maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

An old, black woman was running something like a marathon. The woman was overweight. She wore a brightly colored (orange?) skirt and a red t-shirt. She was really having a tough time running the race, but she kept at it.

At the halfway point, everybody took a break. They sat down in a huge, crowded area of folding chairs. I saw a close-up, like video, of the woman as she stopped at the halfway point. I could tell she was exhausted. When she sat, I could see that she was afraid she wouldn't be able to get up.

The old woman was now back on the road, getting ready to run again. There were other people out on or near the road, but the woman seemed like the only one who was actually getting ready to run again. She looked afraid, like she didn't think she could make it.

I went up to the woman. I patted her left arm and told her that she could make it, that all she had to do was keep up her confidence. This seemed to cheer the woman up. I now started running.

At some point I and a few other racers were in a room like an indoor area at a zoo. We had to cross some zigzag maze-line made out of metal poles and wooden handrails. I jumped up in the air and flew over the maze-line, touching down to and bouncing back off of the handrails with my (right?) hand occasionally.

The end of the maze-line was the exit to the room. There was a lot of sunlight coming through the doorway. I saw it as if I were flying toward it from a stomach-down position only a few inches above the floor. The doorway wasn't too far from the start of the line. The line just worked itself through the back of the room and then back toward the front.

As I approached the exit, I kind of lost myself again and passively saw another man getting through the line by running through it. I then tried to imagine how the old woman would get through this line in her tired condition.

I now had a weird vision of some man standing in the air, up above the line. He was some kind of zookeeper. He had been taking care of some kind of animal, which may actually have been a little, blonde, white boy. But the boy was also some delicate kind of monkey-like animal.

The man had taken care of the little creature by giving him human books and games to stimulate his mind. But this zookeeper had had to leave the zoo. The next zookeeper just thought of these creatures as animals. So he gave the little creature only toy's you'd give to monkeys. The little creature lost interest in everything and soon died.

Dream #2

I was standing out in some area like a seal habitat at a zoo, with a big pool and a stage made to look like a rocky landscape. But this whole area was like a line for a water ride at some theme park.

I was video-taping everything, including the water hitting my feet, to prove somehow that this was actually a good water ride. In the distance, under an arch of fake rocks, I saw waves rise up and crash together.

I was then in a big room like a museum. An older man was giving a group of little kids some kind of tour. Apparently this was some kind of museum about old amusement park rides.

I wandered off by myself and found myself between two rows of mirrors. The mirrors all faced me. They had holographic images on them. I suddenly recognized them as images from the Disneyland haunted house ride. I waited for some face to pop up and surprise me in the hologram. But I also wondered why Disney had taken down the haunted house ride. That was a really fun ride.

Suddenly a face popped up on a mirror and said "boo!" I acted scared, and I did a fake scream, which sounded a lot more weak and frightened than I'd intended. I looked over and saw that I'd gotten the kids' attention.

I looked back at the mirrors. A lot of faces were now popping up. The designs on the mirrors were also a lot clearer. One image looked like river stones, except fleshy, like organs.

At some point a little girl from the group came over to make sure I wasn't really scared. I knelt or reclined and held the girl with my left arm. We watched the mirrors together.

(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.