Mawwaige... is What Bwings Us... Togevvah... Todey....

[Note: in this dream universe I didn't seem to have any knowledge about Em and Simon, and I also seemed to be quite a bit younger than my waking life self, by about 20 years or so.]

One of the first things I remember was that it was dark out, but it still had the feel of being early evening, sort of like how it gets dark early during the winter, but it wasn't cold.  I was in a small, unfamiliar town, and I had just gone inside of a building that reminded me of the old Mercedes warehouse in Texas.  It wasn't full of stuff, but rather the aisles were very wide and tall, and in the "walls" of the aisles were doorways into various rooms.  It was mostly dark in the warehouse, with only a few areas dimly lit by lights way above.

As I entered one of the lit areas, there was a room on my right that I knew I was supposed to go into, and as I went in, I knew I was there to meet someone.  I was feeling some hesitation about it because something about it didn't feel right to me, and quickly I realized I was there because I was supposed to be marrying a young woman that I barely knew, or didn't know at all and had only heard of, and I had the feeling that the whole thing was mostly arranged by her parents.  What I didn't know was how I was the one that that got chosen for her to marry.  The young woman was in her early 20s, maybe around 5' or 5' 1", had blonde shoulder length hair, and was on the thin side.

For the most part, I was there just in time for the wedding to begin, but I wasn't going where I needed to go so that it could get started.  After entering the initial room, it turned more of an antechamber into a meeting hall or something for this small town, almost like a narthex to a sanctuary at church.  I knew that most of the people were already in the sanctuary type room, and once I went in, the wedding would begin, so I was putting off going in so that it wouldn't begin yet.

There was some stuff going on that I don't really remember, but during that general time I found out a few things.  First, the whole town, as small as it was, was very close knit, and very religious.  They almost struck me as being Mormon, or something very similar.  Also, this arranged marriage setup was part of their religion, and not going through with it held consequences of ostracism for both of us.  I wasn't concerned for myself because I didn't really know these people, but these were the young woman's friends and family, and they meant a great deal to her.  Her parents seemed to be especially stern about the whole thing, as they also risked losing face should the marriage not go through.  And finally, thinking about it now, I never found out the young woman's name.  Or if I did at some point, I've now forgotten it.  

I don't remember exactly how or when we met, but I think I found out at least some of this from talking with the young woman, and other parts from observing people in and around the narthex.  When I was talking with the young woman, I got the impression that in spite of the marriage being arranged, she wanted to be happy about it, partially because she knew she was supposed to be happy about it, so she tried her best to convince herself that she was happy.  She seemed very unsure of herself overall, as if her whole reason for existing was to make those around her happy by doing the things she was "supposed" to do.  As I realized this, I felt bad for her, and I wanted her to be truly happy by doing what she wanted.  I wanted to tell her this, to tell her to stand up for what she wanted, but at the same time, I felt like she had convinced herself that this wasn't the case, and to tell her so would actually be quite a blow to her, and I didn't want to cause her grief.

During this time, I think I also found out that we had sort of met online or something.  She talked about either putting something online or finding me online, and somehow that caused things to start where I became the one that was going to marry her, but that whole process seemed to happen without my involvement.

After a bit of hemming and hawing I finally decided it was time to get ready and go into the sanctuary for the wedding.  I went in, and I could sense the relief not only from the young woman, but from her parents as well as the pastor.  I went to the front, up onto the raised dais area, and into a little half-walled area that had a folding chair and sat down there.  I don't remember the actual ceremony, but it seemed to mainly revolve around me answering questions and agreeing to marry the young woman as she and her parents sat in the front of the crowd and watched me.  It was more like being in a court room and answering a judges questions from the stand rather than a normal marriage ceremony.  Also, at this point it seemed to be daytime rather than night like the earlier part of the dream had been.

Eventually that all ended and we were supposed to be going to a reception or celebration, but there seemed to be a general feeling that the whole group of friends and family did not want me and the young woman to spend any alone time together in spite of now being married.  Part of it seemed to give me the impression that they didn't want us being intimate, but another part of it seemed to be that they didn't want me to talk to her privately because they were sure I'd say something that would cause her to "wake up" from the spell they seemed to have her under.  They were really quite the controlling group, and I didn't like it.

