Bad-Neighborhood Dream, and Last Night's Dreams

Hello All,

The first dream I'm going to record is one I had about 4 and a half months ago. I also had two short dreams last night, but they're somewhat mediocre, so they'll come after the older dream.

In the older dream, I was about 12 years old and had moved with my Mom to a bad neighborhood somewhere in California. The dream seemed very real because in real life I moved to North Carolina when I was almost 11 years old, and had some of the same feelings in this dream. So, in the dream my Mom and I had moved to a one story house, with holes in the walls and floors, and no curtains. Even the switches and plumbing were either out-of-date, or somehow faulty. I remember my Mom gave me a little bag of penny candy (she used to do this in real life when I was little), and asked me if I liked the new place we lived in. I was worried about the new school I'd have to go to. The doctor had prescribed me methamphetamine for ADD, and I was afraid I'd get in trouble for having drugs, even though I was supposed to have them.
I heard a police report about the people who lived in the house before my Mom and I. Two sisters lived in the house, and got killed in a botched drug deal. The police were saying that one of the sisters had just pulled in the driveway, and that she would have survived if she had just hid next to her car, rather than go in the house. In my 12 year old mind I had decided I would hide outside the house (like the sister should have) if I got in trouble for my methamphetamine prescription at school.
I was particularly unable to get comfortable in the new house because it was in such bad shape. I remember trying to take a shower, but I could only get cold water to come out because I didn't realize till after the fact that the hot water was turned on by a little switch to the side of the faucet. When I got out of my cold shower and was drying myself off, I remembered there were no curtains, so I had to dry off in the one corner of the room not visible from the windows. That is when I noticed that my Mom had tried to hide the holes in the walls by stacking books and CDs in them.

In the first dream I remember from last night, a woman was painting her face with a paint brush. She was literally painting a face on her face, so not simply putting on make-up. I felt as though I recognized her from another dream, and said to myself, "Oh, that's who she is."

In the second dream I remember, I went to a small party, had a lot of fun and met some new friends. I was walking home one day, and one of the girls from the party offered to give me a ride home. Evidently, her friend (who was the hostess of the party) made a bracelet for me for my birthday. The girl wanted me to stop buy and get it. I felt awkward just showing up at the hostesses house to ask for the gift, but I did and the hostess was happy I came to retrieve it.

My new friends and I got together at a convenience store (I think to practice running it). The front of the shop was an actual store, but the back of the shop was a "practice" store, but it still had real products on the shelves, and I remember we could take anything we wanted, so I got some over-the-counter medications, and was happy to save money. Every one left the store and walked away in different directions. I ended up walking downtown.

I could tell I was near the sea though I couldn't see or hear it. My throat was dry, so I stopped in a convenience store to get some hard candy. When I was about to interact with the clerk, another customer mistook me as an employee there and rudely asked me to help him. I ignored him and proceeded with my transaction. The clerk became impatient as I was putting my purchases on the counter for him to ring-up, so he went to the back of the store. I could see a television in the back of the store.

Though I couldn't see the clerk, I could see someone was fast-forwarding the TV, so I assumed it was him. The image from the store security cameras came on the TV, and showed the clerk sitting on the couch watching the footage. I felt irritated and just left. I then came to a dessert store, but when I went in, all the desserts had ice cream in them, and I'm lactose intolerant. I left the store and continued my walk through downtown...and that was it.

Thanks for reading,

Marc

Tommy-Helps-Me-Dream and Some Fragments

Hello All,

Here's a picture of me in front of the computer, and a picture of Angie on the computer. I'm going to record a dream I had almost exactly five months ago, and then record some brief fragments I remember from last night and the night before. The older dream I had about a co-worker named Tommy. Tommy and I both descended into one of life's darker oubliettes at the same time. Our problems had different causes and expressions, but I think the fact we were both in a downward spiral caused a certain understanding between us. I'm no longer in contact with Tommy, and last I heard he was in a rehab in Canada.

In the dream, my mother had a house in a swamp. The house was so overcome by the swamp around it, that the back-end of it was sinking into the water. If you went into the rooms in the back of the house, their very edges were underwater, and most of the floorboards had moss and mold on them. I went to my mother's house to retrieve something from it, something sentimental. I brought friends with me because the trip was too dangerous for me to take myself. We retrieved some of my precious childhood belongings, and trekked back through the swamp. We had to swim across a deep reservoir to get back to the road. The depth of the water felt more threatening because night had fallen, and now the water and land around me were equally black.

When I got back to the road I realized I had left something very dear to my heart in my mother's swamp house, I'm pretty sure it was the very thing I had set out to get in the first place. I felt so upset! Out of all the people with me, only Tommy felt bad enough for me that he agreed to go back with me, even though it was a frightening trip. I really think this dream was reminding me of some warm-heartedness or understanding that I got from Tommy during my "crazy." Perhaps it's just a dream, but there is a lot I don't remember from that time. So, I feel the need to say, "Thank you Tommy."

The past two nights have been a bit restless, so I've only remembered some dream fragments. The night before last I had a dream I was in class with Michael May. I kept a telephone in my desk. I went home that night and drove back to class the next day, but when I was driving to class my car's engine just stopped. I managed to coast the car into a parking spot near the building I had to go to. I was very upset and hoped Michael would help me, but I wanted to try and get someone else's help first, so he wouldn't feel I was imposing on him.

I went to my desk, but someone had taken my phone. I said, "where's my phone?" and Michael told me he just put it in a cubby by the door. I went to the area, but didn't see it, and needed him to take the phone out for me. I felt stupid for needing his help anyway, just to get the phone to call someone for help with my car.

Last night, I completely forgot my dream even though I was aware I was dreaming. I thought very hard and was able to dredge up the last scene. A man and I were courting each other, but hadn't started dating yet. As a gift, my dad gave the man a large quilt. However, the quilt had been used as a death shroud before, and my suitor was too uncomfortable to use it. My dad was very angry he didn't use the gift, and I tried to explain to my dad it was an inappropriate gift. I hoped he would understand why the man wouldn't use it.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Roaming-Dream

Hello All,

Today I'm going to record two dreams, but will post the newest dream first, so I don't forget any detail. I just woke up and had the dream about 15-20 minutes ago.

