Why Don’t I Write Here Anymore?

It’s quite simple, really. I started this blog with a goal to experience a lucid dream. I thought it would take years for me to achieve this goal, but it only took a few months! After I’d accomplished my task, the blog and my dream-life wasn’t so interesting anymore.

Since I didn’t have a broad foundation for the blog, I didn’t continue writing. I’ve still had some dreams that I think are significant, but have been recording them the old-fashioned way (pen and paper).

I’m happy to say that this little venture didn’t discourage me from blogging altogether, in fact I really enjoyed it and have decided to make a new blog. I’ve been ‘cooking up’ an idea for several months and started writing last night. I hope you like it!

Dream About Underwater Rescue (maybe)

Hi, haven’t written in a while but I had another dream last night. It involved people from my real life (but probably no one who will read this blog, don’t freak out) so I will use just initials so their identities remain ’secret’. If you are very close to me you may figure out who they are and that’s ok, I trust anyone that close to me to be appropriately discrete.

The dream takes place at a beautiful lake. There are a lot of people that I know there having a good time; I think it may be some kind of work function. We are all milling about chatting, tossing frisbees, etc. when a minor celebrity pulls up in a huge truck with an expensive-looking little boat hitched to it. He lowers the boat into the water and his entourage gets in the boat, but he decides to come and chat with the ladies attending our function. He is very charming and says he wants to swim so he invites us all to get in the lake and cannonballs in.

We all follow him- me, A and R who are very close friends, and T, who also knows A and R. A, who is a very boisterous and exuberant young lady, follows him in first and dives into the water followed by T and myself. R hangs back and stays on the shore; she is one of those young women who can completely capture almost anyone’s attention with her beauty and charm if she wants to, and she already seems to have captured our celebrity’s attention; he quickly swims close to the shore near her despite a collecting throng in and around the water near him.

T and myself start to make our way over to all the action when one of us notices that A hasn’t come up for air yet. We wait anxiously for a few seconds, then I dive down. No sign of her. T stays and I swim over to the crowd; I have no idea how good a swimmer A is and think that perhaps she could have dived deep, swam underwater and surfaced near to where all the people were gathering. I can’t see now whether she has joined the crowd or not; there are too many people. I look over my shoulder to Twhere we entered the water. She is diving and coming up with a panicked look on her face. I yell to R, “Is A over there?”

She looks at me with a frown; I guess I interrupted her. I yell louder, undeterred, “Hey! Can you see A from over there?We can’t find her-”

“Why do you think you’re better than me?” she says, “You think I don’t care about her too?”

Puzzled and irritated by her reaction, I blurt out something about A not coming back up for air after what has now become, horrifically, about two minutes. I swim back to T, who has now come up out of the water with news, “I just felt something!”

I duck under the water, using the man-made wall at this edge of the lake to force myself down deeper than before. I feel my foot kick against what must be a human limb and somehow, though I am no great swimmer, manage to release the wall, swim down and grab her arm. I grab and pull and it feels like I am pulling her out of something- a hole in the wall?- it doesn’t matter, she comes out as I push away from the wall holding her little, cold arm crossed in both of my arms tight. I look up- or what I hope is up- and kick, kick, kick. At first I think I’m going to make it ok but then my chest starts to get tight. It gets tight and then it starts to burn. The burning continues and grows in my chest until it has to explode, there’s no way it won’t, but I know I will keep kicking up and up, holding her arm tight even if my lungs demand to be filled and as I open my mouth in answer to the demand, gambling on the chance I will hit the surface in the next few moments as I have to breathe now, anything to fill the burning, imploding lungs now, I wake up in my own bed with my chest burning.

Dream about Violence

OK, so it’s been a long while since I’ve shared anything. I went through a long period where I didn’t dream at all, and then once I started dreaming again I decided I’d only share dreams which I thought were significant in some way.

Last night I had a long, multistage dream. The last part of it seemed significant to me so I thought I’d share.

I am a counselor at a large youth camp with high-school age attendees. At first I think it is a youth camp for girls, then I realize there are young men there too, but there is only one boy for every ten or fifteen girls.

On the second day of the camp, we come under demonic attack. I don’t know how we know, but everyone just feels something bad is going to happen. We all go to the chapel/sanctuary to pray.

