Drinking

I hear people around me, emitting usual crowd, club, bar noises, but I sit silently, eyes fixed on the rings of stained wood, elbows on the counter, arms crossed. Eyes still down, my drinks slide into view and I swallow. I feel bad that I'm in a bar, but more than bad I feel strange to be staring at two drinks I knew, for some reason, I had to order and taste. It's the reason I came here, right? I didn't know. I stare only at the murky liquid and crowded ice, all else becoming shadow, unidentifiable forms I was certain were all watching me.

But, as usual, my standards impregnate my subconscious, and even as I lift the first glass to my lips, allow the fluid to enter freely, I cannot swallow. When, I hope, a shadow is not watching, I put the glass to my lips again, tip it to look like I'm drinking more, and let the warm, uncommitted liquid in my mouth return to its icy conception. Each continued mouthful is an empty threat, an unprofitable hostage, a preferred miscarriage, a disappointment. They are remarkably salty. But I know nothing about drinks, so who knows. I just know I don't want to experience being drunk.

I never swallow, but still in the end, both glasses appear depleted. The ice hasn't melted either. I remain, sitting. I remain seated. I don't know why I stay, I don't remember arriving. I am done with my drinks but my eyes still ignore the shadows and trace the stained counter. I remember Andy. His blog is always talking about people he meets in bars. I wouldn't have known what drinks to even order if not for him. I never come to bars, except in my imagination, every time I read the newest person he meets. I must have come to meet him. Maybe? At any rate, I don't remember arriving and I don't leave.

Tied

Elder Liufau was standing there, reminding me about a missionary companionship 'build togetherness' activity we had (that we never had). It had consisted of a rope and a companionship, being first tied together at the ankle, and after some walking about, being tied back to back like prisoners that would have to escape. Not a bad idea, eh?

Anyway, then the place we were in was a sort of auditorium and chapel mixed and all sorts of people -- strangers, people from my past -- started pouring in, in twos, to partner up for this activity. As someone was at the front explaining, I was sitting next to a couple of young women from my home ward, explaining what they'd missed. I explained the significance, that was for some reason this:

"When Jesus was on the cross, he wasn't tied to it, he was nailed to it. In his agony --how intense we can't even imagine-- it was still as though he was tied to God; he was nearest to Him then than ever. We just do this activity to remind us that in times of trial it is so much better to be tied to God and have Him near than not. In the hard times, have God near to you; He is not far."

And in dreams, things like this make so much sense that the girls nodded in understanding. Then we turned back to listen to whatever whoever was saying. The end.

I like the idea though. It's better to have God near, no matter what sacrifices we need to make, than to feel abandoned by Him in the hard times because we did not exercise faith beforehand. Yeah, that's all. I did have a dream also about a flat tire and other mixed potpourri of the brain, but it just can't be put together again.

Strange as Usual

I had a somewhat emotional dream involving an old friend. And by old I mean, used to be my friend. But he decided not to be my friend, and I don't blame him, when the way I treated him and the way he treated me just didn't anywhere close to balance. But last night in my dream that changed for sure.

It was as though he was only there because he was waiting for someone else to come or something else he'd planned to happen. I had been working on editing poems to submit for publication (which is a reality) in my one bedroom apartment (which my imagination rented for the night) and suddenly he came through the door, as if my small room was a hallway, or merely on the way to some place else. But he stayed. His hair was longer. He had a beard of sorts that came and went throughout his stay. I pulled him onto my bed where I was at my computer writing, and he willingly reclined to review my poems. (He's also a writer and I value a million percent that amazing part of him.) At first I was just next to him, but then I took his hand and moved closer in to him. I was so glad he was there and was nervous what to do to not offend him so he wouldn't leave. I held his hand. He let me. He read but I watched him. He didn't say much. At one point I got up to do something else and when I came back he was visibly emotionally changed. Oh no, I thought. He's read the poem about him. . . Before he could say anything and I could think how to react, I threw myself at him and kissed him, to which he immediately withdrew. Good for him, too. But I felt awkward for sure and just waited. There was a surprising lack of conversation, just looks; the look he gave me was somewhere between offended, hurt, and confused, and desperate desire. For a few eternal moments, our eyes worked out the problem we needed to communicate and then instantaneously the tension and problems were gone between us. We hugged. We'd been in each other's presence for minutes now, but the hug was like two old friends reuniting after years of separation, joyful and tight. And then, we decided to have a snack. :) We ate peanut butter (the irony of which cannot escape me, and if you read the poem, you'll see), both with our own spoon out of the jar. I looked at him and smiled, took my spoon and shoved peanut butter on his face. He returned the favor and the playful pushing and poking turned into sexual tension, basically, and we started peanut butter kissing (I must say some day I'd like to try that) and maybe a little more happened... :) I remember just really enjoying the situation, having him with me. No guilt or grief, just friends having a little fun. Kinda kinky fun, but still fun...



