Thursday, March 29, 2012

roadblock and white chocolate

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was riding in a car with my mom and my oldest nephew. My mom was driving, and my nephew and I were in the backseat. We were driving up onto some bridge over a wide blue river which possibly ran through or at the edge of some big city. I was reading to my nephew from some book that I liked. But I couldn't tell whether my nephew liked the story or whether he was bored by it. He may have been half-laying against my left arm while I read to him.

We were trying to get through. But at one point, not too far up onto the bridge, the road was blocked. It seemed to take us by surprise. We almost crashed into the place that was blocked off. The area looked like it was under major construction. There were big, thick, wooden posts standing up all through the area. We may have tried to get through, but there wasn't even enough space between posts for our car to get through.

My mom pulled the car backwards, then turned it counter-clockwise to get heading back down the bridge. I may have been insisting to my mom, before we'd gotten to the block, that we could get through this road on the bridge. But now I had to admit we couldn't.

As we were turning, I saw a triangular, metal-pole swing-gate which was blocking off yet another road going in the direction we'd wanted to go in. This swing-gate had a metal sign on it with a black figure of a man, like are usually seen on traffic signs.

The figure had one of his hands reached out, and a circle, not originally part of the sign, floated over the man's hand, like some kind of magic orb. It looked like the circle had been naturally rusted into the sign, and that it was just luckily placed. But I also thought that a group of punk-rocker-like kids had put the orb-like symbol onto the sign, as some smart-alecky reaction to the road being closed.

We had turned around and were driving at a pretty normal speed again. I had finished reading the first story to my nephew. I thought for sure he'd want me to stop reading. But now he asked me to read him a book of his.

I was surprised and pleased. But I also felt bad. Maybe my nephew really had been bored hearing my stories. Maybe he'd have been happier if I'd read him his own stories from the beginning.

The story he had me read him was titled A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. I opened the book and started reading it. It was like a children's picture-book retelling of the classic story.

I was about halfway through the book -- that may have been where I started the book. But the picture, which ran across both pages, was a cartoony image of a kind of icy, antarctic landscape with a pink sky in the background. There were a few baby dragons all over the place, with two baby dragons in the foreground. One of the dragons was black and looked like the main dragon in the movie How To Train Your Dragon.

I wondered what the heck this stuff had to do with Mark Twain's novel. But I figured that maybe I'd remembered the story wrong. I thought that maybe the story involved a time machine and the main character travelling up through time, through different time periods, before finally reaching King Arthur's time. I thought that that would be like dramatic buildup to the main attraction.

So I started reading. The story seemed to be more about the dragons than anything else. The story seemed to involve one of the dragons "huffing and puffing," like the wolf in "The Three Little Pigs."

At some point my mom asked me and my nephew if we wanted some white chocolate, or if we wanted another white chocolate. I knew she meant something like an ice cream bar on a stick, or a Fudgesickle, except made out of white chocolate. I could see an ice cream bar on a stick, with vanilla ice cream, coated in white chocolate.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

dirty car

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with my mom, my second oldest nephew, and possibly another one of my nephews. Somehow we were all sitting in the car like it was a room. The space had no seats, just the small walls and low ceiling of a car. The walls and ceiling of the car were orange. The car was filthy -- packed with all kinds of garbage and clutter.

My mom had gotten mad at me because I had tried to clean my room. However she had gotten mad at me, she had made me feel really bad about having cleaned my room. It was like this filthy car we were in was her room, and since I had cleaned my room, I was purposely making a bad statement about the filthiness of her own room. She made me feel like I was betraying her somehow.

So I was now trying to prove that I hadn't actually cleaned my room. I was even trying to prove it to myself. At some point I may even have convinced myself that this filthy car was my room.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

college violence; rent payment

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I got into a long line that ran out outside the door of a building. The building may have been on a college campus, possibly the campus for my old university. The building was tall and white, made out of stone that kind of seemed to be chipping away.

I was in line with a group of college kids. I was telling myself, even as I was in line, that maybe it would be a good idea for me to go back to college. The line was something like a class registration line or a line for picking up the books for my classes.

Now that I was in line, I was starting to have second thoughts about going back to school. This long line, I thought, would probably only be the first of many long lines I'd be going through in school. Did I really want to do all that? And what about my old major? Would I really have to go back to the theatre department? What would people think of me?

But something about the theatre department made me think that things wouldn't be so bad after all. If people were there who remembered me, I might end up feeling comfortable and having a good time.

I was now up at a counter, talking with someone behind the counter. It seemed like it was after hours. The place was really empty and quiet. There were some window walls, and everything seemed dark outside. Inside, the light was a harsh, bright, greenish fluorescent. The counter I stood at was high, like a judge's bench. But the person behind it may have been dressed like a chef in a 1950s diner.

The guy behind the counter may have been trying to pacify me. The situation may have been tense, even though I didn't know it. I thought we were just talking normally, about day-to-day stuff. And we probably were. But the man may only have been talking to me this way to calm me down. I may have just finished beating the heck out of some guy, just smashing his face into the ground. But I wasn't quite sure if I'd actually done this.

Now a woman came up to the counter on my left. She was short and skinny, with a kind of boyish look. She wore a slim, shiny, black leather jacket. She had dark, olive colored skin and dark, reddish hair. She was smirking and saying something annoying. I knew she was getting ready to start trouble, and that she was trying to intimidate people beforehand, so people would be afraid to stop her before she started trouble.

I wouldn't let the woman intimidate me. I got really angry at her. I picked her up and began slamming her face into the ground. I was dragging the woman all the way to the door, bashing her face into the ground.

Now I was being walked back through the building, away from the front door. I couldn't quite believe or remember anything I'd done. But I looked at the floor and saw a trail of blood. It almost looked like stamps on the ground, like someone had stamped individual Rorschach designs on the floor in blood.

A couple of people, tall men, maybe one of them dressed like a hospital orderly, may have walked with me. One of the men had now gone out through some back door of the room we were in, probably to get a group of other guys to take care of me. In the meantime, I had to sit on a bench with some other guy. This guy was like the chef guy who had been behind the counter. We spoke calmly, but I could see that the guy was waiting for me to get violent again.

Dream #2

I was in an apartment, just moving in, even though the apartment looked furnished and completely moved into already. My sister may have been with me. The landlady was also with us. She was a young, blonde, pretty woman.

I had to give the woman my first month of rent money. But it turned out that instead of owing rent for a month, I only owed rent for a few days. My whole month's rent wouldn't actually be due until the following month.

Surprised, I pulled either some money or a check or money order for the small amount the woman had named out of my pocket and handed it to the woman.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

great grandmother suggests college

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom on an upper floor of some small building, either a big house or a small apartment building. The room I was in was a rented room or a furnished apartment. Most of my view was taken up by my bed. All the bed had on it was a lot of white sheets. The rest of the room had a lot of white in it as well. But the room was kind of dim, as if only one light were on, somewhere behind me.

I got the feeling that my landlady (possibly an old landlady from my waking life) was coming for me. Possibly I hadn't paid the rent, or possibly I had done something bad in the room that my landlady needed to speak to me about. But I really didn't want to have to face my landlady. So I left as quick as I could, to avoid her.

Now, having walked away from the room, I was out on my great grandmother's lawn. The light was like late afternoon: a kind of cool blue-grey. I was trying to get away from the building (which wasn't there anymore) as quickly as I could. But my great grandma opened the front door of her house and called for me.

I turned around, still thinking that the person I was hearing was my landlady. I looked in through the shade of the doorway and saw my great grandma. She looked younger and healthier than she had been when she died -- maybe like she was in her early seventies, rather than in her late nineties. She was wearing a small, white sweatshirt.

Finally I realized where I was and who I was talking to. I turned (reluctantly?) and walked back toward my great grandma's house. My great grandma had me come inside. She sat me down in the living room. I sat in the chair she usually sat in while she was alive, and she sat in the chair to the right of that chair.

My great grandma asked me how I was, and then started talking to me about my life. She seemed to be suggesting to me that I go back to college. She asked me something like, "Have you ever considered Pace?"

The only Pace I knew of was Pace University in New York City. I hadn't actually considered that school. I didn't think I would ever consider the school, but I didn't want to tell my great grandma that, and seem to be contradicting her. My great grandma may already have seemed a little frustrated with me somehow, possibly because I was definitely being wishy-washy about going back to school.

I now noticed that my bookbag was sitting on the footstool in front of the chair. It had popped wide open. A new package of baby's diapers sat positioned about halfway out of the bag. I knew the diapers were mine -- like I had bought them for myself to wear.

I didn't want my great grandma to see the diapers and know they were for me. I tried to hide them. But now there was another new package of diapers, in a kind of thin, plastic shopping bag, right next to my bag. There were two big, new packages of diapers right in front of me! The package coming from my bookbag was colored red. The one in the shopping bag was green.

I wanted to put the diapers on right now. But I didn't want my great grandma to see me doing so. I was seriously thinking of doing something like hiding behind a chair so that I could change into a diaper without leaving the living room. But I didn't think that would work. I was half-lazily (like in a reverie) and half-frantically trying to figure a way to put a diaper on.

But suddenly I was in my great grandma's bathroom. I figured I must have gotten there by making some excuse to my great grandma about how I needed to go to the bathroom. I had all the bags with me, and I was putting on a diaper.

