sit on him

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in my family's backyard, sitting on the ground or on something that served as a little platform or seat. It was a warm day. My mom and sister were sitting out with me.

I was staring at some kind of plastic half-sphere, like the big, plastic bubbles that fit over security cameras. But this one was mostly red, reminding me somehow of a fireman's helmet, with just a small square that was transparent. For some reason I imagined that this transparent square could also be iridescent.

My sister and mom were talking about how my brother-in-law (? - or someone else, maybe a kind of famous criminal or bully?) was doing something mean to my sister. My sister and mom had called on my mom's best friend's son, TC, who was really big. My sister and mom said that if my brother-in-law (or whoever it was), tried anything again, they would just have TC sit on him.

grody books

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with one of my co-workers, SS. The room seemed either kind of small and narrow or kind of cluttered and crowded. I was either kneeling or sitting beside the bed. The bed may not have had any sheets on it.

SS had grabbed either one or both volumes of Jung's seminar on Visions. These books were mine. SS seemed to be interested in the books, and possibly impressed by the fact that I owned the books.

But the books looked kind of dirty and grimy. I suddenly got worried that the books would be infested with bugs, and that SS would be shocked -- and appalled at me -- when she discovered this.

So I told SS, "Hey, actually, that book's kind of grody. It might be better if you left it alone."

were they zombies or not?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had apparently recruited a few people for some project. But there was also a danger of zombies in the area of the project. Something had happened, and now either the group of people were in danger of becoming zombies, or else they were already zombies.

Some boss of mine began blaming me for not having been aware of the situation. Either I should have known there were zombies around, or I should have known that one of the people I'd recruited was actually a zombie. I think I knew I couldn't argue with this.

I may have been trying to figure out how I could have missed the fact that one of the guys in the group was a zombie. I knew that zombies looked different from humans. They were all dead and rotted, with green skin and so forth. But sometimes I mistook zombies for humans, apparently.

I somehow got my thoughts distracted into a scene which was kind of a world half-ruined by some kind of zombie invasion. Living humans lived in areas where zombies also roamed about. The living people had to avoid the zombies.

I knew it was sometimes hard to tell the zombies from the people. I focused on two guys, two friends who were about college age. The two guys had both been planning on going to some trip together. But at the destination, one of the guys had become a zombie (or had already been a zombie for a while). The other guy may just not have been there.

I tried to figure out when the first guy had actually become a zombie. It seemed to me that he could have been a zombie all the way from before he and his friend had gone on the trip. In fact, maybe both the guy and his friend had been zombies. But I didn't know if that could be. The guy had planned the trip with his friend via written letter. I'd seen the letters. They'd been too intelligently written to have been written by a zombie.

I now saw the guy speaking with his friend. The friend was in a small, dim room, on a bed, like he was on his death bed. Both the guy and the friend may have been zombies. But the guy was talking to the friend as if he were dying. It was somehow understood that once the friend died, there was a good chance that he'd become a zombie -- as if he weren't a zombie right now. The two friends spoke with each other very sadly.

My view was now outside, from behind a chain-link fence, in a small, desert town which had already been overrun completely by zombies. It was a hot, dusty day. The town looked completeley abandoned. I saw up a main thoroughfare of the small town -- just a wide road flanked by small, squat buildings.

Now a zombie was walking down the road. The zombie's skin was all dark green and rotted, but dry and shrivelled. The zombie seemed to be wearing something like a nice suit of clothes and something like a gardener's broad-brimmed hat.

The zombie kept on walking straight forward. But then its walk began to waver, as if the zombie was being pushed around by the wind. The zombie then fell over, out of my field of view (like below the fence was a concrete barrier which blocked some portion of my view of the ground). I knew the zombie was dead.

Now a group of people came walking down the street. At first I thought they were more zombies. But then I knew they were actually college kids. They had come to this town because they knew it had been completely overrun by zombies. The kids were here to have a little adventure.

The kids came marching down the street in two lines, one on either side of the street, almost dancing, like they were in a musical. I thought it had been stupid for the kids to risk their lives by coming here in the first place. I was starting to wonder whether they hadn't actually been caught already and turned into zombies.

As the kids got closer I could see that they were also wearing nice clothes, maybe like the characters of the musical The Music Man might wear. There was a lead kid, a guy, tall, blonde, and very good-looking. He wore grey-blue slacks, a grey-blue vest, a white shirt, a tie, and some kind of round-brimmed, straw hat. He may have been holding a cane, too, and using it as a part of his dance.

When the guy approached the fence, I thought, even though he looked normal, that he could be a zombie. He seemed to be preparing for some kind of big physical effort. I thought he might have been preparing to attack me. But instead he jumped up to the top of the tall fence. He balanced on the fence and began singing, as well as continuing his dance. Some of the other college kids may have been working their way up the fence.

But now the man saw two or three zombies. They seemed to jump all the way up the fence. The man caught them in time, though. He used his cane to bash the three zombies, either knocking them away from him or killing them altogether.

The man may have jumped down onto the other side of the fence now. At this point the "battle" against the zombies may truly have begun. But possibly the man had stayed on the fence. Either way, I, already on this other side of the fence, had turned away from the thoroughfare and was now standing inside a building, or at least looking at the inside of a building from my outside vantage point.

The building felt pretty small and constricted. It was packed full of people, all or most of whom may have been zombies. The zombies were in some kind of frenzy. They may have been just acting in a chaotic way. Or they may have been attacking each other. Or they may have been attacking some living humans who had gotten into the room.

flying through a walking town

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some large building, coming up an escalator with one or two older businessmen and a young woman who was probably a businesswoman. We were coming up from the basement. The escalator bank was huge and spacious, like there were a whole lot of escalators all in a row. The space above the escalators was also wide and open, like in the atrium for a huge skyscraper.

One of the older men was DR, the head of the department at one of my old jobs. The two men were educating the woman on something. I'm not sure how I was involved in the conversation. But the teaching eventually had something to do with the appearance of tall buildings from other tall buildings.

We headed up on the escalators to a place where the walls were all glass. We looked out to a cityscape. The sky was heavy, soft, and dark grey. We looked out on a cityscape that was filled with nice, new buildings. Everything looked vast and monumental. But none of the buildings looked like skyscrapers.

DR said, "Oh, well, that's because we aren't high enough. Once we get high enough you'll see how tall the buildings look, as well as vast." But I could tell that DR was actually a little embarrassed by the fact that the buildings that had come into our view weren't skyscrapers. After all, the woman was supposed to be getting a lesson in how tall builings looked from tall buildings.

DR said, "For instance, if you look up the side of this building, you'll get an incredible feeling of vastness." Our vision was directed to our left, where we could, apparently, see up the side of the building we were in. It was like the escalator bank was in a glass atrium attached to the side of the building proper.

