(12/27/09) home in the woods; follow that mom!

(Entered in paper journal at 8:24 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was with someone, maybe my brother, in the woods. We were near our/my car, which was stopped on a dirt road. The weather was cold. It was nearing night.

Now the night had passed. I had spent the whole night here, in a tent. The other person had "gone back." I stood near the car and looked at the woods around me. I was proud for having camped here all night.

Now I had to go hiking through the woods. But the light was still dark blue-grey, pre-sunrise light. I felt afraid to go into the deep woods in the darkness, or even in the light. I worried that a wild animal would attack and eat me. The area around me was grassy with the occasional shrub or pine tree dotting the landscape, and edged by a deep forest of pine trees.

Suddenly I noticed a coyote hiding behind a shrub and looking at me. I got afraid and made some aggressive kicking move at the coyote, scaring the coyote out of the shrub, which was maybe fifty feet away from me. The coyote trotted away, looking at me shyly. I felt bad, thinking I'd scared away a perfectly innocent coyote. I may have seen a domesticated dog off to the left as the coyote wandered off to the right. I may also have seen another, unrecognizable animal.

I was now back "at home," which was a house like a double-wide trailer at the head of the trail I'd taken into the woods. I stood with a group of people in my family, including my Aunt B and Uncle M. I stood at eye level with a tangled bunch of different, tall-stalked wildflowers. The morning was bright, sunny, and kind of warm, and the flowers and stalks glittered with dew.

Somewhere in a little clearing amid these flowers, I knew, a tent stood up on an oval of lawn. My little cousins (even though in waking life they are no longer little) had camped there the night before. Either my Uncle M or Aunt B was telling me that the kids had camped out here for a little while, but that they had gotten scared or cold and that Uncle M had to bring them in.

Dream #2

I was riding in the backseat (?) and passenger side of my grandma P's car.  My grandma P drove, and either my brother or sister was also in the car. It was a golden, sunny day. We were driving up a steep hill in a residential neighborhood, but we were also near either a busy road or a highway.

Suddenly my mom pulled up from behind us to our right. She yelled out her window at us that she had to go to XXXXX (either a hospital or a jail or both), possibly to see my brother, and that she couldn't stop, she had to keep driving there. So, she said, she would meet us back at home, but she didn't know when, maybe not even today. She said it in such a nonchalant and yet urgent manner that I at first thought all was completely fine.

But suddenly I realized I was headed for the airport, to go back home to New York, pretty soon. I had to get back home. But my mom had all my luggage, including my airplane ticket, in her car. We were going to meet at her house so she could give me all that stuff. But now she wanted to have all of us sit there and wait while she went off and did whatever! I knew the only reason she was doing this was to make me miss my flight.

I told my grandma, "Follow my mom's car! We're going wherever she's going. I'm getting my ticket and getting out of here!"

My mom was already out of sight, but I think we had an idea of where we were going. We drove toward some facility, hoping we were going to the right place. But I wasn't sure we were.