Three Words:

nesting blue cassowaries.

Isn't It Time You Were Brainwashed?

After a graduation ceremony, all the people I know filter out of the large room and fade away into the verdant forest. I meet up with Andrew and Aaron, they look ridiculous in their caps and gowns. We clamber off the road, across a large log and onto a small mountain trail.

I am in the van with my family. We are in a hurry. I look out the window and see that much of the other people and cars are beginning to film over with a strange white substance, like they are covered in a chalky mold. When they are fully covered in the substance, they become zombies. Our van is becoming slower to respond, I can tell we are being converted, but we are nearly out of the city.
Pulling past a stoplight, we do a u-turn into a park. There is a grassy area surrounded by hills. Another family has sought refuge there and are playing frisbee, relieved. We ask if we can join them, they agree. As we begin to settle in for the night, though, the cold sets in, and we realize that we have no blankets, nor provisions. Nervously, we decide to split up. Mom journeys over the hills in search of food, while Dad and I head back to town to get blankets and sleeping bags.



Our control center is infiltrated. The lights go out. A small beam of sunlight from a crack in the ceiling illuminates the now-prolific dust motes. THe building is suddenly ancient and full of grace. As moss crawls over the stools and display panels, several phosphorescent beings flow in under the crack of the doors. Their glow illuminates the entire room. They have the appearance of land-dwelling jellyfish, without tentacles. It seems they can take any form they like. They circle the edge of the room, and as they come to rest, a small lightform presents itself in the center of the room, in the beam of sunlight. It stretches upwards, un the sunlight is refracted through it into each of the other strange beings. This signals the beginning of an intricate dance, which proves to be sometimes hesitantly mournful, sometimes blindingly violent, but always brimming with light and colors.
They finish. We are convinced they have bestowed special abilities upon us.

I encounter a blonde boy of about thirteen. He is exceedingly rude to me, but I let him continue on his way.
A little farther into the building, I literally run into the same blonde boy. He apologizes profusely. I realize that the strange beings have brought special powers to the world, but in balance - there is good, and evil - hence the two blonde boys. They appear to be the same, but have dramatically different personalities. I must bring the two of them to the room where it all began - the control room. However, it is by now an ancient ruin and getting to the center will be difficult.

Dragging the boys by their arms to my car, I am stopped by a Hispanic-looking man. He seems to think I will do the boys harm. I insist that I have magical powers and that I am on an important mission. I try to barge my way past him, but his compatriot appears. I grow Exceedingly frustrated. I try to demonstrate my powers on the car, but nothing happens. As they continue to smirk and block my way, I concentrate with all my might on my magic. I finally succeed in making the locks on the doors wriggle violently, but my aggressors do not notice. They drag the boys away from me and towards the city.
All is lost.

Again

This time my grandma comes over to our house for our birthday party (they are two days apart; we always celebrated together). She is still able to walk, although with some difficulty; the Parkinson's has begun to progress.
Again, I feel guilty for thinking she had been dead. Really, she has been alive this whole time and I haven't seen her since last April because I was too busy. This has made her very sad, and I feel so terrible, and horribly confused.

Not Again

My grandma, the one I thought had been dead since least April is sitting in front of me. She gives me important advice, which I cannot grasp. I keep shaking my head and saying, "I'm sorry, I thought you died. I'm so sorry, they told me you were dead." She assures me that she is alive and well, and she recovered from Parkinson's as well.

Meat

First, I am a part of corresponding scenes from each of the Jaws movies. It is the part where the hunky dude decides to show off for the cute girl and go swimming, even though she begs him not to because it's dangerous, but he does anyway and gets eaten.

Then Kathryn calls me up and wants to go get dinner at Southcenter. I ask what she wants to eat and she describes this elaborate plan to steal either a cow or raw meat from some company, and take it to the steakhouse and have them cook it for us.

Instead we go to a fabric store where I find a really cute fabric, but it has some matching mesh attached, which Kathryn's mom explains is for the architecture student's models.

Sandwich-Making Competition

Kathryn, Kellen, some other friends, and I leave Ms. L.H.'s classroom in Shorewood and walk down the hallway, heading over to someone's house for a graduation party. Along the way we pass a long line of students, probably Juniors, waiting to get their photos taken. As we pass by the office, I hear, "Jenny, come take photos with me!" It is my special friend, and he smiles and pleads with his eyes. I make the sorry face, but he grabs me by the hand and we run down the hallway towards the bathrooms, laughing. We stop and stare at each other, laughing. His pupils keep dilating, and finally I get a flash of reality and ask, "Are you high?" He laughs and says, "Why, are you?" and I say, "No, but are you?"

Eventually I make it past all the sorority girls crowding Steven's Way and into the auditorium. It is filled with long tables, all facing towards the front stage. At each table there are teams of five people sitting in a row, wearing matching polo shirts and visors. I find my team and sit down to the left of Roderick. We are in a sandwich making competition. Suddenly it has started and I am presented with bowls of tomato wedges. My job is to add the cottage cheese. We have five minutes to make as many sandwiches as possible to the judges' standards. For some reason, though, the first person in our line gets up and leaves, halting the process. I try to take over and salvage their work, but find that they have actually been doing a terrible job, and we are out of tomatoes. As a judge passes by, I wonder why anyone would even put cottage cheese on top of tomatoes anyway. I always eat my tomatoes off the top of the cottage cheese.
I think we are disqualified in the end because we didn't actually make sandwiches, and I am not disappointed because it was a silly competition anyway.

