Another long, drawn out dream, documented as accurately as possible. This one is from last night. I was in a dorm room, hanging out with a boy. He had brown curly hair, and was wearing a plaid flanel shirt. I think he might have been Chris, but for some reason in the dream, I kept referring to him as Kevin Cowling? But since I’m not certain of his true identity, I’m going to refer to him as “Kyle” for the purposes of telling this dream.

Kyle was lounging on his bed with his laptop. There were several empty beer cans on his dresser. I remember the lights being low. I felt really strongly towards him, in a romantic sense. I sensed that he and I had been together for a long time, or that we were going to be together for a long time. There was a pervasive feeling of security. We talked about tons of things. I remember a lot of conversation flowing freely. I don’t even know what we were talking about, but everything felt really good. He kept trying to offer me a beer. His roommate, a black boy who was named like Ray or Robbie or something, was temporarily there, but soon left.

At one point, he put down his laptop, and got up. We started to slow dance in his room. It was nice until I heard an IM sound or something from another nearby laptop. It turned out to be my own laptop. I was apparently receiving an IM from another boy, asking me what I thought of him? I kept checking the screen, but refused to answer the IM. I remember seeing the number 50 somewhere in his IM, but don’t remember details about the rest. I remember trying to skirt around the fact that I had received an IM from anyone at all, and tried closing the laptop to muffle the IM alerts. I don’t remember what happened immediately following this.

The next part I remember is Kyle and I walking down a street. I think we were headed to a party. We heard and saw a lot of commotion outside of a house we were passing. There was a fire truck parked outside, and the front lawn was scorched. We learned that an elderly woman and her two teenage granddaughters lived there or something. There had been a fire. A lot of people were standing just outside the house. We went inside to see what was going on. It turned out that there was some sort of fancy socialite party going on inside, a party apparently thrown for the granddaughters.

The dream turned a little creepy at this point. Both of the granddaughters appeared to be either deformed or wrapped in bandages for reasons unknown to me at the time. Kyle and I stuck around. I remember one of the granddaughters taking off the bandages she had around her head. I was afraid, expecting to see her brain exposed or something. In reality, she was just covering up a burn that she had suffered on the side of her head. Her hair had started growing back a little over the damaged tissue, but it was mostly matted down to her head, whereas the rest of her hair was longer. I remember thinking that she was really cute when she took off her bandages. She kept complaining about how she was having a “permanent bad hair day”.

Later on at the same party, someone informed me that the girls were telling everyone that I had stolen their earrings. I looked down at my hand, and noticed that I was holding some long earrings that weren’t mine. I apparently had held them for the girl while she was removing bandages from her head. I sat down next to her, and laid out all of the jewelry that I possessed. I had various necklaces, earrings, and long feathered pieces that I assumed were worn as pendants. She picked out all of the ones that she believed to have been hers. She then started arbitrarily picking out pieces of my jewelry that she wanted. I let her have a few, but when she asked for the feather pendant, I refused. I told her she could not have any more of my jewelry. I noticed that all of the remaining jewelry happened to be in various shades of blue.

I don’t remember what happened immediately after this. The next part that I do remember was Kyle and I sitting down at a table in a warehouse, and beginning to unwrap cookies. It turned out that this “warehouse” was actually the SUB, but like…stripped of all of its decor and design. I remember seeing Kat Flaate there. She was talking to us about an event she was attending later on. It was apparently going to be something similar to a flash mob. The next thing I remember is Kyle and I standing in the middle of this warehouse with 40 or so other people (just a ton of people).

Kat was there again, as was Kate Elrod. We had all joined hands, and had formed three separate chains of people. We were all moving very quickly, linked and shifting around slowly at first, but then it seemed as if a surge of excitement ran through all of us at once. We gained momentum, running at different angles, curving the chains around corners. We reached a large garage in the warehouse, and as we neared the door, it drew open. At this point, everyone started running, still holding hands. There was a bustling street right outside. I’m pretty certain it was Franklin street. Cars were whizzing by, but regardless, we all bolted, hands joined, across the street. People swerved to avoid cars that showed no signs of stopping. It was kind of abrupt. A number of cars did not stop in time.

