#1: A classic unprepared-for-the-big-test college nightmare. I dreamt that it was time for my advancement exam - which will happen for real in April 2010 - and I failed to accomplish anything in the six months preceding it. I even failed to write and submit the two papers on which I'd be judged! Of course, everyone was there beforehand to offer encouragement, even this nineteen-year-old undergrad I had/have the hots for. We were sitting around in a big, dusty high school science classroom while someone made a speech before the exam. In the meantime, I'm wracking my brains trying to put together two 45 minute talks on the spot...trying to turn the project I stumbled through when I first came to UCI into something coherent. Bill E. and Suzanne B., two of the people on my practice exam committee made it onto this one as well and were going to lead me into the exam room. Just before I woke up, I wondered when they were going to notice that I never submitted anything for them to read beforehand. In other words, I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Commentary: I spent the previous week backsliding...not getting anything done in lab as a result of showing up at weird hours and missing the people I needed to connect with to move my project forward. Considering I had this dream on my lab's couch, I think this was my subconscious trying to remind me that if I fuck this up the second time around, there won't be a third time.

#2: Some sort of war dream, a la WW I. I think for a while I was at sea, drifting on some wreckage. I somehow regrouped with my unit, and from there my mission turned into bomb-planting and espionage: counter-resistance, in other words. I recall there was a set of stairs and tunnels connecting my 'side' to the enemie's 'side' (or perhaps I was just travelling between basements of buildings?). Very utilitarian affairs, stark concrete and pools of water here and there. I remember moving materiale from one location to the other, walking point and alerting my team members to passing enemy soldiers. If I was planting bombs, the detonations never occured with me present...it was just understood that they happened. Eventually, we were found out and had to make our exit. The other members fled through a door, down some stairs and presumably to safety via navigating the tunnels. I think at this point there was some flooding, due to our actions behind enemy lines. Unfortunately, the dream becomes very non-linear here. I alternately chose stay behind as a rear guard, and captured (and in the next frame was captured!) by the enemy forces persuing us. There were elements of holding the door shut so they couldn't get to me, to throwing back live grenades when they managed to force the door open enough (one genius threw the pin at me instead!), to them being in the same side as me holding me hostage (which they really sucked at), to escaping... I think I was quasi-lucid dreaming, suggesting elements and watching them play out. It ended with me being conscious and day-dreaming about grenades...wondering if you accidentally pulled the pin and activated one if several mattresses, doubled-over, could absorb most of the shrapnel or if the only thing to do to save your comrades would be to jump on the grenade and die, as has been reported from oral histories of soldiers.

Commentary: I see clear elements from Verne's "Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and Marquez's "Autumn of the Patriarch", which I'm currently reading. Also brings up a recurring thought I have, if I'd be willing to forfeit my life if I knew I'd definitely save others...and that if I chose not to act my own chances of survival were, at best, slim (i.e. the "grenade in the trench" scenario). Would I choose to die like a man, even if it meant paying for it with my life?