the sinister force; mashed potatoes; cliffhanger

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A group of people (I may have been among them, or I may have been in the scene, but passively viewing it, like watching a movie) were in some desert building. The building may have been some kind of bunker or military building from the 1940s, or it may have been an old, desert house.

The people were some kind of official workers. They were here on an investigation. They were trying to get beyond one door, possibly a door leading down to a basement. The door was probably in the kitchen, which was bright with natural light.

The men finally decided to blow up the door using a large amount of explosives. They set up a canister as big as an oil barrel against the old, thick, wooden door. The canister may have had the force of 620 XXXXX (something I can't remember).

The men went outside the house during the blast. They crouched behind a wooden structure built like a mix between a horse trough and a well house. The men may all have been wearing leather trench coats an old style gas masks for protection.

The explosion occurred. It was supposed to have been intense, but I don't remember it at all. The men may have been expecting to uncover some dangerous criminal, or the things he'd stolen. But they'd released something much worse: some kind of sinister, demonic force.

I had a view of this force rising through the surrounds like a green gel or a green light, which then subsided back to the ground.

The men were all still standing around outside. They knew that the demonic force, though its eventual goal may have had to do with attacking all of society, was first concerned with attacking one specific woman. The men needed to protect the woman. But they couldn't, for some reason, tell her they were protecting her.

The woman was here among the men. She was a glamorous, 1940s style woman. She was so elated that the door had been open that she said she was going to run all the way somewhere, maybe all the way to the nearest (small) town. The woman ran away along a ridge of rocky soil that rose a couple meters above the flat ground.

The men thought this might be convenient. If the woman ran fast enough, she might be able to evade the spread of the sinister force. And if she stayed in town, the sinister force couldn't attack her. Then the men wouldn't have to explain anything to her.

But now the woman had turned around and was running back toward the house. It turned out that she had only been kidding. She wasn't actually going to run off anywhere.

The men now knew the woman was in danger of being attacked by the sinister force. I thought she may already have been attacked by it. Her running off and then coming back, apparently out of joy, seemed a little strange to me. I thought her actions might really have been due to the fact that the sinister force was already infecting her mind.

Dream #2

I walked into a house through a side door. I walked into a kitchen that was kind of small and dim and dirty.

There was a pot of potatoes to my right, either on the counter or on the stove top. The potatoes were in a mixture of water and butter. The water wasn't boiling, but the butter was melted and mixed in with the water like the water was boiling.

A young woman, kind of average looking, a little heavy, but pretty, stood just out of my sight somewhere in the kitchen. The woman and I probably lived together, and we were probably lovers.

But the woman had now started having a relationship with some other woman. She was talking to me now about this other woman, not saying right out that she was having an affair with this woman, but saying nice things about the woman to kind of hint that she might be attracted to her.

I had a feeling that the woman was partly trying to conceal the relationship and partly trying to make me jealous of it. Either way, it was annoying. I decided to ignore the woman. Anyway, I thought, if the woman left me, it would be kind of a relief. I didn't like the woman that much, anyway.

I turned my attention to the potatoes. They were really soft. I grabbed a spoon and began fumbling around with some of them. They were all still in their skins, but they were cut in half.

I spooned into some of the potatoes, scooping out all the insides, then mashing them while keeping them in the water. I thought to myself how much I liked eating potatoes like this, especially when they were soaked in butter, like these potatoes were.

I think the woman was still talking, on and on, about the other woman. When the woman noticed I wasn't paying attention, she might have started yelling at me.

Dream #3

It was a grey, cool day. I was riding a bike down some path in the mountains. I was all alone on the trail.

I had come from a pretty far distance in the mountains, and from a pretty high elevation. But now I was heading home. I was just about to hit the edge of the deep moutains. But I still had a ways to go, through the foothills and the city, before I got home.

I rode down a narrow section of path that ran between two tight cliffs of tan stone. At the bottom of that slope was a trail which, I knew, I'd take off to the right. But below that trail another slope went down to a river, which also flowed off to the right.