While we were waiting for the celebration to begin, I wound up sitting next to the young woman on some sort of bench or sofa while other people were milling around.  I was on her right, and her parents were on her left, and people were going around to and fro getting things ready.  She was holding my hand and eventually she scootched closer and put her head on my shoulder.  She actually seemed to be genuinely happy to be there, but was hesitant to show it too much because she wasn't sure if I was actually happy.  When I realized that she was actually happy and not just trying to convince her self that she was, it made me feel better and happier for her, and I leaned my head over onto hers and brought my right hand over to hold hers in both of mine.  As we sat there, I actually started to feel more love for her and less pity for her.  I realized that the marriage was actually going to give us time to get to know each other a little better and I would have time later to talk to her and help break her out of her shell.

Soon after this, we were ready to leave and head to the place where the reception was going to be.  It was night time again, and we were riding in a SUV or something with a number of her friends.  Her parents didn't seem to be there, or they were in a different vehicle, or they had left earlier and were already at the destination.

We finally got to this place that was kind of a rustic bar or restaurant or something, but when we got there, something was wrong.  We got out of the vehicle, and people were outside, and some were trying to go into the main entrance, which was kind of to our left, and others were trying to get into a "back" entrance or service entrance on the right side.  Each door had a single bulb light above it, and there was a little bit of dim light coming from the windows, almost like some lights at the far back or another room were on, but the room that the windows went to wasn't actually lit.

There was something wrong going on.  Either something was broken down, locked up, or possibly even something darker like someone had been hurt or killed.  This seemed to go on for "a while", like maybe a half an hour or so, and then eventually it got cleared up and we were able to go inside.  The room where the reception was to be held was white, very tall, about 20 feet to the ceiling, and big enough for several hundred people to hang out in.  As we were in there, things started to relax a bit, and the young woman seemed to be having more fun and feeling better.  We were constantly at each others side.

At this point the dream started falling apart and fading out and I started waking up, but I was feeling happier and ready to see where this thing with the young woman went.

Sometimes They Come Back, Sometimes They Go

Em and I were in a mall, but I'm not sure where it was located.  I got the idea it was somewhere in Virginia, and it seemed that both Em and I worked there for the mall, at large, rather than a specific store.  It was also almost as if we even lived there, working in one part of the mall and living in another part.

I was walking through the busy shopping part of the mall, working on some task that required me to go from one store to another, and passed by a group of people that suddenly seemed very familiar.  It turned out that it was the family of an ex from high school, including the ex.

At first I worried that they'd spot me and recognize me, but I realized that I had changed a lot in my appearance since they last saw me, and I figured between the added weight, the buzz cut hair and the beard, I was safe.  I just walked quickly past, but wondered briefly what brought them there as I thought that they lived a lot farther away.

A short time later I was walking through another hallway past a music store on my right, and there was a line of people waiting to get in.  I quickly glanced over and saw my ex and her mom in line, and they immediately spotted me and recognized me and started calling out to me.  I turned away quickly and acted like I didn't know them and made my way towards the "dead" end of the mall where the living quarters were.  There were some divider screens that were up that I just walked around, and I hoped that if they decided to follow me, it would be enough to deter them from continuing to follow me.  I was hoping to be able to just wait it out for them to leave.

I made my way to one of the bathrooms in this living quarters area.  It was basically a giant public restroom that was huge, full of stalls, and very much like other bizarrely huge bathrooms that have shown up in other dreams.  I went in and and was looking for an empty stall to just go sit and hide out in, but so many were occupied or broken.  It was amazingly busy in there.  As I was walking around, a couple of my "coworkers" and "housemates" were asking what was up, and I told them about my situation.  They seemed sympathetic, but didn't have any good suggestions and basically just wished me luck.

While I was still wandering around this huge bathroom for somewhere to hide, my ex and her family came in and found me.  They started talking to me, asking me how I was doing, what I'd been up to, and things like that.  My ex, of course, started asking me why I ran away when they had called out to me.  I wound up telling her that I just didn't have any interest in talking to her.  She seemed slightly offended, but it also seemed to feed off of it in a way that meant that she was going to start needling me even more about why I didn't want to talk or something.  I remember feeling angry about that and feeling like I was ready to start yelling.

This part got kind of fuzzy, and the next bit was about being out in a fairly hilly area.  I think at first I was kind of disembodied, kind of like flying, and it was like as if this part was almost showing me background story of what was to come.  It kind of had the feel of Warwick, NY during the late summer or early fall.  

