A little from column A, a little from column B

I was slicing bits off the keel of a sailboat and recording the cut I had made in column A against the angle it sat in the water in column B.

The fortune cookie phrase floating in my head just before waking: "You have to relinquish control to achieve your dreams."

Episode 2

Fell back to sleep, woke two hours later from a dream that I was building a graph with two data points - the one from my last dream. And a new one about how clean I could get something with a whole container of Comet.

How many decimal points would you like with that?

Last night I took part of an MCAT practise test just for fun.  In real life.  Yes I'm that weird.  Some of my friends are testing for medical school this year and I got curious. 

Last scene before waking from sleep this morning: I was working a calculation and had finally figured it out.  I turned to the person I was working it for and asked, "How many decimal points would you like with that?"

Conclusion: I am just as much of a geek in my dreams as in real life.

Also, I want that bumper sticker/t-shirt.

Hell's waiting room and the face of Death

I was a young man named Alex.  A girl I was dating died and I had to carry her body to the lobby of heaven. 

I stepped through a doorway, the girl heavy in my arms, and found myself on a granite grey slab.  The walls were stop sign red, and there was a second door ahead of me, frosted glass etched with an arboreal pattern, like the network of blood vessels in the body.  It smelled like rotten vegetables, like the inside of a dumpster.  I realized I had taken a wrong turn. 

Keeping my grip on the girl tight, I backed out of Hell's lobby into the corridor.  It was side by side with a door that issued a pale blue light and wispy clouds.  I took a breath, walked through the adjacent doorway

and ended up right back in Hell's lobby.  There was muzak playing now, I noticed.  The air seemed sharper, expectant.  A shadow crossed behind the frosted glass door. 

Again I retreated, my heart hammering in my chest, arms cramping from carrying my girl.  I rested against the wall between the doorways, trying to catch my breath.

Across the hall was a discarded toaster oven, and in its burnished surface, I saw myself, the body of the girl in my trembling arms.  The archways on each side of me - one to heaven, one to hell - were reflected too. 

Something moved in the doorway to hell's lobby.  Don't, I told myself.  Don't look at it.  But I couldn't help myself.  A shadowy figure approached the doorway, and resolved.  I caught a glimpse of a corpse white skeleton face, with a thick oily tongue constantly licking its rotting lips.

It was all I could do not to scream, drop the girl and run.  I held my breath, trying not to get its attention.  It can't leave and come out to get me.  It's fine if I don't move.  Don't look in its eyes.

I began to calm down but then, with a sick lurch I realized, if I could see Death then... lifting my eyes again to focus on the toaster, I saw it watching me, saw it grimace in recognition and hunger.

I woke.

Making babies, then running away

"How about Emma and Anna if they are twins?"

My best friend and I were standing in a cavernous lab, unloading bags of fresh produce from a stainless steel cart into a tiny refrigerator.  I rambled off another handful of names for her future offspring.

She bent down to put away a canteloupe and pulled out a bottle of strawberry milk.  She held it up to the light, examining it this way and that, then nodded, satisfied.  "Now all we need is the sperm," she said.

We walked down the long hallway connecting other labs, stopping in at the ones I knew in order to ask for the missing ingredient, but everyone we met was female.  "This is really inconvenient." Her voice was tense, and I could tell she blamed me for having such a gender imbalance in my workplace.

Finally we reached the end of the hall, which opened into the Biochemistry storeroom; the three male employees stood at a huge table sorting mail and exchanging inappropriate banter.  

I wanted to ask the nearest person for assistance and leave quickly.  My friend insisted on interviewing everyone.  "To make the best CHOICE," she said.

All the employees wore black jeans and black button down dress shirts rolled up at the sleeves.  I sat on the table, dangling my legs while she flirted with the man closest to us.  He introduced himself as Frank.

Frank looked to be 50, was balding and short but had tanned muscular arms and an engaging, contagious smile.  Even I felt the corners of my mouth lift, my irritation subside as I watched them from the corner of my eye.  He glanced at the bottle of milk, and his eyes widened but his smile never wavered.  My friend laughed.  I could see her decision was made, no need to interview anyone else.  

Just as my friend began asking for a donation, a tall man in a black cape swept into the room.  He spoke briefly into the ear of the man at the far end of the table, and immediately the man stood ramrod straight, all but saluting.  The second employee, directly to our right apparently received a similar message, as he also snapped to attention and stood unmoving at his post.

