Crazy Dream

When the phone rang, somehow I knew the call was coming from upstairs so I rounded the corner and silently leaped up the stairs to find the source of the call. As I quietly but quickly stepped into my sisters bedroom I slipped into the secret cubbyhole that we often used to sneak around the house inside the walls. The caller was just ahead of me. But once I was inside the hidden space I found I was chasing myself, but not just myself, a version of myself from 1992. It didn't look like me, it was me and my heart was racing. I could feel my surprise. Not my surprise but the surprise of the younger version of myself, and I could literally feel it. It was like we were occupying the same time and our consciousness was merging. My younger self dashed into a room off of the secret space I had never in all of my dreams been into. My heart was racing. What could be around that corner? I was about to find out.

I almost never remember my dreams. Most of the time they are a mix of current events warped into something either humorous or disturbing or nonsensical. Once in a while suddenly realize I am dreaming and the dream dissolves away. Other times I question if I am dreaming and the dream just goes extra goofy. But there are these times I have these deeper more complicated dreams that end up being reoccurring. For example, when I was in college I would have these dreams that I was back in either my house in Duluth, MN, or in the house in Neenah, WI, and we would have some reason to be sneaking around the house. In both of those houses my sister Katy's bedroom was located in the Southwest corner of the house, on the second floor, and I would dream that from that room there was a crawl-space that led to a space between the walls and we could get around the house by carefully navigating our way through the walls. I have had a number of reoccurring dreams in my life and I believe this is the last of it's kind in my life at this point. All of the others were younger and more warped.

Last night I had a dream but it was not really a reoccurring dream with regard to the storyline. The location however, the crawl-space, only existed inside that reoccurring dream from my college days. And to establish a bit more history, I haven't had that dream in so many years that I couldn't begin to tell you when I had it last.

In the dream I was hanging out with my two sisters and similar to most of the deeper dreams I sometimes have I seemed to be able to suddenly remember a lot of backstory to our completely fictional dream situation, which makes the dream seem so much more real. As we were standing there Amy and Katy were saying goodbye to me and getting into a car to drive away, presumably back home to Wisconsin (as I live in Arlington, VA across the Potomac from DC.) Amy gave me her cell phone number and as she was leaving I recorded it into my cell phone and I waved goodbye. The weather was sort of gloomy and cloudy with impending rain that refused to fall until it was good and ready. As I walked back into the house my phone began to ring.

There was something funny about the way the phone rang. While I knew my sisters just drove away, part of the dream seemed to splinter at that moment. I was suddenly standing in my Duluth home and while I could still see my sisters car heading down the street I knew the phone call was really coming from the second floor of the house even though my phone said it was my sister Amy. In that moment I knew that the car driving away was sort of like a dream but then I wondered if what was upstairs was somehow real. So I headed up the stairs.

I have seen myself in a dream before. Typically seeing myself just means I am seeing the dream from a third-person perspective, a non-participant simply observing the moment. This was different. First, I remembered the outfit I was wearing. In fact I remember the exact moment because my mom took a picture of me that day. I was wearing jeans and a tucked in flannel dress shirt and a lazy beard on my face. I was barely old enough to grow a beard but I think that was the reason I did it. I never saw my bearded face. Second, as the younger version of me darted around the corner I could feel his feelings of fear and excitement and virtually hear his thoughts in my head, which made my heard hurt a little like when you are running a high temperature. That never happened to me in a third-person perspective dream before.

Once I rounded the corner into the new hidden room, the younger version of myself was gone and I was standing in a room much like the attic of a house with exposed wooden beams and small windows. At that point I said aloud, “This is bizarre.” From the northwest corner of the room standing by a small window was a man I couldn't describe who told me, “You are dreaming,” and he motioned with his hand to a balcony. I opened the french doors and stepped out on the balcony. Someone who looked like my sister Katy was standing on the balcony, but it wasn't my sister Katy. She only looked like her for some reason. She pointed out to the street where I saw a 30-something aged woman with two kids. The woman was around my age and one child was very young and sitting on her hip. The other kid was standing beside her holder her other free hand. I never saw the woman before in my life. As the women with children stood there in the street the Katy-person said (but somehow didn't speak out loud because her mouth didn't move,) “She would look like this today.” I knew those were her kids and they all look at me as if they knew me but also through me like they were a movie and not really there. Just then a car was coming down the street and drove right through them as if they were a hologram.

The Katy-person pointed out others that then appeared and said things or acted out moments from their lives. Oddly enough they all seemed to know me but I recognized none of them. The moments were like presentations or simulations from a version of now that apparently didn't seem to exist.

Then the Katy character motioned down the road where a storm had suddenly broken free. Lighting was striking the ground and the street was cracking and opening up small little holes that crumbled into larger holes. Holographic people were running around attempting to search for help. Out of the holes climbed these ape-like creatures with enormous heads, with pieces of asphalt matted into their hair. The holographic people were running toward the house, the ape-like creatures were quickly coming up behind them and I retreated back into the house.

Suddenly it became clear that I was fully back into the dream moment again, likely from the moments near to the storms beginning. The ape-like creatures seemed very much like something out of a bad scary movie from the 1970s. The only scary moment from me, however, was the moment when I saw myself and the dream seemed to change for a short time into something other than a typical dream.

So now, completely out of the dream I am left with questions: Why was I back into a version of a childhood home from a reoccurring dream but not in the reoccurring dream itself? Why were my sisters in the dream? What was the significance of the younger version of myself and why did I feel that versions feelings, the fear and excitement? Who was the other person standing by the window in the attic room that told me I was dreaming? Most impacting, why did my head create a character like my sister katy -but not Katy- to show me a picture of a woman with two kids and tell me “she would look like this today,” and was “today” really today or the past or the future? Ah, too many questions.

So is this just a humorous / disturbing / nonsensical dream or something else? Is part of it significant and part of it just a typical dream. Is the broken street struck by lightening with emerging big-headed Apes more to do with the fact that I drank a coke not long before bed, or is my subconscious just in creative overdrive at the moment!? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is God trying to tell me something through my dreams? Maybe I need a reading + movie break, but I don't really read many books like that dream or see many movies like that dream really.... wacky.