maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was coming up toward a house. It seemed like something bad must have happened there. I came up to a black iron fence surrounding the house. It was only a few meters away from the door.

Just inside the gate, on some kind of stone walkway up to the front door, were the remains of a squirrel that had been killed. I thought the squirrel had been killed by a human. The squirrel had probably been beheaded and then sliced up the middle, on its underside, like a fish being gutted.

Just in front of the door was a mailbox. The mailbox either stood alone or stood out against the wall. The mailbox itself was really thick and wide.

On top of the mailbox were parts of the killed squirrel. It was probably the squirrel's head, but the head seemed really skinny, and it seemed to be attached to a long, bony thing, covered in fur, and which I thought of as an arm.

I was a little scared by the sight, as if the squirrel pieces meant that some bad scene of carnage was inside, maybe even a human murder scene. But I also thought that perhaps the scene of carnage was what I was here for -- what I was here to see.

I went into the house. The door was a side door, and it opened directly into a side hallway of the house. The floor of the hallway was made of white linoleum tile. I passed a couple rooms that seemed half-finished, kind of like laundry rooms. The hallway was shaped like an upside-down "L," with the base of the "L" turning off to my right.

At the intersection there was a huge pile of crap. The pile itself was huge, but the pieces of crap themselves were enormous. I thought that only an animal would crap on the floor like this. But the crap looked too huge for any domestic animal to make. So I thought maybe a human -- a big human -- crapped on the floor.

I walked into the living room and saw a smaller pile of crap on the pale beige carpet. But the pieces of crap were still so huge that I thought only a human could have made them. I walked around a coffee table and stood in between the coffee table and a couch. An old, clunky TV stood on a TV stand off to my left.

Suddenly a big, black poodle (!) jumped at me, to attack me. It got good height as it jumped over the coffee table, and it would have bitten me in the face. But I slapped it away, knocking it to the carpet, in between the coffee table and the TV stand.

The poodle was no longer vicious. It was like it was my friend, or my own dog. I considered that this dog may have made all the crap that was all over the floor. The dog was huge, especially for a poodle, and it had a kind of fat body. So maybe it could have made huge pieces of crap.

I tapped the dog sharply on its flank with some kind of stick -- maybe a dried, tan bamboo stick? I said, "Turn around!" I wanted to get a look at the dog's anus. If the dog's anus had crap all over it, I'd know that the dog had crapped all over the house.

The dog turned around. I noticed that a lot of the fur all over the dog's body was grey as well as black, as if the dog were getting older.

I spent a couple seconds looking at the dog's anus. It was completely naked, barren of fur, so I saw it alright. It looked totally clean, and pretty small. I thought there was no way the dog could have crapped all over the floor. It's anus was too clean -- and too small. So I still didn't know what -- or who -- had crapped all over the house.

Dream #2

I was possibly watching some sort of television show. There were three Vietnamese or Vietnamese-American children. They stood in some strange, half-indoor, half-outdoor area.

The space felt like a living room somehow, but it also felt like the corridors of some kind of shopping area in a big, Asian city. There was a lot of warm, orange, red, and pink light glowing into the atmosphere.

The children themselves stood behind some kind of wooden bars, like the bars of a nice crib or playpen for babies. The bars met a carpet floor, which stood up on a tiny step, maybe 20cm high. The floor before the step was possibly also carpeted.

The children were a musical group. They had won some kind of singing contest on a Vietnamese talent program. They now had to go to some further kind of televised championship.

But the children were all worried, and they called out, "No! Wait! We can't do it yet!" It was like they'd forgotten their song, or gotten stage fright. They felt like if they went to the championship (which may have only been down the hall) at this moment, they'd screw up their luck and totally ruin their chances.

I was half in the scene and half watching the scene on TV. I wanted to tell the kids that there was no need to worry, that plenty of groups had felt the same way before they'd gone on to their championship performance, but that they'd done just fine.

In fact, I could remember one specific group that was actually Vietnamese as well and had gone through the same emotional difficulties as the children were going through right now. But I couldn't remember the group's name. I tried really hard, but I couldn't remember.

I was now in a big room with my mom. The room was like a living room, but the floor was white, linoleum tile, like in a kitchen. The light was bright and white. The room was huge, and there was barely anything in it except a couch, a TV stand, a TV, and some random clutter, like blankets, so that the place felt very barren.

My mom stood in front of the TV, messing around with something, like she was trying to run a tape in a VCR. I told my mom, "You tell those kids there's nothing to worry about. I know another Vietnamese girl that had the same kind of worries. But she ended up winning. She actually had a great song. I'll show it to you."

I couldn't remember the Vietnamese singer's name. But I pulled my phone out of my pocket, as if I could find her on YouTube and show her to my mom. I thought that, if I just looked for the singer in some random way, I'd probably find her. I could remember the singer's song, and the video, which had a lot of pink, orange, and red atmosphere.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a dark bedroom. The door was open a crack, and there was also a slim window running along the right (my right) side of the door. The door and window opened out to a hallway full of fluorescent light. It was like I was in a dorm room. There was a bed against the wall to the right of the door.

