wrong way in circles; mom on a limb; grocery theater

Dream 1

I was out on a road, probably in a mountain town, like a residential neighborhood in a forest. I was probably trying to get somewhere fast. I was probably in a car, though I may possibly have been on foot, running. The road may have had a few other cars on it.

I knew the road I was on was a big circle, like some kind of circle made specifically for whatever residential community had been developed out here. I had probably been traveling along the road clockwise at first. But now I was going counterclockwise. I was trying to take the quickest way to get off of this circle and onto the main highway, so I could get wherever I was going quickly.

But just as I was approaching the base of the circle, where the forest became a lot less dense, and where there were more houses, and maybe even something like a strip mall or shopping center, I realized that the road had recently been turned from a two-way to a one-way street. So, even though I was now relatively close to the main highway, I would now have to turn around and go clockwise, almost the entire length of the circle, to get to where I could legally get onto the main highway.

I was discouraged. I may already have felt like I was late. And now I'd lost even more time and would have to spend even more time getting myself in the right direction. I probably felt like I had basically failed at getting wherever I was supposed to be. But I turned around, anyway, and started heading clockwise on the circular road.

Dream 2

I was outside, in front of a tall house. It was probably early evening, just after sunset. The atmosphere was a dim, cool blue.

I could see over the roof and behind the house. I may actually somehow have been floating above the roof. The roof was probably flat, though tiered, and maybe made out of some kind of silvery or white material. There was a big tree, maybe like a London Plane Tree, just behind the house, so that the top of the tree's canopy went above the roof, and maybe even touched the roof a little.

My mom was on the roof, probably with a couple other people, probably including her old friend, TH. Everybody was spaced widely apart on the roof. But they all seemed to be walking toward the canopy of the tree.

My mom was really close to the tree. She was, in fact, going to walk along the limbs of the tree. Even though the tree was completely barren of leafs, it had a few big, round globes of fruit, maybe like Osage-orange fruit, hanging from the limbs and branches. My mom was going to pick the fruit. We may have thought of the fruit as pears.

I didn't want my mom out climbing these tree limbs. My mom thought the limbs were sturdy. But I knew they were weak. They were also really high in the air. I was certain that if my mom went out on the limbs, the limbs would break, and my mom would fall to her death. I could see that TH, who was kind of big and heavy, was also planning to climb the tree. I knew for sure that if both my mom and TH were on the tree, the tree would break and send my mom crashing to the ground.

I yelled at my mom not to climb the tree. But she already seemed to be doing it. She seemed to be fine. But she hadn't gotten to the really narrow limbs yet. She called for me to help her pick the fruit. But I wasn't going to encourage her to climb the tree by going out there as well.

I wasn't going to stick around to watch this. I yelled at my mom that I was going to go to the movie theater and watch a movie. I could see, from my floating viewpoint, myself walking down the block (sort of like the block we used to live on when I was in high school).

My mom called after me, somehow implying -- not with anything she said, but more like with the tone of her voice -- that if I didn't come back she'd actually try to fall from the tree and die. But I could see myself still walking away -- my view looking down on myself while it still floated in front of the house, just above the roof.

I thought to myself that I wasn't going to let my mom stop me. I told myself to face the possibility that when I got back home I would find the tree canopy broken and my mom dead on the ground. If that's what I found when I arrived back home, I'd just have to accept it. I wouldn't let myself feel guilty about my mom's choices, even if she'd made them expressly to spite me.

Dream 3

I was at a movie theater, probably with either my family or some friends. We stood in line at the ticket booth, which was in a small lobby at the front of the building. The lobby mostly had window-walls that looked out onto a sidewalk and parking lot, which was probably part of some strip mall.

There was something weird about the situation, like maybe we were coming to see the movie at an odd time of day, like ten o'clock in the morning, when the movie theater would normally not be open; or like we were here at a normal time of day, but maybe on a strange day when the movie theater would usually be closed; or maybe even like we had come to the theater when it was under construction, but we were being allowed to go in anyway, for a special screening or something.

I may have been myself, but I may have been really short, like I was a child. I may only have come up to the waist of my friends/family and all the other people in line. Or I may have been my normal height, just about the same height as everybody else, but the ticket booth or counter may have been really tall.

Nevertheless, I was also sort of like the leader of my group for this event. I knew everything that was going on with this unique situation and was helping everybody else through it. But everybody else may also have been a little skeptical of the situation, or at least of my ability to handle it. But I tried not to notice their skepticism.

The woman at the ticket booth may have started telling me about something bad that had happened here. The night before, someone had busted one of the windows that fronted the main lobby, right near the far end of the main lobby, and had gotten into the lobby and either vandalized or stolen something of high value. The woman explained that now the theater would be mostly concerned with fixing that issue, not with screening movies.

But we were here for a special screening, and the woman let us in. I may have felt bad. I was really excited to see this special screening. And I knew that now the screening would probably not look so great, as the projector folks wouldn't be very focused on the screening. But I hoped they would be focused on the screening, even though I knew that hope was kind of selfish.

My family/friends and I walked into the main lobby, which was wide and long, with tall ceilings, like a big lobby for a large hotel or even a convention center.

As we walked in, a few Hispanic ladies were walking in front of us. One of them chuckled boastingly that she'd gotten a good deal out of the movie theater. Apparently her company had been assigned to fix whatever the problem was. And she'd made a good $150 (?) off of the project.

It may even somehow have been implied that the woman's friends or company had made the problem themselves, so they could profit off of it. I thought that was kind of shady and underhanded. But I didn't say anything. I felt like the woman may have said all of this in front of me so I would hear her and criticize her. She wanted to start a fight with me. So I'd just ignore her and hope she'd leave me alone.

I, the Hispanic ladies, and probably my family/friends were all now at the end of some long black bench that backed against the wall, which was lined with black-painted metal lockers, like high school lockers, all the way to the long, black counter of the concession stand. We all may have had to do something like take off our shoes, as well as maybe put something on that looked like virtual reality goggles or weird, visor-like sunglasses, before we headed into the movies.

We finished whatever we had to do and walked past the wall and into a dark, black-walled hallway. My family/friends were now like an Hispanic family.

Almost immediately, the hallway became like the hallway for a small mall. We were all headed to our specific theater. But eventually we may have forgotten about the theater altogether.

The mall corridor was crowded, busy, and lively. I kept looking at all the storefronts. We passed one storefront which was actually a grocery store that had just gone out of business. The storefront gave a full view of the store. The entire floor was emptied out. But all along the three walls, the shelves (and maybe refrigeration walls and meat counters) were filled with items. There were handmade signs near the tops of the walls, advertising 15% to 20% off on a lot of items.

I was with a lot of young, Hispanic girls. One of the girls giggled and said how stupid it was for the grocery store to be advertising such a big sale on their items, especially as they were closing. But I couldn't figure out why it was bad to advertise the sale. Was it because all the goods had already gone bad?

