A First

So, after being internet-less all summer, I am back...and on new and additional medicines so that always makes for more interesting sleep patterns and dreams. Last night I had a first...I dreamed in cartoon. It started out "real" and then the two main characters and their surroundings turned into cartoonish, playdough-like characters and remained that way for the whole dream. I won't go into the plot of the dream because it was not entirely cohesive and was a bit awkward, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

In related news, last night, my roommate and I started to fall asleep after talking about a mutual acquaintance who was involved in missionary work among Muslims. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I hear 3 words come from her side of the room, "Middle Eastern Studies." I suddenly panicked thinking I had fallen asleep in the middle of our conversation and was just then waking up for the end of it...however, she was just as asleep as I was. In response, I said, "What?" She replied, "What?" And I said, "You just said middle eastern studies." To which she responded, "Oh, I don't know what I said, I shouldn't be talking right now, I don't know what I'm saying." And then we both went back to sleep. The end.

Last night's dream was so random and jumbled but interesting. There was a parking garage, a zoo, a containment facility for I don't know what, aliens and ufos, woods, my Uncle Bob in his old beat up red truck and my dad...an odd assortment on things to dream about to say the least. But the weirdest part to me was the wolves. At some point after my uncle, whose an electrician, had come worked on some electrical problem at the parking garage and my dad had talked to him, and after the aliens showed up and we had to relocate to a different facility that was meant both to protect the people in it but also keep them from leaving. It was a secret containing facility that had the facade of an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere.

My job was to patrol the grounds all night long. And apparently we had a wolf problem because there were 4 wolf traps on the wood line that I was supposed to check throughout the course of the night. I had been patrolling all night and was a little tired, but I went to the wood line to investigate what looked like my dad walking up through the woods and approaching the facility. He was further back in the woods, and all I could see was his silhouette so I decided to check the wolf traps while I waited for him to approach. There were 4 in a straight line about 50 yards apart from each other. So I started from right to left. The first one, empty. The second one had a wolf in it, but it looked like it had been dead for some time which made me worried that the guards before me must not have been doing their job and checking the traps.

Then, in between the 2nd and 3rd trap, I saw another dark outline, but this one was low to the ground. My dad was still a ways off so it wasn't him, and I didn't remember seeing anything else moving before so I stepped closer to get a better look. It turned out to be a wolf. It was a lean, surly, evil looking one, too. My job was to run it off the premises, so I stepped forward with heavy steps, put my arms out and got as big as I could and started yelling gruffly at him trying to convince him that I was a force not to be reckoned with. I was fairly confident it would work considering the fact that he was such a little guy, but apparently he had just been cowering because once I started moving towards him and yelling, he stood up straight and squared off at me and started growling himself...which revealed rows of shiny, sharp, glittering teeth.

I noticed the look in his eye. Sometimes animals get looks in their eye, and you just know that they are planning on tasting blood. This was one of those times, so I started to back up. I ran through possible options mentally. Lure him into the trap? Nope, this one's too smart for that. Run back and get my pump action? Nope, run and he'll bite me in the back. There really weren't any good options, so I just started backing up really slowly and heading for the building. He had already made up his mind, and he jumped straight at me and went straight for the face. This was more than just self-defense for him--if it were self defense he would've gone for my neck. He was just out for blood and vengeance. So I grabbed his snout and his bottom jaw and did my best to keep stumbling backwards without falling because then he would've had the upper hand, and I don't know it I would've recovered from that mistake.

We continued to fight for a full 5 minutes as I slowly made my way backwards to the edifice. I wasn't willing to turn my back to him, and it was a good thing because every time I would push him away, he would wait a second then pounce for my face again. My fingers got pretty bloody against his teeth, but it was better than getting my face put into that meat-grinder.

I finally made it back to the doors and reached for the handle to open it, and with my boot I kicked him hard in the chest one last time and then yanked open the door and went inside to safety. He just stayed outside brooding over losing his prey and paced back and forth in front of the door then he drifted away eventually. Scary dream. The end.

This was the first time I've had a dream that took place in the early morning hours and in which there was fog.

