the vanished woman; old woman charon

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom of an apartment or of a mutli-story house. The bedroom was dim and small, with dull, wood floors and a small bed that probably had a pink bedspread over it.

I was a strong, young man with olive complexion, dark hair, and a little bit of stubble on my face. I was in the bedroom with a woman who may have been beautiful, though she may have been twice my age. She may actually have been a family member, or the mother of a group of my friends who were downstairs.

I had gotten into an argument with the woman over something, possibly some crime the two of us had taken part in. I felt like the woman was going to get me in trouble by revealing something about the crime. I may have been planning to kill her to get rid of the evidence.

I traced my feet around the bed, moving clockwise around the bed from the head of the bed, down around the foot of the bed, and up just a step or two back toward the head of the bed.

The woman now stepped near the bed. She didn't know -- maybe I hadn't, either! -- that my feet had actually cut into the floor, like in cartoons. The traced area was ready to collapse. I must have had an idea of this, because I'm pretty sure I told the woman not to step any closer.

But the woman did step forward and fall through the floor. The bed, the section of floor, and the woman all vanished through the floor. I looked into the hole. I'd expected to hear a crash or something. But there was nothing. And the hole was shallow, like there was another floor only one or two meters down. Everything had really vanished!

I hurried downstairs, hoping to find the spot where the woman had landed. I met the woman's children, who were probably all about the same age as I/the young man. I don't know whether the family actually was angry at me for letting their mother die, or whether they even suspected me of being involved in it. But I was afraid they were angry. They all seemed kind of savage and capable of really harming me.

I was trying to justify what had happened to the woman. But the conversation between me and the others went to other topics. The hole in the floor, I learned, also had something to do with demons. So perhaps demons had drawn the woman to the hole in the floor. The woman was definitely in danger of demons right now, wherever she was.

Something else I learned from our conversation, which continued as we walked down a big complex of old, institution-style staircases and balconies, was that the woman had actually said something that had tempted fate, or tempted the spirits, to pull her into wherever she now was. She had something that had to do with keeping her distance from spirits, something like always staying two steps or five steps away from something.

As people -- including, now, for some reason, my grandma P -- continued to tell me this story, in an almost pitying tone of voice, I, continuing to walk down the staircase, began playing with the bannister, running my fingers along a knob of white-painted wood.

We ended up down at the bottom of the staircase, in a fluorescent-lit basement. I had expected to find the woman down here. I could even visualize her, laying wrapped up in a blanket, even cluttered on either side by stuff that had fallen with her through the hole in the floor.

Dream #2

I walked out of a living room and into a hallway, at the back of a group of older family members, probably including my mother, my grandma P, and my step-grandmother.

We had all been planning on how to take care of some older woman in our family who was having physical troubles. I had understood that I had been assigned certain tasks, and I had adapted my thoughts to the anticipation of taking care of these tasks.

But now that we were walking through the hallway, I learned that I had been assigned a whole different group of tasks. The responsibility I had accepted, even come to look forward to, was now replaced by a whole different set of responsibilities, which were things I felt could have been assigned to a child. I felt like it was being implied that I was no more than a little child.

I had only found out about these changes as they'd filtered through the conversation my relatives were having with each other. But I found out that my mother had actually been the one to make these changes. She'd made the changes, and she hadn't told me a thing!

We all ended up in a bedroom at the end of the hallway. The bedroom, like the rest of the house, was kind of small, narrow, and flimsy. But something about it also felt like a great library, like the Morgan Library.

The rest of my relatives had kind of dispersed, leaving just me and my mother in the room. My mom may have been trying to have a nice conversation with me. But she may also have been gloating at me, trying to needle me with the fact that she had changed plans on me without telling me anything.

I got extremely angry. Suddenly I was floating a bit above the ground. A book was also floating in front of me. Ostensibly the book was an edition of Dickens' Little Dorrit. But it was much thinner than any edition of Little Dorrit could be. And the covers and all the pages were made of some kind of backing and white fabric. The white fabric was all emroidered with quaint illustrations, giving the book the look of a folk art cushion and a child's book.

As I looked at this book, calmly entranced by its strange, Christmasy beauty, I was think/talk/yelling at my mom. I brought up some instance where a relative, possibly my grandma P, had needed her help. But some decision my mom had made had gone wrong. I yelled at my mom, "You! You really -- fucked -- it -- up!"

I knew that that would hurt my mom and get back at her for her having changed plans on me. But now that I'd done it, I felt bad. I'd gone too far. I worried that I'd permanently damaged my mom's emotions. I felt really terrible.

I was now in an SUV with some co-workers from my present job, probably including MM and SC. I was sitting in a backseat. We were driving through a quaint residential area. We drove up to a property that was fenced around with a solid, white wall of fence that had some kind of green ivy draping over it.

We stopped at the gate. It was understood that I needed to head in and hand a payment to an old woman who lived at the house. This payment was partly something I'd owed from the past. But it was almost like this payment was a kind of rite of passage, something that would make me part of my group of co-workers.

But I either didn't have the money or else was so low on money that paying the fee would really put me in trouble financially. I tried not to let on about this. But somehow SC found out. She, and probably the rest of my co-workers, were a little disappointed in me when they found out. I knew I'd be held in lower esteem because of this mistake I'd made -- not having enough money.

My co-workers, or maybe just SC, who was probably driving the car, may have handed me a twenty-dollar bill, or even a wad of twenty-dollar bills. I now had enough money to give to the old woman.

I was now standing before the door. But, where before the house had been in a kind of tight, wall-fenced place, it now stood out on some wide, sunny lawn, maybe even a wide valley.

Two old women opened the door. One woman stood tall. The other woman may have been very short, or hunched over, or even sitting in a wheelchair. She was kind of fat, very pale, very baggy-faced, with pale blue eyes and thin, white hair. She wore a peach-tan, satiny nightgown. She was the woman I was supposed to give my money to.

The woman didn't really seem concerned with my money. She was talking in a rambling manner that was uncanny and spooky. (I want to say now that it was autonomous or beyond my control -- I'm not sure why, or even what that would mean.)

The woman wanted me to stay to keep her company. She may have been offering me dinner in return. But something about the woman, the degree of her illness, made me realize that it wouldn't be good, either for me or for the woman, for me to stay with her.

I may still have wanted to stay with the woman. But I was now sitting on something like a child's tricycle combined with some (not sure what) aspect of a Radio Flyer wagon. The wagon was being pulled by a yellow and blue rope attached to the front. I was being pulled away from the house and out of the valley.

I kept trying and trying to pull myself back toward the woman. But the rope kept pulling me farther and farther away. Moving through the rolling valley, I was surprised by its vastness. I really felt like things had changed -- for the better (?). I saw a few small groups of beautiful people, mostly beautiful, little girls, playing in the valley.

Getting toward the edge of the valley I now saw that the people who were pulling the rope attached to the wagon were the co-workers who had been in the car with me, in particular SC and MM. They stood on a clear boundary of lands. The area they stood in was more like a pine forest, with trees and dusty, needle-strewn ground. I knew that my co-workers were doing what was best for me. But I still kept reaching back toward the house and the old woman.

i have sex with my headless self

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had probably been riding through the wilderness with my famlily. I believe we had been riding through some area that closed at a certain time of day. The area was probably now closed, even though it was, apparently, still daytime.

We drove down a hill, to a small, lawny area that looked like part of a city park. My brother-in-law let the kids get out of the car and run around. The adults got out as well. It seemed like we were still trying to figure out where we'd go next.

I didn't really want to go anywhere else. I was hot and exhausted. I was so hot that I was having trouble breathing.

A sprinkler started running right in the middle of the field. The jets of water coming off of the sprinkler were really powerful. The water looked so nice. I wanted to go in it.

As I walked toward the water I panted, I was so hot. I could hear my nephews laughing with each other. They were making a crude joke about Chinese people. I could also tell my brother was heading toward the sprinkler.

I started worrying about getting into the sprinkler. I worried that it would hurt something in my appearance. But I was already edging into the sprinkler. It felt so good.

I began floating upward, flying, hovering through the tops of the jets. I enjoyed the feeling so much that I floated into a horizontal position and closed my eyes.

I was now in a bed, looking at my back. I was wearing blue-green pajamas made of a nice fabric. I had the shirt lifted up so I could see my back. My skin felt weird, and I had some bumps and blemishes around the shoulder.

I was a little disappointed in how my back looked. I flipped my body around so I could see my front. My chest looked alright. The flesh wasn't as waxy and yellowed as the back. It was softer, healthier looking, but really pale.

I flipped my body around to my back again. It was only now that I realized I was doing all of this stuff to my own body. How could that be?

I told myself something about my head having been detatched from my body, and how it was possible for something like that to happen and for a person to be okay. I went back to flipping my body around.

I now decided I wanted to "have sex with" (more like dry hump) my headless body. So I flipped the body onto its back and began to straddle it.

But I wondered how, if I were rubbing my penis against the body, I would be able to feeli its penis. It didn't make sense to me. I didn't have two penises. So either I had the penis, or my headless body did.

I patted the headless body below the waist. It was just a bunch of padding, like in a pillow. So there weren't two penises, after all. Relieved at this resolution of the contradiction, I began dry humping the body.

"all our eggs are free"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked into a restaurant with a group of people, possibly family members, including my mom. The restaurant was really big, with dark wood walls and tables. Most of the space was round tables for two or four people. But along the left wall were booth tables. I sat down into a booth table.

As I was sitting down, one of my old friends from college, BR, sat down with another group of people in the booth right next to (i.e. behind) ours. As he sat down, I could hear somebody, maybe myself, in my head, mentioning how the selling point of this restaurant was that in all their breakfasts, they offered eggs for free. The restaurant's motto was "all our eggs are free." I could see an omelette-like egg folding in my mind's eye.

BR, seeing me, decided to start up a little joking exchange. So he called out to me, as if we'd been laughing about this slogan together, "How about your ----- [can't remember] eggs?"

I said, "They're free!" I didn't say anything after that. But BR kept staring at me, and I realized that now it was my turn. So I said, "How about your..." I had to look off into the distance to visualize a kind of egg. "Sunny side up eggs?"

BR said, "They're free! How about your scrambled eggs?"

I said, "They're free!" But I really couldn't remember any other kinds of eggs. So I just decided to get absurd. I said, "How about a glass full of raw eggs, but you mix it up and put a straw in it and drink it like a shake?"

BR said, "They're free!" BR then asked about another kind of egg. But as he was doing so, something was happening at my table that was causing me to lose focus. I was looking down at the table, maybe at a menu.

