skydiving contract; a bathroom of one's own; neglected nephew

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was among a small series of rooms with a few other people. The rooms were brick walled, kind of half-finished looking. There were some occasional incandescent bulbs lighting the rooms. The furniture was maybe just benches jutting out from the walls.

There were two women sitting on the benches along the back wall of the back room. They were getting ready for some kind of stunt, which was probably also part of an art project. They were just about ready to head off.

But a third woman off to my left stopped the women. She said the stunt the women were about to do was very dangerous. Before the women did the stunt, the woman needed to make sure the women had signed the contracts waiving any liability the third woman's organization might have.

The women, I now knew, were actually wearing their contracts. The contracts were a kind of netted bodysuit. The netting was made of a coarse, yarn-like material colored a dark red-pink. The netting made diamond patterns, the holes of which were rather wide. But the material squeezed tightly against the women's bodies. I think the women were wearing other clothing, though not much, below the netting outfits.

The contracts, I knew, would be visible when the outfits were taken off and unfurled. Between some of the holes in the netting ran some gauzy billows of material. These billows just looked like fraying or tattered material. But when the contract was laid out flat and arranged correctly, the billows took on the appearance of sheets with letters. The signature line of the contract was near the collar of these outfits.

The third woman asked the woman on the right whether she had signed her contract. Apparently the woman on the left had definitely signed her contract. I had a feeling that the woman on the right hadn't signed her contract. I was a friend to the two women. But for some reason I felt obliged to tell the third woman that the   signature line better be checked for the woman on the right. The woman on the right was angry at me. She felt betrayed.

But now both of the women were heading off to do their stunt. The stunt was probably skydiving. I went outside to watch the stunt. The sky was a kind of dim, pale blue fading into dark grey near the top, but a pale, lightless yellow at the horizon. It almost looked like a stage sky. There were some trailer-like buildings maybe twenty or thirty meters away from me. There were people scattered all about, looking up into the sky.

It now seemed like the stunt was a skydiving race. There may have been three women in the race. One of them, possibly the woman who had previously been the woman I'd "betrayed," was my co-worker SC. Another one of them may possibly have been my co-worker AW. The racers had their parachutes open and were somehow racing to see who could reach the ground first. I was cheering for SC. I felt like I looked up to SC, like I was a young girl and that SC was my lover.

At least one of the parachutists, maybe SC, was now close to the ground. My view of her/them was obscured by the trailers and the people around me, who all felt a lot taller than I. I couldn't tell who was winning or who had won the race. I was hoping SC had won. But I also didn't know whether SC's landing had been safe. I was hoping SC hadn't been injured.

Off in the distance to my left, I could see one of the women, perhaps AW, landing. It seemed like she'd had a hard landing. She had, it now seemed to me, been the third woman in the room, the one who'd asked whether the women's contracts had been signed.

The third woman, I now knew, had been so concerned about the safety of this jump. But I myself (probably as myself and not as the "young girl") had convinced the woman of the safety of the jump, and that she herself was fine to jump. But now, watching the third woman, I could see that her landing was actually really hard. I was pretty sure the landing gave the woman physical pain. I also feared that the woman had sustained some sort of injury. Now she'd blame me for the whole thing.

I looked back forward, to where I assumed SC would be landing. The space was clear, and I could see all the way to the barren, flat, stage-like horizon. But there was now sign of the parachutists. There were instead two strange devices, like giant spotlights, sending something, maybe beams of light, maybe parachutes, up into the air.

I now understood that these devices were part of a show, like a live-action version of an anime. The parachute/skydiving race was a stunt, a contest, on its own. But it was somehow integrated into this anime. There were probably a number of races. Before and between the races, the anime show took place. The show may have justified sending the racers up into the sky. But the racers in the show may have been sent up into the sky not by a plane or any other vehicle, but by their parachutes and the spotlight-like devices.

This didn't quite make sense to me. But I was kind of eager to see the anime show. I wondered what the drama would be about.

Dream #2

I was in a public restroom. Something had gotten me offended. I felt like there had been a huge crowd of people, all trying to stop me from using the restroom -- even though I didn't actually ever see anybody in the restroom.

I was in a narrow hallway, like a hallway between one section of the bathroom and another, standing (all by myself?) as if I were standing in line. Suddenly I got so frustrated by the feeling of being crowded out and having my position in the bathroom line threatened that I began walking quickly through the hallway, all the way to the end of the hallway.

I may have heard or imagined people talking about me -- or I may have simply been thinking about myself. The statements I heard or imagined were like a questioning: why I'd run off and acted so rudely toward everybody else, as if I had been suspicious of everybody else for no reason, or as if I'd thought I was better than everybody else.

I now felt kind of silly for having run off. But I was already on my way. I was looking for a toilet that nobody else would try to take from me. I ended up in front of four toilet stalls. I turned left in front of the stalls. On the wall across from the stalls there was a half-opened door. The door opened to a small room with two or three more stalls in it. I walked into the room and toward the first or second stall in the room.

