My dad is Chinese and my cat jumps into the ocean. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm on a floating, man-made island. I'm on vacation. Suddenly, a ton of homeless people come and sit where me and my parents were at. We leave because we don't want to get accused of their crimes. 

My fluffy white cat leads me to the stairs we need to go up to get to the main island. Suddenly he jumps in the ocean instead of taking the path on land. The water is clear, turquoise, and there is no turbulance. 

At first, he seems to find some stairs and swims towards them, but then, he deviates. I jump into the water after him, fully clothed. I wonder if I'll drown, but I'm okay. I manage to catch him and pick him up and carry him to the stairs. 

I'm in an office with a black man and his golden retriever. He gives me some advice. 

Then I find myself going against traffic on some spiral stairs again with my parents. It's mostly Japanese businessmen coming down, but a fat, middle aged woman in a huge, flamboyant, puffy red-orange kimono comes down too. Her shoes are pointed, curl and the ends, and are covered in golden beige silk.

I say to my parents, "All kinds of Asians are here in the Philippines, right?" My Chinese dad says yes.

I get absorbed in an eReader with a built-in token. It generates a password for me. I'll have to save it later. Don't want anyone to look up Dr. Alok Kanojia, who put out this eReader. He has gooning videos! And this app is mainly about gooning!

I go up the stairs by myself and end up in the small, cramped apartment of my nemesis acting teacher. There are other people milling around for this class. The decor is slightly themed in black and white with splashes of red. The teacher comes and tells us to play games. 

I empty out a laundry basket of board games. I see something that looks like that caterpillar children's game, Cootie, but it's themed around Beatles trivia. I ask the person next to me who is looking at another caterpillar came if he would like to play this one. We agree to this game, but then the teacher stops everyone and tells everyone but two of us to leave. 

I'm very nervous about this. I believe I'm in mild danger.

I sit in a chair that takes my flying out of there to another place on this metal island. The trip is nice. It's like flying on a plane.

INTERPRETATION

Lately, I've been having dreams that encapsulate my relationships with a broad demographic in addition to revisiting specific relationships I've had with people in my distant past. For example, I dreamed about a nun who had kids to support, and she was having sex and depending on an old boyfriend of mine. I was observing her feelings about sex and romance and this specific boyfriend, and it totally reminded me of my overall, general feelings about how my sexual relationships with men have been over the course of my life.

I think this dream draws out some of my concerns about the responsibilities of pet ownership. I love cats and dogs and animals in general, but I'm not sure I want to be a pet owner again. It's a huge responsibility. You can't really go on vacation without risk. You have to either invite someone into your home or you have to take the animal with you. If your cat jumps in the ocean, you've got to risk your life to jump in there after it. And it's a living creature, so it has a mind of its own (it won't do what you want), and it's prone to getting sick and injured. You can't have just the fun parts of pet ownership, like chilling with your handsome kitty, who's sitting on the counter as you cook breakfast in the morning.

However, in the dream, the golden retriever was of great assistance to the man who was giving me advice. I wasn't exactly sure how the golden retriever was helping him, but I knew it was. So maybe pets give us benefits in subtle ways. 

Certainly, I love experiencing those feelings of love and affection for another being, and I love being reminded of what it was like to have a child's mind. (That's always what I think of when I'm around cats and dogs.)

And then the relationship with the acting teacher was pretty specific in this dream. He got away with bad stuff in one-on-one, private situations. Not stuff that would put you in fear for your life, but you were at risk of being harmed by this guy in lesser, but still impactful ways.

Between sleep and wakefulness. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

Some of the most interesting moments in my life have been those times between falling asleep and being awake. I might be more on the "being awake" side, or I might be more on the "falling asleep" side, but it's always a strange sensation. We should have a word for that. The closest one I could find is "hypnopompia." Google Gemini defines it as "lingering dream logic." 

But the other night, I was lying in bed, and I was almost asleep, but I was awake, and I found myself suddenly bathed in a bright, gauzy, white light. I was laying down, and I could see a small team of about four people standing over me, scanning me with their smartphones. They were very calm and attentive and tried to look me in the eye.

But I was definitely under the impression that these were aliens, not humans, and the smartphones were not smartphones, but some kind of alien technology disguised. 

I wasn't scared. I felt that what they were doing was either benefitting me, or benefitting them--but no one was going to be hurt by this. 

