Dodgeball Ritual I'm sitting with my sister, watching a dodgeball game. All of the players are wearing gray shirts with four check-boxes in a row across the front, with a variable number of boxes containing X's. Only one person, a friend of my sister's, has all four boxes marked, and I ask her about it. "It's because he's dead," she says. Meaning he's already been hit four times, and it's an unusual circumstance that he would continue the game under these circumstances. "Oh," I laugh. "That explains why there's no one else wearing that." One of the players gets the ball, senses an alley, and charges up the gym towards the end zone. There's a player from the other team right behind him, and it looks like he's going to get tackled, but he does a baseball slide and he makes it! But he goes past a wall and out of my line of sight. People are celebrating his point, but he calls out that he still got hit. So it's a point, but he gets a mark on his shirt. I try to remember--did he already have three? He comes back past the wall. Yes, three marks. So he's "dead," now. Suddenly I wonder if there's a ritual to commemorate this occasion. I ask my sister, but then my question is answered for me when the guy carries out an ornate chair and a purple blanket patterned with silver stars, setting the chair in the middle of the gym. I switch places with the player, so now I'm sitting on the stool, trying to cover myself with the blanket. Everyone standing around the chair has a funereal expression on zir face. Once I'm covered, I'm whisked off backstage somewhere. There are musicians back there. Later, when another player is whisked off in the same ceremony, I notice that one of the musicians is rushing terribly. Laser Tag Classroom I'm sitting in a classroom when I see an enemy sneaking through the door. "Watch out!" I shout. Then I pull out my laser tag gun and start shooting at them. They angrily shoot back at me, but for some reason their shots don't seem to register on my suit. I feel awkward, like somehow I'm cheating. Should I just pretend that they hit me, since by all rights they probably should've? But then the person shooting at me loses all of her HP and leaves. By now the classroom has prepared its defense against the incoming invasion. More enemies come through the door, and people start shooting. All of the enemies are shooting exclusively at me, and it's overwhelming. Plus, one of them is somehow launching laser grenades at me. I have absolutely no idea how to do that, and I feel like I'm losing. And indeed, soon all of my HP is gone. I guess they got their vengeance, but that was not fun.
Never Tickle a Sleeping Polar Bear (7:12) Two people somehow anger a polar bear. It starts chasing them and they run all the way to the other side of town and into a building, where someone uses a phone to call for help. Help is slow to arrive, though, and meanwhile, we're all watching some kind of live feed that shows us where the polar bear is. It will reach the building in a matter of moments. Now, looking out the window, I can see it running down the street. And still no sign of help. The bear comes inside, and I know it will kill people one at a time until help finally arrives to stop it. Seeing as those two idiots were the ones to anger it in the first place, I think it's appropriate that they should be the first victims. We push one of them into a pool as a sacrifice. The polar bear paces on the edge for a moment, then dives in after the sinking person. I don't watch, but a friend comes up and tells me, "Well, I saw it." I can imagine how gruesome it must have been. I realize that now I will probably start having nightmares about polar bears attacking me. Rock Concert Setup (10:40) I've agreed to help an old high school friend set up for tonight's rock concert. I'm just really curious about how all of this works. One of the first things we do is unwind a lot of extension cord around some concrete poles set up around the edges of the pavilion. We go around the outside about a dozen times. Then a big truck dumps some stuff in the middle of the room and start threading a bunch more cords every which way. Meanwhile, I keep asking a bunch of questions about /why/ we're setting things up in certain ways, and it's clear that my friend is getting kind of exasperated. He just wants to get the job done. And apparently I'm messing some stuff up: he tells me that I'm not supposed to run the cord right along the concrete bricks; they're not supposed to touch at all. I'm about to ask him why, but then I see the unhappy expression on his face as he waits for the inevitable question, and I decide I'd better give him a break. He thanks me for it, and I set about moving all of the concrete bricks. Later, his dad comes in, and my friend says something to him that I don't understand. In fact, I'm not even sure if it was English. I look more closely at the pair of them. My friend keeps bowing and saying what sounds like formalisms in a language I don't understand. He's acting very, very respectfully towards his dad. I seem to remember hearing back near the end of high school that he did something very embarrassing; maybe the punishment for that is causing this behavior now.