The building was made of white marble, and it had a very square appearance, like some of the buildings in Washington, DC. For some reason I figured that DR had made reference to this building as if it were the Schwarzmann building of the New York Public Library. DR had seemed to imply that even though the building wasn't tall, that if you looked up the side of it, you'd feel as overwhelmed by its size as if it were a tall building.

I didn't quite agree with DR when he said this. But it was almost like I had been saying it. It was like I had been trying to teach the woman this whole time -- and constantly making a fool of myself by being wrong all the time! So I thought I must have been trying to make up some silly idea about perception, so that even though I couldn't show the woman a tall building, I could at least make her feel like she should feel like she was looking at a tall building.

I was now walking up a steep slope, up to the side of the NYPL building. The slope was tiered with big, square stones, which were topped with heavy soil and vegetation. It was narrow walking sometimes, and I felt like I could lose my balance and fall down the slope. It was a sunny day, but the slope was in the cool, grey shade of the massive building's side. There were some other people out on the slope.

We were now all walking along the side of the building, walking up toward the front of the building. I could tell we were all part of some group, like a volunteer group. In front of the building was a wide, marble promenade. People were scattered all over the promenade, kneeling before small planters full of new flowers.

I walked a bit more, possibly trying to find what my place was among all these volunteers. I got past the front doors of the building. There was now another slope, off to my left. This was a golden lawn with a big tree about halfway down it. There were a few volunteers -- mostly attractive women -- working on putting in a few rows of flower beds along the slope.

I wanted to go down along the slope to see what was going on. But instead of walking down the slope, I flew over it. I hovered down over the garden and the women. I could hear the women's conversations.

I think I was a little surprised at first that I could fly. But then I told myself to control my flight and experiment with it. But, for some reason, I think I got too focused on flying around near the branches of the trees. I think this may have been because I was a little shy around the girls. I felt like some of their conversation had to do with making fun of me.

I think, though, that at some points I was flying really high up into the air and then back down. I think I had done this while asking myself, If I were in a dream and flying, how would I take advantage of the situation?

The girls were now really trying to get my attention. But it was like they were only doing it as a joke. So I turned away from them. But just as I was turning away, I saw some guy coming up the slope. He was an attractive, muscular man. It was like he was the guy all these girls loved. But he was only wearing a blue, sleeveless shirt and a pair of briefs. And the briefs were pink with blue lining, like a pair of boy-short panties for girls!

I could tell that the women had only been trying to get my attention so they could show their man that they could make other boys interested in them. They knew this kind of thing amused the man. So, without giving the women and man any attention, I flew up the slope and off to my left.

The slope ended at some fence. I flew over the fence and found myself in a quiet, suburban neighborhood shaded by big, thick-canopied trees. I landed on the road and started walking.

For some reason I either thought that I was in Portugal or that, since I had transported myself -- somehow -- from the NYPL to this quiet, suburban neighborhood, that I could transport myself anywhere, even Portugal. I heard a voice in my head start talking about how Portugal was "a good walking city." (?! - The whole country is a city?)

I thought that I would love to go walking through a good walking city. But now I felt a bunch of pains in my feet. I pulled off my shoes and turned them upside down, dumping some small rocks and pennies out of my shoes. I put my shoes back on and started walking again. But now my legs felt so heavy that I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk very much farther.

unlocking door

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the hallway of an apartment complex. I stood out in front of the door to the apartment I was staying at. The apartment probably wasn't mine.

I had to make sure the apartment door was locking well. I think I had been asked to do this by the people I was living with. But I think I also wanted to do it because I felt territorial about the place, and I felt like it wasn't well enough protected.

The lock was high up on the door. I had to reach over my head to get to it. The lock had something to do with pressing in a button. There may have been a problem with the button, though, like it was pressing too far into the wall or something. This was what I had to investigate and fix.

I walked inside the door and looked up. I saw how a steel rod, maybe 1/2 centimeter in diameter, would poke through the doorjamb. I could see the rod was long, and that it poked out really far from the wall.

I must have done something, because now I just went into the living room. I had to wait for whatever the results were of whatever I'd done to fix the door.

One of the people who lived in the apartment sat in the room with me. She was a woman who, IWL, lived with one of my good friends, H. The room was dark. The woman, T, sat in a big, leather chair. A television was placed on a set of shelves or something, just over the head of the chair.

Something about how T was sitting or what T was doing while she sat was blocking my view of the TV. I didn't think I could wait here for a long time while whatever was supposed to happen to the door happened.

Finally I decided I had waited long enough -- even though I probably knew I really hadn't. I stood up and went to the door to see how things turned out.

two or three guys in a band; two or three guys on a job

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a group of two or three guys in some place like a living room. We were probably all rehearsing songs. The two or three guys were in a band. They had let me come rehearse with them. I may have been singing.

But now the rehearsal was over. The guys were all scattered around the living room, as well as in a small kitchen that was separated from the living room by a breakfast bar a little over waist high.

The guys all seemed to be mad at me. It was like I had screwed up something while I had been singing. It was less like my singing had been bad and more like the style of singing I was using was different from what the guys had wanted. In fact, it was so different that the guys had been a little insulted that I'd think of using it.

One of the guys was talking to me for a moment. He looked kind of like Elliott Smith. She had about jaw-length hair and wore a skull-cap that went kind of low over his brow. He was kind of pissy as he spoke with me.

But now my vision shifted into something like a page on YouTube. But even while I was looking at this page I was looking at the living room. The YouTube page took up my whole vision, but it was like it was almost transparent.

Through the YouTube page I could still hear the man talking to me about the mistake I'd made in choosing my style of singing. This discussion had something to do with the YouTube page I was looking at. The page belonged to the band. This page was a way I'd first gotten to know about this band.

To illustrate my mistake, the man told me to scroll down the page. I scrolled down -- although it was kind of more like my whole body was floating down the page.

I arrived at a comment I'd made on the video. I'd thought it had been smart. But now the guy had me scroll-float up to a more recent comment. This comment was made by one of the band members, possibly the guy. The comment was preceded by an icon that looked like a rainbow flag, although it was supposed to stand for something religious or mystical. The comment criticized the comment I'd made. I was disappointed in myself for never having caught this before.

Dream #2

I was somewhere -- possibly in front of a computer screen. I had just gotten a group of guys together to go out on some project for my work. The project was going to begin on this day. But now, looking at the screen, I found that two or three of the guys I'd gotten on for this project were planning not to show up. It may even have been that the guys were doing this because they didn't like me personally.

sabbath; netflix; a friend in need is a friend on hold

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in either a bedroom or a bathroom. It was night, and there was incandescent light on in the room. I was standing up near a niche in a wall. I was facing the wall as if I were standing and urinating into a toilet. But I don't think I was really going to the bathroom. On the walls before me and on my right were bookshelves and possibly a couple of small posters. On the wall to my left was a window with its curtains drawn, exposing the black night.

