Mountains and Monsters

Mt Hood was erupting throughout the dream. At first we set off down I- road on this long walking hike, and we could see the smoke coming from the top of the mountain (despite the fact that you can't actually see it from there). Then I saw a peculiar flurry of white in the sky near the mountain, like a gigantic monster taller than the hills moved, with snow on its shoulders. It turned out to be just that and it was stalking around, quite enormous. We traveled out to the mountain and were walking along mountain trails. At one point we came to a river which had a log accross it that people were crossing. When I went to cross I came up to an old woman who was also on the log. She said she would let me by and then without warning jumped into the river (to allow me to pass) I was aghast and fell off the other side of the log (but a much shorter distance, onto the bank. She climbed out of the water and was okay, but I was still feeling shocked and guilty. I had to explain what had happened to my family. Later the mountain started to erupt in earnest and I was packing some things to evacuate with my family. I may have had my baby at that time. I also had my cat A- but my other cat was not in the dream and I was concerned about this, wondering if something had happened to her (it was like I landed in the dream and didn't know what had happened in the recent past in my life... had something happened to my other cat that I didn't know about but everybody else knew about?).

Fleeing From A Plot Against A Different Mother

Monday June 16 - Sunday night/Monday morning's dream

I was in a hospital with my mother and brother. However, I think I may have been somebody else (or in a different family) as they did not look like the actual relatives. My mother was very old, with short curly gray/white hair in the manner of my maternal grandmother, and my brother was older, and stocky. My mother was near death from some disease. My brother and I were the only surviving relatives, and we were waiting by her bedside (or alternately wandering around the hospital) for the final moments. The hospital was very open with staircases, hallways, and shiny wood floors. Her bed was in a large open room, not secluded, and no other patients were visible.

I was returning from a walk around the floor when my brother told me that she had passed away, and I could see the machine had stopped making noise. I was upset but barely had time to react before two people in black (henchmen like) sort of herded me away. I was wondering what was going on. Then a man also dressed in black bounded out of nowhere and started fighting them off, I didn't know who he was but he told me hurriedly that he was "on my side" and they were trying to do away with my mother.

Driving off the others, he then took me over to a different room where my mother was in another bed, alive and well! The pulse monitor was going strong. I said "you're not dead!" or something like that, and she affirmed, and said that this guy had told he what was going on. Then here came my brother (angry, he was one of the bad guys and was trying to have her die (even though she wasn't really near death after all) using the machine she had been hooked up to. He and the henchman burst into the room, but I helped my mother out of bed (she was a bit tottery but seemed well) and with the help of the unknown man, escaped from the room. We saw in the distance another person who looked like my mother but the man said it was a decoy dressed as her to derail our pursuers.

We escaped to the outside and began a long journey to get back home and evade the pursuers who wanted her to die of the supposed illness so my brother could capitalize on what she had left behind, and also they didn't want the story to get out of course. First we crossed a rocky garden area on a hillside.

It was very chilly out and a strong wind was blowing. I saw something on the ground like a nut as we climbed up the hill. It was moving slightly, so I bent and picked it up. It cracked open in my hands and a small plant emerged from the shell and grew before my eyes, rooting in the shell. The shell also gradually grew until it was like two large broken coconut shell halves. The small plant inside matured and bloomed and then it faded and shrank back down and then other small plants in miniature started to grow out of the bottom shell, warmed by my hands. I kept the top shell canted over them to protect from the icy wind. As I watched them I realized they were rapidly going through the seasons inside the shell, and I could hasten the coming of "spring" by blowing on the shell with my breathe to warm it up mor. They continued to grow, flower, fade, turn colors, fall and then be covered by miniature drifts of blowing snow only to repeat again. I watched this as I walked along holding it in my two hands and spurring it on with my breathe.

The next place we came to, we went up a road over the top of a wooded hill. We seemed to have collected a few other people by this time. The normal road we wanted to take had a lot of junk along it in front of a house that it passed. A somewhat crazed guy with a head like a seed pod came out in the road and started shouting at us, saying nobody was allowed to come this way, and if we did we would regret it becuase the person who lived up the road at the house would come after us. We asked how we were supposed to get through and he pointed down a side road, laughing maniacally. It had a tree fallen across it. Frankly we were suspicious that he was trying to lead us the wrong way, but we didn't want to tangle with the bad people who lived in the house so we decided to take the side road anyway. Plus we knew we were still being pursued and any altercation would slow us down. So we climbed through the broken tree and continued down that road.

We came to a small roadside inn and I think spent the night there. There was a very young girl with black hair who was having to work there apparently as a prostitute, although we saw here performing in a bawdy play with another person. The man who was with us convinced her to come with us and escape from this place. She was wary of us as well but she wanted to get out so she joined our band and we got away the next morning.

Later we came to a steep hill with treacherous slippery cliffs to climb down. There was an old house at the top but it was stocked with supplies, so we stopped to feed everyone and get food for the last leg of the journey, climbing down this cliff and then finding our way out to a town again. My mother began preparing food in the kitchen for everybody.

