maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a living room with my little brother. There was probably a sharp, but pale incandescent lamp on somewhere. A TV was blaring on a small TV stand. And the living room was littered here and there with things like blankets and clothes.

My brother was being really annoying in some way or another. At one point he was really annoying me by doing some weird kind of walk away from me and then back to me really fast, as if he were going to crash into me.

Eventually I just tried to ignore my brother altogether, and I started trying to pay more attention to the TV. But then I felt bad for treating my brother so coldly. So I figured that if he started acting nice to me, I'd be nice to him, too.

My brother now came up to me and asked me if he could take a look at my phone. He was just curious to see what it had on it. Having told myself I'd be nice to my brother, I handed my phone to my brother.

My brother walked over to the couch and sat down with my phone. A little while later my brother was standing up and walking around the room, doing some other stuff.

I was wondering where my phone was. My brother may have told me he'd left it by the couch. I saw it on a desk that stood before the couch. I grabbed it.

I saw that I had either an email message or a text message from somebody (or a few people?). I was about to look at the messages. But my brother, looking at his own phone, at the other end of the living room, said, "Oh, did I just get a message from ----? Saying -----?"

This was the person I'd just gotten a message from, and the subject of the message the person had sent me. My brother said something else to make me understand that while he had been "looking" at my phone, he set it so that any texts or emails I received would be automatically forwarded to his phone.

I was really mad. I didn't want my brother in all of my business. I felt like it was stupid to give my brother my phone in the first place -- even if I had thought I should have been nicer to him. But I was mostly concerned with how to stop my phone from forwarded all my info to my brother.

Dream #2

I was on an indoor basketball court with a group of boys. But I'm not sure whether we were playing a game, or just waiting around for some other people to lead us in some kind of event. I'm pretty sure we were all milling around. I was just milling around by myself.

I saw the basketball hoop and wondered if I could jump and touch the rim. I'd never been able to do it before. But I felt like maybe I could now.

The rim seemed a bit higher than normal, and it was a really bright orange. The net was also torn to shreds, so that now only a couple ratty inches hung below the rim.

As I was getting ready to jump, a bunch of the boys all gathered around me. It was like they had all suddenly decided to start playing a game.

I felt a bit self-conscious now that all these other boys were around me. I had thought that maybe I could jump and touch the rim. But now I knew I probably couldn't.

But I also having a hard time even jumping, because I was getting all tangled up in all the other boys who were trying to play a game. But, at the same time, I was already in the air, and so absurdly high in the air -- yet nowhere near the rim -- that all the boys were already beneath my feet.

One of the boys said something like, "Oh, he's trying to touch the rim! Let's see if we can do it! Or let's see if we can do a slam dunk!"

Apparently now the other boys were now already doing slam dunks and touching the basketball hoop's rim, while I was apparently still floating my way on up toward it! (But strangely enough, I don't think, all throughout this dream, that I actually ever saw one of these boys.)

Finally I reached the tattered net of the hoop. I grabbed onto it and pulled myself up to the rim.

The other boys were now saying things like, "Oh, look! He's holding onto the rim! Is he going to try to do a slam dunk?"

I didn't really know what I was going to do. I didn't know where to go from here. I didn't know how to get down. I felt like I was up way too high.

But now I thought I should climb down. First I did this by inching my hands down the couple inches of tattered net.

Then I saw a pole in front of me. It was like a brass coat rack, or some kind of lightpost. It had one central pole. And off from the pole, on either side, set one below the other, like rungs on a ladder, were little loops of brass. But every once in a while the brass of this structure was black, like it was coated in a think layer of tar or plastic.

I started climbing down this pole. As I did, I noticed that on the other side of the pole was something like a shopping mall. Apparently this indoor basketball court was right in the middle of a shopping mall.

About twenty meters away, there was also a long folding table, at which sat three or four older adults, nicely dressed and very serious looking. I could tell these were the judges. Whatever event the boys and I were at, we were going to be judged on our performance.

All this time, the boys were saying, "Oh, look! Now he's going to climb down!" I climbed down to about two or three meters above the ground. There were no more rungs on the pole. So I either had to jump down or slide down. I think I chose to slide down, even though I may have thought that I was still climbing down.

When I got down, one of the boys (whom I'm pretty sure I didn't see) warned me, "We aren't supposed to be climbing on the pole. You're gonna get in trouble when the judges come!"

I was kind of shocked. I looked up at the pole, which now seemed extremely thin and weak, as if my weight should probably have snapped it off at its base.