Camera Project (7:06) My sister needs to borrow my camera ASAP for a class project which I assume is due this morning. I give it to her somehow and head to my own class, Discrete Math. On the way I get a text from Mom saying that my sister has gotten really depressed about this project, since now she can't get the pictures off of the camera. I feel stupid for not realizing that she would need the CD to install the camera's driver onto her computer. I'm not even sure where that CD is, nowadays. I might have packed it in one of those boxes I've been meaning to send home. It'll take a while to find it for her. But that's actually okay, I suddenly realize, because I don't have class this morning--it's Monday, and Discrete Math is on Tuesdays. Today I don't have class until the afternoon. Only, maybe the project was already due, in which case I can do nothing to help. On the off chance it will do some good, I head back towards my dorm. By means of a cutscene [or something], I see that Dad's given my sister a call, to say in no uncertain terms that he is totally unsympathetic to her plight. I also see that my sister is standing in a grassy lawn, crying, waiting for her boyfriend to come with roses and make her feel better. I think that's a bit of an immature thing to use a boyfriend for. Old Folk's Home I'm about to walk away from the building when I decide, regretfully, that I might as well go back there to practice viola. I don't like that building. That one weird professor lives in it, and it's basically an old folk's home. I turn around and walk back, noticing that there are a lot of string quartets and small bands rehearsing on the sidewalk, all in a row. Huh. Inside, I wander around the building for a while. There is a shallow spiral staircase to the second floor. I feel old myself as I climb them, since my recent sickness has left me lethargic enough that I have to put both feet on each step. This frustrates me, so I decide to challenge myself and try the other staircase: a much steeper one going up the middle of the spiral staircase, with golden steps that are individually suspended on ropes from the ceiling. It turns out to be very hard, since there's nothing to stop the steps from swinging back and forth like so many swings. I have to grab a rope to prevent myself from falling off. One of the women working at desks on the second floor notices my plight and demonstrates proper use of the staircase. She has no trouble walking all the way down. But there's not really a trick to it; you just have to be very coordinated. I can't believe anyone thought that this staircase was a good idea. It seems dangerous. In describing this staircase, later, I call it a "Margo Walk." Back on the first floor, I meet a nice old woman and her friend. As a test, the woman has us alternate numbers, counting to ten in German. It gets off to a slow start, because I was confused by her accent and I expected she was going to ask for Korean. Then I ask her how to say "forty" in German, because I only know twenty and thirty. [IRL: I didn't even know "thirty"; I was confusing it with "thirteen."] She seems confused, thinking that I should have asked how to say "forty-four," I guess because it's more fun to say. It's an interesting approach to linguistics, I suppose. She has to think a long time about "forty." Has she been speaking English for so long that she forgot her native language? Then it's time for lunch, and as a group we set off for the dining room. I wonder if the'll want me to sit next to them. I decide not to risk being unwelcome, and I sit at the end of the table instead. Then I notice that somehow my place doesn't have a plate with food, while almost everyone else's does. I decide I'll just be patient, but in the meantime I'm worried that some of the people here will start fussing over me, thinking that my not having a plate is a dreadful tragedy, or something. I look around the table at the old faces around me, trying to reconcile myself to the idea of old age. I guess for the most part they're good-looking, in their own ways. [I think I came back to this lunchroom on various other occasions. I began to feel a bit like a freeloader for eating lunch here almost every day, but on the other hand I would feel rude abandoning everyone just before the meal. And the food was pretty good.] Are We Watching Porn? Spoiler for sexual content: I'm in the basement with a group of kids my age. There are about a dozen TVs down here, all showing similar videos. At first, the content is pretty innocuous. But there's this one video with two women. Somehow their clothes start disappearing, and somehow what they're doing is stimulating to one of the women. After a minute she gasps and says, "That was