Here's an example of a subtle predictive dream. Nothing spectacular, nothing provable. Just quietly strange.

THAT DAY

I wake at 5 AM with chills, sweats, shakes. I've had a recurring fever for several years. Still no diagnosis.

While they subside I work on my mom's estate (she died 10 weeks ago; she named me executor. Talk about irony! A hippie researching estate-tax issues...)

My friend Alder buys me lunch--Ethiopian, on Valencia Street. To thank her I buy her a book; find two for me. Put back two more I really did want--I'm still not used to having money.

Start Hunted by N.M. Brown. Classmates bully Karen, corner her, beat her into a coma. She wakes up in another world--in the body of a fox! Escaped one set of hunters just to face a second... It brings up my own memories of being hounded in school--and dreaming I was other creatures in other worlds. My classmates had no right to bash me, but I understand why they shunned me. I was never human.

THAT NIGHT

I'm in a hospital, waiting to see a doctor. I need to shit so I look for the bathrooms on a big map on the wall. The bathroom has no toilets, just two huge cones. Looks like you squat over the summit-crater as if you're shitting into a volcano. I can't climb the first; slippery and wobbly like it's Mt Jello. Try the second cone. Firm enough to climb, at least. But when I squat, it stings me! OW! Sharp metal teeth around the rim. Are they hypodermics? Or just the sign of a sado-plumber?

I decide I really don't need poo abuse, and go look at the map on the wall. Hmm. These are the only bathrooms on this floor.

So I slide down a spiral stair to a lobby full of pillowy chairs. A cute girl reading a book glances up and smiles. No map of this floor on the wall, but there's just one big hallway. People and noise ahead. To my left, a library with a pool table and video games.

An upscale bar's ahead. A businesswoman in a navy vest & skirt sips an intricate layered drink. Strata of jello. I feel uneasy, as if I don't belong, then catch myself. I have money now; better get used to it.

A big dark lobby to the right, full of models of med-center buildings and... restrooms? No, restaurants. I'm just sensitized to that letter-combination, saw REST and assumed...

I stumble on an archway leading to daylight. Ahead is a ledge of gritty stone sporting weeds and a mossy little TV. I'm holding a large cup or small plastic tub. Wherever I point it, dirt and grit fly off, as if quite a strong breeze blows out of the cup. Yet it's silent, and when I wave my hand over its mouth, I feel no breath.

Now dark shiny veins appear on the ledge--wet streaks. Rain, too? Storm-In-A-Cup! I point it at the TV idly, hoping only to clean it off...

...and blow it off the ledge! Oops. It crashes on the plaza below. Luckily, no one's down there. I feel ashamed, though I'm not clear why. I pointed a cup at a piece of junk, I broke a broken thing, I moved some trash down a level. It's hard to see how I worsened the mess...

I still feel guilty, and slink away.

I end up on a path through the dry heart of this city. Or ex-city. Silent, sunny, dead. A slough below me, straightened brutally by concrete walls. Few weeds even. The far bank: empty factories, windowless towers.

Among them, a strange house--old rounded cars and trucks have been welded on to the high points of a Victorian. Like a bulging rusty insectile Kremlin. A girl in a baggy sweatshirt is lugging a load of junk toward the edifice. Home? Sculpture? Both?

I've heard of these squatters--a sort of construction cult. The cops don't hassle them since the whole block was near-dead and they're reviving it. Despite their weird esthetic. Like amateur Gaudís. Or tower-building termites.

I head back to the medical complex--high time to see the doctor. The clinic's up a steep hill. I slow down. A girl ahead of me is climbing backwards, though her friends are walking forwards... just as slowly as me. Steep! I try walking sideways, and halfway up I switch to my other side to even out the stress. Grin at the backward girl. Up and up...

We top the hill. A small traffic loop at the clinic entrance. Sparse gardens. The main doors. And... a dead TV. Only it's not; the moss fooled me. It was a robot head!

A couple of techies are arguing over it. "I say clean the head and just attach a new body." "No, that head's a mess. Download the memories--probably intact, these old units are tough--into a whole new head AND body." I'm surprised memories might survive years of weathering. And I wonder why this AI was beheaded! Was it dangerous, did it know too much, was it a victim of persecution? We may find out--or not. Even the AI itself may not know--if its memories aren't complete, may have to live with it unresolved...

NEXT DAY

I go with friends to see a French film, Micmacs. It turns out to be about homeless people who bring down the nastiest arms dealers in Europe. But it's the setting that stuns me--the Micmacs operate from a crazy, beautiful trash lab/fortress in their junkyard home. Shockingly like the trash palace in my dream! Not that I drew it well--it was bolder, wilder. Funnier, too.

NOTES

• Medical complex: am I medicalizing simple fatigue? But also predictive: next day in Micmacs they prowl thru arms dealers' mansions.
• Want & see REST everywhere: the months since my mom died have been exhausting--not just grief; I find the estate-executor work difficult and draining.
• Jagged plumbing: got a glass splinter in my heel today.
• Drop one floor: in Hunted, Mowl's people call the worlds 'tiers'. Is dropping one level my response to fatigue/illness? From which to which?
• Library-rec room: bookstores I went to today.
• Bar, money, my turf's changing: I play outsider "because I'm broke & ill." But now I'm not broke, and illness was just an excuse--I'd rather watch than participate.
• Ledge, dirt: I gardened on our deck today.
• Dead robot, dead city: I tried to fix a CD player. Then I found a dead rat in our garage. And my mom is still dead. All three are unfixable.
• Blowing things around: a hot day; my housemate Alder ran her portable fan
• Funky junk towers liven up the block: this morning I sculpted fjords on my model planet Capsica. Straight shores are dull!
• Squatter-sculptor in hoodie: probably the activist-cartoonist Fly, author of Peops--I saw a copy today in Dog-Eared Books. I'd buy it but I already own it.
• Squatters build a junk utopia: straight outa the film Micmacs--except I dreamed it first!
• Socializing on a steep hill: my housemate Christopher joined the World Naked Bike Ride; their route went down Lombard, steepest hill in town.
• Techs check robot's memory: the book Hunted brought up childhood memories of being bullied and bashed.
• Old memories in new body: in Hunted, Karen suddenly recovers her human mind and memories in a fox-body. Disorienting!
• "Stick a new body on": So far, only rest and fasting have helped me, but these dream-technicians hint that more can be done--if I get radical.
• ACTION: 1: Accept that these predictive dreams are real, and pay attention; they often have practical advice.
• ACTION: 2: I can heal my body, but memories of being bashed and shunned are me. Face it--I'm a Micmac at heart. So forget normality--build my own junk palace! And call it...the World Dream Bank.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites