grocery store criticism; a sculpture garden of friends

Dream 1

I was standing in a grocery store. It was a huge structure with dark cinder block walls and dusty floors. It was only lit by natural light, which was kind of orange, like the sun was low in the sky.

The grocery store may have been flooded out. I may have stood in the grocery store while it had been flooded. I may have been a little surprised by how back the grocery store looked. Everything was in disarray. There were no shelves for the food. Everything was just piled up. But I may have told myself this was just because of the flood.

But now the flood was gone. People were working on getting the grocery store back to normal. In fact, the grocery store was just about to reopen.

I was walking around, looking at the store. I was surprised by how rundown it looked. The floor was just dirt in many places, though it was concrete in others.

The store was more like a factory or warehouse than a grocery store. It had a kind of L or maybe U shape. And one side was like it was divided into cinder-block rooms, like different large storage rooms, at the end of which may have been a big, wide opening to the outside.

A woman, maybe Hispanic, came up to me and asked me what I thought of the store. We started walking back toward the front of the store.

I wanted to give the woman a somewhat honest opinion. This place didn't look like a grocery store at all to me. But I also didn't want to make the woman feel bad about the place -- especially if it was about to reopen. I decided to stick to the stuff I liked and try and sound as objective as possible about that stuff.

We stood out near the front of the store, right at the corner of the L or U. We were looking toward the doors into the grocery store, which were like automated swinging glass doors. Workers were coming in and out of the doors. They were also going around the doors, like the front of the store continued beyond the entrance, like the entrance was just inset into the store about halfway along the front of the store.

I commented on how I liked the space at the front of the store. I said the place felt spacious. I said that was a good feel for a grocery store, as most grocery stores are pretty wide and open. I was trying to say -- though I couldn't find a nice way to say it -- that I couldn't quite understand why the store wasn't just a big, open square like most grocery stores.

I then said that I liked the floors in this part of the store. They were made of concrete. But they could probably use a little bit of sweeping before the store opened. I may have made a mental note to myself to avoid reviewing any of the places where the floor was dirt. But I couldn't remember where those places were. The front of the store itself may have had dirt floors before. But now the floors were concrete.

I may now also have wondered where all the products were. There was nothing in the front area. The space was completely empty, except maybe some kind of plyboard leaning against the wall and a bit of construction clutter next to that.

Dream 2

I may have been at a party for some art community, maybe the Denver art community. It was getting toward early morning. A lot of people were leaving. The party had been outside. The party had possibly been big, with a lot of people, many of whom were now filing away.

Among the people, I saw my friend LN, who is the owner of a Denver art gallery. I had kind of stopped being friends with her about a year ago. I shyly called out to LN. I was happy to see her. But I was a little afraid she'd be mad at me and wouldn't want to talk to me.

LN seemed happy to see me, but in a subdued sort of way. I was so relieved that she wasn't mad at me that I hugged her tightly and told her how much I missed her. I hugged her kind of awkwardly, from the side, though with both arms. And while I hugged her we kept walking forward.

LN wore a kind of tight shirt, more like a bodysuit with jeans over it. The top was kind of pink-beige, with a soft but ridged or ribbed feeling to it. And the chest was lacy, like a bra had been built into it. I may have reflected that LN would usually not wear an outfit like that.

We were almost totally alone now. We were walking down a sidewalk on a slope that may have been bordered by a park or field on our right. A couple of party stragglers may have been walking near us. But soon even they were gone. The edge of the horizon may have been getting a tiny bit lighter with morning.

LN and I turned off the sidewalk and into the field. I don't think I ever let go of LN. I may have been talking to her about how bad I felt about not talking to her and about how I really did like her. But at some point she may have said that we needed to hurry on our walk. Apparently we needed to get across this field within some time frame -- either before the sun rose, or before some bus we were trying to catch reached a stop on the other end of the field.

We were moving through a field of tan, waist-high grass. We passed a lone tree with no leafs. After this it may have been like LN picked me up and ran with me in her arms. But it wasn't like she was carrying me in her arms. It was more like she was embracing me and arching her back a bit so my feet were a couple inches off the ground.

We sped through the field. I suddenly realized this field had been turned into a garden of abstract or conceptual sculpture. One sculpture was an abstract shape made out of mirror-like chrome. Another sculpture (or the same sculpture?) may have had bright neon or LED lights on it. I may have felt like LN and I had purposely come to this field so we could review the sculpture garden.

We headed up a slope near the end of the field. At this point I was carrying LN. It was like she was tired or maybe even sick. I may have been carrying LN in my arms. But we still sped along -- almost like we were floating rather than running.

It was pretty light now, maybe way past sunrise. We made it to the bus stop. A young guy may have been heading toward the bus stop, too.

