Dream: France will fall because of a woman
Current mood: amused
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

I've been having wacky dreams again. Last week I dreamed a very annoying Swedish

drag queen moved in with us and I couldn't get rid of her. But last night's dream was

more complicated. I dreamed I went to some sort of a retreat center with my mom and

my siblings. We thought we were going there on vacation, but it ends us we were

trapped and that the people who ran the center were some sort of cult

leaders/dictators. They said we could only leave if we survived going through this cave

where a tyrannasaurus rex lived. My mom and I went together through the cave which

also had a little stream. The T-Rex roared at us and chased us a bit, but it wasn't that

difficult to get through to the other side. We walked through a door and were safe.

Minutes later we heard a light knocking coming from the other side of the door. My

mom wanted to answer it. "Maybe that's Ryan or your dad," she said. But I told her if

Ryan or my dad were coming out of the cave they would run like hell as we did, not

politely knock seeing if someone just might open the door. "It's the T-Rex trying to fool

us by knocking with his stumpy little hand. If you answer, he will eat you," I said.

Later we found that we had been cheated and that the center leaders wouldn't let us

leave after all. "If you go through the T-Rex cave again we might consider it," they

said. Naturally, we were pissed off, but it was impossible to escape because of some

sort of magic spell. My sister and I started going to the beach which looked just like the

beach in Contis Plage, France where I recently went of vacation. I saw an friend of

mine named Anke walking away from the beach. She was holding hands with one of

the cult leaders who I suddenly realized was a famous politician (maybe Sarkozy.)

Later I walked in on her having sex with another one of the leaders. A few hours later I

saw her again with yet another leader (she looked just like the German Chancellor

Angela Merkel and he looked like the former chancellor Helmut Kohl. Although they

were obviously having an affair, Angela/Anke was also pissed off because Kohl had let

all of her plants die. "But darling," he said. "I have always been cheap. Water is too

expensive.") Jesus, I thought. She must get tired having all of these affairs one after

another. Then suddenly I realized she was trying to set us all free. If she pitted the

leaders against each other they would fight and the center would break apart. We

would all be free to go. I told my sister all of this. "It figures," she said. "If France

ever falls, it will fall because of a woman."

11:55 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The true story of the haunted wardrobe
Current mood: hungry
Category: Blogging

