have you had any strange dreams lately? do you know what mine could mean?

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Answers

Hey:

whoever it is that's trying to post as me on the message boards:

stop it.

That's not nice.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 1999

weird dreams... i've been having strange dreams lately, last night i had killer juices in my basement that were only supposed to be tadpolejuice, but grew up, and tonight i dreamed about senora garrett calling me to sing. she's my spanish teacher, psychotically crazed should-be-teaching-elementary-school type person... she likes to talk really loudly about personal things and point out that if you fail a test you can take it again. not that failing a test in her class is easy since she gives you all the answers. but she called me, and was crying because lots of kids like to sleep in and i shouldn't be like them, and then she burst into song. and then she put another student on the phone and made me explain why i would want to sleep in on a school day (which i did, oddly enough). it was disturbing.

ay caramba, i must abuse the forum and advertise! http://members.tripod.com/~astrianna/accentuate

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Maybe it has something to do with Eric wanting to go see your grandmother.. it being a 'big step' sort of thing. The meanness is just the Red Bull talking.

Although I've been having some freaky dreams about my wife wanting a divorce, where she's all mean. But, of course, that just isn't reality.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Pamie, I don't have even a clue as to what your dream could have meant. I have so many strange dreams myself that it would take forever to just pick out just one to tell you about, let alone actually know what any of them meant (although the most memorable one was from when I was a kid - in the dream I went to the top of the staircase in the hall of the building we lived in and looked down, only too see these huge ketchup and mustard bottles walking by, as if in a parade and being terrifed of them).

Just like you, I also have experienced bad dreams about people to the point where I've woken up and been mad at this person, even though I knew it was unfair. It would usually linger for about an hour after waking up until I could finally let go of it. And I even once asked my then-boyfriend to apologize for something he did in a dream - and I was only half kidding.

To change the subject just a little bit, I would like to write about the best dream I ever had. My boyfriend had this big fight that night and I ended up having a nightmare. I don't even remember what the nightmare was about, but all of a sudden, my then-boyfriend came to me and put his arms around me and *poof* - I woke up. No one has ever come to me in a nightmare before and when I opened my eyes, I looked at my boyfriend laying there and just wispered "thank you" even though I know that if that nightmare had been real, he'd have been gone long before I had the chance to ask for help.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

I originally wrote this as a reply to your entry in an e-mail. Then I noticed your forum message and decided to paste my e-mail here also.

Just from what little everybody knows about you, I think the wedding/star wars contrast represents the contrast between your real life and the life you have maintaining your journal.

You depict yourself as somewhat self-conscious, so your disappointment with your wedding, I think, represents your disappointment trying to please others, only to have people be evil behind your back, whatever that means.

Playing with the star wars dolls represents your life maintaining your journal, because, to the people from whom you get zilch from trying to please, doing your daily web journal looks like you are a child playing.

Of course my interpretation of your dream may say more about me than it does about you. But, if my interpretation is in fact the case, the question for you then becomes: what are you going to do about it? (Don't feel obliged to reply. Like I'm saying, it's just an idea.)

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

You would have to ask this the day after I dream that I'm a surgeon on M*A*S*H trying to deal with a woman who attempted suicide by swallowing cyanide.

I'm also sure there was a dog....

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Pamie, man, your dream has so much symbolism that I wouldn't know where to begin. I think the main point of the whole dream is your deep desire to play with Star Wars action figures on your wedding day.

But it's weird that you had a dream where you knew you took LSD but never took it before. I had a dream where I smoked crack and I've never smoked crack before. It was the weirdest feeling. I remember being very scared when I realized that I just smoked crack. I also felt very dirty too. Weird, huh?

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

I also have dreams where I do very bad things. Like I'm sitting in the dream trying to figure out how to get the dead body stuffed in my trunk and where I should dump off the car and then I wake up and go, "OH MY GOD! THANK GOD IT WAS JUST A DREAM! I CAN'T BELIEVE I KILLED THAT GUY."

I also have that dream where I think I've been drugged and then I wake up before my body wakes up and I'm all stuck there and frozen and inside my brain is screaming, "I can't move!"

And when I fly in my dreams, i don't really fly, I jump up and down, higher and higher until I pass some point of atmosphere or something where I can no longer stay attached to the earth and then I'll float off into space if I don't hold onto something.

It's terrifying, really. I hate it when I fly.

I think I need to be put on some drugs...

