maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in my family's living room. Someone, probably my brother, had just finished watching something on TV.

I was led to believe that I could now watch whatever show I wanted. But I knew this wasn't really true. My brother and probably my mom just wanted me to think I could watch a show that I liked so I'd stay in the living room. But as soon as they knew I'd stay, they's switch my show on me.

I had chosen some old Saturday Night Live episode. But as soon as I saw that my brother and mom were playing a trick on me, I got up and left the living room.

I went down into the basement, into a room that was apparently mine. I could hear the Saturday Night Live episode from upstairs. I knew my brother and mom were now playing the episode really loud, and that they were going to play the whole episode, just to taunt me for not having stayed upstairs.

The room in the basement was pretty empty. It was lit by greyish-white natural light coming in from a window high up on a wall in front of me. My sight was mostly focused on something right in front of me, either a book or a paycheck.

I was now in some busy place in a really busy part of town. I don't know whether I was inside or outside. The place seemed like a fancy kind of bar. But it also seemed to be outside, out on a street like a small town's main street, only as packed with people as a street like Times Square.

My vision was still very focused on one small thing, probably an envelope. I was surprised to have found this envelope. It contained my paycheck. I hadn't expected to receive my paycheck so soon.

I pulled the paycheck out of the envelope. There were a few problems with the writing on the check. The amount for the check was something like $814 or $810 (I wish!). But the way it was written in the side box was all messed up, so that instead of a number, there was something more like a nonsensical word.

I looked over to the line where the amount of the check was written out. This line seemed to be done correctly. But there was one more place on the check where the amount was written out incorrectly. In this spot, the check gave a horribly small number, like $30 or $40.

I knew I was supposed to be getting the amount that had been written out. But I doubted any bank would take such a messed up check. I also worried that if a bank took the check at all, they'd only give me the lower amount. I was sure no bank would give me the benefit of the doubt, since people in places like banks always seem to hate me.

But this was either my first or my last paycheck. It was very important that I have this money. So I needed to get things fixed. I determined to fix things. I thought of going "back" to my job, which may have been some kind of parks job.

But I was now walking away from the main street kind of area with my mother, sister, and niece. I really needed to go talk about my check. But I couldn't let my mom and sister know what I was doing. And my mom and sister wanted to get back home.

My mom and sister were using my niece as an excuse to go home. But my niece didn't want to go home. So, as an excuse to go take care of my check, I told my mom and sister that I'd take my niece back to the main street area of town.

But I got the feeling that my mom and sister now had the idea that I only wanted to take my niece with me so I could do something bad to her. So I didn't push the idea.

We had been walking through a kind of residential area. But now we had turned a corner and were back in a small town main street kind of area. I decided I should be honest. I told my mom and sister that I needed to go see about fixing my check. I also said I needed to get a haircut.

But we were now headed down some red-carpeted steps, down into some fancy restaurant. We were being led by a tall, very pale, blonde man with a little bit of a goatee and stubbled cheeks.

My mom and sister and I had been to this restaurant before for lunch. Either my mom or the young man thought it would be impressive to take us all back to this place for dinner.

But I knew this wouldn't work. During lunch this place was cheap and relatively empty. But at night (it still looked like midday outside) this place became packed with people because of some crazy comedy show. The price of the food also skyrocketed.

But I didn't say anything. We went down through some glass doors and into a nice lobby area. There was another set of glass doors showing a packed dining area -- people almost shoved against the glass doors, and everybody beautiful and in nice attire.

The name of the place was written on the door in gold capital letters. But it was written on the inside of the door, so that from our side of the door, it looked backwards. The name of the place was "EVERYTHING WARHOL." I knew this place served really good Indian food.

A bald man in a tuxedo came out and made a reservation for us for dinner. It was written on a page from a restaurant order's notebook, like you see in diners and so forth. There were a lot of scribbled numbers all over the page.

The man gave the reservation to either my mom or the young man. Nobody even looked at the reservation, just assuming we were going in soon. But I knew we'd have a long wait. Finally I snuck a look at the paper. Amid all the scribbles, I saw our reservation for something like 8:37 PM. It was now around 5:30 PM.

We were all heading back out, with the others in my group thinking we'd be back very soon. But the young man, the last person to go through the first set of doors before I would, stopped in the doorway, the door half-closed on him, and turned to the waiter to ask how long we'd have to wait for a table.

Apparently this restaurant, or at least the staff, was Belgian, or maybe Swedish. The young man asked the waiter, either in English or French, how long our wait would be.

The waiter replied in French (I thought of it as Belgian-French) that the wait would be a little long. He spoke in French because he was sure that the young man wouldn't understand it.

But the young man was either Belgian or had been in Belgium for some time. In fact, he was only striking up a conversation with the waiter because he wanted to impress my mom and sister by showing off his knowledge of French.

The young man had a short conversation with the waiter. The waiter kept saying "peut-etre," or "maybe," which I kept seeing in my head as "petait." I knew the word meant "maybe," but I kept mixing it up with "petite," and thinking the waiter was saying "little," like, "It will be a little wait."

Eventually the young man got the understanding that we'd be waiting three hours for a table. He rubbed the goateed corners of his mouth and walked out the door. I must have followed.

I was now walking out with my mom and my sister in what was supposed to be my great grandma's old neighborhood. We passed my great grandma's house, which had been sold after my great grandma had died. The place was now being remodeled and expanded by the new owners. I could even see sillhouettes of the new owners working inside.

We passed the next house, in which one of my cousins lives with his wife and kids. For some reason, I looked on that house with scorn. I didn't want to have anything to do with those family members.

We kept walking on. My view was more like the sideways tracking of a movie camera. My mom was saying how she'd always liked this neighborhood because it was much safer compared to some other neighborhoods.

I agreed. But something about the sight of my cousin's house made me angry and greedy. All I could think about was buying out every single house on this block, and maybe a few other blocks.

I wanted this area to be completely empty. I could even envision it being empty. This way, I thought, my immediate family could live in happiness, being safe from violence and free from irksome family members.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A man who was probably in his late forties was having me house-sit for him. The man was probably rich. He had a pretty big apartment in Manhattan. He seemed gay, and his face looked a little soft and worn out.

The man showed me around his apartment. The apartment seemed like it could have been in an old building. But it seemed to be in a new building, or at least to be surrounded by a lot of new buildings.

But even though the apartment was big and nice, it was really messy. There was clutter everywhere. Nothing was organized. Everything was so packed together. It didn't seem like a very comfortable place to live.

I walked around the apartment with and without the man. The apartment had two halves, like two wide, narrow rectangles. There must have been more rooms. But the rectangles were wide enough already to give the apartment a lot of space.

At one point I walked through a kitchen. There was a bunch of old garbage in the sink. There was even something that looked like a dead pigeon. It looked all wet and gross, like it was starting to rot. But somehow I determined that the pigeon was a fake pigeon, like a stuffed animal. Since it had never been alive, I thought, it couldn't die and rot.

A little while later I must have thought I was by myself, even though I didn't think the man had gone on his trip yet. I kept looking out the windows of the apartment. There were windows everywhere. I was worried that people would look in and see me, especially while I was doing something gross, like masturbating.

I also worried that some of the man's friends would find that I was house-sitting. I worried that the people would look down on me and make it known to me somehow that they disapproved of the man allowing some low person like myself to house-sit for him.

I may have considered cleaning up the man's house. I may also have considered masturbating. But now the man woke up. I could see him sitting up on a huge but sparse and dishevelled bed in a room full of yellow light. The man and I walked around the house again.

I was now with my brother. We were in a cafeteria on the first floor of the apartment building -- like the building was a new, enormous apartment building or office building. We were getting some food for the man.

My brother then got some food for himself, as the man had told him. I'd also been told to get some food. But I didn't really want anything. But rather than have anybody worry about me, I just decided to get something. But whatever it was I got, I knew it was such junk food that the man and my brother would ridicule me for it.

Dream #2

A boy, maybe five or six years old, stood before me. His back was to me. He only wore a pair of white underwear. It was planned that the boy and I would have sex. But I didn't want to. I didn't want to get in trouble for having sex with a child, and I didn't want to have sex with a male.

But the boy was a part of the whole plan. He was going to make me have sex with him The boy began fondling me and then moving up against me.

The boy was moving his backside so that he was directing me into him. All this time I hoped I'd find my way under his backside and into a vagina, discovering that the boy was actually a girl, so I wouldn't have to be with a boy. But it didn't happen. And, in spite of myself, I was feeling really aroused.

Dream #3

I was with my mom and sister in a car. We had gone to some bookstore. The bookstore was the first branch of a very small chain. The second branch was closing down. So we were visiting the original store to see how it was doing.

But for some reason only my mom went in. It seemed like she was taking a really long time in the store. So I decided to go inside and see what she was doing.

The store was kind of big, but really dingy. The light was a white, fluorescent light. The floors and shelves were grey and old. The place looked more like an old video store than a bookstore.

I found myself in some section selling videos. There was a poster of a bunch of grotesque imagery that I thought was scenes out of a horror film. But it turned out to be a poster for the video Faces of Death. It may actually have been for Faces of Death III.

I now understood that these images were of actual people, dying in really gross ways. Some of the people looked like their bodies and heads were melted. Others were decapitated. Others had gigantic holes gouged through their bodies.

I looked around me. This section was filled with nothing but snuff films and posters for snuff films. I wasn't terribly grossed out. But I decided to get out of the area.

I walked up a small staircase to the back half of the store. The place seemed to be empty, except for a few pieces of exercise equipment, which also seemed to be on sale.

I saw an older, kind of fat man with grey hair, tinted eyeglasses, and a black t-shirt standing somewhere, maybe reflected in a mirror wall. I felt like he would have done something bad to me if I'd gotten close to him. So I turned around and headed out of the store.

As I exited the store I realized that this place was closing down, just like the second branch had closed down. The whole chain of bookstores must have been going out of business. Everything in the store was on sale for clearance prices -- even the exercise equipment.

