Bd Dream 193 -- Set Me On Fire

In my dream, I am standing on a plot of grass -- quite possibly someone's yard -- along with several young men mid- to late-teens.  I know them, but not all that well, except for my dear friend Zink, who is standing with the rest of the guys.

Parked nearby is a fire engine.

These guys are having some fun that looks horribly dangerous -- taking turns so that everyone can watch the individual action.  The player ignites himself and is burning from head to foot -- and the flames are almost immediately doused by other participants.  

I look on in fascination and horror as this takes place two or three times -- each time with a different person being lit.  

After several sessions of this, some of the guys invite me to participate.  I decline, but I am castigated severely by my friend Zink.  He assures me that there is no pain and that everyone else is doing it.  (I note that none of the previous participants is showing any sign of burning -- either on their skin, their hair, or their hair or their clothing.)

The peer pressure from the group for me to participate increases, and in response -- and also to placate my friend -- I agree to be ignited.

I stand in the right spot and someone comes close to me with a small flame.  I can't tell if it's a lit match, a torch, flare, or some other device.  I was not doused with any liquid that would act as fuel for the fire, but I am suddenly and completely burning all over.  I don't feel any pain, and the flames are quickly extinguished.  I get a brief spate of cheers and applause from the rest of the crowd.

Someone makes the suggestion that I should do this again.  Right now.  I'm a bit puzzled by this suggestion, as no one else has taken a second turn.  But everyone, including Zink, agree that my doing this again would be a good thing.  

What crosses my mind is that, when burning, I am totally dependent on the rest of the group to extinguish the flames.  And it's also clear to me that the only reason that folks are not feeling pain is that the flames are extinguished almost immediately.  And I begin to wonder if I'm being "set up" -- that all that has taken place so far is simply to get me agree to be re-ignited so that I will burn to death. 

I have the feeling that my declining the invitation would not be well received, and that the pressure to participate would show up again -- but more seriously.  I look at my friend, but he seems to be going along with this.  I try to think of a reason that Zink would want to kill me this way, but can't think of anything.  

I am seriously determined not to participate, but don't know how to explain my concerns without accusing the group of trying to murder me.  

I wake up.

Bad Dream 192 -- Getting to the Test Site

In my dream, I am walking along a path.  There are a few trees nearby, but most of the surrounding area is mown grass.  It almost feels like a park.  

I'm working at a controls company and we are about to do a test of a new system while it is still on the company's test floor.  A representative of the customer is here at our facility to confirm that the system works as it should.  

There are five of us walking from one building (headquarters?) to another building where the system is set up and -- we hope -- ready for testing for the customer.

Walking roughly 20 feet in front of me are two people: my supervisor and the engineer who designed the system we are about to test.  They are busily discussing the system and the upcoming test.  

Walking roughly 20 feet behind me are two other company employees.  One of them is a Field Engineer, who will suggest  whatever adjustments are necessary during the test.  And the other is a secretary from the office who will take notes for whatever changes are required and write out the requisite acceptance form for the customer.

I am a Technical Instructor.  I visited the customer's site some time ago and presented a talk about the hardware and software of the proposed system to the maintenance people who will be responsible for keeping the system running effectively.  

I know who is here from the customer's company to oversee the test.  He was a student of mine when I taught the course there and we got along quite well.  So I'm pleased to seeing him again.

I feel a little awkward walking by myself between these two groups, but don't feel I can participate in any meaningful way.  And I might interrupt the conversation in the group ahead -- and the Field Engineer and the Secretary seem to be chatting along quite happily and "two's company, three's a crowd."

We come to a brief rise in the ground, and all five of us are gathered fairly closely for the first time in our walk.  We've been depending on the two guys in the lead to walk us in the right direction, but now they seem confused.  Where is the building that has the system test all set up?  The five of us stand there looking around in all directions, but none of us has any idea where to go from here.  

Bad Dream 191 -- Trying to Get to Calgary

In my dream, I am standing on the sidewalk in a small town in Canada. The sun is getting low in the sky and I have a task to do:

For reasons that aren't explained in the dream, I have to get to Calgary -- which is in western Canada and a considerable distance from where I am now.  

Since the population centers in Canada are mainly in a horizontal line running east to west.  (That is, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, and so forth.)  Since I know that I am not far into Canada from the USA border, all I have to do is travel west on the biggest road out of town and that should get me to Calgary eventually.  (In real life, this is known as the "Trans-Canada Highway.")

But I am totally unfamiliar with this town, and don't know which direction is west from where I'm standing.  As I look around, I realize that there are several streets that would take me out of town, but they all go in different directions.  There is no easy way to determine which way is west just by looking at the streets.  

I realize that, if I had a GPS, I could easily determine which way to go plus which road would be best to take plus roughly how long it will take to get to Calgary and so forth.  So now my search is for a GPS device in one of the local stores.  None of the stores I see is likely to have such a thing for sale, but I try them out anyway.  Everyone says no, they don't carry such things, and I become more and more distressed about ever getting started on the trip to Calgary.  

