The Other Dreams

No dreams last night that I can remember, probably didn't sleep long enough to fall that deeply.

But since I opened the can on Monday saying I'd write about the dream where I might have killed someone, ok, here goes.  Not nearly as interesting now a day later.

Anyhow, a bunch of people were at a retreat.  The setting reminded me of a combination of Smoke Tree Ranch and The Lodge at Bellevue Square... a comfy, cozy place with a lot of people. Architecture of rock and glass, big fireplaces.  Makes me wish I still skied, to think of it now.  Skied is a really weird looking word.

We kept going into sessions to hear a guy speak, and then between sessions we'd hang out in the lobby.  Earlier in the conference, one of the conference goers had been shot, though the police could not find the gun or any evidence and had no suspects and seemed a little frustrated.  For some odd reason, I felt that maybe I was responsible, even though I couldn't remember pulling the trigger or even seeing the woman after she had died, did not have much interaction with her prior to her death, and nothing to suggest that I had been involved.  No clothes with bloodstains on them, no reddish skin on my forearms from vigorous hand-washing to get rid of gunshot residue.  As much as I wracked my brains, I couldn't come up with a motive, couldn't come up with any concrete or even circumstantial evidence that I had been involved, but there was just this nagging thing in the back of my head that said I had done in.

So, I was wrestling with whether I go to the police and inform them of my suspicions -- in case they found out on their own, would I be in a better position if I went to them first?  Or whether I just kept my mouth shut and figured if I couldn't even be sure myself, what could they possibly figure out?

I was still wrestling with that when I woke up.  Usually after I wake up, I think and ponder about that night's dream for some time, trying to remember it, trying to figure things out, trying to determine how I could have acted differently, and what kinds of clues I should have looked for to determine it was a dream.  While they are quite elusive, I am fascinated by lucid dreams and think I've participated in a few in my lifetime. 

Though, weirder, I've had a few dreams where the second or third parts came years later.  One really memorable was a dream I had while in high school or college where I had just come from a car accident in which my in-dream wife "Jenny" had died.  I stood by the fireplace in the house drinking whiskey and just losing it.  Six or seven years later in the middle of a dream, I walk into that same house and see the whiskey glass sitting there with the dried residue from the unfinished drink, covered in dust.  The entire house was closed up, mustly, dusty, as if I hadn't been there in years.  That shocked me so much I threw myself right out of the dream into conciousness and did not want to go back to sleep at all, I was so unnerved.)  (Don't let this

Another is a Myst-like setting, a building high in a forested mountain, containing a small hydroelectric plant.  A small yellow building with green framed windows that a waterfall falls into to power the plant.  The area was just so lush and beautiful and peaceful.  I've been back a few times and sometimes realize I'm on the way the route I'm driving in my car and then the parking lot and the hike into the forest.  I can tell it's not real, but I'm not able to control what happens, which usually isn't much of anything, except to enjoy the calm and peace.  I'm always quite sad when I wake up from that dream.

If there seems to be a theme of death in my dreams, that's not necessarily the case.  I did dream often of falling off cliffs when I was a child, but I'd always survive, just barely missing the ground, or landing on the tires of my bike and riding off.  I think only once I've dreamt that I actually died, and it was three days before 9/11/01 (not posted on my blog until early 2003).  Considering that it seems like every time someone I haven't seen in years suddenly makes an appearance in a dream is usually a 1-3 precursor to me connecting with a different person I hadn't talked to in years (this was in the pre-Facebook era) the fact that the death dream was right before 9/11, any time I have a really big and foreboding dream (like watching from a mall on a hill as a toxic cloud rolls in a wipes out Los Angeles), I'm really freaked the next day.  Fortunately, I haven't had any of those in awhile. 

Well, must get off to work.  Wow, I've been typing intermittently for almost an hour.  Somehow feels like a completly useless use of time.