lingerie mannequins; video store monster; venetian sales techniques; video library; everyday people

For a review of some of the images from these dreams, please visit this entry in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was in a nice department store with a group of people. We may all have been young. We may also all have been dressed in 1980s clothes. We were all looking for clothes. We may have broken up into groups. I may have floated around alone for a while -- not walking, but floating around a few inches off the ground. At some point I may have ended up in front of a row of four mannequins in nice, satiny, lacy lingerie.

Dream 2

I walked, probably with an old woman, toward the back end of what was apparently a video rental store. The walls and floors were dark grey. And I don't remember whether there were any video display shelves up against the wall.

The old woman and I were probably talking about a room we were looking for. It basically had all the really graphic horror movies.

I found the door to the room, on our right. I opened the door, probably holding it for the woman. The woman thanked me, said she needed to be going, and walked away from the doorway, back the way we had come. It didn't make sense to me that she'd just up and walk away after we'd gone to such trouble looking for the room. But I was kind of relieved. I didn't want the old woman to see what kind of movies I liked.

The room was kind of big. There were only a few shelves of movies scattered throughout the room. I walked up to one shelve that stood against a grey, cinder block wall.

I could barely see what the movies were. But I started to get a weird, eerie feeling. I felt like if I got too close to these horror movies I'd unleash some sort of demon or monster in the room. But I didn't know what to do. I felt like I at least needed to get some movie. I may have started to think that if I grabbed the right horror movie, I wouldn't unleash a demon.

I walked to a set of shelves off to my left and looked there for a second before turning around and walking toward a set of shelves in the middle of the room. By this point I may simply have been looking over my shoulder the entire time, waiting for some kind of monster to come out and attack me.

Dream 3

I may have been in some city like Venice or Verona, but in modern times. I was in some place that felt like it was entirely made of polished stone or marble, like the dining area in Grand Central Station or some mall-like area in one of the Las Vegas resorts. The place was crowded with people in business suits running here and there.

I stood off to one side of a walkway. Caddy corner from me was a table where some people sat. The table may have been low, like a coffee table. And the people may have sat in all kinds of chairs -- a big, leather chair, smaller garden chairs, etc.

A businessman, probably a bit older, maybe in his late forties or early fifties, walked up. He probably said something I thought was horribly stiff and cheesy. I knew the man was a salesman. But because of his cheesy joke, I probably was immediately annoyed by him.

The salesman may have started, even while he was standing, giving some sort of sales pitch. I thought the sales pitch was hideous! The seated people invited the man to sit.

As the salesman sat, I either saw through his eyes or was now he. The people around the salesman were kind of a mixed group. They mostly looked like upper-mid-level business people, especially a blonde woman with short hair and a deep tan who wore a black skirt suit. But some of them looked a bit more relaxed, kind of like tough guys who had gotten fat as they'd aged.

The people were eating from a huge plate of pasta. One of the tough guys told the salesman to grab a plate. The salesman grabbed a plate and piled on some pasta. The pasta was just long spaghetti noodles, plain, apparently, with lots and lots of mozzarella cheese on top. The salesman shoveled the pasta into his mouth, holding the plate at mouth- or maybe even eye-level.

At some point the salesman started giving his sales pitch again. I still (even though I was seeing from the salesman's eyes) hated the pitch. But time started to fade forward. And I knew, even though the conversation was blurring out, that everybody the salesman spoke with had decided to buy what the salesman was selling.

Having witnessed the salesman's success, I immediately changed my mind about him. I knew that I'd probably never like the salesman's personality. But whatever steps he'd taken to get to the deal's close, I knew he'd done the right thing.

I thought through the steps I hadn't liked (whatever the cheesy beginning was) and the steps I'd been uncomfortable with (having to randomly eat a lot of food) and figured I'd have to really integrate a lot of this stuff into my own approach, because it worked.

My view was separated from the salesman's again. I was in a room with the salesman and a young woman who was probably the salesman's apprentice. I stood maybe three or four meters away from them.

We seemed to be in some weird sort of control room or something. The wall behind the woman and salesman was black, with a white screen, like a projector screen, and possibly, but maybe not, some sort of sci-fi-esque control panel underneath it. But off to my right (the salesman's left) was some orange, translucent wall, which I feel was the back side of some back wall in something like a display diorama in a museum.

The man started to explain the process of the deal I'd just seen with the young woman. As the man began to explain, my view faded to white. Then lines started to get scribbled out, like old drafting lines in a Leonardo sketch. The lines started to form some garden chair, which, I knew, was the chair the man had sat in when he'd made the deal (even though I was pretty sure he'd previously sat in one of the big, leather chairs).

The drawing sketched out more and more. The view of the drawing may also have rotated a bit. At some point, the drawing sort of faded into a real view of the area again.

I may have gotten a feeling that the lesson from this whole drawing moment was that even the manner of fabrication of the chair the salesman had sat in while making the deal was a part of the salesman's process. This seemed a bit outlandish to me. I hoped we would just get to the actual elements of the closing process.

Dream 4

I was in some large, dark room with a group of people. The people may have been young. Many or all of them were black. The walls and ceiling were probably black. The floor may have been concrete.

Set up around us were something like modular walls. But the walls made something more like a maze with room-like areas than a series of rooms. These modular walls were all screens. Bright, monochrome imagery probably played on the screens. There may also have been some kind of music or sound.

We were all part of some research project, probably for some conceptual art piece we were creating. This place may have been the installation we were making. But it was also probably something like a library or research area.

A few folks were on the ground, working on something like a computer but also like some machine for effects for the conceptual art piece. One of the people, a young, black man, asked me to look into some specific artists whose work or personality we were referencing in the piece.

I felt like I knew exactly who the young man was speaking about. I may even have said so. But I wasn't quite sure of everything I was saying. So I knew I'd need to double-check it with some additional research.

Another young, black man asked me if I knew that I was looking for information on a specific group of people (probably Sly and the Family Stone). I said yes. The man asked me if I'd like some help getting some specific information on them. He probably knew exact moments from history the other young man had been looking for. I said yes and was really appreciative.

The man may have asked me to come along with him to another room. But then he must instantly have been in that other room. I had to walk through the maze of screen walls. But I got to the room. It was a big, square room with an upright projector screen standing in the center above something like a small structure, like a small set of shelves or some kind of small, mechanical device.

The man may have been in the room when I was there. But he may already have been gone. He may have vanished only an instant after I'd seen him in the room. He may have been upset that it had taken me so long to get here. Or he may have waited for me to enter the room, let me know the information I'd needed to see was queued up to show on the screen, and then walked out of the room.

I watched the program. It was something like a Marvel movie. I clearly saw a character like Iron Man. I may have seen some other characters. The view was from a high, but not directly overhead, viewpoint, like a camera was at a steep angle, almost a right angle, that would eventually quickly swoop down to meet the characters (maybe including The Incredible Hulk?) face-to-face.

This whole program, however, was also an historical document. This was real film, from some real event that had happened, probably in the late 1960s. I'd learned whatever I'd needed to learn about the people I'd been sent to study. So now I headed back to discuss the information.

But when I got back to the first young man, I felt like I had taken way too much time. The young man may not have been annoyed by my slowness. But I may have felt like he noted it and would probably trust me less to run research projects in the future.

To justify my work, I tried to express what I'd learned -- probably, again, about Sly and the Family Stone. It took me a little bit of effort, but I started seeing what I'd seen on the screen in the other room. I planned to say everything to the young man as I re-saw all the imagery.

But I really don't think my mind was comfortable with the imagery at all. The imagery looked like computer graphics. The characters were all shiny, like they'd been made in the 1990s or 2000s. And everything just looked so comic book-like that I couldn't find anything in it like the type of historical gravity that would make me assume it was real.

I really started questioning whether I had seen what I'd needed to see after all. Had I seen the truth? Or had I just been queued up to watch a comic book movie?

Dream 5

(This dream occurred after I'd woken up, turned off my alarm, started recalling my previous dreams, and fallen back to sleep.)

I faded out of a memory of the dark room with the screen showing the historical imagery. Again, it all looked like a computer graphics comic book movie rather than an historical moment. So I just felt really weird. It was like I was trying to remember what I'd actually seen. I kept trying to look deeper into the imagery in order to see the real images.

But as I tried to do this, I may have been speaking about everything I'd seen. The more I spoke, the more my view faded, first into a white-out, and then into a huge office space.

The office space was enormous, like a giant trading floor for some large financial institution. It was vast and wide, filled with long rows of connected desk spaces, as opposed to cubicle farms. The room was huge. But the ceilings were kind of low, maybe only three meters high.

The only other person in this space was a young woman, my coworker, who sat directly across from me. She was white, with blonde-brown hair. I had apparently been telling her about my memory, which I may have known to have been a dream.

But even though it was a dream, it was also a reality. It was like something we did, maybe our job, maybe our hobby, maybe something related to our job but only peripherally, may have been related to exploring these alternate spaces, like the one I'd just explored, that were dreams, but were also real.

The discussion may have come back around to Sly and the Family Stone. The woman may have asked me if I knew who they were. I said yes. I may have thought she didn't know who they were, possibly because I couldn't figure out why she would have asked me that question.

So to give an example of a Sly and the Family Stone song, I started to sing "Everyday People." For the first few notes (really, just the "I" part), I sounded just like Sly Stone. But when the notes descended (the entire "am everyday people" part???!!!), I went way off key.

