the vanishing pleasure dome

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a group of friends in some place like a theme restaurant mixed with an indoor amusement park. The place was enormous. It was divided into a number of small sections. Each section was like a different theme restaurant or theme area for amusement park rides. The sections were mostly connected by a mall-like hallway, although some of the sections also just blended directly into other sections. A lot of the sections were dark, with little gleams of light, like reflections from a mirror ball, floating around the room.

I had broken off from my friends at some point. We'd all been in a restaurant section. I had stood up and walked away. Now I was trying to get back to them. But nothing around me looked familiar anymore. I didn't know what section my friends were in.

I was in the mall-like hallway section for a moment. I knelt or sat down to tie my shoes. When I stood up, I was even more lost than before.

I wandered through some of the interconnected sections, mainly walking through restaurants that seemed like bars, too -- like a lot of people were drunk and partying, or sitting around in booth seats with drinks and talking really loudly. I kept thinking I had happened upon my group of friends. But I never did, and I only felt more and more lost, like I was constantly working my way away from, instead of toward, my friends.

It now seemed like this place was closing down for the day. The sections were all emptying out. Wait staff, dressed like workers at a movie theater, were coming in and cleaning up the sections. Dim lights had come on in most of the sections.

I walked up to one of the wait staff and asked him where my friends were (as if he'd know who and where my friends were?...). The man seemed to know what section my friends had been in, though he probably wasn't sure they were still there. He pointed off to my right, toward a section of mall-like hallway. One of the other waiters confirmed the directions the first waiter had given.

I was now walking around in the mall-like hallway. But the building seemed to be vanishing with each step I took. I suddenly found myself outside, on a slope of almost barren soil. The building still seemed to be vanishing piece by piece, until it was nothing more than a run-down, dirty-boarded house at the top of the slope. An Hispanic woman stood on the porch of the house.

I looked down at the ground. There was a pair of old, white sneakers. I picked up the sneakers. The house had now also disappeared. The only thing, apparently, that was left from the building was the pair of sneakers. And it was like something, some aspect of the building, had concentrated itself into the sneakers.

not quite hired; nephew's medical dilemma; a sculpture in new york

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a job interview. It was supposed to be a professional place, but it looked more like the backstage area of a theater. It seemed to be full of worktables and cluttered everywhere with colored fabrics and trinkets. There was one little office where my interviewer, MH, sat. The room was buried within the clutter of the rest of the place.

MH had decided that he wouldn't be able to hire me. He seemed to be disappointed in my interview. I walked away from the office, rather disappointed in myself and depressed. But only a few seconds later (though it may have felt, in some way, like it was a day or two later), MH walked out and implied that he would like to hire me after all.

MH set up some kind of desk space for me on one of the work tables by clearing off some of the piles of colored fabrics and laying down a laptop. MH hadn't quite told me he'd like me to work for him. Instead, he told me something like he needed me to stick around for a while. He said he needed some kind of data entered into a system before some event occurred, like the visit of some clients. He was just asking me if I could do this project as a favor to him. But I understood that if I did this project well, I'd probably stick around for even longer.

A couple other guys now started filtering into the room. They looked young, like recent college graduates. One of them seemed to be dressed in business casual clothes. But at least one other guy was dressed in a strange, but somewhat fashionable way. One of these guys was very short and pale. He had slightly shaggy, black hair. He wore pale, greyish jeans and a pale, greyish, denim jacket. Something else about his attire looked very clunky an 1980s-style.

The young men, when they saw me, seemed to be jealous of me, wondering whether I wasn't here to take away their jobs. I tried to make a point, apparently through my body language, that I was here to do a completely different job, not to take anybody's job.

To prove this, at one point, I stood up right when the grey denim boy was walking past me. I may have been planning to show him something. Instead, the young man became a little frightened of me and began walking backwards as I walked forward. But somehow we began talking, and eventually we were talking either about something we both liked (like some kind of art) or about some kind of project I'd now volunteered to help the grey denim boy with.

I may have been a little worried, now, about helping the grey denim boy with a project. It seemed like he was kind of weird. I didn't know if everybody else would think I was weird for helping this boy with something. But then I realized that most everybody else here also dressed weird. So nobody would think anything about it.

The grey denim boy and I had cleared off some of the clutter of colored fabrics from a work table. There was now a whole cookie sheet of sweet-looking desserts. The desserts were like scone-sized globs of maple, pecans, and sugar, all clumped and crystallized together. There wasn't any crust or pastry or anything attached to these sugary globs.

The whole team of workers was now, apparently, gathering together to have some kind of a team meal and meeting. We gathered at a table in the center of the room. There were little spaces cleared out for each of us, so we could sit down our meals, or desserts, and our laptops. But the clutter was so high that we couldn't see around it to the other people sitting at the table with us.

The meeting never seemed to start or finish. Instead, people seemed to take forever to sit down, and then they'd stand right back up and walk away. I sat at my space, waiting for instructions or something. I thought about eating my dessert. But I felt bad about doing so. I knew that eating too much during the day would make my body act weird. I was trying to figure whether I could somehow work eating the dessert into a schedule that would be okay for my body.

Dream #2

I was in an elevator with an older man. The man was white, stood tall, wore a nice business suit, and had fine, white hair. The elevator we were in was going straight up at first. But then it began going upward and forward, diagonally, like we were traveling in an elevator car, but along the tracks of an escalator.

