Dream #544 (February 5, 2016) Neil's In-Laws

Kind of boring.


I dreamt that I was visiting the in-laws of my friend Neil (he and his wife Hannah were also present).  However, even then I knew they were his in-laws in my dream, they were actually his real parents from real life, so that was kind of weird.  They were very hospitable and served a lot of delicious egg-based foods while I stayed with them.  Nearly 100% of the time my dreams take place during some form of twilight, but this dream was in constant blue-sky daytime.  Neil's in-parents lived in a large fancy lake house and had several servants who were always busy.

I spent much of the dream going through Neil and Hannah's childhood belongings.  They were trying to figure out which things they wanted to keep and which they wanted to throw out.  There was an entire bedroom in the giant bakehouse (basically a mansion) stacked from floor to ceiling with various papers, drawings, photos, and news clippings that they had saved over the years.  Hannah kept showing me things Neil had written from his middle school newspaper, and they all seemed to be worth the read.  We discussed how it was simultaneously fun and sad to go through the old memories.

After hours of this, I went upstairs with Neil and Hannah's sister Carrie to go make sandwiches for everyone.  We were also joined by a golden retriever.  I remember packing all of the sandwiches into a bright neon green and blue lunch bag that Neil and Hannah were going to take back with them to Montana (we were all in Illinois for some reason).  Neil and I then went to build a transparent puzzle (which I had never heard of before and might seriously consider inventing).  Suddenly Hannah ran up from the basement carrying some portable holograph player and showed a video that had been made by one of her ancestors.  The old, eccentric man in the holograph said he hid a special note in an old lunch pale.  I remembered seeing the lunch pale earlier that day and asked Neil's mother-in-law (actual mom) if she knew where it was and she panicked because she had just thrown it into the lake in the backyard.

I immediately jumped up, ran out of the house, scrambled down the embanked backyard, and dove into the lake.  I was underwater for a scary amount of time, and I could hear muddy screams as I resurfaced with the lunch pale.  They yells of concern turned to cheers as I came out of the lake.  I also pulled an old rocking chair up with me.  The family took out the letter and read it together.  They all cried, but I was unable to participate because they all read it silently and there wasn't space for me to get a peak.  So I waited patiently in the rocking chair I had discovered.


I began walking away after awhile.  I was alone.  The dog followed me for a bit, but I told him to go back to his family.  I was soon again in twilight.  Everything was dust and sand and fog.  Out of nowhere I stumbled upon a racetrack and a lone sprinter was sprinting lap after lap after lap around it.  There was an enormous tire in the track, larger than any I had ever seen, and the runner would climb through its center each time he encountered it.

I sat in the dust at the edge of the track near the tire and watched the runner for what seemed like an hour.  He never grew tired.  He was wearing a white jersey with a single red diagonal stripe across the front and white shorts.  He was also carrying a black baton.


Then I awoke.

Dream #543 (February 4, 2016) The Future and Teleportation

The return of the dream blog (for now).


I dreamt that I was living in a small community at some point in the future.  The couple dozen of us lived in a large spaceship that had crash-landed by Navy Pier in Chicago.  Though in my dream Navy Pier was surrounded by suburbs.  The community had built an electric fence around Navy Pier to keep out any unwanted creatures and people (though there were not many people in those days).  I was a bit of a rebel and liked to wander about the suburbs from time to time, exploring the vacant homes and contemplating their collective emptiness.  When I would try to return to the pier community of peers, they would always give me a hard time and threaten to not let me back in the next time, but they always let me back in.

However, on this particular occasion, a sudden violent storm hit Chicago.  I was forced to take refuge in one of the homes so as not to get blown away.  The lights no longer worked in these houses anyway, so I was prepared with a flashlight.  I took shelter in the basement, where I found an old gas-powered Mole Transporter.  These things used lawnmower engines for power and were capable of opening up holes in time-space allowing transport to other Moles.  Moles were very expensive in their day, though there weren't too uncommon.  The pier community had one sitting in the center of the outdoor meeting area near the lake.  I urgently needed to return to the community because we had at last fixed the spaceship and were going to actually try to fly it to find other humans who had abandoned Earth.

I started punching in the numbers of my destination, then pulled the lawnmower engine to start up the Mole.  I hoped that someone in the community was near the Mole there so that they could power it up (they would see an incoming transport and start the engine; otherwise I wouldn't transport anywhere and instead just get a really bad headache, like I had just run into a brick wall).  I made several transport attempts, but to no avail.  After trying about 5 times (my head was killing me), I tried one last time.  Luckily, one brave soul had ran out from the storm shelter to retrieve something and saw the incoming transport.  He started up and engine and greeted me as I entered.

