maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an alien spacecraft. The interior of the craft was very nice. It had molded, rounded walls colored cream-white and eggshell-brown. The room was round, with a round, central column, which may have served as some kind of control center.

There may have been a window somewhere, which I may have been looking out of at some point. We were probably at some high elevation, though still in the atmosphere of whatever planet we were on, probably Earth.

I was remembering some conversation or having some conversation in my head. It had something to do with aliens. There was some kind of idea that aliens were taking or duplicating people's identities or else using people for their identities in order to do something.

Something about the whole argument which had been made to me regarding the aliens didn't make sense. I tried to express the idea.

I now saw a room of cars -- kind of like one of the prize-display stages for the TV game show The Price Is Right. There were three cars of different sizes and quality. I was making an argument using cars as a metaphor for identities. I was trying to make a point that aliens wouldn't use human bodies for identities, since they'd easily be able to a lot more with their own, much more advanced, bodies.

But I also seemed to be trying to make some argument that aliens were actually using cars' identities in some way, instead of using people's identities. Some cars weren't cars. They were actually aliens disguised as cars.

At this point, the interior of the alien spacecraft, instead of being all smooth walls, had a number of rooms like the room with the cars in it. I don't know if all the rooms had cars in them.

(Side notes: Yesterday I went to the Museum of Modern Art and watched documentaries for -- well, from 1:30 PM until 10 PM.

One showing had two documentaries: one about the history of General Motors destroying the trolley car industry so it could artificially create demand for cars in the United States; the other about General Electric's nuclear weapons business and the effects it had on an upstate New York town.

The General Motors documentary struck me deeply because, growing up as a suburbanite in America, a car was just a thing I had to have once I became 16. It was part of my identity. But, in addition, I feel very strongly that I identify with cars in my dreams. Cars stand for my identity in my dreams.

But -- if you look at Bruno Bettelheim's book The Empty Fortress, for example, the autistic children identify with cars or identify cars as beings that can care for them and nurture them as children.

So, it seems like, despite the demand for cars being pretty nefariously and artificially created by a small group of rich men, cars also came to stand, rather quickly, for human identity.

The second documentary outlined the role General Electric played in the arms race, how it carelessly dealt with its nuclear waste, and how it then tried to hide all this stuff from the public. The story reminded me, oddly, of all the stories of UFOs in the United States and the stories of government conspiracies to cover up the truth about UFOs.

Well, I don't think it's anything new to assert that a lot of the fervor around UFOs and conspiracy theories regarding UFOs was, at least some of the time, derived less from actual UFOs and more from the collective understanding in the United States that the government, military, and corporate structure were doing things without telling us about it, and that we probably wouldn't approve of these things if we knew about them. You can read Jim Marrs' books to get more of an idea about that.

So I think my dream combined these issues, which are somewhat large, emotional issues for my little, squirrely brain, and fashioned them into my dream.)

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a new deli, which may have been downstairs from my apartment. The deli was still under construction. There were all kinds of things being unpacked.

The place had a blue-green kind of feel, as if the walls had been painted a pale blue-green. There were rolls of paper unrolled on the floor. Counters were set out in random fashion, as if they hadn't been fastened to their permanent positions yet.

There were a couple soda refrigerators with their doors open. One was on the back wall, in front of me. The other was on the wall to my left. They were both tall and narrow. The refrigerators were so cold that I could feel the cold coming from them.

The coolers were so cold that the sodas (or bottled waters?) inside the coolers had been frozen. I figured this level of coldness was natural, since the store wasn't opened yet, so that the coolers weren't tuned to a normal level.

There were a few people running around in the store, getting things ready. I saw at least one woman and one man. They were both Mexican. They were talking back and forth and joking with each other in English or in Spanish and English.

I knew that the place wasn't open yet, and I felt like I shouldn't be here. But, for some reason, I felt really comfortable here. I figured I'd grab some stuff and then head back up to my apartment.

It suddenly struck me that, now that there was a new deli below my house, it would be a lot easier for me to come downstairs and grab some frozen pizza. I thought I would suddenly be eating a lot more frozen pizza than I'd been eating in a long time.

Dream #2

There was some kind of television show or some kind of stage performance about adult women who had romantic relationships with young girls.

The stage and background were white. The stage may have been clean and polished, so that it was slightly reflective.

The women and the girls wore spandex suits with blue, pink and purple flower designs on them. They also wore something like flowing, white blouses that went up over their heads to become something like hoods, leaving a circle open for their faces. The hoods may have been topped with flat circles, which were slightly tilted.

The women and young girls were doing a slow dance, in groups but kind of solo, where they would elevate and point forward their legs and arms slightly.

Dream #3

There was some kind of narration about my mother's life. There was talk about how my mother had had such a tough time because she had been a single mother. There may also have been talk about how my mother had been really upset when my father had left her.

There was now a view of a car like a station wagon driving up a steep, mountain road. The road didn't criss-cross or spiral up the mountain: it just went straight up the steep slope. As the car drove, the narrator spoke about how my mother worked through a lot of emotional difficulties and survived to this point in life.

Listening to this narration made me really sad for my mom. But it also made me kind of proud of her. I felt I had seen this road somewhere. It occurred to me that I might have seen the road in a dream. The surreal steepness of the road and the way the car seemed to be reaching extreme heights on this mountain all reminded me of some tall mountain dream I'd had in the past.

I was now in the backseat of the car. My mom was driving. We had approached some place halfway up the mountain. We pulled into an asphalt parking area.

My mom, and possibly one of my family members, maybe my sister, was talking about how lucky we were. Some of our more removed family members, my mom said, had died in pretty terrible situations. They had died all alone, sometimes in shameful ways. The closer family members of those people had had to deal with the ghastly emotional impact of those situations.

But, my mom said, the closer members of our family who had died had died rather peacefully, with loving families around them. And, right now, all our family members were in situations where, even were they to die suddenly and unexpectedly, they would at least die in a position where they were somewhat comfortable and they knew their family loved them.

I either thought to myself or said out loud that that wasn't true. I thought about two of my cousins, P and B. P is a man and B is a woman.

I thought that both P and B were in situations where, if they died, they'd be all alone. At least one of them was actually in an extremely dangerous situation, though in my dream I couldn't remember where either cousin was.

