a repository for dreams
This is not a dream, but a story about a dream… or not.
One night shortly after Eleanor turned 3, I woke up when I heard her cry out in the middle of the night. I stumbled half-asleep into her room, picked her up and held her in my arms. Then, suddenly, she laughed. Her eyes were still closed and she seemed to be asleep.
“What’s so funny?” I whispered. “Are you laughing at something in your dream?”
She opened her eyes and looked up at me.
“It was YOUR dream,” she said.
[submitted by Laura]
We have a great week of flying dreams planned for you, but we need a another good dream or two to complete the line-up. If you have ever had dreams about flying, email us and tell us about them.
Of course, as always, we are still interested in other sorts of dreams, too. So please keep sending in all your interesting dreams, whether they’re about flying or not.
See our submission guidelines for more information.
We were about to go on a plane to somewhere. NW* was there and PA and maybe some GSAPP kids. PA kept using some totally cool lingo. Using words as verbs that I didn’t know could be used as verbs. NW seemed very excited about learning these words, being down with the kids.
So we’re in the car to the airport and somehow there’s a problem with ID’s – and I forget what, but then there’s this interlude where someone we meet is talking about how she’s more mature then I/us because she doesn’t care what her ID picture looks like. In fact,
isn’t she silly? She took hers outside of the ID office, holding a tiny American flag. OK.
So then maybe we can’t get on the plane because someone’s missing an ID. So we’re driving back somewhere and NW’s asking PA about her Yale profs. And then we somehow start to think that people are out to kill us. We end up back and some college/high school hybrid and we’re crouched down and some security guy is shooting big things at us with
some sort of gun. And I’m a little farther back, but one of these big things grazes my neck, so that freaks me out.
We move to the gym. NW’s left at some point and AM has joined us. It’s dark and weird – I start to see people get boils all over their faces. I ask AM if he sees this – he either doesn’t, or doesn’t care. So we’re crouched down in a crowd and maybe some of us start making out a little and then the guy I’m facing realizes he’s back-to-back with GS and he’s like, “Didn’t you used to make out with GS?” And I’m like, “Shut up!”
We decide that to avoid getting killed by the security guys, none of us should go to our respective homes. I leave and start walking to W4th station with the intention of calling KD and taking the F train to her place in Brooklyn for the night. On my way, I run into some
creepy guys who look like versions of Albert Einstein. It’s unclear whether they’re wearing wigs, but it’s clear they’re not actually Einstein. I pass another guy with semi-similar Einsteiny hair, but obviously not Einstein, and he smiles at me and freaks me out. Next I
see AM walking toward me and I grab him and take him down some side street to the left and I’m like, “Holy shit – did you see that guy? He totally freaked me out!’ I almost told AM, “I think he’s trying to kill me,” but then realized that he, not being part of the original
would-be-plane-passenger group, might not know what’s going on – that we all fear for our lives. So I ask him, “Do you know what’s going on?!” And he’s like, “No. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I tell him maybe some vague stuff, but nothing really, as he obviously
can’t be trusted, and head to the F train.
It’s quite late at night at this point and the internal pedestrian corridors at the W4th station are under construction. More than corridors, they’re rooms with tons of junk in them. The first room has all sorts of people in it, working on stuff, like an overcrowded woodshop. There appear to be many doors – each a potential route to the subway. I don’t want to ask directions from any of these people, so I just tromp over a lot of their shit (I have to be relatively gymnastic, at times jumping down like five feet to get thru the obstacle course). I push open the door I think correct and find myself in some old crappy theatre – more like a 1950’s high school auditorium, and rather dusty. There are a few guys working in here
too. I climb over some of the wooden seats to the next door – it still seems this might be the right way. But when I get thru the next door, somehow, maybe I see some people who are obviously getting to the subway and realize that, in my current route, I’m clearly not.
