doing damage

I dreamt I ran my Jaguar (?) into the Jaguar of the head of my division. (Neither she nor I actually own such an expensive car.) Alternatingly, it was a valuable necklace of hers that I had damaged somehow with my own necklace. But either way, she was unhappy with me and wanted $890,000. I told her I didn't have that much money; I told her that even my house cost much less than that. But she wouldn't be appeased. She told me she knew I didn't have it, but she thought that suing me was the right thing to do.

Of all the executives in the company, she is probably the one whose opinion matters most to me. She's funny and fair, she doesn't insist on any ridiculous deference and dislikes the stiffs who do. I was very upset!

lost babies

I dreamt that I had gone on vacation with my friend R. She is pregnant in real life, but in the dream, she had a baby.

We were having trouble getting home: taking multiple flights and renting multiple cars; being lost in a parking garage where I tried to follow a man in a yellow old beater to the exit, but lost him around a corner. I was terrified that we would be stuck in the dim airless space forever. But then it got worse: I turned to R and said, "R! We forgot the baby!!

R said, "It's okay. Let's just get home."

bad choices

My sister N fell in love with a guy I knew well enough to know she shouldn't. He was handsome, passionate and well-spoken, but completely insincere. I was going to warn her off, but I didn't have to: as she and I wandered around New York (?) on the eve of her wedding, we found out that the reason he needed to marry her was that he was about to be homeless, and that he had been living with somebody else.

I went home thinking she had been saved from marrying a total loser, but in the morning I passed a bunch of my siblings eating breakfast at a diner, and they were all gushing about the wedding to be. "She's still marrying him?" I couldn't believe it.

And then she did marry him, and she looked breathtakingly beautiful, and they appeared to be the perfect couple except that my sister looked a little sad. And the next morning, while I was still waiting to talk to her, the evil brother-in-law abandoned my sister, who was asleep in their bridal bed, with only a note. The whole huge family was shocked and homicidal -- except for me and N. She just smiled and whispered to me, "The last thing he said before we fell asleep was that we were forever! Isn't that hilarious?"

happy holi sandwiches

I dreamt this friend of mine (we'll call him S; he teaches at my undergrad) and I were making offerings of food together. We were putting the offerings at stations, like stations of the cross except we were in somebody's kitchen.

S was a unlikely partner for this activity, since he's an athiest. But we were having fun as we did it, throwing the food around. And some of the 'food' seemed to be the colored powders that hindus use in the holi festival, so it sort of makes sense that we were throwing it. Then I remember we were eating from the stations. I took an ordinary sandwich I had made, and S took a paint sandwich. I thought, 'ew. He's gonna eat paint.'

sick cat, bad liquid

I dreamt my cat was sick because he was full of this pernicious grey fluid. The top of his body was gone -- he looked like a cat watering can -- and you could look down and see that he was over-full of it. So I picked him up and poured it out. His body felt solid and motionless. Like a watering can.

Hugging the Witch Bird

This may well be the weirdest dream I post here.

In the dream a group of us (?) watched a movie in which a powerful and evil witch who was also a giant black bird was cheated out of some peanuts by the hero and his dog. (Peanuts!!) The dog was also a human and a cherished and loyal friend of our hero.

Then my friends and I were in the movie, and the critical scene repeated with me as the hero. But the ending went further than I remembered.

First the dog/friend had to teach me how to move through the woods without making a sound. I don't remember the trick, only that at first I thought it must be impossible, given the carpeting of crackly leaves on the forest floor. (I don't care what people say about the capabilities of Native Americans; I still think that's impossible.) Then later we were in the room with the witch bird; she was entertaining us before a fire. It seems strange now that we should have made so much trouble about getting there quietly if we were to be her guests, but we did.

The dog turned me invisible, and I went about stealing the peanuts. I had to hug the giant bird/witch so that she couldn't feel me reach in her pocket. It was embarrassing, uncomfortable and frightening, hugging her fat feathery body. As I stole the peanuts, I threw them one by one to the dog, who snapped them up. (This bit was supposed to be funny, I think.) Then the movie dream took a more typical Hollywood turn. The dog (also invisible) sneezed and our cover was blown. He turned visible and human -- he was tall and rugged and honest looking, with a reddish brown beard and short messy hair. (I know nobody who looks like that.) The witch tried to kill him, and he tried to cover for me so I could escape. But (of course) I at first refused to go. There was a scene in which he, injured, encouraged me to leave him behind and save myself. Surprisingly, the scene showed me silently acquiescing: I ran away around a corner as the witch neared the room where we were. I remember thinking as I left that there was another option, but I have no idea what it was. But in the next scene my dog friend and I were safe at my hearth and he was recuperating.

