grandma comes to my house

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in my apartment. My grandmother was at the door. I knew my grandma wasn't supposed to be there. She was supposed to be staying at home, because she was sick.

I didn't want to let my grandma into the apartment. I thought that if my mom found out I had let my grandma into the house she would get mad at me for having encouraged my grandma to be too active while she was sick. But my grandma barged her way into my house, anyway.

My grandma slowly walked through my kitchen and into the bathroom. I really did not want my grandma to see my apartment. My place wasn't dirty. I kept everything picked up. But it was largely empty of furniture, devoid of anything that would make the place feel comfortable. And I hadn't vacuumed in a long time.

My grandma looked at something in my shower stall. It was like there may have been a medicine cabinet inside my shower stall. My grandma may have put some medicine into the cabinet or pulled out some medicine or some kind of soap or shampoo or made some comment about how I needed some kind of medicine.

My grandma may then have tried to go into either my living room or my bedroom. But I really didn't want her to see either of those places. Somehow we managed to stop back on the threshold of the kitchen. My grandma held up a piece of paper, like a medical record. She accidentally dropped it. I watched it fall to the ground.

restaurant with friend; wearing little panties

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was in a restaurant with my old friend ML. We may have been with some other friends. The restaurant we were in was dim, lit by candlelight. The restaurant may have been a French-style restaurant or fancy cafe.

ML and I walked up to a bar on the opposite side of the restaurant from our table. We were apparently going to order desserts from the bar, like the bar was actually a coffee and pastry counter. There was a stand-up card display of desserts. There may also have been a fold-out menu.

ML may already have known what he wanted. I had to look for a minute to decide. I felt like ML was a little disappointed in me. I felt like he thought that, by getting dessert, I was overeating. I may have thought that I could make ML less disappointed in me by getting a light dessert rather than a heavy one. But I may have decided on some kind of chocolate-coated chocolate cheesecake with some kind of sweet, red shavings or sprinkles on it.

Dream #2

It was night. I was in a small bedroom a few floors up in a small apartment building. The bedroom probably wasn't mine: I was probably just watching it for somebody. The room was cluttered. It had two beds, both of which were piled up with the room owner's belongings. In addition to watching the room, I may also possibly have been assigned to ordering the room so that some of these personal belongings could easily be moved out.

I had been facing a bed along one of the short end walls. I now noticed that the bed to my right had some piles of neatly folded clothes all stacked up under something that looked like a broken-apart desk. I looked closer at the clothes and saw they were mainly women's clothes.

Then I saw some panties. The panties were kind of tiny, maybe for young girls, probably too small for me. But I figured I'd try to wear them, anyway. I tried on one pair of panties. They may have fit, but I wasn't satisfied with them.

There were a second pair, which I thought were lovely. They were also tiny. The hips had a wide look to them, like a mix between boy-short panties and bikini panties. They were white cotton, but they had childish, purple designs on them, maybe like letters and numbers. There may also have been a "pocket" design somewhere, like the pentagonal house-shape of the back pockets of jeans, except really small.

I may have wanted to try on these panties. But as I did, I could hear three or four old people down on the sidewalk outside. They were having some normal conversation. They were completely unaware of me. But I thought that if I could hear them right now, they might be able, at any point in time, to see me trying on these panties.

I think the people who owned this apartment knew I was a bit of a transvestite, and they didn't care. But I didn't want other people to know. I wasn't even really afraid of the old people downstairs knowing. What I was more worried about were younger guys walking past the building, accidentally seeing me, getting angry, and deciding to get violent with me. So I decided not to try wearing the panties, even though I liked them a lot.

housewarming pop culture; seductive girlfight; karaoke 1; empty luxury; karaoke 2

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had come back home to "my apartment." I may only recently have moved into this place. I walked into the living room to discover that my old best friend R had sent me a huge package. The package was a housewarming present.

I opened the package. It was full of stuff. The most prominent thing in the package was a box of shoes. I'd needed some new casual shoes, as the soles of my current ones were getting thin. Somehow R knew this and sent me shoes.

The rest of the box was full of pop culture items: mostly music CDs and movie posters. Two of the movie posters were enormous and rolled up together. The front movie poster was for a new Tim Burton claymation movie. The poster was "in French" (it really wasn't French) and gave the title of the movie as Formulation. A clay man and woman stood at the top of the hill in the circle of the sun or moon and under an orange sky. The man wore a leather and buckles kind of outfit.

I thought this movie poster matched my style, but I couldn't figure out why. I looked up at my walls. There were two life-sized cutouts pasted up to my wall. One was of Brandon Lee in The Crow. The other was another leather and buckles kind of guy, maybe Edward Scissorhands.

I looked back down to the package. I pulled out the soundtrack for the Sophia Coppola movie Marie Antoinette. As I flipped the CD case around in my hands I could either hear R speak or else see a post-it note from R. Basically I perceived some apology for the Marie Antoinette soundtrack -- as if some of the songs were so weird that R thought they might not be my style, even though he personally was really excited about the soundtrack and wanted to share it with me.

Dream #2

I was in the backseat of a car, driving along a wide, park-like road in some suburban area, probably in a wealthy part of town. There were probably three other guys in the car, all businessmen. The guy driving the car was TM, a former co-worker of mine. But in the dream I didn't know TM. He and the other guys in the car were guys who worked for a company I was trying to get a job with.

I'd just interviewed with the company, and now we were all headed away from the company -- like it was the end of the day and the guys had all decided they'd drop me off at home. I suddenly remembered that as I'd passed TM's office, I saw a picture of another of my old co-workers, TI, on TM's desk. I realized that TI had called TM to put in a good word for me.

I asked TM, "Hey, have you spoken with TI lately?" TM didn't seem to know who TI was. I thought that was kind of weird and annoying. I told TM, "Well TI told me he was going to call you and put in a good word for me. And you must know who he is, even if he didn't call you yet. You have a huge picture of him right on the top of your desk."

TM now seemed ashamed. He squinted, as if he were now trying really hard to remember who TI was. He finally may have come to the conclusion that he did, in fact, know who TI was. I felt really bad at this point. Here I was, trying to get a job from TM. And instead, I was sitting here, making him feel really bad about himself.

We stopped the car for some reason out on some wide road in front of some large, brick apartment complexes. A group of little girls was playing some tag-like game in the road. TM sat there and watched the little girls. He may have made some remark to me about the simplicity and kindness of children.

One of the little girls then shouted out to TM, "Hey? Why are you looking at us? Are you trying to do something funny with us?"

TM tried to assure the girls he was just watching them play because he liked to remember the innocence of childhood. But the girl said, "Well, don't you dare try to touch me! Because if you do, I'll call the police!"

TM may have gotten made at this point. He may have shown his anger and frustration in some vocal or phsyical way while remaining separate from the girls. The girls may have been reacting in a nasty way toward TM as well, although it may have seemed to me they were just trying to coax him to get closer to them.

