It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? But after a couple passes through the wet and wild Slip & DreamSlide, I’ve decided it’s time to put my nose to the grindstone once again.
Without further adieu, let’s split this old melon of mine once again.
A Good Michaelob is Hard to Find
(I can’t remember if I’ve already used that header, but I’m rolling with it anyway.)
As you mentioned–or good old Tony “The Tiger” Crisp posited–sometimes the mere possibility that someone could disappear is enough to send you into a [striped] tailspin, especially when that someone is so near and dear.
Mr. Michaelob and I have been together long enough that I know he’ll always be close by (*cue The National’s “I Am Easy to Find”*). That being said, what the heck are dreams like this about?
My Brain Hath Been Battered, Scattered
That could almost be a Rolling Stones song, couldn’t it? To answer your question, I’m only creatively scattered in real life, and definitely feeling some anxiety because of it. And to piggyback off my previous question, I think that relates to losing my lawfully wedded ninja turtle.
It’s not very often that I feel out-to-sea anxious, but when I’m in the midst of prolonged anxiety, I do tend to feel adrift in that nautical way. Like any piece of shark-bait, when this happens, what I want is a life preserver.
I suppose said ninja turtle would be that life preserver, right? He can’t fix my problems, but he can keep me afloat long enough that I can solve them myself.
An Educational Shopping Trip
Hey, that whole lost at sea thing matches up with the cruise ship portion of this dream! Funny how that happens. You so tricky, subconscious.
But what about these other locales?
I LOVE your “before times” idea, connecting mine and Michael’s time in college together to the university setting in this dream. I look back on those days fondly as being somewhat carefree. I mean, we used to be able to stay up past 9 p.m. on weeknights. Carefree indeed.
Next, while “shopping for a new husband” tickles me pink, I’m wondering if there’s even more to this frantic mall excursion.
Back when we were kiddos in the ’90s, shopping malls were the place to be, both for shopping and just for hanging out. But we were also kiddos during the time when Stranger Danger was riding high and malls were to predators and kidnappers what spinach was to Popeye.
I think it’s entirely possible that this lingering childhood anxiety mish-mashed with my prevalent adult anxiety to inspire fears of the TMNT having been abducted…
Cut My Life Into Pieces, This is My Last Poptart
I can’t ruminate over the shopping mall without also ruminating over that butterfly knife. Does it represent transformation, as you mentioned? Is it about cutting something or someone out of my life?
Jennybean, I do think there’s something I’m hiding from in waking life, as you wondered. No, it’s not creepy strangers in the shopping mall of my youth. I think it is, quite simply, the anxiety that has plagued me throughout this dream so far.
I think I need to channel the cunning and tricksy butterfly: stealing Turtle Tears for Fears, using them to my own advantage.
Spiral Staircase Going Down
This one has sounded a bit like a bummerino so far, hasn’t it? Just a lot of me being anxious and needing to rely on someone else to anchor me?
However, since you know me quite well (I mean we only have the same brain and somehow the same Lithuanian nose), you’ve probably guessed that I’ll come out of this on the independent side of things.
Flashlights! Spiral staircases! Beefcastles in tactical gear! In the end, they’re no match for my own sense of stubborn indignation.
I think it’s time for me to take a ride on a Mental Health Cargo Van of my own making and kiss this anxiety butterfly knife goodbye. I’ll be sure to pick up my Ninja Turtle along the way.
Thank you for splitting that melon like a pretty Gallagher.
All my smuckers,
Mack Ketchum, Pokemenace Trainer Extraordinaire
P.S. If you rated this dream an 11/10 on the Newtmare Scale of Perkycutlass Estimation, then I must rank your analysis…
20/10 on the Drim-Cracker Barrel Biscuit of Writertrout Satisfaction.
Before I begin this, I really just want to say: CONGRATULATIONS!
Why? Because, my ferocious mini pony, it’s Friday. We limped across the finish line to find a three-day weekend ahead of us. We’ve done great work this week and we deserve all the wine we’re about to drink.
As I write this sweet, sweet (frightening) drim-dram I’m sipping on the delicious bottle of Bully Hill Space Shuttle Red that you bought me in the Fingerlakes the other week. I will attempt to go easy on it, but I make no promises.
Now, let’s dig into things, shall we?
Television is melting my brain.
I don’t even watch that much TV. If I lived alone, I’d probably barely turn mine on at all. Not to be uber pretentious, but… (okay, this is uber pretentious) I’m perfectly content with my books and my record collection. Visual stimulus not necessary.
However, I do not live alone. And my roommate/BFF/spouse-person is super into the TV-before-bed thing. Meaning we watch about an hour of something or other at 8 p.m. and then promptly brush our teeth and crash in bed with books at 9:15–9:30.
We are boring and The Worst™ , and I know it.
Except that the hour of TV we watch is usually something super unpleasant. For example, this week it was a mixture of the v. v. depressing Chernobyl as well as the equally depressing Handmaid’s Tale.
I’m telling you this only because this dreadful hour of TV tends to seep into my dreams. Sometimes in a bad way. Sometimes, like on this particular night.
I’m in three places at once.
This has been happening a lot recently. The locales just seem to blend together (you know, like an aromatic red wine blend). This time, it goes from cruise ship to university campus to shopping mall in the span of a few steps.
In the beginning of the drimmer, Mr. Michaelob and I are on the tail-end of a vacation. Our backpacks are in tow, passports in hand, and we’re departing a cruise ship. As always, port is something of a mob scene. There are swarms of people, and we’re milling slowly through the crowd, trying to find our way off the ship.
