lake panic

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked along a concrete path that went around a lake in a small natural area. I was coming from the right end of the lake, and I was walking clockwise around the lake. It seemed to be late afternoon. The sun seemed to have gone down, and the atmosphere was a silvery, pale blue. The lake was bordered by a small slope that came down to the sidewalk and was covered in dry, tan grass, so that I couldn't quite see the lake.

I may have been singing or whistling a little tune to myself when I saw three coyotes or wolves walking in a row near the edge of the lake. The coyotes didn't seem very mean, but I was afraid of them. I had just come from an area of the natural area where humans had been attacked, maybe by a big feline or canine. I worried that making the wrong move could set these three coyotes off in the same way the other animals had been set off, so that they'd attack me.

A shrill, loud whistle, like a steam whistle or an alarm whistle, sounded off in the distance, possibly to my left, away from the lake. The whistle shocked me, but it terrified the coyotes, who jumped into the lake to defend themselves. The coyotes swam in fear toward the center of the lake.

The noise had stopped. But now whole droves of different kinds of animals were flushing out of the lands of the natural area and jumping into the lake, swimming into the lake in reaction to their fear of the loud whistle.. Soon the lake was filled with different kinds of animals.

I continued walking around the lake. As I did, semi-trucks began driving alongside me, as if the path, and probably the thin strip of grassy slope between me and the lake, were road. There seemed to be a whole line of semi-trucks driving alongside me.

I now realized I was at work, and that the semis were somehow a part of my job. I now looked closely at all the semis as they passed, feeling like I needed to make sure something in particular about them was in good condition. It wasn't like my job was to inspect the trucks. I was something more like a driver or a passenger. But everybody kind of had the responsibility to make sure each truck in the fleet was in good shape.

I had worked my way about halfway around the lake. Some of the trucks appeared to be driving into the lake. I focused intensely on some of these trucks driving into the lake. I now found myself walking or riding in a truck (while a young man drove) under some bridge near the back end of the lake.

As I came out from under the bridge, I noticed a barge-like vehicle floating on the lake. The front of the vehicle was the red cab of a semi-truck. Behind the cab was something like the deck of a barge or a flatbed trailer for a semi-truck. Fixed into the center of the flat area was a stout, wide chimney that blew out smoke. I realized that this vehicle, whatever it was, ran on steam power.

My view may have shifted onto the barge-like vehicle, or I may have continued driving along in the semi-truck. But I now came back basically to the same point at which I'd started walking along the lake. Now this point was like a headquarters for my job.

I stood inside a small building like a trailer that had been transformed into a small office. It seemed at first that my shift was over for the day. The other drivers, young men, but kind of big and grizzly looking, so that they looked a lot older than they were, and wearing overall outfits, were filing into and out of the office, like they were taking care of some final paperwork before they headed home.

But some leader-like man, kind of thin and tall, much more prim-looking than everybody else, and standing at a tall but thin counter jutting out from the wall, asked me and my partner (whom I didn't see) if we knew about the whereabouts of some vehicle. My partner knew. He told the leader that the vehicle was in a town about a 90-minute drive away from here. The leader asked if we could go get the vehicle. My partner said we could. We would take my partner's car to get down there.

My partner walked away to get something in preparation for our trip to go get the vehicle. The leader told me that I probably had a few minutes until my partner and I left. He said I could probably go take my lunch break. He asked me if I'd eaten lunch or brought a lunch.

I kind of stumbled with my answer. I don't like eating lunch, and I seldom bring lunches to work. But I told the leader yes, not really knowing what question I was saying yes to. I only hoped the leader wouldn't make me prove I had a lunch now that I'd said yes. I was afraid that if the leader found out I didn't actually have a lunch he'd force me to eat a lunch that he'd get for me.

I decided that, in order at least to look like I was eating lunch, I'd better walk out of the leader's sight. I walked off to my left and down a hallway that hadn't been there before (before, off to my left was the doorway exiting the small, narrow makeshift office).

