The Dream of October 23

Right, so James has started blogging (there's a link under "The Doctor Prescribes") and I've been thinking I should resurrect this thing. I've been a bit short on dreams, lately, but I do remember a fair amount of the one from last night.

I was in my mum's flat and we were packing things up to move somewhere. I knew I could only pack a few things because I had to go somewhere first and meet up with my mum (and presumably my brother) in the new place a couple of days later. At no point while this was being planned did I seem to stop and think about where I was going since I couldn't help them with the actual move.

At some stage I must have set out, though, because I had a backpack full of equipment and I somehow materialised on an alien spaceship which was threatening the planet. While I'm not entirely sure why I was there I can only presume I was planting some sort of explosives or other destructive materials, but the part I was focusing my efforts on was getting out of there again.

There were three floors of the spaceship and people were living on it and walking around. They looked like humans but I'm not sure that they were. On the other hand the thought that they may not have been did not seem to bother me particularly. I could identify the military forces of the aliens without too much difficulty, they were dressed in black, wore helmets and some type of masks across the lower halves of their faces armed with what looked like rail guns out of Quake (but attached by tubes to some kind of containers they carried on their backs).

While I could blend in with the civilians it seemed that if I made eye contact with any of the soldiers they could identify that I was not one of them.

On each floor there were two points with some type of control panels with points where I could connect the equipment I carried which could teleport me back to earth. I had cables which looked a bit like XLR and they connected to a handset I needed to speak into to confirm that I where I wanted to travel to, but I needed to get to one of these control panels in order to travel. Some kind of message through the speaker system seemed to announce that everyone had to gather in meeting rooms on each floor, making it a lot harder to merely walk to the control panels without drawing attention to myself. I walked along with the other people trying to turn corners and pass behind anything which would hide me from view whenever I saw the soldiers approach in the crowd.

One of the civilians seemed to have noticed me, because he looked at me intently, but did not alert the others to my presence. He had long hair in a pony-tail and had a little bit of an "hippy" air about him. Somehow he also seemed to stand out from the rest of them, but not even the guards seemed to pay any attention to him. Eventually I had managed to get to one of the control panels and I was digging through my backpack for the cables I needed when the guards spotted me. They walked up to me and aimed their weapons at me and fired.

I presume I died, but I can't be sure as the spaceship part of the dream then started over - nearly as if I were in a computer game and had another few lives to use. I restarted my mission and again it ended with me being shot by the guards. This kept repeating but it was never the same twice, I would be shot at different locations in the ship and I encountered different things. The man who had observed me appeared each time and as the dreams progress the encounters were longer. It eventually became clear that he was a human earthling, like me. I was never quite sure what he was doing there, but he was never able to save my life from the guards and I don't know if they also killed him.

A few more "attempts" at the dream in he seemed to have fallen in love with one of the women on the ship and wanted to bring her back to earth with us. Again, it kept repeating a few more times as we tried to break free and bring this woman with us.

Eventually, we managed to connect the cables and speak the instructions for transporting us to my mum's new flat just as guards were approaching to kill us for the umpteenth time.

Not the best dream ever but if I'm going to try to start this blog up again we may need to have to ease into it.

The Dream of the Nap of April 2

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

The Dream of December 10 (all is well again)

I know there was more than one dream, but all I can remember are little bits of one. I think the general idea was that Kit and I were in a school that looked like a cross between my junior high school and the Zenit building on Linköping University's Campus Valla. We were with these two guys (fictional) and I know I was younger than I am now, probably in my late teens. There was a little something going on between me and Hassan, one of the guys. I'm not sure if we were an actual couple or just flirting, but that's not important.
The main idea, I think, was that we were carrying out some kind of plan to get a lot of money. Like, millions. I don't know if the acquisition of the actual money was illegal or if it was some of the steps along the way that was - but I do know that we weren't the only ones after the money, a whole lot of other people were.
So. Little things I can remember. At one point we were on this stretch of grass in the middle of what looked like South American jungle or something. There was a statue carved from stone and two guys were trying to get the "clue" we needed from it. I know we got it in the end (it was two tennis balls to add to the other two we already had, they had numbers written on them in red marker pen), but I don't know what happened to the two guys who got there first. Probably we just beat them up and took their balls (hee hee).
Then I remember us being back in the area of our school that looked like Zenit, and we were on a bench or something in the corner, hiding our tennis balls. Actually, I was the one hiding them all behind my back, leaning up against the wall - it hurt! Hassan was sitting in front of me and I remember having my legs propped up on either side of him and thinking "fuck, it's been a few days since I shaved them last, I hope he doesn't care", since he was gently stroking them just where the trousers - that had been pulled up a bit from all that extra leg-bending - ended. (how the hell do I remember details like my trousers being pulled back to reveal my calves??)

Then we needed to get a Magnum handgun of some sort, I think. I don't remember how we realised this or acquired it but somehow we did. Then, to throw someone else after the money off their track I was sent to an area with classrooms. I didn't even know who I was looking for, but there would be someone there. Once I got there I only recognised two people. One was Kattis, a girl who I went to junior high and high school with. The other was Lisa - not sure if she's been mentioned before. We were great, great friends for a couple of years, then we hated each other (ahh, the friendships of hormonal 13-year olds) and now we're friendly but not close. Anyway, they were both there and had both - for some reason - had to start their first year over in high school. I guess that puts me in my second year. And I remember thinking that Kattis seemed so young and immature, before remembering that she's three weeks older than I am. I talked a bit to them (both were wearing t-shirts from really cool, fictional music festivals I wanted to go to) but they didn't seem to be the people after the money. Suddenly someone opened my backpack and pulled something out of it. I wheeled around to find a girl with curly, brown hair clutching a toy gun going: "Ha-HA! I got your Magnum!" to which I replied: "HA! It's not real!" and snatched it back and shot at her twice. The gun made some kind of laser-toy-gun sound and she looked so disappointed that it wasn't real.

Now we, apparently, had almost all the info we'd need from the school. But there was heavy security at one door, checking people with a metal detector - which was a bad thing for us since we had a gun. The added security seemed to have something to do with the American students who had appeared and was now being shown around in groups.
One of the guys, for some reason, had to go out the front door with the security while Kit, Hassan and myself could sneak out through the glass door right next to us. We were all very concerned that he'd be caught, but a minute later we reunited outside and all was well. Time for the next phase in the plan!
But I can't tell you what that was, because we never got that far. I remember looking up outside and seeing a giant, bright green zeppelin flying over us. It was heading for an equally green tower-thing that looked just like the zeppelin towers in WoW, where another green zeppelin was already waiting. For some reason I know that one of the zeppelins was going to either Hamburg of Frankfurt (can't remember which). Oh, and the best part was the name of them. They had the name printed across the balloony bit in huge white letters: "Papal..." and I can't remember the second word. But it was a body part! Like "Papal Hand" or "Papal Knee" or something. What a great name for a zeppelin company - and how little sense it makes!

That's the last bit I remember, but I know there was something about old castle ruins somewhere in the country side in the beginning. But since I can't remember what we did there...
Oh, and at some point Kit and I were sitting in armchairs in my grandparents' home and I asked her if she could get me some tea since my knee hurt after all that football I'd played (yes, we all know how much I love to play football. Err...) and she grinned at me and said that her legs were tired too, and told me to get it myself. Hrmpf.

The Nightmare of December 9 (and the reason I'm not going to sleep again until I'm unconscious)

It's... 3:10. I woke up... maybe ten minutes ago and my hands are still shaking so bad I can hardly type. I've just overcome the violent sobs that had me trembling, curled up on the chair. I didn't wake up that way, in fact, at first I wasn't too upset. But it was as if the realisation of what I'd just woke myself from gradually crept up on me (yes, I woke myself out of a dream and in case it ever happens again, I hope I work faster next time).

