09/03/04
Mr. & Mrs. Collins
This is a dream fragment from my regular sleep yesterday.
I seemed to be in my bedroom--I think it was daytime--and I somehow found out that Phil Collins, the musician, was married to a black woman. I was mildly surprised to learn this as I just assumed he had a white wife. I was trying to figure out whether she was British born or from somewhere in Africa. I know she spoke with a slight accent of some sort. I think I had a picture of her and maybe Phil, perhaps from a CD or tape jacket, and she was very pretty, kind of like Iman the supermodel. I believe she was dressed in orange, like in a long flowing dresslike thing which came down over her shoulders and extended loosely over her body like a covering or a shawl (maybe an upper part over the shoulders and arms, and a lower dresslike part beneath?), and in some kind of cap/hat/headdress which completely covered her hair, if she had any (perhaps it was cut very short). Her headpiece may have clung tightly to her head and then risen into a flat top, like the weird hats Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) always wore on Star Trek: The Next Generation, only not as ostentatious. I seemed to be standing facing my door as I looked at or thought about this.
Let's Go Outside
This is a dream fragment from my regular sleep yesterday.
There was some before this but I can't recall it. I remember getting ready to go outside where Ma was, doing something, maybe tending to her plants. It was the height of summer and hot and sunny outside, unlike how it's been most of the summer in real life. Our house was COMPLETELY different, so much so that I can't even describe it; even the outside location seemed different. I think of the color white or very pale gray, and of something like stucco, so maybe the walls were like that. I gathered up the stuff I wanted to take outside with me and I was carrying things like my blanket, a book, my cup of cold tea, etc. (I'm pretty sure about the tea and maybe the blanket, not sure what else), like the things I tend to carry out of my room when I first wake up at night. I seem to remember a cat wanting to go outside a lot too but I'm not sure if it was our current one, Cosmas, or our deceased one, Pepper. I was in a very good mood. I just hoped that Ma wouldn't end up coming inside while I was busy getting ready to go out; I really wanted to join her out there in the sunshine.
I had gathered all my stuff and was walking out a door; I think I was on the shaded side of the house and there might have been a little stoop or set of steps to go down. As I started going down them I realized I had forgotten to put on my sandals! I knew I had to walk down a long gravel driveway (like the one we have in real life, only positioned differently) to get to Ma, and across grass, which might have been wet--my feet would get dirty, plus they'd hurt, walking over that gravel. I considered going back in and putting my sandals on but shrugged it off--"I can make do without them." I would just walk carefully, is all, though I really didn't want to have to walk slowly as I might end up missing Ma. I continued on my way outside in great anticipation when my alarm clock went off and woke me up.
Couch To Basement In One Second Flat!
This is a dream I had while napping on the couch last night.
This is all jumbled and bits are missing so I'm going in the best order I can, possibly inaccurate. In the dream Ma and I were seated on the couch at night; she was on her end in the light (it seemed to be nighttime), while I sat beside her, facing her and with my right elbow resting on the back of the couch. I seemed to be talking to her while she beaded or crafted something. I felt a cool draft on my arm and wondered what it was. I turned to look at the wall. The couch was different, more like the one we had before the one we had before this one, with brownish-colored padded cushions you could remove from the seats and the back. The draft seemed to be coming from the wall right behind us. Frowning in puzzlement, I carefully peeled back the cushion to reveal the wall behind it, and my eyes widened, appalled at what I saw.
I saw the basement!!
In real life, our couch is backed against the wall which forms one of the sides of the basement stairwell. (The stairwell is enclosed from the rest of the house, of course; the other side is parallel to the bathroom.) The stairwell is accessible from a door in the hallway off of the living room (where the couch is), and below that stairwell there are shelves where jars used to be placed before we owned the house. Then there's the rest of the basement which consists of two main rooms, the bigger one divided in two by the shelves under the stairs. (There is another, smaller, storage room just to the right of the end of the stairs but it's self-contained from the rest.) In my dream, it's like a big section of wall had just fallen away and I had a view down into the basement; I can't quite describe it as it was different from how it would be in real life. I think there were some stairs there, but I seem to remember the shelving, or maybe they were combined. I think of long thin white wooden planks, like those that form the handrailing/supports on the right side of the stairs down. Beyond all that I could see the basement floor and such. It was well lit from electrical lights and seemed cleaner, if still jumbled (our real basement is very mildewy and spiderwebbed). Somehow, a HOLE had formed around the couch, leading into the basement below!