Finally one store clerk says, "No we don't carry them, but you can buy one at Fat Ollie's store, which is just a few blocks away."  He gives me some general directions and I start off to find Fat Ollie's.  

Getting back outside, I see that it is almost completely night and realize that the clothing I'm wearing is not going to keep me warm if the temperature drops -- which it's likely to do, since this is Canada.

I wake up.

Later, I realize that at no time in my dream did I ever have or even think about whether I owned a car.  Or could get any other vehicle that might get me the hundreds of miles I would have to go to get from my dream location to Calgary.  I also never considered the GPS function that I have on my cell phone.  

Just details, but they may be important for understanding the dream.

Bad Dream 190 -- Where's My Briefcase?

In my dream, I am back in my childhood home in suburban Baltimore.  I am in the house preparing to leave for an assignment, which is either a presentation for my work or a college-level class.  The dream doesn't make it clear which is the case.  

I'm pretty much ready to go.  All I need to do is retrieve my briefcase, which has documents I will need for this upcoming assignment.

I go to the spot in the house where I normally leave my briefcase and it isn't there.  I can't imagine why not -- I almost always leave it in the same place.  And the time available to get to the assignment is running short, and I really don't want to be late.  

I move around the house looking in each room (which are actual rooms I recall) for my case, with no luck.  As I keep moving, a younger sibling sidles up to me and tells me that Richard -- our older brother -- had taken the case.

I go upstairs to where I think Richard will be and find him lounging on the bed.  He looks up at me, sees that I'm distressed, and gets a smirk on his face.  I explain to him in loud and rapid-fire language the inconvenience that he's causing.  He almost looks apologetic.  Not quite, but almost.  He points to a collection of things against a wall and tells me that the case is in that pile of stuff.  

I go to the pile and examine each and every object, but the case is simply not there.  I look at Richard and tell him that. His face changes and he gets up off the bed and comes over to the pile.  He then assures me that he left it there, and now has no idea who might have taken it or where it got off to.  

I am thoroughly aware that his comments might simply be Richard ratcheting up the prank to a higher level, but there's no way I can be sure whether he's still pranking me or is genuinely unsure what happened to the briefcase.  

He looks as if he's about to start looking for the case himself, but there's no reason I should hang around him when I should simply be continuing the search.

By this time, I am boiling mad and deeply concerned about what my absence at this assignment will mean for me.  The excuse of "I'm late because I couldn't find my briefcase" is just too close to "My dog ate my homework." 

I go back downstairs to repeat my search while trying to think of what else I could be doing to minimize the damage that's being done to me and my career.  

I hear my Dad say softly "Being angry is not going to help."  And I understand that, if I could let the anger go, I might be capable of more rational thoughts and activities, but just then I want to hang onto my anger and frustration.  

Bad Dream 189 -- Spinning Plates

In my dream, I am standing in a field on a nice sunny day.  I have a few friends standing nearby and some other folks a little farther off.  They are visitors to our little gathering.  I am holding a spinning plate in one hand and the appropriate spin stick in the other.  

The deal is that I'm supposed to spin the plate up onto the stick and perform a few tricks to educate(?) impress(?) convince(?) the visitors of my skill with the plate -- but my dream does not inform me as to exactly why I'm doing this.  My friends seem to think it's important, and they are telling the visitors how terrific my skill is with the plate -- "Just wait until he (that is, me) gets this thing going!  It's amazing!"

I toss the plate in the air with a flick of the wrist to give it some initial rotation.  But I misjudge the procedure somehow so that the plate bounces briefly onto the stick and then falls to the ground.

My friends assure our visitors that that happens occasionally.  Not a problem.  Boy, are you going to be impressed!  

I pick up the plate and try again, but the result is the same.  My friends smile weakly at our visitors as I pick the plate up off the ground again.

Third time is not the charm.  Yet another failure.

My friends try to make a joke out of the situation, but it doesn't help much.  The visitors have clearly seen about as much as they need to.

After the fourth failure, the visitors turn and start to walk away.  

One of my friends, Kurt Rheinheimer -- a boyhood best buddy -- walks over to me.  He's quite angry.  Looking straight into my face but talking loudly so that all my friends can hear, he says that I screwed up on purpose.  Why that's the case isn't clear in the dream, but he obviously felt that he had something to gain personally from my success at spinning the plate -- something that now simply wouldn't come to pass. 

At this moment, I become aware of an explanation as to my failures and tell Kurt equally loudly that it made perfect sense for me to fail, given all the pressure I was under as the visitors looked on.  To help make the point, I pick up the plate and successfully spin it on the stick.  I'm not at all sure that my reasoning was honest and true, but it felt good to say.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I just made up the explanation to bring the total event to a conclusion.  

Bad Dream 188 -- From Years Ago -- A Car Experience

(I wrote out this dream long-hand, which suggests it's one that occurred to me at one of Renee Crauder's retreats.  That makes it a long time ago.)

