The One with Deborah Henson-Conant

The details of this dream are vague for me - I got paged for work at 2:00 and realized I had been dreaming...

I dreamed that I was a big outside music festival with a female friend I can't identify now.  It was night and it was one of those festivals with multiple stages with one large main stage.

We walked by Deborah Henson-Conant who was either in transition with her equipment or she was setting up to do her show just on the side of the sidewalk, similar to what she does in real life sometimes.  I stopped to say "hi" and take a photo with her.

My friend took the camera and I went to Deborah's left and we put an arm around each other like you normally do in a photo, but she kept leaning really far to the right, making us fall to the ground.  We tried a couple of times but I don't think we ever got the photo.

The One with the Tornado and Plane

Background:  I had this dream exactly a week after the tornado that went by work, after talking about it with friends and after driving home in a crazy lighting storm.  There was another really LOUD storm the night I had the dream but I'm not sure if the dream was before, after, or during that storm.  I believe it was before.

 

I had a dream that a tornado was heading toward me - I was outside but don't recall the exact location.  I know other people were around.  We were looking up into the funnel cloud and saw the tail of an airplane that had been caught into the tornado and it was swinging around from the right to left.  It was moving pretty slowly (assuming because the plane was HUGE). 

 

It started coming down toward me and I knew it was going to fall on me, but it was not falling quickly.  So, I watched the plane as it came down and I positioned myself so I wouldn't get smooshed.  I ended up crouching down between the fuselage and the wing - kind of the left armpit of the plane. 

 

Once the tornado passed, we looked at the plane and noticed that although the doors were shut and the windows were not broken, there was no one inside and we assumed that they had someone gotten sucked out while up in the air.

The One with the Tobiko In My Nose

I was talking with someone from work and they commented that my nostrils looked strange - they were closed like if you pinch your nose shut.  I thought it was weird that I didn't notice a change in my breathing and looked in a mirror.

My nose did feel a bit clogged, so I stuck my finger in one nostril and felt something, so I kind scooped and some tobiko came out.

I was very concerned in the dream and went to a doctor and they said that I had a disease.  That's all I remember.

The One with the Dream Within a Dream

I had a dream within a dream this morning, and what was strange was that the second dream was more normal than the first.  In the first, the only thing I really remember was being in a parking lot outside, and a group of kids with a couple of adults doing some activity with dolls and all of a sudden they took all the clothes off the dolls, but the dolls had realistic breasts and that was really funny in the dream.

At that point, I remembered I had a dream and started writing about it.  In the second dream, my friends Meredith and Greg were in California stuck on highway 1 (which they are in real life, and were in "real life" in the 1st level dream).  While they were stuck in the 2nd level dream, they went to some restaurant and were taking a ton of photos and videos of them doing funny things.

There were about 7 people and they had 4 people in a booth and 3 in a small table and they kept moving the small table around - close to the booth, further, and taking all kinds of pictures of them laughing.

Then they were trying to catch bubbles in their mouths in the parking lot and there was one video where the bubble popped and got soap into a girl's mouth and she gagged (well more like dry heaved) and it was the most hilarious thing to watch in the 1st level dream.

Dream Themes: Loose/Missing Teeth

I had a friend ask me about dreams where your teeth are loose or falling out and I knew that I had several dreams with this theme, and have even heard references to it on shows like 30 Rock.  So, let's look that one up:

"Lose a tooth and you are afraid of losing a loved one.  Lose all of them and you are full of anxieties about the future." (1)

"Dreaming of teeth falling out may represent insecurity. These dreams often occur at a time of transition... When you lost your milk teeth, you also gradually lost your childhood innocence. Losing your teeth today therefore shows that today you have similar feelings of uncertainty and self-consciousness as you did in childhood. The dream could also highlight your worries about getting older or your sexual attractiveness." (2)

"Im Tofeeq, a Palestinian woman, told me that among the Arabs it is believed that if you dream of losing teeth it means your brother or son is in trouble. She had a dream in which three of her teeth fell out. The next day she received a call from America to say her son had been shot in the head three times by a gunman." (3)

In my own experience, I always had a sense of fear during these dreams that I would be ugly, so I'm guessing in my case it's insecurity about how I look.  My other insecurities tend to play out in my dreams in other ways, I guess, like being chased or being in perilous situations.

(1) Grant, Russell. The Illustrated Dream Dictionary.

(2) Hamilton-Parker, Craig. Remembering & Understanding Your Dreams.

