Dream Blog

Halloween... and my dream last night wasn't so much scary as it was depressing.
I accompanied my mother to work...not sure why. She had some job working in a temporary tent shelter, with A/C, on what was supposed to be the UC/Berkeley campus, up on a hill in a big lawn somewhere. (Bore no resemblance to Berk. whatsoever.) She left me at a weird desk to go to a meeting, with a note that someone named Sandy s... I've forgotten the name, it was a weird one, easy to make fun of... had called for me and I was to call back. I didn't know who she was, so put off ever calling. A lot of other people were coming in and out, and I recognized a lot of them. One guy I even gave a hug to. But I didn't want people to recognize me and start talking to me. Apparently, I was supposed to have spent time there 2-3? years before interviewing people (administrators?) for my thesis. But I had done nothing in the interim. And here were other people, former students? and others, that I recognized and I was assuming they were finished and had real jobs. And what did I have? Bupkes. So I was kind of cringing at this desk and listening to all the chatter around me and ryhing to avoid meeting peop,e in the eye, hoping hey would not recognize me and start asking me things. I had done interviews but just a description of them, I had written nothing in 2 years, and had no analysis. I was embarrassed and wanted to go away so no one wujld ask what I was doing or had been doing. I would start to dial this Sandy Skipper ot whatever, but fortunately, someone or something would prevent me from actually dialing the number. What was I going to say? I'm returning your call, who are you? Then one of the women told me my mother had passed out a sheet (?) in her meeting telling about me, and I realized that I had written 2 theses, the one about sexism and TV and the other about TV and scriptwriters. So she was proud of me, so I actually had done something... even though no job, I could talk about something a little, even if not especially acadmically... never been really able to do that anyway. But I still wanted to go away and walk down to the Berkeley bookstore... which I knew I would find somewhere down the hill, even if there was no resemblance to the real UC/Berk. and even if I wasn't wearing the right kind of shoes to take a long walk in.

Long dream... just snips and snaps... endless winding winding along a mountain road, going where??? Linda and Richard, later Jacqui and Doug and Mother. Then in a room with a bunch of other people. I look out a window and see ... how to describe it ... a gated arch structure hovering in the air. Then there's 2, 3. I look out another window and see more. Someone says there are 9 of them. What's going on? Then a small squarish hovering vehicle makes its way into the room. We are trying to peer inside to see if there are tiny creatures in there. Somehow, the top opens up, and it's a mess in there. At some point, I turn it upside down, and then there's a bunch of smallish Chinese-looking people and a general-looking type in there. They have technology... The general guy says, Now we have all your technology, and we see things on screens things that look very familiar. (Can't tell you what now.) The general guy starts ranting and raving and trying to boss us around. I think he is really bad news, and I take some kind of jar (?) and put it on his head ( he's still small) and turn him upside down again. It all goes back into a mess again.
Then I am looking into a small room that tilts downward and has an open door at the end that appears to be over a precipice. I won't even step into the room to look and see what's out there. I'm too scared. There are 2 guys in there. I ask them what they are doing. Don't remember the response. One of them wants me to put some weird contraption on my head and get in a chute and be sent out that open door. I say no way and back away. Then I come back and say I'll do it. But I just fly out that open door, all of a sudden totally unafraid. I cruise around. Down below, a huge building of some kind is being constructed. At some point in all this, I somehow rescue two girls and talk to some black women who are sitting on the contruction and having lunch. They tell me it's going to be a big apartment building, maybe they will be living there later, besides working on it.
Then it's time to get out of these mountains and fly home (?). It's like it's Sunday, and there are long lines of cars snaking along the curves in the mountains. I fly and cut across, instead of following the curves of the road. It's like I hadthought to follow the road back. But I see a more distant point where the road goes to, and I fling myself out over this incredible abyss that is so deep that it's all misty below. I am not afraid. I look down and can see a river winding along very far below. I am unafraid. Another couple has followed me out there, flying too. (I should have paid more attention to them.) It's long distance. It's like I am riding a crest of darker air which all the sudden rears up like a wave about to crash. I pull myself just back from the crest, figuring if I go over with it, I will end up at the bottom and not at the top of the point where the road is that I want to reach. I hear the couple behind me say, What was that? I get to the point, but I must haul myself up and over and concrete railing.
Then somehow I am in this busy noisy town. Nothing is familiar. Where am I? Where am I going? What am I doing there?

