Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I was at a job interview. It was supposed to be a professional place, but it looked more like the backstage area of a theater. It seemed to be full of worktables and cluttered everywhere with colored fabrics and trinkets. There was one little office where my interviewer, MH, sat. The room was buried within the clutter of the rest of the place.
MH had decided that he wouldn't be able to hire me. He seemed to be disappointed in my interview. I walked away from the office, rather disappointed in myself and depressed. But only a few seconds later (though it may have felt, in some way, like it was a day or two later), MH walked out and implied that he would like to hire me after all.
MH set up some kind of desk space for me on one of the work tables by clearing off some of the piles of colored fabrics and laying down a laptop. MH hadn't quite told me he'd like me to work for him. Instead, he told me something like he needed me to stick around for a while. He said he needed some kind of data entered into a system before some event occurred, like the visit of some clients. He was just asking me if I could do this project as a favor to him. But I understood that if I did this project well, I'd probably stick around for even longer.
A couple other guys now started filtering into the room. They looked young, like recent college graduates. One of them seemed to be dressed in business casual clothes. But at least one other guy was dressed in a strange, but somewhat fashionable way. One of these guys was very short and pale. He had slightly shaggy, black hair. He wore pale, greyish jeans and a pale, greyish, denim jacket. Something else about his attire looked very clunky an 1980s-style.
The young men, when they saw me, seemed to be jealous of me, wondering whether I wasn't here to take away their jobs. I tried to make a point, apparently through my body language, that I was here to do a completely different job, not to take anybody's job.
To prove this, at one point, I stood up right when the grey denim boy was walking past me. I may have been planning to show him something. Instead, the young man became a little frightened of me and began walking backwards as I walked forward. But somehow we began talking, and eventually we were talking either about something we both liked (like some kind of art) or about some kind of project I'd now volunteered to help the grey denim boy with.
I may have been a little worried, now, about helping the grey denim boy with a project. It seemed like he was kind of weird. I didn't know if everybody else would think I was weird for helping this boy with something. But then I realized that most everybody else here also dressed weird. So nobody would think anything about it.
The grey denim boy and I had cleared off some of the clutter of colored fabrics from a work table. There was now a whole cookie sheet of sweet-looking desserts. The desserts were like scone-sized globs of maple, pecans, and sugar, all clumped and crystallized together. There wasn't any crust or pastry or anything attached to these sugary globs.
The whole team of workers was now, apparently, gathering together to have some kind of a team meal and meeting. We gathered at a table in the center of the room. There were little spaces cleared out for each of us, so we could sit down our meals, or desserts, and our laptops. But the clutter was so high that we couldn't see around it to the other people sitting at the table with us.
The meeting never seemed to start or finish. Instead, people seemed to take forever to sit down, and then they'd stand right back up and walk away. I sat at my space, waiting for instructions or something. I thought about eating my dessert. But I felt bad about doing so. I knew that eating too much during the day would make my body act weird. I was trying to figure whether I could somehow work eating the dessert into a schedule that would be okay for my body.
Dream #2
I was in an elevator with an older man. The man was white, stood tall, wore a nice business suit, and had fine, white hair. The elevator we were in was going straight up at first. But then it began going upward and forward, diagonally, like we were traveling in an elevator car, but along the tracks of an escalator.
We were, I knew, going up to the 23rd (or 28th?) floor. I knew that my youngest nephew had just been admitted to the hospital. He was sick, possibly with a pulmonary illness. The old man and I were coming to visit my nephew. I believe that we understood, at this point, that nobody else in the family knew about my nephew's condition, including my sister and my mom, who lived with and took care of my nephew.
The doctors wanted to give my nephew some medication. But the doctors didn't know what medication to give him. They apparently couldn't get a hold of my sister or mother, so they called me. The old man and I were now standing just outside the hospital.
I got the message from the doctors via text on my phone. I didn't know how to respond to it. I thought that before I responded to anything, it would be a good idea to try and get a hold of my mother and sister. After some trying, I may have gotten a hold of my mother and sister.
In fact, my sister may now have been sitting near me, on some brick ledge surrounding a raised planting area that held some small trees and shrubs. I may have tried to make a point to my sister that I hadn't been trying to control her life or her son's life by engaging in a conversation with the doctors.
I "said" (or just "felt to" my sister) that the doctors had contacted me, and that I was surprised they'd done so. I "said" that I had only been planning to respond to the doctors because I hadn't been able to get a hold of my sister or mom. I thought that if I couldn't get a hold of anybody, I'd have to respond. The situation seemed too important. It seemed like someone needed to make a decision sooner rather than later, to make sure my nephew was taken care of.
Dream #3
I was looking at a book of sculptures by Japanese artists. The artists all had a style very much like the style for which Takashi Murakami is famous: plastic-looking, cartoon-themed, and visually bubbly and complex. But a lot of the artists didn't color their works. The works would largely be all white.
The book had photos of these sculptures in stores all over the world. Some of the stores may have been cleared out to become temporary exhibit spaces for larger collections of art works. Other stores may have carried on with their business, with just one large piece of sculpture placed in the middle of a store.
The final photo I looked at was of a store I think I recognized as The Disney Store in New York City -- even though it was nothing like The Disney Store. It looked more like a bookstore. There were bookshelves spaced widely apart. The store was kind of small. The walls were barn-red. The ceilings were high. In the center of this store stood a tall, white pedestal with a small, white sculpture of a bulging-headed, Mickey Mouse-like character.
Even though I was looking at a book, the picture began moving panning toward the side, as if I were watching a video on a TV or computer. I felt like I knew the view I had been looking at. But now that the view was shifting, I was feeling less and less familiar with it. The idea of what place I was looking at had only slowly been dawning on me. Now I was losing my focus on what I was looking at.
At the same time, two girls, maybe both Asian girls, began talking near me. One of the girls was my friend. The other girl was my friend's friend, though she may have been my friend as well. My friend and I may have been on some kind of trip together. My friend and her friend were now talking about the various attractions in whatever city we were visiting. (Oddly enough, we may have been standing in the same place that the photo in the book was showing.)
I needed to get back to the first view this moving photo had shown. I put my finger down on the paper and swiped my finger over to the left. The photo, which had been panning off to the right, now moved left (I think). It now reached the original spot. This view looked mostly like the original view, even though I think there were some changes to the view that looked a little uncanny and frustrating to me.
I suddenly called out to the two girls, "Look! It's the Disney Store in New York! I can recognize it!" The girls may have looked at the photo for a moment, not really paying attention to what I was saying. Then they may have looked away. I had felt like it was really important for me to show that I knew the view. I was trying to prove to the girls that I had lived in New York, and that I knew the sights of New York. I was starting to think that nobody really believed anymore that I had ever lived in New York.
Showing posts with label new york city. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new york city. Show all posts
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
bookstore beer; ayudame hamburger stand; diaper boy's accident; afterlife bridge; subway map
Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I walked into a bookstore. I got into the bookstore by heading down into a basement. The bookstore was just a huge, empty room with wood walls and green carpet. At the far end of the room was a checkout counter, which was also made of wood. There may have been a couple of tall machines behind the counter.
There were two guys behind the counter. I had apparently spoken with the guys before. Now I was coming back. Both the guys seemed pretty cool. They were both probably in their late forties or early fifties. One of the guys stood up and spoke with me. He was tall, with short, grey and black hair. We chatted for a moment.