In the dream, I was moving out of a rental house where I shared a room upstairs with one of my house mates. I remember my bed had mustard yellow sheets. I moved out of this house into an apartment of my own. A friend asked me about my old house, but I had already almost forgot about it. I think it disturbed me that the place I just lived in should leave my memory so quickly. I guess it was a fear of separation from the past.

I left my apartment on foot, and went to find my sister. She lived in a town house, and the sun was setting. I knocked on her door, but no one answered. I had a small CD player with me, so I lay it on her doorstep and listened to "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin. She was home after all and just wasn't answering the door. She only answered the door because the particular song irritated her. She ended up talking to me for a little bit anyway. It was still dusk when I left her apartment. I walked between the townhouses and through yards of apartments, and came out to a street that led to a sea-side carnival closed for the season. The wood of the stands was dried out and splintering from the salt in the air.

I came by one closed stand that had a wooden Christmas scene (the size of a moderate stage) laying on its back. I traced my fingers along a statue of a toy soldier. I continued walking and came to a mental hospital I had stayed at perhaps when I was a teenager in the dream. I decided to go in because they still had some of my personal effects I never collected, but when I went in they wouldn't let me go. I took it upon myself to just leave. I recognized the road which left the hospital and began to follow it to my apartment, but it started raining so hard that I couldn't move very fast, and before I knew it guards from the hospital tracked me down with scent dogs.

I was returned to the mental hospital, but a journalist came and walked me out, and we snuck to the side of the building. A guard confronted us, but the journalist began to argue with him. As they were arguing, a disgruntled employee from the hospital came around the side of the building and dropped a pile of files and letters on the ground and left. I went to the pile and found files providing proof of criminal malpractice in the mental hospital. I also found a manila envelope filled with my belongings from when I stayed there as a teenager, and the letters were ones I never received from various friends.

I found two Dexedrine pills among my personal effects, and thought "good, now I can get something done." A lot of the letters were from a girl named Audrey Pratt, who in real life was my best friend from the ages of 12-17 (this is why I presume I was in the mental hospital as a teenager). She sent me pictures of herself and little pieces of artwork. The journalist scared off the guard, picked up the files, and we left. She dropped me off at my parents' home, and my parents told me the mental hospital could call me back any time they wanted to, and I asked them if there was anything they could do, but they didn't answer. We got in the car (a white station wagon) and began to drive somewhere. I kept on asking if there was anything they could do, but they wouldn't answer.

We then turned into a different family, I was some teenage kid (and no, not even me when I was a teenager) with short light brown hair, and my parents were in their 30s and kind of looked like white-trash. As this kid, I was still asking them if there was anything they could do about the mental hospital having a permanent hold on me. The car broke down, and we all got out of the car. My parents started talking about if there was anything they could do, and I was glad they were finally thinking about it, but I soon realized they were talking about the car, not me.

I kept asking, but they weren't paying attention to me, and I began to feel faint and lay down on the ground next to the car. I then switched to the point of view of a woman walking down a snowy path (it was Trinity road as a gravel foot path). I remember her thinking, "I can see castles in the snow on the path, I can see castles in the falling snow, I can see castles in the snow that's blown by the wind, I can see castles in the clouds." Then I woke up.

I remember a short dream from the night before last. I was in Connecticut again, and playing in the undergrowth of a forest. I found various herbs and was excited about it. I was looking for a holly plant and finally found it, but it was missing leaves and sickly looking. I then heard a voice come out from the sky saying, "Marc, you're always disappointed by what you find." I left the forest and walked down the driveway of a small farm to the road, and the neighbor from across the street told me I could swim in his pool if I liked. I did and was happy because I love swimming.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Another Fragment

Hello All,

Yesterday evening I told my Mom my method for remembering my dreams, and just that night I became aware I was dreaming twice, but nearly forgot both. I have a slight memory of one of the dreams.

When I'm not so faded and tired, I can look much more androgynous than I do now. For so long I've been meticulous about my appearance, but now that things have changed in my life, I'm too tired. Perhaps that will change some day, and perhaps that's why I had this dream.

I had a dream of being in school again. I abruptly left class because my sister was moving and I had to get some boxes. While getting boxes from a store, one of the employees mistook me as a co-worker, and rudely asked me where the plastic spoons and forks were. Glad to be unhelpful, I just answered, "I've never known where those are."

When I returned from class the teacher was mad at me for leaving. I was suprised because I left class to do something important, but it soon dawned on me that when you're in class it doesn't matter if your sister is moving. I returned to my apartment in a bit of a down trodden mood.

As I was making my way past an ill-tempered neighbor's door, he came out dressed very beautifully. I could hear the silk rubbing together, and smell his perfume. I thought to myself, I wish he knew I could look just as beautiful. In my mind I imagined introducing myself to him, after taking some time with my appearance.

Theatrics are theatrics, but presenting an image can be something to be missed.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Worry-Dreams

Hello All,

This time I managed to take a picture of myself much earlier in the morning, closer to when I actually had the dream. I'm going to narrate two dreams I've had since I've been a bit slack about writing my dreams down. The first one I had about two nights ago, and the second dream I had this morning. The first one will be harder to describe because much of it had to do with how the place felt and how I felt, not really how things looked.

A big family gathering of a friend of mine was about to take place. I was evidently a friend of the family as well, and was invited to stay over the night during the reunion. It was a very big house with a large yard, and wide deck, elevated about 8 feet above ground level by wooden poles. The house was three stories high, but the first and second stories were actually split level, which is the reason the porch was so high above the ground.

I felt uncomfortable about staying over, but it was one of those situations where it would insult the family if I didn't stay. Nightfall came. I was sleeping in a chair in the family room, along with other guests my age, who were distant enough to the family that they weren't able to get a room in the house. Everyone in the family room were either sleeping in a chair, on a couch, or on the floor. We joked (with a grain of sincerity) that we were the orphans of the house, and we should stay up all night, while they stayed up all day.