We were, I knew, going up to the 23rd (or 28th?) floor. I knew that my youngest nephew had just been admitted to the hospital. He was sick, possibly with a pulmonary illness. The old man and I were coming to visit my nephew. I believe that we understood, at this point, that nobody else in the family knew about my nephew's condition, including my sister and my mom, who lived with and took care of my nephew.

The doctors wanted to give my nephew some medication. But the doctors didn't know what medication to give him. They apparently couldn't get a hold of my sister or mother, so they called me. The old man and I were now standing just outside the hospital.

I got the message from the doctors via text on my phone. I didn't know how to respond to it. I thought that before I responded to anything, it would be a good idea to try and get a hold of my mother and sister. After some trying, I may have gotten a hold of my mother and sister.

In fact, my sister may now have been sitting near me, on some brick ledge surrounding a raised planting area that held some small trees and shrubs. I may have tried to make a point to my sister that I hadn't been trying to control her life or her son's life by engaging in a conversation with the doctors.

I "said" (or just "felt to" my sister) that the doctors had contacted me, and that I was surprised they'd done so. I "said" that I had only been planning to respond to the doctors because I hadn't been able to get a hold of my sister or mom. I thought that if I couldn't get a hold of anybody, I'd have to respond. The situation seemed too important. It seemed like someone needed to make a decision sooner rather than later, to make sure my nephew was taken care of.

Dream #3

I was looking at a book of sculptures by Japanese artists. The artists all had a style very much like the style for which Takashi Murakami is famous: plastic-looking, cartoon-themed, and visually bubbly and complex. But a lot of the artists didn't color their works. The works would largely be all white.

The book had photos of these sculptures in stores all over the world. Some of the stores may have been cleared out to become temporary exhibit spaces for larger collections of art works. Other stores may have carried on with their business, with just one large piece of sculpture placed in the middle of a store.

The final photo I looked at was of a store I think I recognized as The Disney Store in New York City -- even though it was nothing like The Disney Store. It looked more like a bookstore. There were bookshelves spaced widely apart. The store was kind of small. The walls were barn-red. The ceilings were high. In the center of this store stood a tall, white pedestal with a small, white sculpture of a bulging-headed, Mickey Mouse-like character.

Even though I was looking at a book, the picture began moving panning toward the side, as if I were watching a video on a TV or computer. I felt like I knew the view I had been looking at. But now that the view was shifting, I was feeling less and less familiar with it. The idea of what place I was looking at had only slowly been dawning on me. Now I was losing my focus on what I was looking at.

At the same time, two girls, maybe both Asian girls, began talking near me. One of the girls was my friend. The other girl was my friend's friend, though she may have been my friend as well. My friend and I may have been on some kind of trip together. My friend and her friend were now talking about the various attractions in whatever city we were visiting. (Oddly enough, we may have been standing in the same place that the photo in the book was showing.)

I needed to get back to the first view this moving photo had shown. I put my finger down on the paper and swiped my finger over to the left. The photo, which had been panning off to the right, now moved left (I think). It now reached the original spot. This view looked mostly like the original view, even though I think there were some changes to the view that looked a little uncanny and frustrating to me.

I suddenly called out to the two girls, "Look! It's the Disney Store in New York! I can recognize it!" The girls may have looked at the photo for a moment, not really paying attention to what I was saying. Then they may have looked away. I had felt like it was really important for me to show that I knew the view. I was trying to prove to the girls that I had lived in New York, and that I knew the sights of New York. I was starting to think that nobody really believed anymore that I had ever lived in New York.

methodone novel; married

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on a bookselling website. I was looking at the cover for some novel about methodone use.

I clicked on the image of the book, which I think meant I would buy the book. But the next screen said that the book had been taken off the webiste. I knew this was probably because the book advocated something illegal.

Dream #2

My old friend H had come to Denver from New York. H and I got married.

We were now driving down a highway. I was probably driving. But I'm pretty sure I was on the passenger side of the car.

I felt like there was something very important for me to tell H. She may not have realized that we were married. But I couldn't figure out the words for telling H that we were now married.

whale bones; trampoline space launch; old friend on stairwell

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was out in some dark place. It felt like I was walking through city streets in the dark, just, perhaps, by the light of the moon. But it also felt like I was walking through a dark living room.

There was the feeling of the presence, or the threatened presence, of some man. He was a bad man, maybe some kind of criminal. I had to protect either myself or some people I knew against the man.

I was now looking out at some dark grey sky. I heard people in my head, one of them an adult woman, telling me how either I or someone else had managed to stop something bad from happening. I thought to myself that it was a good thing I'd listened to someone who'd told me something. If I hadn't listened, the bad incident wouldn't have been averted.

I now saw up in the sky a huge structure. It had the shape of a whale. But from tip to tip it looked like the ribs of a whale. At first the whale had been full of a substance like dim, golden light. But the dim, golden light was taken over by some gloppy, grey-black substance. I knew that that was good. The golden light was bad, and the black substance was good.

Dream #2

I was walking down a staircase. The wall to my left was made of a very nice, heavy wood. The wall to my right was either there or was made of some transparent material, like plexiglass or even some sort of netting.

Somehow I knew that down below, where I was heading by the staircase, there was some sort of trampoline exhibition going on. A bunch of people had won a few different trampoline jumping or dancing contests. Now they were here, gathered all together, to display their talents.

