a repository for dreams
I dreamt that I woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to
the bathroom.
Looking in the mirror, I started to brush my hair with this crummy
plastic comb but all my fingers began melting together. Soon I only
had these squirming, claw-like pinchers gripping the comb, and then
all my teeth fell out. I knew I was going to die.
I had this dream a very long time ago.
[submitted by Anonymous]
I have teeth dreams quite often. Sometimes I’m spitting them into my hand one tooth at a time and there’s lots of blood. Other times I dream my teeth have gone back to the way they looked before I had braces, and I wake up really believing that’s true – I have to check in the mirror and I always feel a massive sense of relief when I see they’re ok. Lately I’ve been dreaming that my retainer, which I wear one night a week, has somehow damaged the root of one of my front teeth and caused it to fall out – that one always gets me waking up in a panic too.
[submitted by norelle]
I don’t exactly remember how the dream started, but I know we were in a military unit, which was stationed near a canal. There were at least two guys besides myself and we were engaged in doing a demonstration, which was supposedly staged, about wrestling crocodiles. It was a very colorful, even technicolor, setting, which was very muddy.
The demonstration was going well but it was very difficult physically to restrain the crocodile, and he got loose. The crocodile was dragging one of the men, who turned out to be my friend Dustin from college, down the muddy canal bed by his arms. I chased after him down the side of the canal and I could see him getting tossed about. I wanted to rescue him, but the guy who was in charge of the action wanted to let him get dragged for a while, “in order to show everyone what that would look like”. But watching him I could see that he was getting really badly injured so I decided to help him anyway.
I went in to get him away from the crocodile and so did another guy, who turned out to be Jake D. [another friend from college]. In the process of wrestling him away from the crocodile, the tail hit my face, deforming all my teeth on the right hand side. At that time, I had a visual of the inside of my mouth and all the teeth sticking out far into my cheek, and the front teeth being cracked and broken. This did not cause me any physical pain but made me very ‘creeped out’ in that way you feel when you hear nails on a chalkboard. However, we were able to rescue Dustin and drag him up on to the shore.
Once we were on the shore it appeared we were in a jungle/forest-like area. A lot of people we lived with in college were hanging out on the shore, and they were getting ready to go out somewhere.
They asked me if I was ready to go and I said that I was. But then I saw Dustin, who was sitting on the shore very calmly, and I realized that his hands and most of one of him arms had been eaten off. He said in a mildly perturbed voice that he wanted to go to the hospital first before it closed, as if he had said this fifty times already that day, and had kept being ignored. He then pointed out that he was missing both of his hands.
I volunteered to take him. Jake asked if he could go too, because two of his fingers had gotten eaten off during the struggle. For some reason after he told us that, everyone laughed, including him. The other people we were with told us to catch up with them later and went to wherever they had originally been going. We walked the opposite direction very casually and I looked at Dustin’s arms and thought to myself how put together he was for someone who had such a bad injury.
We went to the hospital, and Jake and I were in the waiting room, which was my grandmother’s kitchen. There were some other people at the table and one of them was asking us about what had happened. They asked if it had been very bloody or something and I thought to myself that surely, it must have been bloody, but I couldn’t remember it being that way. So I went into the bathroom, which was her downstairs bathroom, to get a look at the condition of my teeth to make sure they were like I had thought. Again I saw they were really bad, but again, not physically painful.
So I sat down at the table and began to pluck my teeth from my mouth and throw them on the floor under the table. I pulled all of the teeth out on the right side, visualizing the entire time what it looked like from within my mouth. Afterwards I felt much more comfortable, as if I had removed a huge wad of gum or guaze, but I was upset because I was going to look as if I had been in a fight or that I was trashy in some way.
Then I was at work the next day. I currently work in a school with autisic children, and I was in the classroom. All of the people I work with were talking and complaining about their various ailments or problems from the night before, a relatively common thing in reality. I thought I would tell them all the story of my teeth and how I lost them and even began to say something about how the night before I had lost all my teeth, but then I thought better of it, thinking that if I told them, it would be too disturbing for them, and also that they might not believe me, or that I might be appearing to try and show up their own stories.
I felt my tongue around in my mouth and sure enough, all the teeth were still missing. I felt very disappointed. I went then to send a text message to someone who had “been there”. Walking to the table to get my cell phone, the dream ended.
I’ve had lots of teeth/choking related dreams but this one was definitely different.
