08/15/03
Saved By The Blanket
I believe this dream was from my nap of August 13. Actually it was after I had awoken and dozed off again while sitting upright with my blanket draped over my legs.
I can't recall all the details, just that my VCR recording (which I had been tending to before dozing off again) was giving me trouble. In real life I had timed the first recording; then I woke up to deprogram the VCR and start the next recording on a new tape. As there are a few minutes of commercials between the programs, this isn't usually a problem, though the other day the first program ran long and I missed the end of the recording because I hadn't set it to record that long. >:/
Anyway, in my dream I think I was trying to deprogram the VCR using the remote (actually the only way you can do it), but it wasn't responding. I think I then started trying to stop the tape, rewind it, eject it, turn off the VCR, change the channel, do all sorts of different things and it just would not respond. I started getting upset. In my dream Ma was out at the computer doing her own thing; it was night because the lights were on. I started crying and freaking out. I think I finally gave up on the possessed VCR and tried muting the TV for some reason; I do now remember hearing a lot of talking from the TV sitcom Martin (which came on the air after I dozed off; I wanted to change the channel but was too tired to bother--I remember them saying the word "Word" a lot, I believe, and I think there was a misunderstanding about what it meant). But...now when I tried muting the TV, the TV failed to respond, also! This REALLY upset me and I started freaking out even more.
I lifted my head to look out at Ma for some reason and then this weird blue bar appeared across my field of vision. Just this big, fuzzy, light blue bar, going diagonal, covering up part of my view of the TV and Ma and the computer in the next room. I stared at it in confusion, then realization started dawning. I looked at the TV itself and said aloud, "If this is a dream, then the entire TV will turn blue!" I was testing to see if I was dreaming or not; if I was, then I could end the damn thing before it got any worse.
I THINK the TV started to shift then, but it didn't really turn blue. Instead more bands of color appeared before my eyes until they filled up my field of vision...and I finally realized I was in fact staring not at the TV, but at my own lap, covered up by my multicolored blanket. My eyes had first focused on a band of blue yarn, which had been what had obstructed my view of the dining room in the first place. My eyes must have started to come open even as I slept, and once I saw what was really in front of me, I took a little bit of control in order to end the dream--though I would have preferred continuing it, albeit in a friendlier manner.
What a weird ending! O_o
Follow That Shadow
This dream(s?) was from my nap of August 14. It was so very fragmented when I awoke that I didn't take note of it and so it's even worse now. I don't know if it was one dream or more than one, but I'll try to describe it in its different parts. It made some sense and had some order while I was having it, but on awakening it was more like a jumble of unrelated images.
I'm not sure which order these went in, but in one part I stood in a hallway of some sort and glanced to my left, to the very end of it, to see a stairwell opening up way, way at the far end. The hallway was white and the stairwell was yellowish and I saw a flicker of shadow disappear to the right. My interest was piqued and I suddenly had the urge to follow this shadow, whatever it was, even though I had no clue what it could be. I have the feeling I was with somebody or waiting for somebody and was supposed to stay there, but then I hurried down the hallway toward where the shadow had been. I wanted to get around the corner and disappear from the sight of my companion--whoever they were--before they could notice, as if I were playing a trick on them. I think I wanted to act much like the odd shadow I'd just seen. *shrug*
In retrospect I find it odd how I was so willing to follow something strange, when I had no clue if it was friendly or not; I think I felt this way in the dream too, but was too excited to care. I hurried and hurried to get around the corner and went up(?) some stairs, hoping I hadn't been spotted by my companion though I couldn't be sure because toward the end it had almost been like running through water, very slow and tedious.
If they were not the same dream, this may have shifted into or been related to "Good Chimp, Bad Chimp." It might also have been related to "Overexposure."
Good Chimp, Bad Chimp
If they were not the same dream, this may have shifted out of or been related to "Follow That Shadow."
I'm not sure if this was the same dream as "Follow That Shadow" or if it came in a different order, but one part of the dream involved two chimpanzees. One was a good one--female, I think, maybe wearing a bow on her head--and one was evil. Perhaps they were with me in this building I'd been in and maybe I encountered them on another floor? Or had met them earlier? Perhaps the shadow from "Follow That Shadow" had been from one of them? In any case, the bad chimp (male, I believe) came after and attacked me. I tried fighting it off and I think somebody else was trying to help. (For some reason the looks of the place make me think of the upstairs/balcony level of the high school gymnasium with the bright lights, where we would exercise, though that might just be me.) I think the evil chimp was also after the female chimp and we were trying to protect her, too; there was a lot of screaming and screeching, chimp style. It was quite violent.
