Last night I had a dream that I met a few neighbors of mine. Out of the blue, I asked if any of them play the bass.

“I have a parakeet that plays bass” reported one guy who kinda looked like a hippy as he held up a little white parakeet, perched on his finger, “he sits on the strings and pecks them to make sound.”

Awesome.

(update: it turns out this is not all that uncommon)

Last night I had a dream that my parent’s neighbor’s house had been locked and completely over run with ducks (all kinds: Mandarins, Mallards, Wood ducks, Pintails… etc). By some ridiculous coincidence, the person I was telling the story to happened to be an expert lock picker who excelled at duck calls.

We went to the house where he picked the lock and started making duck calls.

The ducks promptly left and all was well.

Lately, my subconscious has riddled me with nightmares, but such was not the case last night. No, last night I had a totally righteous dream.

I was back in my hometown. I was leaving church and walking home when I saw Irene and Vivienne walking up ahead. I started jogging to catch up… but something wasn’t quite right. I would take a stride, and go much farther than expected. I was running uphill, next to Stoneham’s own Pomworth park, but not feeling even remotely tired. I took an especially long stride and just kind of… coasted in the air for about 5 meters before returning to the ground. I pushed off again and went equally as far. Could I jump high too? Could I make it over the baseball diamond’s towering backstop fence? I pushed hard and up, up, up… I cleanly cleared the backstop.

Normally this alone would be pretty awesome, but imagine my glee when turning around the corner… came a convoy of Monster Trucks. How often are you faced with the sudden acquisition of a super power and an almost comedic opportunity to jump over a monster truck?

I jumped up and soared over the monster trucks. As I cleared a vertical exhaust pipe, the warm air pushed me higher still. I turned around in mid-air (interestingly, this is the only part in the dream where I thought “huh, I shouldn’t be able to do that”) and landed softly on the sidewalk.

Good job Subconscious. Good job.

Although I’ve been struggling with sleep lately, last night saw some decent shut-eye. I was really hoping for some sweet dreams as I drifted off. I even tried to jump start good dreams by trying to fall asleep thinking of awesome things. Instead, I dreamed that I was working in the stock room at work. Hold on to your socks folks. Whew! Pretty much a thriller there.

Nothing happened in the dream. I just had to keep picking parts for the assemblers. It was pretty slow paced and pretty darn insignificant. No kung fu aliens. No herding of veloceraptors. No beautiful women giving massages. Just me and a whole bunch of small metal components that I could put into various boxes. It wasn’t even rushed. My deadline was way out there. I could pick parts at whatever speed I wanted.

Come on Subconscious. You can do waaaay better than that.

Sunday night I had a dream. My sister T and I were headed over to the post office to drop some letters off for my mom. She was driving our family’s van. We chatted about nothing special as we made our way to our destination. It was about 8:45am.

As we pulled up we saw a huge crowd gathered in front of the door. It turns out they didn’t open until nine.

“oh man! this is going to take forever,” tree noted.
“why don’t you jump out and get in line,” I offered “I’ll park the van.”

Theresa hopped out of the drivers seat. I took the car and did a three point turn. Then I went turned left into the parking lot. Despite the large amount of people in front of the post office, the parking lot only had a few cars.

As I pulled into a spot I felt the car thump heavily. I used the auto-mirror on the passenger side to let me see if I’d hit anything.

I had run over and killed a toddler.

!!!!

I woke up totally horrified wondering why on Earth casual dreams seem to get overly horrific without any warning. Despite waking up, I still felt like I was on Cape Cod. I pulled the warm blankets up over my shoulder and started drifting back to sleep… when I heard a sound from downstairs. “who would be downstairs at this hour?” I pondered.

And just like that, I realized I wasn’t on vacation in Cape Cod. No. I was at home. And it was Monday morning. And in 45 minutes, I’d have to get up and go to work.

What a lousy way to start a week.

I had a pretty nasty nightmare last night.

I was driving on a highway at night. I was in the third lane, going south at a reasonable speed. There was a light fog and my headlights had limited effectiveness. The general environment was a bit like the bat for lashes video. Dark. Cold.

I don’t know where I was coming from, but I do know that I was headed home to the House of Rock. I was tired and anxious to get home. The trip was proceeding rather boringly. Just driving, nothing more.

Until the check engine light lit. I looked down at the dash and groaned. Just earlier this week I had spent some money to get some work done on the car and looking down at the dash, I wasn’t too excited to spend more. I returned to driving but had this impending sense of doom.

Moments later I passed a car in the breakdown lane. It was a small four door, gray and beat up a bit. Just after the car, my headlights suddenly illuminated a crowd of people standing in the road. In front were two guys. One faced east, the other north west. They just stood there. I slammed my foot against the brake, but nothing happened. I swerved the wheel hard right, and the car fishtailed out.

I woke up as my car plowed through the crowd of people.

I once had a great dream. In this dream, I was the winner of a contest. The prize was a coupon with strange properties. I could use this coupon to get free fajitas at any restaurant that served them. If fajitas were on the menu, I could get them for free, no matter where I was. If they weren’t on the menu, I was out of luck.

