Vicksburg hills

Sandy and I are driving through the hills around Vicksburg, where we lived for five years. In reality these gently rolling hills are covered with nondescript pines and scrappy hardwoods where they're not plowed for fields. In the dream, though, they are exquisitely beautiful--irregular, peaked, plentiful, covered with thick vegetation that is shaded every variety of green. They have the grace of a Chinese landscape painting. We drive through them, getting a panaromic view as we crest the highest. The light is warm and ennobling.

The scene shifts to the city itself, where I walk through a middle-class neighborhood. I see a lion in the near distance outside someone's house. It is tawny and large, imposing as it paces below a window. The door to the house opens and someone comes out on to the porch. They see the lion and go back in.

I'm in a second story apartment, where Sandy and I apparently live. I look down into the back yard and see the lion that I saw earlier, which is female, as well as another one, male with a hugh mane, both pacing around the small backyard. I'm a little uneasy but not too nervous.

Now I'm in a coffee shop in downtown Vicksburg. I sit down at a table where DB is sitting. I haven't, in reality, spoken to him in several years. His normally long red hair has been cut to a near crewcut length. He has his chin on his hand and seems distraught. I ask about his wife. He works in her art and framing shop. He says that they're not doing well, that she has been giving him bad work evaluations. He weeps.

We are in his apartment. His wife is there, as well as a little girl who I learn is his adopted daughter. She is playing with some kind of unusual toy--a tablet of some sort. His wife is filming her with a videocamera. She and DB don't speak directly to each other.

The giant mouse and France.

First dream.
A mouse is making noise beneath our bed. I finally get up and poke around under there, finding a very large mouse hole in the wall. I can see the mouse inside, much larger than a nomral mouse, looking calmly back at me. Tiny black eyes. I want to find something to smush him with, so I leave the house. Somewhere I pick up a large plank, something like a 2"x10"x12' made of pine, and hurry back to the house. There I see various people running about in a state of emergency. Sharon is there, grinning. The house has become a different structure--a factory, maybe, or a ruin of one. The roof is missing in some rooms, and the windows are broken out. A sense of urgency prevails. I run through the building carrying the plank like a lance (I know, I know...). I get to the bedroom, which is now very large. In fact, the mouse hole has gotten larger and the mouse as well. I see it still stitting calmly inside the hole, but it is now a foot and a half tall. I gallop towards it, planning to impale it with the plank. As I do I hear the mouse say, or think, this sentence: "That Mr. Faust is a very bad man." I plunge the plank through the hole and smash the mouse on his left arm. He stares at it. I hold the plank in place for a moment, then approach the hole. The mouse lies dead or stunned on the floor. He is enormous. Enormouse.

Second dream.
Sandy, Jan, Zack, and I are touring Europe. We are in England, crossing a bridge on a tourist bus. We slowly enter an extremely dense cityscape. The buildings are elaborately, magnificently, decorated. Every window--and there are thousands--has its own frame, each a different color than the contrasting background. Everything is bright and sunny. The buildings are without number, every street and alleyway revealing another crowded cluster. We are delighted with the view.

Now we're in France. We go inside something--a museum?--and find ourselves in a mall-like area. We walk into a long hallway where Sandy and I are having a heated discussion--an argument?--and Sandy runs away down the hall. She says something about cancer. I go after her and we return. As we do we pass a dark-haired young woman drinking at a water fountain. She is crying. Apparently she speaks English, we realise, and has heard the conversation about cancer. Either she has cancer herself, or is distraught at hearing us discuss it. Sandy goes to her and comforts her.

Where's my car?

I'm downtown in Austin, on Congress Ave--the main street. The dream finds me waking in a clothing store on a corner. The place is small, nearly bare, with a simple counter at the back and a few racks of clothes near the front. It may be a women's clothing store, or it may be a shop for secondhand clothes--or maybe both. I have apparently been sleeping on the floor behind the counter. I stumble around for a few moments trying to wake up. A woman I don't know enters the store and looks at the clothes on one of the racks. I leave but feel uncertain about it; perhaps I should be staying because no one in charge is around. Do I have a key? Should I leave the door unlocked? I decide to leave anyway.

