Thread: A Writer's Dream Journal

I was on my way to a yoga studio to visit the man that I love’s girlfriend. We were walking together and as we enter the studio, there are shining brown hardwood floors and walls with century portraits and artifacts covering them. Everyone is sitting in a circle in red plastic chairs and I walk over. He sits down next to his girlfriend and I immediately shudder but try to ignore it and introduce myself to everyone else. Everyone’s faces become blurs and I focus in on hers-very delicate and pretty, she has soft red hair, blue eyes, and a skinny waist. “Damn” I think. They are holding hands sitting together so I look to my left and pretend not to care. Sitting next to me is a half-child, half-furry creature of sorts (covered in thick red fur and with wheels for feet but a young child’s face). “Hello there! Let’s go play” I tell the “thing” and take it to a yoga mat on the floor while everyone else talks. I am thinking that I should secretly show him how well I am with children so I start playing with the thing on the floor. It suddenly multiplies itself into three other identical creatures and I am rolling a ball on the floor and petting their red fur. Then, the man that I love stands up and walks over. I am sitting, he is standing, and he stretches his arms down to me on the yoga mat and I grab hold of his arms as high up as I can reach. It reminds me of how much I love the softness yet strong grip of his arms. Then, he pulls me up and we walk down a narrow hallway, passing his girlfriend on the way. She smiles brightly at me and I try to smile back, although feeling the motions of it I know that it is a “I’m trying to look happy but I’m really in pain” sort of smile. As we walk down the hallway, the man that I love becomes smaller and smaller until he is a child. Someone is yelling at him at the end of the hallway and he begins crying and putting his thumb in his mouth. “Don’t worry, it’s okay!” I cry and pick him up. His head is against my shoulder and he is only five. His face is wet with tears and I tell him that I will buy him a cookie later. He smiles and nods his head. As I walk back to what was then the circle of chairs, there are now wooden chairs in a classroom formation. I sit down at one as an old man with thick glasses speaks, eyeing me and grunting, and I give my lover a big hug and tell him to sit down and that everything will be alright. He nods his head and walks away. Then, I am informed that the wedding is soon to commence. I do not know what wedding this is and immediately worry. We step outside to a beautiful lawn surrounded by rolling hills and willow trees. The plastic chairs are now metal and seated in the formation of a wedding ceremony. We sit down and a band begins to play as people slowly walk up to the wedding arch. I see his girlfriend, but in a black dress, and her red hair is now combed and gleaming in the sun. Yet, I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize that it is not her who is getting married. I zone out during the ceremony and stare at one of the trumpet players of a jazz band that is playing. He looks nervous and the trumpet is covering his entire face. In between songs, he tells everyone that they are from out west and working on new songs. The jazz songs are beautiful and I am immediately attracted to him. He says that he wrote one of the songs in Chile and realize that we have that in common. After the band plays, we stand in a circle guarded by a large willow tree. I feel hands on my back and turn around to see the Chilean trumpeter putting a large coat around my arms. “Oh thank you” I say and smile over, though I cannot stop thinking about the man that I love. I say “so when did you go to Chile?” and he smiles and says something that I can’t make out but with a worried face. His body begins to disintegrate as he calls out and the last thing that I see before he disappears is a finger pointing to the sky. I turn around and hear someone scream “TORNADO” and look to see a massive tornado ripping through the hills and coming right for us. I am frightened and begin running towards the main studio building, with people screaming in crowds and running all around me. I run into the first room that I see, a bedroom, and there are four people huddled under the blankets and holding on to the bed posts. I hold on to the bed posts. There are two beds that are intertwined, so places to hold on everywhere. A little girl yells “HERE IT COMES” and I look outside to see a black and red sky. I scream “CAN WE CLOSE THE PLASTIC COVERING”? and they tell me that I can try and so I close a tiny plastic covering the blinds and screen. Everyone keeps saying “here it comes” but not much happens. Then, something falls over in the room and the sky clears. People begin to laugh and say “that was it?” until we see a little black girl floating through the air outside and holding a potted plant. She is literally flying and holding this plant with a very serious expression on her face. In the plant begins a tornado, rising up from the dirt. She floats into the bedroom and places the plant, as the tornado is forming above it, on the floor next to me. Everyone screams but I say “don’t worry, there is nothing to generate the chaos”. I walk over to the plant and watch the tornado swirl down, until it bubbles in the dirt and goes down and rises up to the surface, over and over. I place the plant on a blanket on the floor and it twists the shape of the blanket into a smaller, more manageable size. Then, I wonder if the tornado plant is changing the reality of things or just our perception of them. I ask where the man that I love and his girlfriend are and a little girl replies “they ran off together, we don’t know where they are”. I feel very sad and remember that he always looks to signs for answers and the fact that a tornado hit a non-tornado region during a wedding ceremony and they happened to run off together would be a sure sign that they should be together. I take the tornado plant and watch it bubble strangely and take it to the main studio. It is warping paintings, the floor, everything that it nears, twisting the shape of it and playing tricks on the eyes. I place it on the ground and walk towards the bedroom. This is when I wake up.