I was now out on a river bank with my family. I suddenly realized that my cousin B wasn't far away at all. She was actually in this forest. She was kayaking through this river.

In my mind's eye I saw further down river, to a wide stretch that was shaded pleasantly by tall pine trees. Where we were, the banks were open and lawny, with jagged rocks for the river's banks.

Maybe all my immediate family members were out on this bank. We had a couple of kayaks nearby. We must have been getting ready to go kayaking, although for some reason, I seemed to feel like I was thinking of suggesting the idea of kayaking to my family, as if it hadn't yet occurred to anybody to go kayaking yet.

I thought of dipping one of the kayaks into the water, but the water (which was actually only moderately fast) seemed way to rough and the rocks way too jagged for the kayak to handle.

I turned around and saw at least one of my nephews, the oldest nephew, getting dressed in an orange life jacket. I felt like everybody was getting dressed in life jackets, as if they were all getting ready to go kayaking. I thought this was great, and I offered my own life jacket to one of my nephews, since I knew they liked wearing my stuff (???).

One of my nephews, maybe the oldest, said he'd take my life jacket. But suddenly I realized I'd left it somewhere else. It was like I'd left it in the car. But it was also like I'd left it somewhere very far away. I said I'd have to go get it. I hoped I could get it fast enough so that it wouldn't cause a delay.

I suddenly realized that I had also left the life jacket in water somewhere. The life jacket had been in the water so long that it was now beginning to dissolve. I hoped I could pull the jacket out of the water before it dissolved entirely.

In my mind's eye I saw the life jacket. It was white, instead of orange, but it had orange flower designs on it.

Dream #4

I was walking through a park. It was a clear day, pretty warm. The sun seemed to be going down. The sky was dim, and the light was partly golden and partly cool and dim.

I walked along a concrete path in a somewhat narrow curve of the park. There was deep, green lawn on either side of the path. There were a few people in the park, just relaxing. I think everybody in the park was black.

The sound of my breathing slowly became more and more audible. Suddenly it seemed to me like my breath was like the breathing sound of somebody in a space suit, like in the movie 2001. I wondered why my breathing would sound like this.

It suddenly occurred to me that the reason my breathing sounded like this was because I wasn't exactly in a park. I was in a different kind of place altogether. The only time I could think of when I was in a place like this was in my dreams.

I realized I was dreaming. There wasn't a tremendous improvement to the clarity or sensation of the dream, like there usually is when I become lucid. But I was suddenly a lot more aware of the environment.

I smiled at a few people. I was happy to be aware, and I wanted to share my happiness somehow.

I walked into a wider area of the park. Since there were a decent number of people around, and they all seemed to be peaceful and happy, I figured I'd try to talk with some of them, just to see what things were all about here.

There were a couple of boys playing (with a set of blocks or other toys set up to look like a castle?) half on the concrete path and half on the grass. The boy on the path had his back turned to me.

I smiled and addressed the boy in some way to get his attention. The boy turned his face toward me. He looked a lot older than he actually was. Something about this threw me off balance. I looked quickly at the boy and walked on down the path.

I tried not to let the boy's surprising appearance throw me off balance. I tried to continue acting cheerful. I figured if I could keep the cheerful attitude I'd had as I'd become I could stay lucid. But I could already feel that I was dropping out of lucidity.

I could see that I was approaching something like a brick-and-concrete, arched gate that served as an entrance to the park.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was driving through a town. I was probably in the car with my family, and my mother may have been driving.

The town was centered somehow around some kind of mining operations, or else it had been in the past. I may have had some "memories" of looking at photos of the town or watching a video about the town.

At some point we drove past a young man in a business suit. The man was white, very tall, and very thin, with hair down to about his jaw line. He looked very professional, but also very haggard and tired, almost to the point of a nervous breakdown.

My mom drove the car into a parking lot for an apartment complex. As we drove into the lot, I commented how nice and clean this town seemed, but how it had such a lonely, spooky quality, like in a ghost story.

Dream #2

I had just finished some kind of task with a group of people. The people were all at the other end of a huge, fenced in field, like a lawn for a number of soccer fields. It was a sunny day.

I may have been walking away from the field. But I got distracted. I noticed that I had a bunch of humongous hairs in my nose. I began pulling them out. But there were so many.

I walked back into the field and frantically began pulling the hairs out of my nose. A man who looked, and wore clothes, like Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean was nearby. I didn't want him to see me pulling all these hairs out of my nose. So I walked between two stone walls, like the walls for outdoor racquetball courts.

The Orlando Bloom guy followed me. So I hurriedly walked away from the stone walls. I gifigured I would just leave the field altogether.

I was still pulling hairs out of my nose. I had a handful of hairs. They were all about 4cm long.

As I approached the gate, the Orlando Bloom guy came up behind me and said he needed to talk to me. He said he was having the same trouble I was, and that he was going to "contact the lady" about it. Apparently the lady had told the guy she could solve his problem. But she hadn't solved it yet.

I knew that everything the guy had just spoken about was in regards to the long hairs growing out of my nose.

I went into a park bathroom, possibly to was my hands. I was now exiting the bathroom. The bathroom was big, made out of concrete and cinder blocks, and had dimmish, fluorescent lighting.

As I approached the door, I could hear the guy talking to somebody on the phone. I could tell from the guy's voice that he was no longer Orlando Bloom, but some guy I had known in college, JP.

The guy was telling the person, who I knew was a pretty, blonde girl, that his cover had almost been blown. It turned out the guy had been at the field either to follow me or to keep me out of the way while something bad happened. But since I had put the guy in a position where he'd had to talk to me, the position had been messed up. Somehow all of this was the woman's fault.

I stood before the door, not yet opening it. I felt betrayed by the guy. I thought he'd been trying to sympathize with me or be my friend.

I lifted my hands up before my face. The backs of my hands were cracked in a few small places. In the cracks was a hard, ambery and red substance, which I took to be scabs.

I went to open the door. But the guy, having finished his phone conversation, pushed open the door, almost knocking me over. He now definitely looked like JP. He was tall, with pale olive skin and short, slightly spiky hair.

The guy was slightly surprised by having run into me, but he greeted me kindly, in a way I now understood as being completely fake. I greeted him in a fake-friend way too, just wanting to get out of thr bathroom and away from the guy altogether.

Good morning, everybody.

An old, black woman was running something like a marathon. The woman was overweight. She wore a brightly colored (orange?) skirt and a red t-shirt. She was really having a tough time running the race, but she kept at it.

At the halfway point, everybody took a break. They sat down in a huge, crowded area of folding chairs. I saw a close-up, like video, of the woman as she stopped at the halfway point. I could tell she was exhausted. When she sat, I could see that she was afraid she wouldn't be able to get up.

The old woman was now back on the road, getting ready to run again. There were other people out on or near the road, but the woman seemed like the only one who was actually getting ready to run again. She looked afraid, like she didn't think she could make it.

I went up to the woman. I patted her left arm and told her that she could make it, that all she had to do was keep up her confidence. This seemed to cheer the woman up. I now started running.

At some point I and a few other racers were in a room like an indoor area at a zoo. We had to cross some zigzag maze-line made out of metal poles and wooden handrails. I jumped up in the air and flew over the maze-line, touching down to and bouncing back off of the handrails with my (right?) hand occasionally.

The end of the maze-line was the exit to the room. There was a lot of sunlight coming through the doorway. I saw it as if I were flying toward it from a stomach-down position only a few inches above the floor. The doorway wasn't too far from the start of the line. The line just worked itself through the back of the room and then back toward the front.

As I approached the exit, I kind of lost myself again and passively saw another man getting through the line by running through it. I then tried to imagine how the old woman would get through this line in her tired condition.

I now had a weird vision of some man standing in the air, up above the line. He was some kind of zookeeper. He had been taking care of some kind of animal, which may actually have been a little, blonde, white boy. But the boy was also some delicate kind of monkey-like animal.

The man had taken care of the little creature by giving him human books and games to stimulate his mind. But this zookeeper had had to leave the zoo. The next zookeeper just thought of these creatures as animals. So he gave the little creature only toy's you'd give to monkeys. The little creature lost interest in everything and soon died.

Dream #2

I was standing out in some area like a seal habitat at a zoo, with a big pool and a stage made to look like a rocky landscape. But this whole area was like a line for a water ride at some theme park.

I was video-taping everything, including the water hitting my feet, to prove somehow that this was actually a good water ride. In the distance, under an arch of fake rocks, I saw waves rise up and crash together.

I was then in a big room like a museum. An older man was giving a group of little kids some kind of tour. Apparently this was some kind of museum about old amusement park rides.

I wandered off by myself and found myself between two rows of mirrors. The mirrors all faced me. They had holographic images on them. I suddenly recognized them as images from the Disneyland haunted house ride. I waited for some face to pop up and surprise me in the hologram. But I also wondered why Disney had taken down the haunted house ride. That was a really fun ride.

Suddenly a face popped up on a mirror and said "boo!" I acted scared, and I did a fake scream, which sounded a lot more weak and frightened than I'd intended. I looked over and saw that I'd gotten the kids' attention.

I looked back at the mirrors. A lot of faces were now popping up. The designs on the mirrors were also a lot clearer. One image looked like river stones, except fleshy, like organs.

At some point a little girl from the group came over to make sure I wasn't really scared. I knelt or reclined and held the girl with my left arm. We watched the mirrors together.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with my sister. We were out in the driveway of her house, although it feels now like we were also in some kind of dirt parking lot for a fairgrounds. My sister was talking to me about and showing me some kind of pictures of a place that she and some of her children were planning to go to.

I had to go to some other car to get something for my sister's trip. I went to the other car with my brother-in-law. It was a few rows away in the dirt parking lot.

The trunk or hatchback of the car was open, and my brother-in-law and I were looking inside. I had my computer opened up in the back of the car. I asked my brother-in-law to look up something on YouTube. It had to do with some pop-culture figure or figures, but it also had something to do with homosexuality.

My brother-in-law looked the thing up. I was now walking away from the car. I was now worried that somehow my brother-in-law would think I was trying to make some comment on my own sexuality by showing him that YouTube clip. (In waking life, even though I wouldn't say I'm gay, my sexuality is absolutely not normal. But I try to act as normal as possible when I'm in front of my family.)

I was back to sitting in the car with my sister. My sister now said that she was too sick, after all, to go to the event. For some reason, the whole family was now going, instead of just my sister, brother-in-law, and some of their kids. I was also going. Now only my sister wasn't going.

I felt bad, like maybe we shouldn't go at all if my sister wasn't going.

Dream #2

There may have been some situation where I had to take care of some task for a group of professionals. But I had messed it up somehow.

Later on, I was running from zombies. The zombies were pale white, with rotting faces. Most of the zombies wore button-up shirts, ties, and slacks.

I was running from the zombies through big corridors like mall-sized corridors that looked like hallways in a hospital. Everything was white, lit with greenish-white fluorescent light. Occasionally I would find myself in larger rooms.

Zombies would pop up everywhere and surprise me. They would almost catch me, and then they'd chase me through the corridors. I may also have been shooting some of them with a gun I had.

Eventually I found some way to jump way high, up to some high-up window. The window was swung open from its top. I floated down through the space. I found myself in some greenish-white-lit place that looked like a mix between a bowling alley and a hospital.

From all different places, a bunch of normal humans came into the bowling alley. Many of them were carrying guns. Some of them were wearing what I thought of as hunters' outfits -- beige vests and caps, flannel shirts, and khaki-like slacks. Many of the people were wary, on guard, waiting for more zombies to just spring up.

I was about to go to all the people. I thought I had found a group of people that I could be safe with. But as I approached them, they became suspicious of me, almost violent toward me. It was obvious that I wasn't a zombie, just like it was obvious that they weren't zombies. But they didn't care. They just didn't like me, and they didn't want me around.

So I walked away from them before even approaching them. I may have started walking down one of the bowling lanes, thinking I'd find a sneaky way to get through the building at the end of the lanes.

Suddenly I was fighting something, possibly zombies. There were gunshots everywhere. Explosions were blowing up the wood of the bowling lanes. I was turning back and shooting at whatever I was fighting.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some kind of building construction setting. As I was in this setting, I had some kind of conversation going on in my head, probably just a conversation with myself, but possibly a "remembered" conversation between myself and some person I looked up to.

