Dream 1
I was in outer space. I may have started out in a space capsule or a space station. I was probably with a woman astronaut.
We were then out in space. We had to get from one structure to another structure. The second structure may have been a space capsule that would transport us to the space station that was our base.
We had to put on our space helmets before we went into the second structure. I put my helmet on. As the helmet clicked into place, some oxygen started flowing through the helmet area, and possibly through the rest of my suit.
But then the air pressure of the oxygen got really high. I felt like my head was getting squeezed or smashed. The astronaut floated directly facing me. She got worried. She asked me if my suit was malfunctioning. She thought it might be because I had put my helmet on incorrectly. She wanted to help me take my helmet off as soon as possible so I wouldn't get injured. But I said I thought I was fine. I decided we would just float into the structure and I'd see if things got worse from there.
We floated up through a narrow, tube-like area. At the end of this passage was a shallow, dish-like dome. I knew that beyond this space was the cabin of the structure. Once we were in there we would fly to the larger structure.
We were now in the larger structure, the space station that was like our home base. I was in one room that was like some sort of control room. The floors were shiny black. The walls were covered in machinery and monitors that displayed data, etc.
A man stood in the room. He was some sort of high-ranking person in the space station. He wore a crisp, square-bodied uniform. His chest bore a pretty big grid of decorations. He may have been holding his cap or helmet in his arm, kind of close to his body. And he stood really straight.
The man probably asked me about my condition. There may still have been a worry about whether I'd been badly injured by the helmet incident. I said I was okay. But even I couldn't be sure.
Dream 2
I was probably watching some movie about some kids who discovered a spacecraft in the woods. The spacecraft was sort of lime-shaped, but with shell-like ends. It was hard and dark green, like an avocado. But it was ornamented all around with silver, pipe-like fixtures. The craft itself may have opened like a clam shell. Or it may have had an entrance via a ramp leading up into the bottom of the craft.
Two boys had discovered this spacecraft. They then decided to fly it. But they stayed on earth. Some time had passed. Possibly one of the boys had gotten some sort of illness and had gone into a coma for a while. When the boy awoke, he probably found out that a zombie apocalypse had taken place.
The boy may have found the other boy. The two boys then took their spacecraft on journeys all around the earth, where they'd always have to avoid or fight zombies.
Then, almost as if by accident, one of the boys, or possibly both of the boys, flew in the spacecraft all the way off the earth. The boy went to some distant place in space, where he kind of settled down. After that the story became a lot more calm and a lot less interesting.
I seemed to have seen a good amount of the calm part of the boy's story. I was sort of disappointed by it. It was now like I was reviewing this whole story, almost as if it were starting over again. I thought to myself how much I liked all the zombie stuff and how I'd have liked to see the zombie stuff continue.
I'm not really sure whether I was still dreaming at this point. I seemed to imagine a few different scenarios of the story that I would have liked better. But I'm not really sure whether I ever saw any of the scenarios play out. I kept on seeing the spacecraft at the beginning of the story, as if the story were always stuck at the beginning.
All throughout the dream, my view was obscured, as if it were blocked by columns that were totally in the shade or darkness, though sometimes it was also like the columns were two huge, shaggy legs of orange fur or a huge column of a tree the bark of which was coated with some fur-like vegetation.
Dream 3
I may possibly have been out on a beach or a field. The beach or the field was wet, so the sand or soil was pretty muddy. It was probably a cloudy day.
I was probably out with a few people: some adults and a little girl. The little girl may have been a cheerleader or a dancer, dressed in some cute costume.
The little girl was trying to teach me a cheer or a dance. I may have been doing a bad job of learning the dance, or I may have been too shy really to have put my whole effort into the dance. So I looked kind of terrible.
The little girl didn't seem disappointed in me. She kept trying to teach me the dance. But the adults were sort of annoyed by or angry with me. I felt like the adults thought it was stupid that I wasn't dancing well. Didn't everybody know how to dance well? I also felt like they thought I was purposely acting like an idiot in front of the girl, to kind of subtly demonstrate to the girl that I didn't care about what she was doing. But I also felt like they thought I was attracted to the little girl and that I was trying to hit on her by practicing a dance with her. So I felt like they were disgusted and angry with me.
Showing posts with label repetition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repetition. Show all posts
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
the steep hill to nowhere; hurtful jokes
Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I was in a car with my step-grandmother and my mother. My step-grandmother was driving. We were just coming home after having taken care of something. We were on the highway. We were now somewhere near a confluence of highways. We were trying to figure out what was the best way home.
My grandma may have taken one of the highways by accident, maybe because she'd been distracted by the conversation all three of us had been having. But my grandma had come up with the idea that we were, after all, traveling on the correct road. This may have had to do with the fact that this road was higher than the other roads. In fact, this road may have been a bridge across a wide river.