I've been having a lot of wild dreams lately but haven't been posting them. The main reason is I've been working a lot these days and then coming home to take care of Mia which meant any free time was spent taking a nap usually (I'm not really a high energy person by nature and when you're seven months pregnant every day life takes a lot out of you....) Unfortunate really, since the dreams are fading and going off to whereever it is that forgotten dreams go. Anyway, we're going to the French coast for vacation next week (the ocean. Hallelujah!!)and it's the weekend so I thought I'd post a true ghost story from my family. This is the story of the haunted wardrobe. The haunted wardrobe was built in 1923 in Manchester (there is a plaque stating so on the inside of the door.) When I was 15, I decided it was finally time to let go off the pink canopy bed and cream and gold furniture of my childhood, and so my dad took my shopping for new furniture. Luckily, my dad could sometimes be quite a spendthrift, because if he hadn't been I would never have gotten the haunted wardrobe which, if I remember right, cost around a thousand dollars. It had been brought over from England on ship from an American archeitect who was now selling it at an antiques show room in San Francisco. He had fitted it with shelves and I remember that they were all filled with copies of Archetictural Digest. When we bought the wardrobe he asked me if it was going to be for my first apartment which I found really cool since I was only 15 (wow, I look that old, was what I thought.) Anyway, we got the wardrobe home and placed it in my room where I soon filled the shelves with books and various other objects. I'm not sure now if the haunting started right away or not, but at some point things got spooky. What would happen is this: on some nights I would feel really frightened in bed, like someone was watching me who wanted to intimidate me or hurt me. If I ever had to get up to go to the bathroom or whatever I was sure someone (a man)would be there and that would be that. But I never told anyone anything specific about these nighttime terrors. I've always had an over-active imagination and didn't take them seriously, though the fear was real. Besides, when I was 15 I left behind my childhood ambition to become a Marine Biolgist and started writing poetry and listening to depressing goth music so I guess I figured it just went along with the territory. The haunting went on as long as I lived at home and, since I stayed at home during college so I wouldn't get myself hideously into debt (besides, there was a housing crisis in the Bay Area at the time. Any apartment or room in my price range had around 50 other applicants, so I really had no chance....), that means it went on for around eight years. But then I came to Berlin and, except for a short stint in a possibly haunted apartment in Steglitz, never had similiar nighttime terror feeling again. At some point my father moved into my old room. He had always had problems with snoring which got worse at some point and I think my mom and him wanted space anyway. I came to visit after he had been sleeping there for a year or so and asked him if he liked sleeping in my old room. "Yeah it's ok, only sometimes at night I have this strange feeling like someone is staring at me with hatred and it's really spooky. If I have to get up I'm always sure a man will be standing there," was what he told me. I was totally freaked out. Like I said earlier, I had never told anyone about this, figuring it was just me freaking myself out, but he described perfectly what I had been experiencing for years. My mom had just started doing shamanic journeying at the time (hey, give me a break. We're from California. That kind of stuff is normal there!) Basically, journeying involves listening to drumming music that puts you into a trance and then going into the "lower" world to ask questions. It's a lot like lucid dreaming in that you can direct things to a certain extent and they say the drums create the same alpha waves in your brain that you have when you are dreaming. She did a journey and was told the wardrobe was haunted. Later she did another one to look into it in more detail. My brother Ryan and I were in my room when she did it. We sat together on my futon while she lay down with her eyes closed, listening to the drum music on a Cd-man. Man, was that a creepy experience. At some point the mini-blinds began to sway, although both the window and door were closed. There was a cardboard moving box on the floor where I was storing some stuff. The lid was open and it started to visibly vibrate. When my mother finished after 15 minutes or so she was also freaked out. It ended up there were two ghosts. One was the ghost of a woman who was frightened and spent all of her time hiding behind the wardrobe. When my mother asked her to go she did so gladly. The other was the ghost of a man, very violent and angry. About the time when my brother and I saw the box lid vibrating, he was standing in front of my mother in this dream world, pointing a gun at her. Needless to say, he didn't really want to go. It took a few more journeys to finally get rid of him. What happened? Was this a murder/suicide that happened years ago in England? Who knows. All I know is it is the true story of the haunted wardrobe....

2:28 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Dream: Odin and a name that means graveyard
Current mood: sick
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

I've been having a prolonged bout of insomnia, but I still seem to get enough time in

for some occasional dreaming. Here are the pieces of two recent ones. On the 22nd I

dreamed that the partner of a friend of mine had her baby (she was due on the 17th,

so it could come anytime now). They already know that it is a boy and they have

named him Bruno. In the dream it ended up that they had twins which was a total

surprise. My friend told me the twin had somehow been hiding the whole time. The

second baby was a girl and they named Hilka, which is a sort of less common variation

on Heike, a common girl's name here in Germany. "We named her Hilka because the

name means graveyard," my friend told me. I was surprised the name had such a

meaning (because in real life, of course it doesn't) and also thought, "Shit, if they had

twins and didn't know it until the birth, then maybe I'm carrying twins too!!"

In the other dream I was a powerful witch and also the mistress of the god Odin. Odin

was a real pain in the ass though, and often I was trying to avoid him. I would do this

really powerful spell that made me absolutely invisible, even to a god. The spell was

very difficult and took all of my concentration. Somehow he would still know that I was

in the room and then he would do something that made me angry. My anger would

break my concentration and so the spell would fail. He would then find me and laugh,

as though it were all just some great joke. Later in the dream it was far in the future.

Odin had died and now I lived on a farm near his former wife. When he was alive we

had hated each other because she was the wife and I was the mistress. But now that

he was gone we had a sort of ambivalent tolerance for one another since we both knew

what a pain in the ass he had been and how we had both suffered under him. I

realized at some point that he had been resurrected. He was on his way to our farms,

and since we lived so close to each other (and in the middle of no where) he would

easily be able to harass us. "Damn," I thought and rolled my eyes.