But in the middle of all this, a tall, strong girl shouted and broke up the rest of the crowd of girls. She bent over and touched her hands to the ground. This quieted all the girls down. The girl then stood up and told TM that anything he wanted to try against the girls he could try against her. She was tough and confident and felt like she could counter any assault TM would attempt.

TM still remained separate from the girls. But the tough girl finally taunted TM to the point where, in a rage, he flew at the girl. He made some weird kind of movement toward the girl -- something like slapping her chest, then grabbing one of her own hands, or the hand of another girl, and making that hand slap the tough girl in the face.

This incited a big, fight-like game among all the girls and TM. I understood that the girls weren't really trying to fight TM. They were actually trying to confuse him into letting them seduce him. But now I saw that one girl, who was deciding to be nice and take TM under her wing, had grabbed TM's hand. She was walking TM through the crowd of frenzied girls. The girls all now seemed unaware of TM. They seemed to be fighting or playing violently with each other.

Dream #3

I was at some sort of karaoke event. I was in a huge room filled with long, school cafeteria-style folding tables. There were rows and rows of these tables, all with white tops and benches. At the far end of the room was the actual karaoke performance area. I couldn't see the performance area very well, if at all. But I could see the karaoke DJ sitting down at the front bench and working something out on a piece of paper.

The tables weren't full, but the space was so big that it felt like there were a lot of people here anyway. Not a lot of people were going up to perform. A lot of the time, a song would play in between people who were actually performing, just because people weren't putting song requests in fast enough to keep the karaoke performances constant.

I hadn't thought I'd do any karaoke. But now it was getting so frustrating to hear regular songs instead of karaoke songs that I decided I would sing a couple songs. I thought I'd sing one song in English and one in Japanese. I looked through the book of songs without finding anything I really wanted to sing. Then I realized that it actually cost money to sing: something like $1 per song. I didn't have any money. I'd have to go back to my house to grab some money.

I stood up and walked out of the karaoke space and out onto a wide, grassy field. It was a cool, grey day. I now knew I was at a fair of some kind. Bordering the large, grassy field were booths and little structures set up as exhibits for the fair. The karaoke section was only a part of it. I think the rest of my family was here as well.

My brother came running up behind me. He looked a little bit fat, like he'd gained about twenty pounds since the last time I'd seen him. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was heading home to grab some money. He said he was heading home for a second, too, so he could give me a ride if I wanted. I told him that sounded good.

My brother asked me if I'd ever heard of a coffee called "uite" or "uita" (pronounced "you-ee-tay" or "you-ee-tah"). He said it was a new trend among coffee drinkers. It was based on a very old, native style of coffee. He said it had a rich, bitter flavor with "glass undertones."

For a moment I wondered what "glass undertones" could possibly come from. Then I realized that in the making of the uite coffee -- I had the image of grass and dirt in my mind's eye -- the actual melting (???) process created a material that was potable, but which had chemical similarities to glass. So the coffee actually did have a glass-like taste.

I told my brother, "Yeah, now that you mention it, I think I have heard of uite coffee. But I've never tried it before."

Dream #4

I stood out on a street corner in a city like New York. Looking across the street, I saw a big, stone-like, but also barn-like, all-white building. The second floor of the building, I could see, was a shop that sold old vinyl records. From what I could see through the small windows, the shop looked, big, clean, well-lit, and full of people. But what interested me more was the floor above the record shop, which looked like an empty apartment.

I was suddenly now in the apartment. The apartment was huge and completely empty. The floors and walls were in pristine condition. I started out at the back end of the apartment and walked toward the front. At the front there was a stairway leading up one level. I walked up the stairway and found myself in an area just as huge, empty, and pristine as the area below.

I had a bunch of clothes and towels with me. I decided to hang some of this stuff up in a closet at the back end of the upper level. I knew this was allowed. Anybody could store their stuff in this place. I had a few more items of clothing with me. I wanted to store them as well. But I didn't know where.

I may have found myself back outside the building, across the street, looking up at the record store. I may then have been inside the record store. But even though the record store seemed really beautiful, cheerful, and busy, it didn't interest me.

I walked out of the store. I was in the stairwell of the building. I wondered, walking up the stairwell to get to the apartment, what it must be like to live above a record store. I wondered if it was loud. I had the idea that it didn't have to be too loud. But I wondered whether, if I lived above the store, the owners of the store would turn their in-store music up extra loud just to annoy me -- because they didn't like me personally.

I got back into the apartment and realized I couldn't live here anyway. It would be too expensive. And besides, I didn't think it was for sale. I knew the place was open to anybody who wanted to store their clothes here. And people could even hang out here during the day, if they wanted to. But nobody was really allowed to live here.

Walking around in the space, I marveled at the fact that I hadn't known about it before. It was so huge and so quiet, such a great place to just come and relax. It would, really, be a great place to live, as well. The only problem with it, I thought, was that it was built so that the whole, huge space consisted of two or three large segments, more like two or three enormous living rooms, rather than any actual bedrooms.

But now, looking right and back over my shoulder, I began to realize that there were side rooms. For some reason I couldn't quite make myself go into these rooms. But one of the rooms I stopped in front of seemed to be bedroom sized. It seemed like the room was separated from me by a smaller room, something like a walk-in closet.

I had my other clothes in my hand, still trying to decide whether I wanted to take them up to the closet to hang them up. I knew that even though nobody else was using this space, the space was open to anybody. And these clothes were my really good clothes. I didn't want to hang them up with the rest of the clothes, only to find out later on that someone had gotten into the clothes and messed them all up because they didn't like me. Now I even became a bit paranoid about the other clothes that I'd already hung up. They weren't my best clothes. But, still, I didn't want people messing them up.

Dream #5

I was in a "restaurant" that seemed more like some kind of casino -- or, more like a casino space with slot machines that looked and played more like 8-bit video games than slot machines. I was seated at a "booth" with an older woman, maybe one of my grandmothers. I was trying to tell my grandma about this place, trying, in some way to justify its existence. But I felt like my arguments were all kind of naive and lame.

I then realized that this place also held a karaoke area. I had actually been in the karaoke area some time ago. I had been planning to head back to the karaoke area after I'd taken care of something. But I'd forgotten to go back to the karaoke area.

So I stood up and told my grandma that I had to go back to the karaoke area. I tried again to justify the existence of the karaoke area to my grandma. But I knew all my arguments for sounded lame.

I was now walking outside, as if one had to go outside the building to go from one section in the building to another section. I walked along a ridge a bit separated from and elevated with the building, so I got a good view of the overall building. The building was interesting. It was mostly made of glass, and it was configured of a few different shapes: a cylinder and a couple of curvy, not-quite-cubes. Looking inside, one could see how much the entire space looked like some kind of children's playplace than an adult casino.

A car now drove up behind me. One of my old bosses got out of the car and walked up to me. He asked me if he could give me a ride home. I wasn't going home, but I also really didn't want a ride from my old boss at all. So I told my old boss, "No, I'm not going home yet. In fact, I'm heading back into the building right now to sing some karaoke."

