Wherein Melancholia, Criminal Minds, Assassin's Creed, and a random assortment of sci-fi/fantasy nerdery have had way too much of an influence on my subconscious.

It has been a long time since I've had a dream worth remembering that I actually remembered long enough to write it down, but here I am again, with another quasi-apocalyptic, quasi-lucid dream.

This one's actually in Tunisia, but whatever.

I was sitting at the window of a minaret in 16th Century Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, but which was also kinda present-day, I think, staring at the sky.  It was night and the sky was dark and scattered with clouds.  A celestial body which I could not identify as the sun or the moon was on fire, encompassed by an eerie halo of flames, which sometimes appeared to snuff out into a halo of smoke, but then would reignite again.  Because clouds were passing across the sun/moon/whatever, I thought maybe I was just confusing cloud cover as smoke, but I wasn't sure.

Once again, Nick's painting, Equilibrium, depicts it best.

Suddenly, a dramatic spray of sparks showered from the mystery body into the clouds, and I realized that it was a planet that had just entered our atmosphere and was headed straight towards us.  As it burst through the clouds and sailed ever closer, I thought, Oh shit, this is it! This is really happening! The whole planet is going down! Wait, is this real? Or am I dreaming? Real? Dream? I can't tell!  The planet, whose diameter was roughly the length of a small town, floated by a few miles overhead. Oh hooray! It's going to be a fly-by! Wait, hold up, this has to be a dream. If this were real, that thing would have a much more destructive effect on the atmosphere, and wouldn't be moving so slowly. Yay! Just a dream!  With that comforting realization, I was able to watch calmly and curiously as the planet gradually descended and finally crashed about 20 miles away--just on the horizon.  The impact made a low, booming sound, and the shockwave rumbled outwards in slow motion.

I got down from my windowseat and ran down a flight of circular stairs into a round, candlelit room which was filled with my group of friends--which, in addition to Irene, Aaron, Nick, Natalie, Caitlin, and Chuck, also inexplicably included the cast of Criminal Minds and our fearless leader, Jeremy Irons dressed as a White Wizard, complete with flowing white hair and beard.

Too bad I don't care enough to Photoshop his face onto Ian McKellen's wizardy body.

Except for Mr. Irons, we were all dressed in period garb, but additionally had to put on stilts because apparently there were aliens among the humans of the city who were there to ensure that all of us stayed on the planet for its, and our, demise, and they would turn anyone who tried to escape into zombies.  The "people" who had paid to be on the planet were on stilts, whereas those who were serving the paid guests were the humans who had to be kept under control.  We were wearing stilts to disguise ourselves as paid guests.

Our task was to make our way through the bazaar to this wide, flat, paved area where we could make our escape.  We had broken up into smaller groups who were taking different routes in order to appear less suspicious.  My group was Irene, Chuck, and a Cuban woman who was not dressed in period garb, but rather a white tube top, white Daisy Dukes, and had a clitoral piercing donning a gigantic hoop earring that hung outside of her shorts and dangled between her legs.

Imagine that sucker hanging from your clit. Ouch.

Irene leaned over to me and whispered, "Do you know her? I don't remember her being a part of our group."  I looked at her closely and tried to remember if she'd ever been a cast member of Criminal Minds, then determined that she hadn't, and was therefore a stranger.  Chuck got up in her face and whispered harshly, "YOU ARE A SPY.  NO SELF-RESPECTING HUMAN WOULD WEAR A HOOP EARRING AS A CLIT PIERCING.  THAT IS A DEVICE TO SPY ON US AND GIVE AWAY OUR LOCATION, AND MUST BE DESTROYED."  He ripped the hoop earring out of her crotch and smashed it to pieces with his boot, but she didn't even flinch.  Irene yelled, "She's not human! That should've hurt like a bitch!"  Chuck threw her over a bridge into the water below and we hurried away.

But as we walked I realized that all the women of Criminal Minds had been captured and turned into zombies.  Even in a dream-state, however, I'm still a raging feminist, and since the dream was partially lucid I was like, "No.  I reject this.  This plot is completely misogynistic.  Women, you're fine.  Stop being zombies and get on with it."  All the women stood up straight, pushed past their captors and walked off into the crowd, which made me quite proud.

