Dream - I drive back to Nevada, then through town behind things, a woman's voice worries that the military might object, I see dead patients and the skins of faces in the windows of a hospital, I go inside but people try to capture me, I go out with my car following, and a woman also, and my car and I get into a fight with people sent after us

On Monday, June 21, 2010, around 9:30-11:30 PM, I dreamed I went back to Fallon, Nevada. It was late at night. I was driving the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile. I went just outside of town along behind it, and then started going down an alley thickly paved with dust and gravel, going west, running parallel to the main road through town. I went all the way back to the end. It seemed I had done it before, maybe on an earlier trip. Early on someone was commenting on it, someone outside the car, who I somehow clearly heard, maybe a woman, worrying about it, about whether the military might be upset about it. I discounted it some, mainly on the basis that I probably wouldn't be noticed.

At the west end of town there was a big building, one story probably. It seemed to be a hospital as well as other things. The dream seemed to replay that segment a few times. Finally I was driving along it looking at huge windows facing the alley, lined with patients in beds, tilted up some to face the window. I was slowly driving along looking at them, then their faces were near the window, and as I went along looking at them I suddenly realized they were all dead. Then I went by a series of smaller windows, though still picture window size, that had a series of almost flat, collapsed, almost featureless pale leather skins, and I realized it was the skin of faces of people. The voice had still been worrying, but was not as loud, though it still seemed close.

At the end of the building I went inside, as I had done before in some earlier replays. I think the car may have come in too, a little ways, but then I was on foot and going down a corridor, lined with pictures, watercolors perhaps. An occasional person went by, dressed in hospital/laboratory white.

Then there was a bit of a commotion. I had been noticed. Some military officer, maybe a general, was after me, wanted me captured. I quickly retreated, going back and turning at the end to go down the other short corridors, winding. I came across my car, which was somewhat smaller, and it followed me. A woman, maybe in her thirties, started tagging along, at a distance.

I got outside, and the car was still following along, hovering in the air. I didn't have time to get in it. I got a ways out, going along some gravel roads, without buildings, not very far. Then I got into a fight with people who had either been following me or whom I had come across here, maybe partly both. The woman was worrying about things, about the fight. I was fighting one of them and a little ways off the car was fighting the other. The car was much smaller now, maybe six feet long. It got on top the person and was beating at him with its front wheels. He was on his back on the ground and seemed to be getting the worst of it, though he tried to fight back. One time when it seemed he was beaten he suddenly started throwing a lot of hard punches at the car's front, seeming to cause some damage, though I couldn't see it from the angle I was looking as a disembodied presence. My physical body was busy fighting with the other person, successfully so it seemed. My attention was almost entirely on the car and the fight there. The car itself was a little flexible, like a cartoon car. It started fighting back hard then, coming down on the man over and over with its wheels, punching him with them.

The car finally got off him. The woman was worried about the man and went to him, saying that they needed to get him to the hospital. He had been through such things before and come out alright. Then she poked at his chest while he lay there still, and the chest went in some with the sound of breaking glass, but came back out. She paused, staring at it, and said, "Well, maybe not this bad...."


Note: Late that night, maybe around 1:30 AM, June 22, 2010 (I originally wrote 13:30 AM, which would be incorrect; it must have been 1:30 or 12:30), when my mother got up off the couch she knocked her glass off the little table and it fell on the floor and shattered, with the sound of breaking glass, similar in sound probably to what was in my dream, though my dream happened first.

Dream - A hand comes from behind my computer, pointing at the screen

On Saturday, June 19, 2010, around 4:00-4:30 PM, I was sleeping at the computer with the radio off. I dreamed I was waiting for the Yahoo email page to update itself, as the computer was running really slow and near the end of its resources (as it was in real life before I fell asleep), and after a while a hand came from around the computer screen and was pointing at where I had been moving the cursor, though it was now off more to the side. The hand seemed to be saying it knew what I had been doing and maybe even suggesting I move the cursor over there again. I wondered how it could know what I was doing. I think I had just been moving my own hand over there on the screen, looking at some items in the list, pointing at them with my fingers. How could the computer know what I had been doing with my hand? With the mouse pointer I could understand, but my hand was not part of the computer.

Then I swiveled my chest around to the right so I was facing toward the street and the computer on the other desk/table (I had two computers in the dream), and was looking at that one. It also had my email list on the screen, with some items cheeked, for possible deletion. I had forgotten that I had it on and the email on the screen on that one too. It had apparently been on since yesterday, tying up the phone line. I had forgotten all about it. I looked at the email there for a while, including moving the mouse to hover over the addresses and subjects, to cause them to expand into little windows, so I could see what they really were. I didn't want to actually do anything to it on this computer now, though, since I was also in the email on the other computer, and it would probably confuse the system, with undesirable results. It seems something odd was happening there too, something strange, but I don't remember what.

I went back to the first computer and started working there again, maybe calling up something else instead of the email, I'm not sure. After a while the hand came around the screen again. I moved my head back, staring at it. It seemed confusing. Could it be my hand? No, there were three hands.

I finally grabbed it and was pulling on it. After a bit of a struggle I pulled a short skinny man out from behind the computer, maybe five to five and a half feet tall, hippie looking, long brown hair parted in the middle and a short beard. He walked quickly out of the room, looking a little scared. I wondered if I should have held onto to him, should maybe go after him and try to catch him, but it seemed too much trouble. I was too tired, could hardly keep my eyes open.

I woke up then, and things were normal. When I closed my eyes a little while later though, I could see, on a background of lesser red, a ball of red particles, not large, turning and swirling, dense in the middle and with wider spaced particles circling it. It seemed almost like some kind of fireworks display. I watched it for a while, sometimes opening my eyes and closing them again, then went back to fiddling with the slow computer.


Note: Prince Charming, the cat, died around a day or so later, and was found in the cat room at my sister's house, wedged behind some things with a paw sticking out, which is reminiscent of the hand sticking out from behind the computer screen.

Dreams and visions of my mother

My mother went into the hospital on Thursday, November 4, 2010, and died late on Monday, November 8, 2010.

Before that time, sometimes months before, I had had premonitions of her death. I had been having dreams for a long time, years, reflecting my concerns about her declining health. These could be attributed to what I could plainly see, without having to call them predictive. Some dreams though, including one a few days before her death, are harder to explain.

There was a time after her death, a week or so, when I had much fewer dreams than normal, and the ones I had of her sometimes seemed more like visions, particularly since I wasn't always asleep when they happened. I also had feelings of her being there at times. Most of the time, though, I felt an emptiness, and numbness, that was very profound. It didn't help either, that my own health at the time was not very good.

In the second week, I seemed to be having more dreams, some with my mother, though she tended to play minor parts. It wasn't until after the second week that I began to have a lot more dreams, including ones in which my mother played major parts. These dreams frequently referred to her death, though she was apparently alive in them, or at least acted so. Sometimes she appeared younger, and sometimes not, and sometimes she didn't look so good, like the dream was showing her actual body, dead but animated. Sometimes my grandmother, her mother, also appeared in the dreams. I had had many dreams about my grandmother in the past, but she rarely talked in them. Now, she talked a lot.

Below are a list of the visions, dreams, premonitions, etc., though I can't claim to have included all of them. The dreams still continue, too, though now she usually appears as a more normal figure in them, without references to her death. Most of the dreams and other items have been shortened quite a bit here, to better fit within the long list.



A few months before my mother died, perhaps early September, though I think it might have been late August, I was thinking about what I might get her for Christmas, when the feeling came, that it didn't matter, that when the time came it wouldn't be something that mattered. It was a feeling that the question itself wouldn't have any meaning. There was a bit of an empty feeling with it. I tried to reject it, push it away, because it implied that my mother wouldn't be there.



At around 6:30 AM on Labor Day, Monday, September 6, 2010, I walked down to the living room to check on my mother. I found her sitting on the floor near the hallway, facing away from me. She had tried to step around the partly folded towel she had put down weeks ago for the cat to lay on, and tripped and fell. Her left wrist was injured, and had a bump on the upper part of it on the side toward her body. It was fairly good sized, perhaps a third of the way across.

Earlier, I had been on the computer, and listening to the radio. Perhaps a little less than ten minutes or so before, the Internet connection had been lost. I thought that my mother might have for some reason wanted to call Sharon, and picked up the phone, causing the connection to be lost. I thought I should go down and tell her that it was alright to call, if she didn't already know, since the connection was lost and I wasn't on the phone any more. However, I went ahead and read some of what I had been reading I think, maybe all of it, and then continued listening to the radio, because I wanted to hear what they were saying. I started to get increasingly nervous though, wondering if perhaps she had fallen. When the radio came to a break, I went down to check on her.

When I saw her there, sitting on the floor, her back to me, I said something to her, and she turned around and showed me her wrist, I thought to myself, "Oh, Mommy, what have you done?" I said something to her, talking softly, but trying to be upbeat.

However, I had a bad feeling about this, and thought of my grandmother falling and breaking her wrist a few days before she died. My mother had fallen before a few times, and severely hurt, maybe breaking, one wrist or the other, but she had always recovered. Now, for some reason, it felt different, like this was it, this was the one that would do it. I had already had a bad feeling about her putting the towel down for the cat, back when she did it, but there was nothing that could have been done. Any attempt to take it away or argue with her about it would not have worked out well, and I understood that she was trying to do something nice for the cat, that she loved.

It was almost like something now, though, of retrieving a distant, half-remembered memory, of what the fall and injured wrist meant. I was disturbed by this and tried not to think too much about it, tried to believe that everything would work out alright, like before. (I have this account recorded in a file, and while going through the file I happened to add some to this entry on Monday, Labor Day, September 5, 2011. It was a strange coincidence, Labor Days a year apart, though they didn't occur on the same day.)


Before the fall, things had felt a little odd that weekend. I worked on getting my email in better shape, reading some of it and moving some to folders for a possible later time. Looking back, it almost felt like I was marking time, waiting for something. By Sunday I had gotten a feeling that something was going to happen Sunday. I had no idea what, or if it would involve us at all. It turned out, of course, that it happened early on Monday, but exact dates can be hard to come by with these feelings.

Saturday afternoon, the Saturday before the fall on Monday, I had a long dream that seems closely associated with what happened. In the dream I had reached up to a light high on the wall outside where I worked, intending to demonstrate to the management people that it needing fixing, pulling at the two cords hanging from it, like before, hoping to make it act up like before when I did that. Before, it had started making popping and sputtering noises and glowing red and hotter around the base, and crumbs of red glowing concrete block were going off it and a larger glowing triangular chunk two or three inches across was flying off. Now it didn't do much, though, making only a little noise. But then the face of an end of a concrete block came off, glowing on the bottom and halfway along its length, and fell toward me. I was wearing long, heavy, black neoprene rubber radiator shop gloves for some reason, and raised my left hand up to fend the glowing piece off, and it hit the side of my hand, and my arm, and it seemed to hit my side too, and I fell down, and it was even partly laying on me for a few seconds. Everyone gathered around me, and they got it away from me and were standing around me bent over looking down at me. An ambulance was called and I was taken to the hospital.

