Thursday, July 25, 2013

hot rod computer; fitting room full of clothes

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some dark space with my boss JE and his boss AB. The space may have been walls, maybe brick, opening out to the dark air at the front wall. There was just a thin, yellow-grey light, like from a streetlamp, somewhere. I had my bag at my feet. It may have been really big, maybe even as big as a sleeping bag. It may have been like we were preparing to go on some kind of camping trip or slumber party.

AB asked me to take my computer out of my bag for some reason, possibly to show me some work I needed to do or to illustrate something I was doing for fun that he was interested in. I took my computer out of my bag. AB remarked how cheap and bad my computer looked. He was a little disgusted. I suddenly felt ashamed. AB was right. The computer was extremely light and flimsy, like it was made out of cardboard.AB showed me his computer. It was a nice, solid laptop.

AB was now going to show me the work I needed to do. He may have opened his laptop. But he was also holding my laptop. He was flipping it over in dismay. He asked me, "Does this thing even have a DVD player?" I said it did. I took my laptop. looked for the DVD player and seemed to find it.

I sat my laptop on some stand, something like a square pedestal of wood maybe about 150cm tall. I opened my laptop. It still looked like a cheap laptop on the outside. But the face and keyboard looked something like the hood and chrome grill of a1950s-style hot rod.

I may have done something like try to turn on the computer. But now all the chrome pieces seemed to make a strange-looking stereo, with a CD player and radio on the face. I ran my hand across the devices. The devices seemed to multipy. The computer was now as big as the pedestal it had been standing on.

Dream #2

I was in a clothing store, possibly a lingerie store, like a Victoria's Secret, or possibly the clothing section of a general department store. I headed into the women's fitting area. Apparently I was going to try on some women's clothes. Just outside the fitting room were a few torso mannequins wearing some cheap-looking, form-fitting blouses or dresses of sequins and glitter.

I had tried on whatever I was going to try on. Now I was putting my own clothes back on. But I had decided to change my outfit. I had just been coming back from something like a camping trip or some other kind of multi-day, intense task. I was now on my way home. I hadn't changed my clothes in one or two days. I had a backpack full of clothes, though. So I figured I'd just change now while I was in a fitting room.

I had a bag, like a laundry bag, full of clothes, in front of me. I somehow threw the clothes I'd changed out of into the bottom of the bag. But now that I'd changed, I kind of had second thoughts about it. Now I'd be walking out of the fitting room in different clothes, lugging a bag of clothes with me. Wouldn't that seem suspicious, like I was trying to shoplift some clothes?

I thought that I should just go ahead and change back into the first outfit I'd been wearing and try to put all my other clothes back into my backpack.

But now the bag holding my clothes was enormous! It looked like a cloth bag you can buy at the grocery store to use instead of disposable bags. It was navy blue. But it was about waist-high and maybe a meter wide -- stuffed full of my clothes! A lot of the clothes looked like cotton gloves and other accessories. The clothes were all wet, like they'd just come out of the washing machine.

The clothes I'd changed out of were at the bottom of this sack. I knew that now they'd not only be extremely difficult to get to, but wet and wrinkled as well. And since they'd been dirty when I'd taken them off, the wetness would make them smelly and even dirtier-feeling. It was no use getting back into my old clothes at this point.

I may have started pulling, or imagined pulling, the huge bag of wet clothes out of the fitting room.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

injured knight

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably in a library with two of my friends, one of whom may have been my old friend ML. We were getting ready to leave the library to hear an author's talk.

ML was a little disappointed with the author, and possibly also with having to go to the talk. I knew this was because he didn't like some themes or some plot devices in the most popular book the author had written.

But I knew, and I wanted to tell ML, that the author himself didn't like his most popular book. He had kind of been forced or swayed to write it the way he had. His other books were written how he wanted to write them, and I liked them a lot more. I thought ML would, too.

I could see an image from the popular book. The book was an old-style, cloth-bound, hardcover book. On the paper glued to the inside of the front cover was an illustration, monochrome, in blue and white, of a knight leading a group of men through the mountains.

I was now out in some wildland of rolling valleys of grass dotted with occasional groves of trees and shrubs. The day was grey, cool, and misty. There were three knights, one of whom may have been me.

The knights all rode big, powerful, fast horses. But the horses may also only have been half-horses, or they may have been like big puppets, or hobbyhorses with curtains of puppet-fabric over them. The knights were also wearing, instead of mail and armor, big, brown coats or vests made out of either animal hide or puppet fabric.

As the three knights sped along, the third knight, with whom I identified, somehow injured himself. One of his legs was broken. He fell off his horse, which then may have stopped running. The knight stood up and may even have gotten back up onto his horse, even though he knew he would no longer be useful at riding.

The other knights were only a short distance in front of the third knight. It was like they weren't moving forward at all, even though they may supposedly still have been charging forward.

I felt a keen sense of dismay and fear at the third knight/myself having broken his leg. I understood now that it may have happened because the knight had been shot off his horse, maybe by an enemy's crossbow. Or perhaps the knight had only fallen and injured himself. But his injury put him at the mercy of the enemy, who were lurking in the wildlands, unseen. I didn't want the knight to be doomed: his doom would be mine.

The knight called out to the other two knights that they should keep going and not worry about him. The knight tried to act like he could still ride, to keep the other knights from waiting for him.

I now understood that this was actually a scene from the popular book by the author my friends and I were going to see. I had felt bad about my friend not liking the book. So now I had gone into the book to make "the ultimate sacrifice" within the book, as a kind of penance. This might have seemed like a kind of silly thing for me to have done, since it might cost me my own as well as the knight's life.

The third knight was somehow keeping up with the other two knights, possibly even beating them. But it was now like he was speeding along on a pogo stick that was covered in shaggy hide or puppet fabric. The knight had chosen to ride on a pogo stick so he would only have to use one leg to move. But he was still afraid that something would happen, either to injure his broken leg even more, or to break his other leg. So he called back to the men that if something bad happened to his legs, he would make them feel really guilty about it.

I was now floating up in the air, maybe twenty meters high. I was looking down on something like a parking lot or a garage where a semi-truck was parked, possibly with two trailers attached to its back end, side by side.

Something had happened, I can't remember exactly what, to make the truck inaccessible to me. The truck had been guarded over by some man at some high vantage point and inside something like a control room. But I was either assigned to drive it, or I'd wanted to drive it, to some destination.

But now the man had been subdued, and the truck was no longer under the man's control. The two trailers were now attached (maybe they hadn't been before?) to the back of the truck, and the truck was now ready for me to drive. I could imagine the trucks being pulled back out of the concrete-walled, stall-like space they'd been in. My trip was ready to be started.

But now I realized I couldn't make the trip. I was scheduled to be somewhere, maybe at some place like my work, at a specific time. But the trip would take me 48 hours (or, at least, the end of one day and the beginning of the next). If I took on this task, I would miss the other thing I was scheduled to do. Plus, I now realized, I was only renting this truck. I had enough money to rent the truck for one day. But going on this trip for two days would be too expensive for me.

I also didn't know how to drive the truck. This hadn't seemed like such a big deal before. I'd thought I would have some time to be taught by my dad, who knew how to drive big trucks. But now the trip was about to start. I'd only have a short time, maybe 24 hours (even though the trip was to start immediately) for my dad to teach me.

Still, that didn't seem like such a big deal. I could learn what was essential, I thought, and pick up the rest by experience. But it was scary to think of needing to to that with such a big, dangerous vehicle.

And now I saw two other trailers standing alone, unhitched, near the stall-like parking space for the truck. I realized that the task was actually to take the trailers that were now hooked to the truck, then to come back, pick up the second pair of trailers, and haul them, too. This would definitely take me four days.

I was in despair. I definitely couldn't do this, and I may have said so, maybe even starting to cry. I didn't have the time, money, or experience for something like this.

I now saw something like the battle which had been fought to wrest the truck and trailers from the man's control. During that fight a father and his son, a young boy, were both shot in the head and killed. I thought to myself what an absurd waste it was that the father and son had been made to give their lives for these trucks.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

a hill of beanbags

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a group of young adults or teenagers on an enormous stage. The stage may have been part of some game show which may or may not have been televised. The stage seemed to be in some place like a high school gymnasium. The stage, besides being enormous, may have been elevated about two or three times as high as usual above the audience.

An announcer, a young man in a suit and with a kind of showy, sharp hairdo, led us to our next contest. We had to climb, apparently, up some really steep object. At first I may not have been able to discern what the object was. But then I saw that the object was something like a gigantic, cylindrical beanbag. It wasn't standing quite erect, because of the odd clumping and shifting of the stuffing.

I watched a couple of my teammates, probably boys in their late teens, try and fail at climbing up the side of the beanbag. They would get up close to the top, then cling to the top, or as close as they could to the top, and then try to pull themselves up onto the top. But they wouldn't be able to pull themselves up, and they'd fall down.

My view of the gigantic beanbag shifted from the right to the left. I now saw that the beanbag was part of some larger complex, almost a small hill's worth, of beanbags. We had to run up to the top of this whole complex!

It was now my turn. At first I'd been worried. But now I really wasn't. I had the feeling that I knew how to get up the beanbag slope. I just had to get up enough momentum to blast myself up the slope. That way I wouldn't have to pull myself up by my arms. The people before me hadn't done enough running up the slope. I, however, would.

I charged past the announcer, who'd been standing right next to me, and up the slope. As I ran up it, it seemed a lot less steep than it had looked. It also seemed to have slide-like grooves in it. I was running up one of those grooves.

I lost a little of my steam as I reached the top. I was a little afraid at first that I wasn't going to make it. But I got to the top. I now saw the way up the rest of the hill of beanbags.

I kept running. I knew everybody down below was a little amazed, maybe even scared or annoyed. Nobody else had even gotten up the first slope, though I felt like some of my teammates had, somehow, continued along the course. I, however, hadn't just gotten up the first slope: I was making a charge to conquer the entire hill! But even I started to wonder about myself. Was I being too obsessed?

I felt my running speed slacken. I really felt like I was losing momentum. But I found myself at the top of the hill. The top of the hill was a wooden playground. The beanbag hill had been the first part of an obstacle course. This was the second part. But the playground really just seemed to be nothing more than a wooden playground, except that it may have been a few tiers high. It seemed to be more fun than anything else.

I ran around until I found a hole for a covered slide. I could see that the slide was really steep, just a straight shot down. But this was part of the obstacle course: you had to be brave enough to withstand the steep slide.