As we near the exits, Michael and I are separated. It’s something I don’t immediately panic over. We’re adults and heading in the same direction, and he’s also a dude (and thus, a less likely candidate for kidnapping). My higher brain tells me we’ll call each other and meet up outside of the ship. My lower brains submits to a sense of sheer anxiety. What if I can’t find him outside? What if I can’t find him at all?
Sidebar: This seems to happen in a lot of my dreams. Michaelob and I are separated somehow, and it ends up being a big source of anxiety. Maybe that’s something I can take on its face?
A B.A. in Criminal Psychopathy
As I cross over the crowded gangplank of the ship, I arrive not in port, but in the halls of a crowded university. Judging from the lively common areas and rooms, it seems I’ve emerged in a dormitory. Thinking maybe my significant otter is somewhere in the crowd looking for me, too, I meander about the dorms. My passport is still in my hand.
Michaelob is nowhere to be found. Instead, I’m approached by some milquetoast, college-aged young man with a dark mop of hair. I can’t remember any details of his face. I don’t think he was anyone that I awake-know. Really just some vague amalgam of TV characters and people I’ve seen in passing, maybe.
What sticks with me is how utterly persistent this guy is. He’s trying to get my attention, trying to make me laugh, trying to make me see him. The issue is, I just don’t really care. It’s Michaelob Ultron I’m looking for. Still, the guy pesters me to such a degree that I start to feel legitimately uncomfortable and flee the dorms.
I end up in a semi-vacant corridor. I’ve crossed over into the classroom area of campus. The walls are all white, the lights fluorescent. There’s a patently sterile feel to it all. Peering into one of the rooms, I notice labs. Now I’m just feeling like I’m somewhere I’m not supposed to be. I walk on instead.
Capitalist Meet-Cutes for the Masses.
I’m relieved when I walk through a large set of double doors into what appears to be the campus cafeteria. Only, after a moment’s inspection, I realize it’s not a university cafeteria at all, but the food court in a mall. There are shopfronts all along the wall, a penny-fountain, and an exit blanched in white light on one side.
I’m still missing a Michaelob, so I hurry towards the exit. Of course, since this is a creep-out dream, I’m intercepted by the frat boy. He’s not happy I walked out before. This time, his persistence is taken to a new level. He’s hovering like a gnat, and to my horror, wielding a butterfly knife. He spins it around his fingers, waving the tip in my face, threatening me.
I start to run, but Edward Scissorshit gives chase. The knife grazes my cheek. He’s laughing and shouting. I start crying out for help, but the surrounding shoppers are completely oblivious. They lope across the mall’s tile floors like cows grazing in a field, their arms full of shopping bags.
The lights go out.
I’m aware of the passage of time. I didn’t see it happen. But this is a dream, remember? When have clocks ever made a difference (except in the realm of existentialist symbology).
The room I find myself in is pitch black, with the exception of the flashlight in my hand. That, and the flashlight on the other side of the room, where Edward Scissorshit and what appears to be his sister are calling after me.
My flashlight might as well be a bullseye, so I turn it off and drop it, edging along the side of the room. When I say room, I’m talking warehouse-sized. It’s big, the center mostly empty save for a few crates, and there are stairs everywhere. One flight, two flights. Three or four floors, as far as I can see in the darkness. The Shits are on the ground floor, so I quietly pad up the stairs.
The next several moments are just climbing and descending stairs. Sometimes I’m heading towards the second and I end up on the fourth. And when I’m going up, I’m going down. It’s like an M.C. Escher painting, only with more Jason Statham-level action suspense.
Eventually, I start to see doors. Lots of doors. I open them, one at a time, each leading to some dead-end storage room, until I finally find an exit I can slip out of.
I open up on some sort of chateau-style terrace with a long banister and armed guards milling about. They’re dressed all in black tactical gear and carrying sub-machine guns.
Sidebar: What the fuck? Do you ever wonder why every morning when I message you I’m like, “I’m so tired, omg.” I spent all night evading heavily armed militia.
It’s Prison Break but with less prison and more panache.
A couple questions at this point:
Who in the actual dicks kidnapped me?
Why am I so easy to kidnap?
Is this the actual worst end to any vacation ever?
Where is my real-life human husband?
Truth be told, I’ve never been kidnapped before. I know, hard to believe. I’ve been told by family members before that I’m quite kidnappable, which is actually v. v. alarming? Thanks, fam.
All that being said, I’ve stealthed the heck out of a lot of video games in my day, so how different can this be? It’s a drim-dram, and I really believe in myself as well as the stupidity of my foes, so lo and behold, I actually manage to sneaky-snake my way down to the street.
There’s a woman waiting for me. Do I know her? No, not really. But she’s a woman wearing white (HELLOOOO, Symbolism) and I was just butterfly-knifed repeatedly by some greasy-haired shitboy in black, so I’m like, “Hi, I trust you with my life.”
She’s pulling me towards a cargo van. Apparently it’s used by the owner of the estate to transport jewelry. Certainly an odd detail, but I’m running for me life, so do I have time to question it? Jenny, I donut.
It’s time for a nerve-shattering Hell-ride.
Passenger vans weren’t exactly made for speed. It’s not like I’ve ever had to write about one of these things for work before so how would I…
Well. I slam the sliding door, buckle up, and look to the driver. Does she look familiar? Not even. But her M.O. of “get the actual feck out of here” seems to align with mine perfectly, so I question nothing. Instead, I look at the passport in my hand. Only now, it’s not a passport anymore.
Now it’s a notebook, and I see all these notes and drawings left by Michaelob. Notes about a fantasy world he’s constructing for a book, pictures of swords and monsters. Gummy bears stuck to pages. Fragment of little action figures taped in. I wonder if I should be looking in on his thoughts without his permission, but then I remember he drew them in my notebook, and I feel vindicated.