I knew I'd somehow made the melody unrecognizable. And, for sure, my coworker didn't recognize the song at all. I said I'd try again. It was one of the most popular pop songs around. She'd recognize it if I could just sing it right.

So I tried -- embarrassingly! -- a few more times. Every time, I would sound just like Sly Stone until a certain part in the descending notes. Then I'd just get everything horribly off key.

I thought that I realized that where I was making a mistake was in that descending part. I somehow wasn't going low enough. So now I tried to go really low. I sang the melody again. The melody was recognizable. But now I slid really, really low, so that I probably sang the words "everyday people" an octave lower than I'd needed to.

But I thought that maybe this was right. After all, I remembered some song I really liked where the melody got really low, in a way that had seemed both inventive and irreverent at the same time. Maybe "Everyday People" had been that song.

During all this time, my vision had probably faded back into darkness, like I was in some dark area between the office space and the dark room with the video playing -- maybe with my face close to one of the screen walls.

But now my view snapped back to the office space. My coworker said that the screen maze and the historical imagery that had played reminded her a lot of the work of some recent (French?) philosopher -- someone whose name was like Georges Sumner.

I knew who my coworker was talking about before she'd said his name. So I may have tried to say his name before my coworker did. But I don't think I could quite say it. I think I may have felt a little defeated because of this, like I was just getting nothing right today.

My coworker said I'd really like the philosopher's works (even though I was pretty sure I'd already read them). She handed me two of his books.

The books themselves looked and felt nice. They had that slightly grainy feel, like the covers of the Vintage International Faulkners from the 1990s. But the art on the covers was a bit more abstract. The imagery had a handmade, collage-like feel, so that, by contraries, I got the sense that the books were probably theory or philosophy about the high-tech media age. So even though I was pretty sure I'd already read the books, I was kind of eager to read them again.

I probably sat down at this point. I probably also had the feeling that the fact that my coworker shared these books with me probably demonstrated that we were pretty good friends and colleagues. This probably made me happy, even though I was still embarrassed about not having been able to get anything right at all in our conversation just now.

lyme disease airbnb

For a discussion of some imagery from this dream, please visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was walking or running or driving down a busy street, possibly in Denver, but possibly also in Houston. The light was an icy blue, like it was early morning, possibly in early spring or late winter. The road went down a long, moderate slope.

I knew I was in a hurry to get somewhere. I may have been in a hurry to get to some airport. But if I was walking, I knew I'd have to walk for a long time to get to the airport. And if I was driving, I knew I'd have to drive out of the city, through the desert mountains, for four hours before I got to the town with the airport.

I was going to some convention, possibly with my coworker RO. The first event of the convention was going to start soon. I had no idea how I'd travel for four hours, get on a plane, fly (to Houston?) and still be on time for the first event of the convention. Plus I still had to check into my hotel.

I suddenly realized I was on a baby blue Vespa scooter. This would make things a lot easier for me. I was driving the Vespa along on the sidewalk.

I stopped at an intersection. I looked around the corner, to my right. I saw a hotel like a Hampton Inn. It was a cheap hotel. But it looked nice, made out of heavy, peach-pink stone and with some sort of arched-out colonnade in front.

Suddenly I knew I was already where I needed to be, probably Houston. I may even have wondered why I'd thought I'd needed to do so much travel to get here. I knew this wasn't the hotel everybody who was going to the conference was staying at. But I figured I'd stay here. I'd stayed here before, probably with RO, on another business trip.

I went inside. There was a woman worker near the door, possibly sitting in a window well or sitting at a table, doing some kind of work, maybe computer or paper work, or maybe clipping her nails. She greeted me cheerfully but maybe somewhat distractedly.

I went to the front desk to check in. I thought the woman who'd greeted me would check me in. But another woman came out. She wasn't as nice to me. As she checked me in she said a few snide things to me.

I couldn't tell whether the woman behind the counter didn't like me because of the way I'd acted or something I'd said. So I decided to try and act nice and innocent. I said something about my suit for the convention and how I'd need to get it pressed after my trip here.

The woman said she had a room ready for me. I was expecting something in the building. But now we were in her car. She was driving me to the room.

We drove along a highway that overlooked some small neighborhood, like in some small town in the desert mountains. It looked like early winter here, too. There was frost everywhere. Finally we drove up into a neighborhood street, through a bunch of houses that looked a little like trailer homes.

I was sort of worried at this point. I thought I was staying in the hotel building itself. It would have been easy for me to walk to the convention from there. But I didn't have a car. It had been a far enough drive for us to get here. How was I going to unpack everything, walk to the convention, and still get to the first event on time?

The woman now drove through the house, through a living room, and then through a long room like a bedroom. There were lots of beds. But we stopped in a part of the room with three beds. The room was bright. It may have had a bit of a girly feel, maybe with a dollhouse somewhere. But it also felt sort of rundown and dingy.

The woman and I stood outside of the car. The woman pointed at a bed and said this was my room. I looked around. At first I thought I'd been put into some sort of dormitory or hospital room or mental hospital. But the place definitely looked like someone's house. I thought, All I wanted was a hotel room. Did she put me into an Airbnb?

The woman started walking back toward the front door, probably telling me some final things I'd need to know about my stay. We walked through some weird curtain that divided this room from another room full of beds. The curtain was like strips of fabric hanging down from the ceiling. They barely blocked the view of one room from the other.

The next room had three hospital beds. The hospital beds had hospital trays nearby. And some of the trays looked recently used. There may have been a cigarette lighter and an ashtray on one of them.

I asked, "Uh... Do I have this place to myself? Or will the people who live here also be sleeping here tonight?" This was totally not what I'd been looking for when I'd booked a room at the hotel.

The woman said, "Well, it's an Airbnb. People live here, you know. I mean, they said they were doing something else."

A woman who was older-looking and sort of tough-looking, with thick, square eyeglasses and short, unkempt hair, came up and said, "My surgery is happening this afternoon. That should keep us busy for a while."

The hotel woman said, "She got Lyme disease."

I may have noticed that the house woman had no hands, and maybe no forearms. But I also feel like the woman may have been wearing a long coat. So I may not have noticed this.

I was a little scared by the house woman. It felt like I was a little kid and she was maybe half my height taller than I. I turned to my right. Apparently this room of beds opened, along a wide wall (?), directly into the kitchen. The kitchen was wide, with a kitchen island in the middle. But it was dim and sort of rundown and cheap looking.

Some older adults were milling around in the kitchen, maybe preparing some food, smoking some cigarettes, etc. One of the adults was a balding man with a round head and face and probably a pretty big gut. He may have been wearing a kind of tight, white t-shirt that was worn out almost to translucency.

The adults started telling me about the surgery. Apparently the person getting the surgery was a young girl. Everybody was really worried about her. But they were all doing their best to act cheerful and optimistic.

I felt guilty. Here I'd been complaining and complaining about this hotel room or Airbnb or whatever it was. But the people who lived here were all really worried about this girl having to go into surgery. They were trying to be nice to me. And I hadn't been sympathetic at all. Couldn't I just stop being selfish and just try and be nice for a change?

I looked back toward the hotel woman, maybe to tell her that I'd take the room. She was also probably way taller than I, too -- again, like I'd somehow become a child or taken on a child's height.

The tough-looking woman walked back up to me. The hotel woman said, "She's seventeen."

I realized that the tough-looking woman, who'd told me earlier she was having surgery, was actually the girl everybody had been talking about. She was only seventeen years old. But whatever was afflicting her -- if it was Lyme disease (which I may have doubted) -- had impacted her so badly that she now looked really old.

The girl looked down to me and reached out her arm. I realized she wanted to shake hands with me. I suddenly didn't know what I would do. She didn't have any hands. But of course I would shake with her.

But I didn't know -- was I brought here to become the girl's boyfriend? Was I brought here to make the girl feel like she was still attractive?

I figured that right off the bat I would tell the girl I thought she was beautiful. And from then until the girl left for surgery, I would flirt with her. That way the girl would feel like someone thought she was cute.

shiho ochi's cellphone; breathless shopping mall

Dream 1

I was at a concert given by singer Shiho Ochi from the J-pop group Superfly. It was in a small area, like a basement cafeteria or recreational room in a university or high school. But the area was packed with people. Everybody must have been seated in stackable chairs. I sat off kind of near the stage, but more toward the right corner.

The room was almost completely dark, except for a spotlight that shined on Ochi. Ochi sat on a stool and played an acoustic guitar. She had long hair and probably wore some kind of wide-brimmed hat.

At one point, Ochi stopped singing right in the middle of a song. She pulled out her cellphone and started fumbling around with it. She may even have spoken directly to someone on the cellphone. She then probably apologized to everybody and started up the song again. I'd thought this was weird.

But now the situation happened all over again. Ochi started singing this song I'd never heard before. It may have had some Valentine's theme or some theme that made me think it would be really good on Valentine's Day.

But as soon as Ochi started in on a part I thought was really interesting, she pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. I hadn't heard the cellphone. So I thought that maybe the phone had buzzed instead of rang.

Ochi apologized to everybody in the crowd. She looked at her phone's screen. It was blazing pretty brightly. It looked like an old LCD screen, except that it seemed to be glowing yellow and purple instead of the standard green-yellow and black.