This matches what happened in real life fairly closely, though it happened to my mother instead of me, and although I was burned while she was injured in a different way, we both fell, and both our left hands were hurt, and our left forearms, hers from where it had gotten hurt around a week ago, and both our sides were injured, hers from something that happened a week or so ago, and it was her right side whereas it was my left side in the dream. We both went to the hospital too, though my sister took her, instead of an ambulance.

It also had the feature of me waiting too long, in the dream waiting a few seconds while trying to get something I was working on finished, before going to see someone who was leaving and then finding him already gone. In real life I was reading what was on the computer and listening to the radio before checking on her. I also had had the feeling that she might have fallen, and an increasing sense of urgency, in the minutes before finally checking on her.

The dream also had the interesting feature of metal things being concealed inside stuff, to both spy on us and for other reasons, and when I tried to put the hands of a woman in a carriage under a scanner, that would see through what she was carrying, she resisted but when I finally managed to do it, I saw that her hands and at least half or so of her forearms had black metal in them instead of bones, that someone had for some reason replaced at least that much of her bones with metal. This could be seen as highlighting the part of my mother's body that she came to have a problem with in the fall, and might also be a reference to the hidden splint that they put on her, as well as to the x-rays she undoubtedly had at the hospital.

I also had an incident that Saturday night, where a bulb in the ceiling fan over the kitchen table made a popping sound behind me and burned out. The fan has two chains hanging down from it, for the fan and the lights, matching the two cords for the light in the dream, the light that also made popping sounds. The dream happened Saturday afternoon, before the bulb burned out that night.



I had a long dream Saturday, October 30, 2010, in the 3:00-3:30 AM area, a little over a week before she died, in which my mother came to my bedroom, looking a little younger. She lay down beside me and didn't say anything. Something seemed wrong, she seemed bothered by something. I looked at her face in the dim light. Her face looked a little puffy and her eyes were mostly rolled back at different angles, with dark red inside the lids and some around the eyes, on the edges of the eyeballs, and she had a bit of a grimace. I asked what was wrong and tried to comfort her. When I looked at her again, her eyes had changed to completely dark, a glistening dark with a reddish tint, almost completely a black color though. She talked a little bit I think, and finally got up and stood in front of the curtain, looking toward it. Her face was more normal now. She seemed upset about something though, maybe even with me some, though her face was mostly expressionless.

The dream has many things that matched what happened in real life. When she died, the light in the hospital room was relatively dim. She was laying in bed, and her face was swelled some. She had also had some problems with her eyes when she went to the hospital, with an infection, though they had apparently fixed that before she died. The darkness of her eyes in the dream, though, and their pointing up, seems to portend more than that. As for going over to the curtain in the dream, well, "curtains" is sometimes used as a euphemism for death.



On Tuesday, November 2, 2010, Election Day, my sister took my mother to vote. I went at a later time, then picked up my mother at my sister's house. I offered to take her to Burger King and get some supper to take home. I told her we had to stop off at the house briefly. As I drove toward the house, she reminded me about going to Burger King. I said again that I was just stopping for a little while at the house, then we would go. She said she wanted to make sure I wasn't trying to get out of giving her her treat. I took her to the bank, to get some money out. I told her on the way where we were, what we were going toward and going by. After the bank, I drove toward the Burger King, again telling her about where we where, while we talked about things. After the Burger King I drove toward home, and we continued as before, talking, with me telling her where we were, and where we were going.

As we went, I came to feel more and more that things were ending, that this would somehow be the last time things would be this way. It reminded me of when I had taken my grandmother home, decades ago, after celebrating her ninetieth birthday. I had kept looking at her and thinking that things were about to change, that this would be the last time things would be this way. The next day, in the morning, my grandmother fell and injured her back, and was taken to the hospital, and spent a long time getting well enough to go home. Then, at home, after getting better for a while, my grandmother fell and broke her wrist, and died two or three days later. It felt now like it had felt then, when I was taking my grandmother home.

Though I did not know it at the time, my mother had less than a week to live.



Late Friday, November 5, 2010, at night, the day after my mother went to the hospital, I was at home, and got a strange feeling of peace, that it was over. I tried to resist that, didn't want to accept it, got very upset about it, telling her, mostly in my mind, to stay, to hang in there, not to go away, to come back, over and over.

I had not been feeling well. My ankle had bled all over the floor, just before they came and took her to the hospital. I got a call from my youngest sister, though, to come down to the hospital, and I did, and I talked to my mother for a long time, and she laughed a lot. I am very glad I went. I was very shaky on the way home though, and an hour after I got back my ankle started bleeding all over the floor again.



On Monday night, November 8, 2010, I got a call from my oldest sister, saying that my mother was expected to die, and that I should go to the hospital, and then, while I was getting ready to go, my brother called and said her organs were failing and they were going to shut her off. This came as a surprise. She had seemed to be doing well while I was there Friday. I had not gone back, afraid that my ankle would start bleeding again, but I talked to my youngest sister on the phone Saturday, and she said that she was doing really well and was expected to be moved out of Intensive Care on Sunday. When I called my sister on Sunday, though, she said that my mother hadn't been having a good day. Now, on Monday night, I hurried down to the hospital, and got to spend some time with her, though she wasn't conscious. A lot of family members were there too, though I was given a couple of times to be alone with her. She died that night, a few hours after I arrived.



On Wednesday, November 10, 2010, probably around 4:00 AM, give or take an hour or two, I felt a presence in the house, and also heard something. It didn't feel like it was in the room. It seemed to be in the front part of the house initially, then at the far end of the hallway, then at this end of the hallway, a few feet from the computer room, where I was. The little dogs didn't seem bothered by it. I had been sleeping at the computer with the radio on, but wasn't asleep at the time, or didn't seem to be.



On Wednesday, November 10, 2010, probably around 2:00 to 4:00 AM, as I was sitting by the computer, with the radio on, trying to sleep, I drifted and went into a halfway dream state. I hadn't slept for a long time. I had been writing a book for National Novel Writing Month, and I went into a version of the character I was writing about, who now looked more like me, and my mother was with me, in place of his mother. She was much younger, maybe in her early forties. It was dark, and we were separated by a few feet, going down a street, bent over some, moving sneakily but fairly quickly. She was a little ahead, but not much. We sometimes talked to each other in low tones. I think it was mostly a residential area, but with perhaps a few businesses. It was filled with old buildings, with I guess you would call a cobblestone street. It repeated itself a time or two. We were on an adventure, going stealthily into an area where we might find someone I think, in one of the buildings further on. It was brief, but enjoyable.



On Friday, November 12, 2010, around 3:00-6:30 AM, more or less, I was sleeping at the computer with the radio on. I dreamed that my mother, looking very young, in her twenties, and with a very small waist, kept coming up to me, rushing up to me, as I sat there by the computer. She was in heavy black and white, like the old pictures of her, except that it was heavier, with a dark outline around her. She seemed very dynamic, walking swiftly up to me, bent forward slightly, her arms bent, but moving back and forth some as she walked, coming toward me with an intent look, like she was on a mission, her face smiling a little, but also looking intent. It happened over and over, one right after the other. It seemed more like a vision, instead of a dream, and matched the physical situation I was in, sitting there in the chair, my head down, my eyes closed.



At my mother's funeral, on Friday, November 12, 2010, I went down the aisle and looked at her in her coffin. As I looked at her, for a moment, for an instant, another version of her seemed to recede several feet away from me, away from the body in the coffin, through the side and the open lid of the coffin, a version of her that was alive and several years younger, partly sitting up, looking toward me with her mouth open slightly, a slight smile on her face, almost of slightly uncertain expectation. She was looking toward me, seeming very comfortable herself, but looking a little unsure of my reaction, of what my reaction to her might be. I drew back, blinking and shaking my head I think, turning away from her. I looked back a few times, but the vision was gone now. It seemed astoundingly real, though, in the brief instant of its happening.

I thought about it many times in the days and weeks and months that followed. It seemed very real at the time it happened, but very brief. I wondered about it, and wondered whether it was real or just a trick of the mind, but at the moment it happened I was greatly affected by it, and had to leave the area of the coffin for a while.



On Wednesday, November 17, 2010, around 3:00-6:00 AM, I dreamed I was driving from mid-to-northern Arizona, back home. Some other people were with me. It was daytime. I was on a divided highway partly cut through hills. Roadwork was going on. My mother was with us, looking younger, maybe in her late forties. She was alive and alert, but somewhat shrunken down, her hips and especially her legs, with her legs shorter and tiny feet. We were taking her back for her funeral, but were experiencing delays due to the road work. I think my grandmother might have been with us.



Apparently on Thursday, November 18, 2010 in a sleep period ending at 9:30 AM, I dreamed my mother fixed sandwiches for me, Jimmy Dean type stuff. I got six Chapsticks, and reminded her to put them on the sandwiches....



Apparently on Thursday, November 18, 2010, in a sleep period ending at 12:30 PM, I dreamed that my mother was trying to fix something that she was calling shrimp or something like that, that she had bought at the store. We had had it before sometimes, in my history as it was in the dream. It wasn't really shrimp, but looked like a little person, maybe three feet tall, with wispy trailing strips like antennas, coming from the sides of the forehead and maybe shoulders or sides. I was talking to her about it, and started saying that it looked like a person, how much it looked like a person. She was saying not to say that. I kept on doing it. I was finally saying that it was a person, that it was really a fairy, or maybe more likely a pixie, or maybe an elf....



On Monday, November 22, 2010, around 5:30-9:30 AM, I had an extremely real-feeling dream in which my mother came back, suddenly appeared laying on the rug in a hotel room, as I was talking to my little sister. My mother looked a little irritated, and perhaps a little confused. I was somewhat surprised to see her, and a little confused myself. I told my sister she was here, then went to her and lifted her to her feet, tilting her up. She felt perfectly solid, perfectly real, perfectly three-dimensional. It didn't feel like a dream at all, it felt like she was really there. She seemed around sixty. She was wearing clothes that she used to wear, an old faded blue-purple blouse with flower designs on it and a dark skirt. I was glad to see her, but a little confused because I thought we had just buried her, how could she be back?

We talked about various small things, going into the room beyond the fireplace. She seemed to be getting younger, closer to fifty. My sister went with us, also talking to us. We talked some about the get-together party that had occurred, and maybe about how they would be surprised to find that she was back. I said, in responding to something, "and the autopsy they did and the cut up pieces that they buried."