The part of the dream where we walked through the bazaar and buildings to get the meeting area was long, convoluted, and somewhat hazy, but the one noteworthy part was that I temporarily got separated from Irene and Chuck in a building that resembled the bar scene from Star Wars.

Except the aliens were, you know, incognito.

After we found each other again, we quickly arrived at our meeting place.  White Wizard Jeremy Irons handed us each a glowing cylinder, and we were supposed to stand in a certain pattern on the paving stones.  The shockwave from the crashed planet had finally reached the city and was starting to devour it.  It was getting close enough to us that we were being buffeted by hurricane force winds.  I shouted over the wind to Jeremy, "But where are we going to go?  The entire planet is destroyed!  There's nowhere else we can survive!"

"Wrong!" Jeremy crowed, "We're hitching a ride on the Heart of Gold!"

From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for those of you who aren't hip.

The glow from the cylinders swelled and enveloped us right as the force of the shockwave hit, and as a cascade of images flashed by in quick succession I thought, "This is so fucking nerdy.  You are such a nerd to be having this dream, Emily.  Ugh, just stop already."  Thus ended my nerdiest dream yet.

Desire Rekindled

It's been ages since I've had a dream I can remember at all, much less one worth blogging about.  I guess the thoughts that have been consuming my mind lately don't lend themselves to bizarre and fantastical dream interpretations.  Who knows.  At any rate, tonight I had a dream neither bizarre nor fantastical, but deliciously mundane.  It was simply this: someone gave me a cello--a well used, well loved acoustic instrument that was full size and therefore a wee bit too big for me.  I had to stretch my left arm up pretty high to get my hand in position around the fingerboard, and thought to myself, "It's a good thing I've been doing Dolphin Pose in yoga so much lately, because now my shoulders are flexible enough to comfortably play this cello!"  The smell of the cello reminded me of UT's Music building, and the memory sent a thrill through my body.  The varnish was worn off the belly in places, and I liked the way it felt as I ran my fingers across the surface to transition from the smooth varnished parts to the rough, almost sandy unvarnished areas.  I liked the way the weight of it felt against my thigh and chest.  Finally, I picked up the bow and started to play.  I was awful!  Of course!  I've never played a cello before.  I scratched and scraped and generally created cacophony, but instead of feeling frustrated or embarrassed, I just felt excitement: this was only the beginning, and now that I had a cello of my very own, I could start taking lessons and become an accomplished cellist.  Finally.  Finally!

Wherein I inhabit not one, but multiple, paintings.

Prologue: I went over to Nick's house the day before I dreamt the following and saw some of his new paintings, and they ended up becoming my dream world that night.  The three paintings that influenced the dream are included below.  To see the entire Reclaiming series, visit Nick's website.

Grows Back Stronger by Nick Baxter

I was in a world with no atmosphere, like the painting above (like all the paintings in this series, as a matter of fact), where all the stars and galaxies were clear and bright because nothing stood between the planet and the universe.  I was standing in front of a gigantic cactus, whose lowest lobe was partially dead and smoldering like an ember.  The rest of the lobes were green and living, but much higher above my head, so I didn't really look at them much.  The smoldering one was about ten feet tall and about eight feet wide.  It was so beautiful that I couldn't stop staring at its glowing heart, and I kept getting closer to it to soak in the warmth.  Avi was standing behind me and a little to my left, so I turned back to him and said, "It's so beautiful I wish I could hug it!  Too bad I can't!"

"Oh, but you can," he replied, and walked up and hugged the cactus.  As he hugged around the edge of the cactus, the orange glow of the cactus' heart spread to Avi's skin, and soon he was glowing as brilliantly and translucently as the cactus was.  With a surge of excitement, I spread my arms across the broad front of the cactus and pressed my body as close to it as possible.  My right cheek was pressed against it, so I was looking at my left arm, and I watched as first my hand, then my arm, then my whole body also began to glow.  I wasn't burning, only filled with a feeling of warmth and joy.  As I backed away, this wisp of light stretched between the cactus and me, eventually wafting up and dissipating.  I started moving my arms around, watching with delight as the glow traced my movements through the air like the lines of light that sparklers leave behind in a photo.

Avi and I started running around, waving our arms around and watching the shapes of light we were leaving behind.

