my new late friend; i don't paintbal enough

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a hospital, probably with a friend. We stood in. A hallway, before a hospital bed in which was a female friend or acquaintance of my friend. The woman was really sick. She may have had to go in for some treatment. We may have been seeing her off.

My friend and I also had somewhere to go in the hospital. We went there. We may have sat down for a moment in a bar-like area. My friend may have had to go somewhere else within the hospital.

I may have heard something about the woman. I felt like I needed to get back to her. I went back to the hallway. The woman was being cared for in the hallway like it was a hospital room. And she had a young nurse in scrubs constantly attending to her, standing near her right shoulder.

I noticed that the woman was really ravaged by her disease. The blanket had come away and exposed her legs. The woman's legs were extremely thin, even thinner than I'd have assumed her bones would be, and there were brownish-purple spots where, it seemed, the woman's flesh had decayed away.

But the woman was pretty. She was tan, with dark black hair. Her face looked a little chubby at first. But after I'd looked away and looked back to her face, her face was thinner, kind of like a supermodel's face. Her face looked healthy, even though the rest of her body seemed ravaged.

The nurse, or somebody, may have told me that the woman had to go. She was being taken in for another procedure, possibly something like chemotherapy. She was going to being taken into a room right near where she'd been laying in the hallway.

I was reluctant to see the woman go. I'd formed a bond with her somehow, in just these few minutes of being with her. I didn't want her to go into the procedure, go through a lot of pain, and maybe even die, without her knowing that I cared for her.

My friend may have been standing at the woman's left shoulder. At this point my friend may have looked like my old boss and constant mentor EB. With the nurse and man by the woman and some kind of stuff cluttered around the woman on her bed, it was now really hard for me to see the woman's face.

My friend may have told me to come closer to the woman's face. I did so. I may have spoken and smiled with the woman a little. I may have wanted to give the woman a kiss goodbye.

Dream #2

I was in some cafeteria in a basement. The cafeteria was filled with people sitting at long tables. But the space was small, with low ceilings, and kind of dim.

I sat at a table. Some of my co-workers, in particular DK, sat around me. DK sat directly across from me. Then my co-worker MS and some other person, maybe CP, came up.

MS sat right beside me. His plate was heaped full of food -- stuff like mashed potatoes and corn. I contrasted it with my own plate -- either nothing or very little food. I hadn't taken much food. I didn't think my stomach could handle it.

For some reason MS scared DK, as if MS were a tough kid in high school and DK were one of the smarter, calmer kids. I was a little unbalanced by these feelings, and it made me a little tense around MS and the other person as well. I was hoping to calm things down, if I could. But I don't think I knew how.

Now DK was gone. His space was just empty. MS now moved, under the table, into DK's space. Once seated there he managed -- somehow! -- to reach back under the table and pull his plate of food over with him.

I knew MS had moved, at least partly, because he didn't want to sit by me. Even though he liked me, he found me boring, almost awkwardly quiet. He would never say so to me, but that's how it was. And now he could sit next to his friend and talk with him.

I now stood before a counter either like a bar or a hotel concierge's desk. I had been turned away from it at first, talking with a couple people, probably about something business-related. Now I turned to face the desk.

There was something on the desk, like brochures or magazines, maybe for resorts or vacations. In some photos on the papers was a really beautiful, almost 1940s-style, but very contemporary, woman, engaged in a fun, but extremely competitive, game of paintball.

There may have been a woman working behind the desk. She may have been pretty, pale, kind of young looking, red-haired, a little chubby or chubby-faced. She may have criticized me, telling me I didn't have enough to do with something like the paintball games, like I was emotionally incomplete because of that.

south african spy; drug dealing spy family; science fiction interview

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A man -- who was also I, even though I wasn't seeing from the man's point of view, but from a view only 20cm or so from the man's face and directed toward the man. The man may have been black, with a light complexion, short-shaved hair, and a muscular body.

The man was a spy. He had traveled to a few cities around the world on a few different missions. He was now in a hotel, possibly in South Africa. The hotel was kind of dingy, with old-looking, concrete or white stone walls. But it was supposed to be a high-class hotel.

The man lay down in his bed. He pulled a cell phone up to his ear. He explained to his bosses how he'd been trailed through the city. He said that he was certain people now knew who he was.

The bosses told the man that everything was alright. The bosses said they'd send another agent to meet the man in just a couple hours. The man was to meet with the agent the bosses sent at a specific restaurant or cafe in the city.

The man hung up the phone. He understood that the bosses were laying a trap for the man. Since the man had been spotted, he was no longer a good agent. Since the bosses had no use for an agent that was no longer any good, they were going to kill the man. The man knew he needed to escape the city before the agents who were sent to kill him came after him.

The man went into the bathroom and pulled a huge Ziploc bag full of some material out of a suitcase. He may have pulled another bag full of something else out of the suitcase. The man was now apparently ready to leave the hotel and find a way out of the city.

Dream #2

I was in a nice, big hotel suite with a few young looking, beautiful, Latina girls. The girls were dressed casually, in kind of baggy t-shirts and ponytails. They were really skinny.

The girls were either spies or drug dealers. I had been working with them. But now I had just finished telling them I could no longer work with them. I was standing in the bathroom with one of the girls, right after I'd told her I was quitting. The girl was kneeling down, like she was tying her shoes or something, and I was petting her pale brown hair.

We now all stood out in the main room. A big window let in a lot of daylight. We were on a high floor in the hotel. The main room almost looked like the living room of a long-lived-in apartment: it even had a really lovely book collection along the left wall.

The girls' father was in the room. He was a kind of heavyset, rough-faced man with a dark olive complexion and full, but wiry, salt and pepper hair. He wore a tweed jacket, button up shirt, and nice slacks of a kind of heavy fabric.

The girls told their father that I could no longer work with them. I was afraid to hear the father's reaction. I thought the father would get angry and kill me. I was about to tell the father that I didn't exactly mean I couldn't work with the girls, that I was only thinking that maybe I should try to do something else.

Dream #3

I was in a big hotel suite. I was with the cast of The Chronic Rift, an old pop culture review show on New York City cable access in the 1990s. The cast was all sat out in their usual forum style in the main room of the suite. I had just walked from another room, like the kitchen or bathroom, into the main room.

The show may just now have been ending. There were now a couple of pop culture industry guests sitting out with the cast. The cast and the guests were talking back and forth about some element of science fiction writing.

One of the guests may have been tall, pale, and young-looking, even though I had a feeling he was older and far more experienced than I. The man wore a yellow t-shirt and a white cap, like Fred Lebow's old running cap. The man knew I should be interested in the topic everybody was discussing. But I wasn't contributing to the discussion at all. This annoyed the man, like he thought I was simply being lazy.

