the burning-up disease; can't let go; central gossip

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some room like a side room or a storage room in a large building like a high school or a college. But the side room was also filled with desks, like it was a classroom itself. I sat at one of the desks.

An older woman, like Mary Carrillo in Entre Tinieblas, stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. I was writing in a notebook. I was apparently writing gossip about movie stars. But it was also like I was writing gossip about the woman's family, friends, or business associates.

This was apparently my job, and now my work day was over. I stood up out of my desk. The older woman, who was probably my boss, told me what elements of gossip I was missing about people. I would need to fill this gossip into the stuff I was writing.

As I stood out of my desk, a young man, maybe Southeast Asian, with dark skin and short hair, and wearing a blue, button-up shirt and tie, walked into the room. He prepared to sit down in the desk in front of my desk. This man was a financial researcher. He now worked either for one of my old bosses or somebody like one of my old bosses.

The man's boss came into the room now. He was really lighting into the young man, who may now have been sitting, about how terrible some of his recent work had been, and how he needed to improve so much. I came to understand that the quality of my old work had been much higher than the quality of this man's work.

The woman was gone, but I had another boss, probably like one of my old bosses. This boss of mine may have told me about how good my work was. He probably then told me some things I'd need to do when I came in to work the next day. I was leaving for the night on very good terms with my boss. This probably made the other worker jealous.

I walked out of the building, which was now a lot like a college building. It was night, but there were a lot of people walking into or around the building. The building had a glass wall where the doors were. But the glass was was nestled in between two semicircular, sweeping brick structures. Before the entrance to the building was a wide, concrete plaza-like area. Beyond that was a parking lot which mostly lay in darkness.

There were a few black women walking in toward the building. Some of them were walking alongside their bicycles. There may also have been a few black women walking out from the building. I may have been worried that they were walking faster than me and that I needed to speed up.

I got out to a sidewalk that ran alongside a road connecting the parking lot to the outside road. It was pretty dark here. I knew I had to catch a bus. The bus seemed pretty far away. I had to walk down this road to the main road. I had to turn right onto the main road and head up some hill that ran along the grounds of this school. I then had to turn right and walk some distance along a back road to get to the bus stop.

But it was already almost time for the bus to arrive. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to catch the bus at all. But I thought there was a small chance that if I ran I could catch the bus. So at first I began walking really fast, and then I began running.

But as I was running I heard a voice tell me that I shouldn't put too much effort into my running. I was now in some room with an old, tall, thin man in a white lab coat. The man was telling me about the effects on the bodies of people who had overexerted themselves in really hot weather (although I don't remember the weather having been hot).

The man may have shown me photos or films of, or just vividly told me about, one person in particular. This person overexerted himself in hot weather. He had something like a heart attack -- his heart just locked, froze up. But then the rest of his body malfunctioned. His body heat kept rising and rising, until finally his insides just began melting.

I may have asked the man not to tell me anymore about this man, or even about this disease. I may have tried to walk to another room, just to get away from the man's gruesome stories. This room was like a classroom. But it didn't have any school desks in it, and it was divided in certain places by curtains like curtains dividing bed spaces from each other in a hospital room.

The man sat right outside or on the threshold of one of these curtained areas, in a pale, wooden chair. Just inside the curtained area was a big desk like a teacher's desk. A sexy nurse sat at the desk, working away at  a report or some kind of paperwork.

The man was continuing to tell me about the burning-up disease. He told me that as the burning-up disease progressed, actual layers of skin would peel away from a person's body, just curling backward. He may have said that this began at the extremities of the body.

To prove this to me, the man was holding a white, plastic trash bag with a man's hand in it. I couldn't see the man's hand, but I knew that there were sections of the hand where the skin was peeling backwards. But instead of the skin peeling backward and revealing red or pink flesh beneath, it just revealed more and more whitish, rubbery skin.

Dream #2

I was flying through the air with my brother. I don't know what kind of aircraft we were in, or whether we were in an aircraft at all. I was definitely at least partly exposed to the air.

My brother was in control of the flight, and he was flying really erratically. This may partly have been because he was fighting or maneuvering around something like a dragon. But he was also flying really crazy just because he wanted to shake me up, possibly even to get me thrown out of the air altogether.

I don't know whether my brother knew this, but I was holding onto a notebook. The notebook had important information in it, and I couldn't let go of it. It was hard enough to stay in the air with my brother's flying. But it was even harder to hold on to the notebook.

Now I was back on the ground. I'm not sure about my brother. I was moving through a street. I was moving along one of the lanes in the street, as if I were in a car. But I'm not sure I actually was in a car. I felt like I was out in the open air, floating maybe a meter above the ground, standing straight up, and moving along the road at about the speed of the car. Others on the road may have been doing the same thing, including a really cute, well-dressed, Asian girl.

I still had the notebook in my arms, even though I felt like I had lost something while I'd been up in the air. I was disappointed that I'd lost whatever I'd lost. But I thought I could at least boast to my brother, if it was ever brought up, that I hadn't lost the notebook.

I turned left down some road. I was then in a bedroom. The bedroom seemed big and nice, maybe with thick, wood walls. But it was all cluttered with stuff like blankets.  I was probably sitting on the floor, at something like a low desk, surrounded by all kinds of blankets. I may have been trying to do some kind of work, either in a notebook or on a computer.


But now my mom opened the door to my room. I think that when my mom opened the door, I could see into the halllway. I think it was then that I realized I was in some really big mansion.


My mom told me that my brother wanted to talk to me. He had some really big scheme for making a lot of money. And he wanted me to be in on it. The scheme also involved one of his friends. So he wanted me to meet his friend as well.


But I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. I already knew that I simply wouldn't be a part of any scheme my brother was putting together. But I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to avoid meeting my brother's friend. I had a bad feeling, though, that if I met my brother's friend, that would bring a whole bunch of trouble into my life.


So I told my mom no, that I didn't want to see my brother. I may have told her that I was still mad at him for flying so crazy and almost making me lose my notebook.


But now I could see my brother beyond the doorway, coming up a thick, wooden staircase at the end of the hallway. Instead of talking to my mother, I was now walking out of the doorway and speaking directly to my brother.


I was so angry that I must have been scaring my brother. Instead of walking up the stairwell, he was now walking down it, backwards. He was still calling up to me, a really wild look in his eyes, talking about his scheme, and talking about this friend of his he wanted me to meet.

But finally I must have said something really insulting or upsetting to my brother. He finally stopped talking. But he seemed really sad, depressed. I felt bad for having told him whatever I'd told him.

We were now sitting down in something like a living room. My brother sat in a big, cushiony chair. I sat down on the floor. I may have been writing in a notebook, which may have rested on something like a stool. All around me and my brother was clutter, mostly stuff like bedding. At some point I may have apologized to my brother for whatever bad thing I'd said to him.

Dream #3

Possibly something about my needing to put together gossip about a Japanese pop group, maybe the group AKB 48. I saw a group of Japanese girls in plaid mini-skirts, yellow sweaters, and white button-up shirts walking down the street.

I may have felt like I had two groups of information -- which I may have visualized as two ends of a black and white photograph. But I may have felt like I needed one last piece of information, which would have been like the center of the photograph, except that it would have been in color, and it would have been real and living, not photographic at all.

design subway; friend's boss sneaks up

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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