Outside I look across the street and I see the sun is near the horizon. The sky is lit up with an energetic glow. But I can't tell if the sun is setting or rising. Did I wake up in the morning or did I sleep all night and all day? This makes me more anxious, and I set out around the corner away from Congress Ave. and walk uphill. The sky is now darkening and I think that it is evening and not morning.

I search for my car, which I know I parked somewhere downtown, but I can't remember where. Anxiety increases more as I scan every car and concentrate on remembering. I come to the next street, which runs parallel to Congress and pass a black man on the corner. I feel some nervousness at the encounter. Looking across the street I see that there is a ruined building, almost a shard of a building, lit by a last ray of sun. It is brilliantly decorated with colorful grafitti covering every brick. I walk down this street for a block, then turn back towards Congress Ave. At the next intersection I notice that the block is full of brightly colored classic cars parked next to each other and filling all the spaces. They are blue and pink, and parked so that the colors alternate. I 'remember' that there is a classic car convention in town. I walk on and as I get closer to the main street I find myself amid a line of boats being pulled by cars--it is a parade of vehicles, part of the convention. I have to step nimbly to avoid being run over.

When I get back to Congress Ave. the light is increasing again, as though it is in fact dawn. I look around for a telephone so that I can call Sandy to come pick me up and help me look for the car. The only one I see has been vandalized so that the handset is missing from the cord, which dangles down. I'm going over in my mind what I want to say to her, which is that she should meet me at the old library.

Unaccountably, I find myself waking up again. This time Sandy is with me and we are in a small hotel room overlooking the main street. There are two strange men in the room as well, talking to each other and ignoring us. One of them reminds me of P, a gay man I once worked with. I think that it has been many years since I saw him and wonder if he has gotten as fat as I have. I suspect he hasn't if he continued to swim daily.

Then it comes to me with an aha sensation--how could I have been so dumb?--that stories are obviously hardwired into our brains because our unconscious dreams in stories.

I wake up.

Things that go boom in the night

Sandy and I are watching TV in a room on the second story of our house. A large window is on the right of the TV, and from my angle I can see only pale blue sky through it. There is a booming noise outside and I look at the window where I see a small dark blue compact car flying through the air. I leap to the window and see a puff of white smoke rising from the trees and houses in the near distance. Looking back at the car I notice that it is continuing on through the sky, its initial arc flattened into a smooth trajectory so that it seems to be flying rather than shot out like a cannon ball. It passes out of my vision to the right, but now I notice another strange event. In the middle distance there is a large white factory, something like an oil refinery but cleaner. It is set among neighborhoods and trees, but dwarfs them. In the far distance is a line of low dark hills, and above everything the sky is now a brilliant deep blue. The factory is exploding. White smoke, then yellow flames, wash out of it. I give a glancing thought to the people who live in the nearby houses and then turn to Sandy. "We've got to turn off the gas!" I cry, and rush down the stairs to the basement. There I see a gas powered water heater that is knocking and hissing like a cartoon boiler. I search frantically for a moment, then find the on/off switch and turn it.
I wake.

Tigers and wolves, oh my

Sandy and I are standing below two fenced areas that extend from the wall to our right. The lower one is larger than the top one and is suspended below it. A wooden stairway connects the floor where we stand and the two enclosures. The lower one holds an enormous tiger, which is mostly white but with various warm colors on its back. It pads softly around the area. Above it, in the other cage, two adult wolves and a cub pace back and forth. They are giant wolves, the size of small horses.

The stairs somehow open to us and we ascend--but as we do the wolf cub zips down the stairs and escapes. We hurry up the stairs and find that there is a third level where we may stand. Spread out beyond us is revealed a magical landscape of hill and forest. The trees are brightly colored with rust and ochres, something like a fall landscape. The light is clear and brilliant. Seeing the view is exhilirating.

But as we admire the view we are also aware of the animals now below us. The wolves in the area immediately below seem angry and distraught, possibly because the cub is missing. One wolf in particular keeps poking its snout into our area and snarling. The head is enormous. I can see its yellow teeth and sense it malevolence, but am somehow also jazzed by the beauty of its pelt.

We decide to leave and the stairs suddenly fold into a slide, which carries us quickly down past the animals. The dream ends.