Daring Police Duo

Tuesday night 3/17/2011 – Wednesday morning 3/18/2011

I’m in part of this dream but I only come up occasionally, mainly it follows other characters.

At the beginning of the dream I’m milling around this town doing fairly mundane things, but it sort of maps out the town and gets the lay of the land as I go around. It’s a small-medium sized town that is not a real place, but in the dream I guess I live there. It’s sort of similar to a combination of Ab- and Mo- but with significant changes, I don’t think it’s actually supposed to be either but rather a new place.  In the dream I do things like go to a nearby grocery store. My parents have come to visit and I meet my parents there (possibly at a restaurant adjacent to the grocery store, it’s kind of a strip mall area) but they also need to get some things at the store, and then drive my mother around a little. They aren’t familiar with the area but I am somewhat. She wants me to take my car through the carwash after we leave the grocery store. 

About this time, luckily, action shifts to other characters in the dream and the real story, which I don’t really appear in again until one other time, and I’m not part of the story.  The main characters are much more interesting. 

The story centers around two police officers, a young woman and a slightly older guy named Sam. They are out patrolling the city as a duo. This isn’t their first outing as partners but the woman is still fairly new here. Sam is on the slender side, dark hair and a bit scruffy looking, not classically handsome but sort of attractive in an ugly way. He’s probably in his late thirties though I’m not very good at guessing ages. The female officer is a young, gorgeous woman, tall and thin with long pale blond hair. She has a somewhat mysterious past. As she explains to Sam later in the dream, she doesn’t know what her real name is. She was adopted as a child and they did not know what her name was before either. She’s tried other names but she can’t remember names so she immediately forgets them. She compares it to writing a name on a scrap of paper, and then dropping the paper. Then she doesn’t pick it up because she doesn’t remember what’s on it or why she should. So, she doesn’t think of herself as having any name. (Sam has a hard time imagining not thinking of yourself by a name at all… like an empty nutshell). Other people refer to her as Spirit. This is partly because she doesn’t have a name and partly because she comes and goes a lot… leaving one town without notice, showing up somewhere else. (She’s apparently been a cop in other places as well but is relatively new to this one). She also has a lot of trouble remembering other people’s names, including Sam’s, although she’s been working with him for a little bit already and they are developing a connection to each other.  This whole discussion happens later in the dream where they pause in the action but I don’t remember exactly where it fits in so I mention it now in order to refer to them by name.

Sam and Spirit are out patrolling the city, it’s daylight still when this starts. They visit the grocery store/restaurant parking lot area after being called because of some problem and talk to the people there.  Then they head over to a radio station higher on a nearby street, where Sam thinks there may be some trouble going on. It’s called AM FM or has that in the name. It is suspected to be a center of operation for some gang or drug dealers, though that hasn’t been clearly established. They go in and talk to the people, who are very friendly and open acting (covering up any suspicious activity) so they aren’t able to catch them at anything. They get a call again back at the grocery store area that the problem person has returned, so they drive back. There are some gaps here that I can’t remember that clearly and other things that happen, but somehow Sam identifies the bad guy who is a small unpleasant person. He puts the person in the police car but somehow in the struggle the guy locks him out. Sam tells him through the window that he can’t escape that easily, he has other skills. Then Sam proceeds to squeeze through the door latch (apparently very strange other skills!). The guy is freaked out and terrified. 

Another officer is also called out on the scene, I don’t remember his name but he works with Sam and Spirit sometimes. He is interested in Spirit but this isn’t really returned. He does something at this juncture that isn’t particularly helpful but ticks off Spirit, like letting the bad guy escape perhaps or causing some problem for Sam by the way he reacts to the situation (he and Sam aren’t really best buddies, possibly because of Spirit). In description he’s a slightly smaller/stockier guy, but still youngish, curly brownish hair, average looking.

I think it’s probably in here somewhere that there’s a quiet period and Sam and Spirit have the conversation about names and Spirit’s past, maybe while they’re taking a break eating. I know they are sitting outside together somewhere at the time and it’s afternoon light. It’s an intimate moment which pulls them closer together.

The details are vague in the next part but Sam and Spirit end up back in some business establishment and something happens to cause an argument between them, and Spirit stomps out. She is mad and upset with Sam over something he said or did that made her feel like he didn’t care about her. By this time, it’s dark out. Spirit walks away on foot along the side of a road, mad. Several cars pass by her. 

Unbeknownst to her, Sam gets a call that there is trouble at the radio station and heads back over there in his squad car. It’s a trap though… they are not happy about his interference earlier and are luring him back to get rid of him. When he shows up they pretend to cooperate but once he gets the bad guy back in his car, the guy manages to distract him and the others setup a severe crash in the parking lot (to look like an accident) where his car is rammed and destroyed.

Meanwhile, Spirit is walking along the road, several people have offered her  a ride. Then, the other officer we’ve met earlier stops and she is talking to him as he sits in the car (she doesn’t want a ride) when she hears over the radio the radio station mentioning that there has been an injury accident in their parking lot. She immediately knows that Sam is in trouble and it must be him (and suspects foul play, since the radio station is reporting this before the police department has received an injury report from their own officer). She runs off on foot without explanation to go to the radio station, argument with Sam momentarily forgotten in light of the fact that he is in danger and probably injured.  The other officer doesn’t really know what’s going on or where she went but decides to go after her. 

