Nightmares

I'm back to dreaming a lot but only in little vignettes so that in the morning it seems both overwhelming and exhausting to write it all down.  At least once there will be some dramatic nightmare scene.  Last night had a double feature.

Scene: a two-storey rambler, warm summer day.  Big trees, the slightly long left-to-grow-a-bit grass in the front yard sways in a warm breeze.  There are women, about thirty, in track suits and blazers with jeans, swarming through the house.  A real estate agent winds her way through them, winning best-dressed in patent leather heels, tasteful hose, pencil skirt, silk blouse, Hermes scarf, A-line coiffure; but under the careful makeup and facelift she is easily surfing the upper age limit in the house.

Everyone is writing a number on their own index card.

A woman, about 50, jeans, bright patterned blouse, dyed strawberry blond hair, parks and approaches the house.  "Lindsay," the real estate agent calls, and "Lindsay" echoes and murmurs through the crowd of women.  Lindsay hands the real estate agent a note, and before anyone else can reach her, she backs away, murmuring something about just having one thing to do, not wanting to stay.  People nearest have tears in their eyes but they nod, accepting she would rather be alone right now.

We realize she has just gotten a divorce and is in foreclosure.  Lindsay walks away, past her car, down the street.  A woman in the front room has collected all the index cards and is doing math.  Triumphantly she raises her head, "The total of all donations comes to $145,000; we did it!  We can save the house, girls!"  There is a general cheer, interrupted by the sound of a freight train wail.  People look up through the window.  People standing on the long grass on the lawn turn.

"That's funny," says the donation coordinator.  "I don't remember there being a train track out here."  The train whistler is insistent; then the squeal of brakes.  The train doesn't stop instantly of course.  It is too heavy.  Instead the brakes cause it to very painstakingly slow down and down and down and down until it stops a quarter mile down the track.

There is general commotion at the railroad crossing where a pickup truck and sedan had been waiting on the other side for the train to pass.  Every pair of eyes in the house is now trained on the spectacle a block and a half away.

You the observer know before the women in the house can allow themselves to. 

They should have stopped Lindsay instead of just letting her walk away.  They should have told her. 

People are carrying a stretcher.  In the distance the sound of sirens. There is someone on the stretcher.

The camera pans forward until you are looking right at the woman on the stretcher.  She seems remarkably intact, she is talking.  She shakes her head, gives a half smile. Her hand goes to the waistband of her pants.  She shifts as the paramedic approaches and her hand comes away red, blood seeps now from under her hips.  She shakes her head and says something more, shifts, and her torso separates slightly from her legs, blood gushes onto the carrying mat.

End scene

Scene two:
A global catastrophe has resulted in widespread starvation.  The US, particularly the west coast, was hit a little later.  People are just beginning to run out of food, but the animal situation is terrible.  People are on the move and livestock and pets aren't practical or portable.  I am traveling, always at night, trying to get to a family retreat that has reserves.  I have a tiny grey kitten with me. 

I pull up to a neighborhood grocery store and break in through the front glass door.  I see something move in the shadows and almost die of terror.  A stick figure shadow tows another small shadowy creature directly up the side of a wall; then I see there are ladder rungs attached that lead to the attic.  I hear dogs barking. 

I feel like I should follow - it seems like an invitation - but possibly one from a horror film.  It could be a trap.  I know the owner of the store in passing, a robust jovial woman named Josephine.  She hardly matches the skinny silent shade that skittered upstairs.  I am paralyzed with fear and then a small curly-haired dog leaps towards me.  "Where's Josephine?" I whisper, more to bring down the tension than to begin an investigation. 

The dog is skittish and strange, alternately lunging aggressively but soundlessly and then prancing and playful.  I decide the dog needs to be walked and pooped so I attach a lead.  There is another older slow dog I leave behind.  We head for the shop door.  Outside, inky blackness.  In the doorway is the small grey kitten.  It isn't far to the door but seems to take a very long time.  The dog on the lead is slowing down.  By the time we reach the door I have to pick her up and carry her.

