All Shook Up

A couple days ago- Monday night's dream

I haven't remembered my dreams since then because I didn't write this down, due to some parts I didn't particularly want to remember. But I remember them anyway, so here goes.

In the first part, I am living in an apartment at the coast. It's similar to mine now except for the location, but has my same things in it. It's several stories up, and looking out the window you can see the beach and water immediately below, and look down the tide line in at least one direction. I have two cats, one of them is A-, my orange cat, and the other is black but is not Q-, it looks more like a young C-, a cat I used to have years ago, who died.

At the dream's opening, my sister is visiting me. It has snowed, and when we look out the window at the beach far below, we can see smatterings of snow down there on the sand as well. I don't remember what specifically happens during the visit, we may go down to the beach or something, or just talk.

Later, I am alone. My cat C- is racing around the house in a frantic fashion, as cats sometimes do, I try to get him to calm down. Then the apartment is suddenly hit by an earthquake or huge storm wind or something, at any rate it sways wildly back and forth. Things fall off the walls. The cats panic. The door rattles so violently that the deadbolt lock begins to rotate. I am scared and trying to keep my feet, but I fight my way across the moving apartment to reach the door; it is going to burst open any minute as the lock untwists. In retrospect, I don't know why it's was important to keep the door locked at this time (what was out there?), but it was. I reach it just in time as the door starts to open and slam it shut and lock it again. The movement finally stops shortly afterwards, with no apparent serious damage done although things are in disarray.
The next part is later in the same dream, I am visiting my parents. I am walking with my father in the back yard, talking. Parts of the house are rearranged somewhat so that the bedroom windows aren't facing the same way they do in real life. I see my mother through the window on the bed, with an unknown guy. I walk up and bang on the glass, demanding to know what he is doing there. She tries to calm me down, my father sees what is going on but doesn't say much. My parents are both sad and decide to separate. I am very wrought up and miserable. My father seems sad but quiet, he doesn't seem as angry as I expect, just disappointed and resigned. I don't know who is going to leave there in the end, but I end up walking down the trail with my father, talking. I decide in my mind that he must end up staying there in the end and my mother moving out, because she (and possibly the unknown guy, I don't know) wouldn't be able to run the place without my father. Other details happen but I can't recall them.

Both parts of this dream seemed to relate to fear of something undefined; I don't feel like they signal specific fear of what happened in them, but something else. The first part of the dream was scary, but the second part really bothered and upset me, which is why I didn't particularly want to write it down (there's no relation to anything in the waking world here, nor have I had this type of dream before, so I found it disturbing). But, then I couldn't remember the dream I had the next night, even though I know I had one, or last night's. I have to write them down to remember what comes next, it seems, or the old dream just sticks around blocking the new ones.

Incidentally, C- the cat also reappeared from the dead in this dream.

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Update: A curious thing. The same day I posted this (but a couple days after the actual dream) a small freak tornado struck this area, although not the part of town where I was at.

Meetings in the Restrooms

1/6/2008 Sunday morning's dream

The entire part of this dream that I can remember seemed to take place in a large public bathroom. There were numerous people, men and women, flowing in and out and getting into discussions with me about one thing or another.

Oops... forgot to post this. Posting out of order *gasp**gulp*

A Meeting about Money in a Remote and Cavernous Building

1/5/2008 - Not last night but the night before... Saturday morning's dream.

I had received an offer for some kind of huge scholarship. However, I was a little suspicious of the conditions and I wanted to make sure it was legitimate. So, I drove to the specified location to meet a representative. It was several states away.

The place where we were meeting was a huge gray concrete building, with gigantic rooms and high ceilings, sprawling in a drippy temperate forest with tall trees, rhodedendons, and salal. I met the representative, an older woman with the sort of pale blond hair that comes from dyeing gray hair, cut into a bob. She was slight, dressed in the sort of semi-professional garb of an office clerk, with light slacks and a floral patterned black silky shirt. We had to go to another room in the building to answer my questions, so she led me through a veritable maze of rooms, the ceilings in most of them were hundreds of feet high. It was all dark and empty, without furniture, just bare concrete. As we got higher above ground level, I looked out a large window and saw a scattered few people far below starting to arrive up the front steps, which was a different place than we had come in. They came from a long trail up through the woods. I asked her if that was the way we had come in (we'd walked around for some time in the building until I was thoroughly lost), and she said no, they were going in the front door to collect theirs. She actually shuddered, and I got the impression that she was glad to have avoided them, although she seemed quite happy to see me.