4:06 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

It’s a.....
Current mood: happy
Category: Life

girl!! That's right. Baby X was officially declared a girl today when I got my ultrasound. I

was convinced it was a boy, but two girls will also be cool. That way later they can

borrow(or more likely steal) each others clothes. Jasper even prefers another girl to a

son, breaking the male stereo type to be sure. He'll have three lovely ladies always

thrilled when he comes home. Yeah. Girls rule!!

1:19 PM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Dream of the Long Lost Pal
Current mood: tired
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

Ok, so this dream isn't nearly as interesting as the science fiction dream I had the night

before, but it was still intense. The dream featured my old friend Abi, who I was close

to the last few years of college. Abi is someone I think psychologists would call a

classic borderline. She would throw herself into new situations and friendships with

amazing positive energy and entusiasm, but then it would slowly start to dissapate until

everything was all bad and therefore must be immediately dropped. I had watched her

do this again and again to different people, jobs, etc. over a period of two years but

somehow naively believed I myself would be spared. But then, inevitably, she turned

on me too and we stopped being friends. Still, the friendship was intense and I learned

a lot about myself through knowing her. Perhaps most importantly, she's the one who

introduced me to astrology. Normally I wouldn't have never been open to something I

considered such clap-trap (besides newspaper horoscopes, I associated astrology with

the trashy, gum-snapping girls with long, fake nails who would come and buy Love Sign

books when I worked at a bookstore in the mall)but I thought Abi was so cool so I

made an exception. Good thing too, since "real" astrology is both fascinating and

complex. Without her making me realize this, I would have never gone to the

astrology courses here in Berlin, taught by my now-brother-in-law. Without those courses

it's doubtful I would have ever met my second husband, which would in turn mean no

baby Mia, no baby X. Jesus. For me, astrology has brought a lot.

Anyway, getting back to the dream: I dreamed at first that I was trying to call my

family (this is probably due to the fact that it IS difficult to reach them sometimes due

to the time difference and that I was having trouble with my cell phone and land line.)

I saw all these signs about phone cards, but they were difficult to understand and I was

having trouble getting through. Then, suddenly I was at my parents house in

California. Abi called me on the phone. I was shocked at first (in real life, I haven't

heard from her in over ten years)but then remembered that she liked to call and check

in every once in a while. She said she would call back in a few minutes, but then my

sister called and I talked to her for a long time so Abi couldn't get through. Finally my

sister came over and suggested we watch the musical Bye Bye Birdie together. I

realized that Abi would be pretty mad that I hadn't been reachable (she could be pretty

persnickity), but I also knew it was too late to call her because she was a total morning

person. Suddenly I saw a book that she had sent me. In the book was a transcript of

all of the phone calls and letters we had had in the past ten years. The front had

copies of pictures. "That's right. Abi always loved photography," I thought, though this

really isn't true. There were lots of pictures of New Zealand that she had taken, sort of

clumsy art shots. "I forgot how much she loves it there," I thought, though this also

was only part of the dream. I was so touched that she had put together the book and

felt so nostalgic and happy that, unbeknowst to me, our friendship had continued.

Abioye, if you are out there somewhere; as I'm sure you are; I owe you one.

1:29 AM - 7 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Science Fiction Dream
Current mood: amused
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

Occasionally I have a rather science fiction-like saga dream for some reason, though

I've never really read much myself. Maybe my sub-concious is trying to tell me

something like stop writing all these literary short stories and start focusing on robots.

Anyway, in the dream last night I was in this strange, highly structured society.

