lucky

Lucky (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I almost got lucky
in a dream last night
but somehow things just
didn’t work out quite right

I guess I’m the same person
in the end, even in my dreams
as I am in reality
or so it seems

which strikes me as ironic
and brings a smile to my face
because wherever I go
I’m never really out of place

for wherever I go
that’s where I am
and even in my most private dreams
luckily, I’m the same silly old man

all night on the love boat

Cruise Ship – Celebrity Infinity (Photo credit: blmiers2)

Last night, I dreamed that my life was in danger and I was trying to hide from someone.  I slipped onto a cruise ship and attempted to blend in with all the passengers.  But, to my dismay I found myself in some kind of old Jack Lemmon comedy, because I was on a cruise ship full of naked swingers.  All I wanted to do was find a place to get some rest and sleep, which made me stand out.  Bizarre hilarity ensues as I go all over the ship, from the lounge chairs on the deck to the bowels of the engine room, trying to sleep, only to encounter swingers with other things in mind.  I go searching all over different deck levels, from the cafeteria to shower rooms, and I can’t find a place to be alone.

Finally, I wake up and I immediately think, “how do I get back on that ship?”  This gives “The Love Boat” a whole new meaning for me.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to real cruise ships, living or dead, is purely coincidental and only in my dreams.

the night of not wanting to be touched

English: Fungus, Huntly, Banbridge (2) Resembling something from a 50’s science-fiction film, this jelly-like fungus was growing on dead wood beside the old railway 921790. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I dreamed last night that I was meeting my old best friend from high school, David. We were going to an all night science fiction film festival. We hadn’t seen each other since high school and we had some catching up to do before the first movie started. So, we were sitting outside the theater on a bench talking when a person walked by that looked very strange. The person was covered with what looked like a dark green fungus and their eyes where blacked out so that it was obvious they couldn’t see. They were walking with their arms outstretched. At first we thought it was someone acting like a zombie for some horror movie festival or something. I don’t like horror movies. We continued talking and David told me that he had inherited a lot of money and was going to England to study. Then we noticed that when the strange walking person touched someone else the person they touched was rapidly covered with the same alien green fungus and also began walking around blindly. It happened so fast they barely had time to cry out.  We looked at each other and said let’s get out of here. I patted David on the shoulder and wished him luck as we separated to leave. On the way out the the theater I ran into another old friend, Gail. I ran up to her and gave her a hug and kiss. She was unaware of the situation, so I quickly told her what we had seen. Just then a large crowd came out of a theater yelling and screaming and we were swept along and separated. I never saw her again after that.

Outside the theater, I watched more and more people turned into these green fungus covered zombies walking blindly in the streets. I ran to the nearest police station and was trying to explain the situation but they thought I was crazy. Just then the first infected person was let in the front door and the infection quickly began to spread. I escaped and made my way to a cliff thinking that since they couldn’t see I would be safer there. Of course, blind people can’t see where they are going, so there were still people there. I was working my way over a ledge and trying to figure out how to climb down to below when I woke up.

the night of paranoid probabilities

Delphi, Greece (Photo credit: Mr G’s Travels)

Last night I dreamed that I had returned to Tennessee and was looking for a job, but wherever I went my efforts were being sabotaged by some unseen entity. I had spent the last ten years of my life working on a huge computer modeling system for the government. We called it Delphi, the Probability Machine. I was the creator and chief systems architect for the system. Originally, it was designed to model scenarios and probabilities for the Department of Defense. For example, what might happen if two nuclear tipped missiles were lost in the Mediterranean Sea from an aircraft carrier? Delphi would model and predict how fast our enemies, from terrorist groups to foreign countries, would find out about the incident and how they would respond to it. Over time, though, Delphi was tied directly into huge information gathering systems at the National Security Agency. It began modeling more and more activities and scenarios that were not specifically defense related. Recently, the administration began using it to predict how the population would respond to their actions and what they needed to do to get re-elected and stay in power. I realized that Delphi was being misused and was trying to think of what I should do about it, when Delphi predicted that I was a threat and would try to shut it down. So, I was fired from my job and lost my clearance, which was how I had found myself back in Tennessee with everyone seemingly against me. How could I compete against my own creation that could predict everything that I was likely do before I could even think to do it myself?