I looked away from the storefront. The mall hallway was now the inside of a big grocery store, maybe like a Super Walmart or Super Target. There were a lot of people in here, too, though this place may also have been sort of hollowed out, like it was going out of business and shelves were just being removed as all the inventory on the shelves was being bought. However, my group and I may have been looking for the checkout area, so we could buy whatever we were looking for (maybe like it was just waiting for us at the checkout stand???) and leave.

pink trick dogs; dog coughs up a mouse; tall checkout stands

Dream 1

I was with another person, probably a man, walking in some area like a corridor that was divided into rooms. The corridor curved along, as if we were walking on the outer edge of some circular structure, like the circular structures atop the Space Needle. The person walked to my right, closer to the outer wall.

In one room we walked past a pink dog. The dog was tiny, maybe the size of a teacup poodle. But it may not have looked quite like a poodle. Its fur may have been long and flowing, like that of an Afghan Hound.

In the next room we walked past another dog. This dog was maybe about half a meter long. It was also pink, with a poodle-like appearance, but long fur. It saw us and wanted to do a trick for us, apparently. It did something like a headstand. But it did a headstand in such an uncanny way that I remarked on it to the person walking with me.

We entered another room. There was a kind of big dog. It was white. But it had the same kind of fur as the other dogs. It was sitting in a kind of big, leather chair. This dog did the same trick as the second dog had done, but with a little bit more of a twist on its hind legs. The dog may have been showing off its genitals. But I couldn't tell whether the dog was male or female.

The dog was off to our left. We had to exit this room and head outside, possibly onto a balcony. We may have had to exit through a door right in front of us. Or we may have had to exit through a door off to the left of and behind the dog. Either way, I felt bad and a little awkward. The dog had done such a good trick. But we really couldn't stop and praise the dog or give the dog a treat. We had to keep moving.

Dream 2

I was with a group of people in a kind of small room. We were all like family or friends. We were all here for some kind of casual get-together. I sat at a tall, narrow, circular table. I may have been eating a small plate of food or drinking something. Everybody else was gathered in a different area, talking and laughing.

A dog off to my left started coughing and hacking. There may have been a cat somewhere near the dog. Both the dog and the cat were my family's pets. As the dog started coughing I realized that our new pet, a mouse, was missing. The dog had probably eaten the mouse and was now trying to clear it out of its throat.

I was really disappointed that the dog had eaten the mouse. I'd really liked the mouse. But there was a little boy near my table. I was more concerned for him. He may have liked the mouse or he may have been indifferent to it. But he'd definitely be devastated if he saw it dead -- especially coming out of the dog's mouth!

My mom was somewhere nearby. She must have had the same thought as I, because she was now distracting the little boy, showing him something up near the table I was seated at. The boy was turned toward my mom and turned totally away from the dog.

The dog now coughed up the dead mouse, which was curled up in a ball, and whose hair was all wet and dark grey. Someone, maybe I or maybe my mom, picked up the mouse to throw it away. I was really disappointed that the mouse was dead. I was also kind of disappointed in the dog for having eaten the mouse. The two of them were supposed to be friends. I may possibly have reflected with a little annoyance that the dog was too stupid to recognize who its friends were.

Dream 3

I may have been in a grocery store. At first I may have been somewhere near the back of the store. Then I may have been up near the front of the store, near a weird checkout stand.

The checkout stand was probably really tall, like maybe almost over my head. Its conveyor belt may have been used as a display shelf for piles of merchandise. The merchandise may have been electronics or some other kind of hard, plastic stuff.

grocery store criticism; a sculpture garden of friends

Dream 1

I was standing in a grocery store. It was a huge structure with dark cinder block walls and dusty floors. It was only lit by natural light, which was kind of orange, like the sun was low in the sky.

The grocery store may have been flooded out. I may have stood in the grocery store while it had been flooded. I may have been a little surprised by how back the grocery store looked. Everything was in disarray. There were no shelves for the food. Everything was just piled up. But I may have told myself this was just because of the flood.

But now the flood was gone. People were working on getting the grocery store back to normal. In fact, the grocery store was just about to reopen.

I was walking around, looking at the store. I was surprised by how rundown it looked. The floor was just dirt in many places, though it was concrete in others.

The store was more like a factory or warehouse than a grocery store. It had a kind of L or maybe U shape. And one side was like it was divided into cinder-block rooms, like different large storage rooms, at the end of which may have been a big, wide opening to the outside.

A woman, maybe Hispanic, came up to me and asked me what I thought of the store. We started walking back toward the front of the store.

I wanted to give the woman a somewhat honest opinion. This place didn't look like a grocery store at all to me. But I also didn't want to make the woman feel bad about the place -- especially if it was about to reopen. I decided to stick to the stuff I liked and try and sound as objective as possible about that stuff.

We stood out near the front of the store, right at the corner of the L or U. We were looking toward the doors into the grocery store, which were like automated swinging glass doors. Workers were coming in and out of the doors. They were also going around the doors, like the front of the store continued beyond the entrance, like the entrance was just inset into the store about halfway along the front of the store.

I commented on how I liked the space at the front of the store. I said the place felt spacious. I said that was a good feel for a grocery store, as most grocery stores are pretty wide and open. I was trying to say -- though I couldn't find a nice way to say it -- that I couldn't quite understand why the store wasn't just a big, open square like most grocery stores.

I then said that I liked the floors in this part of the store. They were made of concrete. But they could probably use a little bit of sweeping before the store opened. I may have made a mental note to myself to avoid reviewing any of the places where the floor was dirt. But I couldn't remember where those places were. The front of the store itself may have had dirt floors before. But now the floors were concrete.

I may now also have wondered where all the products were. There was nothing in the front area. The space was completely empty, except maybe some kind of plyboard leaning against the wall and a bit of construction clutter next to that.

Dream 2

I may have been at a party for some art community, maybe the Denver art community. It was getting toward early morning. A lot of people were leaving. The party had been outside. The party had possibly been big, with a lot of people, many of whom were now filing away.

Among the people, I saw my friend LN, who is the owner of a Denver art gallery. I had kind of stopped being friends with her about a year ago. I shyly called out to LN. I was happy to see her. But I was a little afraid she'd be mad at me and wouldn't want to talk to me.

LN seemed happy to see me, but in a subdued sort of way. I was so relieved that she wasn't mad at me that I hugged her tightly and told her how much I missed her. I hugged her kind of awkwardly, from the side, though with both arms. And while I hugged her we kept walking forward.

LN wore a kind of tight shirt, more like a bodysuit with jeans over it. The top was kind of pink-beige, with a soft but ridged or ribbed feeling to it. And the chest was lacy, like a bra had been built into it. I may have reflected that LN would usually not wear an outfit like that.

We were almost totally alone now. We were walking down a sidewalk on a slope that may have been bordered by a park or field on our right. A couple of party stragglers may have been walking near us. But soon even they were gone. The edge of the horizon may have been getting a tiny bit lighter with morning.