I realized I had lost focus and missed BR's cue. I looked back up and said, "They're free! How about your..." I wanted to mention an egg dish made out of egg shells, with no more substance in them. But before I could say anything, something else happened at my table to make me lose focus.

rub her crotch; important people; fitness video; pulled by a ship

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

There was a naked woman on a bed. She lay on her back with her legs bent, so that her knees were up in the air. There was a man on the bed with her. There may have been one other person on the bed.

The woman may have had a miscarriage or an abortion. Her vagina may have been in pain. She was trying to expose her vagina to the man on the bed so that he'd rub it and make her feel better. She didn't want to have sex. She just wanted to be comforted.

The woman was then lying on the floor, in the same position, with her crotch turned toward the bed. But now there may have been nobody on the bed. The woman was still in pain and still looking for someone to comfort her.

Dream #2

I was probably in the living room of an apartment, which was probably my mom's apartment. My mom may have been throwing some kind of party there. There weren't many people. The lights were dim. The living room was mostly empty. The floor seemed to be a little littered with blankets.

It was getting late, so I decided to leave. My apartment was just across the hallway from my mom's apartment. Just as I was getting into my apartment, I heard that somebody very important was going to be coming for a visit. For some reason, I thought they were going to be coming to my apartment.

My apartment was just as empty as my mom's There was one blanket on my floor. I sat on it and read a book. I was dressed in something strange, like boy's pajama pants and a pink girl's shirt. I may even have been wearing some kind of big jester's hat.

I'd thought at first that when the important person came over, he, or she, or they would be impressed by the book I was reading. But now I thought my clothes, as well of the kind of lazy way in which I was reading, would make a bad impression on the important person or people.

So I stood up to change my clothes. I got into a pair of jeans and a regular t-shirt. But I still felt like even in clothes more like daytime clothes I still looked raggedy and lazy. But I didn't know what else to change into.

I also got the feeling, now, that the important person or people were coming to my mom's apartment, not mine. I decided I'd better head back over to my mom's apartment.

Dream #3

I was in a living room with a small group of people. I don't know what my relation to them was. They were men and women, good looking, in maybe their twenties and thirties. One of the guys was an exercise instructor. He was the biggest and most muscular of us all. He was tanned golden brown, and he had long, platinum blonde hair. He wore a tight, red t-shirt that showed off his muscles.

It was now time for everybody to go to bed. I went into my bedroom, even though everybody else may have been staying in the living room. My room was dark. But on one wall there was something like a TV screen that was surrounded by neon lights. The TV screen began to play a fitness video. I lay on the floor, covered in blankets. The main thing the fitness video was doing was leg lifts. So I did leg lifts with the video.

The exercise instructor walked into my room. I was ashamed that he'd caught me working out with the fitness video. The fitness video came from a different company than the company he worked for. I either tried to justify myself or apologize to the man. But the man said it was alright. His fitness company didn't have a leg lifts program like this one. So he'd suggest I use this tape if I was concerned with doing leg lifts.

The exercise instructor left the room. The fitness video was now turned off. The only thing showing on the wall were the neon lights, which shined in a pattern of top half, then bottom half, then top half, then bottom half. I think I was using this pattern to continue my leg lift exercises.

Dream #4

I was out near water with my family. It was a grey day, but it wasn't raining. My brother-in-law, sister, and a couple of my nephews were all out in the water on a small, very narrow, white-painted boat. The boat may have been made out of some kind of metal. The water was greenish and relatively calm.

I stood on some dock or boardwalk, leaning against some waist-high metal railing. My mom may have been standing next to me -- although she may have been a tall, youngish, thin woman wearing a flowing, white dress, a broad-brimmed, white straw hat, and sunglasses.

The woman/my mom and I may have been having some discussion. Possibly because of that discussion, I decided I needed to have some fun in the water. So I jumped in. I swam to the boat. My brother may have been somewhere in the water as well.

I climbed onto the boat. I sat in the boat for a moment. There were little puddles toward the bow end of the boat. In the little puddles were greenish animals, which I may have taken for lizards, even though they seem to have been creatures more like neon green anemones.

I knew my brother-in-law was sitting at the stern end of the boat. My sister and nephews were also on the boat, and I think I could occasionally see my sister and my youngest nephew, although I couldn't actually see them on the boat. But I decided that the boat was way too crowded for me to stay on it. I jumped back off.

I jumped out on the opposite side of the boat from the dock, so that I felt like I was in deeper water. We were in something like a river, or maybe more like a canal. It was easy for me to swim farther and farther away from the side I'd jumped in on. But when I tried to swim back toward the boat or the dock, I felt a strong pushing against me.

Some woman, either my sister or a copper-skinned woman with jet-black hair and deep, black eyes swimming next to me, said something like, "Now you know the lesson."

I said, "Uh-huh. I do."

The woman said, "You don't swim too deep into the water. Or the current will pull you away. It will be really hard for you to get back to shore."

I thought about my cell phone, which I knew was in my pocket. I cried, "Oh, crap! My phone!" I pulled it out of my pocket. I held it above the water, hoping that irreparable damage hadn't been done, and that I could keep the phone out of the water from here on out.

There was a ship in the water. It was pretty big, for the space it was travelling through. Its hull was mostly black. Toward the deck the ship turned white. Almost all the top portion of the ship was white. The ship looked like some sort of military or commercial vessel. But it may also have been used for some kind of recreational purposes.

