maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A tall, white man, bald on top, with white hair around the sides of his head, and wearing a grey suit with a white shirt and, probably, a maroon tie, was sitting at a table with me in a drably fluorescent-lit room, talking about lucid dreaming.

I don't remember what the man said now, although I could hear it pretty well. One word in particular really struck me, although when I woke up I seemed to think that that word could have applied to any subject.

Dream #2

I was standing at the edge of a city park. The park felt small near me, though I had the idea that it was actually a rather large park. I stood on the inside of a black-painted iron fence. A sidewalk ran just outside the park. It was a nice, sunny day. There were a lot of people on the sidewalk.

Somehow I saw, off to my left, my old friend R walking around the corner. He was walking under the shade of some trees. I didn't really want to see him again. But if he was here, and if he saw me, I supposed I should be happy to talk to him.

The entrance to the park was on my side. And R was rounding the corner to reach my side. But for some reason, I started walking over to the side of the park where R was. It was like I wanted to meet him before he got to my side.

But, only a few steps away from where I'd been, I realized that I'd just left my backpack (??? -- don't wear one IWL) behind. I turned around to grab it. It might have been leaning against a tall headstone, like for a grave.

I grabbed my backpack. But by this time, R had already rounded the corner. He was now walking past where I stood. He may have said something to me. We may even have been talking to each other -- in my head. R was already about to reach the next corner.

Somehow I came to understand that I would be meeting R at some other place, like we'd arranged to meet each other for dinner or at R's house or something. I now walked away from the park gates and down toward the opposite end of the park.

The park, I'm pretty sure, had a lot of gravestones in it. It might actually have been a cemetery. I walked across a lawn full of gravestones, under the thick shade of trees.

At some point I saw -- as if I were walking there, but not quite -- the street on the other side of the park. It was an empty street, with a big, residential apartment building. The building was kind of old and run down. It was made of stone or concrete, and it was painted white. It glared in the sunlight.

I was thinking something to myself. But I can't remember what. I was probably still continuing my in-head conversation with R.

Dream #3

I was sitting on a couch with my brother. My brother sat to my right. To my left was another couch, on which sat two or three women. The women weren't my family members, though maybe they were supposed to have been.

I was either drawing or looking at drawings and humming or singing a tune to myself. I remember sensing the tune -- hearing it and feeling it in my throat. But I don't remember the tune at all.

The first drawing I was looking at was kind of tall and narrow. It was of some human-like figure. The figure was all green, with a masculine, slender, but muscular body, and a featureless face. The figure had smallish wings, kind of butterfly-shaped, but clear, like fly-wings.

The figure stood before a background, like a sky fading upward, from the horizon, from yellowish to greenish-yellow, to olive-green.

The second drawing was of a sky and a landscape below. The landscape was very small as I remember, and the sky was very vast. A whole lot of demon-like entities were being released from the sky. They may have come from some ship, but I can't remember.

The demons were little, black, scraggly shadows. In the center of these scraggly shadows there were single, pink orbs, almost like eyes.

The sky faded very quickly from a dark band of blue at the top, to a paler blue, and finally to a white, which took up most of the vast sky. For some reason, the whole thing reminded me of something out of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and I might even have started making up a story about Shinji Ikari attacking these demons.

I was still humming or singing. At some point the women started singing or humming along with my tune. Finally my brother made some smart-ass comment to me about how stupid my song was. He also asked me something like, couldn't I quit making so much noise while he was around?

I stopped. I was really offended and angry. The women stopped as well. But they took more of an attitude of being scared by the sudden change in tone in the environment.

I turned to my brother and said a lot of really bad stuff to him. I remember sensing each thing I said to him -- but I can't remember what I said. All I know is that I was calculating everything I said to hurt him and make him feel as terrible and worthless as possible.

Finally I said that I only tolerated being around him, and nothing more -- that I didn't like being around him.

I then did some strange move where I lifted my hands, bent my arms, grabbed onto the back of the couch, and flipped myself over to the backside of the couch. When I did this, I was in another room.

