I had a dream I was walking around at night in the park, where I grew up, and behind the swingset, there was this 3-4 story brick building.  It looked like an old tavern or inn, but it was beautifully maintained with a nice porch and white shutters on the windows.  It had a for sale sign in front of it.  Across the front door in big gold plate letters “Washington Train Museum” was written.  I walked in and everything was very clean, but obviously it was closed.  The front lobby had a gift shop area.  The upstairs was a restaurant.  As I walked up the wooden staircase to the third floor, it overlooked the dining area of the restaurant.  In the third floor, there were a few rooms, like offices perhaps.  One of them had a light on inside, behind a sheet that covered the door way.  I walked in, and there was a man standing in there.  He was an artist of some sort, definitely a hint of mystery about him.  He was in his 30s, black hair, thin black beard and mustache, and dressed like you’d expect someone from the early 1900s to dress with a tightly fit vest and sleeves rolled up.  He seemed welcoming and asked if I was interested in buying the building.  I told him that I didn’t remember the building being there when I was a kid, so I knew that it was not a permanent building.  I was so very impressed with potential of the place though, so I asked him how I could be sure people would be able to get to it if I did buy it and try to reopen it to the public.  He seemed entertained that I had figured out the building was a sort of “traveling” building.  Then I came up with the idea that I’d have to market it as a place where you could visit in your dreams.  Only such a lovely place could be rationalized as existing in a dream world.

We shook hands.  I woke up.

I’m starting to question memory in dreams.  In some of my more recent dreams, the feeling of being familiar with the dream happens.  Does this mean that I really did dream about that dream before, or is it all part of the fantasy and illusions in dreams?

Recently, I’ve had dreams that I’m in a play or a musical back at my high school.  I have to remember all my lines and dance routines and cues.  Last night’s dream was the actual performance of the play, and I had such a hard time remembering all my lines and parts, but I was very familiar with them.  There was a complicated costume change where I had to wear some sort of Roman soldier chest plate under my dress shirt so that I could make a critical change quick enough.  I remembered rehearsing that part…or did I?

I’m really curious as to whether my dreams are picking up fragments of old dreams and I’m interpreting them as memories.  Or maybe I’m just being fooled into thinking I’ve dreamed about it before.  Broken down, it’s all just chemical and biological reactions.

I’m actually getting a little stressed out about it in my waking life, as well as my dream state.  I’m worried that I’m not creating more unique dreams but I’m stuck on the same recycled concepts.  I’m worried my dream memory is failing and my dreams will not be as fun as they used to.  Maybe my dreams will wind up just being similar to the real life of an old man with Alzheimer’s.  Am I there already?

I’m hugging a pillow
But I wish I had my arms around you
The road winds around a mountain
And I enjoy the never-ending view
The farthest peak seems so far
But you’re beyond them still
And if I could drive that distance, I would
But a car will never get me there

I’m listening to the mix tape I made
Between the road, tires, and my mind, a serenade
The symphony of rubber meets asphalt
The harmony of driving without halt
They all intertwine to form a musical epic
And I’m living in that moment
Because it’s the only one there will ever be.
And it’s along the way to destiny.

The wheel and my stomach turn
Along these back roads and high hopes
The tachometer becomes my time piece
And it ticks away as I dream
With both hands on the wheel, I’m not moving
But everything around me is whirling by
And I see the exit out of the corner of my eye

Big green signs dot my highway
And display names of places that I’ve never been
To meet names and faces that I’ve never seen
And I’d do that, on my stop for dinner
But I’d only stay for a little while
Wanting to get back on the road; on my way
Seatbelt fastened and ready to drive
Moving like the dead, but feeling so alive.

I’ve written before that I’m convinced [at least my] deja vu’s are my past dreams coming true.  Part of my dream blogging is an effort to prove that.  The hard thing is to separate the dreams from things that can possibly happen from the impossible, and then remember the non-remarkable dreams after waking, and the final step is usually the kicker, to blog about it.  It’s easy to blog about the entertaining, far-fetched, or intriguing dreams, but it’s hard to place importance on the dreams, or part of the dreams, where I’m sitting at a table with 3 people and someone says or does something and another person says or does something else in reply.