Then, the other night, maybe a week ago, I had this brilliantly insane dream. It was like a t.v. sitcom setting (Think Dharma and Greg). The husband comes home, acting very strangely. After trying some trivial home welcoming, the wife recognized something was really off when the husband asked, "Do you know the way to Hell?" Strange to me she replied, "Sometimes I wish I did." And the 'audience' laughter was cued. Somehow we now knew that the husband was possessed (again?) and she sighed, "Come on." She itched her calf (i remember that distinctly for some reason...) and walked toward the door of their small house that led downstairs. Apparently Hell had an entrance connected to their basement. She invited her husband down with her. Camera followed. The basement was definitely cave-like, no formal walls with sheetrock. There was one human-looking figure in a window that was carved out of the rock wall (think bank teller) to take your name before s/he'd send you to the elevator across from her window, an elevator like in mining shafts, with two metal-bar doors that cage around the descending. The elevator had two henchmen guards the size of gorillas to escort the traveler to Hell. The wife, now with some other man and her husband, told the husband, time to go, but he just felt like he couldn't go. The devil inside him knew that he'd be purged out of the man if he descended to Hell and made it out (Hell turned out to be a river with an eventual opening that if you made it down and out whatever you'd been struggling with would be left somewhere along the way). The wife said, "Well, we've signed in, we can't very well not go!" So she continued down with the other mystery man, leaving her husband and his devil to struggle with the decision. He paced back and forth for hours. At five minutes to five PM, the human-thing in the window informed the husband that it was closing time. S/he was going back down with the last elevator for the night, and it was his last chance. She and the two henchmen crowded into the cage, ready to descend without considering any hesitation, fully prepared to make the husband wait alone in the basement cave until Hell opened again in the morning. WIth a brave step he pushed into the elevator barely squeezing in as the henchmen used their great strength to close the doors barely containing the four bodies. As they descended the camera changed scenes to a small, thin boat bearing the wife and mystery man, dressed in long, pristine white clothing (think total LOTR elf scene), and the wife looks expectantly toward the gaping exit they had just passed through. Fade back to the upstairs of the small house. The wife has a gathering of people at her house. They ask her about her husband and she gazes suddenly into the air, seeing into another time or dimension. For some reason she can't remember his name, she can't tell them about what happened. For some reason everyone understands that to mean she's now possessed. Back down she goes, I guess. The dream ended as the camera faded out from her sightless gaze.


Nice, huh? ha. Love my brain.

so many dreams about church...

Since it was pioneer day on a friday and everyone wanted a long weekend, we decided to have church meetings on Thursday. Except, as soon as Relief Society /Elder's Quorum meetings and Sunday School were over, the brother conducting thought it would be better still to have Sacrament meeting on the actual Sabbath day, so he made the announcement that everyone could leave and we'd get back together Sunday after all. it was weird walking away from church that day knowing I go to the store and listen to popular music, etc.

Then, I was sitting the girl I always do (for some reason I was carrying her in a bag and she wasn't in a stroller...), and we were walking down the sidewalk in front of the MTC. There were actually a lot of missionaries outside the MTC walls, talking bad about people that weren't missionaries that had gone running around the MTC field ("I was like, why is she running with us? She's not in our zone!"). As I passed through the globs of missionaries, I recognized a face, an elder from my mission, Erik Edwards. He had way too much in his arms and I stopped him and asked if I could help. He was very distracted and asked "You want to know if you can help?" like he'd never had such an offer. He set everything down, and wow, was it a lot of stuff. He explained to me that it was a bunch of stuff from his brother's wedding. "His wife has had three receptions already, and I'm taking this to the last one." Whoa, high maintenance... Suddenly the surroundings changed to my mom's basement floor, except there was no ceiling, and above us still resemble the sky above the MTC. He was looking in boxes. Two boxes he was going to let me carry had old newspapers, dried corn cobs, mini cotton balls, two teddy bears, and other random things, and he said, "You know what? No on'es really going to notice if that's there or not. Just leave those boxes in the room they were staying in." Poor folks had stayed in my mom's junky basement room that we call "the pit of despair," no lie. Other people came to help Erik carry stuff and, since my boxes were back in the room, I wasn't really needed anymore. And the dream just sort of fizzled from there. It was weird because I had apparently really wanted to do anything to be around Erik...and I haven't seen him since a couple of half-hellos at the mission reunion in April. Anyway....

