tractor beam roller coaster; justifying my job

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with a male relative of mine, maybe my cousin or my brother, on a hot, sunny road. The road looked like Second Avenue just above Houston Street in Manhattan, except that the street was a lot wider. The sky was so sunny it may almost have been yellow. My cousin/brother was probably in the driver's seat. I was in the passenger's seat.

Our car was stopped probably in the middle of a block. We may have ostensibly been stopped at a traffic light or stop sign, though it (now) seems like we were way too far from the end of the block to have done something like that. There weren't a lot of other cars on the street, but the cars near us were also stopped.

It seemed like we had been stopped a long time. My cousin/brother and I were talking about something, maybe to keep our minds off of the boredom of being stopped. Or, possibly, my cousin/brother may have been talking about how bored he was while we were stopped and waiting, while I was trying to distract him and make him a little more patient by talking about other stuff.

Suddenly, a fighter jet flew in front of us. It was only a hundred meteres or so up in the air, and it only seemed to be a few blocks away. It flew at a normal position for a moment, then twisted onto its right side to make a turn. Either my cousin/brother or I called out the jet.

I tried to get a better look at the jet, to determine what it was. At first I thought it was an F-35. But something about its shape didn't seem quite right. I almost knew what the jet was, but I couldn't quite think of the name.

The jet flew around to our right, seeming to get closer and closer. I could see it through my windows, just over the building tops. As the jet got closer, it took on more of a triangular shape, like the wings had become long and sleek, clinging tightly to the sides of the jet. I really had no idea what the jet was, now. I got a view of the underside of the jet, which somehow reminded me of a mix between a fighter jet and a commercial airliner.

The jet flew around the back side of our car. I turned to see the jet through the back window. t seemed to be descending. I may have had the ominous feeling that the jet was actually looking directly at my car. I may have wondered if the jet hadn't been sent to follow me as a potential criminal. Possibly to shake off the ominous feeling, I turned around and looked forward, possibly even hoping to clear the thought of the fighter jet out of my memory altogether.

But now the jet flew over the car and began to land maybe twenty or thirty meters away from the car. It was hovering and descending like a helicopter would. The jet was huge. Its back end was kind of strange, with maybe four jets coming off the back end, in a horizontal row. The jets were like rounded rectangles.

The jet released one huge blast of air from its jets. I thought -- I may even have "explained" to my cousin/brother! -- that the blast was like a little cushion of air to help the jet land softly. But the blast was so strong that it actually began pushing the car backwards. The few cars around us didn't seem to be affected.

The car kept moving backward. It didn't seem like it would stop. I now knew that the jet had made the blast of air expressly to get this car moving, and that it would probably keep the car moving. The jet, which may have stayed landed, was now also above us.

The jet again blasted us with air, causing us to move backwards under its direction, maybe even taking a few turns along the road. Other cars around us -- there were a lot more, now -- were driving forward, in a normal flow of traffic, not unaware of us, but not more aware of us than they would be of any other cars on the street.

The jet now somehow lifted us up off the road. We may have been lifted with a blast of air. But the blast of air, I thought to myself, if it was a blast of air, was now acting like a tractor beam. The car was flown over some buildings, then over a densely packed area of buildings that were maybe four or five stories tall. It was like all the roads were gone, and like now all there were were buildings. But I felt like I was just in some "back area," like an alleyway, or a secret entrance area for all these buildings.

At some point during all of this, the car began moving forward instead of being pulled backward. The jet may now have been gone. My brother/cousin may also have been gone, or I may simply have been less aware of him.

I was directed to a building-sized hole set into a cluster of buildings. Something about this hole reminded me of a multi-story parking garage. But it was very dark and shadowy, and something about its edges seemed more like the walls of a demolished building, or the gaping maw of a monster. Red-painted metal tracks, like the tracks of a modern high-speed roller coaster, came twisting up out of the abyss. My car was directed to and then linked up with the tracks.

I knew, or at least assumed, that the tracks would lead down into some government building. As I'd suspected, I thought, the government had brought me here. I coasted along the twists and turns of the track, always heading toward the black abyss, but never seeming to reach it.

I was a bit apprehensive. I reflected that I didn't know whether I was being brought here by the government for a good or bad reason. Did the government want me because they felt I had some kind of special talent? Or did they want me because they felt like I was involved with some kind of heinous crime. I knew that if they thought I was involved with a crime, they'd probably torture me.

Even though I knew I hadn't been involved with anything bad, I assumed I was probably being brought here to be tortured. I wasn't afraid of the pain as much as I was afraid that, in pain, I would embarrass myself by acting weak and screaming and crying.

Dream #2

I was sitting at "my office," which was a big, unfinished room filled with natural light. The room felt like the side room of a large house, or like some long, narrow room in a basement. The floors were probably linoleum tile. The walls were really tall, tall as walls in a mansion. But they had a cheap look to them. Windows ran all along the top of the wall to my left, letting in dazzling beams of white-gold sunlight.

I sat at the left corner of a long table. The table was like a mix between a trading desk and a lunchroom table. My computer -- possibly an old, clunky, 1980s style computer, and possibly a phone, were the only things on the desk.

I sat before the computer and spoke on the phone. I was probably running down some sort of call list that I had on my screen. I had just managed to get a hold of some insurance agency that was listed at the bottom of my screen. The insurance agency's name was the same as the last name of the owner. Something about that name seemed really familiar to me.

A woman picked up the phone and answered with her name. I recognized the woman's first name and the woman's voice. She was MM, a client of mine from a job I'd been laid off from four years ago. She had simply taken on her married name while she was working at this insurance office, which she and her husband ran together.

Happy to speak with MM again, I said who I was, asked MM if she remembered me, and asked how she was doing. I never really heard MM's voice responding to me. But I knew she had now probably asked why I was at the job I was at, and what kind of work I was doing.

I pushed myself backward, away from my desk, and then forward and off to my right, toward the exit from this room, on something like a mix between an office chair and a skateboard. All this time I was still talking on a phone, which may have been a cord-bound, landline phone.

I kind of skirted the issue of why I was working at this new job, though now that MM had brought up the question of why, I now felt a little ashamed of the fact that I was working here. Instead, I explained what the job was.