I was now getting the feeling that it was too late for me to contribute to the discussion: everybody seemed to be getting ready to get up and leave. But for some reason I did say something. It was really hard for me to speak, and whatever I said came out kind of confused.

The tall guest and the other guest stayed seated in order to answer my question. I think they were disappointed at my question: they may have expected a more complex question from me. But I think they took the time to answer my question in the hope that their answer would lead me to ask a more complex question. It was like I was somehow known for asking really penetrating questions.

depression elevator; "child" applebee's; nuclear theater; spinach jar; child in bedroom

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a hotel elevator. The elevator may have been going directly upward at first. But then it shifted its direction, going upward and forward at the same time, like an escalator. Eventually the elevator had a completely open front. I could see that the elevator box was traveling along a track very much like the track of an escalator.

The elevator dropped me off at the twenty-ninth floor. As I was easing my way up to the floor, a computer voice from somewhere began to tell me that, because of the fees I'd paid to stay at the hotel, I was only granted a limited amount of access to the hotel. My room was on the twenty-ninth floor, and I was not allowed to travel to certain other floors without permission.

I knew this had something to do with the Great Depression. It was like I was in the year 1929 in America, and that the Great Depression had begun. Hotels were giving people like me special discounts, so they could still patronize the hotels. But the discounts included restricted access to other parts of the building, like the restrictions I was receiving.

But one of my friends was actually staying on the fifteenth floor -- one of the restricted floors. I knew I'd have to ask my friend to give me permission to come down and visit him/her. I was walking around in the hotel hallway. But it was also like I was already talking with my friend on the phone.

I was now in a hotel room, with either a young man, maybe my brother, or an attractive, young, Asian woman. I was trying to explain to this person why I needed permission to come down. Of course, it was obvious that I already had permission from the person. We were friends. But I needed to make the permission official. But even this seemed like a moot point to me now. I may already have been in this friend's room -- this may have been the friend's room, not mine.

I looked down at a vanity that was built into the wall. On the vanity's countertop were some makeup kits and other beauty supplies, as well as some wet washcloths.

Dream #2

A young woman, maybe in her early twenties, was joking with me about the restaurant Applebee's. It was like the woman and I were part of some business that had Applebee's as an account: like we were advertisers or maybe some large shopping complex where Applebee's had had a restaurant.

But the woman was joking that everybody now called Applebee's "'child' Applebee's." This derisive name was due to the fact that Applebee's had canceled its account with our company. The cancellation had occurred, actually, because of an issue that our company did not feel was a big deal, but which Applebee's did feel was a big deal: a woman over the age of eighteen, having an affair with a woman under the age of eighteen, was found taking the girl out for dinner at an Applebee's.

I now saw a paper. I probably thought it was a newspaper, but it was really just a sheet of paper. It gave the story of the two girls having the affair. Both of the girls were from France. The older girl, who was twenty-three years old, was probably the daughter of some high-level French official, like a French ambassador. The girl's lover was sixteen years old.

There may actually have been some rule in France that said a girl over the age of sixteen was considered to be of the age of consent. So the two girls weren't really breaking the law, in France, by having an affair with each other. The Applebee's they may have been caught eating at may even have been in France. But it may have been in America.

Either way, girls over the age of eighteen taking girls under the age of eighteen out to dinner was against Applebee's policy, either in America or in France. A stuffy waiter, a lot like a French waiter, asked the two girls to leave the Applebee's. The two girls must have caused some sort of a fuss in reaction to the request to leave.

The whole issue became really big news. Some people supported Applebee's decision. But the company I worked for did not support it. So Applebee's canceled its account with my company. And, to make fun of Applebee's, everybody at my company called it "'child' Applebee's."

Dream #3

I had a view of the deck of a war ship, like I was seeing the ship on a television show, but also like I was actually floating, disembodied, over the ship. The deck was itself like a stage, rather than like a real war ship's deck. There was definitely a crowd, like a theater crowd, somewhere beyond the edge of the deck. And there were a few men in naval outfits on either side of the deck, standing still, like a chorus.

A door opened at the back of the deck/stage. From out of a yellow-lit passageway walked Mikhail Gorbachev, the former President of the Soviet Union -- though I might have taken him in my dream for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Gorbachev/Putin was visibly angry. Apparently the United States had taken a stand that Russia did not agree with. This decision was pushing Russian statesmen to the brink of considering war with the United States.

Gorbachev/Putin began a speech. He quickly got even angrier as he spoke. His eyes began bugging out of his head. It seemed, even as he spoke, that he was considering escalating the conflict immediately to nuclear war.

Gorbachev/Putin began trying to insinuate this without coming right out and saying it. But he stuttered as he tried to come up with subtle ways of threatening nuclear war. Eventually he had a model of a nuclear bomb, like the old 1940s/1950s style nuclear bombs, in his arms. The model was about two meters long. It was lightweight, maybe made of plastic, and it had a dull, gold color.

Gorbachev/Putin eventually flung this bomb across the stage. The model bomb landed in a pig pen. There were two or three men in sailor outfits standing around in the pen. The model bomb clattered around at the men's feet.

Now the whole thing was like a comedy, or at least like some kind of stage production, rather than anything that would become a reality. Gorbachev, who was now probably only Gorbachev, was standing flanked on either side by a sailor. The sailors seemed to be there to support Gorbachev in case he got weak. Gorbachev was wearing some kind of wooden, cubic frame around his head. This frame was supposed to symbolize a space helmet or oxygen helmet or something.

Gorbachev was acting like he was visiting an area which had just been struck by a nuclear bomb. This area was probably supposed to be in America -- another "subtle" indication of what Russian officials were planning. But when Gorbachev took off his helmet to see what America looked like, he was stricken with sorrow. The audience could all tell that all Gorbachev could "see" was desolation.

Gorbachev, carrying out this act even further, began to cry. But now the radiation poisoning was getting to him. He was beginning to faint. The sailors on either side of Gorbachev were holding him up. Gorbachev had something like an oxygen tube, a white, plastic tube, running into his mouth. Gorbachev's eyes rolled up into the back of his head.

I took all of this to mean that Gorbachev could see that starting a nucelar war would lead to the destruction of too many lives, and that Gorbachev had decided not to start a nuclear war with the United States after all.

Dream #4

I was in the living room of "my family's house." The living room looked unfinished, like it had the shape of a living room, my great grandmother's old living room, in fact, but like there were no carpets or plaster walls. Everything seemed to be made out of a dingy, greenish stone. My mom was standing up at some counter, taking care of something. I was laying, stomach-down, on the floor. There were other people wandering about.

I was staring at a huge jar of what I called spinach. The jar was the shape of a pickle jar. But it was about 75cm tall. It was filled with water and what looked like long-stalked wildflowers. The flowers had very small, dull-colored blossoms, like the flower was fading out. But the stalks, stuck down all the way into the water, were lush, dark green, and flowing with leafs.

