About to be killed in a base on an alien planet. (dream)

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DREAM

I live in a base of Earthlings on an alien planet. The base is in a secluded forest. We're being invaded by aliens that remind me of the Predators from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. We have invisibility cloaks, but they have way better ones. And they can detect ours with only a little bit of effort. But we're still sending out men on assignments to try to counter this invasion.

They're aggressive, but I don't know if they're cruel. I do know that we will all die. There's no way we're going to be able to ward off this invasion. 

I watch the base from afar. It's being bombarded with laser like energy attacks. There's no way the base can keep withstanding all of that. The shields are failing. I go inside the base (it doesn't even occur to me that I could survive for any length of time in the forest) and I grab a cage that looks like a suet feeder with three birds lined up in a row in it. They're spray painted in different glittering, metallic colors. I release the sky-blue raven and say, "It's a raven." It replies, "I'm a raven." I'm hoping this raven will survive without us. 

I leave the metallic brown parrot and the myna bird in the cage. Someone might need them. And they're not as likely to survive without us. 

I run around the base trying to figure out what other last-minute tasks I need to do now that I'm at the very end of my life. The other colonists are running around in a panic as well. I wonder if the aliens will make us suffer before we die, but I try to put that out of my mind and focus on what needs to happen before any of that.



INTERPRETATION

I asked AI about different herbs and supplements that can enhance dreaming, and it said that there is scientific evidence that B6 enhances dream recall. I've been taking a pretty high dose of it, and I think it actually works! I've been remembering more dreams lately. They're often uninteresting or jumbled, so I haven't shared all of them. But this one almost had a story arc.

I think this dream describes how I've felt for the past several months. I'm really worried about a catastrophic future, but I need to focus on the very next thing I need to do. Am I and are the people around me ill equipped to survive the current environment? Yes. Will I suffer before I die? Probably. But that doesn't change the fact that there are things I have to do right now.

The massive fruit. (dream)

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I'm out in the back yard and I'm so excited about the plants I've grown. I've just watered these huge, spring green plants with broad leaves and massive, red fruits hanging off of them. 

There are creative writing friends in the room with a window to the yard, and I climb through the window to greet them. I can't wait to show them this plant.

Then I look a little closer at my yard, and I realize that there's a giant hole in the middle of it. I peer down into the hole. There's an enormous drop to another, floating island. I wonder how I could have let the guys working on our yard dig that deep! It was careless of me not to monitor the digging more carefully! It's scary hiring people to work on your house. Or did the dog dig the hole? And how did they get through a couple feet of rock? Then again, are we ever safe if the only thing preventing us from plunging to our death is a couple feet of rock and soil? 

This is my problem now, however it got started. What do I do? 

INTERPRETATION

This dream makes me want to cry, because it's clear what it means to me. I really, really want to get this project done for a writing contest, and I can't wait to show off the fruits of my efforts (the fruit from the plant I've grown in the dream). In the dream, I wanted to show off what I'd patiently grown and nurtured to writing friends, and in real life, it's the same thing. 

Oh, and that hole. Well, it just seems like there's no end to the number of problems around the house. Chores to be done. Things to be repaired. I don't always know what to do. Sometimes, I just let a problem sit there forever. 

There's also no end to the problems I have to face with my creative writing project. I get this helpless feeling staring at the screen sometimes.

Emperor Palpatine orders Darth Vader to kiss his toes. (dream)

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DREAM

I'm watching Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine interact in a large, open room. The emperor asks Darth Vader to do or say increasingly humiliating things. I can feel what Darth Vader feels. He's uncomfortable, but eager to show his loyalty. 

But after a couple of these minor requests for signs of compliance, the emperor takes his shoe off and asks Darth Vader, "Shouldn't you be willing to kiss my toes?" 

I can feel how embarrassed Vader is, but he gets down on the floor and kisses that stockinged foot anyway out of fear. 

Then the Emperor says, "A truly loyal servant would let me take one of his fingers." He eyes Darth Vader's fingers greedily and smiles, like he might bite one of them off. (These are Anakin's real, flesh fingers, not robotic ones.) 