SO GOOD!" At this point, I'm a little confused and uncomfortable (and aroused); I thought these videos were about something else. Everyone else seems confused too; another guy asks, "Are we watching porn?" In response, a few people laugh. By now, everyone in all of the videos is naked. Lucid? [I remember that I was lucid at some point in the night. I was looking at a natural landscape and appreciating the detail. Then I tried to look upwards, and the lights dimmed and I lost all visuals.] Stamitz Viola Concerto (9:23) I'm talking to someone in the entrance hall of an old-ish building. I hear a viola behind me, and suddenly I recognize the music as the theme from the first movement of the Stamitz viola concerto. Sweet! I look around at the player, who turns out to be a forty-odd, balding man. I notice that he's playing the accompaniment parts as well, using double stops. For that reason, he's playing well under tempo. Also, sometimes he has to break a long solo note into repeated shorter notes, since the accompaniment underneath is changing. Wow, this guy's good. I feel very inept in comparison. Ritual of the Children I'm sitting in a common room when a girl comes in from outside. She starts talking to some friends of hers, telling them about a meeting she just attended with a famous person, who actually just sent out a tweet about the meeting that involved a play on words on the girl's name. She's pretty happy about this. Later, I come back into the common room. The girl's already there. I sit next to her and try to start up a conversation. We talk about her name. Turns out her name is Sadie Hawkins, which is also the name of a type of school dance. I'm surprised I didn't make this connection the first time I heard it. I suppose that must be because I heard it in the context of a play on words. I try to explain this to her, but my explanation is something along the lines of, "Oh, I guess that makes sense, because . . . you know, it was . . . right?" Immediately afterward, I feel embarrassed for being so terribly awful at communication. I think I was afraid to explain it directly, because that would mean admitting that I eavesdropped on her conversation. Then a bunch of ten-year-old kids come into the room and start doing a ritual. Then it's time for lunch, but we have time to shower first, if we want. I do want to, so I try to head down the hallway to the bathroom. But the entrance is like two feet too short for my head. I suppose this hallway must be reserved for the ten-year-olds. They have their own hallway? This is weird. Whatever. I go down the hallway to the left, which takes me to the bathroom. It's dark in here, and crowded. I open the first door that I come to, but it's a toilet stall, not a shower. I keep looking for a shower, but instead I come upon a row of turnstiles in the right wall. The kids are lined up behind them, entering one at a time. If this is their entrance, then I probably went past the showers. And I'd better find one soon, because it will be even more crowded here before long. Tropical Island [I am awake at the beginning of this dream.] I know that it is almost time to wake up, but I decide to see if I can fall asleep into a dream landscape of my choosing. [Sort of like a WILD, I guess, but I didn't use that terminology at the time.] I decide that I will attempt to enter the dream quickly by visualizing myself falling from a great height. I picture a field of rolling plains, and in the distance there is a tall group of rocks with almost vertical sides. I am at the top of those rocks, I decide. The view starts to zoom in on the rocks. I still feel like I'm just picturing this in my head, not dreaming it, which frustrates me. Eventually I zoom in on myself, and then I fall backwards off of the cliff. [I can't remember the details of the event.] I've landed on a beach, in the surf, though it takes a few moments for me to get my bearings. Somehow this is not what I wanted to happen, but a voice tells me that I should be feeling very comfortable right now (seeing as how this is a tropical island), so I should try to enjoy myself. I wade into the water, but almost immediately I notice something floating in the water near me that looks like dog poop. Eww. I try to wade away from it, but a trick of the current seems to make it follow me. Once, I think I've gotten away from it, only to look again a moment later and find that it's back. Then I notice that there's a current under the surface that's making a lot of stuff collide with my legs on its way past me. Seaweed, perhaps. In any case, it's gross. This is not fun.
[Another bad night; still sick. I woke up at 4:51 remembering something about a bike race on a mountainside where everyone crashed.]
