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Originally Posted March 31, 2007
Welcome to my nightmare indeed. I had already chosen that song days ago to accompany this story for a couple of reasons. Even though this dream was menacing enough on its own, the nightmare became the aggravation I encountered trying to post this blog at all.
I spent the last 2 days writing, meditating, investigating and researching. I arrived home from work yesterday with the intention of posting the blog and the Word document was gone. Disappeared without a trace. I searched every square inch of this computer and it is nowhere to be found.
I just now finished the whole process over again, the most difficult task being trying to remember what I wrote in the first place. I got it all done, posted the story on the blog, decided to tweak one picture and accidentally deleted it. I went back into the html editor, saw the code was still there and intact, went back to the main view and the blog was gone. All that remained were the pictures.
Hopefully it works this time.
This is a dream from a couple of years ago but has remained on the back burner due to the fact nothing definitive has really come of it. The cast was full of characters I hadn’t seen for ages and the new accountant at work who I had only spoken to about three times at that point. It was kind of like a Return to Gilligan’s Island only with a different Maryanne.
It’s always confused me when I dream about people I barely know or haven’t been in contact with for a long period of time. A while back I thought I’d experiment with a Rorschach-type method and relate the first thing I think of when I think of that person back to the dream. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. I assume the new person will become important in my life in some way.
These are the result of the tests with these particular people.
Christopher – younger cousin, travelled around Southeast Asia for a few years, got Malaria, went to university to study journalism, got a degree in that, married a girl from Malaysia, divorced girl from Malaysia after her true intentions of an easy Canadian citizenship became apparent, married other Malaysian girl, settled in Malaysia and Indonesia for about 10 years, worked for CBC and Bloomberg, got transferred to Japan where he still resides as far as I know and is still employed with Bloomberg.
I don’t particularly care for this relative. He possesses an ego the size of a truck and resides in an All About Me world. His appearance was perplexing.
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Accountant at Work (AW) – Nice lady, as I said I didn’t know her at the time so her appearance was also puzzling. I have learned our birthdays are only a few days apart so that’s sort of interesting. We don’t interact often but get along just fine when we do. I guess when I think of AW the first thing that pops into my head is her pale yellow Thunderbird convertible. Not sure what’s up with pale yellow but I see it a lot in the dream world. Usually as an article of clothing.
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Nancy – childhood best friend from the ages of 4 to 18. Time and distance are the only reasons for the lack of communication since then. Nothing specific stands out with Nancy. She and her entire family were a huge influence in my life, there are far too many memories for just one to resurface first and foremost.
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Lorrie – Nancy’s younger sister, Alice Cooper. I doubt he has a bigger fan.
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Gord – Nancy and Lorrie’s father. He is an enigma to be sure. Because of his profound influence in my life and his recurring appearance in dreams, I will delve a little deeper into Gord. His materialization is no mystery at all. The first thing I think of with Gord is the numerous questions I would like answers to.
One fascinating aspect of Gord was the time he was fortunate enough to have spent with the Natives of Northern Ontario. Quite a privilege. Same with Purpleaura’s tenure with the Gurka tribe of Burma when she was a kid. That’s yet another story of its own merit.
Gord’s idea of a holiday began with a lengthy road trip followed by a ride in a bush plane to where he was greeted by his tribal friends who would then escort him the remainder of the distance by canoe and by foot.
A camping trip with Gord was an unforgettable adventure. There was nothing namby-pamby like a cooler or Coleman stove. Your main course was stored live in the lake or river adjacent to what you were calling home for the weekend. If you didn’t catch a fish, you didn’t eat. Well, there was always the trail mix and home-dried beef jerky. Who made their own beef jerky in 1963?
Never have I known anybody so shrouded in mystery. He is either not of this earth or a fugitive, there is no other explanation. I asked Nancy countless times where they moved from. She didn’t know. Had no clue at all. I asked her mother and she told me where she grew up, not where they moved from as a family. I asked Gord and got the usual, “You ask too many questions”. Yeah well I’ve got a lot more.
I asked Nancy how many cousins she had. One. From her mother’s side. Grandparents? One grandmother also from her mother’s side. There were no family photos, no point of origin, no fond childhood memories. Nothing at all identifying a past of any kind where it concerned Gord. Quite peculiar.
Gord was employed in a steel foundry, Bethlehem Steel to be exact. One of his hobbies was collecting and restoring antiques. Many a night he came home with a new find, some old beaten up Chippendale or Hepplewhite chair or settee, void of upholstery and stuffing. He would take the new find to his basement workshop, a tiny little room of about 60 square feet directly behind the boiler. To this day I cannot fathom how he even got some of that stuff in there. I suppose he got it in there in pieces, it was the getting it out that perplexed me. After a week or so in the shop with the most basic supply of prehistoric-looking tools he would emerge with a piece even the occupants of Buckingham Palace would envy.
