screwed; hantavirus; statue of trickery

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I may have started out in an office. But eventually I was on the phone as I sat in a dim bedroom. Both in the office and on the phone, I was speaking with one of my old co-workers, KB. KB was now the head of some employment agency I was working with.

I had been out on a job. But KB now told me I couldn't go back. KB told me this was because some form I'd filled out had shown some bad information about me. I think it was possible for me to get around whatever bad information had been proven. But the management at the company wasn't around. So I'd have to wait until KB could get back in touch with the management, to talk with them about getting around the bad information.

I had a feeling this wasn't all true. I had a feeling that I'd somehow angered KB and that now she was trying to find a way to get back at me. KB was trying to keep me from this job. I thought that the management team may actually have been around, but that KB had just decided not to talk to them about me.

I got angry. I kept my emotions under control, but I did make a comment implying that I was angry and that I thought KB was giving me the runaround. As I spoke, I was driving a screw through a sheet of paper and into a brick-sized block of wood.

Dream #2

I was in a bedroom with a woman who was about my mom's age and size. The woman may have been one of my mom's old best friends. The woman half-lay on a bed. I sat down on the bed. We had been speaking about the hantavirus. For some reason, we were making jokes about how the virus had come from the "upscale" cabins at Yosemite.

Dream #3

I was either in or watching a movie. Either I or the main character was in love with a girl. But there were a number of men who were dead set against letting any woman into the character's life. These men were all from the internet, like they'd been internet figures, but they'd found their way off of the internet, through fiber optic cables, and into real life.

There were three men, I believe. One man was a definite leader. All the men were criminals. They may have been internet figures all their lives, or they may have, at some point, been relegated to the internet for their crimes. But now they had broken out of the internet and were ready to keep the main character from finding love in his life.

There were two scenes, both of which seemed to occur in adjacent rooms in some huge building, kind of like the Rose Main Reading Room of the NYPL. I can't remember the first scene very well. But I think I saw the main character very much in the third person during this scene.

In the second scene, I probably saw through the main character's eyes. I was getting in line for something. There was a long belt-rope line-maze leading to somewhere. I knew that somewhere along the line, I would meet the girl I was interested in. I was looking forward to meeting the woman and proving to the men trying to stop me that I wasn't afraid of them.

But now I got a phone call. The call was either from or on behalf of my mom. My mom was having serious health troubles. I needed to go see her right away. My mom may also have been angry with me, and that made me feel like I needed to get to her even sooner.

I turned around and headed out of the line and out of the room, probably into the room of the first scene. In that room the men who were against me stood around some sculpture that looked like a small model of the Statue of Liberty, except in a mottled fashion, kind of like a sculpture by Rodin.

The three men laughed at me. I now understood that the phone call had been a fake. My mom really wasn't in trouble. I was just being called so I'd step out of line and lose my chance at seeing the girl.

I was torn. I felt like I couldn't let myself believe the feelings I was getting from these men, that the phone call had been a fake. I still believed that my mom was in trouble. So I felt like I still needed to go see her. But I also couldn't let the men fake me into stepping out of line and seeing the woman. So I felt like I needed to get back in line. But I also felt like I'd already missed my chance at seeing the woman. Now that I'd stepped out of line, the woman would miss me and leave.

So I was frozen. I didn't know what to do or where to go. Of course, I didn't want to show this feeling to the men, either. The leader slapped two traffic-cone-orange squares onto the chest of the Rodinesque Statue of Liberty. The squares had backs that kind of looked like defibrillator pads.

***

UPDATE: Added drawing to dream #3, September 20, 2012, 8:13 AM, Mountain Standard Time.

attacking mom; foxes and wolves

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a huge room, like the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, with my family. The section of the room we were in was all cluttered with blankets. Either I or my mom was holding up my little niece.

