A blog designated to journaling my dreams.
I was in Denver, looking for an apartment and made a hasty decision on one; it looked like a converted gym shower and changing room and the entire place had wall to wall concrete. The good news was that it had two bedrooms and was spacious. I went outside to see the Denver skyline and take down my new address and pondered my decision to rent a concrete palace.
I live in a medium-sized city that is like the fictional "Lanford" in the hit TV sitcom "Roseanne". That is my brutal reality for the time being.
That being said, my dream was of my home town, the Quad Cities, Illinois. I remember being in a t-shirt shop and there being various shirts made to sell to tourists. You know, the kind of t-shirt place one might find in Aspen, Colorado; selling t-shirts with graphically designed mountains on them or some one-liner about snowboarding. I remember the t-shirt I saw distinctly. It said..."The Quad Cities: I just want to raise my kids here". It was being sold as a tourism item and wasn't meant to be a joke. I even thought it was funny while dreaming about it.
On a street that runs perpendicular to mine, I watched a neighbor's yard as a crew was trying to film the gravel bordering his property and the city street. I guess the gravel was supposed to be shown as a scene in a documentary on World War II. A full day passed and the crew was back, filming the gravel. There was some unidentified problem and the filming stopped- the owner of the property disappeared into his house only to return, irate and with a patch of sod he said he tore out of the ground for the sake of the filming.
Almost immediately after that, I was in Iraq explaining to an Iraqi woman where Texas was. I recall saying that "I think Baghdad is supposed to be comparable to Houston, Texas". I then somehow made this map of the United States with my two hands and I couldn't believe what a great depiction of the US I had made. I pointed to where Texas was and she somehow understood. The next thing I remember is having to board a train with this Iraqi woman and 2 other Americans. A grave sense of danger overtook us, reminiscent of Dith Pran's plight in the movie "The Killing Fields", and we secretly had to board the train (that was bound for a neighboring country). My Iraqi guide made it clear that we weren't to speak English and that we should maintain a low profile.
Our seats were on the terraced roof, only separated by small ornamental fences that looked to be from the turn of the century. We wanted to sit in the front, so naturally I ran there and leap over these mini fences like I was Clint Eastwood in one of those movies from the 70's where he chases the bad guy atop tall buildings. When I sat down again, the train and stopped and the conductor motioned at me. He was angry. This wasn't good. Unsure if the gig was up, I sat silently in my seat hoping for some reprieve.
I saw this teenage kid who lived among friends and family in a bad part of town. He was jesting with his buddies on some topic that I can't recall. At some point my observer role changed into an active role and we began to talk. He showed me a gun, for some reason, and asked me of the two bullets he had for it would work in the kind of revolver her had. After seeing that the bullets were nothing more than two Bic pen caps with stuff lodged inside of them, I said that they probably wouldn't work in the gun.
Out of no where, we were in the cement-covered playground of my old elementary school and among other people. Equally bizzare, this kid took out a giant helium balloon that was in the shape of a dog. He was trying to get on the thing to fly, I presume, and when he had troubles doing this, I intervened. I told him he had to straighten his legs to go higher and crouch to sink and somehow this all made sense that body shape would affect the pull of gravity on us. (9.8 meters per seconds squared my ass).
I walked the railroads for what appeared to be only a day and by the time the two others I was with decided to venture off the path and climb out of the man-made valley we were in, we had walked to Oklahoma. I was in a mom and pop diner when I asked where exactly we were. In fact, it was as though there was a special trail and door made for people who were walking in off the railroad tracks. We were among them and I was amazed that we had walked such a long way and only in one day and that it happened to be snowing in early September.
I was in Peoria with a friend and we were in a grocery store. Someone lit part of a food display afire and we had to leave in a hurry but immediately walked outside and into a rain storm. Somehow I knew that we were to meet people in a town neighboring Peoria and that these people were vampires. It was supposed to be a secret and I'm not sure if I was supposed to know this. Once I got into my car, I had a hard time driving what with the downpour and the vampires on my mind. I recall seeing highway signs that looked completely foreign to me. For example, interstate 33.
The dream ended abruptly when I was reasonably sure the vampires (one of whom has short dark hair and a tall, gangly frame) were making a move on me and my travel partner. They had taken my bags and refused to let me get to them. So, naturally, I took this large bottle of Deep Woods Off mosquito repellent and sprayed it in his face the whole while telling him not to do anything funny, because I was onto the fact that he was a vampire.
