While awake...

A movie
A book

I am standing on the deck of a gigantic cruise ship. I look at the water below. Huge swells approach us. The boat is getting unstable. I must jump. I find myself in the water for a moment, and then, when the deck of the boat touches the water, I jump back on.

I am walking in between coat racks. I organize coats and hang up clothes that have fallen on the floor. Along a wall, each on a separate hook, hang towels. I look at them and touch them. They are all patterned. All of them. I walk from towel to towel to look at each pattern. Butterflies are imprinted on most of the towels. That is so strange, that most of the girls seem to have chosen butterflies. The towels are large and they are unused.

Nobody is really allowed to leave. It is too late for that. We are inside a building and all we can do is wait. We follow the Finnish chef outside. He walks over to his silver cabriolet, puts a suitcase in the trunk, and drives off! He left! For him it didn't seem as a problem at all. I tell the other people that he probably intends to take the ferry to U. and continue from there by train to T. and cross the border there. I know he lives in T. We stand on the yard for a while and look at the road that he just drove off along.

So I decide to leave. As I am traveling along the narrow forest road I see a river to my left. Small motordriven boats are coming from the opposite direction. Soldiers in camouflage uniforms are standing in the boats. More boats pass me as I travel along the road. Some of them are larger army vessels. Everything happens in silence. Now I am moving in between a gridlock of cars. Everyone is heading in the same direction as I am. There is a war behind me, and A. might be with me. We want to leave this place. I am biking. It is a little unsafe to move fast with cars so nearby, but I am not scared. I feel determined and capable to steer my way out.

Candy in all colors and shapes. I select a variety for myself in a bag and leave the rest in a clear glass jar. A. and a friend are sitting in the bedroom by the dresser. They are working or playing a game. I offer them some candy in a small bowl that I find in the bathroom cabinet. It is blue. A. and his friend look up and thank me. But, they say, isn't it a little too late? I feel somewhat embarrassed and look at T.H. who is sitting on the bed. He says he thinks I should not overdo it, and suggests I should put the candy away. I feel hurt but tell him that he is my conscience. Then I go and put away the rest.

I am walking into a supermarket. It offers everything from food and produce to textiles and tools. The shelves are few and far in between and there are windows that show a grey and dark landscape outside. It reminds me of a tax free shop at an airport. I am looking for salmiak and amazingly enough I do find a bag of diamond shaped salmiaks. This is certainly a well stocked store! A. is here. He shows me a long piece of fabric in neon green with orange lace trimming. He suggests we buy it and put it up between the livingroom and the bedroom, as a curtain for the doorway. I cannot understand how he can like it. The color is hideous. Neon green is the most appalling color I know of. I think I convince him of putting it away.

The floor in a room is flooded. I am standing in the water. A while ago it wasn't as flooded but now the water has ascended up to my ankles again. With the side of my foot I am trying to swipe the water toward the drain hole in the floor. I think there are pieces of something soft floating around in the water. I try to press these parts down and disintegrate them and make them disappear into the drain. J.B. shows up to see what is going on. Oh, oh she says. Yeah, I tell her, perhaps it would be better if she would pretend she didn't see this. It will only add to her worries, I think. There are some other people around too. The water is dirty and lukewarm, and the room is dark.

While awake...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry .

While awake...

Happened upon one of my favorite children's movies Radio Flyer .

Restless dreams.

While awake...

A plethora of dreams remain veiled. Perhaps for the best?

While awake...

"When angels fell, some fell on the land, some on the sea. The former are the faeries and the latter were often said to be the seals ."- Orcadian saying

While awake...

Montague Ullman's article on dream work describes a very pleasant and positive way of sharing dreams with other people.

While awake...

Maybe All This
by Wislawa Szymborska - 1993

Maybe all this
is happening in some lab?
Under one lamp by day
and billions by night?

Maybe we're experimental generations?
Poured from one vial to the next,
shaken in test tubes,
not scrutinized by eyes alone,
each of us separately
plucked up by tweezers in the end?

Or maybe it's more like this:
No interference?
The changes occur on their own
according to plan?
The graph's needle slowly etches
its predictable zigzags?

Maybe thus far we aren't of much interest?
The control monitors aren't usually plugged in?
Only for wars, preferably large ones,
for the odd ascent above our clump of earth,
for major migrations from point A to B?

