The mat (a dream)

The schoolmaster asked us to gather around Mr. Johnson's Mat. Which was yet unfolded, waiting to be revealed on the floor of the small empty patch of forest. Parents and children alike wondered but also seemed afraid to come a bit closer.

The teacher - a man with short, brown hair in his thirties and cleanshaven - sank down on his haunches, glanced around the group and unfolded the map which was made of some kind of thick plastic and showed no sign of hinches or folds when unfolded.

My first impression - or from the character I played in my dream - was that it vaguely resembled the playing board of Ludo. Because of the different coloured circles. The colours were orange, brown, yellow, blue, red and green. They resembled the different levels of learning from all different children in the school, regardless of age.

The colours matched the different places on the edges of the manmade open place in the woods. Children got assignments from the AI, put their hands on the mat, on a coloured circle that matched the level of difficulty of the question. Thanks to biometrics the software knew which student had answered which question and 'sensed' the answer. The corresponding circle would light up at a right answer and more circles would light up, indicating the number of points the student was rewarded. The student would then walk over to the appropriate spot at the rim of the field. About half a dozen students could simultanously use the mat.

Survive (a dream)

Some sort of giant alien loci had devoured all plantlife on Earth. Unsure if it were the aliens themselves or a genetically engineered lifeform they had unleashed unto the planet. 

Giant tsunami's swept the planet and the largest one hung over Kenia, according to the latest images I had seen on the last available television broadcasts, just before a worldwide shutdown of energy.

The last survivors were packed together in basements, churches, bars, underground stations and other (makeshift) shelters and people started to die from starvation.

All the while I was being tossed around by the winds and water, ocassionaly clinging to flagpoles and lampposts, realizing the end was near but still hoping at least my children would survive.

We could (a dream)

There was a street performer who played a blind character in mime, singing a song with the word 'see' in it. And it was hilarious. In another act he would drink white cava whine. He had black, curly hair and was a Belgian student who also played the trombone in a well known orchestra, as an investigative reporter found out by looking at images at a viewing screen in a studio. The performer told me he had some wine left in this old delivery truck he had painted himself with colourful graffiti. Later he would ask me to film him while he was smoking a cigarette in the back yard of his old university. Which suddenly was my own back yard and on the camera I saw images of my son as a child. 

There was a party we attended. With a lot of young people. My girlfriend in the dream had given me a (black) car she had poorly parked in the garage underneath the venue. On our way to the party (a national celebration, it seemed) we met a couple of which the woman was wearing almost the same outfit as my girlfriend. Including the same keffiyeh. And they both had grey eyes with light grey eye white. Which looked rather unsettling.

The party was no fun as a lot of people were under the influence of different substances. So we decided to leave. When we entered the garage we just saw my car leaving in the distance. It went straight and left and disappeared into the daylight.

We had no choice than to go by bike. My partner had a pillow and a small child on the back of her bike. I asked her for her old slide phone to call my now ex-girfriend. 'No, you can't have more than 1000 sheets of printing paper!', she yelled. I told her that was not what I was calling for. I found out she was driving my car and asked her why. At least she could have called and tell me. No reply.

Later we (my girlfriend? My son? My new friend the performer?) sat in the back of the car of an unknown but in the dream familiar man. He directed our attention to an old and expensive housing project that was never finished and left for Mother Nature to slowly demolish. 'What if we had no jobs, no hobbies, no family. In which would lie life's adventures?', he asked. And I replied: 'In visiting the nearby (I forgot or may have never known the exact name) 'Old white house of Mr. Grey'. At least we could have a pee there.' The driver smiled, put his hands more firmly on the steering wheel and his foot deeper on the gas: 'Yes, we could.'

Surprise (a dream)

To everyone's surprise I literally jumped at the change to be the bike taxi driver for a friend of mine. While she sat in the back of the homemade tricycle (one wheel in the front, two at the rear), she asked outloud who was willing to take the rider's seat and take her wherever she wanted to go. 

Pushing people aside, I grabbed on to the side railings (?), leaned on my arms for a few seconds, defying gravity, dropped unto the seat and started pedaling. Much to the bemusement of my passenger who cried out: 'Yihaw!'