My mother looked at me briefly, looking a little disturbed, and then said, "Yeah." (In real life no autopsy occurred.)

She seemed to be a little younger, under fifty now. She talked about going on an airplane to another state, one a few states over, to the east. My sister was going to take her to the airport. It seemed she had to leave pretty soon.

She went into the bathroom and changed into overalls, like a farmer might wear. In real life she would never wear such things, but it was probably a reference to the farm where she grew up.

My mother and sister talked for a while, and continued talking, and I said, suddenly feeling that I should give a warning, though it seemed a bit like a party pooper, that "You never know how long these things will last, it might be two hours, or an hour," while privately hoping that my warnings were groundless, that she would be here much longer, days or months or indefinitely, as the dream quickly faded into being awake, and she was gone.

The dream occurred on the 47th anniversary of the day John F. Kennedy was shot.



I was extremely cold at times in the couple of weeks after my mother's death. Especially earlier, closer to the time of her death, and in the days afterward, concentrated more in the first week, where I had on a coat and a blanket and couldn't get warm no matter what. I was shaking with the cold, even one time in the late afternoon, sitting by the TV. The heat wasn't on back then, which I'm sure didn't help, but it seemed more than that, as I felt colder than I should, given the actual temperature (this IS the Valley of the Sun). Around a week and a half after her death, I put the plate back in the ductwork in the attic, which blocked off the cold air and helped noticeably, but I shouldn't have been that cold, especially in the late afternoon, especially since I could feel the warmth, the heat, all wrapped up like that, but it still couldn't help.

Ghosts are frequently associated with cold spots. Art Bell, the radio talk show host, had experiences with being cold after his wife, Ramona, died. He has since remarried, but after his earlier wife died he was getting cold a lot, and one time he was even sitting in the shower with the hot water on and still couldn't get warm.



Sometimes in the days and weeks after my mother died, as I wandered around the living room, it seemed that I could reach out my arms and hug her, hug a space in the air where she was. Sometimes I wondered about it, and thought to test it, and tried to turn and hug another area, but it didn't feel that she was there, it felt empty, and that she was in the other place.



On Friday, November 26, 2010, around 4:00-6:00 AM (the day after Thanksgiving), I had a long dream, in which I was very tired, and driving. Then at home, I saw my mother again, and she sometimes seemed connected to what was happening to her body in the grave. We walked around to the back of the house, talking. The cat that she liked was alive again too, and she took it into the house with her, through a door that didn't exist in real life....



On Saturday, November 27, 2010, around 6:30-9:30 AM, I had a dream in which I ate some strange food, then went to my grandmother's house in Arizona, then went walking and found her. Then my mother came, and we went walking toward our house, with me carrying my grandmother, but I somehow got lost and we went through a block with lots of rooms that seemed to be a medical place. Then somehow I was in a race in the 1970 Cadillac. Then I went home and found that my mother and grandmother and youngest sister were there with some kids, but there were two sets of mothers and grandmothers, almost identical, but with one set looking worse than the other.



On Saturday, November 27, 2010, maybe in the 10:00-10:30 AM area, I was in the computer room, drifting but not asleep. I had a half-vision of my mother and grandmother off to the left side of me, a few feet away, in the room, coming toward me some, but I don't think they ever got closer than a couple of feet. They were standing there looking at me, apparently talking about me sometimes, concerned about me, though I didn't hear what they said and I'm not sure I actually saw them speak, though it seems I did a little.



On Friday, December 10, 2010, around 10:30-11:40 AM, I dreamed that I was in what seemed to be a living room, perhaps in my house. My mother was in there, laying on the couch, partly toward me. I was standing on the floor by the couch, leaning over to her, and shadowy figures were moving around nearby, but most of the area was a gray fog. The housekeeper was there, cleaning the house, though I heard her more then saw her. I could only see her a little bit, a dark figure in the fog. She spoke a little though, briefly, sounding distant. I asked my mother why the housekeeper was there cleaning the house, and she said something like, "Oh, she just was," and seemed happy about it, in a distracted way....



On Wednesday, December 15, 2010, around 10:00 AM-2:00 PM, I dreamed that I was in my bedroom. My oldest sister was a few feet away. We were talking, and she had a big smile on her face. I heard the tinkling of the bells my mother used to call me with, small ceramic bells with a handle on top. I heard them twice, a few seconds apart, faint but clear and sharp in tone, nearby, like maybe in the hallway just outside the room, and my mother was there, coming in through the open door, looking maybe around fifty, maybe less, in her faded violet-purple flowered blouse and a dark skirt I think. She was just partly seen, partly faded out, almost like an impression she was there, but I still felt like she was solid, at least the part that was visible, less so the parts that weren't. I was looking at her to the side, to the right, without turning my head much, and she came in, a presence or partial presence, partly seen, but definitely there.



On Wednesday, December 15, 2010, around 10:00 AM-2:00 PM, I dreamed I was with my mother at an old school, looking for books in a room full of old books, then a storm came....



On Friday, January 14, 2011, around 5:30-7:00 AM, I dreamed that I was thinking that my mother was dead, was remembering and thinking that it was too bad, that she wasn't here to tell something to I think, then thinking suddenly that it was found to be a mistake, and that she was alive, and I was glad that it had been a mistake and she was alive again.



On Friday, January 14, 2011, around 7:30-9:15 PM, I dreamed my mother and my brother and I, and one or two other family members, probably my sisters, went to a place outside of town somewhere. It seemed like a very small town, a settlement. We stopped at a place with a Old West appearance, a store with a large flat lot in front, unpaved, scattered with fine light brown gravel. It was daytime. Everyone seemed much younger. The girls were still children, and sometimes my brother seemed to be around ten or twelve, though sometimes he seemed to be older, in his teens. I'm not sure what we were driving. It seems we might have originally been in more than one car.

We were in the store for a while. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think it was kind of a restaurant/tourist store/convenience mart type of thing. I think my father might have been there too, or in the area, or had been there, or was coming there. I'm not sure I actually saw him.

It was getting time to leave, and we got in the car and drove off, with my mother driving. She was talking, and I was talking sometimes too. The girls were also talking, mostly carrying on their own conversations, sometimes only one-way. I turned back as we drove out of the lot, away from the somewhat tall sidewalk that ran along the front of the building, with the tall, thin, square wooden pillars that lined it, and thought I saw my brother back there, looking toward us, seemingly around ten years old. I didn't see him in the car, looking toward the back seat on the driver's side. After a few seconds I said to my mother that I thought we left him back there. She questioned what I was saying, repeating it, then said to me, reassuringly, that he was here, and I turned and looked at the back seat on the passenger side and he was there.

We drove for quite a while, though it didn't seem too long in the dream. It was late at night, and we were driving in the mountains, on a road that might have been unpaved, though it was flat and in good condition. We were in the 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon now, blue with a white top. We stopped at some stores on the left, a series of perhaps three or more stores connected to each other, almost like a small mall. My mother went in, and the girls went into the store but not very far, going in and looking at the stuff in the bins and on display and then coming back out, going back and forth. My youngest sister was talking and giggling. My mother came back and we started off in the car again, with my mother driving like before.

My mother drove slowly forward in the dark, away from the stores. A few other buildings were scattered back a little ways from the road, but not too many. The road mostly went through a cutaway section of the mountains here. Directly ahead of us were two or more huge speed bumps that had been put in. I remembered going here long ago. The speed bumps were like large half-cylinders made of dirt, laying across the road, smooth and perfectly shaped. At first there just seemed to be two of them, separated by perhaps twenty feet or so. They were big enough that it looked difficult to get over them. My mother slowed to a crawl, slowly going over it and down the other side. I thought the car might scrape but it didn't. Initially they seemed to be perhaps 15 or so inches high, but they got higher as we approached them. As we went toward the second one, which had been the same size as the first one earlier, was now quite a bit taller, perhaps two or three feet. We managed to get over it. It was so large it was like going over a small hill, with the car somehow able to clear it, with maybe only a minimal amount of scraping.

We headed toward another one then, slightly farther apart than the other two. It was huge, maybe four or five feet high. Ahead, another car was coming, moving faster then we were, though still not very fast, maybe less then 20 miles an hour. I thought it would get a surprise when it got to the bumps if it didn't slow down more, and thought it might have to slow abruptly as it got to them. It might be local, though, and familiar with them, and somehow knew what it was doing.

I didn't see how we could get over this bump, though, it was so huge, and began cringing and partly turning away, even sometimes briefly closing my eyes. I was talking about it, worrying about it. My mother was talking back to me, reassuringly, slowly and tired sounding, her head tilted back some as she slowly drove toward it. We started to go up it, the front of the car tilting up in the air. We headed toward the top of it, and I could see over it, and it looked like we were going to make it after all.

Dream - The inflatable boat

Around the end of April or beginning of May, 2008, I had a dream where I was in my bedroom, talking to someone, and I opened a package that I guess had been left there. It was perhaps fifteen or eighteen inches on a side and maybe a couple of inches thick. I was discussing with the other person about what to do with it.

With the wrapper off, it was densely folded heavy plastic. I started unfolding it and pulled some device on the side, activating it. I think it was a spur of the moment thing and I was a little surprised that I did it. The other person was more surprised than I was.

It turned out to be a narrow rubber raft or boat, that was now inflating. I took it out of the bedroom and down the hallway. It was already long enough that it was bumping and bending on things as I took it through the doorway and down the hallway.

In the living room it fully inflated. It was very long but not very wide, and the sides were very small and not very high. I looked at it in amazement. I thought it was a stupid design and would be difficult or impossible to ride in without the part where the person sat getting water in it.

There was more to the dream earlier, but I can't remember it now.


Early in May, no more than a few days after the dream, an issue of Discover magazine came that had a picture of a similar appearing boat, though the appearance of being extremely shallow was an illusion caused by it being very low in the water. It was an interesting coincidence. Perhaps I had a precognition of it in the dream. It was not the only time something like that had happened.

Dream - Grandpa and the violins

In May of 2007, probably around the middle of the month, I dreamed that I was driving through the south side of Phoenix, going east, probably a little south of Jefferson St. There was a lot of bare land, just dirt, to the right, the south. I went by or through some overpasses, underpasses and crossroads. For some reason I had been drinking (I don't drink) and a few miles ahead I was going to hit someone with my car and kill them. I somehow knew this was going to happen, like it was fated or had somehow happened before. Or perhaps I was informed by some presence or entity in the dream. I know there was someone I stopped and talked to. I continued on, but somehow never made it to where I was supposed to kill someone.

