maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I stood out on some covered concrete area, like between the entrances to two buildings that were a part of the same apartment complex. It was a grey day.

I stood out with a young girl who IWL lives in my apartment complex. We may have just come out from a set of sliding glass doors. Now the girl stood with her back against a concrete pillar.

The girl told me she wasn't really allowed to talk to adults anymore. She'd gotten involved with some adult woman who worked as something like an undercover agent for the FBI But the woman had fallen in love with the girl and gotten herself in trouble through distraction.

I saw in my mind's eye that the FBI woman was Latina, a bit overweight, wearing black jeans and a black and red jacket.

So now the girl's dad told the girl that she was no longer allowed to talk to adults. But I figured I could probably talk to the girl anyway. I wasn't planning on falling in love with her.

Dream #2

I was in a living room with a man, probably my brother-in-law, and two of my nephews, who were both babies. My brother-in-law had one of his kids slung up onto his shoulders, and he was saying something like, "Time for a diaper change!"

My brother-in-law walked out with that nephew of mine. The other nephew was still there. I now noticed that he was wearing only a diaper, which was really soggy. I thought my nephew looked a little too old to be wearing diapers.

My nephew jumped off the couch and cried, "Diapers are fun!" He then started crawling around in a skinny space between the coffee table and the TV.

Dream #3

I was at Victoria's Secret, for some reason, getting rung up for something. The items may have been lingerie, or they may have been the black slacks and jackets the Victoria's Secret workers wear.

Dream #4

I was at the end of some area that looked like a huge tunnel. The tunnel was lit up well and had peach-colored walls. It seemed like the area was used for something like a shopping plaza.

I was crouched down at the mouth of the tunnel, possibly with my back to some wooden barricades or police tape. Somebody may have come up behind me and annoyed me. I may have told him to get lost. Another person may have asked me for help with something. I may have given him directions.

Another man now approached me. He was an older, black man. He'd asked me if I'd given the other man advice about how to set up a shop in this area. I said I had. The man seemed to be mad at me. I knew people didn't like it when other people started working here. But the man didn't act too mad.

The man and I may then have stood near his own shop, which was something like a soup shop, set up in a little, wooden shack.

I was walking away. But I was now out on some plaza-like area like between buildings on a college campus. The blue moonlight shone down on the plaza.

The man now came up behind me. He was fatter than he'd been before, and he was wearing a nice, orange shirt and tweed jacket But he was now, apparently, a homeless person with no money. He asked me if I could give him some money. So I gave him some change.

Suddenly there were a whole bunch of old, fat guys pressing up against me, asking me for change. But I didn't have any more change. In fact, I didn't have any more money! I tried to tell the guys this. But they were all mad at me. They told me they'd get me soon.

I was now in some weird space like a house with a huge window looking out over a backyard area. But the backyard area, as the dim, grey morning light revealed it, was actually a huge area of rolling, grassy hills, small, brambly, tangled trees, and shallow, muddy ponds. Up to the right was a tall hill that towered over everything else.

I may have been out earlier in this area. I may have thrown the man over my shoulder and into one of the shallow, muddy ponds. While I had been standing over the pond, I'd heard my old friend R suggest that I just go ahead and kill the man.

I thought there was no way I could kill another person. I wouldn't like to do it, and I could never get away with it. But R told me that I should murder the man. He even had a place where I could bury the body.

I was now crouched down before a different hill, but in the same kind of landscape. I heard Camille Paglia and my friend R talking about how all people are at all different stages of mental development.

Paglia said that people who like a certain poet (or listen to a certain style of music?) are of an "older stage" of mental development, like from Edmund Spenser's time. They aren't as developed, Paglia said, as people with modern minds.

I now either saw or stood near the top of the hill. There was one large spot, maybe ten meters across, where the ground was extremely soft and slimy under the grass, compared to the rest of the rather firm, muddy soil. I knew this without touching or stepping into the spot.

Dream #4

I sat on my knees before a coffee table in a living room. I was all by myself. But suddenly my grandpa and my step-grandma walked in the front door.

I was surprised to see my grandpa: he'd passed away a few years back. But I figured that my step-grandma had done something to make it so my grandpa could come back for a while.

I was also surprised by my grandpa's hair, which was tight and curly. He also had thick sideburns, like lamb's wool.

My step-grandma and grandpa sat down on a couch behind me. I continued to sit facing the coffee table, with my back to the couch. My great grandma may also have come in at some point, sitting in a chair to the left side of the couch.

My step-grandma told me to remain calm about everything, and just to perceive my grandpa being here, without any questions or worries. Getting too worked up would make my grandpa disappear.

I turned my head slowly back and tried to look at my grandpa. But now he looked really weird. I thought at the time that he was back to looking like he did before he died of cancer. But he actually looked a lot different. His eyes were huge, almost popping out of his head. And something about his face was almost plasticky.

I looked away. I thought, If my imagination made my grandpa look like that, then I can imagine him a different way. I'll imagine him when he was young and healthy.

But I was now in a room with my grandma, my grandpa's first wife. My grandma was talking to me about me and my little cousin A, and how the two of us are so special to her.

As my grandma spoke to me, she was playing with two or three cylndrical, but rough, pieces of wood, each about 20cm long and 5cm in diameter. My vision was really focused on these pieces of wood.

One or two of the pieces formed a man's body. The third had a smaller tab at its base, which was supposed to fit into a notch at the mid-point of the man. I thought that my grandma was trying to fit this third piece of wood onto the man as if it were his phallus.

Dream #6

It was early morning, with a clear, blue sky. I was drifting in, along a river, in toward a city, on a small, wooden boat. The river was big, but I was calling it a canal. I knew the city I was drifting in toward was something like a canal city, like Venice. But I may have also thought of it as a university town, like Oxford.

I now drifted up toward the buildings at the edge of the river. The buildings were all massive, beautiful, and made of red brick. The rising sun was just hitting the tops of the buildings, setting them in gold light, against the blue-grey shade.

I knew that a young man would be by soon to come pick me up. He was going to take me to a library, where I would spend some time studying. But I knew the young man was kind of resentful of me, and that he was reluctant even to come pick me up.