I got caught up in the pull of the vessel. I tried to swim out of it, but it was too hard. I got pulled closer and closer. I figured that, at this point, there was nothing I could do. I'd probably get sucked under the ship and die. But I thought that if I didn't die, I could push off of the ship and try to use some of that force to get myself out of the pull of the vessel.

I reached the ship without being pulled under. I kicked off of it and broke free of a little bit of the pull. But I ended up drifting around so I was now behind the vessel. From the back, the vessel looked even more like some recreational vessel, maybe even like a really big yacht. The name of the ship curved around the top of the back end of the vessel.

I was now in the ship's tow. I couldn't avoid it. Wherever the ship went, I would go as well. The ship looped around, apparently, then headed down into some area that was like a gigantic tunnel. The ship slowed down a lot. I could tell it was coming to a stop. I worried that when it came to a stop I'd be drawn all the way back to it and then sucked under the ship, where I'd be chopped up by the rotor blades.

The ship stopped. But I wasn't sucked under. I moved a little closer to the ship, then I stopped. Behind me was a small boat carrying my aunt and her husband. Behind my aunt's boat were a whole string of small boats. It was like we were actually on some kind of theme park ride, like this had all been some kind of water slide.

There was a wooden walkway just to our right. My aunt was complaining about the ride as she and her husband stood out of it. I pulled myself up out of the water.

I think my aunt was now complaining about a broken down refrigerator on the wooden walkway. Apparently my aunt thought she'd be able to get food out of the fridge, like it was a fridge that my family had reserved space in. But since it was broken, my aunt wouldn't be able to get any food. I thought my aunt's complaints were unfair. I was trying to think of a way for her to get food. If I could tell her a different way to get food, maybe she'd stop complaining.

We had been let out of the water at some level below the place we'd come from. So we had to walk up a long stairway to get back to the regular level. As we did, I looked down to the wooden walkway, to the refrigerator my aunt had been talking about. It was surrounded by other machinery, and it was lit in orange streetlight. The area surrounding the refrigerator actually looked like a parking garage to me.

My aunt and her husband were now gone. But I was surrounded by people, all people who'd gotten off the ride I'd apparently been a part of. A lot of us were walking up the stairs. I assumed we'd be going up to the river that I'd originally jumped into. But we were now heading up a steep slope of dry, dusty soil. At the end of the staircase, we ended up walking out onto some dirt walkway. The dirt walkway, I knew, headed to a sidewalk that led into the edge of a shopping district of some neighborhood.

As I headed toward the sidewalk, I kept having to dodge young guys who were rushing down to where I'd come from. They were all really excited about taking the ride that I'd just taken. I felt like they kept getting in my way to stop me from moving, like they were afraid I'd get onto the ride before they did -- even though I was heading away from the ride, not toward it.

When I got up to the sidewalk, I saw that I'd need to turn a corner to the left, then cross a street and walk a couple blocks to get to the shopping district. There was a little vacant lot to my right, between me and the street. I decided to cut across that while I was heading toward the street.

But as I was cutting across this field a man and his girlfriend, maybe in their late twenties, came walking up from some other walkway. The guy spotted me and decided he was going to cut in front of me, to trip me up  in my walking. I kept walking in my own direction. But as the guy got closer to me and I could see that he was aiming to cut right in front of me, I sped up my walk and twisted my path a little. I crossed just in front of the guy. But even when I crossed in front of him, he threw out his legs and tried to trip me.

I passed the guy, and we both crossed the street, but we were heading in different directions. But now I could hear the guy talking to his girlfriend. The guy was telling his girlfriend about some criminal he either knew or admired as an historical figure. The guy liked the criminal because he was always looking for some occasion to be bad to other people. The guy was, apparently trying to take this for the model of his life.

I had the feeling that, even though I'd managed to stop this guy from cutting in front of me and tripping me up, he still felt like he'd won whatever game he'd played with me, just because he'd been able to engage in an activity where, at the very least, he'd had bad intentions.

***

UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry of my dreamday journal. 

officer big mac; family in car

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a McDonald's playground. I was floating over one of those old playground items which is like a gigantic Officer Big Mac (the police character in McDonaldland), except that the mouth is bars, like in a prison. I probably thought that Officer Big Mac was Mayor McCheese.

I was floating near the back of Officer Big Mac's head. On the back of the head there was a big red stamp. The red stamp almost looked like the stamp used as a signature on artworks like Japanese scrolls. But the stamp was in English, and it said something specific, possibly something very threatening.

Dream #2

There was a family in a car. Either this family or some other people (who had then become this family) had just been through a series of events. But those events, whatever they were, were now over. The family was in their car, driving away happily.

The family was probably American, and possibly of Middle Eastern descent. The father was in the driver's seat. He was clean-shaven, with a kind of sharp jaw and gentle eyes. He had a hairstyle with the top a little long, so that the bangs curled just a bit over his forehead. The mother was very pretty and elegant, which long hair. Both the father and the mother had dark black hair. The father may have had a streak or two of grey in his hair. The father wore a black casual shirt. The mother probably wore a black dress.

There were probably two kids in the back seat: a boy and a girl. But I don't think I saw them.

narciso rats

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was somewhere, possibly outside, with a group of people. We were all probably single people in our late twenties or early thirties. But we all lived with each other in the same house. Somehow it was like the people living with me were all members of my family.

We were all discussing the house. It had been discovered that the house had a rat infestation. The house was infested with what were called "Narciso Rats." A pretty, blonde business woman was explaining this to us. She may have lived with us but also may have been something like our leader, or even our landlord.

We all knew we'd been having rat problems. I knew I had, too. But I seemed to be really ashamed of it in front of everybody else, like the rat problems in my own room were something that everybody else would judge me for. I may even have tried to convince myself that I didn't have any rat problems. But I knew I did. I was really afraid, too. I had a low bed in my room. I knew the rats could easily climb up and get near me at night. They might spread disease that way.

Another man near me, kind of fat, tan skinned, with short, choppy, black hair and eyeglasses, started talking about how he'd thought, at first, that he'd outsmarted the rats. He said, "I laid little bits of food out in a half-circle at a distance from my bed. I thought that would distract them. I thought the bits of food would lead them away from me." But this had probably eventually stopped working for the man.

The blonde woman told us all that the building had tried a number of ways for getting rid of the Narciso rats. But they were really hard to get rid of. Now we were all going to have to leave the building for a while. Some exterminators were coming in to do the whole building. This was the only thing that would work. Even this method might not have been totally sure of success. It might have been a possibility that the whole building would have to be destroyed.

I now realized that in my room I had a different kind of rat. (At this point I was half-waking out of my dream.) This was called something like a "Gold Flow Rat" or a "Gold Floor Rat." I heard some text being read, possibly as I read it out of a book, saying, "This animal has been placed on the dangerous species list."

jim marrs -- sections l and m; cranberry juice; tarantino's conspiracy theory

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a basement room, reading a book from the light of a window. The window was kind of small and high up on the wall. The light it let in was dim.

The book I was reading was by conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs. I had finished the main part of the book. I was now leafing through the appendix. The pages of the appendix were all glossy and black, with white lettering. There were pictures of outer space and the earth on almost every page. But the earth didn't look like the earth, but more like a foamy, blue ball with landforms represented on it.

I had flipped to section L of the appendix. Marrs had written that he was writing some new information in response to requests by some of his readers. He wrote that section L of the appendix had been meant for this originally, but that Marrs hadn't finished what he'd been writing for section L had never been completed. Marrs would now include all the new information in section M, which was, apparently, more like a polished essay.

I flipped to section M. The first thing Marrs was talking about was some piece of land in China. Marrs wondered why China had bought this piece of land. Why, Marrs wondered, did China make such a big deal about needing this land? But then, Marrs pointed out, China sold this land, first to the Germans, and then to the Federal Reserve.

This was all apparently some big scheme for globalization. The illustrations first showed the corner of the globe with China on it, with some kind of yellowy spotlight on the land bought. Another illustration showed some round view of the earth with three landforms, thin, kind of crescent shaped, seeming to be jittering together like matter inside a cell. There may have been one more distant picture of the earth.

Dream #2

I was in a dark house. I was in the kitchen. I was myself, but I may have been a bit younger than I am IWL. The house was an apartment. But it was a really big apartment, and multi-storied.

The husband and wife who owned the apartment had had me over for the night. There may have been a girl there, as well. At some point in the night, I remembered, the husband and wife had asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I told them if they had cranberry juice, I'd like some, but if they didn't, it wasn't any worry.

The husband and wife had then told me to wait before I said something was no worry. They had called down to somebody, who quickly ran out and bought a jug of cranberry juice. The husband and wife told me I could eat anything that was in the house, and that when something I wanted wasn't in the house, I could get it ordered.

I was now in the kitchen, in the dark, looking for the cranberry juice. I fumbled around on the kitchen counters and in a few of the above-counter cupboards. I then headed toward the middle of the kitchen. On either side of the kitchen were doorways out into rooms. I could see that the space on my right had a large living area with a staircase to the upper floor. The area to my left probably ran through a number of bedrooms.

I could almost hear the girl, husband, and wife laughing at me now. I felt like they were wondering why I was so greedy. Why did I want to get more cranberry juice than I'd been given? I felt like some kind of glutton now. But I couldn't resist it.

Finally I realized that the cranberry juice would be in the fridge. I opened the door of the fridge. Inside was a transparent plastic jug, shaped like a Minute Maid jug, of cranberry juice. The jug was half full. I grabbed it to pull it out of the fridge.

Dream #3

I was in a living room with my mom, sister, nephews, and niece. The living room was really big, but barren. The floors were wooden. Plenty of pale white-gold light flowed in through the windows.

For some reason we were all laying on the floor, under blankets or sleeping bags. We each had our own little space, but we were still kind of gathered together near the front, left corner of the room.

I had been emotionally cold, even mean, to my nephews and niece lately. So now I felt the need to make up for it. I stood up and went to one of my nephews, maybe my second oldest nephew. I spoke with him a little bit. Then I spoke with my niece a little bit. They both stayed laying under their blankets while I spoke with them.

My sister then spoke to me. She was laying down on some small mattress that she barely fit onto. It was also, somehow, like she was laying inside a car, maybe in the back of a car, even while she was in the living room.

My sister told me, "I've got to get ready for my wedding. I've gotten a rainbow dress. But I haven't picked it up yet. It wasn't ready until just now."