The dream seemed to skip ahead a few years, though I seem to remember at least some things happening in between. Years later, though, I was at another town, the place where the dead person's family lived. Grandpa, my mother's father, who has been dead about fifty years, got off a train, along with some other people who were with him. He looked thinner and seemed more energetic, but his hair was short and white instead of gray. He had several violins in their cases sitting around him, though not directly in front of him. There might have been six or seven. Although the person I killed had been dead for several years and presumably long buried, Grandpa felt that it was only right that since he was visiting the person's hometown that he should perform some kind of memorial service. He wasn't mad or judgmental, and seemed almost cheerful. More happened after that, but I don't remember what.

Finding my grandmother

When my grandmother got older she liked to walk a lot, and apparently walked all over the neighborhood, even stopping in at a store sometimes and buying something. As the years passed, though, she eventually reached a state where she became increasingly confused and frequently became lost. There was also a concern that she might wander onto a major road. My mother tried to look in on her now and then, and then go looking for her if she wasn't there, but my mother had a lot of things to do and couldn't stay with her constantly.

One day after work, probably somewhere around 1980-82 (my grandmother passed on in late '84), I drove home past the street where I live, and almost but not quite to the street where my grandmother lived. I had a feeling, and had had it for some time, that she would be out walking right now. I decided that she would be on this particular street, and turned onto the street and drove down a few houses until I found her sitting on a fence in front of a house, sweating.

She seemed happy to see me and asked if someone had called me. (I believe there was a woman looking out of the house at her, or maybe it was a neighboring house. This may or may not have had anything to do with what my grandmother said. I don't know if the woman had said anything to her.) I said no, and my grandmother looked at me kind of strangely, perhaps wondering how I found her or why I should even be looking.

I helped her into the car, a 1970 Cadillac I had owned for a long time, and took her back to my house. The house was empty for the moment, as my mother was on an errand somewhere. I gave my grandmother a glass of water, which she thanked me for, and my mother came home a little later. She was surprised to see us both there, and I explained what had happened.

My grandmother stayed a few more minutes, perhaps even half an hour, but soon wanted to go back to her own house. She became a little anxious if she stayed away too long, and so my mother took her back.

Dream - Computer problems that blended into reality

In the late morning of Wednesday, November 26, 2008, the day before Thanksgiving, I had a series of strange dreams. The following dream is the second in the list (the first one is "The figure receding sideways through the clouds").

In the dream, I was using the computer, and had been rapidly looking at several things and doing various things, at sites on the Internet I think. I was very intent on what I was doing, almost like it was some kind of business activity, though I may have just been checking what users were doing and their responses to things.

Suddenly, some error occurred and shiny pastel curtains filled the computer screen (again). Long pink curtains in the middle with short blue ones hanging at the top and long blue ones at the sides, or something like that, something like a theater or a Loony Toons sign-off screen.

I pressed a key, the Ctrl key I think, intending to respond to the message at the top of the screen and try to get out of the error, and then mentally berated myself for doing so. These attempts don't usually work and it generally just gets worse from then on, resulting in having to manually turn the computer off, and I should have just done that to start with.

I heard a slight beep (or maybe the beep was at the beginning, when the curtains first appeared), then the screen changed to dark gray with just slightly lighter gray swarming static. I stared at it, and then pressed Ctrl-Alt-Delete, but nothing happened. Disgusted, I pressed it a couple more times, and then suddenly a loud beep was heard along with some clicks, and I realized that the power briefly went off and then came back, shutting the computer off and turning the monitor to a default OVERRIDE mode. I realized this even as I was waking up from the loud beep, sitting in a chair in front of the computer, where I had been napping.

It's odd that the dream seemed to predict computer problems and the computer being abruptly shut down (which in the dream I was trying to do). The dream even said that it was "curtains" for it, and if it really was a Loony Toons sign-off screen, those come with Porky Pig saying, "That's all, folks!"

Dream - The figure receding sideways through the clouds

In the late morning of Wednesday, November 26, 2008, the day before Thanksgiving, I had a series of strange dreams. The following dream is the first in the list that I made of them.

In the dream, I saw a dark figure facing the right, completely covered in a bulky suit. The head was slightly pointed down, and the head and neck were completely hidden by a cylindrical flat-topped covering with a faceplate. The head covering may have been of soft material. Overall, it was almost as if he was wearing a containment suit or perhaps some kind of welding suit. After a slight pause, the figure, still with its side facing me, rapidly receded away from me through a hole in layers of dark clouds.

Two days later, on the morning of Friday the 28th, on WGN, Matlock had an episode called "The Coach," in which a person briefly appeared wearing a dark, smooth, bulky coat with a hood. The hood was tall and went to a point in the back. The person was shown from the side, head pointed slightly downward, though the forward slope of the top of the hood exaggerated this, and the person's face was almost entirely hidden and sometimes entirely hidden by the side of the hood. The figure was very disturbingly reminiscent of the figure in my dream.

Later that day, at 10:00 PM, a new Monk Christmas episode came on the USA channel in which monks appeared wearing brown hoods that were somewhat pointed at the back, but the cloth was thinner and the tops of the hoods were more rounded. They were thus less of a match, though it was still interesting that I should see similar costumes on two shows that day, ones that were at least somewhat similar to a figure in a dream two days before.

Dream - The figure in the tree

Back in July of 2007, probably around the middle of the month, I had a long dream with a lot of things happening in it. Earlier in the dream, I tried to help my younger brother a couple of times in a minor way, but he coldly rejected it. One time I remember he had been eating a sandwich and had gotten a lot of crumbs on his arm and I tried to brush them off with a paper, but he looked at me coldly and said I was just making it worse. The dream also had a lot of separate incidents with what were apparently pirates and odd raft-like ships made out of big metal tubes and tall masts and triangular supports that were also made out of metal.

At one point I was looking in a big hollow tree that leaned or curved slightly to one side, trying to show someone the light that was visible in the sky past the dark leafless branches of another, thin tree that was inside the hollow trunk of the big tree. The light was strange and pale, roughly circular, with a border around it like twisted or woven purple cloud, with a dark but not black nighttime sky as the background. It shown down inside the hollow tree and made a round bright area on some dark water, a lake or maybe a river, that was perhaps 10 or 15 feet underground. This time, though, I was having trouble finding the light. I just saw a broad washed-out pale area with the skinny branches of the small tree in silhouette.

I was leaning into the hollow trunk and peering upward, looking closer and moving my head back and forth, trying to find the light past the branches when I became aware that a small figure, perhaps three or four feet tall, was sitting in the tree and apparently blocking my view of the light. I moved my head closer at it, feeling somehow that I should be able to somehow see through its eyes and out the back of its head, as though there wasn't anything back there. Its face was round and broad, almost slightly square, and its mouth was stretched in a wide toothy grin. Its eyes were relatively small and very round, and were entirely black with a slight cloudiness, and looked somehow soft like round dark grapes.

As I came close to the head, looking at it and the eyes, I suddenly realized that it wasn't really alive, not as we think of life, that it had an emptiness about it, but that it was somehow nevertheless animated, though by something that wasn't actually living precisely in it but behind and somewhat above it. It gave a short laugh and said that I would never be able to look through its eyes that way.

I was fairly close to it now, and there was suddenly a feeling of great danger and of tremendous power held in check, power that could be released at any time and to any degree necessary, and that it was only letting me do as much as it pleased it to let me do, and that I should not tempt it too much.

I had a brief vision, then, of what could happen. I saw its body silently crackling with white energy going out all around it like electricity, and its arms becoming much longer and reaching out for me, with long hands and long fingers ending in pointed nails. Its face seemed more angular, but still with the wide, toothy grin and small wide open black eyes. Its face got closer to me and also seemed to somehow project inside my head, and I felt tremendous terror wrap around my brain like a fog, not the kind of terror where you run, but the kind of terror that brings you to you knees, hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. I felt my awareness and my brain cringing, shrinking in on itself, feeling like something caught in mid-spasm, shrinking to a point and then starting to fade out, leaving only the face and the eyes and the terror.

And then I was moving my face back, somewhat nervously, and trying to look around the figure to each side, trying to find the light in the sky. I finally reached up and lifted the figure, the little man, down from the tree, but I still couldn't find the light, just a broad diffused light through the dark branches, and light that shown down softly on the dark water below. I finally left the tree and the dream proceeded to other things.


That Sunday, after the dream, I happened to watch the last half of Waterworld on the TV, a movie I had never seen. In it, the main character had a boat made of metal or metal-like pontoons and with tall metal masts and supports. Near the end, he rescued a little girl by blowing up an oil tanker run by pirate-like people. He did this by dropping a lighted flare through a wide metal pipe that led to a lake of dark oil far below. The light fell onto the oil, which then erupted into pale streamers of fire and exploded. Fire boiled through all the openings of the ship, and blew open new openings. People were running everywhere in mindless terror.

The movie had in common with the dream the metal boats, the light on a dark liquid far below, bright streamers that were electricity in the dream and an explosion in the movie, and terror.

A vision of small Gray head swooping toward me

Around July 3, 2007, I was sitting at the computer and closed my eyes to try and go to sleep for a while, and immediately saw a tiny head in the distance ahead of me and slightly to one side. It seemed to be the head of a Gray-type entity, the ones commonly assumed to be extraterrestrial aliens. It rapidly moved toward me, enlarging as it came, though it always remained small. As it approached it became clearer and its appearance was also shifting, becoming somewhat different. It remained approximately the same color (which I think might have been light blue instead of gray), but the shape was almost the reverse of the standard Gray alien shape. It had a very small, rounded head with bulging cheeks. Its eyes were like shiny plastic, and ran around to the sides of its face. The eyes were straight on top and rounded on the bottom, giving the Gray a slightly angry look. The eyes also had thick, black rims around them, like goggles.

Oddly, although it felt at the beginning to be far away, it also actually seemed to be only four or five feet away for some reason, only actually getting a foot or two closer to me as it swooped toward me. It was almost like it was more a representation of distance than actual distance. Or perhaps the distance was not a physical one.

This was not a dream, at least not in the traditional sense. It was more like a vision. I wasn't sleeping when it happened, and I didn't try to sleep for a while after it happened.

At the time, the face reminded me somewhat of a gerbil or hamster with its cheeks stuffed with food, just because of the bulging cheeks, not for any other reason. After thinking about it some more, it seemed to also resemble a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle a little bit, although it wasn't that exaggerated. However, I soon found something else that was startlingly reminiscent of it.

A day or two before the vision, I had gotten an issue of Discover magazine in the mail, but I hadn't read it yet. About a day after the vision, I started looking through the magazine and found a picture of a swimmer's head sticking partly out of the water. The picture was evidently taken fairly close up at a low angle, and the top of the head, covered with either the top of a wet suit or a tight cap, was a smooth light blue and appeared very small. The front of the face was exaggerated and the bottom part was apparently in the water, with a yellowish snorkel in the mouth making the bottom part of the face seem to bulge enormously. The swimmer also had enormous black-rimmed goggles on that were straight on the top and rounded, in an angular sort of way, on the bottom.

