Friday, May 1, 2015

Africa and (Captain) America

This dream was very intricate, and I know I won't get it all, but here goes:

I had a crew and we had an airplane, like a giant helicopter. The dream started with us getting in a helicopter and me trying to brief everyone on the mission. It was dark at a chaotic airfield. My pilot didn't really know how to fly, and I tried to help/watch and learn as he operated two sets of hand controls and a comically large brake/foot pad. The front of the helicopter was glass and sort of domed, so that the pilot and gunner sat in the bottom of the dome, and the rest of the team was on the bridge behind them.

I could see outside of myself, that we were not doing a good job. Everyone was tense, but not angry. More like bitchy - we were all getting fed up with each other in a long-term relationship sort of way. We either failed to take off, or sort of crashed back down.

I gave everyone a pep talk about doing better next time, but there was fatigue in the air.  It was raining now, and one of my crew (Jonathan A) was secretly very ill. He told me in an aside - there were a lot of quiet asides in this dream where dramatic conversations took place - and I was very worried for him. Steve Rogers was also there, and he was incredibly supportive.

Our commander - Richard Ryan the fight choreographer - gave us another chance. However as I climbed up into the belly of the plane/helicopter, I noticed that I was down a few crew members.
"Where is everyone?" I asked. My remaining crew told me they were sick or something like that. I felt my stomach drop out of me, but I tried to be brave. "Alright, I can fly it," I said.

"Really?" Asked one of my crew.
"Well, no, I'm not a pilot. But I'll figure it out." I sat down at the controls, and immediately the helicopter started bucking about in the bad weather. I did figure it out - sort of. The hand levers controlled pitch and speed, while the foot pad did something about turning. It was really complicated and I didn't know what I was doing. Still, we only banged into a couple of buildings before I finally got us above the base and in open air where I could afford to make mistakes.

But then all of a sudden we were over Germany. I don't know how we got there, and I was still not good at flying the ship. We hurled towards the ground, and I realized too late that we were just above the target we needed to destroy. It was this big barn thing with what appeared to be a giant, steep, ramp coming out of one side of the roof. Instead of blowing up this barn, I accidentally flew inside it and banged around like a toy.  We blinked out and found ourselves back at our home base. I was very confused because outside everyone was angry with us, but I thought we had done pretty well given the circumstances.

The next night, I came back to try for a third time. I felt very confident because I had found the target at last. But when I climbed into the belly of the plane, I found that the cockpit had been transformed into a series of cubicles. I couldn't get to the controls anymore. My crew was gone, except for Steve Rogers. He told me we were grounded. I told him - strongly - that I wasn't going to let it happen. Then I went to find the Commander. I told him we deserved another chance, that we had improved and I knew what to do now. The higher ups weren't willing to listen to me. I gave a big speech or something about doing a good job.

"Come with me. I might have a position for you," the Commander said, leading me away from the airfield. His secretary was with him, a beautiful lady. I was very worried he was going to try and make a pass at me, that I would get mistreated because I was a woman and I didn't know if I would say no or yes if he forced me to trade sex for the opportunity to fly again.

"You will go to Africa. Fly around the mountains at night and look for fires."
"Mountains?" I tried to explain that I wasn't much of a pilot to do something that complicated. He implied that I didn't really have a choice, but that I would get to keep my plane and that it was a good job. I felt giddy because he was on my side after all, and hadn't let me get fired.

I ran back to the ship, but my crew had left me. Except for Steve Rogers. He sat on the ladder with his pack and smiled. "I'll always have your back," he said. I was so grateful.

Now, amid all this drama, there was character drama sometimes. Someone - one of my crew members who might have been Jeremy Piven? - had asked me to marry him. I had my reservations, but it seemed like no one else was interested and so I said yes. Then I realized that I loved Steve, and he was the only one who was there for me when it mattered. So I was conflicted about what to do.

The scene cut to night in Africa. I had landed and was in a tiny room. I don't know how I got there. I had a bed and a table and the place seemed comfortable, if spare. There were noises outside and I was nervous. I was more nervous of the mosquitos - I really didn't want to get malaria. I climbed into my bed and shut the netting.

External shot of daytime rising on the plains. I woke up and made my way to a jeep. My house was surprisingly pretty, sitting alone on a blank sort of prairie. A dusty road wound in front of my driveway, and in the jeep Steve and I made our way to a big building that looked like a barracks. It turned out to be a church of sorts. The pastor was a Marine in a tan workout shirt, and the families were mostly caucasian, which I thought was odd. They must have been expats.

It was at this point someone pointed out that I was married, or engaged. Steve's shoulders visibly slumped, as though he'd been punched. I panicked because I was in the process of not being engaged specifically for him. I tried to explain it, but the service was starting. He did let me hold his hand, which somehow made it ok. The service was nice - militaristic and about duty and family. There were  children moving about, playing and passing around collection plates.

