Secret Rooms, Alternate Lives

Hello All,

I decided I have enough energy to transfer another dream post from my old blog. It's actually rather good timing because I just re-read one of the dreams from its original source in one of my diaries, so have it better memorized than when I recorded it in my old blog. Today has followed the pattern of the past number of days, feeling mysteriously uncomfortable, and aggravatingly unproductive. I simply can't settle down to the things I want to do, so at least I can do this.

I have re-occurring dreams of looking through my grandmother's house (she has been dead for almost five years now). Often, she has just died, and I'm at her house trying to save sentimental things from being thrown out, or taken by strangers. Other times, I'm just looking through the house to try and get to know more about her. My grandfather died when my Mom was 17, so I never met him. In my grandmother's-house dreams, my grandfather lives in a secret room.

In one dream, I was looking through each room to try and find a secret door. I finally found one, it was disguised by being in the corner of the room, rather than being a door flat against the wall. I opened the door and the room was shaped like an octagon, rather than having just four walls. The walls were green trimmed with gold baroque designs and little cupids. The furniture had green velvet upholstery, with gold-gilded wood. Every bit of counter space was covered with images of the saints, jewelry boxes, photos in fancy picture frames, and ornate bottles and vases, some with gaudy fake flowers in them.

In another grandmother's-house dream, I asked my grandmother if I could go to the bathroom. She excused me, I finished going to the bathroom, but accidentally loudly dropped the lid of the toilet. A secret door flung open behind the toilet, and my grandfather's angry silhouette appeared with red light glaring behind it. His anger was so powerful that it seemed like a bolt of lighting was pulsing through the whole image of him and the secret door. I quickly ran out and slammed the bathroom door shut.

One of the stranger grandmother's-house dreams I've had started as usual, with me looking through the trinkets and rooms in her house, trying to learn more about her. An older lady who was a tenant in the upstairs portion of the house invited me to look around her apartment. When I came downstairs my whole family was there as if it were Christmas or Thanksgiving. It seemed like no one noticed me, or I wasn't supposed to speak them.

I left the house to go to a bar, and that's when I realized I was some big fair-haired guy with a beard. I was dressed like a blue collar worker. I was drinking a beer with another guy at the bar, and we went out to the side walk in front because there was a big crowd on the street. We saw a large spaceship flying low over Middletown (NY). We acted as if it was a normal sight, but soon some smaller shuttles (or perhaps they were robots) began to approach the bar. Their lights came on and alarms went off. We, and the other people outside, ran into the bar to warn everyone that the aliens where about to enter the bar. And the strangest thing is, me and the other man ran into the bar and we had our own families. We took our wives and children, and snuck out of the bar to hide from the aliens. How strange to have a dream of being some blue collar straight guy.

Even though it was a bad dream, I remember it left me with a refreshed feeling, just the chance at being someone different for a little while. I have another dream I"m going to post soon, where I get to be a different person for a while (this time a single woman), and it too gave me a strange feeling for a few days. I think I had the aliens dream when my grandmother was still alive, but I'm not sure if she was alive during the other dreams or not. I've always felt estranged from both of my grandmother's because neither of them spoke English very well. I think with my Italian grandmother, it was actually more that she had a heavy accent, than she didn't speak English well. It still ended up being a language barrier when I was growing up. I guess the cultural barrier was a more significant obstacle in getting to know either of my grandmothers.

Thank you for reading,

Marc