I was in a strange house, where a girl or young woman showed me a room that looked like a semi-aquatic exhibit at a zoo. The back half was filled with murky water, and the effect of the house and the room was to fill me a sense of horror and foreboding. The word “Cthulhul” kept appearing in my mind, and for what seemed like hours I spelled it over and over again, obsessively, stopping only when I woke up.
I have never read Lovecraft.
I was in a futuristic city high rise when suddenly a giant star like a cookie cutter banged against one of the full-sized glass windows in front of me. It came back and banged again. Clearly, it was up to something bad as it tried to to break through.
Finally it did, but then it left. I raised my hand in salute, which made it return and crash against the glass that was still there. Every time I made a gesture of thanks, it returned and banged again.
I couldn’t stop myself.
I returned to college because I thought there had to be more to the area than I remembered. I set off for the bookstore, which was across a park green, although I knew it might not be open. I expected it to carry the same things it had 20 or 30 years ago, as though I had never left. As happens in this recurring dream, the landscape had changed dramatically, and I found myself at the top of a hill looking down at a lush green hollow where the road curved. Open-air arts and crafts booths, like something you might find in the country, filled the hollow. It looked magical. I wondered how I could have missed such a strange sight in the city 30 years ago.
I was at home in the trailer, where everywhere I looked — the stove, even the kitchen drawers — the gas was lit, although the flames didn’t burn anything. I didn’t question how or why; I knew this to be part of my mother’s cleaning ritual. I looked for her to ask her how long she planned to leave the gas on and the fires burn. She said, “At least one hour,” which made me nervous. She pointed to my dad, who was working outside on a bare pile of dirt, and to an oncoming storm. Several trees had been broken up, and I thought about how too many had been lost to development since I was last at home. I had a strange feeling that soon none of the familiar trees would be left.
The storm slammed into the trailer in a way that made me realize it was more of a hurricane or tornado than a summer thunderstorm. Its destructive force filled me with terror.
When it moved on, the walls of the trailer were left flattened, and nothing — not even the vintage metal suitcase of photos — had been left behind. My parents were standing off to the side where my dad had been, hugging one another. My dad waved to me without letting go of my mother. Despite the gesture, I had the impression that it would have been okay if I had been blown away, too, but that may have been because the scope of the loss left me devastated.
I wondered if the photos would turn up somewhere and if they would be too wet to be salvageable.
Several men were playing an enormously long piano keyboard. Facing them was a row of ducks trained to respond to their movements and cues. The ducks moved in patterns with the music toward the keyboard, an amazing sight to behold.
I was standing next to a car door and holding a golf club, the head of which people were supposed to hit (with a ball?). This would prevent something catastrophic from happening. The onus was on me, although I just stood there.
A tower with a round top like a revolving restaurant or UFO loomed overhead. The city seemed safe, but I feared that whatever held the tower together, perhaps a ring, would come loose and would cause all to come crashing down around us.
I ran into an old friend from my first job, and we talked about her babies, with a misunderstanding on my part because she meant only the youngest, while I referred to all of them. To my dismay, I learned that the boy, the second youngest, was more than 40 years old, when I still thought of him as a 7-year-old. Future shock.
My brother and I were flying toward and over the ocean on the open seat of a hovercraft. It was exhilarating and more than a little scary.
At a house, everyone was preparing for a game or a class, but I kept looking out a window at a street, where something about the buildings and even the weather wasn’t right. I recalled that there was supposed to be some kind of conflict — I wanted trees removed from along the shore to enhance the water views, while a large, powerful group of neighbors was lobbying to keep them. None of it, least of all my viewpoint, made sense to me.
The people of the house tried to get me to join the game or class, but I was distracted by a young ginger-and-white cat on the basement steps that I was sure was some reincarnation of my beloved tortoiseshell, Pudge. I didn’t know why I was so certain, and was confused and upset when the cat didn’t respond to me at all. Surely Pudge would have remembered me?
At a strange mall, I was pursued by a group intent on killing me. I found a door, opened it, and entered a space just big enough to hold me. It had no lock, which I hoped my pursuers wouldn’t notice. I tried to hold it closed by the handle, although it kept changing and even disappearing. I didn’t know how long they would look for me and wondered if they were lurking, waiting for me to open the door. Something about the room made me feel safe.
