I had a strange dream last night where some sort of large, air-conditioner sized device was stolen from my place of work. It was a TV or computer or something I wasn’t sure, but it was a vital piece of equipment and I was outraged that it had been stolen. Fortunately the repair guy who was there told me that someone had just dropped that exact item off in his shop that very morning. We went to his shop to lie in wait for the thief and confront him when he came to pick it up, but events kept preventing us from completing the arrest or apprehension of the guy. At one point he came in and the repair guy motioned to me that this was him, but just then some blonde woman with sunglasses and a fur coat came in and pushed her way to the front of the line to see the repair guy, and so the thief said he would be back later. Then we saw him coming out of his new apartment (where he had clearly wanted to place my equipment) carrying moving boxes to the trash with a helper. Things kept getting in the way of confronting him, but I kept expecting to at any moment. I tried to imagine what his excuse would be, caught dead to rights in his scam. But we had to wait, and so I retired to a huge maze-like apartment that I was sharing with friends to wait for the right moment. And then I woke up.
Sometimes our dreams reveal clear aspects of our personalities that we are trying to work through. I had such a dream last night:
I was on a fun trip to someplace very far away, and I kept inviting friends to come join us. The apartment we were renting was a great deal arranged by another friend of mine, and we were happy to be there. Later, some friends came from a great distance to join us on short notice and when I went to pay my arranging friend for the rooms, I realized it was a crazy price and we were really being ripped off. I argued at length about it, and he argued back, and I was really upset at myself for having not been more thorough about getting all the info, and how I was letting people down. We were in a dump and paying 500 euros for it (each!), and it turned out just so they could share our space on a dirty floor in this now crappy place.
This is one of those dreams that is so clear to me. For whatever reason (the way I was raised, vague insecurities) I am often worried about negotiating conflict that involves two separate parties. If it is only between me and the other party, no problem at all. I am direct in expressing what I want. But when I am working out a conflict that involves two competing parties, I always want everyone to be happy, even if the competing desires of various parties make that impossible. I am not sure why this particular type of conflict causes me stress when most kinds don’t, but clearly my subconscious is having a go at figuring it out.
I arrived at some ashram in the German countryside with some tall blond curly haired guy that was with me at the previous place we were escaping from. We were in an area where there were these strange shaped cars, rusted out in places but very futuristic at the same time. I looked up and noticed there was a really beautiful light filtering through the trees. Some woman took us on a tour around the somewhat suburban neighborhood, and then we were asked to stay at the ashram for awhile, or forced to stay, it wasn’t clear. We went to our room to rest before dinner, and suddenly the tall guy was gone and my cousin Josh was there, and there were a bunch of people in this series of rooms and we knew that they were all staying at this place to fix something about themselves. They weren’t prisoners exactly but still were there to work through some kind of order or punishment. I was explaining to Josh the rules in a place like this, and we picked up this weird new age book about quantum physics and spirituality written by Dolly Parton that we had to read as part of the program here. People kept saying this was good because it showed that this place was based in science and reason, not kooky new age pablum. We were then all forced to take a nap although no one was tired, and we had to sleep on the floor with just a blanket and it wasn’t very comfortable. We then noticed a woman get up (in contravention of the rules) and walk past us to open a secret door that led to a long path through the woods around the grounds of the ashram. I explained to Josh that with so little to do here, we take walks a lot and they were really nice and lasted a couple of hours and helped the time go by. When we came back from the walk we were asked to help out in the kitchen making part of the meal for everyone. Josh wanted to be helpful but served up corn chips which he wasn’t supposed to, because the leader of the place was allergic to them. Everyone at the table was very polite about it though.
There was a large group of us in some sort of resort or shelter in a big city that was very dense with buildings like New York, but more futuristic. We were listening to some live program on the radio and kept commenting about what they were leaving out. We kept saying, “That’s not Hollywood, what is wrong with them?” We were all famous somehow, and two of our group went down to the place where the show was being broadcast, and sort of muscled their way into it and onto the air. When they were on the air they went through the archives in that building, reading off names over the radio of things they pulled out of the boxes at the station. Most of these things were people’s names. They then came back to the shelter where we were, only now we were outdoors in the city, looking up over a long bridge to a massive tower on axis at the end. It was nighttime and all the buildings were lit up, and it was snowing but not cold or windy at all. It was an incredibly beautiful scene, but also quite stylized and old looking, like an artist’s idea of what the future would look like from the vantage point of 1930. We kept saying to each other “Now that’s Hollywood,” as we looked around the city, satisfied that some names had been correctly read on the radio.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on April 20, 2010 @ 8:37 am — 1 comment
Often times dreams are just a jumble of the images that you were presented with the previous day. I had such a dream last night. Here are some pieces of it:
I was at a party saying good bye to lots of people from LA, but we were in Paris at a bank. The woman who was throwing it looked a lot like Jujubee. As people were arriving at the party she was telling them over the intercom what they could not bring in, and the list of things were odd. She told them not to bring pacemakers and bank slates and equipment. I saw a lot of old friends and even though we were in a stationary building, the party was moving like on a bus through the streets of Paris. We kept looking out the window to figure out where we were (somewhere near the Bastille I guessed) but couldn’t. I told some people that I was hugging goodbye that I didn’t miss LA, but I missed them (which was not true in the case of the people I said good bye to, because they were only vague acquaintances, not ever close friends. But I didn’t want to hurt their feelings and it seemed appropriate in the moment.)
