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.

A Trip to My Aunt's Old House, in a Foreign Country

2/9/2008 - Last night's dream.

The last few nights I've been very tired and lacking in sleep, which generally causes me not to remember my dreams. But last night I caught up on it and remembered a bit.

I was in a place that looked like a foreign country. It was green and hilly and had ruins and very old buildings built into the hillsides, somewhere in Europe I think. I traveled through, taking in the sights. The area I was in was out in the country. There were a lot of small houses, scattered about, mixed in with some very old small ones built out of stacked and mortared rounded rocks which now were converted into people's back sheds and such. My Aunt N- had a house here, and I was going to see it. It was a house she had lived in as a child once and had returned to look at, although I think she was going to sell it and not stay there. I was going to describe it and take pictures for some project of my own.

On my way I saw something I wanted to stop and look at. I decided to walk up the hill to see it, and continue up to her house, which was at the top of the hill. I walked up about halfway to a sort of cave. It was one of the stone houses built into the hillside, an old ruin part of a building built hundreds of years before, of which there were many around here. It was now being used by someone as a woodshed. At first I felt nervous walking in, since of course I didn't belong there, but then someone came, possibly the owner, and showed me around. I think it was an old guy pleased to have it be a tourist attraction.

I looked around the dimly lit inside, the wood was stacked meticulously against all the walls in enormous heaps. The pieces of wood were each only a few inches long, split to that uniform size. I found the magnitude of the woodpiles and their exacting construction quite fascinating, and I took a few pictures, although I was concerned they might not turn out because of the dim light inside and the bright daytime light coming in through the doorways. I found myself describing it in my head for the piece I would write about my trip.

Then I climbed up the hill and arrived at the house my Aunt was at. It was more modern, but still built decades ago in or before her childhood. She didn't seem too pleased to see me although she had been expecting me, but took me in and showed me through the rooms, without much interest. I took note of the interesting features. The rooms were differently made, narrow and antique and irregularly shaped. There was a dangerous looking laundry chute several stories deep. The staircase was wooden with close, narrow steps, and curved up to a dark upstairs. I looked at it and she, somewhat indifferently but smugly, told me I should check out the feature of the slide. I moved a wooden lever on the side of the staircase, and the steps rotated so the stair became a smooth slide, something that now reminds me of some Little Nemo strips (although it didn't in the dream. In the dream I'd heard of this feature before from movies but never actually seen one, and I thought it was rather nifty to be able to examine one in person). She recalled enjoying sliding down it as a child. I was looking through a few other rooms on the ground floor and taking notes as my Aunt stood by, when my Uncle drove up in the parking lot below. We went to the open door and looked down to the gravel lot below. He greeted us cheerily. I remembered I had brought some items for him, and gave them to him. There were three of them, but I don't remember what they were any more. Then there was a fourth item, which was a photo album collection that included pictures of me from a play or show I'd been in some years ago. I don't remember what it was for or what he had needed it for. He politely accepted all the items, with thanks.

My aunt somewhat snippily said aside to me that he already had two of the items, which she and/or someone else had given him previously, and the third had come up in discussion in the past and he'd said he didn't like it. I was somewhat unsure how to respond to this, she was obviously displeased with me for bringing the items. I said something like he'd accepted them pleasantly enough or seemed to like them. Of course, she acted as if she knew better, being his wife and all and therefore privy to such things which I wouldn't be. It struck me she was acting jealous of me for some reason. She was more openly displeased about the photo collection, specifically because of the types of photos of myself that were included. I felt that the whole situation had become rather uncomfortable.

Here my recollection becomes disjointed, but I remember driving somewhere away from there with somebody, and it was nearing Easter time.

Finding crystals in dangerous ground

Last night's dream

I was the father of a young girl, probably between 5 and 8. I was a young man, with dark hair, thin. We were on the old logging road, the way it used to be. Our work was gathering small crystals from the ditch, which looked like amethyst or some kind of tinted quartz, this was how I made a living. I had a ball and played catch with my daughter; teaching her how when she caught the ball repeatedly I praised and encouraged her heavily, telling her that when I was a kid I had been pretty bad at this (too true, although in my memory of that time I looked like a little girl).

The girl found a large crystal in the ditch, several inches across. It was purple, with sort of a streak in the middle that faded towards the outside. We were very happy about our discovery, but then an evil guy rode up. He had a private mine area at the top of the logging road where these stones were usually found, and thought we had stolen it. I had sort of suspected this would happen. An argument and fight ensued, I think I might have gotten injured or bloodied in some way. Then his horse stepped on the stone and it was crushed into several pieces. He was angry, but only wanted the big ones, so he rode away. I reassured my daughter that I was okay, and it was not her fault for keeping the stone, it hadn't been his anyway. She picked up the larger pieces that were left of the big stone, which were good finds for us anyway.
Later, we walked down the road, alongside the creek.