LN and I turned off the sidewalk and into the field. I don't think I ever let go of LN. I may have been talking to her about how bad I felt about not talking to her and about how I really did like her. But at some point she may have said that we needed to hurry on our walk. Apparently we needed to get across this field within some time frame -- either before the sun rose, or before some bus we were trying to catch reached a stop on the other end of the field.

We were moving through a field of tan, waist-high grass. We passed a lone tree with no leafs. After this it may have been like LN picked me up and ran with me in her arms. But it wasn't like she was carrying me in her arms. It was more like she was embracing me and arching her back a bit so my feet were a couple inches off the ground.

We sped through the field. I suddenly realized this field had been turned into a garden of abstract or conceptual sculpture. One sculpture was an abstract shape made out of mirror-like chrome. Another sculpture (or the same sculpture?) may have had bright neon or LED lights on it. I may have felt like LN and I had purposely come to this field so we could review the sculpture garden.

We headed up a slope near the end of the field. At this point I was carrying LN. It was like she was tired or maybe even sick. I may have been carrying LN in my arms. But we still sped along -- almost like we were floating rather than running.

It was pretty light now, maybe way past sunrise. We made it to the bus stop. A young guy may have been heading toward the bus stop, too.

LN and I were now in some room, a kind of small room, maybe with cheap, fake-wood-paneled walls, at the very back end of some sort of makeshift office building. We may have been sitting at some really low, circular table, in chairs that were probably too big for this small room. Our belongings, like coats, bags, etc., may have been cluttered all over the room.

LN stood up and said she had to go into a meeting now, and that it had been nice to see me. We were now not quite in the same room we had been in before. There was a glass door into another room.

A young man who was probably famous in town as a rapper or poet walked into the room beyond the glass door. LN was scheduled to interview the man, probably for some project they were hoping to collaborate on. Both LN and the man wanted to impress each other, as they were both hoping for success from this project. But LN probably wanted to impress the man more than he wanted to impress her.

But when I saw the young man, I was really excited. I poked my head into the room as LN walked in and said hello to the man. I said hello to the man. I may also have said something about how I thought it was cool he was working with LN.

At the same time another young man walked into the room, probably from an entrance directly from outside, on the left wall of the room. The first man may have been Hispanic. The second man was black. I also recognized him as a rapper or poet from around town. I also said I was really excited to see that he was working with LN.

The first man may have recognized me a tiny bit from around town. He seemed to be a bit more relaxed now that I said I was happy to see him. He said something to me and then closed the door to start the interview with LN.

I stood (maybe even sat? like a pet dog?) out in front of the door for a second. I gloated a little to myself that one advantage I had over LN was that I actually knew the artists around town in human terms. I didn't think of them as business propositions. And that always made people feel more comfortable.

I walked back into the small room LN and I had been in. I knew the men would think it weird if they found me outside the door. They were here to interview with LN. And it would be awkward if I kept putting my nose in their business. Anyway, it was getting to be time for me to leave.

I picked up my belongings and was getting ready to leave. Now LN was in the room. She was also picking up her belongings. She was apparently getting ready to leave, too. But it was also like she still had to continue her interview with the young men.

LN spoke to me a bit about some money troubles she was having. It was like she and her husband were barely scraping by for a living. They were even worried about getting kicked out of their place. In fact, they may have gotten kicked out of the place they'd been in when I'd last spoken with LN. They may now have been living in some non-residential space that some friends had let them stay in. They may even have been living in this space. LN may even have been preparing her bedding so she could get some sleep.

I thought back to all the reasons I'd been angry at LN. And I started feeling really guilty. After all, it wasn't really worth it to be mad at her. She liked me. I knew that. And, yes, she was sort of stuck up sometimes. But, really, that was just part of her act. At the end of the day, her reality was this. She was trying to build up young artists' careers. And while she was doing this, she was basically making no money at all.

LN led a hard and frustrating life. And wouldn't it be better of me, I thought, if I could stop being so hard on her and just play her game, let her act her act, and let her feel good about herself for a change?

wearing diapers to the store; one-legged chase scene

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was up in some apartment on the second or third floor of an oldish, Village-style, brick apartment.I was in a bedroom. Everybody else was in some other room. The bedroom was cluttered and little with a bright, but kind of pale, incandescdent light.

The apartment wasn't mine. I may have been here because of a party that was going on, though the party may not have been happening right then. I may also have been here because I was going to watch the place for the people who lived here, though they weren't gone yet.

I was looking at myself in a mirror. I saw that I was wearing a Pampers Baby Dry diaper. I was planning to go downstairs and out to some grocery store or music store (or a grocery/music store?) that was right near the apartment building.

I wanted to go down there wearing my diapers. But I wanted to make sure they were visible, so that everybody I walked by knew I was wearing diapers. I may have hoped that somebody would be turned on by my wearing diapers and want to hit on me.

I grabbed a pair of very low rise blue jeans from somewhere. I put them on and looked at how the waistband of the diapers flapped over the waistline of the jeans. I looked at the Sesame Street character on the waistband.

The waistband seemed to flop down a bit too much. I was also worried that once I actually got walking around, the waistline of the jeans would snug up around the waistband of the diapers, obscuring the diapers. I really wanted people to see me in my diapers! I wondered whether I couldn't just go down to the store wearing only my t-shirt and diapers.

I looked out the window. The neighborhood was busy with young people who were out having fun. But across the street from me, standing next to a gate like the gate around St. Mark's Church in the Village, were two kind of scuzzy-looking men. They looked like they could either be forty-five or twenty-five. One was white, the other Hispanic. They wore cheap clothes.

I knew these men were actually stalking me. I knew they'd been waiting for me all this time. If I went downstairs while they were down there, they'd follow me all over the place. I didn't mind other people seeing me in diapers. But I didn't want these men to see me in diapers. And I really didn't want them following me around. I tried to think of how to avoid the men.

My brain must have skipped over this problem entirely. I was now down in the grocery/record store. I walked around, having a little fun feeling myself in a diaper. I remember wondering about the back of my diaper, wondering whether that wasn't also visible, wondering whether I couldn't do anything to make it more visible.

The store was as large as a regular grocery store. But it had a kind of old, run-down feel to it, like an old Chinese vegetable store. The light was dingy fluorescent. The linoleum floors were coated in a patina of eternal dust. There were wood-crate like stands everywhere, holding merchandise. Toward the right side of the store were rows and rows of record or CD stands.

I must have bought something. I now stood before the cashier, whose counter was higher than my head. I had to reach up to hand the cashier my money. The cashier was a blonde girl, kind of short and young-looking, with slightly tanned skin, pale, blue eyes, and frizzy-wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a faded, purple or blue t-shirt.

Dream #2

It was a hot, summer day. I had just walked away from some big outdoor event I'd been attending. The event may have been a parade or a fair. The event had probably been held to benefit people with some sort of physical problem. I felt like I had had fun and been able to support a good cause.

But now some black man began chasing after me. He was tall, very skinny, and very dark, also really sweaty or greasy. He wore really dark, but reflective, sunglasses. He was trying to bamboozle me into giving him money. But I barely had any money myself.

The man wouldn't leave me alone. I began running away from him. But apparently I had no left leg. I began hopping on my right leg, as fast as I could, to get away from the man. My hops became huge leaps. I was almost floating through the air between hops. I even seemed to be accelerating.

But the man was still behind me. I had gotten out of the busy part of town and was now on some sun-yellow, concrete-and-dust outskirts of the downtown area. I saw a grocery store off to my right. I thought if I went into that place, I'd be protected from the man. Out on the street, anybody could bother anybody. But in a store, you had to obey the store's rules.

I also thought I might have been able to evade the man by hiding in the store. But the man was still close enough to see where I was heading. He had gotten onto a bike, which he was now peddling with only his right leg. He, now, apparently, had only his right leg, while I had both my legs. I wondered how someone could possibly pedal with only one leg.

I went into the store through a set of automatic doors. The store was really old-looking and run-down. It looked like barely anybody ever came here. Everything looked kind of stale. There were no lights on, but plenty of dim natural light, green as a hard-boiled egg yolk's skin, came in through the front window.

I saw the man run into the store. Somehow I acted like I was walking through the store, looking for stuff to buy. But as soon as I saw that I'd gotten the man to walk far back into the store, so that I was out of his line of sight, I ran out of the store.

I turned around the right corner of the store and ran up the sidewalk, to a pedestrian bridge that ran over some wide road. I was pretty sure I had now evaded the man.

But now I was having thoughts of some conversation with my mom. The conversation got so heavy that I stopped running about halfway along the chain-link-fence-domed bridge. I began fumbling with something, maybe an electronic device, while I looked down and continued the imaginary conversation with my mother.

reassuring prince

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I may have been working, standing amid aisles of shelves, like shelves in a store. There were a few other people with me. There were one wall of shelves and display racks and then a series of aisles perpendicular to the wall. I stood staring at the wall of shelves. Something like clear, plastic packets full of papers and study materials hung from the display racks on the wall.

We had to do something like sort papers or make sure that papers were in the right places. This all may have had to do with studies we were doing for reports, like dissertations, each of us was writing. But one of my co-workers thought he had put one of the papers in the wrong place. He was now completely upset and panicking.

I knew that the panicking co-worker was the pop artist Prince. I went to go talk to him, to assure him that everything was alright. I turned away from the wall and walked down one of the aisles. I then turned left and up another aisle, the shelves of which were full of salty snacks, like potato chips and onion rings. Prince was just walking down the aisle. He had long, black, disheveled hair and a thin mustache. He wore a purple bodysuit with a steep, v-necked, lapeled collar that opened all the way down to his sternum.

I knew what Prince had done. I knew he'd thought he'd organized something in an incorrect way. He probably had organized something in an unusual way. But he hadn't necessarily done it the wrong way. I called out to Prince, telling him to calm down, that everything was cool.

I held out my fist, so Prince could tap his fist's knuckles against mine, to show me he understood he was cool. I noticed that Prince had a gold ring on his middle finger. The design of the ring was a gold disc with an upward-pointing pentagram inside of it.

I was now off to the left of the aisles, past an empty gap of floor space, kneeling at the end cap of another aisle. On a low shelf was a tray of meats and cheeses. I picked up some slices of turkey. I tried to pick up slices of Swiss cheese as well. But the slices were so stuck together that I could only tear off fragments. I began laying the fragments down on the slices of turkey. I was going to roll the cheese and turkey together and eat these little turkey roll-ups.

As I did this I could hear someone like a supervisor speaking from the far end of the aisles. The supervisor (probably a woman, but maybe a man) was telling everybody that if they'd done interviews with professors from universities, they were not to treat the paperwork from those interviews the same as if the paperwork for the interviews with people in commercial fields. This had something to do with the fact that professors were, for my co-workers, more than just interview subjects. They were also potential professional contacts.

But someone was continuing to put the professor paperwork into stacks with other paperwork, even as the supervisor was talking. The supervisor kept repeating, "Keep the paperwork separate! Keep the paperwork separate!" The supervisor's voice became more and more insistent. It was like the supervisor was getting more and more urgent and annoyed, but also like the supervisor was becoming more and more convinced that the person working was really too stupid to understand the command.

I felt bad for the person getting chastised. I knew the person wasn't stupid. I even had the feeling that the person was actually doing things correctly. I thought the supervisor may have been too impatient to see that the worker was following directions, just in a different way.

"weird al loves this place"; modular homeless; golden field; blocked images

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a grocery store. I was possibly near the back end of the store, on the left side of the store (as a person would face the store from front to back). The aisles near me seemed to be in disarray, like they were being rearranged, or like new stock had come in and was being added to the shelves.

There were a few workers in the area that was disorganized. One of them was a tall, white man, probably young, even though his face looked a little worn-out. This man was probably the manager. I had probably been afraid of interacting with the workers. They seemed really boisterous, and I was afraid that they'd start making fun of me if I got too close to them.


But the manager walked up to me. He said, not as if he was saying it to me, but as if he were saying it to his friends, but loud enough that I could hear, "Weird Al loves this place." I knew that the manager meant the comedy singer "Weird Al" Yankovic. I didn't think it could be true that Weird Al even came to this grocery store, let alone that he could love the store. So I thought that somehow the manager had found out that I liked Weird Al, and that he was just saying this to impress me.

But the manager motioned me to come along with him to the back room. The back room was really small, for a grocery store. The man told me that he seriously meant that Weird Al came to this store a lot, and that he really loved the place.

I was now a worker for the store. Perhaps I had been this whole time. The manager brought me back out into the main area. We were all alone in the side aisle now. The place was still cluttered up. There were even big boxes running across the aisles, slanted diagonally from the floor of one side of the aisle to the top of the other side of the aisle. The boxes were thin, like they might have carried poles or fluorescent bulbs in them.

The manager was walking backward as I walked forward. He was speaking to me excitedly. He said, "In fact, Weird Al is just now coming back from a concert tour. He'll be coming in here one of these nights. We already have a cake made for him."

In my mind's eye I could see a round, white cake with red words on the top. I had to walk either under or over one of the tall, slanting boxes that took up the aisle. As I did so, a bright flash of light probably filled my view.

The man continued, asking me, "What else do you think Weird Al would like? What do you think he would like to hear from us?"

We were now at the front of the store. The window walls of the store probably showed that it was dark outside. The store was basically empty of customers. There was a long expanse of checkout lines. The manager stopped at the registers nearest us. A couple of blonde girls had a couple of registers, and the manager needed to check in on the girls.

I walked down a few registers. There was another blonde girl. But her hair was shorter, and she looked less girly, more tomboyish, than the other two girls. I was a little attracted to her. She seemed to be wearing a kind of dumpy uniform, more like the 1980s style of uniform for Burger King than a modern uniform for a grocery store.

