A few weeks ago I confronted a gargantuan hairy orange spider with a three foot wide web on my back patio. It returned with a vengeance in a dream the other night. I was at a horse race track with this guy who was desperately trying to convince me to lay down a ton of cash on a horse. I told him it wasn’t a good idea because I knew the horse wouldn’t win; I had a premonition. As we walked along this curving walkway around the outside of the betting area, I froze in horror. Draped across the ceiling and down one side was a massive web, the domain of the orange spider, now grown to the size of the fruit of the same name. It scuttled about, occasionally dropping from the ceiling and then returning to the web’s center where it deflated its body to a more compact form. A man standing near the web noted with amusement the spider’s proximity and then returned to his conversation. Only I seemed to think, “Aaaaahhhh! Aaaaaaahh! Look at that big spider!”

Then last night I found myself in some Midwestern field complete with decaying barns. I needed to get back to my car or something, but I realized that the field was full of small webs, each containing a large black spider at its center. It looked as though someone had gone nuts with the clone stamp tool in Photoshop. The webs and spiders were all identical. I’m not sure what I did to escape the field.

The earliest part of the dream I can recall involves me and a crowd of tourists visiting a museum of old movies and special effects, created by Harry Knowles’ family. I remember it being cave-like, as though carved out of the bowels of bedrock. We had just finished a tour and were taking a break before the next event. I encountered a witty and beautiful woman, but I avoided her once I saw she was engaged. I decided to go take a ride on this hoverbike/jetski thing. Apparently it was a game where you zipped through the flooded part of the caverns, following the instructions of a disembodied computer voice: “turn left here,” bank right,” “spin.” Somehow racing along narrow corridors over very deep water seemed fun instead of life threatening.

Cut to me walking outside the museum complex to my car in the parking lot. Dave and I were supposed to go back to the hotel. He had left all his suitcases and stuff just lying on the ground near my car and I had to shove them all out of the way so cars wouldn’t run into them. I was waiting for Dave to come out when I realized he had an audition and that’s why I didn’t see him. So I found Kevin Waltman, a guy I knew in college, and we started catching up. I told him I had read a blurb about him in The DePauw, the alumni magazine. It said he had published a book of short stories. He denied it. I said maybe I had him confused with Jared Howe, another writer in our class. Kevin didn’t remember Jared and had to consult a yearbook to remind himself who that was.

I decided to go see how Dave’s audition was going. I found the museum’s cafeteria which had a large stage at one end. Dave was in the middle of a scene from a Shakespeare play I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist. I can’t remember his character’s name, but it was a name more often associated with a woman, Carmine or something like that. He played a baron trying to win the heart of a woman from a foreign kingdom. A housemaid had told him of a magic cloak that might be just the thing he needed to gain prestige. There was a white satin rope tied around Dave’s waist and whenever someone spoke of the magic cloak, stagehands would hoist him a little higher into the air, indicating his rising hopes. I noticed the housemaid was played by the attractive engaged woman I met earlier. The scene was being directed by Michelle Forbes, seated out in the cafeteria. I had a huge crush on her, the star of many recently cancelled television shows. At a break I went over to talk to her, asking what she thought of the performance. She said the woman playing Dave’s love interest was good, even though the actress had decided to rewrite all of her character’s lines.

Then someone in the downstairs apartment began talking loudly and woke me up.

Unfortunately I haven’t been chronicling some of my latest dreams, which have been a collection of summer blockbusters and indie sleeper hits. Now only a few fragments remain. I recall this remixed version of the Matrix sequels, at least ten times better than what they showed in the theater. I know what you’re thinking: impossible, right? What could have improved *those* cinematic gems? 😉 Well, for starters, *I* was in them. And I could walk on the ceiling. I rest my case.

Then the other night I had a strange spin on the old suddenly-I’m-back-in-college dream. This time I had “returned” to the University of Chicago in order to solve some kind of mystery on campus. I had to decide what classes would require the least amount of effort so as not to distract me from my investigations. Oh, and Noah Wylie was in the dream, too, perhaps riffing on his Donnie Darko role.

Unfortunately, that’s all I recall. In the future I’ll try to be a better reporter on the important developments in dreamland.