Tag Archives: dreams

bizarre, dreams

smaerd

i’ve been having some weird dreams, recently. i believe, in part, they’re because i’ve been sick — at least that’s the leading hypothesis at this point, because i tend NOT TO HAVE dreams when i’m not sick, but, anyway…

i was going somewhere on my bicycle. i think it was on capitol hill, in seattle, but it might have been in bellingham — but if it was in bellingham, then that makes the second part of the dream really bizarre. and i had my trombone, in its case, on my bicycle, which is rather odd, because my trombone case is a decidedly NOT bicycle-friendly design, but that apparently didn’t affect my ability to ride the bicycle. i was riding uphill, and eventually, came to this HUGE catholic church, with wide flagstone courtyards… multiple buildings… much more like a cathedral than a church. with a wide, shallow, flagstone staircase at the front — which i didn’t have any problems riding UP, with my bicycle and trombone… eventually i found a place under some huge stone arches, where the acoustics were perfect for playing the bach ‘cello suite that i have had memorised since i was about 15 years old, so i parked my bicycle near a flagstone thing that looked sort of like the shape of a telephone booth, in the middle of one of the flagstone terraces, and started getting out my instrument. but, while i was in the process of putting it together, a bunch of people wearing capriotes came out of the phone booth, which, apparently, was the top end of a staircase whose lower end was somewhere below the terrace on which i was standing. i was very apologetic about interrupting whatever ritual they were performing, but they said not to worry about it. then my trombone F-attachment linkage came apart, and i caught the three tiny pieces and was trying to put them back together, as the people in capriotes were performing their ritual. the terrace was built around a large square of smallish sculptures, at the back of which was a bunch of large fish with open mouths, that i recognised as being a part of a huge fountain, at some point in the past, which had been dismantled because of weather, time, acid rain, and other deleterious effects on the sculpture. the rest of the statues were more-or-less life size, upper body sculptures of kings, popes, saints, and other suchlike people, but they only came up to about my waist, which sort of indicated that their legs had been cut off, or something like that. there were probably 500 or so, individual statues, arranged in a square, and surrounded by a marble banister, so that people were encouraged NOT to walk there…

then it all sort of moodged and migrated into a scene at the old national guard armoury, which is now “the center house” at what is now the seattle center / old worlds’ fairground, except that, instead of it being “the center house”, it was still the old national guard armoury, before the monorail was added. i was there with a bunch of people, some of whom i know, more-or-less, from the moisture festival, including harry levine, who were trying to remember something, collectively, but not quite able to do so. then, the scene changed again, and i was south of downtown seattle… it’s really weird, because some of the time i know that i was west of capitol hill, in the area now known as “south lake union” (which is, actually, NORTH of downtown seattle), and other times when i clearly recognised some parts of what is now “sodo”, pre-stadium, but they were much more closely connected than they are in reality. there were a lot of businesses that dealt with industrial wastes of various kinds, and huge machinery that ran a high speed slough of industrial muck along the side of what is now beacon hill, pre-freeway… and there was ABSOLUTELY NO safety precautions in place, anywhere, which gave me a decidedly 1925-to-1945-era vibe about the whole thing. i was walking south, avoiding huge piles of steaming blackish-brown goo and watching as people in yellow haz-mat suits were trying, and failing, to control the masses of muck that had inevitably spread everywhere. and then i came across some people, they might have been hobos, but i’m not sure, and one of them had a bunch of tubas that he had rescued from the muck, taken apart, and re-soldered together in a bunch of interesting ways. as i was walking along, i actually fell into the muck, up to my waist, and had to struggle to get out.

bizarre, brain injury, dreams

since my injury, i haven’t had more than a handful of dreams that i could remember…

before my injury, i, REGULARLY had very bizarre, vivid dreams that i could remember with some detail… some of them i STILL remember.

since my injury, i haven’t had more than a handful of dreams that i could remember, and those have been very bland and boring…

except for the past month or so.

in the past month, i have had, probably, ten to twelve incredibly bizarre, vivid dreams, that were QUITE disturbing. the one i had last night was so disturbing that i am still emotionally affected by it, at 18:30 the next day.

