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.

support and cover; why we moved; fleurs de mal?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was floating or coasting or driving through an area of buildings, like buildings on a university campus. Surrounding all the buildings was barren soil. It was like the grounds were under construction. Something like restoration or construction may have been going on with the buildings as well, though they seemed to be fully constructed. There were people here and there, probably some guys in hard hats, but also some guys in business suits.

A person then spoke to me about the buildings. Apparently nobody had known, or at least the general public hadn't known, the actual construction of these buildings. The buildings were all made to look like they had been constructed out of certain materials when, really, they weren't.

As we drifted past one group of buildings, there was a construction about the wooden facades of the building, even though I could only see these facades in my mind's eye. As we drifted past a group of buildings and out into an open space, there was a discussion of steel, as if some building was made entirely of steel or had a facade to make it look like it had been built entirely of steel, or as if all buildings should be made entirely of steel.

The person then told me that there were elements of architecture that served as support and elements that served as cover. The elements of support were like steel. The elements of cover were like wood.

Unfortunately, some of these buildings had elements of cover for elements of support and elements of support for elements of cover. But they looked like they were composed in the reverse manner. Other buildings were constructed entirely of only elements of support. That was why everybody was out here right now taking care of these buildings. They were afraid that if they weren't taken care of, they'd fall down altogether.

Dream #2

I was sitting at an old school desk in a living room. The desk had a steep top and was somehow cluttered -- either around its edges or on its top -- with a lot of household items. The desk sat so I was directly facing a wall or two walls, angled awkwardly near some far corner of the room.

Behind me, from a hallway at the other end of the room, I could hear my mother and maternal grandmother speaking with each other. My mom was explaining to my grandma why I'd moved to this place. My mom had moved out here as well at some point in time before I'd moved out here. But once I'd moved out here, it was like we'd both moved out here together. Because of this, my mom had to justify my having moved out here.

After overhearing the discussion, I felt like I had been really stupid or weak or lazy to have moved out here. I realized my mom hadn't thought very highly of my moving out here. In fact, I now became an object of her derision whenever she needed to use me as an excuse for something. She had used me as an excuse for something just now in front of my grandma. So I was feeling pretty bad about myself.

My grandma came up behind me. I was eating some warm chocolate. I dropped a few pieces of it onto the desktop. I was trying to tell my side of the story (can't remember it) to my grandma. I ended by talking about selling certain things.

I stood up and turned around to face my grandma. My grandma told me that my mom had already sold most of the items I'd wanted to sell. My mom had sold the items to my grandma at a really good price, and had made a really good profit.

My grandma and I were standing outside. I only had one item left. It was the same as all the other items, so I thought I could also get a good price for it. But when I handed it to my grandma, she dug into her pockets and handed me five or six quarters. And only four of those quarters, I knew, really counted as the selling price. So I'd only gotten a dollar for this item.

My grandma tried solemnly to tell me this was all she could do, that this was all the item was worth. But I could tell that my grandma was actually laughing to herself about how she'd managed to cheat me. She thought, because of the story my mom had told her, that I'd really deserved to be cheated. She'd thought I'd thought I was really smart. But she'd just proved to herself that I wasn't smart.

Dream #3

I was floating outdoors, past a series of buildings like buildings on a college campus. Passing one building, I passed along a covered porch. At different points along the porch, young women were interviewing with university faculty in order to be accepted into the university. The young women were mostly from foreign countries.

I got to the edge of the covered porch and found myself in the space between two buildings. The ground was slightly sloped downward, and was barren, but dark and moist, soil, strewn slightly with peach-colored gravel. A young woman, pale with short, brown hair, was speaking to a faculty member about how exciting this whole process of application was for her. She felt like college was giving her a new chance at life.

I turned around and floated back in the direction I'd come from. Eventually I just started walking. I kind of giggled inwardly, thinking about the young woman's excitement. For some reason, the woman's achievement didn't seem like a very big deal at all. But I'd never tell the woman that.

I knew the woman had been a high school dropout. She'd led a very tough life, possibly growing up in Russia or an Eastern European country. But now she was getting her life back on track. And it was quite an accomplishment to go from being a life-toughened high school dropout to being accepted into a university such as this one. Suddenly it struck me that the young woman really was justified in her excitement, and that she really should be proud of herself.

I started reflecting, as I stared down at a patch of barren, dark soil, just beyond the edge of a concrete walkway, that maybe what caused me so much trouble at college was the fact that I'd had a bad time in high school. I wondered whether having bypassed high school altogether wouldn't have helped me in college. The lack of bad experiences from one place would lead to good experiences in another, perhaps, I thought.

I turned left and walked up a small slope, heading toward an asphalt path or road that I knew would lead me to the right and back to my family. I imagined having to tell my family members, most likely my mother and brother, to be careful regarding what they said while they were here around DE, an old co-worker and friend of mine, who was also here. I told them that certain things they said might cause DE to react in a flippant manner, which I knew would make my family members extremely agitated, maybe even violent.

