packed runway; aunt and stalkers; gap in the wall; mother in hospital

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably in the cockpit of a small airliner, taxiing down the runway. The runway seemed to be in some kind of military base. The runway may have been cluttered, or it may have been bordered by a lot of clutter. I was involved with whatever operations took place at the base. I was in the cockpit with someone else who worked at the base. This person may have been piloting the airplane. I was acting as more of a passenger.

We were trying to get up to a part of the runway where we'd be able to lift off. But there was some delay up ahead. I felt kind of inconvenienced, but I tried not to. I knew that the delay up ahead was being caused by something I'd normally be in awe of.

We now approached what I thought may have been the cause of delay. It was a gigantic aircraft. The gigantic aircraft moved along on an awkward set of wheels that looked like stilts made out of chrome bars, like the chrome frames of a hospital bed, at the bottom of which were smallish (for such a large aircraft) wheels. The body of the aircraft was beautiful: like a mix between an F-117, a B-2, and an SR-71. But it was a gigantic craft.

At first I thought we were going to taxi our airliner underneath the aircraft. I was a little afraid to do this, but I also wanted to do it. But we turned off to the right and worked our way over to a runway that almost sent us back in the direction we had come from.

As we taxied away, I heard or understood that the gigantic aircraft was an F-XXX (can't remember the number, maybe something like 149). I was a little surprised. I'd thought the craft was a B-2. I was a little ashamed of myself for having thought the craft could have had the name "B-2." I really thought the craft was what I knew as a B-2, and that I had just mistakenly concocted the name "B-2." I couldn't believe I had gotten the model name so wrong.

We may eventually have ended up flying. While in the air, we may have seen one or two other strange aircraft. We then landed. I, as well as a number of other pilots who had been out flying today, was walking through a hallway like a school hallway, to get to a classroom where I, and the others, would apparently review the day's flights.

I walked into the classroom, holding a few photos with me. I may have been disappointed in myself. Perhaps I hadn't remembered certain aspects of my flight. Perhaps I had gotten so afraid at one point during my flight that I'd closed my eyes or blocked my perception out in some other way. Whatever had happened, I felt like I had missed some aspect of my flight, and I was disappointed. But I was also trying, somehow, to prove that I actually hadn't missed anything from my flight.

I shuffled through the photos in my hands. The photos were glossy and about the size of a standard sheet of paper. Either I had taken the photos or the photos had been taken from the airplane I had been in. The photos were of an X-15 rocket.

The photos mainly showed the X-15 right as and just after it had lifted off the ground (although, in actuality, X-15s, as far as I know, never lifted off the ground but were dropped from the wings of a larger plane at about 45,000 feet altitude, where they would begin flying on their own).

I was disappointed with myself for having been so close to an X-15 in action but either not having remembered it or having been so afraid of whatever flight patterns my own craft was going through that I had blocked out all my perception, including my perception of the X-15. I may have looked closer at the photos, hoping to see something that would spark a living memory in my head.

But now I began to doubt that the vehicle in the photos was even an X-15 at all. It had a strange shape for an X-15. It was broad and triangular instead of thin and stub-winged. It actually reminded me of (what I would have recognized in waking life as) an F-35. But I began to justify the shape to myself, saying that, of course, I'd only seen the X-15 from a couple different angles and that, at angles I wasn't familiar with, the X-15 might look kind of awkward to me.

Dream #2

I was in an office. I had come into this part of the office to take care of some kind of work that I usually didn't have to take care of. The part of the office I was first in may have been dim and grey, like all the lights were off and the only light was coming from a window in a separate room or a part of this room that was blocked off from my part of the room by a big partition.

Some guy, or a few guys, in the office had always been following me around, trying to prove that I was doing something illegal. But this place was an area I didn't usually go to. The guys following me didn't expect me to come here. I was all by myself in the room for a moment. But soon I could feel the guys coming after me, to stalk and skulk around behind me. I got the image of the guys being little, bug-eyed semi-humans enshrouded in trench coats and massive fedoras.

Feeling followed again, I immediately decided to walk somewhere else, at least to throw the guys off my trail for a moment or two. I was also hoping that, if I went somewhere totally unusual and the guys were following me even to that place, that I could really prove to myself that I was being stalked. I could then hopefully do something about it. But, more than that, I just simply wanted to throw the guys off my trail and be by myself.

I was outside, walking on a sidewalk like the sidewalk that runs along a street along the top of the slope outside my old elementary school. My aunt M was there, putting a little baby and her car seat into the front seat of a shiny, red SUV.

When my aunt saw me she called to me, insisting that I take a ride with her. I really didn't want to take a ride with her. I was afraid that since she smoked her car would smell like smoke, which was kind of disgusting to me. I also wasn't too interested in listening to my aunt M talk during a car ride.

I tried to make up some polite excuse for not riding with my aunt. But as I approached her car, she continued to insist that I ride with her. She was even already moving the baby and car seat out of the front seat and into the backseat.

I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to ride with my aunt. I got into the car and tried to act happy, hoping there was something happy and distracting I could immediately get talking about with my aunt, in order to mask the fact that I didn't want to be here at all.

Dream #3

I was in "my bedroom," possibly with one or more of my family members. My bedroom may have had two cheap-looking beds in it. The room was, otherwise, pretty barren. I lay on my left side on the floor, looking underneath my bed while my family member(s) probably sat in a chair (or chairs).

A man came into the room. He had been here to check out some problem I'd been having in my house. Immediately he went to the wall next to the bed I was facing. The man pointed out a big gap running along the bottom of the wall and said, "Oh. Yep. I knew it. There it is, right there."

The gap looked like an even strip of space that normally would have been covered up by something, maybe a floorboard. It was like it was customary for the drywall of the wall ended about half an inch from the floor, and that a strip of floorboard -- or something else -- was customarily installed to cover up the gap. But whatever had been there was now gone, either torn off, worn away, or something.

The man said, "Yep. That's just what the mice are getting through." I now had a vague memory of having suspected, without actually having seen, mice in my room. But now the man confirmed it with me. I had a mouse problem. I looked for some other evidence of this. In the shadows under the bed I searched for mouse droppings. I thought I saw a little sliver of something that could either have been a scraping of dirt from my shoes or a (very large) mouse dropping.

The man somehow (the bed was still, as far as I know, pushed flush against the wall, so that nobody could get between the bed and the wall) ran his finger along the wall, pointing out the gap. He said, "I had a suspicion, because your next door neighbor is also having mouse problems. And, you see, the mice come in through the walls. Then they use this gap, on both sides, to go into your place and his."

I tried to see how my room was connected to my neighbor's room by this gap. I thought I should be able to see into my neighbor's room if both our rooms were connected. But I couldn't see into his room. Instead, just beyond the gap was another layer of drywall that went securely down all the way to the floor, thus sealing off my room from my neighbor's room.

Dream #4

I was in physical therapy room in a hospital, watching my mom do physical therapy. My mom had recently gotten done with some kind of operation. But she seemed to be progressing well. Her performance during physical therapy, though it wasn't phenomenal, seemed to show that she would be able to get released from the hospital and go home soon.

I walked out of the physical therapy room and down the hallway. I may possibly have been planning to meet my mom in her hospital room. I may even have been planning to get my mom ready to be released and go home.

The room my mom was in may have seemed a lot like an intensive care room in a hospital, cluttered with a lot of life support and monitoring machinery. The room may have held two beds, with a curtain separating one bed area from the other.

I was surprised to find my mom's bed empty. I had been expecting my mom to get back to the room before I did. I had a bad feeling that this meant something wasn't good with my mom's health and that my mom wouldn't be able to get out of the hospital today.

Now a group of doctors and nurses rushed my mom into the room and laid her on her bed. My mom looked pale and sweaty. Her hospital gown was almost hanging off her chest, almost exposing her right breast. I had a bad feeling about my mom, like she had suddenly taken a turn for the worst.