The other guy, who was sitting obscured behind one of the tall machines, poked his head out. He told me that he and his friend were just getting ready to have a beer. This implied that he'd like me to join them for a beer.
I thought about it for a moment and said that I really couldn't. I could hang around for a bit, but I couldn't drink any beer just then. I felt bad because I knew these guys were starting to think of me as their friend. If I didn't drink a beer with them, they'd think I was just thinking of them as bookstore owners, not as friends.
Whatever I'd said must have been kind of ambiguous, because now the long-haired guy was having me head downstairs with him while he got the beers. The downstairs area was about as big as the upstairs area, but the ceilings were a little lower. There were two wet bars, I believe: one on the right wall and one on the left. The guy went behind the bar on the left wall. But I was looking at the bar on the right wall.
The scene stayed the same, but it was now a meeting hall instead of a bookstore. There were a bunch of seats to my left (as I faced the right wall), all facing the back wall. There was a little stage jutting out of the back wall. A woman stood on the stage, haranguing a half-full crowd. The crowd may mostly have been young adults or older children. The woman may have been doing something like trying to incite a revolution.
I was drawn into the situation somehow by someone who had been standing off to the side. I can't remember how I got drawn in. It may have been that somebody'd called attention to something I'd done, maybe something stupid.
Dream #2
I was just walking back to a hamburger stand I worked at, after I'd gone to get some kind of help for the place. It was early evening. The sun had set, and the sky was a cool silver blue. The hamburger stand was stout and white. There were a few sections on the left side (as I faced it) that were open to the outside, just like open-air counters people could sit at. Around those counters there were also a few outdoor tables, probably circular and made of concrete edged with pebbles.
I sat down at the counter. Some guys coming from off to my left were bringing trays full of Mexican food. It actually looked like food from Taco Bell. There seemed to be plates and plates of Nacho Supremes. This was what I'd done for the hamburger stand. The place had been running out of one specific kind of food. I'd needed to ask another fast food place to give us a comparable kind of food, so we could keep selling. So I'd gotten the taco stand to give us all this food.
As one of the guys was loading food onto the counter, I tried, in a really horrible way, to say, "Thank you. You really helped us," in Spanish. I apologized in English for my terrible Spanish before I spoke the Spanish. And my Spanish was really horrible. I can't remember it now, except that I think I said something like "me lo ayuda" for "you helped us."
The guy I spoke to in Spanish was now like my manager at the hamburger stand. He walked behind me then sat down at the counter, to my right. I was saying that if this place sold out of food, it must be really popular. The man said that it actually wasn't popular, due to one of the items on the menu.
I asked what the item was. The man seemed really hesitant to tell me. But he eventually said that people didn't like the fries. I thought about it as I looked into the store and saw people sitting at the inside tables. I thought I saw the man's point. Maybe, I suggested, the people thought the fries were bland? The man nodded.
Dream #3
I was in a bedroom. It may have been night. There was an incandescent light on in the room. I was probably cleaning the bedroom. I was probably in the room with one of my siblings, who may have been a child. There were two bunk beds against the back wall of the bedroom. My sibling sat on the lower bunk of the right bunk bed.
I sat on the floor in between the two beds. I probably had a stack of used baby diapers -- used by me, likely, even though I was my current age -- before me on the floor. There were also sheets of newspaper scattered all over the floor, as well as stuffed animals everywhere. There may also have been some kind of grainy substance, like salt or sand, strewn in places on the floor. Yet I had been cleaning the room, and I'd thought I'd gotten to a point where the room was nearly clean.
My mom walked into the room. The first thing I worried about was the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them. Nobody else used this room. So obviously the baby diapers were mine. But my mom didn't seem to be aware of the diapers. At first, I think, she just thought that the place looked really messy. I think she was asking me questions about that.
I think I answered that I was going through the cleaning in layers. I'd cleaned a number of layers, but I left the layers of stuff that I'd thought I still needed. That was, for instance, why I'd left the sheets of newspaper on the floor. I'd also left all the stuffed animals. I wasn't going to throw the stuffed animals out. They belonged to my sibling (my sister?), and I respected the fact that my sibling liked stuffed animals.
Suddenly my mom got very angry and started asking me about the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them at all. I think I only mentioned that I was planning on throwing them away as soon as possible.
I was now out walking alone on a road that ran through a flat, grassy plain. It was probably early evening. The sky was really beautiful, with shades of blue and pink. The colors in the sky may have shifted from time to time, so that there were always new, brilliant combinations of evening colors. I was apparently engaged on the task of taking something back to some place.
But someone behind me caught my attention. I turned around. The person was probably a woman, maybe in her forties or fifties. She was blonde, dressed in a tan suit with a skirt that went down to about her kneest. She had her hair up in a short, tight, style. Her hair was blonde and grey. She looked very beautiful and stately, but a little worn out. She held five knives, with their points down, close to her chest. The knives had silver handles. They may just have been butter knives.
The woman asked me what I was doing. I may have replied that I'd been sent out to return the stuffed animals that had been in the bedroom I was cleaning. "But," I told the woman, "I'm really not going to return the stuffed animals. It would be cruel to my sibling. I only needed to make it seem to my mom like I was going to do that."
The woman may have discussed something else with me, probably something that made me wonder how I was going to get home from where I was right now. I may have told the woman that it was finally getting dark, and that I'd need to make my way back home before it got too dark for me to see my way. I knew it was going to be dark soon, because the sky had taken on an intensely vivid, though deep and dim, yellow-green glow at the horizon.
So I started walking back home. I reached something like an intersection. The road crossing the road I was on was small, like the road I was on. But it was busy, and big trucks occasionally ran down it. Right across the road was a river. The road I was on crossed the river, but not quite in a direct line with the stretch of road I was on. The crossing was a little off to one side.
Just then it became pitch black. I couldn't see anything at all. The headlights from the cars on the road may have given me a little light. But I think that usually the cars were even driving without headlights. The only lights I constantly saw were the lights of the town I was trying to get back to. But they didn't provide enough light for me to see where I was going.
I'd managed to cross the busy road. I was now at the river. I was trying to find the crossing. But I couldn't find it in the dark. I would edge my way from side to side along the bank of the river (which was just off the edge of the busy road), nudging into the air with one of my toes, trying to hit the solid structure that I'd know was the crossing. But I couldn't find it. I thought I'd just try to cross the river by wading across the river. But I knew the river was too deep for that.
I edged my way over to the left, still poking my foot out to find the crossing. But now a huge semi-truck came barreling down the road. I must have been a little bit into the road. The truck screeched to a stop, almost, I thought, hitting me. I could feel the waves of heat pouring off the truck and flowing along my back.
Suddenly I fell down, almost like I'd fainted. I was lying on the ground, right underneath the front left tire of the truck. I was wrapped up in a white sheet, like swaddling clothes, or a burial sheet. I started to wonder if I hadn't been hit by the truck after all. The headlights for the truck were now on. I could see them.
The driver got out of the truck and ran to see me. I didn't feel hurt. I didn't know whether I was injured. I figured I could probably still use all my limbs, though, for some reason, I didn't want to try at the moment. The driver may have attempted to lift me out from under the tire. He may have succeeded. Other drivers may have stopped and gathered around the front of the truck. I heard the flat, desperate scream of a woman.