Most of the winners had been like 1950s style sexy girls. The girls had mostly won contests for how sexy they could do trampoline jumping/dancing. In my mind's eye I saw one of these girls: an older, heavy-looking blonde woman who wore a leotard of blue and silver sequins and some hat of the same material.

The woman did some dance where she's wiggle her legs really fast while she was in the air, like a shrimp swimming. I didn't find it sexy at all. The woman may have had a poodle with her.

I could hear, as if in my head, the event organizers, two older men, one of whom was my friend, talking about how I had won a trampoline contest. I thought that I'd also have to compete. I didn't want to do some silly, supposedly sexy dance. I also didn't know if I'd be able to show any real skill on the trampoline.

But I started some kind of an act in my head, rehearsing the moves I'd make. I knew I'd be able to carry everything out and make it look okay, as long as I kept everything simple. I hoped that keeping it simple wouldn't disappoint my audience.

But the event organizer who was my friend said that I wasn't going on after all. My friend said something like I was too tired to do the contest.

I imagined lifting upward on the trampoline. I looked upward. I could see up the side of some building in the daytime. I was then high up in the air. I may have been a couple thousand feet up in the air. I was in a space capsule, like the SpaceX Dragon. I may have been in there with another person.

Somehow we could see down below us, as if a huge portion of the capsule were just a window. We were flying through the air, as if the capsule were under its own jet control.

It was now suddenly like th capsule had its top, a big, wide circle, wide open. I sat leaning along the rim, my head hanging out of the capsule. We were flying kind of sideways. 

But I think the other guy may have tried to impress me by making the capsule go upside down. I was slightly disoriented. My entire field of view was taken up by the green landscape below. I also feared that I would soon have a hard time keeping myself secured against the wall of the craft, and that I would fall out.

We were now heading for a pond. This would be where we made our final descent. As we approached the pond, we flipped back upwards. When the capsule splashed into the pond, I feared that we would be submerged, and that the capsule would get filled with water and sink down to into the pond. But not a drop of water reached up over the rim of the capsule. We began floating, bobbing up and down with no problem.

I was now in a basement, watching a replay of this scene. The basement was like a bedroom. But instead of beds, the bedroom just had tons of blankets all over the place.

There was a young man, maybe 17 or 18 years old, in the bedroom with me. I had been laying on my stomach while watching the TV replay. I rolled over and turned back to the boy behind me. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching another TV.

I asked the young man how the inside of the capsule didn't get any water in it on the splashdown. The young man and I were still in the bedroom. But instead of being on blankets, we now seemed to be coming out of some object like a small, collapsed tent. The fabric of this tent-like thing was silver. And the bottom of the thing, the only thing with a hardness to it, was lens-shaped. This thing had been our space capsule.

The young man may have told me the capsule hadn't gotten any water in it because I'd done a good job of getting the capsule down. He definitely also told me that the capsules were built that way. He said they were ultra buoyant, so that they'd always float high enough for the capsules never to get any water in them. The boy then may have walked up a stairwell out of the basement. I may have followed.

It was now night. I was looking up the side of a building like a castle. I could hear people in my head talking about a number of space launches that had recently occurred. Many were of vehicles like the SpaceX vehicle. But others were of different companies' vehicles.

I was supposed to have been a part of the launches. But one of the guys organizing the launches, a man who was an astronaut and a friend of mine, had taken me out of the launches.

I could see the man in my mind's eye. He looked a little bit like Neil Armstrong. The man had told everybody I couldn't do a launch because I'd been scheduled for some kind of flight which would occur the next day. The man would be coming on this flight with me.

I was near some place like a lake. I started walking away from the tall building. I realized the man was right. I couldn't waste my energy on a launch if I was going to be doing a flight. In fact, I needed to conserve my energy much better in order to do this upcoming flight. And I shouldn't talk to anybody about the flight, either.

The sky was just becoming silvery blue in preparation for sunrise. I walked up some stone path on a wide slope. The stone path led to a house or villa. The villa was fenced all around with a stone wall.

I looked over my shoulder and to my right, down the slope. A small group of people were walking up toward the path up the slope. There were a couple horses with the people.

One of the horses, a beautiful, red-brown horse, spotted me. The people couldn't control the horse. It ran up the slope toward me. I didn't know whether the horse was kind or violent. I just turned around and kept walking up the slope, resigning myself to having the horse do whatever it was going to do to me.

The horse came up along my left side, slowly poking its head into my field of view. It kept on sticking out its tongue. It had a huge, awkward looking head and a big, fat tongue.

I took a chance and began petting the horse's head. I said, "Hi there, horsey," in a high-pitched, cooing voice like I might use when I talk to babies.

The people now came up from behind me. They drew the animal I'd been petting up beside me, too. The animal had a low, fat body. It kind of disoriented me at first. Then I realized that the animal was a cow.

We all headed into the villa through a thick, wooden gate in the stone wall fence. I was embarrassed by my mistaken perception. I told everybody, "I'm so sorry. I can't believe I called your cow a horse."

Dream #3

I was walking down a staircase in a bookstore. I was heading down into the basement. There were a lot of people on the stairwell. But almost everybody seemed to be heading up while I was heading down.

One of the people I saw heading up the staircase was one of my old best friends. I hadn't seen her in years. She had really short hair, almost in a boyish cut.

I was surprised when I first saw her. But I didn't say anything to her. A couple steps farther down I either said or thought of saying, "Hey!" to get my friend's attention.