It's odd to be a guest, so you feel the need to "make yourself at home," but at the same time feel too uncomfortable in the host's house to really accommodate your needs. I find this often to be the case when visiting someone other than a peer. This is how I felt in this dream. I woke up in the middle of the night, and all the other "orphans" were fast asleep. I had to go to the bathroom, and decided to go to one on the bottom floor because no one was there and I'd be less likely to disturb someone. However, when I got down there, I felt if someone in the house heard me rummaging down there, they might think it was a burglar. Of course, the bathroom didn't have a lock, so I was afraid that if they did think it was a burglar, they might bust in the bathroom while I was using it.

Upon deciding this, I felt it was better to go to the bathroom in the main hall, on the second story (the same story as the family room). I went in the door, and realized it was a kind of mini-kitchen (perhaps for a mother-in-law suite etc). It was messier than the rest of the house and had someones personal effects all over the place. I even saw a pair of eyeglasses on the counter. I felt maybe I wasn't supposed to be there, but then rationalized the hosts knew they had a lot of guests, so should expect to have people using whatever bathroom, and then I woke up. The dream highlights my discomfort with being a guest (I've never been the kind of kid to go to slumber parties, and when I did I always regretted it).

Here is the dream I had this morning: The dream started with me searching a discussion board for answers about how to relieve my anxiety around other people. I typed in my particular inquiries thinking I was typing in a search engine box, but instead I was actually starting a thread, so everyone could see what I wrote and reply to it. I remember going back to the website and seeing that someone replied to my post, but since I didn't intend for it to be public, I didn't read the reply and continued my search.

I actually forgot what happened between that scene and the next one I'm going to describe, but I know not a lot of action intervened between the two. I was hiking in a forest with my friend Michael May, trying to divert myself from my worries. We had done the hike and I was still very anxious, so Michael pulled out two CDs and we both put them in our walkmans in our backpacks and continued to hike. The CD was of a man leading us through a path in the woods. The object was to follow the directions the man gave on the CD, and we were supposed to do everything at once and not pause, so we rushed through the forest paths following the recorded voice's instructions.

We came to a small canyon (so perhaps I should call it a ravine with a creek running through it). The creek at the bottom was only about 20 feet down the sheer walls of the ravine. It was very clear and shallow, but quick running over its bed of smooth rocks. There were three boulders that rose to just 4 feet or so below the cliff-top our path led us to. The CD told us to cross the ravine using the boulders as stepping stones, and said we could take no longer than 30 seconds to do this. In my head I pictured a man stepping off the cliff-side, falling forward with his foot landing on the first boulder, he then stepped-out with his next foot and fell forward. Perhaps because of the angle of the drop, he was able to bypass the middle boulder and fall with that foot planted down on the third boulder, he then leaped up to the cliff-side on the other side of the creek. Basically, the man I pictured in my mind (a mental manifestation of the directions I was being given by the CD) was crossing this ravine (about 20 feet wide) with only two steps and one leap.

It seemed very dangerous to me, if not impossible. Michael told me it was just an optical illusion, and that it was actually not that far from the first boulder to the third, and that the middle boulder was shorter than the other two, so you could just step past it. Our 30 seconds was nearly up, so I decided it was too dangerous, and quickly took an alternate path that led down to the ravine floor, across the creek, and up the other side. Michael decided to use the boulders as stepping stones like the CD instructed. He made it fine until he came to the leap off the third boulder to get on the other side of the ravine. He lost his footing and fell backwards, and landed on his backpack at the edge of the creek.

Since the boulder was already below the cliff-side, I figured there was a good chance he wasn't hurt too badly. I went down the path to the ravine floor and came to Michael. He seemed dazed and I went to help him up. That's when I noticed his CD player and his CD were shattered, which made me think he had a good chance of having a substantial injury. I helped him and we left to go to the parking lot of his work place (my former work place) to send him home or to a doctor. Michael was silent the whole time, and I began to feel something was wrong with him. As I walked him to his car, shards of the broken CD started to fall on the gravel parking lot . I tried to gather them up so no one would step on them.

As I was gathering the shards, I came upon very thin sharp pieces of glass, which I assumed came from Michael's backpack too, but as I collected them they started to break off and melt in my hands. I noticed there was ice, sleet, and snow all over the parking lot now. I got Michael to his car, and returned to the woods to go back out the path to where ever I came from, but I was stopped by employees of the store I knew from when I worked there. The snow was very deep now, and they were all drinking in the parking lot. I joined them, and started to feel very drunk, so I said to one of my friends there that I was going to stop drinking. He encouraged me to have some more, and I drank more. I then realized he was already smashed and was just trying to get me on the same level as him.

We went into the workplace because the people I was drinking with hadn't clocked-out yet, and wanted me to wait for them there. I stopped to say hello to my old boss, she looked very tired and work-weary. We went into the back of the store and I sat around while my ex-co-workers were tying the loose ends up to get out of work. Their supervisor was irritated with them because he said, "If you clock-out now your just going to have to wait till everyone else is ready anyway." I felt relieved to not be working there anymore.

Everyone was finished and we went back to the parking lot, that was now buried in high drifts of snow. I helped the friend with me get to his car because the snow was almost over our heads. He was parked at the edge of the lot, in front of a restaurant with people eating outside under an awning. The snow was so deep I had to turn around and do a sort of somersault to launch myself forward and get a little higher on the snow. The proprietress of the restaurant said, "He looks like he's trying to get away from something." I then reached my car, and the dream ended.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Pact-Dream

Hello All,

My dream last night was slightly out of character for me like my last dream post. It reminded me so much of playing a video game that it took me a second to realize I was dreaming.

I had a dream where people lived in protected conclaves with force-fields around them, so only members of that conclave could exit or enter it. Marcus and I (Marcus was my best friend when I was a teenager and I haven't seen him in years) lived in one conclave, but we had another group of friends we secretly contacted (people from one conclave were not supposed to communicate with people from a different conclave) over some time. This group of friends consisted of two girls and one guy.

