The Suffering

This morning there was suffering.

My dream picked up at the beach; the rocky sand, blue water, an almost perfect paradise you would most certainly find somewhere in the Caribbean. Something was wrong, just ahead of me. For most of my walk along the warm, clear water, I kept my gaze downward, watching my feet being caressed by the sand and sea. Several men were just ahead, far enough that I couldn’t tell what they were pulling out of the ocean from at least waist-deep. Some trash or nets full of fish? Curiosity urged me forward. They were laying out what I thought at first to be large fish on a sand bar, maybe a pod of dolphin had died after being struck by a passing ship. As I came closer, the reality of the situation became much more twisted - and insane.

    Walking up to the commotion, my eyes couldn’t register at first what manner of beings I was looking at. There were people, writhing on the sand in tattered clothing - open wounds on their faces and limbs, some missing appendages, mouths trying to scream from agony or perhaps cursing their prayers to be rescued had only prolonged their suffering, so close to death. No matter how they contorted their mouths, sound could not be produced. I was in shock by this point, only capable of staring blankly at these wretched survivors, the sound of a wave crashing behind me, snapped me out of it. I was in Cuba, or at least that is what the dream was suggesting and manifested a new scene. The suffering were placed in a side corridor of the hospital, it was nearing dusk and this corner was dimly lit - the lights would be turned on momentarily.

    Someone came out of an office with an armful of canisters to place just within the reach of each person’s hand. I thought maybe these were filled with food or water, but my mind told me they were air-horns to call for assistance from the staff, if anyone was able to survive. In this state, the people that were salvaged from the ocean had little hope, there was not enough supply to attempt caring for this many, so close to deaths door. My heart was filled with pity. I stayed in the hallway with them, until night fell. 

    I woke up thinking about the dream, exactly 3AM. Something about the people being almost lifeless, helpless and without hope made me think that maybe these were the Zombies from past dreams… having no purpose or just powerless to chase me, at least for now.

    The next dream was about working in a boardroom again. Several people were gathered at the conference table, each had a specific task to complete. This didn’t feel like other dreams, where everyone else was just knocking about like video game avatars, but actually interacting with each other - and me. An assembly line of sorts is the only thing I could really describe the scene reminding me - components were laid out on the table, each person was connecting snap-on parts, passing the completed section over to the next person. 

    My role wasn’t clear, but I felt child-like and bored with the exercise, standing up and stretching my legs. Instead of standing up, I sent out my spirit-self to eaves-drop on the conversation two women were having at the other end of the table. “I’m from Dallas Texas” the woman just across the table responded to the woman my spirit was standing next to at child height. From out of her response I let out a hearty “Yeeeeeee Haaaaaaaw” like some television cowboy. They heard me and both turned with a look of sheer embarrassment and disdain. Exposed by my own childish ignorance I take what looks like a light blue bicycle helmet with no padding off of the table to put over my head - the woman next to me yells “Hey, give that back!” I didn’t realize there were parts inside of the container that she needed to assemble her section.

    The dream is finally done with me. I inspect the contents of the plastic bin, only to find random parts for the construction and something inside near the bottom catches my eye… my CPAP head strap. Picking it out of the bin my concentration zooms in closer. I need to test the reality of this item, knowing it belongs in the real world, the rubbery material stretches and flexes, just like it does in real life. I pull too hard on it now, making a snapping noise… I wake up.

I’m Electro!

The superhero powered battles are back.

    My youth was spent in-between the pages of comic books, reading hundreds of them over the years. Even though I read them voraciously, I never could remember the stories inside - or at least they didn’t spark my imagination like a good book would, the pictures took the effort out of creating the scene in my head. I feel like those comic books read me, while I slept through the action…

    The pages of comic books were different for my best friend Alexis (RIP), the words and pictures were enough to spark his imagination, transporting him inside each heroic battle - as if he had lived it inside a dream… Plenty of times, Al would come down to my apartment, excited about reading the newest Hulk or Wolverine comic, and proceed to spoil every detail with animated precision… his words painted a picture, vivid enough to transport me into the battle, I never had to read a comic if I didn’t have to.

The battle was in the old Pre-war building again, located somewhere in Manhattan or the Bronx. Zombies or groups of people are involved - the chase or escape was going up and downstairs. Pandemonium is all I can describe the action, confusion and stark imagery all around me, meant to keep me in the action. We’re winning the battle against the antagonists, using fists and weapons, we slowly deplete their numbers - they keep coming though.

    The superhero action was left for the end.

