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.
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