I passed toward or under some tallish, stone arch. I thought that it was still early in the morning. So maybe before I went to the library I could pick up a cup of coffee. I was sure there would be a Starbucks somewhere. I may have been thinking of this place as like the Financial District in New York!

I was now with the man in the library. We were in some kind of central spot. The place was massive, with heavy, wood walls. There was a wide balcony formed in a sqaure, looking down to the floors below. There was a staircase just ahead.

I knew the next level down was a quiet area. I may have heard a thin, grey-haired woman with glasses telling me, as if I were already down there, that there was no activity allowed in that area except for quiet study. It sounded perfect to me.

Dream #7

I was walking in the parking lot of a huge shopping center. It was a grey day. I walked past a McDonald's, with the lane for the drive-thru to my left.

Two white girls and a really short black boy came walking up toward me. The boy purposely got in my way, cornering me against the little curb separating the drive-thru lane from the rest of the parking lot.

I twisted my body so I wouldn't hit the little boy. I'd had to move fast -- it seemed like the boy was almost lunging at me. I lost my balance and stumbled into the drive-thru lane.

I looked back at the boy. It seemed like he was pretty amused at himself for what he'd done. People of all ages had done that to me before, and given the same amused look. But I decided this time I wasn't going to let the person get away with it.

So I walked all the way around the McDonald's building, so I could wind up behind the boy and girls. I snuck up on them and pulled the little boy toward me by the back of his shirt.

I thought I was really going to tell the boy off! But I said, "Hey, man, any time you need any help, any time you need me to do anything for you, just let me know, okay?"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some kind of auditorium, which also felt like a huge, modern church sanctuary. I sat up in a balcony. The balcony curved all the way around the sanctuary, which had an odd shape, like an octagon. Farther to my left there was another balcony over this balcony. The church was well-lit, almost like the inside of a big-box club store like Sam's Club. The place was packed. We were all here watching President Obama give a speech.

President Obama wasn't at the front of the church, on the stage. Instead, he stood on a small podium in the middle of the crowd. But then he was standing on some little platform hooked to the balcony, so that he wad just a bit lower than eye-level with the top of the balcony's barrier.

Obama gave his speech, which was about all the good things he was doing. One of the things had to do with fostering positive relationships between the US and the Middle East. One of the proofs he gave of this was some partnership being formed between Chile and a supposed Middle Eastern country called Rubia.

Now Obama was taking questions from the audience. I raised my hand to ask a question. But a woman off to my left got to ask her question. After she asked her question, Obama may have said, "Okay. Now who has another question?"

The woman had a mic, so I not only raised my hand, but stood up and walked over to the woman so I could get the mic from her. A lot of other people raised their hands to ask questions. I thought for sure one of them would get to ask, rather than me. But my old boss, DR, was sitting off to the girl's left. He said, "Let ----- ask his question first."

So I got the mic. I was walking back to my seat with the mic. In the meantime, Obama was probably answering the first question. His response had something to do with taxes. But then he also mentioned interest. A white man with blonde hair, a blonde mustache, blue eyes, and a trucker cap, asked me, "How does the government make money doing the kind of stuff Obama's talking about?"

I said, "Well, the government makes money through revenue, which is what they call taxes. And then they also make money through charging on debt ..."

The man and I together said, "... which is interest!"

The man now seemed to understand pretty well.

It was now my turn to ask a question. Obama was now up on the balcony, on some maroon-colored steps between two aisles. I was also standing on the steps, a few steps up from Obama. I asked my question. At first the mic was really quiet.

I asked Obama, "You say you're doing a lot of stuff to make relationships positive in the Middle East. But beyond the example you gave with Chile, which is a country in South America, not the US, and Rubia, which I've never heard of before--"

A young, pretty, blonde man wearing a black windbreaker came up to me as if to take the mic away. I flinched away from him. But he made a poking motion at the mic with a thin, pen-like instrument. I saw a little orange light on the mic. I understood that the man just wanted to turn the volume up on the mic. So I let him do so.

With the volume up, I asked Obama, "So there are a lot of countries I can think of in the Middle East and North Africa. Out of all these countries, when you talk about good relationships with the US --"

The crowd began clapping and cheering loudly.

"-- Where is this?"

Obama seemed like he was about to answer my question. I handed the mic to someone else so they could ask their question. As I did, I thought I'd tell Obama that I was also concerned with Sub-Saharan Africa, although nobody else seemed to care too much.

Dream #2

I was in a car at night, pulling into a parking space before a building. A woman came out and greeted me. She said my hotel was ready. I got out of my car and went up to the hotel room with her. The hotel room was kind of small. It felt like it was a few floors up and inside the building. It felt kind of stuffy.

At some point, perhaps in an elevator, I was -- somehow -- putting myself into a baby's diaper (???). It fit really terribly. I -- somehow -- saw it wedging up into my rear end and sliding halfway off one of my legs. I'm not sure how I did or saw all this, as I was still fully clothed.

I was laying back on the bed, with my arms behind my head, looking up at the ceiling. The woman told me, "Well, then, I'll give you a call and let you know what I can do about your request."

I was kind of surprised by the woman's statement. I didn't remember asking her anything. But I figured I could have been experiencing missing time. So I asked the woman (as if I thought this was a clever way to hide the fact I didn't know what she was talking about), "Sometimes I have trouble remembering the things I just said. Could you tell me what I asked you?"

The woman, standing in the doorway, said, "Sure. You said you were a little disappointed with this room. You had made a reservation for something different. So you asked me if I could find you a more 'high-performance' room."

I remembered having made a reservation for something bigger. In fact, in my mind's eye, I had the view of something more like a small townhouse. And here I was in this dinky, little hotel room. So I guess I was disappointed.

I told the woman, "Thanks. That sounds right. Just give me a call when you figure out where I can be moved."

The woman left the room. I stood up. I walked out of the bedroom and into a second room (???). This room was like another bedroom. But it was totally dark. I walked through the room and into a bathroom. I turned on the lights.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I was naked except for a pair of panties over a pair of diapers (???). I took off the panties. The diapers had a yellow and blue color scheme. There was something like a Mickey Mouse pattern on them. They seemed a bit loose and baggy on me.

