turtle children

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was standing out on a bridge over a river with my mother and my sister. We were in a pine forest in the mountains. The ground was mostly grey, and the sun was hidden behind the mountains, so that the atmosphere around us was a chill blue-grey. The bridge was hefty and stout, and it stood maybe seven meters above the river. The river was wide, a little shallow, with rushes of water occasionally broken by small boulders.

My mom was talking to me, probably about some family gossip that I really didn't want to hear about. I had turned away a bit and was looking down to the river. I was surprised to see two turtles swimming in the water. They were bigger than any turtles I'd seen in the wild: their shells were about a meter long. The turtles were so big I assumed they must have been sea turtles.

Hoping I wouldn't make my mom think I was trying to change the subject, I cried out, "Look! It's sea turtles!" I was now surprised to see the heads of the turtles. The heads, which were submerged under the rushing water, were a bright, vivid green-yellow, and as round and wrinkle-free as the head of a cartoon turtle.

The turtles' shells were now gone, as if the turtles had gotten out of their shells. I knew my mom wouldn't believe me about the turtles if she couldn't see their shells. But I was more surprised to see how strongly, swimming around in the water, the turtles' bright, green bodies resembled the bodies of human beings.

I was trying to think how I could prove to my mom that the swimming creatures were actually the "sea turtles" I'd seen. But I was more concerned with trying to prove to myself that these creatures were actually turtles. They resembled humans. But, I thought, that's only because they actually are (???!!!) evolutionarily very close to humans. And they weren't wrinkled at all. But, I considered, the wrinkly appearance of turtles only came, after all, from their being stuck in their shells.

Now three turtles stood up onto a wide, flat rock almost directly under the bridge. But the two green turtles were gone, and these three turtles were a pinkish purple, mottled on their backs with black spots like leopard spots, though I may have thought of them as giraffe spots.

The three turtles looked just like three little, naked girls, except that their heads were bald and a little more bulbous than human heads. I may have had the idea that these turtles, or turtles in general, were not just closely related to humans, but were actually a part of some extraterrestrial race.

I probably kept waiting for the two green turtles to show up. And I probably still kept hoping for a turtle to get back into its shell, so I could prove to my mom that I'd seen a sea turtle.

grandma's kitchen

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with my great grandmother and sister in my great grandma's kitchen (in waking life, my great grandma died about four years ago, and her house was sold). The three of us stood at an inner corner of the counter. The light in the kitchen was filled with gentle, white-gold sunlight.

My great grandma had just fixed some Wyler's cherry juice in a clear, glass pitcher. At first the juice was murky, like the grains of powdered juice mix hadn't dissolved all the way into the water. I was kind of disappointed. But then the liquid began to clarify into a crytsal-clear, sharp red. It looked delicious. I really looked forward to drinking some of the juice.

great grandmother wants to kill me

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I was in front of my great grandmother's house. I may have been sent to check on my great grandma because she was sick. (My great grandma had actually died a few years ago.)

I walked up the steps to my grandma's house. The screen door was closed, but the front door was at least halfway open. My grandma was just inside, kneeling on the floor in some kind of meditative position.

My grandma was so still, I was almost sure she was dead. I thought I had gotten here too late. But then she stood up. I knew, as I think everybody in my family knew, that my grandma was going to die soon.

My grandma was acting weird and saying weird, drifty things. She walked out of the living room and into her bedroom. She returned with a container of Vaseline and a pair of scissors behind her back. I thought she was going to kill me.

I probably ran out of the house in fear. I got to the edge of my grandma's yard and then stopped running. I started talking about how I remembered all the nice stuff my grandma had done with me when I was a child.

I turned around and addressed my grandma, who stood outside her door. I walked back over to my grandma and spoke with her a little more. We were now leaning against the railing of the steps, as if we, or at least my grandma, were the height of a child.

My grandma, I saw, had dropped a blade like a scalpel on the ground. I knew that my grandma actually had been planning to kill me. But our talk had mellowed her anger.

We walked back inside. My grandma went back into her room. But now a few other members of my family were here, including my mom, and probably also my sister. It was like we were all here for my grandma's funeral, or to be with my grandma as she died.

My mom and I walked into the kitchen. My mom gave me a pile of mail which had been directed to me, though it had apparently come to my mom's house. It was a bunch of large-size envelopes. One of the envelopes may have had a post-it note on it saying "FOR YOU?"

I opened a couple of the envelopes. They came from a couple different apartment complexes. They started out as late rent notices, then they became eviction notices. I walked with these envelopes back into the living room.

Some other family member of mine may have addressed me, causing me to turn around. My family members may have been talking about me or my grandma as if one of us were physically or mentally ill.

teaching tooth brushing; the son's return

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bathroom with three of my nephews. The only nephew I recognized was my youngest nephew. We were all standing in front the sink. I was apparently teaching my nephews how to brush their teeth.

All of my nephews may have been playing with their toothbrushes in a really messy way. But at least the older two seemed to be brushing their teeth. But my youngest seemed to be really messy. He was running his toothbrush back and forth under the faucet and knocking it against the sink. It was hard to tell whether he was having trouble learning how to rinse his toothbrush correctly or whether he was just having fun being messy.

I backed away from the sink. I seemed to be backing out of the bathroom altogether. I may have started to give up hope on being able to teach my nephews after all. But I stopped at the threshold. I didn't want to put off a feeling of being disappointed in my nephew. So I smiled and said, "My dear, little nephew," so he'd know I loved him.

Dream #2

I was reading a book, probably about some incident that had "really occurred" (at least in the dream world). A young man had gone missing. Most people had given the young man up for dead. But the young man's sister (?) and mother believed the young man was still alive.

The book had some narrative segments in conventional third person. But a lot of the book was, I think, letters between the mother and the sister. The mother kept living, somehow, as if the young man would be found. The sister was often ambivalent. Sometimes she seemed to criticize the mother for being so optimistic about finding the young man.

The conflict between the mother and sister eventually became pretty painful. The mother herself was even starting to wonder whether she was crazy. The conflict was so painful, and the waiting for the son so tedious, that I started flipping through the pages, toward the end of the book.

I must have read this book before. I knew there were one or two final letters from the mother, where she really thought she'd gone too far in her hopes, and where she was finally resolved to give up hope of seeing the young man alive again. I turned to these letters, knowing how beautiful they were, and knowing that the next letter or "article" in the book would reveal that the young man had been found alive.

I knew there was a photo, like from the 1940s, of the young man being escorted out of the car by two policemen, probably because he was too weak to walk.

I knew that there was also a photo of the mother as she had gone to reunite with the young man. The woman was kind of stately, elegant, wearing a white dress and a small hat with a feather on top and a small, net veil coming down from the brim of the hat and down just over the woman's brow.

I knew that there was some part near this climax where the mother had decided to wear this outfit before she'd known the young man had been found. She'd called it her reuinion dress. Now that the young man had been found, the mother felt justified in having worn the dress. This didn't quite make sense to me, given that, just before, the mother had resolved to give up hoping for the young man's return.

something i don't know; family sickness

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at an office desk, on the phone. I was staring down at the grey base of the phone. I had just started a sales call with someone. The person on the other end of the phone was some business manager. He told me, "I already know the basics of your product. I don't have time for you to tell me all the stuff I already know. Tell me something I don't already know."

I knew there were a few little things I could tell the man that he didn't know. But I also knew that it was protocol, for the company I worked at, to give the basic overview of the company. I was bound to do it. I thought, however, that I would shorten the overview for the person.

So I started the overview, beginning with the date and the reason of the company's founding. But as soon as I'd started that little overview, I could hear the man sigh and then hang up the phone. I called out, "Hello? Hello?" hoping the man was still there. But he was gone.

Dream #2

I was in a hospital or doctor's office with my mother. We had just finished taking care of something, either for my mom or my sister. My sister had been with us, but now she was out in the car. My mom and I walked out of the building and into the bright, calm, yellow daylight.

I had been a little upset that my sister had gone out to wait in the car. I felt like she'd gone out there either because she was annoyed that she'd had to wait so long for the thing we'd been doing, or else because something either my mom or I had done had annoyed her.

But my mom told me that, really, my sister was just upset at the gravity of the situation, and that she couldn't stay within that situation for very long without feeling overwhelmed. The way my mom was talking, I felt like my sister's anxiety may have had more to do with an illness my sister had, rather than with an illness my mother had. (In waking life, my family is currently dealing with the fact that my mom is having some serious, though temporary, physical problems.)

I approached the family vehicle. It was like a van, but the cabin's floor seemed really low to the ground, and the ceiling seemed to extend 30cm or so higher than the ceiling of a normal van. My sister sat in the front passenger seat. For some reason I may now have felt like my mom was gone. Maybe she'd stayed in the hospital. My mom had driven my sister out her. But now I had to drive my sister back somewhere, probably back to her house.