My grandmother was now walking beside me. She seemed to be about a head shorter than I, maybe even shorter. She was bouncing up and down around me and speaking excitedly about a whole bunch of things. It was kind of annoying. She seemed to feel an urgent need to have all of my attention. It was stifling.

I tried to escape from my grandma. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I walked down the hallway to a restroom. The restroom was for men, but my grandma followed me in. I tried to explain that the restroom was for men. But my grandma wouldn't listen to me. She charged past me and locked herself in a stall at the end of the room.

I hoped I could get rid of my grandma while she was in the stall. I quickly left the restroom and ran down a couple long hallways to another men's restroom. But my grandma somehow followed me there, too. As I was about to unzip my pants and use a urinal, I discovered my grandma standing right there beside me.

I decided that if my grandma was going to keep running into all the men's restrooms after me, I might as well try running into a women's restroom to get away. I ran down a couple hallways and found a women's restroom.

The restroom was huge and full of women, mostly women with children. At first I was shy about walking into the restroom. But after a moment I didn't care. I did seem to have gotten away from my grandma. I started looking for an empty stall I could use.

I walked past one stall in front of which a mother knelt on the floor, putting a little girl in diapers. The girl was maybe five or six years old, too old for diapers. She was blonde, with kind of tan skin. She wore no pants, only a long-sleeved, black sweater with horizontal white stripes down the front.

The little girl seemed to be embarrassed that she was seen by a boy as she was being put into diapers. She stood up, grabbed the diaper off the floor, and ran into the stall behind her mother. The little girl's sister (who may have been younger than the little girl) was in the stall, apparently using the toilet. The little girl somehow proclaimed that she wasn't going to wear diapers like a baby, but that she was going to use the toilet, as if she always used the toilet.

I walked to another stall that seemed empty. A mother sat in front of it with two daughters. The daughters were maybe nine or ten years old, but they acted less than half that age. Nobody was using the stall behind the mother, so I opened the door to walk in.

One of the daughters, a pale girl with very, very long red hair, stood up and tried to follow me into the stall. The mother may have stopped her. I closed the door behind me. But the little girl was standing close to the door, like she was still trying to find a way to get into the stall with me.

The stall was kind of gross, like people had peed all over the walls, floor, and toilet. The toilet now also seemed huge: there was no way I could stand and urinate over the top. But nothing seemed out of proportion. It was like I had somehow become a little child, not more than two or three years old, and I was facing a regular-sized toilet.

There was some weird kind of children's ride, like a plastic cartoon animal model attached to a standing metal frame by springs, so that it would bounce up and down as the child rode it. But it was tipped on its side and covered in urine. I climbed up onto that urine soaked object, trying to find the driest parts for my feet.

I now stood over the toilet seat. At the front of the seat was some object like a child's potty-training seat that attached to an adult toilet. I knew I had to pee into that object. The potty-training seat was plastic and made to look like Santa Claus, with Santa's body as the seat and Santa's face as the seat-back.

As I prepared to aim my pee into the potty-training seat, the girl with the long, red hair spoke to me again. She may even have found a way into the stall, so that she was staring at me. She told me, "If I can't be with you, at least tell me and my sister a story so that we can hear you and not feel as lonely."

I said, "Okay. Do you want me to make up a story?" I was having a hard time concentrating on both making myself urinate and coming up with an impromptu story. But I had a feeling I could do it.

But the girl said, "Tell us a story... about Christmas. About Santa Claus!"

I thought, Oh, I hate telling Christmas stories! They're so conventional. I also knew I didn't want to tell a story about Santa Claus, since I was trying to pee into a urine-soaked model of him at the moment. But I said, "Oh, okay. Once upon a time, there was a man named Santa Claus..."

domestic drama in space; almost run over twice; use the phone!; i fail to protect

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on another planet, and I may have been in communications with the spaceship I'd come from. But, really, it felt like I was just standing on a sidewalk outside an apartment building at night and talking with people up in an apartment. It was pitch black outside, and all the windows of the apartment building were blood red.

