dreams
Battles in Dreamland
3 nights in a row this week I dreamed of different people trying to attack me with a knife. I would say it’s due to the fact that i’ve been sick… (i tend to have crazy dreams when i am sick) but it’s also possible (depending on your take on dreaming) that a malicious enitity of some kind may have latched onto me. I considered this as a possibility because just prior to the knife dreams, i had a dream in which everything was nice and normal and sunny… and then suddenly an invisible force started causing me incredible pain. I don’t usually feel pain in my dreams. Nor do i encounter invisible forces or knife weilding foes.
I was actually stoked (upon awakening of course) to have another recurring nightmare challenge me. In my life i’ve had no more than a handfull recurring nightmares but they were all VERY significant. And beating them was incredibly transformative. So last night I was really excited to go to bed and try to kick some ass. I laid down and re-read a chapter on lucid dreaming in on of my favorite books to put myself in the right state of mind. Before long I fell asleep, and in the early AM I finally started dreaming. What transpired COMPLETELY caught me off guard. This is how it all went down, to the best of my memory:
I’m in a house that I’ve been to several times in past dreams. I remember it clearly. There is room on a hidden 3rd floor in this house that is old and dusty and full of plant life due to neglect. Abandoned, but fully furnished, it features an expansive loft which has tall dirty windows on one wall and looks like something out of a movie… like Dracula’s summer-home or something… I found these upper floors in earlier dreams but, in the last one, I remember being disappointed that someone sealed it off.
So anyway… I find myself at this house again. This is probably the 3rd dream sequence I’ve had for the evening. I actually DID go lucid briefly in the 2nd sequence but lost it pretty quickly. Now I’m fully immersed again and I want to show my friends this house. Ruthie is with me but she’s wearing Emily’s p-coat. Our friend Dominique is with us too and 2 other girls who I don’t recognize.
The first room we enter has tons of restaurant supplies all over. I count over 8 industrial stove-top burners around the room… some of the stoves are modular and sort of piled up in pieces against one wall. There is a short staircase on the left side of the room with more stove stuff and a bunch of silverware in those cup-shaped plastic holders that restaurants use. I try the light switch and the lights do not come on. This should have been my clue that I was dreaming but I was too immersed to realize it. Instead I commented that the owners of the house must have shut off the breakers for this floor when they sealed it off.
We walk up these stairs and continue straight ahead into a hallway with a wood and glass door on the right. There is an etching in the glass of half of a face. On the other side we see dark wood dining room furniture. Everything is covered in dust and the only light, aside from our flashlights, is coming from small distant windows. But then we look down at a table and there are four tea lights burning in a stone tea light holder.
I pause and wonder who lit the tea lights but I assume other people have been coming in here. I push open the glass door a little to show off this room and suddenly a bonfire lights itself in the fireplace and the face etching fills the rest of the way in with an iridescent green. I am still not shaken and I assume that these are special fancy features of the house… maybe triggered by opening the door to the room.
We back out of the dining room and keep going down the hall, and there is now a long staircase on the right and a door on the left. I know that the door leads to the big majestic loft and I want to save that for last so I point everyone to the right.
That’s when we see a young girl standing on the stairs, staring at us, covered in white powder. “Hello” she says. “Hello” I say back. Then she vanishes. Ruthie says “um…” and all my hair stands on end. I start pushing her to the door… “Let’s go! Let’s go! Oh shit!” and suddenly several of these ghosts materialize around the two unknown girls in our party and then vanish, taking them away with them.
Sheer panic now. “RUN!” I shout… and out of the corner of my eye I see what looks like six of these ghosts… powdery and kind of blurry… running up the stairs carrying the two struggling girls by the arms and legs.
Then I woke up. I still get chills thinking about it right now. I was TOTALLY not expecting that shit. I am still excited to go back to sleep and beat this thing, but the game has changed. I DID attempt to get back into the dream with success but only briefly… and it felt more like daydreaming and not full-blown dreaming.
Fucking… CRAZY.
Teeth Falling Out
Here is something i thought was absolutely weird.
At Burning Man ’05, on my third night of sleep, I had a dream that my teeth were coming loose… at the end of the dream I watched my father die right in front of me in a rite-aid.
In “The Techno Pagan Octopus Messiah” ( www.amazon.com/Techno-Pag…/0953327515 ) author ian Winn wrote that he stayed with a shaman and had a dream that his teeth were falling out… when he asked the shaman what it meant, he was told “it means that your father has died”
A few chapters later, he went to Burning Man for the first time… He was also there in 05 giving lectures. I tried (and failed) to attend one of them.