I was then back in the car with my mom and sister. My mom was driving away. We were heading out of a small parking lot and onto a small road that wound in between two tight, forested hills. My mom and I spoke about how the bookstore chain was shutting down.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A kind of short, cocky-looking Latino guy with kind of tall, wavy hair was walking through a door. The guy was wearing a military jacket and no shirt. He had a girl on either arm. He was kind of giggling to himself.

The guy seemed to be walking into some huge mansion, which was probably his. The idea seemed to be that the guy had gotten rich somehow, possibly through rap music. He was really gloating about his success, which was really pissing me off. I wondered why the assholes were always the successful ones.

The man was followed by another guy, who I assumed was the guy's brother. The brother looked a lot like the man, except that he looked a lot more gentle-mannered and worn-out. He may have been partly bald. The brother also entered with two people, possibly family members.

The brother was then followed by a lot of other family members. I thought it was at least good that the man was letting his whole family in on his wealth.

But now it was like the group of people was some kind of tour, taking a walk through Beyonce's mansion. The group was mostly young adults and older kids. Everybody, walking through the mansion, had the feeling that they would be able to make money like this, too, someday.

I was following the people through the mansion from a backward view, like I was facing people and looking through a dolly-camera as it tracked through the rooms. Each room of the mansion had different colors for the walls. There was one room with yellow walls and another room with sea-green walls.

In the room with sea-green walls a young, white woman was looking at a bunch of empty picture frames that hung on the wall. I had turned around to face forward and look at the woman.

The woman asked me, "How do they get the money for the models for these things?" I didn't know how to respond to that. Apparently the woman thought the picture frames had all been made to order or built by hand, instead of just bought.

I walked into another room, which was mostly dark. It was a really big room, almost like a ballroom. But most of the room couldn't be seen in the darkness. I stood in the light of the room I had just left.

Obscured from my view by some tall potted plants like palms was a table. Two people stood at the table. At first I thought it was Jay-Z and Beyonce. But then I realized it was Beyonce and some other woman. At first I thought the woman was white. But as I creeped around the plants, I saw that she was black.

Beyonce said something to the woman about giving the woman advice, from one mother to another.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a locker room with a group of people like business people. The business people were all smarter and more put-together than I was. But they all liked me anyway, for some reason. We had just finished up something. We were now hanging around and laughing with each other.

Then some sports team came into the room. They were like a soccer team at first. It was also like they were somehow a part of our group. But then they were some other group of people. They started getting really loud and rowdy, kind of to bully the rest of us and make us feel uncomfortable.

Then the group of people became a whole bunch of black guys. They were all kind of skinny and grizzled-looking. One had a long, skinny, grey beard. They all wore really nice golfing clothes, with pale beige golfing sweaters. They'd all just come in from the links. They threw their golf bags all over the floor.

For some reason I was laying on the floor. One guy saw me on the floor and threw his golf bag so it landed on my right leg. It didn't hurt very much. But I knew he'd done it out of disrespect.

I stood up instantly and was right in the guy's face. I may even have been standing on his feet. The guy seemed passive, but not really afraid. I was yelling at the guy and doing something physical to him, to try to hurt him. I got madder and madder.

Suddenly I was out on a beach. The beach felt small, almost fake. I couldn't see the water. There seemed to be a couple dunes of sand on either end of a small, flat area of beach. I stood near one of the dunes with a young woman.

The woman knew, but wasn't quite telling me, that I'd gotten so mad just a moment ago that I'd committed some kind of really violent act on a group of people. I'd probably killed a few people. The bodies were now gone, but there were still small traces of blood here and there.

I couldn't remember anything about the violent act, and the woman wouldn't tell me anything about it. She didn't even tell me outright that I'd done it. All I could figure was that I'd killed that group of black men in the locker room.

Something about that thought brought the black man before me again. I was filled with rage. But for some reason I was now just flying over the sand. In the places where the dunes had been, or maybe just before the dunes, were two intricate sand sculptures, each of a city. The cities looked almost like Middle Eastern cities.

Dream #3

There was some kind of big tract of land with a house on it. The house was at the bottom of a kind of steep hill. The hill had a flower garden on it.

At the base of the hill, along the side of the house, was a stone path which may almost have felt like a trench in places. At some point in the trench area was a door that led into some dark, cellar-like room. This was apparently a woman's quarters. The room also held a bathroom.

The woman who lived in the quarters was probably Irish, pale-skinned, tallish, fat, with red-brown hair. She wore a dress of coarse, plain fabric, probably denim-blue and tan. She was probably a little grouchy, lazy, and mean.

My sister now stood before me and a few other family members in a kitchen. My sister was very young, maybe nine or ten years old. She wore a pale blue skirt and some long, white stockings with blue designs on them.

My sister was complaining about having gone down into the bathroom in the woman's quarters. She had opened the door while a woman -- probably not the woman who lived there -- was in the bathroom.

My sister told us, "I'm not a lesbian. So I wouldn't try to see a woman naked. But when I opened up the bathroom door the woman did this." My sister grabbed her chest and made gestures indicating big breasts.

My sister said, "Then she said, 'I'm married with kids, so don't get any ideas!' Like she thought I was coming into the bathroom to have sex with her!"

Good morning, everybody.

I thought I'd share the passage below, since it relates to both dreaming and New Year's Eve. The passage is from Charles Dickens' story "The Chimes."

The plot device of "The Chimes" is similar to that of "A Christmas Carol": a ghost leads a man, Toby Veck, into the future, so that he can see the effects of the choices he makes in the present. The effects are terrible. So Toby mends his ways and lives happily ever after.

This quote comes from the end of the book.

"Had Trotty dreamed? Or, are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere, none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end -- endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy."

Dream #1

I was in a laundromat which may have been a part of a department store or a K-Mart. I was at the far end of one of the aisles of machines. I think the machines were dryers, though they looked like washers. There were laundry carts cluttering all the way up the aisle.

Two guys were also in the aisle. I felt like they were my friends. They may also have been working at the laundromat. They were talking to each other without really regarding me. They were talking about some guy, who I eventually realized was me.

The guys were talking about how the guy was really conceited. They said that you could never tell this guy anything. And he'd never admit he was wrong. It made the atmosphere tense around him all the time. But he wasn't really so impressive that he should make people feel that way.

I thought, Wow. Is that really the way people feel about me? I realized I should really start watching how I act toward people. I thought I'd start right away, by treating my two friends nicely. I may have tried to say something nice to my friends.

But now I was suddenly sitting at a desk outside the aisles of laundry machines. I was looking at my phone. I was texting back and forth between my sister and my friend H.

I think I was just having a normal conversation with H. But my sister had gone into the hospital for something. So I was texting with her to find out how everything had gone.

But somebody, either H or my sister, was sitting at the near end of another aisle of laundry machines off to my right. The person was sitting with another couple of people, probably kids. They were all on the floor, maybe buried in coats.

I hadn't heard from my sister in a while. I wasn't getting worried about her health, necessarily. But I was worried that I'd said something to offend her, so that she'd stopped texting me and now wouldn't let me know if things were okay.

But I now got a text from my sister. It said something like, "Well, the doctor sent me and J (my brother-in-law) over to the pharmacy. So when I get my stuff from the pharmacy I'll be able to tell you what my problem was."

It was like the doctor knew the problem, but didn't tell my sister what it was. So my sister had to infer the problem from whatever kind of medicine she got.

The text did, however, seem to have a bit of a feeling of annoyance with me. So I tried to think of how I could be less annoying.

At the same time that I read the text, the person sitting on the floor off to my right was also speaking to me. It was like my sister was right there, telling me everything she had texted me.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was out walking along some damp, sandy shoreline with my sister and my oldest nephew. It was a nice, sunny day. The water was to our right. We were probably pretty close to the water, too. The shore itself was probably pretty narrow.

We passed some really beautiful scene on our left. There was a big, beautiful lawn (though the grass may have seemed to be a little dried and yellowy). At the end of the lawn was some kind of beautiful, classical mansion or palace or plaza.

I can't really remember it that well at all. It was gleaming white, and it had a lot of columns. There were people in some non-modern dress walking around on the grounds and in or near the structure. Parts of the grounds may have been open from the shore. Other parts may have been separated from the shore by a fence.

My sister pointed to the beautiful scene and said, "This reminds me a lot of my trip to Italy."

For some odd reason I took a really sarcastic tone with my sister. I said, "Pfft! There's nothing like that in real life!" (??? ) I then either said, "That's only a painting," or, "That should really remind you of a painting."

My sister and nephew and I were now walking in the downtown area of some smaller town. We three seemed to be among the few people out on the street.

It was still a nice, sunny day. We walked down a street with dark tan or brownish buildings that were probably around eight to twelve stories tall.

Suddenly I saw, across the street from us, a huge helicopter descending from above the building tops. The helicopter had a dull, blue underside. It was shaped a bit awkwardly, like if you were to put an old, corded phone's receiver into a blanket and then try to make a rectangle out of that mass.

The helicopter was moving pretty slowly. It was still descending, and it looked like it was directed toward us. I'm -- pretty sure -- that at this time I recalled a time IWL in 2002 when I was in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a huge, black, military copter floated down toward me and seemed to follow and watch me for half a block or so.

I'm pretty sure that I was really worried that this helicopter was going to do the same thing to me. I had been really afraid in Santa Fe -- so afraid, I'd had to hold onto a wall near me to stay standing.

But I didn't want my sister and nephew to see me that way. So I tried to show that I was actually interested in this aircraft, rather than that I was afraid of it.

But as the helicopter descended, it turned out that I really was more interested in it than afraid of it. The helicopter actually looked like some form of public transportation -- like a bus, but with propellers instead of wheels!

I could see now that the helicopter-bus was going to land and unload passengers at a building on the corner of a block just up ahead and across the street from us. I ran toward that building, leaving my sister and nephew behind.