The thought came into my head that I was supposed to be observing the sabbath. I was supposed to be taking a time of rest. It seemed like it was something that had just come up, something like a holiday, but an emergency holiday.

I knew it was probably true that I needed to observe the sabbath -- possibly even for physical reasons. But I didn't really want to. I felt like I had too much to do already. I couldn't take a break now. And others would think I was lazy.

But I now heard a woman's voice, probably the voice of a female preacher, Marilyn Hickey, telling me to observe the sabbath, from today through Tuesday. I knew that this demand was actually written into an old book of teachings, which the preacher had often used as a source for lessons in her own books. It wasn't the Bible, but it was an old book of wisdom. Knowing that the command had come from this book, I understood I probably couldn't argue with it.

Dream #2

I had probably gotten a bag of mail, maybe from my mother. The bag may have been like a small bookbag. I had to shuffle through some of the mail. I may have been looking for something in particular. But, by accident, I found two red mailers for Netflix disks. I had two Netflix CDs I wanted to return, but I hadn't had any mailers to send them in. I was really happy to have these mailers.

Dream #3

I was by myself in a big, nice apartment. I was in some side room that seemed partly like a kitchen and dining room, but that also seemed to edge out into something like a sunroom or a patio. I sat at a smallish, round, wooden dining table, with my chair's back turned to the table, so that I faced out to see the kitchen counters.

The space off to my right was airy and open, like there were a lot of big, wide windows. Off to my left was a doorway that led into a big, open space, like a huge living room. It was probably late afternoon. The sky was dark grey, like it was getting ready to storm.

I was on the phone with one of my old bosses, whom I now think of as a good friend, EB. I was talking to EB about my current job. I told him that I was actually having a lot of fun with the job, and that I found the work really exciting. But, I told him, I wasn't getting enough money to live on. I told him I figured that for the time being I'd be okay. I'd never been too terribly worried about money.

EB told me, "Really? If I had to eat, if I had to have food, I'd do whatever I needed to get it. Having enough money is really important to me." I could tell EB was partly saying this because he admired my ability to do without a lot of money. But I could also tell that he was worried I wasn't doing enough to go for what I needed.

So I told EB, "Well, I've actually been thinking about applying for positions at some funds out here. You know, something like what I was doing before. There are a few good ones out here. I'm wondering if you know anybody you could put in a good word for me for at ----- or -----?" (I named two specific firms.)

EB had managed to put me on hold right as I asked him to help me. I couldn't tell whether he'd done it on accident. But I assumed he had. I thought he'd pull me right back off hold. While I was on hold, I heard a couple of contemporary R&B type songs, which I found really annoying.

I stood up, a little impatient, and walked out toward the sun room-like area. I only walked up to the threshold (? - if there was one) of that area, then turned to my left, turned around, and walked back toward the dining table I'd been sitting at.

For this entire time, I'd been on hold. It now occurred to me that EB had put me on hold on purpose, not by accident. But I still justified his having put me on hold. I told myself that EB had probably suddenly had to take care of some business, so that he'd had to put me on hold suddenly. As soon as his business was taken care of, he'd talk with me again. Then I could ask him for help.

But now, as I approached the table to sit down again, I could start to hear EB's voice. It was less like he had put me on hold and more like he had just sat the phone down near some speaker playing really loud, crappy, contemporary R&B. Now I heard EB talking with some other guy about me, very faintly, in the background. EB was saying something about me that wasn't flattering at all. But I can't remember what it was.

bedroom and bookshop; anger at office

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom in an apartment that was probably my apartment. It felt like a really nice, big apartment on a high up floor in some busy part of a big city. The ceilings were high. I may have been kneeling on the floor and looking up toward my right, to a tall, narrow window with shutters and some kind of gauzy curtains around it. It was night, and my bedroom lights were on.

I was apparently doing something perverted in my room. I might actually have been wearing a wedding dress. I was worried that the people in the apartments across the street from me would see into my room and see what I was doing. The gauzy curtains were drawn over the windows. I couldn't quite convince myself that this was enough. I thought I might draw something more over the window. But I didn't want to stand in front of the window and have people see me. So I just kept crouching.

I was now walking into a small bookshop in some small, but clean and quaint, kind of Main Street area, like in a small town. I had been in the bookstore before, and I knew that the woman who worked there knew me. In fact, I kind of worried that I'd been coming to the bookstore too often, and that the woman would start to think I was some crazy guy who was attracted to her.

The bookshop had small bookshelves, all through the front room, like in the children's section of a public library. Some guy was working between one of the shelves and a big window wall off to my right. I didn't see the guy at first. But then he stood up from behind the shelves. I figured that since the guy was working today, the woman wouldn't be here. I was a little let down. The woman would know me and treat me somewhat indifferently. But I was worried that the guy would eventually get suspicious toward me or start trying to annoy me.

But then the woman showed up. I tried to act like I wasn't very aware of her. I walked into some other room, off to my left. There were tall shelves in this room. But against a wall off to my right was a waist-high bookshelf that held books on mysticism and spirituality. I knelt down and looked at some of those books. They were all paperbacks, kind of old. Some of them had covers more indicative of science or business books than of spiritual books. One book may have been written by W.B. Yeats, although I may have thought of him as a business writer instead of as a poet.

Dream #2

I was in an office. The office was one room, maybe ten meters long and five meters wide. There were two long tables set up in it: one at the center of the room, and the other on the right side of the room. People sat working at computers all along these two tables. I sat at a computer in the corner of the room, at the end of the table along the right wall.

Some of my co-workers began discussing how they might get me to do some of their work for them. They were mumbling this to themselves, as if they thought I couldn't hear them. I got mad. I knew they were going to try and find a way to dump a bunch of work on me without asking me beforehand whether I could do it.

Now one of my co-workers, a guy about my age, tried to play friendly with me, to butter me up before all the work got dumped on me. I was wearing a hoodie. The man walked up behind me and pulled the hood over my head. The man just thought he was making a funny joke. But something about it really pissed me off and panicked me.

The guy had walked back to his desk and sat down, like he'd realized he'd done something dumb, but that he didn't think it was a big deal. But I followed the guy to his desk and began screaming and yelling at him. I also began yelling at everybody I thought was in on the plans to get all their work dumped on me. Among these people was some woman who sat near the guy.