When Spirit gets to the radio station and sees the wreckage, she is distraught. Sam is gone, she doesn’t know where, but presumably he was taken to the hospital as it’s reported he had serious or life threatening injuries. By this time other people are aware of the accident (though not the real nature of it which only Spirit suspects, that Sam was targeted). She is very worried about him, and immediately sets off to try to get to the hospital. By this time, it’s next morning. The other officer is trying to catch up with her and follow her, she doesn’t want his help. She gets on a train going to the hospital, he tries to catch the same train but loses track of her. At this point the action follows the other officer. He really does want to catch up with her and make good with her (and more, of course, since he’s interested in her) and can’t figure out why she’s avoiding him. He suspects she’s going to the hospital, so he also boards a train which he thinks is the same train, but it turns out she was on the one before so he’s slightly behind. The train is an old fashioned kind of train operating as an inner-city rail, it has dining cars and such inside which he pushes through, annoying the waiters, while he’s trying to find her. The train crosses the bridge which is in the middle of town to the other side of the river, where the hospital is located. 

Spirit gets off the first train, she doesn’t have any idea where the hospital is (or even if there is more than one) but she races around looking and finds a building not far from the train station that is labeled as some kind of hospital or recovery center. It is a big building with glass fronts and is run by some sort of religious organization. The nurses and doctors all have white uniforms and headscarves, but I don’t think it’s actually a Muslim hospital but rather some obscure Christian sect. The name of the hospital is long and complicated and I don’t remember it.  She goes into the hospital and is asking after the injured officer, the people working there present sort of a barrier to going in and don’t want to tell her anything. It’s a very private recovery center and they don’t know if they should tell her, or let her in. Also, she can’t remember Sam’s name now due to her problem with names so she doesn’t have the specific information to get access to see him or know if he’s there.  She is desperate to find out if he is okay. Somehow she manages to slip past the initial workers at the front who basically exist to prevent access from random inquisitors, and gets into a laundry area, where she attempts to disguise as a hospital worker between stacks of sheets. She is discovered pretty quickly by some other people working in the laundry area. When she explains what she is doing there, they act sympathetic to her plight, but they end up committing her as a patient (she has some other injury sustained in earlier events, coupled with her inability to give either her name or the name of the officer she is looking for, they decide she has a major head injury requiring recovery…plus she’s not in uniform anymore now which doesn’t help her credibility). She doesn’t resist this even after she figures out that they’re not really helping her, because it’s a way for her to stay inside and try to find Sam later. However, initially she is sequestered in her own room.

Now we are back with the other officer on the train. He gets out and locates the hospital (easier than Spirit did, presumably because he’s lived her longer).  The hospital workers react better to his pleas to get in than Spirit’s when he asks if this is the place with two injured officers.  They let him in, but they don’t tell him which rooms Spirit and Sam are in, so he has to go from door to door. There are numerous strange little cupboards, some numbered, most of them high up on the wall and only accessible by climbing up ladders or crawling across windowsills. The inside walls in this room and cupboard (room) doors are made of wood slats, somewhat like an old style barn, and very irregular. At this point, I reappear in this dream as myself, (with my son in tow) trying to figure out how to even get up to the cupboards, I start climbing one ladder but give it up because it’s fairly hard to do one-handed. Then it’s back to the other officer, he climbs up one of the ladders and opens a few doors, then he opens one door and it has a small opening into a room at about head height. You can’t actually go through the door because it has a screen over it, but you can look into the room. Spirit is in the room with another man, and this makes the officer very upset and shocked. She sees him at the window and comes over. She is mad that he is there and keeps following her around. She comes out and yells and him to leave her alone. The officer protests that he was coming to make sure she was okay, and asks why she is so mad at him and never wants him around. She reminds him of whatever he did to make things hard for Sam earlier in the dream (the details of which I can’t remember), he didn’t realize that this would make Spirit upset (because of her connection with Sam). He feels defeated and leaves. Spirit is now out of the room and goes looking for Sam again. She goes from one part of the large hospital building to another and walks through this open area sort of like the inside of a swimming pool building. There are separate pits of water in places, screened off by low walls, for treatment. In many of these there is also a doctor with a lot of electrical equipment, and the patient is in the water soaking, and possibly getting shock treatment or something (however, despite its diabolical sounding nature, everyone is pretty calm).

Spirit runs from place to place and finally locates Sam, who is soaking in a Jacuzzi sized small pool (naked or nearly so) not being electrocuted or anything at the moment. He sits up, she is excited, happy, and crying to be reunited and see that he is okay. He has mainly recovered from his injuries during treatment (several days at least have passed since the accident now, somehow, and all this time she did not know if he was dead or lying comatose or with serious injuries).  They embrace, he calms her down and comforts her, both are emotional.  He gets out of the pool, there is a small couch area with blankets and towels alongside of it where they sit talking intimately, and he starts tickling and kissing her feet until she is laughing hysterically and groaning, and writhing around, burying her face in the towels. Several bystanders nearby gather to watch, amused by their display of affection and her reaction.

Getting A Man At The Mall

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning's dream - 3/16/2011

I don't remember the earlier part of this dream, but somehow I ended up going to a mall. It wasn't a mall I know in real life, it might even have been in a different city. It was evening. I was carrying my son with me. I met S- there, who I haven't seen in a long time (the time period was current or slightly in the future, so I really haven't). What I can't remember now is if we were intentionally meeting there, or if I knew he was going to be there so I went there. At any rate, I knew he was going to be there and I wasn't surprised to see him, but rather I was looking for him and looking forward to it nervously.

