Nicholas Dreams

Creepy Commercial Corridor and Spontaneous Hindu Statuary Fed By My Tears

The chronology is fuzzy, didn’t catch this one early enough but it is still fresh in my mind.  I was hanging out with a large belligerent, dark-skinned man.  Sometimes he was black and sometimes he was Indian (Hindu specifically).  We were living in some sort of multi-tiered structure.  It resembled a really high end shopping mall of sorts.  There were escalators and balconies and most of the walls were steel and glass.  We lived on the mezzanine in modern, harem style luxury.  We were perpetually going on shopping trips in the space and elsewhere to look for odd items.  Some of my responsibilities were to vet new displays and retailers.  Make sure they were doing their job and had the right kind of merchandise represented.  Sometimes people would install totally inappropriate windows displays and I had to call the out.

I had this one interaction with this creepy, little person.  They weren’t quite a midget or a dwarf.  Just like a totally miniature human.  He was clearly male but also had a disturbingly androgynous quality.  To top it all off he was mentally retarded on some fashion.  It was really difficult to put my finger on how or why exactly.  He had long, almost hipstery, rocker hair.  He had been given a small nook off of the main promenade to sell knives and other semi-violent implements.  To get to his particular retail space, one had to climb a ladder into a small room.  It had one enormous opening that faced out over the main shopping gallery and one could see the contents of his room from most vantage points in the mall.  He had this incredibly inappropriate poster and wall-painting that depicted people getting stabbed and flayed with his knives as his main promotional material.  I made an incredibly diplomatic attempt to persuade him to take down the artwork as I was sure it would not only fail persuade people to purchase his goods but would probably offend most of our patrons.  He reacted very angrily and couldn’t see how or why it was an unsuccessful campaign.  In a moment of exasperation I ripped down all the adverts and threw them down the ladder onto the floor underneath.  He began stuttering and stammering angrily and brandished one of his blades to come at me.  He was incredibly easy to disarm and I kicked him out of the building in a fit of anger.

For the rest of the dream I was always aware of the threat of being stabbed in the thigh by this disgruntled midget and was extremely paranoid throughout.  I went back down to the mezzanine to confer with my partner/boss, the large dark-skinned man.  He was reclining on some enormous chaise lounge, absentmindedly mentioning girls I ought to devote my attention to.  Extolling their various virtues and haranguing me for not taking advantage of any of them.  At that point he suggested we go on some sort of extended car-ride or road trip to get our hands on some frsh tires.  He told me to go into the basement to fetch some provisions for the trip.  At that moment, a female friend of mine (from waking life) appeared on the scene.  She was dressed for cold weather, looking very elegant and beautiful.  She is one of the people in my life that I have always been deeply attracted to but never have been able to stomach her lack of existential control in life.  We descended down an escalator arm in arm to go to what I presume was the garage.  On the way down the escalator I was happily nuzzling in her neck and beginning to warm to her intensely.  As soon as we got to the bottom my dark friend shouted to me to come back up the stairs.  At this point I completely lost my temper and began berating him for his lack of sensitivity and total personal abandonment of all proper managerial abilities.  He was beginning to get all worked up for his rebuttal when he looked above my head with surprise.

An enormous wooden block was falling towards us attached to a parachute.  It landed softly at my feet and lay horizontal on the ground in front of me.  It was an enormous, door-size, wooden carving of a Hindu deity in profile.  It resembled Hanuman or Shiva Nataraj in a running position.  My dark friend began shouting orders at us to get it upright and store it properly.  I began chanting mantram under my breath and crying profusely.  As my tears fell on the sculpture my tears began flowing through the various furrows of the carving. As the tears began spreading from the center everywhere channel they flowed through began turning gold. As more and more of the outlines and details of the sculpture began turning gold the deity began animating slowly.  It smiled broadly and looked at me from the corner of my eye and began running in great leaps and bounds across an enormous mountainous landscape.  All of the anxiety and perturbation that had been pursuing me through the dream instantly vanished as I realized that this particular deity energy was always communing with me and always psychically available.

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.”

X-Games in a loft and New York gone terribly wrong

This was the last dream of my night.  I was walking through the city (NYC) with my mother in the late afternoon.  We were in the meatpacking district in some such semi-quiet area with big industrial buildings.  The streets were empty so we could walk freely in the middle of the street and be totally fine.  I remember walking by some gas stations with a whole series of empty taxis parked with their doors open.  It was beautiful, balmy night and dusk was falling.  An older, tall, skinny black man stepped out from the shadows and sidled up to us.  In hushed tones he made sure to let us know that New York was no longer as safe as it used to be.  It essentially boiled down to the face that after night fell the city would be populated by predatory types.  Not zombies or anything like that, just angry, disgruntled, idle city folk with nothing better to do than prey on us.  He suggested we find someplace indoors to wait out the night.