I was now "inside the spaceship," which was just one of the apartments. I was looking at a dining table, at which sat four people. The dining table was under a hanging incandescent lamp. The rest of the room -- maybe the rest of the apartment -- was dark. The window was open, showing the pitch black night outside.

Two of the people at the table were unknown to me. The other two sat at the far end of the table, near the window. On my left was Leonard Nimoy. On my right was Miss Piggy. Miss Piggy may have been supposed to be my mother.

Miss Piggy was rebelling against some idea. Leonard Nimoy was trying to convince Miss Piggy that the idea was good. Miss Piggy got really nasty. Everybody else left the table. Miss Piggy probably now became my mom. She may have looked at me and asked me for advice about the situation.

Dream #2

I was out on a road near the house I lived in in my last three years of high school. I was walking down the quiet, empty road. Parked on the left (my left) side of the road, just a few houses down from my house, was a big truck, like a semi-truck without a trailer, or like a really big tow truck.

I had possibly seen a car come driving up the road. To avoid the car I walked over into the gutter of the left side of the road -- though, for some reason, I didn't get up onto the sidewalk. But the car, instead of traveling along the regular area for driving, veered into the gutter to come after me.

Of course, the big truck was parked right in the gutter. But somehow the car had managed to wedge itself in between the passenger side of the truck and the curb. It was like the truck hadn't parked flush with the curb, and the car was now managing to wedge into, and widen, that gap. The car was doing all of this in order to come after me.

I remained calm. I knew the car had seen me in the distance and had wanted to taunt me somehow. When I'd gotten out of the way, the car just looked for a new way to get into my way. He'd found it. Now he was trying to scare me. But I would just remain calm.

I got past the car -- I'm not sure how. I have an image in my mind of a black iron structure, kind of in the lattice pattern of space scaffolding. I was now on the driver's side and tail end of the truck, looking back up at the truck.

There were a couple of guys standing outside the truck, watching the guy in the car. The car was now on the driver's side, slamming his car right up against the back end of the front wheel. I could now see the guy driving the car. He was an older man, maybe in his sixties. He had long, grey hair with a balding forehead.

The guy had actually managed, by pushing on the back end of the front wheel, to move the truck forward. The truck shot forward by a couple of houses. The guy probably stayed in his car. But he addressed the two other guys. He told them that he could move any vehicles like that, if they were obstacles in their way.

The other guys, who were probably thirty or forty years old, thought the guy was crazy. But they humored him and told him okay. Apparently, I understood, the guys had been doing some kind of work around here. But the truck had appeared to be in the guys' way. So the old man, without even having been asked, decided he'd come up and push the truck away. The guys hadn't really asked for it. But now it was done, they were kind of pleased.

The old man said, "Yeah, and you can make money off of this kind of stuff, too. For instance, I don't know who owns this big truck. So we can't do anything with it.

"But there's another big truck down the road." (I had an image in my mind's eye of a huge, black pickup truck down about a block and a half, on the other side of the road.) "That car's just been sitting there for years. If I moved it for you guys, you could make tons of money.

"I know the guy who used to own it. He died a few years back." The old man explained how the dead man's family either didn't know about the vehicle or didn't care about it and would rather let it sit there and rot than figure out what to do with it. Apparently this kind of gross neglect made the vehicle anybody's property -- if they could move it. The old man was familiar with these laws and he could move the vehicle. But the two other guys weren't interested in the old man's proposition.

The old man may have driven away. I walked away. I quickly found myself in a structure like a horse stable. But the structure was only a few houses down and across the street from where I'd been before. It didn't have a ceiling, and it was made of fencing rather than solid walls. The fencing was horizontal boards, maybe a foot wide and six feet long, painted white. The floor of the stable was cluttered with blankets.

My aunt was driving a car that looked almost exactly like the head of the Super Mario Brothers video game character Yoshi. She was pulling the car backward. I was right behind the car. But my aunt didn't care. She would happily have backed right over me. She almost did back over me. But somehow I missed getting hit. I was flustered that my aunt almost killed me -- without even seeming to care!