Marcus and I, and this other group decided upon a suicide pact, which we were going to carry out separately in our own areas. Marcus had got a very sharp sword that we agreed I would kill him with, and then I'd kill myself. When we got down to doing it, I realized I didn't want to kill myself, and that if I killed Marcus like he wanted me to, I'd just get charged with murder. I told Marcus what I felt, and he decided he didn't want to kill himself either. We hatched a plan to falsify our identity, so we could sneak into our friends' conclave. We wanted to try and stop them from committing suicide.

When we left our conclave, we were in some sort of flying vehicle. Outside, there were a lot of unmanned flying machines equipped with weapons. We had to keep a certain distance to keep them from detecting us. I remember feeling nervous as we flew over one in particular, I was just hoping our vehicle could fly high enough. We got to our friends' conclave where we contacted someone we knew there who was a maintenance worker on the force-field. He managed it so we would seem like members of that area. We snuck in and found our friends.

The man and one of the girls had already killed the other girl. When we told them we had decided not to kill ourselves, they also agreed. I remember feeling sad for the girl who already got killed. I went to the bed where she was killed, there was blood all over the place. I looked at a photograph of her with one of her friends. I was surprised to recognized them as acquaintances in my real life (of course in the dream I was just surprised to recognize the friend, but when I woke up I realized they were people I knew in real life). I looked on a shelf next to the bed, where the girl had been playing with a few small figurines while contemplating her death.

The remaining of us realized we now had a murder scene to clean up. We quickly cleaned up the bedroom and washed any clothes and bedding with blood on it. If I remember correctly, the dream ended with us leaving that conclave and sneaking back to the one Marcus and I came from, so the man and woman could start a new life with us, and not be penalized for the other girl's death.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Typical Nightmare

Hello All,

Last night I had a nightmare. It must of been produced by some increased anxiety I've been feeling because it otherwise seems to have little to do with my day to day life. Luckily, I had a sense of disassociation from the dream when I was having it, so it's not as if it was actually a scary dream. Unlike the dream I had in my last post, this dream just didn't feel like it was really happening.

The dream started with a lot of people gathered in a large outdoor parking lot, so something like where a state fair would be held. People sat on the hoods of their cars (etc) and talked with each other. On the road going by these fairgrounds, I saw rows of people walking by -- these were some type of alien. It didn't seem like any of the people knew for sure if the aliens were a threat, but my family, friends, and I already decided to leave the area. We rushed into our cars and drove to a large underground chamber, it looked like a sandstone rock quarry, but was completely underground. That's were we stayed, closing an enormous door behind us.

My perspective then shifted back to the fairgrounds/parking lot area. A couple of young men approached the aliens and began to talk to them. The aliens had a sense of decay about their otherwise human features, and when they spoke their intentions materialized upon the humans they were talking to, like illusions. As one alien spoke to one of the humans, it appeared the young man's throat was slit, and that the alien had flesh between its teeth. As soon as the young men stopped talking to the aliens and left, the illusion of a slit throat disappeared from the young man, and the aliens looked like normal people again.

My point of view then shifted to a number of other people around that particular town getting ready to hide underground from the aliens. I remember one was of a boy alone in his house, taking his pets down to the basement. I also remember a scene of people trying to get out of a mall through it's back entrances, but most of them were being caught and eaten. Oddly enough, one female alien was trying to catch up to a human child, to try and help him escape. However, in the child's fear he ran too far ahead of this female alien, and the scene ended with her looking through the back corridors of the mall, looking at the victims being eaten by the other aliens, in fear this boy was one of their victims.

I then appeared back in the dream with another man. We were trying to escape together. We entered something that seemed like a very large drainage system, or sewer, but it was large enough to have concrete and glass office stations lit by florescent lights through out its levels. Other people were trying to get into this underground area too, but they were being overcome by the aliens. For some reason the aliens didn't seem to notice we were human, and kept passing us by. I remember in one instance a nerdy looking alien was tricking humans into thinking he was a human, and an evacuation official. He would direct the humans into a corridor as if it was a path deeper into the underground area, but it was in fact a trap (where the humans would then get eaten).

A lot of people tried to get back out the doors of this corridor once they saw it led to a dead end, but more aliens would come to the entrance and keep them from escaping. Again, the man and I were overlooked and escaped after also falling for the nerdy alien's trap. We realized their was nothing safe about this underground area, so as soon as we came to an entrance that led back outside, we ran out. There was a creek leading into the woods from the tunnel we escaped through. We followed the creek into the woods, and this is how we escaped.

The dream then switched to a scene of two girls who had been killed by the aliens. After realizing they were dead, they jumped down a shaft in the underground area, down into "heaven." In heaven all the creatures were cartoons, but the girls soon realized these cartoons were also aliens that wanted to eat them (again). However, the two girls determined that since they were in heaven, they were the monarchs of all the cartoon aliens. The girls then shouted for the alien cartoons to leave them alone, and the cartoons fled in a big crowd. That's when I woke up.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Happy-Disrepair Dream

Hello All,

I had a dream worth recording last night. As it began, a man and I were in bed together. We weren't having sex, we were just sleeping together. It was really humid in the room, and the window was open. The man I was with was older than me, he seemed very adult and manful. I felt somewhat dazzled to be in this situation with such an authoritative, masculine man. We both had insomnia together, and were knotting and twisting on the bed in a sweaty beige sheet. We would wake up every hour or so, drink wine and smoke a cigar, and talk until one or the other could sleep again. I remember the man would lay the cigar on the windowsill, and every time we woke up, he would tap the ashes off the cigar, and it'd still be burning.

