maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a museum with enormous rooms. The paintings were also enormous. The walls of the rooms may have been twenty or so meters tall. The paintings were just as tall.

I may have been with a group of people, possibly a school group. But I had broken off from them for some reason or another, and I was now walking around by myself.

But I was afraid to go into any of the rooms very far. The paintings on the walls were so gigantic. I was afraid they'd fall on me and smash me. So I could barely go beyond the threshold into rooms.

One room was kind of dimly lit, like from a dirty set of windows in the ceiling. I saw a pair of paintings in the room. The paintings were, I told myself, either by Goya or El Greco.

The paintings had the same subject: a young man in rich attire, something like pink, satin pants and a white shirt. The paintings stood opposite each other in a kind of side niche in the room. I wanted to examine the paintings closer, but I was too afraid of them falling on me.

I left this room -- I think -- and went into another room. The paintings were also huge in this room. But I may have been getting braver about being around the paintings, and I may have stepped quite a few meters into the room.

But now I looked up and saw that there were also paintings in the ceiling, the rest of the ceiling being made out of thick, ornate wood, like in the Rose Reading Room of the New York Public Library. I was now afraid of the ceiling paintings falling on me. They seemed like they'd be heavier than the wall paintings.

Dream #2

It was a greyish day. I was either treading water in a river, moving backwards slowly in a small boat, like a rowboat, in a river, or standing on a walkway through or at the edge of a river.

I may at first have been with a group of older, well-off people, like a tour group. But I'd broken away from the group a bit. The group were all walking along the walkway.

The river was wide, and at the other end of it was a big, kind of square, building. The building faced the river directly, starkly: it may even have been a bit cantilevered over the river.

The building was made of some kind of white stone, but the front of it, or the side facing the river, was of slightly tinted glass. This windowed section curved around the sides of the building as well, giving the white stone of the building a kind of backwards "C" shape.

I knew that the building was an art museum. It was the Art Museum of Mexico or the Mexico Museum of Art. It was a very good and nice museum. But it was also used -- especially the enormous room overlooking the river -- by drug cartels for arranging certain deals.

People liked to visit the museum. But people who went there were always afraid. You always had to be careful not to hear things, or at least not to act like you heard things. And you couldn't offend any person in any way. If you offended someone or acted like you'd overheard some drug deal being arranged, you could be killed.

But for some reason I was feeling defiant. I was going to go into the museum and I wasn't going to act afraid at all. Besides, it was the Mexico Museum of Art. It was full of great works of art. I'd be really disappointed in myself if I didn't see the art works there.

Dream #3

I was in some building. I was near a staircase. Apparently I'd always come here to this place to read. Other people did, too. But I'd come to have a favorite spot for reading on the staircase. And I'd read there all the time.

There were some guys who'd decided to follow me around. They thought I was really smart. They were jealous of me. They wanted to figure out everything I was doing and studying. They thought if they read everything I read, they could get smarter than they thought I was.

One of these guys was an old, kind of tall, white man with a big belly. He wore nice slacks and a nice button-up shirt. He saw I was heading toward the staircase to read. So he either took the place I always took or took a place a few steps higher than my place. Wherever he sat, his plan was to look down at what I was doing, so he could do it, too, and hopefully beat me at it.

I tried to figure out what to do. I didn't really care if people knew what I was doing. I tried to be open about that. But I felt annoyed. I may have thought I'd hide whatever I was doing, just to annoy the man back a little. Or I may have thought I'd just act unperturbed, like the man didn't bother me, or didn't exist at all.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some large building, like a museum or a student union kind of area. I was on the second floor. To my left was a balcony-like railing that looked out over the first floor. To my right was possibly a dining area.

My old friend Y was standing, leaning against the railing. I hadn't seen her in some time. I was happy to see her. And I was acting (and feeling) like I hadn't expected to see her. But I'm pretty sure I had been expecting to see her, like we'd made plans to meet here.

I walked up to Y and stood beside her, maybe kind of leaning against the railing like she'd been doing. All this time, I felt my mother's presence behind me. I may have heard her voice, too, as if she had somehow planned this meeting between me and Y and was now directing it.

Y was watching a movie that was being projected against the wall opposite the railing. The wall was maybe three stories tall. The projection was hitting the third-floor section of the wall. So we had to kind of look up to see it.

I'm not sure how we saw the movie: the wall was red brick; but the movie showed up just fine, anyway. I think it was a movie that we both liked.

Y and I had had some sort of small conversation. Just the sound of Y's voice made me so happy. I put my right arm around Y, not out of romantic feelings, but just because I was happy to see her again.

But Y was really put-off. She grunted something cold and nasty, even implying that she had some kind of sickness that I'd get by touching her.

She'd done this to me in the past. I knew she was just trying to freeze me out or gross me out so I'd leave her alone. I took my hands off her and watched the movie. We may also have continued talking about something.

Eventually we were planning to "meet for dinner." We walked away from the railing and over to the section of the floor that had dining tables.

But now Y changed into my friend H. H and I sat down at the table to eat. The table was a regular, round dining table, about 125cm in diameter, possibly covered over with a white tablecloth. But it was also crammed, both the table and the chairs, with all kinds of things, like household and personal items.

H and I were trying to sit down so we could eat. All this time I felt my mom's presence behind me. I may also have felt the presence of my old friend R. R's presence seemed particularly bitter.

Eventually I got sat down on a seat. But I was only halfway sat in the seat -- the rest of the seat being cluttered with stuff. I guess that H couldn't find any other place to sit. So she tried to sit on my lap. But something about my lap was making it really awkward for her to sit.

H was wearing a grey mini-skirt and a black shirt. But the mini-skirt kept riding up, almost revealing H's panties, as H tried to sit on my lap.

But now it seemed like H was getting into what I thought of then as a "slutty" mindset. She was really getting turned on by the way her skirt was riding up on my lap. Now she started to do it on purpose. She may even have been pulling it up with her hands and then putting it back down.

I might have started getting turned on. And I may have tried to make a move for H. But at this point, she may have gotten up and walked away. I may have been a little bitter about this. But I think I told myself that when H got back, she and I would just forget about it and have a nice dinner.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a big group of people. We were in an area that looked like the large reading room of the New York Public Library. But it was also something like a high school gymnasium. The group I was with was probably a church group, though it may have been part of a church-school.

I was up on a balcony level, crouched down or sitting down near the floor. There were a few other people up here with me, including a teacher, who sat behind me.

We looked down on the main area, where a lot of other people were. That area may have been floored with brownish gym mats. There may have been an occasional school desk. There were a decent amount of students down there. Everything felt kind of cluttered.

We had all been given a lesson by somebody who was probably speaking into a microphone from some pulpit at the other end of the room from those of us on the balcony. It was some lesson about Christian history.

We now had to do an in-class exercise based on the lesson. The exercise was some kind of role-playing game. I think we all had to imagine ourselves as some saint, who had been the subject of the lesson. We then had to imagine ourselves into the environment of the saint.

A classmate of mine, a boy maybe eleven or twelve years old, wanted me to come with him on the role-playing game. I was probably going to go along with him.

But my teacher, a pretty, blonde woman, yanked me back from the boy. She told me the boy was distracting me. The teacher told me I was going to come with her.

I looked behind the teacher to the area I knew we were going to: some kind of stage-like area on the left wall of the room, where there were other kids sat out on the floor with papers, studying or doing their lesson exercise.

I was now in some kind of hallway-like space with my teacher. The hallway was like an old, narrow, seldom-visited corridor in a natural history museum.

We sat on the floor -- actually, I think my teacher was laying on her stomach. My teacher had a book, some kind of history of poetry. She may have read some of it to me. She may then have asked me either to read some to her, or to give her a reaction to what she'd read. She handed me the book.

I could see that the text was about the seventeenth century British poet Abraham Cowley. But the pages looked like they were from some kind of illustrated Bible for kids. There was a drawing, almost coloring-book-style, of biblical mountains running across the top half of one set of pages.

I told my teacher a little bit of my own thoughts about Abraham Cowley. I liked him, and I thought it was unfair that he'd fallen into obscurity.

I then read the bottom lines of the left-hand page of the book. It mentioned how somebody in the eighteenth century had "single-handedly" rescued Cowley from oblivion. It took me a long time to read this. But I finally got the idea that the person referenced was Samuel Johnson.

My teacher was now slightly around the corner from me, and up on a very small platform, elevated about 20cm above the floor. I lay on my stomach and stared at a beautiful, Gothic-style, wood wall as I gave my teacher some of my own thoughts on Cowley.

It was hard for me to speak -- my brain was really groggy. But I said, "Well, you know, now that Cowley's rescued from oblivion, everybody thinks he's just great. But I don't think he's free from faults. I love his Mistress poem cycle. But his Odes are kind of flat, in my opinion."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with my mom and another woman. It was a grey day, probably a little drizzly. My mom and the woman were driving me somewhere, probably to the border of Holland. We drove under some small, arched stone bridge, like an arched bridge walkway in park.

As we drove to and under the arch, I realized that I really wouldn't be able to get into Holland. I didn't have a passport! I must be in Europe, I thought, if I was close enough to drive to the border of Holland. How did I even get here in the first place, without a passport?

I looked straight up to the underside of the bridge. It was rounded, like the roof of a tunnel. It may have been covered with bricks, or it may have been rough, grey stone.

When we got to the other side I saw a huge obelisk, like the Cleopatra's Needle obelisk in Central Park. But this one was so big I could barely see around the base, and I definitely couldn't see up to the top.

My mom and the woman must have been getting ready to drop me off. But I knew I couldn't go without a passport. But I was ashamed to admit to my mom that I didn't have a passport.

But finally I got up the courage to tell my mom. I was standing out on some wheelchair ramp, like I was in front of a building. When I told my mom, I actually started crying, sorrowfully, as if I was telling my mom something that had to do with some sadness or problem I'd carried with me all my life.