Suddenly, my mom decided to spray me directly in the face with perfume. The perfume had a purple kind of smell. I was angry that my mom had sprayed my face. I can't stand anything getting in my face. So I ducked. I cursed at my mom. My mom said she couldn't see why I was getting so upset over it. Besides, my mom said, my niece had a medical condition where she needed to be sprayed in the face. So my mom would spray whenever she felt like it. My mom sprayed me again.

My mom was now running away, with a small group of people, maybe family members, or maybe some of her friends. I began running really quickly after my mom. I finally caught up with her and grabbed her around her neck. I shook my mom by the neck a few times. I then stopped and walked away. I knew that what I had done just then had injured my mom enough so that she would die soon. But now that I knew I had injured my mom to the point where she would die, I felt terribly guilty.

Dream #2

I was standing out at the back end of the back yard of the house my family lived in while I was in high school. I stood up on some deck-like structure built just beside the garage. The deck was bounded by a chain link fence which went up to about my sternum.

I saw a huge "fox" stalking through our backyard. It then jumped over the fence and onto the deck. I was afraid it was going to kill and eat me. But it just kind of snuggled with me for a second. It then walked down the steps of the deck behind me and walked into a forest-like area. I was surprised that the fox had been so gentle.

I now saw another animal, though, stalking up out of the woods, from where the fox had been. I told myself the animal was a cheetah (though the animal was kind of fat for a cheetah). I was certain it could smell the fox on me. I thought the cheetah would be mad to smell the fox on me. The cheetah was "my type" of animal. So by letting the fox put its scent on me, I was betraying the cheetah.

But the cheetah disappeared, and now a huge wolf (which I may have called a coyote) stalked up from the woods. The wolf had fur as brown as a buffalo's. I could tell the animal was angry at the fox, though I'm not sure the anger had anything to do with me. The way was coming my way, not to attack me, but to jump over the fence and into the backyard. The wolf would fight the fox in the backyard.

I turned to look at the backyard. I could see the fox back there. The grass was really tall, and the fox was crouching down into the grass, hiding itself so it could attack the wolf by surprise. The wolf jumped over the fence. It suddenly occurred to me that the fox wasn't very well hidden. The grass didn't seem so tall, after all.

But now I saw a second fox hiding in the grass. The wolf was in the center of the two foxes, with something like a wild turkey hanging dead in its jaws. I knew the poorly hidden fox, on the wolf's left, was a decoy. The wolf would attack that fox, and the second fox would come up from behind and attack the wolf. But for some reason I didn't know whether that would work. The wolf seemed way too strong to beat.

Now there was a second wolf. And now it seemed to me that the wolves and foxes were evenly matched, and that there would be a fair fight. The fight must have begun. But time passed, and it was now dark outside. I had been behind some wall this entire time. I now looked around the wall. I knew the fight was over. I figured I could tell who'd won by seeing what bodies were left in the yard. I feared that all four bodies would be found lying in the yard.

But I couldn't see the yard. It was too dark. So I switched on a light switch, like for a ceiling light. It may have been daytime. My mom walked down into the yard from the house. I told my mom, somewhat astonished, that there had been a fight between wolves and foxes here just over the past evening. My mom said, "What? You think that's a big deal? I've seen stuff like that before. It's nothing new. It's just a part of nature."

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

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dancing missile complex; texas cather library; citibank semi-lucid

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I "woke up" dancing in a dark room. There may have been music playing, some kind of deep, throbbing music. The room was mostly dark, with maybe a dim, red light. A strobe light may have flashed behind me occasionally, showing my shadow on the wall. As I first woke, a couple of people may also have walked behind me.

I didn't know why I was dancing. My moves were all really aggressive and angry. I thought I may have been preparing for some kind of fight.

At one point my shadows looked like coiled up snakes, like they were all somehow slithering down for the wall. I tried to change this appearance in some way, to make my shadow look more rigid and human. But I didn't like something about the new moves. So I went back to the snakelike moves.