I thought I should probably go to the bathroom in my diaper and change it before the woman called me. But I also thought that I'd wait until the woman came back before I changed back into my clothes, so I could see how she'd react to me in just a diaper.

So I walked back to my bedroom. I was kind of surprised. I thought the woman would have called me by now to let me know if I could get moved into a "high-performance" hotel room. I thought it would have been pretty immediate. I was wondering if she had gone to look at all.

Now I thought maybe there were secret cameras in my room. Maybe the woman was watching me walk around like this. Maybe she thought she would wait until I was fully dressed before she got in contact with me.

But I also thought that maybe there was something wrong with my credit card. Maybe there wasn't enough money on my card to charge a different room for all the nights I wanted to stay. I thought that was possible.

Dream #3

I was in a living room, laying on the couch. I was possibly getting ready to play a video game. My mom came in and asked me, "So did you finish that accounting stuff?"

I knew what my mom was talking about. In another room there was a computer system that looked a lot like a video game system. The screen had a bunch of red numbers on it. I had to do accounting with all these numbers. It was a real pain in the neck. But I knew I hadn't done it, and that I should just do it.

I sighed in annoyance and stood up. My mom, a little taken aback at my annoyance said, "Well, you don't have to do it right now, if you'd rather relax."

I said, "Nah... f**k it," and shrugge my shoulders.

I went into the room and set up the system. Apparently I controlled the accounting system by using Super Nintendo joysticks.

The scene kind of faded into me standing at the right end of a huge flat-screen TV. The TV had a really glossy surface. The screen must have been a few meters tall. My mom, sister, and maybe a couple other family members stood in front of the screen.

I watched the screen from my side view. At first it scrolled through all the red numbers that were part of the accounting system. Then it shifted to some kind of video game, like a racing game.

My family started talking about the game, how fun it was to play. Suddenly I was standing in front of the video game, playing it. It was like a racing game. It was set in the mountains, and you raced things like mini-hovercrafts. It was kind of like F-Zero for Super Nintendo, except all the figures were really small. The graphics were sometimes more like 8-bit graphics.

Now I was suddenly in the game, on the hovercraft, racing around as Claus Valca, my avatar for the DV website. The view was now like reality, not like video games. I remembered some words of wisdom a really beautiful and busty woman in a maroon-and-black, Victorian-style dress had given me about safety.

I came around a curve in the road. I was driving the wrong way. A bunch of Indy cars came driving around the curve. But they were all invisible. I could only see very faint phantoms of them as they got very close to me. A few of them actually hit me. It didn't hurt me very much. But I knew if too many hit me, my vehicle would be damaged. So I pulled off to the side of the road to let all the invisible Indy cars pass.

Off to the left of the shoulder of the road was a small cliff that led down to a wide, green valley. I drove along the shoulder of the road for a bit, then, possibly accidentally, drifted off the cliff.

I descended quickly toward the valley. I found the valley really beautiful, and I really wanted to see it, although I was pretty sure I'd die if I hit the ground at this speed. I even commented to my family on the beauty of the scene, as if I were still standing somewhere with them, playing the video game.

Then, suddenly, a huge cushion of air propelled me up from the valley. The valley sunk below me, and the air rushed all around me. I felt very elated. I even shouted out with happiness. The view was incredible from this height. I may even have wondered whether I was having an out-of-body experience.

Dream #4

I walked into the living room of "my family's house." The room was really big, and only one side of it was lit. The room seemed to be divided in half by a blue couch. There didn't seem to be much stuff at all on the dark side of the room, in front of the couch. Directly behind the couch there was a table, or maybe an air hockey table, covered and cluttered with all kinds of stuff, a total mess.

My mom sat on the couch, kind of sideways, her left arm resting against the top of the back end of the couch. My brother and sister may have been somewhere as well. It was like I was here, visiting for the holidays. My mom's mom came to visit and drop off some food for me for Christmas.

I was curious as to how this would all turn out. As far as I knew, my mom and grandma were no longer talking with each other. But my grandmother was here, right in front of the couch, as if she were talking with my mom, as I came into the living room. Now that I was here, my grandma could leave. She said something to my mom then headed for the door, which was behind the couch.

My mom didn't seem to be answering my grandma at all. I was a little upset at my mom for not talking to my grandma. But I needed to catch my grandma before she left the house. I headed for the door.

As I reached the door -- my grandma already stood half in and half out -- I looked at the table. Amid all the mess were two containers of food. One was a clear, cylindrical container of some kind of green food, like a casserole made out of spinach. The other container had some kind of fruit stuff in it. Both containers, even though they'd only been on the table a few moments, were all messy and gross.

My mom finally spoke to my grandma. She said something completely irrelevant to what my grandma had said. She said something kind of weird that was supposed to prove she was taking care of something very business-like with my oldest nephew or all my nephews.

My grandma didn't respond to my mom. My grandma was wearing a blue, cotton dress with tiny, white, paisley designs on it. The collar may have been a bit elastic, slightly bunchy. The sleeves may have been the same. My grandma also wore eyeglasses that looked extremely clean, but also very, very thick. My grandma alos looked a bit younger than IWL.

My grandma said, "Well, -----, Merry Christmas. I'm glad I got to see you. And I love you." And now she was leaving. I felt terrible that I only got to see my grandma for this very short amount of time. And I really didn't even get to speak to her!

Dream #5

I was walking in front of "the New York Public Library," even though the building looked more like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, out on a wide, cobblestone walkway, like where Trinity Church and the Public Library are in Boston. There were a lot of makeshift stands outside, selling all kinds of art and souvenirs.

There were a lot of women heading toward the library. I heard a couple women talking behind me. One of them said, "Yeah, I'm only coming to the library because they're having that speech for lesbian empowerment."

I wondered about the event the woman was talking about. I was hoping it wouldn't be too big. It could make getting around in the library a huge chore, with all kinds of crowds of people in there.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a house all by myself. The house was one story. The living room was huge, but it was extremely cluttered, as if laundry and blankets were strewn everywhere. It was early morning and dark.

My mother and the rest of the family had left the house some time ago. They had probably left for at least a few days. I had the house all to myself. I didn't live here with my family, but I was "in town" for a few days.

I walked into a bedroom which was just off from the living room and right next to the front door of the house. The room was really small, maybe twice as big as the small bed inside it. It was also extremely cluttered.

