A New Hope ~ 8/21/2025

I dreamed I was watching Star Wars: A New Hope. The Death Star was lodged in a mountain, a lot like the Black Fortress in Krull. Luke, Obi Wan, Han, et alia, made their way in through a cave. They needed to get out of the rocky caves leading to the Death Star into the station itself so they could kick meet Obi Wan, kick off the chain reaction to destroy it, and teleport to safety.

Obi Wan went off on his own, and the boys rescued Leia not long after, but then Vader knew they were in. Vader and a rather bumbling sidekick caught sight of our heroes and the chase was on. Luke et al. managed to slip out of sight long enough to let themselves down a manhole into the sewers.

They were making good progress down there, and they met a kind of goblin-esque creature, like Janna’s lap-pet-thing, but bigger and more anthropomorphic, but not full person-sized. And it could talk. And it offered to lead them to the sewer grate in the main reactor control room.

But 1) it was a magical trickster, and 2) it wasn’t on their side at all. It was actually the familiar of Vader’s sidekick, who was actually a wizard, however bumbling.

The familiar led them out of the sewers to a great cavern. He guided them up a steep, narrow trail along the cavern wall, to a ledge that butted up against the outer wall of the Death Star. There was a heavy door of iron bars that would let them into the station. Han was able to hot wire the lock, and while they were all focused on that, the familiar disappeared. Or so it seemed.

Han began cursing the creature as they entered the Death Star proper, and Luke chimed in, but no one seemed to see or hear him, and now there was another Luke. The familiar was clouding their minds so that he appeared to be Luke, and the real Luke was hidden and couldn’t see him. Only his companions ignoring him like he didn’t exist and talking to someone he couldn’t see.

They passed a weapons cabinet and the fake Luke, who had kind of a sallow, yellowish tinge, suggested they stop to arm themselves. The real Luke, who had kind of a bluish tinge was able to arm himself too, but he could see that what appeared to the others to be blasters were actually rusty flintlocks and what looked like a lightsaber was a corroded, ancient sword. He took it anyway.

The party made their way carefully along a series of corridors and atria, often narrowly avoiding pursuit or detection, or so it seemed. But now the trickster and the wizard were in charge, and they managed to separate each of our heroes onto a different path. They each found themselves alone, or pared down to one companion who was actually a figment of their imagination. Luke found and “rescued” his mother, who claimed to have been a prisoner all these years, but who was actually only there in his mind. Han had found an old flame, Leah was wooed by the false Luke, and they were joined by her “father” whom she had thought lost with Alderaan.

Slowly the wizard and the familiar brought everyone back together in what appeared to be a meadow but was actually a large presence hall for the emperor. The friends and their shadow helpers reunited joyfully, thinking they had completed their mission and found lost loved ones. The meadow looked like the opening set for the Sound of Music, and everyone was dressed up like in the Mary Poppins chalk painting sequence. They all gathered together for a group portrait, as in reality stormtroopers closed in to shackle them while Vader watched from the shadows.

But in the shadows of another corner of the room, Obi Wan was able to use the Force to break through Luke’s enchantment, and Luke, seeing his mother disappear from his side, replaced by a wall of stormtroopers, leapt into action. He used his sword to knock the blaster of the nearest guard out of his hands and scooped it up. In the ensuing ruckus, the enchantments were broken, and everyone began to fight. Obi Wan used the melee as a diversion to let down the shields and the entire rebel army marched and flew into the Death Star, scooping up the good guys, blasting the bad guys, and taking command of the station.

Vader slipped away through the warren of corridors and then stony passages and tunnels, living to fight another day. The rebels swept everyone back to their base, except Obi Wan, who stayed and sacrificed himself to blow up the Death Star. And then I woke up.

Seattle TexMex ~ 4/6/2024

I dreamed I finally found a really good Tex-Mex place in Seattle. The food was just so good. And everybody was really friendly, and recognized me from my previous visits. But on this visit, I kind of decided I wasn’t ever gonna come back, because the service was friendly, but just so bad, and the place was kind of weird.

I was back for my third time, and I parked my white rental car in one of the barns that was available for Parking. the restaurant was back behind a kind of resort area that had a bunch of gold farm houses and barnes for rooms and parking, that the restaurant was allowed to share. Everything was more crowded than it had ever been before, because a lot of people were in town for the eclipse, and a bunch of people were at the sports bar associated with the resort to watch sportsball game of some sort.

I’d been there two times already and each time, I’d been seated at the same table in the same back room. And even the same family had been seated in a table near me. So when I got into the foyer area, that family was there! And we started talking about the coincidence of us always being there at the same time, since I’ve been there for there to visits, and how we were always seated next to each other. As we were chatting, the hostess came to seat them, and I just kind of followed them back. Until I saw that “my” table was occupied. And I laughed about how I just kind of figured I’d be seated in the same place too, but I headed back to the foyer area to actually get seated.

On my way back to the foyer, the owner of the restaurant recognized me and came and led me personally to an armchair that didn’t have a table in front of it. But this was my table. And eventually the waitress came to take my drink order, and she pulled over a little folding TV tray sort of table and set it up in front of me.

