international engineering schools; cat shit; old BS; emotional sales call

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I can't quite remember where I was at first. I had been having a conversation with a group of people, probably including my mother. Those people then went away. We had all been together at one location. But now we were split apart.

I may have been trying to figure out how to get back to some of the people, at least my mother. But the people were all so far away. It was like I was in the mountains and they were somewhere else, maybe in a completely different mountain range, and that my only means of getting to that other place would imply a lot of trudging and tediousness.

I was probably still in the mountains -- a sunny slope of copper pine-needle-strewn, dusty soil, with thin-trunked trees here and there around me. Before me were two women who I may have thought of as being from India. They were mother and daughter, both skinny, wearing shirts like modern t-shirts and skirts like colorful, traditional Indian skirts.

The women had explained to me either how the daughter or the daughter's lover, a beautiful, strong, young man, was going away to school in Mexico. Either the mother or both women were now trying to figure out where to live in order to be closer to the school, so that a visit to the school could be made on a somewhat frequent basis, like once a month or once a week.

I explained to the women that if they lived in India, they could take a sailing passage down straight through to Mexico. This didn't quite make sense to me (even in my dream, where usually anything makes sense!).

I was now floating over either a map of the world or the world itself. I was only getting very tight views, which were never quite in alignment with exactly what I wanted to see. But I did get the idea from everything that there was a channel of water that connected, through India, around Eastern Europe, then down under Southern Europe, then alongside the northeastern edge of South America, which was apparently where Mexico was located. Some parts of the map blinked colors like a bruisy red, indicating key locations along the journey. One of these points was the location of the university in Mexico.

One land mass struck me as very interesting. It was a large island. I thought it should have been a country itself, it was so large. But I couldn't think of what country it could be. Somehow I made my view flash the names of all the countries I was seeing. This large island still had no name over it.

But something, some words flashing over it, made me realize that the island was either the property of a number of nations or a neutral zone that was the property of no nation. But either one or a number of nations were using this island as a place for military tests, or else it struck me personally that this island would be a good place for military tests.

As I tried to figure out more about this island, to figure out exactly where it was, the mother began speaking again. She told me that the daughter's father (?) had gone abroad for university as well. I imagined the father in a black and white photo, with kind of pale skin, a broad, square jaw, wavy hair combed back a bit, and thin, pudgy eyes. The mother spoke about the father not as if he'd ever been her husband, but as if he'd been a fairy tale male figure in the life of some other, fairy-tale-like woman the mother had known, possibly a woman very much like the mother saw the daughter as being.

The mother told me that the father had gone to the XXXXX School for Electrical Engineering. She said it almost apologetically, like there was some stigma of a lower level of education or lower cultural class from a school devoted only to electrical engineering. The school had, actually, struck me at first as not being a great school. But I wanted to defend the mother's emotions and let her think that the school was good.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the school was probably a very good school. It was the school, I now reflected, of electrical engineering for the entire nation of XXXXX. In the United States, I knew, we had schools for electrical engineering for entire states, such as, I told myself, the XXXXX School for Electrical Engineering.

My view was now of the mountain slope and the two women again. I tried to tell the mother about the XXXXX School for Electrical Engineering in the United States. But I didn't express very well what a prestigious school it was. The mother said there was another school like it. I thought of MIT, though I couldn't remember what the acronym stood for. I told the mother that MIT was a good school, and that the people from there were known for being highly cultured as well as very proficient at electrical engineering.

The mother now told me a story about the father -- now, possibly, as if the father actually had been the mother's husband. But the mother now looked a lot different. She was square-framed, possibly overweight, with baggy, turtle-like skin, saggy, pale eyes, and pale red-brown hair. She wore a pink-tan or orange-tan t-shirt that somehow didn't fit her very well, like it was skewed or crooked on her body.

The mother told a story about postcards, and possibly letters, the father would send back home. The letters were apparently diligent and romantic. But they may also have had some comic, eccentric element to them. The father's method of sending the postcards may also have been eccentric somehow.

The mother kept using the word "she" when she spoke about the father. It was like she wasn't very good at English. She would say "she" when using the pronoun in the nominative sense. But when using a possessive pronoun referring to the father, she'd said "his." Occasionally she may have mixed things up even further by switching up and saying "he" and "her."

The mother may have been slightly aware of her mistake. She may even have tried to apologize for it at some point. But it became clear that she was moving through her story as quickly as she could, and struggling hard to state everything else as clearly as she could in English, and still only achieving a halting relation of her story. So she simply couldn't take the time to get every pronoun's gender correct. I did my best to listen to the mother without showing any sign that I was even aware of her mistakes.

Dream #2

I was laying on a couch in a big living room. The couch was all done up as a bed, with sheets, blankets, etc. My head lay on one of the arms of the couch. The couch was probably near a window, through which moonlight probably shone.

