Mohammed’s Radio

Nine of Swords—The Nightmare Card
Photo Source: Learn Tarot

Everybody’s restless and they’ve got no place to go

Someone’s always trying to tell them

Something they already know

—Warren Zevon

As part of last week’s Friday Feast, I said that I seldom remember my dreams. That was enough to get my id upset. So two nights in a row, I have awakened in the middle of the night—OK, an hour or so before the alarm—after a bad dream. I can’t really call them nightmares because they left me more uncomfortable than frightened.

Endless Work Obligations

I was in a meeting at work. It was at ALE, in the department where I currently contract. My employers kept loading on more and more responsibilities and tightening deadlines in the way that ALE does. I was trying to tell them that I couldn’t possibly accomplish everything they wanted by the end of my contract. But all that came out was, “OK.” I couldn’t get back to sleep after this one and eventually woke Suna up a few minutes before the alarm. Sigh.

Wolves not drempt
Photo Source: Veracity

The “Wolf” That Wouldn’t Die

Suna and I were looking at a house in the country. It closely resembled a floor plan she showed me just before we turned in—a nice two-story that was sided in rough cedar and nestled between a couple of hills. I went out on the back deck to look over the lake. Suddenly, a wolf-like creature started running over the surface of the lake, almost directly at me. I knew this, even though the deck was probably 40 feet above the lake.

Luckily, I had an automatic rifle handy. I squeezed of a shot and missed. Then I missed again. I held down the trigger for a short burst. The creature went down, rolling over backward. Then it got back up. It ran past me. I emptied the cartridge. Again and again, it got back up each time I hit it.

Finally, I woke up. I was not scared so much as frustrated, and I had a very full bladder. I went back to sleep fairly quickly after crawling back in and pulling up the covers.

Now I don’t want to go into a deep analysis of these dreams. It is fairly obvious that I am worried about something, probably nothing that a stable job wouldn’t provide the right ammunition for.

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31 October. Another interpretation of the second dream, if not this sequence, is that I have been feeling my own mortality recently. Death stalks us all. We may knock it back a bit, but it always gets up. Just like in those stupid horror movies.