While we are praying, two of the young men stand up and start shouting and waving guns in the air. They are sitting very close to one another but I don’t think they planned this together because one of them seems very surprised. The surprised one gives up his gun right away, but the other one- the one who stood up first- is still threatening people. I don’t know what to do but then i realize I am one of the oldest ones there and need to take responsibility, so I grab the barrel of the gun and push it up in the air just as he fires it. I wonder how I got the strength to do that b/c he is stronger than I am.

I start talking to the young man. I tell him how great it is that even though the gun went off, no one got hurt and really everything is going to be ok now if he will just give me the gun. He ends up giving me the gun, then he breaks down screaming and crying. The girls around him grab him and restrain him, praying and trying to calm him down.

One last thing I noticed is that there were no older male authority figures at this camp. This was especially obvious as I held the gun that I had wrestled away from the boy, wondering what I would do with it, what would happen if one of the young men tried to take it from me, etc.

I wonder if this dream is significant. Obviously, there is something to be said about the culture of violence in America and how much of our entertainment (movies, TV, video games) is rich with violence. I am not sure how I feel about whether or how that effects young people or people in general- what do you think?

More significant, in my opinion, is the lack of male authority, therefore I think the dream may also be a representation of what could happen in America/ the American church if the current trend of fatherlessness and lack of male spiritual authority/ leadership in the home and church continues. What do you think?

That being said, I just want to say something about my church, Every Nation Tallahassee. I am so proud of the pastoral staff and basically all the men who have stepped up into leadership roles in my church. They are all great men of God, strong leaders, and are fulfilling a role that is so necessary and unfortunately vacant in many churches today: they are godly role models for our young men and boys. I have never thought about this before, but now I realize that in the event of emergency there would be plenty of men in my church willing and available to step up and lead, that gives me great comfort; not that women cannot lead, but I know there are some things I just wouldn’t feel comfortable or safe doing and appreciate the fact that I will never be left with a job that is not right for me just because the person that is better suited for that job is unavailable.

I am in Wal-Mart, looking for a hat. I don’t really know why I am in Wal-Mart, because I hate Wal-Mart, but there I am. They have a very small selection of hats.

An employee has been straightening out the area and she tells me to please put everything back neatly once I am done looking. This is kind of irritating because she says it in kind of a whiny way and because isn’t it sort of my job to look through the stuff just like it’s her job to straighten it up? Also, who said I wasn’t going to straighten things up once I was finished?

I brush it off and continue looking. Looks like there’s not really anything I want. But then I try on this cute green hat… uh oh. Here she comes again looking all irritated. What a brat. She tells me again to please put things back nicely once I am done with them. I tell her I’m not done, that ’s the whole point and go complain to her manager.

Then I am in a high school and some girl is getting married. All of her party’s dresses look awful as does hers but she looks so happy I don’t want to tell her.

Then I go outside and Sam and I along with one of Sam’s sisters get in this flying machine. It is like a little, tiny wooden prop plane and Sam is flying it. We are flying around this big wooden structure. It is like a large hallway on stilts that is shaped like a square. Some parts are completely or partially enclosed by either wood or glass or a thick plastic sheeting or a combination. Others are completely open. Sam’s dad is in the building and we are playing a game where we have to hit each other with our hands or sticks. We in the ‘plane’ are one team and Sam’s dad is on a team of his own consisting only of him.

I gain a point when we close in on Sam’s dad and I hit him, but he says it’s his point because he actually hit me. Then we fly away and I find a long bone hanging off one of the trees and use it to try and hit Sam’s dad, but he grabs it and the head of the bone breaks off. Then Sam takes the bone and tries to hit his dad with it. I keep thinking of how Sam’s dad kind of reminds me of a monkey climbing around in there, leaning out and trying to hit us.

Not For the Faint of Heart

In the beginning of this dream, I was at a family gathering. It was strange. There were certain people that I knew there, like my aunts Sandy and Margie and my cousin Brittany. Other people were there that I did not know.

Brittany was annoying me because she had grown taller than me and was teasing me about being short. We were measuring each other. I remember feeling that in my past if I had looked up at people more, maybe I would have grown taller as well.

There was a piece of artwork in the home (I think it was Margie’s home) that I then tried to look at and figure out. It was made of metal and string, thin metal posts sticking up out of the circular base with strings attached and criss-crossing everywhere inside of the area between the posts.

There were charms hanging off the strings that were all circular like a small coin and had a shape engraved on both sides. For example, one had a butterfly or moth symbol engraved on it. Another had a shape like a head of wheat. I think they were all natural symbols.

When you looked above the ’sculpture’ you could see the seasons. What I mean by that is that when you looked above it, packets of paper appeared that rotated and had landscapes representing different seasons on them. They were not there until you looked at them.

