stalker and sniper; david bowie in pandora's box; la derniere 3

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was riding in a big, white, 1970s style car with some other person. I'm not sure, but I think the driver was a man. I was mainly in the backseat, on the passenger side, though I think I was also sometimes in the front seat on the passenger side. We were driving through some area that was like the outskirts of a town, with hills and forested areas. But there was also a huge parking lot for some shopping center. It was probably late afternoon, and the day may have felt a little cold.

Somehow the person who was driving had figured out that another car in front of us was actually stalking us. The driver of the car may have been a woman in her fifties or sixties, still in pretty good shape, but a little worn-out looking, with shaggy, pale blonde hair that was black at the roots. The woman was driving a more modern car than our car. It may have been more of a 1990s style, with a roundish, but long, body. But I think it was also white.

I knew (I don't think the driver told me) that the driver had figured out that this woman had been keeping a steady pace in front of us the whole time, always gauging where we were going to turn and then turning in that direction. I may also have known that this woman was working for a man who was about her age, and that the two people were working for some larger group of people who assigned people to stalk other people.

We were nearing the parking lot to the shopping center (or a Walmart?). The driver told me we were going to make it look like we were heading into the shopping center. As soon as the woman had gotten fully pulled into the shopping center, we were just going to drive away. This way, even if we didn't lose the woman, we could still know for sure that she was stalking us when she started following us from behind.

So we lost the woman in the parking lot. The parking lot was on a slope. We drove up the slope, then turned right. On our left side was forested area. On our right was the slope leading down to the shopping center. We drove a ways farther, then turned right again. We headed back down the slope, still driving alongside the shopping center.

At the bottom of the slope we continued forward. I think we had been planning to go somewhere in particular. But we'd had to throw the stalker off our trail first. Even though we seemed to have done that, the driver still thought it was a good idea for us to drive around in a diverted path before we'd headed to the place we had to head to, just to make sure nobody else was following us and would be led to wherever we were trying to go.

So we drove straight forward, into a neighborhood that the driver said was really bad. A couple blocks into the neighborhood we turned left. We drove through a neighborhood of two- or three-story apartment complexes. The sun had gone down over the horizon, and everything in the neighborhood looked grey-blue. But some of the apartments actually were a worn-out, faded shaded of turquoise, which looked even worse in the evening dimness. The trees were possibly barren, like it was late autumn.

The driver told me there were snipers in the neighborhood. I don't remember how the driver knew this. The driver may have seen a sniper in one of the buildings, or we may actually have gotten shot at. I think I could see a sniper in my mind's eye. The driver may have told me to keep cover as well as I could. I crouched down low onto the floor of the backseat, though still keeping my head peeped just a little above the backseat. I was really scared.

Dream #2

I was part of a play. The play may have been just a two-person play. At first, I may have thought that I was part of a rehearsal. For some reason, as part of this rehearsal, I had to be under a dark green sheet. The stage was small, and not elevated too high from the ground. I lay crouched on all fours under this sheet. The other actor sat beside me, addressing the crowd.

The other actor had some long monologue. I knew that I also had lines. But I'm not sure when I was supposed to say them. But as the other actor continued his monologue, he somehow gave me signs that I was supposed to emerge slowly from under the sheet. At this point I saw that the actor beside me was David  Bowie. He looked kind of young. He was pale, and he had red-dyed hair.

I think that as I slowly emerged from the sheet I'd come to understand that I hadn't really been under the sheet as part of the play. David Bowie/the actor had actually kept me under the sheet as some kind of protection for me. It was like he didn't think I could stand to see the audience or something.

I looked out at the audience. This wasn't a rehearsal. It was an actual performance, and there was a full audience. The audience sat about five meters away from the stage. The stage was just a small, black square set against a black wall, on a platform maybe 25cm tall. Between the stage and the audience was just bare, black floor. The audience sat in folding chairs in somewhat steeply tiered rows of bleachers. The spotlights on the stage reflected out on the audience, so I could dimly see the people out there.

I stopped uncovering myself when I had the sheet just below my shoulders. I was in some awkward half-laying, half-crouching position, leaned sideways, with my head pointed toward David Bowie. There may have been more dark green sheets nearby.

