Only a Dream Away

A troubling character

A slew of dreams last night:

ACT I

I experience a series of snippets of time spent with my friend K. It's as though I'm running fast forward through months of times spent together, all fairly mundane -- sitting next to each other, talking, laughing, smiling, hugging -- but all pleasant. In all of these instances I feel my love and affection for him.

ACT II

K has flown in for a visit and I go to meet him. Only, it isn't him. This man *says* that he is K, and acts as though everything is normal. But he's sharp and rude and calculating. Despite the fact that a) he doesn't look like the K I know at all, and b) he doesn't act like the K I know at all -- I participate in the illusion and just go with it, thinking, somehow, that he is the same person, that I have forgotten what K is really like because he lives so far away. This man looks like your typical obnoxious slick '90s businessman, with the slick haircut, suit and tie and briefcase and impatient look.

Somehow I find myself having sex with this "stranger" and going though the motions, doing the dance, acting like I'm into it. It feels like he's using me. I let it happen, under the notion that this is K, and it is fine, and it is a person I know and trust. But I know deep down that something is not right.

At the end of his stay, I go with this man to the airport to see him off. We are waiting for his plane. I am having a conversation with him and he is being disrespectful, rude, offensive actually. He hardly looks up from his phone to talk to me except to give me a dirty look with some sarcastic comment.

Finally, I have had enough, and I say, "OK, what's going on here? You're not really K, are you?" 

And he says, "What are you talking about? Of course I am!" 

"I know you're not him. Tell me who you are."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Look at me! Why would you think I'm not him?"

"You don't look like him and you don't remember any of the other times we have spent together. I knew it all the time and I can't believe I had sex with you." I begin to walk away.

He rushes after me and says, "OK, OK. I'm not him. Look." He pulls out his wallet, and from his wallet a business card with K's picture on it. The card has some kind of a nature/rainbow theme -- not at all the sort of business card K would have in real life. The card shows K under a different name with an executive position. "That was his old job," the impostor says, stuffing the card and wallet back into his pocket. "Friends do this for me all the time," he continues. "I sent K out here to check you out and see what kind of a girl you are and get you ready for me."

This segment of the dream closes with me feeling ambivalence and betrayal about K, whom I loved and thought I knew, but who is apparently an agent for some lascivious jerk. Also troubling is that I didn't even know K's real name (as shown on his business card).

ACT III

I am in the airport again. I am telling some friends (not sure who these are) about the incident but somehow things have gotten better because the real K is returning. I lie on the floor in the middle of one of the main arteries of the airport and start rolling around and stretching. Out of the corner of my eye I see K -- the real one -- also on the floor, "swimming" toward me. He is wearing a shirt with tiny blue and green triangles on a bright white field.

We reach each other and I look into his smiling face -- yes, it is unmistakably him -- and I feel a great comfort and affection for him. We hug and cuddle. I tell him all about the other man, and I confess to him that I don't know why I still love him so much, considering the fact that he would do such a thing to me, be part of such a deception. He provides no explanation. The dream returns to a scene that could have been part of Act I, where we are sitting in a beautiful outdoor setting, the sun is soft, the air is warm, and we are enjoying each other's company.

(I have to admit, this dream is very disturbing. There is a double illusion going on here and I am knowingly participating in my own betrayal. In the end the most honest man is the jerk. This one is going to take a lot of processing.)

OTHER SNIPPETS:

I am a kid again (I think) and it is night time. I am on a steamboat on a river in deep woods. We are gliding toward what appears to be a giant door somehow spanning the entire width of the river. There are three boats, and I am on one. I can see the reflection of the lights on the top of the boats dimly reflected in the door's wooden surface as we near.

Next, I find myself off the boat and sitting on a bank watching some kind of entertainment by torchlight. It's very strange to have this voyage and gathering in the pitch dark night.

Then I find myself running deep into the forest with two other friends. Under a yew I find my 3rd-grade best friend Regina, who is weepily telling us about a dream she had (about her mother?) and how blessed she is to have such a dream. She is lying on her back under the low branches of this yew, and I can only see her from the shoulders up. The rest of her is in the dark of the deep forest. I have a sense that we will leave her there.

Unrelated to the above: I am in a garden tending a low growing plant with blue buds. An older woman who appears to be the owner of the garden/teacher is standing above me, talking to others. I ask her if I should snip the buds off. She says yes, and demonstrates by pinching them off with her hands, explaining that that is how she keeps the plant going all through the season.