A cat was now on the couch with me. And instead of laying with my head on the arm of the couch, I was curled up in some strange position, so that my head was near the center of the couch, but my arms and legs were both pointed toward the same arm of the couch. I was probably also leaning against the back of the couch.

The cat had been sitting on my legs and arms. It now stood up and defecated on my hands. It just kept crapping and crapping. Before long, a few long, warm pieces of crap were piled on my hands. The cat then jumped off the couch and walked away.

I either stood up or figured I would have to stand up soon. I knew I'd need to clean the crap off my hands and the couch. But I also had to do something to the cat itself. I may have needed to clean the cat, so as, somehow retroactively, to clean the feces that had come out of the cat. I may also have thought I'd need to teach the cat to use a litter box. This also would have some kind of retroactive effect on the feces already on the couch. I may also have thought I'd need (or want?) to punish the cat by hitting it hard.

Dream #3

I was in a room that was like a living room or a bedroom in a suburban house. The room was probably unfurnished. The walls were white. The floor was white carpet. There were some windows high up on the wall letting in stark, white sunlight -- though the light may somehow have been blocked by gauzy curtains or by some kind of fabric around my own head. I sat all wrapped up in blankets on the floor. I was leaning against something like the bottom of an overturned  armchair, pressing myself against a black, mesh-like fabric.

I was listening to a conversation in a conference room. BS, my old boss from a few years ago, was speaking with some other person. The other person was telling BS how some young man had done a really good job on some project. The young man had put a lot of effort into the project, and the project had, apparently, made a lot of money for the company. So the other person felt it was only right to give the young man a raise.

But BS -- who may not even have worked for the same company as the young man and the other man! -- didn't feel that was right. BS was obviously feeling greedy for money and glory, and didn't want to portion any of it out to any other person -- especially a young man. This was all obvious in some initial, non-verbal, grunts and moans BS gave in reaction to what the other man had said. Then BS started trying to give an intelligent-sounding reasoning for why the young man deserved neither a raise, a promotion, nor recognition.

This all sounded horribly characteristic of BS to me. I felt like I needed to call BS on his creepy demeanor this time around -- if not to defend myself against what I felt he had done to me, then at least to defend another person from being victim to the same thing that had been done to me. But I may have realized, at some point, that BS and the other man had been speaking about me.

I now saw that behind the black, mesh-like fabric against which I was pressing myself (which was now at the bottom of something more like a kitchen chair than an armchair) was a Polycom conference call phone unit. I had been hearing the conversation via this unit. I also realized that my line wasn't muted. So I could speak into the room and be heard.

So, right in the middle of BS' speech on why the young man shouldn't be granted anything, I simply called out, "Ah... Old BS!" I pronounced his whole name, slowly, like an old radio announcer.

BS immediately recognized my voice. He was angry that an eavesdropper had caught him in a conversation. But he was infuriated that I personally was the eavesdropper. He shouted in rage, his shout increasing sharply in intensity.

Dream #4

I was in a room like a basement living room. There were some other people, probably young men and women, in the room. But the room was mostly dark, and I really couldn't see the other people. The other people sat close to each other. But I was kind of separated from them. We may all have been sitting on the floor, under blankets, though I may have been standing at first. The only light coming into the room was from the top of a stairwell. It was natural light, but only a few slivers of light came down into the room.

This room may have been "my office." But it may also have been some place where I and the rest of the group -- probably my co-workers -- were having some get-together or party, maybe even a slumber party. But I was still working, even though we were at this party. It may have been that we were all just waking up after the night of the slumber party, and that I was now trying to catch up on a little bit of work.

I was on an iPhone, speaking to a person in some company. I was trying to locate the head of the company, so I could make a sales pitch to that person. I was speaking with a woman who was, at first, something like the receptionist for the company.

But as I continued speaking with the woman she became something more like the daughter of the head person in the company, or possibly even one of the head people in the company herself, though she was probably still devoted to the head person as if the head person were her father. The woman, I knew was a young, black, pretty, but very stable, solid-bodied, and professional woman.

The woman at first began by acting as if she didn't have time for me and didn't want to pass me along to anybody else within the company. But as I continued my pitch and continued asking for a higher-level person within the organization, the woman got more upset. It was like I was somehow playing with her emotions in a bad way.

Somehow the family relations within this company were in disarray. It became apparent that the woman couldn't discuss the higher-level person because it made her unbearably sad. She was now so dazed by her sadness that she couldn't even carry on a coherent conversation. She told me that she had to get off the phone and that, if she felt the need to do so, she'd get back to me.