Luckily, Kyle and I made it across the street safely, along with several other people. Some people didn’t cross at all, and just stood in front of the warehouse. Then there were several unfortunate people who had gotten caught in the street and were struck by cars. There were 8 or so bodies lying in the street. I glanced at one of them, a young teenage boy, whose right leg had been crushed flat. I remember feeling really uncomfortable at this point. I watched the boy roll over in the street, and a group of people ran to his aid. More and more people stopped to get help for those who had been injured. If there is a dream equivalent of becoming dizzy and the world spinning, that is what happened. I remember that everything turned blurry and hazy, if it wasn’t already…

Kyle and I ran back across the street and hung back with the rest of the crowd inside the warehouse. Ambulances had arrived and had secured all of the injured people onto stretchers. We all stood by and watched as they rolled 8 or so stretchers past us and into several ambulances. Kyle told me he had to go do some stuff. The next thing I remember, is sitting at a table in the warehouse again. I sensed that I hadn’t seen Kyle in a while. Kyle came up next to me and put his arms around me, but I noticed that he was missing a leg. He had a stump of sorts that ended mid-thigh. I asked him what had happened to him, and he just said that he had lost his leg while doing something with his friends. I was really confused, but nonetheless told him that I was really sorry that had happened to him, and that I had wished he had told me this sooner. I felt myself losing interest in him now that he was missing a leg.

In retrospect, I feel really guilty and disoriented in regards to that dream. I don’t know how I have gotten onto this theme of injury, disease and deformity in my dreams lately, but I really wish it would stop. Am I afraid of getting hurt? Am I afraid someone I care about is going to get hurt? Physically? Emotionally? Academically? I do not know.

Last night…I had this long drawn out dream, where essentially I was a student at a school. It started off that I was following my friend Lauren to her new off-campus apartment. She took me inside. It was like a giant warehouse. Everything inside was seafoam green. Two other girls were living in the warehouse apartments with her. She took me into their commons, which was a huge studio. It turned out that this studio was where all of the art clubs met.

There was a meeting for the ceramics club going on. A bunch of students (primarily female), were sitting around talking, while showing off their darted vessels. The surfaces were all designed the same; horizontal color stripes with black outlines. Madeleine and Jennifer were in this ceramics club apparently. I spotted them sitting over in the corner. On the opposite side of the room was another group of students. I didn’t know who they were at first, but then I noticed my friend Jill was sitting among them. I concluded that this must be the painting club. Then I noticed that there was a female professor standing over against the windows. Lauren, who was standing next to me, was talking to me about the clubs.

Suddenly I had a large canvas in front of me, and I was freely painting lines and shapes with a thick brush. As I painted, the brushstrokes would curl up into beads and slide off the canvas. Only a few of them stayed put, and it looked like I had just painted large wet bubbles on the canvas. It looked interesting. However, I felt like no one else liked it. My dream self wanted to explain why I was suddenly painting, and why it looked the way it did. Madeleine and Jennifer looked at me sort of like I was crazy. Lauren didn’t say anything. In my mind, I kept organizing what I was going to say to them. I just kept repeating that I had some left over materials from when I took Painting I, so I just decided to do a quick painting. But I don’t know if I actually voiced this in the dream or not…because people kept looking at me accusingly. Then I realized that I hadn’t gesso’ed the canvas. I didn’t mention this as to not seem like an amateur or something. It isn’t necessary to gesso a canvas….but in the dream, I was certain that everyone knew that I hadn’t done it.

Following this, there was a lot of commotion among the students in the room. The professor standing near the windows unveiled a set of photos that were clothes-pinned to the chalkboard that everyone was facing. Lauren informed me that she was revealing to the class all of the grades from Painting I. But they were ordered by student height. The grades for the shortest girls were at the front, and the grades for the taller girls were at the end. Somehow this also correlated with performance. I was at the end, and I also had apparently gotten a D or an F in the class. I didn’t say much about this. We talked briefly about the girl who had gotten the highest marks in the class. Her name was Rosie or Rosalie or something.

The next part I remember is leaving my own room that was somewhere on or off campus. I kept jogging down this large hill. I eventually found my way to a parking lot that was on top of a building. I sat in a tiny car and began to do some math homework. There was this other black girl…I think it might have been my friend Lindsay. She was driving circles around my car in her car. She drove a red bug. She kept asking me through our cars, if I had ever been in a car wreck. I kept saying that I hadn’t really. She then told me that she planned to wreck her car before going to her next class. I told her this was a really bad idea. She said that she just wanted to break all of her toes. I was horrified by this, of course. So I stopped talking to her, and just tried not to look at or think about her. She kept trying to talk to me, asking me if I had ever gone to class with two broken limbs. I said no. I didn’t understand why she was doing this. I told her that I thought she was really misguided. The last I remember of her was watching her drive her red bug off the side of the building. I didn’t get out of my car to see if she was okay.