My old boss said, "Well, let me drive you somewhere. You know, they have karaoke up the street, as well. Up at that place..." My old boss pointed up the road and slung his finger off toward the right, indicating a road going up a small slope.

I told my old boss, "No. I don't want to do karaoke there. I want to do karaoke here, at this place." Eventually my old boss relented, got back in his car, and drove away. But, walking back toward the building, I was feeling really stressed out. I didn't think I should always have to make such a big argument with people for wanting to do my own thing. But it seemed as if I always had to.

I may have been back in the karaoke area for a little while. The karaoke area may have looked a lot like the karaoke area from dream #3. The one difference between the areas, though, may have been that here, people could write "criticism cards." After each person performed, you could give a criticism of the performance. This criticism would be posted, most likely by the next morning, on either the person's email or Facebook. I thought I'd definitely write criticisms, but only positive ones, like, "good job!" or "you really had a lot of energy!"

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

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #3

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

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

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

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

Dream #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

split slacks; my apartment isn't mine

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at "my family's house," sitting right in a doorway between a bedroom and the living room. My mom and my brother also sat in the doorway: my mom to my right and my brother to my left. The doorway was wide, with a folding door that would run across it. The bedroom was dark, and the living room was lit.

My mom and my brother were having an argument, possibly about my brother borrowing money. Both my mom and my brother were smoking cigarettes. The argument reached a level of intensity where my mom stood up and left, not wanting to listen to anymore. She also may have had somewhere to go.

My brother was mad that my mom had just stood up and left. He blew smoke in my face and stood up to follow my mother -- maybe she was taking him somewhere. But I had gotten so frustrated over the arguing, and I was so mad that my brother had blown smoke in my face, that I stood up and got right into my brother's face, telling him, "Stop doing this kind of crap, man!"

My brother acted mad at first. Then his face got really sad. He just said, "Come on, just leave me alone," and walked out the door. I felt really bad for having gotten angry with my brother. I knew he was emotionally unstable, delicate, and insecure. I didn't want to make him feel even worse about himself. I was also afraid that, now that he was mad at me, too, he might pull some kind of bad prank on me.

I was now sitting on the floor in the living room. My nephews and niece may have been running around the living room and playing. My brother was now in the living room. It was like he had come back from wherever my mom had taken him. I stood up to talk to him.

He was wearing some weird items of clothing. One item was like a tie. The other was like suspenders on his left shoulder. But the material then ran around his waist at a right angle to the "suspender." The material was black and dotted with little, green frogs and some other design I can't remember.

I wanted to apologize to my brother for my behavior before. But my brother could sense that I was sorry. He acted like it was no big deal.

My brother pointed to the ceiling and said, "I get so frustrated with these kids sometimes. My dress pants were hanging on a hanger up there. They were a really nice brand. They were grey slacks, made of really nice fabric, and they had pinstripes running down them. Then one day I came home, and the kids had torn the pants in half. You know how? They were swinging off of them -- using my pants as a swing -- until they got torn from the hanger."

In my mind's eye I could see the pants being split up the crotch, as if the slacks, instead of being folded over the hanger, were "straddling" the hanger.

Dream #2

I had just moved into a new apartment. My mom's ex-boyfriend was there with me. I think he was there because he'd known about the place -- like he'd owned or rented it before -- and he wanted to check it out to make sure it was okay before I moved into it. It all seemed to be okay. Everything was really dusty. But other than that, it was good.

My mom's ex-boyfriend was gone. I was walking around the apartment by myself. I walked into the next room, the kitchen. There was a broom there. I think I thought my mom had left the broom for me. When she'd seen this place, she'd noticed how dusty it was. She'd thought it was neglectful of me not to have swept. So she'd left this broom for me.

I took the broom with me and entered the next room. I walked into another room. Suddenly I realized -- both the rooms I'd walked through after the kitchen were huge! They were both tall and spacious, with the back walls being beautiful, wood-framed window-walls. And they were both well-furnished and decorated: almost as well as a room in a mansion-like museum, like the Morgan Library or the Frick Collection in New York.

The next room was to the left of this room. Now the rooms came one after another in the opposite direction. I walked through one huge room into another huge room. A massive, wooden table in this room had a small, bronze sculpture of a buffalo atop it.

I began to feel extremely lucky. I was trying to remember how I'd actually managed to get into this place. I was paying rent for it, but barely anything -- $650 a month -- for something of this size and beauty. I wondered if the upstairs neighbors would be noisy. But with this much space, and these high ceilings, I doubted it.

I couldn't figure how I was being allowed to live here. The only thing I could guess was that I'd promised to keep the place clean -- which was something I thought I would have no problem doing. I was so excited and happy about getting to live here!

I walked into the next room, which may have been the living room, and which also served as the entry to the apartment. The daylight had been blue, cool, and crisp in the other rooms, but here it was golden and warm, like a sunny morning after snow.

I could see out the window that people were coming up to the door. It looked like one or two wealthy, white families. They walked into the house with no problem, like they had a key of their own. I didn't know who they were. But I think they were talking about buying the apartment.

There were two older men and two older women. I don't know if they were present, but a young man and young woman were also being spoken of, as if they were the son of one family and the daughter of another, getting married. The men may have been joking about how irresolute the son often was, even though he was really handsome and really smart, and may already have had a really good job.

Nobody was paying any attention to me. I still didn't quite know what they were here for, even though I think the families were buying this apartment for the couple-to-be. I wondered whether I was going to have to leave this place soon. I'd just gotten settled in, and already I was being forced out. But I resolved that, until I knew for sure what was going on, I'd just get to work on cleaning the house and act like this was where I was going to be living for a while.

I didn't want to leave the living room while the family was here. I had a bad feeling that if I left while they were here, they'd make some kind of nasty plans against me. So I sat down on the couch, broom still in hand, and acted like I was just taking a rest.

The older men started talking about other stuff, maybe business in general. They decided that they'd like to have some coffee and maybe muffins while they were here. So one of the men sat down on the opposite end of the couch from me. The other man may have tried to sit in the middle section of the couch.

But suddenly I found myself getting very tired. I stretched out over my section and the middle section of the couch, maybe even knocking into the man sitting at the opposite end of the couch. At this point my dream faded into waking life, and I was stretching out in the same weird way in my bed.

"weird al loves this place"; modular homeless; golden field; blocked images

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a grocery store. I was possibly near the back end of the store, on the left side of the store (as a person would face the store from front to back). The aisles near me seemed to be in disarray, like they were being rearranged, or like new stock had come in and was being added to the shelves.

There were a few workers in the area that was disorganized. One of them was a tall, white man, probably young, even though his face looked a little worn-out. This man was probably the manager. I had probably been afraid of interacting with the workers. They seemed really boisterous, and I was afraid that they'd start making fun of me if I got too close to them.