Visiting a Park with a Holy Cliff

Last night's dream (Monday night/Tuesday morning) 11/20/2007

I went with my husband to a famous park and we spent a long time exploring it. It had beautiful thick woods and abrupt gulleys, and we found a small canyon cut 15 feet deep in the mud of the streambed, as if a flood had come through and filled up the valley with mud at the water had cut it down again. It seemed to be summer or spring time and there were lots of small plants growing and white flowers. To continue our exploration we got a guide. Several were available, ours was a young girl with bobbed blond hair and a red and white shirt. She was friendly but not flirtatious, and I did not feel jealous of her and was glad we had gotten her and not one of the male guides.

After this part of the tour was over, my mother, sister, and for some reason a friend of my husband and formerly of me, AM. I think there were some other relatives of mine as well. They parked their cars and we all gathered to visit the most important part of the park, which was a holy place. The guide showed us where to go, there was a sheer rock cliff with a small ledge wide enough to drive on, and we were supposed to drive out. Some of my relatives I think drove a vehicle, and the rest of us walked ahead. The shelf was only just wide enough for the car, and plunging over the edge would mean disaster (this had something to do with why it was a holy pilgrimage spot, you were supposed to have enough faith and bravery to make your way along the edge).

We came to a point very quickly where the floor of the shelf had a lump in it like a small landslide had come down at some point, and it would be difficult to drive the car over without it tipping off the edge, so we decided to leave it and walk on (it would have to be backed up along the ledge to get back too). I went out to the most important point, which was a finger of rock sticking out, and sat there for a while. The rock was sort of a pinky granite. It was very peaceful and yet exciting.

Then, we started to head back and I returned to a hotel room we'd rented nearby, but AM came back with me. My husband and relatives would be following shortly. I was uncomfortable being there with him and realized that when my husband came home he also wouldn't be happy with the situation. So, I claimed I had to go to the bathroom, and went in and stayed there until my husband and mother and sister came back, then I emerged after they walked in, and we all reunited. The sun was just setting at that point illuminating the room with a rosy glow.

The park was well-known in the dream but I don't know of any place like this or that looks similar in the waking world, let alone being some kind of pilgrimage spot.

Trip to Algae Mountain

I have gone to visit my sister at a place she has been staying for a while, and we go to see the main attraction. It is a big rock set at the edge of a bay or inland sea. The waves wash up and crash over it but you can walk to it in between. She tells me that the rock is best accessed at high tide, which doesn't make any sense, because you can only get to it when there is some ground exposed between the land and the rock. The ground around the rock (normally underwater) is covered with white shells and rocks. The surrounding land is hazy with mist or sea spray and is smooth and mounded with bluffs covered with thick green grass. The rock itself is completely covered (almost upholstered) with that thick, cushiony grass-like algae. It looks like it would be slippery but I manage to climb up it, following my sister's lead, without slipping, and we cross it between waves crashing on it.

We go up to a smooth dark gray small slab of rock, partway up the side of the bigger rock. There is a young man with a backpack standing in front of it scratching something on it with a small stone. When he leaves, my sister follows suit and when it is my turn, I see that people have recorded their names or initials and when they visited the rock. There is a line of alphabet letters and most people have scratched their name/initials and date under the appropriate letter. But some people who have visited many times, like my sister, have their names separate with a list of dates underneath. There is not a lot of extra room to write in and I look for a place to scratch my name and the date. There is not enough space under the letter for my initial. My sister tells me to hurry up, and I realize that a line has formed behind me of several boys (maybe 10 years old) waiting to scratch their names. The first boy in line has dark hair and blacked rim glasses, and looks Asian. Finally I find a small empty space and scratch in my initials and the date (all the dates are years, as I recall). The stone is soft like claystone and easy to carve in. When I finish, I realize that the boys are being rounded up to get back into a van, which is parked nearby on another part of the rock. I realize they have to leave without having time to leave their marks, in an apparently very short but important trip out to this rock, and feel sorry for holding up the line.

After they are gone, an old woman comes up and asks my sister if she found something that the woman's brother or husband (not sure which) left her some weeks or months ago. I had the impression that the man who left it here has passed away or something. It seems that my sister has been coming here often. She looks behind the scratching rock, which has a back sort of like a podium, and removes a pouch, looking through it, but does not find the missing object. My sister is very helpful and eventually determines from talking to the slightly tottery old woman that the object is a Leatherman (one of those folding knife/pliers things). She shows the woman her Leatherman and the woman nods enthusiastically. Then from her purse she digs out another Leatherman, more worn looking, and this one has an enormous screw attached to it, maybe 6 inches long and proportionally thick (it was not part of the Leatherman, just tacked on afterwards). The woman is delighted and thanks her profusely.

We return to a house which is somewhat like my parents' house and somewhat like a house that my grandparents used to have. Several people are taking turns using the bathroom. When I go in, I think to myself that the house is big, fancy, has 7 rooms, and yet it only needs one bathroom. It's certainly sufficient, I think (notwithstanding all the people who apparently keep needing to wash muddy clothes in the bathroom), and comparing this to the real life fact that we recently were looking for a 2 bedroom apartment that my husband insisted had to have 2 bathrooms as well... surely unnecessary.