Beatle dream #9

John, Paul, George, Ringo, and i are walking on a sidewalk that meanders through a park in a city. I am my current age but they are much younger – probably right before the Sgt. Pepper era. There are many people enjoying the park on this day and it feels “right” like lyrics straight out of Penny Lane. There are Frisbees flying, couples pushing their babies in strollers, ducks swimming in the cement pond… Just a nice, nice day. Several people recognize The Beatles and join us on our walk. John is laughing and talking with people ahead of me and Paul. I can’t hear what he’s saying but i can guess by his smile that his wit is sharp and that he’s “on” for the audience. I can see George and Ringo further ahead talking to each other about the roses and other plants that grow along this part of our walk, not really interacting with the “public”. Paul is right in front of me signing autographs for young women with long light color straight hair. He turns his head back to say to me “We're going to be asked to leave for causing this mob scene” and i laugh a little and assure him that THIS is no scene, that i know what his future holds and the small contingent following now is nothing compared to the mobs that will come later. We continue walking up the path and come to some stairs. It reminds me of Barcelona. We climb the stairs and i hear a bell ring. I realize i'm dreaming and wake up inside my dream and wonder if my cell phone is what is making that sound but realize my cell phone doesn’t sound like that, then i wake up for real wondering what time it is. It was still an hour or so before Strawberry Fields and i fell back into sleep.

It’s been a long time since i’ve had a Beatle dream. I'm sure driving through Prince William County shook up old emotions. In the last Beatle dream i remember they were having a concert in the middle of, i think, this same park but the park was smaller and the dream wasn't as colorful. No flowers. I don't think there were any plantings in the park then. Plus, the boys were very young in that dream. Cavern days Beatles, but still very dynamic and full of life. It’s always good to see my old imaginary friends vital and happy.

Half-life

I’m in a clothing store. Sheila is there too. Even though i know she can’t stand me, i admire her taste in clothing and hang back while she goes through dresses on the rack. She pulls off a dress and it’s very elegant. She describes the sleeves as ?? (some kind of architectural term?) and hangs it back up. There are some other items on the rack but she leaves without looking at them. After she’s gone i go look at the items on the rack where she’d been looking. The dress is gorgeous. The way the sleeves are incorporated into the shoulders, and how the dress hangs makes it look like art more than clothing.

I wake up and my hair is cut off. It feels good short but i’m surprised i cut my hair since it takes it so long to grow out. I remember that the last time i cut my hair in a dream my head was bald on top and i wonder if it’s the same in this dream. I check in the mirror of my bathroom in the Manassas house. Under my hair is smooth white like the last time, but now there’s some dark places around the edge. I realize that it’s my skull i’m seeing and the dark bit is decay.

Waking up from the last dream i had a hard time finding where i left off in reality. Maybe i'm already dead and all of this is just a last gasp of a dying mind like in Ubik or Vanilla Sky. I loved that dress from the first dream! It looked like a stylized peacock. I wish i could remember the name of the style of the sleeve. It might've just been nonsense but it seemed like an important word in the dream.

Shoot out at the wishing well.

Something about boarding the train to Disney? I don’t remember the lead-in now or maybe there wasn’t one other than that. I’m in a house with ?my family watching television. The news cuts in to the program and warns of an escaped convict. The convict is considered dangerous. He’s in my house and i go into another room – a bedroom - to get a hand gun i know is in the drawer of the side table beside the bed. It’s a small black gun ?22 cal? I make sure it’s got bullets and leave the room in search of the criminal. He’s standing in the front yard in front of an old well (the kind with a bucket on a chain that you have to lower down into the water). The yard is dusty and dry. It’s some kind of farm. We stand face to face but several paces apart, like in a duel. I have no fear of him and shoot him in the upper chest with my gun. He seems surprised but doesn’t fall. I shoot again and hit him closer to the heart and he falls. I watch for a moment and go back into the house. I can tell by the rattling sound that i need to get more bullets. Back in the room where i got the gun i find a bag that i think has the bullets and take it back to the kitchen to reload. The bag is full of ‘shot’ and i start to pour it into the chamber but realize it won’t work like that and i need bullets. I pour the shot back into the bag and put the bag back in the drawer where i found it. I return to where the criminal is and see that he’s still not dead so, at point blank range, i shoot him in the temple. It doesn’t seem to affect him and i shoot him in the eye.

Now i’m in the woods. The criminal is somewhere ahead of me and i intend to find him and shoot him again to make him stay down.