Initially I went in to the mall and went to some different stores, and then I went to this counter where you could renew your passport or book travel tickets. Possibly, you could also get visa stamps there. I think the first time I saw him was around there, he was coming away from the counter. I was looking for him to be somewhere, I'd already been at the mall for a while basically just wandering around passing the time until I met him. I went to him immediately and hugged him, like when I said goodbye the last time I saw him in real life. He hugged me back but I got the feeling that I was hugging longer than he intended and he might be uncomfortable, by the time I broke away. We chatted and caught up. He had just returned from a trip visiting his family back home in J-. His trip came out through Lebanon and apparently this is why he was visiting this travel counter. Also he was planning another trip there soon. He chatted a little bit catching me up on his family, etc, his brother's recent marriage and child, and so forth, and then he went off to do something in another part of the mall that he had been on his way to. I hung around the area and went to some nearby stores, then I saw him again at the travel counter and I went there myself ( to run into him). I said, I was also planning a vacation in Lebanon soon myself, and we talked some more at the counter. I got my passport stamped or something for my trip. It seems I came up with this on the spur of the moment, because in my head, I was making plans at that time how I could request a week off work in a week or two, and actually take the trip, to make it coincide. I could actually do this, I thought, and decided to just then. We talked about going together since we would be there at the same time. Most of this time I was thinking in my head vs. paying attention to what we were actually saying, so I don't really remember most of the conversations but there was a lot of "hanging out chatting" type of conversation, and another half hug at my departure. After I was done with my activities at the ticket counter, they were still working on his, so I didn't have any clear reason to keep hanging around, though I still wanted to spend time with him. So I drifted to the next door store, hoping he would catch up with me again when he got done, though we hadn't specifically made this arrangement. A number of the stores in this mall weren't separated fully into their own entities like in a regular mall, they were more like separate rooms without doors between them, so the transitions between them were a bit odd.

The store I went into next was a bookstore or some kind (next to the travel counter). I looked along a shelf of calendars, they had different themes of different kinds of animals and bugs, then I started looking at a shelf of Anno books for my son. They had Anno's Animals (a very large version, like a supersized version) and then they had another one I'd never seen before which was called Anno's String Games or something similar, and it had a black and white illustration on each page with trees and such, and a person doing some kind of cat's cradle design. There were no words (as typical with Anno books) and no instructions, so it was hard to tell how you were actually supposed to make each design. I was curious about the book flipping through it but decided not to get it for that reason.

While I was flipping through this book, S- came into the bookstore having finished with his travel arrangements, but he saw somebody in the bookstore, a friend or relative who had been browsing, and went over to talk to him (it wasn't somebody I knew, though I'd observed him in the store). It was one of his relatives he'd just seen on his trip back home. In their brief comments (overheard) I realized that when the guy had been at the family get together back home, he let other people there think that he was gay or something as he was not in a relationship, but actually he was involved with (or possibly married to) this girl, who he introduced now to S-. She was a cute American girl with a short blond bob. He was really happy to introduce her to S- and S- was very happy for him and it seemed that the fact that he was with this girl was a big breakthrough in the family dynamics. I gather that some people in the family knew they were together but he hadn't made it evident when S- had last seen him back home.

This news made S- really happy. I knew it was because of me, it was like his cousin being with this girl opened up new possibilities for him or meant the family had decided it was allowable. He came over behind me where I was standing and hugged me from behind really enthusiastically, laughing and happy, to the point that he picked me up around the waist and I lifted my feet off the ground. Still hugging me like this, he whispered very quietly "I love you" in my ear. I was very emotional and happy. I whispered that I love him too, and lifted up his hand to my mouth, kissing it twice just barely, not sure if this was too much. He led me over to the cousin and his wife/girlfriend and introduced me. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and I was walking on air. Then, he raced out the back with me (there was an exit from the mall in that store which opened out through glass doors to the back parking lot). I wasn't sure where we were going exactly. I was very happy, but I did have some fleeting thoughts about the past reasons we hadn't been together, but I was too happy to wonder about them too much. We stopped just outside the doors. He wanted to go tell his mother (and possibly other family members) who were parked at the other end of the lot, I said I have to get my stuff, (my son was still inside with the cousin, and my other things) so I stopped at the exit, and he ran off across the lot bounding with excitement. I went to go back in the doors, but I spilled something on two mats outside the entrance, they were like placemats or small rugs that had been on the ground, that were mostly white, and whatever I spilled on them was some kind of food that stained orange, like spaghetti sauce. So I knelt down to clean this up. I could see at the other end of the darkened lot (which had floodlights like a typical mall parking lot, only we were behind the building not in the main lot), he met a woman (his mother) and was talking to her. Pretty soon he ran back to meet me. He asked what I was doing and if I was ready and I explained that I had started to go back in but then I messed up the rugs, holding them up (my attempts to remove the stain hadn't succeeded, just spread it around). He replied "messed on the rugs!" with an expression of fake alarm/grossed out and we both laughed. I said it this way knowing it would sound funny and he would react like that because it was funny and I wanted to see his silly expression, making fun of me like I remembered. It was still fun to be goofy although I was so painfully happy, maybe lightening the all the emotions a bit by both of us laughing. We went in together to collect my son and my things, then I woke up.