At this point she started to look like my mother again, which confused me and sort of cast doubt on the earlier events of the dream when they were clearly different people. Possibly as a result of the realization of this discontinuity, I woke up shortly after we started climbing down the cliff.

Of Waifs and Wafers

Tuesday morning 6/3/2008

A confusing dream with time loops: various segments sort of replay with variations as if we are going back and doing the same sort of things again and again, but not in time-sequential order. At some point I go to some kind of Bimart or Walmart type lower-end variety store. I am in a side room talking to a manager, or a therapist, or a dentist, or perhaps all of the above. I end up getting a prescription for something, I think tooth-related. The small office has a back door out into an area sort of near S- Hall in R-. It also has a side room filled with lots of random stuff and also the hidden "junk food stash", which I don't discover until later in the dream: lots of creme-filled cookies and such, set out for people to take but obviously in an out of the way spot so only workers in this office will see them. I keep trying to casually pass through with the idea of sampling some of the cookies. There is much driving back and forth to this store, with various members of my family at some points in time, and later with a girl several years younger than me (possibly even in her late teens) called Angelina, or something similar to that. She looks a lot like a girl I know (but not well) on a forum. She is slight, with lank black hair, a pale but pretty face, and a distraught look. She has had a hard life and is basically stuck and I am helping her out, guiding her through some issues. She goes back with me to this store and we go into the office. I don't remember what the point of keeping returning to this store was, but at any rate I get some prescription I need, possibly for dental pain. The Dr returns to this room and we decide we need to slip out. I try to slip out through the junk food room but we end up having to run away so I don't get a chance to snag a treat. We get separated (some of my family members are also with us originally and we all escape but then I can't find them. I give up on them (they will find their way) and go back to me car, and Angelina has returned to the car and is sitting in it waiting for me. Good for her! I was afraid she was going to run off and do something stupid. I get in the car and we start to drive home, but for some reason we have to stop again by the office and go get something, and that point she doesn't listen anymore but jumps out of the car and runs off. I call after her but she's scared of something and can't sit tight, so she's going to get lost somewhere.

Terror at the Stadium

Friday night's/Saturday morn's dream
May 31 2008

My husband and I are at the top of a hill in a wooded area. There is a very steep dirt path down the side of the hill, quite long a rickety, you would basically have to run down it catching yourself on trees becuase it's so steep. We are in S. A. in an area I have not been to before. I have a bunch of things with me and I run down the hill, calling to him to come on. I stop at a landing part way down and call back, but he's taking his time (or not coming at all) so I scamper on ahead. When I get to the bottom I realize I haven't got my cell phone or wallet or anything, just a picture frame (with a picture of him) and I think my keys. I was going to call him and tell him I'm at the bottom but as I don't have my phone and it's now too far to shout, I can't.

I walk a little ways on across a small grassy area and now suddenly I'm in the middle of a city. There's a huge outdoor arena set up with stadium seating semi-circular around a stage, and there's a play going on. I walk around the base of the seating looking for a place to sit down and watch. It's fairly tightly packed. Finally I sit down on the right side close to the stage, on an empty space on a wide bench. There are people sitting on the other side of it but they are facing the other way with their backs to me, and there's plenty of room. I've only sat there a few seconds when the person I'm sitting back-to-back to turns around and grabs me, pulling me back towards him. He is a very large fat american guy with similar comrades and he tries to kiss me, I start struggling and hitting him, and moments later some S. A. policemen arrive. I tell them what he did and he makes some feeble excuse like I was sitting in their seat and he was just trying to get me to move. I am standing clutching the picture to my front but the policemen knock it to the ground when they pull me off the seat, and the glass in the picture frame breaks. They ask me for ID but of course I don't have any. One of the policeman picks up the picture frame, the picture is of my husband in traditional clothes, and I tell them he is my husband. They take the photo out of the broken frame and behind it are a few sheets of legal paper with my handwriting on it. It's something very old and I panic and try to get it back, not knowing what it is. Is it an old story I wrote? Will they decide it's incriminating? But they take it. Then one of the policeman leads me over to the side of the stage in the corridor between two curtains and asks me again what happened. I explain to him again but he also tries to grab me and kiss me, I fight him off and run out of the corridor, but the policeman are all there and probably going to arrest me now, and the other spectators aren't sympathetic either. I am trapped and am petrified of what will happen. I feel I should not have come here and ended up in this situation. I am wondering if my husband will catch up and be able to help, and why did I leave my things behind?

