shiho ochi's cellphone; breathless shopping mall

Dream 1

I was at a concert given by singer Shiho Ochi from the J-pop group Superfly. It was in a small area, like a basement cafeteria or recreational room in a university or high school. But the area was packed with people. Everybody must have been seated in stackable chairs. I sat off kind of near the stage, but more toward the right corner.

The room was almost completely dark, except for a spotlight that shined on Ochi. Ochi sat on a stool and played an acoustic guitar. She had long hair and probably wore some kind of wide-brimmed hat.

At one point, Ochi stopped singing right in the middle of a song. She pulled out her cellphone and started fumbling around with it. She may even have spoken directly to someone on the cellphone. She then probably apologized to everybody and started up the song again. I'd thought this was weird.

But now the situation happened all over again. Ochi started singing this song I'd never heard before. It may have had some Valentine's theme or some theme that made me think it would be really good on Valentine's Day.

But as soon as Ochi started in on a part I thought was really interesting, she pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. I hadn't heard the cellphone. So I thought that maybe the phone had buzzed instead of rang.

Ochi apologized to everybody in the crowd. She looked at her phone's screen. It was blazing pretty brightly. It looked like an old LCD screen, except that it seemed to be glowing yellow and purple instead of the standard green-yellow and black.

Ochi told everybody that her boyfriend had texted her, asking her how the concert was going. She asked everybody if they would like to know more. All the girls in the audience started screaming excitedly. So Ochi turned on her cellphone's speaker. Now everybody could hear Ochi's boyfriend's voice. The girls in the audience started screaming again.

I was really annoyed by all of this. I turned away from the stage. Ochi was asking questions of the audience. We were supposed to raise our hands if we agreed or if we wanted to hear more about what Ochi was saying. But I refused to raise my hand. I tried to even ignore the fact that Ochi was saying anything at all.

But then Ochi said something that made me think Ochi was really happy about her boyfriend and that this whole experience right now was somehow really important and validating for her. I realized I should probably stop being such a selfish jerk and start raising my hand whenever Ochi asked a question. So now I was frantically raising my hand, possibly not even sure what I was raising my hand for.

Now Ochi was asking everybody if we wanted her to pass around her cellphone so everybody could do something... maybe see her boyfriend's texts more closely or hear her boyfriend better or say hello to her boyfriend from closer up or something.

Now all the men in the crowd were raising their hands and cheering. They all wanted to hold Shiho Ochi's cellphone. So they were really excited.

I looked around the crowd. I noticed that there was one entire section of the crowd, directly off the right side of the stage, that was completely turned away from Ochi. Their seats were turned away entirely. It was like they had been seated that way the entire time. But they were fans of Ochi. And even though they still had their backs turned on her, they were wildly raising their hands, hoping to be able to pass around Ochi's cellphone soon.

Dream 2

I had probably just walked outside a shopping mall. I needed to get somewhere, to some place that wasn't a part of, but was spatially related to, the mall. I started walking, knowing that I needed to get myself off the mall property -- basically off of the mall's parking lot -- at some point. But I needed to get off the property wherever I would get a straight shot toward whatever place I was headed to.

I felt like wherever I was headed was close. But it felt like with all the walking I'd have to do, especially while on the mall's property, would make it feel like a really long distance.

I started walking in a counterclockwise direction around the mall. But I wasn't really sure this was what I should be doing. Outside a main entrance to the mall was some event, maybe a little arts and crafts or flea market kind of fair. There were a lot of people looking around. Everybody seemed to be happy.

I thought I might look around at the stuff on display. But instead I decided to walk into the mall through the nearby entrance. I thought I might be able to cut some time off my walk by going straight through the mall.

I wandered around in the mall for a few moments. The mall may have been slightly busy. There was orange tiling everywhere, it felt like. And there was probably a lot of vegetation everywhere.

At some point I may have felt hungry. I suddenly wanted some pizza. I may also have started to feel really short of breath, like walking was becoming harder and harder.

At some point I may have spotted a mall directory map. But it wasn't like the usual standalone kiosks with a mall map on one side. Instead, it was sort of like a bulletin board. It somehow stood over a little river sort of fixture. You had to walk onto a bridge over the river to get a good look at the map.

It was getting harder and harder for me to walk. My legs felt like heavy weights. They may actually have hurt, too. And with each step I took, I was more and more out of breath, until I felt like I couldn't even breathe anymore.

I walked up and over a small ramp and then onto the small bridge. I couldn't even get all the way onto the bridge. I had to stop and rest at a corner, because I couldn't breathe. Also, I was afraid of getting all the way onto the bridge. I felt like if one of the other shoppers saw me standing on the bridge they'd want to come up and hog up all my space to show me that I couldn't just stand anywhere I wanted.

I still couldn't get a direct look at the directory map. But I knew there was a pizza place in the mall. I probably saw an image of an entire pizza, maybe in my imagination, but related to an ad for the place, or maybe as part of an ad that was actually right on the directory map.

I knew that if I went to the pizza place, that would put me at the mall exit I needed to be at, so all I'd need to do would be head in a straight line toward whatever my destination off the mall property was. So I could get a slice of pizza, which I was still hungry for, and be a lot closer to my destination.

But it still felt like, even then, it would be such a long walk. It seemed like such a pain. And I wasn't quite sure I could even walk anymore. My legs hurt. And I was almost completely unable to breathe.

jogger with baby; cold calling chakras; candy landscape

For a review of some of the images from these dreams, visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was probably out jogging in a park during the daytime. There were people nearby, maybe just slightly behind me. I was friendly with them but may not have known them. I may have been telling them about how I was jogging, like I was a tour guide or like I was giving a tutorial.

A guy came jogging up from behind me. I had to beat this guy at jogging in order to prove myself to the people I was talking to.

There was a tall, steep, narrow hill that rose just beside us in the park. The guy started jogging up the hill. I started jogging after him. The path we jogged up may have been extremely steep. But it may also only have been a moderate incline.

I was having a hard time catching up with the guy. It seemed like he was always just ahead of me. I wanted to get ahead of him, but I didn't want to run too fast. I was supposed to be jogging. This wasn't supposed to be an effort for me. But even now I was probably out of breath. I may have been wondering how long I'd be able to keep up with the guy.

The guy may have been carrying a baby or pushing a baby stroller. This may have made me feel even worse about myself. How could this guy be carrying or pushing a baby up this steep hill and just be jogging and still beat me?

My vision may have faded to black, possibly like I was passing out. The situation may have started over again, maybe from the point where we started jogging up the hill. But this time it may have been like the man disappeared early on.

I may have thought that the man had disappeared because he couldn't handle the pace anymore. Or I may have thought that he'd disappeared because he'd only meant to beat me for a second, so he could make me feel bad about myself, and then leave.

Dream 2

I was in some room, maybe like a grey, dingy bedroom. Apparently I was cold calling people, like for phone sales, for some kind of audience. I don't think I was teaching them, but it was like I was giving a how-to, but less for their edification and more so I could prove myself to them.

I'd called one woman (whom I may have imagined in my head to be like a blonde, short-haired, ringleted 1930s movie star) and was pretty successful on my call. That was reassuring. I loosened up with the crowd a bit and spoke with an almost flippant confidence.

I now called a man. The man gruffly answered the phone. I kind of lazily said, "How's it goin'?" The man didn't answer. I could feel his annoyance through the phone.

I quickly lost my confidence, became serious again, and tried to explain why I was calling. But the man grew impatient, said he had no time for this, and either hung up on me or left me no option but to end the call with him politely.

I could tell that the audience's opinion of me had dropped sharply after that call. I tried to recover by giving an explanation of what had happened during the call. I may have done this even as I was moving onto the next call, hoping to cover up the mistakes of the previous call.

As I did this, I may have seen a strange image in my head: something like a chakra diagram, but all in a very abstract, simplistic, and blocky black-line style. The body, probably a woman's body, was laid on its side. And the "chakra" circles weren't placed on or over the woman's body, but alongside it, so that it almost felt like this was a subway map rather than a chakra diagram.

Something weird was also happening with the chakra circle -- like I was imagining them being filled with a phone image once I'd made a phone call, or maybe like I was imagining them being plugged with some kind of headphone jack, maybe like an old telephone operator would use.

Dream 3

Possibly after some other stuff had happened, I ended up in a large landscape. The landscape may have been meant to mimic a natural mountain vista. But it rolled up and down and around more like a football stadium.

But this entire landscape was made out of packages of candy. The packages of candy were all supposed to be "bite size" or "fun size." But they were actually probably about the size of a human. The candy inside the packages (I didn't open any of the packages) was also gigantic.

The candy was all probably supposed to be popular name brand candy. But I think it was actually different -- like strange candy that was even sweeter, gooier, and more chocolaty than the name brand candy was.

I knew, like I remembered having been told, that there were 1 billion packages of candy in this landscape. I stood up on the crest of a candy hillside. Near me there was a doorway, just a white doorway standing up all alone.

