Dream #521 (April 3, 2014) Student Film and NYC

Here is a dream.


In the first part of the dream, I entered a large bar with my brother Mike.  Bethel College was showing a film there that had been made my several students at Bethel and was funded by the college (it was an interesting venue choice since Bethel doesn't allow their students to go into bars or drink).  There was an open bar, and I grabbed a tea (yes, they served tea) before sitting down in a folding chair facing a projector screen.

The movie started, and I managed to sit through the entire thing.  It was well over an hour long, and it wanted to be hilarious, but it was horribly obvious and boring.  Somehow Bethel had tons of cameos, including Samuel L. Jackson, Adam Sandler, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and more.  Some of these cameos were just stills animated with voices of Bethel students, but others were actually in it somehow.  I was perplexed and angry simultaneously.  There were some occasional special fx (there were a ton of explosions) that were impressive, but I couldn't stand most of the film.  The plot revolved around a game called 'Ambush' (created by Andrew DeSelm) where people had to target each other, eliminating them until there was only one last survivor (it's a bit more complicated than that, but I don't think I need to explain all the rules here).  Basically, there were many death scenes in this film.

When it was finally over, I was happy to leave.

The second part of the dream flowed seamlessly from the first.  I walked out of the bar and was in New York City.  I decided to go on a walk, and walk I did.  It was afternoon when I started, and I walked clear past sunset into the night.  Finally I decided that I should find a place to stay, so I knocked on a random door.  Gwyneth Paltrow answered the door and told me she didn't feel like hosting a guest, though she suggested I try an apartment across the street.  I walked over and found that the door was open.  I walked inside the dark apartment and found it to be empty.  So I wandered around through the kitchen and living room until I entered the bedroom.  There was a bunk bed in there, and I climbed up to the top bunk and wrapped myself up in the dinosaur sheets and blankets on the bed.  There was a Batman pillow case with the face of the Joker on it that I remembered from my childhood (I used to be terrified of that face), so I flipped the pillow over to the Batman-faced side.

Suddenly a light was turned on in the next room.  I cowered under the covers.  I saw the silhouette of a woman standing in the doorway.


Then I awoke.

Dream #520 (April 1, 2014) The Failed Film Shoot

I was at last directing a feature film.

I began the dream on a plane.  I was flying to somewhere in the Middle East to shoot a feature length film with a few friends of mine.  I was with Jon Andrew Castleberry, Dan Jeter (both friends of mine from college), Jon Andrew's wife Emily, TG (an acquaintance of mine), and a few other strangers.  The film was a drama about a Middle Eastern elementary school, and TG was the lead actress.

When we landed, Jon Andrew and Dan helped me haul all the lighting and camera equipment into a bombed out school house.  Though it was a bit eerie, it had a certain beauty to it that I liked very much.  We began to light the first scene on the shot list, in which TG was suppose to walk around the destroyed building trying to find hints of the past that was buried below the rubble.

In the first couple takes, TG had a pretty rough performance, so I brought her into another room and had her sit on the floor.  I instructed her to make up stories about her former students that her character would have had.  She sat and thought for a while, then I asked her to tell me about those students.  She did quite well making them up, and seemed to become the character in the process.  We went back to the scene and she had two excellent takes in a row.

Then we began shooting more similar shots in other areas of the school.  They all went very well.  We ran into a couple issues with lighting one of the rooms with a lot of windows because the sun we setting and changing the look drastically.  We eventually had to call it a day, and everyone was told to return the next morning.

Everyone except for me left the school.  I wanted to get to know it more, so I slept there.

The next morning I awoke and walked to the parking lot and waited for TG and the crew.  The crew all showed up on time, but TG was thirty minutes late.  When she parked her car, I walked up to her and asked her what had taken her so long, and she told me this crazy story about how her hotel had a few gunmen enter and rob the place.  She luckily was unharmed.

I then met with Jon Andrew and Dan outside the school.

All of a sudden, people began to run about in the streets.  Gunfire was heard in the distance, and it was getting closer.  Dan, Jon Andrew and ducked under a concrete structure and watched as a military parade walked down the road nearby.  People began to poke their heads out of there windows, and most were waving guns about.  It was rather scary.  Then, somebody in a 3rd story window spotted the three of us and began shouting at us.  He then fired a couple shots in our direction.  I wasn't sure if I should hide or show myself to be unarmed and not a threat.  My heart was pounding.

Finally I decided to stand up with my hands in the air.

Then I awoke.

Dream #519 (February 27, 2014) Castle Prison

An epic dream.


It was a snowy evening.  I was driving an old Studebaker with three other young men.  We had just finished visiting the museum of art and were trying to find a place to eat.  The roads were pretty bad, and visibility was low so I pulled off to the side of the road to gather my bearings.

As I was looking at a map another car pulled up and parked in front of mine.  A man in a pinstriped suit came out and, with a smooth confidence, persuaded us to follow him across a long bridge over to a castle on an island.