Seriously, what's with the bruised leg theme?

Here are some selected details from last night's dream:

People on Facebook can give out sexy points through this program named "Wisteria Lane" (I think that is from Desperate Housewives?). But the points showed up on your cell phone as a percentage, one percent per vote you get. When I discovered this feature I was 1% sexy.

At first we only noticed one three inch-long black spider on the wall. Mom captured it in the dust pan, but then when I went to kill it with the industrial spatula all of its friends started crawling in with it, and into all the other dust pans in the house. I just tried to whack it, but I couldn't tell if it was dead because there were about twenty crawling around. I don't think I ever managed to kill one, because they all made clink sounds when I hit them, as opposed to crunch.

I was working at Solstice and Evan kept coming in and out, making multiple drinks and leaving with them. Later Emily explained that he was making drinks for the examiners that were going to review his thesis, but making the drinks made him late, so he had to make more for his actual professor and classmates. She also said it probably wouldn't have worked, but he has such an extensive drink selection.


Kris had even more extensive bruises on his left leg than the ones I had in that other dream. Apparently they were also much more painful as well.
It took me a long time to figure out that he had decided not to cut his hair, but it was only growing out in the front, into these hideous pseudo-emo bangs.

Global Warming

I am on vacation with my family and the Kolpacks. We stop and park our van behind a cedar-shingled house and one-by-one go inside. I think it must be a gift shop, because there are lots of distracting object hanging down at eye-level, making me repeatedly forget what my goal is.
Eventually I make it back out to the van, and now my mother is impatient because we are going to be late for Christmas. I remember that the reason I went in was to retrieve her.
We make it home in time, but I get impatient waiting for Christmas to get there, and all I want to do in the meantime is take a nap, but the door to the spare bedroom will not close.
I end up in the basement, sitting at a circular table next to the piano. Kris and a girl that resembles Beth, Sarah, and Deb from Napoleon Dynamite all at once sit across from me. We are having a conversation about my plans to rent a house with Kris and some roommates. We are all giddy. He is saying, "I just don't know why we have to live there as separate couples."
"What do you mean." I say.
"Well why couldn't we exist as one relationship? Because I love you-" At this point he leans across the table to kiss me, but I'm starting to feel less giddy."And there's no reason for you to be jealous, and I love her too."
"So what then, Kris? All I need to do is love her-"
"No!" he cuts in, as if that is the silliest thing, but what he is suggesting is not. "You just have to be okay with us. Look!" And he kisses her shiny pink gloss-coated lips tenderly. She giggles.
My reaction is the thought "Do it again". I'm not sure if this is because I don't know yet if I feel jealous; or if I mean it as a threat. He's watching my face, I'm watching her shiny pink lips. "Do it again, Kris." This time it's sounding more like a threat, but I almost say it as a request, when he leans in and kisses her again anyway.
I feel it physically that time, as if I'm swallowing vomit and getting the wind knocked out of me at the same time. I jump up, crying out, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else!" and run away.

Now I am in the Art building, room 301. I am collecting my things now that the quarter is over. There are a few grad students there, doing self portraits, and the model Robert, just taking a nap, not wearing clothes. Lucas from my class comes up to him and examines his face as he sleeps. Robert wakes up and asks if he needs anything. I feel bad and want to tell Lucas that now that the quarter is over he's not modeling for drawings anymore. Lucas says, "Man, I need to work on facial features." He shows Robert his point drawing, and it's very good, so I don't feel as bad.
Joel is over on the other side of the room, curled up on a couch reading. Remembering what just happened with Kris, I go over and say, "Joel, I wonder if maybe you can help me understand something." He says sure, and I begin repeating the conversation with Kris word for word. As I repeat it, I begin to realize that when I said, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else", that has and always will be true for me, no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise. I tell Joel and he nods, but then I wonder what "can't be in love" means. I'm still wondering that, actually.

I stand on a beach with many of my friends, I think it is graduation. I am skipping stones. Then: some powerful figure ( possible my geology prof) has declared that there is no possible way to stop Global Warming. I watch that shoreline and think, "Well then if we can't stop it, why can't we at least stop it from dragging out so long and get it over with? We could all use a little adventure."
The air warms, the alpine glaciers melt, and the sea lazily rises. We all skip up to the parking lot where are two orange VW camper vans are waiting for us, ready to transform into houseboats. The water is rising more quickly now, and we all pile on top of the vans. Matt gets annoyed with Kellen or something and decides he doesn't want to be a part of our van, so he jumps off, but I grab him before he can float away, because we had a deal: I need him to tend to the sails.
We've got quite an assortment my friends on the boat. No one over twenty, all vaguely acquainted. When the water stops rising we float around, observing the new landscape. No one knows who exactly survived, if our families survived.
Some people who formerly lived on a cliff in Normandy park now have a volleyball net set up where people on jet skis joyfully play a game in the "yard". Even though there is a potential for tragedy, starvation, and suffering, everyone shares the air of giddiness, and we soon discover that oral sex is actually the best way of sustaining ourselves. No, really.