But at some point we may have decided that we needed to turn off on another road, or we may have been surprised that this road led us in a direction we hadn't expected. Somehow, we ended up going up a hill that was totally unexpected to me.
The hill was incredibly steep. I didn't know if the car could get up the hill. I even feared that the car might tumble over backwards and roll back down the hill. But nobody else in the car seemed surprised by the height and steepness of the hill.
I thought we must have been meant to go up this hill. But when we got to the crest of the hill, the road completely dead ended. The road just ended in mid-air. A thin metal barrier kept cars from driving off the road and plunging far down to the river below.
My grandma decided to pull us into a u-turn. We scraped along the barrier. I was afraid we were going to fall down into the water. I was also disappointed that I hadn't been able to stop us somehow from wasting our time on this road.
Now we were heading down the high, steep hill. But I was tremendously afraid to look at the downward slope. I had no idea how we could control the speed of our downward movement. I was now even more afraid that the car would end up just toppling down the slope.
Dream #2
I was out in some area that looked like a rooftop with my mom and step-grandmother. My grandma and I were in a "car," even though I don't think the car was really there. My mom was out somewhere else. On the rooftop, there was a star-like configuration of black, fake leather seats like dentist's chairs. Just to the left of that configuration there was a house-shaped structure made of cinder blocks: like the structure that tops a stairwell as it exits onto a rooftop.
My grandma and I were driving the "car" around the house-shaped structure. As we drove past the star-shaped configuration, I noticed that each seat had a couple clumps on it. One clump was large, like a couple of wet blankets, maybe inside or covered by something like a wet paper bag. Another clump was a clump of wet, brightly pastel colored yarn.
Something about these clumps made me think of some mass murderer who had been in the news. Maybe the news had reported that the police had found something like these clumps in the mass murderer's house. But for some reason, the memory of this murderer made me start joking with my grandma about the murderer. We then also remembered some kind of voodoo ritual that involved brightly colored clumps like this. So in our jokes we began combining the story of this mass murderer with stories of voodoo rituals.
My mom was getting really upset by these jokes. My mom told me and my grandma to stop making the jokes. But I laughingly disregarded my mom and kept making the jokes.
We rounded the structure and passed the seats and the wet clumps again. This time the clumps, especially the clumps of yarn, were really wet and mildewy. They were kind of gross. For some reason, this made me think more seriously of voodoo rituals. I made a comment to my grandma about how nobody would seriously use a voodoo ritual to kill anybody. I was saying this more because I wanted to rid myself of a feeling of guilt and to remove any suspicion from myself than because I didn't really believe in voodoo.
Now I was starting to feel bad about having said all this stuff in front of my mom. After she'd said she didn't want to hear anymore, I'd only continued saying things because I thought she was being overly sensitive, and I didn't want to give in so easily to her sensitivity. But now I thought that maybe she was really, reasonably, upset by what I'd been joking about.
We rounded the structure again. This time as we passed the seats, my mom lay on one of them. She looked really exhausted and depressed. She even looked like she might die. I was really upset. I thought that the things I'd said had been responsible for putting my mom into this condition. Now I was really sorry for what I'd said.
Dream #1
I was in a car with my step-grandmother and my mother. My step-grandmother was driving. We were just coming home after having taken care of something. We were on the highway. We were now somewhere near a confluence of highways. We were trying to figure out what was the best way home.
My grandma may have taken one of the highways by accident, maybe because she'd been distracted by the conversation all three of us had been having. But my grandma had come up with the idea that we were, after all, traveling on the correct road. This may have had to do with the fact that this road was higher than the other roads. In fact, this road may have been a bridge across a wide river.
But at some point we may have decided that we needed to turn off on another road, or we may have been surprised that this road led us in a direction we hadn't expected. Somehow, we ended up going up a hill that was totally unexpected to me.
The hill was incredibly steep. I didn't know if the car could get up the hill. I even feared that the car might tumble over backwards and roll back down the hill. But nobody else in the car seemed surprised by the height and steepness of the hill.
I thought we must have been meant to go up this hill. But when we got to the crest of the hill, the road completely dead ended. The road just ended in mid-air. A thin metal barrier kept cars from driving off the road and plunging far down to the river below.
My grandma decided to pull us into a u-turn. We scraped along the barrier. I was afraid we were going to fall down into the water. I was also disappointed that I hadn't been able to stop us somehow from wasting our time on this road.
Now we were heading down the high, steep hill. But I was tremendously afraid to look at the downward slope. I had no idea how we could control the speed of our downward movement. I was now even more afraid that the car would end up just toppling down the slope.
Dream #2
I was out in some area that looked like a rooftop with my mom and step-grandmother. My grandma and I were in a "car," even though I don't think the car was really there. My mom was out somewhere else. On the rooftop, there was a star-like configuration of black, fake leather seats like dentist's chairs. Just to the left of that configuration there was a house-shaped structure made of cinder blocks: like the structure that tops a stairwell as it exits onto a rooftop.
