Vacation and reunion with an old friend

Saturday 9/15 - Last night's dream (Friday night)
I went to stay in a small town near the shore, at first I thought it was near the ocean, because there was a huge misty bay with lots of waves. I walked down to the shore by myself and watched them roll in. But later in the dream, when I am high on the hill I can see the other side, so maybe it was a river.

We are at a vacation house, I and various unidentified members of my family. My college friend, Il-, who I haven't seen for so long, is coming there too, and I am so excited to see her again. There is a row of hotels/apartments in tall, narrow colorful buildings, sort of like those San Francisco row houses you see pictures of, but more Victorian and slightly less garish looking. They range down the street curving over a hill, facing the water.

When Il- arrives I go next door to see her. She brings her husband with her, whom I have never met before. However, he looks sort of like her fiance that I knew in college (whom we both dislike now), even though I know he doesn't actually look at all like him, and even consider this thought in the dream. We are very happy to see each other again, and spend time going back and forth between the apartments and trying to catch up.

Later, I take her up to the hill above the town, and point across the river. We must have been in W-, because I tell her, "Do you see those hills across the water? That's O- over there." They are very green and it seems amazing that we are looking at another state across the water, like when you cross the straits of Juan de Fuca and see Canada where there was nothing before, and it's another country... for some reason it feels unique even though they're all the same ground with nothing intrinsically different between.

As we watch, the immensely wide river valley in between the bodies of land is filling up with fog and mist settling on the water.

There is a lot of interaction in the dream between us, talking and catching up haltingly, and other family members pop in (I don't know if my husband does), but all that is faded.

The overall feeling was that full, excited, intense, fearful feeling of meeting someone you were close to after a long time, and the joy that keeps full when it goes right. I missed her more when I awoke, and once again puzzled over that mysterious bond of friendship that glues two people together tightly and strongly and almost instantly, even through little shared time together, and really not even knowing that much about each other... while at the same time you can spend day in and out with so many other people in your life and even know them better and it never happens.

In the waking world, I took a vacation for a couple of days to the beach with my family, but it didn't look like this. And no Il-. I haven't seen her in years.

Taco Bell's Notorious Secret Passageway

9/14/2007 Last night's dream (Thursday night)

Stories and memories keep popping up about a taco bell in A- which had a secret passageway in it. It's unclear where the secret passageway went, or where in the store it's actually located (if it's still there), but everybody I run into in the dream keeps mentioning it (my uncle, friends, etc). I have been to the restaurant in question several times in the dream. I recall a series of memories connected to the story of the passageway, including my father telling me about it when I was young and in the restaurant, and starting to show me, but my mother stopping him. My uncle relating a tale about it. Someone I didn't particularly like tells the story, etc. It seems that everyone in the generation older than me has crawled through this passageway at least once.

After going through the series of memories and stories about it, I finally end up in the taco bell in question myself. Nobody will tell me where the passageway actually is, of course. I also wonder if the owner of the store, who surely must have noticed people going through it all the time, has blocked it off. I wander around a bit, wondering where it would be located, and see a storeroom with files in it. Some of the files are in boxes on the floor. As I watch, an employee comes in and moves one of the boxes of files to reveal a trapdoor in the middle of the floor. It's easy to see why it's difficult to hide, although the store apparently tries to do so. He goes through into the floor.

I think about how, at other times, this room serves as the front office for my mother... the trapdoor is never evident because it's always covered by a large rug.

Somehow I go through the door or come from the other side and end up witnessing several people using the door. Actually, I think at this point I stop being me, because they can't see me there (or I start being someone else in their group). Anyway, two or three guys crawl down through the trapdoor. They hand things down through the trapdoor, which opens into some sort of garage/storage room underneath the restaurant, which is open to the outside. All of them are relatively young, in their 20's maybe... the leader is a heavyset fair guy, pleasant enough. I wonder why nobody comes because they are making a lot of noise throwing things down, including heavy things like office chairs. Suddenly, two police appear through the hole and others come in surrounding them.