And the house. Oh my God the house. This is the entire reason for my taste and obsession with everything Victorian. Well that and a past life or two.
The furnishings were the above mentioned Hepplewhites and Chippendales, real suits of armor hung on the walls and Wedgwood adorned the dining room table. And in amongst all this luxury and elegance were the least pretentious and most down-to-earth people you could ever know. It didn’t matter if you got mud all over the Chippendale or scratched the Hepplewhite or broke the Wedgwood. Gord would simply take the damaged article to the magical mystery shop and emerge with one as good as new…or old…depends how you look at it I guess. And if it could not be repaired another would turn up under somewhat unusual circumstances. For instance, “There was this guy on the side of the road selling used goods and he just happened to have the exact same dinner plate you broke last week.”
Another fact I found amazing was he had every single issue of National Geographic ever printed.
Gord was a man so far ahead of his time and yet he yearned and strove to live the most basic of lifestyles. Charles Ingalls meet George Jetson.
And he was all for good clean fun, imagination and adventure. You never ever lamented your boredom or you would be cleaning windows in no time. There was no such thing as “nothing to do” in his vocabulary. So as long as we kept busy and didn’t get too rowdy every nook and cranny in that house was open range in a game of hide-n-go-seek or whatever else we came up with. EXCEPT his bedroom and the second attic. The dreaded second attic.
Attic number one was accessed through a regular interior door on the second floor, no different than you would enter any one of the other rooms on that floor. There was a small anteroom with an old wooden staircase leading to the upper level, the actual attic part.
Attic number two had the same access and anteroom and then another door. I don’t ever recall being on the other side of that door, but I do dream of it often. What we found in the anteroom was scary enough. Here was a small box containing various articles which I no longer recall but for one item, a photograph of Hitler in an oval wooden frame. I believe I was holding it in my hands when we were discovered snooping where we ought not to be snooping. This was also one of the places I saw the masonic logo.
I’m not exactly sure what it was that frightened me so much about that photo, I was too young to know who Hitler was, but it frightened me enough to tell Maria about it. She said, “Hitler was a very bad man. He….” And that’s it. I don’t have a clue what came after “He….” Perhaps I have since learned what followed but as a young child the information would have been far too horrific to comprehend or deal with. Therefore I blocked it out.
One factor that still freaks me out to this day is the fact this was an original portrait-style-posed-for photograph, not a painting. That means the camera that snapped the shot was in very close proximity to Adolph Hitler. That means that photo was probably in very close proximity to Adolph Hitler. And I did not like being anywhere near the vicinity of that man. Holding that photo in my hands made me feel as if I were in the same room with him. Very creepy experience indeed. We went nowhere near the second attic ever again.
Gord knew things, things he had no way of knowing without supernatural skills or tracking devices. He knew where we were going, who we were going with and what we were going to do when we got there. Sometimes before we did. Back then I chalked it up to that omnipotence that accompanies parenthood. Now that I’m a lot older and a wee bit wiser, there is still no logical explanation other than the aforementioned two.
Another of Gord’s hobbies was magic. He would tout himself as an amateur but master wizard was more suitable. He was forever trying out new card tricks for us or some other sleight of hand. Tragically I was not in attendance for his most spectacular show, the amazing disappearing man. This sounds unbelievable I’m sure, and I was not there to actually witness the event. However, the look of unadulterated fear in Nancy’s eyes and the genuine fright in her voice as she retold the story was proof enough for me. She was not prone to telling tall tales. Apparently in an extreme fit of rage, Gord transformed into a cloud of vapour and vanished right before her eyes. I am truly sorry I missed out on that.
So there’s a bunch about Gord. My feelings towards him couldn’t be any more jumbled. As a youngster he was more of a father to me than was my own. He taught me so much and showed me so much and treated me as part of the family. On the other hand, WTF is up with that Hitler stuff and the disappearing shit and the secret door?
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Location, Location, Location
This dream took place in a house I visit frequently. There are 2 houses I go to a lot that both feel like ours, (BWB and I). I think one is our regular home and one is a cabin in the forest. Both homes have been in different stages of disrepair and tidiness. They both have 3 or more stories, a basement, a wrap-around porch and lots and lots of wood. Wood floors, walls, furniture…everything is wood.