Ochi told everybody that her boyfriend had texted her, asking her how the concert was going. She asked everybody if they would like to know more. All the girls in the audience started screaming excitedly. So Ochi turned on her cellphone's speaker. Now everybody could hear Ochi's boyfriend's voice. The girls in the audience started screaming again.

I was really annoyed by all of this. I turned away from the stage. Ochi was asking questions of the audience. We were supposed to raise our hands if we agreed or if we wanted to hear more about what Ochi was saying. But I refused to raise my hand. I tried to even ignore the fact that Ochi was saying anything at all.

But then Ochi said something that made me think Ochi was really happy about her boyfriend and that this whole experience right now was somehow really important and validating for her. I realized I should probably stop being such a selfish jerk and start raising my hand whenever Ochi asked a question. So now I was frantically raising my hand, possibly not even sure what I was raising my hand for.

Now Ochi was asking everybody if we wanted her to pass around her cellphone so everybody could do something... maybe see her boyfriend's texts more closely or hear her boyfriend better or say hello to her boyfriend from closer up or something.

Now all the men in the crowd were raising their hands and cheering. They all wanted to hold Shiho Ochi's cellphone. So they were really excited.

I looked around the crowd. I noticed that there was one entire section of the crowd, directly off the right side of the stage, that was completely turned away from Ochi. Their seats were turned away entirely. It was like they had been seated that way the entire time. But they were fans of Ochi. And even though they still had their backs turned on her, they were wildly raising their hands, hoping to be able to pass around Ochi's cellphone soon.

Dream 2

I had probably just walked outside a shopping mall. I needed to get somewhere, to some place that wasn't a part of, but was spatially related to, the mall. I started walking, knowing that I needed to get myself off the mall property -- basically off of the mall's parking lot -- at some point. But I needed to get off the property wherever I would get a straight shot toward whatever place I was headed to.

I felt like wherever I was headed was close. But it felt like with all the walking I'd have to do, especially while on the mall's property, would make it feel like a really long distance.

I started walking in a counterclockwise direction around the mall. But I wasn't really sure this was what I should be doing. Outside a main entrance to the mall was some event, maybe a little arts and crafts or flea market kind of fair. There were a lot of people looking around. Everybody seemed to be happy.

I thought I might look around at the stuff on display. But instead I decided to walk into the mall through the nearby entrance. I thought I might be able to cut some time off my walk by going straight through the mall.

I wandered around in the mall for a few moments. The mall may have been slightly busy. There was orange tiling everywhere, it felt like. And there was probably a lot of vegetation everywhere.

At some point I may have felt hungry. I suddenly wanted some pizza. I may also have started to feel really short of breath, like walking was becoming harder and harder.

At some point I may have spotted a mall directory map. But it wasn't like the usual standalone kiosks with a mall map on one side. Instead, it was sort of like a bulletin board. It somehow stood over a little river sort of fixture. You had to walk onto a bridge over the river to get a good look at the map.

It was getting harder and harder for me to walk. My legs felt like heavy weights. They may actually have hurt, too. And with each step I took, I was more and more out of breath, until I felt like I couldn't even breathe anymore.

I walked up and over a small ramp and then onto the small bridge. I couldn't even get all the way onto the bridge. I had to stop and rest at a corner, because I couldn't breathe. Also, I was afraid of getting all the way onto the bridge. I felt like if one of the other shoppers saw me standing on the bridge they'd want to come up and hog up all my space to show me that I couldn't just stand anywhere I wanted.

I still couldn't get a direct look at the directory map. But I knew there was a pizza place in the mall. I probably saw an image of an entire pizza, maybe in my imagination, but related to an ad for the place, or maybe as part of an ad that was actually right on the directory map.

I knew that if I went to the pizza place, that would put me at the mall exit I needed to be at, so all I'd need to do would be head in a straight line toward whatever my destination off the mall property was. So I could get a slice of pizza, which I was still hungry for, and be a lot closer to my destination.

But it still felt like, even then, it would be such a long walk. It seemed like such a pain. And I wasn't quite sure I could even walk anymore. My legs hurt. And I was almost completely unable to breathe.

jogger with baby; cold calling chakras; candy landscape

For a review of some of the images from these dreams, visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was probably out jogging in a park during the daytime. There were people nearby, maybe just slightly behind me. I was friendly with them but may not have known them. I may have been telling them about how I was jogging, like I was a tour guide or like I was giving a tutorial.

A guy came jogging up from behind me. I had to beat this guy at jogging in order to prove myself to the people I was talking to.

There was a tall, steep, narrow hill that rose just beside us in the park. The guy started jogging up the hill. I started jogging after him. The path we jogged up may have been extremely steep. But it may also only have been a moderate incline.

I was having a hard time catching up with the guy. It seemed like he was always just ahead of me. I wanted to get ahead of him, but I didn't want to run too fast. I was supposed to be jogging. This wasn't supposed to be an effort for me. But even now I was probably out of breath. I may have been wondering how long I'd be able to keep up with the guy.

The guy may have been carrying a baby or pushing a baby stroller. This may have made me feel even worse about myself. How could this guy be carrying or pushing a baby up this steep hill and just be jogging and still beat me?

My vision may have faded to black, possibly like I was passing out. The situation may have started over again, maybe from the point where we started jogging up the hill. But this time it may have been like the man disappeared early on.

I may have thought that the man had disappeared because he couldn't handle the pace anymore. Or I may have thought that he'd disappeared because he'd only meant to beat me for a second, so he could make me feel bad about myself, and then leave.

Dream 2

I was in some room, maybe like a grey, dingy bedroom. Apparently I was cold calling people, like for phone sales, for some kind of audience. I don't think I was teaching them, but it was like I was giving a how-to, but less for their edification and more so I could prove myself to them.

I'd called one woman (whom I may have imagined in my head to be like a blonde, short-haired, ringleted 1930s movie star) and was pretty successful on my call. That was reassuring. I loosened up with the crowd a bit and spoke with an almost flippant confidence.

I now called a man. The man gruffly answered the phone. I kind of lazily said, "How's it goin'?" The man didn't answer. I could feel his annoyance through the phone.

I quickly lost my confidence, became serious again, and tried to explain why I was calling. But the man grew impatient, said he had no time for this, and either hung up on me or left me no option but to end the call with him politely.

I could tell that the audience's opinion of me had dropped sharply after that call. I tried to recover by giving an explanation of what had happened during the call. I may have done this even as I was moving onto the next call, hoping to cover up the mistakes of the previous call.

As I did this, I may have seen a strange image in my head: something like a chakra diagram, but all in a very abstract, simplistic, and blocky black-line style. The body, probably a woman's body, was laid on its side. And the "chakra" circles weren't placed on or over the woman's body, but alongside it, so that it almost felt like this was a subway map rather than a chakra diagram.

Something weird was also happening with the chakra circle -- like I was imagining them being filled with a phone image once I'd made a phone call, or maybe like I was imagining them being plugged with some kind of headphone jack, maybe like an old telephone operator would use.

Dream 3

Possibly after some other stuff had happened, I ended up in a large landscape. The landscape may have been meant to mimic a natural mountain vista. But it rolled up and down and around more like a football stadium.

But this entire landscape was made out of packages of candy. The packages of candy were all supposed to be "bite size" or "fun size." But they were actually probably about the size of a human. The candy inside the packages (I didn't open any of the packages) was also gigantic.

The candy was all probably supposed to be popular name brand candy. But I think it was actually different -- like strange candy that was even sweeter, gooier, and more chocolaty than the name brand candy was.

I knew, like I remembered having been told, that there were 1 billion packages of candy in this landscape. I stood up on the crest of a candy hillside. Near me there was a doorway, just a white doorway standing up all alone.

I may have had some task to take care of here. I may have been trying to avoid some sort of dark force, such as weird, gross, bird-like creatures or something that had caused the landscape I was previously in to become diseased and was now threatening to do the same thing here. Or I may just have had a sense of this impending disease. This strange sense may have prevented me from opening the packages and trying the candy.

Instead, I jumped up in the air and began soaring along the candy package hillsides. I flew around before the slopes, darting along maybe just 50cm or so above the ground.

the rite aid resort; hollow leg anemone; out-of-body acne; apartment building stalker

For a review of some of the images from these dreams, please visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was driving around in a different town. I may have been on vacation or on some kind of leisurely group trip. I was staying in a hotel that was at the top of a huge hill.

I may have driven up to the hotel once. Then I was driving around town again. But now I decided I needed to go back to the hotel for the night. But I thought that before I went back to the hotel I should pick up some food.

I wanted to get back to the hotel quickly so I could go from there to pick up some food and then get back inside the hotel before it was too late (even though -- I don't think it was any later than maybe early afternoon).

I drove up a road, remembering the road and thinking that I wouldn't get back to the hotel quickly enough. But then I found a tunnel. I drove into the tunnel. My car accelerated a lot. The slope inside the tunnel got steeper and steeper. It was almost like I was driving straight up.

I didn't feel like the tunnel was heading in the right direction. But then it let out right at a road I knew was just around the corner from the hotel. I drove around the road and up into the hotel parking lot. The hotel was more like a big, Spanish-style resort. But in the parking lot adjacent to the hotel was some sort of two-story strip mall.