Snakes, Guns and Shopping

I don't have time to write much today, but last night's dream involved my college being moved to a Wal-Mart, shopping at Wal-Mart before it became my college's new home, guns, a snake, trucks, mud, people sitting in lawn chairs on the side of the road, a car ride with my roommate's boyfriend, and guns...and an RPG.

The best explanation I have for all that is that yesterday I went to Wal-Mart, and last night I watched a movie with lots of guns and shooting in it, and my roommates boyfriend came over to drop her off yesterday...as for the rest...who knows.

Last night I had a series of dreams because I kept waking up then falling back asleep and each time I had a different dream, but they all had the same "mood" to them. It was always dark and extremely overcast when we outside. They were all creepy and violent...it was weird and kind of eerie feeling. It was also weird because in the first and longest dream I was there but it was as if I was a ghost because I was helpless to do anything and nobody really paid me much attention or treated me as a threat to their operation. There were all these boys probably around 12-15 years old and they were all out to get this other boy who was probably about 11 or so. They had chased him down this long, stone stairway like you see on the first Lord of the Rings movie, and he had gotten down to this dam. The dam, however, was separated into 2 sections obviously and was full of mud. It was a liquidy, free-flowing mud, but still pretty thick. The boy who was being chased ran right by me down the staircase and ran across a cement inlet that was barely covered in mud out to a small concrete island out in the middle of the dam. The older boys wouldn't go out there, but they just stood there shouting at him and calling him names and stuff. Some of the boys ran back up the staircase until they were just above his head and started throwing rocks and stuff at him and trying to reach down and grab him. He kept dodging them and stayed quick on his feet, but a few stones nicked his head. Eventually, all the boys gathered on the staircase above his head, and had obviously formulated some kind of a plan. They grabbed larger rocks and started chunking them down at him, but this time they weren't trying to hit him, rather they were trying to direct him, and obviously it worked. He kept stepping farther and farther back on the square of cement, and after a few steps he had reached the end of it.

The divider of the two sections was controlled by a metal handle that you had to turn in order to merge the two sections full of mud. As they corralled him further back, he eventually tripped over the handle then reached down and grabbed it in order not to fall into the mud, but when he did he started the turning motion it needed to spin out of control. When he realized what he had done, he reached down and tried to stop it, but it just violently shook his arms around in the circular motion it was already in. By this time, I could see what was about to happen and started to scream at him to get out of there; but it was too late. The divider was gone in no time and all the dammed up mud came in a tidal wave and took him with it. He was gone, and again, it was as if I was powerless to do anything but stand there and watch all of this unfold.

The older boys were all cheering and laughing, and giving each other back-slaps and high-fives until he was completely out of sight then they ran up the stairs and disappeared. I was just left there straining my eyes out into the sea of mud to see if I could catch a glimpse of his t-shirt or anything. All the while in the background, the sound of the mean boys as they told the story to each other and their voices eventually disappeared down the hallway with them. That dream ended, and I woke up slightly disturbed until I realized it was just a dream.

Then the next dream was equally strange, but had a slightly different feel to it. There was a creepy, older man who looked familiar to me. I felt like I had seen him in the last dream, but I couldn't remember where. Maybe he had been the one that sent the boys to do what they did, either way, he was on the mean boy's side, I knew that for sure. The mean boys weren't in the second dream, but I knew they still existed in this dream...they were out somewhere doing some mischief that this creeper had most likely sent them to do. So I only remember bits and pieces of this dream.

The most vivid part was when I was escorted to this old man's house. He wasn't in there, and I was made to wait for him...again in this dream, it was as if I had no freewill and had to do what I was told. I didn't want to be there, but I had to be. Anyways, his house was small and warm and pretty well lit, so it wasn't creepy. I remember thinking that surely it couldn't be his house because it was so cozy feeling. I had to sit at this old desk with a bunch of cheesy posters displayed on it...written in old calligraphy and printed in several different strange colors, pastels. It was just weird that he would decorate his house that way, so I figured the woman who had brought me to the house and was now in the kitchen doing something must've been the one to decorate.