My grandma and I were driving the "car" around the house-shaped structure. As we drove past the star-shaped configuration, I noticed that each seat had a couple clumps on it. One clump was large, like a couple of wet blankets, maybe inside or covered by something like a wet paper bag. Another clump was a clump of wet, brightly pastel colored yarn.
Something about these clumps made me think of some mass murderer who had been in the news. Maybe the news had reported that the police had found something like these clumps in the mass murderer's house. But for some reason, the memory of this murderer made me start joking with my grandma about the murderer. We then also remembered some kind of voodoo ritual that involved brightly colored clumps like this. So in our jokes we began combining the story of this mass murderer with stories of voodoo rituals.
My mom was getting really upset by these jokes. My mom told me and my grandma to stop making the jokes. But I laughingly disregarded my mom and kept making the jokes.
We rounded the structure and passed the seats and the wet clumps again. This time the clumps, especially the clumps of yarn, were really wet and mildewy. They were kind of gross. For some reason, this made me think more seriously of voodoo rituals. I made a comment to my grandma about how nobody would seriously use a voodoo ritual to kill anybody. I was saying this more because I wanted to rid myself of a feeling of guilt and to remove any suspicion from myself than because I didn't really believe in voodoo.
Now I was starting to feel bad about having said all this stuff in front of my mom. After she'd said she didn't want to hear anymore, I'd only continued saying things because I thought she was being overly sensitive, and I didn't want to give in so easily to her sensitivity. But now I thought that maybe she was really, reasonably, upset by what I'd been joking about.
We rounded the structure again. This time as we passed the seats, my mom lay on one of them. She looked really exhausted and depressed. She even looked like she might die. I was really upset. I thought that the things I'd said had been responsible for putting my mom into this condition. Now I was really sorry for what I'd said.
Friday, July 13, 2012
new youtube feature; desert spiral
Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I was out at a busy street intersection in a suburban neighborhood. It was probably mid-afternoon, and the sun was behind a few patches of clouds.
But I was more concerned with some conversation I was having, probably with a young woman and an older woman. The conversation was in my head. I kept having visions cloud my sight, too. The conversation was all about some new (???) feature YouTube was adding. The feature would allow you to put your drawings onto a video. You could then also put music behind the video.
I was thinking of putting some of my own drawings onto YouTube using this new feature. I may have been planning out how to put everything on. My visions were probably of drawings that I'd made.
Dream #2
A woman was driving a car down a road in a small desert town on a summer day. I was probably in the car with the woman. The woman was something like a sales person for a brokerage firm. She was complaining about something that was going on at her firm. She thought she might quit.
We drove past a kind of official looking building -- like a government building built in the mid-twentieth century. It was probably a weird mix of brick boxiness and an older style, with odd, stray, white pilasters. After the official building, we were on the outskirts of town. We drove along a bare patch of desert for a bit. Then we were at some kind of factory, like a gravel mill or asphalt factory, with the conveyor belt that takes the material up to the top of some silo.
The woman was talking about some aspect of her job that was particularly annoying her. The way the woman was talking about it, it seemed like this problem could wreck the whole company. The woman may have wanted to talk to somebody about it. But she might not have thought it was any use.
The scene started over again, except that this time we were deeper into the heart of the small desert town. I first heard a narrator talk about desert towns like this that had been doing very well a few decades ago. The narrator asked, "What made these towns go bad? What caused their downfall?"
The woman and I now approached a T-like intersection. We turned left and were driving past the official building again. This time the woman seemed to be talking to somebody. It may have been like she was on the phone with somebody. It may also have been like she was actually talking to somebody at her office, while she was at her office -- like she was in two places at once, and I could see, or at least feel, both places. The woman was still complaining about the bad stuff going on at her work.
We drove past the barren patch of desert. When we reached the factory, the woman stopped the car. She had received some phone call or some kind of notification saying that she needed to get out of the car and get information. The woman got out. I stayed in the car.
The woman was now walking back to the car. For some reason, I was turned around in the front seat, sitting down on the floor, so that most of my body was down in the foot area, and just my chest and arms were resting on the seat. The woman wasn't in the car yet. But I could hear her talking to somebody. She was saying, "Great. This is just great! I just lost a client. That client did 600 meetings through us last year!"
At first this didn't make sense. How could one client do 600 meetings? Then I realized that a big client could have a number of people as contacts. The contacts could meet with each of the various people at the brokerage firm. And, even if a single person from the client's firm only met with someone at our firm a few times a year, all the meetings would add up. 600 meetings was possible. That meant a lot of money. And that was a lot of money to lose.
The woman was now criticizing me. She said something like, "And I'd expect Preemie to stand up for me a little, and help me deal with some of the things people are doing really wrong around here. But will Preemie stand up? No! He'd rather just hang around, being all distracted, and acting like a little kid!"
I felt ashamed of myself. But I looked at what I was doing in the car. I was still seated in that backwards, on-the-floor way. I was now flipping through some pages of a top-bound, gum-bound notebook. I was shocked. I'd thought this notebook had been all used up. But as I looked through it, I saw that some of the pages had only two or three words on them. The rest of the page would be blank. And the two or three words on the page were always kind of nonsense, silly little phrases that obviously had nothing to do with work.
I was now in a bedroom. It felt like I was still in the desert. The bedroom was yellow with summer light. I had been sitting or laying on the floor. I stood up. I might have seen just a little bit out of a window to my right. I may have seen out to a sandy beach, with the ocean rolling slightly under a swaying breeze.
I turned to my left and looked into a wide, roomy closet. I had either just finished doing laundry or just received a pile of finished laundry from someone. The laundry now all lay on the top shelf of the closet, just above my eye level. I was going to start sorting and folding it.
But I noticed two shirts that weren't mine. The shirts belonged to my brother-in-law. Both shirts were button-up. They may both have been short sleeved. One was grey with orange, flame-like patterns running up it. The other may have been white with black patterns.
I didn't want anybody to think that I was trying to wear my brother-in-law's clothes. I didn't want anybody to think I was trying to be my brother-in-law. I also didn't want anybody to think that I was sexually attracted to my brother-in-law by my having his clothes in my bedroom. So I quickly brought the two shirts out to the living room.
The living room was big and dim, but kind of plain-looking, almost like the living room in a double-wide trailer. The back of the couch faced the hallway and kind of made a border to the living room. My sister, and probably my mom, stood before the couch. Walking up behind the couch, I threw the two shirts onto the top edge of the couch, with a pile of laundry that already lay there. My sister may have asked me a questions, which I may have answered.
I was now back in the car with the woman from the brokerage firm. We were just driving beside the official building. This time the woman was a little more determined. She was saying she was going to do something to change the way things were at the office. I felt determined, too. I felt like I was going to change things, too. I may even have said that I was going to change things.
Suddenly the car stopped. I could hear a young man's voice saying, "Nope! No, no, no."
My view faded into the view of a bedroom. I was laying on the floor, in a pile of blankets. The young man was sitting in a big, stuffed chair to my right, just at about where my shoulders and head were. The young man was skinny, kind of pale, and a little nerdy looking. She was curled up in the chair, with his knees up to his chest. He may have been wearing some chunky eyeglasses.
The young man told me something like, "Nope. You can't go anywhere yet. You're not ready." His reasoning for my not being ready may have been that I didn't have a good enough knowledge of the Spanish language yet.
Apparently the young man was like a guide for me. I was just starting college, and he had been here for a couple of years. So he was going to show me the ropes. He was a lot younger than I, and I thought that his way of acting like he knew more than I was kind of cute. So I decided to humor him and let him think he was my guide. I figured I would get away from him as soon as I could.
In addition to the Spanish he'd already mentioned, the young man told me a few things I'd need to know before I could really go around and do things. One of the things may have been Latin. The other thing, which the young man told me about like it was a great secret, was "COGS."
I wondered why COGS was such a secret. I wondered what it could mean. I said, "Isn't COGS just cost of goods--"
The young man shushed me. He shook his head and said something like, "It's a secret. You're not ready to know it yet." He then pointed over to the right side (his right) of the chair.
I assented. I thought, Well, then it couldn't be what I thought it was. Maybe it had something to do with Spanish or Latin.
But now the young man stood up out of his chair. He may have been carrying a couple of very large straws, like for drinking soda. He walked around to my right side and knelt beside me. He whispered in my ear. "It's a secret. But I'll go ahead and tell you what it is."
The young man now stood up and walked back over to the chair. He reached over the right side of the chair and pulled out a can of Pepsi and a cup of jalapenos. I understood that the young man was going to mix the two things together. I said, "Oh, pepper-flavored Pepsi! That's a great idea!"
The young man didn't mix the Pepsi and the jalapenos. It was more like they just became a new can of Pepsi, a pepper-flavored Pepsi. The young man may actually have had two cans like this.
Two little children, a boy and a girl, came into the room. They jumped up on the chair with the young man. The young man's chair was now very big -- or it may have been broken into three pieces, so that the young man sat on the chair piece, while the two kids sat on something like footstools that faced the young man. And the chairs seemed to be elevated, like they were at the top of a pole. I myself was now elevated, like I was looking at everything from the top bunk of a bunk bed.