Love in Captivity

I was working on a boat at first, and later in some other workplace with uneven floors that I would slide down accidentally. I think we were being held there, and it wasn't possible to escape. But R-, an old flame of mine, was also working there and we comforted each other. He was open to affection in this dream and would hold me and calm me down, it was very comforting. We were not supposed to be together in the dream (this may have been a blanket rule against all who were enslaved in working there) so the supervisors would pull us apart, but he would get back to me. It was all very detailed but I can't remember most of it. I tried to recapture the good part when I awoke but couldn't get back into it.

Disloyalty and Longing

7/15/2008 Tuesday morning/Monday night

It's been a while since recording a dream because I've been having so much trouble sleeping through the night... when you wake up constantly it's very hard to remember the bits and pieces. But most of the one from last night stayed with me.

There are several parts to this dream, I don't remember most of the connecting bits.

I was with my sister and her boyfriend M- at my mother's office. We were coming down the back steps, but they were quite a bit more complicated than in real life. It was or had been raining and they were all wooden and slick. M- was making generally unpleasant remarks, and when I commented on the slickness, he gave me a push to slide on the steps! It was so slick I slid down the stairs to the next landing and slammed against the railing. I was very mad at him shoving me and said so, my sister was somewhat upset as well, and pointed out that I was pregnant. He wasn't particularly repetent.

Next segment (there was stuff in between but it faded)

I had returned to visit the EWU (I think) campus for some reason and was strolling around with my sister. We started to walk back to the car, where other people and relatives were gathering to leave. At the bottom of a small hill I realized that S-, my old (and unfortunately former) friend was there. He was in a wheelchair due to a broken leg (I knew the cause of it. He was sort of behind us. I don't know if he knew that we saw him or not. Maybe he did and he knew why We didn't say anything, but at any rate, he followed along behind us, slowly. We saw him but pretended not to. My heart was pounding. I wanted to say something of course, but couldn't. My sister and I talked and laughed loudly of other things and got to the top of the hill, he was still there. Now he was no longer in a wheelchair or injured. My sister went to get into the car and I had to notice him. We spoke, I think, but I mostly just remember hugging him for a long, long, time. Every time I thought I could let go, I couldn't again. We hugged each other. We touched on how it couldn't be, given my current state of life, but at that moment I really wished it could, and it seemed that he did too. I don't know what he was wishing for though, maybe to just be friends again. My mother and aunt came up in he background, loading other people into the car. My mother saw what I was doing and knew who he was, I think, but she didn't say anything. There was also our dog in the back seat (where I was to sit with four other people, including my brother and possibly even my husband, I'm not sure. Then there were 4 other dogs in the back (it was a station wagon). They were all full sized dogs, and the last one was pretty old, my aunt (N-) boosted it up into the back because it had trouble jumping. Finally I had to let go of S- and we walked over to the car, where I squeezed in by my brother, and wondered why he wasn't on the other side holding our dog.

I woke up briefly still feeling the hug and felt guilty.

Another part, it continued after I went back to sleep but I'm not sure how it go from point A to point B.

I saw my aunt N- with some guy, acting fairly intimate. I was shocked and eventually mentioned it to my mother, who said that it was okay, she had actually gotten divorced from my uncle some months ago, but didn't want to tell anybody yet. I wondered if my cousins knew, then decided of course they must. Should I say something to them? We had been acting normal all along. I decided not to.

Then we were up at my grandma's house. There was some kind of outdoor bazaar or something and my Aunt K- was there. We moved around talking to people. There was a girl probably around my age who was an exchange student. Somebody in my family gave us both some gifts of fabric or scarves. She wanted me to help her write something, a thank-you note I think, and I was trying to accommodate. In the meantime my aunt K- kept talking to this loutish looking guy about what it was like in S.A. She was very interested in learning more but he wasn't too forthcoming.

We went up towards my grandma's actually house, and I noticed that the (dry) swimming pool had been cleaned out. The bottom of it was covered with something like moss but it had been scraped back and colored to reveal a geometric decorative pattern covering the entire bottom of the pool. I was happy that somebody had restored it to its former glory.

There was more in between here inside the house but I've forgotten it.

Then at the end, I am out in the mountains somewhere. I am climbing down hills and cliffs, avoiding the steepest part. It keeps getting steeper and steeper and finally gets to the point where I'm going to have to jump down and probably fall because it's too steep to climb down anymore. So, I wake up.

A Reunion But It's Not Him

Tuesday night/wed morning (6/25)

I am at my apartment and my old friend S- and his brother M- are coming to visit. I am anxious and nervous about this. I have not seen S- for a very long time and I don't know if I still have feelings for him or not. His brother M- arrives first and sits on the couch and talks to me for a long time. He doesn't look anything like he did when I saw him before. He acts like he knows me but really I never knew him very well. His face is haggard and he is sort of melancholy, but tries to cheer me up. He talks about me and S- (who will arrive in a bit) and says that he always knew we would end up together, so I shouldn't worry, we will be together eventually. I say that I doubt that. He says don't worry, it will happen, you're meant to be together. I said you are forgetting, I'm married now, and show him my rings. This doesn't seem to change his mind though (or the fact that this may not be what either of us want).

S- comes in but he sits far at the other end of the couch, facing slightly away so I cannot see his face. Now that he's here I feel excited and a little scared, worried, with butterflies, like I used to feel when I was around him, but more nervous because it's been so long (and I'm not really supposed to be meeting him anyway). I jump up and prepare stuff in the kitchen, trying to clear away ants that have come in. Eventually he joins me in the kitchen. My excitement fades though as he goes about preparing some food, because he doesn't look right anymore. When I first saw him he did, but now he looks more like AM-, another person I used to be friends with, and I find him not at all appealing. I'm a little dismayed by this and eventually I decide it's not him at all, and I am not happy to see the other guy. He's acting all friendly and like we are still friends, and pretending to be S-, which makes me mad.