Looking at my sister as she sat in the car, I could see that she was sick, as my mom had told me. My sister looked very strange, overall. She was so tall her head almost hit the ceiling. She also seemed much dumpier and more overweight than usual -- but extremely pear shaped, so that her head looked grotesquely thin. Her complexion also had a greenish pale pallor.

color me innocent; phone tapper; dirty pink diaper; acting strange

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had to prove something to somebody, possibly that somebody was innocent. But I did this by laying erect, balanced on the arm of a couch, so that my feet pointed up and my head pointed down toward the seat cushions, and drawing or coloring in a coloring book. I may have been a little boy or girl.

Dream #2

It was daytime. I stood out on a road full of big, white buildings. The buildings all felt abandoned, and the road wasn't very active at all.

I was speaking with my old friend R on my cell phone. R and I seemed to be getting along alright, even though we hadn't spoken in a while.

But now R may have said something like, "Now I'll show you what I can do." The phone hung up. Then the phone -- which was still a cell phone, but looked like a long, corded phone -- began ringing wildly. I picked up the phone and heard R speaking. But the phone kept ringing wildly.

R said, "Now I'll make it stop." The ringing stopped. R said, "See how I control things?"

R told me he'd been tapping my and my family's phones, listening to all our conversations. Something one of my family members, maybe my sister, had done, had insulted R. Now R was going to make us pay for it. And there was nothing we could do to stop R. R was just too well in control of the situation.

The conversation was now over. I stood out on the road, wondering what R would do. I saw my sister riding a bicycle down the road. I felt sorry and afraid for my sister. I wished I could tell her something to stop what was going on. But I couldn't think of what to tell her.

Dream #3

I was in some house. There were a lot of other people here. We were all maybe in our twenties and thirties. We all probably lived in the house. The situation didn't feel cramped. Everybody was pretty easygoing.

Some other guy and I were trying to create a disposable diaper that really looked like a baby's diaper but could be worn by adults. We hadn't succeeded, but I needed to leave the house to take care of something.

I grabbed a pack of baby diapers to put on as I left the house. The diapers were like Pampers Baby Dry diapers. But they were all pink, and they felt even softer than Baby Dry diapers. I put on a pair and headed out of the house.

I walked out into a road like a narrow stone road between tall, white buildings, like in a small, European village. Something about the road may have felt like a run-down garage.

I walked back toward the house, worried about something about the diaper, like it would leak, or like people would think I was a pervert for wearing diapers and no pants in public.

But when I opened the door to the house, I saw my mom inside. I didn't want my mom to see me in diapers, not because she didn't know -- it was probably pretty obvious to her that I wore diapers -- but because I didn't want her nose in my business. But I may have thought things would be less awkward if I could ask my mom for some Pull-Ups diapers instead of Baby Dry diapers.

I walked away from the house, not having gone in. I was still wearing the pink diapers. I walked up toward some water which seemed to be flowing up toward the road from some large body of water, like a large river or a sea.

I thought about how much fun it would be to wade in the water in my diaper. I thought it would be nice to get the diaper all soaked. But I also thought the water was probably really dirty somehow, even though it was clear. A little diaper like this wouldn't keep me from being contaminated with whatver made this water so dirty.

Dream #4

It was daytime. I was walking through a long parking lot in an apartment complex. I was upset or angry about something and making dirty faces because of it. Some person I couldn't see very well walked past me.

I tried to disregard the person. But she caught my attention. I looked up to see that the person was NB, a girl who works in the landlord's office at my apartment complex. I felt bad for having tried to ignore NB. NB looked concerned for me, like I was acting very strange.

excalibots; heartwarming procedure

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A spaceship, or a TV stage made to look like a spaceship, like from the TV show Star Trek. A group of people were out on the control deck. The ship was probably orbiting over some planet.

A strange life form had been detected on the planet. It was causing some alarm to the crew of the spaceship. The Captain of the ship, a man with sharp, chiseled features, bronze-tan skin, and dark blonde hair, decided to send some people down to see what the life form was.

The Captain transported himself into the transporter room, which also served as a debriefing room. The room was mostly dark, with black floor and ceiling, and walls that showed nothing but stars.

The Captain stood with another person, kind of like Scotty from Star Trek, before a meter-long conventional telescope that wasn't pointed anywhere in particular. The Captain and the other crew member were discussing something about the dangers or logistics of the trip.

A few crew members had been transported down to the planet. I identified with a woman who had been sent down. The woman was in a lake. Three strange creatures emerged from the lake. At first the creatures were like huge, mutated animals, with slimy, pink, fleshy bodies that kind of had the shapes of familiar animals, like zebras. Each creature had a different animal shape.

But the creatures then became big robots, like 1950s conceptions of robots, with metallic "tin can" bodies, coily arms, and clear, glassy, elliptical heads. One of these huge robots, maybe three or four times the size of me/the woman, lifted me/the woman up out of the water as it emerged. The woman may have stood on top of the robot's head or found a way to fit underneath the robot's head, like the head was shaped like a shallow lampshade or parasol.

There was now some exposition about the robot. The woman had either studied this information or was learning it on the spot. The robots had actually been made to take care of human beings. The robots were still concerned with taking care of human beings. In fact, one of the robots wanted to do an examination on the woman right now.

But something was wrong with the robots. They may have been contaminated, so that contact with the robots would infect humans. Or they may have had bad programming, so that, even though they meant to help, they often did harm. The robots needed to be fixed. Then they could help humans again. But until they were fixed, they were viewed as a threat.

The woman seemed to understand all this better than anybody else. She wanted to help the robots. She viewed them as potential helpers. But everybody else may have viewed them only as a threat.

The sequence of events seemed to start again, from the point where the Captain was in the transporter room. The Captain himself may have been planning to go down to the planet. But he was hesitant. He was coming up with a bunch of silly logistics questions to stall getting into the teleporter machine and possibly even to stall the mission altogether.

But the Captain realized that others in the crew recognized that he was just stalling because he was afraid. So he now tried to come up with questions that sounded really brave and noble, to mask the fact that he was still trying to stall the mission. There was an image of a long, crusty roll before the Captain.

The Captain now asked, "What I really want to know is... can we safely transport ourselves... into the planet's crust?" As he asked this, the Captain may have dug a knife just a little bit into the crust of the roll.

Dream #2

It was daytime. I was in a car with my mom. My mom drove, and I sat in the passenger seat. My mom was telling me about some procedure she, and then my sister, had on their hearts. The procedure was just to diagnose whether my mom and sister had heart problems.

In the procedure, something like a fiber optic cable was piped through a vein and then into the heart. Once the cable was in the heart, some little device at the end of the heart would heat up and test some kind of stress levels on the heart.

My mom explained how the procedure hadn't bothered her a whole lot, but how it had really bothered my sister. My mom explained how the procedure wasn't painful. But it did feel strange. It made the heart itch, which was annoying. And it also created an unpleasantly warm sensation in the heart. This warm sensation had probably been the most bothersome sensation of all for my sister.

darts of betrayal; switching states; waiting rooms; the hesitant tranny-baby

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a different time period or dimension. The time period may have been the 1940s. It was night. I was in an apartment living room with a man. The room was dim and sepia-toned. The man probably wore a brownish suit. His hair was swept up in a wave from his forehead.

The back wall, along which the couch stood, was lined with papers. The papers may have been pictures or signs. They all indicated goals or missions -- something having to do with the future aims of the man. The man would throw darts at the pieces of paper. The pieces of paper the darts struck indicated something about the man's future. I think once a certain amount of papers had been hit, the man and I would actually start some kind of mission outside the apartment.

The man had been going along pretty regularly, hitting papers with darts. The man seemed to have good aim, which may have meant that he was putting together a pretty good future or mission. But somehow the man had gotten the idea that I had betrayed him somehow. He may now possibly have been coming to think that I had taken the woman he loved away from him.

This may have been true. I certainly remembered the woman (a dignified woman dressed in a Victorian kind of style, with a wide hairstyle and a form-fitting, white, lace dress that puffed out a bit at the collar and shoulders).

I remembered that the woman and I had been involved in some kind of situation, like a mission. But beyond that, I didn't know anything for certain. The woman and I may have gotten together with the aim of hurting the man, as if the man were bad and we were secretly trying to stop him from attaining some evil goal.

The man, in his disappointment, began tossing the darts around randomly. He tossed them without caring. He even tossed them at other walls, where there were no papers. The man started telling me things that implied that he knew the woman and I had gotten together. I wasn't really upset that the man was angry at me. I was more upset that he now seemed to be bent on messing up his future or mission, just because he was disappointed about this affair, which may not have even happened.

Dream #2

I was in a car with my mom and my third oldest nephew. We were driving through some suburban neighborhood that was full of steep hills. I was talking to my mom about how I thought I should possibly go back and work for the National Parks Service, like I had done about a decade ago.

My mom didn't seem to have much reaction to this. But my nephew was interested, asking what it would mean if I went to work for the Parks Service. I told my nephew that it meant I'd have to move to another state, maybe Arizona or New Mexico. I'd be kind of far away, and I'd be working in the forest or the desert all the time. As I said all of this, an image of a map, probably of the Southwestern United States, formed in my head.

