blight

I’m following a couple with a baby and i see we’re going into a large ‘official’ looking building. Inside i realize it’s a hospital. I’m not sure why i’ve come here but i keep following the couple with the baby. The ?baby is ill and needs treatment. While i’m waiting with the parents in the exam room i look at a place on my inner/upper arm that’s like a circular track covered with a strip of skin. It’s apparently not abnormal and everyone has this feature on their body. I examine the track under the skin. There are four marks at North, South, East, and West. Each of the marks looks like five tiny holes. They’re ducts of some kind, like tear ducts. On my left arm they all look fine and i examine the same on my right arm. The marks are the same on my right arm but one of the ducts is wrong. It’s about the size of a ladybug and sort of looks like one too. It’s round and red with some raised darker brown spots and covered with tufts of course hair. It reminds me of a caterpillar bit from my Magic Caterpillar dream i had a few weeks ago. I touch it and it’s very hard but doesn’t hurt and i realize immediately that it’s cancer. I show the nurse that’s tending to the baby and she takes one look and then tells me to wait where i am while she gets a doctor. She knows that it’s cancer too. I look at the nodule again and wonder how i could have missed it for so long that it grew to be the size of a ladybug. When the nurse returns with the doctor everything becomes chaotic but they seem to know exactly what to do. I tell the doctor “i knew it was cancer because it’s hard but it doesn’t hurt” and i woke up.

Inspector in Black

I’m in my bedroom in my house but when it was on Castlemill. My bedroom is arranged like it was then too. Bed in the corner between the windows, my stereo under the front-facing window. The house really is a castle or fortress though, and my room is many, many feet above the ground. Mike is lounging on my bed and i’m playing LP’s on a turntable. Something catches my eye and i look up and out the window and a man in black is looking in. It shocks and scares me because we’re far too high for anybody to be looking in the window. By the time i turn to Mike to say something and turn back, the man is gone. I look out the window and far below see the man in black on the ground with some surveying type gadgets and a short ladder. In some interlude that i can’t remember now i’m being informed that the man in black is an inspector checking out the house because it’s being sold and he’s verifying that it’s sturdy and intact and there aren’t cracks in the walls. I give Mike an energy drink for the drive to WV because i want to be sure he and Scott get there safely but he drinks it down right then. I ask him why he drank it when he wasn’t leaving until tomorrow and was a little put out even though i had more to give him. He gave me some vague Mike response and started freaking out that he wouldn’t be able to go to sleep but i assured him it was early enough that it would wear off by the time he wanted to sleep. A movement catches my eye again and it’s the man in black looking in my OTHER window. As soon as i see him he ducks down to avoid being seen. Now i’m pissed because it’s dusk outside and if he’s an inspector he shouldn’t be looking for flaws in the dark. My perspective changes now like i’m a bird in a tall tree looking directly across at my bedroom. I can see the brickwork on the outside of the house. It’s ornate and in a repeating pattern of equal sided crosses, like big plus signs. The brick is very old like you see on really old buildings in London. There’s some other man-made structure on the lawn. I can’t see it now that i’m awake but it was also made of rocks and i remember being under the impression that it was related to something holy. It might’ve been a stone well. That feels right. I think my house is maybe a church? Sanctuary? Camelot! Yes. Arthur’s castle. I remember now it was Merlin who told me that the man in black was an inspector. I live in King Arthur’s castle? If my room was round it WOULD be like turret. I never thought of that before. No idea what it signifies but i have a sudden urge to re-read The Once and Future King. ?

My bedroom – Comfort, familiarity
Castle, sturdy well-made brick walls – Protection, safety
Feeding a friend an energy drink - ? my energy is dependent upon the state of my friendships?
Surveyor / Man in black - ? Judgement? Like people judging me in 'low light', not getting a true picture of me and i resent it?
Crosses and ‘holy water’ Wells – in tarot language wands and cups maybe? My spiritual center?

Separation of work and dreams

Work dream. I’d been keeping a lot of my records (LP’s and 45’s) at work on and in my desk and bookshelf. I’ve come in today and all my records are gone. All of the personal stuff that i kept in my space was just gone. The account director came walking up to me with her predator smile and said “Our lawyers have advised us that anything an employer has at work belongs to the corporation and I have taken your record collection. It will be returned to you when you leave.” I was SO mad. It was all my Beatles collection and i wanted it back immediately. I went to my facebook and posted a request for advice from any of my lawyer friends on the legality of that action because i didn’t believe the director for one minute.

