Dream #541 (September 22, 2015) Feature Film at Weird Camp

Typically odd.

I dreamt that I was visiting what in my dream was called Prairie Camp, though it didn't at all resemble the Prairie Camp with which I am familiar in real life.  David Badertscher was the caretaker there, and he gave me a tour of the camp upon my arrival.

As usual, the dream took place during a nighttime twilight.  There were tons of densely packed trees with a few cabins seemingly arbitrarily built here and there.  There were tons of huge pond-sized puddles from some bizarre acid rain that had recently occurred.  There were a few tents and campers set up, but none of them seemed occupied.  There was, however, a huge community playground where hundreds of people were gathered.

David showed me the cabin I was to stay in.  It was weirdly long and narrow, musty and dusty, damp and dark.  The carpet was black and the wood beams were painted red.  He left me there alone as I started to make my bed (which was a bunkbed, and I chose the top bunk - see Dream #538 in which I also had a bunkbed).  I was utterly freaked out by a pair of Scooby-Doo-sized insects that had chewed through the screen door and were making their way toward me.  They were brick red and brown, had praying-mantis-like claws and dozens of legs.  They had no visible eyes on their heads, and they had pincers in front of their jagged-toothed-mouths.  In other words, they were horrifying.

I grabbed my pillow and shooed them outside, which was much easier than I had anticipated, to my relief.  I watched out of the doorway as they made their way back into one of the acid rain puddles and disappeared.

I was soon met by a film director and his producer.  They were apparently shooting a feature film at Prairie Camp, and wanted to set up a shot in my cabin.  They asked my permission, and I agreed.

I watched as they and their crew set up the lighting and started blocking the scene.  The lead actress, a few minutes into shooting, had a temper tantrum (brought on by absolutely nothing) and quit.  The director desperately needed somebody to take her place.  He walked outside and found my friend Carrie going for a walk and asked her if she would act.  She told him that she wasn't very good, but agreed to do it anyway.

I asked Carrie if I could stick around and watch her perform, and she said 'yes.'  To everyone's surprise, she was absolutely fantastic and gave an incredible performance.  She acted out this weird and dark scene during which she poured black oil all over her head and walked about the cabin in a manic state, occasionally improvising and interacting with her environment.  In the dream I never understood the context of the scene or the premise of the movie.

The character she was playing originally had just a small roll in the film, but the director liked Carrie so much that he decided to add more scenes with her.  I thought that was a bit odd, but still pretty cool that she had that opportunity.  I thought it would be cool if I could work on the film as well, so I asked the producer if they needed anyone else on the crew.  He told me they already had too many amateurs.  Ouch.

After everyone left, Carrie stuck around for a bit and I asked her how she liked acting.  She said it was "awesome to be the best at something."  It seemed to be getting to her head a bit, and she was treating me like I was some acquaintance from a former life.  I couldn't really stand it, so I left.

I met up with my brother Mike and Kody Heffelfinger at the playground.  Most of the hundreds of other people there were in a nearby field watching an extravagant fireworks show, though there were a few kids remaining playing on the jungle gym.  I joined the kids and entered their imaginary game; we pretended that we were knights fighting evil invisible creatures with equally invisible swords.  Mike and Kody were making fun of me, saying that adults can't play on the playground with kids who are also strangers.  They were probably right, but I was having a ton of fun.

All of this was disrupted by the film crew coming and taking over the playground for their next series of shots.  Carrie was there and had so much makeup and prosthetics on that I could barely recognize her (she almost looked like Shirley Temple, strangely enough).  In this scene, she had to swallow some purple potion out of a glass bottle and pretend that she was transforming into a dragon.

It was kind of fun to watch, but I didn't want to be entertained by people who had insulted me, so I left.

I found a crazy middle-aged woman preaching to a group of adults from various walks of life.  She had a built-in megaphone in her face (it was terribly disturbing) and she kept warning everyone of the sins of America.  I noticed that she had a human heart in her hand, and she was squeezing it like a stress ball as she yelled.

Then I awoke.

Dream #540 (September 21, 2015) Basketball Reunion, Discussion

Always with the basketball dreams.


I dreamt that the old high school basketball team form Oregon-Davis High School (state champs!) (in 1A ball) reunited a year after high school graduation.  We found out that we were all still eligible to play for another year because the rules had changed.  Even though this technically would've taken place in 2008, all of the players, including myself, were who we are presently (September, 2015).

