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.

little dog bites; punk club and fast food; guitar chords

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was daytime. I was with my brother in some outdoor area like a stone plaza dotted with small garden planters. A lot of the planters had nothing growing, or very little, growing in them. My brother crouched in front of a planter a few meters away from me. I crouched in front of one of the planters that had only a few flowers growing in it.

I was playing with a few small dogs. There were two or three dogs on my left and one dog on my right. I was letting the dogs wrestle around with my hands. Then the dogs started biting my hands. I didn't mind it very much. They seemed to be biting me as hard as they could, but it wasn't really hurting me at all.

My brother told me I shouldn't let the dogs bite me like that. He said the situation could get out of control, and I could end up getting hurt. I didn't listen to my brother. I seemed to be too happy seeing the dogs having fun to want to think about caution. Another two small dogs ran up to me. They looked like puppies rather than full grown dogs. They were all white, except for a patch around one of their eyes and one of their ears, which were a brilliant blue.

The dog on my right, a poodle-like dog, now began biting me really hard. I could tell I was just keeping my skin from being broken and my fingers from being bitten all the way through. But I couldn't hold back for long. I was trying to pull my finger out of the dog's mouth. But the dog had its teeth clamped down so hard on my fingers that I couldn't even move them.

I grabbed the dog's muzzle with two hands (I'm not really sure how that's possible...) and began prying the dog's mouth open. It was really hard, and I was afraid that the dog would find new strength and snap back down on my fingers, chomping them right off. But now I noticed that the dog actually hadn't had any of my fingers in its mouth. I had actually had my fingers curled around the dog's muzzle, so that it only looked like I'd had my fingers in the dog's mouth (???).

The scene shifted a bit. I was now sitting at the edge of the garden plaza, in some kind of porch-like area that also almost felt like horse stables made out of stone instead of wood. My brother and I were sitting close together, and there were small dogs playing all around us.

A woman, maybe in her late twenties, stood near us. She was like our guardian or supervisor. It was almost like, even though my brother and I were probably our current age, we were also kids. My brother had done something wrong, possibly having injured or killed one of the dogs.

The woman wasn't acting angry toward my brother. She may have been afraid to show her anger. She may have felt like my brother was dangerous, so that showing anger toward my brother might lead my brother to react toward the woman with violence. But the woman was planning to eliminate my brother from this situation somehow, or at least to limit his action in the situation, so that the woman would feel like my brother was less of a threat.

I knew my brother hadn't purposely done anything wrong. He may actually not have done anything wrong at all. I was trying to comfort my brother. At this point a dog, either the dog the woman thought my brother had injured or killed, or a dog very like that dog, came running up to us and playing around with us and the rest of the dogs. I thought that I should probably point this out to the woman, to vindicate my brother.

Dream #2

I was sitting on the floor at the front end of a punk rock club. My brother-in-law sat near me, leaning up against a wall. He looked weird. He had olive colored skin, instead of his usual golden-tan skin, and he had really shaggy, black-brown hair. He was also kind of leaning over to the left a lot of the time, so that his head was almost parallel to the ground. And he may have been sitting huddled under some beige or tan blanket.

The area my brother-in-law and I sat in was lit with a bright, but dingy, incandescent light. The walls were dirty. They looked almost like old stucco. The real activity of the club was behind us. There was a dark area full of people. Some kind of performance, either music or stand-up comedy, was also going on. I felt like my brother-in-law and I were being excluded from the activity in the club.

My brother-in-law may have been telling me how he felt excluded as well. As he spoke, my vision wandered off to my left, to a part of wall near the entrance to the club. There was a marker drawing along the wall, drawn perpendicular to the floor, of a few cartoony figures who represented either famous band members or famous club patrons from the 1970s.

My brother-in-law told me that in the 1970s this place had a real reputation for being a hardcore club for punks. People could come in here and be weird and wild and innovative. But nowadays the club was really a punk club in name only. The music was never very heavy. Sometimes they even did stand-up comedy. And the clientele were all very mild. If anybody -- such as my brother-in-law or myself -- looked like they might be wild, like people in the 1970s were, they were immediately shunned.

My brother-in-law seemed to be taking this exclusion harder than I was. I tried to console him. I said maybe we should go somewhere else. There still were, I said, places where wild people hung out. We just had to wander around and find them.