There were a number of small farms and farm houses around, but things seemed to be very close to the road.  I remember seeing one farmhouse on the right side that was only maybe 10 feet from the side of the road.  There was a very old blue pickup truck parked near by, and it had something on the license plate that made me realize it belonged to Em and me, and that this was supposed to be our house.  (I think I knew when I first woke up what the plate said, but now that it's several hours later, I only have a vague impression that was something cutesie like our current plates, alluding to my and Em's relationship.)  I had the feeling that I was on my way to see Em for a bit, but it ended quickly

The next thing I knew I was driving through the same area during the winter.  There was snow all around on the grass and trees, but the roads seems fairly clear.  Normally this would make me very happy, but I was feeling very sad.  It was strange because I wasn't actually 100% aware of why I was sad or where I was going.  I knew I wasn't going to my house, and when I got to it, I drove past it and kept going without slowing down.

A short way past the house, I saw the old blue pickup truck, this time on the left side of the road.  This area had a lot more trees, and while the truck was close to the road as before, this time it was among the trees near a cobblestone driveway with an open gate.  When I saw the truck, I knew I had to turn left and drive up the driveway.

It went back quite a ways from the road, and it was kind of a steep rise that seemed to wind around to the right and the back to the left.  I eventually came to an open area that was a large circle made of the same cobblestone and with short, knee-high walls on either side.  It appeared to be one of the parking areas for this residence, as there were a couple of cars there.  The driveway continued out to the left a short way and then hooked right into a garage that was under a gigantic stone house.  Another part of the driveway wrapped around the house to the right and continued up the hill where there was another parking area behind the house.  The house was huge and gray stone, about 4 or 5 stories tall, and it was almost castle-like in appearance.

I stopped my car in the middle of the first parking area and got out.  There were a few of people around, a couple of men an at least one woman, and I got the impression that they might have been expecting me they were talking in hushed tones as I walked in their direction.  They greeted me and I greeted them, and I suddenly realized who they were.  They were my exes family from the mall!  But that realization didn't come with the shock of surprise, and neither did the realization of why I was there.

Somehow, between the time that I had seen the farm house and truck in the first "fly by", and now, Em had passed away.  It was why I was feeling so sad while driving, but now I finally remembered why.

My ex and her mom came out of the house via a door to the left and above the garage.  There was a long set of stone steps that matched the house and came down to meet the cobblestone of the driveway, and as they were walking down, I was walking up.  I still wasn't sure exactly why I was there at their house.  My ex stopped about halfway down and held out an arm and made a "come on" motion with her hand and said, "Come on in.  I know exactly what you need."

Of all the things that could have meant, I somehow knew with every fiber of my being that it meant she was going to make me pancakes, and I started to follow her inside.

The Hole in the Earth

When the dream started, I was at the Miller farm in Weyers Cave, or somewhere close by.  I was in an open field, and there were mountains on the horizon, but everything had a very stylized, almost cartoonish quality to it.  Everything was very "clean" and sharp, almost simplified in appearance, and it all had this weird glow to it, almost as if it were supposed to be night time, but in a the middle of a city in a video game.  Saints Row 3 and 4 come to mind.  It was dark, it was late, yet everything was plainly visible.

Out in the middle of the field, there was a very large hole.  The hole was also cartoonish in that it was a perfect circle, and the edges of the circle were cut perfectly into the ground, and it was solid black.  There was a little bit of a hint of perfectly vertical walls at the edge that ran down into the ground, but it did not look like dirt.  It was just cut into blackness.  The hole was growing rapidly, and things were falling into it.  At first the hole looked like it was maybe several hundred feet wide, but then it looked like it was miles wide at the same time.  

I was with a group of people, some family and some from work, I think, and there was even someone that I think was kind of dressed like a medieval knight.  The knight was there to somehow help us fight the hole or something.  The rest of us were just scrambling to keep away from it so we didn't fall in.  There may have been a brief scene where we were with the knight in a setting kind of like a Robin Hood encampment.  There was a large wooden fence all around, and torches all over the place keeping everything lit, and lots of people running around.  I think we were trying to figure out either how to avoid the hole, what was in the hole, or where the hole eventually wound up.  What was on the other side of it?  Where did it lead?

I saw a brief view of the entire planet Earth from space, and I could see the hole on the surface, almost as if it were an overlaid image on top of the earth.  The hole was kind of up to the north-west of my point of view, but just like with seeing it on the ground, I could see the dark gray-to-black of the inner wall of the hole, perfectly perpendicular to the flatness of the top of the hole.  From here I could see it growing, too, going from taking over about one fifth of the surface, to one quarter, to one third, growing to the size of the Earth itself.

Back on the ground, the edge of the hole was coming towards us, and lots of things were still falling in.  We were running between the "Big Barn" towards the dairy barn on the farm, but even the big barn started to fall into the hole.  Somehow at this point we realized that the other end of this hole came out into something like an alternate dimension that resembled our current one, but was different and somehow more malicious.  I don't know if there were any specifics about that discovered, but somehow we knew.

Finally the hole got big enough and came fast enough that the dairy barn dropped into it, and we were going to be next.  I remember a very brief falling sensation, followed by a quick flip, and suddenly I was standing on new ground.  Everything in the new place had a reddish color to it, almost as if it were lit by lava.  It was as if the entirety of Mordor was inside of Mount Doom.  We knew we were stuck here, because within a few minutes the hole would have the whole Earth engulfed, but we still didn't know why this was all happening.  Unfortunately the dream ended before we found out.

The Matrix is Shutting Down

I started out in a large mall-like building that was supposed to be my work building.  I was talking to someone there about The Matrix 4 coming out, and as we were talking, it was supposed to be like we were starting to watch it.  Keanu Reeves was there, but he looked more like his Cyberpunk 2077 character, Johnny Silverhand, than Neo.  Pretty quickly it transitioned from watching a movie about it to being part of the story.

The inside of the mall-like building was very brightly lit and pretty much all white except for some black accents.  There were a lot of video screens around, too.  Big ones, like big video kiosks that would normally have a map of the mall or playing an ad, and others on the walls that were like giant multi-part displays.

Keanu (because he was Keanu in the dream, really not Neo) looked around and said that the Matrix was being turned off.  I looked around, too, and I didn't see anything at first, but when I tried to relax my mind and my eyes, I started seeing the Matrix code sliding around on everything, except that instead of being green, it was a bright, light blue.  As I looked in the direction he was looking, I could see where these screen like areas were going dark, and the Matrix code was disappearing from them.  It was starting from farther away, but was quickly coming towards the area we were standing in.  As it did, it also was turning out the lights in that direction, so it was getting darker.

There was a group of maybe about 10 or 15 of us around, all different ages, men and women, boys and girls.  It really was just a random selection of people.  We all took off after him.  We understood that if the Matrix shut down, our world and our existence would be wiped out.  It was more like we were programs rather than people injected into the Matrix, but at no point did anyone ever imply we were programs.  Keanu said, "We have to stop the Matrix from shutting down.  Come on!"  And he took off running in the opposite direction of where everything was turning off, and we all followed.

As we ran and watched the Matrix code around us, we could see it flickering in and out, and we could hear the "thunk" behind us, like a big switch being thrown in an empty warehouse, as things turned off.   It seemed to catch up to us, and Keanu egged us on to keep running and keep following him.  He kept telling us that we needed to get to "the center of the Matrix" before it all shut down.

There was a point where we came up to a really big area, kind of like a huge food court but without the tables and chairs.  The light was getting dimmer, and there were something like giant statues of heads around.  The Matrix code was getting sparse on everything and kept flickering in and out.  But even though this was the case, we were in this area for a bit longer.  There was some talking going on, and it kind of seemed like maybe Keanu was talking to... I don't know...  machines, maybe?  I think he was trying to convince them to stop the Matrix shutdown, but they were saying that this was the way it had to be, and eventually we moved on.

Soon after this we were running through more big white mall-like hallways, and the power outages seemed to be very close, and stuff was turning off all around us.  We had hit an area of the building where there seemed to be some strangeness in the structure of the building, going up in kind of a weird diagonal direction, and we were having to climb up over furniture, boxes, weird built-in structures, and such to get through a doorway sized opening that was about 10 feet up from us.  Everyone was helping each other climb up and through.  Once we got though there, the whole area where had just left turned off and went black.  The way forward went through a short hallway and then opened up to a very sunny and warm outside area with green grass and blue sky.

At this point my alarm went off and I woke up.  I wish I knew if we ever made it to the "center of the Matrix"...

The One True Marker

 I was in a house with other people, and it was late at night.  I think Em may have been there, and possibly other family, but there were also people there that I didn't know.

In the course of talking to these people, someone showed us a "marker" (as in the large coin like item from the John Wick movies) that they had, but they needed to get rid of it because of some trouble it was causing. 

I don't think I specifically volunteered to do anything with it, but at one point I took it to get a closer look or something, but doing so "activated" it somehow, and suddenly I knew that "they" were coming for me to get it.  At this point, it became very much like Lord of the Rings where I needed to keep this thing out of the reach of the ones coming after it, although I wasn't entirely sure what I needed to do with it or how I was going to do it.

Very quickly, I wound up leaving and heading north.  I knew that if I went north quickly enough, I could get to where they couldn't reach me.  I don't remember how I found out what "they" were, but pretty early on I knew that they were like a combination of the Ring Wraiths from LotR and the dementors from Harry Potter.  Oh, I think I found out because when I left, it was still night time, and these things were only active at night, and they were dormant during the day.  I think I got a short way out but had to make my way back to the house or something, and I either spotted them or heard them during that time.

In the morning I left the house (I'm not sure how I was safe at the house during the night) and once again set out for heading north.  With the chasers dormant, I picked up a strange power from the marker, and it made me extremely fast, allowing me to travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles in a day on foot.  I remember the scenery blurring by as I moved.  I also picked up some extra strength from it, although I don't remember using it for anything.  I just knew that during the day I could move faster than the chasers did at night, and as long as I kept going each day, I could outpace them to my goal.

I remember going through a number of wooded areas, and at one point I even came up to the top of this hill or something that overlooked into a valley and the mountains beyond it.  It was late evening at that point, and though I was heading north, the sun was behind me shining down into the valley, although it had that "golden hour" look to it.  I knew I'd have to find shelter for the night so I could get up early and keep going in the morning.

At some point during all the travel, the dream ended before I reached my destination.

Mini Tornados at the Barn

 I was in the "Big Barn" that used to belong to my maternal grandparents, but rather than being dark and run down like it is in real life, it was actually somewhat fixed up, decently lit, and relatively clean.  I was in there with a small group of people, mostly family I think, and for some reason we had our cat, Pumpkin, in there with us.  She had gotten loose so we split up into a couple of groups to try to find her.

After a short period of time, there was some sort of weather alert, and there was a big storm coming.  I knew we had to find Pumpkin fast, so we were moving quickly around the barn looking for her.  I think we eventually found her in a doorway under one of the hay storage areas.

Shortly after that, the wind started to pick up, and a number of us went to the windows to look out and see what was going on.  I saw that the barn was pretty much surrounded by mini tornadoes that were forming within 50 feet of the barn.  Oddly, they weren't really dangerous because they weren't fast moving.  There were maybe three to five of them around, and they were forming and spinning slowly, but I knew that if I wasn't careful, they'd speed up and turn into full blown tornadoes.  

For some reason we thought we'd have a better time dealing with them from the dairy barn instead of the big barn, so we quickly ran from one to the other.  I'm not sure what our reasoning was, but we felt like we could see them better since there were more windows, so that's what we did.

There was something about the tornadoes, and the weather in general, that I knew I had some degree of control over, or at least if I did certain things, it could cause them to get worse or better.  I kind of feel like I knew what those things were within the dream, but I can't remember now what in the world they were.  

I think the dream ended there because Simon, my son, came and woke me up.

Ah! Not the bees!!

 I was in a large building that had a very "back rooms in Portal" feeling to it.  Things seemed to have a lot of reddish and brownish tint to them, and had the feel of an open warehouse layout.

I was talking with a couple of people (no one I recognize or remember) and one of them was commenting about how they were trying to get wasps out of the building.  They were using wasp spray on the nests, but not much luck with it.  They pointed out the nests to me, and they looked almost like they had been manufactured by people rather than built by wasps.  They were kind of an orange-brown color, and they had very obvious sections or layers to them.  The bottom hole was where the wasps were coming in and out, and that was on the narrowest section.  As it went up to the top of the nest, there were maybe 4 or 5 sections total, each a little bigger than the one below it, except for the top one which was smaller than the one below it.  The nests were all aimed at a 45 degree angle, and there was some light inside, as if it were getting in from the outside.

At some point I wound up with the wasp spray, so I inched up within 15 feet or so of one, aimed the can and sprayed.  I got close to the hole in the end, but I wasn't right on it at first.  I quickly adjusted the spray and started spraying all around inside of the nest to kill all the wasps.  It seemed to be going well, but there were a lot in there, and I hand to really keep on them to make sure they didn't escape and start flying around.

Someone said something to me (I don't remember what) and distracted me for just a moment.  I stopped spraying, and it was enough that some of the wasps slowly started coming out and buzzing around sickly.  I started spraying again, thinking that I'd get to those escaped wasps in just a moment, but as soon as I fired into the nest, those six or eight wasps immediately bolted straight at me and attacked the right side of my abdomen.  I jumped and screamed, waking myself up in the process.  I heard my self emitting a mumble, "Mmmmhhh!" instead of an actual scream as I woke up.