I didn't see any exit in the stable. But somehow my aunt managed to back up, twist to her right, and pull forward out of the stable. After exiting the stable, my aunt stopped the car. My aunt could tell I was upset. She shouted back at me, "If you really cared about your life, you'd have looked at me backing up, and you'd have gotten out of the way!" My aunt then probably drove away.

Dream #3

I was with my ex-girlfriend H. We were on a train, like the Metro North, heading up to some water park (which I called "Water World") in upstate New York or out on Long Island.

H and I were in our seats. We sat on the left side of the train. But we got a little bit anxious. We had been out on this trip a year ago. I thought I'd remembered what train stop we were supposed to get off on. But now I was less and less sure of it. We couldn't miss our stop. If we did, we'd have to get off in the middle of nowhere and wait -- maybe hours! -- for another train.

I had my phone in my hand. But I wasn't using it to find directions, which would have been simple. Instead, H and I stood out of our seats to get nearer to the exit door of the train. We'd look out the door at every stop. We'd read the sign to see what each stop was. If the sign looked familiar, or if the stop sounded familiar, we'd get out there and hope we were right.

As we got out of our seats, I noticed that the train car was really big, almost like the passenger cabin of a huge airplane. There were our aisle of seats, a central aisle, which had a lot of seats, and a third aisle of seats, next to the opposite windows. But the train still felt tight and crowded. Every seat was filled.

But as we walked forward, toward the exit door, the train car became gigantic. It was actually like a waiting room for a train -- or even like a departure gate at an airport! There were people sitting in chairs, people standing up near assistance desks, people sitting on the floors with their luggage, and people sitting, near windows, in seats that actually looked like regular train car seats.

H had also transformed. Instead of being Japanese, she was now a white woman with brown hair. She looked a bit like one of the girls I'd looked up to in high school as being well-organized and smart.

We had a direct view to the exit doors as they opened. As we read the signs, we got a bad feeling that we may have gone too far. I thought that maybe we were supposed to go too far. Maybe what we'd forgotten was that we'd had to go too far, then take another train and backtrack to where we wanted to go. That's why we weren't seeing the final stop. But I couldn't remember what the connecting point would be, either.

H thought we should ask somebody for directions. We walked around the gigantic car, asking the masses of people if they knew how to get to the water park. Some people thought they might know, but they didn't give a really clear answer. Other people had forgotten, just like us. Other people were going to the water park, too. But they were certain that the train had deliberately skipped that stop so that nobody could go to the water park.

H finally found some man, a tall, muscular, well-put-together, white man, who seemed to know where we should go. He gave H some directions.

But suddenly I saw a stop that sounded familiar to me. I ran out the door and rushed along the platform. I was assuming that we had to run quickly to catch the connecting train. I also assumed that H was with me. I rushed down a set of steps, against a flow of people.

But about halfway down the steps, I stopped. I suddenly realized that this was only a stop that had struck me  as interesting during last year's trip. I still had a number of stops to go.

As if to confirm this, I looked down at a slip of paper in my hand. The slip was white with red writing. It was a timetable for the train. It listed all the stops, including the one I'd need to get off on. I think it was right then, too, that I realized that all this time I could just have looked at my phone for directions. But now it seemed too late for something like that.

And now I also realized that H hadn't gotten off the train with me. She'd stayed on. She must be wondering where I was. I had to get back onto the train, and back to H!

I ran back up the steps and toward the train. But, still some distance away from the train, I could see that it was already pulling away. I kept running after it, though, hoping against hope that I would be able to get back on it.

Fortunately, the train did stop. I was still a ways away from the doors. They opened and closed quickly. It seemed that the train was going to start moving again. But it didn't. The train doors opened again. A young, white man in a business suit threw himself into one of the doors as it closed, jamming the rest of the doors. The doors re-opened and I quickly slid inside.