I may have heard a car arriving outside. I knew it was my father. I think my mom and the rest of my family had left because they knew my dad was coming for a visit and they wanted to avoid him.

I walked out into the living room through some kind of thin sheet that was now hanging over the doorway to the bedroom. My dad was already in the house. I was wearing a red and white trucker cap. My dad may have been wearing one as well.

My dad may have asked me why I was up so early. I said, "I always get up this early. This is when I go to work. In fact, I'm heading to work right now."

My dad and I were looking toward a huge sliding glass door to the backyard. But our view to the backyard was blocked by a thin, yellow curtain and possibly also a white dry-erase board.

My dad asked if I always go to work this early. I told him I did, and that I tried to work pretty late as well. My dad said, "Well, my habit has always been to do Fridays only from nine to five. I thought you might do the same thing. At least on Fridays."

Dream #2

I was in a grocery store, getting checked out. The front of the store had big windows running along the wall, looking out on a bright, sunny parking lot. I felt like something, almost like a big piece of machinery, was behind me, making it very uncomfortable for me to stand in the checkout line.

A thin, Latina girl just a bit shorter than I was bagging my groceries. She asked me at some point about my work. I was away from work and I needed to get back. I may actually have been picking up supplies for some kind of work party. The girl may have asked me if my work was really strict with how long I was away.

I told the girl about my hours and what I did at work. She had bagged my stuff and was now walking out of the store with me, helping me take my bags to the car.

I was out in the parking lot. I may have been by myself. A few kids whom I may have thought of as a group of kids I'd taken out on volunteer projects came walking up. I was a little shy, but I called out to them. We kept talking, but for some reason I kept heading to my car, which was a few aisles away.

I now saw that my sister was among the kids. I couldn't see my sister or the kids anymore, but I was "talking" with my sister. She told me she would try to be back at home for whatever party I was throwing. But she wasn't sure she could make it. But if she didn't make it I shouldn't be upset. Because she -----

Dream #3

I was in a hotel lobby. The interior was small, but furnished with nice wood and chairs. But the light was a terribly drab fluorescent. I sat at some couch.

I got a call from my grandmother. She said she had prepared some form for me so I could stay at this hotel for a kind of long period of time. I now had the "form" in my right hand. It was on an iPad. The form was black with white lettering. The blanks, when not written in, were an orange-fadey color.

My grandma said she'd filled in a lot of the form. I noticed she had filled in my social security number. I was kind of surprised by that. But my grandma said, "Yeah, of course I have your social security number. I can get that if I want. I can even have them give me your social security card if I want. It comes with being your grandmother."

I felt slightly inconvenienced at having to be at this hotel, but I figured I'd stay here anyway, since my grandma had done so much to secure a place for me.

But either I or my grandma pointed out that the forms would not be finalized for a while. I told my grandma, "If thats's the case, I need to go somewhere else until the forms are finalized. These people don't like having me here in the first place. And having me here without my permanent forms finalized is just an excuse for them to give me a bad time."

I spoke with my grandma about where I should go while I wait. My view was now of a map. It was apparently a map of Colorado, where I grew up. I kept travelling south on a red road on the map, through a number of towns notated by circles. The color of the map changed from pale lime green to yellow.

I kept telling my grandma I couldn't stay in any of the towns my vision passed through, as the people in those towns all hated "people like me." I eventually went south of Colorado's border, which was much more jagged and rounded than it is IWL. There were three towns just south of the border. I may have figured one of those towns would be safe for me to stay in.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was watching a commercial that looked like it was from the 1970s. There was a black bakckground. In the foreground was a side-lit vending machine. The vending machine was basically a clear, plastic bubble atop a red, rectangular stand.

Inside the vending machine were little robots. They were toy robots. An announcer said that the robots were made in Japan. There was a close-up of the robots. They looked like they were made of wood rather than plastic. They seemed to have been made in two or three pieces. A main piece was c-shaped, like an old telephone receiver. Then there was a rectangular shape that revolved within the c-shape. Atop the c-shape was possibly a small, marble-like head. The toy was red with yellow squares running down it.

I found something wrong about the toys. They seemed to be projecting a strange message about the body to children. I couldn't believe that the toys were made in Japan. So I tried to get at the toys, for a closer look.

I was now on a stage, where there was blue light, like a fake sky, somewhere in the distance, blocked by a number of black scaffolding pieces and stage walls. I walked into a dark, black corner of what now may have been a room. I saw a vending machine. It was huge, and the top half of the sphere was missing, so I crawled right into the bowl of toys.

Somehow I found out that the robot toys had actually been made in Germany. But I didn't seem to be able to grab any of the robot toys. Instead I grabbed what I thought was a robot toy, but which ended up being a thin, long pillow with a pink, plushy casing around it. The pillow actually spoke if you either pressed some part of it or pulled a string.

The pillow had said something strange, so I tried to make it speak again. I pressed the button inside it and bent it and played with its string. I may finally have gotten it to say something, again something strange.

Dream #2

I was in a car with my mom, possibly on a grey day. We had driven up to some hotel, which looked more like a series of townhouses. I was apparently going to stay here for some amount of time, for something like a vacation involving my family, but not quite with my family.

We walked into the front office so I could get checked in. Along the left wall there was a whole display of pornographic programs for sale. I picked out one that looked particularly interesting to me, a lesbian porn flick. Apparently you had to get a big card, which was like a DVD, and then a smaller card, which was like a calling card.

The larger card was yellow. The smaller card was purple. On its front were photos of pin-up style girls. On it back was a description of the film. Some of the language was porn-like and hot. But eventually the language became the description of some piece of classical art in a museum. I thought, Don't they think that kind of language is a real turn-off?

I had walked up to the front desk, where my mom was talking with the worker, a pretty, Asian girl. Behind the desk and in some rooms off to the left, everything was dim. I was suddenly on the phone with my grandmother. I was telling her about some kind of bad thing that had happened in my family, something involving either my brother or sister getting really angry.

I was walking around in one of the side rooms, which was now like my mom's living room and kitchen combined. I was kind of getting sick of telling my grandmother about the incident. So I told her that my mom had lunch ready, so I was going to go and eat it. I could see the lunch -- something like a birthday cake with white frosting and blue sprinkles -- being set on a counter cluttered with books and other things.