Two guys spotted me in my car. I knew that now they'd want to follow me around to figure out why I was here. If they found out I was staying at the hotel, they'd want to cause trouble for me there. So I decided to drive into the strip mall parking lot instead of the hotel parking lot and hang around there until I lost the guys.

I noticed that there was a Rite Aid in the strip mall. I thought they should probably have some food there. So I went in. The guys probably followed me in. The Rite Aid was really cramped. It may have been a small space that took up two floors. But then it may have been all on just the second floor.

It seemed like the Rite Aid sold nothing but cheap, second-rate consumer wellness goods, not quite medical supplies, but things you'd have around the house to use for whenever you got sick or injured or uncomfortable. There may have been a little girl in the store, possibly with her dad. She may have been lifted up onto some stack of boxes.

I looked around a little more. The only food I could find was bags of something sort of like chips -- just a couple bags, and way high up on some rack that made it so I didn't want to go through the trouble of getting them.

I was tempted for a second just to buy a lot of chips and have them for dinner. But I didn't want to eat just chips for dinner. I wanted to have a real meal. So I left the Rite Aid.

I was out in the parking lot. I knew I'd have to drive somewhere else now so I could find some real food. But I thought that was a good thing. The two guys had followed me back out of the store. I knew that it would be best if I went somewhere else before going to the hotel. If I left the area, maybe the guys also would. Then when I got back, I could just head into the hotel without anybody following me.

Dream 2

I was standing out in front of a comic book or zine shop with someone else, maybe my brother, maybe a female friend. We were probably waiting for the store to open for the morning. We may have been speaking with each other about the shop as if it was the first time here for one of us, and maybe also as if we'd just met each other for the first time.

Now the owner of the shop came up. He was a white man, kind of tall, round, and heavy, with a scraggly, grey beard and shaggy, but balding hair. He wore small, squarish sunglasses. He greeted us cheerfully. He seemed happy to see that people were eager to get into the store.

The owner opened the door and led us in. He proudly chatted a little bit about the store. But he walked quickly in front of us and was soon gone.

It may now have been like there was a group of us here. The place looked like a big record store on the inside. There were bins and bins of items on tables all around us. The store had a set of steps in the back leading up to another floor of items.

There was a doorway on the wall to my right. I walked through, into a smaller room of wooden shelves and racks for magazines or comic books or zines. I saw a lot of stuff that I wanted -- items that were apparently books, like novels, but were also zines, drawn in a very thin, liney style. The themes of these stories may have been a little perverted. They were just what I'd been looking for.

I may have been walking around here by myself. But I said to someone else, almost in my head, or almost as if I were in another place at the same moment -- maybe inside or near a tour bus, which I could maybe see through a blinded window as I stood in the store -- that this was what I'd wanted to experience the entire time I'd been in this city. I said that I'd really love to just immerse myself in the experience of these books for the rest of the time we were here.

The person said that if that was the case, I should just buy a ton of the books I wanted and take them with me to the airport. I could do nothing but read them at the airport and on the plane.

I thought what the person said was a good idea. But I knew it wasn't quite what I'd meant. Nevertheless, I knew I'd want to buy some of these books. But I probably wouldn't want to buy a lot. I imagined what a pain it would be to haul so many books along with me to the airport.

We may all now have been getting ready to leave. We were all in a room, just sitting around. We were like a group of schoolkids, though at least some of us may actually have been adults. One may have been Denver's current city council president.

As we all chatted away about something, I realized I needed to take care of an issue I was having with my leg. I had apparently cut open my left leg, possibly along the shinbone. It was kind of hollow inside, with bone, veins, artery, and some other tissue. But what mainly took up the inside of the leg was this peach material that looked like sea anemone tentacles.

I knew this peach material was kind of clogging up my leg, so that it was taking too much energy for me to walk. I knew that if I could just remove some of this stuff I'd be in a lot better shape. So I took some surgical instrument, maybe scissors or a knife, and just began cutting away at some of this stuff.

The fringes or tentacles were connected to a fleshy base. I was pretty sure the fleshy base was fine, and that I just needed to cut off the fringes. But I also felt like, at least for the time being, I didn't need to cut off all the fringes. I just needed to cut off enough to make it easier for me to walk again.

So I cut away at a kind of big clump of fringes. I had cut away quite a bit of the fringes. But they were still connected to the fleshy base by just a little flap of flesh. It was really hard to cut that last little flap -- the flap was so gooey that it just wouldn't snap off. So I decided just to pull and pull until I tore the fringes away from the fleshy base.

Finally I managed to pull this clump of fringes off altogether. Apparently I closed my leg back up. There was a black, metal shell for a computer's CPU. I looked inside it. It was mostly empty, except for a tangle of red and blue wires and maybe one or two other things. I knew I was supposed to stick my leg in here. This was sort of like my shoe, or another natural part of my leg, or something to protect my leg while it healed. I would stick my leg down into the CPU. My foot would stick out a square hole in the bottom.

But I may actually have had problems doing this. Or I may have forgotten altogether to do it, maybe even as soon as I'd started doing it. Then, as soon as I'd forgotten to do it, I may have wondered why I hadn't done it. And I may have wondered whether my leg would be protected, now that I hadn't stuck it into the old CPU shell. I may also have wondered whether I'd even closed up my leg at all, after having pulled out all the stuff.

And now that I thought about all the stuff I'd pulled out of my leg, I wondered after all whether I should have done that. Wasn't the stuff in my leg supposed to be there? Had I just pulled stuff out of my leg that actually made my leg work?

The person next to me asked me if I was okay. I said I was okay, but that I was just wondering whether I may have overdone it on the whole leg thing. But I said that I probably hadn't overdone it. I said I'd probably just been surprised to see my leg so hollow. But, I said, I supposed that a lot of the body is pretty hollow, anyway. And if it's not hollow, and you have all that stuff clogging it up, that's when you start running into problems.

Dream 3

I probably saw that I had a lot of acne sprouting up on my face. I don't know whether I was looking in a mirror or using my phone camera as a mirror. I may actually have seen my face as if I were outside of my body, looking at my face from a low, kind of oblique angle.

I may not have been myself, either. I may have been a blonde man with kind of golden skin, blue eyes, and hair that was loosely curly and frizzy at the edges, like there were a lot of split ends or something.

I think one cheek had small bumps of acne sprouting up all over. The other cheek had a different kind of acne, but it was just as bad and widespread.

Dream 4

I may have been trying to escape some killer or stalker or something. I may have been using a stairwell to escape. But I kept on almost running into the killer.

There may have been a point where I was trying to use an elevator, too. But either people got on the elevator with me who were linked with the killer/stalker or the killer/stalker also got on the elevator with me, or the killer/stalker saw me get on the elevator. So I needed to pretend like I was going to a different floor, so the killer/stalker wouldn't know what I was really doing.

The building was like a huge skyscraper. And there were times when it felt like an office complex -- maybe mainly when I was in the elevator, which I think had (dirty, grimy) glass walls and looked out over an atrium all the way down to the ground level. But most of the time it probably felt like a residential building.

But I think for me it also felt like some sort of daycare center. It may have been like a prison, too. It may have been that people who'd done something bad had been sent here to be treated like they were in a daycare for kids for a really long time. Or it may simply have been a children's daycare center, and I may mistakenly have been put here. Or it may have been a place that was being morphed into a children's daycare center by some bad person, and I was trying to stop that from happening.

But in order for me to succeed and escape, I had to prove that I was grown up, that I wasn't one of the children. But I didn't have to prove this to the bad person who was stalking me. In fact, I couldn't get around that person, or I might actually be turned into a child. I didn't actually have to prove my adulthood to anybody. I just needed to prove myself by keeping my adult identity until I escaped the building or accomplished whatever I was supposed to accomplish.

sad little girl on the couch

For a discussion of images in this dream, please visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was in a house with some family. There were a few young girls in the family. Apparently I had charmed them. Now they were all kind of attracted to me.

I walked into a kitchen. I may have been alone. But there was something, oatmeal or something, cooking on the stove. I may have felt or thought about the dad of the family being somewhere nearby.

It may have occurred to me that the dad was catching on that the girls were attracted to me. And he was now kind of wary of me. I was a little afraid that he'd do something violent to me, just because he was mad his girls were attracted to me. But I was more afraid that he'd just stop liking me and think of me as a bad person.

I walked into the living room. It was kind of dim. It felt big, but a little thin-walled, like the living room of a trailer home. The room was mostly empty.

I saw one of the girls, possibly the oldest girl, walking into the living room from the opposite end of the room. Hoping to make her even more attracted to me, I sat down and slouched way low on the couch -- so my head was way down on the back cushion and my body from my hips down was hanging off the couch. I may also now have been wearing only my boxer briefs.

The girl may have sat in an easy chair right next to the couch. She seemed sad. I asked her why she was sad.

The girl stood up. She was now just wearing underwear: a white bra and white panties, possibly bikini briefs, or possibly boy shorts with frills on the legs. The panties had a red stripe somewhere near the hips.

The girl stood over me. I could see she was really attracted to me. I hadn't meant to make her that attracted to me. I thought maybe I should cool things down. But the girl was also really sad. So I wanted to listen to her and let her express herself to make sure she knew I thought her feelings were valid.