Now, I feel that the emperor may have crossed a line. Vader might feel compelled to rebel now. I can feel that Vader is still afraid, but he's getting outraged now. 

Then, I find myself living in a dorm-like room with a public shower next to it. I take my shower in the only available stall. When my roommate comes back, I ask her how a lesbian takes a shower, as though that might give me insight into myself.

I wake up and go back to bed, and I'm in a restaurant with exclusively black women. Every single table is taken. I go into another section of the restaurant, and I see one, single open table. I squeeze by a young white girl's chair and she asks me, "Do you have to sit there?"

I say with relative calm, "You want every single table, don't you?"

Then there was a whole sequence about making dumplings and pasta. I had a pasta machine, flour and oil, and I was trying to make dough for dumplings, but there was obviously way too much oil, and I watched myself think that there wasn't enough oil. 

Then I was cuddling with my husband in a warm, red sweater with a cup of tea. We were both young, but inside, I felt middle aged. 

INTERPRETATION

I kinda feel as though labeling the antagonist in a piece of fiction "the dark side" is cheating. In real life, the dark side manifests subtly (unless we're talking about an extreme, like a serial killer). "The dark side" is usually more like "the gray area." It's someone who loves you making inappropriate demands that aren't in your best interest. It's someone asking for test after test of someone's affection and never being satisfied. It's an increasing need for power and control in a relationship. Stuff like that. Stuff that one person feels they need but causes the other person pain or fear.

With the restaurant dream, I talked a lot with someone yesterday about how some people have an insane amount of money. I took numbers given to me by Google Gemini and calculated that an annual, 2% wealth tax on the top 1% of wealthiest Americans would pay for all of the annual expenses of SNAP, Medicare, and Medicaid. That's insane. Think of how much money they would still have after a 2% annual tax. "You want every single table, don't you?" I think the racial divide in the dream reflects how you hear about the privileges some people have. In the dream, the privileges are associated with race. In real life, the privileges are associated with money.

Naming the 12 religions you believe in. (dream)

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DREAM

I'm driving and I see one of the characters from my Lost Atlantis series, Matt. He's on a road trip. He's driving a vehicle, and there's a separate car with a vinyl-covered, cardboard shell in which a fluffy, orange kitten is driven independently in traffic with a remote and a self-driving system. The kitten's vehicle is quiet, like a bicycle, but it's big enough and fast enough to be on the main road. I watch the kitten's car make a pretty sharp turn. I'm impressed. I'm convinced that the kitten will be safe, despite my initial fears. The kitten and Matt will meet up at a certain point later on, but the road is longer and gentler for the kitten's vehicle.

Matt parks at a rest stop. There's a hospital painted the color of adobe there, keeping sick patients captive inside the way a mental hospital would. But this is mainly a hospital for physical health. Matt decides to investigate. After a little exploration into the condition of the patients, a nurse in a cliched "sexy nurse" miniskirt uniform gets up on a ledge and goes a dance in the corner of the room. She moves her hips in a serpentine fashion, indicating to another nurse that she recognizes Matt from his legs. They try to nab Matt for spying, but he jumps out the bathroom window. 

They don't follow him outside and he isn't worried about it. 

As he sits out there, my best friend is sitting beside him and says Matt needs to name the 12 religions he has. Matt ponders what that could mean. Could that mean the religions he practices? What if he only believes part of a religion? He considers naming several theories in math, but a passing child does it first. 

Matt is close to achieving his goal with this road trip. Sandi (the main character from the Lost Atlantis series) is getting sloppy and leaving clues, like her scent. I feel as though I am the narrator and must come up with the best ideas I can for why Sandi is betraying herself. 

Matt gets back on the road. He finds Sandi. 

We see inside the lodge at the remote location where he finds her. A circle of people holding various appetizers and meals walks around that circle like it's a cake walk or musical chairs. In practice, it's like a human sushi bar--anyone seated in an outer circle can grab and eat what's on the marching, inner circle's plates. 

INTERPRETATION

There are a lot of odd things about this dream. I'd like to think about what each could mean. 