Babaji

Here is an abbreviated version of the dream as I wrote it to my teacher:

I dreamed last night that Babaji died. 

 

Wherever I was, throngs of people came around a mountain while I photographed a gigantic, dead, but very fragrant tree stump. Where I could pick the bark off it smelled spicy and perfumed. I chewed on some of the bark.

 

You appeared in the crowd of people, who were all shouting and making their way to the funeral, and I felt as if I hadn't seen you in years. We found each other and embraced for a long time.

 

Then we followed the crowd and attended a celebration for Babaji -- lots of garlands of flowers and petals falling from the sky and white animals running through narrow streets, all laden with flowers around their necks and on their backs and in their mouths.

----------------

After the funeral celebration, I walked around the city. It was strewn with performers -- they all looked like Commedia dell Arte performers, but in ghoulish renditions of their usual costumes. They leered and laughed as I poassed by but it didn't seem unsettling -- just part of a carnival atmosphere. Tombstones littered the streets.

One performer took advantage of a slab of concrete missing from the sidewalk to lie down in the gravel, imitating a corpse in a fresh, shallow grave. He was masked as a bishop -- his whole head and mitre were made of a very old, grey, mostly flat piece of would with holes for the eyes. His robes, however, were shroud-like -- grey, dirty, close and not very stately at all. I asked if I could step over him, with one foot on each side of his torso, and take a photo. And he said no -- he did not want me to accidentally step on his clothes. I honored his request and took my photo from the side.

The setting changed and I was in an all-girls home. Something not modern. Someone was with me -- not sure who, a girl/woman -- and I found a tiny adorable pink and grey kitten sleeping on a cushion. Again I tried to capture this sight with my camera. The kitten awakened and hissed, and that was the shot I took. I noticed that it was a Scotch Fold kitten. I moved elsewhere in the room and found another cat, a bigger one, also a Scotch Fold, sleeping between chair cushions. This time I approached it and pet it so as not to take it by surprise. All was fine.

Russia, India: tenderness when things are not quite right

Last night:

I am a man, and I understand that I am in Russia and I am a prisoner of war. I am being led out of a dark room into another room where people are assembled -- men and women, but they are relaxed. I'm scared, and I'm standing in a doorway. I know I'm going to some kind of judgment.

Before I can cross the room to the waiting people, I have to go by several tables on which are arranged baskets of herbs, baskets of bottles, beakers, burners and other lab/medicine-making supplies. I walk forward from the people who are holding me and run my fingers over the herbs, look at the assortment of amber bottles and jars, and other instruments I do not understand. What are they doing here? I feel a tenderness for these plants, and I am drawn to the table almost desperately, like remembering something long forgotten but suddenly and profoundly remembered.

My captors, who had let me walk freely in my sadness toward the tables, take hold of me again and lead me to the group of people who are seated in chairs by some windows. They don't look like a judgment committee at all. Many of them are corpulent women, who look like grade school teachers, just chatting. I am confused. The unseen people who are handling me push me down and make me sit on the floor. 

I feel something small and wet on my partially bare lower leg (I'm wearing tatters). I turn and see what looks like a paintbrush just leaving a bluish viscous daub of something there. I suddenly notice that I am not alone -- there are many other prisoners also on the floor, and they have all been touched with the swab. I ask what is going on and they tell me: "This solution is poison. Slowly, your heart and breathing will stop and you will be dead."

It flickers through my mind that that is probably what they have been preparing with the plants. This seems perverse and grotesque, because my memory of plants is that they are used to heal, not to kill.

I begin to launch toward panic for a few seconds but I know there is nothing I can do. I calm down and consider trying something -- anything -- magic, meditation -- to stop the absorption of the deadly poison into my system, but I give up even on that. 

I don't know what to do with my last few moments. I get up and walk into another room. They do not stop me. It is a small apothecary. I look at the bottles and jars and begin to feel a tremendous sadness over the doom I am helpless to prevent.

I begin to walk out of the apothecary when a small, thin woman with short dark hair and sharp features appears in the doorway. I don't know if she seems short because I am a tall man or of she is really short. Somehow I know this is my real-life teacher Althea. We look at each other for a moment and I begin to cry. We embrace tightly and both of us are wracked with sobs.

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Here is my dream from June 18, the night of some uncommonly strong storms in my area. It is about a man whom I have never met in person:

There is no vision, no kinetic sense or physicality to the first section of this dream. It is just a 'knowing.'

I know that am with my friend M, and we are listening to ragas, reading and writing Sanskrit. This part of the dream seems to go on not for just hours, but for years; probably lifetimes. There is a cyclic sense to it. Just unending learning and activity, very safe, sheltered even. I can hear the music, I have a sense of the mystery and the meditation of it, there is a strange sense of very relaxed yet focused and continuous study. There is also a youthful sense to it, many childhoods and young adulthoods, and a feeling of "this is just what you do," no desire for anything else or any other experience. Like we didn't know there was anything else to life.

There is a color: It is a light gold/pink. There is a sense of sunlight. There is a sense of deeply dyed Gujarati mirrored fabrics. But no forms whatsoever.

Most pronounced is an aroma: Sandalwood and saffron incense. Very heady and very strong throughout the whole dream.

Just the sound, the 'knowing,' the color and the scent, and the years rolling by -- that's all there was to this section, and it is the first time I've ever had a dream like that.

But then all of a sudden, I feel that I have a form -- I am curled in a fetal position, sleeping. I awaken and when I open my eyes, there is M, in the same position, next to me, facing me. His eyes are closed. We seemed to be in some kind of womb-like enclosure. The gold/pink light was still there but had shifted to a pinker hue, darker.

And when I awoke in the dream, I had a sense that something had gone 'wrong' -- that our interpretation of the scripture and music had bifurcated. To my mind, M had begun interpreting our time and our texts as something personally romantic (I'm not sure how else to put it here), and it seemed to detract from the Work I thought we were doing. I told him this was not right, that this was not what I wanted. His eyes stayed closed, though he responded that he understood and that he could hear me.

I wondered why he did not open his eyes.

Then the aroma of the sandalwood and saffron changed -- it became sickly sweet, almost overwhelmingly so. And I looked at M and somehow knew he was sick, or getting sick, and I immediately felt horrible for admonishing him. I was thinking how bad I felt, and what to say next, when --

A peal of thunder and flash of lightning woke me up for real. I jumped out of bed and ran around closing all the windows in the house as the rain blew in, all the while feeling quite distressed about the dream.

Turtle-dile or Turtle-gator

Been a while since I've updated; to tell the truth I've only had maybe one or two serious dreams since the last time I posted, and went through a very unusual dry spell of dreaming. It was probably related to stress and overwork.

Last night:

I am in class, probably shiatsu class, and my friend Tom is sitting next to me. I've brought something special to class, which I am excited to show off. It is a strange animal: a tortoise shell holding inside of it an alligator (or crocodile). I think it looked more like an alligator.

When I pull it out of my bag, only the shell is showing; the alligator is hiding its head, legs and tail inside the shell, just like a turtle would. (It strikes me now as I type what bizarre creatures turtles and tortoises are.) The shell is thick, strong, bumpy. It seems impenetrable. In fact I get on top of the shell and sit on it as though to test its strength. It is completely sturdy.

Then Tom starts poking inside the neck hole to try to get the alligator to show its head. It just peeks out a little.

The scene shifts and I am watching the classroom in the middle of the night, as a disembodied viewer. No one is there, of course. Suddenly the room is flooded almost to the top with water. I see a figure in the water -- he looks like something out of a sci-fi TV show, literally like some kind of alien/human hybrid. He has yellow eyes. I know he does not belong there -- that is, he is not familiar, he is a stranger, but he has been let in with my knowledge.

My perspective shifts and I am viewing the room as this character, with the water level a few feet above my head. Breathing doesn't seem to be an issue. As this character I see something swim toward me out of the gloom. It is the alligator, with no shell this time! I am threatened by it, and it is swimming fast right toward my head. 

I put out my hand and some kind of golden electrical force shoots out of it, not just stunning the alligator but throwing it back. The force is so powerful, the animal hits the back wall, ricochets, hits the front wall, and shuttles back and forth like this through the water a few times, until finally it is presumably dead from all the hits. 

There is an 'outside voice' or consciousness, the part of me that belongs at the school, is part of the family there, that knows the alien character has been mistaken in killing the alligator. This part of my consciousness mourns the loss of the animal, but understands that the alien character was allowed into the school and was only acting in self-defense.

