cemetery security

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was standing out at a mausoleum. It may have been late in the day, after sunset. The sky may have been a dim grey-blue. The mausoleum was a two- or three-story building, with a rectangular, cantilevered design, with a couple staircases made out of porous, white stone. There was a big, tall window in the center of the facade. Two staircases went up the building on either side of the tall window.

All along in front of the building was a plaza, also made of the porous, white stone. There may have been a rectangular pond somewhere along the plaza. Off to my right and left may have been asphalt paths on rolling hills, obscured by smaller structures and manicured, juniper-like shrubs.

My mom now stood out with me on the plaza. She may have been looking for a good place to put the remains of her mother, who had recently died. But my mom was reluctant to put my grandma in any cemetery. Every neighborhood with a cemetery seemed to be a bad neighborhood. My mom was afraid the people in the neighborhood would steal my grandma's remains or vandalize her gravesite.

I tried to convince my mom that this place, however, was good. This cemetery was part of a chain of cemeteries. I'd visited other cemeteries in this chain, maybe even in a forgotten past of this dream. I knew that the cemeteries all had a very good, very covert security system. In fact, I knew, the cemeteries all made a little, pleasant game out of tricking thieves and vandals into thinking they were safe, and then catching them on video, so they could be prosecuted.

I knew that security cameras were all over the building, pointing out at the plaza. I tried to point out some of the security cameras. I knew where they should be, given my inspection of the other cemeteries, which were basically identical. But I couldn't locate the cameras.

The only camera I could find, standing out in the plaza, was a camera on the far back wall of the atrium behind the tall window of the building. It seemed like that camera wouldn't give my mom much comfort: it was so far back that it wouldn't give a very good view of the identity of a thief or vandal.

But I tried to show my mom that the main thing was, a person could see the images put out by the camera at any time, from a computer or mobile device. The person could then alert the cemetery, who would take action against the thief or vandal. But I suddenly had no ability to articulate this, and I was just pointing to my phone, searching for the right words to say.

My mom and I were now inside the atrium, near the back wall. There were a father-like man and one or two other members of the father's family with him, near us. They may just have gotten off a nearby elevator.

Looking out the window, I was able to pull up my phone and pull up an image from the security camera on the back wall of the atrium. I told my mom that she could get images from the other security cameras as well.

Now my view, and the situation, changed. I was floating up into the air at a really fast pace, into a black night sky. But the sky was more like a sound stage, and the land I flew over was more like the landscape of a model train set. I flew higher and higher, until I was in outer space, which may have been some cartoony, blue backdrop of swirls of pure-white stars.

I now began descending back toward earth. The first view I had of the earth was like a cartoon view of the earth. But as I descended, the view became more like that of a model train set again. But all the elements of the landscape were like ragged, slimy toys, like toys that had recently been chewed and otherwise mishandled by children.

I knew there was a crime boss, perhaps of some Asian crime gang, out to get me. I knew something that would prove the crime boss' guilt, and the boss didn't want me to tell it. So he and a couple other gang members were going to trick me, with kindness, into some trap, and then kill me.

As I floated down toward the model of the cemetery, which seemed to be positioned among city buildings and apartment complexes, I started trying to think of nice ways I could address the crime boss and his henchmen, so they would think I liked them, wouldn't inform on them, and, possibly, even had no idea about whatever incriminating fact it was I knew.

chainworm; i'm sorry mom

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some vague space, maybe like a common area or a cafeteria for a university. The space may have been white or cream and blue. I wasn't quite there -- it was more like my view was floating through it, while also vaguely being somewhere else.

I had probably taken my FINRA Series 7 test recently. I hadn't done as well as I'd wanted to, but I'd gotten much better than a passing grade. But now AB, one of the heads of the company I currently work for (which doesn't have anything to do with stocks, the subject of the Series 7), told me I needed to take my test. I was a little frustrated. It was like AB was completely unaware I'd already taken my test.

As AB told me this, my view floated downward, through some den- ski lodge-like area, down through the floor of that area, and into a big basement that also looked a little like a common area or study area in a university. I was all by myself here, and I may have felt trapped here somehow. I alternately sat on the floor and before a long, but short, counter.

I had two books before me. Both books were study books for the test. Both books were tall and wide, though not very thick. The book on the right had writing in it, like test questions. The book on the left was full of three-dimensional, geometrical diagrams.

I reflected on these books. I really didn't want to take the test again. But I felt like that was really the only way I convince AB I'd ever taken it in the first place. I felt kind of lazy for not taking the test. I knew if I took the test again, I could do a lot better. AB would be please by that. But I also knew that I'd already, from my previous score, gotten myself into the top ten percent of the people who'd taken the test. Couldn't AB be satisfied with that?

My view was now floating through a suburban street, but only like I was vaguely there. It was like, somehow, I was still, vaguely, in the basement. I was also carrying on a conversation with AB, or remembering a conversation with AB.

I had a tickling in the back of my throat. I coughed, then reached into the back of my throat and pulled out a string of phlegm. I wanted to pull out the whole string of phlegm. It was really annoying. I didn't want more of it to come back up my throat and annoy me more.

But as I continued pulling the string, it became a thin, dull, gold or brass chain. I was a little surprised by this. I knew that the chain was something organic: either something my body had created or a foreign organism that had gotten into me.

As I kept pulling the chain out, it got larger and larger. Pretty soon it was a thick chain, coated in something like black and grey phlegm. I started to get the idea that the chain was actually something like a tapeworm. I wanted to get the tapeworm out of my body altogether. As I continued to pull, the chain may finally have taken on a fleshy appearance, something like my conception of a tapeworm.

Dream #2

My mom was in the hospital. My brother and sister and I, and possibly my grandmother (who, in waking life, has only recently died), were standing around my mom's bed.

I somehow got a look at the back of my mom's head. There was a chunk maybe an inch wide out of the base of my mom's skull. This was the result of some kind of degenerative disease my mom had, maybe something to do with her heart.

Even though everybody else was around, my mom somehow spoke just to me, maybe using a guarded kind of speech, to indicate that the doctors had told her that the disease she was suffering from was about to overtake her. My mom knew she was going to die.

This had all happened rather suddenly. Something about the whole situation may also have been my fault, as if my neglect of my mother had allowed a physical situation to overwhelm my mother, giving the disease a chance to spread rapidly.

My mom knew this, and she gave me a weak, judgmental, but patient look with just her eyes. The rest of her face was blank, as if my mom's mental functions really weren't there anymore, or as if my mom were too sad or resigned to do much more than look me in the eye.

I was overwhelmed with guilt and full of sadness at the thought of my mother's approaching death. I grabbed my mom's right hand. There was some kind of sore or boil on the back of the hand. But I pressed my forehead against my mom's hand and wept deeply.

fetish-dress thrift shop; goodbye, grandma

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked into a clothing store or thrift shop with my mother. The store was dim, as if no lights were on in the store and the only light was the light coming in from outdoors. The store felt kind of busy with people.

My mom was, I think, heading to a fitting room to try on some clothes. I was following her, but I got distracted by a rack of clothes near the fitting room. There was a pink gingham dress with a belled out skirt, almost like a cosplay dress, on the rack. The rack was tall, so that the knee-length skirt hung just above my eye level. I was really turned on by the dress and I wanted to try it on, but I didn't want my mom to know I liked wearing dresses, especially sissy-style dresses like this one.