Party At Rebecca's!

I am asleep on Rebecca's couch, and when I wake up, everyone has arrived and is helping prepare for the party. Rebecca hurries about looking for the appropriate glasses, and Andreas and Roderick cut up limes. Andrea is in the corner where the dining table should be, but instead Rebecca's bed is there. Except it's not really a bed, it's a toilet. Andrea doesn't want to flush it or it will wake up the neighbors, so she asks me to flush it after she leaves. I say that I will, she leaves, and I go into the kitchen.
Then Laura/Derrick's roommate Lucas comes out of Trevor's room and goes, "Man, you guys, can't you clean up after yourselves! You know I have to have a clean kitchen!" and he starts washing the tea kettle. Rebecca is gone, and I try to defend the mess, saying we are having a party and he's invited, but he just shakes his head and picks up all of the half-full glasses from the counter and dumps them in the sink. I figure it's no big deal to have clean glasses, and then I remember about flushing the bed. I go over to it and make to flush it, but there's nothing in the bowl. Then I spot Andrea's shoes under the bed, and am a little disgusted that she didn't even put them in the toilet. I pick them up from the laces and fling them into the bed with a splash. Then examine the bed, looking for a way to flush it. Finally I think I pull the covers up and it makes a whoosh noise.

Sureallist Dreams With a Touch of Lemon

In front of me is a small lake (that would be small, for a lake, not a-small-lake.) Two figures are dancing on top of the blue blue water - a color I can only see in dreams. They weave and bob in cream robes, jumping high above the water against a backdrop of trees. To their right is a hollow in the water, it bubbles against gravity in an unturned mesa, the water there is milky. To their left is a patch of lemon yellow seaweed. The scene is exquisite and the figures keep moving in their lyric way until the woman leaves to go stand on a whale shaped log. It is a good 20 feet high, covered in the yellow seaweed, and there is only one way to reach her. One must go through an obstacle course upside down. Many men try to do this, but I am content to watch their efforts. I tread out onto the water, avoiding the bubbling water and the yellow patch of weeds, and take in the scene. The woman appears noble and calm, and I suddenly realize the men look exactly like monkeys swinging upside-down on the poles at the zoo. With this, I leave, because there is no more dance.

I am walking around the shore of the lake with my family. My mom decides to take the train around the lake instead of walking. In order to board the train, you must run along side of it and grab onto the railing then swing into the moving car. I find this very difficult. When I fail repeatedly, I begin to hear the Mario Brother's theme song. As if my efforts are just part of a pixelated game.

What went wrong

My parents come to pick me up from my apartment and take me somewhere. I am changing pants and look in the mirror and the backs of my legs are entirely covered in nasty bruises. I touch the one running down the back of my left thigh and it is incredibly painful.

Buffalo Exchange has a top floor, and I go up there with a friend. It turns out that she is friends with the guy working there, and he asks us to watch things while he goes pee. The second he leaves my friend starts talking about stealing things. I point out that everything has one of those tags that would set off the alarm. The only way to get the clothes out would be to toss them out of the window. Hey wait, that's almost a good idea.

Exorcism

The dream begins in a well-lit, nicely furnished living room. There are many people, and one girl is possessed. The rest decide she needs an exorcism, and the violence begins. At times I am her, at other times I am participating in the exorcism, at other times I just watch. The pin her down to the floor, one on each arm and leg, one sitting on her torso, she writhes, alternating between moans and screams. She escapes, rips apart the room's furnishings, they capture he again and try unsuccessfully to physically force out the demon from her body. She begins to tear things apart with her mind, ripping the roof off of the car parked outside, and starting a great wind.

I get tired of watching and move off into another part of the room. My brother has returned from the ranch, and we wanders about in a floor-length red-orange chiffon nightgown with a blank look on his face. This is the mos terrifying thing I have ever seen. He speaks in a monotonous voice of facts he has learned, showing no personal connection to... anything. He sits down with me and my parents at the dining room table, and begins to mark x's on a piece of notebook paper, describing that each x represents a dosage of a drug on a given day. There are many rows of them, up to seven in a row for each day of the week. Then he begins to explain what each drug is and why he takes them. I interrupt and ask about the chart, because I don't understand the system. He responds, "No, There's one for every time per day. And this one is for when I feel anxious, and this one is for when Jenny makes me feel inadequate, and this one..."
I'm so shocked that I get up and leave the table to go back to the exorcism. He was supposed to get better, not become a zombie. The people on the other side of the room haven't made much progress, so I go grocery shopping. I am looking at the cheeses when I run into Ariana. We exchange the typical greetings, Hi how are you, How have you been, etc., and Ariana responds that she was doing fine until the first part of the quarter, but then her upstairs neighbor began bringing home this guy, and they made so much noise having sex that Ariana couldn't concentrate on her studying anymore.