Airport Anxiety Dream

Last night I had a typical airport anxiety dream:  I had flown somewhere, and my old boss, M.B. reminded me that I had to return.  This did not prompt scenario where a I have to get to the airport and my car is broken, nor the one where I'm walking there and a series of labyrinthine, suburban streets block my path--but rather a new twist, where I was frantically searching for my airline ticket.

On one hand, none of the settings was the usual "I'm stuck" settings from Reed or Arcosanti.  And there was a Dream Guide Character sort of played by Kurt Russel.  On the other hand, I need to add "airport anxiety motifs" to my list of dream triggers so I can move beyond them.  I suspect this dream was prompted by a slightly upset stomach and today's trip to get TSA pre-approval.  

Anxiety Dreams

 It's not uncommon for me to find myself awake at 4 AM.  Usually, I blame the cats or the dog or having to go to the bathroom for my "what time is it" awakenings, but today it was an unpleasant dream.  I seem to be having more anxiety dreams lately, where I'm back in old places or with old bosses, but this is the first one where goons tied me up and tortured me to death (they wanted to know where Mark was, and I didn't know).  Luckily (?) I must have been aware enough in the dream that before things got too bad, the dream shifted and I was (possibly) Jamie Sommers (the Bionic Woman) ... but this time the enemy agents had kidnapped my six-year-old daughter and were using her to insure my good behavior for some kind of mind-control experiment.  

Huh.  It's just come to me that prior to all of this, in an earlier dream, I was walking alone on a beach (somehow this was connected to shaving), a little ways away from a group of professors (an amalgam of folks I've known from work at the university).  They were discussing how they had made recent story sales, and what writing projects they were working on, and how the markets were picking up again.  They started out behind me, and as we picked our way over tufts of beach grass and driftwood,  I wanted to join up with them, but they kept walking a little to my left and then they were ahead of me.  I felt left out and jealous of their camaraderie and trudged after them.  Eventually, we all climbed a dune or cliff and re-entered a house.  Everyone trouped through a sliding glass door, through my living area, and then out through another door (I have the sense I was living in an apartment complex or dorm).  I stayed behind and surveyed the living room, which had an undergraduate student decor.  

I fairly sure the second dream is the continuation of a short exchange Mark and I had as I was submitting a short story to a market that I've yet to break into.  

Prophetic Angel-Serpent Dream

I've been hitting the gym less, and my shoulder feels better.  I should go running on the eliptical soon.

I dreamed I was in a high school or college play.  It was a mash-up of Jesus Christ, Superstar" and "Godspell," I think.  I was playing a prophet, and typically, It was opening night and I was having difficulty recalling my lines.  (That I'm a prophet who's forgotten his lines strikes me as signifiant and funny in waking life.)  

I was wandering around back stage, which seemed to be a bunch of tunnels made out of parachutes. When I asked a woman if I could take a look at her script.  At this point I realized that my part had been cut, and that someone else had been given my part's song-and-dance number.  

There's a bit of break and the next thing I remember, I was on the stage.  This was a giant, twisty thing of concrete; in waking life I'm reminded of the "dinosaur bones" in Avery Park in Corvallis, only these were three stories high, and more like columns of frozen water.   They had been made by Winged Serpents -- which may have been fallen angels at one point -- and the Serpents had twisted around and around the concrete columns so that their scales were embossed in the sides of ridges that were wide enough for two or so people to be able to spiral up to the column's top.

I was in some sort of New Testiment Temptation of Christ... only I think the Archangle Micheal was speaking to me (or Christ...) and saying how the trails of his brothers (the Serpent-cast trail) were there.  The Serpents had turned to Angels in mid-squeeze, and when their Serpent bodies had fallen away, only the scaely impressions and their smaller Angel bodies were left behind.

Various cast members were using chalk to color in some of the scales into mosiacs, and chalking in things like nativity scenes along the inside of the trail.  

In waking life, I'm reminded of various dreams I had a few years ago which are part of a dream-knot, but in this dream no deities were hot, shirtless studs and there was no kissing.

Dream: Snapping Fire Turtle Sorceress

The recall on this dream is mixed up, but the elements go something like this.

