Dream Geography

Dream baby dream.

[dreamgeography]

A new dream: Last night, I dreamed that I was at some sort of summer camp with my classmates. My current real life landlords were the chaperones and drivers of the car I was in because I guess this summer camp had multiple destinations. And I guess I was a kid in this world, not old enough to drive. I rode in the backseat with two other young women. One was kind of in charge of a lot of things and mature for her age, so she had her own car she was leaving at this one campsite. She raced to get a birthday cake for another camp goer out of her car and put it in the lap of the female passenger beside me. Then she either went to the bathroom or to talk to someone else. She seemed really responsible to me, so I trusted her intentions were good and that she'd be back shortly. But our drivers refused to wait for her and started speeding off. At first, I thought they were doing this to scare her, but they kept going. I asked them when they were going to go back for her and they responded "Once we reach a certain point, there's no point in going back." I was really saddened that they would do this to her. If this could do this to her, they could do this to me. After enough of my complaining, they turned the car around. Then I worried that maybe she wouldn't come back. Maybe she didn't even know we had left. And now we would just wait. We would be late for wherever we were going. My kindness would be proven wrong; misguided. No one seemed to care that this girl had disappeared. Maybe none of us believed it yet.

[dreamgeography]

I'm dreaming the hardest. --Marilyn Monroe

February 4, 2002 Last night, I dreamt that I swallowed my pride and went to the home of the ex, whom in real life I am trying to avoid. It was his birthday party and in the dream, he lived in the house I grew up in as child--so that was where the party was. There were so many fun people at the party/in the house and I was having a good time, but the whole time I was there, I felt like my ex was avoiding me by being upstairs with his guy friends. I had a present for him: a mix tape I had made and even wrapped up as a gift. Word spread to him that I was leaving and it took him forever, but he made his way downstairs to tell me goodbye. Instead of being cordial, I blew up on him--telling him all these things I had been holding inside. Like that Husker Du song that goes: "There are things I'd like to say to you, but I'm never talking to you again." We ended up going for a walk down my old street (his street now) and he tried to comfort me, but this only made me more upset. *I have a lot of dreams about past lovers living in my real life childhood home. I think it has to do with my fearing losing them forever/having them exist only in the past, but also feeling frustrated that someone who I think doesn't deserve any space in my life...becomes forever a part of my history. I don't want to always feel this way. According to my dreams and real life recent events, I have felt this way for awhile. I want to be able to befriend every ex, but it's hard. It's hard to feel rejected. It's hard to not feel like somewhere down the line you were lied to. It's hard to accept you could have spoken up when things were bothering you. But you didn't.

[dreamgeography]

A new dream:

Last night, I dreamed my friend's husband died just a few days after their marriage and honeymoon. 

It was sudden, unexpected, a nightmare of confusion. 

But my friend wasn't sad she tried to have everlasting love. 

In fact, she thought she would have regretted it more if she had not married him. 

Happy New Year. 

[dreamgeography]

An old dream

January 9, 2002 Last night, I dreamt I met Billy Ray Cyrus in a super market and asked him where the Nutty Bars were. He knew. Obviously. Then I called the band, Subtonix to say WHAT'S UP. Dude. --That was a real dream I had when I was 21. No wonder I was the most optimistic and enthusiastic person in the world back then. According to the rest of my journal at the time, I had just seen "The Royal Tennenbaums" so maybe that it what caused such ridiculousness. I had also watched ADULT SWIM *and* SEX AND THE CITY. I had just left a stressful one month+ visit seeing my family in Texas. I had almost cheated on my boyfriend. Except not really. I just hung out with someone I had had a crush on for ages. We stayed up until 4am watching stoner cartoons in his bedroom, but nothing happened. But then my boyfriend and I had really good sex as soon as I got back into town. I was taking a cinematography class. I was reading Alisha Erian's _The Brutal Language of Love_ while listening to Le Tigre. Man, I was happy. Maybe this kind of energy will repeat itself once I leave Texas on Monday morning. I did just see a SEX AND THE CITY episode. I've probably had the most stressful family visit in Texas I've ever had. I almost cheated, but not really on my not-really-ex-boyfriend-because-he-never-became-my-boyfriend-and-then-we-broke-up-Thursday. I just got drunk and let men talk to me more than usual. I am not reading Alisha Erian, but I am reading Lidia Yuknavitch. I am not listening to Le Tigre, but I have Electrelane in my head. I'm really hoping for dreamy optismism filled dreams and even a dreamy optimistic lifestyle in 2013. Also, lots of enthusiasm. I have faith.

