| This dream was from a few weeks ago, but I wanted to post it because the long middle section is one of the scariest dreams I've ever had, and it was scary in a really weird way. Not like nightmare or danger or searing terror kind of scary, but chilling in this existential way.
I dreamed I was at the Goleta Kumon center, but it was actually in Santa Barbara, at the corner of Mission Street and De La Vina Street. I seemed to be hanging around after hours, but I wasn't really doing anything, just staring into space. Finally I left and went home.
Then came the scary part. I was at home having dinner with the whole family. It seemed to be a special occasion. Somehow I looked at a calendar or something and was shocked to see what year it was. I did some caculations and realized I was 65. I remarked that Barbara (who wasn't present) was 63. Everyone looked at me strangely. I was very distressed, because I had no recollection of most of my adult life, and felt that my best years had slipped away without my having a chance to enjoy them. I had a sudden desire to have some intense, good experiences, now that I was able to really savor them, and so I suggested we all go to Flavor of India immediately. But again everyone looked at me strangely, and Dad said it had been closed for 15 years. (I didn't seem to actually be 65, since no one else was that much older; it seemed more plausible that I was 40 or so.)
I then walked to Kumon. Along the way I looked curiously at the various businesses, many of which were unfamiliar to me. I came into Kumon. It seemed to be after hours. My boss seemed surprised to see me, but greeted me warmly. She looked considerably older than I expected. There were two new employees there who I didn't recognize. She introduced me to one. I remember his last name was Ronguay, and I seemed to remember a former student with that name, but it wasn't him. Jaclyn said it was "good to see me again" and said I hadn't been around much since "out of town", which I didn't undestand. It seemed I had been behaving strangely at work and then stopped coming. She said that this one student "who's probably your biggest fan, asked you something, and you just stared at her." We talked a bit more and I left.
I awoke in dread. I was filled with an awful sense of meaninglessness, since in the dream it appeared I'd been living in a stupor or fantasy for decades. I kept drifting off to sleep and re-entering the dream, seeing more vignettes of this life. In one, Mom was following me around to make sure I was safe, but I mistook her for a stalker and lashed out at her angrily. In another, as I left Kumon, my boss looked out the window after me and a tear rolled down her cheek before her new employees called her back to her work. In another, I realized the reason everyone had looked at me oddly when I mentioned Barbara's age was that she had died many years ago. Each time I would reawaken in horror.
Eventually I had a different dream, which I don't remember so well. I remember walking along various trails that seemed to be in Montecito. I saw several musical groups performing, including a choir singing in the park. It seemed some other people had also seen me playing, and were impressed. One guy slipped me a piece of paper with info about an audition for some orchestra, but for some reason it was for a cello position. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| I remember a bit where I was in some linguistics class. The professor was talking about some concept that was called a "wittigance" or some such thing. (It began with "wit" anyway.) It was a term used in pragmatics and philosophy of language to describe cues that helped a listener disambiguate a referent. This was a very interesting idea to me, but the professor said it was only used for cases where the deduction was entirely "logical", which seemed to leave out all the interesting bits. For some reason I then joked that I would henceforth refer to pencils and wittigances.
There was another part where I went to visit some big research institute in Europe. It was a clean and modern-looking institutional building. I went upstaris to a big open area, like a lounge, except that it was occupied by tables with various sorts of scientific apparatus. Most of it looked like physical science stuff, big parabolic dishes and containers of liquid and other mad-science stuff. There was one researcher doing something at a table in a corner, but other than that everything was deserted. All the lights were out except a small desk lamp on her desk.
I was looking for room 20. I followed the room numbers around the edge of the "lounge". They went down to room 30, but next to that a side hallway led out of the lounge, and the rooms there were numbered in the hundreds. I found another hallway on the opposite side of the lounge and started to go down it. The woman in the main room called out to me, asking where I was going. I told her I was looking for room 20. She went into another room to get me a guest pass or something, and as she did so she muttered, "Could it be Brendan Barnwell?" I said "Yes, that's me!" My visit was expected. She led me to the room, where I was sitting in on a class.
I sat next to the professor, a famous researcher. Everyone was chatting amongst themselves before the class began. He asked if I spoke German and I said unfortunately not. He then somehow "showed" me this train station in town; I just seemed to be seeing it, as if in a movie, while he talked about it. On the platform was a large display of a famous quote from a famous German book or poem called "Das Damp Departments". At first it seemed the quote was shown in English, then it seemed it was shown in German and he was translating it for me. It began with something like "So that's how it is." The next two sentences were "To live is good. To die is bad." There were one or two more similarly short sentences, and then a two-word sentence whose second word was "Karhardt". I remember this was the last word of the quote. The professor was explaining the significance of the quote to me.