The girl lay down, either right on top of me or a little to my right side, so she was straddling my right flank and leg. She may have started moving up and down on me as she said, "Mommy and Daddy just told me Daddy's going away. He won't be coming back. I don't know what to do."

I understood this to mean that the mom and dad were getting a divorce. I was kind of surprised. I would never have guessed that would happen. And I couldn't figure out what would have happened between the mom and dad that would have led to something like this.

The mom was now in the room. She was probably my cousin. She stood off to the left of the couch. She probably told the girl and me that it was time to get going somewhere.

The girl and I stood up. We had to gather our clothes. But, in addition to our clothes, we were probably pulling up all kinds of things, like blankets, pillows, etc. It was like the living room was filled with all this clutter that the girl and I had just made.

I noticed now that I was either totally naked or wearing some kind of lingerie-skirt item but no underwear underneath. I wondered how I could have gotten naked while I'd been on the couch with the girl. Had we gone that far? I certainly hadn't intended to.

and this guy was like; prison dance practice

Dream 1

I was in some room, probably for a television interview, with Donald Trump and a few young men, some black, some Hispanic, maybe some white. The young men were all either basketball players or rappers. They wore baseball caps at different angles and jeans and shirts not very different from the clothes I wear.

The room may have had bright yellow walls and some mirrors in the background. It may have felt like some sort of waiting area outside a fitting room. But it was big, with a couch and some other items that may have made it feel more like a home.

Trump and most of the young men sat on the couch. Some of the other young men sat in chairs near the back area of the room, possibly where there were some doors for individual fitting rooms. I'm not sure how everybody fit onto the couch. Trump in particular was either much smaller than in real life or was barely sitting on the couch. Yet it seemed like everybody was comfortable.

Trump was talking about something to prove he had done something good for people. It was thought he had done something bad. But all these guys were here to prove that it was something good.

Trump pointed over to a black man on the couch. Trump said something like, "And this guy was like..." The black man stuck out his tongue and puffed up his cheeks.

Trump continued with his talk. But my view now just kept on shifting around to all the different guys in the room. I may have been trying to read their reactions to what Trump was saying. They all seemed genuinely to agree with him.

Dream 2

I was outside, probably in the morning. The sunlight was a kind of golden orange. I stood out on a rolling, green lawn. Some people were coming up from the distance. They may have come on a train that had just arrived.

This was some new place for me, maybe like a school. I had met some people here the day before. But I wasn't familiar with any of them. I decided that this morning I would become familiar with some of them.

A group of girls walked up to me. I may have greeted them and then started walking with them. Then three girls walked up in front of and then past us. One of the girls was Asian, maybe Korean. She had dark skin and long, brown and blonde hair. She wore black plastic-rimmed eyeglasses. This girl was making moves like she was teaching the other two girls some dance moves. The three girls all kind of giggled at the moves.

One of the girls I was walking with seemed a little uncomfortable with the three girls who had passed us. I said, "Oh, no. She's fine," meaning the girl who was teaching the dance moves. I said, "She's my cousin. She has a plan for when she gets out of this prison. She and her friends are going to XXXXX. And they're going to sing the song by their favorite artist and do the dance for it. They're really excited."

the last paychecks in the world; chop hit stix; giant architecture books; not good enough for love

For a discussion of some of the images in this dream, visit this post of my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was in some crowded, frenetic place like the lobby of an office building. It was long and narrow, with kind of thin carpet. One wall was all windows. The light outside was dim blue, as if it were early morning or late evening.

In front of the other wall was something like a service counter, like a ticket counter or even a fast food counter, except that it was probably really low, like maybe 30 cm below waist height. People were crowded all around this counter, in front and in back. We were all workers, and we were all in some huge panic.

I may have been watching a TV screen or a set of TV screens that hung from the ceiling. They were like news screens, but they were also like fast food menu screens. The news may have announced some terrible thing that had happened, maybe in Israel. It was having repercussions all around the world. And things were getting really bad where we were.

It had gotten so bad at this point that we were being asked to stay in our buildings. It was like all business operations, even people being able to get food, were being shut down outside. Nobody knew how long we'd have to stay in here.

But paycheck day was today. And while everybody was worried about what was happening in the world, they were really frantic right now because they wanted their paychecks. Something had happened in our business. And the paychecks weren't being given out in their normal way. Instead, a sort of subgroup of management had to hand out the checks manually.

Everybody was crowded around the counters. Nobody wanted to wait in line or create any orderly system for getting their checks. Everybody wanted their check first. But somehow the managers got everybody's checks handed out. And soon the huge crowd dispersed.

But I still hadn't gotten my check. I was wondering what I should do about this. I was trying to figure out how much it would matter if I didn't get a paycheck. The world was either ending or on pause outside. So did I really even need money?

But I also knew that my rent was due. If I didn't have this particular paycheck, I wouldn't be able to pay my rent. I also knew that this was either my last or my second to last paycheck from this company. So I was going to need all the money I could get from the company.

I pondered this as I stood at the top of a stairway leading back down to the lobby. I may have figured I'd head out for the evening and bring up the topic at work the next day.

But one of the managers (a man or a woman or simultaneously a man and a woman?) was now sitting a few steps down on the stairway. The manager stopped me and said they had my check. The manager filed through a stack of papers, maybe saying something about how my check had accidentally gotten lost in the shuffle. Then the manager handed me my check.

I may have looked at the check. I saw that it wasn't enough money. I handed it back to the manager. The manager acknowledged the problem, shuffled through the papers, and handed me another check. The manager may then have said that another check, my final check, was coming, but that that was still on its way.

I looked at this new check. Some of the numbers around it were really confusing. It looked like my pay was correct -- maybe something like $2,600 or $2,500, or maybe $6,200. But there was a bunch of other stuff on the check. Something was going on with some $16,000 sum. I couldn't quite understand it. It looked like maybe that money had been added to my pay, then subtracted immediately. But it also looked like it had been added to my pay and kept there.

I thought I should tell the manager about this. Too much had been added to my pay. I didn't want to be penalized for getting too much money. But I also couldn't tell whether all that pay had been taken back already. I figured I'd really only know once I took my check to the bank to get cashed. And I figured I'd made enough trouble for the manager today. I didn't need to raise any more issues. So I just figured I'd leave things alone.

Dream 2

Something may have happened at first where there was some sort of action, maybe involving something on an airplane. The action may have finished, and then the scene may have replayed. The drama may have resolved itself.

I may now have considered my age. I thought to myself that I looked young for my age. I wondered how I would look when I was seventy years old. I thought to myself that I needed to plan out the things I'd do over the next decades.

In my forties, maybe I would do a lot of the stuff I should have done in my twenties. In my fifties, I'd probably look and act like I should have done in my thirties. By the time I was seventy, I'd probably act like a fifty-year-old. But the big thing, I told myself, was that I needed to make sure I was never fooling myself, or pulling the wool over my eyes. I didn't want to go through some midlife crisis and pretend I was a teenager again. And I didn't want to be seventy and think I was twenty.

At this point, I may have been my seventy-year-old self, walking through some small lobby, maybe like an elevator bank or a small, octagonal foyer, and then in through a small door, maybe a regular door or an elevator door. I had a head of bright white hair, and I wore a white polo shirt.

I was now my regular age (or maybe much younger) again. I sat on a couch in a busy room. My brother, or maybe my oldest nephew, sat to my left. There may have been a lot of kids and adults romping and playing around. The room may have been like a daycare room.

My brother/nephew and I were waiting here to be taken home. It was like we had been on some sort of military mission that was now accomplished and we were being shipped back home. But it was also like we'd been on some tourist experience, partly sight-seeing, partly themed adventure, and were now waiting for some sort of ride back home.

My brother/nephew had been eating something with chopsticks. He was now using the used chopsticks as drumsticks to play air drums. I found that sort of annoying but didn't say anything. But my brother/nephew, seeing he wasn't getting a reaction from me, started hitting the chopsticks against my shoulder.

I was a little annoyed, but I didn't want to show it. Instead, I giggled at my brother/nephew and said something about how he should get a set of the old Hit Stix toys, as he'd be really good with them.

My brother/nephew didn't respond to me. Instead he put the chopsticks down right by my left leg. He then picked up another set of used chopsticks and began playing the drums on my left shoulder again. At some point he may actually have had a set of Hit Stix, which he was playing in the air, of to his left, kind of twisting his body so he was playing them so I couldn't see them, while the speaker for the toy was kind of pointed at me.

Dream 3

I had come from some other situation, possibly involving my family, with my mom possibly playing a big role in whatever had happened.

I was now walking into some room with one of my close Denver acquaintances, AV, a person currently running for political office. The room was big, but also kind of enclosed-feeling. The room had a lot of bookshelves. But it wasn't just a library. There were some couches and furniture. The place had a sort of 1970s modern feel to it -- a lot of leather and wood and cold greys -- no earth tones, etc.

AV and I had been talking. I had probably been trying to justify myself to AV in some way -- to prove I was smart or motivated, or not a crook, or something. But I had also been doing this all in an innocent-sounding way, like I hadn't been suspecting at all that I'd needed to justify myself to AV and I was just making small talk with him like I'd make with anybody.

But I kind of stopped speaking when I saw a new stack of books on some table on the far end of the couches AV and I were going to sit at. The table the new books sat on was already piled with books. This new stack made the pile seem enormous and unwieldy.