As we were searching for somewhere to take shelter we noticed this upscale boutique with a gigantic glass storefront.  There looked like there was some sort fashion shoot going on inside and we walked in to see if we could get any hors d’ouevres.  When we got in we were welcomed by a whole room of obnoziously swank people.  They insisted we go upstairs for the private party where we wouldn’t be anywhere near as endangered by the external malevolence of the city.

The upstairs was like a strange, gothic mega-loft.  The floors were a dark, reddish wood and the middle of the room had several sets of bleachers and a long buffet table.  As we got to the top of the stairs I realized that no one was standing on the floor.  Everyone was standing on top of the bleachers or even on top of the buffet table.  There was also this massive swinging steel surface on cables in the same central, furnished area.  As soon as they realized we were present they beckoned us to stand on top of the furniture with them.  I stood up on the bleachers and realized I recognized a bunch of people at the party, they were all semi-familiar faces from NYC and were all wearing varying types of black, evening wear.  A whistle blew somewhere and people began diving into the floor like a swimming pool.  Strangely the floor became a watery substance of sorts.  It still retained the surface texture, color and opacity of wood paneling but was actually made of water, to the extent that waves were moving outward and people were splashing around in it.  A confusing, and very elaborate game of sharks and minnows ensued where we frantically swam in circles around each other attempting to tap the various sides of the furnishings (which were happily static and normal on the floor as if nothing was out of the ordinary).  Somebody won the game somehow and gradually everyone lifted themselves out of the “water”.   I finished off the dream snacking on canapes and attempting to make conversation with some girl in a long, black, sheer eveing dress.

Bolivian defection and downy rats of alternating sizes

So, I am running up a ski slope on foot.  It’s a beautiful, crisp day and I am moving along at an amazing clip.  I notice an entire retinue of cars behind me and there is a young blond girl on a bicycle at the vanguard of traffic.  There are semi’s and SUV’s and she is going slightly faster than them.  In fact they seem like they are struggling to keep up.  It happens to be on a ski slope on the edge of the mountain, so on one side is a sheer drop-off and on the other a sharp incline.  We finally make it to our destination, which just happens to be her apartment.  I’m hiding from her, waiting to see where she enters.  All of a sudden I storm in behind her with an accomplice and slam the door shut.  We scream at her accusingly, “We know you are planning on defecting from Bolivia.”  My companion has the shady quality of a G-man, some sort of government operative.  He grabs her blouse and tears her shirt off.  She is standing there afraid and defiant in slacks and a bra.  She pleads with us not to tell anyone as she can’t stand life in Bolivia anymore.

At this point I notice her apartment is totally unfurnished and actually only consists of a screened-in sun deck with wood paneling.  I ask her, very graciously, if there is anything she might be able to offer us as incentive to not expose her plan.  She suggests we take her most prized possessions which consists of three plump, English-speaking, white rats in alternating sizes.  There is a very small one, like the size of a baby mouse, a medium sized one, similar to a New York rat, and an enormous one, like the size of a house cat.  I put them in an unmarked, white shoebox and take my leave.

Suddenly I am on a sidewalk next to a rather fancy little hipster bistro in somewhere I would presume if NYC.  There are attractive, well-dressed people sitting at tables chatting and drinking wine.  I go to sit down and place the rats on the ground.  One of the people at an adjacent table sees one of the rats sticking his nose out and decides to scream and lift the top off.  By this point I am quite emotionally attached to them and am horrified at the prospect of any of them being injured by the judgmental and unenlightened patrons.  Total chaos ensues as everyone attempts to get out of the way and alternately smash the poor little buggers under foot.  I, meanwhile, am using my baseball hat (which I’ve taken to wearing recently again, in real life) to attempt to scoop up my darling rats.  I manage to get the smallest one in my hat but when I pull him out I realize he is terribly mangled and has bled to death on the pavement.  I lose my temper and begin shoving the very same well-dressed people out of the way in attempt to salvage my last two.  I find them cowering in a hedge at eye-level while a pair of malevolent, gay, hipsters take it upon themselves to berate them for being rodents.  I get in an enormous shouting match with one of the guys, threaten to push his teeth in and gather up my last two mice and storm off.

Apocalyptic flirting… Intergalactic lizard bitches and art school homicide

This is a dream I had a couple of months ago that I thought had some interesting characteristics.