The doctors and nurses left the room. The room also changed a bit. My mom's bed was the only bed in the room. The bed was almost in the center of the room. The bed was turned so the head faced the door. My mom was in a half-sitting position on the bed, so it was like her back was to the door. The room was a lot dimmer than before. The only light coming into the room was hallway light that came in from a window to my mom's left. The window was shaded by half-turned Venetian blinds.

My mom must have felt like she was going to die. She began reflecting on her life, talking to me about the things she felt she should be proud of. She felt that the way she had lived her life was very unique. The uniqueness came, my mom felt, from the fact that she had made choices with her heart, because she had cared about people.

My mom then said, "And I'm the only person in my whole family who graduated from high school. Nobody else did that." That statement kind of scattered my brains for a moment. After reflecting for a moment, I knew that my mom meant that between herself, her sister, her father, and her mother, my mom was the only one to have graduated from high school.

I considered my mom's life for a moment. I thought that, given all her life's difficulties, she actually had been able to do a lot of things that she should be proud of.

wasurete/divorce; tempting garbage; handbox; murder-ring a suicide

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a woman. The woman may have been my girlfriend. We were moving through a series of locations, something like rooms in a museum. But each location had to do a different rock song, maybe always a Japanese pop song. The locations were all mostly dark, with electronic imagery spreading through the darkness.

In one location, the woman and I were sitting in seats like movie theater seats and listening to a song ("Wasurenai kara?") by the artist Gack't. Overhead spanned a dark beam, like the underside of a bridge. In the distance was a red city skyline.

I found the scene very beautiful, but I wondered whether the woman was feeling bored. Maybe this kind of journey wasn't her thing. Maybe the woman found me boring and resented the fact that she had chosen me for a boyfriend.

I suddenly realized that I may have had to attend some sort of class. I stood up and turned toward the woman, who remained seated. I told the woman not to worry, that I'd be right back. I had to go check whether I needed to take a class right now. But, I told the woman, if I needed to take the class, I'd make sure to come back and get her, so that she could be in the class with me.

I walked down a dark hallway to a lit room where a class was in progress. Most of the people in the class were women. They were all talking in a semi-irreverent, exaggeratedly down-to-earth way. The class was basically a class on how to carry out a divorce most effectively. I was mainly coming to this class because I was trying to help someone through the divorce process.

As I listened to the teacher, who was the most exaggeratedly down-to-earth of all the people, I realized that the woman I'd been journeying through the locations with would think this class was really helpful. So I went to look for her.

But as I was looking around in ----- (the red zone, with the movie seats?), I heard the voice of JS, one of my professional seniors and a person I consider to be a mentor and role model, calling, "Preemie. Preemie! Preemie, wherever you are, get your rear end down here!"

I was so panicked on hearing JS sounding so insistent and disappointed in me that I floated downwards through the floor and down through a huge room, like a fancy bar, where JS sat at a couch and coffee table with a number of other women. JS, seeing me float downward from the high ceiling, asked, "Do you have your divorce report finished? Everybody would like to see it."

I landed and knelt on the ground before the coffee table. I pulled out a stack of papers and began working through them. All the ladies gathered around me, looking over the papers I'd pulled out. I could feel that JS now felt bad about being overly insistent, and that she was now trying to make up for it by being gentle and attentive to my report. I felt like I had put a lot of effort into the report, and I felt like JS could see that.

Dream #2

I was with my mom. We were on something like a bicycle, riding down a slope inside a concrete structure that looked like a mix between a parking lot and the underpass of a highway. We were trying to get to a final destination, but we may have been finding the going pretty difficult.

We were now behind a garbage truck. My mom told me, "If we latch onto the back of the truck, we can let it carry us down the slope. That will make the effort a lot easier on us."

I tried to argue with my mom that latching on the back of the truck, especially while we were going downhill, would only put us in danger. For instance, if the truck stopped, we wouldn't be able to control ourselves, and we'd crash right into the truck.

I could tell my mom was upset about the arguments I was making. But thankfully I didn't have to make them anymore. The garbage truck curved around a stairwell and drove away along some flat stretch of concrete. I knew that my mom and I needed to go down the stairwell. So we wouldn't be able to follow the garbage truck.

I lifted the bicycle up onto my left shoulder and began walking down the steps. The concrete floor had been strewn with some kind of fragmented, glass-like litter. But the steps were even more cluttered with this litter, and the litter was kind of grimy.

I didn't pay it much attention, though. I began speaking to my mom, who I thought was behind me. I told my mom that she'd find she was much happier now that we'd done things the right way. We may have put in an extra effort. But I was shouldering most of the effort for her. I asked her, was she feeling overstrained?

But my mom didn't answer. I realized my mom wasn't behind me. I had no idea where she was. I got to the bottom of the steps and into another huge, concrete room. My mom was standing a few meters away, looking at furniture. There were furniture and rugs all laid out, well-spaced, in this huge room, like exhibits in a museum.

I walked up to my mom and asked her something. She may have asked me something as well, like asking me to remember to do something for my family on her behalf.

Dream #3

I was sitting in a sandbox as big as a public swimming pool. My second oldest nephew sat outside the edge of that sandbox, flinging sand from the edge further in, as if he were splashing water in a pool. My nephew may have been speaking to me about something.

A friend of my nephew now came up. My nephew introduced me to his friend. The friend came into the sandbox. I shook the boy's hand. When the boy took back his hand, he seemed a little panicked. I began to wonder whether my hand had been bleeding and I'd gotten blood on the boy's hand. I felt like this must have been what had happened to make the boy skittish.

I asked the boy what was wrong. He acted like nothing was wrong. But he then showed me a few bruises and healed cuts on his hand. I understood that the boy thought highly of these wounds, so I treated them like they were a really big deal. I realized I also had wounds on my hand, so I showed them to the boy.

The boy began talking about people's hands. He mentioned how some people's hands have an extra little nub of flesh on them. The boy himself may have had this extra nub of flesh. I knew I did. The boy began talking about the different shapes the extra flesh could take on a hand. He mentioned one type which was very much like chicken skin. I thought that must have been my type. I began to feel very ashamed of myself.

Dream #4

I walked into a room with my mom. My second oldest nephew was in the room, holding a flower. My nephew, upon seeing me, got a little teary-eyed and complained to me about how I don't spend as much time with everybody as I should. I felt really bad about this, and I avoided my nephew's eyes.

I looked at the flower. Like an onion, it was bulbous, purple at the base and white at the top. But it also seemed to be folding open into slender, almost orchid-like, but thick, petals.

I was now walking up through the stairwell of a big building. I reached some high up floor. I went up into an apartment which was temporarily mine. It was like I was on some kind of extended business trip or project, and that I'd been given the apartment during the project. Possibly my mom had gotten this apartment for me. I had just come back from a business meeting. This was the first time I'd actually seen the apartment.

There was a huge industrial vent right in the room, near the door. The vent pointed toward the wall, away from the rest of the room. I knew the vent was connected, under the floor, to a much larger system in a small room on the other side of the wall from my apartment.

I knew this larger system at least partly served as a chiller. I had the idea that if the chiller exploded, it would blow open the wall of my apartment. It could possibly even kill me. I wondered whether it had been a bad idea for me to be put into this apartment. I even wondered whether I'd been put into the apartment on purpose, so I would be in constant danger. But I eventually dismissed the whole thing as not being so dangerous after all.

There were huge windows all along the left wall of the apartment. I knew all the windows had been closed while I was away. But now I looked over and saw that one of the windows was open. I couldn't quite believe my eyes at first. But I looked again to see that the window was open.

I went over to the window to close it. But looking out the window, where before I'd just seen a city skyline, I now saw that something like a garden embedded in concrete connected this floor of my building to the corresponding floor of the building next door. The windows in that apartment were open as well. The garden connecting the two buildings was mostly filled with desert soil and plants.

I now began to wonder -- did somebody from across the way come into my apartment? If they did, did they take anything? Or were they still in my apartment? Had they been sent, perhaps, to hurt or kill me?

I reflected that I couldn't really do much about the lack of security before this moment. But right now I could take steps to secure my apartment. I would close and lock my windows right now. I looked down along my wall of windows. I now realized that almost every single window along the wall was open! Somebody must have come in here!

