Willa's Journal: Dream Journal: August 2002

My dreams are an integral part of each 24 hour cycle. I don't view them in a voyeuristic sense, I see them as direct experience. They are lived, not watched like TV. ~~ Nick Bantock

Bob and I were getting ready to go somewhere out of town, maybe on vacation. The phone rang and it was my mother. She asked what I was doing, and I said we were just getting ready to leave, and she said, "Oh, well, that's okay then." I asked why she had called and she said it wasn't important, and I said, no, it's okay, what?

She said that Kevin had called to tell her that they were doing high level testing in Mobile. I said, "Oh, okay," and we got off the phone.

I went outside and told Bob and some other people who were standing around that my brother, who worked for NASA, had called to say that they were doing high level testing in Mobile. I asked Bob which direction that would be, and he pointed south, and we all turned and watched as a mushroom cloud exploded out of the ground. It was actually quite beautiful, and we oohed and ahhed, and then we got in the car and went wherever we were going.

I had been in London, and was going home. For some reason, "they," whoever "they" were, had sent me home by train via Switzerland. The trip was harrowing, very frightening; we almost went off the road at several points, and I watched from above as a car left the road and drove right into the path of oncoming traffic.

I reached some sort of terminal, and was trying to figure out how to get home from there. I asked someone, who thought it very odd that I was trying to get home by train. I said that I had gotten to London by plane, but for whatever reason, they'd sent me home a different way. I said I guessed there really wasn't any way to get home by surface routes, was there?

I was sort of at a loss. I wandered around looking for signs about train schedules or flights or something; I remember thinking, well, airports have signs about what their schedules are, don't they? So you can buy tickets? Wouldn't train stations have the same thing? Someone said something about the snow on the Alps, how it was surprising to see snow in the summer, and I thought, "Ah! Those were the Alps! That explains the rollercoaster-like roads."

I kept wandering around, carrying a blue and white bag of some sort, and a cellophane bag of grated cheese (Swiss cheese?)--I kept reading the recipes on the back of the bag, hoping for some guidance.

I dreamt that I had a tattoo on my nose--a little, sparkly red yin-yang symbol, and my nose was also pierced, right by the tattoo. I was a little worried about it, though, because the piercing was up so high--so high that I wasn't sure how to get the ring backing out, or even if I could. I liked how it looked, though, very pretty.

We were on vacation at the beach; I was sitting in the sun, but then remembered that we had several more days there, and I should probably get in the shade. Then I decide to go inside, and find Bob cleaning up. He almost throws away my bag of shells that I've collected, but I stop him and point out that I wanted to keep them.

Then I'm in New York watching a guy who had the great idea of selling ads, then printing them up in fliers and putting them in notebooks labeled "Laws," then leaving them in bus kiosks and other places all over town. I'm following him and he goes into a building. I follow behind and get in the elevator, but I can't remember which floor I'm supposed to go to. As I try to remember which button to push, the elevator peels off from the wall and takes off, like a UFO. I say, "I don't think we're attached to anything," and we fly by a window. I notice it's snowing and say, "Snow is healing."

Something about leaving home, or running away from home. I had $2,000, $1,000 of which was labeled "stash."