Canyon crevices, gangrene and the music

Last night I dreamt that my husband and I were running along the top of a canyon, in a hurry to get to a festival where we were to meet some important industry people.  We reached the place where we needed to descend into the canyon.  There were two routes: one with large, craggy boulders and deep, wide crevices, the other a steep, dry run-off river bed layered with rocks.  My husband took the first route, leaping from boulder to boulder.  I knew if I followed him that I would miss my footing and end up falling into one of the abysmal crevices, so I ran down the steep, rocky river bed.  We both reached the bottom of the canyon together, held hands, and ran to the festival where we were surrounded by people wanting to talk to us.

My feet hurt, so I removed my shoes.  The second toe - the "pointer" toe - on my right foot was red and swollen.  It continued to swell and turn a bruised purple and black.  I knew it was broken.  I looked in my shoe and saw that it was full of soil.  I said, "I could plant something in that."  Then I noticed the soil was filled with clear crystal quartz points.  When I looked again at my toe, it was twice the size of my big toe, green and gangrenous.

My husband held my hand and we hurried together into the festival.  Some people came up to me and told me - very emphatically - that they had received a package for me that was very important.  It was from my old high school boyfriend from sophomore year.  It was a CD with a bright orange and yellow label on both sides that read, "How to Maintain a Healthy Weight."  I wanted to cry at how fat I've become.

Then I was surrounded by industry professionals all talking about promoting my band and me as a singer.  They were all very excited by the possibilities ahead.

I sat at a table and looked around at the canyon walls surrounding me when I felt someone take hold of my hair.  Then I felt the pressure of the firm hand and scissors against my neck. Before I knew what had happened, my hair had been cut at the nape by a "ninja barber" in a cowboy hat.  He announced, with all the emotion of a physician dictating into a voice recorder, "seventeen inches, gone."  Then he walked away leaving my hair simultaneously on the ground behind me, in my lap and in my hand.  I was dazed, shocked and unbelieving at what had just happened.

When I awoke, a klezmer cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" and the refrain of "My baby loves me, yes, yes, she does" from Neil Diamond's "Cherry Cherry" were playing in my head.

Escape

 Last night I dreamt of a young captive girl.  It felt as if this were taking place during the Holocaust.  She was being held against her will, her hair cut short and ragged, dressed in a rough, drab burlap dress and forced to clean constantly.  She would look out the open glass door to a lush, green, dense forest outside and make plans to escape into it.  She had been befriended by an older, non-captive housekeeper/nursemaid.  She persuaded the housekeeper/nursemaid to help her with her escape plan.

Puppies, Pee-pee and Brian

Last night I dreamt it was morning and I was groggily making my bed.  As I was pulling up the blanket, a tubby little puppy tumbled across the mattress to me.  Confused and wondering where she came from, I picked her up, played with her for a moment, then set her on the floor next to my feet.  I resumed making the bed, when another puppy attacked my feet from under the bed.  Then I noticed a third puppy playing in the blankets.  All three puppies were some sort of mid-sized mixed breed, mostly brown and golden in color.  I picked her up and she peed all down my new purple skirt.  That's when I noticed she'd also peed all over the bed.  I put all three puppies in a corner basket to play while I changed clothes and started stripping the linens off the bed to wash them.  That's when I found the baby - a little blonde baby boy, just a few months old.  I was holding him and talking to him, trying to figure out where he and the puppies came from, when my youngest came into my room.  "Oh, good!  You found Brian," she said.  She proceeded to tell me how a neighbor a few streets over was moving and needed somebody to take the baby for a few days while they did so.  She volunteered and brought the baby home and put him in bed next to me while I slept knowing that I'd take good care of him.

I never did find out where the puppies came from.

Swimming across the murky water

Last night I dreamt I was walking my daughter to school.  She was very young and skipped along ahead of me.  We walked down the sidewalk, up the stairs in the "short cut" alleyway, and started across the school parking lot.  There was a very large mud puddle there left by the rains.  We walked around it and finished crossing the parking lot and into the school.  My daughter was very excited and ran ahead to her class.  I walked calmly down the hallways, noting all the classrooms and all the learning and potential that filled them.  I found her classroom at the end of the hall, stuck my head in to wave goodbye and wish her a good day, then turned around left the way I'd come in.  When I reached the large mud puddle (about the size of a small pond), I saw a neighbor/maintenance man driving into it with a tractor, creating a sort of road across with rocks.  I decided to walk across the puddle-pond on the rock road, but when I reached the middle, the road broke away and the tractor was gone.  I was left over my head in muddy, murky water.  I tried swimming back to the edge of the puddle, attempting stroke after stroke, but was unable to move through the murk.  Finally, I attempted a breast stroke.  That one worked and I was able to swim back across.  As I swam, I noted to myself the similarity between the breast stroke and how a frog swims.