In my dream, I am driving a car.  A sedan.  It feels like Deb's (green) Honda.  Martha is in the car with me.    

I pull off to the side of the road and park.  (Don't remember why.)  Martha gets out and tells me she will be back shortly.

The car is parked next to a large green field.  No trees.  On the far side of the field, there is a collection of buildings that loos like an apartment complex with brick facades.

Now, there is a young woman walking around the front of my car.  I think she is standing near another car, but I'm not sure of this.

She is quite pretty -- maybe in her early-to-mid 20's.  Black hair cur in a Page Boy cut.  She is wearing a one-piece bathing suit with the top neck strap untied and the top of her suit draped down her body to her waist.  She is standing with her back to me and I wait until she turns around so I can see her breasts.

She looks very "well cared for," and carries herself with an attitude of privilege.  

She walks over to another young woman who is clad identically.  They hve a brief conversation that I can't hear, since I'm still sitting in the car.  They are in front of my car.  

The second woman disappears and the first woman walks behind my car, removes her slip-on shoes one at a time, and tosses them onto the trunk of my car.  They land with a loud thump and I'm concerned they may have dented the trunk lid.  I've watched them land in my rear view mirror.  

I open the door and call out to her that if she did that again, could she do so more gently.  I realize this is a nebbishy thing to say, but there it is.

(A bit later in the dream, I think that  proper response would have been to get out otf the car, pick up the shoes one at a time and throw them as hard as I could into the grassy field.  As my dream's mind plans out this thought, I "see" that the shoes are the rubber slip-on type that people use for gardening.)  

Martha comes back to the car, gets in, and we drive away.  

We stop again in the parking lot of a rustic-looking store which seems to function as a restaurant and something of a general store.  I'm hungry.  I walk inside.  It smell s tgood and it's crowded.  I realize that getting a sandwich to go would take a great deal of time and I'm not ready to wait that long.

I leave the shop and am standing in the parking lot  when the owner(?) of the place appo=roaches me and clearly wants to explain what's going on and invite me to return inside the shop.  He's speaking gibberish.  (He's a heavy-set man, partially balding, and looks middle European.)  Some of the words he's speaking sound like English but much of it is clearly not.

I'm not convinced to return inside and walk past his shed (away from my car).  The person I'm walking with is Deb.  I feel it's important in a small way to explain to her why I walked away.  (This is something I do in my waking life all the time.  It's a pointless exercise, but i do it all the same.)

We have walked past the shop to what may be another parking lot and I'm standing as I launch into my (unnecessary) explanation.  We start walking back and Deb says "Well, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but..."  She stops talking but continues walking..  This verbalization of hers is well known to me and I know my part.  She wants to tell me her version of the interaction with the restaurateur and is asking permission to say so.  My response is "No, tell me what you think."  It's my way of giving her permission to tell me something I may disagree with.  

I wake up. 

Bad Dream 187 -- Strange Golf Course Experience

 In my dream, I am out on a very strange golf course.  (This may tie in to the fact that I took my golf clubs out of the locker yesterday for the first time in 5 or 6 years.  I found that swinging a golf club would not likely cause any recurrence of my right shoulder issues -- so I could consider trying to get together with my younger brother again to play.)

Normally the maximum number of people in a group to play on a regular golf course is four.  In this case, I am joined by a group of 5 or 6 or 7 other people in the same group.  

We are walking through an area that looks like the sand dunes that you might find at the seashore or a desert.  The group stops at a spot that doesn't look much different from any other place we've seen, but the group seems to know that this is a teeing-off spot for this hole.  There's no grass anywhere, but some desert plants growing here and there.  I feel as if I'm just starting to play, but that this isn't Hole #1.  I don't mind much, as I'm simply out here to knock a golf ball around and get some socializing and exercising.  

We can't tee off because there's a young man in front of us who is looking to his his second shot.  His ball is located in the sand close to and directly behind a tall weed of some sort.  The plant would seem to be right in the middle of the fairway, given how he's addressing the ball, but there's no particular physical evidence that's true.  He just has a plant directly in front of his ball.

Now, golf course rules might allow him to move the ball sideways around the plant without taking a penalty.  If not, the sensible shot is to hit the ball sideways to the plant so that his next shot would be clear to the target.  But he doesn't seem to know or care about either option.

He's walking around in small circles, gesturing rather wildly about his bad luck in having the ball where it is, and trying to figure out what the best plan of attack might be.  

My golfing partners are starting to get a bit peeved at the young man's histrionics, but they're ready to wait until he resolves the issue.

The young man finally decides just to blast the ball directly into the plant, hoping it will break through the foliage.  It doesn't.  The ball hits the leaves and stems and then bounces directly backwards.  

There is a rather large sand dune about 50 yards or so in front of us.  As the young man's ball stops rolling backwards across the sand, a pair of camels show up at the top of the sand dune.  They are running quickly.  One of the camels is much larger than the other -- and it appears that the larger one is either Mom or Dad (I think Mom...) and the kid.  And the parent is teaching the kid how to best to run across loose sand.