But the manager walked up to me. He said, not as if he was saying it to me, but as if he were saying it to his friends, but loud enough that I could hear, "Weird Al loves this place." I knew that the manager meant the comedy singer "Weird Al" Yankovic. I didn't think it could be true that Weird Al even came to this grocery store, let alone that he could love the store. So I thought that somehow the manager had found out that I liked Weird Al, and that he was just saying this to impress me.

But the manager motioned me to come along with him to the back room. The back room was really small, for a grocery store. The man told me that he seriously meant that Weird Al came to this store a lot, and that he really loved the place.

I was now a worker for the store. Perhaps I had been this whole time. The manager brought me back out into the main area. We were all alone in the side aisle now. The place was still cluttered up. There were even big boxes running across the aisles, slanted diagonally from the floor of one side of the aisle to the top of the other side of the aisle. The boxes were thin, like they might have carried poles or fluorescent bulbs in them.

The manager was walking backward as I walked forward. He was speaking to me excitedly. He said, "In fact, Weird Al is just now coming back from a concert tour. He'll be coming in here one of these nights. We already have a cake made for him."

In my mind's eye I could see a round, white cake with red words on the top. I had to walk either under or over one of the tall, slanting boxes that took up the aisle. As I did so, a bright flash of light probably filled my view.

The man continued, asking me, "What else do you think Weird Al would like? What do you think he would like to hear from us?"

We were now at the front of the store. The window walls of the store probably showed that it was dark outside. The store was basically empty of customers. There was a long expanse of checkout lines. The manager stopped at the registers nearest us. A couple of blonde girls had a couple of registers, and the manager needed to check in on the girls.

I walked down a few registers. There was another blonde girl. But her hair was shorter, and she looked less girly, more tomboyish, than the other two girls. I was a little attracted to her. She seemed to be wearing a kind of dumpy uniform, more like the 1980s style of uniform for Burger King than a modern uniform for a grocery store.

I don't know whether we talked, but we seemed to have some kind of interaction. I may have stood into the register beside her, as if I were going to start working that register. But then I walked away again. I had a big, fat book in my hand. I lay it down, probably on the woman's register, but possibly on my own.

I turned around and walked back toward the registers where the manager had been seeing to the other girls. Apparently a shift change was occurring. Some girls were counting the money in their registers, while other girls were putting their own new cash tills into the cash registers.

One of the blonde girls ran up from behind me to tell the manager that she was only sixty-five cents off on her register. She seemed really happy about this, as if, for all the time she'd been working here, she'd never been able to balance her register so well.

I had been -- at some point! -- carrying a paper coffee cup, like from a coffee shop. But now all I was holding was the heat-protector sleeve. I wanted to get rid of it. So I tore it up into tiny pieces. I walked past a thin column in the store. There was a small, white, plastic garbage can, like for use at an office desk. I tossed the shreds of paper in there. But when I looked, the garbage bag was empty, other than my shreds of paper and a ten dollar bill!

I thought that one of the cashier girls must have dropped ten dollars out of their register. I thought that somebody's register would come up really short. I thought that somebody would definitely get in trouble for that. But I didn't call attention to the ten dollars. I'm not sure why. I just noted it, looked up, and kept walking.

I walked back up the aisle I had come from. But now the aisle was clear, with no clutter or boxes. I walked all the way to the back of the store, then turned to walk toward the right side of the store. But as I walked, I realized I probably needed to head back to the registers. I have left my book -- which I now knew was Jim Marrs' Trillion Dollar Conspiracy -- laying on the woman's cash register conveyor belt. I couldn't just leave my book sitting there. I needed to go back for it before I could continue walking around the store.

Dream #2

I was in an apartment. The apartment unit was on the ground floor, but it may actually have been two stories tall. But the apartment was also something more like a hotel. It was obtained only for short periods of time. Either I had gotten the hotel, or some other person had gotten it and was having me watch the place, since I had nowhere to live.

It was night. The photo and video artist Laurel Nakadate had just entered the apartment. We stood just in front of the door, in a space between the living room and a dining area. I was probably holding blankets and a pillow. Nakadate was kind of tall. She was wearing a tight, black tank top and tight, brown pants, maybe of some kind of suede-like material. Her hair was a little bit disheveled.

Nakadate had probably come here for the night. She knew I had this place, and I'd probably told her she could use it. But I was trying to keep the details of the place, and of my life overall, secret from her. I didn't have a job anymore, and this place was only temporary. In fact, I didn't know what I would do once I had to leave this place. I didn't want Nakadate to know any of this about me. I felt like, if she knew, she'd reject me as a worthless person.

Nakadate and I had a conversation about something I can't remember. It was a very calm and natural conversation, but I can't remember what it was about. But all through the conversation, I did my best to conceal my situation and to act like everything was just fine.

We agreed that Nakadate would go take care of something, maybe taking a shower?, and that we'd then meet in the bedroom just past the living room. I could see the light on in the bedroom. I walked through the living room and into the bedroom.

My ex-girlfriend H, who had taken the place of Nakadate, was sitting on the bed, waiting for me. The bed was set along the back wall. H was watching a TV, which was set along the opposite wall. The bed H sat on was like a bed that had a second, pull-out bed in its underside. The lower bed was pulled out just enough so that H could use it either as a seat cushion, like the bed was a couch, or like a footrest, with the top mattress being used as a seat cushion. The rest of the room was completely empty.

I sat down beside H. She may have been eating a cup of ramen. I "watched TV" with H, even though I'm not sure I actually saw a TV at all. I may just have been staring at a blank wall. H and I began having some conversation, which may also have had to do with my living arrangements.

My thoughts drifted into a woman talking about the living arrangements she and her husband had. The woman seemed to be a 1950s kind of woman, even though I'm not sure what time period she really lived in. The woman and her husband both had very similar professions. And whatever the man and woman did, they liked to travel while doing it. They especially liked living in the mountains.


So, the woman explained, the man and the woman opted to get a kind of extremely modular house. The houses were cheaper than normal houses. They were also much smaller than normal houses. But the man and woman didn't like having a lot of space. They preferred having freedom. The houses were good for this. They could be picked up or dropped off by the buyers very easily, wherever they needed to go.


However, the woman had lately found that the couple's finances weren't stable enough for the couple to afford the modular houses. So the woman was having to take her modular house back to the modular house store. All she did, actually, was get on a bicycle, to the front of which was attached the modular house, and pedal it down a mountain road. The house was so light that the woman could just pedal it away.


The woman rode along a beautiful, undulating mountain road that was lined with pine trees and fields of yellow flowers. The sky was blue, marbled with wisps of white cirrus clouds. The woman was pale, and she wore a pale, rusty-tan dress, in the 1950s style, very understated, with thin buttons running down the blouse, and the skirt belling out just a bit, going down all the way to the ankles. The woman's red-brown hair was done in a short, elegant style.


