walking to school in the desert

Dream 1

I was probably out in the parking lot of a mall. It was night. I had probably met someone here to pick them up.

I met the person. The person was possibly a man. We may have been walking to my vehicle, which may have been a big, black SUV.

But along the way the person needed to pick up a bike. Apparently the person was going to ride part or all of the way to wherever they were going next. We stopped in front of a station where people could rent bikes. The person possibly paid a machine and then got to rent a bike.

But the bike the person got was really weird. All the bikes may have been weird. It was like the bikes were all hooked to poles like seesaw panels. The person got on the bike. That action, I think, pushed the seesaw pole down to the ground. The person could now pull the bike off the pole. It was like the bottom of the bike was a square tube that slid around the pole.

The person tried to pull the bike off the tube. But it was really hard for the person to do so. I may at this point have noticed that the bike had no wheels. Its "handlebars" were also a wheel-like object, like on a Sit 'n Spin toy.

The person may apologetically have said how hard it was to manage this bike. I could tell. The bike was heavy and awkward and had no wheels. But I also started to wonder how I was supposed to fit this bike into my car. I assumed I could put it in the back. But it was so big and clunky, I wasn't sure it would fit back there.

Now the person may have been my sister. We had driven out to some parking lot in a landscape of red sandstone. It may now have been morning or daytime. I was probably dropping my sister off at some school.

We got out of the car and walked away from the parking lot and down a road on a slope. At the bottom of the slope the sandstone went up on either side of the road in ten-meter-tall cliffs.

I looked over my shoulder, thinking of my car. I told my sister that I'd have to bring her her bike later. There was no way I could go back for it. We needed to get her to school. So I'd either drive it over to her while I was between errands or carry it and walk it over to her at some point during the day. But I still couldn't quite figure out how or when my sister would use the bike.

We walked along a desert highway. As we went up a slight slope, the shoulder of the road was blocked by a cliff of orange, powdery material on our right. We couldn't walk in the road because so many cars were coming down it. So we had to edge our way between the cliff and the white line at the road's edge, like we were toeing a ledge of a steep cliff.

I led the way. I kept trying to look back to my sister. But at this point my vision was really weird. I felt dizzy and disoriented. My head felt heavy. I could only look at the ground. And I couldn't even see the ground very well. I would force myself to turn my head back to look for my sister. But I couldn't see her anyway.

We got past the tight squeeze in the road and walked a ways up and over the rest of the slope. We were now back up on a concrete path, with a bit of lawn or wild grass separating us and the road.

We approached an intersection. The roads were really wide here -- maybe absurdly wide -- so that it felt like the intersection was 100 meters wide, going caddy corner. But caddy corner from us was a shopping center. This was the first sign of a city we'd seen since parking.

I knew that we had to keep on going straight along this road, the same direction we'd already been walking. We'd pass the shopping center. Then there would be more empty, desert space. And then there would be my sister's school. At this point I may have wondered why I couldn't have just driven my sister straight to the school.

grocery store criticism; a sculpture garden of friends

Dream 1

I was standing in a grocery store. It was a huge structure with dark cinder block walls and dusty floors. It was only lit by natural light, which was kind of orange, like the sun was low in the sky.

The grocery store may have been flooded out. I may have stood in the grocery store while it had been flooded. I may have been a little surprised by how back the grocery store looked. Everything was in disarray. There were no shelves for the food. Everything was just piled up. But I may have told myself this was just because of the flood.

But now the flood was gone. People were working on getting the grocery store back to normal. In fact, the grocery store was just about to reopen.

I was walking around, looking at the store. I was surprised by how rundown it looked. The floor was just dirt in many places, though it was concrete in others.

The store was more like a factory or warehouse than a grocery store. It had a kind of L or maybe U shape. And one side was like it was divided into cinder-block rooms, like different large storage rooms, at the end of which may have been a big, wide opening to the outside.

A woman, maybe Hispanic, came up to me and asked me what I thought of the store. We started walking back toward the front of the store.

I wanted to give the woman a somewhat honest opinion. This place didn't look like a grocery store at all to me. But I also didn't want to make the woman feel bad about the place -- especially if it was about to reopen. I decided to stick to the stuff I liked and try and sound as objective as possible about that stuff.

We stood out near the front of the store, right at the corner of the L or U. We were looking toward the doors into the grocery store, which were like automated swinging glass doors. Workers were coming in and out of the doors. They were also going around the doors, like the front of the store continued beyond the entrance, like the entrance was just inset into the store about halfway along the front of the store.

I commented on how I liked the space at the front of the store. I said the place felt spacious. I said that was a good feel for a grocery store, as most grocery stores are pretty wide and open. I was trying to say -- though I couldn't find a nice way to say it -- that I couldn't quite understand why the store wasn't just a big, open square like most grocery stores.

I then said that I liked the floors in this part of the store. They were made of concrete. But they could probably use a little bit of sweeping before the store opened. I may have made a mental note to myself to avoid reviewing any of the places where the floor was dirt. But I couldn't remember where those places were. The front of the store itself may have had dirt floors before. But now the floors were concrete.

I may now also have wondered where all the products were. There was nothing in the front area. The space was completely empty, except maybe some kind of plyboard leaning against the wall and a bit of construction clutter next to that.

Dream 2

I may have been at a party for some art community, maybe the Denver art community. It was getting toward early morning. A lot of people were leaving. The party had been outside. The party had possibly been big, with a lot of people, many of whom were now filing away.

Among the people, I saw my friend LN, who is the owner of a Denver art gallery. I had kind of stopped being friends with her about a year ago. I shyly called out to LN. I was happy to see her. But I was a little afraid she'd be mad at me and wouldn't want to talk to me.

LN seemed happy to see me, but in a subdued sort of way. I was so relieved that she wasn't mad at me that I hugged her tightly and told her how much I missed her. I hugged her kind of awkwardly, from the side, though with both arms. And while I hugged her we kept walking forward.

LN wore a kind of tight shirt, more like a bodysuit with jeans over it. The top was kind of pink-beige, with a soft but ridged or ribbed feeling to it. And the chest was lacy, like a bra had been built into it. I may have reflected that LN would usually not wear an outfit like that.

We were almost totally alone now. We were walking down a sidewalk on a slope that may have been bordered by a park or field on our right. A couple of party stragglers may have been walking near us. But soon even they were gone. The edge of the horizon may have been getting a tiny bit lighter with morning.

LN and I turned off the sidewalk and into the field. I don't think I ever let go of LN. I may have been talking to her about how bad I felt about not talking to her and about how I really did like her. But at some point she may have said that we needed to hurry on our walk. Apparently we needed to get across this field within some time frame -- either before the sun rose, or before some bus we were trying to catch reached a stop on the other end of the field.

We were moving through a field of tan, waist-high grass. We passed a lone tree with no leafs. After this it may have been like LN picked me up and ran with me in her arms. But it wasn't like she was carrying me in her arms. It was more like she was embracing me and arching her back a bit so my feet were a couple inches off the ground.

We sped through the field. I suddenly realized this field had been turned into a garden of abstract or conceptual sculpture. One sculpture was an abstract shape made out of mirror-like chrome. Another sculpture (or the same sculpture?) may have had bright neon or LED lights on it. I may have felt like LN and I had purposely come to this field so we could review the sculpture garden.

We headed up a slope near the end of the field. At this point I was carrying LN. It was like she was tired or maybe even sick. I may have been carrying LN in my arms. But we still sped along -- almost like we were floating rather than running.

It was pretty light now, maybe way past sunrise. We made it to the bus stop. A young guy may have been heading toward the bus stop, too.

LN and I were now in some room, a kind of small room, maybe with cheap, fake-wood-paneled walls, at the very back end of some sort of makeshift office building. We may have been sitting at some really low, circular table, in chairs that were probably too big for this small room. Our belongings, like coats, bags, etc., may have been cluttered all over the room.

LN stood up and said she had to go into a meeting now, and that it had been nice to see me. We were now not quite in the same room we had been in before. There was a glass door into another room.

A young man who was probably famous in town as a rapper or poet walked into the room beyond the glass door. LN was scheduled to interview the man, probably for some project they were hoping to collaborate on. Both LN and the man wanted to impress each other, as they were both hoping for success from this project. But LN probably wanted to impress the man more than he wanted to impress her.

But when I saw the young man, I was really excited. I poked my head into the room as LN walked in and said hello to the man. I said hello to the man. I may also have said something about how I thought it was cool he was working with LN.

At the same time another young man walked into the room, probably from an entrance directly from outside, on the left wall of the room. The first man may have been Hispanic. The second man was black. I also recognized him as a rapper or poet from around town. I also said I was really excited to see that he was working with LN.

The first man may have recognized me a tiny bit from around town. He seemed to be a bit more relaxed now that I said I was happy to see him. He said something to me and then closed the door to start the interview with LN.

I stood (maybe even sat? like a pet dog?) out in front of the door for a second. I gloated a little to myself that one advantage I had over LN was that I actually knew the artists around town in human terms. I didn't think of them as business propositions. And that always made people feel more comfortable.

I walked back into the small room LN and I had been in. I knew the men would think it weird if they found me outside the door. They were here to interview with LN. And it would be awkward if I kept putting my nose in their business. Anyway, it was getting to be time for me to leave.

I picked up my belongings and was getting ready to leave. Now LN was in the room. She was also picking up her belongings. She was apparently getting ready to leave, too. But it was also like she still had to continue her interview with the young men.