My mom and the woman probably walked hurriedly over to me to hug and console me.

Dream #2

I was in a gigantic, white building with my mom. The building was something like a museum. But it felt more like some kind of big box store, like a Sam's Club. But it seemed to be humongous, as big as a convention center. The walls were white, and the ceiling may have been glass.

My mom and I were probably here with a group of people, probably including our family members. But we were separated from them. We may have been looking for them or waiting for them. In the meantime, we decided we'd check out some of the exhibits.

I went into a small room off to the right. It was kind of dim. Along the walls were the museum-style diorama wildlife displays. I walked a ways into the room, all by myself, before actually looking at any of the displays.

I turned around, toward the entrance. One of the displays to my left caught my eye. It was apparently a display of some animal like an antelope. The antelope stood in some desert-like area at night -- the background sky was painted dark blue and purple.

But beside the antelope was a long, fallen tree-limb. And writhed around this tree limb was an enormous snake. The snake must have been ten meters long! But it wasn't scaly: it was slightly furry, like a short-hair cat.

I couldn't believe my eyes. So I got closer to the display. I was kind of afraid to: I thought the snake might actually be alive. The snake's skin didn't seem to be as pronouncedly furry as I'd thought. The snake was red, with occasional large, white spots, which may have had black outlines around them.

The snake also didn't seem to have eyes, or even much of a mouth. Its head was pointed down menacingly, but it almost looked like a sock puppet.

But what seemed really to have struck me about the snake was how vividly it was posed. It seemed menacing, alive, because it had been posed in such a dynamic way.

I looked at another display (which I can't remember now). I was again struck by the dynamism of the display. I began to get the idea that this room was all about displaying animals in dynamic, "action packed" situations. This was supposed to be a draw for kids, who had lately been neglecting the parts of the museum with the animal displays.

I thought this was a bad idea. In my opinion, the display I'd just been looking at was so dynamic, you could barely see the animal. And the purpose, I thought, of these displays was so you could really get a good idea of the animal's anatomy. So sometimes a still view was better.

I walked to another display. This one was lit. But it was even more dynamic and "action packed." It was apparently showing some desert wildcat attacking its prey. But the view was some kind of absurd bird's eye view.

The view showed the cat jumping toward some unseen prey. But the cat was posed so that it was almost perpendicular to the "ground" (which, in the case, would have been the back wall, although it seemed to be tilted down somehow). So all you could really see of the cat was its head and paws.

There were also some cacti, like the big, stereotypical saguaro cacti, in the view. Their tops burst imposingly out toward the glass. They seemed more dynamic and "3D"-like than anything else in the scene. But everything in the display looked distorted and hard to see. I didn't think it was very effective.

I walked over to another display. This one was also lit. It was toward the back of the room, just around a curve in the room that went off to the left, as I faced away from the entrance.

This display barely showed an animal at all. The animal was, in fact, just a grey blur coming around the right side of a huge plant. I'd guess, from the size and color of the blur, that the animal was something like a big lemur with grey and black fur. But it may have been some kind of small wildcat.

The plant itself was maybe two or three meters tall. It may have been something like a yucca or an agave. But it was full and round, almost like a gigantic artichoke.

I walked out of the room, possibly because my mom had asked me if I was ready to go. But I didn't go with my mom. Instead I walked out to "catch up" with the friends I'd come with. I walked through a huge open space with a lot of people.

I headed into a room off to the right. The room was something like a roller skating rink. I found "my friends" there -- a few white men, maybe college students, tall, kind of big, wearing sweaters and baseball caps. The had a kind of arrogant look.

The men were all standing outside the rink, leaning against the barrier and looking toward the rink. One of the men said we were waiting for somebody to get back from somewhere. Once he got here, we'd leave.

The guy started talking about a ride in some other room. I now recalled, coming into this room, seeing in to some other room that had some kind of big amusement park-like ride in it. I may have seen a little Asian girl on the ride. It may have been something like a slide. It looked fun.

The ride now sounded so interesting to me that I asked the guy if he wouldn't mind if I went and did the ride while we were waiting for the other guy. The guy shrugged, kind of annoyed that I'd ask for permission. He said, "Do whatever you want, man. I'm not your boss."

I left the room in a hurry, ashamed for having annoyed the guy by asking his permission to do something. The room with the big ride was, I knew, off to the left. But I turned to the right, almost instinctively, to head toward the bathroom.

I passed a little dividing area that was waist high and had a swing-door near the right wall. The bathrooms were in a kind of empty space, just beyond which may have been a much bigger area like an amuseument park for little kids, possibly with some kind of ferris wheel in the center of it all.

Dream #3

I was "at work," sitting at a desk. My old co-worker, DC, came up to me from my right. He sat a chocolate cookie on my desk and said, "Here, you want a cookie?"

I looked at the cookie. It had a thin layer of hard, white frosting on it, like is sometimes on ginger cookies. The cookie looked good, but I knew I shouldn't eat it. So I shyly told DC, "Oh, no. I can't. But thank you."