Improvising a Screenplay (11:51) I'm randomly driving around a town, improvising a screenplay aloud. I know some of the scenes won't come out perfect, but that's okay, because I'm only planning to use this as a sort of first draft. Once, a woman in a nearby car gives me a funny look, presumably because I'm apparently having a conversation with myself. Haha, oops. The policemen and policewomen in this town are mounted on horseback, dressed in smart-looking blue uniforms with giant white feathers in their hats. There seem to be a lot of them on the road right now; I wonder why. Also, since I'm having trouble paying attention to the signs on the road and therefore making no few accidental violations of the law, I hope none of them have noticed me yet. This car is new, and it comes with one of those small remote controls which can lock and unlock the doors. But this one also has another neat feature: if you're driving in a residential area and you click a certain button, the car automatically detects the nearest parking space, and directs your attention to it by slowing down and angling in that direction. There's a related feature for pulling out of parking spots which somehow detects passing traffic. I park and unpark a few times before eventually getting out to meet up with my family. I explain to them about the cool functionality in our new car. Group Transportation (8:45) A group of students at my college are traveling together one evening to get somewhere. However, the current stage of our trip is rather ad hoc: we're waiting on a curb to get picked up by people who have cars, but we're not sure who will be in which cars. So when I get in a friend's car and he drives off, I notice that there's someone back on the curb who didn't get a car, but there's still a spare seat in this car. I doubt my friend will be too happy about going back for him, but I tell him, anyway. He immediately starts turning around, but it's a complicated process, because this is a busy highway. For instance, we have to go a couple hundred feet down a side street. Eventually we pick up the other guy. Then, later, we stop at a house on the outskirts of the city. I've never been here before. After a few minutes, it occurs to me to ask my friend whose house this is. He says it's somebody's dad's. Frags: I'm watching a Miyazaki film in a theater. I'm surprised to realize, suddenly, that it's been dubbed in English, rather than just using subtitles.
[I just came down sick, so the only dream I remember is a feverish, tense one about being in a walking race where in order to succeed, you have to move your leg in slow motion in such a way that it crosses certain three-dimensional boundaries and surfaces in exactly the right way. Somehow you weave your foot's trajectory with the trajectories of other people's feet, and only one path can win. The dream was very closely tied to my own struggle to make it through the night in the face of fever and shivering and cramps. I woke up also at around 4:30.]
Wing Women (6:30) A group of girls is talking to me in a side room. At the end of the conversation, they form a semicircle around one girl in the middle and ask me a question: something about adding up all of their ages and dividing by five. I realize that what they're really doing is trying to tell me that the girl in the middle is really cute and I should really consider dating her, because it would make her happy. Reflexively, I smile in response to the friendly gesture, and I actually think my smile turns out to be a nice one. Then the other girls go back to the main room, leaving me with the cute girl. Despite being pretty sure of what I was just told, I'm still nervous about asking her on a date. We exchange a few awkward half-glances and half-sentences, then she asks me if I want to go to the parking lot. It will be quieter out there, so that's probably a good idea. We go back to the main room and find some friends trying to arrange rides home. One of them, a first-year from my college, has a small four-seater. Someone goes off to find her so we can ask her for a ride. Meanwhile, I realize that it's raining out here. I stack my belongings into a pile to protect them from the water. Another guy from my college, in the year above me, shows up. He's a pretty big guy, so he might not fit into the car with the rest of us, but I figure I should ask if he can come anyway. While we're waiting for the car's owner to arrive, I mention something about the rain, and the guy points out that I have a sports jacket in my pile of stuff, so I should just wear it, 'cuz that's what it's for. I suppose I can understand his frustration, because formal jackets are used nowadays only for fashion, not for utility. The car's owner shows up, and I ask her if the guy can fit in the car with everyone. "He really can't," she responds. "I mean, look." The other passengers are loading in their musical instruments, including a cello and a double bass. They're taking up a lot of room already. I slide in my viola case underneath the others, then look around at all the passengers we're trying to squeeze in. I think we might all be able to fit. Morning Dash (6:30) I've invited a guy over to my house to work on a homework project. When we sit down at a table to work, I start asking him to help me fix some parts of my personal appearance, like my eyebrows and my hair. He gets angry and leaves. Mom asks me to help her pack lunches for my sisters. I consider it for a moment, but then I decide that I have too much work to do this morning to help her with that. I tell her as much. Later, I'm mostly packed to leave to catch the bus. Then my middle sister comes into the kitchen and starts talking about something interesting. A few minutes later, I look at the time and let out a yelp. I ask Mom if she thinks I can still make it to the bus on time, and she says she thinks so. I run out the back door and down the hill. When I look over my shoulder, I see the bus on a road behind me. It'll be going around the hill, so I have a bit of time before it reaches the stop, but I have to run as fast as I can. On the way, I get a little confused about where the bus stop is. I'm running along an unkempt path through the grass, with only two parallel lines of dirt to indicate that vehicles come through here. Then my sisters come running in from a side path. "That's the path Mom always uses," I call out to them, laughing. Then we find the bus stop. The bus is waiting for us.
