Sunday, December 28, 2008

ALF on the Barge

MORNING OF DECEMBER 27, 2008

This is definitely one of the more bizarre dreams I've had in a while, and that's saying a lot. It started with me rehearsing for some kind of play or production in which I was playing the character of ALF (yes, the alien from the 80's TV show). I was rehearsing with the actors who played Willie and Kate Tanner on the show. I did not have the ALF puppet in my possession, nor was I in costume...presumably I'd have something of the sort in the official production.

The set we were on looked like a kitchen, with "Kate" standing by a counter and "Willie" and I at the table. I can clearly remember having a script in front of me, and I had a line that was roughly a paragraph long. Since I can't imitate the ALF voice, I was trying hard to at least capture the cadence and inflections of his speaking. For whatever reason, I kept fumbling this particular line, and the other actors were growing increasingly impatient.

Finally, we took a break. I continued to sit and try to memorize my lines. At this point, Sarah Palin (yes, the governor of Alaska and much-ballyhooed Republican VP pick in the recent 2008 election) walks in with a boy about five years of age who was supposedly her son. It's worth noting that in the dream she was ridiculously attractive, much beyond her real life appearance.

So Palin, who is apparently a friend of mine, asks me if I can take her son on ahead to so-and-so restaurant that we're going to be eating at shortly, while she talks to the other actors about something. This is the first point in my memory of the dream that I'm aware that the set we've been practicing on is built on top of a huge barge that is floating down a river (I recognized the river as an actual nearby river, the Coosa).

The boy and I got into a little novelty pedal-boat and pedaled our way from the barge up the river a short distance to where the restaurant was located (it was on land overlooking the river). It seemed more or less like a kid-friendly place, sort of a subdued Chuck E. Cheese's or something. I got a booth for us and made sure the kid was good to wait there until I came back. Then I left the restaurant and pedaled my way back to the barge/set.

Shortly after my return, the entire barge began to bring the rest of us to the restaurant. Palin and I sat on the front part of the vessel with our legs dangling over the side, watching the river before us. It was around sunset, and was very peaceful. She was talking about something that I have no memory of.

It didn't take long for us to arrive at the restaurant and regroup with the boy (I remember I could see him watching for us from one of the windows when we first got there). As soon as we got in, he began asking Palin if he could have a quarter to get something (gum, a little toy, whatever) from one of those dispenser machines. She allowed him to do it.

We sat down in the booth and at this point I realized (with perfect acceptance and no shock) that it wasn't Palin but a girl I knew for a brief while a few years ago.

Sisters and Witches

MORNING OF DECEMBER 26, 2008

I was in some very small "mom & pop" type of store looking at Christmas decorations one night. There were a lot of Tinkerbell decorations, many of them adorning a small tree on a shelf. I eventually left that part of the store to look at other stuff, and came upon a Tinkerbell window-cling decal on one of the store windows. I took it down and for some reason was considering buying it. Other things happened in the store at this time, but I can't remember what. I do recall that most of the handful of customers seemed to be older people.

Then I remember being in a room with a few other people, and I was talking to a young girl, probably around 8 or 9 years old. In hindsight, she was a little bit like Olive from Little Miss Sunshine, even though I haven't watched that movie in a while. The girl was crying a little bit, and was clearly upset about something. I was desperately trying to lift her spirits, and part of what I said to her was something like, "I'm so lucky to have you for a sister, you know that, don't you?" I don't really have any siblings at all, so that's weird.

Somehow the girl and I were then involved in a staged contest of some sort where we had to "outsmart the wicked witch". Basically we were alone in a building that looked kind of like the store from before, but now emptied of people and mostly dark. We knew someone playing the character of a wicked witch was after us, hiding in the store also. We had to try to outsmart the witch and escape without being caught by her. If we did, we won the prize. I remember the witch springing out and confronting us at one point, and it was scary in the sense that it would catch you off guard.
For some reason the girl and I were each wearing gray sweatsuits.

The witch part of the this dream might come from the fact that I'm currently rereading Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, though I'm not yet anywhere near the part where Elphaba has become the "witch".

Snow and Fire

MORNING OF DECEMBER 25, 2008

In real life I was spending the night at my parents' for Christmas when I had this dream. While there was no chance of anything like snow for Christmas (the weather was rather warm and pleasant, if a bit rainy). I dreamed that my mom came into my room early in the morning, around 5:00, to say that we'd gotten a light snow. She was waking me up because it would likely be mostly melted by the time I got up much later in the morning, but she thought I might want to see it or take some pictures of it.

