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Dream Graduation

I’m in school. Graduation is getting set up RIGHT NOW. Hallways are empty except me and a few other “left overs” who can’t graduate for whatever reason. I have a bottle of wine in my hand and start running and screaming: look at me! A cup manifests and I pour it, chugging the bottle and then the cup, bottle then the cup until I’m in the rotunda, drunk and everyone’s looking at me.

I follow some other left overs through dusty abandoned hallways so Mrs. L doesn’t see us and find us out. We all have this plan to graduate anyway so we go way up into the theater storage attic and try our best to hide ourselves. Me under a big blanket with someone and I’m drunk and my eyesight is like that of when I’m so tired I can’t keep my lids awake. So for most of it I do have my eyes closed and just listen under a blanket stacked on top of theater props so I almost touch the ceiling.

Someone tries to peep into the hallway and a little Asian girl who ate all her hair off (really) is the “hall monitor” for graduation sees that someone. She sends in this bulky girl, a real bully. She’s got a trick. She pulls the first kid she sees to her and licks that student’s lip, touches it and then taps her temple. She screams and falls down, not dead but just painful. She does another little trick to someone (pulls their lip ring over their nose!) and says she won’t tell Mrs. L. She’s gonna leave but first wants to show off another trick, looking for someone she pulls me over to her! No way, I hate pain (who doesn’t); she spins my chin into a tight spiral and every time I un-spin it a little, shit it hurts. But someone tells me there’s a trick to her trick and just un-spin it all at once: I do, and I feel just a little tug and I’m okay.

A few of us go further into the attic and we find that there’s a desk and under the desk is nothing, it’s a free-fall to the ice arena where they graduate so you can watch the whole thing. They’re almost ready! A teacher, Mrs. Smith (4’7 or something small!) sees us peeping and comes marching over. We all run out of the attic, oh too late, and Mrs. L is standing waiting for us.

She’s a lovely lady sometimes and says we can all graduate, so everyone puts their gowns on. I don’t have one. At the final door to the ice arena, its time to graduate, I don’t have a gown, but there’s a box with a white Freshman gown. I’m a sophomore in my dream (hey wait, why were all the different classes graduating instead of just the seniors!) and our color is green, so I’m a bit embarrassed. We walk out and I run over to Autumn so she can take my picture (it’s mandatory). When I get over to my class, they’re all wearing white and I’m the only one wearing green.


Lucid Awakening

I’m downtown, walking in a little drizzle. I plan on going to the community market to volunteer when I see a little nook between buildings with a candy store built in. It doesn’t have a door or a cashing machine, it’s just a bunch of glass jars with a ton of bright colored candy. I’m pretty delighted but wait! We don’t have a candy store downtown. And why is downtown so tiny? I’m lucid. I walk into the center of downtown (as I said, everything is tiny and compact, like 50 feet). I look around and notice:

This feels real. This is REALITY to me. Everything is solid and I am perceiving it just as I do waking life.

(This single lucid fragment has created something in me that has helped everything I've been doing dream-wise DRAMATICALLY. I understood before that dreams=reality while waking life=hazy and unreal while you're dreaming, but I never FELT and EXPERIENCED that completely. Now that I have, something has clicked. My reality checks take up to five minutes or more, not because I feel that more time is necessary or anything, but that's how long it takes me to discern my reality. REALITY has a new meaning. I become lucid more often (though write more in the hard copy of my dream journal, less on here). I thank my subconscious for letting me explore this feeling.)


Fragments

I make a sandwich for myself "when I wake up"- WHY WASN'T I LUCID?

Autumn and I are being obnoxious in school, so Heather leaves without saying a word to me. Crushing.
NOTE: Autumn told me today that she had a VERY SIMILAR dream, of her and I and Heather (who she has never met or talked to) all in a classroom.

Touching Angelina

I am in an airport with Jack, Heather and Autumn. I see some famous chef in all white outside the big the glass walls of the entrance room we’re in. She’s with a guy in a gray tuxedo. I realize this is who Autumn came to meet. They are famous.

The chef woman has a pad of paper and I go take it from her and spit on a few of the first pages, hand it back to her, and run back in. When Autumn goes to meet them, they talk about how mean I am. The guy comes in and lectures me on being nice. He tells me how Autumn emailed him. He’s some political guy. I don’t really care about any of them and let them leave.

Heather points out an Arabic guy and gets really afraid he’s going to bomb the place, so we all book it to the car outside. Heather steps in dog shit and slides into the front seat. We all laugh about it. I’m in the back.

Everything kind of turns into a big giant ship. We are all part of a ship, and the ship is made of lego blocks. Heather and Jack are green and blue blocks and I am red blocks. I start taking my pieces away from the ship and they question why. I don’t really know why, I just want my own ship. So I take all my pieces, make my own ship with red and black blocks, and zoom away.

I fly to a clothing store. I am now inside. I start looking around for a full length mirror because I remember I haven’t shampooed my hair in a long time and I’m self conscious. I look through a big mittens section of the store and find a few different mirrors but they are all too close to my face. I find a little hat and wear it, thinking it will cover my hair.

I find a mirror and see that I have really long hair (not in waking life) and a center part. The hat looks not too bad on me. I start walking around and find a section of really nice textured dresses. I touch them all. I realize Angelina Jolie is one of the dresses, and she’s wearing it. I keep touching it anyway.



“You shouldn’t touch my family dress,” she says. She smiles and walks away. Wow, Angelina Jolie talking to me, what the fuck! I get really excited. I walk around some more.

There’s a little dark tunnel section of the store with a map of the whole place in it. A lot of people are just hanging out in here. I ask about Angelina Jolie being here. They tell me she’s starring in a movie here, with her girlfriend, a young girl my age. What! I get jealous. That could be me! I start walking around the store more.

Outside the little tunnel, the set is displayed. I see the girl. She’s half Emma Watson and half a girl I know from school. She’s being filmed. I sneak around the set and find myself in a new area of the store. There’s a big stage. I enter kind of next to the stage and am facing a giant crowd of sitting people. They are watching an opera show. It’s really dark. The whole store is kind of dark, like there are no lights on, but you can still see with the natural light.

I move on. I sneakily enter into a little passageway into a room. They are storing all the costumes for the movie here. I manage to take a stuffed animal that is the symbol and mascot of the movie. It’s reminiscent of Mickey Mouse the original but the head is just one giant black blob.

