One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

I only slept 4 hours and awoke from 2 dreams. I hadn't prepared my dream journal at the side of my bed so I failed to write anything down.

fragment
I recall that I woke up and that there was something interesting about the dream. It was funny or clever or something. I recall that I didn't find my dream journal so I just went back to sleep. Something about my bedroom and my blue blanket.

Mall, Poem
This dream was very weird. I woke up a bit stressed from it and never got back to sleep. I dreamed that I was in a shopping mall and it was very crowded. It seems like they were mostly high school kids in while and blue uniforms. I was looking through clothing stores and then walking around the the edge of the mall where there were lots of benches outside and people sitting on them.

Then I think I was leaving the mall as a fight breaks out between a bunch of the students. As some of them run off. One mean looking bully bumps into me and threatens me and I get nervous. For some reason I agree to write him a poem. So I walk away and look for a spot on the benches to sit down. In my head I'm trying to formulate a poem. I sit down but it's too noisy with the kids sitting near me talking and listening to music. Many of them have laptops. I'm getting stressed out and afraid what will happen when the bully finds me again later. I get up and move to a different seat and then another and another, looking for a quiet spot to write my poem down. Then I woke up. I was still trying to think of a poem for about a minute after being awake. It was weird. I couldn't get my head out of the dream.

Hotel Rooms
I am staying in a hotel with my girlfriend and a few other friends. We are in a large suite, but I want to have a room for just me and my girlfriend. I talk to the other friends about changing or rooming arrangement. Something about the bathroom.

Games in Mall
I'm in the video game store of a mall. I see two guys watching StarCraft on a TV screen. I talk to one them and learn he is a pro gamer. He is very friendly and encourages me to join his clan. Then he leave but has forgotten his copy of the game in the store. Then out in the mall hallways, a group of people are playing laser tag or something. It's disruptive to the other shoppers as these players run amok in the mall.

Angry
I'm in a hotel room with a bunch of familiar people. My sister, mother, roommate, friend, friend's fiance, and another friend. I seem to be the day before the friend's wedding and it's my job to organize things. I've arranged for the groom and guys to stay the night at my apartment and the bride and girls will stay someone else. Also, there are a bunch of cats in the room. I start to become really frustrated and upset about the situation. The cats shouldn't be here. Some of them seem to be stray cats off the street. My friends aren't cooperating. I am actually enraged and walk out because I don't want to be in the same room with these people anymore.

T-Shirt Store
I am in a clothing store in a mall. Two friends are with me. The store just has a few racks of men's t-shirts with a random variety of prints and text. A salesperson is showing me the t-shirts, but I'm not interested. My friends and I leave and back into the indoor mall. Suddenly, I feel lost. I look around and finally see my friends way ahead of me down the hallway.

Ugh. Emergency at work at 2am. Spoiled the night for me. I recalled some dreams but didn't write them down. Some fragments from memory:

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In a store in a mall. It's arranged like a jewelry store but it just sells random knick-knacks. I'm waiting for the saleswoman to help me but she doesn't notice me. I think I want to by a chess set that reminds me of one I had in childhood.

fragment
With father in a mall. Looking for a restaurant?

Experimenting with some dream titles to break up the wall of text a bit.

0230: F. Two sentences of illegible notes.

Birthday Girl, Bro Code
0337: C. Even in a dream, I obey the bro code. I'm at a girl's birthday party. I came with Lance. It's indoors at a house. There are about a dozen people there. It's dark outside and mostly dark inside. Lance and I pull the birthday girl aside to give her the gifts, so the three of us are alone in a dark room. Lance forgot to bring a gift, but luckily I brought two. I say they are from both of us.

The birthday girl has short black hair. She's tall and pretty. She's wearing a dress. She opens the presents. One is wrapped in purple, the other in yellow. Yellow is her favorite color? I don't remember what the gifts are but she really likes them and is very happy. She starts making out with both of us. (Not the arrangement I had planned for my first threesome, but whatever) As things get heated, it's clear the girl is more interested in me. She pulls off my pants and ignores Lance. Lance gets up and paces around the room upset. He keeps saying "That's not cool." I stop her and get up. She wants me to come back. I leave with Lance.

Hell Is An Amusement Park Line
0510: C. I need to raise half a million dollars, fast. Maybe I'm in debt to a loan shark.

Scene change. I'm in purgatory. I guess I'm dead. I'm waiting in line to be judged to go to heaven or hell. The focus changes to someone else, like I'm watching the movie of some else's life. The main character is a man who died while trying to solve a crime. He's destined to go to heaven, but he chooses the go to hell instead. He hopes he can find more information in hell to solve the crime. I think that's heroic. His partner tries to stop him and says he's crazy. Our hero says he's from San Francisco. Somehow that makes sense to the partner and lets him go.

Scene change. Now it's hell. People come sliding down a big ramp into a large red cavern crowded with people. It's lit by flames and it's fairly bright. Our hero comes sliding down. The focus switches back to me in first-person. I'm already in hell when the hero arrives. In hell, everyone is standing in tight groups in little pens formed by metal railings. It's just like waiting in line for an amusement park ride. I'm standing near some elementary school classmates and they are talking on and on about boring stuff. I think, this IS torture. I think that's funny.

I yell to someone who just arrives down the slide. "Hey, I hope you can come up with the money, by the way. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I don't have bills to pay. But it's not like I can do anything about it from down here."

