Tuesday, July 31, 2012

diluvian proselytizing; john adams inconsistencies; a spy in india; unwelcome friend; nemirovna

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was a slightly cloudy day. I was crossing a quiet street at the edge of a suburban neighborhood. But it was like, at first, I had been washed out into this street, as if a flood or an ocean's wave had carried me here. Even walking across to the sidewalk, I may have felt as if I'd been carried by an undertow.

Getting washed up here also had something to do with my brother. Even as I crossed the street I may have been thinking of my brother or talking with him in my head.

On the other side of the sidewalk from the street was a small lawn. The lawn ended in a steep drop, an artificial cut through the hillside to let a large road pass through. Concrete walls ran up most of the slope. There must also have been a concrete paved walking path for pedestrians to get down the slope. I headed down.

About halfway up the slope there was a concrete paved area with a long picnic table. I sat at the table, at the head end closest to where I stood. The table top was completely covered by a gigantic bag. The bag was white and may have been made out of canvas -- or a really thin material, like tissue paper! The bag seemed to be completely stuffed with stuff.

At the table sat two men. Both men belonged to a certain church. One man sat at the opposite head end of the table from me. He was a new pastor at the church. Another man sat on the long side of the table, just about in the center. He had been at the church for a long time.

The pastor was planning on going out and trying to convert people in the neighborhood. He had given the other man some of his plans. But now the man asked a weird, long question regarding the pastor's approach and the character of the people in this neighborhood, who were largely illiterate or only semi-literate.

The pastor understood the question. He replied, "You want to know how I think people will react when I get to verbal with them. Will they think that if they come to our church, that they'll be overwhelmed with an overly verbal presentation? My answer is that I've already told you and shown you the material we'll be using to witness to people. It's very visual. We are going to promote our church as being very visual, and not too literary."

In my mind's eye I could see one piece of the material the pastor had been speaking about. It was a small pamphlet. It looked like a coloring book. Apparently the people being reached out to were supposed to color the pamphlet in with crayons.

Suddenly the other man's phone started ringing. The man's ringtone was of some heavy metal song. It wasn't a real thrashing song. It had a low guitar riff and a heavy, watery bass line. But I knew that the chorus of the song had some Satanic lyrics.

When the man realized that I'd recognized the song, he turned and winked at me. He thought that I'd think he was cool for having that song as a ringtone. But I was more confused than anything else. How could the guy go out spreading the message of Christ to people while a Satanic ringtone was always playing on his phone?

The road was far below us, and it was as wide as a highway. I looked across to the slope across the highway. Parked out at the edge of the slope was a nice, big motorboat. It may even have been a small houseboat. I got the feeling that the boat was parked out there because the people who owned it thought a flood was coming. They wanted to be prepared to drift away on the flood.

Dream #2

I was probably in a living room, sitting on my knees on the floor, facing toward either a couch or a chair, and using the seat cushion for a kind of desktop. My mom or some other woman may have been sitting on the couch, just to the left of where I was working.

I was looking at some device, probably my phone, but possibly a bigger device. The screen showed a black and white photo from a long time ago. People were gathered together for a group photo. The men and women seemed to be wearing all different kinds of outfits, though the group photo was supposed to represent one specific official body, probably a military group.

I knew that in the center of the picture was John Adams, the second President of the United States. I pointed him out directly. But he was bald, with a huge beard (I assumed it was red, even though it obviously appeared to be dark grey), and he wore a uniform like that of a Civil War Union soldier.

Something didn't seem quite right about this. I tried to justify the inconsistency by thinking that John Adams lived a long time, maybe long enough to see the beginnings of the Civil War. But, even though he looked worn out, he still didn't look old enough for him to be who he was at this time period.

The screen now showed video of this same event, like the event had been caught on some primitive film camera, which had then been transferred to digital video. The event, I could now tell, was a memorial ceremony, including a huge picnic, for some important figure who had died. This important figure may have been John Adams himself.

Everybody was walking around by picnic tables. They all had plates. They all seemed to be wandering to different tables that had food. In the distance were also barbecue grills, which sent up a lot of smoke. At one point I saw the John Adams character walking around and looking at the food. I may have wondered how John Adams could be at his own memorial ceremony.

Dream #3

I either walked or took an escalator up from some basement area, up through the first floor, and then onto some higher, balcony-like level of a tall building. The building was in some big town in India.

All the outer walls of the building seemed to be glass. The inner part of the building mainly seemed to be a network of balcony- and bridge-like structures. There was some inner or rear part of the building that these walkways led to. That was where business took place. But this open area of the building looked and felt completely empty and vacant.

I was a young Indian man. I had dark, copper colored skin and kind of shaggy black hair that went over my forehead and down to just above shoulder level. I eventually understood that I was a spy. I had gotten a job with a wealthy family in India that was also connected with some sort of crime organization. I was supposed to get information on the crime organization. It wasn't just like I had a job here. It was like I had been accepted as a part of the family.

I walked along one of the walkways, heading toward a staircase. I was heading up that staircase to another walkway, where I would walk into one of the office areas. I was probably starting to think that I had gotten too deep into all this activity. It wasn't just that I didn't want to get caught as a spy. I also didn't want to be seen as betraying the family who had come to trust and love me. I didn't want to betray their love.

Suddenly another young man came up a different escalator and met me on the walkway. He looked a lot like me. He was accompanied by a white woman. The young man was really cheerful with me. He told me he was heading out somewhere to have some fun. He wanted me to come along. I really didn't want to come along.

I knew the young man was family to the company by blood. He was a privileged child. He kind of thought this company ran itself. He didn't like to do work. But I had actual work to do -- and I wanted to do it -- to help the company. Nevertheless, I felt like perhaps I should just go out with the young man. But, at the same time, I felt like the young man was starting to get a hunch that I was a spy. Maybe he was calling me out so he could trap and kill me.

But the man was already gone. He had walked across the walkway and down to another escalator. He had just come to tell me where he was going. I could meet him there if I wanted to.

But now I realized -- the young man had a white woman with him! I was kind of shocked! Way to go, I thought to myself, going out with a white woman! I now wondered whether my eyes had deceived me. I looked over the balcony to see if I could see the young man and the woman again.

The young man and woman had already gotten down a few levels on the escalator. But they were walking on a walkway now, and I could see them clearly. They both looked up at me. The young man already knew I was looking at the white girl. She was pale and blonde, but her hair was way too frizzy. It made her look like a Cabbage Patch doll.

The young man hooted up at me, bragging about the girl. He even said something like, "Hey, man, I think she likes you!" The man was kidding. But the woman was looking up at me like she liked me. I had a bad feeling that she'd eventually find a way to get close to me. I wondered if I'd end up betraying the young man by starting a relationship with this girl. But suddenly I realized -- the young man probably wanted me to start up a relationship with this girl.

Dream #4

It was a cool, blue day. I was out on a busy street. The road was clogged with cars and people. The blocks seemed small, but the roads also seemed twisted together in a way that made it seem like a long distance across streets. There also seemed to be a lot of poles in the streets and wires overhead, like there was a whole tangle of trolley systems. The buildings mainly seemed to be like row houses and narrow buildings. There were residences and small businesses all up and down the street.

I was standing -- with a whole bunch of other people! -- at a bus stop. It seemed like the bus was going to take longer than I'd originally expected. So I decided to go take care of my mail really quickly. All I had to do was drop the mail off in a mailbox. I may suddenly have received mail when I'd dropped off the mail for posting.

But I think I did something with the received mail as well. It looked like a kind of big stack at first. But, by the time I got back to the bus stop it was just a couple documents and a small newspaper. I rolled all this stuff up.

The bus still wasn't coming. So I walked up to the corner of the block. The block was really just incredibly busy -- stuffed with people! But I now saw my old friend R and his wife L coming up out of a subway station that was in a slender median in the street across from me. R looked healthy, but a little rangy, like business life had made him kind of sinewy. He wore a heavy, dull blue shirt and green cargo pants, like he was going out to do some kind of field work.

R may have seen me and then quickly pretended not to have seen me. He may even have told L not to look in my direction or acknowledge that I was around. They were across the street, separated from me by huge crowds of people, so I guess R assumed I couldn't understand anything he'd said. L split off from R and walked down toward the opposite corner of the block. R crossed the street but walked down the side street instead of coming down the street I was on.

I suddenly remembered that R lived on this block. His apartment was only a couple doors down from the bus stop! I assumed that R and L were coming home for the day. I figured I'd wait in front of their door until one of them arrived, or until my bus finally arrived. I knew they'd wonder why I was here. I'd just tell them that my bus stopped here, and that I remembered they lived here, so I thought I'd drop by and say hi.

R finally walked around the corner and toward the apartment. He didn't seem happy to see me at all. He plainly acted like he was "acting" happy while he was really "silently" annoyed. It was obvious he wasn't going to let me into his house and that he didn't even want me in front of his building. He asked me what I was doing here. I gave him a little explanation.

Dream #5

I was inside some place like a restaurant. I was a worker here. The restaurant was owned by a family that probably had connections to crime. I was one of the few non-family employees. There had been one other non-family employee at the front of my mind. But he had just left, as recently as a couple hours ago.

I walked out a side door, to some kind of outdoor eating area -- although the area looked a lot more like a big park with a few picnic tables in it. There was a wooden picket fence running around the area. Before me, the fence bounded a steep cliff that probably went down to an ocean shore. Off to my right, the area went up a rolling slope. The fenced area narrowed into a sharp angle as it ascended the slope. Past the fence were pine trees.