But I continued looking through the rack. The rack was long and nearly empty, so that all the dresses were widely spaced. There was another dress with a pink, gingham style. It had a long skirt in back, but the front of the skirt was sectioned away, as if some other piece of clothing were supposed to be placed underneath it. I felt like this dress must have been intended for fetish, as the shortness of the front seemed to imply a sexual readinesss.

I turnes around the end of the rack and walked along the other side, which was closer to the fitting room. One dress caught my eye. It was like a ballet dress, with a top like a spaghetti-strap tank-top and a tutu that spread out flat and wide. This dress struck me at first as being for a little girl. But then it struck me as being more like a fetish outfit, a sissy's outfit.

The last outfit that caught my eye could hardly be called a dress. It was like a couple of hula hoops connected by a thin skein of gauzy, pink fabric. There was a red sphere near the top of the hoops. I had the feeling that this "outfit" was supposed to express something about atomic physics. But it was also supposed to be a girly, sissyish outfit. I couldn't even figure out how to put the outfit on!

Now my boss JE walked out of the fitting room. It was like he, instead of my mother, had been in there the whole time. We began walking toward the exit of the store. I may have worried about what JE would think of me if he knew that I was into wearing the dresses I'd been looking at. I thought that JE must already have seen me looking at the dresses.

Dream #2

I was with my mother and grandmother in a room like a living room or the waiting room of a hospital. The light was dim and warmly yellow. My grandmother and I sat on a couch. I faced my grandma, who sat huddled up in blankets, maybe sitting cross-legged underneath the blankets. My mom sat somewhere behind me.

My grandma was telling me about an operation she was going to have. She was speaking strangely about this operation, as if she had already died during the surgery, or as if it were almost certain that she would die. She mentioned some of the details about the surgery, which would be on her heart, and why death during the surgery was almost a forgone conclusion.

I didn't want to believe that things were that bad. I wanted to believe there was hope. I said some positive things, hoping to get myself and my grandmother to believe that she would survive/had survived the operation.

But my grandmother stopped me. She said her heart was in really bad condition. She may have told me that the left half of her heart was already or nearly dead. She told me that if she awoke during the operation she would tell the doctors, "Give me the milk!" The milk was, apparently, a chemical that doctors would give their patients to help them die.

I now knew that even my grandma wanted to die. She was resigned and calm about the whole thing. But I was still sad. I said, "Oh, Grandma..." and caressed my grandma's face. My grandma tried to comfort me by touching the hand that caressed her face. But now I realized I was caressing my grandma's face with my foot, not my hand!

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.

grandma comes to my house

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in my apartment. My grandmother was at the door. I knew my grandma wasn't supposed to be there. She was supposed to be staying at home, because she was sick.

I didn't want to let my grandma into the apartment. I thought that if my mom found out I had let my grandma into the house she would get mad at me for having encouraged my grandma to be too active while she was sick. But my grandma barged her way into my house, anyway.

My grandma slowly walked through my kitchen and into the bathroom. I really did not want my grandma to see my apartment. My place wasn't dirty. I kept everything picked up. But it was largely empty of furniture, devoid of anything that would make the place feel comfortable. And I hadn't vacuumed in a long time.

My grandma looked at something in my shower stall. It was like there may have been a medicine cabinet inside my shower stall. My grandma may have put some medicine into the cabinet or pulled out some medicine or some kind of soap or shampoo or made some comment about how I needed some kind of medicine.

My grandma may then have tried to go into either my living room or my bedroom. But I really didn't want her to see either of those places. Somehow we managed to stop back on the threshold of the kitchen. My grandma held up a piece of paper, like a medical record. She accidentally dropped it. I watched it fall to the ground.

incipient possession

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lake panic

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked along a concrete path that went around a lake in a small natural area. I was coming from the right end of the lake, and I was walking clockwise around the lake. It seemed to be late afternoon. The sun seemed to have gone down, and the atmosphere was a silvery, pale blue. The lake was bordered by a small slope that came down to the sidewalk and was covered in dry, tan grass, so that I couldn't quite see the lake.

I may have been singing or whistling a little tune to myself when I saw three coyotes or wolves walking in a row near the edge of the lake. The coyotes didn't seem very mean, but I was afraid of them. I had just come from an area of the natural area where humans had been attacked, maybe by a big feline or canine. I worried that making the wrong move could set these three coyotes off in the same way the other animals had been set off, so that they'd attack me.

A shrill, loud whistle, like a steam whistle or an alarm whistle, sounded off in the distance, possibly to my left, away from the lake. The whistle shocked me, but it terrified the coyotes, who jumped into the lake to defend themselves. The coyotes swam in fear toward the center of the lake.

The noise had stopped. But now whole droves of different kinds of animals were flushing out of the lands of the natural area and jumping into the lake, swimming into the lake in reaction to their fear of the loud whistle.. Soon the lake was filled with different kinds of animals.

I continued walking around the lake. As I did, semi-trucks began driving alongside me, as if the path, and probably the thin strip of grassy slope between me and the lake, were road. There seemed to be a whole line of semi-trucks driving alongside me.

I now realized I was at work, and that the semis were somehow a part of my job. I now looked closely at all the semis as they passed, feeling like I needed to make sure something in particular about them was in good condition. It wasn't like my job was to inspect the trucks. I was something more like a driver or a passenger. But everybody kind of had the responsibility to make sure each truck in the fleet was in good shape.

I had worked my way about halfway around the lake. Some of the trucks appeared to be driving into the lake. I focused intensely on some of these trucks driving into the lake. I now found myself walking or riding in a truck (while a young man drove) under some bridge near the back end of the lake.

As I came out from under the bridge, I noticed a barge-like vehicle floating on the lake. The front of the vehicle was the red cab of a semi-truck. Behind the cab was something like the deck of a barge or a flatbed trailer for a semi-truck. Fixed into the center of the flat area was a stout, wide chimney that blew out smoke. I realized that this vehicle, whatever it was, ran on steam power.

My view may have shifted onto the barge-like vehicle, or I may have continued driving along in the semi-truck. But I now came back basically to the same point at which I'd started walking along the lake. Now this point was like a headquarters for my job.

I stood inside a small building like a trailer that had been transformed into a small office. It seemed at first that my shift was over for the day. The other drivers, young men, but kind of big and grizzly looking, so that they looked a lot older than they were, and wearing overall outfits, were filing into and out of the office, like they were taking care of some final paperwork before they headed home.

But some leader-like man, kind of thin and tall, much more prim-looking than everybody else, and standing at a tall but thin counter jutting out from the wall, asked me and my partner (whom I didn't see) if we knew about the whereabouts of some vehicle. My partner knew. He told the leader that the vehicle was in a town about a 90-minute drive away from here. The leader asked if we could go get the vehicle. My partner said we could. We would take my partner's car to get down there.

My partner walked away to get something in preparation for our trip to go get the vehicle. The leader told me that I probably had a few minutes until my partner and I left. He said I could probably go take my lunch break. He asked me if I'd eaten lunch or brought a lunch.

I kind of stumbled with my answer. I don't like eating lunch, and I seldom bring lunches to work. But I told the leader yes, not really knowing what question I was saying yes to. I only hoped the leader wouldn't make me prove I had a lunch now that I'd said yes. I was afraid that if the leader found out I didn't actually have a lunch he'd force me to eat a lunch that he'd get for me.

I decided that, in order at least to look like I was eating lunch, I'd better walk out of the leader's sight. I walked off to my left and down a hallway that hadn't been there before (before, off to my left was the doorway exiting the small, narrow makeshift office).