Rush

Boy I've had some wild dreams lately. I've had a lot of them. Short, random dreams.

Autumn, my sister (very pregnant and very conservative), and I were in Vegas. She was gambling, and had been all night. I came to her in a room on the side of a casino. A guy came up to us, flashing a spread of $100 bills, saying, "Ladies, here's five hundred dollars, you can make it into five thousand!" My sister, in all confidence, put us down to play. No clue what we played, but she worked it and soon we had eight thousand dollars and I said, "Wow, Autumn, that's great. Let's just take that and go." She gathered some bills and said to me, "Oh, come on. I've already got $250,000 from the tables, we're fine." Jeez. I'd say.

I had a spider stalker. It followed me into my car and I noticed it as I was driving. I think I was eating ice cream.... It was crawling around, this big furry black beast, and I freaked out as I tried to maintain control of the vehicle, ice cream cone and sight of its every movement. It dropped onto my seat and I squirmed, lifting my buttocks off the seat. I tried pulling over and chanced a look down again at my seat. All of a sudden the spider was actually a pecan nut. I lowered my butt to the seat, puzzled. I pushed the nut to the floor. weird.

I was married to Ty. I couldn't even comprehend the love that was in my heart. It seemed as though it was a gift afforded as soon as marriage became official. I was so calm and happy, I can't even describe. He just held me, even as others talked and congratulated (and gave really great advice I can't remember now), he couldn't bear to not at least hold my hand. I was his. People left and we were in the front room of my mother's newly remodeled home. We were alone and I told him, "I will do my very best." He smiled, almost as if he had no idea what I was talking about but didn't want to ask me just then what I meant. His look puzzled me. But I hugged him saying, "Wow, I can't believe it's official." Still no response, just holding me. "So...where are we going to live?" I asked, suddenly realizing we hadn't planned very well for life after the marriage date. "Well, I figured I'd still live at home and you at yours." Jolted from my dream in my dream, I suddenly realized I was being hugged and kissed by a man that wasn't my husband, but a man risking his heart again to be my boyfriend. "It was a dream?" "Yeah, we're not married." Of course not. It was too perfect...

I was a dancer slash contestant in a beauty pageant of sorts. It was entirely creepy. Johnny Depp was a bad guy in the dream. He killed one of the contestants (death by arrows in the face....) and she had had black cropped hair and a bright yellow evening dress, which Johnny Depp now sported except he had a horrendously featureless, plastic mask to cover his face. There were only holes for his eyes and his mouth. We were lining up to practice introducing ourselves, and the lady in charge, a large red-headed woman, waved us all to the stage. We awkwardly lined up in evening gown attire, and were instructed to introduce the contestant next to us. I started, actually by introducing myself, then Paris, and Paris presented Darlita (or something, both of those girls were black), and Darlita introduced the awkward Sally, who was actually dead and being played now by Johnny. It was so dead beat, that I couldn't handle it. People were filing through rows of seats, maybe cleaning, getting ready for the event, judges were beginning to take their seats. I yelled to large red-headed directress, "Hey! Why don't we start out something more like this?" I spread out my arms to the empty seats, "Ladies and Gentlemen!" Swept my arms toward the left, "Judges!" And back to center, "And everyone that loves to dance, we welcome you tonight! My name is Ashley! Next to me is..." I caught Paris' attention. She finally caught on. She whispered, "The sizzling Paris." That kinda made me uncomfortable and said instead, "The beautiful Paris." She then presented Darlita, and so on. The red-headed woman loved it! She immediately adapted her choreography. the end. Yeah....didn't want to see what Johnny Depp was up to exactly.

I need to write my dreams as soon as I have them! I had so many...but these are the only ones that came to mind. I was sick the other night and had dreams all night, no matter the character I played, as one with a stomach ache.

None

The batteries to the remote were actually various sizes of tootsie rolls...

I was stranded on an island and was trying to set up my hammock, but I had too much rope, and no hammock... And if you were to fall off the cliff near by, you'd actually land softly in the yard of quite the nice house, which I did. So I guess I wasn't stranded afterall...anymore...