I'm not entirely sure where it started, I think I dreamt that I woke up, but in order to get the full scope of this dream, let me explain a few things about where I am and what I was doing before I went to sleep.
By the way, it's 3:16 now and my hands aren't shaking anymore. They just feel as if I've been holding something heavy for a long time. It's an improvement.

I live in a typical student room in a hall of residency, or "student corridor" as we call them here. I have a main room, I have a bathroom and a little hallway-type-thing by the door. There are lights on the ceiling in the main room, bathroom and hallway. Then I have one lamp on my nightstand and one by the window, close to the desk (it's the one which might get a temple built in its honour soon). The lightbulbs burn out at an unusually fast rate in this corridor, everyone knows it and I often whine that both the hallway one and the bathroom one have both gone out. Right now, every single light in here is working.
There's also a power switch beneath my desk, to which the window-lamp is connected, as well as the computer stuff. The power switch has an on/off switch that glows orange-y when switched on.
I have a friend called Sandra. While it's been a long time since I spoke with her and an even longer time since I saw her (and I feel terrible about not being better when it comes to keeping in touch with people, and especially her since I miss her) I still consider her a very good friend.
Before I went to bed, which, now that I think about it, was actually just twenty-thirty minutes before I woke up again, I was watching the Gilmore Girls on my computer.


OK, here comes the dream. Every time you see something written in between two ¤ it means that the marked passage in the dream was the way it is in real life too/absolutely true.

I can't swear that I know how the dream started, but I *think* what happened was that I woke up in my dream. And the room was dark, which it is this time of year if I wake up before 9-10 in the morning. It was even a tad darker than it normally is, I could still make out certain shapes, but it was too dark to see properly. I reached out to turn on the lamp next to my bed, it didn't turn on. I assumed it was broken, and had a vague recollection of the one by the window having burned out and me changing the bulb in that one (since I use it more) with the one in the lamp on the nightstand. (Note: This has happened, but the broken bulb has since been replaced)
I get up and walk over to the desk and switch on the lamp by the window - it's not working. Frustrated, I turn on the ceiling light. Not working. I try the one in the hallway, same thing. But since I usually keep the one in the bathroom working I try that one instead. Not working.
Exasperated I head back to the desk, to turn the computer screen on. I can make out very faint, grey shapes of Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel (the way you sometimes can when a video clip is stopped and it's frozen in the very last second - if you've seen this you know what I mean, if you haven't then just take my word for it because that's how it looked). So I use ALT+TAB to get to the Explorer, knowing that the background is white and it'll give me the best lighting possible. For some reason it's not working. I think that perhaps the video software is in fullscreen mode so I ALT+ENTER to rectify that. It doesn't make any difference, as far as I can tell. The screen is still black with vague grey shapes that no longer clearly resemble the leading actresses from the Gilmore Girls. I wonder what the hell is going on and get down on my knees. Maybe the on/off button on the power switch is jammed half-way or something, and the computer is getting enough power to run, and the screen is getting enough power to run but it's not showing colours clearly and the lamp isn't getting any power. I see that the switch is as it should be but still press down a bit extra on the button in the on-direction, just in case. Nothing changes.
I start to feel more panicky now, and I'm starting to hear voices outside my window. While this is a student neighbourhood and that's not unheard of in the middle of the night these voices... They just don't sound like drunken in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-December-voices but like it's-daytime-in-June-and-we're-all-excited-about-summer-voices. But I don't *quite* figure this out. I just hear the voices and feel a bit frightened at the prospect of it being in the middle of the night and strangers are making noises outside my window while my room is dark and I'm alone.
I manage to locate my mobile, now realising that it might be my eyes that are the problem, rather than the electricity or lights. But I still feel confident that it will be all right, ¤my mother once told me a story of an elderly man in our building who woke up blind one morning and managed to call his son who got him to the hospital where they sorted it out¤.
I can't see the keys on the phone. But I know that ¤there are six keys in the left-hand column. The top one is not important when calling someone in the phone book. The second one is the dial key, which is followed by 1,4,7 and star. I need to press the down-key in the center to get to the phone book, once there I need to press the 4 key to get to the letter G and my brother, Gustav, is the second name in the G folder.¤
I try to dial. And I get through, it connects rather quickly. Imagine my surprise when the voice of a woman who's clearly just been awoken from sleep answers. It's Sandra. I must've hit the 7 key with the letters p,q,r and s instead of the 4.
Crying desperately, I apologise to her for being out of touch for so long, but I try to explain the situation and that I need to get a hold of my family. I hear the voice of a man in the background, wondering what's going on. The last time I spoke to Sandra she was single and living alone so I feel even worse about my lack of communication when he speaks. She mumbles something I can't quite make out, and I realise I couldn't have made much sense because a few seconds later she hangs up on me and clearly she wouldn't do that if she knew I was in trouble.
I try to dial again, and this time the call connects immediately. This is probably the first time in the dream that something isn't absolutely cohesive with reality, or at least the first time I notice it. But I don't think anything about it, because someone answers the phone. I don't recognise the voice and I ask whose phone I've reached. The voice, a much more androgynous voice than my brother's, confirms that it's his phone and I ask where my brother is. The voice says that it is my brother. I'm almost numb with fear at this point and I shout that it sure as hell isn't and that I know my brother's voice and I want to know where he is because I need his help. Then the phone disconnects. I think that maybe, just maybe it's a dream and that I wish I could wake up. Outside, I can hear someone playing an acoustic guitar and people singing along to it, but my room is still as close to pitch black as a room can become but still have faint shadows and shapes in it. I'm hyperventilating and, again, think: This is a dream, and I need to wake up now. I HAVE TO WAKE UP NOW. Desperation kicks in on a whole new level and while I remain standing I jerk my upper body around violently, in an attempt to wake my still, sleeping body up. It worked.


