My friends and I were on a safari on the remote plains of Africa. We were divided into two jeeps.

We came across a few ten-foot-high square cages positioned at odd angles to each other. Their sides were chain link, and they were clearly getting old.

That's where I got out to explore the cages. I didn't go inside, but climbed up the chain link sides to get to the top and get a better view of the plains. After looking around, I climbed back down again.

One of the jeeps broke down, and my friends were gathered around the stranded jeep when a pride of lions began approaching them for an attack. I ran back to the square cages and climbed back to the top. The lions could climb a tree, but this rusty old vertical chain link siding would be too much of a challenge for them.

My friends couldn't make it to the cages, and might not even be able to climb them if they tried. Most of them were able to get inside the jeep, but the jeep's canvas wouldn't protect them indefinitely from the lions.

Standing on top of the cage watching this, I didn't know what to do for a few seconds. Then I realized that I could transform into a slightly large golden eagle. So I did, and stood there perched on the cage watching the lions.

I weighed my new options (I wasn't big enough to take on an adult lion), and took off. I flew towards the lions with the intent of swooping around the lions and clawing at them, distracting and annoying them indefinitely to protect my friends. I knew it could take a while, but it wouldn't take forever. Either my friends would figure something out, or the lions would lose interest in this prey that had the annoying bird.

I was flying around protecting my friends from the lions when I woke up.

It might have been just a wish fulfillment dream, but it was nice while it lasted.  Sure beats real life problems that are completely out of our control.

(The image was taken by Phil Myers and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.)

In my dream this morning, a few of us were doing the Seattle Blogger Crawl (visiting a few homes of Seattle bloggers). When we got to zannah's home, some college kids just outside were singing,

Pizza Pizza Day Is Free
And Free Pizza Is Good To Me
(Rest of the lyrics forgotten, but there were others.)

(Well, it made sense and was quite catchy in my dream.)  A few of the bloggers were watching the show, but I got distracted by this chalkboard and mixed-color chalk that was mostly white with a swirl of black around the rim.  It was amazing, because no matter how I held it and drew, it always managed to highlight what I wrote with a cool outlined 3D-ish edge.  I busied myself alone with the chalk for a few minutes, trying to figure it out, when I got in trouble with Zannah for either ignoring the other people, or for using up her chalk.  A little of both, I guess.  Sorry, Z!

A couple of nights ago I woke up from another vivid dream about imminent death. The scene was probably influenced by the ending of Fight Club.

I was near the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in San Jose. Let's call it, oh, the Adobe building. (It wasn't necessarily Adobe, but it may have been.)

It was a nice summer day, and I was looking down on the smaller buildings and churches around me. Then I see the effects of bombs going off. Big car bombs. For some reason, I'm on my cell phone with Ted, and we're discussing the coordinated terrorist attack I'm watching in San Jose, of all places. Dirty, house-sized cotton-ball clouds blossoming every couple of blocks.

We both reason that the building I'm in is certainly targeted, and that I'm not going to make it out. As I tell him to let my wife and children know that I love them, I feel the floor, relatively intact, begin to tilt and descend.

Maybe I should start with the fact that I'm alive, in perfect health, and in a wonderful marriage. (And I don't have a Jessica Alba fetish.) That matters little in dreams, though:

Two days ago, I had an amazingly vivid dream, where I was climbing a 5.11-ish route outside, hard sandstone, like at Red Rock, NV. My usual partner, Ted, was belaying me. The route was slightly overhanging. I was leading it, getting to a near-featureless roof, feeling quite exposed, and then my inescapable fate was revealed. I was going to fall and die. This part of the dream replayed itself a few times. I make a lunge under the roof for a hold, fall, and my protection doesn't hold. I never dream about the actual cratering, just keep replaying the fateful lunge that leads to death.

Last night, I dreamt I was returning to UCSB for something-or-other, and had to stay at a stranger's apartment. She was part Jessica Alba from Idle Hands, and part Jessica Alba from Sin City. Adorable and sexy at once. The dream was all about the tension of falling in love with someone, but being too inhibited to follow your heart. It took place over a three-day weekend (dream-time), and the last day was spent frantically, vainly searching for the girl.

Way vivid dreams. The feelings are with me still.