the last part into place, the motor started up, and I began to fly through the woods, following the glimmering torches far ahead.

In five minutes, I'd passed the young people who had been left behind. In ten more minutes, I could see the lights of the last tribe. But I heard a call behind me, and went back. The young people had found a set of rails and some cars, and they asked if I thought I could pull them along. I said I'd try, and found I could. We all agreed that if the tracks started going the wrong way, taking us farther away from the tribes, we'd give up. But they ran through a cutting that seemed to parallel the tribes' march, so I pulled us all along, and at the end of the day, we had outpaced all the tribes, and actually had to back track a bit to set up our camp in front of the leaders of the first tribe.

It turned out that I had won the contest of patience and curiosity, by taking the time, and the risk to find a better way. The young people who had found the tracks and called me back had won the contest of exploration and discovery. And I had won the contest of generosity by going back and bringing them all with me.

For the next three days, we all began the march first, no matter where we'd been when it ended the night before. I did my best to stay with the leaders as long as I could, and to try to get to know these highest ranked members of all the tribes. I didn't expect that any tribe other than Lion would have me, even if I kept up, but I wanted to learn what these people valued, how they lived when they weren't on the march, and if staying with them would even be better than trying to live alone.

I had started out with them the weakest and strangest person in the tribes, but as we marched I grew stronger, and as I proved myself to them, they became more open to my crazy suggestions about adding some deliberate agricultural pursuits to their hunting and gathering lifestyle. I learned that while they lacked that technology, they were otherwise every bit as advanced in other ways as the motorcycle had shown me. But while they valued the acuity and knowledge that went into designing and operating machinery, they mistrusted complete reliance on it, which is why they walked instead, and hunted with bows and arrows instead of guns.

I marched with them until we reached their homeland, high in the mountains. There were stunning towers of white marble, speaking and music halls with lushly cushioned seats in amphitheater tiers around the stage, sparkling waterfalls driving simple mechanisms, and brilliantly clear air. I was fully accepted as a member of Lion tribe. My time marching up with the Sun tribe had acquainted me with the son of their headwoman, and we had fallen in love, but there were a lot of people still opposed to me being considered one of them, much less marrying into their most esteemed family, so we were still working all of that out when I woke up.

Game of Dune ~3/15/2018

I dreamed I was Sansa Stark in a sort of Game of Thrones/Dune mashup. My father Ned/Leto had been killed. My mother and oldest brother were off being Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach in the desert somewhere, no idea where Arya/Alia was, and I was stuck taking care of my brother Bran in our spectacular imperial palace.

All of a sudden, everyone began to panic, and I could see a news program on the television, so I carried Bran over to watch. Apparently dinosaurs from our enemy house were going to invade our planet at any minute.

The rest of the dream was my scurrying up and down stairs and escalators and elevators into different wings, trying to find a place for us to hide. Bran got heavier and heavier, and needed a change of underclothes after a bit, but somehow I'd ended up in a part of the complex I'd never seen. You see, I'd always had someone with me, telling me where to go, and I'd only been allowed in certain parts of the palace.

I started out in a large amphitheater, that was partially open air. There were pine woods and snow behind me as I watched the news program, and campers were running about screaming. I found a door to get inside the palace, and found myself in a sort of shopping arcade. It was like a mall, but it only ran along one side of a huge convention center lobby.

I could see the stairwells and elevators and such were all numbered, and I knew that to get to the royal chambers, I needed stair 30 in the east wing. I kept finding every stair *but* stair 30, and I wasn't sure which wing I was in, anyhow.

Bran got heavier and heavier, as I ran up escalators to hallways carpeted in plush, dark blue, with dark blue walls and dark oak doors. There was a wing of elementary school classrooms, completely deserted. I thought about hiding here, because who would expect that, right? But none of the doors would lock.

I came out into a courtyard, and we had guests there. They were young men from a noble family who had been visiting to discuss marriage with me and my sister. They offered to help hide me, but I just didn't trust them, and I ran and ran and ran and ran, hoping to lose them, hoping they weren't following me.