There was another bit where I was in a car with someone, although I can't remember who. He was driving. We saw some teenager with a skateboard get picked up by another teenager driving a Volvo, but then somehow both were in the car with us, riding in the back seat. The driver saw someone, apparently in another car, and said, "What's that chyk doing? She looks delinquent."
We went into a shopping mall and into a sort of small department store. It seemed to be many separate stores sharing parts of one big space. One was a clothing store, where I spent a minute looking at shirts. The two teenage boys were looking at guitar strings, which were also sold in one of the mini-stores. Another of the businesses was Kumon, where I was supposed to work in a few minutes. Mom showed up. She apparently ran Kumon. She said she'd heard I'd received a bicycle ticket. I couldn't imagine how that was possible, since I hadn't ridden a bike in years, but then I remembered getting something in the mail about it. Somehow the ticket had something to do with kabbalah. I felt a sudden discomfort in my stomach. I told Mom I'd be back in a minute and had to go to the bathroom. As I turned away from her to leave, I turned over in real life and woke up with the same real feeling in my gut, and had to get up and go to the bathroom in real life. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Anyone who reads this blog will have noticed I'm not so consistent about actually posting a dream every week. These days I sometimes don't get around to typing in the week's dreams each Sunday, so I get a bit behind and then have to catch up by typing in multiple weeks at a time.
But that doesn't mean I'm not writing down the dreams in the first place. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I reached the 10-year anniversary: I have dream records from every day starting September 30, 2001. Now, not every record is an actual dream, because sometimes I couldn't remember anything, but I still made a record every day, even if was just to say "I can't seem to remember anything." I even made a record on the few days where I didn't sleep, noting that fact. And there actually aren't that many of these "minimal" records: about 150 out of over 3500 days.
Given that, I suppose it's a good time to admit I'm not going to try to continue posting a dream every week. I'll just post some cool ones when I feel like it. I think hardly anyone reads this blog anyway. LiveJournal is an interesting reflection of how the internet has changed over time. I used to read it a lot more when more people were posting, but these days there's not so much that interests me, and likewise I'm not posting much that interests other people. But I'll keep posting dreams now and then.
In the meantime, here are some fun stats on my 10 years of dreams, 2001/09/30 to 2011/09/30.
- Number of days: 3653
- Average number of words per day: 163.6 (std. dev. 161.6)
- Total number of words: 597,714
- Longest dream report: this one from 2007/08/26, at 1621 words
- Dream reports less than 100 words long: 1612
- Dream reports over 1000 words long: 19
- Number of distinct people named in my dream records: 1537 --- This only includes people named by a proper name (so not things like "a tall guy" or "the grocery store clerk")
- Person in the most dreams: my brother (appeared in 561 dreams)
- Number of people mentioned in only one dream each: 964 --- This includes such figures as Kris Kristofferson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Upton Sinclair, "The Renegade Bachelor", Abraham Lincoln (but it was actually me somehow "being him"), and Jimmy Carter/Robert Redford (compounded into one person).
- Number of distinct places named in my dream records: 621 --- Again, only proper names (so not things like "my house" or "downtown")
- Place in the most dreams: UCSB (appeared in 522 dreams)
- Number of places mentioned in only one dream each: 397 --- This includes locations such as Idaho, Cornell University, Lord Howe Island, and "The Fish Room".
| | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I dreamed I was with other grad students talking about SCUL. We met up with some student from another department (geography, I think) who was giving us advice on how to organize SCUL. We were trying to craft a proposal for a linguistics research group that was "as general as possible" so that we could accumulate money from many sources. The geography department had apparently done this, so we were asking this chyk about it, but she wouldn't give us a straight answer. She was very friendly and rambled on in general terms, but provided no specific info.
There was another part where I went with a big group of people to a restaurant. It was late at night, and we were leaving some other event and just happened to pass by the place. We had all heard about it. It was one of those places where you didn't order individual items but just bought a whole dinner, and you were then served a sumptuous multi-course meal. The first thing we got was a warm, rich squash soup, loaded with earth spices. It was very tasty. Later there was some lamb thing and then a vast array of desserts, plus other courses I can't recall. We stayed for hours. The place apparently had no set closing hours. They closed at a certain time if they had no customers, but if they had customers they would stay as long as you wanted.
