DREAM: I Don't Eat Squirrels and Kittens!

More bizarre symbolism in the realm of dreams continuing...

I dreamt I was at the grocery store and standing at the counter for, I think, a bakery section. Next to it was the butcher section. Somehow my order for whatever I was getting from the bakery got mixed up with the butcher and he started talking to me as he chopped something. I could see that it was the limp body of a squirrel. He chopped off the legs, the head, and the tail so that there was only left this horrible, gray, wet tube of a body. He started cutting up a second one. I started to intervene, but the butcher was so clueless and thinking he was being so nice to make it all wrapped up for me... so I just smiled and tried to be polite. (NOTE: that would never happen in waking life. I would have said something immediately.) I just kept thinking, Well, I will get my stuff from the bakery and take what this butcher gave me, but hand off what the butcher gave me to someone else who would want it. The butcher had struck up conversation with me and I was politely exchanging with him, wishing I could just hurry up and get out of there. He had said something about kittens and I took it as an opportunity to speak up about how much I love animals. The butcher said, "Well, let me see... I think we have some around here," and he started sliding open panels behind the butcher case. He smiled all big and said, "Oh. HERE!" and pulled out a limp kitten. Before I could even realize what he was doing and what he was holding, he had chopped off the head. The body kicked. It had still been alive! He then reached under for another and pulled out a second kitten! He said, "I'm really sorry, but this one is feral. It might be a bit tougher." My mind was having a hard time wrapping around what was happening, He struggled to hold the kitten as it spit and clawed and fought him. The butcher's rubber gloves gripped the kitten by the ears, pulled them back so that the eyes were all stretched out, and he maneuvered the kitten to be on its side on the butcher block. That's when I finally freaked out. I screamed. I wailed out. I could barely scream out my words intelligibly, but I was screaming, "Oh my god! WHY! Why do you do this! How can you people eat these animals and hurt them like this!! If you don't understand how insane this is, you ARE insane!!" and on and on and on... until I woke up.

It was really intense and upsetting in the dream, and so NOT how I would have handled it in waking life, but it was cathartic and disturbing.

Now, I know I have phases when I dream things that are graphic, horrific, and bizarre, but I have yet to really grasp WHY! I mean, these are so weird!!

NOTE: I had watched part of ZODIAC, the movie about the "Zodiac Killer" of California's past. When detectives got a warrant to investigate a suspect's trailer home, it was swarming with squirrels inside. The imagery was striking, so I think part of my dream was influenced by that.

Mostly, I think this dream plays out my undercurrent of frustration for being forced to be polite, kind, and enduring around people whom I love, but who do not grasp the true horror of what they do when they eat animals. I don't realize it, but I imagine this forces a difficult skew within me as I accommodate the majority of apathy and ignorance for the suffering of animals, while living in a constant tortured state of wishing I could abolish all forms of cruelty and exploitation. I suppose this dream was helping to release that which I cannot in my waking life.

DREAM: Watching You Watching Me

I seem to have continued this bizarre theme from LAST TUESDAY...

I dreamt that I had my laptop in my bed with me and had fallen asleep with it on my nightstand.  I had been using SEESMIC earlier and involved in various video conversations, so I had left the site up and the laptop had gone into its "sleep mode."

Suddenly the laptop burned back into life and lit up the room.  Because the room was so dark, I couldn't see beyond the array of light from the screen. Seesmic was still up in the browser and a new video had refreshed in to a conversation I had been in earlier and it started playing... one of my Seesmic friends was laughing and saying, "Okayyy, Troy, what was THAT about?" and from my half-sleep I thought, I don't know, what is she talking about. Then another video refreshed into the conversation and another Seesmic friend said, "Uhh, Troy, did you leave your camcorder running? Ha ha..."

So now I sat up a bit and pulled the laptop to me to see what they were talking about...  In the video thread of conversations I saw that there were two videos posted by me in the past 10 minutes, but I had been asleep!  I played the first one back:  it was just a 2 or 3 minute video of my empty chair at my office desk.  I thought, wow, DID I somehow leave the cam running? But then, how did it post?

I played the next video: Now the camera dismounted and it wobbled to show movement.  Still no one in the video, but the view was the camera being carried away from my desk and toward my bedroom door.  That's when I became slighly paralyzed with confusion and panic, but before I could really consider what I was seeing, another video refreshed into the timeline on Seesmic and it was another post from "me!" I clicked to play it: this time, I was IN the video... sitting in my bed, lit only by the light from my laptop screen. 

I cannot express to you the terror that coursed through me as I realized what I was seeing! I looked up from the laptop and toward my bedroom doorway... my eyes had to adjust, but as I strained through my panic to see what was there, I finally made out... a blinking red light from my camcorder, being held there, recording me... and I could only barely make out the silhouette of someone just standing there... holding it. 

Before I could react, the video timeline refreshed and several videos began playing, each person saying, Oh My GOD Troy, GET OUT OF THERE!  GET OUT OF THERE!!  I had no idea where to go, how to run, or what to do...

And I woke up.

YIKES!!

DREAM: I'm Only Here To Love You

For some of you who actually read my blog, you know I have wild dreams and often they are bizarre and even apocolyptic and dark.  Such a contrast to my daily life, which is like a mix of high-comedy skits and cartoon antics laced with I Love Lucy moments.

Well, last night I had one of the strangest dreams I've ever had and I have a feeling it was prophetic in some way, so I am archiving it here.  I've discovered over the years that peppered throughout my journal are near-LITERAL dreams that I find only years later had some serious relevance to my daily life.  The most recent being, of course, my dream about wandering around in a foreign country, looking for my heart/love, and feeling a state of anxiety I likened to suffocation/drowning... fast-forward 4 years into the future and I am living in The Netherlands because I followed my heart for love and I am dying in a hospital bed from Pnuemonia!

So my dream last night may have some significance, though I have a feeling it might be more symbolic in the end... but you never know, so here goes:

I dreamt I was living in a home from my past, during High School, back in Indiana.  I woke up in the middle of the night and the experience was desperately-vivid, lucid.  I was awakened by the realization that SOMEONE was in the room with me.  I was still for a moment as I tried to figure out what to do.  The panic was controlled, but it was like a terrifying short-circuiting and it was blinding.  I had no idea what to do... so I suddenly LEAPT from my bed, throwing back the covers and grabbing a netting I had been working on from the floor. 