I don't know whether we talked, but we seemed to have some kind of interaction. I may have stood into the register beside her, as if I were going to start working that register. But then I walked away again. I had a big, fat book in my hand. I lay it down, probably on the woman's register, but possibly on my own.

I turned around and walked back toward the registers where the manager had been seeing to the other girls. Apparently a shift change was occurring. Some girls were counting the money in their registers, while other girls were putting their own new cash tills into the cash registers.

One of the blonde girls ran up from behind me to tell the manager that she was only sixty-five cents off on her register. She seemed really happy about this, as if, for all the time she'd been working here, she'd never been able to balance her register so well.

I had been -- at some point! -- carrying a paper coffee cup, like from a coffee shop. But now all I was holding was the heat-protector sleeve. I wanted to get rid of it. So I tore it up into tiny pieces. I walked past a thin column in the store. There was a small, white, plastic garbage can, like for use at an office desk. I tossed the shreds of paper in there. But when I looked, the garbage bag was empty, other than my shreds of paper and a ten dollar bill!

I thought that one of the cashier girls must have dropped ten dollars out of their register. I thought that somebody's register would come up really short. I thought that somebody would definitely get in trouble for that. But I didn't call attention to the ten dollars. I'm not sure why. I just noted it, looked up, and kept walking.

I walked back up the aisle I had come from. But now the aisle was clear, with no clutter or boxes. I walked all the way to the back of the store, then turned to walk toward the right side of the store. But as I walked, I realized I probably needed to head back to the registers. I have left my book -- which I now knew was Jim Marrs' Trillion Dollar Conspiracy -- laying on the woman's cash register conveyor belt. I couldn't just leave my book sitting there. I needed to go back for it before I could continue walking around the store.

Dream #2

I was in an apartment. The apartment unit was on the ground floor, but it may actually have been two stories tall. But the apartment was also something more like a hotel. It was obtained only for short periods of time. Either I had gotten the hotel, or some other person had gotten it and was having me watch the place, since I had nowhere to live.

It was night. The photo and video artist Laurel Nakadate had just entered the apartment. We stood just in front of the door, in a space between the living room and a dining area. I was probably holding blankets and a pillow. Nakadate was kind of tall. She was wearing a tight, black tank top and tight, brown pants, maybe of some kind of suede-like material. Her hair was a little bit disheveled.

Nakadate had probably come here for the night. She knew I had this place, and I'd probably told her she could use it. But I was trying to keep the details of the place, and of my life overall, secret from her. I didn't have a job anymore, and this place was only temporary. In fact, I didn't know what I would do once I had to leave this place. I didn't want Nakadate to know any of this about me. I felt like, if she knew, she'd reject me as a worthless person.

Nakadate and I had a conversation about something I can't remember. It was a very calm and natural conversation, but I can't remember what it was about. But all through the conversation, I did my best to conceal my situation and to act like everything was just fine.

We agreed that Nakadate would go take care of something, maybe taking a shower?, and that we'd then meet in the bedroom just past the living room. I could see the light on in the bedroom. I walked through the living room and into the bedroom.

My ex-girlfriend H, who had taken the place of Nakadate, was sitting on the bed, waiting for me. The bed was set along the back wall. H was watching a TV, which was set along the opposite wall. The bed H sat on was like a bed that had a second, pull-out bed in its underside. The lower bed was pulled out just enough so that H could use it either as a seat cushion, like the bed was a couch, or like a footrest, with the top mattress being used as a seat cushion. The rest of the room was completely empty.

I sat down beside H. She may have been eating a cup of ramen. I "watched TV" with H, even though I'm not sure I actually saw a TV at all. I may just have been staring at a blank wall. H and I began having some conversation, which may also have had to do with my living arrangements.

My thoughts drifted into a woman talking about the living arrangements she and her husband had. The woman seemed to be a 1950s kind of woman, even though I'm not sure what time period she really lived in. The woman and her husband both had very similar professions. And whatever the man and woman did, they liked to travel while doing it. They especially liked living in the mountains.


So, the woman explained, the man and the woman opted to get a kind of extremely modular house. The houses were cheaper than normal houses. They were also much smaller than normal houses. But the man and woman didn't like having a lot of space. They preferred having freedom. The houses were good for this. They could be picked up or dropped off by the buyers very easily, wherever they needed to go.


However, the woman had lately found that the couple's finances weren't stable enough for the couple to afford the modular houses. So the woman was having to take her modular house back to the modular house store. All she did, actually, was get on a bicycle, to the front of which was attached the modular house, and pedal it down a mountain road. The house was so light that the woman could just pedal it away.


The woman rode along a beautiful, undulating mountain road that was lined with pine trees and fields of yellow flowers. The sky was blue, marbled with wisps of white cirrus clouds. The woman was pale, and she wore a pale, rusty-tan dress, in the 1950s style, very understated, with thin buttons running down the blouse, and the skirt belling out just a bit, going down all the way to the ankles. The woman's red-brown hair was done in a short, elegant style.


The woman was "narrating" over this view. She said that this wasn't unusual for her and her husband. They would often take their modular houses back to the store when they felt they couldn't afford them. (I'm not sure what they did when they didn't have houses. Did they camp?) But, eventually, the husband would start to feel good about his life and finances again. Then the couple would go out and get another modular home. After a while, the woman would see that the couple's finances could no longer support their having a modular home. And the couple would take the modular home back to the shop.


The woman looked very cheerful. And her narration had a cheerful tone. But it was evident that the woman was distressed about the couple's financial situation. The woman probably wished that the husband would find some way of being more responsible.


I now got a better view of the modular home. It didn't look like much of a home at all. It was a wooden structure, like it was made out of old shipping pallets, or out of rough-hewn, wooden boards. I don't think I could make out much of a house-like structure to the construction. And it looked really small, maybe not more than three meters long and wide, and not more than a meter or a meter and a half tall.


Nevertheless, it still looked really heavy. I wondered how the woman could just bike it all the way down to town, especially on a mountain road like this. The woman, in "narration," cheerfully answered that most of the ride was downhill anyway, that the modular home was small and light, and that the modular home actually was even lighter than it already looked.


I watched the woman from the crest of a hill. As the woman seemed to be coming round a bend, something happened. I could tell ahead of time that the woman was going to crash. She did. The bike and the modular home wound off onto the shoulder of the road. The woman flew off the bike and landed face down in a patch of pink flowers. I thought the woman was dead. But apparently she was alive. I probably heard the woman, in narration, explaining why the crash hadn't hurt so much. But she hadn't stood up yet.

My view panned up the slope. I drifted along the road, back up to the spot where the modular home used to be. But the modular home was still there. I now heard the husband's voice in narration. But it was like the husband's voice was my voice as well, or, actually, more like my thoughts and feelings were controlling the husband's voice, which was a lot more dignified than my voice. I could also see an image of the husband in my mind's eye: a 1940s style photo of a handsome young man in military dress uniform.