DC was kind of offended that I'd declined his offer. He laughed and said, "Oh..." as if to let me know he thought I was being pretty arrogant, and that he'd do something sooner or later to put me in my place.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a huge building, either like a mansion or a museum. The building was dim, as if at night, with only a few lights on.

I had been in a back area, where there was a high, wooden wall, with a tall window up high on the wall. I then walked forward to some narrow area with a slanted, wall-like display stand or case.

My old friend R was standing in front of this display area. He stood really close to it. He seemed to be trying to avoid looking at me. I somehow knew he'd gotten a reputation for being violent, almost psychotic. He was so tired of dealing with this reputation that he didn't even want to have to look at anybody.

But he actually was as violent as people accused him of being. And he actually wanted to act violently toward me, because he felt I'd somehow insulted him.

I faced R. But now he was in a room even closer to the front of the building. He was in a little niche in a wall to my right. He may even have been wrapped in bandages, like a mummy.

I wanted to prove that there was no reason to be afraid of R and that I wasn't afraid of him. So I handed R a whole bunch of items that looked like huge items of silverware: like huge forks and knives. There were also some huge tongs that looked like forks. Everything was sharp, and I knew it could all be used as a weapon to kill me.

I was now going to leave the house. The idea was, I knew, that if R had weapons and I left the house, that R would kill me. But I was going to prove people wrong. Nevertheless, I was still afraid to leave through the front door.

I ran all the way to the back of the building. There was a window I'd easily be able to climb up to and crawl out of. But as I started crawling out the window, I felt like R might be right there, waiting to throw the weapons I'd given him at my chest.

So I climbed back down. To my right, as I faced the wall, there was a dim kitchen, just like a kitchen in any nice suburban house. Just above the sink was another window. I thought that since R thought I was going to come out the back window, I'd be safe going out the kitchen window instead.

But as I was climbing out the window, I could feel R's presence again. I knew that this time he probably would manage to catch me, throwing the sharp weapons I'd given him at my chest and piercing my heart.

Dream #2

I was looking at a magazine, maybe a porn magazine. The pages were nothing but photos, maybe six photos per page, in the same kind of style as a porn magazine.

The photos showed two girls in bed. They were about nine or ten years old. They were wearing pajama pants and pajama shirts. Apparently, under their pajama pants the girls were wearing diapers.

The girls got into a kind of sixty-nine position with each other. The girl on top of the other girl rubbed her face against the bottom girl until her pants had been worked off. She somehow managed to remove the girl's diaper in the same way.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

There was a girl who hung out with some extremely fashionable people, possibly Andy Warhol's entourage. She had either darkly tanned or copper-brown skin. Her body was lovely. But her head was very strange.

From her forehead back, her head was like a flat disk, like a plate. It was hairless and a little bit mottled. On either side of this disk, almost at the sides of the woman's cheeks, were eyes. The eyes were quite wide, pale, with very tiny pupils.

I saw the woman in two scenes. In the first scene, which I can't remember very well, the woman was indoors, in some place like a fashionable club. In the second scene, the woman was walking on some brick path beside a house, drinking some can of juice or soda. In this second scene, the girl was wearing a long, stylish, but very summery, green dress.

I noticed that the girl's mouth and chin were both very small. Her mouth was almost all the way down to her chin. I thought the girl must have had some kind of disease that had deformed her face.

I now heard the woman talk, as if in narration. She had been an orphan, but it had been very hard for her to find a home, due to her deformity.

Another female narrator now explained that her situation had been similar with that of a boy. I now saw the boy laying in the back of a car. He was little, maybe eight years old. He had shaggy, brown hair, and he wore a white t-shirt and khaki shorts. He told the camera (?), "I've been to a number of different homes. But nobody's wanted me -- because of my problem."

I wondered what the boy's problem was. He didn't look deformed. But I suddenly saw his chest, for just an instant. The boy had a healed-over puncture wound, very deep, in his chest, just up and to the right of his colar plexus. The wound looked just like somebody had stabbed a sign-post into the boy's chest. I took this wound to mean that the boy had heart problems.

The boy continued, "I went to the libraries to do research on my disease. But they didn't have much about it. But I studied whatever I could find."

I had a view of the boy in the library, typing at a computer. It looked like he was on some kind of black and white, text-only page on the internet. But it was just the library catalog. I thought to myself, It's a real sign of the times that, whenever this documentary was made, all you could do on a computer at a library was look up what books they had at that specific library. But nowadays, if you have the right keywords, you can do tons of research on just about anything.

The woman narrator now spoke about how she went to the library the boy had gone to, so she could see for herself how little information the library had regarding the boy's disease.

I was now far out in a big town, which I may have thought of as Brooklyn. I was way out at the end of town, but I needed to get back home. It was daytime, and the streets were really packed. I was looking for a subway station. I kept zig-zagging through various crowded streets, hearing people's conversations. I kept finding subway stations, but they were never the right ones.

One subway station was elevated maybe five or six meters above ground. It was set into a concrete stairway which had shrub-filled planters all along it. This appeared to be a station for one of the green trains (4, 5, or 6 line in New York). But it also seemed like the station was closed, even taped off with yellow police tape.