Meeting bupleurum at Michael's house

A bunch of herb school classmates from Chicago and I are at a place I understand to be my teacher Michael's house. (I have never been in his home in real life.) It is a large and sprawling place. He is nowhere to be seen.

The house has many hallways, narrow ones, with hardwood-sided walls and floors. It reminds me of a Japanese house with sliding screen doors. I have a sense that just beyond any wall or door there is water.

I am standing at the threshold of a wide panel of glass sliding doors that look out into the 'backyard,' which looks more like a huge meadow with pathways and tall grass. It is raining softly and the clouds hang low. It is warm out and the air is still. I begin to step outside onto a gravel pathway to be out in it when someone behind me asks where I am going. "Outside," I say.

I come up to a plant on the path and "know" that it is bupleurum. (I have never seen bupleurum in real life either.) It is dry, yellow, feathery. It does in fact resemble the real bupleurum, as an image search reveals. The variety in my dream seemed to have a finer, more feathery quality, but perhaps it is because it was dry. I wondered why I didn't see my herb ally, white peony, instead.

I stand up from squatting before the plant and see that others have come out onto the paths.

Heading back to the house, Michael appears. He doesn't say anything and neither do I, but he smiles warmly and takes me by the arm and we begin to walk briskly toward the house. I pass my teacher Althea and his wife Lesley, who seem to be selling earthenware on the path (?). They smile as we hurry past but they are very engaged in whatever it is they are doing.

Inside the house, Michael is leading me swiftly through the maze of hallways. "Where are we going?" I ask, mostly unconcerned and actually getting giddy at the speed at which we are moving and the unpredictable twists and turns in the narrow passageways.

At a rare wide 'T' in the hallway layout we appear to be coming close to our destination when we hear a voice coming from around a sunlit corner. Michael hurries me toward a terminus in the hall. I look behind me to see my classmate Mary Anne coming around the corner and calling my name. Michael pulls me inside a door and as I look up I see it is the men's room! He slides into a stall, and I slide into a stall a few feet from his, lock the door and stand on the toilet so my feet can't be seen. Someone comes into the washroom and leaves.

We leave shortly after that and a man outside the men's room looks at me funny. "I accidentally went into the men's room instead of the women's," I say to him. I look back and see that the women's room is directly across the hall from the men's. An easy enough mistake. It doesn't really explain my teacher, who once again has my arm and is leading me somewhere, so I say, "I really  had to go, so I just followed him in there and didn't realize there was a separate room for women." There, that makes sense!

As we begin to walk down the hall away from the restrooms I see a little black cat with a tiny fleck of white fur at its throat sitting along the wall under a chair. I bend down and begin to summon the cat. I wake up knowing that this is a form of my totem animal (as mentioned in the previous post).

Psychedelic Jail Cell/ Sleeping Car

Lots of big dreams over the past couple of weeks that should have been recorded but alas, were not. I can't ignore this one because this morning I received an e-mail from my teacher about his life in the late '60s that dovetails neatly with the subject matter. This is my dream from last night:

I am discussing with a fellow herb classmate, Mary, an herb event taking place somewhere out of state. She is showing me a program, or perhaps it was a train schedule. I understand that one of my teachers (Michael) will be at this event, so I decide to go.

The scene changes and I am standing on a train platform -- an oversized one high above the street. It is a sunny day and I know that I will be taking this train to the herb event. The wind is blowing and I notice I am alone. Where is everyone? Isn't anyone else getting on this train?

Scene jumps again -- I did not see the train actually pull up but now I have just stepped into a train car and the door, which takes up a whole wall, is slid shut behind me with a loud metallic clang. I feel as though I have been pushed in, or tripped in, right off the platform (not off a main aisle in a larger train car; this seems like a whole car unto itself, though it is very small, about 9x9').

I go straight to a very small square window opposite the door. It is placed too high on the wall and I have to get on tiptoe to see out of it. I see another train going by, and faces of strangers inside. They are going in the opposite direction. I think about Michael and wherever it is that I'm going.

I back away from the window and look at the room for the first time. How odd; it is painted in bright, psychedelic colors -- the floor and some of the walls are bright orange and lilac. I look down at myself and I'm wearing knee-high boots and a fluttery chiffon pleated mini-dress in a lemon color, with angel-wing sleeves. My lucid self pops in and wonders why I'm wearing something so outdated and  inappropriate for traveling.