Bowie continued with his monologue. I knew I had lines. But I didn't know when Bowie would actually cue me to say them. In fact, I was getting the feeling he was expressly not having me say my lines. My old friend R was in the audience. (When I thought of R I saw a balding, heavyset man in the audience.) If I spoke, R would know I was the character beside Bowie. He would then be jealous of me and try to ruin the show to spite me. So Bowie kept me quiet. In fear of being discovered, I had actually started chewing on the green sheet. But I still wanted to say my lines.

But now the play was over. Bowie asked everybody in the audience to give a critique of the play. One man, an older, balding white man, kind of wealthy looking, with a thin, slightly leathery and wrinkly face, and wearing a blazer, cardigan, and tie, was the only person to speak. As he spoke, I got a closer and closer view of his face. It was like his chair was right in front of the stage. But then it was like I saw his face in full closeup. At that point, all the wrinkles of his face were highlighted by something like black pencil or marker.

The man said something like, "You know, after all, this is 'Pandora's Box.' And there's a theme to this story. You should at least keep to the theme. There are things that happen in the story, and there are characters involved in the story. But you didn't have any of that.

"And... I know, maybe it's just the Hollywood style, but... you made the whole thing about sex. If you just took out the focus on sex and you just made the story fit with what the real story of Pandora's Box is all about, it might make a lot more sense to people."

I felt vindicated that the man had criticized the play. I was still bitter about not having been able to speak my lines. Any criticism of Bowie seemed like a blow in favor of the idea that I should have been allowed to speak my lines. But the man hadn't really mentioned me, or the fact that I should have been allowed to speak. I had to admit that. I also had an idea that the man would have criticized us no matter what. He just seemed to enjoy tearing people down.

We were now standing backstage. I stood off by myself, staring down at a dancer's balance pole, one of the horizontal bars fastened to a wall, usually accompanied by a wall-length mirror, so a dancer can watch their movements and balance herself as she practices. But as I looked at the pole, it became a long, green object, like a huge leaf, elongated to the size of a balance bar. The leaf was curled up in half. Along the bottom, inner side of the leaf things were written in pen. The one thing I remember was the year "1825."

I now turned to look at the rest of the room. It was a kind of big room. Off to my left, along the same wall with the balance bar, was a door leading outside. A lot of performers were walking out that door -- as if our play had actually used a whole lot of performers, some of them young females in black leotards and tight hairdos, like dancers. Across the way from that door was a dim doorway into some other room, like a seldom used prop-room.

David Bowie walked out of that room. He now stood before the man who'd criticized our performance. But now Bowie was short, maybe coming up only to the man's shoulders. He was kind of muscly and stocky, too. And his skin was all painted a greasy dark blue! His hair, a wiry, dusty-tan color, was done in a spiky flat-top on top. But the back of his hair was done in a thin braid that reached all the way down his back. Bowie wore no shirt, only a pair of shorts.

Bowie walked up to the man. He explained something to the man about the year 1825. In that year, Bowie explained, a very influential artist (someone specific, maybe a pre-Raphaelite, but I can't remember who) had decided that all artists should strip themselves of past influences. In doing so, artists would find ways to express themselves truly and purely, without bogging themselves down with cultural references.

Bowie explained how he came directly from that school. He said the title of his show, "Pandora's Box," was simply meant as an inspiration to the drama of his show. The drama wasn't supposed to coincide with Pandora's Box at all. And the show was supposed to be sexual, because Bowie felt that sexuality was true expression.

Bowie was saying all of this in a matter-of-fact, but apologetic, manner. The man was listening patiently and indifferently, as if he were by this time rather used to listening to artists justify themselves.

Dream #3

I was walking down a hallway in a movie theater. The hallway had orange or yellow walls and orange carpet. I headed down into a smaller hallway, just outside the theater where the movie I had come to see was playing.

A man and woman stood outside the theater. The man asked the woman about whether she'd seen certain movie. The woman said no. The man kind of bragged about how good the movie was (to make the woman feel bad she hadn't seen it). The man then said, "But what's crazy about it, is that the movie was so good, and already they're on the third movie of the series. In fact, that's what's playing in this theater. La Derniere 3."