We were now outside in the dark night. The streets were lit only by very dim, orange streetlamps. I was separated from my brother-in-law by at least a few meters. I may also have been floating through the air, probably bodiless.

We went through a block full of small, kind of old-style shops. We went past some fast food restaurant. It was like an old-style burger joint. The building had a huge red roof that sloped almost all the way to the ground.

In front of the building were rows and rows of tables like picnic tables. The tables all seemed to be full of people. The people all scared me a little. They seemed like drug addicts, gangsters, and troublemakers. But I felt like this was the place where my brother-in-law and I should hang out. So I decided to act calm and friendly toward everybody here. I told my brother-in-law that this was a really cool place.

I now remembered another cool thing about this place. Late at night, the owner of this hamburger stand, a middle-aged man of Southeast Asian descent, would turn the front of the inside of the building into a kind of mini-bazaar. There he would sell all kinds of Southeast Asian merchandise. Other Southeast Asian people in the community would come to the hamburger stand and buy the merchandise. I told my brother-in-law that this was really cool, and that we should check it out.

I was now walking around, probably without my brother-in-law, inside the building. The front of the building now felt like it was just a frame-booth with sheets or tarps for ceilings and walls. It was very spacious. It was empty of people, almost like it was shut down -- or incredibly unpopular!

There were a lot of tables, all piled up with Southeast Asian merchandise. Each table bore a different kind of merchandise. It was even darker in the "building," though, than it was outside. It was hard for me to see the merchandise.

I walked around a corner to my left, into a kind of back area of the "bazaar" that few people knew about. In this back area was a table with a bunch of religious books. Even in the dark I could see that all of the books had colorful, intricate designs on their covers. The books seemed to be about a religion like Hinduism or maybe Buddhism.

But suddenly I had a flash of apprehension. I had a feeling that the man who owned this store was really a violent person. I had a feeling that this whole bazaar was a front for some kind of violent activity the man was staging. I had a feeling that if the man found me in here, I'd become a target for whatever kind of violent activity he was planning. The fact that I was looking at the religious books seemed like it could put me into even more trouble with the man.

I felt like the man could be just around the corner, waiting to do something like stab me. So I walked back around the corner, just to make sure the man wasn't there. The front area was still empty. I felt a little more secure. I turned and walked back toward the religious books, still a little afraid, though, that the man might come attack me.

Dream #3

I was in a bedroom with my brother. My brother sat on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed. I stood very close to my brother, playing a guitar, probably an acoustic guitar. I was playing a song I thought was an original song, or even a song I was making up right then and there.

I really enjoyed the song I was playing. But at some point I lost track of the song. It was either like I had forgotten what chord progression I was using or like I had lost track of where I was in the song altogether. For a moment I was strumming blindly along, trying to find the right sounds for the song, while also hoping that the "wrong" sounds I was currently making weren't too horribly wrong.

Now my brother pulled out a sheet of notebook paper. He held it on his lap, but at a kind of odd angle, so I had to focus really hard to make out what was written on the paper. I saw a series of chords written down, kind of in verse and chorus form, like a series of blocks or grids going down the page.

I remember G and C being one combination, and possibly G and D and G and F. But I can't remember the order of these progressions. There may also have been a sharp somewhere, maybe on the F. I began playing as well as I could according to the chord progressions on the page. I may have been pretty satisfied with the music, like I was nearly, but not quite, playing what I'd been playing before. I may also now have begun singing along to the tune.

punk 1; punk 2; macdonald and mcdonald's; didn't mean to hurt you; can't draw a face; fail/pass/fail

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a house, and then I was outside on a road in a suburban neighborhood. In the house, I was probably in my body. Outside the house my view may just have been floating, bodiless, along the road. The road bowed out to the right and then back to the left. One area of the road seemed to have a row of tall cypress trees.

All this time, I was making up and singing some punk-sounding song. The song sounded really original to me.

Dream #2

I was in a bedroom, standing over a bed. I was putting lifting up large paper cut-outs of action figures, mostly robot-like figures or armored figures, like Samus from Metroid. The paper cut-outs weren't actually put together. They were still flat, and I could still see the tabs sticking off of their bodies.

