You probably won’t believe me, but I had another dream about someone who recently died. He was my old choreographer/director/ballet teacher from when I was in 2nd grade until long into college. He died of cancer, although he always joked with the classes he taught that he wanted to go out doing a high “12 noon” dance kick.
In my dream, he came to me in our old ballet studio and said that he wanted to die on his terms, and we spent one last class together, dancing in front of the mirrors to classical music. The music stopped and he thanked me, and as he was walking away, I asked him if he had any advice. He said, “Live larger than life,” and he went off to the next room, which was suddenly his bedroom to die.
It was a really touching way for me to come to terms with his death.

I took a road trip with Melissa (in real life) to Napa Valley. Due to job constraints and delightful LA traffic constraints, we didn’t leave the city until about 8:45. We got to our hotel room at about 3:00 AM. I drove the whole way, so no sleepy breaks for me.
I was actually so tired that as I lay down, I thought to myself, “Huh, I didn’t check under the bed, like I usually do, for dead bodies. Oh, well. It’ll still be there in the morning if it is.”
Anyway, I fell asleep almost immediately and had the following dream: I was now in Napa Valley with Melissa’s friend Devon and Devon’s roommate Matt. Melissa’s cat Max had also come with us, but he had trotted behind the car the whole time. He’s a long-haired orange tabby, so he got pretty dusty, but he’s apparently really fast.
So I’m standing outside with Devon and Matt, and we’re on the edge of some mesa, looking over a cliff, and I’m going, “Are you sure this is Napa Valley?” Devon dismissed me with her hand, and Matt was reading a travel book of things to do. He wanted to go to some scare house, but insisted we get there early to get good seats, because the lighting looks bad if you get crap seats.
Then we went shopping at Vons, and Max followed us again, and I wanted to let him ride in the cart, because he’d been running so much, but Devon said he was too dusty.
I guess the moral of the story is: if you’re going to stay up till 3:00 AM, don’t only eat Chees-its and Dr. Pepper.

I had two nightmares last night. Very short.
The first one, I was backstage in a large theater, and I was alone. I was locking up at night. I turned around and saw someone out of the corner of my eye. He was medium build and had tanned skin. He had been trying to creep around, but as soon as I saw him, he exploded from his hiding spot and rushed me. I pulled out my phone to dial 911 in an effort to fend him off, but he tackled me before I could even hit a button. I woke up gasping and my heart was pounding.
Luckily I got back so sleep for this delightful gem. I was riding on an airplane, and the woman next to me whips out her cellphone and starts texting people during the flight. (This really happened recently. Terrifying. I KNOW Mythbusters busted it; I’m not willing to wager my life on wacky smug special effects schlubs.) Anyway, the plane goes down in flames, and I witness it all in detail I wish my mind didn’t come up with. The ground outside the window, the people screaming, the sound of the engines chugging against wind resistance. I survived, I guess, then had to wander around the airport to get another flight to where I was ultimately going.

I had a bunch of very short dreams that I didn’t feel deserve their own post, but now I’ve had so many, I can hardly remember them all.
Last night, I had a short dream about watching my friend Matt (who is a Broadway musical actor) in a movie. It was a terrible movie, and at the end, the credits said it was written and produced by Something Awful goons. Figures.
I’ve had two dreams about my very favorite teacher who recently died. He was my theater director, so they were mainly stage manager type dreams where I did something wrong. But he was there helping me along and not yelling at me, like my dreams of that nature usually are.
I had a really weird dream a few weeks ago that I’m actually hesitant to post here, because I think it’s rude to talk about religion or politics. But I’d like to record it to remember, so here we are.
I was at a party, and I knew I was going to die, but all my friends were there to help me celebrate my life. It was a really fun and upbeat event. Then I saw my friend Mike (who is also deceased and has appeared in multiple dreams) calmly told me, “It’s time” and took me away. Suddenly, I’m in purgatory, and it looks a lot like Ikea. Figures.
Here’s the offensive part. I see two of my friends who are devout atheists, just kind of shopping around in Ikea Purgatory, not really bothered either way. Mike’s telling me I have to go on to heaven, and I’m kind of shouting towards my friends “Just say you believe in God, and you can come in with me. Come on, you see the afterlife is real and heaven is this way. Just believe, and you can go!” But they don’t listen.
Sometimes my dreams are embarrassingly telling.