I wandered down a straight road filled with people and cars and tall buildings. There was noise and rushing everywhere. I may have done more zig-zagging through the streets, looking for a police station.

I was now in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, walking up to a driveway on the right side of a house, coming from the front of the house. As I did, a 12- or 13-year-old girl came walking up beside me. She was only wearing a pair of yellow briefs-style panties. She had pale skin and brown hair down to just above her shoulders.

I was in some bathroom. I had a huge mustache, and maybe a huge goatee. I was trimming my hair. I realized that the more I cut off, the better I looked. I wondered what would happen if I just cut the whole thing off.

I was back out in front of the house. In my memory, I heard a black man telling me how it would be bad if I kept thinking about the little girl whom I'd seen topless. He said that something like that was bound to get me in trouble.

I was now walking back over to the driveway. At the curb, the driveway had something over it, like a gate of garlands, through which a new bride might walk on her way up the aisle at an outdoor wedding.

Just coming through the gate was what appeared to be some kind of creepy guy. It looked like the guy was trying to catch up to me and elbow in front of me for some reason. So I sped up my walking to get to the house's side door before the creepy guy could get to me.

But then the person called out to me, not by name, just something like, "Hey!" I looked at the person and realized it was just the girl again. She was naked, again, except for her yellow briefs. The girl held a white, terry-cloth summer dress in her hands. But she didn't look like she was going to put it on.

The girl's body was a little weird to me. She was pretty thin, but her bottom was a little bigger than would seem to be proportional with her torso. The girl also had two "breasts," which were more like two little nubs of flesh with nipples on top, very close to each other at the center of her chest.

The girl seemed to be pretty interested in me. She said, "Yeah, I'm studying -----." (I forgot what she was studying.) We got in the house. We were in a hallway. At the far end of the hallway I saw a room off to the left, with orange walls, where my mom was sleeping on a low mattress or couch.

The girl and I walked into a room near the front of the hallway and off to the right. The room was small and plain, with just a mattress on the floor and a white sheet draped against the back wall. There may also have been a loose door or a long wood board leaning against the wall near or under the sheet.

The girl was continuing to talk about her study project. Apparently it was all a real pain in the neck. Now she needed to use a computer for some research. So she'd come back here, apparently to use my mom's desktop.

But we were apparently in this room because the little girl wanted me to have sex with her here. I was thinking it probably wasn't a good idea, because I didn't want my mom to wake up and discover us. But I also felt like if I wouldn't get in trouble, I should probably just have sex with the little girl. She seemed to be really curious. I thought I should help satisfy her curiosity.

Dream #2

(I had fallen asleep while "rehearsing" the memories of my first dream.)

I stood in a dark room of a museum with a woman and possibly another person, maybe a man. The woman was very business-like, professional looking. The walls of the museum were either black or not lit at all.

The woman and I stood before a painting of some dramatic scene, like a Redcoat soldier on a hill during the Revolutionary War. But it was done in a very realistic style, like that of Millet (?), except more watery. The sky was a slushy blue, and the hill was like washy waves of green, dotted with white flowers. The Redcoat seemed to be collapsing. He may already have been down on one knee.

The style struck me as very dramatic and beautiful. But suddenly I realized the painting was a pointillist painting -- a style of painting I generally don't like very much.

I told the woman that this might be one of the very few pointillist paintings I actually like. I gave a description of the painting. As I did, I suddenly thought, Wait a minute! This isn't a memory from one of my dreams! What the heck am I doing here?

The painting seemed to start changing, a black, comic-book style painting "burning" out from underneath it, from the middle outwards.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I stood before my closet hallway. There were a lot of boxes in there. I had a lightbulb box in my hand. It was empty, so I figured I'd just throw it out to make space.

There were some other boxes in there, possibly including a box for diapers. I threw them out, too. Suddenly I had only one box in my closet. It was the only box that had anything in it. It was white cardboard.

I thought I could start stacking stuff up on this box. But I was a little afraid to. The box looked a little dirty, like it had bugs crawling on it. I didn't want to put more stuff on this box and get everything else all buggy.

Dream #2

I was in the gift shop for a museum. The man there basically owned and ran the gift shop. The gift shop was closing down, and a lot of its shelves were empty. I remember one particular wall of light-beige wood shelves that were completely empty. The walls behind the shelves were grey, like a dark concrete or cinder.

The owner came up and smiled at me. He was white, bald, with a grey-white mustache and a kind of friendly look. He also seemed to be a little bit muscular. He spoke to me in some friendly way about some of the discounts he had throughout the store.

I was now alone in the store. I somehow heard my boss talking with a woman, or possibly with a woman and a man. I had apparently left my job for good. This had been somehwat planned. But now my boss was being urged to get me back. My boss was told that I should try to be tricked into believing that I was actually obliged to stay on for two more weeks.

As I heard this stuff, I had kind of been floating around on my back throughout the store. I had floated up high for a little while. But now I was floating at about the level of the checkout counter.

