The Dead Read Sled

It's been too long dream blog. The west is burning. I can't see the trees or the mountains. Where's the sun? It's red outside. Apocalypse now. Civil unrest, cops killing Black people still, global pandemic, billionaires making more and more money every week while hundreds of thousands of people in California are being forced to evacuate their homes.

My money's on Mt. Rainier blowing up by November.

Before the worst of the smoke, I met my friend Kelli who claimed you can really control your dreams and be an active participant in them which is really difficult but you can do it with a lot of practice. You apparently just have to become aware it's a dream, which you can do if you get a cue that it's a dream, like if you try to write or type and you can't, that's a dead giveaway that it's a dream.

Last night's dream: Donna and Ellen gave us a night out at a nice restaurant for our birthdays, and in the card I received, they said they were paying off a $3500 debt I owed for Grateful Dead tickets. I was confused. I hadn't bought any Grateful Dead tickets but apparently my debt was public and Donna and Ellen found out about it. I instantly knew it was my dad and got intensely angry. I called him and yelled at him. Then we were in our basement which was also a garage, and my dad's stupid red 1992 Pontiac Firebird convertible was back, parked in there (in reality, it had been at the bottom of our driveway for nearly 3 years until we threatened to have it towed and my dad and Ken finally got it out of here). All of a sudden the FBI was there, asking us to step away from the car, taking pictures, dusting, and measuring things. "We've been looking for this car for a long time, ma'am," one of the agents told me. Another agent was impressed with how high the ceilings were in our basement. "What a basement!" he commented. He grabbed a mason jar off a shelf and said, "Did you or the original owners can vegetables?" I told him yep, the Pilos, who'd owned this house for 60 years canned stuff and had left all these mason jars here. The agent was impressed, commenting on how they'd lived through the Depression.

Upstairs, I asked Matiah why he thought the FBI was looking at the car. We both agreed there must've been a dead body in the car.

But how did the alligators get in the house?

Last night's dream was messed up. Matiah and I decided to plan ahead for my death and buy a coffin for me, and then we went a step further and decided to put a copy of my body in the coffin and bury it.

We went through some process by which I lay in the coffin, someone takes a picture and that somehow makes a copy of my body, and then I get out and my other body, my dead body, lies there in the coffin.

Matiah thought it would be a nice way to honor me by carving out a piece of the table and putting the coffin there. For some reason it was a big, thick table that we didn't need to put our legs under? So everytime we sat at the table, I'd notice the rectangular lines where the coffin inset was, and I'd trace my finger over it, fascinated, and say, "Here I am." Matiah would look up from reading the newspaper and put his hand on mine and say, "Yeah, baby, there you are. I'm glad it's out of the way and I don't have to bury you again. I couldn't stand to lose you again." Whatever that meant. My real body would eventually die right? I just had a feeling there were tons of unsolved phenomenon in this dream world, but it was a perfectly normal thing to bury oneself before one actually died.

Then for some reason it wasn't working for us to have the coffin under the table--or it was too sad a reminder of my death or something, so Matiah sawed a space in the floorboard and put the coffin under the house. I watched him do it and it was a swampy, watery other world down there. There were reptiles and fish, and I was worried about putting the coffin down there with all these aquatic critters. Then I saw two small alligators and panicked. "They'll eat my corpse! We can't put it down here!" Matiah reassured me and said the alligators couldn't get through the coffin. A few weeks later we open the floorboard to check on it, and the coffin was open and laying on its side in the shallow water. I was afraid to look because I didn't want to see my own rotting, mangled flesh, ripped up by hungry alligators, but when I finally looked I saw a mangled up fake body--a rubber mannequin body, not my body at all. "That's what was in there the whole time, not my real body?" I asked Matiah. He shrugged, as puzzled as me. I saw a sassy little alligator sitting proudly on a log, licking his lips, satisfied that he'd gotten into my coffin and eaten my corpse. I got so angry I lunged at it with my fist in the air, yelling something at it. It hissed at me, jumped in the water and swam away.