I was afraid, but I jumped down the hole. But I was kind of surprised to find that the slide, though steep, was made of a plastic that wasn't very slippery. So even though I was going straight down, I was never able to get up very much speed. I was disappointed. I had really wanted to test my courage against a straight drop.

The slide ended in a basement. The basement was like a museum. I was in a narrow hallway. I could tell that somewhere nearby was an exhibit of very colorful ceramic or sculpture of some kind. I could also hear two older women in some room talking about some exhibit, maybe an exhibit having to do with Star Wars or some other kind of science fiction.

I may still have felt like I was on the obstacle course. Regardless, I felt like I needed to hurry somewhere. I didn't feel like running was fast enough. I started to fly in some kind of awkward, almost upright way, and close to the ground.

I flew past some room with an exhibit playing either Star Wars or some other sci-fi movie or maybe news about some kind of missile attack. I flew past the reception desk, which was enormous and opulent, and at which sat a beautiful, young woman speaking on the phone.

I flew into the elevator bank and into one of the elevators, where I landed. The elevator doors closed. I knew the elevator was taking me up to a floor which housed one of the companies I worked for. I was a little worried about what my old boss, BS, would think of me once he saw me there.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

serpentine midwife

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was sitting on a bed in a room that was barely bigger than the bed itself. A dim, incandescent light shone down on the bed.

There was a snake on the bed with me. I may even have been holding the snake in my hands. It was a dull green snake with a white underbelly and beady, black eyes. The snake was maybe 60 or 70 centimeters long.

The snake was apparently giving birth or laying an egg like a chicken egg. It was doing so by making the egg come out of its mouth. This seemed to be really hard on the snake.

The snake finished laying her egg. But I knew there were more eggs to lay. I needed to check on the progress of the second egg. I had to grab the snake's head and open her jaws. The snake was poisonous, and I was afraid of being bit, but I knew I had to check. But even as I opened her jaws, the snake didn't seem very violent at all. She seemed gentle, drained.

I looked down into the snake's throat. I saw the second egg, a little way down. I let the snake go. I thought she would lay the second egg presently. But she just lay there limp. I figured she had lost so much energy in having her first egg that she needed to rest before having the second egg.

I stood up and walked out of the room. I thought I would come back closer to the time when the snake was ready to have her second egg. I was now in a dim room like a basement living room. The area had low ceilings, and even though it was long, it felt so cluttered with stuff that it felt tight and cramped.

At some point a kind of old, overweight woman with short, square, blonde hair and a peach-pink shirt walked into the room. She was still "asleep": she may have been sleepwalking. It was like she was recovering from a bad illness which had sent her either into unconsciousness or delirium.

I walked down toward the end of the room and met up with a group of young women. I myself may have been a young woman. All the women (including myself?) were pregnant, or else they were in need of a midwife's assistance for some other women they knew nearby who were about to have babies.

Apparently the old woman was the midwife all the women were looking for. We saw the woman again. She was walking around like she was in a drunken stupor. The woman walked over to the wall and then flopped down onto some spot like a counter or a desk top as if it were a bed.

It was clear the old woman needed more rest before she could take on the tasks of a midwife. But the women were all going to approach the old woman anyway. Each of the women, like me, had a snake. The snakes were all giving birth to eggs. And the old woman was the only one who could help with the births. The old woman still needed to recover a lot, but she was probably well enough to be midwife to the snakes, even though it would drain her energy.

The women all tittered to each other about how childlike they'd appear, all coming to the old woman at once, asking her for help. The girls all joked that they'd seem like little girls, asking, "Help my snake? My snake? My snake?"

But behind the joke was the sentiment that the women really did need the old woman to help with the snakes. And behind that sentiment was a fear. The snakes were something like a buildup. The women really needed the old woman's help giving birth to their own babies. But the women were afraid to bring up the topic. They were afraid the old woman would still be too ill to deliver the babies when the time came, or that the old woman would simply refuse. So the young women became overly, though jokingly, focused on the snakes, and how much they needed the old woman's help with the snakes.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

white tiger reconstruction

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was daytime, a sunny-cloudy day, with clouds skeining across the sky and making the atmosphere all kind of yellow. I had walked outside of a big house with white siding. I hadn't been outside for very long, and I'm pretty sure I hadn't done anything, but I felt like I'd been out for a while.

It started pouring rain. I was hoping to get back inside before I got soaked. But I had to take a "hike" around the big front yard of this big house. Plus, before the house, two white tigers were lying asleep at the trunk of a (barren? headless?) tree. I knew that if I approached the house's front door directly I'd wake the tigers, who would get angry and attack me.

So I walked in a counter-clockwise square around a portion of the yard. The yard was large, but I didn't walk around the whole thing. I maybe only covered a hundred square meters, but I felt like I'd walked quite a bit more. I walked around two huge beasts that were as big as elephants but had faces more like rhinoceros faces, but with narrow, tapered snouts.

The beasts lay on a shallow slope that slightly obscured my vied of the tigers. But just before I crossed down in front of the huge beasts, I saw that the pouring rain was waking at least one of the tigers. The tiger was yawning lazily. But I could tell that once the tiger got all its senses back from sleep, it would be annoyed by being woken and soaked by the rain. If the tiger saw me, it would take out its annoyance on me, attacking me.

I reflected on the huge beasts as I passed before them. They may have been dead, or they may also have been asleep. But I wasn't afraid of them. I knew that if they weren't dead, and if the rain woke them, they wouldn't be as violent as the white tigers would. They would be gentle, and probably just wander off.

I was hoping to work my way far to the right side of the house, then sneak around to the front door. But even as I was heading up the small, shallow slope on which the huge beasts lay, one of the tigers was charging at me. The tiger jumped on top of me and knocked me to the ground, flat on my back.

Right before I was knocked over I began hearing my own (???) voice narrating, as if I were, somewhere, watching a documentary about myself having been attacked by the tiger. As I landed on my back, the view around me may have been of a new subway train, with the white interior.

My narration said that the tiger weighed five thousand pounds. When I heard that, I became afraid. I didn't want the tiger's entire weight bearing down on me: it would be too painful! But the tiger must already have been bearing fully down on me. The narration said that I hadn't felt the weight of the tiger: the pressure hadn't been as painful as I'd expected. This, I realized, was true.

But the tiger was tearing at me, probably with its claws and teeth. I knew the tiger was tearing my body apart. And now the documentary (wherever it was playing, wherever I was watching) was moving to the second part, which was how the person -- no longer me, but more like a young version of Jackie Chan (???)  -- had had large parts of his body torn apart and had to go through reconstructive surgery.

At first I saw a photo of the young man after his reconstruction. It turned out, however, that the young man didn't want a normal reconstruction. He didn't want the doctors to put him back to normal. Instead, he simply wanted to be made functional, and to keep the mauled portions of his body as mauled-looking as he could, as a kind of "lesson" to his attackers, but also as a kind of artistic statement. The photo of the man's face, in fact, looked like the leathery face of a long dead person, or even of a shrunken head.

I now saw the young man, as if on film or video, speaking to the camera and documentary crew. The man was in something like the control room of a very small TV station. The lights were warm and incandescent, and the walls were brick, but all lined with tall cabinets full of TV studio control systems and monitors. The monitors may all have been playing imagery of spaceflight and missiles, which may have had something to do with recent news events, maybe with some impending war.

The man, I now saw, had been reconstructed to look really strange. He had all kinds of dull grey, coathanger-like wires stuck through his body. Some reconstructed portions of his flesh were raw and slimy. Other portions, such as a couple of his fingers, looked more like raw fat or ligament than flesh. And other portions of him looked more like random pieces of plastic or machinery. His head was crowned or haloed with a band of wire, which stuck into his raw skull at certain points.

The man began showing the camera and crew the work he did around the studio. Apparently, like the phantom of the opera, the man isolated himself in his work. He was a genius at his work, and he wasn't as antisocial as the phantom, but he bitterly isolated himself in his work, again as a "lesson," apparently, to the tigers that had mauled him.

But as I watched the man at work, I realized that all of his reconstruction was also like an augmentation. His wire/plastic/technology hands allowed him to process data and punch buttons in the cabinets at an incredible speed. And the man seemed to be able to operate an incredible number of machines at once!

But as I focused on the man's fingers operating on one interace at immense speed, I realized that the man could be driving himself too hard. His brain and body, it seemed to me, may not have been fully healed -- maybe because the man had chosen to have such an incomplete, strange reconstruction.

The man may have been driving himself to cause his incompletely healed portions to break down. And maybe the breakdown was desired by certain parts of the man's body. It may have been that certain artificial elements of the reconstruction wanted more of the original elements of the man to die, so that more artificial elements could join the artificial elements already in place. But, I thought, it may also have been possible that a breakdown would shut down even the artificial parts of the man's body.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

grandma mudslide

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a hallway of a hospital. The hallway was sterile, with bare, white walls and greenish-white, fluorescent lighting.

I was probably at the hospital for my grandmother. She had probably just died. I'm not sure I was there to see my grandma: it may have been more like I was there just to acknowledge the fact that she'd died.

My mom sat in front of the door to my grandmother's room. I looked into the room. I didn't quite feel like I could go in. I kind of felt like my mom was blocking the door, even though she wasn't.

But now my grandma started moving. My grandma actually wasn't dead yet. It was like she had been on a respirator, but like she had just recently gotten the tube taken out, so that she could breathe on her own. It was assumed that her breathing would naturally get weaker and weaker, and that she would die. But this was all surprising to me: I'd been told my grandma was dead.

In fact, my grandma was breathing just fine. But now she began struggling in her bed. She began hunching and twisting upward, trying to get a good view of me. She was trying urgently to tell me something. But she couldn't speak. Instead, she was just hissing.

I wanted to go into the room to talk with my grandma, or at least stand outside the room and focus on what my grandma was saying. But somehow my mom scared me off from the room. My mom may have been trying to convince me that my grandma was dying and that I just needed to let her die. I didn't believe her, but I was too afraid to argue. I just turned and walked away from my grandma's room. But I had a bad feeling that my grandma was trying to tell me a bad secret about my mom.

I was now standing out on a river bank. My mom sat out on the river bank, possibly at something like a school desk or office desk. I walked away from the river bank. Directly behind it was a steep, muddy slope. There were a good amount of people sitting out on the slope, like they were at the park or waiting for a concert or something. But the slope was extremely steep and muddy: it didn't look like it would be comfortable at all.

