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

Dream 1

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

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

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

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

Dream 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

worst pinball game ever

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an arcade with a few other people who were probably around my age or five or ten years younger. We were playing pinball. I was standing near the pinball machine, watching instead of playing. I may have been watching a tall, beautiful, black-haired woman playing.

We then had to go upstairs. We probably went into a movie theater, but I think we were there for some kind of business meeting. A movie may have played.

The meeting was over, but I was now by myself. I took an escalator down from the upper level to the ground floor, where the arcade was. A huge window wall to my left let in a lot of grey light.

I was back down in the arcade. I stood in front of a pinball machine. I may have been surprised by the fact that the pinball machine started up a game without my having put a quarter inside. Somewhere off to my right and behind me, my mom was talking with some other person, maybe about some kind of illness, maybe a mental illness, my mom thought I had.

I started playing. I couldn't figure how to launch the ball out of the side slot and into the game area. But the ball launched itself. The ball bounced around in the game area and then fell toward the hole at the bottom.

The hole wasn't very big, it was located near the side slot, instead of in the middle of the bottom of the game area, and the paddle had the ability to stretch across the hole entirely. But either I couldn't figure out how to use the paddle, or else I was way too slow to use the paddle, and the ball fell right into the hole.

I got another ball, which appeared in the side slot presently. The ball launched into the game area, and somehow I, without even knowing how -- or really whether! -- it happened, got an extra ball.

The ball that had gotten me an extra ball disappeared, and another ball appeared in the side slot. But it launched up the side slot only weakly, then falling back down toward the bottom of the side slot. It actually fell out of the machine altogether, through some hole like a coin-return hole, then tumbled through the floor. I may have picked up the fallen ball and somehow put it back into the machine.

In the meantime, the extra ball I had gained was already bouncing around in the game area. I saw it just as it was falling toward the hole. There was a little bumper near the hole. The ball bounced against the bumper. I thought this would save the ball, or at least give me points or something special. But it didn't. The ball fell down through the hole. I didn't even use my paddle to stop it.

john waters at the movie theater

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

My mom may have dropped me off at the side of a road. It was a warm, grey day. I walked down a grassy slope and into the parking lot for a shopping plaza.

At the edge of the shopping plaza was a movie theater where I was planning to go watch a movie. The entrance to the theater was at the corner of a shopping plaza. The sidewalk bordering the plaza was under a porch-like covering.

I looked at the movie showings, which were listed on some orange, plastic sign over a ticket booth that kind of columned out near the corner of the building. None of the movies looked like anything I wanted to see, and all the times seemed inconvenient. Plus, the movie price seemed way too high. So I decided not to see a movie, after all.

I was about to walk away from the theater when I noticed, to my right, a cluster of people standing around the filmmaker John Waters. Waters was wearing a suit, which was all covered up by a blue velvet bathrobe. He was relaxedly talking with all the people around him like they were all involved in some creative project.

I remembered having seen Waters before, at some other movie theater where I'd decided not to watch a movie. But at that theater Waters had been wearing a red bathrobe. I thought it was interesting to see John Waters, but I didn't know what I would say to him, so I didn't go near the group of people surrounding him.

Now a few people were filtering back behind the movie counter -- like this covered walkway had blended somehow with the interior of the movie theater, so that, even though we were still outside, we were also inside.

A woman who looked like one of my co-workers, VP, was standing beside me and talking with one of the people behind the counter. VP worked here. She and the woman behind the counter were complaining about some other woman who, as usual, hadn't showed up for work.

I got the idea that I could fill in for the woman, not for any money, but just to help out. Seeing that John Waters was standing behind the counter, just within earshot of the conversation, I thought I could impress him with my offer. But I didn't really want him to hear me making the offer.

So I kind of made the offer to VP low, under my breath, but still loud enough for Waters to hear me if he was listening. But I said it in a weird way, something like, "Have you ever thought of having people work some of these shifts on a volunteer basis?" But VP said that that wasn't necessary. Everybody who was here could pick up the slack and fill in for the missing girl.

Since I didn't want to watch a movie, and since I wasn't going to help out the people at the movie theater, I decided to head away, maybe to walk home. I had somehow been inside the movie theater at this point. I walked out the front door. I walked along a wide, uncovered sidewalk leading away from the building.