Writings and Another Look at Long-Ago Love

6-9-2008 Last night's dream

Throughout the dream I was attending a class or lecture or reading group type thing in Oly-. I was at the time in my life where I had just graduated from college, and had moved back home and was looking for a job. My brother was somewhat older than he really would have been at the time, though. Also, I sort of could look forward and back in time in the dream. I remembered and talked about living previously in my apartment at college on my own , and trying to set up a computer network (the memory and attempt weren't anything like my actual experience). Now I was back in my bedroom at my parents house. I had two computers, with different version of windows (98 and 2000) and was trying to network them, but having some difficulties. My father offered advice.

In between I went to this class, I went up there several times, driving my brother. It had already started, I don't think it was one with a beginning or end, just one that people continued to attend. My brother was being required to go by our parents. Each session was lead by a writer with some small reputation in the area and they would lecture and lead the other people through discussions. Attendees had to write assignments from day to day; sometimes they had to turn them in, other times just read them in class. My brother had been attending this for some time, but I was just sort of stepping in now as something to do. Going to and from various sessions of this was the main substance of the dream, but we went so many times and the order mixed around, so I don't know how many times or in what order all of the events happened.

On one occasion it was morning I think and we were trying to get our assignments ready. I was telling my brother than he needed to finish writing his so we could leave, but actually I hadn't really finished mine either. That is, I had written one, and hand-written the other in my notebook but it was quite messy and out of order. I didn't know if we were going to have to turn them in this time, and it would take longer for me to re-write it by hand, so I decided I better type it on the computer, and was trying to do that, as time ran out. This notebook and another one were also a recurrent thread throughout the dream. I had two spiral bound notebooks. One was normal sized and I wrote a lot of assignments in it and notes. I also had a circular one with round pages, which I wrote smaller or shorter things in. Both of them I had crammed into my backpack with a couple other books or notepads, but I kept pulling them out, reading what I'd written, and adding stuff for the various assignments.

On that occasion due to my delay (although I was kind of blaming my brother), we ended up being rather late to the meeting. A woman was lecturing this time and she wasn't as nice as the guy who had been doing it before. She had me read aloud some passage from the book they were reading, and I stumbled over it a lot. The words sort of changed order as I read, so I would read it and it wouldn't make sense, then I would look again and they would be un-transposed. And there were confused parts like "'til Till's till arrived..." which I didn't know if it was intentionally written this way, or I was just stumbling over it.

Another time we went to the meeting I remember going next door afterwards waiting for my brother, there was a small pizza shop. The owner engaged in minor chitchat and I may have had a bite to eat. The room the classes were held in and the pizza shop were both old small buildings, not in the best condition. I drove to and from all the classes with my brother in my old truck.

Another time I arrived well before the meeting was about to start. I did it on purpose because I had seen someone leaving from the class before, whom I knew. It was R-, one of my most enduring crushes (or perhaps an early love, depending on what end of history you look at it from) He also appeared in this dream. I had not seen him since he graduated, as indeed I have not in real life either. I wasn't really planning to meet him, or not meet him, I didn't have a plan, I just came early to see if he would be there.

In fact, he was sitting at the table with his characteristic suitcase. He dressed much the same but looked a little older, unmistakably the same though. I felt a familiar catch in my chest. I was dressed peculiarly, with a weird vest, and my hair was sometimes pulled back into the sort of ponytail I always tried to avoid as child, where the hair on top is in ridges and not all smooth and round. Other times I was covered. I didn't think he would recognize me. He said a few things to me as I came in but without saying he knew who I was. The table he was seated at looked rather like my grandmother's. We were the only ones there as the next group (that I was supposed to be with) had not arrived.

Then he said something to make me realize he did in fact know me. I said as much, do you remember me then? and he said he did, laughing at my assumption that he wouldn't. We talked a little. I said something to indicate a little of what I had once felt, as in fact I'd never told him I was "interested" in him, just basically stalked him. He knew! He wrote something cryptic in my notebook, to the end of that he knew that I knew that I loved him and it might have cryptically indicated that he felt something too. It was like a riddle, I can't remember it now. It made me happy. I looked back at it in the notebook several times later in the dream. I told him then, I'd fallen in love again in college and had my heart broken, and then I'd loved again and gotten married (or would get married...this part is difficult to describe chronologically because at the time the dream is set, I hadn't even gotten a job after college yet, let alone met the man who I would later marry, yet it seemed I knew about this, even though it hadn't technically happened yet in the dream). So in this way we sort of acknowledged our once-feelings, and I learned that they'd been reciprocated, but we also knew that we were on different roads now and didn't expect to make anything of it. Still I was filled with that giddy feeling whenever I thought back on it, which I did several times in the course of the dream, and looked at his note in my book.

The strongest feeling was realizing, but without bitterness of lost opportunity somehow, that he had liked me too, and he was open to it, even though things had changed for both of us. Only the sweetness of this revelation was with me in the dream, not the might-have-beens, and it made my heart happy and fluttery to recall. The writing and the notebooks went around and around everything else. I read and wrote in the dream, and repeated his poem-like shy statement over and over in my head to memorize it, but the morning light washed it away as always, leaving only a positive dull ache, a mere shadow of the feelings in the dream.