I wondered when the judges would come, and what kind of trouble I'd get into. But I also wondered what the heck I was supposed to do, anyway. How was I supposed to have gotten down from the rim, if I wasn't allowed to climb down the pole?

Dream #3

I was in a movie theatre, I think, watching a movie. I already had some idea of the plot of the movie. I knew it was about two girls, probably sixteen or seventeen years old, who, after some kind of accident, were now able to see into a different world.

This world was either a different dimension or the dream world. But the girls would see the dream world or different dimension in waking life, while they were going about their normal lives.

It was like the different dimension or the dream world was overlaid on our world, but invisible to most people. According to what I knew of the plot, the two girls now had to fight some battle in the middle of the two worlds to save our world.

I was now watching the beginning of the movie, which was kind of showing the origin of the two girls' powers.

The girls were out driving on a highway at night. The streetlamps over the highway were different-colored, like lights on a stage at a rock concert.

One of the girls was a troublemaker. I think this was the girl driving. She looked kind of like the avatar Mayatara has on the Dream Views site, of the girl with the white flash coming from her third eye -- except, of course, without the white flash.

I think the other girl was a troublemaker, too, but not as much as the first girl.

But now another car drove up, first really closely tailgating the girls' car, then finally driving up right beside the driver's side of the girls' car. This car was like a 1970s style car, green, but with a big, white racing side across each side.

The drivers of this car also appeared to be girls, about the age of the main character girls. But the audience was supposed to get the feeling that the girls in the green car were demons from the other world, sent to make the two girls angry, so they'd do something stupid that would lead to their own destruction. Apparently the demons of the other world already knew that the two girls were going to work to save the two worlds.

So the girls in the green car began really agitating the two girls. Eventually the girl driving just told the girls in the green car to screw off. The girl stepped really hard on the gas, speeding way up ahead of the green car.

But now one of the girls in the green car pulled out a gun and began shooting at the main girls' car! But when she shot her gun, a whole bunch of stuff came out with the bullet. The bullet, actually, didn't get very far. But the other stuff did, breaking through the back window of the main girls' car.

There was something like a centerless coin, or a washer, among all this stuff. The camera closed in really tightly on the washer and followed it in slow motion. The washer hit the left temple of the girl in the passenger seat. It hit with the same speed of a bullet, but the impact didn't do more than just knocking the girl out.

The girl in the driver's seat saw that her friend (maybe they were more than friends?) had just been injured. Now she was really ticked off!

The green car pulled up beside the girls' car. The girls in the green car were now wild -- bashing and pounding against their own car windows, almost like caged wolves trying to attack a person outside.

But the girl was so angry she just wanted to kill the girls in the green car. The highway was now driving on an overpass that went high over a wide, black river. The girl figured she'd just smash the green car right off the highway and into the river.

The girl began slamming and slamming against the green car. Eventually she drove the car right off the highway. But somehow the demons had a hand in this, too. And the girl's car went off the highway, too.

I watched as both cars plunged into the river. I thought to myself, It doesn't make sense that this is happening. How can these two girls go on fighting with their powers if they're dead? But they must be going to die. There's no way they could survive something like this.

The camera view was now of the girls in their car. The second girl was probably still knocked out. The first girl was possibly trying to find a way to save her friend and herself.

But the girls' car was probably right up on the side of the demons' car, so that the driver's side window of the girls' car was right next to the passenger side window of the demons' car.

The demon-girl on the passenger side of the car now bashed on her window to get the girl's attention. The girl looked over. The demon-girl now let something go from herself, an aura-esque, holographic kind of expansion of herself, which may also have morphed into a demonic shape.

I think I now got the idea that this was what had given the two girls their power. The demons may actually not have been against the girls. But the only way the demon girls could have given the girls their powers was by putting them into a situation like this.

I was now sitting outside, in a hallway between movie theatres. I sat on a couch-like bench. Just to my left was a doorway to another movie theatre. And just to the left of that, I think, was a small concession stand.

The hallway was well-lit, with peach-orange walls. And, far down to my left, at the end of the hallway, was a smallish window letting in a lot of light from the grey day outside.

A guy, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, stood to my left. He was white, with his head shaved, but some black stubble now growing back onto it. He also had a shadow of stubble on his cheecks, even though he may have had a pretty full mustache and some pretty full hair below his bottom lip.