The van gets going, but the going is slow. I look out the passenger side mirror, and I notice we are, in fact, going slow enough that Edward Scissorshit’s sister is almost catching up to us at a run.
“Go, go!” I’m shouting at the driver. But I assure all of you, this bucket-o’-bolts is going as fast as it possibly can. Shitsister is getting close, and I’m getting nervous. I look around the front of the vehicle for some sort of weapon, something I can defend us with.
All that I find is a half-drunk smoothie in the front cup holder. It’s strawberry, red enough that it looks just like blood. Unsure of what else to do, I toss it into Shitsister’s face.
She’s so shocked she stumbles back, and the van charges forward.
Farewell, third glass of wine. I hardly knew ye.
That’s how many I drank before I finished this bad-boy of a drimmer.
Shh, don’t tell the flight of beer I had at dinner.
Sorry, it was that kind of week. I’m getting it out of my system now so it’s not that kind of weekend.
In any case, that was a fast-paced romp, wasn’t it? There are a lot of images to pick through in this one, and I can’t wait to see what you glean from it, my dear.
In the meantime, I might just pour myself another. Thank you again.
Have you ever had an animated dream? Dreamed in all black and white? In a foreign or made-up language?
All dreams have meaning. But there are times where dreams just feel realer. Would you agree? Aboard these vivid drimboats, you’re taken on a journey that surprises you, excites you, and immerses you in more color than you can possibly see in waking life.
Many times these are the dreams that stick out the most to me. This dream was one of em that had moments seemingly ordinary and extraordinary, and I quite enjoyed the juxtaposition. I hope you do, too!
Part Un: Ye Shall Not Pass
I’m outside in my parent’s stone walkway, likely on my way to work in the morning or heading out on an errand. It’s really windy and the gate my Dad and I fixed last fall is making a clacking sound in the current. We replaced it with new wooden planks and painted it a vibrant Badlands Red.
I can see a gap between the bottom of the gate and the fence that swells when the wind whips through. Enough, I think to myself, for a three-year-old golden retriever hellbent on chasing a chipmunk to squeeze through.
Lily senior, Cayanne, and the old gate <3
Now~ the following details weren’t in my dream, but they’ll help you understand the strangeness I felt being at two parts of the yard simultaneously.
We have another gate at the back yard, it’s chicken wire in a big frame and closes securely when you swing it shut, pull its chain, and hook it around its steel post. It guards the three trees we planted when my brother, sister, and I were varying degrees of yougin’.
While I know I was on my way going somewhere when I saw the red gate, in the close-up in my dream that showed the gap, it was actually where the wire gate normally is, guarding the back yard. I tell my Dad about the gap, and he says there’s a bottom latch he’s been hanging onto from when we fixed it originally that will hold things together, and it does.
It’s another day. Another walk out to my car. I unlatch the red gate and it breaks off of its hinges and into my hands without any extra effort. I try to reattach it. Awkwardly trying to balance the connected slats of wood, I notice a sequence of numbers on the gate itself that match the post and try to line these up. I get it to stand upright and look sturdy and secure from the naked eye, but I know that whoever walks back through it will break it again. That feels unsettling to me.
In the next part of the dream, my Dad becomes a famed inventor. IRL, he’s got the crazy Guy Fieri hair for it, at the very least!
Part Deux: Animation Station
I’m looking out over these round, huge, cartoonish green hills. I think to myself how beautiful they are and exaggerated, like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. As I walk toward the plump landscape, the hills do a very Pixar thing and shuffle around like a deck of cards being held by a giant.
As I take a few steps, they bunch up and disperse in a stop-motion way until I’m elevated to being level with their peaks. That’s when I notice them: Big green stems like tree logs, like a close-up of the bottoms of asparagus stalks. Directly above them, giant, curved red petals that look large enough to slide down. Despite my wonder, I’m concerned that they’ve fallen and cannot grow any longer. The bottoms of their stems are blunt as if someone’s taken the world’s largest pair of Fiskars and cut them.
Before returning home, I tell the inventor.
The next day I set out for the green hills again. This time, before I even begin my climb, I can see the gargantuan tulips, a beacon of red hovering against the green hills – it’s a breathtaking sight, the colors are so overwhelmingly vibrant. I pause to take them in. At the end of the day, I run home, energy pumping through my legs. I can’t wait to get up and see the flowers again.
The next day I journey up the green hills, there are more huge, colorful attractions to see. Now, as I ascend the hills, each one unfolds like a surprise greeting held in a pop-up card. Despite looking very real, they also remind me of glossy 3D paper. There’s a shiny, red rollercoaster, those like joke colored worm things that come out of a can of whoop ass- but huge and blue. They constantly fly out in different directions and then disappear and start over again.
The hills are alive with the sound of…whoop ass?
That’s what Julie Andrews sang right-
I’m downright E N C H A N T E D. I now know what to ask for for Christmas this year.
Every time you walk up and down the hills, you find something new, and the higher you venture, the more you find. I take a picture, then saunter down to the information kiosk tucked into the side of the bottom hill like a hobbit house.
Cue the Spa Babes
At the info station, I run into Mack and Enron. They have white towels around their heads and monogrammed bath robes on. They twinkle their toes fresh with polish. Obviously, they’ve just had a relaxing afternoon at the Hillside Spa(TM).
Mack starts massaging my shoulders saying “feel that? You’ve got yourself a gnarly knot.” (that’s when in real life I would have said, “is that like a garlic knot???”) Mack continues: “Let’s loosen that up for you shall we?”
Then I wake up. Thank you for rubbing my shoulders in my dreams, Mackadoodle boo. You the real MVP. <3 Now, what the heckeroonie does all this mean!!?? I can’t wait to hear your take!
