Wednesday, May 30, 2012

annoying coffee guy; "man, don't try to fly"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like the lobby for a hotel or an apartment building. It was pretty spacious. It probably had red tile floors and white walls. It may have had an old Spanish Mission sort of feel to it.

I sat in a nice chair, maybe a green leather chair, before a long, kind of low coffee table. I sat near one of the ends of the table. Across the table, in another nice chair, sat an old, white man. He looked a little well-off, maybe a tiny bit heavy, with a dignified but irascible face.

The man had a wife who was very meek, at least for show. She handed the man some coffee and walked away. She may have said something to the man about staying calm. She may have sensed, like I did, that the man didn't like me being around, and that he was looking for a reason to annoy me or make me feel like leaving.

But for some reason the man hadn't found any opportunity to annoy me. We'd both finished our coffee. I'd been reading the newspaper. The man may have been reading the paper as well. I put down the paper. It was obvious to the man that I was getting ready to stand up and leave.

But as I was getting ready to stand up, the wife walked up again. She either brought or pointed out a little carton of creamer to the man. I looked down at the table, too. I don't think I saw any use in the creamer. Both the old man and I had finished our coffees.

I noticed that the table was littered with newspapers. There was barely enough open space on the table for the creamer. The carton may actually have been partly obscured by a page of newspaper.

But the man seemed to think that I did want the creamer. He suddenly lurched forward. The creamer carton had been opened. The man grabbed the carton. He folded the carton top closed, then decisively planted the carton back down. He then gave the carton top an imperative flick with his index finger. All of this was a way, I knew of annoying me by making me feel that the man owned the creamer and I had no right to it.

I was annoyed. I didn't need any creamer. I didn't even have any coffee left. But the man acting like he owned the creamer really ticked me off. I stood up calmly to leave. I really wanted to do something annoying back to the man. But I decided to ignore him.

But now the man stood up. He seemed to want to follow me out of the building. Now that he'd annoyed me once, he wanted to keep on annoying me.

I was walking toward a wall. Once I hit the wall, I'd walk left. Following the wall, I'd be led to a larger front lobby area and out of the building. The old man had walked in front of his chair and off to the right. But he quickly looped around and walked back in my direction. It was like he was trying to make a beeline for me, so he could cut me off in my path.

I could see the man out of the corner of my eye, approaching me as I walked toward the wall. I knew he was trying to cut me off. I got really mad. I was going to do something to the man.

Right as I approached the man, I hurried up, to get just a couple steps in front of him. I knew I was going to push him back as he made his attempt to cut me off. But what I ended up doing, actually, was grab him by the arms, lift him up, and shove him back a couple steps.

But as I was doing this, the man was talking to me. It was like he was trying to be friendly. I figured he was just trying to be friendly to me now because he wanted to make me second-guess myself, to make me think that maybe I was wrong, and that maybe he really wasn't trying to annoy me. The man looked different, too. He was smaller and skinnier, and he looked more cheerful.

I felt a little bad for not having listened to anything the man had said. I asked him to repeat what he'd said. He started talking about dinner, about some food like Salisbury steaks.

Something about this annoyed me, and I turned and walked quickly away from the man. I got the feeling the man was only mentioning dinner because he knew that would be his next opportunity for annoying me. He was trying to pry information out of me regarding what I liked about dinnertime. That way he could wreck it for me.

I walked into a bathroom along the wall. The bathroom was lit with drab, green-grey fluorescent lights. The bathroom felt a little too small, humid, and stale. The sinks were kind of boxy. They seemed to be made of some old, stale aluminum or stainless steel. There were two workers doing something like cleaning mops in two of the sinks off to my left.

I washed my hands in a free sink. I was hoping the man wouldn't follow me into the bathroom as well and try to annoy me here. The two workers may have been something like the salisbury steak for dinner as well.

Dream #2

I was out in a Main Street area in a small town, not unlike a little shopping area in my hometown, but with longer, wider streets. It was getting to be early evening. The sun had set, and the light was grey blue.

I was with my mom. My mom's mom had been with us. But now she was walking away. My mom told me something like, "Your grandma thinks you're going back to New York right away. She won't see you again if you don't talk to her right now. Go tell her you aren't going back for a few days."

I ran up to my grandma. She seemed to be getting attached to another group of people. But I managed to turn her around. I gave her a hug and told her that I'd actually be in town for a few more days, if she wanted me to spend time with her at some point. But she told me that she'd have too much to do over the next few days. She wouldn't be able to spend time with me.

I said goodbye to my grandma. I turned around and walked down the sidewalk. The sidewalk was mostly empty. On my right side was a nice, small, but massive building made of some kind of grey stone. I may have thought this building was a theatre building.

The staircase up to the front was massive and steep, even though it was kind of narrow and small. The staircase had some kind of black iron gate in front of it. And all the way up, the staircase was bounded by a tall, black iron fence.

For some reason, passing the left side of the staircase, I decided to turn around and hold onto the black railing of the fence. I grabbed onto a spot at a height where my feet would barely be touching the ground. I then began to use the fence railing as a bar for doing chin-ups.

The first time I wobbled up into a full chin-up, I held myself there and looked down the street as my grandma disappeared with the group of people she was now attached to.

It made me really depressed to think of my grandma going away like that. It made me kind of disappointed to think that maybe my grandma said she couldn't see me. I thought maybe she'd been disappointed in me. It made me want to do more chin-ups.

I suddenly realized, though, that I'd actually done a full chin-up. I had a hard enough time doing that, usually. I was surprised I'd done it without much thought at all. I started to wonder if I'd actually even done a chin-up.

So I let myself down, so I could pull myself up into another chin-up. I wobbled my chin up over the bar again. I let myself down and pulled myself up again, still not quite sure I'd actually done a legitimate chin-up.

But this time, as I wobbled my chin up over the bar, I looked down to the foot of the staircase. Two young, kind of bushy-haired, blonde men sat huddled together on the bottom steps. They were wearing clothes like old soldiers' uniforms from the Revolutionary War: something like dark blue jackets and tight, but thick, white slacks.

It struck me that these young men were something like European guards. They were guarding this building. This building seemed to be something important. Maybe it wasn't a theatre, like I'd thought it had been.

I let myself down and then wobbled myself back up into another full-chin up. Holding my head up over the bar I looked up to the top of the staircase. I saw that there were arched and ruffled fabric banners over the doorways to the building -- three of them, I think. The banners were red white and blue, but in a pattern that reminded me more of France than of America.

I suddenly realized that this building was something like the French Embassy. Sitting here doing chin-ups on the stair railing to the French Embassy was pretty disrespectful. So I let myself down and walked away from the staircase.

I walked through some interesting structure. It was like a short but wide staircase of red stone or red brick. The staircase had two wide balconies on either side. At the top of the staircase was a broad promenade. That ran to the left and the right. Across the way from the staircase was some kind of stone arch structure, and then a red walkway that seemed to span quite a ways. This was all under a grey-white sky.

I really wanted to explore this area. But at the top of the staircase a man sat, barring the way. He held some strange sort of guard's weapon. It was almost like a candelabra made of golden-tipped spears. But it was broad enough to block any movement past the top of the staircase.

But for some reason I thought this was easily surmountable. I would simply fly over the man's spears. I'd have to fly high enough that the man wouldn't detect me. And I'd have to land far enough away from the man that he wouldn't detect me. If he detected me, I knew, he'd fight me. And I probably couldn't beat him.

But I thought it would be easy enough to fly past the man. I lifted myself slowly up into the air. When I got level with the tips of the spears, I came closer to the spears. I noticed it would be a little harder than I'd thought to get over the spears. Coming out of the tips of the spears were lengths of twine. They seemed to be joining the spears to some structure overhead.

I flew up, following the lengths of twine. I figured if I could find the structure the twine was joined to, I could fly over that. Even if it was really high, I could fly over it. As far as I knew, my powers of flight didn't have any height limit.

But as I got higher and higher, I came to realize I wasn't outside at all. I was inside a massive, very tall building, something like the Rose Reading Room of the Schwartzmann branch of the NYPL, except three or four times the size and height. And the room almost had a holy feel to it, like a cathedral.

The lengths of twine, I saw, went all the way up to the ceiling. But, maybe ten or so meters from the ceiling, the vertical lengths of twined joined with a lattice of horizontal and vertical lengths of twine. This lattice of twine was so immense and intricate that I knew there was no way I could get beyond it.

But, looking forward, I saw places where there seemed to be open spots. From there I could, I thought, get up high enough to go past the twine lattice and over the detection system that was, apparently, all connected to the man's spear-candelabra.

But now the massiveness of the enormous room was making me really dizzy. I was starting to get afraid, too. I felt like if I flew any higher, I stood a chance, somehow, of easily falling to my death.

For a little bit, I kept trying to move forward. But I couldn't manage it. The room seemed to begin spinning. Everything seemed more massive than ever. The floor scared me because it was so far below me. The ceiling scared me because it seemed so looming and heavy.

I had to descend. I was descending slowly, too afraid that any quick descent would lead to a falling accident that would kill me. As I got closer and closer to the floor, all I could see were the sparkling-polished, red floor tiles. It was like I was focusing on the floor as a matter of life or death. I may have felt like I was going to throw up.

I could hear the man telling me, almost like an older brother tying to give advice, "Man, don't try to fly."