(In the dream, this netting was some kind of project I had been working on and it was made from recycled materials; sort of like the plastic circles used to hold six-packs together, woven into a large net). 

I grabbed up the netting and just started swinging it hysterically and screaming out for my mom.  I ran from my bedroom, through the living room, and into the kitchen just outside of my parents bedroom, screaming for help.  My mom casually stepped out into the dim glow from the windows and asked what the hell was wrong with me.  I know I was speaking, but having a hard time expressing that I knew someone was in my room.  She said, hold on, calm down, let me help... and she grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen counter; meat scissors. 

At first I thought she was going to go with me back to my room and help me confront this intruder, but then I felt a tug on the netting I was carrying and I glanced down to find she was holding parts of it and CUTTING IT APART! I remember feeling completely lost and abandoned by her not taking me seriously and only using the opportunity to do something hurtful (which is clearly a fragment of memory from the abuse I did endure from her).  I tugged the netting from her and, shaking, stepped back toward the living room toward my bedroom, trying to ignore my mom's laughing at me and dismissing my terror. 

As I stepped into the living room, lightning flashed from outside and cast shadows for several seconds... long enough for me to see the silhouette of a man cast onto the wall outside of my bedroom!  The shadow of the man was holding a shovel.  For some reason, I lashed out again hysterically, swinging the net and rushing toward my bedroom doorway, entering, and slamming in to the guy standing there.  I just kept swinging this net and hitting and banging in to this guy.  He grabbed my shoulders and said, "Calm down, CALM down..." he said this in severe whispers, pressing his mouth close to my ear.  He shook me and said to LOOK at him... I calmed down enough for him to say, "I LOVE YOU. I've always loved you.  I've been following you and I finally found you. I just wanted us to be together and tell you I love you." 

I stayed calm long enough for him to say all of this... and then he kissed me.  The kiss was soft, electric, and melted into me.  He stood for a second and looked at me while I tried to make sense of what was happening.  He smiled as if he knew I would understand... and then I freaked out on him again and started screaming and flailing and hitting him and swinging the net at him, so he dashed to my window, straddled the window sill, and smiled back at me, disappearing out into the darkness. 

I ran over to my window and slid it shut, pressing my face up against the glass to see if I could see where he had run off into the rain...

Then I sat on my bed and realized the shocking mix of deep recognition of this person and the absolute, soothing effects from his whispers and his kiss, with the terrifying idea of someone finding his way into my personal space just to prove something to me.  I sat for a long time, completely at a loss as to what to do or what to feel, but kept playing that kiss and his trying to calm me down, over and over in my mind... until I fell asleep again. 

The sun was shining into my room when I awoke and for a brief moment I realized that I must have been dreaming the experience from the night before... until I saw my cut-up netting lying sprawled across my floor.... and then realized that I had an arm holding me from around my waist from behind, with a body spooning warmly against me. 

I shot out of the bed and slammed my back against the door to look back at my bed and see this man had come back through my window in the night and had crawled into bed with me, holding me.  Again, I felt the rush of pure satisfaction and recognition, mixed with the horror of this happening at all! 

Before I got a chance to scream or freak out any further, he got out of my bed, straddled the window sill again, and was smiling patiently at me, looking back at me and saying, "You shouldn't be scared. I'm only here to love you." He played whimsically with a flap in the screen where he had apparently sliced it, and said, "Sorry about the screen. You should just leave your window open next time."  And he slipped away...

And I woke up in my "real" room and sat up, looking around at my windows, walls, doorway, listening, and adjusting to the dark and shadows and sounds... and feeling that same mix of horror and the warm remembering of a love I almost forgot, but that hadn't forgotten me, and had found me again.

The symbolism in this dream is rich, but there's something prophetic about it, too... I can feel it.

We'll see...

Assassination Plots

Several weeks ago, before the DNC, I had a huge influx of psychic static that led me to be very concerned about a potential assassination of Obama. In addition to my psychic static, I suddenly found that a fellow MySpacer had been privy to a band of people on their way to DNC to do just that. So I was very worried. During the DNC, a handful of fools were arrested for plotting the assassination. I was convinced that this was not what I had sense was on the horizon and that these were just some doofus middle-american ass-wipes with guns. The sense I had was of a fairly elaborate network planning this, not these dorks.

But who knows... these could have been the planned patsies who bumbled the whole plan and ruined the more elaborate plan?

By the way, the reason I call this "psychic static" is because it wasn't like a clear sense or some kind of distinct information; it was more like... static. Like an electrical charge with tons of bits of information that hadn't taken form. It was really unnerving and I didn't really know what to do with it, so I wrote about it. After the fact, I suspect this energy was some kind of charge created from among a lot of people who are consciously or unconsciously anxious about this possibility. It would be devestating. Another suspicion, of course, is that it was just my own static and anxiousness, but I've had years and years of self-exploration regarding these types of experiences, so I was recognizing this as something far more than just my concerns. But I'm not above it having just been my over-active imagination.

So the reason I'm writing about this again is because yet another assassination plan was unraveled in the past day or so. This one was pretty elaborately-planned and is closer to what I had sensed was in the works, but... I'm reporting in that I'm pretty sure this is STILL not what I had sensed.

I'm beginning to wonder if the "static" was less about conscious or unconscious anxiety and more about the fact that there is an electrical storm of tiny, idiotic, puffed up plans coming in from all over the country, churning up from small groups and tiny minds everywhere. I am beginning to see this option as being pretty fair to consider.

I'm also wondering if these busts will lull American public into a false sense of trust in the forces that will make sure this doesn't happen... I don't know. But I'm still uneasy.

I haven't had any experiences again like I did in that week before the DNC. No static. No swarms of disembodied presences... I'm back to the normal, random sightings, nothing unusual (for me).

I just thought I'd chime in about this recent bust. From what I understand, there isn't even any evidence to support the boasts of these goons. Just a lot of talk...

That's another issue I wonder about: as much as I despise these people with violent plans and hateful talk, are we now imprisoning people based only on speech? This could be a big problem for our future, if that's the case.

The World Will (maybe) Change in 5 Days

WARNING: psychic and metaphysical mumbo jumbo post, so if you already have a distaste for that sort of thing, I would stop reading here or you will just think I am more bonkers than you already think I am. Otherwise, enjoy!

I wasn't going to post anything about this, but then I came across this blog entry and now I'm really floating in a weird, ominous space about it. I don't know if you have to be a friend of that person to read the entry, but if you can't read it, it's basically a recount of a personal experience that ties directly into dreams and premonitions I have been having over the past month or so.

I'VE BEEN HAVING BAD DREAMS

First, some background:

As you know, I am a channel and I have worked with "the dead" and psychic/intuitive phenemona for most of my life in some way. If you don't know my history, remind me to share it with you sometime. After I moved to New York City, I realized that I could not stay in the same kind of psychic mode that I had always allowed myself to have while growing up. For some reason, living among so many people made it very difficult to function on that level. I was exposed to so much "psychic junk" or "mud" that it would literally weigh me down by the end of the day. Gummy, grey and pink stickiness stretched from person to person and it became very difficult to discern the living from the dead among the crowds of people. And then, of course, I started dating and I began to develop even more of a shyness about my work than I had growing up. So it became practical to begin shut that part of my psyche down. To understand what this was like for me, you would just kind of stare straight ahead in any room and focus on what you see in front of you, even though you KNOW there is more beyond your peripheral vision. The more focused you get, the blurrier the peripherals get, but at any point that you want to turn your attention (inwardly or outwardly) to another focus, you can easily do so. It's not like the rest of the room disappeared, but that you just stopped focusing on it. So... that's what I've done most of my life. I compartmentalized that skill of intuition and channeling to a very specific context and turned it off as best I could in my "normal" everyday life.

Last month I went home to Indiana after a visit to Chicago. It never dawned on me that my ability to ignore my psychic side of my brain was fairly dependent on the environment in which I existed. In New York City, if I am just going about my business, it really is hard to tell if I've seen a spirit or a physical person because people just become objects that you navigate. Sure, I sometimes do a double-take and then a cringing inner d'oh! when I see someone crouching in the corner in an ATM vestibule and I realize it's a wandering soul. Just like when you accidentally catch the eye of anyone you don't mean to engage, it becomes an awkward experience and I have to deal with it except with the dead that can sometimes last for days. It doesn't happen very often, thank goodness.

So while I was in Indiana where there is tons of space and fields and highways and corn, imagine my shock as I am speeding along on the back of a motorcycle and a person steps out from the cornfield ahead. My initial reaction was to prepare for a smile and a nod as I zoomed past, but then he "shimmered" (I really don't know how exactly to explain that) and I thought, "Shit! He's dead!" and sure enough his presence faded as we neared, but I knew he knew I had seen him. Luckily I was speeding on and didn't have a chance to get tangled up in that energy. Again, I don't know exactly how to explain that, but in my experience most spirits seem to root themselves within a very small geographic location and don't really go beyond that, which is why a house is "haunted," or certain parts of a large structure or piece of land. There is a reason they are still hanging around or echoing in space and time like that and it's usually associated with people and places from which energy is drawn for all kinds of reasons. However, I also know that if one notices that you can see them, they can willingly shift attention to entangle with you and you can't just shut a door to get away. You have to talk and see if you can help. And sometimes you can, and sometimes you can't. It might seem very anti-Hollywood that I don't make it a big purposeful endeavor to help all of these people/spirits, but you really can only do so much. Imagine living in New York City and feeling obligated to help every homeless, drug-addicted, broken person you came across. If you focus on who you can help, you can help a lot, but if you spread yourself out, you lose effectiveness and power to help at all. So, I help when I can, which is rarer than I would like it to be. Some people have a LOT to work through before leaving and I learned a long time ago that you can't "rescue" a person from himself, whether living or dead.

So after spending 10 days in all of this open space and not being able to ignore this part of my brain (or whatever it is), I came back to New York City with all of my senses on high. It felt good, actually. I forgot that I appreciated that part of me so much and left myself open. And then my apartment became crowded with spirits. Like a bug zapper in the dark, when the dead hear/see that someone from the other side (for lack of a better phrase) is available, they can flock to that sense of light. A lot of people think it's something cool (or crazy) to be able to see the dead, but it's just as rare for the dead to see the living, too. Apparently it takes two. A conduit is very important and I'm not really sure what that conduit is, but I've suspected it's an emotional energy, a perception that bypasses the biased intellectual filters to a form of resonance. But I digress.

At first this crowding was okay because I am fascinated by all of it and I thought I would judge it later, but see what came of it. As usual, my space (psychically and physically) just kind of acted as a spiritual lounge for people to catch their breath (figuratively), grieve, rest, and then move on. I don't know why it works like that, but it does. Maybe someday I will explore that further, now that I am learning to own that part of my life again, but I assume it has something to do with the validation and acceptance that physical life was "real," and that this after-death is just as real. Dying must be like waking up from a really deep dream and for some people that waking up takes a while, especially if they want to remember as much from that dream as possible. So most moved along, but some lingered and those that lingered have done so for a reason.

Which brings me to the present:

Apparently, something is stirring in the probabilities for our future on a pretty large scale and a few spirits are very concerned and trying to make a difference by doing all they can to share that insight with those of us who can pick it up, and any number of other ways I can't think of. In my case, it's been pretty direct information, even though I have done all I could to ignore it up until now.

There is a lot of static, sharp and crackling, in the energy/air and it keeps getting worse. I've had a very hard time working and focusing and part of it is because of that level of rising interference. It's like a cacophony of chatter that is anxious and almost desperate for communication. I've also had several dreams that had me waking up nearly paralyzed and breathing rapidly and heavily. All of them having to do with awful future scenarios and probabilities. I've ignored them, not spoken about them because, my god, what I am I supposed to do with it! I don't know how to make a difference. And no matter how valid or meaningful or tangible my experiences are with spirits and dreams and psychic phenomenon, I always question whether it's my imagination, my creativity, a malfunction in perception and interpretation... I don't know. But then I saw that blog entry and it really scared me, so I thought it should at least go on record, however embarrassing it is to share it, that we might be in for a big ride over the end of this year.

