DREAM SEQUENCE: Just weird.

Dream: Just weird

I started my dream at Andrea's house. Her family was there along with Dustin's family. We were attending a wedding for one of her cousins and as the wedding went on, the house shifted to Dustin's mom's house. I walked through the hall and saw a room that I assumed was for Sammy when she went to visit. It was blue and decorated with various Minnesota Twins paraphanalia. Now that I think about it now, I think it was the untouched room of Dustin's younger brother, Landon and not for Sammy as I had first assumed.

Once again the house shifted into a reception hall and finally into a large gothic-style church where the main chapel was full of people. I thought it was my ward but my ward had been cancelled so this meeting could take place. Now that I had no reason to be there, I wandered the halls and found myself in the kitchen where several young women were baking cookies. I wandered back out to see what else there was to do and my friend's mom found me and suggested that I take the two 4-foot bags of cookie dough to the upstairs kitchen so my shoes wouldn't make so much noise walking back and forth for more cookie dough. I took them upstairs and threw some cookies in the oven and walked back down.

In the Relief Society room there were young and old women, cutting flowers out of old tapestries. They were trying to make patches and it was easier to cut them out and finish the edges than cross-stitch new flowers. I didn't know how to do any of that so I walked back out to where the congregation was and saw a lone girl standing beside a pillar. She looked like a ghost, with a long flowing nightgown, wavy, unkept blond hair down to her waist and her face was painted white. She kept swaying side to side and was distracting people with her flailing arms.

A man stood from a nearby bench and handed her a hand mirror, which she started making faces in, silently. He knew she would find a lot of quiet entertainment with the mirror and she stood there, miming things to herself, for herself and was having a grand old time with her white face.

I walked back to the kitchen to check on the girls and they had everything under control so I walked out the outer door and into the parking lot where there was an old woman nursemaid and three young children. Two of the kids were quietly playing in the patches of grass alongside the sidewalk and the third child was having convulsions so she had to be kept outside. She kept crying and whining and one of the girls from the kitchen told me that it was her sister who suffered from short term memory loss and could never remember where she was so she was always crying.

Back into the church I went to see what else had to be done but the meeting was over now and the lights were being turned off. I walked to the otherside of the chapel and into the parking lot and what had been broad daylight had turned into 10 o'clock pm. Several lifted trucks and long vans lined the parking lot and I knew that red-necks filled these cars. They watched me with sneers on their faces, I was intruding on something but didn't know what and if I didn't hurry out of there, they'd harm me. I was sure of it.

I ran from car to car, looking for small compact ones but they were all large trucks, sure to be slow. Out of the parking lot, I ran down a few dark lamp-lit streets and into an alley where I saw the perfect car. A porche, a deep cheery purple color. The keys were still in the ignition but there was a body in the car. It was a dead whore, she had been killed out of jealousy by a man she frequently serviced and was left there. I pulled her out, apologized, and took off. The city was dark, I didn't know where I was but I knew that I didn't want those hicks to find me. I saw something that I shouldn't have (didn't know what) but I had and they needed me dead to keep their secret. Through the streets, up and down I raced in the porsche until I woke myself up. I didn't want them to find me.

THE END

DREAM: Chimera

DREAM SEQUENCE: "Chimera"

There was a house down the street that was being haunted by a shadow monster, a creature that the owners felt more than saw. Two of my past bishops were called in to exorcise the house and bless it. It was strange, when I spoke to them, their memory of the event transferred to me and I saw the monster.

It was a female, almost human looking with talons for fingers and long spikey hair from her head to her hips. Her face was an angular wolf's face with a short snout, skin nose and human mouth with long canines. Her eyes were a golden-brown color, her half human, half wolf eyes.

The two former bishops were missing digits-parts of their fingers where she had cut them off with her sharp talons. They did their best to hide them from me but I saw as they gestured the series of events that took place that night.

Some time had passed in my dream and I was driving somewhere with a friend. We made it into a wooded area and I saw two large wolf-like creatures running beside the car. When I looked over, I realized what they were. They were the same sort of creature that the bishops had removed from the house. One of them leapt at the car and swiped at me but I managed to roll the window up enough.

I wanted to kill it but I knew that I couldn't, not by just running it over. As the scene unraveled I learned that the chimera were the physical forms of strong negative emotions. Everyone had the ability to form a chimera, whether sub-consciously or consciously. There were people who were weak and their chimeras were formed subconsciously, to protect their fragile state of being.

