Dreams: By Tag: Hill

Tuesday, August 10, 2010: The Doors

He walked with a friend on the sidewalk of Harrington Way. Ascending an incline near a bend in the road, they stopped at a pair of unattached doors placed flat on the ground. The doors were made out of rubber; one was light gray and the other was dark gray.

His friend dismissed them and wanted to move on.

But he picked up the pair of doors and spoke: "We should afford doors great respect. Think of their lives. Think of the knocks they have received. Think how they acquiesce to the comings and goings of others. Think how they have been spoken through; never speaking and having never been spoken to. They see and hear both what is inside and outside."

Thursday, April 22, 2010: The Bomb

He climbed a street to the top of a hill. Looking down, he could see a smoking light blue crater, the remains of a large part of the city.

He knew another bomb was coming. He climbed into the driver's seat of a white van. Others climbed into the van. He called his daughter on his cell phone. She sounded distressed. He told her what was happening, to take cover, and to not panic.

After hanging up, he found himself inside a rectangular bunker with white walls. Through thick windows, he watched the blast-wave of the next bomb approach.

Sunday, May 04, 2008: Masks, roads, and the chapel of everything

He stood with his wife on a pier before a vast sea. Above the sea hovered masks with different expressions. The masks wanted them to join with them. But together, they kept the masks at bay.

Later, they walked. They found themselves at crossroads going in all directions. It was night, but there was sufficient light from street lamps to see where they were going. His wife pointed and suggested a road. He turned to look at the road, and saw that it was steep, unpaved, and rough. He said that it was likely the road to take. And they began to climb the road.

They came upon a small chapel in the woods and entered. The interior was white and softly lit. They intuited that this chapel served no particular religion, denomination, path, way, world view or system of belief. A young scholarly woman served here. She stopped us from entering the next room, as a service was in progress. She let us know that if there was anything she could do for us, to let her know and she would help us.

Monday, January 21, 2008: Driving circles around Vermont, bagel shop

I was driving in a counterclockwise circle around the outskirts of a city in Vermont. To my right were snowy mountains. To my left were buildings. One building was topped with a giant inflatable crab.

I walked into a bagel shop. There were bakers and servers behind the counter. I spied through a doorway on the right metal racks of bagels. I walked over to a rack of bagels on the left. I looked over the fresh bagels. I saw a salt bagel. I reached for it with my right hand. I noticed my right hand. I thought to myself, I am asleep. I tried to feel the right hand of my waking self, and I moved my fingers in my sleep. Then I woke up.

Sunday, January 06, 2008: Schoolhouse

I walked around a schoolhouse on a wooded hill. Children were gathering at the door. I went around the back of the schoolhouse, to a smaller house where the schoolmaster lived. There was a campfire built, and above the campfire hung a nest of pine branches and pieces of wood, tied from a treebranch by a rope. I was worried that the tree would catch fire, and the schoolhouse. So I walked towards the house.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007: Infiltration, trashscape, driving up a cliff

We infiltrated a dimly lit building, running down corridors and hiding briefly in rooms. We stole a square blue elevator car robot. We posed as students in a classroom, and traded illicit pencils.

I climbed carefully across a landscape of trash, a dump that stretched to the horizon.

I drove a car along a steep road. The incline rose until it the road became a cliff. Some cars tried to ascend the cliff, but they rolled back or came crashing down. Some cars tried to descend, but came crashing down as well. A police man tried to descend in his car and stuck half way. He attached a winch to the car and told me to grab the other end of a rope. I refused. I fell into a dumpster. I climbed out of the dumpster. I pulled clinging pieces of trash from me. I picked a small round black beetle off of my leg.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007: Monster under the floor, mountain top

Beyond a doorway, from a room on the right, I dragged out furniture and guns (check chambers and empty of bullets to be safe) and more clutter. Beneath the carpet was a grate, and beneath the grate was a monster, a green and black tentacled thing, lurking and lashing and caterwauling. With the last of our possessions removed, we closed the door behind us, and kept our guns at hand.

