A Dangerous Place For An American

08-12-05

I had a strange dream last night. I don't really remember a lot of it. I was here in Brazil on my mission. I don't remember if I was companions with Elder Mendes or Elder Choy or somebody else. It seems like I was in Campo Limpo, but not exactly how it really is.

Something bad had happened, something really bad; but I don't know what it was. It was something that was international. I think there must have been something bad happening between the U.S. and Brazil. For some reason there was a strong hatred towards Americans from most Brazilians. Brazil was a dangerous place for an American to be.

It seems like there must have been a lot of deaths of Americans in Brazil. Somehow I got a phone call from my worried dad warning me not to go out that day, that it was a dangerous day. I think that that day I stayed in, but due to the desire to serve and fulfill my mission I continued the missionary work the next day.

However, I did so somewhat in fear and trying to somewhat hide. It seems like I prayed for help and protection many times. I was wishing that the people would realize that I had nothing to do with whatever had happened. I was trying to continue working and hide that I was American. I was hoping that I had tanned enough or that I spoke well enough that they didn't realize that I was American. I remember making a contact on the street but at the same time fearing that he had some kind of weapon. It seems like he had a knife and was going to try to hurt/kill me, but because of what I said in the contact he changed his mind.

I don't really remember much else. It was pretty strange, though. I felt like one of the sons of Mosiah, trying to help people that hated me and wanted to kill me.

Choose Your Own Ending

07-06-05

Monday night I had an interesting dream. I don't remember it very well. I was in grandma and grandpa's house/neighborhood. In this dream/nightmare there was some kind of monster or demon that I had to find a way to kill. He was coming after me and nothing seemed to work; not a shotgun, not even a grenade. A little bit into the dream I realized something important. I realized that I was dreaming. I remember thinking, "I've already dreamed this dream. I don't remember very well what happens, but I know that in the end I win. I remember that it was difficult and extremely scary. I don't remember how, but I know that in the end I win." I remember that when I had dreamed it before it was long and took awhile to discover how to kill him.

So in the middle of this dream/nightmare I just decided that I didn't want to continue the dream. I was able to realize that I was dreaming and take control. I don't remember what I dreamed afterwards.

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So I guess you can have fun and decide how the dream should end. I had a similar thing happen once, that I don't remember very well. But it was a dream that involved some house robbers in my neighborhood. I realized early on that I had dreamed this before and that at the moment the people were robbing the house of someone down the street and around the corner. So I decided to call the police to end it before it escalated to what happened the previous time I dreamed it. Then the butterfly effect happened in my dream. Somehow, the robbers were able to intercept and cut off the phone call to the police which led them to have a personal vendetta against me. It was a really cool, intense dream, but unfortunately I never wrote it down and don't remember the details.

Exhausting Sleep

This is another journal entry from the same day as the last one I posted

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03-09-05
We came home to sleep because it was P-Day. I somewhat slept for a couple hours. It was hot and it was a strange sleep. I think that I was actually completely asleep without having any problems, but the problem was my dream. I was like dreaming in a dream. However, in this dream I wasn't sleeping very well. Like I was having trouble sleeping going in and out of it, but I realized one of the times that I actually woke up that I was really dreaming that I was having trouble. The mind is powerful and so when I actually woke up to get ready I felt like I hadn't slept very well.

You'll Not See Nothing Like The Mighty Quinn

I recently found out that I can let other people post on my blog. So come all without, come all within; if you have a dream you'd like to post just let me know so that I can add you as an author to this blog.

Dreaming in Portuguese

These next few blogs come from dreams I had while I was a missionary in Brazil. I often attained lucidity in my dreams on my mission when I would be speaking to someone in Portuguese and then realize that that person shouldn't know Portuguese. Most of my these dreams went undocumented, and therefore I don't remember them well enough to write down. However, there are a few dreams that I did write down in my journal. Therefore, these dreams don't come straight from a dream diary, but come from my actual journal; which explains the poor grammar and awkwardness of parts of it (I was forgetting English).
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03-09-05

I just felt like writing down a little bit of some dreams that I remember at least a little bit. 2 nights ago I was sleeping and dreaming. In the dream I was here in Brazil. I was on my mission. I saw John Brooks. I was like, "Hey John!" but he just kept walking and he looked at me a little strange. It was like he was thinking, "who are these guys," or, "Great, missionaries." I asked him if he recognized me and finally he realized it was me. We started talking in Portuguese and I don't remember anything else.

