the rite aid resort; hollow leg anemone; out-of-body acne; apartment building stalker

For a review of some of the images from these dreams, please visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was driving around in a different town. I may have been on vacation or on some kind of leisurely group trip. I was staying in a hotel that was at the top of a huge hill.

I may have driven up to the hotel once. Then I was driving around town again. But now I decided I needed to go back to the hotel for the night. But I thought that before I went back to the hotel I should pick up some food.

I wanted to get back to the hotel quickly so I could go from there to pick up some food and then get back inside the hotel before it was too late (even though -- I don't think it was any later than maybe early afternoon).

I drove up a road, remembering the road and thinking that I wouldn't get back to the hotel quickly enough. But then I found a tunnel. I drove into the tunnel. My car accelerated a lot. The slope inside the tunnel got steeper and steeper. It was almost like I was driving straight up.

I didn't feel like the tunnel was heading in the right direction. But then it let out right at a road I knew was just around the corner from the hotel. I drove around the road and up into the hotel parking lot. The hotel was more like a big, Spanish-style resort. But in the parking lot adjacent to the hotel was some sort of two-story strip mall.

Two guys spotted me in my car. I knew that now they'd want to follow me around to figure out why I was here. If they found out I was staying at the hotel, they'd want to cause trouble for me there. So I decided to drive into the strip mall parking lot instead of the hotel parking lot and hang around there until I lost the guys.

I noticed that there was a Rite Aid in the strip mall. I thought they should probably have some food there. So I went in. The guys probably followed me in. The Rite Aid was really cramped. It may have been a small space that took up two floors. But then it may have been all on just the second floor.

It seemed like the Rite Aid sold nothing but cheap, second-rate consumer wellness goods, not quite medical supplies, but things you'd have around the house to use for whenever you got sick or injured or uncomfortable. There may have been a little girl in the store, possibly with her dad. She may have been lifted up onto some stack of boxes.

I looked around a little more. The only food I could find was bags of something sort of like chips -- just a couple bags, and way high up on some rack that made it so I didn't want to go through the trouble of getting them.

I was tempted for a second just to buy a lot of chips and have them for dinner. But I didn't want to eat just chips for dinner. I wanted to have a real meal. So I left the Rite Aid.

I was out in the parking lot. I knew I'd have to drive somewhere else now so I could find some real food. But I thought that was a good thing. The two guys had followed me back out of the store. I knew that it would be best if I went somewhere else before going to the hotel. If I left the area, maybe the guys also would. Then when I got back, I could just head into the hotel without anybody following me.

Dream 2

I was standing out in front of a comic book or zine shop with someone else, maybe my brother, maybe a female friend. We were probably waiting for the store to open for the morning. We may have been speaking with each other about the shop as if it was the first time here for one of us, and maybe also as if we'd just met each other for the first time.

Now the owner of the shop came up. He was a white man, kind of tall, round, and heavy, with a scraggly, grey beard and shaggy, but balding hair. He wore small, squarish sunglasses. He greeted us cheerfully. He seemed happy to see that people were eager to get into the store.

The owner opened the door and led us in. He proudly chatted a little bit about the store. But he walked quickly in front of us and was soon gone.

It may now have been like there was a group of us here. The place looked like a big record store on the inside. There were bins and bins of items on tables all around us. The store had a set of steps in the back leading up to another floor of items.

There was a doorway on the wall to my right. I walked through, into a smaller room of wooden shelves and racks for magazines or comic books or zines. I saw a lot of stuff that I wanted -- items that were apparently books, like novels, but were also zines, drawn in a very thin, liney style. The themes of these stories may have been a little perverted. They were just what I'd been looking for.

I may have been walking around here by myself. But I said to someone else, almost in my head, or almost as if I were in another place at the same moment -- maybe inside or near a tour bus, which I could maybe see through a blinded window as I stood in the store -- that this was what I'd wanted to experience the entire time I'd been in this city. I said that I'd really love to just immerse myself in the experience of these books for the rest of the time we were here.

