11/02/04
The Death Of Dickie


I can't recall the beginning. But at some point, Detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit were standing out in a yard that perhaps was supposed to be Stabler's; it was grassy and green and there was a low brown building with a flat-looking roof behind them. It looked like it might have been in a suburb or housing subdivision or something. It was sunny out and one of them was holding Stabler's young son, Dickie (one of the pair of twins). This dream seemed to shift in odd ways between Benson and Stabler so at first I think Stabler was holding him, but then it was Benson, and Stabler was standing back closer to the doorway. Dickie's age was also oddly shifting; first he was a young blond boy, like he is in the show, but then he was a toddler; and then he was just an infant. Benson was holding him on her arm and noticed a Frisbee flying overhead toward them--Stabler was distracted and did not see it--so she turned away from it, to shield Dickie.

The thing was, when she turned, Detective Benson unwittingly exposed Dickie to danger even more, and the Frisbee struck him right in the head. I knew that since he was a baby, he still had a soft spot, and the Frisbee hit him there. This was a TV show I was watching but I felt awful and started to whine and cry. "Oh no, they can't kill Dickie! He's Stabler's son!"

Now it seemed to be Stabler holding Dickie again while Benson stood nearby, and he was looking at him with growing concern. "Dickie? Dickie!" he exclaimed, and shook him a little. The baby's eyes were closed and he wasn't responding. I just knew he was dead; the Frisbee blow had injured his brain and killed him. :( I knew Benson was feeling horrible for her own unintentional role in his death, though she said nothing. I think they were shocked. Stabler started to cry, still calling out his son's name. I was crying as well--"They can't kill Dickie!" Ma came into the room and looked at the TV, then gave me an odd look.

"Why are you crying?" she asked; she couldn't understand why I would be so upset, since it was just a TV show. Truthfully, I do not think such a thing would upset me so much either! :/ But in the dream I was just abnormally sad. I wondered how the characters would deal with his death.

I think there was an abrupt scene switch, and now I guess it was Dickie's funeral, since Stabler and Benson, and some other people (maybe Kathy, Stabler's wife, among them), were lounging on this green lawn near a treeline; it was overcast now, and there was something small and white sitting near them, like a little cooler. I looked at it in puzzlement and decided it must be Dickie's casket. It was weird, though, because Stabler and these others were just kind of sitting around on the ground, talking, as if it were a picnic; nobody seemed upset. There wasn't even a priest or a hole in the ground or tombstones or anything. Why were they so casual now when his son had just been tragically killed?




Library Shopping


Again I can't remember the beginning, but I ended up going to what was supposed to be the Cheboygan Public Library with my mother. There were lots of other people there like it was for a class. I was there to buy books, so it's like other dreams I've had, where the library and the bookstore are pretty much interchangeable.

At first I looked around for books on a particular subject of interest which escapes me; maybe Egyptian mythology? Whatever it was I didn't find anything interesting and I was waiting for Ma or whoever to get done with whatever they were doing so we could leave. But then I suddenly remembered that I wanted to look for anything having to do with Mackinac Island or the native Ojibwa/Ottawa culture of this region, and so wandered off again, hoping to be able to look quickly before we had to go. I had some trouble finding the exact area of the library I wanted to browse; I went over toward where the paranormal/science section is in real life, and here it was set back into the wall a bit; there were racks or something with books and kits hanging from them. I could tell by looking at them that these were native-related artistic and spirituality-related items. Neat!

Some of the books were like Dover books--clipart and copyright-free material. One was something like warrior designs. I was mildly curious but not enough to want to get that one. On the left side, near the corner where the wall was inset (it projected on the left, not far from where the door/porch would be), there were some kits in plastic bags, put out by the same publishers. One of them was a kit to make a dreamcatcher. Interested, I pulled that one down. It was like a plastic baggie with a cardboard tag holding it shut and maybe dividing it in two, back and front sections. I lifted it up to look at it but I was confused because it didn't look like you got all the materials needed to make a dreamcatcher. All I saw was this little crescent moon pendant and maybe a clear plastic cord thing it was hanging off of; I specifically remember looking for a black (satin?) cord, like for a necklace, and there wasn't one. That's all there was, not even any yarn or feathers or anything. :/

It's kind of like I had it open as I looked this little moon pendant over in my hand. It was a crescent moon maybe an inch or slightly over an inch wide, horns pointed up or down--I'm afraid I can't recall which. And there was like a little metal (?--chrome?) ball attached either to the top or the bottom. The moon itself was a pale milky blue color. It was almost flat, but the surface was a bit wavy, as if it had been carved and then maybe polished or tumbled, smoothed somehow. It was pretty and reminded me of a pendant I have in real life, which is a little silver crescent moon with a little red (like carnelian, kind of) ball hanging from it; this little silver moon has a weird snakelike design on it and I've never really been sure what it signifies; I took it from Ma's jewelry box in the past. Anyway, in the dream, I thought of that pendant, and wondered if this one had been made by the same designer.