I remembered the people who walked behind me. I felt like I needed some kind of approval for them. Maybe they'd laughed at me when they'd seen me dancing. But I felt like I needed to follow them, to get some kind of approval from them.

They'd walked up some steps along the right wall. I walked up those steps as well. The staircase was wooden and narrow. It was hard to see through the railing, up to the next floor. I barely saw a light in a bedroom. I went up to that bedroom.

In the bedroom it was now day. There were two women, both possibly Hispanic, in the room. One of the women was supposed to be my mother. But neither woman looked like my mother. They both looked alike. They were a bit short, kind of skinny, maybe in their mid-forties, and kind of worn-out looking. They had long, straight, pale hair, and they wore big eyeglasses.

The women may have been talking about me being Hispanic. But my mom was saying that I was actually half Native American. I didn't think my mom could prove that, even though I seemed to wish it was true. I wondered if I'd ever be able to track down my dad and findo out whether I actually was Native American.

I expressed something like this to the women while I was looking out the bedroom windows, which seemed to be close together, near the corner of the room.

I was now out in a car with my mom. My mom was driving. It was daytime. We were driving through some mountainy area that seemed to be developing into a suburban area. We drove up a road on a steep, grassy slope.

Along the slope were little fixtures in the ground, almost like ceiling-hung security cameras, except planted upside-down. The fixtures now started firing little missiles out of them, with bright, papery flashes. The frequency of the flashes became more and more intense.

We drove into an area full of apartment complexes. The apartment complexes were all relatively new. But the missile launchers were even here, too.

I figured that somehow this place we were driving through had gotten into a nuclear war, and that the place was just going into an all-out attack before it got attacked. But it was also like my mom and I had been sent to find these missiles, like we were somehow supposed to stop their production. The apartment complex was new. It may have been built just as a cover-up for the missile complex.

My mom and I, as well as my sister, now pulled in through a huge parking complex at night. It was like an airport parking complex. But we found ourselves in a hotel parking lot that seemed to be on the edge of the woods. The hotel was a Meridien. We went into the restaurant.

We were supposed to be meeting someone here. But I didn't have a job. I was really poor. I didn't know how I could afford any food in this place. I may also have been wearing really terrible clothes.

The decor of the restaurant was really nice and modern. It all somehow seemed familiar to me. I wondered how this could be. Then I remembered that I had actually applied for a job here, as a waiter.

One of the waiters walked past me. I recognized him from my interview. I wanted to acknowledge him. But I didn't want him to think I was some crazy guy, just here to stalk him because I still thought I stood a chance of getting a job here.

Dream #2

I was in a car, probably. I was driving somewhere. But I was also in a conversation with somebody -- maybe my mom, or maybe some women from work -- about Texas. There was a location we were trying to get to, on the west side of Texas. Or we may have been tracking someone like a criminal, and we may have suspected that the criminal was going there.

I was now in some place like a library. I had been talking with somebody about an art show I'd been wanting to see. But I'd been avoiding it for some reason, maybe because it was at my old university or run by somebody from there, and I didn't want to bother anybody from my old school.

I was walking away, trying to get out of the building, I think. I saw into a kind of dim room. The room seemed like some kind of narrow amphitheatre. There were a bunch of professional people inside, talking with each other like they had just finished the meeting.

Among those people I saw the old head of my theatre department. But the person was a woman instead of a man. I tried to remember the person's name. But I could only think of a man's name. I wanted to avoid the person. So I left the building. I figured I might go to that art show after all.

I was walking outside for a little while, out on a concrete path on a college campus. But I found myself not too long afterward in a big library, like the Rose Reading Room at the Schwarzmann branch of the NYPL.

Instead of having long tables through the room, the library had either short tables or individual desks. The room was mostly empty, except for three young, black women who were studying under the watch of an older, black, female teacher.