I went into a reverie. I began hearing two people speak. Both of the people were Equity Research analysts. I may have known one of them as CU, an analyst I'd been friends with at my last research job. The other analyst asked CU whether he'd had his report out yet. CU said he hadn't, but that it was basically ready.

The other analyst asked whether he'd read the other reports put out by the other analysts so far. CU said he hadn't, but that his report was probably pretty up-to-date anyway. CU said he could show the other analyst what he had so far.

I now saw what CU had: a whole stack of blue and red construction paper. On each piece of paper was pasted a white piece of paper with black, psychedelic-wavy-style lettering printed all the way down it. This "report" was giving some sort of eulogy for a fellow analyst who had been found dead -- maybe in the very apartment in which I was currently staying.

The thing was, and I could see this as I read CU's "report," that CU was giving very broad, general information about the analyst's death. Not only was the information about the analyst and his death so general that it wouldn't be telling anybody anything they hadn't already heard; it had also missed some of the latest developments surrounding the investigation into the death, so that it was even misleading. I thought this report was almost insulting to the analyst who had died.

I thought that CU must have known the analyst personally. But now, reading the report, I had my doubts. CU's report spoke kindly of the man. But it almost seemed to disavow that CU had ever known the man personally. The details of the man were like details out of a press release.

Apparently the man had also had a  little fantasy of being a movie star. He'd even had some little roles in a few movies. The role for which he was most famous was a bit role, where he was carrying a box of Marlboro cigarettes on his right shoulder as he walked down the street. The man was a tall, blonde man with muscular features and a deep tan. The man had a very 1950s style about him.

The joke of the scene was, apparently, that the man, as he walked down the street, past a woman (the main character of the film) who was sitting on the curb, commented about how wonderful and delicious Marlboro cigarettes were. This was a joke because the industry the analyst had covered was the Food, Beverage, and Tobacco industry. So he was basically pushing his own industry.

But CU's report made it seem like this joke was actually some kind of noble effort. The analyst, the report said, had been standing up for one of the best companies he covered. And he covered that company well. The company deserved great coverage, the report seemed to say, because it was one of the world's most noble companies.

I thought that was going a bit overboard. Besides, I could think of a more independent film in which the analyst had had a much larger role, and in which he'd performed much better. But I couldn't remember the name of the film, or even what had happened in it. I only remembered it being very dark.

Now, looking along my windows, I wondered how the man had died. Early reports had been that the man had been murdered. But now I saw in my mind's eye a Facebook-like grid of photos. Early reports implied that these photos were of people who, possibly through a social media platform, had organized to carry out the murder of this analyst.

But now reports were going back on this previous opinion. One headline I saw in my mind's eye said, "Murder-Ring Now Considered a Suicide." So the man had not been murdered, but had committed suicide. The other analysts knew this, and their reports reflected it. But CU's report still did not reflect this fact. In fact, CU's report spoke very assuredly of the analyst having been murdered. I thought this was kind of silly on CU's part.

stalkers and john malkovich; a lesbian duck?; the greatest of all time; afraid of love

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was probably in a huge pickup truck that my mom was driving. We'd come from out in the country, and we were driving through rolling fields of grass.

I don't know what we'd been doing out in the country. But my mom was now telling me how she used to take my nephews out to this area with their sheep -- apparently the family used to own sheep. The family would actually take cows and sheep down to this area. The cows were sold as food.

The sheep actually carried the cows on their backs. I saw in my mind's eye how this was done. A cow would be cut open and have its guts hollowed out. Then the empty carcass of the cow was sat over the sheep's back, so that it looked like the sheep was giving the cow a ride. It would have looked playful, had the cow not been all bloody.

Something about the sheep was also sold, but I don't know what. The main thing my mom spoke about regarding the sheep was how my family had gotten the sheep to eat so well. The sheep must originally have had a hard time grazing while they were out in the country. But my family got the sheep trained to eat out on the rolling pastures, and to eat the grass in such an orderly way that they'd create huge, even, smooth-lined squares of eaten grass.

I had been noticing a big, green pickup truck following our truck for some time. I could see the guy in the truck: he was a young, blonde man who looked like he lived in my apartment complex. I told my mom that that man had been set on me to follow me in the past. He had now been set on following me again today.

Somehow the green pickup truck got in front of us. There were three big, white semi-trucks in front of us. The green pickup wedged itself in between the second and third semis. So there were two trucks in front of the pickup, one truck behind it, and then my mom's pickup.

I told my mom, "Now watch. The truck didn't mean to get in front of us. But now that it did, it will find the perfect opportunity to get back behind us. It's been following me all day today. I have people following me all the time."

Without my noticing it my mom and I shifted into a public bus. We sat side by side in a seat. The bus was relatively empty. The daylight in the bus seemed a bit brighter and whiter than usual. The light inside the bus may actually have been bright and white.

I told my mom, "The same thing used to happen in Brooklyn. People used get set on me, to follow me around. It's just a different set of people. Out here in Denver they have a group of blonde haired, blue eyed guys following me around. People set these kids on me, to follow me wherever I go."

Suddenly some guy sitting in front of us looked back. He was sitting in some weird way, either like he was in a sideways seat, or like he was crouched on the floor, facing so that his right profile faced me and my mom.

But now that he looked straight at us, I could see that he was John Malkovich. But he was all done up in camouflage. He wore a mainly white, tan, and brown camo design on his pants, shirt, and even on a woolen skullcap. He had the design painted onto his face and hands as well. His eyes were also bugging out, like he was insane.

John Malkovich asked me something about the stalkers. He then took one or both of my hands with both of his hands and began stroking them while he made a weird kind of blowing "O" with his mouth. He started giving me some advice about the stalkers. But he then ran back to the back of the bus.

The back of the bus tiered up into a platform of seats. In the first row on that platform was an Hispanic man who looked drunk and passed out. Malkovich sat beside that guy and started almost cuddling his head against him. He then began telling the man about me, like Malkovich was actually a stalker himself, and like he was passing off information to the man, who was only pretending to be drunk and passed out.

Malkovich then ran back to me and started telling me things about stalkers. It all sounded kind of crazy, and I don't remember any of it.

Dream #2

A woman had been taking care of a white swan, which I probably called a duck in my dream. The woman was a really beautiful, copper skinned woman with dark black hair. At first when the woman had cared for the duck, the duck would always bite the woman. The duck may have bit the woman all over her body, but I think one place the duck always bit the woman was on the mouth. It would hurt really bad. The woman even got to a point where she wanted to kill or get rid of the duck.

But then the woman taught the duck how to read and write. The duck had apparently been biting the woman because she didn't know how to communicate with the woman. But now that she could read and write, her life was a lot more open and free and a lot more frustrating.

The duck was now writing something on a pad of paper and showing it to my view, as if my view were actually a camera filming some kind of documentary. The view may have been set in a small bathroom, where the duck and the woman were standing close together. The duck may have been up on some kind of pedestal, so that her head was even with the woman's head.

The writing pad said something about how grateful the duck was to the woman, and how the duck would show her gratitude to the woman by giving her a kiss. So the duck stretched out her neck and "kissed" the woman by biting her softly on the upper lip.

This shocked the woman. It hurt her a little bit, though not as much as the previous bites had hurt. But the woman started to wonder whether the duck was getting violent again. She had given only a soft bite this time. But what if the bites got harder and harder? The woman would be in pain all over again.

My view panned down toward the bottom of the duck, then down toward the top section of the pedestal, where it kind of halted, just looking at the blank space of the pedestal. I was a little worried, as well, about the sudden biting of the duck. But I also considered the fact that the duck had "kissed" the woman. What it the kisses between the duck and the woman got more passionate? Would the duck and the woman eventually become lesbian lovers?

Dream #3

I was at some job which was like a mix of my most recent job with the duties of a lot of my past jobs. I had been set on some task. But I was wearing really dirty clothes. I may also have been wearing women's clothes, maybe even just women's lingerie. I really needed to change my clothes before I got to work on my task.