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

fushizen na boy; rock star business card; TV truck crash; garbage bag nostalgia

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was either myself or some guy kind of like me, but maybe with paler skin, more stubble, and a knobbier, but still skinny, body.

I was walking through a crowd of people. The people were all heading off somewhere in the same direction, kind of like they had gotten off the train and were now heading to work.

I was walking in the opposite direction. But as I moved through the crowd, they all seemed to part for me. It wasn't like they were paying attention to me. They didn't even seem to be aware of me. They just moved out of my way.

All this time I was doing the arm movements from the chorus section of the j-pop band Perfume's song "Fushizen na Girl."

Watch "Perfume Fushizen Na Girl with Lyrics *Q*" on YouTube

I was kind of shocked that I knew how to do these movements. But I was also worried that people would know I was doing dances from a girl's song. I wondered if they would think I was weird.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a brewery-grill kind of bar. The place was really big, with a light, airy feel to it, and with brick walls. But it was packed with people. There was something like a singing contest going on. But even though the atmosphere was packed and a little competitive, there seemed to be very little tension. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.

The singing contest was apparently for amateurs. But there were some professional rock singers who were also performing as part of the show.

From behind me came the voice of a woman who was pretty insistent about the fact that she used to be a rock star. She was kind of tall and kind of overweight. She had kind of short, really frizzy, brown-black hair. She looked almost like a guy wearing an afro wig and trying to pass himself off as a woman. The insistent woman seemed to be making rather matter-of-fact demands for something because she'd been a rock star. But I didn't think she was a big deal.

The MC for the show was also a famous rock singer. She looked like the Malaysian pop star Atilia Haron, except with dark black and blonde hair and a darker complexion. She was very kind with everybody in the audience. I got the feeling that she thought of herself as a kind of mother and mentor for all the contestants.

I had originally been standing near the front of the audience and near the center of the stage. But now I was sitting on a stool kind of away and off to the right of the stage. There was a good amount of open space in front of me, like a little clearing where people might dance. But all around that space the crowd was still full.

But across the empty space I saw another woman. She sat on a stool as well. She had her elbows propped up on the stage like the stage was a counter. She looked like a mix between Atilia and the Japanese R&B singer Toko Furuuchi. I knew she was really famous. But nobody seemed to be paying attention to her.

Somebody, possibly on stage, had been speaking with this woman, possibly letting her know that her turn to perform was coming up. But she seemed really shy about performing, for some reason.

But now from behind me came the voice of the insistent woman with the frizzy, black hair. Somebody like an event staff member had asked her who she was, possibly so the staff member could get the insistent woman coordinated for some part of the performance.

But the woman said in her normal loud but matter-of-fact way, "I don't like to say out loud who I am, because I don't want people getting all excited about me and following me all over the place. I'd rather just give you my card and let you read who I am. That way it stays secret and quiet."

I knew this was silliness. The woman spoke loud to draw attention to herself. And she used the secrecy to get people interested in figuring out who she might be.

But the woman now handed me her business card. I was, I somehow knew, supposed to hand the card off to the person the woman had been speaking to. This person was up on stage.

I reflexively, naturally took the card and brought it over to the pretty girl on the stool near the stage. The girl probably then handed the business card up to some guy on stage. During the exchange, I caught a glimpse of the insistent woman's first name -- something like "Marisol."

Dream #3

I was in a car with my mom. My mom was driving. I was in the front passenger seat. We were driving along a highway during the daytime.

I had been speaking with my mom about something like giving her $75. This was probably money I owed her. But I had felt it was important to give my mom this money because it seemed like she really needed it for something. I felt like I had just barely gotten the money on time so that my mom could do whatever she'd needed to do.

But now that I'd given my mom the money (or now that it was settled that I'd give her the money?), my mom began talking about some big TV she and my sister were planning on getting. The $75 would put them right in the range of getting the TV.

My mom talked about this TV like it was so great. But I felt betrayed. I thought my mom had really needed the money. But now she was just using it to go out and buy a TV. I was getting anrgier and angrier. I felt like I was about to start yelling at my mom.

We seemed to be getting off the highway, heading onto some exit ramp. There was a huge semi-truck in front of us. The truck seemed to stop all of the sudden.

We had been going really fast. My mom tried to stop the car as soon as she saw the truck stop. But the car was going too fast. We were veering toward the truck's rear end. I knew we were definitely going to crash. But as we approached the truck, I hoped the crash would only be minor.

Dream #4

I was in some place like a kind of dimly lit kitchen. The kitchen seemed to be pretty quiet. But it felt like some kind of party was winding down in some other room. There were no lights on in the kitchen. The only light seemed to be coming from this other room.

I was having some conversation in my head. I was probably talking through some old and recent memories. I thought about how I'd recently come back home after living in New York City. But now I was thinking about moving back to New York City.

I was thinking about the sadness this might cause for the people close to me in my hometown. But I was trying to justify to these people, in my head, why I needed to move back. As I was doing this I was either licking or thinking about licking the orange dishsoap that had dripped and slimed down the side of a large dishsoap bottle that sat near the sink.

I was now standing over a plastic garbage can. I was in a kitchen. But this kitchen was big and well-lit. My old friend R and his wife L may have been sitting at a table in the kitchen.

I was tying up bags that were in the garbage can. On the left side of the can there seemed to be three bags. On the right side there was just one bag. The three bags on the left side were pretty easy to tie up. But they were kind of like grocery bags, way too small for an outdoor-sized garbage can like this one. The garbage in all the bags seemed to be recyclable materials, like plastic 2-liter soda bottles.

I was having a conversation, either out loud or in my head, with R. It may have had to do with disappointing my family or making them sad. But my R was also trying to work some angle into the conversation. He was looking for some way to take advantage of me, or to stop me from having success in anything I did. I had to monitor everything I was saying very carefully, I felt, so that I didn't say anything to give R an advantage.

I may have started talking with L as well. It seemed a lot nicer to be talking with her, even though I was probably still wary.

I had now moved to tying up the garbage bag on the right side of the garbage can. This bag was really full, and it was a lot harder to tie it shut. I struggled with it for a while, never, I think, quite getting the thing shut.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

writing someone else's report; rogemmstein

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like a living room with some friend, possibly my old friend R. My friend knew that I was about to go meet with some man who wrote papers.

My friend wanted me to approach the writer to see if the writer would write a paper, or parts of a paper that my friend had been assigned to write. My friend may possibly have thought that if the man at least wrote some of the difficult passages, it would be easy for my friend to finish the rest.

I was now in a different room, also like a living room, with the man. I was about to ask the man if he would be able to write the report, or the passages in the report, for my friend, even though I felt bad about asking something like this.

But before I could ask, the man started talking about something, probably about how busy he was on some project. I knew this meant the man would not be able to help write anything for my friend. In fact, I felt like I was here to help the man, not to ask favors of him.

Dream #2

There may have been some kind of accident or disaster involving buildings in some town. Someone may have needed to write a report about the incident. But I knew that the report was still missing a lot of details. Nevertheless, I knew that most of the report could just be written with stock material, and that the actual details could be filled in later.

Now I saw a street corner in the downtown area of some city. I was looking at a three- or four-story, white-painted concrete building. There was a wooden sign over the door with a name like "Rogemmstein" burned into it. The name Rogemmstein was a condensation, I knew, of the names Rogers and Hammerstein. There may have actually been one more name condensed in there.

Some bad incident had occurred in this building. It may have been something like a single or multiple murder, or it may have been something like an accident with the material of the building or a natural disaster.

I knew a report needed to be written on the incident. But there were still a lot of details missing regarding the incident. But I knew that I could write most of the report from standard stock material. Then, when the details of this incident started coming in, I could fill in the blanks of the report with these details.

Friday, May 25, 2012

holes in socks; cents per mile

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a few people, possibly some of my co-workers. We all had to take off our shoes for some reason, possibly as part of a game. But I was ashamed to take off my shoes. I knew I had holes in my socks. The holes went all the way across three or so of my toes. I didn't want my co-workers to see that.

Dream #2

I was sitting at work. I was in a big but flimsy room. The room had thin, plyboard kind of walls and kind of dim, fluorescent lighting. The desk I sat at was one one side of the room, kind of set near the wall. My desk was long, but the space I was in, being so close to the wall, was kind of narrow.

One of my more senior co-workers, JP, stood just behind me and over my left shoulder. He was joking with me, talking like he had never met me before and he didn't know anything about my job.

JP asked me, "How do you get paid? In dollars per hour?"

I said, "No. In cents per mile."

"Oh..."

"Which is kind of bad, cause, sitting at this desk..."

"You don't get paid too well, do you?"

"Not much at all." I looked past my desk, over to some kind of counter and window-like hole in the wall that seemed to lead to some place like a kitchen. I thought of that place as a snack bar.

I continued. "I keep thinking I'll wheel my chair over to the snack bar and back over here a whole lot of times each day. That should kind of get my mileage up."

Thursday, May 24, 2012

mom is claiming me; kurt cobain's sculpture garden

Dream #1

I was at some house, possibly my family's house. My mom seemed to be getting her taxes in order so she could file them. I had apparently been getting my taxes in order, too.

But now my mom asked me to give her one of my W2s. She said she needed it for her forms, as she was claiming me on her taxes. I realized I had been spending time living with her over the past year. But it had been less than three months. I didn't think that was enough time for her to be able to claim me on her tax form.