I looked at my diapered bottom in some (???) mirror. I noticed that the diaper-bottom was torn. It was like the leggings of the diaper were like the stitching around the leggings of panties, and that all the padding of the diaper had pulled away from the legging. Parts of the backing may have been shredding a bit as well, creating a striped or netted look.

I was now in another place. I may have just been with a group of friends, taking care of some task. We were now coming back home, as if we all lived in the same dorm-like apartment. I was rushing down to my room in the basement with a feeling of happiness, the brisk excitement of having been out with friends.

The basement felt full of activity, like there were a number of people who lived down there, and like they all shared some kind of common space like a living room, along one wall of which were the doors to the individual bedrooms. I ran into my room, but I left the door half-open.

I looked at myself in a full-length, kind of narrow mirror on the wall. I realized I needed to change my clothes quick! I couldn't quite believe it, but I was dressed like a girl! I wore a tiny, lavender-colored skirt, a baby blue shirt, and something like white nylons or fishnet stockings. I was also wearing a diaper, which I may have peed in. The diaper was visible from under the skirt. My body may also have been the body of a skinny, teenage girl, even though I was still myself, and a guy.

I knew I needed to change before anybody saw me. (It didn't occur to me that, if I looked like this coming into my room, everybody I was out with must have seen me already.) But as I was changing, my brother may have come into the room. His only reaction to me may have been that I needed to stop screwing around. He was impatient for us to get somewhere. And my slowness was really making him disappointed in me.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

room broken into; poorly written men's ads

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was out somewhere. I was on my phone with someone, possibly with my mother. I had possibly been living back at home again. I had a room down in the basement. Apparently I had a lock on my door down there.

But somebody else who lived with us, a person I knew through a connection at my job, also lived there. My mom was now explaining to me that this guy, AV, had "removed the lock" on my door. He had taken the entire lock, latch and all, from off my door.

AV had been suspicious of me. So he'd decided to get into my room, to see if I had anything that would justify his suspicions. Once he was in my room, though, he took a number of things.

I was back in my room, looking through my stuff and trying to figure out what had been taken. My mom was somewhere nearby. I told my mom that she needed to tell AV he needed to put the lock back on my door. But I didn't think it would matter. Either AV wouldn't listen to her, or else, if he did, he'd just keep taking it off and putting it back on. And now that he'd taken a little of my stuff, he'd just keep taking more and more.

Dream #2

I was in a movie theatre, walking in front of the front row, from the left side of the theatre to the right. The theatre had pretty steep seating. The light was dim, as if the show were still a few minutes away from starting.

The theatre was pretty full of people. Everybody was talking kind of randomly, as if waiting for the movie to start. But there was also a feeling that whatever the "show" was these people were here for, it was alrady in progress. Through all the random talking there was a pervasive feeling of attention, as if the audience were already attending to a show.

I was probably getting ready to walk out of this movie theatre and to another theatre, where a movie I wanted to watch was about to begin. I had a feeling that the show I was going to was not going to be very popular. It was probably an old and important, but independent and experimental, film.

Either some woman, maybe in her thirties, nice-looking, and kind of wealthy-looking, was either near and behind me, or else I was imagining talking to the woman. She may even have been in one of the seats.

I was telling this woman about something that had been done to make a little sensation in the theatre I was heading to. I told the woman that the only reason it had been done was to get more people into that theatre. As I told the woman this, I saw a strange-looking woman in a small, turban-like headdress and big, white-rimmed sunglasses, and a shaggy dog whose fur had something wet and electric about it.

I knew that the movie I was heading to might have very few people in it. I worried that if too few people came to the show, that the theatre people might just close down the show. But I also thought that maybe they would just run the show regardless.

I felt kind of bad. I imagined that if I was one of only two or three people in the theatre, the show would, in effect, be run largely for my sake. I didn't want people to feel obligated to run something just for my sake. But I also knew that the show was really important, and that it wasn't something I wanted to miss. So if it ran, I'd probably have to see it.

I may now have "woken up," or lifted myself out of some kind of reverie. I was sitting in another movie theatre. I was sitting in the middle of the seating area. But the seating area was very strange. There were all kinds of different levels. Blocks of seats may have been set in different directions, though everything vaguely seemed to face the screen. I couldn't see the screen, but I knew it was there.

As I had "woken up," the film that had been playing had ended, and the tail end of some final advertisement had been playing. I knew that the ad had been for solar panels, or for a company that built huge solar arrays. But either the logo of the company or the solar cells themselves had something of the look of Duracell batteries.

As the advertisement ended, and the lights had come back up, people were booing the ad. Some of my friends, a few overweight, Latino guys, were seated behind me. They hadn't been booing. But now they were kind of joking that everybody had been booing because they hated solar power.

I looked down at my hands. I considered how I had been really involved with the solar power industry in the past. I thought I couldn't just stand by and let people insult the solar industry. If people were booing because they didn't like the solar industry, then I needed to stand up and defend the solar industry.

I may have heard a few people getting a final few boos in. So I walked up to them and asked them, "Were you guys booing because you don't like solar power?"

The people I was speaking with were a few rows away, up, and behind me. But they had a wide, open space in front of them, so that it was easy for me to stand in front of them while I spoke with them. The people were white, young, and good-looking, probably a little wealthy.

One of the people, a pretty, blonde woman, said, "No. We weren't booing solar power. We were booing the commercial. It was supposed to be all about men, and manly themes. But everything the men were saying in the ad sounded like something a woman would say. It's obvious the writers were either all women or men who had no experience with the manly stuff they were writing about."

I thought this was pretty true. And, for some reason, I could see somebody's arms at a keyboard, as their hands were getting ready to type out the copy for the ad. The person was wearing a bunch of huge, thin, metallic bracelets on each arm. I kept wanting to call these bracelets "bangles" as I stood in front of the people I'd confronted. But I couldn't say it, for some reason.

As I remembered, the bracelets didn't even fit on the arms. I thought that as soon as the person tried writing, the bracelets would just clank of the person's arms and all over the place. Something about this made laughable the thought that this person (who may have been a man) was trying to write a manly ad.

But I also remembered another ad. I tried to tell the people about this ad, too. But I couldn't seem to do this, either. So I just remembered the ad. This one had the theme of some guy in prison, writing to family members or very close friends. The theme of his letter was supposed to be the goodness of some product or service. But the letter of this apparently manly prison man was written and spoken with such a flouncing, effeminate attitude, that I had found the whole ad laughable.

My view shifted from the memory of this ad, to myself talking on a cell phone in an environment very much like that of the ad, to a kind of empty apartment, through which I was walking as I spoke on the cell phone. I was probably speaking about the advertisement to the person on the phone with me.

The rooms of the apartment were all aligned, like in a railroad apartment. The rooms all had dark walls and a dark, stage-like floor. As I reached the far end of the apartment, I saw something on the floor. It looked to me like pyrite -- fool's gold -- except that it was silvery. It seemed to have a fibery kind of texture to it, too. Somehow, playing with a hard, plastic cup, like a Yahtzee cup, with my feet, I managed to trap the chunk of rock underneath the cup.

I was now walking back through the rooms of the apartment. I was now talking on the phone about trying to find an apartment. I spoke about some place I'd gone to see. The person I'd met at the apartment had sounded really nice over the phone. But when I'd gotten to the place to meet him, he turned out to be some snivelling, little jerk from one of my old jobs, a guy who always messed up my name on purpose, to make it sound like some confused version of a girl's name.

So I was looking for another apartment. The person I'd been on the phone with (I was apparently no longer on the phone) had left me a stack of rental ad sections from the newspaper. I thought this was kind of silly, as I'd already gotten rental sections of my own. But I didn't want to seem unappreciative or impolite. So looked through the ads.

I picked up one paper and began walking out of the room I was in. This room was the only lit, furnished room in the apartment. It was lit with a gentle, incandescent light. I'd stood in front of a kind of short, but wide and full, bed at first. The ads had all been on the bed or on the floor in front of the bed. Now I was walking towards the exit of the room, and passing a wooden bookshelf.

The newspaper I was looking at it had a big, rectangular section cut out of the upper left (?) corner, as if a few good ads had been clipped and saved. I was about to discard this paper by throwing it onto the bookshelves. But either before or as I did, one ad caught my eye. It was for apartments in "Astoria" (in Queens?). The apartments were running for $685 a month. I thought this was a good deal.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

bleeding woman

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was standing out on some kind of promenade before a wide river. It was a bright and sunny day. The pavement of the promenade was some kind of pale stone or concrete that reflected the sun pretty brightly. A tall chain link fence bounded the promenade and blocked off the river, which glared in the sunlight.

On the other side of the walkway from the river was a wide, lawny field. I stood by the fence. A couple people stood with me. Some other people stood on the field. All the people around me seemed to be old, and they all seemed to be dressed in nice business suits or nice lounge wear and leisure jackets.

A young woman sat on the ground. She may have been my sister, or she may have been like my sister. She was wrapped up in blankets. She seemed to be suffering from some kind of illness. I knew she was sick. But nobody else seemed to think she was, or even to regard her.