I had a dream memory just then of having noticed a sort of dent in the floor around the couch earlier, which I had brushed off as unimportant. Now I realized how important it really was. Our couch had been sat on and weighed down so much that over time it had worn into the wall and floor and was ready to plunge through into the basement at any moment! The floor and wall holding it up were obviously ready to give way!
"Ohhhhhh," I said, growing ever more anxious. Ma noticed my anxiety and looked up, at which I met her eyes, then nodded at the gaping space in the wall just behind us. She was puzzled by this phenomenon. I immediately jumped off the couch and waved at her to do so as well. I think she did, but she didn't seem nearly as upset as I was. I was so full of dread over this! I hopped from foot to foot and wondered what we should do. Could we fix it? I thought Dad might be partly responsible; I thought of how the couch in real life (which is a foldout bed with metal bars under the seats) had to be supported from beneath by wooden blocks so he wouldn't break it when he sat on it. -_- Perhaps his weight was primarily to blame for this, though I wasn't thinking of placing blame. I dreaded the thought of being on it and of plunging into the basement but I think even more I was afraid of the damage it would cause, and how we would fix it. We don't have the money for that!
The dream gets hazy here; some more stuff happened. All the while I fretted over the predicament with the couch and thought many times of asking whether our insurance would pay for this or not. I never got to ask. More people seemed to be in the house now, like our basement was part of a school, almost like the junior high gymnasium or something. The other people were teenagers but I felt like I was their peer. At some point Ma and another family member--Dad or my brother, Eric--both went and sat on the couch and I started panicking. Why were they doing that!! I stood in front of the couch (I didn't seem to fear the rest of the floor giving way, but I did fear us having this big gaping hole in the floor) and waved my arms frantically. They looked at me in this puzzled way and then I noticed the couch and the floor begin to shift. The basement had been visible the whole time, like the floor was already missing, when it wasn't, not yet, it was just breaking. I let out a little scream, then I let out a LOUDER scream--really high pitched and girly. Then the couch just CRASHED down through the floor and plummeted into the basement!! :O
Hysterical, I think I somehow made my way down there. Ma and whoever else it was were just fine--the couch had landed upright and they were still seated on it, as if to say, "Huh, it fell through. Go figure." (My family seemed unconcerned in this dream, as they often do in most of my dreams; in real life my panicking alone would have been enough to set off my parents.) I danced around in an utter panic. Over and over again I wanted to ask, "Will insurance pay for this? Will insurance pay for this?" I seemed far more upset about how we'd pay to FIX it than over the fact that we had this dangerous hole in our floor and nowhere to sit in the living room anymore! Though that did upset me somewhat; I recall feeling terribly anxious over where I would sit when I wanted to watch TV or something, and somehow this had something to do with my bedroom or my own privacy, because with this gaping hole there would be a lack of privacy, maybe because of the school students now wandering around in our basement/school area. I don't remember the exact reasoning, just that I was terribly upset by all this, and for weird reasons.