I was back on the train, but I was only relieved for a moment. I had no idea where H now was. I also had a bad feeling that I hadn't really gotten back onto the train I'd gotten off of, but that I'd gotten onto a train that had followed the train I'd originally been on. If that were the case, H would be alone on the other train.

I had to find out if H was okay. But I couldn't think of any way to do this. Finally, after some rigorous concentration, I figured out that I could probably text H on my phone, figure out where she was, and figure out whether we were on the same train. If we weren't on the same train, I could at least figure out how and where we could reunite with each other.

Dream #4

I was out in the woods, but near some place like a small town or a resort or something. It may have been the future, far enough in the future for the American legal system to have been changed in weird ways.

There was a group of pretty nasty criminals, maybe four guys. Their crimes had been proven. But the crimes hadn't been bad enough to send them to jail or execute them. Instead, as punishment, the men were all being exiled to another location.

They may not even have been told that their crimes had been discovered, proven, and submitted for sentencing. They were simply being contained by a group of people and being kept calm and happy until they were moved. The place they were being moved to wasn't very different from this place. And they would be kept calm and happy there. But as punishment for their crimes, they simply had to be moved out of their present location.

I was among the group of people containing the men. We had all split up. The four men were also probably split up. We didn't really have to encounter the men. But if we did encounter them, we had to act like nothing was wrong. If the men knew they'd been convicted of crimes, they'd become terribly violent. We had to act like we didn't even know they'd committed a crime.

But I personally felt like the crime the men had committed had been too nasty to get off with such a light punishment. I'd do my job of simply containing the men. But I was bitter about it. And I wished that something would happen that would justify my killing the men -- especially their leader.

I then stumbled upon the leader. He was maybe in his late forties or early fifties. He was rough looking. He was bald and had an olive complexion. He had big, brown eyes and cheeks mossed over with dark, black stubble. He seemed intelligent, but not very cultured. He probably wore a well-fit, black sweater and black slacks. He was carrying a big, clear, blue glass jug. It had apparently had alcohol in it. But it may now have been empty.

I tried to follow protocol and act calm with the man. But he immediately became violent with me. I resisted the strong temptation I had to fight with the man. But the man smashed his jug on the ground. He still had a handle on the jug. But now it was broken into a huge, sickle-shaped and cylindrical shard. The man overpowered me, even though he didn't have me pressed to the ground, and walked me backwards, constantly jamming the sharp glass at my throat.

I was managing to push the shard away from me by pressing against the semi-cylindrical back curve. But the man was stronger than I. It was only a matter of time before he'd manage to get at me.

I reached up to the top of the shard and broke off a fragment (???). I then flailed out of the man's grip and lunged at the man. I sliced at the man's throat. I managed to cut into the man's throat, but only lightly. Just a thin trickle of blood ran out of the scrape, which stretched along a three-inch expanse in the center of the man's throat.

The man suddenly calmed down. He stared at me and aspirated a soft, little chuckle. He said, "But, no. Of course you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't kill me. You wouldn't even try. You just aren't that kind of a person."

The man was now getting ready to walk away. His three cohorts had come to this spot as well. From here, they were going to go off somewhere else. They hadn't all gotten close to each other. But I could see them all at different corners of the woods.

The man couldn't see for himself that his throat had been cut. I knew that if the cohorts told the man that his throat had been cut, the man would become terribly angry. The only reason he hadn't stayed angry was that he'd thought I was being my "usual" gentle self with him.

In fact, the man was still walking close to me, mumbling on and on about how I'd never try to slit his throat. The man had gone from being clothed in well-fitting, all black clothes to being clothed in the tattered rags of a business suit. At this point, as if to prove that he'd go crazy if he ever found out I'd tried to kill him, the man dropped his pants and walked around with his pants around his ankles.

Time passed, and I was now much closer to the resort. The man had, after all, found out that I'd tried to kill him. Now he was getting ready to retaliate. His method was that he was going to infiltrate the resort. He was going to act as an operative and incite a rebellion among the young people within the resort.