Really mad. Ugh. Then i woke up and didn’t know what day it is and was thinking i didn’t have to work today. *&%#! I know what prompted the dream. The monthly account meeting was held yesterday. I haven’t been to one in years. Not since the management team held forth with a thirty minute discussion on what type of footwear is appropriate for the women on the account to wear, complete with photocopies of appropriate and inappropriate styles. Yesterday a group of my co-workers dialed in to listen and i couldn’t help but overhear some of it.

Account meeting agenda starts with all the employee birthdays for the current month. Then all the employee anniversaries for the month and the years served. Then a quiz to see who can add up the total of the years served for all the employees that had an anniversary. That usually takes up the first hour. Then some other bullshit, usually not very important that creates more questions than providing useful information. Then the reading of employee questions that have been submitted anonymously. I was between music on my ipod and accidentally heard one of the questions and my blood boiled. Some of these people are so incredibly petty and unprofessional that it’s a wonder to me that can dress themselves. Idiots. So i’m sure that’s what made me have an angry dream.

Heh. I’m STILL pissed. Me need to wake the hell up!

News of the day invading my dreams.

In the dream, i’m inside a large ship. It’s huge - like a space station maybe, but rides near the ground. It’s a huge tank on a mission to support the ground troops that are on a mission to clear out the ‘bad’ people. The tension inside the ship is very high. I can see the ground troops spread out under the ship (hover tank?) and on either side. They’re wearing full body armor and look like black plastic toy soldiers creeping along with the ship. My guide/companion (?Fitz maybe) tells me we’re going to take a road vehicle out and scout on ahead of the ground troops and we get in a large black pickup truck and take off going really fast. We’re on a road but it’s very dusty and obviously hasn’t been used in a long time. The scene is very apocalyptic. We approach the outskirts of the remains of a city and begin to see people. I’m very afraid – these are the ones that our ground troops have been ordered to annihilate and i know that they’re very dangerous even though they just look like wild dirty humans. We turn around and go flying back to the ship so the guide can tell our leader what we’ll encounter ahead. From inside the safety of the ship, i’m fearful. I argue with the soldier’s leader that fighting against those scavengers will be useless and a lot of soldiers are going to be killed. I want him to call the soldiers in to board the ship with us and see what the scavengers will do.

I’m in a big garage like place where boats are lined up in slips. The man who is taking me through the place tells me that these boats all need some kind of repair or maintenance. Assuming that these boats are floating in water, i tell him that i could maybe help with scraping off barnacles if the boats are lifted up. He explains that the boats i’m looking at are ‘dry-docked’ and need to have other kinds of repairs. We approach a boat that has a few guys doing some work on it and i see that they’re replacing metal chrome strips on the edges and seams of the boat.


Exhausting dreams. Afghanistan. Health Care Reform.

Paisley bargains

I’m in the mall i go to sometimes in dreams and looking through the sales rack of last summer’s stuff. It’s all marked down and very reasonably priced. I’m looking for a pair of shorts and find a pair i like so take them into the dressing room to try them on. The dressing room is made completely of wood. Wood floors and doors and benches. It reminds me of the public showers i used as a child when my family would go camping in National Park campgrounds. The shorts fit perfectly and look really good on me. They’re Bermuda shorts but made of very fine silk. The pattern is interesting – sort of olive colored leaves in paisley swirls on a cream colored background. There are flecks of other colors that i like. They have some kind of odd inward turning cuff which keeps falling out. That ruins those particular shorts for me and i guess that’s probably why they never sold. I do like the style though so i put them back on the hanger and decide to take them to another store that’s downstairs from the one i’m in to see if i can find the same style but in a sturdier more durable material. I wonder if the first store will arrest me if i leave the store with their merchandise but they don’t. The other store downstairs is one i’ve been to before in dreams. There are rows and rows of clothing in several rooms. Two rows on every wall – one high and one low. I don’t want to look at all the clothes so i ask the salesman if he could tell me if he knows whether or not they have something along the lines of what i seek. He shows me some denim shorts that are similar in style but they’re sized for a child and i tell him i would definitely have to have grown up size and he tells me they don’t have any so i go back to the first store and put the shorts back on the rack and continue going to where ever it was i was headed when i got sidetracked by the sales rack.

[It seems like i never find anything i want in that mall. I should go and shop somewhere else in my dreams.]