Packing to Escape an Invasion

4/29/2008
Dream 1

My mother and I are preparing to go on a trip, possibly to Mt. Rainier, when the country is invaded... I think by China but I'm not completely sure. We start packing up stuff hurriedly. We need to escape to the north, continuing on our trip and hide in the mountains around Mt. Rainier. Other family members are there but apparently they don't need to escape as urgently, while we two are in more danger. The buildings are occupied by the invaders, and we creep around trying to pack up items to take while hiding from them (we are somewhere in town, maybe at the office). This takes a long time, I keep thinking of additional items, like certain scarves, and grabbing them. I have a woven bag which I'm carrying stuff in. I think we are supposed to be under house arrest due to the invasion becuase we have to sneak in and out. There is a concrete building with a lot of books in it, like storage for a library, and I climb in there and try to get some to take with us, but have to evade the captors on the way out. There is a bicycle in front of the office, and I wonder aloud if I should take it with us. I ask my aunt K if it's a good one, but she says she doesn't know anything about bicycles and I should ask someone else. Eventually I think we get on our way.

The general feeling throughout is one of heightened anxiety, escape, time running short. It seems like there's a lot of stuff we have to pack which wouldn't really be necessary for escaping, and we are afraid of being caught as the captors are prowling around in the same buildings and we have to keep evading them. It's not clear why we are particular targets.

Dark Cage

Possibly 3/23, Sunday night?

Very unclear and confusing one...

All I remember is it was dark, there's some kind of futuristic cage like structures, like the skeletons of former metal buildings, I'm running around within it, escaping people. There were a lot of other people involved. I may have been living there, homeless. It might be in the future. It was long and complex but I couldn't remember it for a long time, and even now I still just have one or two images.

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.

Captured by terrifying omniscient kidnappers

Saturday 3/08/2008
2nd dream (2 of 3)

I was at home. Our house was sort of like our current apartment, but the bedroom was in line with the living room, and the sliding glass doors were in the bedroom instead of in the living room. It was on the ground floor. Also, I'm fairly sure it was a free standing house, not part of an apartment complex. I got a sense that the dream was set slightly in the future, but not by much.

At first, my sister, mother were there visiting and my husband was home. I took a shower but didn't finish it. I had some kind of dye and was planning to streak my hair in some way to make patches of lighter blond. I hadn't told anybody this but wanted to try something different. I started to apply a little bit of it, (it could go on in the shower, or dry, and then take a shower), but ended up stopping in the middle, with little effect. I kept planning to go back and finish taking a shower.

After everybody left, in the late afternoon, I was alone in the house and I decided I should go back and finish taking a shower and finish my hair. I noticed that there was a pickup truck parked sort of outside the living room window, with an old guy in it. I guess there was a road there or something because I didn't think this was too terrible strange, so I went back in and took a shower. I didn't put any more dye on my hair at the time, possibly forgetting. I was sitting on the bed in the bedroom, it was dusk and I noticed that there were headlights shining at an angle through the sliding glass door in the bedroom. I got up and went to the door, and then I saw that the truck was STILL there. I became alarmed by this, and I started to lock the door. It has this little lock (that frankly is probably ineffective) but it doesn't catch every time, as I fumbled with it, the guy who had been in the truck came up on the outside and pushed the door open, as I was trying to lock it. He had been waiting for me to come to the door. He grabbed me with his arm around the neck and dragged me outside. I started hitting him and screaming, but our house was in a remote location and nobody was around.

The guy took me in the truck to a waiting van, where there were several more guys (younger). They put me in the back with 3 other people who were part of the capture party. The back of the van actually had no seats, so we were all just sitting around inside. I kept hitting the people and making trouble and they eventually let go of me, although they kept trying to grab me. I debated smashing out one of the van windows and jumping out, but the van was going fast and I didn't think I'd be able to smash it out all the way and jump before somebody inside grabbed me.

We drove along through an unfamiliar part of a city. It was light outside again, possible the next day. I watched out the window, hoping to see and then seeing my husband driving in his car! He came up beside the van from behind. I banged on the window and waved my arms and he looked up at the noise (somehow) and saw me, and so he started following the van to help me escape. The van went into some kind of industrial area and made a lot of turns, and lost him. I kept watching but I didn't see his car behind us any more.

Then the van backed up to a big warehouse with a garage door, which was open. As we pulled in, one of the people in the back kicked an inside handle on the van door and the hatchback opened. I had been wondering if this handle would work, but hadn't dared to try. I don't know why he opened it early, but the van had slowed down and I took my chance and leapt out, jumping to the side so I wouldn't be trapped in the garage. The people started after me and I ran pell mell across the yard and city, jumping over small barriers and fences and anything in my way. We were in some part of a city which was up on a hill, with lots of warehouses. I came to a road going down the hill. When I looked back, they were not behind me, but I didn't go down the road. Instead, I crossed it and ran into the trees, which were adjoining. I didn't really know where I was or how far away my home was (or in which direction), but I figured I had a better chance of eluding my captors in the forest. I scrambled through the trees and came to a forest road running downhill, which was wide and paved with fir needles and such, and ran full speed down it, preparing to duck off to the side if they followed me.

A deer crashed through the trees behind me and started running down the road too. I was startled but told myself this was nothing to worry about. The deer ran fast toward me but when it got to me it turned around and ran back up the road. I kept going, leaping over small trees that had fallen across the road. I adjusted my stride, trying to figure out if great leaping jumps or shorter running steps would make me go faster.