This year, on my 2nd night of sleep at Burning Man, i dreamed again that my teeth were falling out… On burn night I ran into Nice Jason and he told me that he had the same dream the night before.
What is the connection between Burning Man and this teeth dream? How is it that I watched my father die in my dream, just as the shaman interpreted for Ian Winn? Why did the dream return 2 years later on the playa again? And why did Jason have this dream too?
Giant Rats
To the best of my recollection, last night’s dream started with me hanging out with a bunch of people on the front porch of someone’s house… I remember Emily, Mo, and Mike being there… I had invented some kind of rubik’s puzzle-like-device that contained deep political satire… it was an american flag w/ the stars made of some kind of anti-establishment buttons (the kind of button you pin to your clothes and wear) and when you folded it just right it turned into something significant… I don’t see, at this point, how the device worked but I was pretty impressed with myself in the dream and i ran into the house to grab it to show everyone.
When I got into the bedroom where it was kept, I started rummaging around for it on the floor. There was so much junk laying everywhere that I started throwing it all on the bed in hopes that it’d find the flag. But everything i threw up in the air stayed in the air. I grabbed some books and held them above the bed and let go… and they wouldn’t fall… i began to move objects around with my mind… moving them this way and that… i was confused… thought i might be hallucinating and ran a test or two to see if i was imagining my telekinetic abilities but, as is the case with intense hallucination, there was too much overlap with reality and i could not tell.
i went back outside and people were getting ready to go on a hike with a shaman… he looked like your typical indiginous south american shaman, dressed in dark colors but i remember distinctly a bright flash of red on him somewhere… like a headband or something…
I followed him, along with two other people … one calm thin guy and one portly guy who was way too excitable… we made our way down this forest path to a bend in the road where there was a stone bird-bath. The shaman pulled out his staff and for a second i thought maybe i should run back home and grab my staff too but we had come too far already.
He began some kind of ceremony, using the bird-bath in front of him as some kind of mixing bowl or offering bowl. The excitable portly guy hid behind me and held onto my shoulders… yammering at me about what the shaman was doing and whether or not we should stick around. I told him i needed my personal space and that he was being too clingy… also he was preventing me from observing the ceremony. He kept clinging all over me and I finally snapped and said “DUDE…. i like you and everything … you’re a nice guy … but for real … I’m going to punch you if you don’t give me a little breathing room.”
He backed away and i turned my attention back to the bird-bath… and the shaman was gone! Vanished. Inside the bird-bath was some kind of thick reddish liquid and two meaty-looking rats were fighting in it… The skinny guy shouted “RATS!!!” and I turned to see him being attacked by several rats on the ground. I started kicking at the ones that were trying to crawl up my legs but before long they began to outnumber me. I started running down the path… deeper into the woods. One of them bit me on the left hand and I flung him off into the trees. I looked behind me and to my shock there were now HUGE rats chasing me… about the size of german shepards… dark and demonic like something out of “the dark crystal”
I ran up to the front door of a cottage and burst through… “RATS!!!” I shouted. The people in the cottage started laughing at me… There was brown/white field mouse in the hallway and they pointed at it… “like that one?”
“NO!” i exclaimed… “BIG rats! like dogs!” They wouldn’t stop laughing so I ran down the hall, past the little mouse and out the back door…
I came to a dirt road on the coast… slightly slanted uphill, with a rock wall to my left and large egg-shaped rocks on my right, arranged several feet apart and in straight line, like a fence all the way down the road as far as i could see… on the other side of this wall of rocks was a mild slope, and then a beach… the ocean, skies and rocks were dark gray and everything felt dismal.
It appeared that I had lost the rats so I walked up this path and after a few minute I felt this thundering vibration… I looked out between two giant rocks into the surf and there was the most monstrous rat I have ever seen… about the size of a dinosaur, lumbering slowly, ankle-deep in the water… it had blood from it’s last meal all over it’s chin and it’s thick fur was matted and dirty… wet from the ocean water.
I took a step back and the sound of the rocks shifting beneath my feet caught it’s attention. it turned to look for me and I tried to hid behind the rock. It’s enormous head came peeking around the corner, it’s notrils flaring, trying to catch my scent. I scuttled around the other side of the rock like a squirril on a tree… trying to move as silently as possible. I was absolutely terrified. i thought to myself “This is how i’m going to die… I’m going to be eaten by this monster of a rat… right here… right now.” I looked back down the path and there were 2 more of these monstrocities approaching.
Panic. Desperation. Then, suddenly, I was somebody else. i was a different person entirely… in an upstairs apartment far away from that hellish beach and hanging around a group of people… I jumped up and told them “Steve is in serious trouble. We have to go rescue him. Do we have any weapons?”