I don't think I'd known -- or questioned! -- what movie I was heading to. But now that I heard that this theater was playing a film called La Derniere 3, I wondered whether I'd wanted to come to see it. It sounded like an action film. In fact, just over the door was a strip with the movie's title and an image from the movie poster. The image showed a contemporary woman riding on the back of a man who was shooting a big handgun as he swung on a rope away from a big explosion.

I decided to head into the movie anyway. I don't think I knew where else I could have gone. My view then shifted to a different movie. A young, blonde man with tan skin and shaggy hair walked into his family's house. His mother was in the house. The man and his mother were in a kitchen or a sun room. Either way, the room was very airy and filled with natural light, like there were windows all over the place, and there seemed to be plants everywhere.

The young man somehow let his mother know that he had been attacked and drugged by a group of people. He seemed to be afraid of the consequences of having been drugged. Either he was afraid he'd been drugged with something really addictive, so he'd have to go through a painful withdrawal, or else he was going to take some kind of drug test, and he was worried that the results of the test would be bad. The young man was ashamed to talk to his mom about all this, but he knew he had to.

The mom said the best way to tell if the young man would be alright would be to look at the young man's eyes. The young man's eyes were all scratchy and yellow. At first this didn't seem like a good sign. The man was really worried. I was worried, too. But on second glance, I think the mother decided that everything would likely be okay.

***

UPDATE: Added drawing to dream #2, July 30, 2012, 2:12 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

flood party; "i'm a virgin star"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was inside some huge indoor area that was flooded. The place was huge, like a convention center, but it somehow had the look of a living room. It was like, above the surface of the water, there were dry areas, along the walls of the huge space, that looked like little living rooms.

The water had risen to its crest, I believe. But it was still surging and waving a little. I was in the middle of it all. It was hard to keep my head above water after the little surges and waves. It was like I was being pulled down deep below the surface.

There were a man above the surface and a woman below the surface. Both people, I believe, were Asian, probably young, and both good looking. I think I'd see the woman when I'd get sucked below the surface. I'd think the woman was kind and pretty. But the man, when I'd come above the surface, would tell me not to let the woman suck me under. He told me the woman would keep me under if I let her suck me under.

I was now wary of the woman. I got sucked under again. But I saw the woman again, and somehow she convinced me to stay under the water for a little bit longer. She was really cute. She wore a tight, leopard print tank top and tiny, blue jean shorts.

I had descended all the way down to the bottom of the water. I was now afraid. I had done what the man had told me not to do. Would I drown? I could feel that I'd need air soon.

But now I found I could breathe underwater. I looked around. It was like there was a little living room down here. I was surprised. But, I thought, it looked like the perfect place to have parties. Probably, I thought, this woman invites people over all the time to have wild parties. I thought that now that I lived down here with the woman, I'd have to deal with all these annoying wild parties.

The woman, I knew, had swum up to the surface. I kept waiting for her to return. I think I really wanted to see her legs again, in those tiny jean shorts.

Dream #2

I was driving a vehicle with my brother at night. We were driving down a road like a main road that ran just along the suburban residential neighborhood my family lived in when I was in high school. The vehicle I drove was something like a mix between some sort of cargo truck and a motor home. But the front area, the cabin, seemed somehow to be separated from the motor home part. The cabin also seemed to have two or more seats behind the front row of seats. My brother sat in one of the backseats.

At some point in time my mother got into the car. She may have come in through the driver's side door. But I was still driving, while my mom sat in the front passenger's seat. My mom may have started making comments about my driving, probably about how she thought I didn't know where I was going.

I tried to ignore my mom and just keep my thoughts on the road. But now my mom had pulled some of my notebook journals out of a book bag or backpack I had lying on the floor. She started making comments about how some of the stuff I had written was inappropriate. She may even have torn pages out of the notebooks or threatened to tear the pages out.

I was really angry that my mom had messed around with my notebooks. I told her to put my notebooks away and leave my stuff alone. Now she was really offended. She may have been silent in a really sulky way, or she may have said some really needling things to me, to make me feel bad for having criticized her.

