Dream Journal

Theresa, horses, trucks with guns and cowboy license plates.

I was napping on the couch in the hallway of the basement at work, the orange one. People were arguing in the next room but I couldn't hear what they were saying, didn't know who they were, just wanted to sleep.

Playing miniature golf on a little island in a lake somewhere, astroturf carefully cut around the trees and rocks. Weathered signage indicating the hole numbers and the par: hole 1 was par 7, hole 2 was par 3, hole 5 was par 9.

Playing checkers against Yuri Geller in the break room at SCANATE. Everybody at the project is there, either in my corner (Pat, Mary-Lynn, Ingo) or his (Targ, Puthoff, and Marshall). Lots of name-calling, bluster from both sides, but Geller and I just glare at each other. We sit unmoving. Pat slaps my back. Mary-Lynn rubs my neck. Marshall whispers something to Geller. Finally Geller asks when I'm going to make a move, and I'm perturbed because I thought it was his turn to move.

Watching television: an episode of Gilligan's Island where they get off the island but life on the mainland is disappointing in many ways. Skipper and Gilligan go around and visit the others. Ginger is doing porn. The Professor is doing talk shows and people want him to do a Mister Wizard type show he doesn't want to do. Mary-Anne is married to the guy who produces Ginger's pornos and the Professor's science show. Everybody was happier before.

Walking through some big suburban ranch house that I don't recognize. It's also the URIEL offices at Livermore Labs. There's someone in another room I'm looking for. They aren't in trouble or anything, I just promised them I'd hang out with them and now I can't find them.

Outside having a picnic with Roger, Jocasta, and Charley. Rainstorm suddenly comes up, flash flooding, we run for the car but Charley is separated from the others. Jo and Roger and I run in three different directions trying to find her. I'm carried away on the water and I see she's already in the back of the station wagon, she was there all along.

Watching television: an episode of some show I don't recognize that has Bob Newhart with a soap actress whose name I don't know. They run a gas station in rural Nebraska which is the center of social life for their community, sort of a Green Acres kind of thing. Tom Poston is their mechanic. I can't follow the plot, there's a lot of talking about who was where when and who said what to whom, lots of people who don't appear on the show but get talked about.

Camping trip with Peter, Zeb, and Andy. Where are the others, we keep asking each other. We have seven tents for the four of us.

I'm working as a cop someplace wet and swampy, even though I don't have any training or credentials. I tell people they hired the wrong guy but everybody thinks I'm joking. The forest is on fire. Lots of owls hooting.

Napping in the back of the van outside Dixon like I was doing before. I can't leave the van, I try to get up and go and I'm stuck there. Bernie is outside the van, drumming her fingers on the sides of it and singing something, she's mocking me and threatening me, I'm her prisoner. I'm worried for Roger.

I’m at a movie theater with some people from work but they’re not immediately around, they’re in a different part of the building. I want to go outside to smoke, because for some reason I can’t do that inside, and the doors out are all locked. I’m annoyed, not frightened.

Up on Mount Shasta at the summit, watching the sun come up, alone. Peaceful, nice.

There’s a cat, little, gray-and-white, except there are two cats.

Watching Archie on Carson, talking about how everybody in URIEL is on Carson sooner or later. Archie tells a funny story about being attacked by a flock of birds in England. Carson makes a joke about ‘bird’ meaning cute girl. Ed laughs, he’s really drunk.

Hiking up a mountain somewhere nearby, hoping to have a mystic vision at the top. Zeb is already at the top, he got a ride with Charley in her one-man helicopter-jet-pack thing. I’m late but in no hurry, they won’t start without me.

Somehow Bernie Fry locked me up in an ice cave. It’s cold and dark and I hate it here. Fumbling around I find the thermostat. Lots of pipe banging as a steam boiler somewhere roars to life. Still dark. Frustrating.

no dreams due to modafinil.

Roger needs me to know the goldfish is dead. Also he's running a fever and has to stay home from school, which is frustrating because I have stuff I was gonna do.