But my mom insisted. She showed me her tax forms. They were like long, green pieces of construction paper with writing on them in purple crayon. The crayon showed simple mathematical calculations. But a lot of them had to do with me. Many of them were trying to prove that I had lived with my mom since 2006.

I was shocked. I knew that if I had to give my mom information for her taxes, that would mess up what I needed to do for my taxes. That's why I didn't want her to claim me as a dependent. But if she had been claiming me since 2006, it would really end up coming back to me in a really bad way! How could my mom have done this to me!

I yelled and screamed at my mom. But she didn't think she'd done anything wrong. She said I was being really ungrateful to her by acting this way. I knew there was no point in yelling at my mom. So I went into the basement, apparently where my bedroom was.

I was getting all my tax documentation together. I was going to file my own taxes right away, the way I'd planned to do them before. But now I got angry at my mom all over again. I began yelling and screaming all kinds of nasty things about her.

I got control of my emotions and walked out of the bedroom. There was a big main area in the basement. I walked through that area into another area, which was my mom's bedroom. My brother stood right on the threshold of that area.

The bedroom was very big, but very dim, like it was lit with only a few candles or a few very small lights. My mom sat at a computer. She was surrounded by a few young men. The men were all looking at whatever she was doing on the computer with a sense of hope.

My brother said my mom was going to let him have a turn on the computer next. I realized that my mom was controlling computer usage, as well as other aspects of life, for my brother and the other men in her room.

I got angry again and yelled and screamed that my mom had managed to get my brother into a position where she had complete control over him.

I now had a view of something like a forest or a jungle. Some George of the Jungle kind of guy was swinging through the jungle. But I could barely see him. Somehow I was comparing my mom to the George of the Jungle guy.

Dream #2

I was outside a house at night. It was a cool, dewy night, and the moon was full in the sky. The house was gently lit. But it was almost like it was lit by stage light, like in a movie.

I was standing outside with a couple young adults. I was just near the foot of the staircase leading up to the covered porch of the house. The others sat on a little ledge on the covered porch. One or two of the people had left. A couple women remained.

We were somehow passing a book back and and forth to each other. It was a big, kind of thin, photography book. The book was about people whose lives had been ruined by meth usage. It had some specific angle to it. All the photos were either by or of famou artists who had been meth addicts, I think.

Somehow we got really interested in a section on Kurt Cobain (? - I don't think he was on meth). The first photograph in his section was of some kind of Buddhist sculpture, like of a fat, grinning, shirtless man wearing some kind of flowing skirt or pants.

I was now standing out on the grounds of what was apparently Kurt Cobain's estate. It was like a college campus, but it was all his house. The buildings were all red brick, with grey-white concrete or stone trim and grey-white concrete or stone columns.

It was a grey, dewy morning. There were a few young people all around the buildings. These people were all here kind of like they were at a party. Everybody was really calm. But I also had the feeling that these people were all drug addicts as well, and that they stood a chance of getting really rowdy.

Somehow I got really transfixed by the sculpture all over the place. Something about the sculpture had a very Buddhist look. But all the sculpture seemed to be defaced.

I may have been walking with one or two other people. They may have led me into one of the buildings. This building was set up like a small sculpture museum. There was really lovely sculpture all over the place. It all had a look like very old, stone, Buddhist sculpture. But it seemed to be made out of white marble, like 18th century French sculpture. And it was also all defaced. It was like the surfaces had been smashed and then rubbed smooth, or just rubbed smooth.

I walked back outside. There was another really fascinating sculpture near a light fixture on a column. This at first looked to me like a fat, bald man sitting and grinning widely.

I wondered, as I looked at the sculpture, why Kurt Cobain had been so into Buddhist sculpture. But as I wondered this, the sculpture changed into the sculpture of a snake's head. The snake's head then became defaced, like the others -- like it had been smashed and then rubbed smooth.

I turned to my right and walked into some small garden between buildings. There were a few young adults hanging around there, lithely relaxing. I was a little afraid of them. They seemed so calm right now. But I was afraid they'd become really rowdy really soon.

I noticed, right at the edge of the covered porch for the next building, a sculpture of a young girl lying on her back. The sculpture was really beautiful and erotic. The girl seemed to be in some kind of death throws. But her hair was all tossed out, and her back was all arched, so that she looked really sexual.

There were other sculptures, all kind of similar, forming a trail along the corner of the covered porch. Some of the sculptures were bigger, and some were of mature women, rather than girls. But they were all of females laying stretched out in some kind of death ecstasy.

I looked past the covered porch, where this trail of women seemed to lead. Just beyond the porch were some dewy evergreen trees and shrubs. Beyond them was a big lawn under a grey sky.

I could only partly see the lawn. But it appeared that the trail of women led to a sculpture of what appeared to be a pile of dead or dying people. The sculpture seemed to be in tact. It was big, possibly of marble. But it was weathered so that it had black and grey colors added to it.

Past this sculpture of the mound of dead or dying stood a sculpture of a crucifix. The crucifix may have been seven or eight meters tall. The style of the crucifix was kind of minimalist and modern. But the sculpture of Christ himself was of an older, more realistic style.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

dancing missile complex; texas cather library; citibank semi-lucid

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I "woke up" dancing in a dark room. There may have been music playing, some kind of deep, throbbing music. The room was mostly dark, with maybe a dim, red light. A strobe light may have flashed behind me occasionally, showing my shadow on the wall. As I first woke, a couple of people may also have walked behind me.

I didn't know why I was dancing. My moves were all really aggressive and angry. I thought I may have been preparing for some kind of fight.

At one point my shadows looked like coiled up snakes, like they were all somehow slithering down for the wall. I tried to change this appearance in some way, to make my shadow look more rigid and human. But I didn't like something about the new moves. So I went back to the snakelike moves.

I remembered the people who walked behind me. I felt like I needed some kind of approval for them. Maybe they'd laughed at me when they'd seen me dancing. But I felt like I needed to follow them, to get some kind of approval from them.

They'd walked up some steps along the right wall. I walked up those steps as well. The staircase was wooden and narrow. It was hard to see through the railing, up to the next floor. I barely saw a light in a bedroom. I went up to that bedroom.

In the bedroom it was now day. There were two women, both possibly Hispanic, in the room. One of the women was supposed to be my mother. But neither woman looked like my mother. They both looked alike. They were a bit short, kind of skinny, maybe in their mid-forties, and kind of worn-out looking. They had long, straight, pale hair, and they wore big eyeglasses.

The women may have been talking about me being Hispanic. But my mom was saying that I was actually half Native American. I didn't think my mom could prove that, even though I seemed to wish it was true. I wondered if I'd ever be able to track down my dad and findo out whether I actually was Native American.

I expressed something like this to the women while I was looking out the bedroom windows, which seemed to be close together, near the corner of the room.

I was now out in a car with my mom. My mom was driving. It was daytime. We were driving through some mountainy area that seemed to be developing into a suburban area. We drove up a road on a steep, grassy slope.

Along the slope were little fixtures in the ground, almost like ceiling-hung security cameras, except planted upside-down. The fixtures now started firing little missiles out of them, with bright, papery flashes. The frequency of the flashes became more and more intense.

We drove into an area full of apartment complexes. The apartment complexes were all relatively new. But the missile launchers were even here, too.

I figured that somehow this place we were driving through had gotten into a nuclear war, and that the place was just going into an all-out attack before it got attacked. But it was also like my mom and I had been sent to find these missiles, like we were somehow supposed to stop their production. The apartment complex was new. It may have been built just as a cover-up for the missile complex.

My mom and I, as well as my sister, now pulled in through a huge parking complex at night. It was like an airport parking complex. But we found ourselves in a hotel parking lot that seemed to be on the edge of the woods. The hotel was a Meridien. We went into the restaurant.

We were supposed to be meeting someone here. But I didn't have a job. I was really poor. I didn't know how I could afford any food in this place. I may also have been wearing really terrible clothes.

The decor of the restaurant was really nice and modern. It all somehow seemed familiar to me. I wondered how this could be. Then I remembered that I had actually applied for a job here, as a waiter.

One of the waiters walked past me. I recognized him from my interview. I wanted to acknowledge him. But I didn't want him to think I was some crazy guy, just here to stalk him because I still thought I stood a chance of getting a job here.

Dream #2

I was in a car, probably. I was driving somewhere. But I was also in a conversation with somebody -- maybe my mom, or maybe some women from work -- about Texas. There was a location we were trying to get to, on the west side of Texas. Or we may have been tracking someone like a criminal, and we may have suspected that the criminal was going there.

I was now in some place like a library. I had been talking with somebody about an art show I'd been wanting to see. But I'd been avoiding it for some reason, maybe because it was at my old university or run by somebody from there, and I didn't want to bother anybody from my old school.

I was walking away, trying to get out of the building, I think. I saw into a kind of dim room. The room seemed like some kind of narrow amphitheatre. There were a bunch of professional people inside, talking with each other like they had just finished the meeting.

Among those people I saw the old head of my theatre department. But the person was a woman instead of a man. I tried to remember the person's name. But I could only think of a man's name. I wanted to avoid the person. So I left the building. I figured I might go to that art show after all.

I was walking outside for a little while, out on a concrete path on a college campus. But I found myself not too long afterward in a big library, like the Rose Reading Room at the Schwarzmann branch of the NYPL.