I walked back to my desk. I now noticed that one of my old co-workers, DE, was sitting at the computer to my left. He began typing on his phone. I knew he was gossiping about how violent I had just been. IWL he had always criticized me for being too emotional in situations that made me uncomfortable.

Now the woman who was among the people I had screamed at walked up to me and asked me about something not work related. It may have had to do with some kind of university course she was taking. The woman had a binder filled with papers of about the same consistency as coloring book paper. The papers all dealt with psychological disorders.

The woman asked me how I'd interpret some kind of diagnostic passage relating to some kind of specific mental disease. She read it in a mumbling kind of voice. I tried to catch everything she said, especially because I felt she was trying to "catch" me or "expose" me somehow as not being smart enough to understand her studies. But it sounded like she'd only read half of the text. It even seemed like she got discouraged about halfway through reading and just walked back to her desk.

So now I stood up and walked toward her desk. I was starting to piece together what the woman had read, and everything started to sound familiar to me. I was pretty sure I knew what disease the woman had been talking about. I asked the woman for the book. I looked things over. The woman said that the one thing she wasn't understanding was where it said this disease, which was purely psychogenic, caused an actual physical decay of the brain.

I told the woman that this was correct: that this disease did lead to a physical decay of the brain. Now everybody was listening. Everybody seemed to be pretty shocked that the disease could do this. But I said it wasn't such a strange thing. I began discussing how the abuse of certain drugs could also lead to conditions where people developed decay in their brains.

hands off my smartphone

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a McDonald's, probably during the late afternoon. The sunlight streaming in through the windows was a really intense, raspy yellow. I sat at one of the long booths against a wall. Nobody else was in the booth with me, all the way along the wall. But I probably felt like I was with other people, a group of people, maybe teenagers, who were kind of annoying to me, even though they may have liked me. I may have been trying to eat something chickeny or fishy, like a chicken strip or something.

I was now on a bus. But the bus' seating was almost like the seating for a large airplane. There were three rows of seats, at least. I sat near the back, near the right hand side of the bus. The atmosphere of the bus was grey, with grey seats that had reddish patterns on them. Whole TVs (I guess) were inset into molded fixtures that jutted down from the ceiling of the bus.

I was typing out a dream on my phone. The format for the blog I was posting onto was kind of weird. It looked like a form. There were a number of different, small blanks. I may have had to fill different parts of my dream into the different blanks.

I was remembering my dream as I wrote it down. I had been thinking of a dialogue I'd had in the dream with some woman. I'd mostly been writing the dialogue as a discussion of what we'd said, rather than the actual speech. But now I remembered that I had actually heard something the woman had said. So I decided to quote it.

I erased a part of the text that I'd entered into one of the small form-blanks. I tried to replace the text with the statement "Then she said, '". But I messed up somehow and entered a capital B, then the opening quotes. I tried to erase this and redo it. But I may have messed up again.

A kind of tall, fat, white man sitting to my left began grabbing at my phone. The man had a short, stubble-scraggly beard and kind of messy red-brown hair. He wore a black, leather jacket and small, rectangular lensed sunglasses. He said something like, "What are you doing there, writing a blog?" But he said it in a kind of mocking way. It was plain he just wanted to take my phone and screw around with it, just to mess with me.

I fumbled away from the man, almost dropping my phone. The man wouldn't stop coming at my phone, though. He reached at me and said stuff in a kind of mocking tone about how I wasn't any good at manipulating the format of the blog.

I got mad at the man and told him to leave me and my phone alone. The man wouldn't really listen to me. I was a little scared by the guy constantly reaching at me. This was stopping me from getting very loud. But the bus was full of people. I figured that if I could yell, I could attract the attention of other people, who might try to stop the man, or at least stare at him until he was too ashamed to continue bugging me.

So I managed to get my emotions together and haltingly shout out, as if I were addressing the other passengers more than the man, "Get your hands off my phone!"

Everybody looked back at me. They seemed to be more shocked that I had the audacity to shout on a crowded bus than they were that somebody would be lunging at my phone. But I was encouraged by having gotten their attention. So I continued yelling "at the man." I made my statement a little more of an offensive statement against the man this time. The only reaction it got from the other passengers, though, was a few chuckles.

The man kept coming at me. He really wanted to take my phone and mess around with it. He just kept grabbing and grabbing at me.

I stood up now, frustrated as hell. I wasn't counting on the other passengers to help me. But I yelled anyway, in hopes that they would help me. But again my shout was violent: "If you don't stop grabbing at me, I'm gonna give you a black eye!"

The crowd all laughed loudly now. It was like they actually approved of everything the man was doing to me. I really wanted to hit the man. But I didn't know if I could hurt him. And if I did hurt him, I thought, everybody on the bus would just turn against me and blame me for being violent.

I sat back down. But as soon as I did, the man started grabbing at me again. Finally, an Asian man sitting across the aisle from the man grabbed the man and shook him by his left shoulder. The Asian man was kind of clean-cut, possibly wearing business clothes. He was apparently the fat man's friend. But while shaking the man, he shouted in an annoyed voice, "Come on man, stop it! I told you already. It's twenty!"

kei's red photos

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had taken photos of Yuu Kashi, the girl who played Kei in the film Linda Linda Linda. These were photos, it turned out, that the girl needed for something to do with a job. So the girl ended up being really grateful to me for having taken them. It had probably come to her as a surprise that I had taken the photos. I myself had probably forgotten all about the photos.

In the photos, Yuu was wearing a simple, casual, red dress. The dress had a collar and a button up blouse, with the top buttons undone. The waist was kind of square. The skirt was plain, going down to just above the Yuu's knees. Yuu stood in front of some old, red pickup truck.

Both the red of Yuu's dress and the red of the truck were plain, a bit flat, and tinged with a bit of orange. The color seemed to take up my whole field of view. The photos may have been scattered together, or they may have been in a strip together, like photos from a coin-op photo booth.

Now Yuu needed another set of photos. It probably seemed to me like it would take much too long to put these photos together, too. I probably went through my mind (or through some physical space?) searching for the new photos, hoping they would appear instantly, like the first group had, so we wouldn't have to go through the process -- without having much time -- of taking new photos.

The photos I may have imagined may have had some kind of motif of black and white zebra patterns.

bouncing elevator

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked from a slate-grey mezzanine lobby in a skyscraper, into an elevator. The elevator was as big as a living room. The floor of the elevator was a nice carpet with a nice-looking, Persian design on it. The walls were a nice, heavy wood. The lighting was dim and incandescent.