In addition to the leader guy, there are one or two other guys, friends of his, and his wife and son, who is maybe 10. He is ashamed of being caught and they are all captured, his wife and son upset about how they will live now. Overall my feeling for them is of sympathy. However, the police who captured them have nothing but contempt and also go on about how dangerous this is. One of them shows me how dangerous and stupid the guy was in the way he drove up. He shows me a line of trucks, 4 or 5, which they parked outside to haul the goods away. Safety violations! says the cop. None of the cars have headlamps, apparently so they can sneak away in the dark (although it's not actually dark yet). The headlights just popped off like plastic ones on plastic trucks, and are sitting in a pile, ready to be popped back on when necessary. In addition, the leader/father's truck has a very dangerous fuel source, the cop shows me. There is some kind of tank in the back with tubes coming out of it, which is a fuel cell. It's powered by some kind of liquid (I don't remember what now... vinegar maybe?) over a huge pile of pennies inside the tank. This causes some kind of chemical reaction and powers the truck or gives it a huge power boost. The cop gets in the truck to demonstrate and it drives forward wildly, far too fast, narrowly avoiding crashing into a nearby roof support. He points out to me how he could have been killed. I think he's being a bit foolish.

Shortly afterward I am back inside the restaurant with my family. They are talking about the robbery, and picking out food items from a small internal grocery store within the restaurant. It sells things like vegetable and dry packets of reheatable food, and those Japanese candies in brightly decorated wrappers. My mother keeps asking me if I like, or would finish eating/take home, various items of food if she bought them, including a packet of green beans. Most of the offers I reject. I sort through a large box of dry food packets from some foreign country, trying to pick some out. I am still feeling sorry for the family of thieves who were caught.

I am unaware of any real secret passageway in a Taco Bell, and my mother's office doesn't double as one...I'm actually not even sure in the dream which town it was in, but it began with A.

A mysterious teacher and a gifted girl

9/13/2007 - Last night's dream ( Wednesday Night)
Dream 1
A young teacher returns to a place that she taught before, in order to pay special attention to one student in particular. This student is a small girl between 7 and 10. She has short black hair cut about to mid ear all the way around, and has much potential. But, she has been difficult for teachers to work with and is now labeled as a problem student, and possibly delayed a level.

The young woman who has returned is probably about my age, also dark haired. She remembers the girl from teaching here for two years or quarters, etc when she was much younger. The teacher has some sort of special abilities herself, in a mary poppins sort of way, and will pull this girl into her full potential.

She only tells the girl that she is here to be the new teacher, and tells her she used to teach her when she was much younger. The girl doesn't say anything, somewhat shyly. Not sure if she remembers this woman (but she likes her already). She goes to play with the other few students in the school. It is set in a somewhat remote area in the woods.

The new teacher observes them playing outside, and begins to formulate her lesson plan. She will be teaching all subjects. Rather than teaching each one for an hour or so each day, she devotes a different day to each subject (or most of the day).

The girl is fascinated by two large old airplanes that are landed in the clearing. They seem to be antique, and are very huge and heavy flying machines (not built like typical airplanes here, but on a large X shape). She is fascinated by them and filled with longing to fly in them, climbing on them and gazing at them.

The teacher watches all this, smiling to herself. When she goes into her cabin that evening, she places a small bowl of simmering green liquid, like a candle, in the corner of her cabin on a small table by the bed. A local man with sandy brown hair, who is smitten by the new teacher, watches this and asks her about it. She explains that this will make the little girl comfortable here. The liquid smells like the wet outdoors and the airplanes, and fills the cabin with this smell. When the little girl stops by to talk to her, while the teacher is formulating her plans, she does smell it but doesn't know where it's coming from. This is some of the teacher's magic.

That morning the little girl and the teacher awaken to the sound of chainsaws. The girl looks out her window to see that the large stump outside is being cut into pieces. There is also another stump at the next house which is being cut up. The view is blocked by the first stump, but she can see pieces of it roll out. The problem is, the stump blocked the view of the toilet. As she goes to sit on it, she can see that once the stump is gone, the toilet will be visible from the next house. It's not an outside toilet, it's part of the house, but it doesn't have walls all around it.

I am "inside" the heads of both the girl and teacher in this dream, like they are characters in a story I'm writing. I felt very attached to it in the same way, as well, although once I woke up (as is often the case) the storyline seemed less coherent than it had in the dream

Dream 2
This one is quite a bit murkier in my memory...