There was another bit where I was at some class or presentation run by one of my professors. He had six students come in. Each was assigned a language --- although most weren't native or even competent speakers of their assigned language --- and discussed an example word from their language and various constructions in which it was used. The languages I remember were French, Russian, some Berber language, and Chinese. The French example was the word "hors", which apparently was used in a construction meaning "let's". I thought I could use this in my dissertation project by comparing how speakers of different languages used "synonymous" constructions depending on the other connotations of their component words.
There was another bit I don't recall so well. It involved some sort of dispute between two guys. One had formerly dated this one chyk, but she had long ago lost interest in him and was now with the other guy. The jilted guy was plotting to beat up his rival. Some friend of that rival explained to the jilted guy the legal ramifications of various actions, and urged him not to do anything rash. Nonetheless, the jilted lover shot and killed his rival. The heartbroken friend then planned to kill the jilted guy in revenge. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I dreamed I went to some sort of nightclub. This chyk I knew slightly in high school was there, and we talked about old school times. Then everyone went outside to a little music show. A band played. The next act was a group of teenagers including a student from Kumon. They played rhythm instruments and whistled Colonel Bogey's March, and soon everyone was whistling along with them. At the end the Kumon student held up a sign saying "it's all fake", which apparently meant they had just been lip-syncing, but no one seemed to mind.
Some strange situation then arose where a group of people took us all prisoner. I remember this one local guitarist was among us captives, along with many Kumon students. Our captors were all of some southeast Asian ethnicity and spoke an unfamiliar language. At first we were held in a basement area, but then we were led out under guard through a school campus. Ajay was now among us as well. We captives communicated with one another using a code of cultural references. For instance, I transmitted some info to Ajay by using Proust references. These secret messages allowed all of us to suddenly turn on our captors and overpower them with a coordinated revolt, the signal for which was the phrase "Burger King time".
I also remember a bit where I was at some school event where various kids were signing up for high school foreign exchange programs. Another Kumon student was there, and it seemed he was going to go study abroad in North Korea. I told him to be careful. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Note: I was teaching a summer class that kept me quite busy the past few weeks, so I got a bit behind on typing in my dreams. Here's a good one from those missed weeks. This probably doesn't matter since I don't think that many people read this these days anyway.
I had a vivid and intriguing dream where I went on some sort of game show. I actually went to some big auditorium just to be in the audience for some sort of show, but the contestants were picked randomly from the audience, and I was one. The other one was a former Kumon student. We went up to a table at the front of the auditorium and the hoist (a rather loudmouthed guy) explained the game to us. It was a fairly complicated card game in which cards had pictures of animals on one side and riddle-type questions on the other. You'd have to answer a riddle with the name of an animal, then flip the corresponding card over and ask the next riddle. (Or something like that.) We played a couple rounds and I seemed to be doing pretty well.
Then there was an intermission. The huge audience --- a few thousand people --- swarmed around. People who saw me congratulated me, but I was soon lost in the shuffle. I moved away from the auditorium. It seemed I was on a film studio lot of some sort. The auditorium I had been in was just one of dozens, all equally huge and some with other big events underway. I walked all the way to the end of this complex, where there was a little park overlooking the lights of the city below. It was surprisingly tranquil and pleasant there, away from the hustle and bustle of the auditoriums. Then I realized the intermission would soon be over and I had to be back on time. I hurried back, sometimes accidentally going into other auditoriums. I could only recognize the right one by its room number.
I had a separate dream that was rather melancholy. I was walking around in Montecito. I had come there specifically to go for a little walk. It looked sort of like real Montecito, but also notably different. I was walking up a small road to the little business district. I remember I was wearing new shoes, and I could feel their pleasant firmness and resilience.
I walked along past various shops and turned into a little shopping center. Another grad student was standing there chatting with a few other people; we waved to each other and I walked on. I had to go to the bathroom and I was keeping my eyes peeled for one. I walked along a patio that fronted several small cafes.