I climbed a cliff to a mountain top, but I was two persons: a boy who did the climbing, and a narrator, observer, or guide. The wind was cold, the sky slate gray. There were eagles perched on precipices. The height made me (us) feel afraid. We searched our backpack for... something. We found a parachute, and strapped it on for safety.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006: Snow Drifts

I was climbing a steep embankment during a snowstorm. The wind was strong, and the snow drifted like ocean waves. Each wave grew higher and higher. I ran up cement steps, to escape, clinging to the railing as the snow grew deeper and deeper. A drift of snow washed over me and I was buried up to my waist, unable to pull myself free.

Saturday, October 28, 2006: Road Trips, Pet Injured

A co-worker and I were driving down a long well-paved two-lane road. It was windy and raining. Apparently, the car was a convertible, but the top was so flimsy, I had to hold it down to keep it from flying off.

In another dream, I was in a chartered bus full of passengers. We were driving down the same road as the previous dream, but in the opposite direction. There were many obstacles on the road, some frighteningly difficult to navigate, including large patch of eroded road that threatened to swallow up the bus.

As we neared the end of our trip, we pulled over for a stretch. A passenger and I went for a walk with our dogs. We climbed down the embankment into a wooded area. We let our dogs wander far, but still on leashes. Suddenly, a blue car rolled down the embankment and struck our dogs. I don't know the condition of the other dog. My dog returned very slowly, as if he were injured. Indeed, when he approached me, his face appeared to be swollen. I immediately returned home, to take my dog to the vet. Before I left for the vet, I took my dog in our fenced-in back yard for a walk.

Thursday, October 19, 2006: Bedside Visitations

While napping in an out-of-the-way room, I felt a presence enter. I opened my eyes. An old friend, Josh, entered the room and sat down at a computer. I sat up and said, “Hello.” He said, “Hello.” He apologized for waking me, and said that he was just going to be a moment; he was checking his email. The room got brighter, and another old friend, Bob, suddenly appeared. “You old hippie,” I joked. He laughed and hugged me.

These visitors departed, and I continued to nap. My wife wandered into the room with a basket of laundry. I showed her the book I had cut and taped together into two strips, joined, and twisted, to form a Möbius loop.

I napped more. My son came into the room and left.

Still I napped more. My daughter came into the room. She sat at the foot of the bed and asked what I was reading. I opened the book, and began to read from it.

As I read, my own voice became the voice of a narrator, and I was in the story, guiding a white sports car along snowy hills, simultaneously a passenger inside the car, driving, and outside the car, holding in my hand a small replica of the car. The car skidded off the road, crashed, and drove on.

I have been reading Mark Z Danielewski's Only Revolutions. This is the source of the Möbius loop and the driving narrative.

In the dream, I felt as if I was more than napping; I was convalescing. I felt at peace, but I was resting because of illness or age.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005: My Dog, War

I was in a strange house. It had a long porch running around the entire house, and it was painted gray. My sister-in-law was there, telling me that she saw Pippin, and to come quickly. I asked if he was hurt. She said she didn't know; he just kept licking his butt. When I got to Pippin, he wasn't hurt; he was just doing what dogs do naturally. I asked him if he needed to go out, and he perked up. He was fine.

Then I was standing in an intersection atop a hill. Down the hill, I could see brown mushroom clouds. I wondered if it was nuclear war. I learned that they were conventional bombs, when I saw strange ships dropping more bombs, whose explosions mushroomed into dirty clouds of debris. The explosions got closer and closer.

I saw a friend of mine, Molly. She was worried about the explosions. I was, too. I noticed that if the bombs did not detonate on impact, they would bounce back into the air, skipping around until they did explode. At least once, we narrowly avoided an explosion because one bounced over us instead of blowing up on impact.

Behind the bombers were these squat cylidrical rotating ground machines that were hunting down survivors. It look like a large gray metal cog, lying flat, and spinning very rapidly.

I asked Molly if she thought we would be safer if we split up? She said she didn't want to be alone. So we began searching for shelter frantically. We came across a building that had the appearance of both a church and a dark pink three decker. Night was approaching. We moved around back, climbed the stairs. There were no open doors, but at least we were on an mostly enclosed porch.

Suddenly, one of the machines extended eyestalks up to the porch window. We hid behind some long window blinds that were nearby. I told Molly not to move. The eyes watched us for sometime, until we fell asleep.

