I've forgotten most of this dream as it's been many hours since I had it, but as it's the second appearance of a social-democratic politician in my dreams* it should be blogged.
What happened was... I was getting restless and angry with my family and couldn't take it anymore and for some reason I ran off to the Hultsfred Festival - a festival I've never been to in real life. Apparently I got there late at night the day after it had ended or something and there were only a few more people left. The camp site itself was... imagine a volcano or something, without the lava, with a lawn and forest-y area at the bottom and a road spiralling up the inside of it, to the top, where the exit was. That's how it looked. Everything was dark and gloomy but I went with this guy who was leaving to catch a train. Once at the station I realised I had no money to buy a ticket with but suddenly a woman I recognised appeared. It was Laila Freivalds and I approached her about my troubles and explained how I'd ended up where I did. Apparently, she felt for me and didn't think my silly, sudden departure for a festival that had already ended was stupid because she told me she'd be right back and went into an office. A few minutes later she returned and told me a girl from the railway company would be along shortly and give me a ticket home and that train would definitely stop by where I live, no change or anything required. I thanked her and waited for the girl with the tickets. She appeared with what looked like a big pad of A4 papers and called out various towns and tore off tickets to them and handed those who approached her, but she didn't call out mine. Then when I asked her about it she gave me a ticket and pointed to a train just where we were.
'That one,' she said and I got on and asked some people where this train was going.
'Paris,' said one man, and I got worried.
'But I'm going to Jönköping?'
'Oh, it might very well go there, you never know with these trains, they're always adding stations they need to stop at. Don't worry.'
So I didn't. But I should have done, because we never went to Jönköping, and I didn't have a proper ticket and got chucked out somewhere in Germany.
I located a computer with internet somewhere and managed to send an e-mail to Freivalds, telling her how disappointed I was and how I'd always liked her and stuff, even when she'd been getting told off by the media for that business with her flat. I don't remember if I threatened to go to the press about what she'd promised me and what had happened of if I actually did. And I don't remember if she saved me from being stranded in Germany, but there you have it.
*The first one was pre-blog and involved the former Minsiter for Justice, Tomas Bodström and the two of us building flats for the homeless in an old castle on cliffs by a sea.
Friday, 3 April 2009
Thursday, 2 April 2009
The Dreams of April 1-2
After battling a bout of nausea for most of the afternoon and evening I went to bed early and was in for quite a night! For the first time in ages, no people in quite "crowded" dreams were real even if some of them sort or reminded me of people I know or have known.
The first dream started with me being at home, late in the evening. It wasn't this home, nor was it any other home I've lived in, but a flat possibly 15 floors up in a very tall building. I was living there with my dream mum and possibly someone else too. Noises from outside caught our attention and I think we might've seen a car get stolen because I remember seeing one joyriding around and knowing for a fact that whoever was driving it wasn't supposed to.
Right next to our building was a river, and the currents in it were quite strong. There was a drop of something between five and ten feet to it from the carpark. Suddenly the stolen car drove through the fence and dove off the edge of the carpark, it got caught between hill going into the river and a tree. The front of the car was just touching the water, but it looked as if the entire car might drop at any second and be taken away by the currents.
'Oh my God, we have to help them,' I said.
'No wait,' said my mum, 'we don't know who these people are!'
I remained concerned, noticing that the driver door had been a bit damaged and might not open. But then, someone did open it and started climbing out.
I'm not sure what happened next, but I know that three teenage boys had got out of the car and then proceeded to doing something else they weren't supposed to be doing. The reason I know this is because I armed myself with something that I could swing around, like a bat or something (for sports, not the blind flying buggers) and went down to chase them away with it.
What happened next is unclear to me in some respects. I know that I, for some reason, was "sent away" to stay with relatives and I know I went from Sweden to England, but I'm not sure why. I also know that in that area there were three trouble-making bullies getting away with all kinds of crap, and while I kind of remember them as being the same as the three from the carpark, I'm not convinced they were. I think possibly they just reminded the dream me so much of the first set of boys that I get them confused, or that the dream me actually believed they were the same boys.
In England I got to stay with what I think might be relatives of some sort. I stayed with a woman from an Asian country, possibly Sri Lanka or something. The woman was fairly overweight and looked quite gloomy and aged, but I suspected she'd aged prematurely. She had a daughter of about five and I think the girl might've been my cousin and the woman a "mail order bride" my uncle had married. He did live there, I think, but I can only remember seeing him once and all I can tell you is that he wore a hat and seemed to love his daughter a lot and, in some way, care a lot about the miserable woman he'd married.
I made friends with a couple of "weird" kids in the area. One was an overweight boy who suffered a lot by the bullies. The other two were a girl and boy I can't remember a lot about, except they were sweet and shy.
I can't recall all the ways in which the bullies tormented us, but I can remember one of the weirder incidents where one of them had chased one of my friends when they were coming to see me and I grabbed the first thing I saw and started swinging at the bully. What I'd grabbed was one of those old wooden folding yardsticks and I remember someone saying I shouldn't take that as it belonged to someone's collection of antique yardsticks.
The last incident I remember was the worst one. They'd been chasing us around in a car that belonged to one of their rich fathers and they were targetting my overweight friend especially. I can't remember the particulars of what they did, but the dream ended horribly with that friend being flat on his back in the middle of the street and the other boy from our group desperately pulling at his arm trying to get him to his feet. Then a car approached and the other girl and I screamed at them to get out of there but just as the car hit I had to look away. When I looked back I saw that it had basically cut the boy who was on the ground in two and the other boy was sitting by a parked car, in shock, still holding the hand of the boy whose blood was all over him.
It really was horrible when it happened, but affects me less now that I'm awake due to the fact that the car which ran over the boy at the end was like... an old Formula 3 car or something. Very strange, and sort of funny in a horrible way.
It took me a while once I'd woken up properly to realise it had been two dreams, for in the next one I was also, for the greater part, in unfamiliar environments with unfamiliar friends.
The details that actually tie the different events into a story are gone, but basically we were going to various places in town, driving from place to place and there was something about big cats. Not big cats as in huge housecats, but lions and tigers and panthers and stuff.
There was also a moment where I discovered that I might have screws in my arms. Apparently, it was normal to have two bones sticking out of your elbow like an upside down V, but I became increasingly certain that mine wre screws. But after a while I realised there be scars if someone had replaced my bones with screws and once I'd told one of my friends about that she felt her own "V-bones" an they felt much the same as mine. So all was well.
Until we were about to drive up to where I live and passed a panther about to be captured by some sort of animal control unit.
We drove past and vowed not to get out of the car until we were far away from it. When we did get out we soon realised there was a lion outside my home and for some reason, one by one, we walked past it and went to sit down on a bench next to where it was. I assume the bench was "safe" or something. The girl I'd talked to about the screws in my arm walked ahead of me and the lion walked up to her and smelled her before following her to the bench. She sat down and the lion sat next to her before looking at me, the last one left standing, and then it took a few steps toward me and did something. I can't remember what, but whatever it was it made me think: "Wait a minute, that's not a lion!" and I spoke to it. When I did it turned into a girl.
I've no idea how she came to have the ability to turn into a lion, or why she'd done it, but whatever her explanation was we accepted it and when she asked for a ride into town we agreed to it.
That's all I remember. Dreams really work better with a story, don't they? Maybe next time!
The first dream started with me being at home, late in the evening. It wasn't this home, nor was it any other home I've lived in, but a flat possibly 15 floors up in a very tall building. I was living there with my dream mum and possibly someone else too. Noises from outside caught our attention and I think we might've seen a car get stolen because I remember seeing one joyriding around and knowing for a fact that whoever was driving it wasn't supposed to.
Right next to our building was a river, and the currents in it were quite strong. There was a drop of something between five and ten feet to it from the carpark. Suddenly the stolen car drove through the fence and dove off the edge of the carpark, it got caught between hill going into the river and a tree. The front of the car was just touching the water, but it looked as if the entire car might drop at any second and be taken away by the currents.
'Oh my God, we have to help them,' I said.
'No wait,' said my mum, 'we don't know who these people are!'
I remained concerned, noticing that the driver door had been a bit damaged and might not open. But then, someone did open it and started climbing out.
I'm not sure what happened next, but I know that three teenage boys had got out of the car and then proceeded to doing something else they weren't supposed to be doing. The reason I know this is because I armed myself with something that I could swing around, like a bat or something (for sports, not the blind flying buggers) and went down to chase them away with it.
What happened next is unclear to me in some respects. I know that I, for some reason, was "sent away" to stay with relatives and I know I went from Sweden to England, but I'm not sure why. I also know that in that area there were three trouble-making bullies getting away with all kinds of crap, and while I kind of remember them as being the same as the three from the carpark, I'm not convinced they were. I think possibly they just reminded the dream me so much of the first set of boys that I get them confused, or that the dream me actually believed they were the same boys.
In England I got to stay with what I think might be relatives of some sort. I stayed with a woman from an Asian country, possibly Sri Lanka or something. The woman was fairly overweight and looked quite gloomy and aged, but I suspected she'd aged prematurely. She had a daughter of about five and I think the girl might've been my cousin and the woman a "mail order bride" my uncle had married. He did live there, I think, but I can only remember seeing him once and all I can tell you is that he wore a hat and seemed to love his daughter a lot and, in some way, care a lot about the miserable woman he'd married.
I made friends with a couple of "weird" kids in the area. One was an overweight boy who suffered a lot by the bullies. The other two were a girl and boy I can't remember a lot about, except they were sweet and shy.
I can't recall all the ways in which the bullies tormented us, but I can remember one of the weirder incidents where one of them had chased one of my friends when they were coming to see me and I grabbed the first thing I saw and started swinging at the bully. What I'd grabbed was one of those old wooden folding yardsticks and I remember someone saying I shouldn't take that as it belonged to someone's collection of antique yardsticks.
The last incident I remember was the worst one. They'd been chasing us around in a car that belonged to one of their rich fathers and they were targetting my overweight friend especially. I can't remember the particulars of what they did, but the dream ended horribly with that friend being flat on his back in the middle of the street and the other boy from our group desperately pulling at his arm trying to get him to his feet. Then a car approached and the other girl and I screamed at them to get out of there but just as the car hit I had to look away. When I looked back I saw that it had basically cut the boy who was on the ground in two and the other boy was sitting by a parked car, in shock, still holding the hand of the boy whose blood was all over him.
It really was horrible when it happened, but affects me less now that I'm awake due to the fact that the car which ran over the boy at the end was like... an old Formula 3 car or something. Very strange, and sort of funny in a horrible way.
It took me a while once I'd woken up properly to realise it had been two dreams, for in the next one I was also, for the greater part, in unfamiliar environments with unfamiliar friends.
The details that actually tie the different events into a story are gone, but basically we were going to various places in town, driving from place to place and there was something about big cats. Not big cats as in huge housecats, but lions and tigers and panthers and stuff.
There was also a moment where I discovered that I might have screws in my arms. Apparently, it was normal to have two bones sticking out of your elbow like an upside down V, but I became increasingly certain that mine wre screws. But after a while I realised there be scars if someone had replaced my bones with screws and once I'd told one of my friends about that she felt her own "V-bones" an they felt much the same as mine. So all was well.
Until we were about to drive up to where I live and passed a panther about to be captured by some sort of animal control unit.
We drove past and vowed not to get out of the car until we were far away from it. When we did get out we soon realised there was a lion outside my home and for some reason, one by one, we walked past it and went to sit down on a bench next to where it was. I assume the bench was "safe" or something. The girl I'd talked to about the screws in my arm walked ahead of me and the lion walked up to her and smelled her before following her to the bench. She sat down and the lion sat next to her before looking at me, the last one left standing, and then it took a few steps toward me and did something. I can't remember what, but whatever it was it made me think: "Wait a minute, that's not a lion!" and I spoke to it. When I did it turned into a girl.
I've no idea how she came to have the ability to turn into a lion, or why she'd done it, but whatever her explanation was we accepted it and when she asked for a ride into town we agreed to it.
That's all I remember. Dreams really work better with a story, don't they? Maybe next time!
Sunday, 29 March 2009
The Dream of March 29
I'm sitting by my computer, except it's in my brother's room (which it was for a while after he moved out so we wouldn't have to keep a cord to the modem all the way through the flat), and I'm playing something that could be an odd dream version of the World of Warcraft, while keeping one eye on something on the telly, sort of (not literally, even though stranger things have happened in my dreams). There was a film or something on in a language I don't speak. Something east or south-European. A dark-haired woman wearing what looks to me like an 80s style blouse (in some odd white, grey and black pattern and a light material) - but the fashion of it could be older - is doing something by a wooden bench in an old cottage. I'm not sure if she's cooking or making something out of wood or what she's up to, but suddenly she looks out the window in front of her, pulls an angry face and darts out of the cottage very quickly. It's summer outside and she heads for an oak tree across the yard where chickens (well, they're hens, really) and little girls are running around. There's a bloody mess of feathers on the ground in one spot and further away is one of the girls, seemingly killing another chicken. The woman shouts at her, angrily, in that language I don't understand, but the subtitles tell me she's telling the girl off:
"What are you doing? You can't do that to the chickens! You all get out of here, now, run along with you!" She adds, to that girl who'd killed chickens: "And you go home and tell your parents what you've done!"
That's all I remember of the film. In the next part of the dream I'm still at the same comp, in the same room, but some of my brother's furniture have gone and a woman is standing next to me. It's job interview and I'm supposed to show her my Office skills or something. So I close down that game I've been playing and I attempt to start working but I get a weird error message saying F: (the DVD-burner/player is F: on my comp) has stopped working completely, and I think "Shit, that's not good, I can't play CDs now. But at least the one in there now is just the installation CD for the webcam." (this is true). And I press the button to push it out and remove the CD, but nothing happens and for some reason I have to get rid of it, so I just pull on it and the sort of "loading" thing for the discs just comes flying out as if it wasn't in any way connected to the rest of the DVD-burner. That, and the actual CD dart across the floor and there's a hideous odour of burning plastic. I decide to ignore it, given my ongoing interview and smile at the woman while thinking to myself that my brother's gonna kill me for the mess I've made of his room. In addition to the demolished bits of my computer I've got a little notepad and some little book-like things that look like instruction manuals for various components on his desk (other things too, but I can't recall what they were now).
The computer is locking up and I decide to reboot it, but when I do it loads up the game I was playing before and a lot of other things that have got nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be doing. I try to shut them down, but they start up again. I can feel panic setting in and I try rebooting it again, same thing. Now I'm at the point where I no longer care about the job interview, I just want to be rid of that stupid game and the other stuff that keeps loading and I just crash the computer manually and leave it off. But it boots itself and everything starts again. I crash it again and it starts on its own. This time I crash it and switch the power button in the back of it off, thinking that'll be the end of it. And it is... For a few seconds before it powers up again. I look at the power switch at the back and it's back into on-mode. I switch it off there instantly, not even bothering with the normal power-button thing at the front. And I watch as it slowly switches back into the "on"-position and starts up again.
Now, I can't quite recall what I do next. I know that I considered unplugging it and I might've done. But I might actually have gone nuts and bashed the entire computer up until I was sure it wouldn't magically reboot again.
Either way, at this point in the dream I know the computer isn't going to start up again, it's dead. It's early in the morning and my mum's just getting up. She asks me what I'm doing up that early and I just shrug, not wanting to explain the computer situation (the job interview woman is long gone, she must've left some time during my psychotic attempts to kill the computer). The last thing that happens is that I think:
"Oh no... that computer is never gonna work again. I'm computerless now, what's James going to say?"
At that point I woke up, feeling massively dehydrated.
"What are you doing? You can't do that to the chickens! You all get out of here, now, run along with you!" She adds, to that girl who'd killed chickens: "And you go home and tell your parents what you've done!"
