Two Nights: Two Parts of a Nightmare

Day 1:

Two musical chords.

****

Yes, that was all I remember. Two horrible, movie-style "look-out!" musical chords. Woke up and was halfway across the hotel bed toward the window before I realized that I had only dreamed it.

I remember nothing else.





Day 2:

I was running home through the cornfields in the back of the house. The fields were still brown and not yet tilled, and I was running along the edge, between the field and the forest. There were snakes, sleeping along the forest edge. I ran past them, not really looking at them because they were harmless. Then I thought I saw a hooded cobra, and I stopped, thinking "Cobras don't live in Indiana..." As I stopped to look, the snake reared back and sort of bit me in the hip. I was surprised, and plucked it off. We both looked at each other, sort of surprised, then the snake extended its fangs and sunk them deep into my side, like around my kidney.

****

Again, I woke up, though this time I did not attempt to escape my bed.

Later, while at the Sonora Desert Museum (highly recommend it), I saw a medium-sized snake, black and shiny, slithering across the sidewalk below me. I decided to give it a wide berth.

Swords and Shame

I was at some type of college - it looked like my old college, except with large brick verandas. There was a fight workshop of sorts going on. All the students were in Elizabethan garb. Half the class started working with shields, the other half with swords. It was blurry, but I remember being happy with how things were going.

Later, we were watching a movie. Something like the Three Musketeers. I was commenting on it, and my fight instructor (who I know in real life) whispered in my ear that I was annoying everyone and should be quiet. So I was, and I felt ashamed.

The rest is blurry, but at some point I found a secret door in the facade of a brick building. I don't remember if I was able to go through it, or if I watched my classmates go through it. It closed back up.

Washington Post

I was in a town in Washington - or possibly Canada. I tried to explain my location to a woman on a phone, and when I looked at the map I had gone north into Canada, but there was a line on the map which said "No Record Beyond this Point". I had gone west through Canada, and the state of Washington was blinking on the map, but I wasn't confident that I was there.

I was at a house, and Matt Damon, Zoe Deschanel, and Darren Criss were around. The house was suburban, and there was a pool in back. The whole thing had an air of incompleteness about it. It was a property, but not a home. I had traveled to this place to write. I was working in an office occasionally? Or at least, I was occasionally in a sort of office building. I got a letter from a woman, handwritten and on some sort of napkin, saying that she wanted to publish my book on female gamers and would offer me a healthy paycheck. Then she called. I was walking around the town, trying to make sense of what she was saying and not sound too happy. I reflected on my book, on my essays, and what still needed to be done. I could not believe that she was going to pay me for a book I had not finished.

When we hung up, I wanted to surprise everyone, so I didn't say anything. Later, at a table by the pool, I announced that I was going to have my book published by...I think I said something like P.T. Waterly? I can't remember. Then Mitch (actor friend), burst out laughing at the name of the publisher. He was making fun of me, and I was crushed that his first response was to laugh at me. Darren Criss gave me a hug, but I didn't feel better. I fell into a sadness because the first reaction was to make fun of my project.

****

This is the second dream in recent memory where I've felt ridiculed by actors I know, even though I don't think of them with animosity.

I do actually have such a book in the making - but it's not very good. I don't think my style is engaging enough - but that would be news for a different sort of blog.