I awoke before I reached the "shore" of the parking lot.

Watch repair, Mom & the boy scouts

Last night I dreamt that my watch had quit working.  I took it in to a watch repair shop by the name of O'Doul's or O'Houl's (the name on the sign kept changing) to have it fixed.  There, behind the counter staring blankly, was a friend of mine (a costume goddess and local boutique owner).  She looked at my watch and said it should be easy enough to fix.  I told her, if not to not worry about it.  It was a very cheap watch that I'd bought on a clearance sale - only paid $10 for it - and I really didn't want to pay more to fix it than the watch was actually worth.

Then we were sitting in the kitchen of her house, visiting around the table.  It was a small party of some sort.  I received a call on my cell phone from my mother that she'd been in a minor accident just down the hill.  She was in a hurry to get to an appointment and asked if I would come and trade her places so should could get there on time.

As I was driving down the hill, which was now a mountain, I passed a troop of young boy scouts.  Something had happened at their camp and most of them were injured and needed a ride to the hospital.  I explained to the scout master that I only had room in my minivan for a few of the boys.  He assured me that room was no problem, they could just stack the boys on top of each other in the back.  And they did.  The scout master climbed into the passenger seat, smoking a cigarette and wanted to ash it out the driver's window.  I told him to roll down the passenger window for that.

We needed to turn around in order to get to the hospital but the now mountain road was very narrow and rocky.  There were a few turn-around spots available, but they were all very tight turns meant for smaller vehicles and it would have been too dangerous to try to turn the minivan around using them.  So we continued to drive.

The Return

Last night I dreamt I was returning to work after a long illness.  I was running a few hours behind schedule but, while they were holding my position at work, they really weren't expecting to me to return that day.  I went to the pantry to grab a box of fiber cereal snack bars to take with me only to find that they were all gone.  So, I grabbed a roll of Ritz crackers instead and headed off to work, my husband driving.

When I walked into the office, I found that everything had changed.  My co-workers were the ladies I'd worked with years ago when I lived in Idaho.  The office was in the living room an old Victorian house.  Everybody was sitting in a semi-circle, either on low chairs or on the floor, with strange new phones that did the calling for them - no computers so they had no idea to whom they were speaking or why.  I wasn't ready to return to that, so I decided to go check out the rest of the office.

As I walked out of that room, it became apparent that this was my daughter's house, a very large, old Victorian house in the city.  Her roommates wandered quietly through the rooms.  I went upstairs and found a large room full of young girls, laughing and chatting and dancing.  They all had either freshly washed faces or had drawn (or were in the process of drawing) bold, geometric shapes with bright colors on their faces, necks, limbs and torsos.  A voice from behind me smiled and said, "These are their real faces.  The ones they create for themselves."  I smiled at the joy emanating from them.

I looked out the window and saw the ocean and suddenly I was there, walking over the rocks at the ocean's edge.  I was barefoot.  I was walking with a coworker/friend and an older man.  I was filled with a sense of rightness and belonging as I climbed over these rocks and made my way through the mists to the ocean's water.  I sat there, alone, on a large sea boulder with my feet dangling in the waves and breathed in happiness.

Steve Lawson and Lobelia

Last night I dreamt that my mother-in-law was hosting a house concert in her living room.  The room was large and full of musical elite.  At the front of the room playing were Steve Lawson and his wife, Lobelia.  I wanted to get photos of them playing as well as some of them with me.  I picked up my camera and checked the batteries - there were only three when there should have been four.  I couldn't find the fourth.  Then Steve and Lobelia were done and gone and it was my turn to play.  The room was now very small and we were trying to figure out how to fit all twelve musicians in the stage area.