I take it to the passageway of people in the tunnel. They’re all surprised at how I got this. I told them I was practically invisible and just grabbed it. Pete Wentz, the bassist of Fall Out Boy, is here in the tunnel too. He takes the doll. The people tell me the girlfriend actor is also in a new band with him. I get jealous again! Why does she get all these cool opportunities? (Why was my dream mind judging her SO HARD??)

The girl is now in the tunnel too. She is talking about doing an interview with Pete on some TV show.



“Will it be just us or the whole band?” she asks Pete. Pete explains it will probably be just them because they are the “face” of the band.

“I always liked when the whole band showed up,” I told Pete. “I like when I get to see Joe.” I ruffled his hair and left. Outside on the set, Angelina had makeup on so she didn’t even look like herself. Some teenage boy kept telling me to look at how different she was. The girl came out and they filmed a part. We all went back into the tunnel.

Somehow I had a connection with Angelina even though we didn’t really speak that much (perhaps we did, and I don’t remember). She started to take off her makeup. I sat down and thought about how much I didn’t like the girlfriend. Now Angelina came over and started to take off her dress. She kind of straddled me while standing up and began to take her clothes off. I wanted to touch her legs, but could I do that? It was fucking Angelina Jolie and she was taken.

I noticed her legs were Heather’s legs: they had her scars on the thighs. I wake up.

Totoro Encounter

I wake up to a phone call. It’s a little boy saying my dog is outside. I don’t have a dog, but I go check anyways.

Outside, a golden retriever is laying in my yard. His name is Rusty and in waking life he belongs to my friend Martin but in this dream, he belongs to my neighbor Bill. The kid got confused. I look for the boy but I see no one in sight, and the dog is just sleeping. He thought he was hurt.

I peep downwards. On the other side of the screen door is a little white totoro with a cute red cap on and little red mittens! I let him in.

He runs around for a moment and then I lift him up. Wait, this could be a trick. My anxiety kicks in and I think of what this could be: a weird listening device robot and someone is hearing on the other end what I am talking to it about? I put my finger in its mouth. It’s wet, and I feel a few baby teeth. I pat all around it, it’s fur is very very soft, like a shaved cat belly. It seems soft on the inside: no mechanical parts.



It doesn’t like this patting though and it hops out of my hands and runs under my couch. I’m sad because now I know it’s real, and I already fucked up our first meeting! I get on my hands and knees and peep under the couch and lure it out.

I hold the cute little thing in my hands. He takes his hat and mittens off and I cuddle him a little. I then remember my two cats. Shit. They smell it, and come from upstairs. He hops out of my hands and the chase begins. I feel so bad for him, I can’t catch either my cats or him. At one point, I see something ruffling under a big blanket and I think it’s my cat. I tap my foot to lure her out, and she jumps at my foot, clawing it. She feels bad and kind of walks around me in apology.

I find the totoro and scoop him up and run to the door. I am about to set him free when my cats come and think I put him out already, so they’re eager to leave. They both go out and the totoro is safe. I set him down. He begins to cry softly. I feel so bad and squeeze him lightly, apologizing.

He is very in the moment and stops crying when I cheer him up and he realizes there’s no cats. He doesn’t seem to be hurt. He scurries back under the couch with his hat and mittens. He keeps smiling at me someone even though his mouth isn’t really like that.

I false awaken. Both my cats are on my bed. A shimmer of light shines through my window and all three of us go and watch the beautiful sun set.

Both of my cats were on my bed sleeping all night. Maybe we shared these dreams

Fantasy Cousins

I am in a parking lot with my mom and my cousin Catie. We’re going to go somewhere, like Portland or something, even though it’s really late and it’s two hours there, two hours back. Catie says Patrick, her brother/my other cousin, has to come too. I like Patrick in waking life, but I scream really loud in my dream when I hear this. I don’t say anything, I’m just screaming.
Before we go to Portland, we have to stop at Heathers house for some reason and wait a long time. Catie and Patrick awkwardly sit in the living room. The house is very different than waking life. I peep into Heathers room and she’s sleeping. I go in.
She’s having a dream and she’s smiling so big. She’s talks too, occasionally. I’ve never seen anyone have such an in depth dream. I wake her and apologize because her dream sounded cool, but she said it just ended.

We all leave together. The scene changes to a very weird room, cramped and full of people. We seem to be “regular” people, while there are more “noble” people. One is an old man, very strict and military-esque while appearing wise and mystic as well. He has a long beard like a stereotypical Chinese guy. The other noble is a young girl. She’s giving everyone weird creatures to ride on. Patrick gets on back of one that kind of looks like a bear, but is clearly nocturnal for some reason and has jagged limb structures. I want to get on one, but the girl explains it’s only for males. Heather, Catie and I sit down, and I feel really mad.
The scene changes to just me and Patrick walking up this big hill. He starts to dance kind of, just moving his body in a strange rhythmic way. On the ground below us, ice forms as he dances in a beautiful pattern. I join, and the pattern becomes more intricate. We get to the top.


Fragment

I’m at school. Our classroom moves to the teachers secret library. It’s a tilting room that I’m afraid will tip over. I sit in the back, closest to the exit. The ceiling is extremely high and there are bookshelves that reach it, toppling with books. I hate myself because I keep saying absolutely everything on my mind, whether it makes sense or not. I blame it on being really tired.
Later, we go to a gym. The gym has a giant weird rotating machine in the middle. The teacher comes up to me with a paper I made, and instead of an essay we drew pictures. Mine had a wand made of a marijuana plant, and she said I shouldn’t be so risqué.


Fragment

My mom wants weed, so I call up my friend Dylan and ask about it. He says some obscure date, but my mom goes and visits his apartment anyway. Outside there is a sack of seeds and she thinks its hers. She goes in and he says it’s not, so we leave.


Fragment
I'm shopping with Heather and Tyler. In one store, Heather buys me a jacket. In another, we all look at a display case of jewelry. There is a watermelon mood ring that Tyler wants. Heather wants some earrings (her ears aren't pierced), and I want a little hand clasp with an eye on the palm.

Pug Genocide and the Obstacle Course

I’m on my street walking two dogs, a Pomeranian and a pug. I make sure to keep them walking on the right side of the road, and my dream-mind thinks of how much I like the direction of East. I have trouble keeping them out of the roads but I manage to take them to my destination: a big building with all the kids from school waiting in line outside. There’s something going on, but I don’t really know what. I notice that if I get in line, I’ll be waiting for hours. It’s extremely hot out, the peak of summer.

