rehearsals

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably in a bedroom with my mother. The room had a bright incandescent light on the celing. But some grey-blue daylight came in through the windows, making the incandescent light feel pale and weak.

The two of us may have been practicing something together, like some kind of drama or presentation. But my mom got caught up in something she thought was funny. My mom was wearing a blanket, which she took to be a cape. She wrapped the cape all the way around me.

I was on my knees, underneath the blanket. I flew into a panic. My mom opened up the cape. The incandescent light now seemed to be a lot warmer and brighter. I screamed up at my mom, "Don't you ever remember what I've told you about how I get when I'm covered up with things?!" (In waking life I've never made any such comment to my mom.)

Just to prove my point -- that I hated being covered up with things -- I fell over onto my right side. There was a pillow on the floor. I half lay on the pillow and went into something like a fit of convulsions. I thought I was faking the convulsions. But they may have been real.

My mom just stood calmly by and watched. She was collecting all the strange behavior I exhibited. I knew that once she had collected enough instances of my strange behavior she would try to prove that I was insane, so that she could get control over me.

I was now in a bedroom with my old friend Y. The room felt larger than the room my mom and I had been in. The light was off. The only light coming into the room was grey light from the windows. My friend Y sat on a bed, maybe a bunk bed, but maybe a normal bed with the mattress just above waist height.

I had been watching something like YouTube for a while. I thought I was doing something creative or preparing to do something creative by watching YouTube. But Y wanted me to focus on something else. It seemed like we had been memorizing lines, like for a play, and now Y wanted to go over them with me.

But I couldn't remember the lines, and I had to look at the pages Y had with the lines on them. Y's pages were actually pages of sheet music, with certain passages of music highlighted in yellow. Y may also have had a musical instrument with her, maybe an electronic keyboard.

I searched through the sheet music for my lines. Y still held all the pages, so I had to look at them from an odd angle, seeing whatever snatches of pages I could as Y flipped through them.

Finally I got so frustrated by all of this that I told Y I wasn't doing it anymore. I either told Y or thought to myself that I had been doing something creative on my own, before she'd come here, and that I was going to continue to do it.

Y was offended that I wasn't interested in doing the lines anymore. She stood up and left the room, probably taking her keyboard with her. She said that she'd come back for me, and that when she did, I'd better be ready to practice the lines with her, otherwise she'd find a way to really embarrass me.

I knew that I was headed to some place like a festival, maybe like a festival for an Asian holiday. I knew that I was going to be involved in something creative there, maybe a performance.

I knew that if Y was still mad at me, she'd break into the middle of whatever the creative event was and call me out, saying something bad about me that would embarrass me in front of everybody.

I knew I had to work hard to avoid all of this happening, possibly (not really sure) because if I was really prepared and solid during my performance, Y wouldn't be able to find a place to break in and start calling me out.

But I ended up sitting at a chair before either a small desk or the edge of the high bed. There was now no light from the bedroom or window. The light came from the door Y had left open. The door opened to a hallway like in a college dormitory.

I started watching some YouTube program on a laptop. The program was educational, about science or history. Some cheerful young woman was giving the presentation.

reverse stage rocket; meth lighter

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was watching a video of a new space capsule. It had already launched into space, and it was traveling above the earth, but it was apparently joining up with two lower segments, which were like the rockets that would have propelled it into space. But I knew that the capsule needed to join up with these rockets. Perhaps it was preparing for a flight farther out into space.

I now stood on earth, on some wide tarmac area between two large, warehouse-like buildings. I heard a narrator say that I should watch how well the new space rocket prepared for its flight. The narrator may have said that the rocket was already ready for its flight.

Suddenly a silvery spaceship, kind of like a 1950s sci-fi conception of a spaceship, blasted downward, skimmed along the ground, then blasted back upward. As the ship blasted upward, two lower, rocket-like devices flew upward to join onto the bottom of the spaceship. I could see, as the spaceship quickly reached dizzying heights, how the rockets had already linked up with the spaceship.

Dream #2

I was in a hospital waiting room. I had probably just seen a psychiatrist, but I had been sitting around in the waiting room, anyway. I now stood up to leave.

As I was passing through the doorway, a scraggly, young man handed me a red lighter. I really didn't want to take it, but I felt like I probably should, since the young man had offered it to me. The young man walked through the waiting room and went to see his psychiatrist.