Building a College Fantasy

5/6/2008 Tuesday morning/Monday night

I arrive at my old college, EWU; I am going to start going to school there again (maybe for another degree?). For some reason, I am disguised as a boy. I have my hair styled so it looks like it is short and hanging over most of my face, with a bandanna and a white tee shirt with an illustration on it that is mostly green. This makes my eyes look green.

I walk up to the dorm from the outside, it's apparently my old dorm (although it looks nothing like it, but in the dream I am familiar with it). I have arrived on the very first day, and although I haven't made the necessary preparations in advance or picked up my key, I know that the door will be unlocked for all the students moving in, so I am able to get in. The door leads to steps immediately going steeply down, and then going up again on the other side, then up up up further. I follow them and when I come to the top there is a large gap to step across to the doorway, which if you didn't remember to step across would be dangerous to put your foot in. In the dream I remember needing to step over this gap when going out and down the stairs, from when I was there before.

The door opens out at one end of the hallway in the dorms. There are students wandering everywhere, moving their stuff in and out. In the first room on the left, the door is open and the occupant is seated at the computer, and another person is sitting next to him in a chair with his back mostly to the door. It is my old friend S-, who I haven't seen for so very long. I knew/hoped he would be here, but I wasn't sure. I suppress my excitement and walk past (he will not recognize me in the initial disguise, I think, plus he is looking the other way). My heart is pounding.

I go down the hall looking for an open room. Rather than having rooms assigned, people just choose them and move in on the first day, and many people are already moved in. I realize that this is a bit of a problem, since I am kind of getting back into this at the last minute (I haven't registered for classes either or anything). A girl that I apparently knew before at school recognizes me and says hi, how's it going, etc. and I respond in kind. I realize that my disguise is totally ineffectual if she recognized me anyway, so I may as well take it off. I duck into the nearby bathroom.

I look at myself in the mirror, I don't think I am recognizable in my disguise but apparently I am, so I take off the bandanna and put my hair back where it belongs. My eyes look very green, which I attribute to the influence of the green on the tee shirt. Even the whites of my eyes look tinted with an almost florescent green, apparently a reflection. I wonder if S- will recognize me like this.

I use the toilet, being in some gastric distress. It appears that I have consumed a lot of long plant vines like pathos and onion greens, and I'm in quite a bit of discomfort.

That taken care of, I go back down the hall. People have cleared out a bit. I stop in the doorway of another room near the end of the hall, but on the other side from where he was before, and S- is sitting there, waiting for me. He did see me go past before, and he smiles and is happy to see me after so long. We say hello and other small things. I want to rush forward but I hang in the doorway, unsure of his reception. Now I can't picture him exactly as he was in the dream, but it was very clear then.
I say "well, it looks like I may not get a room on this floor after all, I should have come earlier," or something like that, ruefully, since everybody is snapping them up. He says that he reserved one for me, just a couple doors down from his. I say "Ah you're such a sweety," surprised and pleased. He just smiles, but I see that he has tears sparkling in his eyes, he is, like me, choked up with happiness and emotion at our meeting again. I've never seen him like this before. I know now that it is not just me aching with the fulfilled longing of seeing each other again, and this makes me deliriously happy.

I go down to the room he saved for me to put my stuff there. I am thinking, feeling slightly guilty at our meeting and the fact that I am here with him and enjoying this time and feeling so good. But then I think, it's just a dream, after all. I don't have to feel guilty, I'm not really cheating because it's not real and it's out of my control. Strangely even though I actually THINK to myself that it's a dream and use this to justify my time with him, the dream doesn't become lucid and I can't control anything, plus everything still feels completely real. It's a strange setup. I feel a little sad thinking that it's only a dream, and I'm not going to be here with him all the time. But then I tell myself I should be happy it's a dream. If it were not, he wouldn't be all welcoming to me and certainly wouldn't have gotten me a room right next to him, he would be trying to drive me away instead, rather than acting like I'd always hoped for. Plus I would be cheating on my husband since I'm married now. I think, in real life this is impossible and I'm happy that I have such a better relationship with my husband than things went in the past with S- in real life. At least because this is a dream I can come back and visit it again and again and spend some of my time here, under the dream conditions of our affection. (Even though generally you can't just choose to return to and keep going on the same dream at will, in the dream I think this will work).

I leave my bag in my room and tell S- that I'm just going to go back out to my car and get the rest of my stuff, we will meet up then and go eat or register or something. I go back out to the parking lot. When I get to my car, I see that there is a NEW large dent in the side. It is quite large, and looks like somebody fell out of the sky and landed on the car crushing a dent the shape of their head and upper body. A person standing nearby in the parking lot points it out to me and says that some people were having a fight nearby and one of them must have been thrown against the car. Also for some reason my trunk is open.

I'm somewhat perturbed by this but still in a pretty good happy mood because of S-, so I close the trunk, and hop in the car to get my stuff. I think I will straighten it up a little bit in case S- and I go somewhere in the car later, I'm not sure if he has his car here or not. Then I realize that there is a person in the car, of an unsavory sort... dirty looking with long stringy hair and bad intentions. I don't think he was expecting to see me, just stealing stuff, but the guy pulls me in and locks the doors. I think he has some kind of weapon, but I'm not sure. He starts driving. I am being kidnapped! I am a bit panicky. He goes through my stuff but fails to find anything useful, although he takes my cell phone.