At the bottom of the steps I stopped altogether. I half-turned, so that my left side was facing up the stairs. A lot of people were still heading upstairs. I thought for a moment of calling up the stairs to get my friend's attention.

dace joke; humped by zappa lookalike

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a big bedroom with one or two women. Both the women were very beautiful and very made up, almost like 1940s actresses -- or fetish models! They were actually college girls. They either had just graduated or were just about to graduate. There was some issue with one of the girls being just about to meet some other girl, possibly so they could engage in some creative endeavor together.

I turned around and walked toward the door. It now seemed like it was exactly one year later than the time it had been before I'd turned around. There was another woman sitting near some small dresser with a lamp. The woman seemed somehow to be using the dresser as a desk.

There was some discussion about how the first woman and the woman that she had been going to meet were now good friends. The seated woman told me this as if to say "didn't you know this already?" as if I'd asked some question about it.

I walked out into the living room, which was also really large. The room was really messy. It was like there had been some kind of party earlier on -- it was still dark outside -- and nothing had gotten picked up yet.

I was about to walk through the living room and into another room. This whole time I'd been talking with some young woman somewhere about her college graduation, which was just about to take place.

I stopped on the threshold between the living room and some dark room. I stood halfway in both rooms. I could see the woman I'd been talking to in the dark room, standing before a dresser and pulling on some clothes.

In the living room, one of my old friends, M, began making some kind of joke about the graduation party the girl was going to throw. Apparently she was going to throw the party here. Some amount of thought had gone into decorating the place for the party. But M was downplaying all the effort.

The main thing M was doing was playing out the scenario of some dopey, scratchy-voiced, bum-like guy saying all the things you'd need to make a party really classy. M, as the character, would list off one or two normal pieces of furniture, like a coffee table or a dresser. But then he'd veer off and start mentioning all kinds of weird, sometimes trashy, sometimes drug-related, items. One of these things was something called a "dace."

I was really amused by M's antics, even though I felt a little bad, thinking that the girl was probably a little annoyed and insulted by M downplaying her efforts to put together a nice party.

I joined in with M in the antics. The weird exchange M and I had -- both of us acting as the bum-like guy -- was so vivid that I could hear it. But I can't remember anything I said now.

Dream #2

I was in a mall with some guy. I was supposed to keep the guy with me: either making sure I followed him closely or making sure he followed me closely.

The guy was probably in his early forties. He was maybe 190cm or 195cm tall, a little heavy. He had worn out skin and a kind of baggy face. His hair was short, slightly feathery, and blonde, but going grey quickly. The guy wore a blue shirt with a mild, business-casual plaid-like crisscrossing of darker blue lines and a pair of khaki slacks.

The mall was somewhat busy. We had walked out of one store and were now walking to a point where two wide corridors joined into a staircase which led up to one wide corridor.

It had been difficult to keep track of the guy in the corridors, though I'd managed to do it. He'd be up in front of me, then back behind me, then up in front of me all over again. But I think we'd been talking with each other, which had helped me keep some orientation regarding the man.

But the stairwell leading up to the next corridor was extremely busy, if only for a moment. It was like a huge rush of people were all coming down the stairs while I was trying to go up the stairs. I had been having troubles, I think, keeping my own orientation, not to mention keeping track of the man. But now my own orientation was completely obliterated.

I got control of myself. I was only three steps up the staircase. I looked down to the foot of the staircase. I assumed that was the last place I'd seen the man. But the man wasn't there.

The staircase was relatively empty now. I looked past the bottom of the staircase, down the corridor adjacent to the corridor the man and I had come from. I didn't see him among any of the people in the corridor. But I thought he might have gone into one of the shops in the corridor. I thought I should probably walk past all the shops, looking in to see if I could find the man.

But something, either my own thoughts or the voice of some person a couple steps up from and behind me, who seemed to have seen the man, told me that I should actually go up the steps to look for the man.

That made sense. The man, if separated from me, would, I assumed, have kept going in the direction we'd been going in together before we'd gotten separated. After all, our common goal, it seemed to me, was more his goal than mine, even though I'd had to be the one to stick with him to make certain we got to the goal. I could even imagine the man standing on the left side of the corridor, near a shop one or two shops away from the top of the staircase.

I went up the staircase. Time became a little bit jumbled.

For a little while I was in some store like a department store or a drug store, near the makeup sectiong. I may have been talking to a woman behind the counter, standing on a high up platform. I may have been ashamed while I was talking to the woman, like I'd really wanted to wear the makeup she sold, but like I really didn't want her to know that and think I wasn't a boy she could be sexually interested in.

I was then in some big room -- not like a bedroom, but some brick walled room that felt like some kind of art studio, or even an old record store that had been hollowed out. But something about it still felt like a bedroom.

I was in the room with some guy. There may have been another person, possibly also a man, in the room. But he seemed only to be observing, not acting in any way. And he may have disappeared at some point.

The first guy and I went through some scenario together. It was like the guy was trying to figure out something about a girl: maybe why his girlfriend had left him or why he wasn't able to get a specific girl to like him or how to tell a specific girl he liked her. But I had something to do with the woman. It was like I was at fault for the woman not being in love with the man. I didn't know if the man knew this. I suspected he did. But I wasn't going to mention it unless he did.