I think the house was the old Olson farm in Minnesota. The criminal was a thug and i didn’t feel any remorse at shooting him but i did feel remorse that my bullets weren’t killing him cleanly and that i was making him suffer. The place in the woods where i was pursuing the man was a ‘living’ version of a scene from World Of Warcraft. It’s heading south along the hills outside the town of Auberdine. The dream was triggered by watching old Law&Order episodes in the morning and the movie Surrogates just before bed.

The Fool and Keystone Cops

First dream Making lasagna noodles. Mom and i are in the kitchen of the Manassas house. There’s a large wooden block in the center of the kitchen and mom has the top of it covered with rolled out pasta dough. She’s just finished rolling it out and is beginning to cut long strips. As she cuts the strips she hangs them up around the kitchen to dry. She hangs them on anything – cupboard handles, around the necks of bottles under open cabinets, over the top of cupboard doors… anywhere. I take one of the strips she’s made and roll it up and ask “what kind of noodle is this called, when lasagna is rolled up?” and she says “it’s still a lasagna noodle” and (disappointed), i unroll it and hang it back up to dry. I have an idea that rolled up and deep fried it would be something new and different. Mom leaves the kitchen so i take over cutting the strips and hanging them up. I’m running out of places to hang them up so i check some of the noodles that’ve been hanging up for a while to see if they’re dry enough that i can move them to someplace else. All of the ones i check are kind of dry along the edges and starting to get that curly look that lasagna noodles have but the center part is still soft. Just as i’m thinking that i’ll maybe drape the newest noodles over the milk jug and juice bottle inside the refrigerator mom comes back in the kitchen and shows me i can just hang the newer noodles right over the already drying noodles.

Second dream Death dream. I don’t remember most of the dream. I’m in a rustic house. It seems familiar to me in the dream but awake i don’t know the place. There’s a lot of stone and wood. I’m with a group of men. A band? Another man is standing outside waiting for me. I recognize him from another time. He doesn’t talk and is a very gentle spirit. He’s come to take me somewhere and i want to go with him. I’m writing a goodbye note on a blank sheet of white paper. It’s a kind of suicide note explaining that it is a good thing and for people not to be sad or upset. I don't think i'm going to die as much as 'move on' - in my mind there's a difference but i know that my friends and family won't see it that way. At the end of the note (the writing takes up the entire page) i ask that they take care of my cat but if they think that will not be possible, to send him to me because he could come with me where i’m going.

Third dream Barney Fife/Keystone Cops. People are in a line paying their bills to a man sitting behind a card table. Each person put some bills (1’s and 5’s) in plain white letter-sized envelope and hand it to the man sitting behind the table. Barney Fife realizes he doesn’t have the cash but knows he has money in the bank. He decides to break in to the bank and get his cash. There’s an alarm system but he knows how to avoid triggering it. Barney, Floyd, Howard, and Goober go over to the bank. Barney goes inside. There are two “vaults” but they’re really more like jail cells. Two rooms, full of shelves, covered with steel bars. Barney (except now i think it’s the quiet man from the death dream) scales the front of the first vault and reaches through the bars and grabs some loose cash out of a box. It’s a cardboard bank box and besides having a jumble of loose bills there are buttons and paper clips and other desk junk in the box. As soon as he gets the cash, he steps down onto the floor and the alarm goes off. Floyd says “Why did you do that?!” The ‘gang’ peeks around the back of the building and see an old fashioned ladder truck racing across a field leaving a plume of dust in its wake. Barney/quiet man says “It’s Andy! We have to get out of here” and realizes that if he’d taken the money from the second vault, the alarm wouldn’t have gone off.

At first, when i woke up, i thought the quiet man was Death but in context i believe he must represent The Fool. He was familiar to me and i felt like i knew him, that we’d met before. Good omen, representing trust. I don’t understand the pasta dream. Maybe it has to do with making decisions? The keystone cop-like dream was more of The Fool and maybe symbolizes “dramas” people create unnecessarily? Because Barney HAD the cash but it was in the bank. He didn’t need to “steal” his own money. Maybe that dream was a result of the man in the Chevy Silverado that was harassing me on the road yesterday. Stupid scary rage-filled jackass.