Everyone seemed really happy, like they knew their place but there was also a feeling

of heaviness in the air. Something wasn't right. Someone must be controlling all of

this, but I didn't know who to ask. Then, suddenly, everyone started marching very

solemnly. I couldn't understand what was going on, so I asked this nice looking hippy

guy. He told me someone was trying to revolt and rebel so they all had to be

re-programmed. "You better run now," he told me. "You're not one of us and I have to

make a report." I was shocked, but I took his advice and started to run back down this

corridor. As I did, I heard him yell "Traitor! Traitor!" Afterwards I was in this room with a lot of

people. The guards were coming after us, and since the people hadn't yet been

re-programmed they were scared and didn't want it to happen. "Why don't you fight

them?" I asked, but they were so weak and full of fear that they were sure this would

be no use. The guards entered the room. One was a sort of short, pudgy man with

dark hair, the other an arrogant looking woman with dark curly hair and black-framed

glasses. They were both in about their mid-30s. In their hands were these sticks that

looked like cattle prods. I saw them approach a person and put the prod against their

forehead. A flash of blue light shot out and erased the person's thoughts. Then they

put the other end against the person's mouth and these blue spark came out which

gave them confidence and a feeling of purpose. The male guard was working around

the room. When he came to me, I overpowered him and used the prod on him. He

immediately became passive, forgetting that he had come to re-program us. The other

people in the room were shocked at what I had done. They found it inspiring but were

also terrified. The woman guard was so much tougher. We would never be able to

overpower her. She came into the room and gave us quite a fight, but in the end we

were able to use the prod on her. When the blue sparks went into her mouth she

became so confident that it was almost laughable. The others told me this was because

she was so arrogant and full of herself to begin with. The level of confidence the sparks

gave you could only match the level you already had within yourself. For a while our

actions went undetected. The two guards had been re-programmed and we were

leading a sort of low-key rebellious cell. A couple things happened that are sort of

blurry. One was that I found one of the women in our cell in the bathtub where she had

slit her wrists. She had discovered she was pregnant and didn't want to be, so she had

decided to kill herself. I dragged her from the water and bandaged her wrists, but then

realized that she had really only scratched them. She was so thankful that I had pulled

her out of her funk because she hadn't really wanted to die and decided she would keep

her baby. Slowly, the people in the cell started to become more confident. So much

time had passed and yet there had been no consequences. But I was beginning to

realize it was only a matter of time. We weren't really going to get away with it. One of

the men in the cell was going to go into a bar and say some things that would have

made it obvious he wasn't programmed. "Don't do it," I urged him. We had no chance.

We would be caught. Suddenly I remembered the

their was capital punishment for overpowering guards.

We were all going to be killed. "Order always wins," I said,

though I said it in German, not in English.

4:33 PM - 8 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Dream: That’s not my pizza in the oven
Current mood: pissed off
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

Last night I dreamed that I wanted to go out to some fancy location and therefore

wanted to wear some sexy but ridiculously uncomfortable high heels. I always have a

couple of pairs somewhere in the back of my closet which I almost never wear, due to

the ridiculously uncomfortable part. Anyway, in order to get the shoes, I for some

reason had to go back to this apartment I once had on Kienitzer Strasse. The

apartment was the one I had in Berlin after leaving my first husband. It was run down

but charming, big and so incredibly cheap that I almost didn't look at it because I

thought it must be either a joke or a scam. It was also with coal heating, which some

apartments in Berlin still have. I had three ovens (including a pot bellied stove in the

kitchen)where I would burn lumps of coal every day in the Winter which I had ordered

earlier by the ton. The coal burning was romantic and oh-so 19th century at first, but

when I noticed that a thin layer of black coal dust covered everything in the place, it

started to get old. (I also later learned that if you don't regularly air out your

apartment- unlike Germans, I still have a hard time doing this in the freaking Winter-

you can actually die of the the fumes. Nice...) Still, I adored that apartment and dream

about it every once in a while. There are some pictures of me posing in front of the

main oven under the "Coal Oven Pictures" photo album. I also wrote a blog piece about

it sometime last summer. Getting back to the dream- I was sure that I had left several

pairs of shoes at my old apartment, so I went there with my husband to get them. I

don't think I found the shoes, but I did notice that there were several things of mine still

left in the freezer, like a hardback edition of the American Heritage Dictionary and

several frozen pizzas. Suddenly hungry, I popped a pizza in the oven. Then my

husband and I were heading off somewhere in a train. My ex-boyfriend was also there,

working with some oceanography equipment (he is doing a Master's in philosophy, so I

was a little confused about this.) The atmosphere was tense and my husband and

ex-boyfriend didn't seem to be getting along. I noticed that my husband was using the

American Heritage Dictionary that had been in the freezer. Several cheerios were stuck

to its pages. Suddenly I remembered that I had left the pizza in the (still on)oven.