Instead of having long tables through the room, the library had either short tables or individual desks. The room was mostly empty, except for three young, black women who were studying under the watch of an older, black, female teacher.

The young women were all spaced well apart from each other. As I walked into the library, one of the women was speaking out something to the teacher, who stood behind her left shoulder. The girl had a really nice voice. But what she was reading sounded really simple, almost silly. I couldn't figure why the girl, who seemed really smart, was reading such a simple text.

But the girl was really pretty. So I wanted to impress her. I began walking around the library with my chest all puffed out, like I was really smart. The young woman wore a dress of almost pastel colors -- yellow and green.

As I walked around the library I noticed that the other two young women also wore pastel colored clothes. The clothes seemed to me very well suited to the desert, which was apparently where we were. The colors also reminded me of something that the characters in the novels of Willa Cather might wear.

I walked toward the left side of the library. I was looking for books for myself. But I was also getting a bit nervous. I felt like sooner or later another guy would come into the library. When he saw how I was alone in this room with four women, he'd get jealous of me and start doing all kinds of things to annoy me.

Dream #3

I was in "the Citibank building," a huge skyscraper that was apparently located in Manhattan. I was here for an interview. I was on a high up floor, maybe even a floor that was still under construction.

I was really poorly prepared for the interview. I looked terrible, and I didn't exactly have any talking points prepared. Plus, I may have been interviewing for some position for which I had no experience.

I sat in big conference room for a bit with a tall, white, skinny man who looked young, even though he was probably in his mid thirties. The room was full of windows and filled with dim gold of late afternoon sunlight. But I felt really low in my seat, much shorter than the man, and it seemed really hard to see up and out of the windows.

The man eventually told me that he didn't think this job was a good fit for me. He may have told me he hadn't thought this job was a good fit for me, even before I came to the interview. He may have wondered why I'd come here at all. But he said this all in a really gentle way, like he was concerned for me, like I was a special child that he wanted to help.

The interview was over, and I was walking around the building. I was up on a floor where construction workers were still working. The floor had walls, but a lot of the floors and ceilings were still in a raw state.

I knew I was really high up over the city. I really wanted to look out the windows, to see the city below. But I suddenly realized that this was a dream, and that I could just fly out the window. I ran as fast as I could. I started flying, even before I got to the window.

As I saw the cityscape outside the window I told myself to focus. I knew that in the past I'd panicked with moving into outside environments in lucid dreams. I told myself to stay calm and just believe I could get outside.

I got through the window, but the enviroment changed. The building was much lower than it had been. And the landscape below was just trees and lawn, like I was in some kind of office park, rather than in the middle of Manhattan.

I stopped flying, for some reason -- maybe because I'd wanted to fall, to see what it was like to jump out of a building. I slammed down on the lawn on my stomach. I pulled my head up to look at the building. It looked like a pretty tall building, and it gleamed in the afternoon light.

I tried to stand myself up so I could look around and explore this dreamworld. But as I did, it changed from day to night. I thought I must haved woken up. But it scared me to think I'd woken up out on a lawn in the middle of the night. I had no idea how I'd gotten here. Had I been sleepwalking? Was I going crazy?

I could hear my labored breathing, like I was breathing inside a spacesuit. I walked or stumbled a little ways in the darkness. I thought that maybe I was still dreaming. But I couldn't be lucid, I told myself, because this world was so close to the world of my bedroom (???). I told myself I must be right on the edge of waking. I heard my breathing get louder and louder, until I woke up.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

archaeological stalker

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at some kind of scientific excavation site, maybe an arachaeological dig. The space that had been dug in the ground was roughly circular and maybe ten meters in diameter. The earth in the circle looked more like it had been cleared by a collapse of the ground, rather than having been dug up.

There were a decent amount of people in the hole. Most of the people seemed to be engaged in some task along the edges of the hole. I'm not sure whether I knew what my task was. There was a definite leader in the hole. I was probably sticking close to the leader.

I looked closely at the walls of the hole. The soil formed a kind of set of barriers, like for a waist-high fence of horizontal-planked wood. Through the spaces between the barriers I could see into some kind of building area, like an old office building or shopping mall. I may now have realized that I was looking for somebody and that the person I was looking for was down in this area.

I was down in the area now. It was like a tall corridor, lit with greyish fluorescent lights. It seems to me now like the hallway outside the service area of a big post office. I may have been standing at a counter built into one of the walls.

I knew I was supposed to meet with someone just down the hallway. I had just been notified (through text or email?) that the people had just finished whatever they'd been doing and that they'd be ready to meet me right away.

I wanted to walk down the hallway right away. But I had the feeling that someone was stalking me, following my every move. If I made it obvious that I was directly going to meet somebody, the person who was stalking me would be especially interested in following me. So I tried to take my time and act like I wasn't going anywhere in particular.

I walked down the hallway. A way down, there was a small space on my right side, a little alcove that the doors for three classroom-like rooms opened up to. In the alcove were a few tables for people to eat or study at.

My mother either sat at one of the tables or was just walking up to it. I walked up to my mom. My mom told me that we were still waiting for my Grandma Y, my mom's stepmother.

I was relieved to see my mom. I knew that, now that I was with people I felt familiar with, the stalker would be less apt to encroach on my space so obviously and make me feel so obviously like he was stalking me. I also felt like the stalker, seeing how I actually had outside relationships with people, would stop stalking me so much because he'd see how there were people in my life to help protect me.

But I still didn't want to make it obvious that my mom, grandma, and I were taking care of any particular kind of task. If my actions seemed directed toward any sort of goal, the stalker would take that as some sort of alert that he needed to stalk me even more.

I walked over to a wall to my right. There was another counter built out of the wall. This counter had stacks and boxes of books and comic books on it. I thumbed through some of the books, hoping to look kind of leisurely, like I wasn't doing anything I cared about, and like I didn't have anything I cared about doing on my mind. I hoped this would fool the stalker.

My grandma Y came up behind me at some point and began talking to me about books. We had a short exchange and then decided it was time to go do whatever we were supposed to be doing.

But as I looked down the hallway, I saw a tall, skinny, black man, maybe in his late thirties or early forties, sitting down at a long table. He opened a laptop computer and began typing on it.

I knew this man was the stalker. He had waited for a while, peering at me from somewhere else, before he'd decided I was going to be in this one spot for a while. Once he'd figured I'd be here a while, he'd decided to sit down and use his computer for a bit.

I thought this would be the perfect time to get out of here, since it would take at least a few seconds for the stalker to shut off his computer, stand up, and start following me. But I also didn't want to look too rushed, because I didn't want to make the stalker too alert, so that he'd think he needed to follow me even more closely.

I may then have been standing outside a semi-truck at night. I may have been with a group of young guys. We may have been talking about something work-related.

Monday, May 14, 2012

earthquake in philadelphia; can't get served; gold and nature walkways

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

There was an earthquake in Philadelphia. A helicopter was flying over Philadelphia during the daytime, showing views of the earthquake's effects.

But now the roads throughout Philadelphia were starting to collapse. It caugh everybody by surprise. Whole roads would just crumble down into pits. People were driving along some of the roads. When the roads would crumble, the people on the roads could be heard screaming.

At first I may not have been in Philadelphia. But then I may have been. I may have told myself that I needed to get out of Philadelphia.

I was then in some big, public building with a lot of other people. We may not have been in Philadelphia. But we were allpreparing to head away somewhere.

I was walking through a long hallway maybe five meters wide. The hallway had brownish walls, like cinder blocks tiled over with brownish tile, and floors of orangeish carpet. There were big duffel bags, probably everybody's travel bags, running through the center of the hallway.

I was looking for my bags. I found them. I probably had three long, black duffel bags. I noticed that one of my notebooks or videotapes was sitting on top of one of my bags. I knew I hadn't taken anything out of my bags. So someone had gotten into my bags. I opened a bag full of notebooks and put my notebook or videotape back inside. I stood up and walked away.

I was now seeing from the helicopter's view again. The news was reporting that the street collapses in Philadelphia were becoming even worse. We watched as an entire block of one of the main streets in Philadelphia was upended, lifting up and then sliding down into a pit.

I was now in an SUV with a few other people. It may have been late afternoon. The sky was a cool, silvery blue, and we were driving all through shadow. I sat in the front passenger seat. The other people in the car seemed to be young, smart, professional, white males. One of the people in the car may have been one of my old bosses, DO.

We were driving through Philadelphia. The city appeared to be abandoned, empty. One or more of the guys may have been talking about the history of the city, but possibly also about the danger the city was in.

But I now noticed we weren't driving on the roads at all. We were driving over public lawns, through plazas and parking lots, and over the walkways in front of buildings. But we stayed off all the roads.

I may have asked why we were doing this. But then it seemed obvious. I said, "Oh! The roads are all collapsing still. So we're driving on all the other spaces, because none of them has collaps--"

One of the guys interrupted me. "Don't say anything. You don't wanna jinx it."

We continued driving on, past an old, kind of small, but very nice looking public building of grey stone and red brick.

Dream #2

I was in line for something like a coffee shop. The line was more like a cafeteria line, where you move sideways along a counter that can be used for sliding a meal tray along. All I wanted was a cup of coffee.

At the head of the line there was a small window. A man stood at the window to take everybody's orders. The man looked kind of young, but not in good shape. He had a fatty, but scraggly and hungry, kind of look. He had stubble and long hair. He wore a black t-shirt and a white baseball cap, which he had on backwards.