The bridge was a mile long, and the caste was grand.  The man in the pinstriped suit waved us down at the draw bridge and we all got out of the Studebaker there.  Suddenly he pulled out a tommy gun and he was joined by a couple other thugs with guns.  Together they led us into the castle and into a dungeon.

There we sat all night, not quite able to sleep.  We tried to talk about what was going on, but we were all a bit speechless.

In the morning, some older ladies came and instructed us about our chores for the day.  I was given a mop and bucket and I went to clean some of the endless hallways.  The stone was blue and grey, and emitted an overall dismal tone.  There were hollow echoes bouncing slowly off the walls, and it sounded like people crying out in pain.  I tried to determine where they were coming from, but it was impossible.

The dream went on slowly from this point.  I did more chores, day after day.  Eventually I met a few more of the slaves.  From what I gathered, I determined that there must have been about 100 of us enslaved altogether.  I began to realize that if we were to come together, we could possibly overthrow our captors and escape the castle.

I began to organize each prisoner into different groups with different purposes.  Some kept track of all supplies going in and out of the castle, and others had to intercept those packages and steal a few supplies here and there.  Others studied the layout of the castle, searching for the best ways to escape.  After several weeks of work, everything was coming together and a massive escape was imminent.

The evening before the great escape, I had lunch with a young woman who had started as a slave but worked her way up to becoming an actual employee.  I had fallen for her and revealed my plan of escape to her and welcome her to join in.  She told me that she enjoyed her life in the castle too much to leave.  I tried to tell her that she was still a slave there, no matter what they called it, but she was stubborn.  The meal ended with her boyfriend (who was a terribly cruel slave master) coming in and making her leave me.  He punched me in the gut before dragging her away from me.

I was depressed, but still determined to escape.  The next morning, everything went according to plan.  Several people, including me, snuck into the lift that lowered down into the basement of the castle.  From there we crawled through a tunnel we created to a river that ran underneath the castle.  We climbed out of the river at the entrance of the castle and forced it open, allowing the other hundred of slaves to leave.

We marched toward the bridge with determination.  Suddenly spotlights were shining on us and a loudspeaker informed us that we would be shot if we left.  Everyone froze, except for me.  I kept walking.  The loudspeaker continued to threaten me, but I kept on marching.  I arched the bridge.  I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned around and saw the young women who had refused to leave.  She begged me not to go.  I tried to get her to join me again, but she wouldn't.  Finally, I turned and started walking again, shouting for the rest of the prisoners to follow me.  They did.

Suddenly the bridge began to collapse as I walked onto it.  The prisoners jumped into the great lake and started swimming to the other side.  I was about to jump in, but I was hit suddenly by a bullet in the back.  I fell into the water.


Then I awoke.

Dream #518 (February 12, 2014) - The Tricycle

Ha!


I dreamt that my brother Mike, Kevin and I were living at my grandpa's house in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  I had just returned from a shoot in the bitter cold out in Washington state (like in real life), but Fort Wayne was warm and sunny enough for me to wear shorts and a t-shirt.  I hopped out of my car (a blue Honda Civic for some reason; I've never owned that kind of car) and greeted Mike and Kevin.

It was lunch time, so we began preparing a meal together.  In the dream we were all quite talented: Kevin juggled tomatoes before chopping them up, I blew lettuce into the air before slicing it with one knife in each hand, and Mike kicked whole carrots into the air and quickly chopped them up.  Everything we cut up magically landed in a great bowl in the middle of the kitchen and thus a salad was formed.

We then made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for each other (I made Mike's, Mike made Kevin's, Kevin made mine) and sat down and ate a good meal.  After lunch I hit myself in the head with the palm of my hand as I realized Mike and I were supposed to pick up a rented camera from Indianapolis (over 2 hours south of Fort Wayne).  I began getting ready to leave.  As Mike and I walked to the car, he told me that he didn't want to drive on such a nice day.  Instead, he wanted to ride a bike (yes, just one bike for the two of us) down to Indy.

I laughed at the idea, but he insisted, so I put my things in a plastic bag and walked over behind the house where he kept his bike.  As it turns out, his bike was actually a tricycle with a large basket in the front.  I crawled into the basket and Mike began to pedal.

We went quite a ways, but then it dawned on both of us that it would take us days to bike as far as we were wanting to go at such a slow pace, so we turned back around.

Finally, we got into my car, which had transformed to a Buick LeSabre (the car I actually own) and we started driving.


Then I awoke.

Dream #517 (January 31, 2014)

This was fun.


I dreamt that I was working at the National Youth Worker's Convention in some weird city in Florida.  Emily De Araujo, Seth Bartlette, Andrew DeSelm, and Aaron Satterfield (who all worked at the convention in real life) were there with me.  Though we had a rather small set, we were shooting interviews in an enormous gymnasium that we had all to ourselves.

After a couple interviews Emily told me to run some errands, so I took a 15-passenger van and went into town.  For some reason I stopped at every bus stop and picked up passengers (I was only supposed to go to Lowe's to grab some screws and such).  Finally, I had a van-full.  It was only then that I realized I knew every passenger.  Most were guys from the Oregon-Davis High School basketball team I played with years ago, and one was a barista I barely know.