The car has no furniture, just a fold-down bunk on the right side, attached to the wall. I lie on it and it is extremely uncomfortable, hurting my spine. The mattress is old and thin, with little substance. I ease off the bed and look under the mattress, which seems light as a feather. Someone has shoved corrugated cardboard under there, presumably to protect their back from the bars and springs of the black bedframe. I adjust the location of the cardboard to where my lower back meets the bed.

I stand back and think, "Huh. This is more like a jail cell than a sleeping car," and wonder about the garish colors, which give one the impression of cheer but are so incongruous with the space. I have no access to other passengers, nor do I know if there even *are* any on this train, and I cannot open my own door.

The end.

Englishwoman in the mirror, diagnosis via Tarot

Two dreams from the last week or so:

Last Sunday:

I am meandering through a mansion in the English countryside. Room after room, floor after floor, all lavishly decorated in a style not of recent decades. My husband is with me sometimes, and sometimes he is not.

The first clear memory I have is after having been in many rooms on other floors, I am in some part of the house that has a huge skylight -- it is almost like a solarium but it is positioned in the center of the mansion (or at least, that is the feeling). Sunlight floods in from the ceiling and from avenues that lead out behind me, to my right and to my left. It feels like a greenhouse, very warm and humid, though I don't particularly remember many plants. I get the sense of them but I don't remember seeing them. The floor under my feet is concrete.

The strange thing is, before me, up a few steps, there is a structure with many panes of what I think are mirrors. I see "myself" in them and as I move the reflection shows me the exact same movements, I realize that it is not me as I am but a very tall English woman (don't ask me how I know, I just know she is English, just like I know the setting is in England). As I move to the left, so does she. To the right, so does she. She mirrors my movements exactly but seems unaware of me.

She is wearing a powder blue straight, drop-waist shift with a jacket and matching cloche hat. The jacket sleeves seem a bit short for her long arms. She wears sensible heels, a taupe color. It strikes me as not a particularly fashionable outfit but something more practical, and she strikes me as a practical person, Athena kind of energy, engaged in intellectual affairs. She isn't particularly glamorous or beautiful either; "handsome" would be a more accurate word. She has medium brown hair; I can't tell if it is short and curled or long and pinned up under the hat.

As I move out of the mindset that she is me but not me, she begins to move of her own accord and the mirrors become panes of glass. She is speaking to either a servant, assistant or some other inferior, and they are working at something on a table before them which I cannot see. I get the feeling that it has to do with plants and we are indeed in a greenhouse and I am looking in at a scene in a workroom.

I move on and deeper inside the mansion I enter a room with dark rose wall paper. It is carpeted. A big window lets sunshine in. I am immediately drawn to a low wide shelf against a wall upon which are very old porcelain floral teacups and saucers. Inside one of these teacups are some earrings and perhaps a ring. There is emerald (this I remember distinctly, I comment explicitly on the emeralds in the dream) and perhaps pearl in them but I don't remember the exact design. I know they are mine, even though I am in this strange house. I just... know it. It is a very strong feeling. I hold them in my hand and try to remember how it is exactly that they are mine. My husband looks on, somewhat quizzical but also not questioning this immediate connection I have with these jewels which I have never owned (in this life anyway).

Looking further amongst the teacups I find a pair of earrings which I do recognize -- these are gold rosettes with amethyst in the center given me at my birth by my maternal grandmother. I wonder how they got there.

Suddenly a petite woman with shoulder-length dark hair appears behind us. She has big nervous eyes. She appears to be of this century. She is not the owner of the mansion but some kind of caretaker... or perhaps the best description I can think to give her is "tour guide." She seems to have appeared because she is concerned that someone (myself) has gotten into the private rooms and is handling valuable objects. She doesn't say this out loud, of course, but hovers closely and offers her "help." I have a sense that I should ignore her, and while I acknowledge her politely I don't give her much attention. I continue to gaze at the jewelry, trying to make sense of it.

She gets more agitated and begins to chirp nervously, so I put the jewelry back in the cups, not feeling particularly regretful about it, and leave the room with my husband. She follows close behind, and as we pick up speed so does she, talking and talking and generally regarding us with suspicion. Through the halls of the mansion, down ruby-carpeted wide stairs we go, until we are back in the solarium/greenhouse and I mention to her my experience of the woman in blue. I don't know why I am compelled to tell her, but I do, and it feels like it validates my presence here. This really sets her off, and either she tells us point blank to get off the property immediately, or it is a sense we get from her (I can't remember exactly).