As Frank, oblivious to what I assumed was his supervisor, smiled wider and said, "Yes," to my friend, the tall man in the cape was suddenly at my elbow.  He stood so close he was nearly touching me, but ignored me utterly.  He leaned across my body, as if to whisper something confidential to Frank.  His face, averted until this moment, came into profile - a luminous milky moonshine white, a hooked nose, small ice blue eyes - and I inhaled sharply from terror and recognition.

I watched helplessly as the man in the cape slid a remote over Frank's ear.  Frank's face went slack, the smile gone from his lips and eyes.

I grabbed my friend's hand.  She resisted me but I pulled her bodily out of the room, dragged her by the hand back down the hall.  We ran all the way to my house, a three storey townhouse tucked into the side of a green belt.  I had two neighbours, and all three houses sat at the far end of a long driveway.

My friend bent over on the front steps of the house, gasping, angry, still clutching her milk.  "What in the hell is going on?"

I gave her the Coles' notes - I wasn't really from earth, the man in the cape was a Specter sent here to kill me - the last of my kind - and would probably also kill anyone who tried to help me.  Blah, blah, blah, the usual boring interstellar plotline, could we please pack a small bag and LEAVE NOW???

In the foggy dusk shone distant headlights, slowly brightening.  "They're coming.  We have to GO."  There wasn't time to pack.  We ran into the house and up the stairs, finally emerging through a hidden staircase onto the roof.

When I peeked over the eave, I could see a small blood red convertible with the top down parked right outside my door.  It was empty.  Footsteps in the house.  My heart felt like a jack hammer in my chest.   My friend had disappeared.  I took a running leap and landed on the roof of the house next door, then shimmied down a drain pipe to the ground.

It was quiet, the grass wet with evening mist.  The house I'd landed on was abandoned, recently sold and the new owners had not moved in.  My other neighbours were on vacation.  Should I keep running?  The Specter was fast, but not overly intelligent.  It tracked like a bloodhound and would doggedly follow scents even if that meant going in circles over the same ground.

 I began walking out complex patterns through all three houses.  Canadian winters had made me an expert at that childhood snow game of Fox and Goose.

Welcome the unknown

In my dream I was juggling a lot of responsibilities and getting life advice from my best friend.

The last dream image before waking was of someone opening a door onto a huge, empty gymnasium.

The view was from the floor inside the gym.  As the door opened, bright sun spilled inside, glinting off the glossy waxed floor.  The room was clean even of dust and I felt a moment of dull panic.  

Last clear dream thought: "Welcome the unknown."

I stayed in bed a minute or two letting the empty room be there, full of possibilities, rather than fear.

Fall of empire

I'm working this job.  I'm at the top of my field inasmuch as you can be without achieving the holy grail of facultyship.  I'm paid about as much as you can be as a non-tenured scientist in academia.  I've got as much responsibility, autonomy and training as you can get in any job.  I come into lab at 10am ish or whenever the hell I please, I can see the sky, the water, and the freeway overpass from a fifth floor window that Actually Opens, and I don't hate that I often work till 1 in the morning.

I can see the stress in the faces of faculty dealing with yet another budget crunch.  I count colleagues departing from academia, only to wait months for a real job, one that bores them senseless.

I am paying enough attention to know the entire US economy is balanced on a tricky little ledge.

Though it's spring the air smells this certain way, like rotting leaves or imminent snow.

We are about to fall and I am going to miss all this.

This is not a dream

Last night I took some benadryl.  And slept from 930 to 6am without a shred of night life.

I've been having some kind of allergic reaction to pollen? food? - whatever it is, my lips are puffier than Angelina Jolie after collagen injections.  I already have an allergy to my own eyelashes so maybe I have become allergic to my whole entire face.

Despite being knocked on my ass by a half dose of children's anti-histamine, my lips are still huge and sore this morning.  Which may indicate that this is not an allergy.  And I am a lightweight.

Google says dehydration may be the culprit.  Then again, maybe I'm harboring alien life that is preparing to burst forth and destroy me as it emerges.

I'm drinking water and hoping for the best.

Do the macarena

450am first conscious thought: I need to be more grateful that my life is so easy right  now.

I could taste the dregs of some dream about hardship clashing with the reality of my soft comfortable bed, and the day of non-manual labor ahead, but couldn't remember anything specific.  Also I couldn't actually access any feeling of gratitude, only the admonishment that I ought to feel some.

My cat Jack was still scratching at my bedroom door, the trigger that had pulled me from sleep.  He does this so constantly that there is a groove worn into the wood of the doorframe.  My irritation was too big, it was taking up all my gratitude space.  I yelled, "stop it!" before closing my eyes and praying for more sleep.

