August 28: Short Military Dream

The dream: While I don't remember much of what came before this point, what I do remember started with me being in the military and part of some sort of training exercise. I had no idea where I was, why I was part of the military, or what exactly I was training for, but as is the case in dreams so often, I attempted to go with the flow. I was marching around when I was approached by a commanding officer. I didn't know who the officer was or even his rank, so I hesitated before addressing him and stumbled over my words. He berated me for my performance and then sent me off to another room for my training.

I entered a large indoor gym and approached a man who was handing out life vests; he instructed me to find one in my size. I was curious as to what my mission would entail if it required life vests, but I found one and put it on. After a while, I was approached by another commanding officer, who told me I would receive training on how to withhold information during interrogation. I was then escorted with other participants out of the gym. On our way, I was very quickly briefed on what we would be doing: we were to follow a script closely during a staged sequence, and if, during the sequence, we were chosen for the mock interrogation, we were to do our best not to reveal key information. I thought about how I would handle this scenario as we walked down a series of hallways.

We soon entered a small meeting room where many people were gathering around a large conference table. At the head of the table sat a large, gruesome-looking man; somehow I knew he was the actor portraying the leader of a group of thugs. For some reason the "boss" of the thugs had lost his nose; in its place was a fake nose made out of cake. As we were sitting, he started pulling pieces from his nose and eating them. Pacing about the room were other "thugs" playing their parts; meanwhile, the participants took their seats around the table.

As the act commenced, I realized that I didn't have a script. I looked nervously about at the other participants and tried simply to mimic their behaviors and responses. Soon, the act came to the point where the "thugs" began choosing participants to interrogate. First approached was a woman on the other side of the table from me. As they began, the woman immediately said something that was apparently so far from the script that everything had to stop, and some of the actors broke character to show her that, according to the script, she shouldn't say that. I thought it odd that we were being trained to withstand interrogation techniques, but forced to follow a script: how would that prove anything?

Eventually I was chosen to be interrogated, but I still didn't have a script. I asked the person sitting next to me if I could borrow his since he hadn't been chosen. He gave me his copy, and I hastily scanned through the script as I walked with the interrogator to a chair across the room. As I sat down, I realized that everyone was quiet, and all eyes were on me. I quickly looked down at the paper booklet in my hands, and I saw my name there, but nothing written for me to do or say. And this is when the dream ended completely and I woke up.

***

My thoughts: These dreams of being completely clueless as to where I am and what I'm doing are fairly common, though usually related to school (being in a class and having no idea what the subject is, etc). Other than that, it was a rather short dream, and I don't remember much before or after it.

August 27: Persistant Scammers and the Big Bang

I've resumed keeping a dream journal after a two-year hiatus. Let's see how long I keep at it this time....

The dream: At the beginning of this dream I was working in an arcade, helping kids turn in tickets for prizes and keeping an eye on the games and patrons. After a while, a woman and her teenage daughter approached me. The girl was participating in a fund raiser and trying to raise money by selling flowers; the person who purchased a flower would get to go on a date with the girl. I assume the mother was there as a chaperone and officiator of the whole process. It seemed strange, so I asked a series of questions to figure out what was really going on.

Ultimately, I uncovered that they were using the information they gathered to sign the unwitting participants up for some sort of contract, which required the dupes to pay a significant amount of money every month (for what I’m not sure); the mother and daughter were at the mall, targeting single males in the hopes of swaying them with the hope of a date. Strangely enough, even though I uncovered their scam and avoided it, the two acted as if they had duped me already and were laughing and mocking me as if I were a desperate chump who fell for their ruse. It was frustrating, but the dream soon changed.

Next, I was at a zoo with a group of friends. It was a strange place where the animals were all free to roam about in one giant building as opposed to individual pens or fenced-off areas. Patrons boarded a small train that ran leisurely along a track through the various zones in the zoo. We rode by a large group of apes standing dangerously close to the tracks, and later through a bird area, where a duck jumped into my car and settled on my lap. At the end of the train ride, I noticed the same girl and mother duo from earlier in the dream, still pointing and laughing. I angrily approached the girl and informed her that I hadn’t fallen for her scam, and began arguing with her. Eventually she realized this, and responded with hostility as opposed to derision. After the brief argument, I left.

The dream changed again, and I was getting ready for bed in a large abandoned dining hall in some unknown building. The room was filthy and infested with rodents: underneath my blanket I found a dead mouse. I realized I wouldn’t be able to sleep here, so I left.

After a while, I again ran into the girl in the hallway of an unknown residence. Unlike before, she seemed now to be at odds with her mother. Apparently our argument made her realize that her mother’s plan wasn’t a good one, and now she wanted out. She befriended me, and we ventured off together.

At some point in the dream we stumbled upon a strange device. Apparently it was a recording that an advanced alien race had made that, when activated, flooded the user’s mind with images of the history of the universe as seen from this civilization, from the big bang to the end of their race. We watched, entranced, the creation of the universe, the expansion of countless galaxies, and the rise and fall of this alien race as if watching the seasons of their civilization from spring to winter. By the end of the overwhelming stimuli, having all of the intense information compressed and distilled into such a short burst, we were emotionally exhausted, left incapable of anything but tears for the loss.

The dream changed again, and either I was watching some sort of new Star Wars movie or I was in it: I saw Han Solo, Chewbacca, and some unknown Wookie who was fixing some sort of machine.

After the short Star Wars tangent, I was back with the girl from earlier; she was telling me about all of the dresses she owned and how they were great because they allowed her to holster a variety of weapons at her hip. This is about where I woke up.

****

My thoughts: Well, the girl and her mother were rather persistent characters, appearing in almost every facet of this strange hodgepodge of dreams. I guess they represent my distrust of people and my paranoia about being taken advantage of or scammed. Other than that, it was an extremely long dream - or rather, a series of dreams wherein the beginnings and endings fuzed with those before and after.

The scene with the alien devise was so intense in my dream. I remember seeing things that would be impossible to see; it was interesting how my subconscious portrayed the Big Bang, etc. It really felt overstimulating.

May 01, 2009: Rainbow Brite

So in this dream, I was watching some sort of Rainbow Brite show, or movie, or video game - it kept switching. It was an updated, revamped version of Rainbow Brite for a new generation, and it was rather dark: the villains were scary looking, it was set in some huge dismal castle, and even the "hero" characters were older and more serious, though they still had the whole Rainbow Brite color names and motifs going on. It was like the Castlevania series crossed with Rainbow Brite.

I was talking to whoever was there with me about it, comparing this Rainbow Brite to the older cartoon version from the 80s, where the villain was some goofy looking guy with a mustache as opposed to a giant behemoth with horns and fangs, and the characters were all little kids with color names and not these brooding teenagers. I don't remember much else about this dream, other than watching this incarnation of a little girl pop-culture icon, and thinking that it was a lot more child-appropriate when I was a kid.

*****

OK brain, what's the deal? Rainbow Brite? Really? I want some sort of refund.

I think the worst part was that I knew enough about Rainbow Brite to describe the way that the characters had changed.

-Matthew