The young man held two cans of pepper Pepsi. He had a long straw in each can. The kids took a straw and tasted the Pepsi. Neither kid really liked it. The boy thought it was awful. It may even have been so hot that it burned his mouth. But the girl just thought it tasted kind of funny. She may actually have made a suggestion for making it taste better.
But now the kids were both really tired. So the young man decided that it was time for them to go to bed. The young man left the room. The kids each got onto a bed. The beds were all cluttered with bedding and other stuff. The lights in the bedroom stayed on.
I kind of lost interest in the boy. I watched the little girl as she got into bed. I thought the little girl was cute. For some reason I thought that the little girl was attracted to me, and that she wanted to get my attention. She'd do things like shift around in her bed, trying to get into the same position in her bed that I was in in my bed. I was flattered, and I thought it was really cute. So, without exactly responding to her, I would smile and chuckle a little.
I think at this point, my mother may have been in my bed, too, sitting with her back against the wall and her legs on top of my legs, over my blanket. My bed was cluttered with a lot of stuff, too, like the kids' beds. My mom may just have seemed like a part of the clutter.
I was looking at a few different clothing catalogs. Some of them may have been lingerie catalogs. But none of the catalogs used actual models. They all used mannequins, either full or partial mannequins. And sometimes, the mannequins were arranged in circle or star patterns, or other patterns that made the brightly-colored clothing they wore look more like paint samples.
I thought all the clothing the mannequins wore was sexy, in a kind of cheap way. The fabric was all cheap, and the colors were way gaudy. But I liked the feeling of being cheap like that. And I was thinking I might like some of those female fashions or lingerie for myself.
The little girl was still shifting around in the bed. But now she had a big beanbag chair propped up behind her back. There may even have been a parasol propped into the back of the beanbag chair. I thought to myself, Wow, that girl really is trying to lay down exactly in the position that I'm laying down in! But now I started to wonder whether that was true.
Finally, I think the little girl was annoyed by my constantly looking over at her. She called out for somebody, maybe a man. I realized that the little girl was trying to lay down in bed exactly like some man she was attracted to. The man was a real man: a strong, tough man. The little girl wanted the man in bed with her. And sometimes he would come around to be with her. But when he couldn't, she would try to lay down in bed exactly like he did.
I don't think the man was around. But I heard my sister come in the door, possibly with her best friend. The little girl was so happy to hear my sister come in the door that she shouted with glee. I stood up out of bed and walked into the hallway. My sister and her best friend were just walking into the house. They were in the living room, which was at the end of the long, long hallway. They may have sat down a bunch of shopping bags.
I knew that my sister hadn't eaten yet. But it was some holiday, and my mom had fixed some kind of sausage stew. There was a whole, big pot of the stew, I knew, in the kitchen. So I walked into the kitchen to tell my sister about it. As I waited for my sister to come into the kitchen, I kind of felt hungry myself. So I thought I would grab myself a bowl of the sausage stew.
My sister came into the kitchen. She was holding a tall, clear drinking glass full of sausage stew. I told my sister that our mom had fixed sausage stew for the holiday. My sister said she knew. My sister told me a few other things that made me understand that while my sister had been away (maybe at work?) she had worried that everybody would have eaten the sausage stew, and that there would be none for her. My sister had even brought herself a glass of sausage stew (from her work?) in case there wasn't any left at home.
But I knew there was plenty of stew here. We stood beside the fridge. There was a huge pot beside the fridge. There was also, I thought, a huge pot inside the fridge. And I was pretty sure there was a huge pot on the counter opposite the fridge.
I was still trying to get myself a bowl of stew. But, even while she was still talking to me rather calmly, as I went to grab some stew out of the pot by the fridge, my sister clamped her hand down on my arm, forcing it down to the counter and keeping me immobile. I knew she was trying to get me to be considerate and wait until she'd gotten some stew before I went back for more. But I struggled and struggled with my sister. Finally my sister either just gave up or disappeared.
I felt bad that I'd struggled with my sister. I looked at the pot of stew. It really didn't look like there was much left. I opened the fridge, looking for the other pot of stew. But there was no stew in the fridge.
The fridge didn't close all the way. There was a huge plastic bin of food on the floor keeping the fridge door open. The food was all in baggies. I couldn't tell what it was. So I pulled it out and looked at it, thinking that maybe I shouldn't have any more stew, but that, if I could find something else good to eat, I would. I sat the big bin on the counter. But, looking closely, I could see that the baggies were all full of stuff like jellybeans. I realized this was just stuff for my sister's children's school lunches.
I put the bin back. I started looking for the pots of stew again. But I couldn't find anything. Eventually I somehow ended up getting distracted by a computer screen that was maybe at the back end of the kitchen. There was some internet page up. The page had a black background and purplish lettering. The page was all about food people ate on whatever holiday this was. There was a photo of sausage stew. Suddenly sausage stew filled my field of view -- kind of all stretched out, like it was being wobbled through an anamorphic lens.