We're driving north thru something like Kansas, Nebraska, me and Steve and Frances, except the landscape is dry-ish and slightly hilly. We're just going straight straight straight. Steve is driving in the new car (Infiniti). Finally, we come to a small town. I say we need to stop for some lunch or something, we've been driving for 4 hours. The first place we slow down for is closed, but downtown near a bus station, I see several little cafes open. Steve parks. But then it's like we're back on the outskirts of town. Somehow there's this guy/kid there, and Frances has given him some cassette tapes. I'm annoyed, and I want to see what they are before she gives them away. I look and say he can have them. Then I can't tie my shoes and have to have Steve help me. Somehow this kid gets into the back seat and won't get out. Steve thinks it's OK just to leave him there. I say no, he has to get out. I have visions of him hot-wiring the car and taking off with it. I have to convince him to get out of the car, that it's not OK for him to stay in there. He finally gets out, and we start walking toward the downtown. Frances has disappeared. The kid is walking ahead of us, and he pulls out a gun. I'm terrified. But then Steve says don't worry and he pulls out a gun too. [Aeeeiii! Stupid men and their guns.] The kid is now on the other side of the road. I grab Steve's hand and we start running. I say, I wish I could fly and get us away, and then I do and we fly further away and around some corner. But then Steve goes off in one direction and I am not able to follow and go off in another. I try to hide in a doorway. I see the kid coming and I move my position around another corner, hiding behind some bushes on a stairstep. Now the kid has 2 cronies with him, maybe motorcycles. They look really mean, black leather jackets. The kid now has a little sports car and he comes and parks right near where I am, but he hasn't seen me. Since the top is open, I lean over and grab his neck backward and say he has to leave us alone. But them somehow, I have no top on and I have to go down to his 2 buddies. I am crying and trying to cover myself up. Somehow there's a distraction, and I crawl around the corner and into a door, which turns out to be a restaurant. I ask if my husband is in there, and I crouch underneath a bar/counter. The 2 meanies come in, with guns, maybe machine guns. They haven't seen me, and they sit at a table -- what's it called? where it's semi-enclosed. I am still crouching, terrified. Then this little boy comes out -- at first, I think it's Steve -- with some kind of really big plastic toy zapper gun, and he sprays the meanies with something. But they are already out of it. Someone has doped their coffee. There's more confusion, and a lot of people, a family, start to enter the cafe, even though others try to tell them not to come in. I crawl out of the door and up the street and into another doorway, crawling There are teenagers out there. I tell a girl to call the police. She runs off. I keep crawling and go into another building which turns out to be something like a bank or something, big open space. I am still crying, no top. I crawl way in the back and try to hide behind a desk. There are 2 women there who comfort me. I warn them all. They know these guys, say they used to think they were Elvis Presleys and now they're just bad. The bad guys come in... all 3 of them, and the first kid from the car finds me. I am crying and begging and pleading. Then somehow, he is on a couch and I am trying to talk to him .... I forget now, maybe it was that he'd had a bad childhood or something, but he shouldn't take it out on others, blah blah.

Green Plant 

I'm going to copy what Arlee Barr did on her blog site to tell people about herself. Arlee is an artist and quilt artist who was also in Susan Sorell's on-line farbic collage class where we learned how to make "potholders," as I started calling them... because they're about potholder size. I'll have to post some here, in case anyone shows up to ever read this stuff.

