Dreams by Ellen Ashdown - Read all the dreams

GARY AND THE MYSTICS

My husband Gary is taking me to a house, saying only that he wants me to meet the people there. It turns out to be some sort of spiritual gathering, perhaps a sect. Even getting there feels mysterious. I have no idea we’ve arrived, thinking we are still en route. At a door I ask…

BLUEBIRDS IN THE GRASS, NOT ALAS

My sister Andrea and I are on a cruise in the Caribbean, visiting an island with other passengers. The day is clear and perfect; the sky is a pure azure, as amazing as the sea’s shifting, deeper blues. Andrea and I walk side by side, but she is slightly behind me. I don’t see her…

I AM THE CAMERA. I AM THE VIEWER.

I am watching a black-and-white dream, a ’50s or ’60s TV show (Hitchcock, Twilight Zone). It is in effect full-screen: the entire dreamscape. A family—husband, wife, two kids—are traveling in a car. The man has told his wife that, when they reach their destination, he must travel on to Las Vegas for business. He will…

ILL WIND

September 1994. I am walking at night, down the side of a desolate highway. The unlighted road where I walk is the only landscape, dream as close shot. A terrific gale is blowing, terrific. The wind blasts straight at me—but not at my face. For I am walking, must walk, backward. Only this way can…

BARBECUE PIT TOILET or A PRINCESS PEES AMONG STRANGERS

My family and I are touring a castle-like museum: long vast halls, marble floors. I find a bathroom—with a line, because only one person at a time can use it. Impatient, I wander off, finding no line when I return. The bathroom is downstairs, reached by a rather narrow brick stairwell with a sharp turn…

SUCH A LONG WAY

Mother came to me seventeen years after she died. I remain convinced it was not only a dream. The first time I had sleep paralysis, long before this dream, I was an undergraduate staying at a friend’s house. As I lay there immobile in the dark…

DUI. DOA.

Once again I’m in a big house, this time at a lively drunken party with many people, family and not. I have made quite an entrance, or should have, because I’m in a convertible sports car spinning in the air in the living room. (Unfortunately, or thankfully, I observed dream-me without dream-vertiginous sensation.) The silver…

THE DARK CHILD, THE GENTLEMAN, AND THE KNIFE

I am on the edge of a plain, a bare place, and in its center is a dark-haired child, foreign. He is lying down, almost in a half-crawling position although he is not crawling, as in Christina’s World. He is quite pale; needs help and protection; does not know and understand the world he is…

PHANTASMAGORIA

My sisters Kerry and Andrea and I are the only customers at a mall. Indeed, we are the only people, which never occurs to us. Wait, though.

IRISH

Lance and I have moved to Ireland. Our stone house is on a small open rise, almost a plateau, and at the edge of the meadow before the house, a hill drops steeply. . . .