There seemed to be somebody walking out in the hallway. He didn't seem to trust me, or else he didn't seem to like the fact that I was around. I myself didn't quite feel like I belonged here. I may have been hoping I could get out of here soon.

I was pacing back and forth in the bedroom. I paced toward the door and turned around. I was about to start walking away from the door when the man somehow got a hold of me. He either told me or handed me a note saying that I needed to paint a bench.

I knew what bench the man had been talking about. I realized I had forgotten to paint it. This was somehow a relief to me. I felt like now I had a task I had to take care of, I really had a reason to stay here. Before, I realized, I had been almost arrogantly insisting that I didn't have to be here, as if I was better than this place. But now that I had a task, I could focus on the task and keep a humble outlook on where I deserved to be.

I was in a living room with a few other people, some of whom may have been my family members. The living room also felt a little like an artist's studio or workshop. The floor were concrete and paint-spattered. The walls were bare white plaster. The light was a very harsh, raspy incandescent. There seemed to be a TV blaring somewhere. And everybody either seemed to be busy or distracted.

I knelt down to a wooden bench about knee-high and maybe three meters long. The bench had been painted white. But either the paint had started chipping off or else the paint job I had given the bench had been so bad that I'd missed patches of the bench altogether. So I needed to fill in the unpainted patches with white paint.

I was painting the bench and thinking about painting. At first I may have been doing a good job of painting the bench. But at some point I may have wondered if it really was a good plan to put new paint among all the stretches of old paint. I didn't think the old paint and new paint would look very good together.

Then I realized that the paint I was laying on the bench wasn't actually "sticking." It would disappear only a while after I painted the patch. It seemed like either the paint evaporated away or like the paint just sank into the wood. I then realized that I had forgotten to lay a coat of primer before I lay the coat of white paint on the bench. But I didn't have any primer here.

I stood up. I had to head out and grab some primer. For some reason, Lewis Carroll was in the living room. He may have been the last person I said goodbye to before I went to grab the primer. He may have said something encouraging about my painting job so far.

I was now walking around in the parking lot of some huge shopping center or mall. It was either late night or early morning. Some of the stores were open, including a huge grocery store that didn't have any doors on its front, just a huge opening.

I walked past a few huge stores. I seemed to be confused about what I needed to get. I either couldn't quite remember what I'd needed to get, or else I couldn't figure out where I needed to get it.

I now remembered where I needed to go. But the store was closed, and it wouldn't open for a couple of hours. But I needed the stuff now. I needed to get back home and paint the bench for something like a birthday party. But I wasn't going to be on time. I somehow knew this.

I suddenly remembered that I needed primer. It suddenly dawned on me that I could have gotten primer at any time during the past few days. But I'd waited and waited and never gotten it. Now it was too late. I was desperately disappointed with myself. I had done stuff like this before in my life. Would I ever learn how to just do things on time, instead of always waiting until it was too late?

I was about to start crying, I was so disappointed with myself. But, right then, I got a call on my cell phone. It was my mom. She very quickly told me she'd speak with me in a moment. I then heard her getting on the phone with someone else. I dropped the phone from my ear and thought, Oh, god. Here's another one of these calls where my mom gets all dramatic and then tells me something that isn't bad or dramatic at all.

I put the phone back to my ear. I was walking past a store, another store with no doors, just a huge opening. So I walked inside, thinking I might be able to find something, maybe primer. The store actually looked like some kind of home improvement store.

My mom appeared to be talking to some kind of hospital, even though I couldn't hear the person my mom was talking to. My mom said something about trying to get information about my brother. He had been taken to the hospital for some emergency.

I thought that this sounded serious after all. My mom had some information on my brother. She gave it to the operator, to find out where my brother was. The info was like a room number or something. The operator put my mom on hold.

My mom came back to talking to me. She said, "Your brother has thrown himself to the ground." I understood this to mean that my brother had attempted or committed suicide by throwing himself off a multi-story building.

I said, "No," in a flat, but panicked voice. I was about to lose control of myself and start pleading, "No, no, no!" into the phone. But I didn't I was too afraid that the hospital operator would hear me (even though I couldn't hear her), think I was being disruptive, and hang up before giving my mom any information on my brother.

I walked over to an ATM to get some money to buy whatever it was I was here to buy. As I walked over to the ATM, I pulled the phone away from my ear. I had some web page regarding the hospital on my screen. The text was black, with some passages of text in tan-orange lettering. The screen was kind of like visiting or facilities information. I kind of got the impression that this place wasn't a hospital in the conventional sense.

As I got to the ATM, before I could even slide my card through, my mom was back on with the operator. She said something like, "He did? When? Well, it would have been really nice if someone had told me this earlier." It was obvious my mom was terribly sad and angry. She wanted to burst into tears. But she kept her temper with the operator, sounding pretty well composed, though slightly irritated.

I understood, before my mom even got back on the phone with me, that my brother had died. The hospital really only called to tell my mom this because they couldn't hold onto the body. They needed someone to take it away. Otherwise, they might never have called my mom.

My mom told the operator she'd be right back. She put the operator on hold. She got back on with me and said, "Your brother died at 4:15 AM this morning."