maboroshi

Good morning, everybody. My dream recall from last night is pretty fragmented, especially for the first dream.

Dream #1

In the context of something else I can no longer remember, I was looking at a website which offered some kind of songwriting (?) service. The user would either be charged by word written or by number of whole songs (?) written, depending on how many songs had been written and how long the songs were.

Dream #2

I was coming home at night. I was across the street from "my apartment building." I looked up to the windows of "my apartment" and saw that my lights were on. This, I knew, meant that someone was in my place, as if someone had broken into my place and was just hanging around in there while I was away.

I was now in "my apartment." I was going from room to room, trying to find whether the person was still there. I had a lot of rooms.

In one of the rooms, possibly the bathroom, I pulled back the curtains to the window. I saw that the window was wide open. I knew that the person who had come in here had gotten in through this window.

I went through the rooms, trying to find evidence that someone had been in my place. Was anything missing or misplaced? Was anything in disarray? But I don't think I found anything wrong. I may eventually have found some mess under or on top of a bed in a dim bedroom.

I eventually had one of my friends come over to investigate as well. I don't recognize my friend, and I'm not sure I ever saw him directly in the dream. He was an older, tall, white man with carefully arranged, grey, wavy hair. He wore a very nice suit.

At some point the man and I had left the apartment. I probably had to go on with my normal daily life despite the threat of this house invader.

But the man had an idea. If I stayed close to the apartment but I made it look like I had left the apartment building with no intention of coming back, perhaps the intruder would come back.

So now the old man and I were milling around in the deli near my building. I was probably looking at some bags of chips.

At some point, it may have become evident that the intruder was back in my place. The old man and I may have headed back to the place.

Dream #3

I was watching some old clip of a role Sarah Silverman had had as a child. Apparently she was in some kind of show about high school kids But she looked as young as an elementary school kid. She was also wearing a costume that looked like a plush easter bunny costume, except that it was Elmo-red.

Silverman stood on some huge stage, like for the Lawrence Welk show. The stage and the background were a seamless pink. Silverman stood with a young male friend beside a minivan, which was being displayed, as if for a game show. The front of the minivan was pointed toward the back of the stage.

Silverman was doing some act where she was supposed to be giving a huge, smart monologue about all the great characteristics of this prize minivan. But, as part of the act, she kept screwing up her lines until, out of frustration, she (still part of the act) threw the boy into the minivan and then slammed the sliding door shut.

Silverman then got into the front seat of the van. The shot was from the inside of the van now. It felt like the van was also oriented in the opposite direction.

Silverman was still giving some kind of monologue as she pouted and slouched in the seat, her knees up against the steering wheel. The monologue was supposed to be funny.

But the audience (of whom I hadn't been aware previously) was booing Silverman. Apparently they had been really offended by the way she had thrown the young man in the car, even though it had only been meant to be the comedic climax to her act.

Good morning everybody. This dream definitely ended around 1 AM. I had gone to bed at about 9:30 PM.

Although the end of this dream is very interesting (by my standards -- my dreams are tame compared to the others on this site!), and although it seems pretty spontaneous, I feel it was actually influenced by waking life -- namely by the part in Emiko's dream from yesterday where the boy tells her his name is Thomas.

Dream #1

I was in an apartment. Some stuff here happened that I no longer remember.

A young, pretty, and somehow motherly woman then told me something about how the doors of the apartment were open. This meant something like I would now be able to get back into the apartment, whereas before, I think, once I'd gone out I couldn't come back. The woman asked me to go pick up some kind of food.

I left the apartment. It was night. The apartment was a two-story building with outdoor balconies connecting the second story apartments. The area around the apartment felt like it was under construction or like it had been neglected or destoyed.

I think I was now planning to ask my cousin for the food the young woman had requested. I crossed the street to where my cousin lived. The building was a "college dorm," but it actually looked like a military living space for in the desert. It was long, half-cylindrical, and painted green.

I was now inside. The space was like a small supply warehouse. The floors were concrete. The space was lit by lamps hanging from the ceiling. There were a lot of young men around. They were largely congregating toward the back of this structure, where there was a big TV.

This was the first day of something like college or an extended trip that these guys were taking during college. The guys had all just settled into their dorms.

Along the left and right walls were doorways leading to a bedroom. Each boy had a bedroom. Beside each doorway was a small kitchenette and a small washer-dryer combo. I had a hard time telling whether each boy had his own kitchenette, washer, and dryer, or whether two rooms each shared one set. I either couldn't tell or didn't wonder where the bathrooms were.

I knew that I also had a room here. But I figured I'd probably continue living in the apartment. The boys all seemed cool. But I had a feeling that if I lived around them too long, I'd attract their bad attention and make a bad situation for myself.

I wondered if I had food of my own in the kitchenette that belonged to me. But I didn't concern myself with checking. I knew I'd come here to find my cousin.

I found my cousin at the back of the structure, near the TV. He may have looked like a kid. We spoke for a little while. We were then met by a boy my cousin introduced me to as C, a boy from my cousin's neighborhood. C, who had been short, thin, and pale as a kid, was now tall, tan, and muscular. I was surprised to find myself attracted to him.

I heard some noise in waking life that began to wake me from my dream.

But I still lay in a dream state. I had a vision of three figures. They looked like "little girl in dress" figures cut out of felt and made to interlock. One figure was black; one, grey; and one, white.

I very sensibly heard the figures speaking. They spoke in male and female voices. They were talking about how they had been dream characters but how, now that the dream was ending, they were going back to some place where they spent the rest of their time.

They were speaking with each other in a joking, familiar tone about the stuff they had shown me during my dream. One of the female voices addressed another character as David. The name David affected me for a number of reasons, which I was very aware of, having to do with both family members and big world events that had happened when I was young.