My grandmother was now walking beside me. She seemed to be about a head shorter than I, maybe even shorter. She was bouncing up and down around me and speaking excitedly about a whole bunch of things. It was kind of annoying. She seemed to feel an urgent need to have all of my attention. It was stifling.

I tried to escape from my grandma. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I walked down the hallway to a restroom. The restroom was for men, but my grandma followed me in. I tried to explain that the restroom was for men. But my grandma wouldn't listen to me. She charged past me and locked herself in a stall at the end of the room.

I hoped I could get rid of my grandma while she was in the stall. I quickly left the restroom and ran down a couple long hallways to another men's restroom. But my grandma somehow followed me there, too. As I was about to unzip my pants and use a urinal, I discovered my grandma standing right there beside me.

I decided that if my grandma was going to keep running into all the men's restrooms after me, I might as well try running into a women's restroom to get away. I ran down a couple hallways and found a women's restroom.

The restroom was huge and full of women, mostly women with children. At first I was shy about walking into the restroom. But after a moment I didn't care. I did seem to have gotten away from my grandma. I started looking for an empty stall I could use.

I walked past one stall in front of which a mother knelt on the floor, putting a little girl in diapers. The girl was maybe five or six years old, too old for diapers. She was blonde, with kind of tan skin. She wore no pants, only a long-sleeved, black sweater with horizontal white stripes down the front.

The little girl seemed to be embarrassed that she was seen by a boy as she was being put into diapers. She stood up, grabbed the diaper off the floor, and ran into the stall behind her mother. The little girl's sister (who may have been younger than the little girl) was in the stall, apparently using the toilet. The little girl somehow proclaimed that she wasn't going to wear diapers like a baby, but that she was going to use the toilet, as if she always used the toilet.

I walked to another stall that seemed empty. A mother sat in front of it with two daughters. The daughters were maybe nine or ten years old, but they acted less than half that age. Nobody was using the stall behind the mother, so I opened the door to walk in.

One of the daughters, a pale girl with very, very long red hair, stood up and tried to follow me into the stall. The mother may have stopped her. I closed the door behind me. But the little girl was standing close to the door, like she was still trying to find a way to get into the stall with me.

The stall was kind of gross, like people had peed all over the walls, floor, and toilet. The toilet now also seemed huge: there was no way I could stand and urinate over the top. But nothing seemed out of proportion. It was like I had somehow become a little child, not more than two or three years old, and I was facing a regular-sized toilet.

There was some weird kind of children's ride, like a plastic cartoon animal model attached to a standing metal frame by springs, so that it would bounce up and down as the child rode it. But it was tipped on its side and covered in urine. I climbed up onto that urine soaked object, trying to find the driest parts for my feet.

I now stood over the toilet seat. At the front of the seat was some object like a child's potty-training seat that attached to an adult toilet. I knew I had to pee into that object. The potty-training seat was plastic and made to look like Santa Claus, with Santa's body as the seat and Santa's face as the seat-back.

As I prepared to aim my pee into the potty-training seat, the girl with the long, red hair spoke to me again. She may even have found a way into the stall, so that she was staring at me. She told me, "If I can't be with you, at least tell me and my sister a story so that we can hear you and not feel as lonely."

I said, "Okay. Do you want me to make up a story?" I was having a hard time concentrating on both making myself urinate and coming up with an impromptu story. But I had a feeling I could do it.

But the girl said, "Tell us a story... about Christmas. About Santa Claus!"

I thought, Oh, I hate telling Christmas stories! They're so conventional. I also knew I didn't want to tell a story about Santa Claus, since I was trying to pee into a urine-soaked model of him at the moment. But I said, "Oh, okay. Once upon a time, there was a man named Santa Claus..."

stuffed animal neighbor; brother-in-law deals drugs; stars and stripes cafe; a load of crap

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was late afternoon, just after the sun had set. I was standing out in front of the house next door to my family's house. My brother-in-law and/or my nephew stood in the front yard, facing me while I faced the house. I was dressed very nicely, though the color of my clothes was kind of odd: pastel greens and forest greens, like one might see a little boy wearing on Easter Day.

I was having a kind of calm conversation with my brother-in-law. But then the neighbor came out of her house. She was a snoop, always getting into other people's business. She thought she had found a really good way to get my brother-in-law, and possibly me, in trouble. She may even have made a snide comment to that effect, to taunt me and my brother-in-law.

We did get a little afraid, and we headed back into the house. But I suddenly got mad. It didn't make any sense to me at all that this woman should have such power over us. I wanted to turn the tables on her, to show her that I was not afraid of her.

I went back over to the woman's house. I entered the house. I may have brought stuff with me. Suddenly the woman's house was filled with stuffed animals. Other members of my family came into the house as well. It was suddenly like we were all trying to overpower the woman, to get her out of the house.

At some point I may have gotten close to the woman and whispered things in her ear. The woman may then have turned into a stuffed animal.

Dream #2

I had just finished some kind of task successfully. I was now entering to some house that I had been asked to house-sit. It was like the house was part of a brownstone. The interior was long and narrow, almost like the interior of a clothing boutique. There may have been clothing racks along the walls.

There was a mannequin in the center of the shop. It was white and headless, and it wore an orange dress of slightly shimmery material with a blouse that had a wrapped effect with a sharply v-cut chest line. The mannequin really turned me on. I walked up to it and embraced it. I thought I was going to try to have sex with it. But I felt like someone was looking. I suddenly stopped embracing the mannequin.

My mom sat on a couple of stairs at the far end of the room. She began talking to me about something, maybe getting my sister and my brother-in-law to do something. She may have expressed doubt about this, like she thought my sister and brother-in-law were too lazy to do what my mom wanted them to do, or like she thought they were just a couple of cheats who'd try to cheat their way out of doing it.

While my mom spoke, I looked all over the store. All over the place, I saw stacks of my mother's clothing -- mostly panties. My mom is overweight, and her panties were kind of big. Nevertheless, as I saw her panties, I wanted to wear them. Some had nice colors: purple, blue, pink, with flowers and butterflies on them.

My mom had somehow tasked me with taking care of something regarding my sister and brother-in-law, as if she thought I could get them to stop doing whatever it was she thought they were doing.

Now I was suddenly outside, at night, at a big, new gas station that seemed to be alone on some desert highway. My brother-in-law stood out at a pump, filling up a white business van. I knew that my brother-in-law was actually out on some trip to sell drugs. He was about halfway to where he was going. Whenever he sold drugs, he would use this white van.

Suddenly my dad pulled up to the gas station. My brother-in-law obviously hadn't expected to see my dad while he was in the middle of making a drug run. He knew my dad was protective of my sister. Seeing my sister's husband in the middle of a drug run would obviously infuriate my dad.

My brother-in-law tried to hide what he was doing. But, for some reason, he had my family name (not his family name) and some phone number written in yellow paint on one of the back windows of the van. It was obvious, somehow, that this was an advertisement for selling drugs. But, as my brother-in-law saw my dad walking up to him, he tried to hide the advertisement, or obscure it in some way, to make it seem like it was an advertisement for some kind of service, like maintenance or something.

My dad walked up to my brother-in-law and seemed kind of friendly at first. My brother-in-law responded in a kind of friendly way. But then my dad said a couple of quick things to my brother in law, something along the lines of "How are you feeling? Do you feel good? Do you hurt in any way? Well, does this hurt you at all?" My dad kicked my brother-in-law in the stomach. He may also have shot my brother. Somehow, an umbrella (???) was also involved in the situation.