I did feel bad, now. But I wasn't going to apologize. I wasn't going to lose focus of the road either. My mom had no right just going through my stuff the way she did.

I knew where I needed to get now. I knew I needed to get to a certain street (I can't remember) in a certain neighborhood. I knew that no way would be quick. But I knew there was a somewhat direct way, given where we were. I knew I had to go up to a certain street and turn left. But I could only turn left on that street if I was paying attention the whole time. I kept myself in a frame of mind where I felt like I was paying attention.

Suddenly, though, there were a bunch of women walking through the street in the opposite direction from my vehicle. There were maybe twenty of them. They all looked, I guess, like Gretel in the fairy tale of "Hansel and Gretel." They wore white caps with hook-shaped twists coming down over the ears and then back up. They wore yellow-skirted dresses with black tops and white shirts underneath. The tops seemed to be laced somehow. They all seemed to be part of some club. And they were all walking at random through the street.

I was doing everything I could to dodge all the Gretel girls and to keep my focus on where I needed to turn. But at one point my mom grabbed the steering wheel. She forced the steering wheel over so that the vehicle pulled all the way over to the left (my left) side of the road. It seemed like we almost hit a few Gretel girls as we veered to the side of the road. But they all seemed to have gotten out of our way.

My mom had now made me a nervous wreck. I stopped the car. My mom was yelling and screaming at me about how I'd almost hit all those girls. The vehicle was swaying too and fro. Even though I was still in the big vehicle, it actually felt like I was on something that I was having a hard time balancing, like a motorcycle. I told my mom that I was done driving while she was in the vehicle. If she wanted us to go anywhere, she could drive.

I pulled the vehicle over into some dirt lot, which may have been an RV lot. My mom and brother and I got out. My sister may now also have been with us, as well as a couple other family members, maybe some of my nephews. All the lights in the vehicle were on, and the headlights of the vehicle were also left on.

As we got out of the vehicle, my ex-girlfriend H came walking up to me. She was holding some books or notebooks. She said she was so happy finally to see everybody in my family. Everybody else was walking away from the vehicle. So I told H that I'd introduce her to everybody in a moment. She may have tried interacting with them already, although they hadn't seemed to interact with her. I realized I hadn't told my family anything about H. So they didn't know her to interact with her.


H's lips were all messed up. It was like the flesh of her lips had been replaced with something like a dried pudding, or maybe scabs. Her lips didn't puff out, either. They were flat, even a tiny bit sunken in.


H and I headed up into the vehicle. The living area part of the vehicle could now be accessed through the back end of the cabin. There was a kind of tall bed. I had my bookbag on the bed.


H was asking me something about how my life was going. I was trying to explain to her that my job in Colorado really wasn't working out, and that I had to find something else to do. I told her something about some project somewhere. It was some kind of project, maybe scientific, that somebody had approached me about without my having made any first contact with them. But it ended up sounding like something I really wanted to do.


But when I'd thought about doing it, I explained to H, I hesitated. I'd come back to Colorado to be with my family. This assignment would take me out of Colorado. So I didn't know if it really would be right for me to do it.


I knew that I had all the documents relating to the project in my book bag. I could see in my mind's eye the cover of some book. The cover was blue, with a white drawing of one hemisphere of a globe. There were possibly white drawings of something like olive leafs crossing below the drawing of the globe.


I thought if I could show the documentation to H, she could see what I was talking about. Maybe she'd be impressed that this organization contacted me directly to ask me to work for them. But when I pulled the documents out of my bookbag -- I saw that the offer had expired! I was supposed to reply by a certain time. I'd missed the window. The offer was no longer good!


I threw the papers down on the ground and began crying. I told H, "It doesn't matter anymore! It doesn't matter! It's all over with! I can't do anything!" I walked over to the windshield of the vehicle. I looked down into the light from the headlights to see if I could find my family.


Everything went black. I may have still been having some sort of conversation with H. The conversation may have continued as the light faded back in. I found myself in a subway station, something like the Times Square subway station. I was heading up out of the station.