Dream #4
I was at my great grandmother's house. (My great grandmother died about three years ago in waking life.) It was daytime, and golden sunlight filtered into the living room, like it always did.
I was here with my mom and my sister. My great grandma had had some kind of bad accident. We all thought she was going to die. But now she was up and walking around the house, taking care of household chores. But, for some reason, either my mom and my sister or just my mom thought my great grandma was still going to die.
I was trying to be a bit more positive about things. I tried to help my grandma out with her household chores. I had been in the hallway, maybe walking out from my grandma's bedroom. I could see my grandma walking around in the living room. I then walked into the "guest bedroom," the spare bedroom my grandma kept available for family members who wanted to stay the night. I could see my grandma heading toward the guest bedroom.
I was doing something like arranging a huge pile of quilts on the bed. The pile was all stacked up neat and orderly. These were all quilts my grandma had made. The top one probably had a red and green design on it. As my grandma walked into the room, she discussed something with me. She may have spoken about smoothing out the quilt's top. Or she may not have discussed it. But that's what I was doing, for some reason.
My grandma and I started having an interesting conversation (of course -- I forget it now!). I was really engaged on one point, when suddenly I saw my grandpa (my mom's dad, who died about four years ago in waking life) coming toward the bedroom. For some reason, the door to the bedroom was open only a crack. But I could still see my grandpa.
I stopped what I was talking about in mid-sentence. I didn't want my grandpa to be involved in the conversation, for some reason. When my grandpa came into the room he said something nice to my grandma. He said something else to both me and my grandma. I smiled and treated my grandpa very politely and listened to what he had to say.
My grandma walked out of the room. My grandpa switched his position so that I kind of had to face away from the bed. I may have held one of the quilts in my arms. I may have been folding it, so I may have held it folded over one of my arms.
My grandpa told me something like, "When I died, at first I was a little woozy. I woke into the new world, but I didn't know what it was. Slowly I began to see things clearly again. But only a little bit. And that's when I saw angels. The angels were all facing in different directions, each to a different specific location in the world. One angel faced toward Argentina. Another angel faced toward Venezuela..."
I could see, in my mind's eye, a place full of light. At certain points, the bright, shining, white light seemed to resolve itself into clouds. There may have been golden gates at certain places in the clouds. In the clouds stood angels. The angels were, in fact, spaced widely apart and facing in all different directions. I think I figured that there must have been one angel for every country in the world.
I was walking along the pedestrian portion of a large bridge, crossing over a large river. The pedestrian walkway was enormous, and the bridge must have been enormous as well. I was walking up toward a stairway up to the next section of walkway. The stairway ran between two walls of huge, stone blocks. It was a bright, clear day. But in the shade it felt cold, and there may have been some ice on the steps.
I thought to myself what a comfort it was that my grandpa had visited me. I thought that now that he had shared his vision of the afterlife with me, I'd be much less afraid of dying. I probably thought of the experience as a dream, but I may have kept a little feeling with me that it had actually, physically, happened inside my great grandma's house.
I thought I'd share the experience I'd had with my family. But, walking out from between the stone walls and out onto the next walkway (which may also have had coatings of ice or snow along its edges), I thought that I may not share the experience. I felt like my mom, and possibly my aunt, had had experiences already with my grandpa and great grandma. I didn't want their experiences to conflict with my experiences, and I didn't want them to change their accounts of their own experiences so they would fit in with my account.
I passed some sort of stone gate along the walkway. The walkway, which had been sloping up slightly, now became much flatter. I figured I was about halfway across the bridge by now. A dog came running up past the gates. It was a border collie. The man with the dog was still behind the gate. He was out jogging with his dog. But the dog had run a ways ahead of the man.
The dog lay down right at a spot in the path where the coatings of snow had become so wide as to take up all but a central portion of the path. The dog was rolling around, growling, and baring his teeth so frantically that I was afraid to approach it. It seemed like a violent dog that would attack me if I got near it. But I was still a ways away from where the dog had stopped, and I figured I wouldn't have to worry about what to do for a few more seconds.
But now the man came running up from behind me. He quickly reached the dog. The man appeared to be in his fifties. He looked healthy, muscular, and tan. He was bald and wore sunglasses, a red (or rusty tan?) t-shirt and some running shorts. He cheerfully told me (I was still a ways away) that the dog was actually a good dog and wasn't anything to worry about, especially since the man was now with him. The man may even now have had the dog on a leash.
But as I approached the point in the path where the man and the dog stood -- not moving forward, the man maybe jogging in place -- the dog began barking violently and frantically. The dog then did some weird move where it rolled through a puddle. The puddle splashed unbelievably high, sending a wave of water toward me. The water swept over me and shocked me.
I backed up, out of the way of the wave. But I still thought of approaching the point in the path where the dog stood. But now, when the dog barked, sheets of cold, clear rain dropped from the sky! They seemed to fall in time with the dog's bark! The sky was completely clear, but the sheets of rain would still fall. I backed up quite a bit, maybe all the way back behind the gates I'd crossed when the dog had first passed me.
I waited until the rains stopped. Then I began walking forward again. I think the dog and man were still at the point on the bridge. But now a group of teachers and students were approaching from the other side of the bridge. I think this may have made the dog less violent.
I crossed the part of the walkway that was really coated in snow. I was now on a much thinner section of walkway. I could actually see out, on both sides, to the river we were crossing over. We were really high over the river! I could also see the big city on the other side of the river.
I think I crossed two groups of teachers and students. The teachers were all pretty, smart-looking women, probably in their late twenties. The students may mostly have been girls. A lot of the students looked like they came from places other than America.
I think the first group of students I passed didn't react much to me. But I passed the second group of students as I was reaching a particularly thin portion of the walkway -- again, it may possibly have seemed thinner only because a large portion of it was taken up by a coating of snow.
I believe I had tried to make space for the children by getting as far off to the side as I could. But the teachers made all the students turn their backs on me and stretch out their arms. It was like the children and teachers were all making a fence. The teachers were like fence posts, all evenly spaced between the students. The students, I notice, all wore pink wool caps and pink wool scarves and pea coats of some maroon-purplish color.
At first I felt like the teachers had put this "human fence" in place specifically to block me from crossing the bridge. But the students weren't blocking the passage at all. In fact, they even seemed to be standing up on the coating of snow, completely faced away from me. So now I wondered if the teachers had put this "human fence" where they'd put it so I'd have no chance of seeing any of the children's faces, like, if I saw the children's faces, I would do something perverted to the children.
Dream #5
I was down in the subway in New York City. The subway platform I was on was really big and really crowded. But it was also constructed so that it felt really tiny and tight. The walls arced over toward the tracks very steeply. The light was a dirty, glaring white fluorescent light.
A group of kids, maybe in their early twenties, stood behind me, around me in a half-circle, like they had gravitated toward me and were trying to make me a part of their group. From their conversation I gathered that the kids had come from Texas. They were here as tourists. This was their first day here. They had probably only gotten here a few hours ago. They were now headed back to their hotel.
But they felt that they hadn't seen enough. They hadn't really known how to get around. And they were worried that tomorrow they still wouldn't know how to get around. They wouldn't be able to use their time efficiently. And they wouldn't be able to see all the sights they wanted to see.