The elevator began going up. I knew I had to get to a very high floor. But the elevator seemed to be taking a long time getting up there. It then seemed like the elevator was going up, then down, then up, then down. Later, I might have felt like I was going up way too fast, and that I'd crash into the ceiling of the building. I also watched the LCD display on the elevator wall: red, digital-style numbers. But mostly they seemed to be zeroes -- nothing else.

narciso rats

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was somewhere, possibly outside, with a group of people. We were all probably single people in our late twenties or early thirties. But we all lived with each other in the same house. Somehow it was like the people living with me were all members of my family.

We were all discussing the house. It had been discovered that the house had a rat infestation. The house was infested with what were called "Narciso Rats." A pretty, blonde business woman was explaining this to us. She may have lived with us but also may have been something like our leader, or even our landlord.

We all knew we'd been having rat problems. I knew I had, too. But I seemed to be really ashamed of it in front of everybody else, like the rat problems in my own room were something that everybody else would judge me for. I may even have tried to convince myself that I didn't have any rat problems. But I knew I did. I was really afraid, too. I had a low bed in my room. I knew the rats could easily climb up and get near me at night. They might spread disease that way.

Another man near me, kind of fat, tan skinned, with short, choppy, black hair and eyeglasses, started talking about how he'd thought, at first, that he'd outsmarted the rats. He said, "I laid little bits of food out in a half-circle at a distance from my bed. I thought that would distract them. I thought the bits of food would lead them away from me." But this had probably eventually stopped working for the man.

The blonde woman told us all that the building had tried a number of ways for getting rid of the Narciso rats. But they were really hard to get rid of. Now we were all going to have to leave the building for a while. Some exterminators were coming in to do the whole building. This was the only thing that would work. Even this method might not have been totally sure of success. It might have been a possibility that the whole building would have to be destroyed.

I now realized that in my room I had a different kind of rat. (At this point I was half-waking out of my dream.) This was called something like a "Gold Flow Rat" or a "Gold Floor Rat." I heard some text being read, possibly as I read it out of a book, saying, "This animal has been placed on the dangerous species list."

shot in the face; thunderclouds; independence days; being pissy

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room, probably a living room, with my nephews and maybe some of my other family members. My nephews were all running around wildly, mostly around one structure in the room that seemed like a child-sized chair with a couple boxes piled on or around it.

Things were getting really out of hand. I may have been getting ready to try and deal with the situation. But my youngest nephew, in defiance of whatever anger I was showing, pulled up a gun and shot me in the face.

I didn't hear the gunshot. All I sensed was a quick pop of light, like when a light bulb suddenly goes out, accompanied by an almost electronic, bird-warbling sound. Then all my vision was just a blank, dull brown-red. I couldn't hear, see, or feel anything. I figured I was probably dead.

But then I could tell I was near my mom or sister. I was either being held while standing up or lying in the arms of my mother or sister. I hadn't heard anybody ask me anything. But I just crossed may arms back and forth in front of me a couple of times, as if to say, "No, thanks. Don't do anything for me. I'm already dead. Don't worry about it."

I had made the arm motions because I couldn't talk. But now I could. I must have heard somebody ask me a question, because I now said, " Oh, no, I can't see anything. But I'd rather not see right now. I really don't want to know what I look like."

Dream #2

I was driving or running along somewhere during the afternoon. I was probably in some suburban part of town, flat, with a wide, cloudy sky overhead. I suddenly began to pass under an even cloudier section of sky. The clouds were low, thick, and grey-black. They looked like they could send down spikes of lightning at any second.

I was really afraid. I began to move faster, hoping I could get out from under these clouds or into whatever building I was headed for before the lightning started to get really bad. But I also realized that it was a kind of cold day. It was too cold, I thought, for lightning actually to strike -- despite my ominous tactile sensations, which always seem to surface on my skin before thunderstorms. I was less worried, but not quite convinced the lightning wouldn't strike. But I probably slowed down my running or driving a bit.

Dream #3

I was in some room like a living room. I was listening to some device which may sometimes have looked like a cassettee Walkman, a CD Walkman, and an iPod. I was listening, apparently, to a compilation of versions of the song "Independence Day," by Elliott Smith. Every version was apparently done by Smith.

Each song seemed to be a bit more and more distracted or corrupted versus the original version. I was getting a little frustrated, hoping I could eventually get back to the original version. I wanted to sing it, but I couldn't quite remember how it went.

One of the final versions I heard was actually some dramatic theme from one of the Star Trek series. I was reading some horizontally scrolling text on my device that said this theme had been influenced by "Independence Day." The theme was orchestral and electronic, I think. But the melody sounded a lot like the beginning guitar playing for "Independence Day." After that, some of the progressions sounded the same, though the actual melody became something of its own.

The final song I heard was probably Smith's "Waltz #2" song.

Dream #4

I was possibly using a laptop in some living room. My third oldest nephew came up to me and started acting annoying. I got all pissy. I stood up and stomped away into the kitchen, then used the laptop in the kitchen. I probably felt bad for having gotten so pissy.

college dropout, college registration

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some kind of room, possibly an area like a convention hall. It was probably dim or dark where I stood, like a specific booth in this hall had been set off from everything else and all the lights turned off in it, but with some light coming in from other places in the hall.

A young woman stood to my left. She may have stood at the edge of the dark booth, so that a bit more of the rest of the light of the convention hall was hitting her. The woman stood resting her arms atop some waist-high pedestal. There may have been a line of pedestals, with a pedestal near me as well.

The woman began complaining about her boyfriend. Her boyfriend had been going to college. He had probably gone back to school after having done a little bit of a career. But now he either had dropped out or was on his way to dropping out. He had been losing focus in school and was most likely through with it all.

The woman was disappointed. She said the man didn't even think anything was wrong with him. But the woman could see it. The woman could see how her boyfriend was mentally trailing off, slacking off in everything. But the man thought he was fine. In fact, he thought he was getting more and more in shape mentally all the time.

As the woman told me this, I looked off to my right. A big video screen (or projection screen with a video projected onto it) was playing some sort of black and white art video. At first the video showed a string of Chinese characters, all moving downwards along the screen kind of quickly. These images were interspersed with other objects, giving the feeling of something like strings of stars being pulled downward through the sky.

As I saw all this I thought that perhaps the man had been studying Chinese, at least as a part of his courses. But he was slowly losing focus, and was taking less and less care with his studies. The woman, I assumed, was really disappointed about this. The man, I supposed, was of Chinese descent. So the woman found it important that the man knew Chinese. But now the man was totally neglecting his Chinese studies.

I continued to watch the screen. The strings of characters and symbols were now all trailing downward, drifting into a few strings of dots of light. Eventually there was just one string of dots trailing downward. I knew, regarding the man, that this was probably a bad sign.

