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.

The Ache of Emptiness and Comfort

Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning - Last dream series of the night

I am in college in class. One of the classes I've been attending, which is the one I'm in now, I've been kind of slacking off on. The teacher, who looks sort of like my old math teacher from CC (but the topic is not math, it's something to do with history) plays a movie at each class and at the last class we had a paper to write in class. As I'd totally been spacing out during the previous class and the paper related to the movie, I had done pretty badly.

Now I'm back at the next class, deciding I better start paying attention and taking notes during the movie, since I'm doing pretty badly. There are 3 or 4 other people who show up for class that day, and we are seated around a long table with the far end pointing at the TV where the movie will be shown.

One of guys in class has been really irritating me, he always makes smart aleck remarks at me or acts sarcastic, and it is annoying. This happens at each class. I can't clearly remember much about how he looks now but he had shaggy light brown hair that was several inches long at least and was probably around my age or slightly older. I knew him from the class at the time, and his name, but I can't recall that either. This class I am seated at the very end of the long table, with people scattered on either side, waiting for the teacher to come in. I am slouched down in my chair, with my notebook out, feeling very discouraged and kind of depressed and unhappy, presumably about the class, but really as I've been feeling a lot lately. All signs kind of indicate to stay away from me.

Shaggy hair guy comes in and sits down next to me at the end of the table (not a usual occurrence) and makes one of his "funny" remarks as usual. I am weary, but at some level I appreciate that he does talk to me each time, there's some level of affection there I realize. There is scattered talk about having to pay attention to the movie this time becuase we'll probably have to write about it. The teacher comes in and starts to play the movie, and shaggy hair guy leans against to me very softly and rests his head on top of mine. I lay my head on his shoulder. It feels SO good I almost cry. I feel so comforted in my misery and lean back against him and we stay like that, he rests his hand tenderly on my head or my shoulder and we just lean together for the movie not really paying attention after all, or to any remarks from the teacher or others. I am aching inside with how good it feels to be held like this. The fact that I previously thought he was annoying is completely gone, and that this is wrong doesn't even matter because it touches the pain so much.

Something wakes me up at this point and I feel so empty, and want to go back to that feeling in the dream. I go back to sleep trying to get back to it, and though I end up going back to school again in the continuing dream, I can't get back to that scene or the guy.

In the continuing dream, it's the next quarter starting, first day. I am still hoping to run into him again and recapture the comfort of the previous dream. I am back at my parents house, packing up for school early in the morning, and with my are my sister and either a cousin or my brother, I'm not sure. We all get our stuff together. As we are leaving there's some altercation on the road involving my aunt and uncle and our dog. We go down to see what's going on, apparently they think he was doing something wrong and are yelling at him. He barks and another dog, a female, comes running down the hill at his call. Apparently this is also our dog but relatively new. She is a German Shepard like him, but her coat is actually white with pink vertical stripes, much like a pair of pants I used to have. She has another name but our dog calls her Cornelius. My father comes down to the commotion and I ask her if this is really her name, and he says he guesses it's the right name, as that's what the other dog has been calling her and it seems to fit.

As my father is handling the dog situation, whatever it was, we get into the car and drive into school. It's unclear what college campus this is, really, it sort of morphs between CC and EWU and this other version of EWU that has appeared in some of my other dreams. It's quite early in the morning, about 20 to 7.

My sister and I part ways in a classroom and arrange where we will meet, after some discussion we decide to meet in the "blue classroom with the cartoon characters painted on the walls". Both of us can picture and remember this room but neither of us actually remember exactly where it is, but we are sure we will find it. I can't remember where my first class is, although I know it starts at 7:30. There is an enormous clock on the wall in the classroom I'm in, where my sister and I split up, but I can't tell if it says 6:30 or 7:30. At first I think it's 6:30 but then when I look closer it appears to be 7:30. I finally ask some other people in the room, and they assure me that it is 6:30 but the clock is set wrong. I hope this is true, and I hurry off the the library to print off my schedule so I can find my first class. Hopefully it will have the same guy in it (one of the classes I'm taking is the same class, continuing the previous one, so it should).

I set off for the campus library. I am carrying a very awkward bag of stuff. In addition to my lunch and a pair of very dirty hiking boots, and school stuff, I also have 4 very large and awkward ceramic vases that I made in a previous class. I don't know why I'm hauling them around except that I'm hoping to show them to somebody, but I really am thinking I should have left them at home. I'm afraid they will break and it's very difficult to carry them all. I think I eventually decide to put them back in the van so I don't have to haul them around.

