Dream: Wade in the Water

I was wading in Lake Superior, out to a boat or plane. I was alone, and the light seemed strange and diffuse. The sand was quite a dark gold color, and I remember wading amongst other people and realizing many of them were standing in the water a long way out, and I realized I could wade that far out too. I was doing this to go home to Saginaw.

There was something with the plane—like it was stuck in the sand amidst the shallow waters, and had been abandoned. It seemed like someone was living in it, and in it was this guy who seemed to be about my age (maybe a little younger; I’m probably getting to a point where I think I’m younger than I actually am (haha)). It seemed like there was an abandoned boat out in the water too, and we were going to drift out to check out the boat. Somehow it seemed like I went from shoreline to shoreline until I got to my mom’s.

I made it to my aunt’s somehow, and my cousins were being silly in a good way. We were calling each other although we were in the same room. And then the stinging began. My hands were full of little raised bumps, worse on my right hand than my left. They stung and itched but if I scratched them they burned and oozed. On my left hand the bumps were tiny, like grains of sand, mostly around my knuckles and spreading down my fingers for a knuckle joint or so. On the right, the bumps were bigger and profuse, clustering together. They looked more like warts, although there were also the small ones about. I also got a few on my left torso.

I remembered having them before, also from trips where I had been in the water, and I felt surprised that I’d never figured it out before, as it seemed pretty obvious. I wondered if it was perhaps from the power plants in Marquette. I also had a few plants that were planted in sand, and they seemed to be getting out to a mediocre start. I wondered if the soil was right for them.

Things began to be explained to me, by someone who seemed to be male, although I can’t remember because it seemed like I was on the verge of waking and sleep. The bumps were described as electromagnetic wounds.

Interpretation:

-Water is a symbol of spirit. The shallow water represents the depth of my recent mindfulness.

-Stranded aircraft is symbolic of the spiritual journey, stalled but used as a shelter

-“Home” here is symbolic of returning to where I belong, and the silly phone calling while we’re in the same room is like using words when mere presence is enough.

-Electromagnetic wounds come from a misaligned energy field

Dream--Tests even when unconscious

I was taking a multiple choice test (on my laptop) with ridiculous questions and answers, such as: If one had a knife, shield and some other things, what kind of kit would it be part of? The answers were welder/maybe wielder, hobbyist, warrior, something else, and I clicked on the most ridiculous answer in the group, the one I don’t remember. I realized I was supposed to be taking the test seriously. At the bottom of the screen was a 10/15 that changed whenever I answered a question, but it seemed as though if I got any wrong, I could retake it until I got them all right.

In another part I was in a tall building, and even on the top floor there were buildings that were even higher. To the middle right of the window was a building with rooms that were walled in glass, clear so I could see right inside. In the penthouse was an older gentleman who came up to the window to look out over the city. Behind his building, there were two taller white buildings, and I said “look at those, they’re even taller!” I was glad to be in a place where I could see so much, and wondered how people ever got used to it.

Dream: Frank Black must have the best tent.

I watched more Millennium again. Obviously.) Frank Black, portrayed by Lance Henriksen, was looking at tents. There was a long row of tents, about a dozen, all set up in a line, and I think there was another line of tents facing the first. It seemed like there was a display placard set up to either side, facing each other, so to read the words on them, you’d have to be pretty much in the entrance of the tent. Rather than information about the tents, however, there were notes written by Frank, in what seemed to be a consecutive series of journal entries, and they were read by his voice in the background rather than by him in the present.

It seemed that he was going to go on a camping trip, and Frank really wanted to impress a woman with his tent. Yes, seriously. Some of the lines said things like “I must have the best tent,” and others described what attributes he wanted the perfect tent to be, such as: “the perfect tent is one you have to duck your head to get into but stand straight once inside.” It seemed to me that he had bought and set up all of these tents in his basement—he was just trying to select which was the best to bring on the trip. It was incredibly important to him to pick the right tent, and I kind of wondered in the dream if Frank had lost it.