The water was beginning to heat up from the bottom and center of the jar. I knew this actually had something to do with the vegetation. The jar was packed full of these wildflowers. And the wildflowers acted in such a way that, when they reached a certain density and mass, they would heat up greatly. If the wildflowers were put into water, therefore, they could cause the water to boil, thus allowing the flowers to boil themselves.

I knew this "spinach" was being prepared by my mother for a meal that I was expected to partake in. But I didn't want to eat this meal. I didn't want to have to eat a meal that had been prepared in the unsanitary conditions of this house.

Dream #5

I was in some room like a living room. I may have been sitting or laying on the floor. I looked off to my right, down a hallway. I saw that the doorway to "my bedroom" was open. Someone must have found a way to get past the lock on my door and get into my room.

I was a bit panicked. I stood up and walked into the room. My room was full of all kinds of brightly colored junk. It was a complete mess. But apparently I had left it this way. I began looking around my room. I wanted to make sure nothing was missing. But in all this disorganization, I realized that something was, in fact, missing from my room. Now I knew someone had gotten into my room.

I was pretty sure that the person who'd gotten into my room was still in my room. So I hunted around in all the clutter for that person. I'd been near my bed. Now I walked to the other side of my room, to a closet that was wide open, with no doors, packed full of clutter.

Something behind me got my attention. I now saw that a little, Asian boy (?) was sitting atop a bunch of clutter, actually sitting inside a drawer that had been pulled out of a dresser and had been laying empty atop the pile of clutter.

I walked over to the little boy. All this time, I'd had a feeling that one of my younger relatives, maybe a nephew, had been the one to get into my room. Now my suspicion was confirmed (even though I didn't actually know this boy). The little boy was darling and cute, so I didn't really bother him. I treated him nicely, figuring I'd just make sure he didn't have anything of mine and then get him out of my room.

But somehow my attention got distracted by something up and off to my left. It was like DVD cases for anime shows were flashing up in that corner of my vision. I started looking at the DVD cases. There were a lot of different animes. I remembered some of them. Others were unfamiliar. Most of them looked interesting.

I may have begun talking about the various animes, as if I were talking to the little boy. But the boy was now gone. I was in the room by myself. But I was still carrying on this anime conversation, as if I were having an actual back and forth conversation with someone in my head.

The conversation actually turned to a contentious point. I can't remember what the point was. But my argument against the point was that if somebody had a wide knowledge of anime, they could name the shows they were talking about. But, I also argued, if somebody didn't have a wide knowledge of anime, they could still probably bring up certain shows as examples of something, because they'd like things enough or be familiar enough with themes that they'd know what kind of shows to look for as examples.

the city in a mall

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on a subway train with "my family." The family sometimes appeared to be my family and other times appeared to be a wealthy family, with a father, a mother, and at least a pretty, blonde daughter. There may have been other people with this other family, like extended family members coming along on vacation. I'm not sure whether I saw from my height or the height of a child. But I was my current age, at least mentally.

The train we were on seemed a bit more like an airport train than a subway train. It seemed like the cars were really small and clean, and like everybody was standing up.

The train either stopped or slowed down. An announcer, probably a computer voice, came on and told us that the train would be detoured. This was a big inconvenience for my family. We decided that we would get off the train as soon as possible and take some other form of transportation to our destination. But this seemed inconvenient to me. The other transportation would be biking or walking, which would take a long time, or driving, which would cost a lot of money.

I felt bad about the train getting detoured. I thought it was my fault somehow. I think it had been my suggestion to take the train. I'd thought it was the most convenient way to go. I think I even (at this point I'm pretty sure my view was from a child's height) tried to justify our having taken the train to everybody -- even though nobody seemed to think badly about my having suggested the train.

But when we got off the train, it was like we were almost to our destination, anyway. We walked out onto a huge concrete plaza, which felt bleached white by the sunlight. Off to our right was another train. We may have headed over to catch that train. At this point, my family was a lot more like my waking life family -- or, at least my mom was a lot more like my waking life mom.

The train took us a short distance, still along this giant concrete walkway, to a set of escalators that went inside a building. This was our destination. I knew that our plan was to check into our hotel and then go to the Museum of Natural History. I may even have called it Denver Museum of Natural History, like we were in Denver, on vacation. (Denver is where I live in waking life.)

We went up the escalators. Somehow I lost my family. I was completely by myself. I was in some gigantic shopping mall. I had no idea how I was going to find my family. But I knew where we were going. We were heading to the hotel and to the museum. I knew that everything in the city was in this mall, or was at least connected to this mall. You could reach every place in the city through the mall. So all I'd have to do is find the hotel and the museum. Then I'd be able to find my family.

I went to some huge sign that listed some of the major areas of the mall. I looked for the listings for the hotel and the museum. I may have known that the mall was divided into different sections, each section being denoted by a different color. I knew that the museum and hotel were in the red section of the mall. So I looked for the hotel and museum in the red section listings.

I apparently found out where the hotel and museum were. I began rushing toward the hotel, down through a hallway that I believed was a part of the red section of the mall. But for some reason I either forgot where the hotel and museum were, or else I became uncertain about whether I was travelling in the right direction. So I had to stop and look for directions again.

I found a directions sign hanging over an escalator bank that was coming up from a lower level. Some young man seemed to be headed toward either the escalators or a place where he could get a good view of the directions sign. I was in a big hurry to get to the sign as well, and I think I cut the guy off. I apologized to him. But he said it wasn't a big deal.

I thought that I found the hotel on the directions sign. But what I actually found was a hotel belonging to the same chain, but at a different location. Right underneath that hotel was another hotel belonging to the same chain. The location name for that specific hotel may have been "Quemada." I looked at a different spot on the directions sign and found the hotel I was looking for, which now may have been named "Denver West."

I rushed toward the hotel again. But I may have stopped again. I may have wondered whether I should be meeting my family at the museum instead of at the hotel.

But I think I ended up at the hotel. I think I stood in front of the entrance to the hotel. It looked like the entrance to any other shop in a shopping mall: square, wide, and kind of short. I didn't walk in or head up to the hotel room yet.

But I knew -- like I could hear my mom talking to me from somewhere -- saying that everybody else had decided they were just going to end their day here in the hotel. Nobody was planning on going to the museum. I thought this would obviously include me. If nobody else was going to the museum, I wouldn't be allowed to go, either. But I think I started to think of a way that I could go even if nobody else was going.

***

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

hotel liquor; meeting michael jackson; scrumbly liver; not meeting michael jackson

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was cleaning a recently vacated hotel with a young woman. The hotel room was really big. It looked more like a big living room in a house. But it was kind of dim and run down. It was cluttered with all kinds of personal belongings, more like you'd expect in a home. The room was on the ground floor. The front door was open, letting in a bit of bright summer light.