In my imagination, I tried to make a reason for why my family members should keep these risky comments to themselves. I said that DE was a very elite person. I tried to explain that he had been a good athlete at a top-level school, and that he thought of himself as being a very top-level person (in waking life, DE is not snobbish like this at all).

As I was imagining this explanation I took a look at a small tree to my right. I saw that it was growing strange flowers. The flowers had waxy, thick petals, and they seemed to grow out of a thick, waxy, spiny bud. In fact, I thought. The bud itself originally looked like fruit. Then the "fruit" would split open, revealing this beautiful, but in some ways disturbing, flower.

I brought one of these flowers to my mother, who was standing along a roadside. Off in the distance behind my mom, my brother was kneeling before a small shrub, working away at something, possibly digging in the ground. I showed my mom the flower and tried to explain the tree.

I theorized that the tree I'd seen must have grown two sets of flowers. I'd seen fruit on the tree, and the fruit looked like crabapples. So I knew that the tree must have grown flowers that looked like apple blossoms. This second flower was something else. I thought the flower was beautiful, but I may also have had a feeling that it meant something bad for the tree, or else that it was a kind of predatory flower, like a venus fly trap, that ate small animals that approached the tree. Either way, it felt kind of sinister.

My mom asked me to show the flower to my brother. He'd appreciate the fact that I'd thought of including him in the whole effort of discovering what this flower was about. I agreed, and I felt guilty for not having involved my brother earlier.

But suddenly I began to reflect on things that made me feel even worse about this flower. First of all, the bud-like casing seemed to be like the spiny foliage of some weeds. That didn't seem like a good thing. And second -- I may have thought about this as I looked at the small shrub before which my brother knelt, maybe a shrub version of the tree I'd seen -- the tree had fruit on it even while these flowers were still growing. Was that right? The fruit should come after the flowers, not the flowers after the fruit. I had a bad feeling about what these flowers might possibly do to the growing fruit.

milk bomb; "he loved her for the first time"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I may have been in an office setting on some high floor (maybe the 14th?) of a skyscraper. I stood out in half-open, corridor-like area. The fluorescent like was bright, not drab. The floor and walls were an orange-tan kind of color. I may have stood in front of my boss, who seemed a lot taller than I. He may have been telling me something about how I'd been fired.

I may then have been down at some area like a dock over a river like the Hudson River. But the dock was all made out of really nice, grey flagstone, almost like a walkway in a nice park than a dock. I had my back to the water and was facing a grouping of skyscrapers just past the foot of the dock. I may have been talking to somebody, maybe a woman, about getting a new job. Either I'd just been fired from my current job, or else I was really desperate to find a better job. 


Suddenly, just before the skyscrapers, rectangles of electric color began to pass upward through the air. It was like the rectangles of color were passing upward along some kind of clear, floating TV or computer screen. It was almost like I could see the outline of the transparent rectangle of the screen itself. Sometimes the rectangles passed upward in one single column. Other times they passed upward in three columns.


The rectangles were generally colored a dull blue or a dull orange. There may sometimes have been dull red rectangles as well. Most of the time each rectangle had yellow lettering on it, listing a job position and possibly -- sometimes -- the qualifications for the job and the pay.


The rectangles were listing all kinds of jobs. I kept looking for a bank job. I found a couple here and there. But they all seemed either to be filled or to have qualifications that I didn't meet. After a little while it seemed like every bank job was filled. Then it seemed hard even to find bank job listings. When I thought I'd found one, the rectangle looked all weird -- like its color was blocked by some kind of murky color. Apparently color had to do with the quality or availability of the job. But the murky color made it impossibly for me to tell anything about the job.


All through this search I may have been talking with the woman, who may have been a kind of young, Hispanic woman, maybe a little bit overweight, with a mature, slightly impatient, but very calm attitude. I may now have been deciding to give up on my search. This may have made the woman even more impatient with me, although she may also not have been surprised about my giving up.


It was now like I was standing at the foot of the dock, near where the dock met a wide promenade of flagstone, across from which were the skyscrapers. But there were stacks of cardboard boxes blocking my view of the skyscrapers.


I looked over the cardboard boxes. There were some men standing at the base of a skyscraper. The first couple of stories of the skyscraper were open to something like a loading dock or a parking garage. But the openings were partly blocked by cardboard boxes.


The group of men standing before the skyscraper were all in business suits. One of their co-workers stood behind the stack of boxes, inside the open area. This man was young but tall, very thin, and very pale. He had a shaved head and face. But his head and face still looked scraggly. He wore a baggy, probably dirty, white t-shirt and some kind of scrubby-looking pants.


The men in business suits were all going to lunch. I think they may have been trying to invite the other man. But, the men knew, the other man was kind of going insane. He was either going to be fired from his job or else he had been fired. But he was really obsessed with working, as if, because he wasn't going to be working in just a little while, he wanted to get as much done now as he possibly could.