But I again felt rushed or crowded out by someone -- someone I couldn't see! I quickly exited the stall and moved to the very back stall of this room. I stood in front of the toilet and began urinating into the toilet.

Dream #3

I was probably outside in a suburban neighborhood with my family. We may all have been lounging around in the middle of the street (???). We were probably at the corner of the street. The building at the corner may have been a single-family house. But it may also have been an apartment complex or some kind of office building that I'd taken as being a house.

My youngest nephew sat on the curb, playing around with something. I knelt beside him. He asked me something like, "Are you mad at me?" I told him I wasn't mad at him. He said something like, "I thought you were mad at me, because you never come to see us anymore."

I felt really bad. I may have hugged my nephew or patted him on the back. We were now in front of the house, maybe right before a screen door or in the threshold of the doorway. I explained to my nephew that the fact that I didn't visit the family's house very often didn't have anything to do with him. I tried to tell my nephew that I really loved him and thought he was a good little boy.

Beyond the doorway, in the kitchen?, there was now a lot of activity. My brother-in-law was in the kitchen, and a few little children were running around, creating a little sense of chaos. I felt like my brother-in-law was regarding me suspiciously. I didn't know why. But I felt like I should back away from my nephew.

I was now "somewhere else," talking with my brother-in-law on my cell phone. But my view was "in my family's living room" looking at some vague activity, which may have been like the phantom motions of people, of members in my family.

My brother-in-law was explaining how my youngest nephew had begun to act strangely. He was doing things like wearing a dunce cap and beating himself on the head. He was constantly criticizing himself and others in the family, being extremely severe with them morally. He was blaming everybody, including himself, by turns, for my not coming to the family's house as often as I used to.

My brother-in-law was probably telling me all this stuff to get my opinion on whether my nephew was going crazy. But it also seemed like he was blaming me for my nephew acting this way, like I'd done something bad to him -- not neglectful, but actively bad -- to make him go crazy.

I was trying to convince myself that my nephew wasn't acting strangely, that he wasn't going crazy. I also felt like I had done something bad to my nephew: not that I had done something actively bad to him, but that I had emotionally been neglectful of him. But I was trying to convince myself, again, that that really had no effect on my nephew, and that my nephew was fine.

lake panic

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked along a concrete path that went around a lake in a small natural area. I was coming from the right end of the lake, and I was walking clockwise around the lake. It seemed to be late afternoon. The sun seemed to have gone down, and the atmosphere was a silvery, pale blue. The lake was bordered by a small slope that came down to the sidewalk and was covered in dry, tan grass, so that I couldn't quite see the lake.

I may have been singing or whistling a little tune to myself when I saw three coyotes or wolves walking in a row near the edge of the lake. The coyotes didn't seem very mean, but I was afraid of them. I had just come from an area of the natural area where humans had been attacked, maybe by a big feline or canine. I worried that making the wrong move could set these three coyotes off in the same way the other animals had been set off, so that they'd attack me.

A shrill, loud whistle, like a steam whistle or an alarm whistle, sounded off in the distance, possibly to my left, away from the lake. The whistle shocked me, but it terrified the coyotes, who jumped into the lake to defend themselves. The coyotes swam in fear toward the center of the lake.

The noise had stopped. But now whole droves of different kinds of animals were flushing out of the lands of the natural area and jumping into the lake, swimming into the lake in reaction to their fear of the loud whistle.. Soon the lake was filled with different kinds of animals.

I continued walking around the lake. As I did, semi-trucks began driving alongside me, as if the path, and probably the thin strip of grassy slope between me and the lake, were road. There seemed to be a whole line of semi-trucks driving alongside me.

I now realized I was at work, and that the semis were somehow a part of my job. I now looked closely at all the semis as they passed, feeling like I needed to make sure something in particular about them was in good condition. It wasn't like my job was to inspect the trucks. I was something more like a driver or a passenger. But everybody kind of had the responsibility to make sure each truck in the fleet was in good shape.

I had worked my way about halfway around the lake. Some of the trucks appeared to be driving into the lake. I focused intensely on some of these trucks driving into the lake. I now found myself walking or riding in a truck (while a young man drove) under some bridge near the back end of the lake.

As I came out from under the bridge, I noticed a barge-like vehicle floating on the lake. The front of the vehicle was the red cab of a semi-truck. Behind the cab was something like the deck of a barge or a flatbed trailer for a semi-truck. Fixed into the center of the flat area was a stout, wide chimney that blew out smoke. I realized that this vehicle, whatever it was, ran on steam power.

My view may have shifted onto the barge-like vehicle, or I may have continued driving along in the semi-truck. But I now came back basically to the same point at which I'd started walking along the lake. Now this point was like a headquarters for my job.