I realize this dog is very tired, starving.  I think of the food in my car.  Should I feed her?  I only have enough to last this journey for myself and the kitten - who admittedly eats fairly little.  This dog would need a lot. Just tonight.  And then what?  I keep walking, trying to convince myself I'll find some other food for her.  There is a Fred Meyer just a few blocks away (instantly the image of swarming looters and danger; I ignore it).  There is a storage shed attached to the house; I will search in there.

The dog becomes limp.  She closes her eyes.  I keep walking.  She is dying, right there in my arms and I can feel it.  It is my fault.  It is too late.

Haunted

So last night I dreamt that I visited my old lab and my former boss was standing in the hallway eating dates.  Her funding had been cut in half so she was carrying folders of grant applications under one arm.  When she saw me she smiled like she knew something I didn't and asked, "How's it going?"

We walked silently down to her office, and she periodically spit date pits into a cup, like it was tobacco juice.  "So," when we finally stopped outside her door, "When are you getting back into a program?"

I knew she was asking if I was going to stop wasting my life and go back to school.  I felt like I might cry or hit her but instead I just said, "Why would you even ask me that?"

"Come on," she started, "we all know you just gave up."

"Just because I didn't follow the tenure track you think I'm a failure? " I sputtered.

She opened her mouth but I cut her off.  "For your information, I'm very happy in my position.  I'm making a difference."

"Are you?" she asked.  "Well," and she paused to spit a final pit into the cup and set it down.  "I guess that's that isn't it?"

Preparing for the Bahamas

This really happened though it could easily have been a nightmare.

The day after Thanksgiving, I was lying on the treatment table at the Silver Springs Medical Spa in North Vancouver while an esthetician ripped the hairs out of my lower body. I had not worked with this girl before and her accent was confounding me.

In the course of chit chat one sentence in particular eluded me and after asking her to repeat herself three times my natural Canadian politeness kicked in so I just nodded and smiled.  My other natural instinct, namely obsessiveness, continued to work on the translation problem until I realized  that one of the keywords used was "Brazilian".

I spent the next twenty minutes using my yogic breathing to combat not just the awareness of my healthy Celtic hair roots leaving my body, but avoiding any ill-advised calculation of the pain to shaft diameter ratio given how much beefier the hair north of my thighs is compared to anywhere else.

I still have no idea what she asked, but perhaps the barrier of my underwear was sufficient to communicate what my words might not - ie please leave me covered.  In any case, I left with most of the arctic circle intact.

I drove home to begin the easier part of prepping for the Bahamas: packing a suitcase.

tropical storm in Seattle

I wake to rain pounding the windows, wind whipping the house.  I half-expect to open my curtains to see palms trees thrashing the pre-dawn air, open my slider to hear the crashing surf.  It feels just like the last week I spent in the Bahamas.

Everyone said it was unusually cold that week, at least ten degrees cooler than normal.  Which was somewhat comforting since the only thing I kept wishing while there was that it was at least ten degrees warmer.  Well that and... will those $*#%!$-ing bugs stop BITING me?

I sit in my Seattle bed and reminisce by scratching.  There are more noseum bites on my arms, legs, and torso - even my feet and fingers - than there is tanned skin.  If I was a calomine lotion girl, I'd  just pour thirty of the melted strawberry ice cream bottles into a bathtub and crawl inside. As it is I have used up a whole tube of hydrocortisone cream and am getting set to crack a new one.

Thunder rumbles in the distance while I look at the steady glow of my one am (1254 to be precise) clock radio, and this almost finally breaks the spell.  The frequent windstorms in Bahamas lacked thunder, but that didn't stop them from shaking down power lines; the power in our hotel went out so often that I never actually got a chance to set the flashing just-woken LCD of the ancient clock radio on the nightstand to the correct time.  Instead I'd click the shutter on my camera, press play, and mentally adjust the timestamp by three hours.

But here I am, in the middle of the night, awake, mentally adjusting the glowing numbers on the clock as if it will anchor me, feeling my dreams fade.  It's exactly like every night on my just-ended tropical vacation.  I had a lovely time but it was cold, itchy, and I couldn't sleep.