Apparently, I was something like the first line of attack in a collections agency, or something like that. When people were in financial trouble with a company that had loaned them money or given them credit, the people were sent over either to me or to my company. I then had the job of calling these people and telling them that their credit was in trouble.

This, I'm pretty sure, was all I was supposed to do. The people who had been notified and who had accepted the information were then routed to some kind of credit repair or debt collection place. Somehow I earned money for each person I'd spoken with who had accepted the fact that they needed to start work on the first stages of whatever process they would then be put through.

I had an image of a call list for my job. It seemed to be like an Excel spreadsheet. But it seemed to be written on paper, in bright, red crayon, and possibly in a childlike scrawl. I tried to explain to MM that felt like this was a really good business to be in, and that I could make a lot of money from it, even though I myself was beginning to have doubts about that.

As I continued speaking with MM, I was wheeling myself into a different room, with cheap wood-paneled walls and thin, grey carpet.  I wheeled myself up to a long, wooden desk, like the sales desk of some old merchandise shop, and then out into a larger, office-like area of the room, through a waist-high, swinging door.

wearing diapers at job

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at "my office," which was dim and looked kind of cluttered. I walked into one office. My boss was sitting at the desk.

I suddenly realized I was wearing only diapers, probably Pampers Baby Dry diapers. My boss looked at me kind of weird, but he didn't say anything.

A little while later I was in a room with three other guys. They were all young and sporty business men. I wondered what they'd think of me, if they'd look down on me, once they saw I was wearing baby diapers. But they didn't say anything.

I knew I needed to change, or at least wear some clothes over my diapers. I was now standing in front of a mirror. I looked at myself in the mirror. I could see my skinny body. I thought I looked good in the diapers.

I thought that at least my diapers were clean and dry: I hadn't wet them yet. But I thought that I might actually like to wet my diapers. It would, I thought, feel good and look good. I'd feel kind of sexy like that.

for and against clients; life towels

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was possibly in an office. The office was dim, lit mostly by colored spotlights, like a stage or a dance club. There was some special event going on to honor the members of a company. It was like the company was the client of the company I was working for. But we weren't celebrating the company just because they were our client, but because they had passed a serious milestone in their history.

I sat in a cubicle in a central area of the room. I had a computer, and probably some boards of technical controls. Before me was a wall. But most of the wall was cleared away, like it was supposed to be a window wall. I could see another cubicle on the other side of the wall. I could possibly see another few cubicle. It was like I sat in a column of cubicles in the center of this office-like room, like this central column was a supporting pillar for the building.

Along the walls of the room were booth-seats. People sat in the booth seats. These people were more important than the people in the cubicles. Another man sat in a cubicle to my right. He was giving a big toast, mentioning everybody in the company he thought had really contributed to the company's great achievement. He would say a person's name, then give a brief description of the person, either what kind of person the person was or what the person had done for the company.

I knew there was one woman in particular, a blonde woman in her late forties, who I felt deserved a lot of praise. She was one of the company's co-founders. I felt she should have been among the first to receive praise. But the man listed a few more people, then conspicuously stopped. I realized he really wasn't going to mention the woman. I looked at the man's face (apparently I had an open wall to my right, now, too). He was glowering bitterly at the woman.

I had a feeling the man had just blown off the woman because he didn't like the fact that she as a woman was so powerful in business. I felt like I needed to stand up for the woman. But the man who had been announcing things was a key figure in the company. So he was also a client, and therefore not subject to criticism.

But I couldn't help myself. I stood up and called out, "You forgot to honor somebody, didn't you? You forgot to honor her. Why don't you say a few words about her at least?"

Everybody in the room gasped. I knew I had done something stupid. If I made this guy mad, he could pull out his business. We could lose our client. But I still couldn't help feeling like it was right to have ignored the woman.

I went about my work like nothing had happened, even though everybody now seemed to be staring constantly at me. I went into some other cubicle and began hooking up a computer system. The cubicle had no lights on, but a grey-white fluorescent light was shining through a window-like space. I had to set a CPU in a specific place, then loop the cord around the edge of a desk. This seemed like a really clever technical task to me.

I then stood up. I walked to where the woman was sitting. I asked her to come with me. I was going to force the man to say something about the woman by having the woman stand face to face with the man. I was pretty angry, but I tried to hide my anger. I tried to make the woman feel good about herself. I asked her, "What's it like, you know, watching this thing go from a little baby into a fifty billion dollar company?"

As we passed my desk, and I threw a white towel on it, the woman replied, "Oh, it's pretty surreal. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we actually did it."

We walked around into the man's cubicle, which was now completely dark. But when I approached the man and demanded he say a few words to the woman, a purple spotlight appeared on the man's face.

The man set his jaw tightly in anger and said, "I see you in the future, going to another business, making a quick 4.5 grand," (which meant $4.5 billion) "but not without a good amount of debt. But even after the debt, you'll be in good shape. You'll probably spend the rest of your life with that money..." the man then mentioned something he thought the woman would do, something the man thought was absurd, like donating to charity or art funds, or even becoming an artist herself.

I walked back to the booth seats with the woman. I thought to myself that that idea had backfired on me. I'd tried to get the man to say something nice to the woman. All he did was imply a few indifferent and negative things about her.

The room of booth seats was now filled with natural light, like there were windows over the seats and it was daytime. The room also had a hazy feel to it, like I was very bleary-eyed. I saw my old boss CR off in a booth seat to my right, talking and laughing with a couple clients. The woman sat down. I sat down to the woman's right. The woman seemed upset. I couldn't blame her.

The man now came and sat to my right. He was wearing a white, beach-style shirt with multicolored floral prints and khaki shorts. I thought he was going to say something nasty to me. But he muttered in my ear, "Hey, man, tell your boss he's gotta watch his hair. Otherwise he's going to start poking the people around him."

I wondered what the man could be talking about. I looked over to my boss. I saw that he had run his fingers through his hair, and that thick, swirled, spiky locks of hair really were coming about one or two inches off from his head. I realized the guy was trying to joke with me, even though he had sounded a bit sullen when he'd made the comment.

The man started talking to me a little more freely about the company. But something about his attitude, maybe the fact that he still wasn't regarding the woman, made the woman stand up and walk away. I sat frozen, not really knowing how to react.