I cried about how hard this all was while Matiah consoled me. Then I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that alligators were in the house at all--the space under our floorboards wasn't outside--it was contained within our house, so why was it a damp otherworld that housed all these critters? I kept asking Matiah and I don't remember his explanation but it wasn't good enough and I felt more puzzled than I ever had. Then all of a sudden we were in a dry house with a sliding glass door and I saw two armadillos. They were sort of cute but I was still angry so I ran to the door, opened it, and shooed them out. They left, scared.

In the next part of the dream, Matiah was playing a really awesome and strange sounding synthesizer, seemingly making up songs as he went. It sounded like the weird moog music on that ode to plants album from the 70s. At some point he had little figurines in his hands and was using them to tell a wordless story. He moved the keyboard around so all five people in the room could see the tiny objects he was holding.

That's all I remember.

Saw the psycho again

I had a dream I was visiting Oviedo and it was completely different. It looked like the U.S., specifically somewhere around here. I felt like I was on a beach at Lake Washington looking at Vashon or Mercer Island, except the houses weren't huge fancy things like they are on Mercer--they were average 70s style houses with no notable gardening or architecture, and some of them were even ugly. I was sitting there on the beach marveling at how much Oviedo had changed, how trashy and American it looked, when a bunch of people walked by and I looked back in front of me and realized there was still some old world charm--cobblestone streets meant only for pedestrians, and the towering ancient churches. I settled into my blanket and grabbed my book but then I felt drawn to look up again. That's when I saw Jorge Fernandez Castro, my psycho ex who beat the hell out of me and denied it, who was absolved in court after I pressed charges and applied for a restraining order.

He was really the reason that I left Oviedo.

I noticed it was him even though he was wearing a large hooded jacket and a hat. Not sure why people were wearing jackets when it was this nice out and there were also people having picnics on the beach.

Then I did the unthinkable. I waved at him. I pretended everything was water under the bridge. I didn't address what happened 8 years ago, I didn't even yell at him. In my conscious waking mind I know I'd never talk to him even if I saw him on the street, but there really is a part of me that's curious about what he's up to, if he's abusing women as we speak, if he ever got in more legal trouble or got exposed as the villain he is. His eyes went wide, he said "It's you!" and he sat down on my blanket. "How are you?' he asked and I replied "Great!"

There wasn't much deep conversation and I don't remember what we talked about if anything. Sort of reflects the shallow mundane shit we used to talk about in reality: movies, music, people, food. Rarely did we actually talk about ideas and world events, and when I tried, he began talking so fast and passionately in Spanish that I couldn't really keep up or add new things to the conversation.

The next thing I knew we were in someone's flat having dinner at a long table with a bunch of other young people of all different nationalities. It felt like I was back then in time, meeting all kinds of people, trying to learn snippets of Portuguese, French, Japanese, whatever language of the person I met, while they asked me questions about English. Everyone at the table was jovial, wine was flowing, the food smelled delicious. Jorge's soft, jolly baritone voice was the most audible, and he made jokes and told stories. He made people laugh like he always used to. Some of his jokes seemed a little pointed or subtly harsh, and I saw a bit of a wounded reaction from one of the guys at the end of the table, who shuddered and glared at Jorge.

Jorge and I weren't sitting near eachother, but he kept looking at me as if he was trying to get my attention. I held steady and refused to make eye contact with him. I was realizing I didn't want to talk to him in the first place and was wishing he would leave. I was confused about why I was even here in the same room with him. He walked across the room a few times looking at me, talking about how he was getting out of here soon, making no attempt to hide the fact that he asking me to go with him. I waited it out and he eventually left. Before he did, he said, "Okay Lissa, I'm so glad I got to see you. I'm glad you're doing well" and I replied in a very emotionless and dead tone, "I'm glad I saw you on the street."