In my dreams, I have seen several different scenarios:

1. I saw Ohio and New York hit by attacks related somehow to Russia. Why Ohio and New York, I have no idea.
2. I saw glowing, burning highlights on a large calendar for the dates of August 25th through 28th.
3. I saw an assassination attempt on Obama's life.
4. I saw random, rampant explosions of riot and attacks on various levels of society that seemed to help bring it all to a halt as way to either make a point, or to completely overhaul the direction in which we are going and to shape it to a small groups' ideals.
5. I saw Bush declaring Martial Law and extending his office beyond his terms.
6. I saw an eventual assassination attempt on Bush's life.

I'm known for having apocalyptic dreams, so it's not surprising to me that I kind of brushed these aside, but now I feel it's important to document them, especially since I realized that the Denver Democratic convention is August 25th through the 28th. That already freaked me out, but then I read that blog entry and even if it's a bogus entry, I was shaken by it's parallel to my private experience.

There are SO MANY reasons I can come up with to help me dismiss all of this. It's not a new concept that Bush might extend his office and it's not an unusual concern about Obama's life considering the potential for our having our first (half-)Black President and our having such an undercurrent of ignorance and racism among middle-americans. I always have epic dreams. It could be a coincidence that I dreamt those dates and that the Denver convention is on those days. It could be that my imagination has gone into overdrive and that there is something completely different happening with my abilities and those have just triggered deep fears and concerns.

Now, the spirits hanging around, I have no problem accepting and claiming as "real" in my experience because that's just been a part of my life for a long time and I've had my proof (like looking up the bio's or obituaries of those who told me their stories). But the predictive, doomsday element is not familiar to me at all. I find predictions to be pretty useless and especially when they have a doomsday bent, but I've also never had this happen to me so strongly, so...

I'm just going on record. Owning it. And MAYBE others have had similar senses, experiences, or even just fears... maybe just bringing the fears to the surface can save our future. Rather than fester into a serious issue among all of our psyches, maybe all we need to do is candidly bring it to the surface for air and let it go?

Maybe that's all it is.

If not, then make sure you have bottled water, canned goods, and flashlights stocked in your homes... yeesh!

The Music of Muse

This week was filled with strange dreams involving a couple of my muses in this life: Chris Garneau and Elizabeth Fraser. The truth about these muses is that I have no real idea about their personal lives, their personal integrity, their personal paths... but their art has changed my life. Or maybe I should say, it makes my life better than I imagine it would be without them. Along with several other artists in this life, they have become soundtracks to the inner space of me. And for some reason, I was visited with inspiration this week in the form of both Chris and Elizabeth.

My Chris Dream:

I dreamt I was attending some kind of ballet class for some reason and Chris happened to show up for that same class. I behaved as I would normally behave around someone who inspires me or toward whom I am in awe and I just did what I came to do, letting myself be thrilled, but not letting that spill over to invade Chris's space. But he kept coming up to me and laughing and touching me and engaging me and I felt tremendously at ease. We started acting silly and doing obnoxious dance poses... at one point, I remember his leaving the room and then suddenly spinning through the doorway, round and round and round until he was dizzy! We fell down together laughing, onto the floor against the wall. I realized I was leaning back onto him and that my hand was on his leg. I pulled my hand back and sat up quickly, but discreetly, continuing to laugh with him. Without any awkwardness, he reached for my hand, placed it back on his leg, and pulled me back into him, continuing to talk and laugh with me. It was extremely comforting. He whispered into my ear, "Don't forget. I know you."

My Elizabeth Dream:

I wish I could remember more of this because I NEVER dream of Elizabeth. What I remember is being shocked that she showed up somewhere where I was and that she was looking forward to meeting me! She showed up carrying packages and she was all frenetic and talkative and running around... I remember asking if she preferred to be called "Elizabeth" or "Liz," and she said, "anything, but Lizzy!" and I remember thinking that name had never even occurred to me. I don't remember much more than that, except that we were talking and talking and talking and it was hyper and excited. I do remember one phrase that stood out... she said, "we all end up singing our own lullabies."

So in honor of two of my muses visiting me in my dreams, I am putting together a MuxTape to share! Please take time to listen and enjoy. I've included some lyrics below to help you fall into this space within and maybe hear this music from between the worlds more intimately. So open the playlist into one page, and listen along with this page!

COCTEAUBOY JULY MUXTAPE

Playlist with Lyrics:

Cocteau Twins - MY TRUTH

You become powerful as you are accepting
You can work through the pain or enjoy more pleasure
Commit to the work of both
If you love all this energy, the chemistry

And you can work through the pain or enjoy more pleasure

and you can, you can work
through the pain
or enjoy more pleasure
and you can, you can work
through the pain
and come home to peace

It's frightening, exciting
Something shakes up our old understanding
The truth is more powerful
Are you fools, and confused to say
that I'm not angry

and you can, you can work
through the pain
or enjoy more pleasure
and you can, you can work
through the pain
and come home to peace

I'll remember my secret
I'll write it down and never tell it
It's not more fear outside of myself
that can save me

And you can work through the pain or enjoy more pleasure

Chris Garneau - TRY ME

Go ahead and try things on me
Maybe it'll bring you things you've never seen
It's a try, guaranteed
You can take whatever you need
Only skin remains
The winds blow it away
the guts and my brains
I'm as lonely as a stone
The one left behind
Never picked up and thrown

No more tired, you
I'm sure you love me, you do
You can touch me, still
Try me, then leave me
The way that you will
I can't wait
I can't wait

Just wanna see a beautiful face
One that won't last
But one I can't erase
Like that moon or lunar ambush
Comes in so soon
Turns my dreams to mush

No more tired, you
I'm sure you love me, you do
You can touch me, still
Try me, then leave me
The way that you will
I can't wait
I can't wait

I save everything like files
Your smile
My wounds
Your Dark
And your Light
Your joke
Your smoke
Your lovely
So when do you think we could love?