There was a deep, forest green hall, and a hall of blinding, antiseptic white and glistening steel and frosted glass. Finally, I found stair 30, and I bolted up it and into the royal wing of cream walls and golden wood and garnet carpets. I locked us in the King's Suite, because I'd heard my brother had died, and Bran would now being king. And then I woke up.

LEGO, Ship Building, and Proper Cups of Tea ~ 3/10/2018

I dreamed I was wandering through a world built from LEGO. I was staying in a French mountain town, and I had to wait while they rebuilt my room, since a prince had just stayed there, and they needed to remove his exclusive specifications. So I wandered up the street, past a pastry shop and a dress shop, along a small stream, down out of the mountains and onto a desert plain.

There I found an oasis palace, the court of an Arabian nobleman, mosques, markets, small homes, all built of LEGO. To the north I found a jungle temple, then more sand and an ancient Nubian fortress town. Lots of gold LEGO used there. I headed east, through a rocky canyon, and at the other side I found a charming Bavarian village, which lay to the north of a Jewish enclave with a temple more beautiful than any of the ones I saw in Prague, all, of course, built from LEGO.

Eventually I found the end of the LEGO world, and entered the back halls of the home of its creator. Draped in sheets and dust, I found huge sections of the Taj Mahal under construction, and I made a mental note to encourage her to finish it. But I never did find her, and my mom called and wanted me to meet her in Paris, so I left for France.

In Paris I found that my mom was staying in a hostel where her room was a small wooden clipper ship. She needed my help because she was going to sail the ship home, but first she needed to disassemble it and rebuild it at the port. They’d told her all the pieces were interchangeable, so she’d started a quick but haphazard disassembly. But I took a closer look, and, in fact, every piece was unique, and would need to be fitted back in the exact same place, so the first thing we had to do was put it all back together.

An older English gentleman came to help us, which was good because it had started raining. The wood was getting a bit damp, and became harder to take apart. I looked closely at one of the ends and found an intricate series of notches where the pieces fit together. It was really ingenious. As long as the wood was quite dry, the pieces came apart and went together easily. But once the wood got damp, like it would at sea, it would swell and the pieces would lock together and be waterproof.

The problem was, of course, that it was raining, so the wood was getting all wet. Me and Mom and the Englishman worked hard to keep things dry, and I began disassembling at the prow, making sure to keep all the pieces stacked in exactly the order I'd removed them in. I'm not at all clear on how we managed it, but somehow we did. We picked up a crew and some paying passengers in the port, and the Englishman agreed to come along and run the gift shop counter.

I had become very fond of him, and I thought he might also be quite fond of me.  I was the only person on board whom he'd trust to make him tea while he was working, because he said I was the only person who knew what a proper cup of tea was. Somehow, though, I never noticed if he took milk or sugar, though I pretty well assumed he did NOT take sugar. But instead of asking, I'd always just bring them, and bring enough tea for me, too, so I could use whatever he didn't.

I was in the galley, and I was having a horrible day. I poured the water into the teapot instead of the kettle by mistake. I thought of just microwaving the whole mess and calling it tea, but I knew it wouldn't turn out to his standards, so I dumped the whole thing, and a friend came in and put the kettle on the boil for me while I tried to reconstitute some powdered milk, because we'd run out of fresh that morning. I wasn't as worried about that, since I was pretty sure that was just for me, but I kept getting the proportions wrong, and filled a tiny pitcher with sludge that wouldn't dissolve. I was so tied up with the milk that I let the tea leaves steep for too long, so it was all bitter, and I just couldn't seem to do anything right, and I knew I was going to let my Englishman down, but then I woke up.

Mine World Craft War Game Thing ~ 1/21/2018

I dreamed there was this Minecraft style game that could be played as a community effort. The game system was controlled by these machines that were about twice as big as a microwave, had a piano style keyboard and accordion bellows beneath a shiny, crinkly cover, kind of like a windshield sunscreen, in silver, magenta, light blue, and red. I was shopping for a system for my game group, and of course I wanted to get a red one.

