July,
2004
I am riding
along a forest path on horseback, strumming a guitar. On my left,
a long foothill rises out of the woods. It is a golden late afternoon
on a sunny spring day, though the light is muted and dappled under
the forest canopy. On the left, the foothill gives way to a grassy
plain with one lone tree in the middle. My horse takes me out into
the clearing, and we
stop near the edge of the forest. A herd of wild horses mills around
the tree, and when they see us they gallop in our direction. The
herd envelops us and starts to fidget about. It is as though I am
afloat on a sea of horse flesh.
Suddenly I hear
a buzzing off in the distance, coming from the far side of the clearing,
some 3/4 of a mile away. A tumultuous cloud of red dust advances
towards us across the plain as the buzzing becomes louder and more
insistent. I don't know what the cloud is, but I know it is pure
evil.
The herd bolts
into the woods, and my mount quickly follows behind them. I toss
my guitar aside and spur my horse on. The foothill is now on our
right, and as we are catching up on the tail end of the herd, the
other horses break off to the left, leaving the path for the suddenly
murky woods. I spur my horse faster and faster, but we are not fast
enough. The
buzzing is now deafening and terrible, and the evil cloud overtakes
us.
And then I woke
up.
November
4, 2002
I dreamt that I owned a sandwich shop and that one of my workers
was Osama Bin-Laden. I had to fire him. Not because he was a leader
in the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, but because he kept showing up
late for work. The word around town was that Osama was bent on revenge.
One day I was riding my bicycle downtown, and I saw him riding towards
me from the opposite end of the street. His bicycle was a creaky,
rusty old thing. Westopped about 20 feet away from each other and
he eyed me warily. He spoke: "Your days remaining on this earth
are strictly numbered." With that, he creaked off down the
road on his piece-of-junk bicycle.
And
then I woke up.
Listen
to Shawn read this dream on a public radio show, nextbigthing.org.
(bottom of page: "Dreaming of Osama")
November
2, 2002
I dreamt that I was friends with a very cute young woman named Jenny.
No such person really exists. That is to say, while there are doubtless
many very cute young women named Jenny, none of them are friends
with me. Anyway, Jenny had a dog, and that dog's name was Old Matt.
Jenny was practicing some magic spells and she accidentally turned
Old Matt into a stack of fabric softener sheets. The stack of fabric
softener sheets had a pair of eyes that could blink. It also made
barking sounds, although it had no visible mouth. It was pretty
funny at first. But it got sad really fast when Jenny couldn't figure
out how to turn Old Matt back into a dog.
And
then I woke up.
GUEST
DREAM - courtesy of Kelly Thibodeau
The dream began as me meeting this very handsome boy at a bar. I
believe we were in New York, although we could have been in any
city, any bar. Of course the boy instantly loved me. Oh, and he
was gay, of course. And there we were in all our gay glory, drinking
our beer, when I notice that Joan Jett walked in. I freaked. Cause
really she is a god. So I go to find Joan and she was set up in
this living room type place down stairs from the bar. For some strange
reason she is selling her merchandise, CD's, pictures and books.
I notice that off to the side that there are these small comic book
type books, which were written by Joan. I am stunned because I never
knew that Joan wrote comic books, but they are more like children's
books with a dark twist to them. So I have to buy them, of course.
There I am standing in line and I finally get up to her and I just
start gushing all over Joan about how she is my biggest idol and
how much I love her. She is flattered, but also wanting me to shut
up. So she tells me that she has been waiting for me her whole life
and that she is so happy we have finally found each other. She says
she has a present for me, which turns out to be this bright orange
jacket vest. She says how it is her favorite piece of clothing and
she now wants me to have it. (All of this is very weird because
I could never picture her actually wearing this thing, but I don't
care cause I am in like seventh heaven). So I think to ask her this
one thing that I have been wanting to know about forever (in my
real life I have this old friend, Justin, who I haven't seen in
years, well he claims to have met Joan and went out for drinks with
her, but I have never REALLY believed him). So now in my dream I
see the perfect opportunity to ask Joan, did she actually meet Justin.
But she doesn't answer me. She just says that she has to leave and
that she was so happy to meet me. And off Joan went.
Now I am devastated. I
try to find my new handsome gay boy friend, but he is nowhere in
sight. I think that he was mad at me for dissing him for Joan. Oops.
I find my way up these set of stairs into this room where I just
sit and cry because I have lost Joan and my gay boy. And the next
thing I know, in walks Shawn. He asks me why I'm upset and I tell
him all about Joan and the boy and I tell him how I have to get
Joan back and he tells me that I can't because he was with Joan
now. At first I didn't believe him, but then he told me all about
how HE met Joan and how she loved HIM. I got so mad I didn't know
what to do. I was screaming at him about how Joan was my thing and
how he came and stole my one thing. I kept saying that he couldn't
have her because she was mine and how he should go find his own
obsession. But he just wouldn't listen to me, that bastard. And
off he went back to Joan and he just left me there in that ugly
room, with no Joan and no cute gay boy. So sad. So so sad.
And
then I woke up, thinking "That Shawn's a total bastard."
July
21, 2001
I am in the yard at
my mother's house, where I grew up. I am with Michael Sheehan, a
childhood friend of mine who lived just up the street. We are standing
beside a small pit, several feet wide. The pit is covered with writhing
snakes, but we are convinced that the snakes are hiding something.
I grab a hockey stick from the garage and use it to lift off the
snakes. Underneath the snakes, the pit is filled with dead squirrels.