The conversation had something to do with the way capitalists exploit people, and how anybody with a conscience shouldn't be part of the corporate system. Of course I felt bad, thinking about my own life in this context.

The building construction site was enormous. It was almost like some kind of futuristic landscape, where everything in site was part of one kind of building complex. But the whole area seemed to be under construction. But it was in complete disarray, as if things had been destroyed, or as if the place, instead of being a construction site, were just a gigantic dump.

I was now either swinging on a huge crane or watching some kind of robot swinging from the crane. The crane had a red metal frame. It swung back and forth in front of a half-built building.

As the crane swung back and forth, I heard the voice in my head talk about my boss, referring to him as a "lucky boss." Something about the way this had been said made me feel bad about myself all over again, as if I were part of some awful system where the bosses were all "lucky" and everybody else was being exploited.

I was now definitely watching a robot swinging from the crane. The robot was yellow, like a tractor. It may even have been made out of old tractor parts. But it had cute, big eyes that looked half like oogly eyes and half like empty headlights for a car.

The robot dropped itself off the crane. It fell down toward a huge pile of other tractor-like robots. I knew that the impact of the landing would kill the robot. But I knew that the robot had meant to do this, and that it had wanted to die.

Dream #2

I was in some kind of forest or rural area. I was in front of a cabin. It was a warm, partly sunny day.

I jumped up into the air and flew over toward a dirt road or dirt path. As I did this, I thought to myself something about the history of the United States and slavery.

I landed on the path. The path was blocked by a patch of weeds, some of which were quite tall, even flowering. I jumped up into the air again and flew over the weeds. There may have been another patch of weeds not too far after the first one. So I may have decided to keep on flying.

As I flew over the weeds, I continued my thoughts on slavery. I thought to myself that African Americans had been kept down first by slavery. But then, even after slavery, they had to deal with so much oppression. I thought to myself, Well, I shouldn't be surprised if there's resentment because of all this. But now the situation is definitely changing.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a small party. I sat at a small table, probably in the kitchen. There were a few other people in the kitchen, mingling. The party may have been set up around something specific. But now that specific thing, whatever it had been, was over, and people were getting ready to leave.

Then two black men came into the house. They sat down at the table. They were both light-skinned, and they both had a kind of creepy look. One wore an orange hooded sweatshirt. They seemed to be focused on me, as if they had come here to follow me and see what I was up to.

I had been getting ready to go, but now I was reluctant. I didn't want these guys to think they had creeped me out so that I wanted to leave. But I also didn't want their strange suspicions of me to increase because I left as soon as they came in.

I acted cheerful with a couple of people near me. Then some young boy, who may have been a nephew of mine, started asking the two men a bunch of questions about themselves, ranging from where they came from all the way to serious professional questions. The two men just kept staring forward.

I told the boy not to bother the men with the questions -- even though I mostly wanted the boy to stop asking questions because the professional questions were hitting close to my own profession.

Then somebody, possibly the boy, brought out two brightly colored plastic pigs with twigs coming out their noses. One pig may have been pink. The other pig may have been orange. One of the men may have been upset by the pigs, as if he thought we were calling him a pig by showing him the pigs. One of the men may even have said something along these lines.

Dream #2

I was at "my office," which was much larger and on a much higher floor than my current office. The director of my department had just decided that I was going to work with D, one of my boss' peers, who I don't like. My boss may have been out of the picture altogether.

D walked up to me, gloating because he knew I had to work for him when I didn't like him. He had a Snickers wrapper. He was trying to find the garbage can at my desk so he could throw the Snickers wrapper in my garbage. But he couldn't find the garbage can. So he tried to hand me the wrapper. He leered at me and said, "Here. Throw this away."

I refused to take the wrapper. D even tapped it against my chest. Finally he just threw it on my desk.

Later I was talking to the head of my department, J, who was angry at me because I wouldn't take D's garbage. I was yelling at J that I wasn't going to take anybody's garbage. I finally yelled, "If you want somebody to take care of D's garbage, then fire me and find somebody else!"

I was now in a place like a big conference room. It had window walls and was at the corner of the building. A woman was folding up some sheets that had been on a set of tables in the middle of the conference room. I knew the woman, and she may have looked like one of my aunts. But she was a head of some kind of company.

I helped the woman fold up her stuff and put it in some big, paper shopping bags. I may even have helped her fold paper bags and put them into paper bags, too. As I did this, I asked the woman questions about her life. But I did so in such a way that I sounded reallyy stupid. The woman had a sweet voice, but the annoyance in her voice at how stupid my questions were was obvious.

Now J walked by and saw me helping the woman. I didn't know what he would think. I wasn't willing to help D but I was here helping the woman?

The woman and I had finished putting everything away. I noticed a tray of cookies on a chair near my right knee. The tray had a clear plastic cover. I asked the woman about the cookies as I worked the cover off. The woman told me the cookies were for the guys in Derivatives.

"Oh, Derivatives," I said with admiration, and slowly put the cover back on the tray of cookies.

Dream #3

I was in a crowded space between a line of tables and displays and a wall. The area was part of some big conference hall. There were a lot of people here.

One of my old friends, M, was with me. As I walked forward he walked backward and faced me, talking to me. He was telling me that the pitfall of being a professional photographer was that people always wanted you to take pictures of their spicy pizzas. People, M explained, would throw parties and make their own pizzas for the parties. Then they'd want you to photograph it.

M said that people would hear you were a photographer and they'd ask you to come photograph them, like they had all these great ideas. But then you'd get to their house and they'd be all shy. So they'd just tell you to photograph the spicy pizza they'd just made.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was either with a group of people or watching them as if watching like a disembodied viewer. The people were in some kind of store like an old deli, which also felt like an old trading post. The people were mostly men, maybe older men. They surrounded a younger man.

The younger man was pale white. He wore a 1970s style suit with a blue jacket, white shirt, and tie. He had long, frizzy hair which was balding away from his forehead. He had pale, blue eyes, a kind of nubby nose, and a mustache. He may have had pimples or boils on his face.