Prior to arriving at the party a few of us were traveling around with someone close to me, I could not make out who, but someone I had known a long time. And we kept packing and unpacking suitcases with lots of old things, memorabilia in them. I kept asking my close friend if he or she had everything, hadn’t forgotten anything, as we looked deeply into the suitcase for things that had been discarded about the room. All kinds of things, pants, books, tobacco, lamps, plastic bags, moldy old photographs. Something was really important to find in all of this mess, but we couldn’t and the bus/building was leaving for the party, so we gathered what we had and left.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on February 12, 2010 @ 9:36 am — 1 comment
I had a strange dream last night with a lot of moving parts to it. It really ranged across a ton of subjects, but I can only remember a few details. I was in some sort of hunting lodge type place with a bunch of people, cozy around a fireplace having drinks. To my right was the Queen of England, and she was saying something about her father the King who had died in the year 499. I somehow knew she meant to say 1499, but still I called her out on it.
“You are telling me that you have been Queen since 1499? That is over 500 years. No way.” I said, with a fair amount of nonchalance.
“Of course not,” she said, “I became Queen much later, but my father did die at that time.”
Incredulous, I consulted with a couple of friends near me over a hot toddy. “She is either lying or crazy,” I said.
I don’t remember much else in the dream except some long house with a bunch of rooms where a group of us were staying. We were hanging out at one end and some middle aged, blond female benefactor kept calling me on the intercom from the other to ask me for help with something.
Satori, dreams — Stephen on December 12, 2009 @ 7:26 pm — 0 comments
I often will post dreams here on my blog. I love dreams and think they are fascinating for what they tell us about our current conscious and subconscious preoccupations. Sometimes they are quite mysterious with no apparent connection to anything we are experiencing at the moment. And sometimes they are crystal clear, like the dream I had last night:
I was in a very large warehouse type space that was in some tropical place. I had been renting it for many months, but the place was pretty much empty, like I hadn’t moved in at all. I hadn’t bothered in all those months to do anything other than place a mattress on the floor, and there were some vague piles of junk in the far corners of this vast room. At one point my brother came back with me to the apartment from an all night party we had been at. He took a look around the place and started making all kinds of pronouncements and judgements about what a mess it was, how could I live like this and why was I even renting this place! Then suddenly my cousin Josh was there and I was trying to get half the rent from him but he told me that even though we had rented it together, he had only actually stayed a few times. As I tried to talk to him about the money, he was on the phone talking to one of his friends and completely ignoring me. So then and there I decided to hell with everybody, I was gong to fix the place up, so I began pulling all this cheap but well designed, brightly colored furniture out from various places around the room. There was a ton of it, and I started organizing it around the huge space, making smaller spaces out of the arrangements of furniture. As I was fixing the place up, more and more people were coming by to see the space and taking things away with them. People were milling about everywhere and I kept asking them to leave, but more and more kept coming, even as the others were leaving. I had no money but the place was really starting to look good with the found objects I had placed there. Suddenly Oprah was there and I asked her if she needed my phone number just in case to contact me, but she smiled condescendingly and said no. Then Levi Johnston who was next to me leaned over to shake my hand. Finally some drill sergeant type woman (very much like Jane Lynch) started asking everyone to get in line, then started calling out my name dismissively. As I turned to face her, I was squinting and couldn’t see her too clearly. As I tried to open my eyes, they were hurting a bit. I woke up with the sun in my face.
So to break it down:
I have been trying to find a rental place in Puerto Rico with my cousin Josh, where we are going in a couple of weeks. I have some money concerns about the whole enterprise, as I have had with money in general recently. My brother has been a bit judgmental with me recently about several things, and it has been upsetting me. And the rest? Just the pop culture debris and refuse that fills every nook and cranny of our brains. Although I was a little bugged that Oprah didn’t want my number. Who does she think she is?