It seems likely that the vision was for some reason connected with that picture, though I don't know why. It may also be that more than one thing was represented by the vision, and the different things were combined into one image, but I don't have any real evidence for that.

The picture in question is on page 18 of the August 2007 issue of Discover magazine.

Dream - On the run

In the morning of April 2, 2008, I had a dream or combination of dreams. Though initially the dream was not too unusual, it changed and became increasingly strange, finally becoming a long story where I ended up running from the law and able to change reality.


In the earliest part of the dream that I can remember, I was driving the 1970 Cadillac, but there was also another car, perhaps dating from the sixties or seventies. There was something about checking or perhaps changing the oil or looking at the waterpump seal. The engine had a lot of space around it, and it was easy to see things.


Then I was back home, in bed. There were some crumbs on the blanket, partly on top, partly underneath. I think that my brother and mother showed up at separate times and then left. I got up, tired. I may have gotten up more than once.

I went toward the hall, then, thinking I was alone but evidently hearing something. The house was filled with a dense fog. I went cautiously forward. I could definitely hear someone then, faintly, at least two people.

Becoming acutely aware that I had just gotten out of bed and was not fully dressed, I fell to my knees, going back into almost a sitting position, doubled over somewhat. I was wearing just a shirt and underwear, what I had been sleeping in. I pulled my shirt down as much as I could, in that position covering my underwear and part of my legs.

A little girl came into the hallway, appearing out of the fog. She was not someone I knew in real life, though I seemed to know her in the dream. She happily talked to me, saying that someone (perhaps my mother, perhaps another person) had brought her, and she had been sent to me to help me. I was a bit uncertain about this, but I kept my reservations mostly to myself, and generally only made brief responses, mostly acknowledgements, to what she was saying.

Though she took no notice of my current situation, I still felt uncomfortable and decided to go back to bed and get back under the covers so I wouldn't be so exposed. I got up, trying to keep my shirt pulled down onto my legs, and somewhat nervously walked back to my bedroom. She followed along and we continued talking, though she was doing most of it.

When I reached my bed, I looked down at it, frowning. Though I had been about to get back under the covers, the crumbs were still there. It seemed unpleasant, now, to get back into bed with the crumbs there, and somewhat embarrassing to have someone see my bed this way. I started brushing the crumbs off the covers, but a lot of bugs were there now, also, and the more I brushed the more appeared. They were mostly pale, fragile, skinny-winged things, and most of them seemed to be dead or dying already, even before I started brushing at them. New ones kept flying in or even falling from above, and it was hard to get them adequately brushed off. Pieces seemed to stick to the covers and stay behind, too.


Later, perhaps in the same dream or perhaps in a different dream, I went outside, dressed in dark work clothes, to the backyard and then around to the side yard. A fence ran around the backyard, extending partway along the side yard. There was a gate in the side yard in the part of the fence facing the street, and then more fence ran along by the driveway. The fence was much higher than in real life, perhaps eight or ten feet. A chain was attached to the top, somewhere back along the fence, perhaps even back close to the backyard, and I used it to do something, though I'm not sure what now. I think I stretched it to the end of the fence that is toward the street but I'm not sure what the purpose was. It seemed important and/or useful at the time, though.

At some point it came to be that a rough wooden stairway went down from the top of the fence in front of the gate. I don't think it stretched all the way to the ground. Someone was with me and had been for some time, and I think they went down the stairs first, and then I went. It seems we were supposed to go inside now. Perhaps a meal was about to be served, but I'm not sure now.

I went toward the carport and got involved with doing things there. The carport kept expanding and lengthening, and turned into a garage, a business. There were several people there, and a sliding garage door that opened toward the house. There was some problem near the door, some loops of cable or something like that, that were on a square hook up high beside the door. For some reason the people needed to have them taken down so they could reach them, it was for some reason important.

At the far end of the garage near the street, some chain was attached to the wall. I went and got it and somehow stretched it out all the way across the garage to where the loops of cable were, pulled the chain tight, and then holding it more or less tight used the tension from it to walk up the wall and take the loops of cable off the hook. In real life this would not have worked, because the chain was to the left side of me, not in front of me, but in the dream it seemed that it should. As I got the loops down, someone started going through the garage door opening, as though I had to get the cable down before this could happen. The people were happy that it was taken down and someone was reaching for it even as it was coming down.


I was in a nearby house, then, perhaps the first house over toward the main street. I heard sirens that got louder and louder, and I saw, through some narrow window openings (curtains or perhaps cardboard were blocking most of the glass of the windows), an emergency vehicle go past. It went past my house and to the house on the other side, or perhaps the house on the other side of that. I wandered over to see the emergency vehicle, and went out back and to the front and back again. I started to feel that I was reliving to some extent a horror novel (a specific one), the mood was getting darker and somewhat scary and menacing. It seemed to be very late afternoon, almost twilight, sometimes after sundown, sometimes earlier. I started going around a big building toward the street, a little nervous.

Partway toward the street, I met a mostly black dog, medium size. The dog seemed friendly, but I felt it was there for a purpose, left there to guard that side of the building and perhaps a nearby side entrance. I went by or around it, but it wanted to follow me at a little distance, with its mouth open and its tongue hanging out. I didn't know how long it would follow me and I kept worrying that it would suddenly attack.

I went up the side of the building, pulling myself up on little pieces of metal sticking out, sometimes in the form of little skinny bars almost flat against the building, sometimes as just odd flat pieces of heavy metal. None were very big and none stuck out very far. Going up the building, working my way back some, following where the metal was, I got pretty high, perhaps ten or twelve feet up. The dog was still down there, looking up at me, happily waiting. I took a piece of metal off the building and dropped it on it. The metal fell on its back, close to the hips. The dog yelped but didn't leave. I felt a little bad about dropping the metal on it, and was now afraid that the dog was more likely to be mad at me and more likely to attack.

I came back down and went down the street a ways, keeping back in the front yards, trying to stay somewhat hidden. The dog seemed to stay behind, at least for now. I felt I was being searched for by somebody, though. I think some police or police detectives were also looking for me. It was dark now, and it had been dark when I was with the dog. The area I was in seemed to be small town/rural, no longer the suburban place where the dream started.


I came to a more open area and turned right into it. I seemed to observe someone, and thinking about his situation and storyline, then became him. The person wasn't too bright, at least at times. The street I was now on went downhill, sharply at times. There was some situation with a car and a tow truck. Then there was something hanging from a tree, a long chain or perhaps initially a swing. I took the chain and pulled it way back, and I was in the air over the tow truck and car then, going back, back, back, the chain seeming to play out from the tree an enormous distance. The road was dirt, somewhat sunken, with slanted, sometimes steeply slanted, shoulders. I was high in the air, perhaps twenty or thirty feet, going back up toward the more main street. Then I was going back toward the tree, going through the air, the road slanting downward in front of me. The chain kept playing out and I kept going forward more and still more, somehow staying above the now steeply downward-slanted road.

I crossed an intersection and eventually another, gradually getting closer to the ground while the ground kept falling away from me. I passed a restaurant on the other side of the road and seemed to be coming in for a landing a little ways past it on that side of the road, on a long pile of trash and large collapsed boxes. A woman saw that I was coming down and pulled a very large flattened box into position for me to land on. The box had a lot of oil or grease on it, but I managed to land past at least part of it, trying to keep to my hands and knees to get as little on me as possible.

Behind me, the chain falling across the intersection had caused some trouble, at least with the first intersection. The chain was or had been in the air, going across the intersection, and one or more cars hit it and had gone on to hit other things. The police were investigating and would eventually be tracing the chain to see where it went.

I left, following the street downhill in the dark, and after a while came to another intersection and more houses, houses that faced the intersecting street. The dog was back, and the house on the right side of the street had another dog. This second dog was smaller and paler, with somewhat longer hair, though I think initially it may have been almost a twin of the first. The second dog was in the front yard, inside a low white stucco wall that ran around the front yard of the house. I think it had just come from inside the carport, perhaps somehow also coming from inside the house. I was on the other side of the wall, on or near the street I had come in on, the street that ran between the houses.

I did something to the second dog, and changed it into a small stuffed toy and put it on top of the low white stucco wall. The first dog had left, moving on before I changed the second dog into a toy. I knew the toy would change back into a dog before very long, and it did so just before I left. It seemed that it might be an even smaller dog than before, and it seemed nervous and somewhat frightened and wasn't really interested in me.


I went back toward the downtown area, trying to avoid the tree holding the chain and the investigators, going in a bit of a zigzag, taking different streets. I think at some point I met someone and talked briefly, and they may have given some advice. In the downtown area, I went past an intersection and saw someone, a man in late middle age, looking at me through the windows of a very small corner store, windows that were mostly blocked by cardboard, leaving just a long slit or two open on each side.

Looking in through the slit as I passed, I saw him looking back readying a bow and arrow. The arrows were primitive, homemade like the bow, and had no heads, just roughly broken-off ends. I had been warned about him and others, though perhaps only in a general way. I quickly hurried across the intersection at an angle, going away from him. He fired at me, though, and I could see the arrow, with its splintered end, coming for me in slow motion. I batted it away with my hand, perhaps even turning it back toward him, though if so, it didn't do any damage, perhaps not even reaching him. I continued to move quickly away from him. He fired again at me. I was a considerably greater distance now, but it still reached me. I batted it aside again.


I came to a room. It faced the street, a side street to the one I had been on and going the same direction as the one with the tree, now far behind me. I had continued to go forward in a zigzag, and the room was on a far corner, with the cross street intersecting another street. I think someone was urging me to go in, to hide for a while.

There was someone already in the room, an older man. I went into the room anyway, through a door that led to a room beside his. I think someone may have come in with me, someone who had joined me somewhere along the way, but I'm not sure. Some other, much younger people were there in other rooms, sometimes coming in or talking from where they were. There didn't seem to be a real hallway, just rooms opening to other rooms. The old man seemed to stay mostly in bed, though he was at least partially sitting up or leaning on his side at times. He showed me and the others various things he had made, some no doubt from long ago, that his room was full of.

Through the window, I could see people outside looking for me and questioning people on the street. I think some of the people looking for me were police detectives and policemen, though I think some of the people were criminals, organized crime figures.

The old man took a very small device and showed it to me. It seemed to be a small piece of metal bent into a V shape with one of the sides longer and curved inward and a long skinny bolt going through the two sides away from the fold, toward the outer edges, tightened just enough to hold them in the elongated V shape. Inside the V, there seemed to be some more stuff, including perhaps some wires. The whole thing, including the bolt, was pale metal. It was intended to be held with the hand almost in a fist and the V part between the fingers, with the thumb inside partly holding on to it, partly pushing the trigger. The trigger seems to have been partly the end of the bolt and partly intention.