That's all I remember of the film. In the next part of the dream I'm still at the same comp, in the same room, but some of my brother's furniture have gone and a woman is standing next to me. It's job interview and I'm supposed to show her my Office skills or something. So I close down that game I've been playing and I attempt to start working but I get a weird error message saying F: (the DVD-burner/player is F: on my comp) has stopped working completely, and I think "Shit, that's not good, I can't play CDs now. But at least the one in there now is just the installation CD for the webcam." (this is true). And I press the button to push it out and remove the CD, but nothing happens and for some reason I have to get rid of it, so I just pull on it and the sort of "loading" thing for the discs just comes flying out as if it wasn't in any way connected to the rest of the DVD-burner. That, and the actual CD dart across the floor and there's a hideous odour of burning plastic. I decide to ignore it, given my ongoing interview and smile at the woman while thinking to myself that my brother's gonna kill me for the mess I've made of his room. In addition to the demolished bits of my computer I've got a little notepad and some little book-like things that look like instruction manuals for various components on his desk (other things too, but I can't recall what they were now).
The computer is locking up and I decide to reboot it, but when I do it loads up the game I was playing before and a lot of other things that have got nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be doing. I try to shut them down, but they start up again. I can feel panic setting in and I try rebooting it again, same thing. Now I'm at the point where I no longer care about the job interview, I just want to be rid of that stupid game and the other stuff that keeps loading and I just crash the computer manually and leave it off. But it boots itself and everything starts again. I crash it again and it starts on its own. This time I crash it and switch the power button in the back of it off, thinking that'll be the end of it. And it is... For a few seconds before it powers up again. I look at the power switch at the back and it's back into on-mode. I switch it off there instantly, not even bothering with the normal power-button thing at the front. And I watch as it slowly switches back into the "on"-position and starts up again.
Now, I can't quite recall what I do next. I know that I considered unplugging it and I might've done. But I might actually have gone nuts and bashed the entire computer up until I was sure it wouldn't magically reboot again.
Either way, at this point in the dream I know the computer isn't going to start up again, it's dead. It's early in the morning and my mum's just getting up. She asks me what I'm doing up that early and I just shrug, not wanting to explain the computer situation (the job interview woman is long gone, she must've left some time during my psychotic attempts to kill the computer). The last thing that happens is that I think:
"Oh no... that computer is never gonna work again. I'm computerless now, what's James going to say?"
At that point I woke up, feeling massively dehydrated.
The Dreams of March 28 and 26
I know I had two separate dreams this morning but the first one's the only one I can still remember something from.
I was at some sort of boarding school situated in the countryside with different buildings one had to go to. It was summer and I slowly made my way across the yard to the building I was supposed to be in next. There was an exam that day, but no one else seemed bothered by it.
So, I was alone, I got the feeling I was rarely anything else, and I sat on a bench underneath coat hangers in the entrance hall to that building. It reminded me of the place my music class in junior high was taught, but this place had stone walls and was more of an old manor type place than a mid-late 20th century building. I was in a grey school uniform, much like the others'. Then a man opened the door and came out and said a few words about the exam. He ended by making a comment about not having any expectations about me passing it, I had after all only been accepted because I was his granddaughter. Everyone giggled.
And yes, it was my grandfather who opened the door (paternal one), which is weird since he's never taught anything in his life as far as I know. And I guess it's easy to explain this as me having some kind of fear of disappointing people or something. I'm sure I do. I'm sure everyone does.
But there we were and we all went inside and sat down at these large wooden tables with our exams. There was a robot functioning as a servant gliding around from student to student offering them crushed ice, which, apparently, was useful in some way. Not sure which way.
..but if you've interpreted the first bit of this dream, what about the thing with the robot?
A couple of days ago I had a dream where Kit and I went to something that can only be referred to as a ski resort. But I don't recall seeing anyone skiing. In fact, what everyone seemed to be doing there was to ride these ski lift-type things downhill, really fast. Which seems like a lot more fun than actual skiing to me. The actual resort was more like an old castle, and it was cold, and the corridors had water dripping down the stone walls and stuff. And that's where most people had to live and sleep, 'cause apparently one always had to wait a few days for a room. But the rooms were more like medieval prison cells anyway, so it wasn't as if we were waiting for 5 star treatment.
We found a spot that had some light (from one of those torches sticking out from the wall that you always imagine old castles to have) and talked to this teenage boy who was nice.
The ski lift things sort of ran from the actual castle out into the snowy, hilly landscape around us. There were basically gaping holes in the walls where one climbed into an unsafe looking box, hanging from a wire stretching downhill, further than one could see. I remember getting into one to set off after having spent 24 hours guarding my spot on the floor of the corridor, but nothing after that. So I've no idea if it was cool. (:-P
I was at some sort of boarding school situated in the countryside with different buildings one had to go to. It was summer and I slowly made my way across the yard to the building I was supposed to be in next. There was an exam that day, but no one else seemed bothered by it.
So, I was alone, I got the feeling I was rarely anything else, and I sat on a bench underneath coat hangers in the entrance hall to that building. It reminded me of the place my music class in junior high was taught, but this place had stone walls and was more of an old manor type place than a mid-late 20th century building. I was in a grey school uniform, much like the others'. Then a man opened the door and came out and said a few words about the exam. He ended by making a comment about not having any expectations about me passing it, I had after all only been accepted because I was his granddaughter. Everyone giggled.
And yes, it was my grandfather who opened the door (paternal one), which is weird since he's never taught anything in his life as far as I know. And I guess it's easy to explain this as me having some kind of fear of disappointing people or something. I'm sure I do. I'm sure everyone does.
But there we were and we all went inside and sat down at these large wooden tables with our exams. There was a robot functioning as a servant gliding around from student to student offering them crushed ice, which, apparently, was useful in some way. Not sure which way.
..but if you've interpreted the first bit of this dream, what about the thing with the robot?
A couple of days ago I had a dream where Kit and I went to something that can only be referred to as a ski resort. But I don't recall seeing anyone skiing. In fact, what everyone seemed to be doing there was to ride these ski lift-type things downhill, really fast. Which seems like a lot more fun than actual skiing to me. The actual resort was more like an old castle, and it was cold, and the corridors had water dripping down the stone walls and stuff. And that's where most people had to live and sleep, 'cause apparently one always had to wait a few days for a room. But the rooms were more like medieval prison cells anyway, so it wasn't as if we were waiting for 5 star treatment.
We found a spot that had some light (from one of those torches sticking out from the wall that you always imagine old castles to have) and talked to this teenage boy who was nice.
The ski lift things sort of ran from the actual castle out into the snowy, hilly landscape around us. There were basically gaping holes in the walls where one climbed into an unsafe looking box, hanging from a wire stretching downhill, further than one could see. I remember getting into one to set off after having spent 24 hours guarding my spot on the floor of the corridor, but nothing after that. So I've no idea if it was cool. (:-P
Friday, 27 March 2009
Out in the cold...
There aren't that many things I can pride myself on being great at. I'm one of those people who're anywhere from average to very good on a lot of things. But one of the things I definitely have a talent for is starting out in one place on the Internet and ending up somewhere completely different.
So, when I was poking around the website of major, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and stumbled across an article about the construction of this season's ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi it was really unevitable that I'd end up reading more about it. Ever since I first heard about that hotel a few years ago I've always found it intriguing on many levels. So, there I was, looking at all the different designs of this season's ice hotel when one room in particular made me halt, re-read the name of the room, tilt my head slightly as I made sure I wasn't imagining it, and finally giggling as I realised what the two designers had done with the room dubbed "Getting Cold Feet".
Reading about the designers I immediately became curious of the "masked" one known as INSA. Because artists who hide their identities tend to be graffiti artists and that's one of those areas of art that absolutely fascinates me but I know very little about (there are plenty of those areas, by the way, far more than someone who's studied art history and contemporary art for as long as I have should be allowed). So, I started looking for information on this guy (unless it's a woman who's taken a lot of trouble to cleverly hide her gender, in which case I apologise and say that I'm impressed) and there doesn't seem to be a wikipedia-page about him, go figure. I did find some articles though, and through them a link to the "official" (I so hate that word sometimes, but I suppose it's needed to sort out these little pages we call web) site.
Now. Someone who just gave INSA's work a quick glance might say it's just the work of some semi-perv wanting to gawk over half-naked women, but that's not it (or maybe that's some of it, but that's none of our business, really, and it's not of importance), there's much more to it than that. The use of the high-heeled shoe (sometimes with an accompaning leg and arse), which is a common representative of fetishes, is quite thought-provoking. In itself it's just a shoe. Depending on your disposition and feelings towards footwear that can make you think about fashion, footwear you might crave but can't really afford, Carrie Bradshaw half-running down a New York street, pin-up models, pornography or maybe how your wife spends far too much on shopping. But there is something these things have in common - consumerism. If you'd seen a sensible shoe for walking you might just think of necessities, but the high-heeled shoe is not a necessity, is it? Nope, it represents both the aforementioned consumerism and something much more primal - desire. For women (yes, I'm generalising) it's the desire to have it. For men (still doing it) the desire have the woman wearing it.
I've spent hours reading and looking at things by or concerning INSA. But those little cog-thingies inside my brain have been spinning around, making all that machinery work at high-speed too. Because this did something that various things do to me every now and then; I started thinking about consumerism in modern society. It sounds really pretentious, I know, but things just set that stuff off in my head every now and then, but always from a slightly different angle. And this one was quite different and more intense (just goes to show what art and culture can do to me), because this time around I was forced to come back to myself, and scrutinising your own behaviour can be both fun and horrible, but it's always at least slightly frightening. While I occasionally will be watching something trashy on TV with my mum (like Dr. Phil or something) and we'll both exclaim how we don't understand those shopoholics who keep turning up with their "addiction" and how we could never do that. That's not necessarily true. While I get bored very quickly if I shop for clothes (and I even did during that lovely year I felt somewhat thin) if I had the money to spend on my fetish, I'd spend it. And you know what that means, right? Yup. Boxes upon boxes of mint condition original 70s vinyl.
My head was still racing with ideas about consumerism in media and mainstream culture (and subculture too!) and how this could easily turn into one of the two 10-week papers I have to write to ever get that stupid degree of mine when I accompanied my brother as he took the dog for a morning walk. Once outside, my mind started drifting back to the art aspects of INSA (possibly triggered by the dog doing his own street art by spraying the innocently white snow with an in-your-face kind of yellow) and then to the ice hotel (which is looking stunning this season, you must go to their website and check out the pictures of all the rooms). And as I walked there, being viciously stung by the tiny snow flakes which were whipped around in the wind, I started thinking about how much I'll miss this when I move to the UK. I'll complain about it like everyone else, but it's no secret that I love snow and winter. Hell, I was born during a blizzard and a temperature of -25 (rarely experienced this far south, even back then). And I don't even mind when it springs itself on us like this, killing all the flowers which had begun to stick their defiant heads out of the ground. In fact, I was quite enjoying the feeling of an early morning being filled with daylight and snow and birds singing (though, I swear they were louder than normal, as if shouting complaints about the damn weather to one another).
You can't really put a price on the art of snow and ice, can you? While I love leaving the first set of footprints on virgin snow, I know they'll have filled up or melted away a couple of hours later. Or been trampled beyond recognition by other feet whose intentions were much less poetic than my feet's were as I went for that 3 am walk with no other purpose. And while INSA can sell his own range of stilettos, inspired by the artwork he's made for years, for £200 a pair; come spring, his ice suite will return to Torne river and it won't turn up on a 22nd Century edition of the Antiques Roadshow.
So, when I was poking around the website of major, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and stumbled across an article about the construction of this season's ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi it was really unevitable that I'd end up reading more about it. Ever since I first heard about that hotel a few years ago I've always found it intriguing on many levels. So, there I was, looking at all the different designs of this season's ice hotel when one room in particular made me halt, re-read the name of the room, tilt my head slightly as I made sure I wasn't imagining it, and finally giggling as I realised what the two designers had done with the room dubbed "Getting Cold Feet".
Reading about the designers I immediately became curious of the "masked" one known as INSA. Because artists who hide their identities tend to be graffiti artists and that's one of those areas of art that absolutely fascinates me but I know very little about (there are plenty of those areas, by the way, far more than someone who's studied art history and contemporary art for as long as I have should be allowed). So, I started looking for information on this guy (unless it's a woman who's taken a lot of trouble to cleverly hide her gender, in which case I apologise and say that I'm impressed) and there doesn't seem to be a wikipedia-page about him, go figure. I did find some articles though, and through them a link to the "official" (I so hate that word sometimes, but I suppose it's needed to sort out these little pages we call web) site.
Now. Someone who just gave INSA's work a quick glance might say it's just the work of some semi-perv wanting to gawk over half-naked women, but that's not it (or maybe that's some of it, but that's none of our business, really, and it's not of importance), there's much more to it than that. The use of the high-heeled shoe (sometimes with an accompaning leg and arse), which is a common representative of fetishes, is quite thought-provoking. In itself it's just a shoe. Depending on your disposition and feelings towards footwear that can make you think about fashion, footwear you might crave but can't really afford, Carrie Bradshaw half-running down a New York street, pin-up models, pornography or maybe how your wife spends far too much on shopping. But there is something these things have in common - consumerism. If you'd seen a sensible shoe for walking you might just think of necessities, but the high-heeled shoe is not a necessity, is it? Nope, it represents both the aforementioned consumerism and something much more primal - desire. For women (yes, I'm generalising) it's the desire to have it. For men (still doing it) the desire have the woman wearing it.
I've spent hours reading and looking at things by or concerning INSA. But those little cog-thingies inside my brain have been spinning around, making all that machinery work at high-speed too. Because this did something that various things do to me every now and then; I started thinking about consumerism in modern society. It sounds really pretentious, I know, but things just set that stuff off in my head every now and then, but always from a slightly different angle. And this one was quite different and more intense (just goes to show what art and culture can do to me), because this time around I was forced to come back to myself, and scrutinising your own behaviour can be both fun and horrible, but it's always at least slightly frightening. While I occasionally will be watching something trashy on TV with my mum (like Dr. Phil or something) and we'll both exclaim how we don't understand those shopoholics who keep turning up with their "addiction" and how we could never do that. That's not necessarily true. While I get bored very quickly if I shop for clothes (and I even did during that lovely year I felt somewhat thin) if I had the money to spend on my fetish, I'd spend it. And you know what that means, right? Yup. Boxes upon boxes of mint condition original 70s vinyl.
My head was still racing with ideas about consumerism in media and mainstream culture (and subculture too!) and how this could easily turn into one of the two 10-week papers I have to write to ever get that stupid degree of mine when I accompanied my brother as he took the dog for a morning walk. Once outside, my mind started drifting back to the art aspects of INSA (possibly triggered by the dog doing his own street art by spraying the innocently white snow with an in-your-face kind of yellow) and then to the ice hotel (which is looking stunning this season, you must go to their website and check out the pictures of all the rooms). And as I walked there, being viciously stung by the tiny snow flakes which were whipped around in the wind, I started thinking about how much I'll miss this when I move to the UK. I'll complain about it like everyone else, but it's no secret that I love snow and winter. Hell, I was born during a blizzard and a temperature of -25 (rarely experienced this far south, even back then). And I don't even mind when it springs itself on us like this, killing all the flowers which had begun to stick their defiant heads out of the ground. In fact, I was quite enjoying the feeling of an early morning being filled with daylight and snow and birds singing (though, I swear they were louder than normal, as if shouting complaints about the damn weather to one another).