I ordered a Diet Coke with no ice, and just kind of looked around me to get used to the new room that I’d been seated in. I started to realize that I think the restaurant was situated in a building that had once been a pretty large home, and then I was actually in the den area, and it kinda looked like they were just using the furniture that had been there when they acquired it.

While I was waiting, I saw them bring an order to some fellow diners at a table about 20 feet away, and this was done with much fanfare because they had brought sort of the house family style meal specialty thing. Which was bucatini pasta in marinara sauce, served with a giant bowl of grated Parmesan, foot-long slabs of soft mozzarella, and little plates of clams served in their shell, topped with whipped ricotta. Because apparently it was also an Italian restaurant, and I started to get worried about the nachos I wanted to order because I overheard the owner telling one of the weight staff that they’d prepped too much for the chicken and spinach dish, so he wanted the waiters to try to really push that.

All this time, I was still waiting for my drink, and for the waitress to come back and take my order, and an acquaintance of mine came in, and we were happy to see each other because we hadn’t met in a long time. So she pulled over a chair from somewhere and put it across from me at my TV tray, and we got to talking.

Soon after my server did come back with my drink, and it looked kind of funny. I took a zip and it was something like half orange juice, and half Diet Coke. So for the next, while, we kept trying to call her back or get her attention as she walked past, so that I could get an actually good drink. And also order. Because by now it had been something like 15 minutes since she brought the drink.

Finally, I told my friend what I wanted to order, and she agreed to get my drink fixed, and my order placed if the waitress came back while I was gone, because I needed to use the bathroom. So I got up and went through the door to the ladies room And they moved the bathrooms so this was a new ladies room that I hadn’t been in before. And it looked like it had been installed in the kitchen and living room of the original building. It was huge. And… it was multipurpose.

There were about twelve toilets, but they weren’t installs. They were sort of arranged like seats around two kitchen islands with granite countertops. And there were TVs installed sports bar, style, and some women were just kind of sitting around watching the TVs. There was also a refrigerator and a dishwasher, a stove, and a kitchen sink, which, by the way, was the only sink. And in that area a big table for 20 was set up, there was a reservation for a group, and this was the private dining room they’d be seated in. It was also the smoking area, the granite topped island where the toilets were had ashtrays on them, and one woman’s gentleman had joined her at the bathroom to smoke.

So I kind of turned around and left to go back to my table, and when I got there, my friend was done eating and they brought, and then taken away my food, and the restaurant was closing soon so it’s time to go. I realized once I was out of the restaurant, and my friend had left, that I hadn’t paid for anything. But I kind of didn’t feel too bad about that, and I sort of remembered my friend mentioning that I only been charged for the drink and she got it. It was fine. 

So I went to go get my car and leave. But all the Parking barns kind of looked the same, and I couldn’t remember which one I parked in. I vaguely thought that it was the one closest to the road, so I walked all the way across the entire resort and went to inspect the building closest to the road. But that turned out to be hotel rooms with no parking.

I went to look into the next building, and when I went through the door, I knew it wasn’t right because it looked like a restaurant. But I figured I’d just keep walking through the restaurant and exit the other side rather than go back out and go around the building. 

So that restaurant was sort of set up where the seating was a level down from the ground floor entry, and I was walking along a gallery above the diners. The decor was kind of distressed farmhouse, naturally, so the gallery railing had all sorts of different antique fence panels along it. They were perched on, like, a one and a half inch ledge outside of the structural railings, but it turned out they weren’t actually attached in any way to the structural railings. Someone jostled me into one of these panels as I was walking, and this iron fence panel pitched out and fell down, and as I watched in horror, it knocked baby out of their highchair and onto the floor.

I ran down the stairs and began apologizing profusely, and the baby didn’t have any wounds or bumps or anything, it seemed unconscious and so I kept asking the family what I could do and I kept trying to get the attention of the staff to call an ambulance. But no one was paying attention and the family was super nonchalant. So I figured I would at least wait until the baby regained consciousness just to make sure. I was waiting. I also picked up all of the families things that the panel had knocked over and scattered, like the toys they brought for the baby and their older son, and then a bunch of cutlery that had been in a tray nearby. Eventually, the baby woke up and seemed perfectly normal somehow so the family told me I should really leave it was all OK. So I left.

I went into the next barn, and my car wasn’t in any of the stalls I could see so I went through a door that I thought went to another parking area, but it turned out. It was somebody’s room, so I backed out without waking him up thankfully. I did find my car in the next building. And as I was getting in, I realized I was being followed by a vampire. so fast as I could, I pulled out of the barn, and was trying to drive around the winding exit drive without hitting any of the people that were milling around, but also going as fast as I could. And I kept running into dead, ends like at the swimming pool, and at a marble Roman amphitheater, and when I finally got to the road, the light was red and I needed to turn left, and then I finally got on the road, but by that time the vampire was clinging to the roof of my car, and I was frightened and scattered to remember how to get to the interstate, and then I woke up.