The woman was "narrating" over this view. She said that this wasn't unusual for her and her husband. They would often take their modular houses back to the store when they felt they couldn't afford them. (I'm not sure what they did when they didn't have houses. Did they camp?) But, eventually, the husband would start to feel good about his life and finances again. Then the couple would go out and get another modular home. After a while, the woman would see that the couple's finances could no longer support their having a modular home. And the couple would take the modular home back to the shop.


The woman looked very cheerful. And her narration had a cheerful tone. But it was evident that the woman was distressed about the couple's financial situation. The woman probably wished that the husband would find some way of being more responsible.


I now got a better view of the modular home. It didn't look like much of a home at all. It was a wooden structure, like it was made out of old shipping pallets, or out of rough-hewn, wooden boards. I don't think I could make out much of a house-like structure to the construction. And it looked really small, maybe not more than three meters long and wide, and not more than a meter or a meter and a half tall.


Nevertheless, it still looked really heavy. I wondered how the woman could just bike it all the way down to town, especially on a mountain road like this. The woman, in "narration," cheerfully answered that most of the ride was downhill anyway, that the modular home was small and light, and that the modular home actually was even lighter than it already looked.


I watched the woman from the crest of a hill. As the woman seemed to be coming round a bend, something happened. I could tell ahead of time that the woman was going to crash. She did. The bike and the modular home wound off onto the shoulder of the road. The woman flew off the bike and landed face down in a patch of pink flowers. I thought the woman was dead. But apparently she was alive. I probably heard the woman, in narration, explaining why the crash hadn't hurt so much. But she hadn't stood up yet.

My view panned up the slope. I drifted along the road, back up to the spot where the modular home used to be. But the modular home was still there. I now heard the husband's voice in narration. But it was like the husband's voice was my voice as well, or, actually, more like my thoughts and feelings were controlling the husband's voice, which was a lot more dignified than my voice. I could also see an image of the husband in my mind's eye: a 1940s style photo of a handsome young man in military dress uniform.


The husband/I was explaining how he/I wasn't planning on getting rid of the modular home. The wife had always been anxious about finances. But the husband/I had a feeling that the couple's finances would be fine soon enough. The husband/I felt like everything was going to be okay, so there was no reason to get rid of the modular home.


The modular home was built on a square deck of wood. At each corner of the square stood a wooden pillar, kind of like a tower. In the center of the wooden deck stood the house itself. The house was rather small, almost like a child's playhouse. Its walls were square, but its roof may have been rounded, or teardrop-shaped. The whole thing was made out of rough-hewn wood. The design may have reminded me of a miniature version of the Taj Mahal.


I may have thought that this little place was definitely not big enough for me an H (or for me and Laurel Nakadate?). I thought that I would definitely want to keep the modular house. But I would probably want to change the model for one that used the space of the plot a little bit better, i.e. one that incorporated more of the deck space into the interior of the house.


I may have heard the woman's narration again, or I may have heard some other woman's voice in narration. It was like the woman was acting as a real estate agent, or a modular home sales agent. She was supporting all of my feelings regarding keeping the modular home and possibly trading into a new home.


Dream #3


I stood out in some mountain landscape, in a valley full of golden grass. The golden grass was filled in places with pockets of white snow. I had apparently journeyed a long way to get here. I still had a great deal of journeying left to do. I may have remembered a conversation I'd had with an old man before I'd started this journey. The man may have been tall, slim, bald, dressed in an old-fashioned pinstripe suit of very dark material.


Dream #4


I had been discussing a number of images with an old man. It was like I was in a dream, trying to rehearse all the elements of the dreams I'd had over the course  of the night. I reached the end of the sequence of images, and I was kind of surprised by them. There was some sort of unity to them I hadn't expected. I think this unity had to do with celebrities.


But the dream images all clouded over -- like they had been drawn over with heavy amounts of crayon! It was like a succession of images piled over the images I'd just organized in my head. A chain-link fence clouded over everything: the chain-link fence being shaded all through with opaque browns, greys and greens. Then a man's head, also colored with heavy, dark colors, appeared before the chain-link fence. Then another chain-link fence. Then another man's head.

***

UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry of my dreamday journal.


UPDATE 2: Added two drawings to second dream, July 25, 2012, 3:18 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

rub her crotch; important people; fitness video; pulled by a ship

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

There was a naked woman on a bed. She lay on her back with her legs bent, so that her knees were up in the air. There was a man on the bed with her. There may have been one other person on the bed.

The woman may have had a miscarriage or an abortion. Her vagina may have been in pain. She was trying to expose her vagina to the man on the bed so that he'd rub it and make her feel better. She didn't want to have sex. She just wanted to be comforted.

The woman was then lying on the floor, in the same position, with her crotch turned toward the bed. But now there may have been nobody on the bed. The woman was still in pain and still looking for someone to comfort her.

Dream #2

I was probably in the living room of an apartment, which was probably my mom's apartment. My mom may have been throwing some kind of party there. There weren't many people. The lights were dim. The living room was mostly empty. The floor seemed to be a little littered with blankets.

It was getting late, so I decided to leave. My apartment was just across the hallway from my mom's apartment. Just as I was getting into my apartment, I heard that somebody very important was going to be coming for a visit. For some reason, I thought they were going to be coming to my apartment.

My apartment was just as empty as my mom's There was one blanket on my floor. I sat on it and read a book. I was dressed in something strange, like boy's pajama pants and a pink girl's shirt. I may even have been wearing some kind of big jester's hat.

I'd thought at first that when the important person came over, he, or she, or they would be impressed by the book I was reading. But now I thought my clothes, as well of the kind of lazy way in which I was reading, would make a bad impression on the important person or people.

So I stood up to change my clothes. I got into a pair of jeans and a regular t-shirt. But I still felt like even in clothes more like daytime clothes I still looked raggedy and lazy. But I didn't know what else to change into.

I also got the feeling, now, that the important person or people were coming to my mom's apartment, not mine. I decided I'd better head back over to my mom's apartment.

Dream #3

I was in a living room with a small group of people. I don't know what my relation to them was. They were men and women, good looking, in maybe their twenties and thirties. One of the guys was an exercise instructor. He was the biggest and most muscular of us all. He was tanned golden brown, and he had long, platinum blonde hair. He wore a tight, red t-shirt that showed off his muscles.

It was now time for everybody to go to bed. I went into my bedroom, even though everybody else may have been staying in the living room. My room was dark. But on one wall there was something like a TV screen that was surrounded by neon lights. The TV screen began to play a fitness video. I lay on the floor, covered in blankets. The main thing the fitness video was doing was leg lifts. So I did leg lifts with the video.

The exercise instructor walked into my room. I was ashamed that he'd caught me working out with the fitness video. The fitness video came from a different company than the company he worked for. I either tried to justify myself or apologize to the man. But the man said it was alright. His fitness company didn't have a leg lifts program like this one. So he'd suggest I use this tape if I was concerned with doing leg lifts.