I got into the building. It was like a hollowed-out lobby of an office building, but with something to its atmosphere that made it seem like a bus station. There were concrete pillars through the room. The window-walls of the lobby must have been tinted, because the light coming in was kid of smoky-amber colored. The floors may have been covered in a short, tight, brown carpet.

I'd come in through some doors to the left of the corner of the building. But the helicopter, I saw, had landed at the corner of the building. There were some hospital-like, sliding-glass doors that opened along with the opening of the helicopter's doors. A little wheelchair-ramp-type structure went down from the doors to the floor.

I ran up to the sliding glass doors as they opened. There were no passengers in the helicopter-bus, even though the helicopter-bus had apparently landed to let passengers off.

The pilot stood just outside of the bus for a moment or two. He was tall, white, with a kind of big belly. He had short, shaggy, red hair and a short, shaggy beard. He wore squarish eyeglasses.

I didn't say anything to the man. I just stood there, kind of awed that I was seeing such a new, incredible element of public transportation.

The man understood my feelings, though. He said, "Well, it's fun for now. But the city'll get rid of it soon. This is the new thing. And when the next new thing comes around, they'll forget all about this thing."

I now spoke to the man, but it was like I was speaking to him in my head, or through narration, as I was heading back out onto the street, out to my sister and nephew.

I told the man, "Oh, no -- they'll never get rid of this. It's too great! And it makes so much sense. It's so efficient!"

I may now have been telling my sister and nephew something as we watched the helicopter lift up and away. The helicopter seemed to be going right back in the direction it had come from. So did we. We seemed to be walking right back down the block we'd walked up.

Good morning, everybody.

Happy holidays! The icy Dream Views logo is really fun. And the Santa Claus flying through the moon is cool, too.

Dream #1

It was night. I was either getting into or out of a car with my sister and my brother-in-law. The car was probably my sister's. It was a kind of short car, and it was packed all around by some bigger SUVs.

My sister was drunk, but she was trying to act like she wasn't. She was trying to act nice for my sake.

We now all got out of the car. The parking lot the car was in was in some downtown-like area. There was a really big, ominous-looking, tan-brick building right at the edge of the lot.

We walked out to the road, which felt very old and run-down. This place was like one of those downtowns that shut down completely at night. We were all alone here. The streetlights seemed like in a horror movie -- the light was all grainy, almost sepia-colored.

My sister was now not able to control her drunken appearance at all. She even asked, "Hey, isn't there some place we could pick up some booze?"

I knew there was a store somewhere -- maybe even just across the street and around the corner. I could even see the store, still open, like a chain drug store, its greenish fluorescent lights shining out through a window-wall in a stately, stone building.

But I figured I'd do what I could to keep us from going to that store. I think my brother-in-law felt the same way.

Somehow we decided we needed to go to the bathroom. I knew where there was a free public bathroom. We walked off to our right, toward some park-like area, then along a nice, stone walkway.

The light was just becoming blue with early morning, and there were already tourists out here -- it mostly looked like mothers and daughters.

We went to some area that looked like a fast food restaurant. It had the same color scheme as Dunkin Donuts, but with a lot more brown. And it was shaped like a wide, low public restroom in a park.

I knew that this bathroom had either been sponsored by the restaurant or was the restaurant itself. I probably thought the restaurant was McDonald's or Burger King. I think the restaurant itself was closed, but that the bathroom was always open.

I think we first walked through the restaurant's seating area, which was huge, but completely empty of people. I think we then walked through a concrete-floored, cinder-block-walled hallway that felt like it was a bridge over a road, between two buildings.

The three of us were now in the bathroom, which was a wide, concrete-floored, cinder-block-walled bathroom, like a really nice public bathroom in a park. But it may have had a Dunkin Donuts color scheme.

My sister was still drunk -- kind of wandering around randomly. But I myself was now really distracted. Eventually I decided I needed to use the bathroom. I went to a stall, so I could take a crap.

But I was having trouble closing the stall's door. It wouldn't stay closed. I was also trying to close it by twisting the little doorknob using a huge, wadded up piece of toilet paper. It was like I was afraid to touch anything in the restroom. So I was protecting my hands with toilet paper. But it was really hard to do anything with the amount of toilet paper I had in my hands.

Then, at some point, I felt some kind of erotic feeling. It related to the feeling of taking a crap. I thought I was going to do something really bad and gross in the stall. And it turned me on sexually. But I didn't want to get caught doing it.

Then a mother and daughter came into the restroom. I was kind of annoyed. I knew that if a couple of tourists were coming in, then that meant that a whole bunch of people would soon be coming into the bathroom. Everybody would know I was here, and they'd all start harrassing me. So I might as well leave now.

I might have walked back out of the stall, passed the mother and daughter, found my brother-in-law and sister, and walked back out into the long corridor.

Dream #2

It was a nice, sunny day. I was probably in the backyard of the house where my family lived while I was in high school. But the backyard was now three or four times as big as it was IWL, and it was filled with flowers. It was an incredibly huge, English-style garden! Where our garage had been, there was some big, shady kind of pagoda-like structure made of greyish, dark wood.

There were some little kids running around and playing in the garden. I thought of these kids as something like my friends or siblings. They were all angelically beautiful, like the golden-haired children of storybooks. I feel like they were all involved in some task. But I can't remember what it was.

My attention was caught by the huge, stalk-like plants near me. I couldn't put a name to them. They seem, now, to have looked like hollyhocks or foxgloves. But they weren't those flowers, either -- I'm pretty sure. They had a kind of fuzzy look. And some of them had bud-like centers: tight, green bulbs, inside a collar of thin, peach petals.

I was suddenly laying on my back. Our old dog, a cocker spaniel, was standing over me, vigorously licking, or "kissing," my lips. She was actually licking off a bunch of honey that I had on my lips.

Some voice in the distance (or in my head?), probably a child's voice, asked me either if my dog liked honey, or if my dog liked to kiss me.

Whatever the question was, I answered, "No, she's just getting the honey off my lips. She's really excited to go traveling. She loves to go places in the car. In fact, when she ----- (can't remember) -----, we'll probably get a nice car for her. Then she'll be happy to go!"

I now had an image in my head of a white, horse-drawn carriage, like a nineteenth century carriage. But the carriage was very short, proportioned, it seemed, to fit small children or dogs. And there was no top to the cabin of the carriage. It was flat and open, kind of looking like an ornate, white Radio Flyer wagon.

A man in a suit and top-hat sat in a small front area and drove the carriage. He may also have been holding a white, lace parasol.

I could see that there was a main seating area: a small square. But there was also a smaller, back rectangle, which, I now guess, could normally be used for luggage.

But I guess my dog was now dead, because she was stiff and motionless, and we had laid her in the back area, as if it were some kind of coffin for her, or a space that would have fit a coffin for her.

But I'm pretty sure the carriage wasn't taking my dog to a funeral, but to a wedding. And I may have been a part of the wedding. This was probably whatever I'd been referring to when I'd spoken to the voice. But I'm pretty sure this image didn't have anything to do with what I'd actually said.

Dream #3

I was in some kind of huge place, something like an old, French palace, mixed with a museum, mixed with an old, run-down, slummy apartment. The place was filled with all kinds of clutter -- boxes, junk, all over the place.

There were no lights on, and it was night. The only light coming into the place was extremely dim, orange light from the streetlamps outside.

There were a few other men in the structure with me. They were all in one room. The place was huge, but we were all sitting in just one room, which had a bunk bed and a computer desk in it, but which was so filled with junk that we could hardly fit ourselves into the room.

The men may have been Latino, and they may have spoken very little English. They seemed to be in their late thirties or early forties. They were short, a little overweight, and a little tough-seeming.

The men were being nice or indifferent to me. But I had a feeling that, as time wore on, they'd probably start annoying or harrassing me.

My mom now came into the room. I was happy just to have someone familiar to me in this environment. It kind of diluted the bad emotional sense I was beginning to get from these guys.

My mom looked a bit different. She was skinnier, and she had shorter hair. She sent me off to some other room. She told me that we were both getting up early tomorrow morning to take care of some task. She stressed the importance of getting up on time.

I was excited about the event. And even though it was already late, and that I wouldn't get very much sleep at all if I wanted to get up on time, I was really happy and determined to get up on time.

I lay down in bed and closed my eyes. Almost immediately, I re-opened them. I realized that I had woken up an hour late!

I ran out into the hallway to find my mom. It couldn't be true, could it? Had I overslept for the thing I was so excited for?

My mom was at the other end of the hallway. She said, "Yep, you overslept. But I wasn't going to wake you up."

I could tell my mom was disappointed in me. I felt horrible. But my mom now said something like, "Hurry up. If you just get your shit together and get out the door right now, we can still probably make it on time."

I was back in the room with the Latino men. Some of them were sleeping on the bunk bed. One was still up, sitting at the computer desk. The light was still dark. It was still very early morning, before sunrise.

I crouched before the bunkbed and began arranging something on the cuff of my right shirt sleeve for some reason. It was like I was peeling back my cuff and then twisting it back and forth. It felt like I was trying to put some kind of steel band around my wrist.

But I realized that I was just wasting my time doing this. My mom was probably out in the car, waiting for me. If I didn't hurry up, my mom would either leave me, or else she'd wait for me and we'd both be too late to make it to our task.

I stood up to get my shit together and go downstairs. But I was so unfocused. I really couldn't remember what the hell I needed to do. I didn't really know what I needed in order to get the hell out of here. And the Latino men didn't help. It was just like they were waiting for an excuse to distract me.

I now found myself in a car, an old, clunky station wagon, like the one I drove IWL when I lived out in the desert for a couple of years, working for the Park Service. The car was inside -- in one of the rooms of the house. I sat in the driver's seat. One of the Latino men stood just outside the door, looking in.

The car only had AM radio (IDL and IWL ). I had a plastic tub -- like the plastic tubs you get for various purposes during hospital stays -- filled with little, plastic knobs, each about 2cm in diameter. I had to put all of these plastic knobs onto various parts of the radio's face. Only after that would my shit be together enough so that I could leave.

