Dream Archive 52: Lost in the Woods

We were wandering around some version of Ann Arbor. I had a special type of scope you could look into that would allow you to see the landscape before human civilization came along. It was just like being lost in the woods. That’s a pretty clear metaphor for the fact that we’re all essentially lost in the woods despite being surrounded by modern life, right? Sometimes dreams are so on-the-nose.

I tried to remember if I still lived in Ann Arbor or if I’d moved back to Denver or if I’d moved back to Denver and then back to Ann Arbor. I have this dream all the time. Why would I move back to Michigan? I hated it so much. But nothing that has happened to me since then feels real.

The version of Ann Arbor to which I dream about moving back never looks like the real place. I tried to picture the apartment I was currently living in, but I couldn’t remember for sure. I could picture a variety of apartments—some of which were actual ones I’ve lived in in either Ann Arbor or Denver and some of which seemed familiar but were clearly imaginary. The one that felt the most recent was one of the imaginary ones. I knew it wasn’t real.

I thought as hard as I could but couldn’t see the place I lived. Then I woke up, and I was like, “Oh yeah, this is where I live now.” It also felt completely unreal. My current apartment is one of the imaginary ones, because nothing that has happened to me since I left Michigan has been real.

This is what it must feel like to be a ghost or a wandering spirit. You can never quite remember the details of your life, and everything feels like it could be a dream. No wonder people are so terrified of ghosts—either being one or meeting one. It’s the worst possible feeling. Any spirit that became lost like that would surely go insane and would do anything to come back to “reality.” They would try and steal someone’s life in a heartbeat. I would do it.

Dream Archive 51: Apocrypha

My dad played a show of songs based on a folk singer’s interpretation of lost biblical stories. Then he figure skated a whole routine with costumes and flips and everything. But all we cared about was that the music was too loud, because we were trying to play a board game of some kind.

Dream Archive 50: The Moon

We took a trip to the Moon. Apparently someone had figured out how to grow things there, because there were trees everywhere. It looked like a grey, rain-soaked logging town. There were ramshackle houses set close to each other with small grassy yards. It looked like a poor neighborhood about two steps away from a trailer park. This was all on the Moon.

HAPPY 50TH TO THE DREAM ARCHIVE!

Dream Archive 49: Shady Acres

I was making lunch at work. The nature of my job was unclear. I made a delicious banana shake of some kind. My dad needed help preparing for a board meeting. We walked through an indoor mall, and salesmen kept telling him he looked stressed-out and that they could help him. He refused.

My dad gave me three posters. The smallest one showed blurry shapes. The next one was larger and clearer. The biggest one showed an aerial shot of a housing subdivision by a lake. The lake looked metallic and polluted. The text across the top read: Now do you get it? Shady Acres, California...

My dad was worried about the consequences of decisions he’d made on the project. He compared it to a previous scandal that had involved 20 lobsters. A woman named Jill Herring had complained, but no one had listened to her.

Dream Archive 48: Skeptic

I was trying to find my way home, but they kept adding numbers to the street signs, so I became a college professor. As a police detective it was my job to track down a missing person. My partner said she had a vision of where he was. I told her not to believe in things she didn’t know for sure. Later on we did find him, but I refused to believe it or do any tests to confirm that it was him.

Dream Archive 47: Method Acting

We were trying to toughen up a friend of ours to get him ready for a role as a troubled police detective on a prestige drama. We showed him how to steal every single item in a store. Then we helped him steal a car. Apparently stealing things was the key to being a tough, troubled police detective.

Dream Archive 46: Memse

Walking around outside and reading different magazines to find out where to buy things. Nearby in an industrial part of town there was a business where all they did was film cars crashing into each other for movies. One of the roommates spoke to us in a very high-fantasy type dialogue. She used the word “memse” (pronounced "memsy") to refer to someone in a derogatory way. She looked like a punk rocker but potentially with a fin on her head instead of a mohawk, as though she were some sort of aquatic creature. There was animation of the fin appearing on her head in silhouette, so I don’t know if it was real or something she was imagining or describing.

I looked up where we should go in a zine-style book that was apparently so dangerous and badass that it jumped and lurched in my hands as I tried to read it. Whatever. Overrated. Inside there was a comic strip poem based on “The Night Before Christmas” that was actually a guide to different places around town. It was apparently inspired by a different article someone had written in a different magazine called “Ten Places Where the Bartender is Doing Your Dog.” A guide to bars so rough that the bartender is engaging in bestiality instead of serving you drinks? Please. It was clearly hyped up beyond belief. What kind of laughable person reads a magazine to find depraved bars to hang out in? Sounds like pathetic poser tourism to me.