We finally reached an inner room which was smaller and painted, with carpet, and a large file cabinet, from which she procured a file with information about the money. She spread it out and went through it with me, there were a number of smaller amounts mentioned for various purposes. It seemed that this company managed the application for the winnings, and I was one who had been selected to apply, but the amount was not yet determined. I asked her (this was the catch, I knew) how much I would owe them, if I won. She said that they would take 15 percent of the winnings, and outlined an example in which I won millions and then paid them back a small portion. I thought this was a pretty good deal, and felt less suspicious about the whole thing. Another thing I asked her was if I should get back her the same way I came. She gestured with the papers (perhaps they contained instructions), and said that it depended on how I'd come. There were two ways to get here, through Arizona or through Texas. I said I'd probably come through Arizona, coming from Oregon, but she shook her head, puzzeled, and said no, I would probably be coming through Texas then. I was a little surprised. Despite the fact that I had driven here, I had a very unclear idea where we were, even what state we were in, and now was even more confused about it.

I continued asking her quite a few questions about the scholarship and contest. At first she was eager to answer them, but then she gradually became irritated by so many questions, and began to move farther and farther away. I could see that she was starting to get annoyed with the questions, but I persisted, I had quite a few. She gradually moved out of the room into a place in front where elevators opened up. I could now see that there were people arriving who worked there, starting to move about the huge interior. A man in a business suit came out of the elevator and started talking to her, she acted like it was quite important that she talk to him, but I suspected she was just trying to avoid more questions from me. She continued intermittently responding to me (I stood in the doorway of the room we had been in). More business folks arrived. Three more of them came out of the elevators and stood waiting to talk to her, men in navy blue business suits. They were exact duplicates of each other, a cut and paste job, and I remember thinking at the time that this was a bit lazy (of whom though, I wonder now... me for dreaming it? :S).

She gradually continued to move away until she was standing down some steps on a lower level quite a long ways away from me, talking to some of the men in business suits. I had to shout to reach her. I called one last question, which she answered, and found that all of them had been responded to. In general I felt positive about the plan. Now it was time for me to leave, and I started making my way out. I had no idea how we'd come in, it had been long and complicated. I started out down a huge spiral staircase, extremely wide with a very high ceiling, that we had come up together. I think eventually I ended up going out the front door, because I knew where it was, although it was not where I had parked my car.

A strange visit to the optometrist

1/4/2008 - This morning's dream

Only a few scenes stand out clearly. I can't remember enough of the first part of the dream leading up to this segment, or exactly what happens after it, although the dream continues on in both directions.

I am going to an optometrist's office. It's one I haven't been to before, I am new in town. It's a small office, when I walk in the door there is a doctor, probably in his 30's, seated in an examining chair, right inside the door, tilted backwards (where a patient would sit). He has short black straight hair, and a white coat, and is main optometrist. When he looks up at me, I explain that I'm here for somebody else (maybe my husband?). I am not actually being examined today, but we are doing preliminary tests and I'm getting to know the doctor. Later, I or someone else will return for an actual appointment. The main optometrist in the chair sends me off with another guy who is sort of an assistant optometrist. This guy is much older, with gray hair. We go into a back room. As we go in, the old optometrist asks me if I know of a good contact lens solution. Do I have any problem with my contacts getting dry? He also wears them, apparently. It strikes me as odd that he is asking me (a patient) this, thinking I would know more about it, but I tell him what kind I use and say it's been working fine. In fact, I had been thinking about asking if he knew a better one, but I decide against it after this conversation. He is nice enough but doesn't seem that knowledgeable.

Once in the room, we sit at a small wooden table and talk. He says he's going to give me some preliminary tests, which consist of looking at some pictures which are of the "magic eye" sort and similar optical illusions. Except these versions are very clear and amazingly realistic, they don't look like regular magic eye pictures at all. One of them shows a brown version of buildings, sort of escher-esque. I comment on how nice these magic eye pictures are, I've never seen any like this. He agrees that they are quite nice, not like the common ones you find in the newspaper comics. (They actually did used to print them there when they became popular a few years ago, although I haven't seen them there for a while). There's actually an example of one of the usual ones there in the office, in a newspaper which has the comics page showing. I am trying to look at it to compare without him noticing, since he's still talking and that would be rude, but I try to sort of sneak looks at it.