Then I went through a doorway and almost walked right into two guys I knew in college, plus a guy I knew in high school, who were standing there talking. They were in dress clothes, as if at a wedding. I said "Dude!" They greeted me, but rather ordinarily, as if they saw me every day, whereas I was quite pleased to see them after such a long time. I made some reference to our college days, and again they responded, but in a more "Oh yeah huh, heh heh" way than a real reminisce. Almost immediately two of them moved off. The third hung back a minute. We walked outside and down some steps to the edge of a parking lot. It seemed as if he wanted to talk but couldn't find anything to say. This guy recently had a baby in real life, and I congratulated him and asked how he was liking life as a father. He seemed somewhat stunned by the concept, and said, "Yeah, it's. . . it's pretty crazy, man." He looked a little different than his real self. A group of people, also in dress attire, came up and hustled him into a van. I realized that these three guys had been attending some sort of event that I'd happened to walk into, but I still felt somewhat sad that they didn't seem to have much interest in catching up with me.
I walked off down the street. Somehow I picked up a broken light fixture. Held upside-down, it had the shape of a big cup, and somehow I filled it up with milkshake and was drinking my milkshake from it. When I had finished, I considred trying to clean it out and use it, but I figured it would be too much trouble, so I just threw it away. As I drank it, I was walking along a slightly elevated street, with a park below. Through trees I could see part of a lake.
After I had finished the milkshake, I walked back toward the business distct. It was now getting dark, and most businesses had closed for the night. The lights of those still open --- mostly coffee shops and restaurants --- seemed islands of warmth and conviviality in the gathering night. Even so, I felt a sense of exclusion from them, as if I was a stranger and couldn't really participate in the conversations and activities that still took place in these still-lit establishments. I walked past a row of restaurants, observing their styles and patronage from the position of a solitary wanderer, barred from direct enjoyment of what they offered. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I had a dream where I was some sort of elite commando crimefighter. I had various sorts of weapons and equipment, incluidng a retractable climbing rope. I went through this big building taking out all sorts of enemies. Then the dream entered a different phase where I seemed to be just sort of hanging around the building. Then there was a little girl who seemed to be a sort of crimefighter in training. She and I were climbing around the building using our commando equipment. At some point in here I also gave a colloquium talk at a room in the building, in collaboration with some other grad students. When it ended, I noticed half the room was empty --- not just unpeopled, but empty of furniture as well.
I went outside with another grad student and the apparentice crimefighter and we got into some sort of spherical pod that began to float away. Time seemed to slow down, and then suddenly the pod landed on a deserted beach. It was night. The beach seemed to be part of a natural harbor area. There were small boats pushed high up on the sand, and a marina off to one side. To the other side was a small pier with a building covered with illuminated Coca-Cola signage. Music drifted from it; it seemed to be a little cantina.
Somehow we knew we were looking for a certain person, or perhaps a ghost, who had suffered some accident here long ago. We split up and explored the beach. Eventually dawn broke. I went to look at the beached boats. Many of them had people sleeping in them, wrapped in blankets. One boat just had two little babies in it. They woke up as I got there and I talked and played with them a bit. One wasn't talking yet and just babbled. The other was a bit older and could talk a bit. I tried to get him to tell me where his parents were, but he couldn't give me a clear answer. Someone else then came by --- I can't remember if it was the apprentice crimefighter or just some friend of mine --- and I let her sty and play with the babies while I kept exploring. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | I had a rather frightening dream. I didn't seem to be myself in the dream; I was a kid, I think a girl. I had a brother. Some sort of saleswoman had come to our house and was trying to get our parents to buy her product. Us kids knew it was bunk, but our parents seemed to be getting drawn into her seductive sales pitch. We took our mom out to the car to get away. before we left, we called back to see what our dad was doing, but there was only an ooking sound --- he had been turned into a monkey. There was the implication that, if we looked over at our mom there in the car beside us, we would see she was a monkey too. It now seemed I was the brother (or maybe I was all along). As my sister put down the phone she repeated in shocked terror, "It was a monkey. A monkey!" | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I had this unusual dream. I dreamed I was in bed and had just woken up and was lying there half-asleep. I heard the sound of a tape measure folding and rolling up. It sounded very close, as if the person were right outside my window. Then I felt the tape measure brush me and realized the person was actually in my room, measuring it. I decided to suddenly sit up and surprise them. I steeled myself for a sudden lurch out of my dozy state.
Then all at once I rolled over to see who was there --- but I rolled over IN REAL LIFE and woke up. There was of course no one there. Although my room looked as I'd expected from the dream, it was light, while in the dream it had been dark. Still acting based on the dream, I turned on my bedside lamp, and was confused when it had only a small effect on the room's brightness. I then realized what had happened, turned off the light and lay back down in bed. (At the time, I thought the dream had been an exact recreation of my real room, but now I think there were some subtle differences. Most notably, I think there was a bit of space between my bed and the wall, making my room slightly larger than in real life.)