LN and I were now in some room, a kind of small room, maybe with cheap, fake-wood-paneled walls, at the very back end of some sort of makeshift office building. We may have been sitting at some really low, circular table, in chairs that were probably too big for this small room. Our belongings, like coats, bags, etc., may have been cluttered all over the room.

LN stood up and said she had to go into a meeting now, and that it had been nice to see me. We were now not quite in the same room we had been in before. There was a glass door into another room.

A young man who was probably famous in town as a rapper or poet walked into the room beyond the glass door. LN was scheduled to interview the man, probably for some project they were hoping to collaborate on. Both LN and the man wanted to impress each other, as they were both hoping for success from this project. But LN probably wanted to impress the man more than he wanted to impress her.

But when I saw the young man, I was really excited. I poked my head into the room as LN walked in and said hello to the man. I said hello to the man. I may also have said something about how I thought it was cool he was working with LN.

At the same time another young man walked into the room, probably from an entrance directly from outside, on the left wall of the room. The first man may have been Hispanic. The second man was black. I also recognized him as a rapper or poet from around town. I also said I was really excited to see that he was working with LN.

The first man may have recognized me a tiny bit from around town. He seemed to be a bit more relaxed now that I said I was happy to see him. He said something to me and then closed the door to start the interview with LN.

I stood (maybe even sat? like a pet dog?) out in front of the door for a second. I gloated a little to myself that one advantage I had over LN was that I actually knew the artists around town in human terms. I didn't think of them as business propositions. And that always made people feel more comfortable.

I walked back into the small room LN and I had been in. I knew the men would think it weird if they found me outside the door. They were here to interview with LN. And it would be awkward if I kept putting my nose in their business. Anyway, it was getting to be time for me to leave.

I picked up my belongings and was getting ready to leave. Now LN was in the room. She was also picking up her belongings. She was apparently getting ready to leave, too. But it was also like she still had to continue her interview with the young men.

LN spoke to me a bit about some money troubles she was having. It was like she and her husband were barely scraping by for a living. They were even worried about getting kicked out of their place. In fact, they may have gotten kicked out of the place they'd been in when I'd last spoken with LN. They may now have been living in some non-residential space that some friends had let them stay in. They may even have been living in this space. LN may even have been preparing her bedding so she could get some sleep.

I thought back to all the reasons I'd been angry at LN. And I started feeling really guilty. After all, it wasn't really worth it to be mad at her. She liked me. I knew that. And, yes, she was sort of stuck up sometimes. But, really, that was just part of her act. At the end of the day, her reality was this. She was trying to build up young artists' careers. And while she was doing this, she was basically making no money at all.

LN led a hard and frustrating life. And wouldn't it be better of me, I thought, if I could stop being so hard on her and just play her game, let her act her act, and let her feel good about herself for a change?

not quite hired; nephew's medical dilemma; a sculpture in new york

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a job interview. It was supposed to be a professional place, but it looked more like the backstage area of a theater. It seemed to be full of worktables and cluttered everywhere with colored fabrics and trinkets. There was one little office where my interviewer, MH, sat. The room was buried within the clutter of the rest of the place.

MH had decided that he wouldn't be able to hire me. He seemed to be disappointed in my interview. I walked away from the office, rather disappointed in myself and depressed. But only a few seconds later (though it may have felt, in some way, like it was a day or two later), MH walked out and implied that he would like to hire me after all.

MH set up some kind of desk space for me on one of the work tables by clearing off some of the piles of colored fabrics and laying down a laptop. MH hadn't quite told me he'd like me to work for him. Instead, he told me something like he needed me to stick around for a while. He said he needed some kind of data entered into a system before some event occurred, like the visit of some clients. He was just asking me if I could do this project as a favor to him. But I understood that if I did this project well, I'd probably stick around for even longer.

A couple other guys now started filtering into the room. They looked young, like recent college graduates. One of them seemed to be dressed in business casual clothes. But at least one other guy was dressed in a strange, but somewhat fashionable way. One of these guys was very short and pale. He had slightly shaggy, black hair. He wore pale, greyish jeans and a pale, greyish, denim jacket. Something else about his attire looked very clunky an 1980s-style.

The young men, when they saw me, seemed to be jealous of me, wondering whether I wasn't here to take away their jobs. I tried to make a point, apparently through my body language, that I was here to do a completely different job, not to take anybody's job.

To prove this, at one point, I stood up right when the grey denim boy was walking past me. I may have been planning to show him something. Instead, the young man became a little frightened of me and began walking backwards as I walked forward. But somehow we began talking, and eventually we were talking either about something we both liked (like some kind of art) or about some kind of project I'd now volunteered to help the grey denim boy with.

I may have been a little worried, now, about helping the grey denim boy with a project. It seemed like he was kind of weird. I didn't know if everybody else would think I was weird for helping this boy with something. But then I realized that most everybody else here also dressed weird. So nobody would think anything about it.