At first the basements were a colossal mess with mountains of laundry everywhere. We have slowly gotten them cleaned up and repaired over the years and the laundry complete every once in a while, although smaller piles turn up every now and again, which is to be expected. The cleaning never ends. Not here, not there, not anywhere.
There are a ton of rooms in these houses, mostly bedrooms. Not sure if we’ve got a B & B on the go or what, but hoards of people come to stay. Some alive, some dead, relatives, friends, people I don’t know, people I barely know and some people I wish I didn’t know.
The bedrooms aren’t finished, they still have bare framework exposed and no other furnishings than a bed and night table. This doesn’t appear to be an issue or concern.
The condition and adequacy of the loo is notable and vital in every dream. During one I recall being very excited that each visitor had their own private facilities, usually there is only one. But that one is magnificent! The room is massive, the floor and walls are white tile shining and gleaming and sparkly clean. I can’t recall right now if there’s a toilet or sink, I usually only see the tub which is an old ball-and claw-footed unit with lots of hoses and brass fixtures.
The basements both have rooms that go on forever. You think you’ve gotten to the last one and there’s another door leading to yet another room with yet another door. No matter what else is going on in these dreams, I’m always making time to ensure our guests are warm and comfortable.
The cabin is located in dense forest comprised mostly of coniferous trees. A section of the porch at the back overlooks what sometimes appears to be a bottomless gorge, and other times a rather large body of water. Guard bears protect the surroundings. It kind of reminds me of this place below at times with different living quarters and the addition of a forest:
La Chateau des Pyrenees ~ Rene Magritte~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The house is located in a quaint Victorian neighbourhood on a road with a moderately steep incline. It is also surrounded by greenery-a-plenty, but where the cabin surroundings are rustic and remote, this yard is well manicured. A substantial flowering bush takes up a good portion of the front yard. The back yard is again dense forest but a coniferous deciduous mix and the bears protect these surroundings as well.
One room I have seen in the house but not the cabin is an office with a wall comprised of nothing but bookshelves. In one dream there were no books on the shelf which bothered me a bit. I wasn’t sure if I had read them all or they disappeared for another more sinister reason.
There’s a computer in the office and although a lot has happened regarding that computer, it is simple. It sits on a card table, the kind you can fold up and store away behind a couch or door. It’s probably the only piece of furniture not made of wood. The entire computer looks to be 70’s vintage with no bells and/or whistles. It does what it needs to do and that’s it.
In both places lives a couch that has come to feel like an old friend. It’s almost always in the basement and usually the only piece of furniture in the room. When I see it, it’s as if there’s a beacon of light shining down on it, like some sort of deity. It has quite a vibrant personality for a couch.
The style must have been very popular in it’s time. My parents have owned a couch just like it waking life as did an old landlord and a high school flame. This couch gets around. I also owned this couch and the circumstances around my acquiring it were a bit strange. A co-worker was getting rid of it and I accepted it sight unseen. When I went to pick it up you can imagine my surprise at being reunited with this familiar icon. I really can’t say what it means other than it maybe holds memories of significant moments in my life.
So there’s the lowdown on the cast and location. Lots of bizarre stuff goes on in this house, miracle babies, flying cameras and talking kittens asking me to help them find their lost strings. Just to name a few. This was also one of those dreams that came after a complete and total inability to stay awake no matter how long I slept or what I did to try and fend off the exhaustion. And now that I’ve preambled for about 5 pages, here’s the dream:
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Miss Scarlet's Dream ~ December 24th, 2005
It started out with you (Purpleaura) and me in Ridgeway, but I don't think my mom knew I was in town yet. The first place we went was Gord's house. I remembered in this dream another dream about him moving out and I said, “I don't think he'll be here”. You told me to try the door just in case so I did and it was open. We went in the house and it was empty, but we were just looking for a place to sleep and went upstairs to Nancy's room. It was fully furnished so we decided that would be where we stayed. Her old bed was there, a big four-poster intricately carved with pineapple toppers on each post.
After we unpacked we went to my mom's. We were just sitting around and my sister-in-law came in with their son. I was really happy to see them but wondered where my brother was. Just then he came through the door, dressed in a pale yellow t-shirt and jeans. He went directly to sit with his wife and son and totally ignored me or maybe didn’t see me. The power went out at one point and there were just bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, but yours and mine stayed lit. My family was a little freaked over that.
Next thing I’m out front of my mom's and the neighbour is building quite an elaborate garden right in the middle of the driveway. It had a canopy supported by 4 big pillars that were made of hand-carved wood. The actual garden was a rectangular container built of rock. I looked over to watch and all of a sudden Lorrie pokes her head up from behind the rock wall. She was armed with a shovel and was helping the man with the garden.