I got off my bike and went down to the slope. I'd taken off all my clothes except my boxers (in waking life I never wear boxers -- only boxer briefs). I now got into the river. I had a feeling that I could just lay back and let the water carry me downstream. It could carry me, I thought, almost all the way back home.

But I reflected on all of this. It didn't make sense. First of all, the water was really cold. By the time I got to the end of the river, I'd be sick from the coldness of the water. Second, the river wouldn't take me all the way home. I wouldn't have my bike with me. So I'd have to walk. The walk home would make the whole trip a lot longer than it would have been just taking my bike down the path.

So I got out of the river and headed back up toward my bike. After all, I now told myself, I had only gone down to the river to get a little washed up.

But now, for some reason, I'd climbed up a steep rock outcropping to get back up to the trail. There were a few large boulders that took me a lot of effort to scale. After scaling two black boulders I had to scale a really tricky tan-orange one. I could see my bike just over this boulder.

But I was either having a hard time or pretending to have a hard time climbing this boulder. There were a few ledges I kept seeming to swing off of or arch myself forward or backward to reach.

At some point I almost fell from the ledges. I realized that I was actually really high up, and that if I slipped, I'd fall and die. But I was still wet and slippery, and the boulder was, somehow, just as wet and slippery as I.

I slipped and suddenly found myself hanging from a ledge. I knew I was in trouble. But I also felt like I could save myself if I remained calm.

incipient possession

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a movie theater, probably with my mom and my grandma P. The theater was very large and packed with people. The seating area was flat and wide. The screen was enormous, though it seemed to be tilted away from me at a slight angle. My seat may also have been tilted, so that I personally faced the screen at a weird angle.

The theater was dark, and movie previews had just begun to play. The first preview was about how the devil took over the world and how Jesus fought against him. It all took place in the modern world, in a big city. The city seemed to be just as large and full of buildings as New York City, but with a bit of an older or more stately feel, with many of the buildings, it seemed, made out of large, tan stone blocks.

The devil had shrunk to a very small size. He had either split himself up into millions of little men or else brought with him a horde of demons who were also shrunk to a very small size. These millions of beings all filtered down, as an oatmeal-like paste, into the sewer systems of the city. One shot showed the paste flowing down under a partly lifted manhole cover.

This paste was, apparently, supposed to look innocuous. The devil knew people would think the paste was harmless. But the devil would use the paste to infect people or possess them with demons. The world would then grow worse and worse. But somehow Jesus, looking just like all the old paintings of Jesus, came on the scene to defeat the devil. He may have planned to have some kind of physical fight with the paste. He may also have planned to reveal the true nature of the paste to people, so they wouldn't expose themselves to it.

The next movie preview also had something to do with demon possession, and probably on a large scale. But the main illustration, in the preview, of the larger potential for the demon possession had to do with lions and tigers at the zoo.

The scene was a very tight view of an exhibit at the zoo, apparently for both lions and tigers. The setting was all very lush, with full, green plants everywhere. But the exhibit itself may have been small: just a ledge bordered by a steep cliff on one side and a pane of glass, for close viewing, on the other side.

At first, only the tigers were visible. There were two or three tigers. Two tigers were laying down. Another tiger may have been standing and pacing back and forth between the two lying tigers. But then there were also one or two lions. At least one of the lions was a male. The lions had been possessed by the devil and were out to eat the tigers -- something they wouldn't usually do.

The lions were possessed of a ferocity exceeding their usual ferocity. The lions would start fights with the tigers. They would then take their claws, which were gigantic, and, in a struggle where both the lions and tigers were on their hind legs, split the tigers open from head to groin. Pale pink flesh would glop out of the gash. It was implied that, from this action, the tigers had also been possessed by demons. The tigers would later go out, like zombies, to infect or possess other creatures.