There are some shoes and a tree, or branches of a tree, that I carry and put on a bed, which has a light pink bedspread. I am spending a lot of time there, either in the bed or just in that room. They are branches of a sensitive plant (mimosa), and I have picked them from a larger version of it. I am explaining to someone, a boy around my age, that you have to be careful of the vicious thorns in these branches (true!), but the ones I am carrying don't seem to have many of these. They look more like they are off one of the tree relatives than the actual sensitive plants. I think that I may be in this room because I am sick with something. I think that I enlist the boy to sneak more things up to me, which he doesn't follow very well.

Touching Another Plane

Monday Night, 9/10
I was at a new class. I'm not sure what kind of class it was, but it was some kind of PE class involving physical activity, or training to do CPR, or swimming... something like that. I had a locker which I retrieved my things from. It was a new class that I just started, and there were some people I knew slightly in it or talked to... I wasn't feeling extremely negative about it, but not that positive either. There were the usual confusions of the new day where I did not seem to know where anything was or what anything meant, while everyone else did.

Then, I have stopped by the P- airport. I am intending to go to a nearby grocery store, as I urgently want to buy some ice cream. I have slipped away from the others, in this, since for one they would not approve and for two, I am intending to eat it all myself, guilty style. I'm having one of those periods of craving things and eating them all myself.

I make my way up and down aisled, through rows. It sort of morphs between an open air market and an actual grocery store of the enormous warehouse style. I collect a cylindrical box of ice cream, a frozen peanut butter pic dessert, and a third item, and make my way to the checkout counter. The guy there has a notice which he is passing out and which is on the wall, a flyer printed on colored paper. It notes that something about ID. I rummage around and around to locate my debit card and driver's license, holding up a lot of people, but I cannot find my current ID. According to the flyer, I can't make a purchase without it. I am steamed, and I resolve then and there to go to the nearby DMV office and get a replacement license in order to make the purchase. I suspect it's really not that lost, but I'm getting frustrated that I cannot buy the ice cream and other stuff. I stomp off to go do this, pondering if anyone will object to the fact that I have obviously driven to the DMV without a license. Around that time, I realize from writing on the flyer relating to the state that I must be across the border in V-, not in P- at all. For some reason this is irritating as well. I maneuver my way around the airport and stores and locate the DMV.
Skip over actually getting the license, I go back and purchase the ice cream and other stuff. The ice cream is in a yellow box like Tillamook ice cream, but it has a black, rather cartoony picture of a jackal on it. I meet up with my mother and sister nearby, and we are looking down into a treed area, possibly a park, from a high distance. I am in a much better mood now, but my mother is pointing down below, talking about how my sister can always see these things she can't see. She asks if my sister can see something down by the river.
My sister rolls her eyes to me, we've been through this before. It is I who can see things other people can't see, not my sister. She tells my mother she can't see anything, while I point out whatever it is down by the river.
Then, I see a pack of jackals (real ones), moving through the trees. I marvel over them and exclaim. My mother and sister cannot see them at all, and gradually throughout this part I realize that it's not that I can see BETTER, it's that they can't see them AT ALL. They are there, but I (and perhaps others) am the only one who can pick them out, as though they exist on another plane but live in this world. I am racing over the implications of this in my mind, thinking of other occurrences this might explain. Suddenly I realize that the jackals actually came from the ice cream I bought, and it is through this that they have been let out. I marvel at them, they are not dangerous or threatening, and the others seem to realize something is there, but cannot see it.

I take my mother's hand and leap down a huge waterfall of fruit from the top of the airport to the bottom. It is in enormous stairsteps, with different kinds of fruit on each step: peaches, strawberries, etc, hundreds and thousands of feet down. I jump easily from step to step, feeling the rush of air but knowing I will land safely as I bounce from one to the next. My feet squish into the fruit at each landing, and I can smell the fruit and see the airport far, far below, but I don't feel heightsick because of the certainty of the giant staircase I am jumping down. I glance to my mother, enjoying the sensations, and realize that she is a little frightened, although trusting of me. Then I realize that it is because she cannot actually see the fruit staircase we are jumping down either! It's like the jackals. I try to imagine what it must look like to her without it, probably scary, but she is coping very well.