Dream #3

I was in a huge cafe, maybe something more like a big common area in a college that had been transformed for the evening into a makeshift coffee shop. The place was mostly dim, with just a few lights shining off in the distance. The place was full of young men and women, all sitting around with each other in big groups at tables, having a good time.

I may have been sitting off to one side all by myself at first. But a couple people ended up coming over to me. One was a girl. Another was a guy, probably a French guy. The girl eventually went away. The French guy, who had seemed hostile toward me at first, ended up being a lot nicer as time went on.

Now there was some kind of performance going on. The performance was some little song. I didn't realize until the end of the song that the French guy had been performing. I thought he'd just been sitting there beside me. But now the performance was ended. Everybody was clapping. I realized I needed to clap, too: otherwise, the French guy would get hostile toward me and not clap for me after my performance. The French guy smiled and folded up something into a leather satchel.

Now someone started playing the piano. From the opening, I recognized the song: "Stars and Stripes Forever," even though I couldn't name the song. The French guy, hearing the song, began to chuckle a little bit. I may have chuckled as well, thinking, for a talent show -- which apparently this whole thing was, now -- it was a little too obvious or trite to play such a well known song. But as the song continued, I kind of enjoyed the melody on the piano. The piano sound was kind of quick and tinny, very old-timey sounding.

Dream #4

I was standing looking at a wall. The wall was kind of barren. It may have been a cinder block wall. The wall was painted some flat, dark shade of green. There were a couple of old, decaying, wooden shelves high up on the wall, running the full length of the wall.

As I looked at the wall, I could hear my step-grandmother talking about one of her friends. Her friend, a male, was older than she and my grandfather, who passed away about four years ago. My grandma related a story to me about my grandpa and this friend. As she related the story to me, I started taking care of something, maybe taking a jacket off the shelf, shifting myself over to the left, and putting the jacket back on the shelf.

My grandma said that as my grandpa was dying, he told the friend, "You should be the one who's dying. You're older than me." But then something about the story changed. Now my grandma said that my grandpa had said something like, "I'm glad I'm the one who's dying, and not you. You have so many young people in your life. You need to make sure you stay around for them."

As my grandma told this second version of the story, I realized that I was defecating. A long string of pale-tan crap was coming out of my (apparently clothed) rear end. It wasn't breaking. By now it was at least a meter long -- so long, I could bend it around and hold it in front of me. In fact, I'd shifted to the far left end of the wall by now, and I was starting to place the long line of feces up onto the shelf. The feces may even have been topped with mustard!

I'm pretty sure that even as I was coiling up the mustard-topped feces onto the shelf and listening to my grandma's story about my grandpa, that I realized that the feces was a metaphor. I knew I was somehow defecating and putting the crap up onto the shelf to show that I thought the story I was listening to was a load of crap. I didn't, of course, want to admit that I thought the story was a load of crap, because it was about my grandpa. So I may have started trying to justify my defecation in some other way.

the steep hill to nowhere; hurtful jokes

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with my step-grandmother and my mother. My step-grandmother was driving. We were just coming home after having taken care of something. We were on the highway. We were now somewhere near a confluence of highways. We were trying to figure out what was the best way home.

My grandma may have taken one of the highways by accident, maybe because she'd been distracted by the conversation all three of us had been having. But my grandma had come up with the idea that we were, after all, traveling on the correct road. This may have had to do with the fact that this road was higher than the other roads. In fact, this road may have been a bridge across a wide river.

But at some point we may have decided that we needed to turn off on another road, or we may have been surprised that this road led us in a direction we hadn't expected. Somehow, we ended up going up a hill that was totally unexpected to me.

The hill was incredibly steep. I didn't know if the car could get up the hill. I even feared that the car might tumble over backwards and roll back down the hill. But nobody else in the car seemed surprised by the height and steepness of the hill.

I thought we must have been meant to go up this hill. But when we got to the crest of the hill, the road completely dead ended. The road just ended in mid-air. A thin metal barrier kept cars from driving off the road and plunging far down to the river below.

My grandma decided to pull us into a u-turn. We scraped along the barrier. I was afraid we were going to fall down into the water. I was also disappointed that I hadn't been able to stop us somehow from wasting our time on this road.

Now we were heading down the high, steep hill. But I was tremendously afraid to look at the downward slope. I had no idea how we could control the speed of our downward movement. I was now even more afraid that the car would end up just toppling down the slope.

Dream #2

I was out in some area that looked like a rooftop with my mom and step-grandmother. My grandma and I were in a "car," even though I don't think the car was really there. My mom was out somewhere else. On the rooftop, there was a star-like configuration of black, fake leather seats like dentist's chairs. Just to the left of that configuration there was a house-shaped structure made of cinder blocks: like the structure that tops a stairwell as it exits onto a rooftop.

My grandma and I were driving the "car" around the house-shaped structure. As we drove past the star-shaped configuration, I noticed that each seat had a couple clumps on it. One clump was large, like a couple of wet blankets, maybe inside or covered by something like a wet paper bag. Another clump was a clump of wet, brightly pastel colored yarn.

Something about these clumps made me think of some mass murderer who had been in the news. Maybe the news had reported that the police had found something like these clumps in the mass murderer's house. But for some reason, the memory of this murderer made me start joking with my grandma about the murderer. We then also remembered some kind of voodoo ritual that involved brightly colored clumps like this. So in our jokes we began combining the story of this mass murderer with stories of voodoo rituals.

My mom was getting really upset by these jokes. My mom told me and my grandma to stop making the jokes. But I laughingly disregarded my mom and kept making the jokes.

We rounded the structure and passed the seats and the wet clumps again. This time the clumps, especially the clumps of yarn, were really wet and mildewy. They were kind of gross. For some reason, this made me think more seriously of voodoo rituals. I made a comment to my grandma about how nobody would seriously use a voodoo ritual to kill anybody. I was saying this more because I wanted to rid myself of a feeling of guilt and to remove any suspicion from myself than because I didn't really believe in voodoo.

Now I was starting to feel bad about having said all this stuff in front of my mom. After she'd said she didn't want to hear anymore, I'd only continued saying things because I thought she was being overly sensitive, and I didn't want to give in so easily to her sensitivity. But now I thought that maybe she was really, reasonably, upset by what I'd been joking about.

We rounded the structure again. This time as we passed the seats, my mom lay on one of them. She looked really exhausted and depressed. She even looked like she might die. I was really upset. I thought that the things I'd said had been responsible for putting my mom into this condition. Now I was really sorry for what I'd said.

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

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

for and against clients; life towels

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was possibly in an office. The office was dim, lit mostly by colored spotlights, like a stage or a dance club. There was some special event going on to honor the members of a company. It was like the company was the client of the company I was working for. But we weren't celebrating the company just because they were our client, but because they had passed a serious milestone in their history.

I sat in a cubicle in a central area of the room. I had a computer, and probably some boards of technical controls. Before me was a wall. But most of the wall was cleared away, like it was supposed to be a window wall. I could see another cubicle on the other side of the wall. I could possibly see another few cubicle. It was like I sat in a column of cubicles in the center of this office-like room, like this central column was a supporting pillar for the building.