The kitten in the self-driving vehicle. I haven't really started trusting the idea of a self-driving vehicle until recently. It sounds like it's gaining popularity in Los Angeles and Phoenix, which boggles my mind. Maybe it really could happen one day, in spite of the fading of the painted lines and the confusing placement of traffic lights that don't go all the way across every lane of traffic. Where I live, it often looks like a lane in which people are supposed to go straight ahead at 55 MPH has a traffic light over it which says left turn only. Is a self-driving car going to get that right when it's really hard for a human to get that right? Hey--maybe one day. I've been driving a lot recently, and to not have to drive and to not have to deal with a human at all to get somewhere sounds like a utopian dream.

Restraining people for physical health problems. I guess I've been thinking about some of the unfairness with which society treats people facing mental health challenges. We definitely don't think of pain in your leg as the same as pain in your mind. It's crazy to think of a hospital forcing you to stay for a broken leg. I just finished a memoir in which a woman is treated horribly for reaching out for help with her mental suffering, and she couldn't leave the mental hospital even though she checked herself in (I think this was in the 1950s). I'm doing some training in the mental health field, and it's very interesting to contrast the official, theoretical attitude to which mental health professionals hold themselves for thinking about the mentally ill versus the reality of lay people and even some of these same professionals once they get into an actual work position. I'm really not sure what the solution is for the mistreatment of vulnerable adults. I've been listening to the YouTuber Asmongold, recently, and he did a video on Chris Chan. I have exactly the same perspective as he does about people treating that poor soul badly--humans are animals and you can't be too shocked about them being uncivil. That's just their animal nature. But I think that once we notice a pattern of behavior, we can put up systematic rules to counter that pattern.

12 religions and most of them are math. I've been thinking about my spiritual beliefs in recent years, and I was telling a friend that I had checked the Bhagavad Gita out from the library. I think I said something about not being Hindu, and she replied, "Why label your beliefs?" Indeed--why do I bother with that? That's a question I've been wrestling with lately. I believe many different things from many different sources. And I recently read about half of a book about the origins of math, and I was really surprised at how faith-based some of my beliefs about math were. (I had kind of bought into the idea of Platonic ideals.)

Sandi leaving her scent. Why does Sandi, the main character, betray herself by leaving behind clues about where she is? I often feel as though I betray myself by posting on the internet. It would be so much more safe and secure to say nothing online, and to do as little as possible. But then the quality of my life goes down if I can't say the things I want to or do the things I want to. So there's always that ambivalence.

A human sushi bar. I guess I think a lot these days about how we have spent millennia using people like machines, and perhaps that time in human history is ending. We're starting to get a little more serious about merging robots with AI with the creation of tools like the Optimus robot. 

Salting gloves. (dream)

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DREAM

I'm in an elementary school classroom, sitting crisscross apple sauce in a column of other seated adults. We all face forward. An old boss from a restaurant I used to work at passes around a bucket full of pairs of mitten and glove socks. (These are mittens and gloves that go up the arms.)

I see the girl behind me select a pair, then change her mind and put them back. I used to take a gym class with her when I was in high school. I take the mittens she rejects. They're made of a thin, stretchy, sage green material.

We put on the mittens and pick up grains of salt with them. We place the salt on our tongues and leave them there for about seven seconds, sitting quietly, observing the sensation. We do this several times, contrasting the feeling of salt vs. no salt.

Then I go out into the mall with a small group of friends. One of my wise friends suggests that we will want to have full calorie, full-fat ice cream. It will keep us full. Some of our group go looking for it. But I'm worried about parking.

I go outside to look for a place to park my big, yellow, school bus. I pick it up in my hands and struggle to get it to the first spot that looks good to me on the edges of a desert circle. There's a confusing sign on the white-painted parking spot. It says something about "No Parking." I can't tell which spot it's referring to. Does it mean both of the two parking spaces? The sign is really close to both of them.

I go across the desert circle to another, elevated pair of parking spaces. The same "No Parking" sign is there, but it's a little clearer. If I got towed, I could argue that the sign is in a different place than the spot where I parked.

I put my bus down in there. The bus has shrunk to about 25% of its original size.



INTERPRETATION

I think this is a mishmash of things I do these days. It's winter, so I wear mittens and gloves. I think about going back to meditating these days (the salt exercise is a little like mindfulness). I've been thinking about calling the wise friend. The full fat ice cream is how I want to get back on Keto. And I'm always worried about parking.

