Two dreams.
I'm under a train, riding the rails, my face only an inch or two from the ground. I'm trying to get a message(?) to someone. Is it about myself? Will it get me off the train? I don't know. This message can't be delivered in any normal way, but has to be sneaked in. Somehow I have disguised it as a sack of garbage, or several sacks of garbage. As the train slows down I throw the sack from beneath the train. It slides into a pile of other garbage bags and people standing nearby notice this event and register that something unusual is going on.
This first part I see from my perspective below the train, but when the garbage hits the perspective shifts so that I see the scene from above--dark bag sliding across the ground and colliding with other bags, the train slow or stopped on the tracks. Then the viewpoint shifts again and I swoop down beside the train. I'm able to see my body hanging there. The expression on my face is not a happy one--am I asleep? unconscious? dead?
Second dream. I'm in a large public room, a restaurant I think. There are many people sitting at tables with white tablecloths. The place is also a barber shop. A small woman with neatly cut dark hair is the barber. There is a line of 15 or 20 people, all standing, waiting for her attentions. After she finishes them all I approach her and ask for a haircut. I tell her that I just had one earlier that day with someone else but I'm not satisfied, and I ask her not to tell that other barber that I'm coming for a second one--I don't want to hurt her feelings.
The woman, who seems cheerful and competent, tells me that she has always liked long hair, with the implied suggestion that I should let mine grow longer. I explain that my hair is thinning out and doesn't look good long, but as we talk I see myself in a large mirror. My hair, which is in reality gray and indeed thinning, appears in the mirror to be thick, glossy, and black. It's combed straight back.
2.25.2005
2.15.2005
Deja voom
Short dream. Back in Austin. I'm wandering around the west campus area where I once lived. The houses are single story older family homes now overrun by students. The sun is bright with that clear Texas sunlight but I'm not hot. There is a festival or a block party going on in the streets. The sidewalks are crowded with young people, about half of them naked. No one seems to notice. I'm dressed in only jeans.
I'm pushing a heavy bicycle down the sidewalk, a task made more difficult by a long metal chain(?) attached to its back. The metal is not actually in links like a chain, but more like a whip. It is stiff and refractory, so that as it drags the bicycle is slowed down. I keep trying to bend it up so that it doesn't drag, but without success.
As the dream ends I am struggling with the metal piece while an older heavyset man watches me from nearby. He is seated on something like an apple crate and seems vaguely familiar.
I'm pushing a heavy bicycle down the sidewalk, a task made more difficult by a long metal chain(?) attached to its back. The metal is not actually in links like a chain, but more like a whip. It is stiff and refractory, so that as it drags the bicycle is slowed down. I keep trying to bend it up so that it doesn't drag, but without success.
As the dream ends I am struggling with the metal piece while an older heavyset man watches me from nearby. He is seated on something like an apple crate and seems vaguely familiar.
2.02.2005
Nuclear fears
Tough night. Woke at the dread hour of 4:30 again, tossed round and round trying to get comfortable though my shoulders ached in half the positions. Slipped in and out of doze. At some point I began explaining to someone else what I thought about when I lay awake. I thought: sex, work, art, death, love, god, etc. Then I imagined making a special pair of dice. On one of those octohedral or whatever game dice I would put those words describing the basic existential knots, one word on each facet. Then a companion di would have various approaches to those ideas on each facet. For instance, laughter, despair, irony, sadness, etc. I couldn't decide if the dice would then be rolled and discussed as some kind of therapeutic and/or spiritual activity or if they were the prelude to some complex game.
Then deeper dreaming as I finally got to sleep about 6:00. I'm riding with Sandy in the van downtown, where she drops me off for some meeting. I wander across the university and to the museum, where many people are milling around in the parking lot. One of them, a former supervisor, is oddly dressed. She has one breast exposed and the the dress she's wearing is multicolored and thin. She has dyed her hair some bright color. She looks distracted as she idles around the parking lot. This is surprizing since she is or was a very conservative dresser and is roughly my age. After a bit we enter the museum and sit around a large table, where I see that I was mistaken--that woman wasn't who I thought. Instead, the real one is there looking twenty years older than in actuality. Her hair is long and solidly gray. She seems distraught. Someone reveals to me that she has an incurable disease.
I leave and go back downtown, only to find that the van is missing. Despite the fact that I was dropped off earlier in it, I now expect to find it parked. It isn't. I go inside a restaurant and try to call Sandy. The woman behind the counter there knows me and we start talking about some job search. I call Sandy but some other employee there answers. He says he won't get Sandy because--well, something catastrophic has happened to the country. Perhaps a nuclear event. He says Sandy has chosen to stay and work because most of the other employees have fled. He talks very very slowly, so that it is maddening to try to get information from him. I wake distraught.
