dreams

race officer

I am the race officer for a couple of one design fleets, bu t on this second day of racing, my stake boats have not appeared.  I wonder how I am going to run a race for the gathered group.  Later I a trying to manuever a large powerboat, but the water has become snow.

Rising Tide

A small group of us were climbing big big rocks to keep ahead of the rising tide.  We were heading to the northwest, away from the ocean.  To our right was a high promontory with a lighthouse atop it, but the promontory was too steep to tackle directly.  I was worried for us all, but particularly for ML, who was pregnant in the dream, and was lagging.  I was afraid we would get caught on a local high spot, but below the eventual high tide mark, which was still scores of feet higher than we were.  Somehow, I knew we would get to see Bruce Schwab's new house when we got far enough up.

Billy Stanley

I came into a restaurant to have breakfast with a crew of people I was supposed to go racing with.  Everyone was sitting in a big wrap-around booth with puffy, teal-green plastic upholstery and a shiny pink Formica table flecked with gold.  I was a little concerned that it might be getting late and wanted to herd the crew out of there.  Our waiter was Bill Stanley [in waking life, a sometime acquaintance who committed suicide about 20 years ago], but he was sitting in the middle of the booth among the rest of the crew.

I shooed everyone from the table, promising to pick up of the tab.  I asked Bill for the check.  As we walked out of the restaurant, he was fishing through his pockets and handing me lots of little slips of paper, but none of them were the right one.  They were to-do lists and other personal notes. 

I asked Bill what he was doing.  He launched into an enthusiastic recital of plans, the gist of which was that he was headed down to the Caribbean to go back to some kind of professional school, like law or medicine (I wasn't clear on exactly what).  Before he could go, he had to finish fixing his boat.

Conveniently, the boat was right there on the hard.  It was a big boxy powerboat on blocks.  He showed me how he was rebuilding one of the twin propulsion units.   These were unlike anything I had ever seen - not conventional propellers or out-drives, but more like squared-off thick metal air conditioning ducts with a couple of slots facing aft.  One was disassembled and there was a kind of vaned disc visible.  He had some kind of very apt name for these units - something like "Crawly Creepers", but I don't think that's it exactly - which made them sound slow but reliable...

Prisoners

I'm sorry to have been neglecting this journal.  It is not that I haven't been dreaming, but I haven't been able to recall my dreams.  Recently when I wake I start attending to situations in my waking life, and by the time I remember to try to remember my dreams they have faded.  Last night however, I woke a couple of times from fairly vivid dreams and I remember snatches:

An important woman has two men as prisoners.  She knows that one of them is an important powerful man and the other is not, but she is not sure which is which.  Both men are dark haired and about 6 feet tall.  The apparent important one is older, maybe 40, with a sturdier frame a squarish head and blunt features, while the other is thinner with sharper features and moves more lightly on his feet.  Both men are dissembling, for different reasons, throwing out hints of behavior that might indicate that they have reversed roles.  The woman sees all this, but still hasn't made up her mind about them.

In another dream I am at a service garage in back of a mall.  who ever I am with and I have gotten here in beat up old taxi cab which we had stolen for the purpose, but we now abandon among the  cars in the mall lot, many of which are also beat up old taxis.  Inside the garage some one is trying to get a partially disassembled big yellow bucket loader onto the back of a truck or trailer.

Later, I am approaching a small town across a grassy plain.  There are groups of people standing in rough lines listening to someone talk.  I gather it is some kind of youth award presentation, but I pass by and continue toward the town, which is really just one building an old two story white painted concrete building, open on the ground floor.  Inside a couple of grizzled old men wearing military uniforms under cheap coveralls are rummaging in their lockers.  I move ahead with trepidation toward the  counter, where I will learn my fate...

The Chinese are coming

I was walking through a large city on my way to an apartment in the west end where I was staying.  I thought I recognized a large building in the distance, some kind of department store.  As I walked along I picked up a newsprint magazine.  I was reading an article about the statue of liberty.  Apparently, the Chinese had been hired to refurbish her.  They were taking her apart to ship back to China.  I thought the whole thing very suspicious.  There were pictures of a giant ship and several different giant helicopters they had brought along to work on her.  These looked like something our of 1950's science fiction comic books.  They were manned by hordes of tiny Chinese.