The Day the Music Died ~ 6/29/2023

I dreamed a fellow MOBster won a Pulitzer for his arrangement of "My Girl", and was invited to perform it at a high school band competition I was at as an alum with other trumpet players from my high school band.

And he wanted us to be part of the performance, and I would be on second trumpet. But I was looking over the score he gave us, and I couldn't for the life of me find my line or follow it across page turns. Sometimes a page wouldn’t have any trumpet lines, and then the next page would have all the trumpet parts on one staff. And I’m not great at sight reading anyhow. And I couldn’t tell if the part might not be too high for me, because I could only reliably hit C above the staff, and I thought I saw some Ds but maybe that was the 1st trumpet part?

And half the pages were cut out staves pasted on construction paper. Of various colors like magenta and black and mint green and beige…

I asked if there was sheet music by part so I could JUST look at the 2nd trumpet part. Since I’d be sight reading. And I couldn’t follow what he gave us AT ALL. No one else seemed to be having trouble, so I felt really dumb.

Then my trumpet started falling apart. The spit valve on the tuning slide fell off. Then a tiny screw that held one of the brackets to the valve casing popped out and I couldn’t find it. And then I woke up.

Horsey Halftime Show ~ 5/20/2023

TW: discussion of suicide

I dreamed the U.S. men’s soccer team was playing the Russian national men’s team at Rice Stadium. The US would be wearing bright orange and electric blue. The Russian team would be wearing the purple and green, basically the same hues of Buzz Lightyear. As a sort of “welcome to Texas” gesture, I made hundreds of egg and bacon breakfast tacos. I lightly painted the tortillas in the teams’ colors using food coloring and milk before cooking them up. 

I tucked foil-wrapped breakfast tacos into all sorts of nooks and crannies under the bleachers at the ends of each side of the field, just under and behind where the teams would be sitting, along with their staff and press and people involved with producing the game. The ones on the U.S. side disappeared quickly, and everyone enjoyed them, but the Russian team and coaches and all didn’t really know what to make of hard-scrambled eggs. Apparently eggs in Russia were always served soft and runny. They thought they tasted all right, but didn’t really know what to make of them, and it was obviously not their thing. So for the rest of the game, every time I had a minute and felt hungry, I’d hurry over to the other end of the stadium, underneath the metal bleachers, and I’d grab a taco or two.

For halftime, there was going to be a dressage show with about a dozen horses. They wanted them to be done up like My Little Ponies, with dyed mains and tails, and designs painted on their rumps. So I didn’t have a lot of time to eat tacos and watch the game, because I was in charge of coming up with the designs and painting them on each horse using nail polish, where the horses waited under the bleachers. I had to keep reminding people telling me what to paint that we had to be careful not to paint on trademarked images. One person kept wanting the apples on the rump of one mare to look like the Apple logo, and I kept refusing, saying that this was internationally televised, and we’d all get into trouble and be sued for actual money if we did that.

The U.S. had scored one goal during the first half, but twice during the second half I peered out through the bleachers to see that the U.S. goal was completely unguarded, and sure enough, the ball came flying into it before too long, so Russia won the game 2-1. When the game ended, I put on my roller skates to head back to my apartment, because my senior year was over, and I needed to pack up and move out. If all the exits had been open, I could have just coasted down the ramps and out down the street to my apartment, but because I had to stay late to help with the horses, they kept closing exits, and I had to keep stopping and going back up the ramps to find another way. This was NOT EASY in roller skates and I kept falling.

When I finally got out onto the streets, there were still a lot of people milling around. Suddenly everything got really quiet, and we could hear a deep, eerie chanting, getting nearer and nearer. Here and there in the crowd, deep voices softly joined the chant. Someone near me whispered, obviously afraid, that it was the Hare Krishna, and that they were getting out of here! Other people scattered, and soon the street was almost empty, except for those who had begun chanting along, and a few other people who seemed determined to just pretend nothing was wrong, but were obviously nervous. 

A large group of people carrying torches came across the plaza where I stood. They wore robes of black and orange and white, in rectangular, geometric designs, almost like plaid, except without the interweaving of a tartan, just stark blocks of black and burnt orange on white. They wore head wraps of the same fabric. Those on the outer edges of the group held up poles of silver-gray worn bamboo and thin lathes of old wood, all supporting a sort of light canopy of the same reeds and wood, and maybe human bone, the person next to me whispered, though I certainly didn’t see anything like that, all tied together with dried grass and pitch. The whole structure was sort of geometrically knobbly, a bunch of polyhedral shapes all glommed together, with some of the faces draped with the same orange, black, and white fabric. strings of metal beads and disks hung from corners, matching the necklaces worn by the chanters, and clinking and jingling and tinkling in time with their steps and in time with the chant. 

All they were doing was chanting and walking, so I couldn’t figure out why anyone had found them super scary. The person next to me whispered that they practiced dark magic and sacrificed babies. But honestly, the only thing that made them seem different from any other group of people wearing uniforms and carrying banners and marching, which is practically an American pastime and on display in any parade, was that all of these people, and the chanters in the crowd who joined them, were Black people. So I figured the fear and rumor was really just racially motivated. The Hare Krishna was headed down my street, so I just skated on after them and made it home just fine.

