Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I had come back home to "my apartment." I may only recently have moved into this place. I walked into the living room to discover that my old best friend R had sent me a huge package. The package was a housewarming present.
I opened the package. It was full of stuff. The most prominent thing in the package was a box of shoes. I'd needed some new casual shoes, as the soles of my current ones were getting thin. Somehow R knew this and sent me shoes.
The rest of the box was full of pop culture items: mostly music CDs and movie posters. Two of the movie posters were enormous and rolled up together. The front movie poster was for a new Tim Burton claymation movie. The poster was "in French" (it really wasn't French) and gave the title of the movie as Formulation. A clay man and woman stood at the top of the hill in the circle of the sun or moon and under an orange sky. The man wore a leather and buckles kind of outfit.
I thought this movie poster matched my style, but I couldn't figure out why. I looked up at my walls. There were two life-sized cutouts pasted up to my wall. One was of Brandon Lee in The Crow. The other was another leather and buckles kind of guy, maybe Edward Scissorhands.
I looked back down to the package. I pulled out the soundtrack for the Sophia Coppola movie Marie Antoinette. As I flipped the CD case around in my hands I could either hear R speak or else see a post-it note from R. Basically I perceived some apology for the Marie Antoinette soundtrack -- as if some of the songs were so weird that R thought they might not be my style, even though he personally was really excited about the soundtrack and wanted to share it with me.
Dream #2
I was in the backseat of a car, driving along a wide, park-like road in some suburban area, probably in a wealthy part of town. There were probably three other guys in the car, all businessmen. The guy driving the car was TM, a former co-worker of mine. But in the dream I didn't know TM. He and the other guys in the car were guys who worked for a company I was trying to get a job with.
I'd just interviewed with the company, and now we were all headed away from the company -- like it was the end of the day and the guys had all decided they'd drop me off at home. I suddenly remembered that as I'd passed TM's office, I saw a picture of another of my old co-workers, TI, on TM's desk. I realized that TI had called TM to put in a good word for me.
I asked TM, "Hey, have you spoken with TI lately?" TM didn't seem to know who TI was. I thought that was kind of weird and annoying. I told TM, "Well TI told me he was going to call you and put in a good word for me. And you must know who he is, even if he didn't call you yet. You have a huge picture of him right on the top of your desk."
TM now seemed ashamed. He squinted, as if he were now trying really hard to remember who TI was. He finally may have come to the conclusion that he did, in fact, know who TI was. I felt really bad at this point. Here I was, trying to get a job from TM. And instead, I was sitting here, making him feel really bad about himself.
We stopped the car for some reason out on some wide road in front of some large, brick apartment complexes. A group of little girls was playing some tag-like game in the road. TM sat there and watched the little girls. He may have made some remark to me about the simplicity and kindness of children.
One of the little girls then shouted out to TM, "Hey? Why are you looking at us? Are you trying to do something funny with us?"
TM tried to assure the girls he was just watching them play because he liked to remember the innocence of childhood. But the girl said, "Well, don't you dare try to touch me! Because if you do, I'll call the police!"
TM may have gotten made at this point. He may have shown his anger and frustration in some vocal or phsyical way while remaining separate from the girls. The girls may have been reacting in a nasty way toward TM as well, although it may have seemed to me they were just trying to coax him to get closer to them.
But in the middle of all this, a tall, strong girl shouted and broke up the rest of the crowd of girls. She bent over and touched her hands to the ground. This quieted all the girls down. The girl then stood up and told TM that anything he wanted to try against the girls he could try against her. She was tough and confident and felt like she could counter any assault TM would attempt.
TM still remained separate from the girls. But the tough girl finally taunted TM to the point where, in a rage, he flew at the girl. He made some weird kind of movement toward the girl -- something like slapping her chest, then grabbing one of her own hands, or the hand of another girl, and making that hand slap the tough girl in the face.
This incited a big, fight-like game among all the girls and TM. I understood that the girls weren't really trying to fight TM. They were actually trying to confuse him into letting them seduce him. But now I saw that one girl, who was deciding to be nice and take TM under her wing, had grabbed TM's hand. She was walking TM through the crowd of frenzied girls. The girls all now seemed unaware of TM. They seemed to be fighting or playing violently with each other.
Dream #3
I was at some sort of karaoke event. I was in a huge room filled with long, school cafeteria-style folding tables. There were rows and rows of these tables, all with white tops and benches. At the far end of the room was the actual karaoke performance area. I couldn't see the performance area very well, if at all. But I could see the karaoke DJ sitting down at the front bench and working something out on a piece of paper.
The tables weren't full, but the space was so big that it felt like there were a lot of people here anyway. Not a lot of people were going up to perform. A lot of the time, a song would play in between people who were actually performing, just because people weren't putting song requests in fast enough to keep the karaoke performances constant.
I hadn't thought I'd do any karaoke. But now it was getting so frustrating to hear regular songs instead of karaoke songs that I decided I would sing a couple songs. I thought I'd sing one song in English and one in Japanese. I looked through the book of songs without finding anything I really wanted to sing. Then I realized that it actually cost money to sing: something like $1 per song. I didn't have any money. I'd have to go back to my house to grab some money.
I stood up and walked out of the karaoke space and out onto a wide, grassy field. It was a cool, grey day. I now knew I was at a fair of some kind. Bordering the large, grassy field were booths and little structures set up as exhibits for the fair. The karaoke section was only a part of it. I think the rest of my family was here as well.
My brother came running up behind me. He looked a little bit fat, like he'd gained about twenty pounds since the last time I'd seen him. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was heading home to grab some money. He said he was heading home for a second, too, so he could give me a ride if I wanted. I told him that sounded good.