The man said, "Do you feel like going after her? You want to defend her. I can tell. Do you like her? Would you like to be with her? I think she'd be with you, if you wanted. She might like you, too."

I started feeling a little shy. I hadn't realized the woman liked me, and I hadn't really thought about whether I might like her.

Dream #2

I was out in some open area, near the top of a hill, with my mom. The area around us was like a dirt lot, or like land that had been cleared for development. The sun was shining behind some thin clouds, giving the sky a silvery-white appearance.

We had just departed from my grandfather (who died about four years ago IWL) and my step-grandmother. They were down at the bottom of the hill. They were both getting in a car to drive away. They may have been planning to go back home. I think my step-grandma was driving. She may have gotten into the car first.

Before my grandpa got into the car, he called to me, "When you get over to my house, you'll see a huge pile of dirt in the yard. Make sure you shovel all that dirt to the very front of the driveway, so people in the neighborhood know they can have the dirt. Also, give your aunt a call and let her know that she can have some of the dirt if she wants it."

My mom and I turned and walked away from the slope. We may have been heading to a car of our own. I was thinking that I really didn't want to have to talk to my aunt. But I knew I had to listen to my grandpa. I wondered how I'd get around this problem.

My mom and I were now in my grandpa's house. We had a huge load of pale green towels. We were going to take them to the laundry. Each of the towels had its own name. Each name had the word "life" or "living" in it.

We were now in a laundry room. The room was all white, with bright, white sunlight pouring in through the windows. The washing machine was in one section of the room. My mom and I were in another section of the room. The two sections were divided by a wall that seemed to be made out of wooden beams and transparent, but foggy, plastic.

A Latina woman stood before a huge washing machine. My mom and I spoke with the woman around a doorway. The woman offered us some towels, like they were towels she found had gone missing from our last load of laundry.

We traded her the towels we had for the towels she had. But one specific towel, which was meant for my mom, was goldenrod-colored. This towel had the name "think." I thought it was weird that my mom had gotten a "think" towel instead of a "life" towel. But I didn't worry about it too much. We did have a few goldenrod towels in the load of towels the woman had just given us. But the majority of our towels were still green "life" towels.

cleaning for mom; ornate room; program access; phone memory; politeness doesn't pay

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at my family's house. I had just finished taking care of some task, possibly with my brother-in-law. Now we were heading back into the living room. It may have been night. The living room was cluttered. The only light in the room was an incandescent light bulb somewhere, maybe on a shadeless lamp on a table.


My mom and possibly a couple other family members all sat in a cirlce amid the piles and piles of clutter. My brother-in-law and I sat down with everybody. I think my mom was having us get ready to move a couple of heavy objects for her. We were ready to do this.


But now my mom said, "I'm glad you guys are here. Because we have a lot of stuff to go through and clean out. In fact, we could be here for days and days, cleaning out the stuff I have."


I got angry. I stood up and said, "Well, it's fine that you want us to help you clean stuff and move stuff. But I can't devote all my time to cleaning your stuff. I didn't just come here to do that. I came here to study, too."


I stood up to move something that needed to be moved. I felt bad after having been so angry with my mom. I had actually come back to my hometown because I was out of money. My mom had helped me get back home. Now I was telling her I couldn't help her with things?


As I walked over to the object I was supposed to move, an air hockey table, my mom told me, "We used to live on an Air Force base. When we lived out on the base, everything was a lot easier, and you had a lot better outlook on life. Do you remember that?"


I lifted up the air hockey table and shifted it either to the left or the right, about the length of the table. As soon as I shifted it, daylight flooded into the living room. The living room looked a lot bigger, almost as if it were a workshop or a warehouse. I turned around and walked through the living room. I probably walked past my mom, even though I was still probably talking to her and probably helping her out with things.


Dream #2


An ornate room, like a room in a palace. Every surface of the room had a blue marble kind of texture, like either a cream color or a light blue color veined with a darker blue. Everything was also edged or lined with gold in ornate designs. But some of the furniture seemed to be attached to the walls and the ceiling, so that I could see the tops of stools or dressers facing me from the wall before me and the ceiling.


Dream #3


I was in some big room like a big garage. But the walls seemed to be covered in a billowing, white fabric, like something out of a photographer's studio, and the light was a very suffused, gentle incandescent. There were rows of tall metal tables, like tables in a workshop. There were probably three or four rows, divided into two aisles. Each table had two computers on it. These computers were workstations for specific people.


I went to my workstation. But my computer wasn't working. A tall, pale, skinny, white man walked up to my workstation. The man told me that it was bad news that my computer wasn't working. I was doing something of some importance to the government. Somebody knew what kind of work I was doing. So if my computer wasn't working, it was likely that the people trying to stop my work hacked into my system and shut the system down. But I needed to keep doing the work. It couldn't stop now.


The man got onto my workstation. He may have told  me that the problem was with an energy level in my workstation. Because something was weird with the energy level, I was no longer being given access to my workstation.


But the man had managed to set me up on some kind of a backdoor system. The regular system, I believe, required me to have a certain amount of energy so I could run all the programs on my workstation. This system, on the other hand, allowed me to log in to single programs. The system was just a list of the programs I would usually run. I would click on the program name. A drop down menu would appear. I would go from there to run my program.


Something didn't seem entirely good about this. I felt like I needed to have the regular system back up and running as soon as possible. I felt like if I continued using the setup I was currently using, whatever network my workstation was linked into would identify my activity in a strange way, destroying my regular system as I knew it, or else that I would eventually be denied access to this backdoor system as well.


Dream #4

My cell phone told me that I could no longer put any additional items onto the memory. The memory was so close to full that the phone could no longer even run the functions of programs that would store things in its memory. I really couldn't do anything on my phone. The phone didn't have enough memory to run any processes.

Dream #5

I was possibly in a bowling alley. I was with a large group of people, mostly kids. It may have been like we had taken these kids on a field trip. But now we were getting ready to leave.

As people were milling around, maybe doing stuff like putting on their jackets (it must have been winter), my sister stood before me. Behind her was a little partition, like she was standing before some segment of wall cornering off from a hallway. We stood in a greenish grey fluorescent light. Behind my sister, I could see the bowling alleys and all the kids.

My sister said, "I have a feeling you're having trouble with money. And I want to let you know that if you need help with money, all you have to do is ask. We're willing to help you."