Along the walls of the room were booth-seats. People sat in the booth seats. These people were more important than the people in the cubicles. Another man sat in a cubicle to my right. He was giving a big toast, mentioning everybody in the company he thought had really contributed to the company's great achievement. He would say a person's name, then give a brief description of the person, either what kind of person the person was or what the person had done for the company.

I knew there was one woman in particular, a blonde woman in her late forties, who I felt deserved a lot of praise. She was one of the company's co-founders. I felt she should have been among the first to receive praise. But the man listed a few more people, then conspicuously stopped. I realized he really wasn't going to mention the woman. I looked at the man's face (apparently I had an open wall to my right, now, too). He was glowering bitterly at the woman.

I had a feeling the man had just blown off the woman because he didn't like the fact that she as a woman was so powerful in business. I felt like I needed to stand up for the woman. But the man who had been announcing things was a key figure in the company. So he was also a client, and therefore not subject to criticism.

But I couldn't help myself. I stood up and called out, "You forgot to honor somebody, didn't you? You forgot to honor her. Why don't you say a few words about her at least?"

Everybody in the room gasped. I knew I had done something stupid. If I made this guy mad, he could pull out his business. We could lose our client. But I still couldn't help feeling like it was right to have ignored the woman.

I went about my work like nothing had happened, even though everybody now seemed to be staring constantly at me. I went into some other cubicle and began hooking up a computer system. The cubicle had no lights on, but a grey-white fluorescent light was shining through a window-like space. I had to set a CPU in a specific place, then loop the cord around the edge of a desk. This seemed like a really clever technical task to me.

I then stood up. I walked to where the woman was sitting. I asked her to come with me. I was going to force the man to say something about the woman by having the woman stand face to face with the man. I was pretty angry, but I tried to hide my anger. I tried to make the woman feel good about herself. I asked her, "What's it like, you know, watching this thing go from a little baby into a fifty billion dollar company?"

As we passed my desk, and I threw a white towel on it, the woman replied, "Oh, it's pretty surreal. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we actually did it."

We walked around into the man's cubicle, which was now completely dark. But when I approached the man and demanded he say a few words to the woman, a purple spotlight appeared on the man's face.

The man set his jaw tightly in anger and said, "I see you in the future, going to another business, making a quick 4.5 grand," (which meant $4.5 billion) "but not without a good amount of debt. But even after the debt, you'll be in good shape. You'll probably spend the rest of your life with that money..." the man then mentioned something he thought the woman would do, something the man thought was absurd, like donating to charity or art funds, or even becoming an artist herself.

I walked back to the booth seats with the woman. I thought to myself that that idea had backfired on me. I'd tried to get the man to say something nice to the woman. All he did was imply a few indifferent and negative things about her.

The room of booth seats was now filled with natural light, like there were windows over the seats and it was daytime. The room also had a hazy feel to it, like I was very bleary-eyed. I saw my old boss CR off in a booth seat to my right, talking and laughing with a couple clients. The woman sat down. I sat down to the woman's right. The woman seemed upset. I couldn't blame her.

The man now came and sat to my right. He was wearing a white, beach-style shirt with multicolored floral prints and khaki shorts. I thought he was going to say something nasty to me. But he muttered in my ear, "Hey, man, tell your boss he's gotta watch his hair. Otherwise he's going to start poking the people around him."

I wondered what the man could be talking about. I looked over to my boss. I saw that he had run his fingers through his hair, and that thick, swirled, spiky locks of hair really were coming about one or two inches off from his head. I realized the guy was trying to joke with me, even though he had sounded a bit sullen when he'd made the comment.

The man started talking to me a little more freely about the company. But something about his attitude, maybe the fact that he still wasn't regarding the woman, made the woman stand up and walk away. I sat frozen, not really knowing how to react.

The man said, "Do you feel like going after her? You want to defend her. I can tell. Do you like her? Would you like to be with her? I think she'd be with you, if you wanted. She might like you, too."

I started feeling a little shy. I hadn't realized the woman liked me, and I hadn't really thought about whether I might like her.

Dream #2

I was out in some open area, near the top of a hill, with my mom. The area around us was like a dirt lot, or like land that had been cleared for development. The sun was shining behind some thin clouds, giving the sky a silvery-white appearance.

We had just departed from my grandfather (who died about four years ago IWL) and my step-grandmother. They were down at the bottom of the hill. They were both getting in a car to drive away. They may have been planning to go back home. I think my step-grandma was driving. She may have gotten into the car first.

Before my grandpa got into the car, he called to me, "When you get over to my house, you'll see a huge pile of dirt in the yard. Make sure you shovel all that dirt to the very front of the driveway, so people in the neighborhood know they can have the dirt. Also, give your aunt a call and let her know that she can have some of the dirt if she wants it."

My mom and I turned and walked away from the slope. We may have been heading to a car of our own. I was thinking that I really didn't want to have to talk to my aunt. But I knew I had to listen to my grandpa. I wondered how I'd get around this problem.

My mom and I were now in my grandpa's house. We had a huge load of pale green towels. We were going to take them to the laundry. Each of the towels had its own name. Each name had the word "life" or "living" in it.

We were now in a laundry room. The room was all white, with bright, white sunlight pouring in through the windows. The washing machine was in one section of the room. My mom and I were in another section of the room. The two sections were divided by a wall that seemed to be made out of wooden beams and transparent, but foggy, plastic.

A Latina woman stood before a huge washing machine. My mom and I spoke with the woman around a doorway. The woman offered us some towels, like they were towels she found had gone missing from our last load of laundry.

We traded her the towels we had for the towels she had. But one specific towel, which was meant for my mom, was goldenrod-colored. This towel had the name "think." I thought it was weird that my mom had gotten a "think" towel instead of a "life" towel. But I didn't worry about it too much. We did have a few goldenrod towels in the load of towels the woman had just given us. But the majority of our towels were still green "life" towels.

where i lived; naked in public; movie theater backpack; bon voyage, family

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a small room, like the concession stand of a movie theater, but in its own little room. There were a lot of mirrors in the room, and the room had a mostly blue color scheme, with strings of clear incandescent lights flashing everywhere.

I was sitting up on one of the counters, talking with somebody else in the room, probably a young woman. The woman was asking me about my old careers. She asked me something about the work I did in New York for Americorps. She asked me something like, "Didn't they really respect you and look up to you there?"

I replied something about how it definitely seemed that I was looked at as one of the best performers in the programs I worked in, but how, when it came to living situations, I still got stratified out. I said how, when it came to living situations, the whites went with the whites, the browns went with the browns, and the blacks went with the blacks.

"Except me," I said. "For some reason, when I lived in New York, I mostly lived in West Indian neighborhoods."

A man now came walking in through the door. He was a young, good looking business man. He was blonde and tan with blue eyes. He wore a business suit with a tan or pea-colored trench coat over it. He said he'd heard what I'd been speaking about. He wondered if I could come somewhere with him and speak with him a little bit more.

Dream #2

I was out with my sister in some residential neighborhood. My sister was leaving me here to take care of something. But I may have been set to meet her somewhere else later on.

My first task, apparently, was to take a shower. So I walked a couple blocks down the road, to a big, classical looking fountain that just stood in the middle of the street, and took a shower.

When I got out of the shower, I put on an orange t-shirt. I started walking along the road, when two teenage girls standing in a front yard began laughing at me. I looked down to see that I wasn't wearing any pants or underwear -- just my t-shirt!

I knew I had brought some clothes with me when I'd left my sister. They were probably in a backpack. But where had I put that backpack? I thought I'd brought it with me when I'd walked over to the shower. But maybe I'd left it at the point where my sister and I had split ways.

