An over-heated engine

Last night was miserable for sleeping. Most of the time was spent uncomfortably tossing and turning as my system tried to fight off some hellish flu-like bug. The only sleep that came was in twp one-hour segments.

Both of these segments brought very detailed dreams. That which came in the second segment can’t pass through the self-imposed content filter I’ve set for my postings here, so I can’t say very much about it. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, but that’s about all I dare say in its regard.

The dream that came in the first segment was very vivid, too.

In my dream…

…it was like I was looking through my own eyes as I experienced it. On a hot summer day I’d pulled my pickup truck into a filling station to gas up. I was wearing jeans and black socks, but nothing else. For some strange reason I’d kicked off my boots.

As I was filling the tank with gas I noticed the truck’s engine seemed particularly hot. After replacing the hose and nozzle back in the machine and screwing the lad back on my gas tank, I popped open the hood for a look at the engine. To my surprise I saw a strange tank in the engine compartment that I couldn’t identify. And there was a steady little fountain of coolant spurting out of the top of it.

Not sure what the heck was going on, I called over to the mechanics who were working in a nearby service bay and asked if one of them could come over and look at my leak.

While I was waiting for one of the guys to come over,… I woke up.

Catching and eating rats.

Last night’s two sleep segments brought me two completely different nightmares. This is rather unusual for me. Though my nightmares used to come more often than nice dreams, in recent years (well, in recent months, anyway) that hasn’t been the case.

The dream which came in my first segment was, by far, the most disturbing. It hit me with major sensations of guilt coming from a number of directions. Though it involved a fantasy setting, its cast of characters included real, private folks who are still alive. And that being the case, it’s blocked by my self-imposed content filter and can’t receive further mention.

The second dream, the one that came in my second sleep segment also qualifies as a nightmare. But the primary elements in it were desperation, fear, and physical revulsion. I’ll take those any old day of the week over guilt.

In my dream…

…I was a crewman aboard a big double-masted wooden sailing ship. The time period of this dream wasn’t specific, but it could easily have been almost any time in the 18th or early 19th Centuries.

The ship had been at sea for a long time and was stuck in the doldrums. With no wind we couldn’t move. And we had run out of food. Other than what fish we could catch, when we were able to catch any, we were forced to catch and eat the rats that were hiding on board.

That’s the horror to which I was driven in this nightmare: catching and eating rats in the dark, hot sub-decks of the ship.

Dreaming about books

Today brought me eight hours of sleep, but they were extremely light hours, interrupted many times by noises out in the hallway. Ordinarily those noises wouldn’t have bothered me; I’d have slept right through them. But today I was expecting two deliveries of books: one coming via UPS, about which I wasn’t too concerned, I was confident the UPS man would make his delivery; and the other coming via USPS, that’s the one I was worried about.

The local Post Office seems to assign delivery chores here at the hotel to a number of different postal workers. We never know from day to day which worker will be coming. Some of these folks are pretty good, while others aren’t. The good mail carriers will bring any packages to my door, knock loudly, and wait for me to respond. This is good.

Those mail carriers who are not so good may or may not even bring the packages to my door. If they do, they knock very lightly and timidly, then scoot away quickly before I have time to answer the door. Then they’ll leave a notice in my mailbox and I’ll have to schlep my old self all the way down to the Downtown Post Office and collect my stuff from there. And sometimes they’ll never even bother coming to my door, they’ll just leave the note then leave the package at the Post Office.

It was my concern that one of these “less than good” mailmen might be on the route today that caused my light sleep. I wanted to be sure to catch even the slightest knock on my door and answer it quickly. Consequently I jumped out of my bed and raced to the door at many wrongly interpreted sounds. Grr…

The very light sleep I was having did manage to bring me a few very similar, very short dreams about books.

In my dreams…

…I was opening boxes and finding beautiful art books inside. The different dreams had me finding different books. None of the dreams went much beyond that, and none of them were disturbing in the least.

That was a rather interesting eight hours of light sleep, interrupted by frequent trips to the door looking for books, and only finding them when I returned to bed and my head hit the pillow.

The postal delivery finally did come, by the way, a few hours after I woke. And the UPS delivery arrived a few hours after that.

Sharing a hotel room with Nancy Pelosi

This was one of the most surprising dreams I’ve had recently. And, given the pact that my political views are 180 degrees out of phase from hers, it was surprisingly pleasant.

In my dream…

…I shared a hotel room with Nancy Pelosi. And we proved to be delightfully compatible.

Wanting to get away for the weekend I was inclined to go camping but decided for some unexplained reason to check into a hotel room for a Friday night, Saturday night stay.

Not long after I checked into my room, dropped my duffel bag by the end of my bed, and stretched out to relax, the door opened and Nancy walked in, her suitcases set inside the door.

We looked at each other, both rather similarly amused, and we said at the same time,”Well, this is certainly a surprise!”

In this dream I was about twenty years younger than I am now, and so was she. She was an extremely attractive woman in her early forties.

“I suppose we may as well make the best of this,” she said, as she began taking off her clothes.

Without going into any further details that would take this blog in directions I’m trying to avoid, let me say that things progressed very well.

She and I never talked about politics at all, though we did share a bit of pillow talk. And in both physical and psychological ways we communicated very well and proved to be extremely in synch with each other.

I’m glad this was one of those dreams that had visual, auditory, and tactile clarity. And I wouldn’t mind a repeat performance of it. No, I wouldn’t mind that at all.