I stood on the far side of the bed, in a small space between the bed and the wall. The young woman stood on the other side of the bed, possibly rifling around through papers on a desk or something. I noticed that on the right (my right) wall there was a little niche, with a little space created for a wet bar. On the bar was a tray with tall glasses full of liquor. The liquor, I knew, was Johnny Walker. But it had been dumped into something like chocolate milk.


I grabbed one of the glasses and started to drink the liquor. Either the young woman or I myself may have started to wonder whether I should really be doing that. I didn't know if I should really be drinking any liquor right now. But I also didn't know whether it was considered stealing if I drank stuff that people had left out after they'd vacated the place.


Dream #2


I was down in the basement area of a big building. I was walking through an area with a lot of janitorial supplies. The light was a very dim, very green fluorescent. As I was about to reach a doorway into another room, someone called from behind me.


I turned around to see who it was. It was a very skinny, frightened looking person. He was all bundled up, so at first I couldn't see who he was. But then I realized it was Michael Jackson. But he was in disguise. I don't even think he wanted me to know it was him.

Michael asked if I could lead him to some place, I can't remember where. I said I could. We walked through the doorway. I started thinking about leading Michael Jackson around. I was pretty excited. But I didn't want to show that I was excited. I didn't even want to show that I knew it was Michael.


I was also a little worried that I'd act like a big know-it-all, which is a major fault of mine when I'm leading groups. Usually it turns out that I don't know anything at all. I didn't want to act like a know-it-all in front of Michael Jackson. And I didn't want to turn out not knowing anything at all in front of Michael Jackson. So I was just trying to be as careful as possible with everything I did.


Dream #3


I had been walking around in some town for a little while. But now I had sat down for a moment to take a rest. It was a nice, sunny day. I was on the downside of some steep slope, looking across the street at a block of small shops. There were a decent amount of people walking up and down the slope.


I had kind of lost myself in thought -- possibly coming up with an idea for a story to write, or something like that. But now I realized that I'd been sitting in one place for too long. If you did that, I thought, people would start to think you were a vagrant. They'd get the police after you.


So I stood up and walked down the slope. I knew that I was headed somewhere in particular. Wherever I was going, money would be needed. I had to grab my money, ID, and phone out of my purse (???) or bookbag.


But when I pulled my bag around in front of me and began rifling through it, I heard somebody marching up from behind me with a very violent-sounding step. I thought that someone saw I had money and that they were going to mug me. So I turned all the way around and walked off the sidewalk, so I could get a clear view of the person.


The person was a black woman, maybe in her early forties, with short hair done in a squarish cut, with flowing curls. She was wearing clothing that somehow indicated she was in the military. I realized that the woman's walk was just a brisk, military-style walk. But the woman also realized that she had frightened me with her walk. She gave me a little apology. I told her not to worry about it.


I felt the need to follow the woman. She headed toward a building that was only a few steps away from us. It was, I knew, some kind of military building. The woman was a building inspector for the military.

As soon as we reached the building, the woman began her inspection. Before we even got in the door, the woman found a fault. The doors were automatic doors, the old swinging-door kind, like in old grocery stores. But there was some sort of issue with the caulking somewhere on the ground in front of the doors.

The woman groaned a bit and said something like, "Oh no. Already?" I don't think she liked giving places bad reviews. But I think she knew she'd have to give this place one.

As we walked through the automatic doors, I was trying to get a closer look at the woman. I was trying, I think, to find out what branch of the military she was in. But now she was wearing a black jacket with yellow lettering on the back. It seemed only vaguely related to the military. I was pretty sure she was wearing a military uniform. So I thought if I could just look at her front, I could tell from her uniform what branch she was in.

But as soon as we got inside the center, the woman quickly bustled away. The center had the same kind of atmosphere as an old, run-down post office. But it was almost completely empty. At the back of the room were some counters with plexiglass window-walls to protect the workers who dealt with the customers. And at the front of the room may have been a wooden bench.

The woman called out to someone at the back of the room that she was here for the inspection. The person acknowledged the woman. The woman walked to the opposite wall of the room and went in through a door over there.

I figured I'd wait for the woman. Just inside the room, just to the right of the automatic doors, was a TV. The TV hung from the ceiling, which was maybe three and a half meters high. Three old people stood huddled together, watching the TV. I think it was two women and a man. Something about the old people being here made me think that this place was a center for military veterans. It was like a place where they came to pick up their benefits, or else have some sense of community.

The TV reception was really bad. But the old people must have been watching the TV, because I'm pretty sure they were mumbling back and forth with each other about the show they were watching. But when the reception got so bad that the screen was nothing but a bunch of liquidy static, I turned off the TV. Apparently I was holding the remote control for the TV. I thought the old people would much rather have the TV off than have it all staticky.

The old people didn't reproach me for turning off the TV. They simply started mumbling among themselves about how they'd really been looking forward to some TV show. Feeling kind of bad, I turned the TV back on. I began flipping through the channels, trying to find one for the old people that wasn't all staticky.

But somehow the old people made me understand that I wasn't supposed to find a channel that wasn't staticky. I was supposed to fix the TV so that the channels generally wouldn't be staticky. The remote control was some kind of bulky box. It had wheel-knobs on it. I was supposed to spin those to adjust the reception and control of the TV image.

I must have gotten to a point where the image was alright for basically any channel. It was night outside. It may even have been snowing. Something about the light in the center may even have felt like Christmas lights.

I asked the old people what they wanted to watch. They all said they'd been watching a cooking show with some famous chef. They just kept telling me, in a kind of half-hearted, mumbly way, "Find us the channel where the chef is cooking liver."

I flipped through a few different channels. One channel was a cowboy movie. There were a few cooking show channels. Then I finally found a channel where someone was cooking liver. The "liver" was two wide, flat pieces of meat bubbling in a frying pan full of grease. The meat looked like seared pieces of Spam. But it was also a little grainy-looking, like the grease it was cooking in was accumulating on the surface of the meat.

The old people were trying to figure out if this was the correct show. One of them said, "Does the liver look scrumbly?" "Scrumbly" was apparently some nonsense word that meant cute, even cuddly, but in a way directly related to food.

Another old person said, "Oh, yeah. That looks scrumbly. He's cooking the food really scrumbly."

"Then this is the right show, if the food looks scrumbly."

I watched the liver frying in the pan. I may have been watching the show really closely by this time, just trying to figure out, I think, how the heck you determined whether food looked "scrumbly."

Dream #4

I walked into some big room. I had come from a back area, possibly a back hallway or a room full of supplies. The room was like a big convention room in a hotel. But it may have felt like it opened directly outside.

