Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I was in "my bedroom" at night. The light in my bedroom was on, and the door was open. I was sitting on the edge, looking out the hallway. The hallway was dark and had a deep blue color. The hallway extended a little bit, then turned off to the left. I feel like there were a lot of bedrooms in the house.
A little girl walked down the hallway and toward my room. She was only wearing a diaper. She asked me to change her diaper. Just as she asked me, an older woman's voice told the little girl to get back to bed. The little girl stood in my doorway and pulled off her diaper. I could see that her diaper was a little messy.
Dream #2
I stood out on some desert road on a hot day. I must have been in a small town. I stood across a road from a wide dirt parking lot, at the end of which were two buildings like small factory buildings. I panned my gaze from the right to the left, moving my view off to the left of the buildings.
As I did this, I heard the guy from the PBS Idea Channel on YouTube winding up another one of his "here's an idea" segments. I can't remember what he was talking about, but it seemed to vindicate something I was thinking of. I think in my mind's eye I had a view of yellow and black tiger stripes, kind of like the pattern of Lum's clothes in Urusei Yatsura, except with a fading to white toward the bottom.
My view continued to the left, scanning through a vacant field, mostly of dirt, with a few green weeds here and there. The Idea Channel guy continued talking, but now referencing a totally different idea, like he was on another episode. His voice became really small and grainy -- it was like he was dealing with a subject he was a little unsure of, so he wasn't quite confident, while at the same time the "reception" (???) for the program was fading out.
My view continued to the left, where I may have seen an asphalt parking lot and a multi-story office building in the distance, beyond another vacant dirt lot. The Idea Channel guy may have been mentioning some kind of art project that had been funded by a bank. But one of the guys who'd responded to the guy's statements was now speaking directly.
I could see the guy in my mind's eye. He was tall and pale, and he wore clunky, square glasses. He had a kind of high, very whiny voice. He mentioned something about "the Citibank project," as if the art project in question, being funded by Citibank, was generally known by the bank's name.
Dream #3
I was in a car with my mom and possibly some other family members. We had dropped my brother-in-law and some of the kids off at some place like a recreation center, probably where the kids were taking lessons in some sport, maybe bowling. Apparently my mom and I were going to wait in the car while everybody was inside.
But now my mom suggested that we take the car and go take care of a few errands. I think she had to okay something about taking the car with my brother-in-law. It was like my brother-in-law would have to confirm with my mom that he was going to stay with the kids. If he was going to stay with the kids, then we could take the car.
My mom was thinking that we'd go see her mom, check in on her, make sure she was okay. But I think she was having a hard time remembering the directions to her mom's house. We had to determine directions by using some nearby McDonald's as a reference point. I think I was getting a little impatient. I think I felt like I had better things to do with my day than get lost driving around some McDonald's with my mom.
Dream #4
I was apparently the manager of a Family Dollar store. I was in some really big room like a break room. It was kind of dim, with just some natural light coming in through a high-up window.
A woman stood across from me at a long break table. She had come to talk to me because she heard that ----- was buying out Family Dollar. (I know this company was a specific, "real" company at the beginning of the dream, but I can't remember what it was. The company changed to Sav-a-Lot at the end of my dream. I'm pretty certain it was not Sav-a-Lot at the beginning.)
I knew that ----- was buying out Family Dollar. The woman had only reminded me of the fact, which I now knew was really important (???). The woman asked me whether I was going to tell the employees anything about it. I said I would. I told the woman to get all the employees of this Family Dollar together, and we'd have a talk about everything.
So everybody got together. There were crowds and crowds of people, all apparently working for the one Family Dollar I was the manager of, gathered in something like a plaza area. The plaza area was mainly a stone plaza amid some rolling, green lawns. But there were also balcony-like levels over the edges of the plaza area. Those balconies were also crowded with people from the Family Dollar.
I stood in an empty space near, but not quite at, the front of the crowd. There were other management members with me in this space. I wasn't quite paying attention to anything. I was kind of looking at the ground and fiddling with my hands or some piece of thin rope that may have bounded off the management speaking area. At this point I may have been an overweight, pale white man with a bald crown and grey hair on the sides of my head and wearing a black business suit with a white shirt.
I may have assumed I'd be introduced or given the floor. But before I was given a chance to speak, some person from the back of the crowd asked some question of a lower-level management person who stood up on one of the balconies. The question had something to do with logistics, making the logistics of work a bit easier. The man and the management person got into a long discussion. After this discussion another group of people had another discussion regarding some element of administration at the Family Dollar.
After this discussion, there was a bit of a pause. I had kind of begun to assume that I'd just walked into a normal meeting of the Family Dollar employees, and that, since I didn't have any concerns that needed addressing, I didn't need to say anything. It seemed, too, like nobody else had anything to say. So everybody assumed this meeting was over. They all began shuffling out of the meeting area.
But a management woman behind me and to my right whispered in my ear, "The buyout! You needed to talk to them about the buyout!"
I suddenly remembered that that was what this meeting had been called for. I said, "Oh, yeah! Stop them before they all leave!"
About a quarter of the crowd was already gone. But somebody had called out to the rest of the crowd to stay here, that this meeting had been called to address a concern they all had regarding the acquisition of the Family Dollar. The person said that I, the store's manager (and I think I was myself again), would be giving a presentation to everybody, so they'd see there was nothing to worry about.
Most people seemed inconvenienced. The people who thought everybody was going to get laid off "already knew" that everybody was in trouble. The people who thought everybody was fine "already knew" that everybody was fine. So why did I need to make a speech to them? I thought to myself, Well, then, they're basically right. So I'll need to give them a little new information, a little bit of unique information, that will make them feel like they didn't waste their time here.