My grandmother was already pestering me to call her back in five minutes. I told her I probably couldn't.

I had hung up the phone. My mom, my brother, and I were all in a room like a living room in an apartment. My brother pointed to a picture on the wall and asked if that was by Henry Darger. I said it was and then looked over my right shoulder at it.

The painting all seemed to have been made on wood. It looked like it was four large fragments, not quite the whole painting, all within a wood frame of the same thickness of the wood on which the painting was done. The painting was mostly white, and it depicted little girls on a battlefield.

My brother had been concerned that this was a fake Darger. I tried to assure him it wasn't. On the opposite wall, right near a corner around which was a dim room, was another Darger fragment. This was painted on a huge block of material that looked like cardboard. The painting depicted two children in a deep, green forest. But the two children were just bellies and legs -- nothing else. They looked like the bottom half of Homer Simpson, except shorter and with green pants.

The fragment was shaped like a patch of camouflage, and it hung like a lone puzzle piece in a much larger, rectangular frame of the same cardboard material. I looked closer at the thick fragment. All the colors of the painting appeared to go straight through the carboard, as if you could slice the carboard at any width and find the same picture.

My mom started getting hysterical. She said I wasn't paying attention to her problems, and that I'd pay for it. I acted like I didn't care. But then she said something like she had a lot of ways to make me pay, such as getting me arrested.

I turned away from her. We were now in something like a subway car. Three kind of trendyh, young men all walked up to me. I thought they were going to start trouble with me, as usual. But they asked me if I wasn't the guy who "that tall, blonde guy had hit on the head on the train." I said I was. They all kind of cheered me on. They said they had all been watching me, and that they thought I'd handled the situation really well.

I was trying really hard to remember the situation. But all I could remember was that I didn't get intimidated and I was ready to fight the guy, but that he had walked away. I made some body motions, swinging my body back and forth and holding my fists up. The guys mimicked me.

I was kind of hoping the guys would get off the train. I felt like the situation could easily change and that the guys would decide they didn't like me. I tried to change the subject. One of the guys was wearing a t-shirt with the Superman logo on it. So I asked the guys about Superman.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was leaving "my mother's house." It may have been a grey day, and there may have been snow on the ground. I stood right outside the front door. My mom stood just inside.

I told my mom I loved her. I gave her a hug. My mom seemed really short. When I hugged her, it felt like I was breaking her spine, or like I had hugged her in such a way as to feel a part of her spine that had already been broken.

I walked to the car. As I did, I thought about a small cup of ice cream I had in the back seat of the car. It was like I still had the taste of the ice cream, or even some actual ice cream, in my mouth.

In my mind's eye, I saw the ice cream sitting in the back seat. The ice cream was kind of melted and creamy, and it had some kind of big, marshmallow-shaped, but colorful and jelly-like, things in it. The spoon in the cup seemed to be coated with the melted ice cream.

Apparently my grandmother was driving me to the airport. But the car we were taking was more like one my mom would drive. It was a small hatchback, kind of old looking. It was messy on the inside and the outside. The outside was kind of grimy and greasy. The inside was full of old garbage and fast food containers and stuff.

I was kind of disgusted that I'd kept my ice cream in the messy back seat. I thought it might not be a good idea for me to eat the ice cream.

I walked up to the driver's side of the car. My grandma was still standing outside the car, with the door wide open. As I walked up to my grandma I either thought to myself or asked out loud if I'd showed my mom well enough that I cared about her.

I was in the car, on the passenger side, riding through a kind of busy part of a suburban town, with either my grandma or some man driving the car. It was now black night.

The driver told me, "You showed your mom you cared about her. And the fact that you're worried about it shows that you care a lot more than a lot of people do nowadays."

We got stuck in traffic on some kind of quaint-looking, Main Street type area that was all decked out in lights, as if for Christmas. We kind of inched through the traffic and then ended up turning right on a side street and up a hill into something like a residential area.

As we were doing this, the driver, now most likely a man, continued, "That reminds me of a project I was reading about. People were making Christmas cards to send to the soldiers. But a lot of the people making the cards thought it would be good to send cards with anti-war messages on them.

"And that's what I mean about care. The people over there don't need to hear somebody telling them 'NO WAR.' They need us to tell them, 'We're thinking about you, and we hope you're doing well.'"

We had gotten up to the top of the hill and were now sitting on the right end of a long conference table. We were apparently inside a room. The room had fluorescent lighting. There was also a wall-sized bookshelf that I was looking straight at.

But it was also somehow like we were in a cafe with a big window, or as if we were actually floating out over the top of the hill, looking down to the Main Street area. It was like, even as I was looking straight at the bookshelf, I also saw the town below.

The man had gotten onto the topic of two books. Both books were about economics. One book was written by someone I didn't know. The other was written by Warren Buffett. The man seemed to be talking more about the book by the other guy. He then ended up talking about something extremely interesting and insightful (which, of course, I forgot).

As the man spoke about the really interesting stuff, I realized how nice he looked. He was white, with well-groomed, white hair. He wore a nice suit with a tan jacket, a subdued blue shirt, and a somewhat colorful (peach? pink?) tie. His skin was deeply tanned. His face was kind of thin and angular. But his complexion mesmerized me. It was perfect!

I then asked the man, "Who did you say made that comment? Did you say it was Warren Buffett or the other guy?"

The man said, "No. That was from Warren Buffett's new book."

I thought to myself that I needed to get Buffett's new book. I seemed to keep getting Buffett somehow confused with Alan Greenspan. But I could see the cover of Buffett's new book. It kind of looked like a modern cover of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

The book wasn't an autobiography. It was actually a book on economic theory. I thought, "This is exactly what I've been looking for!" The man and I spoke back and forth for a bit on how odd it was that everybody didn't know about this book. It apparently wasn't selling much at all.

I looked down and to my left. I could see the conference table. But, again, I could "see through" the table and the room, outside and down the hill, to the lit-up Main Street area.