I may have had some task to take care of here. I may have been trying to avoid some sort of dark force, such as weird, gross, bird-like creatures or something that had caused the landscape I was previously in to become diseased and was now threatening to do the same thing here. Or I may just have had a sense of this impending disease. This strange sense may have prevented me from opening the packages and trying the candy.

Instead, I jumped up in the air and began soaring along the candy package hillsides. I flew around before the slopes, darting along maybe just 50cm or so above the ground.

the rite aid resort; hollow leg anemone; out-of-body acne; apartment building stalker

For a review of some of the images from these dreams, please visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was driving around in a different town. I may have been on vacation or on some kind of leisurely group trip. I was staying in a hotel that was at the top of a huge hill.

I may have driven up to the hotel once. Then I was driving around town again. But now I decided I needed to go back to the hotel for the night. But I thought that before I went back to the hotel I should pick up some food.

I wanted to get back to the hotel quickly so I could go from there to pick up some food and then get back inside the hotel before it was too late (even though -- I don't think it was any later than maybe early afternoon).

I drove up a road, remembering the road and thinking that I wouldn't get back to the hotel quickly enough. But then I found a tunnel. I drove into the tunnel. My car accelerated a lot. The slope inside the tunnel got steeper and steeper. It was almost like I was driving straight up.

I didn't feel like the tunnel was heading in the right direction. But then it let out right at a road I knew was just around the corner from the hotel. I drove around the road and up into the hotel parking lot. The hotel was more like a big, Spanish-style resort. But in the parking lot adjacent to the hotel was some sort of two-story strip mall.

Two guys spotted me in my car. I knew that now they'd want to follow me around to figure out why I was here. If they found out I was staying at the hotel, they'd want to cause trouble for me there. So I decided to drive into the strip mall parking lot instead of the hotel parking lot and hang around there until I lost the guys.

I noticed that there was a Rite Aid in the strip mall. I thought they should probably have some food there. So I went in. The guys probably followed me in. The Rite Aid was really cramped. It may have been a small space that took up two floors. But then it may have been all on just the second floor.

It seemed like the Rite Aid sold nothing but cheap, second-rate consumer wellness goods, not quite medical supplies, but things you'd have around the house to use for whenever you got sick or injured or uncomfortable. There may have been a little girl in the store, possibly with her dad. She may have been lifted up onto some stack of boxes.

I looked around a little more. The only food I could find was bags of something sort of like chips -- just a couple bags, and way high up on some rack that made it so I didn't want to go through the trouble of getting them.

I was tempted for a second just to buy a lot of chips and have them for dinner. But I didn't want to eat just chips for dinner. I wanted to have a real meal. So I left the Rite Aid.

I was out in the parking lot. I knew I'd have to drive somewhere else now so I could find some real food. But I thought that was a good thing. The two guys had followed me back out of the store. I knew that it would be best if I went somewhere else before going to the hotel. If I left the area, maybe the guys also would. Then when I got back, I could just head into the hotel without anybody following me.

Dream 2

I was standing out in front of a comic book or zine shop with someone else, maybe my brother, maybe a female friend. We were probably waiting for the store to open for the morning. We may have been speaking with each other about the shop as if it was the first time here for one of us, and maybe also as if we'd just met each other for the first time.

Now the owner of the shop came up. He was a white man, kind of tall, round, and heavy, with a scraggly, grey beard and shaggy, but balding hair. He wore small, squarish sunglasses. He greeted us cheerfully. He seemed happy to see that people were eager to get into the store.

The owner opened the door and led us in. He proudly chatted a little bit about the store. But he walked quickly in front of us and was soon gone.

It may now have been like there was a group of us here. The place looked like a big record store on the inside. There were bins and bins of items on tables all around us. The store had a set of steps in the back leading up to another floor of items.

There was a doorway on the wall to my right. I walked through, into a smaller room of wooden shelves and racks for magazines or comic books or zines. I saw a lot of stuff that I wanted -- items that were apparently books, like novels, but were also zines, drawn in a very thin, liney style. The themes of these stories may have been a little perverted. They were just what I'd been looking for.

I may have been walking around here by myself. But I said to someone else, almost in my head, or almost as if I were in another place at the same moment -- maybe inside or near a tour bus, which I could maybe see through a blinded window as I stood in the store -- that this was what I'd wanted to experience the entire time I'd been in this city. I said that I'd really love to just immerse myself in the experience of these books for the rest of the time we were here.

The person said that if that was the case, I should just buy a ton of the books I wanted and take them with me to the airport. I could do nothing but read them at the airport and on the plane.

I thought what the person said was a good idea. But I knew it wasn't quite what I'd meant. Nevertheless, I knew I'd want to buy some of these books. But I probably wouldn't want to buy a lot. I imagined what a pain it would be to haul so many books along with me to the airport.

We may all now have been getting ready to leave. We were all in a room, just sitting around. We were like a group of schoolkids, though at least some of us may actually have been adults. One may have been Denver's current city council president.

As we all chatted away about something, I realized I needed to take care of an issue I was having with my leg. I had apparently cut open my left leg, possibly along the shinbone. It was kind of hollow inside, with bone, veins, artery, and some other tissue. But what mainly took up the inside of the leg was this peach material that looked like sea anemone tentacles.

I knew this peach material was kind of clogging up my leg, so that it was taking too much energy for me to walk. I knew that if I could just remove some of this stuff I'd be in a lot better shape. So I took some surgical instrument, maybe scissors or a knife, and just began cutting away at some of this stuff.

The fringes or tentacles were connected to a fleshy base. I was pretty sure the fleshy base was fine, and that I just needed to cut off the fringes. But I also felt like, at least for the time being, I didn't need to cut off all the fringes. I just needed to cut off enough to make it easier for me to walk again.

So I cut away at a kind of big clump of fringes. I had cut away quite a bit of the fringes. But they were still connected to the fleshy base by just a little flap of flesh. It was really hard to cut that last little flap -- the flap was so gooey that it just wouldn't snap off. So I decided just to pull and pull until I tore the fringes away from the fleshy base.

Finally I managed to pull this clump of fringes off altogether. Apparently I closed my leg back up. There was a black, metal shell for a computer's CPU. I looked inside it. It was mostly empty, except for a tangle of red and blue wires and maybe one or two other things. I knew I was supposed to stick my leg in here. This was sort of like my shoe, or another natural part of my leg, or something to protect my leg while it healed. I would stick my leg down into the CPU. My foot would stick out a square hole in the bottom.

But I may actually have had problems doing this. Or I may have forgotten altogether to do it, maybe even as soon as I'd started doing it. Then, as soon as I'd forgotten to do it, I may have wondered why I hadn't done it. And I may have wondered whether my leg would be protected, now that I hadn't stuck it into the old CPU shell. I may also have wondered whether I'd even closed up my leg at all, after having pulled out all the stuff.

And now that I thought about all the stuff I'd pulled out of my leg, I wondered after all whether I should have done that. Wasn't the stuff in my leg supposed to be there? Had I just pulled stuff out of my leg that actually made my leg work?

The person next to me asked me if I was okay. I said I was okay, but that I was just wondering whether I may have overdone it on the whole leg thing. But I said that I probably hadn't overdone it. I said I'd probably just been surprised to see my leg so hollow. But, I said, I supposed that a lot of the body is pretty hollow, anyway. And if it's not hollow, and you have all that stuff clogging it up, that's when you start running into problems.

Dream 3

I probably saw that I had a lot of acne sprouting up on my face. I don't know whether I was looking in a mirror or using my phone camera as a mirror. I may actually have seen my face as if I were outside of my body, looking at my face from a low, kind of oblique angle.

I may not have been myself, either. I may have been a blonde man with kind of golden skin, blue eyes, and hair that was loosely curly and frizzy at the edges, like there were a lot of split ends or something.

I think one cheek had small bumps of acne sprouting up all over. The other cheek had a different kind of acne, but it was just as bad and widespread.

Dream 4

I may have been trying to escape some killer or stalker or something. I may have been using a stairwell to escape. But I kept on almost running into the killer.

There may have been a point where I was trying to use an elevator, too. But either people got on the elevator with me who were linked with the killer/stalker or the killer/stalker also got on the elevator with me, or the killer/stalker saw me get on the elevator. So I needed to pretend like I was going to a different floor, so the killer/stalker wouldn't know what I was really doing.

The building was like a huge skyscraper. And there were times when it felt like an office complex -- maybe mainly when I was in the elevator, which I think had (dirty, grimy) glass walls and looked out over an atrium all the way down to the ground level. But most of the time it probably felt like a residential building.

But I think for me it also felt like some sort of daycare center. It may have been like a prison, too. It may have been that people who'd done something bad had been sent here to be treated like they were in a daycare for kids for a really long time. Or it may simply have been a children's daycare center, and I may mistakenly have been put here. Or it may have been a place that was being morphed into a children's daycare center by some bad person, and I was trying to stop that from happening.