For some reason I felt like I needed to scale the slope. I started climbing the slope. It was really difficult, but eventually I was approaching the top.

But now the slope became extremely steep, almost a vertical wall, all mud. I had to struggle to find hand- and footholds, and the mud was slopping all around me. Yet there were also people sitting on the slope near me, like they were just enjoying a day at the park. And there were two pretty, tanned girls with frizzy, blonde-brown hair walking up a cinder path to my right.

I didn't get all the way to the top of the slope (which may have been bordered by a wooded area) when I decided I needed to slide down the slope. But I was afraid that the slope was so steep that I would slide too quickly and start tumbling down the slope and crash to my death.

But I started sliding, anyway. It wasn't so bad. The hardest thing was, that I had with me the book I'm currently reading (Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, by Henry Adams), and that it was hard for me to hold onto it as I slid down the slope.

Monday, April 8, 2013

carnegie's airship

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably laying on the floor of a dark living room. My brother, and maybe other members of my family, were also in the living room. A television was on in the room. I couldn't see the TV, but it provided the only source of light in the room.

The TV was playing a documentary about Andrew Carnegie. The documentary's narrator explained that Carnegie had, by modern rules, cheated his way into making a lot of money. Now that Carnegie had made a lot of money, he wanted to build a gigantic airship, which he felt would be of great benefit to humanity.

I saw, somehow, a few views of Carnegie on his airship. The shots were taken with a very old film camera, and they were really grainy and shadowy. The airship, I could tell, was gigantic. It floated slowly through the air like a zeppelin, although I hadn't thought of it as being like a zeppelin at the time.

The narrator now explained that Carnegie had been accused of cheating and theft by his peers. They worked long and hard and managed to get the U.S. courts to convict Carnegie. Carnegie had to give a lot of his money back.

By his own standards, he may now have been broke, even though he was probably still a millionaire. But, the narrator, explained, Carnegie no longer had the money to operate his gigantic airship. This was a bit of a tragedy, because it set air travel back by decades.

I had stood up to go take care of something. Now I had a clear view of the TV screen. The documentary was showing film of the final flight of the airship (the film's view from far above the ship???).

The airship was like a gigantic, flat slab of stone -- like an entire stratum of rock taken out of a mountain! -- atop which was a long, well-manicured park. The airship was like an enormous aircraft carrier, except with park instead of an airstrip. At the stern end may have been some kind of control center, or even a mansion or other kind of estate.

I was so inspired by this airship that I shouted out, "Yes! Look at that thing!" Suddenly it seemed to me that everything Carnegie had done had been right, if it could have led to an achievement like this. It also did seem tragic to me that people took away Carnegie's ability to continue running this monument to humanity.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

turtle children

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was standing out on a bridge over a river with my mother and my sister. We were in a pine forest in the mountains. The ground was mostly grey, and the sun was hidden behind the mountains, so that the atmosphere around us was a chill blue-grey. The bridge was hefty and stout, and it stood maybe seven meters above the river. The river was wide, a little shallow, with rushes of water occasionally broken by small boulders.

My mom was talking to me, probably about some family gossip that I really didn't want to hear about. I had turned away a bit and was looking down to the river. I was surprised to see two turtles swimming in the water. They were bigger than any turtles I'd seen in the wild: their shells were about a meter long. The turtles were so big I assumed they must have been sea turtles.

Hoping I wouldn't make my mom think I was trying to change the subject, I cried out, "Look! It's sea turtles!" I was now surprised to see the heads of the turtles. The heads, which were submerged under the rushing water, were a bright, vivid green-yellow, and as round and wrinkle-free as the head of a cartoon turtle.

The turtles' shells were now gone, as if the turtles had gotten out of their shells. I knew my mom wouldn't believe me about the turtles if she couldn't see their shells. But I was more surprised to see how strongly, swimming around in the water, the turtles' bright, green bodies resembled the bodies of human beings.

I was trying to think how I could prove to my mom that the swimming creatures were actually the "sea turtles" I'd seen. But I was more concerned with trying to prove to myself that these creatures were actually turtles. They resembled humans. But, I thought, that's only because they actually are (???!!!) evolutionarily very close to humans. And they weren't wrinkled at all. But, I considered, the wrinkly appearance of turtles only came, after all, from their being stuck in their shells.

Now three turtles stood up onto a wide, flat rock almost directly under the bridge. But the two green turtles were gone, and these three turtles were a pinkish purple, mottled on their backs with black spots like leopard spots, though I may have thought of them as giraffe spots.

The three turtles looked just like three little, naked girls, except that their heads were bald and a little more bulbous than human heads. I may have had the idea that these turtles, or turtles in general, were not just closely related to humans, but were actually a part of some extraterrestrial race.

I probably kept waiting for the two green turtles to show up. And I probably still kept hoping for a turtle to get back into its shell, so I could prove to my mom that I'd seen a sea turtle.

Friday, April 5, 2013

grandma's kitchen

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with my great grandmother and sister in my great grandma's kitchen (in waking life, my great grandma died about four years ago, and her house was sold). The three of us stood at an inner corner of the counter. The light in the kitchen was filled with gentle, white-gold sunlight.

My great grandma had just fixed some Wyler's cherry juice in a clear, glass pitcher. At first the juice was murky, like the grains of powdered juice mix hadn't dissolved all the way into the water. I was kind of disappointed. But then the liquid began to clarify into a crytsal-clear, sharp red. It looked delicious. I really looked forward to drinking some of the juice.

Monday, April 1, 2013

cemetery security

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was standing out at a mausoleum. It may have been late in the day, after sunset. The sky may have been a dim grey-blue. The mausoleum was a two- or three-story building, with a rectangular, cantilevered design, with a couple staircases made out of porous, white stone. There was a big, tall window in the center of the facade. Two staircases went up the building on either side of the tall window.

All along in front of the building was a plaza, also made of the porous, white stone. There may have been a rectangular pond somewhere along the plaza. Off to my right and left may have been asphalt paths on rolling hills, obscured by smaller structures and manicured, juniper-like shrubs.

My mom now stood out with me on the plaza. She may have been looking for a good place to put the remains of her mother, who had recently died. But my mom was reluctant to put my grandma in any cemetery. Every neighborhood with a cemetery seemed to be a bad neighborhood. My mom was afraid the people in the neighborhood would steal my grandma's remains or vandalize her gravesite.

I tried to convince my mom that this place, however, was good. This cemetery was part of a chain of cemeteries. I'd visited other cemeteries in this chain, maybe even in a forgotten past of this dream. I knew that the cemeteries all had a very good, very covert security system. In fact, I knew, the cemeteries all made a little, pleasant game out of tricking thieves and vandals into thinking they were safe, and then catching them on video, so they could be prosecuted.

I knew that security cameras were all over the building, pointing out at the plaza. I tried to point out some of the security cameras. I knew where they should be, given my inspection of the other cemeteries, which were basically identical. But I couldn't locate the cameras.

The only camera I could find, standing out in the plaza, was a camera on the far back wall of the atrium behind the tall window of the building. It seemed like that camera wouldn't give my mom much comfort: it was so far back that it wouldn't give a very good view of the identity of a thief or vandal.

But I tried to show my mom that the main thing was, a person could see the images put out by the camera at any time, from a computer or mobile device. The person could then alert the cemetery, who would take action against the thief or vandal. But I suddenly had no ability to articulate this, and I was just pointing to my phone, searching for the right words to say.

My mom and I were now inside the atrium, near the back wall. There were a father-like man and one or two other members of the father's family with him, near us. They may just have gotten off a nearby elevator.

Looking out the window, I was able to pull up my phone and pull up an image from the security camera on the back wall of the atrium. I told my mom that she could get images from the other security cameras as well.

Now my view, and the situation, changed. I was floating up into the air at a really fast pace, into a black night sky. But the sky was more like a sound stage, and the land I flew over was more like the landscape of a model train set. I flew higher and higher, until I was in outer space, which may have been some cartoony, blue backdrop of swirls of pure-white stars.

I now began descending back toward earth. The first view I had of the earth was like a cartoon view of the earth. But as I descended, the view became more like that of a model train set again. But all the elements of the landscape were like ragged, slimy toys, like toys that had recently been chewed and otherwise mishandled by children.

I knew there was a crime boss, perhaps of some Asian crime gang, out to get me. I knew something that would prove the crime boss' guilt, and the boss didn't want me to tell it. So he and a couple other gang members were going to trick me, with kindness, into some trap, and then kill me.

As I floated down toward the model of the cemetery, which seemed to be positioned among city buildings and apartment complexes, I started trying to think of nice ways I could address the crime boss and his henchmen, so they would think I liked them, wouldn't inform on them, and, possibly, even had no idea about whatever incriminating fact it was I knew.

Friday, March 29, 2013

latex transvestite interview; youzakura

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a very small bedroom, like a bedroom in a double-wide trailer, with a beautiful, blonde woman. I stood close to and facing the woman, who stood with her back to a small chair.

The woman and I were apparently on some kind of television show. We had gone through some sort of interaction, and we were now being interviewed, or we were interviewing each other, about it. But I couldn't see the camera. It was almost like we were playing that we were on TV, even though we really were on TV.

The interview basically became about the fact that when the woman and I had gone on a date, we'd worn the same clothes. The woman was still wearing the clothes she'd worn on the night of the date, including a yellow, knee-length skirt that had a hem like the cuff for the sleeve of a long-sleeved shirt and bunched loosely out in lazy pleats up to the waist.

I asked the woman what her reaction had been to me coming to our date wearing a dress. The woman gave her reaction instead of talking about it. The woman acted accepting, but shaky and a little reticent. It became obvious that the woman was a little jealous, wondering if I'd stolen her clothes.

We kind of changed positions a bit, so I was now facing the door, which had been to my right before. The woman's skirt was still loose and yellow, but was now made of latex. The woman told me something, possibly more accepting of me than she'd been before.

We changed positions again, so that I was now facing the back wall, with my back to the chair. The woman's entire outfit may now have been made of latex, and it was probably much tighter. The woman told me she actually thought it was hot that I had been dressed in the same clothes as she (i.e. the tight latex outfit).

The woman's outfit may have changed again, to a completely skin-tight, almost transparent, latex outfit. I was wearing the same thing. I knew the woman wanted to get on all fours and have me go at her from behind -- without either of us taking off our suits! This seemed really impractical, even uncomfortable, but really arousing.