Now the scenario changed a little bit. So did the guy. The guy had at first been kind of sloppy, wearing a white t-shirt with some black-printed rock band art on it and some kind of khaki jacket. Both the shirt and jacket were in terrible disarray. The guy had been a little round-bellied and round faced, with pretty short hair done in a tightish, square style.

Now the guy was wearing basically the same clothes. But he was really tall and really skinny. He had long, frizzy, black hair, a linty-looking mustache and goatee, and lots of stubble. He had dark, deep-set eyes and bushy eyebrows. He kind of looked like Frank Zappa, with a little bit of Joey Ramone's look, too.

The two of us were still going through some scenario related to the girl who was the guy's love interest. But now there was also some Smashing Pumpkins song playing in the background. Somehow the scenario got mixed up with a discussion about the song -- as if we were actually writing this song together as we heard it, or as if we were trying to figure out how to write a song like this together.

I'm not sure how, but the scenario had worked its way to where the guy had me on the ground, on my back. He was beginning to hump me. He may even have unzipped my pants to reveal that instead of underwear I was wearing a baby's diaper.

I wasn't attracted to the guy. He was pretty dirty looking. But it felt good when he humped me, especially when I could feel the diaper I was wearing pressing against me. I was worried that enjoying this stiuation probably made me gay. But I somehow got myself to believe that even though I was enjoying this guy dry humping me right now, I wouldn't normally enjoy having sex with guys.

I was probably about to climax. I could feel my erection pushing against my diaper. The Smashing Pumpkins song got louder and louder. The man and I may have been singing the song together. I may still have been trying to figure out if we were making this song or only listening to it.

fushizen na boy; rock star business card; TV truck crash; garbage bag nostalgia

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was either myself or some guy kind of like me, but maybe with paler skin, more stubble, and a knobbier, but still skinny, body.

I was walking through a crowd of people. The people were all heading off somewhere in the same direction, kind of like they had gotten off the train and were now heading to work.

I was walking in the opposite direction. But as I moved through the crowd, they all seemed to part for me. It wasn't like they were paying attention to me. They didn't even seem to be aware of me. They just moved out of my way.

All this time I was doing the arm movements from the chorus section of the j-pop band Perfume's song "Fushizen na Girl."

Watch "Perfume Fushizen Na Girl with Lyrics *Q*" on YouTube

I was kind of shocked that I knew how to do these movements. But I was also worried that people would know I was doing dances from a girl's song. I wondered if they would think I was weird.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a brewery-grill kind of bar. The place was really big, with a light, airy feel to it, and with brick walls. But it was packed with people. There was something like a singing contest going on. But even though the atmosphere was packed and a little competitive, there seemed to be very little tension. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.

The singing contest was apparently for amateurs. But there were some professional rock singers who were also performing as part of the show.

From behind me came the voice of a woman who was pretty insistent about the fact that she used to be a rock star. She was kind of tall and kind of overweight. She had kind of short, really frizzy, brown-black hair. She looked almost like a guy wearing an afro wig and trying to pass himself off as a woman. The insistent woman seemed to be making rather matter-of-fact demands for something because she'd been a rock star. But I didn't think she was a big deal.

The MC for the show was also a famous rock singer. She looked like the Malaysian pop star Atilia Haron, except with dark black and blonde hair and a darker complexion. She was very kind with everybody in the audience. I got the feeling that she thought of herself as a kind of mother and mentor for all the contestants.

I had originally been standing near the front of the audience and near the center of the stage. But now I was sitting on a stool kind of away and off to the right of the stage. There was a good amount of open space in front of me, like a little clearing where people might dance. But all around that space the crowd was still full.

But across the empty space I saw another woman. She sat on a stool as well. She had her elbows propped up on the stage like the stage was a counter. She looked like a mix between Atilia and the Japanese R&B singer Toko Furuuchi. I knew she was really famous. But nobody seemed to be paying attention to her.

Somebody, possibly on stage, had been speaking with this woman, possibly letting her know that her turn to perform was coming up. But she seemed really shy about performing, for some reason.

But now from behind me came the voice of the insistent woman with the frizzy, black hair. Somebody like an event staff member had asked her who she was, possibly so the staff member could get the insistent woman coordinated for some part of the performance.

But the woman said in her normal loud but matter-of-fact way, "I don't like to say out loud who I am, because I don't want people getting all excited about me and following me all over the place. I'd rather just give you my card and let you read who I am. That way it stays secret and quiet."

I knew this was silliness. The woman spoke loud to draw attention to herself. And she used the secrecy to get people interested in figuring out who she might be.

But the woman now handed me her business card. I was, I somehow knew, supposed to hand the card off to the person the woman had been speaking to. This person was up on stage.

I reflexively, naturally took the card and brought it over to the pretty girl on the stool near the stage. The girl probably then handed the business card up to some guy on stage. During the exchange, I caught a glimpse of the insistent woman's first name -- something like "Marisol."

Dream #3

I was in a car with my mom. My mom was driving. I was in the front passenger seat. We were driving along a highway during the daytime.

I had been speaking with my mom about something like giving her $75. This was probably money I owed her. But I had felt it was important to give my mom this money because it seemed like she really needed it for something. I felt like I had just barely gotten the money on time so that my mom could do whatever she'd needed to do.

But now that I'd given my mom the money (or now that it was settled that I'd give her the money?), my mom began talking about some big TV she and my sister were planning on getting. The $75 would put them right in the range of getting the TV.