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Oh, I have those flying dreams, but I really do fly.. unless I suddenly think that "Geeze, I can't fly." then I fall and I have work hard to get back in the air.. but then I can float, swoosh, and whathaveyou.

The strangest are those Mission Impossible type dreams wher I'm in this big consipracy, or some type of war, or infiltrating some evil place and I was just some normal guy on the street who got wrapped up into it and I have to lead a bunch of people. Half of the time, I get frozen, half the time I perform like a superhero.

I watch too many movies, I think.

The best dreams, though, are when you take control, when you know you are dreaming and you start to force things to happen the way you want them to. That happens a lot in the flying and mission impossible dreams, too.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

That's called "lucid dreaming," when you can take control of your dreams. I tried for years to get to do that. I used to have really bad nightmares when I was younger.

One way they say you can start doing it is to look at your hands all the time and think to yourself, "I'm aware of what I'm doing, I'm looking at my hands." And then when you have a bad dream, just make yourself look at your hands in the dream and then you can start having control.

Gives new meaning to "The Saftey Dance," I know: "Everybody look at your hands."

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Stung,

Your posting seems sarcastic. Is there something you wanted to say?

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

When I was terribly young, I had the most terrifying dream that I had an older brother (not my real older brother, but one even older than *him*), who got caught on a giant escalator, and was carried away, crying, never to return.

I didn't realize it was a dream for months and months until one day I mentioned to my mom that I really missed my older brother. And she said something to the effect of, "But he's right here!" To which I replied, no, my *other* brother.

It took weeks to get me to realize it was just a bad dream...

And sometimes I have the sneaking suspicion that that whole "dream" story is just a cover-up for some pretty negligent parents. (Be careful around escalators, folks!)

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Pamie, I used to have a dream similar to what you describe about flying away into the atmosphere, not being attached to anything. For me it was a recurring dream where I was in an elevator that shot up and out the top of a skyscraper and just kept going. And I always knew that eventually it would stop going up and fall back down to the ground, but I always woke up before impact.

A friend of mine who studied dream interpretation said that this type of dreaming is symbolic of fear of failure. I.e., you're afraid you'll shoot up up up in success but then come crashing down. My reaction to that explanation was just "yeah, whatever." I thought it sounded sort of dopey. But interestingly, I never had that dream again after that.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Last night I dreamed that I called up my local radio station, one I rarely listen to anymore, to enter a call-in contest. I was talking to Barry Lee who is the local radio celebrity, and who hosts the morning show on this station. He was asking me all these questions and he somehow decided I had "Nothing but time on my hands." So he decided he would award me a prize package of "The opposite of 'Nothing but time on my hands.'" So then I get this huge package on my porch, and inside in a Cabage Patch kid with all kinds of outfits and weird things and a pair of live rabbits. The Cabbage Patch kid is one of those educational child care dolls that have been going around my school this week. You have to care for it and at the end you get a computer score on how well you did. ANYWAY, it is blond and I wear one of those baby back carriers out to feed my new rabbits. Then I woke up.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

mike,

It was a joke. See, I said that pamie's dream has a lot of symbolism (which it did) then I offered a very literal explanation. Humor!

As for having something to say, I said it. I had a dream like pamie where I did a drug I never did before. I think that's weird.

pamie,

I have that dream when I wake up and I can't move all the time. I hate it. My head is always titled or something so it feels like my neck is broken. This happens because sometimes when you dream you become paralyzed (I assume to prevent you from acting out your dreams in real life). So sometimes you wake up before the rest of your body becomes unparalyzed. It's pretty scary.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

It is true that when you sleep, your body is paralyzed so you don't act out your dream. And that reminded me of something funny. If I ever cry or laugh in my dream, I do it for real. I one time had this very funny dream, all I can remember is laughing very hard. When I woke up, my grandmother told me that she heard me laughing a lot in my sleep.

A few times I've cried in a dream and when I woke up, my face and pillow were wet. One time I was crying really hard in my dream and then just woke up. It was so quick, that I guess my brain didn't know that I had woken up and I just kept crying until I fell back asleep.

And as far as controlling lucid dreams, I never figured out how. I've had many lucid dreams but only once was I able to control what happened. One thing I am able to control, somewhat, is going back into a dream after waking up. I hate when I'm having a great dream and I wake up. It used to bother me so much that I started to try to go back to the dream and most of the time it worked. Pretty cool. :)

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Earthling Known As Stung!

Tell me of this Weak Earth Emotion called Humor!

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

... i mean ... sorry ...