    We cleared the building of enemies, but one remained at the top floor. Residents that were hiding out in their apartments flooded the hallways as we cleared the building, getting everyone to leave via the stairwells - elevators never appear in the old building, only the skyscraper. Just as the last screaming resident exits the front door and to safety, my companion (usually a woman) beckons me to come back in so we could finish the job. 

    Jumping over the bodies of the fiends we unceremoniously disposed of, we make our way back up. A few others joined our team, they had been outside taking care of the attacking stragglers. I’m in the lead, making my way up to the top floor landing. The stair to the top had broken off in the intense fighting, only the railing above was intact. A ladder appears, probably created by one of my team, I begin to climb up. An older gentleman pops out of the apartment to the right, a resident who was too feeble to flee the onslaught - our enemy comes out of the apartment on the left, a ridiculous plastic pompadour that looked like it came out of an anime, was on his head. Despite the silliness about to break the dreams grip, my companion shouts behind me to “Get HIM!!” I’m struggling on the makeshift ladder and the villain makes an announcement and a big reveal…

“I’m Electro!!!”

    This can’t be - a Spider-Man enemy? He bursts from his disguise as the leader of the zombie hordes, crackling with powers on a scale I had never realized before possible in a dream. Body rising up in the air he shoots a blast of energy towards my team below and behind me, my companion is already glowing with purple energy of her own and deflects the energy with a force-field she put up. Either fear or my having turned invisible, saved me from the initial onslaught - this was too much power for me. My companions however knew how to handle him. Another team member began explaining how she would increase her magnetic resonance so she would be able to absorb any more blasts. The elderly man was encased in a bubble and spirited down the staircase to safety as I finally vaulted over the rail to the landing.

    Standing just in front of our nemesis things became too exciting for me, the dream begins to subside leaving me confused and wondering what would have happened if I had stayed in.

    As with most of my dreams, there are details and subtle hints left out, breadcrumbs of a story that my mind can’t ever hold on to. The feeling is like reading a comic book, not being able to recant the story correctly, like Alexis could.

    The enemy is always a version of yourself, the thing you fight against - whatever you’re afraid of… ‘Tricky’ sent a message yesterday “A delivery that I had to receive, but didn’t want…” 

    I think he meant the nightmares would return.

Dream Diary Vol. 4

 

Last night, I caught up with my journal entries for Vol. 3 - the last 12 pages were cut and paste from the three blog entries from within the timeframe (Oct 27-Nov19) of all my collected notes. This new, fancy looking journal didn't come with a rear pocket or a pen holder feature, it's strictly a blank book. Using a piece of thick paper I made a rear pocket, attaching it with strong glue. For a pen holder, I didn't come up with anything as creative, just a couple of rubber bands.

    One of the reasons I skipped using this one is the size of the printed lines, they were spaced too far for my liking. I like the thinner lines (Probably 7mm in height, I have to check) of my older journals, so rather than purchase a new one - I opted to begin in this one, regardless of the shortcomings. My pen of choice for journaling is the Sharpie, 0.7 S-GEL - It just fits nicely for what I need it to do. The only complaint I can think of is random blotchy performance that might actually be from the grease from my hands. To curtail this, I started using a piece of laminated paper that I sized to my preferred journal dimensions (“6x9”) to rest my hand on while I write.

    This morning I woke up several times, and each time whatever the dream was that was playing out, retreated hastily beyond my ability to recall what was going on. I’m of the mindset that the reflected solar radiation from the moon, however light, could be vibrational enough to stir my dreams up. Not the case for me when I woke up at 12:30 and 3:15AM. By the time I fell back to sleep this morning, the moon would have already set, only crystalline eddies of energy would be perceptible by any nocturnal creature.

    

    A delivery guy shows up, wearing blue coveralls (Workers in the dream world, at least in mine will wear the distinctive outfit for their profession as a way for my conscious mind to grasp the meaning - I’ve mentioned blue coveralls before) this particular man was blonde or white-haired - (another clue personally for me) with pale skin visible up to the v of the collar, exposing just the top of his chest. He begins unloading box after box from his hand-truck, neatly in stacks almost four feet in height. I come over to check the address's on a few and notice they belong to other buildings in the area. When he came in I was cheerfully doing some paperwork and nodded for him to put the packages in the room, now I was irate. “These don’t belong to us, you have to take them back. We don’t use these Russian parts here…”

    Boxes of screws, binder clips, and assorted other things came out of one of the packages that I opened before checking the address. The writing on each part box was Cyrillic. Was this guy Russian? The man is upset with us, demanding that once he placed the items down, he is no longer responsible for them and we had to call for a pick-up. I’m not having it, trying to make him understand, he pushes past me and hits me on the right arm with his left - this guy is solid muscle and slim. My workers take exception to the arrogant cheap-shot. Next thing I know, two people jump him, and an all out donnybrook explodes - I hang back helpless as the delivery guy takes a few shots and then turns the tables on both of my people, grabbing the woman in a headlock and leg scissors, pulling back like a pro wrestler. She’s not able to move and my other guy try’s to free her, whacking the blonde guy as hard as he could. 