I had a feeling I was in trouble with money, too. But I didn't want to bother my sister with the details. So I just told my sister thanks, and that I was alright.

We were all now walking down a hallway kind of like an office hallway, except that it was really dim. The only light was natural light coming from a front window wall in the far distance. We stopped so a group of people could do something, I'm not sure what, possibly use the restroom.

I stood in the hallway with a twelve-year-old girl. The girl had golden tan skin, blue eyes, and shoulder-length, brown-blonde hair. She only came up to the middle of my chest. She wore a big, puffy black jacket that made her look overweight. On the wall behind the girl was some framed photo, probably an Impressionist-style painting, in heavy browns, blacks, and greens, of a figure who looked kind of like Emile Zola.

The girl was kind of flirting with me. I liked it. I was flattered. The girl flirtatiously asked me something about what our relationship might be like in five years, when she was seventeen. In one sense, she may just have been implying that she was hoping she'd be able to take care of my by that time. In another sense, she was just wondering whether I would let her get romantic with me.

I tried to steer her off from worrying about that argument. I flattened my hand on the crown of her head, then lifted the flattened hand up in the air until it went about two or three inches above the crown of my head. This was supposed to illustrate to the girl how, in five years, she would be taller than I. She might still like me, but she wouldn't think I was attractive. So she shouldn't worry right now about whether she thought I was attractive.

We all started walking again. We headed toward the exit of this building, which was now definitely like an office building. In fact, we had all come here for some reason almost totally related to me. It was like I had come here to interview for a job or to find assistance regarding a job that I had or was looking for. Others in the group may have been doing the same thing here. Everything had been taken care of. So we were leaving.

But as almost everybody else had gone out the front door -- a big, heavy, wooden door, kind of like for a Mexican restaurant with a mission-like decor -- a woman came into the foyer and stopped me. She was a bit taller than I, olive skinned, with frizzy, black hair and brown eyes with a lot of mascara.

The woman told me, "I'm friends with SG, someone you used to work for. I called him up to tell him you were here. I was really excited you were here. But SG told me that you need to tell both me and him everything that made you leave your last job. We want to know what made the situation so bad that you couldn't stay there anymore. You're too valuable to us, SG said, and we can't afford to lose you."

The woman also said that SG had told her that I have a bad habit of not speaking up when things are going bad at the workplace. He'd said that I needed to talk to him whenever something bad started happening, so he could figure out how to take care of things for me.

My view faded out of the building, as if I had looked out the door -- not walked out of it -- and into a blinding white light. The view now changed into a yellow slip with computer-printed writing on it, almost like the copy portion of a bill or a deposit slip. But it was a letter, or, actually, something more like an email (in telegram form?) from SG.

SG's message said something like, "There is a point when you can have too much politeness. Sometimes it doesn't pay to be polite." This was in reference to my bad habit of always acting like things were going well when they really weren't. SG was telling me that I needed to tell him about the bad things, as soon as they happened, from now on.

shifting conference rooms; car misses bus; living funeral plans

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was "at work." The office space was huge and bright. The section I was mostly in was all just one big open space, divided into two levels. The back level was about 150cm higher than the front level. Most of the space was filled with desks.

There was a conference room along the left wall. My boss had almost the entire management team of one of our clients in the conference room. I was in there, too. But I got pulled out of the room by our office manager. She took me up to her desk at the back area. She told me some other people wanted to use the conference room. She asked me if the meeting we were doing in the conference room was so important.


I got really annoyed. I told the office manager, "Yes! It is important! We basically have the entire company in that room!" But the office manager was still giving me the idea that I needed to move everybody out of the conference room we were in. So I figured I'd take the request to my boss and see what he wanted to do about it.


But when I got back to the front of the area, everybody was gathered at an auditorium-like area that had been set up. A lot of rows of chairs had been set up facing the front wall. There were a stage and a screen along the front wall.


Someone was obviously going to give a presentation to the company. We were all just waiting for the presentation to start. All the management from the company had acknowledged me. It seemed that they liked having me around. I was happy with that.


But I got called away again, probably by the office manager. I had to have another discussion. When the discussion was finished, the presentation either had already started or was so close to starting that I didn't want to make any noise or distraction. There was a person sitting at the end of the row I had been sitting in. I didn't want to ask him to stand up so I could get back to my seat. So I just went a few rows back.

A woman from my work was sitting in a chair outside the rows of chairs, but near the row I was going to sit in. As I sat into the rows I said something to the woman like, "You'll see now what a good note-taker I am. I'm going to take really good notes on this presentation. Then I'll give them to the client. They'll be impressed."

But when I sat in the rows of chairs I realized that the backs of the chairs in front of me were huge. They were yellow plastic and they had grating designs on their backs, like school chairs. But they were probably as tall as a standing person. There also seemed to be a roof-like structure connecting the seat backs in front of me with the seat backs of my row of chairs. Because of all this, my view of the presentation was completely blocked.

I thought to myself, Well, I don't need to see to take notes. I can just listen. But I knew it wasn't good enough. If I didn't see the PowerPoint presentation, I'd miss a lot of stuff that I'd want to take notes on. I'd have to do my best. But it was a pretty bad situation.

Dream #2

I was in a car, but it was also like I had just walked out of some building. It was like I was standing right outside the doors of a building, but also like I was in a car. The building was a city official building. It was big, kind of modern looking. The daylight and coolness of the atmosphere felt like morning time on a nice, clear summer day. The shadow of the building was deep and cool.

I "walked out" of the building (in the car) with my brother and a bunch of other guys. I was in the driver's seat. My brother was in the front passenger seat. The other guys were all crowded tight together in the back seat. The guys all seemed to be tough, maybe a little impatient, but good natured overall.

There was a bus across the parking lot from us. At this point in the parking lot, the lot was just a small strip of asphalt with a special area for buses built right into it. I knew this was the bus I needed to catch. But it looked like the bus was leaving soon.

For some reason it was really hard for me to move away from the building. I think it may have had to do with the guys in the back. The bus pulled away. I knew I missed the bus. I'd have to wait a long time to catch the next bus.

I was annoyed at the guys. They'd made me miss my bus. But I knew I couldn't show my frustration with them. If they felt offended at all, they'd turn violent. So I just acted like nothing was wrong. I just focused on getting across to the bus stop and saying all the time that the bus must be coming soon.

But as I moved across the parking lot, I looked up to my left. Another bus, just like the one that had just left, was now approaching the bus stop. I was pretty sure I could still get where I needed to go by getting onto this bus.

I got up to the bus stop. I was standing out at the bus stop now -- not driving a car or in a car, like I'd been before. The bus arrived. The doors opened. Before getting on, I asked the bus driver if this bus could take me where I needed to go.

Dream #3

I was a little kid, probably a little boy, but maybe a little girl. My view was all in black and white, as if, even though I was seeing through "my own eyes," I was also watching a movie. I was siblings with one of the other children. I'm not sure about the rest. My sibling was probably the opposite gender of whatever I was.

My sibling and I had a grandparent who was dying. The grandparent, probably our grandfather, was in the hospital. He was still conscious. But it was obvious he was going to die very soon. My sibling and I wanted to have a funeral for him before he died. That way he could be a part of it and see how much he meant to everybody around him.

But our parents, and possibly even our older siblings, didn't take any of our efforts seriously. So we had to enlist the help of our friends. I remember some views of me and my sibling at a computer screen. I also remember a view, through a hospital room doorway, of our grandfather in bed.

Eventually what me and my sibling were doing seemed like it could be practical. It was starting to take shape. It was probably going to work. At this point, our older siblings, and maybe even our parents, joined in. But when they joined in they basically took over everything about the project. They gave me and my sibling some little job to do, something that was useless, as if it was the only thing we could handle, even though we'd previously been in charge of everything.

holes in socks; cents per mile

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a few people, possibly some of my co-workers. We all had to take off our shoes for some reason, possibly as part of a game. But I was ashamed to take off my shoes. I knew I had holes in my socks. The holes went all the way across three or so of my toes. I didn't want my co-workers to see that.

Dream #2

I was sitting at work. I was in a big but flimsy room. The room had thin, plyboard kind of walls and kind of dim, fluorescent lighting. The desk I sat at was one one side of the room, kind of set near the wall. My desk was long, but the space I was in, being so close to the wall, was kind of narrow.

One of my more senior co-workers, JP, stood just behind me and over my left shoulder. He was joking with me, talking like he had never met me before and he didn't know anything about my job.

JP asked me, "How do you get paid? In dollars per hour?"

I said, "No. In cents per mile."

"Oh..."

"Which is kind of bad, cause, sitting at this desk..."

"You don't get paid too well, do you?"

"Not much at all." I looked past my desk, over to some kind of counter and window-like hole in the wall that seemed to lead to some place like a kitchen. I thought of that place as a snack bar.

I continued. "I keep thinking I'll wheel my chair over to the snack bar and back over here a whole lot of times each day. That should kind of get my mileage up."

a raise from my old boss; seinfeld paperwork

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an office. I sat at a desk that had a huge shelf or barrier right beside it. The barrier felt more like the back end of a filing cabinet, topped with some small set of metal shelves. My desk was part of a narrow but pretty long area, like a number of tall filing cabinets had all been lined up near a wall, with desks set behind them.

My old boss, CR, walked up in front of my desk from an aisle made between two of the filing cabinets. He seemed to be thinking I was planning to leave this job. He didn't want me to leave, and he was thinking of ways to keep me.

Finally he told me something like, "You know, things are finally going to be okay. We're going to start making money. I'll be making more money. And I'm going to see to it that you get a raise."

Somehow in all of this it may have been implied that my boss was going to leave his job for another job, and that he was going to take me with him. Or it might have been that we had already gone to another job, and that things were going to be better here than my boss had first thought.

My boss walked away, and I watched after him. I then sat down, thinking about my raise.

Dream #2

Something like an episode of Seinfeld. The main characters all sat against some run down wall, on a bench that was either part of the wall or built onto the wall. They all sat kind of slouched and lazy.

The guys were all somehow annoying Elaine. Some of them may have been making annoying sounds. But what they were really doing that was really annoying Elaine had to do with some kind of work they were either not doing or doing in some kind of really annoying way.

The view now focused on Jerry, who sat at the far right (my right, as I viewed it) end of the bench. Jerry now called attention to the fact that all this time he hadn't been half as annoying as the other guys, and that he had quietly been doing his work. He continued his work. This may have inspired everybody else to do their work.

Now one of the guys had some kind of paperwork to fill out. This was like a tax form, except it had more to do with getting employment. There were two columns of questions, with an answer column beside each question column.

Two questions toward the bottom of the page, maybe the last and the third to last questions, were in boxes filled in with a blue background. At least one of these questions was an eliminating question. It may have had something to do with Texas.

It was now like I was filling out this form for the person who needed the process related to this form taken care of. The answer box next to the very important question may already have been a lot of small writing, maybe typing. But I had to write in a zero. I crossed through the circle of the zero to clarify that it was a zero and not an "o."

Something about the process of filling out this box may have repeated. It may have been like the first time I'd done the filling out I hadn't known what I was doing, and that, as I learned what the box really meant, I'd have to re-do and re-do the box.

fragments of criticism

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at my office. I had been having a lot of troubles with my boss. But now a higher-up person, possibly a client of ours, was coming to the office. I had a feeling he'd listen to my concerns.

But now I heard that the visitor was here. I knew that I had actually written out my concerns regarding my boss. I knew that the visitor would take anything I'd written very seriously. But I now thought that what I'd written about my boss was actually a bit mean and unfair. I'd look immature and petty for having written it. I needed to find what I'd written and get rid of it.

I ran into the copy room. The copy room was pretty big, but a little dumpy and kind of dim, as if only one or two lights were on. I found a big book on the floor, in front of some old copiers or old boxes or something.

I opened the book and found what I'd written about my boss. It was actually just a few sentences, written in capital letters, on a torn top half of a sheet of paper. The tearing was kind of ragged and slanted, so that the paper had a kind of rhombus-like shape and was a bit less than half the area of the full page.

I read through my criticisms of my boss. They actually weren't that bad, in my opinion. They were pretty reasonable. They were written in a blank, business-like style. And they didn't veer into the more personal or vehement claims I might have made. I may have thought that I actually wouldn't mind if the visitor found this piece of paper.