I had the understanding that these characters were actually elements of my personality, and that at this moment they were all autonomous to interact with each other, apart from me. It was kind of like being able to look in from the outside on a schizophrenic episode, which kind of worried me.

I could now sense the characters sinking away somewhere, possibly into the base of my brain, or the very top of the back of my neck.

I now had a beautiful hypnagogic vision: a black background filled with twirling squares and circles, curtains full, of purple, scale-like shapes. This vision buzzed around for a while, then faded away into waking life altogether.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was near "my car" in the woods. It was almost night. The sky was a dull, dark blue. I was all alone.

I may have been planning to sleep in my car for tonight and, perhaps, for a number of nights. I may not, though, have thought this was the right place to sleep. I may have been planning to drive my car somewhere else.

At some other point I remembered one of my male friends talking about living in some other town. He was complaining about what a boring town it was to live in.

He said, "The thing is, it doesn't have a road that leads directly out of town, up to the mountains. You have to take all these roads that wind around town. It's really hard not to stay stuck in town. And that gets really boring.

"Not like Boston. Boston has a road that leads right out of town! It's easy to get out of town and have fun."

At some point I saw a view of "Boston:" a town at the base of some deep-green mountain range, with its "main road" running along the side of the town and a little bit up the slope of mountains. There may have been houses lining one side of the road.

I thought how I didn't quite agree with my friend. I thought the town I was thinking of sleeping or spending some time in was fine. But I didn't want to disagree with my friend and look uncool (even though my friend wasn't really around, and I was just "remembering" a conversation with him).

I may now have been standing on the outskirts of a pretty big mountain town. I stood in the parking lot of some hotel. The hotel building looked kind of like a restaurant building.

(I've seen a building very much like this, in a space very much like this, in at least one other dream.)

Dream #2

I was in some bookstore. The bookstore was huge and mazelike. After winding my way through a few areas, I found myself at a manga section.

There were two thin, Japanese men shelving some books near the manga section. They both had a mild intellectual look, with casual, short haircuts, big eyeglasses, and nice, button-up shirts. They spoke back and forth with each other in Japanese.

I didn't want the guys to think I was just another American who only knew about Japanese culture through manga and j-pop. But I was also really curious about what manga the store had. In particular, I was looking for a copy of Tezuka's Phoenix series.

When I got over to the manga shelves, I heard the men laugh back and forth with each other. I "understood" their Japanese. They were basically saying exactly what I didn't want them to think about me. I got ashamed and thought I would leave the section. But I figured if I was already here, I might as well stay.

But I got bored pretty quick. It was all a lot of new manga. I had been looking for some really old, classic manga. Some of this stuff didn't even look like manga. It looked like airbrushed versions of American comic books with medieval European themes. Some of the books were tall, thin paperbacks with really glossy covers.

Good morning, everybody. I feel lousy today. I think I've caught another cold. Ugh!

I remember two dreams from last night. I feel like the first dream is only a fragment. Also, the second dream occurred between 5 AM, when I woke (and saw I still had some time to sleep) and 5:30 AM, when I got out of bed.

Dream #1

I had been walking around at night with my friend T. She had spoken with me about something like the two of us having sex.

We ended up at some place. We were in a bedroom. The bedroom was lit only with the glow of a TV. The room seemed to be split in two halves by a partition or wall. We were in the half with the bed. The floor of this half seemed to be set down lower than the floor of the other half.

I lay on my back on the bed. T straddled me from above. We may both have been naked. Then suddenly I was wearing baby diapers. I may have been an adult wearing baby diapers at first. But then I was actually a little baby, being changed by T.

Dream #2

I stood out in the parking lot of a mall during the daytime with an older man and possibly some younger men and women. The older man was probably tall, wearing nice clothes and dark-tinted eyeglasses. I may have been a child's height, coming up only to the man's waist, even though I seemed to think like myself at my present age.

The man was holding a huge, black, plastic gun that looked like it was from a cartoon. The barrel swelled out and in, like the sections of a wasp's body. The man asked me where I had gotten this gun. I was holding a similar, smaller gun.

I told the man I had gotten it at "The Anime Shop." I had gotten it for some girl who really liked anime. I saw the girl in my mind's eye. She was a Latina friend of mine.

I told the man I could show him where The Anime Shop was. I could see an "address" for the shop. It think it had the numbers 44 and 45 in it.

We walked into the mall. The corridor we were in was lit red. It seemed to have a jungle theme to it. There were stores in the middle of the corridor as well as along the walls. These stores looked like wooden huts in odd shapes. We had to wind our way around them.

I kept looking around for The Anime Shop. I had been pretty sure it was down this corridor. But we were now approaching the end of the corridor. Through glass doors I at first saw what looked like the interior of a really nice department store. But as we got much closer to the glass doors I saw that beyond them was actually another corridor, this one looking more like a normal mall's corridor. I may even have seen a TCBY (???).

I felt bad because I had led the older man all the way down the wrong corridor. I now realized that The Anime Shop was in a parallel but separate corridor. I knew we'd have to walk through the regular part of the mall to get there. But I didn't know if the older man would trust me any longer to guide him there.

Good morning, everybody. I remembered three dreams from last night. But I lost one between waking up and starting this entry.

The "new bacteria" dream is influenced by the NASA announcement about that newly discovered Mono Lake microbe that survives on arsenic instead of phosphorous. I also don't know why I thought in my dreams that bacteria aren't alive. I'm pretty sure it's viruses that are technically not alive or only half-alive.