But I couldn't fit all of these knobs onto the radio face! I think I managed to find ways to fit some of them onto the volume and tuning knobs. I also popped some of them onto the set-station buttons. And I may have tried to stick some onto the actual station indicator plate. But I was running out of space. And I had a ton of knobs left!

I was now by myself in a large hallway, probably inside an apartment. It was night, and the hallway was pretty dark.

I stood near the front door. The door was made of old, worn-out wood. I could feel something like a gentle wind whispering past the door. I knew it was some kind of presence. I partly thought it was a ghost. But I also thought it was some person -- or, a person coming, not a person who was actually there yet.

I knew that I was still a bit early. But as long as I kept aware of the situation, I'd see the person. Then I could meet the person just outside the apartment. I may actually have just thought of this person as only a breeze of wind.

I was now looking out through my door through a small, square window that was maybe 30cm directly above the doorknob. Looking out, I saw the dark sapphire sky of morning. I could see that out there was something like a brambly yard, which may have been something like a big, nice garden.

I was telling myself something very soothing, like the person who was coming to me was a very nice person, and that I had nothing to worry about or be afraid of.

I watched one or two people crossing my field of view. They were walking along some path, I think, that crossed between the garden and some much wider field. They were a man and a woman. A man may also later have crossed by himself.

I told myself, "See? See how nice they are? When they come for you, they'll treat you nicely. You have nothing to fear."

I was now outside. It was a bright, sunny morning. I was drifting up a very, very slight slope, on a long, wide lawn that led up to a sidewalk and an asphalt road.

I saw a man and a woman walking along the road, heading from the right to the left side of my field of view. The man and woman both looked like they were in their late thirties. But they wore clothes and had hairstyles like from the late 1970s. The man's hairstyle was particularly chunky and bowl-shaped.

The man and the woman seemed to be in a kind of peevish argument with each other. It scared me a little bit. I felt like if I got into their field of influence, they'd probably start getting all peevish and annoying with me.

But they were walking pretty quickly. And they were already away from me by the time I got up to the sidewalk.

Now that I was on the sidewalk, I noticed a few handfuls of people, all adults, walking toward a building. I realized that I was near a university campus.

The campus neighborhood reminds me now of my occasional visits to the Princeton campus. But the university building, which I saw off to my left, looked more like an elementary school mixed with a modern, suburban church building.

All the people walking toward the building seemed to be in their thirties and forties. There were men and women. Sometimes people were in groups, talking with each other. Other times they were walking alone.

Some of the people wore suits or formal attire. Others were wearing caps and gowns, like they were attending a graduation ceremony.

I also noticed that a lot of the women had very masculine faces. Some of the women were definitely women, just with very hard, squarish faces. But some of the people dressed as women may have been men.

As I got to the actual building, I realized that it was more like an elementary school. The adults I'd seen funnelling toward this area were actually teachers. They were all now dispersing toward different parts of the building: to their classrooms, I assumed.

I was in a square, concrete-floored courtyard of the building. There were a lot of kids running all about, rushing, I supposed, to get to their classes.

There were some adult women posted here and there, apparently to make sure that nobody was getting out of hand. I figured I'd ask one of these women either where I was, or where I was supposed to be. I didn't really know the answer to either of those questions.

I saw a woman posted just under the covering of the building, at the back, right corner of the courtyard. I figured I'd approach her and ask her what I was here for.

As I walked toward that woman, a girl wearing a pale pink sweater ran through the courtyard with a clear, plastic bottle of water.

One of the other women admonished the girl for some reason or another. The girl thought she was being really grown-up and helpful for doing something. But she was also using her task to avoid having to do some thing that all the girls her age needed to do. She knew this. So when the teacher admonished her, she listened.

But as I was about to reach the woman, some kind of alarm went off. The alarm was the prayer bell. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing, when the prayer bell went off, you had to stop, crouch down on your knees, bow your head to the ground, and start praying to god.

The ritual seems to me now to be Islam-influenced. But the prayer was more like a Christian prayer mixed with something like the United States Pledge of Allegiance.

I bowed, too, because I at least knew what all this meant. I was near a stairwell. A girl wearing a Muslim-style head-covering bowed near me.

As I looked at the floor, I noticed it was tiled in meter-square tiles looking like flecked granite. But this tile was all chipped away in a corner, so that almost a quarter of the tile was chipped into an oily blackness.

During the prayer-pledge, the girl in the pale pink shirt ran out of the doorway of a classroom near me. She had the water bottle again, and she was about to rush off somewhere. But the woman I was trying to approach told the girl to kneel down and pray, like everybody else.

The girl said something like, "Oh, yeah. Right." She didn't kneel down, though. She just sat, in some kind of athletic pose, with her back to the wall, and waited for the prayer to finish.

Something about the girl's face made me think she might have Down's Syndrome. But the girl was really smart and active. I liked her a lot.

When I got up from the prayer-pledge, I approached the adult woman. I had a feeling now that I was here for some kind of volunteer project with New York Cares. So I asked the woman if she knew where we volunteers were meeting. The woman pointed to the stairwell behind me and said that New York Cares was meeting up on the second floor.

But before I could go upstairs, a little girl grabbed my hand and told me to help her with her spelling. She dragged me over to something that looked like folding gym mats stood up on one side and w-folded, to look like a gym-mat version of Chinese screens.

Before the Chinese screen was a long, school-like table that was only 25cm or so above the ground. Both the little girl and I had to kneel to sit at the table. The table had a long sheet of paper across it. The paper was filled with items like multiple choice questions.

For each number, there may possibly have been questions, probably ridiculously inane questions, like, "How do you spell -----?" as if a kid wouldn't know how to spell a word he was looking right at. But there were no answers in the multiple choice spaces. It was just A, B, C, D, with no answers beside the letters!

I think what the little girl actually had to do was choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D, and then correctly spell the word in the space beside that letter. I think the little girl may actually have explained this to me herself.

The little girl was probably learning impaired. But she seemed really smart, as well. She seemed to be doing well enough spelling for herself. And maybe she just wanted me around for the heck of it while she was doing her work.

But every once in a while I'd have to help her with spelling. At some point, I even chose, and circled?, the letter "C" on one of her questions. I also remember something about one of us writing in cursive.

Then the little girl's brother came up. He was also, apparently, learning impaired, though not as much as his sister. He may have been a bit younger than the girl. He was climbing all over both me and the little girl, though he mostly seemed to be climbing all over me. He really wanted my attention, and he wanted to prove, I think, that he was smarter than his sister.

At some point I stood up, as if my lessons for the little girl and boy were over. I told them they'd both done a good job.

But the boy wanted to see my cell phone for some reason. I was pretty sure that that was not a good idea, because I think I'd been looking on some sort of fetish website before I'd come here. The boy didn't need to be seeing any of that kind of stuff.

I then saw my phones screen, as if it were flickering on, like a TV would, with a bit of vertical hold striping a black screen, as the TV is getting started up and getting a hold of itself. The striping was yellow -- so it seemed to me that this was "effect" for a production, not real vertical hold striping.

There was then, probably, some kind of video, maybe starring Hyde from the j-pop band L'Arc en Ciel. But I can't remember anything about it.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a dark restaurant. The restaurant had a lot of small, black, two-person tables in the main area. I sat at a table there. Off to my left there were some bigger booth tables. Multicolored neon lights seemed to reflect off many of the dark surfaces in the bar.

The two-person seating area was pretty full. A business man sat next to me, at the table to my right. He may have been Asian American, maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He wore square glasses and a kind of plain suit. He had a gentle, easygoing, but mature-sounding voice.

The man asked me why I had left my previous job. I began to list off a whole bunch of complaints about my former boss. The complaints just got worse and worse, and I just got more and more agitated as I listed them. I think the main complaint was that my boss wanted me out of the office, and that he just neglected me and tortured me until I left.

I now noticed that my boss was sitting up in one of the booths off to my left. Red, white, and green light was playing off his face, like a rotating neon sign (or a barber shop pole) was shining on him.

My boss was sliding a grey iPad back into a case. It was almost like the iPad was the thickness of a VCR cassette and that the iPad case was like a VCR cassette sleeve.

I could tell that my boss had heard everything I'd said about him. I was a little ashamed of myself for having spoken bad about him. But I was also glad that he'd heard it. I hoped that it would sink in somehow, and that he'd feel bad.

But I also felt bad for complaining. The business man may have been thinking about hiring me. Now that I'd complained so much, maybe he just thought I wouldn't be a good employee.

My boss was now standing just beside me, on my left. He said, "Hey, I need to talk to you for a second."

I stood up with him and walked toward the center of the restaurant. There was a wide pillar there, around which was a chest-high counter that had a bunch of computer screens (maybe cash registers?) on it. My boss stopped there and spoke to me.

He said "You know, I've been getting the feeling lately that you think I didn't treat you right while you were working for me. And that's just not true. I have a feeling you've been telling people stuff like that. And I really don't want you to."

The way he was saying all this made it sound like he had just come to these conclusions all by himself -- like he hadn't heard me speaking at all just now, and the idea had just popped into his head. I knew he was just trying to impress me by making himself sound insightful enough to guess my moves. But I'd seen him listening to my conversation.

I told my boss, "I saw you sitting there, listening to everything I said! I knew you were there, and that's why I said it! I'm not sorry I said it! You treated me like garbage while I was there!"

(EDIT: I forgot to say that there was also some point where I was even making fun of my boss' voice, doing some kind of high-pitched, flat squealing, with a sheep-like, bleating rhythm. I may have been standing or crouching over my boss while he was laying on the ground. I may even have had his left (?) arm pinned to the ground.)

I was now standing out near the dugout of a baseball field in a park. I was with my boss momentarily, still yelling at him. But my boss eventually changed into my old friend R.

We were actually standing with a group of people, maybe twelve or fifteen of us, all straggled out along a fence that went along from third base to home plate. R and I were standing just beyond third base. At this point, the fence was separated from the diamond by about twenty meters of lawn, and it went up a small slope.