The person said that if that was the case, I should just buy a ton of the books I wanted and take them with me to the airport. I could do nothing but read them at the airport and on the plane.

I thought what the person said was a good idea. But I knew it wasn't quite what I'd meant. Nevertheless, I knew I'd want to buy some of these books. But I probably wouldn't want to buy a lot. I imagined what a pain it would be to haul so many books along with me to the airport.

We may all now have been getting ready to leave. We were all in a room, just sitting around. We were like a group of schoolkids, though at least some of us may actually have been adults. One may have been Denver's current city council president.

As we all chatted away about something, I realized I needed to take care of an issue I was having with my leg. I had apparently cut open my left leg, possibly along the shinbone. It was kind of hollow inside, with bone, veins, artery, and some other tissue. But what mainly took up the inside of the leg was this peach material that looked like sea anemone tentacles.

I knew this peach material was kind of clogging up my leg, so that it was taking too much energy for me to walk. I knew that if I could just remove some of this stuff I'd be in a lot better shape. So I took some surgical instrument, maybe scissors or a knife, and just began cutting away at some of this stuff.

The fringes or tentacles were connected to a fleshy base. I was pretty sure the fleshy base was fine, and that I just needed to cut off the fringes. But I also felt like, at least for the time being, I didn't need to cut off all the fringes. I just needed to cut off enough to make it easier for me to walk again.

So I cut away at a kind of big clump of fringes. I had cut away quite a bit of the fringes. But they were still connected to the fleshy base by just a little flap of flesh. It was really hard to cut that last little flap -- the flap was so gooey that it just wouldn't snap off. So I decided just to pull and pull until I tore the fringes away from the fleshy base.

Finally I managed to pull this clump of fringes off altogether. Apparently I closed my leg back up. There was a black, metal shell for a computer's CPU. I looked inside it. It was mostly empty, except for a tangle of red and blue wires and maybe one or two other things. I knew I was supposed to stick my leg in here. This was sort of like my shoe, or another natural part of my leg, or something to protect my leg while it healed. I would stick my leg down into the CPU. My foot would stick out a square hole in the bottom.

But I may actually have had problems doing this. Or I may have forgotten altogether to do it, maybe even as soon as I'd started doing it. Then, as soon as I'd forgotten to do it, I may have wondered why I hadn't done it. And I may have wondered whether my leg would be protected, now that I hadn't stuck it into the old CPU shell. I may also have wondered whether I'd even closed up my leg at all, after having pulled out all the stuff.

And now that I thought about all the stuff I'd pulled out of my leg, I wondered after all whether I should have done that. Wasn't the stuff in my leg supposed to be there? Had I just pulled stuff out of my leg that actually made my leg work?

The person next to me asked me if I was okay. I said I was okay, but that I was just wondering whether I may have overdone it on the whole leg thing. But I said that I probably hadn't overdone it. I said I'd probably just been surprised to see my leg so hollow. But, I said, I supposed that a lot of the body is pretty hollow, anyway. And if it's not hollow, and you have all that stuff clogging it up, that's when you start running into problems.

Dream 3

I probably saw that I had a lot of acne sprouting up on my face. I don't know whether I was looking in a mirror or using my phone camera as a mirror. I may actually have seen my face as if I were outside of my body, looking at my face from a low, kind of oblique angle.

I may not have been myself, either. I may have been a blonde man with kind of golden skin, blue eyes, and hair that was loosely curly and frizzy at the edges, like there were a lot of split ends or something.

I think one cheek had small bumps of acne sprouting up all over. The other cheek had a different kind of acne, but it was just as bad and widespread.

Dream 4

I may have been trying to escape some killer or stalker or something. I may have been using a stairwell to escape. But I kept on almost running into the killer.

There may have been a point where I was trying to use an elevator, too. But either people got on the elevator with me who were linked with the killer/stalker or the killer/stalker also got on the elevator with me, or the killer/stalker saw me get on the elevator. So I needed to pretend like I was going to a different floor, so the killer/stalker wouldn't know what I was really doing.