Then the entire location of the dream changed. I was still a student somewhere, but now I was living in another area. I worked at a hair salon that was run by me and a few of my friends. A friend of a friend named Al was living there, as was Bob Saget apparently. I think Colin Grace might have been there as well. At one point, I was eating lunch. I was fishing objects out of a well of dark liquid against the wall. I was eating from it. Apparently, I was fishing seafood out of a dark sauce. I kept pulling out star shaped pieces of fish. At one point I ate something that was squishy and black. I asked Bob if it had been a worm, and he said that it had been some other type of fish. Whatever it was I kept eating from the well tasted fairly good. Then Bob brought over a little blonde toddler, who I assumed was a young Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen. He asked me to fish out something for her to eat. She wouldn’t eat any of the seafood at first. Then Bob held her while I stuffed various-shaped morsels of fish in her mouth. She seemed to enjoy it at this point.

After this, I got up to use the restroom at the back of the salon. When I got to the restroom, I noticed a dry-erase board that had all of the workers’ schedules listed. I noticed Al’s name, Colin’s name, the names of two girls I didn’t know, and Christian’s name. He apparently worked at this salon as well. According to the dry-erase board, he was in meetings until 3pm with people named “Renée”, “Stewart”, and “girl”. My schedule was also on the board, but it was so far off to the side, that it was too squished to be legible. I went into the restroom, and looked in the mirror. At first glance everything seemed normal. I looked away for a moment, but when I looked back, there were light splotches all over my face. I flipped out. I ran and told Al that I needed to go to the doctor, immediately. I don’t remember what his response was, but I kept telling him that what had happened to Michael Jackson was real. Apparently my dream self had developed Vitiligo.

I wanted to go to the doctor, but realized that I would have to miss my 1:30 ceramics class if I did. Professor Wilbur walked into the salon, almost as if on cue. I explained to her what was happening to my face. I told her that I had recently used some triamcinolone topical gel that I took from my mother. I had applied it to my face (which I have actually done in waking life this week). But apparently, it had caused me to begin losing pigment in my face. I told Wynne that it was imperative that I get to the hospital, and that I apologized for having to miss class. She sympathized, and offered to give me a ride to the hospital.

I told her that it was close enough that I could walk, but she insisted. We stepped outside into what was a bustling city. It looked like we stepped out of the salon (which was presumably in Kirksville), and into what looked an awful lot like Chicago. We turned the corner and she crouched down next to the sidewalk. There was a patch of dirt. She started digging through it. I kept asking her what she was doing. I knew the disease was rapidly spreading across my face. We had little time. She said that they had to keep the key to the university’s car buried in the dirt. She said that it took longer to find the key and drive the car, but that ultimately, this saved the university money.

Yesterday morning I awoke from what was perhaps the most recursive dream I have ever had. The weirdest thing about this dream was that for a good portion of the end of the dream, I dreamt myself recording the dream by hand. I was writing down what I was dreaming, as I was still dreaming it. I think maybe I thought I was awake, but I definitely was not because when I woke up for real, I was disappointed that I had lost all of the notes I had taken regarding the events of the dream. But here is what I still recall:

The earliest portion of the dream was taking place at my house here in Kirksville, but the house looked radically different. It had no front door. My room was technically the same as the living room. Chris was over, and we were lounging on the couch talking about the cat, Mikey. We were intimate briefly, and then we discussed the implications of getting up and going to class when neither of us wanted to do this.

Joyce was there. She was going on and on about how she needed to use a flat iron/hair straightener but that she was afraid she would start a fire. She also expressed that she felt like she was going to trap Mikey in a stairwell by accident. Shortly thereafter I remember sitting at a table, joking with some friends about how ridiculous it was that Joyce acted like it was so hard to turn on a hair straightener, and that she was afraid of killing the cat. I recited everything she had said to me, and we all laughed about it.

The next part of the dream I remember is finding myself in a building that looked like it was the rec center. This guy was there. I think he might have been a cross between three different male friends of mine, but I can’t determine who he resembled the most. For the purposes of recording this, we will call him Carlson. Anyway, Carlson was sitting in a chair next to some yoga mats and bar bells. All I remember is another female friend and I rolling out yellow yoga mats to his left. Over and over again, we unrolled a yellow yoga mat.

Then there was a tour group. It was a family. They were coming through the rec center. Suddenly I was one of them. I was in the tour group. We all looked the same; caucasian, faded curly brown hair, slightly overweight. The person leading the tour group was actually a family elder. I sensed that she was the grandmother. The mother announced that on our way through the rec center, we were going to order pizza for dinner. The grandmother was taking the orders on a clipboard. She asked each individual what type of pizza they would like. When it came to me, I really just wanted to order a pineapple and pepperoni pizza, but she kept telling me that my only options were cheese, black olives, or a third vegetable that I cannot recall.