For some reason, even though everybody was annoyed and in a hurry to get back to work, I decided I needed to make a big, showy entrance. So, as the person introducing me -- he had a voice like the Chicago Bulls announcer -- said my name, I came running up from the area directly behind the manager's speaking area.
This area was (now, anyway) a stone square with a pool or fountain of water on its left side. The pool was only about ankle deep at its edges. I ran through that pool, making a ton of splashes. I thought, Everybody who knows me will know I like water. So I'm sure they'll all think my running out here through a pool of water will be a really characteristic touch. It'll be endearing.
I now stood up on a black-painted metal railing, locking my feet into some of the lower bars of the railing and pressing my knees against a higher bar. The crowd was packed, from the railing, out as far as I could see. Off to my right was a huge sign, kind of like the light-up menu sign at a McDonald's, mixed with an LED TV screen. I had a PowerPoint presentation playing on the screen.
I said, "I know you all know that Sav-a-Lot has announced that they are going to buy out Family Dollar. And I know that many of you are thinking, 'What's going to happen to me?' Well, let me assure you, you'll be fine. The business footprint of Sav-a-Lot is far different from the business footprint of Family Dollar. In fact, Sav-a-Lot planned to buy Family Dollar in order to expand its business footprint."
I also had an argument that Family Dollar was better run than Sav-a-Lot, so that if anybody was going to get let go, it would probably be the people from Sav-a-Lot first.
I now went through -- or tried to go through -- slides showing how Sav-a-Lot's business was so widely different from Family Dollar's business that there were no worries about efficiency-related layoffs. But I was having a hard time saying anything. I was comparing business segments and product lines for both companies. But it was so hard for me to keep focused on all the specifics. Plus, I wasn't sure I was telling the crowd something they didn't already know.
And now the slides started going really fast. And the more the slides progressed, the more the slides actually started to look like items off of a McDonald's menu. I remember looking at one slide that apparently was comparing a lineup of fruit-flavored smoothies at Sav-a-Lot with fruit-flavored smoothies at Family Dollar.
And, what was worse, I was even forgetting the name of the company acquiring Family Dollar. There was even one slide with three or four different names for the company acquiring Family Dollar. I knew that all the names except one were subsidiaries of the main company. I couldn't remember, now, whether Sav-a-Lot was the main company or just a subsidiary. But I didn't want to say "Sav-a-Lot" if Sav-a-Lot was only a subsidiary. It would make me look like I didn't even know anything about the company acquiring us.
Eventually I think I did just say "Sav-a-Lot" again when referencing the company, figuring that, if anybody gave me grief for it later on, I'd just tell them that everybody knew the company, anyway, as Sav-a-Lot, and that nobody thought of it by the main company's name.
Dream #5
I was in a room that kind of looked like a students' chemistry laboratory at a university. I stood at a long table with my old boss from a few jobs back, BS, one of my co-workers from that job, another unrecognized person, and a black man who was my boss' boss, the Director of our department.
The Director mentioned the acquisition of a Pepsi distribution company by some larger company that wasn't Pepsico. I can't remember the subtleties of the argument now, but the idea was that somehow this acquisition was either signaling bad sales on the part of Pepsi, or that it would signal bad sales for carbonated soft drinks in general, which would mean bad news for all the soft drink companies like Pepsi and Coke.
The Director was getting direct calls from clients voicing concerns over this potential bad news. He was coming to my boss to ask my boss' opinion on all of this. My boss didn't seem to have anything to say at first, and my co-worker jumped in. He said something to show that the issue wasn't actually a big deal at all. I can't remember what the argument was -- again! --, but it didn't seem to the point, in my opinion.
I had an idea that was more to the point, in my opinion (?????). The company that had been acquired mainly manufactured soda syrups for private label companies that operated out of Latin America. There may have been something about sugar cane involved in my argument. In my opinion, the acquisition may possibly have signaled bad news for the Latin American soft drinks market and for the companies that had been acquired and that made the acquisition. But globally, I probably didn't think the problem was very big.
I was about to mention this, but my boss finally told the Director, "It's not a big issue. I was actually writing a report on the whole thing right now, saying it's not a big deal. You should see that report within the next 24 hours." I knew that since my boss had spoken, there was nothing else for me to say.
Dream #6
A grainy, black and white image showing some young, pretty, Japanese women. The women looked mierable. They were probably victims of either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombings, or else they had somehow been displaced by the whole thing. They were very depressed, and they felt like they had no hope for life.
This image faded into a color image of the same young, pretty, Japanese women -- who may now have been the Japanese pop group Perfume! They were in the present time, and they all looked extremely happy, well-off, and full of hope.
This sequence of images may have been an advertisement for some kind of foundation that helps people. But I can't remember.
Showing posts with label dirty diapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dirty diapers. Show all posts
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
bookstore beer; ayudame hamburger stand; diaper boy's accident; afterlife bridge; subway map
Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I walked into a bookstore. I got into the bookstore by heading down into a basement. The bookstore was just a huge, empty room with wood walls and green carpet. At the far end of the room was a checkout counter, which was also made of wood. There may have been a couple of tall machines behind the counter.
There were two guys behind the counter. I had apparently spoken with the guys before. Now I was coming back. Both the guys seemed pretty cool. They were both probably in their late forties or early fifties. One of the guys stood up and spoke with me. He was tall, with short, grey and black hair. We chatted for a moment.
The other guy, who was sitting obscured behind one of the tall machines, poked his head out. He told me that he and his friend were just getting ready to have a beer. This implied that he'd like me to join them for a beer.
I thought about it for a moment and said that I really couldn't. I could hang around for a bit, but I couldn't drink any beer just then. I felt bad because I knew these guys were starting to think of me as their friend. If I didn't drink a beer with them, they'd think I was just thinking of them as bookstore owners, not as friends.
Whatever I'd said must have been kind of ambiguous, because now the long-haired guy was having me head downstairs with him while he got the beers. The downstairs area was about as big as the upstairs area, but the ceilings were a little lower. There were two wet bars, I believe: one on the right wall and one on the left. The guy went behind the bar on the left wall. But I was looking at the bar on the right wall.
The scene stayed the same, but it was now a meeting hall instead of a bookstore. There were a bunch of seats to my left (as I faced the right wall), all facing the back wall. There was a little stage jutting out of the back wall. A woman stood on the stage, haranguing a half-full crowd. The crowd may mostly have been young adults or older children. The woman may have been doing something like trying to incite a revolution.
I was drawn into the situation somehow by someone who had been standing off to the side. I can't remember how I got drawn in. It may have been that somebody'd called attention to something I'd done, maybe something stupid.
Dream #2
I was just walking back to a hamburger stand I worked at, after I'd gone to get some kind of help for the place. It was early evening. The sun had set, and the sky was a cool silver blue. The hamburger stand was stout and white. There were a few sections on the left side (as I faced it) that were open to the outside, just like open-air counters people could sit at. Around those counters there were also a few outdoor tables, probably circular and made of concrete edged with pebbles.
I sat down at the counter. Some guys coming from off to my left were bringing trays full of Mexican food. It actually looked like food from Taco Bell. There seemed to be plates and plates of Nacho Supremes. This was what I'd done for the hamburger stand. The place had been running out of one specific kind of food. I'd needed to ask another fast food place to give us a comparable kind of food, so we could keep selling. So I'd gotten the taco stand to give us all this food.
As one of the guys was loading food onto the counter, I tried, in a really horrible way, to say, "Thank you. You really helped us," in Spanish. I apologized in English for my terrible Spanish before I spoke the Spanish. And my Spanish was really horrible. I can't remember it now, except that I think I said something like "me lo ayuda" for "you helped us."
The guy I spoke to in Spanish was now like my manager at the hamburger stand. He walked behind me then sat down at the counter, to my right. I was saying that if this place sold out of food, it must be really popular. The man said that it actually wasn't popular, due to one of the items on the menu.
I asked what the item was. The man seemed really hesitant to tell me. But he eventually said that people didn't like the fries. I thought about it as I looked into the store and saw people sitting at the inside tables. I thought I saw the man's point. Maybe, I suggested, the people thought the fries were bland? The man nodded.
Dream #3
I was in a bedroom. It may have been night. There was an incandescent light on in the room. I was probably cleaning the bedroom. I was probably in the room with one of my siblings, who may have been a child. There were two bunk beds against the back wall of the bedroom. My sibling sat on the lower bunk of the right bunk bed.
I sat on the floor in between the two beds. I probably had a stack of used baby diapers -- used by me, likely, even though I was my current age -- before me on the floor. There were also sheets of newspaper scattered all over the floor, as well as stuffed animals everywhere. There may also have been some kind of grainy substance, like salt or sand, strewn in places on the floor. Yet I had been cleaning the room, and I'd thought I'd gotten to a point where the room was nearly clean.
My mom walked into the room. The first thing I worried about was the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them. Nobody else used this room. So obviously the baby diapers were mine. But my mom didn't seem to be aware of the diapers. At first, I think, she just thought that the place looked really messy. I think she was asking me questions about that.
I think I answered that I was going through the cleaning in layers. I'd cleaned a number of layers, but I left the layers of stuff that I'd thought I still needed. That was, for instance, why I'd left the sheets of newspaper on the floor. I'd also left all the stuffed animals. I wasn't going to throw the stuffed animals out. They belonged to my sibling (my sister?), and I respected the fact that my sibling liked stuffed animals.
Suddenly my mom got very angry and started asking me about the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them at all. I think I only mentioned that I was planning on throwing them away as soon as possible.
I was now out walking alone on a road that ran through a flat, grassy plain. It was probably early evening. The sky was really beautiful, with shades of blue and pink. The colors in the sky may have shifted from time to time, so that there were always new, brilliant combinations of evening colors. I was apparently engaged on the task of taking something back to some place.
But someone behind me caught my attention. I turned around. The person was probably a woman, maybe in her forties or fifties. She was blonde, dressed in a tan suit with a skirt that went down to about her kneest. She had her hair up in a short, tight, style. Her hair was blonde and grey. She looked very beautiful and stately, but a little worn out. She held five knives, with their points down, close to her chest. The knives had silver handles. They may just have been butter knives.
The woman asked me what I was doing. I may have replied that I'd been sent out to return the stuffed animals that had been in the bedroom I was cleaning. "But," I told the woman, "I'm really not going to return the stuffed animals. It would be cruel to my sibling. I only needed to make it seem to my mom like I was going to do that."
The woman may have discussed something else with me, probably something that made me wonder how I was going to get home from where I was right now. I may have told the woman that it was finally getting dark, and that I'd need to make my way back home before it got too dark for me to see my way. I knew it was going to be dark soon, because the sky had taken on an intensely vivid, though deep and dim, yellow-green glow at the horizon.
So I started walking back home. I reached something like an intersection. The road crossing the road I was on was small, like the road I was on. But it was busy, and big trucks occasionally ran down it. Right across the road was a river. The road I was on crossed the river, but not quite in a direct line with the stretch of road I was on. The crossing was a little off to one side.
