Framed for murder...with a can of pineapple?

This dream was really random and sort of fragmented. I know there were a lot of other interesting components, but a lot of it was mood and sporadic visuals. I think the dream was set in current day, but a lot of the parts seemed to be from the '50s. I'll try to piece it together.

I was working at, or planning an event at, an old theater that seemed to be a hybrid of the Riverview theater, the Highland Theater, and the Suburban World Theater. It was old but nicely maintained, the chairs and curtains were made out of red velvet and all the pillars and railings were painted a shiny lavender. I am pretty sure I've had dreams about this same theater before.



The old man who ran the theater told us when we were leaving one night that we should use the underground passage to go home, because that's what my grandpa used to do (there was something about my grandpa possibly owning the theater previously -- maybe I had inherited it?). So, we went into the passage which was a claustrophobic maze sort of thing that led through boiler rooms and closets full of junk and old-timey garbage. I think the basement was haunted. I'm not sure who I was with, but we got separated and I found some ratty squares of scrap carpet that had old, dried blood on them.



Somehow I got out of the underground maze and was right across from the theater again. I went in and my friend Vanessa was there, who had apparently been lost in the tunnels too. We went into the bathroom and none of the stalls would lock. A older woman came in and told us that we would be framed for the murder that had happened in the tunnels (re: bloody carpet squares) and she had the proof...which was an old can of pineapple from the '50s that had both of our finger prints on it.



The scene changed to the underground tunnels again, but it was a brightly lit, well organized warehouse that also doubled as my friend Beth's basement. She was there and was going on and on about her Christmas decoration collection and showing me spools of gold vintage garland. The scene switched to above ground and I think it was the old Woolworth's that used to be in downtown St. Paul, but it was still an extension of Beth's basement. She and I had races up and down aisles with circular dust mops and got yelled at by the store manager.



There was another scene where we came out of the tunnels and we were at a gas station that was on Marshall & Lowry in Northeast but it was also somehow within a block of both Steven's Square Park and Lyndale & 25th, and also Cleveland & Randolph Avenues. There was something about cigarettes and a shiny person but after that it gets cloudy and I can't remember.

Get in the Dollhouse

I think this dream was my personal remix of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse," a show which I've watched a number of episodes of recently.

I was held sort-of captive with a bunch of other people at a big, old house. We were all sort of zombified, but I was different because I thought weird thoughts and they could tell. My mom had something to do with running the house we lived in and she was the first to notice I was different. They fed us mind-control chemicals for our meals and at lunch one day they served me a neon green tube while everyone else got a small square with brown liquid and an antenna on it. Mine was intended to hurt me, and after I drank it they planned to put me away forever in a pitch black maze and remove my memory. I was allowed to wait for a week before I had to drink it and I tried my best to act normal.



During that week my friend Jahna was there running a photo shoot that entailed her leading a big line of people in primary color Halloween costumes down a winding stair case and into our livingroom. All the costumes were blocky and bright -- I think some of them were Super Mario Bros characters. The photos appeared in Vita.mn as half-page images and they looked motion blurred and grainy like they were taken with an iphone.



At the end of the week it was time for me drink the green vial and go in the maze. I decided to try one last ditch effort to convince my Mom to let me stay, so I put on a lavender dress. Somehow that convinced her I was normal and she gave me a second chance at the last second. I was standing by the door of the maze and saw that one of my friends was in the maze and tried to come up with a plan to get him out, but he was in a true zombie state and when I tried to talk to him he couldn't hear me.



There was also a random part about sandwich shops giving away 99 cent sandwiches and lots of weirdos were crowded in a shop that was near our house. One was wearing a t-shirt that said "don't drink the water, just get in my belly" with an arrow pointing to a big black square on the lower half of her shirt.

Chick and the Killer Baby

This was definitely on the nightmare tip. The first part of the dream featured me strapped in a chair with someone drilling into my eyes with tiny drill bits. This seemed to be a medical procedure so I didn't struggle, but I could see the drills going into my eyes from outside of my head and from the perspective of my actual eye. It didn't really hurt, but felt more like wet vibration if that makes any sense.



Then it switched the upstairs bathroom at my parents house, where my sister was holding a baby she had just had. The baby was small and gnarled and had a crooked, pointy nose. We discovered that he would mimic words and soon began to form broken sentences, despite being only a few hours old. My dog was there and he began calling her "Chick" over and over, totally scary coming from a monster-baby. My sister and family seemed oblivious and they put the baby on the floor in my old bedroom (which is a long room above the garage that's now a storage space) and the baby would dart around unnaturally fast and hide behind boxes, making guttural sounds and repeating "Chick." I was completely terrified the baby was going to eat my dog and wanted to kill it, but I woke up before things escalated.

This is clearly a Mr. Bean/baby Photoshop hybrid, but it's along the same lines: Hideous.

Technicolor Blood Face

In this dream I had a stroke or something, at any rate, one side of my face was paralyzed. Someone created a projection system that was somehow always projecting on my face, no matter where I went. The projection made digital tears of blood run from my eyes intermingled with static and rainbow colored interference. I was considered a monster and no one would help me or talk to me wherever I went. The only part I really remember was going into Grampa Tony's Pizza in St. Paul (where I did a real-life stint as a waitress in the late nineties) and no one would take my order and I got so agitated that I woke up.

The tears were more bloody and digital, of course

White Wedding at the Motel 6

While I've been keeping a Word file of my dreams for the past couple weeks, even the first few have lost a lot of their imagery in my mind. I'll recount a few of my more vivid, recent dreams and add to this blog as I go, from here on in.

In this dream I was just married, to whom I'm not quite sure, but I have a feeling it was my friend Rachel. We were on our "honeymoon" and forced to share the "bridal suite" at a Motel 6 with the band Motley Crue, who were playing an arena across the street (for some reason I think it was the old Met Center). The suite looked like an all-white Denny's, with vinyl booths and tables, and a flat screen tv mounted in the corner. Roadies were rushing in and out with sound equipment and luggage and rockers with big hair were lounging in the booths, much to our disdain.

The Crue

The scene changed to Rachel and I walking through a forest that had a lot of broken glass and garbage everywhere. We came to a little bridge where I found an old-timey looking gold key that somehow was softly amplifying blues music. Running underneath the bridge was a greenish-yellow stream that was clearly toxic. I had it in my mind that I wanted to go in and search for agates. Rachel was against the idea so I threw the key in as an excuse to go in. I could see it gleaming on the rocks and jumped in, Rachel followed me. I picked the key up with my toes and followed the stream into a dark cavern that had candle-light flickering in the back of it. We found a peeling white cabinet on the back wall that I opened with the key. Inside was a tattered self help book, and that's where the dream ended.

Ok, so I couldn't find an actual pic of a gold key underwater with agates.

Good Morning

Dreams are fleeting. Like a cracked mirror reflecting your mind's subconscious inner workings, dreams are an odd kaleidoscope of little, visual tidbits and suppressed emotions that we unknowingly file away on a daily basis. Sometimes your remember them, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you wake up and replay a wild dream over and over in your head only to have it drain away as quickly as it came.

After much cajoling from my friends to keep a "dream journal" I opted to start this blog. My dreams are incredibly crazy compared to most, they tell me. After months of posting a dream here and there on Facebook, I've come to the realization that maybe they're actually sort of special. They are often outlandishly weird, visual and nonsensical, after all. Kind of like abstract brain art with a loose plot. Maybe my dreams are a sign of mental illness to come, who knows, but if that's the case maybe they'll be able to diagnose me via this blog after I go off the deep end.

by Salvador Dali, my favorite artist as a child