The room was being used, at least for today, as something like a coffee shop. There was a line of folding tables set up across the back of the room. The tables would be coffee-serving areas. But there may also have been other items on the tables, such as t-shirts. I was apparently one of the people who'd be working this event, serving people coffee and so forth. The event hadn't started yet. We were still getting everything set up.


I was standing behind the table, working with a young man. The young man was white, kind of pale, and skinny. He was either working fast or giving the appearance of working fast. There was a young woman, whom I eventually may have thought of as my old friend Y, in front of the table. She was kind of like the manager of this event.

The young man told us how, earlier that day, he had seen some really big celebrity. I can't remember if the young man had been excited at all. But we somehow got talking about being excited around celebrities, but not really showing it.

I said, "The only celebrity I think I'd get really giddy around -- and I just couldn't avoid it -- would be... Janet Jackson."

By this time the young man was no longer paying attention to the conversation. I got the impression that he'd really only mentioned his celebrity sighting to impress our manager, because she was a girl.

I tried to explain to the manager how I really had a crush on Janet Jackson. So if I saw her, I probably wouldn't be able to hold back about my crush on her.

I continued, "For instance, today I met --"

I suddenly didn't want to say out loud in front of everybody that I'd met Michael Jackson. But, thankfully, the manager (as if she were trying not to pay attention to the conversation), walked into the back area. The manager was the only person I wanted to tell. So I followed her into the back area.

The manager had walked behind a couple of wheeled garbage cans and was standing between a floor-level mop sink and a regular, metal-basin sink. I followed the manager to that point. I myself kind of felt like a woman now. I felt like I was wearing all kinds of clothing, like a head covering and everything. I had my hands folded together like I was praying. And I was quivering with the girlish pleasure of gossip.

I told my manager, "Just today, I met Michael Jackson. He needed help getting somewhere. And I knew it was him. But he was disguised. He was trying to act like he really wasn't Michael Jackson. But I had to lead him somewhere. But I just acted really calm about it."

My manager said, "Yeah... What I'd tell you is that... if someone is all disguised and they're trying to act like they're not somebody, then you have one of two possibilities. One possibility is that they really are that person, and that they're just disguised. The other possibility is that they really aren't that person, and they're just trying to act like they are."

I understood that the manager meant that, in the case of Michael Jackson, there were so many rumors about him walking around disguised, that people had started walking around in "Michael Jackson disguise" disguises. So if you met someone you thought was Michael Jackson in disguise, it was probably just a Michael Jackson impersonator.

I asked the manager, "So... in this case..?"

The manager said, "In this case, I'd say it was definitely not Michael Jackson."

***

UPDATE: Added drawing for dream #2, July 16, 2012, 2:11 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

annoying coffee guy; "man, don't try to fly"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like the lobby for a hotel or an apartment building. It was pretty spacious. It probably had red tile floors and white walls. It may have had an old Spanish Mission sort of feel to it.

I sat in a nice chair, maybe a green leather chair, before a long, kind of low coffee table. I sat near one of the ends of the table. Across the table, in another nice chair, sat an old, white man. He looked a little well-off, maybe a tiny bit heavy, with a dignified but irascible face.

The man had a wife who was very meek, at least for show. She handed the man some coffee and walked away. She may have said something to the man about staying calm. She may have sensed, like I did, that the man didn't like me being around, and that he was looking for a reason to annoy me or make me feel like leaving.

But for some reason the man hadn't found any opportunity to annoy me. We'd both finished our coffee. I'd been reading the newspaper. The man may have been reading the paper as well. I put down the paper. It was obvious to the man that I was getting ready to stand up and leave.

But as I was getting ready to stand up, the wife walked up again. She either brought or pointed out a little carton of creamer to the man. I looked down at the table, too. I don't think I saw any use in the creamer. Both the old man and I had finished our coffees.

I noticed that the table was littered with newspapers. There was barely enough open space on the table for the creamer. The carton may actually have been partly obscured by a page of newspaper.

But the man seemed to think that I did want the creamer. He suddenly lurched forward. The creamer carton had been opened. The man grabbed the carton. He folded the carton top closed, then decisively planted the carton back down. He then gave the carton top an imperative flick with his index finger. All of this was a way, I knew of annoying me by making me feel that the man owned the creamer and I had no right to it.

I was annoyed. I didn't need any creamer. I didn't even have any coffee left. But the man acting like he owned the creamer really ticked me off. I stood up calmly to leave. I really wanted to do something annoying back to the man. But I decided to ignore him.

But now the man stood up. He seemed to want to follow me out of the building. Now that he'd annoyed me once, he wanted to keep on annoying me.

I was walking toward a wall. Once I hit the wall, I'd walk left. Following the wall, I'd be led to a larger front lobby area and out of the building. The old man had walked in front of his chair and off to the right. But he quickly looped around and walked back in my direction. It was like he was trying to make a beeline for me, so he could cut me off in my path.

I could see the man out of the corner of my eye, approaching me as I walked toward the wall. I knew he was trying to cut me off. I got really mad. I was going to do something to the man.

Right as I approached the man, I hurried up, to get just a couple steps in front of him. I knew I was going to push him back as he made his attempt to cut me off. But what I ended up doing, actually, was grab him by the arms, lift him up, and shove him back a couple steps.

But as I was doing this, the man was talking to me. It was like he was trying to be friendly. I figured he was just trying to be friendly to me now because he wanted to make me second-guess myself, to make me think that maybe I was wrong, and that maybe he really wasn't trying to annoy me. The man looked different, too. He was smaller and skinnier, and he looked more cheerful.

I felt a little bad for not having listened to anything the man had said. I asked him to repeat what he'd said. He started talking about dinner, about some food like Salisbury steaks.

Something about this annoyed me, and I turned and walked quickly away from the man. I got the feeling the man was only mentioning dinner because he knew that would be his next opportunity for annoying me. He was trying to pry information out of me regarding what I liked about dinnertime. That way he could wreck it for me.

I walked into a bathroom along the wall. The bathroom was lit with drab, green-grey fluorescent lights. The bathroom felt a little too small, humid, and stale. The sinks were kind of boxy. They seemed to be made of some old, stale aluminum or stainless steel. There were two workers doing something like cleaning mops in two of the sinks off to my left.

I washed my hands in a free sink. I was hoping the man wouldn't follow me into the bathroom as well and try to annoy me here. The two workers may have been something like the salisbury steak for dinner as well.

Dream #2

I was out in a Main Street area in a small town, not unlike a little shopping area in my hometown, but with longer, wider streets. It was getting to be early evening. The sun had set, and the light was grey blue.

I was with my mom. My mom's mom had been with us. But now she was walking away. My mom told me something like, "Your grandma thinks you're going back to New York right away. She won't see you again if you don't talk to her right now. Go tell her you aren't going back for a few days."

