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 had a dream Kallie and I went to California to visit her family. Only, her family was an african american family. She had 2 half brothers and a half sister. Kallie is a halfrican. It was weird. They were throwing a picnic for us, and Kallie hadn’t seen them much, and I didn’t know much about them. I kept thinking, “I don’t remember these people at our wedding. I wonder if they even came.”

Kallie was joking around with her half sister, saying that Kallie’s dad was back in down, and her mom overheard and said, “wow, I didn’t know he was back in Michael.” As if the town they lived in was Michael, Ca. I didn’t realize until after I woke up that Michael is the name of Kallie’s biological dad. Anyway, the whole time it was very awkward and I wondered why Kallie kept in touch with these “siblings” because she obviously had nothing in common with them but an african american mother, that wasn’t even all that nice to us.

I woke up thankful for my mother in law

Someone needs to invent the technology to record dreams. I have so many ideas and write so many songs in my dreams that I can’t remember when I wake up. This is one of the ideas that I do remember.

I was involved in the creation and marketing of a device that added realism to movies. It was a simple box that could hang on the back of a movie theater seat or get placed on a stand in front of the movie watcher. The box (2 feet wide, 4 inches tall, 4 inches deep) had things like a water sprayer or mist creator, a fan, and even digital “voting” panel. It all sounds cheap, but it was put together well. Anyway, me and a few other people were marketing this thing to movie theaters as a cheap way to “upgrade” their movie theaters.

The idea is that when someone splashes some water in the movie, the audience would get a little spray from the box. The movie could also have “alternate stories” or something where the audience could vote what happens next and the movie would show that story line. This technology already exists when you go to theme parks like disney world and the “4d” shows that interact with the audience, but that’s the only place for it. My group was trying to break that into the real world theaters and even in homes by putting it in one simple box that was inexpensive. It would require some pre-production work to get signals sent to the device to sync up with the movie, but for theaters, you could even just have a man in a booth doing all the work for all the devices.

Anyway, I think it was catching on in the movie.

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.  You’re 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.

Probably very much to do about the pens loss last night to the montreal canadiens in game 6, I had a dream I was playing in the game.  I was the stand-by goalie, and we were down 3-4 in the second when I was put in to replace Fluery.  I was amazing.  So much so, that I deflected a shot so hard that it flew directly into the other goal to tie the game.  Yes, I’m that powerful.  Then, in the third period,  I was on offense.  For some reason, I was also frozen in the ice at the waist down, at about half-rink.  With about 3 seconds left in the game, I busted out of the ice and skated to the net, caught a pass and directed it right into the goal to win 5-4.  It was great, I was so shocked, people were so happy with me, but we all understood that it was just a fluke and that I’d go back to my normal life after the game. 

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.

I did something pretty horrific in my dream last night.  I put a cute little black kitten in a microwave for about 30 seconds.  Then I did it again.  After the second time, I took it out, and it was certainly messed up.  It couldn’t even walk straight.  I felt terrible.  I tried giving it some water thinking that would make it feel better.  It was dazed, meowing every few seconds with that sound that kittens make when they’re part scared and part confused.  I could only imagine that I nuked its insides somehow, and now it has to die a slow death.  Why in the world did I put this cute kitten in the microwave?  I’m pretty sure I’m going to be haunted by this image for a while now.  It was looking at me through the microwave glass.  Beautiful round blue eyes.  I’m ashamed, and I technically didn’t even do anything.  It looked exactly like this:

I have this dream too.  Sometimes college, sometimes high school.  I’m glad someone else does too.

via: xkcd.com/557/

Last night I had a dream i was asked to speak infront of my old college ministry group, Cornerstone.  I have no idea why they chose me, but it was my present day self talking to what I would assume to be current students.  I got up and was so energetic and excited to talk to everyone.  I started out about how grateful I was to have been involved in Cornerstone.  Then I had note cards passed out so everyone could write their majors on them and give them to me.  I told them that if they didn’t know their majors, to make something up, or just put "life" on it, because we are all getting lessons in life, especially at college.

I went on to relate everyone’s majors to the theme of "K.I.S.S." or keeping it simple.  I asked who went to Sunday school when they were kids and remembered the stories there.  That serves as an example of how simple the Bible can be.  How simple it could be to understand God’s love and intent for all of us.  Then I started saying that as we grow older, we complicate our lives, but there is scripture to guide us even in our complicated lives.  We again can understand God’s love for us in our complicated worlds.  I was tying it all into God’s love being timeless since we saw it when we were young and see it as we get old.  It’s omnipresent because in everything we do, in all of our majors in school, we can apply God’s love.  I wrapped up by saying it’s just that simple.  As humans, we try to complicate things.  As our understanding grows, things become more complex.

I don’t know if there’s any practicality in that as a sermon or what, but I just thought it was neat to speak to everyone in my dream and in an impromptu manner.