But the men in business suits had gotten into some kind of argument with the man. They may only have done something like toss a few thinly-veiled insults at the man. But it had made the man really mad. The man had apparently already been planning to do something violent at the building. But the man was so angry that he decided to get violent now. 


The man pulled out something like a little canister. I could tell this was a bomb. I really didn't want to hear a bomb explode. So I ducked and crouched behind my stacks of cardboard boxes. At some point I felt like the bomb must have gone off. I stood up. I think when I looked up over the boxes again, the bomb had just gone off. 


The explosion of the bomb only had the look and sound of a cylindrical container of biscuits popping open. But when it popped open, something like milk also popped out of it. The men in business suits were now walking away. I think they were just trying to avoid getting splashed by the milk. The milk flowed onto the ground, making a puddle maybe two meters long and a meter wide.


I looked over to my left. There was a wide, open space, all made out of concrete or flagstone, as an extension of the promenade. Just beside the dock I was on was another dock. This dock may have been a bit lower than my dock. The docks were also connected, maybe as if by a ramp.


I was here to meet a group of friends, maybe mostly female friends. But only one of the friends, a young, Hispanic woman, showed up. She went down and sat down on the lower dock. So I followed her to the dock. There was some understanding between us, as if we had been speaking, though we hadn't. I knew the woman was wiser than I. I also knew that we were here because of something to do with singing. I wanted to be near the woman because I thought she knew exactly what was going on.


The woman was sitting on something like a wide, but fragmented, board of thin wood. There may have been a clear grease stain on it somewhere. The woman may have been wearing something red. She may have been doing some kind of work with her hands, too, like sewing or knitting.


Something made me feel like I was being too bothersome by being so close to the woman. I figured I needed to go walk off on my own and give the woman some space. So I walked back up to the dock I had first been on. At that dock there was another woman. She looked very much like the first woman. She may have told me that I needed to go do something like a karaoke contest or an American Idol contest.


Dream #2


I was in some place like the Financial District of New York City. I seemed to be walking directly south, all the way to the bottom of the island. It was probably morning. The sky -- between the buildings -- was clear blue. There was a little bit of white sunlight here and there. But mostly the atmosphere was of blue-grey shade. The air was kind of cool. But the streets were really busy. And there seemed to be construction going on at every corner. Grey steam bellowed out from all the construction sites. 


I walked past one street corner where a group of construction workers stood talking. One of the workers, a short, slightly stout, Hispanic man wearing a dull green t-shirt and a construction hat, saw me coming. He took a couple of steps backward so that he could get into my way. He knew he was doing it, but he was acting like he didn't know. I was kind of annoyed. But I moved out of the man's way and crossed the street.


Continuing south, I realized that I was going down to the island -- out to some promenade or dock -- something like, but not quite, the area around Battery Park City. I was going to meet my family there. There was some sort of festival that involved a singing contest like American Idol. I may not have been planning to take part in the contest myself. But I liked to watch. And my nephews may possibly have been planning on competing.

In my mind's eye (or in actuality -- like I had "telescope eyes?") I could see a woman standing out on a walkway on the edge of the river. She was tall and blonde, with really well-done-up hair. She wore a glamorous red dress that was tight around the body and puffed out really far on the left shoulder, while the right shoulder was strapless.

The woman stood in some sexy pose and was singing a jazz song. The jazz song had a repeating line for the final line of each verse: "He loved her for the first time." (This kind of sounded like the "but I love him, yes I love him" line in "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby.")

I crossed another street (or just approached the corner of the street I'd just crossed?). There was a set of small orange traffic cones, topped with something like orange and white striped, plastic poles, set in a quarter-circle around the traffic-light post. It formed a small "corridor" of sidewalk through which pedestrians were supposed to walk. Outside this corridor construction either was or would be going on.

There were a group of really pretty girls in business clothes walking up to and into the corridor. One of them struck me as being particularly lovely. She had tan skin and brown hair. She wore a white, button-up shirt and a green and tan tweed skirt, very tight, going down just below her knees. She also wore black sunglasses. She had a really lovely, curvy body.

The girl saw me as I was approaching the corridor. She maneuvered herself and her group of friends so that they were taking up all the small space between the traffic light pole and the knee-high traffic cone barrier. I had the feeling that the girl kind of wanted me to fight or edge my way into the corridor -- maybe so I'd have to talk to her or she'd have to talk to me. But I also felt like she just didn't like me, so that she wanted to shove me out of the corridor altogether.

Either way, I didn't feel like worrying about the woman. I walked along the corridor, right on the outside of it. I was walking along some asphalt space, kind of like a paid parking lot. I could hear the pretty girls talking and laughing as I passed them. But I could also hear the woman down at the bottom of the island, still singing the song... "He loved her for the first time."