All the way up the slope were also fake train cars, like plastic replicas of train cars, except designed so they could be something like beds for little kids. These may have been eating areas or storage areas or just play areas for kids who came to the restaurant. I walked up the slope, looking through the cars and thinking of the non-family employee who'd just left.

I wondered whether the employee had been hurt or killed by the family. I could see the man in my mind's eye. He was tall, white, skinny, with bugged-out eyes. He was really touchy, and he had really violent emotions. He always felt like he was getting ripped off. (He kind of reminds me of a Steve Buscemi character.)

I think the man had found out that the family had been doing something to collect extra money in shady activities based on side aspects of their legitimate business. This was probably a small crime thing and not the larger crime the family was involved with. But it had used the man's efforts. The man found out how much money his efforts had drawn in through these shady activities. He wanted a cut of it. But he knew he'd never get it. So he stole his cut, threw a big fit in front of all the workers, and ran off.

I was at the top of the hill now, looking back down. I didn't know whether the family would follow the man, or whether they had already hurt or killed him. I realized now that I was a spy on the family. I wondered, walking back down the hill, whether the man hadn't also been a spy. I had a feeling, however, that what the man had done would make my job a lot harder. The family would be on the lookout for any suspicious activity at all.

As I approached the bottom of the slope, four men came walking out the side door of the restaurant. They were maintenance workers. The leader really disliked me. As soon as he saw me he started to sigh and groan, like he loathed even having to share the same air with me. He was a little shorter than medium height, with pale olive skin and a bald head. He was heavyset, but in a kind of muscular way. He wore a white t-shirt, khaki shorts, and a baseball cap.

I sat down at some small table, like a children's table with small chairs. I pulled out a cell phone and a couple other devices. I had one of the devices plugged in somewhere. The guys all sat at a table behind me. The man was sighing and groaning even still that he had to be around me. He must have really hated me.

I stood up to go get something. When I came back, my chair was gone. I saw that the leader had taken it for one of his guys to use. I acted like nothing was wrong. I just took some other chair and began concerning myself with my work again.

But the guy still kept sighing and groaning like he was angry at me. So I turned around and looked him in the eye, as if to say that if he had any problems with me, I'd be more than happy to take care of them directly. The man suddenly became genuinely relaxed and kind. He said a couple things to me about work. I replied kindly and turned back to my work, wondering whether I hadn't been imagining the man's hostility this whole time.

Now a woman came outside. It seemed obvious to everybody, right away, that this woman was a spy. She was a pale, thin woman. She was probably young, maybe in her mid twenties. But her style made her look old and frumpy. Her hair was red and frizzy, like it would have been shoulder length if it had been straight, but instead it just shot in all directions around her head like a disheveled halo.

The woman took a seat -- in a folded up folding bed! Her head and arms popped up out of the top of the bed. I was suddenly also sitting on the edge of a bed, working at a desk, with my back to the woman.


The woman had announced herself as an investigator. But it was hard for me to keep this in mind. What kept running through my head was that she was a spy, and that nobody was supposed to know it. But she was so obviously a spy that everybody knew it. I was hoping that her being a spy wouldn't blow my cover as being a spy. Then, suddenly, going through this chain of thought, I'd realize that she'd actually announced herself as an investigator.

The woman was looking for information related to a crime. But she wasn't necessarily looking to get this particular family in trouble, even though I think she knew the criminal activities this family was engaged in. But she was going to monitor our activities to see what ways we might inadvertently give her information as to the larger crime families she was trying to pin down. She was also going to ask us questions. We were supposed to volunteer any information we could. But -- knowing these guys -- I was sure "nobody would know nothin'."

But the woman started asking her questions. Suddenly I was laying on the bed I'd been sitting on. I could start to see everything in my mind about the crime family. The family's last name was Louis, which kind of surprised me. I could also see the head of the family. He was a kind, gentle-looking old man. He was wearing a nice suit. I even felt like I may have had a nice conversation with him at some point in time. I may also have seen an image in my mind's eye of a wall full of lockers.

I thought I'd tell this woman all this information right out, right in front of the maintenance guys. They were all playing along some code of honor, where nobody said anything. They were family. But I wasn't. And they thought that if I couldn't be loyal to them, I could at least be made afraid of them. But I wasn't going to be made afraid. I'd tell the woman everything, right in front of the men. And they could do whatever they wanted to me.

But I remembered I was a spy. If I told all my information right in front of these men, I'd be giving myself away as a spy. And I couldn't have my cover blown. I tried to figure if there was some way I could figure out whether the woman already knew I was a spy, or if there was some way I could let the woman know I was a spy. But I couldn't figure anything out. Suddenly, I had an image in my head of a name: Nemirovna.

***

UPDATE: Added drawing to dream #5, July 31, 2012, 12:01 PM, Mountain Standard Time. 

Monday, July 30, 2012

stalker and sniper; david bowie in pandora's box; la derniere 3

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was riding in a big, white, 1970s style car with some other person. I'm not sure, but I think the driver was a man. I was mainly in the backseat, on the passenger side, though I think I was also sometimes in the front seat on the passenger side. We were driving through some area that was like the outskirts of a town, with hills and forested areas. But there was also a huge parking lot for some shopping center. It was probably late afternoon, and the day may have felt a little cold.

Somehow the person who was driving had figured out that another car in front of us was actually stalking us. The driver of the car may have been a woman in her fifties or sixties, still in pretty good shape, but a little worn-out looking, with shaggy, pale blonde hair that was black at the roots. The woman was driving a more modern car than our car. It may have been more of a 1990s style, with a roundish, but long, body. But I think it was also white.

I knew (I don't think the driver told me) that the driver had figured out that this woman had been keeping a steady pace in front of us the whole time, always gauging where we were going to turn and then turning in that direction. I may also have known that this woman was working for a man who was about her age, and that the two people were working for some larger group of people who assigned people to stalk other people.

We were nearing the parking lot to the shopping center (or a Walmart?). The driver told me we were going to make it look like we were heading into the shopping center. As soon as the woman had gotten fully pulled into the shopping center, we were just going to drive away. This way, even if we didn't lose the woman, we could still know for sure that she was stalking us when she started following us from behind.

So we lost the woman in the parking lot. The parking lot was on a slope. We drove up the slope, then turned right. On our left side was forested area. On our right was the slope leading down to the shopping center. We drove a ways farther, then turned right again. We headed back down the slope, still driving alongside the shopping center.

At the bottom of the slope we continued forward. I think we had been planning to go somewhere in particular. But we'd had to throw the stalker off our trail first. Even though we seemed to have done that, the driver still thought it was a good idea for us to drive around in a diverted path before we'd headed to the place we had to head to, just to make sure nobody else was following us and would be led to wherever we were trying to go.

So we drove straight forward, into a neighborhood that the driver said was really bad. A couple blocks into the neighborhood we turned left. We drove through a neighborhood of two- or three-story apartment complexes. The sun had gone down over the horizon, and everything in the neighborhood looked grey-blue. But some of the apartments actually were a worn-out, faded shaded of turquoise, which looked even worse in the evening dimness. The trees were possibly barren, like it was late autumn.

The driver told me there were snipers in the neighborhood. I don't remember how the driver knew this. The driver may have seen a sniper in one of the buildings, or we may actually have gotten shot at. I think I could see a sniper in my mind's eye. The driver may have told me to keep cover as well as I could. I crouched down low onto the floor of the backseat, though still keeping my head peeped just a little above the backseat. I was really scared.

Dream #2

I was part of a play. The play may have been just a two-person play. At first, I may have thought that I was part of a rehearsal. For some reason, as part of this rehearsal, I had to be under a dark green sheet. The stage was small, and not elevated too high from the ground. I lay crouched on all fours under this sheet. The other actor sat beside me, addressing the crowd.

The other actor had some long monologue. I knew that I also had lines. But I'm not sure when I was supposed to say them. But as the other actor continued his monologue, he somehow gave me signs that I was supposed to emerge slowly from under the sheet. At this point I saw that the actor beside me was David  Bowie. He looked kind of young. He was pale, and he had red-dyed hair.

I think that as I slowly emerged from the sheet I'd come to understand that I hadn't really been under the sheet as part of the play. David Bowie/the actor had actually kept me under the sheet as some kind of protection for me. It was like he didn't think I could stand to see the audience or something.

I looked out at the audience. This wasn't a rehearsal. It was an actual performance, and there was a full audience. The audience sat about five meters away from the stage. The stage was just a small, black square set against a black wall, on a platform maybe 25cm tall. Between the stage and the audience was just bare, black floor. The audience sat in folding chairs in somewhat steeply tiered rows of bleachers. The spotlights on the stage reflected out on the audience, so I could dimly see the people out there.

I stopped uncovering myself when I had the sheet just below my shoulders. I was in some awkward half-laying, half-crouching position, leaned sideways, with my head pointed toward David Bowie. There may have been more dark green sheets nearby.

Bowie continued with his monologue. I knew I had lines. But I didn't know when Bowie would actually cue me to say them. In fact, I was getting the feeling he was expressly not having me say my lines. My old friend R was in the audience. (When I thought of R I saw a balding, heavyset man in the audience.) If I spoke, R would know I was the character beside Bowie. He would then be jealous of me and try to ruin the show to spite me. So Bowie kept me quiet. In fear of being discovered, I had actually started chewing on the green sheet. But I still wanted to say my lines.