If they were not the same dream, this may have shifted into or been related to "River Of The Dead." It might also have been related to "Overexposure."
River Of The Dead
If they were not the same dream, this may have shifted out of or been related to "Good Chimp, Bad Chimp."
I don't remember the start of this at all; maybe it shifted out of the part with the chimps, or not. I just remember coming out onto this bridge(?) over a wide green river. I don't even remember who was with me or who I was or what was happening, but something urgent was going on. Perhaps I was being chased? I know I looked down into the river and saw a dead animal of some sort float by in the current, from right to left. I stared at it in dreadful fascination. Then I spotted another, and another. Animals such as little wild pigs, dogs, and maybe rodents, drowned and floating by along the river.
I exclaimed to somebody with me--I feel it was a male Latino, older. Perhaps I was Latina or native or something also. I felt very superstitious and full of fear. SOMETHING was going on here, involving the river and the dead animals and some kind of belief or curse or superstition, but I can't remember what it was. I think maybe I was afraid of some poisonous creature, like a water monster or a snake or something, coming at me out of the river, though that didn't seem to be the problem. I pointed at the water for the man to see, and then looked down into it. More and more and more dead animals drifted past now--I remember seeing a great mastodon, dogs, wild pigs, smaller animals; it was bizarre. Just this neverending stream of dead drowned animals floating just beneath the surface, tinted green by the water. They weren't rotten or bloated, just soggy and dead. Lifeless. They didn't seem to have met their end through violence, but there were so many of them. The fact that there were extinct animals (the mastodon, of which there might have been more than one) among them hinted that they had been dead a long time and were only now being washed downstream somehow. Where had they been caught before now? What did their presence signify? None of this was answered.
I think a little boy might have been involved in that part--perhaps I was trying to protect him--but I'm not sure. It was just so bizarre watching all those dead animals drift on by. I did not really feel disgust like I would in real life. I sensed they had not been hurt or tortured or anything; they gave me a neutral feeling. Rather it was the symbolism, what their floating by meant, that bothered me in the dream. I sensed they were a sign of something bigger and potentially more threatening.
If they were not the same dream, this may have been related to "Overexposure."
Overexposure
This dream from my nap of August 14 may have been related to the other dreams of this night, "Follow That Shadow," "Good Chimp, Bad Chimp," and "River Of The Dead." It seemed a bit more distinct from the others than the others were from each other, though, so it could have been a different dream.
I ended up walking along some city streets in the afternoon/evening, and it was cold and overcast, like winter. If this WAS related to another dream, then this part might have shifted out of "Follow That Shadow" when I went into the stairwell and came out somewhere else; perhaps this street was where I had come out? I can't be sure. Anyway, I think I was wearing a coat and everything and it was cold and wet and gloomy, but I had spirit in my step. I was on my own in a strange place but not afraid because I liked this place. Eventually the big drab city evolved into a sort of suburb and I ended up walking along a cross between it and what appeared to be a lakeshore road similar to those one has to drive on the way from Petoskey to Cheboygan. There were trees on one side and lake on the other; it was late evening now, growing dark, and lights were coming on and lots of other people bundled up for the cold were out walking, also. It was almost like a stereotypical holiday evening with everybody out shopping and having fun. I loved the atmosphere. For some reason the setting made me think of Mackinaw City, just vaguely. I'm not sure if that's what it was meant to be or not though I feel it was.