I looked at the green, digital numbers on the display of the tan, plastic cash register. They said "4-17." I knew that meant that today was April 17th. This was, I thought, about two weeks before I was scheduled to leave work. But I really didn't want to have to go back to my office, and I was trying to think whether this story these people would be feeding me about how I needed to go back was actually true.

Dream #3

I woke up. The lights were on in my room. My eyes were really blurry. But, I knew, because of my half-sleeping condition, I could see things that I normally wouldn't see.

I looked at my walls. There were black spots all around the room, at about waist height. The spots were set in pairs, and the pairs were spaced with about one meter intervals. The pairs of spots were set so that two spots were right next to each other, one set up a little diagonally to the other. The black spots were little spy cameras.

Up near the top of the wall were much more widely spaced, much bigger devices, which may have been colored like rusty metal. They looked like small versions of the horns for old phonographs.

I knew people were spying on me by using all this stuff. But I didn't know who was spying on me. There was suddenly a high-pitched ringing in my ears. It got more and more intense.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some kind of big building like a museum. The building seemed to have a couple of floors, the upper floor and lower floor visible to each other. The lower floor was far down from the upper floor and was connected to it by a bunch of ramps. The walls were fronted by brown wood panels, which were set aslant from the real walls. Mild lights beamed down from the high ceiling.

I was on the upper floor, but I was talking to an old lady who stood in front of some painting down on the lower floor. The old lady had grey hair in a big perm. She may have also been wearing a blue, polyester suit, like from the 1970s.

I was apparently either a Nazi or Jewish. Somebody, not in the museum, had said something degrading about me because of what I was. The person who insulted me may have been something like a Nazi.

I was complaining to the lady. The old lady told me something like I should go right now to confront the person who had insulted me before. She told me something very specific to tell him. It may have involved dropping her name.

I may then have imagined a view of me walking outside, into the black night, in some kind of suburban area. I then imagined, without sound, being in some kind of public setting and standing before a black man, as if I were in the process of telling him to stop degrading my Nazi or Jewish character.

Dream #2

Some man had died. Something about this had caused a ghost or demon to occupy the man's place. So now there was some kind of exorcism being performed.

It was black night. A black man was chasing the ghost, who looked like Debbie Harry. The black man was dressed in some kind of outfit with a straw-woven chest plate made out of long, white beads and a tall headress that looked something like a fountain made out of straw and grass. The man kept hitting Debbie Harry on the head with what looked like drumsticks with padded tops.

The man was chasing the ghost along a weird structure that was like a maze of ramps made out of wooden planks, like a bunch of wooden bridge-like ramps. There were flat areas as well, also made out of the wooden bridge-like structures. The ramps and flat areas were all lit up by light bulbs like the light bulbs on amusement park rides.

The wooden structure was as big as a mansion or an apartment building. It seemed to be on the shore of a beach, at the edge of some kind of dense jungle.

The ghost may finally have run into some high up, central area of the structure. The central area was really lit up with a bunch of lights. It was either something like an altar or a throne.

Good afternoon, everybody. I hope everybody is doing well.

Dream #1

I was laying on a bunch of blankets on the floor in a living room. I was laying on my stomach. There might have been a bunch of people also laying in the living room with me. I could sense a cat walking toward me. The cat lay down near the right side of my head. It began purring. It felt kind of nice to have the cat wanting to sleep near me, although it was a little annoying that the cat wanted to sleep on my head.

Dream #2

I was in some plaza-like area with a woman and her daughter. The mother was youngish, blonde, with pale skin. The girl was maybe 6 years old, blonde, with tannish skin. The mother and daughter sat on some crescent-shaped bench made of concrete.

For some reason I had to go to a museum. The museum was just down the street. I was now in the museum. But all the exhibits were kind of terrible, and there was some kind of pervasive, menacing feel to the place. So, disgusted, I left.

I was now back with the mother and daughter in the plaza. The woman asked me about the museum. I was telling her good things about the museum. She said she might take her daughter there. I figured the woman wanted me to go with her, like it was a date. But I was too shy to say anything.

I sat over on some chair away from the bench. The little girl came and lay across my lap. She lay stomach down and had her shirt pulled up halfway up her back. I massaged the girl's back. I understood from this that the girl wanted me to ask her mom on a date. She wanted me to be part of the family.

I figured I would ask the mom on a date. But now I had to go to some thing like a job interview or a medical examination.

I went to the examination and came back. The mother and daughter were just about ready to leave the plaza for the museum. I figured this would be good for me. I could say that I was just going back to the museum, too, and that we could all go together. That way it would be like a date, but I wouldn't have to ask for a date.

I saw a father, possibly an older, Asian man, with his son, who was a little boy, maybe 5 or 6 years old. The boy was sitting across the man's lap somehow, possibly as the man's legs were fully extended.

Dream #3

There was some kind of snake that had some kind of material in it. When the material was taken out, the snake would become invisible. The material could be put back into the snake, but the snake would not become visible again.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a huge grocery store. At some point I was in the produce section. A boy and girl and possibly one more child, all siblings, stood at some stand displaying apples or some other kind of fruit. One of the children may have been writing on a piece of paper that was resting on the apples.

