Greta Christina's Blog

Dream diary, 1/2/10: Oak Aged Scotch

I dreamed that there was a fancy, high-end Scotch that, instead of being aged in oak barrels, was aged in live oak trees that had been hollowed out specifically for this purpose. I was a little confused as to how the oak trees could survive this process, but was told that the whisky functioned like sap.

Dream diary, 11/21/09: Terrorist Pizza Party

I dreamed that I was having pizza with Iranian terrorists. A reporter friend of mine was doing a story on them; she was hiding them in her crawlspace, but they were thinking of coming out and revealing themselves in public. To encourage them to do this, she had a pizza party for them. Ingrid and I somehow got mixed up in this. I was uncertain how I felt about what my friend was doing, but mostly I was uncomfortable trying to make small talk, since the terrorists didn't speak English very well.

Dream diary, 9/23/09: The Paul Newman progressive ice show

I dreamed that I was doing an ice show about progressive political issues with Paul Newman. As the big finale of that day's show, to represent the fight against global warming, I was supposed to skate across the length of the ice rink as fast as I could, ending with a flying leap, and catching myself by two fingers in a small yellow tube that Paul was holding up. I hadn't practiced this maneuver and was worried that it would be dangerous and I might break my fingers; but then I realized that if I pretended I was the lead in a flying wedge instead of the only skater on the rink, it would be safe.

I woke up very baffled.

Dream diary, 8/4/09: The singing alarm clock

I dreamed that when my alarm clock went off, instead of making a series of buzzes, it sang. Specifically, it sang about food, making suggestions about what I might eat that day. If I got up right away, it gave me a broad range of suggestions in its song; but every time I hit the snooze, the range of what it told me to eat got narrower and narrower. I hit the snooze four or five times, and it ended up just singing, "Grapes, grapes, grapes, grapes..."

Dream diary, 6/8/09: The Facebook survival kit

I dreamed that when you joined Facebook, they gave you a medical kit to help you survive in case of natural or man-made disaster. When I picked up mine, I thought I'd have to show some sort of proof that I'd joined Facebook, but it turned out to be pretty much on the honor system. The kit was full of expensive injectable medicines, some of which needed to be refrigerated, so there was an ice pack of liquid nitrogen at the center of the kit, which was steaming like dry ice. They had also included a vial of strychnine, in case the disaster was so bad (like a nuclear holocaust) that Facebook members might want to kill themselves quickly rather than die a slow and painful death. In the dream, I thought this was all very thoughtful of them, but was concerned about how expensive it all was and how the company would be able to sustain itself while doing this program.

I woke up feeling very baffled, almost laughing, at dream priorities and dream logic.

Dream diary, 3/14/09: Violet and Rorschach

I dreamed that the markings on our cat Violet were moving around on her face like Rorschach from Watchmen.

Dream diary, 2/13/09: The NAACP symbol

I dreamed that the symbol of the NAACP was a floating letter N (capital, sans- serif, about the size of a human hand) that bobbed around in the air at about eye level and followed people around, reminding them to support civil rights.

Dream diary, 1/21/09: Doctor Biden's housecall

I dreamed that Joe Biden was my doctor, and was making a housecall at my office. I was having narcolepsy and dizzy spells: he said we could treat it with aggressive medication, but he thought the problem might just be sleep deprivation, and suggested I take a nap. He also thought the problem might be too much wax in my ears. When he left, my co-workers all thought I had cancer, because everyone knew Biden had been an oncologist before he became a Senator.

Atheist Dreams

Do any of you ever have atheist dreams?

I don't mean atheist dreams, as in, "dreams and hopes for a better, more atheist- friendly world." I mean atheist dreams, as in, "I dreamed that Christopher Hitchens was trying to sell me life insurance," or, "I dreamed that the ghost of Thomas Aquinas appeared at my dinner table and told me it was okay to be an atheist."