While my sister went off, out of the room, I spoke some more with my niece. My niece stood-sat on my legs as I sat on the ground and had my knees together and drawn up. My niece would lean her back backwards over my knees. She was also listening to some device I had, like an iPod or iPhone.

I had been playing some kind of YouTube video for my niece. It was of some old TV show, like from the 1950s. My niece wasn't watching the video at all. She had some white headphones in her ears, and she'd listen to the video. But I was holding the device, sort of looking at it.

The video was over. I tried to find another one for my niece. This was also an old show. But it was in color: a lot of sparkling pinks. I asked my niece at some point if these videos were boring. She said they weren't boring. They sounded fine. I figured that as long as the videos had an interesting sounding story, my niece would be happy.

My sister may have come back. I was standing at some odd corner of the living room for a moment, facing the thin end of a wall dividing the living room from a hallway.

I was now in the front, right corner of a living room again. It was probably late afternoon. It was dark blue outside. But the living room was lit with slightly dim, warm, incandescent light. The room was furnished now, instead of being barren.

I stood before a table that had some food on it. I was apparently at some party, like a holiday party, probably at my family's house. I was trying to decide what kind of food I wanted. I saw enchiladas, either on the table or in my head. I may also have seen spaghetti.

I now heard Quentin Tarantino behind me. Tarantino was talking with a circle of people. He was giving them some conspiracy theory speech. I can't remember what it was about. But Tarantino then asked everybody, "And what do you think they linked it all together under? -----, which is a well-known supporter of the Ku Klux Klan! This is all about white supremacy!"

Tarantino continued his speech. I decided to join the circle. I didn't quite believe anything Tarantino was saying. But he made it sound interesting. And it was, after all, Quentin Tarantino I was getting a chance to listen to.

But right before I got to the circle, my second oldest nephew came up to me and started making goofy noises and showing me something on his Nintendo DS. I was still trying to be nice. So I spent a few moments listening to my nephew and being goofy with him.

I then joined the circle -- kind of. I felt like I had to stand at a distance and act like I wasn't really paying attention to what was being said. I had a feeling everybody in the circle thought I was a spy. So if I paid too close attention, they'd think I was memorizing what they said, so I could inform on them.

So I stood just outside the circle, turned at a kind of angle. I rested my right arm up on the mantle of a fireplace. I may also have rested an iPad there. The fireplace and wall were of thick, grey stone.

girl on bus; lightning and stairwell

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A vision of a girl on a bus during the day. The girl stood near the front of the bus, on the right side, as if she were just getting onto the bus. The girl was young, maybe twelve to fourteen years old, but tall. She was slim and pale. She wore a green shirt with very short sleeves and a wide v-neck that revealed a white shirt over her chest. She wore very short, pale-beige denim shorts. The girl had long brown hair, drawn back in a kind of ponytail, and big eyeglasses.

I saw the girl, first as if in a small picture or a movie on a phone's screen. Then I saw the girl as if I were actually on the bus, watching the girl walk up toward and then past me.

Dream #2

I was in "my family's backyard" with my oldest nephew. My nephew was probably six or seven years old in the dream. He had an armful of toys. He was annoying me somehow by poking me with some of the toys. I told him to stop annoying me. He thought he was funny, so he began poking me with antennas from a couple remote control joysticks he was carrying.

I got really mad and knocked some of the stuff out of my nephew's hands. I was trying to get closer to him, so I could grab him and tell him to stop poking me with stuff. But he was offended that I'd knocked stuff out of his hands. He backed away from me and started whining. He stood under some structure like a porch backing up against the back wall.

I was at the left fence of the backyard now, as if I were going to leave through some gate near me. My oldest nephew and second oldest nephew now confronted me. My second oldest nephew was mad at me for having told my oldest nephew not to poke me. He seemed less like he wanted to stand up for his brother and more like he wanted to have the fun of annoying me by nagging at me. I told him to leave me alone and I walked away.

I was now sitting out on the front porch of "my family's house," which was a red brick or red stone house. The porch was covered over with stone, so it was pretty shady. But it was pretty cloudy outside, so it was even dimmer on the porch. Some of my family members, probably my brother-in-law and some of my nephews, were sitting on the steps.

We were all watching the lightning. A few bolts would come down from the sky at a time. It wasn't raining yet. The air was dry and electric. The lightning flashes were really beautiful. They were pretty far away. But they were so violent, and it felt like they would be getting closer really soon.

Nobody seemed really afraid of the lightning coming closer. But I was nervous. I felt like it would be coming closer soon. I felt like when we got a close strike, it would take us by surprise. I stood up onto the porch, hoping the porch would shield me from the lightning strike. I tried to judge the closeness of the strikes by the flashes and the noises. But the flashes stopped showing up as much, once I focused on them, and the noises were sometimes all alone.

Now a group of guys, maybe with a couple women, walked down the street. They all seemed to be young and cocky, but somehow settled into good lives. They were being led around by a black man, who was one of their friends. The man showed them a house across the street, as if he were recommending that they buy the place. The place was big, for a house, and made of red stone.

I hid from the group of guys. I felt like if they saw me, if they knew I lived here, they'd want to hang around here all the time and annoy me. I tried to hide behind a column on the porch and in the shadows of the porch. But the black man saw me. He started leaning against some black iron gating that came just off of the left side of the stairway. The man did this to annoy me and show me he could lean against my family's property if he wanted. But I tried to justify his actions by saying that maybe the man was a professional guide, and that leaning against the gate was a part of his presentation.