Dream #3

I was in a hospital with my mom and sister, who seemed to be a young child. We were here because my mom needed to be seen by the doctor for something. My mom was taken into some hospital room. My sister and I were in a waiting room. But we were then led into a different waiting room.

At some point my sister and I also got separated from each other. I was supposed to find my sister and bring her into my waiting room. I may have found my sister at some point. I may have been a little annoyed to find that she was in hysterics over something I didn't think was a big deal at all.

Dream #4

I was in some place like a clothing store. There were a lot of men, mostly dressed in drag, around me. The men were all going to give me a makeover for Halloween. They decided they were going to dress me up as some kind of glamorous transvestite adult baby. I think I had an image in my mind's eye of me wearing a blonde wig, some kind of pink and white t-shirt, diapers, and some kind of gold-sequin panties over the diapers.

The guys were just about ready to put makeup on my face. I was getting a little worried. I told them, "Guys, if I start to look really awkward or stupid, don't try to be nice to me about it, okay? Just take the makeup off and we'll forget about all this."

wearing friend's panties; mom accuses me; devil takes over me; creditors harass me

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room like an exhibit room in a museum. The room was dim, with rough, cream-colored walls. The room was divided into two sections, in an L-shape. At the joint of the rooms there was a huge stack of stuff, like boxes. Among the boxes may have been glass and wood museum display cases and cabinets.

I had been crouching on the floor, my back turned at about a 45-degree angle to the piles of stuff. But I now stood and turned toward the piles. My old boss and very good friend EB stood on the other side of the piles. Apparently my job had to do with sorting out these piles. I spoke with EB a little bit about some of my older jobs. EB listened sympathetically with me, possibly agreeing that there had been good parts and bad parts to my old jobs.

I now turned away from the piles of stuff and toward a conveyor belt, which lay on the opposite side of the room. A young woman also stood at the conveyor belt. Our job may have been to take and sort things which came toward us along the conveyor belt. Or it may have been to take things, sort them, and put them on the conveyor belt.

The woman and I spoke for a moment, then turned toward the conveyor belt. As we did so, three boxes, kind of like cake boxes, slid up toward me. The boxes were a little bit open, and I could see that stacks of well-folded lingerie were in each box.

The young woman told me she had put those boxes together for me. She had a bunch of extra lingerie, and she couldn't keep it at her house anymore. Since she knew I liked lingerie, she thought she'd either give or loan me the lingerie. That way I could hold onto the lingerie for safe keeping, but I could also enjoy it. I think the girl liked me, and was turned on by the fact that I liked wearing lingerie. So she may have been hoping that she could see me wearing her lingerie.

I took the boxes of lingerie and walked them to my room (which was now, conveniently, adjacent to the room I was standing in). I sat the boxes of lingerie on my bed.

I knew the woman and I were in kind of a rushed situation, and that I should get back to work as soon as possible. But when I saw some of the lingerie, I felt like I had to try it on. I opened a box and pulled out a few pairs of panties. One pair of panties was pink satin, in a bikini style. I took off my pants and underwear and put on those panties. I may also have taken off my shirt, thinking I'd put a camisole on instead.

I may actually have gone to the bathroom at some point. I may have gotten an erection before or while I was urinating. So now my erection was pressing up against my panties, and there was a little drop of urine wetting the panties.

I now really felt I needed to get back to work. So I stood up and pulled on my pants, which were now dull-green shorts that went down to just below my knees. The shorts rode a little low, so that the waistline of my panties were visible. I walked back out toward the conveyor belt, trying to put my shirt back on in a hurry, so that the workers other than the young woman wouldn't see the waistline of my panties.

The room the conveyor belt was in was a lot larger and airier than it had been before. The room may even have been open somehow to the outdoors. As I reached the conveyor belt, I was still working to put my shirt on. I was standing right in front of the young woman. I could tell that she could see the waistline of my panties. But her reaction was kind of silent. I couldn't really tell what the woman thought of me.

Dream #2

I was in a large room where a presentation was about to be given. The room was full of people. The room was small, like a side room, or a choir's dressing room, at a church. But the room was decorated so that it looked like a small mock-up of a church sanctuary. The room was rectangular. Folding chairs were all set out to face one of the wide walls, with a stage-like area before it that looked like a flowery altar.

I walked up to the seats and sat down. The seats were now almost completely full. I'd saved a seat right next to me with a pamphlet, and maybe a Bible. I was expecting my mom to arrive at any moment. But now the presentation -- something like a business presentation -- had begun, and my mom was nowhere to be seen. I tried to listen to the presentation, but I was a little anxious about my mom.

Suddenly my mom and sister walked into the room. They stomped up behind me. My mom whispered over my shoulder and into my ear, "Do you want me to be a bitch?" I was a little shocked by this. Apparently my mom and sister were angry with me. I couldn't figure out why. My mom sat down in a seat separated by a meter or two from the rest of the seats. My sister may have left the room, as if she were going to take care of some kind of business against me.

I was trying to figure out what could have made my mom so upset with me. I stood up and walked away from the seats. At first I may have been planning to leave the room. But then I got the distinct idea that my mom and sister were planning something against me, using something about internet usage as evidence of my guilt regarding something.

I turned back toward my mom. She now seemed to weigh about twice as much as she does in waking life. She was wearing a turquoise sweater. She may have said or communicated in some other way that she was, in fact, planning to get me in trouble with the law based on something on the internet. I didn't do whatever she was going to claim I'd done on the internet. But she was going to make it look like I had done it.

I knelt down in front of my mom. I may even have rested my chin against something -- like a huge binder? -- that rested on my mom's lap. I may even have rested my chin on my mom's stomach. I whispered to my mom, "Don't you dare try anything like that against me, Mom. I have a lot of support. There are people who are willing to stand up for me. And I've kept in contact with them. They know what I've done. And they can back me up."

I could now see that my mom was backing down from whatever plans she'd had against me. But now that she was backing down, I was starting to feel guilty. I still didn't know what I'd done to make her so angry with me. I would never have tried purposely to hurt my mom's feelings.

Dream #3

It was a sunny day. I was out in some space like a football field for some high school in a mountain town. Around the field, at least beyond one end zone and the left side of the field, were short cliffs and then tall, wooded slopes.

I may have seen or somehow known that the goalposts at the end zone were secretly missile launchers. At the top of each pole in the goalpost was a tiny canister, shaped almost like a battery. This canister was a miniature nuclear missile. I knew that there were also larger nuclear missiles somewhere in this area, maybe underneath the field itself.

There were now pick-up trucks parked out on the football field, like the football field was supposed to be a parking lot. I was having a conversation in my head with one of my old bosses and mentors, JS. I was telling JS that it was a lot of stress and responsibility always having to know about the status of the nuclear missiles. JS agreed with me. I may have been talking about everything as if I were planning to leave this nuclear missile job, or as if I had already left it some time ago.

As I continued to discuss the stress of the job with JS, I may have gotten onto the topic of keeping a steady mind. There were especially times when this was important, such as when one went into a reverie or dream state.

I found myself falling into one of these states right now. In this reverie state I met with two characters whose faces were really unstable. One had really cartoony eyes. Whenever this guy got upset, his eyes would waver about, like some kind of animation made with pastel crayons. Another guy's whole head would become all blurry and shaky in a really scary way.

I understood that these guys were playing these tricks with their appearance as a way to throw my spirit off balance. I was guarding some important secrets, and I was in control of whatever powers the secrets concerned. If the guys could throw me off balance, they thought, they could get control of the powers.

I managed to resist those characters and wake myself up from that reverie state. But I almost immediately fell back into another reverie state. I first found myself walking up one of the cliffs. But I then found myself walking up a wooden staircase in some mansion or cathedral.

I met with a man who basically said he was the  Devil. He tried to take over my mind, rather directly, without playing any games. He was trying to get into me so he could directly control my identity. I had to fight -- somehow -- to keep this character out of my mind. I managed to keep the character out of my mind.

I woke out of this reverie state in some short, shallow-arched tunnel. I was leaning against the concrete wall on the right side of the tunnel, looking out toward some area like a beach. I was rather proud of myself for having fought against the character I'd just fought against. I felt like it had taken a lot of strength.

I walked out of the tunnel. There was some space like an amphitheater: a kind of plaza of tiered concrete. On some of the concrete tiers there were occasional aluminum benches. Just beyond the amphitheater area was a beach or the ocean or a wide, wide field.

Scattered throughout the amphitheater were some young men and women. We were all friends or students or co-workers. We were planning to do something together here. Whatever we were doing may have had something to do with the secret the reverie-characters were trying to get out of me.

Just as the young men and women were deciding to go away from the amphitheater and start taking care of things, I felt my identity shift. I could feel the Devil character taking over my personality. I didn't even care. I thought it was kind of nice. I had the idea that I, now the Devil character, would get close to each young man and woman and take aware their own identities, just like my identity had been taken away. I was very blissful about this, and it all made me want to act very kindly toward the young men and women.