OK: Me
1. Born and raised in Calif., first in San Joaquin Valley in little farming town, Wasco, then over to the coast in another little town, Carpinteria, near Santa Barbara. I guess I still consider myself a Californian through and through, even tho' I haven't lived there for a long time (basically since we went off to Brasil) and even tho' I know things and its people have changed a LOT.

2. I've been married twice. First to Marshall from Oregon, who had webbed feet, I kid you not, but I was/am a better swimmer than him. We lived in Homestead, FL were he was the very first ecologist for Dade Co. I died there. Then I met Steve and it was like we were soul mates. We lived together for 19 years before actually getting married, and now we've been together, with a couple of breakups here and there, for -- eek!!!-- 35 years!!!! We've lived in the Bay Area, in Ithaca, NY, in Brasil, in Florida, for almost 20 years, and now in Silver Spring, MD, just outside the DC border.

3. I've spent a lot of time overseas, both traveling and living. I consider myself extremely fortunate for that. i was an exchange student to France for a summer, living with a family in Nice. I was an exchange student my junior year in college to Marburg, Germany, for a year.
I wasn;t going to apply to the program in college because I had already been to france and thought someone else should have the opportunity, but my parents (fortunately) thought I was crazy and drove ne right back down to LVC (La Verne College) to apply. And then after that, I thought again I would never again have to opportunity to go to Europe, but Steve had a chance to be a tour guide for a man whose tour he had taken in college... Lutnick, out of Queens College. Lutnick was expanding, and he was hiring people who had taken his first tours. Steve was offered the job, and I really really really wanted him to take it, but I thought that if I showed how very eager I was to go that it wouldn't work out or something. So I played down my frothing at the mouth. But we did go, and maybe it was an advantage to Lutnick because I had been there before too, and had spent even more time in Europe than Steve had. And then for many years, Steve took a lot of consulting jobs overseas, and often I was able to go along. So I've been back to Paris more times than I can count. I love Paris. When we first moved here, to DC, I would say that I knew the Paris metro system better than the DC system.

We've been to Bangkok and Thailand twice, and I would go ag ain at the drop of a hat. It's so exotic and different, even if Bangkok is hot and humid and traffic there does not move.

I've been all over most of Europe, trips around France, Switzerland, England, Germany, Austria, lived in Italy for 6 months, Portugal, some of Spain, and now we've been to Prague. Never been to Scotland or Ireland. Visited Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Not Finland. Marshall (1st husband) is Finnish, well, Finnish background... Escola. Then we were in Indonesia, Bali, Japan. and Kauai. Canada -- Vancouver, Victoria, Banff, Lake Louise, Toronto, Quebec, Montreal. Then of course, there's South America... two, well, about 3 years total in Brasil... 2 years in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, then Salavador twice for 6 months. Have visited Lima, Macchu Picchu, Cali, Columbia, Caracas. Been on a couple of Caribbean islands.... Most recently, the Caymans... clearest water I've ever seen, and before that, Martinique and Barbados. I wish Steve were the cruise taking type. I'd love to do that sometime.

This dream was a few nights ago. I went into a room with big windows on 3 sides, and standing outside were my grandfather, Uncle Ferle, Uncle Cecil, Daddy, and Uncle Mahard. I'm sure this image is from a picture that was taken at Grandpa's funeral. I recognized my grandfather immediately, even wearing glasses. I knew it was him, and I have not thought about him in years and years, and as far as I can remember, I've never dreamt about him.
I was so excited. I really wanted to talk to him. He came in and a bunch of us were sitting on a bed against the wall. Maybe Richard was there, Joan, not sure who else. He was talking about being in Germany in the war...WWI, it would have had to be... except he tweren't never in no war, thank god. I was trying tell him that I had been in Germany as an exchange student. Joan wanted to know where was the $6 he'd promised to give all us kids. My thought was, Wasn't that just like Joan, to be asking about money. There was some kind of an old poster on the wall with Superman and Wonder Woman on it, and I was trying to tell him that we all knew who Superman and Wonder Woman were and that they were still around. I think what I really wanted to say in the dream was to tell him that I loved him and missed him and wished he were still around now that I'm an adult [sic] . I have been able to tell this to my father in dreams.