A lot of my dreams take place at the estate (the house where I grew up).  I would say it’s the most frequent dream location, with Heritage Hills (the school I attended from 3rd grade until 9th grade) being a close second.  Both of these places no longer exist.  I know these will never turn into a deja vu.

A lot of my dreams involve my dad, or me at high school, or just at a younger age.  I know these can never happen.

It’s the dreams that are mundane, or even with people that I don’t know (yet?) that I need to focus on and document.

Sometimes, my dreams are hard to deal with.  Sometimes, I do things that I’d be ashamed to do in real life.  My dreams are in my memory though, so they don’t just fade away.  I remember them, as if I did them.  If the act alone is not bad enough, sometimes the emotions that go along with it make it a nightmare.  In real life, I’ve trained myself how to deal with my emotions.  Possibly as a result, my dreams become emotionally intense, and that emotion does not go away when I wake up…

She’s standing on the landing to the upstairs of my house.  I get down on my knees to be at her height and she laughs at me.  “How old are you, Daddy?”, she says to me as I chase her up a few steps.  “I’m 37″, I reply, knowing I’m lying, but not really able to remember the right answer.  She says she’s older than me.  I look at her analytically to figure out her age.  “No way, you’re like a 2 year old, Jule.”

I know her name.  She’s my daughter.  She looks like Mara Wilson of “Matilda” and Mrs. Doubtfire, only with shorter blonde hair.

As she climbs a few more stairs to the top, she calls out that she’s taller than me now.  I crawled up to her and tackled her to put her under my height again as she laughs.  Kallie’s at the top of the stairs, holding our son.  “I’m going to give Micah a bath.”,  she says.  I reply, “OK, I’ll keep Jule busy.”  As I roll around with Jule, a yellow lab comes up the stairs and joins in on the fun.

And then they’re gone.  Your first reaction is probably, “aww, that’s cute.”  My first reaction, in the middle of the night, is tears.  Actually, as I assume I felt myself waking up, I held Jule closer, starting to cry even in the dream, and that carried through to reality.  This was not a dream to me.  That was my child, I knew her, and I loved her.  I effing loved her, and then she’s gone.  It’s the same exact thing as death.  Even though the cause (what takes them away) is different, the effect is still feeling like someone you love is not there anymore, and never will be.  It’s pretty effed up.

That’s part of the reason I don’t want to talk about kids.  Dreams tend to pull inspiration from your real life and your actual thoughts that day.  I want to reduce the risk of me ever having dreams like that.  A beautiful nightmare?  Perhaps, but a nightmare still.  I’m still getting watery eyes just typing about her.

I had a pretty wicked dream last night about my step dad, Chris.  It was more like a short film itself.  It took place in this old time chinese town, with a royal family.  The first scene had this mother in a kimono at the door of a house on a rainy night, kissing her ~6 year old son good bye.  She was sad to see him go, but there was an urgency for his safety that he had to get away.  The boy is taken away by a guy in a long cape.  There was a guy with camera across the street that kept trying to take pictures of the boy, but was never able to get a shot of his face.  So there’s this theme of mystery around the son of the lady.

Next scene is years later, and a 20 something year old man, who is trying to find out if the lady is his mother.  They walk down a narrow path behind some houses with a waist high white wall to their left and these 1 story white houses/apartments with big windows to their right.  They’re walking and talking about their history, and she knows who he is, but she can’t admit who he is right away.  So, I’m like this bodyguard person walking with them, and every time we pass one of these large windows, I throw out my arms, grabbing my cape and blocking people from inside seeing the two together.  Then, one window has the same camera man behind it.  I bust through the window and try to chase him down, but I’m not successful.  He’s not able to get a shot of the man’s face though.  So I’ve done my job.

Then, we flash to modern day in my mom’s house.  I’m sleeping downstairs and I hear a noise upstairs.  I rush upstairs all ninja like, check the back bedrooms are clear, and when I come to the main door, it’s open.  Someone made their way into the house.  I’m yelling for Chris to let him know that the camera man is in the house.  I locked the door and start to make may way through the livingroom into the back bathroom.  Then I see the guy with the camera standing in the door way.  It’s friggin creepy to think about it right now.  So i lunge towards him, he goes into Chris’ room, where Chris and I try to corner him, but he slips back into the bathroom, still not being able to take a picture of Chris’ face.  When I go back into the bathroom area to find him, he had disappeared into piles of garbage bags of clothes that are all over the floor.  Our old dalmation, Dante, is there, and he sniffs him out and the dude jumps up out of the bags with his camera in hand and I throw out my arms with my cape and block a picture of Chris again. 