We rode through busy streets, avoiding market stalls and pedestrians. Until we ended up in a quiet neighbourhood of the foreign city. There was a swimming pool. Actually three basins in one building. All not very crowded. I picked one and started a conversation with an elderly lady. She was smoking and simply tossed her finished butt in the water. Much to my surprise.

Thusfar (a dream)

People appeared in a big glass container with brass ribs. They were all different but at the same time all the same: a white male in his twenties with blond, almost white, hair. Apparently covered in a powdery substance that made his skin look even more pale. Wearing some kind of off white loin cloth and a sad and surpised look on his face. 

The container filled up fast and handlers had to work increasingly harder to shove them deeper and deeper into the container to make room for more of them. Pushing them from the back towards the front that was facing the viewer.

People in the marketsquare were disappearing like magic and reappeared as the blond, white males in the container. Workers were frantically building more 'prefab' containers to house all the new 'guests' but the containers - and the whole system - started to collapse. It started with the prefab brass legs of the glass containers collapsing. They consisted of three brass, square 'sticks': two vertically and one - supporting the glass container - horizontally. Quickly welded together and with bad quality hinges attached underneath the glass. I was surprised the system had worked thusfar.

Never seen before (a dream)

There were no humans left on Earth. Future robots that came to look saw some lost predecessors working to maintain the structures left by mankind. And failing. Off white buildings that were looking like mushrooms build on mountain slopes broke into pieces and collapsed unto heeps that slowly got integrated in nature. Next moment after watching that on a big screen, I was drawing. The paper was black and on it were elephants outlined in silverish grey. I found myself sitting at a bar, having a drink with a friend who was also drawing. 

Abent mindedly I traced the outlines of the elephant and noticed it was standing on half a dozen smaller elephants. When my pencil reached the starting point, the paper started to change and hovering above it colourful, moving (in more than one way) pictures appeared, 'exploding' into different images. Of butterflies, rainbows, unicorns, flowers and animals I had never seen before. 'Wow!', a woman looking over my right shoulder exclaimed.

Our Ways (a dream)

My favourite guitarist, Mick Box from Uriah Heep, and me worked together on the sheet music and words for The Easy Road, probably in his home studio, and admired eachother's creativity and writing skills. In the dream he was some twenty years younger than he is today. 

We laughed at a pun we came up with at the same time and I found myself laughing with new found friends. On a hot day we enjoyed some unexpected cooling in the form of a broken waterpipeline over our heads. It was at a beach or at least a large slab of sand and soon our clothes were soaked and we took them off. Laughing and naked but clothed at the same time, we introduced ourselves to eachother and when it was time to leave we decided to exchange clothes, including underwear and still laughing with joy parted our ways.  

Green beans (a dream)

In my dream my son was a bit older than in real life. His hair was long although it's short in reality. He was standing in the 'top left' corner of a room that looked like an office with a glass wall and behind it, people passing by. He talked to me and my partner, who was sitting on my right, and told us he was very happy in his new job. 

My partner squeezed a little in my hand and suddenly I was standing in an ocean, talking to a man I didn't see at first until he gave me a few clues: he was standing on a pier, fishing and the float of his - extremely long - fishing rod - was floating near me, in between a group of about a dozen people swimming. Most of them with swimming or bathing caps on.

Next thing I knew I was standing on the deck of his yacht where his wife, I pressume, handed me a pair of  wellingtons. Blue and reaching way over my knees.

Next scene: I was sitting in their living room and he told me his name was David but I could call him Dave and he was pleased to meet me in real life, after we had met online.

Diner consisted of mashed potatoes and mashed with it tomatoes and green beans.

Threatening (a dream)

We were at a kind of theme park that was either closed for years or open and about to close. 

We (me and four or five other people. Not necessarily people I knew) entered a structure. 

Which was a rollercoaster. But also a ghost house and a (apparently not so) hidden cave.

It was dark and there was fire but not as hot as you'd expect. 

And some of the 'fires' turned out to be cardboard and paper with lights shining through them.

As we climbed the stairs it became clear that my child-version needed help. 

So I picked him up and put him on the shoulders of my older me. 

So, there were three versions of me present, each representing a phase in my life:

my past, present and future. 

We encountered an enormous devil-like creature that looked very menacing. 

Until he got attacked by a raven and looked more terrified then threatening. 