Equilibrium by Nick Baxter
This painting wasn't in my dream; in fact, Nick painted it after I had this dream.  However, the orange wispy-glowy situation coming off the sun in this painting looks very much like the orange wispy-glowy situation coming off our arms in my dream.  Way to conjure up my dream image post hoc, Baxter.  You're creepy/psychic/awesome.

Eventually the glow faded out of our skin and we were normal again.  Then I noticed, off to our left, a gigantic supercell cloud that was glowing blue from the inside (bearing in mind that behind it was still the galaxy of stars rather than a sky; yes, I realize that defies the laws of this world's physics, but not my dream world's physics, apparently).

We started running up a low, broad hill at full speed towards the cloud, and as we ran I told Avi, "Oh! That's the cloud that Natalie and I wanted to take a picture of a few days ago!  Too bad we didn't have a camera!"  Of course, Avi replied, "I have a camera," and started taking pictures of the cloud as we ran (dream physics, remember: you can totally run and take perfect photos simultaneously in my world).

As we crossed the hill's apex and started running down the other side, I followed the cloud with my eyes down to its origin, and discovered that it was actually coming out of an ibex's skull.

The Hunter by Nick Baxter

We started running towards the skull, but the closer we got, the bigger it got, and soon I realized it was actually massive--the size of a large hill.  When we arrived at its base, we started walking up it.  Avi was walking much faster than I and got pretty far ahead, but I was busy avoiding all the skull suture lines.  I said, "I don't want to step on a crack or I'll break my mother's back!," but then I started laughing self-consciously: "I can't believe I'm 32 and still doing that!"  Avi just shrugged and said, "Better safe than sorry."

When we got up to the right horn, we started climbing it like a rock wall.  Pretty soon, however, it got broader, flatter, and less steep, and suddenly we were on a hiking trail at Maroon Bells.

Maroon Bells, CO

We were surrounded by aspens, and I realized that all the leaves were heart-shaped, like the leaf in this painting:

What Love Is by Nick Baxter

We were in a forest of silver bark and gold and orange heart-shaped leaves.  It was beautiful beyond description, and we just walked in stunned silence for what felt like a long time (but, obvs, it was a dream, so prolly just a few seconds).  Finally, I had to pee, so I walked off the trail into the woods looking for a place to go.  I woke up, realizing that I actually did have to pee.  Stupid bladder, waking me up from the most beautiful dream I've had in a really long time!

Olympic Snow Diving

I had a dream that didn't have much of a plot or story.  It was just me competing in this event in the Olympics called "Snow Diving", wherein you jump from a really tall platform that looked a lot like the ski ramps that are used for aerials, like so--

--except that they were completely vertical instead of sloped, and huge banks of snow were piled up against one side of them and then sculpted into perfect rectangles.  The point of the sport was to dive as perfectly and straightly as possible into the snow, and whoever dove the deepest before coming to a complete stop would win.

I dove off the platform into the snow, and it was such a vivid dream that I could feel the cold of the snow cutting through my gloves and making my fingers wet and numb, and I could hear the snow rushing past my ears as my body dove through it.  When I came to a stop, everything was still and dark and all the sounds of the outside world were muffled.  Eventually this machine that looked like something between a yellow dumptruck and one of those claws in the arcade games where you try to grab toys dug through the snow, picked me up, and set me down in this arena area.  I was trying to find my score to see if I won, but all the jumbotrons were playing some cartoon of a dancing balloon and a stick of bamboo that were alternately fucking each other and hiding from each other.  Everyone was too busy watching the cartoon to notice my dive.

Mazes, celebrities in trailer parks, Japanese food courts, condom commercials, and cannibalism: what's not to love?

Ok, I just have to say, I am *really proud* of myself, because this was a super long and detailed dream, and when I woke up I immediately spoke aloud some of the most prominent features of each segment of the dream so I'd remember them long enough to write it all down.  And it worked.  Here, in all its glory, is the longest, most detailed dream I've had in a really, really long time:

Mom, Dad, Bev and I were driving through the hill country to a piece of land owned by Mom and Dad's church.  We were going there to meet a former priest of the church (who has since moved away in real life) but Mom was the only one who'd been to the property before.  We parked in front of this field that was full of grasses that were waist tall or higher and was enclosed by a fence made of galvanized wire laid out in 4"x4" squares and framed by unstained 2"x4" wood.  The fences were about 8' tall.  We walked through a door in the fence, made of the same material, and on the other side realized that a series of narrow passageways had been made out of that same fencing material, all jutting off in different directions, like a maze.  Some had clear plastic doors, though, while others were made of the same galvanized wire and wood.  Mom was leading us through the passages, which were complex and convoluted, and I was afraid we were going to get lost.  "Don't worry," Mom reassured us, "I've been here several times.  I know the way."  I commented that I was surprised that people didn't get lost out there, to which she replied, "Oh, lots of people do.  Parishioners have to call me all the time because they get lost.  Even people who live out here get lost.  That's why you'll see people pissing in their own front yards out here; they're so lost they don't even realize how close they are to their own homes."

Suddenly, we were back in the car, and it was parked in a dirt lot across the street from a row of rundown country houses.  Our headlights were shining on a dude who was pissing in his front lawn while talking on his cell phone to someone, saying, "I just don't know where I am!"  I could hear the voice on the other end of the phone going, "Just turn around.  Turn... around!"  Then I realized the pissing guy was Judah Friedlander from 30 Rock:

Then I turned around and looked behind us and realized that the lot we were parked in was in front of a row of food trailers that were all, like, country cookin'.  You know... one was BBQ, one was soul food, one was cajun food, etc.  There were picnic tables between the food trailers and the parking lot we were in, and gathered around the picnic table directly behind us were Jack Black, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Amy Sedaris, and Amy Sedaris again, but this time dressed as Jerri Blank.  Yes, Amy Sedaris was there twice, simultaneously, standing right next to her other self.

As we were driving away, I looked at Amy through our rear windshield and said, "I love you, Amy Sedaris!"  She saw me, we made eye contact, and I could tell she was a little creeped out by it.  Bev, who was sitting next to me in the backseat, started laughing hysterically: "You totally freaked her out just now!"  "I know!" I responded, "I can't decide if that's the best or the worst thing ever!"  "Well," Bev replied, "At least Jerri Blank doesn't look too upset." While Amy-as-herself was still watching us and looking pretty disturbed, Amy-as-Jerri was leaning over to David Cross and pointing at our car.  Both of them were laughing at us.

We drove to another dirt lot not too far away, also filled with food trailers, but this one had Christmas lights strung up between the booths and over the picnic tables.  Dad wasn't with us anymore, so it was just Mom, Bev and me.  Mom and Bev wanted to go to the seafood trailer, but I wasn't in the mood for anything on that menu.  I walked down to the next trailer, but everything on the menu was smothered in chili: chili burgers, chili fries, chili baked potatoes, etc.  The next one over, however, was called "Baconlicious!!1!" (yes, with the number 1 inserted among the exclamation points) and served a wide variety of foods in large paper cups along with strips of bacon.

I read the menu thoroughly and couldn't decide what to get.  In addition to obvious items like bacon burgers, bacon baked potatoes, and bacon and eggs, they had lobster/artichoke/bacon, penne/sundried tomatoes/bacon, truffles/risotto/bacon, sardines/bacon, sweet potato wedge fries/mayonnaise/chives/bacon, sushi rolls/bacon...the list went on and on.  The menu was written in Japanese, and I was very proud of myself for remembering enough Japanese to be able to read it.

Suddenly, Baconlicious!!1! wasn't an outdoor food trailer, but was in a food court at a mall, and I was with Jay instead of Mom and Bev.  Actually, even though it was a food court at a mall, supposedly, it looked a lot like the Jack in the Box on Guadalupe--or at least, what I remember of it from my old UT days.  Or maybe it was the Burger King on Guadalupe.  I can't remember.  It's been a while.  Anyway, there were signs posted everywhere warning that certain scenes from Avatar may be awkward for people with interracial friendships.  Jay was disgusted, saying that anyone who felt awkward about interracial friendships should go back to the 19th Century where they belonged.  I was just about to agree with him when these two teen boys - one black, one white - walked up to the soda fountain where Jay and I were standing and very loudly and obnoxiously said exactly what Jay had just said, verbatim.  Jay looked at them with irritability and said, "Uh...yeah...I just said that..."  The boys started laughing hysterically and walked off.
(As a side note, when looking for photos to go with this section of the dream, I found these two gems:

So, ok, apparently, my brain isn't the only one that likes to make up stupid shit about Avatar being racist.  Good to know.)