After he left I felt sick to my stomach. I immediately divulged to the people in the room what happened. "I never should have come here," I told them, "that guy Jorge is my ex and I haven't talked to him in 8 years. He attacked me in Budapest on New Year's 2011 and beat the shit out of me. He took my ID and threatened to leave me there. I took him to court and he was absolved. I was completely grief-stricken, depressed for the whole winter and spring, and triggered by childhood abuse. And I can't believe I talked to that fucker and sat in the same room as him. Entitled, misogynist piece of shit!"

Peoples' eyes went wide. The girl next to me was really sympathetic. She rubbed my shoulders and said, "Wow, I bet that dinner was really hard for. I wish I would've known." I told everyone about how he lied to everyone, turned mutual friends against me, etc. Then the guy at the other end of the table who I'd noticed earlier spoke up. Then I noticed he was shaking.

He said, "I'm so glad you said something. Jorge attacked me too. He held me down and tore off my clothes and told me he liked me. At first I was into it, but then he got rough and I told him to stop and he wouldn't. Then he raped me for hours after that, and wouldn't let me leave. It was the scariest night of my life."

Everyone in the room was crestfallen. The guy put is face in his hands and sobbed and the guy next to him hugged him and comforted him.

I felt angrier than I've felt in some time. "We have to do something to that fucker! We can't talk to him and be friendly anymore! We're just reinforcing the idea that what he did was okay and he can just go through the world doing whatever he wants to anyone and there are no repercussions and he's still adored and he's Mr. Popular. Fuck that!"

Other people agreed. "No, we can't talk to him anymore."

It was such an angering dream, and I was mostly angry at myself talking to that psycho.

Another talking dog

I was walking by a man and his dog on the street and I bent down and put my hand out like I do when I want to alert a dog I want to pet them.

At some point in my life, I learned it's rude in Seattle to not ask the owner if you can pet their dog, so I asked the guy. He said, "Why don't you ask him?" And the dog said in a husky, irritated take-no-shit voice, "No, lady! Leave me alone! Why do you people think you can just bend down and touch my head whenever you want?!"