Dream #2

It was night. I was walking down the middle of a wide street, like a busy street of stores and parking lots in a suburban city. But there were also cherry trees or crabapple trees growing up in the middle of the street. The trees were huge, and their canopies were filled with big, beautiful, pink and white blossoms. The blossoms' color was even more intense in the orange streetlamp light.

I felt so peaceful walking down this road. Suddenly I came to a gigantic cherry tree that seemed to fill me with its beauty. As I passed under the canopy and witnessed the beauty of the blossoms, I became much more aware of things, if not entirely aware that I was dreaming.

I knew I could fly. I decided to fly up to the top of this tree. I ran out from under the canopy, turned around, and ran back toward the canopy. Reaching the canopy, I leaped upward.

I jumped over the first layer of canopy, which was wide, but not extremely tall. Above that first layer the tree basically became a trunk clouded and swirled around with branches and limbs full of small, gentle-pink and white blossoms. I also spiraled my way (counterclockwise?) up the tree.

I clung to the tree with my left arm, like a monkey would. The sky was foggy or cloudy all around me. I looked down to the ground. It was a lot farther below me than I thought. I saw through a layer of clouds to the shimmering orange lights of a city.

I was really close to the top of the tree. I wanted to go ahead and fly up to the top. But I was already scared by how high I was. But I decided to fly up to the top, anyway. I made one last leap and reached the top of the tree. The top was round and bald, covered in dark bark, and coated in thick piles of tiny, pink and white petals.

I now knew I had to jump back down to the ground. I was really scared by how high I was. I knew that I could fly, and that I'd probably just be able to float down gently through the clouds and back down to the ground. But I worried that I either had lost my ability to fly or that I would lose it, and that, mid-flight, I'd suddenly drop down through the air and smash to the ground.

But I went ahead, took three deep breaths (which I could physically feel in my ears) and jumped. I found myself drifting downward through a thick layer of clouds. I may then have passed below the layer of clouds, so I could see the tree again as I drifted back down toward the ground.

I was suddenly called for by a group of people, probably a group of Japanese people, mostly women, in their forties and fifties. I couldn't see them: it was like they were shrouded in the blackness of the sky around me. They told me I needed to join them for a safe landing.

I somehow joined hands with the people. We had joined into a circle and were drifting down to the ground, maybe like a circle of skydivers. We landed. As soon as we landed, the darkness all went away. We were all standing out on a flat, open, treeless plain in the sunlight, under a blue sky. Everybody started walking away. It was like we had been part of some volunteer project, which was now over.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

chainworm; i'm sorry mom

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some vague space, maybe like a common area or a cafeteria for a university. The space may have been white or cream and blue. I wasn't quite there -- it was more like my view was floating through it, while also vaguely being somewhere else.

I had probably taken my FINRA Series 7 test recently. I hadn't done as well as I'd wanted to, but I'd gotten much better than a passing grade. But now AB, one of the heads of the company I currently work for (which doesn't have anything to do with stocks, the subject of the Series 7), told me I needed to take my test. I was a little frustrated. It was like AB was completely unaware I'd already taken my test.

As AB told me this, my view floated downward, through some den- ski lodge-like area, down through the floor of that area, and into a big basement that also looked a little like a common area or study area in a university. I was all by myself here, and I may have felt trapped here somehow. I alternately sat on the floor and before a long, but short, counter.

I had two books before me. Both books were study books for the test. Both books were tall and wide, though not very thick. The book on the right had writing in it, like test questions. The book on the left was full of three-dimensional, geometrical diagrams.

I reflected on these books. I really didn't want to take the test again. But I felt like that was really the only way I convince AB I'd ever taken it in the first place. I felt kind of lazy for not taking the test. I knew if I took the test again, I could do a lot better. AB would be please by that. But I also knew that I'd already, from my previous score, gotten myself into the top ten percent of the people who'd taken the test. Couldn't AB be satisfied with that?

My view was now floating through a suburban street, but only like I was vaguely there. It was like, somehow, I was still, vaguely, in the basement. I was also carrying on a conversation with AB, or remembering a conversation with AB.

I had a tickling in the back of my throat. I coughed, then reached into the back of my throat and pulled out a string of phlegm. I wanted to pull out the whole string of phlegm. It was really annoying. I didn't want more of it to come back up my throat and annoy me more.

But as I continued pulling the string, it became a thin, dull, gold or brass chain. I was a little surprised by this. I knew that the chain was something organic: either something my body had created or a foreign organism that had gotten into me.

As I kept pulling the chain out, it got larger and larger. Pretty soon it was a thick chain, coated in something like black and grey phlegm. I started to get the idea that the chain was actually something like a tapeworm. I wanted to get the tapeworm out of my body altogether. As I continued to pull, the chain may finally have taken on a fleshy appearance, something like my conception of a tapeworm.

Dream #2

My mom was in the hospital. My brother and sister and I, and possibly my grandmother (who, in waking life, has only recently died), were standing around my mom's bed.

I somehow got a look at the back of my mom's head. There was a chunk maybe an inch wide out of the base of my mom's skull. This was the result of some kind of degenerative disease my mom had, maybe something to do with her heart.

Even though everybody else was around, my mom somehow spoke just to me, maybe using a guarded kind of speech, to indicate that the doctors had told her that the disease she was suffering from was about to overtake her. My mom knew she was going to die.

This had all happened rather suddenly. Something about the whole situation may also have been my fault, as if my neglect of my mother had allowed a physical situation to overwhelm my mother, giving the disease a chance to spread rapidly.

My mom knew this, and she gave me a weak, judgmental, but patient look with just her eyes. The rest of her face was blank, as if my mom's mental functions really weren't there anymore, or as if my mom were too sad or resigned to do much more than look me in the eye.

I was overwhelmed with guilt and full of sadness at the thought of my mother's approaching death. I grabbed my mom's right hand. There was some kind of sore or boil on the back of the hand. But I pressed my forehead against my mom's hand and wept deeply.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

sex with diapered co-worker

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked into a big bathroom like a public restroom and locker room for a gym. The light was bright and green-white fluorescent. I may have felt like there was a smell of urine in the air.

One of my old co-workers FA stood in the restroom. She and I may have been getting ready to go somewhere as part of work or school. But FA was wearing a dress, and somehow the skirt pulled up to reveal that FA was wearing a diaper. FA was now sitting on the ground, her legs spread wide open to show the diaper.

FA was embarrassed. Apparently she liked me (I've always had a crush on her -- she's married now) and she thought that I wouldn't like her if I knew she wore diapers.

I partly wanted to comfort FA and let her know I would like her no matter what. But I was also turned on by the fact that she was wearing a diaper. I put my face closer to FA's diaper. It looked like she'd peed in it a little. I probably then moved myself upward to I could embrace FA. Her dress was pushed up all the way up over her shoulders. I embraced FA's naked chest.

FA was getting hot, but she didn't want to act like she was. She seemed to be a little annoyed by me. I think she didn't want to admit she liked me (this would kind of make sense -- she's tall and beautiful, and I'm short and nerdy.) But she also didn't want to stop me from doing anything.

I stood up and pulled one of FA's legs up. I then straddled her leg and started working my way down FA's leg. I was planning on doing something like scissoring with FA: I was stripped down to just my boxer briefs, and I really wanted to rub my crotch against FA's diaper.

But for some reason I was having so much difficulty just working my way back down into a sitting position. I thought to myself, Man! Scissoring isn't as easy as it looks! FA may have been patient with me, trying not to act like I was being awkward. Or FA may have had not personality at all at this point: she may have been like a doll or mannequin.

I now noticed that off to my right was a half-wall divider revealing a living room. The living room looked like an older woman's living room, and it was dim, with watery, green daylight flowing in through a gauzy-curtained front window.

My mom was in the living room with one or two other people. She may have looked over and called to me, to let me know it was time for us to take care of some stuff. My mom either didn't see the position I was in, or else she wanted to act like she didn't see, so I wouldn't be embarrassed.

Monday, March 25, 2013

worst pinball game ever

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an arcade with a few other people who were probably around my age or five or ten years younger. We were playing pinball. I was standing near the pinball machine, watching instead of playing. I may have been watching a tall, beautiful, black-haired woman playing.

We then had to go upstairs. We probably went into a movie theater, but I think we were there for some kind of business meeting. A movie may have played.

The meeting was over, but I was now by myself. I took an escalator down from the upper level to the ground floor, where the arcade was. A huge window wall to my left let in a lot of grey light.

I was back down in the arcade. I stood in front of a pinball machine. I may have been surprised by the fact that the pinball machine started up a game without my having put a quarter inside. Somewhere off to my right and behind me, my mom was talking with some other person, maybe about some kind of illness, maybe a mental illness, my mom thought I had.

I started playing. I couldn't figure how to launch the ball out of the side slot and into the game area. But the ball launched itself. The ball bounced around in the game area and then fell toward the hole at the bottom.

The hole wasn't very big, it was located near the side slot, instead of in the middle of the bottom of the game area, and the paddle had the ability to stretch across the hole entirely. But either I couldn't figure out how to use the paddle, or else I was way too slow to use the paddle, and the ball fell right into the hole.

I got another ball, which appeared in the side slot presently. The ball launched into the game area, and somehow I, without even knowing how -- or really whether! -- it happened, got an extra ball.

The ball that had gotten me an extra ball disappeared, and another ball appeared in the side slot. But it launched up the side slot only weakly, then falling back down toward the bottom of the side slot. It actually fell out of the machine altogether, through some hole like a coin-return hole, then tumbled through the floor. I may have picked up the fallen ball and somehow put it back into the machine.

In the meantime, the extra ball I had gained was already bouncing around in the game area. I saw it just as it was falling toward the hole. There was a little bumper near the hole. The ball bounced against the bumper. I thought this would save the ball, or at least give me points or something special. But it didn't. The ball fell down through the hole. I didn't even use my paddle to stop it.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

avoiding old co-workers; it's not a date?!; the giant worm

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was apparently at my new job, though the building looked something like an art gallery. I had walked from a back area into a front room, something like a small reception area or lobby. A woman sat at the front desk.

The walls may have been made of large, white, tile-like squares. I may possibly have seen through the cracks between the tiles -- or possibly through the walls themselves, somehow -- to see that some people from my previous job were coming into this place. The people were walking through a dirt parking lot or a yellow-skied, desert-like landscape, and were right near the front door.

