Category: dreams

I’m supposed to be in a wedding in Las Vegas. We’re in a big complex with hotels and shopping centers. I’m in one area and trying to figure out how to get over to another area to shop for things to wear. There are tram lines, but do I have time? It’s getting very late. Then I have a car, a little convertible, and I’m considering whether to put the top up to keep the wind from messing up my hair. I end up not taking the car at all. I’m trying to navigate the parking garage and shops by escalator but having trouble finding the shop I need. I end up going down when I need to go up. I need to find better shoes, but there isn’t time, so I decide to wear my everyday clogs. I need stockings  and go through my drawer and pull out several very old unopened packages of stockings. Most of them will not do, but one looks like a possibility. I pull them on, and they seem to work. Then they’re falling down, and I realize that there’s virtually no elastic at the waist. I ask someone for safety pins and find only paper clips. I make do and push them through the fabric, and miraculously they hold. I stop at a full length mirror on my way out. I’m wearing a deep midnight blue fitted dress and notice in horror that there are great big pink patches of some substance all over the dress. I brush and brush at the patches to make them go away but keep seeing more.

There is a basket of kittens, and everybody claims one. We put them in the cab of a truck for safekeeping.

I’m driving a station wagon filled with all of my worldly possessions covered over with white sheets. I’m in an unfamiliar town and turn off the road to pull into a gas station but stop when I realize that the driveway I’m pulling into is only for the mechanic and is blocked off from the fueling area. I can’t see how to get there.

We’re staying in a ramshackle motel or inn and leave the room for breakfast. When we return two ladies are cleaning the room and have packed up all of our stuff. I go past them to the bathroom. I’m trying to keep everything orderly, but the toilet has been moved. Someone tries to come in while I’m in there, and I pull the door closed again.

I’m dozing in a chair in a sitting area with a bunch of women I don’t know. One of them asks if I’m looking at her, but I let my eyes glaze over until it’s clear I’m falling asleep. I’m toppling over in my chair. The woman starts talking to the other women in the room and showing them the fistula she has in her breast. She tells them she can reach in all the way down to her knee and then demonstrates. I get up and move to a chaise longue that’s been vacated so I can sleep more comfortably. I’m holding a kitten and set it down before I sit. It takes over the seat, so I sit down anyway and make it give way. It does so only grudgingly, so I’m half-sitting on it and trying not to crush it. It’s long-legged and has silky fur. Another kitten is on the floor and reaches up and is playing with mine, then a third comes over– but I realize it’s the mother cat. She’s a big tabby– one kitten is black and white and the other is grey and white. She gives them a sniff over and then walks a few feet away and flops down gracefully with her back to us.

I’m visiting the home of a friend, and we’re going through the house, trying to get everyone settled. All the bedrooms have pairs of twin beds with different colored, matching spreads for each room. The rooms are reached by climbing up bookshelves. I have to carefully plan my route up the articulated face of the wall, and sometimes I get it wrong and have to go back down and start up a different way. As we go up floor by floor, all the rooms seem to be occupied by family members, and we never reach the room where I’m supposed to stay. I look over to the side after scaling a particularly challenging wall of shelves and see a staircase that’s been there the whole time.

I’m trying to gather things I’ll need. My toiletry bag is spilled out over the floor on the other side of a table. I crawl under it to reach the stuff and grab a few things and then back out from under the table, my forehead low to the floor. I look back and can’t see how my head possibly fit through because the leg support crossbars are so close to the floor.

I’m walking our dogs with another woman, and we come to a big road. Floyd runs out, and I have to call him sternly back to heel. There are cars way off in the distance, none so close as to be concerned, so I start across. But the road is wider than I realized– it goes on and on, and I have to break into a run to get across ahead of the cars. On the other side there is a rocky hillside. Somehow I’ve fallen behind. The other woman stand way up above, peering out and looking to see where I’ve gone. I pick up the dog to carry him and start up the hill.

I’m carrying someone’s baby around, and she’s heavy and awkward and keeps slipping. I keep hefting her up and jostling her, trying to get a better grip. I’m trying to juggle too many things I’m carrying, so I set the baby down. I’m focused on something I’ve placed in one of my bags– I realize it’s not mine and move it to give it back. I look around and can’t find the baby– where did I put her? I’m panicking– I’ve lost the baby! I’m looking and looking, and suddenly there she is up on a precarious ledge by two sinks that are quickly filling with water. I snatch her up and shut off the water. I’m holding her tight and rocking her, but I notice that the look in her eyes is terrified. I’m telling her I’m so so sorry, and she gives me this speaking look, like, yeah, right, okay, but you know what just almost happened. I’ve just had a very close call, and it’s up to me to see that it never happens again.

I’m carrying the baby through a crowd of people, and someone says something about how the baby is mine– I say, I wish. There’s a moment of confusion, and I say, I wish she were mine. I’ve tossed off the comment but realize the truth of it, and a weight seems to lift off, and I hold her tighter.