For some reason, my only reaction to all of this was that the lions were really disgusting animals. It didn't make sense to me that any animal would want to kill an animal as beautiful as a tiger. It also seemed almost like cannibalism that a lion would want to eat a tiger. I thought of the lions as reasoning, intelligent creatures, making deliberate choices about their actions, rather than demon-possessed beasts.

Now the actual movie began. The opening credits were mostly blue, capital letters against a blank, black screen. There were occasionally some red titles, and a few white titles.

The very first titles were white, and they noted either that the film was conceived by or had it screenplay written by a woman named Lisa King, who, I "knew," was Stephen King's wife. (Not Tabitha King?) These titles ran across the left side of the screen, a little lower than the middle of the screen.

On the right side of the screen, running down from the top of the screen to a little lower than the middle of the screen, was a black and white photo of Stephen King. The photo looked like it came from the late 1980s.

At first I thought the presence of the photo meant that Stephen King had died and that this film had been made in his honor. Then I thought the photo meant that King had actually created or conceived of the film himself. But if this was the case, I couldn't figure out why the film had been attributed to King's wife. Somehow I came to understand that the photo meant partly that King had helped to create the idea of the film, but mostly that it was a love-dedication of the film to King.

The screen cleared, becoming all black. A series of blue titles now played just above and to the right of the center of the screen. This series was a list of the last names of great authors of the past. I didn't recognize any of the names. The first name was quite long, and it started with an M. All the other names were long and sounded rather dignified and European.

I knew that eventually Stephen King's name would show up in this list. I almost groaned with annoyance: it seemed so silly for a film the creation of which had been so tied to King should also attempt to connect King to a lineage of great authors.

Now two last names were placed one on top of the other. The first name was something like "Hannan" or "Hannans." The second name was like "Breuger," "Breugen," or "Breugens." These two names then morphed into the first and last name of the character who was to be the main character of the film. I understood, now, that the use of these last names was intended as an allegory of the character, not as a promotion of Stephen King as a literary figure.

I thought that, if these two names were allegorical, maybe the entire previous list of names had also been allegorical. I was now a little less annoyed with Stephen King and a little more ashamed of myself, for having thought that Stephen King would have been so shamelessly self-promoting. (In waking life, by the way, I'm actually kind of a fan of shameless self-promotion.)

The blue titles vanished. A red title appeared. This was the actual title of the film. The title now faded away, and the first scene of the movie faded in.

The scene was of a cloudy, snowy night on a big city street. The time period may have been the present, or some timeless, but present-like, time period. The street itself was extremely wide, and bordered by massive stone buildings. But the street was so wide, that the massive stone buildings didn't take anything away from the airiness of the street's intersection or the vastness of the sky above.

It was a Friday night, and people were going out to restaurants, parties, etc. Everybody seemed to be mature adults, established in their careers. Many of the people may have been wearing Victorian dress. There was a lot of activity out on the street, but I didn't see a lot of people. Either people kept evading my view, or else the streets were so wide, or the people were so good at spacing themselves from each other, that it felt like only a few people were actually out on the streets.

Among these people were the main couple of the film. I didn't see the woman very well. The man was maybe in his late thirties or early forties. But he was a bit overweight, with thinning hair, and a generally worn out look. His hair was oiled down over the crown of his head to conceal the balding as well as it could. The man also had a long mustache and wore thin, round eyeglasses. He was dressed in a nice, Edwardian (?) style suit.

The man seemed to be very nervous and agitated. He seemed to be convinced that certain people out on the street were there only to get in his way and make him miserable while he was out trying to have a good time on a Friday night.

This somehow seemed to be proved to the man in the next moment of the film. The man and his wife had stopped underneath some kind of beach-parasol like structure, either to get out of the snow for a moment or to wait for some kind of public transportation. At this point, a few young, kind of rough-looking, but well-dressed, men walked by. One of the young men, with strawberry-blonde hair and red-tan skin, came up close to the man and did something to jostle him, then hustled off with his friends.