But as I made a few attempts to take the young men's and women's identities away, the young men and women began to suspect who I was. I got afraid of being discovered outright. So I decided to pull back a bit and find a slower way of seducing the young men's and women's minds.

There were a few young men and women standing around and on a long bench. I began playing around on the bench, like I was doing lazy gymnastics moves, while talking about the science and history of transistors and computers. People seemed to be interested in this. I was still feeling rather scared and anxious, trying not to give away who I really was, and hoping to calm down people's suspicions. As I spoke, my voice may even have quivered a little bit, like I was a little kid who was really eager to please and impress.

Dream #4

I was walking on a concrete path in the lawn of a courtyard of "my apartment complex." I may have been trying to take care of something, like paying my rent. But I also knew I was in a lot of financial trouble. I wasn't sure, from day to day, or moment to moment, whether I'd actually have my rent money in the bank. Some creditor, possibly out to get my overdue student loan payments, could actually have found a way to take all the money out of my bank account.

I walked into a hallway leading up to the landlord's office. Along the left wall of the hallway were everybody's mailboxes. I opened up my mailbox and pulled out my mail. There was a lot of junk mail that looked like it was actually important mail. I had to look at it a couple times to make sure it wasn't actually important mail.

I also found some mail from me on the floor or on a chair across the hallway from the mailboxes. I looked through that mail, too. It was like the postal worker had set that mail there instead of in my box because he thought I was going on some long vacation and that I wouldn't be back for a while. It was like laying the mail on the floor was more secure, for longer periods, than laying the mail in my box.

As I approached the landlord's office, I noticed that one of the pieces of mail I thought was junk mail was actually mail from a creditor. A creditor had, in fact, been sent after me for my student loan payments. I now owed a whole bunch of money. It wasn't just all the money that would have gone to my rent: it was a whole lot more money than I even had. I stood frozen at the threshold of my landlord's office -- the office had nobody in it -- wondering what the heck I was supposed to do with myself now.

not quite hired; nephew's medical dilemma; a sculpture in new york

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a job interview. It was supposed to be a professional place, but it looked more like the backstage area of a theater. It seemed to be full of worktables and cluttered everywhere with colored fabrics and trinkets. There was one little office where my interviewer, MH, sat. The room was buried within the clutter of the rest of the place.

MH had decided that he wouldn't be able to hire me. He seemed to be disappointed in my interview. I walked away from the office, rather disappointed in myself and depressed. But only a few seconds later (though it may have felt, in some way, like it was a day or two later), MH walked out and implied that he would like to hire me after all.

MH set up some kind of desk space for me on one of the work tables by clearing off some of the piles of colored fabrics and laying down a laptop. MH hadn't quite told me he'd like me to work for him. Instead, he told me something like he needed me to stick around for a while. He said he needed some kind of data entered into a system before some event occurred, like the visit of some clients. He was just asking me if I could do this project as a favor to him. But I understood that if I did this project well, I'd probably stick around for even longer.

A couple other guys now started filtering into the room. They looked young, like recent college graduates. One of them seemed to be dressed in business casual clothes. But at least one other guy was dressed in a strange, but somewhat fashionable way. One of these guys was very short and pale. He had slightly shaggy, black hair. He wore pale, greyish jeans and a pale, greyish, denim jacket. Something else about his attire looked very clunky an 1980s-style.

The young men, when they saw me, seemed to be jealous of me, wondering whether I wasn't here to take away their jobs. I tried to make a point, apparently through my body language, that I was here to do a completely different job, not to take anybody's job.

To prove this, at one point, I stood up right when the grey denim boy was walking past me. I may have been planning to show him something. Instead, the young man became a little frightened of me and began walking backwards as I walked forward. But somehow we began talking, and eventually we were talking either about something we both liked (like some kind of art) or about some kind of project I'd now volunteered to help the grey denim boy with.

I may have been a little worried, now, about helping the grey denim boy with a project. It seemed like he was kind of weird. I didn't know if everybody else would think I was weird for helping this boy with something. But then I realized that most everybody else here also dressed weird. So nobody would think anything about it.

The grey denim boy and I had cleared off some of the clutter of colored fabrics from a work table. There was now a whole cookie sheet of sweet-looking desserts. The desserts were like scone-sized globs of maple, pecans, and sugar, all clumped and crystallized together. There wasn't any crust or pastry or anything attached to these sugary globs.

The whole team of workers was now, apparently, gathering together to have some kind of a team meal and meeting. We gathered at a table in the center of the room. There were little spaces cleared out for each of us, so we could sit down our meals, or desserts, and our laptops. But the clutter was so high that we couldn't see around it to the other people sitting at the table with us.

The meeting never seemed to start or finish. Instead, people seemed to take forever to sit down, and then they'd stand right back up and walk away. I sat at my space, waiting for instructions or something. I thought about eating my dessert. But I felt bad about doing so. I knew that eating too much during the day would make my body act weird. I was trying to figure whether I could somehow work eating the dessert into a schedule that would be okay for my body.

Dream #2

I was in an elevator with an older man. The man was white, stood tall, wore a nice business suit, and had fine, white hair. The elevator we were in was going straight up at first. But then it began going upward and forward, diagonally, like we were traveling in an elevator car, but along the tracks of an escalator.

We were, I knew, going up to the 23rd (or 28th?) floor. I knew that my youngest nephew had just been admitted to the hospital. He was sick, possibly with a pulmonary illness. The old man and I were coming to visit my nephew. I believe that we understood, at this point, that nobody else in the family knew about my nephew's condition, including my sister and my mom, who lived with and took care of my nephew.

The doctors wanted to give my nephew some medication. But the doctors didn't know what medication to give him. They apparently couldn't get a hold of my sister or mother, so they called me. The old man and I were now standing just outside the hospital.

I got the message from the doctors via text on my phone. I didn't know how to respond to it. I thought that before I responded to anything, it would be a good idea to try and get a hold of my mother and sister. After some trying, I may have gotten a hold of my mother and sister.

In fact, my sister may now have been sitting near me, on some brick ledge surrounding a raised planting area that held some small trees and shrubs. I may have tried to make a point to my sister that I hadn't been trying to control her life or her son's life by engaging in a conversation with the doctors.

I "said" (or just "felt to" my sister) that the doctors had contacted me, and that I was surprised they'd done so. I "said" that I had only been planning to respond to the doctors because I hadn't been able to get a hold of my sister or mom. I thought that if I couldn't get a hold of anybody, I'd have to respond. The situation seemed too important. It seemed like someone needed to make a decision sooner rather than later, to make sure my nephew was taken care of.

Dream #3

I was looking at a book of sculptures by Japanese artists. The artists all had a style very much like the style for which Takashi Murakami is famous: plastic-looking, cartoon-themed, and visually bubbly and complex. But a lot of the artists didn't color their works. The works would largely be all white.

The book had photos of these sculptures in stores all over the world. Some of the stores may have been cleared out to become temporary exhibit spaces for larger collections of art works. Other stores may have carried on with their business, with just one large piece of sculpture placed in the middle of a store.

The final photo I looked at was of a store I think I recognized as The Disney Store in New York City -- even though it was nothing like The Disney Store. It looked more like a bookstore. There were bookshelves spaced widely apart. The store was kind of small. The walls were barn-red. The ceilings were high. In the center of this store stood a tall, white pedestal with a small, white sculpture of a bulging-headed, Mickey Mouse-like character.

Even though I was looking at a book, the picture began moving panning toward the side, as if I were watching a video on a TV or computer. I felt like I knew the view I had been looking at. But now that the view was shifting, I was feeling less and less familiar with it. The idea of what place I was looking at had only slowly been dawning on me. Now I was losing my focus on what I was looking at.

At the same time, two girls, maybe both Asian girls, began talking near me. One of the girls was my friend. The other girl was my friend's friend, though she may have been my friend as well. My friend and I may have been on some kind of trip together. My friend and her friend were now talking about the various attractions in whatever city we were visiting. (Oddly enough, we may have been standing in the same place that the photo in the book was showing.)

I needed to get back to the first view this moving photo had shown. I put my finger down on the paper and swiped my finger over to the left. The photo, which had been panning off to the right, now moved left (I think). It now reached the original spot. This view looked mostly like the original view, even though I think there were some changes to the view that looked a little uncanny and frustrating to me.

I suddenly called out to the two girls, "Look! It's the Disney Store in New York! I can recognize it!" The girls may have looked at the photo for a moment, not really paying attention to what I was saying. Then they may have looked away. I had felt like it was really important for me to show that I knew the view. I was trying to prove to the girls that I had lived in New York, and that I knew the sights of New York. I was starting to think that nobody really believed anymore that I had ever lived in New York.

dirt lot buildings; flying through grandmother's house

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I had walked a distance and now found myself in a gigantic dirt lot. In the dirt lot there were a couple of tall, modern-looking office buildings. The lot was lit up, like there were powerful, stadium-style lights somewhere over the lot.