I walked back into the waiting room. I breathed in through the top of the lighter. I felt smoke fill my lungs. I suddenly knew that the lighter was full of crystal meth, and that I had just inhaled some of it.

At first, I felt angry with myself, that I had let the scraggly, young man pressure me into taking the lighter and smoking the meth. But now I was just afraid. I didn't want the meth to take effect on me. I didn't know what it would do to me. I slowly walked back out of the waiting room, monitoring everything about myself, so I could be prepared for whatever bad effects the meth would have on me.

meeting a girl; tometeas; back for more; fetish, porn, and game boys

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on the subway, sitting on a long bench that ran across the side of the car. I crossed to the other side of the car, where there was a wide open space. A woman was sitting to my right. She had a back pack and maybe some other bags with her. She may have been a little heavy, and her clothes may have looked a little worn out, but she was blonde with tan skin and very attractive.

The woman lay against me, partly as if she were simply resting against me, but partly as if she really wanted to cuddle with me. I enjoyed having her against my side, but I didn't want to admit it. Somehow both of us got into some game of making up an excuse for the woman leaning against me. We were pretending that we were looking for some guy the woman was supposed to be with, and that, in order to find the guy, I had to stretch my body one way and the woman had to stretch her body the other way, so that it would look like we were cuddling with each other.

Through all of this we had gotten to talking with each other. We were really comfortable with each other. Now the woman and I were getting off the train. We walked out onto some huge outdoor plaza that was full of people. I was kind of shy, sure the woman wouldn't like me. So I began walking away quickly. But the woman caught up to me and asked me some random question to get me to slow down.

I slowed down, and we began talking again. We were headed into a building that looks to me now like an airplane hangar with the huge doors wide open. Everybody was headed in there. As we headed in there, the woman asked me what I was doing for a living. I didn't want to admit what I was doing for a living right now, but I also didn't want to mention what I had been doing for a living before, as it didn't seem to matter very much anymore.

We were now walking through a grocery store. We turned left at the front of the store and were heading along the endcaps of aisles that looked like salty snack and party food aisles. The woman began telling me about herself. She said she'd just moved here from some big city (maybe Chicago). In Chicago she'd been involved with some industry, maybe the real estate industry. But now she was cleaning houses for a living.

Listening to the woman, I felt relieved. I realized that my life story was a lot like hers. I felt a lot less shy about sharing my own story.

Dream #2

I was in a car, in the front passenger seat. My mom may have been driving. We passed behind, and then to the right of, a small cargo truck. The back and sides of the truck were decorated with advertisements for a food called "tometeas," I believe. The name sounded like "tomatillas."

These tometeas were actually very small scorpions that were tomato-red. They were supposed to be cooked (I think) and eaten by the handful. They tasted like tomatoes. The tiny scorpions basically looked like flat discs with a small rod coming out of the front or back end and two goopy, purplish eyes, either on the disc or at the end of the rod. There was also a slogan for the tometeas, which I found to be almost preachy.

My mom was having a heated conversation with somebody in the car. As we passed along the right side of the truck, the car pulled into a ditch along the curb of the road. There was a lot of muddy water in the ditch. It splashed up as we drove through it. The rest of the road seemed dusty and desert-like.

Dream #3

I was in some small park in a big city, sitting out by the stone basin of an empty, dry fountain. I had a back pack with me. In the back pack was some kind of secret information or machine. I kept walking away, leaving the back pack unattended, so I could go eat some brownies. I must have walked away to go grab more brownies two or three times.

The last time I came back to the fountain I wondered whether the secret items would still be in the back pack. I figured that the people who wanted the secret items were always following me around. If they'd seen me continually walking away from the items, they'd eventually figure out that this would be the perfect time for them to come grab the items. But I also had a feeling that when I got back to my back pack, the items would still be there.

Dream #4

I was "in" some kind of fetish store. But it wasn't like I was quite there. It was almost like I was intensely feeling a movie I was watching. I heard a narrator describe some other part of the store. People thought this part of the store offered actual sex services, like a covert brothel. But the narrator explained that, even though people did offer a service, it wasn't sex, it wasn't prostitution, and it wasn't illegal. Whatever it was, however, was to be revealed right then and to come as a big surprise.

But I "skipped" to the front door of this store. I now stood outside it, looking across a street that looked very much like a side street along the east side of Manhattan. I stood under an awning, looking toward another awning across the street and down to my left by one or two buildings.