But in order for me to succeed and escape, I had to prove that I was grown up, that I wasn't one of the children. But I didn't have to prove this to the bad person who was stalking me. In fact, I couldn't get around that person, or I might actually be turned into a child. I didn't actually have to prove my adulthood to anybody. I just needed to prove myself by keeping my adult identity until I escaped the building or accomplished whatever I was supposed to accomplish.

sad little girl on the couch

For a discussion of images in this dream, please visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was in a house with some family. There were a few young girls in the family. Apparently I had charmed them. Now they were all kind of attracted to me.

I walked into a kitchen. I may have been alone. But there was something, oatmeal or something, cooking on the stove. I may have felt or thought about the dad of the family being somewhere nearby.

It may have occurred to me that the dad was catching on that the girls were attracted to me. And he was now kind of wary of me. I was a little afraid that he'd do something violent to me, just because he was mad his girls were attracted to me. But I was more afraid that he'd just stop liking me and think of me as a bad person.

I walked into the living room. It was kind of dim. It felt big, but a little thin-walled, like the living room of a trailer home. The room was mostly empty.

I saw one of the girls, possibly the oldest girl, walking into the living room from the opposite end of the room. Hoping to make her even more attracted to me, I sat down and slouched way low on the couch -- so my head was way down on the back cushion and my body from my hips down was hanging off the couch. I may also now have been wearing only my boxer briefs.

The girl may have sat in an easy chair right next to the couch. She seemed sad. I asked her why she was sad.

The girl stood up. She was now just wearing underwear: a white bra and white panties, possibly bikini briefs, or possibly boy shorts with frills on the legs. The panties had a red stripe somewhere near the hips.

The girl stood over me. I could see she was really attracted to me. I hadn't meant to make her that attracted to me. I thought maybe I should cool things down. But the girl was also really sad. So I wanted to listen to her and let her express herself to make sure she knew I thought her feelings were valid.

The girl lay down, either right on top of me or a little to my right side, so she was straddling my right flank and leg. She may have started moving up and down on me as she said, "Mommy and Daddy just told me Daddy's going away. He won't be coming back. I don't know what to do."

I understood this to mean that the mom and dad were getting a divorce. I was kind of surprised. I would never have guessed that would happen. And I couldn't figure out what would have happened between the mom and dad that would have led to something like this.

The mom was now in the room. She was probably my cousin. She stood off to the left of the couch. She probably told the girl and me that it was time to get going somewhere.

The girl and I stood up. We had to gather our clothes. But, in addition to our clothes, we were probably pulling up all kinds of things, like blankets, pillows, etc. It was like the living room was filled with all this clutter that the girl and I had just made.

I noticed now that I was either totally naked or wearing some kind of lingerie-skirt item but no underwear underneath. I wondered how I could have gotten naked while I'd been on the couch with the girl. Had we gone that far? I certainly hadn't intended to.

and this guy was like; prison dance practice

Dream 1

I was in some room, probably for a television interview, with Donald Trump and a few young men, some black, some Hispanic, maybe some white. The young men were all either basketball players or rappers. They wore baseball caps at different angles and jeans and shirts not very different from the clothes I wear.

The room may have had bright yellow walls and some mirrors in the background. It may have felt like some sort of waiting area outside a fitting room. But it was big, with a couch and some other items that may have made it feel more like a home.

Trump and most of the young men sat on the couch. Some of the other young men sat in chairs near the back area of the room, possibly where there were some doors for individual fitting rooms. I'm not sure how everybody fit onto the couch. Trump in particular was either much smaller than in real life or was barely sitting on the couch. Yet it seemed like everybody was comfortable.

Trump was talking about something to prove he had done something good for people. It was thought he had done something bad. But all these guys were here to prove that it was something good.

Trump pointed over to a black man on the couch. Trump said something like, "And this guy was like..." The black man stuck out his tongue and puffed up his cheeks.

Trump continued with his talk. But my view now just kept on shifting around to all the different guys in the room. I may have been trying to read their reactions to what Trump was saying. They all seemed genuinely to agree with him.

Dream 2

I was outside, probably in the morning. The sunlight was a kind of golden orange. I stood out on a rolling, green lawn. Some people were coming up from the distance. They may have come on a train that had just arrived.

This was some new place for me, maybe like a school. I had met some people here the day before. But I wasn't familiar with any of them. I decided that this morning I would become familiar with some of them.

A group of girls walked up to me. I may have greeted them and then started walking with them. Then three girls walked up in front of and then past us. One of the girls was Asian, maybe Korean. She had dark skin and long, brown and blonde hair. She wore black plastic-rimmed eyeglasses. This girl was making moves like she was teaching the other two girls some dance moves. The three girls all kind of giggled at the moves.

One of the girls I was walking with seemed a little uncomfortable with the three girls who had passed us. I said, "Oh, no. She's fine," meaning the girl who was teaching the dance moves. I said, "She's my cousin. She has a plan for when she gets out of this prison. She and her friends are going to XXXXX. And they're going to sing the song by their favorite artist and do the dance for it. They're really excited."

the last paychecks in the world; chop hit stix; giant architecture books; not good enough for love

For a discussion of some of the images in this dream, visit this post of my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was in some crowded, frenetic place like the lobby of an office building. It was long and narrow, with kind of thin carpet. One wall was all windows. The light outside was dim blue, as if it were early morning or late evening.

In front of the other wall was something like a service counter, like a ticket counter or even a fast food counter, except that it was probably really low, like maybe 30 cm below waist height. People were crowded all around this counter, in front and in back. We were all workers, and we were all in some huge panic.

I may have been watching a TV screen or a set of TV screens that hung from the ceiling. They were like news screens, but they were also like fast food menu screens. The news may have announced some terrible thing that had happened, maybe in Israel. It was having repercussions all around the world. And things were getting really bad where we were.

It had gotten so bad at this point that we were being asked to stay in our buildings. It was like all business operations, even people being able to get food, were being shut down outside. Nobody knew how long we'd have to stay in here.

But paycheck day was today. And while everybody was worried about what was happening in the world, they were really frantic right now because they wanted their paychecks. Something had happened in our business. And the paychecks weren't being given out in their normal way. Instead, a sort of subgroup of management had to hand out the checks manually.

Everybody was crowded around the counters. Nobody wanted to wait in line or create any orderly system for getting their checks. Everybody wanted their check first. But somehow the managers got everybody's checks handed out. And soon the huge crowd dispersed.

But I still hadn't gotten my check. I was wondering what I should do about this. I was trying to figure out how much it would matter if I didn't get a paycheck. The world was either ending or on pause outside. So did I really even need money?

But I also knew that my rent was due. If I didn't have this particular paycheck, I wouldn't be able to pay my rent. I also knew that this was either my last or my second to last paycheck from this company. So I was going to need all the money I could get from the company.

I pondered this as I stood at the top of a stairway leading back down to the lobby. I may have figured I'd head out for the evening and bring up the topic at work the next day.

But one of the managers (a man or a woman or simultaneously a man and a woman?) was now sitting a few steps down on the stairway. The manager stopped me and said they had my check. The manager filed through a stack of papers, maybe saying something about how my check had accidentally gotten lost in the shuffle. Then the manager handed me my check.

I may have looked at the check. I saw that it wasn't enough money. I handed it back to the manager. The manager acknowledged the problem, shuffled through the papers, and handed me another check. The manager may then have said that another check, my final check, was coming, but that that was still on its way.

I looked at this new check. Some of the numbers around it were really confusing. It looked like my pay was correct -- maybe something like $2,600 or $2,500, or maybe $6,200. But there was a bunch of other stuff on the check. Something was going on with some $16,000 sum. I couldn't quite understand it. It looked like maybe that money had been added to my pay, then subtracted immediately. But it also looked like it had been added to my pay and kept there.

I thought I should tell the manager about this. Too much had been added to my pay. I didn't want to be penalized for getting too much money. But I also couldn't tell whether all that pay had been taken back already. I figured I'd really only know once I took my check to the bank to get cashed. And I figured I'd made enough trouble for the manager today. I didn't need to raise any more issues. So I just figured I'd leave things alone.

Dream 2

Something may have happened at first where there was some sort of action, maybe involving something on an airplane. The action may have finished, and then the scene may have replayed. The drama may have resolved itself.

I may now have considered my age. I thought to myself that I looked young for my age. I wondered how I would look when I was seventy years old. I thought to myself that I needed to plan out the things I'd do over the next decades.

In my forties, maybe I would do a lot of the stuff I should have done in my twenties. In my fifties, I'd probably look and act like I should have done in my thirties. By the time I was seventy, I'd probably act like a fifty-year-old. But the big thing, I told myself, was that I needed to make sure I was never fooling myself, or pulling the wool over my eyes. I didn't want to go through some midlife crisis and pretend I was a teenager again. And I didn't want to be seventy and think I was twenty.