But now the young woman began bleeding. At first she was bleeding a little bit -- from somewhere. But then it was like something had jabbed into her ribs, or like she had jabbed something into her own ribs, on her right side. I could see that the stab had been made through some kind of beige colored Ace bandage. The young woman began bleeding a lot.

For a moment I was looking at some weird kind of processed food. It was like a small, plastic canister of soup. The canister was shaped like a baby food jar. But it was bigger, and colored a solid blue, almost like a jar for powdered paint.

Inside the jar were what looked like cubes of bouillon. I knew that when water was added to these cubes, they would dissolve into broth. But there were also little sheets or flakes of some kind of white material. At first I thought these were ingredients for the soup, like slices of chicken. But then I realized these were also items that dissolved into broth.

It seemed like this whole soup was just broth. I'd wanted to eat the soup at first. But now that I realized it was all just broth, I no longer wanted it. It seemed too salty for me.

I may have seen the bleeding woman one more time.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

movies, candy, and a time cannon

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was possibly watching a documentary about the history of movies. But I may have been seeing scenes from movies while I myself "narrated" my own thoughts over them. The main theme of the scenes I watched appeared to be that in talkies, there was a period where the acting was really bad and overly improvised, but that this bad quality got better over time.

There was a question as to why this occurred. The narrator gave some really complex reason. I don't remember the reason anymore. But it may have had something to do with the fact that people were still coping with the complexity of the technology, sothat they couldn't act intelligently in front of it.

An illustration was given. Some silent film, which looked like a German Expressionist film, except that it seemed to star Buster Keaton, was shown. Two characters stood in front of a wall. The wall was bare, but sooty and grimy. The Buster Keaton character stood on the left. Another character, completely clad in black, as if wrapped and wound in a black sheet, stood on the right. This character, which was like a shadow-monster, but had possibly disguised itself as someone Buster Keaton loved, now made a lunge at Buster Keaton. This scene was supposed to illustrate the emotional intelligence of silent-era films.

The next scene was a very early talkie, and one of the first films that Orson Welles had ever appeared in. It was supposed to be a retelling of some famous historical moment, maybe as far back as ancient Roman times. The scene showed all the characters up in the tower of some castle, which may have hung over some sharp precipice. The characters all stood out on some balcony.

Orson Welles was giving a reenactment of some great speech. But he was made up to look fat and old, like his Hank Quinlan character, and he was dressed only in a pair of pants and a ribbed undershirt. His speech was horrible, overimprovised, and rambling. And all the other characters were dressed in average evening wear from the 1940s.

I now took over the role of the narrator. I was explaining the idea to my friend, possibly my friend T, as if she were watching the documentary with me. But my view now actually faded into color. And it was like I was now walking in the balcony with the actors. It was like we had finished our takes for this scene. We were now heading downstairs for a break. The cast was mostly young women. I may have been a young woman, too.

I was telling my friend that the real reason acting was so bad when talkies first came into being was that people still didn't think of film as a serious art. So most of the actors didn't take their acting seriously. I made the point that it wasn't like nowadays, when actors are like royalty. It took a while to get that way. And as it got that way, people took acting in films more seriously, and acting got better.

I had been walking down the stairwell of some mansion or castle with all the cast. But now I was walking down a stairway in some nice, but modern, upper middle class house. I grabbed onto the railing of the stairway. I began to slide down the railing, holding my head and chest close to the railing, and bending the rest of my body up and away from the railing. I eventually landed down in the living room, which was kind of small, but nice, with grey carpet and puffy, white furniture.

As I did this I explained to my friend (who was still in that other place where I was, too, still watching the documentary) that in the first days of film, if an actress tried to be in the company of a duchess, she would --

I don't think I finished this idea. Instead, I now got sidetracked by a bowl of candies on the coffee table in a u-shaped area made by the furniture. My sister (into whom my friend may have changed?) was now standing with me. My sister mentioned the candies. So we both had some.

I chose some sucker which was green and dotted with some kind of salt. My sister cooed a bit as she saw that, as if I'd made a really good choice. The sucker was apparently a nice mix of sweet, hot, and salty. But I looked closer at the ingredients of the sucker. The sucker was all made out of some weird chemical insead of sugar. The chemical had just two letters, a hyphen, then two numbers for its name. I thought that couldn't be good.

I was now reading a letter. There may now have been a third person in the room with us: a man who looked like the founder of the company I work for IWL. He was playing the role of some kind of FBI agent.

The letter was from some woman who was worried about her husband. The husband was some average guy. But he had gone out on some kind of errand, after his family's safety had been threatened in some way. He had to take care of things. But he knew he might possibly never come back. It had been a certain amount of time since the husband had left. The wife, according to the husband's instructions, was now to assume that the man was dead. But the wife would not assume this. She was asking for someone's help in finding the husband.

The FBI agent now stood out on a black road with a young agent. The FBI agent told the younger agent that he believed neither the wife's nor the husband's story. There was no danger. In fact, the FBI agent said, the husband was probably using the story to cover up some kind of trouble the husband himself was brewing up.

The whole scare now had to do with a UFO the family had seen. But the FBI agent insisted the object seen had not been a UFO. One argument of the object's being a UFO was its size and closeness. But the FBI said that objects could often appear to be very close at night. A bright light appeared before the man. The FBI agent said that just proved his fact.

The bright light was now behind the agents, over the back of a house. They got a look at it. It was shaped like an upright can of shaving cream, except that it had something coming out of its top, like a straw. The FBI agent said, "See? The husband thought that was a cannon. But look closer."

The object coming out of the larger object was taped round with an advertisement for a radio station. The sign said "70s, 80s, and 90s."

The FBI agent said, "If that's a cannon, I guess it must be some kind of time cannon."

Monday, March 19, 2012

swinging elevator; rat bites man

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

Some anime, or else a real-life situation where two anime girls were present. Both girls wore schoolgirl outfits: purplish, pleated, very short skirts and white button-up shirts with ties. One girl was more serious than the other. This girl had long, purplish hair. The other girl had shorter, kind of curly, orange hair. Both girls were probably secretly in love with each other.

The two girls were in the lobby of a hotel. They were being seen to by a worker, who was also a young woman or a girl. This girl was very polite and had very short, blonde hair.

The blonde girl led the purple-haired girl toward the elevator bank. The orange haired girl ended up staying behind. She looked down the corridor to the elevator bank. The elevator bank had red carpet with some kinds of designs on it and mirrored walls. It was lit in a kind of dim, golden light.

I probably now saw from the orange-haired girl's point of view. I didn't know why the orange-haired girl had been so shy about following the other two girls. But now I felt like if the orange-haired girl (I?) didn't get upstairs to the purple-haired girl in time, the orange-haired girl (I) wouldn't be able to tell the purple-haired girl how much she/I loved her.

I got into the elevator. At this point I may have looked around at the elevator, noting how similar all hotel elevators are, and how they must be made that way, to promote some similar attitude that's good for business. The elevator had red carpets and either white, plastic walls or brown, wooden walls.

I knew that I had to go up to the eighth floor. But the elevator was really slow. It was just churning up fhe floors. I watched the floors click by on a small, black panel with red LED lighting.

Finally the elevator got to the eighth floor. But it didn't stop there. It went all the way up to the tenth floor. I thought this was odd. I'd definitely pressed "8," to go to the eighth floor.

Now the elevator dropped, rather sharply, to the eighth floor. But just as soon as it did, it climbed to the tenth, then to the twelfth, floor. Then it dropped sharply again.

It was obvious something in the elevator's computer was messed up. I thought evetnually, though, the elevator would open at the eighth floor. But I was worried that before then, the elevator could get so strained by jerking up and down that its cables would snap, sending me plunging to my death.

But I didn't feel any signs of the elevator straining. So I was probably okay. But now the elevator began a steady, kind of fast ascent. I watched the numbers on the black panel increase. I knew the building only had so many floors. I was hoping the elevator wasn't going to do something like smash into the roof.

But then the elevator stopped. It had come out into some open kind of space. The elevator shaft was all made of glass windows. An.d I could see this, as if the elevator itself were also made of glass. I felt a little safer, now that I could see out into the clear, blue day. But I also felt high up. And the elevator was swinging wildly on its cables, back and forth. The elevator even knocked against the walls. I was afraid the elevator would crash through the windows, and that I would plunge to my death on the street below.

But the elevator finally calmed down. It was now motionless. I was safe. But now I was stuck. I looked through another one of the walls. I saw a kind of lobby or dining area below, for one of the high-up floors of the hotel. Someone down there may have seen me. So maybe people knew I was in trouble. And maybe someone would help me.

At this point I may have started thinking about the anime show of which the two girls were a part. I may have seen a video box with cover art for the show. The art may have been pretty heavy on the lesbian aspect of the girls' relationship. I may have gotten distracted about that, wishing I'd seen more of that, and trying to remember if there were any clues that things between the two girls would actually get that heavy.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a conference room with a young man. The young man was white, very pale, and bald, with black stubble growing back onto his head. He had dark, kind of tired eyes. He was a bit taller than I, and much more muscular.

The conference room wasn't exactly empty of people. But the young man and I were wandering around it like it was. The young man was here for something like a trial. He was being accused of something he probably wasn't guilty of.

