Ides of Summer Dreams

 Dream One:

I was in some sort of classroom or church.  The room had white walls and light wooden floors.  There were rows of chairs or desks or desk/chairs or pews, with a aisle up the middle.  In the back of the room, three women -- an amalgam of various red headed women I've met over the decades -- began singing a kind of medieval song (in waking life, I think I'd scrambled a new version of Qntal's "Dulcis Amor" by moving the starting bar back two beats and adding more polyphony -- maybe I'd added bits of "Ab Vo d' Angel").   

Superimposed over the image of the three red-haired women singing, there was a kind of hinged metal toy? nut-cracker?   The base was a long tongue of flat dark metal (iron), about two feet long (no longer).  A metal deer with antlers, one angular fore hoof raised (the hook of the hoof and the 90 bends in the metal of the leg stick out in my mind) stood at the far end of the metal base, facing the hinge.  The hinged arm part was also metal, but it was angularly wavy, and represented the rushing waters of a river.   Wielded to the metal river was a smaller deer, also antlered; this was closer to the hinge, and it faced the far end.  When the metal river arm lowered, there was a way for it to rest around the larger deer, and the two animals could face each other.  

The river became real.  The song continued.  Real deer faced each other, with the addition of a metal wolf (metal angular mane squares around the wolf's muzzle) on the riverbank stalking the smaller deer.  The flowing river tilted up on its hinge and became metal again, and the wolf had been added to the sculpture.  

I have a sense the sculpture opened and closed several times, transforming between a real river with animals and metal tableau.  

Dream Two:

I was walking through a wooded area.  It may have been the North Side of the hill I grew up in.  I think I found a house or inn -- the recall is muddled.   Somehow, I'd stumbled into the story of a high school acquaintance.  I think there was a woman in the house/inn -- anyway, we found my high school acquaintance's journal.  The friend had disappeared in real life, so the journal entries were from 1980.  

He had written a series of short stories where he was living in a better life as the inn-keeper of the inn we were in, which was somehow enchanted, and under the protection of a large black bear, who had somehow banished (i.e. killed, eaten, or disappeared) my friend's abusive father. 

There was a "so that's where the bear came from moment"; the bear still roamed the woods, an angry dark shadow.  I think about now I realized I was in a parallel world and that I should figure out how to get back into this one.

Dream Three:

X-rated.  But highly consensual and with good communication.