The building was like a huge skyscraper. And there were times when it felt like an office complex -- maybe mainly when I was in the elevator, which I think had (dirty, grimy) glass walls and looked out over an atrium all the way down to the ground level. But most of the time it probably felt like a residential building.

But I think for me it also felt like some sort of daycare center. It may have been like a prison, too. It may have been that people who'd done something bad had been sent here to be treated like they were in a daycare for kids for a really long time. Or it may simply have been a children's daycare center, and I may mistakenly have been put here. Or it may have been a place that was being morphed into a children's daycare center by some bad person, and I was trying to stop that from happening.

But in order for me to succeed and escape, I had to prove that I was grown up, that I wasn't one of the children. But I didn't have to prove this to the bad person who was stalking me. In fact, I couldn't get around that person, or I might actually be turned into a child. I didn't actually have to prove my adulthood to anybody. I just needed to prove myself by keeping my adult identity until I escaped the building or accomplished whatever I was supposed to accomplish.

rescuing the zombie girl; mclaren's a garbage car; zombie girl at women's event; zombie girl is irrelevant

For an analysis of some of the imagery in today's dreams, visit this post in my dream analysis blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

A military group was driving through a sort of industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of a big desert town. There was some sort of operation to rescue either a little girl or a whole affected population from a group of zombies.

At first I may not have seen from the perspective of someone in the group. My view may have been backed away a few blocks from the action and up in the air ten or fifteen meters.

A bunch of things happened that I don't remember very well. All the action was jumbled up. The leader of the group had driven in a bunch of vehicles, maybe including some kind of tank vehicle. At this point in time I may have seen from the point of view of the action. There may have been a lot of shooting.

There may have been a point where the leader and a few other people went into a big building. This building may have looked like a sci-fi desert palace of some kind rather than an industrial building in a city. But it may also have looked like some sort of truck loading dock mixed with an official city building.

Some other things happened. All the action may have started over again. It may have been like the leader was driving all his troops right back around the blocks leading up to the big building. There may have been some argument between the leader and one of his leaders, who was speaking with him remotely. The second leader wanted the leader to leave the area. It was too dangerous. But the leader wouldn't leave until he'd rescued the population or the little girl.

At some point the little girl herself got involved in the decision making. This became a news item. A news reporter, a black woman with short hair, who may instead have been some sort of high-ranking military officer, made some kind of report about the girl.

The little girl had made some sort of decision to sacrifice herself so the other people in her population could live. But she also hadn't made this decision. She was still alive, and the leader of the soldiers was going to rescue her.

Now the little girl made a news announcement of her own. She may have looked like some kind of anime character. She announced that the military needed to leave her alone. She said she had become a zombie. She still had her intelligence. She was basically just like she had been before. But if any living human beings got near her, her zombie side would come out. She would be driven to kill them and eat their brains.

After this I may have been in some sort of swimming, half-dreaming state where I was discussing the meaning of the girl's announcement with some of my "friends," either people I knew or people in mainstream media who always appear on my Twitter stream.

I may have been trying to stand up for the girl. But I may also have been trying to organize some sort of discussion about the girl, maybe even to bring the girl to Denver. But my "friends" all said that the little girl was really irrelevant, and that they suspected I only wanted to bring her here because I was attracted to little girls and wanted to look at her.

Dream 2

I had somehow saved or helped a ten- or eleven-year-old boy. We may have been in some social situation: a crowd or a party or something. The boy started flirting with me. I got the feeling he was sexually attracted to me. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. So I took him somewhere -- possibly one of our houses, but probably not -- where we could be alone.

We were now on the top bunk of a bunk bed in a huge room. It was like the bunk bed was just in some gigantic, empty industrial space. It was dark. The only light in the building was deep, blue light from the night sky coming in through windows high up on the walls.

There was probably some man laying on the bottom bunk of the bed. I'm not sure I noticed him. He kind of creeped me out. I felt like he was essentially there to spy on me and the boy. He wasn't going to stop anything. He was just going to lay there. It may have seemed weird to me. But I also figured there was just nothing I could do about it.