I was now in a big, very nice living room with my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, and a couple of their friends. The room was filled with yellow light. The living room opened up to another spacious room that I couldn't quite see. Everybody seemed to be coming out of that room.
My mom said something like, "RC from our old neighborhood died. He had a kidney issue. It was fatal. The doctors knew it. It started with the digestion. Then he had a quick, acute pain, and he went unconscious. The doctors always know, with a quick, acute pain, that the kidney issue is fatal. If it's something they can cure, you generally don't feel the pain first."
My brother-in-law asked, "Oh, really? So if you feel the pain, then you know the kidney disease is fatal? And you go unconscious, too? Well, what I also heard was it was in the digestion. His digestion was really bad. He ate really terribly."
I imagined the "kidney" being something more like an appendix, or like some kind of little knob coming off of the intestines. I imagined it getting bright yellow.
***
UPDATE: Added two drawings to dream #2, July 13, 2012, 2:05 PM, Mountain Standard Time.
Dream #1
I was out at a busy street intersection in a suburban neighborhood. It was probably mid-afternoon, and the sun was behind a few patches of clouds.
But I was more concerned with some conversation I was having, probably with a young woman and an older woman. The conversation was in my head. I kept having visions cloud my sight, too. The conversation was all about some new (???) feature YouTube was adding. The feature would allow you to put your drawings onto a video. You could then also put music behind the video.
I was thinking of putting some of my own drawings onto YouTube using this new feature. I may have been planning out how to put everything on. My visions were probably of drawings that I'd made.
Dream #2
A woman was driving a car down a road in a small desert town on a summer day. I was probably in the car with the woman. The woman was something like a sales person for a brokerage firm. She was complaining about something that was going on at her firm. She thought she might quit.
We drove past a kind of official looking building -- like a government building built in the mid-twentieth century. It was probably a weird mix of brick boxiness and an older style, with odd, stray, white pilasters. After the official building, we were on the outskirts of town. We drove along a bare patch of desert for a bit. Then we were at some kind of factory, like a gravel mill or asphalt factory, with the conveyor belt that takes the material up to the top of some silo.
The woman was talking about some aspect of her job that was particularly annoying her. The way the woman was talking about it, it seemed like this problem could wreck the whole company. The woman may have wanted to talk to somebody about it. But she might not have thought it was any use.
The scene started over again, except that this time we were deeper into the heart of the small desert town. I first heard a narrator talk about desert towns like this that had been doing very well a few decades ago. The narrator asked, "What made these towns go bad? What caused their downfall?"
The woman and I now approached a T-like intersection. We turned left and were driving past the official building again. This time the woman seemed to be talking to somebody. It may have been like she was on the phone with somebody. It may also have been like she was actually talking to somebody at her office, while she was at her office -- like she was in two places at once, and I could see, or at least feel, both places. The woman was still complaining about the bad stuff going on at her work.
We drove past the barren patch of desert. When we reached the factory, the woman stopped the car. She had received some phone call or some kind of notification saying that she needed to get out of the car and get information. The woman got out. I stayed in the car.
The woman was now walking back to the car. For some reason, I was turned around in the front seat, sitting down on the floor, so that most of my body was down in the foot area, and just my chest and arms were resting on the seat. The woman wasn't in the car yet. But I could hear her talking to somebody. She was saying, "Great. This is just great! I just lost a client. That client did 600 meetings through us last year!"
At first this didn't make sense. How could one client do 600 meetings? Then I realized that a big client could have a number of people as contacts. The contacts could meet with each of the various people at the brokerage firm. And, even if a single person from the client's firm only met with someone at our firm a few times a year, all the meetings would add up. 600 meetings was possible. That meant a lot of money. And that was a lot of money to lose.
The woman was now criticizing me. She said something like, "And I'd expect Preemie to stand up for me a little, and help me deal with some of the things people are doing really wrong around here. But will Preemie stand up? No! He'd rather just hang around, being all distracted, and acting like a little kid!"
I felt ashamed of myself. But I looked at what I was doing in the car. I was still seated in that backwards, on-the-floor way. I was now flipping through some pages of a top-bound, gum-bound notebook. I was shocked. I'd thought this notebook had been all used up. But as I looked through it, I saw that some of the pages had only two or three words on them. The rest of the page would be blank. And the two or three words on the page were always kind of nonsense, silly little phrases that obviously had nothing to do with work.
I was now in a bedroom. It felt like I was still in the desert. The bedroom was yellow with summer light. I had been sitting or laying on the floor. I stood up. I might have seen just a little bit out of a window to my right. I may have seen out to a sandy beach, with the ocean rolling slightly under a swaying breeze.
I turned to my left and looked into a wide, roomy closet. I had either just finished doing laundry or just received a pile of finished laundry from someone. The laundry now all lay on the top shelf of the closet, just above my eye level. I was going to start sorting and folding it.