The game itself involves spawning microorganisms, then helping them evolve into humans. Like, you spawned your small critters, and once they reached a certain level of health, you could trigger them to spawn into fish, then dolphins, then mice, then humans. The humans were all identical male people called "Hessians".

The Hessians were dressed as Phrygian warriors, with helmets shaped like Smurf hats, breast plates, swords, spears, and VERY short leather kilts. Once the Hessians reached a certain level of health, they would... er... mature... and then procreate/replicate. Similar to how Minecraft animals do.

The next stage of development for the Hessians was that they could begin travelling to other teams' worlds, as long as they either conquered or colonized systems in a geographically realistic way. At this stage, you could play either looking at a screen, or, through virtual reality, actually enter the game world. In that mode the Hessians finally differentiated, because they looked like the actual people controlling them.

As a system administrator, I could individually pop into any game in progress, though I couldn't affect any world my team didn't have an official presence in. I popped into one realm where a battle over an office building was going on, and I hid among rows of seating in a training amphitheater. I watched as players took each other out. Or snuck off into corners to, erm... help each other mature...

But most of the time I played the game in console mode, so the graphics were mercifully unrealistic. There was also a creative mode I could enter as an admin, to set up challenges for my team. At one point, though, my team was all so scattered and unfocused that I decided to just start spawning thousands of dolphins, just cuz.  And then I woke up.

TBTT#33 Sartorial Splendor ~ 11/9/2013

I dreamed I was a slender, Indian American teenager, with dark skin and eyes, going to a school dance dressed in a gorgeous dark green and black silk brockade dress over a black lace under dress with star-like points of gold, a sort of medieval style outfit.  My wrap was black netting with gold as well.

I loaned my cousin a hooded black velvet cloak because her dress was sleeveless, and mine had long bell sleeves and I was warm enough.  This elegance contrasts quite a bit with my dream the night before, where my mother packed my clothes for a three day wedding, but only packed me dresses for the first and second day. 

She suggested I borrow a beautiful retro red, dark green, cream, and black patterned dress that actually belonged to Emma Watson, until I explained that there was no way it would fit me.  My cousins Sam and Stevie were in suits, and I ended up having to wear slacks that were a strange color, somewhere between magenta and purple (puce maybe?) and a hot pink tank, with a sort of spaghetti strap camisole of black netting over it, that was woven through with the thick yarn hair ties I used to have as a kid, in red, green, orange, and pale pink.

It was a super-awkward outfit. Then I woke up.

TBTT#32 As if Spiders Weren’t Bad Enough ~ 6/29/2013

I dreamed my New Orleans game night group and I were walking down near the Walmart on Tchoupitoulas, which was nearby, when some convicts, most of whom were murderers, were lead down the street with people who were claiming that the convicts had repented, were born again, and needed to be forgiven, and we should donate money to help raise awareness for them.  An old paunchy silver haired man who looked like a football coach put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You NEED to do something for them!”  I glared at him and said I pray for them all every day, now get your hands OFF of me.  Then we joined up with Greg Sanders and Warrick Brown from CSI, and they were trying to solve some mystery.  The killings involved a new species of tiny, black, bioengineered spiders that scatter in the light, but in darkness gather by the hundreds and thousands, begin to vibrate up and down in chorus like daddy longlegs, and then, with sparks and flashes of tiny blue lightning, shoot forth suffocating grey masses of sticky cobwebs to engulf a person.  The spiders had infested my hill country home, and we were trying to both get rid of them and study them, and they kept massing in the TV room, in the deep corner recesses of the built-in book shelves.  At some point Adam and Jamie from the Mythbusters teamed up to help us.  As long as we kept our flashlights and cellphone lights trained on the corners, the spiders stayed hidden, but the lights kept going out, and we’d see the little blue sparking arcs start up, and scramble to get the lights back on. Then I woke up.