Dream Log: March 18, 2001

• The baby was underwater, we were all underwater, and she looked at me with her eyes wide open and her mouth wide open and her flailing fists. Smile, I said to her. Smile. I wanted to her to be happy as we drowned. It is Sara's fault for telling me never to turn my back on the kids in the bath.

• Dad had me squished into the backseat of the car under all the old carpets. It was dusty and when I opened the window he said I would choke him to death with all the fresh air. I was insolent. Give me a cigarette then, I said. I will choke you that way, is it better?. No, he said. Cigarettes is not kosher. What are you talking about, girl. My legs were numb under the dust.

• Chris said the only way in over the rocks so we climbed all the way up, using our hands and scrabbling with our fingernails. We were naked and barefoot and the wind was cold.

• A family gathering is starting but no one will take me to the store and I'm out of clean clothes so I stay at my dad's house and sulk.

• I'm at my brother's elementary school (In real life, he's a sophomore in high school). As we're walking through the halls looking for room 14 (which is upstairs), we run into a very tall student who decides to hang my brother up on a wall. I take him back down and we go upstairs.

  I'm worried about being late, but the teacher (a 40ish woman) gets there after we've been waiting at the door for a few seconds. I walk in and find a desk. Apparently I have volunteered to help grade papers. I worry that the children will hate me if I grade them too harshly. My brother (who now looks like his real-life age) and my sister are now sitting on either side of me; apparently they have volunteered as well. I get a paper to grade and it is a copy of the Sunday Comics with random writings on it. I have no idea how to grade this; I don't have an answer key.

  The teacher (who is now a 60-year-old man) finds out that a teachers' strike has started and walks out of the classroom. I decide to sit at the teacher's desk and keep an eye on the kids until it is time for them to leave, but they are so eager to leave that they all run out of the room before I can carry this plan out.

  It's chaos in the halls. Someone is riding a horse through the school's hallway.

  TIME SHIFT-I'm in a teachers' lounge that closely resembles my dad's living room. I talk to the teacher whose class I volunteered for and tell him that strange things have been happening to me since Thursday night. He asks for $1 for gas money. I'm in a generous mood, so I want to give him $2. I look through my wallet and find only $1 and some larger bills, so I decide to give him $6. He is happy.

• I'm at my company's annual variety show for charity. A woman is on stage, singing a song. I wander aimlessly around the stage, surrounded by a wall of glass doors. I finally exit through the back and walk up to her. She tweaks the lyrics to the song depending on my actions.

  The song is over, and I discover that the auditorium is empty. This is a disaster, I think to myself. Just then, people start entering the auditorium. Might as well repeat the opening number, I say to myself, so that the audience doesn't miss anything.

• I'm lying on the couch in my grandparents' living room playing with my bear puppet when my dad walks in and yells at me over it. I sarcastically reply, "Would you be happy if I threw it away?"

  He says, "Yes, I would."

  "But Mom gave it to me as a Christmas present!"

  "She'll thank me later."

  Fine, I think to myself. I tear the puppet's head, arms, and legs off and throw the puppet in the garbage.

  TIME SHIFT-I was at my grandparents' house, having Thanksgiving dinner. I'd had a dream about ripping apart my bear puppet because my dad didn't like it. Even though I knew better, I was angry at my dad over it. I tear off the puppet's head, then I walk into the dining room and ask my grandmother where the trash can is so I can throw the puppet away. She thinks I want her to fix it, so she starts looking for a needle and thread. I see a garbage bag, and place the puppet in it. I give my dad a brief "I-hope-you're-fucking-happy" look (I don't look long enough to see his reaction) and I storm off.

  TIME SHIFT-I'm explaining to my dad why I did what I did. I describe the dream to him. He is surprised. He tells me he doesn't mind the puppet.

• The woman is in Judge Mathis's courtroom, suing someone for over $2,000 for emotional distress. The judge has found many holes and bad logic in her case, and is very angry at her. Nonetheless, he does rule that she is entitled to $350.