All this time, I was making up and singing some kind of song. I may have thought the song was punk-sounding. But it really wasn't.

Dream #3

I was at a fast food restaurant. The restaurant seemed a little bigger than normal, and it felt empty: either empty of people or empty of chairs and tables. The light coming in from the window walls was bright grey and somehow sterile, although the place also had a somewhat grimy feel to it.

I was reading a John D. MacDonald novel, either from a book or on my phone. The novel had the feel of Barrier Island and Condominium, though I'm pretty sure its subject was outside the field of real estate. I had reached a point in the novel where an over-assured man was planning to go get aggressive with another man who had put him in a compromising position.

Feeling the suspense of this moment I put down my book/mobile device and chuckled, "Whoa, no!" I knew already that, if this book followed the usual structure of a MacDonald novel, the man would get himself in trouble through his over-assuredness. Either he or the man he was out for would get killed, when all the man likely intended to do was cause a little scare and end the problem.

As I walked along and pondered this whole thing, I saw an older man sitting and eating. He looked to me just like a character I'd imagine out of a MacDonald novel: a little short, kind of dumpy, but tough-looking, probably well-off, and someone you wouldn't want to mess with in general.

I walked down a short hallway. There were probably bathroom doors on the right wall. At the end of the hallway I found myself in a coffee shop, possibly a Starbucks. I may already have placed my order, so that now I was just waiting for it.

The man at the cash register, a young, skinny, black man, handed me my coffee. Apparently I was waiting for something else. The young man gave me an easygoing assurance that my other item would be here in a moment.

In the meantime, I figured I'd fix my coffee. I took the lid off my coffee. I wanted to stir in some sugar, but I didn't have a spoon. I was going to reach for a spoon, but the young man planned to give me one instead. He was a couple meters away, doing something else. He spun around, away from me, still looking more concerned with the other thing he was doing, while he threw a white plastic spoon toward me from behind his back.

The spoon lilted steeply up into the air, then dashed lightly downward. It all took me by surprise, but I still reached out to grab the spoon. I had to stretch a bit to get at the spoon. I caught the spoon, but I managed to fumble it and let it drop to the floor.

I picked up the spoon. I didn't want to look like I was rejecting the young man's offer of the spoon. But I figured I'd just grab my own spoon, a clean one that hadn't touched the floor. I'd just look like I was using the spoon the young man had thrown to me. But I then figured that I didn't even want to use a spoon at all before washing my hands. I'd touched the floor in grabbing the spoon. So my hands were just as dirty, now, as the dirty spoon was.

Dream #4

I was in a bedroom with my ex-girlfriend H, sitting on the floor. H had a bunch of stuff all pulled out of paper shopping bags, like bags from really nice clothing boutiques. The stuff was strewn all over the floor in between us.

H was concerned with something, maybe with packing up so she could go on a trip somewhere. But she was making remarks that I thought were kind of stupid. I may also have felt offended by the remarks, like she was making them to make me feel bad about myself.

I got frustrated with H's remarks and said something that I thought would shock H into being reasonable. I then picked up one of the paper bags. The bag was full of items, mostly brightly colored bands of the same material as elastic-fabric hairbands, but really large, maybe 15cm in diameter.

I took the bands out of the bag and began arranging them on the floor. I then kept some of the arranged bands out and put others back in the bag. I then organized the rest of the materials that were inside the bag. The bag looked  really well-organized now. I was pretty proud of myself, and I thought H would be impressed.

But when I looked back up at H, she had her face turned away from me. She held her hand in front of her face as well. I could tell that H was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. I felt really bad. I could tell that the remarks I'd made had sounded a lot meaner than I'd expected them to. I also knew that I'd made these kinds of remarks so many times before that H was finally getting sick of it, and of me. I had a feeling that H would finally stop liking me and would leave me.

Dream #5

I sat at a long table, like a table in an elementary school's cafeteria. Across the table from me sat a woman and two children, maybe a boy and a girl. The woman was drawing with the two children. Papers were scattered all over the table.

I was trying to draw the woman as she drew with the children. The woman was wearing a big, flat, black hat with a bit of a fishnet veil hanging down from it. It obscured most of her face. But I could still see enough of her cheeks and mouth to get an expression.