I ran up to my grandma. She seemed to be getting attached to another group of people. But I managed to turn her around. I gave her a hug and told her that I'd actually be in town for a few more days, if she wanted me to spend time with her at some point. But she told me that she'd have too much to do over the next few days. She wouldn't be able to spend time with me.

I said goodbye to my grandma. I turned around and walked down the sidewalk. The sidewalk was mostly empty. On my right side was a nice, small, but massive building made of some kind of grey stone. I may have thought this building was a theatre building.

The staircase up to the front was massive and steep, even though it was kind of narrow and small. The staircase had some kind of black iron gate in front of it. And all the way up, the staircase was bounded by a tall, black iron fence.

For some reason, passing the left side of the staircase, I decided to turn around and hold onto the black railing of the fence. I grabbed onto a spot at a height where my feet would barely be touching the ground. I then began to use the fence railing as a bar for doing chin-ups.

The first time I wobbled up into a full chin-up, I held myself there and looked down the street as my grandma disappeared with the group of people she was now attached to.

It made me really depressed to think of my grandma going away like that. It made me kind of disappointed to think that maybe my grandma said she couldn't see me. I thought maybe she'd been disappointed in me. It made me want to do more chin-ups.

I suddenly realized, though, that I'd actually done a full chin-up. I had a hard enough time doing that, usually. I was surprised I'd done it without much thought at all. I started to wonder if I'd actually even done a chin-up.

So I let myself down, so I could pull myself up into another chin-up. I wobbled my chin up over the bar again. I let myself down and pulled myself up again, still not quite sure I'd actually done a legitimate chin-up.

But this time, as I wobbled my chin up over the bar, I looked down to the foot of the staircase. Two young, kind of bushy-haired, blonde men sat huddled together on the bottom steps. They were wearing clothes like old soldiers' uniforms from the Revolutionary War: something like dark blue jackets and tight, but thick, white slacks.

It struck me that these young men were something like European guards. They were guarding this building. This building seemed to be something important. Maybe it wasn't a theatre, like I'd thought it had been.

I let myself down and then wobbled myself back up into another full-chin up. Holding my head up over the bar I looked up to the top of the staircase. I saw that there were arched and ruffled fabric banners over the doorways to the building -- three of them, I think. The banners were red white and blue, but in a pattern that reminded me more of France than of America.

I suddenly realized that this building was something like the French Embassy. Sitting here doing chin-ups on the stair railing to the French Embassy was pretty disrespectful. So I let myself down and walked away from the staircase.

I walked through some interesting structure. It was like a short but wide staircase of red stone or red brick. The staircase had two wide balconies on either side. At the top of the staircase was a broad promenade. That ran to the left and the right. Across the way from the staircase was some kind of stone arch structure, and then a red walkway that seemed to span quite a ways. This was all under a grey-white sky.

I really wanted to explore this area. But at the top of the staircase a man sat, barring the way. He held some strange sort of guard's weapon. It was almost like a candelabra made of golden-tipped spears. But it was broad enough to block any movement past the top of the staircase.

But for some reason I thought this was easily surmountable. I would simply fly over the man's spears. I'd have to fly high enough that the man wouldn't detect me. And I'd have to land far enough away from the man that he wouldn't detect me. If he detected me, I knew, he'd fight me. And I probably couldn't beat him.

But I thought it would be easy enough to fly past the man. I lifted myself slowly up into the air. When I got level with the tips of the spears, I came closer to the spears. I noticed it would be a little harder than I'd thought to get over the spears. Coming out of the tips of the spears were lengths of twine. They seemed to be joining the spears to some structure overhead.

I flew up, following the lengths of twine. I figured if I could find the structure the twine was joined to, I could fly over that. Even if it was really high, I could fly over it. As far as I knew, my powers of flight didn't have any height limit.

But as I got higher and higher, I came to realize I wasn't outside at all. I was inside a massive, very tall building, something like the Rose Reading Room of the Schwartzmann branch of the NYPL, except three or four times the size and height. And the room almost had a holy feel to it, like a cathedral.

The lengths of twine, I saw, went all the way up to the ceiling. But, maybe ten or so meters from the ceiling, the vertical lengths of twined joined with a lattice of horizontal and vertical lengths of twine. This lattice of twine was so immense and intricate that I knew there was no way I could get beyond it.

But, looking forward, I saw places where there seemed to be open spots. From there I could, I thought, get up high enough to go past the twine lattice and over the detection system that was, apparently, all connected to the man's spear-candelabra.

But now the massiveness of the enormous room was making me really dizzy. I was starting to get afraid, too. I felt like if I flew any higher, I stood a chance, somehow, of easily falling to my death.

For a little bit, I kept trying to move forward. But I couldn't manage it. The room seemed to begin spinning. Everything seemed more massive than ever. The floor scared me because it was so far below me. The ceiling scared me because it seemed so looming and heavy.

I had to descend. I was descending slowly, too afraid that any quick descent would lead to a falling accident that would kill me. As I got closer and closer to the floor, all I could see were the sparkling-polished, red floor tiles. It was like I was focusing on the floor as a matter of life or death. I may have felt like I was going to throw up.

I could hear the man telling me, almost like an older brother tying to give advice, "Man, don't try to fly."

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.

green wal-mart; hotel breakfast; jumping through walls

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably out driving through some desert, possibly with some other people, such as my mom. It was daytime. The sky hung low with heavy, grey clouds. I was afraid of a thunderstorm coming. We were headed to some particular place in the desert, so we could take care of some task.

But I suddenly remembered that there was another place in the desert -- some place in Texas, I remembered -- where Wal-Mart had built a "green" store. The Wal-Mart was "green" because it sold "green" food. This meant food that was made in a way that didn't hurt the environment. But it also meant healthy food. The "green" Wal-Mart in Texas was a test store. If it was successful, Wal-Mart would build more like it all over the country.

We weren't necessarily near this part of Texas. But I felt like if we were in the desert, we had to go check out the Wal-Mart before we took care of the rest of our task.

I was now in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart. The sky was the same. The parking felt enormous, but kind of grey, old, and dirty. The front of the Wal-Mart store also looked old. The store actually had a different name on the front, in green lettering.

I wasn't sure this was the correct Wal-Mart. So I asked a woman who was pushing a line of carts into the store. The woman was short and a tiny bit thick-framed, with copper-colored skin and long, black hair. The woman didn't really answer me. She just let me know, somehow, that she was annoyed by me.

A young man came up to us when he saw the woman was annoyed by me. He was blonde, pale-skinned, and muscly, with his hair in a square, spiky cut. He spoke roughly with me, trying to get me to go away from the woman.

But the woman told the man that I was just trying to figure out whether this was a "green" Wal-Mart. The man thought that by "green" I just meant a place that only sold vegetables. I tried to explain to him what "green" really meant.