The man was now extremely angry and annoyed. He felt like he couldn't even go outside without something like this happening to him, as if some large portion of the population had all made a plan to harass him whenever he went outside. He felt like he wanted to fight back, to injure the people who did this to him, and to scare people off from ever doing stuff like this to him ever again.

It was at this point in the film that the devil knew he could get possession of the man. The devil began laying some kind of plan to bargain with the man. The man would get a taste of power from the devil. The devil would then promise more power to the man if the man would let the devil possess him. But this all may not have happened in a conscious way. Rather, the more the man's unconscious instincts would allow the devil's possession, the more the man would consciously experience moments of power.

The first moment of power was now happening to the man. It was in its incipient stages. What the man noticed was how the snow had almost frozen in its descent. The snowflakes seemed to be standing still in midair. Either the man was now acting and perceiving with super speed, or else something in the man had allowed him to control and freeze time.

The man now spoke in voice-over, as if reflecting, from a future moment, on what he'd perceived at this incipient moment. He said that the first thing he'd noticed when all the snowflakes had halted in midair was that one could see, through all the snowflakes, to distances of miles and miles.

When the snowflakes were falling, the man reflected, their motion created a blur. But when they were frozen, the blur was gone. It was then evident that what snowflakes actually did was clear the air, give it greater visibility. So if it weren't for the blur of the snowflakes, everybody could, when it snowed, be able to see much farther than they could when it wasn't snowing.

I didn't quite agree with this idea. It seemed like the conditions that created snowy weather would necessarily make visibility worse. This seemed especially obvious to me at the moment, when thick, heavy clouds hung low in the sky overhead. Those dense clouds seemed, to me, to imply bad visibility in general.

wearing friend's panties; mom accuses me; devil takes over me; creditors harass me

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room like an exhibit room in a museum. The room was dim, with rough, cream-colored walls. The room was divided into two sections, in an L-shape. At the joint of the rooms there was a huge stack of stuff, like boxes. Among the boxes may have been glass and wood museum display cases and cabinets.

I had been crouching on the floor, my back turned at about a 45-degree angle to the piles of stuff. But I now stood and turned toward the piles. My old boss and very good friend EB stood on the other side of the piles. Apparently my job had to do with sorting out these piles. I spoke with EB a little bit about some of my older jobs. EB listened sympathetically with me, possibly agreeing that there had been good parts and bad parts to my old jobs.

I now turned away from the piles of stuff and toward a conveyor belt, which lay on the opposite side of the room. A young woman also stood at the conveyor belt. Our job may have been to take and sort things which came toward us along the conveyor belt. Or it may have been to take things, sort them, and put them on the conveyor belt.

The woman and I spoke for a moment, then turned toward the conveyor belt. As we did so, three boxes, kind of like cake boxes, slid up toward me. The boxes were a little bit open, and I could see that stacks of well-folded lingerie were in each box.

The young woman told me she had put those boxes together for me. She had a bunch of extra lingerie, and she couldn't keep it at her house anymore. Since she knew I liked lingerie, she thought she'd either give or loan me the lingerie. That way I could hold onto the lingerie for safe keeping, but I could also enjoy it. I think the girl liked me, and was turned on by the fact that I liked wearing lingerie. So she may have been hoping that she could see me wearing her lingerie.

I took the boxes of lingerie and walked them to my room (which was now, conveniently, adjacent to the room I was standing in). I sat the boxes of lingerie on my bed.

I knew the woman and I were in kind of a rushed situation, and that I should get back to work as soon as possible. But when I saw some of the lingerie, I felt like I had to try it on. I opened a box and pulled out a few pairs of panties. One pair of panties was pink satin, in a bikini style. I took off my pants and underwear and put on those panties. I may also have taken off my shirt, thinking I'd put a camisole on instead.

I may actually have gone to the bathroom at some point. I may have gotten an erection before or while I was urinating. So now my erection was pressing up against my panties, and there was a little drop of urine wetting the panties.

