Dream Journal

It began with a walk. A friend and I were taking a walk through a neighborhood. It was dimly lit out. We were near the area where we were going to pick up our new dog — a big shaggy brown dog that was known to be really mouthy and licky, not something I actually wanted. As we walked along, I saw what I thought was a weasel jumping around across the street and a few houses away. I pointed it out to my friend. I started singing something like, “Heeey weasel, jumping jumping weasel, why don’t you come to me. . . . ” I sang a few verses, creative and silly, just singing freely what came to me. Then it began running towards us. As it got closer, I realized it was a scary-looking black, white, and brown dog that I had mistaken for a weasel. It circled around us, then began to follow us.

After walking another block, an angry man came up to us from behind. It was the dog’s owner. I turned around and explained to him that I thought it was a weasel, what with my eyesight not being as good as it was, and it jumped the fence and ran out to us. He understood. I think I had begun to sing some of it, and he joined in? At any rate, he was the first to join us.

Then we saw a party going on in one of the houses, and I felt intimidated by it — maybe because it was a poorer part of town. There were lots of people I didn’t know, people of many different cultures in there. Someone came out and said, “What? You’re not going to come in to the party?” I said I wasn’t invited, and he gestured an overly obvious invitation. So we went in, even though I didn’t know anybody there (in waking life I would be too intimidated to do this).

Now this begins of a long series of events where I face and head into uncomfortable situations; usually entering a stranger’s house, experiencing something or another with them, then relaxing, having fun, and at some point breaking into song where my friends harmonize with me and it sounds great. The people from the house join in, and at the end one or two of them joins us when we leave. Each time the group gets bigger and the next original song gets more complex, with more parts in it.

The songs were amazing — instant harmonies, like everyone knew it even though we’d never heard it before, just expressing our thoughts in words musically, and watching them weave into songs.

I’m trying to remember each encounter. . . . Each new situation was more uncomfortable than the previous. One was a family dinner with an African American family where a very scary-feeling new boyfriend had joined them. Everyone was tense around him, and he felt really dangerous to me. But I began a song to greet each person and him as well, and he definitely noticed that, and responded in a challenging way (it seemed the only way he knew how to be). But the song continued and changed, and I noticed it wasn’t always me to initiate a new part of the song now — I had enough people who had joined me that some of them initiated melodies, which I went along with. There was always a bit of spontaneous fun that preceded or was part of the beginning of the song. Afterwards, it was the scary guy who joined us. I had my reservations but didn’t stop him.

One later on was going into the house of an Indian family. All of these encounters were large groups of people, like get-togethers with lots of family or friends.

The people that joined me — each was strange in their own way, and had a story or power of some sort. Some were originally scary or intimidating characters. For example, near the end, one guy had this metal brace around his neck and his arms. He said that some information (the story itself?) was all coiled up and stored inside of him. He showed us an illustration of the bands coming off and seams appearing, which uncoiled, revealing how it was stored in him.

Then I was coming home alone with Rebecca. It wasn’t our actual house. I think we drove home, and I rationalized a car — it was our green Prius. We got out, and I saw and remembered that I had this thing set up in the driveway — a super dangerous experimental contraption where I had basically thrown together all this explosive, energetic stuff with the goal of just seeing what would happen. From the outside, it looked like a white garbage bag full of stuff. On a whim, the same kind that had guided the whole dream, I decided to set it off. I turned it on, then I immediately realized I needed to get Rebecca to safety. I shouted to her to go inside the house, and she rushed in. I led her upstairs and down a hallway to the far corner of the house.

We got to the bedroom and the explosion went off with a great flash of light. I was surprised to notice a golden orange light continuing from the area of the experiment. We looked out the window and saw a glowing shape — a circle with an orange arch across the center, made of hardened, chalk-like material. We watched it glow with a strange light, and I knew it was some powerful portal. Then it collapsed into dust and the light was gone. The explosion had utterly wrecked the car I’d parked next to it. It was kicked back about 16 feet, with the entire outer frame of it knocked askew, and it was all deeply corroded and melted. I laughed and said I should have moved the car first.

Wondering now if the “movie” was over, I headed back out into the neighborhood. Walking along, I came to this prison-like area surrounded by a chain link fence with guards. I think I was still with my friend from the beginning. We spoke to the guards, and four of the original group were let out. They were mad at me. For leaving them for the scene with the explosion? It felt as if some time had passed. I felt like this story deserved a better ending, so this part was now happening. We resolved the anger and went on to find more of the group from before.

We ended up climbing the walls of a fortified slum area to find one of our singing group firing huge boulders out of himself at us. They bounced off the wall we were climbing, back into the big truck he was in, then back and forth before rolling away. So they had each become hostile to me over time, and we were going out to fix it, and it was to end in a grand way.

I don’t recall the specifics, but it did come to that grand conclusion nearby, upon a set of bleachers. And as it did, I felt so moved and connected that I declared that this was my new favorite movie.