Victorian Mansion

Last night I dreamt we were in a reception hall.  I was talking with a photographer about family photos, trying to clue her in on everybody's personality.  She gave me a handwritten note-card with her discount rates on it because it was my birthday.  There was another really large group there, getting ready to leave.  Every couple minutes they would stop and pray loudly.  They must have prayed this way at least a half-dozen times.  They were those really loud "look at how religious and righteous I am as I pray" prayers.  As they finally prayed their way out the door, I noticed two of the women in the group were dressed in black lace Victorian dresses with large, beautiful hats - one hat had a large black raven on the crown, the other had a large deep red rose tangled up in black netting.

Then we were in a car driving down a snowy road.  My husband was behind the wheel and wasn't seeing the ice on the road, but it was very clear and obvious to me.  I was really nervous about him driving.  Everything was in very sharp focus for me.

Suddenly the dream was in high definition black-and-white.  We were in the courtyard of this big, beautiful Victorian mansion.  There were huge, ancient trees draped with Spanish moss, manicured landscapes, fountains, etc.  I could feel the air buzzing with energy.  Sometimes I could see people, sometimes I couldn't, and I wasn't sure who was physical and who was spirit.  As I walked up the drive toward the front door, I saw something scratched onto the pavers.  I used my foot to clear away the snow and fallen leaves and saw that someone had scratched "WWII" there.  I could here the trees and night air whispering as I watched it turn to "WWIII".

Next, I was in the parlor of this mansion.  Across the parlor from where I stood, I saw a large ornate black mirror on the wall.  I walked toward it, looking into it.  I didn't look away, but I felt the room full of people - ghosts and angels.  As I looked in the mirror, I saw death and destruction and annihilation.  I screamed and screamed and screamed and fainted.  As I passed out, I was caught by
ghosts and angels.

The Sisterhood

Last night I dreamt I was at a neighborhood park with my family.  It was a beautiful day and the park was full of families playing and celebrating.  My family was off throwing a frisbee or something.  I was sitting alone on the floor of a pavilion with my back against the wall and my legs stretched out in front of me, just enjoying the breeze and the day and watching all the people.  I looked up and saw a group of beautiful ladies walking on the other side of the street.  I think there were seven.  Their gate was so smooth and steady it seemed they were floating.  They were dressed in long, flowing dresses with long, flowing sleeves and wearing tall pointed hats with long veils that flowed from and around them.  Each dress was the same but in a different color - dark purple, deep red, forest green, rose, soft blue, indigo, heather.  They were so beautiful.  Suddenly, I heard a humming.  Soft.  Pure.  I closed my eyes and breathed in the moment.  When I opened my eyes, they were standing in front of me and singing to me.  The song was beautiful, ethereal, pure, and I was filled with a sense of complete calm and absolute love.  When they were gone, they left me with a calendar (I don't remember a month or year) and an invitation to join them.  Across the top of the calendar was written, very ornately, a name - I think it was "North Ridge Coven" or "North Ridge Society" or something similar.  When I looked up from the calendar, they were disappearing down the street with the same smooth, floating, serenity by which they appeared.  I looked around and was surprised to know that nobody else in the park saw them or heard them or even seemed to know they were there.

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.