Dream #1

I was at "my office," which was like the living room of a small house or cabin that might have been located in the woods. There were a few big windows on the walls, letting in plenty of light, possibly through thin, gauzy curtains. The day was probably cold and light grey.

My desk was near the center of the room. I was standing back from it a little bit at first. The desk was cluttered with all kinds of papers and things that looked like mechanisms for gathering data for ecological surveys.

The front door opened and either "my boss" or "a colleague of mine" walked in. He may have been a white man, strong-looking, with a big stomach and a huge beard. He may have been wearing some kind of plaid shirt, suspenders, and a broad-brimmed hat.

I had the understanding that I was probably going to be fired because I was doing a terrible job. I sat down at the desk and grabbed my lunch. I probably shouldn't have been eating at this time, but I decided to eat right now, and to eat like a pig, in defiance of whoever was going to fire me.

My lunch may not have looked much like food. It may have looked like machine parts, or, rather, just one small but chunky, metallic machine part. It was in a clear, Tupperware container about 35cm long, way too big for whatever the small lunch was. I may have been trying to eat the machine part with chopsticks.

I decided that if I was going to get fired for being lazy, I might as well be even lazier while I was waiting to get fired. I saw some kind of "mechanism" that looked like the metal-wound cord for payphone receivers. It may have been partly buried under a pile of papers.

I probably started whining and complaining about something that would prove I wasn't thinking about doing my job at all. I might have complained about some porn website that I couldn't get onto or some rock song that I wasn't able to turn on really loud. (But, now that I think about it, I may not even have had a computer at my desk.)

Dream #2

A view of various "bacteria." It was like seeing a lot of purplish, purple-blue, and pinkish, spidery or web-like shapes stuck in clear cubes like novelty plastic ice cubes.

The "cubes" were being moved before my eyes as if they were being displayed as part of a presentation. But they would often overlap, as if they were just random cubes of ice jangling about with each other in a glass of water.

I heard a voice talk about the bacteria and how they were a new kind of bacteria. They weren't really alive, or they were only half alive. But they had the ability to reproduce.

Good morning, everybody. I recall three dreams from last night. The third dream definitely occurred between 5 AM and 7 AM.

Just as a side note, in waking life my opinions about South Africa and Chile are not like the portrayals in the second and third dreams. The "South Africa" and "Chile" of my dreams are more a reflection of myself.

The "keyhole" comment the father makes in the third dream is absolutely influenced by the "keyhole" comment the prospective stepfather makes in Laurel Nakadate's movie The Wolf Knife.

Also, I seem to portray myself as some kind of awesome ladies' man and businessman. It would be cool if I were. But, alas...

Dream #1

I may have seen this dream from the third person, and from a very low angle, possibly as low as the floor.

A man was standing on some lower level of floor, and possibly also separated by a barrier, from two other people. The man was probably young, though he may have acted old.

The man was bragging about how McDonald's in his country was better than McDonald's in America. The other two people asked him to explain why.

The man, agitated, shouted, "Well, for example, Big Macs! In my country, our secret sauce has an extra special ingredient!"

The other two asked what this ingredient was.

The man shouted, "Gall!" By which I understood that human gall was being used as an ingredient for the special sauce.

That sounded terribly unappetizing to me. I may have been half awake at this point, wondering why people would volunteer to have their gall-bladders drained so that the gall could be used in Big Macs.

Dream #2

I was sitting with a woman at the back of a darkened conference room. The conference room was full of rows of long tables. At the front of the room was a large pull-down projector screen.

Projected on the screen was a view of a man and a woman. The woman in the room with me sat to my right. The way the woman and man on the screen were positioned, the woman on the screen was across from me and the man on the screen was across from the woman.

The woman on the screen was maybe 17 or 18 years old, black, very pretty, with short, black hair. The man, possibly a little older than the woman, looked Latino or possibly Filipino. He wore a frumpy dress shirt.

The woman and man were representing the appliance company Maytag. They were holding a video conference to discuss the company's financial results.

The woman and the man spoke for a little while and then came to something like a conclusion. I'm pretty sure the discussion didn't have anything to do with Maytag's operations.

The woman then began bowing repeatedly and saying something in Japanese, something incongruent, like "onegashimasu."

I suddenly noticed that the woman was wearing a costume like a mix between Uhuru from Star Trek's dress and a pink, silk cat-girl outfit, even with pink, silk cat-girl ears on her head.

The man and the woman then began joking, as if they were having banter on some kind of TV talk show. I wondered what the heck kind of financial reporting this was.

The man now said something about how the South African broadcasting company was experiencing technical difficulties broadcasting from the present building. So the man and woman had to switch buildings.

I don't know if I'd realized before this point that the conference call was taking place in South Africa. I figured it made sense that there were technical difficulties, given the current infrastructure situation in South Africa (???).

The man and the woman now began clowning around on the screen even more. The screen's view then switched to a view of either a huge office or a huge apartment in a tall building. A pretty, young, Asian woman with really sexy eyes and brown hair sat before the camera, with a huge window behind her.

The Asian woman was eating a huge, sloppy hamburger. She got all fussy and pouty, as if she were offended that anybody might expect her to act professional. She whined, "Well, everybody is still coming over here to get the conference call started. So I'm gonna eat some food."

I was wondering what the hell was going on with this conference call. It was the least professional conference call I'd ever seen in my life.

I wondered how long it was going to take to get the conference call started back up. I wondered if I needed to change buildings as well. I felt like that would cause a terrible delay. But I then realized that my screen was fine. I didn't need to change buildings. It was just the connection in South Africa that was having troubles.

Dream #3

I was in Chile with a somewhat wealthy Chilean family. The family was a father and three daughters.