You can't really put a price on the art of snow and ice, can you? While I love leaving the first set of footprints on virgin snow, I know they'll have filled up or melted away a couple of hours later. Or been trampled beyond recognition by other feet whose intentions were much less poetic than my feet's were as I went for that 3 am walk with no other purpose. And while INSA can sell his own range of stilettos, inspired by the artwork he's made for years, for £200 a pair; come spring, his ice suite will return to Torne river and it won't turn up on a 22nd Century edition of the Antiques Roadshow.
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
The Dream of March 24
OK, I've already lost track of some details that become important when this dream ends, but the gist of it is still safely in my head and I think I can guide you through some of the odd twists and turns of it.
It started out with me going downtown - but where the "downtown" was I couldn't tell you. I'm pretty sure I was either living with or visiting my grandmother because I know she was "home" when I left.
There was this shopping centre I went to, which was inside a building that was older than the actual shopping centre and had not always been used as such. It was quite small, but because they used both floors they still managed something like... ten shops in there. And that's also where my grandfather's nursing home was, apparently. I visited him every now and then and this time found him sharing a room with two or three French people. So I went to talk to one of the nurses and point out that my grandfather speaks only Swedish and shouldn't share a room with French people. I think one of his brothers was actually living in the same nursing home so there wasn't a shortage of Swedish people to put him with. I did say that I knew that it might be difficult to arrange and when I said that the nurse sort of whispered that "if Mrs. [some odd name I can't remember] can get a new room in the midst of a war we can get your grandfather one now". This triggered a thought about a war the UK had been in a couple of years earlier (fake one, not the Iraq thing) so I guess that's where I was.
The next thing I remember is being out on the streets, trying to get somewhere on the busy streets. A girl who was walking in front of me suddenly stopped or side-stepped or something and I had to sort of throw my hand out and put it on her back to manouvre around her as I passed by. But I did this a bit roughly and I might've nearly slapped her. But I didn't really have time to stop and apologise so I hurried along. Then something came flying at me and struck me hard in the head. I toppled over and heard people gasp around me. Looking up I could see the girl I'd just passed looking furious, she'd thrown something at me. She said something about hitting me and instead of pointing out that she had purposely hurt me much worse than I had her and getting angry about it I stood up and calmly apologised for hitting her earlier, saying I really hadn't meant to, but she didn't listen. With a threat of something that would happen if I showed my face where she was (can't remember exactly what), she hurried off towards that shopping centre - and I needed to go back there for some reason, probably to check on my grandfather again.
So I started moving towards another entrance, making my around the building, looking inside it as I went. I spent quite a while sneaking around inside trying to avoid her attention, and I know I went back into the nursing home. I think we occasionally bumped into one another while we were both sneaking around through shops and I know we talked to loads of people including a Portuguese health chef who was forced to work in a shop due to lack of work in his field. There was a run-in with her later, on the street, but I don't remember what happened, just that after we'd argued (or something) we were both sitting down, resting ourselves against the wall of a stone building, twenty feet, or so, apart from one another and we weren't talking.
I'd had a brief memory of having forgotten my money and card some time earlier, not sure when, and I was down to my last four dollars (yup, they were dollars - a one-dollar bill and a non-existant three-dollar one). For some reason I threw the two dollar bills into the street, they flew quite far before landing in front of a somewhat old and tired-looking man who then slipped on them and fell down. He immediately shouted something to me, apparently suspecting me immediately. I then pretended not to have heard him and shouted to that other girl:
"Look what you did now!!! Why did you throw those there?"
The man turned on her instead. She kept trying to get him to turn his focus back to me, and we both stood up and I walked over to her and the man, who was now shouting furiously at the both of us. He wore REALLY weird glasses (that's not really important, I just wanted to mention it. They we like... the shape of upside down speech bubbles from a comic book and all the colours of the rainbow, but slightly metallic-looking). He went on and on about what street punks we were, and we were both dressed in nice-looking coats and we had proper suits on underneath. He seemed to think I was the scruffier-looking one but at some point he seemed to hear what we were saying and proceeded to take his weird glasses off and look at us proplerly and he then said we looked wholesome and pretty or something.
But that didn't stop him from having us both prosecuted for this crime, together. It turned out that he had loads of money and the prosecuting side of the court dealings had gathered up that Portuguese chef, among many others we had interacted with during our bisarre cat and mouse game. They all testified to what they'd seen us do throughout that day and we were shown satellite images of me throwing that money (which somehow still incriminated the both of us, despite the fact that I'd thrown the money), but lastly it was time for the man who'd slipped to testify.
Then he started telling this long story about how his declining health had forced him to seize working and how he'd been feeling terrible for a couple of years but as this trial had started he'd met all these people, like that chef, who were all able to help him somehow. He listed all these people that I remembered having met in my dream who were all great at something. And apparently if you put all of them together they were perfect employees for the man who'd slipped and he was already feeling much better. He finally ended his testimony by saying how meeting me and the other girl had been a blessing and shortly thereafter we'd been cleared of all charges.
Then I woke up and had to use the loo. (:-P
It started out with me going downtown - but where the "downtown" was I couldn't tell you. I'm pretty sure I was either living with or visiting my grandmother because I know she was "home" when I left.
There was this shopping centre I went to, which was inside a building that was older than the actual shopping centre and had not always been used as such. It was quite small, but because they used both floors they still managed something like... ten shops in there. And that's also where my grandfather's nursing home was, apparently. I visited him every now and then and this time found him sharing a room with two or three French people. So I went to talk to one of the nurses and point out that my grandfather speaks only Swedish and shouldn't share a room with French people. I think one of his brothers was actually living in the same nursing home so there wasn't a shortage of Swedish people to put him with. I did say that I knew that it might be difficult to arrange and when I said that the nurse sort of whispered that "if Mrs. [some odd name I can't remember] can get a new room in the midst of a war we can get your grandfather one now". This triggered a thought about a war the UK had been in a couple of years earlier (fake one, not the Iraq thing) so I guess that's where I was.
The next thing I remember is being out on the streets, trying to get somewhere on the busy streets. A girl who was walking in front of me suddenly stopped or side-stepped or something and I had to sort of throw my hand out and put it on her back to manouvre around her as I passed by. But I did this a bit roughly and I might've nearly slapped her. But I didn't really have time to stop and apologise so I hurried along. Then something came flying at me and struck me hard in the head. I toppled over and heard people gasp around me. Looking up I could see the girl I'd just passed looking furious, she'd thrown something at me. She said something about hitting me and instead of pointing out that she had purposely hurt me much worse than I had her and getting angry about it I stood up and calmly apologised for hitting her earlier, saying I really hadn't meant to, but she didn't listen. With a threat of something that would happen if I showed my face where she was (can't remember exactly what), she hurried off towards that shopping centre - and I needed to go back there for some reason, probably to check on my grandfather again.
So I started moving towards another entrance, making my around the building, looking inside it as I went. I spent quite a while sneaking around inside trying to avoid her attention, and I know I went back into the nursing home. I think we occasionally bumped into one another while we were both sneaking around through shops and I know we talked to loads of people including a Portuguese health chef who was forced to work in a shop due to lack of work in his field. There was a run-in with her later, on the street, but I don't remember what happened, just that after we'd argued (or something) we were both sitting down, resting ourselves against the wall of a stone building, twenty feet, or so, apart from one another and we weren't talking.
I'd had a brief memory of having forgotten my money and card some time earlier, not sure when, and I was down to my last four dollars (yup, they were dollars - a one-dollar bill and a non-existant three-dollar one). For some reason I threw the two dollar bills into the street, they flew quite far before landing in front of a somewhat old and tired-looking man who then slipped on them and fell down. He immediately shouted something to me, apparently suspecting me immediately. I then pretended not to have heard him and shouted to that other girl:
"Look what you did now!!! Why did you throw those there?"
The man turned on her instead. She kept trying to get him to turn his focus back to me, and we both stood up and I walked over to her and the man, who was now shouting furiously at the both of us. He wore REALLY weird glasses (that's not really important, I just wanted to mention it. They we like... the shape of upside down speech bubbles from a comic book and all the colours of the rainbow, but slightly metallic-looking). He went on and on about what street punks we were, and we were both dressed in nice-looking coats and we had proper suits on underneath. He seemed to think I was the scruffier-looking one but at some point he seemed to hear what we were saying and proceeded to take his weird glasses off and look at us proplerly and he then said we looked wholesome and pretty or something.
But that didn't stop him from having us both prosecuted for this crime, together. It turned out that he had loads of money and the prosecuting side of the court dealings had gathered up that Portuguese chef, among many others we had interacted with during our bisarre cat and mouse game. They all testified to what they'd seen us do throughout that day and we were shown satellite images of me throwing that money (which somehow still incriminated the both of us, despite the fact that I'd thrown the money), but lastly it was time for the man who'd slipped to testify.
Then he started telling this long story about how his declining health had forced him to seize working and how he'd been feeling terrible for a couple of years but as this trial had started he'd met all these people, like that chef, who were all able to help him somehow. He listed all these people that I remembered having met in my dream who were all great at something. And apparently if you put all of them together they were perfect employees for the man who'd slipped and he was already feeling much better. He finally ended his testimony by saying how meeting me and the other girl had been a blessing and shortly thereafter we'd been cleared of all charges.
Then I woke up and had to use the loo. (:-P
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
The Dreams of March 18
What happened this morning was I woke up 'cause the phone was ringing and realised I'd forgot to set my alarm. No biggie, I wasn't going anywhere really (except for a walk in the gorgeous weather we're finally having).
So then I remembered just what I'd been dreaming before I woke up, and I started retracing my steps and soon realised I'd been dreaming like crazy... I'll try to remember as much as possible.
Dream 1. James was visiting and I think his parents were here too, but I can't remember much of what they were doing. We were all at the local shopping centre (not that it looked the same as it does in real life) and it was nearly closing time which, for some reason, was 2 am on week days... or nights, rather.
I'd been off on my own for a bit, to buy something, and I was heading back to the food court to meet up with the others when some guy I had a vague recollection of having met a few times before came up to me and started chatting me up. I wasn't particularly amused and politely tried to excuse myself but he wasn't discouraged and followed me, grabbing my arm trying to get me to stop. I felt myself getting slightly nervous and started half-running away from him. On my way there I suddenly saw a very familiar, green sign above a closed off shop. "Starbucks ...opening soon!"
Wow. Starbucks here? In *my* hometown? There aren't even any in Stockholm! I ran back as fast as I could to tell James about it.
Here's where it gets hazy. I know I got back and told him and we were talking to his parents for a bit, I remember his mother telling me something, but the next clear thing I remember is me being alone out by the carpark.
Something gets really weird here, my car isn't working as it normally does and for some reason I have to drive slowly through this huge crowd of people. Not just a huge crowd, an actual parade. Some of them were in matching costumes performing some sort of dance routine!
Not sure what this was all about, but that's all I remember, anyways.
Dream 2.
I think I may have been one of the two women in this dream, at some point I did turn into one of them, but to begin with I think I was sort of... just seeing them, like on a film. They were in water, just by a beach and talking about things like seeing birds (ducks I believe it was) swimming in the water. They were trying to get across this river (or whatever it was) to the other side where there were these huge concrete pillars, holding a bridge that crossed the river up. The young woman, or rather; teenage girl, was saying things that implied she'd never really been out in the world before and the woman was telling her things about it that I'd consider completely untrue but somehow seemed to make sense in this dream. For instance; the girl was commenting on never having seen birds flying on water before and the woman said that seeing that was a way of seeing God's love, or something.
There was something very pale and sickly about the girl and she was exhausted once they reached the pillars.
Now, the next bit sort of feels like the same dream. As if those pillars were this magic gate and by getting to them this girl was made healthy again and sent to where she was supposed to be. I distinctly remember her having straight, brown hair in the first part of the dream, but now it was curly and I was her. And I was in a house with a couple of other people, but I was just exiting it through the back and there was an orchard behind it where some young men were working. By the looks of the home and the clothes people were wearing I'd say time had shifted back to early 20th century. I asked the closest boy where another boy, whose name I can't remember, was. The young man shouted something to the others working further down the orchard and they, in turn, shouted further down and shortly thereafter the person I was looking for came running and gave me a hug. When the other young men started making remarks he told them I was his sister, but I don't think I was.
And that's when the phone rang and woke me up.
A lot of things were hazy about these dreams as there was so much to try to remember. Oh well. I hope you had a good night!
So then I remembered just what I'd been dreaming before I woke up, and I started retracing my steps and soon realised I'd been dreaming like crazy... I'll try to remember as much as possible.
Dream 1. James was visiting and I think his parents were here too, but I can't remember much of what they were doing. We were all at the local shopping centre (not that it looked the same as it does in real life) and it was nearly closing time which, for some reason, was 2 am on week days... or nights, rather.
I'd been off on my own for a bit, to buy something, and I was heading back to the food court to meet up with the others when some guy I had a vague recollection of having met a few times before came up to me and started chatting me up. I wasn't particularly amused and politely tried to excuse myself but he wasn't discouraged and followed me, grabbing my arm trying to get me to stop. I felt myself getting slightly nervous and started half-running away from him. On my way there I suddenly saw a very familiar, green sign above a closed off shop. "Starbucks ...opening soon!"
Wow. Starbucks here? In *my* hometown? There aren't even any in Stockholm! I ran back as fast as I could to tell James about it.
Here's where it gets hazy. I know I got back and told him and we were talking to his parents for a bit, I remember his mother telling me something, but the next clear thing I remember is me being alone out by the carpark.
Something gets really weird here, my car isn't working as it normally does and for some reason I have to drive slowly through this huge crowd of people. Not just a huge crowd, an actual parade. Some of them were in matching costumes performing some sort of dance routine!
Not sure what this was all about, but that's all I remember, anyways.
Dream 2.
I think I may have been one of the two women in this dream, at some point I did turn into one of them, but to begin with I think I was sort of... just seeing them, like on a film. They were in water, just by a beach and talking about things like seeing birds (ducks I believe it was) swimming in the water. They were trying to get across this river (or whatever it was) to the other side where there were these huge concrete pillars, holding a bridge that crossed the river up. The young woman, or rather; teenage girl, was saying things that implied she'd never really been out in the world before and the woman was telling her things about it that I'd consider completely untrue but somehow seemed to make sense in this dream. For instance; the girl was commenting on never having seen birds flying on water before and the woman said that seeing that was a way of seeing God's love, or something.
There was something very pale and sickly about the girl and she was exhausted once they reached the pillars.
Now, the next bit sort of feels like the same dream. As if those pillars were this magic gate and by getting to them this girl was made healthy again and sent to where she was supposed to be. I distinctly remember her having straight, brown hair in the first part of the dream, but now it was curly and I was her. And I was in a house with a couple of other people, but I was just exiting it through the back and there was an orchard behind it where some young men were working. By the looks of the home and the clothes people were wearing I'd say time had shifted back to early 20th century. I asked the closest boy where another boy, whose name I can't remember, was. The young man shouted something to the others working further down the orchard and they, in turn, shouted further down and shortly thereafter the person I was looking for came running and gave me a hug. When the other young men started making remarks he told them I was his sister, but I don't think I was.
And that's when the phone rang and woke me up.
A lot of things were hazy about these dreams as there was so much to try to remember. Oh well. I hope you had a good night!
Saturday, 14 March 2009
The Weirdness of Dreams
Yes, this is it. The first non-dream-post. I should probably drink something festive to celebrate, but I can't be arsed to get up so the slight taste of garlic still residing in my mouth since lunch will have to do.
For those of you who didn't stop reading from being too grossed out just now, welcome! I've been meaning to get this done for ages, but it's never seemed the right time. But today, as I was reading a blog post on the blog of a delightful woman who on the web goes by the name of dyermaker I was reminded of a wonderful album I haven't listened to for a while, namely This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours by the Manic Street Preachers. Lately, I've mainly listened to Send Away the Tigers, but it was time to reacquaint myself with the older stuff too.