But now it really did seem like the man was giving a presentation. He seemed to be speaking about the house across the way from us as if it were a dorm building for a small university. The man now led the group of people across the street to the dorm. I decided to follow the man. I was curious about this place. But, now that my space had been invaded by him, I felt the need to confront him about it.

I walked into the building. It was now much taller. The lobby looked like the lobby for an old high school. But it was multiple stories tall. The light was a dimmish, greenish fluorescent. The tile floors gleamed thickly with layers of wax.

I was following a group of older people, mostly white women. The people looked like parents for the college kids who would be staying here. The black man was gone. The older people all seemed to be turning right, into an area I knew probably led to the bathrooms.

I followed the people, hoping to get a chance to confront the black man, and also just because I was curious what this place was all about. But the older people all seemed to be women now, and they all headed into a women's bathroom. I stood outside the door. I knew I couldn't go in. Now college-aged girls were also walking into and out of the bathroom. I looked around for a men's bathroom, but I couldn't find one. So I walked out of the area.

I was now walking across the hallway, to a doorway that I thought may have been to hall of dorm rooms. As I did, I still only saw girls here, no boys. I thought this may have been an all-girls college. In that case, I thought, people would think I was really weird for walking around here all by myself.

I got to the doorway, a double doorway, to find that it actually led to a stairwell. The stairwell was wide, like a double-stairwell in a school, but it was so empty and unused feeling that I guessed it was a fire escape stairwell. I walked up the stairs a bit. There was plenty of grey-white light coming in through windows on the landing walls.

After walking up a couple flights, I got the urge, somehow, to go up the stairs faster by pulling on the handrail, then letting go, causing myself to be ejected up into the air. This would throw me up a couple of flights.

I did this a couple times, then somehow messed it up. I landed on my right side on a staircase, looking up toward the floors above me. I was almost up to the top floor. I could see the dim shade of the unfinished, dirty-metal ceiling.

I told myself that if I wanted to go up to the top floor, I could throw myself up there, even in just one throw. I knew this was a dream now. I told myself that if it was a dream, I could throw myself up to any height I wanted. I still didn't quite believe that. I felt like my aim and coordination would still have a lot to do with where I ended up. But I decided to give it a shot.

I threw myself up into the air. I almost got to the top floor. But the whole space of the top floor now seemed to be covered by dark blue sleeping bags. I tumbled down to a lower floor, but I landed on my feet.

I looked down from the landing I stood on. I knew I couldn't get any higher. The whole area was obstructed up there. But I saw that between the windings back and forth of the staircase, there was a little, rectangular corridor. I knew that IWL jumping down that space would be suicide. But in a dream, I could probably aim myself safely down that space.

I jumped down. But, again, I got worried about how good my aim was. I ended up causing myself to tumble back and forth a little roughly between the guardrails of the stairwell. I somehow got tumbled out on one of the floors.

Looking around, I saw I was on something like a balcony over an area that looked like a mix between a library and a cafe. There were book stacks farther back, but the front area was a section of big, heavy, wooden tables that looked like study tables. But people were bringing food to the tables and eating at the tables. There were young men and women.

I thought I would test myself by jumping off the balcony and flying over the space. But as I jumped, some of the male students noticed me. I got shy, and my flying ability faltered. I was descending slowly. But I thought I could prolong my hovering. I descended slowly until I landed on a table. There were only a few people around. Some of them noticed me, but they were ignoring me, like they thought I'd done something kind of silly.

So, just to get somebody's attention, I jumped off the table and, landing before an area of big, comfy chairs, I did some kind of crescent-like kick at or into the face of a woman sitting in one of the chairs. My vision got really blurry at this point.

diphtheria house; customer complaints; how's consumer sentiment?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A view of the backyard of the house of a family. It was daytime. There were a lot of workers in the backyard, along with at least the mother and the father of the family. The house was a nice, two-story house. The mother and father were white, attractive, and kind of wealthy looking. The workers may have been dressed in yellow, pale green, or white, plastic protective suits.

The house was being worked on because the family had all suffered from some disease. The disease had probably been called diphtheria. The disease was apparently like scarlet fever because, when you had it, you had to burn everything you'd touched while you had it. So the workers were working, not on burning everything in the house, but on sanitizing it in some way.

One of the things the workers were doing was to plow up the ground all around the foundation of the house. Then they sprayed something all over the plowed up soil. This stuff looked like the white smoke that comes off of dry ice. It would do something like freeze the ground. But it was also adding a chemical to the ground that caused the soil to do something like freeze itself.

I understood that the diphtheria germs had come from the soil. The soil had been disturbed, releasing these old germs. Now the soil had to be chemically frozen, to kill the germs.

But now the workers began to ask about other items the family had been around in the house while they'd had diphtheria. In particular they began asking about the family dog. My view, which had been really close in on the soil that was sprayed, now backed away. I got a pretty full view of the back of the house. And even though the dog wasn't back there, I got a pretty good image in my head of the dog running along the back porch, in the shade of the back wall.

The mother of the family knew that if the workers knew the family had touched the dog while they were sick, the workers would want to spray the dog with the freezing chemicals, too. But the mother knew that that spray would kill any living thing. So the mother said that the family had not touched the dog while they had been sick.