At this point, I may have been my seventy-year-old self, walking through some small lobby, maybe like an elevator bank or a small, octagonal foyer, and then in through a small door, maybe a regular door or an elevator door. I had a head of bright white hair, and I wore a white polo shirt.

I was now my regular age (or maybe much younger) again. I sat on a couch in a busy room. My brother, or maybe my oldest nephew, sat to my left. There may have been a lot of kids and adults romping and playing around. The room may have been like a daycare room.

My brother/nephew and I were waiting here to be taken home. It was like we had been on some sort of military mission that was now accomplished and we were being shipped back home. But it was also like we'd been on some tourist experience, partly sight-seeing, partly themed adventure, and were now waiting for some sort of ride back home.

My brother/nephew had been eating something with chopsticks. He was now using the used chopsticks as drumsticks to play air drums. I found that sort of annoying but didn't say anything. But my brother/nephew, seeing he wasn't getting a reaction from me, started hitting the chopsticks against my shoulder.

I was a little annoyed, but I didn't want to show it. Instead, I giggled at my brother/nephew and said something about how he should get a set of the old Hit Stix toys, as he'd be really good with them.

My brother/nephew didn't respond to me. Instead he put the chopsticks down right by my left leg. He then picked up another set of used chopsticks and began playing the drums on my left shoulder again. At some point he may actually have had a set of Hit Stix, which he was playing in the air, of to his left, kind of twisting his body so he was playing them so I couldn't see them, while the speaker for the toy was kind of pointed at me.

Dream 3

I had come from some other situation, possibly involving my family, with my mom possibly playing a big role in whatever had happened.

I was now walking into some room with one of my close Denver acquaintances, AV, a person currently running for political office. The room was big, but also kind of enclosed-feeling. The room had a lot of bookshelves. But it wasn't just a library. There were some couches and furniture. The place had a sort of 1970s modern feel to it -- a lot of leather and wood and cold greys -- no earth tones, etc.

AV and I had been talking. I had probably been trying to justify myself to AV in some way -- to prove I was smart or motivated, or not a crook, or something. But I had also been doing this all in an innocent-sounding way, like I hadn't been suspecting at all that I'd needed to justify myself to AV and I was just making small talk with him like I'd make with anybody.

But I kind of stopped speaking when I saw a new stack of books on some table on the far end of the couches AV and I were going to sit at. The table the new books sat on was already piled with books. This new stack made the pile seem enormous and unwieldy.

There were probably four books in the new stack. The books were gigantic -- maybe 30 centimeters tall, 20 centimeters wide, and 6 centimeters thick. And each book was encased in some solid, cardboard box with a red and white marble design pasted onto it.

I groaned at the sight of so many heavy, new books in my collection. I went to the books. I opened one of the boxes and looked at the book. The book had a 1990s-style dust jacket -- red, with gold lettering, and probably a nice, color reproduction of some medieval painting under the gold lettering.

I saw that the book was about architecture. With relief I said to AV, "Oh... these books are my mom's. They must just have come to her because of the new architecture class she's taking."

I was relieved that I didn't have to worry about these books. And I couldn't wait to unload them on my mom. But I was also very intrigued by them. And I couldn't help but flip through the pages of the book I held as I sat down on the couch to start my conversation with AV.

AV said, "Or... maybe these books are meant for you. Don't try to sell yourself short. And don't be modest. If you're that interested in architecture, that's something you should be proud of."

I said, "Oh, no, no. These books really are for my mom. She's in school. She's studying. She has some new course on architecture she's taking. It's from the time period when these books were originally written."

I looked at the text of the book. The writing was really scrawly. I couldn't understand any of it. It was all in columns, too. So there was so much text packed onto one page. And beneath each black line of text was a line of red, as well. The red may also have been text. Or it may have been red dots of some kind, or some kind of code or symbolism.

Somehow I must have gotten the gist of whatever I was reading. I understood that I was looking at a lot of information. This single page was packed with a ton of information. I couldn't imagine getting through one of these books, let alone four! And it was even more staggering to imagine that these four books were just one requirement for just one class. That was just an unbelievable amount of work to get through!

But it was also amazing to me that whoever had written this book, four hundred years ago, had actually written so much. I told AV, "This book only deals with a small time period. And yet the person had so much to write about that time period. The person must have been so intelligent and disciplined."

Dream 4

An older woman who may have looked like Julia Child, except maybe a bit more regal or refined, was laughing at me. I'd somehow indicated my sexual attraction to her or to some woman her age or some woman around my age or some little girl or little boy. But I don't think I'd meant to indicate my attraction. And I hadn't said that I had been attracted. Nevertheless, the woman took it as given that I was attracted to this person.

The woman thought it was cute that I was attracted. But she also made it clear that I would never be good enough for the person I was attracted to. And that's why she found the whole situation funny.

rescuing the zombie girl; mclaren's a garbage car; zombie girl at women's event; zombie girl is irrelevant

For an analysis of some of the imagery in today's dreams, visit this post in my dream analysis blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

A military group was driving through a sort of industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of a big desert town. There was some sort of operation to rescue either a little girl or a whole affected population from a group of zombies.

At first I may not have seen from the perspective of someone in the group. My view may have been backed away a few blocks from the action and up in the air ten or fifteen meters.

A bunch of things happened that I don't remember very well. All the action was jumbled up. The leader of the group had driven in a bunch of vehicles, maybe including some kind of tank vehicle. At this point in time I may have seen from the point of view of the action. There may have been a lot of shooting.

There may have been a point where the leader and a few other people went into a big building. This building may have looked like a sci-fi desert palace of some kind rather than an industrial building in a city. But it may also have looked like some sort of truck loading dock mixed with an official city building.

Some other things happened. All the action may have started over again. It may have been like the leader was driving all his troops right back around the blocks leading up to the big building. There may have been some argument between the leader and one of his leaders, who was speaking with him remotely. The second leader wanted the leader to leave the area. It was too dangerous. But the leader wouldn't leave until he'd rescued the population or the little girl.

At some point the little girl herself got involved in the decision making. This became a news item. A news reporter, a black woman with short hair, who may instead have been some sort of high-ranking military officer, made some kind of report about the girl.

The little girl had made some sort of decision to sacrifice herself so the other people in her population could live. But she also hadn't made this decision. She was still alive, and the leader of the soldiers was going to rescue her.

Now the little girl made a news announcement of her own. She may have looked like some kind of anime character. She announced that the military needed to leave her alone. She said she had become a zombie. She still had her intelligence. She was basically just like she had been before. But if any living human beings got near her, her zombie side would come out. She would be driven to kill them and eat their brains.

After this I may have been in some sort of swimming, half-dreaming state where I was discussing the meaning of the girl's announcement with some of my "friends," either people I knew or people in mainstream media who always appear on my Twitter stream.

I may have been trying to stand up for the girl. But I may also have been trying to organize some sort of discussion about the girl, maybe even to bring the girl to Denver. But my "friends" all said that the little girl was really irrelevant, and that they suspected I only wanted to bring her here because I was attracted to little girls and wanted to look at her.

Dream 2

I had somehow saved or helped a ten- or eleven-year-old boy. We may have been in some social situation: a crowd or a party or something. The boy started flirting with me. I got the feeling he was sexually attracted to me. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. So I took him somewhere -- possibly one of our houses, but probably not -- where we could be alone.

We were now on the top bunk of a bunk bed in a huge room. It was like the bunk bed was just in some gigantic, empty industrial space. It was dark. The only light in the building was deep, blue light from the night sky coming in through windows high up on the walls.

There was probably some man laying on the bottom bunk of the bed. I'm not sure I noticed him. He kind of creeped me out. I felt like he was essentially there to spy on me and the boy. He wasn't going to stop anything. He was just going to lay there. It may have seemed weird to me. But I also figured there was just nothing I could do about it.

The boy was laying on his back. He was wearing either just underwear or just a diaper. I may also have been wearing just underwear. I still really didn't know whether the boy wanted me to be with him. But I was aroused at this point and wanted to be with the boy.

I pushed up one of the boy's legs, which made it easier for me to push at his crotch. I rubbed up against the boy's crotch a few times. It felt good to me. I hoped it felt good to the boy. I hoped it was what the boy wanted.

But now the boy was somewhere else, maybe not even on the bed. He was talking to me about some conversation he'd had with some man who'd thought he was really cool. The man was kind of rich and very handsome. But he was really arrogant.

The boy told me how he had asked the man about his car in particular. The man had mentioned some kind of car I thought was really good -- maybe a McLaren or some other car with a name starting with an M. But, the boy told me, he'd just laughed at the man. He'd told the man that he only dated men who drive XXXXX (some type of car that probably had a few different letters and numbers in its name). The boy said, "I told the man, 'Come back when you aren't driving garbage cars anymore.'"

I was kind of shocked. I'd had no idea that the car the boy had mentioned even existed. Yet it was like common knowledge to the boy that this was what really sophisticated rich men drove. And the car I thought was so good was thought of as a garbage car by the boy. Obviously, I thought, this little boy would never be sexually attracted to me. I didn't even know what a good car really was!