Although I described it as the two wide halves of the V being held together by the bolt, it now seems that the bolt somehow also went through the point of the V and down its axis, and that the V was actually a piece of metal bent to form a narrow triangle, with the V formed by the ends closing against each other. One side was still curved inward. The side facing out had a narrow flat area formed by two bends, with a tiny pinhole in it and an open slot below it where the flat area disappeared, leaving just the edges of the sides, and the end of the bolt, I don't know which end, sticking out.

The man demonstrated its use against the window, holding the device and pressing it close to or against the window. He moved it slowly down the window, cutting a narrow line. The window was thick, and had shapes or designs molded into part of it. I felt that it might have been something he had made, and I felt kind of bad about it being damaged. I felt too, though, that he probably didn't have much longer to live and knew it, and that he was no longer overly concerned about preserving physical things, having felt that they had largely already served their purpose.

He had me try it myself then, cutting more into the glass of the window (which may have been plastic instead), making a line from top to bottom so that a section of the window could be removed. It was intended that I should leave through the opening. It would be a narrow opening and awkward to get through, but I felt I could somehow do it. I would also be taking someone with me. Although I seemed to have come in with someone, one of the young people there, a girl, would be going with me. It was her decision, but there was at least some discussion about it. She may have also been the one that came in with me, but there's some doubt about that.

Looking outside through the opening, I could see the people across the street trying to find me. Perhaps a couple of them were questioning people. Associated policemen were also scattered around the area. It would be difficult or impossible to escape through the narrow opening without being seen. I pointed the device at them and fired it. It was difficult to do real damage at that distance, although if I kept it trained on one spot it might eventually start going through. A very faint mist was at times visible from the beam, though not usually in the beam itself, just mostly around the impact area.

The person I was aiming at, a man who had been questioning people and seemed to be a leader, turned partly toward me, his mouth open, his eyes mostly closed, a look of discomfort and annoyance on his face. His head was partly forward and his body was getting progressively wetter as it was hit from the beam. He was pushed back some and I think he might have eventually fallen. I might have also pointed the beam at another person, before the first one fell, if he did. Meanwhile the old man warned me, in an almost conversational style, as I first started to turn the beam on the men, "You know, if you do stuff like that, you'll have to keep on doing it."

When it seemed that I had created enough trouble, I went through the opening in the window and the girl followed. She seemed to be in her thirties, perhaps late thirties, though she had seemed a little younger earlier. She later seemed to resemble a little the full-figured woman on the latest Big Brother (Big Brother 9, with people divided into couples). She was blonde and smiled a lot, with big dimples on her face. Sometimes, though, she had a more subdued appearance, perhaps even approaching that of Adrian Monk's assistant, Natalie, from the TV show Monk.


We went back toward the direction I had come from. We had to keep looking out for the police and the detectives and whoever else might be after us. I was in a more open area now, away from the downtown. I went ahead cautiously, slowly going around corners, staying mostly at or toward the backs of buildings. The ground was sloping away now, sometimes leaving open areas at the backs of buildings, where the building was supported on boards, stilt-like. I came around to one area where some people were underneath the building. I was scared for a few seconds, but then realized that they were just bums. I stayed with them for a few minutes, then continued on. Oddly, they seemed to be at least partly aware of my situation.

I came to the back of a building, then, an open back, that had a bunch of policemen and detectives there waiting for me. They seemed triumphant that I had fallen into their trap. The girl who had come with me remained nearby, lagging a bit behind me, perhaps ten or fifteen feet away and to the side. I pointed the device at what appeared to be the main person and fired it. It was almost like pointing a ring, like Green Lantern, the DC Comics superhero, except that I had to push inside with my thumb, though it may have still been mostly intention that did it. The man's body moved back a little with the impact, his arms going out to the side some, his mouth open and his face in an expression of pained and somewhat angry dismay. His body became very soaked with the mist, though don't remember any hole appearing in his clothes from the beam.

Another man came forward, perhaps to protect the first. He wore pale clothing. He turned his back to me as he came, and I fired into his back. His back arched and his head came back, partly turned, and his mouth opened crying out in pain. His clothes became completely soaked and a tiny hole appeared in the cloth. I think he finally fell over, either before or after I moved on to someone else. They seemed to be mostly frozen watching what was happening to the others, until I turned the beam on them. I didn't spend as much time with the later ones.

I tried to leave, going away down the dirt road that was a little ways behind the building, but there were two other people there, a man and a woman, seemingly waiting for me in case I escaped the others. They came from the direction I had been going away from. I fired at the man for a while. He either finally fell or was incompacitated enough that I could get away from him. I fired at the woman, then, but she kept on slowly coming toward me. She was in late middle age, an expression of sadness and pain on her face, tears in her eyes, looking at me accusingly. She got closer and closer, her dress, somewhat lowcut and medium dark, completely soaked, until finally I was firing the device directly against the bare skin of her upper chest. As she came she spoke to me, about what I was doing to her, and the thought came through, whether directly spoken or just implied, that I shouidn't be doing this to her, it was wrong, and maybe someday I would realize that.

I wondered if she was actually involved in going after me. Perhaps she, along with the man, had only a slight involvement, or perhaps even none at all, and that I was essentially firing now on what might be innocent bystanders, though it didn't seem somehow as important as perhaps it should be, as by now I had to fire simply because they were there. I finally stopped firing, though, and turned away, and took the woman who had come with me, and flew away to another place. I don't know the fate of the woman I shot, whether she recovered or not. I don't know what happened to any of them.


We ended up on what was apparently a ship for a while. It seems that we had both at some point had gotten shot, though I'm not sure now which one I first realized had gotten shot. We were in a lounge area, on big roomy stuffed leather chairs with arms and sides. We were naked but had magically sunken in and blended with the chairs, even taking on their coloring, with mostly just our heads and shoulders and arms and legs sticking out, with just suggestions of other things, so it was hard to see much of our bodies. A suggestion of her chest showed, but her hip region was hidden, as was mine. I had a different body than I do normally, young and muscular, though my body was almost completely hidden. We were leaning back and smiling and talking, not seeming too terribly disturbed by our wounds. Some of the nearby people frowned at us, both because we were wanted criminals and because we were sitting there openly naked. Frowning at us because we were basically flaunting our wickedness.

That night we went out on deck, dressed now, looking for someplace to hide for the night. We were somewhat quieter and more thoughtful now, and our wounds bothered us more, though we didn't talk about them. She found someplace on top of something, perhaps a rowboat, and slid down into something laying on top of it that fit her like a sheath, leaving just her head and shoulders sticking out. I was worried about her and asked if she was alright. She assured me that she was. I was afraid, though I didn't say anything, that I would find her there dead in the morning. There seemed to be nothing more I could do though, and, still worried, I left her to find someplace for myself.

In the morning I went looking for her and calling out for her, but I didn't get a response. I finally found the place I left her, and there she was, her head and shoulders sticking out as before. She lay there still, and I think her eyes may have even been open, staring upward. I thought she was indeed dead, as I had feared, but then she turned her head slightly and smiled and looked at me.


Another time, probably before we got on the ship, perhaps after we left it, we were running from the law and came to the end of a building, toward the back. I paused, and saw in my mind that a large number of people were back there, waiting for us, ready to gun us down. I saw also a future in which I had not paused and they succeeded. I did not see them as people but as vague blobs and swirls of yellowish energy. I changed the furure then, and the present, and created a situation in which they were not there. I then cautiously looked around the corner, confirmed that it was empty, and then led the woman through and past the area.

Another time, perhaps before or perhaps after the other one, I got somehow careless or perhaps thought it didn't matter enough, and went into a similar situation where men waited for us behind a building. There were much fewer men this time, and even though I was looking right at them instead of sensing them, some of them still appeared as energy forms. We were fired at and I guess I fired back, but I think at least one of us was wounded then. Perhaps we both were.


Later, after we had left the boat, we were in some region of the Southwest. I believe we still had our wounds, but they seemed unimportant now. I think we had stolen a car to get where we were. We were in the desert near a freeway, not far from access ramps. The place was a complex containing one or more large service stations and one or more restaurants. We were aware that the police were still tracking us, and would eventually get to where we were. It was night. We were walking, and passed a couple of cars that were parallel parked, with the first one, a convertible, having the whole back section full of food.

I reached out and grabbed one or two of the items, probably individually packaged turnovers, and was just going to take them. The woman who was with me turned around and was saying "No," though, and took out some very crisp bills and gave one of them to a man who was with the car. I don't know where she got the money or what denomination it was. I was somewhat surprised to see that she had any. A couple of other people associated with the car were nearby. I think they were people on a vacation, perhaps retirees.

We went looking for another car at some point, wanting to confuse the pursuit. There were a lot of cars getting gas, so there were a lot of possibilities.

I also wanted to get rid of the device. I felt I had had it long enough and that we would continue to have trouble as long as we had it. I was getting tired of all the running and trying to evade the law. I recognized that the magic would go with it and that I would be losing a lot of power, but I still felt that it had to be done.

There followed a lot of confusion and activity, a lot of which I've forgotten. I remember driving around the parking lot, looking for a distant exit to the street, though I think I went back toward the pumps after finding it. This may have been before I took the food, perhaps even at a different complex at a different offramp. I also remember trying to get away from people who were after us.

In any event, I did locate a woman at a pump and gave her the device. I went with the woman who had been with me to steal a nearby car, then. A bit of confusion followed, though I think I did succeed in stealing a car. Some people were after us though, and I think were even after the woman that I gave the device to. The woman I gave the device to didn't really understand what was happening, and she didn't understand the device very well, though I tried to explain it some to her. She seemed to like the device though, staring at it and looking it over.

At some point, with people running around and trying to get me and probably her too, she pointed the device at some low mountains, including a section of Monument Valley-type mountains, that lay beyond the freeway. The mountains were being used as an earthen dam to hold back water, and water started to come through the rock now, coming diectly out of the rock as well as over it. A huge wave, very tall but more as a burst then having a continuous structure, came forward and over us. More water came, and kept coming. Water was even coming out of the rock high in the mountains, well above the level of any water held by the dam, coming out of rocks that should have been dry.

I realized somewhere in there that I still had the magic, even without the device. I looked out at what was happening from near the edge of the pavement of the service station area, the woman who had come with me standing by me. The water was lessening, now, and I began to think that it was getting time to go down the freeway and leave, with the woman who had come with me. I'm not sure now if we would be walking or taking the car I stole, but I was confident about the future.

What lay around the bend

About 10 to 12 years ago, something odd happened as I was driving late one night.

