A Dream about being Lonely with Company

I dreamed that I was out in an urban area that particularly featured a parking garage. Actually, the parking garage was early in the dream. I was in it, maybe wandering around, when I met a guy I knew—he was tall and had dark hair and was maybe in his thirties. I think that in the dream I was thirtyish, too. Something was going on that caused many people to be showing up at the parking garage. They were gathering to see something, to watch a spectacle of some sort. We talked and I think agreed to hang out in a particular part of the garage, which was above ground and all grey concrete swirls. But I think he disappeared.

Later, I was walking around on a sidewalk with two female friends—we were all young and at least one of them was someone I knew in elementary, junior high, and high school: Kelly Zander.

Twice while I was supposed to be with those two, I fell behind and walked with a couple of women in their sixties or so. They assumed that I was alone, and I didn’t correct them but didn’t know why, really. The two young friends didn’t notice when I wasn’t with them; I saw them walking and talking animatedly with each other.

The second time I was with the older women, we’d been walking on a sidewalk, and this led to a series of concrete steps. We started walking up them, and I was watching my two young friends who were below and to the left—in a sort of park—of this sort of bridge we were on. I fell about four or five feet behind, so one of the older women paused and called, “Susan?” She turned and saw me, I started catching up, and she said, “I was worried about you.”

As I continued following the older women, I kept looking to my left, making sure I didn’t lose my young friends, who continued laughing and talking and showing no concern for my absence.

Once I’d gotten up and down the concrete stairs and lost track of the older women, I saw my young friends and I walked down a concrete ramp to reach them.

When I finally caught up, we were in an area covered in about four inches of slushy snow. The two young women were laughing and making paths in the snow by pushing it around with their feet.

I felt sad, alienated, left out—because they hadn’t missed me and now ignored me. They seemed as though they could care less if I was around.

 

It seems like I was detached from these friends. As for the older ones, we had only just met, so we could hardly be called friends, and I had no intention of staying with them. Maybe it’s just one of my socially awkward dreams, and I have a lot of those. I think the ages were significant, because I’m between the ages of the two groups of two.

My Current Whereabouts

Obviously I haven’t been active on WordPress for a while. Technologically, it feels weird to be back on WordPress–not sure if it was always like this. Here are online places you can find me:

Medium, where I blog now: https://sewigget503.medium.com/

Bluesky, now my favorite social media: @sewigget.bsky.social

Facebook: S. E. Wigget or https://www.facebook.com/sewigget

Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@sewigget

In 2022, I was disciplined about submitting fiction more frequently, so I was published here and there:

-My poem “Bonsai Tree” in the webzine Grim & Gilded, September 2022 issue. https://www.grimandgilded.com/roe-v-wade

-My story “Theater Patron” in Kaleidoscope—A Queer Anthology, published by Cloaked Press. Proceeds for the latter go to The Trevor Project. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZHPBPWP/

-My story “Starless Night” in Sirens Call Magazine, Spring 2022, 57zine issue, http://sirenscallpub.com/ or http://www.sirenscallpublications.com/pdfs/SirensCallEZine_Spring2022.pdf

-My story “Portrait” in Variety Pack, 2022 issue 7: https://varietypack.net/issue-vii/

I’ve self-published numerous books:

Witch’s Familiar & Whimsical Stories is available in trade paperback and e-book. It’s a fantasy novella and short stories. The novella features a sardonic talking cat and a cross-dressing witch.

My travel memoir Every Day is Magical: A Buddhist Pilgrimage in India and Nepal:

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Day-Magical-Buddhist-Pilgrimage/dp/1499258895/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1706L50UQPXKO&keywords=Every+Day+is+Magical%3A+A+Buddhist+Pilgrimage&qid=1694052535&sprefix=every+day+is+magical+a+buddhist+pilgrimage%2Cspecialty-aps%2C206&sr=8-1

My magical realism novel about toxic relatives, Skeleton from the Closet: https://www.amazon.com/Skeleton-Closet-S-Wigget/dp/1976492955/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Skeleton+from+the+closet+Wigget&qid=1634082395&sr=8-1

Spells and Enchantments is the first volume in my middle grade fantasy series Rowanwick Witches:

Rowanwick Witches, Lesson 2: Gingerbread:

Violet & Steampunk Boy, my favorite book (volume 3) in my middle grade fantasy series Rowanwick Witches, is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Violet-Steampunk-Boy-Rowanwick-Witches/dp/1727383273/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Rowanwick+Witches&qid=1632983796&sr=8-2

A Witch House & Other Dreams

A miniature witch house I made… turned into a life-size witch house.

A few of us were inside the house, and there were Nazi-type people outside who wanted to invade, sinister and dangerous people. We were afraid and trying to figure out how to hide. The house had two rooms plus on the outside of these rooms—along two walls—there was a corridor where chopped wood was stacked. I was trying to picture how we could hide and how this corridor could help us hide. It was a small house without a lot of hiding choices. They were right outside the door.

Numerous people, including people I’d never met, were staying at my parents’ house.

At some point we were out behind the house, standing around talking on a plateau that I think was lower, a little further away, than the actual plateau behind the house.

Later people were inside the kitchen, and I was feeling some resentment toward someone. People sat around the table.

Later people had gotten up and walked away, maybe gone outside, and I looked at what used to always be my seat and felt some resentment that someone else had been sitting there.

That may have been the same dream in which about 20 or so people, mostly elderly, were gathered, seated outdoors in chairs lined up, several rows, facing something, maybe a podium. It was like a gathering for a townhall.

Across the street was a grassy area. A woman who wasn’t older than her 40s was walking a cute little dog, maybe something like a peach and cream Basset hound.

She brought the dog across the street to out gathering, while I was standing to the left side and hovering, undecided where to sit. She said something about giving the pup to Daddy and placed the dog—now looking smaller—on an old man’s lap in the back row (which was only about the fourth row).

I slipped into the row. There was one person on the left end, and at first I thought there was enough space on the bench to the right of that one person for me to sit down. I was carrying hot coffee in a white cup and placed it there.

I was about to sit down, when I noticed it looked like a narrower space than I at first thought. I eyed the rest of the row and scooted further over in front of people. They seemed to be indifferent toward me and like they didn’t want me to join them and were a little impatient for me to go away. I was realizing there wasn’t space for me after all and was about to get my beverage at the end. (So… this was one of my many socially awkward dreams.)

Stressful Dream: Fabric Store

Some time in the night, I woke from at least one dream definitely inspires by The Mary Shelley Club. I lay in bed thinking it tells you a book made quite an impression if it’s giving you disturbing dreams.

I had a stressful dream in which I worked at a fabric store that was open all night.

I was accustomed to working there during daylight hours, but a coworker or manager left a message on my answering machine saying I had to be there at 11 pm. Anxious, I ran around the house getting ready—taking a shower and shampoo and trying to decide what to wear. I kept looking toward windows and noticing it was dark out.

I looked at a digital clock, and to my shock it was already 11 pm. I was so late! I expected someone at work to call, but the phone didn’t ring. The house looked a lot like my parents’ house in Indiana. I sat down on my bed at some point.

Suddenly it was daylight. I looked at the big sliding glass door in the kitchen. I couldn’t understand how it could be daylight. And the clock said 1:09. At first I thought I was somehow 2 hours late for work, but then I realized: it must be 1:09 in the afternoon the next day!

Next I was at the fabric store and walking around and talking with a supervisor or coworker, a tall and stocky woman with shoulder-length sandy hair. She didn’t seem angry at me for not showing up, and neither did anyone else.

We kept walking while talking–not sure what we were discussing. I think she did most if the talking in a calm, friendly voice. We were next walking out back. The fabric store had a back yard with little sheds. We walked around in that area and a few inches past one shed down a path. There was a chain and padlock at the back of the path, and she unlocked and locked that, and we continued walking, to an entrance to one of the buildings. In the reality of the dream, I knew that customers had a lot of malice toward this shop (that sounds like Fabric Warehouse!). The chains and padlocks were to keep them from breaking into the sheds and stealing it vandalizing on the property.

Dreams from Different Eras

6:15 am:

I had a dream in which people take walks on a mountain trail or mountain trails and end up time traveling to a limited number of times and places. The most common is Nazi Germany or at least somewhere in Europe at that time…. and a young woman who was probably the main character dreaded returning to that time and place again and dying.

A large crowd of people were in a huge room, and there was a stage. Many people were on the stage. Several actors in a row dressed identically in khaki would come on stage and be introduces as this character they apparently played, probably an early 20th century historical figure. This one person with a microphone keeps introducing them as the character, and it becomes a running joke.

I’m watching this on tv and keep thinking the next actor will be Rufus Sewell because he’s the only one I’ve seen playing that character/historical figure, but it keeps turning out to be someone else—they always appear at first with their back to the audience. I don’t recognize any of them.

10 am:

I dreamed about an exquisite Victorian apartment building from the 1870s. It was the present in NYC. Jessica Jones lived in this apartment, and the landlord had stripped down the walls to the original surface—maybe removing layers of wallpaper.

The walls were mostly white, with crown moulding and elaborate baseboards and maybe picture rails. The walls in one room had a strip of patterned cornflower blue—at least one foot wide—and just above it a strip of patterned peach about the same width. I’m not sure if it was paint or wallpaper. It was exquisite—too bad it was only those strips (higher than wainscoting height) instead of the entire walls. The ceilings were extremely high—about 12 feet. I wondered if tenants were expected to change overhead lightbulbs themselves, and I was about to ask Jessica Jones this at the end of the dream.

Theater Dream

I had a dream that I was going to a theater and was excited to see the play. I had just recently seen a musical or opera and it was great to go see live theater again.

I wore a 1920s style pale dress with a mustard yellow velvet jacket. I was talking toward the theater’s entrance and other people were doing the same.

Next I was in the theater lobby and there were double doors wide open into the auditorium.  I pulled out my ticket and took a look at it. It was a comp ticket—$0. I also read the seat location… but now I’ve forgotten it. I think it was right of center. Looking around, I realized I was running out of time but also that I needed to use the restroom.

Next I entered a small, four-stall restroom. One woman came out of the furthest stall. She glanced at me and seemed disdainful. I didn’t want to go in the stall where she had just been. Next to that stall was one with a sign taped to the door, so I assumed it was out of order. I was about to go in a closed one. I remember seeing a knot mustard yellow cloche hanging from the corner of one stall—and I think that was seconds after I wished I was wearing a cloche.

Spooky Dreams

I dreamed about a young gay guy who… the earlier parts of the dream are vague now—I think he was out and about in a city.

Toward the end of the dream, he meets a drag queen and has a crush.

Next they’re at his house—it’s the first time we see inside his house, and it’s surprising.  There’s a huge room in which the walls are painted black and standing here and there throughout the room are glass display cases containing things. At least two items are manikin heads wearing the face masks of famous drag queens.  The first one is printed in a lively blue and yellow pattern.

Next—maybe the same dream or a different one—a drag queen meets my fictional character Roland, and he wants to learn how to tuck so he can be Doctor Frankenfurter for Halloween. So they go onto a dressing room, where the drag queen hits on him.

Next a couple of friends are watching behind a tree in horror in a dark forest—it looks like nighttime—and Roland and one other person are staggering down a path through the woods. The friends seeing this know they’re under the spell of so-and-so (presumably the drag queen). This person has a magical or hypnotic ability.

Napping:

I dreamed about a corrupt lab. It was kind of office-like, with multiple rooms. All white—floors, walls—solid white.

An employee in the lab displeased the people in charge, so they did what they normally did in such circumstances: everyone else gets out of the lab and leaves that one person behind. They flip a switch. Along one wall, a screen gradually goes up, and from behind the screen is this glowing orange light… orange or light blue. That light kills the person.  Radiation?

So it worked on one person. I’m not sure whether they intentionally left this one other person in there, someone who looked like they might be a somewhat humanoid mouse. The mouse person ran away from the light and hid in another room.

Next, a guy who worked in the lab returned for something. The mouse person—who I think was now a man—was hiding in a back room.

The lab worker saw the noise guy, but the noise guy stepped forward and began to strangle him. The lab guy was shocked and didn’t try too hard to protect himself. The mouse guy continued strangling him… still strangling him… got on top of him… may have grabbed a large piece of plastic sheeting and tried to smother him with it.

Dreams of Theater & Fabric

I dreamed about a woman in her 60s—she had short white hair and was an actor. She was sitting in a dressing room in a post-modern sort of building, and she kept looking at the enormous, wide, doorless entrance to the dressing room. She needed to change before the show, but there was a large yellow hallway right outside the entrance, and people kept walking past. She wanted to change in private, without people being able to see her from the hallway.

Next she was in the hallway with another woman about her age who was seated at a white plastic table across the hall from the dressing room. This woman was also an actor who had the same issue with that dressing room.

I had a dream set in a huge, plain, white kind of building with tall ceilings—I think part of a university. I was with one other person… and this guy in his thirties who was tall and very fit joined us.

He seemed like a teacher of some sort. He talked a lot, but he wasn’t loud or aggressive—his voice wasn’t annoying or anything like that. He talked about how he did things, and with a different voice he certainly would have sounded arrogant, but as it was I was slow to stop and think that.

He got onto the subject of sewing and wanted to give me advice on it or talk about something—maybe a specific sewing project.

While he was on this topic, we ended up at the far end and almost in the corner of a huge room that had lots of long folding tables and here and there people sitting around talking. It was like a school cafeteria, complete with the drab white tile look. But just behind that last long folding table I had set up a sewing area, with a sewing machine and piles of fabric, entire bolds of rayon challis.

He was talking about something and approached one bolt of fabric, hesitated, turned to another bolt of fabric, reached for it and touched it briefly… and he ended up picking up a bolt of pale peachy rayon challis as he talked about whatever sewing project he was talking about.

Dreams of September 7

I dreamed I was at a village square. I think that’s what it was, though it could have been Portland, I suppose.  It seemed like a village.

I wanted to visit a specific art gallery. I may not have been sure how to get there, but I had an idea. I started heading that way. Strangely, I felt compelled to crawl through the bright green grass.

At this stage, the imagery was like a cartoonish map…. in which I was crawling through the center of the village, and at least three people were crawling ahead of me. The front person was Karen Brocken, and she was wearing red.

Next I was walking right behind a few people and we’d just arrived at a modern building, mostly glass but partially white. It had huge windows, and it was an academic art department—

and here was the gallery and I recognized some of the art. I had seen some figurines elsewhere.

Next at least two people and I were inside that gallery and slowly moving around, admiring art. While I did this, I knew this was the wrong gallery and that I’d better hurry up and start heading to the correct one soon.

Earlier, I had a dream in which I had two young, pretty, and slender roommates. One of them looked like the lead in a film I saw last night. She said something fatphobic, and I blew up at her and demanded that she move out. She and the other roommate didn’t act like they took me seriously.  They didn’t speak to me 

 and didn’t look at me directly.

I had another dream that was quite vivid… I was thinking of it while describing the above dream….

I was a student, I think.  It was a school and there were a bunch of students. I was one of a few who were closed out of the classroom for some reason (disrupting class?).

The room had large windows, and I peered inside the room and watched. Students were doing presentations that day. A couple of girls were doing a presentation at the front of the room, standing near an upright piano. Everyone looked high school age. I was curious about the presentation, but the other students in the hallway weren’t and were being fidgety and whispering and maybe giggling.

Dreams from August 31st

I dreamed I had a new position at an office… and it was a strange position in which I had a lot of freedom to come and go and had my very own office. I was treated like I had a special position, and it was unique…. but because I was new, I felt anxious that I needed to make a good impression and if I didn’t, I was afraid I’d be fired.

I tended to come and go twice a day. I had a key to a padlock on a door that led outside.

At some point, I was in someone else’s office—2 guys shared this office (the walls and everything were white, it was post-modern and minimalist and had large windows). They were talking about something and also looking at a newspaper—an actual print newspaper—specifically an article about something I overheard a bit ago—how people on an island were protesting because a RepubliKKKlan politician, or several, were doing something bigoted, something against women, people of color, and queer people, etc. It sounded like the guys in the office were against the RepubliKKKlans, to my relief.

I walked over and spotted a print-out on one guy’s desk—apparently something about an open position. He noticed that I noticed it and said I could have it. I hoped to keep my present position, so I felt awkward but picker it up.

Next I was at an exterior door, the one with the rusty padlock. The door was reddish and rusty. It was like a metal sheet. A guy of Indian descent wanted to leave, too, and he waited for me to use the padlock. That made me feel special—that I was the one with the padlock.

Not sure, but that may have been the same dream in which I had a new house and a bunch of property, and it had several buildings. It was in a very small town, maybe a village. My property used to belong to some sort of organization, perhaps a rehab center.

There was a large white house (farmhouse). There was a separate block that I knew to also be my property.  One white building had a tall section and made me think of a defunct wool mill.

I drove past all this, maybe on my way to work. I felt excited about my new property, especially the house.