"Shit!" I said. I told my husband about it and was freaked out because maybe I had

burned the place down. But then I realized that the new tenant had no idea I had even

been there. Maybe he came home soon after we left and was just confused by the

pizza. Maybe it just got black and turned to charcoal but nothing else happened. And

maybe it did, indeed, burn down the house. But it wasn't my problem. There wasn't

even any proof that I had ever been there. "Hey, that wasn't my pizza in the oven," I

would tell anyone who might bother to ask.

P.S. The reason I'm pissed off is because someone stole my cell phone but I

unfortunately didn't notice it until a day later. I just got the bill and the fucker made 42

phone calls and now my bill in 350 Euros!!! Heads are gonna roll....

7:05 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Expatriate dream
Current mood: nostalgic
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

I've been living in Berlin for almost ten years now. It wasn't something I planned. I

finished my Bachelor's degree in music and thought that I would go to Berlin for a year

or maybe two to learn German and be with my German boyfriend. Then I was certain I

would come back to the U.S. for graduate school. What happened on the way? I didn't

get into the graduate program I wanted, the relationship was an absolute disaster which

had suddenly turned into a bad idea marriage (so he could come with me to the U.S.

you see. Never, ever do a green card marriage unless you are getting at least

$10,000! ;) ) Still, I did learn German and now am (happily) married for the second

time with a 14 month old daughter and the next kid already on the way. Though

Berliners themselves can be a pain in the ass, it is still a great place to live. Jesus, you

never know where life is going to lead you.....


Anyway, coming to the point of this blog- Last night, after nearly ten years I had my

first expatriate dream. I don't remember very much about what happened in the

dream. What I do remember is that at some point I looked up on a shelf and saw a

Nerf football. When I saw this and realized it was Nerf (it was purple I think, and made

of foam) I was filled with nostalgia. "Oh my God. Nerf! I'd forgotten all about that. No

one in Germany has ever heard of Nerf." For some reason this struck me as somewhat

sad, like ignorance of Nerf simply couldn't be good for a person. Later I ate trail mix

with chocolate malt balls in it which I was sure was also so American. "Just wait until I

tell all my American friends here that I ate chocolate malt ball trail mix." I thought.

"They will be so jealous!" Of course, no such trail mix exists (at least to my knowledge)

but when I was in California I did bring my American ex-pat pals back a couple of

boxes of girl scout cookies. They loved them.

1:40 PM - 4 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

You can never go back
Current mood: melancholy
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

I've been having a lot of strange dreams in the past few months. On occasion I think

about posting them here, as I have in the past. Why I haven't is varied, but usually

has to do with a one year old who shrieks whenever I go on the computer (who knew

mother is actually a loose synonym with "slave"!) and also that I have sort of lost the

MySpace/Internet habit. Anyway, most of them have faded into threads, bits and

pieces of half remembered plots and images. One thing that I do keep on dreaming

about is my grandparent's house in Flagstaff, Arizona. My father was supposed to

inherit that house and assumed that he would until my grandmother finally died last

year and we discovered that my aunt had illegally (or at least shamelessly) transferred

the house into her name as well as squandered my grandmother's fortune along with

her husband. When it comes to drama, my family has many a southern novel beat bar

none.... Anyway, I remember in one of the dreams that I came to the Flagstaff house

and saw that it had been beautifully re-done. Supposedly the house suffered water

damage (however, you never know what might be a lie on that side of the family) and

the whole ground floor had to be renovated with money from the insurance. In the

dream I was shocked at how tastefully it had been done. The whole second floor was

full of people I know from Berlin as well as my family. The only thing that was strange

was that one corner was full of piles and piles of bird shit, like some rock where

seagulls have hung out for generations. When I walked into the kitchen I saw my uncle