Having shocked myself forcefully awake, I had difficulty getting back to sleep, but when I did, I had another strange dream. I'm not sure how it began, but the earliest part I remember is I was talking with this woman who had a rather flabby body with a runty, deformed head. It was only half a head, sort of, with no eyes or nose and mouth that was hidden away somewhere on its underside. It was basically just a brain with skin. She was talking about how she was proud of her body because she had a nice voice and a few hairs (scraggly ones dangling from her forehead). Then she described how she used to be very pretty but had been mutilated by a deranged boyfriend. She began talking in Spanish. Then the boyfriend appeared with a meat cleaver and, after continuing the story, attacked me. Some other guy was somehow there, and using his own knives he attacked the boyfriend to protect me. They dueled while I dodged around, trying to distract the evil boyfriend by throwing things at him.
The dream became sort of like a videogame, and I was somehow looking at a walkthrough as I played. The boyfriend became an evil sorceror who looked sort of like a Spanish don. He painted a mark of death on my palm, but, following the walkthrough, I quickly laid my palm against his forehead to transfer the mark to him. He murmured, "A shade! A shade. . ." in quiet surprise and then died. There was also a woman who was a minion of his. She had no real special powers so I fought her with blunt objects until she collapsed. I went back to the table where I'd killed the sorceror and found his body had disappeared and been replaced by a small snake that spit venom. (All this was taking place in the dining/living room area of a rancho-style house.)
The walkthrough mentioned several things I had to do with the body of the sorceror, with the body of the woman, with the snake, and with some books or other objects that were on the table. I had to use the titles of these books to answer questions. One question was something like "When do you fear snakes?" and I had to answer with the book title that was "in the dead of night. Another title was the name of an inn.
I thought I might have missed my opportunity to do some of these things, so I began to undo my actions. Although the dream was first-person, I had the feeling of an external meta-self that was pressing control-Z on a keyboard to undo. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I slept for an incredibly long time and had many dreams, some of which I've probably forgotten. There was one where I dreamed I awoke and was playing backgammon with Mom, here in my room in my apartment, at a smal table. We seemed to be playing with three dice instead of two. I became extremely sleepy and fell asleep while playing, although I somehow managed to get back into bed. I was half-asleep as Mom came and tucked me in and told me that three-dice backgammon was no different than two-dice backgammon because of something called "lemma six".
I had hardly gotten back to sleep when I felt something bouncing on my bed. I opened my eyes and saw it was Sean. He then got off and took my phone charger from where it was plugged into the wall. I angrily told him to beat it. He seemed indignant.
I got up and went into the living room (which wasn't my living room, although my bedroom seemed like my real bedroom). Several people were there, including the Chuckmeister and Phil. It seemed that Phil's computer had gotten a virus and they wanted me to help get rid of it. The Chuckmeister had the silly idea that once a virus spread from one computer to another, the first computer no longer had it. His idea was therefore to infect another computer so it would leave Phil's computer. I suggested they reinstall the operating system. While all this was going on, Dad went into my room and begna tkaing apart the wall to mess with the electrical wiring. I was worried people were going to mess with my stuff.
There was another part where I went to some sort of literary club. Beforehand I looked it up on facebook and found some photos of previous meetings. This one bum guy who I used to see a lot at UCSB and Borders in Goleta was in the group. It seemed his name was Senior Senior. I went to the club. We were discussing some recent exhibition of art, literature, and nonfiction film and writing. It was called Wonders Of Capitalism In The 21st Century. We each got a sort of fat magazine that contained some excerpts from the work and some reviews, plus, for some reason, a deck of cards with a special design. However, my cards were stuck together, and ripped when I pulled them apart. I tried to get another pack but none seemed to be available. Most of the people in the club were quite annoying, so I just left as soon as I could.
I then seemed to be in Paris. I was in an area I wasn't familiar with, and I wandered around a lot before finding myself on a map. Then I went to a large train station with a big restaurant and some sort of movie theater. I wanted to catch a train but I had difficulty getting to the tracks. I also was looking for a bathroom, but most of them were closed. Eventually I found one in an odd basement area. Several other people followed me in to use it after me.
I eventually got to a big museum. I went into an auditorium where they were showing a movie from that same "wonders of capitalism" show. I sat down in the front, but left after just a few minutes for some reason I can't recall. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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