LN spoke to me a bit about some money troubles she was having. It was like she and her husband were barely scraping by for a living. They were even worried about getting kicked out of their place. In fact, they may have gotten kicked out of the place they'd been in when I'd last spoken with LN. They may now have been living in some non-residential space that some friends had let them stay in. They may even have been living in this space. LN may even have been preparing her bedding so she could get some sleep.

I thought back to all the reasons I'd been angry at LN. And I started feeling really guilty. After all, it wasn't really worth it to be mad at her. She liked me. I knew that. And, yes, she was sort of stuck up sometimes. But, really, that was just part of her act. At the end of the day, her reality was this. She was trying to build up young artists' careers. And while she was doing this, she was basically making no money at all.

LN led a hard and frustrating life. And wouldn't it be better of me, I thought, if I could stop being so hard on her and just play her game, let her act her act, and let her feel good about herself for a change?

girl in hospital gown; a pile of diapers; back of the food line

Dream 1

I walked into a bedroom. Possibly a lot of natural light flowed into the room, making it bright and white. The room may have felt really cluttered. A young girl lay on a mattress that was on the floor in the back right corner of the room. The mattress was crowded all around with all kinds of boxes and other clutter.

I approached the girl, maybe to tell her something. But when I saw her, I was attracted to her. She was still asleep. She rolled around under the blankets. She was wearing something like a hospital gown. I saw her back. I got really aroused.

I got into bed with the girl. I figured, weirdly, that if she'd rolled around to show me her back, she must be attracted to me, too. The back of the woman's gown had snaps on it. So I started to undo the snaps. I saw more and more of the girl's back.

Now an older, tall, kind of fat and burly man walked into the room. He may have asked me whether I'd woken the girl yet. Or he may have said impatiently that we needed to get going, so I needed to get the girl out of bed. But he may have implied through all of this that he didn't approve of me trying to seduce the girl.

I felt ashamed and a little afraid. But I also couldn't remember: had the girl wanted to be with me? Or had she been sleeping all this time and I'd just taken my own attraction to the girl as a sign that she was attracted to me?

Dream 2

I was probably in a place like a hotel room with my mom, my brother, and my sister. But the hotel was also like a bedroom in a duplex my family lived in when I was in sixth grade. My brother and sister may have been kids. But I was probably my current age. It was time for us to leave the hotel. We had to pack up all of our stuff and get going.

I noticed some diapers on the bed, maybe like Pampers Baby Dry. I thought for sure they had to be mine. I must have just worn diapers on some night and forgotten to throw them away the next morning. The diapers weren't dirty. They were just worn.

So I picked up the diapers off the bed. But then I noticed more and more diapers on the bed -- again, not dirty, just worn, like I'd slept in them for the night, then tossed them aside. I went down to the foot of the bed and noticed a ton more diapers. I pushed the bed aside. There were piles of diapers back there.

I knew I'd have to make a real effort to clear out all these old diapers. But I also wanted to make sure that I had them all cleaned out before my mom came back in the room. My brother and sister, as kids, may have been sitting up on the bed, maybe oblivious to all of this.

My mom came back into the room at some point. She stood over me as I was cleaning stuff, maybe not diapers, off the floor. I may have been a kid at this point.

My mom may have said we needed to go somewhere. We may have headed somewhere in a car.

Dream 3

I sat in a chair in some empty restaurant. The restaurant was huge, maybe more like a dance club. I sat at a tall table along a back wall of the restaurant. Off to my left was the cashier's counter. Off behind that may have been more restaurant space. Before me, the space was just empty floor, maybe like a dance floor. The floor must have been some sort of clear material. It may rhythmically have shifted color, from deep blue to white to deep purple.

Somewhere, maybe up near the ceiling, a television may have been playing. The show may have been about Michael Jackson or about the Jackson family. I knew I had something to do with whatever was taking place on the television.

But I was in this restaurant waiting for the cash register to open so I could buy some food. My mom showed up behind the cash register. She started setting it up.

For some reason I was a little afraid to get out of my seat. I felt like I was really high up in the air. Maybe I was high up on some top bunk bed. Or maybe my seat, being at normal height, was near some high ledge.

My mom had opened the cash register. So I walked over to the register. The place had been completely empty before. But now a few people had shown up, and I had to stand behind them in line. I may have been annoyed that I'd been here first but still had to wait. But I just acted like it didn't matter.

dead mall jewelry commercial; bunk bed exercises; not here for the movie business

Dream 1

I walked down some wide, marble steps into a large, tall area, the floors and walls of which were like marble. The place was a shopping mall. The lighting in the space was dim. There were a few people milling around. In the back left corner were probably a few food shops, like for a food court.

I may have been with someone. I may have been speaking with them. But the person I was with, or just some person in the mall, interrupted me. They asked me whether I didn't know about the mall. They then pointed to a sign at the foot of the stairs.

I looked at the sign, which was like a metallic plaque placed at an angle at the top of a waist-high brass pole. I knew the sign said that the mall had closed down. But I couldn't quite read the sign. The words were all blurry, like they were covered over with a sheet of plastic.

I turned around and looked at the mall. People were still here. So the mall wasn't completely closed down. And the food court shops were open. The only thing I'd really wanted to do was get some food. So maybe I could still do that. But I felt like if I even tried to get over to the food court, I'd be offending the person who just told me the mall was closing down.

I turned back toward the steps. The steps may now have looked like they were loosely covered over by a big sheet of plastic. I looked up to the top of the steps. The steps seemed to open directly out into a beautiful, blue night.

My view shifted up to the top of another set of steps. I may have been remembering an old commercial for the mall, maybe from the 1980s. A glamorous couple, maybe in their late forties, walk-danced their way down the steps. The man was in a tuxedo, but I barely saw him. The woman was in a red gown.

The couple were famous for their ads for a jewelry store, which was in the mall. This walk down the steps they were taking may have been a commercial from the 1980s. But it was also their last walk down the steps for the mall.

As the couple progressed down the steps, the woman became older, shorter, and less glamorous. She was speaking rather bluntly and possibly smoking a really terrible cigarette. The man was still hardly visible. There was a second woman coming down the steps, something like a servant or assistant for the couple.

The woman was discussing, maybe with the man or assistant, but possibly also with some member of the media, what the couple would do now that they would receive no more money from the jewelry commercials.

The woman tried to remained poised and polite at first. But then she started talking about how maybe she should go to the mall later, even if they were closed. She then spoke about taking some sort of action against either the owners of the mall or the owners of the jewelry shop. Whatever she wanted to do, I knew, would cause a lot of trouble for people. And that's all the woman really wanted to do.

Dream 2

I was down in a small, stuffy basement, possibly at night. I was standing on the side of some structure like a bunk bed. It may have been a bunk bed, but with framing like cheap, thin, stainless steel for some sort of outdoor structure. I was trying to do some sort of exercise on the bed, like pull-ups on the frame. But it wasn't working out.

I went to another bunk bed. A middle-aged man was seated off the side of the bed. I grabbed onto the frame of this bed, also made of cheap metal, and started doing some exercises.

The man smiled up at me and said, "I'm sorry I wasn't at the other bed. I know you were trying to do your exercises."

I had a feeling, looking at the man's smile, that he had meant to stop me from doing my exercises by not being at the other bed. I knew that now, even though I was doing my exercises, he'd hope to annoy me by making it clear he had meant to stop me.

I simply said, "Oh, it doesn't matter. That bed had the wrong exercises, anyway. I wasn't supposed to do those exercises today. I was supposed to do these ones." This was probably true. But I probably didn't need to say it, really. I just wanted to, to let the man know that even though he'd tried to stop me, I'd still succeeded at getting my exercises in.

I was now laying on a regular bed, reading a huge book. There was some noise coming from somewhere. I went into the kitchen, where the noise was coming from. The room was small and cramped, filled with a bunch of furniture, random stuff, garbage, and possibly huge sheets of plastic. There may also have been some leaking or dripping somewhere in the room.

The man was there. He may have been quite a bit older now, with a bald head and huge, watery eyes. He towered over me and looked down close to my face, blocking out the light from the ceiling bulb.

The man told me we were supposed to go somewhere. But I knew that wasn't true. I also knew I was supposed to be doing something else here. The man was just trying to pull me away from what I was really supposed to be doing, and he knew it. But when I told him I wasn't going anywhere, I could tell he was simply going to take that as an indication of how lazy and unwilling to work I was.

I was in a bedroom, laying on a bed and reading a huge book. The book may have been about Winston Churchill or about Winston Churchill and some other historical figure. I was getting through the book at a surprising speed. I knew that this book was incredibly important to some work I was getting ready to do. I couldn't believe I was finishing the book so quickly. I was really happy.

The bedroom I was in had a door on my left side and a door on my right side. Both doors connected the room to a whole lot more space. The door to my right opened into a long hallway.

The man stood in the doorway on my right side. He said he'd gotten back from wherever he'd gone, and wasn't it too bad that I'd not felt like going with him.

I was really mad that the man had said that. He was implying again that I'd been too lazy to go. But I'd gotten a lot done while he'd been gone -- including reading this book. I just wanted the man to leave the room. I was so close to finishing the book. I didn't want to argue with the man right now and lose my train of thought.

I was in a different room now. I may have thought of it as being upstairs from the bedroom I'd been in. The room was long and wide, with somewhat high ceilings. The floor was likely of polished stone, maybe with some black and white patterning on it. The man was in the room as well, discussing something with another, younger man. There may have been one or two other people in the room, off in the distance.

The two men were discussing some items of business we three needed to take care of. I had to be here for the conversation. But I knew that I really wasn't invited to say anything. Anything I said would be thought of as stupid and worthless. But the two men weren't really talking about getting any sort of business done at all. So I started to get bored.