Then deeper dreaming as I finally got to sleep about 6:00. I'm riding with Sandy in the van downtown, where she drops me off for some meeting. I wander across the university and to the museum, where many people are milling around in the parking lot. One of them, a former supervisor, is oddly dressed. She has one breast exposed and the the dress she's wearing is multicolored and thin. She has dyed her hair some bright color. She looks distracted as she idles around the parking lot. This is surprizing since she is or was a very conservative dresser and is roughly my age. After a bit we enter the museum and sit around a large table, where I see that I was mistaken--that woman wasn't who I thought. Instead, the real one is there looking twenty years older than in actuality. Her hair is long and solidly gray. She seems distraught. Someone reveals to me that she has an incurable disease.
I leave and go back downtown, only to find that the van is missing. Despite the fact that I was dropped off earlier in it, I now expect to find it parked. It isn't. I go inside a restaurant and try to call Sandy. The woman behind the counter there knows me and we start talking about some job search. I call Sandy but some other employee there answers. He says he won't get Sandy because--well, something catastrophic has happened to the country. Perhaps a nuclear event. He says Sandy has chosen to stay and work because most of the other employees have fled. He talks very very slowly, so that it is maddening to try to get information from him. I wake distraught.
2.01.2005
A series of short dreams...
A series of dreams.
On a train with several people who are apparently friends. We're riding in one of the cars near the end of the train. Another train, or vehicle of some kind, is following behind us on the tracks. One of my companions, a young man, suggests that we uncouple some of the train cars so that they will crash into the followers. His face has a kind of mischevious or even mean-spirited expression. The cars are uncoupled and they crash into the following cars.
In a restaurant/night club. Low lighting, rough walls, many small round tables, some people. With a group of people I have entered the room, walking down a short flight of wooden steps. One of the people I'm with tells the group that the Rolling Stones first played together in this club. We are all thrilled and look around in vain to see if they might drop in tonight.
In a hospital. I've got an incurable disease and the doctors have decided to put me out of my misery. I'm being led down a green hall, wearing a hospital gown, to a small room where the mercy killing will take place. I'm reluctant to enter and feel great sadness that my life is about to be over.
In the museum. I walk down a hallway, which is dark and narrow. Doors open from the hallway and people talk in the doorways and sometimes crowd the hall. Everyone seems taller than me. I walk to another corridor which is separate from the rest of the building and enter. It contains a tall set of wooden steps that lead to my office. There are two or three college age people coming and going in the corridor, and one man, older than the rest, walks through a doorway to return to the other corridor. He is very tall, mostly bald. He bumps his head on the lintel without seeming to notice. I start up the stairs but they get rickety as I climb. Near the top I see that in order to get to my office I will have to leap across an empty space and twist around to land in my office. I feel dizzy and the stairs start to come loose from their moorings in the wall. I'm too frightened to leap. One of the students at the foot of the stairs, a young woman with short dark hair, looks up at me and asks if I'm still disoriented. She is apparently referring to some earlier problem I'd had. I wake in distress.
On a train with several people who are apparently friends. We're riding in one of the cars near the end of the train. Another train, or vehicle of some kind, is following behind us on the tracks. One of my companions, a young man, suggests that we uncouple some of the train cars so that they will crash into the followers. His face has a kind of mischevious or even mean-spirited expression. The cars are uncoupled and they crash into the following cars.
In a restaurant/night club. Low lighting, rough walls, many small round tables, some people. With a group of people I have entered the room, walking down a short flight of wooden steps. One of the people I'm with tells the group that the Rolling Stones first played together in this club. We are all thrilled and look around in vain to see if they might drop in tonight.
In a hospital. I've got an incurable disease and the doctors have decided to put me out of my misery. I'm being led down a green hall, wearing a hospital gown, to a small room where the mercy killing will take place. I'm reluctant to enter and feel great sadness that my life is about to be over.
In the museum. I walk down a hallway, which is dark and narrow. Doors open from the hallway and people talk in the doorways and sometimes crowd the hall. Everyone seems taller than me. I walk to another corridor which is separate from the rest of the building and enter. It contains a tall set of wooden steps that lead to my office. There are two or three college age people coming and going in the corridor, and one man, older than the rest, walks through a doorway to return to the other corridor. He is very tall, mostly bald. He bumps his head on the lintel without seeming to notice. I start up the stairs but they get rickety as I climb. Near the top I see that in order to get to my office I will have to leap across an empty space and twist around to land in my office. I feel dizzy and the stairs start to come loose from their moorings in the wall. I'm too frightened to leap. One of the students at the foot of the stairs, a young woman with short dark hair, looks up at me and asks if I'm still disoriented. She is apparently referring to some earlier problem I'd had. I wake in distress.
1.28.2005
Calling Dr. Freud...
I'm in the van and just pulling into a gas station, rising on a little mound at the edge of the station, when the car runs out of gas. So close! Another foot further and the car could have coasted down to the gas pumps. I start rocking the car back and forth with a hip movement and it just barely scoots over the mound and I coast to the pumps. Hmm...
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