Just then it became pitch black. I couldn't see anything at all. The headlights from the cars on the road may have given me a little light. But I think that usually the cars were even driving without headlights. The only lights I constantly saw were the lights of the town I was trying to get back to. But they didn't provide enough light for me to see where I was going.
I'd managed to cross the busy road. I was now at the river. I was trying to find the crossing. But I couldn't find it in the dark. I would edge my way from side to side along the bank of the river (which was just off the edge of the busy road), nudging into the air with one of my toes, trying to hit the solid structure that I'd know was the crossing. But I couldn't find it. I thought I'd just try to cross the river by wading across the river. But I knew the river was too deep for that.
I edged my way over to the left, still poking my foot out to find the crossing. But now a huge semi-truck came barreling down the road. I must have been a little bit into the road. The truck screeched to a stop, almost, I thought, hitting me. I could feel the waves of heat pouring off the truck and flowing along my back.
Suddenly I fell down, almost like I'd fainted. I was lying on the ground, right underneath the front left tire of the truck. I was wrapped up in a white sheet, like swaddling clothes, or a burial sheet. I started to wonder if I hadn't been hit by the truck after all. The headlights for the truck were now on. I could see them.
The driver got out of the truck and ran to see me. I didn't feel hurt. I didn't know whether I was injured. I figured I could probably still use all my limbs, though, for some reason, I didn't want to try at the moment. The driver may have attempted to lift me out from under the tire. He may have succeeded. Other drivers may have stopped and gathered around the front of the truck. I heard the flat, desperate scream of a woman.
Dream #4
I was at my great grandmother's house. (My great grandmother died about three years ago in waking life.) It was daytime, and golden sunlight filtered into the living room, like it always did.
I was here with my mom and my sister. My great grandma had had some kind of bad accident. We all thought she was going to die. But now she was up and walking around the house, taking care of household chores. But, for some reason, either my mom and my sister or just my mom thought my great grandma was still going to die.
I was trying to be a bit more positive about things. I tried to help my grandma out with her household chores. I had been in the hallway, maybe walking out from my grandma's bedroom. I could see my grandma walking around in the living room. I then walked into the "guest bedroom," the spare bedroom my grandma kept available for family members who wanted to stay the night. I could see my grandma heading toward the guest bedroom.
I was doing something like arranging a huge pile of quilts on the bed. The pile was all stacked up neat and orderly. These were all quilts my grandma had made. The top one probably had a red and green design on it. As my grandma walked into the room, she discussed something with me. She may have spoken about smoothing out the quilt's top. Or she may not have discussed it. But that's what I was doing, for some reason.
My grandma and I started having an interesting conversation (of course -- I forget it now!). I was really engaged on one point, when suddenly I saw my grandpa (my mom's dad, who died about four years ago in waking life) coming toward the bedroom. For some reason, the door to the bedroom was open only a crack. But I could still see my grandpa.
I stopped what I was talking about in mid-sentence. I didn't want my grandpa to be involved in the conversation, for some reason. When my grandpa came into the room he said something nice to my grandma. He said something else to both me and my grandma. I smiled and treated my grandpa very politely and listened to what he had to say.
My grandma walked out of the room. My grandpa switched his position so that I kind of had to face away from the bed. I may have held one of the quilts in my arms. I may have been folding it, so I may have held it folded over one of my arms.
My grandpa told me something like, "When I died, at first I was a little woozy. I woke into the new world, but I didn't know what it was. Slowly I began to see things clearly again. But only a little bit. And that's when I saw angels. The angels were all facing in different directions, each to a different specific location in the world. One angel faced toward Argentina. Another angel faced toward Venezuela..."
I could see, in my mind's eye, a place full of light. At certain points, the bright, shining, white light seemed to resolve itself into clouds. There may have been golden gates at certain places in the clouds. In the clouds stood angels. The angels were, in fact, spaced widely apart and facing in all different directions. I think I figured that there must have been one angel for every country in the world.
I was walking along the pedestrian portion of a large bridge, crossing over a large river. The pedestrian walkway was enormous, and the bridge must have been enormous as well. I was walking up toward a stairway up to the next section of walkway. The stairway ran between two walls of huge, stone blocks. It was a bright, clear day. But in the shade it felt cold, and there may have been some ice on the steps.
I thought to myself what a comfort it was that my grandpa had visited me. I thought that now that he had shared his vision of the afterlife with me, I'd be much less afraid of dying. I probably thought of the experience as a dream, but I may have kept a little feeling with me that it had actually, physically, happened inside my great grandma's house.
I thought I'd share the experience I'd had with my family. But, walking out from between the stone walls and out onto the next walkway (which may also have had coatings of ice or snow along its edges), I thought that I may not share the experience. I felt like my mom, and possibly my aunt, had had experiences already with my grandpa and great grandma. I didn't want their experiences to conflict with my experiences, and I didn't want them to change their accounts of their own experiences so they would fit in with my account.
I passed some sort of stone gate along the walkway. The walkway, which had been sloping up slightly, now became much flatter. I figured I was about halfway across the bridge by now. A dog came running up past the gates. It was a border collie. The man with the dog was still behind the gate. He was out jogging with his dog. But the dog had run a ways ahead of the man.
The dog lay down right at a spot in the path where the coatings of snow had become so wide as to take up all but a central portion of the path. The dog was rolling around, growling, and baring his teeth so frantically that I was afraid to approach it. It seemed like a violent dog that would attack me if I got near it. But I was still a ways away from where the dog had stopped, and I figured I wouldn't have to worry about what to do for a few more seconds.
But now the man came running up from behind me. He quickly reached the dog. The man appeared to be in his fifties. He looked healthy, muscular, and tan. He was bald and wore sunglasses, a red (or rusty tan?) t-shirt and some running shorts. He cheerfully told me (I was still a ways away) that the dog was actually a good dog and wasn't anything to worry about, especially since the man was now with him. The man may even now have had the dog on a leash.
But as I approached the point in the path where the man and the dog stood -- not moving forward, the man maybe jogging in place -- the dog began barking violently and frantically. The dog then did some weird move where it rolled through a puddle. The puddle splashed unbelievably high, sending a wave of water toward me. The water swept over me and shocked me.
I backed up, out of the way of the wave. But I still thought of approaching the point in the path where the dog stood. But now, when the dog barked, sheets of cold, clear rain dropped from the sky! They seemed to fall in time with the dog's bark! The sky was completely clear, but the sheets of rain would still fall. I backed up quite a bit, maybe all the way back behind the gates I'd crossed when the dog had first passed me.
I waited until the rains stopped. Then I began walking forward again. I think the dog and man were still at the point on the bridge. But now a group of teachers and students were approaching from the other side of the bridge. I think this may have made the dog less violent.
I crossed the part of the walkway that was really coated in snow. I was now on a much thinner section of walkway. I could actually see out, on both sides, to the river we were crossing over. We were really high over the river! I could also see the big city on the other side of the river.
I think I crossed two groups of teachers and students. The teachers were all pretty, smart-looking women, probably in their late twenties. The students may mostly have been girls. A lot of the students looked like they came from places other than America.
I think the first group of students I passed didn't react much to me. But I passed the second group of students as I was reaching a particularly thin portion of the walkway -- again, it may possibly have seemed thinner only because a large portion of it was taken up by a coating of snow.
I believe I had tried to make space for the children by getting as far off to the side as I could. But the teachers made all the students turn their backs on me and stretch out their arms. It was like the children and teachers were all making a fence. The teachers were like fence posts, all evenly spaced between the students. The students, I notice, all wore pink wool caps and pink wool scarves and pea coats of some maroon-purplish color.
At first I felt like the teachers had put this "human fence" in place specifically to block me from crossing the bridge. But the students weren't blocking the passage at all. In fact, they even seemed to be standing up on the coating of snow, completely faced away from me. So now I wondered if the teachers had put this "human fence" where they'd put it so I'd have no chance of seeing any of the children's faces, like, if I saw the children's faces, I would do something perverted to the children.
Dream #5
I was down in the subway in New York City. The subway platform I was on was really big and really crowded. But it was also constructed so that it felt really tiny and tight. The walls arced over toward the tracks very steeply. The light was a dirty, glaring white fluorescent light.
A group of kids, maybe in their early twenties, stood behind me, around me in a half-circle, like they had gravitated toward me and were trying to make me a part of their group. From their conversation I gathered that the kids had come from Texas. They were here as tourists. This was their first day here. They had probably only gotten here a few hours ago. They were now headed back to their hotel.
But they felt that they hadn't seen enough. They hadn't really known how to get around. And they were worried that tomorrow they still wouldn't know how to get around. They wouldn't be able to use their time efficiently. And they wouldn't be able to see all the sights they wanted to see.
There were a few guys and a couple of girls. The girls all looked pretty, clean, casually dressed, but well made-up. The guys were all kind of scraggly, sunburnt, with messy hair and messy clothes. But the guys and the girls were all cool. Even though they were upset about not knowing what they were doing, they all seemed to be joking and laughing with each other.
I turned toward the guy who stood directly behind me. He had scraggly, tightly curled, blonde hair, a red-pink and pale white face, and he wore a dark, dingy blue t-shirt. I told the guy, kind of speaking to him over my shoulder, "You know, the easiest way to do this is just to get a subway map. You can find out where everything is where you want to go. Then just look at the subway map to see where you need to catch the trains to get there."
The man said that he didn't want to spend a lot of money on some map. But I told him the subway map was free. He seemed surprised by this and asked me how he could get a subway map. I told him, "You just go to the subway booth. At a lot of stops, you'll see, right past the exits, a little, silver structure with a worker sitting at it. You just go up to that worker and ask for a subway map. Look. I'll show you."
I led the kids over to the stairway (or set of stairways?) that led up to the turnstiles leading out of the station. Just past the turnstiles was a service booth. A worker sat at the booth. The kids all went up to the booth to ask for a map. I hoped the booth wasn't out of maps. It wasn't. The kids got their maps. I watched one of the boys pull out his wallet and slide his subway card through the turnstile.
We all started walking back down the steps to the platform. The kids all told me thanks. Apparently, now that the kids knew their way around (of course, they hadn't even opened the maps yet), they were heading off on some different train. But I think the kids wanted me to be friends with them and help them out in getting places while they were touring around here. I thought I should give them my phone number or email address.
But I couldn't tell if they really wanted me around. So I told the kids that I had to hurry away to catch my train. I ran off to the right as they headed down another set of stairs off to the left.
***
UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.
UPDATE 2: Added one drawing to dream #3 and one drawing to dream #4, July 27, 2012, 3:29 PM, Mountain Standard Time.
Dream #1
I walked into a bookstore. I got into the bookstore by heading down into a basement. The bookstore was just a huge, empty room with wood walls and green carpet. At the far end of the room was a checkout counter, which was also made of wood. There may have been a couple of tall machines behind the counter.