Suddenly everyone was holding kittens. The kittens were trained to go poop in a toilet, but not to flush. We all thought this was hilarious. Somebody also had a baby with them, and I got to hold him and babysit for a while. My mom arrived and helped me. He was a really, really cute little baby.

Then we all went to the mall, but it was a mall on FSU campus. I started to have a fever and had to go to the doctor, but for some reason since I don’t actually have a primary care doctor yet, I had to go to Thagard. Luckily there was a Thagard clinic at the mall. Unluckily it was crappy.

When I went in the doctor said (this is where you should stop reading if you have problems with blood) he would have to draw two tubes of blood. Now I am not a wimp when it comes to that kind of stuff, but they do have a really hard time getting blood out of my veins bc my veins are so small. It’s not out of the ordinary for them to stick 2 or 3 times before they get it in the vein.

So I let the guy know, hey, I’m a hard stick. Use my right arm b/c people tend to have more luck and use a small needle please. Well, homeboy goes and gets the type of needle they use when you are DONATING blood. Not only that, because we are in a crap clinic he takes me into this little back room and there is no place to sit down!!!

So I am standing up and luckily he gets it in on the second stick (oh yeah, maybe my brain just filled this in when I woke up, but if you ever read this post I made where I said you can’t feel pain in your dreams? yeah… LIE!!!) but after he gets it in, the dude LEAVES ME!!! So for a while, I’m like, ok, this is not too bad. But then things start to go wrong.

For one, I actually have to hold the tube of blood in my hand and the blood starts leaking. That’s not so bad. It’s a big mess but hey, I am not going to have to clean it up. It is going all over my hand and dripping down onto the floor, and you know how blood is, it smears everywhere and even a little looks like a lot.

Second complication. My blood stops flowing through the needle. This always happens when I give blood. They tell you to keep squeezing something like a tennis ball or to make a fist and keep pumping it, so I do. Which brings us to the third and final complication, which is that it FREAKING HURTS.

I don’t know what to do, so I start to cry. It’s not that it hurts THAT bad, it’s more just the injustice of being left here without even a place to sit down with a huge needle in my arm making a mess with my own blood. It is running from the injection site down my arm now. At one point I call out to the doctor guy, who makes some BS response I can’t remember now. I decide to leave the room and go find my family.

On the way I decide I’ve got to pull out the needle or people will think I am a crazy woman. So I steel myself and pull the needle out. It hurts but not as bad as I thought. However since I didn’t have a tourniquet, it is already bruising. Lovely. A fat purple nightcrawler squirming up my arm. I find a bathroom and wash my hands and find some Woody (from Toy Story) bandaids randomly and put a big one over the site. It must be Toy Story 2 because Woody has the little dot on his head from when the kid burned him with the manifying glass.

I don’t even get the little piece of cotton. I am upset about this. My arm still hurts.

I am on the top level of the mall, so I try to go downstairs. There is an arrow pointing which way to go. I follow it but am mostly paying attention to my arm. Then I look up and realize I am about to walk off the upper level of the mall. You know how there are usually guardrails? Well in this mall they don’t believe in guardrails. The floor just ends.

But all of a sudden I hear a voice from the bottom level of the mall. It says, “Don’t worry, the stairs are right here! Just keep on coming!” It is the voice of Senator Hillary Clinton. I walk slowly to the edge, and sure enough, there are the stairs. I climb down. The Senator smiles at me warmly. I find it very odd. I’m still not voting for you, but thanks! I think. Then I wake up.

Complicated Dream

The dream I had last night was very complex and didn’t make too much sense. I will try to recall all of it…

I am in the woods somewhere, catching bugs. The bugs I am catching are supposed to be really good to eat and I am going to take them to some sort of banquet which is also in the woods. Someone also gives me a platter of octopus to take to the banquet. I trap the bugs in a cage and leave them in a shed and take the octopus to the banquet first. When I go back for the bugs, they start attacking me because they don’t want to be eaten. There are also bats that are attacking me. So I tell the bugs I won’t eat them, I will let them go.

Then somebody gets married. I don’t know who the person is but she has red hair. I have no idea whether this is what the banquet was for or not.

Then my cousin Melissa tells me she is pregnant- which I know cannot be true unless she has all of a sudden decided to marry her boyfriend and/or start a family, which i HIGHLY doubt. Also I meet another one of my friends, Andrea, who is pregnant. (In real life Andrea just had a baby- congratulations!!!) We talk about Melissa being pregnant. Then Melissa starts to have her baby. She was going to have her baby at home for some reason, and I think our grandma was going to be like her midwife or something. It was WEIRD. So I was trying to get a hold of Grandma when I woke up.