I now really felt I needed to get back to work. So I stood up and pulled on my pants, which were now dull-green shorts that went down to just below my knees. The shorts rode a little low, so that the waistline of my panties were visible. I walked back out toward the conveyor belt, trying to put my shirt back on in a hurry, so that the workers other than the young woman wouldn't see the waistline of my panties.

The room the conveyor belt was in was a lot larger and airier than it had been before. The room may even have been open somehow to the outdoors. As I reached the conveyor belt, I was still working to put my shirt on. I was standing right in front of the young woman. I could tell that she could see the waistline of my panties. But her reaction was kind of silent. I couldn't really tell what the woman thought of me.

Dream #2

I was in a large room where a presentation was about to be given. The room was full of people. The room was small, like a side room, or a choir's dressing room, at a church. But the room was decorated so that it looked like a small mock-up of a church sanctuary. The room was rectangular. Folding chairs were all set out to face one of the wide walls, with a stage-like area before it that looked like a flowery altar.

I walked up to the seats and sat down. The seats were now almost completely full. I'd saved a seat right next to me with a pamphlet, and maybe a Bible. I was expecting my mom to arrive at any moment. But now the presentation -- something like a business presentation -- had begun, and my mom was nowhere to be seen. I tried to listen to the presentation, but I was a little anxious about my mom.

Suddenly my mom and sister walked into the room. They stomped up behind me. My mom whispered over my shoulder and into my ear, "Do you want me to be a bitch?" I was a little shocked by this. Apparently my mom and sister were angry with me. I couldn't figure out why. My mom sat down in a seat separated by a meter or two from the rest of the seats. My sister may have left the room, as if she were going to take care of some kind of business against me.

I was trying to figure out what could have made my mom so upset with me. I stood up and walked away from the seats. At first I may have been planning to leave the room. But then I got the distinct idea that my mom and sister were planning something against me, using something about internet usage as evidence of my guilt regarding something.

I turned back toward my mom. She now seemed to weigh about twice as much as she does in waking life. She was wearing a turquoise sweater. She may have said or communicated in some other way that she was, in fact, planning to get me in trouble with the law based on something on the internet. I didn't do whatever she was going to claim I'd done on the internet. But she was going to make it look like I had done it.

I knelt down in front of my mom. I may even have rested my chin against something -- like a huge binder? -- that rested on my mom's lap. I may even have rested my chin on my mom's stomach. I whispered to my mom, "Don't you dare try anything like that against me, Mom. I have a lot of support. There are people who are willing to stand up for me. And I've kept in contact with them. They know what I've done. And they can back me up."

I could now see that my mom was backing down from whatever plans she'd had against me. But now that she was backing down, I was starting to feel guilty. I still didn't know what I'd done to make her so angry with me. I would never have tried purposely to hurt my mom's feelings.

Dream #3

It was a sunny day. I was out in some space like a football field for some high school in a mountain town. Around the field, at least beyond one end zone and the left side of the field, were short cliffs and then tall, wooded slopes.

I may have seen or somehow known that the goalposts at the end zone were secretly missile launchers. At the top of each pole in the goalpost was a tiny canister, shaped almost like a battery. This canister was a miniature nuclear missile. I knew that there were also larger nuclear missiles somewhere in this area, maybe underneath the field itself.

There were now pick-up trucks parked out on the football field, like the football field was supposed to be a parking lot. I was having a conversation in my head with one of my old bosses and mentors, JS. I was telling JS that it was a lot of stress and responsibility always having to know about the status of the nuclear missiles. JS agreed with me. I may have been talking about everything as if I were planning to leave this nuclear missile job, or as if I had already left it some time ago.

As I continued to discuss the stress of the job with JS, I may have gotten onto the topic of keeping a steady mind. There were especially times when this was important, such as when one went into a reverie or dream state.