I dreamt I had adopted 8 year old twin girls.  They arrived with an entire entourage of doctor, social workers and lawyer.  The social workers were here to evaluate my suitability, the doctor to familiarize me with their vaccination history and medications - one had asthma, the other occasional epileptic seizures.

The twins had just been orphaned by well off suburban parents and knew how to speak several languages and dance ballet.  I carried them around on my back, taught them how to do the macarena, had serious conversations about what happens after death, signed a lot of legal papers and suddenly the door closed, leaving just me and my twins.

And no Jack.  Where was Jack?  I realized my beautiful giant fluffy fraidy cat Jack must have run out the door with the stampede of exiting professionals.   He was not an outdoor cat; also he was not remotely street smart.  I searched and called but eventually had to give up.  I felt frustrated and scared; I didn't know where he was and I was late for work.

603am the sound of Jack scratching urgently at my bedroom door.  I feel immediately, viscerally grateful.  He isn't lost outside; I know exactly where he is.

Oh the troubles I've seen... dating

For a good part of my several dreams last night I was a guy dating a string of strong-willed women.

In my first dream series, I was literally a man.  I dated girls who were brown, with sleek black hair and lots of attitude - one was an ex-con, one had a fondness for throwing crockery to make a point, and another had grown up in Alaska, and learned to gut fish before she could walk.

I showed up at the doorstep of this woman, the one originally from Alaska, after inheriting her family bar in a poker game from a frequently-incarcerated brother.  It was winter in North Dakota, and as I approached the snowy front steps of the two storey blue house, she opened the door and brushed past me without even asking why I was there.  I had to call her back and explain my presence.

Even then, she didn't cry or fight, which would certainly have been the response of the daughter of the foreman of the Peruvian mine company where I'd spent the last six months as cook.  The mine had chronic fluid leaks which is to say that periodically and without warning, a wall of the mine shaft would burst open, gushing forth foul black liquid.  I eventually couldn't handle the sense that I was gambling with my life every day I went to work.

This girl simply fixed me with a long stare, told me it wouldn't be the first time, and, "anyway it's OK; you won't last a week."  My already-number fingers and cheeks tended to agree with her but I was feeling stubborn.  Anyway she was wrong.  I lasted three months before getting on a plane to Hawaii and swearing off frostbite and women altogether.  It turns out sarcastic, hard-working, tough girls, while initially a nice change from fiery, Latin, plate-throwing daddy's girls, can also be emotionally unavailable, callous and, in their own way, entirely self-centered.

My resolve lasted all of fifteen days but that might have been due to the fact that I had found a job working at a halfway house for women.

Recently a good friend said she had not realized how masculine I could be.  This came as a shock to both of us, as my personality is pretty mild and while not uber girly, my dress and demeanor is certainly not even androgynous.  I have never been mistaken for a man, which is definitely not the case for many of the queer women I have been close to.

I fell back to sleep at around 630 and woke up in my dream, as my female self, in bed with my wife and my best friend, a man I'd known since high school.

My wife and I lived in a gigantic condemned building at the side of a crumbling ravine at the edge of a desert in Somewhere, Arizona.  It was winter, which is to say, the temperature was not the scorch-you-to-death-without-air-conditioning typical of AZ summers.  Days were pleasant, nights chilly.

I had a diary hidden in the house in which I wrote many private things; I was consumed with paranoia that someone would find it so I kept moving it to new locations and then forgetting where it was.

I went for a long walk outside on a Saturday and ran into a middle school class on a field trip.  They were crossing the raised boardwalk next to the only water source on the property - a huge sinkhole wide enough to resemble a small lake.

Several kids on mopeds - our neighbours' sons - were out riding the dunes.  They waved and shouted to the class.  While everyone's attention was diverted, the only male chaperone, a tall thin man dressed in khakis and sporting a whistle on a neck chain, got too close to the fenceless edge of the boardwalk and fell ~50 feet.  He entered the water with a huge splash and was not seen for several breathless, tense minutes.  I wanted to help but couldn't swim.

When he emerged, dripping and exhausted but essentially OK, I set about herding our cats, who had escaped from the house in the morning, back home.

It is morning.  I am female, I am in my bed in my house which is a modest 3 bedroom rambler and not  in the least bit condemned.

