Dream Journal
Melissa and I were driving from homer to Soldotna. We had an important event to attend, and we were late. Melissa was driving her little black truck and I was in the passengers seat. About halfway there we decided that we were going to be too late and would miss the majority of this event; we turned around and drove back home.
I walked into her bedroom and saw that it was set up just as it had been back when we were sharing the room: two twin beds on opposite walls, stuffed animals hanging on the wall, toys on the floor. I lied down on what was once my bed and slid under the covers, lying on my back. The light from the window directly over my bed was too bright that I couldn’t get any rest.
Melissa lied down on my bed parallel to me. She was on top of the covers, on her left side facing me and the wall, and still fully clothed. I wondered how the bed had grown so that both of us could fit comfortably on a small twin bed. She held up her right hand and blocked the light from my eyes. I was very grateful.
Themes: Melissa
I was at a party at someone’s house. It may have had something to do with school, because a few teachers were sitting in the living room - the ‘adult’ room - talking.
I found myself in the small bathroom with a male friend. He was a physical compilation of Damon Absher and Keith Beachy, both I knew in high school. There was a bar of soap that, although it looked like plain ivory soap, was really some expensive and nasty illegal drug. Because of all the adults at the party, we had to get rid of this substance.
He, in a sort of frantic hurry, showed me what we had to do. We had to take this bar of soap and shred it into unrecognizable shavings. On the counter was a machine that looked like a meat grinder, blender, and cheese grater all mixed into one. He put the bar of soap in the top of the machine and turned it on.
The machine took a very long time to shred the bar of soap. Apparently it was much harder than a bar of soap because the machine kept trying to push it out of the top. After it was all ground up, my friend instructed me to finish the rest of them. I looked over onto the counter and saw what looked like a package of 6 individually wrapped bars of soap, but I knew that they were all this drug.
There was also a beautiful dark blue perfume bottle sitting on the counter. I opened it up and saw dark green pellets of powder floating in liquid butter. This powder was another drug, and my friend had tried to disguise it by mixing it with melted butter.
After a few more bars of fake soap had gone through the machine, the machine got very hot. My friend kept loading the top of it with more soap, hoping to speed up the process. I watched underneath the machine and saw that it was bright red and smoking. My vision blurred. I thought that the machine was either going to blow up or melt into a pile right there on the counter. Neither of those things happened.
I decided that I was going to distract the adults out in the living room. I grabbed the blue bottle with the really illegal powder drug and turned to leave the bathroom. I saw that a white bottle had been placed in front of the door - which was just a curtain. I figured that the wind had been blowing the curtain in, and my friend had placed the bottle there so that we would not be exposed in destroying evidence.
I moved the bottle and, just as I had expected, the curtain blew in. I turned left from the hallway and stepped into the living room. A male teacher was in a plush chair right in front of me. I gave him the bottle and told him that I had found it in the bathroom. I also told him that I thought it was an illegal substance. He took it and thanked me.
I went back into the bathroom and told my friend what I had done, expecting him to be grateful. Instead he was quite angry that I had drawn that attention to the bathroom and illegal drugs. I then walked back into the hallway, poked my head into the bathroom at him still grinding the soap, and said, ‘see you later.” He was shocked that I was leaving, but wouldn’t dare leave the rest of the soap not ground.
I ran down the hallway and out the door. I wanted nothing to do with those soaps or anything else in that bathroom. I ran around the building and saw a car. Needing to hide from the car, I ran onto a wide path and around a fenced and overgrown garden. Inside the garden, in the back, was a girl in her early 20s with a gun. She pointed it at me and I dropped to the ground in the middle of this path.
Around the corner on this path came driving the car that I was hiding from. Knowing I was in the dead center of the path, I lied down as flat as I could so that the car would go over and not squish me. It passed safely, but the back axle brushed the top of my butt. After the car passed, I convinced the girl that I was not an enemy and that we had to have a better hiding place.
We ran into the woods and met up with another girl about the same age. It was nighttime and we had come to a dead end. The girl with the gun had told us that she was running from her husband who had cheated on her. I asked her if she knew of some place where we could practice target shooting. She got a gleam in her eye, and then ran through the brush on a well-covered path.