The man had either been involved in some crime or had witnessed some crime. Now the men were trying either to get the man to give them whatever he had gotten from the crime or to refrain from telling the police about the crime. But the man wouldn't cooperate. I got the feeling that, right or wrong, the guy was kind of sleazy or cocky.

The men did something to the man, possibly beating him up somehow. They then poured some kind of liquid like gasoline down his throat. After this they may have lit a match around him.

The man was dead. The men were now just outside the store. But the outside of the store was like a log cabin in the woods. Something about the event was repeating itself inside, as if the man were dying all over again.

The leader of this group of people was now a black woman with short, reddish-blonde hair. The woman now stood before the men, outside. She asked them if everything had been taken care of. The men said yes. They had even laid the man's body on her bed, as she'd asked.

I now saw the woman's bed, as if the woman's bedroom were just upstairs from the deli/trading post. The body of a tall, muscular, black man lay on the left side of the bed. The body may have been naked or clad only in white underwear.

I now understood that the woman's husband had died. The woman was going to use this dead body to get in touch with her husband somehow. Possibly she was just going to lay on the bed and talk to the dead body as if it were her husband. But possibly the husband was actually going to possess the body.

A little story played out in my head where the woman lay down to talk to the body. The body became possessed, surprising the woman. The body spoke, but it couldn't move. The woman may have decided to have sex with the body.

Dream #2

I saw the top of my head somehow. I saw some rather long and stringy pieces of dandruff in my hair. I was kind of grossed out. I searched through my hair, trying to figure out how much of this big dandruff I had.

I saw, then, that parts of my hair had actually been stapled to my head. It was done in tiny bands, like braids on a small girl's head. I thought that I had gotten my hair stapled to my head the last time I'd gotten my hair cut. That had been two months ago -- too long, I thought. By now, the staples would be grown into my head. When the haircut people went to take them out, it would really hurt.

Dream #3

I was looking through an Ikea catalog for stuff for my house. I may have gotten a bunch of stuff already. But now I thought I'd need a bed, too. But I was reluctant to get a bed. They cost so much, and I'd already spent so much.

So I looked through a few different kinds of alternative beds, which were cheaper. One was just some blue mattress. Others were tiny, baby-sized mattresses, which I may have taken for cribs.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a car with my grandfather (who, in waking life, passed away about two years ago). We were in a parking lot. It was night, probably a cold night. I was in the driver's seat, and my grandpa was in the passenger's seat.

My grandfather told me that he had a disease and that he was going to die in a very short time, maybe as short as seven days. I got very sad to think that my grandfather was going to die so soon. What struck me more than the fact that I would miss him was the thought of him standing so close to the complete uncertainty at that moment of death.

I started to cry. I clenched my throat and grit my teeth as I cried, as if I were trying to stifle the cry. But my tears were also very bitter, as if they were somehow electrified.

I now stood outside of and just in front of the car. There were two trees in front of the car. They were right next to each other, possibly crowding into each other. The tree on the right (as I faced the trees) may have been some kind of evergreen tree. The tree on the left was barren of leafs, with a strange, parallel branching, with the final branches sticking out almost perfectly straight. These branches either had big, red buds on them or else something like Christmas lights.

My grandpa was floating up into the barren tree. I may have been holding on to his hand as he floated (or climbed?) higher up into the tree. The tree was something like the way to heaven. So in this sense, my grandpa was already dying. Eventually I had to let go of my grandpa's hand.

Dream #2

I was in a small house like a log cabin in the middle of the woods. The place was crowded with people, all probably "my family." One man in particular, an older, skinny man, lay on a scanty bed, probably wearing long johns or a tank top and old-looking pajama pants.

It was a really cold day and I needed to get somewhere to check on something, possibly some other house that might be in trouble. The house may have been separated from us by a lake, which was frozen now.

I probably would go across the lake by taking some kind of vehicle -- which, now, seems to have been something like a hovercraft and ski-doo mixed together. But to drive the vehicle, I'd need fuel.

All over the room there were these stumps of wood, stood upright, like columns. On top of the stumps there were upside-down lids for metal garbage cans.

The upside-down lids were filled with some kind of substance. This, I understood, was fuel for the vehicle. The fuel was clear and had a kerosene-like quality to it. But it was in a partly frozen state in all the "pans." It was melting from snow-like blocks into the clear liquid state.

I asked the old man if I could use some of the fuel for the vehicle. The old man asked me about the conditions outside. It had to do with something about the level of the snow outside. I'd been outside only a while ago, and I knew that the conditions were bad. I didn't lie to the old man.

The old man said, "Then, no. You can't use any of the snow. You know what kind of danger you'd be putting yourself in. And in weather like this, the ice on that lake is weak. That vehicle would melt right through the ice, and you'd find yourself inside the pond."

Dream #3

I was out walking with one of my old friends. We were up on the crest of a snowy hill. It was a sunny day, and the sky was clear and blue.

To our left were something like footprints. To me they probably seemed like human footprints, even though, now, they seem to me to have been gigantic footprints.

For some reason, these footprints proved that the snow was pristine, virgin snow, untraversed by other people. This was a relief to me, as I had been afraid this whole time that people had already been climbing this hill, and that sooner or later I'd have to deal with a lot of jerks while I was out hiking.

I looked further down the snowy slope to my left. At the base of the hill was a small town. I think I mostly saw one-story houses, probably from the 1960s or 1970s.

Dream #3

I was "talking" (in my head?) with a few of my family members. They had asked me to stay wherever I was for a little more time. I decided that I would.

My family members then told me that as a reward for staying a little while longer, they would also give me a couple final days all to myself and give me a free trip (or free tickets?) to the beach.

At this point I realized I was in Philadelphia. Apparently Philadelphia had this very short stretch of beach, but it was one of the best beaches in the world.

I now saw this beach as if I were flying over it from a couple hundred feet in a helicopter. I saw how short the stretch of beach was. The water into which the beach receeded also looked a bit murky, greenish black, not the kind of water you'd want to swim in. It also seemed like all sides of the beach were bordered by a rather intimidating fence. I saw people on the beach. It didn't look like a very fun place to go. But I kept telling myself, It's a luxury beach, one of the best.