But now the play was over. Bowie asked everybody in the audience to give a critique of the play. One man, an older, balding white man, kind of wealthy looking, with a thin, slightly leathery and wrinkly face, and wearing a blazer, cardigan, and tie, was the only person to speak. As he spoke, I got a closer and closer view of his face. It was like his chair was right in front of the stage. But then it was like I saw his face in full closeup. At that point, all the wrinkles of his face were highlighted by something like black pencil or marker.

The man said something like, "You know, after all, this is 'Pandora's Box.' And there's a theme to this story. You should at least keep to the theme. There are things that happen in the story, and there are characters involved in the story. But you didn't have any of that.

"And... I know, maybe it's just the Hollywood style, but... you made the whole thing about sex. If you just took out the focus on sex and you just made the story fit with what the real story of Pandora's Box is all about, it might make a lot more sense to people."

I felt vindicated that the man had criticized the play. I was still bitter about not having been able to speak my lines. Any criticism of Bowie seemed like a blow in favor of the idea that I should have been allowed to speak my lines. But the man hadn't really mentioned me, or the fact that I should have been allowed to speak. I had to admit that. I also had an idea that the man would have criticized us no matter what. He just seemed to enjoy tearing people down.

We were now standing backstage. I stood off by myself, staring down at a dancer's balance pole, one of the horizontal bars fastened to a wall, usually accompanied by a wall-length mirror, so a dancer can watch their movements and balance herself as she practices. But as I looked at the pole, it became a long, green object, like a huge leaf, elongated to the size of a balance bar. The leaf was curled up in half. Along the bottom, inner side of the leaf things were written in pen. The one thing I remember was the year "1825."

I now turned to look at the rest of the room. It was a kind of big room. Off to my left, along the same wall with the balance bar, was a door leading outside. A lot of performers were walking out that door -- as if our play had actually used a whole lot of performers, some of them young females in black leotards and tight hairdos, like dancers. Across the way from that door was a dim doorway into some other room, like a seldom used prop-room.

David Bowie walked out of that room. He now stood before the man who'd criticized our performance. But now Bowie was short, maybe coming up only to the man's shoulders. He was kind of muscly and stocky, too. And his skin was all painted a greasy dark blue! His hair, a wiry, dusty-tan color, was done in a spiky flat-top on top. But the back of his hair was done in a thin braid that reached all the way down his back. Bowie wore no shirt, only a pair of shorts.


Bowie walked up to the man. He explained something to the man about the year 1825. In that year, Bowie explained, a very influential artist (someone specific, maybe a pre-Raphaelite, but I can't remember who) had decided that all artists should strip themselves of past influences. In doing so, artists would find ways to express themselves truly and purely, without bogging themselves down with cultural references.

Bowie explained how he came directly from that school. He said the title of his show, "Pandora's Box," was simply meant as an inspiration to the drama of his show. The drama wasn't supposed to coincide with Pandora's Box at all. And the show was supposed to be sexual, because Bowie felt that sexuality was true expression.

Bowie was saying all of this in a matter-of-fact, but apologetic, manner. The man was listening patiently and indifferently, as if he were by this time rather used to listening to artists justify themselves.

Dream #3

I was walking down a hallway in a movie theater. The hallway had orange or yellow walls and orange carpet. I headed down into a smaller hallway, just outside the theater where the movie I had come to see was playing.

A man and woman stood outside the theater. The man asked the woman about whether she'd seen certain movie. The woman said no. The man kind of bragged about how good the movie was (to make the woman feel bad she hadn't seen it). The man then said, "But what's crazy about it, is that the movie was so good, and already they're on the third movie of the series. In fact, that's what's playing in this theater. La Derniere 3."

I don't think I'd known -- or questioned! -- what movie I was heading to. But now that I heard that this theater was playing a film called La Derniere 3, I wondered whether I'd wanted to come to see it. It sounded like an action film. In fact, just over the door was a strip with the movie's title and an image from the movie poster. The image showed a contemporary woman riding on the back of a man who was shooting a big handgun as he swung on a rope away from a big explosion.

I decided to head into the movie anyway. I don't think I knew where else I could have gone. My view then shifted to a different movie. A young, blonde man with tan skin and shaggy hair walked into his family's house. His mother was in the house. The man and his mother were in a kitchen or a sun room. Either way, the room was very airy and filled with natural light, like there were windows all over the place, and there seemed to be plants everywhere.

The young man somehow let his mother know that he had been attacked and drugged by a group of people. He seemed to be afraid of the consequences of having been drugged. Either he was afraid he'd been drugged with something really addictive, so he'd have to go through a painful withdrawal, or else he was going to take some kind of drug test, and he was worried that the results of the test would be bad. The young man was ashamed to talk to his mom about all this, but he knew he had to.

The mom said the best way to tell if the young man would be alright would be to look at the young man's eyes. The young man's eyes were all scratchy and yellow. At first this didn't seem like a good sign. The man was really worried. I was worried, too. But on second glance, I think the mother decided that everything would likely be okay.

***

UPDATE: Added drawing to dream #2, July 30, 2012, 2:12 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

michael jackson museum; the kitchen of lesbian monsters; emails at jack in the box

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was looking at a wide, thick picture book full of black and white photos. It was like an illustrated history of Michael Jackson's musical career, with a focus on a very specific time period, maybe like from the late 1980s forward.

But the book was also about the creation of a Michael Jackson Museum somewhere. Some of the photos showed columns and long, narrow corridors, all kind of futuristic looking, but also with a plainness that made the spaces feel very much like contemporary rooms in a museum. There seemed to be silver tinsel everywhere.

But I'd also have flashes of views where I'd suddenly be inside the Michael Jackson Museum. My vision would be really blurry. There were a lot of green spotlights lighting everything up. There were a lot of people around. Sometimes I'd be led down certain areas of the museum. I think Michael Jackson himself was leading me. Then my view would suddenly switch back to just looking at the book.

Dream #2

There was some weird battle going on between two sets of women. All the women were really gorgeous, kind of pale, thin, goth-looking girls. But one half of the girls were normal humans, while the other half had been transformed into vampire- or zombie-like monsters. The regular women were making their final battle against the monster women in a long, narrow room, like a kitchen.

The battle may now have been over. The monster women were sitting all in a line on a fake-leather bench that ran across the left (my left) long wall. The normal women were all working on the monster women. The monster women all seemed to be injured pretty badly, mainly in the chest.

The normal women were all set to work on pulling something out of the monster women's chests. In two cases (I think) I saw the object being pulled out. One of the women had a screw or bolt in her chest, while the other woman had a nail in her chest. But these objects were both cursed objects that had made the women into monsters.

The second normal woman took the nail she had just pulled from the woman's chest and walked over to the sink, which was in the counter that ran all the way along the right wall. She did something with the nail. The monster woman was now a normal woman, and her chest, which had been all caved in and bloody before, was now completely healed, except for a hole in the center of her chest, just above her breasts.

The normal woman may have handed the nail back to the woman. Either way, the woman had a nail in her hand again. The nail was "clean," not cursed. But the woman shoved it right into the hole in her chest. I was kind of shocked that the woman would purposely drive a nail into her chest. I asked her, "Do you like that sort of thing?"


The woman replied, "Yes. Does that scare you? And does it scare you that she" (the normal woman who'd healed her) "is my lesbian lover, and that she likes driving nails into my chest, too?"




I didn't mind. But I felt ashamed for hanging around here. I now realized that all the monster women were all lesbian lovers with the normal women who'd healed them. I didn't want to look like I'd been here because I'd been attracted to all these girls -- even though I had been attracted to them all.


As I was backing up, I saw the first monster girl. She was also healed, even though her chest may still have looked bloody and collapsed. She had a "clean" bolt, which she was now getting ready to shove into her chest.


I walked around a kind of hairpin curve and found myself in a space like a dining room. It was a lot lighter than the other room had been. There was a booth-like table in the right corner of the wall facing me. The bench of the booth was made of white or cream-colored fake leather and went around the table in an almost full square shape. There was also a bright window along the back wall.


The right wall was more like a half wall. It showed into the next room, where a woman sat all by herself. The woman was Asian, and she may have looked like my ex-girlfriend H. I tried not to look at the woman. I assumed that she, like all the other women in this house, was a lesbian. I'd already been ridiculed a bit for having been attracted to girls who were gay. I didn't want to get ridiculed again.

There was a bunch of stuff on the dining table, which may have been below the height of my knee, something like a coffee table's height. I picked up some of the stuff and carried it to the wall behind me. The stuff may have been empty and dirty dishes. I may have been carrying them to a sink to clean them.

Dream #3

It was night. I was sitting at an outdoor table in front of a Jack in the Box restaurant with my mom's best friend. We were eating some kind of sandwiches that had ham and eggs. We may have been talking about old times for a moment or two. But then I got distracted by a message on my cell phone.

There was a whole string of messages that came from Riley Kilo, an adult baby transgendered person who has been an advocate for adult babies in a number of different media arenas. Apparently Riley Kilo and I were kind of like friends. But there was something not quite right about our relationship, like I was always doing something to upset or frustrate Riley and make her feel like she was never getting through to me.

But now Riley was coming to Denver. She'd made this announcement on her blog and in a number of different places, hoping I'd catch on. She'd even sent me this whole string of emails directly. But I hadn't seen or responded to any of them. Finally, she'd sent me an email saying that she was coming to Denver and that she was going to come to my apartment, whether I liked it or not, on the assumption that she was staying there. Once she got there, if I still didn't want her around, I could just kick her out.