I made a critical mistake last night before bed, having read your astute reply. That combined with some late evening writing and a particularly frustrating episode of GoT left my mind so wired I barely got a wink of sleep. As I write this, I am running on fumes and sheer piss-and-vinegar will, so forgive me my… well, inevitable inarticulocity.
Of course, before I really begin, I have an announcement to make:
*Clears throat*
Today marks my formal candidacy for mayor of Crazytown, USA.
Ask not what your existential crisis can do for you, ask what you can do for your existential crisis!
Don’t Let the Sky Fall Down On Me
I said Jenny & the Bets and now I’m doing an Elton John theme. I don’t make the rules here.
Oh, apocalypse. I’m really not the sky-is-falling type. I had enough of that kind of cynicism in my sordid youth. Now, I’ve emerged from my teen angst like an annoyingly positive phoenix from the ashes.
That doesn’t mean I’m not still dramatic as all get out.
The theater represents my social life, eh? I’ve mentioned this before, but I see my social calendar filling up more and more lately. And while I love every hour spent with friends and family, I get tired. I’m a reformed cynic, but I’ll never really shake the introvert I’ve been since childhood. I need to be alone with my thoughts or my circuits completely fry.
I really try to give my all to those in my immediate sphere. Honestly. Even on the days when I’m really tired. I want to be a wife, daughter, friend, and boss. It’s exhausting. Sometimes I just need… to be left the feck alone, you know?
Saturday Night’s All Right for Staying In
It’s around this point in my reply notes that I jotted down “bless your actual fart,” and I can’t remember what that was in reference to, but I stand by it. Bless you, my ferocious miniature pony.
Perhaps I was just marveling at how keen your analysis was. For instance, do I take refuge in my own company? Do I ever. I used to not like myself very much. Now? Hot damn, I love hanging out with me! Fun conversation, smooth music taste, even better taste in wine…
I say this all without a trace of conceit, by the way, because self-love is hard and I’m learning to own that shit a bit more each and every day.
One of the best things about being alone with myself is that I get to play in sandboxes of my very own making. It looks almost exactly like this except my teeth are longer:
Even when I’m totally alone I’m not lonely. I’ve got so many characters and different worlds floating around the ol’ nog-bog, it’s easy enough just to drift away into another realm sometimes. My dream is to get some of these realms and characters down on paper in a way that doesn’t utterly repulse people.
Hey! Maybe that’s where The Red Curtains of Ambition™ come into play…
Funeral for a Fiend/Love Lies Reaping
Your hashtag game is truly astounding. #TwinningAndSinning? I almost spit my seltzer.
When I was considering who this evil twin might represent, I was thinking more of the external. I.e. someone in my waking life. But here you’ve come, charging into my Meat Dome with your Freudian greatsword, riding a horse named Duality, and I’m… I’m shook.
The psychopomp was within me all along.
I should’ve seen this coming. As you know from the many many conversations we’ve had, I’m a huge advocate of painstaking self-reflection. After my most recent bout, I’ve been really focusing on my need to be more assertive in both professional and personal settings.
So, who knows? Maybe the twinsies are more like… Ego vs. Id? Civilized Conduct vs. Feral-Possum Impulse?
Tiny Destroyer
I won’t deny that this Tony Crisp fella sounds like a wise man. But “Tony Crisp” also sounds like the Christian name of one “Tony the Tiger,” doesn’t it? Sir Anthony Crisp!
Greetings from the Kellogg’s Pantheon, A.K.A. my tiny blue insane asylum on the hill. You know, grim reaping really seems like the hard way to mental expansion. Brown acid would have been easier. As it is…
Perhaps I am at odds with my impulses of creation and destruction, both in personal relationships and in creative life. Remember that sandbox I mentioned? When I don’t get enough time to play in there, I kind of freak out a little bit. I get snippy and overwhelmed. After enough time away, I feel so stoppered that when I finally find some alone time I don’t know what to do with it.
When I had this dream, I was dealing with a wicked case of writer’s block. Pressures from my daily life had me mentally fatigued and pretty short on imagination.
I’ve since looked that writer’s block–let’s call it… Lorelai Gilmore–dead in the eye and said, “GFY,” but at the time, I was definitely feeling emotionally vulnerable.
I think you hit on the main takeaway here: I’ve got to stick to my guns, whether it’s at work, when staring down a blank page, or while deciding on the fate of ailing middle-aged men.
There are few immutable truths in this life. Someday, we all must die. Rain will always be wet.
Gin is an affront to mankind.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but anyone that claims to like gin is actually just nurturing a traumatic pain. Probably from childhood.
Them’s the rules, and I do not make ’em. That being said:
This dream is brought to you by gin.
You ever have one of those dreambinos where you’re not quite yourself? Maybe you’re not even someone that you know, you’re just some random character. Perhaps this person is an amalgam of other characters you’ve been hoovering off of screens and pages throughout your life: TV super spies and dashing knights and zombies.
I don’t know where this person came from, but as so often happens in these types of dreams, it feels utterly right to walk in their skin. Or maybe it’s just that all day as I coast through my conscious life, this made-up stranger is walking in my skin.
Maybe I should let my imaginary friends out to play more often.
Not too long ago I was on a cruise ship (slaycation, you well know). Some people find it mildly terrifying to be adrift at sea inside of a massive boat, but I’m sort of the opposite. I find comfort in a self-contained city surrounded by nothing but miles upon miles of water. And that’s what a cruise ship feels like–a tiny city. You can walk from room to room at all hours of the day, from bar to casino to theater and back again. Everything is just steps away at any moment.
This is what the city of my dreams feels like.
There’s an interconnectedness, a metropolis made of rooms. A promenade shopping mall here, a pub there; but for me, it always starts and ends in the theater.