But the young man didn't really want to listen to me. As we approached the sliding glass door entrance, the young man walked away from the woman and me, saying that if I wanted to find out if this was a green store, all I had to do was walk inside

Dream #2

I was at a hotel, getting breakfast. But I was in some kind of strange back-room, kind of area. It was almost like some sort of connection to the kitchen. But it was just a long hallway. Hallway had beige walls and beige-tiled floors, and was lit with gentle incandescent light.

A counter ran along the right wall of the hallway. Over the counter, the wall was completely lined with fixtures that looked partly like cupboards and partly like coffee dispensers -- or coffee-bean dispensers. These fixtures held all the food that the hotel kitchen would use in making its breakfasts.

I was working at the hotel (but not for the hotel) at the moment. So I was thought of as a staff member. I, therefore, took all my breakfasts directly from the hotel's stock of supplies, instead of having to wait for the kitchen to make breakfast for me.

But I was having trouble finding what I wanted for breakfast. All I could find so far was some kind of bread, possibly a bagel, and some kind of flavored cream cheese, probably strawberry-flavored.

I walked through the hallway and scanned the fixtures, looking for more food. But nothing seemed appropriate. The hallway went in something like a square loop, which I traversed clockwise.

At some point I had reversed my walk, and was traversing the loop counter-clockwise. But something like a door made me stop walking. It was like a kitchen door. I knew that beyond the door were people who were not hotel staff. I was too shy to be seen by them. Besides, I knew that they had their breakfast, and I had mine. I had to get my own breakfast without going out there to look for it.

Now the fixtures were on the left wall instead of the right wall. I walked counter-clockwise through the first part of a loop. But then the fixtures were on the right wall again, and I was walking clockwishe. I kept thinking to myself, wondering what kind of food would be appropriate for breakfast, other than a piece of a bagel and some strawberry cream cheese. But nothing really came to mind.

At some point I was facing a wall of fixtures. I turned away from it to find myself in a place like a Whole Foods. But it was empty of people, and, it seemed, largely empty of food and furniture. But it seemed a lot more likely that I would find something I wanted for breakfast here.

I walked through an open space, where usually all the service islands for the Whole Foods salad bar would be. I walked past a few empty glass display cases, which probably would once have held meats.

I then came to a small area like a soup shop. There were a few people here. One of the people was JS, the head of my department at one of my old jobs. She and one other woman were customers. There were a couple of workers as well.

There was some sign up on the wall saying what was being served today. All I was really looking for was breakfast. But the main service area was just a set of big, black pots filled with soup and something that looked like meat and sesame noodles.

I didn't want any of this. But I also didn't want to look like somebody who was so tasteless that he wouldn't want any of this food. I figured the other customers would think I was vulgar. So I snuck away from the area, hoping nobody would notice me.

I was back in the huge, empty space. I was walking past the empty glass cases again. Now I saw a lot more breads and cream cheeses. I wondered if it was okay for someone to eat that much bread and cream cheese, or only to have bread and cream cheese for breakfast. But I saw a pineapple-flavored cream cheese. I thought that if cream cheeses were flavored, then it wasn't such a bad thing for someone only to have bread and cream cheese for breakfast.

At this point, I may have started to see other foods behind the glass case. But I don't think I figured out what they were, or what they could end up being.

Dream #3

I was with a few other people in some area like a cafeteria in a hospital building. But there were only three or four tables in this area. The tables were all tall, and they stood in a line, from the left wall to the right wall. The right wall was green. The left wall was partly a green wall and partly a window-wall, with the inside coated with some reflective, silvery material.

I and at least one child had to jump from one table top to the next. This was supposed to be a test of our athletic ability. A man was monitoring our progress. One boy was currently jumping across the tables. I stood on the floor, watching the boy. The man stood on the floor, on the opposite side of the tables from me, walking along with the boy and guiding him.

The boy had been jumping from the left to the right. But when the boy reached the right wall, the man told him he had to jump all the way back to the far left table. The boy jumped. He floated through the air kind of dizzily, almost as if he were flying. It seemed like he made it all the way across the room. But I'm pretty sure he landed right back at the right table.

The boy then tried the jump again. By accident, the boy jumped through the right wall. He reappeared through the left wall and landed on the left table. He jumped on all the tables and ended up back at the right table. This was the end of his test.

The man said, "Now you see the secret of this. It's jumping through the wall. You come back around. Like in the Pac-Man game. It wastes much less energy than jumping all the way across the room. But you did it by accident this time. And you can do it on purpose."

I was now standing on the far left table. Apparently I was supposed to show the boy that it was completely possible to jump through the walls on purpose. But I was unsure of myself. I was certain I couldn't even have done the across-the-room "jump" the boy had first done. I couldn't jump very far at all. And the tables were -- now, anyway -- pretty far away from the walls to begin with. Would I even hit the wall?

But it was my task at least to try to jump to and through the wall. So I turned toward the left wall. As I did I saw, in a corner of the room off to my left, JS. She seemed to be monitoring my progress as well.

I knew I couldn't disappoint JS. So I jumped off the table. The wall was at least five meters away. I was surprised that I seemed to be reaching the wall with no problem. But I wondered if I would get through it.

The wall was the silvery-coated window wall. (And, now that I think of it, I didn't see my reflection in the dim, shimmery material.) I cringed as I approached the wall. But I got through it.

But I didn't end up on the other side of the room. Instead, I ended up outside, at night. I was in some weird kind of concrete space, a set of balconies, like the twisting portions of a parking garage. I fell down a couple of stories and finally landed in a narrow rectangle.

I wondered what my failure was. I heard the man's voice in my head. The man told me that I'd jumped through an area -- something like a transition area -- instead of jumping through a regular piece of wall. The man seemed to think this was normal, as I'd been dealing with some kind of transition space before I'd come to the jumping training.

I knew the man was right, and I could actually remember having come from the transition space before the training. But I also knew that the window-wall was a door to the transition space. If I'd only gone through the regular portion of the wall, I would have jumped through to the other side of the room just fine.

driving to texas; movie-concert work farewell; hotel policeman

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had just been part of some situation where somebody had been trying to tell someone else how far away one point in Texas was from another point. The person telling this had been lazy and wrong. I thought to myself that all he'd had to do was show a couple of points on a map and figure out things that way.

I was now figuring out the distances between the towns myself. One town was in south central Texas. The other town was on the east border of south Texas. I was looking at these two towns from a map. But the map took up my entire field of view. It felt like I was flying over the map, looking down on some actual landscape, even though it looked just like a map.

I kept flying over the border of Texas, spotting three towns that lay right on the border. One was San Martin. I forgot the name of the second one, which was farther south. The one farthest south was named Moon.

I was now with somebody else, a young man, tall, roundly muscular, with a mostly-shaved head. We were apparently driving to the town on the border of Texas. I knew that the town was 683 miles away.