But then I remembered that I had left the book I'd been reading on the table I'd been sitting at (???) inside the theater lobby. I had to turn around and get it. So I turned around. I was kind of annoyed. I quietly said, "Fuck!" and gave an angry facial expression.

Just as I did that I noticed that John Waters was out on the curb, still in his bathrobe, fumbling through a bunch of cardboard boxes. I didn't want Waters to think I was coming back to the movie theater because I wanted to hover around him all the time. I thought his having seen me annoyed at having to come back to the movie theater might illustrate that. But I also wondered if he'd thought I'd been annoyed because I'd seen him out here.

Now Waters stood up and began walking toward the movie theater. But he was purposely walking very quickly, and he was heading toward a private entrance about halfway along the left wall of the theater. I could tell that Waters was doing this because he thought I was following him, and that it was creeping him out a little.

I went back into the theater lobby, to a tall, long table where, apparently, I'd just been sitting with a group of friends, all of whom were working on this movie theater project. We'd all had a little meal party before the work shift started.

I saw my book sandwiched between two empty, dirty plates. I quickly snatched it up, hoping I could just make a quick dash out of the movie theater so I didn't freak out John Waters anymore.

But now VP saw me and asked me some question. It was obvious she wanted to start a conversation with me. I didn't want to let her down. So I sat down with her to have a conversation. The conversation may have ended up being about some annoying person at work.

But right in the middle of our conversation, VP grabbed some little candle off the table, used it to light a cigarette, and walked away, saying she was heading outside to smoke, but that if I held my thought, she'd be right back. As the smoke from VP's cigarette lighting cleared, a tall, heavyset man across the table from me, whom I may also have recognized as someone from work, said, "Isn't she annoying? She does that kind of stuff to people all the time."

incipient possession

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

job offer anxiety; my impaired condition; lost opportunity repeated

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room with a number of other people. There was something like a formal presentation going on in the room. But the room wasn't very formal. Everybody was sitting all over the place, at all different angles, in all different kinds of chairs, some people even under blankets. The room was mostly dark, with some bright light shining from the back of the room and throwing a little bit of light on everything else. The presenter was a young woman who may have been something like everybody's boss.

At some point during the presentation I felt I'd heard everything I personally needed to hear. I grabbed some other guy and headed out of the room with him. We walked down a narrow, fire escape-like staircase that ran along the side wall of a lower room. The lower room had a couple windows letting in a lot of natural light. But this room was also in disarray: a computer and keyboard sat on some kind of crate, and there seemed to be blankets everywhere.

The guy and I discussed something that had to do with whatever kind of business I was trying to take care of. Once we had come to a conclusion, we decided to split up. I'm not sure where the guy went. He may have stayed in the lower room. I went back up to the upper room.

Not long after I got back to the upper room I got a call on my cell phone. I answered the phone, stood up, and walked out of the room. Now there were a lot of men, like business men in their forties and fifties, casually dressed in t-shirts, shorts, and sunglasses. They were all talking out business ideas with each other.

The call I had taken was some kind of job offer. The guys, who currently worked for the woman, just like I did, saw that I was talking over a job offer. I knew some of the guys were tempted to tell the woman what I was doing. One of the guys may not have wanted to say anything to the woman. But he did ask me why I was talking to someone about taking a job offer.

I was now walking down a few very narrow, steep steps, off of a cabin porch and down to a clearing before a calm forest. I held the phone to my ear and asked the man -- who was neither near me nor on the phone -- whether he could blame me. After all, I said, the woman hadn't given me work in more than five weeks. I needed a better guarantee of steady work than that. And the place giving me the job offer could give me steady work.

I was now walking, or taking some kind of track-bound, cart-like vehicle, down a long stairway or slope that ran underneath a huge, suspended passenger airliner. The top of the airliner, I knew, was completely sawed off. The seating area was completely visible. Both the airliner and the slope I was moving down were apparently hanging high up in the air, maybe even over the clouds.

It was now like the cart-like vehicle I was driving in was a family's vehicle, maybe even an SUV. There had been a building at the top of the slope. The building was a hospital. The family driving this family vehicle had picked up the oldest son of the family (who was, now, maybe in his late thirties or early forties) up from the hospital.

The son was practicing to be a doctor. He was Hispanic, kind of overweight, with a pudgy face and finely done, graying black hair. He wore a black button-up shirt and some nice slacks. He looked healthy, but tired and frustrated from the day. He was so tired that, even though he seemed to have some pent up aggression in him, he was carrying it around with an almost elegant sort of resignation.