Then a raccoon came tearing down the road from behind me. It ran close to where I was, stopped, and turned around and ran back up the road. A terrible fear gripped my insides. Somehow, I didn't know how, the animals were working for the kidnappers and seeing where I had gone. As I ran on, a white poodle and a couple of other animals, in succession (the rest wild), ran down the trail after me, stopped, and ran back. I was petrified. I didn't know who I was up against or how they were doing this.

Then I heard a huge booming voice coming from above. I stopped and looked up but saw only the trees above me, I couldn't tell where it was coming from. The voice said something like, "You cannot escape us. We can track you wherever you go, and find you wherever you hide. We are everywhere."

I was absolutely terrified, but I kept running again, I wasn't sure what else to do. After I followed the woods for a long time, I cut back out to the city. I was trying to find my husband again, since I knew he was out there looking for me, but I had absolutely no idea where he was. Then I found him. We climbed between a barrier and down through a planting above a restaurant to his car. We'd hardly gotten going again when a policeman or sheriff stopped the car.

I was frightened that he might be working for them, but I decided to take a chance. I told him I needed help, people were trying to kidnap me, and I told the whole story from the beginning. But then he said, actually he was pulling us over for something else, and named some minor thing on my record (I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't something I knew about and it also was not important). He wasn't interested in helping me with the kidnapping people and I was very frightened because it meant he was in on it. He didn't try to arrest me for them though, we kept going.

I don't remember what happened next... it faded away into another dream or I woke up. This dream was a lot scarier than most of my capture/escape dreams, and was actually the most frightening dream I've had in a long time. I still feel anxious thinking about it.

A Photographic Tragedy in Five Parts

Friday night/Saturday morning 2/16/2008

I'm tempted to record these separately because they were in distinct parts or chapters, but at the same time I didn't get the sense that they were different dreams, just a continuation. Some of the same threads continued throughout.

Part 1.

I am somewhat younger, a little kid but not too little. I am going up the old logging road, several others are as well including members of my family. It's some kind of race, plus people are after. If I get to the end in time, I can elude them. There is a large mechanical device at the beginning where the gate would be, like some kind of huge tractor or earth moving equipment. I think it might prevent people from getting through or catch them. I get passed it and run quickly to the end. At the end of the logging road there is an abrupt hill, very steep, down to the house. Some people are going down before me, I can see them at the bottom. I have to be quick. There is a walled garden covered with roses at the bottom. If I can get down there, it will be too late for my would-be captors to catch me. I scramble down the hill and into that garden courtyard. I am safe. I go out through the metal gate where the other people are. I think my grandma (my mother's mother, now deceased) is there, among many others.

Part 2.

It's the present day and age again. I am on a trip and I stop to stay at my Aunt K-'s house. That night there is a lunar eclipse (in the waking world, there will be one in a few days). The moon rises in eclipse, huge and orange on the horizon, many times larger than normal. There are dark markings on the moon, like lines in a ring around the middle, reminiscent of the pattern in an eye. I quickly retrieve my camera. I set it on "bar" which is like panorama but not as wide, and take many pictures. The dark pattern on the moon changes two or three times as it continues to rise, and I take more pictures.

Part 3.

We continue on (the same?) trip, out into the desert. We meet up with our guide, it is my husband (but he's not my husband yet in the dream), but he is bigger than my husband is in real life. After driving for some long distance, we come to our destination, which is a cluster of huge rocky mountains in the middle of the desert. An old guy we run into at the entrance takes my my right arm and looks at it. He says that I will soon lose it or hurt it (I don't remember what he says exactly, but it's in that wise mysterious prophet of doom kind of way).

We continue into the mountains. They aren't really big enough to be mountains, it's more like just a big rocky area with very tall rocks. We wind in between them, driving. Our guide warns us about the little blue and yellow snakes that live here. If they bite you, you will die immediately, they're very deadly. He stops the car and the others in my family get out with the guide and walk up a rocky slope to go look at something.

I see something else. There are several enormous black shiny snakes, bigger around than my arm, wrapped up in a pile on a rock shelf, very close by. They are rare to see, and I have to get a picture. They are so black they are blue, and they regard me impassively, unafraid, but also not moving from their ledge. I will go get a picture while the others are off looking at whatever they went after. When I walk towards the black snakes, I realize that there are tiny blue and yellow snakes all over the ground in between where I was and the ledge. They are only a few inches long and are spaced only a few inches apart on the ground, and are almost cartoonish in their garish appearance and eyes. They move in an upright manner.

I step between them to get close enough to get a good picture, and snap several pictures of the black snakes. But then the yellow and blue ones start biting me. I am bit three times on my left leg, on the top of the foot, somewhere else on the foot, and up my calf on the outside, right below the knee. They cling after biting. It hurts a lot and I yell and run up to the high ground again, knocking them off. Our guide returns and looks them over, then announces we have to get to the nearest doctor as soon as possible. I realize that he must have exaggerated how poisonous the snakes really were, since I'm not dropping dead, but am still somewhat worried. He asks me what limb the old man had warned about, but I tell him it was the right arm and not the left leg.