I imagined some sort of game using the colors of the floor, like avoiding certain colors on the floor by jumping over them. I sort of regretted that the colors on the floor weren't in a nice checkerboard pattern, because that would make my game a lot more practical.

The men now discussed getting in touch with someone from the media. There was a local TV station, possibly a local PBS channel, that always had a really good news show on. The news show starred these two guys. And it was always a good idea to get interviewed on their show. But the guys couldn't remember the name of the show.

I couldn't quite remember the name of the show. But I had a vague idea. I called out, "It's something like The Ron Paul Show, isn't it?"

The two men laughed. One of them derisively said, "No. It is definitely not Ron Paul."

The two men may have walked off to the other side of the room. I knew that the men were wrong. I may not have been totally right about the name of the show. But I was pretty sure that if the guy's name wasn't Ron Paul, it was pretty close. That had always been one of the things that had been interesting to me about the show, was how close the two names sounded.

I knew the guys wouldn't listen to me. So I gave up. I knew that likely I'd be vindicated when the guys learned that the name of the show was something like what I'd said. But I was sure that, even then, they wouldn't admit that I'd been right, and that they'd likely still try to make me feel stupid for what I'd said.

Dream 3

I was in some place like a diner. I sat at the counter. The counter apparently surrounded the kitchen on three sides. The back side was a wall, possibly with doors into another kitchen. The walls of the place may have been a dull, green color. The kitchen was really busy, as was the dining area.

A woman behind the counter was quickly, briskly fiddling around with some of the kitchen machinery. She was talking with some guy near me. The two of them were talking about some kind of business -- probably making movies or something. They were talking logistics, and it all had to do with why the man, but also the woman, had come to this place (maybe Minneapolis or somewhere in Wisconsin).

I felt like I may have been wanted as a part of the conversation. Something suddenly occurred to me. So I said that this was actually a great city for making movies.

I may have started to give some examples or some pointers, which I'd also thought were wanted. But the woman looked at me and said something like, this wasn't a great city for making movies, and that wasn't the reason she or the man had come here. The woman acted like I'd rudely distracted her and the man from their main discussion, so that they'd now have to figure out all over again what they were supposed to be doing.

I stayed quiet. I knew now that I really wasn't wanted as part of this conversation. But I also knew that I was probably right about what I'd said.

I was now in some sort of room, like a huge lounge where parties were thrown. The place may have been nicely furnished. It was supposed to be a nice place. But the ceilings were really low. So the place felt uncomfortably closed in. And there was clutter all over, so that it felt like the place was just being moved into or being vacated because it was being closed down.

There was a small crowd of people, all probably rich and well-dressed, in the room, kind of off to one corner of the room. I was there, but maybe just by sight, or maybe just as someone who was supposed to be there only as an observer.

A man knelt on the ground before the crowd, like he was meditating. He then stood up and conducted some sort of fight sequence. He may have fought some of the rich people. Or he may have ran toward the other side of the room, through a doorway and into another room, where he'd fought some hidden martial artists, eventually bringing the fight out to this room.

Now the scene repeated itself. It may have been like the scene was all an act and the meditating man had decided that he would repeat the scene for the better enjoyment of the spectators.

The man was Asian now. He was probably dressed in a tuxedo. He knelt on the ground again and meditated. He finished meditating and stood up. He got really close to the woman at the front of the crowd of rich people. The woman was old, maybe in her seventies or eighties. She was dressed in a shimmery flapper-style dress and headband with a feather, and she probably wore a lot of diamonds, as well as a monocle or pince nez eyeglasses.

The man explained to the woman how he was going to redo the fight. The martial artists now all came out into this main room. They fought. But it was also possible that now a lot of the rich people were being fought against. Or it may have been that the rich people felt that this fight could get out of hand and eventually involve the rich people.

I now sat back up in the diner. It was like the scene between the man, the woman, and me was being repeated. But it was also like we'd still had our previous discussion.

The man and woman were still trying to figure out why they were in this town. They knew it was good for getting into the movie business. But they were sure that wasn't why. The woman had a piece of paper, which she may have called a deed. And she wasn't even sure why she had it.

I called out again to the woman, asking her if she really wasn't here because of the movie business. I said everything she and the man kept talking about really made it sound like she was here because of the movie business.

The woman and the man were now pretty annoyed with me. They both kind of ganged up on me, told me that they were absolutely not here because of the movie business, and basically made it clear they both thought I knew nothing. The woman and the man went back to talking.

A woman seated to my right, maybe a friend of mine, asked for my attention. She then asked me to pay attention to the deed the woman was talking about. The woman behind the counter, even though she was still fiddling around with all the kitchen machinery (not really making any food), was holding the deed in her hand.

The deed now appeared before me, maybe as if the woman seated to my right were now holding it. The paper wasn't whole. It was like rectangles of it had been cut out. And the words on it were either vanishing or had already vanished.

I knew the deed said something specifically related to this place (maybe now Minnesota, or just "MN," instead of Minneapolis or Wisconsin). But the words were either too hard to read or were already gone. So I couldn't figure it out.

So now I knew that the deed was the reason the woman was really here. But I didn't know what the deed led to. And I felt like I still wanted to help the woman and man figure out the answer to their mystery. But I also felt like I was simply not wanted by them. They didn't think I knew anything. And they didn't want my help. In fact, I even started to wonder whether the woman seated to my right hadn't been nice to me only so she could shut me up and stop me from annoying the woman and man, who were actually her friends, maybe even her employers.

rejected body switch; pink adult diapers; little girls at the theater; gigantic domed building

Dream 1

I was probably getting my body switched with someone. I don't know where we were. I was looking up, as if I were almost lying on the ground, toward a woman or a person who had been body-switched into a female body.

The person was bald. Her eyes were rather blank. The underside of her head exposed muscles, like the skin was gone, or like the skin was fabric or material that had run out while the body was being made or reconstructed. But the muscles were flesh-colored, not red and bloody. I probably saw all of this through a tangle of close, black wired.

I was now walking around outside, probably in some big parking lot. It was a sunny day. It was probably morning. But the sunlight was golden, like in late afternoon. The asphalt was dark black, like new.

I was out ahead of some other people. I looked behind to them. Among them was a woman who looked like a cyborg -- probably with a human head but a robotic body. I knew that woman had had her body switched with mine. She'd wanted to be a man, and I'd wanted to be a woman. So we'd switched bodies. But I think her new body wasn't taking so well, and there was a bad feeling that she might die.

I turned my head and started walking forward. I had some misgivings about my new body, too. I had a weird feeling around my jawline, like my face was starting to get rejected, like the tissue was starting to die. I'd be left without a face.

Now I was noticing how difficult it was to walk. It was like the muscles or tendons all around my hips, on the front of my body, were extremely weak. It was like the muscles or tendons were made out of garbage bags. I was more and more exhausted with each step I took.

My body was probably all some kind of black metal, just like the body of the person in the distance behind me. We apparently had real, human bodies -- each other's old bodies, in fact. But the bodies were also these strange, robotic bodies.

I wondered whether my legs weren't being rejected. Were my leg tissues dying? If so, I imagined, my whole body would likely die. However, I also thought that maybe my body was just healing after the body switch. It might take time for my body to get back to normal. But I didn't really know.

I was worried. But I figured that, regardless of what the truth was, I might as well just go about my daily life as if my body weren't going to fail. After all, I didn't want it to fail. I was finally in a woman's body. I could finally live life the way I wanted to.

I got to some place, probably my office, which was a weird, thin structure, like the stairwell up to the bridge-like overpasses that take you from train platform to train platform in railway stations. The inside was very dark, like the walls were all black. The stairway was black. It was also probably made of some kind of marble or granite. A lot of people filed into the building, a stream of business people heading to and up the stairs.

By now, the people who had been walking behind me in the parking lot, who were now likely the scientists who had performed the body switch, were ahead of me, a few steps up the stairway. I knew I needed to follow them so they could monitor my progress.

But I walked only a couple steps up the stairway before I got extremely exhausted. It was so hard to walk with these legs! I didn't think my heart would be able to handle getting all the way up the steps. I really did think now that my body was doomed to fail.

I stood down at the foot of the steps again. There may have been so many business people heading up the steps that it was hard for me not to be carried by their momentum into walking up the steps. But I was trying to figure out what I should do. Should I stay down here and try to find medical help?

I decided to start walking up the steps again. I needed to stay with the scientists. And if I was going to die, I might as well just keep on going, anyway. But maybe my body was just getting back to normal. I decided that what I would do is take each step very easily and slowly, so that I wouldn't put too much strain on myself. I figured that if I couldn't even handle the strain of walking slowly up the steps, I would make a new plan.

Dream 2

I was probably in my house. It may have been a bright day, or it may have been night, and I had lights on in my house. I stood in front of a white wardrobe I have in my living room for linens and cleaning supplies.

I opened the door to the wardrobe. Apparently there were adult baby diapers inside. As soon as I saw them, I was wearing them. I was naked, except for a pink pair of adult baby diapers.

I looked at myself in a mirror that was probably fixed to the back wall of the wardrobe. I was surprised by how good I looked. My body was skinny and smoothly muscular. The adult baby diapers also made my hips look nice.

I swayed my hips back and forth in the mirror. I then turned away from the mirror, probably heading toward my bedroom. I felt so sexy, I thought I would play out some sort of fantasy in my head.

Dream 3

I was probably backstage at some play or musical performance. I had probably come to see the performance. Maybe some of my friends were in it. But I had somehow ended up backstage, like I'd needed to help with things. And now, getting all mixed up in the things happening here, I couldn't be sure whether I'd get out to my seat on time to see things, or whether I'd miss finding out that the performance had been totally canceled.