I told the young man that I felt bad for him. I wasn't sure he was going to win his case. The person presiding over the case was Mayor Meyer (???), who was apparently the mayor of New York. I made some insulting comment about the Mayor. But then I turned around and realized the Mayor was sitting in something like a juror's box against the wall. I should have known he was sitting there. Other people were there, too. Now the Mayor had heard me say bad things about him. I'd be on his bad list now.

The Mayor just grinned at me. The Mayor didn't look too different, actually, from the young man who was in trouble. He was white and bald. But he was a bit more tanned than the young man. The Mayor wasn't wearing nice clothes. He wore a pale blue-grey sweatshirt with a dark blue or black shirt underneath.

I turned away from the Mayor and said something to appease him. But I said it toward the young man, about the Mayor, as if now I were no longer aware that the Mayor was even there.

I was now outside, in some strange place in the middle of town, watching the young man cleaning out some space. The space was like a vacant lot. But it had some concrete walkways in it. It was also set down into the ground and bordered off by concrete structures that looked like highway barriers.

The place had been extremely disgusting. But the young man had cleaned it off a lot. It still looked pretty bad. But now it was clean enough so that the young man could allow water to flow through some part of it. It was like part of this place had been a stream, but that the place had been so polluted that the stream had to be shut off.

The water now began rushing through the stream. But the young man suddenly panicked. He yelled, "Stop!" He reached his left arm into the water. He pulled it out again. A big rat was on the young man's arm. The young man had seen the rat get caught up in the rush of water. He'd panicked, then reached in to save the rat.

The young man's arm was gloved with a long, thick glove, not like a work glove, but like a hawker's glove. But the rat had actually managed, in its severe panic, to bite through the man's glove. I couldn't believe this. I kept trying to convince myself it wasn't true. But the rat had bitten all the way through the man's glove and into the man's flesh. And it was still biting the man. The glove was all bloody.

The man was trying to let the rat go free. But I yelled to the man to hold onto the rat. Despite the fact that the man had saved the rat, the man would have to kill the rat. Now the rat, a wild or feral animal, had bitten the man and drawn blood, the rat would have to be killed. Its head would have to be chopped off, so the brain could be tested for rabies. If the rat had rabies, the man would have to be treated.

But the man finally got the rat off his glove. He set the rat on some little railing. The rat ran off into some shadows and garbage.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

jim marrs -- sections l and m; cranberry juice; tarantino's conspiracy theory

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a basement room, reading a book from the light of a window. The window was kind of small and high up on the wall. The light it let in was dim.

The book I was reading was by conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs. I had finished the main part of the book. I was now leafing through the appendix. The pages of the appendix were all glossy and black, with white lettering. There were pictures of outer space and the earth on almost every page. But the earth didn't look like the earth, but more like a foamy, blue ball with landforms represented on it.

I had flipped to section L of the appendix. Marrs had written that he was writing some new information in response to requests by some of his readers. He wrote that section L of the appendix had been meant for this originally, but that Marrs hadn't finished what he'd been writing for section L had never been completed. Marrs would now include all the new information in section M, which was, apparently, more like a polished essay.

I flipped to section M. The first thing Marrs was talking about was some piece of land in China. Marrs wondered why China had bought this piece of land. Why, Marrs wondered, did China make such a big deal about needing this land? But then, Marrs pointed out, China sold this land, first to the Germans, and then to the Federal Reserve.

This was all apparently some big scheme for globalization. The illustrations first showed the corner of the globe with China on it, with some kind of yellowy spotlight on the land bought. Another illustration showed some round view of the earth with three landforms, thin, kind of crescent shaped, seeming to be jittering together like matter inside a cell. There may have been one more distant picture of the earth.

Dream #2

I was in a dark house. I was in the kitchen. I was myself, but I may have been a bit younger than I am IWL. The house was an apartment. But it was a really big apartment, and multi-storied.

The husband and wife who owned the apartment had had me over for the night. There may have been a girl there, as well. At some point in the night, I remembered, the husband and wife had asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I told them if they had cranberry juice, I'd like some, but if they didn't, it wasn't any worry.

The husband and wife had then told me to wait before I said something was no worry. They had called down to somebody, who quickly ran out and bought a jug of cranberry juice. The husband and wife told me I could eat anything that was in the house, and that when something I wanted wasn't in the house, I could get it ordered.

I was now in the kitchen, in the dark, looking for the cranberry juice. I fumbled around on the kitchen counters and in a few of the above-counter cupboards. I then headed toward the middle of the kitchen. On either side of the kitchen were doorways out into rooms. I could see that the space on my right had a large living area with a staircase to the upper floor. The area to my left probably ran through a number of bedrooms.

I could almost hear the girl, husband, and wife laughing at me now. I felt like they were wondering why I was so greedy. Why did I want to get more cranberry juice than I'd been given? I felt like some kind of glutton now. But I couldn't resist it.

Finally I realized that the cranberry juice would be in the fridge. I opened the door of the fridge. Inside was a transparent plastic jug, shaped like a Minute Maid jug, of cranberry juice. The jug was half full. I grabbed it to pull it out of the fridge.

Dream #3

I was in a living room with my mom, sister, nephews, and niece. The living room was really big, but barren. The floors were wooden. Plenty of pale white-gold light flowed in through the windows.

For some reason we were all laying on the floor, under blankets or sleeping bags. We each had our own little space, but we were still kind of gathered together near the front, left corner of the room.

I had been emotionally cold, even mean, to my nephews and niece lately. So now I felt the need to make up for it. I stood up and went to one of my nephews, maybe my second oldest nephew. I spoke with him a little bit. Then I spoke with my niece a little bit. They both stayed laying under their blankets while I spoke with them.

My sister then spoke to me. She was laying down on some small mattress that she barely fit onto. It was also, somehow, like she was laying inside a car, maybe in the back of a car, even while she was in the living room.

My sister told me, "I've got to get ready for my wedding. I've gotten a rainbow dress. But I haven't picked it up yet. It wasn't ready until just now."

While my sister went off, out of the room, I spoke some more with my niece. My niece stood-sat on my legs as I sat on the ground and had my knees together and drawn up. My niece would lean her back backwards over my knees. She was also listening to some device I had, like an iPod or iPhone.

I had been playing some kind of YouTube video for my niece. It was of some old TV show, like from the 1950s. My niece wasn't watching the video at all. She had some white headphones in her ears, and she'd listen to the video. But I was holding the device, sort of looking at it.

The video was over. I tried to find another one for my niece. This was also an old show. But it was in color: a lot of sparkling pinks. I asked my niece at some point if these videos were boring. She said they weren't boring. They sounded fine. I figured that as long as the videos had an interesting sounding story, my niece would be happy.

My sister may have come back. I was standing at some odd corner of the living room for a moment, facing the thin end of a wall dividing the living room from a hallway.

I was now in the front, right corner of a living room again. It was probably late afternoon. It was dark blue outside. But the living room was lit with slightly dim, warm, incandescent light. The room was furnished now, instead of being barren.

I stood before a table that had some food on it. I was apparently at some party, like a holiday party, probably at my family's house. I was trying to decide what kind of food I wanted. I saw enchiladas, either on the table or in my head. I may also have seen spaghetti.

I now heard Quentin Tarantino behind me. Tarantino was talking with a circle of people. He was giving them some conspiracy theory speech. I can't remember what it was about. But Tarantino then asked everybody, "And what do you think they linked it all together under? -----, which is a well-known supporter of the Ku Klux Klan! This is all about white supremacy!"

Tarantino continued his speech. I decided to join the circle. I didn't quite believe anything Tarantino was saying. But he made it sound interesting. And it was, after all, Quentin Tarantino I was getting a chance to listen to.

But right before I got to the circle, my second oldest nephew came up to me and started making goofy noises and showing me something on his Nintendo DS. I was still trying to be nice. So I spent a few moments listening to my nephew and being goofy with him.

I then joined the circle -- kind of. I felt like I had to stand at a distance and act like I wasn't really paying attention to what was being said. I had a feeling everybody in the circle thought I was a spy. So if I paid too close attention, they'd think I was memorizing what they said, so I could inform on them.

So I stood just outside the circle, turned at a kind of angle. I rested my right arm up on the mantle of a fireplace. I may also have rested an iPad there. The fireplace and wall were of thick, grey stone.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

little round house

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like a small cafeteria or eating area that was at the edge of a larger floor, like in some kind of school or administrative building. The floor had a wide staircase or escalator bank at the other end of it, leading upward. The floor I was on felt like the second floor. Off to my right was a door to something like a huge auditorium, even though I couldn't see it.

My co-worker KB was standing in front of me as I sat at a table. KB had been speaking with me about something. Now I was talking about one of my past jobs, and one of my old bosses, DO. We then got talking about how the housing market downturn had been predicted as early as November of 2005.

I got really excited, talking about one person who'd predicted this. I was trying to explain everything I knew. But I felt like KB was only half-listening to me or half-believing everything I was saying. I was trying to keep a focus on everything I was saying while contending with the overall atmosphere of distraction I was beginning to feel.

A group of ladies, apparently all KB's friends, came up to get KB. They took KB toward the auditorium. KB told me to come along. So I went.

We ended up in a place like a seating area before an airplane gate. KB and the ladies sat with their backs toward the window, at the last row of seats away from the window. They were all watching a TV that hung down from a lip of wall that curved all the way around the seating area in a crescent shape. For some reason I was laying curled up on the floor, facing the TV.