So I walked into the living room of some townhome or ground level apartment unit. The living room was small and well furnished, but also cluttered with a bunch of neglected belongings. I had a backpack full of clothes.

I began trying to pull clothes out of the backpack. But every time I began to pull something out, I'd hesitate. I had pairs of men's underwear, but they all seemed to be dirty and sour in really gross ways. Some may even have been hard with filth. I had a bad feeling I'd just have to wear one of these pairs of dirty underwear. I'd hope nobody would smell or see or notice in some other way how disgusting my underwear was.

My emotions or focus shifted, and suddenly I was just getting ready to walk out the door, like I was fully dressed and ready to go. I slung my backpack over my right shoulder. As I headed toward the door, opened it, and looked down at some turned-off lamp on an end table next to the door, I had some conversation in my head.

The conversation seemed to be partly me talking to myself about a conversation and partly the actual conversation, which involved a group of people who studied mysticism with Carlos Castaneda. These people were saying that Castaneda was the greatest magician of all time. But that qualification would get mixed up with saying that Castaneda was the greatest Research Analyst of all time. And that statement would get mixed up with my co-workers saying that I was the greatest Research Analyst of all time.

Dream #4

I was looking at a catalog that was kind of done up like a porn magazine. But it was really something like a monthly who's who of sex and fetish in every state in the United States. The pages were a brick red kind of color, and there were grids of photos on each page. Most of the photos showed attractive women wearing lingerie or bikinis. The women were usually sitting, but in very seductive poses. Below each photo was a description of the woman and her particular fetish. At the top of each page was yellow, script-like writing in a kind of "California cool" style.

I flipped to the Colorado section, hoping to find a woman who would be into transvestites or adult babies. But, for some reason, the more I looked through the Colorado section, the more afraid I got. I felt some sense of danger regarding the women. I can't remember what the sense of danger came from. I may have seen or thought that some of the women were actually men dressed as women.

But there was something else I was afraid of -- like contacting any of these women would lead either to my personal information being stolen, or to scandalous information about me being shared on a wide scale. I even began to feel like just looking at the pictures of the women and men would somehow "transmit" my information to whatever place was ready to hurt me.

I quickly flipped to some other section of the catalog. I think I allowed myself to feel attracted to the girls in this section of the catalog. But I think that after a moment, I may have become bored with the catalog and put it away.

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.

child labor; arcade; ethnic showering; buffet; museum stalker; church gym; car show; last episode

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A view of a room in grainy-looking black and white, like an overexposed or extremely zoomed-in shot, but also digitized. A group of small kids, mostly small boys, working in a white grid of small spaces. The boys may have been assembling something. There may have been a conveyor belt somewhere. The boys may have had deeply tanned skin and well-combed, short hair.

Dream #2

I was in an empty arcade with one other guy. The arcade was so quiet, it felt like it may even have closed down. The guy and I may in fact have found our way in here by accident. So we decided to play some games.

There was a wide arcade console near the front window (to my left) that played the old game Centipede. My friend told me we should play Centipede. I told him I'd never played it before (???). He told me he'd teach me.

The game started up. It had the same primitive graphics as the old Centipede game. But instead of controlling a figure down at the bottom, you actually controlled a little blob that was a piece of the centipede as it ran downward through the screen. The piece of centipede had the ability to shoot. There was at least one long centipede running through the screen. There may have been more. You had to shoot the centipede, knocking off its pieces until there were none left.

But I was apparently really terrible at the game. Even on the first level,which was basically a blank screen with no obstacles, I did really horribly. I couldn't figure out the shooting mechanism. It was taking me way too long to twist the part of the centipede's body over to where the long centipede was coming from, aim at it, and shoot it. I must have gotten to a more difficult level. But this one was full of obstacles and may have had more than one long centipede. I think I was thinking of asking my friend to teach me how to shoot.

Dream #3

I was either at a beach or at a really big pool with some friends. But a lot of us were just hanging out in front of the outdoor showers. The showers ran alongside a big, cinder block wall that stood before a wooden boardwalk-like walkway. Each shower had its own little division, like it's own little stall, although the dividing area only rose up to about shin-height.

I don't know whether we'd already gone swimming or if we were just getting ready to swim. But at least I personally seemed to be obsessed with the showers. My shower didn't seem to be working. It had hot water for a little while. But then the hot water all went cold. Now something weird was going on with the nozzle.

A male friend to my right -- tall, muscular, attractive, and white -- laughed cheerfully and told me something like I just had to keep positive and hope for the best, and that the shower would probably get better soon.

I stood in the shower a little bit longer. But now the nozzle was loose. I could see, at least in my mind's eye, a white, conical nozzle like the tip of a cake-icing tube almost hitting me in the face through a cascade of water. And my stall was full of a bunch of equipment, like parts of a shower that had fallen out and were left discarded in my stall.

But another person, maybe a female friend of ours, told us that it was time to go. So I had to go to the locker room to shower and change back into my regular clothes. I went into the indoor locker room, a cinder block building with dim, watery, green-grey fluorescent lighting. There seemed to be a lot of people in the locker room.

I headed toward the shower. It was probably just a nozzle, probably all by itself, among other restroom elements like urinals, toilet stalls, and sinks. The shower may have worked fine. I walked back into the main locker room area. I knew I had to hurry to keep up with my friends.

I now noticed that I was in a special area of the locker room. The locker room had been divided into sections. Regardless of nationality, people like me with brown skin had to use this part of the locker room and stay divided from other people in the locker room.

I knew that while people with brown skin were required to use this part of the locker room, it was also assumed that anybody who was using this part of the locker room was using it expressly to conspire with other people in this part of the locker room in some destructive plan. So everybody was always suspicious of the people in this section. I tried to rush out of the place as soon as I could, to avoid suspicion.

The edge of the section for brown people was bounded by a set of small, orange traffic cones. The cones were connected by yellow rope which ran along their tops.

Dream #4

I was heading into a fancy restaurant with a male friend of mine. It seemed like we were coming here to meet a business contact. The lobby of the restaurant was all made of heavy wood.

A skinny, wiry black man with short, but really frazzled (almost shocked), hair stood at the front desk. The worker knew my friend, but he didn't know me. He looked like he was already getting ready to tell me to leave. But my friend not only told the worker that I was his friend, but he told him my name.

The worker's tiny, tight eyes bugged out as wide as they could. The worker said, "Oh!" He grabbed my right (?) hand, folded it at the wrists, and then covered it in both of his hands. Then he put my hand to my chest -- or possibly to his own chest -- and led me through the restaurant, to the table where our party was waiting. I knew I was getting special treatment because of who I was. But I didn't know why I would deserve special treatment.

The restaurant was empty, other than the table with the party we were here to meet. The restaurant was bright with natural light, which came in through windows high up on the wood walls. The place felt open and very nice, full of nice furniture, but kind of old and dusty, a little run-down, especially in the carpeting. There were big, round tables throughout the room and booth tables along the walls. Off to my right was a room that was much dimmer than the room we were in.

I sat down at the round table with our party. I don't know if my friend did. I don't think he did. I think he just walked away. My friend was tall, white, and muscular, with a kind of long haircut done up in a sweeping, squarish, but spiked style. He wore a really nice, grey business suit.

I was now sitting at the table with a group of old men. There may have been a few empty seats. One of the men I recognized as my grandfather, who died about four years ago. Another man I recognized as my mom's old boyfriend. The remaining men were, I assumed, family members or relations of some kind. They seemed very old, and they wore very nice suits.

I opened my menu. The menu looked like a Denny's menu. I couldn't decide what I wanted. But now my grandpa and the other old men stood up and walked away, leaving just me and my mom's ex-boyfriend at the table. One of the men must have come back, but only momentarily, leaving a plate of french toast covered in syrup and a couple links of sausages on the table.

I saw that the men had all gone to the dim room. I now realized that in that room there was an all you can eat breakfast buffet. The old men had all chosen this all you can eat buffet for their meal. I said, probably to the air, "Oh? Is that what everybody's doing? I'd much rather do that. Did they want me to do that as well? I hope I didn't offend them by looking into the regular menu." I didn't want to look like I was trying to order something that was higher-priced, or a worse value than, the all you can eat buffet.

I stood up. I was about to head to the all you can eat buffet. But I saw my mom's ex still sitting at the table. I thought that, instead of being rude (???) and leaving him alone at the table, I'd sit and wait here and talk with him until one or two of the old men came back.

So, sitting down my menu and a handful of plates, which apparently came from nowhere, I asked, "So, how's it going? How's everything been for you lately?"

My mom's ex looked at me in offended surprise, as if to imply that I really had some nerve talking to him at all -- especially after what I'd done to him. I couldn't figure out what I could have done that would have offended him so much. But I just decided not to say anything.

Dream #5

I went into a museum. I went into a special exhibit about some ancient culture. The special exhibit was only going to be at the museum for a short time. I didn't know whether I'd be able to make it. So I was really happy to be here. But I was all alone in the exhibit. A lot of the old artifacts were huge and resembled human faces. It was kind of spooky to be among them all, all by myself.

But I walked into a small room full of these faces (maybe huge, wooden faces, like segments of a totem pole?). There was a big video playing on a wall. In front of the video screen were a long, stainless steel table and three chairs. It was like a little study area. I took off my jacket and pulled out a notebook and pen to start taking notes.

I now noticed an old man come into the room off to my right. The room was like the main entrance room for the exhibit. It was a huge room, like a ballroom. And it seemed like it only had one exhibit display in it, right along the front wall, just a small display of a few artifacts. The rest of the room seemed to be completely empty.

The man had, I knew, noticed that I had walked into the special exhibit. He didn't like my looks, so he decided to follow me and harass me. The man was white, kind of stout, with long, frizzy, white hair along the sides of his head and a completely bald crown. He wore thick black-rimmed eyeglasses, a red and white plaid shirt, and khaki slacks.

The man was really only focused on annoying me. But he wouldn't come into the room I was in. I think he thought that even though he was following me, stalking me, that his stalking would be too obvious if he was in the same room with me. So he stayed in the other room, but he began dancing in a really stupid -- kind of hilarious -- but really distracting way.

I tried to keep focused on the video in front of me, the figures in the room, which I was apparently studying, and my notebook writings. But I kept losing focus. The man kept shifting his movements so he was always in the corner of my eye, doing a weird kind of stompy, twitchy, flailing dance that was hilarious, but that really annoyed the hell out of me. I was getting to the point where I was going to stand up and start a fight with the guy. The way the guy was moving made me wonder if he was on drugs.

But now a tour group was heading into the room. The man saw the tour group and dashed away. I knew that the man was only doing what he was doing to annoy me, as part of a stalker/targeted individual technique. He didn't want his role as a stalker to be seen by anybody else. He didn't want to give himself away. He didn't want anybody to believe me if I told them what he was doing. He wanted everybody to think I was crazy. So he ran away before anybody could see him.

The tour group looked pretty big. A whole line of people entered the room. At first I was just relieved that the old man had gone. But now I thought I should try to get someone to get rid of him altogether. I should tell someone, the tour leader, about the man.

Even though I hadn't seen him directly, I knew that the leader had entered at the front of the line. The leader was already working his way over to the section that was considered to be the beginning of the exhibition. I knew the leader would take a minute to let the tour group get situated, and then he'd start his presentation. I decided to run to the leader really quickly and tell him about the man.


The beginning section of the exhibition was set just a little bit into the right side of the big room. The rest of it went into a room separated from the big room by a sort of overhang. The section itself was like a maze, constructed out of knee-high metal railing. Behind the railing were artifacts. Many of the artifacts were either tall as standing men or else set on pedestals about that height, or even taller. These artifacts may have had more of a Gothic, maybe even more of a Buddhist, appearance.


I found the tour leader standing in the middle of this maze. A few members of the tour group stood around him. The rest kind of filtered through the maze in a long line. But people were still entering the room and getting situated. The tour leader himself was tall, white, but with reddish-tanned skinned. He had dull blue eyes and reddish blonde hair. He was skinny-looking, but he was actually muscular. He had a kind of whiny look about him.


I got the leader's attention in some childish way, maybe by tugging at his elbow or something. I may have felt like I was a child, or at least the height of a child. I at least felt like my head didn't even come up to the leader's sternum.


I very shyly started trying to tell the leader about the harassing old man. But as I did so, I realized that, along with my notebooks and my jacket, I had also left my cell phone at the desk I'd been studying at. I was sure that if the man worked his way around to the room I'd been in, which was like the last room of the exhibit, he'd steal my cell phone for sure.


So I told the leader, "I... uh... I left my cell phone in another room." I knew that the man would start speaking before I returned, and that once he'd started speaking he wouldn't stop for me to tell him about the old man. I couldn't ask the leader to hold off on his speech until I returned. All I could do was try to get back to the leader before the tour group was situated, and hope that the man would be patient enough with me to let me tell him about the old man.


But I still, walking away, tried to at least hint to the leader that I needed to get my cell phone before it got stolen, but that I needed to speak with the leader as well. But all I got out to the leader was something like, "Uh... I'll be... uh... a... just a moment... I'll be right back!"


I walked backwards through the maze. But it was filling up with tour members. It was hard for me to make any progress as I tried to squeeze past them or excuse myself or push past them in the opposite direction. I had a feeling that, with all the time I'd been away from the room already, the old man could easily have taken my phone. If he hadn't gotten to my phone yet, I needed to get to the room as soon as possible, so he couldn't get to it.


Suddenly, I just lifted myself up in the air. I began flying over the tour group. I flew over the group in kind of a weird way, like I was lying on one side, maybe my right side, and clawing the air below me with my right arm -- though my right arm was bent in a really weird way -- while also clawing the air before me with my left arm -- though my left arm was held almost completely to my chest, so that my clawing hand was really only flopping back and forth at the wrist. But I was moving faster than I would have moved by walking.


The line of people filtered all the way through the maze-like area. Just past the maze area there was a staircase, apparently going up to the balcony that overhung the maze area. The line wove under the staircase, not single-file, but with four or five people all beside each other, and then went all the way through the big room and out the entrance door.


I was awed by how massive the tour group was. I had a hard time trying to imagine how the leader was supposed to give a presentation, in just his voice, with no microphones or speakers or anything, to a crowd this enormous.


I may have seen a female tour guide, who was in place to monitor the back of the crowd and make sure nothing got out of hand. She was white, blonde, tan, kind of pretty. She wore the same uniform as the man, except with a mini-skirt instead of slacks. She looked nice enough to talk to without being shy. I thought that I would tell her about the old man after I'd gotten my phone.


I may have landed near the door of the room with all my stuff. I was still really afraid that the old man had gotten to my cell phone first. I felt like I really needed to hurry to get to my things.

Dream #6

I was with some group of people, maybe something like classmates or a group of friends. We had all finished something. We may have been in a place like an auditorium or a movie theatre at first. We may have been watching a movie or movies made by people in the room, or we may have been watching physical performances which were very much like movies somehow. But now the performance was over. The lights had come back on, and people were leaving the auditorium.

We all walked out into a huge room that looked like a gymnasium where we were standing. For a little while I spoke with one of my friends, a kind of heavyset, Hispanic looking girl with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked athletic and tomboyish. I think she was gay, and I think she was worried that I was trying to hit on her. But I just liked talking to her as a friend, because she was so easygoing.

Farther away, the gymnasium changed into a cathedral. There were rows of pews, like in a church. Then the room tiered upward along a wide, solid staircase. It went up to a mezzanine level, where there were more tiers and rows of seats. And along the back wall there were some enormous, incredible stained glass windows. There may have been stained glass inside the building, too: maybe along some of the railings at the front of the mezzanine level.

I was mesmerized by the beauty of the stained glass windows. I wanted to see the windows up close. I walked toward them. Some other people walked around in the cathedral area near me, apparently because I was walking around here, so they figured it was okay. I was pretty sure it wasn't okay for any of us to be here. But I really had to see the windows up close.