I had an image in my mind of soap suds and probably hands and arms. I had a feeling I was watching the rich man clean himself, as if the boy had also told him something like he'd needed to go wash himself off because he'd been driving such a garbage car. I thought that if the rich man had needed to wash himself off, then I'd really need to wash myself off -- because I didn't know anything!

The boy was probably near me at some point now. He may have tapped me on the shoulder or patted me on the back.

The boy said, "Well, come on. Let's get going." The boy hopped down from the bunk bed and walked off toward some really nice car. I knew the boy and I had to go take care of something.

I'd still sort of wanted to stay in bed with the boy. I didn't know whether the boy had stopped our physical stuff just randomly or because he really hadn't wanted to be with me after all. If I'd misread his signals I'd feel really bad.

But I thought I couldn't have misread his signals, because he wasn't mad at me and wanted me to come along wherever he was going. But if the boy was attracted to me, then I was still aroused, and I was still hoping we could have just stayed in bed and been together.

There may have been some sort of modular-looking structure near the car, like some makeshift room with fluorescent light inside. It threw off a little light, which dimly reached the bunk bed. I climbed down from the bunk bed.

I saw the creepy guy on the bottom bunk. He was still there, just spying on everything the boy and I were doing. I may have thought that maybe it was good the boy and I hadn't done anything while we were here. Maybe once we were out of here, the creepy man would stop spying on us.

Dream 3

There was some sort of women's event. The place was packed. I'm pretty sure the little girl from my first dream had been invited to speak.

Dream 4

I had proposed to TA, a person I'd spent a lot of time with on volunteer events during the 2016 election cycle, that we bring the little girl from my first dream to speak at some event. TA just laughed at me and said, "Why would we do that? That's so irrelevant."

sick girl in bed; small town texas ramen; psychic slither; the floating trumps

For an analysis of images from today's dreams, visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was laying in bed. A young woman may have come to lay in bed as well. She was white and had brown hair. She was skinny. I thought she was cute. We weren't together. We were something like co-workers.

The woman had come to lay in bed because she was feeling bad. She looked over at me and groaned, saying that she was pretty sure she was getting sick. She may have said she felt like she had a hair stuck in her throat. She then put her fingers in her mouth like she was pulling a hair out of her mouth.

I felt some attraction to the woman. But I couldn't tell what she wanted me to do. I didn't know if she wanted me to move over to her side of the bed and comfort her, or if she wanted me to try and have sex with her. I knew that if I did either of those, I'd get sick, too. But I didn't care. But I did worry that the girl wouldn't want me to get near her because she wouldn't want me to get sick.

I also worried that maybe the girl didn't want me to get near her at all. Maybe she wasn't attracted to me at all. She had, after all, just said she'd gotten into bed because she was sick. She probably didn't want to be in bed with me because she was attracted to me. She just wanted to be in any bed she could find, so she could get better.

Dream 2

I was out in some desert town in Texas with my old friend R and his wife L. The sky was dark, dark blue, and the colors of everything around us were deep and dark. It was like everything was being filtered through a heavy sort of UV-protective lens.

We may have been out walking. Or we may have driven for a little while and then gotten out of the car and started walking. All this time we were probably talking -- possibly catching up on our lives and then talking about something in particular.

We passed a couple of small shops that stood out in the emptiness. There may have been an auto repair shop and a fast food restaurant. R, or maybe L, may have remarked on one of the shops, possibly to note the condition of the shop, or maybe because they were thinking of buying the shop.

We now walked up to something like a booth made of old wood, like wood from the Old West. But the booth was apparently a ramen stand or some other kind of shop for Asian food. We stood before the counter, looking at stuff.

R said something to me, making me feel like he and I were finally friends again and in a good place emotionally. I felt bad for not having seen R in such a long time. I then looked at L. She smiled at me nicely. I patted her on the shoulder.

I suddenly felt like L genuinely liked me. I didn't know what to do. It made me feel nice to know she actually liked me. I'd never felt that way before. And I wanted to keep doing whatever made her like me -- if that meant touching her again or hugging her or just continuing to act nice. But I didn't know what the right thing to do was. So I just hoped for the best and turned back to look at the food behind the counter.

Dream 3

I was in some strange place. It may have been like a multiplex-style family fun center from the 1980s or 1990s. Or it may have been like an old roller skating rink from around the same time. A crowd of people were probably milling away from one area and toward another. They were all walking down some ramped walkway with waist-high, solid railing on either side.

I was moving along with the crowd. But I was doing something more like crawling or slithering along the ground rather than walking. I may also at some point have slithered my way up and over some corner area of the walkway's path, then back down to the floor, to continue moving along with the walkers.

Somehow it was like I had just woken up from a dream. I remembered that in the dream I had been discussing something with my mom.

My mom was now in the crowd, walking just behind me. Her foster kids may also have been there. My mom was talking, probably with her foster kids, about some conversation she and I had just had. But as I listened to what my mom said, I realized she was talking about the conversation I'd just had with her in my dream.

I said, "But I just dreamed that conversation, Mom! I haven't told you or anyone else anything about it." At this point I may have started walking upright instead of slithering on the ground.

She said, "I know. I dreamed it, too."

I said, "Oh... I guess that means..."

My mom may have nodded her head.

"That means I'm psychic."

My mom didn't say anything else at this point. She may have become separated from me by a few other walkers. We all may have been walking into a dark room, possibly like a roller skating rink.

I started to worry about all the people around me. Had they heard what I'd just said, that I thought I was psychic? Would they hear and listen to anything else I would say? Would they think I was insane? Would they try to get me put into a mental institution?

I'd stopped talking. But I was probably still worried, as if somehow people could sense what I would say if I were talking. I was trying to control something about myself, almost like my mental vibrations or something, so I could just blend in with everybody else and nobody would think I was insane.

At this point I probably started slithering around again. But now it may have been like I was slithering over people's bodies: up over their heads, their shoulders, etc., as they continued walking forward.

Or it may have been like I was standing upright, but not walking forward. It may have been like the crowd was sort of pushing me forward, like I was a stiff body being moved along indifferently by the motion of the crowd. At some point I may actually have been pushed backward over or against a part of the waist-high railing, so that I may have been bent backward at my back at a pretty sharp angle.

Dream 4

I was in some really big room, possibly like a government room, but many times larger. It may have been lit through large windows beaming in soft, yellow, natural light, like in a massive cathedral. There were wooden structures all around that may have felt like balcony areas for seating in a theater or pews for seating in a church. But they also felt like large, ornate ticket booths in a massive, old train station. There were huge crowds of people all over the place.

I saw Donald and Melania Trump somewhere. It was like they were off to my left or right and upward somewhere. They may have been all the way over one of my shoulders, back off to my left or right, behind my shoulder, and up in the air somewhere. Most likely they weren't standing on anything. They were probably just floating up in the air.

naked women's muscular legislation

For my analysis of images from today's dream, visit this post in my blog preemie: my life's (a) dream.

Dream 1

I was out on some street corner in a residential part of some urban city, maybe like Brooklyn. It may have been late afternoon or early morning. The light was cool and blue with shadow, but with tinges of sunlight in places.

Two young women were walking up the sidewalk, talking about some legislation that had just been passed. A man had passed the legislation. I may have seen the man in my head: an older, black man, balding on the top of his head but with kind of thick hair on the side and back. The legislation said that men were no longer able to touch women, or possibly even to look at them, without the women saying it was okay first.

The young women were really happy about this legislation. They were happy they'd gotten the man in their pocket enough to make the legislation. But they were also happy about what the bill allowed them to do. They spoke to each other about ways they'd now be able to go around town making men attracted to them, then making the men feel bad or, now, even criminal for being attracted to them.

The young women turned the corner to my left. They held hands and skip-walked down the street, toward an apartment building a few doors down, past some new, clean-looking row houses. At first my view of the women was obscured by cars that seemed to be filling up the entire street. But then I could see them a little better.

Now the young women were naked, jump-skipping toward the apartment door. Before, both girls had been tall, kind of skinny, and white. But now one girl was dark brown. Both girls were kind of big-bodied. But both were very muscular. Their bodies also may have tapered down, so they had sort of small bottoms.

I considered everything the girls had said. It sounded to me like they had just fought to make this new law so that they could attract men and then criminalize men for being attracted to them. I kind of thought they were gross, scuzzy, and slimy for doing that. At the same time, they were so muscular, I felt like I had to like them. I just felt like you couldn't genuinely dislike people who were as muscular as they were.

lunchtime in the darkest hour

Dream 1

I may have seen or been in scenes in a movie. There may have been a first scene, in which a man was in some sort of dire situation. He may even have been in prison. But he was apparently writing something, a novel or a screenplay or a song, that would save him.