I stood inside a small building like a trailer that had been transformed into a small office. It seemed at first that my shift was over for the day. The other drivers, young men, but kind of big and grizzly looking, so that they looked a lot older than they were, and wearing overall outfits, were filing into and out of the office, like they were taking care of some final paperwork before they headed home.

But some leader-like man, kind of thin and tall, much more prim-looking than everybody else, and standing at a tall but thin counter jutting out from the wall, asked me and my partner (whom I didn't see) if we knew about the whereabouts of some vehicle. My partner knew. He told the leader that the vehicle was in a town about a 90-minute drive away from here. The leader asked if we could go get the vehicle. My partner said we could. We would take my partner's car to get down there.

My partner walked away to get something in preparation for our trip to go get the vehicle. The leader told me that I probably had a few minutes until my partner and I left. He said I could probably go take my lunch break. He asked me if I'd eaten lunch or brought a lunch.

I kind of stumbled with my answer. I don't like eating lunch, and I seldom bring lunches to work. But I told the leader yes, not really knowing what question I was saying yes to. I only hoped the leader wouldn't make me prove I had a lunch now that I'd said yes. I was afraid that if the leader found out I didn't actually have a lunch he'd force me to eat a lunch that he'd get for me.

I decided that, in order at least to look like I was eating lunch, I'd better walk out of the leader's sight. I walked off to my left and down a hallway that hadn't been there before (before, off to my left was the doorway exiting the small, narrow makeshift office).

My grandmother was now walking beside me. She seemed to be about a head shorter than I, maybe even shorter. She was bouncing up and down around me and speaking excitedly about a whole bunch of things. It was kind of annoying. She seemed to feel an urgent need to have all of my attention. It was stifling.

I tried to escape from my grandma. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I walked down the hallway to a restroom. The restroom was for men, but my grandma followed me in. I tried to explain that the restroom was for men. But my grandma wouldn't listen to me. She charged past me and locked herself in a stall at the end of the room.

I hoped I could get rid of my grandma while she was in the stall. I quickly left the restroom and ran down a couple long hallways to another men's restroom. But my grandma somehow followed me there, too. As I was about to unzip my pants and use a urinal, I discovered my grandma standing right there beside me.

I decided that if my grandma was going to keep running into all the men's restrooms after me, I might as well try running into a women's restroom to get away. I ran down a couple hallways and found a women's restroom.

The restroom was huge and full of women, mostly women with children. At first I was shy about walking into the restroom. But after a moment I didn't care. I did seem to have gotten away from my grandma. I started looking for an empty stall I could use.

I walked past one stall in front of which a mother knelt on the floor, putting a little girl in diapers. The girl was maybe five or six years old, too old for diapers. She was blonde, with kind of tan skin. She wore no pants, only a long-sleeved, black sweater with horizontal white stripes down the front.

The little girl seemed to be embarrassed that she was seen by a boy as she was being put into diapers. She stood up, grabbed the diaper off the floor, and ran into the stall behind her mother. The little girl's sister (who may have been younger than the little girl) was in the stall, apparently using the toilet. The little girl somehow proclaimed that she wasn't going to wear diapers like a baby, but that she was going to use the toilet, as if she always used the toilet.

I walked to another stall that seemed empty. A mother sat in front of it with two daughters. The daughters were maybe nine or ten years old, but they acted less than half that age. Nobody was using the stall behind the mother, so I opened the door to walk in.

One of the daughters, a pale girl with very, very long red hair, stood up and tried to follow me into the stall. The mother may have stopped her. I closed the door behind me. But the little girl was standing close to the door, like she was still trying to find a way to get into the stall with me.

The stall was kind of gross, like people had peed all over the walls, floor, and toilet. The toilet now also seemed huge: there was no way I could stand and urinate over the top. But nothing seemed out of proportion. It was like I had somehow become a little child, not more than two or three years old, and I was facing a regular-sized toilet.

There was some weird kind of children's ride, like a plastic cartoon animal model attached to a standing metal frame by springs, so that it would bounce up and down as the child rode it. But it was tipped on its side and covered in urine. I climbed up onto that urine soaked object, trying to find the driest parts for my feet.

I now stood over the toilet seat. At the front of the seat was some object like a child's potty-training seat that attached to an adult toilet. I knew I had to pee into that object. The potty-training seat was plastic and made to look like Santa Claus, with Santa's body as the seat and Santa's face as the seat-back.

As I prepared to aim my pee into the potty-training seat, the girl with the long, red hair spoke to me again. She may even have found a way into the stall, so that she was staring at me. She told me, "If I can't be with you, at least tell me and my sister a story so that we can hear you and not feel as lonely."

I said, "Okay. Do you want me to make up a story?" I was having a hard time concentrating on both making myself urinate and coming up with an impromptu story. But I had a feeling I could do it.

But the girl said, "Tell us a story... about Christmas. About Santa Claus!"

