I Open The Doors To My Dreams

I leave my house to go shopping, and when I return everything has changed. The apartment building where I live has disappeared, and the farms that used to be here before the city was extended have returned. The nearby district of single family homes is gone too, it's all fields and cows. There's hardly any traffic, just one noisy tractor in the distance. I suddenly feel very lonely, and I decide I want to go downtown to be surrounded by people. Because the bus stop has disappeared as well, I have to walk. When I arrive in the city centre I see many people, but by far not as many as I remember. The city itself looks different too: some streets are canals like they used to be, and the factories that I know as abandoned are operational again. Then I realize what happened: I'm in the past! This past is a mixture of the 1970s, when I moved to Leiden as a student, and earlier periods that I only know from photo books. The situation is getting to my nerves, and I want to leave Lei...

It's the early 1960s. I am sitting on the floor in the living room of the house where I spent the first nine years of my life. But I'm not a child, I'm an adult: the person that is dreaming this dream. So how did I end up in the past, surrounded by my childhood toys? When I look around, I notice that my (adult) twin cousins are in the room as well. They have turned into statues, resembling the Anubis statues of ancient Egypt. In their stone-like hands, both cousins hold a carton of orange juice. Puzzled, I approach one of them to have a look at the orange juice. When I get close, the carton becomes transparent, as does the orange juice. I can see thousands of small creatures swimming inside the carton. Roughly half of them are from our planet's prehistory; the other half is of alien origin. The carton of my other cousin is similarly full of creatures, but they are different from the ones in the other carton. The two cartons are counterparts: male vs. female, positive vs...

In real life, I have retired from my job at a pharmaceutical company. In my dream I am invited back to attend an inspection meeting. In the pharmaceutical industry, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies execute inspections of pharmaceutical companies to investigate if quality and safety related to the development, manufacturing and marketing of medicines is maintained. Apparently, my former company was to be subjected to such an inspection, and my presence was required. The meeting takes place on the eighth floor of the company headquarters, and the whole floor is turned into an auditorium consisting of a central stage surrounded by circles of seats. There is also plenty of standing room. The meeting is absolutely packed; I estimate between 100 and 200 people are attending, most of them standing. When I arrive, the representative of the Agency is already at the center of the auditorium, speaking through a microphone. He's asking questions that the attendees have...

The Randstad job agency has communicated that they will start to accept submissions of people's home-made inventions. They will pitch them to companies, and when a company accepts an idea it will hire the inventor and help him or her to commercialize the invention. I have invented a Living Map. My prototype is a large piece of cardboard that shows, in miniature and in real-time, everything that is happening in my city, Leiden. Because it is raining I wrap my investion in plastic, and get on my bike to go to the Randstad office. However, it has been raining so heavily that the bicycle tunnel on my route is flooded. I have to get off my bike and wade through 30 centimeters of water to reach the other side. Just when I'm getting off my bike a rook lands on the front fender and punctures the front tire with its long, sharp beak. Now I'm in trouble. Not only will I miss my appointment because I have to walk to the job agency, I won't even be able to find my destination becau...

It's the last day at my old high school in Rotterdam, and I must prove that I am worthy of the school, and of passing on to the next phase in my life, by writing a paper. The paper needs to be about a subject that I know nothing about, and has to be submitted at the end of the day. I go home to work, but there are no results because I am unfamiliar with the subject, and the internet, computers and Wikipedia are still decades into the future. I decide to retreat to a distant, quiet place to be able to better concentrate on the job, and I find myself in a wooden cabin in the woods near the fictional town of Twin Peaks in the US. Every morning the cabin is also a hotel where I have breakfast, and this hotel looks like the police office from the Twin Peaks TV-series. While working in isolation it starts to dawn on me why I need to work on this subject: to lift myself to the next level. Once I understand this I have the the knowledge and the energy to finish. When done I enthusiasticall...

Mirjam and I are on a day trip in the Dutch province of Zeeland. We are in a picturesque town, where we are participating in a guided tour. During the tour, the guide takes us to a location on the intersection of a narrow old street and the city square. She points to three holes in the ground, right in the middle of the street, with a diameter of ca. 50 cm. The holes contain water, and they seem to be quite deep. "The holes are connected to the ocean, and each hole belongs to a species", she explains, "The hole to the right belongs to the seals. The hole in the middle to the dolphins. And the hole to the left to the whales." As if they were waiting for these words to be spoken, a seal, a dolphin and a whale appear in their respective holes. Though the animals are far bigger than 50 cm, especially the whale, they have no trouble passing through the holes. They seem to be at ease, and slightly amused by the behavior of the people in the tour group. Their faces are wis...

It's late afternoon. I'm at the bus station in Leiderdorp, waiting for bus 100 to take me home to Leiden. The Leiderdorp bus station is a large square in the center of town, a busy regional hub where countless buses come and go on their way to destinations all over the country. I've been here many times in previous dreams, even though this location doesn't exist in the real world. One of the people waiting at the bus stop is a young man with a dog. He explains that he needs to deliver his dog to "number 62", but he doesn't know where that is, and he has very little time. I tell him that it's not far from where we are, and that it wouldn't be any trouble for me to take the dog there. He is very grateful and hands over the dog leash. I leave the bus stop with the dog. It's a friendly, brown, long-haired animal with long ears, who is happy to be with me. Because the destination is nearby I go on foot, but at the same time we find ourselves inside ...