We all pile back into the vehicle and he drives out through the rocks along the road. We pass a small "clearing" in the rocks off to the right, and I look out the window and see a large grizzly bear, defecating in the clearing. For some reason this is very amusing to me, and I consider making a joke to the others about bears doing it somewhere other than "in the woods", but I realize after some consideration that nobody else is going to find this at all amusing (also nobody else saw the bear). A little bit farther one we pass a goat amongst the rocks and maybe some others as well, but this part fades away.

Part 4.

I am still on a trip with my family, but there are more people now, it's a huge extended family of grandparents, aunts, relatives, possibly even my husband. We have stopped to sightsee at some sort of significant place, and so we walk across a big valley of rocks, dotted with huge mounds like a mima mounds with no grass, made out of boulders much higher than people. When we get up to the high ground, I arrange everybody for a group portrait. Out comes the camera again. But I'm having trouble getting to actually take a picture on the "bar" setting. I keep changing the settings. It turns out I am using a laptop, not a camera, but this is okay, because it's the laptop that goes with the camera and that I will transfer the pictures to eventually, and it can also take pictures. The group is restless, and they only hold their pose or position for a few seconds, then they move and talk to each other, assuming I've taken it. I'm getting very frustrated with them and my inability to get it to take the right picture. Then I realize it's not my laptop, it's a red one. I switch out for my proper one. I'm still not able to take it. The group complains and still I haven't gotten any decent pictures. I finally locate my actual camera and possible manage to snap some, although they probably aren't any good becuase I couldn't get the settings to stick and people kept moving. But the group won't stay together any longer.

Looking down the valley of the mounds that we've just cross, I can see their pattern which I wasn't aware of when I was walking through them. I also see a plume of smoke from one and then fire. I realize all of a sudden that they are volcanoes (very tiny ones :P) and one of them is erupting. I exclaim upon this to everyone and they are all excited, and we quickly run down the hill to get a closer look, standing right at the base (this doesn't seem like what you do after realizing there is an erupting volcano nearby, if you are very smart, but it all turned out fine).

Part 5.

We are back at my parents' house. I am cooking a big vat of soup on the stove, possible corn chowder. There is a guy there, I think named Zach. He is tall and somewhat gangly, we're both teenagers or close to it I think. This is our first get together at my parents house, I guess he is interested in me and I've invited him over, but we don't know each other that well (or that is, I don't know him too well, as I will discover). I have constructed an elaborate dinner, including the soup, but I run out of some ingredient. Otherwise practically everything else is ready to eat. I'm under some stress from preparing the meal. He is hanging around the kitchen not doing much. He kisses me, and it feels like he has slime in his mouth. I am disgusted and tell him as much, scooping a wad of slime out of my mouth with my hand and showing it to him. He suggests that we serve the soup using some kind of excavator scoop (like from miniature construction equipment). At first I am not paying attention and what he says doesn't' really register. But when he says it again, I suddenly realize that I actually DID this, with another guy, who I dumped becuase he turned out to be a criminal or something, at any rate he and I didn't last long. I ask Zach, "what did you just suggest? Because I've done that before with somebody else..." I am very suspicious and he sees this and realizes that he has made a mistake. He excuses himself to go get some corn from the garden for the soup. Turning it over in my head, I realize that it's the same guy and he's reinvented himself in a new persona to get back together with me. CREEPY. As it turns out, he does know me better than he pretends.

I go out to take something to the yard. The yard is totally different than in real life. It's a sunny grassy knoll with apple trees and such, and a barn and rolling hills in the distance. It's a beautiful summer day. When I get back in, I realize that my family has started dishing up their food because they are tired of waiting, even though I'm just about done. They have loaded up plates, some with one item of food, some with two others, etc. None are laid out like I was planning, or with all the courses I created, they've just taken stuff buffet style. I pretty much melt down, after all the work I've put into preparing this dinner I am furious that they aren't going to let me set it out my way. Everybody else complains they just want to eat. I'm beside mad. Zach returns and realizes I've figured out who he is, and I'm mad about that too and want nothing to do with him. I sulk lividly in the side of the yard while everyone else picnics on the grass with the meal I've prepared, out of order and not as I wanted to serve it.

Missing a past and nowhere to go

January 26^th - Saturday morning's dream

My parents and family have been arrested for something and all taken away, and the house is barricaded off by the police or FBI or something. All record of their existence has been removed from public record, but I don't think they are dead, just being held somewhere. I was the only one not taken, but I'm not sure why this is (or what crime they had been involved with). I am driving around a small hilly area somewhere in town, in the old pickup I used to drive which once belonged to my parents. The gas is almost empty. I drive back and forth in a several block area, looking for somewhere, but I don't remember where I was trying to get. I don't have anywhere to go home to now. In the dream I was still working for the old company I used to work for, and apparently was living at home. I now will not be able to go back to work there, also I won't be able to get another job because the fact that I worked there has been erased (I think the entire company has been "removed" similarly, or if not that, the fact that I had worked there for 5 years) so I have no employment history or references.