No, those aren't real dreams. I made them up. But I did have a real one a little while back. I was waiting in line with a group of friends to see Richard Dawkins read at a bookstore. But I'd won a contest, and the prize was that Richard Dawkins stood in line with us and hung out with us while we waited for the bookstore to open. He was a surprisingly good sport about it, and was good company, but we were all a little star- struck and didn't quite know what to say to him. (I woke up feeling slightly baffled by the recursion conundrum of Richard Dawkins waiting in line to see himself read.)

I forgot to log it in the dream diary at the time. But it's stuck with me, and it's made me ponder the degree to which atheism and the atheist movement have entered my subconscious. (I have other atheist dreams, too, usually about blogging or reading other atheist blogs. Most of them aren't that interesting -- although I'm still tickled by the one about atheist plumbing -- but I have them fairly often.)

And I was wondering: Does this happen to anyone else? Do any of the atheists reading this blog -- or any of the non-atheists, for that matter -- ever dream about atheism? If so, what do you dream about? When did it start? And how do you feel about it? (My atheist dreams make me feel a little bit nerdy, but in a good way.) I personally find it slightly odd to dream about something so abstract -- to dream about the non-existence of something, essentially -- and I'm curious if this is a widespread phenomenon or not.

Dream diary, 7/28/08: The Shadow Government

I dreamed that there was a secret organization -- a corporate organization, but also connected with the government somehow -- that was controlling people through subliminal signals created by shadows falling on their bodies while they slept. In the dream, I "woke up" to see some shadows in the corner of the room: the shadows began forming into patterns, and I recognized one of the patterns as the logo for this organization. I was very excited -- at last I had proof that this was really happening -- but I was also completely terrified, as it was happening to us, right now.

This was a genuine night terror, the first I've had in a long time. I woke Ingrid in a panic, but was completely unable to explain why I'd woken her. This was easily the most abstract night terror I've ever had, which made trying to form words to describe what was happening even more difficult than usual. Weirdly, the process of trying to explain what was happening forced me to try to make sense of it... and the process of trying to make sense of it made it eventually dawn on me that it didn't make sense, it was ridiculous, and I'd woken my wife up out of a sound sleep at two in the morning to warn her about the evil government shadow puppets.

Dream diary, 4/8/08: Atheist Plumbing

I dreamed that Ebonmuse, of the Daylight Atheism blog, had asked me to write a blog post about atheist plumbing for a project he was doing in the atheist blogosphere. I woke up in a guilty panic, thinking, "Shit! I forgot to write that atheist plumbing post I promised Ebon!" It took me a few moments to realize that this was a dream- memory and not a real one.

*****

Update: Here's the post.

Dream diary, 1/13/08: The dream job

I dreamed that I was applying for a job as a professional dreamer. Specifically, I was applying for the job of United States Dreamer Laureate. The job basically involved having interesting dreams; writing about them was a part of it, but just having the dreams was the primary responsibility. I really wanted the job, and was concerned that my more recent dreams hadn't been interesting enough to qualify me. I woke up feeling somewhat disappointed that there was no such thing as Dreamer Laureate.

Dream diary, 10/7/07: Voldemort and the Ikea cabinets

I dreamed that Ingrid and I had just bought a set of black Ikea cabinets. It turned out that these cabinets somehow held the secret to the world, and that Voldemort was trying to destroy them.

Dream diary, 8/3/07: Coconuts and yogurt

I dreamed that if you cracked open a coconut at just exactly the right time and the right stage of ripeness, it would have yogurt inside.

(I actually had this dream a few days ago, but I forgot to blog about it until now.)

Dream diary, 7/8/2007: 12-step programs and the Mafia

I dreamed that Alcoholics Anonymous, and all other 12-step programs, were a Mafia front organization. I was watching a 12-step meeting and saw that there was a back room behind the meeting where a group of Mafia men had gathered to talk business, and I realized that this was going on in 12-step meetings all around the country.

Dream diary, 6/2/07: Thermonuclear missile

I dreamed that in college, some friends and I as a prank had stolen a thermonuclear missile, and that I was the one who had gotten stuck with hanging on to it. In the dream, it was the present time, and the missile was stashed in a van in a woodsy area behind my house. I was getting ready to move to a new house, and was trying to figure out what to do with the missile. I was afraid that if I tried to move it I might drop it and set it off. Most of the dream involved struggling with the missile, and while I was frightened that I was going to set it off, I was mostly just annoyed that I was the one who was stuck with the damn thing after all these years.

Dream diary, 5/20/07, The gun and the Converse high-tops

Dream #1: I dreamed that I was at a restaurant with friends (in that dream way, they were close friends in the dream, but not anyone I know in real life). A man came into the restaurant waving a gun around in the air, and everyone in the restaurant started going crazy. I called the police on my cel phone, and then managed to get the gun away from the guy, by hitting him on the head with a large metal valve that was on the table. The police came -- but the gun had disappeared, and my friends started saying that they hadn't seen the gun, didn't know what I was talking about, and didn't know why I'd hit this guy (who was still knocked out cold). The police arrested me for assault and for filing a false police report, which they were calling "first degree fraud" and which they saw as much more serious than the assault. The rest of the dream involved me being processed and put in jail, and completely freaking out because it was obvious that my friends were fucking with me or framing me, and I had no idea why. I woke up very upset, and it took me a while to shake it off.

Dream #2: I dreamed that I was in a shoe store trying on sneakers, and discovered that they had started making Converse high-tops with decent padding and arch support. I was very excited -- I bought a pair with Tweety Birds all over them, and was thrilled that I could start wearing Converse high-tops again. This was a very happy dream, and I woke up in a good mood, but somewhat disappointed that it wasn't true.

Dream journal, 4/3/07: Ingrid's Wedding

I dreamed that Ingrid and I were visiting Ingrid's relatives in Arkansas. She had a couple of old friends there who she was still in touch with, and one of them was a guy who, for complicated legal or logistical reason, needed to get married. So somehow it got decided that Ingrid should marry him, right away, within the next few days.

At first I went along with this, and didn't think it was a big deal. But as the dream went on and the wedding plans moved forward, I got increasingly upset. It started occurring to me that Ingrid's marriage to this guy would have real legal standing, greater legal standing than our domestic partnership. And the wedding was happening in a church, apparently to make Ingrid's fundamentalist relatives and the groom's fundamentalist relatives happy... and I was getting very weirded out by the fact that Ingrid was going along with this. The dream ended with me at the church just before the wedding, feeling like I had to keep our relationship a secret even though most people pretty much knew about it (a bunch of the other wedding guests were glaring at me), and not sure if I was supposed to sit in the front row with the family or sit in the back as if I was just another guest, and getting very freaked out and and hurt and increasingly sure that this was a very bad idea.

This was obviously a pretty upsetting dream, and I was very relieved when I woke up (although bummed that Ingrid had already left for work and I couldn't ask her to reassure me). I also woke up remembering that, in fact, California law says that domestic partners have to dissolve their partnership before one of them can re-marry -- which helped bring me back to the reality that Ingrid would, in fact, never do this. (It sometimes takes me a while to realize that my dreams aren't real and don't make sense.)

Reality note: Ingrid has fundie relatives in Mississippi, not Arkansas. I have no idea why my dream-brain translated that into Arkansas.

Dream diary, 1/1/07: Multi-media Performance Art

I dreamed I was taking a college class in multi-media performance art taught by my friends Tim and Josie. I had decided to do a performance about crying and grief, and was planning to project images of the weeping Virgin Mary onto my own face, while eating pizza, with music by Fred Frith in the background. I knew this was kind of a weak, half-assed idea, but I didn't have the time to do anything better. But I needed to find some images of crying Virgin Marys, and I knew my co-worker Andrew had a big collection of Virgin Mary statues, so I knocked on his door and woke him up so I could take some photos of his Virgin Marys with my camera phone.