Dream #2

I was in a dim room that was full of people. The place was like a club mixed with a museum. I sat on a really low chair or sofa made of red leather.

A bunch of little kids would come up and sit with me. They didn't know me. They just thought I was interesting. I was kind of flattered. A few of the kids were Asian. Their dad was nearby, looking at paintings and talking to people. One of the Asian kids looked like an old person. He had longish hair, but he was balding on top.

I and one little boy were now watching what was supposed to be Gentlemen Prefer Blondes on a video screen in the floor. The screen was about the size of a small TV screen.

In one scene, Marilyn Monroe walks into a fountain at night. She was apparently naked, and she apparently said "bon appetit," though I did't hear or see any of this. The boy asked me what bon appetit means.

I tried to explain to the boy that it didn't mean anything bad. The scene now replayed itself. I thought, there's no way Marilyn Monroe was naked in this movie. They wouldn't have allowed it!

Marilyn now walked into the fountain, which was an enormous pool of water at the foot of a staircase before a huge building. She was wearing a thin, body-length dress. The soaked dress became kind of, but not extremely, see-through.

Marilyn now swam up to the camera, which was positioned at the side of the huge fountain, and said "bon appetit."

Now all kinds of weird blue and green digital drawings blotted onto the screen like crude versions of fireworks.

Dream #3

I was walking home at night. But somehow I had lost my way. I was walking through some kind of suburban neighborhood. I would turn down streets and think I was finally in the right place. But then I'd see I was still in the wrong place.

At one point I got to a streetcorner which looked exactly like a streetcorner near my house. But it was completely empty, and the buildings were all shut down and featureless, maybe even windowless. I wondered what had happened to my neighborhood. But I suddenly realized this wasn't my neighborhood. The buildings I was looking at were part of some huge hospital.

I turned around and walked another way. I was now in the parking lot of some area like a church. I felt like I might not even have been in the right borough. I turned to walk out of the parking lot. I grabbed my phone, which was my old phone, to try to get an idea of where I was.

I wondered how I'd gotten so lost. It didn't seem possible. I thought, Maybe I'm dreaming. I didn't think it was possible, but I tested myself anyway. I jumped up into the air to see if I could fly. I began floating a little bit. So I was dreaming.

I couldn't control my flight. I was floating backwards. I managed to get floating forward, about 3m off the ground. I was coasting through some suburban neighborhood. I still didn't know where I was. I told myself, You can't see where you are because it's dark. If this is your dream, then make it light.

So I made it light outside. But the world suddenly got very blurry.

I was now floating down toward something. I thought I had woken from my dream. I floated past one of my co-workers, C, who was giving some self-important lecture about something.

I was down in the frozen food section of some grocery store. I was looking at some children's picture book or some piece of paper on which I'd scrawled some stuff. I was still thinking to myself what a disappointment it was that I'd woken from my lucid dream.

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.

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.)

Good morning, everybody. I think these dreams are both influenced by other dreams I've read on this site.

Dream #1

I was in a department store. The light was somewhat grey and dim. I walked to my right, into an area with a lot of dresses for little girls.

I walked past one long rack of dresses. The dresses were all shimmery. Most of them had one single color, like purple or pink. Some may even have had pointy, brimless "princess" hats (which now remind me more of the I Dream of Genie headdress).

All these dresses were supposed to be long on little girls. I assumed they'd hardly even fit onto my body. But for some reason I was still thinking of trying these things on.

I walked between two long racks of dresses. Some of these dresses seemed to have black velvet tops and gold skirts.

As I walked along, two or three tall, young, black men came walking from the other direction. The men were all dressed in shiny, satiny outfits that looked like jester outfits. The front guy may have been wearing sunglasses.

I scooted out of the way a little bit. When I did so, so did the guys. I excused myself and said sorry. The front guy said, "No problem, no problem."

I now found myself out in a wider area of the store. I was trying to figure out whether I wanted to go back to the dresses or go somewhere else.

Dream #2

I was possibly somewhere like a room in a library. I was probably with a group of peers, which was probably led by an older, tall, balding "teacher" figure with grey hair, glasses, jeans, and a denim shirt.

At some point I realized I wasn't wearing any pants or underwear. I was just wearing a big button-up shirt. I knew I needed to get fully dressed.

I walked out into a large stairwell like a big, open stairwell at a museum. I knew I was on the third floor and I needed to get down to the first floor. There were people on the stairs and on the floors between the stairs, walking in and out from exhibits. I had told myself I would run down the back stairwell. But I now realized I was going down the main stairway.

I thought for a moment I could keep going. I thought the shirt was long enough that nobody would see I was wearing no underwear. But then I saw that people had noticed I was wearing no pants and underwear. I was embarrassed. I hurried at the next landing to a doorway to the back stairwell.

I ran past a couple people and into the smaller stairwell, which was more like a fire escape stairwell. I was all alone. I started speeding down the stairs, almost flying down them, taking a lot of steps at once.

