maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was near "my car" in the woods. It was almost night. The sky was a dull, dark blue. I was all alone.

I may have been planning to sleep in my car for tonight and, perhaps, for a number of nights. I may not, though, have thought this was the right place to sleep. I may have been planning to drive my car somewhere else.

At some other point I remembered one of my male friends talking about living in some other town. He was complaining about what a boring town it was to live in.

He said, "The thing is, it doesn't have a road that leads directly out of town, up to the mountains. You have to take all these roads that wind around town. It's really hard not to stay stuck in town. And that gets really boring.

"Not like Boston. Boston has a road that leads right out of town! It's easy to get out of town and have fun."

At some point I saw a view of "Boston:" a town at the base of some deep-green mountain range, with its "main road" running along the side of the town and a little bit up the slope of mountains. There may have been houses lining one side of the road.

I thought how I didn't quite agree with my friend. I thought the town I was thinking of sleeping or spending some time in was fine. But I didn't want to disagree with my friend and look uncool (even though my friend wasn't really around, and I was just "remembering" a conversation with him).

I may now have been standing on the outskirts of a pretty big mountain town. I stood in the parking lot of some hotel. The hotel building looked kind of like a restaurant building.

(I've seen a building very much like this, in a space very much like this, in at least one other dream.)

Dream #2

I was in some bookstore. The bookstore was huge and mazelike. After winding my way through a few areas, I found myself at a manga section.

There were two thin, Japanese men shelving some books near the manga section. They both had a mild intellectual look, with casual, short haircuts, big eyeglasses, and nice, button-up shirts. They spoke back and forth with each other in Japanese.

I didn't want the guys to think I was just another American who only knew about Japanese culture through manga and j-pop. But I was also really curious about what manga the store had. In particular, I was looking for a copy of Tezuka's Phoenix series.

When I got over to the manga shelves, I heard the men laugh back and forth with each other. I "understood" their Japanese. They were basically saying exactly what I didn't want them to think about me. I got ashamed and thought I would leave the section. But I figured if I was already here, I might as well stay.

But I got bored pretty quick. It was all a lot of new manga. I had been looking for some really old, classic manga. Some of this stuff didn't even look like manga. It looked like airbrushed versions of American comic books with medieval European themes. Some of the books were tall, thin paperbacks with really glossy covers.

(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.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with a woman who looked like the woman from the band Republica, but with a lot of red-dyed strands in her hair and copper-tan skin. The room was dim, as if lit only by a very small lamp. It was also bare, with only the bed for furniture. The bed had no blankets.

The woman was naked and writhing around on the bed. I got on top of her and had sex with her. We had sex in a couple different positions (although I seem to have finished shamefully quickly).

We lay on the bed. The woman looked at the walls of the room. They were filled with manga sketches that looked professionaly done. The woman either asked me why I liked manga or whether I thought manga was an art. I told her I definitely thought it was an art.

I tried to express how I'd seen comic artists draw, and how that alone would have conviced me. But I was unable to bring out the words to say that. So I told the woman that I'd show her.

We got up (the woman -- and I -- may have remained naked throughout the dream) and walked out of the room. We were in some basement. I knew this basement had been made into a manga museum. It was like the house of which this basement was a part was on a college campus. The house held rooms for students, like the room the woman and I had just been in. And the students had volunteered their rooms while they were away (on vacation) to be exhibit rooms for a temporary manga museum.

The basement was very dark, lit only by a strange, dim, red light. There were four doors for "dorm rooms" on the wall to our left. The room we were in was like a big common area.


I told the woman I'd find her some classic manga and show her why I thought it was art. We went into the door at the farthest end of the room. We went inside.

The room was also dim, barely lit by a red light. The place smelled terrible! I looked around. It looked like a normal college boy's dorm, nothing out of the ordinary. But the smell drove me crazy. So I left. The woman stayed in there, looking through some manga on a thin, tall bookshelf.

I walked a couple rooms down. I may have thought about switching on some lights in the place. But I didn't want anybody outside to know the woman and I were here. I figured if they knew we were here they'd all want to come in. Then the place would get crowded.

I went into another room. This room was supposed to have manga from a very early period. For some reason I kept thinking about Golgo 13. I thought there was something in particular about the brushstrokes in manga that were just perfect. But you'd only know it deeply if you saw someone actually sketching things out (with a pencil?).

I probably spent some time in this other room, looking at manga and individual pages of drawings.

At some point, people started coming down into the manga museum. Morning light may also have started to fill the rooms.

Dream #2

I was with some group of kids at a sports camp or a summer training vacation. We had been out on a large, grassy field, doing some kind of fun training, possibly with a giant robot of some sort.

We were now all in a bedroom, on a bunk bed. There were a lot of us boys on the top and bottom bunks. We probably weren't sleeping. We were probably just hanging out and goofing off before the next training thing we had to go to.

I lay on the bottom bed. I was a little disappointed by this sports camp. It was all about football, and I was more interested in cross country.

There was a black boy laying just at my head, sideways to me, like we'd form a T. Another black boy hung over the top bunk, talking to the boy on my bunk.

The boy said, "When they got that new cross country coach, things really changed, right? He got some of those kids who were no good at football. Nobody thought football players could run long distance. But he sure showed them.

"Man, it's too bad tou didn't see my last race! I was really proud of myself. When I started, I thought I was gonna get a lousy time. But I got my best time ever!"

Somebody called all us boys out to take a bus to our next training event. So we were getting up. The boy on the top bunk climbed down and walked over to a dresser. I stood up and went to the dresser, too.

I hoped nobody would ask me about my times in cross country. They'd been horrible. I didn't want to actually say my best time out loud and be laughed at. I kept thinking of the time 18:38 in my head, even though I knew that was a faster time than my fastest time.

The boy from the top bunk and I stood before the dresser. I pulled open a drawer. I pulled out my wallet and something like a wadded up sock and a skinny, tall comb.

I regretted that the boy saw me take my stuff out of the drawe. I didn't like people to know where I put my belongings. But I also didn't want people to know that. I wasn't suspicious of anybody. I didn't want them to think I was. But I just had a fear of people knowing where I put my belongings.