I once had a dream in which someone had lined up all of my closest friends and family, and that person was standing there with a gun and told me to decide which one of them he should kill. If I didn't choose one he'd kill them all.
I've always considered that to be the worst nightmare of my life - and clearly, nothing can top pain and agony such as that, but when I woke up it was still easy to shake those feelings because it was so obviously a dream.
This one... I was using logic throughout it. Everything was as it is in real life. I remember stepping over a suitcase that's really there, I was watching the same show I'd been watching before I went to bed, I did exactly what I'd do if I woke up in the middle of the night and for some reason had trouble seeing. When I woke up my first thought was "It WAS a dream" and I hugged one of my pillows, taking deep breaths as the close-to-life-aspects of it started to sink in. Then I started getting upset. And my first thought was to get to my computer, to turn on that screen, see that white background of Explorer and talk to my brother on MSN (knowing that he'd probably be online). And I got to turn the lamp by the window on. And once these reassurances that all was as it was supposed to be hit me I just started trembling and crying even worse. One hour later and I still feel weak just thinking about it.
I'm trying to find the silver lining. I woke myself up from a dream, I don't think I've ever done that before. But even as I started throwing my upper body around like a rag doll I still wasn't convinced it really was a dream, and I can still feel a small remnant of that desperation. It's very, very frightening. Just that little bit. I'd rather not have to relive the full force of that desperation again.

Fuck. I need tea. Or whisky. I might let you know which one I opted for in the next installment of this blog. If I ever do decide to sleep again.