I got the feeling this was a very special garden that had been in the works for a long time, and now was the time and the place, that's why it ended up in the middle of the driveway. It had to be done here and now kind of thing. I'm vaguely recalling Lorrie digging a tunnel entrance.
I also knew it was Christmas and wondered why they had no snow. The Great Lakes ALWAYS have snow in the winter.
I approached Lorrie and the man and saw he strongly resembled the same man in another dream about Gord's house. That time it was being renovated and he was the new owner. The man was short and round and bald and dressed in white. He kind of looked like Buddha.
In waking life one of our neighbours has an old bed frame in the front yard with a garden growing in it, his flower bed. It's really cool. I told the man about this flower bed and thought his looked like a flower bed too, only much more elaborate than the garden in our neighbourhood. I had my camera with me and thought I had a picture of the flower bed to show him, but then I remembered the camera didn't work. I then turned to Lorrie and told her how happy I was to see her, asked her how she was doing, blah blah blah. Then I asked her for Nancy's number or email and she told me something I don't remember. Probably her number or email.
I think it's the next day now, I know we didn't sleep at Gord's and I was worried about our stuff still being there or the new owners wondering who the heck broke in their house. I had been toting a huge black duffel bag with the Calgary Flames logo on it.
The house is located in a quaint Victorian neighbourhood on a road with a moderately steep incline. It is also surrounded by greenery-a-plenty, but where the cabin surroundings are rustic and remote, this yard is well manicured. A substantial flowering bush takes up a good portion of the front yard. The back yard is again dense forest but a coniferous deciduous mix and the bears protect these surroundings as well.
One room I have seen in the house but not the cabin is an office with a wall comprised of nothing but bookshelves. In one dream there were no books on the shelf which bothered me a bit. I wasn’t sure if I had read them all or they disappeared for another more sinister reason.
There’s a computer in the office and although a lot has happened regarding that computer, it is simple. It sits on a card table, the kind you can fold up and store away behind a couch or door. It’s probably the only piece of furniture not made of wood. The entire computer looks to be 70’s vintage with no bells and/or whistles. It does what it needs to do and that’s it.
In both places lives a couch that has come to feel like an old friend. It’s almost always in the basement and usually the only piece of furniture in the room. When I see it, it’s as if there’s a beacon of light shining down on it, like some sort of deity. It has quite a vibrant personality for a couch.
The style must have been very popular in it’s time. My parents have owned a couch just like it waking life as did an old landlord and a high school flame. This couch gets around. I also owned this couch and the circumstances around my acquiring it were a bit strange. A co-worker was getting rid of it and I accepted it sight unseen. When I went to pick it up you can imagine my surprise at being reunited with this familiar icon. I really can’t say what it means other than it maybe holds memories of significant moments in my life.
So there’s the lowdown on the cast and location. Lots of bizarre stuff goes on in this house, miracle babies, flying cameras and talking kittens asking me to help them find their lost strings. Just to name a few. This was also one of those dreams that came after a complete and total inability to stay awake no matter how long I slept or what I did to try and fend off the exhaustion. And now that I’ve preambled for about 5 pages, here’s the dream:
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Miss Scarlet's Dream ~ December 24th, 2005
It started out with you (Purpleaura) and me in Ridgeway, but I don't think my mom knew I was in town yet. The first place we went was Gord's house. I remembered in this dream another dream about him moving out and I said, “I don't think he'll be here”. You told me to try the door just in case so I did and it was open. We went in the house and it was empty, but we were just looking for a place to sleep and went upstairs to Nancy's room. It was fully furnished so we decided that would be where we stayed. Her old bed was there, a big four-poster intricately carved with pineapple toppers on each post.
After we unpacked we went to my mom's. We were just sitting around and my sister-in-law came in with their son. I was really happy to see them but wondered where my brother was. Just then he came through the door, dressed in a pale yellow t-shirt and jeans. He went directly to sit with his wife and son and totally ignored me or maybe didn’t see me. The power went out at one point and there were just bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, but yours and mine stayed lit. My family was a little freaked over that.
Next thing I’m out front of my mom's and the neighbour is building quite an elaborate garden right in the middle of the driveway. It had a canopy supported by 4 big pillars that were made of hand-carved wood. The actual garden was a rectangular container built of rock. I looked over to watch and all of a sudden Lorrie pokes her head up from behind the rock wall. She was armed with a shovel and was helping the man with the garden.
I got the feeling this was a very special garden that had been in the works for a long time, and now was the time and the place, that's why it ended up in the middle of the driveway. It had to be done here and now kind of thing. I'm vaguely recalling Lorrie digging a tunnel entrance.