Frags: another anxiety dream about packing for a trip
Frags: I'm trying to read something, but the words are out of focus. I try switching glasses, but it doesn't help.
Hanging Roller Coaster (1:32) [This dream isn't very cohesive. I had trouble falling asleep.] I'm in line for a roller coaster. It's the last ride of the day, and the line is long. You ride the roller coaster like a zipline. Suddenly all of the hangers start moving at once, which surprises me, because I expected everyone to go one at a time, for safety reasons. Then I reach the end of the coaster and start going backwards. No wonder people went one at a time [??], because otherwise we'd run into each other at this part of the ride. Somehow I realize that I'm dreaming. I exit the boarding platform by using a series of coat hangers along the wall as if they were monkey bars. I realize that I'm not having much fun, and what I'd really like to be doing is having sex. I sort of just start imagining the accompanying pumping motion, and before long I wake up somewhat messily. Stronghold Minigame (9:43) I've had this game for a while, but on a whim, I decide to explore the menus for a bit. I find out about a prison minigame, which supposedly happens any time you get captured in the main storyline. The rules say that the game is only 6 minutes long, and you have to complete five smaller minigames in that time. Sounds like it would be pretty challenging to finish. I decide to try it. Next thing I know, I'm browsing through a menu of screenshots for each of the possible castles that you can try to escape from. The screenshots all have different dimensions, and they fit together like a well-planned, orthogonal collage. It's pretty cool. One of the wider screenshots catches my eye, and I choose it. My character (a female) appears on the roof of an apparently vacant castle. Something bad happened here to drive out all of the inhabitants. A voice-over explains to me that my guards were killed as soon as I landed here, and they'll be no more help to me now. I see a soldier pacing a nearby tower, but I'm not sure how to reach it. Presumably he's an enemy, and the pathway for the level will bring me over there eventually to fight him. I immediately start grabbing as much loot as I can. I need armor and weapons. I look behind me and see a dead dragon that apparently crash-landed into the edge of the roof. That must have been how I landed here--I rode the dragon. I run over there to see if there's any good loot. The dragon's saddle is decorated with two lightsabers, which are of course totally outside the universe of the game. I must have downloaded a Star Wars texture pack. I turn away from the dragon and notice my own lightsaber floating in the air about twenty feet up. It's hard to see because the camera is at about the same height and it's difficult to manipulate. I use the Force to pull my lightsaber toward me and pick it up. Then I find some armor and start investigating the rest of the rooftop. I keep picking up everything using the Force. There's a child standing near the edge of the roof. When I approach her, she comes alive and starts talking to me. She lost her family in the chaos of whatever just happened, and she's willing to help me now. I cast a glamour spell to make the child look like an old woman. This will protect her somehow. The spell animation looks like a flying dragon's head. Inside a small rooftop building, I find a furnished room. This is where the child's grandmother lived. I find a wooden box lined with felt rows, each containing smooth, round stones colored pastel green and red. The stones are about the size of a penny, and they have various lumpy irregularities. They are powerful magical artifacts, and I want to take them with me. I use the Force to group them into a ball, but the stones have a Force of their own which repels them from each other. I can't close my pocket, so as soon as I put them in there, most of them will pop right back out. I try anyway, but things happen exactly as I expected they would. That's probably why the wolf that invaded the castle didn't take these stones with him. The wolf was good, but the grandmother was better. I wish I had a ziploc bag or something to hold the stones together. Suddenly Dad calls from a nearby doorway. The family is loading up the car RIGHT NOW, and I'm expected to do my part to help out. Obediently, I wake up.