There were a few guys and a couple of girls. The girls all looked pretty, clean, casually dressed, but well made-up. The guys were all kind of scraggly, sunburnt, with messy hair and messy clothes. But the guys and the girls were all cool. Even though they were upset about not knowing what they were doing, they all seemed to be joking and laughing with each other.
I turned toward the guy who stood directly behind me. He had scraggly, tightly curled, blonde hair, a red-pink and pale white face, and he wore a dark, dingy blue t-shirt. I told the guy, kind of speaking to him over my shoulder, "You know, the easiest way to do this is just to get a subway map. You can find out where everything is where you want to go. Then just look at the subway map to see where you need to catch the trains to get there."
The man said that he didn't want to spend a lot of money on some map. But I told him the subway map was free. He seemed surprised by this and asked me how he could get a subway map. I told him, "You just go to the subway booth. At a lot of stops, you'll see, right past the exits, a little, silver structure with a worker sitting at it. You just go up to that worker and ask for a subway map. Look. I'll show you."
I led the kids over to the stairway (or set of stairways?) that led up to the turnstiles leading out of the station. Just past the turnstiles was a service booth. A worker sat at the booth. The kids all went up to the booth to ask for a map. I hoped the booth wasn't out of maps. It wasn't. The kids got their maps. I watched one of the boys pull out his wallet and slide his subway card through the turnstile.
We all started walking back down the steps to the platform. The kids all told me thanks. Apparently, now that the kids knew their way around (of course, they hadn't even opened the maps yet), they were heading off on some different train. But I think the kids wanted me to be friends with them and help them out in getting places while they were touring around here. I thought I should give them my phone number or email address.
But I couldn't tell if they really wanted me around. So I told the kids that I had to hurry away to catch my train. I ran off to the right as they headed down another set of stairs off to the left.
***
UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.
UPDATE 2: Added one drawing to dream #3 and one drawing to dream #4, July 27, 2012, 3:29 PM, Mountain Standard Time.
Dream #1
I walked into a bookstore. I got into the bookstore by heading down into a basement. The bookstore was just a huge, empty room with wood walls and green carpet. At the far end of the room was a checkout counter, which was also made of wood. There may have been a couple of tall machines behind the counter.
There were two guys behind the counter. I had apparently spoken with the guys before. Now I was coming back. Both the guys seemed pretty cool. They were both probably in their late forties or early fifties. One of the guys stood up and spoke with me. He was tall, with short, grey and black hair. We chatted for a moment.
The other guy, who was sitting obscured behind one of the tall machines, poked his head out. He told me that he and his friend were just getting ready to have a beer. This implied that he'd like me to join them for a beer.
I thought about it for a moment and said that I really couldn't. I could hang around for a bit, but I couldn't drink any beer just then. I felt bad because I knew these guys were starting to think of me as their friend. If I didn't drink a beer with them, they'd think I was just thinking of them as bookstore owners, not as friends.
Whatever I'd said must have been kind of ambiguous, because now the long-haired guy was having me head downstairs with him while he got the beers. The downstairs area was about as big as the upstairs area, but the ceilings were a little lower. There were two wet bars, I believe: one on the right wall and one on the left. The guy went behind the bar on the left wall. But I was looking at the bar on the right wall.
The scene stayed the same, but it was now a meeting hall instead of a bookstore. There were a bunch of seats to my left (as I faced the right wall), all facing the back wall. There was a little stage jutting out of the back wall. A woman stood on the stage, haranguing a half-full crowd. The crowd may mostly have been young adults or older children. The woman may have been doing something like trying to incite a revolution.
I was drawn into the situation somehow by someone who had been standing off to the side. I can't remember how I got drawn in. It may have been that somebody'd called attention to something I'd done, maybe something stupid.
Dream #2
I was just walking back to a hamburger stand I worked at, after I'd gone to get some kind of help for the place. It was early evening. The sun had set, and the sky was a cool silver blue. The hamburger stand was stout and white. There were a few sections on the left side (as I faced it) that were open to the outside, just like open-air counters people could sit at. Around those counters there were also a few outdoor tables, probably circular and made of concrete edged with pebbles.
I sat down at the counter. Some guys coming from off to my left were bringing trays full of Mexican food. It actually looked like food from Taco Bell. There seemed to be plates and plates of Nacho Supremes. This was what I'd done for the hamburger stand. The place had been running out of one specific kind of food. I'd needed to ask another fast food place to give us a comparable kind of food, so we could keep selling. So I'd gotten the taco stand to give us all this food.
As one of the guys was loading food onto the counter, I tried, in a really horrible way, to say, "Thank you. You really helped us," in Spanish. I apologized in English for my terrible Spanish before I spoke the Spanish. And my Spanish was really horrible. I can't remember it now, except that I think I said something like "me lo ayuda" for "you helped us."
The guy I spoke to in Spanish was now like my manager at the hamburger stand. He walked behind me then sat down at the counter, to my right. I was saying that if this place sold out of food, it must be really popular. The man said that it actually wasn't popular, due to one of the items on the menu.
I asked what the item was. The man seemed really hesitant to tell me. But he eventually said that people didn't like the fries. I thought about it as I looked into the store and saw people sitting at the inside tables. I thought I saw the man's point. Maybe, I suggested, the people thought the fries were bland? The man nodded.
Dream #3
I was in a bedroom. It may have been night. There was an incandescent light on in the room. I was probably cleaning the bedroom. I was probably in the room with one of my siblings, who may have been a child. There were two bunk beds against the back wall of the bedroom. My sibling sat on the lower bunk of the right bunk bed.
I sat on the floor in between the two beds. I probably had a stack of used baby diapers -- used by me, likely, even though I was my current age -- before me on the floor. There were also sheets of newspaper scattered all over the floor, as well as stuffed animals everywhere. There may also have been some kind of grainy substance, like salt or sand, strewn in places on the floor. Yet I had been cleaning the room, and I'd thought I'd gotten to a point where the room was nearly clean.
My mom walked into the room. The first thing I worried about was the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them. Nobody else used this room. So obviously the baby diapers were mine. But my mom didn't seem to be aware of the diapers. At first, I think, she just thought that the place looked really messy. I think she was asking me questions about that.
I think I answered that I was going through the cleaning in layers. I'd cleaned a number of layers, but I left the layers of stuff that I'd thought I still needed. That was, for instance, why I'd left the sheets of newspaper on the floor. I'd also left all the stuffed animals. I wasn't going to throw the stuffed animals out. They belonged to my sibling (my sister?), and I respected the fact that my sibling liked stuffed animals.
Suddenly my mom got very angry and started asking me about the diapers. I didn't know how to explain them at all. I think I only mentioned that I was planning on throwing them away as soon as possible.
I was now out walking alone on a road that ran through a flat, grassy plain. It was probably early evening. The sky was really beautiful, with shades of blue and pink. The colors in the sky may have shifted from time to time, so that there were always new, brilliant combinations of evening colors. I was apparently engaged on the task of taking something back to some place.
But someone behind me caught my attention. I turned around. The person was probably a woman, maybe in her forties or fifties. She was blonde, dressed in a tan suit with a skirt that went down to about her kneest. She had her hair up in a short, tight, style. Her hair was blonde and grey. She looked very beautiful and stately, but a little worn out. She held five knives, with their points down, close to her chest. The knives had silver handles. They may just have been butter knives.