I hung up the phone. The iPhone's face was full of icons and had a lava-red background. I now stood closer to the rest of the people in the basement. I felt a little ashamed. They'd obviously just heard my whole conversation. I was a little ashamed, first of all, that I'd been caught working at a time like this, when everybody else was either sleeping or having fun. But I also felt a little ashamed that I'd been caught putting the woman on the phone into such a bad emotional state.

Now the woman called back. She was still audibly rattled by whatever emotions my sales pitch had drawn up in her. But she had put a mask of order and professional retaliation over her distress. She was speaking to me about something -- perhaps about how nobody in her company would be interested in speaking to me. But something about what she was saying also made it sound like the woman had actually gotten in contact with her lawyers, in order to press charges against me for the emotional turmoil I'd put her through.

I may have tried to justify my actions to myself, to prove to myself that there was no way the woman could bring any charges against me. But I may not have been able to do so. I may have thought that, in my carelessness, I had done something, some little thing that was now slipping my mind, that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was guilty of wrongly injuring this woman emotionally.

switch-clippers; dog and wrench; old boss' advice

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with two or three other guys. We were all probably dressed the same way: in jeans, but no shirts. I lay back on a bed. One man probably lay on another bed, at right angles to me. But sometimes I may have been laying next to the man, not at right angles to him. Another man may have been somewhere off to my right, though I may never have seen him.

Another man was just walking out of the room. He was tall, wiry, but with a kind of worn-out looking body, and bald, with a young yet old face. He looked a little crazy, though he either masked or tried to mask that look with a glance of calm or serenity in his blue eyes.

The man had just bragged about something he'd done. I had called out, in a lazy voice, that I didn't believe he'd actually done the thing. The man gave me a serene, almost playful, look, groan-laughed something at me, and walked out the door. I could tell the man was really offended by what I'd just said. I myself couldn't believe I'd said it.

But now the man walked back into the room. He had a "switchblade" pulled out -- actually, it was just the nail file/nail cleaner implement on a normal pair of nail clippers. He still had the serene look in his eyes. But he also had the look of a killer. He came at me, obviously angry, and told me that he'd show me that what he'd said was true.

The man stood over me, maybe holding me down. He was running the "switchblade" around my nipples, as if he intended to cut them off. He was also running it around my stomach in a horizontal oval, as if he were searching for the correct spot to plunge the "switchblade" into my flesh. He was working himself into a greater frenzy, eventually shouting that he'd show me what he'd said was true.

I didn't struggle against the man, or if I did struggle, my struggles were weak. I figured I was probably going to die. But then the other two (?) men in the room jumped up and pulled the man off of me. The man may still have been holding onto me: I seemed to come with him as the other two men pulled him to the door.

Now I had broken free and stepped away from the man enough so that I felt like I could get enough reaction time to defend myself against him. I grabbed the man (he was like some meter-long, scrunched-up, capsule-shaped version of a man now) and threw him against the wall. I may have been hoping to smash him or break him. I shouted that now it was my turn to show him something.

I felt ashamed for brutalizing the man. I was trying to get back a feeling of strength, of being able to protect myself. But, I knew, the only reason I was now able to do this stuff to the man was because he was in an extremely weakened condition. The two other men had gotten the man to this point. If the man were still at his full strength, I wouldn't be able to treat him the way I was treating him right now. But I tried to put those thoughts out of my mind, and just convince myself that I was being strong by beating this man right now.

Dream #2

It was a brisk morning, with the sunlight probably dimmed and made pale by some wisps of clouds in the sky. I was out walking in a suburban residential area. I came to a street corner which joined with the corner of a house's backyard. There may have been a broken chain link fence bordering the backyard, with a lot of gaps in the fence. Or there may have been no fence, only a few occasional steel poles marking where the fence used to be.

A white and grey, scruffy-haired dog, maybe about knee-high, came running up through the backyard to bark at me. The dog seemed to want to get even more violent with me, maybe even attack me. But then the two owners came walking up from the front end of the back yard. The husband came from the left side of the yard; the wife, from the right. The dog, seeing the two owners, stood back from me.

There was a gigantic water dish (or an old tire filled with water?) at my feet. The dog stopped at the water dish, as if it only wanted to drink the water. But it didn't even look down at the water. It just kept barking at me.

The wife stayed at a distance from me. But the husband, though never reaching me, always seemed to be advancing and approaching. The wife seemed young and pretty, with an athletic, strong body and luxurious, blonde hair. The husband looked a little older, a little more worn, and kind of prissy-faced, like a guy who took too much pride in being "fine" and "intellectual."

The husband may have said something to me about how the dog would never attack me. But something about what the man said made me think that he had given me justification, if the dog got too violent with me, to get violent with the dog.