😱

In last night's dream, the U.S. had become a totalitarian society and some sort of gestapo was rounding up millions of people and sending them to internment camps. Matiah and I had to go because we were teachers and were accused of teaching hatred and overthrow of the U.S. government. The camp was so bleak, just a big cement building like a Costco warehouse, filled with bunk beds. I had the eery feeling that we were going to be killed. We all had to wear white pants and t-shirts. I felt so devastated as I laid there in my bunk, wondering where Matiah was and wishing more than anything that I could hold him. The men and women were all separated into different camps so I didn't know where he was. The next day I saw him in the breakfast line. I ran up to him and hugged him and told him we have to get out of this place or we're going to get killed. I looked outside and there were hedges and bushes everywhere. It seemed like we could do it. I told Matiah to meet me out there after breakfast and we'd make a run for it. Miraculously, it worked. We walked right outside and hid under some bushes. None of the guards saw us. We ran along some suburban streets and winding dirt trails and it felt like we were flying--we were moving so quickly. We wound up in a huge complex that we discovered was a Mexican neighborhood. It looked like we were actually in Mexico. The Mexican Spanish everywhere, the smells, the people. It smelled just like it smelled when I lived there a long time ago--pork and spices cooking, laundry soap, trash, industrial smells, something burning. The apartments were really shitty and gross and there was crap everywhere, but the people looked happy. They were just carrying on their every day lives and didn't have to fear the police capturing them. We walked right into someone's apartment--the door was filled with holes and half falling off the hinges. There was a woman, a teenage boy, and three children in the tiny apartment. I begged the woman in Spanish if she could hide us, that we were trying to escape the death camp. She nodded and pointed to a room with another busted up door. We went in and got onto a bunk bed and slept. The next day, we kept running, and found a different compound. We ran through peoples' apartments, looking for places to hide--under beds, inside cabinets, anywhere we could find. All the while I shouted in Spanish at the people whose homes we were invading and they all understood and tried to help us hide as best they could. At one of the apartments we were hiding in, there was a party going. The people there looked like they were in college. I told them our story and they nodded sympathetically. All of a sudden we saw lights and heard walkie talkies outside. The police were here. We ran into a bedroom and laid on the top bunk, but they crashed in and handcuffed us and took us to another compound. The next day, in a white room, we were seated side by side in chairs under a blinding florescent light. Matiah turned to me and said, "They're going to amputate our feet, Lissa." I screamed as a man walked up to us with a tool. "How can you do this?!" I shouted at him, "Monster!" Then I realized we weren't tied up and could easily get out of the chairs, so I hopped up and said to Matiah "Let's go! Come on!" Matiah wouldn't move. He looked sober and stone-faced, stared forward and said, "It's no use. They'll always find us. Let's just give up." I grabbed his shoulders and screamed at him, "Noooo!! We have to go!" I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the chair. Again we ran, with the police chasing us. We miraculously got away and we were running like before, easily and effortlessly, almost flying every time we jumped. We ran down more nicely hedged and boring suburban streets and into another Mexican apartment complex. Matiah sat down and said he couldn't run any more. He said they'd get us and it was all useless. I cried and hugged him and told him not to give up, that we'd make it to Canada even though we were in the deep south--maybe Texas. I wasn't sure but I knew Canada was a long way away. Then out of nowhere one of the college students from the party the other day approached us and gave us two ID cards. One was hers and the other was her boyfriend's. She was white and blonde and I didn't look like her, but she assured me it would work. Her brother gave us his car, which was totally decked out with tinted windows, shiny rims, and an obnoxious looking stereo. They told us to drive to Canada. I didn't know how to thank them and I cried and hugged them. We started driving. In a day or two we saw the ocean. A few hours after that we heard police sirens behind us. This was it. I panicked, but Matiah of course showed no emotion or sign of surprise. I cried and drove as fast as I could. That's all I remember of that dream. I hope we made it to Canada.

(I've probably been watching the Handmaid's Tale too much).

In the most recent venture into my subconscious last night, I was in a post-revolutionary period where communist fascists were in charge and there was a protocol for doing everything. Since I was in a certain age bracket, I had to live and work with people in my age group and everything we did was watched over, controlled, and corrected, however I learned the people in charge weren't really paying close enough attention and I could get away with little things. I eventually built up the courage to just drive away.

The room was sort of a blocky cement deal but there were homey aspects like pillows and books in one of the rooms. At the beginning of the day we were supposed to clock in and get our chore list for the day. After that was breakfast and if you didn't finish it in a specific time period you got a mark on your record. Also, if you had food out on the tables or the chore list, a man would come around and scold you, write your name down, and tell you to put the food away. I learned to just throw the food on the floor or put it in my lap when he was coming, and I started shredding the little chore lists before he could see I still had them. I guess you were supposed to eventually memorize the chores (they were the same everyday for people in this group). At one part of the day, we were expected to hang out with members of the opposite sex and get to know them in the cozy room with pillows and books. It was creepy and annoying and I didn't like anyone there. I knew they were just trying to get us to have sex and make babies and it was repugnant. I actually liked a few people in my age crew as friends and identified with them in ways I couldn't identify with the others. I often worked with a short Puerto Rican guy named Diego, we would cry and talk about how much we missed our old lives and not being so structured and told what to do. We missed our freedom so much more accurately because we'd just recently possessed it. We also bonded over music, specifically all the punk, rock, garage, psych, and random old records we were devastated we'd never listen to again. Russian lessons were towards the end of the day and were mind-numbingly difficult. The teacher did not teach, just gave books, told us to study, and yelled out Russian words she'd written on the board. At dinner there were bottles of different drinks available and they'd always glare at you if you poured yourself wine, but you didn't get a mark on your record. I poured as much wine as I could when they weren't looking. I learned to be sneaky and surreptitious to get what I needed. The last thing I remember is Diego and I driving a utility van beyond the bounds of the facility and no one noticing.