I also had the impression the house we were in didn't have electricity. When we woke up, we went our different ways in the neighborhood. It was a strange neighborhood tucked away down a muddy dirt road in the woods. It seemed like some people's houses didn't have either running water or electricity, or only had one or the other. Everyone seemed to know each other (including myself), and gathered in the middle of the neighborhood each morning to figure out what to do that day. In this particular day, we decided to play in an abandoned school at the edge of the neighborhood. Both the neighborhood and the school sat by a large lake. The dirt road left the neighborhood between the school and the houses, and crossed the lake.

After visiting the abandoned school, we all went to the other side of the lake. All the houses on the other side of the lake were completely abandoned. We put candles all over the outsides of the houses and the trees around them, and got dressed into scary costumes. It was like a Halloween parade. We all went our separate ways after this festival. I heard a car come down the dirt road, and went to hide. I think this side of the lake was abandoned because it was too accessible to the general public, and the neighborhood I lived in on the other side of the lake was kind of a hidden community.

I tried to get down the dirt road to get across the lake back to the inhabited side of it, but the road was flooded. Some normal people (people not a part of the hidden community) had driven a jeep to the edge of where the road was washed out, and were swimming and playing in the water. I avoided their sight, jumped in the lake and swam back to the inhabited side of the lake. I remember walking through the abandoned school, and seeing a watermark on the wall where the flood waters had come up to. That's when I noticed the sound of construction workers in the school, and I quickly left it before I was noticed. I guess it was being reclaimed.

I went back to my neighborhood and told the people about the normal people swimming by the washed-out road. A bunch of them went out and swam to the edge of the washed-out road and started harassing and playing pranks on the normal people. Someone, I'm supposing it was the guy I was sleeping with, handed me the cigar again. It was still lit, so I smoked from it again. I then began to think about all the people who had been murdered in their lakeside houses, on the other side of the lake, and thought to myself, "It's dangerous to live by a lake."

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Nap-Dream

Hello All,

Today I found out I've been declined for unemployment aid, nearly 6 weeks after I first applied. Naturally I was upset and laid down. The substance of my life is very thin now. I had a dream swhirling with everything I've read and done in the past 6 weeks.

I was wearing the embroidered robe of a priest, but it was tightly cinched at the waist like a dress. I remember thinking about my last name. It's "Guilarte" and is Euskara, that's the language of the Basque people, and I'm half Basque. My name means "From the Oak Tree." Dressed as I was, I walked into a forest with so much undergrowth I felt as if I was wading through water. I came to an oak tree.

I sat there staring at it quietly for a while. I saw a long unicorn horn come out of it. I thought it was going to stab me because it came right for me. Instead, the horn slid along my shoulder and between my hair, which hangs far past my shoulders. Then I saw the unicorn. It's body was furry and flexible like a cat's body, and it's face was long, but exceptionally narrow for a horse's. It began to speak to me. The unicorn's lips curled and puckered like a human's lips. It whispered into my ear, as if to remind me,

"Judge ye not, "I am a withered tree."

"Judge ye not, "I am a withered tree."

"Judge ye not, "I am a withered tree."

I woke up, and don't feel any better. I'm thin skinned, and exceptionally afraid. Is there any act of humankind that can calm me?

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Diary Entry: Trees and Fields

Hello All,

I'm acutely aware of time passing, but when I look back at my life, I've made such an effort to keep my time consistent it seems as if my life will just keep going on. I know it won't, so I don't know what to think of my eternal childhood. When little, first I played in the forest behind my house in Connecticut, and then in the choked and shallow creeks of North Carolina --always returning to my stuffed animals, books, and daydreams in my room, no matter what age.

In my adulthood, I played in the online forests and fields of video games (MMORPGs), while often doing much the same in real life (swimming, drawing, reading, writing, dancing around in my room). I wonder how long it will be that I can count the months on one hand where my life hasn't changed too much. I even had the same cat from 7 to 27, and desperately clung onto my parents and their house till I was 28. Age hasn't taken much of a toll on me, I look much the same now as I have for many years.

I live in fear of the time when I lose that continuity. With every change in my life I always wonder, "Is it now?" For the present, I'm unemployed and mostly isolated in my apartment, so I have plenty of time to scour over the past, and try to keep things up. It's my reluctance to break this continuous chain of events from my past to present that leaves me by myself, and unsure of my future. I just hope I can add another link rather than break the chain when I'm finally forced to do something different.

In the meanwhile, I can look back at the recent past and see how I continued to be able to play with my sister or a friend in the woods or fields, even though it may have been in computer world. I really miss listening to "Trout Mask Replica" by Captain Beefheart, or "Freak Out" by Frank Zappa, while playing the futuristic MMORPG "Anarchy Online." To some people it will seem nerdy, or unseemly for someone past childhood to gild something like that, but I haven't been as happy as I was then... ever since. I still had my parents watching TV downstairs, some good friends, my older sister playing with me, my childhood bedroom, my childhood cats, my grandmother, and my daydreams of "what I would be when I grew up." That was only a matter of years ago.

Now, I feel I can only be happy it wasn't that long ago, and hope this isn't the time when things are going to change, and my charmed, immortal childhood will end. I'm not finished growing up, and I'm not ready to decide what I want to be yet.

See you later,

Marc

Another Homlessness Dream

Hello All,

For the sake of documentation, I decided to go ahead and record yet another homelessness dream I had on Sunday night. It's the second dream I've had that involves Christians trying to kill me. At some point in time, I'll write down the other one I had a number of months ago... hopefully, within proximity to this post, but I've been busy in the past few days, so I have no ideal how well I'll be able to organize my next few posts.

I had a dream I lived in a rather organized slum. The buildings were made of scrap-wood and corrugated metal boards. The main path was dirt, but had ditches dug on the sides to channel waste water and what-not down the sides of the road. Each building had a little plank that went over the ditch and into their entrances. I was looking for something in one of the buildings. I remember this slum being a lot like what I imagine the middle ages being like. It was very dirty, and appeared to be run by common-law within the community. I remember seeing people bath next to the waste-water ditches, and their nudity wasn't appealing at all, it was very real, and filthy...just animals taking care of their bodily needs.

