rock star drug habits; college outskirts; better man?; the time traveling ski-mobile mechanic

Good morning everybody.

Dream #1

I was either a part of a rock band, or else I was focused on a young man who was a lot like me and was a part of a rock band. The rock band had probably taken part in some big festival. Their set was now over. They were relaxing at the corner of an extremely long couch in some large, dim room. There were a lot of other acts on the couch, relaxing, while, probably, in the distance, another band was playing.

One of the members of this rock band (maybe I/my counterpart) was complaining about how tired he was. Another male member may have suggested that if the member was tired, he should try taking some drugs. But a female band member, probably the leader of the whole band, said that nobody in the band was going to take drugs. I/my counterpart was relieved to hear that. I/my counterpart felt that if I/he took drugs, I/he would easily become addicted to them.

Another band sitting a ways down on the couch, not having heard the first band's discussion, was also having a discussion on drugs. A guy who looked a lot like Dee Snider was justifying the use of drugs, especially drugs that give a person energy. The guy scratched the back of his head and said that he himself was hoping he could score some drugs very soon.

Another band sitting at the same position as the first band now also discussed drug use. This band was supposed to be an actual band, though I can't remember who -- I keep thinking They Might Be Giants, but I don't think that's right. All the band members had huge, heavy beards. They all disagreed heavily with drug usage, especially the band leader, who spoke about drugs in the same tone of voice one might use while speaking about a really annoying person at work or school.

Dream #2

Something about walking around dusty mountain paths near a college campus. But I can't remember what. I may have just started school or come back after summer break. There were other people out there. We were all separate from each other, but we had all been discussing something before, and we were all thinking of it now. There may have been an element of being in a national park as well.

Dream #3

I was on the subway, sitting in a seat perpendicular to the walls of the car and next to a window. One of my old friends from college sat in the seat facing mine. She was talking on the phone with her boyfriend. I could tell, just from the conversation and possibly from hearing a little of the man's voice, that the girl's boyfriend was a scrawny, kind of weaselly guy -- sort of like me, except more exaggerated. I could also tell that the boy was a lot younger than my friend, from the way my friend was speaking to the boy.

I suddenly had the feeling that I'd be a better boyfriend for my friend than the weaselly boy would be. After all, the boy and I were a lot alike. But I had the advantage of not being so exaggeratedly weaselly as he was.

My friend hung up the phone on the boy. I made it clear somehow that my friend could complain to me about the boy. As she did, I got down on my knees in front of my friend. I nudged my head up under her left arm, like I was trying to snuggle with her like a small dog would.

I began asking the woman some questions, the answers to which I expected to be negative, since they were about the boy. I figured I'd then respond to those answers with statements about positive traits in myself. One of the first questions I asked may have been about the boy's age. I thought it was a positive that I was closer in age to my friend than the boy was.

Dream #4

I was out on the ski slopes with a female friend, whom I don't really recognize now. We were boyfriend and girlfriend. But we were also like partners, at least for the day, in some kind of daredevil skiing activity, like ski jumping.

We made some huge, dangerous jump and landed. But when we landed we ended up near the girl's parents, and maybe a couple other of the girl's family members. The parents were well-to-do and a little conservative. They seemed shocked that I'd ask their daughter to do such a thing as daredevil ski jumping with me. We'd landed safely, and they were relieved by that. But I could see, especially in the father's face, that they were afraid one of the next jumps would be far less successful.

I was skiing away from the family. I thought the girl was coming after me. But suddenly her skis broke right in half. She fell over onto her back. I turned around and tried to get back up to her. But she'd managed to stand back up and ski, or walk, back down toward me.

But just as we were reaching, the scene somehow changed. Now I had been a really strange kind of ski jumper. It was like I had been using a ski-mobile for ski jumping. But I hadn't just been jumping off of a ski ramp. I had actually been jumping through time. Part of the ski-mobile jumping course had been traveling to a different time, moving through an adventurous course in that different time, and then traveling back to the present to finish the course.

The woman had also been involved in this time travel ski-mobile competition. But while she had been traveling in time, her ski-mobile had come apart. I don't think she knew this, because I think she had been translated back into the present time as soon as her ski-mobile had started to fail.