In particular, I remember the girl closest to me. She was very young (maybe in her very early 20s), blonde, with large, blue eyes. She was wearing a hot pink, velvet hoodie. Her hair was up in a pony tail.

It's a little scary to talk about now, but it felt fine at the time. It was like going to see the doctor for a minor checkup. Maybe it was even more than that. Maybe it was more like feeling the comfort of being taken care of by a medical team, combined with the comfort in knowing that there are forces in the universe looking out for you aside from what we can see on planet Earth.

I'm excited to do the coding for an assault rifle. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

Based on the two dreams I had last night, I think I'm having some kind of crisis about what to do with the remaining 20-30 years of my life. 

Last night, I dreamed that I was at work (not at my real life job and not with my real life coworkers). In this dream, I worked in a windowless bunker. My boss handed me a large, automatic rifle. It looked a little used--a little beat up. The handle looked like it had a rubber grip on it with nicks and scuffs. He said, "I need you to program this. All of this needs to happen..." He hands me a piece of laminated paper. On it is a table that has the descriptive names of various settings for the gun on it. 

I reflexively say, "Sure!" because I'm so excited to be useful to my boss. But I'm even more excited that I'm going to be programming something.

He says, "No one can see you working on it." I nod.

I take the rifle home and I draw the blinds. I start coding right away, excited for the challenge. It's only now, in the quiet and privacy of my own home, that I start to wonder more deeply about why I'm doing this. What's being planned for this rifle?

I woke up, peed, and went back to sleep.

I'm drawing a picture of some love birds with Prismacolor (artist quality) colored pencils. I've been working on two different poses for the love birds, which are green with a light blush of peachy pink and a spot of coral/maroon. Then I realize I've been working on the wrong piece of paper. I have another, larger piece of drawing paper where I've started two other poses for the love birds, with white flowers. 

"That's okay. I'll combine the two so the piece is tall, and there are four love birds instead of two. It'll be twice as nice." If there's one thing the arts will teach you, it's how to put in extra effort without necessarily seeing a payoff.

I'm combing a fringe of yarn in various, neutral shades with my fingers when a man comes up to me, looks at what I'm doing and says, "Oh! Well, you have to do that, don't you!"

Something about the way he said it implies that he doesn't know why someone would waste their time crafting and drawing. But maybe some people just have to be artists, and so... if this is just fun for the artist, it doesn't make sense to pay them to do what they do naturally. 

I'm annoyed, and I say, "No, I don't have to do this!" There are plenty of other things I could do with my time, and I wish someone would be grateful for the time I take to make art.

The dream ended there. 

The thing is, I've always said to myself and others that I do have to be an artist. That I have to write. That I have to express myself creatively. And I do think that in my life, this artistic side is a core component of who I am. I need to balance fun, creative projects with the stuff that actually pays my bills. At this point in my life, it is very clear that my creative work is not the thing that will take care of me, materially. 

But I think the love bird dream highlights two things: I can spend my time doing things other than creating art. The bulk of my time is spent doing non-creative things right now, and I'm surprisingly okay with that. I'm trying to address other parts of my life, like exercise, nutrition, education, and career. 

I think the first dream with the rifle is urging me to take a critical look at the direction my actual bill-paying career is taking me, and not allow myself to unconsciously, reflexively end up somewhere I don't want to be. In the dream, what I was doing was taking me down a path of hurting people. In real life, "the wrong path" could mean a lot of different things. 

And I am trying to avoid hurting people. I had to put aside my ego this week to avoid getting unpleasant with someone. But I felt mad. I've dropped any claim to getting emotionally compensated for that, which is how someone once described forgiveness to me. I like that description, because when I get mad, I often feel like the situation is a power and dominance struggle, there's a winner and a loser, and someone needs to compensate me for the suffering they caused me with suffering of their own.

I've been doing a yoga teaching certificate which started off as a way to get more knowledge about a Satyr Plays story I wanted to write, but has ended up being really good for me in a variety of ways. One of my favorite things about this certificate program is the section and live Zoom meetings on the philosophy of yoga. There's something in the yogic lifestyle called "Ahimsa" or non-violence, which means avoiding hurting people with either words or actions. This is something I want to put into practice in my own day-to-day life. And I think that the less you involve your ego in frustrating situations, the easier it is to avoid reactively harming people. But for me, I think it's something I need to practice again and again to train the nervous system to stay calm in the face of injury. So I had the opportunity to practice this week. ☺

I think the gun part of the dream might also be cautioning me against agreeing to things without thinking more deeply about them.