A dream competition?

The past few weeks have been relatively dream-heavy and that’s a good thing, in my humble opinion. Unfortunately, most of them failed to pass through my self-imposed filter regarding what I will post here, so mention of them never appeared in this dream journal. Last night’s, however, was certainly okay to share.

In my dream…

…I’d just finished a short, rather bizarre dream that I felt good about because I thought it a good entry for a “dream competition” in which I was involved.

The details of this competition weren’t explained in the dream. I have no idea who was sponsoring it, nor why. But I did have the sense that the dreams of the competitors were being directly monitored by the governing body.

And I don’t remember any details about the short, rather bizarre dream that I thought would be a good entry. Some sketchy memories of it remained while my head was still on the pillow, but they’ve escaped me now.

A strange football assignment

This major episode of insomnia through which I’m currently moving (no sleep for the past 32 hours… and counting) is starting to provide some vivid lucid dreams. The one which passed a few minutes ago was… entertaining.

In my dream…

…which occurred as I was resting in bed, fully aware of my surrounding and situation, I was in a football locker room, being issued my gear by the equipment manager for the upcoming Summer pre-season workouts.

With my arms full of the pads, pants, jerseys, cleats, and helmet, I found my way over to my assigned locker. Before loading the gear into my locker, I set the stuff down on a bench. Picking up my helmet first, it being on top of the stack, I noticed right away the number 24 in decals stuck to the helmet’s backside. 24? 24?! WTF? That’s a halfback’s number! And I’m an interior lineman! My number has always been 64!

Surely the coaches weren’t expecting me to play halfback this season! Were they?! Maybe the equipment manager goofed.

Before I could investigate this mystery, the lucid dream faded.

Portending bonsai?

Recent days have found me in an interesting sleep pattern. There’ll be one major sleep segment, usually anywhere from five to seven hours in length, followed by extensive catnapping throughout the rest of the day.

These catnaps have been bringing some interesting dreams. Like the naps themselves, these dreams are little things; often no more than a single image, or burst of short images. The one most recently experienced has me thinking.

In my dream…

…I was whittling away, or carefully pruning, a little branch of a small tree with a very sharp knife.

While in the dream I wasn’t thinking about bonsai particularly. But upon waking, with the dream image still fresh in my mind, I began wondering bout the possibility of exploring that hobby.

Now, I’ve never done bonsai before, but… I’m tempted to look into it. Was that dream a foretelling of some future hobby? Hmm……

I won… a new refrigerator?

Sunday’s second sleep segment brought an unusual dream.

In my dream…

…I was enjoying a quiet afternoon in my apartment when I was surprised by a crew of workers delivering a big, fancy new refrigerator. This was to replace the short, compact refrigerator I now have.

When I asked the guys why they were doing this, they explained,”This is your prize! Didn’t you know? You won this!”

Well, I didn’t remember entering any contest, but I sure wasn’t about to turn down this incredible upgrade to my kitchen. And I woke before the guys had a chance to realize they’d delivered the new refrigerator to the wrong person.

How DID they fit together?

Today’s sleep came in two segments: a first segment that was five and a half hours long, from which I was roused by noise out in my hallway; and a second nap that was only an hour long, which was ended by a mailman knocking at my door. It was the first sleep that brought me a strange dream.

In my dream…

…there were three main elements that seemed to fit together seamlessly in the dream itself but which, upon remembering them after I woke, don’t connect with each other in any logical way I can imagine. But then, dreams aren’t necessarily logical, are they?

Those three elements, all of which were intimately connected to each other, were:

1. my trying to solve a crossword puzzle (I don’t do crossword puzzles at all. I have no idea where this came from!),
2. an action sequence of a scifi/anime combat situation in which I was an active character, and
3. the sensation of eating mashed potatoes covered with a delicious, spiced, creamy, chipped beef gravy.

While I was in the dream it all seemed to make perfect sense, but now… I haven’t a clue how that could be.

The Space Vulture’s Dreams

Last night brought me a solid eight hours of sleep, something for which I’m always grateful. And it brought me a very detailed, rather pleasant dream. Unfortunately that dream involved people and activities that prevent it from moving through my self-imposed filter, so I’m unable to write about it in any kind of meaningful detail.

Fortunately, my reading before sleep included an interesting dream related passage. What follows is from Space Vulture, the Science Fiction novel coauthored by Gary Wolf and Archbishop John Myers:

Space Vulture used his sleep not just for work, but for entertainment. For him, going to sleep was like entering his own private movie screening room. Dreams that he himself had scripted flickered on in one part of his sleeping mind. His entertainment dreams were wondrous, fully-formed adventure stories set in exotic locales. In these dreams Space Vulture overcame all obstacles, vanquished all foes, charmed and delighted all women. These dreamy adventures always left him happy and refreshed when he awoke.

Ever since he altered himself, made himself physically and mentally perfect, Space Vulture had never had a nightmare.

Until now.

Space Vulture’s mind transported him to a place so hot that even metal smoldered. He was being pursued by demonic phantoms. He tried to evade them, but he failed. They caught him. They overwhelmed him. He was powerless against them. They threw him to the ground. They plucked out his eyes, tore out his tongue, ripped off his flesh and gnawed on his bones. The pain was unbearable. He was terrified. He tried to shriek. No sound came out of his mouth.

And with that delightful bit of imagery, I’ll wish you all good night and… sweet dreams.