At the mall (or was it a film festival?), I took a photo of Leonard Nimoy with my iPhone. Somehow I got word to him, and he searched until he found me. All he wanted was the photo. By then, I couldn’t find it on the iPhone. What should have been app icons had become the blank edges of CDs, so I had no clue as to what was on them. He had cornered me near a creepy house and frightened me without saying a word. Finally he left, with a sad yet menacing expression.
Finally I found the photo, and he reappeared instantly — perhaps I or my mind called out. As he walked off with it (somehow, as it was a file), he turned and blew me the lightest of kisses.
Fragments from a longer dream or series — The train was chugging along normally when it decided to break apart. Cars and groups of cars spread out in different directions, forming an instant, disorganized rail yard but without the tracks. The engine — or was it the caboose? — wouldn’t or couldn’t stop and burst into steam or smoke. It was foreboding.
Again I was flying over a swimming pool that ran through a city like a river. Huge dark shadows of enormous fish appeared just below the water, and planes ducked under the water in pursuit. “What are they doing?” I asked. “Catching fish,” a voice answered. We seemed to do the same. There were more planes making more dives than there were fish, and I worried and wondered, but not about why.
I was looking for a street exit from a building, but kept getting more trapped. I would come upon stairs, but they proved to be channels into which I had to fit to slide down. There was no up. I began to think there was no out, either.
I was at the top of an ancient, crumbling stone staircase leading toward the bowels of the earth. At the bottom was a wall — a dead end. A monster I could not escape had run me to ground.
I was with a group of people in a science lab who were intent on making something that seemed like an arts-and-crafts project. I was more interested in flinging Mardi Gras beads around and dancing. One tall man appeared to feel the same way, but he couldn’t quite make his way to me.
A musician was half sitting, half lying on the floor, his face stretched and mask-like as though he’d been burned. The only song I could hear was “Along Comes Mary,” which never stopped playing.
The tall man, the musician, and I knew something the others didn’t and were right to focus on the dance. I could feel it.
In this dream not much happened, but it was disturbing conceptually and visually.
My cat seemed normal, but I could tell that he was an empty shell filled with an enormous, vicious-looking fish. I would open a flap to try to remove the fish, but couldn’t bring myself to touch it. It couldn’t be left there, either, because it was evil. I wasn’t sure that anything was left of the cat. It was too late.
My mother and I were in the city, a place where I’d never seen her. I observed myself as a giant parade balloon against the night sky. I let go of my mother’s string, and she floated high into the air. Soon she crashed into the spot from which I had released her. I felt horrible as she was injured and in pain — but I must have known this would happen when I let go. She tried to tell me the complicated way in which she’d been repaired up there, but this made no sense to me as she’d been hurt on landing, not on rising. My head swam.
I felt forlorn and terrible, although I thought I should feel light and free.
While walking down a theater aisle, I spotted TB for the first time in months. As I passed by, I quoted a line from a play in the voice or intonation of Orson Welles — or I hoped I did. That should have gotten his attention. Immediately I wondered if I also looked like Welles and what I had been thinking — that he would fall for the same kind of talent and abilities I do? In these dreams, I try to impress him and others with what I like.
I was wearing a light cotton housecoat when I realized I was standing in the middle of a road at night, and a car was coming. I ducked into my closet, which was right up against the narrow, shoulderless road, and tried to pull the housecoat around me and shut the door, but the coat wouldn’t fit around my breasts. The car passed within inches of me, and I felt shaken by nearly being hit and seen.
I heard a former boss from PwC come along with someone. They talked about moving some files in the closet on the other side. There was nowhere for me to go.
I went back to the hospital for a third procedure/second surgery and ran into T. F. F. while waiting. I felt ambivalent about this, but when he tried to be apologetically affectionate, perhaps even sexy, I didn’t like it. I left to find a bathroom, but everything was strange, with no doors or distinct toilets.
After passing through the corridors, I came upon a plaza of quaint stores like those in Wheaton, Long Grove, and Geneva. Now I was confused. I went back the way I thought I had come, but I was lost. Finally, I saw someone to ask for directions, but when I followed them I ended up in what appeared to be a fancy drawing room with no other exit. It was nothing like a hospital.
By now, I was panicking that I’d been called for surgery while I had been wandering, and a little worried that T. F. F. would think I had run off. I was anxious because I believed this surgery was critical to my survival, and that I’d walked out on my last chance for life (surgery) as well as a renewed friendship that I no longer had much interest in. All I could think was, “It’s complicated,” but I did not want to explain why.