Told you it's a try, guarantee
I said you can take whatever you need
Come on
Come on
Come on

No more tired, you
I'm sure you love me, you do
You can touch me, still
Try me, then leave me
The way that you will
I can't wait
I can't wait

Cocteau Twins - ROUND

I, I will stay focused
When the thoughts do land
It's positive reinforcement
This sense of movement

This space, enjoy it

It gives me a new sense of progress
To this new life, a capacity to improve
Yes, I will, I will stay focused
When the thoughts do land

This space, enjoy it

This space, enjoy it
because because because...
the wheel turns

This space, enjoy it
because because because...
the wheel turns

Chris Garneau - SO FAR

Like the touch of my mother's hand on my head
I'll miss you, too, when I go to bed
We've ruined all the new pots
And the metal in the egg crate cots
But we haven't missed a good day of television, yet, so far
No we haven't missed a good day of television, yet, so far

The dishwasher's on now, cleaning, somehow
The baby bits of hamburger helper that dried too soon
We leave out the milk and it rots
and the mayonnaise that we got from Top's
But we haven't missed a good day of eating good food, yet, so far
But we haven't missed a good day of eating good food, yet, so far

You love good
but I think you should
go home, honey
cuz we haven't got any money

You love good
but I think you should
go home, honey
cuz we haven't got any money

Like the touch of my mother's hand on my head
I'll miss you, too, when I go to bed
We've ruined all the new pots
And the metal in the egg crate cots
we haven't missed a good day of television, yet, so far
No we haven't missed a good day of television, yet, so far
we haven't missed a good day of television, yet, so far

Elizabeth and Jeff Buckley - ALL FLOWERS IN TIME BEND TOWARD THE SUN

Elizabeth:
My eyes have baptismal views
I'm singing into my fires for a hand, I'm lost

Jeff:
All flowers in time bend toward the sun
I know you say that there's no one for you
but here is one
All flowers in time bend toward the sun
I know you say that there is no one for you
But here is one
Here is one
Here is one

Both:
All flowers in time bend toward the sun
I know you say that there's no one for you
but here is one
All flowers in time bend toward the sun
I know you say that there's no one for you
but here is one
but here is one

Jeff:
Keep it growing in me
Wicked traveler
Say it ain't farther from me
with your face in my window glow
oh where will you wait for me, sweet willow

Elizabeth:
It's okay to be angry
but not to hurt me
oh darling...

Both:
All flowers in time bend toward the sun
I know you say that there's no one for you
but here is one

Chris Garneau - RELIEF

I saw the sea come in
I saw your good old friend
He walked right past
I'll never ask
I'll never ask again

I saw the sea come in
I saw your good old friend
He walked right past
I'll never ask
I'll never ask again

I love the way you dance
Oh we can work it all out
Don't you miss your chance
The pain, it will all grow out

I heard your good ole word
I heard the things you said
They all shuffled in
As medicine, as medicine in red

I heard your good ole word
I heard the things you said
They all shuffled in
As medicine, as medicine in red

I love the way you dance
Oh we can work it all out
Don't you miss your chance
The pain will all grow out

I didn't go to see the city
I went to see it around you
Oh we can laugh in hell together
The devil will find you, too

Nose to nose
and eyes all closed
This is what I said
would never ever end

Nose to nose
and eyes all closed
This is what I said
would never ever end

I saw the sea come in
I saw your good old friend
He walked right past
I'll never ask
I'll never ask again

Chris Garneau - BETWEEN THE BARS

drink up baby
stay up all night
the things you could do
you won't but you might
the potential you'll be
that you'll never see
the promises you'll only make

drink up with me now
and forget all about
the pressure of days
and do what i say
and i'll make you okay
and drive them away
the images stuck in your head

the people you've been before
that you don't want 'round anymore
or that push and shove
and won't bend to your will
i'll keep them still

drink up baby
look at the stars
i'll kiss you again
between the bars
where i'm seeing you there
with your hands in the air
you're waiting to finally be caught

drink up one more time
and i'll make you mine
i'll keep you apart
deep in my heart
separate than the rest
where i like you the best
and keep the things you forgot

the people you've been before
that you don't want around anymore
or that push and shove
and won't bend to your will
i'll keep them still

the people you've been before
that you don't want 'round anymore
or that push and shove
and won't bend to your will
i'll keep them still

Cocteau Twins - SEA, SWALLOW ME
no lyrics

Chris Garneau - BLACKOUT

I, I was kidding about the mean things
While we were sleeping
Heat rushed in, Heat rushed
The fan stopped, the fan stopped
Oh, oh, oh, oh

Flashlights in delis
Drinking on the street
All the lights are out in New York City

And it never ever will be
Too damned late
To run inside the market place

I, I'll be quiet then
in middle of you talking
when we're walking
thoughts rush in
those thoughts rush in
the heart stops, the heart stops
oh, oh, oh, oh

Flashlights in delis
Drinking on the street
All the lights are out in New York City

And it never ever will be
Too damned late
To run inside the market place

I sit by the window
and I watch all of the little
raindrops, raindrops
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh...

Dif Juz (featuring Elizabeth) - LOVE INSANE
no lyrics

Chris Garneau - LOVE ZOMBIE

eat and sleep and shun
your mother she's the one
who gets all your goats
and herds them up two hills
with rotten oats

apple orchard goat
the place you loved the most
your holy frightened ghost

your heart
they liked the meat
it was too tough to eat
to chew and grind with teeth
to chew and grind with teeth
your love zombies

and all those men!
you beast!
you beast!
you beast!
you beast!

jeffrey...

Craig Armstrong (featuring Elizabeth) - THIS LOVE

This Love
This Love is a strange love
I'm afraid it can remain love
This Love

This Love
I'm think I'm gonna fall again
And even when you held my hand
It didn't mean a thing
This Love

This Love
Never has to stay Love
Doesn't know it is Love
This Love

This Love
It doesn't have to feel Love
Doesn't need to be Love
It doesn't have to mean a thing
This Love

This Love
This Love
has a strange Love, strange Love

This Love
This Love
has a strange Love, a strange Love
(doesn't have to mean a thing/think I'm gonna fall again)

This Love....