But when I looked down at my drawing, I was disappointed to see that I'd drawn the woman with far less of her face showing! There was almost no expression at all! I looked back up to the woman, thinking that I'd re-draw her, this time making sure I got all of the visible part of her face.

But when I looked back up at the woman, I noticed that she'd shifted her head so that very little of her face was visible from under the hat. I may have shifted my view a bit by leaning downward at a really odd angle. I may have seen more of the woman's face that way. But I knew I couldn't draw and hold my head at that weird angle. I had no idea how I was going to get a good view of the woman's face for my drawing.

Dream #6

I was walking toward a classroom. I was apparently taking a few classes like therapy classes. I was just about to graduate from one cycle of classes. But there was another cycle of classes that had preceded this one. I thought I had already graduated from that cycle. But I'd actually needed to complete one last class. Without completing this one last class, I wouldn't be considered as having passed the second cycle of classes once I'd completed it.

I was a little afraid, going into the last class of the first cycle. I had a feeling that somebody, maybe the teacher, wouldn't like me, and would try to find some way to fail me in the last class, so that I wouldn't pass the first cycle, and I wouldn't be considered as having passed the second cycle.

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.

baby clothes and video games; one house to another

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the basement of a Toys R Us. The place was full of baby supplies. The basement was huge, like a floor of a department store in a mall.

I had been all alone at first, like I had actually gotten here before the store had actually opened. But now there were more and more people filtering in. I was getting nervous. I decided to leave.

I was heading toward an escalator. But off to my right I saw a huge area, sectioned off from the rest of the basement by a waist-high barrier (like the barrier around a skating rink), that was full of baby clothes.

I seemed to remember now that I had come down into the basement in the first place to look for diapers that I could wear. I thought that maybe the baby clothes section would also have diapers. I thought that there might even be some baby clothes that I could wear.

But the baby clothes area already had a good amount of people in it: good-looking, well-off-looking moms and dads shopping for clothes for their little babies. They'd obviously think I was a pervert if they saw me looking for diapers in the baby section. So I just got on the escalator and went upstairs.

I was now on a first floor of a Toys R Us. But it seemed like a different time altogether. Again, it seemed like the store was closed. The place felt completely dead and empty. I felt all alone.

I was in the video game section. I was looking at boxes for portable game systems. I had picked up one of these systems. I may even have started playing it somehow, as if the box had some kind of demo capability on it.

But now I noticed that a whole bunch of the boxes could also act as security cameras. A lot of the boxes were trained on me, watching me. They also had video screens showing what imagery they were capturing of me.

One of the boxes in particular was kind of strange. It was clear and empty. Its sides were like iridescent cellophane. Its edges were some kind of flimsy, yellow plastic. But somehow I could see that even this object was capturing and projecting video of me.

I felt like there was a small group of people behind all this -- not like security guards, but more like average people who just followed me around because they thought I was some kind of crook.

So I tried to do my best to show that all I had been interested in in the first place was playing the video games. I played the video game demo on the box I was holding, trying to make it clear by my actions that I had no intention of stealing or wrecking anything.

Dream #2

I woke up in a huge apartment. My eyes were really groggy. It was hard to get them open. I had apparently been sleeping on the bench seats of some kind of breakfast table or dining table.

I sat up and looked over the back of the bench seats. It was like I was on a balcony. I looked down to something like a living room. It was pretty far down, but the ceiling was still pretty high up from where I sat.

I knew that I was leaving this apartment for good today. Knowing that I was leaving, I suddenly realized that this huge apartment had been mine. It was so big and so nice. I kind of remembered complaining about it. But I couldn't remember ever having appreciated its size or niceness.

I told myself that I'd have to store up all the memories of how nice this place was before I left. I also probably told myself that if I'd had a place like this before, I could have it again. I knew I was moving to a much smaller place now. But I knew I could get back into a big, nice place like this.

The fuzzy image of a kind of cheap-looking couch came into my mind. The image eventually clarified a little. The couch was brown, fake leather. But the legs and arms were made of some kind of cheap, tubular chrome. I knew this would be the one thing I could take with me into my new place. This was a relief: I knew I didn't have a couch in my present place.

