Category Archives: Dream

Dream: O Canada!

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I left work at a former job mid-afternoon to take a commuter train east accompanied by a co-worker (I think). Shortly after leaving the train station, we suspected we were headed in the wrong direction, which was confirmed when we passed high, jagged, snow-capped Rockies-type mountains. I don’t recall the co-worker after that (if there was one).

On seeing the mountains and fabulous skies, I wanted to take photos before getting off at the next station to head back east, but I couldn’t find my iPhone. Eventually I couldn’t find my purse and coat, either, and wondered how many stations I’d have to pass before recovering everything. I worried about getting back to work, let alone my original destination. 

I put out a plea on the train to help me find the phone as we passed even more spectacular mountains and skies. We went through a NASA-type installation, which is when I realized I was in Canada.

I couldn’t find all my stuff, so I gave up and got off the train at the next station. I couldn’t find the opposite platform or set of tracks for the eastern train, only a dirt road going down a hill. When I asked people for directions, they kept pointing this dirt road out. I thought, “I’m never going to get back to work at a reasonable time.” Especially since I seemed to be in western Canada at a station with no return train.

At this point my phone turned up in my purse in its usual slot. Too late. It was almost too dark to take photos of the mountains, which I couldn’t see anymore from this place anyway.

Dream: Work and the underground Swiss Alps train

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(This may not be chronological or one dream.)

I was in a small work room with three people. Someone was insisting we rewrite another department’s documents, but hadn’t discussed it with me. The insistence was making me livid and anxious since it made no sense.

A French man I didn’t know changed into new shorts—apparently from a skirt. I thought this weird for a work place. I didn’t see how it happened—it was like magic.

At some point we separated. When we came back, the room was different, and I couldn’t find my assigned spot. I remembered my seat number. I was still trying to figure out how to get the co-worker alone in this setup to explain why we couldn’t pursue their plan.

I was on a train—home? It was running underground, and when I looked out the back window, it was turning off but another train, a freight, was coming toward it as though about to slam into it. My train, however, completed the turnoff with perfect timing to avoid being hit—by a cat’s whisker.

I looked for my aunts to say goodbye as somehow I knew I would be getting off the train soon. Then I was to transfer to a train downstate (Springfield?) and somehow get to wherever I was going.

My first aunt refused to hug me, but the other did. I went back to my car, but abruptly I found myself off the train, standing underground, watching the earlier freight go by. I knew it was the same freight because each car was painted with a part of a seamless scene that looked like the Swiss Alps. It was an amazing effort.

I was panicky with no wallet, no phone, and no idea of where I was, realizing I was going to miss my connecting train. I kept finding myself in bizarre underground markets and had no idea to get aboveground.

At last I found someone who was busy but was willing to answer one question, about where I was. “5400 N. (something),” she said. I assumed Chicago. I was a cab ride away from home, but how to get there with no wallet and no phone?

And how to get aboveground?

Dream: Camp, train, snow, bazookas, and apocalypse

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I was on a train in Indiana that had left a campground I was staying at (I remembered being at a camp but didn’t remember it). The train started to pass snow-covered fields, although it was only August. I thought, “Something is terribly wrong.”

Next I was in the bright atrium of an office building or a large department store. Slowly I became aware that someone was firing or about to fire a bazooka or something like it. I ran away and encountered a second person about to fire. I got away from that one too.

I found myself in a narrow street or an alley that should have been crowded with people but was quiet and lonely. I walked faster and faster, trying to elude whatever was lurking for me between me and the end.

I heard something, then saw my dad in his van, beckoning me to hurry. “How could Dad be here?” I wondered, but still I hurried to him . . . and safety.

Dream: Dormitory

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I must have gone to college because I was in a dormitory with two rows of beds. I picked the fourth one in. To my surprise, my boxes were full of old sheets and blankets from childhood I’d forgotten about and other things I didn’t need. I wondered how I’d gotten it all there and why.

I must have gone out, but not to class. I wondered why I’d returned to college when I hadn’t planned to go to classes. When I returned, I couldn’t get in because I didn’t have a key. After I did get in, I saw all the beds, some occupied, were made up with my old sheets and blankets. I couldn’t find my bed or keys, which added to my stress. I gave an enraged speech, then went around taking off all the sheets.

Somehow it happened again. I called the college administrator’s office in front of them. Of course he wasn’t in. I yelled at them about being ill, but they didn’t care. I took back the sheets and blankets again, but this time I looked at each in turn and asked who wanted to have their face broken. If they didn’t choose, I would. Part of me wanted to. Part of me didn’t. I called the administrator’s office again to avoid a greater confrontation. The girls looked at me sullenly and unrepentantly, I thought. They were going to force to me to choose, then see what I would or could do.

Dream: Pinnacles cruise

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I needed a ride home, so I tried to take a bus. I had only coins and paid with what I thought were a dollar coin and a quarter. Maybe it was more than a dollar coin because a stream of gum ball prizes fell out faster than I could retrieve them. The last was a plastic helicopter set. That’s when I realized I had many bags — too many. Was I missing any? Had I lost my purse?

I went back, hoping to find a street address and get a Lyft. I couldn’t. I looked toward the sunset — how late it was getting, and still I wasn’t on my way — and saw striated pinnacles of sedimentary rock, like in Utah or Arizona. This was Lisle, Illinois, though. Or was it Wheaton? Amazing. Old churches were sprinkled among the pinnacles, like a mix of rural and urban. Amazing. I’d have to come back if I could.