The woman asked me what I was doing. I may have replied that I'd been sent out to return the stuffed animals that had been in the bedroom I was cleaning. "But," I told the woman, "I'm really not going to return the stuffed animals. It would be cruel to my sibling. I only needed to make it seem to my mom like I was going to do that."
The woman may have discussed something else with me, probably something that made me wonder how I was going to get home from where I was right now. I may have told the woman that it was finally getting dark, and that I'd need to make my way back home before it got too dark for me to see my way. I knew it was going to be dark soon, because the sky had taken on an intensely vivid, though deep and dim, yellow-green glow at the horizon.
So I started walking back home. I reached something like an intersection. The road crossing the road I was on was small, like the road I was on. But it was busy, and big trucks occasionally ran down it. Right across the road was a river. The road I was on crossed the river, but not quite in a direct line with the stretch of road I was on. The crossing was a little off to one side.
Just then it became pitch black. I couldn't see anything at all. The headlights from the cars on the road may have given me a little light. But I think that usually the cars were even driving without headlights. The only lights I constantly saw were the lights of the town I was trying to get back to. But they didn't provide enough light for me to see where I was going.
I'd managed to cross the busy road. I was now at the river. I was trying to find the crossing. But I couldn't find it in the dark. I would edge my way from side to side along the bank of the river (which was just off the edge of the busy road), nudging into the air with one of my toes, trying to hit the solid structure that I'd know was the crossing. But I couldn't find it. I thought I'd just try to cross the river by wading across the river. But I knew the river was too deep for that.
I edged my way over to the left, still poking my foot out to find the crossing. But now a huge semi-truck came barreling down the road. I must have been a little bit into the road. The truck screeched to a stop, almost, I thought, hitting me. I could feel the waves of heat pouring off the truck and flowing along my back.
Suddenly I fell down, almost like I'd fainted. I was lying on the ground, right underneath the front left tire of the truck. I was wrapped up in a white sheet, like swaddling clothes, or a burial sheet. I started to wonder if I hadn't been hit by the truck after all. The headlights for the truck were now on. I could see them.
The driver got out of the truck and ran to see me. I didn't feel hurt. I didn't know whether I was injured. I figured I could probably still use all my limbs, though, for some reason, I didn't want to try at the moment. The driver may have attempted to lift me out from under the tire. He may have succeeded. Other drivers may have stopped and gathered around the front of the truck. I heard the flat, desperate scream of a woman.
Dream #4
I was at my great grandmother's house. (My great grandmother died about three years ago in waking life.) It was daytime, and golden sunlight filtered into the living room, like it always did.
I was here with my mom and my sister. My great grandma had had some kind of bad accident. We all thought she was going to die. But now she was up and walking around the house, taking care of household chores. But, for some reason, either my mom and my sister or just my mom thought my great grandma was still going to die.
I was trying to be a bit more positive about things. I tried to help my grandma out with her household chores. I had been in the hallway, maybe walking out from my grandma's bedroom. I could see my grandma walking around in the living room. I then walked into the "guest bedroom," the spare bedroom my grandma kept available for family members who wanted to stay the night. I could see my grandma heading toward the guest bedroom.
I was doing something like arranging a huge pile of quilts on the bed. The pile was all stacked up neat and orderly. These were all quilts my grandma had made. The top one probably had a red and green design on it. As my grandma walked into the room, she discussed something with me. She may have spoken about smoothing out the quilt's top. Or she may not have discussed it. But that's what I was doing, for some reason.
My grandma and I started having an interesting conversation (of course -- I forget it now!). I was really engaged on one point, when suddenly I saw my grandpa (my mom's dad, who died about four years ago in waking life) coming toward the bedroom. For some reason, the door to the bedroom was open only a crack. But I could still see my grandpa.
I stopped what I was talking about in mid-sentence. I didn't want my grandpa to be involved in the conversation, for some reason. When my grandpa came into the room he said something nice to my grandma. He said something else to both me and my grandma. I smiled and treated my grandpa very politely and listened to what he had to say.
My grandma walked out of the room. My grandpa switched his position so that I kind of had to face away from the bed. I may have held one of the quilts in my arms. I may have been folding it, so I may have held it folded over one of my arms.
My grandpa told me something like, "When I died, at first I was a little woozy. I woke into the new world, but I didn't know what it was. Slowly I began to see things clearly again. But only a little bit. And that's when I saw angels. The angels were all facing in different directions, each to a different specific location in the world. One angel faced toward Argentina. Another angel faced toward Venezuela..."
I could see, in my mind's eye, a place full of light. At certain points, the bright, shining, white light seemed to resolve itself into clouds. There may have been golden gates at certain places in the clouds. In the clouds stood angels. The angels were, in fact, spaced widely apart and facing in all different directions. I think I figured that there must have been one angel for every country in the world.
I was walking along the pedestrian portion of a large bridge, crossing over a large river. The pedestrian walkway was enormous, and the bridge must have been enormous as well. I was walking up toward a stairway up to the next section of walkway. The stairway ran between two walls of huge, stone blocks. It was a bright, clear day. But in the shade it felt cold, and there may have been some ice on the steps.
I thought to myself what a comfort it was that my grandpa had visited me. I thought that now that he had shared his vision of the afterlife with me, I'd be much less afraid of dying. I probably thought of the experience as a dream, but I may have kept a little feeling with me that it had actually, physically, happened inside my great grandma's house.
I thought I'd share the experience I'd had with my family. But, walking out from between the stone walls and out onto the next walkway (which may also have had coatings of ice or snow along its edges), I thought that I may not share the experience. I felt like my mom, and possibly my aunt, had had experiences already with my grandpa and great grandma. I didn't want their experiences to conflict with my experiences, and I didn't want them to change their accounts of their own experiences so they would fit in with my account.
I passed some sort of stone gate along the walkway. The walkway, which had been sloping up slightly, now became much flatter. I figured I was about halfway across the bridge by now. A dog came running up past the gates. It was a border collie. The man with the dog was still behind the gate. He was out jogging with his dog. But the dog had run a ways ahead of the man.
The dog lay down right at a spot in the path where the coatings of snow had become so wide as to take up all but a central portion of the path. The dog was rolling around, growling, and baring his teeth so frantically that I was afraid to approach it. It seemed like a violent dog that would attack me if I got near it. But I was still a ways away from where the dog had stopped, and I figured I wouldn't have to worry about what to do for a few more seconds.
But now the man came running up from behind me. He quickly reached the dog. The man appeared to be in his fifties. He looked healthy, muscular, and tan. He was bald and wore sunglasses, a red (or rusty tan?) t-shirt and some running shorts. He cheerfully told me (I was still a ways away) that the dog was actually a good dog and wasn't anything to worry about, especially since the man was now with him. The man may even now have had the dog on a leash.
But as I approached the point in the path where the man and the dog stood -- not moving forward, the man maybe jogging in place -- the dog began barking violently and frantically. The dog then did some weird move where it rolled through a puddle. The puddle splashed unbelievably high, sending a wave of water toward me. The water swept over me and shocked me.
I backed up, out of the way of the wave. But I still thought of approaching the point in the path where the dog stood. But now, when the dog barked, sheets of cold, clear rain dropped from the sky! They seemed to fall in time with the dog's bark! The sky was completely clear, but the sheets of rain would still fall. I backed up quite a bit, maybe all the way back behind the gates I'd crossed when the dog had first passed me.