My mom talked about this TV like it was so great. But I felt betrayed. I thought my mom had really needed the money. But now she was just using it to go out and buy a TV. I was getting anrgier and angrier. I felt like I was about to start yelling at my mom.

We seemed to be getting off the highway, heading onto some exit ramp. There was a huge semi-truck in front of us. The truck seemed to stop all of the sudden.

We had been going really fast. My mom tried to stop the car as soon as she saw the truck stop. But the car was going too fast. We were veering toward the truck's rear end. I knew we were definitely going to crash. But as we approached the truck, I hoped the crash would only be minor.

Dream #4

I was in some place like a kind of dimly lit kitchen. The kitchen seemed to be pretty quiet. But it felt like some kind of party was winding down in some other room. There were no lights on in the kitchen. The only light seemed to be coming from this other room.

I was having some conversation in my head. I was probably talking through some old and recent memories. I thought about how I'd recently come back home after living in New York City. But now I was thinking about moving back to New York City.

I was thinking about the sadness this might cause for the people close to me in my hometown. But I was trying to justify to these people, in my head, why I needed to move back. As I was doing this I was either licking or thinking about licking the orange dishsoap that had dripped and slimed down the side of a large dishsoap bottle that sat near the sink.

I was now standing over a plastic garbage can. I was in a kitchen. But this kitchen was big and well-lit. My old friend R and his wife L may have been sitting at a table in the kitchen.

I was tying up bags that were in the garbage can. On the left side of the can there seemed to be three bags. On the right side there was just one bag. The three bags on the left side were pretty easy to tie up. But they were kind of like grocery bags, way too small for an outdoor-sized garbage can like this one. The garbage in all the bags seemed to be recyclable materials, like plastic 2-liter soda bottles.

I was having a conversation, either out loud or in my head, with R. It may have had to do with disappointing my family or making them sad. But my R was also trying to work some angle into the conversation. He was looking for some way to take advantage of me, or to stop me from having success in anything I did. I had to monitor everything I was saying very carefully, I felt, so that I didn't say anything to give R an advantage.

I may have started talking with L as well. It seemed a lot nicer to be talking with her, even though I was probably still wary.

I had now moved to tying up the garbage bag on the right side of the garbage can. This bag was really full, and it was a lot harder to tie it shut. I struggled with it for a while, never, I think, quite getting the thing shut.

writing someone else's report; rogemmstein

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like a living room with some friend, possibly my old friend R. My friend knew that I was about to go meet with some man who wrote papers.

My friend wanted me to approach the writer to see if the writer would write a paper, or parts of a paper that my friend had been assigned to write. My friend may possibly have thought that if the man at least wrote some of the difficult passages, it would be easy for my friend to finish the rest.

I was now in a different room, also like a living room, with the man. I was about to ask the man if he would be able to write the report, or the passages in the report, for my friend, even though I felt bad about asking something like this.

But before I could ask, the man started talking about something, probably about how busy he was on some project. I knew this meant the man would not be able to help write anything for my friend. In fact, I felt like I was here to help the man, not to ask favors of him.

Dream #2

There may have been some kind of accident or disaster involving buildings in some town. Someone may have needed to write a report about the incident. But I knew that the report was still missing a lot of details. Nevertheless, I knew that most of the report could just be written with stock material, and that the actual details could be filled in later.

Now I saw a street corner in the downtown area of some city. I was looking at a three- or four-story, white-painted concrete building. There was a wooden sign over the door with a name like "Rogemmstein" burned into it. The name Rogemmstein was a condensation, I knew, of the names Rogers and Hammerstein. There may have actually been one more name condensed in there.

Some bad incident had occurred in this building. It may have been something like a single or multiple murder, or it may have been something like an accident with the material of the building or a natural disaster.

I knew a report needed to be written on the incident. But there were still a lot of details missing regarding the incident. But I knew that I could write most of the report from standard stock material. Then, when the details of this incident started coming in, I could fill in the blanks of the report with these details.

sabbath; netflix; a friend in need is a friend on hold

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in either a bedroom or a bathroom. It was night, and there was incandescent light on in the room. I was standing up near a niche in a wall. I was facing the wall as if I were standing and urinating into a toilet. But I don't think I was really going to the bathroom. On the walls before me and on my right were bookshelves and possibly a couple of small posters. On the wall to my left was a window with its curtains drawn, exposing the black night.

The thought came into my head that I was supposed to be observing the sabbath. I was supposed to be taking a time of rest. It seemed like it was something that had just come up, something like a holiday, but an emergency holiday.

I knew it was probably true that I needed to observe the sabbath -- possibly even for physical reasons. But I didn't really want to. I felt like I had too much to do already. I couldn't take a break now. And others would think I was lazy.

But I now heard a woman's voice, probably the voice of a female preacher, Marilyn Hickey, telling me to observe the sabbath, from today through Tuesday. I knew that this demand was actually written into an old book of teachings, which the preacher had often used as a source for lessons in her own books. It wasn't the Bible, but it was an old book of wisdom. Knowing that the command had come from this book, I understood I probably couldn't argue with it.

Dream #2

I had probably gotten a bag of mail, maybe from my mother. The bag may have been like a small bookbag. I had to shuffle through some of the mail. I may have been looking for something in particular. But, by accident, I found two red mailers for Netflix disks. I had two Netflix CDs I wanted to return, but I hadn't had any mailers to send them in. I was really happy to have these mailers.

