Tag Archives: dream

Werewolves, vampires, monsters, and old habits

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When I was three or four, I remember my folks watching some television show about wooden ships on the high seas. There were two ships and one guillotine. I think you can figure out the rest. Later in the same month there was a show of a man running through the woods turning into a werewolf during a full moon. After that it was a late night movie about a vampire.

As a little boy the guillotine troubled me, the werewolf had me scared, and the vampire absolutely terrified me. For children that age, we can not separate reality from non reality, they are one and the same. I doubt my folks were even aware of what had happened, but vampires fit right in, being more scary than the monster under the bed, or in the closet.

I spent nights into teenage years scared of vampires. As silly as it sounds, I became a stomach sleeper during these years in an attempt to protect my throat. When sleeping on my side I could not sleep unless I kept my neck covered with my hand(s). About fifteen, I had a two week every night, all night dream, a vampire hanging on the window next to my bed! For two weeks, it begged, threatened, intimidated, and did everything else it could do to gain permission to enter into my bedroom. Vampires do not exist? One did for those two weeks!

As quickly as it arrived, it left, and I was sleeping peacefully once again. Lucky for me I was starting to have a slight interest in the evening news, and I noticed there were never reports of vampires killing people. Same thing at the library, in the ‘modern’ times of the nineteen-sixties, vampires only existed in books and stories.

I had a decision to make. My logical mind knew there were no vampires, or anything like them that could harm me. On the other hand, they did exist in my life for the last eleven years, and they were very real, and quite deadly. Judging on the previous few weeks of nightmares, I had done something to attract one to my window, real or not.

Over the next months I purged vampires out of my life, and changed my sleeping habits to be something in line with my version of normal. It was not easy, but it had become apparent even at fifteen that I could not let that behavior continue. There always was the option that if I was wrong, I could bring back all my fears, and concerns about vampires, but that did not seem likely.

For the most part I became normal when I slept again. That was so many years ago, I had forgotten all about it, until I read a blog last week of someone going through their own personal hell. They have discovered they are trapped inside their house, and are struggling to find the courage to change their life.

Part of me understands this, and of course another part of me does not. If it were only easy to say, that behavior is easy to change. Behavior is hard to change, especially when it is ours. As I think back on my life, it is easy to understand. Habits I have started and dropped, some only after trying for years. Smoking is a good example. I quit four times before I finally stopped for good. Other habits were quite simple to modify, others not so easy.

I know for sure, as it applies to me, is the longer I allow a habit, the harder it is to modify. For some things, such as quitting smoking, it was the only goal in my life for a number of months. Nothing else in my day to day activities mattered as much as not picking up a cigarette.

Sometimes we take on habit to get through the day, sometimes a habit has a way of becoming our day. All I can offer is this, when a habit is no longer serves its purpose, it is easier to leave behind, because we no longer need whatever need it fills in our lives, as much as we need something else.

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Fetish Dream

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I had a bag of fetishes, some of which I wanted to sell. I went out into to the desert where I knew a fetish buyer lived who may be interested in buying the fetishes. I drove for a few hours into the desert. When I arrived I had to go down a small slope, to where the family were living. The wife spotted me first and called out to the husband who was not in sight. She was agitated, and spoke louder than needed, like someone does who is surprised or nervous.

She told me to take a seat by a large flat rock and wait which I did, she did not speak in english, but I understood by her gestures. When the husband showed up he had a very wide face, and wild hair down to his shoulders. He was dressed in flannel and buckskin. He had the look of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun, but his face was not visible.

He had some small Cowrie seashells, or something that looked like Brazil nuts threaded in his hair hanging down over the front of his face. These shells or stones covered most of his face except one eye or the other, depending on which way he tilted his head. He looked like he had some sort of deformity. On his face there were two or three large tentacle like things under his skin. Like the octopus guy in the movie, only less of it and sideways, starting on each cheek and going across his face.

He was both friendly and pleasant, and asked what I was there for? I said to sell some fetishes. He repeated what I said to his wife to his wife. He asked what fetishes, and I poured out the bag on the rock surface. I set a stone lizard, and two long bones to the side, along with some stone carved animals. I showed him the very small fetishes I wanted to sell. They were the size of a finger nail tall, and were made out of some white and red type of rock. They were of people, never less than two and never more than four. They seemed to be struggling against something – maybe strong wind, by the way they were carved. I also had one small fish made out of brown stone, and some other small figures made of brown stone.

He looked at a few of the white fetishes, and told me they were finished roughly. He kept glancing towards my lizard, and I knew he was interested in it but never mentioned it. He took out a cigarette lighter shaped fetish made of antler. It had a rooster on the top. He showed me the carving on the sides, and told me it took him two years to make it. He put it away in his jacket, and told me really it was his son who sold and bought fetishes.

He called the boy and the boy showed up and sat by the rock. The boy was about five or six and had the same disfigurement as the father, but did not have anything covering his face. As the father and I talked about the fetishes, the son started playing around, either losing patience or having too much energy.

The man told the boy I was there to sell fetishes in whatever language they spoke, and showed the boy some of the fetishes, the pieces of two and three people. The boy kept playing around. The man mentioned the fetishes that were still a little rough. He said they were times in my life. I did not realize this and decided maybe I should not be trading them away.

The man then told me that the boy had no fetishes to sell, and apparently was not interested in the fetishes I had to sell. Then he looked at the lizard, and bones again. I realized he was very interested in the lizard and the bones. The boy was not interested in my other fetishes, so I placed them all back in the bag, thanked them, and left. I walked back up the hill, and started walking back to where I had come from.

