Space-Age Bestiary

Last night’s dream was a blast. Total and complete. Gargantuan amounts of backstory involved, character histories and plot entanglements thrown in for good measure. 😀

I lived on a space station orbiting an alien planet that Earth had attempted in the past to colonize, and which they were again trying to overcome. Unfortunately, the natural beasts living there slaughtered any human they found. The danger on the planet (and ensuing war) escalated as the dream progressed, meandering in and out of the background goings-on (and there were A TON of those). I was a high-level student of…something. That part never actually came clear. They taught us how to defend ourselves and shoot well and use all kinds of nifty futuristic gadgets. Not to mention all the science that got crammed inside our heads. I loved that part the most, and took great pride in my level of knowledge. At one point, I took time away from my classes (the ones I took as well as the couple I assisted in teaching) to go check on an old friend of mine. He was an older man, going grey, muscular yet quiet and gentle. Most people didn’t take the time to get to know him, assuming he was gruff and scary, which always made me sad, ’cause he was just a spectacular man. The call went out while I was there that some of our troops were being sent to the surface in an emergency attack. I think they sent all the fighters, which left only half the station’s populace plus the teachers and admin people. I caught the last part of a practice match with a girl from my level – though she was taking defense classes with the new recruits because she was so bad at it – who I was friends with. Unfortunately, though I think she won the match, she ended up getting wounded by the beast so badly, there was no hope. So, being the teacher in charge, my old friend assisted in her death – they took their soul swords (they looked like light sabers from Star Wars, but the light was made by the wielder’s spirit energy) and plunged them simultaneously into the center of her chest, enrapturing her soul and sending it on its way with proper honor. It was very sad. The two of us stood there beside her empty body for some time in silence, and eventually I leaned in to give him the comfort of my presence (it was, after all, his fault she’d gotten so hurt, and yet it was a common danger…so he faced no legal consequences). He pressed a kiss to my temple, and I kissed his cheek and squeezed his hand. He wanted to be alone, so I let him be and wandered to the file room. The file room was lined with computers. Some of them were for simulation games, some for accuracy tests, and one or two for personal records. I had to wait for one of those. Eventually, though, I scrolled through my stuff to find my mission status. Whatever I had to do to reach the next level in classes, I’d done, so it was empty and pending reassignment. With a sigh, I decided I should take the leftover time to send a message to my family and let them know how I was doing. Only I couldn’t find the right machine. One took pictures for ID cards. One tested visual accuity. One was like an atm. Sigh. I never did find the out-bound machine. But in the middle of looking, I got this prophetic flash that something was waiting for me on the planet. I had to go, because it had to be done. Super dangerous, possibly fatal, but I, having so much useless knowledge about the beasts, actually knew how to defeat them. And I had to do it myself. 😦 So, since my next mission was pending, I put in for reassignment to the planet. I found the intra-station message system, and wrote a message to my old friend. “My love. Always.” And then I woke up.

The worst part was…I woke up missing him. I’ve missed him all day, in fact. That led to life contemplations, to be posted later. The weird part was that all the peripheral stuff was THERE. It was like I was really THERE, on the station, that it was my life I was leading, and I had my plans all mapped out for my advancement and everything. There was such a sense of fitting in and BEING, that I actually missed it when I woke up. For all the details in my dreams (75% of which never end up getting told – isn’t that scary?), this one was ten times more complete than almost any other I can remember. And one of the most emotionally compelling I’ve had for some time.

Whew!

I feel better now. The ‘situation’ has been addressed…through some agonizing things, but addressed nonetheless. I can understand it now, deal with it, and reintegrate it into my life in a more productive (and less negative) way. Body feels lighter, spirit much happier. Now I just have to deal with Friday’s final, and my brain will follow suit.