We got together in a dimly lit room that had its floor, walls, and ceiling colored in a dull grey carpet.  Even the furniture was carpeted.  Some of the guys were playing some ATV Playstation game as we were chatting about various things.  Some of the guys were joking around with Austin about the Green Bay Packers or something.  Justin was sitting by himself in a corner, looking forlorn.  I went over to talk to him and Nathan joined me.  He talked a bit about selling cars and marriage, etc.  I'm not sure why he looked sad.  Things seemed to be going great for him.

At last Coach walked in with his assistant Ryan.  Coach pulled out a black binder and asked us if we remembered the plays.  We laughed and shook our heads.  He lead us all out to the parking lot which had a full-sized wooden court in the middle of it and we started running through some stuff.  All of us were surprised that nobody had forgotten a single play.  Also, Coach was surprised that I had become a decent ball player somehow.

We took a short bus to our first game at some small school.  We all listened to our own music on the way.

Upon arrival, we went into the school's swimming pool, which had been emptied, and changed into our flashy red uniforms.  We all wanted to be more excited than we were to be playing together again.

We walked onto the court and began warming up, doing various layup and shooting drills.  My warmup suit smelled like dill pickles.  The court was really short.  The three-point lines extended almost all the way to half court.  We were playing some small school, and they were supposed to be terrible, so I was sure to get some playing time.

From the get-go, we were dominating the other team.  I sat the bench and cheered my teammates on throughout the first quarter.  Brandon and Adam both had a couple sweet dunks.


Then I transferred to a different dream.


I was in a large circle of bearded men with long hair.  David Dodd Lee (DDL) was leading a discussion group about poetry and for some reason we were all discussing centaurs.  I asked DDL how often that mythical creature inspired his poetry, and he said, "All the time!"


Then I awoke.

Dream #539 (September 20, 2015) Bus Trip to OCB

A mere dream.

I began the dream in Redeemer Missionary Church, though it was far larger than it is in real life.  The sanctuary had a stage in the center of it with rows of pews forming an octagon around it.  The basement of the church resembled the musicians' practice rooms at Bethel College.  I was walking in and out of the rooms as various cellists, violinists, and violists auditioned to play on my next album.  I was struggling to find anybody who could fulfill my vision, so I rejected everyone.

I walked into the sanctuary where a sort of prayer service was being held.  A young woman was there praying aloud for all to hear.  She was thanking God for my existence and for all the great times she had with me.  I found this strange and a bit comical because I hardly even knew this woman and didn't really have any desire to know her more.  I walked past a few more rows and sat down by Reed and Jess Lyons.  I leaned over and told them about the prayer I just heard and how absurd it ways.  Jess began to laugh and for some reason the breath of this laugh hit me and caused a stinging sensation in my whole face.  it also smelled like a harshly strong mint.  I quickly leaned back and began to massage my face, trying to relieve the pain.

After I listened to Pastor Jason speak for a bit, my mom and brother Matt came up to me and said it was time to go.

We walked out to the parking lot (which, in the dream, was huge and surrounded only by cropless fields) and stood before a large white bus.  My mom told me to board it.  She and Matt both rode in some fancy blue SUV in front of the bus.

The other bus passengers were all young adults with whom I was not familiar.  I sat in the only empty seat and began playing my harmonica to pass the time.

An ambiguous amount of time passed.  I turned and looked out of the rear window of the bus and saw my dad's car following behind us.  I got out of my seat and walked to the back of the bus to get a better look.  He was waving his arms at me, seemingly trying to get the bus to pull over.

I ran up to the driver and instructed him to let me out, which she did.  As soon as I got out, my dad zoomed right passed me and the bus took off, leaving me there alone.

The traffic on this highway was insane, both because there were many cars and because the cars were traveling at incomprehensible speeds.  I needed to cross to the other side of the highway to reach my dad, who had done a U-turn and pulled off over there.  Several times I took a step out and had to leap back to safety.  After a burst of courage, I made it to the median, but then looked on in horror as a car, followed by a semi, were both accelerating toward me in the median.  I took a wild dash toward the other side of the road and narrowly avoided getting hit.

When I finally reached my dad's car, he was nowhere to be found.  However, the keys were still in the vehicle, so I decided to take it to where I needed to go (see Dream #537 in which I found and drove off in my brother Mike's car without him being there; what's going on here?).

The place I needed to go was apparently Old Country Buffet.  This particular OCB had several arcade games inside, though it still had the aesthetic style of any old OCB.  It was kind of interesting, as if the visitors to the restaurant had all brought their own arcade game and placed it wherever they wanted.