I tried running back to that point. But I couldn't remember exactly where it was. The neighborhood now looked different, too. The houses were all small and cheap, and the yards were barren and full of garbage. I looked to my left down one block to see a couple of guys moving some stuff out of a house. The whole block seemed to be full of cellophane and packing foam.

I may have begun to think that my sister was getting revenge on me for something by having taken my backpack back home with her. Maybe she thought I'd done something perverted to her. So now she was making me feel perverted by leaving me out on the street with no clothes.

But I finally found the block where I thought I'd departed from my sister. I was certain I could find the yard my sister and I had been standing in, and that the backpack would be right there. But there were two old men standing out and talking in one of the yards. I had to sneak past them. I knew if they saw me in this neighborhood they'd think I was a thief.

Dream #3

I walked into a movie theater. The theater was big, and I was the only one in there so far. I had a backpack with me. I sat it down on the left side of the center aisle, a few rows forward from the back row.

I then felt like I needed to leave the theater for a moment. So I left the theater. But standing out in the hallway, I realized I'd left my backpack. I needed to go grab it. I couldn't let it sit in there. Somebody would steal it.

So I ran back into the theater to grab the backpack. But now I couldn't find it. I couldn't remember exactly what row I'd been sitting in. I went through a number of the rows, but I couldn't find the right row. Now a few more people were filtering into the theater. I told myself that it was odd I'd chosen a back row, anyway. Usually I choose a front row.

Dream #4

I was on a thin, wooden platform with my two oldest nephews. The platform was suspended over some kind of dirty body of water. The platform was long. But something about it felt very uncertain, and it was hard for my nephews to stay on it.

My second oldest nephew actually fell off the platform. But I managed to grab hold of him as he fell off. He was now just hanging by my hands. Then my oldest nephew fell off the platform. Somehow both of my nephews were holding onto me. I had slipped off the platform, too, and was just holding on by one hand.

We were now all three in the water. Now it was like it had just been a game. But I was really upset. I was yelling at my second oldest nephew, telling him that if he'd just paid attention to something and done it the way I'd told him to, that we wouldn't have had any problems staying up on the platform.

Now we were involved in some kind of speed-swimming game. Our bodies sped through the water, as if we were boats, or as if we were actually gliding just above the surface of the water. We had to swim through a big body of water, then through a smaller, adjoining body of water, and finally into a small pool of water. The small pool of water was divided, by muddy walls, into two sections. Then we had to turn back and return to the starting point in the big body of water. This whole circuit somehow described a figure eight.

I went through once by myself and managed to get some time like eighteen seconds. I next went through with my oldest nephew. It now appeared that in the two small pools of water there were fish-like zombie creatures. My oldest nephew somehow got injured by one and had to go to the doctor.

I went through the circuit again with my second oldest nephew. We got to the small pools as well. But as my nephew was coming out of the second small pool, he got stabbed in the left arm by one of the zombie fish. He showed me the stab wound. It looked like it had been made by a straight, tubular device, almost like an old TV antenna.

My nephew was wearing a white t-shirt, which now had pinkish lines of blood flowing down it. My nephew was worried. He knew that once you got injured by a zombie, you were most likely going to become a zombie.

My nephew was now gone, most likely getting medical help. I now floated around in the second body of water, looking back toward the small pools of water. I knew that there were zombies in every part of these waters. They could attack you anywhere. But they seemed to be really nasty in the small pools. And, even though this was just a game, if a zombie attacked you, you could really die or become a zombie.

I now had a vision like a high-score screen on an arcade wildlife shooting game. I heard some guys talking in the background, not like they were talking, but like they'd typed out comments on some online forum, and now they were being read back to me, in narration, in the guys' voices.

One guy said he had given up on the game because it was truly impossible, and that the game was just made to cheat people. Another guy said he'd also given up on the game. But he was trying to point out some secret tips that are given to you in the game.

The main tip had to do with the color scheme of some segmented pattern that surrounded some words at the top of the high-score screen. The guy said that if you look at how each color is distributed through the segments, you'll have a good idea of how many of each kind of zombie there are in the game.

I now turned around and looked over my left shoulder. Beyond a window, I saw my little niece playing around in a set of trees in a small garden. I realized that I was at some sports center. I had been here with my family, playing in the pool. Everybody else had gone to take a shower. But I was still in the pool, for some reason.

My family was all getting ready to leave. My niece and her older brothers were playing around in the little garden while waiting for my mom, and possibly my sister and brother-in-law, to come outside. But my niece, now seeing my mom and getting the idea that the family was going to leave without me, asked them to wait for me.

I didn't know whether my family would wait. But I got out of the pool and headed out of the sports center without even taking a shower. I may have seen my niece for a second. But now it was like everybody was gone. My family had to go on some big cruise, so they headed out to some big cruise ship. My niece had wanted my mom to wait so she could say goodbye to me before heading on the cruise. My mom had decided that they would wait for me near the cruise ship. I could say goodbye there.

I got to the cruise ship. There was a big rope-maze line leading up to the cruise ship. I may have seen my family for a second as they were working there way through the line. But the line was virtually empty, and my family must have gotten through it rather quickly.

I now stood before the ship with my grandmother, my mom's mom. We looked up to the deck of the ship, which was far above us, trying to spot my family. I may have said something to my grandma about not having been able to see my family and say goodbye. My grandma may have replied, but I can't remember what she said.

But now I was up in some cruise ship. I was in a gigantic room that looked kind of like a library. But the room was full of tables that stood rather high, maybe about shoulder level for me. The seats for the tables were also rather tall. The tables and seats were arranged today to face one end of the room, which felt like the back end of the room, even though the entrance door was on the same wall. Every seat was probably filled for the event taking place. I sat near the front row, on the left side.

Jennifer Lopez walked into the room. She may have had a new movie coming out, so she was going to give an interview to everybody in this room. But she said she only had a limited amount of time. She could only take nine questions.

She took the first question from somebody in one of the farther back rows. The guy's question was really long-winded. It was basically asking why Jennifer Lopez could only take nine questions. But it was working all kinds of weird symbolism into the question, involving the numbers three and six. Eventually Lopez just got annoyed and asked the guy to ask his question directly. The guy asked why Lopez could only take nine questions. Lopez gave an answer I can't remember.

Then Lopez walked right up to my table and playfully slammed on it, saying, "Okay. Now, you! I want to hear a question from you!"

I was kind of shocked. I didn't really know much about Jennifer Lopez. I'd just come here because I thought it would be interesting to see the event. But if Lopez wanted me to ask a question, I figured I'd better do so. I thought hard about it for a second. I remembered I'd just seen a movie with Lopez in it, and that it had had a scene that had made me kind of curious.

I asked Lopez, "You know, in that cartoon movie you just did a voice for, there's a scene where you're a little girl, and you're on a ship, getting ready to say goodbye to a little boy who you had a crush on, but who's now leaving on the ship. And I was just wondering, is that from real life? Cause it seemed like a really personal scene. And if it was from real life, could you tell us anything about that boy?"

Lopez was back up in her own seat at the front of the room, possibly flanked by a couple of guys who looked like bodyguards. She laughed and said something like, "Oh, I knew you would ask a question like that! Yes, the scene is from real life. And yes, I did like that boy. We were from the same neighborhood. And we never saw each other again."