I continued to try to find an address. At one point I used the bathroom, but there were bugs on every surface, mostly ladybugs. I couldn’t tell if I still had all my bags with me, which had multiplied into at least three purses and a chair.

Before I called for a Lyft, I went back to the pinnacles to take a photo. I tried to get my phone out of one of the purses, but kept getting gum ball machine toys.

I noticed there was an overlook with a less impeded view and stepped out onto it. A voice said something like, “We’re leaving” just as I realized I was on board a boat. No matter how I screamed or carried on, the captain wouldn’t stop or turn back. I wondered if threatening to contact the Coast Guard would help. Probably not.

I thought I’d left the chair and other bags behind and wondered if they’d been stolen. I knew I wouldn’t get home until after dark. I’d be so tired. I already was.

Fitbit showed 40 minutes of REM sleep.

Dream: Anne of the bus

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I’d heard (or possibly saw) that Anne of Green Gables — or was it Megan Follows? — had been on a bus that I sometimes take, which seemed odd for many reasons. Somehow I knew she wanted a keychain figure of herself (the actor? or the character?), which I had or could get so I took the bus in hopes of “running into” her.

I worked up the nerve to talk to her and mid-conversation remembered I’d left my purse behind on a seat. When I looked, it was gone. This surprised me.

Next I found myself in a filthy beauty parlor where a rat was nosing around on the floor.

I had no money and no phone and no way to contact my parents to pick me up, where ever I was. Panicked, the rare and interesting encounter (with an actor? or a fictional character?) took a back seat to the terror of being stranded.

Dream: House on the edge of forever

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The dream began when I became aware that I was not in pain, or not much — but only in the dream.

I was walking with high school friends when they veered off through a meadow where there were no visible paths and disappeared. We had been trying to get to a train station, and I was surprised by the detour. Shortcut?

I tried to follow their track and reached a point where it wrapped around a house. Only a few inches of ground and grass separated the house from a sheer drop into a gorge thousands of feet deep. I couldn’t walk on that — how could they have? Were they that much bolder? They had never been.

In front of the house was a sign like those you see at rural bars. “Not a good idea,” I thought. Alcohol, a precariously perched house, and death only a few inches and a few thousand feet away.

Dream: Desk and elevator

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I came back to my shared desk at work and discovered one of three figurines (trolls?) was missing, but I couldn’t remember what the missing one looked like. I was upset by its loss nonetheless.

Dark stuff was smeared all over the desk, which could be explained by the two balls of graphite I eventually found, first one, then the other.

I opened the drawer to find what looked like sawdust and wood flakes.

Someone sitting in my chair had moved when I returned, but she had no explanation and had not seen anything.

I doubted myself over the third figurine.

After time had passed, a note appeared written clumsily on tattered cardboard explaining someone in their area had used my desk to shred particleboard. To compensate me for the inconvenience, they had ordered me office supplies. Awkward drawings accompanied the text.

Unrelated, I later headed to Human Resources, but kept finding myself in a high-rise mall-like setting with many unusual shops and lots of workers browsing.

I had to get back (having never made it to HR), but I couldn’t find an elevator. I thought I had seen one but it went missing. Finally I discovered one hidden behind a conventional office door, but it was up three steep, oddly angled steps that I couldn’t navigate — but I tried.

A woman stuck her head out of a window in the lower part of the frosted glass elevator door to see if I was coming but I said I’d catch the next one. I was very late already, though, and there was no way I could get up those three steps.

Dream: Turnaround train trip

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I was on a weekend train to Chicago from Hamburg when I realized I didn’t have my Fitbit charger, which seemed important since the Fitbit was low on charge and might not last until Monday. This may have led me to notice I didn’t have anything at all for a trip, even extra clothes. But hadn’t I planned to return Monday?

I tried to figure out how to return, pack, go back toward Chicago — or maybe not.

Had I planned to return Monday or to stay to finish out a quarter? Why was I going? It’s an overnight trip, too long to be bouncing back and forth. [I did do that once, to Pennsylvania.]

As in yesterday’s dream (unpublished), my phone came up. I was about to take a photo when I noticed it was an earlier, smaller iPhone than mine. A nearby child cried that I had her phone. I gave it back wordlessly, expecting the mother to berate me, even have me arrested. She merely rolled her eyes and looked away, as though the child were in the wrong.

Every time I tried to take a photo, it was the wrong iPhone.

Dream: The bull

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A girl I knew had a bull. A boy asked her to let it out of its pen, which she did. Nothing happened.

Later the same boy asked me to let the bull out. The other girl had, so I figured it would be all right if I let it out, too. The bull ran out and chased the boy up several sets of steps to a platform. Second guessing myself and feeling guilty, I wondered if the platform could support the bull’s weight.

I heard a cry.

The girl found out what I’d done and became angry. I was frightened. I’d seen crows and vultures collecting around the sides of the structure but not at the top.

I went up, dreading what I’d find. The bull was gone. The boy was there, but now he was a girl (and had always been a girl). She was pale and walked down the steps painfully as though horribly injured where I couldn’t see, but said she was fine. Again I agonized over what I’d done and why it was wrong when the bull’s owner had done the same thing with no harm.