I bought a compact from one of the buildings that had a razor embedded in its powder. When I left the slum, people warned me a man claimed to have a spear blessed by God he planned to kill me with. I was supposed to use the razor in the compact to kill him before he was able to attack me. I left the slum and the woods it was hidden in, and came out to a clean, suburban street. I remember the dream ending as I watched the man talking to some other people on the street. He didn't notice me coming to his side as I opened the compact and took out the razor.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Dreams of Home-life, Dream of Strange Life

Hello All,

I had a lot of dreams last night. I woke up with a dream where I was in some third-world country. I can't remember it's name, but its sky was milky white, almost as if it was smoky outside. I was in a rural area, and there were trees everywhere, but none of the trees had branches. The land looked like it was covered by telephone poles.

I went out into the back yard of the house I was staying in, and it was on a very steep hill that lead right down to a large river, but the incline of the hill was so steep I couldn't see the bottom of the valley. I remember there being an outhouse in the back yard. I went to a side of the house where the incline wasn't as steep, and walked down to the valley floor. There wasn't a big river as I thought, but several very broad, shallow, creeks. Some kid threw a rock in the water, and I heard an old man say, "Oh he wants to wake the country of so-and-so (whatever the name of the country was).

At this point in the dream, something in the wilderness made a noise kind of like an owl's hoot, but with the raspiness of a pig's squeal. Then it seemed like the whole opposite side of the woods from where I stood started repeating the sound, just like an echo. The noise got louder every time it was repeated. I looked into the woods, but couldn't see anything making the noise. As I was looking in the woods, I heard the same old man call the animal the Rising so-and-so (after the name of the country). He said that only its own kind could "limit its scourge or scope."

Earlier in the night, I had three dreams related to home-life. I'll start from the first to last. The first one was a revision of what actually happened in the past. In real life, I stopped working as an assistant accountant, took that summer to study for the GRE, started taking classes that Fall, and was then accepted into graduate school in the Spring semester, but in the dream. I went back to work part-time for awhile (maybe almost a year?) before going to graduate school full-time.

I wore slacks and a button down shirt, and felt so nervous about going to work I threw up in the parking lot (I really hated that job). I remember going into the office and having to start the boring cubicle routine. I thought to myself, "I'm not going to be able to work here anymore in a few months anyway, so I might as well not put myself through this anymore." I left work and went home. I still lived with my parents, and it was around Spring break for those who were in college.

I looked around my room at all the things I had ever since I was a small child. There was a three-tiered fountain outside, and it had ducks playing in the large pool of water in the bottom tier. I had different friends come and visit me as they came home to their families over Spring vacation. They were people I knew from all different phases of my life in my real life. I remember talking to one of them. We were both sitting on my bed and I was looking out the window watching the ducks in the fountain, thinking I could watch them all day.

The next dream was much shorter. I was in a parking lot of some offices in the process of being built. I remember watching the builders' progress in one office over two nights, and once it got dark wanted to look in the window to see what it looked like inside, but I was afraid some sort of alarm would go off. I was about to go to sleep in the parking lot, but then it dawned on me it'd be safer to sleep in my car.

In the last dream in this series, I was living in our house in Connecticut. I got up in the middle of the night to look for something downstairs. I accidentally came across one of my Mom's hiding spots for sweets. I decided to just take half a pastry, so my Mom wouldn't be too angry with me, but when I went to heat it up, it got all gooey, so I had to eat the whole thing. I felt really bad about it and decided to buy my Mom another one when I got home from school the next day (I was probably about high-school age in this dream). I went upstairs and started to get tired. I could hear my parents wake up early and start moving around downstairs.

My Mom was talking about going to see a concert in London and my Dad was talking about the cost. They were putting up a Christmas tree. I was finally about to fall asleep again when I heard my Dad calling me. I must of been coming out of my dream and falling into deeper sleep in real life because I remember thinking if I were my black cat (Winkerton) I wouldn't have to wake up and go downstairs because then I could turn invisible.

I supposed I had a more active than usual night last night because I'm feeling a little sick today.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

To Touch the Pacific Ocean

Hello All,

I thought it important to include a picture that proves I do Indeed get dressed some days, but sought to comfort you with my usual morning picture (the one with my hair down). In this post I'm continuing my transfer of dreams from my old blog. This dream is part of my beach dream phase. I actually had one other beach dream that I never recorded, so I suppose I'll try to record it here for the first time, but first here is the one I wrote down.

I'll have to malign my rather stuffy old roommate a bit to record this dream. In the dream, Ashley (the ex-roommate) and I had to go to a conference out in Utah. The conference ended nearly as soon as we got there, but filled with an adventurous spirit gained from making such a trek from my home-state of North Carolina, I told Ashley I wanted to go ahead and see the Pacific Ocean, since we had gone so far already. As typical, my ex-roommate reacted with irritation as she was excited to get back to her normal television-programmed routine in NC and snapped at me saying, "I've already done that!" I withheld myself from arguing (which trust me, isn't normal for me) and drove her back to our apartment in North Carolina, and drove myself all the way back out West. I arrived in San Fransisco.

I reached the city exhausted, and needed to stay in a hotel before I could continue on my trek to touch the Pacific Ocean. I remember watching a documentary in the hotel room. It was about a local eccentric. A scruffy long-haired man, who pedaled around on his bike, with a baby-doll dress on (the similarity to me is noted). This man was strikingly ugly to the point where he was cute, much the way people think pug-dogs are cute. He was noted in the neighborhood for his child-like personality. He had rode his bike into a dangerous neighborhood because a woman there had offered to plait his hair into dutch braids (corn-rows).

The police stopped him, knocked him off his bike, and beat him to death because of his appearance. At that point, I had finally fallen asleep in my crusty hotel room bed. My parents are full-time "RVers," and had happened to be in a camp-ground near San Francisco. In the morning, I called them to tell them I was nearby. My Mom approved of my trek to touch the Pacific Ocean, so they agreed to meet me at said beach, but when I got there (in a rent-a-car) the road ended on a high cliff. I could see the beach below, but had no idea how to get there.