So, I found myself inspired by a delightful blog and a wonderful album and I decided to sit down and write a non-dream blog post.
Since I'm trying to ease you into it, this is really only an introduction, also touching on a subject you will be familiar with if you've read my earlier ramblings. Dreams.
After James had read my most recent nocturnal adventure (well, it was really morning when I had those dreams, but still) he posed an interesting question, namely that if he has as weird dreams as I do? Since he's one of many who can't recall their dreams very often it really it's not easy to tell what he dreams. This got me thinking... Do we all have as strange and odd dreams or is there something wrong with me? Wait, that doesn't put me in a very good light, does it? Am I... different? That's a better word.
The more I thought about it the more odd dream descriptions from various friends over the years I could remember. Clearly, there's Kit and her strange dreams. Beppo has mentioned a few as well, and then there are others - including James, who's mentioned one or two odd dreams he's had. Is it very common to have strange, crazy dreams where nothing seems to make much sense? Could it be that a lot of people for some reason think it's embarrassing to talk about and therefore never tell others about their REM-induced endeavours?
Every time I see one of those "dream charts" they always explain things like dreaming about a ladder... And while I can understand that not everyone dreams the way I do (comeplete with sound, smell, taste, sensations and different languages - all in full colour, of course) are there really people who just dream about a ladder? Do they just stand there looking at it? What kind of ladder is it? Doesn't it lead somewhere? Do they climb it? I've seen a few ladders in my dreams too. One was propped up against a house that was being painted white and purple by kids from the school I went to in that dream and somewhere around was a boy I then spent the most amazing day with, walking alongside a road, smelling flowers and went to all kinds of places with before he got in a fight with one of my brothers (I had two in this dream) and as a result died, since he'd had a heart problem no one had known about. Do you see what I'm getting at here?
So what causes dreams as elaborate and odd as mine? I know I get a lot of from real life because I can often relate things in my dreams to things going on in my life and even in dreams where I'm in "fake" places with "fake" people I can still see resemblances from places I know in life. But how come it all comes through so vividly? Is it because of my fondness for the evil rock music? Is it because my diet isn't healthy enough? Or because I watched Gremlins when I was five? That, by the way, was only one of many "scary films" I saw when I was a child but still the only one to give me nightmares (oh, poor Gizmo, those bad ones were throwing darts at him in my sleep too that night), and I've yet to turn into a psycho killer or anything so it couldn't have been too bad.
Any theories on this? I'm not sure I've really composed a proper problem here to hypothesise on, but if you've any thoughts feel free to share them.
As a side note I might add that I've never had a recurring dream that I'm aware of, and I think that's quite common. If I kept getting recurring ones this blog would really be lacking in content.
I wish you all cracked and entertaining dreams!
For those of you who didn't stop reading from being too grossed out just now, welcome! I've been meaning to get this done for ages, but it's never seemed the right time. But today, as I was reading a blog post on the blog of a delightful woman who on the web goes by the name of dyermaker I was reminded of a wonderful album I haven't listened to for a while, namely This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours by the Manic Street Preachers. Lately, I've mainly listened to Send Away the Tigers, but it was time to reacquaint myself with the older stuff too.
So, I found myself inspired by a delightful blog and a wonderful album and I decided to sit down and write a non-dream blog post.
Since I'm trying to ease you into it, this is really only an introduction, also touching on a subject you will be familiar with if you've read my earlier ramblings. Dreams.
After James had read my most recent nocturnal adventure (well, it was really morning when I had those dreams, but still) he posed an interesting question, namely that if he has as weird dreams as I do? Since he's one of many who can't recall their dreams very often it really it's not easy to tell what he dreams. This got me thinking... Do we all have as strange and odd dreams or is there something wrong with me? Wait, that doesn't put me in a very good light, does it? Am I... different? That's a better word.
The more I thought about it the more odd dream descriptions from various friends over the years I could remember. Clearly, there's Kit and her strange dreams. Beppo has mentioned a few as well, and then there are others - including James, who's mentioned one or two odd dreams he's had. Is it very common to have strange, crazy dreams where nothing seems to make much sense? Could it be that a lot of people for some reason think it's embarrassing to talk about and therefore never tell others about their REM-induced endeavours?
Every time I see one of those "dream charts" they always explain things like dreaming about a ladder... And while I can understand that not everyone dreams the way I do (comeplete with sound, smell, taste, sensations and different languages - all in full colour, of course) are there really people who just dream about a ladder? Do they just stand there looking at it? What kind of ladder is it? Doesn't it lead somewhere? Do they climb it? I've seen a few ladders in my dreams too. One was propped up against a house that was being painted white and purple by kids from the school I went to in that dream and somewhere around was a boy I then spent the most amazing day with, walking alongside a road, smelling flowers and went to all kinds of places with before he got in a fight with one of my brothers (I had two in this dream) and as a result died, since he'd had a heart problem no one had known about. Do you see what I'm getting at here?
So what causes dreams as elaborate and odd as mine? I know I get a lot of from real life because I can often relate things in my dreams to things going on in my life and even in dreams where I'm in "fake" places with "fake" people I can still see resemblances from places I know in life. But how come it all comes through so vividly? Is it because of my fondness for the evil rock music? Is it because my diet isn't healthy enough? Or because I watched Gremlins when I was five? That, by the way, was only one of many "scary films" I saw when I was a child but still the only one to give me nightmares (oh, poor Gizmo, those bad ones were throwing darts at him in my sleep too that night), and I've yet to turn into a psycho killer or anything so it couldn't have been too bad.
Any theories on this? I'm not sure I've really composed a proper problem here to hypothesise on, but if you've any thoughts feel free to share them.
As a side note I might add that I've never had a recurring dream that I'm aware of, and I think that's quite common. If I kept getting recurring ones this blog would really be lacking in content.
I wish you all cracked and entertaining dreams!
Friday, 13 March 2009
The Dreams of March 13
I had quite a few dreams during this night, though, most of them I think appeared after I'd been up once around 8, to call James and wake him up (he was already up, though, but at least he wasn't late for work this morning).
Not sure of the order in which I had them, but let's start with the nightmare first and work our way to the silliness, shall we?
The first one was quite brief. I received a call on my mobile from someone close to me who could barely speak from crying too hard. I heard something about someone being shot, but not who and I nearly had to shout at this upset person to get them to repeat who it was as they were so upset.
"My mum!" came the answer. "It doesn't look as if she'll make it."
The rest of the dream was spent on the phone as I tried to find a way to get to this other person as fast as possible.
It was a very frightening dream. (:-/
The next one was longer and had a lot of story to it, but most of that's gone away now. I was a member of a team of some sort, possibly a police one, investigating these houses out in the middle of nowhere. It didn't seem to be night-time, but there was no daylight either. Just this really dark blueish grey that seemed fixed to the area. As if it was a really cloudy day and the sun was just setting, pulling most of the light away from behind the clouds. Except it never changed, and the air seemed cold and wet.
The village was very isolated and no one seemed interested in talking to us. We hadn't found the person or house we were looking for and were ready to give up when someone in the team spotted cables hidden in the grass, going towards what we just thought was a really dense patch of forest. But as we approached we realised there was a gate and a small house that looked as if it might collapse at any second in there. We had to keep the man living in it, who was away from his house at the time (apparently) from finding out we'd been there and cautiously made our way to it. Booby traps were set up all over it, some merely there to alert the owner to our having been there, but others were designed to kill. Like the grids of very thin metal wires with very powerful currents of electicity running through them, cleverly hidden among things he expected us to touch. The whole place was a mess and we soon left, though I'm not sure if we'd found what we were looking for.
The people in the village didn't want to talk to us either, with the exception of a little girl with fair, curly hair. And for some reason no one seemed interested in stopping her from doing so.
I can't recall if she told us anything important, but I can remember that she showed us these odd drawings she'd made. They weren't odd because of what they depicted, but how they depicted it. Not only were they much too good for a girl that age, there was something about them I can't explain... It was as if there had never been drawings like them made before. Ever.
I don't know if there was more after that.
This next bit was really brief and might have been connected to the previous dream despite being in such a different setting. In fact, I think it *may* actually have been us somehow going into the little girl's drawing, because I remember one of them being about California and there were palmtrees and things.
So anyway... We were on a beach somewhere (I think it was the same people), dressed a bit too warmly as we tried to get somewhere. One of the guys who had been sort of a leader of the group charged ahead and started climbing this odd-looking tree to get through the dense patch of rain forest (yup!) which was on the beach (yup!) in California (possibly!). He failed to notice the huge snake that was perched halfway up it and the next person going up had a run-in with said snake. She screamed and somehow one of them managed to push the snake to the ground where it was attacked by a large creature we'd never seen before. It was sort of like that scene in Jurassic Park where they're in the lobby of that dinosaur place and the T-Rex grabs a velociraptor. The two battle it out while we get away.
End scene! Or dream, more like...
The last dream started out with me having an idea for a massive artwork made out of fusible beads. You know, those plastic ones you put on a peg array-thing and iron so that they melt together. Kit and Julian make a lot of those and now that I was rich and living in a massive house with that music room I've always dreamed of (this dream started out so well) I was going to have the cover art of Van der Graaf Generator's Still Life album covering an entire wall, and they were going to help me. Clearly, my role was to let them call the shots of it as they have artistic talent and I can remember just doing what Julian was telling me to do.
But for some reason this dream stabbed me in the back. Suddenly, I was still in a room like my music one, but there were all kinds of professionals running around, and massive lights being aimed at the wall. And... And... The Spice Girls. They were posing against the wall and then they brought in some smart-looking woman with glasses and a suit that probably cost the same as my mum's flat. She was talking about her artistic outlet and then the Spice Girls were commenting on the emotional process and a video being showed portrayed them posing for something and arguing and crying (which is pretty much what I picture them doing most of the time, really). And then, after the video was over, one of them was talking about how she'd dreamed of having this. Just as I was getting annoyed at never finding out what was going on they unveiled it. The fusible beads artwork covering the entire wall. Except it was her wall and the artwork was a massive picture of the Spice Girls, not Still Life.
Then people started drinking overpriced champagne and I woke up.
Not sure of the order in which I had them, but let's start with the nightmare first and work our way to the silliness, shall we?
The first one was quite brief. I received a call on my mobile from someone close to me who could barely speak from crying too hard. I heard something about someone being shot, but not who and I nearly had to shout at this upset person to get them to repeat who it was as they were so upset.
"My mum!" came the answer. "It doesn't look as if she'll make it."
The rest of the dream was spent on the phone as I tried to find a way to get to this other person as fast as possible.
It was a very frightening dream. (:-/
The next one was longer and had a lot of story to it, but most of that's gone away now. I was a member of a team of some sort, possibly a police one, investigating these houses out in the middle of nowhere. It didn't seem to be night-time, but there was no daylight either. Just this really dark blueish grey that seemed fixed to the area. As if it was a really cloudy day and the sun was just setting, pulling most of the light away from behind the clouds. Except it never changed, and the air seemed cold and wet.
The village was very isolated and no one seemed interested in talking to us. We hadn't found the person or house we were looking for and were ready to give up when someone in the team spotted cables hidden in the grass, going towards what we just thought was a really dense patch of forest. But as we approached we realised there was a gate and a small house that looked as if it might collapse at any second in there. We had to keep the man living in it, who was away from his house at the time (apparently) from finding out we'd been there and cautiously made our way to it. Booby traps were set up all over it, some merely there to alert the owner to our having been there, but others were designed to kill. Like the grids of very thin metal wires with very powerful currents of electicity running through them, cleverly hidden among things he expected us to touch. The whole place was a mess and we soon left, though I'm not sure if we'd found what we were looking for.
The people in the village didn't want to talk to us either, with the exception of a little girl with fair, curly hair. And for some reason no one seemed interested in stopping her from doing so.
I can't recall if she told us anything important, but I can remember that she showed us these odd drawings she'd made. They weren't odd because of what they depicted, but how they depicted it. Not only were they much too good for a girl that age, there was something about them I can't explain... It was as if there had never been drawings like them made before. Ever.
I don't know if there was more after that.
This next bit was really brief and might have been connected to the previous dream despite being in such a different setting. In fact, I think it *may* actually have been us somehow going into the little girl's drawing, because I remember one of them being about California and there were palmtrees and things.
So anyway... We were on a beach somewhere (I think it was the same people), dressed a bit too warmly as we tried to get somewhere. One of the guys who had been sort of a leader of the group charged ahead and started climbing this odd-looking tree to get through the dense patch of rain forest (yup!) which was on the beach (yup!) in California (possibly!). He failed to notice the huge snake that was perched halfway up it and the next person going up had a run-in with said snake. She screamed and somehow one of them managed to push the snake to the ground where it was attacked by a large creature we'd never seen before. It was sort of like that scene in Jurassic Park where they're in the lobby of that dinosaur place and the T-Rex grabs a velociraptor. The two battle it out while we get away.
End scene! Or dream, more like...
The last dream started out with me having an idea for a massive artwork made out of fusible beads. You know, those plastic ones you put on a peg array-thing and iron so that they melt together. Kit and Julian make a lot of those and now that I was rich and living in a massive house with that music room I've always dreamed of (this dream started out so well) I was going to have the cover art of Van der Graaf Generator's Still Life album covering an entire wall, and they were going to help me. Clearly, my role was to let them call the shots of it as they have artistic talent and I can remember just doing what Julian was telling me to do.
But for some reason this dream stabbed me in the back. Suddenly, I was still in a room like my music one, but there were all kinds of professionals running around, and massive lights being aimed at the wall. And... And... The Spice Girls. They were posing against the wall and then they brought in some smart-looking woman with glasses and a suit that probably cost the same as my mum's flat. She was talking about her artistic outlet and then the Spice Girls were commenting on the emotional process and a video being showed portrayed them posing for something and arguing and crying (which is pretty much what I picture them doing most of the time, really). And then, after the video was over, one of them was talking about how she'd dreamed of having this. Just as I was getting annoyed at never finding out what was going on they unveiled it. The fusible beads artwork covering the entire wall. Except it was her wall and the artwork was a massive picture of the Spice Girls, not Still Life.
Then people started drinking overpriced champagne and I woke up.
Monday, 2 March 2009
The Dream of March 2
Desperately trying to remember details from this one as I found it interesting. I don't think anyone in it was "real", but possibly a few people shared characteristics or appearances with friends of mine. I'm also struggling to remember if the people in it spoke Swedish or English, but I really don't remember that particular aspect.
I was somewhere in the countryside, with a man and a girl who I think were my father and sister in the dream. The other girl and I were both quite young, possibly about ten years old. We were visiting an elderly couple, the man's parents. They lived in a house, possibly with a small farm, in the countryside of a country that... I think either had been at war about thirty, or so, years ago or the people in the area had ties to a country that had been at war slightly more recently. One thing which definitely suggests something had caused the elderly couple to move to a different place at some point was the fact that their son, or my father, I guess he was, spoke with an accent as if the language the rest of us spoke wasn't as familiar to him (we can ignore the fact that no matter where he grew up his parents' first language would've been his. Maybe they both spoke these two languages perfectly and thus the other language had been their first whereas the one we now spoke had turned into a second one for their son?).
The house of the elderly couple was right next to a field, and there was only a dirt road leading up to their house - definitely in the middle of nowhere. But on the other side of the field was another house, one that had been inhabitated by a family with children but then left abandoned. I was told the story of it, but I don't know if they had abandoned it due to a war raging in the country or if they'd gone on holiday to the country they were originally from and then a war had started there and caught them by surprise. Either way, we knew the family had died. And my father had promised us we'd go explore the old house.