For a while we talk amiably, but then I grow increasingly uncomfortable, and he also changes into a different person, younger, and sort of disturbing or creeping me out. I prepare to leave, but before I do so I put on some different clothes out of a backpack, over my existing clothes. They're a pair of pink pants and a sort of maroon or purple top.

The next part of the dream is unclear and somewhat confusing, but it involves me going into another room, I'm not sure it's in the same building but it has a stark medical look. There is a large machine that looks sort of like a printing press. It's used for some kind of physics-defying travel, maybe time travel or jumping from location to location. I think I or someone else uses this machine but the dream becomes increasingly mixed up at that point, and bops around from place to place, including a trail behind the house and someone else's house, and other people enter the picture. A lot more happens before and after the eye doctor which is related, but I've lost the linear thread of what happens.

Snapshot from an Alternate Reality Life

1/3/2008 - This morning's dream

This dream took place as sort of an alternate universe type version of the meeting between myself and my husband. I was fully present in the dream, yet sort of aware at the same time that it was another version of reality, like a different way my life could have been (although not that it was a dream).

I am on my college campus, several years ago. Quite a few, if we're being honest. It's a bright, sunny summer day. I'm dressed fairly stylishly, in black and gray, with bleached hair, in a ponytail, and am full of confidence. As I walk off campus to my car, a man (my husband, who does not know me yet in the dream) notices me and apparently decides we have to meet, because he and some friends who are with him jump in a car and follow my car. He is wearing a light blue button down short-sleeved shirt. I am fully aware that I have caught his attention, but I continue driving home, watching in the rear view mirror, and singing out loud along with the radio (I went through quite a few actual songs in the dream, but now I don't remember which ones they were). I am sort of playing a game with my pursuer. Neither I nor my husband look quite like we do in real life, possibly because of the alternate reality... we are both dressed differently, with differently styled hair, and I at least also act quite a bit differently, sort of like people I used to observe, but was entirely unlike: who were popular, stylish, flirty, happy and bubbly and attracting attention. He's somewhat more subdued and less outwardly self-assured than in real life, although the differences are harder to pinpoint in someone besides myself. We're the same people, but living a different life.

He follows me all the way back to my house, which is a many-hours-long drive (going home for the summer, not home for class). In this reality I actually live in my real-life uncle's house, across the street from my parent's house (no sign of my uncle/aunt/cousins, the house belongs to me). When I get out, at my house, we meet properly and he stays and visits. We don't know each other but are trying to get to know each other now.

We walk down to the little bridge by the creek, and sit down on the bank of the creek, chatting and laughing. I end up putting my leg in front of a yellow jacket hole in the bank, and they come out stinging and biting me several times on my left lower leg, it's very painful. This is somehow his fault for having me sit down there, and I also don't get up, he has to drag me away from the nest (I'm not sure if I can't get up because of the stings on my leg, or I think he ought to move me - possibly both. There's definitely a sense of milking the "helpless" persona). I admonish him for getting me into this, but I'm not really mad. He returns with a can of Raid and sprays it on the nest, and we go back up to the house.

The house is the same, but it's remodeled totally differently inside. The first room is blue and more spacious, with a high ceiling and several not-very-comfy white couches and tall chairs in a sparse, modernistic style. My brother is also visiting me or staying with me for a while, and is already sitting there. I introduce them. My (future) husband has hurt his knees during the wasp incident, and I offer to rub them (not entirely altruistically). Then my brother intervenes and says that he has something painful on his lower back and wants me to look at it or remove it. He lays down, and there's a small spot on his lower right back. I try to see if i can squeeze out a sliver or pus or something but it looks more like a scar, not like there is anything in it. However, whenever I so much as touch it he screams in pain, so he quickly decides that it's not worth it. Then discussion leads to a mark on my shoulder which occasionally itches me, and hurts when I scratch it, an old red scar (existing in the waking world). My (future) husband is of the opinion that I should have it looked at, but I dismiss it.

Then we end up going up to my grandma's house to visit her, but I don't remember what happens there. The dream finishes up with a sort of "this is how it ended" scene back in the blue room, at some point later in time than when the rest of the dream took place, like when a movie skips ahead at the end to show you how the characters lives turned out. My name is now "Irianna" (not sure of the spelling, it seemed in the dream like it had more letters..Iarriana?). My husband and I are together there, possibly married now although that's not specified. We have a small white poodle-type dog, sort of like my waking-world former roommate used to have, but I have died it bright purple, "so its life will be more interesting."