The rest of that dream consisted of my thinking about getting out of bed to take pictures of the snow. I could see a little of it from the window near the bed. I was just too sleepy and comfortable to really get up. And I think at some point I eventually did wake up just enough to realize I was dreaming the whole thing.

Later there was a dream that had something to do with a girl and I hanging out at my apartment on night
(I don't recall who she was, not even if she was from real life or just fictional). We went outside where there was this odd little hut of some sort on the lawn. Somehow we accidentally caught its straw roof on fire and began trying to put it out with a conveniently placed hose.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Fiona

MORNING OF DECEMBER 20, 2008

I remember that someone gave me a cat. While I do love both cats and dogs, I don't currently want an indoor pet in my apartment, so in the dream I felt a little anxious about receiving it. It seems like the whole scene in which I got the cat took place in the living room of the house I lived in as a teenager.

The cat was very beautiful. It had long fur of hues only slightly different than a Himalayan (which is the kind of cat we actually owned when I was a teenager...except that was a male and this was a female). The most striking thing is that its eyes were a sort of pastel purple shade. I'd never seen anything like it, but it was actually very pretty. For some reason, when I saw those eyes, I instantly named it Fiona without any thought.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

An Evening With Kate

MORNING OF DECEMBER 18, 2008

In real life a couple of nights ago, I happened in passing to catch an interview on TV with Kate Winslet concerning her upcoming movie, Revolutionary Road. While I'm currently completely neutral on seeing that movie, this interview apparently worked its way into my dreams tonight.

I was at the theater watching the movie with none other than Kate Winslet and one other person (I can't remember who, but it was a guy). Somehow I "remembered" that I'd already tried to watch this movie once and had been interrupted. This was my second attempt. At one point during the movie, Kate yawned and then rested her head on my shoulder.

The simple head-resting became progressively more of a full-fledged snuggle-up. Would you believe I didn't protest? Things were quite nice, but eventually the scene changed so that we were no longer in the theater, but were sitting in some kind of old wooden shed out in the middle of the woods at night. We were in the same snuggled-up position, only the location had changed (the change was not jarring to me in the dream).

We continued to snuggle alone in this old shed. And I'm not just toning things down for the blog when I say that snuggling is all we were doing, and there was something so pleasant about it.

We'd left the door of the shed cracked open just a bit to allow in a little moonlight (the only light we had). Suddenly I noticed the door was crawling with bugs that looked like a cross between roaches and regular beetles, but I just identified them as roaches in the dream. There were also a lot of ants visible nearby. I told Kate I'd better spray, even though "someone was supposed to be keeping this place sprayed already."

Kate stepped outside, wrapped in a large blanket for warmth (I'm not sure what, if anything, was under it). I found a can of bug spray that was kept in the shed and began spraying the door and all the corners, etc. I was just so frustrated that this had interrupted such a nice time. I feared that I wouldn't be able to recapture the moment. I worried that we wouldn't be able to go back into the shed because of the poison. The bug spray ran out very quickly, adding to my frustrations.

Suddenly, a middle-aged man approached me. He was of slender build, had a thick mustache and wore a baseball cap almost as dirty as he was. He cautiously asked in his southern drawl if I could help him. He wondered if I kept a shovel in this shed, because he and his young son were trying to bury their dead pet parakeet. I told him I thought there was indeed a shovel in there, and he went on to ask if I could actually dig the hole for him. Apparently he had some sort of injury that kept him from being able, and his son was too little to dig efficiently.

Since it need only be a parakeet-sized hole, I agreed to do this for them. I looked over at Kate, still waiting nearby in her blanket. She gave me a "do what you have to do, it's okay" shrug, so I followed the man, just hoping the snuggling could resume when I returned!

The man showed me a nearby location where they wanted me to dig. His small boy was waiting there with the dead bird. It was in front of a conveniently placed, human-sized tombstone. I began digging, and only a short time later found my shovel striking something hard. Then, all at once, as only dream logic could provide, I unearthed an entire coffin. The man's son freaked out a little, and the man just said something like, "Oh crap, we dug too close to Uncle 's grave!"

Then the man began awkwardly trying to push the casket back into the ground, and somehow Uncle Whoever partially fell out. It was a very disturbing scene, so I just left as quickly as I could.