I found myself falling into one of these states right now. In this reverie state I met with two characters whose faces were really unstable. One had really cartoony eyes. Whenever this guy got upset, his eyes would waver about, like some kind of animation made with pastel crayons. Another guy's whole head would become all blurry and shaky in a really scary way.

I understood that these guys were playing these tricks with their appearance as a way to throw my spirit off balance. I was guarding some important secrets, and I was in control of whatever powers the secrets concerned. If the guys could throw me off balance, they thought, they could get control of the powers.

I managed to resist those characters and wake myself up from that reverie state. But I almost immediately fell back into another reverie state. I first found myself walking up one of the cliffs. But I then found myself walking up a wooden staircase in some mansion or cathedral.

I met with a man who basically said he was the  Devil. He tried to take over my mind, rather directly, without playing any games. He was trying to get into me so he could directly control my identity. I had to fight -- somehow -- to keep this character out of my mind. I managed to keep the character out of my mind.

I woke out of this reverie state in some short, shallow-arched tunnel. I was leaning against the concrete wall on the right side of the tunnel, looking out toward some area like a beach. I was rather proud of myself for having fought against the character I'd just fought against. I felt like it had taken a lot of strength.

I walked out of the tunnel. There was some space like an amphitheater: a kind of plaza of tiered concrete. On some of the concrete tiers there were occasional aluminum benches. Just beyond the amphitheater area was a beach or the ocean or a wide, wide field.

Scattered throughout the amphitheater were some young men and women. We were all friends or students or co-workers. We were planning to do something together here. Whatever we were doing may have had something to do with the secret the reverie-characters were trying to get out of me.

Just as the young men and women were deciding to go away from the amphitheater and start taking care of things, I felt my identity shift. I could feel the Devil character taking over my personality. I didn't even care. I thought it was kind of nice. I had the idea that I, now the Devil character, would get close to each young man and woman and take aware their own identities, just like my identity had been taken away. I was very blissful about this, and it all made me want to act very kindly toward the young men and women.

But as I made a few attempts to take the young men's and women's identities away, the young men and women began to suspect who I was. I got afraid of being discovered outright. So I decided to pull back a bit and find a slower way of seducing the young men's and women's minds.

There were a few young men and women standing around and on a long bench. I began playing around on the bench, like I was doing lazy gymnastics moves, while talking about the science and history of transistors and computers. People seemed to be interested in this. I was still feeling rather scared and anxious, trying not to give away who I really was, and hoping to calm down people's suspicions. As I spoke, my voice may even have quivered a little bit, like I was a little kid who was really eager to please and impress.

Dream #4

I was walking on a concrete path in the lawn of a courtyard of "my apartment complex." I may have been trying to take care of something, like paying my rent. But I also knew I was in a lot of financial trouble. I wasn't sure, from day to day, or moment to moment, whether I'd actually have my rent money in the bank. Some creditor, possibly out to get my overdue student loan payments, could actually have found a way to take all the money out of my bank account.

I walked into a hallway leading up to the landlord's office. Along the left wall of the hallway were everybody's mailboxes. I opened up my mailbox and pulled out my mail. There was a lot of junk mail that looked like it was actually important mail. I had to look at it a couple times to make sure it wasn't actually important mail.

I also found some mail from me on the floor or on a chair across the hallway from the mailboxes. I looked through that mail, too. It was like the postal worker had set that mail there instead of in my box because he thought I was going on some long vacation and that I wouldn't be back for a while. It was like laying the mail on the floor was more secure, for longer periods, than laying the mail in my box.

As I approached the landlord's office, I noticed that one of the pieces of mail I thought was junk mail was actually mail from a creditor. A creditor had, in fact, been sent after me for my student loan payments. I now owed a whole bunch of money. It wasn't just all the money that would have gone to my rent: it was a whole lot more money than I even had. I stood frozen at the threshold of my landlord's office -- the office had nobody in it -- wondering what the heck I was supposed to do with myself now.