Last night, I dreamt I was kidnapped. Why? Because they’d burned down my parents’ house, faked their own deaths, and I saw them alive. Three young guys and a girl…maybe two, and an older gent I’d known for…well…a loooong time. And, as always, I was half in love with him. So I wasn’t really all that upset with being a kidnappee. We went on a road trip in this ’70’s van, and stopped at a ballpark to watch baseball…only the field was a pool. Something happened toward the end, though, and the younger guys decided I needed to die to ‘get rid of evidence.’ So I had to appeal to the older guy, and was about to propose we run off and hide together when I woke up.

What’s it mean? No clue. But it was fun… 🙂

The Cyclical Nature of Life

I should be in bed. Very tired. But I want to comment on this before I forget. I’ve been pondering it for the last couple of days, and it has me very frustrated.

Life really must be a spiral, whether on a single-life basis, or a recurring reincarnation whole. We are doomed, in both cases, to repeat ourselves over and over again. With life being cyclical, the only thing we can control are the choices we make the next time it comes around to smack us in the face. And then hope to the heavens we’ve made the right one, and won’t have to deal with it again.

So then, what do we do when we don’t know what the right choice is? Those ambiguous times when the ‘good path’ isn’t so clearly defined? Even recognizing the particular pattern recurring in my life and knowing the choice I made in the past, I cannot for the life of me figure out what I’m supposed to do this time. Last time, I didn’t handle it as I could have done. This time, I’m not sure if I should let go, confront, or hang on.

A number of years ago, my best friend changed. She hit a phase I could neither understand nor appreciate. I hung on so long, I ended up depleting my own personal reserves of self-esteem in the attempt to forge a link that no longer existed. Years of silence followed the fall of the axe, and then slowly the link reforged itself without my conscious intention. Now, she’s one of the only sources of positive reinforcement in my life (the hubby being the other one). And I have come full circle, for not only is that true, but the person who has been my best friend since that first break is treating me like I’m worth less than…well…anything else. I can only assume it’s a phase with her, as well, and accept the change while recognizing there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. That’s not the hard part. What’s tough – the thing that has me frustrated – is that that I don’t have a clue what choice I should make. Obviously, I can’t do the thing I did last time, and reciprocate only what I’m given instead of pouring my heart into keeping a dying link alive. But do I let go entirely, hoping that someday she, too, will complete the circle? Or do I confront her about it and see what she says? I mean, I know what she’ll say – it’ll be my fault, my being pushy or too successful or close-minded or bitchy or arrogant. Which is the right way to go about it? The way that opens the channel and hurts me, or the way that closes it completely and does who knows what to her?

In these last couple of weeks, I’ve realized the reason I have so few friends and find it so incredibly difficult to make more. I care too much. I only have three levels of relating – acquaintance, friend, and best friend. An acquaintace is someone I know, chat with at work or school, but who will never evolve beyond it because we have nothing else in common. A friend is a person I care about, whose well-being I do my best to support and improve, whose life I consider very important. Best friends are rare – they’re the people I know so well and am so close to, I know what they’re thinking whenever they’re around. Giving best friends up is like severing a part of my own spirit; it hurts like hell. I don’t ever want to do it. Sometimes, I guess, it’s necessary. Must of part of the growth process between people and individually. I know some people outgrow each other. What I can’t decide is if I’m the one outgrowing them – if I’m the one getting older and less tolerant – or if they’re the ones outgrowing me. I’m a Virgo, and therefore aspire to mutability. I don’t want to be so rigid in my life that I can’t accept people. But if that’s the case, why am I the one always scrambling to hold on?