The dream releases me from its grip and I almost lose the thread of action - but it comes back. Slowly I piece together what just went down in my head. It seems that “Tricky” is about to make a “Special” delivery soon, and I won’t be able to send it back.

Sanford

Fred G. Sanford

Late night at work, and I caught my first Uber.

I get to bed quickly, no dinner just my evening pill. My head hits the pillow and I'm settled and sleeping around 1:20AM.

One of the facets of being possibly psychic, and or having spirits visit in the middle of the night, is the temperature drop that only YOU can feel. Not totally convinced that my discomfort is being caused by a random entity lurking around somewhere in the darkness - I scan the shadows in my room, internally cursing the icy blast of air that’s keeping me awake. My wife is asleep, not even bothered by the cold. Mumbling to myself in my head, puzzled by the fact that the heat doesn't even pop on - again leading me to believe the effect is localized, solely swimming around my body. 

I never see anything - just feel so cold... 

This dream is a little busy. Action, mixed with a puzzling amount of intrigue. Escape is the catalyst, putting me on edge, injecting me into the drama. We are trying to get through a mechanical wall, at this point I'm watching everything from the point of view of a drone, or spirit. A secret agent is carrying whatever device the others are trying to capture, his team is behind him as he punches in the code to release the secret lair "Blast" door. The heavy steel door opens just a  few feet from the ground, our "Agent" slides through like baseball player, jumps up runs to the back wall to hit the switch to slam the door shut.

My other team members are a little slow (from agent perspective) the door doesn't close down on them, but they are enveloped in a beam of energy, by the expression on both men's faces - the energy hurt, a lot. I had to keep them in the beam and extract them slowly and rather painfully, as the wall created a metal box cocoon around each man - AI meets nanotech. I cautioned both to hold on, just a few more seconds. Two rectangular metal pods eject from the wall, the beam collapses and the wall slams down. We're safe for now...

I'm released from the dream, having escaped - solving the puzzle if you will; using intuition and creativity and utilizing what was not there at first, and knowing how to use whatever technology I dreamed up. I feel like the crushing energy beam is an artifact of watching "Loki" season 2 when I wake up (No spoilers).

Falling into another dream, shortly after waking up from my escape, put me in another work-related scenario. My manager was involved, only this time I had to bring a plastic bag full of mail or rolled up newspapers or blueprint plans to another manager. The location was my old building in the Bronx, I accepted the slightly awkward parcel and made my way through the dark stairwells trying to find the right floor to exit. The singular, dingy incandescent lightbulb at each landing, providing just enough lighting to keep you moving. My memory of the place is off, replaying the direction that I felt might bring me closer to the apartment. After moving around several floors, I exit the staircase and walk around the corner past the elevator bank and to the opposite stairwell - there in front of me was the apartment I was looking for.

The manager was waiting by the door, a lounge chair situated in the hallway - she looked different than her picture, strangely she reminded me of Mrs. B, my old neighbor - a younger version I would have never known. Handing the bag of paper rolls to the manager I call her by her by name and introduce myself as "Gabe", at least I know who I am at this point. Her expression is mild puzzlement, accepting the parcel from me.

(Mrs. B passed away when I was young, the night she was taken into the Coroner's van - I had the most terrible, vivid nightmare - one I shared with my older brother. I wasn't pleased this morning having "Seen" her again)

Mission accomplished. With the package delivered and visitation over, I am released from this episodic conundrum. I have dream powers again. Moving through space/time like Spider-Man or even Tarzan - I feel myself swinging or vaulting around past and through dreams in order to settle into the next scenario, its almost like crashing through a holographic rolodex. A scene catches my attention, the beautiful woman is there. My arm reaches out and wraps around a metal bannister, my body slows and I slide down like I was on a Fireman's or Stripper pole, my midriff and leg helping me glide to the floor inside my modern apartment.