Twisty turny old house

A house, that same house again--the gigantic old house with half a dozen staircases, twists and turns, secret doors, and a musty old smell. This is a house I dream about often. I often have dreams about exploring it's many different passageways and secrets. There are antiques everywhere and I sometimes feel like it's Wanda and Bob Holmes' house--my foster parents for a year in Roxana, Illinois. Other times I think it's the Brodsky's house, another house they own but don't live in. There's always this awareness that I'm not supposed to be there, that the owners are gone, but I'm so drawn to explore it that nothing can tear me away.

This time I climbed so many stairs it felt like 7 stories. I found myself on a small landing with three doors. I opened the one straight in front of me and found a tiny room with a round window. I looked outside and the people looked incredibly small. I went back out onto the landing and opened another door. A broom closet with old oak flooring. Smelled musty. Nothing to see here. I opened the third door and found a nest of birds squawking loudly. Baby birds were chirping and crying and the mother bird was screaming loudly at me. "Not going to hurt you, chill!" I whispered to the bird. The screaming got louder. I shut the door and left them alone.

This must be the very top of the house. I hear a door closing downstairs and muffled voices. Someone's here. I have to get out. I creep as quietly as I can back down the stairs and search frantically for a door.

Oh my goodness, dream blog, it's been so long. I almost forgot about you.

I'm happy I've kept all these snippets..premises I guess, because my dreams often don't have an actual plot. It's good to get it out. It's more of a morning exercise than a writing project.

So last night it was this: total war had broken out, and I was living in some European country...I think I was in the Netherlands but everyone was speaking English. For some reason, all the girls and women were rounded up and told to stay in these dwellings--they were actually quite cozy, but everyone was really distressed. Every day I came back to my little urban cottage, there was a group of women of all ages gathered around a dimly lit table, drinking tea and speaking in severe tones about escape and revolution. There was a cottage across the street where we were supposed to get our mail. I walked over there and couldn't find my mailbox. Every drawer I pulled out was full of a different type of candy--licorice, taffy, starburst, skittles, tiny wrapped tolberone, whatever. I squatted down and acted like I was looking for mail and sample something from every drawer. The old woman behind the counter knew what I was up to and chuckled.

When I got back to my cottage, there were a bunch of uniformed men--but hard shell astronaut looking uniforms. They were talking to the girls in my house and the girls were upset and yelling back at them. One or two of the girls took off running--the uniformed men didn't seem to care. I looked out the window and they were moving so fast they were already at the end of a very long street. Later, I found out that running was a very sacred thing to these women--most of them would train to be able to run for days, and that's how they would eventually escape this town.

I don't remember anything else from that part of the dream. All I remember is my mother smoking and trying to dance in front of me and make me dance with her and I got extremely annoyed and grabbed her cigarette and threw it on the floor and walked away. After that I felt really bad and called her to apologize but she was screaming at me about being cold and judgmental.