the night of the lessons of the spinning vortex of time

Time Selector (Photo credit: Telstar Logistics)

I had this dream last night that time was not linear but was like a spinning vortex that could be traversed given the correct entry point. I somehow found an point in time that was represented in an object that I could touch whereupon my awareness was propelled back into a point in my past. Each time that I touched the object, I seemed to be drawn to a nexus point in my past that represented something that I had done wrong or not done. So, with my new awareness, I tried to make things better, but things kept unfolding in new ways that were unanticipated and somehow just as wrong or worse. Then, I was returned to the present.  I went through this whole process, looping over and over again, until I finally returned one last time to the point where I discovered the object and I destroyed it in order to set things all back as they were. When my awareness returned to the present for the final time, I was in a room with all of my best friends from various points in my life, now all old like myself, including the one I loved most. I went to each of my friends and shook hands or hugged and then sat down next to my love and smiled before waking up.

one vampire is bad, many vampires really suck

English: A Vampire. Italiano: Un Vampiro. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last night, I dreamed about vampires. Not the new modern kind that glow and are all romantic. My vampires are the old blood thirsty type. I don’t know what blood type I have, but they would like it. I’m sure. I don’t remember much of the plot line of the dream, because when I woke up I didn’t want to think about it. I love science fiction, but I’ve never been a fan of horror. When I was young, I used to sleep with my blankets wrapped up around my neck so the vampires couldn’t bite me when I was sleeping. That was so silly. Like a soft cotton blanket is going to protect me from fangs. Of course, I still sleep with my blanket wrapped around my neck. Don’t tell anybody. It would be so embarrassing.

Anyway, I don’t remember much of the dream. But it seemed like everybody was a vampire. Everybody, except me and my girl. I wish I could remember what my girl was like in the dream. All I remember about her was that she was nice. Can’t even remember her hair color or eye color or if she was anybody I really know. Oh, and in the end, right before I woke up, she had fangs and was now a vampire too. I remember I turned to her as she was about to bite me and said “Et tu, Brute?“. Then, I thought to myself as I woke up that that was a stupid thing to say. Surely, I could think of something better to say before I had the life blood sucked out of me by my ex girl, now turned into a vamp.  My last thought was that it was like I was in the scene in the 1950′s film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers where the girl friend has gone to sleep and turned into a pod person.  And when that happened, the guy didn’t think of something really witty to say either. So, it was okay.

light at the end of the tunnel

English: Light at the end of the tunnel Eastern end of Newchurch No2 Tunnel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

my dad once died and came back
and he remembers looking down at his own body
and feeling peaceful and seeing bright white lights
and if that was all just a dream, it’s not too shoddy

I have dreams of being in a long dark tunnel
and I can see the light at the end
but the light is retreating and then goes out
and then with the darkness I am left to contend

there is only the silence of nothingness
where I am trapped with no possible escape
but, I think I prefer my father’s dream
and the end that leaves me in a much better shape

or so I thought

Succubus (Photo credit: aa7ae)

she came as if in a dream
and she seduced me
with words so witty and disarming

her fine face smiling
a facile fantasy
she encouraged

with her hourglass causing my hunger
and I passed through her
like sand

night after night
she gave herself to me
or so I thought

but she only thought to take
in increments
almost unnoticed and undetected

tonight
my shattered soul shivers
and eagerly fears for another near fatal encounter

and my darkly undeteriorated desire
awaits
for a final unforgettable fragrance

how charming
is the consummation of her curious charity
in my completion

swords and sorcery interrupted

Sword in Stone (Photo credit: Gruenemann)

just as I was about to pull the sword from the stone
I was awoken this morning by my ringing cell phone

it’s not that I want to be left all alone
it’s not that I hate being pulled back to my bed in my home

but how often in your life do you get the most magical opportunity
to pull the sword from the stone and spend time with Merlin from fantasy?