DREAM: Dead Rodents

I had a very strange dream last night (as if my dreams aren't always strange).

DREAM

I dreamt I was at Cyprus's parents house, even though the house was not recognized and is not the same as her parents' house in waking life, and we were sitting around, watching TV. Her parents weren't her parents in waking life, either. In my dream, they were our friends, Sandy and Larry.

For some reason I decided to go get a blanket from the closet. There was a thin, white blanket, kind of like a jersey sheet, lying on the floor of the closet. I reached for it and it moved. My hand cringed back to me and I looked closer at the blanket. Part of it was disappearing into a space that was between the floor and the wall. I grabbed the blanket and pulled at it. It pulled back! It was like fishing, with a fish tugging at the end of the line. I pulled harder and sure enough, pulled through the crack came a tiny, little mouse. I was surprised by the strength it had. I tugged at the blanket until the mouse let go and then it scurried back into the wall.

I didn't want to make a big deal of this, but I wanted to tell Cyprus that there was a mouse in the house. I carried the blanket with me to the doorway of the living room and waved discreetly to her to come into the other room with me. She did.

In hushed tones, I started to tell her about the mouse. She shifted her weight as she listened intently to me and put one foot on a beanbag chair that was in this sitting room. Suddenly a horrifying odor wafted up toward us and it was the smell of a dead rodent (if anyone has ever smelled this, it is one of the most upsetting smells on the planet). I looked down at her foot on the beanbag and I saw that she had placed her foot on a large, dead, bloated rat! Her foot had squished into the rotting softness and caused the release of those horrible smells!



She freaked out and pulled her foot back, shivering and looking completely disoriented and I just stood there, wide-eyed. There was no hiding our conversation from her parents, so a lot commotion ensued as we dealt with the reality of my finding a mouse and now this dead rat.

I don't remember much of what happened next, but the final thing I remember is eating Twizzlers (strawberry licorice sticks) from a bag on the counter in the kitchen. I leaned against the counter and chewed one up, then reached for another, pulling it from the sticky inside of the bag... I ate it, too. I think Cyprus and her parents were, at this point, dealing more directly with the rodent issue and I was just wandering around, finding these delicious Twizzlers.

I reached for another in the bag and that's when I saw through the clear part of the bag, almost obscured by the lettering and logo, a dead mouse stuck to one side of the inside of the bag!

I started retching...

I woke up.

END DREAM

WAKING LIFE ANALYSIS:

Clearly this was a strange processing of my day, yesterday, because I spent a great deal of it "mouse-proofing" my apartment. I have now seen a mouse in my apartment on several occasions, but very few and far between. I never have a mouse or bug problem, so I don't usually get too concerned about it. I attributed my sightings to the fact that some construction and renovation have been going on in my building that the little mice were just passing through. But I don't want to be a passageway for rodents, so rather than setting traps and killing them (I refuse to do so), I would rather just take preventative measures. I have tried to find every possible point of entry and fill it with steel wool and that expanding foam stuff you can buy from the hardware store. So that's what I did, yesterday.

I think it must have carried over into my dreams.

Now, why they were dead and rotting and playing tug-o-war with a blanket... I don't know!

DREAM: a return to slavery & JERICHO

If you are not already watching JERICHO, you really should be (here's a link to the streaming videos for the series, beginning with the PILOT). Seriously, give it a chance... and even as you might have a blah episode here and there, keep on watching... it's worth it.

Although it's a bit formulaic, it is also a fascinating exploration of one of the biggest "WHAT IF's" we can imagine as Americans. What if we were under Nuclear Attack? What if we lost everything in a single moment that we take for granted? What if all communication halted across the country and we didn't know what was happening anymore in the world? What if our government were knocked completely out of commission? What if we found our country then divided into separate, newly-divided countries that found each other establishing their own idea of new governments? What if each of those governments then found each other at war?

What if we found out we were never attacked at all... but that our own government "attacked" us so that a complete rebuild of our country could be done without the Constitution being considered?

After "9/11," none of this seems implausible. In fact, unless you are completely without your wits about you, or unless you simply refuse to fathom this possibility, the inconsistencies, physics, and blatant lies that have sprung up since "9/11" makes this series all the more terrifying to consider.

JERICHO not only asks all of these questions, but eloquently plays out the possible scenarios in such a beautifully-insidious way that you don't even realize how terrified you are under your skin until the reality of the situation hits you in certain episodes. There are strings of episodes that leave you feeling excited about the drama, the action, and then WHAM! the reality hits you and you start to think about what the fuck you would do if you were in those same situations. What then started out looking like a formulaic series coils around you as you realize just how formulaic our own lives are, and how even in the midst of a horrifying shift in everything we ever found familiar, we do our best to retain that formula... until we can't.

Last night's episode really upset me. If you haven't watched SEASON ONE, please don't spoil it for yourself, but if you are a fan, you know how upsetting that episode was... for a lot of reasons that leave you itching, angry, and devastated.

Season 2 episode 4: JAKE and friends discover something devastating

I was crying after the episode and feeling really angry about what happened. The episode played on some very deep wounds and fears in myself that probably stretch from across lifetimes: wounds from knowing the right thing to do, but being punished for doing so; fears of being attacked and cornered for just being who you are; dying senselessly because of someone else's selfishness and fears... I could go on.

Although COMPLETELY unrelated, I am certain that Jericho prompted my dreams last night, which were epic and disturbing.

I dreamt that I was on a flight across the country and we were going to crash. The crash tore the plane apart and was really scary, but somehow most of us survived. We were all over the news. All of us were taken to a hospital, but it wasn't a public hospital; it seemed to be in one of the hangars of the airport. About 20 of us were actually just fine and we were released fairly easily from this hospital, escorted to a kind of cargo plane for our flight to our intended destination. After a while I began to question the length of the flight because it seemed to have been a long time. That's when we began to be treated differently. We were told to shut up and remain seated. When we finally landed there was an oppressive humidity and heat in the air and we found out we had been flown to Thailand.