I assume that the mall represents my 'world' and maybe i should just stop shopping off the sales rack looking for a bargain if i seriously want to find something of value (fine silk) that will last (durable) and is made for a woman, not a child. The dressing room and the pattern of the shorts represents the nature of my desire? Natural (wood), calm or peaceful ('olive' leaves) and traditional yet funky (paisley)? Dunno. Could be. Will ponder.

the Map is not the Journey

In the dream, i’m moving back to Pacifica. Dad is trying to talk me out of going back. My new place is actually two connected motel rooms so i have a key for each of the doors. I’m concerned that even if the doors are locked the locks won’t hold and people will come and go as they please and steal my stuff.

This is recurring theme in my dreams – locked doors that don’t really lock, moving back and forth between Pacifica and Raleigh. I think this dream must’ve been prompted by watching How To Be starring Robert Pattison. It was Robert Pattison movie day for Cathy and Scott and Mike and i happened to be there… we also watched Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire followed/finished by Twilight. I didn’t like Twilight much but How To Be was one of those unknown art house type films that i kinda like. But anyways, the role RP played reminded me so much of the youngest child of the family i lived with in Cali for the first few months. Stu was a few years younger than me so probably sixteen or so. Nice kid but i don’t think he stood much of a chance in life being the last of eight children of an alcoholic father and a totally disinterested mother. He was handsome but didn’t seem to have any direction or dreams. When i lived with them, i lived in a camping trailer in the driveway. It took me several days to clean it up and make it habitable but after i finished, Stu used to come in there and chill with me probably because it was the only clean place on the property. The house was a horror. When i first moved there every dish in the house was dirty and in the sink. All the doors had been removed from the cupboard and were propped up against the wall by the refrigerator. Somebody in the house had decided to paint but never got past removing the doors and some of the paint from the walls. I cleaned out every empty cabinet then washed every dish and put it away. Some of the plates had been in the sink so long that spiders had nested in them and laid eggs. I’d never before and have never since seen anything like that place. All the time i lived with them i would keep the kitchen clean as a kind of payment for them letting me live there and because i wanted to be able to use the kitchen too. The garage where the big sink was that i’d sometimes use to wash my hair (because the bathroom was so disgusting) and the washer and dryer. It was a big garage and easily would’ve held two large cars but instead, it was just another place for them to store shit. The floor was covered with clothes. Years of clothes. Clothes that had been rendered into a sort of strange carpet because of years of the washing machine overflowing, soaking the floor, then drying and having new layers of clothes added. I bet it was twenty years worth of rubbish. Amazing. Their house had once been a nice enough house and with property values what they were then and what they still are now, that house was worth a fortune. Sad. The living room had wood floors but those had been torn up and were leaning up against the wall next to an old decaying piano. Somebody had had an idea to refinish the floor but never got past tearing up the floor. That was the first alcoholic (and family of an alcoholic) i’d ever known. Pitiful. The dad would always refer to me as “my favorite daughter” and would always ask for me to come pick him up from whichever local tavern he happened to get smashed at after his day of working as a limousine driver to the stars. The three grown daughters that lived in the house with him weren’t too happy with me; being his favorite ‘daughter’ but they didn’t do a damned thing around that house. Three grown daughters, a high-school aged son, a working mother and a working father and not one of them could be bothered to clean up after themselves. Sometimes i bury away how truly awful an experience that was but apparently seeing How To Be unlocked that floodgate. Oh. The cats. The dad would often bring home animals. The cats didn’t have a sandbox so they just went to the bathroom on the exposed floor of the living room. One time he brought this really cute little dog home. It was snowy white, maybe a Maltese mix. Obviously somebody’s beloved pet. But the dad insisted it was a stray and the dog stayed at the house for several weeks before somehow the dog’s owner got word that their dog was living a few streets away. The dad lied about everything. That was something else new to me. The daughter i moved to Pacifica was exactly like him. I still have never understood why people lie just to lie. I attributed it to the alcohol addiction. Phew. A dream of motel rooms with two keys unlocked some really bad memories. But it’s true that what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Who i am today is certainly influenced by my first experience away from home. I hope Stu made it out alive and has had a good life. It never was his fault, none of it.

Oh. The locks. I almost forgot about that. How people would come in to the trailer in the middle of the night when i was sleeping because the lock wouldn’t always hold. Sometimes it would be Robin or sometimes one of her male friends. Usually they were drunk and i was sober so i could talk them into going home so i could sleep to get up and go to school the next morning. It’s unsettling to think about. How close i came to being raped so many times. Luckily i have a natural gift with beasts and low-IQ people. That and my angels. They definitely earned their wings many times over during that time in my life. I feel soul sick with the remembering.