An evil sorceress, basically Malificent al a Angeline Jolene, (or possibly Annie Lennox) was breeding cannibalistic snapping turtles who also liked to eat books.  This was part of her long-term plan to beed a giant sort of turtle-dragon, which she would enchant by feeding it magic books.   The fire-breathing, enchanted snapping turtle-dragon played a key role in her plans for conquest and revenge.

I'm not clear where she lived, because I'm pretty sure I dreamed at least twice.  For most of the dream she lived in the shadowy caverns and waterways underneath the castle of an old magician. Or else she lived in a largish house tucked away at the end of a golf course at a fancy resort.


I was the old magician's apprentice; sometimes (at the beginning of the dream) I was a youngish man, other times I was a twelve or thirteen year old girl (in the middle).  

Earlier in the dream (this happened as back-story) I had found an old underground cellar in the castle.  Underneath the rotting timbers an underground stream flowed, and I had dropped the leaves of an old, beat up book one by one into the stream.  The pages contained a spell, which enchanted the snapping turtles living there.

There was a tribe of Goblins or Gnomes living under the castle.  They weren't High Elves; more like indigenous natives or the Goblins out of Labyrinth (or Muppet Rats).  The Sorceress didn't rule over them, but they were afraid of her and usually did what she asked.


Interlude:

A fiery dragon-turtle had hemmed the Old Magician and me into the stone hall of the castle.  My sense is that the magic of the walls kept the flames out of the hall, but they licked along windows and archways.  The Sorceress appeared, and I rushed her (or the dragon).  The point of view switched to a bird's-eye view from the rafters of the hall.  Rushing in wasn't the smartest move, but it did distract folks long enough for the Magician to get the upper hand.


Interlude:

Now that the Sorceress had been defeated, I was directing the Gnomes to maintain the waterways underneath the castle.  In the darkness they rebuilt a course-way and reservoir in order to redirect the stream so it wouldn't stagnate in slow muddy underground swamps.

The lead Gnome (in a plucky, bumbling comic role) had stacked a bunch of stone bricks up, but the water had built up behind the dam and as he stood proudly in front of it in a ta-da moment, the water burst through.


Interlude:

I was talking to the Sorceress in an author speaks with the character way.  She was in lab with white table-tops cutting up live turtles and feeding them to other turtles, and putting hungry turtles in the same enclosures to encourage them to fight.  We had a behind-the-scenes conversation, which I don't recall much of; something about her plans.  I was pointedly not looking at the turtles.


In the second or third iteration of the dream....

As a young girl, I went to help the sorceress.  She seemed nice, and it was neat to go to her house.  When I got there, I forget what we did -- I think I was helping her take care of animals.  She said she had to leave somewhere, and we locked up her house and animal pens and then she followed the stream-way back up toward the Old Magician's stone castle.

She didn't wait for me, and I have the sense that she was speedily traveling over the curving creek, which I had to run along the bank.

I came across a river gazebo.  One of my girl friends and her nurse(?) were there, dressed in 19th century clothes.  It's possible she was a mermaid, because a mermaid with a glowing green tail was in the creek.

But the sorceress was beginning her conquest, and so river snakes were appearing everywhere.  Twenty at least infested the gazebo, and I had to stop and walk around them very carefully.  Insert Poisonous Snake Anxiety here.  This part of the dream ended with me trying to open the door to get out.



When I woke up, I tried to figure out what the snakes meant.  The whole dream has a very Jungian feel to it, with shadow selves and underground water.

I haven't had a dream like that since something like 1980, when I used to dream about a poisonous snake threatening to bite me in my Grandmother's basement.  I have dreamed about snakes within the last few years, but they've usually been singular or non-threatening.  The snakes in the latest dream felt like the anxiety scorpions I used to dream about when something was bothering me at Arcosanti; so it's possible something was bothering me (like my stomach).

Fire-breathing snapping turtles are new.

Journal and Eclipse Dream

Writing:  weekend sickness threw a wrench into things.  So.  Let's see.  Last night I got a critique of a 5000 word story.  I can't believe some of the stupid clerical mistakes I made in the manuscript, but over all the story was well received.  This morning I remembered dreams, got up at 6AM, and wrote them down.   I've got a 1500 word story that is in Very Rough Draft form; I passed it to a beta reader who gave me some really good feedback.