At some point there was a bald, kind of heavy, white man with thick-rimmed glasses who stood above the rest of the working crowd. He probably had a megaphone. He giving the workers direction. Things were really starting to move now. So I felt like maybe we'd wrap up with whatever we were doing and I could get out into the audience in time for the start of the show.

As the man spoke, the crowd of workers became something more like a big sea of tables with people, like at a big bar or a big awards ceremony. But it also felt like a huge cafeteria or beer garden, with long rows of tables. The light was yellow-grey-green, but very warm-feeling. Everybody seemed like they were in a good mood -- like they were all out drinking and having a good time. I figured that everybody was relaxed enough that there was no doubt I'd be on time to see the show.

I walked a bit farther. I may have heard some voices. I was basically by myself now. I saw, off to my left, a group of people at a microphone. They were all reading a script. It was like they were speaking for people who were out on stage. I realized that the show had already started. But I wasn't here to see the whole show. I was just here to see an act.

I knew now that I was pretty far backstage. I wanted to walk up as close to the stage as I could to see what act was on, to figure whether I'd have enough time to get seated for the act I'd come to see. The backstage area was enormous: a huge, white room, with occasional stage-like black wires and metal frames hanging down here and there. But overall it looked more like the interior of a gigantic Spanish mission than the backstage of a theater.

I probably felt a flash of stage lights, like I was almost to the stage. I may even have imagined myself for a brief instant as the beautiful, 1940s-style starlet up on stage.

I was now looking through some sort of railing, like heavy, classical stone railing. On the other side of the railing was something like a church. A lot of people were seated in pews. But the pews really looked like booth tables at a restaurant. There was a gigantic room filled with these booth tables.

All of these people were here for the show, which hadn't started yet, and which was to be either a church service with a sermon by a really powerful speaker or some kind of performance by a Christian performance group that would visit churches. Everybody seemed very friendly. But they were all very Christian. So I knew they wouldn't like me if they got to know my personal beliefs and inclinations.

I focused on one particular booth table. It was up in some section of tables that was elevated about four or five feet above where I was standing. It was actually like a lot or all of the table areas were elevated about the walkway areas.

The man at the table, the father (the mother was probably there, too), was tall, muscular, white, but tanned like he did a lot of outdoor activity. He wore a t-shirt, green khaki shorts, and a pink, weathered baseball cap. I knew that if he met me, he'd probably like me for a second or two then decide not to like me, maybe because of my olive skin, maybe because he could sense some kind of weirdness about my sexuality. So I tried to stay out of his field of attention altogether.

The man was calling for his daughter. I thought I'd try to help find the man's daughter, but without drawing attention to myself. I saw the man's daughter somewhere. She was a young girl, pretty and blonde. She may have been really girly, with hair in poofy ringlets and wearing an old, frilly kind of dress.

I found the little girl very attractive. So I wanted to talk to her. But I knew that if the father saw me talking to the girl he'd really be angry at me and probably find ways to make me feel bullied, by him or others, for the rest of the time that I was here. But I still wanted to help the daughter get to the father. So I knew I needed to somehow get the girl's attention, then draw her attention back to her father. The girl may also have seen me and wanted to talk to me. But she may have been too shy.

I might simply have given up on talking to and helping the little girl. I may just have seen that there was no way I could win.

The walkways now all ended in something like a close, dim elevator lobby. The lobby had dark, rich carpet and dark, polished stone walls. The elevator doors were made of polished gold or brass. There were shiny, black panels that would occasionally display messages in red, digital lettering. It was like this was a hotel. But it was also like it had a museum or something in it.

Some people, mostly mothers, sat on the floor, playing with their kids or talking as their kids played about. There was one young girl I was attracted to for some reason. She was tall, olive-skinned like me, kind of heavy, with straight black hair. She wore a purple t-shirt and black sweats. I felt like she was maybe twelve years old, though she may have been as tall as or taller than I.

I tried to avoid looking at the girl. I didn't want to creep her out, and I didn't want the mothers to know I was attracted to her. I headed straight toward the elevator.

The mothers were talking about what the kids liked to do while they were at this building. The mother said, "She" (meaning the girl in the purple shirt) "loves to go with her aunt and shuttle all the way up to the 72nd floor! They do that as many times a day as they can."

I got really dizzy. I hadn't known this building was at least 72 stories tall! I had thought it was just a theater building. I also knew I was heading up the elevator. But I didn't know where to. I was suddenly really hesitant about even getting onto the elevator. Would I have to go up to the 72nd floor? Or even higher?

I started to justify everything. Just because the building was at least 72 stories tall, that didn't mean the place I was going to had to be that high up. I obviously didn't need to worry about it. So I felt better.

But then I got worried again. I thought, If I'm in a building that's 72 stories tall, if it falls, it will definitely crush me and kill me!

I was really dizzy now. I didn't want to get onto the elevator at all. I sat down in front of the doors.

The mothers were still talking about the girl's trips to the 72nd floor. They said, "She loves to go up there because there's a toy store up there."

I thought, Wow! If there's a toy store on the 72nd floor, I might like to go up there!

I looked over to the girl now. She was laying on her back, with her knees up in the air. I could see her crotch. I was turned on. So I quickly looked away.

The daughter suddenly became interested in me. She started wriggling her way toward me, staying in a kind of seated position on the floor. The mothers could also see that I was attracted to the girl. I tried to look away from the girl, tying to keep my attraction to her inconspicuous. But since the girl was obviously coming over to me, I wasn't going to ignore her. I would talk with her or play with her. Whatever she wanted to do.

The girl was, in fact, talking to me, maybe even about the toy store. But even though she was talking, kind of innocently, as she got very close to me, she spread her legs entirely. She lifted up her crotch and pointed it straight at me. I was now really attracted to the girl.

This building was a hotel. I wanted to take the girl into the elevator and up to my room right away. But as I kept looking at the girl, with her legs spread and crotch lifted up at me, I thought I might like to just lay down on top of her right now. I may have tried to figure out if there was a way I could do that without making the mothers think I was attracted to the girl.

Dream 4

I was out walking along a large street. It was a residential street, but it felt really big, like some of the streets on the crest of steep hills in San Francisco. But I probably thought I was "home," i.e. in Denver. The sky was a deep, electric blue. The houses themselves, possibly all row houses or apartments, had beige walls. But the beige was also a deep tan color, like the sunlight was soaking deep into everything and turning it into a much deeper, more electric color.

I was walking in one direction (either east or west). I knew I was heading away from downtown, likely away from downtown Denver. But in the distance I saw an enormous building with a cupola, like the Capitol building.

I knew the building couldn't be the Capitol. I was heading in the opposite direction. But I couldn't figure out what other building it could be. I was a bit worried and confused at first. How could I be seeing something I was supposed to be headed away from? But my mind was a little more at ease when I told myself the building simply couldn't be the Capitol.

The building was off in the distance, behind blocks and blocks of row houses or apartment buildings. But it was gigantic enough, still, to loom over all of them. The building was made of stone, like massy, muted stone. But it was blue, not grey. That was very interesting to me. Also, the dome, instead of being gold, was some strange kind of iridescent purple. It was so strange. I really wanted to see it up close!

I may have started telling myself that that building was in a different town, maybe even Austin, Texas. I may have told myself that I was actually walking into another town.

Some kids may have crossed the enormous street. They were a big school group, probably of early elementary school kids. They may all or mostly have been Hispanic. I had continued walking forward, so by the time they and their teachers had crossed the big street, they were walking behind me.

As we approached another intersection, I heard the kids speaking, either in Spanish, Japanese, or both Spanish and Japanese. I may have responded to something they'd said in Japanese as I'd passed them as they were still crossing the big street. They may have been impressed that I'd understood them. So they started talking about me, only indirectly, kind of curious whether I could still understand them.

As we crossed the intersection (the road we crossed was small, like a neighborhood road, not like the huge road on our right), I thought I'd say something to the kids to prove I could speak Japanese. I searched my mind for something to say. It was hard to figure out the words.

Then I turned around as I approached the opposite curb. I continued walking, though backwards, so I could keep facing the kids. As I started speaking, I noticed that my mouth was full of food. This would make it hard for me to speak and hard for the kids to understand me.

I said, "Genki desu ka?" The kids may have acknowledged me a little.

As I turned around and started walking forward again, one of the kids said, in English, "That means, 'I am very well.'"

I was pretty sure that that wasn't what I had said. But at least I had somewhat proven to the kids that I could speak their language.

In the distance, and down a slope that we had now approached, I saw a big, obelisk-like monument. It was in a small patch of drying, dead lawn that was bordered by a heavy, grey, stone fence. I felt like the big monument might have something to do with the gigantic, purple-domed building in the distance. So I really, really wanted to see it. It would help me figure out where I really was.

Suddenly I was flying over the road and down toward the monument. Some of the kids remarked in English that I should keep on flying and get to the monument quicker because it was a really interesting spot.

I flew over the plot of land that the monument was in. An old woman was out walking two animals, possibly a dog and a sheep. I was trying to land. But it seemed like anyway I would land would basically lead to me landing on and killing the sheep.

There were some other people near the monument -- maybe residents and some tourists. At least one woman remarked on my difficult situation. She could tell that I didn't want to kill the sheep. Yet she could see that if I landed, I'd likely kill the sheep and make it look like I had meant to do so.