I woke up somewhere after that.  This dream is a little foggier than some of my dreams I write about, but the concept seemed pretty cool.  I could see a little short movie being made where the identity of the heir to the throne must be kept safe.

It’s been a while since I posted a personal update.  Things in married life go well.  New job goes well.  Thinking about going back to school in the fall.  That might be the level of detail you get in the updates going forward…not really sure.  I don’t really want to write about my life with Kallie without her involvement.  What you might see this category turn into would be a opening of the way I think or the way I act, or who I am despite my surroundings.  We’ll see how that works.

One thing that bothers me sometimes is that Kallie will get bunches of people reply to facebook status updates for her.  Sometimes, it’s people that she’s connected through me, but I don’t even talk to on facebook.  It’s not that I want the attention, it’s that I don’t understand why people are compelled to post to her messages in such volumes and so quickly too.  It lead me to believe it’s her.  Some how, people are connecting with her through her update.  She’s reaching them in a way that I’m not.

So we give science a try.  I put the blinking cursor in my status update field and told Kallie to post something as me.  Post something that she would say, if she were me in that moment.  She wasn’t allowed to reveal it was her.  We’d test if it was the content of the status updates or Kallie’s "aura" that people were drawn to.  Within seconds, we had a reply to "mmm, my house smells like freshly baked bread.  I love my wife."  Then another.  Then another from a person I barely know.  I think we found our answer.

It’s me.  I don’t know how to connect with people, or I don’t give them a clear path to understanding me to be more precise.  I wrap things in metaphor, vague allusions, or esoteric references.  Recently, my mom replied to one of my facebook status updates saying she didn’t understand my messages, and she wanted to know if it was her or even her age.  I’m fairly certain it’s actually me.  With this post though, perhaps I can shed some light on to how my mind works and even give some examples to help you better understand what I mean when I say or do something.

We’ll take it back to the days when I first started to post away messages on AIM.  I constantly got asked what they meant.  Well, I’ll tell you now and perhaps it will help you to predict my behavior.

Most of my messages were drawn from lyrics –

"I dream that she aims to be the bloom upon my misery." – This comes from a Soul Coughing song called "I Miss the Girl".  That’s basically what I was saying.

"I feel as if i’m looking at the world from the bottom of a well." – This comes from a Mike Doughty song.  It just meant that I was sad, or I felt trapped, away from the world.

"Getting lost in the fall, glimmer, sparkle, and fade." – This came from Everclear’s album, Sparkle and Fade.   I thought it was a pretty sentiment to describe moods where I felt like a life of a star; people were lucky to catch a glimpse of a falling star, marveled at it’s glimmer and sparkle, and then it fades away.  I used it to express that I had just done something I enjoyed but probably won’t do again.

  "True dreams of Wichita." – More Soul Coughing.  Meant I wanted to travel or that I had a weird dream.

"I’ll be your best kept secret and your biggest mistake." – lines that follow "can I lay in your bed all day?" by Fallout Boy.  Usually meant I liked a new girl.

"Need more friends with wings, all the angels I know put concrete in my veins." – Billy Talent lyrics.  Means I missed people or felt crappy without friends.

"Looking at the man in the mirror and telling him to change his ways." – Michael Jackson, but taken quite literally when used.

"the world through a windshield is callous and cheap.  i toss and i turn but i can’t get to sleep.  counting the hours the days that turn into weeks" – The New Amsterdams lyrics.  Usually meant that I felt like I was just waiting for life to happen.

"Some times, it causes me to tremble."  – My favorite hymn, "Were You There?".  Usually an Easter away message.

"I’m shoulder high in crap and my water wings are flat." – President of the United States of America lyrics.  Usually meant I was stressed about something.

"I remind myself of some body else’s song." – Lifehouse lyrics.  Tongue and cheek mostly.

"Awake and dreaming." – Finger Eleven lyrics.  I was being reflective.

"This is the part where we start to feel better." – Gratitude lyrics.  something was making me sad.