To make a long story short, the rest of my dream was about my finding out that there had been a program implemented by our government to take passengers and survivors from catastrophic events who could easily be written off as missing or not found in the wreckage and disasters, and then shipped to various parts of the world and used as slaves.

In my dream I was able to escape and thus began my epic journey in trying to find a way back to the U.S. to tell what was really happening in the world, but finding out that the highest officials in many governments around the world were already aware and utilizing this program!

Everything about my world had changed in an instant.

I'm still a bit emotional over the damn episode and the dream. It's so weird when things like this really get into you.

It's also very cool.

Why I Keep A Blog

I have chills. CHILLS, I say! Note that this excerpt is from 2004!!! Full post is in the link, but this excerpt is the amazing, AMAZING, relevant part! Well, at least it is to me... Part of why I keep a blog is to document these very things. If I had not had this documented, I would never have realized that some part of me "knew" about an event that would happen THREE YEARS later!

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

DREAM

I dreamt last night that I had discovered a new love for someplace in Europe, but I am not sure where I was. I have never been to Europe in my waking life. I was much younger in my dream, which has never happened before. I always dream of me as either non-age specific or my current age, but in this dream I was just about 20 years old. Apparently, I had gone to this place in Europe, then had left to go back to the States. I guess I had just returned again to Europe and had worked really hard to be able to come back. I vaguely think there was someone there whom I had fallen in love with and had vowed to return to him, but now I couldn't find him. I remember walking down this lovely, quiet street and feeling so alone, but so happy to be back at the same time.

All I can say is... WOW. What the fuck part of me knew THIS PARTICULAR story about my life THREE YEARS before it happened!??? This isn't the first time this has happened, but it is always chilling to me. This is the first time I have browsed back through my blog in a long time.

The irony is that this entry was three days after Nick dumped me in 2004.

Seems I was already looking for Jip in three years in advance, and feeling the loss.

NOTE: I'm not done reading through my archives, but a couple of days later in that year, I have a post about my having a dream about sharp pains in my chest, having to massage my chest to help relieve it, and being told by someone that my "heart had been scarred." I wonder if this relates to the pneumonia.

Wow.

DREAM: The Dangerous Road of Romance

I had another vivid, awful dream last night. I guess it wasn't awful because it was kind of dramatic and adventurous, but it was scary and intense. It is obvious this is just about how I feel about part of my life right now.

DREAM
I don't remember as much as I did when I first got up, but I remember being in a car, driving at night, and somehow hearing some terrible news (by cell phone?) and I was in a panic. I don't even know what the news was, but it had to do with Jip. I remember crying heavily and feeling like I had to make a decision RIGHT THEN. The decision was whether to just GO NOW in the car to Jip or to go get things prepared for a trip. I remember thinking that all I had with me was the clothes I was wearing... and then thought, I can deal with these material things, later... Jip was what was important. So I started the trip to Jip.

At one point I saw what I thought was my exit from the highway, so I took it. When I did, I somehow ended up squeezing down a road through thick trees, leading to an entrance into a tunnel-like space that spiraled down into the earth. I stopped outside the tunnel, got out of the car, and tried to look into the tunnel. It was so dark, I couldn't see much, but I could tell it spiraled down. I hurried back into the car and started driving down the tight spiral...

As I wound down the dark spiral, I kept anticipating that it would lead back out into the night light where I would feel more comfortable again. And then I crashed into something. It was a dead end! The spiral tunnel only led to a wall. I tried to back the car up, but backing up a spiral was impossible, especially with my being in a panic already.

I walked back up the spiral and into the night, my mind full of intense need to get to Jip because he needed me. I was trying so hard to figure out how to get there as fast as I could.

I ran through the trees to a clearing... it was a field of some kind. Alongside the field was a farm. I remember the night being so quiet and disturbing; the kind that is silent, but for the white noise of wind through the trees... only hearing my breath and sniffles.

I, tentatively, crouched and ran to the edges of the farm. Dim light was coming through a couple of windows, but I couldn't tell if anyone was up. I was torn between bothering the occupants, and the need for me to figure out a way to get to Jip, which might mean asking them for help.

I sat a distance away from the house, near a barn, and tried to think. Suddenly, the sound a screen door slamming caught my attention and I looked up to see a man in over-alls exiting the house, heading toward a shed across the yard. He looked angry and purposeful and he was carrying an ax. I tried to move to hide more behind what I think was a bail of hay, but I kicked some metallic tool... and the man stopped, whipped his head in my direction...

...and headed my way.

The only thing I remember after that is my thinking, "I just have to get to Jip... do what you have to do!"

END DREAM

I am sure this is my subconscious playing out my futile attempts to remain close to Jip after our breakup; my willingness to give up everything to be with him from the beginning, but finding only dead ends and danger. Those obstacles seemed completely manageable, but in real life, the obstacles were never about the journey or the road or the battles, but about the fact that it takes two.

Even when you know there is a lot of love being shared, trying to be in a relationship when there is only one person present is a dark and lonely place.

I'll always be a fool for Love. I don't mind.

Did You Send The Faeries?

THE FAERIES ARE COMING?

I had an amazing "dream" this morning. I have to put dream in quotes because it was not a normal dream that I have ever had. I have had the range of dreams from basic symbolic dreams to Lucid Dreaming, but this was... different. Not only was I awake as far as I could tell, but I was aware enough to discern that I wasn't dreaming. I was able to watch what I saw unfold and choose to allow it, and also to consider the source from where it was coming. I'm not saying I wasn't dreaming, but that it SEEMED that I was totally awake and aware, but who knows with these things.

See, I "dreamt" that faeries were swarming my chest this morning. Hundreds and hundreds of bright, quiet, dutiful, tiny, little faeries in a organized pattern swarming from one corner of the bed, down across my right shoulder, landing on my chest in a pattern of my lungs, transferring something either to or from little spots in my chest, and then each moving on, being replaced immediately by the next, so that it was a constant wave. It was like a river of glittery, shimmering lights that weren't too bright or incredible, just pretty. My chest was constantly covered, with each faerie landing, transferring something, and then leaving, only to be replaced by the next. It was like a highly-organized hive of some insect feeding on me, or planting something on me, in this swarm of light and gentle, breezy wings. They were SO tiny and fast! I know there were a handful of them directing the flow and traffic of the swarm, and I remember thinking how perfectly smooth the flow was.