Dream #2

I was in a big room, like a cafeteria or a communal room in a university. The place was packed with students. A lot of the students seemed old. Some of them were kind of fat, not dressed very well, kind of messy. The whole place seemed very chaotic. I stood near a line of folding tables. There were workers behind the tables, probably helping the people in front of the table get registered for certain classes, or possibly advertising certain classes to the people in front of the tables.

I may now have been in or near a school bus. I may have been hearing a conversation in my head between a young woman and myself. The young woman seemed to be pushing me to go back to college. But I really didn't want to do that.

The bus was out in a dirt lot. Propped up on the ground near the bus was an LED sign with red lettering streaming from right to left. The LED part of the sign was just a small strip. The rest of the sign may have been white with blue lettering and a blue border. The LED strip kept saying something about $100,000. I knew that if I went back to college, I'd end up owing that much money.

dice game and green graduation

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some big room with a few other people who were probably around my age. The room was possibly like a warehouse of some kind, though it seemed to be too divided and jumbled up to be a warehouse. I and two other people had walked out of one area and into another. This second area was like a long wheelchair ramp up to a concrete deck. Just behind the deck may have been a small structure, possibly like a trailer, or even like a wood-shingled building from the Old West.

I had been set up to play a game of dice with my friends. In the game, two people were pitted against each other. The players took turns rolling the dice. The highest roll won. After a number of rounds, whoever had won the most rounds won the match. The winner was then pitted against another person.

I had been set up from the very beginning against one of the best players. We would throw the dice on the concrete platform. But the platform was cluttered with all kinds of stuff that might be found on the outdoor patio of a suburban house. So the dice kept rolling all over the place, and we'd have to look for them. But somehow I kept winning the matches. The man I was playing against said, "I can't believe it. Never in my life have I lost like this to someone."

I understood that the man had never lost a round of this game in his life. Now he was losing all these rounds to me. He might even lose our whole match. I told myself to keep steady and not to lose my cool.

It was now like we were walking back to the concrete platform. Possibly the dice throws had strayed far from there. We got back up onto the platform. I threw the dice. But right as I did, some other man got in my way. He was a bit taller than I, but he seemed a bit younger than I. Actually, he might have seemed like a very young child in some ways, and he may have been clothed in shining, white garments. Also, something about him may have had something to do with the military.

My turn came up again. This time I threw the dice near a small table and chair set. It may have been just a table and one chair. But as I did this, a tall, fair-skinned man done up completely in a formal Marines uniform walked up behind the chair. Somehow I felt like I was getting in this man's way, so I was trying to get out of his way, after I'd thrown the dice. But the dice rolled down onto the ground at the man's feet.

I apologized to the man, though he didn't seem to mind very much. I bent down to look at the dice. I either lost or couldn't tell whether I'd lost. But I knew, from the imbalanced attitude of my two previous throws, that I was getting myself into a frame of mind that would cause me to lose. I needed to regain focus if I was going to win.

Now it was the other man's turn to throw the dice. He'd thrown the dice, but they'd apparently landed somewhere that made them really hard to read. I stood by the table while the man was off somewhere (I'm not sure whether I saw him), trying to read the dice. The man seemed to be taking a long time reading the dice. I was getting kind of impatient for my turn, but I waited.

But while I was waiting, I think my mind began to wander. I heard my sister begin talking about recipes my great grandmother used to make. My sister told me that my great grandma would make her recipes step by step. This, my sister said, was different from other people, including cookbooks. I looked to my right and saw something like a big piece of poster board propped up on an easel. The poster board looked like yellow notebook paper. It had typewritten words on it. This was apparently an example of one of my great grandma's recipes.

The scene now began fading into my great grandma's living room. My sister continued. "What great grandma did was to put steps to everything, not just the ingredients, but all the steps of making the dish. Most cookbooks give ingredients, but for great grandma, the steps were like ingredients."

I was now standing with my mom and sister in my great grandma's house, right inside the front door. The door was open, but the screen door was closed. It was a beautiful, sunny day outside. A group of girls, maybe six or seven years old, was walking down the street, from the right. I could see them really well, as if there were a big window just to the right of the door.

The girls all wore something like school uniforms or Girl Scout uniforms. The uniforms were probably navy blue with white button-up shirts underneath. But the girls also wore green mortar boards, like graduation caps. I got the understanding somehow -- like I was in psychic communication with a woman who was leading the group of girls -- that the girls had graduated from some kind of class.

My sister was still telling me something about my great grandma. And I was actually feeling a bit impatient to get back to my game of dice, which I was probably sure I could still win. But now the green-capped girls were walking up to the front door. I could now see that the "mortar boards" were actually made out of green construction paper. The board part was just a square of green construction paper. The cap part was a piece of paper that had been rolled and then taped or stapled into something like a cone shape.

Dream #2

A kind of fat, white man may have been talking about how he was the reincarnation of Cleopatra. I now saw a vision of Cleopatra (or Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra) reclining on her right side. Near Cleopatra was a fishbowl. Cleopatra may have thrown a goldfish into the bowl, with a few other goldfish.

I then heard a voice tell me that Cleopatra, after she died, took the souls of all her followers and threw them into a fishbowl of reflection.

I took this to mean that somehow Cleopatra had a greater soul than other people. So when she died, she could still control the souls of the people who followed her To Cleopatra the servants' consciousness was like that of goldfish. So she threw the servants into the spiritual equivalent of a fishbowl, and caused them to see their reflections in the fishbowl as images of Cleopatra. Because of this, the servants thought of themselves as reincarnations of Cleopatra. And in this way, from the spiritual world, Cleopatra kept her servants serving her on the physical plane.

make yourself useful; nephew handoff

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at some kind of big dinner. It was in some place like a school gym. The lights were all greenish fluorescent, like big floodlights hanging from the ceiling. The room was full of tables.

I sat at a round table with a few other people. The people I sat with were probably park rangers I've known. Everybody was talking, like at any old dinner. But it was also like everybody was giving some sort of presentation. The presentation mainly had to do with whether everybody had been doing their job well.

At the end, the task somehow fell on me of giving criticisms regarding all the rangers' performances. I said something like, "Spend less time focusing on showing how much you know about the things you know, and more time learning the things you don't know," or "Spend less time talking about the things that aren't important and more time talking about the things that are important."

While I gave my little criticism, I alternately stood up and sat down. While I sat down, I sat really far back in my chair. The whole time, everybody else at the table was blocked from my view, as if there were some huge candle or centerpiece or pile of clutter on the table.