Since no one had tended to it in more than twenty years we were told to be very careful as we entered the house, hearts pounding. The ground floor seemed solely devoted to being a kitchen and dining area, and off to the right was a door that opened onto a small, fenced in area that now seemed as if every planted thing there had died - even the weeds. There was a small gate in the fence, which opened directly into the huge field that separated this house from my grandparents'.
As I followed my father and sister out there I looked down on the ground and spotted small holes in the dirt. I voiced my concerns about snakes to the others, but my father didn't seem to hear me. My sister looked scared though. Just after my father had gone back inside a mouse appeared from one of the holes and I shrieked and stomped on the ground to try to scare it away. Then we ran into the house too. We very carefully went upstairs and looked around there too. The whole place was very eery and I remember half-expecting the ghosts of the family to turn up and chase us away from their home. On a table by a sofa and a television there was a huge bowl full of tiny chocolate bars. I remember approaching it to check the expiration dates when my sister grabbed me.
"You're not going to take those, are you? I don't think that's legal!"
"I'm not going to take them, I just want to see how old they are."
But I can't remember actually checking them. The next bit I remember is being inside a bedroom and looking at books in a bookcase. There was a series of biographies about an author I was very familiar with. In fact, my grandmother and I had discussed those very biographies the night before. However, the one book in the series we'd talked about the most didn't seem to be there. My grandparents had now appeared outside the house and it seemed my father and sister had joined them, I was the last one in there. After finding those books I went halfway down the stairs, until I could see them through the doorway, and excitedly told them about my findings. I think I was heading back upstairs after that, but I can't remember any more.
I really enjoyed the mood of this dream, it felt just the same as reading a scary book did when I was a kid.
I was somewhere in the countryside, with a man and a girl who I think were my father and sister in the dream. The other girl and I were both quite young, possibly about ten years old. We were visiting an elderly couple, the man's parents. They lived in a house, possibly with a small farm, in the countryside of a country that... I think either had been at war about thirty, or so, years ago or the people in the area had ties to a country that had been at war slightly more recently. One thing which definitely suggests something had caused the elderly couple to move to a different place at some point was the fact that their son, or my father, I guess he was, spoke with an accent as if the language the rest of us spoke wasn't as familiar to him (we can ignore the fact that no matter where he grew up his parents' first language would've been his. Maybe they both spoke these two languages perfectly and thus the other language had been their first whereas the one we now spoke had turned into a second one for their son?).
The house of the elderly couple was right next to a field, and there was only a dirt road leading up to their house - definitely in the middle of nowhere. But on the other side of the field was another house, one that had been inhabitated by a family with children but then left abandoned. I was told the story of it, but I don't know if they had abandoned it due to a war raging in the country or if they'd gone on holiday to the country they were originally from and then a war had started there and caught them by surprise. Either way, we knew the family had died. And my father had promised us we'd go explore the old house.
Since no one had tended to it in more than twenty years we were told to be very careful as we entered the house, hearts pounding. The ground floor seemed solely devoted to being a kitchen and dining area, and off to the right was a door that opened onto a small, fenced in area that now seemed as if every planted thing there had died - even the weeds. There was a small gate in the fence, which opened directly into the huge field that separated this house from my grandparents'.
As I followed my father and sister out there I looked down on the ground and spotted small holes in the dirt. I voiced my concerns about snakes to the others, but my father didn't seem to hear me. My sister looked scared though. Just after my father had gone back inside a mouse appeared from one of the holes and I shrieked and stomped on the ground to try to scare it away. Then we ran into the house too. We very carefully went upstairs and looked around there too. The whole place was very eery and I remember half-expecting the ghosts of the family to turn up and chase us away from their home. On a table by a sofa and a television there was a huge bowl full of tiny chocolate bars. I remember approaching it to check the expiration dates when my sister grabbed me.
"You're not going to take those, are you? I don't think that's legal!"
"I'm not going to take them, I just want to see how old they are."
But I can't remember actually checking them. The next bit I remember is being inside a bedroom and looking at books in a bookcase. There was a series of biographies about an author I was very familiar with. In fact, my grandmother and I had discussed those very biographies the night before. However, the one book in the series we'd talked about the most didn't seem to be there. My grandparents had now appeared outside the house and it seemed my father and sister had joined them, I was the last one in there. After finding those books I went halfway down the stairs, until I could see them through the doorway, and excitedly told them about my findings. I think I was heading back upstairs after that, but I can't remember any more.
I really enjoyed the mood of this dream, it felt just the same as reading a scary book did when I was a kid.
Friday, 27 February 2009
The Dream of February 27
I've been a bit annoyed lately that I've no money to spend on the annual book sale this year, perhaps that's how this dream came to be centred around a book!
I was browsing through the music-related books in a bookstore in Gothenburg and found one about the Manic Street Preachers and bought it. It had been released by a Swedish organisation arranging gigs and things and I thought that was interesting. When I started reading it I realised that the first 30 pages of the book was filled with pictures from a music club that same organisation ran and had nothing to do with the band in question. The pictures weren't even of bands playing, they were of "metal"-looking people dressed up in stupid costumes (I distinctly remember the guy dressed as an enormous condom), doing stupid things and being stupidly drunk. So, basically, pictures that are only entertaining if you were actually there or know the people in them - and possibly not even then.
Then I got to the stuff about the Manic Street Preachers and found that it wasn't particularly well-written and didn't contain anything that wasn't already well-known about the band (note that I don't know a whole lot about them, even if I do have most of their albums so I've no idea what would be new information).
I'm not sure how much time passed between this and the next part of the dream, where I was going to a gig, but Kit and Julian had now turned up to join me. For some reason we were in the same building as the bookstore, but we went down below ground and ran through tunnels that looked just like the ones underneath campus Valla at the uni in Linköping. Loads of other people were running too, I guess people wanted to get to the front. I lost Kit and Julian somewhere along the way, and actually outran them (possibly the only time I'll ever get to outrun anyone who isn't a turtle) in the struggle to get to a gig with bands I didn't even know the names of. When I finally get there, three guys are standing in the front, they look to be about 15. There were seats towards the back, though. They were like those bleachers you always see in American films, and some people were scattered across them, but the whole point of running to the gig now seemed strange. Especially since the band setting their gear up consisted of five teenage girls and the name of their band was something like Edgoy. Clearly, an Edguy cover band and I'm no big fan of coverbands in general and I'm definitely not a big fan of power metal coverbands with teenagers in them. But there was no way I was leaving until I knew what the main event was. So I asked a few people who didn't know. Then I approached an Asian-looking guy who was sitting alone on front row and looked every bit the part of a power metal geek. Swedish didn't work, but after rephrasing the question two times in English he told me a name I don't remember but recognised in the dream as being another power metal band. Definitely not something to stick around for.
After managing to locate Kit and Julian we started walking back through the tunnels, but soon found they were a lot harder to navigate when you couldn't just follow the running power metal kids. We finally ended up in the right building but came out through the wrong exit and found ourselves in the bookstore I'd been to earlier. I told them about the horrible book I'd bought, only then realising that the venue I'd just left was the same one featured in the photos of that book. We spent some time browsing through books and laughing at romance novels with Fabio-esque men on the cover and titles like "Nights of Passion" and "The Stable Boy". I am sooo not googling those to find out if they're real titles of books like that, I'm sure they are but I'd rather not know that my subconscious knew somehow.
I don't know if anything else happened in the dream, but I doubt it. Not the best one ever, but given the lack of updates lately I thought I'd post it.
I wonder why my power metal past has decided to come back to haunt me?
I was browsing through the music-related books in a bookstore in Gothenburg and found one about the Manic Street Preachers and bought it. It had been released by a Swedish organisation arranging gigs and things and I thought that was interesting. When I started reading it I realised that the first 30 pages of the book was filled with pictures from a music club that same organisation ran and had nothing to do with the band in question. The pictures weren't even of bands playing, they were of "metal"-looking people dressed up in stupid costumes (I distinctly remember the guy dressed as an enormous condom), doing stupid things and being stupidly drunk. So, basically, pictures that are only entertaining if you were actually there or know the people in them - and possibly not even then.
Then I got to the stuff about the Manic Street Preachers and found that it wasn't particularly well-written and didn't contain anything that wasn't already well-known about the band (note that I don't know a whole lot about them, even if I do have most of their albums so I've no idea what would be new information).
I'm not sure how much time passed between this and the next part of the dream, where I was going to a gig, but Kit and Julian had now turned up to join me. For some reason we were in the same building as the bookstore, but we went down below ground and ran through tunnels that looked just like the ones underneath campus Valla at the uni in Linköping. Loads of other people were running too, I guess people wanted to get to the front. I lost Kit and Julian somewhere along the way, and actually outran them (possibly the only time I'll ever get to outrun anyone who isn't a turtle) in the struggle to get to a gig with bands I didn't even know the names of. When I finally get there, three guys are standing in the front, they look to be about 15. There were seats towards the back, though. They were like those bleachers you always see in American films, and some people were scattered across them, but the whole point of running to the gig now seemed strange. Especially since the band setting their gear up consisted of five teenage girls and the name of their band was something like Edgoy. Clearly, an Edguy cover band and I'm no big fan of coverbands in general and I'm definitely not a big fan of power metal coverbands with teenagers in them. But there was no way I was leaving until I knew what the main event was. So I asked a few people who didn't know. Then I approached an Asian-looking guy who was sitting alone on front row and looked every bit the part of a power metal geek. Swedish didn't work, but after rephrasing the question two times in English he told me a name I don't remember but recognised in the dream as being another power metal band. Definitely not something to stick around for.
After managing to locate Kit and Julian we started walking back through the tunnels, but soon found they were a lot harder to navigate when you couldn't just follow the running power metal kids. We finally ended up in the right building but came out through the wrong exit and found ourselves in the bookstore I'd been to earlier. I told them about the horrible book I'd bought, only then realising that the venue I'd just left was the same one featured in the photos of that book. We spent some time browsing through books and laughing at romance novels with Fabio-esque men on the cover and titles like "Nights of Passion" and "The Stable Boy". I am sooo not googling those to find out if they're real titles of books like that, I'm sure they are but I'd rather not know that my subconscious knew somehow.
I don't know if anything else happened in the dream, but I doubt it. Not the best one ever, but given the lack of updates lately I thought I'd post it.
I wonder why my power metal past has decided to come back to haunt me?
Sunday, 22 February 2009
The Dreams of February 22
I've been crap with dreams lately, mainly because James has somehow worked his way into nearly all dreams I can remember having had (yes, you may all proceed to ridicule me and hurl tomatoes at me). There have been a few without him I think would've been worthy of blogging (and a few with him too), but I've managed to forget them all before I've had a chance to write them down.
I had two last night. One of them was indeed one with James, we were going somewhere and the entire dream - or the parts I can remember of it - took place in a hotel where we went in together but for some reason I had to go up to our room alone and there loads of different lifts and I had trouble figuring out which one to use before finding a really fast one (not that I needed a really fast one, the building only had seven floors), but somehow that felt important. Then I had to go back down (I don't know why, there might have ben something wrong with the room) and for some reason forgot half of my belongings in the corridor, by the lift on the seventh floor and when I got back down I think I cried about having left it. Either it was at great risk of being stolen up there or I was REALLY fond of my stuff. James went up to get it for me, and I made sure to tell him about the fast lift.
"Interesting" fact about the fast lift: It wasn't shaped like a normal lift. Usually they're sort of square or rectangular (well, since they're boxes that would make them more cubical than anything I guess, but whatever), but this one was... I swear, it was sort of shaped like a croissant.
Anyway, that's about all I can remember from this dream - it's not all that interesting, but it somehow worked its way into the next dream where I, towards the end, started feeling as if I was actually staying in that hotel, on some kind of holiday with James and I felt that I'd rather be with him than where I was (if you just "awwww"ed you're permanently banned from these blogging premises).
Right, down to business then. I was in my late teens (but I was in my "skinny phase" which was at age 20, not that it matters) and someone was having a party, a birthday party I think. It seemed to be arranged by some of the girls for another one of the girls, and while most of the girls who were there before the party started were either friends of mine from my mid-teens or characters not existing outside this dream the girl whose birthday it was I know from the choir I was in at uni. Her name is Karin too, and in this dream I guess she was having boyfriend troubles.
We were in a flat I've never seen and there were about seven of us there, I think. In the dream I could easily distinguish everyone separately and I can tell you that (for instance) there was a girl with curly hair slicked back in some kind of knot with glasses and freckles on her face, dressed in a black dress of some sort and I could have just as easily told you similar information about all the other girls when I was in the dream, but it's all fading now.
The woman of the hour spent the most part of the dream down in the street, outside the building (which I think was late 19th century/early 20th century and it was in a town/city but from a window I could see a park with a lake in it... It looked a bit like we were in Nässjö, but I sincerely hope we weren't), arguing with her boyfriend. Everytime she came back up the other girls fussed and redid her make-up for her as she kept crying it off. People were talking on their phones, being upset, probably informing other people coming of what was going on with the girl and her boyfriend. One of the girls was probably taking care of party things, she spoke in a much more businesslike voice and seemed very stern and unmoved by the whole thing.
At some point, when things were calm and seemed all right, loads of the girls kept making remarks to me about a boy who was coming. In the dream I knew exactly who he was and what he looked like and while he's not a real person I can definitely see why he was a boy I would've liked as a teenager. Very geeky. Everytime they teased me about him coming my face turned crimson and I kept excusing myself to go to the loo. For some reason, there were two bathrooms and I kept going to one where the toilet was all strange (massive thing that was difficult to flush and the water seemed odd and the entire thing was a bit filthy) and the lock didn't work - the door kept sliding open again - but no matter how many times I went there and the door openedm exposing me to the world, I never decided to go to the other one - despite actually thinking I should in the dream. Very strange.
At some point someone got upset with me for fiddling with my mobile. A bit odd, since everyone else kept talking on theirs. I think this is where the other dream started working its way in, and I was either texting James or checking the time or seeing if he'd attempted to contact me. Someone knocked the phone out of my hand at one point, and it slid across the floor. I remember getting on my knees to look for it (but not immediately, it was after I came back from the loo that wouldn't lock for the umpteenth time). When I found it I asked myself what I was doing at that party when I was in town with James and he was just waiting around for me at the hotel, feeling guilty. And I can actually remember how it felt as if I physically grew and aged in that moment. I was sort of towering over the rest of the girls (anyone who's met me and most people who haven't know that there are few people older than ten I get to tower over). It was as if I was back to being an adult and they were all stuck in 1999 or something.
And then the dream ended.
I'd like to think that this is more than some kind of "coming to terms with being an adult" dream, or "fear of growing up" dream. That just seems too easy. Anyway, sorry about the lack of updates, I'll try to dream more - or actually start blogging about other things too, which I've been planning to do for ages. There. I said it, and now I have to!
I had two last night. One of them was indeed one with James, we were going somewhere and the entire dream - or the parts I can remember of it - took place in a hotel where we went in together but for some reason I had to go up to our room alone and there loads of different lifts and I had trouble figuring out which one to use before finding a really fast one (not that I needed a really fast one, the building only had seven floors), but somehow that felt important. Then I had to go back down (I don't know why, there might have ben something wrong with the room) and for some reason forgot half of my belongings in the corridor, by the lift on the seventh floor and when I got back down I think I cried about having left it. Either it was at great risk of being stolen up there or I was REALLY fond of my stuff. James went up to get it for me, and I made sure to tell him about the fast lift.
"Interesting" fact about the fast lift: It wasn't shaped like a normal lift. Usually they're sort of square or rectangular (well, since they're boxes that would make them more cubical than anything I guess, but whatever), but this one was... I swear, it was sort of shaped like a croissant.
Anyway, that's about all I can remember from this dream - it's not all that interesting, but it somehow worked its way into the next dream where I, towards the end, started feeling as if I was actually staying in that hotel, on some kind of holiday with James and I felt that I'd rather be with him than where I was (if you just "awwww"ed you're permanently banned from these blogging premises).