I was now, back in the present, meeting up with the woman. The woman may have been on another ski-mobile. I sped along. She caught up to me and jumped onto my ski-mobile. I think she had been planning to make some kind of vehicle transfer with me -- as if my ski-mobile somehow held her ski-mobile as well, and that, as soon as she jumped off her present vehicle, her ski-mobile would unmerge from my ski-mobile, so that she could ride it.

But the only thing that appeared from the woman's ski-mobile was a set of pink handlebars and some mangled part of the machinery below the handlebars -- which kind of looked like machinery off of a motorcycle rather than a ski-mobile.

I explained to the woman that her ski-mobile had been completely destroyed in the other time period. She seemed to understand this. I believe that we were now heading toward a mechanic, who could possibly fix the woman's ski-mobile. The mechanic's shop, so to speak, was a large tent made out of olive drab canvas that stood alone in a white valley of snow.

I lifted up a flap of canvas and walked into the tent. But I was surprised to see that the tent had largely been abandoned. There were only a few "personal" items left: a couple random items and a wall-like divider that made the one room of the tent into two rooms (I'm not sure why I counted this as a personal item). The mechanic had completely cleared his shop and left.

Two of my male friends, whom I don't recognize now, were now in the tent with me. Either they explained to me or I explained to them that this mechanic had been a fraud and a fake. We were all part of some group that may have been military, but at least had some kind of military aspect about it.

The mechanic had come from the outside and had claimed he had had experience with groups like ours, so that he could help us. And we had come to trust in him and depend on his help. But then, while I was away, he had admitted that all this time he had been a fraud. He had now disappeared. But before he left, he wrote his name on the divider wall -- something like George Van Dem or George Van Der.

I think the two men and I may have been planning to use the man's name as a starting point for locating the man. I think I wanted to locate the mechanic because I thought that only he could fix the broken ski-mobile. But I think the two men and I together wanted to locate the mechanic because we wanted to "get back" at him for having been a fraud and having left us.

***

UPDATE: Added drawing to dream #4, September 24, 2012, 5:31 AM, Mountain Standard Time.

meeting a girl; tometeas; back for more; fetish, porn, and game boys

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on the subway, sitting on a long bench that ran across the side of the car. I crossed to the other side of the car, where there was a wide open space. A woman was sitting to my right. She had a back pack and maybe some other bags with her. She may have been a little heavy, and her clothes may have looked a little worn out, but she was blonde with tan skin and very attractive.

The woman lay against me, partly as if she were simply resting against me, but partly as if she really wanted to cuddle with me. I enjoyed having her against my side, but I didn't want to admit it. Somehow both of us got into some game of making up an excuse for the woman leaning against me. We were pretending that we were looking for some guy the woman was supposed to be with, and that, in order to find the guy, I had to stretch my body one way and the woman had to stretch her body the other way, so that it would look like we were cuddling with each other.

Through all of this we had gotten to talking with each other. We were really comfortable with each other. Now the woman and I were getting off the train. We walked out onto some huge outdoor plaza that was full of people. I was kind of shy, sure the woman wouldn't like me. So I began walking away quickly. But the woman caught up to me and asked me some random question to get me to slow down.

I slowed down, and we began talking again. We were headed into a building that looks to me now like an airplane hangar with the huge doors wide open. Everybody was headed in there. As we headed in there, the woman asked me what I was doing for a living. I didn't want to admit what I was doing for a living right now, but I also didn't want to mention what I had been doing for a living before, as it didn't seem to matter very much anymore.

We were now walking through a grocery store. We turned left at the front of the store and were heading along the endcaps of aisles that looked like salty snack and party food aisles. The woman began telling me about herself. She said she'd just moved here from some big city (maybe Chicago). In Chicago she'd been involved with some industry, maybe the real estate industry. But now she was cleaning houses for a living.

Listening to the woman, I felt relieved. I realized that my life story was a lot like hers. I felt a lot less shy about sharing my own story.

Dream #2

I was in a car, in the front passenger seat. My mom may have been driving. We passed behind, and then to the right of, a small cargo truck. The back and sides of the truck were decorated with advertisements for a food called "tometeas," I believe. The name sounded like "tomatillas."