Making my way back through the woods to hopefully find Kate still waiting is the last thing I can remember (because, you know, naturally that would still be a concern immediately after accidentally unearthing a corpse).

Monday, December 15, 2008

The Tribute Book

MORNING OF DECEMBER 12, 2008

In real life the last thing I saw before bed was the headline that 50's pin-up model Bettie Page had died at 85. I thought in the back of my mind that maybe I'd do a Bettie Page drawing as a tribute. This plays into the following dream quite blatantly.

The first part of the dream had something to do with driving down a long, winding road with lots of trees on either side. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I was supposedly either going to or from an errand for my job, and this scene was based vaguely on real life activities in recent days (with the notable exception of the sunny day).

Then the dream changed to where Eric was with me in the car and we pulled into this little log cabin convenience store. Inside Eric suddenly remembered to congratulate me for "getting into that book". I didn't know what he meant, so he went on to explain that a Bettie Page tribute book had just come out with several illustrations by various artists. Apparently my illustration was selected to be one of the many.

I remembered in the dream that I had planned to do a Bettie drawing when I found out she had died, but I rightly had no memory of having actually drawn it yet, let alone of somehow getting into a book. It was rather confusing.

Eric bought something at this store and he handed me his receipt, asking me to read what it said. Instead of an actual list of his purchases, the slip of paper simply read that Goldfrapp would be in concert locally on February 24 (which happens to be my birthday). He said we should definitely plan on that, and I woke up.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Fallen Tree

MORNING OF DECEMBER 9, 2008

I was in my car with some friend, I don't really remember which one. We were stuck at the back of a long line of cars at a red light. To the left of us there was a steep dirt embankment with a few trees on the level ground above it.

The wind was blowing fiercely as a storm was coming in. Suddenly there was a loud crack as one of the trees was blown down. It was completely uprooted, landing on its side before rolling down the slope to toward the vehicles waiting below. It came to rest just at the edge of the embankment. We all held our breath as it wavered on it's perilous perch.

Suddenly some soil gave way the the entire tree dropped off the embankment onto one of the cars at the front of the line. It was pretty terrifying, because it looked like the people in that care must be doomed. Several people, including my friend and I, rushed out of our cars to see what kind of help people might need.

Three or four latter-middle-aged-to-elderly ladies we crawling out of the car, frazzled but seemingly unharmed. They were complaining in shock about what had just happened, especially the fact that the loss of the car meant the loss of their shelter from the impending rain. I remember vividly the image of one of the ladies who wore a pink shawl tied around her head to protect against the elements, and it was flapping madly in the wind.

I was relieved but a bit perplexed that no one seemed hurt when the car was mostly flattened vertically down the center.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Crystal, Comics and Classes

MORNING OF DECEMBER 8, 2008

The second remembered dream from this night: I was in some kind of dimly-lit comic store with Richard. There were several people sitting at a table signing things/doing sketches. Richard told me who each artist was, but I didn't recognize any of them. Still, we were standing in the line.

There was one girl in the group and Richard explained that she was played the part of "Lightning Girl" (or some similar name) in the upcoming
Watchmen movie (obviously there is really no such character). When I got up to the actress, I realized I had nothing for her to sign. There was a conveniently placed pack of printer paper beside the table, so I grabbed a sheet and handed it to her.

Instead of signing it, she drew a sketch of the "Lightning Girl (or whatever)" character and handed it back to me. Her signature on the sketch was Crystal Bernard, the actress from the 90's sitcom,
Wings!!! I never watched that show, and who has even heard from this actress in years since then?! I don't have the faintest clue how she infiltrated my dream like this. Just plain weird.

After leaving the store, we went to a some guy's house, only now I was with Eric instead of Richard. The guy was giving us a tour of the place. Supposedly his toddler-aged son had died a year or so previously, and it seemed his slightly older son was responsible for having deliberately done it and was now in juvie. The man was sorrowfully recounting his tale to me, and as he spoke I could see re-enactments of how it happened, as though I were watching a TV. It was fairly depressing.

The man took us into a downstairs room, sort of a furnished basement, and began to show us some old memorabilia he said he'd inherited from his father. He handed us each an old record album from his collection and said we could have them as gifts.