LIGHT OF MY LUNGS

I did have enough sense about me to think, "I don't even believe in this shit. I don't believe in FAERIES! Please." It then occurred to me that this "energy" may have been sent by someone who DOES believe in things like this and somehow it sustained its shape to the point where I was able to experience it without distorting it. I kept thinking, "wow, someone sent their faeries to heal me." And I went with that. I lay back down and watched the soft-light show, listened to the bristling buzz, and fell back asleep.

The strange thing was that when I woke up again, they were still there, but in less numbers, like the process was almost finished, but still in progress. All I knew was that I was happy with what it felt like they were doing and I lay back down and rest, assured.

I woke up one more time to see only a small quantity of these little faeries remaining, finishing up with my chest, and then they were all gone.

I thought this was one of the strangest, most beautiful dreams I have had in a long time. And I do wonder if someone sent me their idea of "faerie energy" for healing!

If you did, it got to me!

Lava Love II

Well, this is interesting...

Following my Lava Love dream the other night, and then the bird dream that was followed by contact with a real bird, the Lava Love dream now seems to have a counterpart in Waking State. I turn on the T.V. tonight for some background noise as I work, and what do I find... a movie on SciFi called DISASTER ZONE: Volcano In New York! LOL! Yes, it is over-dramatic and filled with stock footage, but I just thought the synchronicity was interesting. Especially as the visuals have the ground softening, boiling up, and swallowing homes and buildings. It's not QUITE the apocalypse of my dream the other night, but it's just... interesting.

Birds Of A Feather

Wow... another odd dream, followed by even stranger Waking State:

I dreamt I was interacting with a really playful bird; something like a little parakeet, but not a parakeet. Maybe something like a Conure? Or maybe a baby parrot? The bird was really affectionate, as most birds are (and unless you have cared for a bird, you probably don't know how amazingly affectionate and sweet a bird is). It would ride on my finger, clamp his beak onto my finger, gently, and make those sweet bird noises I remember so fondly. At one point the bird was walking about and around a little dog's ears and head, grooming the hair on the dog, and the dog would just nuzzle the bird. I don't know whose dog this was, but the bird and the little dog got along just fine. I was laughing and just feeling really good about all of this cross-species affection and kindness. The little dog would occasionally open his mouth to try to lick the bird, but the bird would open his own mouth and try to pick at the dog's tongue. It was hilarious (in my dream).

I then made some kind of joke out loud about how the little dog had better be careful because he could hurt the bird unwittingly, and I put my fingers on the back of the bird's neck to kind of mimic an accidental attack, and to move the bird a bit away from the dog's face. The bird freaked out in a loud squawk and then collapsed!!

I could not believe I just killed this little bird! It just lay there. I picked the bird up and felt this horrible wash of sadness and regret and shame for killing it. And then I just decided this can't be happening...

I put the bird to my face and blew into his beak. I kept blowing in rhythms and could feel the bird's belly fill, then empty as I breathed. I then took my finger and thumped it gently against the bird's chest in a rhythm, too. I did this for about a minute... and then lay the bird back down to leave him alone. I was devastated.

And then the bird shook on his side, lifted his head, eyes bleary, and then shook himself to his feet, feathers ruffling, and going back into place. He looked up at me, ran his little feet over the few inches to me, and just started nuzzling and making bird noises! I was SO HAPPY!

So that was the dream... but tonight, as I went to do my laundry, I was putting my clothes in the washers, and suddenly I saw something right in my face at the edge of the washer's top. My eyes focused and it was a BIRD!!!

A teeny, adorable little sparrow! He just sat there. I didn't want to scare him because he is already apparently trapped in a basement laundry room, so I just looked at him for a second and stood still. The little bird walked toward me, so raised out my finger very gently and reached for him to pet him. He let me! It then dawned on me that he may be really sick or something and I started thinking of ways I may be able to catch him and help him, but before those those thoughts could finish, the little bird flew up on my shoulder, chirped really happily, and then flew incredibly acrobatically out the door of the laundry room, around the corner, and then out a crack in the door that led from the basement to outside.

What the...!?? Any dream/symbols of life interpreters out there?

Lava Love

I had this most amazing dream the other night:

As some of you already know, I seem to have a constant stream of apocalyptic dreams in which I am running for my life, and I never really see how they end... I just remember the running.

Well, in this dream the world was folding in on itself. Yes... folding in on itself.

The ground around the world was losing solidity, softening and churning, swallowing people, homes, cities, continents, and replacing it all with molten lava. No one knew where it would hit next, but we did know that it seem to be spreading exponentially. As the earth began to fold in the distance from Manhattan, there was a stillness in the air, with little panic from the city. People were going to rooftops to watch the glowing horizon gently silent the screams of people in the distance, instantly turning people and things into bursts of flames. As the ocean around us started steaming and shifting and parts of the city began to fall, I went down to to the streets with others who were anticipating trying to maneuver the flooding and folding of land and lava. At one point, the ground completely dropped from below me and my arms caught on the ledge of earth left behind, which allowed me to climb up and out of the huge canyon of heat, but as I stood to steady myself, more of the ground began to drop, forcing me to run and climb away in a race against this spreadig collapse. I was able to find solid footing and I stopped to look around me at the people falling into holes, canyons, fires, lava, being buried in debris and rubble...

Then, quietly and softly, an arm came around my waist. In the dream I seemed to know who it was, but in Waking State, I really don't know who it is. His arm came around and I embraced back. We stood in this one solid spot as the ground around us was replaced by lava, crust, and heat. There was grass and a small tree where we stood, so we lowered ourselves down to sit and lean into each other's arms. The world was gone. It was silent.

And suddenly the ground stopped shifting. My view pulled up and away from us to see both of us weeping and quiet, looking out into the nothingness, sitting on the only green island left in the world. The earth around our little island was blackened and red, but it began to solidify and cool.

We didn't even react to this...

We just wondered how and why we were the only ones left in the world... or if there were other survivors.