EC at the animal amphitheatre

I'm attending an outdoor concert in a large open theatre (like the Greek in Berkeley). As i'm walking up some stone steps i see Eric Clapton standing at the top of some aluminum type bleachers. The 'bowl' is filled with people sitting on blankets on the grass and more aluminum bleachers behind them, filled with people. My goal is to get as close to the top as i can without being in the crowd so i can hear without distraction. I look further up the steps and see a large white tiger coming down the steps towards me and i freeze. It steps into the grassy area behind the 'stage' bleacher. I continue climbing, my goal is to get to a hedge that separates the 'stage' from the place where the tiger went. Before i can take another step though, another large cat - i think it's a lynx or a bobcat - comes walking down the steps past the hedge towards me. My heart is pounding. I don't think it would hurt me but i don't really know.

Wake up.

My first impression upon waking is that that venue is the same place i saw Stevie Ray Vaughan play once and i was trying to remember if that really happened or if it only dream happened. I'm pretty sure it only dream happened but really, what difference does it make? If i see a concert 'awake' or i see a concert 'asleep' it's still good. I've seen the Beatles in concert a dozen times asleep. Burned into memory just like it was real. It's like having extra bonus life where everything is free. ;o)

Magic Caterpillar

I’m in the mall i go to sometimes in dreams. Scott and Mike are clothes shopping. We’re in the men section but i decide to browse around and look at shirts anyways. There’s a bunch of shirts on a rack that’s just almost out of my reach but i see a shirt i want to examine more closely. It’s got ruffles on the front and i think it might be cool. As i reach up to get it by the edge of its hanger, a couple – young man and woman, walk up to the same rack i’m standing in front of and begin to crowd me out. The man’s back is to me and he’s pushing me off balance. I say something to him about needing to stop crowding me. He and his girlfriend just look at me like i’m a freak. I almost have the shirt down but Mike and Scott are ready to go so i leave the shirt and we leave the store to go back out into the mall.

The dream sort of morphs here. We’re still in the mall but now it’s Scott and some other younger boy. I have a little black caterpillar that has special abilities of some sort. We go into the electronics store looking at stereos and the younger boy pinches off the very tail end of my caterpillar. I don’t think anything of it – it’s how the caterpillar performs the magic apparently. The little piece that is pinched off begins running around and around on the card that i keep the caterpillar on. The salesman seems to understand what the message of the caterpillar means and directs us to another place. We leave that store and go back out into the mall. As we’re walking, Scott pinches off a bit of the caterpillar from the bottom end again. Again, the little niblet goes running around and around the card. I don’t know what it means. Then we come to another ?store and the young boy pinches off a bit which again goes running around the card. I feel sorry for the caterpillar and tell Scott and the boy to stop pinching off little pieces because they’re getting close to the part of the caterpillar that contains its vital organs and it’ll die if they keep on taking bits of it off. I show them that all you have to do is ask the caterpillar to do whatever you want it to and it will. I tell the caterpillar to turn into the colors of a rainbow. As we watch, we can see the caterpillar go from black to rainbow.

Dream morphs again to ?the desert or some rocky dry place. A girl is explaining about some of the other things the caterpillar can do… but then it’s a new dream and i’m in an underground maze-like place trying to escape from a ?minotaur and wake up.


The telling doesn’t do the dream justice. It was very intense and primal feeling. The caterpillar turning into rainbow colors was very cool. It reminded me of fiber optic lights – cool and soft looking. Not sure what my unconscious was trying to relay.

Is the caterpillar the key or am i focusing on that aspect to much? Couples? Shopping “off the rack” ?

Maybe just a reaction to all the Tiger Woods drama. People keep pinching off bits of him until he’s dead or his career is destroyed? Hmm. I dunno. Doesn’t really feel right but i do hope his golf game isn’t affected by any of this crap. The caterpillar was segmented so it was easy to pinch off little segments. In its regular or natural state the caterpillar was black with bristly hairs and the little nubbin running around was also black with bristly hairs but when the caterpillar turned to rainbow colors it became opaque white looking with the colors appearing from deep inside.