I floated up and over toward the monument. I was in some weird state right now -- not quite landing, but no longer really able to fly. But I also had a hard time directing my motion at all. I could tell there was some sort of plaque, either on the monument or on a staircase leading up to the monument. I was trying to get to the plaque so I could read it and figure out where I was.

I may eventually have bobbed and floated my way over to the plaque, wherever it was. But I was still so bad at guiding myself that I was just facing away from the plaque! I couldn't turn myself around so I could actually read it!

I may possibly at this point have been carried away, as if by a gust of wind, toward the gigantic, purple-domed building. I may have resigned myself to my condition by now. I figured I'd learn where I really was soon enough. I may still have thought I was in Austin. But I may also have thought I was in some Mexican or Latin American city.

At some point I may have seen the huge building again, as if I were floating in the sky above it, though it was still in the distance. But I may have seen above it an image of a gigantic puff of popcorn and a gigantic image of one of the Jeff Koons balloon animal sculptures.

liquefied soldiers; little girl and mannequin

Dream 1

I was possibly part of some group like a military group that was fighting some kind of alien or monster. Or I may have been just a normal person who had been drawn into fighting these beings by necessity. I may have had a machine gun or something like a gun: a weapon that would possibly destroy whatever creatures we were fighting.

I believe that the aliens worked by taking over a human body. They would basically liquefy the body. The liquefied humans may afterward have appeared in their human form again, though they would now be the aliens. But they may also have disappeared altogether.

I stood outside, in some place like a hilly area, like in a town, during the daytime. But the place felt trashed. There were probably cardboard boxes everywhere. But there were also probably blankets and other kinds of bedding everywhere. There may also have been cradles and other items from a nursery.

I stood under some kind of structure -- like just a big piece of wood hanging over the place where I was standing -- a blanket-strewn street or something like that. The area I was in was completely deserted. I'd come here with a group of folks. But apparently they were all now dead. I hadn't known it until now. I realized they'd all been liquefied and had disappeared.

Now two, or maybe three, soldiers entered my field of view. They probably hadn't been a part of the group I'd been with. But now it was like I'd been a part of their group the entire time. But it was also like they were a new group and they'd seen the awful way I'd worked with my previous group.

I felt like this new group of soldiers thought I'd purposely let my old group all get liquefied. I may also have felt like they thought I'd just been so incompetent or new to things that I'd clumsily let my whole group get liquefied. I tried to prove myself to the new group of soldiers by telling them about work positions I'd had in the past.

As I spoke with the soldiers, our position changed. At first we were standing under a structure that looked like a bunk bed -- as if we were somehow all standing on the bottom bunk, which was big enough to hold all of us, and which was tall enough for all of us to stand up without hitting our heads on the underside of the top bunk. But then it was like we were all sitting or laying on the top bunk, though we had to slouch really low, as the ceiling of the room we were in was so close, sloped somehow like the ceiling of a commercial airliner. And then it was like we were in some sort of military aircraft.

As I spoke with the soldiers, it was also less like I was just telling them things of my own accord and more like I was being asked things. There was a female soldier who seemed to sympathize with me. The other two (?) soldiers, at least one of them male, didn't seem to care much about me one way or the other. But the female soldier wanted to ask me questions to figure out what I'd really done in my life, to prove to herself, me, and the other soldiers that I could do my job and protect them against getting liquefied.

As I continued talking, the soldiers now may all have been on the other side of the bed, standing down on the floor. We may have been inside some large military aircraft. Or we may have been inside some large building, like a military aircraft hangar. I may still have been sitting on the top bunk of the bunk bed, which may have been elevated quite a ways above the soldiers.

 Dream 2

A pretty little girl was on a bed. I was probably taking sexy photos of her. She was cute, blonde. She probably wore some skimpy, white clothing, almost like underwear or lingerie. The bed was clothed in a bunch of white sheets and maybe white blankets, which were all rumpled up on the bed. The room was all white, with some bright, gentle daylight coming in through a window.

The little girl and I spoke as I took photos of her. But I'm not sure what we spoke about. I may have been telling her how to pose in order to look sexier. But I may also have been talking to her about some random stuff, to kind of give her confidence in my past experience, so that she'd feel assured that I could take pictures of her that would look sexy and not stupid or boring.

There was now a white mannequin in bed with the little girl. The mannequin was of a full-grown woman, in the typical model-thin style. The mannequin may have had "hair" made out of some orange material, possibly orange tulle, possibly some sort of organic or faux-organic material, like orange faux branches and blossoms, or branches with orange-colored blossoms on them.

The mannequin was most likely inanimate. But it also changed its position. It was in at least two positions: a seated or kneeling position, and a sexy crawling position. The little girl would weave and writhe in a sexy way around the mannequin's body. As she did so, I directed her, again, possibly by just talking to her about my past experience, or talking to her about stuff that happened in my or maybe her day-to-day life.

At one point the little girl emerged from behind the mannequin, but also out from under a comfy, white blanket. At this point I felt like the little girl would start making some really sexy poses. So I tried to give her some really good direction that would make her feel secure that I knew what I was talking about.

The mannequin was now stretched out in her slinky, sexy crawl. I was trying to imagine the best way to tell the little girl to get underneath the mannequin, so it looked like the two of them were laying with each other. But I might not have been able to find the right words to say.

At this point it may all have seemed imaginary to me, like I wasn't really seeing any of this, and that I was just trying really hard to retain my memory of it and to keep that memory moving forward so I could make the little girl and the mannequin do the sexy poses I'd been aiming to see.

bad cosmic aim; wrong salute

Dream 1

I somehow blasted up away from the earth and into outer space. I was probably blasting through space at a high speed. I probably ended up flying into some really colorful area, like a nebula of rainbows.

But then something happened. I may have decided to turn around. Or I may have lost my momentum -- as if somehow gravity was still working and I'd kind of hit the top of my arc and was now coming back down.

I was now rocketing back toward the earth. The earth was surrounded by rainbow clouds like the nebulae I'd just rocketed into. As I got closer to the earth, the clouds dissipated a bit, but never totally. The earth itself looked like a globe full of cities. The closer I got, the more the earth just looked like a network of lit up cities at night.

I was speeding toward the earth. I felt like I was being pretty strongly pulled. But I also knew that I had to steer myself correctly if I wanted to get home. I steered sharply as I approached the earth. I could probably see Colorado, as if it were on a map.

I finally landed. I lay face down on the floor of a gigantic room. The floor was the map of a section of the United States. I pushed myself up. I saw that I had landed in Colorado, though I had landed a bit southwest of my hometown of Denver.

I pushed myself up on my arms and looked off to my right. I told the person standing way out there -- maybe my mom? -- that I had gotten close but hadn't hit the target.

Dream 2

I was in some sort of room. It felt sort of crowded, like I was standing in between two rows of folding tables with tons of stuff on them -- maybe like at a comic book convention, except that all of the stuff felt like it was packed up. Off behind me was a doorway, maybe to something like a fake pyramid, like in a museum exhibit.

A young guy was facing me. We had probably just finished up a conversation. I was hoping to get the guy's approval. I was a little afraid that I would look stupid or ill-informed in front of him. He was white, clean, well-groomed, like a young professional just out of college.

To say goodbye to the guy I backed away from him a few steps, crossed my arms over my chest, said, "Wakanda forever," and lay down on the ground.

The guy walked past me. He somehow tapped or hit my arms, maybe with his feet, but probably with his hands. He pushed my arms, still crossed in an x, off my chest and over to my right side. He said that I'd mistakenly made a gesture toward him that was in support of black people. Crossing my arms off to the right, however, was a gesture in support of white people. And that was what the man had wanted to see.

The man walked into the doorway. I now understood that the man was a white supremacist. I was afraid that he'd want to kill me, now that I'd made a gesture in support of black people. I thought I could make the gesture in support of white people the next time I saw him. Maybe that would make him less angry toward me. But I knew I couldn't do that, either. I was at a loss. I felt like I couldn't do anything at all.

enough propeller oil; angry twitter man; city council faux pas

Dream 1

I may have been in a suburban neighborhood in the daytime. I may have been dropped off here by someone, possibly my brother or another family member. The street I was walking down may have been level, but it may also have been at the crest of a steep slope of blocks and blocks of residential houses.

I may have been imagining some sort of conversation I would have with someone about an airplane flight I'd taken. I may just have been dropped off from this airplane flight. Some people had thought that the flight or the plane wasn't very good. But I thought it was, and I was imagining a conversation about why I'd thought it was good. My brother had possibly been the pilot.

I had walked clockwise down one block and then another. I'd ended up in something like a wooded park. I turned right and started walking down a path.

I was still imagining the conversation. But now I had to run. Apparently the plane was waiting for me. I had to catch it before it left. My mother was probably running beside me. We ran down a wide, gully-like path.

The airplane -- a big, silvery plane like from World War II -- was somewhere. Then we were on the plane. I was in the hollowed-out back area, which had no windows. My mom was probably up front, in the pilot's cabin, probably with my brother, who was flying the plane. I was still imagining the conversation I would have with people who didn't think this flight or plane was good.

We lifted up into the air. But it was also still somehow like I wasn't on the plane yet -- maybe even like I hadn't decided whether I wanted to be on the plane.

I could see somehow that the plane's propellers -- this was a prop plane -- were having some kind of trouble.

Some part of my vision was now up in the pilot's cabin. Somehow my brother made it known that some sort of tubes that went to the propellers were either out of or very low on oil. This sounded kind of scary to me at first. But then my brother made it known that there was enough oil remaining to get us to wherever we were headed, but that after we got there, we'd definitely need to put more oil in.

I was still in the windowless back part of the plane. But I could see, either through the windows of the pilot's cabin or from some point of view outside the plane, that we'd lifted up over a tall hill in the park.