We had been out doing something when something happened to me whereby I received a lot of money. At the same time, the father received a call from a company saying that he owed the company a lot of money. We had to head back to the family's home, which was a pretty big apartment in a tall building.

I had been flirting with the oldest daughter while we had been out. But, also, something I had done had upset the middle daughter. She was now in the kitchen, pouting.

I walked from the hallway into the kitchen by pushing open a set of swinging doors (like might be in the doorway of a saloon in a Western movie). The kitchen was narrow. The daughter sat in a window well at the end of the kitchen.

I pulled my wallet out of my pocket. I told the girl, "You know I said that once I had money I'd help you with -----." I began fingering through some American bills, trying to figure out how much money I needed to give the girl. The girl warmed up to me. She didn't seem so upset anymore.

I sat in the window-well with the girl. I put my right arm around her. I then began fondling her between her legs with my left hand. I wondered if what I was doing was right. After all, I had just been flirting with the oldest daughter. Should I really be flirting with the middle daughter, too?

Then I realized that, somehow, the "agreement" among the family was that I should act as a "husband" for all three daughters. So it was okay for me to be messing around with all three girls.

Someone called the girl and me out to the living room.

I was now lying on my stomach in the living room, looking into another room through a doorway. I saw a young man lying on his back on a mattress. The young man was sick. He was possibly about to die. One of the reasons, I realized, that we had come back home was because the young man had suddenly taken ill while we had all been out.

(I should also say that somehow the mother's death, "a few years back," played into this part of the dream. But I can't remember how.)

The father was sitting at the table in the adjacent dining room. His business partner sat to his left. The father was on the phone, possibly with the company that was claiming the father's supposed debt.

I figured that there was something I should be doing to take care of this situation. I felt I could be resourceful enough to take care of something. I knew people (???). I should be able to get in touch with someone in the US who knew an expert in Chilean financial legal matters.

The father addressed me. He told me how much he loved this place. He had a black-and-white satellite-photograph map of the neighborhood laid out on the table. He pointed out a specific park that he and his family loved going to. The park was next to a plaza and a museum. It was a very prestigious neighborhood.

My view zoomed "upward" away from the park as the father explained mournfully how it was likely that the family was going to be forced out of this neighborhood by its sudden financial troubles.

My brother, who, I now saw, had been sitting across from the father, pushed a piece of notebook paper across the table to the father. The paper had a transcription of the "contract" which was the main point of dispute between the father and the company.

My brother had made the transcription in green pen. The writing was all some kind of hieroglyphic or symbol language, full of radish-shaped, circular letters with circles inside of them. I might have told myself something silly, like this was the native Mayan (???) language of Chile.

The father began critiquing my brother's transcription. He used a pen to insert a crucial "keyhole" (as he called it) glyph into the transcription.

I sat down to the father's right as he tearfully began explaining everything the contract meant. The father was thin, but it seemed like he was just beginning to gain weight, as if he'd be overweight in a few years. He had coppery skin and a tight, curly hairstyle. He wore a brown, tweed suit, a white dress shirt, and a tie.

The man's business partner wore a very similar suit. But the partner was pale white, very thin, tall, and gangly. He wore square, silver-rimmed glasses. He had shaggy, red-brown hair and a half-stubbly beard.

The father translated the "Mayan" document for me. He was eventually able to explain to me that there was some kind of claim being made by the company for cash which should really have been considered a "non-cash" obligation (???).

It was becoming increasingly clear to me, as the father tearfully explained the text, that the terms of the contract actually didn't specify a monetary obligation at all, but a kind of conditional agreement that would only have a monetary value based on certain successes, which the father did not have.

Finally, when I saw the situation for what it was, I began talking, right over the father's weeping explanations. I kept asking the father who his legal counsel was. It took a while for the father to stop crying and just listen to me.

My plan was to see what kind of legal counsel the father had. But I already knew that if the father didn't have sufficient legal counsel, I would almost certainly be able to find some in the United States.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at "my office," which was nothing like an offce. I stood on the top of a gigantic (30m tall?) Kitchen counter, looking down over a gathering of flowers that were almost as tall as the kitchen counter. The blossoms were about 5m across and looked like a mix between lotuses and zinnias. They were a cream-white color with yellowy centers.

From down on the floor, from which the flowers grew, I could hear my company's CEO and someone else talking. They had been planning a party. (There may have been an earlier part to this dream in which I had been helping with the party planning.) They now may have made some reference to me, as if I were not present.

I thought I would get their attention. I thought I could hop from flower to flower to get closer to them. But I figured that wasn't a great idea. The flowers were probably weak. They might not support my weight.

At some point, it may have seemed like the flowers were floating in a body of water, as if this gigantic kitchen had been flooded up to the level of the countertop.

Something had been settled regarding my role in the party, and I was now walking along the counter-top, trying to get to wherever I needed to get to take care of my task. The kitchen floor seemed to get closer and closer, and things took on more and more of a regular proportion.

At some point my CEO walked past me, coming from the opposite direction. He may have been walking on the countertop, but I think he actually was down on the kitchen floor, which was now only 3m or so below the counter-top. I said hi to him. He said hi and addressed me by my name. I was pleasantly surprised that he knew my name.

I walked past some tall cardboard boxes that were on the counter-top. At the end of the counter-top was something that looked like a way-oversized wheelchair-ramp leading down to an oversized lobby that looked like the lobby to a small office building in a suburban office park.

I somehow found myself on another ledge, like an oversized counter-top, looking down (about 5m) to an oversized area that had been set up "to look like" a 1950s-style diner (even though I don't think now that the place actually looked like a 1950s-style diner).

The place had clean wood floors, white walls, and a few round tables. Over the huge front door was a huge "1950s-style" sign which looked like a mix between a clock and a spoon. The name of the restaurant was given, with a (not very convincing) "1950s-style" slogan underneath it.