I felt guilty. I didn't know why my family would feel like they needed to give me such an incentive to stay around a little while longer. They should have just been able to feel like they could ask me without having also to give me something.

Dream #5

I was outside in some kind of semi-suburban area that kind of feels to me now like Princeton, New Jersey. I was out in an area of open, wide, rolling lawns. In the distance were some houses and a short, long structure that was something like a church. There was also, somewhere else, a tall, stone statue of a figure like Christ.

There were a few other people in this environment, men, around my age. At some point, some man blew a bugle or made some general call to everybody. This, I told myself, was a "changing of the guard."

Apparently we had all been playing a game where some people were in charge of the other people. At the "changing of the guard," the people in charge were no longer in charge. I don't think anybody would be in charge at that point. Possibly the game would just be over.

At the "changing of the guard," we all had to go to one specific place, at the top of one of the rolling hills of grass. I was heading to that place. But at some point I saw one of the men in charge.

I had to scurry away in some weird way so that the man wouldn't see me. If he saw me, he'd taunt me or hurt me or make me do something embarrassing. He was allowed to do any of these things, because he was still in charge. And even though the "changing of the guard" had been called, if the man didn't know it, he'd still act like he was in charge. And I, for some reason, would still obey like he was in charge.

Now I was at the top of the hill with the same man, who was apparently an old friend of mine. The game was over, and it was now time to relax. My friend had brought some women with him. The women were naked. They were younger than we; I'm not sure how much younger. They were pale white and had pale red-brown hair.

My friend and I were going to have sex with the girls. Before this time, I now noticed, my friend and I had simply been "having sex" by masturbating and then coming onto torn up pieces of styrofome cups. I was still holding a piece of cup that was the base of the cup with just a little bit of the vessel still rising up off of it. The cup was a kind of pale, blue-green color.

I was just getting ready to come into the cup when my friend pointed out a girl to me. She was mine. My friend immediately got busy with another girl, right in front of me.

The girl who was mine kind of looked at me shyly. I felt bad. She kind of seemed afraid of this whole thing. I told her if she didn't want to do anything, we didn't have to. But if she did want to do something, she should lay down on her back.

So the girl lay down on her back. I think she was lying on a soft, colorful, plaid blanket, instead of on the lawn. I was now naked. I lay down on the girl. I had a little trouble getting aroused, even though it felt good to be on the girl. Eventually, though, I did get aroused, and I finally went inside the girl. It felt good. I asked the girl if she felt okay, too.

Dream #6

I had apparently gotten a new phone. I couldn't figure out how to make something on the phone's internet work. I had typed in a number of addresses for sites I wanted to get to. But none of them had worked. At this moment I wanted to get to some site where I could see some info related to my work. But I couldn't get it.

A woman who works as a coordinator for a volunteer event I go to in waking life said she could figure out the phone for me. So I gave her the phone. She's an older woman, kind of tough, but very nice. She's a little stout, with skin tan from always working in the sun. She has grey hair, which, in the dream was, I think, extremely frizzy.

As the woman figured out the phone's internet for me, I suddenly realized that a lot of the sites I had tried to access on my phone had actually been pornographic sites. I was hoping that the woman would just access the site I needed for work and not see any of the pornographic sites.

The woman now said she had figured the phone's internet for me. She seemed happy at first. But then she stopped, a little grossed out by whatever she had seen. She handed the phone back to me and gave me a disappointed look. I knew she had seen a porn site.

I took the phone, wondering what site the woman had seen. The screen had purple lettering on it saying "Daddy's Little Girls." I thought, Oh god, please don't tell me this porn site is what it sounds like. But I knew that it was exactly what it sounded like.

The background showed the side of a house with a pair of some kind of instruments that looked like something related to whatever I was looking for for work purposes. They didn't look like exactly what I was looking for, but I felt like they were close enough.

So I said to the woman, "Oh, there it is! The product I was looking for. That's the only reason I was looking at this site!"

The woman just continued to stare at me with that grossed-out, disappointed look.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a small hallway that was dimly lit. I stood by a little group of shelves for newspapers. I saw and grabbed a copy of The Onion. But somebody acted in a mean way that made me nervous as I was grabbing the paper.

I got nervous, pulled the paper out quickly, and hurried away. But a few steps away, I realized I had gotten only a few of the first sheets of the paper, not the whole thing. So I went back to grab the rest of the paper.

I was now in a gas station. One of my friends was with me, I'm not sure who. Behind the counter of the gas station was a youngish woman, a little overweight, with copper-tan skin and long, black hair that was pulled back and a little frizzy. She was really cheerful and nice.

I was sitting in a big, pink recliner before the counter. I seemed to be sitting inside of it as though I were really small, maybe a child. But I also seem to have been myself, at my normal height, as well.

Apparently I was wearing diapers and I had wet my diapers. I hadn't told the woman, but she knew that I needed to change my diapers. She told me that there was a restroom in some place across the street (a cafe or a fast food restaurant?). She told me I could change my diapers there.

I didn't have diapers, and somehow the woman knew that, too. She pulled down, from a top shelf over the cash register area, a partly empty pack of diapers. There were two adult-sized, pink diapers inside. The woman told me I could change into one of these diapers and hold onto the other one.

Somehow I came to understand that the woman thought of me as either her kid or as a person who needed someone to take care of him like a mother would. She had known this for a little while, so she had prepared for it. I thought it was wonderfully nice of her to think of me.

I was now outside, on a wide street on a sunny day. The space on either side of the road seemed wide and empty, maybe with dirt lots or grassy lots, although there also were buildings somewhere in the distance. All around on the road there was a feeling of heavy machinery and dusty construction material.

A group of young people, some or all of whom may have been my friends, were laying out a line of what looked like gigantic surge-protector power strips. The power strips were maybe 1.5m long and .6m wide. At either end, they seemed to have poles sticking out of them, like the poles for rope-belt line makers.

The young people would lay the surge protectors down and then plug huge, black cords into them. A few people had to carry and set down each surge-protector. Both that work and the plugging work seemed difficult.

I was trying to find a place in the work where I could be helpful. But the people were all working so quickly and efficiently together already. I couldn't get in. Eventually I was worried that I would look lazy.