But I was stuck behind three young men. The men were either white or white and Hispanic. They wore baggy t-shirts, cocked baseball caps, and baggy jean shorts. They were walking in all kinds of weird ways. At some point either I may have wondered whether they had something wrong with their legs, or else they may actually have had something wrong with their legs.


I went up either an escalator or staircase behind these guys. It was hard to get around them. I got around them as everybody passed through the exit turnstiles of the station. But then we all turned left through some small, kind of dumpy-looking shopping area. The guys had managed to loop around some column where nobody had been walking and get right in front of me again. They were still walking around all crazy and laughing with each other, like they enjoyed slowing down people's walking. But I don't think they were aware of me in particular.

Finally a lot of us who had exited the subway were heading up an escalator into a shopping center. I knew I couldn't stand waiting behind these guys at all anymore. I had to get up ahead of them before we all got jammed onto this escalator. So I maneuvered my way ahead of the guys. The guys all seemed surprised that I'd gotten past them. Maybe I'd done it a little forcibly or awkwardly. The guys may have been offended. I hoped not. I didn't want to get in a fight with them later on.

I was now in a real hurry just to get out of wherever I was trying to get out of or to get to wherever I was trying to get to. I also wanted to get enough distance between me and the guys that they couldn't catch back up with me and pass me later on, maybe making some comment like "Why didn't you just stay behind us, if we were going to pass you anyway?"

The escalator was really steep. But I was running up it two steps at a time. I could even sense that the guys behind me were kind of amazed that I was so serious about getting wherever I needed to go.

There were a lot fewer people on the escalator by the time I got to the top of it. I was now on the floor of what looked like a shopping mall. But I knew I still had to keep going up. There was another escalator. I had to run to and up that escalator as well. This escalator was even steeper than the last. There was probably nobody other than me on this escalator. It was really difficult for me to get to the top of it. But I managed.

I was on another floor like a floor in a shopping mall. I could see another escalator. This one was really small, and the steps on it almost looked like steps on a regular old staircase. I ran to it. But getting up it was unbelievably difficult. I was already extremely exhausted. And the steps were so steep, it was almost like climbing backwards. And -- I could see, just beyond this escalator, that I had one last escalator to climb -- a tall one -- even steeper than the rest!

At the top of the small escalator I decided to take a break. I may have determined that I was far, far ahead of the guys now and that I didn't need to worry about them anymore. I was on another floor like the floor of a shopping mall. I sat down on a rather nice bench which seemed to be cushioned and upholstered in something like brown fake suede.

Off to my right was a shop with a dark front. It looked like a clothing store inside -- some kind of dimly lit, trendy clothing store, perhaps. But on the left (my left) side of the shop front was a slim, glass window with a TV screen.

The TV screen was playing some music video. The music video was colorful, with yellows and pinks and whites, and I liked it a lot. It may have looked like it was from the 1980s. But I can't remember it now. But I had the ability to control the TV, maybe by a game joystick. And I played the video two or three times in a row.

A second music video now played. It also looked like it was from the 1980s. But the color scheme was a lot more drab and sinister. There were a couple, a man and a woman, watching the screen now. They must have come from inside the shop. As the couple watched the screen I realized that the space around the screen was  filled with something like a Japanese scroll, patterned with something like orange and green flowers, very blocky and circular, on a white background.

After a moment, though, they walked away from the screen. The couple were white, somewhat well-off looking, and maybe in their late thirties or early forties. The woman was pretty. The man was overweight, balding, with a red beard and a little red hair and eyeglasses. Both the man and the woman were wearing kimonos. One wore a purple kimono with white designs. Another wore an orange kimono with white designs.

I was kind of surprised that an older white couple would be walking through the mall wearing kimonos. But now I saw another white couple walking out of the clothing shop wearing kimonos. One of the kimonos was mint green. Then there were three or four more white people, these ones single or in a group of friends, walking out of the shop and also wearing kimonos! I was surprised, but I probably just assumed that this was the new fashion.

I went back to the music video. It was finishing, and I wanted to replay it. But a man who had sat down beside me while I'd been looking at all the kimono people now had the joystick. He wanted to play some other music video.