Back near the grocery check out I run into some other people carrying their licenses, they can see these things too right now. We compare stories and discover that each time we lose our licenses, we have a glimpse into the "other side" as if we have died, but we haven't. This is what allows me to sometimes see these things from other planes. My best friend, S- died a month ago (in December, apparently... the time is different), and at that exact time I was able to dip into this plane as well. The other occasions for me and the other people this happens to have been triggered by similar events, and seem to also be signaled by the licenses, which get punched with a cancel stamp at that time: D. We are fascinated by our discoveries and heightened senses that we have access to, although it is something that seems to come and go and may be finite.

In real life, the time of the year is different (December was not a month ago), and my friend S- has not died, a month ago or now. But it's sunny and warm like the weather in the dream. I haven't lost my license lately, but I was driven to go and get some of that ice cream after the dream, although I only just made the connection.

Taekwon-do & chicken yard part 2, and me as a guy on drugs

Last night's dream: Wednesday Night 9/5/2007
In the first dream I was up at my parents house. Some relatives, possibly aunts, drove up in a car. My best friend from childhood, S-, was there, but she was only 8 or 10 years old. My sister had painted S-'s face blue and was trying to make sure that she didn't touch it and get it on her Taekwon-do suit.

I went down to the chicken-yard, my father was there cleaning it up. One side had been disked and plowed to make it all flat (this is beginning to sound like a strange sequel to this dream... maybe it is?). The sidewalks and inside were all clean, and the chicken's were enjoying pecking the tilled up earth. On the other side of the yard, I helped him move some boards against the bottom of the fence, which had been moved to cut down weeds and grass growing there.

Then I went to Taekwon-do with my sister, as we used to do when I was younger. By the time we got there it was absolutely pouring with rain, although I was not wet. We went inside and took our shoes off, I was wearing my black wooden clogs. When I took off my shoes, I discovered that the socks I was wearing were filthy, and I rolled them up with the clean cuff on the outside and stuck them into the shoes, feeling ashamed. My teacher came up and we bowed several times, she seemed happy to see me (although not ecstatic). Then she told my sister some kind of joke about God (I think it involved God's gender) which they both laughed about. I did not think it was funny and felt uncomfortable.


In the second dream, which sort of overlapped, I was a young man about my age who was addicted to (and on) drugs. My girlfriend was also addicted to drugs, including cocaine and heroine, and she disappeared and was found in the woods... dead in one version, and alive in another. In the ending in which she died, I did not feel sad or shocked, just sort of complacent and accepting of it. This faded back into the end of the other dream, with the pouring rain.

It was not pouring rain at all when I woke up, which was a little disappointing, although it's probably what allowed me to still get to work on time.

Old flame sparks

Last night's dream: Monday Night 9/3/2007
I ran into R-, a guy that I used to have a huge crush on in community college, 11 years ago. I'm not sure if he started working where I work, or I just ran into him nearby, but somehow we ended up arranging a lunch date. In the dream world, there was a very fancy restaurant on some high-up floor across the street from my work. We met there, I was very nervous and he very polite and basically just as I remembered him. We examined our menus for a long time and about the only thing I wanted to order that was available was lamb. There was a 2 or 3 page brochure-like spread explaining how their lambs were selected, with little cartoon pictures, the effect of which would presumably be making someone feel guilty for eating the lamb. I did not feel guilty, but I wondered what he would think if I ordered that, having the same menu and all. We made chit chat and he ordered silently by pointing to something on the menu. I ordered the lamb after all, and from something the waiter said I realized that he, too, had ordered the lamb, and we smiled, sharing the joke about the menu.

Then, my aunt N- showed up out of nowhere! She was being very annoying and nosy and wanting to know who he was (without saying so) and would not go away. Finally I was almost rude and she could no longer pretend not to know that she wasn't wanted there, as I wanted to have a private date, and she moved away (later I found she had only moved to a table around the corner). Then I discovered that her sister (no kin of mine) was there too, at a table near to us! I was extremely annoyed by these intrusions, but we continued on, talking quietly. I think the restaurant was French, because French songs from my youth (Allouette, etc) were playing and we talked about them, or else they just came up in conversation. I was very fluttery and smitten all over again and nervous, and he very gracious. Our elaborate lunch arrived and went on for quite some time (probably longer than my lunch hour allowed) before I woke up. The whole dream was very intense, but I don't remember feeling I was cheating or thinking about my husband, if he even existed in the dream world at that time.