I met up with my mom and we had just finished packing up my apartment when Robert Downey, Jr., knocked on the door. He was the producer for the horse show, and they’d all liked my designs, and thought maybe they should do something more permanent, and go on tour with the act. I agreed to go along and discuss this with the horse people. We all met up at Pepper Pots’s house for the talks. I almost left, though, because as she showed me to the dining room, Ms. Pots stopped to deal with a wasp next in the living room. The house was really well appointed, but the floors were hard-packed earth, the walls bamboo and wattle and daub and distressed planks, and the windows open to the forested surroundings. 

Pepper aimed a jet of wasp spray up at the mud-caked nests in the rafters, and down fell a giant tarantula hawk wasp, not quite dead, flopping and buzzing angrily across the earth floor before finally lying still, orange wings flat on the ground, red-black head and abdomen curled up off the ground, with just a leg twitching every so often. I managed not to scream and run, but I kept my eye on the ceilings as I entered the dining room where everyone was gathered to discuss.

I explained that nail polish was just NOT the right medium, and showed them how hard it had been to complete each design before the horse was sent out onto the field for their show. Some people though we should tattoo the marks on the horses and keep their rumps shaved. One person even suggested branding, though most thought that hair dye was the best, somewhat permanent way to go. But some people thought it was cruel and even blasphemous to do that to horses, so I suggested a sort of clear acrylic, shaped cape or covering, with a printed design. Others, including Robert Downey, Jr., thought this was the best way to go, and that there was surely a mesh or webbing that could be used, maybe the color of each horse’s coat, that would make the designs look well integrated and completely organic to the horse.

Then we had to have all over again the argument about using shapes that were too much like trademarked logos and images. And someone asked how we could possibly have an apple design that did NOT look like an existing apple design. So I explained that there were a lot of things to take into account, like the resources and likelihood of suing of the owners of the trademarked designs, as well as whether or not the owner dealt in horses, entertainment, and other related fields. I got hired to do the research, come up with design options, and present them to this panel for decision. What a huge job for someone right out of college!

I already had an office space lined up that I was leasing for freelance work now that my internship was done. I headed over there to put the horse designs on my to-do whiteboard. I wanted to consult the attorney who had the corner office, but he was headed out for the weekend. He promised we could talk in the coming week. There wasn’t room on my whiteboard for this next item, but my office mate, who was packing up, had a box of hardware fasteners of all shapes and sizes, including little round plackets with holes that could look like e’s and g’s and d’s. I asked if I could have them and he said it was one less thing for him to carry out. I lined up the little metal bits along the eraser holder at the bottom of my whiteboard, spelling out, as close as I could get, the words, “horse designs”.

As I was putting together this note to me, my former office-mate and I got into a discussion about the end of the world. We decided that there would probably be two main factions, at least in America. There would be the people saying we just all needed to keep up our hopes and keep looking for a solution, rationally speaking, and the people saying we were all going to die anyway, rationally speaking, and should commit mass suicide to avoid the long, painful lingering. I said that I figured that, we Americans being ourselves, each group would claim not only the rational, but also the moral high ground, and would think the other group were nothing but selfish, wrong-headed, evil people who deserved what they got.

Then I said, but you know, I don’t think it would be all about rationality. I think that it would also be a lot about innate physical and biological imperatives, like… the will to live. Because I thought that, from a rational standpoint, I’d probably be among the “earth is better off without humans and we’ve mucked this up too much to fix it and the fastest way to a stable and sustainable planetary ecosystem was no more humans” folks… BUT… fundamentally, at a gut level, I want to live. I enjoy living. I value breathing for no really good rational reason. So I figure yeah, both camps would feel that pull, and those who refused suicide would rationalize against it and find the others crazy and selfish for not committing to stay and fix the problem, and those who chose suicide would rationalize against their biological imperative to exist, and find the others crazy and selfish for not choosing to stop being the problem. And then we began discussing how many people would have to choose suicide for the rest to be able to fix the human problem and not make the decision and sacrifice of their fellow humans all for nothing… And that got too deep, so I decided I needed to go to the bathroom.

The office bathroom had two toilets, but no stalls. And the mother of a friend of mine was in there washing her hands, so I was chatting with her and waiting for her to leave so I could lock the door. Finally she did, but then I realized there was no toilet paper. But when I tried to open the bathroom door so I could go get some from the supply cupboard, the bathroom had been locked from the outside by the attorney, who had just left… and taken the key with him. And then I woke up.

Walk Across Texas ~ 3/30/2023

 I dreamed I was walking home to Seattle from San Antonio. I was researching popular music since American Colonial days, because I was writing a thesis that both US history and Chinese history could be divided into three eras: colonial, industrial, and modern, and that this division was reflected in the evolution of popular music forms in both places.

In San Antonio, I had visited a museum on Chinese music, and was on my way home. I was walking, of course. I wanted to avoid some hills, so I thought I'd follow the river bank I was walking along, probably the Pecos, instead of hiking up to the top of the cliff face. But the bank narrowed to nothing up ahead, past a pile of boulders and a tall, thin cedar. I turned back, past an escarpment of blood-red jasper, and hiked up to the top of the cliffs after all.

I heard a deep bellow and found myself approaching a herd of bison, mostly red and deep brown and black, but with one cream-colored bull. The bull was NOT happy that I was there. I saw a gate and let myself into a broad corral that butted up behind a large white house. But there were cows with calves in there, and they, too, were not happy to see me. So I knocked on the back door, and asked the residents if I could just pop through their house and out to the street, so I could avoid bothering the bison. They were kind enough to let me do that.

Out on the main street, I looked at Google Maps on my phone to figure out where I was, and found I was in R, Texas. Out in West Texas, there was a Q, and R, an S, a T, and a U, all clustered south and west of Birmingham, Texas. I knew that Birmingham had a whole center devoted to Victorian Texan Culture, so I went there to do some more research.

There were replicas for sale of an old-fashioned instrument called a hand calliope, which was kind of a cross between a bag pipe, a harmonica, a concertina, and a player piano? You filled it up with air, and wound it up, and a spring pump pushed the air out of a rotating, reeded contraption, so that it played a wheezy song.

I was looking up the patent for this fascinating device, and then I woke up.

Olympic Hurricane ~ 9/28/2022

 I dreamed I was watching US Olympic gymnastics team trials because my high school alma mater had sent a team, and I happened to be in the city where the trials were being held. Among the athletes, I recognized my friend Kerri, who was trying out along with them. There were fives slots being filled, and Kerri was selected to fill the fifth slot, and was set to compete in the Olympics, which were starting the next day. 

Once the trials were done, I went and found them, and congratulated Kerri. All the girls from my hometown were in awe that I was close friends with THE Kerri. We had a chance to talk for a bit, and it turned out her family hadn't been able to come support her, so she was there mostly alone. I agreed to try to make it to as many of her events as I could, to loudly cheer her on.

In addition to the usual gymnastic events, like floor, parallel bars, vault, etc., a new event had been added: water gymnastics. Basically, this was a combination of beam and diving, in that the routine was performed on a narrow ledge submerged in shin to waist deep water, and splash should be minimized. All of this took place in a wave pool. Even the spectators and judges were seated in the pool. I was glad I'd brought my swimsuit on my trip because that was one of the events I had time to watch.

I was actually in town for a conference for work, though, so I couldn't spend all my time watching Kerri compete. Still, the convention center hosting my conference was also hosting the Olympic gymnastic events, so that was convenient. Kerri and I planned to meet up one day for lunch.

When I got to the food court, all the gymnasts were heading into a conference room. Kerri saw me and said she'd be back in a moment. The food court was an open-air market sort of set up, with food counters tucked amid tall trees. Nearby they were building more indoor conference space. As I was looking around, waiting, the light dimmed. The sky filled with roiling dark clouds.

You see, we were all in Tampa, and the hurricane was coming.

There was a huge hall under construction with tall openings for floor-to-ceiling windows. As I watched, debris and dust inside the hall began swirling into a pillar, broadening up near the ceiling several stories above. A tornado was forming inside the building. I ran toward the conference room, where everyone was now coming out. It turns out they'd been meeting to plan what to do because of the storm. We all needed to get into a safe indoor spot, but obviously not even the indoors was safe, if a tornado was forming a hundred yards away inside of a structure.

It turned out, though, that this was an expected phenomenon during construction, and all of the buildings being built had special "disruptor" fans installed. These huge fans would break up the air flow patterns inside of these buildings so that they couldn't start spiraling into whirlwinds. Someone was explaining it to me and said it was similar to how bridges got designed now to prevent resonant oscillation like what had destroyed the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

All this time I was trying to hurry to somewhere, anywhere, where we'd be safe, but Kerri was limping. It turns out she had fractured her leg in an event that morning. It hadn't felt too bad earlier, but now, maybe because of the air pressure fluctuations, it was really hurting and she could no longer walk on it. She suspected she was experiencing compartment syndrome. Finally, we got into a fairly sheltered area, though it wasn't as secure as I would have liked. Kerri sat down and took a pocketknife out of her pocket and she cut open her leg to ease the pressure. 

We got her bandaged up, but she needed something to eat and drink, so I walked into a little convenience shop and got her some sort of pastries and a Coke. I shoved them at Kerri so she could start eating and drinking as I paid. I was rifling through my wallet to find the two more dollars I needed when I woke up.

Mall or Madhouse… or Both ~ 8/12/2021

I dreamed I was visiting my mom, and our littles were there. My middle niece was talking up a storm, and my nephew, who was now two, his curly gold hair had straightened and gone brunette. And he had a beard and mustache.

My oldest niece was sick, and needed more medicine, so I was going to go into town to get some. Mom kept listing other things she needed, like printer paper. I kept trying to find something to write a list on, and all I could find was a fortune cookie fortune. I took a picture of the medicine bottle with my phone, and wrote everything else really tiny.