Dream #3

I was by myself in a big, nice apartment. I was in some side room that seemed partly like a kitchen and dining room, but that also seemed to edge out into something like a sunroom or a patio. I sat at a smallish, round, wooden dining table, with my chair's back turned to the table, so that I faced out to see the kitchen counters.

The space off to my right was airy and open, like there were a lot of big, wide windows. Off to my left was a doorway that led into a big, open space, like a huge living room. It was probably late afternoon. The sky was dark grey, like it was getting ready to storm.

I was on the phone with one of my old bosses, whom I now think of as a good friend, EB. I was talking to EB about my current job. I told him that I was actually having a lot of fun with the job, and that I found the work really exciting. But, I told him, I wasn't getting enough money to live on. I told him I figured that for the time being I'd be okay. I'd never been too terribly worried about money.

EB told me, "Really? If I had to eat, if I had to have food, I'd do whatever I needed to get it. Having enough money is really important to me." I could tell EB was partly saying this because he admired my ability to do without a lot of money. But I could also tell that he was worried I wasn't doing enough to go for what I needed.

So I told EB, "Well, I've actually been thinking about applying for positions at some funds out here. You know, something like what I was doing before. There are a few good ones out here. I'm wondering if you know anybody you could put in a good word for me for at ----- or -----?" (I named two specific firms.)

EB had managed to put me on hold right as I asked him to help me. I couldn't tell whether he'd done it on accident. But I assumed he had. I thought he'd pull me right back off hold. While I was on hold, I heard a couple of contemporary R&B type songs, which I found really annoying.

I stood up, a little impatient, and walked out toward the sun room-like area. I only walked up to the threshold (? - if there was one) of that area, then turned to my left, turned around, and walked back toward the dining table I'd been sitting at.

For this entire time, I'd been on hold. It now occurred to me that EB had put me on hold on purpose, not by accident. But I still justified his having put me on hold. I told myself that EB had probably suddenly had to take care of some business, so that he'd had to put me on hold suddenly. As soon as his business was taken care of, he'd talk with me again. Then I could ask him for help.

But now, as I approached the table to sit down again, I could start to hear EB's voice. It was less like he had put me on hold and more like he had just sat the phone down near some speaker playing really loud, crappy, contemporary R&B. Now I heard EB talking with some other guy about me, very faintly, in the background. EB was saying something about me that wasn't flattering at all. But I can't remember what it was.

great grandmother suggests college

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom on an upper floor of some small building, either a big house or a small apartment building. The room I was in was a rented room or a furnished apartment. Most of my view was taken up by my bed. All the bed had on it was a lot of white sheets. The rest of the room had a lot of white in it as well. But the room was kind of dim, as if only one light were on, somewhere behind me.

I got the feeling that my landlady (possibly an old landlady from my waking life) was coming for me. Possibly I hadn't paid the rent, or possibly I had done something bad in the room that my landlady needed to speak to me about. But I really didn't want to have to face my landlady. So I left as quick as I could, to avoid her.

Now, having walked away from the room, I was out on my great grandmother's lawn. The light was like late afternoon: a kind of cool blue-grey. I was trying to get away from the building (which wasn't there anymore) as quickly as I could. But my great grandma opened the front door of her house and called for me.

I turned around, still thinking that the person I was hearing was my landlady. I looked in through the shade of the doorway and saw my great grandma. She looked younger and healthier than she had been when she died -- maybe like she was in her early seventies, rather than in her late nineties. She was wearing a small, white sweatshirt.

Finally I realized where I was and who I was talking to. I turned (reluctantly?) and walked back toward my great grandma's house. My great grandma had me come inside. She sat me down in the living room. I sat in the chair she usually sat in while she was alive, and she sat in the chair to the right of that chair.

My great grandma asked me how I was, and then started talking to me about my life. She seemed to be suggesting to me that I go back to college. She asked me something like, "Have you ever considered Pace?"

The only Pace I knew of was Pace University in New York City. I hadn't actually considered that school. I didn't think I would ever consider the school, but I didn't want to tell my great grandma that, and seem to be contradicting her. My great grandma may already have seemed a little frustrated with me somehow, possibly because I was definitely being wishy-washy about going back to school.

I now noticed that my bookbag was sitting on the footstool in front of the chair. It had popped wide open. A new package of baby's diapers sat positioned about halfway out of the bag. I knew the diapers were mine -- like I had bought them for myself to wear.

I didn't want my great grandma to see the diapers and know they were for me. I tried to hide them. But now there was another new package of diapers, in a kind of thin, plastic shopping bag, right next to my bag. There were two big, new packages of diapers right in front of me! The package coming from my bookbag was colored red. The one in the shopping bag was green.

I wanted to put the diapers on right now. But I didn't want my great grandma to see me doing so. I was seriously thinking of doing something like hiding behind a chair so that I could change into a diaper without leaving the living room. But I didn't think that would work. I was half-lazily (like in a reverie) and half-frantically trying to figure a way to put a diaper on.

But suddenly I was in my great grandma's bathroom. I figured I must have gotten there by making some excuse to my great grandma about how I needed to go to the bathroom. I had all the bags with me, and I was putting on a diaper.

I looked at my diapered bottom in some (???) mirror. I noticed that the diaper-bottom was torn. It was like the leggings of the diaper were like the stitching around the leggings of panties, and that all the padding of the diaper had pulled away from the legging. Parts of the backing may have been shredding a bit as well, creating a striped or netted look.