I still wasn't sure I wanted to be on this flight. But I knew we were already on our way. So I couldn't get off the plane. But I reassured myself, and the people I was having a conversation with in my head, that everything would be okay. I felt like the oil situation had been monitored well.

Dream 2

I had probably posted something on Twitter about some event, maybe some kind of pop culture convention. I'd probably posted a few tweets about how I was excited for the event or how I had really enjoyed the event. I'd probably then posted a tweet that was just a quote, or my paraphrase of a quote, from one of the people who ran the event, possibly the top person in charge of the event.

The person I'd tweeted about, however, was really angry about my tweet. I imagined the person as a white man, bald on the top of his head, but possibly with long, white hair on the sides of his head and a grey mustache that flowed down into a long, white beard.

I read the man's reactions to my tweet and could feel the anger coming from the man. The man felt I'd misquoted him or totally misrepresented him somehow. He told me I should delete all the tweets related to him and his event. He then implied he was even going to try and get my account deleted.

I was now out on a soccer field during the daytime. A game was going on, probably between teenage boys. But it was way off in the distance, and the boys were all so close to the far goal, so they seemed even farther away. Yet at other times it felt like they were pretty close to me.

I may have been trying to get closer to the game -- not to play, but just to see how it was progressing. But I may also have felt unwelcome in the game. And I also may have felt like the angry man was in charge of the game or playing in the game. So I really didn't want to get too close.

The man's Twitter tirade continued during all of this. Somehow the man had started direct messaging me on Twitter. I may have thought this was weird. I was pretty sure he and I were not following each other.

But the man had also managed to connect our conversation with some young woman who was some head person over at Twitter. This three-way conversation probably took place via direct messaging, though it also seemed to take place over the public Twitter feed.

The man was basically trying to get Twitter to delete my account. The woman was sort of defending me. She couldn't see exactly what I'd done wrong. I hadn't misrepresented the man. I'd quoted him directly. She could sort of see that.

But then the woman responded to the man that a lot of times people on Twitter get super-excited about things and post a lot of tweets about whatever they're excited about. The woman was basically implying that I had posted too many tweets about the event, and that the volume of tweets was getting the man all confused, so that it was sort of understandable that the man would eventually feel misrepresented by my statements.

I felt like the woman was actually still trying to defend me. At the very least, she was trying to get the angry man to back off, simply because she found it annoying that he was trying to make sure shut down someone's account. Nevertheless, it was also clear that the woman wasn't on my side, even if she was defending me, and that she -- and possibly even all of Twitter -- found it annoying that I was posting so much about so many things.

I felt like the woman was already starting to be on the fence about whether she should shut down my Twitter account. I had a feeling that the only reason she hadn't already decided to shut down my Twitter account was because she didn't actually know me -- she couldn't actually see me. If she could actually see me, she'd most likely dislike me and firmly decide to shut my account down.

I was now close to a soccer goal. I didn't see any players. But I could probably feel their presence somewhere around me.

I felt like I needed to make a case for myself, to prove that I had not misrepresented the man, that I hadn't even posted very many tweets about the man's event, and that the tweets I'd posted had all been fact-based -- nothing editorial or based on my own opinions or emotions.

I wasn't looking at my phone at all. But somehow, out walking on the soccer field, I was searching for my tweets about the man's event. I couldn't find them. There was some reason for this -- possibly that I'd posted too many other tweets, so that it was now impossible for me to find these specific tweets; or possibly that the man's event had, after all, been so obscure and ill-attended-to, that it was nearly impossible to find any news about it, including my own tweets.

I was in some black room -- possibly a bedroom (or a baby's nursery, but with adult beds in it, too?), possibly my own bedroom, or possibly a bedroom that had been my bedroom but was now partly vacated, as I'd moved out of this bedroom but was still getting stuff out of it. I was lying on a bed. I may have been looking at my phone at first. But now I'd slung the hand my phone was in up over my head and off the edge of the bed.

I may have found enough tweets to prove to the woman that I'd only tweeted a few fact-based tweets about the man's event. But I may still have been uncertain about tweeting these tweets to the woman.

I was probably now on the floor in the room, laying on my stomach or sitting up in some lazy style. I may have been looking at my phone now. But whatever I was looking at was really hard to see and read. I started feeling like maybe the tweets I'd pulled up were really bad examples of whatever I was trying to prove to the woman. I hesitated about sending the tweets. I knew if they weren't good, the woman would get fed up with me once and for all and decide to delete my account like the angry man had told her to.

Dream 3

I was in some sort of official public space. I was in a kind of big room that was full of people. Earlier on I may have been near a food truck. The food truck may have been outside. But it may also have been in this room. While I was at the food truck I may have seen the president of my city council. I may have gotten what I'd needed from the food truck then turned away.

I was now at a doorway out of the room and into another big, full room. My view may have been partly obscured by the doorway.

My city council president walked up to me. He was angry. He pointed his finger at my chest and told me either that I'd said something to offend him or that I'd offended him by not doing something he'd needed me to do.

I told the president that I hadn't done whatever he'd thought I'd done. It was pretty obvious to me that I hadn't. I just needed to point out the obvious to him. But he wouldn't believe me.

He may now have been gone. I still felt like it would be pretty easy to convince him that I hadn't done what he'd thought I'd done. But as I tried, I found it harder and harder to remember the exact evidence that I actually only done good things for him. This may have gotten more and more frustrating to me, as I may possibly have felt that I couldn't actually move from one room to the next without feeling confident that I could present this evidence to the city council president.

brother runs faster than i

Dream 1

It was a golden afternoon. I was out with my little brother, walking along a path bordered by thin strips of lawn, possibly near some kind of suburban shopping center. Some thick, brown leafs occasionally dotted the lawn. The lawn and path probably had a kind of busy road next to it.

My brother were walking at a relaxed pace. Then we realized we needed to get somewhere. So I started running. My brother started running, too. He pulled ahead of me. I kind of got the feeling that he felt like I had been trying to run faster than him, so he needed to run faster than me.

We stopped running. Then we ended up across a street. We needed to cross the street -- which basically put us back near the shopping center area, just on another side of it.

Again, I felt that we needed to move quickly, to get across the street before more cars came, but also to get wherever we needed to go. So I started to run across the street. My brother ran up from behind me and passed me. He didn't look like my brother. He was tall, pale, with a short haircut. He wore a blue sweatshirt and something like grey long johns.

We were across the street. There was no path now. The space between the shopping center's back wall (or maybe just a big brick wall for a gated community or something?) was now all lawn, dotted by thick, brown leafs.

My brother was still running, a few meters ahead of me. I figured I would keep running and try to keep up with him. I wasn't sure how well I'd do. I was already winded. But I figured I'd keep running as long as I could.

But now my brother stopped running. I jogged the rest of the way to catch up with him.

Quick message

Hello everybody,

I am back after a five-year hiatus. I would like to start entering my dreams in my dream journal again. We'll see whether I manage to do this.

Thank you, and enjoy.

Preemie

hot rod computer; fitting room full of clothes

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some dark space with my boss JE and his boss AB. The space may have been walls, maybe brick, opening out to the dark air at the front wall. There was just a thin, yellow-grey light, like from a streetlamp, somewhere. I had my bag at my feet. It may have been really big, maybe even as big as a sleeping bag. It may have been like we were preparing to go on some kind of camping trip or slumber party.

AB asked me to take my computer out of my bag for some reason, possibly to show me some work I needed to do or to illustrate something I was doing for fun that he was interested in. I took my computer out of my bag. AB remarked how cheap and bad my computer looked. He was a little disgusted. I suddenly felt ashamed. AB was right. The computer was extremely light and flimsy, like it was made out of cardboard.AB showed me his computer. It was a nice, solid laptop.

AB was now going to show me the work I needed to do. He may have opened his laptop. But he was also holding my laptop. He was flipping it over in dismay. He asked me, "Does this thing even have a DVD player?" I said it did. I took my laptop. looked for the DVD player and seemed to find it.

I sat my laptop on some stand, something like a square pedestal of wood maybe about 150cm tall. I opened my laptop. It still looked like a cheap laptop on the outside. But the face and keyboard looked something like the hood and chrome grill of a1950s-style hot rod.

I may have done something like try to turn on the computer. But now all the chrome pieces seemed to make a strange-looking stereo, with a CD player and radio on the face. I ran my hand across the devices. The devices seemed to multipy. The computer was now as big as the pedestal it had been standing on.

Dream #2

I was in a clothing store, possibly a lingerie store, like a Victoria's Secret, or possibly the clothing section of a general department store. I headed into the women's fitting area. Apparently I was going to try on some women's clothes. Just outside the fitting room were a few torso mannequins wearing some cheap-looking, form-fitting blouses or dresses of sequins and glitter.

I had tried on whatever I was going to try on. Now I was putting my own clothes back on. But I had decided to change my outfit. I had just been coming back from something like a camping trip or some other kind of multi-day, intense task. I was now on my way home. I hadn't changed my clothes in one or two days. I had a backpack full of clothes, though. So I figured I'd just change now while I was in a fitting room.

I had a bag, like a laundry bag, full of clothes, in front of me. I somehow threw the clothes I'd changed out of into the bottom of the bag. But now that I'd changed, I kind of had second thoughts about it. Now I'd be walking out of the fitting room in different clothes, lugging a bag of clothes with me. Wouldn't that seem suspicious, like I was trying to shoplift some clothes?

I thought that I should just go ahead and change back into the first outfit I'd been wearing and try to put all my other clothes back into my backpack.