The mother of the family, a very old, thin woman wearing a dress almost like a flannel nightgown, patted the man on the shoulder and told him not to worry. The mother knew things were frustrating. But they'd all turn out alright. The son had been thinking about giving everything up. The mother's speech either made the son think it would be alright, after all, to give everything up, or that it would be better to just hold on through the frustration until conditions improved.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a movie theater. The theater was gigantic and completely filled with people. But the seats were all turned, in huge, orderly blocks, at strange angles, so that only a few blocks of seats were pointed directly at the movie screen. I seemed to recognize a lot of the people in the theater. It was like this event was some event for a group of friends or professional colleagues of which I'd been a part.

Sitting just a few rows down from me and across a strangely set aisle were a few young men I'd known from a previous job. They looked very healthy, vibrant, and well-dressed. They were very beautiful. They had been kind to me in the past. But I felt like nowadays they wouldn't have the obligation to be kind to me. They might just treat me rudely, or at least without consideration. I hoped they wouldn't notice me, so I wouldn't have to start up an interaction with them which would ultimately lead to a compromise of my feelings.

But somehow I dropped my glasses and they landed all the way over at the men's feet. One of the men, who didn't look like, but reminded me of, my old co-worker CJ, picked up the glasses. He noticed that one of the arms was broken and fixed in a tacky way. I hoped he wouldn't call attention to this.

We were all now sitting at a dinner table, in a gigantic room packed full with crowded dinner tables and beautifully dressed people. Sitting just behind me at another table was an incredibly beautiful and beautifully dressed, young, blonde woman. The man holding my glasses seemed about to give the glasses back to me. I hoped he would give them back soon and not mention anything about the damaged arm in front of the beautiful woman.

But the man began gabbing away about the damaged arm and the tacky way I fixed it up. At first it seemed like he was talking about it just because he thought it was a little bit funny -- quirky, kind of like I have always been known to be. Then he thought it was interesting in a kind of involving way. Then, finally, he seemed to think it was sad, like he didn't know how I could have gotten to a point, mentally, where I thought walking around with eyeglasses like this was okay.

I didn't know how I'd gotten to this point, either. I may finally have taken the glasses back. I probably looked down at the glasses and hoped that something about my condition would at least draw the beautiful woman to me. I'd been attracted to her. Now I was sure she didn't like me. But maybe she would like me, after all, if there was something in all of my messed up character that drew sympathy out of her.

Dream #3

I was out underneath a tarp with a number of other people. I was involved in business with two older women, both of whom had something to do with the fashion industry. I had made some mistake, something having to do with losing my nerve, at some point, so that I didn't speak up about something. This basically made one of the women decide she wasn't going to do any business with me.

I knew this was bad. With the woman's business, I'd be in extremely good financial shape. Without the woman's business, I'd be nearly destitute. But I could physically feel my business opportunity with the woman snap shut, like a click at the base of my spine. I also saw the image of an object like a black, plastic makeup disc, snap shut.

There were some other people under the tarp. Most of the people were young. Maybe some of them had been rude and unkind to me, causing me to lose my nerve. I felt like I now needed to fight back against them. I probably knew it wouldn't make a difference regarding the business between me and the women. But I felt like I could at least prove that I wouldn't always lose my nerve when people were mean to me.

But I didn't really have the opportunity to fight back against the young people. Nobody was really paying attention to me anymore. Or, if they were paying attention to me, it was like people would pay attention to some dopey, harmless, but overall nice, friend of theirs.

This mood made me feel more comfortable around everybody. I had originally been standing all by myself, at the very far edge of the tarp. Now I worked my way a little bit in toward the center of the tarp. I was trying to find the older women, to see if I could patch up my relationship with them.

One of the older women was standing behind an easel that had a huge pad of presentation paper propped up  on it. I couldn't see the woman. But I knew she had been talking about some problem she was having. It was either an idea problem or a mechanical problem. But as I thought the problem over, I realized I could probably pretty easily come up with the solution.

I tried to get the woman's attention so I could tell her this. But I didn't want to step behind the easel and face her directly until I'd had the opportunity to speak with her a bit and soften the mood between us. I believe I did manage to speak a few words with her. I seemed to be getting back into the woman's good graces.

