Dreaming

Dream No. 1: I am in a foreign airport and am looking for my baggage. I have been touring the country for three weeks, living out of my daypack. When I finally find, through a very convoluted process, the luggage I abandoned at the airport upon arrival, I see why I left it behind. There was too much of it, all of it bulky and unattractive and not suited to my traveling habits. I do not overlook the symbolism of me having too much baggage.

Dream No. 2: I am at a pharmacy run by Kaiser. To get my medication, I have to prove I'm who I say I am, and a driver's license and insurance card will not suffice. Since I was a child, Kaiser has been collecting information on me -- not to mention photographs, locks of hair, swimming medals and trophies (which I threw in a dumpster in California years ago), and they ask me to identify some of these items to prove I am myself. One of the items is a small and very curious toy that was lost to me as a little girl. I take it and refuse to give it back, reasoning that it was once mine and if Kaiser can steal it from me, I can steal it back. After giving me my medication -- something that looked like a few pounds of lentils in a burlap sack -- I find that my friend Nick, who died a few weeks ago, has been parked illegally, waiting for me to go through this ridiculous, time-consuming process to get the medication. His car has tickets all over it, and I apologize that he had to wait so long. He says it's no big deal, that he has another car with him -- a nice new one -- and he hops into it, bids me farewell and drives away, and I feel the pain of his going. Then, returning home, I find that the toy I have begins transforming itself, first into a slimy, gushy crab, then into a giant penguin that I lock outside. I sense something sinister afoot and try to warn others about it. No one will listen to me. I run into YogaGirl and tell her not to let anyone go outside. I go to the sliding glass door on the deck of the house, and I see a woman with a large dog on her lap, barking ferociously, and I think the toy has transformed into this big bad dog. Turns out, though, that the dog is trying to protect the woman from the latest evolution of this bad toy from my past: It has become a vicious ape-like creature, and it jumps in front of the glass door and screams at me, scaring the shit out of me so thoroughly that I awake with a start.

Dream No. 3: I have sex with a female classmate (one who never has read this blog), much to the dismay of others. Who are sharing the bed with us. Heh...

Dream No. 4: I am swimming in a very large lake, one that apparently abuts another very large lake, with only a thin isthmus separating them. I am with a boy who is floating on a boogie board. Across the lake, I see that some kind of massive disturbance in the other lake has pushed a large, roiling, foaming, tsunami-like wave into the lake in which I'm swimming. As it approaches, I grab the edge of the boogie board and grab the boy's leg and tell him to hang on tightly. The wave passes beneath us, a massive swell, and slams ashore at the base of the lake house in which we were staying. As the wave moves back out into the lake, we are dragged by the mighty current across the lake. Nearly to the other side, where something dangerous is going on, we come to a stop in the water. Children are all around us. Some of them are little thugs, and I become concerned about the welfare of the boy I'm with. I begin pushing him on his board away from the other kids, fending them off with kicks. I put some distance between us and then move into a long-distance mode of swimming, pushing and sometimes pulling the boy and his board back across the lake. When we arrive, the water becomes too shallow for me to swim, and we are still far from the shore. I begin to slog through mud and muck to get to the edge, the boy paddling his board across the shallow water behind me. When I get to the shore, I turn around, and he is gone. I have lost him. I stayed with him through the calamity and brought him as close to shore as I could, and though I thought I was leading him still, he has vanished. His mother demands to know why I ever took my eye off of him. And I feel like a failure.