I had had a really terrible time with the people at my previous job (mostly, to be fair, due to my own bad emotional state at the time), and I didn't want those people to know where I worked nowadays. So as they approached the door I tried to hide myself. I did some weird thing where I threw myself on the ground and slid under a wall-mounted coat rack that was piled full with coats. I probably slid along like a worm, with my back to the wall, although I could see, maybe even see through, a tall, narrow window near the coats.

I eventually moved (by creeping or walking?) through a white-walled, white-lit hallway, and into a back area, which may have consisted of one or two unlit, empty, plaster-walled rooms. I milled around back there, knowing that the people from my job were out in the front area. I was waiting for them to leave. But now it sounded like they were coming back here. I had to find a way to get out of here.

I walked out the two rooms. Before the two rooms and behind the hallway was some kind of unfinished space -- just concrete floors, frames, and wires. On the wall to my right was a door leading outside. I headed for it.

But just as I headed for the door, two Hispanic men, whom I recognized as being from my job, though I didn't know who they were, walked in. The two men looked a little old and roughened. At least one of them may have worn black sunglasses.

The men were polite. They smiled shyly at me. They seemed only vaguely to recognize me. But I still worried that they would spread news about someone who looked like me to everybody else who'd come here. And I really didn't want the people who knew me well to know I worked here. But I also felt like the people were going to tell on me, anyway. I thought it wasn't any use trying to leave the building now. I figured I might as well follow the two men, even though I knew they were heading toward the people who knew me.

Dream #2

It was a sunny day. I was out in some area that felt like a long, narrow city park (kind of like Riverside Park in New York City), but also had some feeling of being an amusement park. There were probably a lot of people around, heading from ride to ride, though I really saw neither the people nor the rides.

I was somehow interacting with my co-worker SC, possibly through speaking, but likely through email or texting. But I probably never actually saw the phone on which I was texting.

SC and I had previously arranged to meet sometime. But I had kind of been dragging my feet to meet with her. So I was telling SC why I'd been dragging my feet. I told SC that I felt like I looked really ugly at the moment, and that I hadn't really been taking care of stuff, like my clothes and eyeglasses. I told SC that I didn't think I'd want her to go out on a date with someone who was as much of a mess as I.

SC responded that I was being really silly. We weren't, after all, even going out on a date! We were just making plans to hang out together, as friends. So if we were just hanging out as friends, why should I worry about how I looked, or whether I was a mess? SC said it all seemed really vain, in her opinion.

As SC said all of this, I walked down a small, shallow slope. Set into the slope was a concrete frame with wooden doors, like the entrance to a storm cellar. I also had the feeling of people, maybe in park worker uniforms, rushing around nearby, like in a battle scene.

I lay along the right side of the concrete frame and began texting SC -- even though I still may not have seen my phone. I responded that I agreed with what SC said, and that I should be less worried. But I was also a litle disappointed. She didn't think we were going out on a date? Why not?!

Dream #3

It was probably late afternoon in the suburbs, with a cool, grey-blue sky overhead. I'd walked out, probably from a backyard, and into a front yard. But the front yard seemed more like pavement than lawn.

I lifted my leg to get over a gigantic worm. I then stood near a mailbox. It took me a second, but I then realized that I'd just stepped over a gigantid worm. I turned around to look at it. The worm was an earthworm, but at least two meters long and maybe 25cm in diameter. It was lingering in a patch of mud-slicked, wet pavement. Its body was mostly plump and round, though its back end was kind of shriveled and purple. I noticed that it had fine, white hairs (???) all along its body.

I pulled out my phone, hoping to take a picture of the worm, so I could prove to people outside my dream (???), especially my ex-girlfriend H, that I'd seen the worm. But as soon as I pointed the phone at the worm, the worm began moving, kind of quickly.

The worm squirmed into the street and then up the street. I stood for a moment, trying to catch it. I may have taken one photo of the worm. But the photo may have been blurry, and it may have made the worm look really small.

I tried to follow after the worm, but now it began moving really quickly. It may even have begun hopping away. A car or two drove down the road. The worm barely missed getting hit. Then another car drove down the road. The worm somehow used that car as a distraction. It headed quickly for the curb as the car passed between it and me. When the car had passed, the worm, it seemed to me, had vanished. I looked around for a few seconds, but I could no longer see the worm.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

flying over construction; as long as i live; medicine hunt; photos of youth; see the sun

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I had just left my mother, brother, and sister. I was probably walking along a wooded path or road, but I soon began flying.

I may have been a little surprised and excited that I could fly. After a little while I may have lost my ability to fly. But I got it back and started flying again.

I was still in the woods at night, but I was now flying over some kind of construction scene. There were deep trenches or pits supported by wooden beams and filled with busy workers in orange vests and hardhats. There may have been pylons somewhere, which may have looked like construction cones mixed with Greek columns.

I think some of the workers may have noticed me, but they might not have thought much of me, or they might have been in a kind of thoughtless state altogether. But I really didn't want to get the men's attention: I felt like it could only be bad attention, because they would be jealous of or frightened by my flight. So I flew away, off to my right, probably over a stretch of barren tree tops.

Dream #2

It was a blue night or morning. I sat out on something like a ledge of scaffolding, out on the side of a tall but plain building like a cinder block apartment building. The building was probably in the middle of a wilderness, with the land around it cleared out. Some people below were working, maybe on the building.

I was a skinny, bald, white man, maybe old, and not wearing a shirt. My skin was a little rough and reddish-tan. My chest was misted over with curls of white (or grey-blonde?) hair.

Some young man poked his head out of a window I sat near. He asked me something. I knew my answer would have something to do with something I'd written in a notebook, maybe a notebook I was still writing in. But I couldn't answer the question while sitting out on the ledge: it was like to find the answer I'd have to twist my body around, putting myself at risk of falling right off the ledge.

I decided to pull myself back inside. I somehow pulled myself backward, in through a window, until I was lying on my back on a long, hefty, wooden table. I had the notebook with me. I pulled it out so I could read the answer to the young man.

But I was now in a car, probably with my family. I probably sat in the backseat. The car was a small, red car, like a European mini-car. We were still in the building, driving away from the window. We drove up a corridor ramp, like a corridor in an airport, except that it was dim, like it was in a stage of construction where no lights had yet been put in the ceiling.

I was reading from the notebook. The passage I read was apparently about some kind of mystical experience I'd had when I had been looking out over some kind of landscape. But it was written in a really scraggly cursive.

The last line was supposed the most important line of the passage. But there were sections of writing that were so poorly written that I couldn't read them at all. At first I thought the line was an ominous, almost horrific, statement about the author's and my (as if I were no longer the author) fates.

I had to take some time deciphering the writing. I even seemed to be scratching out or scratching over some of the writing. I finally had the statement figured out: "I'll never forget the sight as long as I live." So, I reflected, the statement was, actually, just a statment of beauty.

Dream #3

I was in the living room of a house like the house my family lived from the time I was eleven until about the time I was fifteen. But the living room was cluttered with all kinds of things. There was a knee-high gate around all the clutter, almost like the entrance to an amusement park for little kids.

A couple of my little nephews and my niece were messing around in all this clutter. At some point I'd been required to find something, which may have served as a medicine. Somehow my niece knew what I was looking for. She said she knew that the item was in the clutter. She even knew just where it was.

Somehow my niece, in going after the item, had managed instantly to clear away a path in the clutter, as well as clearing away a whole pile of clutter that had covered a clear, plastic bin in which the item apparently was packed. The clear, plastic bin was packed with objects, maybe like china ware, wrapped up in clear plastic wrap, like Saran wrap.

I probably doubted that my niece would actually find what I needed to locate. But I let her continue to look -- partly out of kindness and partly, probably, because I was really amazed by the facility with which she'd cleared away all the clutter.

Dream #4

I had been looking through a series of family photos, probably of a vacation, and probably to reminisce, helping myself come to terms with the memory of my grandmother, who had recently died.

I flipped through the photos, none of which I can now remember, until I came to the final photo, which almost faded into my vision or dawned on my vision the same way an idea might dawn upon one's consciousness.

The photo was a low-angle shot of my brother, my sister, and me, as children, all dressed up, in a marching, and maybe saluting, pose, with a Chinese flag up behind us in the distance, fluttering in the blue sky. The photo was kind of blurry. I somehow knew the title of the photo was "Goodbye, Grandma."

Dream #5

A Rose Is Rose comic strip. A little boy was playing in the playground with his mother on a sunny day. But the colors were all dim and drab. The boy remarked that all day long, the boy had been out here, but he'd never seen the sun.

In the last frame, the mother walked away, leaving the boy at the swingset. The boy stood facing the departing mother. Behind the boy a wave of fire-like orange like loomed forward, implying something like a sunrise, like the colors of the sunny day would finally burst forth.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

fetish-dress thrift shop; goodbye, grandma

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked into a clothing store or thrift shop with my mother. The store was dim, as if no lights were on in the store and the only light was the light coming in from outdoors. The store felt kind of busy with people.

My mom was, I think, heading to a fitting room to try on some clothes. I was following her, but I got distracted by a rack of clothes near the fitting room. There was a pink gingham dress with a belled out skirt, almost like a cosplay dress, on the rack. The rack was tall, so that the knee-length skirt hung just above my eye level. I was really turned on by the dress and I wanted to try it on, but I didn't want my mom to know I liked wearing dresses, especially sissy-style dresses like this one.

But I continued looking through the rack. The rack was long and nearly empty, so that all the dresses were widely spaced. There was another dress with a pink, gingham style. It had a long skirt in back, but the front of the skirt was sectioned away, as if some other piece of clothing were supposed to be placed underneath it. I felt like this dress must have been intended for fetish, as the shortness of the front seemed to imply a sexual readinesss.

I turnes around the end of the rack and walked along the other side, which was closer to the fitting room. One dress caught my eye. It was like a ballet dress, with a top like a spaghetti-strap tank-top and a tutu that spread out flat and wide. This dress struck me at first as being for a little girl. But then it struck me as being more like a fetish outfit, a sissy's outfit.

The last outfit that caught my eye could hardly be called a dress. It was like a couple of hula hoops connected by a thin skein of gauzy, pink fabric. There was a red sphere near the top of the hoops. I had the feeling that this "outfit" was supposed to express something about atomic physics. But it was also supposed to be a girly, sissyish outfit. I couldn't even figure out how to put the outfit on!