A lot of my messages were my own creation –

"I’m allergic to the sun.  It makes my skin change color."  – This message was usually used when I didn’t want to go outside.

"I’m a pretty shallow guy deep down."  - It’s true.

"Warning:  This aoler may be potentially unstable.  Proceed to message with caution." – I was probably livid about something.  "Livid" was also used as an away message.

"projectiling a bee of fris across a botanical plane in attempts to approach and ultimately arrive at the X axis’ limits, while not offending the Y axis’ limits, at which point those efforts are reciprocated by an opposing force." –   I was playing ultimate frisbee.

"Let’s go get stoned.  Just like how they did in the Bible." – Just thought it was funny.

Some were direct quotes from movies or literature–

"The moments we shared are lost in time, like tears in a rain storm."  -This comes from the movie "Blade Runner".  I found it profound and quite beautiful.  It’s deep, thinking that there’s no use to cry when it’s raining.

"Closing my eyes and opening my mind in the clarity of passion."  – I’m not certain which source this came from, but it may have been from the movie "Atonement".  I usually used this one when I was falling asleep content to ponder life’s questions.

"Cheyne Stoking." – This comes from an excellent movie called "Dead Man Shoes".  At one point in the movie, the main character paints those words on an apartment wall of some "bad guys" while they’re not there.  It’s a medical term to describe periods of irregular breathing; most commonly the last grasps for breath.  I liked the phrase, so i put it up.  Possibly meant that I thought I was going to die sometime/eventually/inevitably.

"In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo." – This is from T.S. Elliot’s poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  I just used it to say I was talking to my smart wiminz.  Another away message I used, partly inspired from Keren’s song and the poem, was "Measuring out my life with a coffee spoon."

When I’m with you, %n, we stay up all night, and when you’re gone, I can’t get to sleep.  Thank God for these insomnias, and the differences between them."  – Remember, %n was replaced with the viewer’s screen name.  That was fun.  Anyway, I saw a performance at Heinz Hall of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and in between pieces, they would have readings and this was one of them.  I have no idea of the origin, and can’t seem to find anything through google.  It means I was in love or at least infatuated.

"James 4:8 " – The verse is "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded."  This was my personal motto.  Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.  Life is that simple.  When I was searching for why I felt so disconnected from Christ, I simply have to [go to church, volunteer, call a friend to talk, pray] etc.  I needed this scripture during that time of my life.

"Super perfundo on the early eve of your day." – This comes from my favorite movie, Waking Life.  It’s a phrase that one of the characters has said to him in one of his dreams, but even he doesn’t know what it means.  It’s basically used as just a greeting/farewell.

"Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods.  I do not know how far my experience is common.  At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.  – H. G. Wells" – Pretty much the only good line from War of the Worlds.  I resonated with this deeply.

The rest were either weird, boring, or a mix of the above categories –

"He’s a maniac, maniac, on the floor, and he’s cleaning like he’s never cleaned before." – This meant I was cleaning.  Taken from the Flash Dance theme song.

"This away message is fleeting human contact.  both of us lost, but for a moment we’re lost together.  I wonder who you are." – I believe this to be an internet meme, but I can’t nail the true source.  It may have been that simply substituted "away message" in for grafitti.  see XKCD.

"Falto Algo." – Spanish for "Something is missing".  My boss used to say this. 

"Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house I go." – I was visiting my grandmother.

"Home again, home again, jiggity jig." – I went home.

Ofcourse, there are the ones that meant I was sleeping…

"Dead.  At least to the untrained eye."

"Sleep with all the lights on." – Dashboard Confessional lyrics.  Most appropriately used when sleeping during the day  ie: night shift.

"some where between the sacred silence and sleep." – System of a Down lyrics.  Usually meant it was really late and I was still up for some reason.

"Under the Tahitian moon." – Porno for Pyros lyrics. 

"Stress Level Elimination Exercise Plan" (SLEEP)" – own of my originals.  Paired with:

"Stress Induced Narcoleptic Seizures (S.I.N.S.)" – another original that I still use.

So, I hope this provides you with a little bit of a road map on being able to predict what I may be trying to convey in my own mysterious way.  Default to it being lyrics for something.  Then think that I just saw/read something that imbued me.  I’m not all that hard to figure out or predict.  I think.  Did this help?