Work-out:  My last work-out was seven days ago.  Sigh.  It was easier during the summer to go in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; but lately Friday's schedule has put a kabosh on that.  I guess I'm going to have to start going in the evenings instead of the afternoons.

DREAM:   

I'd say that the majority of this dreaming was sparked by the solar eclipse coming up tomorrow (Thursday), a brief conversation about skydiving post-Wordos, and a discussion about ski trips past and future.  

Eclipse Dream

The recall begins at my parent's house.  It's dark and we're waiting for a lunar eclipse to begin.  There's some worry that the eclipse wont be visible because of light clouds.  We're looking east over the Willamette Valley, and then the clouds shift and there's a really huge moon, almost silvery white.  

As we watch, a black circular shadow passes in front of the moon.  It's too quick and small to be the Earth's umbra.  We  leave the house (I don't recall who was with me).  After a short investigation we discover that what we thought was the moon is really some kind of balloon with a light-show projector slung beneath it.  The "eclipse" is really some sort of college game entertainment.

I think my sister appeared at the moment and says something like, "I didn't think this was the real eclipse." or "I didn't think we'd be able to see the eclipse from the house."   I looked north, and there I saw the real moon, thin and pretty far advanced in the eclipse.  White wispy clouds passed in front of it.  We could see it because we were east of my folks' house, but the people inside would have a nearly impossible time siting the moon.  (In waking life, I'm realizing that the moon was in a part of the sky in the dream that it would never be able to reach).  I remember pointing at the crescent moon.

There's a break in the narrative, and the eclipsing moon is over an ocean at the coast.  A front is moving in, and where the ocean meets the shore, a layer of white clouds forms.  

I can see all this because I'm in an airplane on some sort of special tour, with a bunch of middle-aged (60-something?) ladies (there might be some men).  Mark may have been there, and the pilot was a guy.  The pilot was talking about the eclipse and the clouds, and we started climbing.  

I don't recall exactly what happened next.  Either the plane when into a dive, or the engine stopped working, or else this was a skydive tour.  I'm thinking the latter because we were suddenly in jump suits.   

Insert falling scene here, I guess, because we were on the beach.  I had traveled with my portable Stonehenge, which in the dream had transformed from a circular object into a rectangular track that was somehow a cross between a cribbage board and a mancala board.  In the fall, most of the pegs were lost, only the black descending moon's node peg was still in place.  I remarked on this, and then found a $20 bill in one of the mancala holes.  There were some other small trinkets (not possible to be there on the real board) in the mancala holes... things like novelty coins or Renaissance Fair necklaces and beads.  

There's another break.  I think Smokey the cat woke me up here or something.

I was on a airport or train tram with Mark.  We had parked a white rental van in a large dark parking structure.   A track ran straight through a parking lot that was about a block wide on either side.  I want to say that we parked in lot 184A or something like that (at some point in the dream I wrote the number down on a white sock, which subsequently got washed and the numbers ran).

I've got the sequence of events jumbled.

At some point I fell asleep on the train and woke up with it having passed my stop.

At some point I was in a convoy with Mark and possibly our friends, the Husbands.  I think I was driving a white truck.  I think I took a wrong turn and went a considerable distance the wrong way before another off ramp appeared.  And at some point I was in the back seat and no one was driving the car, and I had to reach over the car seat and press the break pedal with my hand to stop the truck before it went through the intersection.  

I vaguely recall a bunch of us were staying in a guest house or an A-frame chalet.  

I may have been driving the truck through a visitors' center or mall.  And the truck may have turned into me just walking.  

I was in a kind of rustic alpine building.  Lots of cobblestone and dark wood beams.  There was a Saturday Market feel, because every three yards or so, there was someone with a booth selling something (like scarves), or handing out brochures.  There may have been someone like Manfred Fischbeck leading dance hikes.  

Behind a tall counter sat a late 20-something guy with two Siamese cats crouching on either side of him with their eyes closed.  "Are your cats friendly?" I asked.

"Well, give them a try; but they don't like just anyone."

I held up my index finger and presented it to one of the cats, who opened an orange eye and started rubbing its whiskers on it.  The other cat came over and they were rubbing their faces all over my hands.