So I go back to the first room – climb over all sorts of shit there. And I see this good-looking boy working, so I start flirting with him so that he’ll give me directions to the tracks. He’s cute and flirts back. I realize he’s really tall – “Man, you’re *really* tall, like a
giant!” He acknowledges his height – estimates that he’s about three meters taller than I am, which is weird because when I’m looking at him, I feel like he’s only about one foot taller. Anyway, he takes me thru the right door and leads me far enough that I can easily get to the tracks. I keep walking without him, but realize I’ve left my purse in the first room. I turn around to retrieve it, in time to see him, head down, complaining to a friend that I’d left before he could get my number.
It’s a joyous reunion back in the workshop. We decide to go out the next day – probably somewhere on 8th or 9th Avenue. We toss out all sorts of ideas, high and low – whatever, we’ll figure it out. I think about inviting him to the BBQ at CB1’s, but no – it’s too soon to
introduce him to my friends.
It’s the next day and we – he and I am some guy and CB2 – enter the restaurant (Italian maybe) and sit down to order. And maybe CB2 is stepping outside – to go to the ATM or something – and unknown dude is like, “Hey CB2, could you do me a favor while you’re out – could you go next door and buy me some groceries?” And CB2 is like, “Sure!”
*Please see initials decoding, below:
NW=Columbia architecture school (GSAPP) professor
PA=Friend from college, now in a econ PhD program at Yale
AM= Columbia architecture school (GSAPP) student
GS=Guy living in LA whom, yes, I made out with in college
KD=Friend from college, now living in Fort Greene
CB1=Friend and architect who often hosts BBQs on her Williamsburg patio
CB2= Columbia architecture school (GSAPP) student
[submitted by Karen]
After September 11, I dreamt I was a mother running in a crowd looking for her son. The body I was in looked nothing like me, and as we all were running and running, suddenly everyone around me turned into black paper airplanes and fluttered to the ground.
[submitted by mercurygirl]
I am walking around and around a large city block in some city that I am excited to be visiting, where I have been before but have not been in a long time (London, San Francisco? Who knows). I remember thinking, it’s such a shame that I even have to sleep tonight because there’s so much I want to do that I wish I could just spend every minute awake and doing stuff.
I am trying to decide if I should go back to this coffee shop that my cousin had told me about where they sell real Turkish coffee. It has a large white sign with distinctive red lettering. I can almost remember the name. I am trying to figure out if it will keep me up all night if I have coffee or not. I realize it’s only 6 p.m. so I am good to go.
I go into the coffee shop that, despite looking kind of gray-and-glass-like from the outside, is all warm lighting and wood and brass inside. Two ladies and an older dude (who look remotely like they might be Turkish) are inside. I order two Turkish coffees and something else—maybe a pastry. I pay and am then confused because the guy doesn’t give me any coffee. He gestures to a table behind me where I realize it is serve-yourself Turkish coffee. I pour out the coffee into two small clear plastic cups, like the kind they might serve wine in at some budget art reception. I fit the lids on (like soda cup lids from McDonald’s) and realize the cups are going to be really hot. I somehow magically stack them up and carry them with my fingertips so I don’t burn myself. The Turkish folk are impressed by this.
I leave the coffee shop and am briefly interrogated by some shady looking dudes who I realize are involved with organized crime, and are out to get my boyfriend/husband (note: this is some dude who is not a real person in real life, but in the dream I knew he was my boyfriend or husband or something of that nature). They are disappointed to see I am alone, but I am pretty sure they will covertly follow me so they can catch up with my man later on and probably kill him.
Warning: mildly graphic sexual content after the jump
And the difficulties thereof.
When I was a kid, I had this dream over and over again. It was always exactly the same, until finally, it had a different ending. After that, I never had the dream again:
I am in a tiny, open boat floating with no oars through a dark, underground canal system. The water is narrow in most places surrounded by brick walls that disappear into the darkness above. Torches on the walls cast eerie shadows, their flames smearing the bricks with black soot. The water moves slowly, but inevitably towards an archway in the brick. I do not want to go through that archway, but the water takes me there. I do not get out of the boat; there is nowhere to go. I don’t even try to paddle away; it won’t do any good.
The boat slides through the archway into a room. On a ledge coming out from the wall, just above the water level there is a bed with a bright white bedspread. The bed is perfectly made. Perfectly made, and covering a dead body under the bright, white blanket. The dead person is surrounded by candles and her personal things, arranged altar-like. I do not recognize any of these things, but I know they belonged to her. I want to hide my face in the boat, but I am too afraid to close my eyes. I need to stay alert.