In the waking world, nothing ever came of the crush except angst for me and discovering my obsessive personality, jealousy, stalking tendencies, etc. I also never indicated my feelings to him as I was excruciatingly shy at the time and also petrified of him finding out the age difference between us. It seems likely that his apparent attempts to avoid me may have been a result of eventually figuring this out on his own, in retrospect. I never saw him outside of school, and haven't seen him at all since he graduated from there, a year before I did.

Sleeping in my dreams in a mixed-up time

Sunday Night's Dream: (9/2/2007)
In the first part, I was on a outing of some kind by car with my grandma and possibly aunt (on my mother's side). We were in Seattle or someplace similar. They decided to stop by a place called Gringimmer's (or something that sounded similar) and were really excited about it. It was a sort of funland and restaurant, rather like an adult Chuck-E-Cheese. We arrived in the parking lot, there was an enormous iconic sign which everyone recognized (except me, but I felt I should) with the name in blue on white block letters. We got in by swinging on colored ropes, from rope to rope high over a large open amphitheater filled with those round colored balls you play in, which we eventually dropped into. Then we climbed out onto a balcony where lunch was served.

In the second part, I was returning to my apartment, driving my old Mazda pickup. I was going to move to a 2-bedroom apartment from a 1-bedroom in the same building, because my grandfather (also on my mother's side) was coming to live with me, as he needed to be taken care of. My sister rode down with me but then went somewhere else. She was still attending college but was on a break. The apartment complex that I lived in was the kind like a large hotel with exterior walkways around the outside in front of the doors, and I was on the second floor. I went inside to move all my stuff... I was now by myself and apparently I lived alone. After putting all my stuff in the elevator, I rode down to the bottom floor (possibly to get my grandpa, but he was not there), but I accidentally got off the elevator and left my stuff inside. It went back up to some other floor. The apartment building did not look that tall from the outside, but it apparently had several floors. I had to keep pressing the elevator button multiple times before my stuff came back... it seems several elevators operated within the same shaft, and it was a matter of luck if I got my stuff to come back before somebody else found it on another floor and took it. Eventually it came back, and I rode back up with it and moved it into the other apartment.

Either before or after this segment (or at the same time, the time order was all irregular), but still sometime in the middle of the day, I went to a class nearby in a similar building. I was still taking college classes part time. In the class the teacher got mad at one of the students because he had brought a sleeping bag and pillow to class. The teacher then said all of us could bring our sleeping bags and pillows, and we did so and filled up the room with them, relaxing and snoozing. I had mine handy and in fact I felt extremely sleepy and fell back into the poofiness and slept for a short time, falling asleep and waking within the same dream. Afterwards when the other students were clearing out, the teacher came to talk to me. He seemed concerned that I was so tired and that I had a sleeping bag with me. I explained that I kept it in my truck so I could go sleep in the vehicle between classes, because I got so exhausted. He seemed worried, but didn't know me well enough to say much more. I continued out of the class and went back to my apartment.

By this time it was very late, and I was feeling lonely and hungry.. I went out walking across the parking lot in the dark, looking for a restaurant or grocery store that was still open. I didn't have very much money, only a few dollars left in my checking account.

I ended up going to a small coffee shop, where I ordered my standard drink. The people here did not know me, as if I were new to the area, although I wasn't. They seemed mildly suspicious. While the barista made my drink, I looked through the other food items in the shop, trying to find something I could afford. There were cartons of ice cream but they were 10 dollars. There were a variety of unappetizing looking muffins and pastries, but the cheapest was 7 dollars. I decided I was not going to be able to buy any food. When I got my drink, the barista asked if I was familiar with some brand name (that apparently went with an energy drink they always sold in this store). I was not and she seemed rather offended (I don't remember the name anymore, but it had a read and white label with two words and I saw it on something in the store after she asked me about it). I wandered out into the dark with my coffee, still feeling hungry and alone.

This dream seems to have taken place in a mixture of time between past and future that never existed in the waking world... my husband is gone in the dream, but it's like he left, perhaps permanently, and used to be there... but my grandparents who died before I even met him are alive. The car I am driving is two vehicles ago, but I myself am my present-day self. The real-time references are to the move and lack of money in the account at that particular point in time. I'm kind of somber throughout and increasingly lonely and isolated feeling towards the end.