Being able to handle stressful situations and darker emotions, I had no chimera, but like the shadow-monster in the house down the street, the chimera that tried to kill me was attached to me. It was a powerful, new beast but it was weak, still frail and still able to be healed and it had the face of my friend Brenda. This was Brenda's chimera and it had come after me. What had I done?

Through the window I asked the chimera why it wanted to kill me. My friend was still driving down the highway and the beasts still ran aside us. It told me, "Because I hate you." Its voice chilled me, it sounded like Brenda with hints of the boogeyman's voice from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon of the 80s.

"Why do you hate me?"

The chimera's anger faded and was replaced by a deep sadness, it's voice was soft. "You left me. You left me alone and I was so scared. You said you would watch over me but you never came; you said you were my friend!"

These things it said, these were all emotions from Brenda, the friend that had moved down the street from me who I rarely see in real life. I knew I hadn't been a good friend to her, I knew that she was so close and yet I never reached out to her. I hoped that the damage could be undone.

"Please. I'm so sorry that I left you alone. Can you forgive me? Can we try again?"

Tears formed in the beast's eyes and she nodded. We pulled over and I tried to form a relationship with Brenda's chimera but it was hard. There were few people who could see chimeras during the day without dreaming. They usually only appeared to people who were in deep sleep, which is what made them so scary in the first place. My friend who was driving didn't know what was going on. She just thought that I was talking to myself and freaked out when she saw the scratch marks on my arm.

People who were constantly hooked up to that deeper part of the brain where dreams existed (or daydreamers) were able to see the chimeras at all times of the day but as I had learned through experience, it was just as scary seeing them during the day.

I woke up.

I Thank Thee For My Trials

Over the years I have become more cynical according to my mom where I just thought I was becoming funnier. Interesting, the different points of view huh? Well, in my cynical, sarcastic humor I decided that I needed to change the way I react to things and that the reaction to situations is what makes or breaks life.

Sometimes in the quiet minutes throughout the day or the silence I force upon myself by closing off my mind, I have realized a lot of things about myself. I'm not sure if the way I deal with things now stems more from being overly sensitive or just honestly not caring about a lot. What I tell myself is that I am able to see the larger picture, making the more menial things that go on in my life forgettable, but I'm not fully convinced it's more one way than the other.

This brings me to trials. Throughout my life I have done my best to keep in mind that people go through a lot worse things than I do and it's true. Up to this point I would have to say that my life has been fairly simple and easy. There may have been a few bumps along the road and I might be driving on the Shrimp farm stretch where the road is crappy but my car has been good to me. Because I've tried to keep the troubles that other people experience at the forefront of my mind when I drive through a pot hole, I've been able to sigh and say 'whatever' and effectively brush the experience off as just a part of life.

There have been some things in life though that I have experienced and taking on this new optimistic approach to my trials has made me laugh whenever I've used it. Example:

There was a point in my school career that I didn't have enough money to buy food for over a month. This is when I brag about my awesome friends and the incredible inner friend finder I've been gifted with. With my closest friends, we had a system where we would take turns feeding each other when we had the money or the food and it worked for us tremendously. During this time I had been waiting for financial aid to come through and didn't have enough money. Luckily these friends had the spirit of aloha and an incredible love and took care of me when I could not take care of myself. Once the money for school came through, I was able to support my friends as they slowly had less and less. It was an invaluable system and I cannot be grateful enough for all they had done for me.

In the mean time, I was concerned with what was going on and did my best to work so I'd have enough money to pay for rent and such things, knowing all the while that God wouldn't let me starve as long as I did my best to support myself. In the church, in the friendships I had, I knew I would be taken care of and my faith never faltered in my god or my friends.

Throughout my college career there were many things that I would have worried about, had I been a mother or a wife, but being single, it was easier to take those trials in stride. The thing, the tool I had mentioned earlier that made me laugh was when I grumbled to myself "man, whichever friend I'm having this trial for, they better be happy that I went through it so I could help them."

This was one of the many things I had pondered in life. I know that we go through trials to make us stronger people and to strengthen our faith, which I can appreciate but over the years I have discovered through many conversations that the things I have gone through when I was younger had helped other people when I shared my stories and the overcoming of them. Which brings me to the crux of this post.