There's a religious festival happening at the Unitarian-looking church next door. People in costumes come out of the woods behind my house and form a sort of parade that runs through my yard. They're all in bishop robes and black wigs and big fake black beards, even the women and kids, dressed up as some historical saint I've never heard of. Everybody's having fun, I'm applauding the costumes, even though I know I should be peeved they're cutting through without warning or permission

No pets allowed?

Driving south on I-5. There's somebody in the back seat that I'm pretending I don't know is there. I don't want to turn around and see them, it would mean a confrontation. I stop and pick up Roger by the side of the road. He glances behind me when he's getting in the car, but knows enough to act like he didn't see them, either.

On a boat, but not a real boat. It's like the 20 000 leagues ride, the boat is on a track in the shallow water, going across some big bay somewhere. It's chilly and this is the way we move the equipment.

Something about a flood.

Walking in the woods, tranquil, silence. Girl with blue eyes.

Sitting in the URIEL office reading the newspaper. I skip to the comics section where it's all Peanuts strips, two pages of them, doing one long story about Snoopy on top of his doghouse and different characters come by to talk to him: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Sally, Linus, Marcie. They're talking about Peppermint Patty, who's suing somebody or being sued, but they don't call her Peppermint Patty, they call her Patricia Reinhart which is her real name. Snoopy has his lawyer stuff out the whole time but he never gets off the doghouse.

I'm a Catholic schoolboy, uniform and everything. Trying to play ball with the other kids at recess, recess is in a parking lot full of contemporary cars, they monkey-in-the-middle me and are just relentless and I get more and more frustrated as nobody intervenes.

Watching television: a weird sitcom about a guy who runs a burger restaurant but he's also a samurai and his daughter is a ninja and Coca-Cola product placement features heavily. The actors all look weird, not like normal telegenic television actors.

Walking along the beach with Roger. Footprints in the sand.

The king is dead, huge state funeral, elves and bikers and schoolkids and fairies and hippies and army guys and monkeys and weird Orientalists types who are actually white guys in makeup. I get mad at the guys in makeup and make a scene and Anna Turner (she's part of the morticians' staff) kicks me out so Mary-Lynn and Bigfoot Pete and me all go to a honky-tonk down the street and get drunk toasting the dead king.

Atlantis sinking but it's not Atlantis.

Swan boats, fire.

I'm arguing with a middle-aged woman I don't know, my brother's ex, about sin. She makes good points and I feel bad. We're sitting on a patio under leaves that turn from season to season in a few minutes: dogwood blossoms and then summer leaves and autumn oranges and reds and then they become blossoms again. I'm drinking red wine and maybe I shouldn't be, maybe it's making it harder for me to keep up with her. She's mad because my brother left her, and she thinks it means he doesn't love her, and she doesn't believe me when I say it's because he loves her too much, it would be painful to stay with her. "Isn't it pretty to think so," she says. She's mocking me. I'm ashamed for me and for my brother.

Big lion? Maybe it was a bear

I was having a stupid fight with Mary-Lynn about nothing, I can't remember anything about it except that I felt dumb for even having it, for it being a point of contention.

Trees

She keeps waking me up, over and over again

Riding a bicycle downhill, wind in hair, no cars or traffic, no way to stop but it doesn't matter, I can fly right over any obstacle.

The Lightning-Struck Tower

Me and the Oldtimer are playing cards with Ricky Jay in the back of the roadhouse where I met Pete. Pete's our host for the evening, he bought the bar but he's cagey about where the money came from. Ricky Jay keeps shuffling and dealing the same set of hands: I have a full house, diamonds over clubs, and the Oldtimer has four aces and a king, every time. Ricky Jay says we're cheating and the Oldtimer acts like he doesn't know what "cheating" is, what the word means, it's a foreign concept to him, and anyway it's time for me to take him home.

Hospital that is also my old high school

Mary-Lynn was there but it wasn't about her.

