Simply an inconsistent dream journal.

Conversational car coolant criminals

In real life, I’m in the middle of replacing the water pump on my car.  As a result, the radiator is currently sitting on the driveway leaning against the bumper.  Yesterday at about midnight, a few people were having a loud conversation punctuated by frequent laughter, which is unusual for my neighborhood.  I dreamed that these people stole my radiator.  I don’t know what they could have done with it.

Female frisbee failures

Today I napped on a hammock.  Per the categorical imperative, I can universally recommend this action.

During this nap, I experienced several dream sequences.  All of them that I can remember featured me blundering numerous throws that I normally complete at a very high rate.  Hammers to open spaces, uncontested short backhands, everything.  The disc just wouldn’t go where I wanted and where I know I can make it fly.

Also, all of these throws were intended for women who I was at least somewhat interested in romantically in the past several years.

Sofa Cinema

I believe I dream more consistently when I sleep on a couch.  Lately though, I have been waking up and either had immediate things to do or someone has been talking to me right away, which makes dream recall much more difficult than usual.  Despite the circumstances I remember a bit of a recent dream.

The earliest part of the sequence I can recall was set at the entrance of a college dining hall.  By appearance, it was a s sort of conglomeration of several dining centers at Iowa State University.  Naturally, my first action in the dream was to sneak past the people who swipe student ID cards and allow access to those with meal plans.  In reality, this is a method I used to save money in my college days.  My play involved pretending to be fascinated by a recycling advertisement near the counter, waiting until the card people were distracted by a few hungry students, then ducking out of sight below the counter level and executing a swift spinning maneuver into the hallway next to them.  

What happened next was one of those unrealistic shifts in scenery which so frequently happen in dreams but are disregarded by your subconscious actor.  The dining center I entered was suddenly a strange series of hallways with multiple levels, staircases, escalators, and green carpeting.  I meandered through the maze for a minute or so before reaching the lowest level.  The room I found down there resembled a den in the largest dormitory building at Iowa State and in the center was a couch and some chairs with a group of people seated on and around the furniture.  I recall recognizing the group as consisting mainly of old acquaintances and vague friends from years ago.  They were all watching a film on a television in the den.  

Among the group was a girl I had a fairly severe infatuation for in high school, but never acted upon (aside from an awkward homecoming dance experience) out of trepidation.  Then time passed, lives changed, and I went a long time without seeing her until a chance encounter led to about three hours of conversation just a few days before I moved out of Iowa this spring.

Returning to the dream, I sat on the floor in front of the couch so I could also view the film.  The girl I described moved to sit with me on the floor and let me hold her.

It was nice.

Colorado Caterham Car Crash

A short bit of action is all I recall from last night.

This subconscious hallucination found me riding in the passenger seat of a superlight sports car, specifically a Caterham Seven.  Many of my dreams feature automobiles, it seems.  The driver was British television host Richard Hammond, who piloted the coach fearlessly along a roadway which resembled most closely those I drove on in western Colorado last October when retrieving a car a friend had purchased through eBay.  While driving, Hammond had many glorious things to say about how the car was behaving, until we spun out in a sandy bit on a downhill curve.  That’s the extent of my memory of this dream.

Canadian Customs Conundrum

Last night, I found myself driving along an interstate highway alone, with no other traffic.  Tall conifers lined the way, set back perhaps fifty yards from the roadside.  I parked my car in the middle of the two lanes of the road and disembarked on foot with only a backpack.  Again, there were no other people or vehicles around. After what seemed like a mile or so, I approached a building which most closely resembled a toll booth, but which I would discover was a customs station.  In this dream I was attempting to go to Canada.  When I reached the toll booth, I spoke with two men dressed in older-style military camouflage who checked my travel documents and asked the standard sort of border patrol questions.  Unfortunately for me, the men were not going to allow me passage to our northerly neighbor nation.  After scanning some piece of identification I had presented, a printout from a computer (on what looked like receipt paper) told them that I was severely in debt to several state government bodies and could not be allowed out of the country until they were paid.  I owed $19,300 total to the governments of three states.  They then turned me away from the border and I walked back down the lonely highway toward my car.  What a relief it was to awaken and slowly recall that my problems aren’t that bad.