As soon as I had said everything I felt really terrible. I could tell that my brother had taken everything I'd said to heart. I knew that he'd probably lose faith in himself and go off and get into some kind of trouble. It really upset me that I'd started off that whole chain of events -- even though, while I'd said everything, it was exactly what I'd meant to do.

I didn't seriously mean anything I'd said, though, and now I wanted to apologize to my brother for everything.

My brother was standing right next to me. I figured this would be the best time for me to apologize to him and get things back in order between us.

We were staring at a table full of arts and crafts supplies. The main thing I remember is yellow, plastic canisters of powdered paint. The canisters looked like label-less Crayola products. We had to pour the powdered paint into white, styrofome bowls and add water. I may have called this paint "tempera."

I was looking at the table and apologizing to my brother. My brother was telling me something like, It's okay, it's okay, I'm okay, don't worry about it. But I still felt awful, and I wanted my brother to know I was sorry.

Dream #4

A girl, probably an Asian girl, maybe in her early or mid teens, was wearing a strange helmet. The helmet was made out of brightly polished chrome.

The skull of the helmet held pretty close to the woman's head. But the jaw of the helmet extended straight forward, on both sides, forming something like two stylized, trapezoidal tusks. There may -- possibly, I'm not sure -- also have been ear-like or wing-like shapes coming off the top of the head.

I wondered why the woman would need to wear something like this. It didn't make sense, for daily life.

But somehow I got the understanding that the woman had been attacked, either physically or spiritually, in her life. She was still healing from the attack. And she was still vulnerable to future attacks. So, to protect the healing areas, the woman had to wear this helmet. The helmet may also have helped her fight, in the case of any future attacks.

Dream #5

I was at my old friend R's apartment. But, for some reason, it was now my family's house. My mom and my mom's best friend were at the house. My sister was also there. Other people may also have been there. But I'm not sure who they were.

We were in somebody's bedroom, which was at one end of the apartment. I was sitting on the edge of a big, fluffy bed.

My mom and my mom's friend were secretly worrying over me. They didn't say anything to me. But they were discussing the fact that I was seeing demons, and that I might, therefore, be suffering from schizophrenia. My sister may also have been involved in the conversation.

I got up, not quite feeling like myself, but still trying to prove that I was sane. I'm pretty sure the fact was that I was seeing demons. But I think I was trying to prove to somebody that they were real. But if I couldn't prove they were real, I could, at least, in the meantime, prove that I had a decent grip on the rest of reality.

I walked into the next room, adjacent to the bedroom. I'm not sure what it was. For some reason, I saw the door on the left wall of the room. I wanted to jump from where I was, through the doorway, into the hallway.

I jumped, and I made it. But instead of landing, I decided I just wanted to keep flying. I knew that one could hover 12cm or so above the ground if one had jumped, and that one could move about a bit more quickly than walking by floating around at this height.

I floated off to my left, up the hallway, into the kitchen, where my mom and her friend were. They may still have been talking about how crazy I was. I thought they'd especially think I was crazy, now that I was flying around. I think they'd even think I was crazy for thinking I could fly.

But I wanted to keep flying, and I wanted to prove to somebody that I was flying. So I turned around and headed down the hallway. My sister was walking up the hallway. I figured if she saw me flying she'd know I was flying and that I wasn't crazy.

But as I passed the front door of the apartment, right before I saw my sister, I passed a pair of high heels. The high heels were very strange. The toes and sides of them were covered in a red fabric with white designs. The heels were covered with something like blue denim and white designs. The shoes were then -- somehow -- fringed with white lace.

For some reason, these monstrosities really caught my fancy. I said, "Ooh!" And even turned back to look at them as I passed them. My sister saw how I paid attention to the shoes. I thought, Oh great. Now she'll think I like the shoes because I like wearing women's shoes. And she'll think that since I "like wearing women's shoes," I'm crazy.

My sister was already heading back up the hallway, toward the bathroom, which was near the kitchen. I turned around to follow her, hoping I could say something to her which would make her think I wasn't crazy.

But my sister was talking to me about some kind of fashion show, which the shoes had been a part of. My sister was talking about one dress in particular from the show. My sister either liked the dress or the model for the dress.