i was playing my tuba (micro-tuba, so it was relatively recent) somewhere, with other people who i knew only vaguely (and, now, i can’t place any of them, although they were a fairly standard band, and we were playing familiar tunes). the performance took place in someone’s incredibly posh, upper-crust living room, and they had a room off to the side where we could put our cases and stuff, but it was also fairly evident, from the room on the side, that the “posh, upper-crust” living room could, possibly, be an attempt to cover up a SERIOUS hoarder, or possibly several hoarders: random stuff in bags and boxes, and bundles of paper stacked against the walls, and general disarray and confusion, except for the “posh, upper-crust” trappings of the living room. after we played, i was putting away my instrument, and i had a couple of small boxes of stuff that wasn’t related to the tuba, but were, OBVIOUSLY mine (because they had been inside my tuba case when i was playing), that had apparently gone missing, and when i told our host this, they (not exactly sure who, much less male or female) sent me on, essentially, a wild goose chase through the house, which got progressively more chaotic and full of stuff, the further i got from the living room. at one point, the only way to go was forward, through a hole in the floor, down a ladder, three floors, except that after the first floor, the hole was suddenly occupied by two, then three, then four ladders, which appeared at random levels, and made climbing down progressively more difficult… and then, when i got to the bottom, i met an old lady who told me that what i was looking for was back the way i came, but now the way was, essentially, blocked by ladders of various sizes — i distinctly remember one of the ladders was like the one that clarice has in the bottom of her coop. there was a large room that was full of electric guitars, some of which had been taken apart, and all of them looked like they hadn’t been touched, much less played, in at least 10 years. eventually i got lost in the house, and was unable to find my way back to the living room, which only added to my anxiety, because my tuba was there, and i didn’t want to leave without it, but it seemed like i had been trapped in the maze of a house for hours.

the house was really interesting, and REALLY full of very interesting (and expensive) stuff, but because of the fact that it was so chaotic and disorganised, and because of the fact that i was CLEARLY getting further and further away from my tuba and the way out of the house, it was really difficult to be that impressed with what i saw.

it was intense, and aggravating enough that i woke up, and when i went back to sleep, i went back to the same dream, which is something that has only happened when i am sick, even before my injury.

bizarre, brain injury, dreams

i had a really weird dream last night

i had a really weird dream last night. before my injury, i had bizarre, vivid dreams pretty regularly. since my injury, i have had less than a dozen dreams i could remember, and none of them have been as bizarre or vivid as they were before my injury.

i miss those dreams… 😢

nevertheless, the dream i had last night is another dream i have had in a long series of dreams, starting before my injury, that have involved a “house” that i have “lived in”, usually in the past, but sometimes, temporarily, in the present. it is an old, not very well maintained house, with victorian architecture, that has been “updated” at least once, in the past, before i lived there the first time. the “house” has at least 5 floors (sometimes many more than that), which include the sub-basement, the basement, the first, or ground floor, the second floor, and the third floor, and each floor above ground is more rickety and more falling-apart than the previous one. even under the best of circumstances, the house is an “abandoned” house, which, when it was first built, was a large, fancy house, but lost most of its “fanciness” a very, very long time ago.

last night, i was staying in the “house” with a bunch of my friends from cirque de flambé/fremont players, including one person — simon neale — who died a few years ago. in the dream, i know he had died, so i figured it must have been a “flashback” or something like that. at first, i was on the third floor with a bunch of random people (and at least 2 more floors above, which is why the “house” is so weird), and one of them wanted to move some large boxes down to the ground floor, and asked me if they could take the elevator. i told them that the “old” elevator still sort of worked, but that it was scary, because i remembered that, in another dream involving the “house”, i took the old elevator up, and it just kept on going up, and didn’t stop, once it reached the top floor of the house. i recommended the “new” elevator, which was in the front of the house, and had been installed comparatively recently, but which didn’t go up beyond the third floor, or down below the ground floor, but, because of the “house” being in general disrepair, i was skeptical that there was a path to the “new” elevator that would support the person AND the large, heavy boxes that they wanted to move.

then, i was on the ground floor, moving my stuff into a vacant room which i was going to occupy temporarily. i looked out the window, towards the back of the “house”, which was on an alley that i recognised as being in downtown seattle, in the early ’70s… in fact, it was one of the large, victorian houses on the opposite side of the same street that “The Monestary” (a gay disco club that was torn down in the ’90s) was on. there was someone backing a pickup truck into what looked like a parking space, directly behind the “house”, but which i knew was actually the buried roof of the basement, which was very definitely NOT designed to hold up a pickup truck… the truck went backwards, hesitantly, until it fell through the roof, and the whole back side of the “house” collapsed. i managed to find my way out of the “house”, which is where i ran into simon, who was dressed in his “captain hook” costume, from the panto “peter pan”. i mentioned to him that the house had collapsed because someone drove a truck into the back yard, but simon was having trouble with his “hook” prop, and said that i should find another way in.

it was at that point that someone sent me a text-message which caused my tablet to emit its characteristic “clown horn” noise, which woke me up. it turned out that the text message was from one of my friends from the cirque de flambé/fremont players, which confused THE HELL out of me for several hours afterwards.