I've never been on a moped and this is clearly not how they work

I lived in a strange and wonderful wooden house with my dad and my little brother. I woke up at 8:00 one morning and realized with horror that I was late for work--well, not work, but my student teaching position (which is actually more important than work right now because it's so elemental). But for some reason I couldn't move quickly enough and stopped panicking about being late. I dallied in the kitchen and made coffee and toast. A door opened--it was the door to the basement--and suddenly I realized I was at my old house in Columbia, the one I shared with Brice on 8th Street, in that huge, crooked kitchen. And who else but Brice and Carey Page strolled through the door! I realized they lived on the other side of the house, where Gunnar used to live. Groggily pouring themselves coffee, they asked me questions about student teaching. They were friendly enough. I couldn't shake the feeling that I wanted a cigarette REALLY badly. I searched the house and found my dad's pack. "Thank god," I thought, "he doesn't smoke those terrible menthols anymore." And I took one. As I started my search for a lighter, I started to wonder how I was going to get to my placement school. The school in Lacey. How the hell was I in a house in Missouri? Lol, dreams are so irrational. I took a staircase and found myself in a garage where my dad was sitting on a camping chair fiddling with a knife and a block of wood. I asked him for a light. He lit my cigarette. I inhaled deeply and was so relieved. Just then, my little brother walked into the garage, greeted me, and walked into the house. I spotted a tiny grayish-blue moped in the corner of the garage. "Hey dad, isn't that your bike?" I asked. "Yep." "Does it work?" "Yeah." "Can I borrow it for the day?" "Sure. Do you remember how it works?" I sat on the bike. "I think so." I grabbed the right handlebar and said, "Accelerate." I grabbed the left handlebar and said, "Decelerate." I motioned to the pedal on the right and said, "Brake." "Yep." My dad smiled and told me to have a good day. I started the engine and flew out of the garage. It felt so nice to have the wind whipping through my hair.

a trip to wonderland as human trafficking

My dream began in Amsterdam. I was walking around with an unknown friend, taking in the city, seeing all the trinkets and sculptures and strangely dressed people. We walked into an antique shop and it was mostly empty and resembled an art gallery. I started noticing strange things happening, like people playing instruments in corners then looking seconds later to see that they weren't playing any longer. A painting I was looking at started to swirl. I started to feel very funny. My friend was suddenly very heavily made up, dressed in black clothes, and laughing. Things started to feel sinister as I walked through the old house and explored the rooms. My friend and an unknown person came up behind me and told me to walk down the stairs. I walked down a set of stairs into what appeared to be a dollar store run by Chinese people. The men behind the counter were tinkering with small objects or fixing them. I walked around and looked at the cheap plastic wares. I didn't feel unsafe, but was starting to wonder why my friend had wanted to come down here. She came up beside me and said, "Do you know where we are?" I started to feel light-headed, as if I'd just taken a puff from an asthma inhaler. I noticed more strange things happening. "Are we in...wonderland?" I asked her. She laughed softly and said, "Yes, we are in wonderland. Let's go down here." She led me to another short set of stairs and we walked down them. We entered a room that was smaller than the previous and sparsely furnished with wooden crates. There were two men sitting on some of the crates. One of them was smoking and wearing a leather jacket. "Okay," he told some unseen person behind him, and the room began to move. I realized we were in a van. I felt even more light-headed. I didn't see my friend anywhere. The men were laughing. I began to feel fear. I screamed. I realized I had been kidnapped. "No, let me out!" I shouted at the men. They laughed. It reeked of weed in the cavernous van. I opened the door and there was shouting: "Speed up, speed up!" I jumped out and landed on my feet. The last thing I heard was laughter and "Aww, come back!" The van didn't stop, I didn't run but walked quickly away, and there was no struggle to recapture me.

I walked around a block and panicked, realizing I had no idea where I was. I was also half relaxed because I was in a nice city in Europe and not in school. Dutch was heard all around, the air was balmy, there was quirky art everywhere, and plentiful coniferous trees in the distance. I decided to call Ali to see if she could advise me, although she was in Indonesia. I couldn't get a hold of her. I walked for a while and asked the next random person I saw if they could tell me what town I was in. That person was a black man who smiled a huge toothy smile and said, "Mendelhoordt" or something to that effect. He pointed to a sign above us that spelled out the name he had just said. When I turned back to him, he was gone. I went into a café and asked a woman where the bus station was. She pointed out the window and down the road. I walked around outside and came to a paved lot on a block corner. Two men were standing and chatting. I approached and said hello. I asked where the bus station was. They talked in Dutch for a minute and then asked where I was going. I told them home, back to Spain. One of them took out a phone. Moments later a van pulled up. "This van goes to the bus station," he said. "Ohhh no," I said, "Not a van! With crates in it!" I ran away and heard similar laughs and bellows of "Aww, come on!"