I was on a road trip, but the road we had taken from Utah to Oregon was no longer on the map for the trip from Oregon to Utah. As I looked at the map, some little creature scurried under the door and I figured it was a cockroach so I just stepped on it, and left my foot there for a while. When I lifted my foot, it was actually a bird. It ruffled its feathers and slowly...reinflated so it could fly away. It gave me a dirty look, too...

I dreamed I went back to the store I'd been to the day before to get the dress I wanted. I tried it on again and put it back on the rack, knowing I'd go back to get it in the morning. I saw that it was size six. (When I went to the store today it wasn't there anymore :( ).

I'm suuuper bored right now.

It continues

In sacrament meeting again. It's time to say a prayer to bless the broken bread. The first to try is Rich Doxey in my ward. But first he starts to preach to the congregation, in prayer, and it's good stuff he's saying...just not the right time. Second try he apologizes. Third, fourth and fifth tries he just can't stay on track. He is relieved by the bishop. Next is some guy I've never seen before and he has a terrifically thick accent and just can't get past a couple words in his four tries. Third victim is apparently the EQ president, but not the one in my ward anyway. He just can't get it either. Neither can the fourth guy. All this time the prayer and its proper reading are running through my head...then I realize something else: they're reciting the water prayer...incorrectly. The service still isn't through the first prayer twenty minutes of the dream's clock later. I move on before it resolves itself.


I run into this guy I went on a few dates with. We're in his car. That's where we spent most of the time on our dates anyway. (No, don't think dirty like that) But...I guess this dream did...kind of. I talk to him for a little while and he decides to toss me in the back of this tiny car and get on me and it's really NOT working toward any advantageous make out-age which is apparently on his mind. I'm just giving him these strange looks...neither of us can even fit in the back seat alone. Then he decides that was what he needed to know, as if he was testing me if I'd really allow him to do something like that.... But he didn't say that, he just said I was now supposed to join him on a family vacation...except suddenly he wasn't going to be able to make it, but I still had to go without him. It was super awkward. I didn't know anyone. We were in an RV of some sorts on our way to some house. In the house all I remember is being in the kitchen. Then we were supposed to get on a train to go somewhere and this place was French-speaking so of course I stepped up to feel useful as a translator, yet suddenly they all spoke French, too. I was just starting to play with an apparent nephew and try to have at least someone warm up to me when the kid's dad came over to take him away. It was a very useless dream. I felt paranoid that he was just trying to test me, to see if I'd pass his little tests of some sort...can't tell I'm slightly put out by the genuine suspicion that it could really be in his character to do something like that?

Strange Pills

(actual Medicine Hunter, center)

Sometimes it's hard for me to fall asleep at night. Noise easily keeps my mind preoccupied and on the observe for anything creative. Already I use earplugs to forcefully cut my mind off from any sensory input to help me fall asleep.

The newest addition to my sleep enhancing strategies is called "Calming Sleep" (then in really small lettering "tablets"). The brand is Medicine Hunter, and it came in a box with his picture on it. Apparently he searches the world for natural remedies to supplement our problems. Wait, supplements to remedy our problems. Yeah, that's it.

It contains Sodium, Ashwagandha, Magnolia, Epimedium, L-Theanine, Phosphatidylserine, and other things I know nothing of in my own meanderings around the world. Something among these unpronounceable materials causes me to have dreams fit for elephants with big ears that have alter-ego mice and crows for friends.

Most of these dreams involve someone I love being chased after or involved in top secret operations. The normally weird aspects of my dreams are magnified and people change shape, appearance, age, gender and character much more often.

A few days ago, Commando the movie mixed with my exboyfriend and a bunch of raft-rowing Maoris and an old High School football coach....

And night before last, my little sister was of some importance that I have since forgotten and yet she changed often from age 3 to her current age, 15. I was there as her personal agent something or other for those times when she randomly became three again. And my brother was in the dream. He drove us around. Once he couldn't find where we were going, so he got out to look and when he was running off somewhere to find out where we were, he threw me his brand new Iphone -- something he would never do, not even in his own wildest dreams to save his own life -- which bounced off the ground once and I barely caught it, still open, with my forefinger and thumb. Did I mention it was raining. Doesn't even make any sense why he would leave me his phone even if he hadn't had to throw it. I guess my mind just craves the most bizarre and unexplainable entertainment.

Last night gets a little risqué. I can't go into detail right now, but it was also very strange with random characters popping up, waaaay out of place. But I got to wear some sexy little panties which is always fun to get away with. I'm not held responsible for what goes on in that brain of mine when I can't control it! ;)