Nicholas Dreams

Failed pitch, temporary Astronaut and Obama’s extraterrestrial theories

I had been agonizing over a pitch we were doing for my friends commercial. I was waiting on Bobo’s animation treatment to see what were going to present. I was walking through an enormous bureaucratic complex. The halls were covered in dark wood with incredibly high ceilings.
As I proceded down a long hallway it opened up into an enormous, semi-circular auditorium with all the seats filled. Bobo was on stage giving his pitch on our project from behind a podium. In the audience were a number of government dignitaries including Barack Obama. My friend Leon was seated at the edge of a back row. It suddenly occurred to me that it was Leon’s piece we were pitching for.
I leaned against a wall to observe. The lights lowered and the curtains peeled back. What followed was an absurd visual orgy of animation. Bobo had taken the product we were designing around and had integrated it into an extravaganza of CG acrobatics. Lasers, fight scenes, exploding planets etc.
I was delighted by its thematic scope but realized immediately that he had completely overshot the mark and that it was going to offend every one of Leons aesthetic sensibilities.
As the lights came back up Leon wandered over to me with his hands in his pockets. He furrowed his brow and very apologetically said there was no way he could work with us considering where he saw the project going. I shook hands with him and gave me my assurance there were no hard feelings.
I went to tell Bobo the bad news when I realized my name was being called over the loudspeaker. Apparently I had been elected to be an astronaut for a day. I walked up to the podium suddenly attired in a tight-fitting bodysuit.
The podium was suddenly replaced by one of those old-school conical space probes they used for the first earth orbits. I sat inside to moderate fanfare (there were only a hundred people or do in the auditorium). I launched immediately through the ceiling and without much intermediate experience was immediately floating in zero gravity. I remember only having a quick moment to absorb all the cosmic beauty when I rapidly descended back into the auditorium.
I stepped out of the space probe into an empty auditorium. No more audience, just janitors sweeping up and putting the chairs back into place. Someone notified that as an astronaut for a day I had been granted an audience with Mr. Obama. I was directed towards his office and I immediately proceeded towards it.
As I knocked on the door I realized I had a rolling suitcase with me and I was still dressed in my absurd proto-astronaut outfit.

He opened the door with an enormous, pleasant smile on his face and beckoned me into the room.  He was tall and slender with amazing poise.  The room was surprisingly nothing like one would expect the presidents office to be like.

It was long and dark and filled with an absurd assortment of stuff.  Almost like a cliched room of curiousities where one would find suits of armor and various weaponry in glass cases.  His desk was crammed in the back corner behind a pile of boxes.  I wheeled my suitcase into the room to be closer to his desk.  He shut the door behind me and began shuffling about moving boxes here and there, unfolding and reading random documents.

I began unpacking my bag systematically to get to some garments on the bottom.  Normally when I have suitcase dreams I am quite aware of revealing my undergarments to passerbys but in Obama’s case I was utterly un-selfconscious.

So, I began changing out of my astronaut costume and back into normal attire.  I had all of my clothes neatly arranged in stacks on the floor.  As I was changing I began asking Obama what it was like being President and if there was anything of note he wanted to tell me.

He said, ” You know, one of the great things about being President of the United States is that I finally have confirmation that aliens exist.”  I remember holding a stack of underwear in my arms when he said this.    I pressed him for informtion.  I got right up in his face and implored him for more.  He wagged his finger at me and said, ” Let’s just say that we built a very powerful computer to say hello in every conceivable fashion and we finally got a response.”

Confused Patricide in a Suspended Japanese Inn

My brother, father and I were being held captive in a small room. I was aware that the surroundings were distinctly Japanese. In fact we were imprisoned in an incredibly spare traditional inn, replete with tatami, sliding screen doors and dark wood everywhere.
My father was being held captive by an enormous giant of a man who resembled an mongoloid, obese, Bruce Willis. He was kneeling behind my father, holding his head in a sleeper hold. He kept on threatening to snap his neck but seemed intent on keeping us in suspense.
My brother and I were pacing in circles around them, they were in the middle of the room kneeling on the tatami. As we circled around them we became increasingly agitated that the giant was actually going to carry out his threat. I decided to take matters into my own hands.
I grabbed an enormous kitchen knife and clambered up his back. I proceeded to cut deeply into his neck until I felt his body go slack.  As I climbed down from his body and surveyed the gory scene I realized that somehow his body had merged with my father’s and I had inadvertently committed patricide.  My little brother began crying profusely and as I attempted to comfort him he began shaking violently.  He gradually shrank in size and became an infant version of himself.  I picked him and threw him over my shoulder and wrapped him in blankets.

An enormous siren went off throughout the building I was in and I realized I had triggered some sort of alarm system.  I threw the door open and began running around the inn carrying my little brother.  Eventually I came out onto an open, wooden terrace.  I was faced with an enormous industrial scene.