The husband/I was explaining how he/I wasn't planning on getting rid of the modular home. The wife had always been anxious about finances. But the husband/I had a feeling that the couple's finances would be fine soon enough. The husband/I felt like everything was going to be okay, so there was no reason to get rid of the modular home.


The modular home was built on a square deck of wood. At each corner of the square stood a wooden pillar, kind of like a tower. In the center of the wooden deck stood the house itself. The house was rather small, almost like a child's playhouse. Its walls were square, but its roof may have been rounded, or teardrop-shaped. The whole thing was made out of rough-hewn wood. The design may have reminded me of a miniature version of the Taj Mahal.


I may have thought that this little place was definitely not big enough for me an H (or for me and Laurel Nakadate?). I thought that I would definitely want to keep the modular house. But I would probably want to change the model for one that used the space of the plot a little bit better, i.e. one that incorporated more of the deck space into the interior of the house.


I may have heard the woman's narration again, or I may have heard some other woman's voice in narration. It was like the woman was acting as a real estate agent, or a modular home sales agent. She was supporting all of my feelings regarding keeping the modular home and possibly trading into a new home.


Dream #3


I stood out in some mountain landscape, in a valley full of golden grass. The golden grass was filled in places with pockets of white snow. I had apparently journeyed a long way to get here. I still had a great deal of journeying left to do. I may have remembered a conversation I'd had with an old man before I'd started this journey. The man may have been tall, slim, bald, dressed in an old-fashioned pinstripe suit of very dark material.


Dream #4


I had been discussing a number of images with an old man. It was like I was in a dream, trying to rehearse all the elements of the dreams I'd had over the course  of the night. I reached the end of the sequence of images, and I was kind of surprised by them. There was some sort of unity to them I hadn't expected. I think this unity had to do with celebrities.


But the dream images all clouded over -- like they had been drawn over with heavy amounts of crayon! It was like a succession of images piled over the images I'd just organized in my head. A chain-link fence clouded over everything: the chain-link fence being shaded all through with opaque browns, greys and greens. Then a man's head, also colored with heavy, dark colors, appeared before the chain-link fence. Then another chain-link fence. Then another man's head.

***

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


UPDATE 2: Added two drawings to second dream, July 25, 2012, 3:18 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

ten cent porn; trash files; juice boss; cooking too much?; secretly following; hitting hitcher; blackmail cupcakes

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on some form of public transportation, maybe a bus, but probably more like a train or a subway. We were moving along above ground. The sky outside may have been deep blue-grey, as if it were late afternoon or early morning and cloudy. I sat in seats that edged their sides against the window. In front of me was a row of seats that edged their backs against the window. There may actually have been another row of seats in front of that first row.

I was looking at my phone. A man now sat in the seats in front of me. He was skinny, with dark skin and dark, wavy hair done up in a square cut. He wore a button-up shirt and nice slacks. He smiled at me and said something like, "You looking at porn?"

I was kind of shocked. I wasn't looking at porn. But I knew I could have been at some other time. In conjunction with my shock, we may have passed over some big bump. I dropped my phone. It scuttered under the row of seats the man was sitting in.

The man didn't seem to notice that I had dropped my phone. I didn't want to act like I'd dropped my phone. I thought if I acted worried, the guy would definitely think I had been looking at porn, and he'd definitely want to look at my phone. I didn't want to ask the guy for help in getting my phone.

I was trying to figure out the best way for getting my phone. I couldn't reach for it from where I sat. It had fallen all the way to the other end of the row. So I had to get up and get it. I stood up and went for it. I knelt in front of the row of seats.

It was a little harder than I'd thought it would be to get to it. The row of seats in front of this row was so close that it was like I had to crawl under this row just to get to the back row. Instead of the man sitting there, there may now have been a Hispanic woman, maybe with one or two little kids.

I noticed that down here the seats were all dusty, too. I could see my phone (except now it may just have been a dime) at the very end of a corner formed by the row of seats and the wall. I crawled back and reached for the phone, rubbing myself up against all the dust of the seats so that I could squeeze my arm in to where the dime was.

I pulled the dime out and looked at it. I may have been sitting straight up, still under the seats, though before I'd had to do a pretty short crawl to get here. Now that I'd actually retrieved my dime, I no longer thought it had been worth all the trouble I'd gone through.

Dream #2

I was at my office. I was looking down into the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. The drawer was all full of clutter. I may have been panicked, trying to figure out how to take care of all this clutter.

I may have heard my boss' voice from behind me, talking to our office manager, BL. My boss told BL, "You'll see. We can do without him. Anybody can do his job, really."

Dream #3

I was in some place like a break room. It seemed to be at the back of a big grocery store. The break room was kind of narrow. A big, circular table with a fake wood top took up most of the room. I sat at the table. The lights in the room were all off. The only light was the fluorescent light from the store, which came in through the open door of the break room.

My boss walked in. He said something like, "You're still here? We got rid of you, didn't we? We have your replacement and everything."

I may have tried to explain something about my being here, like there were one or two things that still needed to be taken care of. But my boss said something to ridicule everything I said. He said everything in a really pissy yet nonchalant tone that made it clear he was trying to insult me as much as he could in the most tactful way possible, so that he could prove how little he felt he needed me without actually getting himself in trouble for insulting me.

I was so angry that I shouted something back at him. It was pretty violent, but I can't remember what it was. My boss didn't take what I'd said seriously at all. So I began to laugh. I told him if he didn't think I was serious, he could just wait and see. I began to laugh louder and louder.

I laughed so loud that I "woke myself up" -- somewhere. I was walking around in the grocery store, I believe. I could hear two women talking to me from somewhere, maybe from inside my head. I could tell that the two women were Hispanic. Maybe they'd been attractive before. But now they were kind of worn-out and dumpy-looking.

The two women were telling me that when I'd been laughing in my sleep, I'd been laughing so hard that I'd woken them up. They said my laugh had been an evil laugh, and that it made them afraid for my boss. I don't know how they knew I was laughing about my boss.

I myself was really surprised I could have given such an evil laugh. When the women told me that my laugh was evil, I began to worry about myself. Was I okay? Did I need psychological help?

I was now walking along the back wall of the grocery store. There was a door along the back wall. I knew that behind that door was my boss' bedroom. He was asleep in that room. It may have been like a dorm room. My boss may actually have been sharing that room with the guy my boss had hired in my place. My boss and the guy may both have been asleep.

I knew my boss had fallen asleep because he thought there was nothing to worry about from me. I was going to show him. I had a plastic bottle in my hands. Actually, the bottle in my hands kept changing. First it was a small, 600ml plastic bottle. Then it was a big plastic juice bottle, maybe around two liters. There may also have been times when I held more than one bottle in my hands. The bottles may usually have been full of orange juice. I don't think any of them were ever completely full.

I planned to sneak into my boss' bedroom while he was asleep and pound him on the head with these bottles until his skull was smashed and he died. But as I was walking up to the door of the room, two tall, very muscular, bronze-skinned men walked up from behind me. The men wore tight, dark grey or black t-shirts and maybe dull green or grey pants, also kind of tight, maybe made of denim. They had short, wavy brown hair, and square, but kind of babyish, faces.

