Category Archives: Dreams

Funny dream with Kelly

Two nights ago I had a dream that featured a guest appearance by my Canadian friend and fellow writer Kelly, a curious bumper sticker, and the coining of a new euphemism for sexual activity.

In the dream I was visiting Vancouver and thinking about moving there. At first I was with my maternal grandmother, who apparently had just moved to Vancouver and was big on living there. (In reality she died in 1997, in Florida.) As we walked uphill on a bustling street–a street somehow reminiscent of my early days in Philadelphia, or rather of my dreams about a city that has aspects of my first big city–on a sunny day, she was giving me a bunch of typically bossy advice about having my furniture moved and stored. Then somehow I was with Kelly and Alyx, who were encouraging me to move to Vancouver and singing the praises of Canada in general. All I remember of my response was a muttered and dubious, “Well, I should probably look into the taxes . . .”

I must have decided the taxes were worth it, because in the next part of the dream I was living in an apartment in Vancouver, in a big old building. At some kind of party or gathering I was sitting in a big chair when a man I didn’t know–nice-looking but not spectacular, 30ish (I was that age, too, how nice)–came over and sat on the floor, or on my chair, in front of me and leaned back into me in a very familiar way. We started flirting. At one point I bent over him and he leaned his head back and we shared a Spiderman-type kiss.  Then it turned out that the meeting was some kind of atheists’ activist group, and our big plan was to distribute blank yellow bumper stickers. Each of us was given a batch of them that looked just like a Post-it pad, only the size and shape of a bumper sticker. The idea was that the blankness of the stickers would proclaim the nonexistence of a deity.

In the next scene I was alone in my apartment with the guy from the previous scene. We were under a blanket on the couch. My POV was that of an observer, not a participant, so I don’t know how far along things had gotten, but the blanket was moving.

Just then the door flew open and Kelly stormed into the room, brandishing a handful of the yellow bumper stickers. She said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

I stood up with an attempt at dignity and indignation, holding the blanket (don’t know what the guy did), and said, “What do you think I’m doing? I’m getting my bing on.”  I have never heard, much less used, that expression.

Kelly then said, “You upset my beloved Nana with these things! Now she thinks there is no god.”

The last thing I remember is me saying, “Well, actually–” Then the dream ends.

Well, actually, I don’t think blank yellow bumper stickers are a very good way to promote atheism, nor do I love the phrase “getting one’s bing on.” But the idea of moving to Vancouver and being a Canadian, and a neighbor of Kelly and Alyx . . . ah, that’s a beautiful dream.

End of the World dream

This morning I had the most vivid and exciting dream I’ve had in a long time. 

Zach and I were in a large chamber atop a tower, maybe in Mexico. We had ascended by climbing 150 steps–the place was a landmark we had come to see. There were about a dozen other people with us, and we all knew that the world was going to end that day. It was an astronomical catastrophe of some sort: rogue planet crashing into Earth, Sun exploding, not sure. Scientists knew it was coming, and people all over the world were preparing in various ways.

The people in our place were mostly calm, talking to each other in low voices. Zach and I sat next to a wall, holding hands, but I was curious and kept going to a big arched window to see what was happening, then recounting what I saw to Zach. First the horizon was rimmed by hundreds of small rainbows, like the scalloping on the edge of an old-fashioned pie plate. Then the sky got dark and thunderous. In the distance on the scrubby plain below, geysers of steam and water burst through the soil. I looked down and saw a herd of brown-and-white cattle running in confusion. Then I looked up and saw that the sun was a strange pinkish-white color, ringed in a glowing aura, and although Sol was not appreciably larger or hotter, I knew that it was time.

I went back and sat next to Zach. I said, “I hope you’ve had a good life. You’re a good man,” and we kissed (his glasses dug into my cheekbone). Then everything went dark.

I woke up in the same chamber, but on a cot. Through the window I saw an unnaturally blue sky. It was exhilarating being alive, but I my first words were, “Wtf? What happened?” There was a sense of anticlimax, almost chagrin; if we had all thought the world was going to end and it didn’t, I might feel rather silly, like those “end of the world” sects that have to keep revising the due date when their prophecies  annoyingly fail to come true.

I ran to the window. Our tower was now surrounded by dozens or hundreds of structures: round buildings made of clay or porcelain, huge metal constructions, elaborate palaces of bricks and glass, examples of many wildly varying architectural traditions all plunked down cheek by jowl. Then another form, like a huge metal eel studded with glass globes, glided silently past just above eye level.

The others were looking out the window and trying to figure out where we were (“Is this real?” “Is this heaven?” and so on). I ran to the opposite side of the room, which had been solid before but was now one huge window. I called out, “I think I know what happened–we were rescued by a race that travels around the galaxy, saving people from dying worlds!” The view was of a huge landscape (think <i>Ringworld</i> or Jack Vance’s <i>Big Planet</i>): ocean, mountains, and this surreal city that stretched on and on, with flying machines and spaceships. Zach and I were jumping up and down with excitement, thinking of the extraordinary adventure that was about to begin. (Even better than Iceland, although that may have been the source of the geysers.)

When we woke up and I told him, he said, “Don’t tell that one to my sister. [fundamentalist evangelical] She’ll say it was the Rapture.” But I’m pretty sure it was aliens.