But as I was doing this, an SUV pulled up maybe about fifty or so meters from the tarp. It was my family. My mother, brother, and some other family members got out of the car. The young people under the tarp pointed out to me that my family was standing over there. They made me feel obliged to check in on my family rather than continue my conversation with the older woman.

Somehow, maybe because it had been pointed out to me by the young people, I knew that the older woman was having some kind of trouble with a tube of lip balm. I knew my brother also had some lip balm. But I was again convinced, somehow, that what I needed to do was fix my brother's lip balm, not the older woman's.

So I walked over to my family's car. My brother showed me his lip balm, which was in a black, plastic, disc-like container. His lip balm may have been fine. In fact, he may have asked me if I wanted any. I had a feeling it would be rude to refuse the offer. But I really didn't want any of his lip balm. I was hesitating, trying to decide whether to accept or refuse.

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

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #3

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

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

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

Dream #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sex with married lesbian; escape from friend; missed race; irate showgoer

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I lived in a big apartment in a big city, maybe New York City, with another man. The man was black, a bit overweight, with kind of big hair. He was maybe in his early forties. The place was mainly his. I rented out a small room in the apartment. But even the small room was very opulent. Most of the surfaces in the apartment were white, lit with golden, incandescent lights from chandeliers.

My ex-girlfriend H was coming over to visit. But I might not have been sure when. It was night already. I may have gotten a call from her at some point. But I may have felt like I'd like a little more assurance on when she'd show up.

I floated out of the apartment. The sky was a warm, dark blue, like there was still just a trace of sun sinking down far past the horizon. But it was supposed to be late night. All the buildings and streets were bathed in orange streetlamp light. The streets were packed with cars; the sidewalks, with people.

In order to get a lock on who was were in this mass of cars and people -- mainly so I could see whether I could find H, I began using a video-game-like viewing technique. I would impose a pink- or red-outline square onto a car. Somewhere in my field of view I would get a readout of the people in the car. I would do a number of these cars at once. I would do a similar thing with the people on the sidewalks, except that, probably, instead using a square outline, I just pointed at them with something like a small dot.

I may now have seen H walking down the street toward my apartment building. I began floating back into the building. I saw myself inside through one of the windows. I saw myself sitting at something like a dinner table and nodding very seriously at some person I couldn't see. I figured that I was talking with my roommate. He may have been telling me stuff I could and couldn't do. But I wanted to see who I really was talking to, so I floated into my body in the room.

I was face-to-face with H. She was talking to me about how, just today, she'd had what she was talking about as a silly idea to marry a woman. She reminded me that lesbian marriages had been made legal recently. She told me that one of her friends, who was a lesbian, suggested that they just go get married as a joke. So H and her friend had gone off and gotten married.

H seemed to think this was just a joke. I felt like she, as usual, wasn't getting the importance and permanence  of what she'd just done. I was probably jealous of H being in a lesbian marriage. But I was even more annoyed that she thought it was all a joke. If it was something she'd regret later, she needed to know. I thought either she was really in love with the woman and she didn't want to tell me, or else she thought she'd done something for fun and now it would come back to get her.

While I was trying to think of the best way to tell H all this, H and I had moved to the bed, which may have been in the same room as the dining table. H and I were laying on our sides and embracing each other. We may have been kissing. H was wearing a long, greenish khaki skirt and a purple tank top. I had the skirt pushed up the back of H's legs. I was feeling H's bottom.

H asked me something like, "Do you like this?" I responded yes, possibly thinking that H meant, did I like having sex with a lesbian.

Dream #2

I was in a small bedroom with an adult woman and someone else, possibly a child. The room was dimly lit with a stark, incandescent bulb, like some bulb just laying on the floor. The walls were bare, probably white, but there was some kind of a blue tinge to them. The whole space was empty and pretty clean, but everything felt tight and restless.

My old friend R was coming to attack us. He may have gone completely insane and started killing a lot of people, with us as his next targets. Or else we may have exposed him for something, and he may now have been trying to stop us from doing something like giving conclusive evidence. He may have done something criminal in a business or political sense. Or we may have seen him murder somebody.

We knew R was way downstairs but was working his way upstairs. We had to get out of here as soon as possible. I gathered everybody up. There was a back door in this bedroom. The door led to something like a spare room. I got us all into that room. The woman was slightly panicked. But the child was very panicked. It was hard to keep it in the room.

I was kind of dizzy, and it was really hard to see. I pushed on all the walls. One of the walls opened up, in two layers -- the first layer coming in toward the room, and the second layer pushing out away from the room. I knew this was a secret exit from the house or apartment.