The TV was showing something about the history of the housing market. On the screen was a chart of something, maybe the homebuilders stock index or new housing starts. But it started somewhere in mid-2005, just perfect for demonstrating what I was talking about.

I started calling out to the ladies that if you looked, you could see how the call about November of 2005 being the top of the market was just a bit too early. The market, I showed, had gone down a bit, then bounced back up a bit, before finally plunging downward. But the ladies weren't really listening to me. They were all watching the TV.

Now the screen went from static to moving. The chart scrolled forward, moving along to show what had happened after the housing market had completely bottomed. There was apparently some sort of history the TV announcer was giving, about how there had been ups and downs. But the chart just basically kept looking flat.

The announcer may have mentioned that there had been another downturn in the market. Or he may have mentioned that there may have been an upturn in the market. The ladies listened sympathetically. But now the chart went even lower. The line of the chart now became a glowing red. It was like the line of the chart actually traveled below the axis of the chart. The red line divided into a crack, with silver-grey fading away from it. In the crack below the axis, computer-graphic houses and buildings appeared.

The announcer now spoke about people beginning to live underground. It may have been that this was actually the end times. Livfing underground may have been due to something like a nuclear attack. The chart sped along even still. But it finally reached a point, freezing, with words in the blank space of a chart, like words in an old arcade game, saying, "HOUSING AS THE END OF THE WORLD?"

But the chart was now apparently some movie. All I could see of the movie was an empty road, as if the camera had the view of a car traveling down it. One of the ladies, who was now apparently my friend, was telling me about the movie. It was some kind of cartoon-like, mystical movie. The central character was a woman who was visited in her head by spirits. The spirits all revealed themselves to the woman to different degrees.

The woman told me about one spirit that barely revealed itself at all, so that the audience hardly knew anything about it, all through the story. The movie was an adaptation of a book. I wondered what kind of forethought would need to go into writing a character that revealed very little of itself. I wondered how much more could be revealed -- on purpose, for the audience -- through implication, if the writing were planned out correctly.

The lady told me to stay and watch the rest of the movie. But I felt like I couldn't. I looked up. Parked right by my head was something like a flight attendant's cart. But it was all done up to look like some kind of beach bar, with shaggy, wooden planks, palm fronds, and so forth.

As I looked at the cart, I realized that the name of the book was Little Round House. I saw the cover of the book. It was lavender with purple dots, with a white shape in the center. There were two cartoon children facing each other. They looked like the Precious Moments children. They had their heads bowed, as if in prayer.

Something about the weirdly quaint attitude of this book's cover made me want to stay and watch the movie. I wanted to see how something that started out so normal could end up being as weird as to include the imagery on the front of the book. But I still felt like I needed to go. So I probably wasn't going to watch the movie.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

girl on bus; lightning and stairwell

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A vision of a girl on a bus during the day. The girl stood near the front of the bus, on the right side, as if she were just getting onto the bus. The girl was young, maybe twelve to fourteen years old, but tall. She was slim and pale. She wore a green shirt with very short sleeves and a wide v-neck that revealed a white shirt over her chest. She wore very short, pale-beige denim shorts. The girl had long brown hair, drawn back in a kind of ponytail, and big eyeglasses.

I saw the girl, first as if in a small picture or a movie on a phone's screen. Then I saw the girl as if I were actually on the bus, watching the girl walk up toward and then past me.

Dream #2

I was in "my family's backyard" with my oldest nephew. My nephew was probably six or seven years old in the dream. He had an armful of toys. He was annoying me somehow by poking me with some of the toys. I told him to stop annoying me. He thought he was funny, so he began poking me with antennas from a couple remote control joysticks he was carrying.

I got really mad and knocked some of the stuff out of my nephew's hands. I was trying to get closer to him, so I could grab him and tell him to stop poking me with stuff. But he was offended that I'd knocked stuff out of his hands. He backed away from me and started whining. He stood under some structure like a porch backing up against the back wall.

I was at the left fence of the backyard now, as if I were going to leave through some gate near me. My oldest nephew and second oldest nephew now confronted me. My second oldest nephew was mad at me for having told my oldest nephew not to poke me. He seemed less like he wanted to stand up for his brother and more like he wanted to have the fun of annoying me by nagging at me. I told him to leave me alone and I walked away.

I was now sitting out on the front porch of "my family's house," which was a red brick or red stone house. The porch was covered over with stone, so it was pretty shady. But it was pretty cloudy outside, so it was even dimmer on the porch. Some of my family members, probably my brother-in-law and some of my nephews, were sitting on the steps.

We were all watching the lightning. A few bolts would come down from the sky at a time. It wasn't raining yet. The air was dry and electric. The lightning flashes were really beautiful. They were pretty far away. But they were so violent, and it felt like they would be getting closer really soon.

Nobody seemed really afraid of the lightning coming closer. But I was nervous. I felt like it would be coming closer soon. I felt like when we got a close strike, it would take us by surprise. I stood up onto the porch, hoping the porch would shield me from the lightning strike. I tried to judge the closeness of the strikes by the flashes and the noises. But the flashes stopped showing up as much, once I focused on them, and the noises were sometimes all alone.

Now a group of guys, maybe with a couple women, walked down the street. They all seemed to be young and cocky, but somehow settled into good lives. They were being led around by a black man, who was one of their friends. The man showed them a house across the street, as if he were recommending that they buy the place. The place was big, for a house, and made of red stone.

I hid from the group of guys. I felt like if they saw me, if they knew I lived here, they'd want to hang around here all the time and annoy me. I tried to hide behind a column on the porch and in the shadows of the porch. But the black man saw me. He started leaning against some black iron gating that came just off of the left side of the stairway. The man did this to annoy me and show me he could lean against my family's property if he wanted. But I tried to justify his actions by saying that maybe the man was a professional guide, and that leaning against the gate was a part of his presentation.

But now it really did seem like the man was giving a presentation. He seemed to be speaking about the house across the way from us as if it were a dorm building for a small university. The man now led the group of people across the street to the dorm. I decided to follow the man. I was curious about this place. But, now that my space had been invaded by him, I felt the need to confront him about it.

I walked into the building. It was now much taller. The lobby looked like the lobby for an old high school. But it was multiple stories tall. The light was a dimmish, greenish fluorescent. The tile floors gleamed thickly with layers of wax.

I was following a group of older people, mostly white women. The people looked like parents for the college kids who would be staying here. The black man was gone. The older people all seemed to be turning right, into an area I knew probably led to the bathrooms.

I followed the people, hoping to get a chance to confront the black man, and also just because I was curious what this place was all about. But the older people all seemed to be women now, and they all headed into a women's bathroom. I stood outside the door. I knew I couldn't go in. Now college-aged girls were also walking into and out of the bathroom. I looked around for a men's bathroom, but I couldn't find one. So I walked out of the area.

I was now walking across the hallway, to a doorway that I thought may have been to hall of dorm rooms. As I did, I still only saw girls here, no boys. I thought this may have been an all-girls college. In that case, I thought, people would think I was really weird for walking around here all by myself.

I got to the doorway, a double doorway, to find that it actually led to a stairwell. The stairwell was wide, like a double-stairwell in a school, but it was so empty and unused feeling that I guessed it was a fire escape stairwell. I walked up the stairs a bit. There was plenty of grey-white light coming in through windows on the landing walls.

After walking up a couple flights, I got the urge, somehow, to go up the stairs faster by pulling on the handrail, then letting go, causing myself to be ejected up into the air. This would throw me up a couple of flights.

I did this a couple times, then somehow messed it up. I landed on my right side on a staircase, looking up toward the floors above me. I was almost up to the top floor. I could see the dim shade of the unfinished, dirty-metal ceiling.

I told myself that if I wanted to go up to the top floor, I could throw myself up there, even in just one throw. I knew this was a dream now. I told myself that if it was a dream, I could throw myself up to any height I wanted. I still didn't quite believe that. I felt like my aim and coordination would still have a lot to do with where I ended up. But I decided to give it a shot.

I threw myself up into the air. I almost got to the top floor. But the whole space of the top floor now seemed to be covered by dark blue sleeping bags. I tumbled down to a lower floor, but I landed on my feet.

I looked down from the landing I stood on. I knew I couldn't get any higher. The whole area was obstructed up there. But I saw that between the windings back and forth of the staircase, there was a little, rectangular corridor. I knew that IWL jumping down that space would be suicide. But in a dream, I could probably aim myself safely down that space.

I jumped down. But, again, I got worried about how good my aim was. I ended up causing myself to tumble back and forth a little roughly between the guardrails of the stairwell. I somehow got tumbled out on one of the floors.

Looking around, I saw I was on something like a balcony over an area that looked like a mix between a library and a cafe. There were book stacks farther back, but the front area was a section of big, heavy, wooden tables that looked like study tables. But people were bringing food to the tables and eating at the tables. There were young men and women.

I thought I would test myself by jumping off the balcony and flying over the space. But as I jumped, some of the male students noticed me. I got shy, and my flying ability faltered. I was descending slowly. But I thought I could prolong my hovering. I descended slowly until I landed on a table. There were only a few people around. Some of them noticed me, but they were ignoring me, like they thought I'd done something kind of silly.