I thought, Oh, I hate telling Christmas stories! They're so conventional. I also knew I didn't want to tell a story about Santa Claus, since I was trying to pee into a urine-soaked model of him at the moment. But I said, "Oh, okay. Once upon a time, there was a man named Santa Claus..."

dirt lot buildings; flying through grandmother's house

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I had walked a distance and now found myself in a gigantic dirt lot. In the dirt lot there were a couple of tall, modern-looking office buildings. The lot was lit up, like there were powerful, stadium-style lights somewhere over the lot.

I may have had the feeling that I was supposed to head into one of these buildings. The building had glass walls all the way up. The walls may have been coated with a dark, reflective material. But now they seemed to be gleaming with pink neon light, like they were electrified.

For some reason I decided not to go into this building. It may have been due to some conversation I was hearing in my head involving my youngest nephew. I ended up on some slope near the building, so that I was eye to eye with about the mid level of the building. As I walked along the ridge of the slope, the building lost all of its light and just became a building of dark, reflective glass walls.

I now noticed another office building. This office building was made mostly of concrete, and it had a kind of weird shape. It seemed like stairwells connected through to the outdoors by open passageways. There were also a lot of overhangs in the building, like ledges. The ledges and passageways were all well lit by incandescent light.

My youngest nephew and a couple other people, probably family members, all sat in a circle under one of the ledges of the building. The group may have been playing a game. I sat down with a group, probably to have some kind of a conversation with them.

Dream #2

It was daytime. I was walking down the sidewalk, heading toward the house where my great grandmother used to live (my great grandmother died about three years ago in waking life). I was heading down to the house from the north. The house on the south side of my grandma's house seemed to be undergoing construction. There were some ruts and a lot of upturned soil in the front yard. I may also have seen, or at least heard, some construction equipment.

I knew that it was early in the afternoon, maybe around 2 PM. I was coming back to my grandma's house as if this was where I lived, or where I was staying for a little while. I didn't want the construction workers at my grandma's neighbor's house to see me heading toward the house. They'd see that I was out of work early, and they'd either look down on me because I'd had such a short shift at work or because I looked like I didn't have a job at all.

So I sneaked up into the house through the front door. The house was very dim, like heavy, brown-orange curtains were hung over all the windows. I had a feeling that my mom and sister were in the house, but that they were getting ready to leave. I wanted to avoid my mom and sister as well. I didn't want them to know I was home from work so early. I didn't want them to think I didn't have a job.

To move quickly through the house, I floated through the air. I had floated somewhere in the house where I wouldn't be seen. My sister left the house. Now only my mom was left. She was probably taking a shower. I floated around the house, heading into the kitchen, my grandma's guest room, and the dining room. I wasn't really focused with my flight. I didn't seem to be flying with any direction. I kept trying to fly down into the basement. But either I kept forgetting or kept getting afraid to go down there.

Eventually I had settled on the idea that I could leave the house, but that I needed to bring a few things with me. I went into my grandma's bedroom. On her desk there were a couple of paperback books and probably some items of clothing. I grabbed the books and maybe some of the items of clothing and I flew out of the room. I flew somewhere where I could dress or prepare without risking being seen.

I was just about to leave the house. But then I realized that I wasn't wearing any shoes. I'd need to get my shoes from my grandma's bedroom in order to leave the house. So I flew toward my grandma's bedroom to grab the shoes.

But just as I was getting to my grandma's bedroom, my mom turned off the shower. I knew she'd be leaving the bathroom soon. I didn't know how I could leave my grandma's bedroom while my mom left the bathroom without my being seen.

But somehow I managed to fly into the bathroom just as my mom was leaving it, so that her back was turned just as I was heading into the bathroom. But I was now stuck in the bathroom. I was either crouched on the floor or sitting on the toilet, holding my books and some clothes in my arms. My mom wasn't leaving the hallway in front of the bathroom. She just stood still right there, her back turned to the bathroom doorway, but right in front of it.

After a moment my mom turned around and walked back into the bathroom. This may possibly even have been because I had called her into the bathroom. Once my mom was back in the bathroom, I called attention to myself. My mom looked down at me, like I was sitting on the floor. I may have begun asking my mom some questions, possibly about what I needed to be prepared to leave the house.

another man's dream

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A man was in trouble with somebody. He may have been spying on some people who were involved in some kind of illegal activity. He was in some place, possibly a house, when he was caught by a beautiful woman. The woman may have tied the man to a chair. The woman may have done something to the man like inject him with a drug. The man was worried for his life. He buried his face in his hands.

The man pulled his face out from his hands. Before, my view of the man had been rather close with him, as if I had been seeing from just behind his shoulder. Now my view was low, as if I were looking up at him from not too far about the floor, on the man's right side. The man was a little chubby, pale white, but Hispanic looking, with stubble and disheveled hair. He was quivering with fear. The beautiful woman, blonde white, well-dressed, stood over the man on his left side.