The model may have looked like an ultra-thin version of Scarlet Johanssen (I probably spelled that wrong). She had pale skin, and her hair was in a very 1930s-style, triangular kind of cut, not quite shoulder length, full of tight, blonde curls.

The model wore a red dress with white designs. The fabric of the dress was kind of thick and practical, not thin, sheer, or soft. The collar-line of the dress was very low and had a wide v-cut. The sleeves were kind off poofy, in an angular way.

The model also wore a blue hat, the fabric seemed to be like denim. The had basically just sat, tiltled kind of rakishly, atop the curls of the model's hair. It didn't really fit over the whole skull.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a dark restaurant. The restaurant had a lot of small, black, two-person tables in the main area. I sat at a table there. Off to my left there were some bigger booth tables. Multicolored neon lights seemed to reflect off many of the dark surfaces in the bar.

The two-person seating area was pretty full. A business man sat next to me, at the table to my right. He may have been Asian American, maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He wore square glasses and a kind of plain suit. He had a gentle, easygoing, but mature-sounding voice.

The man asked me why I had left my previous job. I began to list off a whole bunch of complaints about my former boss. The complaints just got worse and worse, and I just got more and more agitated as I listed them. I think the main complaint was that my boss wanted me out of the office, and that he just neglected me and tortured me until I left.

I now noticed that my boss was sitting up in one of the booths off to my left. Red, white, and green light was playing off his face, like a rotating neon sign (or a barber shop pole) was shining on him.

My boss was sliding a grey iPad back into a case. It was almost like the iPad was the thickness of a VCR cassette and that the iPad case was like a VCR cassette sleeve.

I could tell that my boss had heard everything I'd said about him. I was a little ashamed of myself for having spoken bad about him. But I was also glad that he'd heard it. I hoped that it would sink in somehow, and that he'd feel bad.

But I also felt bad for complaining. The business man may have been thinking about hiring me. Now that I'd complained so much, maybe he just thought I wouldn't be a good employee.

My boss was now standing just beside me, on my left. He said, "Hey, I need to talk to you for a second."

I stood up with him and walked toward the center of the restaurant. There was a wide pillar there, around which was a chest-high counter that had a bunch of computer screens (maybe cash registers?) on it. My boss stopped there and spoke to me.

He said "You know, I've been getting the feeling lately that you think I didn't treat you right while you were working for me. And that's just not true. I have a feeling you've been telling people stuff like that. And I really don't want you to."

The way he was saying all this made it sound like he had just come to these conclusions all by himself -- like he hadn't heard me speaking at all just now, and the idea had just popped into his head. I knew he was just trying to impress me by making himself sound insightful enough to guess my moves. But I'd seen him listening to my conversation.

I told my boss, "I saw you sitting there, listening to everything I said! I knew you were there, and that's why I said it! I'm not sorry I said it! You treated me like garbage while I was there!"

(EDIT: I forgot to say that there was also some point where I was even making fun of my boss' voice, doing some kind of high-pitched, flat squealing, with a sheep-like, bleating rhythm. I may have been standing or crouching over my boss while he was laying on the ground. I may even have had his left (?) arm pinned to the ground.)

I was now standing out near the dugout of a baseball field in a park. I was with my boss momentarily, still yelling at him. But my boss eventually changed into my old friend R.

We were actually standing with a group of people, maybe twelve or fifteen of us, all straggled out along a fence that went along from third base to home plate. R and I were standing just beyond third base. At this point, the fence was separated from the diamond by about twenty meters of lawn, and it went up a small slope.

I knew that I had been yelling at R just like I had been yelling at my old boss. But suddenly I felt like R was in control of something in my life. I didn't like R very much, but I felt like I should apologize to him and be nice to him, so that he would stop controlling whatever it was he was controlling in my life, and make things okay for me again.

There had been a little bit of a game going on on the ball field, a game between two semi-competitive teams, maybe teams of little kids. But now the kids were all just milling around the field, clearing off the field.

There was some sort of ceremony that was now being held on home plate. A kind of tall, kind of fat, bald man in a grey suit, white shirt, and reddish tie was presenting somebody to give a speech. The person was another old friend of mine, E.

I only heard one particular phrase from E's speech. I can't remember what it was. But it struck me as attempting to be "folksy," something that would be understood by and sympathized with by all the "common people" around him.