I wake up again before I make it back to the comfort of the shaggy haired guy, and I can still feel that loss in my chest. The emptiness was already there but he made me aware of it by comforting it, so when the comfort is taken away, I feel the ache more strongly.

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.

Another return to college - with many campus changes

Wednesday 1/30 - Last night's dream

We are back going to my old college, EWU, again. My husband is going to enroll in classes there, I'm not a student but am living there too. At first we have a small apartment in the nearby city, S-, except it looks like P- in the dream. I don't like living there, and I convince my husband that it would be better for us to get a room in one of the dorms (or married student housing, if we can't live in the dorms) or an apartment near campus.

So, we move there. I go to see the campus. It's close to the start of the quarter or the first day of class. I am wandering around by myself looking at everything. All the empty space that used to be in the campus (malls, walkways, lawns, etc) has been filled up with all sorts of brightly colored and somewhat garish constructions, including music venues, eateries, and things that look like public art. I can barely recognize it. I am a little dismayed at the changes, it makes it look crowded and ugly. There are people streaming all over the place. Music is playing and there are a lot of students out and about, hanging out. I wander through the crowds, looking at and climbing on the strange colored constructions. I can't tell what some of them are for, one looks sort of like a brightly colored electrical transformer station with forks (the kind you eat with) attached ornamentally. They all appear to be additions for entertainment, not new study halls.

I have forgotten the name of the hall that we got our room in and am trying to find my way back to it. My husband got mad at me over something and took the room key, so I don't actually have a way to get in. I'm not sure where he's gone to either, but am not expecting to find him. Night has started to fall. I know I can ask somebody at the door to let me in and say I've lost my key, but I can't remember the name of the building we've just moved in to, so I roam around aimlessly trying to remember its name or where it is. I think it is yellow colored but I can't be sure.

I walk into a building but it turns out to be some kind of clothing store. The door was unlocked, but the store is closed for the day and the lights are off, and when I realize this, I quickly try to find my way back to the front door. When I come out, I pass by 4 young girls, maybe a bit younger than me, who are wearing hijab but dressed in a trendy manner with lots of denim. They look like they are from around Indonesia or Malaysia. I think of asking them for directions but they ignore me and talk together as they walk past, so I don't say anything. I try another door but it is a bathroom (somewhat grimy) so I come out again. I've totally lost track of where our dorm is and feel sort of panicky and lost, but resigned to it. I think about how I should put my key on a lanyard around my neck, the way many people used to carry their dorm keys when I was in school (I think I kept mine in my pocket at the time). I wander across the crowded campus again, observing all the happy rowdy people in a detached way. There is a girl with long reddish brown hair past her waist, laughing with a young dark haired guy, and many others I look at. I wonder if the other students know that I'm not a student anymore, or if they think I'm one of them.

Dealing in the Desert with a Disappearance in the Snow

Last night's dream

My husband had gone on a walk in a mountainous park. It was snowy there. He didn't come back and I and my family and rescue people went out to look for him, but didn't find him. It was a forested area high in the hills, which looked kind of like where I used to live. It snowed again that night and he did not come back. I came to the realization over the next days that people did not think he was coming back, and he might be dead.

My mother, who had been staying there with me, took me back home, and we were going up to my grandma's house to visit when we saw a sign board with a brown poster on it, and my sister started crying and was very upset. At first I thought it was bad news about my husband, but it was actually a notice about a wake for an old friend of hers who had died a few months ago (in the waking world as well). I was surprised to see her so upset, because she'd already known of his death at the time it happened and had seemed sad then but not so upset. Something had happened to her boyfriend around this time as well, he was sick I think in a life-threatening way. It seemed odd that all three of them were in peril around the same time. It was when she got upset over the sign that I realized that everybody else already thought my husband was probably dead by now, since he hadn't been found.

I was sad, and worried, but not inconsolable or as upset as my sister had been about the sign, because it didn't seem real to accept the fact that he was actually dead, so I kept waiting and hoping. I drove back near the mountain area, wanting to stay nearby and not to return home until he was found, also leaving my work indefinitely to wait and find out.