The inn itself was suspended from the underside of an enormous bridge.  Underneath us, sprawling in every direction was a gigantic refinery.  There were miles of pipes, concrete buildings and smokestacks belching exhaust and flames.  There was an elaborate system of suspended, concrete walkways coming off of the inn in many directions.  I could see small platoons of security guards in the distance attempt to get closer to us.  I began running carrying my brother all the while.  I chose paths at random hoping that they would lead us down to street level.  I kept on looking over my shoulder to ensure that the security guards were still at a safe distance.

Finally we exited at the bottom of an enormous concrete ramp and we were at a basic intersection.  It looked like any number of grubby, harsh street corners in Brooklyn, underneath the BQE and overrun with traffic.  I attempted to flag down a taxi.  Finally, in a astate of exhaustion I sat down on the curb, put my “baby” brother down on the sidewalk and began crying spasmodiaclly.

Pastoral vacation turned voluntary vampire nightmare

This was from a couple months ago, stuck in my mind with extraordinary clarity.  I was on vacation with my family.  We had rented a huge mansion in New Hampshire or Vermont.  It was in a strange neighborhood with an array of other huge, beautiful homes.  It felt like an enormous Quaker village the way the homes were all clustered together.  It felt like a pedestrian neighborhood that was almost totally devoid of paved roads.  There were enormous, beautiful oak trees interspersed throughout.  It was quite idyllic.  I remember arriving at the house with my family (mom, dad and brother).  My brother and I rushed through the house eagerly checking out all the rooms.  The house was totally unfurnished and the rooms were all beautiful and sparse, with hardwood floors, wood paneling and sunbeams pouring in through the windows.

There were other affluent families living in the neighborhood and everyone was getting set up for their vacation time.  There was this very sweet, almost idyllic moment where we were unpacking things from the car and we all sat in front of the house, staring up at it contentedly.

As soon as the evening came closer we began to realize that something was amiss.  It immediately became bitter cold and some of the neighbors began complaining at the utter lack of supplies in their houses.  There was no food, no furniture, and seemingly no lights or anything.  Night fell suddenly and we realized that something was terribly wrong.  I began to hearing muffled screams around the neighborhood and I beckoned my family to run inside and hide in the upstairs.

As I stood in the kitchen of the house I heard a scrambling noise from behind the basement door.  I swung open the door and from out of the darkness I saw a horde of hairless, toothed, vampire-like ghouls rushing up the stairs, climbing the walls and hissing at me.  Strangely I was not in the least bit afraid as I realized I had total psychic dominion over dream-space and could do whatever I wanted with it.  I began vaporizing my antagonists mentally en masse.  They would vanish in a little puff if I pleased or I could pin them against walls at my will.  I shut the door behind me and erected an impregnable wall of brick in front of it.  It dawned on me that the screams all around me came from all the surrounding houses and that every home must have had demons in the basement.

As the realization that the ghouls were roaming the neighborhood dawned on me, true panic set in.  I sat down in meditation and visualized barriers all around the house to protect my family and then raced out into the night to see what was happening.  Just as I feared, people were being maimed and devoured all around me.  I could see the hairless Nosferatu-esque people dragging their victims around, under their homes, feasting on them out in the open and generally causing violent mayhem.  I did my best to destroy as many a I could see but I realized that I couldn’t help everybody simultaneously.

I realized, even lucidly within the dream, that there was some absurd overlap with some recent horror movies.  The thematic and situational closeness to I am Legend and 40 Days of Night were impossible to ignore and it actually helped me take the violence slightly less seriously.  Still I was incredibly dismayed by the violence and I was determined to prevent it.  I spent the remainder of the evening patrolling the grounds and boarding up houses with my mind.

The next day I remember being emotionally exhausted.  Strangely there was no carnage in sight and it almost felt like we might return to a relative state of normalcy.  As nighttime approached again I could tell my family was not looking forward to being trapped inside and having to contend with the sound of murder in the streets.  I promised them I would find a solution to preserve the sanctity of our home and that of our neighbors.  As the night wore on I followed the same bizarre rhythm of psychically boarding up our house, trapping the ghouls in the basement and then traipsing around the neighborhood trying to save everyone.  It quickly became tedious and emotionally draining.

The next day as I was taking down barriers from our house I noticed a strange character next to our house.  He was sunbathing in a beach chair, of the long, chaise-lounge variety, wearing red boy shorts and red-rimmed Ray-Bans.  He was skinny, incredibly pale and his hairline was greying.  He looked up at me through his sun-glasses and began speaking to me in incredibly familiar terms.

He was British, very sarcastic and possibly gay.  He proceeded to tell me that he had an even more omniscient level of psychic control over the scenario and that he knew everything that had been happening to me and could tell that I wasn’t going to be able to psychically endure for much longer as it was obviously draining me.  He said only he could offer me an exit immediately but I would have to accept that everyone (including my family) would be left behind and devoured in the most heartless and demeaning fashion.  He immediately gestured to our parking lot with a casual wave.