As soon as the man saw me, he told me he wasn't serving anybody else. He was going off shift. So he couldn't serve me. This kind of didn't make sense to me. There were a lot of people in line behind me. How could this guy just go off shift, with nobody around to take his place.

But now the guy addressed the guy directly behind me. He asked, "Can I help you?"

I looked at the worker and said, "You said you couldn't take my order because you were going off shift. Why are you telling this guy you can take his order? All I want is coffee."

The guy just sneered at me. He walked away. He may have told me that I could come back and get my own coffee. I may have walked, or at least looked, behind the counter. The area behind the counter was pretty big and complex. I didn't know whether I could find or fix the coffee.

Dream #3

I was walking through a museum with my old friend H and a man whom I didn't know, but who was probably a friend of ours. H and I decided that we were going somewhere else in the museum. We had to go up a small stairwell to get there. Before we went up the stairwell, the man with us told us goodbye and gave us some advice.

But now I noticed there were two stairwells. The stairwell on the left had a green sign over it saying "Nature Walkway." The stairwell on the right had a red sign saying "Gold Walkway." I knew we had been planning to go outdoors, and that the Nature Walkway was the way outside.

But we hadn't known about the Gold Walkway, which was some kind of exploratory exhibit about gold jewelry. H said, "Gold Walkway," like that was where we now had to go.

I said, "Nature Walkway."

H said, "Gold Walkway," again, quite firmly. I knew I couldn't argue with her. So we took the stairwell up to the Gold Walkway.

Just after the head of the stairwell was a small area kind of like a bookshop. There were just a few small shelves of books, and maybe a couple shelves displaying other sorts of gifts.

Just beyond the bookshop were men's and women's restrooms. H said we should probably go to the restroom before we started the exhibit. The women's restroom was on the left. The men's was on the right. I knew each restroom was single and private, with a locking door.

I told H I'd go to the men's restroom and meet her outside when we were through. But H told me she wanted to go to the men's restroom, too. I assumed this was because she wanted to do something sexual in there with me. I was a little shy at the thought of doing something sexual in a public restroom. But I felt like I should just go with whatever H wanted to do.

But for some reason H and I ended up not going into the same restroom. I finished up in the restroom and waiting for H to come out. I looked through the books in the bookshop. When we'd first come up here, the place had seemed empty. But now there were a few people. I felt shy and uncomfortable.

Now H came out of the restroom. She said something to me like, "Why were you in there for so long? I began to get worried about you. I thought something had happened to you, or that you'd left."

Sunday, May 13, 2012

nefertiti's shadow; big screen youtube diaper girl; hot day boy

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with my mom at night. We were driving along a very dark street and past a tall museum or library that stood in the center of a deep lawn. The museum, was tall, narrow, and octagonal, with a domed roof, somewhat like the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. The darkness of the surroundings and the light on the building gave me a visual sense of being in a grainy, black and white movie.

I knew that the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti was on display at this museum. I knew that somehow, even from this distance, one could get a glimpse of the bust, or at least a fragment of it, from over some wall.

I now saw something that appeared to be the edge of the statue. I pointed it out to my mom. What it ended up being, though, was something like a reflection and something like a shadow, cast up onto a ceiling or a high portion of a wall. It was like the top part of the outside wall was missing, revealing the tops of the inside walls of the room where the Nefertiti sculpture was located.

The reflection was like the reflection of the flat top of Nefertiti's headdress. It showed, in the oval shape of the flat top, something like the stamp of a cobra hieroglyph. Just to the right of this reflection was the shadow of the top half of Nefertiti's headdress. These images were very large against the ceiling.

My brother was now in the car. I was explaining something about all of this to him. I may have been telling him how this use of imagery was a teaser, to whet people's appetites, so they'd want to come into the museum to see the actual sculpture. We may soon afterwards have passed out of sight of the museum.

Dream #2

I was in bed in a kind of big room. On the wall beyond the foot of my bed was a giant flat screen TV. It took up almost half the wall. The room was dark, other than from the light it received from the TV screen. The TV seemed to be playing something off of YouTube.

But now the program had finished. A multi-screen screen appeared, like at the end of YouTube videos, where suggestions are listed, like little mini-screens, of what to watch next. But these mini-screens were all in something like lists, in rows and columns. Each row dealt with one specific video. The columns were different criteria regarding each video.

Apparently, all these videos were videos I had downloaded. I was getting a lot of criticism for my downloads. One column in particular dealt with dialogue, possibly ambient dialogue, in videos. In a number of my video downloads, it was claimed, I'd broken some ambient dialogue rule. The dialogue sounded real and natural. But people were claiming I'd scripted it all for recording, which was against the rules.

As far as I could tell, all the videos I'd downloaded had been from parties I'd gone to. All the thumbnail images were of dark, clublike settings, with pretty, drunk girls in view. I thought it should have been obvious that the dialogue in situations like that would be ambient, not scripted. So the claims against me had to be wrong.

And, at least for a few videos, the criticism against my downloads was a lot more specific. I actually felt like I could argue even more effectively against the more specific arguments. But the specifics were written so small in each cell that I couldn't read them from bed.

I stood up and walked to the screen. The screen was like a touchscreen, and even though the screen was so large and high up that I could only touch the bottom portion of it, I was managing to manipulate the imagery on the screen by touching the screen

I now realized that my downloads had actually been downloads of fetish videos. They all seemed to involve a preteen girl who wore diapers. I knew that this kind of stuff should probably have been kicked off of YouTube right from the start. But I was also excited and intrigued by the thumbnail images for the videos. I wanted to watch a video.

It was kind of a hassle to get access to a video -- but I can't remember why. But finally I got access to one of the videos. The girl in the video was on all fours, turned away from the screen. She kept on jiggling her bottom up and down really fast. It was supposed to be sexy or imitative of sex. But it struck me as silly and awkward.

I was now in some place that was possibly supposed to be a store. But it was more like a covered walkway in between two small buildings, like is sometimes seen in school or other multi-building institutional architecture, except with shelves like grocery store shelves in certain places. The sun was gentle and golden.

I was in between two rows of shelves. At least one set of shelves was filled with packs of diapers. The imagery on the diaper packs was mostly white and red. But there also appeared to be some rainbow lettering that made the packages seem more colorful than they really were.

Some man got my attention. I walked out from the shelves. The man was tall, a little chubby, possibly Hispanic, with dark, coppery skin. He wore a yellow t-shirt and had round, purple-lensed eyeglasses.

The man mentioned the videos I'd been watching. I knew it was no use trying not to sound interested in the videos. The man already knew I'd been aroused by them. So I simply asked the man how I could see more videos like that.

The man told me something that had to do with paying more attention to the packages of diapers I'd been looking at. The diapers themselves, or the sale of the diapers, was somehow linked to gaining more access to the videos.

The man walked away. I went back to look at the diapers. I may possibly have continued some kind of conversation in my head with the man.

Dream #3

I was in a car, possibly with my mother. We were probably driving through some parking lot at the edge of some kind of wide park or natural area.

There was some covered seating area, something like a bus stop, at the end of the parking lot. A few kids were hanging out around there.

I was in kind of a hurry to get home. I had some new access to some kind of fetish video -- probably diapered kids, like in the previous dream. I wanted to get home as soon as possible, so I could watch it.

But my mom saw the kids playing all around the shelter. She sped down to the shelter and swung-curved her car around to a stop near the shelter.

A little boy with light brown skin, really curly hair, and glasses ran up to the car. He looked kind of nerdy. But he also looked like a pain in the neck: a kid with kind of messy habits, no boundaries, and a tendency to do stupid things just because it annoyed people.

My mom had all the car doors open, so that the kid could get in if he wanted. My mom hadn't said anything straight out, but she was somehow indicating that she'd give the boy a ride home if he wanted it.

I didn't want to give the boy a ride home. I knew from experience that a ride home with him would be annoying as hell. But I also worried that the fetish material I was so excited about might be in the car right now. I didn't want to violate any kids by letting them see it.

At first it seemed like the boy didn't want a ride home, anyway. It seemed like he was going to try and be independent. The bus he was waiting for would arrive soon, anyway.

But suddenly the boy said, "But, man! Is it hot as heck outside today!" I knew this meant that the boy was going to want a ride home now.

I was somehow on the driver's side of the car, even though I may also still have been on the passenger side. The car was also really low to the ground, too.

The kid stood right next to me. I knew he was going to want to get in. I didn't want him to come in. But I knew he'd get in anyway. He'd already been given the invitation.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

hospital television

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I woke up in a hospital. I got up and began walking around the hallways. The first hallway I walked through was golden with sunlight. There were people all around. But I didn't feel crowded. Everybody was taking care of their own business. I felt like I was left to myself.

I had apparently had some sort of surgery. I may have woken up from the surgery, or I may have woken up from a long convalescence following my surgery.

People may have been worried whether I'd survive at all. But now I seemed to be completely fine. I may actually have been looking for a doctor or nurse. I may have thought that I was going to be checked out of the hospital this morning.

I wandered down another hallway, possibly on the opposite side of the building. from the hallway I'd been walking down. This hallway was much dimmer. The sun didn't reach through the hospital rooms out into the hallway as it did on the other side of the building.

I wandered into a room where a father and a couple of his children were sitting on a couple beds and watching TV. The room was bright with daylight. I could see through a window to the suburban street below. The father and children didn't seem sick. I had the feeling they were actually waiting for the mother of the family to get well.