I see my Uncle Pat come at me from a distance. He has a shot gun. Suddenly I am being pulled to the ground. I can’t see anything and my dogs are taken. Hands are over me. I am put in a car. I open my eyes. I’m in the backseat. My mom’s in front with my Nana and the dogs are here in the back. The windows are rolled up and we’re all sweating really hard because of the heat.

“You can’t take Pugs out in the open,” my Nana says. She explains that they are being killed off, and my Uncle is one of the men who shoots them. I don’t know why it’s happening. I roll a window down and shove my face out. It’s a little refreshing. I draw things in the thick condensation that’s formed on the windows.

They drop me off at my dream-house, where I’m staying. It’s night time. I take the dogs into a shed and ruffle through a few boxes. I find a purple wig and put it on. In the mirror, I look the same, and my wig looks really funny. I can’t fit all my hair under it.

I go into the house. I’m staying with an autistic boy and his autistic friend. They annoy me, not because they’re autistic, but they won’t leave me alone for a moment. I try to run into my room and quickly close the door, but they get in. I do it again, forcefully and lock the door. The dogs play around in my room.

The scene jumps to me going back to the building with the school kids. It’s daytime again, but the same day, just a few hours later. No one is outside and I see the tail end of the line going in. Shit. To go in, you walk up some stairs on the side of the building, so I do that. The next part is the beginning of a big obstacle course. I didn’t know that was what this was.

Derek, my friend, is in front of me. After the stairs, you climb through a window-esque opening. I do so, but after casually going through, I am almost falling off a circular ledge that leads from the outside to the inside. Below me, all the kids are doing their obstacles or just watching me fall. This is the first part, and I’m already failing. Well I didn’t know about it, so I don’t feel that bad, I don’t really care about this. The ledge is absolutely terrifying, however.

I fall more, and I’m dangling half inside half outside the building, my hands on the ledge.

“Fuck all you hoes,” I say (lols) and manage to lift myself up. I slink around the ledge and come to a bigger part of it. Kayla, a schoolmate, is in back of me. There are two doorways. They are both extremely small. I enter one, and it gets blistering hot as I walk through. I take off my hoodie, and my mind says this is why my dream has been so hot. It’s still hot in the hallway. It zigzags vertically and becomes too small to fit through. I look back and see Kayla has taken the other hallway, the correct choice. Shit, failed again.

Scene change to the end of the course. I’ve probably come in last, but I’m hanging out with the first place and second place kids until they make a final announcement. It’s kind of like a break time. First place is “Heather”, although it doesn’t look like her and she keeps taking her glasses off (which she doesn’t have in waking life) and saying how she can’t see.


Circle Class

I am in a big fancy house and I am going to interview someone. They bring me to the “tea room”, which is a huge circular white room. I sit down.

Scene change to me sitting in the room, but in a desk. There are about thirty desks all arranged in a circular way. I see Jack sitting on the other side of the circle. I’m talking to Megan, a childhood friend, and Derek, a friend from school. We talk for a long time, most of the dream, but I don’t remember dialogue much. My mouth is really dry.

I look down the line and see Heather talking to a friend, Aimee. I get a jealousy pang but remember that I’m having a quite good time myself here talking with Megan. We are sitting in rolly chairs and I spin around the room, having some fun.

For some reason, a lot of people start to leave. I think they’ll come back so I wait. Eventually it’s just me and a few kids near Jack who are really dedicated students and wouldn’t leave a class. I know everyone is having a good time without me, and I get very upset. I see Derek left me a drawing. It’s really good, and on the back it has a black scratch area. It reveals rainbow colors if you scratch it away. I doodle on it and think about what Heather is doing without me. I do some funny things to entertain the students, who laugh, but I can’t close my mouth. It’s too dry!

I wake up, and have the worst dry mouth. I drink water and go back to bed.



Fragment

I am in Goodwill with my mom and someone else. This girl Emily who is really disgusting is here. She points to a sailing instrument, a tiny globe that has a handle under it that controls a grid laying over the earth. It tells you longitude and latitude numbers. I really want it, but it’s thirty dollars. I carry it around and slip it into my pocket.

I check out the records and they have video game soundtracks. I really want the Donkey Kong 64 Part 2 (doesn’t exist!) soundtrack, or the Banjoe Tooie. No money, oh well. I think about telling my friend Lotie about them, because she just got a record player.

I look at a television playing something on a shelf. A thought comes to mind that my mom had cancer in my dream or something. The dream details on this, but I don’t recall any of it.


Fragment

It’s a year later than now, and I “wake up” in a daze into the new present time, knowing nothing of the past year. I ask Heather all the things we did in the passing year, and have my mom tell me some things we did too. I go to a park with my mom and dad and my dad uncovers my old bike from under a hiding spot. He said I put it there last year.


Fragment
I'm in my first room ever. On the ground there are two vests, identical. Weird, I think. Why would that happen? I could be dreaming. I become lucid, look at the vests, and see they are remarkably different. I wake up.

Dynamite Town

I’m flying! I’m close to the ground, no cars, just a big long road in the country surrounded by yellow and orange autumnal trees. I let my muscles go limp and the wind takes me higher, passed the power lines. If I go too high I get a little nervous I’ll never come back down, so I stabilize myself a few feet above the power lines. “It feels so good to be flying, finally,” I say.The wind is warm and everything feels exhilarating.

A tiny voice in my head starts talking to me: it’s my mom! I lose lucidity. She wants me to go get “Cochla root” for my dad, who has a bit of back pain. I need to go to the medicine woman we see for the herbal nutrition we buy from her.

Luckily, my school is having a trip to the same area today! Now I’m on a bus, looking out the window. We’re here, in the little mountain town where she lives. I call it a “boomtown” but for other reasons: all around us, people are working with dynamite in the mountains to access the gold and coal that are inside. The surroundings are all dirt and mud with laborers outside on this particularly rainy day. The houses are scattered boxes on the fields passed the dynamite lands. The bus rides through on the only paved road I see.

Out my window I see a girl who’s working. I look in her eyes as she works. There’s a connection here, one that I’m uncertain of but I feel something. I want her to look at me, but the bus passes before she turns.