I drive up and down in the truck. I don't have enough gas to get up to a gas station at the top of the hill, so I leave the truck and start walking up to the gas station a short distance away. The path I take is through a flooded streambed in a nearby woods, clogged with fallen logs. I carry an enormous piece of driftwood (which I can somehow lift over my head despite its size) which I put down as a bridge across each flooded place, then pick it up and carry it to the next place to use again. It gets smaller and smaller with each use until it is used up. I arrive at the gas station. It's creepy and made of old concrete. I realize that I don't have any clothes on, so I can't buy gas, and also I don't have anything to put the gas in anyway. There is a Goodwill or similar clothing thrift store nearby, and I think of going there to get some clothes. But then I realize that when you have no clothes at all, it's nearly impossible to get any. It's very difficult to get any normal task done when you've lost your clothes, even getting new ones. People will freak out instead of just giving me some clothes, and possibly think I am crazy.

I decide to return to my parents’ house, which nobody is at but it's cordoned off with police tape and some kind of electronic security surveillance. I sneak into my bedroom past the security devices and pack a suitcase with some things. I think I might come back later but who knows if I will be able to. I can only take as much as I can carry, mostly clothes.

Then, I go to the house of my former riding instructor (in the truck, which I guess I got gas for after I got some clothes) not too far away and well out in the country. She and her significant other are somewhat surprised to see me but they know what has happened to my family. I have nowhere else to go and I can't get work or stay anywhere because my past has been erased, so I don't know what to do. They realize this. She mentions that they have a little room and there are a bunch of odd jobs that they've been meaning to get to, implying that I can stay there and work for her in exchange. I'm not ungrateful although I realize that they can easily take advantage of my situation in getting work out of me.

The house is extremely messy. I look around it thinking that I will clean it up and put it in order, like the protagonist of a book which I recently read (in the waking world as well as in the dream) who stays with somewhat messy foster parents. My riding instructor tells me that if I'm going to stay there, I should know that it was they who orchestrated the crime that eventually led to my parents' arrest, and they are going to continue doing these crimes (some kind of robbery I think). I accept this situation (what can I do, anyway?). Then she asks if they can take my truck to go to town, and I say sure. After they leave I realize that the authorities know whose truck it is, and so they will be tracked down and caught. I envision living here on my own, in this remote holdout. I'm not entirely sure if the authorities will eventually come after me, or not, but it seems best to stay out of the public eye.

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.

Trapped by a stranger's crazy mother

Monday, November 5th 2007 - Last night's dream

I was at a class or meeting of some kind, and some people had made an apple cannon, which they were firing off to great fun and general excitement by all. During the activities, I met someone and got invited to their house for dinner and to spend the night. I accepted. Afterwards I realized that my new friend was a boy about 12, which it occurred to me in the dream was a little odd (I may have been younger in the dream but it still struck me this way, because of the age difference, not because there was any flirting going on, which there was not). At any rate, I had already accepted since I felt more uncomfortable about backing out than the odd choice of friend, so off I went to his house in Ol- or L-, where he had a large, happy, friendly. and welcoming family. There were several other kids and I no longer felt particularly uncomfortable, and engaged in chitchat and games with the family.

We had dinner, and then as the evening wore on his mother sort of became unhinged. She had started out very friendly and bubbly, happy and energetic. Then she started to get angry and crazy, although still with a smile on her face. His mother had dark reddish brown hair, straight to her shoulders, and heavy, shaped matching eyebrows, and I think green or dark eyes. She was young and petite, probably in her 30s. Her face was angular and would have probably been attractive if it wasn't for the crazed expression that developed. She started loudly shooing people around the house, and declared that it was "no doorknobs time" and we had to keep all the doors open, and several other pronouncements that I no longer remember, and started to get scary.

The boy who I'd come with was short, with light brown hair in a bowl cut. I discovered that his hair covered a deformed ear that had been cut or damaged in some way by his mother during one of her crazy sessions. He and the other kids and the father acted as if they'd seen this behavior before, and worked around it. It was clear that they didn't like it and were scared of her when she got like this, but they didn't know what to do.

The hidden side of her either became apparent in the morning or I ended up staying the night anyway because I couldn't escape. In the morning I was in a small room which they'd made up for me to spend the night in, getting dressed. I was hurriedly getting clothes out of my overnight bag and packing everything else. I realized that somehow I was going to have to gather up my various things that were left around the house without the mother noticing that I was trying to leave until I had everything and could make a break for it, there would be or already had been an effort to keep me captured here.

