maboroshi

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.