"Wow, they really like you," the guy said.  "You must have a powerful aura."  He stood up, suddenly tall, and his eyes focused just behind me.  I think he said, "You have a lot of yellow in your aura." I recall he said, "You are lord of fire."

"Fire, huh?" I said, "People usually say I'm air."

For some reason I woke up with the name JJ Keek in my head.  There may be such a person with that name, but I have no idea who they could be.

Writer Anxiety Dream

The dream opens in progress...

Previously, had been something about a magician and his female apprentice in a fantasy setting.  I believe we were looking for something in a palace.

The dream shifted, and the contents of the previous dreaming had become a story I had written.  I was at an Established Author's house, in a room filled with Established Authors, and they were critiquing the hell out of my manuscript.

"Well, it's a good start," one said.

"I think you need to go back and Really Write this story," another one said.

In the back of my mind I was thinking, "Man, I'll need to critique what they've written, and I haven't read it yet."

In the front of my mind I was thinking, "Crap, they really hate this story."

At least I wasn't naked.

I woke up.  It's not too hard to figure out that it was a writing anxiety dream about what I'm currently working on.

Pre-Holiday Craft

A few months ago, I decided it would be a good idea to make a paper cut-out thing of the Twelve Days of Christmas (my goal is to try to get most of the holidaze tasks done in November so I can actually have a stress-free December).  I had pretty good luck with the Partridge in the Pear Tree.  And although Mark says the Two Turtledoves looks like an advertisement for a Mandarin Hotel, I kind of like it.  I put in too fine detail for the Three French Hens, and the plotter cutter shredded them when it tried to cut them out.

And then there was this:

Mark called it Four Killer Robo-birds (with Lego Feet).  They were supposed to be cardinals, but I'd remembered them wrong and made things curve out that were supposed to curve in and vice-versa.





I tried again.

"Those aren't seed eating beaks," Mark said, "And those head tufts make them look like some sort of pterodactyl.  Haven't you looked at cardinal?"

I guess I was having a Jack Skelington, "Nightmare Before Christmas" moment.


Undaunted, I went on to the Lords a Leaping....

Which sort of came out as Lords a Judo-Chopping (or running from the Nazgul Who Wants His Crown Back).  As for the Nine Ladies Dancing, I based the dancer's form on the lord's--which in turn was based on a marionette like construction, which is probably why they both look like toys -- and why Mark says the dancer looks like a transvestite.

The goose and the swan came out OK.  So I thought I'd try the Four Calling Birds again. Our friend, Jenn, actually said, "Hey, cool cardinals," when she saw them, so I'm calling them a wrap:

At this point I've six designs down, and six more to go.

Anxiety Elevator of the North

Last night I had a strange mashup of dreams.

What had started out as a kind of house inspection turned into a party and then a ritual. This involved me standing in a knee-deep circular pool of water and spinning like dervish.

Then.. At one point I was waiting for an elevator. Elevators in my dreams are usually bad things--they pulse up and down between floors after their doors open, which makes them difficult to enter or exit. Or they have difficulties getting to the top floor or the bottom floor; it's as if they have two floors they want to go to, two-and-a-half and nine-and-three-quarters. And there's always the possibility that they'll plunge to the bottom of the shaft at any moment.

This elevator was slightly different. It was more a personal lift. As the doors opened, a recorded female voice chimed, "Mind the gap." I should have been suspicious when the elevator floor, which was a square metal grate, was still inching up a little below the level of the corridor. I hopped in without thinking that this was a dream elevator. The elevator shaft was shiny metal and the metal grate sped up little. There were no buttons I could see on the inside, and square shaft was only about three feet wide.

Then it reached the end of the shaft. This was a kind of iron trap door. I had a second where I thought I might be smooshed between the door and grate, but I got it open. The trap door opened in the middle of a field. And the the platform grate kept going. The shiny metal shaft telescoped out of the ground with me looking out of the top.

I slid down the inside of the shaft before it fell over. I'm going to sidestep the obvious Freudian interpretation and say that this reminds me of the tarot card, "The Tower." Also, this was at the end of the ritual and it felt like some kind of earthy counterpoint to the watery dervish part earlier.