I knew that I had been yelling at R just like I had been yelling at my old boss. But suddenly I felt like R was in control of something in my life. I didn't like R very much, but I felt like I should apologize to him and be nice to him, so that he would stop controlling whatever it was he was controlling in my life, and make things okay for me again.

There had been a little bit of a game going on on the ball field, a game between two semi-competitive teams, maybe teams of little kids. But now the kids were all just milling around the field, clearing off the field.

There was some sort of ceremony that was now being held on home plate. A kind of tall, kind of fat, bald man in a grey suit, white shirt, and reddish tie was presenting somebody to give a speech. The person was another old friend of mine, E.

I only heard one particular phrase from E's speech. I can't remember what it was. But it struck me as attempting to be "folksy," something that would be understood by and sympathized with by all the "common people" around him.

I was kind of sickened by this. When I'd first met E, he was a kind of intellectual guy. He struck me as being a genuinely good person. But the older he got, the more he enjoyed cheating and taunting people. But he still tried to carry off the act of being a good guy. By now, it was all just a horrible charade to anybody who knew him. And his speech was an awful example of it.

Nevertheless, when E finished his speech, I went after him, to go talk to him. I figured that since he'd done something important like give a speech, and be introduced by a man in a suit, that he might be an important guy now. He might be able to help me out in my own difficulties.

E walked over toward the fence, toward a section closer to home plate. I hurried down toward him. I may have reached him and started talking to him, in a really shameful kiss-up kind of way.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a house or a mansion. I was in what looked like a big living room. But I may have been sitting on the left edge of a bed. The room was all made of dark wood. There were no lights on. But a lot of natural light was coming through a doorway, probably a wide doorway into a bathroom.

The bed didn't have any blankets on it, just a white sheet around the mattress and a white sheet over that. The bed may actually have been a hide-a-bed, the kind that pulls out from under the cushions of a couch.

Just off to my right, a guy stood talking. It was as if he were in a commercial, or in some kind of "special features" style mini-documentary for a movie. He, and everything around him, had a gauzy haze, like I was already watching the documentary, and the view from the camera lens, which was in some kind of soft focus.

The guy was some famous director. He looked like he was from the late 1970s or early 1980s. He was kind of skinny, with hair down just below his shoulders. He wore roundish, black-rimmed glasses and some kind of nerdy-looking suit.

The director had a kind of high, but full voice, so everything he said sounded a little pompous, and a little more like singing than talking.

The director was talking about his future plans. But he didn't really seem to have any. He may have mentioned that he'd done a lot of work already, and that he now planned to just spend time with his family, to re-charge a little.

The director said that the thing that ruined a lot of creative people nowadays was letting themselves get too overrun by taking on too many tasks. Their work was cheapened, and the artists would get burnt out. The director said that he was going to try not to let this happen to him.

I stood up and walked toward the bathroom, still hearing the director, as if he were speaking directly into my head. The director may have started talking about the French filmmaker Francois Truffaut's career as an example of burning out. I may have seen some black and white photos of Truffaut, intercut with solid views of lavender color.

I now stood in the bathroom, looking down into the bathtub. I was thinking of taking a shower. But there was a little reddish dirt or grime ringing the side of the tub and dusting up the floor of it.

I was kind of grossed out by this. I wondered how a bathtub could be so poorly taken care of in such a rich house as this. I may have thought I'd clean the tub. But I also may have thought that I just wouldn't take a shower.

Dream #3

I was in a house with my sister. I was in the living room, and my sister was in the kitchen. Both rooms were small, so even though we were in two rooms, it felt like we were hanging out together. The living room had no lights on, but light came into it through the kitchen.

I had been sitting on the couch, probably watching a movie on a TV that stood on an entertainment center just off to my left. But now I stood up and walked into the kitchen. My sister was sitting at the kitchen table, doing something -- maybe writing, or coloring in a coloring book, or doing something on her phone.

At some point my sister may have turned into a blonde girl I knew in high school, though she may have been college-aged.

I told my sister that I was going to take a shower. She said okay. But she then mumbled something about the university I'd attended. I didn't understand what my sister had said. So I asked her to say it again. Again my sister just quickly mumbled something about the university I'd attended.

It was like my sister was giving me news about the university. But it was more like she was sharing her reactions to the news with me. She already expected me to know what the news was. And if I didn't know the news, she would just figure I was pretty stupid.

This was even more the case -- at least in my mind -- because my sister had been told the news by a man that she was attracted to.

This man was maybe ten years older than I. He was big and strong and probably involved in business in some way or another. If this man could outdo me with his knowledge, through my sister, my sister -- I thought -- would feel like she didn't need to respect me, or even treat me nicely, anymore.

So after I'd determined that my sister had really mentioned something about news regarding the university I'd attended, I just said something really non-committal, like, "Yeah, it's pretty crazy, right? I can't believe it," and then walked to the shower.

I walked down the dim hallway and into the dark bathroom. I didn't turn any lights on. I closed the door. I must have stripped out of my clothes, too. I now figured I would look at my phone, try to get whatever news I could about my old university, and, while I was showering, think up some responses to give my sister.

When I turned on the news, though, I found a web page that said that the house of famous actress Barbara Steele had caught fire. Apparently Barbara Steele (an actress famous for her roles in Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 and David Cronenberg's Shivers) nowadays lived in my old university town.

The news article showed a picture of Steele's house. But the photo was from the roof of the house. The roof, actually, took up almost all the photo. And the main focus of the photo seemed to be a small array of solar panels that now seemed to be sinking down through the roof.

There may also have been snow on the roof, and there were a few men on the roof, apparently in the middle of putting out the fire. The house seemed like it was just a regular, suburban house in a regular, suburban neighborhood, not a big mansion one would expect a movie star to live in.

The news article said that Barbara Steele had been in the fire, and that she'd been rushed to the hospital. It seemed to imply that she'd died. But I couldn't really determine whether that was true.

I figured this must have been the article my sister had been talking about. My sister would know how much I loved Barbara Steele. So she probably would have wanted to discuss with me any news she'd heard about her. I started thinking of responses to give my sister about the article.

But now I could hear (and maybe even see, in my mind's eye) my sister and the older man talking with each other. My sister was telling the older man that I seeemed to be going through some sort of difficulty. My sister even seemed to imply that I'd lost or was lacking something, as if the older man might help me get a replacement.

I was a little upset that my sister had told the man all of this, especially since my sister and the older man already seemed to be planning with each other how they could make me feel less intelligent than they were.

But I was also relieved. I knew I was missing something. And maybe the man could help me find it. I figured that once I got out of the shower I'd approach the man very humbly and ask him to help me.

But now I saw a strange image. It was a cartoon, or a comic book. A little girl had knocked on a door (her own front door?). A man, maybe the girl's dad, had answered the door. The man let his wife know that the girl was at the door.

But something about what the man said made me realize that the man and girl were going to have sex. They had probably already had sex in the past. It was like the man and the little girl were in love with each other.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was standing in a corridor that looked like it had a wheelchair ramp built into it. The wall I faced was a window wall, extending all the way down the corridor. There may have been a hairpin turn along the wall to get to a tiny, glass-walled space before the exit door.

I probably stood right at the door, inside the building. Outside stood a family. They were all telling me goodbye. The family was white, kind of well-off-looking. There were an older dad, probably a mom, and a bunch of other people.

There were two little girls in the family, and I may have been attracted to the littler one. She may have been five or six years old.

I took some chance to hug the little girl. I had a feeling that if I hugged her, we could both share our feelings of attraction for one another in some secret way. I was sure she was attracted to me, too. But I didn't want to get in trouble for showing my feelings.

Later on I may have been in some cafe. I may have been sitting at a table with a white boy. The table we sat at was against a wall. I sat on one end of the table so that the wall was to my right. The boy sat at the adjacent end, so that he faced the wall.

He was probably gay. He was tall, kind of pretty. He had his hair shaved really close on the sides and then kind of flowing on top. He wore a grey jacket, and he may have had the collar of the jacket turned up.

The boy was kind of stuck-up, it seemed to me. I was pretty sure he hated me. I didn't want to bother him. But I was also kind of angry that he acted so stuck-up. I felt threatened, and I wanted to prove somehow that I wasn't threatened.

I was now back with the family at the door. The older sister was now talking to me. The older sister was maybe ten or eleven years old. She had blonde-brown hair and tan skin. She wore a white skirt and a turquoise tank-top.

The older sister told me that the little sister had gotten sick or something, so she couldn't hug anybody. So the older sister would have to hug me instead.

I knew that the older sister was attracted to me. I knew that she thought if she could just get a chance to hug me, she'd make me attracted to her instead of to her little sister.

I hugged the girl. She wasn't skinny, but her body, around her waist, felt strong. I did feel like I was attracted to her. But I didn't want her family to know. I didn't want to get in trouble.

I walked out the door with the family. I either held hands with the older sister or managed to do something with her like lift her up onto my shoulders, so she was riding on my shoulders.

Everybody in the family seemed pretty happy. For some reason, I asked the girl something either like, "If you knew this was the last day of your life, what would you do?" or, "If this were the last day of your life, could you truly say you've died happy?"

I was now back in the cafe with the tall, white boy. I had apparently asked him some question as well. He was writing something in a notebook. His handwriting was mostly capital letters, very blocky, in something like black, felt-tip pen. But he was also answering me. I had a feeling that he was finally coming around to liking me.

Then another boy sat across the table from me. He had olive skin and black hair, with his bangs kind of spiked down a bit over his forehead. He wore a brownish sweatshirt. He also seemed to be gay.

The first boy had at some point gone to open the door of the cafe so that some cool air could flow in. But the second boy sat next to the thermostat. He turned up the heat.

The first boy asked the second boy if he'd turned up the heat. The second boy said he had. It wasn't clear whether he'd done it because the open door was making him cold or because he wanted to keep the heat at a level that was sure to annoy the first boy.