The man was shocked to see that his surroundings had changed. He was now in a much wider room, almost like some sort of workshop. The workshop looked very clean and nice, with white walls that had little things hanging on them here and there. But, without the man noticing it, I think, the room changed again. The walls inside the room were now horizontal planks of wood, unfinished, raw, very fibrous.

The man was certain that he had been drugged and that, due to the drug, he had woken into a dream. The man was made to stand up. The room changed again. It was now dark. I was now where the man had been. The woman was behind me. We seemed to be in a somewhat cramped place.

There was apparently some uncertainty on the woman's part of who I was. I had apparently told the woman. But she didn't quite believe me. So she was running some tests on me to prove who I was. She gave me a 20-ounce paper cup, like the kind for coffee at convenience stores. She told me I was going to need to give her a urine sample in this cup.

The woman walked me down a hallway to a bathroom. I went into the bathroom and began urinating. I actually needed to pee a lot. In no time I peed all the way to the top of the cup. I was surprised and a little worried, because the urine was a darkish green color. It probably smelled, too.

I still needed to pee, so -- I think -- I went over to a toilet on my right and peed some more. But I may have told myself not to let myself get too much into peeing. I was still slightly aware that I was in a dream (i.e., the dream that the man had been drugged into waking into). I told myself that if I got too much into peeing, that my physical body, wherever it was, would also start peeing, and I'd wet the bed.

I could hear the woman back in the first room, laughing on the phone with someone. She was laughing that she had actually gotten me to pee in a cup for her. I was kind of annoyed. I knew the woman was laughing because she was able to control me. I didn't want to see her anymore.

I thought I would just stay in the bathroom. I started looking around in the bathroom. It was really big, and most of it didn't look like a bathroom. It looked more like some kind of small workshop combined with a small office space.

The woman now called for me. She said she had more tests for me to take. I think she had the idea that I wasn't coming back to the room, that I didn't want to go back. So now she was trying to lure me back in a different way, telling me that something important depended on my taking these tests.

I may have had the feeling that the woman was going to inject me with something. I may have held three small vials in my hand. They were all squarish, dark amber colored, with black caps. Around the base of each cap was a thin, rubbery or plastic band. The band was colored, with a thin, black line running through its center. One band was pink. Another band was green. Another band was blue.

The woman may have begun calling for me again.

***

UPDATE: A discussion of the images in this dream, as well as of the images in some of my other recent dreams, can be found at this entry of my dreamday journal.

sleeping on a mansion porch; cartel paramours

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I may have had either a girlfriend or a girl who was interested in me, who lived in a big mansion with her family. It was night, and the girl, another person or some other people, and I all came up to the mansion. The girl wanted me to sleep here. But she knew her father wouldn't approve of me. So her idea was that I should sleep on the porch of the mansion.

I stood out on the porch while everybody else walked into the mansion. The porch of the mansion was huge, made of massive stone. The doors of the mansion were also big, made of black iron and glass.

The girl checked with the cook of the mansion to see if anybody else was home at the moment. I could see the cook from the right side of the porch, apparently through a dark hallway that led into the incandescent-lit kitchen. The cook said nobody was home. But she also may have said that she still didn't think it was a good idea for me to sleep at the mansion.

I went to sleep on the mansion porch. I slept near the back, right corner of the porch. I think I was using some kind of blankets as a mattress, and a sleeping bag as a blanket.

I now woke. The morning light was grey. A group of people (in a number of cars, including a limousine and a van?) pulled up to the mansion. The girl's father walked up the steps, closely followed by a retinue of people, possibly associates and bodyguards. The father was a black man who still looked kind of young. His hair was maybe about 5cm long. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and some kind of striped tie (maybe green and yellow?). He wore dark but mirror-like sunglasses.

I jumped out of my bedding. I was trying to think of some excuse for why I was sleeping here. Thankfully, I was wearing a business suit -- brown slacks and jacket, not sure about the rest. I was still trying to think of what to say as I approached the father.

But the father directly asked me something like, "Aren't you the tour guide?"

Shocked that I had been given an excuse directly, I said, "Yes."

The father said something like, "Well, why didn't you come here with us? Are you even ready to give the tour? You're cutting it close with time as it is. The group should be here any minute. They'll be waiting in that room."

I looked over to the left wall of the porch. There were iron-barred glass doors leading into what looked like an opulent hotel lobby. The father had walked away. I walked over into the new room. There were three or four short steps leading down into the area.

The area was much wider than it was deep. There were huge chandeliers with incandescent bulbs. The walls were mostly wood. The carpets were all very nice, with kind of Persian designs, in maybe a tan and blue color scheme. There were little circular seating areas throughout the room, nicely upholstered and padded. A couple of big desks dotted the room. And at the far end of the room was a big, wooden staircase.

There were a lot of people bustling about in the room. But right as I walked down to the bottom of the steps I was confronted by a tightly packed group of well-dressed people. This was, I knew, the tour group the father had spoken about.