I suppose I should confront her. That’s the mature, responsible, best-friendly thing to do. Sigh. I’m tired of being the only one communicating…

Harry Potter Dream

I love fun dreams! I don’t have nearly enough of them. One would think that when stressed, rather than exacerbating that stress, one’s dreams would be fun as a way of destressing. But no. Or at least, not usually. I wonder if it’s possible to train the subconscious to have fun dreams when stressed, even though its natural state is to mirror life? Anyway, last night’s dream vanished as soon as I woke up, except I remember that at one point, I was talking to Amanda (who was sitting on a long, low bench like they used to have in pre-desk schoolhouses) and trying to help her fix a paper she’d ripped in half. After Jeremy came home with lunch, I was so sleepy I decided to lay down with him when he took a nap, figuring I’d just let the dream about “the guy who was unrelated to anyone else” and China run through my head. Instead, I fell asleep and had one of my beloved Harry Potter dreams. I love them so much because they’re not only fun, but they’re not usually stressful…at all. Usually, a la the books, I am either helping Harry solve a problem and get sidetracked, or I’m a teacher/student with nothing to do with him and solving my own mystery.

This afternoon, it ended up being both, which happens frequently enough. I started out as a student, helping the trio (this is weird for me – usually it’s just Harry) to dispel this evil entity from this old church where we’d gone on fieldtrip. Ron figured in greatly, which is odd, because he’s usually not present at all. Eventually, we managed to force the thing into physical form (a nasty one, at that – it was grey, kinda slimey with a body like Golem’s from LOTR, with huge claws and vampiric teeth). That was bad, because then it started attacking us, trying to bite us and turn us into evil things, too. And it shot fire from its hands. Stupid gross thing. I got away by flying…and at one point, actual wings sprouted from my back through magic (that’s a first), and then helped the others subdue it by shooting blue lightning from my fingers. We turned it into a plasma state, and the others thought they’d killed it…but just in case, Ron drew a thick white line around what was left, which was supposed to bind it where it was. They left, confident they’d done the job properly. Unfortunately, I didn’t think a white line would do the trick, so I added an ancient spell to it that would not only bind the thing to physical form when it got powerful enough, and bind it to ME. It was supposed to take years to come back, but it was already half formed by the time we left.

Second half took place at the school…which was my subconscious’s cooler version. (It’s been in a couple dreams previously this way – it’s a huge building, kind of like a mall, but more like a town inside the same structure. And it’s open up to all four dozen floors, so people can fly.) The kids disappeared, and I uncovered some mystery that I had to solve (I think Hermione gave it to me because she had too much homework). And I flew around on a cold night, just enjoying the air, and I landed on this London-style townhouse where I saw Snape in the upper room, grading stuff. He looked all lonely and sad…so I told myself I would have to come back and keep him company. Unfortunately, I never got around to it. Instead, I had to take a trip to the post office, which was HUGE, and half an aerie for the owls and pelicans (that’s from a game Andrew plays…dunno why it ended up here). I slipped through this little distribution window and started crawling around the offices looking for information (they were kind of set up like the inside of a yacht – very tight, and really difficult to see into). Somebody caught me, and I had to run. And half fly. 🙂 I ended up in a clean alley (which was really interesting, considering it was all indoors…), trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Then Jeremy woke up. 😛

What was the point? I think just to have fun. 🙂 And it was. Fun, and freeing. I need more of those…

Psychic Powers Are Up

I had totally and completely forgotten how annoying deja vu is. I went for a good two years or so without being bothered by it even once. And now in the last week or so, I’ve had it three times. It’s never about anything important (although I think I may have averted an argument with the hubby the first time), and never interesting. It just is…which means I have to stop and go, “Whoa…okay, enough of that,” but then have to attempt to redirect my attention to whatever I was doing in the first place. Irksome.

Anyone know if the planets are behaving oddly this month? Especially anything pertaining to Mercury? It always messes me up.

Monty Python and the Search for Earth Girl

Honestly, I have no idea what last night’s dream was doing. In parts, it combined every house I’ve ever lived in, both outside and inside, and then threw in really weird historical periods. Part of it was medieval, featuring courageous knights and fair ladies. Part was modern, and mostly about a family holiday (probably because I’m bummed I missed hanging out with everyone on Father’s Day) and lots of food. The rest is highly obscure. And contains the original cast of Monty Python.

