Pay more attention to the trees in your dreams

I'm in Houston or Chicago, driving along a broad tree-lined street. The street is actually two streets separated by a narrow paved area, and both sides have dark complex oak trees on each side, so that there are four lines of trees. There is little traffic. For some reason I decide to drive across the paved area and switch to the left road. I can see patches of white light shining through the branches in the near distance. I think, in the dream, that I've been here before.

Later I'm in a high school, where I am a new teacher. The halls are dark and students jostle each other. At the intersection of two locker-lined halls there is a massive pile of winter coats on the floor. I go outside, where I stand in an area outside the doors that is overhung by the branches of a large oak tree. Someone, another teacher perhaps, is walking up. He is smirking and making a joke about the coats, something about the school having been 'coated'.

Lois M comes out of the doors. In waking life I haven't seen her in 20 years, and she was never a close friend. I had heard a decade ago that she was suffering from a brain tumor (since recovered). In this dream, she is still young and dark-haired, but obviously ill. Her face is strained and she is sweating. I ask her what she's doing there--teaching?--but she doesn't reply. Concerned, I ask her if she's alright. She indicates that I should follow her to the roots of the oak tree, but she wanders off.

I can't remember now if this part was before or after that scene, but I am in the school gymnasium incongruously camped out in one corner. The gym is full of students preparing for a ball--the prom? I get up from the bed where I've been sleeping, which is in full view of everyone, and look around for my clothes. I find the clothes but realise that my wallet is missing. I see a golden credit card lying nearby and pick it up. It's one of mine but nothing else from the wallet is there. From a sitting position on the floor (the bed is a mattress on the floor) I see two or three women approach. One is large and moving in a stately determined sweep. She is elaborately dressed in a red gown. When she gets near she dramatically opens the gown, which splits apart down the front, to reveal blazing white lingerie.

Sprucing up the tree of life

I'm in a tree, medium high off the ground. It's some kind of pine tree, I think, and I'm busily removing small dead branches where they join the trunk. The tree needles are a light green yellow and everywhere around me there is bright white light. I can only see the tree. I'm aware that this is a spiritual tree, perhaps the tree of life.

In the rubble, but...

I'm in a large house that is half destroyed. There is debris everywhere on the floors, little furniture, and the walls seem distant and in shadow. I have fragmented conversations with my brother and sister. Then I am standing with my father looking down at the trash, unhappy at the state of affairs here. I'm saying something to my father, but instead of replying to my words he reaches to my forehead and gently wipes at its center. It is a gesture of love and comfort that moves me to tears.

Shuttles and cannons and leaping grandmothers

Dream one:
I'm in a car speeding along an busy interstate highway. Bright daylight. I'm not sure if I'm driving or riding. I hear something on the roof and look out the window to my left. I see a thin naked elderly woman with short gray hair, a spry grandmother type, leaping from the top of my car to the top of the car in the next lane. It is apparent that she's surfing her way down the road by jumping from one car to another. There is a manic grin on her face.

I arrive at what seems to be an open market area. I'm standing in the middle of it and now I'm without clothes. There are many people all around, but the area is so large that no one is very close by. I have considerable anxiety about being naked and I try to puzzle out how this has happened and what I could do about it. I think that I must have left my clothes in the hotel room which is at one side of the plaza. I struggle with recalling what happened and how I can get back into the room which I believe to be locked.

Overhead, in the very blue sky, a small white plane flies erratically by. It is almost fluttering, more like a moth than a bird, and it is unusually delicate in structure. Someone says that it is the precursor (the trailing flight?) to the shuttle launch, and it's appearance means that the shuttle is about to go up. I look down at the far horizon where I see an enormous gridwork platform, which I understand to be the shuttle launching platform. From this distance I can't see the shuttle, but something there explodes and a large dark smoke cloud rises from the platform. The shuttle has exploded on takeoff.


Dream Two:
I'm in a castle that is a historical artifact of some kind, the sort of thing that tourists would visit. I'm on the top. There is a street that cuts through the castle, and on the other side I see large open doorways and other people. For some reason they want me to shoot a cannon ball in that direction. I aim the small cannon that is nearby and they frantically indicate that I should aim at the doorway, so that the shot will fall on the cobblestones below it and not hurt anyone. I shoot the cannon but the cannonball falls a few feet short. However, there are other cannons and other doorways, and I proceed to aim those other guns in their direction and fire off rounds.

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.