We followed her to a large building in the middle of the woods. The building was unfinished; the walls and floor and ceiling were still plywood. To get in, the girl who had the gun grabbed a rope and swung over a large hole. She tossed the rope back and then disappeared around the corner. The other girl grabbed the rope and tried swinging over as well, but the rope only swung about half way and then stopped. She was left hanging over the middle of the hole.
The first girl came up behind me and told me that she had let down the stairs so that we didn’t have to swing over. Then she saw the other girl. She mentioned that had happened to her last time her and her husband and the other girl (his other girl) came out here. She realized that he had rigged the rope on purpose so that she wouldn’t be able to get inside.
After we all got inside, we lined up and started shooting at the opposite wall. It felt very freeing to be able to shoot at nothing like that. All of a sudden, there were a line of people, women, men, and children, standing along the wall at which we were shooting. I kept shooting and was amazed when my bullets dodged the people. They refused to be hit.
I was standing on the left side of Beth’s dad’s bed. He was lying half under the covers and his chest was bare. As he was lying back onto his pillows, I saw a huge tarantula-like spider swing down from the ceiling on its web. It barely missed his face, yet he had turned his head away as it came down and did not see the spider.
The spider swung back and forth for a while, then landed on his pillow while he was still turned. He was reaching for a pad of paper and a pen and the large spider crawled onto his shoulder and then down his chest and stomach.
B was on my right and I tried to tell him about the spider, but I couldn’t talk or even move to grab his arm. He didn’t see the spider either. I watched in horror as this tarantula crawled up and down this mans body.
B and I were at a garage sale and standing in someone’s living room. Next to their Christmas tree was a big box (as though a large recliner chair had come in it) filled with smaller cardboard boxes. These boxes turn out to be a large train set. B wants to get it and bring it home, but I say that we shouldn’t because it is too big. He gets quite upset at this and he quits talking to me.
We left through a different door than we had entered. We walked down the driveway going downhill. It was break-up season, and there were very muddy ruts in the road. B was being mean to me, but I couldn’t say what he was doing to be mean. We turned left at the end of the driveway, left again, and were now walking uphill on an even muddier road.
We came to a stream, which he crosses easily, but he leaves me behind. I start to cross but slip and fall. I end up on my hands and knees in the mud crying so hard that my throat hurts. He stands on the other side of the stream looking at me with disdain, pity and disgust. I cry. And cry. And cry. (I awoke mad at him, realized it was a dream, and fell back asleep.)
I am now at my grandmothers home standing on the ledge by the door to the tophouse of our boat (which is in my grandmothers house). Standing next to me is my brother Damon and I am telling him all about the garage sale train set dream. We are looking down on my grandparents’ two garage doors. One door is white and the other brown. A bunch of family members are planning on painting the brown door white.
Someone, referring to my dream, says that it is impossible to have an IN door and an OUT door in a home. Damon disagrees and points to the two garage doors of grandmas - one is for driving in, the other for driving out. They are this way so you don’t have to back up once you are inside the garage. I worry about getting paint on carpet.
Themes: B, Left Behind
B and I were at Karen’s house for one of her kids wedding. It was a large oak log cabin. She is excited that we decided to come to the ceremony, and eagerly gives us a tour of her home. She first shows us a large, spacious kitchen where her son, Eli, is washing the dishes.
She leads us through hallways and rooms and stairwells galore. We end up in a church sanctuary on the second floor of her home. This room is very large; it is probably the size of half a football field. We sit in the center of the pew in the center of the room.
The pastor is young and not terribly handsome, but is dressed in a nice suit. He talks and talks about football and mentions that this day is Super Bowl Sunday. He talks about the marvelous game of football for at least a half hour, and then everyone is dismissed. Karen turns to me and says, ‘What a lovely ceremony.’ I thought it odd that we never saw a bride or a groom during the entire ceremony. And I still didn’t know which of her kids had just gotten married.
I am standing in the middle of Beth’s garage holding a bucket of white paint in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. In front of me stands a line of furniture needing to be painted. In the bottom of the bucket sits paint a half inch deep. I have to paint the wood legs and wood ornamental square on the couch. The ornamental square is mounted directly onto the upholstery and I cannot get paint onto the new couch.
I paint furniture piece after furniture piece, worried that I will run out of paint. But I never do. No matter how many pieces of furniture I paint, there is still a half-inch depth of shiny white paint in the bottom of my bucket.