Every “edgy” person in the world is a piece of shit. Every violent person in the world deserves to go to the hospital or the morgue. Ideally I would like to send each and every last one of them there myself. Fuck everyone in this dream. Stupid, sad nobody assholes—too lame to even exist. You act tough, but I’m the one who gets to wake up and continue with my life while you fade away. You were never anything. You’re meaningless, only ever seen by one person and then immediately forgotten. That’s what you’re worth.

Dream Archive 45: Sure Seller

Business idea: a floating pool toy that looks like a giant dead mosquito. Why wouldn’t anyone buy this?

Dream Archive 44: Deez Nuts

We were in a college town where we kept stealing everything from everyone. We were staying in a flophouse that catered to rich and poor alike. We kept listening to stories from the other residents. Michael said his friend “Hot” Charlie was having a rough time and we needed to go pick him up. I jumped in the car with Michael’s phone and headed over to get Charlie. I looked at the phone, which was now Charlie’s phone, and there was a text message that read, “Your divorce has been finalized.” I picked up Charlie and we texted Michael. Apparently he was having trouble with the front door of the flophouse. It wouldn’t open.

We drove recklessly back there to get him. He was listening to one of the residents tell a story, and suddenly he heard the Key he’d been waiting for. He went up to an old fashioned cart that was parked outside. It looked like a wooden cart where a traveling tradesman would keep all their stuff. He pulled out a ratty old leatherbound book and opened it. He said the Key and then used it to draw a handle on the page. He turned the handle and it opened some kind of door or portal. “All right!” he said. “Mike Deez, Mike Deez, you owe me some food, you sly motherfucker.”

We went through the portal and found ourselves in a labyrinth of hallways that led to various rooms. I guess this was Mike Deez’s house. We went from room to room looking for food. We reached a room with a sofa and some machinery. We could hear the disembodied voice of Mike Deez speaking in the next room. It sounded like he was hosting a talk show—possibly from beyond the grave? “If you’re going to be handsome and successful,” said the voice, “you have to know yourself and what you’re capable of.” There was thunderous applause.

Dream Archive 43: The House Across the Valley

I was trying to complete some kind of graduate program. I was getting help from a woman who lived in the area. In return for her help, she asked me to find her daughter who had disappeared recently. I was researching the case on a microfiche projector but getting nowhere. I went to visit the woman at her house across the valley.

As I started to walk, I suddenly achieved full lucid dreaming. I felt as though I was wide awake and in complete control of my body. I thought to myself, “I finally did it!!” even though I have heretofore made no effort to achieve lucid dreaming. Maybe that’s why it only lasted for 30 seconds. But during that time I was able to fly across the valley to the woman’s house at the top of an old logging road.

Of course the house was a mansion. All houses in dreams have to be mansions. The family was having a meeting or a briefing in their living room using an old style overhead projector complete with transparencies and everything. Do kids today even know what overhead projectors and transparencies are? I’m guessing they do given the state of funding for public education in this country. Schools are probably still using equipment they bought in the 1970s.

I assume the family was meeting about the effort to find their missing daughter. As I walked out of the living room, I met the girl’s grandmother. She was lying flat on her back in the middle of the hallway. Her eyes were milky white, and she was clearly blind. She spoke to me and told me three things about myself, all of which were true. The girl’s father told me that the grandmother had the second sight and knew everything there was to know. “She always speaks the truth,” he said.

I knelt down, looking into her blank eyes. The pupils were constricted, and the irises radiated fine grey and white lines. They looked like painted marbles. I asked her, “Where is your missing granddaughter?” She seemed to be looking directly at me even though there was nothing in her eyes. She gave me the answer to my question, but I don’t remember what it was.

Dream Archive 42: Magic Trick

I wanted to do a magic trick, but I was completely wrapped in plastic bubbles, so I couldn’t feel anything.