The first boy stood up to go close the cafe door, assuming that if he did that, the second boy would turn down the thermostat. But as he stood up, the first boy said to the second boy, "You know, I'm really beginning to despise you."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was out in a park, possibly as part of a school group. We all had to run a mile course around the park. For some reason this seemed like a lot to me.

We started running on a narrow dirt path. There was a dense row of short trees or tall shrubs, like junipers, to our left. I didn't really see anybody, and I myself felt like I was disembodied and floating over the dirt trail.

We worked our way up a hill and then turned left, out onto a wide lawn of dry, tan grass. To the right was a residential area. I don't think it was a part of the course, but I ran out there anyway.

My sister may have been with me. We went up one street, then turned back down it and headed toward the park. We then turned up another street, which curved around to the right a bit.

Just around the curve we saw a group of "gangsters" standing all the way across the road, blocking the street. The "gangsters" were a group of four or five tall, white boys wearing baggy jeans and t-shirts.

I knew those guys were nothing but trouble, especially for some guy and girl by themselves. So I turned myself and my sister around. We were walking by this time.

I was still afraid of the "gangsters" up the block, but I kept walking calmly. I was a little worried about whether my sister (who may also have been like my girlfriend) would think I was a coward for being so afraid.

As we approached the park, where I saw a few of my classmates (?) milling around after the run, I heard some hip-hop style song that I knew was popular. It was called "Destiny." (I had the melody in my head for a while, but I can't remember it now.)

I suddenly got really afraid. It was like I'd gotten so close to safety, I didn't want to lose it now by having the "gangsters" catch up with me. So I ran all the way into the park, and even past some small pine tree twenty or thirty meters into the park.

Dream #2

Two boys were driving a car on some road through the forest. The boys were both white, smart-looking, with kind of shaggy hairdos. One of the boys may have worn glasses. Some 1970s style song was playing on the car's radio.

The forest outside looked fake, almost as if it were a slightly grainy or overexposed projection, like for a music video. The view of the forest then changed to a view of fields of some kind of red-purple, thistly flower (which I'm pretty sure I mistakenly thought of as poppies).

The song also changed. It had previously been acoustic. But now, playing the same tune, it became electric.

I knew that something bad was going to happen. The music had become too "fateful." And now the car crashed into a tree. I may have thought at first that the boys were dead. But they were now outside the car, standing as if hiding behind it, looking out for some place they could go for refuge.

The two boys were on the outskirts of a college town. I may have thought it was Oxford. I was now in the scene, possibly as one of the boys or as myself. There was a tall church behind another, shorter building. The church seemed to be made of tan colored stone.

An old man pointed the church out to us as one of the most famous buildings in this town. I mentioned another church, probably designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The man sighed in disgust and waved me off. He may have made a comment about how modern architecture isn't any good.

I was now in some different area, walking away from a different old man and a couple other people, possibly including a woman. The old man made a comment to the woman about how she should be careful, because it was going to rain today.

I walked down a straight road with flat fields of tall, tan grass (?) on either side of me. I wondered if it really would rain. It was so sunny right now. I didn't see how it could rain.

But suddenly it started raining. It was a pretty heavy rain, and there were no clouds in the sky. I thought that it would only get worse once the clouds got here. I knew that would be terrible. I had a long way to walk, and no umbrella. I'd be soaking wet when I got home.

I decided to fly home. I simply levitated myself into the air. I got three or four meters above the ground. Soon after I started flying, it stopped raining.

But I felt unstable, like I could fall at any minute. To stabilize myself I pulled off my backpack (?). I re-fit it to myself, so that I was now using some bottom flap and belt-like straps as a seat. I now had a a lot more stability.

I was pretty excited that I was flying "in waking life." But I told myself it was nothing unusual, and that as long as I stayed calm I'd keep flying.

I flew up toward a pretty thick intersection of power lines. I thought I'd fly over them, as "in the past" I'd always flown under them. It was tough, though, from this distance, to get a steep enough angle where I could fly over the wires.

Suddenly my sister was with me. I now saw some insulating coils connecting the wires to the poles. My sister, apparently thinking the coils were transformers, cried out, "Pop 'em! Pop 'em!" It was like she thought I could explode transformers with my mind.

I may have tried to explain to my sister that I wasn't trying to focus on that right now. But suddenly we veered away from the road and the power lines. We went off to the left over a field, but probably near another road.

I could see that up ahead was an intersection with a few buildings and shops, like a kind of busy rest station out on a long highway. But I was suddenly afraid to get up there. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to see the place once I got there, as if I didn't have enough "imagination" for it.

I may have tried to remind myself that this was waking life, not a dream. If this was waking life, I wouldn't have to "imagine" that busy rest area. It would just be there.

But my fear was too much for me. And I landed in the field. My sister and I turned around and walked back toward the road we'd veered off from. There was now a big mountain on the other side of the road. The road itself may have been a little up on the mountain's face.

Dream #3

I was in "my family's bathroom" with my sister. My sister was telling me something about how to take a shower. It was pretty inconvenient, because there was something cluttering up the bathtub.

My sister was now gone, and I was all by myself. But, in the place of a toilet, my sister had left something like a gigantic potty-training seat, which was blocking up a lot of the bathroom. On top of that, there was something like a big head from an almost life sized action figure on the toilet seat.

I thought something to myself like, Isn't that just like my sister? To leave intruding signs of her presence, even when she isn't here? (My sister is *not* like that IWL.) But I decided not to be bothered by it. I'd just go take a shower.

But as I was getting into the shower, my mom banged on the door. She said, "I've got some bad stuff on you! Now I know what you've done to those kids!"

I thought, All my life I've been waiting for my mom to pin some kind of big thing on me. And I always knew it would have something to do with kids. There's nothing she could legitimately blame me for. But I'll find out what she's going to try and pin on me.

So I left the bathroom. My mom was sitting in the living room with my nephews, who were all little. My mom said, "You bought those kids Transformers for Christmas! You know they can't transform those things. It's just too frustrating for them. Plus, the parts break off! That's too dangerous."

My mom was playing with a little, yellow Transformer, about the color of a Caterpillar tractor. The Transformer had a little button on its chest.

I agreed with my mom that I'd made a bad choice in toys for my nephews. But I couldn't see how that would make me a bad person.

I looked up or over to a long set of drawers. On top of the drawers there stood a big toy. It was green and plastic, and it looked like a weird mix between a Venus Fly-Trap and a crane. The claw-scoop of the crane was connected to the rest of the toy by a black, elastic string.

The claw-scoop was closed, but I saw out of the top of it some pieces of what looked like a gigantic version of the Transformer Optimus Prime. Put together, I guessed, this Optimus Prime toy must have been almost a meter tall!

I got the idea that you could break apart the Optimus Prime toy. Then you could make the crane pick up the broken pieces. But -- somehow -- when the claw-scoop opened, it would actually move all the pieces together in such a way that the toy would be reconstructed.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some place like a restaurant. It may have been on the second floor of a bulding. The wall to my right had a couple windows, which may have had thin, white curtains over them. I sat at a small, round table. There was a larger, round table in front of mine.

My family sat down at the larger table. Somebody, possibly my mom, sat down with her chair pulled slightly out and to the side, so she kind of faced me.

My oldest nephew, as he looked when he was young, maybe nine or ten years old, crept up and hid behind the woman's body. I saw him do it. I was pretty sure he'd wanted me to see him, like he was only acting shy so I'd come right up and talk to him.

So I stood up and walked behind the woman. I may have started talking to my nephew.

Dream #2

I was in the driveway of "my family's house." The driveway was on the left side of the house, unlike IWL. My sister had a huge SUV. She and her kids were already inside it. My sister was apparently going to take me somewhere, possibly home or to a hotel. But she asked me to go get some keys out of the house for her.

At first it seemed like these keys may have been for the car, or for some car I was being taken to. We couldn't leave without them. But I may have found these keys.

At some point I was in the hallway, probably on a threshold to a room, talking with my mom. My mom may have seemed to be a lot taller than I, as if she were a giant or I were a kid.

I may have gone back outside to have my sister send me back into the house again. This time my sister needed keys for something for one of my nephews.

My nephew apparently needed to go to the doctor. But the keys were necessary for something regarding either the doctor's office or my nephew's actual body.

I went back into the house. I may have gone into the basement. It seemed like it was taking me a really long time to find the keys. I may have decided to give up and tell my sister that maybe she should look.

But then I was in the kitchen. I opened a drawer and found the keys inside, laying on a blank pad of sketch paper. There were three keys on a ring. They may have been inside a clear, plastic baggie.

Dream #3

I was at some theatre. At first I was in some part of the lobby. I was getting ready to watch some performance like a college or high school performance. Some kids who'd be performing were in the lobby, talking with each other. One of them was a tall, black boy.

Now I was in the theatre with my friend H. We sat in the very front row, on the very left end. The stage seemed normal, though slightly elevated. It was all black, and a blue spotlight shone on it. There may have been something like a wooden-barred cage on the stage.

Something about this performance may have had to do with Kiyoshiro Imawano and, possibly, Ryuichi Sakamoto. My friend H seemed to be really excited about this. But I got mad at her. I told her, "I've seen Kiyoshiro Imawano and ----- (possibly Ryuichi Sakamoto) performing here before!"

I was so mad at H for once more forgetting the details of my life that I had her twisted sideways, down on my lap. I had her head twisted up at a really painful angle toward the stage.

Now the play began. A bunch of kids kept coming out and introducing themselves. The play seemed to be about a bunch of cool, artistic kids all living together. As each kid took introduced him or herself, he or she would take a spot somewhere on stage.

A few black boys walked out and introduced themselves. I recognized one of them as one of the kids talking in the lobby. The stage was now low and bowed out in a kind of wide U-shape. I felt like the stage was smashing against my knees.

I remembered that my friend H had said she didn't have time to come to the show, and how she'd see me to the show and then leave. But, I happily remarked, H had come in and sat down with me. Now the show had started, and H still hadn't tapped my shoulder or anything to let me know she was leaving. She must have wanted to stay!