I may have made some kind of weak assertion to everybody else that I should have a place in the work. But one of the people (the only person I can remember now was a man with olive-colored skin, shaggy, black hair, and a shaggy goatee) said something about how I was too much of a sissy to help. One person may have told another person, "Tell that guy to go back to the diapers that girl gave him and have fun with those."

So I walked over to what seems, now, like a flatbed trailer for a semi truck. The bed seemed to have been made out of heavy planks of wood. Oddly enough, the pack of diapers the woman had given me was sitting on the bed. There was also some kind of pile of pages or some kind of book. The story in the pages/book may have been something similar to Alice in Wonderland.

I was now "almost-present" in some kind of place with an old friend of mine, M. M was trying to show me, in his usual intelligent-jester way, some article that he found really funny in The Onion.

I had a series of views based on that article. Sometimes it was like I was looking at the paper. Other times it was like the images on the paper, while still paper-images, were also my whole view, as big as the world. At other times, it was like I was in the images, like they were the three-dimensional, real world, while still looking like newspaper images.

The article was taking some fictional discovery made by fictional scientists, which was obviously a cave which had been used by prehistoric peoples for women to give birth in. But the article was trying to make it sound like a mystical place. The humor of the article, apparently, was how the scientists were trying to give this place a really mystical meaning, when it was "just" a birth cave.

At one point I saw a cross-section image of the birth cave. The cave had three rooms, one set behind the other.

The very back room was labelled with some "really mystical" title by the scientists. In actual fact, it was "just" some kind of room where a spirit was being prepared to enter into the body in the mother's womb. The middle room was the room where the actual birth took place. This room was again, given some "comically mystical" name. The front room had some weird label like "meat and other stuff." I took this to mean that all the supplies that one gets by living in the outside world started to be given to the newborn child here.

The article seems to have been full of references to an astral state. Apparently the scientists had discovered human ribs in the middle or front room. So the scientists made some weird comment about how the "astral ribs" of a cave dweller had been damaged and left behind.

The front room had been fashioned, apparently, into a spacious, domed room, with a wide doorway to the outside. The domed ceiling was the natural stone of the cave, though it also seemed to be fashioned into shapes that looked like tiles.

Near the front of the room, some of the "tiles" were missing from the ceiling. The scientists made some "comically mystical" statement about the shaped that the dark space now left by the missing tiles made in the ceiling. But the "comically mystical" statement "only" amounted to what the image actually looked like -- a woman lying on her back, giving birth, while another woman knelt before the first woman, receiving the child.

At this point I may have been trying to figure out what exactly was funny about this article. As far as I could tell, I thought, from my reading about prehistoric life, birth caves were very mystical places, and the birth process was very mystical. The fact that the image of birth in a birth cave had naturally occurred also seemed mystical to me. I couldn't see why a mystical treatment of the whole thing would be so funny.

Dream #2

I had apparently done some kind of complex work project for my boss. It was something I had done on my own initiative.

My boss now began criticizing my work. He told me that the work I had done was too complex. He said that this wasn't the kind of things clients liked to see from us. He said that our job was to do something more simplistic, very basic, and using very basic data.

My boss told me that we couldn't do anything that expressly directed our clients' ideas, because our clients' job was to have ideas. My boss said, "We need let the clients have a chance to do some value creation on their own. So if we just put a bunch of basic data together and something in it inspires our clients to have an idea, we've done a good job."

I took this to be my boss' nice way of breaking it to me that I was spending too much time doing the stuff I actually liked and not enough time doing the pain in the neck work of finding basic data, doing basic number work.

I knew my boss was too nice to tell me that I had been kind of on the wrong track for a while, and that I needed to get back on the right track of looking for hard number-data. So he'd made some cover-up story that really didn't even match what his real thoughts about our work was.

I now felt kind of stupid and lazy for not having done enough number work.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a forest, possibly a snowy forest. There was an animal like a wolf that would eat humans. I may have seen it.

I was then at the house or apartment of an old friend of mine. My friend had me go into some bedroom. The bedroom was dark. There were clothes all over the floor. A mattress lay in the middle of the room. The mattress was also covered with clothes.

My friend kept insisting that I try on some of the women's clothes he had. But I felt like he was just trying to put me into a position where he could do something bad to me. I also felt like he wanted to do something bad to my family as well.

I was then watching some show on a stage. The show had an old variety-show feel, but it was somehow related to an anime. There were some really hot girls dancing around on stage. They were dressed in jeans and tight shirts, just casual clothes, but they had something to do with the anime, too.

At some point I came to understand that the plot line had something to do with lesbianism. This really turned me on. The show was now controllable, as if I were watching it on YouTube. I did all kinds of frantic forwarding and rewinding, trying to get to the point where this assumed hot lesbian scene had occurred.

But suddenly, the screen went blank. I realized I had been watching this on my computer the whole time. My computer's screen was black, with only a cursor blinking in the upper left corner. I started to smell a plasticky, burning smell. I could tell it was coming from my computer's disk drive.

I knew I had burnt out my computer. I was pretty sure I couldn't get a new one for a while. I wondered what the heck I was going to do.

Good morning, everybody.

Before I begin my dreams, I'd like to let everybody know -- if you don't already know -- that the Rubin Museum in NYC will be running a series of programs on dreams through the end of April.

The Rubin Museum specializes in Himalayan art. It's one of my favorite museums in the city.

The series includes lectures, films, workshops, and even a sleepover in the museum, all related to dreams, their meanings, and how we can learn to develop our dreaming skills.

There are a lot of really cool speakers and instructors giving presentations, including famous performers, scientists, and lamas.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give everybody a heads up. More info should be on the Rubin Museum website.

Dream #1

I was in an apartment that I was probably watching for somebody else. The apartment may have been on the ground floor. It may have been late afternoon or early morning -- the light coming into the house was dim.

I was thinking that I needed to get out of here and go somewhere else before I was late for something. I was now in a car. It was night. It was like the car was actually the apartment. The front window of the car was actually shared with a side window of a convenience store.

I looked into the convenience store. I saw a lot of different types of nachos. I thought, Well, if these guys have good food like this, I might as well take my time in leaving. So I got out of the car and went into the convenience store to get some nachos. I was thinking of getting the nachos that had jalapenos in the cheese.