The father had supposed I was the group's guide. I knew this wasn't the case. But I suspected the guide would be along soon enough. If I could just stall the group until the guide got here, perhaps I could make a seamless transition, so that nobody would report me to the father as having been either a terrible tour guide or a fraud.


I was worried about my hairstyle. I could "see" my hairstyle. My dark brown hair was heavily gelled (!) and swept into something halfway between a squarish professional cut and a trendy, spiky-mohawk-type cut. I also really needed to urinate. So I wanted to get into the bathroom before I really got focused on performing for this crowd.


But the bathroom doors were right in front of me, along the wall to my left -- and the crowd were all standing in front of the doors. So I did a little bit of performing for the crowd. I didn't even really know what they were here to tour for. So, trying to act like I knew what I was doing, I also threw out some questions and statements that I hoped would lead the crowd to tell me what they were here for.


I still needed to urinate really bad. So I walked through the crowd, probably telling them that we'd start in just a moment, but that I needed to go to the bathroom first. I may have been worried, though, that while I was in the bathroom, the real tour guide would come along. I wouldn't be able to explain myself to him, and somebody might report me to the father. But I may also have mentioned something to the crowd about how the other tour guide, or even the real tour guide?, might be coming along soon.


The crowd seemed to clear some kind of space to the bathroom for me, or else, even though the crowd hadn't cleared a space, I may have seen how I could have gotten to the bathroom. But the bathroom I now had a clear path to was the women's, not the men's. I could see, on the wood door, a shiny, brass plate in the standard shape of a man, on the door of the bathroom I needed to get into. But it seemed like I was going to have a hard time convincing anybody to let me in there.


Dream #2


A view of something like a road in the desert -- flat, with sandy soil and clumps of grass everywhere. My view floated maybe 3 meters above the road and was moving along over the road at the speed of a car.


In the back of my mind I was feeling a story of a girl who was working through the boyfriend options she had on the internet. There were at least three boys the girl was interested in. The first and the third boy had the last name "Cartel." These two boys each had three names. The third boy's first name began with "Ph." The first boy's first name may have been William. I don't remember anything about the second boy's name.


The girl liked the third boy, Ph. The other Cartel boy was a big troublemaker. But Ph was a really nice boy. And the girl really wanted to be with him.


The girl's father did not want to have his daughter involved with anybody in the Cartel family. But the girl was trying to figure out a way of explaining to the father what kind of a good boy Ph was.


The girl's father came driving down the road, in the direction opposite the one in which I was moving, as part of a big group of vehicles. A lot of the vehicles were dark and shiny, like limousines. But there may also have been some motorcycles and other vehicles. They all seemed to be driving so that they made something like a triangle formation.


The girl's father, who was the leader of this group, may possibly have been driving the lead motorcycle. But even if he was in one of the limousines, I could see him, or sense him, as if he were at the very front of this pack.


Somehow it was now like I was this Cartel boy that the girl liked. I felt like I myself should somehow confront the father and let him know about myself. I knew the daughter would also probably still talk to her father. And I knew that the father would listen to the daughter more than to me. I doubted, though, that the father would really listen to either of us. But I figured I might as well try, anyway.


***


UPDATE: A discussion of the images in this dream can be found in this entry in my dreamday journal.

annoying coffee guy; "man, don't try to fly"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like the lobby for a hotel or an apartment building. It was pretty spacious. It probably had red tile floors and white walls. It may have had an old Spanish Mission sort of feel to it.

I sat in a nice chair, maybe a green leather chair, before a long, kind of low coffee table. I sat near one of the ends of the table. Across the table, in another nice chair, sat an old, white man. He looked a little well-off, maybe a tiny bit heavy, with a dignified but irascible face.

The man had a wife who was very meek, at least for show. She handed the man some coffee and walked away. She may have said something to the man about staying calm. She may have sensed, like I did, that the man didn't like me being around, and that he was looking for a reason to annoy me or make me feel like leaving.

But for some reason the man hadn't found any opportunity to annoy me. We'd both finished our coffee. I'd been reading the newspaper. The man may have been reading the paper as well. I put down the paper. It was obvious to the man that I was getting ready to stand up and leave.

But as I was getting ready to stand up, the wife walked up again. She either brought or pointed out a little carton of creamer to the man. I looked down at the table, too. I don't think I saw any use in the creamer. Both the old man and I had finished our coffees.

I noticed that the table was littered with newspapers. There was barely enough open space on the table for the creamer. The carton may actually have been partly obscured by a page of newspaper.

But the man seemed to think that I did want the creamer. He suddenly lurched forward. The creamer carton had been opened. The man grabbed the carton. He folded the carton top closed, then decisively planted the carton back down. He then gave the carton top an imperative flick with his index finger. All of this was a way, I knew of annoying me by making me feel that the man owned the creamer and I had no right to it.

I was annoyed. I didn't need any creamer. I didn't even have any coffee left. But the man acting like he owned the creamer really ticked me off. I stood up calmly to leave. I really wanted to do something annoying back to the man. But I decided to ignore him.