Ahead, the other bus of students is returning from the town, going home. There is only enough room for one bus, but this isn’t a problem in a dream. Our bus kind of goes “over” the other bus, without an accident or anything dangerous, we are on the same track but on different levels of the same road. My POV is inside the other bus as it passes below us. I see Heather sitting alone, crying. I know she’s having an anxiety attack because of all the dynamite and danger around her. Jack is in my bus and starts taunting her.

“Jack,” I say. Everyone on both of the buses stops talking. “Shut the FUCK UP.” He does. We move on.

We get to our destination soon. It’s a old fort house a little ways passed the main dynamite mountain area. Inside, I get a little scared; this is a haunted house-esqe attraction, not an informative guide through the history of the town. Although I’m scared, me and my friend Celina are the first to run in. The doorway frightens us: when you walk over it, it rains on you. This was terrifying in my dream!

We sit down against a wall and let everyone else explore the house. I go into the kitchen where the witch doing all this scary magic is kneading bread. I ask her about the medicine woman and where I can see her.

“You’re on the same road but this is the wrong house,” she says. I feel embarrassed. I sit back against the wall with Celina and text Heather. Eventually everyone has explored the scary house and we leave.

On the way home we stop at a McDonalds and I order two chicken nuggets. I receive my order and they are huge, about half the size of me! I can’t wait to give these to Heather (I’m vegetarian), but they’re really heavy and difficult to pull along.

The scene shifts to me in the back seat of a car. My Uncle Pat is driving. I don’t want to tell my mom that I didn’t get the Cochla root and she’ll have to drive back to the town. I think of ways to tell her the bad news. My Uncle is going really slow and when I notice this, he hits the accelerator and goes through a shortcut home: through a bank parking lot and then through a school playground. Before we reach the playground, my POV shifts to above the car, as if there is no car, only me and him floating (but I still “feel” that we are in a car). We start passing through the fence into the playground and I see a bunch of curved spoons on the ground.

“That’s where crack addicts do their drugs. If I was going to do crack, I’d do it here,” I say.

On the playground, we pass a teenager on a small child’s bike. Now I am riding the bike.

It has backwards peddle brakes which are so foreign to me that I just don’t brake. Instead, I kind of idle around the edge of the playground until I can cross the street. I go for it without looking, and a car almost hits me: it was my mom, we’re both going home. I find this funny.

Peddling home, I stop on the side of the street to collect some acorns that have fallen from a tiny tree. My uncle’s voice booms to me: “Stop, let’s go home!” I tell him to wait a minute and then we proceed home.

Fragment

(Copied directly from my dream journal, I can’t make sense of it)
Me + a lot of people, nighttime, afraid on couches in a big house. Julia. My cat forms into a square of space + I wake up with her still there.

dreamBirthday Party

I’m in the car with Pehry. He’s driving pretty recklessly with someone else in the front seat telling him to slow down. We take a sharp turn into my dad’s auto shop. The parking lot is full of tiny cars for children but exact versions of their bigger counterparts. I keep saying I want one, and then remember that I “have” one, a tiny tan minivan. It’s parked out back.

We get out and go into my dad’s shop. It’s a party inside; it’s my birthday! My family and friends are all inside. No one pays too much attention to me, but in my dream world this isn’t strange and I am content just walking around looking at the things in the shop.

I walk over to my Nana who is sitting around a turntable. There are old nursery rhyme records all stacked on it. I go through it and each one is colored and decorated with story elements: one is green with a frog, one is red with a pony, one is blue with a bear, etc.

My mom comes over to me and gives me a little ticket. It says “dunk house” and I interpret this as a ticket for me to go into one of those dunk booths at the fair. I quickly give it back to her, and she explains that my Nana is in the dunk house at the fair this year and with this ticket I can dunk her no matter if I hit the target or not.

Everyone keeps doing their thing at this mini-party and Autumn comes in from somewhere. She has her school bag, and I “know” that the door behind me connects to a few classrooms. Because she’s really big, everyone gets nervous and kind of moves towards the middle of the room to make room for her (she’s not THAT big).

She comes over to me and talks about missing a certain project that she’ll have to re-do.

“What? No, that project was that we had to listen to records in class. Why would you have to do that out of school? It’s so easy and dumb,” I say. She has her usual bad attitude and just shrugs her shoulders and says mean shit about everyone around us.
Someone outside is driving a specially-made car.

“Isn’t that the car Marty made that runs off blood instead of gasoline?” I say.

“Yeah I know about Marty,” Autumn retorts as if it’s “cool” to know Marty and she wanted to make sure I knew that she knew about him. We talk about how the problem with the car is that the blood soaks through the seats and stuff so your clothes get bloody and you can’t keep papers on the seats and stuff like that.

Fragment

I walk into a really small classroom. There’s a substitute teacher (who is an actual teacher at a school I went to) and a chocolate cake sitting on the only table in the room.

“Fuck yeah!” I say as I come in and sit down. The kids behind me are excited too: cake and a substitute. I have déjà vu (or perhaps I dreamed this before, or perhaps a dream memory) that I had been to this class and had cake before.

I get a little embarrassed because I don’t know how to sit without being too close to anyone. Kate (a…friend of mine) is here. We all take big slices of cake and talk about dumb things.

We have a project to do in class: listen to a few certain records. The teacher changes from the substitute to my old U.S. History teacher.

Fragment

Jack, Heather and I are looking through a big dumpster of metal scraps, looking for good pieces to put into a trash compactor. We are having a lot of fun doing this.

Fragments of Fragments

• A room made of zebra print. Not painted over or wallpapered, but the structure is the patterns of zebras.
• I check a letter written to Morpheus, looking for a response. I go through sheet after sheet, looking for markings.
• I go downstairs and make myself toast.

Shared Dreaming

Halloween Party

Heather, Tyler and I live in my old house. It’s early morning, like three a.m. or so. Tyler and Heather decide to go outside for a walk and a little adventure. I am getting some layers on because it’s cold out but they’re already out the door. I yell at them and they don’t stop, so I have to run up to them to catch them.

We are walking around and it seems to be Halloween. There are kids everywhere and a stop sign has a plastic decorative ghost-stop sign decal taped over it. I want to make the O of it into an eyeball, so I take a permanent marker out of my pocket and “grow” tall enough to vandalize it quickly. I can’t “ungrow” so I’m tall for a long time. (Heather dreamed that there was a person that was very tall all throughout her dream).

We discuss which way to go and we think about downtown which in my dream-mind’s eye looked how it does when I dream of it, as if the area is semi-static on the dream plane.