the lovely garden path dream

Garden path (Photo credit: slack12)

as I wander down a lovely garden path
and watch the days of our lives stroll by
I hear the musical refrain of life
whistling in the bright blue sky

with lazy eyes I slowly look around
and see our path outlined in green
the bright sun is hidden from my eyes
while sparkling on some distant silver stream

my eyes may focus on this gentle scene
but my heart is always focused on you
I may only love you within this lovely garden path dream
but to you I’ll always be true

in a WWI fighter with Zooey Deschanel

Vought VE-7 (Photo credit: San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives)

Last night. I dreamed I was a member of a group of fighter pilots that were graduating from a new flight school. We were the first to graduate and had to go to another, older school to pass our final flight tests or something. The final test was a multiple day series of various air combat scenarios. The other school treated us like outcasts and gave us the worst aircraft they had available. But we were determined to show them what we could do. At first they gave me an old beat up Vietnam era F4, but the engines wouldn’t light. So, then the lead officer of the operation laughed and said give him the old WWI Vought VE-7 Bluebird Fighter biplane. I was disappointed to lose the F4, but didn’t want to let them know that.

Zooey Deschanel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At the pre-flight briefing I was assigned to fly with a female pilot that looked just like Zooey Deschanel. She wasn’t from our group, so I was a little skeptical about her at first but she turned out to be a real pilot and a good friend. With daring teamwork, we somehow won our first day encounter fighting against an instructor who was pretending to be the Red Baron in a red Fokker triplane.  In fact,  all of my group won their encounters despite  having older aircraft and so we continued on to the second day of testing. The officers and students of the other school looked stunned and surprised about that, but my friends and I just smiled at each other. I was having great fun, and unfortunately woke up before I could complete the second day’s task. I hope I return to that dream someday. Zooey Deschanel was just so unbelievably spunky and great fun to be in the air with.  I suspect I’m the only one to fly with her in a WWI two seater fighter biplane. Only in my dreams, of course.

sinful slumbers

I miss you (Photo credit: Lilly Darma)

sinful slumber
and the hot potato pie
sexy siren
with baby blue eyes

foxy fantasy
making livid love
is it a naughty nightmare
or a delightful dream from above?

dark lightness
and darker laughter
only to wonder what the hell
is she after?

her curves move in curves
no straight lines or answers
nothing is left of what was
only rude romancers

frigid fighter, cold cat
sneaks after it is over
all things end
is it ever safe under the covers?

all night on the run

The long muzzle and neck of the polar bear help it to search in deep holes for seals, while powerful hindquarters enable it to drag massive prey. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last night I dreamed I was a member of a large family, with five brothers. The family was well off, perhaps making their fortune in dubious ways. I don’t remember exactly. One of my brothers was killed and I was framed for it. Almost no one believed me and I had to go on the run and try to figure out who had framed me. I convinced my girl friend that I was innocent and she was helping me. Otherwise, I was alone and pretty much everyone else was working against me. I remember lots of narrow escapes.

Then I was at a pharmacy that was close to our home when I was growing up in Anderson, Indiana. We were in a parking lot when someone dropped some food on the ground. This unfortunately attracted the attention of a hungry polar bear. We jumped into a stage coach and starting driving madly down tenth street being chased by the polar bear who had determined that we were going to be his next dinner. It never occurred to me to wonder why there was a polar bear running loose in Anderson.  Of course, I was totally focused on trying to get away from the creature. Also, it didn’t seem strange that we were traveling on a stage coach while others were driving around normally in cars.

The Collectors

Image via Wikipedia

I was floating in a shimmering blue energy field of some kind when I opened my eyes. Looking outside of the cylinder of light that held me, I could see a beautiful woman with long, wavy auburn hair. She was wearing a tight fitting yellow suit of some kind with strange attachments and connections around her waist and arms. She held up her finger to her mouth to instruct me to be silent. Somehow, I knew that was a good idea although I had no idea who she was or where I was. She was manipulating something outside of my vision that must have been some control panel. Shortly, the shimmering blue began to drop as if a curtain was falling to the floor and I fell to the floor with it. She motioned for me to follow her and I did.