But I now looked over to H's seat. H was gone. She had left without telling me. She may have left a book in her chair.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a store like a high-end gift shop with my family. My mom, a couple other family members, and I were all huddled in a circle, conspiring to rip-off the store somehow. We may possibly have settled on something regarding a check. I then walked away from my family.

I had a green slip of paper in my hand. This was a check. I walked toward the corner of the gift shop, where there was a huge statue, maybe of stone, of something like a stereotypical Native American chief, with a big, feathered headdress. The shop must have been in a mall: a few meters off to my right was big, wide doorway leading out to a huge hall.

My sister ran up behind me. She started arguing with me about how I hadn't included her on the plans to get money. I told her something about how she had been too late for the meeting the rest of the family had had.

My sister wasn't taking any excuses. She now had the green "check" in her hand. We stood in a kind of empty space in the shop. My sister started yelling at me that she knew I'd created this counterfeit check, and that my signature, forged to be someone else's, was the one on it. My sister would get me sent to jail.

A woman walked up from beside some glass counter-cases, like jewelry cases. She asked my sister if there was any problem. I may have told the woman there wasn't any problem, hoping that my sister would just stay quiet.

Dream #2

A bedroom in an apartment. The apartment had all black walls, almost like they had been burnt, or like they were walls for a theatre production. The lighting of the apartment was also very stage-like. The apartment seemed to be from the 1950s.

There were three people in the bedroom: a husband, a wife, and the husband's friend. They were all maybe in their late forties or early fifties. The men were dressed nicely. The woman was done up for bed. She wore a thick, pink robe with dark pink lapels, and she had her blonde hair done up in thick curlers.

The husband himself may now have been getting into bed as well, maybe just dressed in a white tank-top undershirt and a pair of boxers. He may have been kind of skinny, bald and big-headed, with a mustache.

But just as the husband seemed to be getting himself settled in the bed, the wife found a porn novel. The front cover illustration may have shown a pretty, blonde woman in pink underwear in some kind of night scene.

The wife yelled at the husband that he shouldn't be reading this kind of stuff. The wife ran out of the room with the book. She threw the book out of the house, out onto the stairwell landing.

The husband's friend cried, "No!" as the woman tossed out the book. The book just sat out on the landing. But I knew that the husband's friend was going to get the book.

The husband's friend may then have given a little speech, in narration, as if to the audience or in his own thoughts. He said, "A book like that is too valuable just to throw out. Besides, he likes those books. But if I just take it back and hide it, the wife won't care."

The view may now have been of the bedroom again. The husband was in bed, but the wife was still walking around the room in her robe, not getting into bed.

On the wall to the right of the bed was a closet, which may have had its door open. The closet had a high shelf, on which was a brown and tan striped, cylindrical hat-box.

The husband's friend continued, "I'll just hide the novel in the wife's hat-box. That's where I hide all the husband's pornographic materials.

"The wife knows it, of course. Every time she opens her hat box to get her hat, she sees all the husband's pornographic materials. But the wife is okay with that. Because this way she knows that the husband is at least trying to hide his pornographic materials."

I may have seen a second hat-box in the closet.

Dream #3

Possibly a dream where I was in a theatre, watching a movie. The theatre was enormous, with three aisles of seats, in a kind of flat "U" shape. I was sitting near or in the front row, toward the left end of the theatre.

I may then have been sitting far toward the right end of the theatre. I had a female friend with me. We may have been stuck behind a column. With the column and our veered angle of the screen, the view was really bad. The screen may have been big and at normal height at first. But now it was high up and kind of small.

I asked the woman if she was okay with our view. She probably wasn't, but she probably told me it was fine.

Good morning, everybody

Dream #1

I was walking with my sister out onto a parking lot. It was a sunny and clear day, but there was a lot of shade from the canopies of trees overhead. The parking lot was huge and empty. But most of the lot seemed to be shaded by the huge, green trees, which were only on the border of the parking lot.

As we walked into the lot, my sister, who was to my left, and seemed much shorter to me than she is IWL, was telling me about my oldest nephew.

As my sister was talking, I noticed that there was a building, much like the Rose Planetarium structure on the side of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The building was just a gigantic, glass cube. But I was worried because I didn't see the gigantic, silver sphere, the housing for the actual planetarium theatre, inside the glass cube.

Suddenly it seemed as if the walls of the multi-story glass cube were turning yellowy. It was like the glass was decaying, becoming brittle. It seemed as if the whole thing might crumble at any moment.

My sister told me about my oldest nephew. "He may act fine and seem well-behaved to everybody. But I'm worried about him. He has these obsessions. Sometimes he needs to count certain things. And he'll just get so carried away with the counting that he can't do anything else."

I thought to myself, I haven't treated my nephew kindly enough over the past few years. I've been pretty cold to him, and everybody else, almost all the times I've been home recently. I need to make sure, this time around (apparently I was on a visit), to be much more attentive to my whole family.

My mom had a car parked way out in the center of the parking lot, which was otherwise empty. My sister's children were all playing around the car.

From out of nowhere my oldest nephew came riding by on a bicycle. He could see that my sister and I were talking, so he didn't interrupt us. He just pulled a pop-a-wheelie, which he'd intended me to see. He held his front tire up in the air for a few good seconds as he rode. I figured this would be a great time to tell my nephew I thought he was doing a good job.

But my nephew pulled back too far on his bicycle. He fell to the ground. He seemed to have injured himself. My sister and I ran to my nephew. My mom may have been there as well. But now my nephew was up and walking around.

I was now wearing shorts. I noticed I had a big gash and scrape on the inner side of my left leg, just to the side of my kneecap. I may have had a similar gash on my right leg. The gash was deep and red, but it wasn't bleeding. The scrape was only white, as if I'd only scraped the top layer of skin.

I knew this was what my legs would look like if I'd been in the same bike accident as my nephew had just been in. I asked my nephew, who was up and walking around alright, "How the heck did I get your injuries after you rode the bike?"

I figured to myself that there may have been some kind of empathic connection between us. For some reason, I may have kept getting my nephew confused in my mind with my brother.

I was now standing before my nephew's bike, which was just stood up, while my nephew was running around playing, possibly with my other nephews. My legs may now have been fine.

My nephew's bike had a lot of chrome on it, as if it were now some kind of mix between a bicycle and a motorcycle. There were thick, chrome wheel-guards and a smallish, chrome mechanism like an engine. The engine seemed to be fastened right into the front end of the triangle of the bike's frame.

My nephew ran up to the bike and began looking at the reflections in the chrome. He said that he could see his own reflecion in the chrome, but he couldn't see mine.

I said that maybe he was standing in the wrong place. My nephew was looking mainly at the reflections on the engine's chrome. I suggested he look at the reflections on the wheel-guard's chrome. My nephew may have done this. But I still don't think he saw me.

Dream #2

There was a concert with some guy, singing some famous song that I can't remember. It was a really emotional kind of ballad. The guy was on a dark stage, apparently just a sound-stage for a TV studio. He was surrounded by either thin walls or tilting or triangular towers of TV screens. One light shone down on him, and a high-angled TV camera was taping him.

There was some really famous part in the song that apparently everybody knew because it was so melodic and emotional. Everybody also knew when the famous part came in, because the buildup to that part in the song was so pronounced.

But when the really famous part of the song came on, the camera view switched from being on the main singer to being on a kind of TV camera view of a TV screen. The image on the screen was a little grainy, not very stable, and monochrome, with a blue-green kind of tint. There may have been little time-code letters and numbers running across the top of the screen.

Robert Plant's head and shoulders were in the view of the screen. Plant looked very young, like he looked in the 1970s. He was wearing some shirt that exposed a lot of his chest.

Plant was supposed to be singing harmony on the really famous part of the song that the main singer was singing. But now the time for the harmony part had come in.

Plant almost missed his cue to start singing -- in fact, he started about half a beat late, and he fumbled even then. He was tilting his head and looking off to his left.

It became very apparent to me that Plant was reading the words of the song off a teleprompter. But this didn't help him much. He was hardly getting the rhythm of the song, and he'd sometimes slur or mumble the words, or say them at a much slower pace than the main singer.

I was really surprised. Robert Plant was supposed to be a pro, one of the best. But he wasn't even doing the karaoke version of this song -- a song apparently everybody in the world knew -- correctly!

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was out on a stage, just a little bit to the right (my right) of the stage. Back and to my left, the playwright George Bernard Shaw lay in a hospital bed. He was really sick, but he was giving a lecture. I was here either to introduce him or kind of interview him. His voice was really faint and weak.

Now I was leaving the theatre through some backstage area and a backstage door. I was walking through some kind of brick-walled alley. It was daytime.

Suddenly I realized or heard that Shaw was about to die. He knew he was going to die. He had announced that his next lecture would be his last. But that lecture would be today. In fact, it was starting right now! And I had left the theatre!

I had to see Shaw's last lecture. He was my favorite playwright. And I had the feeling Shaw would die immediately or soon after he got off stage. So I had to be there.

I ran back in the door, through the backstage area, and through a small door that led directly onto the stage. The show had just started. A woman had introduced Shaw. Shaw now sat in a nice chair on a green rug. A nice table with a lamp may have stood near the chair. Shaw had just started giving a little speech.

I at first wanted to sit near Shaw on the stage. But since I came in late I didn't feel I deserved to. So I sat off to the right of the stage. In the shadows were some bleachers, which were pretty well filled with people. I sat on the floor on the bleachers, where I thought I would be in view of Shaw, so he'd at least know I'd attended.

The woman asked Shaw some question about religion. Shaw responded a little ramblingly. He then said, "And, yes, I've been in a coven. I've headed a coven."

A little, black boy in a black hooded sweatshirt with thin, widely-spaced, white stripes and sitting in a wooden chair a couple meters to the right of and behind the woman raised his hand.

Shaw pointed to the boy, as if to take his question. He said, "Yes, you. And what's your name, little boy?"