I may have thought that I'd respond to this message by saying, "Okay." But I don't think I responded. I think I just sat there for a moment, trying to figure out what the heck I should do.

I suddenly realized that I'd been sitting in absolute silence with my mom's best friend for a good amount of time now. I thought I'd been making progress during our conversation, up until I'd looked at my phone, with letting my mom's friend understand how much I liked her and appreciated her. But now that it had been silent for so long, I think my mom's friend was wondering whether I actually liked her.

So now I asked my mom's friend, "Do you remember before Jack in the Box made its big change, and when I was a little kid, how you and my mom and I would come here all the time? We'd have breakfast sandwiches." My mom's friend remembered this. But something about her memory seemed to come from a different time period than I was talking about. I got distracted again, trying to figure out how to describe the time period exactly right, so my mom's friend would know exactly what I was talking about.

***

UPDATE: Added drawing to dream #2, July 30, 2012, 2:16 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

reconciliation; what if?; re-programmed bombers; niece's dance; cause of death; the athlete; the replacement

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was "at my old job." I was in a break room. I had been really angry and made some kind of a scene and quit my job just a while ago. My boss walked in. He was pretty sure I hated him now. But I felt bad for having made such a scene. Even though I didn't say anything to my boss, I tried to show, by using non-violent body language, that I was sorry for what I'd done.

I was looking through a binder filled with clear plastic sleeves. The sleeves had small artworks inserted into them. The works varied in size, so that multiple works were fitted into each sleeve, each into its own pocket. The works were like prints, very blocky, almost like the fronts of old product boxes.

My boss left out a door on the wall behind me. He may have mentioned that he had to go to a meeting. I continued flipping through the pages. A while later, my boss came back. He may have been carrying a bag of fast food with him. He came up on my left side and handed me a stack of papers. There were two papers with handwritten messages on the bottom. He asked me if I could hand these papers directly to our office manager.

Just at that time, our office manager entered. She had been really upset by how I had acted. So I tried to show her how well I had patched everything up between myself and my boss by handing the papers directly to my boss that my boss had asked me to hand directly to the office manager (???).

The three of us all seemed to feel comfortable with each other again. I was sitting toward a corner on one of the long ends of the table now. I was still flipping through the binder of artworks. My boss may have been speaking with me, asking me about a specific project I'd need to take care of.

Dream #2

A view of an office. I'm not sure whether I was actually there. The view was probably of a lobby-like area, near the receptionist's desk. There were a few filing cabinets in the area as well. A tall, young man was speaking with another worker.

I started thinking about my whole choice of career paths. I thought about the very beginning of my career, when I'd been given the choice to work with a woman in one department of the company I'd been working for, or with a man in another department. I'd chosen to work with the man. But I started to wonder what would have happened had I worked with the woman, in the other department.

There was now a view of a backyard of a big house. It seemed to be autumn. Two girls were swinging on an improbably high swing. My view was floating up and down with the swaying of the swings. A man, whose voice I recognized as that of JM, one of my old co-workers, was either on the phone or had just gotten off the phone with one of his neighbors. JM then told his wife E that the neighbors would like the family to come over, so JM's daughters could play with the neighbors' daughters.

Dream #3

I was at some big place, probably something like a fair that was composed of indoor attractions and outdoor attractions. I had been inside one of the indoor attractions, a futuristic-looking, white tent at the end of a long plaza. But I had gone out to take care of something for one of my friends. I had probably left the tent and gone and taken care of everything by flying.

I was now flying back to the tent. I may not have been sure my friend was still there. I may actually have been worried that my friend was lost and that I'd need to go find him. I may have tried to continued to fly, but I may have gotten "gravitated" toward a different group of people.

I was -- somehow -- all tangled up with a member of this group: a kind of fat, pale man with long, frizzy hair and a goatee. He wore a t-shirt and shorts. I don't know what the heck kind of body I had, but the man had to untangle me from himself, like he would have had to untangle a purse from off his shoulders.

But the man did this naturally as he spoke with his friends. He was with three or four other people, a mix of men and women. The whole group of people seemed cool. But they were talking about some conspiracy theory having to do with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although -- I'm not sure that Hiroshima was actually called "Hiroshima" in the dream).

The idea was that there was one person in each instance who was ultimately responsible for the dropping of the bombs. It was like these two people were the ones most affected by the feeling of moral responsibility. But the argument was that these two people had been silenced by the government because of their feelings of moral responsbility.

As the people discussed this, we all (I as some kind of flying entity that was still floating but was slowly descending toward the ground) turned up the walkway toward the futuristic tent. I eventually -- I think -- landed in a stroller. I was either an adult, sitting in a stroller like I was a baby; or else I had actually become a small child or baby sitting in the stroller.

The discussion of the conspiracy continued. But it didn't seem to me like there was much government involvement in this conspiracy. One of the guys, maybe the guy who'd dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, had simply committed suicide. But the other guy's story was a little weird. I listened to it as I descended (awkwardly, as I remember it) into the stroller, and as we passed a concrete structure that looked like an entrance to a subway station.

The man with the frizzy hair and goatee said, "The man asked the government to re-program him. If you were experiencing too much feeling of moral responsibility for what you'd done, the government could re-program you. They did it to some people involuntarily. But you could also request to be re-programmed. And this guy requested it, otherwise he was going to commit suicide.

"But just before he got re-programmed, he was arrested on some drug-related charge. Man... I can't imagine. I don't ever want to be in trouble because of any of that substance-related crap."

Dream #4

I was sitting at a dining table in some kind of communal area, like a really big version of a house's dining room. The atmosphere was really relaxed, even though there were quite a few people scattered among the various dining tables. People may have been watching a television that was somewhere.

My little niece walked up to me. She was wearing a little, white dress with baby blue fringes and probably a belt-like, baby blue ribbon at the waist. She also wore white spandex leggings and white tennis shoes.

She asked if she could sit on my lap. I said sure. She hopped up rather quickly and easily. I commented that she must have grown, because before it would have taken her some effort to get up onto my lap.

My niece sat with her legs straight out. She began squirming around a bit, humming a little tune, I guess like she thought she was dancing while she was sitting. So I grabbed her legs, probably at her shins or ankles. I began humming a classical music tune while moving her legs to the melody. It was a little difficult. I don't think my niece quite knew what I was doing or how to cooperate with the movements of my arms.

My niece asked what I was doing. I said, "It's a way to tell if your feet are awake. It's like saying, 'Hey, feet! Wake up!' And your feet will tell you if you're awake."

I suddenly had a view, either directly or in my mind's eye, of one of my feet. I said, "You can ask your foot, 'Are you awake?' And if your foot's awake, he'll move up and down, like this." I moved my foot laterally. "And if your foot's not awake, he'll move side to side, like this." I twisted my foot from side to side.

Dream #5

I was laying on the floor in the lobby of a doctor's office. Some people were with me, behind me, sitting on chairs. The doctor had just entered the room and was standing just inside the doorway, in front of me, but at a distance of maybe three meters. He was a white man with a slightly balding head of grey hair. He wore squarish eyeglasses and he had blue eyes. He wore something like a cardigan sweater, a button-up shirt, and slacks.

The doctor began explaining something about either his diagnostic techniques or medicine that he prescribed for people. He may have been talking about both things. He explained that his techniques were used to cure people of one of the most frequent causes of death in the United States. The doctor said, "The second most frequent cause of death in the United States, excepting suicide..." and he looked at me significantly.

I looked away from the doctor. He made me feel really uncomfortable. The doctor then went on to talk about the second most frequent cause of death. I don't think he ever mentioned the most frequent cause of death. But I think he did mention that in the United States, suicides were becoming so frequent that they were almost the third leading cause of death (???).

Dream #6

I was watching a young man perform some kind of athletic process. It was for some competition that he'd later be a part of. The young man was a clean-cut kid, like a stereotypical Olympic gymnast. He may have been white, but he may also have been Hispanic.

There was basically an orange wall. The left side of the wall had a yellow bar attached to it. To the right of the bar, at the same height as the bar, was a hoop, like a basketball hoop. Then to the right of that was a cube that jutted out from the wall, like it was a part of the wall. The top of the cube was the same height at the bar and the hoop. There were also a red light and a blue light, right next to each other, somewhere -- either over the bar or between the bar and the hoop.

The young man would descend through the bar, between the bar and the wall, then bounce right back upward through the bar. He would then descend through the hoop. At this point, during his practices, he would do some weird kind of move, where he'd bounce really high. (I'm not really sure how -- or where -- any of these "bounces" actually took place.) The young man would then have to aim himself really carefully so that he could latch onto the hoop. But he'd often miss the hoop altogether. If he caught onto the hoop, I think he'd swing himself onto the top of the cube platform.

The man may have practiced this a few times. I watched him. I provided encouragement. I may also have given a few small pieces of advice. The man, I think, ended the practice session with a better idea of what he wanted to do.

It was now the actual competition. All the time I was watching, I heard an announcer's voice. But I can't remember much of what he said.

The young man descended through the bar, then bounced up through the bar. He descended through the hoop. But this time, instead of bouncing way high into the air, he just bounced up to the level of the hoop. He latched directly onto the hoop.

This was a huge surprise for the announcer, who shouted out, "He's finally got it! What a move!" I could probably also hear a crowd cheering for the young man.