We were in some long corridor and I could see a long line of blue shimmering columns. Many had dark unrecognizable shapes in them. On my right the whole wall of the corridor appeared to be made of glass and I could see through it down into a huge room, perhaps the size of several football stadiums. In the room I could see many large strange objects.  There was also a few familiar objects, like a Cessna airplane. She led me to a small circular door that opened with a strange fan-like motion. Inside was a small room shaped like a sphere that projected out into the larger room that I had seen along side of the corridor. She went into the room and I reluctantly followed her not knowing what else to do.

After the door closed again with a strange wooshing sound, she turned to me and said “you’ll be safe here for awhile”. Her hazel eyes looked at me intensely and expectantly and I felt like I should know her, but I didn’t. I thought about what she had said for a moment then asked, “where am I and exactly what am I safe from?”. “The others,” she said without elaboration, turning her head to look around as if someone else might be hiding in the room. However, there was nothing else in the room except for a couple of small round black objects, perhaps seats of some sort, and what appeared to be a glassy panel that circled the room. The wall of the room appeared to be spherical and made of the same glass-like material as the corridor wall allowing a wide view of the large room.

“I don’t understand”, I said. She stepped closer to me and looked into my eyes. “There is something about you. I don’t know what it is, but I had to release you.” I had no idea what that meant, so I shook my head yes and said, “uh huh”. I’m a smooth character like that, always ready with a witty response.  Okay, not really.  I was a little intimidated that she was standing so close to me. There was something strange about her. Yes, she was beautiful and yet she seemed to have a strange shifting glow about her. I felt that if I looked away from her she might fade from my view as if she was only a finely pixelated hologram or projection or something.  She didn’t seem quite real to me. I rubbed my eyes as her arms reached out and pulled me close. Okay, now she seemed real enough with her arms tightly around me.

“You may kiss me, if you like” she said. That was not what I was expecting and was certainly not something that had ever happened to me before. So, I was uncertain of how to respond. I thought of saying, “I don’t even know you” as her eyes peered up into mine, but that didn’t seem like an appropriate response. As I hesitated, she pulled me even closer. So, I leaned in and kissed her on her lips. It was a long kiss. It was a good, long kiss. I didn’t remember kissing anyone like that before and after we separated she briefly lay her head on my shoulder and sighed. I was just confused. Well, confused and elated. But, mostly confused.

“I have to go or I’ll be missed”, she said next, completely catching me off guard. She quickly stepped away through the strange door and turned back to look at me, “I’ll be back as soon as I can”. Then she turned and was gone. I stepped up to the door, but it didn’t open and I noticed for the first time that there was no obvious way to operate the door. “Okay, this is not good” I thought to myself. I shook my head, realizing that I didn’t even ask the woman what her name was. After a moment of self ridicule, I turned and surveyed the room I was trapped in.  I wondered what purpose it served. “Perhaps it served as an observation platform for the large room?” I surmised based on the location and view.

I went to the strange round chair-like object on the left. The shape was not quite right, like it was not really a chair. I tried to set down in it and it moved and squished around me in a very disquieting fashion. “How odd”, I said aloud. My voice seemed to cause a flash of light to form in the glassy panel in front of the chair. It swirled around and formed strange characters and shapes. Nothing that I could recognize. It didn’t even seem to be any language or symbols that I was familiar with on Earth. On impulse I reached out and touched the panel with my hand and the lights traced around my hand and suddenly the characters and shapes began to shift and change into English and into recognizable buttons. It appeared to be a control panel. I was in sub-control unit 42, whatever that meant. I tried touching one of the buttons and an overlay of four empty spaces appeared with the words “Panel locked. Enter access code”. “That’s interesting”, I said aloud again.