But I noticed two shirts that weren't mine. The shirts belonged to my brother-in-law. Both shirts were button-up. They may both have been short sleeved. One was grey with orange, flame-like patterns running up it. The other may have been white with black patterns.
I didn't want anybody to think that I was trying to wear my brother-in-law's clothes. I didn't want anybody to think I was trying to be my brother-in-law. I also didn't want anybody to think that I was sexually attracted to my brother-in-law by my having his clothes in my bedroom. So I quickly brought the two shirts out to the living room.
The living room was big and dim, but kind of plain-looking, almost like the living room in a double-wide trailer. The back of the couch faced the hallway and kind of made a border to the living room. My sister, and probably my mom, stood before the couch. Walking up behind the couch, I threw the two shirts onto the top edge of the couch, with a pile of laundry that already lay there. My sister may have asked me a questions, which I may have answered.
I was now back in the car with the woman from the brokerage firm. We were just driving beside the official building. This time the woman was a little more determined. She was saying she was going to do something to change the way things were at the office. I felt determined, too. I felt like I was going to change things, too. I may even have said that I was going to change things.
Suddenly the car stopped. I could hear a young man's voice saying, "Nope! No, no, no."
My view faded into the view of a bedroom. I was laying on the floor, in a pile of blankets. The young man was sitting in a big, stuffed chair to my right, just at about where my shoulders and head were. The young man was skinny, kind of pale, and a little nerdy looking. She was curled up in the chair, with his knees up to his chest. He may have been wearing some chunky eyeglasses.
The young man told me something like, "Nope. You can't go anywhere yet. You're not ready." His reasoning for my not being ready may have been that I didn't have a good enough knowledge of the Spanish language yet.
Apparently the young man was like a guide for me. I was just starting college, and he had been here for a couple of years. So he was going to show me the ropes. He was a lot younger than I, and I thought that his way of acting like he knew more than I was kind of cute. So I decided to humor him and let him think he was my guide. I figured I would get away from him as soon as I could.
In addition to the Spanish he'd already mentioned, the young man told me a few things I'd need to know before I could really go around and do things. One of the things may have been Latin. The other thing, which the young man told me about like it was a great secret, was "COGS."
I wondered why COGS was such a secret. I wondered what it could mean. I said, "Isn't COGS just cost of goods--"
The young man shushed me. He shook his head and said something like, "It's a secret. You're not ready to know it yet." He then pointed over to the right side (his right) of the chair.
I assented. I thought, Well, then it couldn't be what I thought it was. Maybe it had something to do with Spanish or Latin.
But now the young man stood up out of his chair. He may have been carrying a couple of very large straws, like for drinking soda. He walked around to my right side and knelt beside me. He whispered in my ear. "It's a secret. But I'll go ahead and tell you what it is."
The young man now stood up and walked back over to the chair. He reached over the right side of the chair and pulled out a can of Pepsi and a cup of jalapenos. I understood that the young man was going to mix the two things together. I said, "Oh, pepper-flavored Pepsi! That's a great idea!"
The young man didn't mix the Pepsi and the jalapenos. It was more like they just became a new can of Pepsi, a pepper-flavored Pepsi. The young man may actually have had two cans like this.
Two little children, a boy and a girl, came into the room. They jumped up on the chair with the young man. The young man's chair was now very big -- or it may have been broken into three pieces, so that the young man sat on the chair piece, while the two kids sat on something like footstools that faced the young man. And the chairs seemed to be elevated, like they were at the top of a pole. I myself was now elevated, like I was looking at everything from the top bunk of a bunk bed.
The young man held two cans of pepper Pepsi. He had a long straw in each can. The kids took a straw and tasted the Pepsi. Neither kid really liked it. The boy thought it was awful. It may even have been so hot that it burned his mouth. But the girl just thought it tasted kind of funny. She may actually have made a suggestion for making it taste better.
But now the kids were both really tired. So the young man decided that it was time for them to go to bed. The young man left the room. The kids each got onto a bed. The beds were all cluttered with bedding and other stuff. The lights in the bedroom stayed on.
I kind of lost interest in the boy. I watched the little girl as she got into bed. I thought the little girl was cute. For some reason I thought that the little girl was attracted to me, and that she wanted to get my attention. She'd do things like shift around in her bed, trying to get into the same position in her bed that I was in in my bed. I was flattered, and I thought it was really cute. So, without exactly responding to her, I would smile and chuckle a little.
I think at this point, my mother may have been in my bed, too, sitting with her back against the wall and her legs on top of my legs, over my blanket. My bed was cluttered with a lot of stuff, too, like the kids' beds. My mom may just have seemed like a part of the clutter.