The Letter of the Day is "R"

I was in a yoga sort of class, and Dr. Sautter (NMU’s yoga instructor) was reading from an old Yogic text and said that if one could shape one’s legs to form the letter “R,” their body would become relaxed and rejuvenated. I could see in my mind how to accomplish this, and rolled to my side and arranged my legs so that they indeed formed the letter “R.” I laid on my side facing the left, and brought the left leg up into the top enclosed place, and used my bottom leg to act as the bottom outward leg. Somehow the top was equal with my head, and I had the lower portion of one leg beneath me, folded. I was wearing boxer shorts and socks that were somehow black when they were used as part of the “R” formation and white when they weren’t. My legs were also white when not in formation, and black when they were, but it seemed like a black rectangle formed around them when in the R pose.

Dr. Sautter seemed impressed by the positioning of my legs (and yes, in reality, to do what was done in the dream is not possible without three or four legs) and looked at the top triangle my legs formed. “That’s a 120 degree (something) triangle, isn’t it?” she asked.

I felt bothered that I didn’t know what she meant, and remembered that all triangles had angles that added up to 180 degrees, so maybe she was just talking about one angle, but none seemed extreme enough to be 120 degrees on its own. I said I didn’t know, it had just taken whatever shape because of how tightly my leg was bent. She asked if my leg was bent tightly, and I looked at it (it seemed like I was somehow sitting up) and I didn’t feel like answering because the question wasn’t too useful. I wasn’t holding it tightly, if that’s what she was asking.

She said okay, you’re going to show everyone, then.

Then I was in a church so grand it seems like it should be called a cathedral, and it had two aisles for people to walk up rather than just one down the middle. The aisles were crowded with people all approaching the altar to drop to one knee, cross themselves, and return to their seats. “Cross yourself for your art,” a minister said, or something similar to that, perhaps as a dedication of the art or work we do in life?

I followed them up and saw that instead of having an altar with a high back like the altar I am used to seeing (I went to a beautiful German immigrant built church as a child, and we had a huge figure of the resurrected, enrobed Christ standing above it, his pierced hands outspread), theirs was just a table with a cloth over it, but if you approached the altar and looked up, you saw a cross fitted up in a space behind a wall that blocked your view from the congregation in the pews. The cross glowed as it was lit from behind. I thought it was a bit tacky and ridiculous, and I didn’t cross myself in the proper fashion, purposefully using my thumb to touch my right shoulder to make the symbol meaningless upon me. Perhaps if the symbol used was one of life, like a rock rolled from the opened and empty tomb, or a fisher’s net, important not because it represents the fisher of men but because it interconnects every knot with another knot in the web of the world, rather than one of suffering and death, I wouldn’t have so. Really, the whole “Jesus died for your sins,” argument never made sense to me, and I’ve pretty much always rejected it. Besides, it doesn’t seem like a useful thing to focus on. I thought the whole point of his death was so he could arise from it, showing his followers that we are eternal and there was no need to spend one’s life fearing the end of it. But I digress.

After the church scene, I was in a building where I knew I was about to show the “form your legs into the letter ‘R’” trick to the country. I was changing my shirt, but I put on the wrong shirt, putting on a chemise rather than putting on a T-shirt. It was my old Tool T-shirt, with a spirograph sort of design with the Alex Grey eyes someplace on the lines. I figured it was better to wear, and more interesting to look at, since I was going to turn my face to the floor while in the R position, not caring to be recognized on television, but wanting someone to think “whoa, that design is nifty. Who did that?” a sort of free advertising for Alex Grey. I ended up putting the shirt on over the chemise, which was hot and uncomfortable because I was still wearing a bra under the chemise, and I thought it’s all right if they wait for me, and took of my shirts to get it right, so I was wearing just a bra and the Tool shirt.