I like theaters, too: the smell of crushed velvet, heavy drapery the color of cabernet, gold leaf molding, dust motes cascading down under the stage lights.
The theater of my dreams is empty. Footfalls echo. I weave through the aisles of velvet chairs, whistling all the while.
(This is the first moment I can look back and know I am not me any longer, because I cannot whistle.)
I push through the heavy black doors into the city beyond. The promenade awaits, half abandoned and overgrown with ivy. There is evidence of a time before: shattered glass panels, a filthy skylight, amputee mannequins in windows, cracked cement. If that time was somehow more profitable, good fortune has clearly passed.
I first see her surrounded by a crowd.
She is laughing and grinning, with a smile that could cut glass. And maybe, in fact, she is the source of all this ruin. I think to myself it’s entirely possible. She’s artfully cruel like that.
My sister, the destroyer.
Not Mackenzie’s sister though. This one has wild, dark curls and green eyes. This one is tall and waifish, and she doesn’t shy from a crowd. Not just my sister, but my twin.
Pulling my jacket a bit tighter around myself, I lope into the shadows, trying to walk past the crowd unnoticed. The problem with that is, I can’t seem to go anywhere without her finding me. Except, of course, the theater.
She laughs and laughs and laughs.
I take the escalator to the house on the hill.
In a little blue house on a hill, with a little white picket fence and little pink flowers, a man lies dying on the lawn.
Maybe this is a thing that would scare me–real-life, actual me–but dream me is here with a purpose. This is what she was made for. The man must know it, because when I come towards him, he chokes, begging me to turn away. “Not yet,” he’s gasping, “please.”
I kneel by his side. He seems like a nice enough man. His hair is thinning, belly only just softening with the paunch of middle age. In the driveway there’s a little pink tricycle parked beside his car.
With a single touch of my hand, the child that rides that tricycle can be made fatherless. I know this, implicitly. A history of taking and taking and taking from the world is known to me in an instant.
This is the worst part of the job, really.
“What are you waiting for?” Sister asks me. She’s more curious than she is agitated. I guess I’m an oddity to her.
In the distance, sirens are wailing, heralding the ambulance that will drive this man to safety.
“I don’t have to take him.”
“If you won’t do it, then I will.”
She reaches for him. I grab her by the wrist. It’s not what I’m saying with my mouth, but with my eyes. For once, can we just do things my way?
I’m shocked that she lets me lead her away. She can’t be so bad, can she? Not my own twin.
We’re strolling down the hill as the ambulance arrives. Twilight has fallen over the promenade and the looted shops below. Sister isn’t talking to me, but it’s a comfortable silence. I’m proud.
She can be different. I can be different, too.
A middle-aged man passes us on the stairs, dark-haired where the man on the hill was fair. He looks, strangely, like Burt Reynolds. And he’s whistling and cat-calling my sister and asking to take her home.
“Let me show you a good time, sweetheart…”
It’s the kind of attention that makes me want to gag. It’s uncomfortable and unnecessary, and I’m just about to tell him off when she shrugs and smiles coyly.
“Why not?”
She winks at me, and I’m left staring after her. The man slings his arm over her shoulder. If he’s lucky, she’ll be the best he’s ever had. She’ll almost certainly be the last.
Why do nice reapers always finish last?
With my twin by my side, I’d be invincible. But here I am, strolling these strange shopping mall catacombs alone at night, and I feel weirdly… vulnerable. Kind of ironic, I suppose.
There are young people sitting in stairwells, laughing from low walls as they drink malt liquor. All eyes are on me as I pass, and I can’t help but feel that they’re laughing at me.
I try to pass through into the theater, but a girl stops me. “Hold on. You gotta pay up to pass.” Her cronies surround me on all sides.
“I don’t have any money.”
“You’ve got money. Everyone’s got money. Pay up.”
I empty my pockets. “I don’t have anything. I just need to get through.”
“No one gets through unless they pay.”
I push. They push back. One of them shoves me, then another. Then the lead girl is swinging a fist.
In my theater, nothing can hurt me.
I keep touching my face. My right eye is swollen and puffy, but I can see, and I can hear, too. There’s laughter in my theater where there should only be silence.
I walk up the right aisle of chairs to find my mother joking with a blonde woman my own age. When I say my mother, of course, I mean Lorelai Gilmore because… well, why not?
“What are you doing here?” I ask her. She’s not usually around when I need her. And while I wouldn’t exactly say that I need her now, I need someone. Anyone.
Not that she hears me.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
She and the blonde are laughing and laughing. I take a seat in one of the red velvet chairs. They’re laughing by the yellow light of the stage.
“Mom?”
She turns, as if only just realizing I’m here.
“What happened to your eye?”
Jenny, why doesn’t Lorelai Gilmore love me?
Okay, maybe it’s the gin that doesn’t love me. It certainly doesn’t love my stomach. I do have some good news though: that bottle of gin that’s been taking up space in my cabinet for a year and a half is now in the recycling bin.
And if nothing else, I got a pretty interesting dream out of it.
Hot damn, you are good at cracking this old nut of mine. There were so many delightful observations to be found in your analysis, yet somehow, my main takeaway is this:
If I had one million dollars right now, I would literally blow every cent of it on financing a toilet-humor-themed Charlie Daniels parody band led by you.
I would regret nothing.
I’m peein’ on the midnight train to Georgia.
What was it like when I stayed in Georgia? I’ve thought a lot about this recently, as I’ve been ruminating over how much I’ve changed in the 4 1/2 years since then. It seems like so long ago already, and I truly feel like a different person.
At that time in my life, I was awkward and anxious and on the cusp of real adulthood. I was also really unsure of who I could be. I was out of my comfort zone, but that’s where I wanted to be.