These tometeas were actually very small scorpions that were tomato-red. They were supposed to be cooked (I think) and eaten by the handful. They tasted like tomatoes. The tiny scorpions basically looked like flat discs with a small rod coming out of the front or back end and two goopy, purplish eyes, either on the disc or at the end of the rod. There was also a slogan for the tometeas, which I found to be almost preachy.

My mom was having a heated conversation with somebody in the car. As we passed along the right side of the truck, the car pulled into a ditch along the curb of the road. There was a lot of muddy water in the ditch. It splashed up as we drove through it. The rest of the road seemed dusty and desert-like.

Dream #3

I was in some small park in a big city, sitting out by the stone basin of an empty, dry fountain. I had a back pack with me. In the back pack was some kind of secret information or machine. I kept walking away, leaving the back pack unattended, so I could go eat some brownies. I must have walked away to go grab more brownies two or three times.

The last time I came back to the fountain I wondered whether the secret items would still be in the back pack. I figured that the people who wanted the secret items were always following me around. If they'd seen me continually walking away from the items, they'd eventually figure out that this would be the perfect time for them to come grab the items. But I also had a feeling that when I got back to my back pack, the items would still be there.

Dream #4

I was "in" some kind of fetish store. But it wasn't like I was quite there. It was almost like I was intensely feeling a movie I was watching. I heard a narrator describe some other part of the store. People thought this part of the store offered actual sex services, like a covert brothel. But the narrator explained that, even though people did offer a service, it wasn't sex, it wasn't prostitution, and it wasn't illegal. Whatever it was, however, was to be revealed right then and to come as a big surprise.

But I "skipped" to the front door of this store. I now stood outside it, looking across a street that looked very much like a side street along the east side of Manhattan. I stood under an awning, looking toward another awning across the street and down to my left by one or two buildings.

The narrator explained how the next place he was going to was a pornographic video store. I suddenly realized both the store and the place I'd just been inside of. I realized that I'd actually done this trip before. The narrator was making a film about something I myself had considered to be an occasional consumer ritual of my own!

A man and a woman were now walking up from behind me, having just come out of the store. As they did so, a business man in a shirt and tie, but no jacket, slammed directly into the man, knocking him back a foot or so. The man who got slammed into was tall, kind of chubby, wearing a shirt, tie, and tweed blazer. He looked tough but soft. He didn't say anything to the man who'd slammed into him. The man actually seemed a bit drunk.

I turned around and said back to the drunk man, "Hey, man, what in the hell?" But the man didn't listen. He opened the brassed-lined glass doors to the store -- which was now a bar full of people -- and joined a group of his friends who stood right at the front.

I knew better than to mess with the man now that he was with a whole group of friends. So I just turned around and headed toward the porn shop. It seemed like the man and woman were also going there, even though it seemed like they didn't want anybody to notice them going there.

As we walked up the steps to the store (there hadn't been steps before, and there was now no awning), the man and woman changed into an older, father-like man and a younger, son-like man. The store was now an electronics store.

I was with the two men, but I followed behind them at a bit of a distance. They got into the store a few seconds before I did. The store was crowded inside, even though it only seemed to be selling old-looking, used-looking electronics.

There was a circular customer service desk a few meters past the door. Two Indian-looking, middle-aged men wearing dark blue polo shirts were staring at me suspiciously. I knew that because of my brown skin, the men were already convinced I was going to steal something. I just wanted to catch up to the two men I'd come in here with, who were both white, so that I'd have the protection of their company and not feel so watched all the time.

I caught up to the two men. The older man was now tall, fat, and bald, wearing a dress shirt, a tweed blazer, and slacks. The younger man was now just a boy, a blonde, pale-skinned, shaggy-haired teenager wearing a baggy, white t-shirt and blue jeans. The two men were looking into a glass display cases of old devices that were all something like variations on the Nintendo Game Boy.

I commented on how much I used to love the Game Boy. But as soon as the two men became aware of my presence, they quickly shunned it. They didn't walk away, but they made me feel like they really didn't want to have to acknowledge me at all.

I decided that I would walk away from the men, showing them that I wasn't trying to be obsessed with being in their company. I tried to look for some other glass display case that I could be interested. I figured if the men wanted to acknowledge me sooner or later, they would. But I couldn't find anything else I liked. And I was becoming increasingly worried about the store owners seeing me on my own and thinking I was an easy target for accusations.

