07/25/03
The Fair Samaritan
This dream is from my regular sleep.
I was riding downtown headed home with somebody, probably Ma, when I looked to my left and noticed big Ferris wheels spinning on the fairground--much bigger than it would have been possible for me to see in such detail. "I didn't know the fair was here already!" I exclaimed, wanting to go see it; and then suddenly, I was there on the fairgrounds, with some girl friends of mine who I had known from school.
We were walking around in a group and we approached some of the Ferris wheels. I think there was the regular one, but then there were special ones which did more than just go around and around, vertically. There was one whose seats spun around while it went, and the one we went on, if not the same one, turned the seats upside-down while it rotated. In real life I would NEVER go on a ride like this. But I did in the dream and I ended up sitting beside this older lady (blondish shoulder-length hair, in her forties maybe, not fat but a little schlumpy; vaguely like the mother from That '70s Show (Debra Jo Rupp)). She was on my right and it was overcast outside. The ride started moving and I kept getting turned upside-down; this really REALLY made me anxious, but I gripped onto the bars and told myself that maybe, if I just relaxed and stared forward rather than looking back and up (REALLY bad things to do on a fair ride if you're afraid of heights), I could tolerate it and it would be fun. I tried to convince myself I was in no real danger, and relaxed a bit.
The ride started to slow just as we were turned upside-down, and even though I seemed to be just a few feet above the ground, nearer the front of the ride, I had a terror of falling out as I felt myself slipping from my seat. I think the lady grabbed hold of my arm or something though, so I stayed put until the seat was righted and we were allowed to get off. The other girls started gaggling around while I went to the lady--we didn't even know each other--and thanked her profusely for what she'd done.
I was kind of laughing and joking nervously the whole time. "Thanks for keeping hold of me like that," I said. "You probably saved my life!"
She looked at me with some surprise before saying something like, "Oh, if we'd fallen out I could have used your body as a landing device to break my own fall! I should probably be thanking you!" (Hinting that my body was soft and fatty, so she could safely land on me.) So it turns out she hadn't rescued me SOLELY to rescue me, she'd had it in mind that I could help her if she fell out, too!
In real life this would have been a terrible insult, twice so, but in the dream I didn't take offense. I think I felt a little embarrassed at kind of misguessing her motives, but there was no harm done and we both laughed, albeit a bit awkwardly. Whatever her idea had been I still appreciated that she had helped me, and I guess that if I could have made a nice landing device for her, well then, I would have said you're welcome right back! :)
Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
This dream was from my nap. It could have been influenced by events from real life (see "Invasion Of Privacy") a day or so ago.
In the dream I was lying on my left side on the couch (in real life I was lying on my right). I was trying to nap but not having much luck. (In real life, I was kept awake for a little while by my cat jumping up and down from the windows.) I somehow got a view out of the front picture window; it was dark outside and I sense it was supposed to be around ten at night, though it felt both later (like around midnight or two) and MUCH later (like early morning!), at the same time. *shrug* Anyway, it wasn't nearly as dark as it should have been; there was still a bit of light in the sky that allowed me to see things. I happened to spot two little girls, maybe between five and ten, walking down the highway past my house. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Two LITTLE GIRLS, walking outside on their own THIS late at night! I watched them go by and my anger flared up--where the hell were their parents? Who was even keeping an eye on these kids? They were cute little girls with long hair, maybe blond, and little summer dresses, and didn't seem afraid at all; I think first they walked south, and I tried to see them through the smaller window to the side of the front picture window (there was obstruction, like bushes, and the window was smaller like our old picture windows were), then they turned and went north again so I waited to see if they would turn and come down the side road.
They did, and I lay and watched as they passed by, heading east now. I noticed a car parked right in our yard, underneath and to the left of the northwest window, and felt a surge of both anxiety and irritation; who would park in our YARD and why? Then I remembered the car had been there for a while and it was okay; either they had permission to be there, or it just belonged there. It was a tannish-colored older model, like from the Seventies or Eighties. (Its being parked there may have been a throwback to the real-life incident of seeing the truck parked suspiciously on the corner, as I felt whoever had parked it might have been waiting for the girls--see "Invasion Of Privacy.") I remember seeing the dying light glinting off its windows and hood. So, I no longer felt the car or its owner was a threat to the girls, but still...