I'd had to turn around to see the sign. I turned back around and was now in a smallish theatre, which was still, somehow, the "1950s diner." I stood (on the floor!) at the top and back of the theatre.

The theatre was full of young people, mostly boys. The theatre's seats were all set up at a couple of different angles. The seating was very steep, like stadium seating. The chairs were red. Down at the bottom was a small stage.

I understood that an anime festival was about to take place here. Some presenter (possibly a shortish, youngish-looking Asian woman in a grey t-shirt, pale blue jeans, and glasses) was about to begin speaking.

I found a couple of my friends: a man I don't recognize and my female friend T. They were sitting at the back of the theatre, on red-leather and chrome stools like counter-stools in a 1950s diner.

I went over to my friends. I lay down across a couple of the stools, stomach-down. I wondered if these seats were very good. After all, this place was packed. Once the presentation started, would we have a bunch of people constantly crowding in front of us?

My stool-tops now seemed to come directly out of the floor now, instead of being atop chrome poles. T, wearing a long skirt, lifted up her skirt to straddle me and sit on my back.

I kind of got mad that T had lifted up her skirt. I knew that she'd lift it up enough so that anybody looking would easily see the crotch of her panties. There had already been some creeps looking in our direction. Now that T had basically flashed everybody, these guys would probably really want to cause trouble for me.

At some point I may have had to tell T to get off me. The way the stool-tops were set and the way T sat on me were putting a lot of pressure on my spine. I figured I'd just roll down onto the floor and let T sit on me that way.

After this, T and I were standing by some doorway, just outside the theatre, looking into the dark theatre through a half-opened door. We stood in a white walled hallway.

We were talking to a couple of older, rich-looking, white people, probably a man and a woman. The man and woman were famous and possibly had had something to do with the anime and manga industry. We may have been making plans to collaborate on something.

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

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good morning, everybody. I remember four dreams from last night.

Dream #1

I was in a big airplane, either in the cockpit or near it while its door was open. In the plane were just me, the pilot, and one of my male friends. The sky outside was grey and wet.

We were taxiing down a runway. We picked up speed, as if we were going to take off. But we weren't getting up enough speed, in my opinion.

I could see from outside and just above the plane. The runway we were on looked way too short for our plane to get up enough speed to take off.

We taxied around the runway roads, clockwise, trying to loop back around and hit the long runway again with a little bit of momentum so we could build up enough speed to take off.

But somehow we ended up (as if we had been travelling counterclockwise) driving the plane outside of the airstrip and onto a strip of road before a large, Victorian-style house. The house was adjacent with the chain-link fence bordering the airport.

A military man in camouflage stood beside the airplane, talking with the pilot, as if he were just standing beside the window of some bus, not a huge airplane. The military man was older, white, tanned, with shortish, square-cut, white hair.

The military man said that the town in which this airport was located was being evacuated soon, anyway. Once it was evacuated, nobody would mind us using the public streets as a runway. That way we could easily get up enough speed to take off.

The military man said, "Heck, maybe even some of the people we evacuate out of the town would like to fly some planes with you!"

Somebody, maybe I, suggested that we get "some of those little planes" (in my mind's eye I saw cone-shaped planes maybe 3-4 meters long, painted white with red triangles pointing away from the nose). The "little planes" could easily get up enough speed to take off from a small runway like this.

We drove the plane away. The military man said he'd order some of "those little planes." He may even have started talking with a younger military man about the order.

It was now night. I stood before the Victorian house, in some little niche set between the wall and the staircase up to the front door. In the niche was an old-style, wooden podium. The podium may have held a big book.

I was probably here to talk to the military man regarding the little planes. I wasn't trying to speed up the order. I was actually trying to figure out what the planes were, to see if they were the right things to use. But I figured my being here to ask about the planes would make me look impatient, and that I'd get on the military's bad side because of it, if I didn't do things the right way.

Somebody came out to talk to me. He was a younger soldier, in formal dress, even a hat (which kind of looked like a Nazi hat). He explained a few things to me about the higher-ups' names. I tried to keep it all in mind.

The man saluted me. I was so surprised that I saluted back, with tears in my eyes (for some reason). Somehow I could see the man reflected in my tears, as if the tears were the surface of sunglasses.

I was alone again. I turned to the book in a frenzy. I had just forgotten everything the man had told me. The high-up military man's name was Wellinghoff. Or was it Norris? I couldn't remember. And I couldn't remember the correct titles of all the higher-ups, either.

Dream #2

I was in a bookstore or library. It had an old feel to it. It was all made of wood. It was open, with a ground level and probably a balcony level running along the walls. The ceilings were very high. The center of the store was mostly small, wide tables with books displayed on the. The walls were lined with shelves.

I saw, from high up, a couple of my female friends. One of them was aw woman I haven't seen since college. I decided to go say hi to them.

To get to them I began climbing down a wooden pole about 20cm in diameter. I was climbing down the pole head first for a way. Then I did some weird kind of fllip move so that I was climbing down feet first.

I ended near some small, tight, spiral staircase, for which this long pole may have served as a support column. The pole seemed to end a couple meters above the ground. I had to jump the rest of the way down. The two women were right nearby.

I slowly, flexibly reached away from the pole. I relaxedly leapt away from the pole, almost as if I were floating away from it. I landed very softly on my feet.

Thinking that the women would think I was showing off with all I had just done (I wasn't exactly sure myself how I had done it), I started talking naturally to act like nothing had happened.

I began fumbling through a couple of books and even something that looked like a mix between a woman's wallet with a tiny mirror on the front. The wallet may have been a dark blue suede, and it may have had some black and white photo of a famous actress or famous work of art on it.

