Paris

Last night dreamed I was in Paris.  I left the hotel and went to a grocery store for breakfast.  On the way I crossed the Seine, but instead of the urban river that runs through real Paris, this dream version stretched out far into a rural distance, bounded by rough chalky cliffs and under a clear blue sky.  At the edge of my vision I could just see a group of young boys jumping off the cliffs and into the water.  Luminous air.  It was another in the series of Mystic Landscape dreams.  I was so moved that I began weeping at its beauty or impossible perfection.  But returning from the store I realized that I had forgotten the name of my hotel and had no memory of the street it was on.  I was completely lost and disoriented.  I don't know that I've ever felt that quite so strongly in dreams or in waking life. 

I climbed into a passing car, whose occupants didn't seem to notice me, and I rode with them through the city.  One scene was glimpsed as we went through a cavernous tunnel:  a parallel tunnel where sheep lived on a dirt floor.  We drove up a mountainous road to the top of a rocky outcrop where houses were clustered.  The driver couldn't help me find my hotel.  I walked to a nearby house.  An old, skinny, dark-skinned grandmother opened the door.  She fanned a fistful of dollars and said I could sub for her as a teacher if I wanted--she was blind.  Somehow she covered me with black and white kittens (I know, I know).  I woke up.

Entering a large rectangular room, giant hearth on one side, assorted sofas and chairs in the middle.  At one end is a massive credenza stretching to cover the whole wall.  Where a mirror might be there reaches to the ceiling a profusion of carved animals and birds interspersed now and then with mirrors and paintings.  The credenza and all the carvings are made of very dark wood, so dark that details are murky.  One of the paintings near the top, near the ceiling, is just large letters that almost seem to spell out a word but I couldn't read it.  JUNG, maybe?  I recently bought a book about him.  It is hung upside down.
One of the other walls is festooned with musical instruments, especially stringed instruments.  Many of them are unfamiliar to me.  One of these is a harp, but made of dark wires.  It is hanging from the ceiling and the bottom, also wire, is curved upwards like a rocking horse base. 
A crowd of people have entered the room, moving randomly about.  I pick up the harp and find that I can play it reasonably well.  Partly because I can see lighter areas on the wire strings where other people have put their fingers.  I play some arpeggios and scales.  A policeman of some sort strides purposefully through the crowd, ignoring everyone.  With some apprehension I play more loudly, thinking that he will assume I'm innocent.  Because see?  I can play the harp.

I'm touring a university campus unfamiliar to me.  I'm with a few other people I don't really know, and the tour guide is a professor at the university who is new to me, but I know he has a reputation for brilliance and being difficult.  He's showing us around and he and I are getting on quite well.  We finish the tour and he walks us to a large car parked outside on a field.  The sunlight is very bright and suffuses the field.  All around us there are other people walking on their business but there also are many small children running happily about.

The tour guide gets us into the car and leans into to the window to speak to me.
"Do you enjoy having all the children around," he asks.
"Yes," I reply honestly.  "I don't get to see many little kids any more and it's fun to see them, especially so happy.  (Or something very like that.)
"You know," he says  "the man who plays the violin for the university is retiring."
"He's Ray Bradbury," one of my companions says.
I look at the tour guide, who is walking away.  I realize he is suggesting I take the position of violinist for the university.
I call after him:  "I don't play the violin!"
He turns just enough to say, quietly:  "I think you can do it."
I turn away from the window, instantly tormented by this.  My chest is convulsed with sorrow and physically knotted up inside.
"Go ahead," I cry  "Stab my heart with an ice pick!"
And I fall into the lap of one of my companions and weep harsh painful tears.
I wake with my heart pounding and chest heavy with distress and sadness.

Missed chances in life?  Very intense dream.