But now the man stood up. He seemed to want to follow me out of the building. Now that he'd annoyed me once, he wanted to keep on annoying me.

I was walking toward a wall. Once I hit the wall, I'd walk left. Following the wall, I'd be led to a larger front lobby area and out of the building. The old man had walked in front of his chair and off to the right. But he quickly looped around and walked back in my direction. It was like he was trying to make a beeline for me, so he could cut me off in my path.

I could see the man out of the corner of my eye, approaching me as I walked toward the wall. I knew he was trying to cut me off. I got really mad. I was going to do something to the man.

Right as I approached the man, I hurried up, to get just a couple steps in front of him. I knew I was going to push him back as he made his attempt to cut me off. But what I ended up doing, actually, was grab him by the arms, lift him up, and shove him back a couple steps.

But as I was doing this, the man was talking to me. It was like he was trying to be friendly. I figured he was just trying to be friendly to me now because he wanted to make me second-guess myself, to make me think that maybe I was wrong, and that maybe he really wasn't trying to annoy me. The man looked different, too. He was smaller and skinnier, and he looked more cheerful.

I felt a little bad for not having listened to anything the man had said. I asked him to repeat what he'd said. He started talking about dinner, about some food like Salisbury steaks.

Something about this annoyed me, and I turned and walked quickly away from the man. I got the feeling the man was only mentioning dinner because he knew that would be his next opportunity for annoying me. He was trying to pry information out of me regarding what I liked about dinnertime. That way he could wreck it for me.

I walked into a bathroom along the wall. The bathroom was lit with drab, green-grey fluorescent lights. The bathroom felt a little too small, humid, and stale. The sinks were kind of boxy. They seemed to be made of some old, stale aluminum or stainless steel. There were two workers doing something like cleaning mops in two of the sinks off to my left.

I washed my hands in a free sink. I was hoping the man wouldn't follow me into the bathroom as well and try to annoy me here. The two workers may have been something like the salisbury steak for dinner as well.

Dream #2

I was out in a Main Street area in a small town, not unlike a little shopping area in my hometown, but with longer, wider streets. It was getting to be early evening. The sun had set, and the light was grey blue.

I was with my mom. My mom's mom had been with us. But now she was walking away. My mom told me something like, "Your grandma thinks you're going back to New York right away. She won't see you again if you don't talk to her right now. Go tell her you aren't going back for a few days."

I ran up to my grandma. She seemed to be getting attached to another group of people. But I managed to turn her around. I gave her a hug and told her that I'd actually be in town for a few more days, if she wanted me to spend time with her at some point. But she told me that she'd have too much to do over the next few days. She wouldn't be able to spend time with me.

I said goodbye to my grandma. I turned around and walked down the sidewalk. The sidewalk was mostly empty. On my right side was a nice, small, but massive building made of some kind of grey stone. I may have thought this building was a theatre building.

The staircase up to the front was massive and steep, even though it was kind of narrow and small. The staircase had some kind of black iron gate in front of it. And all the way up, the staircase was bounded by a tall, black iron fence.

For some reason, passing the left side of the staircase, I decided to turn around and hold onto the black railing of the fence. I grabbed onto a spot at a height where my feet would barely be touching the ground. I then began to use the fence railing as a bar for doing chin-ups.

The first time I wobbled up into a full chin-up, I held myself there and looked down the street as my grandma disappeared with the group of people she was now attached to.

It made me really depressed to think of my grandma going away like that. It made me kind of disappointed to think that maybe my grandma said she couldn't see me. I thought maybe she'd been disappointed in me. It made me want to do more chin-ups.

I suddenly realized, though, that I'd actually done a full chin-up. I had a hard enough time doing that, usually. I was surprised I'd done it without much thought at all. I started to wonder if I'd actually even done a chin-up.

So I let myself down, so I could pull myself up into another chin-up. I wobbled my chin up over the bar again. I let myself down and pulled myself up again, still not quite sure I'd actually done a legitimate chin-up.

But this time, as I wobbled my chin up over the bar, I looked down to the foot of the staircase. Two young, kind of bushy-haired, blonde men sat huddled together on the bottom steps. They were wearing clothes like old soldiers' uniforms from the Revolutionary War: something like dark blue jackets and tight, but thick, white slacks.

It struck me that these young men were something like European guards. They were guarding this building. This building seemed to be something important. Maybe it wasn't a theatre, like I'd thought it had been.

I let myself down and then wobbled myself back up into another full-chin up. Holding my head up over the bar I looked up to the top of the staircase. I saw that there were arched and ruffled fabric banners over the doorways to the building -- three of them, I think. The banners were red white and blue, but in a pattern that reminded me more of France than of America.

I suddenly realized that this building was something like the French Embassy. Sitting here doing chin-ups on the stair railing to the French Embassy was pretty disrespectful. So I let myself down and walked away from the staircase.