The man began swinging back and forth. I think he had to wait until the lights flashed either red or blue. Then he could swing himself off the hoop and onto the cube platform. The announcer cried, "If he can swing up onto the platform in time, he'll break the world record!"

The light finally flashed the correct color. The young man swung himself off the hoop. I wasn't sure he'd make it. But he flipped up and landed on the platform. The announcer cried, "One minute and three seconds! A new world record!"

I may have seen the time somewhere, maybe at the corner of my vision, as if I were looking at a TV screen, as 1:03.04. I also noticed how the wall on the other side of the cube was a window wall, showing, in the deep blue light of evening, a street scene, like Rockefeller Center, as if this place were part of the NBC studios.

I stood up and ran to the young man. The young man was now a copper skinned man, kind of skinny and scraggly looking, with long, shaggy hair that curled down over his forehead and eyes. He wore an orange tank top and shorts. And his eyes looked a little crazy.

The young man was really grateful to me because I'd supported him so much through his training. He hugged me passionately. I think he was sexually attracted to me, and that he was trying to break me out of my shell and make me sexually attracted to him, too.

The man crossed over some rope that separated the competition from the spectators. We stood by some big, comfortable chair. The man hugged me again, very passionately. I dropped something I'd been holding in my left hand, maybe a water bottle, into the chair.

I suddenly realized that I was sexually attracted to the young man as well. I really wanted to be somewhere alone with him as soon as possible. But I think at this point the young man walked away to go take care of some other stuff.


Dream #7


I was in an office, or actually a place more like a bank. The place looked very nice, with wood walls and wood desks. The desks were all spaced well apart, just like in the customer service area of a bank. Two people sat down before a desk. A woman sat down behind the desk. I either floated above this scene or stood behind the couple (although if I was standing, I must have been kind of tall).


The couple seemed to be kind of surprised to see the woman behind the desk. They were used to dealing with somebody else. But the woman behind the desk, a kind of young looking, Asian woman with a cute, round face and wearing a very prim black-grey skirt-suit and white button-up shirt, told the couple that the woman who usually helped them would not be able to help them today.


The way the woman said this implied that the original woman would never be able to help them again, like she'd either quit or been fired from the position. The couple was surprised. I think they wanted to know why they hadn't been informed of this. But they were too shy to ask the question right out. So they asked how long it had been since the woman had been unable to help her customers.


The new woman replied something like, "Well, she just started getting her stuff ready a few moments ago." This meant, I thought, that the woman had probably quit the job. She'd probably announced that she was quitting only fifteen minutes or so ago. And now the woman was packing up and leaving. The new woman was taking over the original woman's responsibilities immediately. But she wasn't upset by this. She even seemed to be gloating over the fact that the woman had left.

Friday, July 27, 2012

bookstore beer; ayudame hamburger stand; diaper boy's accident; afterlife bridge; subway map

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked into a bookstore. I got into the bookstore by heading down into a basement. The bookstore was just a huge, empty room with wood walls and green carpet. At the far end of the room was a checkout counter, which was also made of wood. There may have been a couple of tall machines behind the counter.

There were two guys behind the counter. I had apparently spoken with the guys before. Now I was coming back. Both the guys seemed pretty cool. They were both probably in their late forties or early fifties. One of the guys stood up and spoke with me. He was tall, with short, grey and black hair. We chatted for a moment.

The other guy, who was sitting obscured behind one of the tall machines, poked his head out. He told me that he and his friend were just getting ready to have a beer. This implied that he'd like me to join them for a beer.

I thought about it for a moment and said that I really couldn't. I could hang around for a bit, but I couldn't drink any beer just then. I felt bad because I knew these guys were starting to think of me as their friend. If I didn't drink a beer with them, they'd think I was just thinking of them as bookstore owners, not as friends.

Whatever I'd said must have been kind of ambiguous, because now the long-haired guy was having me head downstairs with him while he got the beers. The downstairs area was about as big as the upstairs area, but the ceilings were a little lower. There were two wet bars, I believe: one on the right wall and one on the left. The guy went behind the bar on the left wall. But I was looking at the bar on the right wall.

The scene stayed the same, but it was now a meeting hall instead of a bookstore. There were a bunch of seats to my left (as I faced the right wall), all facing the back wall. There was a little stage jutting out of the back wall. A woman stood on the stage, haranguing a half-full crowd. The crowd may mostly have been young adults or older children. The woman may have been doing something like trying to incite a revolution.

I was drawn into the situation somehow by someone who had been standing off to the side. I can't remember how I got drawn in. It may have been that somebody'd called attention to something I'd done, maybe something stupid.

Dream #2

I was just walking back to a hamburger stand I worked at, after I'd gone to get some kind of help for the place. It was early evening. The sun had set, and the sky was a cool silver blue. The hamburger stand was stout and white. There were a few sections on the left side (as I faced it) that were open to the outside, just like open-air counters people could sit at. Around those counters there were also a few outdoor tables, probably circular and made of concrete edged with pebbles.

I sat down at the counter. Some guys coming from off to my left were bringing trays full of Mexican food. It actually looked like food from Taco Bell. There seemed to be plates and plates of Nacho Supremes. This was what I'd done for the hamburger stand. The place had been running out of one specific kind of food. I'd needed to ask another fast food place to give us a comparable kind of food, so we could keep selling. So I'd gotten the taco stand to give us all this food.

As one of the guys was loading food onto the counter, I tried, in a really horrible way, to say, "Thank you. You really helped us," in Spanish. I apologized in English for my terrible Spanish before I spoke the Spanish. And my Spanish was really horrible. I can't remember it now, except that I think I said something like "me lo ayuda" for "you helped us."

The guy I spoke to in Spanish was now like my manager at the hamburger stand. He walked behind me then sat down at the counter, to my right. I was saying that if this place sold out of food, it must be really popular. The man said that it actually wasn't popular, due to one of the items on the menu.

I asked what the item was. The man seemed really hesitant to tell me. But he eventually said that people didn't like the fries. I thought about it as I looked into the store and saw people sitting at the inside tables. I thought I saw the man's point. Maybe, I suggested, the people thought the fries were bland? The man nodded.

Dream #3

I was in a bedroom. It may have been night. There was an incandescent light on in the room. I was probably cleaning the bedroom. I was probably in the room with one of my siblings, who may have been a child. There were two bunk beds against the back wall of the bedroom. My sibling sat on the lower bunk of the right bunk bed.

I sat on the floor in between the two beds. I probably had a stack of used baby diapers -- used by me, likely, even though I was my current age -- before me on the floor. There were also sheets of newspaper scattered all over the floor, as well as stuffed animals everywhere. There may also have been some kind of grainy substance, like salt or sand, strewn in places on the floor. Yet I had been cleaning the room, and I'd thought I'd gotten to a point where the room was nearly clean.

My mom walked into the room. The first thing I worried about was the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them. Nobody else used this room. So obviously the baby diapers were mine. But my mom didn't seem to be aware of the diapers. At first, I think, she just thought that the place looked really messy. I think she was asking me questions about that.

I think I answered that I was going through the cleaning in layers. I'd cleaned a number of layers, but I left the layers of stuff that I'd thought I still needed. That was, for instance, why I'd left the sheets of newspaper on the floor. I'd also left all the stuffed animals. I wasn't going to throw the stuffed animals out. They belonged to my sibling (my sister?), and I respected the fact that my sibling liked stuffed animals.

Suddenly my mom got very angry and started asking me about the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them at all. I think I only mentioned that I was planning on throwing them away as soon as possible.

I was now out walking alone on a road that ran through a flat, grassy plain. It was probably early evening. The sky was really beautiful, with shades of blue and pink. The colors in the sky may have shifted from time to time, so that there were always new, brilliant combinations of evening colors. I was apparently engaged on the task of taking something back to some place.

But someone behind me caught my attention. I turned around. The person was probably a woman, maybe in her forties or fifties. She was blonde, dressed in a tan suit with a skirt that went down to about her kneest. She had her hair up in a short, tight, style. Her hair was blonde and grey. She looked very beautiful and stately, but a little worn out. She held five knives, with their points down, close to her chest. The knives had silver handles. They may just have been butter knives.

The woman asked me what I was doing. I may have replied that I'd been sent out to return the stuffed animals that had been in the bedroom I was cleaning. "But," I told the woman, "I'm really not going to return the stuffed animals. It would be cruel to my sibling. I only needed to make it seem to my mom like I was going to do that."

The woman may have discussed something else with me, probably something that made me wonder how I was going to get home from where I was right now. I may have told the woman that it was finally getting dark, and that I'd need to make my way back home before it got too dark for me to see my way. I knew it was going to be dark soon, because the sky had taken on an intensely vivid, though deep and dim, yellow-green glow at the horizon.


So I started walking back home. I reached something like an intersection. The road crossing the road I was on was small, like the road I was on. But it was busy, and big trucks occasionally ran down it. Right across the road was a river. The road I was on crossed the river, but not quite in a direct line with the stretch of road I was on. The crossing was a little off to one side.

Just then it became pitch black. I couldn't see anything at all. The headlights from the cars on the road may have given me a little light. But I think that usually the cars were even driving without headlights. The only lights I constantly saw were the lights of the town I was trying to get back to. But they didn't provide enough light for me to see where I was going.