I figured that would be cool. I'd gotten kind of obsessed with the first music video. And I didn't want to get obsessed with the second music video, too. But I would have, if this man hadn't been here to stop me. Besides, it would be nice to see someone else's tastes in music. You always learned cool, new artists that way.

But the man was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get a music video to play. I'm not sure if he'd made me feel like I shouldn't help him. But I didn't help him. I just waited for him to figure out how to work the joystick so he could play a music video. But after a moment, I realized it was going to take him a really long time to figure things out.

I stood up and walked away from the area. It was like I was in the kitchen of some kind of big, but run-down house. But the kitchen was supposed to be more like the living room of the house. There was a tall stairway leading up to some place that I felt like I needed to get to. So I headed toward the staircase.

But the man, sensing that I was annoyed with his having taken control of the joystick and then having no idea of what to do with it, but still wanting to keep me around -- just to control me, I guess -- called after me, in a kind of loose, but menacing tone, "Hey, stay upstairs." The man meant that I should stay on the floor I was currently on. Apparently there was a downward staircase as well as the upward one, though I couldn't see it. The man thought I was taking the downward staircase, but he didn't want me to.

I knew it wasn't that he didn't want me to go downstairs. It was that he didn't want me to leave this floor -- his sphere of control. But I went upstairs anyway. I figured that if the man bugged me about it later, I'd just tell him that I thought when he'd told me to stay upstairs he'd simply meant that I shouldn't go downstairs.

The staircase was long and steep, and it got dimmer and dimmer as I went up. Finally I was in a small room, kind of like a bedroom. It was really cluttered and dim, though there was a light coming from some other room -- apparently a tiny staircase that went up into an attic -- off to my right.

I realized this was my old friend Y's bedroom. I don't know if Y went on vacation for a little while or went to live somewhere for a longer time. But she'd left a lot of stuff here. She had a bunch of old movies, books, and music that I was either familiar with and liked a lot or that I'd been curious about but had never gotten a chance to check out.

There was a bookshelf along the left wall. I went as close to it as I could -- it seemed to be blocked off by a bunch of haphazardly placed and stacked furniture -- cushiony, upholstered with some kind of fake, blue suede or crushed velvet material. But I could reach over the furniture to one of the upper shelves.

I pulled down a few DVD cases. The DVDs were anime DVDs. The titles all seemed almost, but not quite, familiar to me. It was like they were all series based very closely on series I was familiar with, but with just a few odd, unsettling differences. The titles also seemed to be like that -- almost familiar, but with weird, unsettling differences.

One of the DVD cases showed a tall, long-legged woman with short brown hair, and wearing a short, yellow tank top and tiny, yellow shorts, leaning her bottom against the left side of the DVD case and carrying a fancy parasol in one of her hands.

I was interested in one of the DVDs. I thought I'd play it. I was now watching it -- probably in my mind's eye, although my mind's eye had expanded into my full view. The cartoon dealt with a young demon character. The character was young and naive, but he looked old, almost like Cherry in Urusei Yatsura. There was another demon who looked like the young demon, except that he was much older, purple, more demon-like, and naked.

The setting was some big, empty, wooden room, like some kind of traditional Japanese room. But it was apparently supposed to be used for washing dishes. The young demon had made a mistake and had broken a dish. The older demon knew how to play on the young demon's sense of guilt. He wanted to young demon to go away. So he was trying to make the young demon feel like the broken dish would put him in a very dangerous, or at least shameful, situation with the master.

The young demon believed this and was about to leave the master's residence. But some accident occurred. It was like, without the young demon's will, the young demon's magic created, or at least assisted, the situation. Every plate in the room was swept up, broken, shattered into tiny, tiny pieces of dust. The plate dust spun and spun around the room, like a cyclone, eventually whirling in purple clouds against the walls.

The young demon himself was pushed back against the walls. It was almost like the cloud of plate dust was pulverizing him into the wall, integrating him into the wall. But eventually the cloud of plate dust subsided. Everything seemed to be okay. Either all the plates were fixed, or else all the plates had reconfigured themselves into something that was enough value to replace the plates as they had been before.