[submitted by Leah Love-Stout]
I have had a recurring teeth-crumbling/falling out dream since for approximately the last 10 years. The context is always very vague – I’m talking to people (could be friends, could be family, could be random strangers – there are no scary/theatening feelings associated with these dream people), when suddenly, my mouth is full of my own freshly-fallen out teeth. I put my hands over my mouth as I talk to these people, trying to conceal the fact that I’m losing my teeth in mid-sentence. Some of the teeth are fragmenting or crumbling upon falling out, and I can feel the grittiness of the tooth crumbles mixed with the smooth hardness of whole teeth. Sometimes there is a slight variation whereby I spit part of this freaky payload into my hand and look at it in a vaguely horrified (but certainly not quite as horrified as I think I should feel) way, remarking to myself that the mixture resembles nothing more than a collection of small pebbles or pearls in a handful of coarse sand. It should be noted that there is never any pain or blood associated with this dream – the actual falling out/crumbling of my teeth is not painful in the least. The worst part of the dream – what makes it so consistently unsettling – is the vague, ambiguous nature of the dread/embarrassment I feel, standing there in front of random people, hand clapped to my face to try to hold in what feels like a mouthful of small, smooth rocks.
[submitted by Jillian]
This week we’ll be focusing on teeth- dreams about teeth falling out, teeth crumbing, and other dental problems. Each day we’ll post another dream about teeth. If you have had a funny, disturbing, bizarre or otherwise interesting dream about your teeth, it’s not too late to submit it for inclusion in our week of dental-themed dreams. Just email it to us ASAP.
I dreamed that I was watching low-resolution clips of people singing happily with no sound. There were several different groups of people in different clips. Low resolution aside, the videos looked like they had been professionally made, but the people in them looked really cheesy and amateurish. A lot of the groups were wearing matching red sweaters: they reminded me of a Saturday night live sketch from maybe 15 or 20 years ago about a choir that sang Beatles songs but couldn’t remember all the words. I was outside on a lawn with my best friend S and his father, and it turned out these clips were from a book (?) of songs about the joys of baseball that S’s father had just either given or received as a gift. It recalled simpler, more innocent times. I am indifferent to baseball, but the enthusiasm of the people in the videos seized S and I, and we started running around this large grassy area and wrestling like little kids.
Someone shouted to get out of the way because a meteor was falling. S ran off a few paces, but I didn’t know which way to go, because I didn’t know where the meteor was going to fall. People kept shouting at me to get out of the way, but I just curled up in a fetal position on the ground, hoping that would protect me. The meteor landed right on top of me, but somehow I was able to get up and walk around afterwards without any injuries. I quickly realized that no one could see me: I had been killed and was now a ghost.
I was a little sad about this, but tried to make the most of it, walking through walls and playing pranks on people. Sometimes I could make people see me. I flew into a large office tower, pulled an executive out of his meeting, and carried him through the wall to the outside. Floating in the air, many stories above the ground, in inclement weather, I realized I wasn’t sure if I could hold this man up, and felt a small twinge of guilt that I might be endangering his life. I was able to carry him into another company’s board meeting. The man berated me for irreparably damaging his career though my pranks, and feeling only slightly bad about the whole thing, I left.
There was a young woman in the lobby of this building by the elevator bank, talking on a large beige plastic phone. She was alternately having phone sex and working as a telephone psychic. She was also involved in LARPing over the phone. I disliked her, and, as a spirit, I took it personally that she posed as a medium.
I decided to show her what a real ghost was like, and tried to scare her by whispering in her ear, but she assumed the voice was one of her LARPer friends playing a trick on her. Eventually I got her to see me and realize that I was a ghost, which did sort of surprise her, but didn’t cause her the devastating scare that I’d hoped it would.
Then we saw two black women coming out of an elevator. One was short and in her late twenties or perhaps early thirties. The other was taller and older. The psychic LARPer phone sex operator explained that the shorter woman was God.
God was having a discussion with the taller woman, who was an angel and sort of God’s chief of staff. The chief of staff was arguing that they should have chosen human forms more in line with conventional representations of God: middle-aged white males. God did not agree, and seemed to find the suggestion distasteful. As they passed us, the LARPer phone sex operator suggested that I go introduce myself to God, as it looked like she might be looking for a new chief of staff, which would be a great career opportunity for me. I was too shy to introduce myself, though.
[submitted by Anonymous]
I am in a canoe, in the ocean, at Big River Beach. It is nighttime and the sky is crowded with stars. There is some girl in the canoe with me. For some reason I decide to jump into the water. As soon as I go under, the water starts pulling me down, down, to the bottom of the ocean. I am fiercely struggling to resist the pull. I am very aware that, if I go too far under, I will not have time to get back to the surface, when and if I break free – simply because I am being pulled down really fast by an unknown force, but I will have to make it back up on my own power.
Luckily, I break free, but I am really deep. I start swimming to the surface, but I am clearly drowning. When I finally get there, I triple. That is, I turn into three versions of myself. They are identical except one is dead, one is dying, and one is still well. The me that is still well – the conscious me – has to drag the other two mes to the beach, which I do with some difficulty.