“We have that gun over there.” someone said and pointed at a 50 caibur rifle… while seeming like a great choice, I also realized i had no idea how to use it.
“Ok what else do we have?” I asked…
“Swords… we have those swords in the closet.”
Not bad, I thought… better for close-range combat with those giant rats.. I pulled four swords out of the closet… one bent… one rusty… one made of wood… and one without a handle. I unsheathed the rusty one and there was another sheath… a paper one like the kind kitchen knives come packaged in. I pulled it off and there was another one. and another. and another. and another. “Crap,” I thought, “by the time i get to the blade it’s going to be the size of steak-knife… this won’t do at all.”
The only two people who were willing to help me rescue “steve” were my parents… they weren’t “steve’s” parents… they were two people I’d never seen. They ran downstairs to get the car ready and I (whoever i was) tried to grab my laptop that was sitting on the front porch and put it in the apartment before locking up… I was stopped by a landlord-type-guy who was furious and yelling at me about something. I told him that I didn’t have time and we’d have to talk later. I almost dropped the laptop off the railing but managed to get it inside. I locked the door and ran downstairs where my parents were waiting for me in a blue volkswagen beetle (the old kind)
This is about when I woke up… panting and sweating… I laid back and contemplated the meaning of the dream for a while… I still have no interpretation but in retrospect it feels a lot like the shaman transported me to “the underworld”… a dark place full of dark creatures and i wonder if somehow my soul had gotten stuck there. Who was this person I had become who was going to come rescue my soul and return it to the real world? What is the significance of my telekinesis? I was on the verge of going lucid but never quite made it… then i was whisked away into the woods to be transported into another world. Also… they say if you see an animal 3 times (or from 3 different angles) while in a trance it means that is your spirit animal. I have had one experience in the past where, in a vision, I followed a furry animal down a burrow and thought maybe that was my spirit animal… could it have been a rat? Does your spirit animal ever try to attack you? Because i DID see these giant rats in a group of three… maybe they wouldn’t have eaten me… maybe i shouldn’t have run.
i dunno… anyone got any insight?
Spider Dreams
Last night’s dream started off really scary… i was dreaming that i was laying in bed trying to fall asleep (so the transition was flawless and i was convinced that i was still awake) when a spider bit my pinky toe. i yelped and kicked for a second and then checked out the bite… it was swelling up like a blood-blister… so i squeezed the blood out. A few minutes later i squeezed it again a ribbon of puss came out… followed by a COMPLETE SPIDER AND A BUNCH OF SPIDER EGGS!
“aw shit son… this is BAD!” I said and that’s when i felt another bite…. on my right nut. I won’t get into the gross detail but it didn’t take long before I realized i needed to be DRIVEN to a hospital so i called one of my best friends, Joe to pick me up.
He arrived in an 83 280zx 2+2 with his girl and their daughter… They’re helping me out the front door of my house and i reach down to check the ol’ testes again and … whaddaya know… they’re back to normal. i check the toe… back to normal… that’s when i realized i was dreaming…
the funny thing is i told them i forgot something and went back to my room to figure out how to tell them “sorry to wake you up and drag you over here… it turns out i’m dreaming…”
Spider eggs in your toe… not so hot. Spider eggs in your right testicle… straight-up WRONG.
I don’t remember what happened directly after that but by the end of the dream i was mashing in reverse-gear in a BMW 325i with 6 miliion dollars in the trunk and some guy with a flat-top shooting at me.
I would have gotten away too if the BMW didn’t suddenly morph into a Segway with a dying battery.
Oh and one more piece of advice… if you are ever hiding from a villain in a factory where concrete is being poured into molds… do NOT hide IN the concrete with a plastic straw in your mouth to breathe through… i know this sounds terribly obvious but you’d be surprised the lengths you’ll go to when you’re being chased by a man with a gun who wants your share of the loot.
A New Tornado Dream
For years I was plagued with tornado dreams… always representing the unknown… and in these dreams I was always running away from them… hiding behind or inside symbols of security. I have become certain that these dreams signify my fear of the unknown.
The last big one i had was the night before my first Ayahuasca ritual… since embarking on the voyage i was having a tornado dream almost every night… and finally, the night before the big plunge, I took a deep breath and jumped into the thing… and inside; peace… calm… and the dreams ended right then and there.
A few years later when I was going through some romantic turmoil the dream came back a handful of times… only in the new version the tornados were somehow darker (like made out of flames… or there would be several of them and a city in ruin) and i would be frantically searching for my ex as the funnel-clouds were bringing about the end of the world as we know it… but I could never find her. Clearly a future without her was frightening… but these dreams ended when the pipe-dream of us getting back together (or even being good for each other) finally ended.