The woman is outside, walking away - maybe just having left my place. I turn away from the front wall that is wood and glass in a diagonal pattern. Swanky pad? Admiring her shape as she crossed the street I look down and realize that I'm nude. Time for a shower. My muscularity isn't lost on me in the dream - almost time to wake up as my conscious is putting two and two together. I walk across the apartment past a leather La-Z-Boy that swivels around. Fred Sandford is sitting in the chair (The character, not the actor) and he grabs my leg by the ankle before I make it over to the bathroom. I see him and say "Hey Pop, how are you feeling?" In a feeble and melodramatic voice he replies "Oh, still not feeling so good." He's decked out in his cable sweater and tartan cover over his legs, looking really beat down. After my shower I'll take care of him, bring him soup or something. 

My consciousness brings me out. Fred looks nothing like my dad, and I don't look like Lamont - nothing is adding up so I wake up.

Fire Face

My Journal

Despite the ominous title, there were no fire faced entities involved in this mornings dreams.

In the first dream that woke me up before the time change, I was inside what I imagined to be a school. Quite a bit of commotion was going on but oddly, I wasn't paying much attention while meandering the hallways. Something was off and managed to catch my eye, at least this set of details brought my consciousness into the dream. People were milling around the hallways, but they were similar, actually almost the same person - a maddening set of cookie-cutter clones. This was a woman, older and built frail but sturdy at the same time. She and her clones were wearing various pastel colored sweaters atop white blouses and dark colored pants and shoes. The hair was neatly coifed in a low bouffant style, she could have been an older version of Mrs. Howell from "Gilligan's Island" and they scurried around like administrators or head secretaries from room to room. The absence of children was beginning to make me take notice. The building was immaculate, and every classroom brand new. After a group of these doppelgangers entered and exited one of the rooms, I was able to sit down at one of the crafting desks and pulled out my journal. This was the first time that I've brought something from the real world with me, probably with the intent of writing down the dream in real time.

Another wave of Lovey's enter, and I feel the need to join the geriatric train of clone sisters around and out of the room. I was distracted and left my journal on the table. The force of the group carried me around until the absence of my journal was able to break the submission hold on my will from the group. Running back to where I left the book, it was gone! Feeling the need to retrace my steps, I looked for the group that was now several classrooms ahead of me and I pushed passed them as they exited the room they had just inhabited. Frustrated now because each of the desks is empty, I notice there is a movable partition wall, separating the desks from a play / nap area. Looking past the wall, I see it - sitting on another desk is my brown journal. Relief washes over me and I begin to wake up.

The next dream was hard to parse. Divvied up between several locations unrelated to each other, the stark contrast and disjointed narrative, presented a rare set of circumstances, some mundane while others a little difficult to avoid. The mention of "Fire Face was the catalyst.

My youngest was with friends at a concert, and as usual - being the dad of a non-driving teen, I had to pick up the small group. Entering the venue because I could hear the music inside, no one stopped me from passing the security and I simply walked around the stadium like stands under the main stage in the brightly lit space. What caught my attention was the room was white, not dark. The lighting was bright but not overpowering and I tried to see who was onstage from this lower vantage point. I catch a glimpse of Ice Cube, going through a routine but not much more was visible from where I was lurking.

After a few minutes of walking around and concerned I couldn't find the teens, my kid comes running in from outside excitedly yelling to me about seeing a "Fire Face"... I reply "Fire-Face?!!" Heading outside the situation changes and I'm paranoid, thinking the name was a notorious gang instead of a music group or something. Now I'm in a different neighborhood outside of a convenience store and a white, 70's Pinto drives up to park and I imagine the driver to be a "Fire - Face" - he's emotionless and not aware that I'm about to get help to deal with him. I run into the building that is attached to the store, and run into the first floor apartment. I find my Son-in-Law and a friend of his.. I ask them where is my son. They tell me he was just here a minute ago, I tell my Son-in-Law to come help me deal with the "Fire-Face" outside, we had no time to wait for my son to return. The car is gone by the time we make it out to the street. We return to the building but the steps leading up have worn away, leaving a steep concrete ramp. We're both struggling to climb up the steep incline, my SIL just ahead of me is having a hard time due to his medical conditions, my age is making the climb back up even tougher than I thought. My SIL makes it to the top, his legs barely holding him up, he lunges for the door handle only to have it pull open with the weight of his body and swing him out over the edge of the 10ft drop. He lets go, not being able to hold on and slides down a shaft at the bottom of the stairs. I'm shocked and all I can say is "Dude!"

Making it to the top, I look down into the shaft/chute he disappeared in and hoped he didn't break his legs at the bottom. The thought sent my spirit form down to have a look, and there in the basement he had broken his legs from ankle to knee in a twisted mess. The fall knocked him unconscious from shock. Before I could make it to anyone for help, the dream began to peel away and I slowly woke up, unable to help.