huge roller coasters

Dream 1

It was a bright, sunny day. I was at an amusement park.

I saw a few huge roller coasters. One of the roller coasters did something like just go straight up. Another coaster may have been elevated pretty high in the air, and it would shoot the cars up and down on a U-shaped track, like a roller coaster version of a sea dragon ride. Another coaster did something where you were upside down a lot.

I thought to myself how I wouldn't want to ride any of these coasters. Nowadays my heart is so bad that they might kill me. But I was also just afraid.

I walked to the edge of the park. It was just a couple of huge lawns, crossed by some concrete footpaths and edged along the left side with a couple of small, wooden food stands.

But at the edge of the park were a few more roller coasters. They were enormous, with shining bright white tracks. One of them had a weird, vertical shape. The other did a corkscrew-like series of loops.

At first I thought I might be able to do the looping coaster. But then I realized how big it was. I said, "No, no, no, no, no." I may have been with a friend at this time.

But then I realized that these roller coasters at this end of the park were all under construction, anyway. So I wouldn't have to ride them. This whole part of the park may actually have been under construction.

the vanishing pleasure dome

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a group of friends in some place like a theme restaurant mixed with an indoor amusement park. The place was enormous. It was divided into a number of small sections. Each section was like a different theme restaurant or theme area for amusement park rides. The sections were mostly connected by a mall-like hallway, although some of the sections also just blended directly into other sections. A lot of the sections were dark, with little gleams of light, like reflections from a mirror ball, floating around the room.

I had broken off from my friends at some point. We'd all been in a restaurant section. I had stood up and walked away. Now I was trying to get back to them. But nothing around me looked familiar anymore. I didn't know what section my friends were in.

I was in the mall-like hallway section for a moment. I knelt or sat down to tie my shoes. When I stood up, I was even more lost than before.

I wandered through some of the interconnected sections, mainly walking through restaurants that seemed like bars, too -- like a lot of people were drunk and partying, or sitting around in booth seats with drinks and talking really loudly. I kept thinking I had happened upon my group of friends. But I never did, and I only felt more and more lost, like I was constantly working my way away from, instead of toward, my friends.

It now seemed like this place was closing down for the day. The sections were all emptying out. Wait staff, dressed like workers at a movie theater, were coming in and cleaning up the sections. Dim lights had come on in most of the sections.

I walked up to one of the wait staff and asked him where my friends were (as if he'd know who and where my friends were?...). The man seemed to know what section my friends had been in, though he probably wasn't sure they were still there. He pointed off to my right, toward a section of mall-like hallway. One of the other waiters confirmed the directions the first waiter had given.

I was now walking around in the mall-like hallway. But the building seemed to be vanishing with each step I took. I suddenly found myself outside, on a slope of almost barren soil. The building still seemed to be vanishing piece by piece, until it was nothing more than a run-down, dirty-boarded house at the top of the slope. An Hispanic woman stood on the porch of the house.

I looked down at the ground. There was a pair of old, white sneakers. I picked up the sneakers. The house had now also disappeared. The only thing, apparently, that was left from the building was the pair of sneakers. And it was like something, some aspect of the building, had concentrated itself into the sneakers.

amusement park waiting room; interview and stationery shop

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some room like a conference room in what looked like a hotel or convention center but was supposed to be some kind of fun center, like an indoor amusement park. I had been with a small group of people, probably mostly children, led by an older, balding man. But the others had left. The man had told me to wait for him here while he checked on something. He told me he'd be back.

A younger man was now in the room with me. He was kind of getting impatient. But I told the young man that we'd been told to wait, so it was best for us to wait. But then I thought things over. It actually had been a long time since the older man had left me here. I thought maybe I actually should try to find him and see what was going on.

I walked up a floor and onto some balcony-like area overlooking an atrium within the building. There were a lot of people around, all running around and having fun, like they were at an amusement park, even though I couldn't see any amusement park rides.

I saw the man at the end of the walkway with a group of kids. The man saw me and broke off from the group to meet with me. The man said that he was just on his way back to me to tell me that it would be a long time before we would be able to get into the place, and that maybe we were just going to go home.

I wondered about this. It seemed like we were already inside the amusement park. Maybe the man was talking about some special part of the amusement park. But I didn't need to go to some special part. I was happy just riding the regular rides.

The man then told me about some new form of technology the amusement park people were trying to get him, and maybe all of us, to use. He pointed it out to me on some little table to my right. It was like headphones, but it may also have had something to do with an iPod, or maybe even something to do with virtual reality.