I may have had the feeling that I was supposed to head into one of these buildings. The building had glass walls all the way up. The walls may have been coated with a dark, reflective material. But now they seemed to be gleaming with pink neon light, like they were electrified.

For some reason I decided not to go into this building. It may have been due to some conversation I was hearing in my head involving my youngest nephew. I ended up on some slope near the building, so that I was eye to eye with about the mid level of the building. As I walked along the ridge of the slope, the building lost all of its light and just became a building of dark, reflective glass walls.

I now noticed another office building. This office building was made mostly of concrete, and it had a kind of weird shape. It seemed like stairwells connected through to the outdoors by open passageways. There were also a lot of overhangs in the building, like ledges. The ledges and passageways were all well lit by incandescent light.

My youngest nephew and a couple other people, probably family members, all sat in a circle under one of the ledges of the building. The group may have been playing a game. I sat down with a group, probably to have some kind of a conversation with them.

Dream #2

It was daytime. I was walking down the sidewalk, heading toward the house where my great grandmother used to live (my great grandmother died about three years ago in waking life). I was heading down to the house from the north. The house on the south side of my grandma's house seemed to be undergoing construction. There were some ruts and a lot of upturned soil in the front yard. I may also have seen, or at least heard, some construction equipment.

I knew that it was early in the afternoon, maybe around 2 PM. I was coming back to my grandma's house as if this was where I lived, or where I was staying for a little while. I didn't want the construction workers at my grandma's neighbor's house to see me heading toward the house. They'd see that I was out of work early, and they'd either look down on me because I'd had such a short shift at work or because I looked like I didn't have a job at all.

So I sneaked up into the house through the front door. The house was very dim, like heavy, brown-orange curtains were hung over all the windows. I had a feeling that my mom and sister were in the house, but that they were getting ready to leave. I wanted to avoid my mom and sister as well. I didn't want them to know I was home from work so early. I didn't want them to think I didn't have a job.

To move quickly through the house, I floated through the air. I had floated somewhere in the house where I wouldn't be seen. My sister left the house. Now only my mom was left. She was probably taking a shower. I floated around the house, heading into the kitchen, my grandma's guest room, and the dining room. I wasn't really focused with my flight. I didn't seem to be flying with any direction. I kept trying to fly down into the basement. But either I kept forgetting or kept getting afraid to go down there.

Eventually I had settled on the idea that I could leave the house, but that I needed to bring a few things with me. I went into my grandma's bedroom. On her desk there were a couple of paperback books and probably some items of clothing. I grabbed the books and maybe some of the items of clothing and I flew out of the room. I flew somewhere where I could dress or prepare without risking being seen.

I was just about to leave the house. But then I realized that I wasn't wearing any shoes. I'd need to get my shoes from my grandma's bedroom in order to leave the house. So I flew toward my grandma's bedroom to grab the shoes.

But just as I was getting to my grandma's bedroom, my mom turned off the shower. I knew she'd be leaving the bathroom soon. I didn't know how I could leave my grandma's bedroom while my mom left the bathroom without my being seen.

But somehow I managed to fly into the bathroom just as my mom was leaving it, so that her back was turned just as I was heading into the bathroom. But I was now stuck in the bathroom. I was either crouched on the floor or sitting on the toilet, holding my books and some clothes in my arms. My mom wasn't leaving the hallway in front of the bathroom. She just stood still right there, her back turned to the bathroom doorway, but right in front of it.

After a moment my mom turned around and walked back into the bathroom. This may possibly even have been because I had called her into the bathroom. Once my mom was back in the bathroom, I called attention to myself. My mom looked down at me, like I was sitting on the floor. I may have begun asking my mom some questions, possibly about what I needed to be prepared to leave the house.

stuffed animal neighbor; brother-in-law deals drugs; stars and stripes cafe; a load of crap

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was late afternoon, just after the sun had set. I was standing out in front of the house next door to my family's house. My brother-in-law and/or my nephew stood in the front yard, facing me while I faced the house. I was dressed very nicely, though the color of my clothes was kind of odd: pastel greens and forest greens, like one might see a little boy wearing on Easter Day.

I was having a kind of calm conversation with my brother-in-law. But then the neighbor came out of her house. She was a snoop, always getting into other people's business. She thought she had found a really good way to get my brother-in-law, and possibly me, in trouble. She may even have made a snide comment to that effect, to taunt me and my brother-in-law.

We did get a little afraid, and we headed back into the house. But I suddenly got mad. It didn't make any sense to me at all that this woman should have such power over us. I wanted to turn the tables on her, to show her that I was not afraid of her.

I went back over to the woman's house. I entered the house. I may have brought stuff with me. Suddenly the woman's house was filled with stuffed animals. Other members of my family came into the house as well. It was suddenly like we were all trying to overpower the woman, to get her out of the house.

At some point I may have gotten close to the woman and whispered things in her ear. The woman may then have turned into a stuffed animal.

Dream #2

I had just finished some kind of task successfully. I was now entering to some house that I had been asked to house-sit. It was like the house was part of a brownstone. The interior was long and narrow, almost like the interior of a clothing boutique. There may have been clothing racks along the walls.

There was a mannequin in the center of the shop. It was white and headless, and it wore an orange dress of slightly shimmery material with a blouse that had a wrapped effect with a sharply v-cut chest line. The mannequin really turned me on. I walked up to it and embraced it. I thought I was going to try to have sex with it. But I felt like someone was looking. I suddenly stopped embracing the mannequin.

My mom sat on a couple of stairs at the far end of the room. She began talking to me about something, maybe getting my sister and my brother-in-law to do something. She may have expressed doubt about this, like she thought my sister and brother-in-law were too lazy to do what my mom wanted them to do, or like she thought they were just a couple of cheats who'd try to cheat their way out of doing it.

While my mom spoke, I looked all over the store. All over the place, I saw stacks of my mother's clothing -- mostly panties. My mom is overweight, and her panties were kind of big. Nevertheless, as I saw her panties, I wanted to wear them. Some had nice colors: purple, blue, pink, with flowers and butterflies on them.

My mom had somehow tasked me with taking care of something regarding my sister and brother-in-law, as if she thought I could get them to stop doing whatever it was she thought they were doing.

Now I was suddenly outside, at night, at a big, new gas station that seemed to be alone on some desert highway. My brother-in-law stood out at a pump, filling up a white business van. I knew that my brother-in-law was actually out on some trip to sell drugs. He was about halfway to where he was going. Whenever he sold drugs, he would use this white van.

Suddenly my dad pulled up to the gas station. My brother-in-law obviously hadn't expected to see my dad while he was in the middle of making a drug run. He knew my dad was protective of my sister. Seeing my sister's husband in the middle of a drug run would obviously infuriate my dad.

My brother-in-law tried to hide what he was doing. But, for some reason, he had my family name (not his family name) and some phone number written in yellow paint on one of the back windows of the van. It was obvious, somehow, that this was an advertisement for selling drugs. But, as my brother-in-law saw my dad walking up to him, he tried to hide the advertisement, or obscure it in some way, to make it seem like it was an advertisement for some kind of service, like maintenance or something.

My dad walked up to my brother-in-law and seemed kind of friendly at first. My brother-in-law responded in a kind of friendly way. But then my dad said a couple of quick things to my brother in law, something along the lines of "How are you feeling? Do you feel good? Do you hurt in any way? Well, does this hurt you at all?" My dad kicked my brother-in-law in the stomach. He may also have shot my brother. Somehow, an umbrella (???) was also involved in the situation.

Dream #3

I was in a huge cafe, maybe something more like a big common area in a college that had been transformed for the evening into a makeshift coffee shop. The place was mostly dim, with just a few lights shining off in the distance. The place was full of young men and women, all sitting around with each other in big groups at tables, having a good time.

I may have been sitting off to one side all by myself at first. But a couple people ended up coming over to me. One was a girl. Another was a guy, probably a French guy. The girl eventually went away. The French guy, who had seemed hostile toward me at first, ended up being a lot nicer as time went on.

Now there was some kind of performance going on. The performance was some little song. I didn't realize until the end of the song that the French guy had been performing. I thought he'd just been sitting there beside me. But now the performance was ended. Everybody was clapping. I realized I needed to clap, too: otherwise, the French guy would get hostile toward me and not clap for me after my performance. The French guy smiled and folded up something into a leather satchel.

Now someone started playing the piano. From the opening, I recognized the song: "Stars and Stripes Forever," even though I couldn't name the song. The French guy, hearing the song, began to chuckle a little bit. I may have chuckled as well, thinking, for a talent show -- which apparently this whole thing was, now -- it was a little too obvious or trite to play such a well known song. But as the song continued, I kind of enjoyed the melody on the piano. The piano sound was kind of quick and tinny, very old-timey sounding.

Dream #4

I was standing looking at a wall. The wall was kind of barren. It may have been a cinder block wall. The wall was painted some flat, dark shade of green. There were a couple of old, decaying, wooden shelves high up on the wall, running the full length of the wall.