What a great dream!

Recently I had a dream. It went as follows:

I had to go back and play tuba for my high school band. But the Tuba sounded terrible! Halfway through the song, I realized the tuba was full of water. I emptied it, and it sounded a lot better.

It was a pretty short dream. But clearly, full of symbolism.

I e-mailed out the DREAM TEAM to help me figure out what was going on. Here are a few of the responses:

Ryan Schenk said:

Despite being unsure on how it will impact the other parts of your life, you still really want try TUBA DIVING!

Megan Ledger said:

In short, the dream represents your inner desire to become an extremely hairy kangaroo.

The tuba is the continuation of your life as something other than yourself. The fact that the tuba is a low brass instrument shows that you wish to carry out your life somewhere low – as in, under the equator. John William, a famous composer and tuba lover, had a second cousin that grew up in Australia; a second cousin that he was madly in love with, I might add, and he dedicated every one of his symphonies to this cousin. This narrows “under the equator” down to Australia.

The fact that you are going back to high school is reminiscent of a small animal going back to it’s parent, as a small Joey returns to it’s mother. Tubas have long been regarded as strange instruments. Kangaroos have long been regarded as strange animals. Tubas sit upright. Kangaroos sit upright. Mike D, as you play the tuba, one could say you were serving as it’s locomotion. Kangaroos are the only large animals to use hopping as a means of locomotion.

The water represents two things; when the tuba is full, the water represents your constant desire to take a shower and thus grow a thick and glossy head of hair that will protect you for the rest of your life (also note that a tuba in a symphony serves as a reinforcement to the strings section, and string is the essence of hair), but by emptying the tuba we know that in the future, you’d like to cast off showering desire, and live as an animal in a very dry place. We’ll combine this clue with the Australia clue and conclude that you wish to live in the desert.

Or maybe you had to pee really bad.

Ruth predicted:

You will be asked to preform a task that you once considered yourself proficient – nay, even good at, and people remember, and they will ask you once again to perform this duty for them – they are depending on you! Unfortunately you’ve been resting on your l laurels – too happy to simply sit back and think of glory days gone by, and haven’t been actually practicing it at all.

You will set to the task at hand with the vim and vigor you used to posses but will quickly come to a roadblock, and you will be consumed with frustration – BUT, take heed!! there is a simple solution that you may have overlooked, and rather than struggle against this allegorical road block you will simply be able to walk around it, or perhaps pole vault over it. But be creative! Stay sharp! practice Tuba 20 minutes a day lest they ask you to play at the next company picnic and you aren’t prepared!

Alicia connected the dream to common symbols:

What was the FEELING you had in the dream?

Some symbols -
high school = returning to your roots?
Tuba = something that you chose to be unique – something singular. With the saxophone, you were one of many. With the tuba, you were a soloist.
Water = something that is impeding your performance.

Is these something that’s getting in the way of you being as unique/important as you felt in the high school marching band?
If so, it seems like it’s probably easy to get rid of.
LIKE SANDER

Devin suggested:

I think that it hinges on whether or not you played tuba before. I’d say that if you did, you dream is just symbolic of your return to something in you past, but now that you have had so much more experience, you will be able to overcome things that you would never even dream of experiencing(tuba full of water) when you had done such things(playing tuba) in the past.

Irene believed:

I think the tuba full of water represents your secret desire to play in an underwater marching band. You think it sounded better when you emptied it, because you couldn’t convince anyone to join you in your underwater crusade. You secretly knew that underwater the tuba sounds ten times more powerful and you would definitely be the all star of your underwater band and lead everyone to harmonious glory! Nonetheless, you had to empty it so you could fit in with your lame high school buddies who won’t risk their lives in the face of good music. Obviously, this dream was set in the past because you left those losers behind.*

*Disclaimer: If any of Mike D’s high school friends read his website, I was just kidding about that last part.

And of course Theresa’s:

Two latent themes resonate from the manifest content of your dream: that of incompetence and that of self-efficacy. First, the image of the tuba. Music generally has a positive, self-affirming, and relaxing role in your life, but in this case the image of the tuba is situated in a negative context: that of high school band. Instead of signifying happy recreation, the tuba playing is deliberate and required (“had to go back”), and playing is work. The tuba, therefore, represents your work life: effortful and (unfortunately) leading presently to feelings of incompetence and ineffectiveness.

Water, here, represents the pressure and overwhelming feeling suppressing your ability to be effective in your work. Perhaps the pressure is on, and it is frustrating. Note, you are not drowning in a pool, nor are you submersed in the ocean facing a tidal wave. Rather, only one part of your life is affected by this particular feeling of overwhelmedness (a word? maybe!). The rest of your body is dry, meaning you find satisfaction and success in other areas of your life outside work, and your self-worth is not completely tied to your occupation. Further, you pour the water out of your tuba, which suggests your agency in improving your work situation. This emptying of your tuba signifies your ability to take action and change how you feel about your work performance. You have the ability to let loose your potential for feeling good about your ability to do your job.

So there we have it. If you’d like to contribute your dream interpretation feel free! Special thanks to all the members of the dream team for today’s post.