Dreams fascinate me. Some people believe that they represent an alternate reality- a real world in which we only partially live. Others think that they provide profound insight into the psyche- a kind of "mind's eye." Still others believe that they are just "brain farts," or your mind's attempt at dumping excess information. Whatever they are, I find mine to be rich and often vivid. Furthermore, I find it interesting that many of us have similar recurring themes that pop up in dreams. For example, who hasn't had a dream about flying? This theme is even documented well before humans were physically capable of flying! Anyway, last night was a particularly strange night, not only for me, but for a lot of people I have talked to today! Everyone seems to have had strange dreams. I had several:

Dream One: I am eating breakfast with my mother. The waiter keeps bringing over the specials. All of them have loads of bacon, ham, sausage, etc.

"This looks great," I tell him, "but do you have any vegetarian versions?"

He doesn't respond, he just goes back to the kitchen. Suddenly, I see a stationary streak in the sky. The sky is kind of orange, like it's sunset or sunrise, and this silver streak is hovering menacingly in the sky. I ask my mom what she thinks it is. She tells me that it is probably a comet. I tell her that comets don't look like that. She then suggests a meteor. Again, I disagree. "It would be moving," I insist. Finally, we agree that it is a rocket or some kind of plane. I get nervous that it might be a bomb.

I look at it through binoculars (don't we all take binoculars to breakfast with us). Sure enough, it is a rocket of some sort. I begin to get nervous because it is heading toward the ground.

It hits the ground. We see a flash of light. The sound comes with the first clouds of smoke and dust. As the cloud gets closer, I grab my mother to head for the door.

"I need to get out of here," I tell her. "September eleventh. I can't do it again." (I was in Brooklyn on 9/11 and the cloud from the buildings' collapse did, in fact, move its way quickly across the water to envelope my neighborhood.) She agrees to let me drive the car to escape.

I start the car and we begin to move away from the cloud, but something is wrong with the brake/gas pedals. For some reason, I have to pedal them like a bicycle, which is making it hard to actually gain speed. We pull over to pick up her husband and my boyfriend.

Her husband thinks it's silly that we are running. He says that he hasn't even heard of a crash. Indeed, I turn on the radio and there is no word of a crash or a bomb. We decided to head back.

Once we are back, I grab my boyfriend and tell him that I want to go check out the crash site. When we finally get there, we see nothing but barren land. There is no burn mark, no impact crater, nothing. I'm very nervous about this. Finally we see a sort of commune. There are thousands of people standing around with bowls. I freak out and insist that we leave. I get the feeling that they are not human. I wake up.

Dream Two: This one was the most frightening because it seemed very real. I get up out of bed to go to the bathroom. I am about to go back to bed when I look in the mirror. The bathroom is dark and my image is obscured. Suddenly, I notice my neck. It seems very leathery- almost scaly. It begins to stretch. My face begins to transform. I freak out and go back into the bedroom. I try my hardest to scream. I keep trying, but nothing comes. I decide to bang on the walls to make noise and wake up the household, but I can't even do that. I wake up to my real self screaming. Yikes!

Dream Three: Someday, I will recount my real-life dental nightmare. It's an important thing for the world to know! Anyway, another recurring nightmare for me is the losing of teeth. I guess this is pretty common. I don't remember all of the details, but I remember one of my molars becoming loose. I play with it (like we did when our baby teeth fell out), but I begin to get very scared that I'm going to lose it. It eventually becomes so loose that it is just hanging by a thread (yuck). I decide it needs to come out. I pack my mouth full of crushed ice to numb it before pulling it out. At this point I try to tell myself that it is only a dream and that everything will be okay when I wake up. The only problem is, I can actually feel the ice! My whole mouth is cold. I can also feel the tooth! Eventually, I wake up and realize that it is freezing in the bedroom and I have fallen asleep on my back with my mouth open. Thus the cold mouth.

I had several more throughout the night, but this is good enough! The others are rather vague. I need to quit one of my three jobs- I think I am stressed to the point of insanity!