October 8th, 2002 CE

I dreamed so many dreams last night. It's what comes of sleeping for eighteen near-continuous hours.

The one I remember most clearly took place in Rockwood, Ontario, where I grew up.

I was walking to my old school, Rockwood Centennial (a location which appears time and again in my dreams, to a surprisingly large extent), and upon getting there, found the place had changed fairly little from when I was a child. Only a few cosmetic details had been altered. It was early in the morning, and very few children were there, so I took a stroll through the playground.

Upon arriving at the far side of the playground from where I'd started, I saw a bus leaving from a bus stop which I think I'd planned on getting on to. Figuring I'd have a good long wait for the next one, I figured I'd stroll.

Rockwood, it seemed, had become a lot more commercial since last I'd laid eyes upon it; far more stores and restaurants. One which caught my eye was a new place called "Mar's", which seemed to be a bright-red chicken-oriented restaurant, like an earthier KFC. I remember wondering if the red colouration had anything to do with the fact that the name of the place coincidentally sounded like the red planet.

I went inside and was perusing the menu, which, to my absence of surprise seemed to swim and change in my field of vision every few seconds (because, as everyone knows, it's all but impossible to read anything in a dream; the results of trying to do so are varied but always chaotic), and waiting in line behind a balding, rotund fellow with sandy blonde hair and a white shirt. He was taking a really long time, so I decided to do something entertaining.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, I levitated myself up into the air to about eye-level. I do this all the time in my dreams, and it never seems to come as a surprise to me that I'm able to do so. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to me, and moreover, it feels like a specific muscular action is taking place. Like I'm flexing a muscle to lift my body up off the ground. What does surprise me in my dreams, sometimes, is when the people around me aren't surprised by the fact I can do this. This was one such case.

Hovering behind this rotund fellow for what seemed like several minutes, I began to feel tired, and began to sort of waver in the air. I knew I couldn't keep it up for much longer, so I lowered myself to the ground. Finally, my turn at the counter came, and I mentioned to the waitress that I thought that might be a new record for keeping myself aloft. She asked what I was talking about; apparently she hadn't even noticed! I sat down on the ground once again and demonstrated it to her. She was mildly interested. "So that's how you do that, huh?".

Fed by her interest, I first span around and around as though sitting on a turntable. My vision blurred in an interesting, almost kaleidoscopic way as I spun. Then I began to zip around the restaurant at about shoulder-level, until the manager came out, telling me I couldn't be doing that inside the establishment. I demonstrated to him that there was no fear of my colliding with anyone; I could just fly over their heads if a collision was imminent. He would hear none of it, though, and I decided o drop myself on the ground with needless roughness in a passive-aggressive gesture meant to make him feel bad. No such luck.

Then I woke up.

I had a couple of other dreams I can remember parts of.

I was staying in a sort of tree house with many rooms, and which was as large as a medium-sized cottage, atop a massive tree, with a wooden ladder leading to the ground. There was a family living there, and I was a guest. They fed me dinner at some point, and it was a stew. I ate some, and the taste was unlike anything I can recall ever having tasted before. Musky, sort of like a beef stroganoff, but with sort of a sweeter undertone. I asked what was in it, but they refused to tell me, all full of knowing grins. I had a terrible feeling about this, and was eventually able to get it out of them that it was human flesh, which had come from a wiling donor, which in their minds made it alright. I was pretty sure it was still illegal even in that situation, and resolved to get out of there soon. Before I did so, though, I wanted to get a good night's sleep. I went to the room where I'd been staying, and upon getting settled down in bed, the daughter of the family - perhaps 12 years old, maybe less - came into the room and climbed into bed with me, clearly intent upon seducing me. I was off-put by her overtly sexual behavior; it was clearly nothing new to her. Hence, it seemed to me that she must have had sex regularly in the past. Probably with her weird-as-fuck family members. I saw some sort of a display on the wall which looked like a menu from a computer screen, which seemed to have some bearing upon her history of sexual encounters with people. I couldn't make any sense of it, though, and then the images began to swim in my vision, and the dream became discontinuous.

Next, I seemed to have left this tree house, and was making my way down a path in the woods next to a small lake. There was what I suppose could best be described as some sort of brutal water sport taking place there, which I was soon roped into taking part in. I was sitting on some sort of sled being drawn along behind a boat or jet-ski or something in the lake, with some protective gear on and a sort of crude lance held at my side. Other groups of people were also on the lake in the same arrangement, and there was a sort of super-high-speed aquatic jousting tournament in the offing. I did fairly well for myself, managing to nail a couple of my opponents with my lance without being hit myself. Later on, there was a victory celebration around a small campfire, and I remember snuggling up with an attractive dark-skinned young woman who I believe had been driving the boat which I'd been pulled behind.

h later in the dream, after some other parts I can't really recall clearly, I recall seeing someone - a friend of mine, I think, though this part wasn't clear - sitting beneath a tree by a stream, dressed in something which looked like a cool-as-ice-looking cross between one of the blue outfits from the old movie TRON, and the Ultimate Iron Man armor. I can't recall too much about this - or any later - part of the dream.