Dream #2

I was in a lobby area, waiting for a job interview. I was wearing a business suit. There were a number of young men and women in the lobby with me, all dressed nicely. I was sitting in a chair at the back corner of the lobby area.

The lobby area was wide and airy, with dark brown brick walls and grey-brown carpets. It opened out to a ramp-like hallway leading down, on the left side, to the front entrance to the building, and up, on the right side, to the business offices.

I kept looking down and to my left, like I was waiting to see someone I knew, probably someone altogether unrelated to the interview process. But the young men and women around me were watching me looking for the other person. They all thought I was doing something specifically geared toward impressing the interviewers. So they were all jealous of me and angry at me.

I tried to mellow down these emotions in people by showing how kind I could be to everybody around me. Another interviewee came into the lobby. I stood up and gave that person my seat. Another seat opened up, so I sat there.

Then another person came into the lobby. There was suddenly a desk in the lobby area, so I stood up to let the person have my seat, and I sat down on the desktop. Then for some reason I decided to sit underneath the desk.

I had a big, fat book with me. I tried to start reading it, to get my mind off of all my emotions. But I dropped the book. When I picked it up, the book was bent out of shape a little. I realized how fat the book was, the binding crammed full of old, thin, yellowed pages.

I started imagining what the interviewer might say when he saw what book I was reading. I knew the book was by Sir Walter Scott. The book may have been Rob Roy. I could only see a few hazy details of the plot, but I thought I'd be able to speak about some of the themes of the book, if need be. I felt assured that the interviewer would be pleased with my knowledge of the book, even though if I were actually called to discuss concrete details of the book, I would disappoint horribly.

I was now in a living room, standing before a stereo set, listening to a punk rock album, maybe by the Sex Pistols. I was then in a car, riding through the desert with two or three other guys, and hearing -- maybe in my head, maybe on the car's stereo -- the same Sex Pistols song.

As the song ended, some DJ began speaking about the song, as well as the legendary album (not Never Mind the Bollocks) that the song was on. I now saw a record spinning. The label on the record was red, with two overlapping white ellipse. Where the label was red, there were white block letters; where white, there were red block letters. The letters gave the band name and the record label's name.

As the DJ continued talking, maybe about some more mainstream 1970s pop music group, maybe a Soul or R&B group, my view faded to me and a woman walking down some thoroughfare of shop booths on a sunny day.

The woman, perhaps inspired by what the DJ had said about the 1970s group -- even though I'm not sure she'd actually heard the DJ speaking -- suddenly felt there was something she absolutely needed to get from one of these shops. But I'm not sure if she could remember exactly what the thing was.

We found a display of shoes out in front of one shop to our right. The woman made a beeline toward one of the pairs of shoes: high-heels done in some kind of wicker-basket or weaving style, with wooden heels the same color as the plasticky, "woven" material of the tops. The shoes may have cost $10.

I told the woman that she should get the shoes. Then I picked up the shoes and began concentrating on them myself. Suddenly I realized that the woman was gone. I realized she may even have told me that the shoes weren't what she wanted, but that she'd seen what she was pretty sure she wanted in some other shop nearby.

I walked to a shop to the right of the shoe shop. The front of the shop looked run-down and featureless, like it didn't sell anything worthwhile. But I knew, somehow, that the shop was a stationery shop, and that it had actually been redesigned and filled with a lot of really beautiful stationery. I was pretty sure this was where the woman was.

I walked through some kind of curtains that came from the ceiling down to about my chest. Just beyond the curtains was a small, Japanese woman wearing a navy blue polo shirt and khaki slacks. She told me in kind of broken English that the store was a very good, very beautiful store, even though the storefront still looked a bit messy.

The storefront, even behind the curtain, did look messy, like everything was still under construction. But I could already see inside the store, where there was a lot of really beautiful stationery in all different colors. I felt like the woman didn't need to apologize so politely for the store. I could already see how beautiful it was.

I stepped inside the store. It was enormous! And it was all filled with shelves, walls, and display tables of beautiful, beautifully colored, paper! I just wanted to explore all of the beautiful things here. The store woman was still at my side, willing to act as my guide through the store.

But now I saw my female friend. I pointed out my friend to the woman and said I had to go meet her. But, for some reason, I found myself really uncertain about going up to my friend and reuniting with her. I felt like I wasn't quite sure she was really there.