As I looked at the wall, I could hear my step-grandmother talking about one of her friends. Her friend, a male, was older than she and my grandfather, who passed away about four years ago. My grandma related a story to me about my grandpa and this friend. As she related the story to me, I started taking care of something, maybe taking a jacket off the shelf, shifting myself over to the left, and putting the jacket back on the shelf.

My grandma said that as my grandpa was dying, he told the friend, "You should be the one who's dying. You're older than me." But then something about the story changed. Now my grandma said that my grandpa had said something like, "I'm glad I'm the one who's dying, and not you. You have so many young people in your life. You need to make sure you stay around for them."

As my grandma told this second version of the story, I realized that I was defecating. A long string of pale-tan crap was coming out of my (apparently clothed) rear end. It wasn't breaking. By now it was at least a meter long -- so long, I could bend it around and hold it in front of me. In fact, I'd shifted to the far left end of the wall by now, and I was starting to place the long line of feces up onto the shelf. The feces may even have been topped with mustard!

I'm pretty sure that even as I was coiling up the mustard-topped feces onto the shelf and listening to my grandma's story about my grandpa, that I realized that the feces was a metaphor. I knew I was somehow defecating and putting the crap up onto the shelf to show that I thought the story I was listening to was a load of crap. I didn't, of course, want to admit that I thought the story was a load of crap, because it was about my grandpa. So I may have started trying to justify my defecation in some other way.

time travel to the water park; gigantic coca-cola glasses; jules-port verne

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a water slide amusement park with my mother. We received a phone call from my sister. My sister said she was ready to come to the water park as well. So we left the park and went to meet with my sister.

I was in a house at night. The house had a lot of long hallways. We were now going to head to the water park. But our grandfather was sitting either in the living room, which may have been pitch black, or in some other pitch black room. My sister said we had to avoid my grandpa. He was assuming my sister was staying at home. He'd get really mad if he found out my sister was going to the water park.

We walked outside. It was dark, but a lot of snow was falling, and with the orange streetlamps and falling snow, the sky and air looked purple. I was walking out to the car. There were actually three or four cars in the driveway. My grandpa was standing out by the cars. Somehow my sister had managed to avoid my grandpa's view.

We were now driving through the snow. It was maybe late afternoon, and the sky was a dim grey. I told my sister I didn't know if we'd be able to go back to the water park today. It didn't make sense to me that the park would be open if it was snowing like this. But my sister said it didn't matter and that we would be fine.

I didn't believe my sister. But as we continued driving, all the snow disappeared. It was still cloudy outside, but I could tell that it had become a lot warmer. But something else had changed: it was like we had traveled back in time twenty years, to the early 1990s.

I got excited about this and told my sister, "What the heck? We crossed a street, and now we're back in the 1990s!" My sister didn't quite see how I could tell this had happened. I pointed out how all the cars looked a lot different from the cars of 2012. We were in my sister's van. I told my sister, "Everybody must be looking at our car and saying to themselves, 'Wow, that's some kind of Prius.'"

We drove up a road past the water park and toward a Sea World aquarium. The parking lot for the water park was closer to the Sea World than to the water park. My sister was worried that we weren't going to find a good parking space.

As my sister expressed her worries, I saw Shamu, the killer whale mascot of Sea World, jump upward at least 10 meters. I was really excited and I pointed out the sight to my sister. Then another killer whale jumped around in its tank, though not much above the level of the water. I also looked up into the air to see some person atop a pole like a mast on a sailing ship.

Regarding my sister's worries that we wouldn't find a parking space, I said that, at this time of day, toward 3 PM, a lot of people were already getting ready to leave the water park. Plus the weather wasn't so great (it seemed to be getting cold again). So a lot of people were probably leaving on that account, too.

We had parked, and we were now walking toward the water park. We were walking along a sidewalk that seemed to be going along a botanical gardens rather than a water park. As we walked, my mom called us up. She may have been trying to figure out where we were, as if she were coming in her own vehicle to meet us.

It now seemed like my sister and I were walking with a whole lot of baggage and garbage, like we were walking, but we were still inside a vehicle, but the vehicle was just crammed with garbage. We also seemed to have a bunch of stuff like folding chairs with us.

Now my mom was with me and my sister. For some reason my mom had taken my phone and was looking at all my photos. She had found some video I'd accidentally taken on the phone while my sister and I had been walking toward the water park.

In the video, my sister and I were talking about my mom, mainly about the logistics for meeting her. There was nothing offensive about the things we were saying, but my mom still took offense. I got mad at my mom and asked for my phone back. This seemed to offend my mom as well. I was getting really frustrated.

Dream #2

Some party had just ended. I was walking back and forth between a living room and a kitchen. Neither the kitchen nor the living room seemed quite normal -- like they were really big, but unfinished. They almost had the feeling of a convention center.

My mom was in the kitchen, talking with one of her best friends. She was talking about some way in which she'd been competitive with me and won. It made me feel a little bit defeated. I thought to myself that when it came to my relationship with my mom, there was really just no way I could win. There was some girl I was interested in romantically. But I felt that because I could never win against my mother, it would be no use starting up a relationship with the girl I liked.

I had walked back out into the living room. But now I was coming back into the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open. I was thinking about grabbing some food for a meal, maybe dinner. But now the kitchen was outdoors, out on a street like a street in a downtown area. Just down the street from us, a parade was finishing up. The parade was probably in celebration of the same event for which the party had been celebrated.

One float in the parade, maybe the final float, was two gigantic glasses of Coca-Cola. The glasses were maybe 5 meters tall, and full of real Coke and huge ice cubes. I had been thirsty and I'd been trying to decide what I'd like to drink. Now I thought I might like a Coke -- but not from the huge glasses, of course!, I told myself. I went to the refrigerator and found a couple of cans of Coke. I grabbed a can.

Dream #3

I was out in a vacant lot in some downtown area. There were two women and a man out in the vacant lot with me. The women and man were young professionals. We all headed toward a fence at the front of the vacant lot and then over to the right, where the fence opened to let us out.

All this time, I was looking at a thin paperback novel. The novel had pulpy cover art. The cover art and yellowed pages, with a turquoise edging, made the paperback look like it was from the 1950s or 1960s. The novel was something like -- though possibly not exactly -- Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days.

I got the idea that this story was about a scientist who had been funded for taking a trip around the world. During his trip, the scientist actually used his own inventions as means of travel. But at one point in the trip, one of the scientist's invented vehicles broke down.

I saw a line-drawing illustration of this scene. The scientist had flowing, dramatic hair and a thick, flowing mustache. He was very muscular. He seemed to be waist- or chest-deep in water. I read the caption for this illustration -- which may have been in the book or on the back cover of the book, as a kind of teaser for the book itself. The caption said that the scientist had the fortitude to continue on despite his struggles, and that he was funding the repair of his vehicle out of his own "laboratory funds."

As the four of us reached the opening in the fence and hairpinned our way around it, I looked at the cover of the book. The cover gave Verne's name as Jules-Port Verne. I felt a sense of relief at this. I remembered that for the longest time, I always knew Verne as J.P. Verne, without knowing Verne's full name. I'd always had a vague feeling that the J stood for Jules. But I'd never known that the P stood for Port. I also hadn't wanted to admit the shortcoming in my knowledge to the three other people I was with. I thought they'd probably know Verne's full name right off the bat and think of me as a fool for not knowing Verne's full name.

my own private quilp; searching for a presentation

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the living room of an apartment. But it was also like I was in a doctor's office. The office was my mother's office, as if my mom were a Doctor.

Somebody buzzed into our apartment from outside of the apartment building. I knew it was an annoying, little man. He had an appointment with the Doctor. But I also knew that he always came here, and that every time he came here, he came up with a new reason to complain about the service he received from the receptionist.

Today I was acting as receptionist, even though I usually didn't even have a role within the office. Acting as the receptionist, I got really afraid of what the man might do this time. I tried to have everything arranged so that the man would have absolutely nothing to complain about. And the first thing I'd do would be to buzz the man into the apartment and open the door for him as promptly as possible.

I was sitting on the floor. I had to stand up and press a button near the front door. I quickly did so. But as soon as I pressed the button to let the man into the apartment building, the man bashed in the door of the actual apartment! He was only about waist-high to me. He was bald, with a wide, misshapen head and huge eyes. He was dressed in a nice business casual shirt and khaki slacks.

The man looked angrily at me. But I could tell he was really getting enjoyment out of the whole situation. I knew he had been waiting right at the door, hoping I'd think he was downstairs, just so he could surprise me by being upstairs. I felt completely out of control of the situation. I felt totally defenseless against the man. And he loved it.

Dream #2

I was at some event, probably with one of my family members, maybe my mom or my sister. The event was being held in a large building, something like a modern church, with a lot of hallways and stairways leading to a few major (but not very big) lobbies and auditoriums.