Then it got very weird. For some reason, what we had done back on that chaotic German run had messed up a timeline. Neither Steve nor I were supposed to wind up in Africa on fire patrol. The timelines had gotten all flipped around. The air sort of crackled around us as things started to warp at the incorrectness. Steve suddenly got very weak, like before he became Captain America. Then he was back, but it was like he was fluctuating. I grabbed him and carried him to the jeep, and our driver started driving to the hospital. I held him to me, even though he was bigger than I was.
"Don't you worry - I'll always have your back," I said.


****


Whew! Ok, so that was the bare bones of the dream. There was a lot of melodrama and dark comedy in the beginning. And I knew everyone, sort of, in my dream - like I knew Jonathan, and Richard, and  Chumly (from Veep), and we weren't really interacting but then we were interacting strongly. I was myself, but like many of my dreams I was mostly watching myself in the dream, able to hear my own  internal thoughts because they were my own (mind bending!). I don't remember who the guy was that I had hastily agreed to marry even though I didn't love him, but I have a vague feeling it was Jeremy Piven.

Captain America is easily my favorite Avenger, and Chris Evans might be my only celebrity crush at present. So it very satisfying to have a dream where we were each other's support. 

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Blood Puppy (Nightmare)

I dreamed I awoke in the middle of the night, because I heard a chewing sound. Looking over my bed, I saw the puppy had chewed through her cast and also her leg. I went over to stop her, but she bounded out of her cage. Her leg was shredded and bits of flesh hung down.

I kept trying to stop her, but she kept eluding me. I called the vet. They put me on hold. I was weeping because they wouldn't listen to me.

When I finally got ahold of her, she was covered in blood. Her leg was whole somehow, but bleeding everywhere. I kept trying to wipe it away, but I couldn't find a wound. She was gleeful, chewing on her own muscles and ripping herself apart. I couldn't make her stop.

***

Perhaps what makes this so frightening is that overwhelming sense of helplessness. The blood was pretty awful, but it was more not being able to fix it.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Canals and Cakes

This was a strange dawn-like dream, and I only remember a little bit of it:

There was a city, where the streets were canals. There was a large church on a block, for example. The fog was heavy, but the sun was shining.

At one point, there was a cake competition. All these princesses showed up with cakes that looked like their faces. But none of them won the competition. Suddenly I had to make a cake ( I was not particularly interested), but my cake wouldn't look like a face. I had to make an "evil eye" cake, which was supposed to ward off bad spirits, or something like that.

Anyway I got help from a gondolier with a mop of black curls - he seemed nice, and rowed me all around the city.


***

Ah, I remember - before this part of the dream I was in a video game simulation. It was a zombie game, but I was so bored by it because it felt like I'd already gone through it several times. My teammates and I were in a rural town that hadn't been affected yet, and there was a gear store. One of the guys in my team wanted a bow with a bug zapper string - he didn't want to pay for it. I warned him that messing with the town's stuff was dangerous when they didn't know zombies were coming. He didn't listen, and a crowd of townspeople beat him to death. Then the simulation started over.

This part of the dream was in a series of huge tunnels, like grain elevators laid on their sides. At one point I had to climb a long spiral staircase around the inside of one of the tunnels.

***


I'm not sure about this dream. I don't remember if the zombie video game bit was frightening or not. I seem to recall that I was frightened in the dream at times, because there were zombies to fight and chases and such.

As for the gondolier and the cakes - there was so much more plot there that I cannot remember. Perhaps I should go back to writing down my dreams in the morning, rather than right before I go to bed. Transcribe from my dream journal...

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Waking Dreams

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had a strange uptick in waking dreams, or at least dreams that seem to center on me in my actual room or in my actual bed.

- In a portion of one such dream, a giant dragonfly/wasp creature was flying towards me. It wasn't going particularly fast, but I smothered it in my comforter. Then I woke up, and rushed over to the light switch so I could get a better look at it. It was about 2:30am. I realized that it was dark in my room at night, so how could I have seen the bug flying towards me so clearly? I went back to sleep.


- In the second dream a couple of days later, I dreamed a sprite was peeking at me around my curtain above my bed. I am not sure if I fully awoke for this to check, or if I dreamed that I checked. Because the dream was contained over my pillow, it's possible that dream-me checked or awake-me checked and I would not have been able to tell the difference.


- In the third dream, last night, I woke up believing that someone had magicked my pants to the ceiling above my fan. I stared hard at the fan, in complete disbelief. I decided I should take a picture since no one would ever believe me. Then I turned on my light, and saw that it was, in fact, just my fan. It was only 11:45 pm - I had barely been asleep for half an hour.


I haven't been making any grand changes in my life style lately. I haven't switched coffee, or started drinking wine at night. My sleep times have not altered. According to my sleep cycle app, my sleep patterns are a little erratic. I wonder what has been causing all this.

It would make a good short story, now that I see all three dreams written down. A progressively invasive sprite making mischief in an honest sleeper's mind...