***

UPDATE: Added illustration for dream #1, September 18, 2012, 7:23 AM, Mountain Standard Time.

the city in a mall

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on a subway train with "my family." The family sometimes appeared to be my family and other times appeared to be a wealthy family, with a father, a mother, and at least a pretty, blonde daughter. There may have been other people with this other family, like extended family members coming along on vacation. I'm not sure whether I saw from my height or the height of a child. But I was my current age, at least mentally.

The train we were on seemed a bit more like an airport train than a subway train. It seemed like the cars were really small and clean, and like everybody was standing up.

The train either stopped or slowed down. An announcer, probably a computer voice, came on and told us that the train would be detoured. This was a big inconvenience for my family. We decided that we would get off the train as soon as possible and take some other form of transportation to our destination. But this seemed inconvenient to me. The other transportation would be biking or walking, which would take a long time, or driving, which would cost a lot of money.

I felt bad about the train getting detoured. I thought it was my fault somehow. I think it had been my suggestion to take the train. I'd thought it was the most convenient way to go. I think I even (at this point I'm pretty sure my view was from a child's height) tried to justify our having taken the train to everybody -- even though nobody seemed to think badly about my having suggested the train.

But when we got off the train, it was like we were almost to our destination, anyway. We walked out onto a huge concrete plaza, which felt bleached white by the sunlight. Off to our right was another train. We may have headed over to catch that train. At this point, my family was a lot more like my waking life family -- or, at least my mom was a lot more like my waking life mom.

The train took us a short distance, still along this giant concrete walkway, to a set of escalators that went inside a building. This was our destination. I knew that our plan was to check into our hotel and then go to the Museum of Natural History. I may even have called it Denver Museum of Natural History, like we were in Denver, on vacation. (Denver is where I live in waking life.)

We went up the escalators. Somehow I lost my family. I was completely by myself. I was in some gigantic shopping mall. I had no idea how I was going to find my family. But I knew where we were going. We were heading to the hotel and to the museum. I knew that everything in the city was in this mall, or was at least connected to this mall. You could reach every place in the city through the mall. So all I'd have to do is find the hotel and the museum. Then I'd be able to find my family.

I went to some huge sign that listed some of the major areas of the mall. I looked for the listings for the hotel and the museum. I may have known that the mall was divided into different sections, each section being denoted by a different color. I knew that the museum and hotel were in the red section of the mall. So I looked for the hotel and museum in the red section listings.

I apparently found out where the hotel and museum were. I began rushing toward the hotel, down through a hallway that I believed was a part of the red section of the mall. But for some reason I either forgot where the hotel and museum were, or else I became uncertain about whether I was travelling in the right direction. So I had to stop and look for directions again.

I found a directions sign hanging over an escalator bank that was coming up from a lower level. Some young man seemed to be headed toward either the escalators or a place where he could get a good view of the directions sign. I was in a big hurry to get to the sign as well, and I think I cut the guy off. I apologized to him. But he said it wasn't a big deal.

I thought that I found the hotel on the directions sign. But what I actually found was a hotel belonging to the same chain, but at a different location. Right underneath that hotel was another hotel belonging to the same chain. The location name for that specific hotel may have been "Quemada." I looked at a different spot on the directions sign and found the hotel I was looking for, which now may have been named "Denver West."

I rushed toward the hotel again. But I may have stopped again. I may have wondered whether I should be meeting my family at the museum instead of at the hotel.

But I think I ended up at the hotel. I think I stood in front of the entrance to the hotel. It looked like the entrance to any other shop in a shopping mall: square, wide, and kind of short. I didn't walk in or head up to the hotel room yet.

But I knew -- like I could hear my mom talking to me from somewhere -- saying that everybody else had decided they were just going to end their day here in the hotel. Nobody was planning on going to the museum. I thought this would obviously include me. If nobody else was going to the museum, I wouldn't be allowed to go, either. But I think I started to think of a way that I could go even if nobody else was going.