Christmas in November and Hell on Earth

I went up to Squamish BC this weekend to see the fam - it's hard for us to find a time in December that works for everyone so we this year we're doing Christmas the weekend of US thanksgiving.  Really nice hotel room on the local golf course, portable pre-lit tree, brunch in the hotel in the morning, a trip to my sister's construction job site in the afternoon, and fish and chips takeout for dinner.  Then we opened presents.  What could be more traditional?

Really it has been delightful.  It snowed fairly heavily this week, and the entire Sea to Sky corridor, on which Squamish is one of several possible way stations, is set right inside a mountain range.  The sight of Santa himself driving his sleigh across the alpenglow couldn't make this more seasonal and festive. 

Last night I dreamt I was on a boarding school university campus.  I was married to a man; my husband and I were taking different degrees so I'd see him between classes.  He was in the dorm for early risers.  As I was on my way back from a really late night film class, I ran across him in a narrow bed waking from sleep.  He took off his trunks under the covers and tossed them at me.  "Is that an invitation?" I asked.   He replied sarcastically but in the affirmative.

I went to get ready and ran across an old girlfriend.  She showed me her six-pack from recent workouts and at the graze of my hand across her bare stomach I felt like I was melting and drowning.  We made out; it was hot and very risky, right in the middle of the morning in a building full of my colleagues.  Creeping back to my dorm I spotted my old boss seated in an open air lecture within line of sight of where I had just been.  We made eye contact and even though I couldn't tell if she had seen me, I flushed with guilt.  She leaned over to someone else in my department and whispered.

Of course when I got back to my husband's dorm room he was already up and gone.  I wondered whether I should try to explain where I'd been.

Next door was the fiction library building.  I walked in through the glass door, which streamed with condensation from the exhalations of all the people already inside meeting the winter cold outside, and pulled a book off the shelf at random.  It turned out to be a handwritten account of the end of the world, illustrated by pictures of tunnels going to hell.

"The entrances were set in pairs and threes across a great wall, under a fiery sunset.  There was an enormous communal wailing and the rank smell and bitter taste of sulfur as we drew closer to the rippled mouths of earth.  People hung back, afraid, but each in turn in the vast line of humanity, pushed forward by the frightened masses behind them, was sucked through one of these holes like a straw, feet-first, so that we could see the horror on their faces as they left us."

Next to this book was a first edition copy of The Cat in The Hat.

Workday redux

I woke at 6am having dreamt I did all the things I plan to do today at work.  Of course the dream also had pirates and an international alien drug running conspiracy... NOT.  And.... REALLY?!?!?!

Apparently it's not bad enough that instead of sleeping cozily through a snow day with my arms wrapped around a hot beverage and/or person :D, I'm working on Thanksgiving.  Now I get to do my work twice.

There was a lot more drama in my dream than I expect in reality.  I think there will be an N of 2 in my building today and the other person will likely be the security guard.  In my dream the halls were decked with scientists doing experiments and drinking.  FTR the reason there is no public service effort to propagate the Don't Drink and Do Science message, is because there is no real need for it.

There was also a creek that ran through my building and I was constantly moving my lab around to different buildings on campus in order to avoid the thugs that were hunting me down.

I shouldn't complain though.  Really.  In fact that was in my dream.  I had a conversation right before waking with a postdoc that works down the hall.  I explained to her that I was channeling gratitude.

Then I caught a glimpse of a man dressed all in black sneaking down the hallway, ninja-style.  So I excused myself and moved my microscope to another room.

Happy US Thanksgiving!!!   Today I am thankful that I am not really the target of an international gang of science poachers.

Dream in four acts

I had a dream in several acts, like a Shakespearean play or - if that's too lofty - a tv series.  The same characters reappeared in subsequent dreams and the conversation and plot referred to earlier events.

I slept fitfully last night, which normally would result in me getting up extra early.  But I've got a headache that drugs can't touch so the thing I most wanted to do every time I woke up in the night was go back to sleep.