I’ll never forget the first Friday I spent down there. A week had passed, and Kris and I went bar-hopping–you know, to get a real taste of what Savannah, GA, has to offer. At some point, we ended up in The Rail Pub slamming PBRs and Irish Breakfast shots. It was a moment of carefree inebriation and stunning clarity all in one, in which I realized that the next few months of my life could be whatever I wanted them to be.
So, yes, it was good. It was maturing and learning a lot about me. And it’s something I’m immensely grateful for.
This is where we get all cat’s-in-the-cradle.
Since then, I’ve grown a lot. My life has changed in a big way. Every month, I seemingly grow out of my former self a little more. It’s a lot like an old winter coat that no longer seems to fit, the kind that you’d stash somewhere in the basement (hey, wait a second…).
This also means that life is constantly growing busier. The calendar fills up fast. And of course I’d love to spend more time with my mom and sister but…
*Harry Chapin croons solemnly in the distance*
I know dreams are a place for metaphor, but maybe I should just take this one literally: it’s time to block off some more time for the three of us gals.
The kids are all wet.
Urinating is one way to relieve yourself, but not a direct translation for what you may be dealing with deep down.
Juniper Peppercorns, from the blog post just before this one
As I was reading through your analysis and jotting down notes, I picked up on this gem and simply scrawled, in all caps, “WOOF.”
I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I’m sort of really good at compartmentalization. Like, if it were an Olympic sport, I’d put Michael Phelps to shame. My face would be on a Wheaties box. Except they’d have to change the name to Weepies… you know, for obvious reasons.
I’m starting to feel that this dream is more about growing pains than anything else. Meditating on the distance between my current self and the child I once was (a person who is, in some ways, almost unrecognizable to me). Lamenting the constraints of a busy schedule and the lack of time with certain family members.
(That’s the Shame-Wow, isn’t it? Sidebar: I would pay a second lump sum of one million dollars to star in the infomercial for that Shark Tank-worthy product.)
But, hey, maybe it is time to pull the stopper and let go of that undue pressure I’m putting on myself.
“Ready, Able”
Why Grizzly Bear, you asked? That’s a good question. You know I love some good animal symbology, and I think that which you’ve provided is fitting: the bear teaches how to look inward for the tools for survival.
Isn’t growing up just learning what tools you have at your disposal and figuring out the best way to use them? Figuring out how to build something good for yourself?
You know, that reminds me this song that I really like…
// Five years, countless months and a loan Hope I’m ready, able to make my own Good home //
Well. Your inaugural dream is a hard act to follow. It was full of cocaine-babies! Assassins!! Romance (sort of)!!! How will I up the ante?
With undiluted shame, of course. How fitting.
Let’s set the scene.
Any good twenty-something shame dream worth its salt starts with Mom, doesn’t it? Fortunately for Mom, her involvement in my sheer embarrassment basically starts and ends with her presence. She is neither cause nor effect. (That’s it, Mom, I swear. This does not warrant a concerned phone call.)
Our story begins with a wholesome family road trip. My mother, sister, and I have driven to Savannah, GA, for a dual-purpose.
We are visiting a childhood friend of my mother’s, Kris; a woman who, incidentally, welcomed me into her home during my senior year of college while I was working an internship.
We are attending a music festival, because… I mentioned this was a shame dream, right?
This all sounds pretty normal. Just a couple of lively broads about town, rocking and rolling. V. v. cool. V. v. fresh.
It gets weird.
We arrive at Kris’ house to find that… well, it’s not really a house. To be clear, it’s a souvenir shop hawking “I <3 Savannah” t-shirts, unlicensed band merch, keychains, and a host of other useless items to be shoved in drawers and promptly forgotten about. However, unlike, you know, 95%~ of other tourist-trap souvenir shops, this place is hoppin’. It’s uncomfortably busy. Merch is flying off the shelves.
Almost as soon as we’ve arrived at Kris’, we’re heading out the door for day one of the festival, which appears to be taking place in some sort of abandoned warehouse. The crowds have only gotten worse here. It’s hot. It’s sweaty. Someone spills beer on me.
So, kind of an average festival.
Grizzly Bear is playing a set. Though they’re one of my favorite bands and I’ve been dying to see them for years, I feel disappointed. I’m exhausted from the thirteen-hour drive, stressed out, and deeply uncomfortable. The music doesn’t sound right. I’m nervous about losing my mom and sister in the crush.
Day changes to night, night changes to day.
Everything looks a bit better in the morning (even in dreams). I wake refreshed. Kris’ souvenir shop home has emptied, all the merch having been sold. What remains is candy, bags of junk food, and a few cheap mugs likely made in sweatshops. I sit at the kitchen table (conveniently located in the middle of the souvenir shop) with my mom and sister beside me. Across from me sits one of my high school acting teachers and her daughter. How or why they’ve joined us, I have no clue. They serve seemingly no purpose but to make me feel somehow out of place in my own dream.
Kris joins us in the kitchen, sunshiney as always, ready for another day working the register. “I think some pipes burst,” she cheerfully informs us. “The whole house is flooding.”
Oh, okay. That’s cool.
The water rises quickly, all muddy and brackish. This is a river in the midst of the flood: bacteria-ridden waters that dirty me as I wade, with some effort, from room to room. A bit gets in my mouth and I almost immediately feel sick.
This is where the problems really start. See, I have to pee, and in a bad way. An urgent way. I make it to the end of the hall, swimming to the bathroom, only to find the house’s other inhabitants all sitting in a corner bedroom, playing video games on a small television. They’re laughing, enjoying themselves.
What strikes me is the plush, white carpet in the bedroom where the others are laughing. It’s completely unsullied. How has the water not spilled through the open doorway? It’s as if an invisible barrier is in place to keep everything bad out.