It’s all pretty much a jumble of images, really. It had a romantic subplot (me hooking up with the main guy from the Python movies) with all the stumbling blocks usually associated with regency romances. Fantasy complications – I found a unicorn whose horn had been cut off, and I had to go and find the pieces (as well as its magical spirit) to restore it to full power again. It was my quest. And of course, it got in the way of said romantic subplot, and I ended up being very rude to my love interest’s father (a very big, important, scary mob boss) because he had the spirit locked up in a box and wouldn’t let me have it. So then we couldn’t get married, and I went off in search of the other pieces of unicorn horn. It took me ten or fifteen years (dream time – which passed in a second) to find them all, and then they fit together like a 3D puzzle. I finally found the spirit in a dead fountain, and coaxed it out of the water and back into the unicorn, too. So my quest was accomplished, but when I went back to apologize (not having realized it had been ten or fifteen years), the guy had married someone else. Bastard. Except he still loved me, so I think he tried to get me to be his mistress. But I figured if he was gonna get to marry someone else, I should be able to, too. That’s when I realized one of the other Python guys was enamored of me, and was gonna try to convince him to marry me when I woke up. Sigh. My subconscious always steals the fun, juicy parts from me.

Moonlight and Cold Seas

Continually, I’m having a problem staying asleep. In one way, this is nice – I tend to remember more of my dreams. But in all other ways, it’s frustrating. It leaves me tired and kind of disconnected for a good portion of my waking hours, and I get my dreams confused.

Last night, I had at least four dreams, all separate. But I can only remember the last two, and that’s likely only because they were derivations of each other.

The first dream was one I’ve had before. Some disaster befell me, and I didn’t have anything left in the world. No home, no clothes, no money, nothing. A kind man thereafter took pity on me and allowed me to stay in his HUGE home, in exchange for looking after his kids. (This time, the man was played by Gabriel Byrne, but I’m not sure if he was last time.) Half the kids were adopted (one a brainy little Chinese girl this time, who painted me a picture that said she loved me and was happy I’d come to live with them, so she had someone like her around to talk to – meaning that the other kids picked on her for being smart and shy), and the other half were his own. His wife had died some years back, and when he opened a closet to let me pick from a variety of clothes too small (my clothes from when I was in elementary/middle school, which was just weird…I wouldn’t think I paid enough attention to remember, even subconsciously!) he sent me down to the basement to pick something of hers. They were inside this big, ornate, GORGEOUS dark-wood armoire (some of them things my mother has worn in years gone by), but I felt most of it was too flashy and formal for me. In the end, I picked a simple, dark blue silk dress (that very much resembled one of my mom’s). Half the kids were very upset about me wearing their mother’s clothes, and the other half (we’re talking like four and four, five and three, something around there) were excited to have a surrogate-mother figure around. I knew in the dream I’d dreamt it all before, and knew if it played out further, I’d end up falling in love and marrying the guy…which I really would have liked to dream out, but I woke up instead. 😛