So now we're half running and she is trailing us all the way, when finally just as I am emerging from the mansion into the gardens she is at my side, pursuing me now, and she has actually turned into a monster -- a hydra-like being! I pay her no mind and know that as soon as I get up the ivy-trailed steps and onto the lawn, there is a 'secret' path off the property into the woods, and she will be no problem.

Marty is already waiting for me when I get onto the path, which comes off the main lawn and down through some bushes onto a dirt road leading into the forest.

Either attached to this dream sequence or else separately but related, we are helping three little boys "escape" the mansion via the secret path into the woods as well. I'm not sure what exactly is in the forest but two of the little boys know to keep running into it, while the third just stands there on the dirt path, looking as if he is waiting for something, staring into the distance, away from the forest. At once I know that he is waiting for something or someone to pick him up and take him to some sort of destiny. He knows he is not meant to go into the forest but to wait. He stands backlit by the soft sunshine streaming through the trees behind him, his curly red/brown hair a golden halo around his head. I have a sense that a rider will come and take him. It doesn't worry me; in fact I am impressed by his intuition and courage.

Last night:

Once again, I am at some kind of herb convention held in a hotel setting. It is the final night of the convention and there's a lot of weird energy, people milling about from room to room, things on the floor, halls filled with books people want to get rid of, offered for free.

I am in a crowded hotel room with a bunch of herbalists. My teacher Lesley and I are talking about something, and she says goodbye and leaves as the room gets more and more packed. When she is gone, her husband, my teacher Michael appears, and he is in teaching mode. I give him a hug and we seem to move as if on a gliding track through several rooms together.

All of a sudden the dream resets and he is entering the original room once more. Another teacher, Susan, passes through the room, stepping around people and junk on the floor. It is less crowded this time. Michael sits down on a cushioned chair before a small table. "I didn't sleep well last night," he says to me. "Oh, didn't you? I slept very well," I say. "Then that means you weren't praying to God," he says.

Then he proceeds to do a tarot spread for someone asking for an herbal consult. In this case he is performing the consult and assessment via tarot. As he reveals each card he states the physical problem and writes it down on a yellowed old piece of paper, in his usual narrow handwriting. I notice he is spelling some words strangely and making odd glyphs out of some letters.

I go to my room across the hall and start packing. I feel like I've only been there a few hours rather than a couple of days. Michael knocks on the door and appears at the threshold. The end.

Strange town, strange school, and the blue-headed child

I find myself the only adult sitting at a desk in a classroom full of children. It feels a bit back in time; earlier in the 20th century. BUT -- we are being shown DVDs. The teacher passes around red Netflix envelopes as she puts the DVD in the player. It is midday but the blinds are drawn. Shafts of sunlight sneak into the dimmed room. Everyone gets a red envelope but I get the DVD's actual sleeve with mine, so I know the title of the movie playing (and, I suppose, I have to return it!). The sleeve says something like "The Dark School" or "The Dark Classroom." The movie plays in black and white. The opening scene is of unifomed children in a classroom. I remember a little girl with fat blonde braids in ribbons. Strikes me as late 1950s to mid '60s.

The children, all about 9 or 10 years old, steal glances at me and seem bemused that I'm there. I feel welcome, if a little bit on display. They look at me like I'm some kind of curiosity, which I suppose I am. I rest my chin on my fists on the desks and relax completely, thinking how great it is to just sit quietly in a classroom and passively learn.

Then we are about to be dismissed. We all stand up in a crowd around the door. Something (I can't remember) is going on with the children. Nothing bad, but something needing adult intervention. I bend down and help out. The teacher appears from the hallway. I try to hide behind the door but she  points out that the door is frosted glass, so she can see me. It's all very gentle and relaxed, good-natured teasing.

I am going down the stairs out of the school and someone hands me a small sleeping child -- a baby even. Maybe no more than 2 or 3 years old. He is wrapped in a blanket. He is exotic-looking, dark olive-skinned, beautiful, also strange. His bald (or shaved) head is a sparkly green-blue color. He sleeps against my scarf, which happens to be the same color. His head against the scarf against my chest reinforces the memory of this color.

Someone -- and older child? -- behind me is following, either related to him or...?

I get outside and don't know what to do with him or where I am or where I am going. Like the school and the children, I don't recognize the town either.