The grey denim boy and I had cleared off some of the clutter of colored fabrics from a work table. There was now a whole cookie sheet of sweet-looking desserts. The desserts were like scone-sized globs of maple, pecans, and sugar, all clumped and crystallized together. There wasn't any crust or pastry or anything attached to these sugary globs.

The whole team of workers was now, apparently, gathering together to have some kind of a team meal and meeting. We gathered at a table in the center of the room. There were little spaces cleared out for each of us, so we could sit down our meals, or desserts, and our laptops. But the clutter was so high that we couldn't see around it to the other people sitting at the table with us.

The meeting never seemed to start or finish. Instead, people seemed to take forever to sit down, and then they'd stand right back up and walk away. I sat at my space, waiting for instructions or something. I thought about eating my dessert. But I felt bad about doing so. I knew that eating too much during the day would make my body act weird. I was trying to figure whether I could somehow work eating the dessert into a schedule that would be okay for my body.

Dream #2

I was in an elevator with an older man. The man was white, stood tall, wore a nice business suit, and had fine, white hair. The elevator we were in was going straight up at first. But then it began going upward and forward, diagonally, like we were traveling in an elevator car, but along the tracks of an escalator.

We were, I knew, going up to the 23rd (or 28th?) floor. I knew that my youngest nephew had just been admitted to the hospital. He was sick, possibly with a pulmonary illness. The old man and I were coming to visit my nephew. I believe that we understood, at this point, that nobody else in the family knew about my nephew's condition, including my sister and my mom, who lived with and took care of my nephew.

The doctors wanted to give my nephew some medication. But the doctors didn't know what medication to give him. They apparently couldn't get a hold of my sister or mother, so they called me. The old man and I were now standing just outside the hospital.

I got the message from the doctors via text on my phone. I didn't know how to respond to it. I thought that before I responded to anything, it would be a good idea to try and get a hold of my mother and sister. After some trying, I may have gotten a hold of my mother and sister.

In fact, my sister may now have been sitting near me, on some brick ledge surrounding a raised planting area that held some small trees and shrubs. I may have tried to make a point to my sister that I hadn't been trying to control her life or her son's life by engaging in a conversation with the doctors.

I "said" (or just "felt to" my sister) that the doctors had contacted me, and that I was surprised they'd done so. I "said" that I had only been planning to respond to the doctors because I hadn't been able to get a hold of my sister or mom. I thought that if I couldn't get a hold of anybody, I'd have to respond. The situation seemed too important. It seemed like someone needed to make a decision sooner rather than later, to make sure my nephew was taken care of.

Dream #3

I was looking at a book of sculptures by Japanese artists. The artists all had a style very much like the style for which Takashi Murakami is famous: plastic-looking, cartoon-themed, and visually bubbly and complex. But a lot of the artists didn't color their works. The works would largely be all white.

The book had photos of these sculptures in stores all over the world. Some of the stores may have been cleared out to become temporary exhibit spaces for larger collections of art works. Other stores may have carried on with their business, with just one large piece of sculpture placed in the middle of a store.

The final photo I looked at was of a store I think I recognized as The Disney Store in New York City -- even though it was nothing like The Disney Store. It looked more like a bookstore. There were bookshelves spaced widely apart. The store was kind of small. The walls were barn-red. The ceilings were high. In the center of this store stood a tall, white pedestal with a small, white sculpture of a bulging-headed, Mickey Mouse-like character.

Even though I was looking at a book, the picture began moving panning toward the side, as if I were watching a video on a TV or computer. I felt like I knew the view I had been looking at. But now that the view was shifting, I was feeling less and less familiar with it. The idea of what place I was looking at had only slowly been dawning on me. Now I was losing my focus on what I was looking at.

At the same time, two girls, maybe both Asian girls, began talking near me. One of the girls was my friend. The other girl was my friend's friend, though she may have been my friend as well. My friend and I may have been on some kind of trip together. My friend and her friend were now talking about the various attractions in whatever city we were visiting. (Oddly enough, we may have been standing in the same place that the photo in the book was showing.)

I needed to get back to the first view this moving photo had shown. I put my finger down on the paper and swiped my finger over to the left. The photo, which had been panning off to the right, now moved left (I think). It now reached the original spot. This view looked mostly like the original view, even though I think there were some changes to the view that looked a little uncanny and frustrating to me.

I suddenly called out to the two girls, "Look! It's the Disney Store in New York! I can recognize it!" The girls may have looked at the photo for a moment, not really paying attention to what I was saying. Then they may have looked away. I had felt like it was really important for me to show that I knew the view. I was trying to prove to the girls that I had lived in New York, and that I knew the sights of New York. I was starting to think that nobody really believed anymore that I had ever lived in New York.