I am at work and going to pick up some food for those of us here (not too many, it seems like). I end up at a Taco Bell. The interior is large and empty, the counter is long and minimal, revealing the large kitchen behind. The employees all seem to be teenage boys who aren't doing much of anything. There also seems to be too many of them for how slow it is, maybe six or more. They’re also all wearing face masks, all just under the chin. I step up to the counter and the only girl in here takes my order. I didn’t really know what to order, so I just get one of their party packs.
They have reimposed a mask mandate. Immediately, most people have started wearing them. Walking around, there are a few that aren’t. I’m among the few and more confident about my decision this time around, seeing how they didn’t change anything. I think I’ve driven somewhere with Melissa, but she won’t be driving back with me. I see the area, it looks like Central America, as if on a map. It zooms in at times as I think about places I could stop to see.
I’m in some department store, looking for a new coat. The store seems small, cramped, and dim. It also seems like there are only coats on the racks. There are several people in here, only some wearing a mask. I don’t think I am. I run my hand over a coat that catches my eye and notice it’s $80-90. Thinking that’s a bit much, especially because I think that’s a sale price, I rethink how much I really need a new one. Now I’m in a different store - the outside looks like a CVS and the inside looks like a cross between that and more of a department store. I think I’m with Mom and Makayla. There’s an employee inside the entrance with a handful of masks, but no one in here is wearing one. There is a sense of things being ‘back to normal.’ I think I’ve come here for a pedicure and something else. Now I’m about to enter one more store. Kelli and Carl are with me. It’s the first time I’ve seen them in a while and I’m not sure if they’re going to wear a mask into the store - it feels awkward not to if they’re going to - but none of us do.
I am in some shopping mall. (I want to say it is unfamiliar, but it almost seems familiar from another dream). It seems large and it’s not all that crowded. Right now it looks like I’m in a section with an atrium. I notice some people with masks and some without, myself included, and it seems like there’s no judgment from either party toward the other.
I am in California to go to the bank. I’m not sure exactly what part I’m in (it doesn’t seem like too big of a city - maybe Sacramento size?) or why it has to be this bank. I’m aware that masks are optional here if you’re vaccinated, so I’m not wearing one. The people I pass on the sidewalk are a fairly even mix of masked and not. Inside the bank now the same is true and it feels natural with no hard feelings either way. I get to the teller and I think I’m just making a deposit. It takes me a minute as I haven’t done this in person in quite some time.
I am somewhere, by a park maybe, with my parked car. I step outside the driver's side to drink some water. In either a mirror or my peripherals I notice that the back door is open, so I shut it. Now, when I step out again? I see that it is open again. Finding this kind of weird, I close it again. This happens one more time and at this point it is pretty disturbing as there is nobody around and no way it could have happened by itself. I think I assume it must be a ghost. I am in an unfamiliar house. It seems dim and sparse in here. I notice a small family approaching and get weird vibes. What looks like a teenage girl starts trying to open the door. I’ve locked the door knob and the deadbolt but she is somehow able to open them, so I have to keep pressing the door closed and relooking these. It is somewhat a struggle to keep the two balanced. At times she makes startling progress, but I think I manage to keep her out. I am in what I think of as a Vans store but what looks like a grocery store. I’m probably thinking this due to all of the Vans merchandise on display. Specifically I notice some high up (like above the meats or dairy section of a store’s display). I notice some teenage? boys that seem to be wearing Vans head to toe. I think about what it would be like to completely wear only one brand. At some point I am in an aisle with Mom and some others. I think there is largely an absence of masks, and it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. I’m with Makayla and we are parking at the front of some store. It is average to large for a retail building, with a curved exterior. The area seems rather desolate. As we get out of the car a happy looking black man approaches and compliments us for getting out of a semi truck’s way/letting it do something. He just seems very content and sincere. I envision this semi truck in the center ‘lane’ of what looks like pyramid highway, and I’m assuming this happened earlier in the dream. I am following, through a forested area, a river that is not too wide yet gives the impression of depth. It appears fairly peaceful but has a very strong current. The water seems so clear and pure.
I am walking up to a larger seeming store, apparently to return a bag of dog food. I notice that people entering and exiting through the foyer don’t have masks on, so I’m thinking it’s not something we have to worry about anymore. Still, I have a mask in my hand and/or pocket that I’m ready to put on. I can’t do it before I enter because of my carrying this large bag. Just a few steps into the foyer, a masked employee tells me to put on a mask. Now, I am further into the large, busy store. I’m at what looks like a hardware or even food counter and around the side of it is a place to return the bag. I walk over and set it down in front of the 2-3 indifferent male employees. Again, I don’t notice many masks. Now, I am leaving and Melissa is driving. We seem to be at the top of the hill. It is typical Nevada, yet there is something scenic about it. I think it may be that some greenery is starting to show. Melissa starts taking us the wrong way. I can see this on a map on my phone? There is a loop and had she gone the other direction we’d quickly be where we need to be, but she’s taken the long way that includes a few switchbacks. I think I mention this and it upsets her. I think this way ends up being very pretty. When we get back, I look at the map to see exactly where that was.
I am at what seems like a Christmas Eve get together with Dad’s side of the family at Matt and Sara’s house. We are just getting here and walking onto what looks similar but slightly different to their balcony. There are more people than I thought would be here, and there is an air of not knowing exactly how to act during this familiar ritual become completely new due to the pandemic. There are no masks, but people seem to be keeping their distance. Sara comes out from inside and we smile and wave at each other. It does hurt a bit not hugging someone you are used to hugging at these occasions. Then, I hug an old lady whom I don’t even know. The odd feeling of this is barely assuaged by her seeming not to care at all.