Inside the four empty spaces were four smaller squares, as if I needed to enter four sets of four digits or characters. It looks like a Visa card number, I chuckled to myself.  I was about to try some random pattern, knowing the odds against me correctly guessing would be astronomical at best, when I noticed a button in the corner that simply said “Help”. That looked encouraging to me, so I pressed it. Text began rolling past me on the panel at a dizzying rate. It was a useless blur.  I could only catch random words here or there. “I wish this could slow down” I said aloud to myself thinking that it was important for me to be able to read the text. A deep voice answered, “adjusting for average human perception rate”. “You understand my voice commands?” I asked the voice. “Obviously,” it answered. That was a stupid question, I admit.

Image via Wikipedia

Over the next few minutes I had a long conversation with the voice. The voice was some kind of computer, but more advanced than anything I could have ever dreamed of. It was able to carry on a conversation that was indistinguishable from talking to another human. I found out that I was on a space ship. The operators of the ship were known as “Collectors” and apparently I was part of their collection. It appeared that they traveled the galaxy collecting items of interest which they then sold after returning to their home world. I began to realize that I was in a really serious situation.  ”We ain’t in Kansas anymore, Toto” I said expecting to confuse the voice, but it surprised me by actually recognizing my reference. “You’re not even on Earth, Dorothy”, it responded making me laugh out loud.

The voice was more than extremely helpful. It was almost friendly. It knew everything about Earth, every language and seemed to have a catalog of Earth life forms that included species we still hadn’t discovered yet on our own planet. It quickly became clear to me that the designers of this device had not anticipated anyone other than the operators of the ship interacting with it. The simple help system had access to a vast amount of data beyond my understanding and awesome computational capabilities. Before long, I had the help system running through all possible numbers to unlock the access code for the panel.  I was feeling rather confident of myself, although I had no idea of what I would do after I got access.

Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me ask “what are you doing?”.  The woman had returned and I was so focused that I hadn’t even heard the door. “Nothing”, I said reflexively, as if all the flashing lights and spinning numbers on the console in front of me were mere unimportant random reflections of light. “Uh huh”, she said repeating what I had said to her earlier.  I wondered if that was intentional.  She moved to sit down in the other chair and there was a brief sparkle around her. Her face appeared for a moment to look something like a flattened horse’s head with the same long auburn hair.  That was a little disturbing sight.  As she spoke, her face took it’s original beautiful human form again.  ”The others are in stasis now.  I have to reset the ship’s timer for the jump so that we will have some time.”  Odd shapes appeared on the glassy display in front of her and she confidently spun the shapes around with her fingers.

I started to say “uh huh” and then caught myself. “Some time?” I finally asked after a long pause. “Some time for what?” I didn’t really want to ask that. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know the answer. “Time to get you back to your planet,” she said while turning and smiling back at me. That sounded good, very good. Again, she had surprised me. I wondered who was this woman and why was she helping me? After she seemed satisfied with her work on the timer, she stood up grabbed my hand and pulled me back out into the corridor.  ”We should hurry”, she said.  She led me to the opposite wall and as she approached she waved her other hand and part of the wall appeared to simply evaporate leaving another door.  ”How many weird doors do they have in this place?”, I remember thinking to myself.  She pulled me through the opening and smiled up at me.  I looked around wondering what we were doing in a empty closet, when suddenly the floor began to fall.  I realized we were in some kind of elevator.

The elevator ride was a little disconcerting and I reached out to her for support.  That seemed to please her and she smiled at me again.  I remember thinking that her smiles seemed so … natural.   I thought that was strange, considering that she almost certainly wasn’t human. As soon as we stepped out at our destination, I could tell we were in the large room. “This way”, she said as she began briskly walking still holding my hand.  I noticed a row of what appeared to be about eight foot tall mechanical spiders against the wall.  They were glowing with that strange blue shimmering energy that I had originally been trapped in and their legs were folded under their huge bodies.  She noticed I was dragging behind looking at them and said, “you don’t want to get close to the spiders.  They aren’t dangerous, but if they get activated an alarm will go off.” “Spiders?” I asked puzzled.  ”Sometimes, we use them to collect specific items, ” she answered and then urged me to continue on by pulling on my hand.