The exercise instructor left the room. The fitness video was now turned off. The only thing showing on the wall were the neon lights, which shined in a pattern of top half, then bottom half, then top half, then bottom half. I think I was using this pattern to continue my leg lift exercises.

Dream #4

I was out near water with my family. It was a grey day, but it wasn't raining. My brother-in-law, sister, and a couple of my nephews were all out in the water on a small, very narrow, white-painted boat. The boat may have been made out of some kind of metal. The water was greenish and relatively calm.

I stood on some dock or boardwalk, leaning against some waist-high metal railing. My mom may have been standing next to me -- although she may have been a tall, youngish, thin woman wearing a flowing, white dress, a broad-brimmed, white straw hat, and sunglasses.

The woman/my mom and I may have been having some discussion. Possibly because of that discussion, I decided I needed to have some fun in the water. So I jumped in. I swam to the boat. My brother may have been somewhere in the water as well.

I climbed onto the boat. I sat in the boat for a moment. There were little puddles toward the bow end of the boat. In the little puddles were greenish animals, which I may have taken for lizards, even though they seem to have been creatures more like neon green anemones.

I knew my brother-in-law was sitting at the stern end of the boat. My sister and nephews were also on the boat, and I think I could occasionally see my sister and my youngest nephew, although I couldn't actually see them on the boat. But I decided that the boat was way too crowded for me to stay on it. I jumped back off.

I jumped out on the opposite side of the boat from the dock, so that I felt like I was in deeper water. We were in something like a river, or maybe more like a canal. It was easy for me to swim farther and farther away from the side I'd jumped in on. But when I tried to swim back toward the boat or the dock, I felt a strong pushing against me.

Some woman, either my sister or a copper-skinned woman with jet-black hair and deep, black eyes swimming next to me, said something like, "Now you know the lesson."

I said, "Uh-huh. I do."

The woman said, "You don't swim too deep into the water. Or the current will pull you away. It will be really hard for you to get back to shore."

I thought about my cell phone, which I knew was in my pocket. I cried, "Oh, crap! My phone!" I pulled it out of my pocket. I held it above the water, hoping that irreparable damage hadn't been done, and that I could keep the phone out of the water from here on out.

There was a ship in the water. It was pretty big, for the space it was travelling through. Its hull was mostly black. Toward the deck the ship turned white. Almost all the top portion of the ship was white. The ship looked like some sort of military or commercial vessel. But it may also have been used for some kind of recreational purposes.

I got caught up in the pull of the vessel. I tried to swim out of it, but it was too hard. I got pulled closer and closer. I figured that, at this point, there was nothing I could do. I'd probably get sucked under the ship and die. But I thought that if I didn't die, I could push off of the ship and try to use some of that force to get myself out of the pull of the vessel.

I reached the ship without being pulled under. I kicked off of it and broke free of a little bit of the pull. But I ended up drifting around so I was now behind the vessel. From the back, the vessel looked even more like some recreational vessel, maybe even like a really big yacht. The name of the ship curved around the top of the back end of the vessel.

I was now in the ship's tow. I couldn't avoid it. Wherever the ship went, I would go as well. The ship looped around, apparently, then headed down into some area that was like a gigantic tunnel. The ship slowed down a lot. I could tell it was coming to a stop. I worried that when it came to a stop I'd be drawn all the way back to it and then sucked under the ship, where I'd be chopped up by the rotor blades.

The ship stopped. But I wasn't sucked under. I moved a little closer to the ship, then I stopped. Behind me was a small boat carrying my aunt and her husband. Behind my aunt's boat were a whole string of small boats. It was like we were actually on some kind of theme park ride, like this had all been some kind of water slide.

There was a wooden walkway just to our right. My aunt was complaining about the ride as she and her husband stood out of it. I pulled myself up out of the water.

I think my aunt was now complaining about a broken down refrigerator on the wooden walkway. Apparently my aunt thought she'd be able to get food out of the fridge, like it was a fridge that my family had reserved space in. But since it was broken, my aunt wouldn't be able to get any food. I thought my aunt's complaints were unfair. I was trying to think of a way for her to get food. If I could tell her a different way to get food, maybe she'd stop complaining.

We had been let out of the water at some level below the place we'd come from. So we had to walk up a long stairway to get back to the regular level. As we did, I looked down to the wooden walkway, to the refrigerator my aunt had been talking about. It was surrounded by other machinery, and it was lit in orange streetlight. The area surrounding the refrigerator actually looked like a parking garage to me.

My aunt and her husband were now gone. But I was surrounded by people, all people who'd gotten off the ride I'd apparently been a part of. A lot of us were walking up the stairs. I assumed we'd be going up to the river that I'd originally jumped into. But we were now heading up a steep slope of dry, dusty soil. At the end of the staircase, we ended up walking out onto some dirt walkway. The dirt walkway, I knew, headed to a sidewalk that led into the edge of a shopping district of some neighborhood.

As I headed toward the sidewalk, I kept having to dodge young guys who were rushing down to where I'd come from. They were all really excited about taking the ride that I'd just taken. I felt like they kept getting in my way to stop me from moving, like they were afraid I'd get onto the ride before they did -- even though I was heading away from the ride, not toward it.

When I got up to the sidewalk, I saw that I'd need to turn a corner to the left, then cross a street and walk a couple blocks to get to the shopping district. There was a little vacant lot to my right, between me and the street. I decided to cut across that while I was heading toward the street.

But as I was cutting across this field a man and his girlfriend, maybe in their late twenties, came walking up from some other walkway. The guy spotted me and decided he was going to cut in front of me, to trip me up  in my walking. I kept walking in my own direction. But as the guy got closer to me and I could see that he was aiming to cut right in front of me, I sped up my walk and twisted my path a little. I crossed just in front of the guy. But even when I crossed in front of him, he threw out his legs and tried to trip me.

I passed the guy, and we both crossed the street, but we were heading in different directions. But now I could hear the guy talking to his girlfriend. The guy was telling his girlfriend about some criminal he either knew or admired as an historical figure. The guy liked the criminal because he was always looking for some occasion to be bad to other people. The guy was, apparently trying to take this for the model of his life.

I had the feeling that, even though I'd managed to stop this guy from cutting in front of me and tripping me up, he still felt like he'd won whatever game he'd played with me, just because he'd been able to engage in an activity where, at the very least, he'd had bad intentions.

***

UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry of my dreamday journal. 

cooking potatoes; grandma's and my bills; not dying

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was in the kitchen of some apartment. All the lights in the apartment were off. The only light coming into the apartment was the blue light of the moon coming in through the windows. There were no windows in the kitchen, so the kitchen was particularly dim.

I may have been myself, or I may have been a young woman with black hair done up in pig tails. I had been cooking potatoes, doing so as a kind of illustration for somebody on how to cook potatoes.

There were a group of men, kind of tough-looking men maybe in their forties, all sitting out at my dining table. The light of the moon shone directly onto the dining table.