The guy wore a green t-shirt with white lettering on it. He wore a long-sleeved shirt under that. He wore slightly baggy, black jeans. The guy, I somehow knew, was a popular movie critic. He may have had some blog that everybody paid attention to, when it came to movies, even though I hadn't ever read it before.

The guy seemed lost in some way or another. Since he seemed lost, and since he was famous, I figured that maybe I would see if I couldn't help him. If I helped him, maybe he'd be able to help me get a job.

But the guy was only concerned because his friends still hadn't arrived for the movie yet. There seemed now to be a whole bunch of people standing around the guy, as if they were all standing in line to get into a movie.

I told the guy not to worry. The movie didn't start until 2:53. So he still had plenty of time to wait here for his friends. But somebody near us was saying, in a kind of tone of urgency, that he and whoever he was with had to get to the theatre. The movie had started at 2:35. So they were already late. And the guy didn't want to miss any more than he'd already missed.

I got kind of panicked, too. I'd been excited to see this movie, too! But I thought it started at 2:53, not 2:35! I looked at my watch (? - don't wear one). It was 2:53 right now! That meant I'd already missed a lot of the movie!

I ran down almost to the end of the hallway, to get to my movie theatre. As I ran in, I saw that the movie had already started. I was coming in after the whole origins scene had come and gone.

Now I'd never know how the girls had gotten their powers! This had been my biggest question!

The theatre itself was kind of disordered, as if there were a lot of parents their with their little kids. So each family, or maybe small group of families, was in their own little space, making clumps of noisy areas, and whole sections of empty seats.

But a lot of the audience didn't even seem to be focused on the movie. The atmosphere was like a big picnic inside of a movie theatre.

I went up toward the front of the movie theatre and sat near a blonde business woman wearing a white blouse and khaki-colored skirt or trousers. The woman's hair was really thick and flowing. The woman may have been in her early forties. She may somehow have acknowledged me and then gone back to watching the movie.

The scene was now a daytime scene. A man and a woman, maybe in their late thirties or early forties, were out on some promenade on the side of the same river that the girls had crashed into.

The man and the woman were both teachers at the high school the two girls went to. The man had a kind of Joe Piscopo look about him: curly, brown-red hair, kind of tan face, but a little reddish, too. But he looked a little more worn out by life, and he had slimmer, paler eyes.

The man was telling the woman that she needed to stop messing around with the two girls. Apparently the woman had been in the car with the two girls during the crash into the river.

The man was telling the woman that things the woman had lately been involved with with the two girls -- some kind of weird adventures that the man vaguely knew about, but which generally appeared to the world like nothing but close scrapes with trouble -- were hurting the woman.

The adventures the woman was involved in, the man said, were distracting the woman from teaching her students. And if she got too distracted from her role as a teacher, there were people in the administration department of the school who would be more than happy to fire her.

The woman listened to the man and sympathized with him. But she couldn't really do anything about it. It was fate. She was meant to have the adventures she was having.

I knew that the woman had been sitting in the backseat when the car had gone into the river. She had received only a part of the power that the two girls had received. But she'd received enough to see what kind of trouble the two worlds were in.

And she had a part in saving the two worlds. So she didn't have a choice. Regardless of what happened to her, she had to have her adventures. She wished that she could tell the man about all of this. But the man could only know so much. And so he'd just have to be worried for the woman.

I could see that, off to the right, the main girl was walking toward the promenade from a stone bridge that crossed the river. I could tell that the girl was already seeing a new batch of holographic demons. I could tell that a new fight was already about to begin, and that the woman would be involved.

(Good morning, everybody. I remember one dream from last night.

The character in my dream definitely looks like a person I know from waking life. I don't know him personally, but he goes to certain art events I also attend, including one last night.

He's not at all like the person in the dream. He's really cool and insightful. So I don't know why I dreamt of him being this way.)

Dream #1

I sat at an anime fest, in a place like a basketball arena. It was like everybody who had come to attend the festival were sitting in bleachers, looking down to a stage-like area that would be where the basketball court was. The seating section, as big as in any pro basketball arena, was completely packed.

I sat near the front row. The row I sat in had a big, wooden bannister before it, which kind of reminds me of the front railing in the public area in a court room, or of the balcony area where the public sits during government sessions in capitols.

The area where the basketball court would be was full, probably with artists' booths. But the festival patrons weren't going down there.

We were all watching some presentation given to us by some white man who was apparently a manga artist. The man may have been tall, a little overweight, balding, with red-brown hair, and red-tan skin. He may have been wearing a kind of old, green sweatshirt and blue jeans.