I started walking alone and found myself in a deserty area, very dry and dusty, with some sage brush and desert plants. I ran into a guy about my age, taller and bigger than me, but very friendly, and I followed him back to a small town, where he lived. He was native american, and it was a native american town, but it was in a somewhat old-fashioned architecture style. The buildings were of the type covered with baked clay, with rounded edges, like in the southwest, but modern and comfortable inside. They were sandy colored on the outside and matched the desert around. I felt a little out of place walking through the town, but he and his family who lived there invited me in and I stayed and talked with them. They knew already who I was, it seemed, and that my husband was lost in the snowy mountain area (it had a name, but I don't remember which mountain it was). They were very nice and sympathetic to me. I stayed for a while, and watched TV with them, there were some issues with reception and we kept getting strange channels.

The guy I met offered for me to spend the night there, as I wanted to stay in the area and I had nowhere to go. He was very nice to me and as I got to know him, I realized that he liked me and was interested in me. I told him that I was very grateful of the offer (I was, and I kind of wanted to stay there), but I reminded him that I was married (I don't know if I said married, or engaged to be married). He said that he knew that (in other words, was not trying to get anywhere with me right now), and he looked sympathetic and it occurred to me that none of them thought my husband was coming back, they were just waiting for me to come to that conclusion as well, and provide comfort for me when I did. He wanted me to know that he wanted to be there for me when I understood that, but he wasn't going to pressure me, although he didn't say this, just showed it by his actions.

I realized that if my husband was really not coming back, I would keep hoping for a long time, and how long would it take before I accepted it? I never accept things, just keep hoping whenever something bad happened or I lost someone. This brought to mind the guy I had loved years before I met my husband, who hadn't been interested in me the same way. I had kept hoping he would change his mind, but it hadn't changed, and eventually I'd forced myself to move on. Looking back I knew it wouldn't have worked out but it had taken a long time to realize that. The nice guy who was helping me reminded me of him in some ways, but more gentle and nice to me.

I tried to think about how it would be and what I would do if it turned out I was a widow, but I couldn't get it to sink in. I spent a lot of time wandering around the area and thinking about it, and wondering if my husband would be found, as the nice guy who'd offered me a place to stay while waiting showed me around the town and the garden and such, and tried to make me comfortable.

The overall feelings of the dream were of sadness, thoughtfulness, the unreal feeling caused by shock, and also a sort of comfort, as if everything was going to keep going and be okay. When I awoke I still felt this and then I also felt guilty about it and about not being more distraught.

Death of an Orange Tree and a Mocker Reappears (to mock the Death of the Orange Tree?)

Tuesday Night, 8/21

I'm getting ready to go to a Taekwon-do demo somewhere a ways away, which requires driving. I'm actually planning to work out and participate, and am trying to get my old suit together and ready to go. I'm kind of frustrated about something having to do with getting the suit ready (or perhaps the impending demo), and then out of nowhere, B-, shows up.

He's huge when he first appears, maybe 14 feet tall. I see him from a distance standing beside a tree. He shrinks up to his normal, still tall, size as I get closer. I try to act friendly and happy to see him at first, but quickly he starts to grate on my nerves. He distracts me from getting ready to go and I lose track of what I'm doing (time is short before I have to get in the car to leave).

He somehow draws my attention to the fact that my orange tree has been cut down. He is somewhat amused about this, as he acts about all things, and I pretty much lose all pretense of pretending I was ever not annoyed by him. We are in the chicken yard looking at the cut tree. It was planted along the fence, and somehow got cut down when my father drove the tractor discing a thin link along the inside of the fence. The path of torn up ground made by the disc is only about a foot wide, although this does not seem odd at the time. I am very upset about the death of the tree, which I had nurtured for 10 to 15 years, but mostly this is directed at B-, who is being annoying about it, and not at my father who cut it by accident. I count the rings on the large tree trunk which is the size of a dinner plate. Each ring is over an inch wide.

B- also makes reference to his "wife," which might have been hypothetical, and it causes me to stop and look at him suspiciously (he's gay). He follows up with something joking like, "or maybe I should say husband." It leaves me wondering if he is no longer gay? Or what the heck is going on?

In the waking world, I have an orange tree, but it's in a pot and safe, although not spectacularly healthy. It is the same age as in the dream, but the stem is smaller around than my wrist. The level of upset if something happened to it is probably quite like in the waking world. Although when I was moving away, he said we should "get together" sometime here, B- has never followed through on this plan, for which I am grateful. In the waking world I was recently working on a TKD site for someone, but I end up inserted back into TKD in my dreams with surprising frequency, considering how long it's been since I've attended a class.