There’s a children’s show in progress, and I take the baby and grab a seat, trying to turn her in my arms so she can see the stage. But she’s squirming and unwieldy, and I realize the whole thing is lost on her, she’s too young anyway. So I get up to leave, but the floor is slippery and on a slope. I try to go one way and slip and almost fall and turn around and try the other way, which also slopes. I’m having a hard time since my feet can’t get purchase and I can’t use my hands. There are a couple of people up over the slippery part, and one reaches out to help– I hand her the baby and am able to clamber up the rest of the way.

…of arranging heart shaped stones together in a pile in the center of the table.

All the floors of J and E’s giant old farmhouse collapsed under the weight of their friends. We were all sorting through the wreckage trying to salvage important stuff. I managed to rescue J’s wedding dress and a pink crinoline underskirt and a one other thing.

I’m traveling and arrive late at night into a busy city airport, having missed my connection. I make my way to ground transportation and walk through ranks of tall rumbling buses, eventually locate the one I need, climb wearily aboard, ride it to my destination. Once my business is complete, I go back to the airport to fly home only to discover my ID is missing and recall its having been taken and handled by travel personnel on the trip out. I step up to the airline desk, bustling with hard, hassled-looking folks, and explain that my ID is missing, that I’d handed it over to them days prior, give them my maiden name, my married name.

The functionary thumbs quickly through a small file case, snaps it shut, says, “Nope,” and looks ready to move on to his next item of business.

I’m starting to panic a little and blurt out, “Wait! Wait! Could you look again? It must be here somewhere!”

The man sighs audibly and picks up the box once more. “Name?”

I repeat both names, spelling each succinctly.

He thumbs through the box with exaggerated care and says pointedly to me, “Not here.”

And I start to lose my shit. “Look,” I begin. “Your people took my ID from me and never gave it back—it must be here someplace.”

I start babbling a whole lot of extraneous information, how tired I’d been, how late it was, how I cant ‘fly home without this picture ID, and so on.

The guy’s getting visibly irritated and doing his best to simply ignore me and get on with the rest of the chaos at the desk until finally I snap and, raising my voice, say something like, “Would you fucking help me here?”

As soon as it’s out of my mouth I realize my mistake—the whole place immediately shuts down to me—I’ve crossed the line by cursing at them. I glance over at the supervisor’s window and see him glaring at me and realize I’m a hair’s breadth from getting hauled out of the place by security.

I grind my teeth, throw up my hands and walk away. Next I try the buses standing in lines like slumbering diesel-exhaling elephants. This goes on and on until I wake myself up with some verbal outburst in my sleep.

Beside me in bed Chris says, “What?” and I just say, “Dream,” and roll over.

I’ve fallen in the water, and the helicopter comes down to try to pick me up, but they hadn’t prepped for a water landing and don’t have the right shoes on the aircraft.

The pilot, who looks a good deal like Ving Rhames, says, “Let me see if I can do it.” But the feet immediately sink beneath the waves. Meanwhile someone else is throwing me grappling lines.

The pilot goes, “Crap. Okay, everybody hang on,” and he angles the machine downward and dives.

I have a split second to think, “Oh! It must be amphibious,” and draw a quick intake of air before I’m dragged along behind beneath the surface of the water and down. Presumably the plan is a quick dive and reemergence, but my lungs are burning until I expel my breath and wake up gasping.

Floyd is curled sleeping down where my feet would go, so I’ve torqued my body around him and return to wakefulness with a statement echoing from the dreamworld: I just keep tripping on all the dogs lying around the place.

I enter a house hanging on the edge of a cliff to rescue a tin box of letters and papers. the ocean has come up over the lip of the cliff and covered the grass where we were formerly sitting. an older man (our teacher? the descendant?) and I have taken off our shoes to go retrieve what’s left. the old house is tippy, precarious, and our added weight causes it to shift alarmingly, so we step back across the old wood floor gingerly– I find the letters, though they’re somewhat scattered. mostly they seem to be innocuous and not much worth the effort of saving– routine classmate valentines and such– there’s a good deal I may just throw away– the at the bottom are a few pieces that seem more meaningful– there’s a sheaf with handwritten messages from all my friends, expressing concern and care over my dark mood, and then there’s a folded-up piece of my own writing– I stuff it all back into the box and resolve to review it later on outside the tipping, sliding house. my companion is still working on his own search, so I poke around a little and discover an old handbag belonging to the former tenant– it hales from another era and seems to me to be redolent of history and character– it’s a large satchel type bag, and I’m imagining its owner, thinking how it’s just the sort of bag a lady might use to carry a shawl in, and lo and behold, I reach inside and pull out a length of fabric– which turns out instead to be a dress of deep blue and fascinating cut. the other guy has come over to see what I’ve found (there’s the sense he has prior claim on the house’s contents), and I hold up the dress to show him. I’m thinking I might be able to wear it, as the fabric is stretchy even though it at first appears quite narrow-waisted– but he gives me a dismissive look, and I feel quite horrible suddenly, though I play it off and offer the dress to him, telling him it would make an intriguing piece of art hung on a wooden hander on the wall.