Spending a whole day at work not knowing what to do. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

Last night, I dreamed that I was a brand-new receptionist. This is a very basic, entry-level job. I'm dressed well for it in a cheetah print blouse with a nice skirt. I believed that dressing nice like this was a way for me to express my enthusiasm about this job. I look the part! 

Then, right when I get behind the desk, the phone rings. I answer. A customer asks a very, very simple question, but I can't answer it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I couldn't answer any question that would come across my path. I don't think they trained me to do this, and I'm scared. I'm all by myself at the front desk. There's no one who can help me.

I'm very scared of the scenario in this dream (not knowing what I'm doing and being left alone to fend for myself). I'm scared about other scenarios related to work too, but this one is my main one. 

I can't let this happen!

*Update: A week later, I'm having even more dreams about picking up the phone and being unable to answer people's questions.

Feeding cats to snakes. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm responsible for helping some ladies exit an artistic/spiritual retreat safely. There's one gray haired lady who, before leaving, dumps out her duffel bags with cats into the terrariums of some large snakes. I am shocked and horrified at this. 

Then I look at the cats. They're undernourished. They're too small, even though I know they're adults. They are dirty. They probably won't be adopted. 

And I think to myself, they're part of the food chain just like other animals. If it wasn't these animals who aren't wanted or given a good life, it would be other animals we'd kill. But my gut is telling me that there is more to this situation than what I'm consciously taking into account, and that this is somehow worse than what one would ordinarily feed to a large, pet snake. 

INTERPRETATION

I used to have a lot more nightmares related to vegetarianism than I do now. I think this dream could relate to my concerns about not being a vegetarian or a vegan, but I think it also highlights those times that you have a mismatch between your gut feeling and what your head is telling you. In the dream, I think I was a lot more aware of this divide between head and gut than I am when I'm awake. 

In my opinion, my gut is like an emergency warning system that can put on the breaks or give me the go-ahead before my brain has had a chance to catch up. Because when I woke up, I could think of other reasons why it's worse to feed a cat to a snake. That's an animal that does have a chance at a good life in someone's home. There's probably not a future good life for a chicken or a rabbit bred for food. And we've domesticated cats and dogs to be tame and dependent on us as pets. It's a betrayal of trust to kill an animal that was promised a stable, comfortable life by our society for reasons other than offering them a kind exit from their suffering. It's a betrayal of our stewardship. It may not be a betrayal on an individual, one-on-one contract type of level, but it's a betrayal on a societal contract kind of level. It's true of chickens and cows too (that they're bred by us to be tame and dependent on us), but it's not so common to share as close a bond as the one we develop with cats and dogs. 

On the other hand, shouldn't the bond we've achieved with cats and dogs tell us that we could achieve that kind of a bond with nearly any other kind of animal to some extent--especially tame, domesticated animals like chickens and cows? And even with wild animals, we might not be able to bring them into our lives on a close basis, but we can relate, emotionally, to the experiences of nearly any kind of animal. 

It's just not good that we kill any animals for food. We have a lot in common with animals--similar senses, similar emotions, similar pains and joys. When they sleep, they dream. When they play, they're exercising their imaginations. I'm all for lab-grown meat in the future. With some animals that are true carnivores, like snakes, we might not be able to give them nutritionally complete meals without feeding them whole animals with organ meat and skeletons and all. But humans? Humans are omnivores. Humans can probably live on plant-based diets with occasional supplementation. 

So why am I not a vegetarian or a vegan? It's just too inconvenient not to eat meat. I've already got a lot to worry about with my diet as far as chronic disease goes without worrying about how to get all my nutrients in and how to cook special meals to accommodate a special meat-free diet. But I do think it's more morally correct to not kill animals for human food. And eating meat does contribute to that system. 

I've heard some people decrying the use of lab meats because it's "unnatural" and will likely have toxins in it. But we don't know that. It could be perfectly safe. We'd have to run tests over time. We wouldn't know if it's toxic or not just based on the fact that it's lab grown. I do hope they succeed at mass producing safe, lab grown meats in the future and that the skeptics end up in the minority. 

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

Image by Midjourney

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)

Image by Midjourney

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.