They passed by the side windows (maybe my cat was watching, because I feel he might have been in this dream somewhere), and I watched them head east. Outside the northeast window they stopped and several more little girls joined them in a group, all of them talking cheerfully. Strength in numbers, I suppose, but I was still angry that their parents apparently cared so little for them that they didn't mind the children wandering around unchaperoned so late at night. What kind of parents would do that? >:/
There may have been a little bit more to that dream; I think it might have shifted into something doing with Monk, as that was on TV when I awoke (Sharona was yelling about how she didn't want to go near an elephant, so I saw that in my dream--I remember hearing the elephant grumbling and my mind conjured up that image too although I didn't watch the episode), but I don't remember what.
The Ultimate Bad Hair Day
This dream is from my nap. It took me a while to get to sleep, so this and the following dream took place in under an hour.
I wanted Ma to do my hair. It was late at night, possibly after she'd returned from the casino (she goes to the casino in real life on Thursday nights and doesn't get home until late). My hair didn't go in right the first time so I went to get a better hair tie. I think I looked in the bathroom, but the two black ties in there were either way stretched out or broken. (I think the one I was using had broken too.) So I went to the new pack of hair ties in my room and retrieved those, only to find that they were all of funky new experimental sorts that would NEVER work properly--why had people even come up with such things!
I started crying loudly and left my room to show these to Ma out of protest. She just sat silently in the computer chair while I came in and threw the ties onto the floor in frustration. (I was being very childish, although in real life I often am, when it comes to my hair.) I picked them up and started showing them to her, crying the entire time, explaining what was wrong with each one.
(In real life last week, I think, I saw some ties at the store and instead of having the little metal clasp which holds them together, they were GLUED together, heat sutured or something; I had remarked that such ties would NEVER hold, and got the old-fashioned ones instead. I think this influenced the dream.)
"This is the brand I always use to tie up my hair!" I cried. "And now all they sell is these stupid ones that will never work!" I pulled out one and gave it to her for inspection. I'm not sure if I explained what was wrong, or just showed them to her. One of them, rather than being a loop, was a loop that the person did up themselves--you could open it and close it by sticking one end into the other, and VELCRO would attach the two! There was like a little bit of fuzz on the "stick-in" end which was meant to stick to the rest of the Velcro in the receptive end, inside some kind of little cylindrical opening with a hole in it. It was so stupid! I tossed that down and showed her another. I think it was glued or sutured together like the ones in real life. I tossed that down and pulled out another, which was similar to the first; instead of being made of rubber encased in cloth/thread/fiber, it was like a piece of cloth itself, with no filling, soft and flattened (hollow, like an unstuffed pillow) and stretchy like material used for sweatsuits. I think it too was an adjustable one and these seemed to be in shades of powder blue and pale gray. I can't remember what was wrong with the others, but NONE of them would have worked. I was so upset, because I knew I wouldn't be able to find THIS PARTICULAR BRAND in the metal-clasp type that I liked. Annoying! An idiot must have designed these.
I think I left the room in a fit, going to the bathroom and envisioning what I'd look like with my hair done up, just some of it in a tail and the rest left hanging, kind of messy like. I imagined Sailor Jupiter's/Lita's hair from Sailor Moon, how she wears a ponytail but has bangs and some strands dangling in front of her ears, but the look just wouldn't carry for me. I envisioned myself in profile with some of my hair up in back and the rest hanging down and I looked HORRENDOUS, even worse than I would in real life. My hair was all dried and frizzy and hung down so it looked like I had no back to my head (in real life this is almost so--I have a pronounced, squarish forehead and not enough curvature to the back of my skull so I look kind of Frankenstein monsterish :( ). I felt awful. Still, I tried putting in my hair loosely (it was dry and curly, like it is when I've just woken up--otherwise my hair is mostly straight) to see what it would look like and if I could do it in a way that looked presentable. I've always been jealous of women who can carry off having their hair put up kind of messy and STILL look good. How do they do it?