I waited until the rains stopped. Then I began walking forward again. I think the dog and man were still at the point on the bridge. But now a group of teachers and students were approaching from the other side of the bridge. I think this may have made the dog less violent.
I crossed the part of the walkway that was really coated in snow. I was now on a much thinner section of walkway. I could actually see out, on both sides, to the river we were crossing over. We were really high over the river! I could also see the big city on the other side of the river.
I think I crossed two groups of teachers and students. The teachers were all pretty, smart-looking women, probably in their late twenties. The students may mostly have been girls. A lot of the students looked like they came from places other than America.
I think the first group of students I passed didn't react much to me. But I passed the second group of students as I was reaching a particularly thin portion of the walkway -- again, it may possibly have seemed thinner only because a large portion of it was taken up by a coating of snow.
I believe I had tried to make space for the children by getting as far off to the side as I could. But the teachers made all the students turn their backs on me and stretch out their arms. It was like the children and teachers were all making a fence. The teachers were like fence posts, all evenly spaced between the students. The students, I notice, all wore pink wool caps and pink wool scarves and pea coats of some maroon-purplish color.
At first I felt like the teachers had put this "human fence" in place specifically to block me from crossing the bridge. But the students weren't blocking the passage at all. In fact, they even seemed to be standing up on the coating of snow, completely faced away from me. So now I wondered if the teachers had put this "human fence" where they'd put it so I'd have no chance of seeing any of the children's faces, like, if I saw the children's faces, I would do something perverted to the children.
Dream #5
I was down in the subway in New York City. The subway platform I was on was really big and really crowded. But it was also constructed so that it felt really tiny and tight. The walls arced over toward the tracks very steeply. The light was a dirty, glaring white fluorescent light.
A group of kids, maybe in their early twenties, stood behind me, around me in a half-circle, like they had gravitated toward me and were trying to make me a part of their group. From their conversation I gathered that the kids had come from Texas. They were here as tourists. This was their first day here. They had probably only gotten here a few hours ago. They were now headed back to their hotel.
But they felt that they hadn't seen enough. They hadn't really known how to get around. And they were worried that tomorrow they still wouldn't know how to get around. They wouldn't be able to use their time efficiently. And they wouldn't be able to see all the sights they wanted to see.
There were a few guys and a couple of girls. The girls all looked pretty, clean, casually dressed, but well made-up. The guys were all kind of scraggly, sunburnt, with messy hair and messy clothes. But the guys and the girls were all cool. Even though they were upset about not knowing what they were doing, they all seemed to be joking and laughing with each other.
I turned toward the guy who stood directly behind me. He had scraggly, tightly curled, blonde hair, a red-pink and pale white face, and he wore a dark, dingy blue t-shirt. I told the guy, kind of speaking to him over my shoulder, "You know, the easiest way to do this is just to get a subway map. You can find out where everything is where you want to go. Then just look at the subway map to see where you need to catch the trains to get there."
The man said that he didn't want to spend a lot of money on some map. But I told him the subway map was free. He seemed surprised by this and asked me how he could get a subway map. I told him, "You just go to the subway booth. At a lot of stops, you'll see, right past the exits, a little, silver structure with a worker sitting at it. You just go up to that worker and ask for a subway map. Look. I'll show you."
I led the kids over to the stairway (or set of stairways?) that led up to the turnstiles leading out of the station. Just past the turnstiles was a service booth. A worker sat at the booth. The kids all went up to the booth to ask for a map. I hoped the booth wasn't out of maps. It wasn't. The kids got their maps. I watched one of the boys pull out his wallet and slide his subway card through the turnstile.
We all started walking back down the steps to the platform. The kids all told me thanks. Apparently, now that the kids knew their way around (of course, they hadn't even opened the maps yet), they were heading off on some different train. But I think the kids wanted me to be friends with them and help them out in getting places while they were touring around here. I thought I should give them my phone number or email address.
But I couldn't tell if they really wanted me around. So I told the kids that I had to hurry away to catch my train. I ran off to the right as they headed down another set of stairs off to the left.
***
UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images in these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.
UPDATE 2: Added one drawing to dream #3 and one drawing to dream #4, July 27, 2012, 3:29 PM, Mountain Standard Time.
Monday, July 16, 2012
wearing lingerie in public; museum jealousy; astronomy lies for sex
Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I walked out of some building and into a yard of buildings. The buildings were small, about the size of double-wide trailers. There were a lot of people out in this yard with me. The yard was like a vacant lot, surrounded on all sides by tall buildings, in the middle of New York City. It also felt a little like the back area of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The small buildings in the yard were in all different shapes, some classical, some modern. Some of the buildings appeared to be made out of granite. One building was made out of a shaded-looking glass. Other buildings were twisted in weird shapes. There was steam or smoke rising up from the ground everywhere.
I understood that this was a museum for the history of NASA. But I may not quite have understood that while I was in the building I'd just come out of. But now that I understood it, I wanted to go into a number of other buildings, to see what everything was about.
But as I looked at another building to go into, I saw a woman staring at me. She was a young, black woman. She was something like a security guard, but she sat behind a strange, glass structure, and up in some tall chair like a lifeguard's chair. It was like the woman was thinking I had done something bad. I think she was getting ready for me to do something else bad. So instead of hanging around and being blamed for something else bad being done, I decided to leave.
I may have had some friends. I may have told them I was leaving, or they may have come with me. I walked out onto a cobblestone street, kind of like the streets in the SoHo area of NYC. But this street was really wide. It was also pretty desolate of people. I walked to my left and kind of hooked up and backwards around a corner. I then headed up toward a streetcorner where there seemed to be a lot more people.
I stood among the people. I held a blue, fuzzy blanket around all of my body below my neck. Someone asked me if I knew where they could get a good something, maybe a good meal. I pointed in some direction where I knew (and could see in my mind's eye) a good shop. I may have given some directions. The place was only a couple blocks away. But the person seemed confused. So I told the person I could lead her (?) to the place.
But for some reason, when I pointed out the directions, I'd managed to undo the blanket from being wrapped around my body. I exposed myself. I was wearing women's lingerie -- a purple cami and purple panties.
I said, "Oh, wait. I can't take you down to that place. I'm wearing the wrong clothes. I didn't realize, I must have left the museum in a hurry, before getting into regular clothes. I'll have to go back and change."
But the woman stopped me. She said, "Why do you need to change? You've walked all the way out here wearing nothing but that stuff. I don't think anybody's going to care if you keep on walking around like that."
I thought the woman was right. It didn't seem like anybody around us really worried about the way I looked. But I was still embarrassed. I figured I'd at least go back to the museum so I could put on a t-shirt and some jeans.
Dream #2
I was in a museum, maybe an astronomy museum. The museum was run by two of my old friends, ML and MK. The museum was kind of like a series of small, modular areas set into a lobby or atrium of a big building, like an office building.
I had been shuffling around the museum, kind of sticking to the outskirts of it, not really wanting to be seen by ML and MK. But now a young, black man came into the museum. He was talking with my friends. The young man sat on the floor, with his back to a structure that had a big enough gap in it (between two stone or concrete walls?) that I could see the young man and at least my friend ML.
The young man began discussing something about his schooling. He'd studied aerospace, and he was really interested in learning as much more as he could about space travel. So he'd come here to see about becoming a member or about taking more classes through the museum or something. ML was really impressed by the young man. He told the young man he'd get back in touch with him soon.