Unfortunately that's the point my alarm went off.

Over a year (a dream)

Because I wanted to walk my pet goat (perfectly normal in my dream), I asked my niece to hold open the door for me as it was blocked by the bike of one of my neighbours. It was one of those modern black mikes with electric power. A friend helped push aside the bike. Suddenly I was back home again. With the goat. Who started feeding my goldfish: standing on its hind legs and with its front legs over the edge, it fed my goldfish some kind of grass. And smiled as the fish happily started eating it. 

The aquarium filled half my living room and the water looked brackish, dirty. As if it hadn't been refreshed in over a year.  

She agreed (a dream)

My (in real life deceased) mother and I were on vacation in an unknown city. Wandering around we decided to visit a local museum. As usual in my dreams it was a huge building with lots of stairs and doors. The artwork around us seemed all to be examples of tribal cultures and most of it was very colourful. For some reason (siesta time?) there were not many visitors. Just a few people, dressed in all white.

Going up the stairs to the second floor I looked at my watch and asked my mother - who was a few meters ahead of me - to hold so I could ask her a question:

'Shall we go find a place to eat after this? It's four thirty and we'll be ahead of the restaurant rush.'

She agreed.

A few days later this dream continued: while my mother was seated on some park bench, she had sent me out to get something to eat from one of the many stands and restaurants in the area. My order got mixed up so my mother got what I had ordered for myself and I got her eggroll. Which tasted as if it was at least three days old and just a few seconds heated in a microwave. I woke up with a dirty taste in my mouth.

Left (a dream)

It was in the future. There were not many people left but those who had survived had it pretty good. I was one of them and at some kind of Olympics. I was thrilled to see athletes have a go at a sport I can describe as a cross of skateboarding and snowboarding. Imagine snowboards with wheels. And no snow as no one alive at the time had ever seen any.

People were apparently competing in two different categories: yellow (easy) and blue (hard). There were poles put in the sand. At least I think it was sand. It was pure white and glistened. Nets were stretched from pole to pole and after every couple of nets there was a platform that could sometimes double as a trampoline but was sometimes just a flat, hard surface and sometimes really slippery. 

Competitors had to jump, skip, slip, ride from one platform to the next as fast as possible. With points being added for style and tricks and points being distracted for touching the nets with their hands. Falling meant disqualification. 

The lower poles - with the yellow nets - were for mostly teenage riders who couldn't fall more than two meters while the athletes - mostly adults - riding the higher and blue nets could get seriously hurt after a seven meter fall. 

I didn't see any elderly people during my time in this future, by the way.

There was loud cheering from some speakers (people watching from home?) as the dozens upon dozens of riders started to go down the parcour simultanously. From right to left.

I want more (a dream)

Once again I was standing on the Edge of the City of Tomorrow, a reoccuring place in my dreams. Friends on The Other Side were waving at me but were too far away for me to make out if they encouraged me to stay on my side or join them on theirs. 

There was a rather wide gap between us and while I was contemplating on a decision, a boat sailed into the crack that was suddenly a canal. It was an antique wooden barge and on board it was very crowded. All aboard wore a pirate hat from the partyshop. 

A few of the passengers/sailors recognized me and waved enthousiastically: 'Join us! It will be fun!' but I had no idea how to get down to them. There was not a ladder or anything in sight that could help me to overcome the distance. It looked like a few hundred meters down, so jumping was not an option. 

Instead I climbed into some construction that was attached to the roof I was standing on. A flagpole? A radiomast? An antenna? For some reason I did not wish to stay where I was and took a risk: would the construction take my weight? I climbed it, it bent under my weight and I held on in disbelief and fear as it had almost bend over far enough for me to jump across the...er...rift? safely but it suddenly jerked back to its original position. Leading me to hang on for dear life and wait for the afterswing to stop. 

It did stop and upon opening my eyes again - tip: even in your dreams: if you get dizzy from swaying too much, close your eyes - I found myself at a balustrade inside a large office building. It was alongside a large corridor with every four meters or so un unmarked, and white, door. 

It was all white, the top part of the balustrade was glas and it had a chrome railing. I held unto it as I looked down and saw a friend (not one from real life but I have seen her in more of my dreams) in a red dress and with brown hair standing in a life size glass chamber/cell in which she could hardly move.