Maybe just the opposite:
They've got a taste for trivia up there?
Look! on the big screen a little girl
is sewing a button on her sleeve.
The radar shrieks,
the staff comes at a run.
What a darling little being
with its tiny heart beating inside it!
How sweet, its solemn
threading of the needle!
Someone cries enraptured:
Get the Boss,
tell him he's got to see this for himself!


Additional words by the same wonderful poet.

"for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality"
The Nobel Foundation

Below my parents' house there is now a body of water. What is strange is that the water is sloping with the hill so that it looks like a frozen surfwave. In fact, people are trying to surf down it. I am somewhere in the water lower down the waterhill. I am now under water and see other people, a little higher up the hill, dive down. I pop up again and watch some men moving in the water. The water is deep and it is both scary and fascinating to see this odd phenomenon. I have clear vision both above and below the surface. The water feels lukewarm. It is twilight and I take one last glance up the watery hill. The hill slants at about 45 degrees angle.

I drive to work. It is not a workday and it is raining. When I arrive there I want to get a coffee and plan to walk to a coffeehouse nearby. I am now inside the school and I see some of my old friends there. They are all wearing pajamas. It is a pajama party. I am both surprised and happy to see them and wonder out loud why they didn't tell me in advance so I could come prepared. They give each other a look. I know, they did not want me there.

I have just arrived home. I am holding two suitcases and stand outside my parents' house. I look up to the second floor of the house. The entire side of the façade on the second floor is now a window. I see my sisters and my mother. We wave at each other. I take my bags and walk inside. I am welcomed and we go upstairs. Just as I am about to finish the stairs to the attic, the stairs become very narrow. The staircase is now so narrow that I can barely place my foot on the next step. I place my right foot on the narrow step and look to my left. There is no railing. I am holding my suitcases, one in each hand, and attempt to get past this point. As I step forward I notice that I have to take a huge step. People are standing behind me, waiting for me to move on. I want to reach the attic.

While awake...

A queen worthy of her crown.

I walk into a classroom that is lead by J.B. She has a large group of close to 30 students. The classroom is located in a temporary structure, a trailer. A math lesson is in progress and she shows me how they are going to play games of cards during the lesson. Every couple of students have a pack of cards and they begin to play. I am impressed at the maintained order of such a large group.

Now I am inside a large bathroom. I feel a tremor and ask A. if it is an earthquake. The tremor continues for a couple of seconds. I walk out to the livingroom where some of my friends are. We sit on the floor. I have a large suitcase nearby and I try to decide what to wear. The suitcase is open and I rearrange my clothes while talking to my friends. At the bottom of the suitcase I find a peculiar looking necklace. It looks like a pendant. The pendant is a rather large cut rock. The rock is absolutely polished and shiny. It is beige and has circles similar to year rings of a tree. It hangs from a chain made of seashells. I have no idea why I would carry around such an item.

Now I walk to the bedroom door. I walk in. A. is still sleeping. I wake him up. I feel happiness and warmth when I see him.


I am walking on the promenade looking for a place where I can buy a quick breakfast. A. wants to go to an Irish pub for breakfast. I do not have time. I am late for work.

I am walking along the road in high heels. I am in the countryside. It is winter. Someone is skiing or biking past me. I run after them. I continue to run even if it isn't very easy or comfortable in my high heels. It is as if I am competing with this or these other people even if I am not even using skis. We approach a stadium and I am closing up to the leader. The final curve before the finish line. Now I am someone else. A man.

While awake...

Insomnia

I am walking in snow with my friends. I am wearing white winter sneakers that look strange compared to everyone else's footwear. We walk in slush and talk about our shoes. I feel awkward wearing these shoes and utter some excuses that they are American sneakers. No one else seem to be bothered by their appearance, but I feel different. As if I did not belong here anymore.

I walk into a room, my old room at home, and see that a cat has given birth to at least ten completely black kittens. She looks exhausted as the little lives are moving about around her. I lean over her basket to look at the kittens and my shirt touches some of the cats. It is the moment, the calm, after birth. When I walk away I notice that I have a couple of slimy bloodstains on my shirt. It must have rubbed off the cats.

A.G. and A.M.K. are with me. We are discussing religion and philosophy. A.G. propose that we should get together regularly to talk more about these things. It would be a little discussion club. We all feel relieved that we can talk about these things openly. So we set up ten meetings and write them down on a paper. I suggest that we decide upon a topic for each meeting. That way we can come prepared and can start thinking about the topic in advance. Everyone agrees that it sounds like a good idea. I am both a little surprised and happy that A.G. is so enthusiastic about religion.

We are to board a plane. I walk through a narrow, carpeted walkway that has several turns. It leads to the entrance of a small plane. As I board the plane I see that there is a kitchen in the building that connects with the plane. They are obviously loading fresh food onboard. Inside the plane I sit down and we take off. It is the fast take off that one experiences with smaller planes.
Now I am again boarding a plane. I walk along a narrow walkway until I enter the plane. This time we are going to sit in the dining area of the plane, where there are bar stools and tables. I wonder how we are going to be safe during take off since we sit at tables. Now the plane is in the air. I look out through the window. We are flying low over a road. I sit on the right side and farther to my right, outside, I see a small dust devil. It is narrow but very tall. It is perfectly shaped and looks like a silverblue trunk of a slender tree. It moves in the direction of the plane. Before I have time to think further the dust devil hits the plane and I fear we will crash. The plane shakes a bit but moves on. We move a little to the left and elevate. I am with people I knew in my teens.

While awake...

I found a dreamstone .

I am standing in a room waiting for someone. I glance to the side and notice that I have a pimple on my left shoulder. I am wearing a white T-shirt with a blue large sweater on top. My shoulder becomes visible when I scratch myself and that is how I notice the pimple. I squeeze the pimple and something white comes out of it and falls to the floor. It looks like a white, short worm. In order to see it better I kneel down to have a closer look at it. That is weird. It isn't really the stuff that comes out of a pimple but instead some kind of organism. When I squeezed it it sort of jumped off my shoulder and landed on the floor. Now I look at my shoulder and notice that what once was a pimple is now a colony of white small barnacles! I have a group of barnacles on my left shoulder! This is frightening and disturbing to me and I see how the small organisms that live inside the hard shell move about with their feather-like antennae. I move my nail across the rough surface and the small lives inside fall out and land on the floor. I notice that I also have a couple of barnacles on my left ankle. How will I ever get rid of the hard, dry shells?

Together with A.G. and E.S. I am traveling by car. We drive toward what looks like a quarry and begin to drive along a narrow sandy road. It looks like a road used by trucks when loading sand or gravel. I am not so sure that this car will make it but A.G. assures me that we'll be fine. The sandy landscape is bordered by steep walls of hardened clay in yellow and light brown. I see the road as it winds around in the deep valley between the towering landmasses that once connected. We meet a truck. Now I see a huge pile of trash. I think it is a huge mountain of clothes and trash and random items. I am falling into this pile. Before I land I feel afraid that it will hurt when I land. I fear I will land on something sharp. Now I land. It doesn't hurt. It is such a strange experience. Where did I fall from?

I stand up and look at the ground in front of me. I see a shovel and a hoe. I pick the hoe and continue to walk away from the mountain of rubbish.

I am now inside a building. It feels like a hotel. A. is in this room with me. We are sleeping and it is dark in the room. I can see a weak light from a window that is covered with blinds. It is dark outside. I am now awake and I stand beside our bed. I am getting dressed, and choose a yellow dress to wear. A. is still sleeping. I do not want him to hear me. Now I can hear some voices coming from another room. First it is vague and I cannot hear separate words, but now I can hear a man and a woman. They are fighting. The woman is yelling at the man. She seems so sad and she is crying out loud. The man is yelling back. I understand now that they speak Swedish. A. is awake. I keep listening to the arguing and suddenly it dawns on me that it is J and M! I want to see them. I want to help J. I am standing by the door but A. tells me not to leave the room. He tells me I shouldn't go in there, that it is best if I stay here. It is so hard for me to stay here, and I stay by the closed door. But I don't open it even though I hear their voices.

I am going to have my lip pierced. I try to make up my mind about it and am finally convinced I should go ahead and do it. So now I am sitting in a room where a woman is going to insert a metal rod in my lower lip. It will pierce my lip near the right corner of my mouth. I lie down and wait for it to be over. My eyes are closed.