dreams, medication, mushrooms

🍄

.25 g 🍄 @ 08:00

i had a dream that i could remember, which is VERY unusual. AND it was really frustrating. there was a party at our house, which wasn’t our house, but it was, in the dream. i was in my office, hiding from the majority of the party, as i frequently do. there were a bunch of kids, with their parents, that were part of the party, and one little girl decided that it would be funny to film me with her tablet, when i was working on my computer, but the app that she was using to film me was one that steals your passwords and suchlike, and ships them off to russia without your knowledge, which, of course, she didn’t know, because she was a kid. i found out about this after she had filmed me entering MY password to somewhere, and i confronted her father, who said that i could have her tablet to try to delete any information that it had stolen, but, because of the fact that it wasn’t MY tablet, everything was set up differently, and i couldn’t figure out how to do it… and then they decided that they had to go home, and wanted her tablet back… 🤬

bizarre, blasphemy, dreams, gulf oil spill, i am a terrorist, jeezis, links, rants

another week closer to the eschaton…

Crabs provide evidence oil tainting Gulf food web – oil spill? what oil spill? wasn’t that two weeks ago? 8/

and, while we’re on the subject of oil, 2,487.5 mpg! Catchy headline unneccessary – “We find it incredibly thrilling to report mpg ratings that require a comma so we’re going to write it again: 2,487.5 mpg. Wow.” that’s right, they’re talking about two “prototype” internal combustion, gasoline powered cars, in measured competition one got 437.2 miles per gallon, and the other got 2,487.5 miles per gallon… detroit is still hyping their 20 – 25 mpg cars as “energy efficient”, “fuel saving”, and other preposterous blather, despite the fact that mileage on my cars hasn’t changed significantly in over 30 years. apparently, we “umayrakins” are swallowing it hook, line and sinker, and begging for more. it’s my understanding that you can’t sell a car in europe these days that doesn’t get at least 40 mpg… what do we have to do to get these “prototype” cars into mass production?

oh, and by the way, Senior U.S. scientist rescinds previous claim that ¾ of oil from spill is gone, says most is still there and Top Expert: Geology is “Fractured”, Relief Wells May Fail … BP is Using a “Cloak of Silence”, Refusing to Share Even Basic Data with the Government – what? were they really thinking that we would believe that they could clean up two months worth of oil spill in less than a month? and once they got the well plugged up, the first thing BP did was go back to it’s habit of not sharing information with anyone again… it all goes back to that link that i found a couple weeks ago, where the guy was claiming that the BP gulf disaster may have triggered a ‘world-killing’ event…

Time To Terminate Western Civilization Before It Terminates Us – right on! its about time somebody said it! it’s about time we all get down to learning at least Ten Reasons to Become Self-Sufficient and Ten Ways to Get There

It’s time to presume the web is guilty – it’s an interesting way to look at it, but i think he may have something there. especially considering that Trojan-ridden warning system implicated in Spanair crash – when i was a software tester, there was this thing called “good enough” which was a state where the software still had bugs, but it was “good enough” to release to the public, because the bugs that it had were small, inconsequential, difficult to show, or inconsistent enough that there wasn’t an immediate need to fix them. there were exceptions to the “good enough” rule, which included software on which peoples’ life depended, such as avionics, medical software, and that kind of thing, but when i was a software tester, the concept of a virus that spread through email was something that had only recently been realised and hadn’t been around for more than a couple of years, and most of what appeared on the web was presumed to be innocent. now we’ve gotten to the point where software testers can’t assume that “good enough” really is good enough any more, and even when it is completely bug-free, software may be vulnerable to a specifically designed attack. moral: your computer is suspect. be wary of anything it tells you, and watch your back at all times.

cardinal francis george, head of the u.s. conference of catholic bishops, has gone on record regarding proposition 8, saying no court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined. he obviously hasn’t seen this video, shot at the honolulu zoo on november 11, 2004, of a chimp raping a frog. that’s about as natural as it comes, and if nature intended for a frog to provide oral pleasure to a chimp, then two people of the same sex having the right to marry, or an individual’s choice to use cannabis shouldn’t be far off, right?

Church Vows to Burn Qur’ans Without Fire Permit – the church said they were going to burn qur’ans, but the gainsville fire department said that they can’t burn books without a fire permit (shades of Fahrenheit 451, anyone?). now the church says, permit or not, they’re going to go ahead with their “protest”, because islamic law “is totalitarian in nature,” islamic teaching contains “irrational fear and loathing of the west” and that the qur’an teaches that jeezis “was NOT the son of ‘god'”. again, i would ask, is "christianity" that much different? change “irrational fear and loathing” to the east, and remove the negative from the last statement, and i would say that the similarities are striking…

there are a couple of things from LiveScience – One Common Ancestor Behind Blue Eyes and Age Confirmed for ‘Eve,’ Mother of All Humans – that i’d be willing to bet are going to be abused massively and frequently by “christians” who will say that they just prove that “eve” exists, even though it’s only about 196,000 years older than the “young earth creationists” claim, and even though both of the articles specifically say “this doesn’t mean she was the first modern woman”… it’s just a matter of time before they latch on to this and try to twist the meaning of the words to fit their own schemes…

How Can You Control Your Dreams? – i have never seen, and probably will never see inception but lucid dreaming has always held a great deal of interest for me.

Simon’s Cat – that is all.