But our leader called us away. It was like he was an adult and we were children, maybe high school aged children. I may have been my age. But I may have been recognized as a high school kid. This may have been kind of frustrating to me. I wanted to be recognized as an adult by the leader. But I didn't feel like I had enough power in me at all to be recognized as an adult.

Outside, we headed down some barren slope of tan soil to a few big buses that were going to take us back to wherever we'd come from. The buses were parked alongside a pond, which we'd apparently used at some point in the day for swimming. There were still some kids swimming in the pond.

There were a couple adults, probably leaders, too, with the leader who'd called us out of the building. The leaders were all laughing about how kids would shower and then get right back to swimming. But now we had to leave, so the kids couldn't take a shower again.

Dream #7

I stood or sat just offstage, watching some sort of theatrical performance from the wings. My old office manager sat just behind me and to my right. She kept whispering stuff in my ear about this performance. I think I found the stuff she whispered useful, but annoying.

On stage, a sheer, baby-blue curtain was let down, maybe about halfway back in the stage. It ran all the way across the stage, and all the way down to the floor of the stage. The fabric was like the fabric of a negligee. A red, 1950s style car drove up behind the sheer curtain. It glimmered romantically in the spotlights. A slow 1950s style song began playing. A beautiful woman may have appeared, sitting on the roof of the car. The car may slowly have driven off stage.

Dream #8

The last episode of a TV show for teenagers. The show was a variety show, put on largely by teenagers, but with a few adults who acted like moderators and mentors for the teenagers. The show was mostly informative, about pop culture, fashion, and so forth, with little bits of comedy and sketches here and there.

There was a segment showing some of the kids who ran the show getting all sentimental and crying, some of them right after they'd stoutly announced that they wouldn't get all sentimental and start crying. One image was a closeup on a girl's face as she cried. The girl was white, pale skinned, with freckles, pale blue eyes, and frizzy, black-brown hair. She, like all the other kids, wore a yellow t-shirt and blue jeans.

But now it was like the final episode of the show was just beginning. The premise of the show's beginning was that all the kids were going to treat the show just like any other show: that, even though this was the final episode, the kids were going to act like it wasn't. But then, once somebody got out onto the stage, maybe the adults, but I'm not sure, the kids would all shout, "Surprise!" After that, the show would be like a big party.

I knew that at this point, all the crying would take place. I kind of didn't want to have to go through all the crying moments again. Even though they were silly and sappy and kind of endearing, they were also kind of painful. And I didn't want to have to go through the pain again.

The first scene showed the kids running through the backstage area, which was kind of like a huge warehouse full of supplies like bulk-quantity craft supplies: like huge rolls of paper and so forth, on huge shelves towering all the way up to the ceiling.

The kids were, either genuinely or as part of the show, running late for the beginning of the show. They had to get there before the adults did, so they could surprise the adults. But there were people -- not planned by the show -- who were apparently doing work backstage. They paid no attention to the kids, and were even a little smug with the kids. They kept on with their work laying all kinds of obstacles in the kids' path, and walking slowly at right angles to the kids.

The kids were now genuinely late getting on stage. Then one of the girls tripped on one of the workers who had gotten into her path. She fell and slid across the floor. All the kids who'd seen the girl fall stopped running and knelt down to help the girl. It was now painfully obvious that these kids, if not all the kids, would now be extremely late in getting onto the stage.

stalker plane; mom gives me money

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I had just come from somewhere else, doing something else. I was now walking along a sidewalk. I was either waiting for someone to come give me a new task, or I was waiting to walk to a place where I would be given a new task.

I didn't know what the task would be. But I must have had some idea. I told myself that it would be good preparation for the task if I would practice some flying.

I was walking past wide, leafy tree. Under the canopy of the tree, along the sidewalk, were a few stray rocks, each maybe about 15cm wide and 8cm tall. I stepped onto one of these rocks to get some kind of launching momentum. I then lifted up off the sidewalk.

I flew up to about the top of the tree canopy. I then flew around the tree, moving counterclockwise. Around the back end of the tree, the side not facing the sidewalk, there were a lot of other trees. I felt a little closed in.

Flying back around toward the sidewalk, I considered flying higher. I figured I'd fly away and explore some places. But I told myself not to. I landed on the sidewalk, telling myself I was worried about my task, and that my task was something different from flying. Maybe my task wouldn't even have anything to do with flying.

I turned up toward my right, opposite the direction I'd been heading in before I'd started flying. It was now like I was heading home for the evening.

But I now saw, up a small slope from me, and near some railroad tracks, a group of four guys. Some of the guys may have been young. But the ones I could see clearly looked like they were in their forties or fifties. They didn't look transient, but they were shabbily dressed. It was more like their dress was part of a look they gave themselves, in order to hide themselves from view.

I realized this group of guys may have been a group of stalkers. These stalkers may have been assigned to follow me around. They may even have been set up so they were living in my apartment building.

I decided to see whether these guys were really following me. I turned around and walked in the opposite direction. I walked a ways, then quickly turned around. Two of the guys definitely were following me. The other two seemed to be standing up near the railroad tracks, as if they were stationed there to wait for me to make any moves back toward the apartment.

I got really angry. I went charging at the two men who were following me. Somehow I made it clear to the men that I knew they were following me. I also made it clear that if they followed me anymore, I'd hurt them. Both the men, up close, were kind of afraid of me. They decided that they'd just keep walking in the direction they'd been following me in.

I continued up the slope. I kept a look over my shoulder the whole time, waiting for the men to start following me again.

I walked into an airplane cabin, which I may have thought of at first as a train car. I knew I got onto this airplane all the time. I knew the men probably knew it, too. So I still wanted to keep an eye out for them.

I got into a window seat on the left side of the cabin, about midway through the cabin. Somehow I had made it so that these seats sat up really high. It was like all the seats in the cabin were sliding seats that you could slide up or down the wall. I slid mine as far up as I could. This way, I told myself, I could look all the way up and down the cabin, always having a bird's eye view, to see whether the men were coming after me.

A pretty, though kind of boyish-looking, female flight attendant walked in front of me. The woman had short, brown hair and olive-colored skin. She had dark eyes, and she wore a bit of mascara. Her face was a little round and chubby. She wore a red vest, a white shirt, and black slacks. I thought she was cute.

Before, I had had seats in front of me. But now it was like I didn't have any seats in front of me. I faced some kind of wall with a window-like hole in it. Beyond the window-like hole was some area like a little locker room or storage area for all the flight attendants' things. It may also have been like a break area for the flight attendants.

The woman walked past me, then around the wall and into the break area. She put down a compact disc player Walkman and headphones. Along with the CD Walkman, the girl had a few CDs. I was trying to see what CDs she had. I figured I could either learn some new bands from the girl, or else strike up a conversation about some of the bands we may both have liked.

Dream #2

I was somewhere, I'm not sure where, but possibly at my family's house, or possibly at some house. I had probably been standing outside the house with some other people, most likely my immediate family members. But now everybody was heading inside.

But my mom stopped me before I headed inside. My mom and I were now the only ones outside. My mom handed me either one or two stacks of money. The stacks were each pretty big, and densely piled with paper money bills. The bills may have been huge, too, like fake novelty money rather than real money.

My mom told me that she wanted me to hold on to all this money. She had plans for all this money, but she couldn't carry out her plans for the money until she had a little more saved up. But she wasn't good enough at saving. So I'd have to save for her. So could I please hold on to all this money for her?

But there was also something about the money, as if she were giving it to me because she owed it to me. That seemed kind of odd. As far as I could remember, she didn't owe me any money. Quite the opposite. she'd paid for me to come back home when I'd been penniless in New York. I'd been paying her back for my travel expenses home. I didn't have any plans of stopping giving her money any time soon.

But I took the money, and my mom and I headed inside.

corgan killed; orange; gosling bites; cafe bar show

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I may have been reading the news on the internet when I saw that Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan had been murdered. Some sort of "news flash" with the same news may have been announced over the internet -- like the internet was a radio or a television set. I may even have seen a male news anchor (with a bowl-like haircut from the 1970s) announcing the news.

