Satori, dreams — Stephen on April 27, 2012 @ 7:58 am — 1 comment
I was with a few people going on a trip, one of them was a friend of my friend Olaf. He was going to take me somewhere and Olaf would meet us later, but Olaf was yelling at him for not preparing something correctly and for running out of time. There were a couple of people who were experimenting with strange little glass jars that contained mini fusion reactors or something. They were very volatile but there was sometimes, if done properly, a time differential inside the jar that was different from the outside. One guy was explaining how he had saved 17 minutes in this glass jar, but he seemed a little dim like he didn’t really know what he was doing, he was just watching the other scientists who knew better. Just then the glass in his hand exploded and we were all knocked down to the floor and back in time 17 minutes. Later we were at a dinner and this colleague of mine, a woman I respected very much, told me she had just lost her job. And then we heard a report that all over the world the economic situation for people that lived next to rivers was very bad, they were all struggling. My colleague was sadly, slowly brushing her teeth and preparing to leave when I woke up.
I was in Chicago for a singing audition for a new commercial jingle, and they told me that my part sounded great, but the other part (performed by other people) sounded terrible. The problem was that they had all the power and were not about to include my part. I was calling the corporate guys to get approval on my part, but the phone line kept getting cut. They were a group of mean girls stopping it from happening, and I decided to go on vacation. A lot, I was going on a lot of vacations. And on my way to the airport, I got on a call with my boss to tell him I was leaving, but then someone called in on the other line. It was my friend Jonny in Geneva who told me that his friend had clubbed his loud dog to death and that he would not be trusting him any more, no sir. But he said it in a laughing way, like he thought the entire thing was very funny. And then I woke up.
I was with my parents on vacation in a collection of beautiful but decaying buildings and a kind of shopping mall that sprawled on forever. There were a large group of people we were meeting there. For some reason, we bought a dog that was controlled by an object that looked like a metal detector that we had to carry around with us everywhere. With this item, we could call and track the dog with a signal. There were lots and lots of weird items that we were buying and comparing with people, mostly sheets and towels and odd nicknacks for the home. Then it was time to leave and it seemed to take us forever to get our stuff together and ready (the items, the dog who kept hiding, saying goodbye to the neighbors) to leave. We kept forgetting things and having to go back for them. And then we were finally on our way out, walking through the remains of several buildings and then across the rooftop of a building when suddenly an earthquake happened. But it was an odd, rolling, slow motion kind of earthquake. Everything started to shake and fall apart, but in a very slow moving kind of way. We kept looking for structure to hide under, and I was worried I would be trapped, not sure whether to get outside or stay under a building shelter that was crumbling. Then it stopped, we were ok and I woke up.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on December 28, 2011 @ 8:59 am — 0 comments
I awoke with a start this morning (my alarm always startles, that is its purpose after all), with the barest remnants of a strange dream. Here they are. I was with my ex, Brian, and we were driving (in separate cars) to the outskirts of San Francisco, but it didn’t look like San Francisco. It looked like a cross between Los Angeles and Indianapolis, and the traffic was terrible. We kept driving around, desperately trying to find a place to stop. Then I was in a body shop / garage with my car, waiting to pick it up while Brian went to park his somewhere close by. Their system for finding the cars they were working on was byzantine, with rotating racks of numbers not unlike the ones that clothes go round on at the cleaners. Finally they got me my car back and I parked it right outside, wondering where Brian was after all this time. I called him and he was in a fit about finding parking but finally had. I told him we would walk into town and he freaked out. He absolutely hated walking and wondered why I couldn’t just drive us to where we were going despite the traffic. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but he was screaming mad about it. Other than that, I remember watching some crazy live fashion show/ advertising campaign in the lobby of some building while waiting for him to join me and thinking, I could do better than that….
Satori, dreams — Stephen on November 14, 2011 @ 8:57 am — 0 comments
We (I think I was with my aunt, but I am not sure) were in a very old, impossibly large cathedral with an old sound system that was not working. There were many ancient, small wooden rooms on a kind of balcony level that people (including us) were staying in, and there were cobwebs over every thing that we were continually removing. This seemed like a place abandoned by a previous civilization, and the words that were coming through the sound system were being used to control people. What we heard were static-like voices, not very clear, but that were nonetheless keeping us in a kind of trance state, doing the bidding of the people in charge that were issuing commands about all sorts of things. Somehow, I discovered a way to fix the old system, and then people had control over what was playing on it, which consisted of very old recordings of music and speeches. At the same time this woke them up to what had been happening and brought them out of their trance state, freeing them from the control. Everyone was very happy, and then I woke up.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on November 2, 2011 @ 8:28 am — 2 comments
I was with a friend and we were walking around a really cool bunch of buildings, mostly houses, exploring them. We got separated and I was then inside one of them and led to a room along with a family (father, mother, boy and girl — all dressed in black) that was also visiting. The family was asked to sit down and I was asked to take umbrellas as props to a man in this room who was going to tell his life story to the family. Suddenly there was another woman in the room, directing me to hand the man umbrellas which he would use to point at things while he told his story. And then it seemed this woman was my grandma and the man telling the story was my grandpa, but neither of them looked anything like my grandparents. The man was telling his story until at one point the woman (my grandmother) stopped and yelled out “And then you cheated on me! Tell them!”. The family got all quiet and it was a bit awkward. My grandmother explained that it had happened in 2003 (after they were dead btw, but dream logic is like that) and even though they had reconciled, she was still pissed. After that, I left to find my friend but couldn’t, and I was kind of angry with him for taking off like that. When we finally did find each other, he was with another person and we all got on bikes to ride down very steep but peaceful roads meandering through grassy green hills. The feel of the air rushing by was perfect and beautiful. At a certain point it was clear that we were leading a group of kids back from a trip, and we split up with each of us taking a separate group of kids back to their homes, each in a different sector of the city. As I led my group towards the downtown area, I woke up.