I was walking home one day in a huge city park.  It reminded me of Golden Gate in San Francisco on account of the huge trees and multitudes of interesting looking people crowding the paved walkways.  I noticed this beautiful young girl riding a vintage bike with a white banana seat.  She had stripey leg warmers, blonde hair flying behind her in the wind from under her helmet and was happily enjoying the day.  It felt like fall. I was fascinated by her in a predatory sort of way and kept my eye on her for a while.  I noticed some other young guy with a similar fixation tracking her movements out of the corner of my eye.  I immediately felt a competitive surge to be the first one to approach her.  Suddenly she took a spill on a dirt track next to the paved road.  I rushed over to aid her, as did the other guy to my dismay.

As soon as I got near her I extended my hand to help her up.  She smiled up at me and got to her feet, as soon as we made eye contact I noticed a huge army helicopter flying off in the distance.  It was one of those cargo choppers with twin blades at either side.  She noticed my glance over her shoulder and turned to look as well.  Moments later the chopper plummeted behind arow of pine trees and a massive explosion ensued.  The sky lit up with an enormous nuclear-style explosion and instantly the entire landscape (including all the pedestrians and my pesky competitor) was consumed in white heat and rendered into ashes.  We were left standing in this grey landscape, suddenly alone and unscathed.  I felt totally safe and she seemed reassured that we were both still standing.  Enormous words began moving across the sky like an LED display, from right to left.  It was then that I realized the entire event was a staged promotional effort for an action movie.  I had this faint impression that Ben Affleck was the star and instantly became sociopathically irritated at the entire celebrity advertising phenomenon.  We agreed to head back to her place to get situated.

She had a nice little apartment with a kitchen adjoining her bedroom.  It was almost open plan with the bedroom off to the right of the backdoor entrance.  As soon as we got home we began getting it on.  I began kissing her eagerly and as I was runing my hand across her skin I noticed it had an intensely textured and three-dimensional quality.  I pulled my head back and realized her entire body was scarred and tattooed in an indescribable pattern.  Her flesh was all white, and had diagonal criss-crossing grooves in it like a quilt.  In addition she had several, swirling, milky-way tattoos that worked in concert with her flesh texture.  It was as if several galaxies were being depicted simultaneously across her body.  She smiled at me and I also realized she was blinking horizontally with a secondary set of eyelids, lizard-style.  She stuck her tongue out and had four tongue-tips that were happily articulating around each other simultaneously.  Even at this point I wasn’t in the least bit turned-off and in fact considered quite auspicious that she was so intensely decorated.  I realized I had an opportunity to mate with a non-terrestrial race of lizard people and thought the experience could be useful.

Somehow, an ex-girlfriend of mine mysteriously made an entrance and decided to get in on the action.  It became a messy sort of threesome and I ended up totally distracted with my ex-girlfriend.  The sex became very ferocious and angry until I orgasmed at which point my ex decided to tell me that her most recent boyfriend was much better in bed than me and substantially better endowed. I became enraged and was determined to find him and have my revenge.  She mentioned that I could identify him by the white pentagram he had tattooed under his chest hair and that he was a jewish kid with really curly black hair.

I stepped out of the bedroom into the kitchen and was suddenly aware that my hostess’ children, 12 of them actually, were assembled around the dining room table staring malevolently at me.  They were dressed in white, naugahyde one-piece hoodies like a baby might wear.  They resembled cranky teletubbies in alternating sizes.  I sat down at the table with them and I could feel their disapproval of my behavior radiating aggressively across the table.  As soon as I realized their bitterness wan’t going anywhere I got up to leave.

Somehow, I ended up instantly at RISD, prowling the halls looking for my ex-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.  The building I was in didn’t resemble RISD at all and in fact felt like a random public school,  linoleum floors, cream-colored cinder block wall, lockers, etc.  As soon as I found him (with his new girlfriend in tow) I poked around under his shirt to find the white pentagram.  When I was sure it was him I prodded him in the back with a shotgun and forced him into the basement.  We ended up in a massive boiler room.  There, in the basement was the quintessential crawling pipes, valves, glass dials and steam clouds.  As soon as we got somewhere private I proceeded to decapitate the both of them with shotgun blasts.  I felt absolutely no remorse and made my way back to the upper floors.

As soon as I passed through an emergency exit back to the main floor (I think I was in front of an equipment room) I felt a hand grab my shoulder.  It was the boy and his girlfriend, totally unscathed picking shotgun pellets out of their faces like they were peppercorns or something.  Evidently my shotgun was faulty.  They had brought an RA with them and out of vengeance had decided to write me up.  I sat there obediently and accepted my punishment.