The person who had killed Corgan had been stalking him for a long time. Apparently the person had some strong opinions against Corgan. It was like he thought Corgan was a sell-out, so that he had to kill him.

I remembered that in some internet forum I'd made a joke about how Elena Anaya looks like Billy Corgan on the poster for La Piel Que Habito. I thought that, at the very least, my joke would now look disrespectful and distasteful. But I worried that the joke could also get me pinned as having had some connection to Corgan's killer. I may even have wondered something like whether the killer, having seen my joke, would try to take refuge with me as a sympathetic character.

Dream #2

It was a winter day. I was inside an office building, but I could sense (maybe after having seen through some big windows?) that there was a lot of snow outside and that the sky was grey. The light inside and outside was blue-white.

My old friend ES had sat my mom and I down in the lobby of the office building, then went off to get somebody. Apparently I was here for a job interview. The person ES was getting would interview me.

The lobby of the office building looked more like a living room in a really nice house. The place felt very spacious, but sparsely furnished. The floors were made out of some black-brownish, thickly polished flagstone with blackish material in between the stones. The walls were white. The floors kind of jutted upwards in places to create "platforms" that ended up being convenient as seating places. There may have been a fireplace somewhere.

I sat against one wall. The platform I was on went from the wall out to the middle of the room. The big front window was off to my right. My mom sat on a platform or chair that backed against the opposite wall. Off to my mom's right, running along that wall, was some small, dim area that looked like a really nice kitchen.

My eyes felt really fuzzy. It was hard to keep them open. I kept almost falling asleep. But then I heard something, like it was coming from some speaker in the ceiling. At first I thought it was background music, like waiting room music.

But when I listened closer, I got excited. I could discern Orson Welles' voice. Orson Welles was narrating some sort of story. Welles would give a bit of story. Then a little boy would speak for a while, as if he were living out the story. I think I sat forward excitedly and told my mom, "It's Orson Welles on the speakers!" I then tried to listen closer, so I could discern what story I was listening to. I had no idea so far.

But then ES brought in her friend. ES then went to sit, I believe, by my mom.

The woman brought a black-framed, orange-vinyl-padded chair to the far end of my platform. She sat down in it. The woman looked to be maybe in her early thirties. She was tall and skinny, with crimpy-curly, pale-blonde hair and glowingly tanned skin. She wore a pale-blue sweater of soft fabric and a pink shirt of the same kind of fabric under that. She had a bunch of canvas bags all around her chair. The bags may have been full of children's books.

I went to the end of the platform to meet the woman. Somehow I knew that this woman was interviewing me for a position in a company called Orange. This place was the office building for Orange, even though nobody was here except for ES and the woman.

Orange was some sort of investment or research firm. ES had become a Senior Analyst here, covering an industry and providing investment advice for people. The woman was also a Senior Analyst, covering a different industry, possibly something consumer-related. ES and the woman were going to share me as an Associate.

I shook hands with the woman as I sat down. We shook hands really awkwardly, even as we were exchanging pleasantries in almost a surprised kind of way. I found it easy to be really positive and outgoing with the woman. And the woman was just as positive and outgoing to me. But we shook hands fully almost once. Then I fumbled so that I was doing a guy's-style "bounce-back" handshake. Then I went in for another one or two handshakes and, each time, only grabbed two or three of the woman's fingers.

I prepared myself for some kind of interview. But the woman barely seemed engaged in the interview. She smiled, said it was nice to meet me, and basically gave me the indication that everything she needed to know about me she already knew.

I was a little shocked by the brevity of the meeting. I looked over to ES for support. But ES herself looked a bit shocked. For some reason, ES, wearing khaki slacks, had her feet up on the seat, with her knees drawn up a bit. I could see ES' crotch pretty well outlined by the slacks. I was really turned on.

The woman stood up. I followed. The woman said something to imply that I already had the job. But then she said, "Well, all I have to do now is go through the final two or three candidates, to make sure none of them have anything I want more. But I will say, you have more experience than any of them. It's nice to have someone to work for you who was around when people were using selling tactics based on growing in a growing market, not predatory selling tactics."

It seemed to me like the woman was already trying to come up with reasons why she wouldn't hire me. I think that ES was starting to worry about the same thing. The woman had spoken about my experience like it was something ES had mentioned to her. But it seemed obvious the woman was already trying to excuse herself for wanting a more conventional person to work for her. But I tried to keep positive, thinking that the woman's comment about my experience had been a compliment.

The dream may have ended here. But it seemed to go on. Time slipped a bit. My mom was no longer in the lobby.

The woman, ES, and I all stood in the kitchen, closer to the refrigerator. The refrigerator had, I think, been white before. But now it was brushed steel or stainless steel. I stood on the right (my right) side of the fridge. ES stood on the left side. The woman stood right in front of the fridge.

The woman was explaining to both ES and I that I would probably be taken on with Orange, and that at first, I would probably be working for both ES and the woman. But the woman felt like, for her industry, I was probably not the ideal Associate. She wanted to keep interviewing people. She was sure she could get somebody better.

I had backed so far along my side of the fridge that I could no longer see ES. The woman explained that once she found a new Associate, I'd probably be shifted over to working only with ES. I was kind of happy about this, since I liked ES a lot. But ES only gave a dull grunt -- and it sounded like her mouth was full of food. It sounded like ES was both surprised and disappointed by what the woman had said.

I began to suspect that ES had assumed that eventually the woman would take me completely, instead of ES having to take me completely. I realized that ES really didn't want to have me completely on her team, because (this is very far from the reality of waking life!!!) I was so good at what I did that I'd outperform her. I knew that ES wanted to help me. She wanted me to have a job. But she really didn't want me working with her personally.

I began to feel stressed out by the whole situation. I was thinking that I'd come into this situation and eventually have an industry of my own to cover. But it was looking like that might not turn out. I had a friend who didn't want me to outperform her. And I had a woman who was only taking me on reluctantly -- based on the suggestion of my friend.

I also started wondering about all the people in the office. I'd worked in small offices before. And if one person had snobby ideas about you, eventually everybody would. I hoped it wouldn't be the same thing her. But I was starting to have doubts.

But I wanted to put on the best face I could. So I stared at the side of the fridge while I told the woman, "I really like this place. The building seems really nice. The atmosphere seems really nice. I'm really thankful that you're giving me the chance to work here like this. I'm a really hard worker. So I'm going to do my best. And I hope that I won't disappoint you."

When I looked over at the woman, she was just scowling at me bitterly. But she wasn't the same woman -- if  she was a woman at all. She was blonde and tan, but she had a square jaw now. Her hair was done in a short, boyish style, with the top swept up in a dramatic, mohawk-like wave of brown and black hair. She wore a greenish-tan, button up shirt, kind of loose, like a man's style, with black stripes.

ES was now gone. I could tell the man/woman didn't want me around at this job. And I suspected ES didn't want me around at the job, either. But I began to get the idea that ES did want me around in her life, and that she did want me in this town (whatever town Orange was in).

I told the woman (who may now have looked like she'd looked at first), "Can't you tell ES something, maybe? Like you and I had a conversation, and that I told you that I'd be happy just being around ES here, even if that meant that I was in some job where I wasn't getting paid very much money at all? I could work at a Starbucks nearby, if all ES wanted was for me to live near her."

I started picturing the life with fondness: me, working at a warm, cozy Starbucks just down the street from Orange. I would live with ES. And at the end of the day I would come home to ES and live as her boy, or even, possibly, as her adult baby.

Dream #3

It was a sunny summer day. I was out in some backyard, possibly like my family's backyard. There was a trampoline to my right. I was looking down at the ground. I was planning to go inside.

But then I suddenly noticed that there were "geese" in the yard. But they didn't look like geese. They were about the size of hens. But they were covered in shaggy black stuff halfway between fur and feathers. Some of the "geese" had black heads. Others had red heads, like heads made entirely out of the crests (or waddles?) of roosters. For a moment I told myself that perhaps these animals weren't geese, that perhaps they were vultures.

