Dreams

Dreams. Some have them. Some claim they never have them. Sleep specialists claim that everyone has them at some point when they are asleep. But what I know from my experience, dreams have a profound effect on me when I remember them.

I have had many types of dreams throughout my life. I have had dreams about fear, love, fame, death, end of days and even about sci fi / fantasy material so vivid that I have been writing a novel about the events I dreamt about. The truth of the matter is that when I remember the dreams that are so vivid (you swear they are real), they stick with me for years after having them.

Just a few days ago, I had a dream that I would classify as an 'end of days' type dream. Being that my beliefs are Christian based, I lean very heavily on this thought as I describe the events of my dream. I am sure that others well versed in dreamology will have different thoughts on this. Fortunately, I am open minded enough to hear thoughts of interpretation.

I will call this dream "End of Days - Dream Oct. 2009":

The setting was my old single story ranch house that my parents owned on Mohawk Drive in San Jose, California. I was in one of the 3 bedrooms talking to one of my coworkers from my current job. Keep in mind I haven't stepped foot in this house since 1992. The bedroom wasn't a bedroom but it was an office (like the kind at work). It had cubicles with computers and a phone. My conversation was about whether or not my coworker had checked to see if we had enough labor scheduled for the next business day. Then my father walked by the bedroom/office doorway.

I peered out the doorway and saw my father at the end of the hall to the left.

"Hey dad, what's going on?" I asked.

He looked flustered and turned back to look at me and said "We have a big problem. I need help putting out the fires."

I was shocked by his statement and replied "Fires? What fires?"

"The fires outside. Come help me please." He seemed awfully calm. So I followed him to the end of the hallway. To the left is the kitchen / family room. To the right is the living room. He turned left and went through the kitchen. He stopped by the back sliding door. This door led to the fenced in back yard. We had a small lawn and an elevated planter box with a medium size tree back there. As I approached the back door, I looked outside and saw that the ground was on fire. The grass, the fence, the tree, the neighbors houses all around us and the sky was black like coal.

The coworker is apparently no longer in the house but my sister and mother are. My father asked "What do you make of this crazy fire?"

I calmly replied as I assessed the situation "If I am a betting man, I'd say the end of the world." We all stood there for what seemed like a really long moment. I went over to the kitchen and starting taking plastic pitchers out of the cabinet. I filled up two and asked my sister "Can you fill these up and with water and keep them coming as I return the empties?"

She nodded and began to fill up the pitchers while I carefully began to pour water onto fires that were close to the house. My father followed suit and did the same. The last thing I remember before waking up: I was not worried but I knew that if the fires where truly everywhere including under the house, it was only time before we would no longer be alive.

This was the first time I have ever had an end of the world type of dream where I did not panic or feel stressed.

But then there were two other end of the world type of dreams I remember. Those dreams were a lot more frightening to me at the time. "End of days - Dream March 2006" was definitely one of them. In that dream, I was walking with friends in an open field in a place I did not recognize. I know it wasn't in Florida (where I currently live) but it felt like it could have been a farm somewhere in the Midwest. It was early evening around 4pm-ish and as my friends and I walked we saw a ball of fire falling out of the sky. This ball hit within a few hundred yards and shook the ground hard. We gathered our thoughts and tried to make sense out of it.

     Was it an airplane? Didn't seem like it. But as we questioned what it was several thousand more fire balls were falling from the sky suddenly. They were each about the size of Toyota SUV but completely round. We were surrounded. One by one they came hammering into the earth with such force. The point where I woke up was the moment of realization that there was no where to run, dodge or hide from this event.

     The other one I remember clearly was "End of days - Dream December 2002". This dream had myself and two friends driving around Los Angeles. At the time of this dream I was living in Portland, Oregon. We were driving to a hotel in L.A. when I parked at a gas station so the other two could by food and beverages. As I sat in the car, I looked out the windshield and saw a plane flying. This isn't normally a weird thing but the plane was on fire. Since it was just a little over a year since 9/11, I assumed I was having a nightmare about that. But what occurred next made me anxious to get out of there. The plane seemed to crash and suddenly the area we were in was engulfed in flames. The radio kept saying that there was a wild fire emergency in Los Angeles. Everywhere we tried to drive was blocked by flame. It was definitely a tense dream. I remember waking up thinking that I was not going to go to L.A. anytime soon.