I sat down by Mom and Matt and told them of my near-death experience on the highway.  Mom gave me a couple quarters to try my hand at the claw machine.  I was a bit embarrassed by this at first, pretending to deny her offer, but deep down I really did want to play and didn't have any change on me, so I took it from her and walked over to the game, followed by Matt.

Then I awoke.

Dream #538 (September 19, 2015) Mega Church Pastor Slam

Here we go.


I dreamt that I was living with Kyle and Kody Heffelfinger in a house just a bit larger than the one they have in real life in a subdivision just a bit more vast than real life.  The atmosphere was an eternal twilight no matter what time of day it was supposed to be.

At the start of the dream, it was Saturday night and I was packing my things because I was going to move into this large dormitory that also housed a huge mega church.  Kody told me he wanted to play in the community Start Wars event before I left, so we went and got our lightsabers and ran out into the street.  Many other subdivision dwellers were out on the street with their lightsabers, pretending to have an epic battle.  Some were throwing Nerf debris acting as if they had the Force.  Kody and I went on a rampage, destroying any other lightsaber wielder in our path.

After about an hour of this, Kyle drove through the street that was supposed to be blocked off and told me and Kody that we needed to go home so we could eat dinner (pizza).  We obeyed.

I went to sleep after dinner and the next morning took my things to the dormitory/church.  I wandered about looking for a room that suited me.  Finally, on the second highest floor, I found this room with an extremely high ceiling and an unnecessarily huge bunkbed.  It was perfect.  I asked the leader of the establishment, who happened to be my college friend Ashley Miller, if I could have the room, and she said it was certainly available.  I set my bags down and crawled into the bed to take a little nap.

Soon after that church began, so I went down into the sanctuary.  It was dark and seemed to be the size of a stadium.  When the pastor took the stage, I recognized him (not from real life but from the dream world) to be a terrible televangelist who seemed to be all about money and fancy possessions.  He owned several nice cars, a huge house, a helicopter, a jet, etc.  He preached some bogus sermon about how it is God's will that we have plenty.

I couldn't stand it.  After the sermon, I went up to Ashley's office and asked her how she could put up with such garbage.  Then the preacher himself walked in.  I believe his name was Chris.  He was wearing a pin stripped suit and had gelled black hair.  He then began starting to laugh at my complaints and proceeded to mock me.  Then I became furious and started shouting at him, accusing him of being a "false prophet" and "disturbingly and filthily greedy" and more.  I was yelling at a volume that I have never yelled at in my life. The room became quiet when I finished.  Then Chris asked, "This man is living here?" as he walked out of the room arrogantly.

I turned to Ashley for her support, but she looked disappointed in me.  Had I been too harsh?

I went back to my room only to find that Chris had leased it to a young college-aged gal.  I was trying to get my things, but she had a ton of friends and family in her room for a "house-warming party" so it was difficult to get around.  I grabbed only my backpack and found a room on a lower floor.

This room was terribly tiny and I had to share it with six other people.  It smelled like sardines had been sitting inside of a catfish smothered in year-old gravy.  I began working on something on my laptop computer, but then I decided that I wanted to write a note to Chris apologizing for my harsh tone, but still showing concern for his stance on wealth.  However, I needed paper, so I went to my old room to try to find my other bag which contained my notebook.

I finally made my way through the crowd and grabbed my duffel bag.  I pulled out my notebook and pen and began writing the letter right there amidst the chaos.  Another church service was soon about to start, and I discovered that the room I was in also doubled as a greeting room for members of the church, so writing proved to be difficult.  Chris was actually standing just a few feet from me, making comments about me to some of the others there.  Somebody bumped me, causing my papers to fly out of my notebook.  I started gathering them when Chris yelled at me, accusing of taking things that weren't mine.  "This homeless-looking guy is trying to steal from you people!"

He grabbed a piece of paper that had a poem of mine written on it and tried to give it to some woman as if it were hers and not mine.  I tried taking it back, but he kept pulling it away from me like I was a cat and the paper was a string.  The woman then took the poem and handed it back to me.  Finally a supporter!

I jumped ahead in time to some outdoor activity involving candles and balancing and teamwork.  Chris was leading the activity, then, noticing that I was doing well, "accidentally" caused me to fall and break my candle stick.  I was fed up with him, so I walked away proclaiming, "I'm done!"  Chris proceeded to mock me and get all the other guys partaking in the activity to also make fun of me for being a quitter.  I still wanted to write him that note, but he was making it so much harder for me to do.


Then I awoke.