I and the person I was with had something to do with the event, either the running or the organizing of it. But the turnout for the event was kind of disappointing. We walked up a stairway and into a lobby area where a white man with copper-tan skin and red-blonde hair was giving a presentation to a scattered, but kind of densely packed, group of people. The presentation was being given just outside an auditorium that had doors like the doors to a sanctuary.

I and the other person may have understood that we had something to do with the presentation, or with a presentation somewhere. We may have gone in search of something to do with whatever presentation we had something to do with. We wandered through a number of hallways, and maybe even a couple of small rooms, like Sunday school rooms, which may also have had a decent number of people in them.

We ended up in a lobby-like area, one wall of which curved out, like bay windows, with a wall of windows. The curving-out space was bounded on the opposite side (forming an ellipse or football shape) by a series of green, carpeted steps which could also serve as seats, so that this area was like a mini-auditorium with the window walls as a backdrop.

A presentation was going to begin here in just a few moments. But now I saw, outside the building, my nephews and niece walking down onto a series of concrete seat-steps that mirrored the seat-steps inside the building. There was a show about to begin outside as well. But before the show began, some person was down on the "stage," showing off two or three of his dogs.

I wanted my nephews and niece to see me, so I stealthily crawled up to the window-wall, hiding behind one of the dogs outside the window. I then popped my head up from behind the dog just in time for my nephews and niece to see me. Only one or two of them saw me. They screamed, "Preemie!" They may even have tried coming up to the window.

The show outside was now beginning. A Pastor-like man was beginning to speak. I didn't really want my nephews or niece to see me now, now that the presentation was starting. But it was right at this moment that all my nephews and niece saw me. They all screamed, "Preemie!" They ran toward the window. I felt really bad. I hadn't consciously wanted to cause a disruption. And I was kind of embarrassed by what was going on. But I also kind of liked the fact that my nephews and niece wanted to give me so much attention.

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

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #3

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

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

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

Dream #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

kicking a little dog; purple diapers and t-shirt; phonecall pools; exhibit m; hill climbing

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in somebody else's house. The house was yellow with daylight coming in through the windows. The house seemed cluttered. The furniture and other items in the house were brown.

I had to move something out of the house. I had gotten whatever I needed to move out of the house (it may have been something like a tall, wood-backed chair). I was heading for a door.

But now a little dog came running at me. It had longish, red-golden hair. It was skinny, with a long, pointy face and pointy ears. It was barking at me a lot. I thought it was going to bite me. I had been told about the dog, I believe. I knew that while I was taking the item out of the house I had to keep the dog in the house. If the dog left the house, it would be really hard to get it back.

So I kicked at the dog kind of violently, to keep the dog in the house. I had the door open and was pulling the item out of the house when the dog attacked me again. This time, instead of just kicking at the dog, I kicked the dog. I kicked the dog a number of times before the dog ran yelping away into the house.

Once I'd secured the item outside the house I started to feel bad for having kicked the dog. I went back into the house to see the dog and make sure it was okay. When I found the dog it was afraid of me. It scuttered away from me and hid behind a chair. I followed after it. The dog was laid over on its left side. The dog was now black, with sleek fur, almost like the feathers of a starling bird.

I believe I petted the dog and that, after a while, the dog began to feel comfortable around me and to respond to me.

Dream #2

I was at "my step-grandmother's house." I had apparently either come to live with my step-grandmother or to spend a few days with her. It was night. We were in some room kind of like a living room mixed with a study. The light in the room was dim -- maybe just one lamp for the whole room.

My step-grandmother had been telling me all the preparations she'd been making for my arrival here. As she told me this stuff, she sat in a high-backed, cushioned chair, while I sat down at her knee, on some comfortable, cushioned stool.

My grandma told me something about how she'd made similar preparations for someone who'd come to live here before me. The person seemed to be alternately a man and a woman -- or perhaps there had been a man and then a woman in succession. I believe that when my grandma spoke about the woman, she seemed to mention the woman as if she were very fashionable, as if my grandma always had to think of how to be "fashionable enough" for her guest.

But when my grandma mentioned the man, she mostly liked to draw attention to his quirks. For instance, my grandma mentioned an "unfortunate" collection the man had left of fashion magazines. These magazines smelled like perfume. My grandma hadn't even known the man had had such a huge stack of fashion magazines. And my grandma hoped that I wouldn't mind them being in the room I'd be using. My grandma would soon be throwing these magazines away.

When I heard about the magazines, I kind of wanted to tell my grandma that she shouldn't throw them away. I loved fashion magazines, and I wanted to see the ones the boy had left.

I had now stood up and paced out across the room and back. As I did, my clothing changed from normal boys' clothing to a tight, short, purple t-shirt and a purple Pampers Underjams diaper.

My grandma was discussing difficulties she'd had in getting the place prepared for me personally. She seemed to be at the end of the list once I'd gotten back to her. But now she said, "And, here. See? Let me see here. What are you wearing under this shirt?"

My grandma lifted up my shirt. She said, "Ah. Just what I suspected. Diapers."

My grandma stood up and paced to the opposite side of the room. I followed her. I now noticed that the opposite wall of the room was of stone, with a fireplace set into the stone, and a little platform in front of the fireplace.

My grandma said, "I was thinking of setting you up with a girlfriend while you were here. But I didn't, because I knew you were going to be wearing diapers. I just didn't know, if you were wearing diapers, if you'd want to be spending any time with a pretty girl as well."

I was sad that my grandma hadn't set me up with the girl. I thought that maybe I shouldn't have worn diapers here after all.

Dream #3

I walked through the doorway of some kind of stone- or cinder-wall barrier. A pretty, skinny, tall, blonde woman had been walking with me. But she stopped walking and stood just inside the doorway, on the right (our right) side of the doorway.

It was a clear, hot, sunny day. I was walking along a wide concrete path. Off to my right were pools of water. They were square-shaped, divided from each other by concrete walls. The water in each pool looked a little different. The shapes of the floors of the pools was also different. Some pools were just even cubes. Others had steps or tiers in them. Some may actually have extended out a lot farther than the others.

Some of the pools had flowing water, and some of the pools had still water. The water in all the pools seemed to be clean -- I think the one thing the water had in common was a slight greenish tint (which I think I've always associated with chlorinated water). I think there were supposed to be living creatures in at least some of the pools. But I don't think I ever saw any creatures.

After walking a very short distance, I suddenly crouched down and called my boss' phone. I was crouching down on some kind of basalt outcropping that seemed to jut over a larger body of water than any of the pools. I didn't reach my boss. I decided to leave a voice message for him. But I kept talking and talking so much that the time limit ran out on the voice message.

I hung up my phone. I figured I'd said enough to my boss. I stood up and started walking along the pools again.

But now I realized I hadn't said enough to my boss. In fact, there were key points I'd left out of my voice message. So I called my boss up again and crouched down beside a pool. I got voicemail and talked and talked until the voice message time limit ran out. I then hung up the phone and stood up again.

I was now walking on a concrete sidewalk, up a slight slope, on a street with tall skyscrapers. I knew I was heading into my office. I knew I had been away on some kind of a business trip for a long time. It was like I was a salesman and I had been out selling.

I could see the image of a comic strip clearly in my head. It was black and white, in a straight-edged, 1950s style of line drawing. In the first frame there was a man in a suit and a fedora, walking in the sunlight. The man said something like, "It's good to get back home, to see how the people (down stairs?) are doing. You get back in touch with what's actually happening in the company." In the second frame, the man was heading into a building very much like the building I was heading into.

I now headed into the building and downstairs. Downstairs was a cafeteria. Apparently the first thing I was going to do was grab some lunch. Everything seemed to be sterile and white in the cafeteria. The cafeteria had a Mexican food theme to it -- all the time, I think.

I headed to a steel-countered service area at the back end of the cafeteria. I was really looking for a burrito. The cafeteria was selling one main item that day. But I can't remember what it was. Maybe tacos? I may have grabbed a main item. But I didn't really want it, and I went looking along the counter for something else. It looked like, behind a glass window, they were also serving little single enchiladas and single tamales (the tamales actually looked like tiny burritos) in little, plastic dessert bowls.

A tallish, white man with long, brown hair in a ponytail and wearing a white food service apron came up behind the counter. He asked me if I would like him to get me anything. I asked the man if he had any burritos. The man said, "Oh, no, we aren't doing those today. But we have a lot of other really good stuff."

I now seemed so small that my head barely rose above the steel counter that had previously been waist-height. I looked up over the glass wall at the man and, in a kind of acquiescent way, asked for one of the food items I'd seen in one of the plastic dessert bowls. The man handed it to me.

It seemed like the man understood that he was now done serving me. I figured I'd better just take that as a cue that I shouldn't bother the man anymore by asking him to serve me anymore. But I realized that when I'd asked the man for the item I'd wanted, I'd asked for the wrong item. I'd wanted a tamale and an enchilada. But instead, I'd asked for a ----- (I don't know).