In my mind's eye I saw some small potatoes all piled up on top of each other on a square plate. The potatoes were covered over with something like a napkin or handkerchief. I imagined the napkin being pulled off the potatoes as I told the men that ----- potatoes (I can't remember what kind) were very special in that, to protect their (moistness or flavor?) they needed to be covered over with a satin sheet.

I was now back in the kitchen. I had a small pot full of full-sized potatoes. The potatoes looked like they had been baked, but they may have been boiled. I grabbed one of the potatoes. I pulled the skin all the way off the potato in one easy pull. It was like the skin had only been fitting very loosely onto the potato. I then shoved all the skin in my mouth and ate it. I thought it was delicious, and that it meant the potato would be very good.

I commented to the men at the table that the skin had come off so easily. I thought that might mean that the potato would be bad. The men replied that that meant the potato would be good. They even asked me what I was asking them for. Hadn't I just mentioned (or thought?), they asked, that a potato with loose skin would be good?

I knew they were right. I thought that the potato itself would be really moist and soft. I knew it would be delicious. I may have thought of eating one right now.

Dream #2

My grandmother had an electricity bill that needed to be paid. But somehow my mom and I had paid it off. We now needed to tell my grandma that we had paid off this bill.

We found my grandma down in some huge basement. It seemed like it may have been the basement for a house, but it was really huge. The place seemed run-down. It was really dim, like there was just some bright incandescent bulb, like might be found in a mine, shining for the whole basement.

I saw my grandma and told her that her electricity bill was paid off. My grandma hugged me and said thank you. My mom paced behind my grandma, giving her a mean kind of look, as if she were jealous of my grandma for thanking only me and not my mom.

My grandma then either told me that she had paid my electricity bill, or that I should also worry about my own electricity bill. My grandma made it sound like my bill was dangerously behind. I was kind of surprised by this. I didn't know my electricity bill had been behind. But my grandma said it was.

My mom took me upstairs to explain my electricity bill. We were up in a smallish living room. The lights were all on, but it still wasn't bright. The living room was pretty active, with all my nephews  playing around, running into and out of the house. My sister may have been in the living room as well.

My mom had something like a sketch pad that was wire-bound at the top. She flipped open the sketch pad. I could see something about the pad that implied that the identity of the person whose usage of electricity I was going to have to pay for was a pretty, long-haired woman. I saw -- somewhere, somehow -- a quick sketch of the woman in the nude, the curves of her body accentuated in a sexy way.

My mom showed me the electricity I had used. This usage had led me to believe that I only owed a certain amount on my electricity. But there had been additional usage, possibly by this woman, that I hadn't known about. I hadn't paid my bills on this usage for a number of months now, and now I owed something like $85.

The utility worker who would come out and inspect meters and decide whether to turn the electricity off or keep it on, and who was herself a very pretty woman, had been kind to me, my mother explained, and allowed my electricity to stay on, even when I wasn't paying the bills. But now, my mom explained, it was getting to the point where I would have to pay the money I owed.


Dream #3


It was night. Somebody may have been in a hospital and dying. It may have been me. My whole family was in one room of the hospital, possibly in with the person who was dying. 


I felt like I needed to prove that I wasn't the one who was dying. I was now at some other place in the hospital, and I needed to get back to my family to prove I wasn't dying. I entered the room that my family was in. I tried to prove to my family, apparently just with my presence and the fact that I could walk upright, that I wasn't dying.


***


UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.


UPDATE 2: Added drawing for dream #1, July 12, 2012, 11:34 AM, Mountain Standard Time.

diapered and pole walking; looking for quarters

Good morning, everybody

Dream #1

I was out in some area, maybe something like a parking lot or some kind of vacant lot with a really big ditch in it -- but I'm not sure. I think I felt like it was some kind of common social area, maybe even some place like a shopping plaza.

I was now turning back from this place, heading across the street to my apartment, which was in a tall complext of red brick buildings. It was dim, like it was late afternoon, and the air was damp and quiet.

A group of young people were heading in toward the ditch area as I was heading out of it. I may suddenly have noticed something really embarrassing about myself, like I was naked, or I was only wearing a diaper.

I felt like the young people, who all had a scrawny, kind of hungry look, were looking directly at me for one moment. I worried that they would get angry at me for wearing a diaper. In fact, they turned around and followed me back to the apartments. I knew they lived there, too.

Just past the first building in the complex was a big courtyard, surrounded by all the buildings. The courtyard was mostly made of concrete. It had multiple levels, all joined by wide, shallow staircases. There may have been picnic tables and barbequeque pits in places. The whole area, as well as the stairwells and balconies of the buildings, looked pretty run down. There were a lot of young people hanging around.

The young people behind me now passed me up. I had been a little worried that they'd been following me, stalking me so they could hurt me once they'd seen I'd been wearing a diaper. Even after they passed me, I was afraid of them. I thought they were just acting like they'd stopped stalking me, but that they would keep an eye on me, for the perfect time to hurt me.

They all walked so fast. I was afraid that they were far more physically fit than I was. One of the boys, a kind of scraggly-curly haired blonde boy wearing blue jeans and a Superman t-shirt, even jumped up from the concrete of the courtyard up to a second story balcony. I couldn't quite believe it. I had looked away. But when I looked again, he was still up there.

I was afraid and jealous. I tried to convince myself that I had that level of physical strength.

I walked past the courtyard. I was now in some back area, just past the back apartment buildings. I may have been heading to my apartment. The back area was very shaded, as if some highway overpass ran right next to the apartments and blocked the sky's light.

A black boy in his mid to late teens, very skinny, wearing a baggy, white shirt and baggy, tan pants, walked up to me. He was talking to me about one thing. But I knew he was just prepping me to talk about getting me involved in something else, something that could get me in trouble, like drugs.

We walked up some concrete, steel-railed staircase off to my left. I let the boy know, in the least offensive way possible, that I wasn't really looking to get involved in anything with anybody at the moment. I was afraid that the boy would want to hurt me from now on.

I suddenly jumped high up, onto some big, metal railing, like the railing that serves as barrier poles for highway edges. There seemed to be one road to my left, a ways below me, and then either one or two roads up above me. But I was in the open light, the light of grey midday, I think. I was balancing on the pole, walking along. I was surprised that I could jump like that. And I was surprised I could balance.

Dream #2

I was in my bedroom in my apartment. I was thinking I should do laundry, even though it was a weekday, and I usually did laundry on the weekends. But I thought I didn't have any quarters for the laundry machines. I didn't want to go out just to grab change. I hoped I could just find some change in my apartment.

I knelt down in my closet and saw that on the floor, right where the back wall met the floor. I had a stack of three or four quarters. I was really happy. This, added to the quarters I already knew I had, was almost enough for the laundry. But either it still wasn't quite enough, or else I felt like I should have more quarters, just to be on the safe side.