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Pamie, I don't want to come off sounding like an obsessed fan, but it seems like when something happens to me in my life, I read about it (or something very similar)in your journal a few days later...

No, I didn't get married in my dreams, but last friday night I was out with some friends and I did my first (and probably last) tequila shot. Let me tell you...the alcohol made me have some really spooky dreams that night. The worst of the night was someone had just told me that my boyfriend had died and I woke up crying, squirming around, and in the process of my breakdown, I woke my boyfriend up too.

Besides that, I always seem to have dreams where I'm held hostage, or that I'm running from someone that is trying to hurt me..I'm sure this has some deep meaning behind it (besides the fact that i'm crazy :) but I don't know what my dreams are trying to tell me...

~Angela~

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

I used to have lucid dreams all the time. The secret is to get lots of sleep and don't use an alarm clock. They can't happen during deep sleep. Unfortunately I no longer get much sleep due to work and a family. I haven't had one in years.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

Pamie,

If I can butt in again, spelling out what may seem obvious, it looks like your naked wedding dream may represent how you see courtship in the US from an outsider's point of view: absurd.

At the time of your dream, did you find the open display of emotion to be excessive (in general and in your relationship at the time)?

As for others trying to cover up your roommate, did she have difficulty dating at the time? Were there people who created obstacles for her?

(Can anyone tell that I have a very uneven work schedule?)

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

I never remember my dreams. Well... almost never. I had a really bad one about a year ago, and I can't remember exactly what happened in it, but it was not good. I mean it was BAD. I actually couldn't sleep the next night, which never happens to me. It had something to do with that movie "Event Horizon" I think. God-awful film.

Anyway, never remember your dreams really sucks. Especially when you know something good happened, and you just don't know what. I could spend the rest of the day trying to remember what my dream was about. I read someplace that you can learn a technique that helps you remember & analyze your dreams... There's something to do in your spare time... Maybe it's like that lucid dream stuff, I don't know. And now I'm rambling incessently. Splendid.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

pamie, you should know that drinking something called "Red Bull" will bring you harm. Didn't you ever read or see "the Last Unicorn?"

-- Anonymous, May 17, 1999

oh, lucid dreaming. i learned how to do that in junior high school and got to be in control of everything in dreams. then sometime a few years later that power got thwarted. i'd think, i want my naked classmate over there, but then she'd turn into a chicken, or my mother, or something. the trick to learning lucid dreaming, as i read in that magazine article that changed my junior high school life, is to get into the habit of asking yourself in the daytime whether you're dreaming. i don't know why that would work, it's probably just trusting a "trick" at all that's the key. like waking yourself up from a dream, everybody has their own way of doing that. mine was to curl into a fetal ball and shut my eyes tight. anyway i recommend trying lucid dreaming to everybody. maybe somebody else read the magazine article all those years ago and can explain this phenomenon more clearly and instructively?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 1999

I have had the "done a drug I've never done in real life" dream. (cocaine). The interesting thing being that it made me grind my teeth in the dream, and as I was sleeping -- which a pal with a long-conquered coke habit later informed me actually can be a side effect of doing a lot of cocaine. A thing I didn't know at the time. OOH! SPOOKY! Also had the "wedding planned quickly and done wrong" dream. Pamie, I think it's just a basic subconscious wedding-want/wedding-fear dream. Nothing to worry about. You probably just happened to involve the Star Wars figures because you were thinking a lot about Star Wars, what with the entry and all. Also had the "boyfriend does something evil and/or annoying" dream after which I wake up and am still angry.

I've had a lot of crazy dreams in my life, but the wierdest that I think applies involves consuming something before sleep, like Red Bull. Except it was Nyquil, because I was sick. Both times I've take Nyquil I've had horribly vivid dreams that I couldn't quite wake up from -- one about rats, and another about drowning. I kind of woke up during the drowning one and felt like I couldn't escape sleeping, I couldn't wake up completely and get out of the dream. Sucked. I never took Nyquil again, that's how bad it was.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 1999

I have a lot of critter dreams. In the most recent one I remember keeping a nest of snakes in my stomach. Apparently they liked the body heat. Whenever one would want to come out I would just lean over into the puking position and let it slowly crawl out. The only thing that struck me as strange during the dream was the fact that they weren't covered with gastric juice when they emerged. Covering myself with insects is another consistent theme in several of my dreams. It's not like I am repulsed by it either - it's more like "Hee hee...those tarantula legs sure are tickly"!