With that finish, I wake up (or rather, I spent the next 45 minutes trying to wake up, drifting in between consciousness and remembering parts of the dream. In my semi-awake state, I feel it's very necessary to remember the name and the purple dog). The whole official "alternate reality" version of my life, as opposed to being weird becuase it was a dream was sort of a new one for me. Also, the amount of extreme physical pain (experienced by me and the others) was higher than usual, although I've felt pain in dreams before. The weirdest thing was how I acted like a totally different person, embracing behaviors that I don't do or even dislike, but that are common in many young women I know.

Escaping from a bookstore and recovering my car

1/2/2008 - This morning's/last night's dream

I had been captured by some people and they had also taken my car and my husband's car (his car was a dark color, mine was just like mine in the waking world). I was held downtown (a somewhat shorter version of downtown than in the waking world). The evil doers also had a company with an office downtown. I don't recall what their company did or exactly how they ended up capturing me. There were some other people involved as well, including my husband. We weren't being held together, but we were able to communicate by cell phone.

I was in a bookstore, somewhat like P-'s (in fact it probably was P-'s). I plotted my escape. I was loose, but there were people roaming about the store, and keeping an eye out to make sure that I did not escape. The bigger problem after I got out, in my mind, was how to recover my car, which I needed.

At the time I was to escape, I woke up at night in the bookstore. It felt like I was on the second floor. I moved very quietly to avoid waking up the other people. I had to find a particular book, which would somehow help me escape; I couldn't get out without it. I snuck through the lighted areas of the store, avoiding being seen by people, and found the book. It was fairly large, the size of a dictionary, with text and pictures on the cover. I wondered how I could smuggle it out without being caught (it was now morning, and light out): there were two problems, me being seen and recognized, and someone noticing that I was carrying the book. I somehow managed to hide it under my shirt, partly stuck in the waistband of my pants (this would have been fairly obvious to anyone looking closely, but it worked).

I escaped from the bookstore like this; then I had to make my way to the company office. Once out, I ditched the book somewhere, apparently I didn't need it anymore. The office was a small, first floor office of an ordinary type. There, other members of the group were fighting the main evil person who had orchestrated this. I think she was the head of the company. They had gotten the car keys back, which I ended up with somehow as a result. With them distracting the company headquarters, I went to search out the car. I knew that both cars would be parked in a parking lot nearby, but which one? I called up my husband on my cell phone, I think he was involved in foiling the evildoers to prevent them from coming after before I got the car back. I questioned whether we should go to the police at this point, but we decided not, because then the company would know that I was looking for the car before I actually had it in my possession, and could get it away from me again.

I went from lot to lot, it was a race against time becuase the evil people now knew I had escaped and they were trying to get the car away. At one point I called and reported that my car was missing, and gave the license number (to a police or tow truck company, I'm not sure). I didn't identify myself, but they told me which lot the vehicle had been towed to. I set off to find it. I scanned the cars in lot after lot. The evil doers were chasing after me at the same time. I managed to move my husband's car to a safe location (since I couldn't drive both at once) but when I went back for mine, they had moved it again. I finally found it. The key I used to get into the car looked like one of those classic "skeleton" type keys that aren't really used for anything anymore, rather than a regular car key.

I escaped out of town in my vehicle and ended up driving through a trail in a forest. It looked like it was May, spring but not as soggy anymore. Everything was mossy and green. The trail was wide and flat, but there were many fallen trees across it. I went over the trees in the car easily, like they were gently sloping speedbumps, slowly going up and over each one. There were other people driving over them in the woods too, and white horses jumping them, but I was no longer being pursued, I had shaken off the evil doers and gotten away.

Later on, I was walking on a logging road. The terrain was very hilly and uneven, and I was high up looking out over everything in the valleys and surrounding hills. I was in an unfamiliar part of the logging road system, but was making my way home. I'd come this way before, many years ago (and also in other dreams, I think). I realized, however, that the field I used to orient myself when I got close to home was no longer a field, it was grown in with trees. Would I still be able to find it and find my way?

I had three small devices with me, about the size of my cell phone or slightly smaller. they were shaped like an elongated half circle, or a rectangle that was round on one end. At least one of them had brown line symbols marked on the front. I used these devices for something in the dream, but I woke up while I was using them, and I now I can't remember what they were for, or what they were called.