I needed to get money, so I went to an ATM. To my left, as I faced the ATM, was a dark hallway. A tall, kind of overweight, white man with reddish blonde hair came out of the hallway and began speaking to the man behind the counter, who may have been Indian and very skinny.

As the man was talking, telling the guy about products and shipments and things he needed to do, he kept crowding really close to me. I got freaked out. I thought he was trying to see my PIN number. My card didn't work once, so I had to do it again. But I waited unti the guy got away from me. The second time, the card worked.

The man asked me something in a friendly manner, as if he'd seen he'd made me feel uncomfortable. He then pulled out some flyer for some kind of Christian church. He may have been one of the preachers at the church. I was even more freaked out now, because I thought this guy was trying to convert me.

Dream #2

I had come into some nice house with a group of friends. We were all like high schoolers. We were probably not supposed to be here, but we were. We were being kind of rowdy and having fun.

At some point, the police knocked on the door of the house. Either we weren't supposed to be here or we had done something before we'd come here that wasn't very good. We knew we were in deep trouble.

A couple of my friends went to get the door. I stayed behind with another guy. The guy kept making some weird joke about throwing somebody at high speed against a brick wall and something about New Kids on the Block. We had all said the joke a number of times and thought it was funny. But now I told the kid to shut up. The joke had something to do with whatever bad thing we had done. He'd give us away if he kept laughing about it like this.

Then everybody else was gone and I was all by myself. It was like this house had been mine all along. I wandered around the house for a bit. Eventually I got wrapped up in some kind of sexual fantasy about a pretty girl coming home to have sex with me.

As part of the planning for this girl's arrival, I stretched a brown blanket down the staircase to the second floor. I then got dressed in a Pull-Ups diaper. I sucked on a pacifier and crawled up and down the blanket. I pretended I was a baby. At some point I beganb wetting the diaper.

Good morning, everybody.

I was in a place that may have been like a mix between a bedroom and a clothing store. The place was small and crowded with clothes and other items.

A group of black kids had done something to me. Possibly it had something to do with something perverted about me. They might have stolen or ruined a bunch of women's lingerie that I owned.

I had discovered this upon either waking up or coming out of some small place like a dressing room. At first I didn't say anything. But when I didn't react, the kids, both boys and girls, got really rowdy, taunting me. They may now even have threatened doing something to my mom.

So I decided to call some woman who was an authority figure over all of us and tell her what was going on. I picked up a cell phone off a couch that a bunch of the girls were laying on. As soon as I started dialing, a few slightly overweight girls gathered around me, yelling that I better not call the lady. But I had already dialed, and I wasn't going to hang up.

I got some weird message. The woman said she was out. She gave some big explanation about why she was out, which sounded like a blog-style rant about how hectic life is.

I now stood in a doorway at the woman's apartment. The woman had just taken a shower and she was walking around, getting dressed. She was really pretty, blonde, probably in her late 20s. She probably had a towel around her body and a towel around her head. She kept talking on and on about all these airheaded things that were apparently reasons that she was too busy to take my call.

I was trying to place the girl. She looked like a celebrity. Cybil Sheperd? No, her eyes were pale green and thin, her hair was too long, and she was too tan. Eventually I was amazed at how out of it this girl was. I thought, She can't help me. She's useless!

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was flying a helicopter over a river at night. I was coming up on a big cityscape, the lights of which had a low, buzzing, brownish-yellow color, almost like hypnagogic vision.

In the helicopter with me was a good looking man, maybe 15 years older than I, with blonde hair and a tan face. I was giving the man grammar lessons. I was trying to explain something about the way Homer used poetic expressions to give more vividness to his battle scenes.

I pointed out a few examples. But then I felt like I was being too condescending, acting like the man knew nothing about grammar at all. So I tried to think of another way to explain things that would assume more intelligence in the man.

But now the man told me, "I don't care for all that poetic stuff. I believe in direct expression. What's the most concise way you can say something?"

I felt a little ashamed. I agreed with the man. I looked back on all my writing and wondered if I had been concise enough. I doubted it.

I told the man I agreed with him. I was now in a hospital at night. I was in some hall. Eveything was dim, with only a few occasional ceiling lights turned on. I looked into some room through a big, plastic window. I may either have seen a newborn baby in a bed or a very injured adult in critical care.

Dream #2

I was walking into an anime convention. I was in some basement area, walking through a huge hallway into a large main room. The hallway and room were full of people.

I looked behind me. A group of girls was close to me. They might have known me somehow or been my friends. Two of the girls were dressed like Captain Harlock. They looked kind of boyish, but they didn't strike me as being as dashing as Captain Harlock.

Then I saw a third girl dressed as Captain Harlock. She was tall, thin, and blonde. Her face was perfect. I thought she looked terrific. But her hair was cut way too short, and it didn't have any of Harlock's style.

Dream #3

I was in an apartment that wasn't mine. I was probably watching it for somebody. The apartment was really big and nice. It was up on some high floor. The light from the windows was pinkish orange with sunset.

For some reason I decided to leave this place and go home. I went downstairs and outside. But as soon as I was outside I saw how many people there were all over the place. It was too much for me to handle. I suddenly remembered that the Super Bowl was going on, and that everywhere in the city would be like this. It would be better for me to go back upstairs and wait for things to calm down.

But I thought I should get something to eat before I went back upstairs. I was walking along some kind of desert road with something like carnival booths on each side. One of the booths was a Subway store. So I went into the line. I got up to the front pretty quickly. The lady in front of me, kind of short and overweight, ordered something that sounded really good. I tried to remember what she'd ordered, so I could order it, too.

I got an image in my head of miniature pizzas with something like olive paste and lizard eyeballs on it.

Dream #4

I was looking out the window of a house. Down below, a group of people were skating on a snowy pond. There were three people. They wore hooded robes made or rich, red velvet. I recognized the people as being cast member from the show Kids in the Hall. But now they all looked old, ragged, and fat.

They all had these dumb smiles on their faces, as if they were doing a skit about people who thought they were really good skaters when they were actually just morons. They spun quickly (clockwise?). They vanished beneath their robes.

This spiining and vanishing act was carried out twice more. The first time, the men wore green robes. The second time, they wore blue robes.