I was now back at the pools. I had walked a little way farther along the pools. But now I remembered that I needed to finish up the details I'd given to my boss. There were a few final things he needed to know. So I crouched down again beside a pool. I called the number and waited for the voicemail to turn on. I looked into the pool I crouched over, maybe even sticking my hand into the pool, in hopes of finding some of the animals I'd thought were here.

Dream #4

I was in a dark hallway in a hospital. I opened a door. My dad was in this room, laying in a hospital bed. The room seemed pretty dim, at least at first: like the room was only lit by a wall-mounted x-ray film illumination screen.

My dad was laying on his left side. He'd been through some kind of really tough situation, and he was only now arriving at a point of recovery. My little brother had also been in this hospital. But he'd recently died, only the night before, or possibly even this morning.

My dad now asked me about my brother. I was kind of surprised nobody had told my dad about my brother. My sister was here, too, like I was -- seeing to my brother and dad. And my sister had seen my dad on a number of occasions during the night and morning, after my brother had died. I had a feeling that my dad should have been told about my brother a lot earlier, and that he'd be a little annoyed when he found out he hadn't been told until so long afterwards.

But I looked at my dad. He looked so weak: pale, dried out, with his hair gone a brittle color of silvery-grey. I thought that the news of my brother's death would distress my dad so much that my dad might relapse into his illness, or even die himself. So I hesitated in telling my dad about my brother. Instead, I told him something like I didn't know exactly what was going on, but that I would tell him the news as soon as I could.

I closed the door and walked out into a lit, moderately busy, hospital hallway. I was trying to figure out who I should ask in order to know for sure whether it was or wasn't okay to tell my dad about my brother. I probably settled on discussing the matter with my sister. But I may also have had the vague, foggy images (as possibilities) in my mind's eye of my mother and of some nurse -- the nurse wearing a very fetish-style nurse costume.

After a while I managed to meet up in the hospital with my sister and mother. But after talking with my sister and mother for a little bit, I realized that the only reason they hadn't told my dad anything about my brother's death was neglect. It wasn't that they wanted to spare my dad's feelings. They just, for some reason or another, neglected to tell my dad anything.

I was a little angry with my mother and sister for having been so neglectful. I may have expressed my anger. But I knew I had to hurry back to my dad and tell him about my brother as soon as I could. I knew there was a chance that my dad could die. And if my dad died before I told him that my brother had died, I could never forgive myself.

I walked into a hospital room. But the bed by the door was empty, the sheets still crumpled up on the bed, as if the person who had been occupying the bed had only recently been removed. I was certain that this meant my dad had died, and that his body had only recently been taken away. There was another bed in the room, which may have had somebody in it. There may also have been a medical staff person in the room with the person in the bed.

But somehow I came to understand that this room was actually not the room my dad had been in. A lot of the rooms looked an awful lot alike in this hospital. I was in a similar-looking room, but in a completely different area of the hospital. I needed to get to the right area of the hospital.

I knew the areas of the hospital were all divided into something like wards. But the wards were called something like "exhibits." The boundary for each exhibit had a plastic sign over it, like over a doorway or a threshold. I think the plastic sign could light up. On the sign were, in black, plastic, capital letters, the word "EXHIBIT" (?) and the exhibit letter.

I knew I needed to get to exhibit M. I knew that my dad's hospital room would be the corner room in a wall lined with rooms. I knew that once I found the correct room, I could just walk in and see my dad in his bed, right where I'd left him.

I walked through exhibits H, I, and J. Each successive exhibit I walked through looked less and less like a hospital and more and more like an old-style library. And the more I walked through these exhibits, the less welcome I felt. It was like I was heading into wealthier and wealthier areas. The people there wondered what I was doing there. They looked down on me and suspected me.

Finally I found exhibit M. I walked past the threshold and found myself in a big, nearly empty, wood-floored and wood-walled room. There were huge paintings on at least two of the walls: one of the side walls and the back wall. The paintings were landscapes or skyscapes. Each picture nearly took up the whole wall on which it was mounted.

I felt extremely unwanted in this exhibit. It seemed like the wealthiest exhibit I'd been to so far. There was a school group -- mostly high school boys -- standing near the back left corner of the room. Some of the boys were actually sitting on the edge of some long heavy marble- or wood-topped table.

At the back left corner of the room was a doorway. I knew I had to go through that doorway to find my dad. But that meant I'd have to go past the high school boys.

I assumed that the boys were all rich, since they were in exhibit M. They were all white, kind of pale-skinned. They wore clothes that were a little baggy and a little thuggy-looking. Some of them wore baseball caps tilted at weird angles. The boys' teacher was a tall, muscular, white man with a nice tan. He wore a nice shirt and slacks and thin-rimmed eyeglasses.

The boys all seemed cheerful enough with each other. But when I passed them I felt a definite change in mood. They all seemed to be focused, now, on how they could cause troubles for me. One of the boys threw a paper wad at me. Another boy actually threw a needle at me. The needle was intended to stick into me. But somehow I managed to spot its flight and catch it in a safe way.

The boys now all seemed to have forgotten about my existence. I was about to cross over the threshold into the next room. In fact, I think I crossed into the next room, which was another huge, empty, museum-like room. But it felt a bit dustier than the other room, and lit with much more harshly bright daylight.

But I quickly turned back toward the first room. Anger had built up in me. I realized that the boy who had thrown the needle at me had really meant to hurt me. What could have been on that needle? And yet the boy had completely ignored me after throwing it. I knew all the boys in the group were in on the needle-throwing. And I intended to make all of them feel some regret for what they'd done.

One boy stood on the threshold between the rooms. He may actually even have stood a little bit into the second room. His back was to me. So I stuck the needle as far into his back as I could. I thought I'd get a little bit of a reaction out of the boy. But he didn't even seem aware that I'd stuck the needle into his back.

I felt bad for sticking the needle into the boy's back. After all, what could have been on that needle? Did I just poison the boy? Did I just give him some kind of disease? Did I really need to be doing something like that to somebody, just because I was mad? I pulled the needle out of the boy's back.

But I was really angry that the boys still seemed not to be upset about having tried to hurt me. So I walked out in front of them all. Apparently the teacher had stepped away. Most of the boys were sitting on the edge of the long table.

I asked the boys if they had any idea that what they'd done to me was wrong. They hardly seemed to be registering my existence at all. So I flipped out on them. They didn't seem to move. I basically went down the line, doing something cruel to each boy. Each thing I did was a little bit different for each boy. I killed one of the boys, maybe even chopping off his head. But, for another boy -- the boy had something like orange juice and orange donuts. I spilled his juice all over the place and began smashing the donuts with the bottom of the cup.

As I was smashing the boy's donuts, the teacher came back into the room. I knew I was probably going to get in a lot of trouble for what I'd done to all the boys. I thought I would explain myself, but I don't know if I ever got started explaining myself. I seemed to be pretty intent on smashing the donuts into paste. I thought that if I could explain myself, I'd possibly get off free. But then I thought that couldn't be possible, considering that I'd killed at least one of the boys.

Dream #5

I was walking up a steep slope with an older man and a younger woman. It was a bright, sunny day. But the sky may have been yellow, rather than blue. We were walking up a sidewalk. But we may have been in a partially forest-like area. The whole environment may also have had some kind of cartoony feel to it, too.

The older man was in the lead. I followed the man, and the woman followed me. The older man was like some established, wealthy business man. He was taking us up to something business related, I believe, at the top of the hill. There may have been some tall, skyscraper-like building up there.

The younger woman had light brown skin. She wore something like a black corset with pink decorations on it. She may also have been wearing pink, feathery wings. Her hair was dyed pink, at least near the roots. The woman had been walking behind me for a ways. Then she walked beside me. I think while she was walking beside me, she'd been expecting me to make some sort of move on her, or at least show some sort of sexual interest in her. I was interested in her. But I was really shy.

According to the older man, this walk was supposed to be a really rigorous walk, and our attainment of the crest was supposed to be a symbol of how, if we put a really strong effort into it, we could achieve anything. Only people who could get to the top of the hill could go into the building at the top of the hill.

But I realized I wasn't walking too fast or trying too hard at all. I was staying a few meters behind the man, keeping pace with him. I even pumped my legs a little bit harder than needed, just so I could feel like I was making the effort the man had said we'd be making.

The woman must have felt the same as I did, because she now moved up ahead of me. As we neared the crest of the hill, the woman even moved up ahead of the man. I was shocked that the woman had gotten into the lead. I was a little ashamed of myself for not having taken the lead myself. And I was envious of the woman.

The woman, who was still attracted to me, sensed my envy. We were all turning to head back down the slope, as if we were now doing something like laps up and down the slope. As we crossed paths, the woman said something to me like, "We all take turns at the front. Whoever's in the back has to run up to the front, right? So now you're in the back. It'll be your turn to run up to the front next."

I kind of had the feeling that the woman was saying this only to soothe my envy. But I thought that, if she was right, I was well-positioned for running up to the front. We were heading downhill. So it would be easy for me to get up my speed.