my new late friend; i don't paintbal enough

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a hospital, probably with a friend. We stood in. A hallway, before a hospital bed in which was a female friend or acquaintance of my friend. The woman was really sick. She may have had to go in for some treatment. We may have been seeing her off.

My friend and I also had somewhere to go in the hospital. We went there. We may have sat down for a moment in a bar-like area. My friend may have had to go somewhere else within the hospital.

I may have heard something about the woman. I felt like I needed to get back to her. I went back to the hallway. The woman was being cared for in the hallway like it was a hospital room. And she had a young nurse in scrubs constantly attending to her, standing near her right shoulder.

I noticed that the woman was really ravaged by her disease. The blanket had come away and exposed her legs. The woman's legs were extremely thin, even thinner than I'd have assumed her bones would be, and there were brownish-purple spots where, it seemed, the woman's flesh had decayed away.

But the woman was pretty. She was tan, with dark black hair. Her face looked a little chubby at first. But after I'd looked away and looked back to her face, her face was thinner, kind of like a supermodel's face. Her face looked healthy, even though the rest of her body seemed ravaged.

The nurse, or somebody, may have told me that the woman had to go. She was being taken in for another procedure, possibly something like chemotherapy. She was going to being taken into a room right near where she'd been laying in the hallway.

I was reluctant to see the woman go. I'd formed a bond with her somehow, in just these few minutes of being with her. I didn't want her to go into the procedure, go through a lot of pain, and maybe even die, without her knowing that I cared for her.

My friend may have been standing at the woman's left shoulder. At this point my friend may have looked like my old boss and constant mentor EB. With the nurse and man by the woman and some kind of stuff cluttered around the woman on her bed, it was now really hard for me to see the woman's face.

My friend may have told me to come closer to the woman's face. I did so. I may have spoken and smiled with the woman a little. I may have wanted to give the woman a kiss goodbye.

Dream #2

I was in some cafeteria in a basement. The cafeteria was filled with people sitting at long tables. But the space was small, with low ceilings, and kind of dim.

I sat at a table. Some of my co-workers, in particular DK, sat around me. DK sat directly across from me. Then my co-worker MS and some other person, maybe CP, came up.

MS sat right beside me. His plate was heaped full of food -- stuff like mashed potatoes and corn. I contrasted it with my own plate -- either nothing or very little food. I hadn't taken much food. I didn't think my stomach could handle it.

For some reason MS scared DK, as if MS were a tough kid in high school and DK were one of the smarter, calmer kids. I was a little unbalanced by these feelings, and it made me a little tense around MS and the other person as well. I was hoping to calm things down, if I could. But I don't think I knew how.

Now DK was gone. His space was just empty. MS now moved, under the table, into DK's space. Once seated there he managed -- somehow! -- to reach back under the table and pull his plate of food over with him.

I knew MS had moved, at least partly, because he didn't want to sit by me. Even though he liked me, he found me boring, almost awkwardly quiet. He would never say so to me, but that's how it was. And now he could sit next to his friend and talk with him.

I now stood before a counter either like a bar or a hotel concierge's desk. I had been turned away from it at first, talking with a couple people, probably about something business-related. Now I turned to face the desk.

There was something on the desk, like brochures or magazines, maybe for resorts or vacations. In some photos on the papers was a really beautiful, almost 1940s-style, but very contemporary, woman, engaged in a fun, but extremely competitive, game of paintball.

There may have been a woman working behind the desk. She may have been pretty, pale, kind of young looking, red-haired, a little chubby or chubby-faced. She may have criticized me, telling me I didn't have enough to do with something like the paintball games, like I was emotionally incomplete because of that.

earthquake in philadelphia; can't get served; gold and nature walkways

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

There was an earthquake in Philadelphia. A helicopter was flying over Philadelphia during the daytime, showing views of the earthquake's effects.

But now the roads throughout Philadelphia were starting to collapse. It caugh everybody by surprise. Whole roads would just crumble down into pits. People were driving along some of the roads. When the roads would crumble, the people on the roads could be heard screaming.

At first I may not have been in Philadelphia. But then I may have been. I may have told myself that I needed to get out of Philadelphia.

I was then in some big, public building with a lot of other people. We may not have been in Philadelphia. But we were allpreparing to head away somewhere.