I just woke up from this one. Technically, I woke up at about 5 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was so upset, but I knew it would stay fresh in my mind.
I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but I was in this place that seemed like a train station. Or maybe it was a place where trams brought you to the airport. Or maybe it was an amusement park where you rode on trams for fun, because everyone around me was happy and laughing. Actually, I think it was a mix of all three. I remember buying a ticket on a certain line where I liked the conductor because he joked around. I was with my family and a group of friends, and a boy I liked. It started off as all good.
At some point, we stopped to have a gathering somewhere. It wasn’t at someone’s house, but it was kind of a private party, and there was a little kitchen nook in the back where people could prepare food or something. Here’s where it gets morbid.
Someone at the party who was a stranger to me was dying. He was in the nook with me and several people close to me: my mom, my brother Ryan, and maybe one other friend. I can’t remember how it came about, but this person HAD to die. He had done something bad or he had asked for it, but I was being convinced that he had to die and it was a completely legal and merciful thing that had to be done. Only no one would do it, and they wanted me to do it. AND he had since become delusional and would resist anything slow like, I don’t know, chloroform and an injection or something.
I kept thinking that I wouldn’t want to go on living knowing forever that I had killed someone, and he looked to me like he could go at any minute, so I decided to wait it out. Ew, I just remembered. At one point, he actually threw up his internal organs. Like, I remember a kidney and, like, a bladder, outside of his mouth attached by a gross string. And I was like, “He HAS to be dead now,” and I’d go out into the party and say, “Okay, everyone, I’m sorry. He’s gone.” But then he’d burst around the corner, shoving his internal organs back in, like, “What? Me? I’m fine.” And everyone at the party would be disappointed in me.
I guess I got it through my head that these people wanted him GONE, and since I couldn’t kill him, I decided to put him in my car and drive around until he was dead. So I dragged him out to the train area to buy the ticket from the machine for my favorite conductor, and I passed the guy I liked on the escalator.
I told him that I was sorry, but I couldn’t talk right then, and he looked at the half-dead guy and he said he understood. PS, why are all these people okay with me “killing” this poor dying guy? No clue. But actually, he WAS starting to piss me off a little.
I get off the train, and it’s sad, because everyone there is happy and laughing, and I have this horrible job to do. I get out to the car with my mom and brother, and we’re trying to push this stiffening guy into the car, and it’s not working. This is the part that’s like an airport, because there are all these security agents outside.
This part is crystal clear in my mind. I’m on the driver’s side, and my brother opens the door on the passenger side, but the dying guy slumps to the ground. My brother turns, but he’s on the other side of the door. He’s about to close it to pick up the guy, but at the same time, two security guards run over to help the dying guy. Well, dying guy chooses this moment to come back to life again and sees the two security guards manhandling him as trouble, and he struggles. He’s apparently really strong now, and he’s smashing a rock or something over one guard’s head. The other guard raises his gun, and I scream, “RYAN, LOOK OUT!”
The guard shoots dying guy through the stomach, the bullet exits, goes through the open passenger door, and into Ryan’s stomach, and there’s blood everywhere. The guards don’t look sorry at all, and I’m fumbling with my cellphone, shaking, because I’m so scared that an ambulance will come and take care of stupid dying guy and dumb rock-smashed-head security guard before they’ll help Ryan. And I’m shaking so bad, I keep dialing 9-1-# and 9-1-5 instead of 911.
Then I wake up, and I’m panting because I’m so out of breath and it feels like the bed is shaking because my heart’s beating so fast.
So I guess don’t watch Discovery Health Shows before bed, either.