When I get there, there is a bonfire party going on, with a lot of local kids whooping it up and beating on drums. I call for help and a pretty girl approaches me (not the girl I left in the canoe – she is out of the picture). I show her what happened and she is rather dismissive. “That’s happened to all of us,” she says. “Come join the party.” “But I can’t just leave them here!” I say, motioning helplessly to the dead and dying me on the wet sand. The girl looks me in the eyes. “We ALL leave them there,” she says.
[submitted by Willis]
This dream was about a person I felt instantly connected to the second I saw him. His name was Alex. I dreamt we were at a big party at a hotel, but the party was for monsters. In order to not be captured we had to pretend we were vampires, but our disguises were wearing thin and we had to make a run for it. When we got out of the hotel, there was the ocean and it was nighttime. We swam out into the middle of the ocean. Alex was floating there and he had three or four spirit horses attached to him, floating up like balloons attached to his back. Then Poseidon emerged from the water, and literally ripped my chest open so he could look down and see my heart beating. When that happened, about fifteen spirit horses came out and were tethered to me as I floated there.
Later on, we were back at the hotel, and we were dancing, kind of, moving from right to left, each time we moved to one side, we turned into a different set of god and goddess (Shakti and Shiva, and other gods and goddesses I did not recognize) and that was how the dream ended.
[submitted by mercurygirl]
[This is the second part of Sasha's bear dream. If you missed Part 1, we strongly recommend that you take a minute and peruse it. —ed.]
I am floating on the lake after escaping from the bear. This time I am alone, my mother is not here. I am not worried or anything so I don’t think she has been harmed, she’s just been omitted from this section of the dream.
So, I am in the middle of this vast huge black lake. The sun is rising over the horizon. I realize that I am sitting on some sort of tube and I start moving slowly. I see some land on the sides of me but it is far away and I cannot make out where I am going. After a little while of this slow floating I realize I am being carried to the river the lake feeds into. The sun is up at this point—early morning.
I am gracefully deposited into the river from the lake. But after a few minutes of being on the river I start experiencing a bumpy ride. Rapids, rocks—the river is rushing quite quickly. I’m trying to keep my ass in the middle of this flimsy tube without breaking my back, flipping or getting it popped on rocks.
As I am doing this I spot the bear (from the campground). He’s following close by on the banks of the river. How the hell did he find me?
The big bear is licking his chops mockingly at me as he strolls effortlessly on the banks. Waiting for me to topple over so he can eat me. He doesn’t just jump in and ravage me . . .he likes the game. I float clumsily and he strolls eyes piercing me on the banks.
Finally, I make it to a calmer area and float, making sure I keep myself in the deepest most middle part of the river. The bear is there . . . but he seems to not want to go any further . . . he is struggling to make a decision about going on . . . what’s ahead?
Then I see it. A town. A town that is built OVER the river. There are bridges but also whole buildings and houses that use the river in their architecture. Ecstatically I try to row myself, push myself, WILL myself closer to this town . . . safety.
As I get closer I see that the whole town is these beautiful brown wooden buildings. They all have glowing lights coming from them and are built in odd shapes with circular staircases and wrought iron decks jutting out. It smells wonderful and it feels like a magical place. Trees, flowers, and moss everywhere, and these weird wood buildings.
When I enter the town by way of the river I realize that there is NO ONE there. NO ONE in sight. I am floating REALLY slow at this point—molasses slow. I turn every which way to try and see some form of life, but all I see . . . is the bear.
He’s waiting on the middle of a bridge I am about to pass under. There is nothing I can do, I have to go close to him under the bridge. Sssslllloooowww motion. Floating, bear above, floating, bear looks at me, floating, bear winks at me, floating, bear shakes his fist at me (giving me the “I’m gonna get you sucka” look).
As soon as I pass under the bridge he runs off and comes to the bank to taunt me some more while he finds his way to the next bridge . . . where we go through the same slow motion dance except at the end he makes a swipe at me with his paw. Then goes to the next one . . . and the next one . . . he gets a little more aggressive at each bridge. He is done with his game and wants food.
Desperately I look down the river for something, someone to help me. I see a few more bridges, and then . . . the river starts to flow right in the middle of houses and buildings. I am going to float right into shelter.
I dodge the bear a few more bridges . . . floating into the first house . . . the bear is right at me . . .
END PART 2: TO BE CONTINUED
[Submitted by Sasha]
Dear Readers,
We’re on vacation! Idle Brains will resume publication on May 16.
In the meantime, please continue to send your dreams to us, particularly dreams about teeth.
In the meantime, listen to Jung chat about death.
Please send us your dreams, all right?