When the most beautiful words I never spoke,
Are at the tip of my tongue and then I choke
On the possibility that you might respond,
And then we’ll meet, and I’ll grow fond
Of the way your hair slowly covers your eye.
Or the way your hand gently brushes mine.
Or how the blood from my heart rushes
At every one of your sparking touches;
Forcing my eyes to shut and body stilled;
A quick deep breath and my lungs are filled.
I can’t move. The only thing moving is my mind,
And all the images of you that it can find;
Projected onto the back of my eyelids as a screen;
Debuting a movie that no one else has seen…
Or ever will, because once I regain sight,
And start to gaze at the most beautiful thing in my life,
The movie goes back into production inside my head.
But maybe I’ll get to catch a sneak peak as I sleep in my bed.
All this goes on in the matter of seconds.
And when it’s all over, my heart beckons
For another moment just like it.
A moment where my body won’t fight it.
How your touch invokes something so intangible.
So much beyond anything imaginable.
And all I can do is imagine us there,
At that same table, at that same restaurant,
At the same time, and our bodies in the same spot;
Your eyes focused on mine, and mine on yours.
And we stop time around us for what seems like hours.
Just you and I, continuing our lives without the world around us.
And we’ll continue talking about how love found us,
And put us together for the very first time.
How everything was easy as it just fell into line.
I never knew what I was looking for until I met you.
I never knew how to act until I watched what you do.
When you talk to people that you don’t know.
How they walk away after with a certain glow.
And as for me, I’m a lighthouse shining bright;
Protecting your shores from lost ships at night.
Letting them know that I am guarding your beaches.
And that tonight, land will be out their reaches.
They’ll have to set anchor in the ocean as blue,
As the eyes I’m staring at; the eyes of you.

This was a poem I wrote back in February of 2007 I was reminded of it when I watched this short film:

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

I put up my crappy webcam on the fish tank.  Sorry about the quality, but it’s fun for a while anyway.  It does require Internet explorer for the activeX controls.  So far there are 4 gold barbs, 3 harlequin rasboras, 1 bristlenose cat, and 4 glofish zebras.  Also some live plants.  The best time to view is around 5pm EST for feeding time and you don’t get the reflection off the glass.

Http://fish.footcomputers.com

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions.  Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)"

Pick your Artist:
Soul Coughing

Are you a male or female:
Monster Man

Describe yourself:
Mr. Bitterness

How do you feel:
I Miss the Girl

Describe where you currently live:
Casiotone Nation

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
True Dreams of Wichita

Your favorite form of transportation:
Bus to Beelzebub

Your best friend is:
Moon Sammy

You and your best friends are:
The Idiot Kings

What’s the weather like:
Soft Serve

Favorite time of day:

Coffee Song

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
So Far I Have Not Found the Science

What is life to you:
Uh Zoom Zip

Your last relationship:
New Jersey Devil

Your fear:
Unmarked Helicopters

What is the best advice you have to give:
Blame

Thought for the Day:
Good Thursday Blues

How I would like to die:
A Murder of Lawyers in Overcoats

My soul’s present condition:
Misinformed

My motto:
Needle to the Bar

So, I realized something this morning.  I’ve been living in a dream world during my dreams.  There is an actual place that I visit repeatedly, and even help build.  This place has many ties to real places, like under the belle vernon bridge, the carnegie science center, and a few houses.

Specific to last night, I took Kallie to see this aquarium I had helped build at the Science Center.  It’s physically impossible to do what we did, but it was pretty cool.  Think of it as a tube aquarium with a diagonal cut through it.  We hung this clear net material around the open part.  So if you were at the bottom, you were able to jump on the net and climb up it and be able to touch the dolphins and stuff through the water.  So the water just held it self back from the net somehow.  Anyway, once you climbed to the top, there was a restaurant and just a place to stand around and enjoy the view.  Like I said, this is something that I actually remember building in a previous dream.  I had put in the floors at the top of the aquarium and someone else was installing the net.  During last night’s dream, the net was beginning to wear with holes in it, and I remember thinking that someone is going to have to redesign the material to be stronger since all these kids were going to be climbing on it.

It’s just weird to think that there is saved dream data somewhere in my head that I revisit from time to time.  I’m not sure that’s uncommon, just a new revelation to me.