Dream #3

I was in a department store. The store looked kind of cheap and run-down. I was now at the counter, getting my stuff rung up. The person ringing me up was a woman, but I don't know if she was older or younger.

Something went wrong, and the woman needed to wait before she charged me. I decided to walk around the store some more.

Off to the left of the cash register and a little ways away was a rack of really cheap-looking lingerie. For some reason, I decided to look through it. I took a few items off the rack, as if I were either going to buy them or try them on.

At some point, I came to the conclusion that I was in a Victoria's Secret.

I looked down into a plastic tub (?) which had a few stray pairs of panties inside. I figured that if I was buying or trying on the lingerie, I'd also need to try on some panties. So I tried to pick some out.

I remember one pair of panties that was like a thong, pale yellow, with a cottony back and a sheer, net-like front with flower designs on it. Another pair was like briefs. The material was blue like denim. But it had a weird, scaly look and feel.

Just to my left was a window wall. Just beyond the wall was another rack of lingerie. A big, tall, black man in a black t-shirt and sunglasses was fingering through the lingerie. I could see that he was also looking for articles of lingerie to try on.

Dream #4

I was in "my shower," which was a shower-only stall. It was set into the end of the narrow bathroom.

Either my shower curtain had broken or I had decided I'd needed to adjust it somehow. I took the curtain off the rod. Then I tried to put it back on.

I suddenly realized that by taking the curtain off the hook I'd screwed everything up. The curtain was actually just a gigantic plastic bag, like an enormous version of a grocery bag. The bag had been folded around the rod and against the wall (even into holes in the wall?) in so many weird ways that I likely couldn't replicate it.

I figured I'd do my best and try to re-do things. I was up on the wall, looking down on the shower curtain. I don't know how I was up there -- possibly by holding myself in place by doing the splits and holding each foot against the wall? I began working on the gigantic plastic bag.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room with a couple other people, possibly my mom and great-grandmother. The people were talking with each other in a normal, quiet tone of voice.

I was looking at my left arm. I had three gashes on my forearm. One ran down from my wrist about 15cm. Another ran at about the midpoint of my inner forearm's side, along the bone, and was about 7cm. The other was just a small gash, about the size of a large coin, in the center of the underside of my forearm.

The gashes all had a dry,plasticky, purplish look. The big gash showed a few layers of purplish "flesh," which lightened as they went futher down. Each of the layers had a grid-like pattern in them, as if the flesh were a web of little squares.

I thought, by the dry, plasticky look of the wounds, that they were healing. In fact, the large wound was the only one still completely open. The second wound was just a dark purple line of exposed flesh bumping up on my arm. The smallest wound was really only like a rough, bruised spot.

But I still wondered whether the large wound would heal, or whether I would get huge gashes in my arm like this again. The gashes may possibly have been from something like a disease, as opposed to my actually having gotten cut by something.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a long line, probably all of young men, in a cafeteria or gymnasium that had been set up like a cafeteria. The cafeteria was crowded and busy. Everything had a bluish tinge to it. The line kind of snaked around in a square. It was moving slowly but steadily.

As I was working my way through the line, around one corner, I could see a group of girls sitting at the end of a long table. The girls looked like the girls from Girls Generation. They were also famous singers. I could see them only a little bit through the spaces between the people in front of me.

The girls started singing a little song/chant involving my name. It seemed like they were half-teasing me and half-flirting with me through the song. I knew that the girls were my friends. In fact, I had been sitting with them before I'd gotten in line.

I was now moving forward to where the girls could see me plainly. The line was still moving. I thought that as I passed the girls I would wave or do something like that to acknowledge them quickly without stopping and blocking up the line.

But when I was in full view of the girls, one of them told me to stop right where I was and stand still so she could take pictures of me. I stopped. But I was afraid of the guys behind me. They were tall and they seemed really mean. And it seemed like the instant I'd stopped walking, the guys had started to get impatient with me.

I was trying to think up a couple quick poses to give for the camera. But I could only think up feminine poses. I also felt shaky, because I was afraid of the guys behind me, who were getting very impatient. But I was trying to act unconcerned, innocently oblivious to the guys' anger. This somehow seemed feminine to me as well.

Good morning, everybody. I've had zero dream recall recently. But I remember this dream from last night.

Dream #1

I was in a cafeteria in the basement of a building. I had gotten food from a salad bar. I had a lot of food on my plate.

Now I was at the salad bar again, as if the whole scene were starting over. I had a plate. I was walking along the "salad bar," which was more like an open-faced refrigerator section for displaying drinks at a deli.

I heaped some lettuce and mushrooms onto my plate. I put some other kind of vegetable onto my plate. I lay a couple of long ears of baby corn by the lettuce. I also had some other kind of food by the baby corn.

Feeling the plate, I thought I had gotten too much food. The cafeteria would charge by the pound. This plate was heavy. It would cost me a lot of money. So I decided to put back the baby corn.

At this point I may have had a double-vision, as if my consciousness were in two places at once. I was still in the cafeteria, getting my food, or walking to the register to pay for my food. But I was also sat down in some long, glass-ceilinged corridor eating my food.

(The cafeteria itself had an eating area, I'm pretty sure, just past the registers. But the area I ate at seemed like it was in a different place altogether.)

I hunched over my food at the edge of a long, communal table that looked kind of like a big picnic table. A lot of people passed by me. I may have been in the hallway of a mall. The sunlight was pretty strong coming in through the glass ceiling. To my right, maybe 10 meters away, was a red cinder block walled elevator bank.