As I looked at the table, I was kind of hunched down and over some sheet (or pad?) of notebook paper. I scrawled on the piece of paper, in a very sloppy version of cursive, either the word "Feed" or the word "Feel."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked into a museum with a tourist family. Almost directly after the entrance there was a long, wide staircase made of pale, white stone. The family walked down the staircasw ahead of me, talking about how they had to meet another group of people. Once at the bottom of the staircase, the children (a boy and a girl?) sat on a step while the parents made a phone call to the other group.

As I reached the bottom of the steps, the family had ascertained that the other group wasn't coming until later. Either the mom or dad said, "Well, that gives us some time to do a few extra things first."

The family walked into the gift shop, which was a huge, open area in front of the staircase. The gift shop sold all kinds of things like toothpaste, shampoo, etc. I actually picked up some toothpaste and a toothbrush.

I was now in a big mall with my grandmother and some kids (my nephews?). The mall had highb ceilings of glass which revealed the deep blue night sky above. The mall was empty and half-lit, as if it were closed. At some point, we walked past what looked like a closed down, miniature amusement park. I may have seen a ferris wheel and some kind of structure of plastic tubing for kids to climb through.

Later, almost as if we were on a second visit to the mall, we all sat at a table in the food court. Down the corridor to my right I may have seen the mini amusement park, in shadoe. Another group of people sat a couple tables away from us. They spoke as if this mall's food court wasn't very good compared to another mall's food court.

I felt kind of ashamed at that remark, and I was trying to convince myself that I actually was in that other food court.

I was now out carrying logs in the snow. It was a sunny, cold day. The snow was deep, and it was hard to carry the logs. A little while later, I saw things from a third person view. A young boy was working really fast, in an almost cartoony way, carrying logs away from a pile in a shady area near a house into a sunny area. The boy didn't think anybody would ever believe he'd carried all these logs.

The boy dropped a couple smallish, wide logs into the snow. One of the logs was coated in ice. The boy then managed to move two 2-meter-long logs out into the snow. They looked like they were from a beech tree: they had smooth, silvery bark. They lay parallel to each other, a little sunk in the snow.

I now saw from the first person view again. I thought, looking at the two logs, of making some kind of Flintstones car, using the logs as wheels. I stood up onto the logs and tried to roll them with my feet, shouting, "Yabba-dabba-doo!" at the same time. But I probably realized that this wouldn't work, and I figured I needed a motor.

I was now standing on some long, pale-sea-green painted, sheet metal structure that looked like a mix between a gas powered generator and a wood chipper. I thought this would be a perfect engine for the Flintstones car I was making.

Just then, a blue-skinned zombie, possibly in a business suit, came growling and reaching at me. I was really scared. I jumped off the generator and ran toward the logs. I thought to myself, Why is that guy here? Is he being used for some kind of zombie-powered car?

I now had a vision of a commercial, apparently for a zombie car. But the imagery was just a black screen with a bunch of colored lettering advertising some law office. The commercial may have been targeting people who needed legal counsel following problems they may have had with their zombie cars.

The names of the lawyers were all really weird. One lawyer was named Technical Gee, as in Technical Genius. Another was named Society's Destruction. I was bemused, but not terribly shocked, that professionals were getting away with naming themselves things like this.

The final screen of the commercial stayed up, as if someone had just forgotten to turn it off. I now heard one of the lawyers talking about a presentation he was going to give at a conference. He told two other lawyers, in a Slim Shady kind of voice, "You know how I don't usually collaborate with you guys after this point. I just do me. But I got a surprise for you guys this time. This conference presentation, we're doing together."

Dream #2

I had just come from some bedroom, possibly in the house of a good friend of mine. I walked into the kitchen. I sat at the kitchen table.

My friend was taking a shower or something. His girlfriend stood at the counter, posing and mugging in a sexy way before a small mirror on the counter. The girl was really sexy, Asian, with long hair. She wore a little linen outfit that looked like a mix between some kind of lingerie and a baby's overalls-onesie outfit. The shoulder straps were foldy-ruffly. The outfit's bottom was enbroidered with purple roses, intertwined with green vines and leafs.

The girl was obviously posing to turn me on. It was working. But I didn't want to react, because I didn't want to betray my friend. But the girl really seemed to want me. It was exciting.

The girl, not getting a reaction, walked over to another mirror on the counter and began posing again. I walked up to her and said, "What's wrong?" The girl just gave me a pouty face in the mirror. I sat back down and said, "Are you worried that you're ugly? Well, you aren't. You're very pretty."

I thought for sure the girl would think I was into her. I thought shed'd come over and seduce me. I figured that that would be okay. Apparently, if the girl seduced me, the situation wouldn't involve any betrayal against my friend. I still felt a little nervous about the whole thing. But I figured if the girl seduced me, I wouldn't resist.

Dream #3

I was in the bathroom at my mom's ex-boyfriend's house. I was getting ready to take a shower. I was pulling stuff out of my backpack. I found some pot and some other drug that looked like a D-cell battery.

It suddenly occurred to me that someone, possibly my brother-in-law, had put drugs in my backpack. It wasn't good for me to have drugs in my backpack while I was visiting my family. If my brother-in-law got caught with any drugs near him, he'd be sent straight to jail.

It occurred to me that my brother-in-law had hid his own drugs on me while I was in town. I was mad. I didn't want to get in trouble just so he could avoid trouble. But I was also worried. I was wondering where the heck I could throw all this stuff away.

Dream #4

Some very professional looking man was outside on a snowy night. He may have been a weatherman addressing a TV camera. But he also may have been a co-worker of mine, talking to me on a cell phone.

The man was completely surprised that it was snowing. When someone told him the snow wouldn't stop for a while, he was even more surprised. He also seemed to be surprised that it would also be cold for a while after it stopped snowing.

Good morning, everybody.

The endings of the first and third dreams were lucid. The first three dreams happened between 1:30 AM and 3:30 AM. The fourth dream happened between 5 AM and 5:45 AM.

Dream #1

I was with a couple of my nephews in a car that was driven by my grandmother. I may have been getting a ride back to the airport after my visit back home. It was a nice, sunny day.

My grandma asked me where I'd like to eat. I may have felt like a little kid at this point. I didn't want my grandma to have to pay for a big meal, so I said, "Oh, just Burger King will be fine."