Its not the first time I've dreamed about talking with friends that don't know Portuguese in Portuguese. I remember once I dreamed that I was already back home. I decided to spend a day working at Papa Murphy's for old time's sake. For some reason Bransin was also working there again and Mallory and Lupita were also still working there. Everybody else was new to me. I didn't know the others. So it got slow and we were sitting in the back. Bransin and I were talking but the strange thing was that I was speaking Portuguese and he was speaking Spanish. We were understanding each other and speaking normally and Lupita was just listening, also understanding, but not speaking.

Another time I had a dream that took place after my mission as well. I met Matt Webber. He was with 2 kids that when I think about the dream afterwards seemed like Suzana and Gabriel, but it wasn't them. I talked with him and caught up on old times. We got to talking about the church a little and in the end before having to go I invited him to go to church that Sunday. I left and was walking home when the little girl asked if they could go, too. I said, "Claro que podem!" It was the last thing that I said that I remember that made me realize I was dreaming in Portuguese.

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John Brooks was my best friend growing up in Kearns. Bransin, Mallory, and Lupita are obviously people that used to work at Papa Murphy's with me. Bransin was also one of my best friends, we would hang out all the time before my mission. Matt Webber was a good friend of mine in elementary school and the beginning of Junior High School. Suzana and Gabriel are two kids that I knew really well from my first area on my mission (the area I was in when I had this dream). "Claro que podem!" means "Of course you can!"

"I Gave Them The Name Of My Piñata"

04-07-04

I think that in my dream my family was going to go on a bike ride, so I needed to get a bike. It seems like I decided to borrow a bike from the University of Utah. I remember being on the bike in the Marriott Library. I think I was playing around with the bike, making it bounce because of the shocks.

I also remember seeing a little kid (about 1 or 2 years-old) eating a blue ice-cream shake. He made a really big mess with it. It seemed like there was blue ice-cream everywhere. So I went to get a napkin for the mom, but when I got back she had it all cleaned up.

The next part of my dream that I remember was at Riverview Jr. High. For some reason I was on a school bus over there, and it drove around and dropped us off by the playground. Maybe we had just come home from a field trip. I was going to just walk home because I live close to the school, even though I guess school wasn't out yet. I was just starting to go when I ran into Derek Hofmann. He wanted me to watch what Heather McEwan was doing for some reason. It seems like she was trying to jump all the way down some stairs. She kept doing it, I guess seeing how many times she could. I think I remember her or someone saying she had done it 8 out of 30 times. She was wearing a night gown or over-sized pajama shirt or something. I don't know why, but it seemed fun to watch.

The next part of my dream that I remember seems like it was a mix of Smallville and Tru Calling, or maybe Clark was having an experience like when he got the phone call from Lana in the future. I was Clark in this part of the dream, or maybe I was just observing him, I'm not sure. I/Clark knew about something that was going to happen to Lana later this day. I think it might have had somthing to do with a robbery. I told Whitney about it, and gave him some instructions on how to help her. I also let him borrow my truck. Apparently I had tipped the Police off about it, too. Because I remember calling my dad/Jonathan and telling him that. I told him not to worry though, because, "I gave them the name of my piñata" so that they wouldn't suspect it was me and find out about my abilities.

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For some reason this has always been my favorite dream. I think it has to do with the "I gave them the name of my piñata" part. Just a little footnote for those that don't know much about Smallville or Tru Calling. Tru Calling was a show where this person would repeat days to prevent a death. In season 1 of Smallville Lana (the girl that Clark has always liked) dated Whitney. Clark's dad, Jonathan, was always worried that someone would find out about Clark's ability and he'd be in danger. When I dreamed this it seemed so logical to give the police the name of my piñata, which I guess means I had a pet piñata. When I was writing this down, I was just free-writing as I remembered and I got to that point and started wondering what was I thinking in this dream. Why would I have a piñata with a name? And why would I use that name to give to the police?

The Death of Snuffaluffagus

This is the first dream that I ever wrote down upon waking up. When I write these dreams upon waking I just write what comes to my mind as I'm writing. So as I write I am sometimes ramble trying to figure out what was going on and it can be a bit jumpy since parts of the dream are very clear; whereas, other parts are very vague.

04-06-04

Part of the dream I was Superman. I was also in a video game when I was Superman. Maybe I was just playing a Superman video game and maybe it was a Virtual Reality Game.

Another part of the dream, I think I was asleep in it, and found out that the elephant character from Sesame Street had been stabbed. I remember waking up in the dream and finding out that it had really happened and there was a big investigation. They found the suspects very quickly, that same day.

The next thing I remember in the dream was that I was at the new Murray High School for some reason. I had just gotten out of a class and walked through part of the school to waste some time before my next class started. It was supposed to be beginning guitar that I was going to, but somehow I ended up playing baseball in gym.