My parents had the same problem as I and met me at the edge of the cliff. As we were looking out into the vast darkness of the new moon sky and black ocean, I decided to go to the rent-a-car and use my cell phone and a map to try to find where the path down to the beach was. My parents were satisfied with just standing on the cliff, looking into the outer-space like darkness, so when I found the path to the beach, I just called them and told them what I was doing. I remember the car sharply pointing down a sandy path. It slipped down the path's loose sand, and I used it as a sled to get down to the beach.

That's how that dream ended. I had another West coast beach dream I never wrote down because it seemed fragmented and silly to me. Now, referring to real life, I've dated very seldomly, so the men I've had in my life maintain their significance through the years. My first boyfriend was a guy named Terry. He was a year older than me. It was at the height of "grunge" and we both loved Courtney Love's "Hole." I was 17 and he was 18, and we both had eating disorders and angst-provoked drug habits. Naturally, it was love at first site.

In this dream we had trekked across the USA in order to fulfill my dream to touch the Pacific Ocean. Terry had some drug-buddies he met back in Baltimore who we could stay with in San Francisco. I remember their house was a four-roomed disaster, but was achingly close to the beach. Always being the prude in the group, I was nervous about staying in a house full of junkies (Terry's drug habits where rather serious, while mine still remained in the realm of youthful experimentation), but Terry isolated me from the rest of the group, so I felt relatively safe.

The first available morning, Terry and I went out to explore the sea-side, and finally touch the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to go straight to the beach and get our quest done with, but Terry wanted to show me a tide-pool where ostriches had colonized. We were just a dune away from the ocean, and I remember walking along it, looking at the ocean, but knowing I'd have to wait till I could go to it. We reached a copse of palm trees where the wide, shallow tide-pools began. As soon as we saw the ostriches (they were much larger than I had imagined), Terry reminded me they were very territorial, and would attack us if they thought we were a threat. He also said they would follow a potential threat for miles once startled. I was rather put-off by this and asked him if we couldn't just go to the beach.

Sure enough, as soon as I said this, the ostriches spotted us and immediately started to charge. We ran all the way back to the dilapidated junky-house, and never got to go to the beach. He tried to act like it wasn't a big deal because there was a big party at the house, blah. So there you have two more Pacific Ocean dreams.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

The Blood-rush of Escape Dreams

Hello All,

This is another post where I'm transferring dreams from my old blog to my new blog. The next few dreams from my old blog are all related to escape, and oddly enough, most of them have something to do with touching the Pacific Ocean, something I've never done. I had this dream about 3 and a half months ago.

I lived in a new prospering city. A place that could only exist on the West Coast, it's European history remarkably brief. I lived in a hotel stories upon stories high, with every thing inside. A tower of elevators and escalators, vast windows and unending views out into the sea. I was a completely different person. I was someone I'd be attracted to, rather than myself.

I'd go to my school, only to go out to the beach in front of it's large tempered-glass windows, framed with steel piping. I put on a wet suit, and swam as the sun set. The light blared through everything, it obscured the landscape as much as fog. I was late for class because I couldn't leave the rushing ocean and intense level of sunlight. I never feel so much energy in real life as I feel in dreams like these.

I soon went back to class as the evening took hold, and only looked forward to the next day to where I again could be so completely blasted by sunlight. I woke up with an incredible amphetamine rush, that only lasted a few minutes, and then I went back to bed. Real life, is so much like, trying to drag a soggy, dead body to shore.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Trapped

Hello All,

I dreamt unpleasantly last night. However, I take any dream as information, and also as my own little movie, so I can't disapprove too much of any dream. I decided to take a picture of Angie and I this morning. Each day, she wakes up around 3am and proceeds to play with her loudest toys (I live in a studio apartment, so it's basically one room), and to tread in every place she knows she's not supposed to go (kitchen sink, my desk). The past few days she's been better behaved, so I thought she deserved a close-up.

My dream began with me driving to bring an item to a doctor at their home, so it was a personal visit, and not an appointment. When I got there, the doctor wanted to take some sort of test sample from me anyway. The doctor anesthetized me without my knowledge or permission, and locked me in the bathroom. When I came too again, I felt very sick and the doctor had done something to my legs that made it hard to walk, and had operated on one of my teeth, so the tooth was almost all gone, and replaced by a clamp with a dull lead-like finish.

The doctor came to the bathroom to see if I had woken up yet. I was very angry and admonished him for not even giving me anything to read. He gave me a newspaper, but I left anyway. I lived with a number of people of different ages, including a girl about 8 or 9 years old. The girl had trouble understanding the seriousness of the rule that my cat is never allowed outside. Some big mess occurred, and everyone gathered to clean it up, but my cat (in the dream it wasn't Angie, but a long-furred, orange, tabby kitten) kept on trying to get in the mess. The girl suggested putting the cat outside, and I became very angry with her.

The next day, I drove out into the country to visit a friend. I'm always nervous about driving into the country, it doesn't feel safe. In Raleigh, once you leave the city it becomes even more conservative. The rural culture in North Carolina is dramatically different from the urban culture (and the urban culture isn't particularly progressive either). In some directions, it only takes a few miles of driving to find your self surrounded by the religion-fueled fear and hatred of the untamed tobacco lands. I arrived at my friend's house, carefully noting landmarks and streets, so I could get back home.

I stayed later than I wanted. I don't like driving at night, but I hate staying over the night even more. I made it home easily, relieved to be back in familiar territory. Unfortunately (and I can't remember the reason), I had to go back out into the country the next day, but this time I just couldn't find the way back home. I eventually had to stop and ask one of the natives directions, but he gave me some smart-assed reply and walked off patting himself on the back for being rude to the weird city-fag.

However, some local homosexuals overheard the incident, and told me where I was and how to get back home. They (perhaps a group of 5 or so) said I could stay at their place and make the drive tomorrow. Unfortunately, I really was far away, and felt it wiser to accept their offer. When I go to their house, it was very dirty and in much disrepair. I'm not the cleanest person on Earth, but their house was way past my threshold of decency. I figured it was just one night, and any motel would be just as unhygienic.