My record album featured the "The Age of Aquarius" by the 5th Dimension! How random! Suddenly I noticed I wasn't holding a regular album sleeve, but a box of the same dimensions (except deeper). I opened the box to find several old comic books inside.

Most of the old comics featured Disney characters, and looked like they dated back to maybe the 50's or so. Toward the bottom of the stack there was a series of more generic-looking comics from the same era that heavily featured pin-up style good-girl art. I can't remember the titles or covers of most of them, but one of them featured a character called "Lambykins", and she was a "sexy" anthropomorphic sheep character. I found this fairly bizarre and somewhat perverse to have come out of the 50's. Another book had a title that referred somehow to "Fairy Tale Girls", and it had a bunch of saucy-looking renditions of female fairy tale characters in battle with each other. Most of them, I think, were Disney versions, and definitely included Alice from A
lice in Wonderland, but some might have been generic, non-Disney designs.

When the man saw all of these comics, he suddenly reminded us that he was only showing these items to us, and had not, after all, given them to us (even though he definitely had originally given them).

When we came upstairs from the basement (empty handed), we were in school. The bell was ringing and the halls were busy with students scurrying to get to their classes. I panicked because I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be in class all this time. I instantly knew it was time for math class and that I had already missed the two classes before it.

But where was my backpack with my things in it?! Had I left it down in the basement? Had I left it at the store where Crystal Bernard was? As I was running about in my frenzy, I happened to see I had left my backpack and my coat lying on a table that was just sitting in the hall where I was. That was convenient.

But now I realized I didn't remember where my math class was located! And the halls were now silent as everyone was already in class. My panic increased as I began running around frantically trying to locate my class.

And the phone woke me up.

Terminator in a Terminal

MORNING OF DECEMBER 8, 2008

The first of two remembered dream from this night: I was watching the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show, but it was like I was both watching and participating at the same time. A bad Terminator showed up on a motorbike trying to trick John Connor into riding somewhere with him. Somehow I was thinking as though I was a good Terminator and needed to stop the bad one.

Before it went any further, I was walking into a futuristic-looking terminal of some sort, and there was a bank of computers hooked up to iTunes. Cameron, the good Terminator from that series was using one of the computers downloading music into herself. In real life this weekend I purchased an album on iTunes and had problems receiving the files. So in the dream I went up to one of the iTunes computers and tried to see if I could successfully download my files yet. The only music I could find on the dream computer was Terminator theme music. It was an annoying and fruitless search.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

A Night In the Tree

MORNING OF DECEMBER 6, 2008

I was leaving a strange house late at night. It was in a secluded location surrounded by woods. I drove my car down a road in said woods, but the road was very narrow and almost entirely covered in dry, fallen leaves, so that it was hard to see or to follow.

Suddenly I realized a police car was behind me with his lights on. I couldn't imagine how one could get a ticket driving alone on a trail in the middle of the woods at night. As it turns out, when I pulled over, the cop just kept right on going.

The next thing I remember, I was up in the top of one of the trees. There was a makeshift treehouse of sorts in the branches. It looked like it had been modified from an old golf cart (which is weird because I don't play golf or ever ride in gold carts, so I have no idea where this came from). It had obviously been up there for a long time.

I tried to sleep in one of the seats of this "treehouse". It was very cold out, so I was bundled in blankets, and I remember tossing and turning, pulling them around me as I tried to get warm. (I think I was actually barely waking up at this point, actually turning trying to get comfortable and warm in my real bed). Every time I turned in my perch, it would shake and waver precariously in the branches.

There was a noise from below, and I looked down over the edge with a conveniently placed flashlight. I located a little gray tabby cat that appeared to be lying dead nearby. I was afraid either I or the cop might have run over it earlier, but then it suddenly turned over and I realized it was only asleep.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Do Not Cross

MORNING OF DECEMBER 4, 2008

I know there was a lot going on in this dream, but it's one of those where I can only really remember one thing. I heard a medical report on the news that crossing your legs could be damaging. Either way you crossed them was potentially bad--guy-style or girl-style--it didn't matter.

The reasoning was something to the effect that it pinched veins in your legs and restricted blood flow, and over time this could lead to permanent damage. I wondered if I needed to be concerned, because I'm sure I cross my legs regularly while sitting.

There was also something about watching an episode of
ALF , because I've really been watching that childhood favorite on DVD off-and-on here lately. The part I remember in my dream featured ALF getting into the Tanner's dryer to hide.