Long dream culminating in this scene:  I'm in a large, dimly lit room where many people mingle (I attended a poetry reading last night, which is probably the resource for this).  Standing against one wall, her back to the room is my mother.  She's dismally unhappy.  A young girl stands beside her, also with back to the room.  Both have very long strait hair, unlike my mother in life.  I approach and put my arms around my mother's back, trying to say calming and reassuring words.  Finally, I say "I love you, mom."  Immediately her body pops like a soap bubble, leaving me holding her empty skin for just a second.  But I understand that my declaration of love has freed her, and ended her suffering.  Now she can go on to some other place. 

Very positive dream.  I really felt like I was making some kind of astral plane communication of something that needed to be said.  

Sometimes A Great Notion?

Dreamed I wandered into a banjo workshop taught by Ken Kesey and Paul Newman.  Kesey seemed irritated about something, but Newman was gracious and charming.  They were parents? custodians? guardians? of a miniature adult, an old man about a foot tall. 

Here comes the train.

Northern Arizona, maybe.  Rocky, mountainous landscape, no trees.  S and I are in a car traveling somewhere for fun, for a good view in the mountains.  Sky darkens.  We're heading back southwards, and the road parallels a railroad track.  I'm about to turn right onto a short bridge that goes over the tracks, when I see that a train is fast approaching and the bridge has collapsed.  Dream ends as I'm trying to stop before driving onto the collapsed bridge and being hit by the train--which anyway will crash as it hits the bridge ruins.  No idea what's happening here.

Elephant talk

Chatting with an elephant about something.  We were both reading a poster on the wall.  Then today I saw three pictures of elephants online on separate sites.  Ganesha? 

Nightmare on the 10 yard line

Night.  On a highschool football field a half-dozen young men drive cars in bumptious circles.  At the other end of the field an old man sits at a makeshift desk.  Papers and other humdrum objects are scattered on it, and hold his attention.  Myself and a friend walk onto the field knowing that the old man was our chief tormentor in high school, a bully and a villain.  We approach him and push over his desk and send him flying onto his back.  The scene blurs here but somehow our attack kills him.  Awareness now splits, so that I'm standing off the field while also digging a ditch with a backhoe to bury him in the field.  My friend and I admire the fact that we/they are burying him in the football field, it seems a charged act. 

All during this and what happens afterwards, I am aware of myself thinking that this is a Stephen King story, that I've read it before.

The scene shifts to later in the night or the next night.  We're now in a large dining hall filled with the people of the town.  They are rewarding us for having killed the villain, who apparently tortured them all in one way or another.  They show us gratitude with gifts and food.  One Oriental man offers me a painting from his art shop--can't quite remember the artist. 

I half wake and realize that this isn't any King story I've read before, that I'm the one making it up.  It's a disturbing dream but I drift back into it and try to re-write the ending so that it is more of a story.  In this re-writing I realize that I am now being cast in the role of the new villain to replace the one we killed.  As though there was a psychic ecology to the town that demanded this role exist.  As an amendment, I realize that the friend and I will now have to fight it out for first place in this role. 

I think I know where this partly came from.  I've been watching Breaking Bad every evening for several weeks, and I'm reading a novel by Edward St. Aubyn--both bleak and thick with monsters.   The power of the dream was not so much the horror elements as the sense that it was a significant story revealing itself and being revealed by my lucid rewriting.

Zip lines and old people

Sitting in restaurant with S, outside I see a Western view--ruddy orange rocks which block my view into a very deep canyon.  I can see the other side of the canyon rising above them in the distance.  I see people jumping from the top of the far canyon wall, just small dark silhouettes at this distance.  S is talking and I interrupt to show her the jumpers, and count ten of them.  Then I notice that there are wires strung across the canyon, several of them, and that people are using them as jump lines.  They speed across the air suspended below a line, zooming into close up view before jumping off onto the near cliff face.  (I recently watched a video about S. American people commuting across a valley using these zip lines.)  Absurdly, a Volkswagon minibus glides across the wires as well.
Scene shifts to edge of canyon.  I'm in line behind others, particularly an elderly couple, as we wait to descend the cliff face sitting in inner tubes.  My attention is focused on the faces and near-naked bodies of this couple.  They are oddly beautiful, with translucent skin over lean bodies.  Their cheekbones are prominent, and they are happy.  I wake before we descend.  Very positive encounter.