I went too fast and found that I had gone too far down. I was in an area full of white-painted pipes. The area was huge and well lit, and the pipes were all so neatly arranged, like bookshelves in a library.

I felt way out of place down here (although my state of undress didn't seem to bother me anymore). I knew I needed to get up to the correct floor. I imagined workers finding me and trying to do something bad to me.

I now imagined (???) a tall, black man in a beige denim jacket and black sunglasses standing before me at the bottom of the staircase. My view panned through the aisles of white pipes which also seemed to be decorated with white Christmas lights.

I imagined myself asking the imaginary man a weird question, like which way was the way out. I imagined the man first telling me something weird, like telling me how to get to the position in the basement where the exit would actually be on the first floor. I even imagined a huge painting, like a huge equestrian painting that might be seen in the lobby of an art museum.

I then imagined, as my view panned through an area of white pipes lit almost entirely by tons and tons of white Christmas lights, that the man asked me something, like he was asking me on a date (???). I imagined that just around the corner from this area there was something like a themed food court, all done up in a confectionery style, like old merry-go-rounds.

I thought that if this guy wanted to go have all this fun at "the festival," I'd have to get money from an ATM. I could hear Mexican music, like Mariachi music, playing somewhere.

I found myself in a place like the parking lot of a shopping plaza from when I was a kid. The shopping plaza had a number of large stores, like a big clothing store, a big grocery store, and a big bookstore. It was night, and the light was deep blue, with all the lights in the shopping plaza turned off. But I still saw the lights, felt the warmth, and heard the music of the festival somewhere.

I walked around trying to figure out where the festival was. I felt like I had woken from a dream. I may have been trying to convince myself that the music and light had only been in my dream, and that I was now just having trace memories of that stuff.

But, I told myself, I'm still dreaming! There's no way I could be just walking around here right now. This is a dream, too.

Realizing this was a dream, I felt a lot more clarity. The sky may have even gotten a bit lighter.

I decided to turn around and look for the festival. But as soon as I turned around, everything went black, like I had closed my eyes. I tried to "open my eyes" and see again. But I couldn't. I walked around. I felt and heard myself walking. I even continued hearing the music. I even had some idea of where I was in the parking lot. But I couldn't see anything.

Dream #3

I was in "my office," which was larger than my office, much more like an office floor for a larger company.

I got up from a cubicle when I heard that a couple of women were getting ready to interview a man for a position. I felt like they were interviewing a replacement for my position.

I walked a little ways, then looked through what seems to have been the underside of a large semi-truck's trailer, to the elevator bank at the front of the office floor.

I could see the interviewee in my mind's eye. He was a little kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, dressed in a nice suit. One of the women interviewing him was a stout, Hispanic woman with short, black hair.

I heard from somebody nearby that my boss was getting fired, and that the person was interviewing to become my boss' replacement. That was a relief for me, considering I had been thinking all this time that I was going to get fired. I only hoped that management would decide to keep me after firing my boss.

I may have thought about the complications for this actually being possible. Maybe the man already had somebody like me on his team. So maybe he'd just bring that other person over from whatever company he was coming from. I also thought that it might not be worth it to work for this guy, anyway. Maybe he would just turn out to be a jerk.

Good morning, everybody. I remember a fragment of a dream from last night. I know there was a lot more. I also know I had a kind of long dream later in the night. But my image memory has been kind of off lately, so I'm not retaining dreams as well as I'd like to.

Dream #1

I stood before a "beetle" that had a long horn, like the horn of a rhinoceros beetle (?) and a stinging tail like a scorpion's tail.

The beetle stood on something like a platform or table that maybe reached just above my navel in height. The table may have been lit from a small track-lighting beam in the ceiling, like in a museum. The rest of the room was dim.

The beetle was maybe about 10 or so cm tall and 30cm long, with its tail coiled up, not straightened out. In addition to the beetle having a scorpion's tail, something about the beetle's underside and leg positioning remind me of a horseshoe crab.

The beetle had a weird, green color, like an old, metallic Chinese vessel, except darker, almost pine green. The beetle itself may have been metallic.

The beetle was protecting an egg, possibly by standing before it, so that the egg was behind the beetle's scorpion tail. The egg looked like a white chicken's egg. But it may actually have contained a human being.

At some point the egg was no longer behind the beetle. It may have been near me or somehow in my possession. At another point, the beetle may have been climbing on the back of my neck.

(One side note, December 5th. I took a look on line to learn about scorpion eggs. Probably everybody in the world except for me knows this, but scorpions don't actually lay eggs.

Based on what I found on the internet, scorpions keep their eggs in their body. The babies are born live. The babies then often spend a short period maturing while living on their mother's back.

Sometimes scorpions do release their eggs. If they do, however, they often eat the eggs before they hatch.

So, interestingly, humans and scorpions have live birth in common. This might partly explain why the scorpion was protecting an egg with a human inside of it. And, I guess, the babies maturing on the mother's back might explain why the scorpion was climbing around on the back of my neck.)