There was a trial in my past that only now I am realizing the deeper seeded effects its had on me, leading to much confusion about a lot of things that I had just brushed off as natural. I have made small but amazing discoveries along this road that I travel and one of them had to do with the feelings I have toward an important person in my life. The fact that this person was not around to protect me from something they had no knowledge or control over had caused me to harbor subconscious feelings of distrust and even a small bit of hatred for.

Once I had realized the subconscious connection I'd made between both events, I broke down and cried for the disgust I had towards those feelings, towards the unbelief that the little pot hole in my life had caused such a great misalignment in my car and towards the time I've lost from my life as I've discovered I've been driving on an unpaved service road that runs parallel to the highway I want to be on.

Since that discovery, the headway I've made has lessened quite a bit but the freedom of guilt has been an enormous relief. I shared this with a friend of mine as we discussed skeletons and she made the same connection. It hit her hard, probably because I had dumped it on her when she hadn't been expecting a cold shower. I feel bad that now she has to go through the same emotional hell it put me through but I know in my heart of hearts that the relief it will bring her will be worth the pain. And she won't be alone in it because I am right here, with my arms out as my god had done for me when I was going through it for the first time.The cleansing and sealing of a wound is always a reason to rejoice and the battle scar can be finally worn with pride instead of shame.

For this very reason, I am proud that I am strong enough to handle trials. I am glad that God knows I am strong enough to take what the world throws at me because in my deeper desires to help those I love, I will be able to help emotionally where I'm not able to physically. It is a gift. It is a strength. I don't wish it upon myself but I can look at bad times with a cynical optimism and know that someone I love will have a better life because of it.

And you know what? That's good enough for me.

Travels

So I thought I had nothing interesting to blog about now that I've retired from the social scene of school. But I just remembered that I went to Big Island with my awesome friend Lora. Here's a little summary of events of that weekend.


Lora had arranged to go horseback riding in the morning so I went exploring in the neighboring town and found myself in a Japanese graveyard. Hawaii being the superstitious place that it is and with all the weird Hawaiian ghosts around, I didn't want to evoke the wrath of Japanese ghosts too. I was by myself...in a graveyard...need I say more?

I drove around a little bit more just to see how long the roads were in this town and drove down to what I thought was an abandoned energy plant and found goats grazing in the parking lot. Security came by and I just told him I was taking pictures of the goats and he waved at me and left me.

A lot of fun things happened. It rained while we did our tour of Akaka Falls and a lot of other places that I'm not remembering without taking pictures.


The first incident of "I can't believe this happened" was when Lora picked me up from the airport and took me back to the hotel. I started unpacking my duffle bag and only pulled out two shirts for our four day excursion. Can I just say that it was a good thing there was a Walmart five minutes away? I swear we ended up going there every day whether it was for snacks or shirts.
I had only been to Big Island (Hawaii) once and was pretty impressed by myself to have found the temple again so easily. This trip also made me aware of the bodacity of my Jamba Juice radar. There's the Kona Temple. The Laie temple on Oahu is being rennovated so this is where everyone has to fly to until next year.

The last full day of our trip was Sunday and we decided to chance the volcano again to see if the weather conditions would be any better. They sure were. We had clear skies all 4,000 feet! There's a lookout to one of the craters that I'm embarrassed I don't know the name of. But the lookout is the Jagger Lookout. And how's me thinking Mick Jagger is the one that funded it. Tch...stupid tourist.
There was a trail of volcanoes that we decided to chance. Because of toxic fume levels, the lower part of the road was closed but let me tell you, I was feeling it. The further down the road we got, the more my chest hurt. This is one of the last pictures I took from the last little lookout spot we stopped. Then I told Lora we had to go because I was having a hard time breathing. And it was getting dark on the top of the mountain and neither of us wanted to be stuck in the dark...Yea for asthma!

We went back home, had a good sleep and had no troubles on our flight back to Oahu...which is a far cry from the hour I sat on the plane as I waited to fly to Big Island.

The end!

Strange fears

Sometimes I'm afraid to be around people.

My hands get clammy, my heartbeat speeds up, I get nervous and when they talk to me I want to run away and hide and never come back out again.

Luckily it only lasts for a couple of months when it does hit.