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dreams

Dreaming of Alligators

Sep 11th, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
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snap snap

snap snap

Last night I had a disturbing dream. This always seems to happen when I can’t find a way to get comfortable in bed.

I was talking on the phone with Emily. Celeste and I had just been some place and Emily was mentioning that there was another place near where we were that served tea that might be fun to visit with the kids one day. So, Celeste and I were taking a walk though a small park that joined the two in order to go check it out.

As I walked through the park I was holding Celeste in one arm and still talking to Emily. I looked over through some trees to the right at a pond and saw an Alligator there, just coming out of the water. Before I could run he snapped at us catching Celeste’s left leg in his jaws just below the knee.

Here’s where it gets even stranger. The alligator didn’t bite all the way through. In fact, if he would just open his mouth she would more than likely have nothing more than a few puncture wounds that would heal quickly. So I was holding Celeste with an Alligator attached to her leg and had a choice to make. I could kick at him, maybe getting him to let go, or maybe pissing him off so much that he attacks us again, this time, no doubt, much worse. I could pull Celeste out of his mouth, more than likely leaving her leg seriously damaged and then run like hell. Or I could just wait to see what he does next, hoping that he opens his mouth and leaves us alone.

This scenario is how I see almost every difficult choice I have to make. And similar choices are currently at the forefront of my mind.

In my dream, the last part of it, from the bite onward, continued to repeat itself. Each time I’d try something a little bit different. The outcome was never good. In one scenario, we managed to break free from the Alligator only to find his friend waiting a few seconds down the path. However, in my dream, waiting it out was never attempted. Trusting the Alligator was simply not an option.

Dreaming on Drugs

Jul 22nd, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
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Last night before bed while getting very sleepy from some medication I’m taking I wrote this:

if you’ve ever wondered what’s best about the things you are offered, know this:

sometimes I need to unplug. not so much from technology, in general, but from the internet and my expectation of response from it. it is clearly an entity of its own, an I exect so much from it.

ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddfds

I’m not quite sure what it means entirely, but it’s fun to share.

Last night’s sleep was crazy. I woke up A LOT. Each time having had an even more vivid dream than the last. The strange thing was that the dreams felt VERY real — almost tangible — and were fully based on things that really could happen, which isn’t usually how I dream.

I remember this one: In real life, on Monday, C and I went to visit Ramona, Austin and their family. I had a fantastic time and certain portions of that evening really meant a lot to me. In my dream (and in reality as well) I wasn’t entirely certain that Ramona knew how much it meant to me and I set out to tell her. When I started to, she interrupted me to express how much that evening meant to her and how much she enjoyed it. We laughed and that was it.

I had another dream that clearly took place in the future even though all of the people in the dream looked the same as they do now. In this dream Kim and I were in a relationship — maybe even married. At any rate, we lived somewhere in New England on the coast. We were out walking with C on the shore and both laughing uncontrollably at C’s excitement when the waves would run up the sand and reach her feet.

So real, and yet not. The Kim one clearly isn’t true. I can look at my day today and see that I’m not in a relationship with Kim nor do I live on the East coast. But the one with Ramona might have actually happened, I feel like it was a dream, but, maybe it wasn’t. I’ve debated emailing her to ask, just in case.

my first daughter

Aug 25th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
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It was late afternoon on a too-warm summer day. The afternoon light was filtering in through the screens surrounding the porch I was sitting on. My Dad was talking to me about something or other from outside. There was a lull in the conversation. I had been caught up in thoughts all day and suddenly, without any real conscious effort on my part, I asked him a question: “What was my first daughter’s name?”

He looked at me and was quite shocked for a second, then he quickly shook it off and made a joke. I was puzzled, and confused, and seeking. He looked at me more closely and said, “do you really remember her?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant so I only answered with, “I think so. What was her name?”

“I don’t even remember,” he said. “It seems like such a long time ago.”

I urged him to tell me more and, finally, reluctantly, he did.

He swears he can’t remember her name, though I’m not sure I believe him. He said that around 2 years old she became unspeakably violent without cause. We brought her to the hospital where they insisted that she be supervised and examined by a child psychologist. We were told that to really understand they’d need to watch her for a few days and that we should go home.

I can’t imagine agreeing to leave my daughter there and go home for more than a few hours, let alone a few days, yet my dad swears that we all thought it was best. We weren’t home for more than a few hours when the hospital called to tell us our daughter had been stolen. They had no idea who had done it but assured us every available resource was looking for her.

I was consumed by it. Time passed and they found nothing. I hunted for her day and night. I could not rest until she was found and no one seemed to be helping. I lost my job and was becoming sick. Eventually, according to my dad, I was urged to see a psychologist myself. After a weeks worth of lengthy visits, I was no longer obsessing over finding her. And after a few months, I didn’t speak of her at all. Over time, it was as if I had completely forgotten.

Even then, as he was recanting the entire story to me, it seemed like a story belonging to someone else living in a world that wasn’t anything like the one I lived in.

It was such a scary, insane dream that I can’t get it out of my head. I still remember almost every detail and there’s a part of me — a rather big part considering what we’re talking about here — that feels like it is real.

Even stranger is that there was no indication of time. I don’t know if the dream was in the past, the future, or the present. I also never saw my “other daughter” or spoke of her other than in reference to the fact that my missing daughter was “first”. I awake from the dream not knowing either daughter’s name. Is it more scary that this could be from the future and that my “first daughter” is Celeste? Or that this is from the present/past and that my “first daughter” came before Celeste?