This seemed to be taking place in the bedroom in my grandparents’ old trailer. Someone was living there, as there was a messed up bed. It seemed to be one of the women I remembered passing in the living room on my way into the room. Outside of the room during my shirt changing, I was overhearing a young man and woman talking in the hallway. I don’t remember what they were talking about but I kept waiting for them to comment about how long I was taking. It seemed like I was interlaced into three situations at that time: 1. changing my shirt, 2. Talking to people about how if I was supposed to sing in front of a million people, I’d rather choke and not sing at all rather than perform as I was expected, and 3., watching a television commercial for a western miniseries called “Mother,” where some violence had been wrought around a small town out in the West, where it seemed to be dim and cold often. One of the images in the trailer was a little girl, face smeared with dirt, seeming to be dead in a screaming woman’s arms. There were also a few other children running about in the commercial, but the commercial repeated two or three times while the scene where I was changing my shirt was playing. Such interlacing is pretty common in my dreams, although I don’t always write them in that way, and I wonder how many other people have the same experience.

I finally went out into the living room, which seemed to be the long living/dining room from Niki’s childhood home rather than the living room from my grandparents’ trailer. I recognized the first couple instrumental bars of the Sting song “the shape of my heart” repeating in the background, which I thought was relevant only because I would be demonstrating the shape of the letter R. Two women were sitting on the floor, trying to stretch and limber up. They didn’t seem to be particularly flexible, and I worried they would not be able to imitate the pose.

It seemed like one of them seemed pretty tight in the hips, and she couldn’t meet her feet in front of her without leaning back. “If you can’t do that, do this,” the other woman said to her, and showed her a spine twist.

“You really suck at this,” the unflexible woman said to the other.

I set my bookbag down, moving it out of the way, wondering where the cameras were hidden, because I knew they had to be there because we were going to broadcast live to the nation. I was glad I wasn’t late, and looked around waiting for Dr. Sautter to arrive.

To carry a frozen Garfield

At first I was watching other people’s computer screens from my own computer, but then it became apparent that I was watching from inside people’s heads who were looking at their computer screens, because I began to see hands come up to faces, or the scene would shift away from the computer. I could somehow do this online, and I watched Niki watch a show on her screen that at first I wasn’t sure about, then I saw the actor who played Alan Quartermaine on General Hospital. Then I realized I was getting internet at my apartment, and that was pretty cool. MSN messenger was up and I noticed Niki’s name was displayed in symbols that at first I couldn’t understand, then I realized they were shaped like the letters of Niki’s name. The screen was pretty foggy/staticky until I moved into people’s heads, then the screens cleared up quite a bit.

I could also see a former high school teacher’s screen, which wasn’t too interesting. Then I was somehow at a public area, like an outside cafe, and I saw a dude I used to know and somewhat wished to avoid, so I ducked behind my laptop screen until he passed. It didn’t quite look exactly right, but it seemed like it was the right person.

Then, somehow (and this might have been another dream), I was inside a gated community carrying Cuddles and Isis (former cat companions, both black) and I was walking with someone who seemed to be carrying Toby (the newest of the Moma’s brood). Someone else was carrying a large whitish cat who seemed to have orange tips to each strand of its fur. It was rather strange looking, and it was a –really- furry cat.

We were there to pick up a frozen Garfield and bring it to people outside of the community. It felt cold, so I changed the way I was carrying the cats, to better share my body heat with them, and they weren’t reacting like they usually would to the way they were being carried. I set the cats down to pick up the Garfield, which seemed to be a real cat who had been frozen, because I picked it up by the leg and it felt like a real leg, with the bones within its skin, and I hoped it wouldn’t break, but it seemed to be a toy as well, like the ones my cousin Kayla had when she was little, but it was frozen, as if it had been moistened and put in a freezer. I think it was my mom who was carrying Toby at this point, and she picked up Cuddles too, so I only had to carry Isis and this frozen Garfield.