Dream Archive 41: Fucking Homicidal Insect

I talked about dreams with Amanda last night, and I told her that I almost never dream about places I’ve lived. So of course I went to bed and immediately dreamed about the house on Locust Street. Specifically, I was in the backyard, and there was some kind of insect running around. It was about the size and shape and color of a Magic Eight Ball — some kind of beetle. I saw it coming towards me, and I tried to run, but I slipped and fell, and it grabbed onto the back of my neck. I woke up shaking violently like I was being electrocuted, still feeling it jerking around, pulling on my skin, its wings flapping. I lay there looking around to make sure it wasn’t in my room. Then I heard a deep rumbling sound that seemed to be coming up from the floor. I couldn’t identify where it was coming from. It lasted a few minutes, then I fell back asleep.

Dream Archive 40: Jelly Beans

We were coming home from a trip and dropping people off. We were in a large truck, almost like a boat or maybe a carrier for a parade float. We stopped at a large red brick building that looked to have 50 rooms or more. It was like a dorm but was apparently a co-op house where Duncan lived. I tried to ask him about it, but his accent was getting more and more foreign. I looked at the street signs and tried to memorize them, but I quickly forgot.

We went back to our house. My dad was very worried because he had forgotten to sweep up some broken glass and there had been people coming to look at the house while we were away. We went in and talked to a guy who seemed like a detective but was actually an insurance adjuster(?). I asked Kimmy Schmidt if she remembered where the big red house was. She smiled and held up one finger, then went to her bedroom and came back with a bag of extra-large jelly beans. I was happy to have jelly beans, but I still wanted to know where that house was. I wanted to live there someday.

Dream Archive 39: What It's Like

It's like an enormous model train setup, a huge diorama stretching hundreds of yards in all directions except to the west where it meets a concrete wall. Tiny cars move down the streets, but everything else is eerily quiet.

Dream Archive 38: Summer Pumpkin

There was a comedy thing, and we were working to save it. It was like being in a newsroom, but everyone was writing jokes. Anna and I traveled to some kind of conference together, possible in Scotland or Ireland. She was upset and confused about how she was feeling. We traveled back to her house in the city. I met her husband. He wanted to do curls with me. I said okay, and he showed me a set of weights with complicated settings and attachments. 

Then we all went to a wedding at a nearby resort. It was like being in Mexico or another tropical country. Batman was there, and he was SO TALL. We walked for a bit, and I saw Bob. I hadn’t seen him in years. I asked how he was doing. He said he was still in school. I asked if he was still playing music, and he said, “Summer Pumpkin still plays sometimes.” This was apparently a band he was in with other people I knew. I told him, “I still listened to your solo albums from time to time.” (not true) “They’re really good.” (true) He didn’t say anything. As with a lot of people I’ve known in real life, I don’t think Bob likes me very much. Summer Pumpkin is objectively a great band name, though. 

To get to the wedding ceremony, we had to walk down about a mile through what looked like a subway station. There were ads in plexiglass frames all over the walls. What did humans dream about before we were constantly drowning in information? It must have been something simpler. 

Now I have to get up and live my “real” life, pretend that the days when life meant something aren’t far, far behind me. It was a relatively brief time in the grand scheme of things, and now it’s vanishing into the mists of the distant past. I feel like the last few Leghk huddled together in the Halls of Memory, knowing the the Uhl will soon take them like it’s taken the rest of their kind. The Uhl wants all of us. Does anyone out there understand this reference?? DOES ANYONE OUT THERE FEEL THIS WAY???????

Dream Archive 37: Finally, a David Lynch Dream

Hangin out with David Lynch on a trip. He went off to go skiing or biking or hiking with his wife. I was trying to learn the guitar solo from Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” because there was a mobile recording studio there and everyone expected me to play it. But I couldn’t remember it, and I couldn’t find a recording of it or a video anywhere online. When Lynch came back we made a joke about how our friend was napping underneath some clothes. He seemed to think it was funny. I asked him if he liked Weezer. He said, “Yes, those female harmonies are something else.” I couldn’t think of a Weezer song with female harmonies, but I didn’t want to correct him.

Dream Archive 36: Chicago Goons

Direct quote: “How does this sound: Chicago goons, trying to get paid ahead of schedule, broke into his room and accidentally released a swarm of bees.” The bees were already responsible for several deaths.