When the man's presentation was finished, the man announced that we could all come down to his booth. He had a black binder full of his manga art, and he informed us that we could each choose our favorite female manga character out of the binder and take the page for free. He might also have said he would sign the page.

An overweight, black man about my age, with thick glasses and wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, sat to my left. He said, probably to me, in a joking-confiding way, "Well, everybody who's in line behind me better get ready to wait a long time. Cause I'm gonna take my time going through that book until I find my favorite anime girl."

Some announcer called each person down by name. They called the man. Right after that, they called me. I stood behind the man as he slowly flipped through the pages of the binder.

The binder was huge, full of pages. The pages were probably all in individual plastic sleeves. The art looked very pencil-y but very professional. Some of the art was in grey pencil. Some was in blue pencil.

The man pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a cell-phone-sized laptop. He checked the time, put the device back in his pocket, and went back to leafing slowly through the pages.

I was trying really hard to think to myself who my favorite manga character was. All I could come up with was Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin. I thought I should be able to come up with a character better than that. But I figured that maybe Jasmine from Aladdin really was my favorite manga character.

The man had flipped all the way to the end of the binder. Then, saying out loud that he didn't see a manga girl he liked yet, he began flipping backward through the binder.

As I watched the man flip through the pages of the binder, I saw a number of drawings of Jasmine. I figured I'd be happy with just about any of those drawings. Seeing all these Jasmine drawings, I was starting to get impatient with the man. I could have had a perfectly fine picture and been gone by now. But this man wouldn't stop taking his turn!

The man pulled his "phone" back out of his pocket and looked at the time again. The phone indicated that he'd been flipping through the book for 20 or 22 minutes by now. (The phone may not have been showing the time. It may actually been timing the man as he flipped through the pages.)

The man nodded approval at the time, put his phone back in his pocket, and began flipping slowly through the binder again. He may have gone all the way backward through the binder and started flipping forward again.

Good morning everybody. It's Saturday, so I have some time for side notes. Usually I post my dreams via phone, on my subway ride in to the city.

I remember five dreams from last night. But I can't remember any of them very well. I've been pounding NyQuil every night, and that really affects my recall -- though it doesn't seem to affect the weirdness of my dreams too much.

Looking back on these dreams, it seems pretty obvious a lot of the imagery comes from a photo article msn.com had yesterday about huge mansions. A lot of the mansions had movie theatres. And one of the mansions had the "organic shape" of the science lab in the first dream.

I was lucid for about half a second in the fourth dream. I seldom get a solid lucid dream. Maybe once a year. I don't try. Lucidity, like meditation and OBEs, seems to be bad for my nerves rather than good. I don't know why. I usually let my dream life just take its course.

Also -- sorry to MoSh for appropriating his avatar into the fifth dream. I think I have found the dream-sharing interactions on this site so interesting here that I made up a DC to dream-share with.

Dream #1

I was in a restaurant with my female friend T. The restaurant was nice, dim, with tall tables and chairs, all widely spaced. There were very few people in the restaurant. However, I ended up talking with some guy sitting a few tables away from us.

The guy and I ended up talking about spiders. I was trying to make some point about how spiders are actually nicer than a lot of people think. I was trying to use some weird etymological (not entomological) argument.

Eventually I turned to T and asked, "How do you say 'phobia of spiders?'"

T asked, "In Japanese or French?"

I said, "In French, of course!" as if the argument had all been based on French etymology.

T gave me the phrase. But as she did, it was also like I was trying to work through the phrase in my own mind, trying to recall it for myself. As I did so, it was like T was explaining a whole series of things regarding phobias.

T expanded over my whole field of view. Darkness surrounded her. She was eating some kind of tofu soup. I now focused deeply on one of the cubes of tofu. It seemed to break in the broth. The fragments dissolved and became something like stars in the darkness.

As this happened, T was explaining the optical, neurological, and muscular processes of a phobia. As she finished her discussion, the stars became directed toward moving out of some kind of wall. I seemed to be moving with the stars. They pushed out through and past the wall. I went with the.

Outside the wall, I looked back to see that this "wall" had been some kind of half sphere of organic material, like a microscopic picture of a spore. The view of this was in black and white, with all the outlines and ridges of the "spore" in white and all the smooth parts of the spore and the spore's surroundings in black.

As this was occurring, I heard T say, "You see, we can take any sort of psychological process, such as the phobia of spiders, determine its physical characteristics, even down to the temperature change of the body, and re-engineer an organism through these phenomena. And that is how we've created our first mouse."