On a street, I was walking in one direction while there were a lot of people around, talking and whatnot. I walked past a building with a long reflecting window. Through this, I saw the reflection of a couple children running and I think a cop walking. Seeing the cop made me nervous, and I turned around and walked in the other direction.

While I walked down the sidewalk, I saw a bunch of people—I think in twos—with animals, mostly catching tiny, cute piglets and putting them in hutches. They were presumably rescue piglets. I thought it might be neat to adopt a couple, but then I figured they’d grow up to be large, and I wasn’t sure I wanted full size pigs on my property.

Napping:

I dreamed I worked in an office—I think the same one where I worked at in Kansas, but there was no mention of Kansas, and the office looked different. It was a large white space with rows and rows of desks.

At some point in the dream, I was standing by one other person in front of our manager’s desk—the same manager I remember). She was saying we could have tomorrow off. In this reality, we rarely went to this workplace in 2020 because of the pandemic. It was like a continual vacation… although realistically we would have taken the work home, at least after a couple months, anyway.

I felt excited about getting tomorrow off, but I also felt guilty about it because I got most of last year off.

I had a dream in which I may have been a college student.

There was a library where I was looking at antique books that may have been about the occult, about Spiritualism and ghosts, maybe about witches. The library looked Victorian—dark brown wooden bookcases in rows. Like the bookcases I just put in my dollhouse. I was in a section in a larger gap between two bookcases—there were brown, dark wooden benches beside each other, backs to the wall, and between the two was a flat surface piled with books. Maybe someone came along and told me I had to follow them—something like that was when I put my stack of books on the stack between the two benches.

We were two or three students with a white-haired woman professor in another room, not necessarily in the library. We may have left the building and walked somewhere on campus. Anyway, she was a bit stern and quite serious.

We stood talking with her, or maybe she did most of the talking and we listened. I was looking forward to a big project (maybe occult-related).

She said we could have the rest of the day off. I felt excited about that and was looking forward to doing my research.

I dreamed I was staying at a bed and breakfast. I felt socially awkward there. People didn’t seem to approve of me.

There was a coed group shower room. It was a long white tile room with 1920s-style sinks. I sneaked in there to take a shower while nobody else was present. Not sure what happened—maybe the shower broke or stopped working. It was unpleasant and disappointing.  I grabbed a bathrobe that was white with green lines, terry cloth. I put it on—lost in thought about how to explain the shower problem—and I hadn’t fastened the terry cloth belt when a guy was standing in front of me looking British and frowning at me. I hastily tied the belt. We had a brief conversation in which he was brusque and disapproving and basically accused me of stealing the robe. I walked off resolving to prove him wrong by leaving the robe at the B&B. But the dream ended before I left.

Dreams of August 29th, 2021

Well.. I often dream I’m a completely different person…

I dreamed I was from a squabbling family (that part is true, to put it mildly), but of the five now adult siblings, I was the only one who looked white and had white privilege.  Everyone else in the family was Japanese and looked Japanese. I felt ashamed of having white privilege and being the only one who did.

There were two brothers and two other sisters in addition to me, and the other two sisters were the only siblings who got along with each other.

Our parents were present, too. They were early in the dream—bossing us around or criticizing us for not getting along? They demanded we had to mall meet up at a specific location. We may have been at an amusement park.

As I was walking toward the meeting place, the ground and much of the place was plain white. I think there were some bright flowers here and there, like it was a collage. In the distance, as I walked, I noticed my two sisters walking together and looking pretty and slim. Next I noticed my two brothers walking together and squabbling, arguing, about something. I felt aversion—siblings, so of course—and didn’t want to walk along near them, so I tried to keep my distance.

I may have been the last to reach our meeting place.

The meeting place was a brown Craftsman bungalow surrounded by that plain white space. Members of the family were on the front porch or standing in front of the house.

I’m not sure what the lecture was about—I just remember the parent delivering the lecture said something about the bible, like that it doesn’t say such-and-such. This pissed me off, and I loudly said, “Fuck bible babble! That’s fucking bullshit.” Then I broke into a song/chant and sort of danced while chanting/singing, “Fuck that bible bullshit! Fuck that bible bullshit!”

Well, that was about my asserting my disgust in smug and self-righteous Goddess-rejecting monotheist hypocrites. Also, the family was Japanese because I just read George Takei’s graphic novel They Called Us Enemy.