I was walking through a long hallway maybe five meters wide. The hallway had brownish walls, like cinder blocks tiled over with brownish tile, and floors of orangeish carpet. There were big duffel bags, probably everybody's travel bags, running through the center of the hallway.

I was looking for my bags. I found them. I probably had three long, black duffel bags. I noticed that one of my notebooks or videotapes was sitting on top of one of my bags. I knew I hadn't taken anything out of my bags. So someone had gotten into my bags. I opened a bag full of notebooks and put my notebook or videotape back inside. I stood up and walked away.

I was now seeing from the helicopter's view again. The news was reporting that the street collapses in Philadelphia were becoming even worse. We watched as an entire block of one of the main streets in Philadelphia was upended, lifting up and then sliding down into a pit.

I was now in an SUV with a few other people. It may have been late afternoon. The sky was a cool, silvery blue, and we were driving all through shadow. I sat in the front passenger seat. The other people in the car seemed to be young, smart, professional, white males. One of the people in the car may have been one of my old bosses, DO.

We were driving through Philadelphia. The city appeared to be abandoned, empty. One or more of the guys may have been talking about the history of the city, but possibly also about the danger the city was in.

But I now noticed we weren't driving on the roads at all. We were driving over public lawns, through plazas and parking lots, and over the walkways in front of buildings. But we stayed off all the roads.

I may have asked why we were doing this. But then it seemed obvious. I said, "Oh! The roads are all collapsing still. So we're driving on all the other spaces, because none of them has collaps--"

One of the guys interrupted me. "Don't say anything. You don't wanna jinx it."

We continued driving on, past an old, kind of small, but very nice looking public building of grey stone and red brick.

Dream #2

I was in line for something like a coffee shop. The line was more like a cafeteria line, where you move sideways along a counter that can be used for sliding a meal tray along. All I wanted was a cup of coffee.

At the head of the line there was a small window. A man stood at the window to take everybody's orders. The man looked kind of young, but not in good shape. He had a fatty, but scraggly and hungry, kind of look. He had stubble and long hair. He wore a black t-shirt and a white baseball cap, which he had on backwards.

As soon as the man saw me, he told me he wasn't serving anybody else. He was going off shift. So he couldn't serve me. This kind of didn't make sense to me. There were a lot of people in line behind me. How could this guy just go off shift, with nobody around to take his place.

But now the guy addressed the guy directly behind me. He asked, "Can I help you?"

I looked at the worker and said, "You said you couldn't take my order because you were going off shift. Why are you telling this guy you can take his order? All I want is coffee."

The guy just sneered at me. He walked away. He may have told me that I could come back and get my own coffee. I may have walked, or at least looked, behind the counter. The area behind the counter was pretty big and complex. I didn't know whether I could find or fix the coffee.

Dream #3

I was walking through a museum with my old friend H and a man whom I didn't know, but who was probably a friend of ours. H and I decided that we were going somewhere else in the museum. We had to go up a small stairwell to get there. Before we went up the stairwell, the man with us told us goodbye and gave us some advice.

But now I noticed there were two stairwells. The stairwell on the left had a green sign over it saying "Nature Walkway." The stairwell on the right had a red sign saying "Gold Walkway." I knew we had been planning to go outdoors, and that the Nature Walkway was the way outside.

But we hadn't known about the Gold Walkway, which was some kind of exploratory exhibit about gold jewelry. H said, "Gold Walkway," like that was where we now had to go.

I said, "Nature Walkway."

H said, "Gold Walkway," again, quite firmly. I knew I couldn't argue with her. So we took the stairwell up to the Gold Walkway.

Just after the head of the stairwell was a small area kind of like a bookshop. There were just a few small shelves of books, and maybe a couple shelves displaying other sorts of gifts.

Just beyond the bookshop were men's and women's restrooms. H said we should probably go to the restroom before we started the exhibit. The women's restroom was on the left. The men's was on the right. I knew each restroom was single and private, with a locking door.

I told H I'd go to the men's restroom and meet her outside when we were through. But H told me she wanted to go to the men's restroom, too. I assumed this was because she wanted to do something sexual in there with me. I was a little shy at the thought of doing something sexual in a public restroom. But I felt like I should just go with whatever H wanted to do.

