It's Coming...Are You Ready?

Okay, I don't know quite how to explain this video, which is unlike anything I've done before. It's based on some dreams I've had recently (I know, my dreams...) about airplanes and time travel. Yes, I'm a sci-fi nerd and kind of a weirdo. I'm also an airline kid (my dad and several other family members were pilots) and I'm under a lot of stress, and flight patterns have always flickered through my subconscious at night. I also realized a few weeks ago that flights from the north and south take a westerly turn across the lake right by my neighborhood all night, and there's a blinking white highway of incoming airplanes over my building all night long. (You can see airplanes soaring over buildings at the end of the video...I know, I have a crappy camera.)

A strange poem and some music were flitting around my head last night as I tried to sleep. It seems like no matter how busy my brain is during the day, and how hard I try to stomp down reflective thoughts about The Big Picture and What Life's All About, they are running through the universe that is my mind all night, with a groovy little music soundtrack. Anyway, it's less than two minutes long, so if you're already here, give it a look and lemme know what you think.

Orange You Glad You're a Dreamer?

The psychic dream run continues. Last night I dreamt I was finishing up a visit in Indiana with my parents, and trying to pack my cats into their carrier for the ride home to Chicago. I kept looking into various carriers that were all over the back yard and saying, "These aren't my cats! Whose are these? Mom, where are my cats?"

There were purple cats, and tie-dyed cats, and glittery cats, and one that was speaking French and smoking a cigarette. Carrier after carrier had some unlikely combination of real cats and fantasy cats. The last one I looked into had two baby orange and white kittens in it. They had milk on their mouths and some burrs stuck to their scruffs.

"Well, at least these look real," I said.

Mom walked over to me. "Oh, yeah, you should pay attention to those. I think they want to be yours."

So -- back to reality now -- about an hour ago I was walking from my brother's house to my house, talking on the phone to my mom, and a big orange and white cat came strolling up the middle of the sidewalk toward me. I immediately started giggling. Here's another one, I thought. (And yes, I also thought "I can't wait to blog about this," because I am a nerd.)

He was one of those awesome city cats who's very self-assured, striding down the sidewalk like a person. He walked right up to me and meowed a greeting, like someone saying "Hey, I was hoping I'd bump into you." I petted his head, and he jumped up for a little more affection, twirled around my legs long enough to leave three little black burrs on my pant leg, and trotted off.

This interrupted the conversation with my mom, who said "What's going on? What are you giggling about?"

"There's this cat...oh, I can't explain." I picked the burrs off my pants and looked back at the cat, who gave me a funny little glance over his shoulder and disappeared into some bushes.

Okay, universe, I'm listening. You've warmed me up. I'm paying attention. I know I'm a vessel, or a conduit, or whatever flaky metaphor you prefer. Now what?

Freelance Lodgeburgers, Psychic Understudies, More

The Lincoln Lodge has given me the thumbs up, and I'm lined up for a guest set there in the next few weeks.

I didn't get into Time Out Chicago's "Funniest Person in Chicago" contest, but Dan did! I'm going to try to go to the contest at the Lakeshore so I can scream on his behalf.

Along with a new communications partner, I'm going to do the PR for the Chicago Advertising Federation for the next year. This means working with people like McDonald's CCO, who's a very savvy and cool woman.

Last night at ChUC I freaked everybody out with talk about my returning premonition dreams. I'm being called everything from "touched" to "spooky." One of the highlights of the last go 'round of this sort of psychic adventure happened one night when I was 13, and I was walking through my family's living room while then-President Reagan was giving a speech on tv. I absent-mindedly mumbled three sentences of his speech at the same time he said them. My family, gathered around the tube, spazzed out. "How did you know what he was going to say?" And I said "He said that last night on tv. We watched it together, remember?" And they said "No, this is a live broadcast, you little weirdo...he's never said that before." I know, I know, this is the kind of thing that got women burned at the stake not so many generations ago. Maybe I should stop talking about it.