[dreamgeography]

A new dream:

A dream about dreaming. I was staying at my older sister's house and she lived in this super beautiful almost artist-cabin. The bedrooms were all up high and you had to slide down a wooden slide that almost looked like a slanted bridge to get down. I took a nap on my last day of staying with my sister and I had a dream I was floating. It reminded me of my one bad drug experience where I laid in bed paralyzed with the room spinning. Except this time I had control. It was a lucid dream and I could make myself turn slowly in the air like a steering wheel. But I couldn't quite make myself land or make myself touch anything concrete. I could see my laptop on my bed. I could see except everything was black and white. I wondered if my sister or her kids were going to walk in on me floating, think I was a witch or possessed or something. But they didn't. Eventually I forced myself a wake but it was so hard. And then I was in a daze and tried to pack my stuff. But I couldn't for the life of me remember what time my flight was. And the packing was useless. I had no order or logic to what I was doing. It was like I was still moving in circles even while awake. I listened to a voicemail from a girl I once dated and she told me she had all of this pie and other holiday treats and cookies for me if I visited her. She was in San Diego but I was going to LA. the thought of her offering these things to me was nice. More appealing because she was extending kindness than that I actually liked her. Then the house turned into an undergrad dorm room. I was going to have to share a bedroom with a woman I had never met. I avoided her and then we talked. She wasn't as old as me but older than the typical undergrad. She was very nice and pretty. A brunette like my other sister. She told me she worked at Target. Like one of my former students. Then in what i think was the last part of my dream, I was in a long dress running outside. I was running through the beautiful desert. Music was playing on the home owner's boom box. The homeowner was now my high school best friend and not my older sister. They are both Pisces. The music was Latin and I thought how me running through the desert with that music would make a perfect scene in a movie. Except no one was filming it. We walked back and reality struck. I told my best friend I couldn't remember when my flight was and I didn't have a ride to the airport. It was like I had a concussion. She was nice and tried to brainstorm ideas with me. I remember I was in tucson and so was one of my friends from the bay area. I thought that maybe she would give me a ride. She was my friend and I felt like she owed me.

[dreamgeography]

I've got dreams to remember.--Otis Redding

An old dream:

January 2, 2002

i had strange dreams this morning. it kind of felt as though i was awake and allowing myself to be my own guide within the dreams.

i really felt as though i was leading myself in this dream. kind of like a contemporary virtual reality version of Maya Deren's "At Land".

i was in another town, slightly lost and my friend was kidnapped and i had to run for my life and left her behind and ran down this hill, where i slid down all this sand.

but i got myself back up and thought i was running to something, but really there was just commotion.

then i waited in line at a friend's work, but she never came through for me.

i ended up in the sand being provocative and having an ex of mine be sleazy with me.

i just remember having this feeling of control as i was running to something that wasn't there. the more i ran, the more i could see.

then i ended up back "home" only to find that my bedroom had been moved into a bigger house. like my house and housemates were a sub-house in a bigger one.

I don't remember this dream at all now, but I can tell you I rarely have dreams where I feel like I'm in control. It's as if control is a muscle I haven't used in years and I'm slowly starting to regain its power.

[dreamgeography]

A new dream:

Last night I dreamed about having a staph infection and being sure I was going to die.

Like that girl in Oregon or that other girl in Georgia. Both places I have lived in real life.

Limbs would need to be amputated. I wanted to call people I loved to tell them goodbye but I knew they wouldn't have the time to come see me in person before I died so I didn't want them to bother.

Because I knew anyone I loved who loved me back, would make an effort to come and see me before I died. I think this was a dream about trying to stop other people from doing what they wanted because I was convinced I already knew how everything was going to turn out.

So why bother.

Why bother?

Before I went to bed last night, I saw a picture of a friend's new tattoo.

It was swollen, maybe seemed infected.

I worried about his skin.

I don't have any tattoos.

Was always afraid if I got one, I wouldn't be able to stop.

It would become an addiction.

Sometimes I wonder if tattoos actually say anything about anyone.

Or if bare skin does.

I can't tell.

I just want to control the way you see me, I guess.

I guess I guess I guess I guess.