There is no transition that I remember, though both of these fragments "feel" as if they are part of the same dream.

I am dumpster diving behind Tyler’s apartment with Marilyn Manson as a teenager. We go through one of the back doors of the restaurants that line the brick wall of dumpsters. On the other side is a big house party. I feel completely lost among Marilyn Manson fans and gothic kids. I walk around the place and the living room is Heather’s living room.

Heather is laying on her couch taking up two spaces; Adam is sitting on the third space. I go over and lay on Heather, so relieved to have her here when I thought I was alone. She gets red and starts getting up, pushing me off of her. She’s embarrassed to be with me in front of Adam.

I’m sick of that feeling so I walk into the kitchen and start eating cupcakes. Dylan, my ex-boyfriend is at the party. I decide to take revenge on Heather by telling him we can go out again. He is ecstatic, to a point where I am annoyed. It’s not worth it. The whole time I am at the party, he’s trying to say things to me to make me really love him again.

I take him outside, where it’s still dark out (though hours have seemed to pass).

“I can’t two-time Heather like that,” I say. I try to break up with him and it’s really difficult, only because I know that he will feel like shit after I do. I realize he’s in college and get weirded out for some reason, so it’s easier. I break up with him again and go back into the party.

It’s mostly over, as if I had been gone for a long time and it’s now morning. Almost everyone’s gone. Marilyn Manson is yelling at his mom, and I give her a sympathetic glance. I “know” that he used to be nice to her but started to be mean as his persona grew.

I walk over to the second living room (not Heather’s). There are giant seats that sink in a lot. I sit in one and find a gold key that Heather wears. Instantly, I know that Heather made out with Adam in this chair. I text her “found your key”, which will let her know that I know what she did. I’m upset.

I look around the room. Everything is being picked up. A girl is throwing these giant cellophane carrots away. An extremely young version of my grandmother is picking up most of the trash and stuffing it in a trash bag.

She gets really upset that the girl is throwing the carrots away and starts yelling at her because they are full of “goodies”. I remember that my grandmother is a highly spiritual person and wonder why she is getting so upset, losing her temper over a trivial thing. She goes into another room to clean up there.

A few guys sitting around the breakfast table are talking about the newspaper mascot, Happy. It’s a black dog who is severely depressed.

“Never try to make Happy happy. Everyone knows he’s sad so it’s insulting to him,” one of the guys says. He gives me a page of the newspaper. I held the paper out about a foot in front of me. An article had been strangely bolded and unbolded and when you can see all of the words, the boldness of the letters reveals a black ink dog made of words. His tail was the darkest part.
I throw it into the trashbag. I see a few Jenny Lewis calendar posters, really quality black and white, thick paper. I start taking them out. A woman sitting in one of the deep comfy chairs starts talking to me about Waterville’s mascot, a parrot named Waterlou. (Heather had a dream about mascots.)

My grandmother walks out of the room and smiles at me. I see that her temper was very in the moment and she was easily brought out of it.

Dream Graduation

It’s the first day of my senior year. Most of the student body is sitting on a giant multi-tier bench system that isn’t quite bleachers. It’s in the middle of a giant intersection downtown. All of us are seated by popularity, with the most popular at the bottom with no one in front of us so we can see the “show” that’s going to happen. I happen to be in the very front row (though I was never that popular). From where the benches are, we can see upper main street which trails off and turns a corner. It’s sloped quite a bit more than usual.

The “show” starts. All of the “really really cool” fashionably dressed kids come out and use main street like a runway. The first is this big black guy who was never dressed nicely at all, but he was wearing some classy clothes (classy in dream terms: truthfully it was quite wacky). A few more people trickle out of some building passed the curve of the street. None are girls!

As the fashion students strut around downtown, the whole world turns, or at least the benches we are on. If one starts walking down the street instead of up, all of us lean toward that end of the street. I am so scared that I’m going to fall off the bench which would be really embarrassing. Whenever the benches turn, I grab onto the girl next to me: a girl I know in waking life, Hilary. Behind me, my ex-boyfriend Dylan is sitting. In my dream, they are dating, so it’s awkward that I’m holding onto his new girlfriend pretty tightly.

Once the show is over, all the fashionably dressed popular students are allowed to look around main street alone; we are all here to visit the new shops on the first day of school. I realize that we will be able to join them row by row and I’m in the first row. I panic because that means all the still-sitting students will watch what I look at. My row is dismissed.

I walk around kind of hazily and embarrassed for a few minutes, waiting to see someone I know on the street and for the rest of the rows to come join us. Eventually they do but I can’t find anyone I know. I decide to spend my time as I should: looking at the new places.

The first place I see is a new tattoo shop right next to our older one. It’s called Astral Tattoos and it isn’t an actual store, it’s a pink and green painted wooden booth. They’re selling body modification, tattoos and henna tattoos. I don’t pay attention to what else or what specifically the tattoos are, but I imagine they’d be interesting.

I find my brother Holden (who doesn’t go to my school) and follow him around until we are all brought into the big building at the end of the street. It’s the high school (not where it usually is, it also looks very different).

Inside, we are all wearing our caps and gowns now. Everyone’s color is maroon; it’s our school colors (not in waking life). I follow a few students who are in front of me, because we are arranged alphabetically. Steven and Jamal are before me and Adam is in back of me, although all of them have last names that are in back of where I would have been. I’m really nervous and walk into the bathroom for a moment, look at myself and walk back out. We are led into the auditorium of the school which is absolutely huge and decorated with maroon everything.

I sit down in my row with Steven next to me. Jamal isn’t here so there’s an empty seat. As the students are being shuffled in, I question where I am.

“Is this a dream?” I look around but make up a history to make sense of where I am: yes, the graduation memory that comes to mind is actually when I graduated junior year. Now it’s senior year, so this is real life. Wasted dream check.

Behind me, Martin who is a junior but is sitting with the seniors is handing out camera kits for us to use. I go to grab one but realize that I don’t talk to him a lot and that would be weird and he’d want someone he knows to have them.

While I sit and wait for the ceremony to start, I look at a pamphlet that I have in my hands. It has a bunch of activities we were supposed to do while downtown. They include things like woodworking, pottery, volleyball, etc. I didn’t sign up for anything. I wake up.