I was now outside, on some big vehicle, possibly a bus. I was trying to catch up to a car that my mother and sister were in. I was really trying to catch up with my sister. It was like I was in love with her, but I had made some kind of mistake, so that now she was running away from me.

I had caught up to the car once. But I had made some mistake. After my mistake, I was somehow slowed down so that my sister could get away from me by speeding away.

I was now coming after my sister again. I was still on the bus. I was halfway hanging out of the bus. When the bus caught up to my sister, I hung even further out of the bus.

My sister was on the passenger side of the car. I yelled over to her. She spoke to me, but she was acting like she didn't know me. Her purpose was to ignore me and keep me out of her life. I may have been planning to live in her house. But she didn't want that either.

But I was determined to get back into her life. So I jumped off of the bus and onto my sister's car. My sister's window was only partly open. But I somehow managed to climb in through the window. I told my sister something like, "See? This is how serious I am about wanting to be back with you."

We rode along. It was now night. My mom drove, and my sister sat in the passenger seat. I sat in the backseat. Things seemed to be a lot calmer. But we were actually heading to some apartment complex. It was where my sister had been living.

We stopped in the parking lot. Apparently we'd come here so that my sister could break up with the man she'd been living with. But now that I was here, and I was planning on being something like my sister's boyfriend, it was up to me to confront this guy.

My sister said something to me like, "So you really think you can handle committing to me? Let's see. You'll have to face guys like this one. And he's tough. Let's see if you can do it."

But I didn't think the guy was so tough. I knew he was rich. We were parked in the lot of some really nice apartment. The building looked modern, almost like a beautiful, new art museum building. There were blue lights shining against the building. And all around the parking lot was a calm forest.

The guy was some kind of business man. But he'd probably just made a lot of his wealth by cheating people. He was an Asian man with hair down to just above his shoulders. He wore dark glasses and a white suit. He looked kind of like a criminal version of the physicist Michio Kaku. But something about him also looked old and faded, and also a bit feminine.

I was nervous about, but not afraid of, meeting the man. But I was going to go in and confront him. But before I could go in, he came out, with three or four tough guys like bodyguards around him.

The men all got into one car near our car. I could see the man's head as he sat in the car. I figured I'd go talk to him right now, just to take care of things. But now I actually was pretty afraid.

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.

mountaintop temple suicide

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was outside, probably in front of a tall, white house or a white apartment building. I received news that a person I had formed a relationship on behalf of the business I worked for had committed suicide. The person's name was mentioned, and I heard it very plainly.

I was surprised to hear that this man had committed suicide, and I was sad for him. But I also worried about myself. It seemed like everybody I was forming relationships with for my business was dropping out from the thing they had signed up for, for one reason or another. I wondered how I could have chosen such consistently unstable people.

I imagined that the man had either hung himself or shot himself. While still standing out in front of the building, all by myself, I began to have a lot of white flashes flood my view. I assumed these were the flashes the man saw as he died: something like flares from the impact of bullets, or something like that.

I was now standing outside in the mountains. The sky was starry and dark blue. The ground and branches of the pine trees were covered with snow. There were other people at a certain distance from me, all facing away from me and toward something else, as if they were engaged in some sort of task that I probably should have been a part of.

A man began speaking to me, probably in my head. He was an older man, Chicano, or possibly Native American. He was some kind of worker, possibly a parks worker or a truck driver. He told me that it was getting harder and harder to work here because of the thieves and other kinds of criminals that were around.

I told the man that the best thing to do was probably to head up to the top of the mountain. I now looked over and saw the mountaintop I was referring to. I could see that I was on a kind of plateau, about halfway up the mountain. The mountain then sloped up and went to a very high point. I told the man that high up on the mountain nobody would bother him. I may even have thought of heading up there myself.

I walked toward the crowd. There seemed to be a man at the front of the crowd singing. There was a yellowish light on him or behind him, making the atmosphere around him very warm. The man sat on a stool before a microphone and played an acoustic guitar as he sang. It was kind of like an open mic night at a coffee shop.

I was now inside a bar or a cafe that also served alcohol. The man (or somebody else?) now seemed just to be getting started with his set. I thought I should stay there and hear his set. But now everybody who had been sitting, on stools as well, around the man were getting up and filtering out of the crowd. I was one of the few people left. It didn't seem like the other remaining people were really certain they would stay, either.