One of the stranger dream experiences I had was when I was in Air Force technical school about 4 years ago. I was awakened in the middle of a dream by my alarm clock (set to go off at 3:41 in the morning). The dream was so freakish and so off-the-wall that I started laughing uncontrollably for the next 45 minutes or so. Everyone else in the dorm section thought I was going to pull out a gun and start shooting, but I suppose it was just my stressed-out brain forcing me to blow off a little steam.

I now only dream on weekends, when I actually have a normal sleep/wake cycle.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 1999

Chris,

The tech school dream you are refering to: is it the vomiting Disney characters dream?

Yes, people, I know this guy. I think someone needs to research for any increase in missing person or missing pet reports during the weekends.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 1999

I have lots of different kinds of dreams, but the most common are the kind like you're in a movie, with all these characters, and an actual story, or the lucid dreams, where I kinda half know I'm dreaming, and can actualy make the dream do what I want sometimes. Some dreams, though, are just weird, and have no head or tail, and usualy involve me running away/hiding from someone/something.

The best ones, I think, are the story ones, since I am a big Fantasy/Sci-fi person, and my dreams often involve things like doing magic and saving the world and lazer guns and dragons and all kinds of that cool stuff. They usualy also involve my fiancee, since he manages to infiltarte almost every dream I have.

The worst ones are the ones that I have had a couple of times where I spend simply interminable periods knowing that my fiancee is just horribly angry at me but I don't know why. I keep trying to find out what I did, but I never find out, and I wake up feeling like crud. I had one dream where this really creepy guy was like, almost stalking me, and he ended up grabbing my wrists and forcing me to kiss him. Then my fiancee comes in, and thinks that I'm cheating on him, and I spend the rest of the dream trying to get him to let me explain, only he's so hurt he won't listen, and this creep just keeps following me and laughing, and since my fiancee's so upset, he won't make him go away. These are really weird, because I would never even think of doing something like that, and there have been very few times when my fiancee was even annoyed with me, much less angry...and they never even last for very long. I guess I'm just paranoid.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 1999

Anybody else see "Eyes Wide Shut?" (I could go on and on about that one...but I won't.) In the movie, Nicole Kidman is dreaming when Tom Cruise comes into the bedroom. Dreaming, and laughing kind of all evil-like. The dream is supposed to be about doing bad things to Tom Cruise and laughing at him. At the time, I thought, "Oh, come on. Nobody really laughs out loud in that evil way while they're sleeping."

The night after we saw the movie, I had this dream where I was laughing at my boyfriend, (in a sort of evil-type way) and I swear, I woke up and heard myself indeed actually laughing out loud. Damn, I am SO suggestible.

(On the other hand, my boyfriend never heard me laughing, despite the fact that he was there in the bed next to me. Maybe I dreamed that I dreamed that I was laughing? Now I'm confused.)

-- Anonymous, July 22, 1999

i have many strange strange dreams. a most notable one is one i had when i was about eight or ten years old, and i can still remember it vividly and i still remember to this day...when i close my eyes, the pictures are still in my head, but it's hard to tell in detail. Running down a huge hall with tin armor along the wall, then suddenly on a cot in a dark room. Being raped by Patrick Swayze,(and it was somewhat graphic) and knowing he got my sister too because he had her underwear tied around is leg, Punky Brewster bandana style... i think it was provoked by watching too much "Dirty Dancing" non-stop. i've never attempted to analyze that one.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 1999

Ooookaaay... Well that last one was a little disturbing (Megan's, not yours so much , Pamie). My latest sort-of freaky dream took place in the desert. I think it was because I had just finished the Stephen King/Bachman, Desperation/Regulators books. If you've read the books you'll understand, if not, don't worry about it. Anyway, I'm in the desert and everything is very vivid. It's night, but I can see the sky is a very deep blue (midnight blue, I guess) and the sand is a very dark reddish color. I can see a little ways in front of me because of the light that is mounted on the sled. Oh, did I mention I was riding in Santa Claus's sled? Well, I think it's Santa, but he looks like a younger, rougher, post-apocalyptic version; he's got a salt and pepper beard, no shirt and camoflauge pants. He kind of reminded me of the hawk guy in Flash Gordon. So Santa is driving, but Billy Blanks(tm)'s daugher is behind us in the sled (again, I think it's her because I know what she looks like from her voice, but I never actually turn around in the dream) and Santa starts arguing with her. He hands me the reins and turns around to argue. At this point I notice that we only have one reindeer and that for some reason we are on the road (weird huh? I mean why not fly?), and it's a little hard to steer. So, I turn him off to the side. Now the reindeer seems to have a little bit better traction, but something surfaces in the back of my mind from Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now--"Don't get off the road unless you're going all the way". I start to hear coyote howls off in the distance. Then I hear a low growl. At first I think its from behind me, then I realize it's me. At that point my eyes bulge out and I start to laugh maniacally (really creepy if you've read either Desperation or the Regulators).