On the way out, there were motion detectors that turned on lights, but it didn’t last long. The gates opened when we stood before them, which I thought wasn’t a useful security precaution at all if they just worked for everyone, and waiting outside the road was a person to whom the Garfield was to be delivered. I saw Toby running along the road and saw a minivan coming, so I called for him so he would come quickly, but the van slowed and turned into a driveway across the street without using its blinker.

Interpretation (11:11 am): So the frozen Garfield probably seems really weird, but I think it’s a reference to the fact that Isis’ body is still frozen in my mother’s freezer. I don’t know what the cats themselves represent, but they are all cats I really love and had an instant connection with. I’m definitely a cat person, and it seems right around when we’ve lost cats, another has come very quickly to us. The longest my mom has been without a cat since I’ve been born was maybe a month or so, and that was when I was three or four and we found our cat Big Eyes on the highway. I thought it was really weird that I couldn’t cry for him, but I didn’t cry for any animal’s death, even teeny kittens, until Isis died in February, and my mom and I both cried more for her than we did for her mother. There are times when I still cry about Isis, like now (I even cried about her death when she was a kitten ten years ago because I had become so attached to her so quickly), but I only cried twice for my grandmother. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her, I just didn’t feel her loss the way I do Izzy’s. Isis and Cuddles have been the cats that have visited me after their passing. Honestly, I still get teary sometimes thinking about Steve Irwin’s death, and I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe because he was a sorely needed champion of the planet, and had two young children and a wife who was deeply in love with him. Maybe because he was a truly lovely person who lived his dream although it would take him to an inevitable early end.

Grief is a strange feeling, and I’m not sure why I grieve for who I do, and don’t grieve for those I don’t. For some people it seems okay that they’ve left their bodies, like my grandfather, who didn’t really seem to care to be alive anymore after my grandmother’s passing. It seemed like a joyful occasion to me because he was finally free (and I was actually quite envious of him at the time). It was then that I realized people grieve for themselves. If I see a dead person in my dreams, I don’t hesitate to notify them that they’re dead, but when a cat shows up in my dreams, I’m just glad to see them.

Ain't Afraid to Dye

Last night I had a dream there were some girls hanging out in my apartment and there was some hair color fest seeming to be occurring in my living room. The colors of dye came in little packets with a sort of silicone spout in the tip. I didn’t seem to be partaking, but I was trying to clean up after it to make sure dye didn’t get all over the floor or carpet. A Dir en grey song, “Ain’t Afraid to Die” (oh wait, I just got the pun—Ain’t afraid to DYE. Ha.) was playing on the television and there were karaoke subtitles with the bouncing ball over the syllables, but I was the only one who knew the song and notes to sing. Also, the song started to lapse into Japanified English words, like “ringu ovu saturun.”

I started having a conversation in my head with an Australian person who seemed to want to hide that he was Australian, preferring to speak as British as possible, but he was making it difficult for me to take him seriously.

There was something about a purple bit of dye and there was a girl who had a kerchief that had “purple crew” painted on it in gold letters, but she was missing. We weren’t sure where she went, but it didn’t seem like a big deal.

Millennium: A Lost Episode

I think Millennium got into my brainzors.

At first, I was walking with the ninja to a food pantry, where we could just take a bag and fill it with whatever we wished from the pantry for free, as long as we wrote down what we were taking. There was this blueberry bread that seemed like it would be good, so I got it, and the ninja and I walked home. It seemed to be where the library parking lot would be, and we had to go uphill rather steeply to get to our apartment. I remembered what used to be there but figured the food pantry wouldn’t last that long. It looked like a dimly lit wooden room, like an old general store of some kind.