The young man left. ML now spoke out, either to MK or else to the whole room, so he'd know I'd hear him, talking about how good the young man was. This was possibly supposed to make me feel bad about myself so that I'd take a more active role in studying the stuff at the museum. I did get jealous. I walked out of hiding and began talking with ML, trying to prove that I had been diligently studying aerospace and astronomy for a long time now.
Dream #3
I was in trouble with somebody, possibly a woman. I'd been in the role of a teacher for a number of females of all different ages. But I'd told them something completely wrong about astronomy.
I'd told them something about the effect of something like gravity from stars. I had been telling the women that scientists could not make firm judgments about either the composition of certain stars, or maybe even about the existence of certain stars within small groupings of stars. This had something to do with gravity.
I'd told the girls that, at least with certain kinds of stars, you could get closer and closer to the stars without feeling any different gravitational effects from them than you felt at a far distance. I had an image in my head, as I remembered telling the girls this, of a white star like a sun dotted with a bluish star on one side and a blackish star on the other.
The woman asked me why I'd been spreading such harmful nonsense among the students. I was trying to remember if I'd meant to spread nonsense. It seemed to me, as I reflected, that I was telling what I'd thought was the truth.
I even had a memory of a video I'd seen discussing the phenomenon. I tried to remind the woman about this video. I now saw an image of a star with two smaller stars dotting it. I then saw an image of two white stars that were close to each other.
I knew that the video said that the phenomenon was the same for both kinds of star systems: you couldn't feel any different gravity that would determine the existence, or the composition, or certain stars within the system. It might not be felt until you got really close. But even then there might be some kind of cancellation effect that would make it seem like there was no gravitational force from the bodies at all.
I tried to remind the woman of the video that had said this. But I couldn't remember what the video was, or when we'd watched it. And the woman didn't want to hear what I was talking about. She told me that the only reason I'd said all this stuff was to make the girls I was teaching less worried about some upcoming events. The girls were all so worried about some upcoming celestial event that they didn't want to have sex with anybody. But I was trying to make them less worried, so they'd have sex -- with me.
I now saw a slide, an old style metal slide. It was indoors. The room the slide was in was mostly dark, with just the top meter or so of wall, right where the slide peaked, lit up all the way across the wall with some gentle, fluorescent light that was behind a white, opaque pane of plastic.
The girls were all up on the slide's ladder. As they got to the top, they'd slide down. Three or so girls would be on the slide at once, all kind of evenly spaced. As they slid, some of the girls may have had some kind of purple glop detaching from their bodies, sometimes from their bottoms and sometimes from their stomachs.
***
UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images from these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.
UPDATE 2: Drawing added for dream #1, July 16, 2012, 2:15 PM Mountain Standard Time.
Dream #1
I walked out of some building and into a yard of buildings. The buildings were small, about the size of double-wide trailers. There were a lot of people out in this yard with me. The yard was like a vacant lot, surrounded on all sides by tall buildings, in the middle of New York City. It also felt a little like the back area of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The small buildings in the yard were in all different shapes, some classical, some modern. Some of the buildings appeared to be made out of granite. One building was made out of a shaded-looking glass. Other buildings were twisted in weird shapes. There was steam or smoke rising up from the ground everywhere.
I understood that this was a museum for the history of NASA. But I may not quite have understood that while I was in the building I'd just come out of. But now that I understood it, I wanted to go into a number of other buildings, to see what everything was about.
But as I looked at another building to go into, I saw a woman staring at me. She was a young, black woman. She was something like a security guard, but she sat behind a strange, glass structure, and up in some tall chair like a lifeguard's chair. It was like the woman was thinking I had done something bad. I think she was getting ready for me to do something else bad. So instead of hanging around and being blamed for something else bad being done, I decided to leave.
I may have had some friends. I may have told them I was leaving, or they may have come with me. I walked out onto a cobblestone street, kind of like the streets in the SoHo area of NYC. But this street was really wide. It was also pretty desolate of people. I walked to my left and kind of hooked up and backwards around a corner. I then headed up toward a streetcorner where there seemed to be a lot more people.
I stood among the people. I held a blue, fuzzy blanket around all of my body below my neck. Someone asked me if I knew where they could get a good something, maybe a good meal. I pointed in some direction where I knew (and could see in my mind's eye) a good shop. I may have given some directions. The place was only a couple blocks away. But the person seemed confused. So I told the person I could lead her (?) to the place.
But for some reason, when I pointed out the directions, I'd managed to undo the blanket from being wrapped around my body. I exposed myself. I was wearing women's lingerie -- a purple cami and purple panties.
I said, "Oh, wait. I can't take you down to that place. I'm wearing the wrong clothes. I didn't realize, I must have left the museum in a hurry, before getting into regular clothes. I'll have to go back and change."
But the woman stopped me. She said, "Why do you need to change? You've walked all the way out here wearing nothing but that stuff. I don't think anybody's going to care if you keep on walking around like that."
I thought the woman was right. It didn't seem like anybody around us really worried about the way I looked. But I was still embarrassed. I figured I'd at least go back to the museum so I could put on a t-shirt and some jeans.
Dream #2
I was in a museum, maybe an astronomy museum. The museum was run by two of my old friends, ML and MK. The museum was kind of like a series of small, modular areas set into a lobby or atrium of a big building, like an office building.
I had been shuffling around the museum, kind of sticking to the outskirts of it, not really wanting to be seen by ML and MK. But now a young, black man came into the museum. He was talking with my friends. The young man sat on the floor, with his back to a structure that had a big enough gap in it (between two stone or concrete walls?) that I could see the young man and at least my friend ML.
The young man began discussing something about his schooling. He'd studied aerospace, and he was really interested in learning as much more as he could about space travel. So he'd come here to see about becoming a member or about taking more classes through the museum or something. ML was really impressed by the young man. He told the young man he'd get back in touch with him soon.
The young man left. ML now spoke out, either to MK or else to the whole room, so he'd know I'd hear him, talking about how good the young man was. This was possibly supposed to make me feel bad about myself so that I'd take a more active role in studying the stuff at the museum. I did get jealous. I walked out of hiding and began talking with ML, trying to prove that I had been diligently studying aerospace and astronomy for a long time now.
Dream #3
I was in trouble with somebody, possibly a woman. I'd been in the role of a teacher for a number of females of all different ages. But I'd told them something completely wrong about astronomy.
I'd told them something about the effect of something like gravity from stars. I had been telling the women that scientists could not make firm judgments about either the composition of certain stars, or maybe even about the existence of certain stars within small groupings of stars. This had something to do with gravity.
I'd told the girls that, at least with certain kinds of stars, you could get closer and closer to the stars without feeling any different gravitational effects from them than you felt at a far distance. I had an image in my head, as I remembered telling the girls this, of a white star like a sun dotted with a bluish star on one side and a blackish star on the other.
The woman asked me why I'd been spreading such harmful nonsense among the students. I was trying to remember if I'd meant to spread nonsense. It seemed to me, as I reflected, that I was telling what I'd thought was the truth.
I even had a memory of a video I'd seen discussing the phenomenon. I tried to remind the woman about this video. I now saw an image of a star with two smaller stars dotting it. I then saw an image of two white stars that were close to each other.