The dream gets foggy again here. As I was sleeping in real life there was some sort of TV show on--Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, I believe--and parts of it and whatever else was on filtered into the dream as background dialogue, but I can't remember how. I felt upset that my privacy would be invaded by this gaping hole in the floor. I remember at one point I was in the basement and I looked up through the hole to see Ma above--she must have gone back upstairs to survey the damage. And she was way, WAY up there, FAR higher than she would be in real life--she was so far away! The ceiling above her was offwhite or cream and came to a point over her head, like a gabled roof. She was so tiny up there! I looked up at her and I think I wailed or screamed, I was so aghast at this hole. And maybe I didn't want her leaning over it like that, either. Again I can't remember the exact reason for the way I kept reacting, only that I was very panicky and hysterical throughout this whole dream. I was really close to asking, "Does the insurance pay for this? I bet it doesn't! How are we going to fix this? What are we going to do until then??" I really hated the financial aspect of the situation. -_-
The dream shifted a bit I think and now I was headed into the basement, which was a school area, with my big blanket and some sort of stuffed toy--I know it was a trademarked character, probably Scooby-Doo--in tow. I felt very self-conscious walking around with these since there were teenage girls who would probably make fun of me, watching as I passed. I might have been dressed in my house clothes or in pajamas, like I was getting ready to go to bed. I was no longer upset about the hole, though I did feel tense about how the other students would react to me. (Remember I seemed to be their age.) It was like the waiting time every morning before class in the junior high gym and I briefly considered ditching at least the Scooby-Doo toy but decided not to; I'd take my chances before the girls. (I have no clue why I had a Scooby-Doo toy, as I have none in real life.)
At one point I turned and had to head down this little concrete stairway set between two little waist-high walls, like handrailings, and a bunch of guys were gathered here, kind of blocking the way. One of them was a VERY big, obese guy with kind of longish curly hair; when I think of it he resembled the big man who was on Becker for a while, only younger. I sensed he had a reputation as a bully, and was anxious of crossing him; but then I remembered that he knew me, and I knew him, and he was not such a bad guy once you got to know him--in fact, he was rather protective of certain underdogs. His bullying attitude was just to keep the real jerks at bay. I remembered that for some reason, I had told him to stand here and block the way, I think, until I came through, then he would step aside. I made my way through the crowd and toward the steps and he turned to look at me, like he wasn't going to move. I believe I politely said, "Excuse me," or something--and the big guy stepped aside, just like that. I flashed him a small smile and said, "Thanks, Van," as I went on my way, the big guy moving back into place behind me. I knew that was his name or nickname, "Van." As I hurried off, grateful to the big guy, I wondered if maybe he'd gotten that as a nickname for his big size. I was in a better mood because despite his threatening looks and silent, ominous attitude, he wasn't a bad guy at all. He'd done exactly as I'd asked and let me through without making fun of my blanket and toy, too. Looks could certainly be deceiving.
Real-life associations: Though the couch DOES have a block support under it, and used to break every so often due to Dad's weight, I haven't really had any fears about it plunging into the basement! I think maybe the fact that I was napping on it in the first place--something I haven't done in a long time--might have made it show up in my dream, and perhaps my anxiety over the price of fixing the gaping hole had more to do with my anxiety over other financial or home concerns, like our perpetually cranky hot-water handle (which I can never turn off right and which I'm always afraid of breaking and then angering Dad), or bills and such. Insurance is something I think about often since I have none and I'm always worried about my rotting teeth, and my extreme social anxiety, neither of which I can get help for.
The big guy vaguely reminds me of a bully I knew in junior high, Brian H. He always made fun of my poor posture and other things. The two of us, plus two other bullies who would often pick on me, ended up in a junior high support group together...and he, plus one of the other bullies, Adam L., ended up being rather nice and friendly toward me. (The third bully, Josh H., never got over his bullying and was a jerk toward me till the end. He moved away after junior high; Brian and Adam remained through high school.) Brian was a big guy--nowhere near as big as "Van" in my dream, but that's who I think of when I think of this guy. I never became friends with Brian per se but the few times he did see me he would say hello and such like that in a cheery manner, and he never picked on me again. Adam, who was smaller and goofier, turned out to be more of a class clown type than a bully and I guess we just got off on the wrong feet; I wouldn't say we were friends either, but we had the occasional class together and he was quite funny and liked to chatter and joke with me, and he stopped making fun of me too. To this day I am surprised how two people who started out being such jerks toward me ended up being not so bad after all. Although "Van" was not outgoing and cheery like they were (he was silent and didn't smile nor say a word to me in the dream), he made me think of them.
I think the name "Van" may have come from the show Reba, which I watched earlier that night and which features a male character named Van. It's odd though how in the dream the name resolved itself into a possible pun, referring to Van's immense size. I can't be sure whether this was his real name or his nickname, nor even if, if it was his nickname, this was the reason why he'd been given it.
2004 Dreams
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