So, just to get somebody's attention, I jumped off the table and, landing before an area of big, comfy chairs, I did some kind of crescent-like kick at or into the face of a woman sitting in one of the chairs. My vision got really blurry at this point.

Monday, March 12, 2012

flying over lake

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was daytime. I was flying over a lake, as a part of some task. There were two other people around me. They were probably in a small boat. At first they were probably a man and a woman I knew as friends or colleagues. But then they probably became my mother and my sister. An old man, probably a wizard-like man with a long, white beard and a pointy hat, was also somewhere, possibly high overhead in the sky, watching over my progress.

The way I was flying was by holding something over my head. The thing would catch wind, then lift me up into the air. I would often have to drop myself back down to the lake, which I did by closing or dropping or shifting the thing over my head, so that it no longer caught wind. I probably stopped descending when I got to a point where I was just floating above the surface of the water.

The thing I held over my head changed a few times. Once it was something like a parachute. Another time, it may just have been a grocery bag or some garbage. Finally I "found" a device that was supposed to help me a lot. It was like a thin, wooden pole with a square of some kind of metal mesh, like a door's screen, attached to it. It looked like a metallic version of a flag or pennant.

This device could help me control my flight really easily. To move up, all I had to do was flip the flag around one way. To move down, I just flipped the flag the other way. I don't know how I "found" this device: every device I'd used had just appeared in my hands while I was flying over the lake. But I was still proud of having "found" this device, and I looked to the people in the boat for some approval, which they probably gave me.

I now felt like I had to prove myself in some other way. Flying was too easy with this device, and I didn't really know whether I deserved the device. I flew along the lake until I found myself in some kind of basement area inside some apparently large building. The area I was in was tall but narrow. Along the right side was a black, chain-link fence. On the left side was a white-painted, stone wall.

This area was full of boxes and other stuff. But I knew it had been even more packed with stuff just a short while ago. But my sister had cleaned out a lot of the place. Now there was something down here I had to find and confront. It was something like a demon, or at least I was afraid of it because I thought it was a demon. I had to fly up and down and search through all the stuff. But I was afraid of finding something in one of the high boxes. I'd often drop myself quickly back to the floor.

I could hear, or else I was imagining, two people standing on the ground near the back of the room, by the fence. The people were an old man and a young woman. The old man looked like some kind of noble from the Medieval Italian days. He wore a big, dark headdress and a rich, dark robe. He was some kind of magician. I didn't see the young woman very well. But she didn't seem very young sometimes. She was too scheming.

The man and woman were talking about something, probably about making wine. They had commanded a much more innocent, younger woman to help them make the wine. The young woman had apparently helped them in the past. But she was afraid to do so. If she didn't find the right elements for making the wine, the man and the first woman would then make what they called "Diana's wine." This was the blood of the second young woman.

I couldn't figure whether Diana had to find some fruit for making wine, or whether she herself had to go find blood for making wine. I didn't know if there was also some kind of cannibalistic ritual involving the wine, if it were always blood-wine. I didn't know, at first, how Diana could have survived after having given away her blood for wine. Then I realized it was just like a transfusion. Diana didn't give away more blood than she'd give in a transfusion. And she'd regenerate it all.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

great grandma's territory

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the main bedroom of my great grandmother's house, which has in waking life been sold to someone else since my great grandma died about two years ago. The room had its lights off, as usual, so that only greyish daylight came in through the thinly draped windows. I stood in the back right corner of the room, where my grandma had a wall-length desk. Right in the corner was a pile of clutter.

On the top of that clutter I saw a record sleeve that was lying face-down. I lifted the sleeve. The front cover was a scene like on the front of a pulp murder novel. The background of the scene was yellow, like a yellow sky. In the foreground were a man and a woman. They were both in their late twenties, but mature-looking and attractive, in the early 1960s style. There may have been a car near them.

I knew that the scene was depicting some moment from a murder novel. This record was probably a read version of that novel. At first I thought the novel was by John D. MacDonald. But I looked closely at the cover. I think I saw the name of the person who wrote the book. It wasn't MacDonald. It may have been something like Gill. The title of the book was something like Stock Chase.

I lay the record sleeve face-down again and wondered why my great grandma had this. She loved reading so much. I don't think she would have gotten a book on record or a book on tape, if she could have read the book herself. (I didn't consider that IWL, for the last few years of her life, my great grandma *only* read things on tape.)

My great grandma was now just behind me, standing over my left (or right?) shoulder. I knew that she was dead. But I simply figured she'd come back from the dead to talk with me. My great grandma asked me some question -- probably what on earth I was doing, just dilly-dallying here with this pile of clutter.

I tried to find something to do, so that my great grandma wouldn't be upset with me. I turned around and walked out of her bedroom. My great grandma's house had a small hallway; so all I did was basically walk out of her bedroom, when I got a pretty direct view to her living room. My mom and my sister were in the living room. My mom sat in my grandma's old chair. My sister sat somewhere else. My great grandma still stood behind me.

I saw a porcelain scuplture standing on my great grandma's coffee table. It was about 75cm tall. It was of a little girl. The girl had short, blonde hair in loose but straight curls. The girl wore a white and pink dress, the skirt of which went down to just above her knees. The girl was faced away from me at about a 45-degree angle. She seemed to be standing on her tiptoes, as if she were trying to see out the front window.

I then looked back and to my right. I somehow saw, in either my grandma's bedroom or the guest room, a head lying on either a bed or a desk. I don't know if the head was real or a sculpture. It looked like an ancient head, shrivelled up and dried up. The skin was like leather, and it clung tightly to the skull. The eyes looked small, and there was only a tiny bit of hair left on the head. It was only the top part of the head, too: there was no lower jaw.

I looked back to the sculpture of the little girl. I may have looked to my mom and sister as well, thinking that I needed to tell them something. My great grandma, still standing behind me, may have said, "You know all that work you used to do with stocks? I think you should still be doing that stuff." I had thought all that stuff was done for me. But when my great grandma mentioned that I should do it again, I felt a little hopeful. I thought maybe she was right.

I turned around and headed back into my great grandma's room. My great grandma had gone in there herself. I don't know if our plan had been to talk about things more or what. But my great grandma suddenly seemed to be getting either very angry or very distracted.

Suddenly my great grandma shocked me by urinating all over her room! I'm not exactly sure how she managed to do it. But she was running all over the place, peeing all over the floor, as well as shooting jets of urine all up along the walls, and all along the surfaces of the furniture. The only thing she didn't hit was the bed.

I couldn't tell why my great grandma was doing this. I had been starting to talk with her. So I wondered if something I'd said had made her angry, or if she was doing this to interrupt me, so I wouldn't get distracted from the new things she was telling me.

By the time my great grandma had stopped, everything in the room was soaked in urine. For some reason, I thought it wouldn't do to have pee all over the floor. I may have thought that the people coming to look to buy this place wouldn't want it if they saw pee all over the floors. So I took a towel and got down on my knees to dry off the floor.

As I did this, I may have been asking my great grandma why she'd done something like this. A hole may have opened up in the floor, and my great grandma may have been preparing to go down it. But she may have stood up for a moment more, watching me.

I was noticing, though, that the urine was itself already vanishing. There was something very obvious about this to me. It was like the pee was ghost-pee, which had the characteristic of vanishing or evaporating quickly, leaving no trace (although there may have been traces of salts in some areas). I was only seeing a few tiny spots left on the floor, where larger amounts of urine had pooled.

I either understood or was told by my great grandma that the reason my great grandma had peed all over the place like this was to mark her territory, like an animal would in the wild. The urine was all vanished now. But this space was still my great grandma's territory. It's possible that this meant that she could leave for now, but that it would be much easier for her to come back.

Friday, March 9, 2012

diphtheria house; customer complaints; how's consumer sentiment?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A view of the backyard of the house of a family. It was daytime. There were a lot of workers in the backyard, along with at least the mother and the father of the family. The house was a nice, two-story house. The mother and father were white, attractive, and kind of wealthy looking. The workers may have been dressed in yellow, pale green, or white, plastic protective suits.

The house was being worked on because the family had all suffered from some disease. The disease had probably been called diphtheria. The disease was apparently like scarlet fever because, when you had it, you had to burn everything you'd touched while you had it. So the workers were working, not on burning everything in the house, but on sanitizing it in some way.

One of the things the workers were doing was to plow up the ground all around the foundation of the house. Then they sprayed something all over the plowed up soil. This stuff looked like the white smoke that comes off of dry ice. It would do something like freeze the ground. But it was also adding a chemical to the ground that caused the soil to do something like freeze itself.

I understood that the diphtheria germs had come from the soil. The soil had been disturbed, releasing these old germs. Now the soil had to be chemically frozen, to kill the germs.

But now the workers began to ask about other items the family had been around in the house while they'd had diphtheria. In particular they began asking about the family dog. My view, which had been really close in on the soil that was sprayed, now backed away. I got a pretty full view of the back of the house. And even though the dog wasn't back there, I got a pretty good image in my head of the dog running along the back porch, in the shade of the back wall.

The mother of the family knew that if the workers knew the family had touched the dog while they were sick, the workers would want to spray the dog with the freezing chemicals, too. But the mother knew that that spray would kill any living thing. So the mother said that the family had not touched the dog while they had been sick.