But the man needed some particular help in one passage of his creative work. It may have been that he needed his old teacher's help with the passage. Or he may have actually written a passage that his teacher would act in or sing.

The man may have been discussing all this with the woman, who was probably black, in a really small room, of which I may only have had an obscured, as if from the corner of a hallway and then through the doorway into the room.

The woman was now in a room with the teacher, an older, black man. The woman may have looked like Dorothy Dandridge. The teacher may have looked like Quincy Jones. The woman was discussing things with the teacher. The teacher was excited about all the ideas the man had. He gave his blessing to the man's work.

But the woman explained that the man actually needed the teacher in the work. The teacher reacted as if a little ashamed of not having understood what the woman had said before. He quickly said that that was okay.

Now my view shifted to me writing in a notebook a pink-covered spiral notebook, exactly like the one I'm currently using for my daily notes. I was lying on the floor on my stomach in some room like a living room, probably with a couch directly to my left, so close my left arm may have been rubbing against it.

The conversation between the woman and the teacher was still taking place, maybe just in my head. But now the conversation was about some passage of a novel or a story I was writing. The passage may have been about how a young man had written a song and then revised the song to make it even better. But I'd taken out a whole passage in the story where the young man's teacher had been convinced by a woman to help the young man out with a certain part of the song.

In the conversation in my head, the teacher told the woman that he'd liked this entire segment of the story -- kind of in three passages: the passage where the young man made the song, the passage where the teacher got involved, and the passage where it became clear that this song was really good.

The teacher said that he was happy helping, but that it was also important that I keep the second passage. He told the woman he knew I had taken out the passage because I was worried that I hadn't edited things down enough. But he said the passage was really good.

I may have been writing everything I was hearing in my notebook. Or I may have been writing notes on the story as I was kind of making a strategy for my writing or editing process. Or I may have been writing this very part of the novel or maybe a part more toward the end of the novel.

But I now realized that I needed to go back and put the second passage of this segment of the story back in. I was kind of relieved at that. I'd really liked that part of the story. But I also wasn't quite sure how I'd be able to find the passage in my notebook and then get everything back in order -- even though I'm pretty sure I was also directly looking at that part in my notebook already.

I was caught up by my mom, who was now sitting up on the couch. Something about her presence put a stop to everything for me. She couldn't know about my writing. She may have been part of some group of authorities who were kind of waiting to see whether I'd write something like this, so they could stop me.

I may have tried to tell my mom I was writing something else. I may have tried to explain this other thing I was writing. But my language may have trailed off. I was really just trying to shake my mom out of my mind so I could get re-focused on my work. But it may have gotten harder and harder as I tried to keep both things in my head to keep track of what was actually happening in my notebook and how I was supposed to rearrange the story to get it back into its good, original order.

There was now some conversation going on on the couch. My mom may still have been there, though as some other person, or she may no longer have been there at all, and a young woman may have been in her place. There were two other people: at least one guy, and maybe one other woman, but maybe one other man. The three people were office workers. This living room with its couch was like their office.

The office workers were complaining about some guy downstairs. The guy may have been a person in another office, in another business. But the people had to deal with him a lot. They didn't like him because he was kind of boisterously nasty, always seeming to get some sort of giddy pleasure out of showing up the office workers. He was often right about the things he said, too, which made the office workers like him even less. I saw the guy in my head: kind of tall and rangy, with olive skin and a close-shaved flat-top of tightly-curled hair. He may have worn a clunky, tan polo shirt.

The office workers were currently really annoyed by something the man had just said. The office workers all knew the man would end up being right. But he'd issued his statement as a bit of a challenge to the office workers. It was also said in a way that shamed the office workers a bit, like they knew they should be doing something about what the man had been talking about, but they really didn't want to. The man may even have said that the office workers were talking to someone they knew they shouldn't have been talking to. And even though they knew this was true, his saying it just made them even more annoyed.

I wasn't a part of this conversation. I was, apparently, one of the office workers. But I was treated like I wasn't a part of their little group. I may have been treated like I wasn't even a part of the company most of the time. I may have been treated like I was just a little kid, or even like I was someone who wasn't wanted around at all.

However, even though I was basically disregarded by my coworkers and was maybe not even wanted around, I still started feeling a little weird and guilty as I listened to them speaking about the man downstairs. I knew how annoying the man could be. But I also knew that we all probably needed to respect some of the things he said a little bit more. But I was guilty feeling this way. I knew my coworkers would feel I was betraying them if they ever knew I had these feelings.

I was now downstairs, all the way on the ground floor of the office building. On the ground floor was a deli-like restaurant. But the seating area for this deli was a lot more like a kind of big casual dining restaurant, like an old Bennigan's or Chili's. But, surrounded by this huge seating area was the deli counter.

The annoying man was working behind the counter. Apparently he owned the deli or was just one of the deli workers. I'd come down here to deliver something or pick something up, like I was performing the duties of the mail room person for my office. There may have been a sense that people were actually trying to get me to do these duties more and more so they could actually take away my current job and throw me into the mail room full-time.

I'd made whatever exchange I was supposed to make with the deli man. I was probably sitting on a bar stool, making small talk with the man. The deli was completely empty. A TV may have been on over the deli counter. The deli man was just doing stuff behind the counter like cleaning up.

The deli man had asked a question. I casually responded in a way that let the man know that the office workers had been annoyed by some of the stuff he'd said. The man acknowledged what I'd said and took a little bit of snide pleasure in my coworkers' annoyance.

But then he got a little more serious. He tried to make the point again that what he'd told the office workers was true and that it should be listened to. He somehow conveyed to me that he thought I was different. He was hoping that by speaking to me a bit more honestly and seriously he could drive the point home that the office workers really needed to think about this stuff.

But I could sense that the man had also sort of given up on the office workers. I could also sense that the man was sort of hoping that he could entice me to come work for him instead of them. But I was doing my best not to convey any sort of interest in working for the man. I was already dumped on enough working with the office workers. I didn't want to imagine what people would start doing to me if I went back to some position like working in a deli.

I had only come down to make whatever exchange I had made with the deli man because it was lunchtime and I was on my way out of the building. I told the man I had to get going so I could grab some lunch.

Then I realized how insensitive what I'd said had been. The deli had no customers at all. I could tell that the deli man was even expecting to have no customers over the course of the day. The deli man was getting less and less business all the time. And now I'd come here just to make some exchange, and not even to buy anything? It seemed mean of me. And I didn't want the deli man to think poorly of me. So I decided I'd get a couple small things and then find some other place to get the rest of my food.

But I already had two hot dog buns in my hands. I had actually already eaten half of one of the buns. I looked sort of back and over my shoulder, into some bag, maybe even a bunchy, black, leather purse I was carrying. In the purse was an entire thing of salami and an entire block of cheddar cheese. There may even have been an entire, unopened jar of Dijon mustard in my purse!

So now I realized I had enough food that I could just get a couple more items from the deli and then just walk somewhere outside, like a park or something, to eat my lunch. That way I could just get a couple things from here, make the guy feel good because I bought something from him, and not risk having the guy hear that I'd gotten food from some other restaurant as well.

I asked the guy for a bottle of soda. I would also get a cookie out of a box atop the glass display case -- which was now really tall, so that I'd had to reach up really high to grab the cookie! As the guy walked away to grab the soda, I calculated that I'd pay $5.86 for everything. That, I thought, was a good amount for the time I'd spent in the deli.

I grabbed the cookie. The cookie was wide and flat, probably a sort of chewy cookie, wrapped in a clear wrapper. But the front of the wrapper said something I found disgusting, like some sort of beef-based meal or something. At first I thought that meant the cookie was flavored like some kind of beef-based meal. I obviously didn't want that. I fumbled to see the next cookie. It also had some kind of meal label, like split-pea soup or something.

I didn't want a cookie that tasted like beef or split-pea soup. But I also felt like, at this point, I just had to grab what I'd ordered and leave. However, I then realized that the label on the package meant what kind of food should be eaten with the cookie. It was like a food pairing suggestion. I could see (maybe even somehow taste) that the cookie in the beef-meal package was a lemon-flavored cookie. I knew I'd like that a lot.

I left the deli. I walked outside and into the dark night. I looked back at the door of the office building (and deli). It was now like I was looking at the display window of a cheap electronics store, like the kind in Times Square (if they still exist). There was an old neon sign advertising the old, clunky electronics.

I may have tried to figure out where the heck I was for a second. The street was on a slope, at the bottom of which was the electronics shop. So I was pretty sure I was in San Francisco.

I had a strange sense of déjà vu. It was like I had been here, instead of with the office workers, earlier in my dream (or my experience, or whatever I called it while I was dreaming). I had walked down the sidewalk and toward this door, I vaguely remembered. And now I was coming out.