I'm doing rehearsals for my friend Nancy's play about her experiences as a comedy writing teacher at Second City. I'm an understudy and will probably be onstage only 2 or 3 times. The show is directed by the very awesome John Hildreth, who does work with Second City's BrownCo, and is a lot of fun. Nancy totally tricked me into this by saying, "I know you've never acted, and you're big 'fraidy-cat, but this will be good for you, very low-key. You'll be offstage, script in hand, reading into a mic." Guess what was required of me at the first rehearsal? Acting, dancing, and singing -- including solo singing. Ha ha ha. Very sneaky, Nancy.

Oh, and Technorati alerted me to the fact that a blogger in Plano, Texas linked to an ancient blog post on Bella Rossa, and referred to me as a "failed girl comedian." He seems to have a good sense of humor, so I gave him a friendly poke in return, acknowledging that yes, perhaps at the "few months" mark of my comedy career, I should have reached stratospheric heights of fame already, and maybe I should pack it in. Oh, silly internets, I love you so.

I Don't Go to Sleep to Dream

My dreams are weirding me out lately. I've been having a lot more premonition dreams -- dreams that contain details of things that end up happening within the next few days. I've had them all my life. I've dreamt of the unexpected deaths of famous people, unforeseen natural disasters, entire sentences from Presidential press conferences, unplanned visits from long-lost friends, conversation snippets, big and little things -- you name it. I think of it as a loop. The initiation of the loop is the dream, and the closing of the loop is that detail manifesting in the waking world.

I've had premonition dreams since I was a little girl. They happen more when I'm stressed/excited and taking on new challenges. The last time I had an overwhelming amount of them, I was 13. I tried keeping a written record but it was more than I could keep up with. I kept trying to talk to people about them, trying to understand why they were happening, but people were freaked out, and the experience was overwhelming, so I shut them out.

But lately, as I've begun opening myself up for more interaction with others, and giving myself more freedom from within to do things like perform comedy, they've begun coming back, and I'm trying to incorporate them peacefully into my existence. I've had about ten in the last week. Little, cute, amusing details. Maybe warm-ups for bigger, more meaningful ones to come? I was trying not to think about them -- I have so much on my mind right now -- but then last night, a loop connected from a dream I had Tuesday night, in a very frightening way.

After the great ChUC show Tuesday, I came home, exhausted but exhilarated, and dreamt of a threatening male figure emerging from the darkness. The emotional component of this dream was in the context of the show, and me putting myself out into the world in a way I never have before. I'm excited about everything that I'm doing, but it makes me feel very vulnerable sometimes, too. The man in the dream was bedraggled and bearded, in a red plaid shirt and a dirty ballcap, and I knew to be afraid of him. I was trying to avoid him but whichever way I turned, he was in my path, like a glitch in a video game. Suddenly, we were face to face. He spoke to me in a voice that had crackly static and mic feedback in it. "I'm Dan Allison, and I've been thinking about how I'd like to hurt you." I woke up with a pounding heart, and it took me awhile to get back to sleep.

Then -- back to reality -- last night I was riding my bike in the darkness, home from my office, much later than I would have liked. The light was out on my bike, and I'd forgotten my helmet, and I was a little edgy. On an unlit block, I had a creeping sensation up the back of my neck. There was no one around. I dodged some construction machinery by hopping up on the sidewalk. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, a lone man was walking in my direction, out of the darkness. I slammed to a stop when I realized the sidewalk was blocked with construction materials. The man got just close enough for me to make out some details: he was bearded and wearing a red plaid shirt, with a stitched name tag: "Dan." He was wearing a dirty ballcap with a corporate logo patch: "Allison." I rode like hell all the way home.

Yes, I dreamt at least six specific details about a threatening person, and then I saw a person with those six characteristics the next day. I even got two names right, pulled from the ether of my mind and this mysterious universe we find ourselves knocking about in.

What exactly was the point of that, universe? Come on, I'm not hard to scare. Is this a girl thing? A hormonal thing? A crazy sensitive introvert thing? A cosmic thing? If it's some sort of tool or window, I'd like to understand and be able to use it. And I'd like to sleep a bit more peacefully. PM me with some details, Lords of the Cosmos, please.