Frogs, OK, and even the slug--but the giant peacock?

S and I in bed in a small room whose door opens to a flat desert outside.  Bright outside, dark inside.  I look from bed through the open door and see an enormous bright green bullfrog hopping by.  It splits into two bullfrogs who bounce? against each other and then become one again.  Then a fantastical slug scoots by.  It is about a yard long, colored in various shades of blue, with snake-like blue scales on its top.  It moves not like a normal slug, or even a snake, but in a steady effortless glide across the desert floor, like a little train engine.  Then an enormous blue peacock prances into the bedroom.  It is the size of an emu, with azure tail feathers and a short fat beak.  It pokes around in the room, slightly threatening but more of an annoyance than a serious threat.  It pecks at my back (I'm now lying on my stomach in bed) where I'm not covered by the blanket. 

tree at night

Deep night.  I'm in a bare-branched tree, high above the ground, reclining on a branch with no sense of threat.  The limbs of the tree are dark against the night sky, which is filled with a semi-regular pattern of small clouds.  The clouds are dark gray, blue-purple against the nearly black sky.  They are luminous is this somber register.  A young black woman is behind/below me in the tree, both of us naked.  She reaches one hand around my chest and rubs one nipple in a decidedly erotic manner.  I wake. 

More mystic light on water.

Last night dreamed of R.  She was standing at a distance from me in a field of bright green grass that grew 3 or 4 feet high.  Behind her the land dropped away as a massive cliff down to the ocean.  The light was cloudy/bright, saturating the colors.  In the far distance down the coastline I could see an island covered with many large buildings, almost like a castle or fort.  The sunset was behind it, so that the island and the structures were silhouetted.  The contrast of sunset and silhouette made the island seem to glow.

I approached her and saw that she had gained a lot of weight.  Her face was garishly made-up, with bright red rouge spots on her cheeks. 

 "Are you surveying your domain," I asked, somewhat ironically as I pointed to the island, which I knew to be her home.  She didn't reply, but I could now she that she was weeping.

"What's wrong," I asked.

"No one likes me," she said, and turned her face away.

After some confusion I found myself lying the ground beside her.  We kissed a bit, and I remember kissing her neck. 

That's all, but on waking it felt like the dream was in the 'mystic light on water' category.  Not last night but the night before I remember wishing I could have another dream like that before falling asleep.

helicopter landing

Landed twice in a helicopter last night--maybe the President's helicopter?--both times the landing was jarring.  Later went to the truck but found that the back half of it was missing.

another mystic light

Driving on a narrow road I realize that I've wandered off and into a field beside the road.  The field is grassy and wet, with deep puddles covering most of it.  I turn the car around and head back to the road.  When I do, I see that the sky is dark with clouds but directly in front and above me there is an opening through which a bright light pours.  The puddles in the field are illuminated with shiny reflections.  I grab my camera and try to take a picture of the light but the clouds close again before I can get the picture composed.  Nevertheless a very positive feel about the experience.

This is another one of the mystic light in an expanse of nature dreams.  Oddly, they often involve a car.  Am I trying to remember something?  Could there be a specific experience behind these dreams?  Each time they happen I feel that something significant is taking place, but beyond my understanding. 

This afternoon I walked in the Bot Garden and spent half an hour or so sitting beside the river on a boulder, just listening to the nature sounds and enjoying the warm afternoon.  The sense of peace felt related to last night's dream. 

How can I get more of this?

