sanity is relative

I was some kind of male pirate, a Spaniard, and quite possibly dressed in oldschool pirate gear, yet I was being thrown in the brig on the USS Enterprise (original Star Trek TV version). I vaguely remember two other people being in the cell, and we were discussing how the cells were supposedly inescapable but I said something like I knew they weren't because I'd tested them for Starfleet and found a way out. (This sounds like something my brain ripped from the show or movies but I honestly can't remember.)

The way out was through the roof, and I got up into an area that was duct-work and then eventually weird spaces with large pipes running through them and big drop-offs on various sides of large metal surfaces that could be walked across fairly easily.

I found my way into someone's room, which was huge, and it turned out to be Uhura's. At this point I turned into Harry Mudd and tried to sleaze my way into convincing her that everything was fine and I was just gonna walk out the door now. She didn't buy it at first but after some more sleazing she was starting to believe me.

Then I woke up.


(Seriously, dream? You leave off with me as Harry Friggin' Mudd? The pirate was way better!)

I'm forgetting a lot of this already, but I think it started out something like an episode of M*A*S*H (which if you don't know, is an army medical drama/comedy set in the Korean War), with Hawkeye Pierce and possibly BJ, I forget who else; there were four of us total. I was I think some sort of military type person, no clue what my position was supposed to be. We were going down a corridor of some sort and something weird happened, I forget what exactly but possibly like an earthquake, lights going nuts, etc. When that calmed down we were like, "Man we better get out of here!" so we kept going down the hall and through a little door to the right. This opened up into what looked like a large empty storage room or garage, and on one side there were windows.

I knew something was wrong already as there were just stars outside the windows, and as I went closer I saw a a galaxy waaaay off in the distance. We were in outer space! Awed, and quite confused as well. Then we saw a planet come into view below, and as the apparent-ship started shaking we realized it was going to be going down through the atmosphere and landing. We managed to grab some straps or something along the wall and waited for the bumpy ride to end.

This part is fuzzy but I think we got off the ship without anyone noticing (possibly the window area was like doors and they were opened without anybody realizing we were there). The ship had landed in water, and reminded me very much of US navy ships. There were docks around and it was sort of a nice, airy public travel terminal if the focus was space ships and water.

I started asking random people questions, things about what society was like and hypotheticals and I seemed to be disturbing some of them. From what I could tell, the US Navy had taken over the government at some point and we were far in the future. I think someone even told me what year it was when I asked, but I don't remember what it was now. Questions didn't seem appreciated much to begin with, and obviously the subject matter (which seemed benign to me) was not almost like, not something anyone should talk about.

Some guards arrived and it seemed we'd been discovered. I remember the guards standing really stiffly. There was some other person with them, more of a doctor-type, I think he even had a white lab coat. The next thing I remember is that we had been placed in a series of rooms that had classrooms and bunkrooms and stuff, and there were other people around who didn't belong in that time period (they seemed to be all from ours or maybe a little later). We were learning more about the way things worked now and I think the people in charge weren't all that sure what to do with us.

Then I woke up.

(My notebook says this was from the morning of Sunday, August 27 2006. Pardon the gratuitious use of foward slashes and parenthesis in the following text...)


( for mature readers only )

It was a pirate ship full of evildoers and undead. My companions and I fought bravely (we were the "good pirates" as opposed to the evil ones) but in the end we were captured. Our leader was tied at the wrists with a long rope and hoisted high into the rigging as punishment. He caught a beam high up the main mast and suddenly I was him. The bad guys had left me a simple knife for some reason, or maybe they hadn't searched me well enough, and I held the blade in my teeth for a moment as I maneuvered myself onto the beam better. My friends were now up on the mast with me. I cut myself loose and we went back down the mast, leaping the last several feet to the deck and catching the others by surprise. A bunch of the evil pirates were now undead (must be thanks to the movie Pirates of the Caribbean). I was able to kick or punch some of the undead into smaller pieces and then throw them overboard into the water which was rushing by at incredible speed.

Then I realized that all this was make believe (even though we could see everything as if it was real). I was the father of one or more of the children who were making up this grand adventure, while the evil leader of the bad pirates was the father of another boy who was supposed to be in charge of our capture, and possibly the ship in general.

We were winning the day, and the ship. I found the aft deck, which was a good ten or fifteen feet below where I stood. I saw the "evil" boy down there being chastized by his father for letting things go to heck. The boy who was in trouble was sort of pudgy, and he was being disbanded from the pirates for his failure. I lept towards the deck below...

And turned into a woman in a white victorian dress, floating gently down to land softly on my feet. I seemed to inspire awe and reverence in all the children (the evil father figure had left) and I felt an incredible loving, glowing warmth inside me, like I was the deified concept of "the mother" from Peter Pan come to life. The pudgy boy looked like he was going to cry. I asked him what was wrong, and he said nobody wanted to play with him anymore, that nobody liked him.

I felt so sorry for the little boy (who might have been my son, it was hard to tell in the dream because the players seemed so oddly general), and I pulled him close and comforted him. I said, "Mommy loves you... and Daddy loves you too, when he isn't being grumpy." This seemed to make the boy feel better, and he left, probably going back to playing with the other children. (I'm not sure if the evil father was supposed to be my husband or what... it's almost like this story was seen from the naive point of view of a child.)

There was another younger boy who didn't leave with the others. He was maybe five years old, dressed in a sort of Buddhist monk outfit, probably something he picked out of dress-up clothes. He even had a bald head, and his eyes were sparkling pools of wonder that made him look like the most sweet, innocent thing. He was enthralled with me, and also a thin gold necklace I was wearing. I said something to him, something like, "Do you like it?" and I tried to put it on him, but it snagged and I couldn't get it on him. So I put it back on me and asked him if he thought it made me look pretty. He didn't say anything but I could tell that he thought I was the most beautiful thing in the world.

Then I realized that he only seemed to be feeling the necklace, and not looking at it directly. I wondered if the poor child was blind, or partly blind, and nobody had figured it out yet (he wasn't my child, but I may have known his parents). My fear was that he was entirely blind (how nobody would notice that doesn't make sense beyond the dream) but then he focused on the necklace and might have said something and I was content that he could at least see, even if I didn't know how well. Then there was some nonsense about unrolling a scarf from around a paper roll, and the end of it was attached to the roll with three pieces of duct tape.

Then I woke up.

( dream symbol analysis and thoughts )