I think I had been looking for a doctor in this room. Since I hadn't found one, I walked out and into another room. This room was near the first room, but on the adjacent corner with the other room. This room was a bit dimmer than the first room.

There were people in the room, and the attitude -- one of waiting for somebody -- seemed to be like that of the first room. But one of the people in this room was definitely ill and being treated. This person may actually have been gravely ill. I wasn't as interested in this room as I'd been in the first room. So I left.

I walked back into the first room. I may have paid more attention to the room this time. The room seemed to be divided -- only by means of room shape and a couple square columns in the room -- into two distinct halves. The father and kids sat on two beds in the left half of the room. The family watched a television set that stood in the right half of the room.

I looked down to the family. The beds had only white sheets on them. The family was all sprawled out and relaxed. The father may have been in his mid thirties, a little chubby, but kind of worn-out looking.

One of the kids caught my eye. She was a little girl, maybe six or seven years old. She was tiny and skinny, with short, blonde hair. She lay on her stomach on the bed. She wore only a tiny t-shirt and a pair of pink panties.

The sight of the girl's bottom was arousing me. I decided to look away from the girl, so I wouldn't get in trouble with the dad. I stood behind one of the square columns, kind of to hide from the family, so they wouldn't even be aware that I was in the room.

I looked toward the TV. Something about the TV made me think that this room was a common room. I may have thought that any room in the hospital that had a TV in it was a common room.

The TV was playing some kind of children's channel. Somehow I managed to get the idea of what a few different shows on this channel were like. All the shows seemed to be live-action, studio-style shows, like the old Nickelodeon show You Can't Do That on Television. But many of them also had an anime-like, or Power Rangers-like, edge to them somehow.

I was really interested in seeing more of these shows. But I started to get the feeling that if I stuck around watching children's programming for too long, somebody would accuse me of being a pervert. I wondered myself whether I was a pervert for liking children's shows. But I somehow justified myself to myself by saying that I was planning on subscribing to this channel as soon as I got home.

I walked out of the room and back down the dim hallway. It suddenly occurred to me that I'd been away from my own room for a long time now. I could imagine my room, with some of my clothes, and possibly some kind of round-brimmed camping or fishing hat, folded up on my bed.

I thought to myself that in the time I'd been gone, the doctors may have come looking for me. They may have wanted to check me out of the hospital. But if I was away from my room for too long, they'd decide they'd need to come back later on to check me out. In that case I'd have to wait for hours to get out of here. I may already have missed my chance to leave. But, I told myself, if I hurried back to my room I could possibly catch someone who could check me out.

Friday, May 11, 2012

rubbery rainbow shoelaces

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at "my family's house," which was a small apartment. I was in the living room with my mom and my sister and two or three of my sister's kids. The kids were all really young, possibly still in diapers. The living room was bright with natural light. It had pale carpet and bare walls. I was sitting either on the couch or on the floor.

There was a knock on the door. My sister went for it. She opened the door. An older Asian man with a bald crown and grey hair on the sides handed my sister some papers, probably in an envelope. The man made some calm but accusing comment to my sister. The man then walked to some other apartment.

My sister walked away, leaving the door open. I was annoyed at that. The Asian man was someone my sister had complained about before. He always snooped around and tried to find out things my sister was doing. I don't know whether he owned the apartment building. But he seemed like he was in some position to get my sister kicked out of the apartment.

I stood up and walked to the door. I closed it slowly and softly but firmly while giving my sister and mother a wide-eyed, stern look. I walked back to the couch, saying, "That guy's always looking for an excuse to get you. Why are you gonna leave the door wide open?"

I sat back in the couch. I may have spoken a bit more. But now either my mom or my sister told me to stop criticizing my sister. My sister may even have stood up and opened the door again. Or my mom or sister may have had me open the door again.

I decided that was enough. I told my mom and sister that was fine. I sat down on the floor and got my shoes on. I was leaving.

My shoes were laced with rubbery, rainbow shoelaces. They were thick, almost like thick egg noodles. They were also kind of slimy, like they were covered in something halfway between simple syrup and maple syrup. The colors of the laces were bright -- yellows, greens, purples, and oranges -- all fading or blurring into each other.

I may have been speaking to my mom and sister as if I weren't upset about anything. My mom and sister may also have been speaking to me very calmly.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

calling my niece a b---h

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was down in the basement of my family's house. I had just come down the steps. My mother had come ahead of me. She had headed into her bedroom. I was following my mom into her bedroom for something.

But my niece had been trying to get our attention as we'd been coming down the steps. She was being really annoying about it. I'd just been trying to ignore her. But now that we were heading down into my mom's room, my niece decided that she'd follow us.

I was really annoyed. My niece isn't allowed into the basement. She was disobeying rules just so she could come bug me and my mom. I yelled up to my niece not to come downstairs. But she'd run all the way down the stairs before I'd even finished what I'd said.

My niece was already heading past me and toward my mom's room. I had a crystal clear glass of water. I was going to splash some of the water on my niece, to shock her away and back upstairs, like someone might spray water at a cat. But I couldn't pour the water. For some reason my body was all locked up and dizzy and twisted around. I couldn't even move forward until my niece had gotten into my mom's bedroom.

I was so frustrated by what my niece had done that I muttered under my breath, "Ugh, you little bitch." As soon as I'd said it I felt bad. I never thought I'd call my niece a bitch. But, fortunately, I thought, since my niece was so far away from me, she probably wouldn't have heard me.

I walked through my mom's room. At the end of her room, on the right wall, was a doorway to a bathroom. My mom was getting whatever she had for me out of there. My niece had run in there as well.

Now I had to get my niece and take her back upstairs. I had calmed down a bit. Now I wanted to be nice to my niece, to show her I loved her. I picked her up out of some cluttered area near the doorway to the bathroom.

I turned around and carried my niece back out of my mom's room. My niece was still about the same age as she is IWL -- about four years old. But she was as small as a little doll. I bounced my niece up and down in a loving fashion, cooing a little song to her and being tender. But I was also holding her at arms length.

But now my niece began crying. She said, "I know you called me a bitch. Wait until I tell my mom... that you really hurt my feelings!"

I felt really bad. I hadn't thought my niece had heard me. I wouldn't have wanted her to hear me. But she did. And I felt even worse when I thought of how my sister would yell at me when she'd found out I'd called one of her kids a bad word.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

big-eyed scorpion; old friends' concert; expensive water slide

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an apartment, either in the late afternoon or early morning. The apartment was very dim, growing dark. I stood in some area like the living room, right on the edge of the small kitchen of the apartment.

I suddenly saw a scorpion run across the kitchen floor. The scorpion was huge, maybe 15cm long. It was pale yellow, and it looked really meaty. I couldn't tell what it was at first. And even after I concluded that it was a scorpion, I wasn't sure. Its tail seemed to be tucked really close to its body.

I tried to get a closer look at the scorpion. It was at the right side of the kitchen, about to hide under some of the cabinets. But it was fidgeting about, moving very slowly. I was worrying that it would panic if I got too close, that it would unfold its tail and sting me.

The scorpion did seem to get panicked. It moved out from under the cabinets and started to move toward me. I got worried and backed up, toeing my way back to the living room area. The scorpion seemed to follow me for a bit. But then it kind of seemed to forget about me.

I was sitting on a stool, keeping my feet up a couple rungs so that the scorpion couldn't reach me. But now I wasn't so sure the thing was a scorpion, especially since the light was so dim -- maybe getting dimmer.

I tried to look closely at the scorpion, but my eyes were really fuzzy and grainy. The scorpion now seemed to have big, buggy eyes popping out of its head. The eyes were like cartoon eyes. They were egg-shaped, and they seemed to be made out of a lot of little beads or eggs.

I decided that the best way for me to judge what this thing was would be for me to catch an image of it on my phone. But the thing seemed so far away that it was hard for me to get a good view of it on my phone.

I took my stool and walked around, through a small hallway made by the back end of the kitchen wall and the wall with the front door on it, to a second entrance to the kitchen. I set my stool up in that entrance. It seemed like the scorpion was coming that way. I would get a better view of the scorpion, I figured, once the scorpion got over here.

Dream #2

I was walking to "my job." I was apparently outside, on some street. But I felt like I was on a stage, maybe even down in some basement. On the left side of this stage-like street was "my job," some brick-walled, big-windowed building like a restaurant.

As I was about to head into my work, I saw my old best friend R and his wife L standing in the doorway with a few other people. I wanted to avoid meeting with them, as I didn't really want L to know I was working here. So I figured I might go into the shop on my right, the one across the street from my job.

But somehow I decided to go talk to my old friends instead. They asked me where I was going. I told them, "To work." Somehow I knew that my friends were putting on some kind of show on the first level of this building. I worked in the basement.

I knew that my friends wanted me to take some part in whatever they were doing, something like a concert. I didn't feel like doing it, and I was using work as an excuse. I knew I could probably get out of work, if I really wanted to. But I wouldn't try.

I started feeling bad. I knew my friends would think I was just being lazy, especially L. I told my friends that I could go to their next event. They told me their event was taking place at some other restaurant. I actually felt a lot better about going to that event. It seemed better to go to some other restaurant than to have to do the event in the building I worked in.

Dream #3

I was outside on a sunny day. I was in line for something like a waters slide. I was with a family: at least an attractive woman and her little girl.