The young women were all spaced well apart from each other. As I walked into the library, one of the women was speaking out something to the teacher, who stood behind her left shoulder. The girl had a really nice voice. But what she was reading sounded really simple, almost silly. I couldn't figure why the girl, who seemed really smart, was reading such a simple text.

But the girl was really pretty. So I wanted to impress her. I began walking around the library with my chest all puffed out, like I was really smart. The young woman wore a dress of almost pastel colors -- yellow and green.

As I walked around the library I noticed that the other two young women also wore pastel colored clothes. The clothes seemed to me very well suited to the desert, which was apparently where we were. The colors also reminded me of something that the characters in the novels of Willa Cather might wear.

I walked toward the left side of the library. I was looking for books for myself. But I was also getting a bit nervous. I felt like sooner or later another guy would come into the library. When he saw how I was alone in this room with four women, he'd get jealous of me and start doing all kinds of things to annoy me.

Dream #3

I was in "the Citibank building," a huge skyscraper that was apparently located in Manhattan. I was here for an interview. I was on a high up floor, maybe even a floor that was still under construction.

I was really poorly prepared for the interview. I looked terrible, and I didn't exactly have any talking points prepared. Plus, I may have been interviewing for some position for which I had no experience.

I sat in big conference room for a bit with a tall, white, skinny man who looked young, even though he was probably in his mid thirties. The room was full of windows and filled with dim gold of late afternoon sunlight. But I felt really low in my seat, much shorter than the man, and it seemed really hard to see up and out of the windows.

The man eventually told me that he didn't think this job was a good fit for me. He may have told me he hadn't thought this job was a good fit for me, even before I came to the interview. He may have wondered why I'd come here at all. But he said this all in a really gentle way, like he was concerned for me, like I was a special child that he wanted to help.

The interview was over, and I was walking around the building. I was up on a floor where construction workers were still working. The floor had walls, but a lot of the floors and ceilings were still in a raw state.

I knew I was really high up over the city. I really wanted to look out the windows, to see the city below. But I suddenly realized that this was a dream, and that I could just fly out the window. I ran as fast as I could. I started flying, even before I got to the window.

As I saw the cityscape outside the window I told myself to focus. I knew that in the past I'd panicked with moving into outside environments in lucid dreams. I told myself to stay calm and just believe I could get outside.

I got through the window, but the enviroment changed. The building was much lower than it had been. And the landscape below was just trees and lawn, like I was in some kind of office park, rather than in the middle of Manhattan.

I stopped flying, for some reason -- maybe because I'd wanted to fall, to see what it was like to jump out of a building. I slammed down on the lawn on my stomach. I pulled my head up to look at the building. It looked like a pretty tall building, and it gleamed in the afternoon light.

I tried to stand myself up so I could look around and explore this dreamworld. But as I did, it changed from day to night. I thought I must haved woken up. But it scared me to think I'd woken up out on a lawn in the middle of the night. I had no idea how I'd gotten here. Had I been sleepwalking? Was I going crazy?

I could hear my labored breathing, like I was breathing inside a spacesuit. I walked or stumbled a little ways in the darkness. I thought that maybe I was still dreaming. But I couldn't be lucid, I told myself, because this world was so close to the world of my bedroom (???). I told myself I must be right on the edge of waking. I heard my breathing get louder and louder, until I woke up.

flying through a walking town

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some large building, coming up an escalator with one or two older businessmen and a young woman who was probably a businesswoman. We were coming up from the basement. The escalator bank was huge and spacious, like there were a whole lot of escalators all in a row. The space above the escalators was also wide and open, like in the atrium for a huge skyscraper.

One of the older men was DR, the head of the department at one of my old jobs. The two men were educating the woman on something. I'm not sure how I was involved in the conversation. But the teaching eventually had something to do with the appearance of tall buildings from other tall buildings.

We headed up on the escalators to a place where the walls were all glass. We looked out to a cityscape. The sky was heavy, soft, and dark grey. We looked out on a cityscape that was filled with nice, new buildings. Everything looked vast and monumental. But none of the buildings looked like skyscrapers.