The narrator explained how the next place he was going to was a pornographic video store. I suddenly realized both the store and the place I'd just been inside of. I realized that I'd actually done this trip before. The narrator was making a film about something I myself had considered to be an occasional consumer ritual of my own!

A man and a woman were now walking up from behind me, having just come out of the store. As they did so, a business man in a shirt and tie, but no jacket, slammed directly into the man, knocking him back a foot or so. The man who got slammed into was tall, kind of chubby, wearing a shirt, tie, and tweed blazer. He looked tough but soft. He didn't say anything to the man who'd slammed into him. The man actually seemed a bit drunk.

I turned around and said back to the drunk man, "Hey, man, what in the hell?" But the man didn't listen. He opened the brassed-lined glass doors to the store -- which was now a bar full of people -- and joined a group of his friends who stood right at the front.

I knew better than to mess with the man now that he was with a whole group of friends. So I just turned around and headed toward the porn shop. It seemed like the man and woman were also going there, even though it seemed like they didn't want anybody to notice them going there.

As we walked up the steps to the store (there hadn't been steps before, and there was now no awning), the man and woman changed into an older, father-like man and a younger, son-like man. The store was now an electronics store.

I was with the two men, but I followed behind them at a bit of a distance. They got into the store a few seconds before I did. The store was crowded inside, even though it only seemed to be selling old-looking, used-looking electronics.

There was a circular customer service desk a few meters past the door. Two Indian-looking, middle-aged men wearing dark blue polo shirts were staring at me suspiciously. I knew that because of my brown skin, the men were already convinced I was going to steal something. I just wanted to catch up to the two men I'd come in here with, who were both white, so that I'd have the protection of their company and not feel so watched all the time.

I caught up to the two men. The older man was now tall, fat, and bald, wearing a dress shirt, a tweed blazer, and slacks. The younger man was now just a boy, a blonde, pale-skinned, shaggy-haired teenager wearing a baggy, white t-shirt and blue jeans. The two men were looking into a glass display cases of old devices that were all something like variations on the Nintendo Game Boy.

I commented on how much I used to love the Game Boy. But as soon as the two men became aware of my presence, they quickly shunned it. They didn't walk away, but they made me feel like they really didn't want to have to acknowledge me at all.

I decided that I would walk away from the men, showing them that I wasn't trying to be obsessed with being in their company. I tried to look for some other glass display case that I could be interested. I figured if the men wanted to acknowledge me sooner or later, they would. But I couldn't find anything else I liked. And I was becoming increasingly worried about the store owners seeing me on my own and thinking I was an easy target for accusations.

***

UPDATE: Added illustration for dream #1, September 18, 2012, 7:23 AM, Mountain Standard Time.

fragments of criticism

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at my office. I had been having a lot of troubles with my boss. But now a higher-up person, possibly a client of ours, was coming to the office. I had a feeling he'd listen to my concerns.

But now I heard that the visitor was here. I knew that I had actually written out my concerns regarding my boss. I knew that the visitor would take anything I'd written very seriously. But I now thought that what I'd written about my boss was actually a bit mean and unfair. I'd look immature and petty for having written it. I needed to find what I'd written and get rid of it.

I ran into the copy room. The copy room was pretty big, but a little dumpy and kind of dim, as if only one or two lights were on. I found a big book on the floor, in front of some old copiers or old boxes or something.

I opened the book and found what I'd written about my boss. It was actually just a few sentences, written in capital letters, on a torn top half of a sheet of paper. The tearing was kind of ragged and slanted, so that the paper had a kind of rhombus-like shape and was a bit less than half the area of the full page.

I read through my criticisms of my boss. They actually weren't that bad, in my opinion. They were pretty reasonable. They were written in a blank, business-like style. And they didn't veer into the more personal or vehement claims I might have made. I may have thought that I actually wouldn't mind if the visitor found this piece of paper.

I stood up. I had to copy something, possibly my little sheet of criticisms. I walked to the copy machine, which stood against a wall that had been to my right as I'd knelt over the big book.

A man stood to my left as I made copies. He was tall and slim, but athletic, with sharp features, blue eyes, and curly-wavy, reddish-brown hair. He was a bit too tan, and his tan was tinged with red. This man may have been the visitor, or he may have been talking to me about the visitor. He may also have been talking about whatever documents I was copying.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.