There were probably four books in the new stack. The books were gigantic -- maybe 30 centimeters tall, 20 centimeters wide, and 6 centimeters thick. And each book was encased in some solid, cardboard box with a red and white marble design pasted onto it.

I groaned at the sight of so many heavy, new books in my collection. I went to the books. I opened one of the boxes and looked at the book. The book had a 1990s-style dust jacket -- red, with gold lettering, and probably a nice, color reproduction of some medieval painting under the gold lettering.

I saw that the book was about architecture. With relief I said to AV, "Oh... these books are my mom's. They must just have come to her because of the new architecture class she's taking."

I was relieved that I didn't have to worry about these books. And I couldn't wait to unload them on my mom. But I was also very intrigued by them. And I couldn't help but flip through the pages of the book I held as I sat down on the couch to start my conversation with AV.

AV said, "Or... maybe these books are meant for you. Don't try to sell yourself short. And don't be modest. If you're that interested in architecture, that's something you should be proud of."

I said, "Oh, no, no. These books really are for my mom. She's in school. She's studying. She has some new course on architecture she's taking. It's from the time period when these books were originally written."

I looked at the text of the book. The writing was really scrawly. I couldn't understand any of it. It was all in columns, too. So there was so much text packed onto one page. And beneath each black line of text was a line of red, as well. The red may also have been text. Or it may have been red dots of some kind, or some kind of code or symbolism.

Somehow I must have gotten the gist of whatever I was reading. I understood that I was looking at a lot of information. This single page was packed with a ton of information. I couldn't imagine getting through one of these books, let alone four! And it was even more staggering to imagine that these four books were just one requirement for just one class. That was just an unbelievable amount of work to get through!

But it was also amazing to me that whoever had written this book, four hundred years ago, had actually written so much. I told AV, "This book only deals with a small time period. And yet the person had so much to write about that time period. The person must have been so intelligent and disciplined."

Dream 4

An older woman who may have looked like Julia Child, except maybe a bit more regal or refined, was laughing at me. I'd somehow indicated my sexual attraction to her or to some woman her age or some woman around my age or some little girl or little boy. But I don't think I'd meant to indicate my attraction. And I hadn't said that I had been attracted. Nevertheless, the woman took it as given that I was attracted to this person.

The woman thought it was cute that I was attracted. But she also made it clear that I would never be good enough for the person I was attracted to. And that's why she found the whole situation funny.

rescuing the zombie girl; mclaren's a garbage car; zombie girl at women's event; zombie girl is irrelevant

For an analysis of some of the imagery in today's dreams, visit this post in my dream analysis blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

A military group was driving through a sort of industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of a big desert town. There was some sort of operation to rescue either a little girl or a whole affected population from a group of zombies.

At first I may not have seen from the perspective of someone in the group. My view may have been backed away a few blocks from the action and up in the air ten or fifteen meters.

A bunch of things happened that I don't remember very well. All the action was jumbled up. The leader of the group had driven in a bunch of vehicles, maybe including some kind of tank vehicle. At this point in time I may have seen from the point of view of the action. There may have been a lot of shooting.

There may have been a point where the leader and a few other people went into a big building. This building may have looked like a sci-fi desert palace of some kind rather than an industrial building in a city. But it may also have looked like some sort of truck loading dock mixed with an official city building.

Some other things happened. All the action may have started over again. It may have been like the leader was driving all his troops right back around the blocks leading up to the big building. There may have been some argument between the leader and one of his leaders, who was speaking with him remotely. The second leader wanted the leader to leave the area. It was too dangerous. But the leader wouldn't leave until he'd rescued the population or the little girl.

At some point the little girl herself got involved in the decision making. This became a news item. A news reporter, a black woman with short hair, who may instead have been some sort of high-ranking military officer, made some kind of report about the girl.

The little girl had made some sort of decision to sacrifice herself so the other people in her population could live. But she also hadn't made this decision. She was still alive, and the leader of the soldiers was going to rescue her.

Now the little girl made a news announcement of her own. She may have looked like some kind of anime character. She announced that the military needed to leave her alone. She said she had become a zombie. She still had her intelligence. She was basically just like she had been before. But if any living human beings got near her, her zombie side would come out. She would be driven to kill them and eat their brains.

After this I may have been in some sort of swimming, half-dreaming state where I was discussing the meaning of the girl's announcement with some of my "friends," either people I knew or people in mainstream media who always appear on my Twitter stream.

I may have been trying to stand up for the girl. But I may also have been trying to organize some sort of discussion about the girl, maybe even to bring the girl to Denver. But my "friends" all said that the little girl was really irrelevant, and that they suspected I only wanted to bring her here because I was attracted to little girls and wanted to look at her.

Dream 2

I had somehow saved or helped a ten- or eleven-year-old boy. We may have been in some social situation: a crowd or a party or something. The boy started flirting with me. I got the feeling he was sexually attracted to me. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. So I took him somewhere -- possibly one of our houses, but probably not -- where we could be alone.

We were now on the top bunk of a bunk bed in a huge room. It was like the bunk bed was just in some gigantic, empty industrial space. It was dark. The only light in the building was deep, blue light from the night sky coming in through windows high up on the walls.

There was probably some man laying on the bottom bunk of the bed. I'm not sure I noticed him. He kind of creeped me out. I felt like he was essentially there to spy on me and the boy. He wasn't going to stop anything. He was just going to lay there. It may have seemed weird to me. But I also figured there was just nothing I could do about it.

The boy was laying on his back. He was wearing either just underwear or just a diaper. I may also have been wearing just underwear. I still really didn't know whether the boy wanted me to be with him. But I was aroused at this point and wanted to be with the boy.

I pushed up one of the boy's legs, which made it easier for me to push at his crotch. I rubbed up against the boy's crotch a few times. It felt good to me. I hoped it felt good to the boy. I hoped it was what the boy wanted.

But now the boy was somewhere else, maybe not even on the bed. He was talking to me about some conversation he'd had with some man who'd thought he was really cool. The man was kind of rich and very handsome. But he was really arrogant.

The boy told me how he had asked the man about his car in particular. The man had mentioned some kind of car I thought was really good -- maybe a McLaren or some other car with a name starting with an M. But, the boy told me, he'd just laughed at the man. He'd told the man that he only dated men who drive XXXXX (some type of car that probably had a few different letters and numbers in its name). The boy said, "I told the man, 'Come back when you aren't driving garbage cars anymore.'"

I was kind of shocked. I'd had no idea that the car the boy had mentioned even existed. Yet it was like common knowledge to the boy that this was what really sophisticated rich men drove. And the car I thought was so good was thought of as a garbage car by the boy. Obviously, I thought, this little boy would never be sexually attracted to me. I didn't even know what a good car really was!

I had an image in my mind of soap suds and probably hands and arms. I had a feeling I was watching the rich man clean himself, as if the boy had also told him something like he'd needed to go wash himself off because he'd been driving such a garbage car. I thought that if the rich man had needed to wash himself off, then I'd really need to wash myself off -- because I didn't know anything!

The boy was probably near me at some point now. He may have tapped me on the shoulder or patted me on the back.

The boy said, "Well, come on. Let's get going." The boy hopped down from the bunk bed and walked off toward some really nice car. I knew the boy and I had to go take care of something.

I'd still sort of wanted to stay in bed with the boy. I didn't know whether the boy had stopped our physical stuff just randomly or because he really hadn't wanted to be with me after all. If I'd misread his signals I'd feel really bad.

But I thought I couldn't have misread his signals, because he wasn't mad at me and wanted me to come along wherever he was going. But if the boy was attracted to me, then I was still aroused, and I was still hoping we could have just stayed in bed and been together.

There may have been some sort of modular-looking structure near the car, like some makeshift room with fluorescent light inside. It threw off a little light, which dimly reached the bunk bed. I climbed down from the bunk bed.

I saw the creepy guy on the bottom bunk. He was still there, just spying on everything the boy and I were doing. I may have thought that maybe it was good the boy and I hadn't done anything while we were here. Maybe once we were out of here, the creepy man would stop spying on us.

Dream 3

There was some sort of women's event. The place was packed. I'm pretty sure the little girl from my first dream had been invited to speak.

Dream 4

I had proposed to TA, a person I'd spent a lot of time with on volunteer events during the 2016 election cycle, that we bring the little girl from my first dream to speak at some event. TA just laughed at me and said, "Why would we do that? That's so irrelevant."

sick girl in bed; small town texas ramen; psychic slither; the floating trumps

For an analysis of images from today's dreams, visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was laying in bed. A young woman may have come to lay in bed as well. She was white and had brown hair. She was skinny. I thought she was cute. We weren't together. We were something like co-workers.

The woman had come to lay in bed because she was feeling bad. She looked over at me and groaned, saying that she was pretty sure she was getting sick. She may have said she felt like she had a hair stuck in her throat. She then put her fingers in her mouth like she was pulling a hair out of her mouth.

I felt some attraction to the woman. But I couldn't tell what she wanted me to do. I didn't know if she wanted me to move over to her side of the bed and comfort her, or if she wanted me to try and have sex with her. I knew that if I did either of those, I'd get sick, too. But I didn't care. But I did worry that the girl wouldn't want me to get near her because she wouldn't want me to get sick.