I didn’t want any of those. I tried to get her to let me order a pineapple pizza, but she refused. It was at this point that I noticed her beginning to take a pointed interest in me. I didn’t like her face, it made me nervous. She had huge eyes, and deep wells underneath them. Her face was almost as gray as her hair. She started following me a lot with her eyes. All of a sudden the rest of the tour group had disappeared, except for this grandmother. It was just she and I, and she was following me around a track in the rec center with her clipboard. She was asking me strange questions about the equipment around the rec center, and taking notes on her clipboard.

She started cornering me and asking me stranger and stranger questions. We were passing by a row of treadmills that were in a glass cubicle with a locking door. I ducked into the cubicle and locked it behind me. I began jotting down what was happening in a notebook that I pulled out of nowhere. I called out for the rest of the tour group to come back and get this grandmother away from me. The rest of the tour group never came back, but these two maintenance workers came in. They preoccupied the grandmother, and she eventually left.

But the two men were just chuckling at me, asking me how I had gotten myself into that situation with that grandmother. I don’t remember whether or not I answered them. I just remember feeling compelled to record what had just happened to me. My dream documentation of the dream as it was happening was very detailed. It was handwritten. It was much more detailed than I have just recounted it to be…but how weird.

I have another dream from the night before this, but I’m debating whether or not I want to post it. It could be potentially incriminating…

I am going to post two recent dreams in a series. The following dream is from earlier this week. I recorded it a few days ago, but have dragged my feet to post it. The one in the next post is from last night.

About two weeks ago, I dreamt that I was an employee at the United States Treasury, and that people would just walk in off the street and try to get change or pawn objects. This one guy comes in. He looks like he might have been a construction worker of some sort. He throws down a bunch of coins and two little white plastic bottles. I identified one of the coins as a silver dollar, which he apparently did not know.

He then explained to me that the two little white bottles were somehow used in the construction of turrets. I examined the bottles. They looked like containers used to administer or collect fluids with a tiny syringe attachment.They had a bit of red fluid in the bottom of them. He said that this fluid was a special wax that they used as a sealant. Some of the fluid got on my fingers. I told him I would have to call my administrator to see what I could do about giving him paper currency for the silver dollar and the bottles.

I got on the phone, and after waiting on the line a while, the man’s wife showed up. She had a baby carrier with her. While still waiting on the phone, I asked if I could see the child. She uncovered a baby boy, lifting him out of the carrier. When I saw the baby’s face, I was repulsed. He was very unattractive. His eyes appeared as lumpy red slits, and his nose looked like it had been smashed in. I held him briefly, but he cried a lot. I gave him back to his mother. When I looked at her face, I realized that she had the same facial features as the boy. I was really disturbed by this.

Then I guess my administrator came on the line, and after describing to my administrator what the man had brought in, I was instructed to have him immediately removed from the Treasury premises and to call the CDC. I hung up the phone and said “You have to leave.” The man, realizing that I had been warned of his mal-intent, grinned, took the two white plastic bottles, and quickly left. I reached to contact the CDC, but I started to dial 911. Before I could even hear the ring, ambulances and police vehicles pulled up in front of the door.

An officer informed me that they had been called on my behalf by the administrator. He said that the man who had just left was wanted in that county for disseminating the H1N1 virus via a red waxy substance, which turned out to be samples of his own blood. I assume that for the purposes of this dream, “blood”, or this waxy bio-substance, was also a conduit for H1N1 viral particles. An EMT came and carefully washed my hands of the red fluid.

Meanwhile, there were large quantities of people who were trying to get into the Treasury. I told them that there was a health emergency, and that they needed to evacuate or remain far away from the lobby of the building. But these people, primarily older women, kept trying to flood the lobby. I physically tried to block entryways, but they poured in from stairwells, other doors, windows… They all had gifts, and cakes, and cards. It was apparently my birthday? They all kept trying to wish me happy birthday, and I was like…you stupid godforsaken women! Don’t you know there’s a virus on the loose in here?!

I couldn’t stop them from pouring in. It turned into some sort of social gathering. I was at a country home all of a sudden, but it was filled with older women and also debutantes. Young Jewish girls. It was a bat mitzvah. It was also simultaneously my birthday? I walked around and noticed that all of the young girls were wearing combinations of brown and blue in dresses that looked like they were purchased from Kohl’s or Macy’s. I overheard that this was the color combo of the season.