31 January 2010 - The Massage

There were a bunch of us around the till, maybe a dozen or so, all of us waiting. The lady by the cash register was a matronly sort, a solidly built woman, confident and cool in spite of the crush of people around her.

The space was small and green with plants or paint or both; it was somehow like where you'd exit from a mom and pop diner. The cash register was on the corner of a short counter. As I saw it in the dream, we were gathered at the counter on the left. The cash register was on the right. At the far right past the till, you could turn the corner and proceed farther back and enter into the larger space which looked like a workout room. THAT room seemed empty and so it should have because as one finds out later, all the action happens in small rooms connecting off the large room.

We waited.

It was a long wait.

I can't remember what we were all doing during the wait. Waiting, maybe. There was one thing: I found a small, dark marble which I kept it in my hand.

More waiting. I couldn't tell you how long it was, this wait.

I said to the lady at the cash, "I'll pay now," and somehow, finally, that moved me to the front of the line or near to it. I paid for my massage and noticed the slight, small, black woman, a pretty girl with long, straight black hair. She was maybe not much more than five feet tall and she stood at the end of the counter in the space connecting this anteroom and the larger room in the back. She was one of the masseuses, quiet, with a narrow face, waiting patiently. When I paid, this was the signal apparently for her to get to work. She turned her back on us and moved into the larger workout space to get towels or something. Beginning to prepare for the massage. I tried to follow but there was something in the way. Between the end of the counter and the wall, mostly blocking the entrance to the larger room was ... well, it was either a very large statue of a sitting dalmation or a skeleton. I spent an amount of time sorting it out, moving it so I could get through, finally making a space big enough. Then I spent some more time putting it back where I found it. Except that after I put it back, it was still blocking my way (oddly, it seems I didn't go through the space I cleared although I thought I did).

I sort of forced my way past the dalmation (skeleton) to follow the pretty black girl into the room. I hung over her shoulder as she gathered supplies, waiting to be told which room to go in. I said to her, "I'm very on the ball today," in some sort of foreign accent and showed her the marble which sat in the center of my outstretched palm and then had to repeat it because she didn't get this bit of wit the first time. She chuckled quietly. I felt very confident.

I was shown to Room One. I was dressed for business in a shirt and tie, slacks and dark shoes. I started taking off my clothes. I couldn't tell you exactly what I was wearing, except for my underwear which was very clear in the dream: I was wearing my pair of black briefs with the brand name "Report" on the waistband. I was going to be naked for my massage and maybe both of us - me and the girl - would enjoy this.

There were other people in the room. Two women, each on a massage table with sheets to their necks. There were no other masseusses in the room. I became aware of this and yet it mattered not at all. Wearing only underwear and black socks, I sat on the edge of the massage table and partly pulled the sheet over me to cover my hips. I would take the rest of my clothes off from under the sheet. I got one sock off when the young pretty black girl was there to tell me, "Here, I'll help you with that," implying it was part of her job to take my socks off for me. But I was already taking off the second sock, "No, that's all right, I got this." I said this with an air of vague amusement that she would want to take of my socks.

I lay down on the table, got my legs under the sheet and began to lower my underwear. Somehow I got stuck in the sheet. I got my briefs down to mid thigh ("Report") and my legs were all caught up in the sheet. Thinking back to the dalmation (skeleton) I said to the girl as I struggled gently to get myself unstuck, "Everything seems to be an impediment today."

Two other staff members had appeared, a woman and a man. The woman just stood by the table with her hands by her side (or behind her back). The man seemed like the prototypical male nurse, a big happy looking fellow who reached under the sheet to get my legs freed and get me properly situated on the table. My briefs were still at mid-thigh and the guy hadn't noticed I was in the process of removing them. His next task was to turn me so that my head was pointing in some specific direction. There was a purpose to this that he knew and I didn't. He asked me which way I wanted to be. I was by now very much looking forward to being naked and getting this massage on the go and I said with a wry smile, "I'm certain it doesn't matter to me."

The alarm went off.

30 Jan 2010 - The Disjointed City

Walking and driving, changing to whatever seemed to best serve the narrative.

There was an odd group of people with a large white sign advertising a BBQ. They were dressed in ... outfits that resembled white burkas; they looked like tall limestone monuments. I couldn't quite see their faces. I don't think I was invited to whatever they were doing.