I felt like something about my professional destiny had to do with this clunky electronics shop. Maybe I was trying to get a job here. But I also felt like the electronics shop actually still was a restaurant and that I had gotten my meal, and maybe even had a job interview, there. But I'm pretty sure I also still had to go find a restaurant where I could get my lunch. But I probably also wanted to do this stealthily, so I could avoid the deli man finding out where I'd gotten my lunch. And I probably also still already had all my food for lunch and was just looking for a place to eat.

I was right on the corner of the street. So I crossed the sidewalk. At first it may have been like nobody was around. But now there were a lot of people crossing the street. It was pitch black. There were no streetlights. Maybe there weren't even any stoplights, though everybody seemed to be crossing the street as if following a streetlight.

Off in the dark distance I could see or sense a small park. I really didn't want to eat at the park. I didn't really want to eat my food at all. I felt it was too heavy and too random. It wasn't a healthy meal. And I was trying not to gain any more weight. But I also didn't want to go to a park to eat. I knew that as soon as I sat down a flock of annoying people would gather all around me and make my eating experience hellish. But I didn't know what else I could do. I knew I had to go to the park to eat.

I kind of suddenly had a positive attitude about everything. I probably wouldn't have any trouble at all once I got to the park. Maybe there wouldn't even be anybody at the park.

I was still walking across the street. For some reason I looked back over my shoulder. A group of older white people were leisurely riding their bikes across the street. One of the men in the group dropped his scarf on the white lines of the crosswalk.

I tried to call out for the man. But I couldn't do so quickly enough. So I grabbed the scarf off the ground. I looked over to my left and saw a young, white man watching me. I didn't want the young man to think I was stealing the scarf. So, looking at the young man, and still not able to articulate myself, I pointed in the direction of the old man.

The young man smiled and nodded knowingly at me. He then kind of looked up and toward the old man. He may have made some random noise to call out to the man. At this point I got a little more control over my own voice, at least enough to say something simple like, "Hey! Hey!"

At this point it was like the young man was more in control of the situation than I. But I didn't want it that way, because I wasn't sure the young man wasn't going to try and make it look after all like I had tried to steal the old man's scarf.

At this point we were all crossing the street all weird, like we had made it from one corner to the next, but like we were all now crossing across and along the street to our right, so that we were still in the middle of the street, though we were probably also about halfway up the block. At this point we wouldn't reach the other sidewalk until we were at its far corner. And everybody was going this way. We were all one long flow of people on this dark road.

The old man and probably his biking mates had stopped and turned around. I could still barely control my speech. But the old man understood me well enough. He laughed and said something about dropping his scarf -- not like dropping his scarf was something he always did, but more like randomly doing things to oblige the people around him in public situations to sort of clean up his messes or take care of him. At least one of his biking mates, an older, white woman, laughed about this and said it was true.

The young man was still there -- though, now that he had seen how the old man was interacting with me, he'd kind of shied away from the situation at present.

The bikers all pedaled slowly away. I was sort of proud of how I'd dealt with that situation. I may have projected to myself how I could handle things to my advantage in my professional life based on how I'd handled that situation. I may even have thought that the old man himself might offer me a job in the future.

But now the young man was back. I knew there was now a new reason I had to prove my innocence to him. He may have been speaking to me a little, trying to pry information out of me. I may have started telling him something, trying to sound philosophical about the ins and outs of social and professional life. But I may also have been trying to speak in a clear enough way to prove my innocence to the young man, while also in a humble enough way to make it clear to the young man that the old man would never try to give me any sort of professional position that the young man would want.

I probably knew by this time that the park I would have to eat my lunch at was just a bit off in the dark distance, possibly just across the street,(though caddycorner from where I and all these people would end up after we'd reached the corner we were aiming for).  I was hoping that by that time I'd be able to shake off this young man so he wouldn't stick around me and annoy me with his insinuations of my guilt the entire time I was eating.

pink trick dogs; dog coughs up a mouse; tall checkout stands

Dream 1

I was with another person, probably a man, walking in some area like a corridor that was divided into rooms. The corridor curved along, as if we were walking on the outer edge of some circular structure, like the circular structures atop the Space Needle. The person walked to my right, closer to the outer wall.

In one room we walked past a pink dog. The dog was tiny, maybe the size of a teacup poodle. But it may not have looked quite like a poodle. Its fur may have been long and flowing, like that of an Afghan Hound.

In the next room we walked past another dog. This dog was maybe about half a meter long. It was also pink, with a poodle-like appearance, but long fur. It saw us and wanted to do a trick for us, apparently. It did something like a headstand. But it did a headstand in such an uncanny way that I remarked on it to the person walking with me.

We entered another room. There was a kind of big dog. It was white. But it had the same kind of fur as the other dogs. It was sitting in a kind of big, leather chair. This dog did the same trick as the second dog had done, but with a little bit more of a twist on its hind legs. The dog may have been showing off its genitals. But I couldn't tell whether the dog was male or female.

The dog was off to our left. We had to exit this room and head outside, possibly onto a balcony. We may have had to exit through a door right in front of us. Or we may have had to exit through a door off to the left of and behind the dog. Either way, I felt bad and a little awkward. The dog had done such a good trick. But we really couldn't stop and praise the dog or give the dog a treat. We had to keep moving.

Dream 2

I was with a group of people in a kind of small room. We were all like family or friends. We were all here for some kind of casual get-together. I sat at a tall, narrow, circular table. I may have been eating a small plate of food or drinking something. Everybody else was gathered in a different area, talking and laughing.

A dog off to my left started coughing and hacking. There may have been a cat somewhere near the dog. Both the dog and the cat were my family's pets. As the dog started coughing I realized that our new pet, a mouse, was missing. The dog had probably eaten the mouse and was now trying to clear it out of its throat.

I was really disappointed that the dog had eaten the mouse. I'd really liked the mouse. But there was a little boy near my table. I was more concerned for him. He may have liked the mouse or he may have been indifferent to it. But he'd definitely be devastated if he saw it dead -- especially coming out of the dog's mouth!

My mom was somewhere nearby. She must have had the same thought as I, because she was now distracting the little boy, showing him something up near the table I was seated at. The boy was turned toward my mom and turned totally away from the dog.

The dog now coughed up the dead mouse, which was curled up in a ball, and whose hair was all wet and dark grey. Someone, maybe I or maybe my mom, picked up the mouse to throw it away. I was really disappointed that the mouse was dead. I was also kind of disappointed in the dog for having eaten the mouse. The two of them were supposed to be friends. I may possibly have reflected with a little annoyance that the dog was too stupid to recognize who its friends were.

Dream 3

I may have been in a grocery store. At first I may have been somewhere near the back of the store. Then I may have been up near the front of the store, near a weird checkout stand.

The checkout stand was probably really tall, like maybe almost over my head. Its conveyor belt may have been used as a display shelf for piles of merchandise. The merchandise may have been electronics or some other kind of hard, plastic stuff.

space helmet pressure; spacecraft in the zombie apocalypse; learning a little girl's dance

Dream 1

I was in outer space. I may have started out in a space capsule or a space station. I was probably with a woman astronaut.

We were then out in space. We had to get from one structure to another structure. The second structure may have been a space capsule that would transport us to the space station that was our base.

We had to put on our space helmets before we went into the second structure. I put my helmet on. As the helmet clicked into place, some oxygen started flowing through the helmet area, and possibly through the rest of my suit.

But then the air pressure of the oxygen got really high. I felt like my head was getting squeezed or smashed. The astronaut floated directly facing me. She got worried. She asked me if my suit was malfunctioning. She thought it might be because I had put my helmet on incorrectly. She wanted to help me take my helmet off as soon as possible so I wouldn't get injured. But I said I thought I was fine. I decided we would just float into the structure and I'd see if things got worse from there.

We floated up through a narrow, tube-like area. At the end of this passage was a shallow, dish-like dome. I knew that beyond this space was the cabin of the structure. Once we were in there we would fly to the larger structure.

We were now in the larger structure, the space station that was like our home base. I was in one room that was like some sort of control room. The floors were shiny black. The walls were covered in machinery and monitors that displayed data, etc.

A man stood in the room. He was some sort of high-ranking person in the space station. He wore a crisp, square-bodied uniform. His chest bore a pretty big grid of decorations. He may have been holding his cap or helmet in his arm, kind of close to his body. And he stood really straight.

The man probably asked me about my condition. There may still have been a worry about whether I'd been badly injured by the helmet incident. I said I was okay. But even I couldn't be sure.

Dream 2

I was probably watching some movie about some kids who discovered a spacecraft in the woods. The spacecraft was sort of lime-shaped, but with shell-like ends. It was hard and dark green, like an avocado. But it was ornamented all around with silver, pipe-like fixtures. The craft itself may have opened like a clam shell. Or it may have had an entrance via a ramp leading up into the bottom of the craft.

Two boys had discovered this spacecraft. They then decided to fly it. But they stayed on earth. Some time had passed. Possibly one of the boys had gotten some sort of illness and had gone into a coma for a while. When the boy awoke, he probably found out that a zombie apocalypse had taken place.