Reality check: My friend Tim and Josie do not teach multi-media performance art (although one is an artist and the other is a musician). As far as I know, my co-worker Andrew does not have a collection of Virgin Mary statues. And I do not have a camera phone. Just so we're all clear.

Dream diary, 12/13/06: The Greyhound stagecoach and Weird Al Yankovic

I dreamed that I was taking a Greyhound bus to visit my family in Chicago. I boarded the bus, but soon realized that (a) the bus was being pulled by horses like a stagecoach, and (b) the driver was Weird Al Yankovic. Weird Al handed me the reins and insisted that I drive the bus, which scared and upset me -- I didn't know how to drive a stagecoach, and the horses were going really fast, careening around corners and nearly tipping the bus over. I kept screaming at Weird Al to take the reins back, but he just laughed like a maniac, and kept insisting that everything was fine.

I eventually managed to stop the horses. I screamed at Weird Al for a while and then stormed off the bus. But I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a bad neighborhood, and I had no idea where I was (although I was pretty sure I was still in San Francisco). Eventually another Greyhound bus pulled up, also going to Chicago; but the driver was very cranky, and since my ticket had already been torn, he didn't want to let me on the bus. He eventually did, but there were no seats left, and as the bus pulled off, I wondered if I'd have to stand all the way to Chicago.

(P.S. I really wish I could have found an image of a bus being pulled by horses, or that my Photoshop skills were up to the task of making one. That was a truly vivid and frightening image, one which no simple picture of a bus could ever convery.)

Dream diary, 10/25/06: The bees

I dreamed that Ingrid and I were going away for a while, and had left careful instructions for a housesitter. I woke up in an incoherent, terrified panic because we had neglected to tell the housesitter about the bees. There was an enormous beehive under the building, and we had meant to warn the housesitter not to disturb it, but had forgotten. It was all mixed up with comics somehow: we'd written our housesitting instructions in comic-book form, and I had a vivid image of the comic I'd intended to write about the bees but had forgotten about.

This was a genuine night terror (although somewhat less intense than others I've had). I woke up petrified and struggling to speak, and tried for some time to explain to Ingrid that I was frightened because of the bees and the comic book.

Dream diary, 10/20/06: Illeana Douglas and the Oakland A's

I dreamed that I was going to an Oakland A's baseball game, and was just finding my seat when an usher told me I had to move. They were setting aside the section I was in for the hearing-impaired, and were shuffling people around to make that happen. I was irritated -- I had a good seat, and I thought they could have handled this better in advance -- but agreed to move as long as I moved to an equally good seat.

On the way to my new seat, I ran into the actress Illeana Douglas, who was doing some sort of charity work connected with the game, and was helping arrange the hearing-impaired section. We started chatting -- I'd never met her before, but she was very smart and sweet and interesting, and asked me lots of questions about my tattoos and my new book project. We hit it off really well, and I decided I should Google her after the game to see if I could get in touch with her again.

When I found my new seat, though, I was really annoyed. They had seated me in a section that was facing away from the baseball field, where you couldn't watch the game live -- you had to watch it on a bank of televisions. The seats were filled with kids -- it was clearly the "kids' table" of the stadium, where people stuck their kids so they wouldn't have to sit with them at the game -- and the fact that I'd been stuck there was almost as insulting as the fact that they'd made me leave my good seat and expected me to be happy watching the game on TV. I left the stadium in a state of high dudgeon, vowing to never go back.