I move to Egypt on a whim. I buy a one bedroom apartment that is on the outskirts of a market and the apartment is literally a box that I cannot move in but all of my necessities are there. It is made out of clay and wood. There are hills of desert sand and the sand is a deep golden color. There are women walking around with clay bowls turned upside down and strapped to their heads with string. The string is elaborately tied around their foreheads. They are 10 or 11 feet tall with dark brown, glowing skin and piercing blue eyes. They are the size of giraffes but have small camel humps on their backs. Their limbs are very long and wrapped around their legs are gold sandals that strap up to their thighs. They walk uncomfortably yet gracefully and the sand is blowing among them. I am looking out of my apartment window. It is just a hole. I walk outside to the market and try to buy fruit. The woman does not understand me so I walk back to my apartment. Two men are there and stealing my belongings. I yell at them and they run out with my things but then ask me why an American girl lives in such a small apartment, that it doesn’t make any sense. I try to speak but my hands reach out of the doorway and no words come out. They walk towards the horizon and once again, I step outside my apartment, which now looks like a tower, and walk towards a grassy hill with patches separated by sand. I place my hand on my forehead and look over to the setting sun. Everything is quiet and I see people walking in the distance beneath the horizon. The sand is blowing gently and I watch the sun go down.

I am in a room with two women; one that I know is an authority figure and the other a stranger. The room is decorated with elaborate scarves and dresses. There is a bowl with tiny turtles the size of my pinky fingerprint and I have to pick them up, without crushing them, and place them in a dark container with a small hole at the top. If I finish this task, I know that I will get a dress to wear for the ball that evening. I am gently touching my fingertip to the mini turtles and dropping them into the hole. They are holding on for dear life. One by one, I finally finish and the authority figure hands me a large book. I open the cover and with each page that I open, an unusual dress flies out of the paper and onto the floor. I have five dresses to choose from; they all look like they are from the 1930’s. I remember in particular a vivid blue one with ruffles going down the front and a tight neckline. The stranger gets the same book with the same dresses and I wonder what will happen if everyone ends up wearing the same one. I am excited for the ball but prefer to stay inside. It is raining and I enjoy watching the tiny turtles.

I am in Peru and sitting in the courtyard of a small park that is housed by a circular path. In the middle of the circle is a large pool of black water. It is getting late and I am watching a tennis match between two women. I am sitting on a bench and looking up into a very starry sky. I hear someone scream my name from a distance and I look up into this glass box that is floating in the sky. It is pitch black in the room except for two flashing lights that look like eyes. I realize that someone has glowing binoculars and they are following my every movement. I cannot see a body attached to the eyes. I get up and begin running around the circle to let go of some pent-up anxiety and pass an old woman sitting on a bench. She is holding a quiet baby and she looks up at me and says “hello”, smiling. As I run past her, her eyes follow me and she is watching me as I sit on the bench. The woman that I am routing for is losing to her own clone. I get up and walk around again and it is now very dark with only dim streetlights allowing me to see. As I walk around again, I pass a woodsy area that gives me a chill and once again walk by the old woman. As I walk by, I look at her nails and they are unusually long. She looks up at me, smiles again, and says “hello”, this time tilting her head. The baby still has not made any noise. “Hi” I say, slightly friendly but slightly scared, and return to my bench. The match is now over and the players retreat down a long, winding road. I run around the circle again but this time, when I pass the old woman, her nails have grown to a frightening length and have a yellow color. She smiles again at me and I run to where my bench is. I turn around and she is smiling, releasing her baby to the ground. The baby slowly walks on its own and very crooked towards the edge of the black pool. The woman is watching him, then me. The baby looks at me and tilts its head and then keeps staring at me as he thrusts himself into the black pool. I run to the edge of the pool and dive in, swimming furiously towards him as the old woman watches me. I am frightened and do not know what is beneath me. I take hold of the baby and lift him out of the water while swimming towards the edge. The old woman is cackling. I place the baby on the side of the pool and run towards the long, winding road. I turn around and look to the woman and she points up to the sky with her long fingernail, and smiles. I look up and see black clouds rolling in and a massive storm coming.

I am working in a children's hospital and it is dark. The walls are narrow and everything is cold. Suddenly, an alarm goes off throughout the hospital. I look to the ceiling and see a red light flashing and spinning in circles. A woman tells me that there has been a red alert and that it means a child has been stolen from the children's hospital. My heart sinks and I rush upstairs. I am running up flights of stairs and the lights are slowly dimming. I walk outside to the top of a stairwell that is thousands of feet high. At the top, there is a demented looking man who is severely hunched over and wearing glasses that are so thick, I cannot see his eyes. In front of me, a woman in a long black Victorian style dress whose face I cannot see, throws herself off of the porch. I watch her fall into an abyss and there are leaves trailing behind her. The layers of her black dress are floating up with the wind. Now, I am on a playground and the sun is setting. I am very scared. I turn around and the hunched over man is standing with his arm around a little, sick boy. I still can't see his eyes. He has his arm around him and is touching his chest. I am absolutely terrified. I want to save the boy but I am too scared and I start running. The sun is setting and as I am running through a path covered in leaves, I hear the echo of the man's voice: "I'M GOING TO GET YOU LITTLE GIRL".

I woke up from this dream crying hysterically and shaking. This is by far the most afraid I have ever been after waking up from a dream.