But now the bag holding my clothes was enormous! It looked like a cloth bag you can buy at the grocery store to use instead of disposable bags. It was navy blue. But it was about waist-high and maybe a meter wide -- stuffed full of my clothes! A lot of the clothes looked like cotton gloves and other accessories. The clothes were all wet, like they'd just come out of the washing machine.

The clothes I'd changed out of were at the bottom of this sack. I knew that now they'd not only be extremely difficult to get to, but wet and wrinkled as well. And since they'd been dirty when I'd taken them off, the wetness would make them smelly and even dirtier-feeling. It was no use getting back into my old clothes at this point.

I may have started pulling, or imagined pulling, the huge bag of wet clothes out of the fitting room.

injured knight

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably in a library with two of my friends, one of whom may have been my old friend ML. We were getting ready to leave the library to hear an author's talk.

ML was a little disappointed with the author, and possibly also with having to go to the talk. I knew this was because he didn't like some themes or some plot devices in the most popular book the author had written.

But I knew, and I wanted to tell ML, that the author himself didn't like his most popular book. He had kind of been forced or swayed to write it the way he had. His other books were written how he wanted to write them, and I liked them a lot more. I thought ML would, too.

I could see an image from the popular book. The book was an old-style, cloth-bound, hardcover book. On the paper glued to the inside of the front cover was an illustration, monochrome, in blue and white, of a knight leading a group of men through the mountains.

I was now out in some wildland of rolling valleys of grass dotted with occasional groves of trees and shrubs. The day was grey, cool, and misty. There were three knights, one of whom may have been me.

The knights all rode big, powerful, fast horses. But the horses may also only have been half-horses, or they may have been like big puppets, or hobbyhorses with curtains of puppet-fabric over them. The knights were also wearing, instead of mail and armor, big, brown coats or vests made out of either animal hide or puppet fabric.

As the three knights sped along, the third knight, with whom I identified, somehow injured himself. One of his legs was broken. He fell off his horse, which then may have stopped running. The knight stood up and may even have gotten back up onto his horse, even though he knew he would no longer be useful at riding.

The other knights were only a short distance in front of the third knight. It was like they weren't moving forward at all, even though they may supposedly still have been charging forward.

I felt a keen sense of dismay and fear at the third knight/myself having broken his leg. I understood now that it may have happened because the knight had been shot off his horse, maybe by an enemy's crossbow. Or perhaps the knight had only fallen and injured himself. But his injury put him at the mercy of the enemy, who were lurking in the wildlands, unseen. I didn't want the knight to be doomed: his doom would be mine.

The knight called out to the other two knights that they should keep going and not worry about him. The knight tried to act like he could still ride, to keep the other knights from waiting for him.

I now understood that this was actually a scene from the popular book by the author my friends and I were going to see. I had felt bad about my friend not liking the book. So now I had gone into the book to make "the ultimate sacrifice" within the book, as a kind of penance. This might have seemed like a kind of silly thing for me to have done, since it might cost me my own as well as the knight's life.

The third knight was somehow keeping up with the other two knights, possibly even beating them. But it was now like he was speeding along on a pogo stick that was covered in shaggy hide or puppet fabric. The knight had chosen to ride on a pogo stick so he would only have to use one leg to move. But he was still afraid that something would happen, either to injure his broken leg even more, or to break his other leg. So he called back to the men that if something bad happened to his legs, he would make them feel really guilty about it.

I was now floating up in the air, maybe twenty meters high. I was looking down on something like a parking lot or a garage where a semi-truck was parked, possibly with two trailers attached to its back end, side by side.

Something had happened, I can't remember exactly what, to make the truck inaccessible to me. The truck had been guarded over by some man at some high vantage point and inside something like a control room. But I was either assigned to drive it, or I'd wanted to drive it, to some destination.

But now the man had been subdued, and the truck was no longer under the man's control. The two trailers were now attached (maybe they hadn't been before?) to the back of the truck, and the truck was now ready for me to drive. I could imagine the trucks being pulled back out of the concrete-walled, stall-like space they'd been in. My trip was ready to be started.

But now I realized I couldn't make the trip. I was scheduled to be somewhere, maybe at some place like my work, at a specific time. But the trip would take me 48 hours (or, at least, the end of one day and the beginning of the next). If I took on this task, I would miss the other thing I was scheduled to do. Plus, I now realized, I was only renting this truck. I had enough money to rent the truck for one day. But going on this trip for two days would be too expensive for me.

I also didn't know how to drive the truck. This hadn't seemed like such a big deal before. I'd thought I would have some time to be taught by my dad, who knew how to drive big trucks. But now the trip was about to start. I'd only have a short time, maybe 24 hours (even though the trip was to start immediately) for my dad to teach me.

Still, that didn't seem like such a big deal. I could learn what was essential, I thought, and pick up the rest by experience. But it was scary to think of needing to to that with such a big, dangerous vehicle.

And now I saw two other trailers standing alone, unhitched, near the stall-like parking space for the truck. I realized that the task was actually to take the trailers that were now hooked to the truck, then to come back, pick up the second pair of trailers, and haul them, too. This would definitely take me four days.

I was in despair. I definitely couldn't do this, and I may have said so, maybe even starting to cry. I didn't have the time, money, or experience for something like this.

I now saw something like the battle which had been fought to wrest the truck and trailers from the man's control. During that fight a father and his son, a young boy, were both shot in the head and killed. I thought to myself what an absurd waste it was that the father and son had been made to give their lives for these trucks.

a hill of beanbags

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a group of young adults or teenagers on an enormous stage. The stage may have been part of some game show which may or may not have been televised. The stage seemed to be in some place like a high school gymnasium. The stage, besides being enormous, may have been elevated about two or three times as high as usual above the audience.

An announcer, a young man in a suit and with a kind of showy, sharp hairdo, led us to our next contest. We had to climb, apparently, up some really steep object. At first I may not have been able to discern what the object was. But then I saw that the object was something like a gigantic, cylindrical beanbag. It wasn't standing quite erect, because of the odd clumping and shifting of the stuffing.

I watched a couple of my teammates, probably boys in their late teens, try and fail at climbing up the side of the beanbag. They would get up close to the top, then cling to the top, or as close as they could to the top, and then try to pull themselves up onto the top. But they wouldn't be able to pull themselves up, and they'd fall down.

My view of the gigantic beanbag shifted from the right to the left. I now saw that the beanbag was part of some larger complex, almost a small hill's worth, of beanbags. We had to run up to the top of this whole complex!

It was now my turn. At first I'd been worried. But now I really wasn't. I had the feeling that I knew how to get up the beanbag slope. I just had to get up enough momentum to blast myself up the slope. That way I wouldn't have to pull myself up by my arms. The people before me hadn't done enough running up the slope. I, however, would.

I charged past the announcer, who'd been standing right next to me, and up the slope. As I ran up it, it seemed a lot less steep than it had looked. It also seemed to have slide-like grooves in it. I was running up one of those grooves.

I lost a little of my steam as I reached the top. I was a little afraid at first that I wasn't going to make it. But I got to the top. I now saw the way up the rest of the hill of beanbags.

I kept running. I knew everybody down below was a little amazed, maybe even scared or annoyed. Nobody else had even gotten up the first slope, though I felt like some of my teammates had, somehow, continued along the course. I, however, hadn't just gotten up the first slope: I was making a charge to conquer the entire hill! But even I started to wonder about myself. Was I being too obsessed?

I felt my running speed slacken. I really felt like I was losing momentum. But I found myself at the top of the hill. The top of the hill was a wooden playground. The beanbag hill had been the first part of an obstacle course. This was the second part. But the playground really just seemed to be nothing more than a wooden playground, except that it may have been a few tiers high. It seemed to be more fun than anything else.

I ran around until I found a hole for a covered slide. I could see that the slide was really steep, just a straight shot down. But this was part of the obstacle course: you had to be brave enough to withstand the steep slide.

I was afraid, but I jumped down the hole. But I was kind of surprised to find that the slide, though steep, was made of a plastic that wasn't very slippery. So even though I was going straight down, I was never able to get up very much speed. I was disappointed. I had really wanted to test my courage against a straight drop.

The slide ended in a basement. The basement was like a museum. I was in a narrow hallway. I could tell that somewhere nearby was an exhibit of very colorful ceramic or sculpture of some kind. I could also hear two older women in some room talking about some exhibit, maybe an exhibit having to do with Star Wars or some other kind of science fiction.

I may still have felt like I was on the obstacle course. Regardless, I felt like I needed to hurry somewhere. I didn't feel like running was fast enough. I started to fly in some kind of awkward, almost upright way, and close to the ground.

I flew past some room with an exhibit playing either Star Wars or some other sci-fi movie or maybe news about some kind of missile attack. I flew past the reception desk, which was enormous and opulent, and at which sat a beautiful, young woman speaking on the phone.

I flew into the elevator bank and into one of the elevators, where I landed. The elevator doors closed. I knew the elevator was taking me up to a floor which housed one of the companies I worked for. I was a little worried about what my old boss, BS, would think of me once he saw me there.

serpentine midwife

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was sitting on a bed in a room that was barely bigger than the bed itself. A dim, incandescent light shone down on the bed.

There was a snake on the bed with me. I may even have been holding the snake in my hands. It was a dull green snake with a white underbelly and beady, black eyes. The snake was maybe 60 or 70 centimeters long.

The snake was apparently giving birth or laying an egg like a chicken egg. It was doing so by making the egg come out of its mouth. This seemed to be really hard on the snake.

