7/6/97: After staying up late and watching Sojourner roll off of the landing craft, aka "Carl", I retire with my various brain parts already competing for dominance. Near morning I dream that I am watching late night TV infomercials. A guy is selling those sweat-bands that tennis players wear on their wrists. He says that they are the best way to stay warm on nude beaches and a model is displaying one wrapped around his balls. I think that if this guy can sell this product, surely I can sell mine!
7/7/97: Just before return of sanity this morning, I saw that basketball star with the purple hair (forgot his name: no, I'm not a fan of the game that pre-empts my favorite TV show) and he was married to Jamie Lee Curtis. Walter Cronkite was advancing upon the happy couple, brandishing leading questions and a fat microphone. Jamie Lee was wearing something skimpy and high heel shoes. She was squatting in front of whats-his-name, cradling one of the big chromy-looking guns from "Men In Black". Her expression was an anticipatory leer, ready and eager to deal with The Press. Strange little vision, yes? I suspect it has something to do with my feelings of trepiedation, now that the great Charles Kuralt is gone. Who, now, can say they are safe from the predators who remain in his stead, who fancy themselves "reporters"??
7/10/97: I am with some friends outside the walls of a city-state after The Fall of Civilization. We have heard that within is a kingdom of pseudo-vegetarians who won't eat animal flesh, but who instead will cannibalize strangers who wander into their fair city. We set about to explore the town by first genetically engineering one of our fellows to resemble a gorilla. But once the transformation is complete it becomes evident that something has gone wrong: yes, he looks like a gorilla, but the face on his furry head is upside-down.
12/19/97: Last night I dreamed that I was driving North on 101 and as I ascended the Cuesta Grade I saw a large house to my left, on the South-facing slope, near the summet of the mountain. I recalled that there was some kind of military research project going on and that Bill Gates, who lived in this house, had something to do with it. There was a modern military tank on the apron of the driveway, near the garage and I wondered how it had struggled up the steep face of the mountain to get there, since there was no road to the property.
As I crested the grade and descended down the Northern slope, I stopped when I saw another tank on my left. The crew was working on it, doing some kind of engine maintenance and I remarked: wouldn't it be nice if these things moved faster? Just as I said that, four more tanks came screaming up the hill, flying on low platforms, which I knew to be based on Harrier jump-jet technology. The guy working on the tank by the side of the road said that these flying tanks could achieve speeds of 200 miles per hour.
The platforms that the tanks were attached to appeared to be about 2 to 3 ft. thick and maybe 15 ft. wide by 30 ft. long. along the side of one of these platforms I glimpsed flush-mounted thrust vectoring nozzles, which were pointed slightly aft and mostly down. Behind the platforms I could see rocket exhaust plumes extending back maybe fifty feet. Aside from the thrust vectoring nozzles, there were no visible control surfaces: I had the impression the lifting craft were a general purpose design which, at the moment, were being used to move tanks, but which could have been quickly converted to carry trucks or cargo. There was no cockpit, so I surmised that the controls to operate the platform were pre-wired into the tank control system, so that vehicle commanders could perform the flight tasks themselves. Although not designed to be aircraft, there was no evidence of a ground skirt, like one would see on a large hovercraft.
The four vehicles zoomed over the highway, heading mostly up the hill and crossing the freeway at a steep angle from left to right as they did so. They passed overhead, but low, as if taking advantage of whatever residual ground effect might be present at an altitude of 30 ft. or so. The sound of their passage was not the roar one might expect, but it was not totally silent either. I put this discrepancy down to the fact that I was in my truck with the windows rolled up and that I was dreaming (yes, I knew at the time I was dreaming that it was a dream).
10/2/97: In my dream I "awaken" at around 2:AM and suddenly at a loss for something to do, I turn on the TV. But the first thing I see is an ad for the Psychic Friends Network. So I change the channel and there they are again, with that same inane pitch and the brain-dead minority housewives cackling like so many hens, while the on-line psychic spouts what I once heard described as "glittering generalities". I think: are these the "golf widows" of our time, i.e. women abandoned without a life by hubbies in cubicles, also without lives, who mark time by surfing cyberspace for enlightenment? I change the channel again and again, but every channel has the same thing on it. I keep switching and am suddenly amazed to find I have 70 channels to choose from instead of the usual 20 or so, but except for two or three channels which are blank screens or test patterns, they all show ads of this same scam. I dream myself going back to sleep and in the morning I wondered if I actually flipped the channels and if this really happened.
9/10/97: Long about 3:AM or so I found myself suddenly involved in a vivid experience, where I am standing on a green swath, huge like a soccer field, but I had the impression that it was a runway, like those used by old WW II biplanes.
I simultaneously experience two points of view: one of me is off at the edge of the field, in front of some low, gray one- and two-story buildings which have many large windows and which resemble a small airport complex. One "I" is standing with some onlookers who are cheering on a second group of people. This other group, of which I am one as well, is in the middle of the field, in a line, facing the onlookers. I am standing near the right end of the line of people, as viewed by the onlookers off the field, facing them as I slowly raise my arms over my head.
I feel a profound sense of completeness: as if every neuron I possess is firing simultaneously: the whole top of my head seems to be churning with neural activity! Although I have never had the pleasure, the closest comparison would be to say that I was momentarily experiencing a state of grace. Suddenly realizing that gravity could be dismissed, I rise, slowly, off of the ground. The crowd at the side of the runway cheers as I ascend upwards. Then others in my on-the-runway group do as I have done and rise slowly off of the ground as well.
My thoughts, as I awakened in my room, were of viewing the spectators and the ground below from a height of several hundred feet. My mind still felt as though it was functioning like some perfect instrument, fulfilling a destiny that had eluded it until that moment. I awoke and was so energised that I had great difficulty returning to sleep and to dream of other things.
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