I set him down. He has transformed into a tiny, adorable dog! I look at this little black dog -- with white accents -- with complete wonder. He is still wrapped in the blanket. He's awake and smiling that dog-smile, looking at me with bright, eager eyes.

Then I am all of a sudden asking directions -- to a place I heard someone speaking of, though I don't know what is there. Home maybe. But I don't know this place and I don't know where 'home' is. I don't know where my family is. It's like I've literally materialized in another world.

"Which way is ________?" I ask a stranger. They point in a general direction.

I see some buses going by and figure if I just get on one it'll take me where I need to go. I search for a place to catch one. The layout is confusing. I have to go under a concrete bridge. I look at the digital signs on the buses to see if I might recognize a place name.

Finally I catch one and sit near the front. The bus is full of seated people. After riding for a while I get nervous; I really have NO idea where I'm supposed to get off or if I'm even on the right bus! So I turn around to see a middle-aged woman with grey short curls and a somewhat loud floral shift sitting there with her purse primly balanced on her lap. She looks like she's stepped out of a Beatles "Penny Lane" video. I'm surprised to see her and her friend already looking at me with expectant smiles. "Excuse me, do you know if this bus goes to ________?" I ask her. She nods and says yes, and keeps staring at me. "I'm a little lost," I say, apologetically.

And she says:

"Oh no, you're not. We all knew you were coming. I could feel your presence for a long time before you even got here."

Now THIS dream has really got me stumped.

Herb seminar, smoking

I am at my school's annual seminar in May. The mood is comfortable. First I see my roommates, Anne and Pam. After greeting one another, Anne shows us to her office, which is located in a structure in the forest on the mountain where we spend our week. The outside of the structure is what you'd expect from the surroundings -- small, rustic. But inside it is a multi-media smorgasbord, with at least two dozen TV monitors all over. Groups of them show the same image, some display a camera trained on the room, others old newsreel footage. I try to understand why Anne, a practicing herbalist, would have such a set-up but get the impression that she's doing some serious research and it might involve uncovering some conspiracy theories. Strangely I seem to remember seeing footage of Dwight Eisenhower getting into a car.

Then the action changes a bit and Michael appears. He leads me/us down a sunlit path through the trees. It feels like a positive reunion; the energy is easy and affectionate. He leads me into some other structure on the compound. About three or four young men whom I have never seen before are sitting in some kind of conference room. Michael leaves me in the room and goes into an adjoining room, his own office. HIs office has windows around it but the blinds are drawn.

I observe while the men discuss something for awhile. I feel simultaneously out of place but also like I belong. I am standing while they are all seated. I look down at my legs -- I am wearing a long velvet black skirt with a floral cut-out pattern lined in sheer taffeta. The pattern is mostly around the bottom of the skirt but it extends in a wide block up my hips. The cut-out pattern shows nothing but my hips, but since it is sheer it shows that I am not wearing any underwear! (I myself feel surprised to see myself wearing this skirt which is at once conservative and sexy, and also feel surprised to not be wearing panties.) I figure it's all right as long as it doesn't show anything else.

The guys are probably younger than I am -- just out of college maybe. Smart but goofy and immature, wearing t-shirts with bubble-letters on them. I have a wave of uncomfortability. At some point I excuse myself and go into Michael's office. He's eating something -- ice cream? He says something reassuring and I go back out into the conference room.

The guys are smoking. One of them gives me a cigarette and lights it for me. My lucid editor perks up and says "You don't smoke!" I start to become aware that I am dreaming but try to stay in it, taking a long drag on the cigarette and blowing smoke rings into the air above our heads. I think, "This is a crappy cigarette," and look at the filter: Marlboro.

Back in time, Matthew, petroglyphs, strange manuscripts

I really wish I would have gotten this down sooner; the day has worn on and now the details have lost a lot of their vividness. Here goes. This is from last night.

I am waiting at a bus stop. I do not recognize where I am but it does not seem to be in the United States. The bus arrives, seems to be going a little too fast, but it stops. There are many people with me at the bus stop. The bus' front and side doors open, and it is set up to admit passengers from both doors, which surprises me. It makes the boarding faster and more efficient. I think to go on the side door since it is closer, but run up to the front anyway. The bus is red. The city street I am on is not busy. It is an overcast day but springlike, the way I remember Wales in May.

