Tag: dreams

An anxiety dream about nuclear war again. My worry was that I only had two cans of cat food left, and regret that I don’t have a cabin in the woods to hide away in, and that roads would be too clogged with traffic anyway even if I did, so I might as well stay home and greet the oncoming radiation and hunger.

I had an acquaintance who did have a cabin in the mountains, and he also had a drone flying above his car telling him which way to go.

The dream I was woken up from involved skating from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan, only to see three immense explosions on New Jersey side of the Hudson, followed by faint booms, and buildings on that side disappearing. People running in the streets, rumors of terrorists with guns, and suddenly it becoming empty. I know I need to run and hide, but I don’t know where. I know it’s pointless to even try and use the phone to call my friend I was supposed to meet here – networks are always down after terrorist acts. I take the skates off and walk, barefoot, uptown, along the river edge, until I find a boat, a shabby looking yacht with too many layers of paint in the little rooms belowdecks – I check and it seems empty – I’ve never sailed a boat like this before, and feel guilty stealing it, but I decide that the owner won’t be looking for it now and I will return it later so I take off, and immediately come across a small tugboat full of water and a scared-looking four-year-old boy standing on the deck in the water up to his chest. I lift him and take him on my boat, thinking that I need to find his parents later – after we are out of here. Being on this boat I already feel safe, dry and warm. Then I get woken up.

Walking through a vibrant downtown of a 1980s town, a little too vibrant, and a little too self-consciously 1980s, like a set of Stranger Things or Twin Peaks, so something feels off.. Walking past a fire-house fundraiser, and into a school or college, where there is a trial. Courtroom is a dark makeshift affair, with folding seats – it’s not a full time court. The accused is an Asian (Japanese or Korean) 1980s rock-star looking guy, and he really is a singer. He looks like a mix of Viktor Tsoi and my Tokyo-office coworker (who has a band). Most of the audience are students who don’t really want to be there, but are enticed by a raffle and a free course credit. With exception of a girl in docmartens who is awesome and is clearly interested in what’s going on. I sit in the front row, and feel like a total outsider. I cannot understand the proceedings, but they have something to do with his art. There is no defender – only a prosecutor. The charges are serious and carry heavy sentencing. 

I keep feeling that things are off, and there’s more to it that I can see, but I can’t understand what it is. I like that girl, a lot, but she is a lot younger than me (though I know that in reality she is older than me, a time traveler), and I think the entire affair is deeply unfair, the only fault of the accused is being beyond his time. I have a talk with the judge/professor later (he knows I don’t belong there and he asks of my opinion). I tell him that this doesn’t feel like a trial that belongs in this country. He tells me, with self-righteousness, that it, in fact, how American justice system has always operated, and I’m annoyed at him.

I am the one who wins the raffle’s grand prize that includes an anachronistic Visa gift card and a bunch of other unspecified valuable wrapped boxes that I never open. The students end up stealing my loot, but I am not upset because I know I should have never been there in the first place. I know they don’t want me there.

Dreaming of looking out the window and seeing buildings on fire and two tornadoes. The word, fire tornado, floated up into consciousness. Then another gust picked up an entire half constructed building and started to carry it in the wind. I was calculating probabilities that it would hit our building, and thinking how that there is not much we could do if it did. Then it fell into a cloud of white dust and missed us. The sky was red.

Spending almost the entirety of rainy stormy Sunday (whenever possible) in bed with an actual physical book had such a nice effect.

And Stranger Things on both Saturday and Sunday nights!

As a result, dreams of visiting a friend in an imaginary 1980s Amsterdam, missing a bus stop, getting lost, and trying to use a pay phone and frantic futile attempts to retrieve friend’s number from a 1990s brickphone that the airline rented to me at the airport with clunky interface and buttons that don’t press while battery is dwindling before my eyes.

Dreaming of going to Switzerland again. Being very, very tired and sleepy after a long flight with L. Olten, our friend’s city, has very few remaining Swiss people – it’s mostly immigrants who don’t speak English or German. Sitting at a cafe in the street and working on my laptop when my other friend, who, as it turns out, is visiting too, unexpectedly comes from behind, we are pleased to see each other, and he tells me that I should meet people he knows and that there is something he must tell me. We turn to see a green Mazda swerving out of traffic, and a man standing in front of it with a gun, firing a single shot into it. We drop to the ground, hiding, terrified of what will happen next, an older Arabic looking man next to us – we can’t communicate. I want to text R and tell her I’d be late but I’m ok, but can’t find my phone. The police arrives quickly, but there are ominous looking people with guns coming from the other end of the street. There is a lot of very loud gunfire including automatic, but we just try to stay as close to the ground as possible. Then it’s over and everyone is gone, and we can go home. They wrote on my cafe bill, in English and German, that the meal was complimentary, as they thought I would not be coming back, but I insist that I pay.