No idea. Poor little caterpillar. The Minotaur part was probably residual WoW gaming flotsam because of the characters my rogue has been interacting with – especially the Tauren and Orc characters. At least this mall dream didn’t include losing my identity or forgetting where i parked my car.

Sweaters and Crocodiles

I’m in some kind of ?factory. It’s a huge complex of steel walkways elevated over water. The guide is walking me through. It feels like i’m in the scary part of a Bond movie. We’re almost to the exit when i hear a shuffling kind of ‘sandy’ sound and look over the side of the safety rail to see what’s down below. The water is FULL of crocodiles. It’s feeding time and they’re all scrambling for position. Some of the crocs are incredibly huge. One that’s really standing out and really scary i can only see it’s head but by the size and girth of it’s fat head it must be thirty feet long or more. The guide is showing me how they sometimes just throw a live cow into the fray to be torn apart but assures me that mostly they just throw in these big white bags of food. There’s a pretty pale colored cow (looks like Elsie from the dairy logo) being forced to walk down a ramp towards the water. It can smell the crocodiles and is fighting to back up. Some of the smaller more mobile crocs begin to run up the ramp and i’m screaming for the people to open the door and let the cow back out but it’s too late and an croc gets the cow by one of its front legs. We’re at the exit and i rush outside, completely horrified by the experience of being so close to that many crocodiles. As i’m coming out of the exit i’m also waking up for real and have the thought that the big giant crocodile couldn’t really be that big because 1) the water wasn’t that deep and 2) it had to have been an alligator not a crocodile because of the shape of its head. And the dream interpreted itself – my fears aren’t as fearful as they may appear. Just stay on the path.

Then i was in a school going to the auditorium for some kind of assembly. It’s an older type auditorium and all the chairs are wooden without any kind of upholstery. It was cold in there but apparently i’d been there earlier and had left my sweater so was walking through the rows to find it. I could see a few chairs in various parts of the auditorium that had sweaters similar to mine draped over them but none of them were my sweater and i’m wondering if somebody took mine by mistake. All the sweaters are cream colored like mine but mine is a shade lighter and doesn’t have any sleeves. I leave the auditorium and go through the halls to find ?my classroom but end up at the main entrance to the auditorium. There are some ?lunch ladies in blue uniform frocks. One of them stops me and asks for my pass. I don’t have one and tell her so. She tells me that if i can estimate how many people are in the auditorium she’ll let me in. I’m estimating that there’ll be a couple thousand but when i look down the stairs to see and it’s just the entrance to the auditorium and there’s just a small group of people. I’m thinking it might be as many as thirty or fifty but tell her “twenty”. She’s going to let me go in but another of the lunch ladies tells her not to let me. I tell the both that i’ve already been in and will just go back to the top and go in from there where nobody is checking. It makes the second lunch lady mad but i just laugh because i know there’s nothing she can do about it.

I never did find my sweater and i’m not really sure what the images signify. Auditorium – all the world’s a stage? I’m thinking that the lunch ladies are people in some small position of authority? The sleeveless sweater? Just a prop that i don’t really need? Underestimating the number on purpose? Selling myself short or setting myself up to fail on purpose because i know the lunch ladies don’t really have any authority over me? Between the two dreams though, i’d say everything is fine in my life because all my fears and doubts are illusions made to look more important than they truly are. ? Maybe.

Beatles (mostly George) and Chick McGee

I had a fun Beatles dream last night. It was in some old city. Like Boston but older so probably somewhere in England. I insisted on wearing this odd cape thing that had once belonged to George. We went to a restaurant to have food and where the Beatles were supposed to play (Beatles doing dinner theatre! It would’ve been excellent fun) but instead of playing, John and George sat at my table and were making me laugh. Then George said he needed a decongestant and when i checked my cape, it turned out it was made up of Sudafed bubble pacs so i broke off a four-pack and handed it to him. Then we were watching television in a house and some baby spilled drink all over my cape. I was mad at first but then George said i could have his other one and we went back to a room and he handed me a cape but this one was made of really soft deer leather. On the television was a show about blowing up large yellow construction vehicles and it was hosted by Chick McGee. I was surprised at how thin he looked. Then i was walking along a hall and there was Chick McGee coming out of his dressing room and i stopped to mention how good he looked losing all that weight. He said he hadn’t really lost any and i could see that even though his face looked thinner, he had a big belly and a giant fat glob hanging off his neck.

This is the third time in the last five days that Chick McGee has been in my dreams. Weird. Does that mean i need to listen to Bob&Tom more or less?