An older man in the house, yelling at a young couple, woke me up in the middle of the night. The two young men were standing out in the hall, as the older man raged on about how irresponsible and indecent they were. The problem seemed to center around their room, so I walked by the hall and looked in, and saw one cat on the bed that seemed to be dead and another laid on the floor as if mortally wounded, while a third cat poked at it. I was very upset and just went back to my room and decided to stay awake until the sun rose, when I could leave.

The morning came, and all the cats seemed fine, but the one man was still very angry with the couple. I was thoroughly upset by the experience, and just wanted to get out of the hinterlands. As I got in my car to leave, I noticed an ugly sweaty guy on a lawn mower staring in the window of a neighbor's house. He lustily stared at a very worn looking housewife as she exercised in front of the TV on her exercise ball. She had raccoon-like eyeliner on, and a big frizzy hairdo. She looked as if she was being held up by her rolls of fat. She was staring through the window back at this guy on the lawn mower. Bits of dirt and grass were glued to the sweat on his bald head. She clearly enjoyed his voyeurism. It made my already disturbing experience seem much worse.

The dream was actually more upsetting than amusing, but it seemed to be covered with an inappropriately comedic lacquer. I think that's what made the dream so unpleasant.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Looking Back

Hello All,

Ever since I had the dream I posted in "Frenetic Acting" I always think, "If I had done things right in my life, that's where I would have been now." I really love dreams for giving me a taste of having a vibrant and curious life. This is perhaps the earliest dream I remember. I had this dream when I was three or four.

My parents, my best friend Craig Gillan, and I were on a cruise ship. Every thing looked adult and fancy, and I remember the pressure to be on my best behavior. I had to go to the bathroom. I turned the faucet on to wash my hands. I tried to turn the faucet off, but it just wouldn't turn off. The sink basin began to overflow, and I kept trying to turn it off.

Soon fish started to come through the faucet, and the sink looked like a little aquarium, but then the sea began to fill the cruise ship. I couldn't turn the faucet off, the knob just screwed off. We all went to the deck, and some kid had to go overboard with an inflatable raft, then they just brought her back up onto the ship, and said, "See what you did to her."

That's when I noticed we were still docked. There really wasn't any danger at all, but the ship's captain was still acting like we were all going to drown at sea. As punishment they threw me and my Dad into the sea. I remember him trying to grab hold of me under the water. It looked like we were underneath the deep end of a pool. I started to breath the water, and we both began to turn into fish.

My dream world has always had such a tangible feel to me, my whole life. It's as if it's a place I can go to, if only I knew how to drive to it.

Thank you for reading,

Marc

Decisions and Changes

Hello All,

Here is a picture of Angie this morning, and a picture of me standing in front of my desk. The highest picture in the photograph is a picture I drew of the Julian and the Hurricane dream. Last night I had one of those dreams that presents itself in an annoying patchwork, but I'll try to make sense of it here.

The dream began with me in school. A war raged in the continental USA, so it was mandatory for everyone to be trained in the military. I was the teacher's pet in this program and expected to participate in a street battle in a part of the city not secured from the invaders.

I had ethical problems, both with killing people, and with risking my own life, which my parents, the school, and I had spent so many resources and time into teaching and training as an educated member of society. However, my commander (or whatever he'd be called in the military) was so proud of me I had planned to go ahead with the battle and not disappoint him.

Some of my class mates began to also question my decision to go on with participating in active battle. I had considered revealing my status as a sexual minority to have myself kicked-out of the military, but that seemed a very cheap and dishonorable way to go. A friend of mine laid-out an easy plan to go AWOL, and I decided that would be a better way to skip-out of military service because I wouldn't be using my minority status as a wild card to get out of a sticky situation.

It seemed in the dream I had already graduated, and this battle was just a graduating step as far as the military school went, so I just left the campus, and that was that. I thought of the surprise that'd swarm around my military associates and teacher. Now finished with school, and having made my decision to not participate in battle, I returned to my hometown.

My hometown had changed significantly. All the old buildings were there, but so many new buildings had been built, that in some places I had to concentrate to see the old neighborhood underneath. I decided to stay at a small motel operation on the second floor of some offices, and only had about two rooms. The offices seemed to be a place my parents would take me when I was little (such as a dentist office), so they remembered me after spending some time scrutinizing my face. I stayed in one of the rooms and visited my parents. I noticed how the suburbs began to have an urban feel, like row-houses in Baltimore.

I went back to where ever I lived by myself for a short awhile, and then came back to my hometown to visit my parents again. I went to the small motel above the offices again. The people recognized me, and let me walk around unsupervised, but I still felt put off by how quickly the people became unfamiliar with me again. I decided not to stay there. I felt it would be better to just make it a day trip.

I left the motel, and walked down the street, as the turn to my old neighborhood was only a few blocks away. The once quiet (and miserably dull) streets had become full of busy people. I noticed people I knew and talked to, only as long ago as a few years, but they already seemed to have completely forgotten about me. I just kept walking. The police and firefighters had cordoned off a house, and evidently someone was still on fire from the house fire, and they were trying to put this person out. Even though I saw all sorts of people I knew around me, only a stranger started to talk to me about the incident.

I continued to walk down the street, but it soon began to seem more like downtown than it should. I had missed my turn, evidently some building had been built where the turn once had been. I wanted to take the next turn possible, but the wall of buildings remained unbroken. I entered the inner city gates (kind of like a European city has a walled in "old town"). Finally, I saw a turn on the left, the way I needed to go. When I took that street, it came up to a gated tunnel. When I opened the gate, wind rushed out of the tunnel, blowing me backwards. The tunnel was actually an entrance to the old city, and the rush of air was meant to encourage people entering the area to keep on walking.

I kept on looking for a way to turn around and get to my parents house, and the dream ended somewhere around there. Well, I need to get myself ready to go to Cindy's house.

Thank you for reading,

Marc