The last dream function around the same sort of parameters as the first one. Only I now had like four sisters and three brothers (which is kind of creepy – there were 8 in both dreams, and 8 is my number…both my favorite, and my life number), and we’d been separated way back when. (This dream interweaves with my upcoming story, the Montgomery Girls, so should be taken as a creative thing, rather than something more literal.) I was in my late teens/early twenties, and the second oldest of all of us. The only one older had been sent off to be a governess to a rich family across the sea. She was snerty, arrogant, and the typical first-born, in that she thought she knew best and we all should do what she said. She wrote to us and said she was getting married, so we all took the opportunity to leave whatever crappy spit of life we’d been leading to dabble in the richer lands of hers. We were transported on this crappy little ship – really more of a big fishing boat with a hold – which leaked. A storm tossed us all around, half froze us, and threatened to dump us into the drink. But we eventually made it. The rich widower my sister had been working for (again played by Gabriel Byrne) not only had gobs of verdant land (that looked VERY English), but his own little dock, too. Snooty as my sister was, she refused to tell us who she was marrying – I can only assume because she wanted us to think it was her employer – even after we got there. Instead, she made us practice singing and dancing and acting, so we could perform at the wedding and show everyone how talented her family was. Only when I tried to get everyone to do what she wanted, she collapsed with all the others and refused to move. Instead, she tried to preen the youngest of our sisters, but the little one didn’t really remember her, which gave me a vindictive sort of pleasure. The oldest of the boys then said he refused to get up in front of anyone until the Lady granted his wish and started growing his hair back (apparently, he was going bald at about 17). My sister said something very pious about how she was sure it would happen before the wedding, to which I snorted and asked – as quietly as possible – if she really, honestly thought the Lady would grow his hair back. I didn’t think the goddess worked like that, but my sister did. She was so upset by my blasphemous words, that she got up and stormed out. That’s when I realized she’d joined the Sisters of…something…who worshipped the goddess known as the Lady through quiet prayer, reflection, and thoughtless deeds for others (and who knows how much of her employer’s money she’d thrown away on lost causes). She thought she was better than the rest of our family, not because she had gainful employment and was getting married, but because SHE was a HOLY sister. Bah! That made me even more angry, because THAT was not the way the Lady should be worshipped. In fact, ever since I’d been a little girl, I’d been a true follower of the Lady, and was now a priestess in my own right. But the true worshippers of the Lady were secret, and worked good things through magic, behind closed door and under the full moon. I had, in fact, earlier in the dream, gone out and danced half-naked in the moonlight, beside the shush of the waves on the shore, to bring good fortune to the widower and his lands, including my sister’s wedding. I woke up irked at a sister I don’t have, and once again, knowing I was going to end up with the rich widower. >D

Circles – Short Version

I had the long version done, and hit publish without realizing I wasn’t connected to the net. Whoops.

So, long story short – I had a dream about being Chinese. Orphaned, raised by a nice couple who’d been friends of my real parents, along with multiple siblings and a kid completely unrelated to any of us. Lots of wealth/art/cultural goods all crammed into a simple home. When we’d all grown up, financial depression brought on by a changing government swept us into poverty. We had to sell all of my parents’ treasures (front the front yard of Amanda’s parents’ house). The unrelated kid grew into an officer in the army, and confessed he’d always loved me, which I wasn’t thrilled to hear. (Despite being in the army, he was emotionally wimpy.) Unfortunately, we eventually got thrown into a work camp where I had to make decorative hair combs day in and day out. With my surrogate mother very ill, my brothers possibly dead, I decided the only way to fix it would be to use my beauty (which I had a lot of in the dream, I guess) to gain the favor of an important officer and eventually locate my old friend and hope he didn’t hate me for not loving him back. I woke up just as I finished cleaning myself up.

Dominant colors: Green & yellow (only in first half), dark shades of blue (throughout).
Recurring objects: Bejewelled elephant, hair combs, beads, butterfly & dragonfly symbols (interesting, because they are the respective ‘wake up’ signals to Amanda and my mom).
Theme: The circular cycle of all things – even when down, hope will return.
Possible interpretations: Could be past-life-related (abundance of sometimes unrelated objects, and the importance of a mirror). Could reflect present state of feeling abandoned by friends and family (majorly PMS-driven). Could be subconscious telling me to relax, unclutter my head and/or life, and stop worrying/stressing so much.