I was in Arizona on a road going into an increasingly mountainous area. The road was fairly empty, but there were occasional cars and trucks, sometimes coming in clumps. I went up a long slope, and then the road turned abruptly right, went a short distance, and turned abruptly left. Because of the mountains, I couldn't see around the curves. It was a way I had been many times before.

For some reason, I was very cautious and suspicious as I went around the second curve. As I came into a view of the road beyond, I saw a forklift carrying what appeared to be a telephone pole across the road. There was a long flatbed truck parked a ways off to the left of the road, with some poles on the bed and some on the ground. I think some may have been at least partly on the road, also.

I immediately stopped, since I was prepared for something being there, and sat in my car and watched the forklift slowly carry the telephone pole across the road to the right. It was going away from the truck, so it was evidently not concerned with putting it back on the truck. It all took place in darkness. There may have been a flashlight or two in use somewhere, but not much more. The road did not have any barriers set up, either.

Although it seemed to take a long time for the forklift to cross the road and get out of my way, it probably actually wasn't too long. I began to get concerned, though, that someone might come up behind me, maybe even some big truck, and run into me. Nothing like that happened, though, and eventually the forklift was out of the way and I drove on past it.

Good thing I had that suspicious feeling, though.

A nail, or something like it

Around 12 years or so ago, on a visit to Reno, Nevada, I pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center. As I chose a parking space, off by myself with few other cars around, I said to myself, "There's going to be a nail RIGHT HERE!"

When I got out of the car and looked, a few feet from a front wheel and somewhat off to the side I found a small nail-like rivet.

I suppose I must have been especially tuned to these things, as I had relatively recently been having tire trouble, though with bits of glass and not nails.

The Journey to 479

The following story is true, but very strange, and features multiple synchronicities and a prophetic dream that predicted an unlikely occurrence years in advance.

In the predicted events, the number 479 was featured prominently. The prediction concerned me personally, and was not about the world at large.

Toward the time of the fulfillment of the prediction, the number kept occurring in different forms, always in events that were related in some way to the prediction itself.

I will mention now that the numbers are miles, and that 479 needs to be multiplied by 1000.

Other things will be included in the main narrative, both as background and as their own little stories, some with their own predictions and/or synchronicities.

And it does need the background information, in order to properly understand and appreciate what happens later. Even so, much of the story will seem very unlikely to many people, and others may think I'm either extremely lucky or surrounded by guardian angels.

I have been lucky, at times, but I think those guardian angels are there, too.


THE JOURNEY BEGINS

In the late spring of 1988 I came into a situation where I had to do a lot of travelling. The car that I used then, a 1970 Cadillac Sedan DeVille, gold with a white vinyl roof, was old and had a lot of miles on it, and had some major problems. It was a car that I had purchased, used, in the late summer of 1973. Though it had made some trips in the past, it was years, now, since it had been taken out of town. There was some doubt as to whether it was up to it at all.

It did it, though, in spite of everything. The travelling, however, though initially thought to be short-term, became extended, and finally became indefinite. I had repairs done from time to time, but the repairs were frequently unsatisfactory, and new problems kept surfacing. The miles seemed to be accumulating at the rate of 50,000 a year or more, and I knew that this couldn't continue.

Over a year later, in the late summer of 1989, I bought an upscale version of an Oldsmobile Delta 88. It was used, a 1987 model, 4-door, dark blue in color, with a little under 22,000 miles on it.

I had originally intended to split the driving between the cars, so that each car accumulated mileage at a more reasonable level. As time went on, though, I more and more drove the newer car

Initially, it was a difficult transition. In spite of the deterioration of the older car, the newer felt like a big step down. It was much smaller and lighter, with a much less powerful engine, and felt much less immune to what the road could give it. It was years before I really felt comfortable in it.

The newer car, the Oldsmobile, had to last, though, in spite of the rate that the miles were now accumulating on it. By the time it was even paid off it would have more miles than the Cadillac did.

I didn't know how well the car would hold up, but in spite of the expected mileage, and in spite of the cars apparent light-weightness, it would have to last. I couldn't afford to buy another car while still paying off this one.

I tried to keep it maintained, and changed the oil frequently, but things happened from time to time. It had an early problem with a sensor, that occasionally caused it to abruptly run very poorly and usually die. If it did die, it had to set for a while to cool off before it could be restarted. The waterpump was replaced several times in the early years, and then never again. Two of the struts went bad, one was leaking and one collapsed. Replacing them didn't cure the bobbing ride, though. Much later, I had air-cushioned struts put on, which stopped the bobbing and improved the feeling of the car immensely. From time to time some of the fuel injectors had to be replaced. Much, much later, I had to have the oil pan replaced, because the threads were becoming stripped where the bolt went in. Lots and lots of oil changes had taken their toll.


JUST IN TIME

Once, over a period of days, it started running worse and worse. Initially, it just sometimes made a little jerk and cough while going up mountains. This became more frequent, and sometimes happened while accelerating on level ground. By the time I got home, it had become very worrisome. Lots of problems in the mountains, and then making it through the city and past all the traffic lights. The problem turned out to be half of the electronic distributor going bad.

Another time, it developed a problem starting when it was cold. The weather was cold at the time, but this hadn't bothered it in the past. Now, I had to let it crank and crank before it started. It also developed problems similar to what had happened when the electronic distributor went bad.

It was a very difficult drive home, but I made it. Going through the city was bad, though, and it was difficult to keep the car running. Once, it died when I tried to accelerate after stopping at a traffic light, and I had some difficulty getting moving again after restarting it.

I did make it home, though. A day or two later, we took it to the dealer. It was night and we were just going to drop it off there. It died in the dealer's driveway and did not restart. It turned out that the problem was a fuel filter that was mostly blocked, and that the strain of trying to pump fuel past the blockage had burned out the electronic fuel pump.

I had driven it all that way, past the deserts and the mountains, almost a thousand miles, maybe even more, and it died in the dealer's driveway.


THE LITTLE REPAIR SHOP

Then one night, when the Oldsmobile had 271,000 miles on it, I stopped at a service station to get gas. Afterwards, the car would not restart, no matter how much I tried. The engine turned over, maybe even a little too fast, but it would not start.

I had it towed to a local repair shop. I was in a small town, far from any big cities. It was left in a dirt lot by the small repair shop, while the mechanics tried to figure out what was wrong with it. Initially, they thought it might be the electronic distributor, but replacing it didn't solve the problem. They did eventually get it running again, but after it was turned off the original problem resurfaced. They thought, then, that it was probably the timing gear and chain. When they took the plate off the front of the engine, the timing gear had most of it's plastic teeth gone, and little bits of plastic were everywhere.

This occurred close to Easter, and I ended up trapped there in the little town for several days. I also ended up going with one of the mechanics to the nearest big city to look for parts. Then I had to wait for them to find time to repair it. Meanwhile, the car sat in the dirt lot, with a cover over the open front of the engine.

One night, I walked over to the local Safeway. It was cold outside and a little foggy. In the parking lot, a small young woman came up to me. She looked up at me and asked if I were an angel.

I am very tall and I was wearing a heavy coat, and at the time my hair was a little longer than normal. The fog and the lights in the parking lot probably contributed to the effect. It also probably helped that she had been drinking.

It seems that she was married, and now they were in a bad financial situation. Evidently the stress was getting to her husband, who sometimes hit her and had once thrown her down some stairs. I noticed that she had at least one of her front teeth missing.

I went with her to a phone outside the Safeway, where she called a friend, and then walked with her to the apartments where she lived. I waited, then, on the sidewalk while she walked up to the apartments. She was quickly lost in the darkness, and I couldn't tell if she made it to where she was going. I finally assumed that she did, lacking any information to the contrary, and left.

As the days passed, I kept checking on my car, and eventually it was fixed. It seemed to have suffered no ill effects from the trauma.


A DREAM OF THINGS TO COME

The recent problems with the timing gear concerned me, though, and I wondered what else might lie ahead.

Then, one night, when the car had 279,000 miles on it, I had a dream.

In the dream, I was told that two major things were going to happen to my car, and that the second one was by far the worst. And the problems would be made much worse by not maintaining the car properly.

The times that the problems would happen were given to me, in terms of mileage intervals. The first would happen 38,000 miles from now, and the second would happen 162,000 miles after that.

At least I believe that those were the figures I was given. I knew them at the time, but the passing of time has made my memory less sure. Even if they are not exactly correct, I know that I realized after I woke up that added together they made exactly 200,000 miles.

And 200,000 miles added to 279,000 miles made 479,000.


THE FIRST THING

479,000 miles is a long way for a car to go. I didn't know if it could actually do it, but there was no way to know for sure until I got there, or failed to make it. Other things were bound to happen along the way, too, even if they weren't major enough to warrant being predicted in the dream.

Time passed, and one time when I was home, my mother borrowed the car for a while. She complained, then, that the brakes weren't working properly. They were too low, and she had to really stretch to push them. I hadn't noticed any problem, but my legs are long and I would not have to stretch in order to reach the pedal, no matter where it was. My mother insisted that something was wrong, though, and didn't want me to go driving off in the car while it was like that.

I knew that the mileage was now somewhere around the mileage of the first prediction, and so I finally relented and left the car to be fixed while I drove the other one. I was mindful, too, that the dream had said that the problem would be made much worse by not performing the proper maintenance.

The dealer said that the brakes were almost entirely gone.

And so the first prediction came to pass, but the damage was minimized by getting the proper maintenance in time. If the maintenance had not been done, the outcome might have been very different, as the dream had warned.


HOW LONG?

One night, when the mileage was in the early 300,000's, I was driving along through the desert, wondering again how long the car would last.

I looked at the odometer and thought of the future. If the car made it to 479,000 miles, how much longer could it go? What mileage could it reach?

I saw the odometer in my mind, with a reading of something like 506 or 507 thousand. I felt that it was true, and that the car could make it that far.

I tried, then, to change it, to make an odometer reading up around 580 or 590 thousand. I couldn't do it, though. The image wouldn't come. I kept trying, and finally forced the image to come, but I knew that it was false.

So the car would make it to the early 500,000's, but for whatever reason would not make it to the upper 500,000's, at least not while I owned it.


ON AND ON

Although I spent many long hours driving, the driving was not the work itself, but a means of getting to the work. Driving was not my job. Combined with the job, though, it meant that I often spent a lot of time with little sleep.

With the passing of time I gained in stature at my job, and also made more money, but the money was not nearly as much as it could have been elsewhere. I kept hoping that something would open up that would let me work closer to home, but it never did. I was hesitant to leave, too, knowing that things would not be the same without me. There was no one there who could do what I did, and never had been. Not even close. I was also able to fix problems that other people couldn't. Sometimes, they couldn't even understand the solutions that I came up with. But they knew that they worked.