I was kind of sickened by this. When I'd first met E, he was a kind of intellectual guy. He struck me as being a genuinely good person. But the older he got, the more he enjoyed cheating and taunting people. But he still tried to carry off the act of being a good guy. By now, it was all just a horrible charade to anybody who knew him. And his speech was an awful example of it.

Nevertheless, when E finished his speech, I went after him, to go talk to him. I figured that since he'd done something important like give a speech, and be introduced by a man in a suit, that he might be an important guy now. He might be able to help me out in my own difficulties.

E walked over toward the fence, toward a section closer to home plate. I hurried down toward him. I may have reached him and started talking to him, in a really shameful kiss-up kind of way.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a house or a mansion. I was in what looked like a big living room. But I may have been sitting on the left edge of a bed. The room was all made of dark wood. There were no lights on. But a lot of natural light was coming through a doorway, probably a wide doorway into a bathroom.

The bed didn't have any blankets on it, just a white sheet around the mattress and a white sheet over that. The bed may actually have been a hide-a-bed, the kind that pulls out from under the cushions of a couch.

Just off to my right, a guy stood talking. It was as if he were in a commercial, or in some kind of "special features" style mini-documentary for a movie. He, and everything around him, had a gauzy haze, like I was already watching the documentary, and the view from the camera lens, which was in some kind of soft focus.

The guy was some famous director. He looked like he was from the late 1970s or early 1980s. He was kind of skinny, with hair down just below his shoulders. He wore roundish, black-rimmed glasses and some kind of nerdy-looking suit.

The director had a kind of high, but full voice, so everything he said sounded a little pompous, and a little more like singing than talking.

The director was talking about his future plans. But he didn't really seem to have any. He may have mentioned that he'd done a lot of work already, and that he now planned to just spend time with his family, to re-charge a little.

The director said that the thing that ruined a lot of creative people nowadays was letting themselves get too overrun by taking on too many tasks. Their work was cheapened, and the artists would get burnt out. The director said that he was going to try not to let this happen to him.

I stood up and walked toward the bathroom, still hearing the director, as if he were speaking directly into my head. The director may have started talking about the French filmmaker Francois Truffaut's career as an example of burning out. I may have seen some black and white photos of Truffaut, intercut with solid views of lavender color.

I now stood in the bathroom, looking down into the bathtub. I was thinking of taking a shower. But there was a little reddish dirt or grime ringing the side of the tub and dusting up the floor of it.

I was kind of grossed out by this. I wondered how a bathtub could be so poorly taken care of in such a rich house as this. I may have thought I'd clean the tub. But I also may have thought that I just wouldn't take a shower.

Dream #3

I was in a house with my sister. I was in the living room, and my sister was in the kitchen. Both rooms were small, so even though we were in two rooms, it felt like we were hanging out together. The living room had no lights on, but light came into it through the kitchen.

I had been sitting on the couch, probably watching a movie on a TV that stood on an entertainment center just off to my left. But now I stood up and walked into the kitchen. My sister was sitting at the kitchen table, doing something -- maybe writing, or coloring in a coloring book, or doing something on her phone.

At some point my sister may have turned into a blonde girl I knew in high school, though she may have been college-aged.

I told my sister that I was going to take a shower. She said okay. But she then mumbled something about the university I'd attended. I didn't understand what my sister had said. So I asked her to say it again. Again my sister just quickly mumbled something about the university I'd attended.

It was like my sister was giving me news about the university. But it was more like she was sharing her reactions to the news with me. She already expected me to know what the news was. And if I didn't know the news, she would just figure I was pretty stupid.

This was even more the case -- at least in my mind -- because my sister had been told the news by a man that she was attracted to.

This man was maybe ten years older than I. He was big and strong and probably involved in business in some way or another. If this man could outdo me with his knowledge, through my sister, my sister -- I thought -- would feel like she didn't need to respect me, or even treat me nicely, anymore.

So after I'd determined that my sister had really mentioned something about news regarding the university I'd attended, I just said something really non-committal, like, "Yeah, it's pretty crazy, right? I can't believe it," and then walked to the shower.