I slide past the bed and through another archway, leading into the next room in which there is a similar bed made up over another dead body. This one is a man, and he is also surrounded by candles and his personal things, which I do not recognize. The boat slides on, carried by the water into room after room, each with a body tucked under a blanket surrounded by candles and an altar.
Finally, as I knew would happen, I float into a room where I recognize the bed. It is covered with a pink blanket—my pink blanket. A doll that my mom made for me is tucked under the covers. My mom named her Sarah-doll, and made her to look just like me. When I was very little, we even had matching dresses. I outgrew the dress; Sarah-doll didn’t. She is holding my place in the bed. I know that I have to pull back those covers, take her out, and tuck myself in, but I don’t. I sit in the boat and look at the bed. I want to cry, but I don’t. I want to scream, but I don’t. I breathe very quickly. Faster, faster, panic. No sound.
I wake up.
This repeated night after night. Sometimes I wouldn’t have it for weeks, then it would return. It was always the same, until finally, during my freshman year of high school, it was different:
Instead of being alone in the boat, I was with my cousin Anna, who was my age and living with my family at the time. Together, we travelled the same series of rooms that I had travelled alone so many times before. I felt safer with her, not because I thought she would protect me, but because there was someone else to share the burden of fear. Yet, as the boat went through the archway to the last room, the one with my bed, Anna disappeared from the boat. There was no POOF! or anything, she just wasn’t there anymore. I went into my room alone, but instead of feeling panic, I felt calm. I saw the bed, but my doll was not in it. The bed was made, but empty.
Then, for the first time, I floated out of the room and into a new space where there was a large statue of the Virgin Mary wearing blue, and surrounded by candles and brightly-colored flowers. She was smiling at me. For the first time, I felt truly safe. I knew I would never have to come back to this place again.
This final ending was surprising to me. Though I was raised Catholic, I was not practicing by the time I had that dream. My cousin Anna, however, is still a practicing Catholic, and was strongly religious even in high school, when she was living with my family and my companion in the boat.
[submitted by Smax]
My armpits were smelly or itchy or something. So I took a razor and cut them out, down past the dermis. I put them in the sink and scrubbed them clean with soapy water, but when I tried to replace them under my arms I realized they would need weeks to heal, which had me worrying about doing all the things that needed to get done.
Then all of a sudden it wasn’t me who had made such a stupid choice—it was George W. Bush. I read a headline in the paper about how he the President was expected to die. My parents came in and started crying. Stella, the dog, was really interested in those armpits, or George W. Bush, and kept trying to sniff and lick them.
[submitted by Seth]
This is a dream from Valentine’s Day 2005.
I was the mom in a family being held captive in our house. One or more murderers waited in the next room. Anytime you went too close to the door, a hand would reach out and grab you by the leg or arm and pull you in and kill you. They killed our dog and shoved him back through the door at us.
I went too close and they pulled me in and it was just one man. He chopped me in half with an axe, but I felt nothing and was instantly restored to the other room, whole. I tried to attack him several times, but even if I could get a swing at him with a knife, it made no difference. He just came together again, the way I had. I didn’t know what to do, and I was scared.
I learned that I had an option of becoming more powerful and that it could take the form of what was simply called “Truth” or “Magic.” I had to choose one or the other. I thought if I picked truth, which maybe had something to do with reason/knowledge/logic, I could figure out his weak spot. I also felt I did or should value truth more than magic. But magic seemed potentially exciting, fun, and powerful. I attacked him again before I decided. It was bloody and frustrating and scary and I woke up, without choosing.
[submitted by Hilary]
Do you know what’s going to be great? Idle Brains’ second theme week, when we post our readers’ dreams about flying, that’s what.
So email us and tell us about your dreams of flight. And of course, we’re not ONLY interested in dreams about flying. Please keep sending us dreams about other stuff as well. If you have any questions, check out our submission guidelines. And if you are having trouble remembering your dreams, check out our these useful tips.