The bus lets me off somewhere -- I just remember there being a cul-de-sac feeling to it.  Not close or crowded, but the presence of a curved, tall stone wall, or perhaps a place where the road curved into a narrower lane. Houses. The sun was out. It was mild in temperature. I alight from the bus and I see my university boyfriend, Matthew, approaching me.

His hair is long and curly and unkempt the way it was all those years ago. He is thin, tall, lanky, fluid, blue eyes beautiful under that brow I loved so much. All of a sudden I understand that he is there to pick me up, and he acts like everything is normal -- that is, that we are still as we were in college and no time has gone by. I can't remember clearly now but he seems to be receiving me in a shawl or blanket of some sort, wrapping me in it. I remember shades of chartreuse and cantaloupe. He greets me affectionately. I say, "Matthew? You're here to pick me up?" And he looks at me funny, as if I am asking a dumb question -- of COURSE he's here to pick me up, this is what we have arranged. "Just tell me one thing," I say, as we walk arm in arm down the brick-laid street. "What year is this?"

I asked this at least twice but I don't remember if he ever answered.

All of a sudden we are out of a European landscape and walking toward sort of tiki hut bar on some Pacific island. It is not by the ocean, it is roadside, in a dusty, somewhat desolate area. Once inside, I see several of his friends from film school all seated at a long table. They're casual, dressed like beach bums. They all look as they did in college. I am still trying to reconcile this reality with the fact that I am actually 31 now, but, when in Rome (or Wales or Hawaii, whatever)...

The sun is shining through the open door of the bar. There is a window across from the front door, at the end of the long table. Over it hangs a curtain. On the curtain are columns of what look like some kind of petroglyphs, painted in blue onto the linen-like fabric. Either he or one of his friends -- I can't remember which -- gesture to them and indicate somehow that they are being decoded. I feel in awe of these mysterious cartoonish little symbols. One resembles a flying saucer -- or was it a boat, or a rocket? In any case, something having to do with transportation. In the dream I gather that they were copied from somewhere on the island. They hold my interest, looking and feeling very important as the sun shines through them, even though they are displayed in such a mundane location.

Matthew and I sit down. He hands me a book. It has pages falling out of it; it seems old, and if not, then certainly well-worn. It is open to a particular page he wants me to read. Unfortunately now I can't remember what it was that was on that page. I start to flip through the book, not really that impressed with whatever it was he wanted me to look at, or at least it wasn't interesting enough to me to not flip through. "Who wrote this book anyway?" I ask him. He closes the book in my hands and turns it so the cover is facing up. "I did," he says. The title indicates that the book is in three parts: something about science, the next about Freud, the next about literature. Underneath the three-part title is his name. Whatever it was that I was reading didn't reflect the title at all. (Typing this now I think, "Don't judge a book by its interior?") Immediately impressed, I climb on his lap and say, "Oh my God, I think we should start making babies right now!" It is comical but affectionate and sincere. My semi-lucid dream editor rolls her eyes -- this is something I have never said and probably would never say, to anyone, past or present, in real life.

Then, the dream shifts abruptly to a quiet, sparse indoor space,  no longer with the island vibe. I'm not even sure if it is day or night anymore because this part of the dream is lit artificially. I am seated at a desk or a counter, flowing almost seamlessly in this respect from the last part of the dream. All of a sudden, it's Matthew's mother, Romayne, who is there (an artist and writer whom I very much respect and admire) and she has handed me a tabloid-sized piece of parchment with printing on it; it appears to be two pages from a large manuscript, printed in a very old style -- not as crowded as 17th century books; maybe 18th century. It reminds me of one of those old children's primers, but without pictures. I begin to read it and it appears to be a list of my herb school friends, each with a little rhyme or description about them. I only remember part of one -- my EastWest friend Sarah being described as a 'snow leopard.'

I notice that the printing is somewhat irregular, though I marvel at the beauty of the letters. Compelled to look closely because of the slight irregularities, I notice: this is not printed, it's hand-rendered, in pencil! Looking even CLOSER at the sheet, I see that it is not even parchment, it has been painstakingly sketched to resemble the mottled look of parchment! There are even fake 'tea stains' and other discolorations and tears drawn on. It looked so real and as a supposed real document it was impressive, but to find out it was handmade to look old was an unbelievable surprise! I look up at Romayne and wonder: Why would you do something like this? But still thinking it was beautiful. I don't remember her having any reaction.