I was still confused and a bit disappointed that there didn't seem to be anything to the dreamcatcher kit aside from that, though. "There isn't even a necklace cord," I murmured. "Unless it's in the back..." Then I turned the baggie over and...sure enough...in the back section of it, there was the rest of the kit. There was a black cord, some miscellaneous things, and at least two cabochons in some kind of settings. The cabochons were perhaps slightly less than an inch tall; one may have been transparent blue, and the other, the one which I picked up out of the kit to look at, was clear, I think (maybe golden tinted?), but iridescent, with this really pretty rainbow sheen. I believe they were all costume jewelry but I've never really cared for authenticity anyway; to me a crystal is even better than a diamond, because it's prettier and much cheaper. I felt these cabochons could be used and interchanged on the dreamcatcher (which seemed more like a necklace pendant than a webbed hoop), and I shuffled them around as if to pick one. I favored the iridescent one. I decided I really wanted this kit.

"I bet it costs an arm and a leg," I muttered to Ma, who stood nearby. In my dream, just as in real life, I was saving up my money to pay for an upgrade at a website online, and I did not want to really go overboard on spending. :(

Ma said in a sarcastic voice, "Now why would you say that?"

I figured the kit would cost at least $11, likely more; and I would probably want to buy more than one, which added up even more. I turned it over to look at the price written on the back of the tag and saw that it was something like...$4.95! :O ONLY $4.95?? I was so thrilled! I grasped that kit in my hand--I was going to buy it. I looked around to see if there were any other similar kits I would also like.

One of the items I found over here was a small book (more pages than a booklet) about the northern Michigan area. It was a paperback made of thick textured cream- or offwhite-colored paper, utilizing dark blue print, and maybe another color to offset it in illustrations; you know, just a cheap two-color print job. Maybe the other color was brown. I thought this looked familiar but pulled it down anyway to look through it. It had information on areas in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, like Tahquamenon Falls. I remember one illustration with a buck (deer) in it. It might have also mentioned Cheboygan (my hometown). I knew it was an older booklet, maybe from the Fifties or something, but this was a reprint. I started looking specifically for an area where they discussed the meaning or pronunciation of the word "Tahquamenon," because I remembered that from a booklet that I had, and if I saw it in here I would know I already had this at home. I do not remember ever seeing that specific page, because I thumbed through it rather too quickly to know for sure, but I decided that yes, it looked close enough; I already owned this book. I said so to Ma, and replaced it. I browsed around a bit more, and then moved on to another area of the library, still looking.

I think I explored where the crime and reference books would be, if memory serves me right; or maybe it was the psychology section. In any case, I was looking for the history books and had a very difficult time locating the right part of the library. :/ I somehow ended up in the children's section! I didn't even know I was in there--it was crowded with older people, like high school or college students--and I was kind of elbowing my way past them until I realized where I was! I felt embarrassed to be in there, especially since some of them glanced at me, but I tried to act nonchalant as if I had gone in there on accident (which I guess was true). I hummed a little bit and continued looking. I almost headed back into the library proper but then decided I'd check the children's section; maybe they had something interesting? The layout was somewhat different from real life since I'm not sure if they had a sunken level at the middle of the room (last time I was there, which admittedly was years ago, they had a sunken part down by the far wall, with steps set into the carpeted floor, where kids could sit to be read to), but as with the library proper, the basic layout was much the same. (In fact, nowhere in here was the Cheboygan Library ever named; I just assume that's what it was, since it looked so similar.) I still had such trouble locating the history section and I couldn't understand it. Then I was closer to the right side of the room when the sunken area is on your left, near where the desk would be (I haven't been there in years and I hear it expanded so the real layout may be different now), and here there was a shelf on or against the wall labeled "New Releases," like in a video store. I wasn't very interested since I usually don't care for new releases. But then I decided to look--I think there was somebody else near here--and was surprised to see, ta-da!--the history section!

(Yes, after awakening the irony of finding the history books in the new releases section struck me almost immediately. The contrast between history (past) and new releases (present/future) is so obvious that I feel it must have some meaning.)