We were all walking up a colorful-plastic-coated, metal walkway, up a few steps, and then up another small staircase to our left. From that point, we were led beyond a curtain, into an indoor area. An attractive woman was ushering us into this area.

As we were going up through the line, a woman (somewhere) was telling us about some really good vacation deal. The deal was $585 per person, and it was for a family of five. In addition, the vacation people were giving a $500 discount to people signing up for the vacation.

I had some idea that this whole water slide we were in line for was somehow a part of whatever this vacation deal was. I was thinking the vacation deal may have been for spending a number of days at a water park.

But I calculated in my head, as the woman ushered me beyond the curtain, the expense of the trip. Five time $600 would be $3000. Minus four (!!!) times $15, or $60, would be $2940. Minus $500 would be $25--.

I told the woman I was walking with, "We can't do that. It's too expensive. Especially for just water slides." I was talking to the woman like I was her husband. But I also felt like I was disappointing her, so that I could never be her husband. I wondered whether she'd try to go off and find some better man.

The water slide seemed like a regular water slide as I first approached it: a plasticky flume with water flowing down it. But as I got closer, it changed. It was more like a series of ramped conveyor belts. I'm not sure where the water was. I knew that a person would slide or walk down the ramp a ways, and that a brightly colored, plasticky, boat-like vessel would come up to meet the person and take him on the rest of his ride.

It was about to be my turn. Behind me in line were a bunch of young, very attractive women, like college girls. They all seemed to be talking kind of friendly, almost like they were trying to be friendly with me personally.

But now we somehow knew -- possibly because the ushering lady had told us -- that the water slide wasn't working for the moment. There was some problem with the little boats. They weren't being sent out. We had to wait until they were being sent out for the ride to start back up.

But the woman I had come here with had already gone down the slide. The first conveyor belt ramp went down about twenty meters. It was then intersected by a horizontal conveyor belt, which ran from right to left. The boats may have been supposed to meet people at this point. Then there was another conveyor belt down.

The woman stood on the horizontal conveyor belt. She looked up to me, kind of confused, wondering why I wasn't coming down and why she wasn't going anywhere. The woman may have been wearing a wedding dress.

Possibly because I didn't want to look ineffectual in front of the pretty girls, I yelled down to the woman that the ride was stopped because of the boats. I told her it should be starting again soon. But the woman still seemed to be uncomfortable in her situation. So I may have decided to walk down the conveyor belt to stand with the woman while we waited for the ride to restart.

Monday, May 7, 2012

a raise from my old boss; seinfeld paperwork

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an office. I sat at a desk that had a huge shelf or barrier right beside it. The barrier felt more like the back end of a filing cabinet, topped with some small set of metal shelves. My desk was part of a narrow but pretty long area, like a number of tall filing cabinets had all been lined up near a wall, with desks set behind them.

My old boss, CR, walked up in front of my desk from an aisle made between two of the filing cabinets. He seemed to be thinking I was planning to leave this job. He didn't want me to leave, and he was thinking of ways to keep me.

Finally he told me something like, "You know, things are finally going to be okay. We're going to start making money. I'll be making more money. And I'm going to see to it that you get a raise."

Somehow in all of this it may have been implied that my boss was going to leave his job for another job, and that he was going to take me with him. Or it might have been that we had already gone to another job, and that things were going to be better here than my boss had first thought.

My boss walked away, and I watched after him. I then sat down, thinking about my raise.

Dream #2

Something like an episode of Seinfeld. The main characters all sat against some run down wall, on a bench that was either part of the wall or built onto the wall. They all sat kind of slouched and lazy.

The guys were all somehow annoying Elaine. Some of them may have been making annoying sounds. But what they were really doing that was really annoying Elaine had to do with some kind of work they were either not doing or doing in some kind of really annoying way.

The view now focused on Jerry, who sat at the far right (my right, as I viewed it) end of the bench. Jerry now called attention to the fact that all this time he hadn't been half as annoying as the other guys, and that he had quietly been doing his work. He continued his work. This may have inspired everybody else to do their work.

Now one of the guys had some kind of paperwork to fill out. This was like a tax form, except it had more to do with getting employment. There were two columns of questions, with an answer column beside each question column.

Two questions toward the bottom of the page, maybe the last and the third to last questions, were in boxes filled in with a blue background. At least one of these questions was an eliminating question. It may have had something to do with Texas.

It was now like I was filling out this form for the person who needed the process related to this form taken care of. The answer box next to the very important question may already have been a lot of small writing, maybe typing. But I had to write in a zero. I crossed through the circle of the zero to clarify that it was a zero and not an "o."

Something about the process of filling out this box may have repeated. It may have been like the first time I'd done the filling out I hadn't known what I was doing, and that, as I learned what the box really meant, I'd have to re-do and re-do the box.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

whose DVD player?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a living room with some members of my family. The living room was small, kind of dim, and kind of cluttered. I sat on the carpeted floor, probably with my back propped against the foot of the couch. My sister probably sat on the couch, near my left shoulder.

My mom's best friend CM came into the room from some small hallway off to my right. She stopped and stood near some kind of cluttered frame of red-painted, metal tubing, like a frame made of a bunch of chair-frames all welded together and crammed full of old household clutter.

CM held a red electronic device in her hands. It was apparently a portable DVD player. CM asked, "Do you know whose this is?"

I told CM that the DVD player was my sister's. In fact, my sister had been looking for the DVD player just recently. But CM said something about how where she'd found the DVD player or what disc she'd found in the DVD player had led her to believe that the DVD player wasn't actually my sister's.

My sister seemed indifferent to the fact that the DVD player had been found. But she said, "Look! If he says that that's my DVD player, then it's mine! You need to listen when he tells you things."

CM possibly didn't hand me the DVD player, but she held it close enough so that I could see it. It was colored red, like an old amusement park ride, maybe even with sparkly flecks in the red. But it looked broken. Some part of the front casing was broken off, possibly the part where the DVD was held. And the casing for the batteries (AA batteries) was gone, too.

Either my youngest or my second youngest nephew came to sit down next to me. We may both have been under blankets. My nephew made up some kind of excuse for why he needed to lay by me. He was afraid -- as he'd probably be IWL -- that I would ask him not to be so close to me. But I recognized that, and I told him he was fine laying by me.

But now I realized I had left my phone plugged in off to my right, near the metal frame-thing. I wanted to have my phone near me, just in case. But I didn't want to ask my nephew to move, now that he was comfortable with me. We were both basically laying down by now. And I didn't want to make too big a deal about missing my phone, because I didn't want someone else to grab it for me -- just in case I'd left something shameful on the front screen.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

fragments of criticism

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at my office. I had been having a lot of troubles with my boss. But now a higher-up person, possibly a client of ours, was coming to the office. I had a feeling he'd listen to my concerns.

But now I heard that the visitor was here. I knew that I had actually written out my concerns regarding my boss. I knew that the visitor would take anything I'd written very seriously. But I now thought that what I'd written about my boss was actually a bit mean and unfair. I'd look immature and petty for having written it. I needed to find what I'd written and get rid of it.

I ran into the copy room. The copy room was pretty big, but a little dumpy and kind of dim, as if only one or two lights were on. I found a big book on the floor, in front of some old copiers or old boxes or something.

I opened the book and found what I'd written about my boss. It was actually just a few sentences, written in capital letters, on a torn top half of a sheet of paper. The tearing was kind of ragged and slanted, so that the paper had a kind of rhombus-like shape and was a bit less than half the area of the full page.

I read through my criticisms of my boss. They actually weren't that bad, in my opinion. They were pretty reasonable. They were written in a blank, business-like style. And they didn't veer into the more personal or vehement claims I might have made. I may have thought that I actually wouldn't mind if the visitor found this piece of paper.

I stood up. I had to copy something, possibly my little sheet of criticisms. I walked to the copy machine, which stood against a wall that had been to my right as I'd knelt over the big book.

A man stood to my left as I made copies. He was tall and slim, but athletic, with sharp features, blue eyes, and curly-wavy, reddish-brown hair. He was a bit too tan, and his tan was tinged with red. This man may have been the visitor, or he may have been talking to me about the visitor. He may also have been talking about whatever documents I was copying.

Friday, May 4, 2012

too many dinners; brother wants to strangle me

Good morning, everybody. This post was from 5/4/12. I thought I'd published it. But it looks like I'd only saved it. So I'm publishing it now.

Dream #1

I was in a car with one of my co-workers, LM. LM was driving. We ended up going to some small restaurant, maybe like a fast food restaurant. It was like LM was ordering some meal or something for some other event. LM then told me that since I'd come with her to this restaurant, that she would give me dinner as a reward.

I was looking forward to this dinner. But now I was in the car with LM and a group of other people, possibly a few younger people. LM was in the front passenger seat now, and I was in one of the back seats, maybe the back middle seat.

Somebody had brought LM two or three bags with styrofoam containers in them. The containers were all full of dinner meals. LM had been given these meals as a kind of present. She was expected to eat them all pretty soon.

I understood this would mean that LM would likely not get dinner with me today. But I also thought that maybe what would happen would be that LM would expect me to eat these containers with her and then to eat a dinner with her, too. I knew that would be way too much for my weak stomach to handle.

LM opened up one of the packages. It was filled with rich food, like some sort of steak coated in a heavy gravy. I knew this was way too much. I probably wouldn't share this with LM. And she'd probably be too full after eating it to have another dinner with me.