# posted by Zanny @ 1:05 AM 0 comments

Weird dream last night. First, I was trying to get some custom-made sweater done, with a special pattern. I had to feed the right data into some weird machine. Then I had to ride on the weird machine. [I told you this was weird.] Then it seems that a whole suit was produced, a top and skirt, which I was wearing -- very chic-looking, but I wasn't sure this was the pattern I wanted and I wanted to try another one. But this time, the machine came by and it was like getting on a ski lift, but I couldn't get on.


Then I was in a different place, sitting on stairs in some fancy room, wearing a really pretty yellow frilly dress, watching all these "real" models go up and down staircases with different outfits on. The designer was woman, who later encouraged me to go down the stairs and model the dress I had on. One of the other models told me that the four men in the back watching were other designers, one being some famous Manolo? I agreed to go down the stairs and model the yellow dress, but when it came to putting on shoes, the ones offered to me by Manolo? were clear plastic and much too big for me. I said I would trip on them going down the stairs, so I ended up modeling the dress barefoot. The woman designer later came up and asked if I was having a good time and would I like to come back. I said I loved it and would love to come back. But when I did [this with no gap in the dream, of course], all the models were male [whereas before they had been both male and female], and the dressing room was dirty, and most of the guys were gay and had been doing funny things in there.... if ouy know what I mean. And I was wearing a stupid blue dress with big stiff petticoats underneath and one of those stupid pillbox Jackie hats.

I have been flying in my dreams forever. Flying dreams are one of my favorites. I used to be very out of control and would go too fast and not be able to stop and crash land or crash into things. That's gotten better. I went thru a period where I would turn flips in the air, etc. I also like to just go out on a wind stream and float.
Flying isn't always easy. Sometimes I have to pull myself up. It's like pulling yourself up thru something heavy...maybe like heavy mesh or tulle. Pull pull pull to get up... and I never get high enough.
I used to have terrifying dreams where I would go too high.. usually in a night sky... and I would suddenly be sucked out out out in a terrible wind, with no control. Higher and higher and higher. Sometimes I would fall. That was terrifying too. Just fall out of the sky, no way of stopping. Usually, I would wake myself up before I hit bottom. Once I did hit bottom. God, it hurt like hell. I mean, I woke up immediately, but I lay there as if I were paralyzed. The dreams kept repeating and repeating. If I were I psychoanalyst, I suppose it may have had something to do with things out of control in my life. Then one time I decided just to let go and see what would happen...not to fight it, not to be terrified, but let the wind carry me out and out and out and up and up and into the darkness. Where I ended up finally......was into the light!!! That was incredible. I had those dreams for a long time, and I loved them. I would deliberately try to get myself high up there so that wind would catch me and carry me away... into the light. But now they've stopped, and I haven't had the light dreams for a long time. Wish I knew what that meant.
I sometimes save people... In a dream not too long ago, my family and some other people were in a car which my father was driving. He was going too fast and hit a curve and went off, of course, over a cliff. I shouted, NOOOOOO.. and then I somehow made the whole car fly so we wouldn't all be killed.
I used to not be able to fly over water. I would get part way and then fall into the water. That's gotten much better now, so that I am not afraid to fly over water, altho sometimes it's iffy.
I also did not used to be able to fly off a cliff. I knew I would not fly and just fall and fall and have to wake mtself up before I hit bottom. But that's gotten better now too. Sometimes I can just soar out and take the updraft.
I do a lot of flying over incredibly scenic places. There's one coastline I've flown along many many times. Never been there in real life. No idea where it is. I've also fly into and over beautiful mountains a lot too. Sometimes it's supposed to be Switzerland, sometimes Colorado. It always seems like I go too fast tho, and I can't slow down enough to really enjoy the scenery.
Usually, no one notices that I'm flying. But when people do, they try to get me down, and I can never get high enough to really get away. Those dreams are scary.

Porcupine