So, I Guess I’m Still Disturbed About the Whole Dog Thing.

I am driving with my family in Texas. We stop in the parking lot of what looks like a furniture store. We are going to get an urn for Ivan’s ashes (he was cremated).

We go in to the store and go to a place in one dark corner mostly sectioned off by bookshelves. My brother and parents are with me. There is a lady at the desk who is helping my parents. I see an urn in the corner that I want to get. It has a picture of a frog on it and a poem. I can’t remember the words to the poem, but basically they are saying that since God made all creatures with such wonderful complexity, he must care for them all when they die, even things as small and seemingly insignificant as an insect.

I wake up crying.

I go back to sleep and drift off into an episode of sleep paralysis. I sort of dream while I am in the episode that I am petting Ivan, but he starts to turn to ash while I am petting him. I try to grab him but he slips away and my hands are full of ash and his hair. He had such gleamingly white, brilliant hair. When he was outside it caught the sun… It doesn’t seem right that he was burned; I don’t understand why my parents did that. I started to hear crackling noises… then I was back in bed trying to wake up, but I couldn’t move anything but my left foot. I couldn’t breathe. My breathing was too shallow. I was suffocating.

I panic, as I always do when this happens. I start to try to breathe more heavily, hoping that the lack of oxygen will force my body to wake up all the way or that the sound will wake up Sam. I start to move my left foot up and down, up and down, like I’m pumping the brake in my car. I try to move my legs but they are so heavy and I am powerless. I think the movement of my foot tickles Sam. He rolls over in bed. I wake up gasping for air.

New Dog

My dog Ivan died on Saturday, so my parents are considering doing Texas bull terrier rescue.

In real life, not in my dream.

Anyways, here was my dream from last night.

I’m home visiting my family. My parents decided to go ahead and adopt ‘Spanky’:, so we go upstairs to meet him. Mom must have just given him a bath because he was in her bathroom, where she usually bathes the dogs.

Spanky is fat and lazy. He doesn’t want to play, he just wants to be petted. He is a deep disappointment to bull terriers everywhere.

I’m sure in real life Spanky is not like that. But no dog will ever replace Ivan.

The House and The Owl

I am in a house with a little old Mexican woman. We are in a laundry room/nursery in the back. The woman is showing me her house and her flowers. There are a series of large sinks against one wall and she becomes very concerned because one of the faucets has a drip. She says the water is very expensive and if she has a leaky faucet she could also be fined.

Then the woman goes away. I think she is trying to sell us her house. It is very old and decrepit-looking from the outside but clean and nice on the inside. Sam appears and I tell him I could probably take of the lawn by myself since it is so small. We go inside and all of the walls are painted very bright colors (blues, pinks and purples). I like it.

We come back outside and look at the outside of the house itself. We notice there is a huge owl on the roof of the house. It is almost as big as a man and looks almost human. Sam puts on a long beard and climbs up onto the roof of the house. He puts on sunglasses too. Now Sam and the owl look like brothers.

Babystting, Working in a Cafeteria and Going to Atlanta

I was babysitting the kids I usually babysit about once a week. These kids are always hungry. Their mom has a ’schedule’ for when they can eat so they’re not begging for food constantly. But I accidentally forget to feed them lunch on time, so they are really hungry.

One of the boys goes and tries to make himself a grilled cheese sandwich, but he doesn’t know how to use the stove, so he toasts the bread and then tries to melt the cheese between the toast slices. It’s sad. Then I try to make them all real grilled cheese sandwiches, but I can’t find the stove.

All of a sudden I realize we aren’t in their house anymore, we are in some kind of school or camp cafeteria. I really want to get them grilled cheese sandwiches so I ask the cafeteria worker if I can use her stove and a pan (I already have the bread and cheese). She says yes but then her boss comes and makes me fill out paperwork. Brenda (the kids’ mom) comes and picks them up. I never get to make the sandwiches.

Then Sam finds me and we leave the kids to travel to Atlanta. We watch the sun rise as we are driving and it is beautiful. It seems like we are driving high above everything. We have to go through a long tunnel even higher up in the air, REALLY high, that is only one lane. It looks almost like a roller coaster that you drive through. It is scary and we are going real fast and the way Sam is driving is freaking me out.