Lopez went on to the next question, like she had given a sufficient answer to my question. I could tell she was glossing over a lot of the more personal issues I thought would have been interesting to hear. I think the details may have been a little embarrassing to her. I figured I wouldn't push the issue, and I'd just leave my question at that.

cooking potatoes; grandma's and my bills; not dying

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was in the kitchen of some apartment. All the lights in the apartment were off. The only light coming into the apartment was the blue light of the moon coming in through the windows. There were no windows in the kitchen, so the kitchen was particularly dim.

I may have been myself, or I may have been a young woman with black hair done up in pig tails. I had been cooking potatoes, doing so as a kind of illustration for somebody on how to cook potatoes.

There were a group of men, kind of tough-looking men maybe in their forties, all sitting out at my dining table. The light of the moon shone directly onto the dining table.

In my mind's eye I saw some small potatoes all piled up on top of each other on a square plate. The potatoes were covered over with something like a napkin or handkerchief. I imagined the napkin being pulled off the potatoes as I told the men that ----- potatoes (I can't remember what kind) were very special in that, to protect their (moistness or flavor?) they needed to be covered over with a satin sheet.

I was now back in the kitchen. I had a small pot full of full-sized potatoes. The potatoes looked like they had been baked, but they may have been boiled. I grabbed one of the potatoes. I pulled the skin all the way off the potato in one easy pull. It was like the skin had only been fitting very loosely onto the potato. I then shoved all the skin in my mouth and ate it. I thought it was delicious, and that it meant the potato would be very good.

I commented to the men at the table that the skin had come off so easily. I thought that might mean that the potato would be bad. The men replied that that meant the potato would be good. They even asked me what I was asking them for. Hadn't I just mentioned (or thought?), they asked, that a potato with loose skin would be good?

I knew they were right. I thought that the potato itself would be really moist and soft. I knew it would be delicious. I may have thought of eating one right now.

Dream #2

My grandmother had an electricity bill that needed to be paid. But somehow my mom and I had paid it off. We now needed to tell my grandma that we had paid off this bill.

We found my grandma down in some huge basement. It seemed like it may have been the basement for a house, but it was really huge. The place seemed run-down. It was really dim, like there was just some bright incandescent bulb, like might be found in a mine, shining for the whole basement.

I saw my grandma and told her that her electricity bill was paid off. My grandma hugged me and said thank you. My mom paced behind my grandma, giving her a mean kind of look, as if she were jealous of my grandma for thanking only me and not my mom.

My grandma then either told me that she had paid my electricity bill, or that I should also worry about my own electricity bill. My grandma made it sound like my bill was dangerously behind. I was kind of surprised by this. I didn't know my electricity bill had been behind. But my grandma said it was.

My mom took me upstairs to explain my electricity bill. We were up in a smallish living room. The lights were all on, but it still wasn't bright. The living room was pretty active, with all my nephews  playing around, running into and out of the house. My sister may have been in the living room as well.

My mom had something like a sketch pad that was wire-bound at the top. She flipped open the sketch pad. I could see something about the pad that implied that the identity of the person whose usage of electricity I was going to have to pay for was a pretty, long-haired woman. I saw -- somewhere, somehow -- a quick sketch of the woman in the nude, the curves of her body accentuated in a sexy way.

My mom showed me the electricity I had used. This usage had led me to believe that I only owed a certain amount on my electricity. But there had been additional usage, possibly by this woman, that I hadn't known about. I hadn't paid my bills on this usage for a number of months now, and now I owed something like $85.

The utility worker who would come out and inspect meters and decide whether to turn the electricity off or keep it on, and who was herself a very pretty woman, had been kind to me, my mother explained, and allowed my electricity to stay on, even when I wasn't paying the bills. But now, my mom explained, it was getting to the point where I would have to pay the money I owed.


Dream #3


It was night. Somebody may have been in a hospital and dying. It may have been me. My whole family was in one room of the hospital, possibly in with the person who was dying. 


I felt like I needed to prove that I wasn't the one who was dying. I was now at some other place in the hospital, and I needed to get back to my family to prove I wasn't dying. I entered the room that my family was in. I tried to prove to my family, apparently just with my presence and the fact that I could walk upright, that I wasn't dying.


***


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


UPDATE 2: Added drawing for dream #1, July 12, 2012, 11:34 AM, Mountain Standard Time.

equal science; vesuvius resort; get to know your mother; strawberry sugar soap

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A vision of blue sky striated by thin, white clouds. I may have been flying through this view, spinning or somersaulting about. I was hearing some conversation about a man and a woman who were trying to do some project together. The project was possibly some sort of science project. They were trying to do the project together to promote equality between men and women.

Dream #2

A rocket was lifting off. The rocket was huge and kind of squarish looking. It had four small rockets in a row at its base, which impressed me for some reason. As soon as the rocket started lifting off -- almost immediately -- it seemed to be going through shelf-like layers of clouds. It never seemed to stop going through these shelf-like layers of clouds.

All the time that the rocket was lifting off, I could hear people talking. I probably heard two male announcers. It was like I was watching the liftoff on TV, even though I felt surrounded by the view, as if I were right there.

But there were other TV-like effects. The rocket had a number of stages, different sections of rocket that fired, then burnt out. As one stage burnt out, another would turn on. But there would always be a pause between the burn-out and turn-on, where the rocket would not have any propulsion at all. At these points, the rocket would slow down. But my view, the "camera," expected the rocket to keep going up at the same speed. So it would go upward a bit without the rocket, then have to come back down.

I was actually a little worried. I knew that a rocket had to go a certain speed to break free of the earth's gravity. But if the rocket kept slowing down a little in between each of the stages, would it ever get going fast enough to break free? I convinced myself it would break free. After all, it kept going higher and higher. And maybe each new stage was more powerful than the last.

Finally I heard the announcers talking about the mission. It was something like a commercial space mission. The announcers even seemed to be making an advertisement for space travel now. It was like the rocket we were watching was heading to some kind of space resort, or was heading to some earth resort at a really fast speed via space travel. The announcers were putting in a plug for this resort.

My view now shifted to some big estate. My view was floating. I might even have felt like my body was floating there.

The first thing I saw was a castle in the distance. It was made out of some brownish tan stone. It may have been made out of brick (???). It was at the end of some long expanse. The expanse wasn't a road or a walkway. It seemed to involve a lot of concrete. It was like a network of aqueducts or channels of some kind.

I heard the announcers speak again. Apparently they were speaking about this place, which had something to do with making wine. It certainly didn't look like a vineyard. But the announcers were promoting the place as a great place to come to for great wines.

I was still outside the gates of this place. The gates were very complex, almost like a miniature of the castle itself. They were made out of brownish tan brick. I floated over to the left to see the name of the estate on one of the lower expanses of brick. The sign was in big, gold letters. It said "Vesuvius." I may have wondered why this place would have the name Vesuvius if it was well known for wines.

The announcers may have spoken again, telling me about how the Himalayan Museum was putting on a comprehensive show about the lifestyles of the Himalayan religion. I don't know whether Vesuvius was still Vesuvius. But I knew that the Himalayan Museum being mentioned was now down in the "basement" area in the building structure that was now created by this network of gates and concrete aqueducts.

I was now down in the basement. It was like a giant hotel lobby, kind of dim, with dark carpeting and upholstery everywhere. There seemed to be a decent amount of people here already, a lot of well-off people. And the whole thing had an air of a convention. Exhibits seemed to have been set up. But nobody seemed to be occupied with any of the exhibits yet. It may have been that a scheduled movement through the various exhibits had not yet been started.