I stood up. I had to copy something, possibly my little sheet of criticisms. I walked to the copy machine, which stood against a wall that had been to my right as I'd knelt over the big book.

A man stood to my left as I made copies. He was tall and slim, but athletic, with sharp features, blue eyes, and curly-wavy, reddish-brown hair. He was a bit too tan, and his tan was tinged with red. This man may have been the visitor, or he may have been talking to me about the visitor. He may also have been talking about whatever documents I was copying.

bedroom and bookshop; anger at office

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom in an apartment that was probably my apartment. It felt like a really nice, big apartment on a high up floor in some busy part of a big city. The ceilings were high. I may have been kneeling on the floor and looking up toward my right, to a tall, narrow window with shutters and some kind of gauzy curtains around it. It was night, and my bedroom lights were on.

I was apparently doing something perverted in my room. I might actually have been wearing a wedding dress. I was worried that the people in the apartments across the street from me would see into my room and see what I was doing. The gauzy curtains were drawn over the windows. I couldn't quite convince myself that this was enough. I thought I might draw something more over the window. But I didn't want to stand in front of the window and have people see me. So I just kept crouching.

I was now walking into a small bookshop in some small, but clean and quaint, kind of Main Street area, like in a small town. I had been in the bookstore before, and I knew that the woman who worked there knew me. In fact, I kind of worried that I'd been coming to the bookstore too often, and that the woman would start to think I was some crazy guy who was attracted to her.

The bookshop had small bookshelves, all through the front room, like in the children's section of a public library. Some guy was working between one of the shelves and a big window wall off to my right. I didn't see the guy at first. But then he stood up from behind the shelves. I figured that since the guy was working today, the woman wouldn't be here. I was a little let down. The woman would know me and treat me somewhat indifferently. But I was worried that the guy would eventually get suspicious toward me or start trying to annoy me.

But then the woman showed up. I tried to act like I wasn't very aware of her. I walked into some other room, off to my left. There were tall shelves in this room. But against a wall off to my right was a waist-high bookshelf that held books on mysticism and spirituality. I knelt down and looked at some of those books. They were all paperbacks, kind of old. Some of them had covers more indicative of science or business books than of spiritual books. One book may have been written by W.B. Yeats, although I may have thought of him as a business writer instead of as a poet.

Dream #2

I was in an office. The office was one room, maybe ten meters long and five meters wide. There were two long tables set up in it: one at the center of the room, and the other on the right side of the room. People sat working at computers all along these two tables. I sat at a computer in the corner of the room, at the end of the table along the right wall.

Some of my co-workers began discussing how they might get me to do some of their work for them. They were mumbling this to themselves, as if they thought I couldn't hear them. I got mad. I knew they were going to try and find a way to dump a bunch of work on me without asking me beforehand whether I could do it.

Now one of my co-workers, a guy about my age, tried to play friendly with me, to butter me up before all the work got dumped on me. I was wearing a hoodie. The man walked up behind me and pulled the hood over my head. The man just thought he was making a funny joke. But something about it really pissed me off and panicked me.

The guy had walked back to his desk and sat down, like he'd realized he'd done something dumb, but that he didn't think it was a big deal. But I followed the guy to his desk and began screaming and yelling at him. I also began yelling at everybody I thought was in on the plans to get all their work dumped on me. Among these people was some woman who sat near the guy.

I walked back to my desk. I now noticed that one of my old co-workers, DE, was sitting at the computer to my left. He began typing on his phone. I knew he was gossiping about how violent I had just been. IWL he had always criticized me for being too emotional in situations that made me uncomfortable.

Now the woman who was among the people I had screamed at walked up to me and asked me about something not work related. It may have had to do with some kind of university course she was taking. The woman had a binder filled with papers of about the same consistency as coloring book paper. The papers all dealt with psychological disorders.

The woman asked me how I'd interpret some kind of diagnostic passage relating to some kind of specific mental disease. She read it in a mumbling kind of voice. I tried to catch everything she said, especially because I felt she was trying to "catch" me or "expose" me somehow as not being smart enough to understand her studies. But it sounded like she'd only read half of the text. It even seemed like she got discouraged about halfway through reading and just walked back to her desk.

So now I stood up and walked toward her desk. I was starting to piece together what the woman had read, and everything started to sound familiar to me. I was pretty sure I knew what disease the woman had been talking about. I asked the woman for the book. I looked things over. The woman said that the one thing she wasn't understanding was where it said this disease, which was purely psychogenic, caused an actual physical decay of the brain.

I told the woman that this was correct: that this disease did lead to a physical decay of the brain. Now everybody was listening. Everybody seemed to be pretty shocked that the disease could do this. But I said it wasn't such a strange thing. I began discussing how the abuse of certain drugs could also lead to conditions where people developed decay in their brains.

diphtheria house; customer complaints; how's consumer sentiment?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A view of the backyard of the house of a family. It was daytime. There were a lot of workers in the backyard, along with at least the mother and the father of the family. The house was a nice, two-story house. The mother and father were white, attractive, and kind of wealthy looking. The workers may have been dressed in yellow, pale green, or white, plastic protective suits.

The house was being worked on because the family had all suffered from some disease. The disease had probably been called diphtheria. The disease was apparently like scarlet fever because, when you had it, you had to burn everything you'd touched while you had it. So the workers were working, not on burning everything in the house, but on sanitizing it in some way.

One of the things the workers were doing was to plow up the ground all around the foundation of the house. Then they sprayed something all over the plowed up soil. This stuff looked like the white smoke that comes off of dry ice. It would do something like freeze the ground. But it was also adding a chemical to the ground that caused the soil to do something like freeze itself.

I understood that the diphtheria germs had come from the soil. The soil had been disturbed, releasing these old germs. Now the soil had to be chemically frozen, to kill the germs.

But now the workers began to ask about other items the family had been around in the house while they'd had diphtheria. In particular they began asking about the family dog. My view, which had been really close in on the soil that was sprayed, now backed away. I got a pretty full view of the back of the house. And even though the dog wasn't back there, I got a pretty good image in my head of the dog running along the back porch, in the shade of the back wall.

The mother of the family knew that if the workers knew the family had touched the dog while they were sick, the workers would want to spray the dog with the freezing chemicals, too. But the mother knew that that spray would kill any living thing. So the mother said that the family had not touched the dog while they had been sick.