Right then I wake up: not from my dream, mind you, but from the hallucination within my dream. Now I'm in a convertable parked at a gas station in the desert and I realize that all of this was just a peyote trip and I should be moving my car before a cop comes along.

I think there are 2 reasons for this dream. 1: I recently went through a long audition process for a post-apocalyptic film set in the desert in which I would play a punk tripping in the desert. 2: Continuing theme of dreams in which I'm scared by the possibiliy of being evil. The scariest of these was one in which the devil came to my front door. I started laughing, telling him I knew why he was there and no, he couldn't have my soul. Then he started laughing and said he already had it. That freaked me out enough to wear a crucifix for the rest of the night.

Okay, I guess I shouldn't say anything about anyone else having kooky dreams.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 1999

The Don't get off the road... idea is a theme common in a lot of fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretal, Wizard of Oz, et al. Have you made a dramatic path change of any kind recently? It may be related to the losing your soul dream, in that your subconscious may be telling you you've made a wrong turn somewhere, and need to get back on track.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 1999

Your dream also made me think of The Lost Highway, where the character is haunted by the possibility that he is damned, until he actually deliberately commits an evil act, and then he's on the lost highway. David Lynch is funny that way. (I just had to mention a Bill Pullman movie, before the reference got cold.)

-- Anonymous, July 27, 1999

Huh. This topic is long-dead, but I just wanted to get the dream I had last night out into the open.

So I'm in my English class - well, the one from my junior year in high school - and I'm talking to this girl that graduated a year before me. She tells me we're having a substitute that day, and I'm all like, cool. So he comes in. And it's Alan Rickman (the Hans Gruber guy from Die Hard, Metatron from Dogma?). Anyway, he's a total hottie, and I'm all excited. Well, he keeps asking me questions and calling on me and I'm getting all hot and bothered and then he puts his arms around me and asks me what I'm doing that evening and I'm like, "Nothing" and he's like, "Want me to take you hostage?" and of course you know I'm all about Alan taking me hostage, so I say sure. And then I woke up, dammit.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2000

Man, the resurrection of this thread is so timely. I've posted (okay, started an entire topic) about this over at another board, *cough* Hissyfit *cough*, just today. Last night, I had a dream that I had *ahem* sexual relations with George Hamilton. (Hey, Sandman! It couldn't have been someone sexy like Christopher Walken, BD Wong, Tim Roth or Liam Neeson? Oh, no. You had to give me George Hamilton.) He was very good at, um, "it", he smelled like vanilla, and he is tanned everywhere. The hell? I think my subconscious needs a little medical attention.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2000

Jodie... why George Hamilton? Why?? Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you that you need a vacation - a day at the beach, so you, too, can be tanned like Mr. Hamilton. I think mine's telling me that I need to break into the acting business so I can fulfill my dreams of being involved with a man 34 years older than myself. Yeah, that's it. Hollywood, here I come! Someone tell Alan I'm on my way!

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Okay, now this is WEIRD. I've just awoken from a nap and had to come straight here and tell you all about the dream I just had. In the dream, I had just moved into a new apartment and, as it turns out, my next door neighbour was Johnny Depp, conveniently sans woman and kid. So we get to know each other, and he asks me out. After a few weeks (dream-time moves at any rate it wants, I guess), I meet his other girlfriend, of whom I had previously had no knowledge. And guess who the girlfriend is- it's Pamie! She bitchslaps me and tells me to leave her Johnny alone. So it turns into a full-on Jerry Springer punch up. Wonder what this means. Other than that I watch too many Tim Burton films and spend too much time online, that is. ;)

Oh, and Mia- I have NO idea why I would dream about sleeping with George Hamilton. And furthermore, I would sooner eat nail polish than tan myself into the leather handbag he's become.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Mmm... I do love a man that feels like leatha'.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

By the way (off topic), I'm confused- is Pamie pronounced Pammy or Pay-me? Yeah, I'm so lame.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Pamie, as in "whammy" or "panties". :)

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000