It was like I was working on the back of someone ELSE'S head, for I had a good view of it from behind and could use both hands unfettered! How odd. I think I just ran my fingers through the hair rather than brushed it, and tried looping the tie around it, the hair semi-messy, to see what it would look like. I tried to force myself to refrain from smoothing out small lumps because in real life my hair has to be PERFECTLY smooth when it's put up, and this is a great source of frustration since only my mom can do that. I pulled it all up and started to gather it into a tail, but noticed a big hunk of it kind of hanging out on the bottom right; I scooped that up as well and now there were two SMALLER parts, like bangs kind of, hanging out over the back of the neck. (The neck was thin and white, almost like a mannequin's.) I told myself to ignore those as some of the hair was too short to fit in the tail, obviously, though I did scoop up one more little bit which probably wouldn't be long enough to make it into the tie, and then I think I tied the hair up into a tail.
This entire time the hair had been medium brown, long, and curly. As soon as I did this, however, it was this ugly brown-streaked blond, seemed much shorter and straighter, and was plastered down as if with water. Also, the tail I had just put in was just about nonexistent; there was only a TINY little tail! I knew I had put it in loosely and some of the hair had probably escaped the tie, but still, where had it all gone?? It was impossible for someone with as much hair as I have to have such a tiny tail. I tried tightening it to lengthen the tail a few times but without luck. Confused, I went into the bathroom (if I wasn't already in there?) to look at myself in the mirror.
ACK!! Once I got a look at myself I recoiled. I was HIDEOUS! This hairstyle was so awful...it was like a very short bob, curling out at the bottom, going only down to my neck. Ugly streaked color, and plastered down like a nerd's hair would be. Parted in the middle but with bangs falling over my forehead. There was still the even tinier tail in back, also rather plastered down. It was so bad it looked like a MOCK parody hairstyle! I made an awful face and this belief was just confirmed; I looked like I should have braces and play the part of an ugly little girl on Mad TV or something. Ugh! I did this a few times and tried to convince myself that, hey, if I'm this ugly, I can just make a joke out of it, but no, I could not stand how horrendous I looked. It was just too freaky. I turned to look at myself in profile (I could get a perfect profile, unlike in real life) and suddenly my NOSE was so tiny it was almost like I had none! I had two views of myself, like the mirror image and my real face, and ascertained that my nose was in fact regular size (though still smaller than in real life); but in my mirror image it was so TINY and made me look even worse because my face was now just about flat, from forehead to chin. Ick! Then I grinned and my mirror face took on a caricature appearance, like a rough cartoon sketch; it's hard to describe since I got the feeling it was kind of like a sculpture, in weird colors like burgundy and such, maybe made out of wood or shell or something; it had tiny dot eyes and a big grinning mouth (in profile) which was cut out of the rest, kind of a crescent-moon shape. That wasn't quite so freaky as it was weird, and I turned forward again.
I decided to take my hair down and just have Ma do it the regular way after all. I had to find a good tie somewhere. :( I pulled out the tiny little flattened-down tail from behind (again getting a view I would not have in real life) and there STILL was not much hair there; then I started brushing it out, and it came down in long dark blond (almost curly) waves (in real life I have brown hair, and when it had been up in the dream it had been ugly brown-and-blond streaked). Well, at least it had gotten longer again! I think I was going to go out and have Ma try to put it up once more, but that dream ended and/or shifted into the next.
If they were not the same dream, this might have then shifted into "The Hall Of Good & Evil."
The Hall Of Good & Evil
If they were not the same dream, this might have shifted out of "The Ultimate Bad Hair Day."
This was a VERY strange dream. It was memorable, but shortly after waking up some of the details became jumbled so it's not as clear as I'd like it to be. Still, here goes.
For some reason I was going upstairs to do something. In real life our upstairs is incredibly messy since we just stick old stuff up there when we have no room downstairs. At the top of the stairs is a tiny landing with a closet and attic door right in front, and to the right is my brother's old room, with a lot of my junk and an old TV in it, and to the left is the "other room," a sewing room with a lot of Ma's stuff in it. In the dream, I went up onto this landing and went into Eric's (my brother's) room. Perhaps I was looking for something; Ma might have been involved too.
I was surprised to notice that much of Eric's room had been cleaned, although my stuff hadn't been thrown out. There were still some boxes standing off to the sides, but it was almost presentable now! Even the carpeting was mostly clean. I turned toward the rows of drawers lining the left-hand wall and paused when I heard noises coming from behind them. I think rain was falling outside and I figured the noise might be that, but then again, perhaps there were rodents living in the drawers or in the wall and they were making the little noises? I couldn't be sure. I didn't really want to look and find out. :/
I turned a bit more to the entrance to the room and noticed that the big old TV had been removed, probably tossed out. There was a big indentation in the floor where it had been, and I think a couple of boxes of my stuff were sitting here. (At first it seemed to be empty, but then it wasn't.) I worried for a moment because at first the indentation was just that, a big dented section of floor kind of sloping downwards (maybe at this point the floor was white and uncarpeted?), and I feared it would cave in, especially with some of my stuff sitting there (though it was just a couple of smallish boxes with probably only papers in them); but then it was just a smaller indentation left in the carpeting, and I didn't worry so much. I also noticed one little roundish, red candy, like a Skittle or a lozenge, lying on the floor slightly to the left of this same space, and felt a little icky. Why hadn't that been cleaned up? It was probably sticky and fuzzy from being on the floor and I didn't want to touch it. I wasn't sure if I had left it there, or if my brother had tossed it there while he still lived at home. Aside from that the place seemed remarkably clean. Maybe somebody else would take care of the little candy.
I now headed toward Ma's room. (I'm still not sure what my purpose up here was, though in the dream I seemed to have one.) I got distracted by the little closet at the top of the stairs, however. In my dream it was a bit more to the left, closer to Ma's room, than it is in real life. I think I was carrying something now, like a box, and I wanted to set it down somewhere, and considered the closet, as it had been cleaned out too and was empty. The inside walls were painted white (not like in real life) and instead of being square/rectangular, it was diagonal/sloping; that is, the back wall of the closet was close to me on the left, and sloped back toward the right corner, making a triangle out of the floor. Recessed and almost hidden in a tiny alcove in the back right corner of the triangle was a soft yellowish-white light which lit the entire closet. I was intrigued.
I peered into the closet and wondered if I could hide things in it, because now it changed and there were other little recesses and alcoves in it; the warm white of before was now replaced by a colder white, like bluish-white paint; when I stepped inside to try to see the light source that seemed to vanish although it was still lit, just not from a recognizable lightbulb like before. I really liked the idea of being able to hide things in little hidden parts of the closet and wanted to get a better look at its layout...but it changed yet again, now into a little walk-in room, and I went inside.
I had to step down and into it. Now it opened up around me, still small for a room, but HUGE for a closet. I can't describe the layout adequately as it was very weird...it was still done in bluish-white, but it was kind of...latticed, so there seemed to be blackish recessed areas where the light didn't hit as well (nothing seemed to be painted black, though I don't remember looking at the ceiling). In short, it was well lit, yet dark at the same time; like the corners went off into shadow. The whitish material making up the place was like I said kind of latticed across the floor in a crisscross pattern, and there were raised parts and low parts; I walked upon the raised parts. The material was whitish, very bumpy/lumpy but not jagged--smoothed over like tumbled rocks--and kind of soft and slightly squishy, maybe like hard foam. It gave the appearance of a padded room, kind of, and was cool to the touch. The way the stuff crossed over itself, there were recesses all over in the walls, and even though I felt VERY confused and a little frightened, I really liked this place; it was so interesting! (My thoughts of home and Ma and the upstairs fled; I no longer seemed to realize that's where I was, though I did remember entering here from the upstairs closet.) I thought of how in my fictional writing the demon Ocryx gave a special room with light-up crystals in it to his daughter Red Bird, and had the feeling that this room had been given to me by Ocryx--kind of a pretend feeling, I believe, not a "this actually happened" feeling. It reminded me of the Haunted Theater on Mackinac Island for some reason, and the Haunted Theater (in real life) is where I got the idea for Ocryx, so it made sense in my dream.
That thought didn't get to last long, for I turned to my left to see what else was in the room. I noticed now a hallway here, leading to another room which seemed to consist of the same odd material although I couldn't see it very well. It too was both lit and dark; hard to explain. (Like, it had really focused light sources, like desklamps, but was dark in between those; their light only reached so far. That's still not an accurate description but it's the best I can do.) In this hallway I saw at least one but probably more little cherub statues and they were grinning wickedly and shaking their heads at me as if to say no.
I turned to my right and saw a hallway here as well, almost an exact duplicate of the first, except the little cherub statues were smiling kindly and nodding, instead.
I immediately understood the implication. Left, in the occult, frequently denotes evil things, whereas right denotes good things. The little cherubs in the left hall looked evil and shook their heads because that hall led to evil, and the cherubs in the right hall nodded and smiled kindly because that hall led to good. (Though in retrospect, it seems it should have been the other way around--I get the feeling the evil cherubs should have been nodding and trying to get me to enter their hall, by way of deceit, whereas the good cherubs should have been shaking their heads and frowning sadly, trying to convince me NOT to enter the left hall. It really might have gone that way, but I can't be sure; all I know is their actions were opposite one another, and I knew that the left hall was bad and the right hall was good.)
Although intrigued by the left hallway, and making up my mind to visit it later on, I decided to be wise and head right. I believe I passed through the right hallway and now ended up in a room similar in layout to the first, if I even switched rooms at all. That is, there were again rooms to left and right, and the big main room I was standing in (I was facing where the entrance to the room would have been before, the closet entrance, so the good hall was on my left and the bad hall on my right), only instead of the empty, latticed, padded room of before, there was now a sort of banquet table or dais set up in front of me, maybe some stone steps, and from here there now came--A GIANT SCORPION!
O_O It just came out of nowhere and tried to attack me! I managed to duck and roll or something; I never directly fought it, but somehow I avoided its blows, and I think it jumped over my head, into the middle of the room, and perhaps the fall killed it. As it lay there I saw it had no stinger, but in fact knew that its stinger was smaller and hidden; as I watched it developed a long tail with a stinger, then the entire monster seemed to dissolve into red fluid like a punch drink. I think it vanished and now a giant CRAB (looking kind of like a crayfish or lobster rather than the traditional crab--in short, it was longish bodied, much resembling the scorpion that had just attacked me) came scuttling down at me, repeating the attack.
Crap!! I dodged and avoided that, too. It also went down into the room (they had come down at me from this raised steps/dais area where the entrance would have been before), and I think it too was somehow defeated without me actually killing it. I stood up and tried to recover myself from my fright, and now I was no longer alone.
This part grows fuzzy. I'm not sure how I was introduced to the people here, if they suddenly appeared or not, but I was also kind of controlling how the rest of the dream went--putting words into people's mouths, indicating what should happen, etc., although I was not lucid. (Playacting, or roleplaying--taking control of some dream events without realizing I have control.) I seemed to be a young girl like Chihiro from Spirited Away, or Charmian from my own Manitou Island; perhaps I was a cross between the two, for while I screamed and acted girly like Chihiro, I also acted tough and independent, like Charmian.
A man started speaking and I sensed he was the leader of this hall; he had a British accent, but I don't recall ever actually seeing him. It was like I made him speak, kind of. He said something like, "Congratulations; you've defeated them both, and managed to survive. These first two tests, you should be aware, represented..."
"I know what those were!" I snapped in response, even though I didn't know where the voice was coming from. "The first one was Scorpio and the second one was Cancer!"
That is--the first creature which had attacked me was Scorpio, the scorpion of the zodiac; and the second had been Cancer, the crab. These first two "tests" I had passed (to paraphrase what the man said, since I can't really remember his words) had been against creatures of the zodiac. I got the feeling I would be encountering and/or tested by the other creatures of the zodiac, and had brief thoughts of what they would be like--would I face my own sign, Libra?--what would that look like?--and I got a distinct image of Sagittarius, the centaur, awaiting me in the hall to my right. (Which was the bad hall--remember I was facing the entrance--but at this moment was supposed to be the GOOD hall; I sensed Sagittarius to be a noble soul, and wise, and was thrilled by the prospect of learning from him--I even wondered if he'd have a human centaur head, or a horse head, or what exactly he'd look like. Oh the possibilities!) I got the feeling that some of the zodiac signs, like the aforementioned Scorpio and Cancer, would be hostile, but others would be friendly.
Anyway, the British man was impressed that I knew exactly what it was I had just faced down. Now there were more people all over in the hall (room), and I sensed that they were the spirits of the dead; this hall was like a banquet hall of the dead. O_o Again I never saw the British guy, but we talked some more throughout this part of the dream, with him and some of the others explaining where exactly I was and what was going on.