I walked through some interesting structure. It was like a short but wide staircase of red stone or red brick. The staircase had two wide balconies on either side. At the top of the staircase was a broad promenade. That ran to the left and the right. Across the way from the staircase was some kind of stone arch structure, and then a red walkway that seemed to span quite a ways. This was all under a grey-white sky.

I really wanted to explore this area. But at the top of the staircase a man sat, barring the way. He held some strange sort of guard's weapon. It was almost like a candelabra made of golden-tipped spears. But it was broad enough to block any movement past the top of the staircase.

But for some reason I thought this was easily surmountable. I would simply fly over the man's spears. I'd have to fly high enough that the man wouldn't detect me. And I'd have to land far enough away from the man that he wouldn't detect me. If he detected me, I knew, he'd fight me. And I probably couldn't beat him.

But I thought it would be easy enough to fly past the man. I lifted myself slowly up into the air. When I got level with the tips of the spears, I came closer to the spears. I noticed it would be a little harder than I'd thought to get over the spears. Coming out of the tips of the spears were lengths of twine. They seemed to be joining the spears to some structure overhead.

I flew up, following the lengths of twine. I figured if I could find the structure the twine was joined to, I could fly over that. Even if it was really high, I could fly over it. As far as I knew, my powers of flight didn't have any height limit.

But as I got higher and higher, I came to realize I wasn't outside at all. I was inside a massive, very tall building, something like the Rose Reading Room of the Schwartzmann branch of the NYPL, except three or four times the size and height. And the room almost had a holy feel to it, like a cathedral.

The lengths of twine, I saw, went all the way up to the ceiling. But, maybe ten or so meters from the ceiling, the vertical lengths of twined joined with a lattice of horizontal and vertical lengths of twine. This lattice of twine was so immense and intricate that I knew there was no way I could get beyond it.

But, looking forward, I saw places where there seemed to be open spots. From there I could, I thought, get up high enough to go past the twine lattice and over the detection system that was, apparently, all connected to the man's spear-candelabra.

But now the massiveness of the enormous room was making me really dizzy. I was starting to get afraid, too. I felt like if I flew any higher, I stood a chance, somehow, of easily falling to my death.

For a little bit, I kept trying to move forward. But I couldn't manage it. The room seemed to begin spinning. Everything seemed more massive than ever. The floor scared me because it was so far below me. The ceiling scared me because it seemed so looming and heavy.

I had to descend. I was descending slowly, too afraid that any quick descent would lead to a falling accident that would kill me. As I got closer and closer to the floor, all I could see were the sparkling-polished, red floor tiles. It was like I was focusing on the floor as a matter of life or death. I may have felt like I was going to throw up.

I could hear the man telling me, almost like an older brother tying to give advice, "Man, don't try to fly."

calling my niece a b---h

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was down in the basement of my family's house. I had just come down the steps. My mother had come ahead of me. She had headed into her bedroom. I was following my mom into her bedroom for something.

But my niece had been trying to get our attention as we'd been coming down the steps. She was being really annoying about it. I'd just been trying to ignore her. But now that we were heading down into my mom's room, my niece decided that she'd follow us.

I was really annoyed. My niece isn't allowed into the basement. She was disobeying rules just so she could come bug me and my mom. I yelled up to my niece not to come downstairs. But she'd run all the way down the stairs before I'd even finished what I'd said.

My niece was already heading past me and toward my mom's room. I had a crystal clear glass of water. I was going to splash some of the water on my niece, to shock her away and back upstairs, like someone might spray water at a cat. But I couldn't pour the water. For some reason my body was all locked up and dizzy and twisted around. I couldn't even move forward until my niece had gotten into my mom's bedroom.

I was so frustrated by what my niece had done that I muttered under my breath, "Ugh, you little bitch." As soon as I'd said it I felt bad. I never thought I'd call my niece a bitch. But, fortunately, I thought, since my niece was so far away from me, she probably wouldn't have heard me.

I walked through my mom's room. At the end of her room, on the right wall, was a doorway to a bathroom. My mom was getting whatever she had for me out of there. My niece had run in there as well.

Now I had to get my niece and take her back upstairs. I had calmed down a bit. Now I wanted to be nice to my niece, to show her I loved her. I picked her up out of some cluttered area near the doorway to the bathroom.

I turned around and carried my niece back out of my mom's room. My niece was still about the same age as she is IWL -- about four years old. But she was as small as a little doll. I bounced my niece up and down in a loving fashion, cooing a little song to her and being tender. But I was also holding her at arms length.

But now my niece began crying. She said, "I know you called me a bitch. Wait until I tell my mom... that you really hurt my feelings!"

I felt really bad. I hadn't thought my niece had heard me. I wouldn't have wanted her to hear me. But she did. And I felt even worse when I thought of how my sister would yell at me when she'd found out I'd called one of her kids a bad word.

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

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

Dream #3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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