Dream #2

I was in some kind of small store, like an old-style office supply or stationery store, or an old-style furniture store. It was pretty dim inside, and everything was grey, like even the walls and carpet were the same colors as the old, grey-painted, metal shelves.

I stood, or even sat, before some grey counter. The counter made a kind of L-shape that connected with the back wall and the left (my left) wall, making a kind of big square of space for the workers. There was at least one office-style desk behind the counter. The space felt like an old office overall. But at the back wall was a kind of window, like one might see for a service area between the cooks and the waiters in a diner.

Behind the counter sat two workers. One of the workers sat pretty close to the counter. The other worker sat at the desk, off in the back, left corner of the worker's space. The worker close to the counter was pretty young. He had been dealing with me in some way or another. But he had been rude to me, and he hadn't done what I'd needed at all.

I had told the young man that I was going to complain. The young man didn't seem to believe me or even care if I did complain. But I knew that if I spoke directly with one specific man: the other man sitting at the desk. He was the young man's boss, and he didn't seem to like the young man too much to begin with. He was looking for a reason to fire the young man. And I knew I could give the man a good reason.

The young man knew I was serious. So he decided to listen to me. But he was really mad at me. He asked, "What do you want me to do for you? What do I have to do?" in a kind of angry, but desparate tone.

It was now like we were talking on the phone instead of standing face to face. I could see the young man's angry face on the phone. At first he looked like he was a young, kind of skinny, black man. But his face morphed into a young, bald man with a kind of olive-colored to light brown complexion. His features were really sharp but smooth at the same time. He had a tight skull and sharp cheekbones. And he looked really sullen and angry.

I was through dealing with the young man, though, and I told him that I wanted to speak with the older man now. The young man didn't have a choice but to put me through to the older man. The older man was a kind of fat, white man with pale skin and hair in a spiky cut that looked like it was dyed blonde. He had kind of red cheeks. He wore a black polo shirt and black shorts. He was obviously in his forties, but his clothes and style made him look younger.

The older man knew he had to take my call, and he was already mad at the younger man. But the older man was on a phone call at the moment, so he told me I had to wait. The younger man stood up and walked into the back area, the area behind the back wall.

The older man fiddled around with his phone for a moment while talking. Then the call was over. But the older man acted like he still had a number of things to do, probably making phone calls, before he could finally get to helping me. He actually stood up and walked toward the back area himself.

I was still in the office. I was standing at the counter. But now the counter was more like a stainless steel counter. And behind the counter was now a small area like in a small bakery. The whole place still felt old, grey, and dingy. But now there were kind of fancy pastries everywhere. The counter ran in an L-shape. But now the L-shape faced away from the wall, so that the area behind the counter was also L-shaped.

The older man was working on putting all kinds of pastry orders together. He was completely avoiding me and any of the complaints I had, acting like he had to take care of all these orders first. I'd even ordered some pastries. And even though my order was small and simple, he was taking care of all the bigger, more complex orders first.

A group of Latina women walked in. A couple of them were maybe in their late twenties or early thirties. They looked like mothers. They were all happy. They all made orders with the man. The man put their orders together and gave them to them almost instantly, still completely ignoring me.

I looked at the women's orders. One of the women had a kind of bright pastel, sweet, delicate, bready, but dry-looking cake. The other had some kind of syrup-topped, pie-like thing that I told myself was made with guava. Both of the items looked good. But I was more intrigued by the guava item.

The women seemed to be leaving the store already. I had been shy while they were in front of me, because they were all pretty. But now they were all passing me to get to the door.

One of the last women to pass me must actually have been a girl. She was kind of short and very skinny. But she had a flat chest. She wore tiny, black jean shorts and a tiny, black bikini top with silver fringes. But the girl's chest was so flat that the bikini top was a little bunchy and loose on her in spots, even though it was drawn pretty tight around her back and neck. But despite the fact that the girl was so young, I was really aroused by her.

Dream #3

I was at "my office," sitting at "my cubicle." The walls of the cubicle were tall. I seemed to be sitting pretty close to the right edge of the wall, my face very close to the wall. To my right, and also pretty close, was a window with blinds. The light coming through the window seemed to be filtered through some kind of UV coating. It was greyish-brown, but still kind of sparkling somehow with the whiteness of bright sun.

Between the cubicle wall and the window was a little walkway. I knew that beyond me were one or two other cubicles, then a more open space for people to walk through. I knew that my boss BB was walking through that space, even though I couldn't see him. I could barely see another co-worker, SW, walking into that space.

My boss had just been out on some business trip through a few big cities. SW asked my boss, "Hey, so, while you were out there, how was business sentiment looking? I mean, how was the consumer outlook? Are people looking more positive?"

I thought this was a strange question to ask. It implied that my boss had actually been out to enough towns to actually get a good sampling of business sentiment in all of America. And it implied that my boss had actually been out talking to all kinds of people on the street.

But my boss had only been in a few cities. And those cities were pretty isolated, probably geographically, from the rest of America. And my boss had only been speaking to higher-up business people, about very specialized topics. I didn't think my boss' answer could really indicate a big picture view of the American economy.

But SW was going to take my boss' answer and use it to reflect the American economy. SW was like an economist for our company, as if our company were something other than it was, something more like an investment firm or an investment advising firm.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

lost astronauts; suits and books; talent show father

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was falling through the atmosphere of a planet or moon. I may have thought of it as our moon. I was probably in a spaceship with a few other people, possibly family members, or maybe friends. I was definitely talking with other people. But I also felt like my body itself was actually falling through the atmosphere.

The atmosphere of the planet was a kind of pale red. The land below seemed to be rather desert, and of a whitish color, tinged in places with a pale orange red. There were clouds here and there, and the overall feeling of the atmosphere was rather hazy.

We had come here under the assumption that we were the first people on this planet. But now, as we descended, I saw another craft lifting off from the planet. It looked like an old rocket. But it was lifting off with the entire launch frame still attached to it!

I shouted out to my companions that another ship had gotten here first. This seemed like really bad news. I had the feeling this was a Russian spaceship. But now I was starting to question the time period I was in. Based on the looks of the ship, I now felt like perhaps we were in the 1960s or 1970s. It seemed odd that we were exploring other planets on such a scale at that early a time.

We reached the surface of the planet. At this point my view felt like my body itself was flying along just above the surface of the planet. Other people, some of them children, probably all of them "my family members," were around me, sitting about or walking about at a leisurely pace. Yet we were all involved in some kind of scientific project.

I still felt like we were on the moon, or on some other planet. But now I also had the feeling that we were actually on earth, following some kind of nuclear war. I may have felt that my group had something to do with either preventing the attack or retaliating against the attackers. But I felt like we'd been too late. I also felt like my group had to get out of here pretty soon. The radiation was too strong for us to stay here for so long.

Dream #2

I was in some situation where I was around a few other people who thought they were dressed up. But their clothes were kind of old and tattered. I was dressed the same way. But then at some point I was dressed in really nice clothes. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't want people to think badly of me because I was dressed nicely.

I was then in a classroom. There were probably two other people in the classroom with me: an older man and a younger woman. It may have been night. The classroom may have been lit with fluorescent light. I was sitting at a desk. The man and woman may have been walking around. They seemed to be focused on me for some reason.

I had two books. I wasn't really reading either one. I was having trouble deciding between which book to read. So I'd go back and forth, not really accomplishing anything in either book.

One of the books had a Philip K. Dick kind of attitude, but it was a bit more literary, more surreal, and less science fictiony. It had a cover like the big paperback versions of the Bollingen edition of Jung's works, with the white cover, black lettering, and thin-lined, broad, colored lettering. The other book was a hardcover book, bound like a standard edition of the classics. It was some kind of Dickensian style novel.

I may then have gone back to whatever situation I'd been in before, where my dress was the same as, then much better than, the dress of the people around me.

Dream #3

There was some talent show in an Asian country, possibly Malaysia. There were a number of kids getting ready for the talent show. But a few of the kids had gotten distracted from the show by the drama of their own personal lives.

At one point some little boy had gone missing. A little girl had gone out at night to look for the boy. The little girl walked through the business area of the small town she lived in. The business area was an interesting mix of modern roads, modern lighting, and kind of old, wooden buildings. The buildings almost reminded me of the Old West in the United States.

The little girl was walking along a gutter. She passed a little outfit that looked like a little bumblebee costume a girl might wear. But it was pink and black, instead of being yellow and black. The costume even had gauzy, pink wings. But it just lay on the ground, like some kind of shed shell.

The little girl may have taken the empty costume to mean that the other little girl (instead of a little boy?) she had been looking for had given up on the talent show. But she also took it to mean that the other little girl had actually gone back, or tried to go back, to the talent show to do something really good. The girl still may have felt she had to find the other girl, so she could help her find her way back.

But now a couple of girls, more like teenagers than little girls, had come back to their house. They were of a somewhat wealthy family in the town. They needed their father to come to the talent show for some reason. But the father was a little cold-hearted, and he was refusing to go to the talent show.

The teenage girls were now trying to get the father to open up his heart. The father had some emotional issues to deal with. If he didn't deal with them, he'd possibly mess everything up for the talent show.