The boy may have found the other boy. The two boys then took their spacecraft on journeys all around the earth, where they'd always have to avoid or fight zombies.

Then, almost as if by accident, one of the boys, or possibly both of the boys, flew in the spacecraft all the way off the earth. The boy went to some distant place in space, where he kind of settled down. After that the story became a lot more calm and a lot less interesting.

I seemed to have seen a good amount of the calm part of the boy's story. I was sort of disappointed by it. It was now like I was reviewing this whole story, almost as if it were starting over again. I thought to myself how much I liked all the zombie stuff and how I'd have liked to see the zombie stuff continue.

I'm not really sure whether I was still dreaming at this point. I seemed to imagine a few different scenarios of the story that I would have liked better. But I'm not really sure whether I ever saw any of the scenarios play out. I kept on seeing the spacecraft at the beginning of the story, as if the story were always stuck at the beginning.

All throughout the dream, my view was obscured, as if it were blocked by columns that were totally in the shade or darkness, though sometimes it was also like the columns were two huge, shaggy legs of orange fur or a huge column of a tree the bark of which was coated with some fur-like vegetation.

Dream 3

I may possibly have been out on a beach or a field. The beach or the field was wet, so the sand or soil was pretty muddy. It was probably a cloudy day.

I was probably out with a few people: some adults and a little girl. The little girl may have been a cheerleader or a dancer, dressed in some cute costume.

The little girl was trying to teach me a cheer or a dance. I may have been doing a bad job of learning the dance, or I may have been too shy really to have put my whole effort into the dance. So I looked kind of terrible.

The little girl didn't seem disappointed in me. She kept trying to teach me the dance. But the adults were sort of annoyed by or angry with me. I felt like the adults thought it was stupid that I wasn't dancing well. Didn't everybody know how to dance well? I also felt like they thought I was purposely acting like an idiot in front of the girl, to kind of subtly demonstrate to the girl that I didn't care about what she was doing. But I also felt like they thought I was attracted to the little girl and that I was trying to hit on her by practicing a dance with her. So I felt like they were disgusted and angry with me.

rude girl cut from team; young drag queen and rich little boy

Dream 1

I was in a really confused space. It may have been a big space, like the Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library. But it may have been divided up into separate areas somehow.

I was here with some kind of group of people -- maybe a group of actors or athletes or some kind of artists. I had been assigned to choose from this group of people to assemble some kind of team.

One girl was supposed to be the star of the team. But I spoke with her. She was really kind of terrible and rude. I knew it wouldn't be worthwhile to deal with her.

I also got the feeling there was another girl in the group who was actually a much better athlete. This girl had been overshadowed by the rude girl because the rude girl was so vocal. But the rude girl actually wasn't a good athlete at all. It was just that she dazzled everybody with her personality into thinking she was good.

The girl may have been an adult at some point. But then it was like she was a kid. But then it was like she was a really little kid. She may not even have come up to my knees in height.

I went to talk with someone about my decision. I may actually have walked with the rude girl in my arms, carrying her supported by my arms so they were like a seat for her, probably while she kept shoving something in her mouth, like a ring lollipop, but maybe pale peach colored and dough-like.

We walked up a narrow, shallow ramp, to another section of this big room, where a crowd of people, possibly in their teens or early twenties, were all hanging out. The girl may have continued saying rude things to me as I carried her.

Probably at the front of this group of people was the head person for this group. The person may possibly have been a woman. I reported to the head person that I was cutting the rude girl from the team and putting the good athlete girl on the team instead. I said this was the only way we could win.

I walked away from the group of kids and back down the narrow, shallow ramp. My thoughts kind of wandered along as I walked through a section of empty bench seats made of nice, heavy, dark wood.

I looked over to my right. The team was all gathered there, complaining to the coaches about my decision to cut the rude girl and put the good athlete on the team. The team was young people, maybe in their teens or twenties, men and women. The team all stood against the front railing in front of a set of wooden bench seats. Across the aisle from them, the coaches stood backed against a tall chain-link fence.

I was sort of afraid to confront the team. But I walked over. Without really waiting for my turn to speak, I immediately went into a speech. I asked the kids if they really wanted to win the game. If they wanted to win the game, then they needed to have a player who was actually good. They could either have someone who was rude all the time and couldn't play, or they could have someone who could actually play and win them the game.

As I spoke to the kids, I may have started shrinking, so that I was eventually the size of the tiny girl I'd cut from the team. Or I may have knelt or even gotten down on my hands and knees to crawl before the kids.

Dream 2

I was in a room with a preteen drag queen, who is a friend of mine on Twitter, and probably a few other people, possibly also including the drag queen's mother. The drag queen sat in front of me on a kind of tall chair. Everybody else probably sat in random chairs or on the floor on the walls off to my side and behind me.

I stood before the drag queen with a big rectangle of cardboard wrapped in cellophane. On one side of the cardboard was a poster-sized picture of my Twitter friend.

I now flipped the board around. On the other side was a poster-sized picture of some preteen boy, kind of wealthy looking, white, with blonde hair swept back, wearing a suit jacket and nice looking shirt. The boy's signature may have run across a wide swath of the bottom of the poster.

I told my drag queen Twitter friend that I hadn't seen the wealthy boy in some time. Apparently the boy had also been a star, maybe on Twitter and elsewhere. And then he just sort of dropped off everybody's radar. But only recently he'd come back, possibly only briefly. I'd been so happy to see him again.

I also noted that I still found the young boy attractive. This was sort of to make the young drag queen less worried. I think I'd acted in such a way or said something that implied that I may have been attracted to the young drag queen. That may have made the drag queen think I was some kind of pervert. So I wanted to show that I really wasn't attracted to the drag queen, and that I was instead attracted to this young boy. That would somehow be considered by the drag queen as more normal and less perverted.

explaining my eviction; k-pop versus retail

Dream 1

I was somewhere, possibly a bedroom at night. The bedroom light was kind of bright. On the bed may have been a long board, like if a long folding table had its legs folded up and was just laid out flat on the bed.

I may have been using the tabletop to look through some documents or fill out some forms. The documents were probably eviction documents. I knew I had been evicted from my place because of something I'd done or possibly because of something I believed in.

I may have been explaining to someone, possibly my mom, how I'd gotten evicted. As I explained, it struck me more deeply how serious this situation was.

Dream 2

I was somewhere, maybe in a bedroom or in a booth area at a night club. The room was lit all in pink, like pink neon lights were the only thing illuminating the room.

I was probably sitting with someone, possibly a blonde woman. The woman may have been in her thirties or forties. She may have seemed a little worn out. She may have been kind of pale, but with really dark eye shadow. The woman may also, or simultaneously, have been a K-pop star.

I was involved in a frustrating conversation with the woman. Apparently there was some sort of retail space that was getting re-branded. The branding was at least inspired by K-pop. The retail space may also have been selling clothes with K-pop stars on them or some other products, maybe even K-pop CDs, etc.

However, the woman was saying she didn't want any K-pop specific branding on the stores at all. She didn't want the name of the store to reference K-pop. And she didn't want any of the signs in the store windows to reference K-pop. No K-pop stars could be mentioned in any of the branding. The woman wanted everything to look and sound as American as possible.

As we had this conversation, my viewpoint was probably really weird. It was probably like I was floating over the woman, maybe even drifting upward toward the ceiling without being able to control myself.

I was pretty upset. I may have walked away from the conversation altogether, or the conversation may have ended naturally, but in a way that left me really frustrated. I felt like the woman was going to do what she wanted and not really respect K-pop at all.

I may have figured that I needed to take matters into my own hands. But I was sort of afraid that if I did, I would be thwarted anyway by the woman, who was in an actual position of power, whereas I was just someone who cared about the situation.

I went to some place like an apartment complex. It was probably where a K-pop star lived. I may actually have been in the K-pop star's apartment, explaining to her, probably in a completely disjointed way, how my conversation had gone and what the woman was planning.

But then it was like I was just on the balcony, outside the K-pop star's apartment door, waiting to come in. The K-pop star may have been out front, maybe smoking a cigarette or having drink or just talking with her friends. It was sort of like I wasn't there until a certain moment. At that moment I may have needed to ask the K-pop star if I could come in and talk with her.

But now it was like I was heading to the K-pop star's apartment. The K-pop star probably lived on the second floor of the apartment complex. It was like I was coming down from one or two floors up to visit the K-pop star. I may have been walking down (or up???) a stairway that somehow faced the balcony in front of the K-pop star's house. But it was also like I was floating down or up to and then straight toward the K-pop star's front door.

I had a weird, eerie feeling. It was like I was in a losing race against the woman who was re-branding the retail spaces. I felt like she was also approaching the K-pop star's apartment. I had a bad feeling that even if I got to tell the K-pop star what was going on, the retail woman would still win. Maybe she would confront me while I was talking with the K-pop star and browbeat me into submission. Or maybe she would wait until after I'd spoken with the K-pop star and tell her that everything I'd told her was a lie.