Dream Archive 35: The Fox Conspiracy

We were in some kind of enormous complex that was possibly a city, and we were probably in the basement of the house on Long Avenue. There was a little animal like a fox or a dog that was helping us unravel some sort of conspiracy or history of something. Eric and I were wandering the streets and stairways for work. Not sure what we were doing exactly. One of our coworkers said he was moving to San Francisco, and I had the thing I always have in dreams where I long to live in California. Going to the beach seems like the most intensely meaningful experience in the world, although if I actually did it I probably wouldn’t appreciate it. Maybe when I die my spirit will go to the coast and it will be like when I was a kid again. The layers and layers of fear and self-hatred and humiliation will fall away until I can see things the way I used to.

Dream Archive 34: I need a shower.

I was just trying to take a shower. The only one available was in a stone chamber, and the shower head looked like the Virgin Mary. I kept getting interrupted by people wanting different things, and the soap kept disintegrating. Somewhere else in the building was a mall. One of the stores had an entrance to a restricted area where an army general or dictator lived. I worked there briefly, which could be why I needed a shower.

Dream Archive 33: The House with a Snack in Its Walls

I was trying to get together some old paintings I had done. I was taking an art class, and the teacher liked my work so much he wanted to publish a book with me. Unfortunately his work wasn’t very good. He played one of his songs for me — that’s right, songs — and the mix was terrible. We were staying in a ramshackle old mansion, potentially with thir13en ghosts. My dad was Tom Hanks. He had bought black contacts to make himself look spookier. The outside of the house was covered with electrical outlets and light switches. When you flipped them on, various things would happen, like lights coming on, small dioramas appearing, or secret doors sliding open to reveal… salad? I don’t know what was up with the salad. Maybe it was supposed to be haunted salad.

Dream Archive 32: A Complicated World of Meaningful Objects

A lantern, a bell, a manor house that I(?) inherited(?). In the dream I was writing down the dream. In one of the shared rooms we were all sitting on the floor. It was a mess. Someone’s pet turtle was crawling around. He opened his mouth and fifteen little foam balls of different sizes rolled out. We realized we needed to clean the place, because he’d been eating them for a while. This was maybe a shared house at a college(?) because people started discussing the legal ramifications of cleaning up other people’s stuff.

There was some kind of story that kept repeating. It was a story of intrigue that involved riding motorcycles through a complicated world of meaningful objects, perhaps in a museum(?). In order to be on the motorcycle team, you had to log in and create a character. My login was “japan5”.

There was a street that looked like it might’ve been in Cork or Edinburgh. It was bustling with activity, and there were shops and restaurants everywhere, but it was apparently still part of the college(?). I was supposed to be doing work, but I kept looking around. My father was there, and he lifted me up and swung me around so I could get a better view. There was a window set into the floor directly above me about six floors up. Someone, a student, was looking down through it as though they were sitting in front of a regular window. I got the feeling this was maybe the school library(?). I started to feel self-conscious and told my father to put me down, because being on your dad’s shoulders is only for little kids.

I knew I should check my email and see what work I needed to do, but I was hungry. I asked my dad if he wanted to go to a cafe(?) called Savannah. He froze up, trying to think of what to say, an I realized he was supposed to be undercover. I was blowing his cover story. My brother and I looked at each other, trying to figure out what to do. A woman came over and asked if she could help. She clearly thought my dad was having trouble remembering things.

I said, “No, it’s okay, he...”

“Yes,” said my dad. “It’s okay. I’m Savannah.”

Dream Archive 31: Joysticks

A (recurring?) dream about a party in a basement. This time it’s being thrown by Rick from Rick and Morty. I’m Morty, and there’s two girls I’m trying to impress. They want to play a video game, but there’s no joysticks. I keep asking Rick to fix them, but he’s using them for something. People upstairs are playing some kind of team sport. Some of them are naked. I think in previous dreams they've been wearing white togas, and the party was thrown by someone else. But the joystick thing has always been part of it.

Dream Archive 30: Schoolwork

Had to drive all over creation for schoolwork. The esteemed, indefatigable Professor Leonard Miles was threatening to fail us, even though it would be mostly his fault because he’s a terrible teacher. Suck it, Leonard! You’re wasting everyone’s time. 

Dream Archive 29: Cartels

A movie about drug cartels starring Dennis Quaid and Luis Guzman. People were after a big cache of money, but it turned out the drug lords were faking the whole thing in order to draw people in and capture them. 

Dream Archive 28: Installation

An unspecified member of The Cure made a public art installation that was basically a huge green bell hanging from a tree. If you went up inside the bell there were posters and things plastered to the walls. 