The boy was laying on his back. He was wearing either just underwear or just a diaper. I may also have been wearing just underwear. I still really didn't know whether the boy wanted me to be with him. But I was aroused at this point and wanted to be with the boy.

I pushed up one of the boy's legs, which made it easier for me to push at his crotch. I rubbed up against the boy's crotch a few times. It felt good to me. I hoped it felt good to the boy. I hoped it was what the boy wanted.

But now the boy was somewhere else, maybe not even on the bed. He was talking to me about some conversation he'd had with some man who'd thought he was really cool. The man was kind of rich and very handsome. But he was really arrogant.

The boy told me how he had asked the man about his car in particular. The man had mentioned some kind of car I thought was really good -- maybe a McLaren or some other car with a name starting with an M. But, the boy told me, he'd just laughed at the man. He'd told the man that he only dated men who drive XXXXX (some type of car that probably had a few different letters and numbers in its name). The boy said, "I told the man, 'Come back when you aren't driving garbage cars anymore.'"

I was kind of shocked. I'd had no idea that the car the boy had mentioned even existed. Yet it was like common knowledge to the boy that this was what really sophisticated rich men drove. And the car I thought was so good was thought of as a garbage car by the boy. Obviously, I thought, this little boy would never be sexually attracted to me. I didn't even know what a good car really was!

I had an image in my mind of soap suds and probably hands and arms. I had a feeling I was watching the rich man clean himself, as if the boy had also told him something like he'd needed to go wash himself off because he'd been driving such a garbage car. I thought that if the rich man had needed to wash himself off, then I'd really need to wash myself off -- because I didn't know anything!

The boy was probably near me at some point now. He may have tapped me on the shoulder or patted me on the back.

The boy said, "Well, come on. Let's get going." The boy hopped down from the bunk bed and walked off toward some really nice car. I knew the boy and I had to go take care of something.

I'd still sort of wanted to stay in bed with the boy. I didn't know whether the boy had stopped our physical stuff just randomly or because he really hadn't wanted to be with me after all. If I'd misread his signals I'd feel really bad.

But I thought I couldn't have misread his signals, because he wasn't mad at me and wanted me to come along wherever he was going. But if the boy was attracted to me, then I was still aroused, and I was still hoping we could have just stayed in bed and been together.

There may have been some sort of modular-looking structure near the car, like some makeshift room with fluorescent light inside. It threw off a little light, which dimly reached the bunk bed. I climbed down from the bunk bed.

I saw the creepy guy on the bottom bunk. He was still there, just spying on everything the boy and I were doing. I may have thought that maybe it was good the boy and I hadn't done anything while we were here. Maybe once we were out of here, the creepy man would stop spying on us.

Dream 3

There was some sort of women's event. The place was packed. I'm pretty sure the little girl from my first dream had been invited to speak.

Dream 4

I had proposed to TA, a person I'd spent a lot of time with on volunteer events during the 2016 election cycle, that we bring the little girl from my first dream to speak at some event. TA just laughed at me and said, "Why would we do that? That's so irrelevant."

wearing diapers to the store; one-legged chase scene

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was up in some apartment on the second or third floor of an oldish, Village-style, brick apartment.I was in a bedroom. Everybody else was in some other room. The bedroom was cluttered and little with a bright, but kind of pale, incandescdent light.

The apartment wasn't mine. I may have been here because of a party that was going on, though the party may not have been happening right then. I may also have been here because I was going to watch the place for the people who lived here, though they weren't gone yet.

I was looking at myself in a mirror. I saw that I was wearing a Pampers Baby Dry diaper. I was planning to go downstairs and out to some grocery store or music store (or a grocery/music store?) that was right near the apartment building.

I wanted to go down there wearing my diapers. But I wanted to make sure they were visible, so that everybody I walked by knew I was wearing diapers. I may have hoped that somebody would be turned on by my wearing diapers and want to hit on me.