The area near Agricola and Gottingen was under construction. I hadn't been there for a long time and an incomplete building stood on the corner, it's metal girders describing a several story building-in-progress. I knew there were other new buildings in area that were in various stages of completion and thought it was pretty cool, what they were doing to this part of town. Indeed, where I was walking looked clean and bright and modern.

There was a young man on the street who, while handsome enough, had about him an air of panic and desperation. My own anxiety went up as he approached me. But all he wanted to know how to get to (unintelligible). I didn't know what he was saying, I didn't know where that was. Inspired, I took out my BlackBerry. Maybe the GPS application could help. The BlackBerry showed us a map of what looked like the city, maybe from around the mouth of harbour, McNabb's island, but it was zoomed in too close to tell for sure and panning over and over couldn't quite show us what we wanted to see. There was a second man that had shown up and I was fearful of the two of them robbing me of my BlackBerry.

I drove in the dark. To the right in a copse of trees was a white sign, the same one I'd seen with the monument people, advertising the BBQ. I stopped the car and noticed what look like heaps of grey and white ash from leftover fires. Approaching closer, I realized the white was the monument people lying in the road among the ash. Grateful that I'd seen them before I'd run them over, I moved slowly, walking through them, careful not to step on anyone.

I found myself inside a dark room where I wondered how I'd fit in this case that looked like a speaker, the kind you'd plug in your electric guitar. I lifted it and unsuccessfully tried to fit my body under it, wondering how I'd done it before since this was the speaker/amp that had protected me from the nuclear blast. I fretted over how much time this was taking and how I couldn't make it fit over me again, wondering if the robe next to me was maybe specially treated to protect the parts of me that couldn't get under the speaker....

27 January 2010 - Away Game

Where did this dream begin?

Inside? Outside? Is there more I've forgotten that precedes what follows? Probably. There was a jumble of things and I know for sure the last part was last but...

Let's say it was the girl.

I was inside but there were screened windows all around that barely kept the outside out. It was sunny and vaguely tropical. I was looking at a computer screen, maybe a tablet or pad with a message from a girl. An e-mail? An IM? A web page? This girl was young and not necessarily pretty but pleasant enough. How did I have her picture? Was it on the screen or only in my memory? She was familiar. I had been in touch with her, but now she was mad; I hadn't replied to her in quite a while. I searched my memory and remembered that yes, I had had sex with her, although the memory of it was dim. It was once, fairly recent and maybe only unremarkable. I peered intently at the message on the screen. There were also pictures that she herself had drawn and included: crudely made shapes, green and blue of the outside, grey or brown like logs or sticks. These were somehow cluttered around her words. She was unhappy she hadn't heard from me, I guess she thought I was an asshole and a jerk, but "whatever" ... she was moving on. This was a sense of things rather than the literal message because as much as I tried - and I was trying very hard to identify individual words - I couldn't quite read what she had written and ...

... looking up from the tablet I was outside regarding a vista of red buildings, stretching in a line in front of me to the right, set some distance away at the edge a precipice, all covered in snow. The buildings might have been constructed from the same red rock of Sedona, because that was their colour and the snow clung to the fronts of them in puffy white pouches. The sun had come up and reached across the precipice (and I remember now there are trees on the left, a dark and vaguely mysterious forest which gave shadow to the building fronts for most of the first part of the day). Now the sun has risen to where it's put the sides of the buildings in warmer light. I looked closer because something caught my eye. A disappearing act. A puff of snow that was there but then ... not there? I looked closer, looking at the shapes the snow made, looking to see if I could see the shapes change, but, no. Was it a trick of perspective? One puff of snow in front of another puff of snow so that when I moved the angle between the two of them made the space suddenly appear?

Nothing changed as I watched.

Then suddenly, extraordinarily, like a great event missing only a chorus of angels, all the sun-lit snow melted from the red stone buildings. They disappeared ... not so much as clouds of steam, more like the barely visible waves of the heat mirages that collect on the surface of distant asphalt. The buildings shook with the energy of the collapsing snow and from these thermoplasmic waves. I watched the buildings tremble as the snow fell and then evaporated from their facades. And still they shook. There was someone next to me and I said, "That must be scary inside, almost like an earthquake." The person replied, "No. Actually, you don't even notice it."

