Saturday, October 6, 2012

punk 1; punk 2; macdonald and mcdonald's; didn't mean to hurt you; can't draw a face; fail/pass/fail

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a house, and then I was outside on a road in a suburban neighborhood. In the house, I was probably in my body. Outside the house my view may just have been floating, bodiless, along the road. The road bowed out to the right and then back to the left. One area of the road seemed to have a row of tall cypress trees.

All this time, I was making up and singing some punk-sounding song. The song sounded really original to me.

Dream #2

I was in a bedroom, standing over a bed. I was putting lifting up large paper cut-outs of action figures, mostly robot-like figures or armored figures, like Samus from Metroid. The paper cut-outs weren't actually put together. They were still flat, and I could still see the tabs sticking off of their bodies.

All this time, I was making up and singing some kind of song. I may have thought the song was punk-sounding. But it really wasn't.

Dream #3

I was at a fast food restaurant. The restaurant seemed a little bigger than normal, and it felt empty: either empty of people or empty of chairs and tables. The light coming in from the window walls was bright grey and somehow sterile, although the place also had a somewhat grimy feel to it.

I was reading a John D. MacDonald novel, either from a book or on my phone. The novel had the feel of Barrier Island and Condominium, though I'm pretty sure its subject was outside the field of real estate. I had reached a point in the novel where an over-assured man was planning to go get aggressive with another man who had put him in a compromising position.

Feeling the suspense of this moment I put down my book/mobile device and chuckled, "Whoa, no!" I knew already that, if this book followed the usual structure of a MacDonald novel, the man would get himself in trouble through his over-assuredness. Either he or the man he was out for would get killed, when all the man likely intended to do was cause a little scare and end the problem.

As I walked along and pondered this whole thing, I saw an older man sitting and eating. He looked to me just like a character I'd imagine out of a MacDonald novel: a little short, kind of dumpy, but tough-looking, probably well-off, and someone you wouldn't want to mess with in general.

I walked down a short hallway. There were probably bathroom doors on the right wall. At the end of the hallway I found myself in a coffee shop, possibly a Starbucks. I may already have placed my order, so that now I was just waiting for it.

The man at the cash register, a young, skinny, black man, handed me my coffee. Apparently I was waiting for something else. The young man gave me an easygoing assurance that my other item would be here in a moment.

In the meantime, I figured I'd fix my coffee. I took the lid off my coffee. I wanted to stir in some sugar, but I didn't have a spoon. I was going to reach for a spoon, but the young man planned to give me one instead. He was a couple meters away, doing something else. He spun around, away from me, still looking more concerned with the other thing he was doing, while he threw a white plastic spoon toward me from behind his back.

The spoon lilted steeply up into the air, then dashed lightly downward. It all took me by surprise, but I still reached out to grab the spoon. I had to stretch a bit to get at the spoon. I caught the spoon, but I managed to fumble it and let it drop to the floor.

I picked up the spoon. I didn't want to look like I was rejecting the young man's offer of the spoon. But I figured I'd just grab my own spoon, a clean one that hadn't touched the floor. I'd just look like I was using the spoon the young man had thrown to me. But I then figured that I didn't even want to use a spoon at all before washing my hands. I'd touched the floor in grabbing the spoon. So my hands were just as dirty, now, as the dirty spoon was.

Dream #4

I was in a bedroom with my ex-girlfriend H, sitting on the floor. H had a bunch of stuff all pulled out of paper shopping bags, like bags from really nice clothing boutiques. The stuff was strewn all over the floor in between us.

H was concerned with something, maybe with packing up so she could go on a trip somewhere. But she was making remarks that I thought were kind of stupid. I may also have felt offended by the remarks, like she was making them to make me feel bad about myself.

I got frustrated with H's remarks and said something that I thought would shock H into being reasonable. I then picked up one of the paper bags. The bag was full of items, mostly brightly colored bands of the same material as elastic-fabric hairbands, but really large, maybe 15cm in diameter.

I took the bands out of the bag and began arranging them on the floor. I then kept some of the arranged bands out and put others back in the bag. I then organized the rest of the materials that were inside the bag. The bag looked  really well-organized now. I was pretty proud of myself, and I thought H would be impressed.

But when I looked back up at H, she had her face turned away from me. She held her hand in front of her face as well. I could tell that H was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. I felt really bad. I could tell that the remarks I'd made had sounded a lot meaner than I'd expected them to. I also knew that I'd made these kinds of remarks so many times before that H was finally getting sick of it, and of me. I had a feeling that H would finally stop liking me and would leave me.

Dream #5

I sat at a long table, like a table in an elementary school's cafeteria. Across the table from me sat a woman and two children, maybe a boy and a girl. The woman was drawing with the two children. Papers were scattered all over the table.

I was trying to draw the woman as she drew with the children. The woman was wearing a big, flat, black hat with a bit of a fishnet veil hanging down from it. It obscured most of her face. But I could still see enough of her cheeks and mouth to get an expression.

But when I looked down at my drawing, I was disappointed to see that I'd drawn the woman with far less of her face showing! There was almost no expression at all! I looked back up to the woman, thinking that I'd re-draw her, this time making sure I got all of the visible part of her face.

But when I looked back up at the woman, I noticed that she'd shifted her head so that very little of her face was visible from under the hat. I may have shifted my view a bit by leaning downward at a really odd angle. I may have seen more of the woman's face that way. But I knew I couldn't draw and hold my head at that weird angle. I had no idea how I was going to get a good view of the woman's face for my drawing.

Dream #6

I was walking toward a classroom. I was apparently taking a few classes like therapy classes. I was just about to graduate from one cycle of classes. But there was another cycle of classes that had preceded this one. I thought I had already graduated from that cycle. But I'd actually needed to complete one last class. Without completing this one last class, I wouldn't be considered as having passed the second cycle of classes once I'd completed it.

I was a little afraid, going into the last class of the first cycle. I had a feeling that somebody, maybe the teacher, wouldn't like me, and would try to find some way to fail me in the last class, so that I wouldn't pass the first cycle, and I wouldn't be considered as having passed the second cycle.

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