Birthday Gifts, Annoying Ice Cream Girl
0716: C. I'm indoors in an unfamiliar place but I get the impression that it's my own bedroom in a house. Apparently, it's my birthday. I'm unwrapping presents. Most of the presents are children's toys like dolls and figurines. My sister gives me a new Blackberry. I walk across the room to plug it in to charge. Another gift is D&D-like role playing game. Hugh wants to play so I unfold the map across the floor. I remark how big the map is. It's about 6 feet by 3 feet.

Scene change. I'm in a outdoor mall in a food court. I'm wearing a blue shirt with faded white lettering that says "BIRTHDAY TODDLER." Everyone is gone except Hugh, but he starts walking away leaving me alone. There are other random people in the food court though. A girl from the crowd walks up to me. I'm not attracted to her. She says she want to satisfy some urges and then walks away somewhere, as if to go fetch something that she will bring back to me. I feel awkward. Another girl walks up to me. This one is attractive and I want to talk to her. She wishes me happy birthday. I ask how she knew it was my birthday. She says it's written on my shirt.

The first girl comes back and hijacks the conversation. The second girl walks away. I'm annoyed about that but I try to be polite. The girl has a variety of ice cream and she starts feeding it to me. She want me to guess the flavors and pick my favorite. I play along to be polite. The first one is dark cherry. The second is strawberry. There are two more that I haven't tasted yet. The next one is green so I'm thinking it will either be mint or pistachio. Dream fades.

0740: False awakening. I don't RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal about my last dream. I write something but I don't note the time. Then I wake up for real. I RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I think, wait! Didn't I just do this? Damn it! I write: "False awakening. I dream of writing in my journal."

Unstable DEILD
0811: D. Again, I'm in the food court of an indoor mall but this one is different. I'm with two friends but I don't recall who. We sit at a bench near the actor who played George's father in Seinfeld. But he doesn't say anything. A young blond girl walk up to us nervously. She says "Did you guys know there's a dance coming up?" We say nothing and she walks away.

Another group of girls comes and sits near us in the same set of benches. One attractive blond looks at me and says "Hi I don't know if you remember me." I don't but I guess just to keep the conversation going: "Did we meet last night?" She says no. "I'm on of the 'Real Players.'" I have no idea what that means. Then she starts talking about a family and farm animals. Scene fades.

I wake up and DEILD into a lucid. My view is totally distorted. It's like I'm looking at a blurry TV, off center and from an angle. On the TV it looks like Street Fighter and I struggle to recognize one of the characters is Guile. I turn my head to try to center the view. Instead, I enter a rocky tunnel. I'm floating through, like I'm being carried underwater. It's like in medical films when they stick a camera down a person's esophagus. I look at my hands and rub them. The view still sucks. Dream ends. I think, damn, another difficult scene. I guess I need to be more prepared to face anything that comes at me. Or maybe I just need to be patient and let the dream solidify before trying any control.

Notes: Got to sleep early and woke up in the middle of the night. Tried for hours to fall back to sleep and finally gave up. Watched a movie and eventually returned to sleep for a few hours.

2215: Sleep

0215: B. I am in SAV. I am hanging out with Ben. He lives at the sound end of the complex. I think I am helping him move. He gets upset and I want to leave but I am still at his house. He and his older brother (doesn't exist IWL) are starting th make other plans for the evening. They want to go smoke pot? I feel left out but I can't leave yet for some reason. I keep thinking about how JavaScript doesn't have statics. I think the statements var s = 0; this.static = s;.

Now it's Dave in the house instead of Ben. He is dressed up in black and white. He's leaving soon and is looking for a sweater. He yells at his mother but she doesn't have it. She is pregnant and moves slowly. He yells "Get hobbly!" to tell her to hurry. I leave and start walking home. I pass by a playground. People are talking about how it is new. From the second story of the apartment building, there is a slide. People are saying that a slide is safe for kids than stairs or a ladder. A young girl is saying this as she is climbing a ladder.

0815: Back to sleep

1030: B. I'm in a big indoor mall. I think the whole mall is sports themed. I'm there with work people and old school people. We are at a sports bar. Somebody has a giant old typewriter in front of them at the table. Lucas is there and we are trying to avoid him. He wants to be called "Lazurus" or "Laz". I change tables a few times to avoid him. Each time I close my table with my credit card. I'm drinking beer, something pale. At the last table, my credit card doesn't go through. I look at the card as the waitress hands it to me. It's a white(?) American Express card. Something to do voting? It has some letters on it that are supposed to say how it should be used. I open my wallet and it's all messy. I pull out my green AmEx card (from the wrong slot IWL) and everything is fine.

There is a competition among some people in our group. I'm not participating, just watching. It's being televised by ESPN. The events are outdoorsy things, like chopping wood. There are three events in different parts of the mall. The whole group walks around the mall between events. My teeth keep falling out and I try to stick them back in and hold them in place. I don't stay until the end of the last event. I don't know who wins. I wander around the mall trying to find the exit. I reach a dead end, which seems familiar for some reason. I turn around and head a different way. I run into Ashwin. He was in the competition. I guess he didn't win. He asks me about the ESPN broadcast. I think he wants to be sure that his mom sees it. Then we talk about tennis.

1248: C. I go to work, but it seems like a car wash. It's just me, Frank, Lucas, and a faceless artist. They are debating with the artist about the color of a couch and some 2D images for characters that can be pieced together for different poses. The couch is in the car wash tunnel. I say nothing. Lucas suggests going to Costco to buy more couches. He leaves. Then a bunch of young kids enter the room. Frank comes up to me to confront me about missing work. We try to talk over the noisy kids. He says "You're not well." I say "No, I'm not." He says "We were comparing you before and after and you're not the same. You're dressed like a kid." I look down and see I'm wearing the company baseball jersey. Frank is wearing the same thing.