Now, a few years later, I had my first tornado dream in a long time… last friday night…. only now things have changed. in this dream i was in a car with 3 other people (can’t remember exactly who) and we were chasing the tail of a tornado down farm-roads in what felt like Wilton or something. The tornado was splitting into smaller ones and re-merging sometimes to form larger ones… but it/they were brilliant tunnels of light with electrcity bouncing around inside them… The above pic is the closest thing i could find that captures the feeling… to be honest it looked most like the wormholes that jodi foster was tunneling through on Contact…
Anyway the point is… for the first time that i can remember… the tornado was not a negative thing… and i was not afraid of it at all… i was mesmerized by the beauty of it and not only was i following it but I was bringing friends with me to chase the thing together.
This all seems very positive to me. =)
Here’s to uncertain futures and to exploring them together.
Wilderbeats 06 and More Wild Dreaming
Well that was one of the highlights of my year thus far. Wilderbeats 06 turned out to be more than a party… marking some sort of a “circle of completion” or catharsis for many of us. For me, it was the 1 year anniversary of my first solo gig and the 1 year anniversary of meeting many of my favorite people on earth… my burning man family… Returning to this secluded Forest Hill location turned out to be very special. I was especially touched that people planned the hours of operation for the Bloody Cake ‘n’ Bacon camp so that they would not miss my 1:30 set. Amazing friends i tell you. And let me tell you what i learned about cake and bacon…. mmmmm-MMMMMM BITCH!!! THAT’S what I learned!!! That was seriously the tastiest fucking combination… EVER.
I’m serious.
Just like at Burning Man I was plauged by crazy dreams at night. After drinking it up and helping set up camp on Friday night I fell asleep and dreamed that I was at the party but going through many anxiety-based-scenarios… not the least of which was falling down and tearing my shirt… bloodying up my torso… the kind of rough-ass dream that you wake up from 3 times throughout the night in a sweat…
When I woke up the first time I swear i was in the middle of monster anxiety attack. Why does travelling always induce this kind of dreaming for me? I think it’s weird that at Burning Man I had a dream that my father was dying right in front of me in a rite-aid and now, almost a year later, I come home from this camping trip full of heavy dreams and find out my father is going into surgery on wednesday because he may have cancer of the bladder or something… they’re not sure yet… Fan-fucking-tastic…
There have always been weird synchronicities surrounding the idea of my father dying. When I was in Peru on my Ayahuasca journey I had a dream one night that I saw my father die and then my teeth starting falling out… just sorta getting loose at the roots at first… NOT a fun dream to have… Well after Burning Man i picked up a book called Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck. In one chapter Daniel is staying with a shaman just like I was and had a dream that his teeth were falling out. When asked what it could mean the shaman replied “ah this dream means that your father has died.”
Of course my father hasn’t croaked yet but the ring of synchronicity there is just bizarre… how about the fact that Daniel Pinchbeck himself was hosting a few lectures AT Burning Man last year… the very day after I had the rite-aid father-dying dream. If I had thought of it then I would’ve gone to talk to him about it but i hadn’t seen the connection there yet…
well anyhow….
Wilderbeats was rocking fucking times… I’m sorry to do injustice to it by tangenting off into my dreams there because if i could give Wilderbeats the blog entry it deserves it would be a montage of beautiful people… vibrating trees… writhing dancers… clapping butt-cheeks… exploding taste buds… broken sunglasses… dildos and antlers…. highway debauchery… growling beasts in bushes… sunsets on mars… rattle-bears with sharks for hands… submarine dogs with propeller tails…. snakes in front of liquor stores… screaming teary-eyed vixens and He-Man wearing cop sunglasses and a fanny pack.
But I can’t do all that so here’s some pictures instead:
my heart was last seen here
Cake and Bacon… together at last (tecate optional)
be good to the help… or they will hit you with a dildo in your sleep
Dirt can’t resist the taste sensation that is Mo-Mary
(Mo’s special Bloody Mary recipe)
Morgan and I discussing the logistics of getting faded in the early AM.
I still don’t understand how two Hosa cables went bad on me in one
weekend… see that yellow connector hanging off my mixer? That’s a
fucking playstation RCA cable i carry in my bag that I always
knew would come in handy.
Swami O-My-Gami
you would not guess from this picture that these two bastards are invincible
Show us your game face bitches!!!!
Someone Help Me Make Some New Memories… FAST!
Because the old ones continue to plague me. 
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