I'd managed to cross the busy road. I was now at the river. I was trying to find the crossing. But I couldn't find it in the dark. I would edge my way from side to side along the bank of the river (which was just off the edge of the busy road), nudging into the air with one of my toes, trying to hit the solid structure that I'd know was the crossing. But I couldn't find it. I thought I'd just try to cross the river by wading across the river. But I knew the river was too deep for that.

I edged my way over to the left, still poking my foot out to find the crossing. But now a huge semi-truck came barreling down the road. I must have been a little bit into the road. The truck screeched to a stop, almost, I thought, hitting me. I could feel the waves of heat pouring off the truck and flowing along my back.

Suddenly I fell down, almost like I'd fainted. I was lying on the ground, right underneath the front left tire of the truck. I was wrapped up in a white sheet, like swaddling clothes, or a burial sheet. I started to wonder if I hadn't been hit by the truck after all. The headlights for the truck were now on. I could see them.

The driver got out of the truck and ran to see me. I didn't feel hurt. I didn't know whether I was injured. I figured I could probably still use all my limbs, though, for some reason, I didn't want to try at the moment. The driver may have attempted to lift me out from under the tire. He may have succeeded. Other drivers may have stopped and gathered around the front of the truck. I heard the flat, desperate scream of a woman.

Dream #4

I was at my great grandmother's house. (My great grandmother died about three years ago in waking life.) It was daytime, and golden sunlight filtered into the living room, like it always did.

I was here with my mom and my sister. My great grandma had had some kind of bad accident. We all thought she was going to die. But now she was up and walking around the house, taking care of household chores. But, for some reason, either my mom and my sister or just my mom thought my great grandma was still going to die.

I was trying to be a bit more positive about things. I tried to help my grandma out with her household chores. I had been in the hallway, maybe walking out from my grandma's bedroom. I could see my grandma walking around in the living room. I then walked into the "guest bedroom," the spare bedroom my grandma kept available for family members who wanted to stay the night.  I could see my grandma heading toward the guest bedroom.

I was doing something like arranging a huge pile of quilts on the bed. The pile was all stacked up neat and orderly. These were all quilts my grandma had made. The top one probably had a red and green design on it. As my grandma walked into the room, she discussed something with me. She may have spoken about smoothing out the quilt's top. Or she may not have discussed it. But that's what I was doing, for some reason.

My grandma and I started having an interesting conversation (of course -- I forget it now!). I was really engaged on one point, when suddenly I saw my grandpa (my mom's dad, who died about four years ago in waking life) coming toward the bedroom. For some reason, the door to the bedroom was open only a crack. But I could still see my grandpa.

I stopped what I was talking about in mid-sentence. I didn't want my grandpa to be involved in the conversation, for some reason. When my grandpa came into the room he said something nice to my grandma. He said something else to both me and my grandma. I smiled and treated my grandpa very politely and listened to what he had to say. 

My grandma walked out of the room. My grandpa switched his position so that I kind of had to face away from the bed. I may have held one of the quilts in my arms. I may have been folding it, so I may have held it folded over one of my arms. 


My grandpa told me something like, "When I died, at first I was a little woozy. I woke into the new world, but I didn't know what it was. Slowly I began to see things clearly again. But only a little bit. And that's when I saw angels. The angels were all facing in different directions, each to a different specific location in the world. One angel faced toward Argentina. Another angel faced toward Venezuela..."


I could see, in my mind's eye, a place full of light. At certain points, the bright, shining, white light seemed to resolve itself into clouds. There may have been golden gates at certain places in the clouds. In the clouds stood angels. The angels were, in fact, spaced widely apart and facing in all different directions. I think I figured that there must have been one angel for every country in the world.




I was walking along the pedestrian portion of a large bridge, crossing over a large river. The pedestrian walkway was enormous, and the bridge must have been enormous as well. I was walking up toward a stairway up to the next section of walkway. The stairway ran between two walls of huge, stone blocks. It was a bright, clear day. But in the shade it felt cold, and there may have been some ice on the steps.


I thought to myself what a comfort it was that my grandpa had visited me. I thought that now that he had shared his vision of the afterlife with me, I'd be much less afraid of dying. I probably thought of the experience as a dream, but I may have kept a little feeling with me that it had actually, physically, happened inside my great grandma's house.


I thought I'd share the experience I'd had with my family. But, walking out from between the stone walls and out onto the next walkway (which may also have had coatings of ice or snow along its edges), I thought that I may not share the experience. I felt like my mom, and possibly my aunt, had had experiences already with my grandpa and great grandma. I didn't want their experiences to conflict with my experiences, and I didn't want them to change their accounts of their own experiences so they would fit in with my account.


I passed some sort of stone gate along the walkway. The walkway, which had been sloping up slightly, now became much flatter. I figured I was about halfway across the bridge by now. A dog came running up past the gates. It was a border collie. The man with the dog was still behind the gate. He was out jogging with his dog. But the dog had run a ways ahead of the man.


The dog lay down right at a spot in the path where the coatings of snow had become so wide as to take up all but a central portion of the path. The dog was rolling around, growling, and baring his teeth so frantically that I was afraid to approach it. It seemed like a violent dog that would attack me if I got near it. But I was still a ways away from where the dog had stopped, and I figured I wouldn't have to worry about what to do for a few more seconds.


But now the man came running up from behind me. He quickly reached the dog. The man appeared to be in his fifties. He looked healthy, muscular, and tan. He was bald and wore sunglasses, a red (or rusty tan?) t-shirt and some running shorts. He cheerfully told me (I was still a ways away) that the dog was actually a good dog and wasn't anything to worry about, especially since the man was now with him. The man may even now have had the dog on a leash.


But as I approached the point in the path where the man and the dog stood -- not moving forward, the man maybe jogging in place -- the dog began barking violently and frantically. The dog then did some weird move where it rolled through a puddle. The puddle splashed unbelievably high, sending a wave of water toward me. The water swept over me and shocked me.


I backed up, out of the way of the wave. But I still thought of approaching the point in the path where the dog stood. But now, when the dog barked, sheets of cold, clear rain dropped from the sky! They seemed to fall in time with the dog's bark! The sky was completely clear, but the sheets of rain would still fall. I backed up quite a bit, maybe all the way back behind the gates I'd crossed when the dog had first passed me.


I waited until the rains stopped. Then I began walking forward again. I think the dog and man were still at the point on the bridge. But now a group of teachers and students were approaching from the other side of the bridge. I think this may have made the dog less violent.


I crossed the part of the walkway that was really coated in snow. I was now on a much thinner section of walkway. I could actually see out, on both sides, to the river we were crossing over. We were really high over the river! I could also see the big city on the other side of the river.


I think I crossed two groups of teachers and students. The teachers were all pretty, smart-looking women, probably in their late twenties. The students may mostly have been girls. A lot of the students looked like they came from places other than America.


I think the first group of students I passed didn't react much to me. But I passed the second group of students as I was reaching a particularly thin portion of the walkway -- again, it may possibly have seemed thinner only because a large portion of it was taken up by a coating of snow.


I believe I had tried to make space for the children by getting as far off to the side as I could. But the teachers made all the students turn their backs on me and stretch out their arms. It was like the children and teachers were all making a fence. The teachers were like fence posts, all evenly spaced between the students. The students, I notice, all wore pink wool caps and pink wool scarves and pea coats of some maroon-purplish color.


At first I felt like the teachers had put this "human fence" in place specifically to block me from crossing the bridge. But the students weren't blocking the passage at all. In fact, they even seemed to be standing up on the coating of snow, completely faced away from me. So now I wondered if the teachers had put this "human fence" where they'd put it so I'd have no chance of seeing any of the children's faces, like, if I saw the children's faces, I would do something perverted to the children.


Dream #5


I was down in the subway in New York City. The subway platform I was on was really big and really crowded. But it was also constructed so that it felt really tiny and tight. The walls arced over toward the tracks very steeply. The light was a dirty, glaring white fluorescent light.


A group of kids, maybe in their early twenties, stood behind me, around me in a half-circle, like they had gravitated toward me and were trying to make me a part of their group. From their conversation I gathered that the kids had come from Texas. They were here as tourists. This was their first day here. They had probably only gotten here a few hours ago. They were now headed back to their hotel.


But they felt that they hadn't seen enough. They hadn't really known how to get around. And they were worried that tomorrow they still wouldn't know how to get around. They wouldn't be able to use their time efficiently. And they wouldn't be able to see all the sights they wanted to see.


There were a few guys and a couple of girls. The girls all looked pretty, clean, casually dressed, but well made-up. The guys were all kind of scraggly, sunburnt, with messy hair and messy clothes. But the guys and the girls were all cool. Even though they were upset about not knowing what they were doing, they all seemed to be joking and laughing with each other.


I turned toward the guy who stood directly behind me. He had scraggly, tightly curled, blonde hair, a red-pink and pale white face, and he wore a dark, dingy blue t-shirt. I told the guy, kind of speaking to him over my shoulder, "You know, the easiest way to do this is just to get a subway map. You can find out where everything is where you want to go. Then just look at the subway map to see where you need to catch the trains to get there."


The man said that he didn't want to spend a lot of money on some map. But I told him the subway map was free. He seemed surprised by this and asked me how he could get a subway map. I told him, "You just go to the subway booth. At a lot of stops, you'll see, right past the exits, a little, silver structure with a worker sitting at it. You just go up to that worker and ask for a subway map. Look. I'll show you."