Right, down to business then. I was in my late teens (but I was in my "skinny phase" which was at age 20, not that it matters) and someone was having a party, a birthday party I think. It seemed to be arranged by some of the girls for another one of the girls, and while most of the girls who were there before the party started were either friends of mine from my mid-teens or characters not existing outside this dream the girl whose birthday it was I know from the choir I was in at uni. Her name is Karin too, and in this dream I guess she was having boyfriend troubles.
We were in a flat I've never seen and there were about seven of us there, I think. In the dream I could easily distinguish everyone separately and I can tell you that (for instance) there was a girl with curly hair slicked back in some kind of knot with glasses and freckles on her face, dressed in a black dress of some sort and I could have just as easily told you similar information about all the other girls when I was in the dream, but it's all fading now.
The woman of the hour spent the most part of the dream down in the street, outside the building (which I think was late 19th century/early 20th century and it was in a town/city but from a window I could see a park with a lake in it... It looked a bit like we were in Nässjö, but I sincerely hope we weren't), arguing with her boyfriend. Everytime she came back up the other girls fussed and redid her make-up for her as she kept crying it off. People were talking on their phones, being upset, probably informing other people coming of what was going on with the girl and her boyfriend. One of the girls was probably taking care of party things, she spoke in a much more businesslike voice and seemed very stern and unmoved by the whole thing.
At some point, when things were calm and seemed all right, loads of the girls kept making remarks to me about a boy who was coming. In the dream I knew exactly who he was and what he looked like and while he's not a real person I can definitely see why he was a boy I would've liked as a teenager. Very geeky. Everytime they teased me about him coming my face turned crimson and I kept excusing myself to go to the loo. For some reason, there were two bathrooms and I kept going to one where the toilet was all strange (massive thing that was difficult to flush and the water seemed odd and the entire thing was a bit filthy) and the lock didn't work - the door kept sliding open again - but no matter how many times I went there and the door openedm exposing me to the world, I never decided to go to the other one - despite actually thinking I should in the dream. Very strange.
At some point someone got upset with me for fiddling with my mobile. A bit odd, since everyone else kept talking on theirs. I think this is where the other dream started working its way in, and I was either texting James or checking the time or seeing if he'd attempted to contact me. Someone knocked the phone out of my hand at one point, and it slid across the floor. I remember getting on my knees to look for it (but not immediately, it was after I came back from the loo that wouldn't lock for the umpteenth time). When I found it I asked myself what I was doing at that party when I was in town with James and he was just waiting around for me at the hotel, feeling guilty. And I can actually remember how it felt as if I physically grew and aged in that moment. I was sort of towering over the rest of the girls (anyone who's met me and most people who haven't know that there are few people older than ten I get to tower over). It was as if I was back to being an adult and they were all stuck in 1999 or something.
And then the dream ended.
I'd like to think that this is more than some kind of "coming to terms with being an adult" dream, or "fear of growing up" dream. That just seems too easy. Anyway, sorry about the lack of updates, I'll try to dream more - or actually start blogging about other things too, which I've been planning to do for ages. There. I said it, and now I have to!
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
The Dream (dreams?) of January 27
I'm desperately trying to string my bits of dreams together. I think, and kind of hope, that they're all connected, but the thing is that I was different women in many of the parts. At least three different ones, maybe more. And while there were many, many weird aspects clearly not connected to the times they were in I still felt strongly *when* these were taking place. While not all things included in every bit here was clear in the actual dream in that same bit - I've used information I just *knew* in the other bits. Oh, and I think I went back and forth in between different parts of the dream, but I've put them all together here.
While these bits happened in an order I'm not sure of, I'll try to write them in a way that makes sense. The first bit of the first one was the first part of the dream, though. And the last bit of the last one was the last bit. So THOSE are where they're "supposed" to be. Confused? Me too.
1. I was a woman making her way through a forest area, trying to get away from someone, yet trying to find someone else. My perception was a bit... unnatural, a bit like a fairytale-ish film for children so I think that someone else was reading a book about what I was doing in this part of the dream (which would make sense with what comes later). From patching together different bits of the dream I know that this woman, or teenage girl, is a runaway slave in 19th century America.
Now, there is a very odd aspect to this bit which lasts for a very short time. The woman is riding some strange creature, not unlike a pig, which is levitating a couple of feet above the ground as she searches youtube on the huge sort of screen that has appeared in the dream. Yup. That really happened. But it was over really quickly.
While it felt as if she was looking for someone, I don't think it was anyone specific. All I know is that she reaches a farmland area and finds a family that takes her in. She must be in the north by then as they're white but still happy to take her in provided that she helps with the farm. But they didn't quite realise that she and one of their two teenage sons fell in love as soon as they locked eyes with one another (my dreams are so romantic when they're not actually about me). When this was discovered I think there were a looot of difficult situations, but at the same time I think they either ran away or worked it out with the boy's parents somehow, because they had two children (or more). I don't think they got married or anything, though, that seems unlikely.
2. I have a very brief dream (or part of one), and I actually think it was in black and white which would make it the first dream I've had that was, where a black woman in her twenties gets a job in an office. I think it's the 50s or 60s and it *might* be for a news paper. She loves to write.
3. I'm another woman. She's in her early twenties, and she's Swedish. I think this is the one I "really" am in the dream. She goes to uni in Gothenburg and she's the one who either read the first dream in diary notes (or something) - or dreamt it (ugh, I hope not. People with "supernatural" dreams are soo not welcome in my dreams). What I do know is that despite being a typically Swedish-looking woman (yup, I was all blond in my dream - yuck!) she is the descendant of that girl who ran away.
Gothenburg Uni has just acquired a guest scholar for the year, a writer and literature professor who is well-known and well-respected all over the world. She's an African-American woman who worked her way through college and started writing something like fourty years ago - and the young woman I am in this dream is very confident that she is also a descendant of the woman I have diary entries from. Or maybe they're letters? Either way, she wants to talk to this literature professor and has gone to campus very early in the morning, having heard that the professor comes in at 7:30 every day. On her way there she encounters other students (a couple of which are real people I knew in Linköping), including a guy with an Iron Maiden t-shirt who supposedly had lost a lot of weight and had originally weighed just over a tonne (which for some reason was unlikely - but definitely possible in this dream). These people were still partying from last night. For some reason some of them are singing a Porcupine Tree song while drinking cheap beer.
The young woman finds the literature building where cleaners have started their work day and she's looking at a list of employees and offices, trying to find the right one. I don't know if she finds it because this is where I wake up.
There was a lot more to this dream, but... You know how it works.
If I were to hazard a guess as to what this dream stems from I think it's the conversation I had with Tengil (or Torbjörn, which apparently is his real name! (;-P ) the other day about everyone knowing each other in seven steps and everyone being 50th cousin or less with one another. That, and talking about Gothenburg Uni with Emy yesterday.
While these bits happened in an order I'm not sure of, I'll try to write them in a way that makes sense. The first bit of the first one was the first part of the dream, though. And the last bit of the last one was the last bit. So THOSE are where they're "supposed" to be. Confused? Me too.
1. I was a woman making her way through a forest area, trying to get away from someone, yet trying to find someone else. My perception was a bit... unnatural, a bit like a fairytale-ish film for children so I think that someone else was reading a book about what I was doing in this part of the dream (which would make sense with what comes later). From patching together different bits of the dream I know that this woman, or teenage girl, is a runaway slave in 19th century America.
Now, there is a very odd aspect to this bit which lasts for a very short time. The woman is riding some strange creature, not unlike a pig, which is levitating a couple of feet above the ground as she searches youtube on the huge sort of screen that has appeared in the dream. Yup. That really happened. But it was over really quickly.
While it felt as if she was looking for someone, I don't think it was anyone specific. All I know is that she reaches a farmland area and finds a family that takes her in. She must be in the north by then as they're white but still happy to take her in provided that she helps with the farm. But they didn't quite realise that she and one of their two teenage sons fell in love as soon as they locked eyes with one another (my dreams are so romantic when they're not actually about me). When this was discovered I think there were a looot of difficult situations, but at the same time I think they either ran away or worked it out with the boy's parents somehow, because they had two children (or more). I don't think they got married or anything, though, that seems unlikely.
2. I have a very brief dream (or part of one), and I actually think it was in black and white which would make it the first dream I've had that was, where a black woman in her twenties gets a job in an office. I think it's the 50s or 60s and it *might* be for a news paper. She loves to write.
3. I'm another woman. She's in her early twenties, and she's Swedish. I think this is the one I "really" am in the dream. She goes to uni in Gothenburg and she's the one who either read the first dream in diary notes (or something) - or dreamt it (ugh, I hope not. People with "supernatural" dreams are soo not welcome in my dreams). What I do know is that despite being a typically Swedish-looking woman (yup, I was all blond in my dream - yuck!) she is the descendant of that girl who ran away.
Gothenburg Uni has just acquired a guest scholar for the year, a writer and literature professor who is well-known and well-respected all over the world. She's an African-American woman who worked her way through college and started writing something like fourty years ago - and the young woman I am in this dream is very confident that she is also a descendant of the woman I have diary entries from. Or maybe they're letters? Either way, she wants to talk to this literature professor and has gone to campus very early in the morning, having heard that the professor comes in at 7:30 every day. On her way there she encounters other students (a couple of which are real people I knew in Linköping), including a guy with an Iron Maiden t-shirt who supposedly had lost a lot of weight and had originally weighed just over a tonne (which for some reason was unlikely - but definitely possible in this dream). These people were still partying from last night. For some reason some of them are singing a Porcupine Tree song while drinking cheap beer.
The young woman finds the literature building where cleaners have started their work day and she's looking at a list of employees and offices, trying to find the right one. I don't know if she finds it because this is where I wake up.
There was a lot more to this dream, but... You know how it works.
If I were to hazard a guess as to what this dream stems from I think it's the conversation I had with Tengil (or Torbjörn, which apparently is his real name! (;-P ) the other day about everyone knowing each other in seven steps and everyone being 50th cousin or less with one another. That, and talking about Gothenburg Uni with Emy yesterday.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
The Dream of January 17
This is getting ridiculous. I'm having really complicated dreams every night and now they've taken a turn for the possible crime-of-the-century-film-script-type. Right now, though, I am beyond angry with myself for forgetting so much of this one in the process of waking up. I SWEAR to you that I knew every detail of this well-thought out crime as I discovered it and began to piece the story together for my mum as we alerted the police.
Of course, there are some oddities in it too, things that don't make sense. Towards the end, over a period of probably ten minutes, I manage to walk through three completely different types of environment at different times of day.
Awww, fuck. I'm still angry with myself. I was trying to run through the dream again and I can think of a few "small" things that happened, that became important, but I can't remember how they happened, which would be important for the character who did them all. Crap. Oh well, here we go:
Our neighbour, a little old lady, had moved out or died (there was a little old lady there a couple of years ago, who's since moved out and been replaced by a young man). A woman came to live there instead. She gave us sort of her life-story, I think. About how she was from Belarus and was now looking for a new start here. I think she might've been in a relationship with a Swedish man and had moved in on her own to learn Swedish better before getting to know his young daughter...
The trouble here is... One day she just upped and left, and another woman of similar age (about 35-40) moved in instead. This one was also from an Eastern European country, and we got to know her and her life-story too. And I may be mixing them up a bit. But that's not really important. What does change with the second one, though, is that she stays longer and we get to know her better (there are also dream-oddities such as her living next door but somehow still living in our flat and keeping her dog here. I think I woke up one day to find her and her dog in my room and that's how we were introduced. The dog was a bearded collie, like Yatzty, btw, but less cute).
Anyway. We get to know her quite well and she gets to borrow my mobile, my mum's car, amongst other things. I think she brings me on shopping trips and stuff... I've no idea why I went with her. But over the months she becomes very close to us.
Then, at some point. I go on a trip or something. And I *think* I'm on a ferry or something. I'm definitely on a transport that allows me to, without too much trouble, get into the cargo area. That being said, I may not have been allowed there, but I got in nonetheless.
A few things have now happened, but it's all so faded that I can't tell you how.
1. A bank, or something, has been robbed of a huge amount of money.
2. My mum's car has been stolen.
3. Our neighbour has mysteriously disappeared.
Now, clearly, when reading this it's not hard to connect the three, but in the dream no one had any idea that any of these things could be connected to one another.
So, I find this cargo area. And when I get in there I see a lot of like... bikes and skiis and things. And my mum's car in the corner. Our neighbour is painting it. She's painting one side of it white, while leaving the "details" black. On the other side the "details" are becoming white. Don't ask me the purpose of this yin and yang design - but believe me when I say that, much like every other detail in this dream, it had a purpose. Not only that, but I figured out the purpose of it towards the end.
For some reason, I leave. I think I somehow make it back as we approach our destination (which is still Sweden for some reason) and I see two men in matching overalls and similar backpacks doing some type of work down there. They finish up and they put everything they had to move back in its place as they head off.
Somewhere along the way I've seen our neighbour with a man in a very nice suit. He's roughly 50-55 years old and has a beard. That's all I can tell you really. Well, that and the fact that he's just pulled off the greatest bank job in history. Somehow, I work this out as the two men in overalls leave, because something they've been doing made me put the final pieces of the puzzle together and I've now figured out every detail in their complicated scheme.
But I can't call and tell someone from there, because my neighbour had done something to my phone when she borrowed it, which I now discover. I can't alert anyone else on the ship (or ferry or whatever) because the two "workers" have been meticulous in putting all the bikes and things back in a way that adds another five minutes to my getting-out-of-there-time.
We finally reach land and I'm running down a wooden staircase of some sort to get to the harbour. In it I encounter a guy who's so drunk his nose and mouth are both bleeding (yes, it really was due to the alcohol for some reason). He's clearly not in any position to take care of himself and I stop as he says something drunkenly (I may have madet that word up) to me.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," I say, considering to get him help before I do anything else.
"It's OK, I'm keeping an eye on him," says a guy I know from a forum, except I can't remember who it is. Someone I've never met but respect. And for some reason, in the dream, I know I've seen him with equally drunk friends before and I think to myself that he ought to get new friends. At this point it's late at night and it's pitch black outside, except the night is lit up by millions of lights in a city that seems very big.
I venture on, and manage to phone my mum form my mobile, at last, telling her, without getting into detail, what I've discovered. She sighs and is very troubled by it. I ask her if I should find a police officer downtown and she says that there's no need as she'll phone Kerstin (I don't know if this is a Kerstin we actually know and what she's expected to be able to do about it, but...). Now, it's daytime and I'm on a street here in Jönköping.
A few minutes pass and I phone her back again, asking if she's done it. She says she hasn't, yet, and I sigh at her, knowing she's sneaked out for a cigarette rather than phoned. We hang up, and I walk the last few steps up a grassy slope, where I'm following two police officers I've just spotted, to talk to them about this whole thing. Just as I reach the top of it I see two small wolfish animals lurking about. They're at a bit of a distance from one another, and things now turn very WoW as I guess I step into the aggro range of one of them and it attacks me. I shout for help, hoping the police officers will hear me. A woman, close by does and attempts to help me, but gets in the aggro range of the other one instead. The police officers come running and I manage to free myself of the jaws of the wolf-like creature and throw it a few feet to my right, where it's been shot by one of them before it even hits the ground. Then they kill the other one too, and I can finally begin to tell them my story of the crime of the century...
...of which I've now forgotten all the interesting twists, and details. Bugger. And it was soo much longer than I've made it seem here, there was so much more to it. I'm reeeaaally annoyed.
For what it's worth, I felt very clever just when I worked it out in the dream.
