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.