I was now floating deep in the blue waters of a sea. I saw, down at the sea's floor, an organically curved building, which I recognized as a research lab, covered in sand.

I thought to myself, Why would they have created a mouse? Wouldn't they have created a human from all that human data? But I then realized that you would first have to create small animals, then work your way up to larger animals. I also realized that all of this would have to take place in the depths of the sea, because you'd need the pressure.

I now saw inside the research lab. I saw inside an office that was unlit. The only light coming into the office was from another room, and from the wall-sized window which showed the blue sea outside.

A man sat in the office. He was young, tall, strong, tan-skinned, with slightly curly hair that went just below his shoulders and gentle blue-green eyes. He wore a slightly loosed blue-green t-shirt and blue jeans.

The man was on an old-style, big cell phone with his girlfriend. He was talking about how hard this work was. He sometimes wondered if it was even worth it for him to continue. He also wondered something like whether it was ethical for him to be doing this kind of work.

But he then told his girlfriend, "But, hey, they're paying me 30 a month! That's right! I mean 30 Gs!"

I quickly did the calculation and realized this was a lot of money.

Dream #2

I was in a stadium-style movie theatre. The movie was playing. The movie theatre was relatively empty. In fact, the only people who were there, I think, were friends of mine. The movie theatre may have been part of something like a hotel or resort, and we all may have been at this resort for some specific lesson or project.

I saw my friend T down a few rows from me. I went down to her row and started flirting with her. We ended up cuddling, and getting to the point where I had her long skirt pushed up pretty far on her legs. I thought we might even be getting ready to go back to her room.

But T got up and went somewhere else. I sat watching the movie for a little while. Then I saw an extremely attractive, blonde woman in her mid-20s down a couple of rows from me. I didn't know her, but I went to talk to her. She was very well-groomed, and she wore a pale purple, fuzzy sweater and a long skirt.

We were talking for a little while. Then she started leaning and nuzzling against me. I thought I probably shouldn't respond so much to her, after I had been messing with T and getting her so excited. But I eventually got so aroused by the woman's advances that I began responding.

We started getting pretty involved. I thought to myself, All my friends are in the rows behind and above me. They can all see what I'm doing, right after I'd been doing it with T. What will they think? And what if T is still back there?

The blonde woman and I were now in some store that looked like a dollar store full of Christmas decorations. We were embracing each other fondly and calmly, as if comfortable with the thought of soon being in bed with each other. We stood near a wall-height window in the store. The sunlight was bright and golden-white.

Suddenly I could sense T coming from some part of the store behind us. I thought, I can't let T see me like this! She'll be so upset! She likes me so much!

So I took the blonde woman, folded her up (like she was now only three feet tall), and shoved her into a clear-plastic shelf. The shelf was also holding metallic red and gold letter-shaped Christmas streamers wrapped in flat cellophane packaging with cardboard tops.

I turned back and looked along the aisles. It was a little bit dimmer farther back in the store. I could see T walking up toward me. She was smiling somewhat innocently. When she finally got up to me, I could see that her hair had gotten long and kind of messy.

Dream #3

I floated down from the ceiling of a basketball auditorium. I descended over a wide staircase, at the top of which was a wide entranceway. At the bottom of the staircase was the basketball court.

A group of people walked out from the entranceway as I descended the final slow feet to the stairs. The group was led by a white man. He didn't look real at all. He looked like a cartoon. He was amazingly wide, with unnaturally tanned skin, a plasticky wave of hair, and a frozen grin. He wore a sea-green polo shirt and khaki slacks.

Behind this white man were five black men, dressed up like the Harlem Globetrotters. They all looked like terribly exaggerated cartoons! One of them even looked like the bottom half of a bowling ball in red and white striped shorts -- with no top half for his body!

I told myself, This is unreal. I'm dreaming.

As soon as I realized I was dreaming, everything took on such a tactile clarity that I felt like I was awake. I said to myself, Oh. I guess I just woke up from my dream. No wonder I thought I was dreaming. I told myself, Well, hopefully next time I'll realize I'm dreaming while I'm actually dreaming.

The basketball players all ran out to the court. I ran out as well. It was like I was supposed to play against all of them. They all ran around me with the ball. I kept almost getting the ball from them. But they would pass it around and keep it away from me.

At one point, all five basketball players were in a line, tossing the ball back to the next person as I approached the person who had the ball. I was especially frustrated not being able to get the ball from the player who didn't even have a top half to his body!