(though he looked like my grandfather who, incidentally, died in that house...) For a

long time I was the only person in the family who he liked and was supposedly going to

be his "heir", though since all the money is gone and the two houses are mortgaged to

the hilt, it's not going to be much of an inheritance if, indeed, it was ever true to begin

with. Anyway, when he saw me he came over to me and hugged me somewhat

seductively (which is EXTREMELY creepy!!) and said "Rebeccah, if you want I'll be cruel

to everyone all night." I don't remember what happened later, but I know I had no

desire for him to bring out the nastiness though I know he has a talent for it. In

another dream I was also walking around on the lot where the house is, coming in

through the back woods. I saw that it was a ruin, ashen grey, with exposed bricks. A

woman who I didn't recognize (but, in the dream, assumed was one of the neighbors)

told me it had been that way for a long time. Seeing the house like that made me feel

such a sadness and longing, because I realized I would never be able to go there

again. Still, I wanted to peek in the windows and see what was left.

You can never go back. For years my grandparent's house in Phoenix has been a

typical setting for my dreams, though they are always sad dreams, nightmares,

mysterious ones. Never anything light or funny. The Flagstaff house also sometimes

appears and seems to more and more since we've known that we unfairly, disgustingly

lost it. Probably next Spring my mother will sell the house where I spent my late childhood,

teenage years and early adulthood. When I was there a few weeks ago I looked at

some of the things I know so well; the olive tree I used to climb to get onto the roof

which is now twisted and old, the knot in the wooden ceiling that I always thought looked

like an alien head and the other that looked like a fish, the ice plant covered slope that

leads to the one acre hill we never managed to make a use of. I realized that soon

these places will be only visited in the world of dreams. They will no longer be home.


Home is an island that shifts in the fog. A memory of the smell of the broom closet.

Someone you chase but never reach and, if you did, you would realized you thought they

were someone else. Have you ever stood outside a building where you once lived with

the feeling this must have been someone else's life?

They've changed the locks and pulled down the shades. You can never go back.

2:40 PM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

4th time in California
Category: Blogging

It's a bit surreal to be here, in my parent's living room, writing in my blog while

the California sun streams through the windows of their Eichler home.  I've lived

in Berlin for nearly ten years, and never in all that time have I gone "home" as

much I recently have.  Three weeks in September, three and a half weeks in

December, three weeks in March and now two weeks.  Every other year I only

could manage once a year at the most.  Of course, the reason for my frequent

visits was a sad one:  I knew my dad's health was failing.  My now-husband

came out over Christmas to get married at the San Francisco Court House

because we wanted to be sure my dad could be there.  And it was beautiful: 

standing in my black, Asian style dress (and digging that I was getting married in

black)with Jasper at my side and my whole family plus baby Mia there. 

Afterward we all headed to Stinson Beach to spend the night and have a

fabulous dinner at the Olema Inn (it wasn't until the next weekend that we had a

brief honeymoon in Monterey and Pismo Beach.)  My dad was weak but he

was there and so thrilled to see us tie the knot.  Finally his daughter was officially

a countess (well, not really, since I haven't yet changed my name and am not

sure I will.)  Then in March I came to say good bye to my dad, to hold his hand

while he watched t.v., too weak to do anything else, his voice reduced to a

whispher.  It's not always easy, nursing someone who is so ill, but I'm so glad I

came and was with him.  And baby Mia, just now 13 months old, got to be with

him so much and has experienced California again and again, leaving, I'm sure, a

lasting impression to balance the Prussian upbringing she will experience in

Berlin.  And now I'm here for my dad's memorial.  He passed away on April

7th, baby Mia's first birthday.  How can he ever replaced?  I feel sad but also at

peace.  In March I asked him if he hoped to be alive for his 60th birthday on

June 25th but he told me no, he was too tired.  He was ready to die.  I

somehow know he is now in a good place.

5:21 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment