THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN SCOTT LYNCH

I suppose that's the obvious joke, innit?

Well, lots of folks have online diaries. I've decided to do something a little different, at once more abstract and more personal. Around 1995, I became fascinated by a comic book called Rare Bit Fiends, in which Rick Veitch would draw the "best of" about a month's worth of his dreams in each issue. In late 1996, I began keeping a dream diary of my own. It's not too difficult- leave a notebook and several pens right next to your bed when you go to sleep each night. The trick is to remember to force yourself up so you can scribble in it immediately after first waking. While in that groggy hypnopompic wasteland between states of consciousness, you will have two to five minutes to record the impressions of your dreams while they are still vivid. Don't worry about clarity- most of my dream diary pages look like this:

ewoks- eWoks in SpAce?
hamlet was doing cartwheels
WHere did Alice GO in NebraskA?

The important thing is to capture images and events with a few key words. Later, when you're fully awake, you can use these to draw out a fuller memory of each dream when you transcribe it in a more legible format (I type mine on my Mac.)

Most of this is going to be chronological, but you should bear in mind that I try to get impressions every night of the week, and I generally succeed only three or four times, and that's after four years of practice. Still, I'm better than I was when I began, and I've even begun to experience the phenomenon known as "lucid dreaming" several times a month. Believe me when I say that studying your dreams is the most fascinating way of playing with yourself you'll ever find.

Disclaimer: First, I'm not chopping anything out of those dreams I do present. I'm as weird as anyone else out there, and my dreams reflect this.

Second, I am not, repeat, notlooking for amateur psychoanalysis of my dreams. If it amuses you, feel free to get out a dictionary of symbology and pick through my unconscious film festival, looking for the obvious archetypes and explanations. Just don't come pointing them out to me. I do not believe that the same dream-symbology holds true for everyone, if indeed it holds true for anyone.For example, I regularly have dreams where I am falling (or jumping off large, fantastical structures) but to me they are exhilarating and welcome. I love the sensation of free-fall, and I seek it out at amusement parks and waterslides whenever I can. In fact, falling is one of the constant lucid elements I am able to coinjure in my dreams. Generally, when I realize that I am caught in an unpleasant or boring dream, I can contrive a way to "fall out of it," which wakes me up and lets me start over.

With that said, buy a ticket and take the ride. Direct all comments here.

Dream Theater: January-April 2001
1.7.01 Imported fish, mutant spiders.
1.15.01 Wasting gophers with a .45.
1.20.01 "What happens betweeen us in space stays in space."
1.24.01 Trapped in Heinlein's unwritten novel.
2.10.01 Ronald McDonald defends his career choice.
2.16.01 In the Army now.
2.17.01 Santa vs. the elder demons.
2.19.01 In the Army now II. Co-ed basic training?
3.3.01 St. Paul is overrun by yeti.
3.5.01 Darren Wieland is trapped in a plastic bottle again.
3.10.01 Star Trekkin'.
3.16.01 Riding the mad Ferris Wheel with Cletus.
3.20.01 Girlfriend kidnapped and wired to explode.
3.25.01 Dead cows and day-glo styrofoam coffins.
4.2.01 Gunslinger on trial. I'm a demon looking for my boss.
4.5.01 Three Lynch brothers at Gettysburg, 1863.

I Don't Sleep, I Dream: May-June 2001
4.7.01 Jedi power battles- saving Ewoks at the mall.
4.8.01 The LARPers won't stop singing!
4.9.01 Dan and Danni discuss their hair-care regimen.
4.12.01 Dracula's castle opens like a mechanical rose.
4.13.01 Zombie Content: Unacceptable!.
4.14.01 America's Flat Half.
4.15.01 Self-referential dreams and geometric owls.
4.25.01 Cole's little purple kitten looks for the portal.
4.28.01 An invisible flying shark stalks Mr. Mazere.
4.29.01 There are already people here dressed up as Jedi.
5.1.01 Jesus has a Runeblade.
5.3.01 I have two illegitimate half-brothers?
5.5.01 Back-alley bamboo radar battle.
5.7.01 Eat the mushroom and jump on his head!
5.12.01 Playing StarCraft for keeps... with nuclear weapons.
5.15.01 President Bush has moved the capitol for four years.
5.19.01 Seeking an ice cave in the black Pacific surf.
5.20.01 "Snap into a Slim Jim" my ass!
5.21.01 I refuse to play my part in Ragnarok.
5.23.01 Playing soccer in Sherwood Forest. Oranges are eggs.

The Experiment Continues...
6.15.01 The King of Police Officers dislikes purple.
6.17.01 Duluth, city of aerial waterparks and SCUBA diving.
6.24.01 Monkey Hockey. Return to Gilligan's Island.
6.29.01 Crouching Scott, Hidden Koala.
7.3.01 Jesse Aubart is a waiter at my old restaurant.
7.12.01 Scooting across the ocean to a hockey game .
7.13.01 Why am I abusing the snack foods?
7.15.01 This convention sucks- I'm sleeping on a bridge.
7.16.01 Go go gadget kung-fu star!
Five From the Vault: Mid-2000
7.31.00 Darren leaves a trail of slime in our Tim Burton house.
8.03.00 Waffles, line dancing, and sci-fi in Vancouver.
8.04.00 A visit to the Soviet Union, circa 1944.
8.28.00 War between the League of Hearts and the League of Fire.
9.09.00 Self-propelled dogsleds are dangerous things.

January 7, 2001

A long string of high-school related dreams this evening (That would be Woodbury High School, Minnesota, 1992-96).

My girlfriend is working near a large terrarium full of strange crawling things. She reaches into one with her bare hands and pulls out two deformed spider-like organisms. Their flesh is pale, the consistency of silly putty. They writhe, and I see pale mandibles under flaps of skin, and I am dreadfully afraid that they are going to bite her.

I am with my art class on a field trip to another high school. Our intention is to watch a parade. The other high school, as it turns out, is built into a shopping mall. We line up near a loading dock, and after a few minutes the heavy steel door rises. A large group of football players trots out, clad in rough royal-blue tunics. They parade about fifty feet, smiling and waving, then they turn around immediately and run back inside. We are all terribly confused.

In the confusion, I become separated from the rest of my class. I wander the darkened, floorlit halls of the "mall school," seeing few people. Suddenly, Mrs. Mangold (my art teacher throughout high school) appears behind me and directs my attention to the balconies overhead. I notice that they're tastefully decorated with large aquariums. "Mr. Babbit loved you all," she says (Mr. Babbit being my high school principal). "He imported all the fish."

January 15, 2001

I am wandering the backyard of my parents' house in Woodbury with my younger brother Kevin. He has a .45 automatic in his hand, and we're looking for gophers. We move carefully around the backyard deck, and by the side of the house we come upon a dun-colored (think "Caddyshack") gopher with his head sticking out of a large hole. Kevin casually pulls the trigger, and the gun coughs, disappointingly softly. The gopher's head cracks open in a spray of blood. I am still amazed by how quiet the gun is. A moment later, there is more movement within the hole, and suddenly the gun is in my hands. Two black, slender creatures are pawing their way past the body of the gopher, trying to escape the hole. The .45 is even more quiet this time. My first shot barely hits. My second kills them both messily.

January 20,2001

I am floating high above the earth in a small spacecraft, with an interior cabin about seven feet wide and twenty feet long. I am overcome with fearful agoraphobia (Note: I am not an agoraphobe in real life, but this sensation is a recurring dream of mine. Generally, I am drifting in orbit above the Earth, deeply aware of the infinite blackness of space waiting for me to fall into it. It is only in these dreaming moments that I can truly feel what Lovecraft meant when he wrote of the "endless terror of the vast and infinite skies above.").

The ship has a softball-sized hole in its aft bulkhead, letting in clear sunlight reflecting off the planet below, but for some reason we still have our atmosphere. I am floating free alongside a pretty young woman with short blonde hair, dressed in a white spacesuit. She looks at me meaningfully and says, "You know, what happens between us in space stays in space." I look at her for a while, then shake my head and remind her that I have a girlfriend on the ground that I would much rather get back too.

January 24, 2001

I am reading a paperback novel lent to me my Michael Carus (a friend of mine living in Minneapolis). He has been recommending it to me for years, and I have only now gotten started on it. It's a science-fiction horror novel by Robert Heinlein, and every twenty pages or so there are comic-book interludes. The art is black and white with yellow highlights in strange places. The plot features a vast, cylindrical spacecraft hanging over a planet and falling into disrepair at one end. Several sarcastic people live inside this cylinder, and by the end of the novel they have been beheaded by an alien robot. As their heads float away into space and they trade their last few cynical quips, the cylinder plunges into the atmosphere and burns up.

Later, I am trapped as a character in a scene out of the same novel, only now it has a dark fantasy element. I am immersed in warm, aquamarine water, and a beautiful robed witch is floating in the air above me. She tells me that there is a terrible magic at work within me, and that I have to stand on an underwater stone within this magical pond in order to "ground" myself. I do this, and she vanished instantly.

February 10, 2001

I am in a McDonald's Restaurant, talking to a guy dressed up as Ronald McDonald. "You must have a pretty crappy job," I say. Ronald then spends several minutes trying to convince me that dressing up as a clown for eight hours a day is the perfect job, and I ought to give it a try. He tells me that the benefits are great and his self-respect is intact. I remain skeptical. I argue the point with him for a few minutes, and then I suddenly realize that I am not in a McDonald's at all. I am in a Marvel Comics Restaurant. Pictures of Spider-Man's head are emblazoned on everything, from windows to hamburgers. For some unknown reason, I mix a packet of mayonnaise in with my ketchup and begin dipping french fries into it (Note: I most certainly do not do this in real life. Ugh).

I am standing outside a large Greek temple, and H.P. Lovecraft is lying on the ground before me, unconscious. A cultist in a brown business suit has just pushed him over and run away. It turns out that this cult is not allowed to read Lovecraft's fiction (which they call "The Forbidden Works") because it contains so much truth about what is really going on in the cosmos.

February 16, 2001

I am dreaming that I have joined the U.S. Army, and I have no idea why. It's my first week of Basic, and I'm talking to a young black guy in camouflage fatigues. He tells me, "You know, I've done all sorts of important things in the army. One time, I saved the President of the United States from getting shot. I think that's what this red band on my cap is for, but I'm not sure. Here, let me tell you all the secrets I learned which will make army life easier for you..." but suddenly, I become aware that the rest of my platoon is doing PT (Physical Training) on the field outside, and I am late.

I rush out a screen door and come face to face with my Drill Sergeant, who decides to make an example of me. I am to do one-armed push-ups in front of my platoon. For some reason, I notice that there is a civilian on the field, dressed in red sweat pants, and he is doing one-armed push-ups about six feet away from me. We compete for a few moments, and he collapses after doing only three. I do seventeen before I have to swat a bumblebee that rises up out of the thick grass beneath me, and it is then that I notice that the platoon is ignoring me. I cheat on the rest of my push-ups and rejoin the ranks as far back as possible.

February 17, 2001

I am standing outside the door to Santa's workshop. It is lit with warm, golden light and the snow that blows around me doesn't seem cold at all. I am here to deliver a message to Santa, asking for his help. I get the impression that he is a big, powerful creature of an elder magic, and that he dresses in vermillion rather than bright red. His task is to keep an ancient evil at bay, although I do not know where the evil resides. Once I deliver my message, I begin to wonder if Santa's story would make a good video game, and I decide to call my friend Jesse Aubart to ask his opinion.

February 19, 2001

For some damned reason, I am dreaming that I joined the Army again. This time, I have joined up with my girlfriend, and I am in some sort of co-ed barracks with bright blue walls and red plaid carpet. All of the new inductees including myself have comfortable plaid pajamas, toothbrushes, and slippers. I am up early in the morning before my platoon assembly and physical training, but there's a problem- I still have my long hair, and I have no idea how to get it cut in the next fifteen minutes. I wander the halls as the clcok ticks down and others begin assembling in the gymnasium. They seem bemused by my predicament, but cannot help me get my hair cut. What the hell kind of multi-colored co-ed army base is this, anyway? I have the sinking feeling that I am wasting two years of my life with my enlistment.

March 3, 2001

St. Paul is covered in driving blizzards and clouds of silver mist. There are Yeti everywhere... gray shadow-creatures moving in and out of diffuse beams of light cast by street lamps and windows. Why am I out here in the snow, in this tiny little fort? If I move, the Yeti will see me and come after me. From where I hide, I can see the tufts of fur standing up on their long, swaying arms. Who'd have thought that St. Paul had so many Yeti? The damn things are all over the place.

March 5, 2001

I am working in a Perkins Family Restaurant as a dishwasher/busboy. Most of the people I worked with (and disliked) from 1994-95 are at this mystical Perkins, which has a huge pink kitchen and a wide dining room with emerald-green carpets and large freezer chests in the middle of the guest area. I am wandering around, pretty much doing as I please, when it is pointed out to me that management doesn't approve of my black-and-yellow striped socks, which are pulled up to mid-leg like breeches, and plainly visible to the customers.

This soon became irrelevant, as I find myself trapped in a back hallway with several other people who are waving their hands in the air and flinching. I look around the corner, and am surprised to see Michael Carus standing there holding a black automatic pistol on them. He very clearly says,"This is for breaking into my house!" He's a good shot, and puts just one bullet into every man in the hallway. When he's finished, he turns to me and says, "Hey, Scott. Darren's trapped inside a plastic bottle again. I figured I'd come get you and see if we could help him out."

Darren Wieland, as it turns out, is indeed trapped inside a large plastic bottle. It looks like a giant jug of salsa, though it's empty apart from him. His head and one arm are jutting out of the top, but he won't explain how he got inside.

March 10, 2001

Pale alabaster Star Trekspacecraft are darting back and forth against the blackness of space, trading beams of energy with one another. The scene pulls back until I realize that I am inside a cavernous set made to look like the bridge of the 60s Enterprise.I am shocked at how high and roomy the ceiling is, although Spock's science station is just a large black book rack covered in books on space. "Cheesy," I say to no one in particular. Just then I notice that James T. Kirk is talking to another, younger man, both in 60s-era Trek uniforms.

"Dammit, Jim, we didn't suffer a scratch in that simulation," says the younger man.

"I know, but the Orion vessels were de-powered in the simulation. In real combat, you can expect them to perform about twice as well against a scout ship like this."

"Jim, why are you hounding me? I'm not about to lose your ship. Don't worry."

As they speak, I wander the bridge (TV set?) admiring the pale lavender carpet with a lopsided grin, staring at the creaky plastic shairs and the book rack. Suddenly, there is another rack on the wall, full of Nichelle Nichols' concert tapes ("She tried to have a singing career after the show, poor thing." comes Kirk's voice). Beneath the tapes are large hardbound copies of transcripts from court cases where ex-Star Trekactors have sued one another over the years.

March 16, 2001

I am living in a house on top of a hill, much like the one I occupy in real life, but older and dirtier. The garbage truck has come to carry away our bags of trash, and I am hurrying down the hill with Hefty Cinch-Sacks in hand. After I drop the bags off with the driver, I notice that the driver's young son is sitting in the passenger side of the cab. "Hey, Cletus," the driver yells, "put that credit card down!"

I look and see that Cletus is chewing on an American express card, and whining about wanting to go places to use it.

"Hey, you," the garbage truck driver says thoughtfully, "Why don't you come with us?"

In no time at all, I am in the cab of the garbage truck with Cletus and the driver. They want to take me to an amusement park of some sort, to show off what a great city they live in. I am bemused, but I am shocked by the size and elegance of the park we drive up next to. The place is a vast, colorful pavillion of multi-story buildings, topped with Ferris Wheels and roller coasters and carousels. I run after Cletus and the driver, both of whom are enthusiastic to ride the modified Ferris Wheel in the very center of the pavillion. Rather than the genteel enclosed cars of sane Ferris Wheels, riders on this one sit side by side on an open bench with no back or side rests and cling tenaciously to a single metal pole. Cletus and his father hop onto the bench and wave for me to hurry up. As I am stumbling aboard the frighteningly small contraption, the wheel operator starts the whole thing spinning, leaving me clinging for my life with my legs dangling over the edge.

The Ferris Wheel accelerates with frightening speed, pinning me in place as I am hauled a hundred feet off the ground in short order. I frantically grasp the center pole, and my grip seems firm. I distinctly hear the ride operator laughing, and then the world goes blurry.

Later, I find myself reading a newspaper article about how the ride operator disrupted a wedding party by turning the wheel on before everyone had boarded. It seems twenty-seven people were injured after falling, and I was one of the lucky ones. The article goes on to describe how the groom, a professional gambler, placed bets that the wedding band wouldn't show up to the church and used his winnings to finance the ceremony.

March 20, 2001

Jenny has been kidnapped, and the ransomers want an electronic device I'm carrying. It looks like a cellular phone, and I have no idea what it does. I arrange for a meeting with the kidnappers, and they agree to let me bring the police. We meet in the lobby of a grand hotel, complete with deep velvet carpets and white marble columns. A dozen police officers cautiously back me up as I approach the designated rendezvous point at the foot of the wide stairs. Two men come running down those stairs, one thin, the other wide and bearlike. I take a deep breath and reach for the cel-phone thingy in my coat pocket.

Both of the kidnappers are dressed in vivid purple tuxedos and panama hats, and the thin one grins like a shark. The bearlike man, who maintains a calm, amiable demeanor, explains that Jenny has been wired with explosives, controlled by a remote detonator in his possession. He proposes trading my cel-phone thingy for the detonator, which will lead me to her once the kidnappers leave. I agree at once, place the device on the floor, and back away. The large kidnapper nods, slides the detonator along the floor toward me, and reaches for the device.

As I pick up the detonator, I see that the little digital clock on its surface is ticking down. It reads 3:27, and I quickly press the OFF switch. Just as I do so, the smaller kidnapper snatches it out of my hand, snarls with glee, and says, "Let her die! It doesn't matter now!" Pushing past the surprised police officers, he takes off running. Incensed, I follow as fast as I can, trailing him to a small room. He's squinting over the device, trying to reactivate it, and is very surprised when my hands close on his windpipe. I squeeze and squeeze as furiously as I have ever done anything in my life, trying to crush his throat with my thumbs. After several moments of this struggle, the dream fades, leaving me clutching thin air and breathing raggedly.

March 25, 2001

A short, odd one this evening. I dreamt of my old friend Ryan Christensen. Evidently, he had caused some sort of accident on a highway, and sixteen cows had been killed. (Mysteriously, he had no car.) Ryan got ahold of sixteen large multi-colored styrofoam boxes that looked like gigantic day-glo fast-food clamshell containers. One by one, he pushed the dead cattle into the makeshift coffins, sealing them up and stacking them neatly in a pyramid by the side of the road.

April 2, 2001

Tonight's batch was just damn strange, but very entertaining. Fragments including:

Roland the gunslinger was on trial in a modern courtroom. Judge Keco, a shareholder in the Goodyear Rubber Company and a veteran of World War I, wasn't inclined to be forgiving of Roland's crimes. Roland merely stared at the judge and the bailiff with his cold blue eyes, as though daring them to pronounce sentence on him. His eyes seemed to promise reciprocity.

I and several other people were being chased by MatrixAgents down the concrete expanse of a subway platform. Thinking quickly, we managed to jump through the air and phase ourselves through the sides of the departing train, a trick the Agents weren't creative enough to duplicate. They hopped after us, sliding along the third rail like surfboarders, relentless but frustrated.

I was reading a thick book of police procedures, legends, and myths while my father sat at the window of a midtown Manhattan araptment and polished an extremely heavy handgun. On one side, it looked like a Desert Eagle, but when flipped over it resembled a flintlock grafted onto the firing mechanism of a .38 revolver. I asked my dad whether or not police officers had to buy their own handgun ammunition. He responded by flipping the gun open and spinning the cylinder, showing me that it was empty.

Lastly, I found myself a demon in a strange little sort of bureaucratic hell. I was wandering a hallway dressed in a black and white tuxedo, hands behind my back, giving orders to the invisible spirits that served my whims. I had two offices at the end of the hall, each backed by large stained-glass windows through which an eerie ghostlight flowed. One of my subordinates was reminding me of the fact that none of us had ever seen the demons from which I recieved myorders. With a start, I realized my offices themselves were my superiors, and that whenever I sat within them I was under the influence of more powerful demons. As though on cue, the office doors slammed shut in my face.

April 5, 2001

Tonight I dreamt that I and both of my younger brothers were members of the 1st Minnesota during its famous charge at Gettysburg at the end of the day on June 2, 1863. We were charging across a warm, open field at a sea of men in grey uniforms, Alabamans. Musketfire cracked left and right, and I cringed at the sensation of shots whistling past my arms and face. Men fell screaming all around us. Light-haired Kevin went down in front of me, fired his musket once, and fixed his bayonet. I fired from the hip while running, but failed to see any effect. Dark-haired Brian ran toward the Confederate line, and was shot while Kevin and I watched. He was killed in the battle, which Kevin and I both survived, distraught. The funeral was held in the modern age, and Kevin and I were both ashamed to be the only ones not dressed from head to toe in black. We had had no time to change out of our uniforms, or even clean ourselves up.

Yet more dreams lie this way.