I anticipated shopping in some stores for some interesting things, but I don't think I got to do it. While walking along the shore road, some odd bridges down on the water to my right (I was leaving the city area) caught my attention. I can't describe them adequately as they wouldn't be physically possible unless there was a sandbar or something that they stretched to. They were very small, like ornamental bridges, just long enough to span a little pond or creek. There were at least two, side by side; I think at least one was carved of ice, and at least one (the same one?) was carved/made to look like dolphins leaping from the water. Now that I think of it they were not so much bridges as little rides, slides for people to go on; that's what they were, slides. At first they arched like bridges but then there were bundled-up people sliding all over them. I stopped and watched and wondered if they were getting cold; the slides were pretty and looked very amusing, but it was winter! And as I watched somebody slid down one and landed on their feet in several inches of water--brr!! It seemed awfully inconvenient but they were enjoying themselves; I rather wanted to go out there too, but hated the thought of getting all cold and wet. I believe there were more than two of these slides, in odd shapes, and people just kept climbing atop them and sliding around, both adults and children--in fact there seemed to be more adults having fun than kids. ^_^ I loved the cheer in the air, even if I was reluctant to join in. I knew I had passed these slides/bridges before at a different time (perhaps they or something similar appeared once in a different dream?--I do seem to remember looking out at some structures in the water in another dream once), though I'm not sure if they were rebuilt every year (seeing as at least one seemed to be carved out of ice) or if they were permanent or what.
I wanted to snap some pictures of the little slides, they were so beautiful, carved and frozen like that. I had the digital camera with me now. Now a clarification. In real life, our digital camera has both an LCD display screen to preview pictures on, and a little display atop it which shows you how many pictures you have left, what flash and quality setting it's on, and how low the batteries are. Not long ago my mother dropped it and that little display screen broke so now it doesn't work anymore. The camera itself seems to still work; we just can't tell what the exact settings are unless we memorize them, and we can't tell how the batteries are, etc. Also, she said that when it had fallen the side had popped open a bit and it's still a little like that, cracked open a tad; I can't fix it, and neither can she. It's annoying, but not terribly intrusive, just yet...
Well, in my dream, as I got ready to take pictures of these slides and the people having fun and the lake and lights and everything, the camera started giving me trouble. I can't remember what happened first to set it off but it was like it literally fell to pieces in my hands; the button came loose, and then the side popped open and it just fell into several pieces. I tried to hold it together in dismay, but hoped I could fix it. I stood here on the road with all the other people going by and tried to fix the broken camera by myself. I noticed that inside it, there was this part with two little metal hooks/tabs, and I knew that they were supposed to hook over each other. They were loose now. I felt that if I hooked them up properly and stuck the camera back together, not only would it be in one piece, but the broken display screen would work, too! Because I somehow knew the little displaced hooks were responsible for that. Easy enough to fix!
So I fumbled a bit hooking the two together and now I had to make sure the film was placed properly in the camera, too. You heard right--film. It was a film camera of some sort now! The hooks made me think of how I had to carefully hook the film in place in the old 35mm camera in real life, on little plastic hooks on a spindle or wheel of some sort, long ago; maybe that's where this part of the dream came from. I carefully did that and then positioned the film and then I think I shut the camera back up, making sure it was closed tight. Then I proudly lifted it up, aimed it at the lake or at the slides to take a test shot, and turned it on.
That was when I noticed that the film, which was a yellowish-whitish-cream color (it was long and narrow and shiny like real film, but it was light and opaque, and didn't have little separations between shots like negatives do), had been placed in the camera directly behind the lens or viewfinder and when I had turned on the camera, I had EXPOSED it to light!! :( "No, no, no, no, no!" I exclaimed in dismay, hurrying to try to turn the camera off before all the film, including whatever pictures I might have taken already, could be ruined. (My fiddling with it earlier had not exposed it, but turning on the camera once the film was in the wrong position had.) I didn't really panic or throw a fit, but I struggled to turn off the camera to save the film and it wasn't really working. I had thought I'd fixed it just fine on my own, but it looked as if I'd made it worse by putting the film in the wrong place!
If there was more to the dream, I can't remember it.
Lord Jesus, Herself
This dream was from my regular sleep of the afternoon of August 14. It was just a snippet when I awoke, but it left an impression on me so I wanted to take note of it.
All I can remember is I seemed to be involved in the making of some epic, symbolic, innovative Biblical movie. I say innovative because the makers, probably younger people, were interested in going against tradition to give the movie a deeper layer of meaning. In short they were going to be rather experimental. I may have been an extra or something but whatever I was, I just stood off to the side and watched passively. Perhaps I was supposed to be a Jew. I think this actually came later, but I'll describe it now; in one part there was a map or book of some sort with some significance to the movie, and I remember it had a picture of President George Bush Jr. ("Dubya") in it o_o , and some maps of the Holy Land--different regions with mountains and caves and the names they had had back in Biblical times. It was all brownish colored; in particular I remember the mountainous areas, and little darker spots which I think were supposed to be caves. I don't know what Bush had to do with it, but it wasn't too serious or important. I think we were studying the maps so we'd get a better understanding of the movie, and maybe there were some other things contained in the book/text as well, relating to Biblical times. We just crowded around this thing, studying it and murmuring over it. This whole time I felt we were standing in an area like that in the book, surrounded by desert mountains, dry and brown and craggy, and we were probably dressed in robes and sandals to match. Everything was in earth tones.