I stopped to look. Though they had been upright, with spines facing outward, before, now the books seemed to be lying flat or on a slight tilt, front covers forward. As expected they were geared more toward children, but the very first one I saw, on the right, was apparently about Sacajawea. I'm not very interested in Sacajawea, but I figured, where there's Sacajawea, perhaps there's other Native American-related material. The book was entitled something like Partridge Bird Woman or Pheasant Bird Woman--it was the name of a kind of game bird, I believe, followed by Bird Woman, and I seemed to recall that was a possible meaning of the name Sacajawea, so I assumed it was her. (In real life I recently visited a few sites about her and one of the spellings of her name--I don't remember if it was Sacajawea or Sacagawea--gave "Bird Woman" or something like that as its meaning. I think the alternate meaning was something like "Boat Launcher." (I can't be positive of these two meanings at the moment, though.) I've always spelled and pronounced her name with the J, so that's how I spell it now.) The cover image was a painting of a pretty native woman, dressed in a deerskin dress, her long hair parted and in a braid; she was wading through this deep snow, a kind of curious, innocent look on her face, and there was a huge white dog with light tan markings around its muzzle, following her. It was like a great thick-furred mountain dog of some kind, with short floppy ears and a heavy muzzle, but not jowly like a bulldog; maybe like a Great Pyrenees. At first I think maybe it had been in front of her, leading her, but then it was at her heels, helping her along somehow. I picked up the book (I think maybe it had been upside-down before) to look at it and see what the deal was with this decidedly un-native-looking dog, but never really got the chance to read it; but I was pretty sure that this was her favorite dog, which was why it was on the cover with her. (Maybe I had seen this information elsewhere before.) At first I found it odd for her to be with such an animal, but then I told myself, "The Indians favored dogs; they considered them close companions. This one must have been hers." It was a strange breed, to be sure, but I shrugged it off; maybe they did have dogs like that.

As I was standing, then sitting at like a table along the wall or the shelf or the desk or something, in this area, looking at this or other history books, a stocky, mustached Latino man came walking up on my left, from the main part of the room. I think a girl around my age or college age was seated to my right, working on or reading something. The Latino man may have looked a lot like an Indian (?--by that I mean from India) guy in a Skittles commercial; it's the commercial with the man in the eagle's nest, and the eagle drops some Skittles in his mouth, and the man waves and yells, "Thank you! Thank you very much!" But this guy was supposed to be Latino. He looked at me and said in a kind of loud, accented voice, "Do you mind if I read out loud?" He then said cheerily, almost jokingly, "I used to do it all the time!"--and then sat down not far from me, at this table or whatever it was.

I smiled kind of awkwardly and murmured something like, "Yeah," or "Okay"--meaning either, "I don't mind," or "Yeah, I remember you did that all the time!" And I did have a dream memory of this man--I knew he had been in a college class of mine, and he'd had the habit of reading things out loud during class, and it was really annoying. It had always irritated me, but, being the overly polite person I am, I had never said anything about it. (This did not happen in real life.) I was still too shy to tell him it was irritating--especially in a library!--and so didn't object. He opened up a book and started reading in this loud, melodramatic voice. And he just went on and on! I sat here and kept waiting for a librarian to come over and shut him up, but nobody did. I wasn't so much irritated as thinking, "Boy, he's going to get it!" in a kind of amused way. I was more concerned that the girl to my right, who did seem kind of peeved by the man's actions, would think I had just ENCOURAGED this behavior, when I'd said, "Yeah" or "Okay." That hadn't been what I'd meant at all--I'd meant either that I didn't mind, or more likely, that I remembered him doing this before. I didn't mean I thought it was okay for him to do it in a LIBRARY! In fact I thought it was ANYTHING but! The girl got a kind of dirty look on her face but I was too embarrassed to do anything but wait for a librarian to come along and tell the man to keep it down. One never seemed to get the chance, though. I sat and pretended to be really absorbed in my history book.

I heard a faint grumble from outside. I glanced up and there was a big skylight in the ceiling (there isn't one in real life); through it I saw some light clouds--it was overcast, no blue in the sky--and I stood up and craned my neck to see further. The view would have been impossible since I seemed to see the very tops of trees across the street--even though this skylight was almost directly overhead! Yet even more clearly I saw these really dark gray clouds rolling in. The glass may have already been wet. "Ooo!" I murmured, knowing a nasty thunderstorm might be moving in, and this excited me. I seemed to pick up what I was doing and either move on or just sit down again; I'm not sure which. I get the feeling I almost left but then decided to stay, but I don't know.

There's a hazy part here, in which I seemed to leave, and then was coming back into the library. I was walking through a dim part of the building (I sense it would have been behind where the main desk is in real life, facing the crime/psychology wall) and came to two halls, running parallel to each other, one on the left and one on the right, both leading out into the same part of the library. I think I was turned to the right one but then stopped to make sure I went the right way. They'd both take me to where I wanted to go, but I didn't want to do the wrong thing. There were no lights in either hallway and they were dim, but the light shining in from both ends (they were just short hallways) was enough to illuminate them. I'm pretty sure the one on the right was not carpeted and had a shiny tile (?) floor, and maybe a room off to the right (so the hall was more like an aisle through the room) with a big desk or something, and I knew it was the "office" hall, and private; the hall on the left, on the other hand, seemed to be carpeted, maybe with like orange shag carpeting, and I don't know if it had a room or anything to the left or not. Maybe it was just a hall. That was the one for public use. I made up my mind and took the left hallway, because I did not want to trespass through the private, office hallway. I went back out into the library, perhaps to browse around some more.

Real-life associations: The day before this, I was saving page images from online, of an antique book about Mackinac Island; I was going to bid on the book at eBay, but nearly at the last minute found a public-domain copy at a Canadian site.



2004 Dreams
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