This dream is pretty fresh in my mind, from about 2 nights ago.
It started out a normal Stage Manager Dream, but it was more laid-back. I was setting up the scenes and getting the props in place, but I had everything under control. I wasn’t concerned at all. I was on top of it. I say all these redundancies to stress how unusual it is for me to A) have a Theater Dream where I’m not absolutely tearing my hair out and having everyone yell at me, and B) at this point in my life where I feel so worthless and irresponsible, it’s odd for me to have a dream with really comforting feelings like this.
To add to the awesomeness, the theater was really stocked and futuristic. Like the design backstage was really slick and clean and white, and there were trapdoors and rotating stages, an elevator to the catwalks. It was really swanky.
At some point, I wandered off and ended up in some sort of sleek future hotel room with my high school BFF Kameron and her mom (my “second mom”). Kameron took me into a corner and was whispering to me about this new time travel device she wanted to show me, and I was all, “Hell, yeah, sign me up!”
I don’t know why it was a secret from her mom or anyone, really. She used to work for the FBI, so maybe that was where that seed was planted.
Anyway, so she hooks me up to this thing, and zaps me back to that exact place maybe one year or five years earlier. It’s really boring. Like laughably so. I walk around and try to look at cool stuff and proof of time travel, but it’s just a year or more. It’s the same room. Nothing big. So I start tapping my foot, waiting to get zapped back to the present.
Eventually, I do, and Kameron lets out this huge sigh of relief, and a few people are kind of freaking out in the background, ringing their hands, and running back and forth.
Turns out I had been gone a lot longer than it appeared for me, and they thought I was going to be stuck in the past forever.
Which, again, looking back while awake, I can’t imagine would have been a terrible thing. Seriously, reliving the last one to three years of my life? I’d do it in a second! I don’t know, maybe they thought they neutralized me in the time-travel process. Who knows?
That was actually a pretty cool dream.

Okay, so this is a dream from about 3 weeks ago that that I don’t remember a whole lot about. Alls I can recall is being in a church and thinking that it was totally awesome. Like, I kept thinking about all the bad stuff people usually say about church — the self righteousness, the wars, the judging whether or not ye be judged, that sort of thing — and then seeing really energetic people NOT doing any of that stuff. They could actually answer all my questions, and they did it in a really thoughtful, not-contradicting way. I woke up feeling full of hope. Unfortunately, actually living my life crushed that hope pretty fast.

I had this dream one of the first nights I got back into the states.
I was back in Japan, but my successor had already moved into my apartment. I was hanging out in some random rice field, when I decided I should go meet her at my school. I get to the front entrance and see some of my old co-workers, but I realize I left a mess on the kitchen floor back in the apartment, so I decide to go home and clean it while she was working.
I start home, but I either forget the way, or I have to go this long (colorful!) convoluted way I’d never been. When I get in the apartment, Justin’s there with a gun.
He says that everyone just saw me leave school to come home, and “it” will be very suspicious. Then he shoots himself, and I’m left standing there, knowing I’m about to be arrested for murder.
Then I woke up. Fun, huh?! Don’t watch Forensic Files before bed.