I had a bad feeling that these guys were trying to break into my boss' bedroom. They seemed to want to steal some of the stuff in the bedroom. Apparently the bedroom was also like a storehouse for some of the most valuable stuff in the store.

I didn't want the store to get stolen from, so I began watching the guys very closely. I decided not to go into the room. The room had a sliding door with a small, inward notch of a handle, painted the same pale-tan as the rest of the door. I didn't want the two men to see how easy it was to get into the room. They'd only be more encouraged to go in.

So either I got friendly with the guys or the guys got friendly with me. We began talking, walking past the room, all of us acting like the room was of no importance to us at all. We turned right and headed down an aisle with rather large shelves, more like shelves in a huge discount warehouse than in a normal grocery store. We were talking about something that I seemed to be engaged in with a kind of childlike enthusiasm.

I got the feeling, as we continued walking, that the guys had decided they were going to protect me. But I didn't know if that was just an act. So I kept all my conversation away from anything having to do with my boss or the bedroom door.

Dream #4

I was in some restaurant. I probably worked there. The restaurant had a long, narrow eating area and a small kitchen, most of which was visible from behind a counter. The restaurant was closed at the moment. But we were apparently preparing, so we could open up for some big party later in the day. The party may have been planned to be a multiple-day party. It may also have been the case that we had just closed down for the day, but that we now had to prepare all of our food for the next day.

Most of the workers seemed to be hanging around in the eating area, toward the back, at a couple of tables. It seemed like they, in general, really didn't have anything to do with the cooking, or maybe even the serving of the food. It seemed like they were all some kind of bosses, more concerned with the administrative aspects of the restaurant. There were one or two cooks behind the counter.

I'm not sure exactly what my job was. But somehow, I was keeping track of the amount of food made. I was also somehow involved in determining how much food needed to be made. At some point I had concluded that we didn't need to make a whole lot. We probably hadn't had much business the day before, and it looked like things weren't going to be any more active the next day. Plus, with the kind of food we made (some kind of fish?), it was much better to cook too little and have the food be fresh and good, than to cook too much and have food go bad.

The cook or cooks took my advice and began cooking only a little bit of food. I think I saw the preparations -- something like sheet pans with circular items, like biscuits, except made of fish, laid out on them.

But now I heard from the front door that the next day of the party was going to be really busy. There would probably be a lot of people here. And, in fact, a large group of people might even have made a reservation specifically for this restaurant.

I was excited. I ran back to the cooks and told them that we now needed to cook a lot of food. We were going to have a full house. Suddenly the cooks had all kinds of big fillets of fish, all being fried and laid out on pans everywhere. There were all kinds of pans of greasy, still-bubbling, fried fish -- everywhere.

I walked away from the cooks' counter and back toward the back of the store, where the other guys sat. I suddenly had a bad feeling that I'd told the cooks to make way too much food. The place would probably not be busy enough to serve all that food. If it were busier than the other days, we'd be kind of okay. But we'd still have too much food. But if it were only as busy as the other days, we'd have a whole lot of food and waste on our hands. We'd have wasted a lot of money.

Dream #5

It was probably a fresh, crisp morning. I was out walking around some place like a small town or a college town or campus, leading a small group of new students in some kind of orientation program. Everybody seemed cheerful and relaxed, even though I think we had gotten to some place where I really didn't know where I was going. We were walking along some grey flagstone path in between some large lawns, at the end of which were large, stately buildings. 


A group of guys came walking our way from the other direction. They were all a lot taller and stronger than I. One of the guys, a black man with a shaved head, asked if we knew where we were going. I probably walked up to the guy and mumble-whispered something like, "I don't know where we're going. Do you think you could show us the way -- but without letting on that I don't know what I'm doing?"


We stood before a black iron gate (on my right side) that was hinged on either side with a maybe 2 meter tall stone post. The gate was already partly open. The man opened the gate the rest of the way for us. We all cheerfully walked in. After the gate was a flagstone path that led directly up to one of the big, stately buildings.

The man pointed out a stack of textbooks on the right side of the flagstone path. The top book may have had a yellow cover. The book may have been a mathematics textbook.

The man said, "I think somebody left their textbooks on the path." I knew that this was the way the man was justifying having given me directions for where to go. If he opened the gate and pointed out the books, it would just look like he was pointing out the books, not pointing out the direction I was supposed to take.

I may have replied that the person who owned these books (maybe some female student?) wasn't here, but that I'd make sure to get the books to her. I probably went to pick the books up.

Dream #6

It was morning. I was out with some young, black man on a road, probably in a neighborhood full of fenced parking lots and warehouses. It may have been like I was going to work. It may have been a hot, kind of smoggy morning. The sky was a sour yellow, with the sun just coming up over the horizon.

There were a decent amount of cars in the street, all heading to some warehouse yard to start work. The boy and I seemed to be in a hurry, even though I don't think either of us was too keen to start work.

The boy suddenly had an idea that to get to work quicker we could "hitch a ride." But this hitching a ride didn't necessarily mean getting permission to ride with somebody and getting into their car. The boy told me, "Come on!" He ran up to some van that may have been full of young people, like college students or recent college graduates in something like an intern program. The boy seemed just to jump onto the back or the side of the van and hold on as the van drove away.

I knew that the boy was doing this less because he was in a hurry to get to work and more because he simply didn't feel like walking the rest of the way to work. But I was in a hurry to get to work, and, even though I didn't like the boy's idea, I thought it seemed smart enough that I'd better do it. So I jumped onto a van, possibly not the same van as the boy had jumped onto.

But as I was jumping onto the van I noticed that at one intersection, at which we had just turned left, there was so much traffic that everything had come to a standstill. I was now somehow inside the van. All the young people seemed to make me feel welcome. There may have been a pretty, little, skinny white girl with big, blue-green eyes and her brown hair back in a loose ponytail.

At some point I may have decided that it would be easier just to get out and walk. But suddenly an accident occurred. We'd been moving forward, when we'd hit my friend who'd jumped on the other van. Apparently he'd gotten off the van -- maybe he'd been thrown off of it. But we'd actually driven right over him. It was obvious that he was dead -- crushed. But I didn't want to believe it.

I think I'd gotten out of the van I was in, as if that would reverse my friend's death. I was walking to work. But then at some point I was driving in a car -- a yellow taxi-cab, actually -- with my mom. My mom was driving. I sat in the front passenger seat.


We turned right and drove through an open gate. We were heading along a wide road through a wide lawn. Up ahead was a big, stately building, like a college building. But I looked up ahead and to my left and saw that there were people out here training to be astronauts. Some people may even have been wearing full astronaut outfits for spacewalks.


Suddenly, from nearby, on the left side of the road, there were two people: a boy and a girl. I'm not sure what happened to the boy. He may simply have run off into the field. But the girl ran directly in front of our car. My mom had to step on the breaks really quickly. Even then we barely missed hitting the girl.