Then it seemed like I was no longer with the ninja (maybe another dream?) but working to catch someone with Frank Black and Lara Means (Millennium characters). I figured I could have tossed one of my shirts in his laundry with a wire attached to pick up his conversations because we had the same uniform at work, but now he was working at the Casa Calabria in Marquette. I seemed to care for the killer quite a bit, but I still wanted him caught and stopped, as I was aware I was a likely next target since he seemed to like me. I sat at a table with Christina and Soozin while Frank and Lara pretended to be normal customers having dinner together. I seemed to have a wire on, and the killer, who was this tallish sort of young looking blond dude, touched my shoulder as he passed, as a sort of constant confirmation of his affection.

There was also a conversation with Lara—in the bathroom of the restaurant, where an angel appeared and she was surprised that I could sense it too, although I couldn’t see it the way she could.

I knew the killer had worked out a sexual ritual, and he cared about the girl he’d killed, who it seemed I found in her dorm room. He’d wait until he was going to orgasm and then he would kill her so that his mind could ride into the other side with her. I knew that this didn’t work last time because Leslie, the dead girl, was still in the room when I found her, filling the room with light, as she had been an angelic soul in a human body. He’d learned from this mistake and thought that he must get his sacrifice to orgasm as well so that she would be carried to a higher state of bliss at death, rather than knowing that she had just been killed and hang around the area.

I had volunteered to help catch him, and had set up my dorm room with cameras so that the Millennium people could keep an eye on everything and intervene at the right moment to catch the killer. However, I was also an angelic soul, which the killer seemed to be able to sense, but I could transmit a feeling of bliss with a touch and a bit of concentration. When the killer dude brought out the knife, I simply touched his heart and shared the joy and awareness of divinity I felt with him, and he let me take the knife away, just sitting there stunned in the enormity of this bliss. The Millennium people came in and took him, and then the scene shifted to a conversation with Frank in the room overlooking the interrogation room, behind the mirror. Frank wondered what I’d done, so I shared a bit of the feeling with him, but not too much to debilitate him in the way the killer still was.

I probably could have written it as an episode of Millennium, because it kind of played that way, or could have if my memories of finding the girl hadn’t come later in the dream.

Lizards in Michigan?

I was at my mom’s house and my aunt lived to the north of her rather than to the south. The houses were different, like they were before their current neighbor moved in, and there wasn’t a fence separating the back yards. The neighbor on the other side of my aunt in real life, Larry (who has lived there since before I was born, and is probably in his 70s or so), drove his van (he’s had a van parked in his back yard for a good 20-30 years) through the back yards rather than walking. He leaned against a fence that separated the back yard from the ditch on the ditch side, and we were sitting around on the grass when I saw this really cool lizard climbing the fence. I waited until there was a break in the conversation and pointed it out, thinking it was really cool to have a lizard in the area.

Larry, with a laugh of delight, grabbed the lizard by the tail, and as I jumped forward at him to stop him (thinking that the lizard would lose its tail), he held the lizard/salamander (I thought of it as a salamander, but it had scales) in his hand and flicked it repeatedly very hard. It squealed, and somewhere in my thoughts I knew that they usually don’t make such noises. I was immediately very angry and calculated the proportionate pain he had dealt to the salamander, figuring that my punches would not be enough. I kicked Larry numerous times, much to the dismay and horror of my mom and aunt. The salamander got away, and seemed to be shouting at Larry as it did.

He started to demand what the hell was wrong with me, and I asked the same to him. What right did he have to deliberately injure a small helpless being? (yes, I see the hypocrisy in my asking) We started to argue and he muttered something about how without looking out for the self, my family had no sort of inheritance. I asked what about the inheritance of respect and love for other beings, and he used my kicking him (it hadn’t been hard enough to really hurt him, or so it seemed later) as an example of how I hadn’t learned anything. I was very frustrated and upset, wondering how this heartless being could take delight in the harming of other beings. He had gotten up while we argued, and I struck him hard in the sternum. Larry stopped cold and fell forward on the ground. I knew I’d hit him around the heart, and stunned him.