There were two guys behind the counter. I had apparently spoken with the guys before. Now I was coming back. Both the guys seemed pretty cool. They were both probably in their late forties or early fifties. One of the guys stood up and spoke with me. He was tall, with short, grey and black hair. We chatted for a moment.
The other guy, who was sitting obscured behind one of the tall machines, poked his head out. He told me that he and his friend were just getting ready to have a beer. This implied that he'd like me to join them for a beer.
I thought about it for a moment and said that I really couldn't. I could hang around for a bit, but I couldn't drink any beer just then. I felt bad because I knew these guys were starting to think of me as their friend. If I didn't drink a beer with them, they'd think I was just thinking of them as bookstore owners, not as friends.
Whatever I'd said must have been kind of ambiguous, because now the long-haired guy was having me head downstairs with him while he got the beers. The downstairs area was about as big as the upstairs area, but the ceilings were a little lower. There were two wet bars, I believe: one on the right wall and one on the left. The guy went behind the bar on the left wall. But I was looking at the bar on the right wall.
The scene stayed the same, but it was now a meeting hall instead of a bookstore. There were a bunch of seats to my left (as I faced the right wall), all facing the back wall. There was a little stage jutting out of the back wall. A woman stood on the stage, haranguing a half-full crowd. The crowd may mostly have been young adults or older children. The woman may have been doing something like trying to incite a revolution.
I was drawn into the situation somehow by someone who had been standing off to the side. I can't remember how I got drawn in. It may have been that somebody'd called attention to something I'd done, maybe something stupid.
Dream #2
I was just walking back to a hamburger stand I worked at, after I'd gone to get some kind of help for the place. It was early evening. The sun had set, and the sky was a cool silver blue. The hamburger stand was stout and white. There were a few sections on the left side (as I faced it) that were open to the outside, just like open-air counters people could sit at. Around those counters there were also a few outdoor tables, probably circular and made of concrete edged with pebbles.
I sat down at the counter. Some guys coming from off to my left were bringing trays full of Mexican food. It actually looked like food from Taco Bell. There seemed to be plates and plates of Nacho Supremes. This was what I'd done for the hamburger stand. The place had been running out of one specific kind of food. I'd needed to ask another fast food place to give us a comparable kind of food, so we could keep selling. So I'd gotten the taco stand to give us all this food.
As one of the guys was loading food onto the counter, I tried, in a really horrible way, to say, "Thank you. You really helped us," in Spanish. I apologized in English for my terrible Spanish before I spoke the Spanish. And my Spanish was really horrible. I can't remember it now, except that I think I said something like "me lo ayuda" for "you helped us."
The guy I spoke to in Spanish was now like my manager at the hamburger stand. He walked behind me then sat down at the counter, to my right. I was saying that if this place sold out of food, it must be really popular. The man said that it actually wasn't popular, due to one of the items on the menu.
I asked what the item was. The man seemed really hesitant to tell me. But he eventually said that people didn't like the fries. I thought about it as I looked into the store and saw people sitting at the inside tables. I thought I saw the man's point. Maybe, I suggested, the people thought the fries were bland? The man nodded.
Dream #3
I was in a bedroom. It may have been night. There was an incandescent light on in the room. I was probably cleaning the bedroom. I was probably in the room with one of my siblings, who may have been a child. There were two bunk beds against the back wall of the bedroom. My sibling sat on the lower bunk of the right bunk bed.
I sat on the floor in between the two beds. I probably had a stack of used baby diapers -- used by me, likely, even though I was my current age -- before me on the floor. There were also sheets of newspaper scattered all over the floor, as well as stuffed animals everywhere. There may also have been some kind of grainy substance, like salt or sand, strewn in places on the floor. Yet I had been cleaning the room, and I'd thought I'd gotten to a point where the room was nearly clean.
My mom walked into the room. The first thing I worried about was the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them. Nobody else used this room. So obviously the baby diapers were mine. But my mom didn't seem to be aware of the diapers. At first, I think, she just thought that the place looked really messy. I think she was asking me questions about that.
I think I answered that I was going through the cleaning in layers. I'd cleaned a number of layers, but I left the layers of stuff that I'd thought I still needed. That was, for instance, why I'd left the sheets of newspaper on the floor. I'd also left all the stuffed animals. I wasn't going to throw the stuffed animals out. They belonged to my sibling (my sister?), and I respected the fact that my sibling liked stuffed animals.
Suddenly my mom got very angry and started asking me about the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them at all. I think I only mentioned that I was planning on throwing them away as soon as possible.
I was now out walking alone on a road that ran through a flat, grassy plain. It was probably early evening. The sky was really beautiful, with shades of blue and pink. The colors in the sky may have shifted from time to time, so that there were always new, brilliant combinations of evening colors. I was apparently engaged on the task of taking something back to some place.
But someone behind me caught my attention. I turned around. The person was probably a woman, maybe in her forties or fifties. She was blonde, dressed in a tan suit with a skirt that went down to about her kneest. She had her hair up in a short, tight, style. Her hair was blonde and grey. She looked very beautiful and stately, but a little worn out. She held five knives, with their points down, close to her chest. The knives had silver handles. They may just have been butter knives.
The woman asked me what I was doing. I may have replied that I'd been sent out to return the stuffed animals that had been in the bedroom I was cleaning. "But," I told the woman, "I'm really not going to return the stuffed animals. It would be cruel to my sibling. I only needed to make it seem to my mom like I was going to do that."
The woman may have discussed something else with me, probably something that made me wonder how I was going to get home from where I was right now. I may have told the woman that it was finally getting dark, and that I'd need to make my way back home before it got too dark for me to see my way. I knew it was going to be dark soon, because the sky had taken on an intensely vivid, though deep and dim, yellow-green glow at the horizon.