I walked down the dim hallway and into the dark bathroom. I didn't turn any lights on. I closed the door. I must have stripped out of my clothes, too. I now figured I would look at my phone, try to get whatever news I could about my old university, and, while I was showering, think up some responses to give my sister.

When I turned on the news, though, I found a web page that said that the house of famous actress Barbara Steele had caught fire. Apparently Barbara Steele (an actress famous for her roles in Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 and David Cronenberg's Shivers) nowadays lived in my old university town.

The news article showed a picture of Steele's house. But the photo was from the roof of the house. The roof, actually, took up almost all the photo. And the main focus of the photo seemed to be a small array of solar panels that now seemed to be sinking down through the roof.

There may also have been snow on the roof, and there were a few men on the roof, apparently in the middle of putting out the fire. The house seemed like it was just a regular, suburban house in a regular, suburban neighborhood, not a big mansion one would expect a movie star to live in.

The news article said that Barbara Steele had been in the fire, and that she'd been rushed to the hospital. It seemed to imply that she'd died. But I couldn't really determine whether that was true.

I figured this must have been the article my sister had been talking about. My sister would know how much I loved Barbara Steele. So she probably would have wanted to discuss with me any news she'd heard about her. I started thinking of responses to give my sister about the article.

But now I could hear (and maybe even see, in my mind's eye) my sister and the older man talking with each other. My sister was telling the older man that I seeemed to be going through some sort of difficulty. My sister even seemed to imply that I'd lost or was lacking something, as if the older man might help me get a replacement.

I was a little upset that my sister had told the man all of this, especially since my sister and the older man already seemed to be planning with each other how they could make me feel less intelligent than they were.

But I was also relieved. I knew I was missing something. And maybe the man could help me find it. I figured that once I got out of the shower I'd approach the man very humbly and ask him to help me.

But now I saw a strange image. It was a cartoon, or a comic book. A little girl had knocked on a door (her own front door?). A man, maybe the girl's dad, had answered the door. The man let his wife know that the girl was at the door.

But something about what the man said made me realize that the man and girl were going to have sex. They had probably already had sex in the past. It was like the man and the little girl were in love with each other.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was a bright, warm, sunny day. I was in some kind of suburban neighborhood with a group of people. We all stood out in the middle of the road, in a wide intersection, near the crest of a shallow hill. The other side of the hill felt very airy, possibly like the seashore was nearby.

Somehow I knew -- I may actually have been explaining it to a business woman -- that either a plague or a flood had hit this area. The place had been ravaged for a while: either overwhelmed by waters or distraught by disease.

The calamity had subsided. But things weren't back to normal. The town's population was now extremely low.

On top of that, there were certain streets that were now run by dogs. It was easy to tell the streets apart. The streets that had nice, new, black asphalt were streets where humans lived. But the streets with older, pale asphalt were run by dogs. The streets with old asphalt, I knew, had been so ravaged by the calamity that the new asphalt had been stripped off of them.

It was known that the dogs would guard their streets. If humans came down the streets, the dogs, which were like German Shepherds, would group together along the street and growl the human away, back out of the street.

But new asphalt was now also being laid through the dog streets as well. The group of people and I were following one new strip of asphalt that had been laid, coming out of a dog street and heading toward the front of this neighborhood (which now, apparently, was a gated community).

There were two or three mail delivery men up ahead of us, pushing their bag-carts full of mail. Walking near the men were two or three big, black dobermans. I feel like they were acting as an escort for the mailmen, who, now that the new asphalt was being laid, were again having to go into the dog streets to deliver mail to the houses.

I was now outside the community's gates and a few blocks down. I was talking with somebody, probably a black man in his mid twenties, maybe a little skinny, with reddish hair, wearing a red shirt.

The man and I were out here on a job. The man may have been gossipping to me or complaining about the work, trying to find a way for the two of us to get out of it, even though I wasn't interested in finding a way out of the work.

I was now walking back up toward the gated community. The gate, I could see, was a kind of cheap-looking, chain-link fence, with a tiny post-structure for a security guard to stand inside of. After the fence, the street went up a hill that was covered in the deep shade of heavy-canopied trees.