I was super thirsty, but the only beverage that worked at the soda fountain was Coke.  I didn't want Coke, but I was desperate, so I filled my cup.  They didn't have normal straws there, either, just those thick, narrow, candy cane shaped straws you can find in the holiday section of grocery stores during the Christmas season.  The Coke kept getting stuck in the straw at the highest point, but would not come all the way out.  I kept sucking harder, but it would just suck the straw flat, and nothing came out.  I was super thirsty, and my neck was hurting from having to tilt it in that awkward, upside-down position to get to the mouth of the straw, but it never occurred to me to just take the lid off and drink directly from the cup.  Apparently, dream-me was rather stupid.

There were jumbo screens suspended from the ceiling all around the building, and one of them was above the soda fountain.  A commercial came on for condoms that were meant specifically for your car, and it was shot in the style of those obnoxious toy commercials from the '80s: the voiceover dude was talking in a really exaggerated, aggressively excited voice, the music was super-pumped up flying-V guitars, and the camera would zoom in and out repeatedly in quick, jerking movements.  Also, the actors were dressed like horrible '80s soap opera stars with horrible '80s clothes, makeup, and hair.  Everyone was shot in soft focus.  The voice over dude was talking about how these car condoms were versatile, and worked great for:
*"Men going down on women!" - cut to a dude in the passenger seat moving his head down to the driver lady's lap
*"Women going down on men!" - cut to a woman in the passenger seat moving her head down to the driver dude's lap
*"Sex in the backseat!" - cut to this couple in a backseat making these really over-acted, unconvincing O-faces

*"Making pit stops at your boyfriend's house for a quickie on the way to work!" - cut to a woman tearing into a driveway in her maroon Cutlass, jumping out of the car with her gigantic brown leather purse, and rushing up the driveway towards the front door
*"...and there's even a special tip for sucking on nipples!!!" - cut to a dude placing a still-rolled-up condom over his girlfriend's nipple and then sucking on it through the condom.  She looked right at the camera with her frizzy blonde perm flying everywhere and gave the camera a thumbs up.  I asked aloud, "Why the fuck would you need a condom to suck on nipples?  Mouth herpes??"  No one answered me, though, so I never found out, sadly.

After the commercial was over, a short film came on that was made by Jay, making fun of the condom commercial we'd just seen.  In the film, lego men played the parts of the director and all the film crew.  I didn't get to see the whole film, but the part I saw was making fun of how their location scouts picked the house for the boyfriend quickie scene.  The lego man director stood in the middle of the street and the lego man location scouts turned him round and round while he pointed his uni-digited yellow hand at the houses and did, "Eeny meeny miny mo."  The score for the film was FlyLo's Adult Swim music.

Painting by Evan Lovett

Suddenly, I was in Jay's truck with Nick and Benjamin.  We were going to Thunderheart to get a bison. I was driving, Benjamin was in the passenger seat, and Nick was sitting between us.  Nick turned to me and goes, "You smell like chocolate."  I was like, "Dude, I told you I was going to start using that cocoa butter on the tattoo, remember?"  He goes, "You know I like to eat chocolate.  Can I eat you?"  I replied, rather emphatically, "I am NOT a kangaroo, dude!"  But then I jutted out my hip and pulled my pants down just enough to expose a few inches of skin and said, "Actually, I'm too fat around my hips and belly, so eat as much of that as you want."  He pulled a fork and a knife out of his back pocket, leaned down, and actually bit the shit out of my hip.  I looked down and there was a perfect full dental imprint on my hip, and it was starting to bleed a little bit.  "Ow, dude!  I can't believe you actually fucking bit me!  That fucking hurt!"  He sat up straight and looked at me quizzically: "Sorry, but you told me I could.  Are you mad at me?"  I looked at him for a few seconds and realized he was being sincere.  "No, actually, I'm kind of turned on," I replied, "Who knew that being bitten super hard would be such a turn on for me?"  Then I woke up 'cos my hip was actually, really hurting.

That last part of the dream is entirely due to an actual conversation that Nick and I had about cocoa butter and my tattoo, and this picture of Nick, in Australia, looking at wild kangaroos, with a fork in his back pocket:

Lucky bastard.