I led the kids over to the stairway (or set of stairways?) that led up to the turnstiles leading out of the station. Just past the turnstiles was a service booth. A worker sat at the booth. The kids all went up to the booth to ask for a map. I hoped the booth wasn't out of maps. It wasn't. The kids got their maps. I watched one of the boys pull out his wallet and slide his subway card through the turnstile.


We all started walking back down the steps to the platform. The kids all told me thanks. Apparently, now that the kids knew their way around (of course, they hadn't even opened the maps yet), they were heading off on some different train. But I think the kids wanted me to be friends with them and help them out in getting places while they were touring around here. I thought I should give them my phone number or email address.


But I couldn't tell if they really wanted me around. So I told the kids that I had to hurry away to catch my train. I ran off to the right as they headed down another set of stairs off to the left.


***


UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.


UPDATE 2: Added one drawing to dream #3 and one drawing to dream #4, July 27, 2012, 3:29 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

ride the map; chewed corn flake; sleaze nipples; undercover school days; way too cold

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A view of a map superimposed over a view of a city. In the city it was a rainy afternoon. The sky was very dark. Some form of public transportation was traveling over the map and through the city. I had to use that form of transportation. I think that at first I would use a bus, but that then I would switch to a subway.


A man I probably couldn't see asked me if I would be alright taking the transportation. It was raining, and maybe there were places where I'd have to walk from one stop to the next through the rain. Plus, the overall ride might be a lot longer than I'd expected. But I told the man I'd be okay. If you did the route the right way, it actually went pretty quickly.


I traced the route along the map. As I did, I saw images of a bus, bus stops, the rainy town, and subway stops, all along the route I wanted to take. But there may actually have been some problems with the lines I was looking for. I may have found more difficulty in planning out my route than I'd first expected.


Dream #2


I was at my family's house. I had gone into a bedroom to go to bed. Everybody else was still out in the living room. It was still early in the night. The sky was still light outside, so the light in the bedroom was a dim grey-blue. I lay in a big bed, covered up by a nice, big, white blanket.


I had been chewing on some Corn Flakes cereal at some point in time. From the chewed up pieces of corn flakes, I made one regular sized corn flake. I held it before my face. It was dry and hard, like a regular corn flake. But it looked a little paler and kind of scaly. There may have been some object, like a little earring, at its center.


My second oldest nephew suddenly came into the room. I didn't want him to see that I was looking so intently on a corn flake made up out of other chewed up corn flakes. So I quickly hid the corn flake in my hand and slid my hand under the blanket.


My nephew, thinking I was hiding something like money or candy, immediately became interested. At first he only called attention to the fact that I'd hid something from him. When he did that, another boy, probably my youngest nephew, ran into the room. The two boys ran back and forth at the wall facing the foot of the bed. It was like they were giving all the furniture (not sure what) along that wall a surface inspection for something I might have hidden.


I said something about how I didn't have anything hidden. This convinced the second boy, who left. But my second oldest nephew wasn't convinced. He ran up to the bed and jumped on it. He was on all fours, near my left side. He started calling out how he knew I had hidden whatever I had under the bed. It seemed like if it was candy or money, my nephew felt he absolutely had to know about it.


I didn't realize until this time that my nephew wasn't wearing a shirt. But he was wearing something on his head that looked like he'd turned his shirt into a headdress. The headdress almost looked like the hat of a jester.


Dream #3


Some muscular guy with very smooth, tan skin and probably a bald head, was sitting on a couch. He was either naked or topless. The man was explaining how he was doing something that had something to do with kids. He was bragging about how well he understood kids and what kids needed. He was saying that it was almost like he was a kid himself. But he really just struck me as a big sleaze. I thought I'd watch out for any kids, if he was taking care of them.


The man held a little device in his left hand. It was like two plastic circles connected by a string. The two plastic circles sat side by side and rotated, like fans. The string apparently expanded, so that the two circles would drift apart from each other. But I'm pretty sure I never saw the circles separate. Nevertheless, as the man spoke, I watched either the circles or the shadows of the circles encompass the man's nipples, one circle for each nipple.


Dream #4


As a part of some investigative operation, I had to go to a children's school. I'm pretty sure it was a high school. But it may have been a school for younger children. I had to go to the school with a group of kids. It was like I was a part of the kids' family. This whole "family" may actually have been undercover operatives, like myself, or they may have been an actual family, unaware of the secret investigator role I was playing. I think I acted as myself, at my age. I don't think I took on the identity of a child.


It was the first day of school. Our father, a tall, thin, black man, pulled us up to the front of the school. I was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car. The father parked in a little parking space right before a little sidewalk that led to the front doors of the school. It was a nice, cool morning, with traces of autumn in the air.


The kids got out of the car. It seemed like all the kids were of all different ages. Some of the kids were very young. Some of the kids seemed to wear school uniforms, while others may possibly have been wearing regular clothes. All the other kids ran up to the school building and into the school while I was still getting out of the car.


As I stood out of the car, the father gave me some words of advice. He seemed to know either that I was an operative or that it would be tough for me to go back to school at whatever age I was -- not necessarily because people would see me as being out of place at school at my age, but because people would see me as being the age of everybody else in the school.


There was one kid left in the car. He looked like my oldest nephew, except that he may have been a few years younger than he is in waking life. He crawled up from the backseat to the front seat and buckled himself in.


I walked up to the school building. I had a big book bag with me. It was full of stuff. As I passed through the doors, I realized that I hadn't organized my book bag at all. It would be a big mess.


I was pretty sure this school had a security checkpoint right at the front. I'd have to show my bag, which was a huge mess and would probably make me look suspicious. But I'd also have to show my ID. I knew I had two forms of identification in my bag. But it would probably be a real hassle to find them. This would make me look even more suspicious. Security guards everywhere seemed to hate me. But I was going to make a really bad impression with the security guards at this checkpoint.


Dream #5


I was walking through some town. But I was hungry for a breakfast burrito. I knew there were two places where I could get a breakfast burrito. One was the Connecticut Muffin nearby (which was like the Connecticut Muffin in Fort Greene, Brooklyn -- except that I wasn't in Brooklyn). The other was a place a few blocks down the road from the Connecticut Muffin. I knew the other place made better breakfast burritos. But I had the impulse to have a breakfast burrito as soon as possible. So I decided to head into the Connecticut Muffin.


I walked inside the Connecticut Muffin, which really did look just like the Connecticut Muffin in Fort Greene, except that it had a huge belt-rope line-maze leading up to the order counter. There was almost nobody in the store. So I walked through the maze and up to the front of the line. Now there were two or three people just behind me.


The worker, a young woman with light brown skin and frizzy, black hair, must have asked if she could take my order. But now she said, "Oh, you don't need any help? Okay. I'll get the next person."


I was surprised that the woman had said that. I hadn't remembered her even asking if I wanted help. I said, "No, no. I'd like to get something."


The woman seemed a little disappointed that I wanted to place an order. For some reason I had to give the woman my money before I placed an order. I might have given her a twenty dollar bill, since that was all I had on me. I asked the woman for a breakfast burrito.


The woman replied in a condescending voice, obviously pleased that she didn't have to help me, and handing me back my money (something like fourteen or fifteen dollars?), "Oh, no, we aren't allowed to do breakfast burritos anymore. We lost our license for that. The health inspectors came in and discovered we were serving our burritos at way too cold a temperature."

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

"weird al loves this place"; modular homeless; golden field; blocked images

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a grocery store. I was possibly near the back end of the store, on the left side of the store (as a person would face the store from front to back). The aisles near me seemed to be in disarray, like they were being rearranged, or like new stock had come in and was being added to the shelves.

There were a few workers in the area that was disorganized. One of them was a tall, white man, probably young, even though his face looked a little worn-out. This man was probably the manager. I had probably been afraid of interacting with the workers. They seemed really boisterous, and I was afraid that they'd start making fun of me if I got too close to them.


But the manager walked up to me. He said, not as if he was saying it to me, but as if he were saying it to his friends, but loud enough that I could hear, "Weird Al loves this place." I knew that the manager meant the comedy singer "Weird Al" Yankovic. I didn't think it could be true that Weird Al even came to this grocery store, let alone that he could love the store. So I thought that somehow the manager had found out that I liked Weird Al, and that he was just saying this to impress me.

But the manager motioned me to come along with him to the back room. The back room was really small, for a grocery store. The man told me that he seriously meant that Weird Al came to this store a lot, and that he really loved the place.

I was now a worker for the store. Perhaps I had been this whole time. The manager brought me back out into the main area. We were all alone in the side aisle now. The place was still cluttered up. There were even big boxes running across the aisles, slanted diagonally from the floor of one side of the aisle to the top of the other side of the aisle. The boxes were thin, like they might have carried poles or fluorescent bulbs in them.

The manager was walking backward as I walked forward. He was speaking to me excitedly. He said, "In fact, Weird Al is just now coming back from a concert tour. He'll be coming in here one of these nights. We already have a cake made for him."

In my mind's eye I could see a round, white cake with red words on the top. I had to walk either under or over one of the tall, slanting boxes that took up the aisle. As I did so, a bright flash of light probably filled my view.

The man continued, asking me, "What else do you think Weird Al would like? What do you think he would like to hear from us?"

We were now at the front of the store. The window walls of the store probably showed that it was dark outside. The store was basically empty of customers. There was a long expanse of checkout lines. The manager stopped at the registers nearest us. A couple of blonde girls had a couple of registers, and the manager needed to check in on the girls.