The dream shifted and I was inside a professional sports arena, somewhere new where I'd bought tickets for a game, some sport I'd never seen before. Not basketball, not hockey. I can't remember what now.

I was alone.

The arena was beautiful, a modern marvel full of light and glass and rich with colours in the air. Over the PA came a woman's voice that carried a message for the person in Section L please return to Gate 9 to sign for your ticket and I clearly understood it was for me. I'd not signed my credit card receipt. (I remembered that I'd forgot.) Perhaps I'd also left my MasterCard there. My seat was in Section L at the end of the arena, just past the curve and I had a look through the wide arch through to Section L, impressed with the location. The seats were grey and modern and comfortable-looking and mostly empty; all the people were still milling about through the concourse. I proceeded to find the way out and back to the ticket window. I walked through bright white, along moving walkways, through high, curving arches. It was beautiful. I never quite had the sense of being lost or panicked or frustrated about not being able to find the exit. I just kept moving through the arena.

And I did find the way out. I went through an industrial door and found myself in an airlock of a loading bay. I went down a couple of concrete steps and looked back to where there was a beautiful girl with long blonde hair in a very pretty dress standing behind the rail. I resolved to tell her how pretty she was even though she was very young indeed, maybe only a teenager (17? 18? 19 maybe?), but the air was alive with possibility. She would have sex with me if I pressed my advantage. She was looking past my shoulder and so I turned and saw the second woman, also smartly dressed, much older than either of us, her face rounder, plain and aged. I realized this was the girl's mother. I turned my back, abandoning the daughter and walked past the mother, continuing my trek to the ticket window. I pushed open the bay doors and went out into sunlight.

29 January 2010 - The Snow Covered Hill

Winter driving and my son was in the back seat. Before me was the largest hill I've ever seen, covered in snow and in front of me another car brave enough to attempt the climb. I thought, "I'm going to be all right, the car has snow tires on."

We went up and up.

Niggles of doubt played in my stomach as the car slipped and then slipped again, but each time only slightly, only ever enough to keep an edge of anxiety in my stomach. It seemed a long way to come only to have to turn and go back down if it turned out that the challenge was as steep as the snow covered hill. The farther I went, the steeper it got and the more the snow caused the car to tires to slip. But the car would only skid slightly and I kept a deft touch on the steering wheel and accelerator, coaxing the car ever higher to the top of the hill.

I was going to make it ... inside a long building with which I used to be familiar ... where the passageways were almost like avenues and I was headed here, slightly to the left where I would continue around the corner to who-knows-where, pushing a hard-shelled red suitcase before me, rolling on its little wheels to the counter which was blocked. But familiar as I was to this place and it to me, I went under the yellow tape and behind the counter because it led to where I was going, only to find the way blocked by ... a white wall? Concrete? A young man in his twenties who stood behind the counter (an employee) told me that the way had changed and I couldn't get through this was any more. So pushing the suitcase in front of me, I retreated back the way I came, frustrated over this waste of time to a door which opened on a long set of downward facing stairs.

Art by Susan Kurts

First

You're awake.

I didn't used to be.

While asleep last night I had a dream. It was a very vivid dream full of colours and intensity. I often have dreams like this. The plots and characters change except for me. Sometimes themes or whole stories re-occur or at least seem to. These dreams are very cinematic, sometimes pleasant and sometimes not. I think if I were to guess, I'd say the latter outnumber the former, but we'll see now as I begin to document the ones I remember.

How well will I be able to translate such a cinematic experience with mere words? Especially cinema viewed without eyes?

A man named Hughlings Jackson suggested dreams are for removing junk from the brain; they are to remove unnecessary memories and connections (according to Wikipedia). Maybe that’s why the unpleasant ones seem to outnumber the pleasant ones.

Maybe I’m just disturbed.

Oh, but a man named Sigmund Freud said that a man is not responsible for his dreams; at least that's what I learned from an episode of Star Trek.

You can judge me. I've decided I'm okay with that.

You might have had to navigate through a content warning because I'm planning to write these dreams out exactly as I remember them, without regard to consequence or what opinions might be formed about me, the dreamer.

But we'll see, won't we.