When I looked a bit farther to my left, about 20cm from the stack of quarters, I saw one or two stray quarters. I thought this might be enough for me to do my laundry with. I went to grab the quarters, when suddenly I heard a tapping on my ceiling.

rubbery rainbow shoelaces

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at "my family's house," which was a small apartment. I was in the living room with my mom and my sister and two or three of my sister's kids. The kids were all really young, possibly still in diapers. The living room was bright with natural light. It had pale carpet and bare walls. I was sitting either on the couch or on the floor.

There was a knock on the door. My sister went for it. She opened the door. An older Asian man with a bald crown and grey hair on the sides handed my sister some papers, probably in an envelope. The man made some calm but accusing comment to my sister. The man then walked to some other apartment.

My sister walked away, leaving the door open. I was annoyed at that. The Asian man was someone my sister had complained about before. He always snooped around and tried to find out things my sister was doing. I don't know whether he owned the apartment building. But he seemed like he was in some position to get my sister kicked out of the apartment.

I stood up and walked to the door. I closed it slowly and softly but firmly while giving my sister and mother a wide-eyed, stern look. I walked back to the couch, saying, "That guy's always looking for an excuse to get you. Why are you gonna leave the door wide open?"

I sat back in the couch. I may have spoken a bit more. But now either my mom or my sister told me to stop criticizing my sister. My sister may even have stood up and opened the door again. Or my mom or sister may have had me open the door again.

I decided that was enough. I told my mom and sister that was fine. I sat down on the floor and got my shoes on. I was leaving.

My shoes were laced with rubbery, rainbow shoelaces. They were thick, almost like thick egg noodles. They were also kind of slimy, like they were covered in something halfway between simple syrup and maple syrup. The colors of the laces were bright -- yellows, greens, purples, and oranges -- all fading or blurring into each other.

I may have been speaking to my mom and sister as if I weren't upset about anything. My mom and sister may also have been speaking to me very calmly.

baby clothes and video games; one house to another

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the basement of a Toys R Us. The place was full of baby supplies. The basement was huge, like a floor of a department store in a mall.

I had been all alone at first, like I had actually gotten here before the store had actually opened. But now there were more and more people filtering in. I was getting nervous. I decided to leave.

I was heading toward an escalator. But off to my right I saw a huge area, sectioned off from the rest of the basement by a waist-high barrier (like the barrier around a skating rink), that was full of baby clothes.

I seemed to remember now that I had come down into the basement in the first place to look for diapers that I could wear. I thought that maybe the baby clothes section would also have diapers. I thought that there might even be some baby clothes that I could wear.

But the baby clothes area already had a good amount of people in it: good-looking, well-off-looking moms and dads shopping for clothes for their little babies. They'd obviously think I was a pervert if they saw me looking for diapers in the baby section. So I just got on the escalator and went upstairs.

I was now on a first floor of a Toys R Us. But it seemed like a different time altogether. Again, it seemed like the store was closed. The place felt completely dead and empty. I felt all alone.

I was in the video game section. I was looking at boxes for portable game systems. I had picked up one of these systems. I may even have started playing it somehow, as if the box had some kind of demo capability on it.

But now I noticed that a whole bunch of the boxes could also act as security cameras. A lot of the boxes were trained on me, watching me. They also had video screens showing what imagery they were capturing of me.

One of the boxes in particular was kind of strange. It was clear and empty. Its sides were like iridescent cellophane. Its edges were some kind of flimsy, yellow plastic. But somehow I could see that even this object was capturing and projecting video of me.

I felt like there was a small group of people behind all this -- not like security guards, but more like average people who just followed me around because they thought I was some kind of crook.

So I tried to do my best to show that all I had been interested in in the first place was playing the video games. I played the video game demo on the box I was holding, trying to make it clear by my actions that I had no intention of stealing or wrecking anything.

Dream #2

I woke up in a huge apartment. My eyes were really groggy. It was hard to get them open. I had apparently been sleeping on the bench seats of some kind of breakfast table or dining table.

I sat up and looked over the back of the bench seats. It was like I was on a balcony. I looked down to something like a living room. It was pretty far down, but the ceiling was still pretty high up from where I sat.

I knew that I was leaving this apartment for good today. Knowing that I was leaving, I suddenly realized that this huge apartment had been mine. It was so big and so nice. I kind of remembered complaining about it. But I couldn't remember ever having appreciated its size or niceness.

I told myself that I'd have to store up all the memories of how nice this place was before I left. I also probably told myself that if I'd had a place like this before, I could have it again. I knew I was moving to a much smaller place now. But I knew I could get back into a big, nice place like this.

The fuzzy image of a kind of cheap-looking couch came into my mind. The image eventually clarified a little. The couch was brown, fake leather. But the legs and arms were made of some kind of cheap, tubular chrome. I knew this would be the one thing I could take with me into my new place. This was a relief: I knew I didn't have a couch in my present place.

I was now outside, on some big vehicle, possibly a bus. I was trying to catch up to a car that my mother and sister were in. I was really trying to catch up with my sister. It was like I was in love with her, but I had made some kind of mistake, so that now she was running away from me.

I had caught up to the car once. But I had made some mistake. After my mistake, I was somehow slowed down so that my sister could get away from me by speeding away.

I was now coming after my sister again. I was still on the bus. I was halfway hanging out of the bus. When the bus caught up to my sister, I hung even further out of the bus.

My sister was on the passenger side of the car. I yelled over to her. She spoke to me, but she was acting like she didn't know me. Her purpose was to ignore me and keep me out of her life. I may have been planning to live in her house. But she didn't want that either.

But I was determined to get back into her life. So I jumped off of the bus and onto my sister's car. My sister's window was only partly open. But I somehow managed to climb in through the window. I told my sister something like, "See? This is how serious I am about wanting to be back with you."

We rode along. It was now night. My mom drove, and my sister sat in the passenger seat. I sat in the backseat. Things seemed to be a lot calmer. But we were actually heading to some apartment complex. It was where my sister had been living.

We stopped in the parking lot. Apparently we'd come here so that my sister could break up with the man she'd been living with. But now that I was here, and I was planning on being something like my sister's boyfriend, it was up to me to confront this guy.

My sister said something to me like, "So you really think you can handle committing to me? Let's see. You'll have to face guys like this one. And he's tough. Let's see if you can do it."

But I didn't think the guy was so tough. I knew he was rich. We were parked in the lot of some really nice apartment. The building looked modern, almost like a beautiful, new art museum building. There were blue lights shining against the building. And all around the parking lot was a calm forest.

The guy was some kind of business man. But he'd probably just made a lot of his wealth by cheating people. He was an Asian man with hair down to just above his shoulders. He wore dark glasses and a white suit. He looked kind of like a criminal version of the physicist Michio Kaku. But something about him also looked old and faded, and also a bit feminine.

I was nervous about, but not afraid of, meeting the man. But I was going to go in and confront him. But before I could go in, he came out, with three or four tough guys like bodyguards around him.

The men all got into one car near our car. I could see the man's head as he sat in the car. I figured I'd go talk to him right now, just to take care of things. But now I actually was pretty afraid.

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.

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.