We began driving up a winding hill, the face of which was brownish rock. My grandma said, "No. We're going to go to a sit down place to have some food. Let's go to Denny's."

We were at the top of the hill, in some kind of parking lot. Behind my grandma, from a view out her window, down the slope of parking lot and across some street, I could see a Denny's. Out my window and slightly up the parking lot's slope, I could see the car my mom was driving.

My grandma said, "You go tell your mom we are going to Denny's, and that she is coming, too. Don't let her make any excuses. Tell her I'm paying for all of you."

I was at my mom's vehicle, looking in from the passenger-side window. The vehicle was tall, like a tall van or SUV or pick-up truck. My mom sat at the wheel, giving me an almost dead look. I understood she was almost scorning me for thinking she'd go to Denny's with my grandma.

Somehow I was in my mom's car, riding down the hill, possibly to Denny's. I was trying to keep my mom's emotions under control.

We were now at my family's house. My mom and sister and I were playing with a little boy and a little girl, "my niece and nephew." We were all sitting on the floor, which was kind of cluttered with toys and clothes.

The little boy was doing something cute, but the little girl got really jealous. She did something mean to the little boy, hurting the little boy, and then started crying herself. Either my mom or my sister started comforting the little girl. They fed her a bottle which had a fleshy look to it, like a bottle-shaped breast.

The girl seemed to have a weird-shaped head and weird shaped eyes. The head and eyes got weirder and weirder as I looked at the girl eating. I stood up and walked toward the kitchen.

There were a mattress, some blankets, and some other stuff strewn on the floor right before the doorway to the kitchen. I stepped over all that stuff to get into the kitchen. But among that stuff, I saw that there was a little baby boy who had been forgotten under a bunch of blankets.

I knelt down and uncovered the little baby boy. It looked like a white-furred monkey with black eyes. It was swaddled in a blanket. I picked it up. I felt there was something meaningful, almost psychological, about my having found this baby boy and having started to care for it.

My sister and mom knelt near me. My sister took the baby. As I handed it to her, I felt like I needed to see it again, as if I couldn't believe I'd seen it at all. But now it was a "cell phone," which looked more like a blue, plastic alarm clock with green-lit punch keys on the underside.

My sister handed me the phone. I started talking with my sister on the phone. It was like she was no longer in front of me..

My sister said, "Yeah, it's probably not a good idea to tell F (my oldest nephew) about some of the things you did. It makes him think it's okay for him to do them. I mean, you think it's funny, and I think it's funny. But mom thinks it's just destructive in her house."

I replied, "Yeah, that's cool. We just come from different generations, I guess."

As I was saying this stuff, I found myself in another room, "my bedroom," which was more like a big room in a museum. The room was gently lit with warm, white-gold light. I wasn't on the phone. I was laying on something like a bed, on my left side.

I was looking at a huge painting, maybe 5 meters long and 3 meters tall. It was of Jesus, just his head, before a blue sky. His hair flowed as if blown by the wind, like you sometimes see happening for female anime characters.

Jesus had blood on his head and face, from the crown of thorns. The blood was also blowing in the wind. The blood then turned into red and orange leafs blowing in the wind. There might have been canopies of red and orange leafed trees in the background.

For some reason, this fall-themed crown of thorns painting made a lot of sense to me. I began to wonder why there wasn't a fall-related holiday relating to the life of Christ.

I rolled onto my back and then onto my right side. The room was dark. I was looking at another huge painting, this time winter-related. It had something to do with Jesus' footprints in the snow.

But there was something weird about the snow. It actually looked like boot-tracks on the moon. I realized Jesus wasn't in this painting at all. It was just a painting of boot-tracks on the moon. Yet it seemed so mystical to me that I reached up my arm (a child's arm?) parallel to the tracks.

Suddenly I realized I was dreaming.

I sat up. I was on the floor. I stood slowly. The room was dim, almost completely dark. The painting which stood before me was now even larger. The only detail I could see on this painting was near the lower left (my left) corner of the painting. It was the back of an almost naked person. The back was huge, muscular. But I couldn't tell iif it was male or female.

Next to the painting was an enormous (maybe 1.5-2 meters tall), metallic vessel, probably silver, on a stout, white pedestal and under a plexiglass display cube. The "bowl" of the vessel had a weird, nest-like tangling of metal, as tangled and fine as moss, which was incredible, considering how big this vessel was. The "neck" was smooth and polished.

Walking around, I kept feeling myself fade out of the dream. I tried to keep calm and hold onto the dream as long as I could. But eventually everything went black and I woke up.

Dream #2

I was in some big room like a school cafeteria on the second floor of a building. There were a lot of long tables with bench seats. The light was nice, incandescent. I sat at a smaller table with my friend T and a friend of hers, who I at first thought was Japanese.

T's friend and T were here to study. I had helped T with some kind of study project. I was apparently here to hand off a paper with my revisions. But now T took out a copy of a screenplay I'd written, with a lot of revisions on it.

The screenplay seemed to have been printed on 11x17 paper, so that two pages showed on each side. The first page was covered with pencil-revisions, in a really nice, narrow cursive hand. I understood that the rest of the screenplay was just as full of revisions.

At some point, T's friend reached over and scribbled something in the margins between the two pages. It said something about how T was my girlfriend. The T's friend said something out loud, and I realized T's friend was actually Chinese.

I felt odd about the implication that T was my girlfriend. But right after that T may have called me her boyfriend. I may have been happy about that.

Dream #3

It was night. I was walking down a sidewalk in front of some apartment buildings. A young, black man in a bright red hooded sweatshirt, black bubble-jacket vest, and jeans ran into an apartment building. Seeing me, the guy slowed down and gave me a kind of suspicious glance. He then ran the rest of the way into the building.

I knew somehow that the guy had been planning to kill me for a while. Now that I had just gone past his building, he figured he might as well shoot me now.

I saw him, through some windows, run up a stairwell, then run back down it. I knew he had just gone into his apartment to pick up his gone, and that he was now coming back for me.

I didn't walk any faster or try to get away. I figured if it was going to happen, I couldn't avoid it, even though I'd probably be really afraid once things really started happening.