DR said, "Oh, well, that's because we aren't high enough. Once we get high enough you'll see how tall the buildings look, as well as vast." But I could tell that DR was actually a little embarrassed by the fact that the buildings that had come into our view weren't skyscrapers. After all, the woman was supposed to be getting a lesson in how tall builings looked from tall buildings.

DR said, "For instance, if you look up the side of this building, you'll get an incredible feeling of vastness." Our vision was directed to our left, where we could, apparently, see up the side of the building we were in. It was like the escalator bank was in a glass atrium attached to the side of the building proper.

The building was made of white marble, and it had a very square appearance, like some of the buildings in Washington, DC. For some reason I figured that DR had made reference to this building as if it were the Schwarzmann building of the New York Public Library. DR had seemed to imply that even though the building wasn't tall, that if you looked up the side of it, you'd feel as overwhelmed by its size as if it were a tall building.

I didn't quite agree with DR when he said this. But it was almost like I had been saying it. It was like I had been trying to teach the woman this whole time -- and constantly making a fool of myself by being wrong all the time! So I thought I must have been trying to make up some silly idea about perception, so that even though I couldn't show the woman a tall building, I could at least make her feel like she should feel like she was looking at a tall building.

I was now walking up a steep slope, up to the side of the NYPL building. The slope was tiered with big, square stones, which were topped with heavy soil and vegetation. It was narrow walking sometimes, and I felt like I could lose my balance and fall down the slope. It was a sunny day, but the slope was in the cool, grey shade of the massive building's side. There were some other people out on the slope.

We were now all walking along the side of the building, walking up toward the front of the building. I could tell we were all part of some group, like a volunteer group. In front of the building was a wide, marble promenade. People were scattered all over the promenade, kneeling before small planters full of new flowers.

I walked a bit more, possibly trying to find what my place was among all these volunteers. I got past the front doors of the building. There was now another slope, off to my left. This was a golden lawn with a big tree about halfway down it. There were a few volunteers -- mostly attractive women -- working on putting in a few rows of flower beds along the slope.

I wanted to go down along the slope to see what was going on. But instead of walking down the slope, I flew over it. I hovered down over the garden and the women. I could hear the women's conversations.

I think I was a little surprised at first that I could fly. But then I told myself to control my flight and experiment with it. But, for some reason, I think I got too focused on flying around near the branches of the trees. I think this may have been because I was a little shy around the girls. I felt like some of their conversation had to do with making fun of me.

I think, though, that at some points I was flying really high up into the air and then back down. I think I had done this while asking myself, If I were in a dream and flying, how would I take advantage of the situation?

The girls were now really trying to get my attention. But it was like they were only doing it as a joke. So I turned away from them. But just as I was turning away, I saw some guy coming up the slope. He was an attractive, muscular man. It was like he was the guy all these girls loved. But he was only wearing a blue, sleeveless shirt and a pair of briefs. And the briefs were pink with blue lining, like a pair of boy-short panties for girls!

I could tell that the women had only been trying to get my attention so they could show their man that they could make other boys interested in them. They knew this kind of thing amused the man. So, without giving the women and man any attention, I flew up the slope and off to my left.

The slope ended at some fence. I flew over the fence and found myself in a quiet, suburban neighborhood shaded by big, thick-canopied trees. I landed on the road and started walking.

For some reason I either thought that I was in Portugal or that, since I had transported myself -- somehow -- from the NYPL to this quiet, suburban neighborhood, that I could transport myself anywhere, even Portugal. I heard a voice in my head start talking about how Portugal was "a good walking city." (?! - The whole country is a city?)

I thought that I would love to go walking through a good walking city. But now I felt a bunch of pains in my feet. I pulled off my shoes and turned them upside down, dumping some small rocks and pennies out of my shoes. I put my shoes back on and started walking again. But now my legs felt so heavy that I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk very much farther.