I also worried that maybe the girl didn't want me to get near her at all. Maybe she wasn't attracted to me at all. She had, after all, just said she'd gotten into bed because she was sick. She probably didn't want to be in bed with me because she was attracted to me. She just wanted to be in any bed she could find, so she could get better.

Dream 2

I was out in some desert town in Texas with my old friend R and his wife L. The sky was dark, dark blue, and the colors of everything around us were deep and dark. It was like everything was being filtered through a heavy sort of UV-protective lens.

We may have been out walking. Or we may have driven for a little while and then gotten out of the car and started walking. All this time we were probably talking -- possibly catching up on our lives and then talking about something in particular.

We passed a couple of small shops that stood out in the emptiness. There may have been an auto repair shop and a fast food restaurant. R, or maybe L, may have remarked on one of the shops, possibly to note the condition of the shop, or maybe because they were thinking of buying the shop.

We now walked up to something like a booth made of old wood, like wood from the Old West. But the booth was apparently a ramen stand or some other kind of shop for Asian food. We stood before the counter, looking at stuff.

R said something to me, making me feel like he and I were finally friends again and in a good place emotionally. I felt bad for not having seen R in such a long time. I then looked at L. She smiled at me nicely. I patted her on the shoulder.

I suddenly felt like L genuinely liked me. I didn't know what to do. It made me feel nice to know she actually liked me. I'd never felt that way before. And I wanted to keep doing whatever made her like me -- if that meant touching her again or hugging her or just continuing to act nice. But I didn't know what the right thing to do was. So I just hoped for the best and turned back to look at the food behind the counter.

Dream 3

I was in some strange place. It may have been like a multiplex-style family fun center from the 1980s or 1990s. Or it may have been like an old roller skating rink from around the same time. A crowd of people were probably milling away from one area and toward another. They were all walking down some ramped walkway with waist-high, solid railing on either side.

I was moving along with the crowd. But I was doing something more like crawling or slithering along the ground rather than walking. I may also at some point have slithered my way up and over some corner area of the walkway's path, then back down to the floor, to continue moving along with the walkers.

Somehow it was like I had just woken up from a dream. I remembered that in the dream I had been discussing something with my mom.

My mom was now in the crowd, walking just behind me. Her foster kids may also have been there. My mom was talking, probably with her foster kids, about some conversation she and I had just had. But as I listened to what my mom said, I realized she was talking about the conversation I'd just had with her in my dream.

I said, "But I just dreamed that conversation, Mom! I haven't told you or anyone else anything about it." At this point I may have started walking upright instead of slithering on the ground.

She said, "I know. I dreamed it, too."

I said, "Oh... I guess that means..."

My mom may have nodded her head.

"That means I'm psychic."

My mom didn't say anything else at this point. She may have become separated from me by a few other walkers. We all may have been walking into a dark room, possibly like a roller skating rink.

I started to worry about all the people around me. Had they heard what I'd just said, that I thought I was psychic? Would they hear and listen to anything else I would say? Would they think I was insane? Would they try to get me put into a mental institution?

I'd stopped talking. But I was probably still worried, as if somehow people could sense what I would say if I were talking. I was trying to control something about myself, almost like my mental vibrations or something, so I could just blend in with everybody else and nobody would think I was insane.

At this point I probably started slithering around again. But now it may have been like I was slithering over people's bodies: up over their heads, their shoulders, etc., as they continued walking forward.

Or it may have been like I was standing upright, but not walking forward. It may have been like the crowd was sort of pushing me forward, like I was a stiff body being moved along indifferently by the motion of the crowd. At some point I may actually have been pushed backward over or against a part of the waist-high railing, so that I may have been bent backward at my back at a pretty sharp angle.

Dream 4

I was in some really big room, possibly like a government room, but many times larger. It may have been lit through large windows beaming in soft, yellow, natural light, like in a massive cathedral. There were wooden structures all around that may have felt like balcony areas for seating in a theater or pews for seating in a church. But they also felt like large, ornate ticket booths in a massive, old train station. There were huge crowds of people all over the place.

I saw Donald and Melania Trump somewhere. It was like they were off to my left or right and upward somewhere. They may have been all the way over one of my shoulders, back off to my left or right, behind my shoulder, and up in the air somewhere. Most likely they weren't standing on anything. They were probably just floating up in the air.

naked women's muscular legislation

For my analysis of images from today's dream, visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was out on some street corner in a residential part of some urban city, maybe like Brooklyn. It may have been late afternoon or early morning. The light was cool and blue with shadow, but with tinges of sunlight in places.

Two young women were walking up the sidewalk, talking about some legislation that had just been passed. A man had passed the legislation. I may have seen the man in my head: an older, black man, balding on the top of his head but with kind of thick hair on the side and back. The legislation said that men were no longer able to touch women, or possibly even to look at them, without the women saying it was okay first.

The young women were really happy about this legislation. They were happy they'd gotten the man in their pocket enough to make the legislation. But they were also happy about what the bill allowed them to do. They spoke to each other about ways they'd now be able to go around town making men attracted to them, then making the men feel bad or, now, even criminal for being attracted to them.

The young women turned the corner to my left. They held hands and skip-walked down the street, toward an apartment building a few doors down, past some new, clean-looking row houses. At first my view of the women was obscured by cars that seemed to be filling up the entire street. But then I could see them a little better.

Now the young women were naked, jump-skipping toward the apartment door. Before, both girls had been tall, kind of skinny, and white. But now one girl was dark brown. Both girls were kind of big-bodied. But both were very muscular. Their bodies also may have tapered down, so they had sort of small bottoms.

I considered everything the girls had said. It sounded to me like they had just fought to make this new law so that they could attract men and then criminalize men for being attracted to them. I kind of thought they were gross, scuzzy, and slimy for doing that. At the same time, they were so muscular, I felt like I had to like them. I just felt like you couldn't genuinely dislike people who were as muscular as they were.

lunchtime in the darkest hour

Dream 1

I may have seen or been in scenes in a movie. There may have been a first scene, in which a man was in some sort of dire situation. He may even have been in prison. But he was apparently writing something, a novel or a screenplay or a song, that would save him.

But the man needed some particular help in one passage of his creative work. It may have been that he needed his old teacher's help with the passage. Or he may have actually written a passage that his teacher would act in or sing.

The man may have been discussing all this with the woman, who was probably black, in a really small room, of which I may only have had an obscured, as if from the corner of a hallway and then through the doorway into the room.

The woman was now in a room with the teacher, an older, black man. The woman may have looked like Dorothy Dandridge. The teacher may have looked like Quincy Jones. The woman was discussing things with the teacher. The teacher was excited about all the ideas the man had. He gave his blessing to the man's work.

But the woman explained that the man actually needed the teacher in the work. The teacher reacted as if a little ashamed of not having understood what the woman had said before. He quickly said that that was okay.

Now my view shifted to me writing in a notebook a pink-covered spiral notebook, exactly like the one I'm currently using for my daily notes. I was lying on the floor on my stomach in some room like a living room, probably with a couch directly to my left, so close my left arm may have been rubbing against it.

The conversation between the woman and the teacher was still taking place, maybe just in my head. But now the conversation was about some passage of a novel or a story I was writing. The passage may have been about how a young man had written a song and then revised the song to make it even better. But I'd taken out a whole passage in the story where the young man's teacher had been convinced by a woman to help the young man out with a certain part of the song.

In the conversation in my head, the teacher told the woman that he'd liked this entire segment of the story -- kind of in three passages: the passage where the young man made the song, the passage where the teacher got involved, and the passage where it became clear that this song was really good.

The teacher said that he was happy helping, but that it was also important that I keep the second passage. He told the woman he knew I had taken out the passage because I was worried that I hadn't edited things down enough. But he said the passage was really good.

I may have been writing everything I was hearing in my notebook. Or I may have been writing notes on the story as I was kind of making a strategy for my writing or editing process. Or I may have been writing this very part of the novel or maybe a part more toward the end of the novel.

But I now realized that I needed to go back and put the second passage of this segment of the story back in. I was kind of relieved at that. I'd really liked that part of the story. But I also wasn't quite sure how I'd be able to find the passage in my notebook and then get everything back in order -- even though I'm pretty sure I was also directly looking at that part in my notebook already.

I was caught up by my mom, who was now sitting up on the couch. Something about her presence put a stop to everything for me. She couldn't know about my writing. She may have been part of some group of authorities who were kind of waiting to see whether I'd write something like this, so they could stop me.

I may have tried to tell my mom I was writing something else. I may have tried to explain this other thing I was writing. But my language may have trailed off. I was really just trying to shake my mom out of my mind so I could get re-focused on my work. But it may have gotten harder and harder as I tried to keep both things in my head to keep track of what was actually happening in my notebook and how I was supposed to rearrange the story to get it back into its good, original order.

There was now some conversation going on on the couch. My mom may still have been there, though as some other person, or she may no longer have been there at all, and a young woman may have been in her place. There were two other people: at least one guy, and maybe one other woman, but maybe one other man. The three people were office workers. This living room with its couch was like their office.

The office workers were complaining about some guy downstairs. The guy may have been a person in another office, in another business. But the people had to deal with him a lot. They didn't like him because he was kind of boisterously nasty, always seeming to get some sort of giddy pleasure out of showing up the office workers. He was often right about the things he said, too, which made the office workers like him even less. I saw the guy in my head: kind of tall and rangy, with olive skin and a close-shaved flat-top of tightly-curled hair. He may have worn a clunky, tan polo shirt.