Dream #2

I was in some kind of small store, like an old-style office supply or stationery store, or an old-style furniture store. It was pretty dim inside, and everything was grey, like even the walls and carpet were the same colors as the old, grey-painted, metal shelves.

I stood, or even sat, before some grey counter. The counter made a kind of L-shape that connected with the back wall and the left (my left) wall, making a kind of big square of space for the workers. There was at least one office-style desk behind the counter. The space felt like an old office overall. But at the back wall was a kind of window, like one might see for a service area between the cooks and the waiters in a diner.

Behind the counter sat two workers. One of the workers sat pretty close to the counter. The other worker sat at the desk, off in the back, left corner of the worker's space. The worker close to the counter was pretty young. He had been dealing with me in some way or another. But he had been rude to me, and he hadn't done what I'd needed at all.

I had told the young man that I was going to complain. The young man didn't seem to believe me or even care if I did complain. But I knew that if I spoke directly with one specific man: the other man sitting at the desk. He was the young man's boss, and he didn't seem to like the young man too much to begin with. He was looking for a reason to fire the young man. And I knew I could give the man a good reason.

The young man knew I was serious. So he decided to listen to me. But he was really mad at me. He asked, "What do you want me to do for you? What do I have to do?" in a kind of angry, but desparate tone.

It was now like we were talking on the phone instead of standing face to face. I could see the young man's angry face on the phone. At first he looked like he was a young, kind of skinny, black man. But his face morphed into a young, bald man with a kind of olive-colored to light brown complexion. His features were really sharp but smooth at the same time. He had a tight skull and sharp cheekbones. And he looked really sullen and angry.

I was through dealing with the young man, though, and I told him that I wanted to speak with the older man now. The young man didn't have a choice but to put me through to the older man. The older man was a kind of fat, white man with pale skin and hair in a spiky cut that looked like it was dyed blonde. He had kind of red cheeks. He wore a black polo shirt and black shorts. He was obviously in his forties, but his clothes and style made him look younger.

The older man knew he had to take my call, and he was already mad at the younger man. But the older man was on a phone call at the moment, so he told me I had to wait. The younger man stood up and walked into the back area, the area behind the back wall.

The older man fiddled around with his phone for a moment while talking. Then the call was over. But the older man acted like he still had a number of things to do, probably making phone calls, before he could finally get to helping me. He actually stood up and walked toward the back area himself.

I was still in the office. I was standing at the counter. But now the counter was more like a stainless steel counter. And behind the counter was now a small area like in a small bakery. The whole place still felt old, grey, and dingy. But now there were kind of fancy pastries everywhere. The counter ran in an L-shape. But now the L-shape faced away from the wall, so that the area behind the counter was also L-shaped.

The older man was working on putting all kinds of pastry orders together. He was completely avoiding me and any of the complaints I had, acting like he had to take care of all these orders first. I'd even ordered some pastries. And even though my order was small and simple, he was taking care of all the bigger, more complex orders first.

A group of Latina women walked in. A couple of them were maybe in their late twenties or early thirties. They looked like mothers. They were all happy. They all made orders with the man. The man put their orders together and gave them to them almost instantly, still completely ignoring me.

I looked at the women's orders. One of the women had a kind of bright pastel, sweet, delicate, bready, but dry-looking cake. The other had some kind of syrup-topped, pie-like thing that I told myself was made with guava. Both of the items looked good. But I was more intrigued by the guava item.

The women seemed to be leaving the store already. I had been shy while they were in front of me, because they were all pretty. But now they were all passing me to get to the door.

One of the last women to pass me must actually have been a girl. She was kind of short and very skinny. But she had a flat chest. She wore tiny, black jean shorts and a tiny, black bikini top with silver fringes. But the girl's chest was so flat that the bikini top was a little bunchy and loose on her in spots, even though it was drawn pretty tight around her back and neck. But despite the fact that the girl was so young, I was really aroused by her.

Dream #3

I was at "my office," sitting at "my cubicle." The walls of the cubicle were tall. I seemed to be sitting pretty close to the right edge of the wall, my face very close to the wall. To my right, and also pretty close, was a window with blinds. The light coming through the window seemed to be filtered through some kind of UV coating. It was greyish-brown, but still kind of sparkling somehow with the whiteness of bright sun.

Between the cubicle wall and the window was a little walkway. I knew that beyond me were one or two other cubicles, then a more open space for people to walk through. I knew that my boss BB was walking through that space, even though I couldn't see him. I could barely see another co-worker, SW, walking into that space.

My boss had just been out on some business trip through a few big cities. SW asked my boss, "Hey, so, while you were out there, how was business sentiment looking? I mean, how was the consumer outlook? Are people looking more positive?"

I thought this was a strange question to ask. It implied that my boss had actually been out to enough towns to actually get a good sampling of business sentiment in all of America. And it implied that my boss had actually been out talking to all kinds of people on the street.

But my boss had only been in a few cities. And those cities were pretty isolated, probably geographically, from the rest of America. And my boss had only been speaking to higher-up business people, about very specialized topics. I didn't think my boss' answer could really indicate a big picture view of the American economy.

But SW was going to take my boss' answer and use it to reflect the American economy. SW was like an economist for our company, as if our company were something other than it was, something more like an investment firm or an investment advising firm.