From what I can remember, I was in a strange, triangular shaped room with a small, floor to ceiling slit window at the wedge end of it to let light in. This was a room that I had built for myself while I was staying at this place (a kind of camp or school) and working the front desk. Then I found out, to my dismay, that two of the guys who had seemed so nice to me here were in fact making fun of me behind my back. Later, I was saying goodbye to a sweet old teacher as we packed up to leave for the season. And then they ended up giving my room to one of the jerks who had been mean to me, which I was not thrilled about, but not wanting to make a stink about either. As the teacher and I left the building with lots of teary goodbyes, she stopped and picked up a wad of cash off the ground, which was curiously laying next to a wallet which she left in place. She whispered to me not to say anything because she really needed the money. I promised her that her secret was safe with me, and then I then asked for directions to someplace in Australia. She pointed me to the station, behind the bar with a lot of rowdy but nice people in it who also pointed the way for me. Then I was in a really long line at the bus station waiting to buy my ticket but the jovial guy behind the counter was really taking his time with everyone and I was worried that I would miss my bus if I didn’t get to the front of the line in time. And as the line got shorter, he took longer and longer with each person in front of me, and would hop out from behind the counter a lot to show off something or put on a little show for everyone. He seemed very sweet and generally loving his job and everyone there, and I was impressed with his attitude. Thankfully, someone then pointed out to him that the train was going to leave and he came back behind the counter and I was able to buy a ticket to London, which was strange, even to me in the dream, because I was in Australia. And then I woke up.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on January 22, 2011 @ 9:54 am — 0 comments
I was transported to an ugly looking hotel in India after recognizing it briefly in a magazine, then started discussing the architecture and looking for someone. We (not sure who was with me) came across a sort of kid’s summer camp of adults in this part of the country, and several of them were leaving. A few of them I knew had secrets they were afraid of revealing, and I suspected one of them of being gay. After that, I rented a small apartment that used to be mine but now had another man and woman living in it, although they were not related to each other in any way. It was a strange kind of place, sort of a cylindrical bunker, with curtain lines hanging everywhere to separate the space into “rooms”. We decided to clean it up and make it nice, and as we were cleaning it up we noticed that there were bugs everywhere that needed to be exterminated. I kept noticing that as I would put my glass of lemonade down, all these little ants would gather around it quickly and I realized that because the drink was very sweet it was probably attracting them. I would move the glass and watch the ants follow it in a mini swarm. We were sleeping in these hammock-like things hanging from the ceiling and I was somewhat attracted to the man, with a small crush on him, and we kept holding hands but I wasn’t sure if he was into me or not. We kept planning the makeover for the place, and cleaning out and fixing up this small, weirdly shaped building which was at the end tip of a long island, very remote. And then I woke up.
I have a new client that owns a restaurant, and he thought it a good idea that I dine there before beginning the site design. So he comped me a dinner for two. I was thrilled by this idea because the restaurant is quite well regarded, and so I took Michael last night and we had a really wonderful meal. I ordered the sweet potato ravioli to start followed by the short ribs, complemented by a very nice glass of Malbec. The dishes were truly excellent, if a bit rich.
And sometimes after a rich and heavy meal, I will have very odd dreams — and last night I had a doozy. I can only remember little bits and pieces of it, but it involved a weird family reunion with hundreds of people (even though we don’t have nearly that many relatives) having a picnic in some windy field with many lined up tables. There was some discussion and argument about the best way for me to inflate a raft and what sort of pump to use. At one point I and a couple other people were in a seafood restaurant where they were serving frozen fish, and we argued over fresh versus frozen. Then we were in Italy and I picked up a WiFi signal to find the place where I had stayed with my friend Fabrizio (who I haven’t seen in 20 years). And finally, I was in the house from my childhood when the door rang, and I went to look through the peephole to see who it was. And it was a friend of mine who I didn’t want to talk to because we had had a falling out. And finally, it started snowing. I wish I could have remembered more, but alas these things are elusive. I have had dreams before that had particular story lines that were more fantastic or strange, but rarely one that covered so very many mundane subjects at once.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on December 16, 2010 @ 3:19 pm — 2 comments
I had an odd dream last night. I was on a road trip with my uncle in an ugly Ford Taurus. We were moving incredibly fast though, through fields of smooth cut grass berms we couldn’t see over, zooming around curves. I felt the centrifugal force quite strongly and asked my uncle to slow down. We then stopped along the way at some weird technology center. We started wandering the grounds, alternately sure we were there to attend some conference and just stopping along the road to find a place to sleep like it was a motel. We then stumbled into a kind of precocious children’s school on the grounds, and we agreed to talk to the teacher there and try to write an essay or poem or something but we were having a very difficult time of it. We spent many hours trying to compose, each of us separately, a good essay or poem. I noticed I was working with line ruled paper and a nice, somewhat heavy silver pen, both long lost items from my childhood. The bell rang and we had to turn in our writing which wasn’t finished at all. Then the teacher did an analysis of our work and the work of her three other students, three young women, one of whom was suddenly my friend Ruthbea. The teacher berated all of us for the terrible quality of the poems we had written, then talked about how renowned she herself was at this, and talked about how she would be coming out with a new book soon. Then her three sudents started in with silly, fawning, accolades to curry favor with their teacher. I was disgusted by the transparency of it, but the teacher seemed to respond well to their sycophancy.