(3) Crisp, Tony. Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your Unconscious Mind

The One With the Movie About Violent Sleep Disorders

I was in a large department store in the men's department looking at some sandals that were just basically regular black shoes with lots of the leather cut out to make them strappy - there were lots of straps.

I was trying to find a pair that was 1/2 a size smaller than the ones I tried on but I was surprised that the size 31's fit me as well as they did - they ran small obviously because I normally wore a 29 or so.

Being in a department store in a normal situation turned into it being night, after closing, and instead of being the retail sales floor, it was the warehouse or storage area of the store.

It was after closing, but there were a number of people in there looking around.  I remember a girl and a blond guy in addition to me.  I think the girl either had a bike or was looking for one.

I had a weird role in the dream.  The idea of the dream was that it was actually a movie.  I was kind of at the same time just a 3rd party observer and one of the main characters, it seemed.

The premise of the movie was some people that had sleep disorders so when something in life bothered them (say, being touched by other people), they would react in their sleep (like sleepwalking).

One guy with dark hair (I couldn't really tell if he was me or not) didn't like to be touched and would kick people in the head (I think he explained it that he would kick you in the eye) in his sleep.

But, I also remember "being" a different person (feeling like what it was to be inside them, kind of) and his reaction was just less-specific violence.  I remember the feeling picking someone up by the neck and holding them against a wall.

There were two other guys looking for shoes (sneakers) but they were moving stuff around.  They put stuff really high up on a fixture in the middle of the floor, and I remember while looking around some of the shoe boxes fell on me.

These two guys were up to no good, unlike the rest of us who were just looking around.  Once the boxes fell, the bad guys got agitated and wanted our contact information.  We questioned that and the blond kid explained that they wanted our e-mail addresses, etc. so they could place us in the warehouse to prevent us from snitching on them.

While the bad guys were agitated, they were pushing us around and grabbing our arms and stuff and at least one of us warned them not to touch us because of the disorders.

Next thing I remember was being "inside" another guy - a black guy - who was walking home.  I think he was in the warehouse (good guy - one of a total of 4 good people in the warehouse who were the main characters in the movie with sleep disorders) but don't remember seeing him beforehand.  He walked by this hooker who was lying on the sidewalk and people were pouring gas on her and set her on fire.  She was strung out on heroine so she didn't know what was going on.

They tried to lay another hooker (not as strung out) next to her and do the same and they snuggled up to each other, as if to protect each other from sleeping on the sidewalk.  They were both on fire, but it took a while for the first hooker to exhibit some distress - she was waving her arms around and the second wrapped her in a the foil lined blanket they were lying on.

The first hooker died, but the second was fine (even though she was exposed to the flames), so one of the bad people (I think it was a short woman that reminded me to Snookie) stabbed her in the stomach with a really big kitchen knife - shaped like chef's knife but much wider.

It seems as those the bad guys in the warehouse were in a gang or something and were killing people to establish a serial killer or something - maybe as something to implicate us in?  I think they wanted to find six people to kill.

The dude I was inside kept walking toward home, up a hill, when some guy jumped him from behind, pulled his hoodie over his head and tried to tie the strings.  I remember thinking this was a normal risk in his neighborhood - to get mugged this way.  The guy/me ended up throwing the guy over his shoulder, Judo style, kind of down the hill.

The guy left because there was a cop car whose dash camera was filming the whole thing.  The car belonged to the guy's uncle or dad, who he lived with.

He got to the porch where his aunt or mom was with his dad, and they were like "What the hell's going on?"  In his head he knew these bad people were trying to get something or had something on him.

Dream Symbols: Guns

I've had several dreams involving guns.

One of the theories out there is that the gun represents a penis or male sexuality. More generally, it can represent fears or anxieties - threats in general.

Weapons in general can represent conflict, anger or resentment in life.  It's interesting all the weapons that have shown up in my dreams are phallic in nature, though:  wooden stakes, guns, knives.  I wonder if women have dreams of different kinds of weapons.

Many of my dreams involve me being shot at, or other people being shot or shot at.  According to my dream books, this can represent fear of being hurt or being threatened.

I don't recall ever having shot a person in my dreams - most often both the shooter and the person being shot / shot at are not me.  I'm not really sure what it means that I'm removed from the action.

[Update:  I polled some people to find out what weapons have shown up in their dreams.  I'll keep adding as I hear more:]

• babies in canons [male dreamer, used against others]
• giant chopsticks [male dreamer, used against others]
• used iPhones [male dreamer, used against dreamer (thrown)]