The conversation apparently started up again. Again, I was asked to respond. But this time, when I responded, I saw, sitting to the right of one of the rangers, an old friend of mine, KB. She looked really healthy and young, though kind of skinny. She had short, spiky hair and a shiny, black leather jacket. She waved to me surreptitiously and smile-smirked a little. At first I didn't think it was her. But then I realized it was. As I sat down I tried to look past all the stuff on the table to see KB again. I could tell that she could see me and recognize me alright, even though I couldn't quite see her.

I was probably about to call out to KB. But something else happened. It was like there was now something else going on in the gym, like a physical contest of some kind. It probably involvled high school kids. I was somehow a part of it.

The gym floor was cleared out. The conestants sat on either side of the floor. I sat among one of the group. The contest may have been explained, or I may have known what it was about at the time. But I don't remember now. It was something like a race. There may have been something to do with thin, wooden frames and creme pies as well. There was also something to do with a test of strength. I think this got me worried. I was worried about something with my shoulder or something with my arm.

The scene of the contest shifted. It was like the contest, or at least part of the contest, was over. I had possibly embarrassed myself in some way during the contest, probably disappointing my teammates as well. It was like the gym was mostly cleared out, quiet and empty.

I sat on the floor. Two or three young men sat near me. They all started talking about how I should do this or that next time to keep from failing so bad at the game. They did it in a kind of joking way, like they thought something about my clumsiness was endearing. They probably eventually gave up and just told me to come sit by them.

But when I sat by them I was sitting with a whole group of high schoolers again. There may have been a general feeling of disappointment from everybody, as if nobody could believe I actually had to be on their team. I would really slow things down for them. Most of the people who thought this seemed to be guys. But there were a few girls who thought I was cute. They were happy to have me around.

I was sitting by myself again, a few meters in front of the team I had been sitting with. The gym looked different now. It was like there were window walls or high-up windows -- windows somewhere -- showing the black night sky outside.

I had the feeling I was supposed to be giving some kind of presentation. But there were a few girls in the front row of the team I had been sitting with. One or more of the girls started asking me questions, like advice questions about their lives or about paying bills. They asked partly because they thought I could help, but partly because they thought I was cute and they just wanted to talk to me. I was a little nervous about talking with them. I didn't want the boys to be jealous and start causing troubles for me.

I was now sitting right next to one of the girls. She was kind of skinny, with long, dark brown hair. She wore a dark, velvet mini-dress and something like a velvet rose in her hair. She started whispering her questions into my ear.

Dream #2

I was down in the basement of my family's house. My nephews were down there, too, running around and making messes out of things. Some of them ran into the laundry room. Others were messing around in the main part of the basement. I was trying to get them all to stop and just go back upstairs. But they wouldn't listen to me.

Finally they all just jumped into the bathroom. They left the door open a crack, so that I could see they were running around in there, making messes. I was getting really angry. At last, I opened the door and grabbed the first kid I could see -- my youngest nephew. I held him by his right arm and held him outward from me. He didn't struggle. It was like he was some solid, motionless object, like a coffee pot.

I walked up the stairs and into the living room. It was night. The only light in the living room came from the hallway. The living room seemed to be just as busy with kids as the basement had been. My brother-in-law was standing in front of the TV, which was shut off. I handed my nephew over to my brother-in-law.

torn movie ticket

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a small but nice movie theatre, kind of like an art house theatre. I had just bought a ticket and was headed upstairs to one of the theatres. The stairway and hallway I walked through were small and dimly lit, with walls either painted or wallpapered with a yellowish color, so that they looked like stucco walls, like in some big, old, exotic building.

The movie ticket was more like a credit card receipt with a barcode at the bottom. I'm not sure why, but I tore the ticket in half, maybe even in fourths. I may have thought for a moment that I didn't want to see the movie after all. But then I decided that I did want to see it. Now I felt kind of stupid for having torn my ticket. But I thought that if I held it together I could at least make it so the ticket taker at the door to the theatre would be able to scan the barcode and verify my ticket.

But I also worried that maybe the ticket taker wouldn't let me in because the ticket was torn. The ticket taker might think I'd gotten the ticket from somewhere like out of the trash, and that I was trying to use a ticket that had already been used. I knew that I could easily explain the ticket was mine. The date and time on the ticket were from when I purchased it, only a few minutes ago. So I couldn't have just gotten a used ticket out of the trash.

This movie theatre was one I'd always gone to. I knew that if the ticket taker was the guy I usually saw -- who was actually the CEO for a solar power company -- then he'd let me in with no problem. But I got out of the hallway and walked up through the upstairs lobby to the door of the theatre. The ticket taker was a young, Hispanic man with a very close haircut and a low hairline. Beside him stood one of his friends, a worker who was neglecting whatever work he had to do so he could talk with the ticket taker.

The ticket taker took my torn ticket. Already I could see that the guy resented me, just because of my looks. He would have done anything to keep me out of the theatre to begin with. But the torn ticket made it easy for him to keep me out. The young man told me something about my ticket. I was already ready to just give up and leave.

school keys; religious euphemism; noodle resin; gerald wilkes booth

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the lobby of a school, probably like an elementary school. The lobby was like an intersection for a number of hallways, some of which were probably more like covered outdoor walkways than hallways. The floor of the lobby was a kind of deep green. There were a lot of children and a few adults rushing about, as if a class were about to start, or as if school had just ended for the day.

Most of the people were probably heading for the front door, which was off and to my right. But I was heading toward a hallway that was across the lobby from me and up and to my left. But I saw that the double-doors to the hallway were closed. Since it was the end of the day, and the doors were closed, it likely meant the doors were locked.

I was probably going to head to the doors anyway, to see if I could get in through them. But some kids probably saw me. They probably knew that I would find the doors were locked. But they probably wanted me to get in. Either they spoke about getting me keys, or I could "read in their thoughts" that they were going to get me the keys, or I imagined that they were going to get me the keys. In my mind's eye, I could see a keyring kind of stuffed full of thin, flimsy keys.

Dream #2

I was walking out of some place like a grocery store. The cash registers were to my right, and a window wall was to my left. Up ahead of me was a smaller corridor that led to the automatic doors leading out of the grocery store. It was a sunny day, and the sunlight coming into the store made the store feel kind of cozy, even though it was really actually kind of run down.

As I was walking, there were two women walking and talking behind me. The women looked (even though I couldn't see them) young -- skinny, blonde, tan, pretty -- but a little worn out, somehow. And their voices sounded old and a bit stern and grizzled. The two women were talking about different choices of religion. But one of the women said she preferred not to use the term religion. Instead, she preferred to use some euphemistic term, like "spiritual pathway decision."

As I listened to the women talking, I approached the automatic doors. Leaning against a square column before the door was a wire-rack of free newspapers, possibly something like an apartment rental-ad newspaper.