We awoke to a police officer and two elderly tennants asking us what we were doing here? We said that we were hiding from the machines. They said that they should turn us over to the machines, so we quickly departed.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005: White Mansion, Storm, Dancers

I was with my family and friends in a mansion that had a white interior and large windows. As I looked out one window, I saw a storm swirling above a hilltop. A funnel cloud began to form. I warned everybody to go to the basement. But suddenly, the clouds began to disperse, from west to east, as if an invisible force swept them away. I looked out another window shortly after, and I could see a clear night sky. A man and a woman dressed in white were dancing up on the window.

Friday, May 27, 2005: Kangaroo

My wife and I were walking our dog in the woods. As we walked along a path, we came upon a kangaroo. I wondered to myself, “What is a kangaroo doing here?” My dog barked and growled at it. I was afraid the kangaroo would kick my dog, so I picked him up. We followed the kangaroo to a clearing. From the clearing, we could see stone steps for ascending a green hill.

Sunday, December 19, 2004: Winter Wonderland

Last night, all of my dreams were set among snowy hills, tall ice-capped mountains, narrow cobbled paths, and evergreen trees.

In one of my dreams, I appeared to be a gnome rogue, fighting off large predators.

I saw snowy ruins, with a large amorphous yellow thing lurking under the snow.

I saw the baby Jesus in a manger, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, and Babe the pig sliding along snowy lanes, spouting scriptures and Christian aphorisms. A old Christian I knew, Bruce, started rebuking me, so I ignored him.

In another dream, I was lying in bed. I was in a strange apartment, dimly lit, with cream-colored walls. I saw my reflection in a closed metal window blind. But the reflection was walking around and I was still in bed. I got out of bed and tried to glimpse my reflection again. In my reflection, I could see that somebody was behind me. I turned and turned, but the person behind me circled behind me each time. Finally, I turned and saw that it was my son. He was sleepwalking. He started screaming hysterically. I shook him, reassuring him that he was only dreaming. But he didn’t wake up. I asked him what he was seeing. As he described what he saw, I was suddenly in his dream.

We were in on snowy slopes. He was riding a snow-mobile. As he rode up a hill, an enormous pink hand-bag fell over onto him. This kept happening over and over.

Friday, November 19, 2004: Snubbed, Tornado

I ran into an old high-school friend, Matt, whom I have not seen in years. I was really hoping to spend time catching up with him, but he acted as if he did not wish to have anything to do with me.

In another dream, I was standing on a hilltop, watching a village down in the valley. A tornado appeared in the sky. It bent down slowly and carefully as it was touching down, as if it were swallowing up the village. For a moment, it turned in my direction, as if it sensed me.

Saturday, November 13, 2004: High Road, Dungeon

I was walking down the sidewalk along Hamilton Street. My gaming group was with me. We wanted to cross the street, but as we turned to do so, the street appeared to be far below the sidewalk. There was a wooden bridge spanning the two grassy hillsides. As they tried to cross the bridge, it changed to resemble a bare scaffolding, with hardly a plank to cross upon. Some of the gaming group tried to cross the narrow spans like high-wire circus performers. Other hung onto the spans, saying that they could probably just jump down without getting hurt. I exclaimed, “Are you crazy? You'll die if you jump from that height! And if the fall doesn't kill you, the traffic will.” When it came time for me to cross the street, I continued walking down the sidewalk, until the hill descended to street level, and I crossed.

After crossing the street, I brought my gaming group to a dungeon that I built out of a large warehouse. The place looked like it was made from wood, metal, and stone, but most of it was fake; paint and papier-mâché. There was a pit full of doors and windows that had been removed. We passed through a pair of swinging double-doors. In the large room before us was a low wall. We could hear voices coming from beyond the low wall. Two kids dressed like goblins were vandalizing the dungeon. I picked up a shield and hefted a large metal hammer into my right hand. My wife approached them to speak with them, wondering what language they spoke. They tried to attack her, so I interposed myself between the attackers and my wife. I swung my heavy hammer at them. One of the goblins slashed at my neck with a long jagged knife. It must have been a surface wound, because I survived.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004: Accident, Decay, Rooftop

Sitting in the backseat of a co-worker's car, in a parking lot at night. There was snow on the ground. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, we accidentally ran over the leg of a woman who fell near the car. Everything was moving slowly.