I looked around, trying to decide whether I should stay or go, like the crowd had. As I looked around, my eye caught a woman serving drinks to the remaining people. I thought that maybe this "concert" had a two drink minimum. I didn't want to drink any alcohol. But I knew I had to drink something.

I could see that the woman serving drinks had a glass, or a few glasses, or seltzer water. I thought that maybe I could just drink seltzer water.

I saw that the edge of the bar, which was to my right and maybe three meters away from me, had a few glasses of seltzer water on it. I looked over to the wall behind the singer. There was a dark, wooden, shelf-like counter for people to stand and drink at. There was a whole line of glasses of seltzer water. These glasses had been drunk out of. Some glasses were empty. Others were half-empty.

I thought that I really didn't want seltzer water. It didn't have any taste. But I didn't want liquor, either. I walked up to the bar and asked the man behind the bar, "Can I just have a Pepsi?"

The man nodded and was about to pour me a Pepsi. But I then said, "Oh-- no-- wait a minute. Maybe I can get one of those drinks. Those virgin, oh... how do you call it? A Shirley Temple?"

The man kind of laughed at me for ordering a Shirley Temple. But he started making it for me. I walked back toward the audience seating area, feeling a little silly for ordering such a froofy, non-alcoholic drink as a Shirley Temple.

I was then somewhere else, some place like a cafe or a cafe-like restaurant. But I was in some corner of the room, looking at the wall, kind of pointing my view about halfway down between my head and the floor.

Some woman was talking in my head. I knew she was a kind of healthy, but stern and worn-looking, blonde woman. She may have seemed like she was in her late forties, given her worn look and her sombre kind of attitude. But she may really only have been in her early twenties.

The woman told me that the man who had committed suicide had really actually died from something biological. He had either eaten a kind of food he wasn't supposed to eat, or else he had eaten too much of the food. His eating habits had killed him.

The woman said that the man justified his bad eating habits, and the fact that he wasn't able to resist food that he knew would kill him, by saying that life wasn't worth anything anyway, so why should he go to the effort of preserving this worthless life by abstaining from foods he liked. Because of this, it was said that the man had committed suicide.

I suddenly felt a lot better. I had previously thought that the man had committed suicide in a more violent way. If this had been the case, my choice to have started up a business relationship with him would, apparently, have shown my carelessness in discernment of personality. But because the man had only killed himself in a benign way, like eating the wrong foods, I hadn't been such a bad judge of character, after all.

swinging elevator; rat bites man

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

Some anime, or else a real-life situation where two anime girls were present. Both girls wore schoolgirl outfits: purplish, pleated, very short skirts and white button-up shirts with ties. One girl was more serious than the other. This girl had long, purplish hair. The other girl had shorter, kind of curly, orange hair. Both girls were probably secretly in love with each other.

The two girls were in the lobby of a hotel. They were being seen to by a worker, who was also a young woman or a girl. This girl was very polite and had very short, blonde hair.

The blonde girl led the purple-haired girl toward the elevator bank. The orange haired girl ended up staying behind. She looked down the corridor to the elevator bank. The elevator bank had red carpet with some kinds of designs on it and mirrored walls. It was lit in a kind of dim, golden light.

I probably now saw from the orange-haired girl's point of view. I didn't know why the orange-haired girl had been so shy about following the other two girls. But now I felt like if the orange-haired girl (I?) didn't get upstairs to the purple-haired girl in time, the orange-haired girl (I) wouldn't be able to tell the purple-haired girl how much she/I loved her.

I got into the elevator. At this point I may have looked around at the elevator, noting how similar all hotel elevators are, and how they must be made that way, to promote some similar attitude that's good for business. The elevator had red carpets and either white, plastic walls or brown, wooden walls.

I knew that I had to go up to the eighth floor. But the elevator was really slow. It was just churning up fhe floors. I watched the floors click by on a small, black panel with red LED lighting.

Finally the elevator got to the eighth floor. But it didn't stop there. It went all the way up to the tenth floor. I thought this was odd. I'd definitely pressed "8," to go to the eighth floor.