Satori, dreams — Stephen on December 7, 2009 @ 9:26 am — 1 comment
I had a doozy of a weird dream last night, but can only remember small bits of it, so here they are:
Some boyfriend and I had strange super powers that we were sharing, somehow activated by an ipod mini-looking device that would put both of us at the same time into the same robot. It was like I was both of us, but I was in control of the robot and was fending off all kinds of attacks, and it was fun even while it was dangerous.
Later it seemed that Madonna was my girlfriend, and we both had very similar powers, mechanical in nature. We were being chased by crowds and villains, and we were still fighting off attacks as she was coming to visit me at my place. Because she is Madonna and so famous, all my friends and people all around wanted to meet her, and I was sort of basking in and enjoying the reflected glow of her celebrity, but we never got to meet anyone because we were fighting off all these military style attacks all around us. Madonna told me that she was really born in another country and her name was not Louise, and her voice sounded like it was being run through a synthesizer.
Somehow a bit later in the dream I was having dinner with a middle aged woman who was talking about a couple that are friends with my parents. She made a big deal out of telling me that the husband in the couple was not monogamous, even though the wife was, and that this was their agreement. She said it in such a way that I could tell she didn’t approve at all, but still with a resignation about it.
I was on an island with two sides and parties on either side. There were people everywhere and a festive mood. Everyone spoke different languages but we were communicating well. At one point I needed to get from one part of the island to another, and I had to walk through a forrest to get to the other side. There was no real path marked, but I found my way to the other side and the cabins there. Somehow right at the end of the path I had to choose right or left to get to the village cabins and I chose right, but unfortunately this led to a very very steep incline. When I realized this was wrong, I turned to go up the hill in a shortcut , and found myself under a strange mesh, more like a parachute type material and below me was all sand. I somehow managed to climb up in between the mesh and the sand at this very steep incline to get to the flattening out at the top of this hill, but it was very uncomfortable and hard to breathe. Finally I came to the edge of the mesh and came out to enter one of the main cabins. As I was walking inside, a bunch of people were leaving to go to the other side of the island from where I had just come. I went in to the cabin and sat on a large bed with two guys that lived there and we sat talking for a bit about the party. Although they were mostly ignoring me. Then two other guys came in with a dog, who scampered onto the bed and peed on it. The guy with the dog was apologetic but only made a half assed attempt to clean up the stain the dog had left. At this point I decided to go back to the other side of the island where all the fun was really happening, but it was getting dark out and I didn’t think I would be able to find my way back. Nevertheless I headed out in that direction, and I kept passing happy groups coming back form the other side, asking them how to get there. They kept telling me to just keep following the path, although there was no path. I headed in the direction of the woods and suddenly a house was in front of me and I knew I had to open the door and walk through it to get to the path on the other side. I opened the back door and started walking down a hallway, when an old woman doing laundry spotted me. I started to apologize and explain that I had to walk through to get back to the other side and she didn’t say a word and so I continued through the house, and out a yard when I noticed that much of my laundry was there and hanging, waiting to dry. I realized I could not go back to the other side of the island without my clothes, and so I would have to spend the night on this side of the island, even though I had no cabin. As I headed out the house, back the way I had come in, the screen door slammed behind me and I woke up.
I had a bit of a nightmare last night, which is pretty rare for me.
I was deep in an underground school or camp or prison of some sort, hanging out with a rag tag group. We were sort of like a group of homeless people, rummaging around the debris of these subway tunnels and basements for junk we could use. The people running the place were thuggish, brutish types that were quite menacing. Two other guys and me were about to be punished for breaking some rule, some minor infraction perhaps having to do with some contraband. They had decided that we had to have our eyes put out. We were terrified, but going about preparing ourselves. I was very upset that this was happening, and I complained to someone who told me that for some ethnic reason, this rule didn’t apply to us. I spoke to one of the people in charge who gave me a note excusing me from the punishment, although the small gang meting out the punishment seemed unlikely to heed it. I kept avoiding the place where the torture was happening because I was worried that even though I had been excused and had my note, they would still grab me and try to do the same. I was with a small group, half hiding and yet still wandering close to the place where the guys eyes were to be put out, a group preparing their bed and station and moving things around. The scene was like a wartime, dirty makeshift hospital ward. We heard their screams coming from the other room and I was horrified and also relieved that it was not happening to me. I was filled with some shame for my special privilege, and anger at their stupid rules. We left after that to go out to a safer place while they recuperated. A group of “friends” grabbed me and let me to another part of the underground maze. It seemed that there was a real kind of cultural divide, and that I needed to go with them or I wouldn’t be safe. As we wandered from room to room, I noticed a bunch of malformed and sickly children that were coming and going, moving around everywhere or arriving by elevator down to the depths with us. Then the entire place seemed to tip sideways and we all fell to the ground, and then I woke up.