The speakers were playing "a U2 song," which may have sounded like "Vertigo." The lyrics said something about how everybody always said bad things about the Internet, but how Bono thought it was great, because it was like the Mona Lisa of porn.

(Good morning, everybody. I remember one dream from last night.

The character in my dream definitely looks like a person I know from waking life. I don't know him personally, but he goes to certain art events I also attend, including one last night.

He's not at all like the person in the dream. He's really cool and insightful. So I don't know why I dreamt of him being this way.)

Dream #1

I sat at an anime fest, in a place like a basketball arena. It was like everybody who had come to attend the festival were sitting in bleachers, looking down to a stage-like area that would be where the basketball court was. The seating section, as big as in any pro basketball arena, was completely packed.

I sat near the front row. The row I sat in had a big, wooden bannister before it, which kind of reminds me of the front railing in the public area in a court room, or of the balcony area where the public sits during government sessions in capitols.

The area where the basketball court would be was full, probably with artists' booths. But the festival patrons weren't going down there.

We were all watching some presentation given to us by some white man who was apparently a manga artist. The man may have been tall, a little overweight, balding, with red-brown hair, and red-tan skin. He may have been wearing a kind of old, green sweatshirt and blue jeans.

When the man's presentation was finished, the man announced that we could all come down to his booth. He had a black binder full of his manga art, and he informed us that we could each choose our favorite female manga character out of the binder and take the page for free. He might also have said he would sign the page.

An overweight, black man about my age, with thick glasses and wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, sat to my left. He said, probably to me, in a joking-confiding way, "Well, everybody who's in line behind me better get ready to wait a long time. Cause I'm gonna take my time going through that book until I find my favorite anime girl."

Some announcer called each person down by name. They called the man. Right after that, they called me. I stood behind the man as he slowly flipped through the pages of the binder.

The binder was huge, full of pages. The pages were probably all in individual plastic sleeves. The art looked very pencil-y but very professional. Some of the art was in grey pencil. Some was in blue pencil.

The man pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a cell-phone-sized laptop. He checked the time, put the device back in his pocket, and went back to leafing slowly through the pages.

I was trying really hard to think to myself who my favorite manga character was. All I could come up with was Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin. I thought I should be able to come up with a character better than that. But I figured that maybe Jasmine from Aladdin really was my favorite manga character.

The man had flipped all the way to the end of the binder. Then, saying out loud that he didn't see a manga girl he liked yet, he began flipping backward through the binder.

As I watched the man flip through the pages of the binder, I saw a number of drawings of Jasmine. I figured I'd be happy with just about any of those drawings. Seeing all these Jasmine drawings, I was starting to get impatient with the man. I could have had a perfectly fine picture and been gone by now. But this man wouldn't stop taking his turn!

The man pulled his "phone" back out of his pocket and looked at the time again. The phone indicated that he'd been flipping through the book for 20 or 22 minutes by now. (The phone may not have been showing the time. It may actually been timing the man as he flipped through the pages.)

The man nodded approval at the time, put his phone back in his pocket, and began flipping slowly through the binder again. He may have gone all the way backward through the binder and started flipping forward again.

Good morning everybody. I remember three really short dreams from last night. They were all from after 2 AM. I had coffee last night and couldn't fall asleep until 2 AM.

The third dream was pretty much all lucid, even though it was short.

Dream #1

I walked through some room toward a staircase. The staircase was just past a doorway and was part of some slightly larger hallway, like for a small apartment building.

The room I was in was something like a mix between a living room and a small apartment lobby.

I had to maneuver a little bit past some kids who were rough housing with each other right in front of the doorway to the hallway. There were boys and girls, probably in their early teens or just a little younger. Their parents stood nearby. I thought the kids were funny, and they looked like they were having fun.

I wallked into the hallway and turned toward the staircase. A group of kids ran just in front of me, blocking me from the staircase. The began wrestling and rough housing with each other. I thought they were pretty funny. I just waited for their rough housing to pass.

But then I remembered that the parents were in the doorway, watching the kids. I thought that the parents would think I was weird for hanging around and watching the kids. I decided to get moving. I tried to edge past the kids. It was really difficult, because there were so many kids, and the hallway was so small.

Dream #2

I was in "my bed," in "my bedroom," which was a lot like my bedroom in waking life, except messy. My lights were on.

I was laying face-down on my bed. I was thinking bad thoughts about God. For some reason, I was really angry at God. The more I cursed him, the more amusing I found the activity.

Eventually my legs began levitating off the bed. I wasn't controlling it, but I thought I might be able to. My legs lifted higher and higher until my body was almost perpendicular to the bed, with my head on the bed.

At some point, I noticed little specks of dirt or something black all over my bed. There were also hairs or cotton fibers, also colored black, all over my bed.

I started trying to blow all the dust and dirt and hair off my bed. Some of it would blow away. But there was so much. I wondered how I could have let my bed get so dirty.

Dream #3

I was in "my bedroom" at night. I was crouched down on the floor, possibly naked, with my knees to my chest. The bedroom lights were off, but I could see by the purplish evening light.

I told myself that this wasn't actually my bedroom. That seemed pretty obvious. I told myself I was dreaming.

As soon as I told myself this, I had a false awakening and sat up on "my bed." But I was still lucid.

I stood out of the bed and told myself to remain calm. I figured I would walk out of the house and see what was around. The house seemed like a suburban house.

I was heading for the front door. But suddenly I thought, Why should I exit through the door? If I'm in a dream, I should be able to leave the house any way I want.

So I decided to walk through a wall. I turned right, into another room, possibly another bedroom. I walked straight up to the wall, which had a window on it that started at about my chest.

I thought I might climb up onto the windowsill and walk through the window. But I figured I didn't need to go throgh the trouble. Walking through a wall and walking through a window were basically the same thing.