My dreams have been really choppy and disjointed lately. And I can’t seem to hold onto the plot even immediately after I wake up.
The weird thing is that I know I’ve been having nightmares because my jaw aches for about an hour every morning after I wake up. I can tell I’ve been clenching my teeth in my sleep, and if I’m not fully awake yet in my shower, or if I got an hour less sleep than usual, I have to consciously tell myself to stop clenching because it hurts.
In related news, I’ve also been getting less sleep. Two weeks ago, I had insomnia. I even consciously tried to get to bed earlier than usual, but I just laid there for an hour or two until I finally bored myself to sleep. I kept thinking of things that made me get out of bed. Oh, I left my phone with the alarm in the other room. Oh, I forgot to put away the ketchup. Oh, I just thought of this really funny picture to PhotoShop; I should do it before I forget; it won’t take very long.
Then I got sick. The seasons are changing here, and there are illnesses going around, but I attribute it to my lack of sleep. So in the last week, I’ve been chugging Vitamin C health drinks here and crunching delicious Vitamin C pills. I started feeling better before some of my friends, so I really think it did the trick.
I’m really busy this weekend, but hopefully not too crazy at night. I won’t be able to sleep in, but I won’t be able to have crazy late nights either.
Wow, this blog post is almost boring me to sleep. I guess I just want to track why I sometimes dream and why I don’t.
Well, I’ll tell you about the last dream I remember before my draught, on a Friday night about 2 weeks ago. In my dream, I was at this rock concert with my friend Melissa. For some reason, I wandered around to the backstage area and met some people who remind me vaguely of some old short friends I use to have. Actually, because I’m gargantuan, almost everyone is short to me, but these people were like a short crew all through school.
Anyway, I met them backstage, and we rekindled old friendships. We began trying on different sparkly outfits made, I guess, for the backup dancers? Or maybe, like, stock costumes for the venue. The rock singer was no one in particular, just a general star like Bon Jovi or something. Only, like, cool within this decade and attractive.
I spent the whole concert back there hanging out with my friends and Mr. Fake Bon Jovi (during a break in the music, I guess?), and it suddenly occurred to me that Melissa was still in the crowd. I was upset because she would have wanted to take part in the costume fun, so I went out to get her, but the crowd was cleared. The stage was gone, and it was just an old park with some swimming pools lined up. Yeah, Melissa was gonna be real pissed.
The end! More interesting dreams, I swear. Even if it means eating a chili dog and banana split right before bed.

Friday, there was a tiny earthquake in Nagano. I felt it here in Yamanashi, and it was kinda cool. The next day, strangely, I actually went to Nagano, and felt another earthquake in the early morning. It felt the same to me as the other one, but this one’s epicenter was way at the other end of the island, so it must have been crazy strong.
Anyway, earthquakes have kind of been on the mind over the past few days.
Sunday night/Monday morning, I had a terrible nightmare — one of those where I wake up and my jaw actually hurts from gnashing my teeth together from stress.
So at the beginning of the dream, I knew somehow that an earthquake was coming, and I ran outside, even though I know you’re not supposed to. I just felt (and I still do) that it would be easier to dodge some falling tree than being trapped under a desk for days without food. So I run outside, and I see these buildings collapsing in the distance, and they’re all falling forward. So I stand in a clearing behind a building I am sure will fall away from me like the rest.
Well, when the wave hits this building, it falls in every direction, and I see a huge piece break off the top and come barreling down at me faster than anything I could react to. I duck and do the TiVo thing, rewinding my dream enough so that I have time to run off to the side.
But the earthquake keeps going, and I keep looking for shelter. I end up in some park where there’s an artistic sculpture that looks kind of like a silver Jenga tower, and I get caught in the middle of it. The pieces are light enough so that when it tumbles on me, I can push them out of the way, but I soon see that there are so many pieces, I’m gonna get buried and crushed, and I start to panic.
Then I wonder for a minute what’s happened to people in the subway, and I blink there. I’m riding in a tiny two-person subway car (in Japan still) with Crispin Glover of all random people, and he’s being neurotic like usual. We feel the tremors and get upset, but the car keeps going, and I’m concerned. The subway kind of looks like an amusement park ride, though, and it comes to an underground clearing, and I hop out because Crispin’s kvetching is annoying me to hell. I don’t need this in a damn earthquake, buddy.
Finally, I stumble outside, and the earthquake’s still going on. I see two drunk guys, and they’re making light of the situation, and it kind of annoys me, too, because I’m still looking for shelter. Then a big fucking beam flies down and impales both of them through their stomachs. I’m pretty grossed out, and now I feel bad about being annoyed by them.
I take refuge in a real amusement part I dreamt about a few nights earlier where the actor who dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow flirted with me. I think I hid under the ferris wheel. Not smart.
Then I woke up. So I guess I lived.