The Dream of November 28

Right. A bit of background information on this one:
I was about to head to bed shortly before four. Which, as it happened, was the time a bunch of really loud, and I mean REALLY LOUD, students decided that shouting and pounding on things that make noise was the way they wanted to spend the next two hours. Not particularly sleep-inducive and this was the first time I ever considered phoning the police on some of my fellow students. I didn't, though.
However, at some point I did fall asleep and I think I got about two hours out of it. Plenty of time for a dream, here we go:
I'm walking along this street in what appears to be the center of a reasonably-sized English town. It all looks very English, anyway. With me are Kit (who just last night accused me of not liking her anymore since she hasn't been featured in a dream for ages - well, here you are, Kit!), Julian (Kit's boyfriend, not sure if he's been in one before) and Louise. But not Louise from Norwich (which would have made more sense as we were on our way to a gig) - it was Louise from Jönköping.
Aaaaand... I'm pregnant (it's been a while since the last time, so I guess all is in order)! Not very though, like... 4-5 months into it. We're on our way to queue up for a gig by an unknown band, and across a big parking lot is the start of the queue. No one's there yet and it's a fairly warm day and the particular spot where it starts is in the shade, so I'm hurrying along to get there before someone else does. I'm feeling a bit... bloated by the pregnancy and start to complain about pregnancy stuff to Louise who agrees and gives me hints. Either she's pregnant too or has a kid in this dream, I guess. When we finally reach the queue point it's suddenly further up the street, in the sun, and there's one girl waiting there already. We hang around for a while before I decide to head across the street, to the Starbucks. The sun is causing me discomfort and I want an ice cold frappucino (with absolutely no trace of coffee in it) to keep cool. As soon as I decide to, the traffic becomes crazy, it's a small street but somehow people manage to drive like... nothing I've ever seen, all over the street, switching to the wrong sides, stopping for no reason and all kinds of things. When, finally, one car drives like a normal person, I watch it as it passes me and see that - you're not goin to believe this - there's a man sticking through it. Yes. Through it. As if the car backed into him at a violent speed and his head burrowed through the glass - without breaking it - and his body became stuck haflway through. Now his legs are sticking out and I can see that he's wearing those bright orange trousers that people working along the roads wear sometimes. After this, a few more cars pass by before I can cross the street. When I get there I can't find the entrance to Starbucks, but a group of three girly girls who're talking about coffee walk into a linen shop and I follow. Apparently you're supposed to walk up the stairs inside to get to Starbucks. But a woman in a green apron stops me before I manage it and informs me I can order from her. Not sure why I'm stopped, but I wildly stared around for a menu, knowing the frappucinos change every now and then and that it's been a while since I was there last. She gives me one and I locate a drink, but then I suddenly decide I want ice cream too (which apparently they have now). I'm struggling to choose and she hands me the phone on which she's talking to the person who's supposed to make me my frappucino - and that woman sounds annoyed at having to wait.
Now, I'm in a proper Starbucks (or, at least there are now tables and sofas and armchairs behind me, even if there's no proper counter), and the annoyed woman is standing in front of me. Apparently I'm not there alone anymore. John (my Frost*ie friend, for those not in the know) is standing next to me, patiently waiting for me to make my decision (much more patiently than the woman taking my order). I've finally located the ice cream and they've got some sort of "series" of ice creams to do with ice cream through the ages. For some reason one of them's named "IKEA" and feeling my forehead sweat under the stare of the annoyed Starbucks-employee I decide to go for that one. Even though I've no idea if that's the kind of ice cream I want.
John and I sit down for a bit and the woman returns with my order, saying something like "it's so late now that you won't have time to finish it here". I look around, confusedly, and there's a girl at the next table (another employee, probably on a break) who says I shouldn't listen to her, that she's just in a bad mood. Peering out through the window I can see that the line has grown now. Louise is no longer there, but Kit and Julian are being their normal selves; Kit is climbing Julian like a tree (I don't know if I've actually seen her do that, but it wouldn't surprise me if she did). She sort of falls over his shoulder and he catches her and puts her down on the ground again. Both of them are giggling. I point them out to John, who says: "So that's Kit? She looks really cuddly". I've no idea if one's supposed to describe people as looking cuddly, but it's a description that fits her really well.
I guess we keep talking a while longer, but I can't remember what we say after that. Then I wake up.

Who the hell would name an ice cream IKEA?