While Mom was thinking about what else we might need, I started to worry about a sort of sore bump I had on my chest. It was visible above my neckline, and since it was kind of dark and round, I was worried that someone might think I was exposing my breast and I’d get in trouble. As I examined it, and it was hard to focus on at that distance and angle, I thought I saw something moving. I found a magnifying glass. 

I watched in horror as little white mite-looking things poked out and then ducked back in. I peered at a different angle and found it was like a tiny cave in my flesh, and a tiny, translucent white worm was half visible, curled up in the back. The inside was obviously infected, and I thought maybe if I tried to squeeze it like a pimple I could get all the bugs out, but it ran really deep in my chest and the all sort of just hunkered down. But then my mom finished her list and hurried me out, so I tugged my shirt up to hide it and got on the road.

I went to Ingram Park Mall, but it was pretty different from how I remembered it. For one thing, there was a big, painted concrete monument at the entrance. It featured the state of Texas painted like the Lone Star flag and a gray and silver armadillo. At first it read “State of Guadalupe, established 2006”, which made no sense. When I looked again, it had changed to “State of Texas” with no date, and “Guadalupe Co.” with a big arrow and a mileage indicating direction and distance to that county.

I found parking up on a tiny top floor of a parking garage. It was round, like a castle turret, very dark, with only an exit sign lamp, and it only had enough parking for five or six cars. I found out why it was empty when I went through the double glass doors beneath the exit sign and found myself in a deserted, empty anchor store. I went out into the mall corridors, and that whole wing was empty, though I could see shoppers up ahead.

On the other side of the mall was an office store, so I went there to get paper. I knew I was going to have to stop at an HEB, too, but I wanted to try to get as much as possible at the mall. I walked around the shops trying to find any of the other items. Up on the second floor, down one wing, I found a luxury perfume store that had a sign saying they also sold the medicine I needed, so I went in and got that.

After that, I saw a big shop visible through plate glass windows on all sides. It looked like I could get more of my items there, but I couldn’t find an entrance. There weren’t any escalators nearby, but there was a big blue plastic slide, three chutes side by side, straight down to the first level, so I slid on down.

There wasn’t an entrance on the first level either. On my way up to the third level I found the food court on a sort of mezzanine between floors two and three. Since I had missed lunch, I stopped to get some enchiladas. There were vendors all along the walkways with plates of Mexican food laid out all around. It was pretty amazing. 

After lunch, I made my way up to the third and top level, where there was, again, no entrance. Apparently the only way in was outside, and I’d have to go all the way around the mall exterior to get there. I hurried to a nearby slide to get down to the ground level. This slide was yellow and orange striped, had a tunnel cover over it, and instead of staying straight and together, the three chutes separated and looped around on their way down. 

I sat dow and started to slide, but when I reached the tunnel cover a few feet down the first drop, I didn’t fit. I had to squirm my way back up and off the slide. I decided I was just done. Since I’d come in on the third floor, I decided to just go back to my car and either drive around to the outside entrance or head to the grocery store. 

It was getting late, and the wing where I’d parked was eerie and ominous win its emptiness. When I got to my car, I found I had left my purse behind somewhere. Probably the food court. Or maybe the slide.

I went back to the food court first, and asked around, but no one had seen or turned in a purse. There were even more plates, on all the tables and all along the floor, and I had to be careful not to step in refried beans or tamales in chili con carne. As I neared the slide, there were plates of Indian food, fragrant with curry and cumin and cardamom. I had to wait in line to get to the person running the slide so I could ask about my purse. Dozens of bystanders were hanging around, and they recognized me as the woman who didn’t fit.

My purse wasn’t there either. They directed me to the lost and found. On my way there I passed a pet shop with dozens of puppies in the window, available for adoption. I stopped to eye them wistfully. A woman came out to encourage me to come get a puppy, but I had to explain that I was just visiting from Seattle. I couldn’t bring a puppy back on the plane, and my apartment didn’t allow pets anyway. She was shocked and refused to believe such a rule could exist anywhere. I took a deep breath to try to explain, and then I woke up.

Dreams of Insomnia ~ 6/1/2021

 I dreamed I was on a trip in Europe with a small group from my university band. I was having a hard time sleeping, and would spend every night awake, then get on a bus and travel all day. We were taking a break in one place, and I decided to try sleeping in a warm bubble bath. I accidentally spilled a bunch of rice in the water, but it didn't seem like a big deal.

I woke up in the middle of the night, so at least I had slept, but the water was cool, so I started to drain it, then turned the hot water on. There was something squishy in my mouth, and I figured it was some of the rice, so I just swallowed it. Then, as I felt the warmth of the hot water spreading from the faucet end, I noticed a flicker of movement in the water, just where the warm met the tepid. I couldn't see anything, really, just a sort of ripple. There was a jar by the tub, and I scooped water around the movement the next time I saw it.