***

UPDATE: A discussion of some of the images from this dream can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.

insubordinate identities; orgy superstar; forehead mustache

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was dealing with some sort of dream (? - I have a feeling that on some level I knew this was a dream) entity who was really sensitive and could become angry really easy. I don't know whether he was good or bad. But apparently I was trying to work with him because if I didn't appease him he was going to destroy something.

But I ran into trouble with the man when I was no longer able to control some parts of my own identity. I could see my identity as three women. The women were all supposed to be identical. They all had the same body form and the same kind of shoulder-length, but almost bowl-cut-like, black hair. Their eyes were weird, like they were wearing sunglasses without actually wearing any glasses.

These three female identities of myself may have been naked. One of them may have been completely visible. Another may have been silvery, like a silver mannequin of a person. The other was transparent, like a clear, plastic model of a person. At some point they may have stood in the opening doors of a train like a subway train, out at a train station stop surrounded by fields of tall grass, under a deep blue sky.

I had the idea that one of the women was supposed to help me control my dream. But none of the women seemed to have that trait. One of the women would do the reverse of anything I asked. Another woman may have acted completely at random. I can't remember what the third woman would do.

The man seemed to understand the situation. But I knew that I had to stop the women from acting. Because if they did anything that made it look like I was betraying the man, the man would only blame me, not my identities. But the man still understood the situation enough to think it was funny. The man even made some remark to me about not being able to control myself or my identities.

I was possibly trying to get to the man. I was on a subway. But I realized I had gone the wrong way on the train. My identities may have been with me. The man may have laughed again -- from wherever he was -- about my not even being able to go the right way on the train.

The train door opened outside, in one of the upper levels of a sports stadium. There were a whole bunch of people both inside and outside the train car. I rushed out of the car and into the packed crowd of people. I ran over to the staircase at the bottom of this level. I rushed down the staircase while a whole bunch of other people were rushing up -- though maybe some other people were also rushing down.


At the bottom of the staircase was another subway platform. The train arriving at this platform would take me back to where I'd come from. Then I could get off this train and get back on the train I had just been on. And then I'd be able to get to the right place.

When I thought of all the stops on this particular train line, I realized that a lot of them serviced just this stadium. It was like this single stadium was so big that it could take up almost an entire train line.

Dream #2

I was in a room in some small apartment. There was a group of men and women with me. The men and women were all at least somewhat attractive, all in about their late twenties or early thirties. We had all finished some kind of task. Now some people decided that we should have a sexual orgy.

I was sitting on the floor -- I think the apartment had one table, but no chairs. Two men pulled off their clothes and lay down by me. I was feeling kind of sexually excited by them. They were already starting to have sex. I may have stood up in search of a sexual partner. Other people may now have been taking their clothes off and preparing to have sex.

The two men who were having sex were supposed to be in demand by a lot of people. But people had to wait until the two men were done having sex with each other before they could have sex with one or both of the men.

I was drifting away, possibly with some other people in the group, to some other location. I had gone far away from the apartment. But there was a tube that reached all the way from the apartment to where my group was. This tube was clear and made of some kind of thin plastic or latex. The plastic itself had a yellowish tinge to it. The tube was maybe 20cm in diameter.

Some clear gel was pumping through the tube. I knew this gel was sperm from the two men. As they had sex with each other, they just kept pumping more and more sperm through this tube, all the way over to where the group now was.

But there may have been something wrong with the sperm tube. I needed to go check it out. I went all the way back to the apartment. I was now walking up to the front door of the apartment, following the sperm tube as I walked. I thought to myself that maybe it would finally be my turn to have sex. But I thought that it was probably still unlikely. The two men would still be pumping their sperm away. And if I even slightly bugged them about finishing up, it would never be my turn for sex.

I went into the house. I could see that everybody was taking off their clothes, getting ready to have an orgy. But everybody in the apartment seemed to have Down Syndrome. People took off their clothes and lay on the floor. That was when I got good views of their bodies. Some of the men had nice bodies. Some of the women almost had nice bodies, except that their breasts and hips were exaggerated in size and really saggy. Other men and women were really chubby. I wasn't attracted to anybody. I decided not to have sex.