Fragment

Heather invites me to her house. It’s a huge place and her room is the size of a usual upstairs area in a normal sized house. We go passed her room which is quite barren. We seem to be in the attic. In back of her room she has a big stage that’s halfway on the house, halfway on the roof with wide glass windows containing a backstage area. She begins to dance with life-sized puppets as her back up dancers. The music plays and she steps into the darkness about half-way on the stage, the dancers follow, and everyone glows in the dark.


Fragment 2

I remember eating a lot of maple sugar through a straw out of this tiny dollhouse. I drained it of maple sugar and felt sick. I could see all the sugar particles in my thigh which was where I would gain the weight if I didn't start running. The radio started to play and a commercial was discussing weight gain.

"Usually when people eat fatty foods, they will gain weight. However, some people have a large amount of bridges in their body which distributes the fat evenly, so they don't gain any weight." I knew I had a lot of "bridges" in my body and didn't worry.

The Glowing Forest and a Coaster Ride



I am in a really junky part of Maine, although like always, it’s beautiful. This time its exceptionally pretty: the car I’m in is traveling through a dark forested area on an old road. The moss on the great redwood trees illuminates our way enough so we don’t have to use our lights. Little glowing worms and luminescent animals scurry around. I see a moose with glowing green antlers in between the giant trees. In the car, my mom and I are discussing how much money the houses here cost.

“About the same price as living in the library,” my mom says. I nod as if this makes sense. It does in dream world I suppose.
Our friend Alice Louise is taking us to appraise a house for a guy and his daughter. Along the way she points out some noticeably pretty houses. Most of them have been built into the surrounding landscape; some are carved into trees, some are half sunken into muddy swamplands. One that she points out she’d like to live in seems too small, perhaps the size of a fairy house but a fairy mansion.

We turn into the driveway of a pretty normal trailer; one of the only normal houses in the area. It’s unfortunate that this is what we came to see, not one of the prettier houses. We meet the father and the daughter. The daughter is Abby (an acquaintance in waking life). All of us step into the sunroom which is attached to the side of the trailer. Suddenly it moves, detaching itself from the trailer, and rotates all around it to the other side. This was the “appraisal” that we came here for with Alice Louise. We’re ready to go.

Strangely, when we leave, it’s just Alice and I. She’s driving and I’m in the passenger seat. We’re in the country now, surrounded by low green fields and a big blue sky. The occasional farm passes by my window and there are silos on the horizon. In front of us there’s a guy running manically. He has long scraggly black hair and barely anything on except skin tight white running shorts. If he had a shirt on, I don’t remember. He seems to be running for fitness comically. We kind of catch up to him and slow down for some reason. He comes to the window.

“This is still Washington even though it’s not snowing,” he says, leaning into the window on Alice Louise’s side. She nods and they keep talking about how we are in the very middle of Washington where there is never snow or rain. He gets a little aggressive when he speaks, as if we aren’t particularly welcome right now. We drive off and he begins to run again.
Now the country road we were on has a four lane high-way coming the other way.

“See, we’re not even in the country anymore. We’ll be home soon,” Alice says.

The scraggly-haired man is ahead of us again. We see that he’s throwing sandbags on the road! That will definitely stop the Jeep we’re in. We dodge one but the next is in the center of the road and our front right wheel hits it dead on and we come to a stop. Now the only way home is to use…the roller coaster that is running along the road on the shoulder.

We each get into one of our own coaster cars on the ride. They are cartoon dinosaur heads; you step into its mouth, with the eyes and the nose above you as a roof. Mine’s blue, Alice’s is red. They not only run forward on the roller coaster track, but turn 360 degrees with inertia. I don’t like this. There’s a big hill that we are going up. In front of me, I see other coaster cars. They are jumping from track to track; we are on a similar four lane high-way but this side of the road is a roller coaster. I want to jump tracks like those cars, so I do. It’s easy with intent. When I jump, the coaster car does a flip mid-air and lands on the next track. Sometimes, the cars jump over other cars. It’s kind of a nice sight.

I realize we are going uphill faster than I expected and I don’t want to feel the fall. Although I like roller coasters, this hill is steep: twice Superman, if you will. I close my eyes and forget the dream. I become aware of my sleeping body. Yes, still asleep, not on a roller coaster, not about to fall…

I become aware of my dream body again once I am at the bottom. Alice Louise is gone from my dream. I am now in a gift store: the final destination of the coaster cars. There are a few wooden racks of hand-knitted things. I look at a pair of mukluks that my brother Holden had (dream memory, not in waking life) and remind myself to ask him to buy them for me. A girl comes over and looks at a rack of facial creams. They all have a certain element to them, but I forgot what it was specifically. She debates if one of the creams has that common element with the store clerk.

Kayla (a girl I know in waking life) is buying a pretty unique pair of gloves. They have the fingers cut off hobo-style and are black with Nightmare Before Christmas things sewn onto each finger. The back of the hand part of the gloves have a big skull sewn onto them. She is dressed all gothic-esque and has an air of “I don’t give a shit if I’m retreating back into this style.” (She dressed the same way years and years ago). I lose the dream.



Lucid Beach

I am on a beach with Heather. There’s a ton of people all taking up the shore space, but we find a little sand-muddy area. It’s not particularly nice, but it is the beach (and its winter in Maine, so its pleasant to dream of). Heather starts having an anxiety attack because of the people so we go to the “next” beach, a few feet from this one. They are distinctly not the same beach, but are very close. On this one, there are no people. We have sex, but it doesn’t really work out and we end up laughing and leaving.
There’s a sign on the beach that says there’s a sale going on at “B♠N”. What a weird name for a store I say to myself! We look up and B♠N is right in front of us. In the parking lot area of the store, which is all sandy and car-less because of how close it is to the beach, my mom’s kind of disembodied voice begins to talk about Zelda. Heather responds by saying she’s played all of them, which she has (in dream life, not waking life). I feel weird because I introduced her to the series and still haven’t played all of them (I have in waking life). I become lucid thinking of the name of the store. Jack and someone else are with Heather and I now and we all go into the store. I retain my lucidity but simply watch the events and notice the surroundings. In the store Heather says something about dreaming.

“This IS a dream actually!” I try to convince her and she laughs and kind of “knows” that it is, and I keep pestering her about it. I touch her and really feel her skin.

“It’s weird how I can actually feel your skin,” I say. I’m not amazed about the act of feeling it, but at this point I’m thinking of how my mind is either creating the feeling of her skin, which is an exact representation of the feeling in waking life, or I really am feeling it…on the dream plane. My cat jumps onto my sleeping body and I wake up.