I got in my car, the mini, and was demonstrating the [nonexistent] flat-tire self-repair system to someone (Bill A?).  There was a button on the steering wheel I could use to deflate the tire.  We got out of the car.  In a minute, the tire re-inflated - just as advertised.  I noticed that the car had a roof rack and a bike rack on the back [it doesn't].   The bike rack had its own set of tail lights, much larger than the actual car's, in case the bikes obscured the regular lights.  These new lights would make the Mini look like a large SUV at night from behind.

Back at the apartment, I was trying to load film into my camera.  The film was quite narrow and the leader kept breaking.  I was getting very frustrated until I realized that it was really a digital camera, so I didn't need the film.  I was chagrined at my idiocy.

Ice Dancing

I am skating with a young woman, A.  We are skating down a frozen river of smooth gray ice.  The banks are snow covered and lined with white pine and white birch.  It is night and the sky is jet black.  There are no shadows, no light source, but I can see everything with perfect clarity. 

A is to my right.  I have her left hand in mine and my right hand rests lightly on her right hip, her right hand on mine.  We are doing a very definite sequence of steps:  step right, left over right, step right, step left, right over left, step left.  After four of these sequences, I turn and skate backwards; four more and she turns and skates backwards with me; then four more I turn and skate forward again; four more and we're back at the start. 

This sequence repeats again and again.  We are skating smoothly and in perfect syncronization, but quite fast.   The sensation is effortless and lulling, yet remarkably vivid.  I can hear the 'crish, crish' of our skates on the ice, see the vapor of our breath in the cold air, feel the warmth of A's hand and hip.

Gradually, I notice that the ice has turned black, and that the banks of the river are retreating and curving away on either side.  Ahead is only black ice and black sky.  A lets go of my hand and starts to skate faster.  I skate faster too.  We are skating like speed skaters, bent over, arms swinging, but still in rhythm. 

I look down at the ice which is so black as to be invisible.  When I look up again A is gone.  I am standing on a beach of black sand.  The transtion seem perfectly natural.  I realize that there is full moon, which is why I can see so well.  I also realize that the 'crish' sound I thought was made by our skates was actually the sound of little waves hissing on the sand.  I have a surge of emotion that wells up like an adrenaline rush, but I don't know if it is happiness or sadness...

Club dinner

I had apparently been admitted to some kind of club.  Only men were visible as members.  I came into the club suite of rooms several times.  After a couple of times people started making comments about chicken.  It dawned on me that I had been scheduled to provide a chicken dinner for all the club members.  I felt guilty that I hadn't done so, but continued to ignore the comments and play dumb.  I presumed there was some schedule posted that I should have been aware of.

I went to take Bill A and his family to their room, which was # 212.  It  was supposed to be in the basement of the same building with the club, but in fact wasn't there.  We realized we had to go back to the information desk to find out where it was.  To do so we had to catch a blue shuttle bus.  Someone pointed out a building as possibly where we needed to go, but it was a Domino's Pizza.  I wanted to get the trip over with as quickly as possible.  I was looking for a shortcut to get down to the level of the buses.  I climb down a ladder with thick aluminum pipe rungs...

Water

I was at the site of a flood.  A stream had washed away part of a house outside of town.  Somehow the flood had contaminated the water supply.  I got in my car to leave, but an older couple was inside it.  I had to wait for them to collect their things and get our before I could leave.  I had a round brown skateboard or scooter of some sort which I had been using to get around the flood site.  I wanted to take it in my car, but it wasn't mine so I had to slip it into the car surreptitiously after the couple left.

I drove into town and parked I was walking around looking at the buildings.  One was an old fashioned drugstore, brick with green glass block surrounding the plate glass windows.  I went inside, where there were swimming pools.  Groups of kids were learning the moves they would need to scuba dive.  One kid I knew seemed to be a natural at these moves, which pleased me.

I was sitting in an arm chair near a table to my right that had a sink in it and glasses and bottles on the surface.  Two fully grown teen-aged boys came and sat on a table to my left.  The one nearest me held out an empty plastic glass and said, "Water!" in a whiny, but demanding way.   I thought this was outrageous since it would be just as easy for him to get it as for anyone else, but finally I got up and filled a bottle, mostly to show the kid up for the brat he clearly was. 

When I turned back he had moved into my chair.  I confronted him, a little nervously because he was bigger than I was and I might have to back down.  But eventually he ceded the chair.