I'm in an episode of Mary Tyler Moore, maybe I'm filling in for Murray while he's on vacation. Mary keeps coming to me to complain, like I'm Murray even though I'm not, I tell her I'm not and she's like, oh yeah sorry, then she gets right back into it. Mary's complaining about how Lou and Ted are plotting to drug her and ship her Boston in a box. She doesn't want to go to Boston in a box. Lou and Ted come in with a big wooden crate and Mary runs the other way, and they laugh and put the crate down and tell me they're just messing with her. Betty White comes in and says she's come from Boston to be Mary's replacement.

A tree in my yard is growing Mardi Gras beads instead of leaves. Archie and Marshall come over to see it and they argue about whether to put it on Carson or not. Then we get a phone call—Carson is canceled. Archie is crushed and Marshall smug.

We're all in some dumb Order of the Water Buffaloes type fraternal society which is actually a front for our illegal health insurance collective. Colombo guest-stars as an insurance investigator, we're all like, wow, Peter Falk.

Lying in bed, but it's someone else's bed?

Something about oranges.

I have shingles. They gave me medicine which is okay, I can't drive is the only thing. People act like I must be dying and I feel bad I'm not in more pain.

Our little corgi dog bites you if you try to take away her toy-which-is-really-a-thing-she-shouldn't-have. I know this is bad from a dog-training perspective but she's so little and it's so easy to just separate her from whatever she has through other means. Then she draws blood when my in-laws try to take a kid's toy from her because they don't know not to. (I have in-laws and a dog in the dream.)

My kids have to get to school, and from school, and to dance lessons at the Y, and I should be driving them but I can't for some reason, and so my in-laws are doing it. (I have in-laws and kids in the dream. Maybe the same in-laws as before, maybe not.)

Pat and Jocasta and me, we're driving someplace in a car. Jo is driving, Pat's shotgun, I'm in the passenger seat. I think it's Jo's car. She pulls over suddenly in the middle of the woods and I get out and they drive away real fast.

Beach?

Chasing a cat?

I can't remember anything, which is weird, usually I can remember something even if it's only a little bit. (This is not a dream about amnesia.)

Can't remember anything, again.

The Houdini seance, shadowy

In a garden at night, in front of a huge fountain. Colored lights hung up everywhere, like Christmas but it's summertime. Jazz music should be playing but isn't.

Mary-Lynn shaved her head and now has a bright green wig, color so intense it hurts my eyes. She's disappointed I'm not more pleased with the new look. I go to URIEL and find Jocasta in a bright blue wig helping Charley get a buzz cut, like she's just joined the army. There's a bright pink wig waiting for Charley. Looking at the wigs makes my eyes water.

Waiting on a street corner for the parade. Nobody else is waiting so maybe I have the wrong day? I ask Roger if the parade is happening and why he isn't waiting and he says it is happening but doesn't interest him.

I'm watching some sitcom rerun, black and white with a laugh track loud enough to drown out what the actors are saying. Then the TV falls apart right down the middle, tearing and fraying like a cheap tablecloth. Both halves are still working, on the floor where they fell, but now they're showing two different shows, or half of two different shows. One is Have Gun, Will Travel and the other is Star Trek.

We're having dinner in a fancy restaurant and the food is weird, raw fish and rice in little roll-ups. Everybody thinks it's weird I'm not familiar with this cuisine.

Looking down from up high, land spread out under me like a map. Roads like glittering spiderwebs, forests dark smudges, lava pits and cathedrals.

Art Appreciation Day, they put me down in front of Da Vinci's Last Supper and won't let me get up until I've had some kind of revelation. I keep miscounting apostles.

Chased by masked Mardi Gras, Carnivale, Harlequin types who pelt me with bean bags

It was dark

Standing with Archie and Marshall behind a one-way mirror watching as those Hare Krishna kids get tortured to death, but I know it's all faked and they're actors, and Archie is also in on it, and Marshall thinks its real or maybe he just pretends

Zeppelins or blimps over the Golden Gate bridge