So I started walking back home. I reached something like an intersection. The road crossing the road I was on was small, like the road I was on. But it was busy, and big trucks occasionally ran down it. Right across the road was a river. The road I was on crossed the river, but not quite in a direct line with the stretch of road I was on. The crossing was a little off to one side.
Just then it became pitch black. I couldn't see anything at all. The headlights from the cars on the road may have given me a little light. But I think that usually the cars were even driving without headlights. The only lights I constantly saw were the lights of the town I was trying to get back to. But they didn't provide enough light for me to see where I was going.
I'd managed to cross the busy road. I was now at the river. I was trying to find the crossing. But I couldn't find it in the dark. I would edge my way from side to side along the bank of the river (which was just off the edge of the busy road), nudging into the air with one of my toes, trying to hit the solid structure that I'd know was the crossing. But I couldn't find it. I thought I'd just try to cross the river by wading across the river. But I knew the river was too deep for that.
I edged my way over to the left, still poking my foot out to find the crossing. But now a huge semi-truck came barreling down the road. I must have been a little bit into the road. The truck screeched to a stop, almost, I thought, hitting me. I could feel the waves of heat pouring off the truck and flowing along my back.
Suddenly I fell down, almost like I'd fainted. I was lying on the ground, right underneath the front left tire of the truck. I was wrapped up in a white sheet, like swaddling clothes, or a burial sheet. I started to wonder if I hadn't been hit by the truck after all. The headlights for the truck were now on. I could see them.
The driver got out of the truck and ran to see me. I didn't feel hurt. I didn't know whether I was injured. I figured I could probably still use all my limbs, though, for some reason, I didn't want to try at the moment. The driver may have attempted to lift me out from under the tire. He may have succeeded. Other drivers may have stopped and gathered around the front of the truck. I heard the flat, desperate scream of a woman.
Dream #4
I was at my great grandmother's house. (My great grandmother died about three years ago in waking life.) It was daytime, and golden sunlight filtered into the living room, like it always did.
I was here with my mom and my sister. My great grandma had had some kind of bad accident. We all thought she was going to die. But now she was up and walking around the house, taking care of household chores. But, for some reason, either my mom and my sister or just my mom thought my great grandma was still going to die.
I was trying to be a bit more positive about things. I tried to help my grandma out with her household chores. I had been in the hallway, maybe walking out from my grandma's bedroom. I could see my grandma walking around in the living room. I then walked into the "guest bedroom," the spare bedroom my grandma kept available for family members who wanted to stay the night. I could see my grandma heading toward the guest bedroom.
I was doing something like arranging a huge pile of quilts on the bed. The pile was all stacked up neat and orderly. These were all quilts my grandma had made. The top one probably had a red and green design on it. As my grandma walked into the room, she discussed something with me. She may have spoken about smoothing out the quilt's top. Or she may not have discussed it. But that's what I was doing, for some reason.
My grandma and I started having an interesting conversation (of course -- I forget it now!). I was really engaged on one point, when suddenly I saw my grandpa (my mom's dad, who died about four years ago in waking life) coming toward the bedroom. For some reason, the door to the bedroom was open only a crack. But I could still see my grandpa.
I stopped what I was talking about in mid-sentence. I didn't want my grandpa to be involved in the conversation, for some reason. When my grandpa came into the room he said something nice to my grandma. He said something else to both me and my grandma. I smiled and treated my grandpa very politely and listened to what he had to say.
My grandma walked out of the room. My grandpa switched his position so that I kind of had to face away from the bed. I may have held one of the quilts in my arms. I may have been folding it, so I may have held it folded over one of my arms.
My grandpa told me something like, "When I died, at first I was a little woozy. I woke into the new world, but I didn't know what it was. Slowly I began to see things clearly again. But only a little bit. And that's when I saw angels. The angels were all facing in different directions, each to a different specific location in the world. One angel faced toward Argentina. Another angel faced toward Venezuela..."
I could see, in my mind's eye, a place full of light. At certain points, the bright, shining, white light seemed to resolve itself into clouds. There may have been golden gates at certain places in the clouds. In the clouds stood angels. The angels were, in fact, spaced widely apart and facing in all different directions. I think I figured that there must have been one angel for every country in the world.
I was walking along the pedestrian portion of a large bridge, crossing over a large river. The pedestrian walkway was enormous, and the bridge must have been enormous as well. I was walking up toward a stairway up to the next section of walkway. The stairway ran between two walls of huge, stone blocks. It was a bright, clear day. But in the shade it felt cold, and there may have been some ice on the steps.
I thought to myself what a comfort it was that my grandpa had visited me. I thought that now that he had shared his vision of the afterlife with me, I'd be much less afraid of dying. I probably thought of the experience as a dream, but I may have kept a little feeling with me that it had actually, physically, happened inside my great grandma's house.
I thought I'd share the experience I'd had with my family. But, walking out from between the stone walls and out onto the next walkway (which may also have had coatings of ice or snow along its edges), I thought that I may not share the experience. I felt like my mom, and possibly my aunt, had had experiences already with my grandpa and great grandma. I didn't want their experiences to conflict with my experiences, and I didn't want them to change their accounts of their own experiences so they would fit in with my account.
I passed some sort of stone gate along the walkway. The walkway, which had been sloping up slightly, now became much flatter. I figured I was about halfway across the bridge by now. A dog came running up past the gates. It was a border collie. The man with the dog was still behind the gate. He was out jogging with his dog. But the dog had run a ways ahead of the man.