But for some reason H and I ended up not going into the same restroom. I finished up in the restroom and waiting for H to come out. I looked through the books in the bookshop. When we'd first come up here, the place had seemed empty. But now there were a few people. I felt shy and uncomfortable.

Now H came out of the restroom. She said something to me like, "Why were you in there for so long? I began to get worried about you. I thought something had happened to you, or that you'd left."

little round house

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like a small cafeteria or eating area that was at the edge of a larger floor, like in some kind of school or administrative building. The floor had a wide staircase or escalator bank at the other end of it, leading upward. The floor I was on felt like the second floor. Off to my right was a door to something like a huge auditorium, even though I couldn't see it.

My co-worker KB was standing in front of me as I sat at a table. KB had been speaking with me about something. Now I was talking about one of my past jobs, and one of my old bosses, DO. We then got talking about how the housing market downturn had been predicted as early as November of 2005.

I got really excited, talking about one person who'd predicted this. I was trying to explain everything I knew. But I felt like KB was only half-listening to me or half-believing everything I was saying. I was trying to keep a focus on everything I was saying while contending with the overall atmosphere of distraction I was beginning to feel.

A group of ladies, apparently all KB's friends, came up to get KB. They took KB toward the auditorium. KB told me to come along. So I went.

We ended up in a place like a seating area before an airplane gate. KB and the ladies sat with their backs toward the window, at the last row of seats away from the window. They were all watching a TV that hung down from a lip of wall that curved all the way around the seating area in a crescent shape. For some reason I was laying curled up on the floor, facing the TV.

The TV was showing something about the history of the housing market. On the screen was a chart of something, maybe the homebuilders stock index or new housing starts. But it started somewhere in mid-2005, just perfect for demonstrating what I was talking about.

I started calling out to the ladies that if you looked, you could see how the call about November of 2005 being the top of the market was just a bit too early. The market, I showed, had gone down a bit, then bounced back up a bit, before finally plunging downward. But the ladies weren't really listening to me. They were all watching the TV.

Now the screen went from static to moving. The chart scrolled forward, moving along to show what had happened after the housing market had completely bottomed. There was apparently some sort of history the TV announcer was giving, about how there had been ups and downs. But the chart just basically kept looking flat.

The announcer may have mentioned that there had been another downturn in the market. Or he may have mentioned that there may have been an upturn in the market. The ladies listened sympathetically. But now the chart went even lower. The line of the chart now became a glowing red. It was like the line of the chart actually traveled below the axis of the chart. The red line divided into a crack, with silver-grey fading away from it. In the crack below the axis, computer-graphic houses and buildings appeared.

The announcer now spoke about people beginning to live underground. It may have been that this was actually the end times. Livfing underground may have been due to something like a nuclear attack. The chart sped along even still. But it finally reached a point, freezing, with words in the blank space of a chart, like words in an old arcade game, saying, "HOUSING AS THE END OF THE WORLD?"

But the chart was now apparently some movie. All I could see of the movie was an empty road, as if the camera had the view of a car traveling down it. One of the ladies, who was now apparently my friend, was telling me about the movie. It was some kind of cartoon-like, mystical movie. The central character was a woman who was visited in her head by spirits. The spirits all revealed themselves to the woman to different degrees.

The woman told me about one spirit that barely revealed itself at all, so that the audience hardly knew anything about it, all through the story. The movie was an adaptation of a book. I wondered what kind of forethought would need to go into writing a character that revealed very little of itself. I wondered how much more could be revealed -- on purpose, for the audience -- through implication, if the writing were planned out correctly.

The lady told me to stay and watch the rest of the movie. But I felt like I couldn't. I looked up. Parked right by my head was something like a flight attendant's cart. But it was all done up to look like some kind of beach bar, with shaggy, wooden planks, palm fronds, and so forth.

As I looked at the cart, I realized that the name of the book was Little Round House. I saw the cover of the book. It was lavender with purple dots, with a white shape in the center. There were two cartoon children facing each other. They looked like the Precious Moments children. They had their heads bowed, as if in prayer.

Something about the weirdly quaint attitude of this book's cover made me want to stay and watch the movie. I wanted to see how something that started out so normal could end up being as weird as to include the imagery on the front of the book. But I still felt like I needed to go. So I probably wasn't going to watch the movie.