A new coworker, a new husband, and a new dimension

6/1/2008
Saturday night/Sunday morning - 3 dreams:

1.
A new employee named M- something (maybe Michael?) has been hired at the place where I work, which is a different place from where I actually work. We have a sunken room with computers around the edge, no cubicles (and different coworkers). M- is a rather obvious geek, and everybody else is sort of put off by him right away. He is tall and gangly, with a peculiar manner, being very particular and exacting and not given to the social graces. This bothers everybody, however it does not bother me and I think he holds great promise. I tell the others this as well. I take a computer across from his and try to help him get started with everything (he's not grateful or any nicer to me, but I still feel he holds a lot of potential value inside).

2.
This dream doesn't really have a clear plot that I can recall, however, I am back at my parent's house and walking through the woods above the house. With me is my husband but it's not my actual husband, in the dream I am married to a guy who used to be Jewish but converted to Islam. We compare various points we have learned. We're relatively newly married and not that familiar with each other, but we like each other pretty well. I am visibly pregnant, and later my parents, myself, and my husband talk on the road. They give me suggestions on which skirt looks better in my condition.

3.
This dream is hard to describe and recall. I am in the city downtown, in a sort of desolate area. There is a place which looks almost like a mirror in the land and the part on the other side is sort of a mirror image of the city on this side, but not quite. Plus it's vary hazy over there. I walk to that side without thinking about it, then I run into a young, skittery person who lives there, maybe on the street. They pull me aside, and explain that I'm not supposed to be able to cross over to this side, it's like another dimension and only this other type of creature (people I guess, but not people like me) can go there, and they can't go back and forth. There's a feeling of mild danger and uneasiness on both sides. I'm not sure why I, of all people, can cross to this other part, I didn't realize I was going into something special. Somehow we determine that the connection may be related to these frozen fruits and vegetables that I got at the grocery store. Flash back to the grocery store scene, I am going through one of those horizontal freezers, picking out fruits and vegetables. I have brought them with me into this other dimension area and the person there is quite eager for them, I get the impression that there's a food shortage here. More stuff is happening but then I wake up and lose it.

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.

Magic and too many admirers

1/24/2008 - Last night's dream

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

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

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

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

A mysterious teacher and a gifted girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Touching Another Plane

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

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

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

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

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

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