I had already jumped into this exit. It was now something like a small slide, with either a flat metal sheet or metal rollers for a floor and white walls and ceiling. It was so small that I couldn't stand inside of it. I had to sit. And it was steep. It was hard for me not to slide down. I was already a couple meters down.

I shouted up to the woman to get the kid inside here. This was the place I'd been looking for. We needed to escape quick. The other two got inside. But my friend R had taken one of the people's places, I'm not sure whose. The other two slid down the slide. I closed and locked the exit. Then I slid down.

We landed out in some area full of small shops and restaurants. It was early evening, and the sky and atmosphere were deep blue. There were gleams of light from the shops and restaurants. There were a few people here and there, but nobody noticed us just landing here, apparently from out of nowhere.

I told the woman and child (R was no longer there) to stay calm and not look suspicious. We began walking down one of the streets. We soon found ourselves in something more like the back end of a residential neighborhood.

I told the other two that we had to escape now. I said that the best way to escape would be to take a train -- there was a stop just a few blocks down the road -- to one of the cities up north of here. Apparently we were in New York City. So we were going to head up to one of the cities farther upstate in New York. I named a town, as if the naming of the town itself would save us. The name may have been Osceola. But I'm not sure.

Dream #3

It was daytime. I was out at the edge of some park. I stood on a promenade with a stone fence at the top of a steep hill that overlooked some town. The stone fence had a chain-link fence built out of its top as well, for extra protection. I stood before a bench.

A race had just finished. It wasn't quite a normal running race. There had been something else involved, maybe wheelchairs, even though nobody in the race really needed wheelchairs.

My old friend R showed up. He sat down either in a bench next to the bench I stood in front of, or else on the stone barrier itself. I told R that he had missed the race.

A woman now appeared and sat down at the right (my right) side of the bench before me. I sat down next to the woman and began talking to her. But now R got upset. I had a feeling he was really just jealous of the fact that I was talking with a girl. But he was doing something to indicate that he was feeling bad, like it was important for him to have someone to talk to.

I managed somehow to get the woman out of the way so I could get a better look at R. R told me that somebody he knew had cancer. I realized that R had been sad about this the whole time. I suddenly felt bad for having made such a big deal out of his having missed the race.

Dream #4

I was walking into some room. This room was like a lobby in a theater. In some other room something was going to happen, like a movie was going to be shown or something.

But coming out of a doorway opposite the lobby from the door through which I'd entered were two men and a woman. One of the men was the theater's proprietor. The other two were husband and wife. All three were older, maybe in their fifties or sixties. The proprietor was kind of short, a little shabby looking. The husband and wife were kind of tall and wealthy looking.

The proprietor was trying to explain to the man that he'd done something bad. Since the man had done this bad thing, the theater couldn't let him stay. This one bad thing done indicated that similar bad things would probably also be done once the show started. This would distract the audience. The proprietor couldn't allow that.

But the man was acting up like a spoiled child. He was yelling and screaming about wanting to see the show. It was like he thought if he could convince the proprietor he wanted to see the show badly enough, it shouldn't matter whether he would behave well at all while he was in at the show.

But the proprietor wouldn't let the man back into the show. So the man started threatening violence. The proprietor was obviously afraid. I figured I should at least step in at this point. Both the proprietor and I were small, compared to the man. But I figured if I stepped in, I could fight better than the proprietor, and maybe I could even stop the man.

The man was now yelling at me personally about how he'd been in the military. I was trying to determine how big of trouble I was in physically with this guy. I asked him what he'd done in the military. He now appeared to be in his forties. He had brown hair and a brown mustache. He wore sunglasses, a denim shirt, and blue jeans.

The man told me he'd worked with the Navy. I asked him where he'd been stationed. He gave me some location in the United States. I understood that his service with the Navy hadn't been much more than floating around on a ship just off the coast of the United States.

I could tell the man felt kind of bad about this, like he hadn't been able to risk his life like others had. So I didn't want to make him feel worse by getting into a fight with him and winning (???). So I just started talking nice to the guy. The guy, his wife, the proprietor, and I all sat down in the lobby, in some seats just like movie theater seats. A small screen was playing a movie. We all started watching the movie.

***

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


UPDATE 2: Picture added to dream #1 on July 8th, 2012, at 2:12 PM Mountain Standard Time.