Being down at the reception desk I asked the receptionist why he lied when he told me before that he would free her soon. He started sweating and stuttering, clearly uncomfortable with having to lie again, stating she was a witch and had to be contained.

Apparently the look in my eyes made him decide not to follow the orders he had received from 'them' and freed my friend. Although the dream did not show me how.

Grateful she offered me liqorice: 'Try them. These are new!' Unwillingly because in my dream I didn't care for liqorice, I took one out of the little bag, put it in my mouth and bit it. They came in white and black and had a greenish/greyish filling. 'These are amazing!' I shouted out in surprise. 'Where did you get them. I want more!'

Musings (a dream)

In a post-apocalyptic world, I was one of the chosen to drive trucks with supplies through a rough and radiation invested area to an area where the remains of human civilisation tried to survive. At every stop along the way, me and my co-drivers were assisted by local volunteers to jump into big iron tubs filled with a liquid to decontaminate us. From the footboards of our trucks we would simply drop backwards into the cold liquid. As was adviced and instructed 'because you don't want to see what you jump into'.

While - fully clothed in my protective gear minus hood and helmet - submerged I wondered if our efforts were worth it. Wouldn't we make the same mistakes all over again? Could I hold my breath for at least two minutes? Would she be waiting for me at the final stop? Would it really be the final stop or would we have to move on? But where to?

My (real life) alarm woke me up from my musings.

Real life (a dream)

Standing in the remnants of a party, 

I told my colleague I had put his (empty) beerglass

outside, in a dark corner at the bottom of the stairs.

Climbing those stairs (suddenly in- not outside the building)

was nog easy with my arms full of cups and plates

and other party leftovers.

It became even more difficult because I couldn't stand upright,

the last couple of stairs;

the ceiling was too low for me.

I had just told someone behind me on the stairs

that I would try to open the hatch above us

with my head

when my alarm went off.

In real life.

Green or grey (a dream)

Surrounded by colours, I was a colour myself but could not look at myself in the mirror

because I was too sparkly and needed to quickly shield my eyes.

Although my shoes were too big, I stumbled into another world where I landed on my head.

Which was apparently normal because everyone around me was shuffling through the streets on their heads. Without using their hands. As if no one had ever told them that would give them more balance. I couldn't hold my position much longer and to the surprise of my fellow citizens - all, just like me, wearing outfits as if they played a roll in the seventies Batman-series - I toppled over, landed on my feet and started walking. 

Two young entrepeneurs had seen what happened and offered me a money making deal.

Before they could approach me, I was surrounded by a large crowd and simply decided to snap out of my dream.

Seeing it was two hours before my alarm would go off, I tried to get back into the dream but landed in someone else's. Apparently set in a different world. Were everyone was wearing green or grey.

Nobody minds (a dream)

Found myself playing catch with my youngest daughter (in reality twenty but in my dream around eight years old) and we were both enjoying ourselves. Until a lady (in her thirties, long, brown hair, uncombed, dressed in a white shirt with a faded orange with green drawing on it she may have been sleeping in) shouted: 'Get out of my house. Now!' Only because we were throwing and catching the ball (a bit like a softball but slightly bigger) while standing in her living room. Which made sense to us because in our own house, further down the street, there was less room.

With my daughter (or my son or a friend. It wasn't clear in the dream), I got invited to enter university and we were invited for an informal introductory day. We were having fun in gym class where a (female. Dark, straight hair, cut above the shoulders. Slightly longer on her left side and a big, pointy but beautifully curved nose) friend was just asked by the teacher to take over the lesson, when two older students entered the gym and asked my child (friend?) and me to follow them for a talk about the study we would enroll in. 

When I had picked up our bags with our regular clothes I could just see the two men disappear in the distance in the extremely long and suddenly bustling hallway. I tried to follow them but couldn't reach them through the crowd. Saw a passageway I hoped would bring me closer or even cut them off. But I was wrong. The stairs I climbed brought me to a highter level and after walking for a while I found out it was a dead end. The lane/hall/street - one of hundreds of different walkways. All completely different in design - simply ended and I had no choice but to backtrace my steps and follow a different route.