  The woman is being interviewed about the case outside of the courthouse. She is very angry. It is dark outside, with waist-deep flooding. The movement of the water doesn't move the woman or the interviewer, but it is carrying a bus toward her. She steps into the bus through the back door and continues to rant. The sound quality is really bad; it sounds as if she's on a cheap walkie-talkie.

The second part seemed to be made up of parts from videogames I've been playing, mainly Zelda and Castlevania. I recall the HUD-ish thing from Zelda on screen with the control scheme of Castlevania. AT one point a bunch of characters were descending in an old, dangerous looking elevator. I somehow ended up with this weird black and red sword, although it didn't always stay in that form. I realize now that it's shaped like a sword from some old action figure. It seemed like Bad Things started to follow us after this. At some point there was a side-scrolling battle between two characters, one on a horse (he won). A big white and very polygonal man approaches. He is/was the owner of weird sword, and explains that it can be used to identify items, and there was something to do with summoning animals. All was well after that. I woke up shortly after.

I think I'll cut back on the games for a while...

First dream I remember in months, and it's this? I hate my brain...

So, initially it's one of my crap dreams where I'm just walking around and talking (doesn't matter about what, it just dream-labeled "talking") with someone (actually, now that I think about it, I think the person was labeled "Tyler Durden". Guess I should give that Fight Club DVD a rest). Then, I find out that my sister has run away. So, I'm a little worried. Time shift happens, so it seems like a lot of time has passed. I find out she's back. I run down a bunch of hallways, and see a crowd there. I see mom and dad there, everybodys smiling, my sister opens her arms for a hug, everybody's happy. I tell her I love her and she shouldn't do stupid shit like what she did. All of a sudden, everybody (the crowd, my parents, my sister) goes from happy to laughing at me. "You aren't supposed to say that," my sis says, "you're Ryan. You don't say stuff like that." Obviously referring to my statement that I care about her.

Ack. That's the sort of dream that just makes you feel messed up all day. Damned brain.

Now I am on top of the upside-down canoe in the water, and my twin is trapped underneath it. This canoe is defective: there is a hole in the bottom. If I stick my finger into the hole, I can cut off my twin's air supply. Both of us are thrashing around, causing the canoe to rock, so that the hole appears above water briefly, then submerges. Every time it is submerged, I take my finger off the hole, and watch my enemy's air bubble out from the canoe. When it appears above water again, I clamp my finger down.

As I write this up, I realize that a better strategy would have been to just keep my finger away from the hole and let all the air be forced out by my weight, but in my dream this has the desired effect. The canoe starts to sink, with my twin trapped underneath, until it is about 2 feet underwater, and I can stand on it.

Time shift

I'm back at my job. Apparently, I am a consultant for General Motors, who built the canoe I was in before. Instead of doing the work they have hired me to do, I am talking with a low-level engineer who implements the plastic-stamping designs that are used to make canoes, and I ask him about the fact that my canoe had a hole in it that was clearly put there in the factory (The hole was very cleanly cut and square, not something that can just happen by accident or collision. He says that it happens sometimes, but GM prefers to make defective canoes and then recalls them if anyone has a problem, rather than get it right the first time. I ask him what would happen if he discovered such a flaw in the manufacturing process and reported it to his boss, and he tells me he'd be fired. I find that interesting, and ask him to introduce me to his manager, to find out what his manager has to say for himself about this.

I am led to a large, open, somewhat messy cube farmthat requires security key access from the man I was talking to, and am introduced to a young man only a few years older than myself (the other engineer was in his mid-40s). I sit down in front of his desk, but before we can talk, I have to wait for him to finish grading a small stack of tests that are given in-house. I introduce myself, and the manager asks me what I do here. He asks me what I am working on, and I say I am doing work for a different department. I describe to him the project that I am working on in the waking world (for a company that has little in common with GM), then tell him about the leaky canoe I was in. This is not something that he worked on, but he can recall the model number of the canoe that I am talking about.

Just before he can explain to me his company's questionable business practices, a group of interns enters the cube to work on some sort of work/study project. They are all 16-year-old girls, and most of them are wearing black T-shirts with some sort of educational program logo on the front.

That's all I can remember.