In another dream, I was in my house. I went into the bathroom. When I flushed the toilet, the toilet sunk through the wooden floor, which seemed waterlogged, spongey, and decayed. The water draining through the holes in the floor reminded me of seawater sinking into bubbling holes in beach sand.

In my last dream, I was walking with a friend in a strange neighborhood during the day. Colorful houses sat atop green hills. I climbed onto one of the rooftops of a house and discovered that I could not get down.

Monday, October 18, 2004: Rivers of Coffee and Flying Bears

I followed one of my co-workers, Ray, around a busy factory floor. I felt concerned for him, as he has health problems in real life. We were trying to complete an agenda he had written out on his hand, but the task was overwhelming. We rode conveyor belts to move about the factory. Somehow, I lost him.

In another dream, I was in a sprawling apartment. The walls were painted white. There was clutter everywhere, mostly laundry. Downstairs, on the sidewalk outside of the building, police were inspecting a cargo container. It was strangely labeled. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it made the container seem safe, even though there were terrorists hiding inside the container. Upstairs, there was a party on a balcony. It was a bright day. Macaulay Culkin popped some kind of drug into my mouth... LSD? I didn’t notice anything unusual. I wondered when it would take effect. I walked into the apartment. I remember following a kid into a very messy room, cluttered with laundry, models, video games, etc.

The party and Macaulay Culkin are drawn from the movie Party Monster. The terrorists in the box... they’re probably from the presidential debate, where John Kerry has repeated over and over that the majority of containers coming into the United States ports are not inspected.

In another dream, I was outside, walking up my street, early in the morning, before the sun was up. I could hear a hair dryer whirring from from my neighbor’s house. I wondered, “Wow, that is a loud hairdryer, for me to hear it from outside.” I had a blanket wrapped around me. It was very cold. As I neared my fence, I suddenly sensed a large dog behind me. I wrapped the blanket around me tighter, and everything became darker.

I’m fairly certain somebody in my house was running a hair dryer in the morning, and I could hear it in my sleep.

In the final dream, I had crossed Hamilton Street. Suddenly, the street became a river of coffee. Across the river, a barn full of coffee beans sprung up, and a Starbucks-like building appeared at the top of the hill. The coffee smelled great, but I wondered how I would cross the river to go home. Somebody was with me... I’m not sure who. I told him, “They did this,” and pointed at two small brown bears with purple butterfly wings, hiding in the bushes. I caught one of the bears, and held it upside-down by its legs, demanding that he change the street back.

Maybe I’m craving coffee? The bears were drawn from real-life, where a couple days ago, my daughter had shown me a teddy bear she received at a party.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004: Storm, Tree on a Hill

I was in my house. I could see that it was day outside my windows, but that a storm was brewing. I picked up my dog and carried him into the basement, to wait out the storm with the rest of my family and friends.

In the other dream I remember, my gaming group was gathered on a low hill under a tree.

Thursday, September 09, 2004: Snow

I was shovelling snow from the roof of a concrete building that was built into the side of a hill. Somehow, I was working slow magic, creating a literal snowball effect. Eric, one of the members of my gaming group, appeared in the dream.

Before I had gone to sleep, I made a concerted effort to dream about my gaming group.

On a side note, I’ve been paying attention to the half-dreams that float by as I drift off to sleep. In one, I remember a voice saying, “Ten years.” In another, I see a man’s head that has been cut in half; brains and fluids are spilling out of it.

Friday, August 27, 2004: Stone Church, Green Hill

My wife and I were atop the high wall of a ruined stone church. There were no exits or stairs down. We searched for the lowest part of the wall, where we hoped to climb down without too much risk of falling. Shelby said that she was just going to drop from where she was hanging. When she let go, a breeze caught her and she drifted far from the wall, where the drop onto the green hillside would be too long for safety.

I seem to be having a lot of marriage-themed dreams lately.

Recently, my wife left the church. I had left the church years ago and she remained. But now I feel like I have... all of her again.

Thursday, August 26, 2004: Green Hills, Gold Rings, Marriage

I was climbing a green, grassy hill. As I ascended, I found a gold ring. As I continued, I found another gold ring.

In the other dream, I was in the rear seat of a car. My brother was driving, and my sister was in the front passenger seat. They were asking me questions about my relationship with my wife, with implications that I was only with her because of the church. I told them that I genuinely loved her, and besides, I was no longer with the church. This shocked them.