I looked closely at the jar, and I saw more than a dozen little... things. They were sort of shaped like sideways droplets. They were perfectly clear, so I could only see them when they moved. But they would swim jerkily, like tadpoles, and then I'd see them, circling around in the jar. I searched the bathwater, and I decided I'd got all of them. I really hoped that wasn't what I had swallowed, and that if it was, I wasn't going to have a chest alien bursting out in twenty-four hours.

I set the jar down, and I decided they must have come from the rice, so I started scooping the grains out. I put some into the jar, and the clear things rushed up and began to climb on top of them, so I stopped putting anything in the jar, because it was still only half full, and I did NOT want them climbing out of it.

Instead I started scooping the rice grains out onto the bath mat. There, a bunch of tiny pandas, each about the size of a nickel, hurried out and began eating the grains of rice. I got most of it out, and the water was warm enough now. I set the drain and faucet to flow at about the same rate, so the water would stay warm for the rest of the night.

As I was trying to go back to sleep, I wondered if this was a very good idea, to sleep in a bathtub every night, and would I drown? I decided if I breathed in the water, I'd wake up sputtering, so it was okay. I was just getting comfortable and drifting off to sleep when the trip coordinator knocked on my door and said it was time to get up. And then I woke up.

A Royal Wedding ~ 5/5/2021

 I dreamed I was a guest at the wedding of King Edward to Princess Eleanor in Canterbury Cathedral. In my dream, the cathedral was in a wooded valley amid its medieval village. A stony hill a lot like Enchanted Rock loomed to the east, overlooking the valley. As I rode the train into the village, I looked up to the crest of the hill and saw the gleaming pale walls and towers of the castle, washed by a bright midday sun. The valley was lush with bright green buds on all the trees and daffodils and iris blooming in the tall grass on the river banks.

The cathedral had been recently decorated and freshly painted inside, and its walls were covered with rich tapestries in crimson and gold and deep azure blue. Golden stone columns were richly carved, and seemed to grow like enormous trees up into the canopy of fan-vaulted ceilings. The choir and nave and chapels were at ground level, but the altar was reached by grand, arching stairways to either side, climbing to the upper, altar level, with a towering tabernacle behind, tall seats for the bishops, and dark little doors leading into the vast labyrinth of the monastery, and down to subterranean basements and winding passages.

I had some sort of coordinating job, to do with lights or flowers or something, so I was walking all around the altar level, making sure everything was in place when the king and his bride arrived for their rehearsal. This would involve a procession of a huge train of nobles and clergy, and everyone was joyful and joking around, and I tucked myself up in an out of the way corner to watch and see if I needed to do anything.

The king was young, very tall and rawboned and gawky. His crown and golden mantle couldn't hide his lanky figure, boney wrists, and long jaw. His hair was stiff, straight, and straw-colored, his skin very pale and dusted with freckles, and his eyes very large and hazel green. He was one of those people who should be ugly, but was also magnetically charismatic and full of energy and high spirits. I'd heard he had broken his leg being thrown from his horse not so long before, but he didn't have any kind of limp, and was joking with his court and running up the aisle faster than any of them could go. The queen-to-be was small and golden-haired, dressed and veiled in deep blue. She seemed very quiet and self-possessed, but her gray eyes were kind. She was a very clever and strong woman, everyone knew. The kingdom all agreed it would be a good match.

The corner I was sheltered in had a tall window, and as I stood there, looking on and listening in, I was chilled as a shadow cut off the sunlight that had been streaming through. I turned and looked through a small, clear pane edging the more brilliant glass pattern, and all I could see was a deep, obscure darkness, a steely gray that was almost black, like hematite. As my eyes adjusted, I could see scales and a stretch of leathery wing. I craned my head sideways to peer upward through the little clear pane, and I could see a jagged ridge of spines flowing up a long sinuous neck.

I turned back into the cathedral and It had been so dim already that no one had noticed the blotted out sunshine. There was a loud crack from overhead, and everyone froze, stunned. The king cried, "What is it?" as he rushed to shield the queen. I yelled down that there was a dragon, and we needed to RUN. We all ran.

The people nearest the arching staircases fled down them. I followed the bishop and the royal party as they passed through a nearby door hidden by a carved turret of the tabernacle. That was the nearest door to me. We fled down a narrow stair as stone from the ceilings began to crash down onto the altar, glass shattered, and priceless artworks fell to fragments in billows of dust.

The king and court had secret tunnels, far below ground, that led to the castle, and they hurried to these. But I wasn't allowed to follow them. The monks directed me through tunnels that seemed to be carved out of a dull gray wax, glistening with a clammy dampness. It made me think of adipocire crusting over the insides of a waterlogged corpse. I passed by cave-like rooms where relics and gem-encrusted, leather-bound hymnals and other treasures rested behind glass in locked cabinets. There were tourists there gawking at it all, and I yelled to them to stay down here in the cellars, because there was a dragon.