I was now walking through a long hallway in a dorm building or apartment complex. The hallway was kind of dumpy, with white walls and stark, fluorescent lighting. There was somebody following me. But it now felt like an older, white man rather than a young, black man.

I came to a door, which I knew was for the apartment of the man who lived in the apartment directly above my apartment. I knocked on the door, thinking I'd finally take him up on his invitation to come up and hang out some time. I figured this way, I could throw the stalker off my trail.

The door was a really weak wood. I knocked. The door was now a heavy door with a thin window on the left side. Through the window, I saw a small hallway and the another door. A college-aged girl opened the far door. She waved me in.

I thought the door was locked. But as soon as I pushed on the door, there was a buzzing, and the door opened. I walked into the smaller hallway. The woman was gone, which struck me as strange. I realized I was all alone. This struck me as odd.

Suddenly I realized I was dreaming. I almost lost the dream right there. But I calmed down.

I told myself to keep walking, and just to explore the space. I walked past the small hallway. There was another small hallway. The walls here had wooden drawers set into them, like old library card catalog drawers, except that they looked really light and cheap. I thought this was an interesting place, full of files or something. But I kept going.

I walked through another door. I was now in a very small room with a small, grey-painted metal stairway and second level and a bunch of grey-painted, metal lockers. Below the balcony of the second level, the room seemed to twist off into a much smaller corridor. The staircase also had a metal-railed gate in front of it. The place kind of reminded me of small rooms in the Intrepid aircraft carrier.

I was surprised that I was all alone, and I kept on gurad for a person, who I assumed would probably not be very kind. I remembered that in my last long lucid I had met a really crazy person.

I had two options for exploring. I chose to go up the staircase instead of around the curve on the first level.

I floated over the gate. I almost floated up the staircase. But I felt like the floating was actually causing me to lose my dream-control. So I grabbed the railings of the staircase and forced myself to walk up.

I had a weird feeling through the rest of this dream. I felt very closed in. I could hear my breath, like I was wearing a space suit.

I felt very warm. Walking up the steps, to my left, I saw a clothing rack full of old, pale blue and white button-up shirts. It looked like they were for a somewhat old man. Above that, there was a shelf piled with upside-down, round-brimmed, straw hats. I picked one up and fiddled with it a little. It looked like it was in bad shape.

I got up to the balcony. There were more lockers. It looked at first like I couldn't go anywhere else from here. But then I realized that there was a hallway or something off to the right.

In waking life, my computer made a loud noise. I woke up.

Dream #4

I had been in space, flying some kind of space vehice. I barely remember anything. I remember being high up in the sky, coming back down, around sunset, when the sky was a vivid purple.

I was now taxiing an airplane (?) into an airport with my mother. We were "parked." My mom went into the airport to take care of something before we went home.

I sat in the backseat of a car, outside a metal-walled building like some staff building at an airport. I was still waiting for my mom. The sky still had a deep-blue-purple post-sunset look. It was kind of cold.

I could imagine what was going on between my mom and the people she was talking to. The people were something like military people. I could see, in particular, one tall, older, white man who kind of looked like a very thin Stan Lee, wearing a green military uniform for formal occasions.

My mom was asking the military man what he would do now that she'd told him about the weird adventures I'd been through, which were undeniable fact.

The military man said, "I'll do the same thing I do to every mother and son who comes in here telling me stuff like this. I'll tell them to get out. I had money to pay attention to this kind of stuff the first few times it happened. But now it's happening all over the place and -- you mothers and kids are bleeding me dry!"

I was sitting in the trunk of the car, with the trunk opened just a crack. I thought of getting out of the trunk and telling the military man something about my experience that was so unique that he wouldn't want me to go away. Plus. I would tell him, I didn't want his money. I just wanted to tell my story.

I thought to myself (why?) that this was a lot like a Joyce Carol Oates story (which it wasn't).

I opened the trunk all the way and sat out of it to see one of my female cousins, A, walking down the tall stairway of another metal-walled building. She came my way. I could tell she would be mad at me for not having spoken with her for a long time.

By the time she got to me, my mom was there, too. I was standing by the car. There seemed to be a miniature living room surrounding the car as well.

I was trying to explain something to my cousin about how I couldn't include her on something my mom and I were doing. As I did so, I was kneeling by a small bookshelf and going through some items.

I stood up to see my cousin kneeling on the opposite side of the bookshelf. My cousin now had weird, plasticky, shiny, black hair, like an anime character. She was also wearing some kind of red and yellow uniform that reminded me of an anime character.

My cousin gave me a half-mad, half-disappointed look. I tried to make her less mad by saying something half-heartedly interesting about anime.

(Note, evening, Dec. 17: I think the "crown of thorns" image in my third dream is influenced by a set of images from a photo slideshow I saw yesterday on the US version of Reuters.com. The slideshow was just the normal "editor's choice" picks of global photos, I think.

But it showed a lot of images of people in England, Greece, Turkey, and other countries, involved in some form of protest. A lot of the photos showed people who had sustained head injuries during the protests. What really struck me was that these people were still protesting, even after having been hurt.

So I don't think the "crown of thorns" image is entirely about Christ.

Also I thought at first that the metal vessel in the first dream was just a really big symbol for the male, uh... parts. I still think that's the case. The painting of the man's or woman's backside and the giant... parts right next to each other seems like an image readily supplied by the unconscious.

However, I also think the image stands for a couple other things. First, I think it's an upside-down version of a brain and neck. In my fourth dream I also have an upside-down head (the hats) near a torso (the shirts). I don't know why the head and neck have been important in my dreams lately. But they have.

Second, I think the vessel is like a jet or rocket engine: a bunch of fine, intricate pipes and valves, ending in a big propulsion valve. Anyway, I guess jet engines can be phallic or intestinal, depending on how you look at them.

None of this is a big deal. I just write it down to help me focus.)

Hi. I am new to this site. This is my first dream post here.

I was on the phone with either my mother or my aunt. My mom/aunt told me that my grandmother had died.

I felt bad that I hadn't been able to get back home to see my grandmother before she died. But it had happened so quickly, as such a surprise.

My mom/aunt told me that my grandmother had said something very nice about me before she died. I felt awful, thinking that I hadn't done enough to show my love for someone who loved me so much.

I may have started crying a lot.