I was looking at a few different clothing catalogs. Some of them may have been lingerie catalogs. But none of the catalogs used actual models. They all used mannequins, either full or partial mannequins. And sometimes, the mannequins were arranged in circle or star patterns, or other patterns that made the brightly-colored clothing they wore look more like paint samples.
I thought all the clothing the mannequins wore was sexy, in a kind of cheap way. The fabric was all cheap, and the colors were way gaudy. But I liked the feeling of being cheap like that. And I was thinking I might like some of those female fashions or lingerie for myself.
The little girl was still shifting around in the bed. But now she had a big beanbag chair propped up behind her back. There may even have been a parasol propped into the back of the beanbag chair. I thought to myself, Wow, that girl really is trying to lay down exactly in the position that I'm laying down in! But now I started to wonder whether that was true.
Finally, I think the little girl was annoyed by my constantly looking over at her. She called out for somebody, maybe a man. I realized that the little girl was trying to lay down in bed exactly like some man she was attracted to. The man was a real man: a strong, tough man. The little girl wanted the man in bed with her. And sometimes he would come around to be with her. But when he couldn't, she would try to lay down in bed exactly like he did.
I don't think the man was around. But I heard my sister come in the door, possibly with her best friend. The little girl was so happy to hear my sister come in the door that she shouted with glee. I stood up out of bed and walked into the hallway. My sister and her best friend were just walking into the house. They were in the living room, which was at the end of the long, long hallway. They may have sat down a bunch of shopping bags.
I knew that my sister hadn't eaten yet. But it was some holiday, and my mom had fixed some kind of sausage stew. There was a whole, big pot of the stew, I knew, in the kitchen. So I walked into the kitchen to tell my sister about it. As I waited for my sister to come into the kitchen, I kind of felt hungry myself. So I thought I would grab myself a bowl of the sausage stew.
My sister came into the kitchen. She was holding a tall, clear drinking glass full of sausage stew. I told my sister that our mom had fixed sausage stew for the holiday. My sister said she knew. My sister told me a few other things that made me understand that while my sister had been away (maybe at work?) she had worried that everybody would have eaten the sausage stew, and that there would be none for her. My sister had even brought herself a glass of sausage stew (from her work?) in case there wasn't any left at home.
But I knew there was plenty of stew here. We stood beside the fridge. There was a huge pot beside the fridge. There was also, I thought, a huge pot inside the fridge. And I was pretty sure there was a huge pot on the counter opposite the fridge.
I was still trying to get myself a bowl of stew. But, even while she was still talking to me rather calmly, as I went to grab some stew out of the pot by the fridge, my sister clamped her hand down on my arm, forcing it down to the counter and keeping me immobile. I knew she was trying to get me to be considerate and wait until she'd gotten some stew before I went back for more. But I struggled and struggled with my sister. Finally my sister either just gave up or disappeared.
I felt bad that I'd struggled with my sister. I looked at the pot of stew. It really didn't look like there was much left. I opened the fridge, looking for the other pot of stew. But there was no stew in the fridge.
The fridge didn't close all the way. There was a huge plastic bin of food on the floor keeping the fridge door open. The food was all in baggies. I couldn't tell what it was. So I pulled it out and looked at it, thinking that maybe I shouldn't have any more stew, but that, if I could find something else good to eat, I would. I sat the big bin on the counter. But, looking closely, I could see that the baggies were all full of stuff like jellybeans. I realized this was just stuff for my sister's children's school lunches.
I put the bin back. I started looking for the pots of stew again. But I couldn't find anything. Eventually I somehow ended up getting distracted by a computer screen that was maybe at the back end of the kitchen. There was some internet page up. The page had a black background and purplish lettering. The page was all about food people ate on whatever holiday this was. There was a photo of sausage stew. Suddenly sausage stew filled my field of view -- kind of all stretched out, like it was being wobbled through an anamorphic lens.
I was now in a big, very nice living room with my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, and a couple of their friends. The room was filled with yellow light. The living room opened up to another spacious room that I couldn't quite see. Everybody seemed to be coming out of that room.
My mom said something like, "RC from our old neighborhood died. He had a kidney issue. It was fatal. The doctors knew it. It started with the digestion. Then he had a quick, acute pain, and he went unconscious. The doctors always know, with a quick, acute pain, that the kidney issue is fatal. If it's something they can cure, you generally don't feel the pain first."
My brother-in-law asked, "Oh, really? So if you feel the pain, then you know the kidney disease is fatal? And you go unconscious, too? Well, what I also heard was it was in the digestion. His digestion was really bad. He ate really terribly."
I imagined the "kidney" being something more like an appendix, or like some kind of little knob coming off of the intestines. I imagined it getting bright yellow.
***
UPDATE: Added two drawings to dream #2, July 13, 2012, 2:05 PM, Mountain Standard Time.
Monday, May 7, 2012
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.
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