Now my boss JE walked out of the fitting room. It was like he, instead of my mother, had been in there the whole time. We began walking toward the exit of the store. I may have worried about what JE would think of me if he knew that I was into wearing the dresses I'd been looking at. I thought that JE must already have seen me looking at the dresses.

Dream #2

I was with my mother and grandmother in a room like a living room or the waiting room of a hospital. The light was dim and warmly yellow. My grandmother and I sat on a couch. I faced my grandma, who sat huddled up in blankets, maybe sitting cross-legged underneath the blankets. My mom sat somewhere behind me.

My grandma was telling me about an operation she was going to have. She was speaking strangely about this operation, as if she had already died during the surgery, or as if it were almost certain that she would die. She mentioned some of the details about the surgery, which would be on her heart, and why death during the surgery was almost a forgone conclusion.

I didn't want to believe that things were that bad. I wanted to believe there was hope. I said some positive things, hoping to get myself and my grandmother to believe that she would survive/had survived the operation.

But my grandmother stopped me. She said her heart was in really bad condition. She may have told me that the left half of her heart was already or nearly dead. She told me that if she awoke during the operation she would tell the doctors, "Give me the milk!" The milk was, apparently, a chemical that doctors would give their patients to help them die.

I now knew that even my grandma wanted to die. She was resigned and calm about the whole thing. But I was still sad. I said, "Oh, Grandma..." and caressed my grandma's face. My grandma tried to comfort me by touching the hand that caressed her face. But now I realized I was caressing my grandma's face with my foot, not my hand!

Friday, March 15, 2013

casket shrine of the mystic river

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a group of people who were younger than I, maybe in their early twenties, on the banks of some river passage between two rocky cliffs. The sky was dark and swirly. In some way, it felt like we were inside rather than outside.

We all had to jump into the river. There were holes or chutes in the bottom of the river. I knew the chutes were lit, like the lights in swimming pools. There was some spherical stone we all had to touch. The stone was polished and black, but it also had a dim, blue-grey glow to it. The stone gave people who rubbed it extra gravity, which allow people to sink all the way to the bottom of the river and through the chutes.

Almost everybody, it seemed, had jumped into the river. The only person remaining, other than myself, I could see was a boy who looked like Justin Bieber. I was having some misgivings about jumping into the river. I felt like someone was trying to get me in trouble by having me jump into the river.

My view shifted. I was now out on a street like a residential street in some stereotypical musical about late-1800s London. It was pouring rain. A long, cream-colored, old-style car drove slowly along the road. I had the feeling that this car held the body (?) of a young man. The car belonged to a mafia-type group that was basically been aiming to frame the young man, whom I may have thought of as both myself and the Justin Beiber-like boy. The group wanted the boy in prison.

My view now shifted to the backyard (?) of some huge mansion that probably had an Asian style to it. It was night, and the rain was still pouring down. My view was mostly taken up by a pool or pond that was surrounded by a pagoda- or shrine-like structure. The shrine was tall and multi-tiered, but none of the tiers had a ceiling.

A man in an old, black, Asian-style outfit and black, round-framed glasses sat at the edge of the pool. The man was the head of the crime organization against the young man.

The man watched as a nice, cream-colored (?) casket rose up out of the pool. It rose up, but it may have been like it was actually descending. The man was upset by this. This casket probably held the young man's dead body. The crime boss hadn't wanted the young man dead: the young man was dear to the crime-boss somehow; the crime-boss had only wanted the young man disabled, imprisoned.

The crime-boss was also upset by the casket getting wet. It meant that the young man's body was also likely getting wet. This may have been bad befause it prevented the young man from coming back to life, or because it was uncomfortable to the young man, if he were alive, or because it was a dishonor to the young man's memory.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

great grandmother wants to kill me

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was in front of my great grandmother's house. I may have been sent to check on my great grandma because she was sick. (My great grandma had actually died a few years ago.)

I walked up the steps to my grandma's house. The screen door was closed, but the front door was at least halfway open. My grandma was just inside, kneeling on the floor in some kind of meditative position.

My grandma was so still, I was almost sure she was dead. I thought I had gotten here too late. But then she stood up. I knew, as I think everybody in my family knew, that my grandma was going to die soon.

My grandma was acting weird and saying weird, drifty things. She walked out of the living room and into her bedroom. She returned with a container of Vaseline and a pair of scissors behind her back. I thought she was going to kill me.

I probably ran out of the house in fear. I got to the edge of my grandma's yard and then stopped running. I started talking about how I remembered all the nice stuff my grandma had done with me when I was a child.

I turned around and addressed my grandma, who stood outside her door. I walked back over to my grandma and spoke with her a little more. We were now leaning against the railing of the steps, as if we, or at least my grandma, were the height of a child.

My grandma, I saw, had dropped a blade like a scalpel on the ground. I knew that my grandma actually had been planning to kill me. But our talk had mellowed her anger.

We walked back inside. My grandma went back into her room. But now a few other members of my family were here, including my mom, and probably also my sister. It was like we were all here for my grandma's funeral, or to be with my grandma as she died.

My mom and I walked into the kitchen. My mom gave me a pile of mail which had been directed to me, though it had apparently come to my mom's house. It was a bunch of large-size envelopes. One of the envelopes may have had a post-it note on it saying "FOR YOU?"

I opened a couple of the envelopes. They came from a couple different apartment complexes. They started out as late rent notices, then they became eviction notices. I walked with these envelopes back into the living room.

Some other family member of mine may have addressed me, causing me to turn around. My family members may have been talking about me or my grandma as if one of us were physically or mentally ill.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

process drawback informative

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a hospital. I was in a room like a general practitioner's visiting room, except bigger and a little emptier. The room was probably supposed to be something like a waiting room. I was sitting either on the floor or on a chair very low to the floor.

My mom may just have had some operation, maybe on her heart. I'm pretty sure she was out of the operation, even awake. But she was in some other room. She could only take visitors periodically. This probably had to do with her recovery, like while we weren't allowed to visit her, she was going through some recovery process as dangerous as surgery, through which she may not survive.

My aunt was in the room with me. She held some device, kind of like a cell phone, which allowed her to do something like hear into my mom's room, but not exactly. My aunt was acting concerned for my mom, but then she started acting really strange. I had the feeling she'd get violent about my mom. I didn't want her to be around my mom. But then she was gone. I may have seen her leave through the cluttered area of a dim hospital hallway.

I was back in the room, which was now somehow like a narrow laboratory or kitchen. There were no lights on in the room. The room was illuminated dim blue, like from an early morning sky, except that there were probably no windows in the room.

I received a phone call, maybe on a wall phone, from one of the doctors. He was explaining something to me about the operation a second doctor, maybe named Eric, had done on my mom.

The doctor, who had a kind of Asian accent, said he understood if I was a little concerned about the operation that had been done on my mom. As the doctor explained, I was stirring the dregs of something like hot chocolate in a huge, plastic canister, with something like a wooden spoon.

The doctor explained that the operation was some kind of new technique, a "Japanese" technique. The new techniques were all being performed on patients who couldn't afford regular doctors. The techniques were uncertain, so it was understood that I'd be a little annoyed that my mother had had to go through the new procedure.

I was now going in to visit my mom. I crossed the hallway from my room to my mom's room. The hallway may have been cluttered with workers, all pushing around tall carts like meal-tray carts, except that the carts may have had sheets in them.

My mom's room door was open. I was a little shocked to see that there were a couple carts in my mom's room as well. It was like the workers, maybe even the doctors, were using my mom's room as a storage area, with no regard for her status as a recovering patient.

I peered my way around the carts cluttering my mom's bed. I saw my mom. Apparently, now, this was the first time I'd seen my mom since her operation. She wasn't hooked up to any tubes. But she looked really weak, and I thought she was near death.

My mom lolled her head over to look at me. She then sat up. I noticed how my mom's hair had been cut, so that now it was maybe only 20cm long. I thought my mom would be upset to know the doctors had done that to her, even though I knew the doctors had had no choice: they'd had to cut my mom's hair to put brain-monitors on her skull.

My mom now told me how she was upset about something. She virtually hopped off the bed and onto the floor. I winced. My mom had just had her chest cracked open for a heart surgery. Jostling herself around like that would really injure her wound.

My mom reached up onto some shelf (?) over the counter of a table. She pulled down some kind of signature form. She told me that she was really angry at the doctors, and that she was thinking of suing them.

Before the surgery the doctors had made my mom sign this form. Now my mom had read the back of the form, which had something on it called a "process drawback informative." This meant, my mom said, that the doctors were basically given permission, after the first surgery, to conduct more procedures or to determine other elements of the patient's recovery, regardless of the patient's wishes.

Friday, February 22, 2013

spirit driver and vitamin deficiency

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably in a room with some other people. We were dealing somehow with a murderer: either we were trying to stop a murderer from getting in to where we were, or one of us (I myself?) was a murderer, or was trying to stop from being accused of murder.

I was now in a car at night. I was in the front passenger's seat. The car was driving, but nobody was in the driver's seat. The car came to an intersection. I looked right, up a small slope. The car turned left and drove down a small slope, through a residential road with small houses and thickly lined with trees.

Somehow I now understood that the car was being driven by something like a spirit. The spirit had something to do with the murderer. I was trying to get the spirit to drive the car to the scene of the murder, i.e. the room I'd been in before. But the spirit may have been guilty of the murder. By bringing the spirit to this place, I could prove my innocence. But the spirit may also have been innocent, so I'd need to prove its innocence, as well.

But now the car was driving really haphazardly. It would veer and swing off to the sides of the road, getting perilously close to slamming into the trees. I began yelling at the spirit driver. I don't know whether it made a difference. I may have had to find some other way to stop the car. Finally the car came to a stop at a stopsign.

At this stopsign, or possibly at some other place, I saw the scene of the crime. It was daytime. A tallish, thinnish, kind of impish, old man in a suit and a fedora stood before the door of a brick building. The building looked like a small house, but it had a wall coming off its front end: an arched wall, like what might lead to a courtyard.

The man knocked on the door of the building. I understood that the man was the murderer. He had killed a number of people already with firework-like bombs. He was trying to lure out the remaining people so he could kill them, too. But they weren't coming out of the house. So the man left.

But as the man left, he tossed some firework-like bombs against the wall, underneath something like record sleeves that stood against the wall. The fireworks started going off, like sparklers. I had the idea that the fireworks would set the whole building on fire, killing the remaining people, if they remained inside.