I began to walk through the wall. It seemed pretty easy. But suddenly I saw a bright light. I felt like something was resisting. I got kind of mad, and I pushed really hard through the resistance.

I'm pretty sure I lost lucidity at this point. I fell past the wall and fell a couple stories down to the ground. I think that as I fell, I was telling myself, Oh well, I guess I woke up from that dream.

I sat up. It was daytime. I "had awoken from my dream." To my right was a red brick wall. To my left was a beach, possibly like Coney Island. The sky was deep blue and the light was dim, almost as if I were looking at an old film.

Good morning, everybody. These dreams probably all occurred in the early morning, maybe after 2:30 or 3 AM.

The first two dreams had a weird visual quality, as if I were reading them or half-reading them. I think this comes from the fact that last night I read Oe Kenzaburo's story "Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, in which one of the characters is a boy who can't see very well.

The emotional difficulty the boy's father has with this and other things is so vivid that I think my unconscious tried to put me in that boy's position in one way or another.

Dream #1

I was half-reading and half-watching a story about a man and a woman at a hotel. The man was in danger, and the woman was trying to protect him. The man and the woman were both spies. The man had probably gotten caught in the act.

The woman had brought the man to the hotel for hiding. She may now have been explaining to the man that he was a spy. This may have come as a surprise to the man, who didn't actually want to be a spy.

The woman may then have made some sort of flirtatious gestures or comments to the man. The man may have understood that the woman wanted to have sex with the man while they were at the hotel. But the man didn't want to have sex. The woman may have, reluctantly, gotten the point, after which she turned to talking about some "serious" topic with the man.

Dream #2

I was reading an email from one of the bosses of my department, M. M's email was written in regular black text, except words and phrases that he wanted to emphasize, which were in bold and colored brown.

The first part of the email had to do with the fact that our larger company was getting to celebrate some royal wedding from a number of decades ago. An old, royal couple would be visiting the offices.

I could see the couple in my head, as if looking at a photograph from the late 1800s. They woman was dressed in a Victorian dress. The man was dressed in a military suit and medals.

M wrote that we had to treat the royal couple very nice because they were major investors in our company.

M's email then went on to say that M was going to be let go from the company in just a little while. He was going to stay on to make sure a couple of big events were taken care of. He wasn't bitter he was getting fired. He understood.

I now saw a tall, thin, old, white man in a lonely office hallway. The man stood before a copier that was set into a niche in the wall. The copier had a strange-looking top. It looked like some kind of animal trap, covered over in a metal shell and painted the same color of grey-beige as the copier.

I knew that, to make copies, you had to drop the papers onto the top of the strange device. The papers would then fall into the copier, as they would fall into a garbage can.

Dream #3

I had been in a room full of people, mostly women, doing some kind of small workshop or conference. The room had emptied out largely, with just a few people around. Now, even though I stood in the room still, it was like a number of months had passed since the conference.

I was looking for somebody to celebrate "the holiday" with. The holiday was like Christmas, but it wasn't Christmas. I asked a short woman if she would like to celebrate the holiday with me. She probably said she couldn't. But then she remembered that another girl, an Israeli girl, was looking for someone to spend the holiday with.

The Israeli girl called me on the phone. I could see the girl in my mind's eye. She was short, with olive skin, and long, black hair. I was really happy I was going to get to go out with her.

The Israeli girl told me something like there was no way she was going to be able to get back home "to West Tel Aviv" (I'm not sure if people make such an explicit distinction as "West Tel Aviv" in waking life). I thought of Tel Aviv and told the Israeli girl how much I wanted to go there. One of my favorite psychologists, Erich Neumann, spent the final years of his life there.

I told the girl something like she must hear people say stuff like that all the time. I told her it must get annoying to hear people talk about her home like it was so perfect, when it wasn't actually very easy at all to live there.

I (false) remembered a conversation I'd had with a woman from another country. The woman had told me about how naïve she thought some foreigners were. They'd say how much culture they thought her country had. But they didn't understand that it was really a scary place to live.

I was now in a big room, sitting on a couch so that my legs were propped up on the back and my back lay on the seat cushion. A pretty, blonde college girl stood before the couch. The girl was tall, thin, slim, and tan, with blue eyes. She wore a pink sweater and dark blue jeans.

The girl was giving a speech about different media-propaganda campaigns made by certain regions of the world to make other regions of the world look bad. She was giving a lot of really interesting examples. It sounded like dangerous information to have. But it also sounded like she was referencing Hollywood in almost every example.

I tried to pay closer attention to the girl's speech. But there were a bunch of girls getting up and leaving, walking between me and the girl and making such noise, talking with each other, that I couldn't get what the girl was saying. Her last example had something to do with New York carrying out a smear campaign against Chicago.

Other than the girl and I, there was only one woman now in the room. She was like a professor and like the girl's mother. She was working at a big desk off in the corner of the room.

The girl now flopped down on a couch near mine. We were something like good friends. But I was now really sexually aroused by her. So I rolled off the couch and crawled over to her couch.

For some reason, I asked the girl, "So now what are you going to do with you life?"

The girl's belly was a little exposed from under the sweater. I had intended to roll up and see if I could get away with snuggling with the girl on the couch. But, seeing the girl's belly and waistline, I just decided to stick my hand into the girl's jeans.

So I lifted up the girl'ls waistline and began feeling her. I was surprised to discover that the girl was wearing a baby's diaper. This didn't worry me too much. I moved my hand farther down toward the girl's crotch.

Suddenly the girl demanded, "What are you doing?"

I thought, Oh no! She doesn't want me touching her. I was so embarrassed that I woke up.