I also knew it was Christmas and wondered why they had no snow. The Great Lakes ALWAYS have snow in the winter.
I approached Lorrie and the man and saw he strongly resembled the same man in another dream about Gord's house. That time it was being renovated and he was the new owner. The man was short and round and bald and dressed in white. He kind of looked like Buddha.
In waking life one of our neighbours has an old bed frame in the front yard with a garden growing in it, his flower bed. It's really cool. I told the man about this flower bed and thought his looked like a flower bed too, only much more elaborate than the garden in our neighbourhood. I had my camera with me and thought I had a picture of the flower bed to show him, but then I remembered the camera didn't work. I then turned to Lorrie and told her how happy I was to see her, asked her how she was doing, blah blah blah. Then I asked her for Nancy's number or email and she told me something I don't remember. Probably her number or email.
I think it's the next day now, I know we didn't sleep at Gord's and I was worried about our stuff still being there or the new owners wondering who the heck broke in their house. I had been toting a huge black duffel bag with the Calgary Flames logo on it.
I made a reference to Goldilocks that we laughed about, "who's been sleeping in my bed".
We headed down to Gord's place and there were tradesmen milling around and work trucks parked all over the lawn. All the windows (and there is a lot of windows in this house) were covered with sheets of blue paper. There were different things written on each piece of paper that I thought had something to do with the renovations in progress.
(I wanted to find a sample of this particular shade of blue as it turns up frequently in dreams. Something told me to go to Glidden Paint so I did. I looked at the paint samples without looking at what the colours were called as not to be influenced by any words. I decided conclusively what the shade was and it turns out its called Dream Spiral Blue).
http://www.glidden.com/colors/selector.jsp
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We decided to peak in the front door and hoped the new owners would let us in to get our stuff and understand we just needed a place to sleep and meant no harm. We expected to open the door and see workmen everywhere but were totally surprised to see empty boxes and 4 women just sitting around drinking tea and chatting. One lady was wearing a blue sweater, also Dream Spiral Blue. The weird part was all this work was being done, but nobody was doing it?!?!? We could hear hammers and drills and saws but there were no people other than these 4 ladies.
What I thought was going on were the ladies were witches and had to pretend to the neighbourhood like there were workmen all around, when in reality they were just having a nice chat while the work got done without the men.
All of a sudden you are gone and BWB is there. I said to him where is Purpleaura? He said you had to go someplace else. I said, “But what about her stuff, we didn't get her stuff yet?” He said, “She travels light and doesn't need any stuff, that was just for your benefit, you don’t need any stuff either”.
Now BWB and I are back at my mom's thinking since we have a week off we should go somewhere. I wanted to go north and find Gord, I did see him at some point in this dream and he told me where he was living. For some reason we couldn't let my mom know this so we pretended we were going somewhere else. I suggested Ottawa or Montreal.
All of a sudden BWB are I are in the Victorian house. In the basement is a main room then a door to another room. In that room is a door to another room and then its room-door, room-door seemingly forever. We originally entered into the main room through a door I wasn’t aware of before, and for some reason we had a few people with us, one being the new accountant at work? We walked in and this room that was empty the last time I was here, was now filled with 4 big shelves that went to the ceiling. AW says "Wow you guys have a done a lot of work in here"
The shelves were a surprise to me, I didn't remember us building them but they were full of my teapot collection so I figured we must have built them. The funny thing is I don't collect teapots. My “collection” consists of two and one of those only comes out at Christmas. However they were both in the shelving unit.
The shelves were all white with glass fronts and mood lighting to showcase each teapot. It looked like a museum in there. The weird thing was the shelves could not be accessed and I wondered what I would do if I wanted to add another teapot or rearrange them. I got the impression I would not ever have to do that, the teapots were arranged exactly how they needed to be arranged and there was no need to ever add another. The collection was complete.
We were showing the people around and took one of them, I think Chris, into the place where the rooms go on forever. He was asking us what we planned to do in there and we said we were going to make bedrooms out of them. He thought that was a good idea.
All of a sudden BWB, Chris, AW and I are sitting on the couch admiring the teapots when AW said, "When did you get the dolls?" I said "I didn't, what dolls?" I went closer to the shelves and in amongst and laying all over the teapots were tons of little dolls that strongly resembled terrorists. One for sure was Bin Laden. Yikes!! I was freaked wondering where these came from. I paced up and down the aisles between shelves and they were everywhere, these creepy little dolls. I also wondered how they got into this hermetically sealed shelving unit in the short time we looked around.
And then I woke up.