There were a couple of people behind me and beside me to my right, but just out of my view. A black woman said to her friend, "I don't wanna have to see them showing off their lust for each other again. It makes me sick."

I wondered who the woman could have been talking about. I now saw that the community's gate was open, and that two black, female security guards were walking back and forth in the open space.

The women were both overweight, and their security uniforms were really tight on them. One woman was darker. She had hair about to her shoulders, brown, with blonde streaks in it. The other woman was lighter and had blondish hair, long, in tight braids that pulled up in a fountain-shape and then flowed down.

The long-haired woman was following the short-haired woman around closely, almost flopping over her. I could see now that these two women were lesbian lovers. The woman who had been complaining a moment ago had been complaining about these two women.

Dream #2

I was in a really nice restaurant. I sat along the back wall, with my right side against the wall, at a table for two. The restaurant was one big room, full of tables for two or four people. The tables and chairs were all of heavy, dark wood. The walls may also have been of heavy, dark wood.

It must have been daytime. The restaurant's lighting was dim, and most of the light seemed to be coming from a window at the front of the restaurant.

The chairs at my table, and at all the tables along the back wall, had tall backs, maybe two meters tall, carved in a Gothic style. The chairs were so tall and solid, they made me feel like it was sitting in a booth rather than at a table.

A wealthy-looking white man, maybe in his forties, sat at the table directly in front of mine. I was probably waiting for my food. I was reading a book, scribbling some figures with a pencil onto a pad of pink paper, and listening to music with my headphones.

But I now noticed I'd been singing along to the music I'd been listening to. I didn't know if my singing had been any good. I hoped I hadn't been singing too loud.

I thought it would have been rude to be singing like that here, in such a nice restaurant, with such a serious guy sitting in front of me. But I may also have thought that the guy could possibly have been a talent scout. I may have thought that if he'd heard me singing, he'd want to sign a record contract with me.

But I was more embarrassed by my bad singing and my impertinence for singing in such a place. I took out my earphones and put them away.

Dream #3

I walked into a restaurant in the downtown area of some big city. The restaurant was part of some big building, possibly a big hotel. The restaurant was huge, with windows for all its walls, letting in streams of bright morning light.

The restaurant was like one big room, but divided into a number of areas, mainly by means of setting some parts of the room up on higher platforms, maybe 30cm to 60cm in height, and arranging these platforms at odd angles from the rest of the restaurant. Some areas may also have been divided off by glass walls or waist-high divider-walls.

There was one little alcove with a couple tables in it just off to the left of the entrance. I was thinking of sitting there. There were a few big, beautiful, white business men sitting at a table. One man had a tanned, but reddened face and wiry, brown-red hair. He was laughing with the other men.

I still wanted to sit in that room. I wanted to sit near those men. But I also wanted to avoid them. I didn't want them to think I was trying to intrude in their business.

I looked throughout the rest of the restaurant. It was all empty. There may have been a waitress walking through some of the seating areas, doing something. But that was it.

I was now (I don't know why) so embarrassed with having wanted to sit at a table near the business men that I left the restaurant. I walked around the corner, but then came back in through a different door. This way, I thought, the business men would think I'd left. That way they wouldn't think I was trying to intrude on their business.

I was back in the restaurant. I walked up onto one of the platform levels and took a seat just a couple tables away from the glass wall dividing this area from the room the business men sat in. Apparently I still wanted to be close to the business men. One of the business men did take notice of me. I felt kind of stupid.

Dream #4

It was night. I was sitting with my family at a McDonald's. The McDonald's was packed with people. The place felt hot and greasy and steamy.

My family and I sat at a very low, long table. My mom, my siblings, my nephews and niece, and I all sat packed together. But there was another whole group of people at the table, too. So we were all pretty crammed together.

We had all our belongings heaped up on the table as well. I had a backpack or a book bag in front of me, amid a heap of other stuff.

Someone brought out our food. I had fries, possibly something with chicken in it, and a soda. I had to reach around all the stuff on the tables to get to the drink-tray with the sodas in it. The sodas were all smalls, in white cups.