Dream #3

I was in a big, but cluttered and kind of run down kitchen with a young man. There was a food prep counter in the center of the kitchen, off to my left. The man stood there, while I stood before a kind of old, heavy metal stove, watching a pot of noodles boil thickly.

The man began explaining something to me from behind the clutter on the food prep counter. It was probably about the right way for letting noodles boil. As the man continued his speech, my view backed up from the stove. The stove seemed to be cluttered with all kinds of things like sheets and gigantic rolls of Saran Wrap. But as the man continued his speech, which seemed to be mostly illustrations of how to mess up on boiling pasta, the stove top became cluttered with piles and piles of huge, boiling noodles.

The noodles stopped boiling. The man showed me some of the noodles. Some of the noodles were hollow cylinders, maybe 10cm long and 6cm in diameter. They were boiled really soft, and they all had traces of something like dirt or silt on their inside, bottom surfaces.

The man made me taste the noodles and see how bad they were. In particular the man had me note the "resin" (the dirt) that had been boiled into the noodles. I was a little surprised. For some reason, I'd thought resin would be something sweet and syrupy, not dirt-like. I wondered whether the man wasn't wrong in calling this stuff resin.

Dream #4

I was looking over a resume for somebody who wanted me to hire them for my company. The resume was just a sheet of paper with a picture on it. The picture took up almost the whole page, and it was bordered by some kind of zigzag drawing, possibly interspersed with crayon colors, like something a little child would draw. Below the photo were a few lines, on which were written a couple statements in huge, childlike handwriting.

The photo was of a man standing before a car like a DeLorean. The man stood on the driver's side of the car, right in front of the car's grill. The man was kind of old, bald, and a little egg-shaped. He wore an all-white uniform: white shirt, untucked, and white slacks.

The writing said something like, "My name is Gerald Wilkes Booth. Please don't tell anybody you know who I am or what my history is when you submit my application for this job."

I knew that Gerald Wilkes Booth was the man who assassinated John F. Kennedy. I wondered how someone could do something like that, and become so notorious, and then just think they could apply for a job without anybody catching on who they were. But I also began to worry. Now that I knew who this guy was, would other people now associate me with him?

One of my co-workers, possibly a boss of mine, had probably been standing over my left shoulder for a while, possibly explaining some stuff about this guy to me.

mountaintop temple suicide

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was outside, probably in front of a tall, white house or a white apartment building. I received news that a person I had formed a relationship on behalf of the business I worked for had committed suicide. The person's name was mentioned, and I heard it very plainly.

I was surprised to hear that this man had committed suicide, and I was sad for him. But I also worried about myself. It seemed like everybody I was forming relationships with for my business was dropping out from the thing they had signed up for, for one reason or another. I wondered how I could have chosen such consistently unstable people.

I imagined that the man had either hung himself or shot himself. While still standing out in front of the building, all by myself, I began to have a lot of white flashes flood my view. I assumed these were the flashes the man saw as he died: something like flares from the impact of bullets, or something like that.

I was now standing outside in the mountains. The sky was starry and dark blue. The ground and branches of the pine trees were covered with snow. There were other people at a certain distance from me, all facing away from me and toward something else, as if they were engaged in some sort of task that I probably should have been a part of.

A man began speaking to me, probably in my head. He was an older man, Chicano, or possibly Native American. He was some kind of worker, possibly a parks worker or a truck driver. He told me that it was getting harder and harder to work here because of the thieves and other kinds of criminals that were around.

I told the man that the best thing to do was probably to head up to the top of the mountain. I now looked over and saw the mountaintop I was referring to. I could see that I was on a kind of plateau, about halfway up the mountain. The mountain then sloped up and went to a very high point. I told the man that high up on the mountain nobody would bother him. I may even have thought of heading up there myself.

I walked toward the crowd. There seemed to be a man at the front of the crowd singing. There was a yellowish light on him or behind him, making the atmosphere around him very warm. The man sat on a stool before a microphone and played an acoustic guitar as he sang. It was kind of like an open mic night at a coffee shop.

I was now inside a bar or a cafe that also served alcohol. The man (or somebody else?) now seemed just to be getting started with his set. I thought I should stay there and hear his set. But now everybody who had been sitting, on stools as well, around the man were getting up and filtering out of the crowd. I was one of the few people left. It didn't seem like the other remaining people were really certain they would stay, either.

I looked around, trying to decide whether I should stay or go, like the crowd had. As I looked around, my eye caught a woman serving drinks to the remaining people. I thought that maybe this "concert" had a two drink minimum. I didn't want to drink any alcohol. But I knew I had to drink something.

I could see that the woman serving drinks had a glass, or a few glasses, or seltzer water. I thought that maybe I could just drink seltzer water.

I saw that the edge of the bar, which was to my right and maybe three meters away from me, had a few glasses of seltzer water on it. I looked over to the wall behind the singer. There was a dark, wooden, shelf-like counter for people to stand and drink at. There was a whole line of glasses of seltzer water. These glasses had been drunk out of. Some glasses were empty. Others were half-empty.

I thought that I really didn't want seltzer water. It didn't have any taste. But I didn't want liquor, either. I walked up to the bar and asked the man behind the bar, "Can I just have a Pepsi?"

The man nodded and was about to pour me a Pepsi. But I then said, "Oh-- no-- wait a minute. Maybe I can get one of those drinks. Those virgin, oh... how do you call it? A Shirley Temple?"

The man kind of laughed at me for ordering a Shirley Temple. But he started making it for me. I walked back toward the audience seating area, feeling a little silly for ordering such a froofy, non-alcoholic drink as a Shirley Temple.

I was then somewhere else, some place like a cafe or a cafe-like restaurant. But I was in some corner of the room, looking at the wall, kind of pointing my view about halfway down between my head and the floor.

Some woman was talking in my head. I knew she was a kind of healthy, but stern and worn-looking, blonde woman. She may have seemed like she was in her late forties, given her worn look and her sombre kind of attitude. But she may really only have been in her early twenties.

The woman told me that the man who had committed suicide had really actually died from something biological. He had either eaten a kind of food he wasn't supposed to eat, or else he had eaten too much of the food. His eating habits had killed him.

The woman said that the man justified his bad eating habits, and the fact that he wasn't able to resist food that he knew would kill him, by saying that life wasn't worth anything anyway, so why should he go to the effort of preserving this worthless life by abstaining from foods he liked. Because of this, it was said that the man had committed suicide.

I suddenly felt a lot better. I had previously thought that the man had committed suicide in a more violent way. If this had been the case, my choice to have started up a business relationship with him would, apparently, have shown my carelessness in discernment of personality. But because the man had only killed himself in a benign way, like eating the wrong foods, I hadn't been such a bad judge of character, after all.