I was now in another place. I may have just been with a group of friends, taking care of some task. We were now coming back home, as if we all lived in the same dorm-like apartment. I was rushing down to my room in the basement with a feeling of happiness, the brisk excitement of having been out with friends.

The basement felt full of activity, like there were a number of people who lived down there, and like they all shared some kind of common space like a living room, along one wall of which were the doors to the individual bedrooms. I ran into my room, but I left the door half-open.

I looked at myself in a full-length, kind of narrow mirror on the wall. I realized I needed to change my clothes quick! I couldn't quite believe it, but I was dressed like a girl! I wore a tiny, lavender-colored skirt, a baby blue shirt, and something like white nylons or fishnet stockings. I was also wearing a diaper, which I may have peed in. The diaper was visible from under the skirt. My body may also have been the body of a skinny, teenage girl, even though I was still myself, and a guy.

I knew I needed to change before anybody saw me. (It didn't occur to me that, if I looked like this coming into my room, everybody I was out with must have seen me already.) But as I was changing, my brother may have come into the room. His only reaction to me may have been that I needed to stop screwing around. He was impatient for us to get somewhere. And my slowness was really making him disappointed in me.

design subway; friend's boss sneaks up

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on a subway train in New York City. The train was only partly filled with people. A young woman on the train was trying to figure out the stop she could get off at. She was speaking with a thin, black woman in her thirties.

The young woman kept saying, "Design! Design!" a bit urgently, like she was afraid she couldn't be heard.

The black woman probably kept saying, "8th Street. 8th Street."

The black woman told the young woman to get out at a certain stop, which the young woman probably did. I got off, too, not because I needed to get off there, but because I wanted to make sure the woman found her way okay. The subway station was probably supposed to be the Union Square station. It felt like it. It was really crowded, and I could barely see anything.

I thought back to what the black woman had said. I'd figured she'd been right. By "design," I figured the young woman must have meant the Cooper Union school. That was down on 8th Street. So the young woman would have to get off the train here, then transfer to another train down to 8th Street.

The woman was still wandering around near me, a bit confused. She seemed like she didn't want to believe what the black woman had told her. So I went up to the woman and told her that she should get on the next local train on the platform we were on, then go down to 8th Street.

I thought this over a bit more and realized that maybe I was wrong. The train line we were on would drop the woman off a couple blocks west of where she wanted to be. But there was another train arriving, a 6-train, on the opposite platform. That would drop her of right in front of the Cooper Union.

I quickly told the woman, "Run over there! You can still catch it!" The woman ran up the stairs from this platform, over to the other platform. I kept watching the doors of the 6-train, hoping they wouldn't close.

As the woman ran down the stairs, I noticed her clothes for the first time. Her clothes seemed a bit like little girls' clothes. She wore a small, turquoise colored skirt, a white shirt, and canvas shoes with really thick, brightly colored socks. She had pale skin and dark brown hair.

The woman actually made it to the train. But as soon as she walked in the doors, she walked out quickly. She seemed a little bothered by something on the train. A few people were also getting off the train with the woman. They all seemed a little disturbed. I wondered what could have upset them. I imagined that a dead body was just lying on the train.

By this time I had wandered up a small staircase, only two or three steps tall, that actually crossed over the tracks and across to the opposite platform. I realized I could have told the woman about this staircase, instead of having her run all the way up, over, and down. But now I looked over to my right. The woman was coming back toward me. She said that that train had actually been the wrong one. I realized she was right.

I was now up above ground, having at some point walked up the steps from the station. It was night. I was out in some kind of plaza area, which was only dimly lit by orange streetlamps. I sat down on a long bench. My good friend H stood before me. There were a few other people around us.

I started asking H, who is Japanese, about some Japanese words. I told her about a song the words were in. H seemed very interested in the song (she never is interested in waking life). H actually started quoting some lines she thought I might not be aware of. They included "ai no" and "omou," but I forget the rest.

We then discussed some line in a song that went something like "kogomiru moromiru mou." I wasn't familiar with any of those words. I was pretty sure I'd never heard them before.

Dream #2

I was at work. I was in "my cubicle," which was actually the cubicle facing my cubicle in waking life. My old friend MK was in my waking life cubicle. He was with a female friend of his. The rest of the office seemed to be completely empty.

MK was complaining about his boss, who was actually someone from my job IWL, JP. MK complained that JP was always coming up with useless projects for him to do, just to keep him working. MK's friend giggled and asked MK if he wasn't worried about talking bad about his boss.

MK replied with a big long speech to show he wasn't afraid of his boss hearing what he had to say. He then imitated what his boss would say if he'd ever heard MK talking bad about him. Part of this imitation included some statement about how the boss seldom even showed up on Mondays but how, when he did, he was always really late.

As MK was giving this speech, I saw his boss, JP, sneaking around to MK's cubicle from the opposite side. My view actually seemed to follow JP all the way around, until he reached MK's cubicle. Then my view stopped, and it was like I was laying on the floor, or sitting on the floor, like a little kid would.

But I knew that JP had reached MK as soon as MK had gotten to making fun of JP for never coming in on Mondays. JP tried to surprise MK. But MK caught JP. MK said something like, "Ah! You caught me talking bad about you!" in some kind of falsetto-whiny voice to show that, even though he felt bad for talking bad, he still didn't think it was a big deal, and he still wasn't worried about anything JP might do to him.