[dreamgeography]

An old dream

December 29, 2001 I dreamt about surfing, which I've never done. I also dreamt about my ex having to put his dogs, whom he loves very much in the pound while he was on vacation. *Though I called it "Holiday" in my journal, because apparently I thought I was british 11 years ago. In the dream, my ex hoped no one would adopt the dogs or put them to sleep while he was away. He got the dogs back in the end, but somehow I saw lots of dead fish in the process. I also spent a lot of time with my cat in the dream. Here is what I will say about this dream of mine almost exactly 11 years later: I have no recollection of this dream, though it sounds about right. I still have never surfed. I can't even swim, in fact. I only ever had one ex who had dogs while we dated so it was easy to imagine who I was talking about. At the time that I had this dream, I was feeling guilty because I had just broken up with this ex to date the person I dated before him. It made him feel more like a chump than a rebound since I had complained so much about this person to him. When we dated, things were great. My one small complaint were his dogs. They slept with him nightly and because I have always been more of a cat-person, I just wasn't used to dogs sharing a bed with me...and someone else. One of his dogs was female and I seriously thought the dog was in love with him and that's why she was especially mean to me. Dog-human jealousy. Or maybe the dog knew I wasn't right for him and was trying to protect him. From me. And I don't know why he wouldn't board the dogs but instead surrender them up to the pound other than that it was dream-logic. That and maybe my subconscious thought if he did get rid of the one minor problem between us--if he did get of his dogs, then everything would be perfect. It wouldn't have, of course. And I would never ask someone to do that. I think I saw the dead fish in my dream because goldfish were the first pets I ever had growing up. As a child, I saw so many of them come and go. I remember once my mother holding a dead one in her hand. I hated the way it looked--lifeless and not just out of water, but on my mother's skin. It must have felt so cold.

[dreamgeography]

A new dream: Last night I dreamed I had a pet iguana. I liked the idea of having a big lizard for a pet so much, but the reality was that I was scared to touch the animal. I couldn't handle the idea of it's scaley and rough skin across mine. And it was such a friendly creature to me. Why couldn't I get used to it? The funny thing was, in the dream--I had always wanted a lizard for a pet. I had wanted the lizard to be mine my entire life. I felt most at ease when I put the lizard in water. When submerged, the lizard shrank and hardly looked like the full grown version of itself. But I was scared the lizard needed to be out of water more, out of the plastic bag or aquarium it happened to be in--that so much water for so long was harmful to the lizard. It turned out, no matter where the lizard was or how big or small it became, I was scared. I was always scared. Even though I thought that this was what I had alwats wanted. Always. In the dream, I was taking care of this pet for a friend who could no longer care for the pet either. I wondered if we could live a life where the lizard never touched me. Where each other's skin never co-habitated. I wondered, but had a feeling the lizard would accidentally touch me some day. It would never work.

[dreamgeography]

An old dream: July 10, 2001: Last night, I dreamt that I was walking through downtown, Olympia, Washington with the person I am dating now and we saw the last person I dated. The one I broke up with for this one. I called that person's name and we smiled the biggest goofy smiles and hugged for a really long time, as if they were telling me that everything was OK--or that it was going to be OK, between us and just, in general. I want everything to be OK.

[dreamgeography]

A new dream

The night before last I dreamed a person I was dating was sending me text messages telling me how cute I looked, but in the texts, they were specifically commenting on things I was wearing at that moment. Not to creep me out by telling me they were watching me, but instead to tell me that they could see me. Except I wasn't wearing those things and it was like I had discovered the person I was dating was on autopilot with a stockpile of text-message-compliments ready to send to me on a weekly basis. "I'm not wearing the gray sweater today, but thank you." I'm not wearing the gray sweater today, but thank you.

[dreamgeography]

An old dream: April 28, 2001 "had erotic dreams about my crush and finally wearing this baby blue miniskirt i bought. it was funny. then i was woken up by the phone." I was 20 when I had that dream. Not even old enough to drink. I don't remember who my crush was at the time or if I was dating anyone. I don't even know what baby blue miniskirt I was thinking about. I think I know who the crush could have been. I remember the skirt more vividly though. If it's the one I'm thinking. I used to have way more erotic dreams than I have now. The ones I have now all feel like that scene toward the end of Being John Malkovich, where the audience gets to see everything John Malkovich experienced and hasn't let go of--from childhood until now. The photo is me on a plane, wishing I was dreaming, but just closing my eyes as I flew from a funeral to a family. It was a quick flight, but it made a huge difference.

[dreamgeography]

Dream geography: the beginning

I once had someone I was romantically involved with tell me that "No one likes to hear about your dreams unless you're sleeping with them and even then not so much." The implication being that if you're already next to them in bed, you're kind of forced to listen to them--you don't have a choice. So I guess you should think of yourself here next to me in bed.