Going back to school, thoughts of future and past

1/1/2008
Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream

Throughout, the theme is that I am going to go back to college again starting this coming summer/fall. I have somehow secured a scholarship for continuing studies, and am planning to return to EWU. I'm fairly excited about this. In the earlier parts to the dream, I'm under the mistaken impression that I originally got my AA degree there and am returning to get my BA degree. But later on I remember that I actually did get my BA there, and so now I have to decided what I will be studying... will I get 2nd bachelor's degree? Will I pursue Art, which I have always enjoyed but held off studying until the end, for foolish reasons? Will I get a master's as well? In what? The possibilities open up to me and I continue to think about this throughout the dream. I also remember the past and times I had there, and recall how long ago it was, 7 years really? Will I still remember things that I learned that I need to continue in my studies, like advanced math? I remember several returns to the campus that I have had in other dreams, which are actual past events in this dream. In fact, some undetermined work I was doing in another dream where I was back on campus comes up in this one, in light of the fact that I've actually been on campus recently for while. I speculate about people I knew back then, although surely they are no longer going to school there. I also tell people at work (I seem to be still working back in A-) and a number of other real-life acquaintances that I am going to stop working and return to school.

At one point, I am with my mother and we are travelling somewhere, possibly back to visit the campus prior to me moving back. We stop and have to wait in line somewhere, (at an airport maybe?) for a long period of time (we're sitting down on the ground). We end up next to a young muslim woman about my age, and we make our acquaintance. She is somewhat shy, and from another country recently come here, but I am not sure from where. Her mother or perhaps other relatives of hers are also there. She gives us tea and later some sort of meat meal which is sort of like teriyaki chicken and a Chinese beef stir fry. My mother talks enthusiastically and at one point mentions that we haven't eaten in a long time, at which point she hurries off to go find us some more food. I admonish my mother, saying that she's already given us a bunch to eat and my mother inadvertently made her feel guilty.

I follow the woman into other rooms, she apparently lives here. It's a sparse place, sort of like a laundry room, but with colorful accents. We chat in a friendly way and I discover that she is also starting studies at EWU. She already has a room lined up there. I tell her I will shortly be moving back there too, and I am quite happy to have met her. I share various bits of knowledge that I remember from my past there. Some of it, in fact, is misremembered, which I realize later in the dream. For instance, she asks me about one dorm hall, Morrison, and if it is really true that you can only access the outside storage when the water is low? I say yes, you have to go in by boat otherwise (remembering this and picturing it in my head) and my sister used to live there, I didn't recommend it. The only benefit is access to the Morrison cafe, which is directly above. I recall a place by docks which you have to row in and out of. Then I remember that my sister didn't actually go to this school. Then I also remember that this can't be Morrison, because that was the hall I lived in. So what is the name of that one? (In real life, there's no hall with water access). I'm a bit stumped at how my memory has gotten twisted around like this, and hasten to try to correct the stories, but now the misremembered bits bug me. She also mentions that the description said they all had outside storage, but she supposed she could get used to it.

In general I laud the campus and recall it fondly. I'm excited to be returning and going back to school. I wonder idly if I will be allowed to live in the dorms since I am married now. Will I have to live in the married student court? But my husband won't be moving there with me. In fact, should I have arranged to pay for a whole dorm room to myself, so I won't have a roommate? But I did have a roommate before, actually, which wasn't so bad most of the time... Chains of thought like this continue as the rest of the dream goes on, including interacting with the young woman. A lot of it is spent reminiscing over my recollections of EWU, and trying to correct misrememberances. This goes on for quite some time, most of which I don't recall in detail.

Later in the dream we are walking through an area of woods which looks sort of like the trail up to my parent's house. It's dark, but not completely dark... just past dusk. There is a large hollow tree, and there is someone who is somewhat dangerous or wild hiding inside, we keep trying to catch glimpses through holes and cracks. He has climbed up high inside, and we can't get him out. There's some talk of shooting through the holes, but I don't want him killed, it's not necessary. We go around and around this topic for some time, and circle the tree and look up inside, trying to see in and to determine a plan.

The main and very long part of the dream, which is about the return to college, is filled with a combination of excitement towards the future and nostalgia as I remember my previous time there, with a mixture of happiness and sadness. The actual events and preparation move slowly, and I don't remember most of them, mentally I'm not really keyed into them. Instead I'm thinking about returning to school and my thoughts on this, remembrances (both true to life and not), and imaginings fill up most of this part of the dream. There's also a connection remembering other actual dreams where I returned there (though not to attend) which factor into this dream.