An Anonymous Gift

I’m in my high school. For some reason I take my pants off and put them on the janitor’s cart. I have my white long johns under them though, so I don’t look too strange. I begin walking to my class. Someone in the rotunda says my mom is embarrassed in her classroom (she doesn’t work here in waking life) so I go see her first. Her room is where my 11th grade English class was. It’s set up the same way. She tells me I have a package in the office and I should get it soon. I don’t remember to ask why she was so embarrassed.

I go into the bathroom. Heather is here. Somehow, she ends up out the window, trying to crawl back inside from two stories below on one of those fair game ladders that twist and turn as you climb them (usually horizontally). She’s crying manically and saying the ladder is slippery and she’s going to fall. I somehow manage to take all her limbs and with the help of the janitor who comes in to clean, we get her inside. She’s really distraught.

I leave the bathroom and Heather is now Autumn. We go into our classroom. My 5th grade teacher is our teacher now. Lynn, a friend of ours, laughs when we enter the class an hour late. The teacher is really upset with me in particular and tells me to go get a late pass if I have a good excuse for my tardiness. I leave but have no excuse; I just want to be gone from the room.
I walk downstairs and take a drink at the fountain. My teacher had been following me to see if I was going to the office to get a late pass or not. I casually stroll into the office. I don’t like being in trouble, so I intend it to be the end of the day so I can get off the hook. The bell rings and all the kids scurry out of their classrooms. I sneak into the back area of the office and call UPS from the office phone and tell them not to deliver my package if it’s going to be late. I don’t know why I do this, since my package is already here. It’s nicely wrapped and has a stamp with my name on it.

I bring it upstairs to the benches and open it. It’s a pair of goggles, like steampunk-esque but modernized. They’re red with orange accents. I close the box and leave the school.

My mom picks me up and we begin to drive on back country roads. It’s raining pretty hard, but I’m having a nice conversation with my mom and we don’t mind it. I show her my goggles and she likes them. Neither of us know who got them for me or where they came from. We arrive at this old trailer that I used to know in waking life. In my dream, it’s where Heather lives. Without getting out of the car, my mom somehow knocks but no one comes to the door. I know Heather is home. We just leave.

I am in a store with Heather and Tyler. I upset Heather for whatever reason and end up walking around by myself. I search for the book section in the store and take an astrology book to a picknick table to read. It's specifically on Leos for 2011. At the table, a boy sits down next to me, reading the same book but for Libras. We exchange a glance that has some friendly emotion behind it as we notice we're reading similar books. Another boy comes and sits in front of me. He starts handling some things of mine which I set on the table (though don't remember doing so). One is a little metal squirrel (which I had in my pocket that day) and one is a coin.

"What coin is this," he asks. I take it from him quite angrily.

"A fifty cent piece, obviously. Look at Kennedy," I say. I look at it and am suddenly embarrassed; it's not a fifty cent piece. On one side, there's a big piece of an engraved deep purple stone set into it. The other has the face of a man who I don't know. My dream-mind knows this is an Atlantean coin.

I get “dropped off” in a town (I’m just suddenly in the middle of the road in a foreign town. Perhaps this was the beginning of a dream.) There are a few cars but no people and the setting has an eerie loneliness to it, as if it was a toy town or a set up. It feels “off” like I’m being tricked. I walk onto the sidewalk in front of me. There’s a big sign with a dancing lady advertising burlesque dancers or something. Proceeding, I see a door that says “For Farting Only”. The door has a lock and is obviously for the “management” behind this fake town. I’m bored of looking around so I enter the next door I see.

It’s an office building. There are typical cubicles full of busy workers and shelves stuffed with folders and papers separating the people. In the back of the first room there’s a clear window-wall with an archway. I have a “destination” in mind I’m not conscious of it. I don’t care about anyone in the room and no one cares about me, so I get into the second room easily. I see a girl who’s working and tell her to come with me. She does so without much thought.

Outside, I look into the sky and see a short distance away a little movie theater. As we begin walking toward it, we pass a field that people are setting something up in. I know (or am told, somehow- no detail) that it’s a religious banquet for the town. We walk passed it for now. On a wooden fence in front of us there’s a sign for the movies. 2 people=x amount of money, but 2 girls=a discount. I’m pretty excited that I can get in for less money because I’m gay, and the movie suddenly has a “date” quality to it.

The movie theater is inside a building that, on the outside, looks like a mesh between my high school and my junior high school. There’s a big pavilion (like junior high) hanging over the side of the building, but the actual building is my high school. Beneath the pavilion, there’s an old guru/monk who’s taking people’s money and giving them tickets. I ask for two tickets for two girls and he giggles at me. He gives me the tickets and my change back, but instead of the right amount he gives me two 268 dollar bills. For a moment my mind questioned or was at least surprised that these bills existed, but no lucidity. He said “just kidding” and took them back, giggling.

We didn’t go to the movies (or I don’t remember it) and just walked back into the same little section of town. I have something I want to do now: I plan to make food for the banquet but put “evil” devil food things on the inside of seemingly good dessert meals. I don’t remember if the girl comes with me anymore, but I at least forget about her existence. The office building is no longer the same place, but it’s in the same place and I re-enter it.

It’s now someone I know’s house, but I don’t know who. Heather, Tyler and Jack are there. Tyler comes up to me and starts whispering something about her teeth. She got her braces off (she didn’t have braces in real life). Her upper front teeth all blend together and look like two giant teeth and my dream self “knows” that this is because she had braces on the upper teeth before. Now she got her lower braces off, and those teeth all blend together now too, so she has three giant teeth on the bottom row. We laugh about it and she’s embarrassed to show Heather.

We all begin to work on making the evil dessert. First everyone makes regular mixes for cakes and brownies, but we pour them into trays with the center’s hollowed out. To make the “evil” food, we all spread across the floor and little crimson red glowing strings weave between all of us, making a big cross-hatch pattern of “evil”. Somehow we form this into an edible red mix and put it in the center of all the food. We like making things, so I also make chips and dip using regular potato chips and a mix of strange salsas all put together into a bowl. Henry is there and he keeps eating them and I remind him it’s for the religious banquet.

Tribal Imposter

I am watching a movie about an anthropologist who is living with a native tribe. Jake comments on the scene where, after eating the native spicy food, the anthropologist has to take a huge shit. He washes his hands in a regular bathroom and there is a girl who also comes out of a stall and washes her hands. They join the tribe in the circle around a fire.

