maboroshi

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."