I grab a paper with financial information when he isn't looking and put it into my purse. He drives for a while, it looks sort of like the area near where I grew up, but it's not. I am thinking how I can get the cell phone back and call or message for help while he is distracted. He shows me the phone where he has downloaded additional ringtones and I pretend that I like one of the tunes and want to set it as the default on the phone. He buys this and I fiddle with the phone. Unfortunately while I'm doing this he finds the financial paper in my purse, and tells me so, but I pretend not to be disturbed. I have to call or message for help. He has rearranged everything on my phone though in the course of downloading stuff, and so the normal keys don't go to the same places. I pretend to be setting the ringtone but frantically search through and find recent calls. But S- of course is not in the recent call list, since I haven't called him. My husband is there but I don't call him becuase he is far away and wouldn't be of much help in this situation. I go to the address book on the phone, and S- is there (Not sure when he got there though). I was going to call and whisper but then I realize this will be really obvious and the kidnapper might retaliate, so I send a message saying I'm kidnapped, call the police. Then I just sit back and hope.

I end up being taken to some kind of farm that has dog kennels, and the kidnapper locks me in one of them, presumably while he makes off with the stolen goods. But in a very short time S- arrives with the police and rescues me. I'm impressed since I hadn't actually been able to say where I was. Then I wake up before anything else happens.

Somehow I'm able to enjoy the fantasy of this unrealistic reunion even though I know it's not real (and that I don't even want it to be real since that wouldn't work), and most of the dream I'm just indulging in that and the feelings that accompany it

Seemingly Random Snippets

Tuesday/Wednesday night?

I've been having really disjointed dreams lately. There was another the day before this one but I don't really remember enough to go on, except that I was at home and was a teenager, and was involved romantically with a guy that my father wanted me to break up with, and I was upset and defiant about it. My brother was also in the dream.

The dream the following night was even more disjointed. I remember: Poplar trees. Me as a small child, possibly a boy, running away from somewhere (maybe home) and crawling down into a secret camp I had under a bridge. Someone else was with me who had not been to the place before. There was a trap door leading down to it, and a slow moving river. There were some brightly colored things, maybe jewels. I planned to subsist on my own for a while after the escape.

Also in this dream I read a news article about somebody like Halle Berry, who was a celebrity, but NOT Halle Berry, who had just given birth to a daughter. The baby was named something that sounded Indian, and contained letters like S, A, N, D (the name was not in that order though, and it was longer. It was not sand :P). I had read about this before, but in this article, it said that in addition to the Indian name, she was being brought up to that religion (maybe Hinduism?). I thought this was very strange, as the family was actually not of that religion and they had no cultural connection either, aside from the name they had chosen. I wondered if it would be another crazy celebrity trend that other people would start doing as well.

Magic and too many admirers

1/24/2008 - Last night's dream

My former lead at work, who is now in another department, comes to talk to me. He's always been somewhat serious around me, now I realize that he knows that I too was going to be selected for some mysterious and magical mission, which I am now part of. He comes to tell me. He is also in this organization. People get chosen. He explains it to me, we go into a room at work and lock the door. I get transported somewhere else after he tells me, which is part of it. There's a gigantic black and white kitten and some other kind of animal. They will be in further contact with me, but I now know that I have access to these magical resources and will be going back and forth for their missions. I feel good and kind of excited about it, although he is very serious about it, it's not all fun and games. We also have to keep it a secret from those not involved. This is all very detailed but I can only recall the broad picture.

In the same dream, the other main thread is that I have about 5 guys who are interested in me but I am not particularly interested in most of them so I need to prune them down. I feel kind of bad about this but it's getting out of hand. There's one guy who is tall, thin, he looks sort of like a taller, blond version of the Betty's boyfriend on "Ugly Betty." He comes over to my room or apartment (which seems to be in an area that looks like R- near my mother's office) after I find out about the magical thing and talks to me, telling me that he loves me. I feel kind of indifferent, which I feel bad about. I try to think about who I have loved, and how did I end up with so many people interested in me (kind of funny since I've never had this problem in real life). I was involved with this guy for a while, then we split up for about a month and during that time I got involved with another guy, who is also still interested in me, also light hair but shorter than this guy and shaggier hair. I'm not particularly interested in him either, but have been involved with them both. Now I'm back with this guy, but trying to break it off with both of them. I tell him about the other guy but that doesn't deter him. There's also a third guy who's not present at the time, with dark hair I think, and then I remember J- (my husband in real life, though apparently just an interest here), and another person I used to be in love with in real life. I cross him off already since I had determined it wouldn't work out with him. When I think about it, it seems like J-, although I don't appear to be involved with him at the time, is the only one that I ever had really strong feelings for (except the other guy I loved but that was less so and he won't work). So, I decided to pare down the others. I try to break it gently to this guy, but he's crazy about me, and I know the other one is too. I've already told the other one I think. He tells me how much he cares about me and wants to prove it to me. I just don't really have many feelings for him but I go along becuase I feel bad about being mean to him. I'll keep trying to drop him. All these guys trying to get my attention tire me out.

I end up walking down my aunt & uncles driveway with my cousin K- and my brother. I am wearing a poncho. We are on some kind of mission. Someone (my sister? but then she's not there) comments that we make a pretty good team. I don't remember what we're going to do. When we get down to the road, facing the chicken yard fence/orchard area, we all make a wish about what we want. I know that my wish is going to happen, unlike the others, becuase of my new magic available to me through being chosen for this mysterious project. I wish for something to be able to make people stop loving me, since I don't care about them. When I open my eyes after wishing, I see the apple tree in front of me has grown some apples, and I know that they are poisoned apples, poisoned not to kill but to kill the love for me. They are huge and grotesquely deformed into weird shapes, although they appear healthy. I pick one which is large and awkward like a zucchini, but apple colored. I wonder how I'm going to test it and I think i try it, but it tastes normal. I decided to give it to the smaller guy first who I'm having less trouble with, and then the main boyfriend to make him stop mooning over me, so I'll have fewer of them to worry about and they'll be happier too.