The young demon stepped out from the wall. He now looked like the older demon. He was purple, more demon-like than human, more featureless, with purple wings coming off his back, and naked. He now understood -- or at least the audience understood -- that the older demon had been playing around with the young demon this whole time. The one dish the young demon had broken didn't matter. The older demon had made a lot more mistakes than that in his life. And now the older demon was paying for all his tricks.

The young demon looked over to a doorway that was on the wall to his right. The wall around the doorway now looked like a tree trunk. And now, embedded in the wall, where the canopy of this tree would have been, was a gigantic plate. The plate was veined over with tree roots, but other than that it was whole, embedded into the wall. The young demon understood that that was what had happened, either to the plates that had been in the plate dust cyclone, or else to the plates that the old demon had broken.

And now the young demon saw the older demon's face printed onto the giant plate, drawn onto it like one of Leonardo's old drawings. The young demon knew that the older demon was trapped on the plate forever. The older demon looked angry. The young demon knew that if the older demon could ever escape, he would try to find a way to hurt the young demon. But the young demon knew that the older demon would never escape.

There was now a strange scene, showing, somehow, the torture the older demon was going through. There was a close up on the demon's face. It pulled closer and closer in, until it got up to the demon's eye. Then, inside the demon's eye, the demon's face reappeared. The view pulled closer and closer to that demon's eye. Then the demon's face appeared in that eye. This tunnel effect happened again and again, until finally the view approached an eye that was shut. The eye opened -- and it was blank!

The cartoon faded to black. I now realized I was watching, not a DVD, but a VCR tape. The cartoon I'd been watching had been dubbed onto this tape by my friend Y. I now waited to see what the next thing was that my friend Y had dubbed onto this tape.

An experimental film faded into view. I knew that the film was by an experimental filmmaker both Y and I liked quite a bit. The basic theme of the film was showing the filmmaker's daughters. There would be an old, black and white photo of one of the daughters as a child. Then a superimposed, color film image of the daughter would fade into view. The daughter would be moving, probably doing some sort of repetitive motion that the filmmaker was accustomed to see her doing.

The film may have shown one older daughter and then the youngest daughter. As the film showed the youngest daughter, I reflected on how pretty the girl had been as a little girl. Although she was pretty as she'd gotten older, something about her face had changed. She wasn't overweight. But something about her face had made her seem overweight. (I'm sorry for the shallow thought.)

The film now faded away and I was looking at the youngest daughter in real life. She was in some bathroom in some apartment or hotel on some high floor. I stood just outside the bathroom, looking up to the woman, more as if I were a small child than myself.

The woman was maybe nineteen or twenty years old. She was tall, with tan skin, a kind of athletic build, and short, blonde and brown hair in a squarish, boyish style. She wore a white tank top, maybe with another, colored, tank top beneath it.

The woman was putting on blue eye shadow and practicing making sexy faces in the mirror. I had the idea that the woman was making sexy faces in hopes of seducing a woman. I felt like the woman really didn't like boys. But the way she was making sexy faces was really turning me on. I had to talk to her.

So, hoping to start out neutral and see how far I could get from there, I asked the woman something about film making. The woman, instead of facing the mirror, was now standing behind the bathroom counter, in the spot where the mirror had been. She was really dressed up, and now her hair was long, probably done up in an upward style, She wore a mask that looked like blue eyeshadow, except that it went straight up, like her eyelids were poking all the way up to the top of her forehead.

The woman could tell that I was only talking innocent to get some sort of starting point with her, and that I was really looking to seduce her. So, in order to throw me off and make me understand she didn't and wouldn't like me, she told me, "I'm a virgin star!"

I understood and left the woman alone, although I did seem to be impressed that someone as sexy as she was could be a virgin star. We were now heading out of the hotel or apartment building, walking toward the front doors through a airy and bright, but rather empty, foyer. I stopped about halfway through the foyer and watched as the woman met up with a few of her friends -- male and female. The friends all looked tall, well-dressed, and well-off. I still felt as tiny as a child, maybe only about 75cm tall.

At some point everybody in the group turned around to look at me. Either one of the group asked me something about David Bowie, or I asked the group something about David Bowie. It immediately became apparent that I knew David Bowie. And now, because of this, I went from being totally ignored to being paid attention to by everybody in the group.