The players were now all around me, near the hoop. The were surrounding me. I felt like if I didn't get the ball now, I would lose for sure! Suddenly, a white woman dressed up as Super Mario got the ball from one of the players. She bent over to look into my face (as if I were waist-high -- only a child?) and nodded at me, letting me know she was on my side.

The Super Mario girl soared up into the air. It looked like she was going to make a slam dunk! The hooped seemed to be 20 feet high. But the girl looked like she was going to make it. But as she approached the hoop, she just threw the ball straight at the net. The ball flew off and rolled away somewhere off the court.

The Super Mario girl landed. Some of my other teammates gathered around me. (I only came up to their waists, as if I were a child, although this didn't occur to me in the dream.) The Super Mario girl may now have been wearing spring-green overalls and a pink shirt with tiny, little flower designs on it, though she still had the Mario nose and mustache.

The teammates all explained to me that the Super Mario girl could have made the dunk. But that wasn't the point of this game. I looked at the ground. I didn't want to hear that. I thought, If she could have made the dunk she should have just made it. The basketball players had all frustrated me so much. Somebody should just have dunked on them!

Dream #4

I was in a basement of some really fancy hotel or house. The basement was like a nice, den-like room, with warm, orange walls. There were a lot of people here. We were all having some kind of multi-day party or retreat. We were all somewhat rich, and most of us had been friends for a while.

There were a few groups of us standing in a few different lines to get night-time desserts from a number of different small bars before heading to some late-evening recreation like playing an easy sport or watching a movie.

I was (or was seeing from the viewpoint of) a white man in his 50s or 60s. I was somewhat tall, strong, with tanned skin. I had grey-white hair, short, and well-combed. I had steel-blue eyes. I wore a blue shirt, possibly navy blue, and pale-khaki or white khaki shorts.

In front of me was a little boy. He was blonde, very pretty. He seemed to be wearing only a pale blue, long-sleeved, Gap shirt (which is what I wear as a shirt to go to bed) and nothing else. The shirt went down almost to the young boy's knees.

I and the boy still had a few more people to go before we would get served. The bar we were at looked like it had some kind of tropical theme: it had bamboo shoots for the bar front, and had a roof over it that looked liked thatched palm leaves.

I seemed to be hugging the boy from behind. The boy finally told me he didn't feel like he wanted to do this, and that he really didn't want to do the late night activity. I understood that the boy just wanted to go to bed.

I got out of line with the boy and began walking out of the room. As I did so, I said goodbye to a few people, explaining that I was heading out for the night, because the little boy figured it was time to go to bed.

I noticed how all the other older men were with older women, like they were with their wives. I couldn't figure out why I was with a little boy.

Dream #5

I walked into an apartment that was a maybe three or four floors up in its building. The apartment had brick walls, and it looked out over some kind of city scene, like in a slightly busy area of Brooklyn or Manhattan.

It was late afternoon. The light outside was dim blue. But inside the apartment it was warm and well-lit. The apartment felt cluttered, but nice and comfortable.

There were other people in the apartment, all friends. It was like we were having a party. Everybody was happy and cheerful. But I also had a sense that we were really here to strategize about something. It was like we were making plans to defend ourselves against some really bad thing that was about to happen or that had already begun happening and was in its early, relatively mild stages.

The apartment may have been a very large studio, so that the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the bedroom, were all really "one room," even though the place was large enough and the space was varied enough so that each diferent place felt like a "different room."

I walked over to the dining table, near the front windows. The kitchen was just to my right. I looked at a sheet of paper. It was in a different language. I began talking about what was written on the paper.

One of my friends, a young man all dressed up in fancy garb and a powdered wig, like the picture of Vivaldi in MoSh's avatar on this site, came up to me and asked me if I spoke the language on the sheet of paper.

"Oh, no," I replied. "I don't speak Latin. I don't speak any language other than English. I mean, I think people are fooled, because I learn songs in other languages, and I sing those songs pretty well. But that's mostly j-pop, and I definitely don't speak Japanese."

I felt stupid, having to admit that I didn't speak Latin, after I had spoken, apparently with a tone of authority, regarding the language on the sheet. I thought I had acted in a misleading way. So now I tried to make up for it by thinking of a song that I knew in Latin. But all I could think of was Leporello's aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni. And I knew that "wasn't quite" Latin.

I began to see the words of Leporello's aria handwritten in pencil on a sheet of paper, very watery and blurry.