The snake finished laying her egg. But I knew there were more eggs to lay. I needed to check on the progress of the second egg. I had to grab the snake's head and open her jaws. The snake was poisonous, and I was afraid of being bit, but I knew I had to check. But even as I opened her jaws, the snake didn't seem very violent at all. She seemed gentle, drained.

I looked down into the snake's throat. I saw the second egg, a little way down. I let the snake go. I thought she would lay the second egg presently. But she just lay there limp. I figured she had lost so much energy in having her first egg that she needed to rest before having the second egg.

I stood up and walked out of the room. I thought I would come back closer to the time when the snake was ready to have her second egg. I was now in a dim room like a basement living room. The area had low ceilings, and even though it was long, it felt so cluttered with stuff that it felt tight and cramped.

At some point a kind of old, overweight woman with short, square, blonde hair and a peach-pink shirt walked into the room. She was still "asleep": she may have been sleepwalking. It was like she was recovering from a bad illness which had sent her either into unconsciousness or delirium.

I walked down toward the end of the room and met up with a group of young women. I myself may have been a young woman. All the women (including myself?) were pregnant, or else they were in need of a midwife's assistance for some other women they knew nearby who were about to have babies.

Apparently the old woman was the midwife all the women were looking for. We saw the woman again. She was walking around like she was in a drunken stupor. The woman walked over to the wall and then flopped down onto some spot like a counter or a desk top as if it were a bed.

It was clear the old woman needed more rest before she could take on the tasks of a midwife. But the women were all going to approach the old woman anyway. Each of the women, like me, had a snake. The snakes were all giving birth to eggs. And the old woman was the only one who could help with the births. The old woman still needed to recover a lot, but she was probably well enough to be midwife to the snakes, even though it would drain her energy.

The women all tittered to each other about how childlike they'd appear, all coming to the old woman at once, asking her for help. The girls all joked that they'd seem like little girls, asking, "Help my snake? My snake? My snake?"

But behind the joke was the sentiment that the women really did need the old woman to help with the snakes. And behind that sentiment was a fear. The snakes were something like a buildup. The women really needed the old woman's help giving birth to their own babies. But the women were afraid to bring up the topic. They were afraid the old woman would still be too ill to deliver the babies when the time came, or that the old woman would simply refuse. So the young women became overly, though jokingly, focused on the snakes, and how much they needed the old woman's help with the snakes.

white tiger reconstruction

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was daytime, a sunny-cloudy day, with clouds skeining across the sky and making the atmosphere all kind of yellow. I had walked outside of a big house with white siding. I hadn't been outside for very long, and I'm pretty sure I hadn't done anything, but I felt like I'd been out for a while.

It started pouring rain. I was hoping to get back inside before I got soaked. But I had to take a "hike" around the big front yard of this big house. Plus, before the house, two white tigers were lying asleep at the trunk of a (barren? headless?) tree. I knew that if I approached the house's front door directly I'd wake the tigers, who would get angry and attack me.

So I walked in a counter-clockwise square around a portion of the yard. The yard was large, but I didn't walk around the whole thing. I maybe only covered a hundred square meters, but I felt like I'd walked quite a bit more. I walked around two huge beasts that were as big as elephants but had faces more like rhinoceros faces, but with narrow, tapered snouts.

The beasts lay on a shallow slope that slightly obscured my vied of the tigers. But just before I crossed down in front of the huge beasts, I saw that the pouring rain was waking at least one of the tigers. The tiger was yawning lazily. But I could tell that once the tiger got all its senses back from sleep, it would be annoyed by being woken and soaked by the rain. If the tiger saw me, it would take out its annoyance on me, attacking me.

I reflected on the huge beasts as I passed before them. They may have been dead, or they may also have been asleep. But I wasn't afraid of them. I knew that if they weren't dead, and if the rain woke them, they wouldn't be as violent as the white tigers would. They would be gentle, and probably just wander off.

I was hoping to work my way far to the right side of the house, then sneak around to the front door. But even as I was heading up the small, shallow slope on which the huge beasts lay, one of the tigers was charging at me. The tiger jumped on top of me and knocked me to the ground, flat on my back.

Right before I was knocked over I began hearing my own (???) voice narrating, as if I were, somewhere, watching a documentary about myself having been attacked by the tiger. As I landed on my back, the view around me may have been of a new subway train, with the white interior.

My narration said that the tiger weighed five thousand pounds. When I heard that, I became afraid. I didn't want the tiger's entire weight bearing down on me: it would be too painful! But the tiger must already have been bearing fully down on me. The narration said that I hadn't felt the weight of the tiger: the pressure hadn't been as painful as I'd expected. This, I realized, was true.

But the tiger was tearing at me, probably with its claws and teeth. I knew the tiger was tearing my body apart. And now the documentary (wherever it was playing, wherever I was watching) was moving to the second part, which was how the person -- no longer me, but more like a young version of Jackie Chan (???)  -- had had large parts of his body torn apart and had to go through reconstructive surgery.

At first I saw a photo of the young man after his reconstruction. It turned out, however, that the young man didn't want a normal reconstruction. He didn't want the doctors to put him back to normal. Instead, he simply wanted to be made functional, and to keep the mauled portions of his body as mauled-looking as he could, as a kind of "lesson" to his attackers, but also as a kind of artistic statement. The photo of the man's face, in fact, looked like the leathery face of a long dead person, or even of a shrunken head.

I now saw the young man, as if on film or video, speaking to the camera and documentary crew. The man was in something like the control room of a very small TV station. The lights were warm and incandescent, and the walls were brick, but all lined with tall cabinets full of TV studio control systems and monitors. The monitors may all have been playing imagery of spaceflight and missiles, which may have had something to do with recent news events, maybe with some impending war.

The man, I now saw, had been reconstructed to look really strange. He had all kinds of dull grey, coathanger-like wires stuck through his body. Some reconstructed portions of his flesh were raw and slimy. Other portions, such as a couple of his fingers, looked more like raw fat or ligament than flesh. And other portions of him looked more like random pieces of plastic or machinery. His head was crowned or haloed with a band of wire, which stuck into his raw skull at certain points.

The man began showing the camera and crew the work he did around the studio. Apparently, like the phantom of the opera, the man isolated himself in his work. He was a genius at his work, and he wasn't as antisocial as the phantom, but he bitterly isolated himself in his work, again as a "lesson," apparently, to the tigers that had mauled him.

But as I watched the man at work, I realized that all of his reconstruction was also like an augmentation. His wire/plastic/technology hands allowed him to process data and punch buttons in the cabinets at an incredible speed. And the man seemed to be able to operate an incredible number of machines at once!

But as I focused on the man's fingers operating on one interace at immense speed, I realized that the man could be driving himself too hard. His brain and body, it seemed to me, may not have been fully healed -- maybe because the man had chosen to have such an incomplete, strange reconstruction.

The man may have been driving himself to cause his incompletely healed portions to break down. And maybe the breakdown was desired by certain parts of the man's body. It may have been that certain artificial elements of the reconstruction wanted more of the original elements of the man to die, so that more artificial elements could join the artificial elements already in place. But, I thought, it may also have been possible that a breakdown would shut down even the artificial parts of the man's body.

grandma mudslide

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a hallway of a hospital. The hallway was sterile, with bare, white walls and greenish-white, fluorescent lighting.

I was probably at the hospital for my grandmother. She had probably just died. I'm not sure I was there to see my grandma: it may have been more like I was there just to acknowledge the fact that she'd died.

My mom sat in front of the door to my grandmother's room. I looked into the room. I didn't quite feel like I could go in. I kind of felt like my mom was blocking the door, even though she wasn't.

But now my grandma started moving. My grandma actually wasn't dead yet. It was like she had been on a respirator, but like she had just recently gotten the tube taken out, so that she could breathe on her own. It was assumed that her breathing would naturally get weaker and weaker, and that she would die. But this was all surprising to me: I'd been told my grandma was dead.

In fact, my grandma was breathing just fine. But now she began struggling in her bed. She began hunching and twisting upward, trying to get a good view of me. She was trying urgently to tell me something. But she couldn't speak. Instead, she was just hissing.

I wanted to go into the room to talk with my grandma, or at least stand outside the room and focus on what my grandma was saying. But somehow my mom scared me off from the room. My mom may have been trying to convince me that my grandma was dying and that I just needed to let her die. I didn't believe her, but I was too afraid to argue. I just turned and walked away from my grandma's room. But I had a bad feeling that my grandma was trying to tell me a bad secret about my mom.

I was now standing out on a river bank. My mom sat out on the river bank, possibly at something like a school desk or office desk. I walked away from the river bank. Directly behind it was a steep, muddy slope. There were a good amount of people sitting out on the slope, like they were at the park or waiting for a concert or something. But the slope was extremely steep and muddy: it didn't look like it would be comfortable at all.

For some reason I felt like I needed to scale the slope. I started climbing the slope. It was really difficult, but eventually I was approaching the top.

But now the slope became extremely steep, almost a vertical wall, all mud. I had to struggle to find hand- and footholds, and the mud was slopping all around me. Yet there were also people sitting on the slope near me, like they were just enjoying a day at the park. And there were two pretty, tanned girls with frizzy, blonde-brown hair walking up a cinder path to my right.

I didn't get all the way to the top of the slope (which may have been bordered by a wooded area) when I decided I needed to slide down the slope. But I was afraid that the slope was so steep that I would slide too quickly and start tumbling down the slope and crash to my death.

But I started sliding, anyway. It wasn't so bad. The hardest thing was, that I had with me the book I'm currently reading (Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, by Henry Adams), and that it was hard for me to hold onto it as I slid down the slope.