Dream #2

I was in some kind of small store, like an old-style office supply or stationery store, or an old-style furniture store. It was pretty dim inside, and everything was grey, like even the walls and carpet were the same colors as the old, grey-painted, metal shelves.

I stood, or even sat, before some grey counter. The counter made a kind of L-shape that connected with the back wall and the left (my left) wall, making a kind of big square of space for the workers. There was at least one office-style desk behind the counter. The space felt like an old office overall. But at the back wall was a kind of window, like one might see for a service area between the cooks and the waiters in a diner.

Behind the counter sat two workers. One of the workers sat pretty close to the counter. The other worker sat at the desk, off in the back, left corner of the worker's space. The worker close to the counter was pretty young. He had been dealing with me in some way or another. But he had been rude to me, and he hadn't done what I'd needed at all.

I had told the young man that I was going to complain. The young man didn't seem to believe me or even care if I did complain. But I knew that if I spoke directly with one specific man: the other man sitting at the desk. He was the young man's boss, and he didn't seem to like the young man too much to begin with. He was looking for a reason to fire the young man. And I knew I could give the man a good reason.

The young man knew I was serious. So he decided to listen to me. But he was really mad at me. He asked, "What do you want me to do for you? What do I have to do?" in a kind of angry, but desparate tone.

It was now like we were talking on the phone instead of standing face to face. I could see the young man's angry face on the phone. At first he looked like he was a young, kind of skinny, black man. But his face morphed into a young, bald man with a kind of olive-colored to light brown complexion. His features were really sharp but smooth at the same time. He had a tight skull and sharp cheekbones. And he looked really sullen and angry.

I was through dealing with the young man, though, and I told him that I wanted to speak with the older man now. The young man didn't have a choice but to put me through to the older man. The older man was a kind of fat, white man with pale skin and hair in a spiky cut that looked like it was dyed blonde. He had kind of red cheeks. He wore a black polo shirt and black shorts. He was obviously in his forties, but his clothes and style made him look younger.

The older man knew he had to take my call, and he was already mad at the younger man. But the older man was on a phone call at the moment, so he told me I had to wait. The younger man stood up and walked into the back area, the area behind the back wall.

The older man fiddled around with his phone for a moment while talking. Then the call was over. But the older man acted like he still had a number of things to do, probably making phone calls, before he could finally get to helping me. He actually stood up and walked toward the back area himself.

I was still in the office. I was standing at the counter. But now the counter was more like a stainless steel counter. And behind the counter was now a small area like in a small bakery. The whole place still felt old, grey, and dingy. But now there were kind of fancy pastries everywhere. The counter ran in an L-shape. But now the L-shape faced away from the wall, so that the area behind the counter was also L-shaped.

The older man was working on putting all kinds of pastry orders together. He was completely avoiding me and any of the complaints I had, acting like he had to take care of all these orders first. I'd even ordered some pastries. And even though my order was small and simple, he was taking care of all the bigger, more complex orders first.

A group of Latina women walked in. A couple of them were maybe in their late twenties or early thirties. They looked like mothers. They were all happy. They all made orders with the man. The man put their orders together and gave them to them almost instantly, still completely ignoring me.

I looked at the women's orders. One of the women had a kind of bright pastel, sweet, delicate, bready, but dry-looking cake. The other had some kind of syrup-topped, pie-like thing that I told myself was made with guava. Both of the items looked good. But I was more intrigued by the guava item.

The women seemed to be leaving the store already. I had been shy while they were in front of me, because they were all pretty. But now they were all passing me to get to the door.

One of the last women to pass me must actually have been a girl. She was kind of short and very skinny. But she had a flat chest. She wore tiny, black jean shorts and a tiny, black bikini top with silver fringes. But the girl's chest was so flat that the bikini top was a little bunchy and loose on her in spots, even though it was drawn pretty tight around her back and neck. But despite the fact that the girl was so young, I was really aroused by her.

Dream #3

I was at "my office," sitting at "my cubicle." The walls of the cubicle were tall. I seemed to be sitting pretty close to the right edge of the wall, my face very close to the wall. To my right, and also pretty close, was a window with blinds. The light coming through the window seemed to be filtered through some kind of UV coating. It was greyish-brown, but still kind of sparkling somehow with the whiteness of bright sun.

Between the cubicle wall and the window was a little walkway. I knew that beyond me were one or two other cubicles, then a more open space for people to walk through. I knew that my boss BB was walking through that space, even though I couldn't see him. I could barely see another co-worker, SW, walking into that space.

My boss had just been out on some business trip through a few big cities. SW asked my boss, "Hey, so, while you were out there, how was business sentiment looking? I mean, how was the consumer outlook? Are people looking more positive?"

I thought this was a strange question to ask. It implied that my boss had actually been out to enough towns to actually get a good sampling of business sentiment in all of America. And it implied that my boss had actually been out talking to all kinds of people on the street.

But my boss had only been in a few cities. And those cities were pretty isolated, probably geographically, from the rest of America. And my boss had only been speaking to higher-up business people, about very specialized topics. I didn't think my boss' answer could really indicate a big picture view of the American economy.

But SW was going to take my boss' answer and use it to reflect the American economy. SW was like an economist for our company, as if our company were something other than it was, something more like an investment firm or an investment advising firm.

design subway; friend's boss sneaks up

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

seeing old boss; seventh day religion; imperiled X-15; mediocre musical

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had to go back to one of my old jobs for some reason or another, probably to pick up some kind of paperwork.

I had gone up an elevator and was now in one of the high-up floors of the building. I walked through a hallway that seemed to be an extension of the elevator bank. The hallway was kind of dim, with cherry-colored wood walls and grey floors. I could see that the hallway opened out to a wide office floor, which seemed to be mostly unlit by electric light, but pretty well lit by greyish natural light.

The hallway was filled with people, mostly young people, all bustling about. Amid these people, I saw my old boss, BS, walking into the bathroom. I thought I might say hi to him. But I reflected how he was always so reluctant to talk to me. So I didn't say anything. Nevertheless, he may have stopped in the threshold when he saw me. I may have waved to him quickly.

Dream #2

I was in a huge, empty room with some other guy, a kind of tall, muscular, young, white man wearing a t-shirt, khaki shorts, and a cap. We were both walking counter-clockwise around some cubic, concrete fixture in the floor. The fixture looked a bit like an altar. But it had an aluminum toilet seat and basin in its center.