Now the elevator dropped, rather sharply, to the eighth floor. But just as soon as it did, it climbed to the tenth, then to the twelfth, floor. Then it dropped sharply again.

It was obvious something in the elevator's computer was messed up. I thought evetnually, though, the elevator would open at the eighth floor. But I was worried that before then, the elevator could get so strained by jerking up and down that its cables would snap, sending me plunging to my death.

But I didn't feel any signs of the elevator straining. So I was probably okay. But now the elevator began a steady, kind of fast ascent. I watched the numbers on the black panel increase. I knew the building only had so many floors. I was hoping the elevator wasn't going to do something like smash into the roof.

But then the elevator stopped. It had come out into some open kind of space. The elevator shaft was all made of glass windows. An.d I could see this, as if the elevator itself were also made of glass. I felt a little safer, now that I could see out into the clear, blue day. But I also felt high up. And the elevator was swinging wildly on its cables, back and forth. The elevator even knocked against the walls. I was afraid the elevator would crash through the windows, and that I would plunge to my death on the street below.

But the elevator finally calmed down. It was now motionless. I was safe. But now I was stuck. I looked through another one of the walls. I saw a kind of lobby or dining area below, for one of the high-up floors of the hotel. Someone down there may have seen me. So maybe people knew I was in trouble. And maybe someone would help me.

At this point I may have started thinking about the anime show of which the two girls were a part. I may have seen a video box with cover art for the show. The art may have been pretty heavy on the lesbian aspect of the girls' relationship. I may have gotten distracted about that, wishing I'd seen more of that, and trying to remember if there were any clues that things between the two girls would actually get that heavy.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a conference room with a young man. The young man was white, very pale, and bald, with black stubble growing back onto his head. He had dark, kind of tired eyes. He was a bit taller than I, and much more muscular.

The conference room wasn't exactly empty of people. But the young man and I were wandering around it like it was. The young man was here for something like a trial. He was being accused of something he probably wasn't guilty of.

I told the young man that I felt bad for him. I wasn't sure he was going to win his case. The person presiding over the case was Mayor Meyer (???), who was apparently the mayor of New York. I made some insulting comment about the Mayor. But then I turned around and realized the Mayor was sitting in something like a juror's box against the wall. I should have known he was sitting there. Other people were there, too. Now the Mayor had heard me say bad things about him. I'd be on his bad list now.

The Mayor just grinned at me. The Mayor didn't look too different, actually, from the young man who was in trouble. He was white and bald. But he was a bit more tanned than the young man. The Mayor wasn't wearing nice clothes. He wore a pale blue-grey sweatshirt with a dark blue or black shirt underneath.

I turned away from the Mayor and said something to appease him. But I said it toward the young man, about the Mayor, as if now I were no longer aware that the Mayor was even there.

I was now outside, in some strange place in the middle of town, watching the young man cleaning out some space. The space was like a vacant lot. But it had some concrete walkways in it. It was also set down into the ground and bordered off by concrete structures that looked like highway barriers.

The place had been extremely disgusting. But the young man had cleaned it off a lot. It still looked pretty bad. But now it was clean enough so that the young man could allow water to flow through some part of it. It was like part of this place had been a stream, but that the place had been so polluted that the stream had to be shut off.

The water now began rushing through the stream. But the young man suddenly panicked. He yelled, "Stop!" He reached his left arm into the water. He pulled it out again. A big rat was on the young man's arm. The young man had seen the rat get caught up in the rush of water. He'd panicked, then reached in to save the rat.

The young man's arm was gloved with a long, thick glove, not like a work glove, but like a hawker's glove. But the rat had actually managed, in its severe panic, to bite through the man's glove. I couldn't believe this. I kept trying to convince myself it wasn't true. But the rat had bitten all the way through the man's glove and into the man's flesh. And it was still biting the man. The glove was all bloody.

The man was trying to let the rat go free. But I yelled to the man to hold onto the rat. Despite the fact that the man had saved the rat, the man would have to kill the rat. Now the rat, a wild or feral animal, had bitten the man and drawn blood, the rat would have to be killed. Its head would have to be chopped off, so the brain could be tested for rabies. If the rat had rabies, the man would have to be treated.

But the man finally got the rat off his glove. He set the rat on some little railing. The rat ran off into some shadows and garbage.