But when I looked at my drink in the drink tray, I realized that, while I'd ordered a Coke, I'd been given a Sprite. I was really mad. I'd been here a number of times, and every time I'd asked for a Coke, I'd gotten a Sprite.

I blurted out, "Christ, I hate these people. They did it to me again!"

But I noticed that there was an extra drink in the drink tray. It was a watery-looking orange drink in the drink tray. It looked like a mix of orange Hi-C and carbonated water. I like Hi-C, so I thought I would just be satisfied with that drink instead.

But my brother, who was sitting just to my right, said, "Did they give you the wrong thing? Don't take it. I'll complain to them."

I didn't want anybody to complain, as, in my experience, complaining just made things worse. But my brother had already complained and was now back in his seat.

Now one of the workers came up, a fat, white woman, dressed in blue slacks, a dark maroon polo shirt with blue sleeves and collar, and a visor-hat with a maroon visor. The woman asked, "Did someone here have a complaint about their drink?"

I stood up to face the woman. I didn't want to. But since she was here, I thought, I should just be honest with her. But I hid my face behind the top half of a big styrofome meal-container that was holding a bunch of ripple-cut french fries. I was even shoving french fries and catsup in my mouth as I stood there.

But the woman knew it was me. She either poked her head around the container or forced me to lower the container so she could see my face.

The woman said something like, "Oh, so it's you again!" as if she knew me for a constant trouble maker in the store.

It was obvious that the woman wasn't going to change my drink. She walked away, back behind the front counter. But she sent out another worker, either a black man or a black woman, to kind of pace back and forth around the table and make sure I wasn't trying to start any more trouble.

My family had all finished their meal and were ready to go. We were in a hurry to get somewhere -- maybe to the airport, so I could catch a flight back to New York.

Everybody else in the family was now outside, and I was sitting at the table by myself. It also felt like a large part of the people in the restaurant were gone, too. The place felt kind of empty.

I was trying to pick up all my stuff to get going. But for some reason I couldn't find my book bag.

A new family was coming into the store. There were a mom, a dad, a daughter, and some other people. The dad was tall, white, with a huge belly, barely held in by a thin t-shirt. He wore dark-tinted eyeglasses and had short, blonde-grey, curly hair.

The daughter was young, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. She wasn't very pretty. She had kind of frizzy hair and a nerdy look. But I was probably really attracted to her sexually.

The father obviously thought of me as "below" him, and he didn't even want me around his family while they ate. He was bustling around near me, huffing and puffing and trying to intimidate me. Finally he walked over to my table and stepped on my book bag (which was now on the floor?) a couple times.

I was really angry that the father stepped on my book bag. I had my computer in there. He could have broken it. I was probably going to stand up to him.

But suddenly I was outside, walking with my family to the car. We got in the car as I was telling my mom about the guy who had been bullying me inside. My mom may have asked if I wanted to take care of it in any way. But I didn't think it was any use.

I told my mom, though, that I probably should go back into the store. I'd been looking for my book bag in there, and I hadn't found it yet.

My mom said, "Oh, we just took your book bag with us when we headed out of the restaurant. It's in the back." (The back was like a hatchback, rather than a trunk.) "Did you want me to get it for you before we started driving?"

I kind of did. I wanted to make sure my computer was okay. I remembered the man stepping on my bag. But I didn't know if that was a real memory, now. If my mom had taken the bag out with her, it couldn't have been there for the man to step on.

I figured I'd just take a chance, then, and look at my computer once we got to wherever we were going. I told my mom, "No, that's fine. As long as my book bag's in the car with us, that's all I care about."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was somewhere outside, standing before a small building like a cottage. I stood before the door, which split in half so it could open on the top and stay closed on the bottom. I probably leaned on a counter-like ledge topping the bottom half of the door.

Inside were my family members and a guy I know from a cafe I go to. The interior of the cottage felt very plain and empty, almost as if it were a children's play-cottage with no decorations in it.

I was talking to the guy about stocks. Apparently the guy had been talking about some Chinese stock that was really great. He was even thinking of buying it.

There may have been a business man somewhere in the cottage. I may have been trying to impress the business man by showing how much I understood the guy. I asked the guy, "What's keeping you from buying the stock? Or..."