Anyways, I remember sitting at the desk and thinking how my mom used to display some of those cheesy things in our house, and I remember thinking that I would never, ever put those up when I have my own house...which is true...haha. Anyways, so I sat there waiting and looking around, studying the room which seemed so non-threatening and inviting. It was a stark contrast to its owner who was cold, malicious and uninviting. Well, all too soon he was there, stepping loudly with his boots as he came in the front door. It must've rained earlier that day because it was wet and muddy outside. He went in the kitchen and said something to the woman then came into the living room and grunted something at me and we were out the door.

We walked up the hill from his house to a roofed pavilion thing, like you keep tractors under. He must've been a blacksmith because he had an anvil and all kind of metal tool and a fire pit and all the stuff needed for that kind of work. On the anvil he had this long contraption that I'd never seen before. When we got up there, he slid the "tool" off the anvil and put my left arm on it. I didn't know what was going on, but I wasn't afraid. And then with great effort, he swung the tool up over his head, all the way around his body then brought it down on my arm. I felt no pain, and I think the tool was used to get some metal thing off of my arm...maybe a chain or something.

Anyways, I have a ring that I wear every day on my right hand, and I noticed that it flew off when he brought that tool down with such force. So I gave him an explanation and then started looking for my ring. I found a ring, and I thought it was mine, but when I tried to put it on, it was too small. By this time it was so overcast that it was almost too dark out to see. I kept feeling around in the muddy, wet grass, and I found at least half a dozen rings of all shapes and sizes and materials and deduced that whatever he had just done to me he had done to a lot of people. His nature was one that seemed like he wanted to hurt me or destroy me, but it was as if he was forbidden to by a higher power, and was even commanded to help me by releasing me from the chain that had been on my wrist. Now that his duty was fulfilled, and I was finding all the rings, his disposition seemed to soften for some reason--which made me cautious because it could have just been a tactic to get me trust him.

So he came over to help me look for my ring amongst all the others, and I kept an eye on him the whole time and never turned my back to him. Other people showed up from some warehouse further up the hill and helped us look, too. Eventually, after lots of looking, the creepy guy stood up all of a sudden claiming he had found me ring. I was temporarily excited until I looked up and saw a crazy-looking, spiraly ring--the kind that goes all the way up your finger, and it had rhinestones on it and was totally cheesy-looking. We had been looking for a long time so I just accepted it from him without saying anything, and then we all started to walk back down the hill to his house. By then it was totally dark and had started to rain a little. The end. Weird.

Beer blog

So last night I dreamed that 2 friends from school, Kimberly and Taylor, and I went to a bar. We had each said we were just going to get one beer each. However, when we got there, Taylor and I ordered our beers then Kimberly got up to the bar and ordered a pint! Taylor and I looked at each other wide-eyed and then at Kimberly in disbelief. (Funny how our personalities can be exaggerated or mellowed in dreams.) Kimberly didn't look at us or heed our questions at all but proceeded to down the pint fairly quickly. Taylor and I were beginning to get annoyed because of being ignored so we sat each sat down on a stool and starting to broodingly drink our beers, too.
After that, Taylor and Kimberly were supposed to go to this house in the middle of a small town out in the woods and get it ready for our vacation. I had to run by the store and grab some milk first. So suddenly they were in a car full of Wal-Mart bags full of groceries for our vacation. Apparently, we were staying in somebody's house while they were gone that was letting us chill in their house.
So I went by the store to get milk, but all of the sudden I was walking, gallon of milk in hand, when my cell phone started to ring. I was walking down a dirt road surrounded by trees, and it was late afternoon and looked rainy out, and I remember being surprised that I got reception out there. But I answered, and it was this guy from our school who used to be the dean but is now in charge of the married students I think. Anyways, totally random guy I've only talked to a few times in my life and haven't seen in a while, it was him on the other end of the line, and he was completely wasted. (Extremely out of character because this guy isn't like that at all.) So, he talks to me for a while, and in the course of listening to his slurred speech it becomes clear that it's his house that we're staying out and he's coming home early.
By the time he gets done talking, I've almost arrived to the house with the milk, and it's gotten pretty dark because of the big rain clouds that have come in overhead.
Taylor and Kimberly are out on the porch, and I barely had time to explain to them that we needed to clearn up and get out because the house owner was coming home early when he comes rumbling down the dirt road in an old beat up ford truck--some shade of green...I'm not even sure what to call it...but it was a mix between mint and hunter green somehow.
He gets out and slams his door too hard and stumbles towards the front steps, and the girls have no idea what's going on or what he's saying. And the dream ended with us all awkwardly standing there as he's clumsily trying to get first to his banister, steps then front door. The end.