I may have had a view of the people inside. They may have been good-looking, maybe with a 1950s style. One of the women may have looked like Tippi Hedren from The Birds.

The view may have changed into some other storyline, involving the woman. The background may have been deep, but vivid, green. The feeling may have been really watery, almost like the scene was out of focus. The scene then may somehow have changed into an anime, which may have given some story of how all the characters were doomed.

My view then shifted to a scene that seemed to be partly indoors and partly outdoors. The indoor part seemed like a Chuck E. Cheese video game and pizza parlor. Up a small slope to my left were something like ski-ball machines. The outdoor part seemed like a desert wilderness, with small trees and scraggly shrubs.

I heard a male voice narrate how a woman had criticized the anime I had just seen. Apparently my whole experience had, now, realy been part of the anime.

The narrator said that the murders couldn't have happened as they did in the anime. This was because the murders implied a busy time in the city where they'd taken place. But the woman pointed out, the narrator said, that anybody who knew about Japanese culture could tell you that the city where these murders took place was very slow at the time of the year when the murders took place, due to some local traditional or religious festival.

The narrator said that the woman's name was Brewster HXXXXX. She was an American, but she was well known for her knowledge of anime, as well as, apparently, her skill in creating anime.

I saw some kind of table with the woman's name written in big, plastic letters, almost like the letters were the landscape for a model train set. The letters were lavender, lined at the edges with a darker purple. I then saw another (or the same?) table, this time with the letters spelling out the word "ANIMEISTER," probably in different colors, and with other decorations around it.

The narrator explained that Brewster H. was considered a master of anime, or an "animeister," even though she was American. The term was kind of a compliment, but the narrator was saying it in a way that made it sound like an insult, because he was a little bitter that Brewster H. had made such an incisive comment about the anime. The narrator -- and maybe I, too! -- may have been especially bitter, since Brewster H. was a young woman, maybe even a girl.

My boss JE now came walking up through this space. There were a few cheapish dining tables in the space. I sat at one of the tables. Some of my "co-workers" (none of whom I recognized) sat at the other tables, one person at each table.

JE was telling us each what vitamins we were lacking. He had notes with him, like a real, physical study had been done on each of us. He may have been taking this seriously. But he was jogging around a little from table to table, as if it were all a joke. He also seemed to enjoy holding each of us in suspense to hear about what our deficiencies were.

I heard JE tell somebody else about a vitamin B deficiency. I thought this must be my deficiency. I saw a list of vitamins, with a colored square and the vitamin's letter, then maybe a photo or other image and a short description of what the vitamin did. The list said that vitamin B helped draw water to your skin.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

a conspiracy of friends

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I sat alone at long, round table in a nice, wood-walled room, like a fancy library or a board room. The doorway to the room was open. Beyond the doorway may have been a hallway in a cheap-looking shopping mall. I may have known that I was set to meet my mother here, though she hadn't shown up yet.

A husband and wife, maybe in their fifties or sixties, walked into the room and sat down to my left. I knew who they were -- a group of friends of my mom's sister -- even though I didn't recognize them. The couple may have explained something to me or asked how I was doing in my life.

My mom now walked into the room. Either as or right after she entered the room another couple entered. My mom sat down across from me and a little to my left. The couple sat just to my mom's right.

I may have introduced one of the couples to my mom, who knew the other couple were friends of my aunt. My mom began to eye me suspiciously, as if I were setting up some sort of trap against my mom on my aunt's behalf. I wanted to assure my mom I had only planned to meet her here: I hadn't known anybody else would be here. But I don't think I said anything.

I now noticed that the second couple were extremely attractive, especially the woman, who, although old, was thin, well-made-up, and rather intelligent, but cheerful-looking. She had short, auburn hair and tan skin and wore a vanilla-yellow sweater.

A third couple, and maybe even more people, all friends of my aunt, and all wealthy-looking people in their fifties or sixties, came into the room. The table now seemed to be full. The door to the room may also have been shut.

One of the men at the end of the table near the door now told my mom that we were all meeting here to come up with some plan to take some kind of action against my aunt. Either my aunt was planning to do something bad to my mom, and we needed to stop her, or my aunt was doing something bad to herself, and we needed to intervene.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

my new late friend; i don't paintbal enough

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a hospital, probably with a friend. We stood in. A hallway, before a hospital bed in which was a female friend or acquaintance of my friend. The woman was really sick. She may have had to go in for some treatment. We may have been seeing her off.

My friend and I also had somewhere to go in the hospital. We went there. We may have sat down for a moment in a bar-like area. My friend may have had to go somewhere else within the hospital.

I may have heard something about the woman. I felt like I needed to get back to her. I went back to the hallway. The woman was being cared for in the hallway like it was a hospital room. And she had a young nurse in scrubs constantly attending to her, standing near her right shoulder.

I noticed that the woman was really ravaged by her disease. The blanket had come away and exposed her legs. The woman's legs were extremely thin, even thinner than I'd have assumed her bones would be, and there were brownish-purple spots where, it seemed, the woman's flesh had decayed away.

But the woman was pretty. She was tan, with dark black hair. Her face looked a little chubby at first. But after I'd looked away and looked back to her face, her face was thinner, kind of like a supermodel's face. Her face looked healthy, even though the rest of her body seemed ravaged.

The nurse, or somebody, may have told me that the woman had to go. She was being taken in for another procedure, possibly something like chemotherapy. She was going to being taken into a room right near where she'd been laying in the hallway.

I was reluctant to see the woman go. I'd formed a bond with her somehow, in just these few minutes of being with her. I didn't want her to go into the procedure, go through a lot of pain, and maybe even die, without her knowing that I cared for her.

My friend may have been standing at the woman's left shoulder. At this point my friend may have looked like my old boss and constant mentor EB. With the nurse and man by the woman and some kind of stuff cluttered around the woman on her bed, it was now really hard for me to see the woman's face.

My friend may have told me to come closer to the woman's face. I did so. I may have spoken and smiled with the woman a little. I may have wanted to give the woman a kiss goodbye.

Dream #2

I was in some cafeteria in a basement. The cafeteria was filled with people sitting at long tables. But the space was small, with low ceilings, and kind of dim.

I sat at a table. Some of my co-workers, in particular DK, sat around me. DK sat directly across from me. Then my co-worker MS and some other person, maybe CP, came up.

MS sat right beside me. His plate was heaped full of food -- stuff like mashed potatoes and corn. I contrasted it with my own plate -- either nothing or very little food. I hadn't taken much food. I didn't think my stomach could handle it.

For some reason MS scared DK, as if MS were a tough kid in high school and DK were one of the smarter, calmer kids. I was a little unbalanced by these feelings, and it made me a little tense around MS and the other person as well. I was hoping to calm things down, if I could. But I don't think I knew how.

Now DK was gone. His space was just empty. MS now moved, under the table, into DK's space. Once seated there he managed -- somehow! -- to reach back under the table and pull his plate of food over with him.

I knew MS had moved, at least partly, because he didn't want to sit by me. Even though he liked me, he found me boring, almost awkwardly quiet. He would never say so to me, but that's how it was. And now he could sit next to his friend and talk with him.

I now stood before a counter either like a bar or a hotel concierge's desk. I had been turned away from it at first, talking with a couple people, probably about something business-related. Now I turned to face the desk.

There was something on the desk, like brochures or magazines, maybe for resorts or vacations. In some photos on the papers was a really beautiful, almost 1940s-style, but very contemporary, woman, engaged in a fun, but extremely competitive, game of paintball.

There may have been a woman working behind the desk. She may have been pretty, pale, kind of young looking, red-haired, a little chubby or chubby-faced. She may have criticized me, telling me I didn't have enough to do with something like the paintball games, like I was emotionally incomplete because of that.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

family hospital

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

My brother was in the hospital. My mom and I were in the room with him. The room was barren, with drab, greenish grey lighting, white floors and walls, and the white bed. My mom and I may have sat in a couple of chairs. There may have been one or two cluttered bags, maybe of my brother's possessions, near my mom and I or in a corner of the room.

My brother must have been healing from whatever he'd gone through. Whatever he'd gone through must have included some sort of psychological issue. But now he'd also calmed down from that psychological issue. He seemed to be physically and mentally stable. It was a real relief.

But then something started going wrong. My brother was having some sort of episode -- maybe he was getting really nervous, or maybe his body was starting to go into convulsions. This may have been because he needed to take medicine and he hadn't taken it in a while. Or it may have been because I myself had given him a bad pill that had thrown him off his psychological balance.

I ran out into the hallway to get a nurse. I knew that a nurse could probably take care of this situation, even though I felt like my brother, who had seemed so close to going home, would now have to stay at the hospital a while longer, to get his balance back.

I had gone down to the end of the hallway, and now I was turned around and walking back toward the hospital room. I was walking with a pretty nurse who was dressed in the stereotypical white cloth, sexy-nurse-style dress and hat. The hallway wasn't wide, but it felt spacious. Windows ran all the way along the right wall, letting in a good amount of natural light. And there was a lot of activity: doctors and nurses, and maybe patients, walking back and forth and taking care of duties.

The nurse and I were speaking about my mother -- apparently my mother, not my brother, was now the patient, though this didn't seem to register with my dreaming mind. I was criticizing my mother for not having done something to keep healthy. The nurse was agreeing with me. The nurse confided to me that if my mother didn't XXXXX, she'd either be in the hospital for longer than she wanted to be, or else she'd be back in the hospital sooner than she thought.

I hadn't realized, but we'd been talking about all this stuff as we'd approached very close to my mom's hospital room. The door to my mom's room was open, too. I thought there was no way my mom couldn't have heard everything the nurse and I had been saying.

We opened the door (???) -- my mom was inside, thrashing around on the bed. My mom was flailing around upside-down in the bed -- her head at the foot of the bed. She had the sheets jammed up over her head. Two nurses were struggling with my mom, maybe trying to restrain her or calm her down. The sheet came down from my mom's head. Her head was huge, and her eyes bulged out of the sides of her head, like fish eyes or alien eyes.

We walked into the room -- again, as if what had just happened hadn't really happened. The door was wide open. My mom was sitting in a chair, wearing a hospital gown. Either two nurses or a nurse and my brother or just my brother were rubbing lotion on my mom's legs. The part of my mom's lap that wasn't getting lotion was covered in a pine-green blanket of rough fabric.