Here I seemed to start having trouble getting words into my head as I spoke. "Rather... what is it that is keeping your... joy... about this... company... from becoming 100%... unmitigated?"

The guy then began talking to me about stuff like Chinese economic policy, which I didn't understand. The guy made reference to a few key people in China. I now saw them on a TV screen.

The guy continued to talk to me, but we were now both on a bed outside the cottage. The guy sat on the left edge of the bed, watching a TV in an entertainment center that stood against the cottage wall. I was crouched up in a weird position, like a little kid, behind the guy.

The Chinese political figures were still on the TV. The guy had explained a lot to me. Now he said some quote that apparently some famous investor had made, like, "Why invest in the country's companies, when you can just invest in their currency?"

I thought the guy meant he was going to invest in Chinese currency instead of the company he'd mentioned. But now he mentioned a completely different company he was going to invest in.

The business man now sat on the bed. The guy was now my little brother. But it was like my brother wasn't there. My mom was somewhere around. The business man had been impressed by everything my brother had said.

The business man told my mom, "We need to hire someone new for our firm. We need somebody intelligent, somebody who can give our firm some direction.

"And we're open for all different kinds of people. Duncan Jansen (???) was our CEO." (I knew that Duncan Jansen was a black man.) "We need people who are willing to work, and can have good, new ideas."

I assumed that the man meant, by what he had just said, that my little brother was a good worker, while I was not. I sat up from the bed. I was a little groggy-eyed, as if I'd just woken up from sleep.

I knew I had some sort of data project I had to take care of. I hoped that if I just went and took care of my project, the business man would see that I, too, could work hard.

My office was apparently down a flagstone path, past a few other cottages with fenced yards. After a few cottages, I "knew," I'd turn right.

But as I started going down the flagstone path, the business man mentioned some propecy he'd read, which he now thought was related to my brother. The business man mentioned something about a heavenly choir singing at the announcement of this prophecy.

At the same time, a singing group, which I may have organized, was getting ready for their daily practice. I thought to myself that I might mention to the man that I considered holding singing practice every day to be of great importance.

The group sang a song that had the words "Angels and spirits sing on high." This line kept repeating. It was more like a chant than a song. But it sounded beautiful.

On either side of the flagstone path was lawn, in which were random, wild beds of irises. But the blossoms of most of the irises were way past their prime. Purple and white petals, in different stages of browning, barely clung to the stems.

Dream #2

I saw from the viewpoint of a spaceship in outer space. The spaceship was, apparently, approaching the planet Venus. The planet, though, looked silvery, almost cloud-grey, from our approach.

We seemed to be very close to Venus at first. The upper left quadrant (?) of the sphere had taken up almost all my view. But then we were a ways back, far enough back to see the whole planet and a good deal of the surrounding space quite easily.

At some point the beautiful voice of a woman asked us, in a very professional, almost computerized voice who we were and what our business was.

A man on board the ship may have mentioned that the planet Venus required permission before allowing people to land on her. Suddenly I realized that the voice I'd heard hadn't been from a person on Venus -- it had been the voice of the planet herself!

A spherical shield like glittering gold dust went up around the planet. I knew that this shield could keep anybody off the planet.

The man must have begun interacting with Venus again. This time, though, as Venus spoke, she turned different colors. It was like her surface was banded, like Saturn's surface, but with neon orange, green, and pink. And these bands would shift up and down, like computer lights, as Venus spoke.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I sat in a restaurant, kind of like a huge "bar & grille" style restaurant. I sat at a booth table with a dark wood backing. There was a thin column that ran on the aisle side of the booth, to the left. To my right was a dark wood wall.

A Japanese business man sat to my left, and another Japanese business man sat across the table from me. Both the men were asleep, with their heads laid down in their arms on the table. A woman stood near us. She may also have been Japanese. She was either a business woman or a waitress.

The Chiaki Naomi song "Yoru he sogu" started playing. I could barely hear it -- it was like it was playing in another room of this huge restaurant, and barely audible from my position. I strained to hear it. I was really excited that such a cool but obscure song was playing in a restaurant like this.

I may or may not have tried to wake the men up so they could hear this song. But now the men started waking up slowly.