He still got up, though, and my mom and I went to her house, where two Asian guys were telling her she had to get her stuff out now. I think she was being evicted (that she owned her house wasn’t something that occurred to me in the dream). I was incredulous and asked them again what they’d said, and my mom said it was all right, and inevitable. My mom’s house is quite cluttered and full of things, and we were going to move everything, or as much as we could, to my aunt’s garage. I didn’t understand why they were saying this, but I was trying to understand.

Interpretation:

-Now, it seems like the house was a metaphor for my mind, and if it is true that people of another race represent the subconscious, then my subconscious mind was telling me to clear my mind from clutter and distraction, which I haven’t been doing for a few days, even before the ninja came back.

-The salamander is a fire elemental, and fire is a symbol of the will, which correlates with the solar plexus chakra, or the mind of the third density. The cruelty and self-orientation is a demonstration of self-oriented mind, and to bring the mind to the next level, the heart chakra, would make it difficult to see hurting others as enjoyable, because there is a recognition of unity, compassion and empathy.

Kaboom

A combination of an episode of Millenium, the Dark Knight and Final Fantasy X…. My goodness. It’s epic, and I know I’m not going to get it all.

Frank Black, a woman and I were trying to find a killer that was roaming about on the Black Rocks in Marquette. Little trinkets that were supposed to be clues were strewn about. There was an Orb of Invincibility? No. that’s not right, but there was a small orb that I had that had a mirror on one tiny part of it and it seemed like I was keeping it in my mouth.

There were three keys, a pyramid (clay incense holder that I made) and other things. I realized that these items were just set up to be distractions for us to look for while he set off a bomb.

I am drunk lady from Ukraine!

In this dream, Christina and I were going to a small get together with a couple other chicks were we were all dressed up, wearing wigs and stupid-bright clothing, usually black with some other eye catching color like turquoise, bright pink, red, or violet. We arrived at the place, which looked to be like a rather sedate bar where older people went to self-medicate and ease the pain of a fruitless and difficult life, and one of the ladies we were meeting up with was there, but from behind we didn’t recognize her. We complimented her on her get-up, and I somehow got on a kick of talking like the black haired lady from the new Indiana Jones (a super Ukrainian accent). I was wearing shoes with heels a bit too high to comfortably wear, and I stepped sideways in them and said to the bystanders, “don’t mind, just drunk lady from Ukraine.” This was hilarious.

I and the unnamed girl went to sit at the bar while Christina went in search for the fourth member of our soiree, and I decided I had better write down my dream. Yes, while I was having it. From nowhere, my notebook and a pencil appeared, and I looked at a digital clock or watch and it said 8:66 or something like that, and I looked at it for awhile, knowing it was meant to be a synchronicity, and waited for it to correct itself and say 9:06, which would be the standard interpretation of that time. I started writing down things about being “drunk lady from Ukraine!”

The other girl asked what I was doing, and I said I was writing down my dream because writing them down helped me to remember and interpret them. She seemed to zone out, and I felt my voice trail off, looking around. I realized I could get away with not drinking at all, ever again, and felt rather relieved. I then saw someone with battered and fried pieces of something in a wine glass, and thought that I never had to eat anything fried again either, and was again relieved.

Christina came back with a photo album of pictures from the bar, and they seemed to be pretty well taken. She opened to a page where the first picture was an older guy, kind of balding, looking at the camera unsmiling with a bottle of amber liquid before him. He had a kindly face but didn’t seem as though he quite cared to be photographed.

Next was a picture of the bartender, who was this older Scottish woman I’ve seen in movies before, with white curly hair. She seems like a female Billy Connelly to me. She had posed for the picture, leaning toward the camera in a half “I’ll kick your ass if you mess with my bar” half seductive pose, and I put my finger on the picture and said “Do you know what she’s thinking? She’s thinking ‘I am drunk lady from Ukraine!’” This was also hilarious. Overall I had a faint sense of being uncomfortable in the bar, as if we were intruding and the other girls seemed to look at the people in the bar as quaint locals and part of the atmosphere rather than seeing them as actual people.