Dream Log: September 23, 2001

I'm in a skyscraper, a sleek, angular, black mirrored one, although the room I'm in is part of an expensive apartment rather than an office. I couldn't find anything made of glass to mix a drink in, so I've made a tequila and orange juice concoction in a heavy white ceramic mug.

I'm looking out the window at the city below. Actually, I'm looking through the smoked glass wall of the apartment, as skyscrapers don't have windows per se. I don't think about what city I'm in, I just look at the circles and dapples of light cast yellow on the ground below by streetlights, and the tiny twin cones of grey lit by every fast little taxi on the tarmac.

As I turn from the view, I see the apartment in detail. Overstuffed black leather furniture on light tan carpet, minimalist lamps and bookshelves made of tubes. Deciding that I want to sit down for a while, I begin walking towards the couch. As I move, I feel something change in the way the world feels, something subtle but unmistakable, and I stop to analyze my situation further.

When I stop, my inertia doesn't damp out like it's supposed to, but instead makes me stumble and nearly fall. Instead of going in the direction I was, it pushed me backwards, toward the black plate glass. I'm confused, I don't know what's going on, but it's making me feel sick inside, seasick, the sickness of not being sure which way "up" is.

And worse, as I stand there the pull is getting ever stronger. Gravitational attraction, undeniable as that dealt out by any mass, pulling me where I don't want to go. My concentration is shattered, so I drop the mug. Instead of falling near my feet it falls in a perfect diagonal, tracing out a triangle's hypotenuse rather than a straight drop.

The bottom of my stomach drops out as I watch the mug fall, and I stumble and almost faint. In my stumbling I'm pulled a few steps closer to the window, and the still coherent part of my physical intuition tells me the only way I can effectively fight this new gravity is to hit the deck and hold on to the carpet. I try to do so, but the dream fades out ...

... and fades back in as I'm falling. Fast, faster, fastest, deep breaths and deeper throbbing panic, the kind only a falling dream can cause. As the ground gets close, details rendered more and more clearly, I awake sweaty and terrified and out of breath.

---

This dream/nightmare came a few nights ago. At the time I didn't think I would node it, because it was a falling dream and those are often purely scary but not very interesting. I've decided that this was interesting enough to make an exception for, since I remembered the whole context of the fall, not just the waking up scared part.

By the way, I do realize that in real life tequila and OJ would be foul together. That's just how it happened in the dream.

I dreamt of fire again last night.

The black eyed angel from Radiohead swimming in the flames, locked as I was in the office, high up, so high near the sky, at night, and only fire in the corner to give me any sense of light. The shadows move, and the angel smiles, I see an invitation but I can feel the heat. I realise there is nowhere else to go, so I move over my desk and walk hesitantly into the flames. There is surprisingly little pain and I am all of the sudden sitting on a green hillside looking over a valley with a rich blue river streaming below me, on it are barges being pulled by cartoon cars, and beautiful mermaids wearing full Islamic clothes which swim to the surface and blow stars up into the sky past me.

There is a cool breeze and the black eyed angel sits beside me playing with a little furry dice, she offers me it and I feel it slip almost ghostlike through my fingers into the ground. Where it fell it created a hole, and I see the hole getting bigger and bigger, the angel is shaking her head despondently, and she takes flight into the stream of stars above the river and goes up towards heaven. Mean while I see a light in the hole that is getting bigger and bigger, and I jump into it, there is heat and for a small moment I think I might be falling into hell. Then the heat turns into an updraft, and realise that this is my dream and I want to see the angel again. I transform myself into a condor, and surge up past the hole and into the night sky, and there I sit on a cloud for a while looking around me for her. She pops up behind me, nods sagely and then hugs me quickly.

I feel amazing.

When she lets go the dream has dissolved.

Dana, would you believe, gave me an armpit dress for my birthday. This dress had special pockets under the arms where I could insert little folded valves, and it would laugh laugh laugh every time I pressed my elbow against my side.

New house, all the kids swarming picking out bedrooms. I chose the one painted blue, dumped my duffel and kept looking. My little brothers had the children's room - it was set up like my art dream center. Shelves and drawers and desks full of pencils crayons paints markers papers scissors glue. I almost died, instead was an instant crying maniac. Ten years old again, lost.

Guess what. Last night for a brief ten minutes I was a little red corvette. RACY!

The bus where I was sitting in arrived at a station in some city. There were two girls and one guy waiting for me, all of them unknown for me in real life. Right away we left to meet Erno - we were supposed to spend the following night. Other one of the girls walked hand in hand with this guy and they both seemed to be really happy. Me and another girl walked couple of steps behind them and she was pretty sulky; I guess due to those two in front of us. I found myself thinking what she might think at the moment...

Soon we met Erno but for our surprise yet another guy suddenly appeared. He lived in a military area and we decided to go with him, to sleep in his place. I wasn't sure if he was accomplishing his military service or if he was a professional soldier. Erno was little bit disappointed by this change in plans but on the other hand he was also revealed that we won't bother him anymore. He left us starting to walk towards his flat with his little brother who was a wee kid, maybe six years old.