It was a lot of stress on me, though. All that driving with little sleep. And sometimes I got cooperation from people, and sometimes I didn't. And sometimes, though well intentioned, they worked against me.

Sometimes, while driving, I wished for it all to be over, to be done. I could accept almost anything, just let it be done. Almost anything.

Almost.


TRANSMISSION TROUBLES

As time passed, the car developed more and more of a problem with the transmission.

Once, long ago, when the car had less than 200,000 miles on it, perhaps around 174,000, I got so tired that I mistakenly shifted it into neutral and then reverse when the car was going around 30 miles an hour. It died, and I pulled off the road. I had just passed through a little town and wondered if I was going to be stuck there. I restarted the engine, though, and drove away.

Everything seemed to work normally, except that the shifts were a little duller and the car didn't seem to roll forward quite so easily; it seemed to slow down faster when I took my foot off the gas. As time passed it seemed to improve, though, and by the mid 200,000's it was not quite so noticeable.

Now, though, in the 300,000's, in extremely cold weather it tended to get lost for a brief time between second and third gears. It acted almost like it was in neutral, except it was a bit more draggy and there was a sound like gears barely touching each other, just hitting on the edges. Sometimes it seemed to help to push on the gas. Though the engine would initially just rev, sometimes it would then suddenly snap into gear. But sometimes it didn't seem to make any difference.

It was never in that state for very long, though, and when the car had warmed up sufficiently it didn't do it at all.

It started doing it more and more often, though, and in milder and milder weather. I often tried to let the car run for a few minutes before trying to go anywhere, rather than risk having it happen.

I eventually found out that adding transmission treatment improved it immensely. It almost felt like new, for a while. For a while.

One time I took the car to a transmission shop, and described the problem. They told me that there was nothing in the transmission that could make it act the way I described. I left it with them so that they could try driving it in the morning, when the engine and transmission were cold. The weather was relatively mild at the time, but it also sometimes happened now in such weather.

They were unable to duplicate the problem, though, so I drove on with it as it was.


THE CRASH

Once, when driving on the freeway through Las Vegas, I noticed a large flat-bed truck ahead of me. It had various things on it, including a bundle of white slabs sitting upright.

As I watched, the bundle came loose, and fell into the road in front of me.

I slammed on the brakes, and stopped in time. I heard a screeching sound behind me, though, and then WHAM!

I looked behind me, and saw that a pickup truck had run into me. It was evidently a commercial vehicle, and it had tall bumper guards on the front, bumper guards that were now somewhat bent. I saw the driver on the phone calling someone, and after a while the police showed up.

It turned out that the white slabs were just styrofoam, and one of the policemen moved it off to the side of the freeway, while complaining about the construction trucks.

The back bumper on my car was pushed way in, with a straight area between where the truck's bumper guards had hit, and sharply angled areas going out to the corners. The trunk lid was also pushed in somewhat.

Everything worked, though. All the doors opened and closed with no problem, and even the trunk lid worked.

The pickup truck driver's insurance company paid for the repairs, and I eventually got the car fixed, though I drove it for a few months like that.


THE LITTLE SHOP, AGAIN

One night, while driving along, I noticed that sometimes the car would react oddly to acceleration. It would have odd little variations in speed. It would seem to briefly bog down and then speed up again.

A couple of hundred miles or so later, I noticed a loud metallic knocking sound when I went by a big truck, like the sound might be reflecting off the truck back at me. I wasn't sure it was actually coming from my car, though. I hoped it wasn't.

In the days that followed, though, it became apparent that it was coming from my car. I finally looked under the hood to see if I could see anything. Everything looked normal, except that one of the big pulleys low on the engine looked like it had something sticking out a little on the side of it.

I took it to a local repair shop, the same shop that had worked on the timing gear years ago.

They fiddled with it for a while, listening to the engine with a stethoscope-like device, apparently thinking that one of the pulleys on the accessories was to blame. They couldn't find anything wrong, though, so they finally took the belt off and started spinning the pulleys by hand, but still couldn't find anything. I mentioned that I saw something earlier sticking out of the big pulley. It was hard to see anything now, though. One of them took the pulley by hand and tried to turn it. There was a loud clank.

So, they jacked the front of the car up and took the pulley off. The center of the pulley was made of rubber, and the rubber was torn in a line all the way around it. Without the rubber holding the rim in place, the rim was banging against the metal stops on the pulley. The pulley also had a device on it to control the engine timing, and with the pulley moving back and forth the timing kept changing.

One of the mechanics, looking at the damaged pulley, said that he had never seen that happen.

He said that I could probably drive it that way for a long time around town, but he wouldn't try to go anywhere with it like that. I knew that I had already driven it for hundreds of miles that way, maybe even for over a thousand, and thought for a while about the possibility of driving it home.

I knew, though, that if I made it home it would have around 407,900 miles on it. That sounded a little too much like 479,000. I was also mindful about the dream warning about the maintenance.

So, in the end, I had them repair it. And as before, we had to travel to the big city to get a replacement part for it.

It was done much quicker than the timing gear repair was, though.


THE CADILLAC BECOMES UNAVAILABLE

As I said earlier, I had intended to split the driving between the 1970 Cadillac and the 1987 Oldsmobile. As time went on, though, I more often drove the Oldsmobile and seldom drove the Cadillac.

Eventually, I stopped driving the Cadillac at all, except for emissions testing. There was just too much wrong with it, and repairs too often didn't seem to last for very long. At times, it seemed to be falling apart in front of my eyes. Sometimes, it did so literally.

So it sat there at home, with 255,000 miles on it, and I had no spare car anymore.

Much of the time when something happened, though, I seemed to be trapped in other places, either waiting for the Oldsmobile to be fixed or driving around in a rental car.

Sometimes I was able to borrow my mother's car, a car she did not have when this all started. Oddly enough (or not), it was an Oldsmobile Delta 88 also, a 1989 model, two years newer than mine. It was a much less upscale model, though. It was purchased for her by my sister, and it was already well-used and had over 100,000 miles on it. It was colored gold and had a slightly modernized, slightly more powerful version of the engine that my car had.

It also had problems of its own.


A PREMONITION OF DISASTER

My Oldsmobile was now well into the 400,000's, and the predicted mileage was now not so impossibly far away. I still had quite aways to go, though.

I started to feel a sense of foreboding, though. It continued over a period of several days, and I finally started praying, to "let this cup pass from me." That whatever it was would not happen.

One night, I stopped at a post office to use the phone. When I returned to the car, it would not start. The engine turned over, but nothing happened.

I had it towed to the local car dealer. They found out that the electronic fuel pump had burned out (again).

I felt that my prayers had been answered. Far better to have it happen in a town, than out in the middle of nowhere.


A SYNCHRONICITY OF NUMBERS

As the car approached the midpoint of the 400,000's, it developed a problem going up hills. The engine was getting too hot, and there seemed to be a film on the inside of the windshield. I had noticed, for years, that an orange dust seemed to form on the inside of the windshield when I used the defroster. I felt that the heater had probably been leaking a little, and it was now definitely time to get something done about it.

When I finally arrived at a radiator repair shop, the car had 447,799 miles on it.


AN END IN SIGHT

Meanwhile, things were deteriorating at work. I had big projects ahead of me, but it seemed unlikely that I would have sufficient support to easily complete them. Perhaps not even enough to satisfactorily complete them at all.

My car was costing me a lot of money, too, as well as time away from work. It seemed likely that I would need to get another car to continue.

But I didn't want to go through that again.

At some point I asked myself how long this would continue. And the answer came, that everything would be resolved in the late summer. That there was a feeling of peace associated with it.

If only I could hang on until then.


THE SCREECHING NOISE

Over a period of several months, I had become increasing concerned about a noise I sometimes heard, usually when I heard it reflected off of buildings. It was a kind of faint screeching-grinding noise, and I only rarely heard it, but I suspected it was there more often than I knew.

I finally took it to a car dealer and told them about the problem. I was worried that it might be something like the alternator bearings going bad. The person at the car dealer couldn't hear anything, though, and refused to replace it unless they found something wrong with it, in spite of the mileage. He was going to have his mechanic look at it, though.

They never found anything wrong with it, so I picked the car up and continued to drive it as it was.


THE SECOND THING

Time passed. It was spring, now. My car had 479,000 miles on it, in fact it was halfway to the next thousand. I had recently changed my schedule a little, which resulted in me being other places when particular mileages occurred.

The sun had set, and I was driving up a small mountain. I noticed, then, a lot of screechy, static-like noise. I thought at first that it might be poor reception on the radio, but when I turned the radio off the noise continued.

Then, a burst of sparks came flying out from under the back of the car, and flew away like fireflies in the dusk before disappearing. I reached the top of the mountain and started going down the other side. More bursts of sparks came out. The alternator light came on, and I started trying to find some place to pull over. I found a little place, just big enough for my car, and pulled over into it just as the car died.

I got a flashlight out of the trunk and opened up the hood. A huge wall of smoke came up and quickly dissipated. I peered down at the engine and saw a tiny fire in the alternator. I blew on it a few times, until it finally went out.

It was dark, now, and I was on the side of a mountain, maybe 30 miles or so from the nearest town, though there were farms and residences and businesses that weren't quite that far. Perhaps I could find a phone that was only 20 - 25 miles away. There was also a phone booth at the bottom of the mountain, but I had never tried it and I didn't know if it worked.

I decided to try to walk to the phone at the bottom of the mountain, and if it didn't work, to just keep on walking. Perhaps someone would pick me up along the way. It was cold, but I had on a heavy coat. It was very dark, too, so I used the flashlight when I walked, both to see where I was going and to alert passing cars that I was there.

It seemed to be very slow going down the mountain. It was very dark, so I couldn't see much around me, and it didn't seem like I was making much progress, even though I knew that I must be. Sometimes a car would pass going the other way, but there wasn't much traffic.

Finally, a car passed me and then came back. It turned out to be someone who knew me. He was on his way to work, on a late shift, and thought he had recognized me and my car.

So he picked me up, and took me with him on his way to work. When I told him what had happened and what I was doing, he stared at me and finally said that the last time he was at the phone booth someone had cut the wire. Later, he took me to the town.

The next day I had the car towed to the local car dealer, where they replaced the alternator, and, I think, the battery.

And time moved on.


JOURNEY'S END

In the late summer, everything seemed to come together, like events and people were puppets being pulled on a string. I was at a turning point, where major decisions had to be made. My life would change, no matter what decision I would make. I made the one that I always knew that I would. I resigned. My car was a few thousand miles away from 500,000.

Many years have passed since then. Both cars are gone. The Cadillac was sold with 255,000 miles on it, and the Oldsmobile was sold with 508,000 miles on it.

And everything happened as predicted.

And this is where the story ends.