Exhaust in the Garage

Last night I dreamt that I had pulled my minivan into the garage and had just shut the garage door when a friend of my husband's (a singer from an old band of his) ran up to my window to visit.  I rolled down the window and turned off the ignition to chat.  The engine would not turn off.  The friend reached through the window and took the keys out of the ignition thinking that would cut the engine.  It didn't.  We both remembered, then, that the garage door was shut.  Not a good thing, with the engine still running.  He ran to the garage door and tried to open it manually.  We were both getting foggy-headed and weak.  I remembered I needed the key in the ignition in order for the automatic garage door opener to work so I hollered for him to bring me the keys.  He did.  I was beginning to black out but trying to stay focused on getting the key in the ignition.

(I woke up here and got out of bed to ... ummm ... "attend to business".  When I returned to bed and to sleep the dream continued.)

I managed to get the key in the ignition and push the button on the automatic garage door opener before passing out.  My husband's friend had crawled to me, pulled me out of the minivan and dragged me outside to the fresh air.  As the clean air filled my lungs, I awoke - groggy but alive.

Full of beans

Last night I dreamt I was bathing the animals.  First was a large dog (that behaved very much like my cat) who loved the warm water being sprayed on him.  He kept rolling over onto his back so his tummy could be sprayed and soaped up.  Next was another, smaller dog.  As I was washing him, I noticed that a large, square metal plaque on his collar was cutting deeply into his flesh, leaving big, gaping wounds on his neck and chest.  I went to get some gauze bandaging and medicine to fix him up when I noticed that another cat/dog (I couldn't tell which) also had a tear in his chest.  When I looked closer, I saw that this one was full of red kidney beans.  I didn't want the beans to fall out, so I gathered him up to mend his wound, too.  When I returned to the bathroom to finish bathing the animals and mending the wounds, the first large dog had jumped into the bathtub with my son.  I could not get the dog to leave the tub, so I left the room.

Tornado

Last night I dreamt that I was in a house when I heard a very loud rumbling noise outside.  I opened the door to see a wall of dirt and debris and wind moving slowly past.  Suddenly, I realized it was a giant tornado and that my children were alone in our house on the other side of the field.  I ran outside and around the tornado in an attempt to get to them, to make sure they were safe ... but my house wasn't there.

Ex

Last night I dreamt I was in a hotel room with my oldest daughter (who was a small child in this dream) and my ex-husband.  I knew he was going to beat me and I was doing my best to not upset him while I was secretly dialing 9-1-1.  He finally left the room and I got the attention of some police officers to come help.  They came into the room and didn't see anything amiss, but they, too, felt the undercurrent of impending violence.  Through the window I could see the sun shining and the wide open parking lot lined with leafy deciduous trees.  Ex-husband returned to the room and was attempting to charm the police into believing that all was as it should be and that there was nothing wrong, all the while looking at me with murderous intent.  I knew if I didn't take my daughter and leave with the police that he would kill us both, but I wasn't sure he'd let us out of the room.
When we finally did manage to escape, I was covered in cuts and bruises ... but I was free.

Naked in the window

Last night I dreamt that I was in my master bedroom in the basement of our old house.  I was naked.  I noticed that the blinds on the window were open and wondered if anybody would see me.  I walked to the window and stood there watching as a former friend left the house across the street.  She got into a little red wagon and sat there very regally with her nose high in the air as her two small daughters pulled her down the street.  Nobody saw that I was standing naked in front of the window.  I turned around to mention this to my husband.  He was asleep in the bed behind me and didn't notice what was happening.  I went to wake him, but there were two of him in the bed and I didn't know which one to wake.  When I put my coat on over my naked body, I noticed they weren't really him at all, but my oldest daughter.

Terry Jones

Last night I dreamt I was doing a play with Terry Jones (of Monty Python), only his name was Terry Porritt in the dream.  Two consecutive nights, I left the stage halfway through the play.  The second night, I was sitting in the audience and Terry, who was sitting right in front of me as well as performing on stage, turned around and took my hand in his and said, "It's fine that you've had your little breakdown, but after leaving the stage two nights in a row, don't ever expect to work in this theater again."  I smiled and explained that I had no intention of ever returning to theater so it was okay.  He smiled, patted my hand, and said, "Very well then."  Then I watched as a very large, very hairy, very bad actor resumed the role I was supposed to be playing.  After the show, we went to the cast party.  Everybody was presented with a poster hand drawn on butcher paper and signed by the cast.  Terry had signed mine with just his name but the rest of the cast had written angry, hateful curses to me.  I took the poster, said goodbye and left without looking back.