I knew that the video said that the phenomenon was the same for both kinds of star systems: you couldn't feel any different gravity that would determine the existence, or the composition, or certain stars within the system. It might not be felt until you got really close. But even then there might be some kind of cancellation effect that would make it seem like there was no gravitational force from the bodies at all.
I tried to remind the woman of the video that had said this. But I couldn't remember what the video was, or when we'd watched it. And the woman didn't want to hear what I was talking about. She told me that the only reason I'd said all this stuff was to make the girls I was teaching less worried about some upcoming events. The girls were all so worried about some upcoming celestial event that they didn't want to have sex with anybody. But I was trying to make them less worried, so they'd have sex -- with me.
I now saw a slide, an old style metal slide. It was indoors. The room the slide was in was mostly dark, with just the top meter or so of wall, right where the slide peaked, lit up all the way across the wall with some gentle, fluorescent light that was behind a white, opaque pane of plastic.
The girls were all up on the slide's ladder. As they got to the top, they'd slide down. Three or so girls would be on the slide at once, all kind of evenly spaced. As they slid, some of the girls may have had some kind of purple glop detaching from their bodies, sometimes from their bottoms and sometimes from their stomachs.
***
UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images from these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.
UPDATE 2: Drawing added for dream #1, July 16, 2012, 2:15 PM Mountain Standard Time.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
fushizen na boy; rock star business card; TV truck crash; garbage bag nostalgia
Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I was either myself or some guy kind of like me, but maybe with paler skin, more stubble, and a knobbier, but still skinny, body.
I was walking through a crowd of people. The people were all heading off somewhere in the same direction, kind of like they had gotten off the train and were now heading to work.
I was walking in the opposite direction. But as I moved through the crowd, they all seemed to part for me. It wasn't like they were paying attention to me. They didn't even seem to be aware of me. They just moved out of my way.
All this time I was doing the arm movements from the chorus section of the j-pop band Perfume's song "Fushizen na Girl."
Watch "Perfume Fushizen Na Girl with Lyrics *Q*" on YouTube
I was kind of shocked that I knew how to do these movements. But I was also worried that people would know I was doing dances from a girl's song. I wondered if they would think I was weird.
Dream #2
I was in some place like a brewery-grill kind of bar. The place was really big, with a light, airy feel to it, and with brick walls. But it was packed with people. There was something like a singing contest going on. But even though the atmosphere was packed and a little competitive, there seemed to be very little tension. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.
The singing contest was apparently for amateurs. But there were some professional rock singers who were also performing as part of the show.
From behind me came the voice of a woman who was pretty insistent about the fact that she used to be a rock star. She was kind of tall and kind of overweight. She had kind of short, really frizzy, brown-black hair. She looked almost like a guy wearing an afro wig and trying to pass himself off as a woman. The insistent woman seemed to be making rather matter-of-fact demands for something because she'd been a rock star. But I didn't think she was a big deal.
The MC for the show was also a famous rock singer. She looked like the Malaysian pop star Atilia Haron, except with dark black and blonde hair and a darker complexion. She was very kind with everybody in the audience. I got the feeling that she thought of herself as a kind of mother and mentor for all the contestants.
I had originally been standing near the front of the audience and near the center of the stage. But now I was sitting on a stool kind of away and off to the right of the stage. There was a good amount of open space in front of me, like a little clearing where people might dance. But all around that space the crowd was still full.
But across the empty space I saw another woman. She sat on a stool as well. She had her elbows propped up on the stage like the stage was a counter. She looked like a mix between Atilia and the Japanese R&B singer Toko Furuuchi. I knew she was really famous. But nobody seemed to be paying attention to her.
Somebody, possibly on stage, had been speaking with this woman, possibly letting her know that her turn to perform was coming up. But she seemed really shy about performing, for some reason.
But now from behind me came the voice of the insistent woman with the frizzy, black hair. Somebody like an event staff member had asked her who she was, possibly so the staff member could get the insistent woman coordinated for some part of the performance.
But the woman said in her normal loud but matter-of-fact way, "I don't like to say out loud who I am, because I don't want people getting all excited about me and following me all over the place. I'd rather just give you my card and let you read who I am. That way it stays secret and quiet."
I knew this was silliness. The woman spoke loud to draw attention to herself. And she used the secrecy to get people interested in figuring out who she might be.
But the woman now handed me her business card. I was, I somehow knew, supposed to hand the card off to the person the woman had been speaking to. This person was up on stage.
I reflexively, naturally took the card and brought it over to the pretty girl on the stool near the stage. The girl probably then handed the business card up to some guy on stage. During the exchange, I caught a glimpse of the insistent woman's first name -- something like "Marisol."
Dream #3
I was in a car with my mom. My mom was driving. I was in the front passenger seat. We were driving along a highway during the daytime.
I had been speaking with my mom about something like giving her $75. This was probably money I owed her. But I had felt it was important to give my mom this money because it seemed like she really needed it for something. I felt like I had just barely gotten the money on time so that my mom could do whatever she'd needed to do.
But now that I'd given my mom the money (or now that it was settled that I'd give her the money?), my mom began talking about some big TV she and my sister were planning on getting. The $75 would put them right in the range of getting the TV.
My mom talked about this TV like it was so great. But I felt betrayed. I thought my mom had really needed the money. But now she was just using it to go out and buy a TV. I was getting anrgier and angrier. I felt like I was about to start yelling at my mom.
We seemed to be getting off the highway, heading onto some exit ramp. There was a huge semi-truck in front of us. The truck seemed to stop all of the sudden.
We had been going really fast. My mom tried to stop the car as soon as she saw the truck stop. But the car was going too fast. We were veering toward the truck's rear end. I knew we were definitely going to crash. But as we approached the truck, I hoped the crash would only be minor.
Dream #4
I was in some place like a kind of dimly lit kitchen. The kitchen seemed to be pretty quiet. But it felt like some kind of party was winding down in some other room. There were no lights on in the kitchen. The only light seemed to be coming from this other room.
I was having some conversation in my head. I was probably talking through some old and recent memories. I thought about how I'd recently come back home after living in New York City. But now I was thinking about moving back to New York City.
I was thinking about the sadness this might cause for the people close to me in my hometown. But I was trying to justify to these people, in my head, why I needed to move back. As I was doing this I was either licking or thinking about licking the orange dishsoap that had dripped and slimed down the side of a large dishsoap bottle that sat near the sink.
I was now standing over a plastic garbage can. I was in a kitchen. But this kitchen was big and well-lit. My old friend R and his wife L may have been sitting at a table in the kitchen.
I was tying up bags that were in the garbage can. On the left side of the can there seemed to be three bags. On the right side there was just one bag. The three bags on the left side were pretty easy to tie up. But they were kind of like grocery bags, way too small for an outdoor-sized garbage can like this one. The garbage in all the bags seemed to be recyclable materials, like plastic 2-liter soda bottles.
I was having a conversation, either out loud or in my head, with R. It may have had to do with disappointing my family or making them sad. But my R was also trying to work some angle into the conversation. He was looking for some way to take advantage of me, or to stop me from having success in anything I did. I had to monitor everything I was saying very carefully, I felt, so that I didn't say anything to give R an advantage.
I may have started talking with L as well. It seemed a lot nicer to be talking with her, even though I was probably still wary.
I had now moved to tying up the garbage bag on the right side of the garbage can. This bag was really full, and it was a lot harder to tie it shut. I struggled with it for a while, never, I think, quite getting the thing shut.
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