Dream Archive 27: Work-Study

I was in Ireland on a work-study program. I worked in a cool coffee shop. The owner was very nice. There were more employees than he needed, but he kept all of us on even though we screwed around a lot. We were talking about place names, and his daughter told me that “twain” means “island.” Then she paused and said, “Wait. Ireland’s an island, so why’s it called Ireland?” I said, “I think it’s named after a river.” The owner’s wife nodded and pointed to a map she was drawing in pencil on a piece of paper. It showed all the rivers in Ireland. She asked me to go pick something up at a friend’s cabin and drop off a DVD of Planet of the Apes she was lending him. The owner turned to one of the employees and said, “That’s the cabin you’ll be living at over the summer.” The employee looked excited. I took the van and drove to the remote village where the  friend lived. When I got there he asked if I’d brought Planet of the Apes. I realized I’d forgotten it. I apologized profusely and offered to go buy a copy somewhere. He said not to worry about it, but I could tell he was disappointed and annoyed. It didn’t look like there was much to do in the village, so getting a new movie to watch was probably a big deal. We loaded a wooden bike into the van, and he went back inside. I went in to use the bathroom and met his wife on the way out. She was making all kinds of candy and baked goods in the kitchen. They looked really good, but I knew I didn’t deserve any because I had forgotten the movie. God damn it, I still feel bad about that.

Dream Archive 26: Fox Pack

Worked as a process server in rural America. Stayed at a house in the desert where a fox was sleeping under a bed. He had found a scout pack filled with useful things. I went through it and tried to find mace in case people being served got violent. Found it. In the morning the fox got up and walked around. He was going to leave, but I petted him and he lay down and rolled over like a cat. I scratched his head for a while then had to get going. I was actually filling in for my dad, who wasn’t sick or anything, he just wanted me and my brother to cover his shifts. I came up with song lyrics about someone jumping off the roof of a TV station to kill themselves, but I forgot because I couldn't find a place to write them down. I wish I could remember. I think they were really good.

Dream Archive 25: Amateur Starter

I was a starter for classic cars, meaning that I was one of the only people who knew how to start them when they needed to be moved from display to storage or wherever. But I didn’t have that much expertise, so it only worked about half the time. Apparently that was enough for them to keep calling me when a car needed starting, although they always looked at me skeptically when I arrived. I was basically guessing and sometimes getting lucky. I wondered if other starters knew what they were doing or if we were all just pretending. Maybe there were no professional starters in the world, only amateurs who kept getting lucky. I was also taking improv classes at a place nearby.

Dream Archive 24: Célèbre

A man came into the bookstore where I was hanging out. For whatever reason I was over by the Language section. He pointed to a book called FAMOUS and insistently tapped it with his finger while saying something in French. He was worked up about something. He grabbed a French-English dictionary and tried to show us what he wanted. We figured out that he was trying to find the French word for “famous” so he could learn what it meant. The man’s companion told my friend a story. Apparently the man’s wife had died, and the last word she said was “famous.” He had never been able to figure out what she meant because he didn’t know the word’s meaning. The internet didn’t seem to exist in this world. We began searching the dictionaries, but none of them had the word. Some of them turned into nonsense in the section where the word should be. I was frantically paging through them, and I got so upset that I ripped out one of the pages in frustration. I offered to pay for it, but my friend who worked at the bookstore said I didn’t have to. The closest word we could find was “notoriété” (notoriety), which wasn’t close enough. Having failed the man, I asked for his phone number so I could contact him when I found the answer. His companion gave me a business card which had an email address on it, so maybe the internet existed after all. I was sitting and thinking, holding the card with the edge pressed against the side of my face. It slipped and brushed my eye. I was worried I had given myself a paper cut on my eyeball.

QUESTION: Why have the past two dreams included both bookstore and famous? Did this dream come from the previous one? Or from writing down the previous one?

Dream Archive 23: Two Brothers

Long lost sister and twin brothers who are soldiers. They’re knot experts. They wrap themselves in sheets of fabric and do complicated jumps and flips to tie the knots. They activate things on the walls to make us move around the room. There’s also a man who’s a tiny dictator. They trick him and tie him up. He is arrested and incarcerated. One of the brothers fakes a hand injury so that the dictator will think he’s got the advantage if he ever escapes. All of this takes place within walking distance of two libraries, several museums, a movie theater, an outdoor mall, and a famous bookstore. It’s like the cultural center of town.

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