By inciting a rebellion among the young people, the man would cause the younger generation to lose their rights. The older generation would then take over. Somehow this would give the man the upper hand -- even though I'm not sure what good it would do him. He'd still most likely be transported out of this place.

But, having gotten information on the man's plans (how???), I knew I needed to stop the man. I was in a huge, but kind of cheap and run-down looking, room which looked kind of like a library but which served as the first room of entrance to the resort -- like the woods outside the resort, where I'd been before, wasn't really the proper resort area itself.

The man came into the room. He wasn't disguised, necessarily. But he had something with him, something like credentials, which gave him the "official identity," regardless of his external appearance, of being somebody who was okay for being inside the resort.

The person who handled the entrance and exit of people -- a kind of young, inexperienced person -- accepted the man. The man was simply allowed to go into the resort. I had to stand by and watch. If the person was accepted by the person in charge of accepting people, I simply couldn't do anything about it.

Time passed again. I was on an outdoor balcony level of the main building of the resort, looking down over some concrete courtyard. The balcony I was on was wide and open, pleasant for large groups of people, and had been a favorite hangout for the young people.

But just recently the young people, incited to rebellion by the criminal leader, had gotten into a fight with some officials on the balcony. The young people had been forced down from the balcony and into the courtyard. A whole riot crew -- bulletproof vests, black helmets, night sticks, and all -- had been assembled and was approaching the courtyard, unbeknownst to the young people in the courtyard.

Now the riot crew attacked. The young people, who were basically dressed in t-shirts and jeans, were pretty much powerless against the riot crew. The riot crew proceeded to pummel any young person they could get their hands on. I knew the criminal leader was behind all this. I knew if I could stop him, I could stop the attacks.

A man in his thirties walked up into the courtyard. He was a white man with red-tanned skin, strawberry blonde hair, and chiseled, muscular features. He wore a beautiful business suit, spectacles, and a long, pea-colored trenchcoat. He was carrying a briefcase with him. It was obvious he had just come from a business trip and was just now arriving back at the resort.

The riot crew turned toward the business man. He looked young enough to attack. But when the riot crew saw who the man was, they immediately stopped and backed away from him. He was not fair game. The business man walked up a stairwell at the edge of the courtyard.

I now knew the criminal leader was approaching. I had to confront him and defeat him, even if my orders were not to do so. However, I knew as I was walking away from where I'd been standing, that I was leaving a little girl without my protection. The little girl lay on a mattress on the floor of the balcony. She was being tended to by a very old man or woman. But the fate of the resort hinged on the health and safety of the little girl.

I walked down along the balcony, to where there seemed to be a lot more activity, like people consulting with one another regarding what to do about the unrest in the courtyard. I may have missed the criminal leader -- or I may have watched him walk right past me, as if he didn't quite exist while I was watching him! But I must have seen him again -- I remember seeing him in his black outfit.

There seemed to be fires and explosions. And then suddenly everything seemed to have calmed down. I don't know what the result of the conflict was. But I think some mutual understanding was arrived at between the people who had revolted and the people who had set the riot crews on them.

But I knew, even as I headed back to my post, that the criminal leader had approached the little girl. I assumed that if he had approached her, he had most likely killed her. I needed to make sure the little girl was safe.

I was now rushing back to my post to check on the welfare of the little girl. I was terribly distraught. But as soon as I approached the little girl's mattress, the scene would start over again. I'd be a little distance from the mattress, not able to see the girl. I'd rush up to the mattress and just get a glimpse of the girl. Then the scene would start again.

I think I saw the scene three times. The first time, I'm pretty sure, I discovered that the girl had been killed by the criminal leader. I felt horribly guilty. The second time, the girl may have been attacked, but still alive. The third time, the girl may have been very sick, suffering from some kind of a fever, and possibly in grave danger, but untouched by the criminal leader.

***

UPDATE: Added drawing to dream #2, August 3, 2012, 2:15 PM, Mountain Standard Time.