Well, back to the other part of this dream. As I stood off to the side I watched the character of Jesus interact with some others; it was as if Jesus stood and a few others gathered around, listening to Her words of wisdom. Yes...Her. Jesus was a WOMAN! Now it's hard to describe this part because I'm not quite sure, but, I knew this was just an actress playing a part in an innovative, experimental movie, and they had chosen to depict Jesus as a woman to play against stereotype--you know how experimental movies can be. This person was just an actress. Yet at the SAME time, even if she wasn't Jesus Him/Herself, I felt she represented Him, and the fact that she was a woman didn't really detract from Him much. I really did feel that it was possible Jesus COULD have been a woman. Why not? He was the Son of God, wasn't He? I sensed some power from this woman and felt awe in her presence--Her presence? Because even though she herself was not really meant to be Jesus, it's like I was in Jesus's presence anyway, like she represented Him, and I was awed by this.
As for what She looked like, She was probably of short to average height, slender, dressed in robes (maybe one went over Her shoulder or wrapped around Her somehow) of light colors like white and pale gray and pale blue. Her skin was darker than average, like that of a Middle Easterner or an Indian. And Her hair was dark also, dark brown or maybe black, of medium-long length (at least down to Her shoulders), soft and parted in the middle, straight but not arrow straight; it puffed out a little bit to frame Her face (maybe curling in slightly at the bottom?) before falling down to Her shoulders. I believe She had highish cheekbones; Her face wasn't long, but more roundish, I believe. I can't remember eye color but it was likely dark, to match the rest of Her appearance. She had a friendly yet canny look--that is, I didn't sense She was a soft pushover, passive type; rather She was the type who could advocate loving your enemy, while at the same time angrily throwing vendors out of of Her Father's temple. I sensed great wisdom, kindness, intelligence, and even wit and humor from Her. I think Her eyes might have briefly met mine as She talked to those around Her (maybe we were between scenes), but we exchanged no words; I didn't approach Her. I guess I felt I wasn't worthy enough to. All I could do was stare from a distance.
I'm not sure how many of these powerful feelings actually went through me as I dreamed rather than after I awoke and thought about the dream, though I do know what I sensed from Her in the dream itself. I don't think I had quite the strong feelings of awe and confusion and puzzlement I had on awakening, as I was just part of the dream then and didn't really think about it much; it was just a movie. After waking up I commenced feeling great surprise and wondering exactly what the symbolism could mean. I've been thinking about Jesus somewhat lately, what with my own confusion over what spiritual path I should take and my ignorance over this Biblical Character; I've wanted a relationship with Him but I just don't feel good enough, and I honestly don't know if my tentative beliefs would go along with a belief in Him as the Savior--I really think there could be multiple paths to God. (And isn't the main tenet of Christianity that Jesus is the ONLY way?) Add to this the fact that recently, my mother acquired a portrait of Jesus which used to belong to my (religious) grandmother, and it now sits in our utility room; every time I go out there I see it staring at me and I feel VERY self-conscious, every time, like every little thing I do in front of it is being judged. I actually played with the cat in front of it and got the feeling that everything I was doing was on display and was thus false, being enacted for my watcher's benefit. I felt like a phony, even if I had really wanted to play with the cat. One other thing I want to point out is how my role in the dream--as a passive onlooker--coincides with how I feel about Jesus in real life--I see Him as this great Guy, surrounded by fans and followers who love Him; He seems friendly and popular and good enough, yet I feel unworthy to even approach Him lest I go unnoticed and ignored; so I keep away from Him and stay on the sidelines, no matter how much I might want to step up and say hello. So you can see I have some very conflicted ideas about Jesus, so why He would appear as a woman in my dream--why He would even appear at all--greatly puzzles me. Aside from my older, somewhat more humorous dream "The Junkfood Jesus," this is the only time I can ever remember dreaming about Him (or in this case, Her). :/
2003 Dreams
HOME