Suddenly, I am part of the tribe. Whether I am "part" of it or not, I'm not sure because while they are all black, I am still white and also have no relationship with them. We get a message from a lady somehow informing us that there is a huge storm coming and we must all walk to the safe weather house. We're all kind of disappointed as if we've been there before and really don't want to go. It doesn't take us long to walk there and its only just beginning to rain. Its dark out but I can make out the details of the area. There are a ton of trees, we are in a forest, but the path to the house has been cleared. It's muddy but none of us mind.

The house itself doesn't look like it should for a weather safety house. Its a usual wood building with chipped paint, it looks pretty old and out of the norm in the woods. I wonder to myself why the tribe would let modern man come into the forest so easily, but I don't apply the fact that this building is old and therefore the expansion must have happened quite a long time ago. To enter the house, we don't go through the main door. We all step through a fake painting on the outside of the house. It looks like a black and white framed painting, but its actually silk flaps that we can walk into.

Inside, against one wall there are little cubby holes for each of us. Some are built for two people, and the couples go into them, as if all was pre-set for us (or as if we've been here before, recently). I run to the last one, half knowing its where I belong and half thinking if I don't get a cubby to stay in, I won't have one. We all get settled in. Mine is relatively empty, as is all the others, though some have blankets and pictures on the walls. Everyone starts talking to eachother in their usual dramas and friendships.

The lady who called us in here is really nice. She might be an anthropologist herself, perhaps thats why she is taking care of us tonight and runs this building. She calls attention to us and on a huge chalkboard on the opposite wall she has written the alphabet. Everyone is bored with it but we are handed little chalkboards and try to write it down. She explains the letters and then in a strange yet understanding way she explains the song behind the "alphabet song", the accents on each letter when you sing and how they relate to other sounds you can make, and how "big" or "little" the sound is. A few of the tribe people understand this completely and laugh at her elementary way of explaining things. My conscious dream mind daydreams of the thought of musically inclined people.

I come back to the dream and start drawing the letters but remember that I am an educated person and don't want to be "found out", so I draw them with my left hand. The lady comes over to me and she has a little see through plastic page with black lettering. Its an astrology chart. I ask about the Chinese horoscope and she says this one is the Zodiac. I talk to her about it and she asks if I'm a leo. I say yes, and she says she is too, that she was born on August first. We begin talking about the tribe. I leave behind me the notion of "fitting in" with them, and talk about how its like having your own soap opera always with you because of the intricate dramas always happening. While we talk, the tribe people are all just talking, fighting, laughing, etc.

I wake up and it looks like lightening is illuminating my room. Not just light-wise, but everything in my room is highlighted by lightening streaks and the windows are completely white. I do a reality check, I seem to be awake, and wonder if this is just more of the winter thunder storms that has happened. I go back to sleep.

Everyone has left the building or something, and I am outside in the darkness gliding/running very very fast across muddy hills. I see a modern house and hear a voice that tells me "they are inside" and so I glide to it. On the porch, I'm welcomed in by a black lady who has a motherly aura. We go into the kitchen and she's making dinner. I lean on the counter and we discuss how one of the tribes people, a 20 something woman, is living here and is trying to fit into modern society. She has wrecked her life somehow, getting into drugs and prostitution and lacking any education. Her memory comes to mind. On her chest, she has one of those microdermal implants. It's a circle with a piercing in the middle, and a sun tattooed around it. Her whole face has piercings and dot tattoos. I wonder how she fits in with the people of this area and age. The motherly woman asks if she can move in with me because she needs a place. I tell her she is my sister, even if we are very different and of course I will take her in.

Book Thief

I am with Autumn and her parents and another man and we go to a gift store (which is where Goodwill is in waking life). Inside I begin to look at the books and everyone scurries off into their own directions. On a rack I find a book by the same author as a Series of Unfortunate Events (I can tell not by the name but by the artwork/similar appearance). The title amazes me: How To Be A Lucid Dreamer! I have a dream memory of wanting this book very badly, ritually looking up reviews and prices online.
I don't have any money with me though, so I carry it around and intend to steal it. My mom comes to look at the books and I tell her I brought this book into my life and we both celebrate a little before I walk away. I start looking at little zebra sculptures that are for sale on one wall and daydream of a dream memory: I am asking Autumn to put a zebra sculpture in her bag for me to take it because I am too nervous. I feel bad about it and the guilt hits my "present" dream self, so I stop daydreaming. I walk over to a mini train that is running on a track circling a platform. I sit on the platform and go through the pages of my book. An electronic tag falls out, the kind that make sensors go off if you take it without paying, so I carry it around separately. I don't throw it away immediately because I know the techie who is in charge of that kind of thing in this store is somewhere near by.

I go back to the main part of the store and there is a giant dunk tank and folding chairs placed to watch it. Everyone in the store save a few shoppers are sitting down watching, so I do too. They say they are dunking all the people who steal from the store. I wonder how many people there are, but realize its one man who is representing all of the thieves. He has a disgusting mutilated Halloween face mask on and a belly shirt. His stomach is huge and over stretched. They dunk him, and the water makes his stomach rise and fall in slow motion. Everyone is laughing at how fat he is, but this is part of the act and he doesn't take offense. I really don't want to watch this idiotic scene anymore, so Autumns family leaves, though Autumn isn't with us.

Before we leave, I am simultaneously in the back seat of the car and inside the store. I ask the man driving if I can have four dollars so I can buy the book. The Dalai Lama is in the passenger seat and turns around and tells me "you're really getting into something". My heart jumps at recognition from such a high being. I don't pay for the book, we just leave, and that seems to be part of the driver's joke he quietly has with me. I give him back the money. He gives me back the same amount of bills, but its 3 one dollar bills and 1 one hundred dollar bill. I laugh and give it back to him: I don't need it.


Frag

I am in the back seat of Jacks car. Jack is driving and Andrew is in the passenger seat. We are going around the highway looking at dead animals. We see an orange cat in the middle of the road and a fox on the shoulder. I get a text from Heather and she asks me to come over, I say sure and tell Jack to drop me off. I get worried about her seeing Jacks car. My POV switches to upstairs in Heathers house (usually she lives in a one story house) and looking out the window, seeing the car. I tell Jack to drop me off at the beginning of the driveway, but its really snowy so I know that wont work. I dont know what to do.