Luckily the taller of the two older students was apparantly send to find me and he did. Togethe we joined his fellow student. He was sitting at a sort of picknick table in a courtyard with red brick buildings on either side and lots of hanging plants, almost blocking all sunlight. It felt like an oasis and I was offered a cigarette: a long and slim one which I tried to hide under the table but the student gestured 'It's okay to smoke here. People simply do and nobody minds.'

Partyshop (a dream)

I was in a field hocky stadium. The game hadn't started yet. Somebody made a remark involving Johan Cruijff and I replied: 'That's a clever remark!'. 

The stadium was practically empty but in parts of the stadium groups of people were dressed in opague plastic costumes depicting Star Wars droids while other groups were dressed as characters from the Star Wars 'Dark Side'. 

One of the stands was empty, with the exeption of one man - curly brown hair, a golden earring in his left ear, unshaven, singing his club song lustily while he pulled down his jeans, revealing simple white underwear with a strange bump in it on the front. 

Upon pulling down his underwear, it revealed a pair of plastic buttocks from the partyshop. 

Her eyes (a dream)

After the apocalypse, I was part of a group of survivors. We were each allowed to take a single item from several piles of assorted stuff, like clothes, bags, stationary, household items and so on. I decided I wanted a diary. One with a lock or a string to be able to close it tight because I knew that way (because oxygen or water couldn't come in between the pages) it would be somewhat protected against fire and water and future people could read what I wrote. To find such a diary I had to wait until everyone was gone and the stuff was put away behind garded fences and further sorted.

At first we lived scattered throughout a partially burned down forest and I remember carrying around a rather large ladies handbag filled with now useless Euro and Dollar coins and some (less useless) cigarettes. 

After months of hard work (a few seconds in the dream), we managed to build ourselves a square shaped village, build from wood, straw, clay and manure. High above the ground and furthermore protected from animals and whatever was lurking in the woods by guard towers with fire pits. Apparently very hot fire because the flames were blue so I guess we used some kind of highly combustible fuel to keep them lit. There were some two dozen huts on poles and they were connected by slightly swaying walk ways, like planks on ropes.

The time had come for each cabin to be appointed to a couple: one male, one female. Because we knew we needed to procreate in order to survive. But there were slightly more men in the group (of 44 people?) then women and so a priest was - rather reluctantly - designated to share a hut with a very ill man who needed someone to look after him. In a large hut on the ground in the center of the compound, we stood in a circle, waiting for things to come, as decided by the three or four group leaders. 

I got coupled to a young (early thirties?) woman with long, curly blonde hair that was longer on the left side of her face than on her right. We (the men on the inside of the circle, the women on the outside, their backs turned towards the walls, the ill man on a stretcher in a corner) were standing only a hand width apart as part of the improvised ritual to make us mates for life. She wore a blue dress with thin shoulder straps and a beautiful big smile as she looked down on me, seeing I was grinning and looking straight ahead with my 1.40m and not up into her eyes.

Into the darkness (a dream)

With a friend or colleague I was at some company. Helping them to prank a colleague. We decided to hire a clown that had to look a bit like Ronald McDonald. Not too much because of possible copyright infringement. I talked to several people present in the large white room, scattered with desks and the occasional potted plants. The walls were white as well. No lights, no posters. We talked to learn more about the person who was going to be pranked and satisfied, one of them walked with us to the exit.

We were left in a room that seemed octogonal. In every wall there were one or two doors. White, with opague, small windows at face height and metal bars. Those allowed people to open them but the doors would close shut once you're through so you had to pick carefully.

There was also a hallway that would lead us back to where we came from.

To accomodate us, the lady who showed us out, opened one of the doors a bit, to show us that was not the exit but would lead us back into the building and into a maze we would probably get lost in. We chose the door right from the door she showed us, hoping that one would lead us outside. The bar was hard to push down but we pushed on anyway and stepped over the threshold into the darkness.

Singing (a dream)

Jumping on a train roof of a dark red train I knew I had to get back at him. He was the man who murdered me and I was a female teenager, approximately 15 years of age. Against the rushing wind I kept on crawling until I reached the coach he was in. 

On the side of the carriage was a leather strap on either side I could hook my hands in to not fall off. Spreading my legs as far apart as I could, I tried to keep my balance but was occassionally swept to my right, barely hanging on to one leather strap, making my way back up on top. 