Lava and Vampires

Unpleasant mix that they are, I had a dream where they both figured in equally. I don’t recall the beginning (isn’t that always the way?), but it had something to do with Beth and Cam when they were little. Someone in the family was having a party at our old house in Aurora, and eventually it got out of hand. Too much noise, too many crazy people. So I went to play in the backyard. Only when I got there, the fence broke away and the house disappeared. Now there was a really awesome house, absolutely massive and full of nifty external architecture. It sat on a wide, bright green plain beside a sloping hill. Unfortunately, as I stood there, the hill cracked and broke apart, and the gapes filled up with lava. The party scenario continued. I popped into the cool house (mine, apparently, and blessedly quiet) for a minute to look around, then out one window I noticed some women talking animatedly out on the lawn. So I went to see what was up. They kept trying to cross the lava to meet the ‘new neighbors,’ whose house had been revealed by the hill sliding away, but the lava was too hot (duh…). I gave them a look, then tiptoed up to the edge of the flow and hopped onto this little spot of grey earth in all the hot, steamy lava, and made my way across. (I think while I was crossing, the lava briefly turned into water so I didn’t kill myself…) The other women eventually made it across, too, and we knocked on the front door. No answer. So we went inside. It was huge on the inside, with tons of different rooms, kind of like a big bed and breakfast. Quaint, homey, it seemed perfect, until I passed the study, where a woman was frozen in place while reading a magazine. In the kitchen, another woman stood frozen, moving only her arms as she rolled out noodles. It was super creepy, and I noticed how cold and *wrong* the air felt. But obviously these magically unmoving women were married, so we figured we should find their husbands. And we did. Upstairs. Still in bed, frozen asleep. And I noticed one of them had a ‘visitor.’ But she moved. And she wasn’t too happy to see me. So I opened the door closest to me, and there was another moving woman in it. With fangs. I closed the door as fast as I could, got outside, and then realized my sister (not a real one) had been bitten. The only way to save her was to grab her by the shoulders and channel all my earth and water energy into her to replace the vampire’s fire/air. Which I did. Woohoo! Then, suddenly, the party moved into my front yard and it was full of men on which the vampires were going to feed. While I was trying to turn one of them back, another grabbed me from behind and tried to bite me. Somehow we ended up in a closet and…uh…we’ll ignore that part. Suddenly, the door opened and a guy in black leather pants, black shirt, and black cowboy boots with silver spurs and a squiggle knife on his belt stood backlit. “Oh good,” I thought, “the priest is here to banish the vampires.” And then I woke up. Hehehehehe. It was a very amusing dream. ^_^

Foreign Dreams

Early Friday morning, after another bout of wake-sleep-wake-sleep-wake, I finally fell asleep after the alarm went off. In the ten minutes before the husband reminded me I needed to get up, I dreamed in Latin. I remember speaking Latin, my accent perfect and understanding clear. And then I started conjugating debere, which means ‘to owe’ or ‘ought.’ The funny thing was, the kid who sits next me to me mentioned only a couple hours later during class that he had his first Latin dream the night before, too. Which then led to a bunch of people mentioning they’d previously had dreams, not in Latin, but in French. Always perfect, fluent French (except in the case of our magister, who said he’d dreamed in both French and Latin, though he knows parts of two or three other languages). Now, everyone in class has had a foreign language before, some of them for several years. And yet no one mentioned having dreamed in Spanish, Greek, or German. Only French. I found that thoroughly interesting.

Last night’s dream…um…oh. Sort of a take on Series of Unfortunate Events, Henrikson style. Two girls, three boys, though not played by my present siblings. My parents were in there at the beginning, as well as some scientist I was supposed to be working for. In the end, we (the kids) ended up running from a number of things, and figuring out how to get around various obstacles. Finally, we ran into a bowling alley. Unlike the usual lateral alley, the lanes were stacked on top of each other, so the building had about seven floors. When we got inside, a giant ogre was trying to eat us. Every door either opened onto it, a brick wall, or a closet. Just when I reached the bottom of the lowest staircase, the other girl yelled, “Oh no! It’s Darth Vader! Run!” Unlike the giant who was stuck outside, Darth Vader could follow us wherever we ran. I had two doors left. One led into a linen closet, the other to a bathroom. We all crammed into the bathtub, where I knew there was a secret passage of some sort. Unforunately, when I found it the tub tipped, and it fell into the sewer, taking us with it. Only it was the nasty kind of sewer, full of rivers of…uh…toilet water. Nasty. Thereafter, I woke up.

Yahoo.