“Kris, I really have to use the bathroom.”
“Toilet’s not working,” she replies with glee. “You’ll have to go in the basement.”
Oh.
The Basement: a completely normal place to urinate.
Okay, remember that shame component I heavily alluded to in the beginning?
Something happens as I walk down the stairs. The basement is not Kris’, but the basement of my father’s home, the house that I grew up in. The light is yellow and overly shiny. I get the distinct feeling that I’m shrinking, that I’m no longer even fully clothed.
Worst of all, I just can’t hold it in any longer. I squat right there on the stairs, my shorts around my ankles, and start pissing.
Underneath the stairs, I can see piles of old sneakers, too-small winter clothing, and sun-faded beach gear. And I’m pissing on it all.
Of course, because this is a shame dream, this is also a full-on Tom-Hanks-in-A-League-of-Their-Own piss. It just. Won’t. Stop.
It is, as you might have guessed, the perfect time for Eternally-Joyful-Dream-Kris to appear at the top of the stairs with a very important question:
“Have you seen my sneakers?”
Preternaturally polite, Kris is kind enough not to comment on the half-naked girl squatting at her feet. Instead, she stops, peeks under the stairs, and exclaims, “Oh, there they are!” She plucks her white, urine-soaked sneakers from the basement refuse and promptly steps into them.
It is only after she’s left that my traitorous bladder squeezes itself dry.
At this point, I really, really, really don’t want to walk upstairs, but I do. The others are still in the bedroom playing games. The water begins to drain from the home, as if the stopper has been pulled on a massive bathtub.
I look down at my feet and begin wiggling my bare toes. They’re covered in dirt. And I imagine, more than a little urine.
Jenny, there’s a lot going on here.
I didn’t wake from this feeling bad, necessarily, but I was rushing to the bathroom as soon as my alarm went off. Oh, and I had this great Grizzly Bear song stuck in my head…
Please let me know if it’s my brain that’s upset or just my bladder.
I feel b l e s s e d that we get to start the blog off with a dream so utterly interesting. I laughed, I gasped, I hid the children and the wives. This one really had it all.
Where to begin?
I just cracked my knuckles so hard you could probably hear it from your house. Let’s dive in, shall we?
The idea of these telescoping mini-dreams is one quite familiar to me. It’s like your brain has so much to tell you it can’t settle on just one motif. Instead, it just throws all these fractured images into a blender and sees what kind of super-powered psychic protein shake it can come up with. Here’s the thing though:
There’s no way these scenes–these mini-dreams–aren’t somehow related. It may not seem so, but there’s an emotional undercurrent that runs beneath them all. We’ve just got to figure out what that is.
Pt. 1: Daycareless
You know what stuck out to me the most about this daycare?
You’re going to say the cocaine, I just know it.
Spoiler alert: it’s not the cocaine. It’s actually the seemingly innocuous fact that you were running it with your brother.
Siblings are kind of like the custodians of our childhood memories, aren’t they? Your parents are there from the beginning, but your siblings are typically the only ones down there in the trenches with you.
So, here you are, with your brother–a figure tied to thoughts of childhood and innocence–and you’re trying to care for unruly children together. You’re struggling to control them to such a degree that you’re pumping the little grubworms full of cocaine to get them to settle down.
And they say giving a kid benadryl is bad…
Sidebar: didn’t our grandparents literally give their kids bourbon and beat them with wiffle-ball bats to get them to go night-night? They’re called the “Silent Generation” for a reason…
“You tell anyone about this and I will literally put you in the oven.”
Jenny, have you been ruminating over childhood memories recently? Maybe you’re feeling the strain of adulting?
Pt. 2: Goin’ to the chapel and we’re gonna get murdered
Okay, before we delve into your very juicy stint as Jason Bourne, I think we need to discuss the idea of “split characters” in dreambinos.
You and I have definitely discussed this at length: two people merging to become one single character in your dreams. I like to think of this as another instance of blender brain. It’s taking two people, typically from two different eras in your life, and putting them together. The emotional through-line that binds them across these different eras is the emotional fulcrum of the split-character.
That being said, what do you think is the through-line between Amanda and Monica?
The idea of you being an assassin is something I think we can take literally. You’re here to kill some aspect of the dream. As you’ve been hired to take out the bride, maybe there are some affections you’re trying to eradicate, something that’s either distracting or overall unpleasant–maybe even something from your past (hint hint: your mini-dream).
Hey, know what else? Peach–like those peach flowers you mentioned–can symbolize lust and pleasure.
Now, to cap off this subconscious buzzkill: the time. I’ve been looking up the number 630 and there are a lot of ways we could interpret this. But the number as a whole seems to be a herald of positive change and good things to come. So… kind of a major bummerooskie that you missed it, huh?
You know that you deserve all the actual good in this entire world, right? Jennybean, don’t deny yourself anything.
Pt. 3: A slender manhunt
I am seriously chewing on this Slender Man component and I keep coming up empty because I just find it hilarious.
Let’s tackle the seemingly more obvious symbols, the beach being at the forefront. As a place where water meets land, it’s also a place where your rational and irrational mind meet. And here you are, dodging sandcastles and holes as if dodging the traps of your own irrationality.
Fortunately, you’ve got your Shun knife in hand, which is a way to cut out the negativity. The revolver may not have worked, but you still have something to defend yourself with.
You’re running in lockstep with your enemies, so at least the playing field is even. And while these toxic figures may be close to you, you can mark them with a nice, clear X, like a pirate marking a treasure map.
Did you feel powerful marking them? Did you feel like even though irrationality and fear had been chasing you down, the end goal, and the reward attached to it, was in sight?
Repression is fun.