Dream #537 (September 18, 2015) Country Home Visit

A pleasant dream.


I was walking along the side of a country road in Michigan that ran through beautiful green fields with no cars or homes in sight.  After what felt like an hour of walking, I found my brother Mike's white Ford Tempo parked alongside one of the fields.  I happened to have the keys in my pocket, so I started it up and drove down the road.

After a while a gold car started approaching me from behind.  It accelerated until finally it slammed into the Tempo, causing me to spin off the road and wreck the car.  I surprisingly not in the least bit upset and I went over to talk to the teenage male who had caused the wreck.  He had a blonde bowl cut and thick-rimmed glasses and loved his iPhone.

I soon found out that he was really interested in film, so we chatted about that for a while.  We both had nowhere to go because our cars were undrivable.  To make this more complicated, there was no cellphone reception, so we just walked together for a bit.

Finally a blue car drove by and we flagged it down.  It turned out to be Devon, the father of some friends of mine and he invited the two of us to come and stay at his house with his family.  We both accepted, but shortly after that, the teen's girlfriend pulled up and offered him a ride.  He went with her, but said they would come and visit in a couple hours or so.

I went with Devon and chatted about communal living and how it could be implemented into American culture.  When we arrived at his home, all of his kids were in his living room playing some sort of seemingly hilarious party game.  We both joined in and had a wonderfully fun time, in spite of my lack of understanding of the game being played, if it even was a game.

After that, we all decided that we wanted to eat tacos, so we relocated to the kitchen and began prepping the meal.  I was in charge of creating the tortilla shells from scratch.  I'm not really sure how I was doing it successfully and so quickly, but I was pretty darn skilled at my task.  It was a bit like a cartoon, for we were all tossing ingredients and dishes to each other and never dropping them as we all sang a cheerful tune in harmony and in unison.

When the meal was nearly finished, the doorbell rang.  For some reason I answered it and found the teenage boy with his girlfriend there.  He immediately pulled out his phone and showed me a film that he had shot and edited since he last saw me.  I prepared myself to act amused, but to my surprise it was actually incredible.  I was blown away by the production value and the creativity and the speed at which it was created.  It was some short film about a boy who drove a mini taxi around and created changes in weather by punching floating boxes (Super Mario style) around town.  He then suggested that we create something together someday soon, and I wholeheartedly agreed.  He seemed like a fun guy to work with.

I then returned to tortilla shell creating, and I finished up the last few that needed to be made.  The kitchen we worked in was rather small, but it somehow comfortably fit all of us (there were 10 of us in there). There was a dusty window that allowed some very diffused light into the room, which gave everything a nice soft glow.

We all gathered around the table and said a prayer, then began a wonderfully musical feast.  I was seated next to a friend of mine.  I looked at her and she patted me on the head, shrugged, then walked away from the table.  I didn't know what that meant.  I watched her as she went and sat on the living room floor alone, staring at the ground.

After a few moments of contemplation, I also left the table and sat near her, asking her if everything was alright.  She looked up and smiled at me, then patted me on the head again, then began skipping around the room.  I was both amused and confused.

I then thought about how insanely delicious those tacos were.


Then I awoke.

Dream #536 (September 17, 2015) Matisyahu Film, Sweatpants Basketball, and Losing Sanity

This dream had three very different parts.  The last was quite haunting.


In the first dream, I was directing a feature film.  The world I worked in was perpetually night which at least made for consistent lighting.  I was setting up a shot in a semi-demolished building and for some reason I was smoking a cigarette (maybe that's what feature film directors do).

I was discussing the upcoming shot with my assistant director Andrew DeSelm and my Director of Photography Dan McCullum.  I had a crane that was going to drop down into the building and do an overhead track of Matis as he climbed over the debris.  Andrew was working with the set decorator to put trash/large debris in all the right places.  I tried to start blocking out the scene with Matis, but he was busy smoking a certain substance, so I had trouble getting his attention.

I decided to go outside to talk with my gaffer, Dan Jeter, about the exterior lighting setup.  We had dozens of HMI's blasting into the building at various angles, casting interesting shadows over the scene.  Dan updated me on how much time he needed to finish, and I returned to talk to Matis.

After blocking the scene, we shot it, and got the complex shot perfect on the third take.  That was the last shot at that location, so everyone began to pack up, and I rode off with Matis to the next set, which was a home interior.  Matis and I discussed the look of the house as I gave him a tour.  There were mostly pastel colors throughout the home, with occasional dashes of a saturated green.


Then I switched to a different dream.