My brother asked me if I'd ever heard of a coffee called "uite" or "uita" (pronounced "you-ee-tay" or "you-ee-tah"). He said it was a new trend among coffee drinkers. It was based on a very old, native style of coffee. He said it had a rich, bitter flavor with "glass undertones."
For a moment I wondered what "glass undertones" could possibly come from. Then I realized that in the making of the uite coffee -- I had the image of grass and dirt in my mind's eye -- the actual melting (???) process created a material that was potable, but which had chemical similarities to glass. So the coffee actually did have a glass-like taste.
I told my brother, "Yeah, now that you mention it, I think I have heard of uite coffee. But I've never tried it before."
Dream #4
I stood out on a street corner in a city like New York. Looking across the street, I saw a big, stone-like, but also barn-like, all-white building. The second floor of the building, I could see, was a shop that sold old vinyl records. From what I could see through the small windows, the shop looked, big, clean, well-lit, and full of people. But what interested me more was the floor above the record shop, which looked like an empty apartment.
I was suddenly now in the apartment. The apartment was huge and completely empty. The floors and walls were in pristine condition. I started out at the back end of the apartment and walked toward the front. At the front there was a stairway leading up one level. I walked up the stairway and found myself in an area just as huge, empty, and pristine as the area below.
I had a bunch of clothes and towels with me. I decided to hang some of this stuff up in a closet at the back end of the upper level. I knew this was allowed. Anybody could store their stuff in this place. I had a few more items of clothing with me. I wanted to store them as well. But I didn't know where.
I may have found myself back outside the building, across the street, looking up at the record store. I may then have been inside the record store. But even though the record store seemed really beautiful, cheerful, and busy, it didn't interest me.
I walked out of the store. I was in the stairwell of the building. I wondered, walking up the stairwell to get to the apartment, what it must be like to live above a record store. I wondered if it was loud. I had the idea that it didn't have to be too loud. But I wondered whether, if I lived above the store, the owners of the store would turn their in-store music up extra loud just to annoy me -- because they didn't like me personally.
I got back into the apartment and realized I couldn't live here anyway. It would be too expensive. And besides, I didn't think it was for sale. I knew the place was open to anybody who wanted to store their clothes here. And people could even hang out here during the day, if they wanted to. But nobody was really allowed to live here.
Walking around in the space, I marveled at the fact that I hadn't known about it before. It was so huge and so quiet, such a great place to just come and relax. It would, really, be a great place to live, as well. The only problem with it, I thought, was that it was built so that the whole, huge space consisted of two or three large segments, more like two or three enormous living rooms, rather than any actual bedrooms.
But now, looking right and back over my shoulder, I began to realize that there were side rooms. For some reason I couldn't quite make myself go into these rooms. But one of the rooms I stopped in front of seemed to be bedroom sized. It seemed like the room was separated from me by a smaller room, something like a walk-in closet.
I had my other clothes in my hand, still trying to decide whether I wanted to take them up to the closet to hang them up. I knew that even though nobody else was using this space, the space was open to anybody. And these clothes were my really good clothes. I didn't want to hang them up with the rest of the clothes, only to find out later on that someone had gotten into the clothes and messed them all up because they didn't like me. Now I even became a bit paranoid about the other clothes that I'd already hung up. They weren't my best clothes. But, still, I didn't want people messing them up.
Dream #5
I was in a "restaurant" that seemed more like some kind of casino -- or, more like a casino space with slot machines that looked and played more like 8-bit video games than slot machines. I was seated at a "booth" with an older woman, maybe one of my grandmothers. I was trying to tell my grandma about this place, trying, in some way to justify its existence. But I felt like my arguments were all kind of naive and lame.
I then realized that this place also held a karaoke area. I had actually been in the karaoke area some time ago. I had been planning to head back to the karaoke area after I'd taken care of something. But I'd forgotten to go back to the karaoke area.
So I stood up and told my grandma that I had to go back to the karaoke area. I tried again to justify the existence of the karaoke area to my grandma. But I knew all my arguments for sounded lame.
I was now walking outside, as if one had to go outside the building to go from one section in the building to another section. I walked along a ridge a bit separated from and elevated with the building, so I got a good view of the overall building. The building was interesting. It was mostly made of glass, and it was configured of a few different shapes: a cylinder and a couple of curvy, not-quite-cubes. Looking inside, one could see how much the entire space looked like some kind of children's playplace than an adult casino.
A car now drove up behind me. One of my old bosses got out of the car and walked up to me. He asked me if he could give me a ride home. I wasn't going home, but I also really didn't want a ride from my old boss at all. So I told my old boss, "No, I'm not going home yet. In fact, I'm heading back into the building right now to sing some karaoke."
My old boss said, "Well, let me drive you somewhere. You know, they have karaoke up the street, as well. Up at that place..." My old boss pointed up the road and slung his finger off toward the right, indicating a road going up a small slope.
I told my old boss, "No. I don't want to do karaoke there. I want to do karaoke here, at this place." Eventually my old boss relented, got back in his car, and drove away. But, walking back toward the building, I was feeling really stressed out. I didn't think I should always have to make such a big argument with people for wanting to do my own thing. But it seemed as if I always had to.
I may have been back in the karaoke area for a little while. The karaoke area may have looked a lot like the karaoke area from dream #3. The one difference between the areas, though, may have been that here, people could write "criticism cards." After each person performed, you could give a criticism of the performance. This criticism would be posted, most likely by the next morning, on either the person's email or Facebook. I thought I'd definitely write criticisms, but only positive ones, like, "good job!" or "you really had a lot of energy!"
No comments:
Post a Comment