Frags: something about my current math/CS professor
The Game I'm in the house of a girl I knew in high school. Her parents aren't home, so we're hanging out. After a while, she walks up to the glass door and stands looking out the window. I walk up beside her and put my head on her shoulder. In turn, she rests her head on mine. It's a comfortable position, and I think we're both wondering what we'll do next. She points out that there are some video cameras in the corners of the house. I'm worried and embarrassed, thinking that her parents will be able to see everything we've done. Then she reassures me that she'll make sure they don't get the footage. Then she invites me into her bedroom to "play the Game." Mentally, I test the phrase, translating it to Spanish: "el juego." It's a bit of a strange euphemism.
Zoo Creatures I'm in an urban dystopia. A narrator gives some backstory about what happened here. I find some zoo animals (including a gorilla) and use my powers to make them do tasks for me. Somehow the story ties into the story of the Wheel of Time series.
High School Visit I've decided to visit my old high school. I drive the Pathfinder to school and try to find a parking spot. There are a lot of empty ones, because I got there probably half an hour early and no one's there yet, because high school students are all procrastinators. I have some trouble lining up the car to get it in one of the diagonal parking places. Plus, some of the spots have colorful chalk markings on them with someone's name, seeming to say that the spot is reserved. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to park in the senior lot. I go to class. The first one is math class, with the teacher who used to organize math competitions. He has trouble getting everyone to quiet down when class starts. It's a bit of a shock to me until I remember that in high school, you don't tend to understand just how much of a privilege an education is. Eventually my grandma (who is now the teacher) gives up and starts washing dishes instead. I notice that we're in her house, since she's teaching from home. The students disperse. Frags: something about a random outcome based on how twisted my clothes got (my t-shirt kept getting twisted around me IRL, which probably spurred that dream
Desert Sands I'm traveling through the desert in a game, trying to get somewhere. It's interesting, because the style of the graphics changes depending on the game location. I enter a city that has a resident wizard who's been putting up some defenses. With the help of some allies, I climb a rocky cliff to where he's shooting spells at us, and one of my allies stabs him, despite the warning of a citizen that he should not. Then the citizen explains that killing the wizard won't remove the defenses, because he's cheated death using a strange temple. The temple has something to do with a green emerald, which is linked to an earlier part of the story: one of the main characters accidentally dropped something here that made it a focus point for magical energy. Bed Space I've been sharing a king-sized bed with two girls I know. Usually I sleep on one side or the other, but tonight, even though I get there last, I insist on sleeping in the middle. La Madrugada My family's woken up at the crack of dawn to go on a trip. It's dark and cold in the house, and no one seems to want to make much noise. I look over the bag of food we've packed. There are some M&Ms. Nudism I'm watching a video made by my aunt and her daughters. It's a sort of coming out video, where they explain about their family's nudist beliefs and then take off all of their clothes. Acting Club I'm standing by a car parked on the side of the road at night. The captain of the acting club is there with me, trying to figure out where the heck is everyone. We just got a whole stack of new scripts, and we need to start working on them right away if we're going to be prepared for the performance. The captain is about to give up and start recruiting new members from scratch, but another club member convinces her to wait long enough for someone to run inside the school to round people up. The person takes a while to return, and we're about to lose hope, but then we see a group of people coming around the corner far away. One person, three, four . . . ten! And more are still coming! She must have known exactly where to look for the other members. I suppose that makes sense: attendance has been pretty poor lately, but it's just because everyone's stressed about schoolwork.
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