The whole premise seems rather odd, not the me being chosen for the serious and mysterious magical project so much as me having too many admirers, that I'm not interested in (but going along with anyway), and wanting to get rid of them somehow.

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.

Moving in another world, and at a loss to show how I care

In the first part of the dream, I was on a trip by myself, some kind of vacation in a jungle. At the end, I floated across a small river on a raft. My aunt and her family had been here in the past, and she had told me she could pick me up at the other side of this river on the way back from one of her trips. I had no intention of being picked up, however. She had also told me to be careful of the water lillies that grew on this water. They looked like regular white lillies, but they were poisonous to the touch. I observed them as I poled my raft to the edge and got out.
Now, I was going to walk home from here and then I was going to walk from P-- to S--. This has been a recurrent theme in my past dreams, and sometimes a desire in my waking world, to set out walking on long distances that normally people would not walk.

I walked back to my home, and then crossed the river into V--, to establish my route. At that point, I planned to return to my house, I was going to pack my overnight bag for the rest of the trip. When I turned back some floodgates by the edge of the river (which in the dream was more a flooded small stream) had opened, and muddy water covered some of the paths I had been on. There were several people sitting around who had seen me cross before and watched with amusement at the idea that I was going to get wet crossing back. A girl ahead of me gave up and plowed through, soaking her pants. I was not planning to get soaked for the remainder of my walk, and hopped across a narrow part, onto a large rock, and then jumped the rest of the way across, wetting only a corner of my pant leg.

I returned to my apartment for a bag and set out on the longer walk. It was somewhat late in the day and I could tell that it was going to be dark by the time I arrived at my parents house (an overstatement, since in the real world I think it would be impossible to walk that far in a day, much less a few hours). Almost all the way there, my father was driving by and picked me up, and I reluctantly allowed myself to ride the remainder of the way, I had walked most of it.

In the next part of the dream, I had returned to my home, some time later. Then my cousin returned from a long trip, and wanted to see me. My husband was away and I was trying to get out of visiting my cousin because it would bother him, but also he had chosen to be away and so I couldn't call him and tell him so I ended up going along with it for a little while. I walked along the waterfront to where my cousin was staying to get it over quickly, trying to act nice and friendly. The waterfront was like a conglomeration of some small beach towns I've seen. It had bricked decorative walkways along the fronts of very tall narrow buildings on the edge of the bay. One of them was the building my cousin was staying in. Another was a museum or rocket launching center or something, with a gift shop downstairs. My cousin was acting strangely, and invited me in for dinner. People came up spiral staircases from farther down in the building, carrying tray after tray of food, like an elaborate thanksgiving feast complete with turkey. I was appreciative but protested that I couldn't eat it all and had eaten recently. My cousin was somewhat disappointed. We strolled around for a while more and my cousin asked me a strange question, which made me both somewhat uncomfortable, and also disappointed that I couldn't think of the answer. "If you had 1000 "carules" to spend, how would you show someone that you care for them more than anything in the world." (or some word very similar to that, which was a real word in the dream that meant something like "love points," all the energy and resources that go into demonstrating care and love. In this case 1000 was an extremely large amount, equivalent to saying someone had one the lottery if it had been money).

I was somewhat taken aback at the question, and I wondered if my cousin was getting at something, but I decided to not think about that. I thought about it in terms of showing my husband how much I care and love him. But I could not think of what I would do with my carules, if I had so many to use. I was disappointed and finally said I'd have to think about it, and we watched the seagulls as I felt sad and somewhat inadequate to not know how to spend them.

After I extricated myself from the visit with my cousin, I went to my house to pack my things to move to a new a apartment. I was moving rather suddenly, and to an apartment that I did not particularly like. It was on a second floor, but if you opened the window it looked out onto other people's windows and balconies, and was not private. Also, some parts of the apartment had curtains between them instead of walls. I do not know why I had to move so suddenly. I sat in my apartment cramming the last items into a duffel bag, which were some items of clothing. Some of them I really have in the real world, others were items familiar to me in the dream but that I don't have in the real world. I also crammed my remaining stuffed animal, very worn, into the bag. Some coats and scarves were the last. My mother was helping me pack, although aside from this everything else had been moved.

We walked out past the gift shop on the waterfront, and my mother and I stopped there. I considered buying a small plastic animal but ended up not doing so. We chatted aimlessly and then I continued to the apartment. I felt sad, as I often do when moving.

I reached the new apartment and put my stuff down. My husband had returned and looked at it not liking it very much, as I had expected. My brother was also there to see. I put the stuff in the kitchen and we looked at the apartment somewhat grumpily. My husband also wondered why I'd had to move so suddenly.

There was a break in the dream and then in the last part, one of my neighbors in the apartment complex was having a fight with another neighbor, trying to get her to move out on some half-baked legal claim. The one who was being pushed out was like my old neighbor back in A-, an old woman. The one trying to get her evicted was like my old college roommate, but obnoxious. I watched with some distress, but not knowing what to do. My mother stepped in and began explaining to the old woman what her legal rights really were, and trying to mediate the whole thing.