To those who don’t know me that well, in high school I was briefly in the possession of a wonderful and bizarre model of 80’s muscle car called the Buick Grand National.  It was enormous, boxy, hideous and could defeat about 98% of the cars on the road in a drag race with ease.  Parked on the flat bed of a car-trailer was a mint condition version of the car.  The engine was running, the windows were down and it was literally  sparkling with little light blings.  Almost without hesitating I told him to go fuck himself and that I had no intention of abandoning anyone.  As soon as the words were out of my mouth an enormous oak tree fell on the car, crushing it dramatically.  The trailer was driven on off the property dragging the tree behind it.

My British “friend” chuckled to himself, leaned back into his chair and wished me a sarcastic “good luck”.  I think he added something about how it was going to be a longtime until I achieved anywhere near enough psychic aptitude to govern this many simultaneous phenomena.

At the time, I thought he was the king of the vampires.  A day or so later, after having the dream, I realized he was an outside “visitor” who was merely chiming in to chastise me for my circular habits and doggedly wasteful self-sacrifice.

Shaman family wars in a train yard

So, there was a whole chunk of dream before this but this is the part that stuck in my mind.

I was walking along a riverbank, it was really gravelly, and there was an enormous grey blue mountain behind me.  I realized I was following this older white dude.  He was wearing old jeans and a plaid shirt tucked in.  Must have been in his forties or fifties, nothing particularly remarkable about him.  He was examining the river looking for a place to cross.  The whole environment reminded me of New Mexico in the late afternoon.  We crossed the river into a massive, defunct train yard.  There must have been like 40 lengths of train track, each one with a series of open, cargo cars linked up and stationary.  We walked in between the cars until we found one with another middle-aged dude in his forties.  He was standing on top of a yellow mattress inside a car with his hands upheld.  His eyes were closed and he was rapidly intoning syllables under his breath.

My companion yelled “Clarence!  You better put a stop to that, there’s no use harnessing all that death energy if you don’t plan on doing anything productive with it.”  The other fellow, Clarence, opened his eyes, lowered his arms and looked down at us with irritation.  My companion, I should say, my mentor (never did get his name) proceeded to amble off to go look for herbs or something in the gravel.  Clarence invited me up into the train car.  I can’t remember the exact details of the conversation but he proceeded to list off to me the various benefits of practicing black magic.  How you could easily manipulate people with your mind, use your eye power to win arguments, harness rogue death energies near towns to control the weather etc.  He was obviously very smart and accomplished but had a real creepy vibe.  His teeth were gray and his skin had a wan, jaundiced quality about it.  He seemed very intent on making me his assistant as he said he could tell I had the right alchemy of ego and aptitude to make a good black magician.

My mentor guy came back and scolded me for giving Clarence a chance to fill my head with his terrible insights.  We all decided to go home together. It was now I realized that they were enemies but distant cousins at the same time.  We walked around the central building, that I suppose had been the dispatch office when the train yard was functioning.  Behind it was an enormous mansion that looked like it belonged on of a hilltop in a bad horror movie.  Once we got inside we were welcomed by an entire household of family members and guests.  I was led upstairs to a study with a computer (luckily they had internet access).  I tried checking my email for a second until the room began filling up with people.  I met a beautiful cousin, Clarence’s two sons (who looked at me with hate in their eyes), an old alcoholic uncle and a whole mess of strange people.  Clarence came upstairs and kept on whispering random powers I could attain if I hung out with him more.  Finally I had enough and decided to go home.

The next day (or whatever it was) somehow I made my way back to the train yard.  My mentor was seated in the back of a train car with a blanket around him deep in some sort of meditative state.  He invited me to sit next to him and began telling me how Clarence was attempting to stage some coup so he could have maximum access to the various geomantic energies that animated the area we were in.  Unfortunately he was using some very aggressive tactics and it was screwing up the psychic balance of the entire mountain range.  He wanted me to do some psychic probing to say where Clarence was hanging out and what kind of techniques he was using.  All of a sudden I noticed this weird slimy, pink, oblong creature flying around my head.  It was essentially a miniature, pink dolphin and it was flitting about my head.  My mentor screamed, “Catch it! It belongs to Clarence, it’s his spy!”  I grabbed the little bastard and smashed it in my hand.  Somehow, an enormous grimoire of infernal and magical creatures.  I turned to the page for the little being I just obliterated, it had some arcane name like “Amoxiryops” or something.  Evidently it was a oily, flying, legless salamander one could excrete from one’s wrist once every lunar cycle.  You could send it into the world to be your remote spy.

We decided to head back to the house to get situated and determine our next strategy for challenging Clarence’s schemes.  When we got home, Clarence was upstairs browsing the internet innocently.  As we walked in he looked up at me and winked in a conspiratorial manner.  He pulled me aside and congratulated me on catching his agent.  He made some comment under his breath about how I was made of exactly the right mettle for his line of work.  At that point I noticed some of the family members carrying a corpse under a white sheet down the hallway.  Evidently, the alcoholic uncle had expired in his sleep of mysterious circumstances.  Clarence’s sons were walking back to the city and offered to escort me.

At this point, all I wanted to do was to go home to my studio and work and as we approached my studio the two sons expressed surprise when I pointed out my studio.  “That’s funny,” one of them said,” we live right above you,” as we walked into the front door together. “Stop by anytime, I’m sure dad would be happy to see you.”