The father was now standing in a big room on his estate. The room was as big as a cafeteria in a small school. It had red tile floors and white, stucco-like walls. It was completely empty of furniture.

The father was facing my view (as if my view were a camera), speaking to somebody outside my field of view. The father had dark, coppery skin, a broad, slightly wrinkled and baggy face, and wide, dark eyes. He had short, feathery hair, black and grey. He had a little bit of a belly, and he wore a darkish blue robe with faint, black stripes running down it.

The father was telling the person outside my field of view, "I don't have any problems. I'm completely fine." This was bad news. If he didn't admit his problems soon, the talent show would be ruined.

But now a group of people were introduced into the room, possibly by two other daughters or possibly by the two daughters who'd first come for the father. The group of people were attendants and family of another older man. This man was very important to the father's life. He may have been important for business reasons. But he may also have been something like the father's father-in-law.

Seeing to this person took precedence over everything else. The father called to his servants. There was a door on the right side of the room the father stood in. The people had probably come in through a door on the left side of the room.

The father had servants open the right door, which was thick and heavy, made of dark wood. I knew that beyond the door was another large room, this room also looking a bit like a cafeteria or restaurant. The front end of the room was the living area, although it was a lot like a seating area for a restaurant. The back area of the room, just a narrow part of the room, was lit by a huge overhead window. It was just large enought to accommodate a long, narrow, table of thick, heavy wood.

The father, still in the first room, called to the servants first to arrange for the bed linens for the guest. The father commanded the servants to have two or three changes of bed linens. This was very important.

The father then commanded the servants to have coffee prepared for the guest every morning, as soon as the guest woke. The father then commanded the servants always to be on call in the kitchen for the guest. The guest may have had his own kitchen, which was attached to the second room.

The second kitchen was to be stocked from the first kitchen with a little bit of every kind of food the guest could want. And the servants were, every morning, gently to insinuate to the guest that he might do well to eat. They might make suggestions to the guest as to what kind of food would be good for him. But this was only to gague whether the guest wanted to eat. As soon as the guest was ready to eat, though, the servants were to make for him whatever he wanted.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

design subway; friend's boss sneaks up

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on a subway train in New York City. The train was only partly filled with people. A young woman on the train was trying to figure out the stop she could get off at. She was speaking with a thin, black woman in her thirties.

The young woman kept saying, "Design! Design!" a bit urgently, like she was afraid she couldn't be heard.

The black woman probably kept saying, "8th Street. 8th Street."

The black woman told the young woman to get out at a certain stop, which the young woman probably did. I got off, too, not because I needed to get off there, but because I wanted to make sure the woman found her way okay. The subway station was probably supposed to be the Union Square station. It felt like it. It was really crowded, and I could barely see anything.

I thought back to what the black woman had said. I'd figured she'd been right. By "design," I figured the young woman must have meant the Cooper Union school. That was down on 8th Street. So the young woman would have to get off the train here, then transfer to another train down to 8th Street.

The woman was still wandering around near me, a bit confused. She seemed like she didn't want to believe what the black woman had told her. So I went up to the woman and told her that she should get on the next local train on the platform we were on, then go down to 8th Street.

I thought this over a bit more and realized that maybe I was wrong. The train line we were on would drop the woman off a couple blocks west of where she wanted to be. But there was another train arriving, a 6-train, on the opposite platform. That would drop her of right in front of the Cooper Union.

I quickly told the woman, "Run over there! You can still catch it!" The woman ran up the stairs from this platform, over to the other platform. I kept watching the doors of the 6-train, hoping they wouldn't close.

As the woman ran down the stairs, I noticed her clothes for the first time. Her clothes seemed a bit like little girls' clothes. She wore a small, turquoise colored skirt, a white shirt, and canvas shoes with really thick, brightly colored socks. She had pale skin and dark brown hair.

The woman actually made it to the train. But as soon as she walked in the doors, she walked out quickly. She seemed a little bothered by something on the train. A few people were also getting off the train with the woman. They all seemed a little disturbed. I wondered what could have upset them. I imagined that a dead body was just lying on the train.

By this time I had wandered up a small staircase, only two or three steps tall, that actually crossed over the tracks and across to the opposite platform. I realized I could have told the woman about this staircase, instead of having her run all the way up, over, and down. But now I looked over to my right. The woman was coming back toward me. She said that that train had actually been the wrong one. I realized she was right.

I was now up above ground, having at some point walked up the steps from the station. It was night. I was out in some kind of plaza area, which was only dimly lit by orange streetlamps. I sat down on a long bench. My good friend H stood before me. There were a few other people around us.

I started asking H, who is Japanese, about some Japanese words. I told her about a song the words were in. H seemed very interested in the song (she never is interested in waking life). H actually started quoting some lines she thought I might not be aware of. They included "ai no" and "omou," but I forget the rest.

We then discussed some line in a song that went something like "kogomiru moromiru mou." I wasn't familiar with any of those words. I was pretty sure I'd never heard them before.

Dream #2

I was at work. I was in "my cubicle," which was actually the cubicle facing my cubicle in waking life. My old friend MK was in my waking life cubicle. He was with a female friend of his. The rest of the office seemed to be completely empty.

MK was complaining about his boss, who was actually someone from my job IWL, JP. MK complained that JP was always coming up with useless projects for him to do, just to keep him working. MK's friend giggled and asked MK if he wasn't worried about talking bad about his boss.

MK replied with a big long speech to show he wasn't afraid of his boss hearing what he had to say. He then imitated what his boss would say if he'd ever heard MK talking bad about him. Part of this imitation included some statement about how the boss seldom even showed up on Mondays but how, when he did, he was always really late.

As MK was giving this speech, I saw his boss, JP, sneaking around to MK's cubicle from the opposite side. My view actually seemed to follow JP all the way around, until he reached MK's cubicle. Then my view stopped, and it was like I was laying on the floor, or sitting on the floor, like a little kid would.

But I knew that JP had reached MK as soon as MK had gotten to making fun of JP for never coming in on Mondays. JP tried to surprise MK. But MK caught JP. MK said something like, "Ah! You caught me talking bad about you!" in some kind of falsetto-whiny voice to show that, even though he felt bad for talking bad, he still didn't think it was a big deal, and he still wasn't worried about anything JP might do to him.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

charming the guard; hanging of prisoners

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on a bus with a group of people. The bus was some kind of prison bus or bus to a concentration camp. But it wasn't overly packed or crowded. The seats went all along the sides of the bus. They were upholstered with some light brown, fake crushed velvet material. It must have been late afternoon: golden yellow light filled the bus.

A guard walked up and down the aisle of the bus. He was Asian and kind of short and stocky. He had a squarish haircut and squarish eyeglasses. He wore some kind of brownish uniform.

I believe there were other guards toward the back of the bus. This guard, I believe, enjoyed being mean and bullying to the other people on the bus. But the guards at the back were even more severe. They enforced a stronger level of bullying than even the guard himself would have used while he was alone.

None of the prisoners were supposed to talk with each other. But at one point, one of the prisoners did talk. He was an average, young, white man, kind of tall and thin, with curly hair. He wore a slightly baggy white t-shirt. The guard did something to the man to make him stop talking.

Later on, a young woman and I started talking. I was showing the woman a book of papers I had. The papers were possibly in a small steno book or note pad. A lot of the pages were blank. A lot of the pages had been torn out, folded up, crumpled up, and shoved into the book at odd angles. Some of these pages may have had lyrics to songs in different languages on them.

I showed the young woman, who may possibly have been Hispanic, a sheet of lyrics I had, probably for a Malaysian song, probably for a song by the singer Monoloque. I started going through the lyrics with the woman. I may have explained to the woman how I like singing songs in all different languages.

The guard eventually walked up to us. He wasn't trying to make us stop talking. He was interested in the fact that I sang Malaysian songs.

The guard started talking to me about his own life. He had an interest in something scientific. He may even have been pursuing these interests for a while. He got excited while he spoke about it. And I got excited listening to him. It seemed like he had some really good scientific ideas.

But then something happened, and the guard was made to stop talking to me. I understood that he wouldn't interrupt the speaking between me and the woman. He liked us now, and he'd leave us alone. But he couldn't talk to us or share his interests. The higher-ranking guards at the back of the bus prevented it.

Dream #2

A view like footage on old black and white film. Four men were hanging in nooses in the open space of what looked like the back of an old military truck, the kind with the tarp-like canopy over the back. The film was actually tinged a bluish color.

The men had just been dropped into their hanging positions. The drop must have been mild, because the men were in pretty good control of their bodies, still: their necks hadn't snapped. But after the men were dropped, something else had been done to them, adding an injury that would ensure their deaths.

All four men were shirtless and wore tattered, baggy pants. They were all extremely emaciated, and they all had scraggly beards. The man on the far left, feeling that he was going to die presently, crossed himself weakly. I was interested in the man. He seemed so resigned to his death.

My view closed in on the man. His body, though emaciated, still looked big, as if, before the men had been put through whatever they'd been put through, he would have been the biggest and strongest of them by far. His chest was hairy with curly, pale hair.

My view now closed in on the man's face. His face looked all dried out, almost like salted meat. The man twisted his face a few times in mild pain. Then the man's face relaxed, and the man's head bowed down, as if the man were sleeping. I knew the man was dead.