Flu Dreams

       I have been quite sick, and that always leads to some interesting dream. Unfortunately, that is also coupled with no desire to sit and record those dreams. Here is what I remember, though, from the past few days.

       N and I were walking along a narrow bit of blacktop in an eerily abandoned seeming bit of woods and broken down homes. The air was still, no sounds of birds or insects, some small bit of heat coming from the roadway kept the chill in the air from being too severe. As we strolled I spotted a bright orange cone sticking out of the roadway. The cone was small, about three quarters of a centimeter across and a centimeter tall. As I drew near I saw that the last couple of millimeters of the cone was silvery. There was a sudden crack! Simultaneous with a zing! The crack was the cone bouncing past my ribs and lodging in my shoulder blade. I think I experienced the crack first as it was inside my body, while the zing was outside.
       I fell in a hump on the ground, consciousness fading away. N leaned down over me to see what was the matter. I couldn't catch my breath to warn N, I could see that there were dozens of the little cones on the road in the direction we were headed.

       A couple of nights later, I dreamed I was trying to get across the stage in between acts of a talent show. I would wait for the lights to dim, and then make my way to another set piece. It took me a couple of acts to make it across the stage. When I got there, I was greeted by some visiting dignitaries, and my boss. I described the recent improvements to the theater, and suggested that we could walk around outside to get to the dimmer rack and the new stage manager's tablet workstation on the other side of the stage, as the students were in the middle of a performance.
       "Nonsense, follow me," my boss said and led the group across the stage behind a dance routine/air band performance.
       I apologized to the assistant stage manager and went around the outside during the catcalling and laughter from the audience. When I got there my boss was angry that I hadn't warned him that there was an audience. I could tell that he really felt he hadn't been warned, but the rest of the dignitaries seemed to look at me with understanding. The stage manager was one of my former students, now in her mid twenties and with that slender but solid adult look that teens can only wish for. She greeted me warmly and demonstrated how she was in contact with the control booth in the back of the house to call the shots for the lighting and special effects queues. My boss wanted her to show off the special chase effects and the computer program used to create the light queues, but both she and I reminded him that there was a show going on. (Now there was a dramatic scene being performed by lip-syncing dialog read by audience participants.) I could tell my boss was disappointed. I had recommended against this particular timing in our planning meetings.

       This morning's dream was much more abstract, all shifting planes of various blues and greens, with a bright orange and yellow ribbon that wove around and through a multitude of the planes.
       There was music, the "Macarena" I think it was, and the sensation of other beings flowing along the ribbon with me, all looking to debark into their own particular blue or green plane. I had no idea how I was supposed to locate my particular plane, or even if I was moving in the right direction. A fellow traveller, or perhaps a passing thought, indicated that the ribbon was infinite. With some anxiety, I realized that it would be very easy to go too far in a direction. Though, thankfully, the ribbon seemed to be pretty much one dimensional, with no directions to go but forward and back. I could see indications of other ribbons woven through the planes, but knew, or was told, that you had to enter a plane to transfer to one of them. So I should easily be able to get back to the right plane simply by zig-zagging back and forth a little further afield each time on this same ribbon. I was fairly certain that I hadn't gotten off the ribbon I'd started on. I turned around and the "Macarena" got louder, so I felt that I was now headed in the right direction.