Initial dream recall hasn't been bad lately but I have been lacking in my DJ entries still; a lot of it is varying just the same as me actually getting up from bed too, seems to have been depending mostly on the sunlight in the morning, at least of late. 2nd January 2021 Fragment: Something about being outdoors/in a street and people weren't wearing masks and I thought they should be wearing them, or I felt uncomfortable about the situation.
I am at Camp Richardson with some of the family. Right now we are in some trailer that we are touring or in which we are planning a tour. There is something about it being a small space and people not wearing masks. I think David from Discology is here. Now we are down at the beach. The beach is a deep and wide expanse of only sand that doesn’t seem to be crowded by other people. The water is calm and devoid of boats, etc. I am a ways out and jumping off a tall (20 ft?) wooden structure. There’s something about the Grateful Dead - maybe they’re playing in the background? I jump in and immediately hit the bottom, hard, but it doesn’t really hurt, which surprises me because I thought it was much deeper. Back on the beach, Michelle is here and brings me a Starbucks? coffee, which I think is very sweet of her.
I am with Melissa at Dad’s. I say ‘at Dad’s’, but it looks like it is the kitchen and then absolutely nothing else around it, just kind of a barren expanse/void. It seems like it’s really early in the morning, and I’m making food and getting ready for work. I’m making spaghetti, and when I put the noodles in the pot Melissa mentions how there’s lots of ‘Zoe hair’. I think I just say ‘no’ because I don’t care or because I’m kind of embarrassed. It’s now ready and I’m putting it in two containers but also eating some because I realize I need breakfast, which leaves a smaller portion than I wanted. I look over and Melissa is scrolling through her phone. She takes a while to respond, or just doesn’t, which causes me to become very angry. I shove some of the tupperware, and then I can tell that she knows I’m irritated. I think I am only wearing boxers. I am on a plane with Makayla. It’s crowded and everyone wears a mask. She’s talking to a boy about her age and I amicably join. I am blissfully rising up and floating through a clear blue sky.
I was apparently at some sort of store where somebody was planning to steal a tiny miniature sports car about the size of a skateboard. They were going to cause a distraction and then steal it. But somehow, the distraction was caused but I ended up stealing it. I went out the back way, sat on the car and sped off and drove for a few blocks, pretty fast, low to the ground. Then I turned it around and drove back. When I returned to the store I tossed it to a friend who was there. I believe he took a ride on it too. I did not get in trouble. There was a mob meeting that I attended. We all wore different sorts of masks. Somebody was trying to say that I had done something bad like ratted on somebody and I was saying that I had not.
I'm talking to a man, a great inventor or artist of some kind, who's been given an arena to work in. The structure is very white and the sky is very wide and very blue, and the arena's filled with shadowy figures he's been given to work for him, something like automatons, not alive. Human-shaped, but when I focus on them they look a bit like something that's been burned to charcoal, flaking at the edges, except for their teeth, which are white and sharp; inactive right now. Until this moment I had a lot of contempt for this man. But he's saying to me, "I'm not an idiot," and that he knows he's already made his last great work. Though he's currently working on a project, and though his masters who gave him this arena have great expectations of him, he doesn't expect to live to complete it. His bitterness makes me think a little more highly of him. Working for these things was a mistake. I don't say this to him out loud. There are a couple floating hooded figures with white masks in the arena, and we're both putting on something of an act for them. They're not his bosses, or guards, exactly, but they are effectively monitoring him at the moment. Something more like citizens, as opposed to slaves like him, however honored a slave he might be. He turns off the music he's been listening to while he works, and he's trying to give the impression that he's simply stopping work for now and going to bed as usual, that there's nothing wrong.
I enter a lecture hall and speak to the man who I believed summoned me, dressed in black with a small white owl on his shoulder, but it turns out the owl is the one that called me; this is news to the man in black, and he's not pleased about it. The owl speaks in a pleasant woman's voice and changes into the shape of a four-sided mask, one face for each direction; three of them are simple stylized masks made of wood or similar, but the fourth is an actual face - it moves, it has eyes - just in cartoonishly distorted proportions. She's been sealed/trapped/stuck/reduced to this. She introduces herself as Loki Laufeyjarson, which is not the name I was expecting her to say but I roll with it. She talks about each of her masks - in the one that resembles an actual face, she says she'd taken this form and scorned high heels (meaning an artificial way of gaining the height she feels she should have had anyway - 'height' is not really the issue she's talking about). In one of the wooden masks, she talks about using this form for dealings with a magician, and she suspects that magician of having a hand in her current unfortunate circumstances. She returns to the form of the owl sitting on the man in black's shoulder, and we're now in a yard behind an estate, surrounded by partygoers. The man speaks of my payment and I dismiss the small amount of money he offers; I tell him I expect him to provide me with food and lodgings, pea soup and three packs of smokes a day. (Neither of those are things I'd want IRL, but I wasn't being my IRL self here.) I'm already leaving, stepping over an ornamental pond; it's a demand, not a negotiation. He's irritated, but she accepts immediately. I walk off into the trees along the border of the property. In earlier scenes, symbols of eyes and blue lotuses above the entrance to a cave, and drinking a polar bear's blood from a glass while wondering about parasites.
A man confronts me at my IRL home, having tracked me down, holding me responsible for something that happened long ago. I hear a memory of something he'd said to me then - "The rule of kings is over. We will take our place among free nations." The scene shifts to show the beginning of the thing he blames me for. A procession through a city, passing by a river, soldiers in silver-colored armor, rows and rows of lances in the sunlight, the king and myself in tall masked helmets and long robes, at the corner of my vision I'm aware of a ship moving along the river with sails and oars and something golden about it, and it's all a striking image, but I'm thinking of something like Cosa Nostra.
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