It was my job, I decided, to find anyone who needed to be warned, so I kept hurrying along corridors. Suddenly, I popped out of an archway into the nave of the cathedral. The fan-vaulting high over the altar, at the east end of the nave, was now gaping open to a darkening sky. Perched on the jagged, broken spires was the dragon. It's reptilian head writhed back and forth as its piercing yellow eyes examined all of the interior, looking anyone hiding... or running... like me.

The dragon saw me. I knew I needed to dash into another corridor with a downward stair. The dragon was too enormous to fit down any of the passageways, and once I got deep enough below the surface, I'd be beyond its reach. It's head reared back, and I knew that either the fire or a deadly strike were coming. And then I woke up.

Worst Apartment Building Ever ~ 2/9/2021

I dreamed I lived in a multi-use high rise on St. Charles Ave. It was a nice, snug apartment, and it was reasonably quiet, even with Mardi Gras weekend going on down below. Just before bed, I decided I needed something at the convenience store in the lobby, so I put on my robe and headed down.

I went down the flight of steps from my door to a landing in the drab stairwell of white walls and metal steps and rails painted gray, leading up and down in all directions to other gray metal doors like mine. I went through one of the doors lower down to get to the wood paneled hall to the elevator. 

The elevator started down at a normal speed, but fell faster and faster until I was in free fall, hovering above the floor, terrified that it had broken and I was about to die. But gradually it slowed and my feet met the floor, and the elevator stopped at a parking garage level. I hurried out, even though it wasn’t the lobby. I decided I’d find another way.

I went through some glass doors into a marble-floored department store with potted plants and racks of expensive clothing tastefully arranged. The walls had mosaic patterns, and a brilliantly polished wooden grand staircase led up to a second level.

Off to the right was a sleek, ultramodern coffee shop, and amid its trendy tables another elevator was tucked against a wall. It was a wide, deep, hexagonal space behind floor to ceiling windows. On the floor, in front of its sliding doors, were round metal disks, ridged all around in a radial pattern. To summon the elevator you stood on a disk and the doors would open. But you had to wait there for a certain number of people to enter.

I stood on a plate, then hurried through the quickly closing doors. I looked around for the number panel to select the 40th floor, but I couldn’t find it and had to step back as more people entered.

Suddenly the elevator had launched itself upward so fast that somehow again we were all flying through the air, feet from the floor, bouncing off of each other. I grabbed onto the arm of someone next to me and squeezed my eyes shut in terror until it slowed down, my feet met the floor, and the doors opened at floor S50, according to a tiny display beside the doors.

That wasn’t my floor, so I looked again for the controls. I realized then that there was some sort of laser scan in use, and it was identifying the elevator occupants and determining from that where people were going. It was dropping people off at their floors in the order they’d entered.

I got hustled off too early, though, after flying around miserably a few more times. I was walking through a rooftop mini golf course when I realized the sky was lightening, and morning was coming. I’d been wandering for hours and was suddenly struck by the worry that maybe I hadn’t locked my door and it had been unsecured for all that time. But I felt my keys in the left pocket of my robe, so I decided I had locked up okay.

I made my way back inside the building and found myself in a really warm, richly furnished lobby outside a trans-friendly day spa. I went up to the receptionist and asked if there was an elevator or stairwell I could use. She pointed me to four sets of brown wooden doors, centered on the four walls of the large lobby. I estimated which one was on the wall closest to my apartment, and got in. 

The elevator went up at a normal pace, thank goodness, and stopped a couple floors up to let in a man in a black pinstripe suit, a matching black pinstripe cloth fedora, and gleaming black and white saddle shoes. Once I got past the drama of his ensemble I realized I recognized his face. My jaw dropped open just as the elevator stopped to let him out into a burgundy and gold steampunk themed casino. 

The dinging slots and flashing lights made it seem completely unreal, and as the elevator stayed in place, I asked the hostess nearby, “WAS THAT DANNY TREJO???” She laughed and said it sure was. She asked me what floor I was headed to. I told her floor 40, and she reached into the elevator and fiddled with a tiny slot machine contraption I hadn’t seen before on a small wooden table to the left of the doors. Its readout flashed “40” as the doors closed and I was on my way.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, I was in a familiar hall that looked like an auditorium. Everything was painted, carpeted, or upholstered in purple. There were no seats, and no stage at the lowest tier, but stairs and landings leading to hallways out of the hall at each of the different levels, in all directions. One of the hallways up above me was marked with silver lettering and an arrow as leading to the “Floor 40 Terrace Apartments” which is where I lived.

I followed the hallway to some glass doors and stepped out into bright daylight and onto a moving walkway. It wasn’t a simple belt that propelled me in one direction. It was a series of swoopy-shaped clear plastic paths between spinning plastic circles that you could step off of in different directions to take different paths, but there was no moving in a straight line, or anything like it. 

The swoops and circles were ridged like fingerprints, sort of like the metal disks in front of the department store elevator. It was good they were, because the whole path was taking me through a rooftop water park, and a foamy layer of soap bubbles coated everything. I was making my way across the roof to the corner of a terrace where I knew I’d find a door into the gray and white stairwell, my home, and hopefully I could get some sleep finally, and then I woke up.

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.