Giggling at the thought of the man in the train thinking he was going crazy as I sang a song he knew me to sing when I was still alive, thinking he couldn't get me out of my head. But I wasn't dead. Or was I?

Unsure if I was dead or alive, I started singing anyway.

I love him (a dream)

My son's mother was talking to herself. Literally as two versions of her talked to eachother, sitting in chairs opposite of one another. On the left was the confused and scared psychiatric patient: pale face, wispy hair, crouched with her feet on the chair, dressed in a hospital gown, white with blue dots. Her few years younger or older version - blue t-shirt, combed hair and aubergine coloured trousers - but without severe psychosis.

The latter asking her scared self to finally 'get it out'. Moved to tears she told of a daughter ('Last I know she was in her last year of High School'. Ed. Specifically '5 VWO' in Dutch) before she turned to me, present in a corner of the room: 'I forgive myself. Will you tell our son I love him?'

The dream (a dream)

My friend got killed in a conflict, possibly a war. I felt his body getting cold in my arms in the trenches. He wore a white t-shirt, now bloody. We were in civilian clothing. He wore jeans, me some ensemble that appeared to be a dress suit. As if I was to go out on either a date or some fancy party before things went down. 

With my now dead buddy's card I bought a pack of cigarettes. With the intention to smoke them at his funeral. But people mistook me for him and I didn't have the nerve to tell them he was dead. 

So in the late evening, I took his body to his home and bedroom, dragging him like he was really, really drunk and even his mother fell for it. She welcomed me into their home and made me homemade fries with some vegetables. I helped cut the potatoes, convincing her her son was sleeping it off. Had dinner with them before so it was all perfectly normal. I also found it normal they had a pet tiger on the premises. 

So I came up with the idea of dragging my dead friend's body outside, next day in the early morning before anyone would be awake and blame the tiger for his death. Started dragging the body out of his room ('Nice detail by the filmmaker!' I thought, seeing dozens of flies hovering over the body, of which the eyes were sown shut), unto the patio which was directly outside the bedroom. Heard a noise and got scared so left the body where it was, covered with a brown woolen blanket with three single and small stripes: red, white and black. Tried to hide behind the shed, cowering but was detected by Mrs...? (Forgot her name), my friend's mom. 

She invited me out to the garden to meet a young lady who I immediately 'clicked' with and who I swapped underwear with for unknown reasons. Most likely just for laughs. I walked her up to a nearby (about two miles in a North Eastern direction) outdoor shopping centre. Where she met up with a (female) friend to go somewhere where she would one day take me too. A powerplant? A military complex? Where her father worked? 'You're smiling because you know what I'm wearing, right?', she said cheekily before we parted. 

I met up with a friend and together we walked back 'home'. From a short distance I pointed him the huge homemade winding stairs (that obviously needed some serious maintenance) going around an enormous and obviously old tree. 'Let's get up there one day, yeah?' 'Yeah!' Back on the terrain there was a dark coloured car on the grass. In the back seat my friend's dad, panicking. In the driver's seat (on the right side of the (English?) car his wife, bend over the steering wheel and in obvious pain, bleeding from a head wound. Next to her an unknown brown haired young woman. Babysitter? Dog walker for the tiger? Household help? Friend of the family? A friend of her son's? 

'We don't have insurance! Could you have caused the accident please?' They obviously knew that as a foreigner I was insured and my insurance would cover the costs. I didn't have a car myself so decided was the story would be that I had borrowed a friend's car and - because of my clumsy dealing with the for me unknown controls had accidentally hit their car, just as they excited the driveway and I was making a turn to drive up. All we needed to find was the other car. 

When I spotted a (white) car on their grounds (possibly from the young passenger or from the interesting young woman I had walked to the shopping centre) with the passenger door (right side) already open, I knew that was the car I would make a dent and a few scratches in by bumping it into the car of my dead friend's mother. When I hastily walked towards the car to set the insurance scam in motion, some idiot outside my (real life) home honked his or her car horn (for no other reason than to let someone know the lift had arrived. And to be a selfish a-hole who's too lazy to get out and ring the doorbell or simply call or send a text), woke me up (6.30 in the morning, for f*ck's sake!) and ended the dream.