Elephants from the land of the dead

Fragments from much greater complexity, but here's what I have:
I'm on the roof of a mobile home with someone else.  I hear crying coming from inside and know that it is a younger Z, maybe 6 years old.  I try to get down from the roof and help him, but there is a precipice next to the mobile home.  Next scene, I half wake up and wonder if Z is, at that exact moment, unhappy about something in daily life.  Slipping back into a dream, I find myself perched on the top of his yellow house, trying to guard him from I don't know what, something like Batman.  After a bit this seems creepy and I move to the driveway.  I begin to send a positive white energy field around the house.  Some force tries to suck the good energy away, but I increase the intensity and, like a firehose, it is too much for the bad force.  It is vanquished.  I extend my energy field to S lying beside me and L in San Francisco.  All is well.
Next part.  I've been back asleep for a few hours.  I dream that I am in a Mexican? South American? mountain village, staying in a cheap hotel.  I leave the hotel and enter the house next door.  Once inside it is revealed to be infinite in length, like a dark dusty horse arena.  In the far distance I see a parade of elephants approaching.  But not normal elephants, these are enormous, twenty times the usual size.  As they get closer I see that they are decked out in spectacular adornments, like a circus elephant.  Somehow I know that they come from the land of the dead.  (The day before S and I had passed a funeral cortege, complete with a horse drawn hearse.  I had taken pictures of the horses.)
I walk back outside and find a family of peasants trying to make a garden in the street.  They have brought in dirt to half-cover the cobblestones.  A woman and a small child work the soil.  The father, a wiry middle-aged man who smokes a cigarette, speaks to me in Spanish, then French.  He says:  "Now you're finally alive."
I wake.

Nelson, Willie

It's been a while since I posted a dream, but this one was so entertaining that I'm going to post it.

S and I are attending a Willie Nelson concert in a surprisingly low rent auditorium without many people in the audience. We're setting on the front row. The ceiling, which is pretty high above our heads, has multiple rectangular holes where cardboard boxes have been inserted halfway through. Like weird cardboard crystals poking out of the ceiling. Willie stops playing and climbs stairs at the back of the stage which take him above the ceiling. He removes the cardboard boxes from the holes and throws them at the audience through the holes until all are gone. They all fall directly on me, though I don't think there's anything personal about it and they are easily deflected. But then Willie can be see through one hole unzipping his pants and lying down across the opening, so that his penis is dangling through it. I think: it's Nelson's willie! and I wake up laughing.

What kind of fool am I?

Classic anxiety dream: on stage but I've forgotten my lines. Someone just off stage--the director?--is looking on with disapproval. I'm playing the Fool, maybe in Lear, but looking more like Falstaff. I twirl around and look at the ground, belled jester's cap on my head. Wake with, of course, anxiety.

Memo to self.

Visiting my therapist. I complain about something, and I want her to tell me the answer to my problem. She scribbles something on a piece of paper, folds it, and hands it to me. Take this and read it later, she says. I do. Outside the office I open it and read: Tear up this note and figure out the solution yourself.

kids, car, naked moles, crabs

In the backyard, twilight, I'm drawn to our car which is parked on the lawn. In the back seat there are three babies, perhaps 8months old, two black, one white, all wrapped securely in blankets. Someone has left them there for us to find and adopt. Or at least deal with.

Sandy walks over and circles to the other side of the car. I reach in to pick one up but discover that it is a naked mole rat inside a plastic baggie. It's very active in the baggie and disturbingly resembles a penis. I set it down in some disgust and pick up another one, which is discovered to be a very active small crab that pinches my fingers through its baggie.

No more, but that was enough.

more mystic geography

Another one last night. Early parts of it are lost, but it ended with me floating down a cool broad river in darkness. No danger, everything still and deep in the midnight hush. I can barely discern any details on the shore or in the distance, but I'm aware of passing a large car parked half in the water on my right. I bump against a rock in the shallow water and rise, standing, from the water. In the far distance I see black hills just visible against the black sky. There are scattered lights--houses? fires?--on the hillsides and, arching over all in the vast darkness above, the galaxy swirls through the heavens. Peace fills the air.

I am grateful for these dreams.