But whatever they were, it was a bad sign that they were here. They could spread disease or become violent and hurt you. I hoped they would go away soon. I couldn't walk out of the yard, because that would make them violent and make them come at me. So to get away from them, I got up on the trampoline.

Two geese flew up onto the trampoline with me. Now they really were like geese. But they were like young geese, like goslings. There was one gosling on my right side and one on my left. The gosling on my right side had all black feathers, and he looked as sleek as a cormorant. The gosling on my left had feathers patterned more like those of an adult goose.

The gosling on my right began talking with me in a nice, little boy's voice. While he spoke with me, he bit down softly on my right index finger. The gosling's voice wasn't impeded by this. It was like the gosling's speech was a completed thing coming through the gosling's throat, not something that depended on his bill to form the words. I can't remember what the gosling was talking about, but I think it may have had to do with getting confirmation from me that he was "such a good boy."

The gosling on my left now bit down on my left index finger. I think he may have begun speaking, too, but not as much as the gosling on my right.

Now my whole family was coming outside. There were a whole bunch of geese, too. The yard seemed really crowded with people and geese. My mom may have said something like it was time for lunch. This meant that all the geese had to go away. But a head goose may have also said something about it being time for lunch for the goslings, too.

The goslings had to let go of my hands. But the gosling on the left clamped down on me extra hard for a moment, asking, "See how much I hold onto you? Doesn't that make me a good boy?"

I could see the gosling's drool (???) all over my finger. And when the gosling had finally let go of my finger I could see that he had clamped down so hard on it in the last few seconds that the middle knuckle on my finger was bleeding a tiny bit. I thought about goose crap, and about how maybe geese eat their own crap. I didn't want goose crap and goose saliva in my blood. So I decided I better go wash my hands.

I was now in my family's kitchen. It was kind of small and dim, with yellowy summer light coming in through a couple of beige-curtained windows. The walls were yellowy, and the floors had some kind of red tile on them.

There were two big, metallic double-sinks, like restaurant-sized sinks, in the kitchen, along the back wall, separated from each other by about a meter or so. I was about to go to the sink on the right to wash my hands. But I could see now that it was all the way filled up with water, kind of a mucky, greyish water. Not only that, but the water was still rising in the sink -- even though the water wasn't on and there was a whirlpool in the sink that would indicate water was going down the drain!

The water started flowing over onto the floor, seeming to go down the circular metal grating of a drain in the floor. But, again, the water may really have just been accumulating on the floor.

I figured I'd go tell my mom that all this was going on. But first, I thought, it would be best to wash my hands after the goose had drawn blood on my finger. So I'd use the left sink, which seemed to be working.

But now I looked over to see that the left sink was also not working! It was full of water, too. This water may have been dirtier than the water from the right sink. It may have been full of pinkish and tannish material, like old, soggy cereal had been vomited back up into the sink from the garbage disposal.

Dream #4

I walked into a cafe with my ex-girlfriend H. The cafe was split into two sections. H went over to the left section. I went off to the right. The cafe was warm and full of people. The section on the left was set a step or two lower than the section on the right. It had couches and stuff, where people seemed to be relaxing and talking and having a good time.

I sat into a table by the window. I seemed pretty stuffed into the chair I sat in, like I was wearing a huge thick jacket and had a bunch of stuff with me. I may have been huddled in pretty close to some book that I must have been into. I think I felt pretty warm, if not hot.

At some point I stood up, either to grab a drink or to go look for H. I turned around to see two girls at the table behind me kissing each other. Both girls looked kind of cute, but also a little boyish.

One of the girls, a blonde girl, saw me looking at the girls kissing. She asked me, "What? Does it offend you to see two girls kissing?"

I wanted to reply no, that it actually turned me on, even though the girls weren't exactly attractive to me. But I decided that saying anything at all to the girls would get me in trouble -- that all they were really looking to do was make trouble and cause a scene. So I decided to ignore them. I walked away for a moment and came back to my seat.

During all the time that I was in earshot of the girls, I could hear them both (I think the other one was kind of short and skinny, with olive-colored skin and short, black hair in a squarish, boy's cut) talking about me, saying things like, "Oh! He's so offended by two women kissing that he pretends like we don't even exist!"

After I'd sat back down, a tall, kind of big (though a little doughy), young white man slammed himself down in my seat. It was like, instead of sitting at a chair, I was sitting at a booth-style seat, like a small, two-person booth at a McDonald's.

The young man smashed himself into me pretty hard, trying to get a violent reaction out of me. When I didn't do anything, the young man began crying out, "Oh! He really doesn't like gay people, does he? Are you a homophobe? What is it? You don't want to admit that you're really attracted to boys like me?"

I suddenly realized that this boy was the girls' friend. After I'd effectively ignored them, they'd sent the boy to taunt me even worse. They really wanted to get a violent reaction out of me.

Somehow I managed to stand up out of the seat. I went looking for H. I had a feeling that the next thing I'd see was that H was making out with some girl. I thought that the girls must have set up something like that, as well, to try and get a violent reaction out of me. But I knew that wouldn't get a reaction, either. I'd already suspected H of liking girls, if not of actually carrying on affairs with girls. Seeing something like that would be more of a relief to me, since I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. Besides, we weren't even together anymore.

But I looked all around the left and the right sides of the cafe. I couldn't find H anywhere.

I suddenly remembered that there was also a lower level to this cafe. It was actually a karaoke bar. I'd gone to the karaoke bar before. I decided that I'd like t sing a little karaoke. So I'd go down to the bar, partly to look for H, partly to sing.

I got down into the bar. It was narrow and long. There were mirrors on all the walls. Everything seemed to gleam with pink glimmers, like from pink spotlights somewhere. There may also have been silver tinsel hanging from the ceiling.

I saw my old friend EI, who tended bar at an old karaoke bar I'd go to, walking away from the bar and into a second room which looked like a small theater. I also noticed that my second oldest nephew stood to my left, wearing a dull-colored jacket that was way too big for him -- it went down to his knees.

When I saw EI, I told my nephew, "Look! There she is! She's a really good friend of mine. I'd like to introduce you to her."

But it now seemed like EI was way too busy for me to try and introduce her to my nephew. But I still needed to talk to EI. I wanted to sing a couple karaoke songs, and I wanted to find out where H was.

But when EI came back from the small theater room, she seemed to anticipate what I wanted. She said, "Oh, I don't think we can do any karaoke today. They're putting on a big performance back there. It's going to start pretty soon. So we can't have any noise out here. Maybe you could do one or two songs before that show starts. But I'd have to get the equipment all set up and taken down for that. I don't know if I could do it.

"But you could go to the show, if you want! It seems like a pretty good show."

Somehow I got the idea that the show was some sort of campy remake of The Wizard of Oz, with a lot of people in drag. But I also got the idea that the show was actually a number of shows. The shows all had some kind of transgender or gay, or at least extremely sexually uninhibited, feel to them.

Now there were a whole bunch of people all filtering into the lower level. It was just like a normal theater atmosphere now. Everybody knew each other, everybody was acting all cheerful to see everybody else. There were all kinds of tall, beautiful people. Everybody acted cooler than everybody else. Everybody acted like they knew more than everybody else. But everybody was part of everybody's club. Except for me. Somehow I didn't belong.

Somehow I'd gotten hold of a few gaudy, glossy, postcard-sized flyers for the shows. One of the glossies may have confirmed that one show was some sort of transgendered, burlesque-style Wizard of Oz. Another glossy may have shown some Hedwig-style transvestite posing with one arm up in the air and one knee raised pretty high, before some yellow background that looked like yellow chains morphing into liquid gold or yellow flames.

I may have thought at first that I would stay for the show, if only to show EI that I wasn't so self-centered that, if I couldn't do karaoke, I would just leave the bar. But then I began to feel more and more unwanted, more and more like an outcast among all these people. I knew that whoever I sat by at the performance would make the entire time miserable for me. So I just decided I wouldn't go to the show. But before I left, I thought, I'd at least want to say goodbye to EI.