I know that from experience. Feelings you may have thought were buried, like a lost flip-flop on a beach, have a way of coming back to you though. Your subconscious might be struggling to cut out certain feelings, but it also understands that you’re the girl with the Shun knife, and you know how to use it.
I saved a real keeper for my inaugural dream- it is a doozy. I was watching a lot of true crime leading up to this drimmer and spent the night prior playing live-action horror board games with the sibs.
Let’s just say, things got a bit violent. I can’t wait to hear what you think.
But First~
Ever have one of those really quick dream “mini-sodes” that squeeze their way into your night’s sleep even though they seem unrelated to the overall story that gets all the glory? This dream saga started with one of those- and, though it was brief and feels like it all happened in the span of five seconds- I did feel it warranted mentioning.
In this telescoping mini dream, my brother and I own a daycare center and it’s a bustling day after lunch. We’re picking toddlers up and wiping their PB&J-covered faces, tossing giant foam blocks out of the way that are strewn on the floor, and laying out plush pillows for afternoon nap time.
Several of the kids are acting up, and don’t want to be put down, wailing for more playtime.
That’s where the dream appears to take over and my brother and I make a decision without speaking, sort of robotically, there’s just no other way to tend to this problem: The tantrum makers need to be “medicated.”
I station myself at the kitchen sink to pour test tubes of cocaine (casual) into buckets of water. I’m trying to get the ratio right and the mixture’s getting goopy and grainy (evidence that it’s just about ready).
I don’t have children, nor might anyone I know let me near theirs after reading this, but what should I make of this?
The fun does NOT stop there...
End scene on that mini-sode. Now I arrive at a swanky outdoor venue by a shimmering lake to attend a friend’s wedding (who was the bride? It seems I had two people in mind: This was a split character of Amanda, one of my first close friends in elementary school and Monica, a good friend I have from middle school who I just visited in DC a few weekends ago.)
But, I’m not there just as a guest, I’m actually on a special mission to assassinate someone in the wedding party. Gasp!
Once I greet the bride, I go through the motions of how I’ll carry out the deed, mentally practicing for my moment. I feel the revolver in my right leather jacket pocket, just concealed when I put my hand around it.
I check my watch: 6:00 pm. That’s when I remember I’ll need to eliminate my target at precisely 6:30 pm, no sooner, no later, or else I won’t be admitted into Slender Man’s kingdom.
Yep, Slender Man’s kingdom.
Between my assassination rehearsal and the real shindig, I have some time to mix and mingle with the crowd. 30 minutes to be exact. So I walk over to one of the gazebos decorated in peach flowers.
I get a tap on my shoulder. It’s Kent, a charming acquaintance from college who I haven’t seen or talked to in at least five years. I go in for a hug and Kent kisses me on the lips, as if this is as casual as a handshake. After chatting with a few other friendly faces, I look down at my watch.
6:28 pm.
It’s time for the wedding procession, and guess what? I’m the maid of honor in the wedding (or in this case, the maid of dishonor considering my duties, though I was never fully certain who my target was).
As maids of honor do, I begin stepping down the church aisle to the classic pipe organ processional. My walking partner is moving at an erratic pace, and I wonder if they’re doing it on purpose as I try to speed down the aisle, cognizant of what time it is.
That’s when I realize, everything around me- the pews that flank the aisle filled with friends and family, the stained glass windows on the sides of the church and tall cathedral- everything’s fading away and all I can see is the floor, which quickly starts disappearing under my feet.
The best way I can describe the end of the aisle scene is like being on Rainbow Road in Mario Kart, hitting one of those sneakily placed speed bars around a tight corner, launching off the course, and slo-mo falling into the black part of the screen.
While falling away into blackness, I glimpse my watch. It’s 6:39 pm.
I failed the mission.
Now I’m on the run from someone powerful and their groupies whom I’ve seriously pissed off (could it be Slender?). I get a premonition-type vision that they’ve been in my residence, and stolen important files I was keeping on a TV, but now with the alacrity that they’re pursuing me with, I get the feeling that they still haven’t gotten all that they want.
So, before they ransack my place, I grab my Shun kitchen knife (v. nice, v. v. sharp, quality cooking-grade kitchen knife) for protection. They’re chasing me and we’re all suddenly on a beach, dodging deep holes made from sandcastles, old men asleep in the sun, and down umbrellas.
Though I’m running from them, we’re running in a line, four abreast (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense), but every once in a while, I get the opportunity to take the very tip of my Shun and carve a little X into each crony’s cheek to remind them I’m armed.
We keep running, then I wake up, frightened and reeling.
What does it all mean?
Mack, this dream was action packed and a half and it resonated with me in an eerie way. There’s symbols on symbols here, but I’m having trouble finding meaning.
Perhaps it was just a collision of too many crime stories buzzing around in my pretty little Jenny head? I look forward to hearing your take.
Looking back on our lives, sometimes the strangest, most wonderful memories of all are the ones that we weren’t even awake for.
Mackenzie: I’ve dreamed that the Incredible Hulk tried to cut off my ears with a pair of safety scissors. I’ve dreamed that I woke after the apocalypse, beneath the bluest sky imaginable. I’ve dreamed that I could speak to the dead (and that the dead were speaking back).
Jenny: I’ve dreamed that Adolf Hitler taught me the backstroke in swimming class. I’ve dreamed that my second grade teacher cloned herself and an army of Mrs. S’s were infiltrating my neighborhood. I’ve dreamed that my palm was a portal for tools, weapons, and objects to surface whenever I squeezed it.
We’ve each dreamed so many puzzles that we’ve given up on figuring them out all on our own. Sometimes it takes the wisdom and wit of a good friend to unscramble your own brain.
We don’t have it all figured out. But we’re going to have a lot of fun trying.
Strap in, friends. This is going to get interesting.