Dream diary, 7/22/06: Art boots

I dreamed that SF MOMA (the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) had a shoe store next to the museum. Ingrid and I had just been to the museum exhibit with the enormous interactive gyroscopic space-chair by Matthew Barney, and we stopped to look at the MOMA shoe store's window display. There was an exhibit/sale on psychedelic boots, with two gorgeous pairs on a special display stand in the center of the store. I figured they'd be much too expensive -- probably hundreds of dollars or even thousands -- but I went in anyway just to check, and it turned out they were on super-discounted sale for less than a hundred bucks each, so I tried them on. The pair I liked best -- the low-heeled purple and blue sequined ankle boots -- didn't fit, but the knee-high boots with the orange swirls and the blocky '70s-style high heels fit perfectly, and looked amazing. I was very excited, since most tall boots don't fit over my calves, but I never ever wear high heels, and I was debating whether I should buy them when the dream ended. I woke up thinking, "Of course you should buy the damn boots!"

P.S. The boots in the picture don't actually look that much like the boots in the dream. They were the best I could find in a Google image search under "psychedelic" + "boots."

P.P.S. The Matthew Barney exhibit at SF MOMA didn't actually have an enormous interactive gyroscopic space-chair. Too bad. It would have been a lot more interesting if it did.

Dream diary, 7/8/06: Sick dolphin

I dreamed that my friend and upstairs neighbor Laura had two pet dolphins in a swimming pool in our backyard, one of which was very sick. We could tell it was sick because it was filling up with gas and gradually blowing up like a large balloon. We (me, Laura, Ingrid, and the other people who live in the building) spent the rest of the dream trying to find either a vet or a marine biologist who was open on a weekend.

Dream diary, 6/12/06: Death ballooons

I dreamed that I woke up in bed with Ingrid, and there were all these balloons on the pillow next to Ingrid's head. (The long balloon-animal kind, not the round kind.) The balloons were in a strange configuration: they were very menacing, and seemed to be spelling out some sort of magical runes. I was quite upset, and struggled for a while to figure out what the runes were saying. Then I suddenly realized they were in the form of a magical spell that was threatening Ingrid and might kill her.

This was a genuine night terror (although not as bad as ones I've had in the past). I woke in a wordless panic, and frantically shook Ingrid awake to get her away from the death balloons -- but I wasn't able to speak and tell her what was wrong. I didn't realize it was a dream until Ingrid said, "Greta, are you dreaming?" and even then I stayed upset for some time. It wasn't until I woke up again several hours later that morning that I was able to see the humor in having a full-blown, "waking in the night unable to scream" night terror about evil balloon animals trying to kill my girlfriend.

Dream diary, 5/21/06: Cream pie and Star Trek

Dream #1: I dreamed that Ingrid was teaching me how to make a cream pie filling out of frozen waffles, Cool Whip, and frozen fish. It was important that you use the right kind of frozen fish, and you had to use two different kinds. The filling was suprisingly tasty, but somewhat bland, and Ingrid was explaining how to add flavor -- there was a complicated formula, things like "To make it taste like blueberries, you have use coffee."

Dream #2: I was trying to convince the buyers at my job (Last Gasp, the small press/alternative book and comic distributor) that we had to carry every Star Trek magazine that was published, and to take all of them to all the book conventions we attended.

I seem to be dreaming a lot lately about food and pop culture. I don't know what this means.

Dream diary, 5/12/06: Aaron Eckhart and the evil BART ticket machine

I dreamed I was having dinner with Aaron Eckhart (the actor: "Thank You for Smoking," "In the Company of Men"). He was intelligent and charming, but also very snarky, and he kept asking trick questions and openly gloating when I answered wrong. He lived in this cramped, very messy apartment in San Francisco, and served me bacon and eggs and sliced bananas for dinner. I didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him I didn't eat pork, and decided it was ethically okay to eat it if someone gave it to me who didn't know that, so I ate it anyway.

After dinner, I tried to take BART home, but the BART ticket machine was dispensing candy and sodas as well as tickets: I pushed the wrong button, and the machine spewed out a huge stream of little hard candies, as well as a Coke. I spent most of the rest of the dream trying to make the machine give me an actual BART ticket, and trying to fit the enormous pile of candies into my purse.