We both ran into the spaceship (which look like a classic UFO, but was crazy huge).  The interior weirdly resembled the church I grew up going to in Koontz Lake, IN, though all the walls were more rounded to account for the shape of the spaceship.  Every person of the pier community was at a different station, doing what needed to be done in order for flight to occur.  My station was a double station: cycling/gunman.  I would ride an exercise bike that was hooked up to a bunch of old arcade games (somehow used as a power converter), and I would supply energy to the whole ship (I had plenty of Gatorade to keep me going - a product placement in my dream).  I also had the controls to some of the weapons of the ship near me just in case we encountered meteors or other flying enemies in our path.

I grabbed a towel and some G-rade and hopped on the bike.  Then a young man came running up to me and said that we had an incoming transport on the Mole (we had moved it inside).  We didn't know who or what would be coming to us and couldn't decide if we should accept it.  We called for the rest of the community to come down so we could make a decision together.


Then I awoke.

Dream #542 (September 26, 2015) Rich Calvin, Bro Mike adventure

So bizarre.


I dreamt that I was visiting Calvin Whetstone.  In the dream he lived with his parents in a huge and fancy house on a vast property of painting-like grassy pastures and woods.  There were white fences running all around and within the property, and their arrangement didn't make much sense to me.  They had dozens of old expensive cars and pure bred dogs.

For some reason I was spending the night with Calvin in his bedroom.  He slept on a mattress on the floor and I just had a sleeping bag.  There was a divider between us and I had a CRT TV on my half of the room.  I turned it on and played the VHS that was in the built-in VHS player and watched a claymation Calvin discuss a song from his newly released worship album (the album a thing from reality).  I was amazed at how excellent the claymation was, and a bit jealous that Calvin could create something so fantastic with no previous experience.  However, the stop-motion video was followed by a terribly shot 90s style punk-band music video, though perhaps it was intentionally created to look bad.

I asked Calvin how he got into stop-motion, but the question wasn't answered.  Calvin's mom walked into the bedroom to check in on us and see if we needed anything.  She was wearing a turquoise skirt, turquoise high-heels, and no shirt or top whatsoever.  I don't know what Calvin's mom looks like in real life, but this woman was tall and had long blonde hair and a chest like mine (aka, the chest of a 12-year-old boy).  It was so strange, though she didn't seem to think it was a big deal at all.  After she left the room (which took longer than Calvin and I wished), Calvin expressed his painful embarrassment at his mother's behavior, but in the dream I didn't care at all and said that if men can go topless without women caring, then women should be able to go topless without men caring (how wonderfully feminist of my subconscious self).

Anyway, I went to sleep.

When I awoke, the property had become a war zone.  Some invaders from a nonexistent country had taken over the Whetstone estate and were using it as a military base.  A few gunmen burst into the bedroom and kidnapped Calvin.  Fortunately for me they didn't check behind the divider.  I looked out the window as soon as they left so that I could see the chaos.  I saw that not too far off was a huge crater with a tunnel from which large tank-like vehicles were emerging and disappearing into.

I snuck out of the house and ventured into the tunnel, ducking behind rocks and dirt mounds as tankish vehicles passed.  It was pure darkness after a bit until at last I reached a wooden door in the dirt wall at the end of the tunnel.  I opened it up and found The Kingpin from the 90s Spider-Man cartoon telling a few of his henchmen to patrol the area.  I also saw my brother Mike tied to a post.

As soon as the henchmen and Kingpin left the room, I untied Mike.  Instead of expressing distress, he asked me if I wanted to play my melodica while he played the djembe.  I told him we could if we escaped this military base.  Without warning, Kingpin returned and called his henchmen in to destroy us.  Mike and I climbed up the pole to which he had been tied and made our way into a room above that room through a skinny hole in the ceiling with a circular trap door.

We made it just in time, though Kingpin's head was sticking up out of the hole as we tried to close the trap door.  He seemed immune to pain as Mike and I tried to stomp his head down the hole.  Luckily his body was too big to get all the way through, so he was only able to shout profanities at us without doing any physical harm.

Mike and I fought off a couple of henchmen, then took over a 4-wheeler that one of them was riding and we fled the scene.  Mike drove while I rode behind.  I found a camera in my pocket so I started shooting video of the chase scene that then took place.  Mike rocketed through scarily dark tunnels while simultaneously dodging other 4-wheeler-riding henchmen that were trying to crash into us.  It was seriously impressive.

Finally Mike was able to lose our pursuers and we hid out in a beautiful blue cave with a small lake inside of it.  There happened to be a melodica and a djembe there on the shore and Mike and I proceeded to jam out for a solid half of an hour.  Then Mike said he wanted to explore a bit more, so we took a hike.

After walking through many dark and shapeless passageways we came upon a metal door with a crank to open it.  I opened it up and found a futuristically furnished room with a bunch of people sitting in fancy metal chairs in a circle in the center of the room.  It looked like the Jedi council or something, though it turned out to be the Prairie Camp staff (and a few other people whom I do not know in real life) having a meeting.  Mike Phipps stood up and threw a dart at a futuristic, holographic dart board.


Then I awoke.

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.