Now I am walking away from the piercing room. I am home. It is night and it rains. From the window I see my mom sitting in the playhouse. The windows are lit up. I can feel the metal rod in my mouth when I talk and the small metal stoppers at each end of the rod are quite annoying. I talk to someone and I can hear myself lisp. I begin to notice that the metal rod is far too long. It must be around 1,5 inches long so it flaps back and forth as I speak. Irritating. I decide to go and show it to my mom. I walk around the outside of our house but just as I turn the corner near the playhouse, she is leaving and walking around the house the other way. I walk back to the door and see that she is now in the garage. I walk up to her. She wonders if it really was such a good idea. It doesn't hurt. I realize that now. I am getting second thoughts about this whole piercing thing. I am now thinking about what I will look like in front of my students and everyone else. What first seemed like a good and fun idea is all of a sudden turning into angst. I want to get rid of this rod in my lip! Right now! I walk around feeling it and wondering if I could pull it out by myself or if I need professional help in case it will bleed. With my fingertips I feel the round stoppers to find out how they are attached to the thin metalbar. What if my lip will bleed so much that I cannot stop it? I twist the stopper and it comes off. I pull out the metal rod from my lip. I quickly form small pads of paper towels to stuff the inside of my lips. I also tuck small pieces of paper towel on the outside. It stays there. Apparently it doesn't bleed too much. Why on Earth did I pierce my lip?

I am standing near the shore of lake S. together with someone else. I see how the surface of the water is being rippled by something. A fish? Now I see the dorsal fin of a dolphin. It is a dolphin swimming in this lake, and the surface is again being disturbed by the activity of the mammal. I see more dorsal fins. It is a whole pod of dolphins. They are all very active. The surface of the water is at this point grey and reflects the cloudy daylight that surrounds us. I cannot see the bottom of the lake. It is shallow where the dolphins are playing some ten yards from the shore. Suddenly I can see everything from above. The lake is clear now. A whole pod of dolphins are moving fast and graciously away from the shore. I follow them from above. I see them as they move together in formation from place to place. Everything is so alert and fast paced. The movement of strong bodies underneath the water is almost unpredictable yet so mesmerizing and uncontrollable. We move outward, almost to the other side of the lake. I am now sitting somewhere up on a pedestal.

I am walking with someone in the rain or sleet. It is so dreadful and tiring. My hair is getting wet and I finally pull up my hood. It feels much better. I come to my room. M.N. comes to the door and leaves a little package there. Happy Birthday she says. Is it my birthday? I am so glad that someone remembered me. I open up the package. It is a thick stack of pages upon pages of letters written by her for me. All these letters are for me. Imagine that she wrote all these pages. I don't even know her that well. Does she really care about me that much?

I am in a small town. A. just drove away in our car and I can see him turn around a corner and vanish. I get up on my bike and start to bike. I need to cross a street and have trouble pedaling. Everything moves so slowly for me and I see the cars coming closer. I try my hardest to get across the street. I am now biking up a narrow but idyllic street. I see white painted houses that look adorable and very much like doll houses. Each house has a garden. I continue and now I am biking on a cobble stone street. It is a bumpy ride and now I come to an even narrower path. It is the path to my parents' house! It is summer and I have never seen this path so lush and green! It is so beautiful and bursting with flowers and grass that a great deal of the plants are welling out over the path and I brush against them as I bike. It is a little difficult to maintain the balance but I manage. I am so surprised and happy.

I am skiing. My cross country skis need a new layer of wax. I am moving with great difficulty through the snow. I come to a track and stop. From my left I see A.G. coming fast and she barely moves her skis! She just pushes off a couple of times with her ski poles and the skis run smoothly over the icy track. I cross the track and continue without following any path. I make my own track.

There is a meeting. We have to gather very soon and I am running in a wintry forest, following a path to get to the meeting. C.N. is some sort of supervisor and she tells people where to go. I see her brother here as well. He tries to short cut. She notices it and yells at him to take the proper route, which is much longer. He seems quite upset but starts running off along the proper route. The ground is covered with a thin layer of snow. I expect him to sneak off the path at some point, but strangely enough he actually obeys his sister. I am both amazed and in awe of the power and self-discipline that she seems to hold. Imagine to even be able to boss around with your older brother!