Dream diary, 5/4/06: Voldemort's glasses

I dreamed that Harry Potter had found Voldemort's glasses, and was convinced that this was a major key to defeating him. He was trying to contact the other members of the Order of the Phoenix to let them know about the glasses, but was having trouble getting around, since BART had just added a new line and the maps were confusing.

I woke up thinking, "I need to get a life."

Dream diary, 3/14/06: Buffy vs. Voldemort

I dreamed that Voldemort was preparing his final attack to take over the world, but instead of being fought by Harry Potter and company, he was being fought by Buffy and her gang (a gang which included me and a few of my friends). Voldemort's attack was going to be launched from Central Park in New York, down near the museums, so the Buffy gang gathered on a street corner at around 75th and Central Park West to prepare for battle.

There were about a dozen of us, and we started to discuss tactics, but Voldemort's followers began pouring into Central Park -- there were thousands of them, marching naked in a zombie-like trance along the park's trails and converging into the center of the park -- and we realized that we hadn't actually made a battle plan, and had no idea how to fight an army of this size with this degree of organization. We all sort of shrugged and said, "Oh, well, I'm sure we'll win, we always do," and barged into the park, but were captured almost immediately and imprisoned in a little shack behind the Metropolitan Museum.

We could see Voldemort's army prepare for battle through the shack's windows -- they had now split into two groups, half still naked and half with skin-tight black body armor, and they were pairing off and morphing together into these weird mutant battle-horses. The Buffy gang was starting to get worried, but mostly we were standing around the shack pretty casually, going, "Well, I'm sure we'll think of something."

I think this dream is about George W. Bush and the Democrats. But I'm not sure how the Metropolitan Museum and the mutant battle-horses fit in.

Dream diary, 2/18/06: Another Goddamn Wedding Anxiety Dream

I dreamed that Ingrid and I had just finished our wedding, the ceremony and the dinner and the dancing and everything were now over... but now we had to do it all over again. Because some of our guests couldn't fit the first wedding into their schedules, we'd decided to have two weddings on the same day, so everyone could attend. So now that the first wedding was over, we had to start the second one from the beginning. Also, the second wedding was in a different hall, across town from the first one, and we had to take the bus there... and of course, the bus was late, and we weren't sure it was the right one anyway.

And I would just like to comment for a moment: When am I bloody well going to stop having wedding anxiety dreams? Is this going to be like math homework dreams, that I have for the rest of my life? Sheesh.

Dream diary, 2/2/06: The Daily Show

I dreamed that the Daily Show was doing a week-long series about my new dresser drawers, including a four-hour special being aired tonight. I was irritated because I had sword dance practice tonight and was going to have to miss he special, and I didn't want to record it -- I wanted to watch it live.

Dream diary, 12/25/05: Treasure Hunt

I dreamed that it was Christmas morning, and Ingrid and our friends Tim and Josie were waking me up very early to go on a singing treasure hunt for charity. I didn't want to go, I'd been up very late the night before and wanted to sleep in, and at any rate I didn't remember any discussion about a singing treasure hunt for charity on Christmas morning. But they were all very insistent that this was something we'd planned to do, and they were exasperated with me for wanting to go back to sleep.

Dream diary, 8/11/05: Deli Meat Slicer

I dreamed that Ingrid and I had been given a deli meat slicer (the kind with a rotary blade, similar to one we had when I was a kid) for a wedding present. It was a little fiddly and we were having trouble figuring out how to use it, but it seeemed very, very important that we do so. For reasons that weren't clear even in the dream, it seemed as if many of our problems with organizing the wedding, and indeed many of our larger problems in our life, and even many of the world's problems, would be solved if we could figure out how to use the deli meat slicer.

Dream diary, 7/13/05: Cat Amusement Park

I dreamed that Ingrid and I were building a government-funded amusement park for our cats. We had about 100 of the storage benches we use for window seats (and which our cats adore), and were arranging them in a big grassy field, trying to decide what configuration the cats would like best.