Dream #2

I was in some room like a kitchen with my brother and some woman, possibly my mother. The kitchen was small and narrow. My brother stood at one narrow end of the kitchen. My mother somehow stood at my brother's right. My brother was maybe 15cm taller than he is in waking life.

My mother asked my brother to tell me how sometimes he felt like strangling me. I asked my brother why he sometimes felt like strangling me. My brother got really mad. He towered over me, almost seeming to make a gesture toward strangling me right then and there. He shouted something at me like, "Because you're always so damn frustrating!"

Thursday, May 3, 2012

frisbee art

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was out on a really wide lawn with a small group of people. Everybody was kind of in the same place, but we weren't all together. I think a few people were friends. I may also have been with one other person.

I had been there doing something of my own. I may have been doing something with frisbees. Now I was finished and was about to leave.

But before I left I threw a special frisbee. This frisbee had the ability to lift high up into the air and then travel for long, long distances. While the frisbee traveled these distances, it would record events -- not just events of the present, but also events of the past. I was trying to do something, I think, like record the past events of my life.

I threw the frisbee. It was almost transparent, with a little bit of a gel-like, bluish tinge to it. In order to get high up into the air, the frisbee had to get a good wafting of air under it.

I kept watching, waiting for the perfect breeze to get under the frisbee. But every breeze that came only lifted the frisbee up a little bit. The frisbee would glide a ways, then go back down to about waist level. It would hover around that range a bit before another gust would lift it. But it definitely wasn't getting high enough, even to leave the park!

As I watched the frisbee, it seemed to shift and grow. Still floating around like a frisbee, it now looked like a dome-lidded garbage can, except with a broad disk around the base of the dome-lid. It was still all made of the almost transparent, plastic material.

Some man noticed that I was frustrated with the inability of my frisbee to get going. The man was some kind of frisbee expert, and he wanted to give me some pointers on how to get the frisbee moving.

The man knew that I had been taking video of myself throwing the frisbee. So he asked to see the video, so he could analyze my throws. I turned on the first video. But right from the very beginning I knew it was going to be embarrassing. Apparently I had filmed myself doing some kind of art with the frisbee.

I knew that I hadn't been throwing the frisbee in any context like sport, or playing catch with others. Instead, I'd gotten all dressed up in colorful clothes, put up some colorful sets in the park, and thrown the frisbee, basically to myself, in ways that I thought were "artistic."

I knew this had been completely useless and silly. But I tried to explain it to the man, before we got too far into the embarrassing aspect of the video, by using terms that made it seem like my throws really were based in some kind of truly athletic effort.

I actually had two videos. I thought the second video was probably better than the first. It was in black and white instead of color. So I thought the absence of the gaudy colors I'd used in the first video would be a lot less embarrassing.

The person I was showing the videos to was now a woman. There may have been one or two people around us. And we were watching the videos on a monitor that stood atop some technical tower in a dark booth, like the control booth outside a sound studio.

I told the woman, "You'll probably also like this video because it's a lot easier to understand. It's really good, too, because it has Edie Sedgwick in it. And, of course, she's really attractive."

The video started. Either I or somebody else (a woman?) began telling the plot of the video. The video was now basically a movie. The movie was about a blonde, business-like woman. The woman was maybe in her thirties. She was pretty, but she did look a bit worn and weathered by life. She had shoulder-length, blonde hair and wore a long, tan overcoat.

The person (I?) said, "This woman is going back to an old neighborhood from her past. She's trying to reconnect with a traumatic moment. She's trying to make peace with it. She may even have discovered recently that she could enjoy being in this place again. This may have come as a surprise to her."

My view became really close on the video. I may even have seen directly from the woman's point of view. It was night. The woman was walking up to a house she used to live in. It may have been implied that the house had ghosts.

The woman walked up to the door. But now the view went down to where the wall of the house met the concrete of the walkway. All along this edge there was a thin strip of weak metal.

The view panned slowly along this metal, from left to right. The metal began reflecting bright colors, like from the hot spotlights of a Kenneth Anger film. Some haunting, bleak music played in the background. The music worked its way up to a crescendo, at which point, I assumed, something was to be revealed to the woman.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

baby clothes and video games; one house to another

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the basement of a Toys R Us. The place was full of baby supplies. The basement was huge, like a floor of a department store in a mall.

I had been all alone at first, like I had actually gotten here before the store had actually opened. But now there were more and more people filtering in. I was getting nervous. I decided to leave.

I was heading toward an escalator. But off to my right I saw a huge area, sectioned off from the rest of the basement by a waist-high barrier (like the barrier around a skating rink), that was full of baby clothes.

I seemed to remember now that I had come down into the basement in the first place to look for diapers that I could wear. I thought that maybe the baby clothes section would also have diapers. I thought that there might even be some baby clothes that I could wear.

But the baby clothes area already had a good amount of people in it: good-looking, well-off-looking moms and dads shopping for clothes for their little babies. They'd obviously think I was a pervert if they saw me looking for diapers in the baby section. So I just got on the escalator and went upstairs.

I was now on a first floor of a Toys R Us. But it seemed like a different time altogether. Again, it seemed like the store was closed. The place felt completely dead and empty. I felt all alone.

I was in the video game section. I was looking at boxes for portable game systems. I had picked up one of these systems. I may even have started playing it somehow, as if the box had some kind of demo capability on it.

But now I noticed that a whole bunch of the boxes could also act as security cameras. A lot of the boxes were trained on me, watching me. They also had video screens showing what imagery they were capturing of me.

One of the boxes in particular was kind of strange. It was clear and empty. Its sides were like iridescent cellophane. Its edges were some kind of flimsy, yellow plastic. But somehow I could see that even this object was capturing and projecting video of me.

I felt like there was a small group of people behind all this -- not like security guards, but more like average people who just followed me around because they thought I was some kind of crook.

So I tried to do my best to show that all I had been interested in in the first place was playing the video games. I played the video game demo on the box I was holding, trying to make it clear by my actions that I had no intention of stealing or wrecking anything.

Dream #2

I woke up in a huge apartment. My eyes were really groggy. It was hard to get them open. I had apparently been sleeping on the bench seats of some kind of breakfast table or dining table.

I sat up and looked over the back of the bench seats. It was like I was on a balcony. I looked down to something like a living room. It was pretty far down, but the ceiling was still pretty high up from where I sat.

I knew that I was leaving this apartment for good today. Knowing that I was leaving, I suddenly realized that this huge apartment had been mine. It was so big and so nice. I kind of remembered complaining about it. But I couldn't remember ever having appreciated its size or niceness.

I told myself that I'd have to store up all the memories of how nice this place was before I left. I also probably told myself that if I'd had a place like this before, I could have it again. I knew I was moving to a much smaller place now. But I knew I could get back into a big, nice place like this.

The fuzzy image of a kind of cheap-looking couch came into my mind. The image eventually clarified a little. The couch was brown, fake leather. But the legs and arms were made of some kind of cheap, tubular chrome. I knew this would be the one thing I could take with me into my new place. This was a relief: I knew I didn't have a couch in my present place.

I was now outside, on some big vehicle, possibly a bus. I was trying to catch up to a car that my mother and sister were in. I was really trying to catch up with my sister. It was like I was in love with her, but I had made some kind of mistake, so that now she was running away from me.

I had caught up to the car once. But I had made some mistake. After my mistake, I was somehow slowed down so that my sister could get away from me by speeding away.

I was now coming after my sister again. I was still on the bus. I was halfway hanging out of the bus. When the bus caught up to my sister, I hung even further out of the bus.

My sister was on the passenger side of the car. I yelled over to her. She spoke to me, but she was acting like she didn't know me. Her purpose was to ignore me and keep me out of her life. I may have been planning to live in her house. But she didn't want that either.

But I was determined to get back into her life. So I jumped off of the bus and onto my sister's car. My sister's window was only partly open. But I somehow managed to climb in through the window. I told my sister something like, "See? This is how serious I am about wanting to be back with you."

We rode along. It was now night. My mom drove, and my sister sat in the passenger seat. I sat in the backseat. Things seemed to be a lot calmer. But we were actually heading to some apartment complex. It was where my sister had been living.

We stopped in the parking lot. Apparently we'd come here so that my sister could break up with the man she'd been living with. But now that I was here, and I was planning on being something like my sister's boyfriend, it was up to me to confront this guy.

My sister said something to me like, "So you really think you can handle committing to me? Let's see. You'll have to face guys like this one. And he's tough. Let's see if you can do it."

But I didn't think the guy was so tough. I knew he was rich. We were parked in the lot of some really nice apartment. The building looked modern, almost like a beautiful, new art museum building. There were blue lights shining against the building. And all around the parking lot was a calm forest.

The guy was some kind of business man. But he'd probably just made a lot of his wealth by cheating people. He was an Asian man with hair down to just above his shoulders. He wore dark glasses and a white suit. He looked kind of like a criminal version of the physicist Michio Kaku. But something about him also looked old and faded, and also a bit feminine.

I was nervous about, but not afraid of, meeting the man. But I was going to go in and confront him. But before I could go in, he came out, with three or four tough guys like bodyguards around him.

The men all got into one car near our car. I could see the man's head as he sat in the car. I figured I'd go talk to him right now, just to take care of things. But now I actually was pretty afraid.