I didn't know anybody on either of the teams. Except it seems like there might have been one or two people that I knew (Jack Neal and Nicky Lasano?). It was a pretty fun game. At some part I must have known I was dreaming, because it seems like I was able to control how far I hit the ball and when the other team got to it. I got a triple, and might have gotten an inside homerun, but didn't realize that another person on my team hadn't gotten to homeplate yet, so they got a force out. I remember somebody on the other team hit a homerun and so we had to get another ball.

I remember a small part of an earlier dream where I was in the new High school. However, it was still the old high school but everything looked new. I was skateboarding in it and I think Kevin Nelson congratulated me for something and I was kind of confused. Part of the school, by the weight lifting room, had a quarter pipe going up the wall. Later I found out that I had won some award for something in one of my classes with Covington the year before.

The Crawling Race

Many of my dreams seem to have recurring elements or themes. I often have dreams that I'm still in high school, but can't remember my locker combo, or can't remember my schedule, or I haven't been to class all year long and I have a test coming up, etc... Often times in my dreams my vision is restricted. Maybe everything is just all blurred, or maybe I can't open my eyes all the way or at all. Most often I can't lift my head, so I'm looking at the ground the whole time, unable to see much except through periphery vision. Sometimes my legs seem really week, or really heavy and it is really hard to walk or run.

Once when I was about 9 I had a dream that I was in a crawling race. I was going really slow and couldn't understand what was hindering me. The next thing I know I'm falling off the top bunk, hitting the wall, bouncing off the bottom bunk, bouncing off the wall again, and landing on the floor. I guess that while in this crawling race I actually got up and started crawling and I was tangled up in the bed sheets making me crawl really slow.

Worst Than a Nightmare

Nightmares are pretty scary, but I would rather have an intense, adrenaline pumping, awesome nightmare than an extremely boring, long lasting dream. Sometimes when I get really into a game or a subject I spend the whole night dreaming out scenarios of that (like scrabble or sudoku or physics problems, etc..) These can be pretty boring, especially if they continue all night long.

However, the most boring dream I ever had happened when I was about 8 or 9. I was sick with the stomach flu this night and I fell asleep and slept for a full night without waking up. But the whole time I was asleep I was having the same dream. The whole dream consisted of rows upon rows of toy soldiers (like nutcrackers) marching in place. I watched them just march in place for hours upon hours. I was so bored and even tried to wake up, but couldn't. I just continued watching them march in place. Watching Andy Warhol's "Empire" would be more interesting than this dream.

Childhood

To start off with, I'm going to write about a few things from my childhood that involve sleeping, but not necessarily dreaming. When I was little, I would often fall asleep in the most random places that most people would find too uncomfortable to be able to sleep. At times, it led to my family scouring the neighborhood looking for me, only to later find out that I fell asleep under the kitchen table, or underneath the bed, or underneath the couch or behind it. I once fell asleep on top of a box of toys behind the rocking chair.

There are two unusual places that I slept quite often while I was a child (somewhere between the age of 3-6), that were either because of dreams that I had or just my child imagination. In my old house the stairwell curved at the top, so there were two stairs that were triangular and larger than the rest of the stairs. My bedroom was in the basement, but I often fell asleep curled up on one of these triangular stairs because for some reason I thought there was a giant spider in the basement. I didn't just think that it was a large spider, but a spider about the size of an entire room.

There were other times that I would be asleep in my own bed, and I would wake up in the middle of the night. I slept on the bottom bunk, and my older brother, Matt, was on the top. He would leave his white Sunday shirt hanging on the bedpost at the foot of the bed, and when I would wake up and just see that white shirt in the dark I would get scared. I thought that it was Dracula. I would lay in my bed staring at it for a long time, scared to move or make any noise. I would slowly get out of my bed and make my way towards the door while staring at Dracula. I'd make it out of my room and I would go up to my parents bedroom where I would be safe. My parents have a large water bed. The bed overhangs the base by about a foot all around the perimeter. Because I didn't want to wake my parents up, and crawling into a water bed would definitely do so, I would just crawl underneath the overhang and sleep underneath their bed.

Intro

I rarely remember my dreams when I wake up in the morning. Usually, I just remember feelings that I had in the dreams, which allow me to almost remember them. However, every once in a while I wake up with all these images and feeling from what I dreamt, and so I start writing it down and lots of details come back to me. When I start writing I'm usually thinking that it was an interesting or cool dream that I had, but as I write and remember more details I realize how bizarre and irrational it all was, and I love it.

So with this blog I will be posting the dreams that I have written down in the past, with the date that I dreamt them, and to start out, just some dreams from the past that I never wrote down, but that I remember or recurring elements in past dreams.