The dudes were having a jolly old time, singing, shouting, and dancing around (yes, dancing, even inside a van).  Finally Shaun Johnston made me stop so he could drive.  I gave into his request and soon enough we were barreling down the road into a weird subdivision.  Brandon Johnston (Shaun's brother) declared that we should all remove our shirts, which we did (except for the barista; she had somehow disappeared, though she reappears later).  I took it a step further and removed my pants so that I was down to my turtle boxers.  I shouted with excitement, then jumped from the car.  Shaun slammed on the breaks and everyone else got out and followed me as I sprinted about in random directions.

Finally, we all ended up on the doorstep of a house that looked identical to all the other houses around it.  I knocked on the door as I started clothing myself.  As soon as I was fully dressed, an elderly woman opened the door and handed me a box of donuts and a bag of hardware (the stuff I was supposed to pick up from Lowe's).  I thanked her and headed back to the van.  The basketball dudes thanked me for the ride and continued to run around as I started pulling out.

Then I heard a knock on the passenger door, so I stopped.  There was the barista again.  She asked if she could get a ride back to the convention, and I let her in.  We talked about Washington on our return journey.

Upon reentering the gymnasium, I began to tell Emily De about my experiences.


Then I awoke, or so I thought.


I walked out of the Prairie Camp cabin in which I had been sleeping and found that it was the middle of the night still.  I looked about and saw about 100 elementary school kids walking toward me, lead by my brother Mike.  I ran up to Mike and asked what was going on.  He told me we were getting ready to play capture the flag, which excited me.  Then he showed me a huge bag of Tootsie Rolls he was hiding underneath his coat.  He started counting down from 100.  I turned around and talked to some of the students about their camp experience and how much fun they were having.  Finally Mike reached 0 and he turned to the campers and threw all the candy in the air.  The kids went wild for it, and once they had some, they darted off into the woods.

Then more kids came and Mike threw out another bag of candy, this time they were Sprees.


Then I awoke, for real this time.

Dream #516 (January 20, 2014)

Well, then.

I dreamt that I was working in the vast parking lot of a supermarket.  I was pushing carts, picking up trash, wearing a shiny vest, shoveling snow, and feeding sea gulls.  I went though these tasks for quite some time until a black car with tinted windows rolled up beside me.  The back door on the driver's side opened up so, not knowing any other option, I entered the car.

There Gary Oldman, who in my dream was playing an FBI officer, told me some long story about a drug cartel and people smuggling cocaine inside of school buses.  I asked what it had to do with me and Gary told me that he wanted me to offer my vehicle washing services to the bus drivers, who were supposedly going to park in the supermarket parking lot for a bit of a break.  I was then supposed to find a way to snag some evidence while washing the vehicles so that the FBI could proceed with their raid of the buses.

I accepted to do the bus washing, and I left the black car and began getting the power washer prepared.  Sure enough, the buses rolled in just a few minutes later.  I walked up to the lead bus and talked to a rather large gentleman, who told me he would very much like my assistance because the buses were extra filthy (indeed they were, for there were layers of dirt caked onto all sides of every bus).

I proceeded to blast soapy water on to the first bus.  I was surprised at the great joy I had cleaning the buses.  It was so great that I forgot that I had another more important task to do.  Well, I didn't forget; I just didn't care anymore because cleaning was so much fun.

The head bus driver, after I'd made my way to the third of five buses, talked to me and told me how impressed he was with my washing ability.  He began asking me why I wanted to wash the buses and I told him that the FBI instructed me to do so.  He laughed and patted me on the back as I continued to cleanse the filth.  Then he offered me a very well paying job with the mafia out of gratitude for my honesty, but I really didn't care.  I just wanted to clean the buses.

Then Gary Oldman, dressed as a shopper, snuck his way over to me and asked me what I was doing and that he'd pay me a large sum of money to follow through with the evidence snatching.  I told him that I just wanted to clean!  Frustrated, he left.  The mafia guy again came up to me and commended me on how I'd turned away Gary and offered me even more money to join the mafia, but again I refused.

I just wanted to clean buses.

Then I awoke.

Dream #515 (January 15, 2014)

I seem to be getting more and more sporadic with these dream blogs.  Oh, well.


I was in an old Japanese temple, searching for a sacred scroll.  The place was made up mostly of gray and pale blue linens, ad the windows were arranged to allow natural light to create several diffused gradients of light to shadow areas.  I was wearing my hair in a bun, and I had a light blue robe wrapped about me.  I thought I was the only person there, but I found a priest inside one of the rooms.  When he saw me enter, he pulled out a beautiful, yet simple blade and presented it to me.  I accepted.

Then he opened up a barely saturated red chest and lifted from it the sacred scroll.  I bowed, then knelt before him as he handed the scroll over to me.

I left the temple and found myself in a thick woods bright green trees with red trunks.  I wandered about for quite some time until I finally came upon an American city.  I took a deep breath and descended down a great hill in order to enter it.  The streets were full of filthy people who all paid no attention to me.


I eventually awoke.