Either upon or replacing the dais/steps of before was now a long banquet table with all sorts of food and stuff on it, spanning from left to right, and people were filling their plates and chattering. I was hungry; I felt I had some sort of task to perform, which was why I was here, but the food seemed so inviting. I think somebody offered me something or I took something but it was very gloppy (I think) and weird and I ended up coughing and spitting it back out. That would have been remarkably rude, but the naive way in which I did everything (like Chihiro) endeared me to the people so they didn't take offense. There was a glass which had had milk in it, I believe, but it hadn't been finished off and had been sitting there for a bit; I decided to clean it out so maybe I could have something to drink from it. I didn't know where to do this, though. Someone directed me toward a fountain lower down in the room, and told me to wash it there for the fountain had special properties of cleansing.
It's a bit confusing, because at one point I was near the left (bad) side of the room (when facing the back wall), at a sink or fountain, cleaning it there; but then I was in the middle of the room, facing the dais and table, at a bigger fountain. It was built like a sink, a stone pedestal with an oval indentation in top, filled with water; I think water was flowing from a small spout and into the bowl. I dunked the glass, which was either followed by or now replaced by a big glass pitcher, into the water to wash out the old milk. A black man and somebody else (another man?) were here with me, possibly eating, while I did so. This part of the dream was playacted but didn't work out the way it was supposed to. What was supposed to happen was I was supposed to dunk the pitcher in the water and it would be instantly cleansed of all milk--I wouldn't have to do any scrubbing--and the water in the bowl would be clear too. This would indicate the fountain's cleaning properties. It was meant to be miraculous, purifying. The black guy was explaining this while I did so, but...the water didn't work as it was meant to. It DID clean the pitcher better than something in real life would have, but there was still a slight milky residue in the bottom, and the water in the fountain bowl was stained a little white too from the milk. I swirled my hand in it and cupped the water a few times and it cleared a little, but not completely. I kept repeating this action as the guy talked, as if to say, "C'mon, clear up; you're supposed to CLEAR now," but it didn't really work. Oops. I held up the pitcher and let the reside run out a bit and the black guy then said, "Every so often it still leaves a little bit behind." As if to say, "Well, usually it works." ^_^; I decided to believe him and was impressed anyway. While I did this there was some detail about a man and his wife who had done the same thing at this fountain in the past, but I don't remember the details of the story; I think they had died, maybe because they hadn't done it properly, or maybe it had cleansed them, or something. It was important, whatever it had been. I might have tried to clean something else, maybe some of the dishes; I also might have clogged something with too much food but I'm not sure.
I went back toward the banquet table and the invisible, omnipresent British guy started talking again. I noticed the room to my left (the right, "good" side of the room) and asked about what was in these other rooms to my left and right. The British man told me they were the libraries of this hall. The bad library housed occult and demonic literature, I'm assuming, while the good library housed mystical, "white" occult literature, in particular some Masonic books. I glanced into the good library and could now make it out somewhat. The room wasn't in keeping with the style of the rest of the place; it looked almost modern, with creamy white walls and modern bookshelves and bright modern lighting, like a college office; a little old fashioned, but not as weird or odd as the rest of the place. I saw some of the Masonic literature in there, as well as some Masonic symbols, I think; there may have been a globe. I wished to peruse both libraries, even though the thought of entering the evil library frightened me a little bit; I had the feeling that if I entered it in my own naive state, I risked being corrupted by the evil spirits of the left hall. Perhaps I'd find a way to work that out later, once I'd been here a while longer and learned some more. In the meantime I believe I was going to visit the good, right library to learn from the Masonic literature there; in addition there was the original left hall from the first room (the one I'd entered from the closet), and I sensed there were other left and right halls/rooms in further main rooms throughout the building, each just waiting to be explored. I could hardly wait to see and learn it all! Maybe that was my purpose here, to learn as much as I could?
Unfortunately...the dream shifted here, into some plot involving Nash Bridges, as that was airing on TV as I slept. I think I was now supposed to be him and the plot still had something to do with the good and evil halls, but it was more action oriented and I lost track of what was going on by the time I awoke. :/
2003 Dreams
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