The sun has been up for hours, trying to work its way into my eyes, while I stubbornly resisted, but it is the trash being collected at the strip mall behind our house - the sound of glass bottles clinking as the whirring mechanized arms of the garbage truck lifted the recycling bin into its mouth - which has finally severed my remaining connection to the many plots unfolding all night.

I feel like I have left several novels only half read.  But, it is time to work.

Going to pieces

I had a plan in three parts to kidnap myself.  I split into three people to accomplish this, each of me delegated one of the tasks so that no one of us could be successfully interrogated by police.

The rest of my dream was elaborate and consuming, interrupted on occasion by the progression of the kidnapping, much the way commercials punctuate conventional television.

I remember none of the main narrative now, the long plot unfolding in between commercial breaks.  I know I was on part three when I woke.  

The superstitious scientist

A new family moved into my neighbourhood and my department at work - my dream neighbourhood that is.  They were Pagans of some sort and although the husband/father was a new member of the science faculty, he was incredibly superstitious.  Also he wore a cape.  A black satin cape embroidered with metallic, colorful stars.

At their housewarming party I met his wife Carol, in a  long flowing grey gown and a pointy hat. Their their only child, Rosabella, was 14.  She sat at the kitchen table in a short black velvet dress passing her hand through a candle flame. She told me that contrary to conventional medical thinking, the organs inside the body floated in air, shriveled and preserved inside the body, each attached to the skeleton by a single fibrous stalk.  

I asked the father what he would do if he were a surgeon; would he abandon his beliefs if, as he was cutting into a body, things were not as he preconceived them to be.  He said no.  I asked why.  He said it simply wouldn't happen, because he was right.

I returned to my house where I had taken to sleeping in a large drawer at the bottom of a chest.  Several of my friends were bedded down in the closets and one was curled up inside a kitchen cupboard.  At about 1130 my wife got up to prepare for an evening lesbian dance.  My friends were going too and tried valiantly to convince me to join them.  I pleaded exhaustion and returned to my drawer.

In my dream, I slept.  I woke up this morning in a real bed, organs apparently intact, other than mild heartburn from eating far too late last night.

The cop who couldn't die

This dream has cross-sexuality law enforcement infidelity followed by near-death hallucinations and a cliff hanger of an ending.  A warning to our listeners that it may not be suitable for younger children or people with any physics background.

First/also the main characters come straight out of Continuum which I watched a few too many episodes of last night.  This yet-another cops and robbers drama series features a female lead who has been dragged from her job as a Protector (read: cop) in 2077 into present day Vancouver by a giant time travel fusion reaction set off by seven convicted terrorists eager to escape their executions and start a revolution in the past.  To achieve her personal goal of hunting down the terrorists and finding a way home to her husband and son, she poses as an American special agent and gets paired with Carlos, a hunky Vancouver cop.

IN my dream the Continuum girl cop is a lesbian.   I'll call her Cameron because her first name, Kiera, makes that premise entirely implausible.  Cameron is at a Chinese buffet with the beautiful but married Carlos, in a seedy part of town.  They are discussing an accidental kiss the previous night.  As they enumerate all the reasons why it will never happen again, their bodies come closer and closer, till the upholstery seems ready to catch on fire.  Finally they give in and start kissing passionately in the cheap vinyl booth of the restaurant.

The transgressive make out session serves to dull their cop senses;  as they exit the restaurant, they are confronted by seven gaunt, wiry, desperados easily identified as TV criminals by their disheveled clothing, distinctive creepy features, and piercing eyes.

The male cop attempts to reason with them - he explains the two of them are police officers and it will bring trouble down upon them if they "do anything crazy" but the ruffians seem unmoved.  The girl cop palms her futuristic weapon and a firefight ensues.  In the chaos Carlos and Cameron are separated.  Carlos is shot through the chest and begins to bleed out.  He is on the verge of consciousness when Cameron finds him and begins applying pressure.

As he lies dying, Carlos re-experiences the night's events in a vivid, hallucinatory and benign series.  First he is inside of a nest made of turquoise and royal blue yarn interwoven with twigs.  Cameron is there.  The criminals are the hatching eggs, their siblings.

My dream ends after Cameron has requested an ambulance, called in "officer down" and continued to do her level best to keep Carlos from dying, but before help can arrive.

On TV he'd live, most likely.  Unless it was the sort of show where the main characters are allowed to die and get replaced by more unrealistically beautiful actors.  In real life he'd certainly die.  By getting shot in my dream and failing to die before I woke up, Carlos gets to exist in that between place, an ever-unresolved purgatory.  Dreams have rarely if ever a real sequel.  I doubt I'll be seeing him again.