It’s uncommon enough for me to remember my dreams, but what’s incredibly unusual is the amount of vivid dreams I’ve been having – almost every night now. Maybe it’s the anxiety or something. Anyway, here are three recent ones from the past week or so:
1. Me and a friend who passed away last year had a substantial discussion of our favorite models of vintage Volkswagens. He preferred Vanagons (he camped a lot) while I went on about Squarebacks. We both agreed that Things are the coolest though neither of us wanted one.
2. I found myself walking down a very wide and flat beach that sloped up shallowly inland to some rocky bluffs. Nothing too disimilar from places I’ve been at along the Queensland coast of Australia or even New Jersey but for some reason it felt European. A jeep drove up to me, Terry Gilliam hopped out and asked me if I wanted to be in a scene in a movie. “Sure!” I answered, and he told me that all I needed to do was to open up the trap door at my feet and then pull a plug out of a drain. I looked down and sure enough, there was a foot-square wooden door there with a slight film of wet sand over it. Gilliam hopped back in the jeep, reminded me to “Don’t pull it yet until I give you the signal,” and then sped off. I stood around for a bit and then I hear a tremendous and startling “ACTION!” that seemed to come from inside my head. Suddenly a couple dozen SUVs and minivans speed down the beach – not towards me, just parallel to the coast. Gilliam calls out “OK, PULL THE PLUG!” in that same pseudo-telepathic voice and I pull up the door and find a rusty metal sink underneath it. There’s no water in it, but the stopper is in the drain. I pull the plug out and I hear a rumble from onshore – it’s a giant wave of water that rushes over the rocks and washes all the vehicles out to sea. Gilliam intones “PERFECT!” and I continue walking down the beach.
3. I was in an airport in Germany. Well, I’m not exactly sure that it was Germany, but the signage was all in German. I had just missed my plane (I don’t remember what my destination was) and there wasn’t another flight for several days. The woman at the ticket counter motioned out the window and said “there’s always that,” pointing to a pristine-condition 1920s-era zeppelin anchored at the far end of the airport. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, so I thanked her for her help and ran out of the terminal towards it. The zeppelin was crewed entirely by German-speaking racoons of all sizes and shapes… Captain Racoon was almost as tall as I was and with enough broken English on their part (I don’t know any German) we figured out that where I was going was along their route and so off we went. Pretty opulent ship I gotta say, my cabin was very posh for 1920s-standard travel and after a full day and night of travel I departed somewhere in the Alps. Smooth flight, about the only event was that some baby racoons got into my luggage at some point and scattered loose change about the cabin.
Someday I’m going to write a children’s book about that last one…
Anyway, one of the few remaining flying wing third-scale prototypes was restored a few years back and makes the occasional flight demo here and there. Even after all the pictures, films, etc. I’ve seen of it, I couldn’t help but sputter out an “illbegoddamned” when it took off.