Somewhere along the way I woke up….

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Dreams come true from well formed plans

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If my memory has not jumbled this story up…In one of Carlos Castaneda’s early books, Don Juan tells Castaneda that a witch down the road is planning to attack him, and he needs to stop her before she hurts him. Castaneda is scared, and does not know what to do. Don Juan plays on those fears and drives Castaneda to take some action concerning the witch down the road. Later on, if I have the sequence correct, Castaneda asks Don Juan what he would do if he were on a street, in a city and there was a man with a rifle waiting to kill him. Don Juan laughs, and say’s something to the effect of, he would not be on that street to start with.

Unlike the enemy Don Juan may have created, many of us are our own assassins. We rarely need anyone’s help to ruin our plans. We do it ourselves with some frequency. We meet someone special, we want a different job, any number of things that we start to plan out, and suddenly it all blows up without warning. Or does it? In Castaneda’s book, Don Juan said he would not be on the street to start with. What could Don Juan know that we do not?

Don Juan knew many things about human nature that most do not, and this was only one of them. Don Juan knew that many of us we get stuck in a rut we call our life. We claim we do not like where how we live, what we do, and talk about how we are going to change. Changing, and talking about changing are two completely different things. I think that is what Don Juan knew. Unless, as in Castaneda’s case where he really felt his very life was threatened, he would have normally taken no action to help himself.

I listened to a couple eating at a fast food place last week. They were poor, looking at their clothing which was worn, and frayed. The man was telling the woman that he was planning on going to Las Vegas, to gamble, and become rich. He went on to say that it would probably take him about a year and a half to get rich. He thought she could stay where she was until he returned. Of course when he returned things may have changed. She would probably be on Welfare. Possibly hooked up with another guy (his words). What would he do then? Would she be willing to leave the guy to be with him once he returned rich? Perhaps he would run into a women, and he would not want her any more – that also was possible (his words). With the conversation half finished, and bristling with possibilities, they left.

As crazy as that conversation sounds, some of us make plans like that all the time. We dream our plans, and never live our dream, because something falls apart. For that couple, I doubt he will ever find his way out of town, let alone to Las Vegas. Not because he was not capable, but because his plans are built on the same sand of everyones who’s plans blow up without reason. They are not really plans, they are simply a string of events tied together by hot air.

We all need dreams in our life. We also need good planning so we can have the best possible life. I think we need to keep the two somewhat separate so we can achieve our dreams, instead of dreaming about our achievements that have never come to pass. We are capable of so much more if we give our self a chance with real plans, and realistic dreams.

As an old dinner house cook once told me. Plan your work, work you plan, and clean up as you go. In the case of our lives, it would be: Plan your dream, work your plan, and repeat as you go. Happy dreaming!

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Dreams of houses, house full of nick-nacks

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In 1982 a movie, Ghandi arrived on the silver screen. It was an instant block buster movie, and remains today a very powerful movie for many reasons. I really can not remember much about the movie with the exception of Ghandi traveling to different places.

Over my lifetime, I have moved many times. Moving from place to place had been a pattern throughout my life. Moving also follows me into my dreams. This time of year for some reason, I have a somewhat recurring type of dream, well two different dreams actually. The first dream does not have any time attached to it. It could have happened last year, many years ago, or next year. I do not know if that makes it timeless or not, but it is probably as close as I will get. In this dream I am living in a house somewhere. Usually I am sharing a house with a friend, someone I actually know.

I know in this dream that I have no job, and no purpose for staying there, other than I wanted to go somewhere, and I have not started back home yet. I know I have my own home somewhere else, and I have responsibilities waiting at my house. There is one slight variation in this dream and that is sometimes I have two houses, and I have responsibilities at each one. I also have no apparent job at the house I am staying at. It bothers me in my dream I have no job, but I also feel no urge to go out and get a job either because I am not really living there, just hanging around for a few weeks.

In my second dream I move back to the house I first remember living in. The house has not existed anywhere except in my head for a long, long time. Yet, in my dream it is there just as I remember it. The yard is the same, and the land around the house is the same. The only difference outside the house is the driveway is longer than it was.

Once I am inside the house many things are different. The house was five rooms, but in my dream it is much bigger, and also has a second floor. For whatever reason I live on the second floor. On the second floor I discover a door I never noticed before that leads into a mansion sized house. Sometimes there is a family, or families living there, sometimes not.

The nice thing about my dreams and living in all these houses, is I do not seem to collect all the things I am to attached in waking life. I do not have hundreds of books, shelves of nick-nacks, fishing gear, camping gear, and the tools I have acquired over the years. In my dreams moving is not a big deal. All I need to do is walk out of the house, and go back to where I came from.

My dreams are like the movie Ghandi when it comes to travelling. There is a scene in the movie, I do not remember the circumstances, only the scene. Ghandi is going somewhere, and is collecting his possessions. Ghandi had his white robe, his glasses, his shoes, and one book. If memory serves me right, that is all he had to call his own, in the movie at least.

What most of us need in our lives is somewhere between too much junk, and the few things Ghandi owned – in the movie at least. I am not so sure, my life would be so much fun without my treasury of things that are important to me. I hope you too have your collection of items that have memories attached. For me they are the glue that tie the years of my life together. I hope they are glue for you too, and I hope you have a truckload of memories to go with them!

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