The dog lay down right at a spot in the path where the coatings of snow had become so wide as to take up all but a central portion of the path. The dog was rolling around, growling, and baring his teeth so frantically that I was afraid to approach it. It seemed like a violent dog that would attack me if I got near it. But I was still a ways away from where the dog had stopped, and I figured I wouldn't have to worry about what to do for a few more seconds.
But now the man came running up from behind me. He quickly reached the dog. The man appeared to be in his fifties. He looked healthy, muscular, and tan. He was bald and wore sunglasses, a red (or rusty tan?) t-shirt and some running shorts. He cheerfully told me (I was still a ways away) that the dog was actually a good dog and wasn't anything to worry about, especially since the man was now with him. The man may even now have had the dog on a leash.
But as I approached the point in the path where the man and the dog stood -- not moving forward, the man maybe jogging in place -- the dog began barking violently and frantically. The dog then did some weird move where it rolled through a puddle. The puddle splashed unbelievably high, sending a wave of water toward me. The water swept over me and shocked me.
I backed up, out of the way of the wave. But I still thought of approaching the point in the path where the dog stood. But now, when the dog barked, sheets of cold, clear rain dropped from the sky! They seemed to fall in time with the dog's bark! The sky was completely clear, but the sheets of rain would still fall. I backed up quite a bit, maybe all the way back behind the gates I'd crossed when the dog had first passed me.
I waited until the rains stopped. Then I began walking forward again. I think the dog and man were still at the point on the bridge. But now a group of teachers and students were approaching from the other side of the bridge. I think this may have made the dog less violent.
I crossed the part of the walkway that was really coated in snow. I was now on a much thinner section of walkway. I could actually see out, on both sides, to the river we were crossing over. We were really high over the river! I could also see the big city on the other side of the river.
I think I crossed two groups of teachers and students. The teachers were all pretty, smart-looking women, probably in their late twenties. The students may mostly have been girls. A lot of the students looked like they came from places other than America.
I think the first group of students I passed didn't react much to me. But I passed the second group of students as I was reaching a particularly thin portion of the walkway -- again, it may possibly have seemed thinner only because a large portion of it was taken up by a coating of snow.
I believe I had tried to make space for the children by getting as far off to the side as I could. But the teachers made all the students turn their backs on me and stretch out their arms. It was like the children and teachers were all making a fence. The teachers were like fence posts, all evenly spaced between the students. The students, I notice, all wore pink wool caps and pink wool scarves and pea coats of some maroon-purplish color.
At first I felt like the teachers had put this "human fence" in place specifically to block me from crossing the bridge. But the students weren't blocking the passage at all. In fact, they even seemed to be standing up on the coating of snow, completely faced away from me. So now I wondered if the teachers had put this "human fence" where they'd put it so I'd have no chance of seeing any of the children's faces, like, if I saw the children's faces, I would do something perverted to the children.
Dream #5
I was down in the subway in New York City. The subway platform I was on was really big and really crowded. But it was also constructed so that it felt really tiny and tight. The walls arced over toward the tracks very steeply. The light was a dirty, glaring white fluorescent light.
A group of kids, maybe in their early twenties, stood behind me, around me in a half-circle, like they had gravitated toward me and were trying to make me a part of their group. From their conversation I gathered that the kids had come from Texas. They were here as tourists. This was their first day here. They had probably only gotten here a few hours ago. They were now headed back to their hotel.
But they felt that they hadn't seen enough. They hadn't really known how to get around. And they were worried that tomorrow they still wouldn't know how to get around. They wouldn't be able to use their time efficiently. And they wouldn't be able to see all the sights they wanted to see.
There were a few guys and a couple of girls. The girls all looked pretty, clean, casually dressed, but well made-up. The guys were all kind of scraggly, sunburnt, with messy hair and messy clothes. But the guys and the girls were all cool. Even though they were upset about not knowing what they were doing, they all seemed to be joking and laughing with each other.
I turned toward the guy who stood directly behind me. He had scraggly, tightly curled, blonde hair, a red-pink and pale white face, and he wore a dark, dingy blue t-shirt. I told the guy, kind of speaking to him over my shoulder, "You know, the easiest way to do this is just to get a subway map. You can find out where everything is where you want to go. Then just look at the subway map to see where you need to catch the trains to get there."
The man said that he didn't want to spend a lot of money on some map. But I told him the subway map was free. He seemed surprised by this and asked me how he could get a subway map. I told him, "You just go to the subway booth. At a lot of stops, you'll see, right past the exits, a little, silver structure with a worker sitting at it. You just go up to that worker and ask for a subway map. Look. I'll show you."
I led the kids over to the stairway (or set of stairways?) that led up to the turnstiles leading out of the station. Just past the turnstiles was a service booth. A worker sat at the booth. The kids all went up to the booth to ask for a map. I hoped the booth wasn't out of maps. It wasn't. The kids got their maps. I watched one of the boys pull out his wallet and slide his subway card through the turnstile.
We all started walking back down the steps to the platform. The kids all told me thanks. Apparently, now that the kids knew their way around (of course, they hadn't even opened the maps yet), they were heading off on some different train. But I think the kids wanted me to be friends with them and help them out in getting places while they were touring around here. I thought I should give them my phone number or email address.
But I couldn't tell if they really wanted me around. So I told the kids that I had to hurry away to catch my train. I ran off to the right as they headed down another set of stairs off to the left.
***
UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.
UPDATE 2: Added one drawing to dream #3 and one drawing to dream #4, July 27, 2012, 3:29 PM, Mountain Standard Time.
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