Now, for me it was really surprising that the girl who walked hand in hand with the guy, she like dumbed him and was holding the hand of the soldier. She was just as cheerful as previously but also another girl was more happy now. I was thinking what kind of relationships there were going on...

We entered the military area without any trouble. No one checked our IDs or anything. It was surprising that we could go as we pleased. For some reason it didn't surprise me that much that there were many Yanks there. This is happening in Finland and Finland is not a NATO country nor any other country have their soldiers here. When we were inside the area I started to worry if the militarists will find out that I've got some marijuana and a pipe given by Iwona in my pocket.

I asked what I should do and the soldier guy considered it would be best to conceal it right now because "you never know what those Americans are up to". I imagined in my mind to throw the container of marijuana away but then I saw with the eyes of my soul how the container would hit the wall of a building nearby and make so much noise it would be noticed. That's why I didn't throw it but I shoved a pot-hole in the mud with my shoe. One Yank soldier of lower rank got interested in us because we were doing something there in the middle of yard and he approached us. He made some half-assed questions what we were doing here but practically we kept silent and he walked away. I marked the spot drawing a deep line in the mud with my shoe again.

Now I had my orangish trainers in my hand too and they needed to be concealed too - don't ask me what for. Or actually another one of them. I guess I had other one in my left foot but I'm not sure. With a great haste we started to search for the hiding place for it. However, I noticed very soon the best place would be under the long branch of a fir. I just threw it under the branch and happily I informed everybody that the problem was already solved.

We got in and I went to sleep. The house wasn't ours but the room I was sleeping in was exactly like that one I was sleeping this night in real life (in my parent's house) - with an exception that there wasn't a telly IRL. I was watching the telly from the bed, under a duvet. After a while I however noticed that TV wasn't even on! So, I was having hallucinations and I reasoned that I was under the effect of marijuana. However, it all got even more strange when I woke up in a dream (i.e. I was sort of double-dreaming) and there wasn't any TV at all anymore! Somehow I reasoned that I had to be stoned as hell!

In the morning we went out and we had to find my trainer I hid yesterday. However, the yard had changed. There wasn't any firs at all. We broke up to search for the trainer individually. Now even the group had changed and there was for example Emu, my old mate, with us.
Soon I found the place where the fir was supposed to be. Instead there were several big stones covered with canvases and thus forming a small labyrinth. I entered walking head down because the canvas ceiling was so low. Eventually and quite easily I found the missing trainer. There was an exit too but there was a soldier out there and when I saw him I was embarrassed and I dropped out some poor joke. I retreated back into the labyrinth but I managed to drop the canvas. I tried to put it back but it just got worse. I sweared under my breath but because the soldier didn't care I just went back the way I had come.
I showed off the trainer for Emu...

Me and all my family were on holidays somewhere warm (Hawaii perhaps) and we went out for the day (it was very hot out). We were having problems with hotels or rooms or something, trying to get a good one with all that we wanted. At one point we had to set up a shower in the beach area behind the back of the building on the sand.

Later on on the way back home we stopped by in Penticton, BC to see Gord from actsofgord.com. We hung out at his place for a while and talked to him and some gamer geeks at his place. I helped him water his plants. His book that was updated (like the website) was a blue binder just sitting on a table in the backyard. Towards the end my girlfriend went somewhere, followed by the gamers to plant a plant, but she did it by doing a handstand or something gymnastic. Upon doing it they asked "Do you shave?" (I guess she hadn't done her armpits recently) and she launched into a discussion (with pictures!) of pubic shaving of herself and some friend. When we left the place I wandered by Chadl from work in his car and was offered a ride. I declined, saying we already had a ride with Mike (from my last job) and that's ok. As I walked a little further away I yelled back "but wait just in case!" I thought he heard me.

When we got to Mike's truck we realized that as a single small truck it was too small for all 4 of us (him, wife, my girlfriend and I) so I said that I'd just get a ride with Chadl and walked back. Of course by that time Chadl was gone, so I ran back to Mike's truck, which was gone as well. I was pretty pissed off because I hadn't been gone for too long and I had been watching for the truck to go by. As it wasn't that far to home (Penticton had somehow was at a location 20 minutes or so by the #1 to home) that I could walk.

The day was scorching hot and I was so hot and sweaty already that my arms had turned black. The looked almost burnt, and I licked a thumb to see if it was soot or something but it didn't come out, but it didn't hurt. A really good suntan perhaps? I took off my heavy leather jacket and started walking. I walked for a while in the sun, trying to take off my shirt and carry it and the jacket in a sane manner, but didn't succeed. Eventually I realized that walking was just going to suck too badly, and I should call someone to get them to turn around and pick me up. I called someone on my cell phone and I heard the phone on the other end start ringing, that was when I woke up to the phone in real life ringing.