I attribute the water theme to the fact that I had awoken earlier with a very dry throat, but had forgotten to put my water bottle at my bedside as usual and so had gone back to sleep unquenched.  The expression of the theme is as much a mystery as in any dream.

Dinner

I was having dinner with my daughter in a strange restaurant.  She was sitting with her back to a storefront window.   We were at a table for two, but she and some people at a couple of neighboring tables were having an argument with our waiter.  I was trying to ignore it and pay the check which had come.  It was for $96 and I was going to pay cash.  I had enough in my wallet and and an envelope, but it was taking me a long time to find the right bills.  Meanwhile, my daughter and the others who I guess we were with had started out of the place.  I followed and was walking next to Chris R who was wearing an elaborate trench coat. 

He pointed out a door off to the side and said we could get to Iraq through there.  The door led not to Iraq but to a well lit room with a big swimming pool which is where I went frequently to work out.  The floor around to pool was those institutional tiny white tiles with some black.  There was a big crowd of people around the pool.  A woman I didn't recognize in a group on a slightly higher level accosted me as I walked past.  She told me enthusiastically that she was going to be moving into an office in my building, that Mac-somebody-or-other was moving out.  I was surprised because I hadn't heard that anyone was leaving.

I realized that I didn't have any way to get home.  I thought I would maybe ask Chris for a ride, but going with him would still leave me 20 miles short of getting home.  Then I remembered my daughter of whom I had lost track.  I took out my cell phone to call her.  It was a new cell phone with nice big number keys [unlike my real phone].  They were translucent plastic, red and orange, but the white numbers on them were already worn off in places and I was beginning to wonder whether I would be able to enter her number, when she appeared in person.

She said that of course she would take me home.  She explained that the reason she and the others had been arguing with the waiter was that she had made the comment in the waiter's hearing that her roommate would like a certain 'vacationland' tee shirt that someone was wearing [I'm not sure if it was the waiter, my daughter, or someone else].  The waiter then brought out and tried to sell her and the others a bunch of souvenir shirts that were nothing like the one my daughter had commented on.

The unusual thing about this dream was that I was actually awake for a bit between my daughter finding me in 'Iraq' and her explaining to me the cause the argument with the waiter.  It seems doubly unusual to have the same dream continue after a period of wakefulness and to have a dream hark back to an earlier part.  Normally, dreams seem to make the most extreme transitions of location, cast, and plot without the dreamer feeling anything unusual is transpiring.  I am not sure that I ever remember a dream harking back to an earlier episode in the dream by way of explaining it...

Benches

One of the things I find fascinating about dreams is how much great detail I see in some item while some events are vague and unformed.

Last night I dreamed about a couple of outdoor benches.  They were old fashioned park bench style with black enamel cast iron frames and varnished blond wood slats - probably oak.  ML and I took one to a lady who, with her husband, specialized in refurbishing these kinds of things.  She wanted a lot of money to do the work.  I didn't care about the money for itself but I was concerned about being overcharged.  She had me sign several checks in advance.  There were three or four of them in specific amounts between 1500 and 2500.  I remember one in particular was for 2248.  I assumed these were dollars.  The checks themselves were pink with darker red printing, mad out in blue ink.

I told the lady that these benches would be easier to do than she thought, but in looking at them more closely I noticed that some of the iron frames that held the slats in place between the legs were missing and would have to be replaced with wood.  I was wondering whether they replacement pieces could be steam bent or would need to be laminated, or whether they could just be thin pieces of wood bent ant held by the slats.

In passing, I noticed that the some of fasteners that held the bench together had unusual heads - they were Philips headed, but instead of the usual crossed slots on the axis of the screw, there were two crossed slots off set from the axis.  I remember thinking that this seemed a good idea since if one cross got buggered up the other one would still work.  I was wondering if all the torque applied to the screwdriver would get transmitted to the crew since the slots were off axis.

This observation only took up a very small percentage of the apparent time in the dream and didn't seem particularly an important part, but the detail of the screws was extremely vivid.  I find it curious, the differences in detail focus from one part of the dream to another.  I suppose in waking life we have these differences in focus all the time that go un-noted.  This is probably because in waking life we have more definite priorities that guide our attention, whereas in dreams we are much more passive observers and a wide range of experiences have more or less  the same emotional weight.