I dreamt that I was dating a guy in my dance class.  In reality this is someone who is good looking, sweet-natured, a terrific dancer, and also someone in whom I have no erotic or romantic interest.  In the dream neither one of us were dancers.  We met in a library that was in the middle of shifting from the Dewey decimal system to the Robot intervention system.  Every time I went to look up a book it had been declassified by one system but was not yet in the new system; essentially it was in library cataloging limbo.  We bonded over being human in a confusing and digital age.

The library became our shared condo and also a lecture hall; two of the our fellow classmates - a short curly-haired blonde and a tall silent redhead - also lived in the library.  We slept in the master bedroom which was also where the rare books collection was housed; they slept in the study.  In the daytime, various professors stood at the door to the library to give lectures that virtually no one could hear or see because the acoustics in the library absorbed rather than reflected sound, and because the book stacks obscured almost any clear line of sight. We diligently sat on couches and took notes anyway.  There was a lot of whispered "What did he say?"

I woke up to a blinding headache, and exhaustion so profound it seemed impossible to go foraging for drugs.  I knew there were none in the house, but I suspected there were some in my car.  Instead I went to the bathroom and drank water straight from the faucet, then stumbled back to bed.

My boyfriend and I moved into a one-bedroom house in the suburbs with our library roommates.  We slept in the master and they slept in the living room.  There was a sun room with lots of plants at the back of the house.  None of us were in college anymore.   The roommates worked together waitressing at a local diner and my boyfriend was in construction.  I taught at the local high school.  But we went to night classes at the local university together sometimes, not as official registrants, but just to sit in the back row and listen.

In class one night we met an amateur filmmaker who doing a documentary on relationships.  He wanted me to discuss how my lesbian marriage had been different than my current straight relationship.  I declined but gave him permission to interview my roommates.

The redhead was too shy but the curly-haired blonde loved being in front a camera; she had all kinds of opinions and as she talked about how sad it was that my boyfriend and I never seemed to have sex I realized she was jealous and would take my place in a heartbeat given half a chance.  I knew he wasn't interested in her but wondered what kind of damage she could do by continuing to live in our space.

I woke up to the same blinding headache and the same series of judgement calls: yes, in excruciating pain, no not willing to put on clothes and go to my car, yes thirsty, no not willing to get a glass from the kitchen, and now unconscious.

We were having lunch on the patio with my boyfriend's family and friends around a big white plastic picnic table.  My roommate's comments were still bothering me and I realized that I had never had sex with my boyfriend and that since we moved into the house we barely touched anymore - there was no privacy.  So I took his hand, and when he looked at me, I kissed his forehead, eyebrows, cheeks, lips; his expression was pleasant surprise, and then we kissed for real.  Under the table where no one could see, I shifted my leg so it was against his crotch and pressed, heard him make a sharp intake and then release a moan into my kiss.  I moved against him again.  I wondered how the people around us felt and then I got lost in the slow, delicious seduction and stopped caring.

I wondered why I had waited so long. 

I woke and slept again and this time I was living in my childhood home with at least fifteen other people, some family and friends.  I was single.  The roommates and their partners shared my sister's old bedroom, I was in my own room, thankfully alone.  The bathroom she and I used to share was still full of all the things I own now; I realized that I had failed to clean it for company.  I waited impatiently through three other people's showers and discovered dildos and vibrators and lingerie still sitting out in plain sight. 

I went down to breakfast.  The small kitchen was stuffed with people and the stove had so many things going on it seemed like pots were sitting on top of pans.  I cooked an egg for myself and somehow destroyed two of someone else's eggs that were sharing the same pan.  I apologized, and tried to replace them.  It took five eggs to recreate their original breakfast because I'd drop the egg, or over cook it, or break the yolk.  The last egg to be rejected, gushed blood on opening.  I wasn't hungry after that so I gave them my egg instead.

I am awake for good now and ambulatory so it's off to the car for drugs, off to the kitchen for a glass of water, and maybe a quick check to make sure my bathroom would not be unfit for company.