School busses are especially confusing, because what if they stop on the opposite side of traffic on a busy road? I guess you still have to stop. I've never encountered that situation myself, but I've seen other people have to deal with it. What if I just don't notice the bus driving on the opposite road? I hate it. I hate driving. I hate that a momentary lapse in judgment can result in thousands of dollars of essential, daily equipment being ruined, or it can result in metal and glass shards slicing through my face and body, or it can even result in a child or an elderly person getting killed. But driving is the only way to survive here.

Dating someone after burning a bridge. (dream)

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I had a dream last night. I'm fuzzy on the details, but in the dream, I bumped into this guy who (in real life) cut ties with me when my ex-roommate started a smear campaign against me. (I assume she was running a smear campaign because of the way I was treated by the other theater people after the falling out.) I stayed quiet for a while. I didn't see the point in indulging gossip. But after she got me fired from an acquaintance's film, I posted about it on Facebook. In response, this guy left a fairly cryptic, public goodbye message for someone on Facebook (I assumed it was me), and I assume that he decided to cancel a 10-minute play of mine that his small theater troupe was going to do, because he never contacted me again about when or where I could see them perform it. 

I don't think he's a bad guy. This was just the judgment call he felt pressured into making.

So in the dream, I was back in my hometown and I saw this guy. I thought it would be awkward, but we hit it off pretty well. We started talking. We started going to the park. After a while, he asked if we should date. I agreed to it, but I felt super weird about dating him. And at first, it was hard for me to tell if I felt weird because we burned a bridge a long, long time ago, and he might abandon me again, or if I would feel weird dating anyone at this point. After trying to feel it out for a while, I decided that mainly, I was uncomfortable dating anybody again. I'd forgiven him, and I felt as though could move beyond all of that. But I had been done bothering with doing the labor of trying to maintain a relationship and now this was throwing me for a loop.

I think the only reason I'm thinking of this guy again is because someone on LinkedIn reposted something he had posted. He referenced a video he had made which was getting a lot of views, so I went to see his channel for myself. It's kinda weird to look up someone you left behind in life, but I did it, and sure enough, it gave me weird feelings.

I guess this dream mainly lets me know that I've settled down into being single and wouldn't look forward to starting a new relationship. It also lets me know that I've forgiven this person. But another possible message from this dream is that you can forgive someone, but you'll probably always have the memory of what they're capable of (or not capable of).

The second volume of my dream diaries is now available in paperback form! (news)

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Hello, all!

I've had some free time recently, so I've created a paperback edition of my second dream diary. It took a lot more work than my lazy self thought it would! Even though I already had an eBook cover and an eBook manuscript, it still took about 1.5 days of concentrating pretty hard to put together something for a 1st edition paperback. (And I always fail to catch mistakes or change my mind about decisions I made for a book, so there will probably be subsequent editions one day. But I think that the quality of this edition will be decent. I ordered a proof and thumbed through it. There aren't a bunch of large mistakes as far as I can tell.)

There are a couple things about the paperback that frustrate me already though. One is the length. This book is over 600 pages long. I tried to save on paper by having new dreams appear on both the left and right pages. In the first dream diary, new dreams only appeared on the right.

The other big thing that bothers me is the price for the paperback. It costs $24.99. I wish I could bring that price down, but I only get a little over $1 in royalties for every copy sold at this price. The royalties can't get much lower than that. The book just costs a lot to print, and Amazon's cut is so large that it's quite expensive to produce the book. 

But the eBook is much cheaper at $6.99, so that's still an option.

It's much more economical to purchase and produce eBooks, but some people really prefer paper. And at least for me, the author, paperbacks have their advantages in spite of the expense. Paperbacks are really nice to have at live, in-person events. They're good for readings and they're good for selling at a table. I also like to drop off paperbacks at the free little libraries in town. It's easier and more satisfying to gift physical books to interested friends. And I can sign paperbacks.

So! In summary, if you are a paper person, and you like my dream diary posts, this is now an option. 

Thank you for your attention.

Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Back-School-Naja-Tau-ebook/dp/B0BZXNMMMQ.