Of course, there are some oddities in it too, things that don't make sense. Towards the end, over a period of probably ten minutes, I manage to walk through three completely different types of environment at different times of day.
Awww, fuck. I'm still angry with myself. I was trying to run through the dream again and I can think of a few "small" things that happened, that became important, but I can't remember how they happened, which would be important for the character who did them all. Crap. Oh well, here we go:
Our neighbour, a little old lady, had moved out or died (there was a little old lady there a couple of years ago, who's since moved out and been replaced by a young man). A woman came to live there instead. She gave us sort of her life-story, I think. About how she was from Belarus and was now looking for a new start here. I think she might've been in a relationship with a Swedish man and had moved in on her own to learn Swedish better before getting to know his young daughter...
The trouble here is... One day she just upped and left, and another woman of similar age (about 35-40) moved in instead. This one was also from an Eastern European country, and we got to know her and her life-story too. And I may be mixing them up a bit. But that's not really important. What does change with the second one, though, is that she stays longer and we get to know her better (there are also dream-oddities such as her living next door but somehow still living in our flat and keeping her dog here. I think I woke up one day to find her and her dog in my room and that's how we were introduced. The dog was a bearded collie, like Yatzty, btw, but less cute).
Anyway. We get to know her quite well and she gets to borrow my mobile, my mum's car, amongst other things. I think she brings me on shopping trips and stuff... I've no idea why I went with her. But over the months she becomes very close to us.
Then, at some point. I go on a trip or something. And I *think* I'm on a ferry or something. I'm definitely on a transport that allows me to, without too much trouble, get into the cargo area. That being said, I may not have been allowed there, but I got in nonetheless.
A few things have now happened, but it's all so faded that I can't tell you how.
1. A bank, or something, has been robbed of a huge amount of money.
2. My mum's car has been stolen.
3. Our neighbour has mysteriously disappeared.
Now, clearly, when reading this it's not hard to connect the three, but in the dream no one had any idea that any of these things could be connected to one another.
So, I find this cargo area. And when I get in there I see a lot of like... bikes and skiis and things. And my mum's car in the corner. Our neighbour is painting it. She's painting one side of it white, while leaving the "details" black. On the other side the "details" are becoming white. Don't ask me the purpose of this yin and yang design - but believe me when I say that, much like every other detail in this dream, it had a purpose. Not only that, but I figured out the purpose of it towards the end.
For some reason, I leave. I think I somehow make it back as we approach our destination (which is still Sweden for some reason) and I see two men in matching overalls and similar backpacks doing some type of work down there. They finish up and they put everything they had to move back in its place as they head off.
Somewhere along the way I've seen our neighbour with a man in a very nice suit. He's roughly 50-55 years old and has a beard. That's all I can tell you really. Well, that and the fact that he's just pulled off the greatest bank job in history. Somehow, I work this out as the two men in overalls leave, because something they've been doing made me put the final pieces of the puzzle together and I've now figured out every detail in their complicated scheme.
But I can't call and tell someone from there, because my neighbour had done something to my phone when she borrowed it, which I now discover. I can't alert anyone else on the ship (or ferry or whatever) because the two "workers" have been meticulous in putting all the bikes and things back in a way that adds another five minutes to my getting-out-of-there-time.
We finally reach land and I'm running down a wooden staircase of some sort to get to the harbour. In it I encounter a guy who's so drunk his nose and mouth are both bleeding (yes, it really was due to the alcohol for some reason). He's clearly not in any position to take care of himself and I stop as he says something drunkenly (I may have madet that word up) to me.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," I say, considering to get him help before I do anything else.
"It's OK, I'm keeping an eye on him," says a guy I know from a forum, except I can't remember who it is. Someone I've never met but respect. And for some reason, in the dream, I know I've seen him with equally drunk friends before and I think to myself that he ought to get new friends. At this point it's late at night and it's pitch black outside, except the night is lit up by millions of lights in a city that seems very big.
I venture on, and manage to phone my mum form my mobile, at last, telling her, without getting into detail, what I've discovered. She sighs and is very troubled by it. I ask her if I should find a police officer downtown and she says that there's no need as she'll phone Kerstin (I don't know if this is a Kerstin we actually know and what she's expected to be able to do about it, but...). Now, it's daytime and I'm on a street here in Jönköping.
A few minutes pass and I phone her back again, asking if she's done it. She says she hasn't, yet, and I sigh at her, knowing she's sneaked out for a cigarette rather than phoned. We hang up, and I walk the last few steps up a grassy slope, where I'm following two police officers I've just spotted, to talk to them about this whole thing. Just as I reach the top of it I see two small wolfish animals lurking about. They're at a bit of a distance from one another, and things now turn very WoW as I guess I step into the aggro range of one of them and it attacks me. I shout for help, hoping the police officers will hear me. A woman, close by does and attempts to help me, but gets in the aggro range of the other one instead. The police officers come running and I manage to free myself of the jaws of the wolf-like creature and throw it a few feet to my right, where it's been shot by one of them before it even hits the ground. Then they kill the other one too, and I can finally begin to tell them my story of the crime of the century...
...of which I've now forgotten all the interesting twists, and details. Bugger. And it was soo much longer than I've made it seem here, there was so much more to it. I'm reeeaaally annoyed.
For what it's worth, I felt very clever just when I worked it out in the dream.
Friday, 16 January 2009
The Dream of January 16
I've been watching several episodes of Prison Break every day recently, since I fell in love with it after Gustav told me to watch it. Then, yesterday, I didn't watch any. When I normally would've been watching PB I was on the Improv Everywhere website. I LOVE those marvellous people. Honestly, with stuff like Gaza going down they sort of restore my faith in mankind. It sounds corny, and exaggerated, but it's true.
Anyway. So not the point. I didn't watch any and it resulted in the following dream (sadly, lots of it's faded, which is a shame, because I'm fairly certain there was a storyline worthy of a film in there):
The first bit I can remember isn't set in present-day time. It's probably the 1930s, from what I can gather of clothes and cars. I'm watching this as if it's a film, I'm not actually there.
Someone, who looks like a cross between Edward Norton and Wentworth Miller (the Prison Break guy), gets out of a car in front of a building. It's dark and rainy outside. He has a compress or something stuck to the right side of his neck. No bandage going around his neck, just that white patch (let's not get into how it's staying there, I realise they probably didn't have that medical tape-stuff back then, but this is my dream, and that's what it looked like).
He enters the building into something that'e either a small restaurant or a shop of some sort. There's a younger man, late teens - early twenties, inside, who's got his back turned to the man who just walked in (facing the "camera" which is now at the back of the room).
They start talking about the woman who owns the place they're in. She's the mother of the younger man and has apparently just ended up in hospital. The man with the compress asks how she's doing and the younger man says she's going to be all right, but is quite badly hurt. It's unclear what her injuries are, but from further conversation it becomes clear that she was meeting someone earlier that night and they hurt her. It's implied that she was somewhat involved in something illegal and a deal went wrong. The younger man turns around to face the other. He looks at him, silently, for a few seconds. The Norton-esque man says that they will find whoever did that to his mother and take care of it. He asks if she said anything about the person, and the younger man says she was very confused and nearly unconscious.
"She did tell me one thing, though... She managed to injure him before he attacked her."
The other man nods, completely unfazed.
"That's good. That is really good, now we know what to look for."
"Do you think I'm an idiot?"
The patch-man's face darkens, and he knows he's been caught.
"No. That's why I hate having to do this."
I don't find out what he had to do, but I think we can assume the younger man doesn't make it out of there.
The next parts I remember are set in modern times. The same man as in the previous dream (although he's looking more like Wentworth Miller and less like Edward Norton now) is in jail, and so am I. The trouble from here on in is that I can only remember bits and pieces, which is a shame as I can sort of recall things I have trouble describing and had I been able to, and piece those things together with one another, I think it would've been a cool story.
This man is the brains in that prison. He's the one people turn to when they need something - those who dare to. I know him better than anyone in there, but not enough to really know him, and not enough to not be surprised at the brilliant schemes he puts into place.
I'm struggling to remember these schemes, but the only one that immediately springs to mind is one where he got a fellow prisoner back some of his personal things, like a watch and his keys and stuff. I remember watching the man get his stuff back from the top bunk. My genius friend/boyfriend/whatever has put them in a pair of trousers and handed those to the man who wanted his things back, saying "you might want to change your trousers". Apparently the other man didn't quite know how many things he could really get back since he starts laughing as he puts his hands in the pockets and says something about Norton-Miller-esque man really being "something".
I think we're in a room with two bunkbeds placed alongside one wall. Below me is where my friend sleeps, in one of the other beds (probably the bottom one) is where trouser-man sleeps. And the other one must belong to Kit, because at some point she is teasing me about having so many different tops there. Apparently we get to wear our own clothes, at least on the upper body. And as I feel my face flush and I stutter something about just having four or five, in my dream I recall that my mum (who apparently visited me a lot) had brought a few and I was probably up to about seven or eight. Kit smiles condescendingly at me as she tells me that she has four and I have more than she does.
There's another instance in which my brilliant bunk-buddy has given me something that I think is a kind of mp3-player, only it's much larger and heavier. It's sort of shaped like a half circle and probably two inches thick, and thirteen inches along the "diameter" (it's not really a diameter since it's not a full circle, I guess). There are these things on it... Like little clamps or something, and when I remove them, music seems to flow out through them, as if they're headphones or something. I manage to connect my proper headphones to the thing before anyone hears the noise it's making.
That's all I remember before the scene where I've been released but I'm still helping out my friend who's back there. I'm on my way down a hill in a place here in Jönköping, that apparently leads from the prison. Suddenly, there's a man waiting for me. It's the former prime minister, Göran Persson, and apparently he knows I'm up to something with my friend and for some reason that's his business (as if he was with the police or something).
I think I'm out for a jog or something, but I've slowed down to a walk to talk to him. Then, from my headphone, the intro to Opeth's The Drapery Falls kicks off and I start jogging. So does he. When we reach the point the distorted guitars start playing he starts to run at full speed and I struggle to keep up. We reach the bottom of the hill and there, behind a fence, is my friend Louise (Swedish one, not English). It seems I'm still inside the prison grounds, so I guess I haven't been released, as I thought when the scene started. She looks surprised at seeing Göran there but greets him. I'm sure we have something to do with "business" to talk about and I think we manage to, once he leaves.
That's all I remember!
(And I can now add Göran Persson to my list of politicians I've done unexpected things in dreams with. Running with him is almost as strange as that dream I had a few years ago where I built flats for the homeless inside a castle on a cliff with Thomas Bodström.)
Anyway. So not the point. I didn't watch any and it resulted in the following dream (sadly, lots of it's faded, which is a shame, because I'm fairly certain there was a storyline worthy of a film in there):
The first bit I can remember isn't set in present-day time. It's probably the 1930s, from what I can gather of clothes and cars. I'm watching this as if it's a film, I'm not actually there.
Someone, who looks like a cross between Edward Norton and Wentworth Miller (the Prison Break guy), gets out of a car in front of a building. It's dark and rainy outside. He has a compress or something stuck to the right side of his neck. No bandage going around his neck, just that white patch (let's not get into how it's staying there, I realise they probably didn't have that medical tape-stuff back then, but this is my dream, and that's what it looked like).
He enters the building into something that'e either a small restaurant or a shop of some sort. There's a younger man, late teens - early twenties, inside, who's got his back turned to the man who just walked in (facing the "camera" which is now at the back of the room).
They start talking about the woman who owns the place they're in. She's the mother of the younger man and has apparently just ended up in hospital. The man with the compress asks how she's doing and the younger man says she's going to be all right, but is quite badly hurt. It's unclear what her injuries are, but from further conversation it becomes clear that she was meeting someone earlier that night and they hurt her. It's implied that she was somewhat involved in something illegal and a deal went wrong. The younger man turns around to face the other. He looks at him, silently, for a few seconds. The Norton-esque man says that they will find whoever did that to his mother and take care of it. He asks if she said anything about the person, and the younger man says she was very confused and nearly unconscious.
"She did tell me one thing, though... She managed to injure him before he attacked her."
The other man nods, completely unfazed.
"That's good. That is really good, now we know what to look for."
"Do you think I'm an idiot?"
The patch-man's face darkens, and he knows he's been caught.
"No. That's why I hate having to do this."
I don't find out what he had to do, but I think we can assume the younger man doesn't make it out of there.
The next parts I remember are set in modern times. The same man as in the previous dream (although he's looking more like Wentworth Miller and less like Edward Norton now) is in jail, and so am I. The trouble from here on in is that I can only remember bits and pieces, which is a shame as I can sort of recall things I have trouble describing and had I been able to, and piece those things together with one another, I think it would've been a cool story.
This man is the brains in that prison. He's the one people turn to when they need something - those who dare to. I know him better than anyone in there, but not enough to really know him, and not enough to not be surprised at the brilliant schemes he puts into place.
I'm struggling to remember these schemes, but the only one that immediately springs to mind is one where he got a fellow prisoner back some of his personal things, like a watch and his keys and stuff. I remember watching the man get his stuff back from the top bunk. My genius friend/boyfriend/whatever has put them in a pair of trousers and handed those to the man who wanted his things back, saying "you might want to change your trousers". Apparently the other man didn't quite know how many things he could really get back since he starts laughing as he puts his hands in the pockets and says something about Norton-Miller-esque man really being "something".
I think we're in a room with two bunkbeds placed alongside one wall. Below me is where my friend sleeps, in one of the other beds (probably the bottom one) is where trouser-man sleeps. And the other one must belong to Kit, because at some point she is teasing me about having so many different tops there. Apparently we get to wear our own clothes, at least on the upper body. And as I feel my face flush and I stutter something about just having four or five, in my dream I recall that my mum (who apparently visited me a lot) had brought a few and I was probably up to about seven or eight. Kit smiles condescendingly at me as she tells me that she has four and I have more than she does.
There's another instance in which my brilliant bunk-buddy has given me something that I think is a kind of mp3-player, only it's much larger and heavier. It's sort of shaped like a half circle and probably two inches thick, and thirteen inches along the "diameter" (it's not really a diameter since it's not a full circle, I guess). There are these things on it... Like little clamps or something, and when I remove them, music seems to flow out through them, as if they're headphones or something. I manage to connect my proper headphones to the thing before anyone hears the noise it's making.
That's all I remember before the scene where I've been released but I'm still helping out my friend who's back there. I'm on my way down a hill in a place here in Jönköping, that apparently leads from the prison. Suddenly, there's a man waiting for me. It's the former prime minister, Göran Persson, and apparently he knows I'm up to something with my friend and for some reason that's his business (as if he was with the police or something).
I think I'm out for a jog or something, but I've slowed down to a walk to talk to him. Then, from my headphone, the intro to Opeth's The Drapery Falls kicks off and I start jogging. So does he. When we reach the point the distorted guitars start playing he starts to run at full speed and I struggle to keep up. We reach the bottom of the hill and there, behind a fence, is my friend Louise (Swedish one, not English). It seems I'm still inside the prison grounds, so I guess I haven't been released, as I thought when the scene started. She looks surprised at seeing Göran there but greets him. I'm sure we have something to do with "business" to talk about and I think we manage to, once he leaves.
That's all I remember!
(And I can now add Göran Persson to my list of politicians I've done unexpected things in dreams with. Running with him is almost as strange as that dream I had a few years ago where I built flats for the homeless inside a castle on a cliff with Thomas Bodström.)
Thursday, 15 January 2009
The Dream of January 15
I'm not sure how it started, really. I just know that suddenly I was doing some kind of art class thing with a former teacher of mine (well, she was a former teacher of mine in the dream and while I can think of a few ones I've had that she bore some resemblance to, she's not real).
Now, this woman was a bit... eccentric. I was well aware that she had some mental issues, but she was widely considered a brilliant artist.