A couple of observations: A lot of these dreams have had themes (beer, fish, etc.) Also, all the ones that have been set outside have been set in the late afternoon and it's always looked like it's about to rain....interesting...

Weird, weird, weird

So, as you can tell by the title, last night's dream was the weirdest most bizzare one yet. First of all, when I woke up this morning, my pillow case had evidently been violently ripped off my pillow and flung half-way across the room...I have no recollection of said altercation, but that was the first strange thing that struck me this morning.

Now, there are 2 kinds of dream consciousness in my experience. One occurs when the dream and your waking are a continuous line of consciousness and right when you wake up it's just like your brain doesn't miss a beat and the dream seems to have occured in real time and your thoughts flow from the dream state to "awakeness" with complete continuity.

The second kind of dream consciousness is what I'll call 'recollected dream consciousness' when you wake up and there is a disconnect between your unconscious, dreaming state and your waking consciousness.

I experience both kinds frequently and the first one is usually more surreal and weird than the latter, but this morning I experienced the second type, in which my dream kept coming to me in segments and I had to shake my head in amazement of the information I was receiving.

Last night, or this morning rather, I dreamed that my family and I were visiting this strange lady. She was very disconnected from the real world and she could be because she lived out in the middle of nowhere on a farm of sorts. She cultivated living things and hybrids of all kinds--plants, animals and the most bizzare of which--fishmen...no mermen, mind you, but fishmen.

These fishmen were cultivated and lived in a stream close to her house. The water was clear and shallow so that she could observe them and interact with them. She wore long, flowy dresses and skirts all the time, and she tied them up when she got in the water. She was always barefoot, too. She was very gentle with the "baby" hybrids and had a system of care for them. She let me and my family hold them, but you had be extremely careful and make sure they got air or else they would die.

The fishmen were half fish and half man. The fish half was the bottom half--the tail and half of a fish lower-body. The top half were miniature men in red and black, V-neck sports jerseys. They all had brunette hair, too, for some reason. Anyways, as they were growing, and in the water, the lady kept them in sawed-off 2-liter pepsi bottles. I know, I know...weird, right?

Evidently, they needed to live in water to survive, but they could also drown...? So, she picked one up--supporting the pepsi bottle and then cradling the fishman's torso in her other hand. Evidently, they didn't or couldn't talk either...but they could/did make noise.

Now, there was a system to keeping them breathing that I didn't quite understand even though she explained to me what to do.

There was something about having to slide the pepsi bottle up and down, like it had chambered air and it had to be opened and closed every 30 seconds. I didn't get it and the poor little guy started to choke and gasp for breath. I couldn't figure out what to do so she rushed over and slid the bottle down and released the chamber so that he could breathe again. He looked relieved, and I decided to put him back down before I killed him.

As I reached down to put him back in the water, what else did I see but my mother, kneeling on the stream bank, straining to reach into the pool to touch one of the regular little fish...which were still massive in comparison to any goldfish you might have in a tank at home. The one she was reaching for was a really pretty color--speckled with deep, royal purple and a deep aqua-marine/royal blue. It's fins were long, full, flowy and completely clear. Evidently, mom was enthralled with the little guy and just couldn't help herself in restraining her curiosity. The little guy didn't see her eager hand, stretching out to grasp him, but he lazily drifted towards the middle of the stream. She made one last desparate attempt and lunged towards him with the clumsy splash of her hand, but to no avail. He was gone and cautiously gliding away at this point.

I looked down in disbelief at her, and the lady looked down at her as if to reproach her silently. I had to chuckle at that point because of the irony of the role-reversal that had just taken place. Anyways, we continued to look at all her strange creatures until it got dark and we could see outside anymore, then we made the trek up to her house, exhausted and went to rest in her big, wooden abode. The end. Crazy, huh?

Fail

So last night I had a dream, then I woke up and thought to myself, "Oh man, this is a great one to blog." Then I went back to sleep and totally forgot what it was...no joke. The end.