Then I woke up.

Ex in a coma

The names have been changed to protect me from lawsuits.

I came upon my ex's brother in a sketchy parking lot. He was sitting all alone in a big limosine-like car. The sun was setting, and he seemed indifferent to his location. He barely noticed me. I got in the car and asked what was wrong, and he said, "Oh, hi Terry," in a very distracted way. "What's wrong, Brian?" I repeated. He spoke without answering me (or even looking at me) for a long while. Finally he said something like, "...and that's another thing I guess we'll just have to get used to."
"What else are you getting used to? What's wrong?"
"But it has been really hard. Especially for my mother."
"What?"
"Oh, sorry. I'm spacing out, aren't I? It's Vic [my ex, Brian's brother]. He has been in a coma for three days. And it looks pretty bad because according to his brain scans, he has been awake several times and we couldn't tell the difference."

He never told me what happened to put Vic in the coma. I was shocked at least as much by the change in Brian's behavior as by Vic's situation. I thought, "He's growing up. Is this what it took? How horrible!"
___________________
(Who sang 'girlfriend in a coma?')

a feline pooka?

My cats sometimes make urine-art around my house. I was strongly considering making them outdoor only when I had this dream.

Something very large and evil was trying to get in my house. It was at my bedroom window watching me as I slept. I could not wake myself to stop it and (confusingly) though I looked right at it, I could not see it most of the time. (It had different configurations, only some of which were visible to me.)

My littlest cat could see the evil thing in any configuration. She ordinarily hides from strangers of any sort and growls quietly until they leave. But in this case, she found the courage (and some bizarre physical abilities) to save us. She went to the window and made herself large enough to cover the glass, or did something equally weird and impossible, but anyway "blowing herself up" was how I understood it. The evil thing realized it was not stronger than she, and it left!

the egg on high

A dream I had as a teenager. I never forgot it.

I was in a restaurant at the top of a very tall building. All the other people in the restaurant, including the wait staff, were mobile skeletons. The could move and talk and apparently eat, but they had no flesh or muscle or internal organs. Everyone but me ate bones. I had a plate with a bone on it, but I didn't want to eat it. It was surprisingly quiet in the restaurant until a phone rang, and a waiter's body clattered noisily as he skittered to answer it.

There was a "man" at another table, and somehow I knew he had something he shouldn't. He approached and asked, "are you going to eat that bone?" I countered (craftily, I thought), "I don't know. Are you going to eat that egg?"

He had an illicit egg. I, being fleshy, was allowed to eat (or at least have) the egg. He wasn't, and he knew it. So I extorted it.

I don't remember eating the egg. But I was very happy to have it.
__________
Dream chassis: Overly obvious life and death symbolism. But it was way cool.

Naked Communion

People looking for porn will be disappointed here.

I dreamt I was a part of a radical group protesting the Catholic church's revitalized fundamentalism and the tyranny of Pope Benedict XVI .

My boyfriend, I and others were involved in an action that took place during mass. I don't remember what the others did, but my job was to attempt to take communion naked. We were expecting that I would be refused, but we thought it depended on which sacristan I had. There were four people at the head of the line. Just as I approached the head of the line, Pope John Paul II (who was already dead when I had the dream) swapped in and gave it to me with no pause.

I wasn't surprised that the dead pope gave me communion, and did it in spite of my nakedness. But I thought, "We've made our point."

Then everyone was celebrating a successful action.
________________________
Dream chassis: If you think 'tyranny' is a strong word for Benedict's actions, do some research. Benedict will amplify the precedent that Catholics with thoughts and opinions are unwelcome. I'm lazy, but I highly recommend last month's New Yorker and this article on the America editor's ouster.

I don't take communion at all, normally. I don't believe in the transubstantiation, the literal transformation of wafer into corpse, of Mondavi into blood. If one does believe in it, one must also believe oneself to be participating in cannibalism at the Eucharist. (Catholic police should perhaps be more concerned about this.) I, because I do not believe, am unwelcome at the sacrament.

It's okay with me. I don't eat any meat, or anything anyone else thinks is meat.

My virgin post

My latest stupid idea: this blog. Why do people make blogs? For dumb, narcissitic reasons. Maybe we're all just bored and lonely, maybe we all like to think our pitiful little lives and opinions are worth someone else's time.

And maybe they are. I read blogs. Mostly the well-researched, informative type blogs (see my friend Barney's page), but still. Maybe there is some hope for bloggers.

Anyway, rather than tell total strangers about my actual life (which is boring and, well, nobody else's business) or doing any sort of work, I thought I'd just blog my dreams. Sleeping is most of what I do when I'm not climbing (or working). And my dreams're pretty wacked, so I don't think it'll be boring.