The girl was a beautiful, tall, skinny, black girl with long, loosely curly, black hair. She wore a schoolgirl's outfit, with a tartan skirt and overall-blouse and a white button-up shirt. But she was a college student, or at least preparing to become a college student.


The girl looked terribly panicked. She gave me and my mom a look, like she knew she'd forced us to stop, but that she'd had to do it. She quickly ran around to the back passenger side of the car and got in. My mom had the understanding that we needed to just keep driving and get the girl to the same place as we were going.


The girl said, in an ominous tone, "I really feel sorry for you guys." I could tell that the girl knew something bad that was possibly going to happen to me and my mom. It probably had something to do with the young man who got hit by the van. But it was also connected to the girl in some way, like whatever the girl was trying to escape was whatever was coming after me and my mom, too.


I asked the girl, "What do you mean, you feel sorry for us?" I looked in the rearview mirror at the girl. I could tell the girl was too distressed to talk. I asked, "Do you just not want to tell me right now?" The girl pursed her lips in fear and shook her head. She may have been clutching a teddy bear tightly in her arms.


Dream #7


I was in some place like a Starbucks. But it was much larger than a normal Starbucks. The cashier's counter was also set at some strange angle to the rest of the store. The area around the counter was set up in a cluttered kind of way, too, with the glass display cases set at odd angles to the counter. And, behind a door behind the counter was, apparently, a really big food prep area, like this place was actually a restaurant rather than a cafe or a Starbucks.


I had ordered and had been sitting down. But now I'd stood up and come back to the counter. I may have been planning to leave. But the man behind the counter, a tall, kind of muscular black man with a bit of a feminine attitude, had either given me or sold me some extra items, so that now I felt like I should stay at the cafe to finish my items. This probably wasn't so bad, as I probably had stuff I wanted to read or write.


But now the man offered me even more food. This time it was some kind of cupcakes with a thick layer of pale brown chocolate frosting. The cupcakes looked really good. But I knew I probably shouldn't have them. But the man told me to take one.


There was some woman behind me and just to my right now. She may have been with me.


I told the man that I really couldn't take anything else. I'd probably had enough with the first stuff I'd gotten. With the second batch of stuff the guy had given me, I probably had too much. The cupcakes would make it way too much.


I was about to walk away. But now the man brought out a huge tray of some kind of sweet breads that were coated in some kind of sweet syrup. The man told me something like, "Now, you really can't resist these."


I was actually going to try and resist them. But the man actually told me something weird, like, if I didn't take one of these little cakes with me, he was going to tell everybody some dirty,little secret of mine. So I decided to take one of the cakes. They actually did look really, really good. And now I was even tempted to take one of the cupcakes with the chocolate frosting, too. I really did want to know how that frosting tasted.


*****


Update -- you can find info on images I think are related to this dream (and some others) in this entry of my dream-day blog.

school keys; religious euphemism; noodle resin; gerald wilkes booth

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the lobby of a school, probably like an elementary school. The lobby was like an intersection for a number of hallways, some of which were probably more like covered outdoor walkways than hallways. The floor of the lobby was a kind of deep green. There were a lot of children and a few adults rushing about, as if a class were about to start, or as if school had just ended for the day.

Most of the people were probably heading for the front door, which was off and to my right. But I was heading toward a hallway that was across the lobby from me and up and to my left. But I saw that the double-doors to the hallway were closed. Since it was the end of the day, and the doors were closed, it likely meant the doors were locked.

I was probably going to head to the doors anyway, to see if I could get in through them. But some kids probably saw me. They probably knew that I would find the doors were locked. But they probably wanted me to get in. Either they spoke about getting me keys, or I could "read in their thoughts" that they were going to get me the keys, or I imagined that they were going to get me the keys. In my mind's eye, I could see a keyring kind of stuffed full of thin, flimsy keys.

Dream #2

I was walking out of some place like a grocery store. The cash registers were to my right, and a window wall was to my left. Up ahead of me was a smaller corridor that led to the automatic doors leading out of the grocery store. It was a sunny day, and the sunlight coming into the store made the store feel kind of cozy, even though it was really actually kind of run down.

As I was walking, there were two women walking and talking behind me. The women looked (even though I couldn't see them) young -- skinny, blonde, tan, pretty -- but a little worn out, somehow. And their voices sounded old and a bit stern and grizzled. The two women were talking about different choices of religion. But one of the women said she preferred not to use the term religion. Instead, she preferred to use some euphemistic term, like "spiritual pathway decision."

As I listened to the women talking, I approached the automatic doors. Leaning against a square column before the door was a wire-rack of free newspapers, possibly something like an apartment rental-ad newspaper.

Dream #3

I was in a big, but cluttered and kind of run down kitchen with a young man. There was a food prep counter in the center of the kitchen, off to my left. The man stood there, while I stood before a kind of old, heavy metal stove, watching a pot of noodles boil thickly.

The man began explaining something to me from behind the clutter on the food prep counter. It was probably about the right way for letting noodles boil. As the man continued his speech, my view backed up from the stove. The stove seemed to be cluttered with all kinds of things like sheets and gigantic rolls of Saran Wrap. But as the man continued his speech, which seemed to be mostly illustrations of how to mess up on boiling pasta, the stove top became cluttered with piles and piles of huge, boiling noodles.

The noodles stopped boiling. The man showed me some of the noodles. Some of the noodles were hollow cylinders, maybe 10cm long and 6cm in diameter. They were boiled really soft, and they all had traces of something like dirt or silt on their inside, bottom surfaces.

The man made me taste the noodles and see how bad they were. In particular the man had me note the "resin" (the dirt) that had been boiled into the noodles. I was a little surprised. For some reason, I'd thought resin would be something sweet and syrupy, not dirt-like. I wondered whether the man wasn't wrong in calling this stuff resin.

Dream #4

I was looking over a resume for somebody who wanted me to hire them for my company. The resume was just a sheet of paper with a picture on it. The picture took up almost the whole page, and it was bordered by some kind of zigzag drawing, possibly interspersed with crayon colors, like something a little child would draw. Below the photo were a few lines, on which were written a couple statements in huge, childlike handwriting.

The photo was of a man standing before a car like a DeLorean. The man stood on the driver's side of the car, right in front of the car's grill. The man was kind of old, bald, and a little egg-shaped. He wore an all-white uniform: white shirt, untucked, and white slacks.

The writing said something like, "My name is Gerald Wilkes Booth. Please don't tell anybody you know who I am or what my history is when you submit my application for this job."

I knew that Gerald Wilkes Booth was the man who assassinated John F. Kennedy. I wondered how someone could do something like that, and become so notorious, and then just think they could apply for a job without anybody catching on who they were. But I also began to worry. Now that I knew who this guy was, would other people now associate me with him?

One of my co-workers, possibly a boss of mine, had probably been standing over my left shoulder for a while, possibly explaining some stuff about this guy to me.