I had the door partly closed, but not shut, and was trying to put on a bra, but none of them would fit. There were two in my bag that were brand new, which I'd bought the night before at the mall nearby. One was black with a black pattern, and the other was light green with a pattern of tiny dark green leaves. The problem was, both of them were too small, which was confounding since they were brand new. I frantically rooted through the overnight bag--I seemed only to have dressy clothes, like a black skirt and black pantyhose, that would take too long to throw on and escape. I was also supposed to have my TaeKwon-Do suit in there, because I was supposed to go to a workout later (which might also have been my excuse for leaving them, I didn't really want to go to it but I did want to get out of here any way possible), but I realized that somehow I had not packed it.

As I struggled to get dressed, the mother burst in with a crazy glint in her eye and said she THOUGHT she had announced that it was no doorknobs time, wasn't that right? I tried to make excuses that the door had not actually been closed, but she started yelling about no doors or locks, and called on one of her young daughters to back her up. The girl was 6 or 7, with light blond hair, and she was too young to realize that her mother was off her rocker, things like no doorknob time were apparently normal to her (the mother although striking fear into my heart still had a "happy" face frozen on). She sent her daughter around removing knobs and doors, ranting maniacally, as I frantically continued dressing, trying to figure out a way to get out of there.

Escape As Angry Teenager and How to Respond to a Violent Death

Sunday, 10/21/2007 - Last night's dream

In the first part, I am at the beaver dam with my cousins and possibly siblings, at a younger age. We are escaping or hiding from some people, possibly our parents, but we are hiding separately from each other. I spend a lot of time crawling through several-foot-tall grass, sneaking away quietly from those approaching on the road. At one point, someone passing by sees me, but as it turns out does not capture me but points out that my hiding place is visible and I should move. I drop to ground level and belly crawl through the grass to a safer vantage point. I crawl out onto a bank from where I have a view of the road but can duck down into the grass again. My younger cousin is being taken past on the road by an adult. I wave at her somewhat smugly indicating that I have not yet been captured, the adult does not see me. She looks unhappy but doesn't give me away.

In the second, much longer part, I am at my parent's house. I am still living at home, and am much younger, a young teenager, and at permanent odds with my parents. I have just arrived to take my evening shower and am next in line. My father is complaining about how I have not been studying SAT paperwork for a big test (I don't think it's the SAT but something else which I'm using those materials to study for). I am mad and don't want to study it. When my younger brother arrives, my father tells him to shower next while I do some studying. I am extremely upset by the unfairness of it all, and decide to leave home in a fit of teenage angst. I stomp off afterwards.

I pack some possessions and take off on foot, setting up camp for the night in the woods by my grandparent's driveway, not far away. I am quite furious with my parents and am fed up with living at home. There is some interim part earlier where I am captured in a woodshed or barn with my cousins and/or siblings, and we escape. At any rate, my cousins and siblings come along and find my camp, and since they are also running away (from the captors, not from their parents), decide to stay with me. They have other supplies, so I grudgingly allow it and we set up a tent. It is going to be extremely close quarters, and I consider moving into a tree instead. My younger cousin cautions that this would not be a good idea, because I am pregnant and if I fall I could injure the baby. This is true, I consider. Apparently I have been pregnant all through the dream (showing quite a bit), this isn't new news.

Then, some friends and relatives of my cousins come down the driveway to our hiding place with my aunt N-, who says they have freshly escaped as well and are going to stay with us. This is the last straw! I do not want to share my hiding place with all these people, but the others want to allow them to stay with us. I announce angrily I am going off to make my own camp. I pack up my few belongings and stalk off. Dusk is falling. I hear coyotes howling and reconsider the tree idea. I pause on a hillside and see a wolf or coyote walking nearby. Someone, possibly my lover/future husband, is with me now and we change to look like mountain lions (or appear so to the coyote), it sees us lying together and passes by without approaching us.

Then I am alone again. I have more possessions than I need to set up sleeping quarters, so I decide to put them in my car, which is parked on the side of the road. I consider taking the car and parking it at the edge of the field and spending the night there, but I can't think of anywhere to park it that my father won't see it in the morning, and I want to be more hidden than that since I have told them I am going to leave home and live on my own. I put some items into a box in the car. While I'm doing so, my mother walks up.

She seems sad and asks me what my plans are. I am grouchy and say I am about to leave. She suggests a place several valleys over that supposedly has some jobs available right now. I am somewhat surprised, and a bit disappointed, since I was sort of thinking she would try to convince me to come home, but I don't want to show this. I grumpily say, "Well, maybe I'll go there then." My mother sits down in the car with me first to talk to me, and shows me a necklace that she got. It is made of many brightly colored strands of string, like a very vibrant hammock, and is very long. It looks like it is a stylized version of long elaborate hair. Halfway down there is a multicolored plastic ball which pulls the strands together, and at the end they all come together in a larger ball, which is like a comet with the strings as its tail. I comment on this similarity, and my mother says that she thought it would make up for her thinning hair as she gets older, and tells me about a shop in an open air market where she bought it recently.