I floated down to some big, circular area. It was like rotating tiers of silver. Coming out of each of the rotating tiers were little, silver plates. On each of the silver plates were little glasses, like little communion glasses. There may have been three glasses to each little plate. The glasses were full of a yellowish liquid, which I guessed to be a kind of thick, sweet liqueur. I may have taken one. But I may not have. I may have thought that it was fine just to look, but that I didn't want to actually take one until the scheduled movement through the exhibits had started.

Off in an area behind me and over my right shoulder was a whole setup for manga books and other artsy kind of books relating to anime and manga. There were a lot of kids over there, sitting on the floors in front of the shelves, reading the anime and manga. I got up and walked over to a knee-high bookshelf with some manga books in it. There was a girl sitting on her knees and reading. I grabbed a book and sat by her to read.

I may have felt ashamed of reading manga. I may have felt ashamed of being around so many kids. I didn't want the kids to think I was some pervert, just reading the manga so I could follow them around or something. And I didn't want the other adults to think I was being immature by reading manga.

Somehow, though, I heard that one of my old friends, SA, was going to be doing a show somewhere. I may have been in New York now. SA may have lived for some time outside of New York. But now she had come back to New York to do this show. I decided it would be great to see her. I probably floated up through the manga library and then up a maroon-carpeted stairway.

I was now up in a luxurious apartment on the high floor of a skyscraper. The walls were all windows, looking out over the tops of the buildings of New York. The interior of the apartment was kind of full of stuff, so that it felt a little cluttered. SA stood in front of me as I sat in some chair.

I was telling SA how good it was to see her again. SA didn't quite seem to believe me. But she started talking about the show that she was putting on. It was like she was discussing it with me as someone who might be able to offer her some constructive opinions. But it was also like I had had something to do with the show, like I had either written a portion of it or else been a big inspiration for it.

Dream #3

I was walking through a grocery store. I picked a big, lavender colored box off of one of the shelves. The box was about the size of a cereal box. I think I was looking at the back of the box. The product was called "Get To Know Your Mother." I looked inside the box. It was just sleeves and sleeves of thin, brown cookies. It looked like the top two or three sleeves of cookies were missing -- like someone had opened the box and stolen the cookies.

I looked back to the back of the box. The box was divided into a grid of squares. Each square was about the size of a pantyhose box, like the boxes, I think, that L'eggs pantyhose come in. Each square had a celebrity's photo in the upper left corner. There was then a description of the celebrity.

All of the celebrities were minor. But they were all getting together, with Get To Know Your Mother, for some sort of entertainment festival, the proceeds from which would go to some charity. Some of the celebrities seemed slightly familiar to me. They all seemed to do different things, acting, dance, music, etc.

One of the celebrities on the top row was actually "Weird Al" Yankovic. He had his hair cut short and his face shaven. He was also pretty muscular, and he wore clothes that fit him closely. He sort of looked like Chris Isaak. The description called him Al Yankovic. But under that, it said, in small letters, "Al Smith," as if Al Smith were Weird Al's real name. It was like Weird Al was trying to get people to call him Al Smith from now on, like he was trying to get away from the "Weird Al" Yankovic identity altogether.

My attention was caught by the celebrity in the square on the far left side and second from the top. He was a white man, kind of balding, kind of overweight, with a pale face and scared-looking eyes. He wore a black, leather jacket and a kind of chunky-looking sweater. He was also holding a guitar. The description said that this man was a stand-up comedian whose act involved playing rock songs that sounded serious but were actually funny.

My attention was now directed to a clipped-out newspaper column that was -- somehow! -- located to the left of the box I was holding. The paper may not have been newsprint. It may have been regular paper, as if the newspaper column had been photocopied.

The column spoke about how some guy who was running a science TV show for kids was announcing his retirement. The show had basically been set in some kind of pretend laboratory, full of all kinds of fun gadgets.

The article said that the science guy was retiring because some intern (intern wasn't quite the word) who the science guy had known "was no good at all" from the very beginning had broken into the laboratory and messed up a bunch of stuff. This, I knew, included stealing a bunch of documents belonging to the science guy.

Dream #4

I was with my maternal grandmother. We were in some room which was apparently a part of her house, though it may have been a part of my house. The place felt really cluttered, almost like it was used more for storage of things than for actual living.

My grandma and I were talking about the soap I use when I take a shower. I was telling her something about how the soap I really liked had strawberries and sugar (???) in it. But, I said, the soap I was currently using didn't have strawberries and sugar in it. So it wasn't as effective as my favorite soap.

My grandma may not have believed this. So we got up and walked to the other house (not sure if it was my house or her house) to take a look at the soap.

We walked through the door and out into an "open space," which actually felt more like a fake lawn in some TV sound stage. The "open space," though, was also kind of cluttered, and probably with stuff that didn't belong in the open space, maybe even with stuff like spotlights and so forth.

The other house was just across this fake lawn. On the way to the other house we met my mom. My mom was out doing something like catching or killing lizards or dragonflies. Or it may have been that she'd been involved in an accident which had ended in the death of a lizard or dragonfly. My mom either joined my grandma and I or told us she'd be joining us soon.

My grandma and I walked into the house. The room we walked into was like some kind of small, disheveled warehouse. But it also seemed like it was made simply as a preparation room -- just to prepare a person for going into the bathroom for a shower.

My grandma and I were now looking over the soap in question. It may have been like my grandma had just given me this soap right now as a present. The soap was in a small, thick container. It looked more like a container of Vaseline. The soap itself was thick, like Vaseline. It was pink, too. The container was full, like it was a brand new container. The lettering on the container was big, blocky, black letters, like the product was trying to market itself as being kind of old and "vintage."

I went through the list of ingredients on the back of the container to prove to my grandma that there were no strawberries or sugar in the soap. The ingredients were all listed in alphabetical order. I went to the end of the list. At first, some fruit other than strawberries was listed. I told my grandma, "See? They have -----, but not strawberries." But when I looked again to point it out, the strawberries were actually listed.

I went back up, near the beginning of the list of ingredients, where I expected sugar to be. But instead of sugar, I found cream. I again told my grandma, "See? They have strawberries and cream, but not strawberries and sugar." But when I looked again, sugar was in the place of cream.

My mom had now come into the house. Both my grandma and I were kind of flustered by my mom's presence. It was like my mom was in a really weird emotional state, and she was spinning a lot of her state out onto us.

I had gone into the bathroom, possibly to grab my soap container out of the shower so I could show my grandma what ingredients were in it (? -- again?!). I had closed the door to the bathroom as I'd gone in. I may even have taken off my clothes.

I grabbed the soap out of the shower. It was about half used. I flipped the container around to look at the ingredients. I was walking back toward the door with the container. As I did, I passed the sink.

In the sink lay a dead dragonfly. The dragonfly was pretty big, maybe about 10cm long. It was bright green, and it had bright pink eyes. I knew this was the dragonfly that my mom had killed before we'd met her outside. The sink was also full of hair, like someone had cut their hair or shaved themselves and then just left the hair in the sink.

I opened the door a crack, either to hand the soap through to my grandma or to list the ingredients off to her. But I believe I could see sugar and strawberries both on the list of ingredients already. But as I opened the door, I could hear my grandma and mom talking to each other regarding something about me. Whatever they were saying made me feel like I should go out and address the issue directly. So I opened the door and walked out of the bathroom.

***

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