My mom looked at me, not angrily, but a little ruefully. She'd caught me saying something bad about her. She was a little offended by what I'd said. But she seemed to be more occupied in finding a way to use what I'd said to make me feel guilty, rather than getting herself too upset over it. She gave me a steady look from under a furrowed brow and said something to me that made me feel very bad about myself, like I'd really screwed something up beyond repair, either because of the statement I'd made or because of having forgotten to do something hospital-related for my mother.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

nothing personal, but don't touch me

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at some place like an art fair at a big exposition building with my co-worker VP. We stood in front of some small booth.

VP seemed to be attracted to me and flirting with me. I wasn't very interested, but I didn't mind. But then VP touched my face in some weird way, maybe running her finger around my lips and then touching my cheek.

I was really upset by this, and I backed a few feet away from VP and the booth. But I didn't want VP to think that I was mad at her. So I said something about not touching my face as nicely as possible.

Friday, February 15, 2013

teaching tooth brushing; the son's return

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bathroom with three of my nephews. The only nephew I recognized was my youngest nephew. We were all standing in front the sink. I was apparently teaching my nephews how to brush their teeth.

All of my nephews may have been playing with their toothbrushes in a really messy way. But at least the older two seemed to be brushing their teeth. But my youngest seemed to be really messy. He was running his toothbrush back and forth under the faucet and knocking it against the sink. It was hard to tell whether he was having trouble learning how to rinse his toothbrush correctly or whether he was just having fun being messy.

I backed away from the sink. I seemed to be backing out of the bathroom altogether. I may have started to give up hope on being able to teach my nephews after all. But I stopped at the threshold. I didn't want to put off a feeling of being disappointed in my nephew. So I smiled and said, "My dear, little nephew," so he'd know I loved him.

Dream #2

I was reading a book, probably about some incident that had "really occurred" (at least in the dream world). A young man had gone missing. Most people had given the young man up for dead. But the young man's sister (?) and mother believed the young man was still alive.

The book had some narrative segments in conventional third person. But a lot of the book was, I think, letters between the mother and the sister. The mother kept living, somehow, as if the young man would be found. The sister was often ambivalent. Sometimes she seemed to criticize the mother for being so optimistic about finding the young man.

The conflict between the mother and sister eventually became pretty painful. The mother herself was even starting to wonder whether she was crazy. The conflict was so painful, and the waiting for the son so tedious, that I started flipping through the pages, toward the end of the book.

I must have read this book before. I knew there were one or two final letters from the mother, where she really thought she'd gone too far in her hopes, and where she was finally resolved to give up hope of seeing the young man alive again. I turned to these letters, knowing how beautiful they were, and knowing that the next letter or "article" in the book would reveal that the young man had been found alive.

I knew there was a photo, like from the 1940s, of the young man being escorted out of the car by two policemen, probably because he was too weak to walk.

I knew that there was also a photo of the mother as she had gone to reunite with the young man. The woman was kind of stately, elegant, wearing a white dress and a small hat with a feather on top and a small, net veil coming down from the brim of the hat and down just over the woman's brow.

I knew that there was some part near this climax where the mother had decided to wear this outfit before she'd known the young man had been found. She'd called it her reuinion dress. Now that the young man had been found, the mother felt justified in having worn the dress. This didn't quite make sense to me, given that, just before, the mother had resolved to give up hoping for the young man's return.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

skydiving contract; a bathroom of one's own; neglected nephew

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was among a small series of rooms with a few other people. The rooms were brick walled, kind of half-finished looking. There were some occasional incandescent bulbs lighting the rooms. The furniture was maybe just benches jutting out from the walls.

There were two women sitting on the benches along the back wall of the back room. They were getting ready for some kind of stunt, which was probably also part of an art project. They were just about ready to head off.

But a third woman off to my left stopped the women. She said the stunt the women were about to do was very dangerous. Before the women did the stunt, the woman needed to make sure the women had signed the contracts waiving any liability the third woman's organization might have.

The women, I now knew, were actually wearing their contracts. The contracts were a kind of netted bodysuit. The netting was made of a coarse, yarn-like material colored a dark red-pink. The netting made diamond patterns, the holes of which were rather wide. But the material squeezed tightly against the women's bodies. I think the women were wearing other clothing, though not much, below the netting outfits.

The contracts, I knew, would be visible when the outfits were taken off and unfurled. Between some of the holes in the netting ran some gauzy billows of material. These billows just looked like fraying or tattered material. But when the contract was laid out flat and arranged correctly, the billows took on the appearance of sheets with letters. The signature line of the contract was near the collar of these outfits.

The third woman asked the woman on the right whether she had signed her contract. Apparently the woman on the left had definitely signed her contract. I had a feeling that the woman on the right hadn't signed her contract. I was a friend to the two women. But for some reason I felt obliged to tell the third woman that the   signature line better be checked for the woman on the right. The woman on the right was angry at me. She felt betrayed.

But now both of the women were heading off to do their stunt. The stunt was probably skydiving. I went outside to watch the stunt. The sky was a kind of dim, pale blue fading into dark grey near the top, but a pale, lightless yellow at the horizon. It almost looked like a stage sky. There were some trailer-like buildings maybe twenty or thirty meters away from me. There were people scattered all about, looking up into the sky.

It now seemed like the stunt was a skydiving race. There may have been three women in the race. One of them, possibly the woman who had previously been the woman I'd "betrayed," was my co-worker SC. Another one of them may possibly have been my co-worker AW. The racers had their parachutes open and were somehow racing to see who could reach the ground first. I was cheering for SC. I felt like I looked up to SC, like I was a young girl and that SC was my lover.

At least one of the parachutists, maybe SC, was now close to the ground. My view of her/them was obscured by the trailers and the people around me, who all felt a lot taller than I. I couldn't tell who was winning or who had won the race. I was hoping SC had won. But I also didn't know whether SC's landing had been safe. I was hoping SC hadn't been injured.

Off in the distance to my left, I could see one of the women, perhaps AW, landing. It seemed like she'd had a hard landing. She had, it now seemed to me, been the third woman in the room, the one who'd asked whether the women's contracts had been signed.

The third woman, I now knew, had been so concerned about the safety of this jump. But I myself (probably as myself and not as the "young girl") had convinced the woman of the safety of the jump, and that she herself was fine to jump. But now, watching the third woman, I could see that her landing was actually really hard. I was pretty sure the landing gave the woman physical pain. I also feared that the woman had sustained some sort of injury. Now she'd blame me for the whole thing.

I looked back forward, to where I assumed SC would be landing. The space was clear, and I could see all the way to the barren, flat, stage-like horizon. But there was now sign of the parachutists. There were instead two strange devices, like giant spotlights, sending something, maybe beams of light, maybe parachutes, up into the air.

I now understood that these devices were part of a show, like a live-action version of an anime. The parachute/skydiving race was a stunt, a contest, on its own. But it was somehow integrated into this anime. There were probably a number of races. Before and between the races, the anime show took place. The show may have justified sending the racers up into the sky. But the racers in the show may have been sent up into the sky not by a plane or any other vehicle, but by their parachutes and the spotlight-like devices.

This didn't quite make sense to me. But I was kind of eager to see the anime show. I wondered what the drama would be about.

Dream #2

I was in a public restroom. Something had gotten me offended. I felt like there had been a huge crowd of people, all trying to stop me from using the restroom -- even though I didn't actually ever see anybody in the restroom.

I was in a narrow hallway, like a hallway between one section of the bathroom and another, standing (all by myself?) as if I were standing in line. Suddenly I got so frustrated by the feeling of being crowded out and having my position in the bathroom line threatened that I began walking quickly through the hallway, all the way to the end of the hallway.

I may have heard or imagined people talking about me -- or I may have simply been thinking about myself. The statements I heard or imagined were like a questioning: why I'd run off and acted so rudely toward everybody else, as if I had been suspicious of everybody else for no reason, or as if I'd thought I was better than everybody else.

I now felt kind of silly for having run off. But I was already on my way. I was looking for a toilet that nobody else would try to take from me. I ended up in front of four toilet stalls. I turned left in front of the stalls. On the wall across from the stalls there was a half-opened door. The door opened to a small room with two or three more stalls in it. I walked into the room and toward the first or second stall in the room.

But I again felt rushed or crowded out by someone -- someone I couldn't see! I quickly exited the stall and moved to the very back stall of this room. I stood in front of the toilet and began urinating into the toilet.

Dream #3

I was probably outside in a suburban neighborhood with my family. We may all have been lounging around in the middle of the street (???). We were probably at the corner of the street. The building at the corner may have been a single-family house. But it may also have been an apartment complex or some kind of office building that I'd taken as being a house.

My youngest nephew sat on the curb, playing around with something. I knelt beside him. He asked me something like, "Are you mad at me?" I told him I wasn't mad at him. He said something like, "I thought you were mad at me, because you never come to see us anymore."

I felt really bad. I may have hugged my nephew or patted him on the back. We were now in front of the house, maybe right before a screen door or in the threshold of the doorway. I explained to my nephew that the fact that I didn't visit the family's house very often didn't have anything to do with him. I tried to tell my nephew that I really loved him and thought he was a good little boy.

Beyond the doorway, in the kitchen?, there was now a lot of activity. My brother-in-law was in the kitchen, and a few little children were running around, creating a little sense of chaos. I felt like my brother-in-law was regarding me suspiciously. I didn't know why. But I felt like I should back away from my nephew.

I was now "somewhere else," talking with my brother-in-law on my cell phone. But my view was "in my family's living room" looking at some vague activity, which may have been like the phantom motions of people, of members in my family.

My brother-in-law was explaining how my youngest nephew had begun to act strangely. He was doing things like wearing a dunce cap and beating himself on the head. He was constantly criticizing himself and others in the family, being extremely severe with them morally. He was blaming everybody, including himself, by turns, for my not coming to the family's house as often as I used to.

My brother-in-law was probably telling me all this stuff to get my opinion on whether my nephew was going crazy. But it also seemed like he was blaming me for my nephew acting this way, like I'd done something bad to him -- not neglectful, but actively bad -- to make him go crazy.

I was trying to convince myself that my nephew wasn't acting strangely, that he wasn't going crazy. I also felt like I had done something bad to my nephew: not that I had done something actively bad to him, but that I had emotionally been neglectful of him. But I was trying to convince myself, again, that that really had no effect on my nephew, and that my nephew was fine.