I now had a gigantic wrench in my right hand. I was planning on swinging it at the dog. But I couldn't figure out how to step back to get enough distance to swing the wrench at the dog without hitting the dog. I didn't want to injure the dog unless I absolutely had to. But I felt like the only way for me to calm the dog down was by doing something like showing it how violent I could get and how I actually could hurt the dog. So I wanted to swing the wrench.

I was sick of hearing the dog bark. I was starting to feel like it might be good to hit the dog with the wrench, after all. The husband, still approaching me, but still distant, was talking about how the dog was just acting violent, and how he'd never hurt anybody. The man was now saying things in a way to make me feel like I should be more patient with the dog.

But now I grabbed the dog with one hand by his muzzle. The dog's muzzle was all wet, as if the dog had been drinking from the water dish. I held the dog's mouth shut, so it couldn't bark. The dog may have been struggling, but it may also, finally, have been afraid.

I probably began tapping the dog on the skull with the huge wrench, letting the dog know, somehow, that if it didn't calm down pretty soon, I'd start swinging harder and harder, until I finally began smashing the dog's skull.

Dream #3

I was walking along a stone or concrete path in a riverside park. The river, which was like the Hudson River, was on my right. On my left was a lawny area. There was an occasional tree just to the left of the path. I had probably walked out onto this path after having just crossed under a small bridge.

Just after the bridge there was a chestnut tree. The tree looked normal, but at least one of its limbs drooped all the way to the ground. The branches of this limb twisted along the ground like a grapevine or creeping ivy. The leafs of the tree looked like flowers, somehow, and a pink, coral-like network of stems and blossoms came out from the center of the leafs.

Something about these flowers may have worried me. I may have thought they were poisonous. But I recognized the characteristic look of the leafs of this tree: the palmate, five-leafed structure seemed to me to be that of a chestnut. But I couldn't tell for sure if this was a chestnut or some kind of poisonous tree that I shouldn't be anywhere near.

I called my old boss from a few years ago, BS, on my cell phone. As I spoke with BS I continued walking along the path, far past the tree, and, apparently, not coming up on any trees like that tree.

I tried not to sound worried. I simply told BS that I had forgotten whether five-leafed trees were chestnuts or whether they were something else. But BS could tell I was worried. He asked me if I was calling because I was worried about something poisoning me. He told me something like, "I'll give you the answer to this question. But, really, you have to start remembering that not everything is poisonous to you. Not everything is going to kill you."

I walked around a curve that ran to the left. There seemed to be a little more activity in the distance, like people out on a pier, putting some event together, or people sitting out on a plaza and enjoying the day.

BS was still talking to me. He began to get a little excited. He started talking about my work habits. He mentioned what had set me back, emotionally, while I was working with him, and how he felt that had hindered my chances of making it through the layoffs at my company. He then spoke about the emotional mistakes I had made at my following job, and how they could have been alleviated by a little less paranoia and a little more trust.

BS was still talking, but my phone was breaking up. I was losing reception. Finally my phone hung up altogether. I looked around. I was headed down into a tunnel. I said, "Oh, I'm going down into a tunnel, I'm going to lose you," as if I were still talking to BS and I were giving him the courtesy warning.

Now I was actually in a car. I was heading quickly down into the tunnel. At first the tunnel just looked like some long airplane hangar, with tall corrugated-steel walls and ceilings. I could even see light peering through from the cracks between the walls and the ceiling. But as we plunged deeper and deeper downward, at a faster and faster rate, the walls became thick and solid, like heavy concrete. I may eventually have plunged into total darkness.

I now stood in a huge, stately, but somewhat worn-down or neglected, train station. I stood near a row of tall-backed, hefty, wooden benches. The floors and the tall walls were made of heavy stone. Windows lined the tops of the walls, letting in a bit of pale, blue-grey light. There was no other light in the station.

I knew I was now back where I could get some phone reception. I thought I would call BS back. I pulled out my phone, which may have looked like an old BlackBerry. As soon as I looked at the screen, a new email message popped up. It may have been popping up "in real time," like I was actually watching it as it was being typed by BS.

The message looked crazy. The typing was wild, with all kinds of frenetic expressions and strange uses of punctuation to accentuate a feeling of excitement and importance. I may possibly have thought that BS was writing me this wild email because he had lost contact with me and he was now worried that I hadn't wanted to listen to his ideas in the first place.

Instead of reading the message, I decided to call BS, like I had originally planned. But, possibly, before I had even picked up the phone, BS may have been on the phone. I told BS something like, "I lost reception. But I have it now. So I can listen to you again."

BS started talking to me again about how I needed to be more trusting and less paranoid. But it seemed like the context of the conversation had changed somehow. I no longer felt like the context BS was using applied to me anymore. He wasn't really talking about my working situation. And that, I think, was what I really wanted to hear about.