As we walked around the altar-toilet, the man was talking to me about some religion. He gave some name that sounded like a mix between "Seventh Day Adventist" and "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." The man was making it sound like the people who practiced this religion were really bad, and like they were actually planning to do bad things.

But, I thought, people in generaly usually had a prejudice against people from this religion. At the same time, they also thought highly of people from this religion. Now the man was talking about how good the work ethic was for the people from this religion.

As the man spoke about this, I was cleaning off the toilet seat. It seemed like there was a lot of grime and hair on the seat. I was wiping it off with a piece of toilet paper. But I don't think I knew where to put the paper.

The man mentioned some kind of eating habit the religious people had. It had to do with only eating at a specific time on a specific day of the week. The rest of the day was devoted to work. But the man said you could always spot a lazy guy in this religion by the way he works and the way he eats.

The man seemed to be trying to disparage the whole religion with his comment. But after he'd gotten most of the way through his comment, he stopped himself and commented on how well most people in the religion stuck to this regular eating and working ritual.

Dream #3

Either I, I and some other man, or some man, was watching a news feed, either on TV or on a computer. An aircraft that was supposed to be an X-15 rocket, but which really looked like a black-and-yellow painted space shuttle, was getting ready to land.

The vehicle descended slowly through the blue sky. It landed on a faded tarmac strip. The landing seemed to go well. But the X-15 was damaged somehow, and everybody knew it was in danger.

The X-15 began skidding off to the left. It coasted off the tarmac, onto some grass, and finally stopped beside a chain-link fence. My view of all this was now from within the scene, as if I were floating above it in a helicopter.

Everybody was now thinking that the X-15 had been internally damaged and that it was going to explode. A crew of workers had come up to the X-15 to pull the crew members out of the vehicle before it exploded.

The X-15 now looked like a big Hummer or a big pick-up truck. The crew members were all crammed together in the front and back seats. They all looked like tourists in their fifties, kind of overweight, wearing nice jeans and shirts. They looked like they were all having a good, easygoing time, even though they were being pulled out of explosive wreckage.

Most of the flight crew and rescue crew had gotten away from the X-15. But now a different group of people came up to the vehicle. It was a group of old women, maybe in their sixties. They all thought this wreckage was a wonderful tourist attraction, and that they might sit around in it. By this time, the X-15 really just looked like a big, yellow, pick-up truck with no roof.

I saw the back end of the vehicle burst out with a jet of steam. I knew that the rest of the vehicle would probably now explode in a fireball. I may have seen one small, fiery explosion. But the old ladies didn't even seem to feel it. They were doing things like taking pictures of themselves on their phones.

Dream #4

Some guy was telling me how he thought some musical was only okay. I may have felt bad about this, because I may have been the one to introduce him to the movie of the musical.

The man said the musical all began well enough, but that by the end of the musical, everything about it seemed so shockingly racist. Plus, the actual quality of the drama and the songs just got cheaper and cheaper.

The man may have said that the turning point in the musical for him was the song "When You're a Jet." I then realized that the man was probably talking about the musical West Side Story. It surprised me that I'd introduced this musical to somebody, since I'd never been a really big fan of it.

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

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

arcade; kitchen stowaways; okay paperwork

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an arcade, possibly with a few kids. Other than those kids, the arcade was empty of people. The arcade was divided into a few "rooms." The place was lit kind of brightly, for an arcade, with incandescent lights.

At some point I was sitting at a video game booth, like I was playing a driving game. At another point, I was playing some other video game. I had my face close up to the screen. And, later on, I was pumping coins frantically into the game.

Dream #2

There were three people, of whom I may have been one, though I saw all three people from a third person view. The other two were a young man and a young woman.

The three stood among a crowd of people who were seated at an outdoor restaurant. It was night, and the moonlight shone on everybody at the restaurant. It felt like the restaurant was huge, extending far back under some shelter in the distance.

A blonde business woman came up to the three, but focused on the two young people. She may have handed the two some kind of business form, then told the two that she was no longer going to allow them to stay here. Apparently the two people had been living in this restaurant. They had even, while the restaurant was open, been making meals for customers, like some kind of renegade chefs.

The business woman walked away. The two now knew that they were "evicted" from this place. They could no longer live here and make food here.

The third person (me?) wished he could have stood up for the other two while the business woman had been handing them the papers. But he couldn't have done anything, apparently. But now there was another woman, a kind of short, girlish-looking, blonde woman. She was the business woman's assistant.

The assistant was holding something that looked like a red, plastic Folger's coffee jar filled with some kind of white sauce, like ranch dressing or secret sauce. The assistant said, "My boss owns all kinds of restaurants. She can't oversee them all. So some of them do terribly. There are a few that are closed down."

The assistant may have handed the jar of sauce to the young man and woman. I understood this to mean that the assistant had given the young man and woman the ability to get into and live in the abandoned kitchens owned by the business woman.

Time had passed. I (or the third person?) had gone out to look for an abandoned restaurant. I'd found one. Now I had to pick up the young man and woman in secret, so the business woman wouldn't know we were going.

The young man and woman were sitting out at a table at an outdoor restaurant that was closed for the night and empty. The moon may have been large in the sky, shining down on the young man and woman. I ran down the aisle of tables, then grabbed the young woman's hand and began running with her. The young man began running as well. As I'd grabbed three woman's hand, I'd knocked some silverware off the table.

Dream #3

I was in an office, showing my boss a stack of paperwork I'd done. My boss told me something along the lines that I was doing a good job, but that I should probably slow it down. He may also have referred to some guy in my paperwork, telling me that I had made a mistake in his files. If I'd slowed down, I wouldn't have made the mistake.

I now led my boss into another office, which was apparently my office. I showed my boss another stack of paperwork, a lot of which had to do with the guy. Somehow my boss had come to understand that I hadn't made the mistakes he'd thought I'd made, and that I wasn't working too fast. My boss said that he'd leave me alone with my work, then.

At another time I saw a stack of paperwork on a step in a tall, steep staircase. This staircase may have led to something like a tall, steep, but old and run-down auditorium, almost as huge as a stadium, on a seat in which sat another stack of paperwork.