For some reason, I could actually paint a little in this dream. I'd like to stress that it was still only a little, but you could actually see what I was trying to paint. And in this dream I was painting a picture of a woman behind a window. Or three windows, actually. It was the windows of my room in Ryd (which, now that I think of, I realise that I haven't been thinking of and that I miss terribly). Two large windows on either side of a much smaller one whose purpose was to ensure that one could air out the room without having a huge window taking up all the space of the room (yes, they're *that* big and they open in). Anyways, my picture depicted a woman standing in front of the tiny one, so you couldn't see her arms, because they were hidden by the blinds of the two other windows. She was wearing a white dress so what I was trying to do was to paint the center of the painting white and the sides of it a grey colour. And I was trying to do this by means of the huge mass of grey colour that was on the table. Really, it was like... a spectrum of shades of grey, similar in texture and density to mashed potatoes. Not that easy to paint with!
I was struggling with that and the teacher kept telling me what to do and acting all strange. My mood was not the best. And the room was full of girls who all worshipped that teacher. After giving up on my painting, which had turned into a grey mesh, the teacher started showing me pictures of her former students and what they'd done. I think there was more to that than just the art-stuff, but I can't remember what... When she finally left me alone I excused myself to the teacher's less peculiar assistant and said I'd just get some fresh air.
Outside, I started walking around an area that looked a lot like parts of Öxnehaga, where I spent about nine years of my childhood. And apparently, it was spring. I was surprised to find flowers on the ground and decided to pick some for my mother on my way home. As I was walking around I became less interested in the idea of going back into the art class, but I had something that belonged to the teacher and I'd have to give it back. So I headed for my old high school (which was not where it's supposed to be) to put it in her mailbox-thingie there.
Once inside, I realised that it looked nothing like it had before. Visitors had to tell a receptionist of some sort why they were there, rather than just walk in and do what they needed to do. I managed to tell him I was going to drop something off for a teacher and he waved me along. There were these glass display cases along the walls of the corridors and I was looking at one when a door opened and a former teacher of mine and the computer tech guy walked out. For some reason the computer tech guy was wearing a beret.
I soon realised that the teachers' mailboxes were no longer where they used to be and asked another teacher where they were. She asked me who I was looking for and I struggled to remember the art teacher's name. Christina was her first name, and her last name had the German letter ü in it. I guessed a name and it must've been quite close because she took the thing I was dropping off for me and disappeared. While I still can't recall what that was it was something small, and heavy. Possibly metal.
Now that I was there and had nothing better to do I started looking around and suddenly found myself in a place that smelled of leather and sold handbags. I was just beginning to wonder what the school council was thinking, putting a shop like that inside the school, when three girls I knew turned up. One of them showed off a bag she'd just bought (it was pretty much as ugly as all the rest of the ones in the shop - and how the hell can "bag designer" be a real job anyway?), and the other two seemed very envious of that bag. They started asking me questions about what I was doing now and why I was at the school when suddenly one of the girls found a tiny bag that had already been purchased. It had a sticker on it as if it were supposed to be checked in for a flight and there was a boarding pass inside it.
"Ha! And I didn't even have to pay for mine!" said the girl.
I was horrified, there was a boarding pass with a name on it and a flight to Hannover that wasn't going to leave for another 45 minutes - ample time to make sure it got back to its owner. I can't recall if I took the bag from her to give back or just left because I was angry, but here's where it gets weird. Just as I'm leaving, a pet of one of the girls appears that I'm sure I knew was there all along and didn't think anything of. It sticks its head inside my shoe, trying to keep me from leaving. I try to get it out, but it's really staying in there and it turns into a thing where all the girls have to help get it loose and restrain it so that I can leave.
So, what was this creature of doom, you ask?
A hen.
Right, so that's all I remember from that dream. I do recall that, just as I was waking up (presumably a while later) I was suddenly very much under the impression that it was January 30th, that the next day I'd be going to Ryd to move the last of the stuff and clean out the room - realising that they expect the keys to be handed in by noon and that we wouldn't manage that. It was quite a relief to wake up properly and remember that I'd already moved.
Now, this woman was a bit... eccentric. I was well aware that she had some mental issues, but she was widely considered a brilliant artist.
For some reason, I could actually paint a little in this dream. I'd like to stress that it was still only a little, but you could actually see what I was trying to paint. And in this dream I was painting a picture of a woman behind a window. Or three windows, actually. It was the windows of my room in Ryd (which, now that I think of, I realise that I haven't been thinking of and that I miss terribly). Two large windows on either side of a much smaller one whose purpose was to ensure that one could air out the room without having a huge window taking up all the space of the room (yes, they're *that* big and they open in). Anyways, my picture depicted a woman standing in front of the tiny one, so you couldn't see her arms, because they were hidden by the blinds of the two other windows. She was wearing a white dress so what I was trying to do was to paint the center of the painting white and the sides of it a grey colour. And I was trying to do this by means of the huge mass of grey colour that was on the table. Really, it was like... a spectrum of shades of grey, similar in texture and density to mashed potatoes. Not that easy to paint with!
I was struggling with that and the teacher kept telling me what to do and acting all strange. My mood was not the best. And the room was full of girls who all worshipped that teacher. After giving up on my painting, which had turned into a grey mesh, the teacher started showing me pictures of her former students and what they'd done. I think there was more to that than just the art-stuff, but I can't remember what... When she finally left me alone I excused myself to the teacher's less peculiar assistant and said I'd just get some fresh air.
Outside, I started walking around an area that looked a lot like parts of Öxnehaga, where I spent about nine years of my childhood. And apparently, it was spring. I was surprised to find flowers on the ground and decided to pick some for my mother on my way home. As I was walking around I became less interested in the idea of going back into the art class, but I had something that belonged to the teacher and I'd have to give it back. So I headed for my old high school (which was not where it's supposed to be) to put it in her mailbox-thingie there.
Once inside, I realised that it looked nothing like it had before. Visitors had to tell a receptionist of some sort why they were there, rather than just walk in and do what they needed to do. I managed to tell him I was going to drop something off for a teacher and he waved me along. There were these glass display cases along the walls of the corridors and I was looking at one when a door opened and a former teacher of mine and the computer tech guy walked out. For some reason the computer tech guy was wearing a beret.
I soon realised that the teachers' mailboxes were no longer where they used to be and asked another teacher where they were. She asked me who I was looking for and I struggled to remember the art teacher's name. Christina was her first name, and her last name had the German letter ü in it. I guessed a name and it must've been quite close because she took the thing I was dropping off for me and disappeared. While I still can't recall what that was it was something small, and heavy. Possibly metal.
Now that I was there and had nothing better to do I started looking around and suddenly found myself in a place that smelled of leather and sold handbags. I was just beginning to wonder what the school council was thinking, putting a shop like that inside the school, when three girls I knew turned up. One of them showed off a bag she'd just bought (it was pretty much as ugly as all the rest of the ones in the shop - and how the hell can "bag designer" be a real job anyway?), and the other two seemed very envious of that bag. They started asking me questions about what I was doing now and why I was at the school when suddenly one of the girls found a tiny bag that had already been purchased. It had a sticker on it as if it were supposed to be checked in for a flight and there was a boarding pass inside it.
"Ha! And I didn't even have to pay for mine!" said the girl.
I was horrified, there was a boarding pass with a name on it and a flight to Hannover that wasn't going to leave for another 45 minutes - ample time to make sure it got back to its owner. I can't recall if I took the bag from her to give back or just left because I was angry, but here's where it gets weird. Just as I'm leaving, a pet of one of the girls appears that I'm sure I knew was there all along and didn't think anything of. It sticks its head inside my shoe, trying to keep me from leaving. I try to get it out, but it's really staying in there and it turns into a thing where all the girls have to help get it loose and restrain it so that I can leave.
So, what was this creature of doom, you ask?
A hen.
Right, so that's all I remember from that dream. I do recall that, just as I was waking up (presumably a while later) I was suddenly very much under the impression that it was January 30th, that the next day I'd be going to Ryd to move the last of the stuff and clean out the room - realising that they expect the keys to be handed in by noon and that we wouldn't manage that. It was quite a relief to wake up properly and remember that I'd already moved.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
The Dreams of January 14
The first dream was odd, but not very frightening. I remember bits and pieces of it. One bit was be being on some kind of a shuttle bus to and from the delivery ward of a hospital. My friend Louise (from Jönköping) got on and waved to me, she was working there and took that bus every day, but for some reason we didn't sit together.
At one point we passed these two people standing by the bus stop, a very pregnant woman and a man. And somehow I knew these were the people I was waiting for. The woman was a sister I'd just found out I had, named Elisabeth. I'm struggling to remember who told me about her, while I'm fairly confident it was my mum who told me when we were sitting in a café (having "fika", for those who've been learning new words recently)*, the reason I have to think about it is that I'm quite certain my father was still alive in this dream. Odd. **
Anyway, Elisabeth and her boyfriend didn't get on the bus. But a few minutes later the driver was contacted over the radio and told to go back and pick up some people he'd left behind. Then he took like... Every possible wrong turn back, making the journey unnecessarily long. At this point I was standing next to him, trying to give directions to the thickest man in the world. When he finally got it sorted I must've gone back to my seat, because when my sister stepped onto the bus, she sat down in front of me. I spoke to her.
"Elisabeth? I'm your sister."
I don't remember anything beyond that point. [cue dramatic music]
*From what I remember of this, because it did take place sometime prior to the busride but still within the same dream, we were on... something like an El-train that stopped at a café and you pressed a button or something to leave because I remember my mum having us transported to our next stop before I had a say in it. They were handing out free biscuits and I wanted to take some and bring home and I didn't get a chance to. I was very upset with my mother. (;-)
**What's even more odd is that I have a vague recollection of my mum and I walking around and my mother saying some horrible things that can not be described as anything other than racist. I think there was a discussion about a hockey team I was on (stop laughing, it could happen! ...if I somehow magically gained the ability to keep my balance on a pair of skates) and she made a accusation about something someone on the team had done to a black player. It was along the lines of "Was it that Africa over here?" in a very disdainful voice.
Most peculiar. I've never actually heard my mum say anything racist so I don't quite know where this came from.
Right. Dream No 2.
The first thing I remember is sitting on one of the sofas in my living room. I get the sense that I hadn't been there for a while, so perhaps I'd recently moved back (much like in real life) and I was having dinner (some sort of pasta) with someone who most certainly doesn't live here. I can't recall who it was, but it's someone young and female.
I said something about leaving leftovers out.
"Oh, anything we leave out here won't be here for long," she said.
"Why not?"
"Rats. Huge, huge rats."
"We've never had rats, we've never had anything even remotely alive besides family, pets and the occasional flying insect in the summer."
"We do now."
And soon enough, a rat the size of my forearm appeared on the table. I decided that my flat is not to be taken over by rats while I'm around and I knocked the pasta out of a pot I felt was sufficiently heavy and I started beating the rat, hoping to manage to kill it despite its size. And I was victorious.
However, soon enough, another rat appeared. It was much, much bigger. Like... Dachshund-size. The other girl said something about this being a male one, but despite the fact that I clearly thought "Aren't the female rats larger?" in my dream, I didn't say a word.
I realised that beating this thing to death with a pot wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world so I decided to try to scare it out of the flat and call someone who could deal with it. Somehow, it worked. The giant rat was moving towards the door, and I followed it from a safe distance. The odd thing (apart from its size, that is) was that it appeared to be gliding, rather than running the way rats do. And I swear it got even bigger from the time it left the sitting room table to the time it reached the door. Before we'd turned the corner I'd thought that I'd have to get really close to it to open the door and chase it out, but once we did I'd realised that the door had no lock, just a gaping hole, and the rat got up on its hind legs and put it's front...paw, or whatever, inside the missing lock and just pushed the door open. I closed the door behind it and went back to the sitting room. After I'd sat down I realised that the pasta I'd knocked out of the pot was already gone. A moment later, another rat - the size of the first one - appeared and as I raised the pot again I woke up.
Since I sat down here, I haven't put my feet down on the floor once. I'll have to now, though, I need some chocolatey milk to calm my nerves.
At one point we passed these two people standing by the bus stop, a very pregnant woman and a man. And somehow I knew these were the people I was waiting for. The woman was a sister I'd just found out I had, named Elisabeth. I'm struggling to remember who told me about her, while I'm fairly confident it was my mum who told me when we were sitting in a café (having "fika", for those who've been learning new words recently)*, the reason I have to think about it is that I'm quite certain my father was still alive in this dream. Odd. **
Anyway, Elisabeth and her boyfriend didn't get on the bus. But a few minutes later the driver was contacted over the radio and told to go back and pick up some people he'd left behind. Then he took like... Every possible wrong turn back, making the journey unnecessarily long. At this point I was standing next to him, trying to give directions to the thickest man in the world. When he finally got it sorted I must've gone back to my seat, because when my sister stepped onto the bus, she sat down in front of me. I spoke to her.
"Elisabeth? I'm your sister."
I don't remember anything beyond that point. [cue dramatic music]
*From what I remember of this, because it did take place sometime prior to the busride but still within the same dream, we were on... something like an El-train that stopped at a café and you pressed a button or something to leave because I remember my mum having us transported to our next stop before I had a say in it. They were handing out free biscuits and I wanted to take some and bring home and I didn't get a chance to. I was very upset with my mother. (;-)
**What's even more odd is that I have a vague recollection of my mum and I walking around and my mother saying some horrible things that can not be described as anything other than racist. I think there was a discussion about a hockey team I was on (stop laughing, it could happen! ...if I somehow magically gained the ability to keep my balance on a pair of skates) and she made a accusation about something someone on the team had done to a black player. It was along the lines of "Was it that Africa over here?" in a very disdainful voice.
Most peculiar. I've never actually heard my mum say anything racist so I don't quite know where this came from.
Right. Dream No 2.
The first thing I remember is sitting on one of the sofas in my living room. I get the sense that I hadn't been there for a while, so perhaps I'd recently moved back (much like in real life) and I was having dinner (some sort of pasta) with someone who most certainly doesn't live here. I can't recall who it was, but it's someone young and female.
I said something about leaving leftovers out.
"Oh, anything we leave out here won't be here for long," she said.
"Why not?"
"Rats. Huge, huge rats."
"We've never had rats, we've never had anything even remotely alive besides family, pets and the occasional flying insect in the summer."
"We do now."
And soon enough, a rat the size of my forearm appeared on the table. I decided that my flat is not to be taken over by rats while I'm around and I knocked the pasta out of a pot I felt was sufficiently heavy and I started beating the rat, hoping to manage to kill it despite its size. And I was victorious.
However, soon enough, another rat appeared. It was much, much bigger. Like... Dachshund-size. The other girl said something about this being a male one, but despite the fact that I clearly thought "Aren't the female rats larger?" in my dream, I didn't say a word.
I realised that beating this thing to death with a pot wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world so I decided to try to scare it out of the flat and call someone who could deal with it. Somehow, it worked. The giant rat was moving towards the door, and I followed it from a safe distance. The odd thing (apart from its size, that is) was that it appeared to be gliding, rather than running the way rats do. And I swear it got even bigger from the time it left the sitting room table to the time it reached the door. Before we'd turned the corner I'd thought that I'd have to get really close to it to open the door and chase it out, but once we did I'd realised that the door had no lock, just a gaping hole, and the rat got up on its hind legs and put it's front...paw, or whatever, inside the missing lock and just pushed the door open. I closed the door behind it and went back to the sitting room. After I'd sat down I realised that the pasta I'd knocked out of the pot was already gone. A moment later, another rat - the size of the first one - appeared and as I raised the pot again I woke up.
Since I sat down here, I haven't put my feet down on the floor once. I'll have to now, though, I need some chocolatey milk to calm my nerves.
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