Tantalizing Teacup Transaction

I can recall only a brief snippet of my nocturnal hallucinations last night.  I found myself in some kind of pawn shop, except that this one was filled mostly with bicycles.  An assorted variety of other objects were crammed on the racks between bicycles.  Not the most organized or elegant operation I’d ever encountered.  Anyhow, it seemed my purpose for visiting the establishment was to score some scratch, as they say on the streets.  In my possession, I had a white and light-blue decorated teacup I wished to sell.  Somehow, this dream-teacup was incredibly valuable and I argued with the owner of the shop, who resembled my high school western civilization teacher, that the vessel was worth at least $20,000.  At the termination of negotiations, I accepted a $5,000 cash payment and I recall feeling satisfied with that.

I wish I had such a teacup in reality. It was disappointing to awaken without my pockets stuffed with cash.

Rapid Reptile Rampage

Last night, I was locked in combat with an alligator.  Our field of battle looked something like the parking lot at my workplace a few summers ago, with large metal garbage receptacles and cars strewn about the gravel ground cover.   I know very little of alligator agility in nature, but in my dream, this one was surprisingly nimble.  There seemed to be nothing I could do to evade it.  The reptile was faster than me in a straight line, could match all my changes in direction, and even followed me as I climbed over the cars and other potential obstacles.  Equipped only with a small pocketknife, things were not looking good for me.  I’m not sure how this dream situation ended, but was striking to me was the feeling of having given up entirely after just a few moments of attempting to escape the alligator.  I think I felt tired and just didn’t feel motivated to run away from it, which is problematic.  I know that despite the unnatural lightness of foot the creature possessed, I could have significantly stronger attempts to elude it.  Instead, I just sort of resigned that it would catch me and let it advance.  The last part I remember was sitting atop an automobile as the gator was on the hood.  My last hope, the knife, was in my hand.

Impermeable Apartment

Unfortunately, I don’t remember my dream from last night very well.  I’ve noticed that I have a much greater ability to recall dreams if I arise naturally without an alarm or other artificial awakening and then have a bit of time to consider recent subconscious sequences.  Returning to the dream, the most prominent aspect was that I spent a good deal of time alone outside the door to my old apartment in Ames, Iowa.  I looked in the window and saw no furniture or other possessions inside the unit just as I had left it in reality, but the door was locked.  Despite a struggle, I could not enter.

That place was perfect for me.

Vivacious Veyron Venture

My most recent remembered dream involved driving, which is one of my more favorite things to do.  In this dream, I had the good fortune to find myself piloting a Bugatti Veyron- the fastest production car in the world.  On a bright, warm day, I was really pushing the machine hard around what seemed to be most like the streets around the southwest corner of Ames, Iowa.  It felt fantastic.  Judging by what experience I do have with fast cars, I would suspect that the sensations I felt as I accelerated as hard as possible out of every stop and tested the limits of the tires adherence to the pavement at each corner were probably close to what I would perceive behind the wheel of the real thing.  Which is to say, of course, far beyond any vehicle I’ve ever been in control of.  At some point, I exited the vehicle and walked around the area, noting the presence of the apartment building I lived in sophomore year.  Aside from having free reign over such a fantastic machine in a consequence-free environment, other conditions of the dream seemed fairly normal.

Except that I was naked the whole time.

Fruity frivolous financial fiction

The bit of my dream I recall from last night had a fairly narrow focus.  My mother had just purchased an iPad, and dream-Charles got very upset.  Not that my mother had purchased an iPad, but that she had also purchased a great deal of silly and mostly useless accessories (which don’t exist in reality).  The worst one was a big ugly blue plastic contraption the tablet fit into which had a keyboard attached to it and was supposed to function as a sort of lap-desk.  In the confusing moments in the midst of waking up, I looked forward to playing with my mother’s new device, but within moments I remembered that my mom never really made such a purchase.

This dream does have some prompting from reality.  My mother works with children affected by various mental and learning disabilities and we had recently discussed advances in technologies to assist such people.  iPads were included in the discussion.  Additionally, my mother recently finished an American Sign Language class, and iPads have been used to aid in communication between deaf people and people who can hear.