Return to Dreaming

I wandered away from posting my dreams last year. I even fell away from journaling them, after I had a really bad one that shook me up too much to write it down (although my therapist and I dissected it in some detail).

It's 2005, and I'm journaling my dreams again. Here are the latest:

1-2-2005 (1) I'm coming back to school, trying to find my dormitory. Last year, my dorm room was in Building 427. This year, according to the paperwork I have, it is in Building 463. I don't have a map of campus, but I remember where Building 427 is, so I go there and look around for my building. I find a building that I think is it, but it isn't a dormitory at all, but is instead filled with offices, classrooms, laboratories. I discover that the building is actually Building 2463, and that ivy on the wall had obscured the leading digit when I first saw it.

The dream segues into something about magic. I'm a student of Harry-Potter-style magic, and I have been captured by or somehow infiltrated the retinue of an evil wizard. In a room where the wizard's retinue is lounging about, a slender Asian woman wearing a leotard tempts me by posing suggestively in front of me, and then sitting in my lap. I worry that if she succeeds in seducing me I might fall under her sexual spell. I ask her if this is her intention, and she smiles at me, saying "Maybe...."

I notice C--------- in the room, lounging about suggestively, apparently trying to get the erotic attention of the evil wizard. "Is that wise?" I whisper to her. She shushes me, because she doesn't want either of us infiltrators to be caught and punished.

Another member of the retinue, an Asian man who resembles George Takei, tries to scare me, the newcomer, by telling me of the horrible things he has witnessed: babies impaled on swords, villages full of people slaughtered, and so on. I reply that I know about them, hinting (lyingly) that I've been hardened to that sort of thing.

(2) Amber dream: on a schoolbus, I say something that implies I know about Amber. Two big kids, one of them tall and fat, take exception, in a way that lets me know that they are Amberites, also. We are driving around a hill covered with townhouses and condominiums – and something changes! Someone on the bus is working shadow. But it's really hard to work with shadow this close to Amber.

Now I'm in an aircraft, passing over the landscape. We're flying over the Vale of Garnath. There is the chaotic landscape at the terminus of the Black Road ... and that long black streak through the forest is the Black Road itself.

Now I'm in some kind of confrontation with Brand, who starts out in the form of a manticore, but eventually shapeshifts into human form. I'm in trouble. I reach for a set of Trumps and pull out the first card I can find: Benedict's. I make mental contact. He won't know who I am, but he's my only hope for survival. "Mayday, mayday, mayday!" I say to him over and over again.

1-4-2005 I've been recruited to maintain a large, powerful laser system run by a secret government agency. It transpires that this laser is part of a starship, either part of its propulsion system, a weapon, or both. Lee Jones [the poker author and former programmer for SGI] walks by and warns me about being careful with high-voltage cables and connections.

I'm looking at a technical manual for the laser system. It's a high-powered infrared laser whose lasing medium is a solid [in waking life I think it might be an Nd-YAG or -glass laser]. The manual designates the laser as the BFL-768, and it's pretty clear that "BFL" is an acronym for "Big Fuckin' Laser". The technical manual has lots of illustrations showing plots of resonator designs and yield curves. I turn the pages and also find pictures of nebulae and galaxies.

I don't have a desk of my own, yet. I'm in the bare office space of the guy who is supposed to train me, but he isn't here. Overhead is the laser, festooned with electrical cables. I want to find my boss and my own office space. I want to put the manual down and go looking, but the manual is classified -- I don't want to leave it unattended, and I don't know the combination for any locks on the office filing cabinets. I carry it with me as I go looking.