As we are talking there, we see a guy who has just arrived in a small dark blue car. He is maybe 30 with dark hair, and is very agitated. His friend is lying injured by the side of the road just a little distance from my car; the friend has just been hit by a car (another car, apparently). He is freaking out asking us what he should do in terms of first aid. My aunt K- has walked up as well in response to his cries. We gather around. It is immediately evident that there is no hope for his friend. The injured person's head is sliced cleanly in two like a cantaloupe, and bleeding. The live guy is panicking and freaking out. He asks if he anyone knows how to apply a tourniquet. He reasons that cut off limbs can be amputated and people survive, right? My aunt makes gentle, reasoned responses to each of his queries, indicating that she doesn't think it will help in this case, breaking it to him gently that his friend cannot recover. Every time he says something, I want to blurt out the obvious--The guy's head is cut in two! That cannot be fixed or transplanted--but I hold myself back and marvel that she is able to respond without stating the obvious. I can see that stating the obvious would make the already upset guy much more upset, but I myself cannot formulate a response that doesn't include this pretty bluntly. He also asks about calling an ambulance. He says he tried to call M-, but he couldn't get through. "M- who?" says my aunt. I am surprised again (M- is the name of my grandfather, her father, deceased a few years, who would have been living across the street if he was alive. But she doesn't give any indication of this to the distressed person). He says M- was an old friend of his who lived nearby (probably the same person, but again my aunt doesn't say anything about this and I stop myself as well).

I find myself wondering at the back-and-forth play in this conversation, obviously she (and my mother, who is also responding in the same fashion) want to help and calm the guy, and their responses are working, but I can't figure them out or what I would say to get that effect. I can only tell that my blunt statements that come to mind should definitely not be spoken, and I am able to restrain myself from saying anything since they are doing a much better job.

Kidnappings, and Friendly Foreign Female Strangers

Friday, Oct 19 - morning's and last night's dreams

I am at my parent's house, and we are preparing to go to a play in O-. My husband is also going. At the last minute I don't feel well and tell them that I may not go after all. They leave early and tell me to come along if I change my mind.

I do change my mind and go in by myself, but before I get into where the audience is sitting, I am kidnapped. I am taken backstage where there are several other kidnapped people, mostly children (and I seem to be younger) who are being forced to participate in the production.

The play is like an Anime cartoon, and I play my role and am tied up afterwards. None of us are recognizable to the people watching because we are in costume, and the audience doesn't realize what is really going on backstage.

As the play ends, I manage get myself and some others free and we escape in the pandemonium. I make my way out to the audience chamber. I can see my husband sitting in the audience, apart from my parents. He thinks that I came in late and wasn't able to find a seat near him. Next to him, an Indian woman in her 30's is sitting. She is apparently a friend of my mother's. She is talking to my husband as they get up to leave. I observe the interaction but she doesn't seem to be flirting with him, and I don't feel jealous of her. I step over the seats to cut down to his row, they have flat desks like student's chairs. He turns and sees me, and we are both happy and smiling. I reach out my hand and he takes it, helping me down from the desk, and places it around his shoulders or neck. The Indian woman thinks we are adorable. We make our way out, happy, explaining to each other how we got separated.

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In the second dream, I have been kidnapped again (or maybe it is the same time) and escaped. As it turns out, I helped another woman escape too. She is a political activist who has been accused of communism and other things, and has been locked up for years by some kind of strict regime. She is tall and slim, tan, with graying long dark hair, and is probably in her forties, and very smiley and pleasant, but definitely with an air of someone who does and plans to do daring things. She is extremely grateful that I have orchestrated her escape (she is well known, apparently, but I did not know who she was at the time, just a prisoner like myself who of course I would help escape along with me). She wants to reward me by taking me on a vacation to some place by the ocean, in Mexico, or Spain I think (she speaks Spanish natively, but I am not sure which country she is from originally, she might be South American). I recall that I know some Spanish, but it has faded over the years. Still, I am excited to go, but hesitant. I don't know her at all, and I also am not sure of the financial arrangement. Is she offering to pay for the trip, or just hoping I can go visit her there? I try to figure this out, and she speaks of the trip happening in May. For some reason, I think this will conflict with plans that my husband has, but I tell her I will talk to him about it. I know my parents will be worried at my involvement, and I'm not sure my husband will want me to go, but I'm a bit thrilled at the idea.

Escaping With Secret Identity

Sunday night 8/12
It's all very vague, but I've been captured and trapped somewhere in a fenced compound in the hills somewhere. My family is there as well at the beginning, but later it's only me that had been captured. I walk out through an area that looks like K- field, before the trees were planted, and expands into a logging area. On the way, I am chased through our woods by people trying to catch me, I escape jumping/falling over logs and down gullies. Eventually I meet up with some guy who helps me escape. He seems to think I am from a foreign country, lost here, and I encourage this to the extent that I don't speak or say anything to indicate that I understand English. By going with him, I am able to get away under my pursuer's noses. I Understand that he thinks he is also going to keep me and marry me, but I don't say anything to give myself away. The plan is to go along with it and then slip away when I am clear of the danger area. We make it out, and he drives up a road to where he lives which I realize is the same road my parents live on. It will be easy to slip away...