Tiny Black Pegasus

In the dream, i’m reading a newspaper at somebody’s house. The place isn’t familiar to me but the person who lives there is but i can’t remember now who it was. The print on the paper is small and neat and there are a lot more stories on each page than usual. One story catches my attention and as i’m reading the dream morphs and i’m living the story. There are two men living in a shack-like place in a very rural mountainous area. Hillbillies. They are brothers. Other than being dirty and scruffy, they are attractive enough. They have two dogs – a big hound dog and a small beagle-like dog – and a tiny little horse about the same size as the small dog. There’s an even smaller horse, the size of a little girl cat. It’s all black and has perfect wings. It’s extremely cute. Apparently the little dog mated with the little horse and the product was a tiny flying horse. As sweet as the little flying horse looks i’m appalled that the two different species created offspring and have a sick feeling at the unnaturalness of it. Now i’m back in the house reading the story of the hillbillies. I’m angry and want them to be punished for allowing the atrocity to happen. In the story it describes another freak offspring that died shortly after birth. I’m livid and rant to the other person “What if a full size horse was born with dog paws? It wouldn’t be able to survive” and being thinking about the religious implications of such an evil versus consensual relations between same sex couples. I think that same-sex couples are okay because they can’t reproduce but that letting their pets of difference species mate is against God.

? Don’t know where the hell that dream came from but that little flying horse was SO damned cute. A tiny little Pegasus.

Weekend dreams

Work dream. I’m at work in my cubicle and my computer screen is huge. It’s takes up an entire wall of my cube. I realize i haven’t checked my email in years and decide i better check it. I click on the email app and realize it’s the old DOS version from the dumb terminal from the late 80’s. I have no idea what my old password is and get a feeling of panic. Somehow i get to the inbox but just as i’m about to bring it up i realize that if i do anybody in nearby cubes will be able to see my screen. Sue Brown is watching me so i leave it and turn back to the control console on my desk. Somebody calls a meeting for the nurses and i can hear them lining up their chairs right on the other side of my cube wall. I grab my chair and roll it around to join. There’s a big white board that we’re all facing and it’s got my home page displayed. Music is playing and we’re wondering where it’s coming from when i realize it’s coming from my computer through the white board. Embarrassed, i jump up and go back to my desk to turn off the music. Then i’m sitting at another desk, not in a cubicle. There’s a window right next to my desk and i look out and it’s all open golden fields as far as i can see. There’s a person on a tractor mowing the tall golden grass. Right up next to the window the mower has the grass tall and i can see a little row of strawberry plants bearing fruit. I turn to tell the lady at the next desk (Janice) but i can’t for the life of me remember her name. I wake up and feel very happy that the secret strawberry plants have avoided the mower.

Shoes and Hats. I’m staying in a motel. It’s a place where work puts up its employees that are TDY. There’s a sitting room, a bathroom, a kitchen and a bedroom. I don’t know what i’m doing there and i’m trying to sneak out before anybody realizes i’m there. I go into the bedroom and check the dresser drawers to make sure i haven’t left anything behind. First i open the cabinet drawer on the left-hand side of the antique dresser. Inside are several drawers. The bottom left-hand drawer has a single high-heeled shoe inside. I take out the shoe to examine it more closely. It looks expensive and well made. It’s for the left foot. It’s small and wide but on the bottom is a ‘9’. I don’t understand the sizing because it looks smaller than my shoe size, although wider, and i wear 7.5. Since there’s only the one shoe i throw it in the metal trash can because it can’t do anybody except a one-legged person any good. I try and imagine the woman who left it there and wonder if she was mad when she realized she’d lost one of her expensive shoes. I go back to the dresser and look in the middle bottom drawer. Inside there are two more single shoes. Both are for left feet and look too big for me to wear. They’re both high-heeled sandals and i like the styles of either one. I throw those shoes away also and wonder what it is about this place that people forget to take both of their shoes when they check out. Next i look in the left-hand top drawer. It’s a deep drawer and there’re two large hat boxes inside. The boxes themselves are beautiful. They look like wedding cakes – white, covered with lace and pearls, but they’re a little bit yellowed with age. I take one out and attempt to open it. It’s got a kind of locking mechanism on it that i’m having trouble figuring out. I hear somebody coming and frantically try to figure out how to get the box open. Whoever is coming goes into the bathroom. I finally figure out that i have to press the button as i turn it clock-wise. The box opens and there’s a gorgeous hat inside. It’s an old hat, from the thirties or forties maybe. Very Hollywood. It’s got a short fur brim and there’s a piece on the back that hangs down to the neck. It’s a winter hat. I try it on and check myself out in the mirror. It looks really good on me and i kind of want to keep it but know that i’ll never have any reason to wear it because it doesn’t get that cold so i put it back in its box and back in the drawer. I wake up before i can open the other hatbox. :o(