We spoke about driving. As we did I saw our destination, or one of our destinations, in the distance. It was a small down at the distant end of a straight highway. The sky behind the town was purple and dim from sunset. There also seemed to be some kind of stone bluff that was taller than any building in the town. Or else this stone bluff may actually have been the hotel building where we were staying.

We were now in the hotel. It must have been night. We didn't have many lights on in the bedroom of the hotel. Only light from the bathroom shone into the bedroom. We were probably getting ready for bed or getting up and getting ready for the day.

But now a man from the hotel came in. He was tall, thin, with longish, blonde-brown hair and a receding hairline. He wore a white shirt and a red vest. The man told us that he needed us to move out of this room into another room. There were some kind of important people, the man explained, who needed the room we were in.

He told us that people had either moved out of or been kicked out of the other room. Everybody else in the hotel thought, because of the people who'd been in that room, that the room was really bad. But, the hotel man said, the room was really the best room in the hotel. The man was keeping this secret for us, if we would be so kind as to move.

The man I was with didn't have a problem with moving. But I did. Apparently I had to go somewhere for work. I was actually getting ready to go there right now. I had to be to a meeting at 10 AM. And that was right in the middle of the time when I needed to be to the meeting.

I was slinging on a suit jacket as I thought to myself that, after all, the man I was with could move all our stuff into the other hotel room. Or the hotel people could do it. But I didn't trust things either way. As long as I couldn't be here to see things getting moved, I couldn't trust that something wouldn't get lost. I really didn't want to move, even if we did get a better room.

Dream #2

I was at a movie theatre. It was gigantic. It was all dark, with almost a feeling that we were outside on a dark night -- possibly just because the place was so huge. The seats of the theatre were all set, in huge sections, at different angles. My section was set so that my left side faced the movie screen.

I had probably just finished watching one movie. Now another movie was set to begin. I didn't have a ticket to watch this movie. But I figured that if I just stayed in my seat, I could watch the second movie without getting caught.

Now it was like the second movie was a movie I had been here to see all along. I was really excited for it. But as I sat waiting, two women came into my row of seats and sat down to my left. The two women were maybe in their thirties, kind of attractive, but a little worn out looking, and a little boisterous and crude.

The women may have been talking about the show. Apparently the show was either a concert or a movie about a concert. The band "in concert" was some new rock band that the women were in love with. The band had a punky but smart sensibility. I didn't like that type of music. But I think I convinced myself I liked them. Otherwise, I reasoned, I wouldn't be here.

The woman closest to me tossed a bunch of boxes into the seat between her and me. The boxes were bulky and blocked my view of the screen. But the woman didn't seem satisfied with that. She began pushing the boxes -- and something on top of the boxes -- at me, crowding me out of my own chair.

I moved away. I sat on my seat's armrest. I think I even moved over to the next seat to my right. But by that time, I may have been to the aisle. I couldn't go any farther.

I figured this was enough. I was tired of being crowded out by the women. I was going to leave. I was now walking away. I was outside, on a long, straight road through a small town in the desert. It was daytime. There were a lot of cars out on the road. Now I was regretting not having stayed for the show. I remembered that maybe, after all, the band was good.

I could now hear the beginning of the movie, as if I were still close enough to the theatre to hear the movie. The band had just come out on stage. They said they were going to do a cover version of the Beatles song "Love Me Do."

The person who had introduced the band onto the stage said something like, "Oh, that's actually one of the hardest Beatles songs to cover. Good luck, guys."

But I remembered that the band had done the cover pretty well. I could now hear the song in my head. It sounded like "Love Me Do," but with the soft-punky sound of the band. I thought it was okay.

I was walking for just a moment through the neighborhood I'd lived in when I was in high school. I may have been looking at my phone. My sister was asking me a lot of personal information. I didn't want to give it to her. I felt like she would use it in bad ways.

I had then come into an office building. I was in a big hallway that seemed to curve around some large auditorium. The hallway was white with grey carpeting and fluorescent light. It felt like a hallway inside a new church building to me.

At some point a man told me that I'd better get ready, because everybody was going to be moving out of this building pretty soon. Possibly a tall, slim, black woman told me the same thing. The woman was like some kind of important secretary. The man, whom I saw somewhere, was an IT person. He was tallish, fattish, and bald, with red-brown hair on the sides of his head and a red-brown mustache.

I curved around into some slanted area like a coat closet that actually connected the hallway I was in to another hallway. I turned right down that other hallway, walked down, and found myself in some kind of lobby area with a group of office workers.

I had been thinking about what the IT man had said. A lot of these guys were IT guys. They spoke to me about where the IT operations for the company were going to move. Most of it, they said, would be in a building different from the building I was going to. They mentioned some cities.

I asked about a couple IT people, as if I were trying to confirm that they'd done something for me in the past. But the others said I had the wrong people. They told me the name of the man who had actually helped me. They then told me either that that the man was no longer with the company or that he was going to be moving really far away.

Dream #3

I had come from somewhere else and had now arrived in a hotel room, which was also set up as an office. The "office" side of the room was just a wall-length desk with two computers on it. The room was mostly dark, with just the glow of the computer screens and the incandescent light from some other room lighting the place.

I was probably working here with a pretty, black woman. But right while we were in the middle of some project, "my boss" came in. He was an old man, kind of gruff looking, with blonde hair and a mustache.

The man began giving us some speech which implied that he suspected me of something. He thought I was a bad person who was waiting for just the right moment to do something bad. I think he was just waiting for a reason to get rid of me.

The man now began giving us some kind of justification for his feelings. He said he'd worked for years as a SWAT team member or some kind of special operations guy. He got to know the signs of a bad person.

The man then began telling us stories of how he'd have to talk down people who'd finally gone bad. The man said that he'd really been aiming to shoot the people dead all along. But you had to go through a whole protocol before you could finally kill the guy.

The man stood before us, re-enacting a scene. It now seemed like the man was wearing heavy SWAT team gear. He seemed to be a bit younger, but also a lot more wrinkled and worn out. His hair was a whole lot thinner, but a lot longer. And his eyes were frantic and bugged-out. He may have been holding a rifle.

The man told us how he'd balance legal phrases intended to calm down the target with a manner of speech calculated to frighten the target and make him jumpy. The man said, "I'd keep telling the creep, 'Put down your gun! You're alright! Put down your gun!' But, really, I was just egging him on. I wanted him to lift his gun, so I could blow his head off!"

The man seemed so frantic by this point in time that I could hardly bear looking at him. But now there was the sound of sirens. I turned around and looked toward the curtained window of the hotel room. I could see full, grey daylight coming in dimly below the bottom fringe of the curtain. I was waiting to see the flashing lights accompanying the sirens.

The man or the woman may have said that the cops were finally here, that the man had been planning all along to have me arrested, and that I'd now finally given him a reason to have me arrested.