The office workers were currently really annoyed by something the man had just said. The office workers all knew the man would end up being right. But he'd issued his statement as a bit of a challenge to the office workers. It was also said in a way that shamed the office workers a bit, like they knew they should be doing something about what the man had been talking about, but they really didn't want to. The man may even have said that the office workers were talking to someone they knew they shouldn't have been talking to. And even though they knew this was true, his saying it just made them even more annoyed.

I wasn't a part of this conversation. I was, apparently, one of the office workers. But I was treated like I wasn't a part of their little group. I may have been treated like I wasn't even a part of the company most of the time. I may have been treated like I was just a little kid, or even like I was someone who wasn't wanted around at all.

However, even though I was basically disregarded by my coworkers and was maybe not even wanted around, I still started feeling a little weird and guilty as I listened to them speaking about the man downstairs. I knew how annoying the man could be. But I also knew that we all probably needed to respect some of the things he said a little bit more. But I was guilty feeling this way. I knew my coworkers would feel I was betraying them if they ever knew I had these feelings.

I was now downstairs, all the way on the ground floor of the office building. On the ground floor was a deli-like restaurant. But the seating area for this deli was a lot more like a kind of big casual dining restaurant, like an old Bennigan's or Chili's. But, surrounded by this huge seating area was the deli counter.

The annoying man was working behind the counter. Apparently he owned the deli or was just one of the deli workers. I'd come down here to deliver something or pick something up, like I was performing the duties of the mail room person for my office. There may have been a sense that people were actually trying to get me to do these duties more and more so they could actually take away my current job and throw me into the mail room full-time.

I'd made whatever exchange I was supposed to make with the deli man. I was probably sitting on a bar stool, making small talk with the man. The deli was completely empty. A TV may have been on over the deli counter. The deli man was just doing stuff behind the counter like cleaning up.

The deli man had asked a question. I casually responded in a way that let the man know that the office workers had been annoyed by some of the stuff he'd said. The man acknowledged what I'd said and took a little bit of snide pleasure in my coworkers' annoyance.

But then he got a little more serious. He tried to make the point again that what he'd told the office workers was true and that it should be listened to. He somehow conveyed to me that he thought I was different. He was hoping that by speaking to me a bit more honestly and seriously he could drive the point home that the office workers really needed to think about this stuff.

But I could sense that the man had also sort of given up on the office workers. I could also sense that the man was sort of hoping that he could entice me to come work for him instead of them. But I was doing my best not to convey any sort of interest in working for the man. I was already dumped on enough working with the office workers. I didn't want to imagine what people would start doing to me if I went back to some position like working in a deli.

I had only come down to make whatever exchange I had made with the deli man because it was lunchtime and I was on my way out of the building. I told the man I had to get going so I could grab some lunch.

Then I realized how insensitive what I'd said had been. The deli had no customers at all. I could tell that the deli man was even expecting to have no customers over the course of the day. The deli man was getting less and less business all the time. And now I'd come here just to make some exchange, and not even to buy anything? It seemed mean of me. And I didn't want the deli man to think poorly of me. So I decided I'd get a couple small things and then find some other place to get the rest of my food.

But I already had two hot dog buns in my hands. I had actually already eaten half of one of the buns. I looked sort of back and over my shoulder, into some bag, maybe even a bunchy, black, leather purse I was carrying. In the purse was an entire thing of salami and an entire block of cheddar cheese. There may even have been an entire, unopened jar of Dijon mustard in my purse!

So now I realized I had enough food that I could just get a couple more items from the deli and then just walk somewhere outside, like a park or something, to eat my lunch. That way I could just get a couple things from here, make the guy feel good because I bought something from him, and not risk having the guy hear that I'd gotten food from some other restaurant as well.

I asked the guy for a bottle of soda. I would also get a cookie out of a box atop the glass display case -- which was now really tall, so that I'd had to reach up really high to grab the cookie! As the guy walked away to grab the soda, I calculated that I'd pay $5.86 for everything. That, I thought, was a good amount for the time I'd spent in the deli.

I grabbed the cookie. The cookie was wide and flat, probably a sort of chewy cookie, wrapped in a clear wrapper. But the front of the wrapper said something I found disgusting, like some sort of beef-based meal or something. At first I thought that meant the cookie was flavored like some kind of beef-based meal. I obviously didn't want that. I fumbled to see the next cookie. It also had some kind of meal label, like split-pea soup or something.

I didn't want a cookie that tasted like beef or split-pea soup. But I also felt like, at this point, I just had to grab what I'd ordered and leave. However, I then realized that the label on the package meant what kind of food should be eaten with the cookie. It was like a food pairing suggestion. I could see (maybe even somehow taste) that the cookie in the beef-meal package was a lemon-flavored cookie. I knew I'd like that a lot.

I left the deli. I walked outside and into the dark night. I looked back at the door of the office building (and deli). It was now like I was looking at the display window of a cheap electronics store, like the kind in Times Square (if they still exist). There was an old neon sign advertising the old, clunky electronics.

I may have tried to figure out where the heck I was for a second. The street was on a slope, at the bottom of which was the electronics shop. So I was pretty sure I was in San Francisco.

I had a strange sense of déjà vu. It was like I had been here, instead of with the office workers, earlier in my dream (or my experience, or whatever I called it while I was dreaming). I had walked down the sidewalk and toward this door, I vaguely remembered. And now I was coming out.

I felt like something about my professional destiny had to do with this clunky electronics shop. Maybe I was trying to get a job here. But I also felt like the electronics shop actually still was a restaurant and that I had gotten my meal, and maybe even had a job interview, there. But I'm pretty sure I also still had to go find a restaurant where I could get my lunch. But I probably also wanted to do this stealthily, so I could avoid the deli man finding out where I'd gotten my lunch. And I probably also still already had all my food for lunch and was just looking for a place to eat.

I was right on the corner of the street. So I crossed the sidewalk. At first it may have been like nobody was around. But now there were a lot of people crossing the street. It was pitch black. There were no streetlights. Maybe there weren't even any stoplights, though everybody seemed to be crossing the street as if following a streetlight.

Off in the dark distance I could see or sense a small park. I really didn't want to eat at the park. I didn't really want to eat my food at all. I felt it was too heavy and too random. It wasn't a healthy meal. And I was trying not to gain any more weight. But I also didn't want to go to a park to eat. I knew that as soon as I sat down a flock of annoying people would gather all around me and make my eating experience hellish. But I didn't know what else I could do. I knew I had to go to the park to eat.

I kind of suddenly had a positive attitude about everything. I probably wouldn't have any trouble at all once I got to the park. Maybe there wouldn't even be anybody at the park.

I was still walking across the street. For some reason I looked back over my shoulder. A group of older white people were leisurely riding their bikes across the street. One of the men in the group dropped his scarf on the white lines of the crosswalk.

I tried to call out for the man. But I couldn't do so quickly enough. So I grabbed the scarf off the ground. I looked over to my left and saw a young, white man watching me. I didn't want the young man to think I was stealing the scarf. So, looking at the young man, and still not able to articulate myself, I pointed in the direction of the old man.

The young man smiled and nodded knowingly at me. He then kind of looked up and toward the old man. He may have made some random noise to call out to the man. At this point I got a little more control over my own voice, at least enough to say something simple like, "Hey! Hey!"

At this point it was like the young man was more in control of the situation than I. But I didn't want it that way, because I wasn't sure the young man wasn't going to try and make it look after all like I had tried to steal the old man's scarf.

At this point we were all crossing the street all weird, like we had made it from one corner to the next, but like we were all now crossing across and along the street to our right, so that we were still in the middle of the street, though we were probably also about halfway up the block. At this point we wouldn't reach the other sidewalk until we were at its far corner. And everybody was going this way. We were all one long flow of people on this dark road.

The old man and probably his biking mates had stopped and turned around. I could still barely control my speech. But the old man understood me well enough. He laughed and said something about dropping his scarf -- not like dropping his scarf was something he always did, but more like randomly doing things to oblige the people around him in public situations to sort of clean up his messes or take care of him. At least one of his biking mates, an older, white woman, laughed about this and said it was true.

The young man was still there -- though, now that he had seen how the old man was interacting with me, he'd kind of shied away from the situation at present.

The bikers all pedaled slowly away. I was sort of proud of how I'd dealt with that situation. I may have projected to myself how I could handle things to my advantage in my professional life based on how I'd handled that situation. I may even have thought that the old man himself might offer me a job in the future.

But now the young man was back. I knew there was now a new reason I had to prove my innocence to him. He may have been speaking to me a little, trying to pry information out of me. I may have started telling him something, trying to sound philosophical about the ins and outs of social and professional life. But I may also have been trying to speak in a clear enough way to prove my innocence to the young man, while also in a humble enough way to make it clear to the young man that the old man would never try to give me any sort of professional position that the young man would want.

I probably knew by this time that the park I would have to eat my lunch at was just a bit off in the dark distance, possibly just across the street,(though caddycorner from where I and all these people would end up after we'd reached the corner we were aiming for).  I was hoping that by that time I'd be able to shake off this young man so he wouldn't stick around me and annoy me with his insinuations of my guilt the entire time I was eating.