I walked down a few registers. There was another blonde girl. But her hair was shorter, and she looked less girly, more tomboyish, than the other two girls. I was a little attracted to her. She seemed to be wearing a kind of dumpy uniform, more like the 1980s style of uniform for Burger King than a modern uniform for a grocery store.

I don't know whether we talked, but we seemed to have some kind of interaction. I may have stood into the register beside her, as if I were going to start working that register. But then I walked away again. I had a big, fat book in my hand. I lay it down, probably on the woman's register, but possibly on my own.

I turned around and walked back toward the registers where the manager had been seeing to the other girls. Apparently a shift change was occurring. Some girls were counting the money in their registers, while other girls were putting their own new cash tills into the cash registers.

One of the blonde girls ran up from behind me to tell the manager that she was only sixty-five cents off on her register. She seemed really happy about this, as if, for all the time she'd been working here, she'd never been able to balance her register so well.

I had been -- at some point! -- carrying a paper coffee cup, like from a coffee shop. But now all I was holding was the heat-protector sleeve. I wanted to get rid of it. So I tore it up into tiny pieces. I walked past a thin column in the store. There was a small, white, plastic garbage can, like for use at an office desk. I tossed the shreds of paper in there. But when I looked, the garbage bag was empty, other than my shreds of paper and a ten dollar bill!

I thought that one of the cashier girls must have dropped ten dollars out of their register. I thought that somebody's register would come up really short. I thought that somebody would definitely get in trouble for that. But I didn't call attention to the ten dollars. I'm not sure why. I just noted it, looked up, and kept walking.

I walked back up the aisle I had come from. But now the aisle was clear, with no clutter or boxes. I walked all the way to the back of the store, then turned to walk toward the right side of the store. But as I walked, I realized I probably needed to head back to the registers. I have left my book -- which I now knew was Jim Marrs' Trillion Dollar Conspiracy -- laying on the woman's cash register conveyor belt. I couldn't just leave my book sitting there. I needed to go back for it before I could continue walking around the store.

Dream #2

I was in an apartment. The apartment unit was on the ground floor, but it may actually have been two stories tall. But the apartment was also something more like a hotel. It was obtained only for short periods of time. Either I had gotten the hotel, or some other person had gotten it and was having me watch the place, since I had nowhere to live.

It was night. The photo and video artist Laurel Nakadate had just entered the apartment. We stood just in front of the door, in a space between the living room and a dining area. I was probably holding blankets and a pillow. Nakadate was kind of tall. She was wearing a tight, black tank top and tight, brown pants, maybe of some kind of suede-like material. Her hair was a little bit disheveled.


Nakadate had probably come here for the night. She knew I had this place, and I'd probably told her she could use it. But I was trying to keep the details of the place, and of my life overall, secret from her. I didn't have a job anymore, and this place was only temporary. In fact, I didn't know what I would do once I had to leave this place. I didn't want Nakadate to know any of this about me. I felt like, if she knew, she'd reject me as a worthless person.

Nakadate and I had a conversation about something I can't remember. It was a very calm and natural conversation, but I can't remember what it was about. But all through the conversation, I did my best to conceal my situation and to act like everything was just fine.

We agreed that Nakadate would go take care of something, maybe taking a shower?, and that we'd then meet in the bedroom just past the living room. I could see the light on in the bedroom. I walked through the living room and into the bedroom.

My ex-girlfriend H, who had taken the place of Nakadate, was sitting on the bed, waiting for me. The bed was set along the back wall. H was watching a TV, which was set along the opposite wall. The bed H sat on was like a bed that had a second, pull-out bed in its underside. The lower bed was pulled out just enough so that H could use it either as a seat cushion, like the bed was a couch, or like a footrest, with the top mattress being used as a seat cushion. The rest of the room was completely empty.

I sat down beside H. She may have been eating a cup of ramen. I "watched TV" with H, even though I'm not sure I actually saw a TV at all. I may just have been staring at a blank wall. H and I began having some conversation, which may also have had to do with my living arrangements.

My thoughts drifted into a woman talking about the living arrangements she and her husband had. The woman seemed to be a 1950s kind of woman, even though I'm not sure what time period she really lived in. The woman and her husband both had very similar professions. And whatever the man and woman did, they liked to travel while doing it. They especially liked living in the mountains.


So, the woman explained, the man and the woman opted to get a kind of extremely modular house. The houses were cheaper than normal houses. They were also much smaller than normal houses. But the man and woman didn't like having a lot of space. They preferred having freedom. The houses were good for this. They could be picked up or dropped off by the buyers very easily, wherever they needed to go.


However, the woman had lately found that the couple's finances weren't stable enough for the couple to afford the modular houses. So the woman was having to take her modular house back to the modular house store. All she did, actually, was get on a bicycle, to the front of which was attached the modular house, and pedal it down a mountain road. The house was so light that the woman could just pedal it away.


The woman rode along a beautiful, undulating mountain road that was lined with pine trees and fields of yellow flowers. The sky was blue, marbled with wisps of white cirrus clouds. The woman was pale, and she wore a pale, rusty-tan dress, in the 1950s style, very understated, with thin buttons running down the blouse, and the skirt belling out just a bit, going down all the way to the ankles. The woman's red-brown hair was done in a short, elegant style.


The woman was "narrating" over this view. She said that this wasn't unusual for her and her husband. They would often take their modular houses back to the store when they felt they couldn't afford them. (I'm not sure what they did when they didn't have houses. Did they camp?) But, eventually, the husband would start to feel good about his life and finances again. Then the couple would go out and get another modular home. After a while, the woman would see that the couple's finances could no longer support their having a modular home. And the couple would take the modular home back to the shop.


The woman looked very cheerful. And her narration had a cheerful tone. But it was evident that the woman was distressed about the couple's financial situation. The woman probably wished that the husband would find some way of being more responsible.


I now got a better view of the modular home. It didn't look like much of a home at all. It was a wooden structure, like it was made out of old shipping pallets, or out of rough-hewn, wooden boards. I don't think I could make out much of a house-like structure to the construction. And it looked really small, maybe not more than three meters long and wide, and not more than a meter or a meter and a half tall.


Nevertheless, it still looked really heavy. I wondered how the woman could just bike it all the way down to town, especially on a mountain road like this. The woman, in "narration," cheerfully answered that most of the ride was downhill anyway, that the modular home was small and light, and that the modular home actually was even lighter than it already looked.


I watched the woman from the crest of a hill. As the woman seemed to be coming round a bend, something happened. I could tell ahead of time that the woman was going to crash. She did. The bike and the modular home wound off onto the shoulder of the road. The woman flew off the bike and landed face down in a patch of pink flowers. I thought the woman was dead. But apparently she was alive. I probably heard the woman, in narration, explaining why the crash hadn't hurt so much. But she hadn't stood up yet.




My view panned up the slope. I drifted along the road, back up to the spot where the modular home used to be. But the modular home was still there. I now heard the husband's voice in narration. But it was like the husband's voice was my voice as well, or, actually, more like my thoughts and feelings were controlling the husband's voice, which was a lot more dignified than my voice. I could also see an image of the husband in my mind's eye: a 1940s style photo of a handsome young man in military dress uniform.


The husband/I was explaining how he/I wasn't planning on getting rid of the modular home. The wife had always been anxious about finances. But the husband/I had a feeling that the couple's finances would be fine soon enough. The husband/I felt like everything was going to be okay, so there was no reason to get rid of the modular home.


The modular home was built on a square deck of wood. At each corner of the square stood a wooden pillar, kind of like a tower. In the center of the wooden deck stood the house itself. The house was rather small, almost like a child's playhouse. Its walls were square, but its roof may have been rounded, or teardrop-shaped. The whole thing was made out of rough-hewn wood. The design may have reminded me of a miniature version of the Taj Mahal.


I may have thought that this little place was definitely not big enough for me an H (or for me and Laurel Nakadate?). I thought that I would definitely want to keep the modular house. But I would probably want to change the model for one that used the space of the plot a little bit better, i.e. one that incorporated more of the deck space into the interior of the house.


I may have heard the woman's narration again, or I may have heard some other woman's voice in narration. It was like the woman was acting as a real estate agent, or a modular home sales agent. She was supporting all of my feelings regarding keeping the modular home and possibly trading into a new home.


Dream #3


I stood out in some mountain landscape, in a valley full of golden grass. The golden grass was filled in places with pockets of white snow. I had apparently journeyed a long way to get here. I still had a great deal of journeying left to do. I may have remembered a conversation I'd had with an old man before I'd started this journey. The man may have been tall, slim, bald, dressed in an old-fashioned pinstripe suit of very dark material.


Dream #4


I had been discussing a number of images with an old man. It was like I was in a dream, trying to rehearse all the elements of the dreams I'd had over the course  of the night. I reached the end of the sequence of images, and I was kind of surprised by them. There was some sort of unity to them I hadn't expected. I think this unity had to do with celebrities.


But the dream images all clouded over -- like they had been drawn over with heavy amounts of crayon! It was like a succession of images piled over the images I'd just organized in my head. A chain-link fence clouded over everything: the chain-link fence being shaded all through with opaque browns, greys and greens. Then a man's head, also colored with heavy, dark colors, appeared before the chain-link fence. Then another chain-link fence. Then another man's head.

***

UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry of my dreamday journal.


UPDATE 2: Added two drawings to second dream, July 25, 2012, 3:18 PM, Mountain Standard Time.