I grabbed a pair of very low rise blue jeans from somewhere. I put them on and looked at how the waistband of the diapers flapped over the waistline of the jeans. I looked at the Sesame Street character on the waistband.

The waistband seemed to flop down a bit too much. I was also worried that once I actually got walking around, the waistline of the jeans would snug up around the waistband of the diapers, obscuring the diapers. I really wanted people to see me in my diapers! I wondered whether I couldn't just go down to the store wearing only my t-shirt and diapers.

I looked out the window. The neighborhood was busy with young people who were out having fun. But across the street from me, standing next to a gate like the gate around St. Mark's Church in the Village, were two kind of scuzzy-looking men. They looked like they could either be forty-five or twenty-five. One was white, the other Hispanic. They wore cheap clothes.

I knew these men were actually stalking me. I knew they'd been waiting for me all this time. If I went downstairs while they were down there, they'd follow me all over the place. I didn't mind other people seeing me in diapers. But I didn't want these men to see me in diapers. And I really didn't want them following me around. I tried to think of how to avoid the men.

My brain must have skipped over this problem entirely. I was now down in the grocery/record store. I walked around, having a little fun feeling myself in a diaper. I remember wondering about the back of my diaper, wondering whether that wasn't also visible, wondering whether I couldn't do anything to make it more visible.

The store was as large as a regular grocery store. But it had a kind of old, run-down feel to it, like an old Chinese vegetable store. The light was dingy fluorescent. The linoleum floors were coated in a patina of eternal dust. There were wood-crate like stands everywhere, holding merchandise. Toward the right side of the store were rows and rows of record or CD stands.

I must have bought something. I now stood before the cashier, whose counter was higher than my head. I had to reach up to hand the cashier my money. The cashier was a blonde girl, kind of short and young-looking, with slightly tanned skin, pale, blue eyes, and frizzy-wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a faded, purple or blue t-shirt.

Dream #2

It was a hot, summer day. I had just walked away from some big outdoor event I'd been attending. The event may have been a parade or a fair. The event had probably been held to benefit people with some sort of physical problem. I felt like I had had fun and been able to support a good cause.

But now some black man began chasing after me. He was tall, very skinny, and very dark, also really sweaty or greasy. He wore really dark, but reflective, sunglasses. He was trying to bamboozle me into giving him money. But I barely had any money myself.

The man wouldn't leave me alone. I began running away from him. But apparently I had no left leg. I began hopping on my right leg, as fast as I could, to get away from the man. My hops became huge leaps. I was almost floating through the air between hops. I even seemed to be accelerating.

But the man was still behind me. I had gotten out of the busy part of town and was now on some sun-yellow, concrete-and-dust outskirts of the downtown area. I saw a grocery store off to my right. I thought if I went into that place, I'd be protected from the man. Out on the street, anybody could bother anybody. But in a store, you had to obey the store's rules.

I also thought I might have been able to evade the man by hiding in the store. But the man was still close enough to see where I was heading. He had gotten onto a bike, which he was now peddling with only his right leg. He, now, apparently, had only his right leg, while I had both my legs. I wondered how someone could possibly pedal with only one leg.

I went into the store through a set of automatic doors. The store was really old-looking and run-down. It looked like barely anybody ever came here. Everything looked kind of stale. There were no lights on, but plenty of dim natural light, green as a hard-boiled egg yolk's skin, came in through the front window.

I saw the man run into the store. Somehow I acted like I was walking through the store, looking for stuff to buy. But as soon as I saw that I'd gotten the man to walk far back into the store, so that I was out of his line of sight, I ran out of the store.

I turned around the right corner of the store and ran up the sidewalk, to a pedestrian bridge that ran over some wide road. I was pretty sure I had now evaded the man.

But now I was having thoughts of some conversation with my mom. The conversation got so heavy that I stopped running about halfway along the chain-link-fence-domed bridge. I began fumbling with something, maybe an electronic device, while I looked down and continued the imaginary conversation with my mother.