We are perplexed.
Later that evening, I
am in a log cabin in the woods. The fireplace is lit, romance is
in the air, and I am snuggling on a bearskin rug with Lisa Kudrow
from the hit television show Friends. We are in classic spoon position.
My hand is on her hip and I tell her all about the snake-covered
pit. We both giggle and then she asks me to open another bottle
of champagne.
And
then I woke up.
June
23, 2001
Today's dream will
come as no surprise to those who are familiar with my tendency towards
celebrity-studded dreams, as well as my abnormal fixation on nautical
disaster stories.
I am aboard the U.S.S.
Indianapolis, a navy battle cruiser from the World War II era. I
am an interviewer/videographer for Dateline 20/20. I am in the ship's
brig interviewing Ensign Shaquille O'Neal, who has been convicted
of an undisclosed crime. Ensign O'Neal looks sharp in his dress
whites. The interview begins about 15 minutes before midnight. The
date is July the 29th, 1945. O'Neal is scheduled to be executed
at 12:30am on the 30th. Astute observers of history will no doubt
notice that the Indianapolis is a ship of some renown, having delivered
the parts for the Hiroshima bomb that hastened the end of the war;
and perhaps more importantly, the ship was sunk by two torpedoes
from a Japanese submarine at about quarter past midnight on July
30,1945 -- 30 minutes after the beginning of this dream and 15 minutes
before the scheduled execution. Astute observers of cinema will
marvel that the ship wasn't sunk a month earlier -- but that's because
the date given by Quint in his famous Indianapolis speech from JAWS
was wrong.
I am aware of the ship's
impending fate, but I choose not to divulge this information --
having seen a few too many science-fiction movies, I am afraid of
creating a time paradox and mucking up the future. Because I know
the ship will have sunk before 12:30am rolls around, I don't even
bother asking Shaquille about the nature of his crime or his feelings
about the execution. Instead I ask him if he thinks the reported
troubles between him and fellow Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant will
hinder their chances of repeating as NBA champions. That we are
talking about an NBA championship that will be decided 56 years
in the future and that neither Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, nor
I will be born for at least another 28 years doesn't bother either
of us in the least. O'Neal's responses are glib and filled with
the same boyish charm that will make him an NBA superstar some forty
years later. "As long as the big dog gets the bone," he
reassures me cryptically, "everything will be all right."
At 12:14am, right on schedule,
the bow of the ship is slammed by a torpedo and begins taking on
water. Moments later, a second torpedo hits amidships, knocking
out electricity and communications. In the ship's brig, I patiently
wait for somebody to unlock the door so that Ensign O'Neal and I
can abandon ship. As the water rises above my waist, I start to
get nervous. Shaquille O'Neal points out, quite rightly, that in
a time of crisis like this, nobody is going to go to the trouble
of rescuing a man already condemned to die. I accept his reasoning
as rational and calmly await my fate in complete darkness as the
water continues to rise. I begin to think that maybe I am better
off this way -- that I won't have to endure the hypothermia, dehydration,
and shark attacks the survivors have to look forward to. Now I am
floating and my head bumps the ceiling. As the water closes over
my head, my only regret is that I won't have the opportunity to
bump into Herbie Robinson from Cleveland, baseball player, bosun's
mate... bitten in half below the waist, up-ended, bobbing up and
down like a top.
And
then I woke up.
June
17, 2001
The other day NPR reported
that the iron content of spinach has been vastly overestimated for
years. Apparently the initial research on this subject was
botched, and this went undiscovered until just recently.
Anyway, this morning's
dream found my family discussing these findings while sitting around
the kitchen table in a more lavishly-appointed version of my grandmother's
old apartment in Lawrence, Massachusetts. We were joined by
Laurie Sanders, who used to teach at the same college where I work
until she got preggers and had a kid. She also does these
nice little nature bits for the local NPR affiliate -- thus the
connection.
One of the ideas we discussed
was that when some future generation unearths old film reels of
Popeye cartoons, they'll probably be perplexed as to exactly why
these cartoons equate spinach with superhuman strength. We
went around the table advocating various alternatives to this imagery.
My brother Scott's suggestion was "How about Funky Winkerbean
eating a peach muffin?"
And then I woke up.
BONUS
- Here's a classic dream I had a few years ago.
I'm sitting
on a very large cornflake, floating in a gigantic cereal bowl filled
with milk. The bowl is surrounded by a vast expanse of white --
the kind of pure, undifferentiated whiteness one normally associates
with heaven and car commercials. Off in the distance, at what I
can only assume is the horizon line, I see a tiny black dot bouncing
up and down.
As time passes,
the dot grows, as though whatever-it-is is getting nearer. I notice
that my cornflake is getting soggy and beginning to sink. I paddle
frantically towards the side of the bowl, wondering how the density
of milk compares to that of water -- and how that will affect my
buoyancy. Does it make a difference if the milk is whole or skim?
And what about 2%?
At this point the
black dot is quite close, and I can hear the sound it makes as it
bounces. It goes "boing... boing... boing.....". I peer
out over the rim of the bowl just as the dot rises. It is enormous,
and I can finally make out its features -- it appears to be Nell
Carter from television's Gimme A Break. She is wearing a
black muumuu. She pauses momentarily at the top of her trajectory
and then accelerates straight towards me at an alarming rate. I
scream in horror, but no sound comes out.
And
then I woke up.
Prepare
to dive headfirst into the milky cereal bowl of Shawn's mind.