I was standing on the sidelines of the Oregon-Davis Elementary gymnasium with my brother Matt.  Our team was playing in the championship game and our coach, a random guy from the Dominican Republic, refused to putt Matt and me in the game.

I really wanted to play, and I actually thought I could do better than the people in the game, but the coach was too distracted to hear me out.  He really wasn't even paying any attention to the game but instead playing some brightly colored child's game on his iPad (or similar tablet) with the sound on.

Finally in the 4th quarter, when we were down by 10, I convinced him to let my brother and me play. For some reason every player on the court, including me, was wearing thick red sweatpants with other sweatpants tucked inside of both legs so that everyone's legs looked really chunky-fluffy.  I tried to figure out why this was the case.  Maybe we were supporting some sort of disease research?

Anyway, Matt and I started out our time on the court very well.  Right away we had a double-team that led to a forced turnover and a basket for our team.  We helped tie the game up with a couple minutes left to go.


Then I switched to yet another dream.


In this particular dream, my name was Matt, and another version of me who was named Joe was also in the dream.  Even though I was my own older brother, I didn't resemble my older brother in real life in any way.

I was on the brink of insanity in this dream.  I knew I was going crazy, but I could stop it from getting worse.  In the start of the dream, I was walking around my parents' living room breaking various porcelain and glass decorations and rubbing my fingers over the broken edges, causing my fingers to cut and bleed in various spots.

Then I jumped ahead in time and I was running around outside wearing only a blue cape.

Then I found myself lying on the bathroom floor and my mom and dad were trying to get me to respond.  I wanted to respond, but I couldn't.  I had just ingested a large amount of medicine and mouthwash.

I jumped even further into the future and I had my own apartment.  I had rigged up a machine to pump the blood out of my body into a large plastic bag.  I started screaming about how I needed to remove all the impurities from my system as my sister (who doesn't exist in real life) tried to stop me.  I overpowered her and threw her across the room, causing her to blackout.  Then I hooked myself up to the machine and began pumping out large amounts of blood, all the while shouting about how I was casting out all impurities.

Eventually I began to lose consciousness.  My plastic bag, which held several gallons of blood, was nearly full.  I kept fading in and out of consciousness.  Finally my mom, dad, and brother rushed in and pulled me off the the machine, causing blood to pour all over the ground.  My brother figured out a way to reverse the blood flow and send it back into my body, which he began to do.  My vision turned mostly white and my thoughts became so fuzzy.  My consciousness left my body and I was able to look from a higher perspective at my family trying to save my life.

I started to wake up in real life, but I stayed in the dream for a bit longer.  I was asking myself why I had to dream such a disturbing/disgusting dream, and I think I might have nearly passed out in real life from the amount of blood that I thought I'd lost, which was all over that kitchen floor and all over my shaking body.

I finally began to pull away from the dream and into a weird half-conscious state.  I almost felt as if I were looking down on myself lying in my bed in real life.


Then at last I awoke.

Dream #535 (August 1, 2015) Tim Johnson, Matisyahu in Kalamazoo

This doesn't at all reflect my view of Matisyahu.


I started out the dream at Koontz Lake Missionary church.  Tim Johnson was running some huge even there and I was supposed to direct the camera operators for him during it.  I had finished setting up my station and introducing myself to the ops when I realized I was really hungry.  I went out to the parking lot with Tim and asked if I could go grab dinner before the event started.  Tim hesitated then said, "You have an hour."

I got in my car and, for some reason, headed to Kalamazoo, which is over 100 miles away.  Tim Johnson was probably none too pleased when he realized I wouldn't make it back it time, but I never made it back at all so I don't know what his reaction was.

I went to Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo and ordered a soy burger.  Then I saw that Matisyahu and his assistant David were also there.  They were dining in a private room and they let me in to dine with them.

Suddenly Matisyahu began singing in some weird language, and it seemed as if he no longer had control of his own body.  This went on for a while until Jeremy Robinson, a friend of mine from Oregon-Davis High School, burst in and, after quickly assessing the situation, proceeded to cast a demon out of Matis.  It was rather crazy.  Matis thanked Jeremy and begin praising God.  Jeremy turned to me and said, "You could've done that, but you were just standing there."

Then Jeremy left and I followed him.  We joined some huge parade of people marching down a winding sidewalk leading out of Kalamazoo.  There were hundreds of men, women, and children, and they were carrying enough stuff to last them a few days.  The atmosphere was a deep and saturated blue, and the houses that I could see off in the distance displayed beautiful orange lights.


Then I awoke.