The boy stood up. His face couldn't be seen. He may have been turned around, or he may have had his hoodie on backwards, with the hood pulled up over his face. He said, "Some people call me Lazarus. But you can think of me as Nicodemus."

The boy may have started knocking himself on the top of his head with his right fist.

Dream #2

I was in some room like a school cafeteria. The floors and walls were all white, and there may have been a set of white folding chairs all arranged in a grid, like for a meeting.

But whatever had been going on here was finished, and everybody was leaving. Apparently we'd had a meeting regarding the production of some movie. It wasn't certain the movie was going to be made. But people were feeling a lot more confident that it would.

The leaders of the effort all stood up front, near some long folding tables. There were a few long, plastic coolers. The leaders were kind of clowning around with each other while they packed up their supplies for the day. The leaders all looked South Asian. One of the leaders looked like the Malaysian singer MonoLoQue.

The leaders may actually have been making up some wacky, funny song based on the song they thought would be the theme song for the movie. I tried to join in, but I don't think I was very funny. The leaders were patient with me. But I got the feeling they thought I was being too much of a groupie. So I decided to leave.

I walked down a stairwell in the center of the floor. But as I got halfway down I realized I'd forgotten something upstairs. I ran back up to get it. But I didn't really know what I was doing upstairs and I didn't want the leaders to see me again. So I went back down the stairwell.

About halfway down the stairwell, I realized I had to go back to my apartment before I went anywhere. But my apartment was right near the stairwell. In fact, just in front of the stairwell, right where I stood, was a window to my room. (Off to my left may have been some area like a department store.)

So I swung myself up and bashed through a wooden panel blocking the window to my bedroom. Right before I'd done this I'd seen a tallish, kind of overweight, white man in a red t-shirt and blue jeans walking along some balcony between flights of steps behind me, as if I were now in some kind of apartment building's stairwell.

I broke through my window and rolled onto my bed, then onto the floor. The window seemed to have been open. But I noticed that I'd broken the board, a white-painted board about 33cm high and 1 meter wide, in half.

As I landed on the floor, I heard a woman in the living room go get the door. Oh, I thought to myself, that woman must be my new roommate.

The woman opened the door to the man I'd seen in the stairwell. (I don't know how I knew this, since I didn't see it.) As soon as the woman let the man into the apartment, she yelled, "No! I'm not doing it! I told you I didn't want to be a part of it anymore and I didn't want to see you anymore!"

I thought I should go out into the living room and defend my new roommate. But I was afraid. So I just sat and listened.

The man had apparently been trying to get the woman to be in a movie for a production house he'd just started up. But already the production house was having trouble with censors. The man said, "And this is a movie that, just because you got a few people saying certain cuss words, people wanna make it rated X!"

But the woman had left the man just because he had kept putting her in porn movies. She was yelling at him that she could tell he was getting started going down the same old path, and that she didn't want to be a part of it again. She seemed either to be walking the man to the door or heading out with him.

I sat on my bed and looked at the broken board in my hands. It sounded quiet. Maybe the man was gone, I thought, and I could go introduce myself to the woman. But I was wondering what kind of first impression I'd make with her, suddenly having appeared in my bedroom, and having broken the board on my window. The woman might think I was crazy!

Dream #3

I was sitting in a car with a woman who looked exactly like my mom but was something more like an interviewer or psychiatrist. I sat on the passenger side, and the woman sat on the driver's side. It was daytime. We were parked at the far end of a long driveway in front of a house.

I told the woman, "About the time that my cousin and I were trying to figure out what to do for college --"

The woman interrupted me. "What do you mean? I thought that before, you'd said that your cousin didn't start college until a couple years after you did. How could he be going to college at the same time as you? It doesn't make sense!"

I said, "That's not what I mean. What I said just now was --"

Suddenly something happened, and I knew I had to leave the car and get going somewhere else. My car door had been open all this time. I stood up and walked off to my right. I walked along a stretch of dirt on the shoulder of a road.

As I approached a fence, an adult woman came walking toward, then past me with a bunch of little girls. It was like a school group. Most of the girls were five years old or younger. They were all wearing diapers: some only diapers, some diapers with dresses over them. I was sexually attracted to these little girls.

But there was one little girl, an Asian girl who seemed to be maybe seven or eight years old. She had jaw-length, black hair and was wearing a white dress with thin fabric. It appeared that this girl was also wearing a diaper, though I couldn't tell for sure. I was extremely attracted to this girl.

I passed the fence, and one more adult woman walked along past me, following one last little girl wearing only a diaper. But for some reason, I found myself so sexually attracted to the little Asian girl that I felt like I had to follow her, at least to find out if she really was wearing diapers.

I turned around and headed for the little girls, none of whom I could see now. I knew if I caught up with them and started trying to get close to the little Asian girl I'd certainly be singled out as a pervert. So I was trying to think up excuses for heading back and being near the girls.

I thought that the little girls must have been going to the car to see the woman. Now I was in the car with the woman. She started up the car as I started talking to her. We pulled out of the driveway and drove away.

I told the woman, "You see, my cousin and I were in the same year of school. And we were best friends. So when we got into our Junior year, we both started thinking together about what colleges we'd go to."

The woman had turned right around a corner and was now driving through an alley going past the backyards of houses.

I continued. "But my cousin ended up getting sidetracked. So he didn't go to school right away. He had a terrible childhood! I'd go over there all the time to see him."

The woman now turned right and pulled into the driveway in the backyard of some house like my great grandma's old house.

I continued, "My cousin would be grounded for, like, six months at a time! And he'd just have to sit in his bedroom in the basement for the whole time. Sometimes he'd even have to write thousands of sentences."

I had to leave again. I opened the car door. There were some little girls walking around in diapers in the driveway. I was kind of attracted to them.

As I stood up and turned right, to walk away past the back of the car, I saw that my sister was leaning against the car, almost right in the doorway! She said, "Hey," in a kind of guyish voice.

I hoped my sister hadn't seen me ogling the little girls. But I looked at my sister. She was skinny, in shape, and she wore a blue-sleeved, white t-shirt that really showed off her boobs. I suddenly realized my sister was really attractive!

Dream #4

I walked into a museum with my mom. The lobby was dim and narrow. The ticket counter was some kind of polished, black stone.

We walked up to the ticket person. I was a member at the museum, and the ticket person knew me. But he might not have seen me. My mom handed the man my membership card and said something like, "He's a member."

The man said, "Great," and was about to print a ticket for my mom.

But my mom said, "I'd like three people, and also two children, please."

The man seemed a bit taken aback by my mom asking for so many tickets. I was taken aback, too! I thought I was coming to the museum with just my mom. Who were all these other people coming with us?

I said something to the man. He finally noticed me. He said, "Oh! But you're a member *here*. Why are you trying to get in with this card? This is a MoMA card."

I saw the card in the man's hand and realized he was right. Hoping to avoid him getting suspicious of me -- like he might have thought I was trying to hide the fact that I'd let my membership expire -- I flipped quickly through my wallet, trying to find the right membership card.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a dark bedroom with my mom and my sister. The room seemed to have cinder block walls and concrete floors. The only light in the room seemed to be a blue glow from somewhere along the walls. The room was really big, almost empty, with a big bed off on the right wall.

I held something like an iPad in my hands. It was playing some sort of news show. Below the news show there was a little yellow strip that ran horizontally across the screen. In this strip would be shown little squares that were like stills frome video news stories.

The news story playing in the main part of the screen was interrupted at one point by an announcer informing people that updates had been made on a man who had been wanted by the police.

I looked down to see the updated videos. At first there were strings of black text. As well as the wanted man, there had been a missing man. One string of text said, "MISSING MAN FOUND DEAD." Another string of text said, "WANTED MAN FOUND KILLING MISSING MAN."

I now pressed on one of the stills, to play one of the video news updates. In my mind's eye, I saw a video image of the wanted man being caught doing something like sawing the missing man's head off while he was still alive.

While I had been wathing the original news story and reading the lines of text, I had been sitting out on the floor, in the middle of the room. Now I was laying on the bed, possibly with my sister.

The still I had pressed played a video history of the two men, up to the most updated news reports. The shots showed various photos of the men in some living room. There was often also a woman in the room. The woman was one of the men's wife. I'm not sure which man.

The men's appearances changed throughout the photos. Sometimes the men looked young, almost 1970s-like. They had huge hair and wore dark sweaters and jeans. At other times, they looked like kind of clean-cut college guys.

But most of the time the two guys looked almost identical: long hair pulled back in a ponytail, the hair mostly brown, with grey streaks in it, and a big grey streak in the center, full, but not huge, beards, and blue eyes.

The two men had had something to do with a cult. It was like one of the men had been the cult leader, while another of the men had been a member of the cult, then gone on either to join another cult or try to make a cult of his own.

Either both men or just the cult leader became militantly angry. There were possibly even groups sent out with weapons. Finally the cult leader had caught up with the other guy and killed him.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a drug store, like a Walgreens. But it was huge, like a Super Wal-Mart. I was probably with someone else, possibly my sister. We wandered around the outer aisles of the store, going counter-clockwise. We went past the pharmacy counter, which was at the back end of the store.

Just past the pharmacy section, my sister turned left down an aisle. I waited for her at the end of the aisle, possibly sitting on the floor and playing with some of the products from the store. Somehow or other it became apparent that my sister had got some shampoo. It may have been in a pink bottle. She may have gotten some bottles of some other brands of shampoo.

My sister and I were now with a group of other people. The shampoo was brought up in conversation. But I realized that we hadn't brought the shampoo back with us. We now had to run to go get it. I may have been in the lead. Along with my sister there may have been a couple other people from the group.

We ran through an area that looked like a big Warehouse store, like a Sam's Club, with huge shelves in an enormous, concrete building. But it also felt a bit like a Toys R Us. We ran to one of the really big aisles. I ran left down the aisle.

There was a whole display of shampoos. Some of the shampoo bottles were scattered all over the floor. I may have picked up another pink bottle of shampoo. It was probably Johnson and Johnson's baby shampoo.