As everybody started to have sex, the scene shifted to a park scene. Everybody having sex was on some open, dry, dusty area, like an overused sports field. I sat at the edge of this field with a number of other people. The area we sat on was also pretty dry and dusty. But it sloped up a tiny bit, and there seemed to be pine needles covering the ground, as if pine trees were behind us somewhere. The whole seating area and the whole dusty orgy-field were all covered over with shade from huge tree canopies, through which little fragments of sunlight would occasionally peep through.

I sat on the ground with my knees almost up to my chest, looping my arms around my knees. Other people sat on the ground, while some sat on a couple of benches and some stood. We were all watching the people on the field having sex. Now it seemed like none of the people having sex had a body type that I liked at all. I was actually getting kind of bored with watching the people have sex.

There was apparently a restaurant, like a Denny's, behind the slope that I sat on. A group of people came out from the restaurant, out onto the slope. The group seemed to be a few families. Among the families were a number of pretty girls. I backed up to get a better view of the pretty girls. One of them had tan skin and brown hair. I liked her a lot.

The families all seemed to be curious about what the group I was with was watching. Suddenly I realized that if the girl saw what I was watching she would think I was a pervert. I backed up from the orgy as much as I could, while still staying seated on the ground.

I realized my "shoulder straps" had come undone while I had been watching the orgy. I pulled them back up over my shoulders. It was then I realized I'd been wearing girls-style, white denim overalls with short leggings. Something about the overalls was also bunched up or ruffled, maybe around the leggings and on the chest. I wasn't wearing a shirt or anything else (including underwear, I think) under the overalls. My outfit may have had something in common with the pretty girl's outfit. But I may have been too embarrassed at my own outfit to notice.

When everybody else saw how I was backing away from the orgy, they all said, "Ah, look... Preemie's bored with this whole thing. This show's getting boring. Let's just say the show's over."

Suddenly the show was over, just like it had been scheduled. Now another group of performers walked up onto the lot. But the lot was now made of asphalt. And, somehow, it was re-oriented: 90 degrees to the left of where it had previously been.

The group of performers all made it obvious to me, possibly by singing a little snatch or two from a song, that they were going to perform the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. I was excited, as I've always liked that musical. The group all stood in a grid-like formation and began to sing.

I might not have been able to understand the group's singing. So I stood up to get closer and hear better. But as I got closer, I was kind of disappointed. The song didn't sound familiar to me at all. Were these guys performing a newer version of the musical?

I listened closer to the song. The group was actually singing about plot elements from the old Bible cartoon Superbook! The group may even have said the word "Superbook." I told myself, Oh, no! This isn't Jesus Christ Superstar. It's a musical for the cartoon of Superbook!

I may have been planning to get out of here. But as I was walking away I kept trying to pull my backpack (???) back onto my shoulders. But the straps of the backpack were so small. I kept trying to pull the right strap onto my right arm. But right before it got to the shoulder, it just wouldn't fit. It felt tighter and tigher. It was squeezing my arm like some black rubber band. I thought to myself, Man! Have I gained a lot of weight recently? This backpack used to fit me!

Dream #3

I was at some event like a fair or a Renaissance festival. I stood out on a wide, asphalt walkway. There were a lot of people, all walking around to different small shops or booths. But nobody really got near me. The sky overhead was greyish white with thin clouds. It was probably a warm day.

I pulled some object out of my pocket. It flipped open, like a flip-phone. It was just a little larger than a flip-phone. But it wasn't a phone. It was kind of like a mirror: it shone or reflected in a silvery way, like a mirror. But what it really was was a picture of myself from when I was in college.

I looked at myself from that photo. I looked just about the same as I look now, except that I had a weird mustache. The mustache went down primly from the center of my nose. Then at the top of my lip, it curved sharply back up. As it spread out at the corners of my mouth, it kind of twisted out like a handlebar mustache. But the "handlebars" looked disgusting. It was like they were made of overused, black toothbrush bristles. The edges of the mustache were so spiky and worn-out looking and gross.

Looking at myself, I asked myself, How could I possibly have let myself look like that while I was in college?

I looked at the photo again. I noticed that I also had a mustache just above my eyebrows. It was like a handlebar mustache as well. But it was much smaller and tighter. For some reason it made complete sense to me that I'd had a mustache on my forehead.

***

UPDATE: A post relating to images in these dreams can be found at this entry of my dreamday journal.

design subway; friend's boss sneaks up

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

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

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