maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an audience, probably on the far left side, a few rows back from the front, in a zoo-theatre. On the stage were two workers, one at the front of the stage and one at the back. The one at the back of the stage wore a white jumpsuit and cap and may have been mopping the floor. The one at the front stood before two "polar bears."

The two "bears" stood up and were on the right (my right) side of the stage. The stood next to each other, side to side, so that it was hard for me to see the one in the back. The one toward the front, however, did not look much like a real polar bear, but like a mix between a polar bear and the huge, shaggy dog on Sesame Street. It was all shaggy, and its face, except a huge, black nose, was covered over with shaggy fur.

It was like I had come in in the middle of the worker's act. He was telling everybody how he could freeze a polar bear so that it wouldn't hurt him, even when he got close to it. He was now standing right in front of the front polar bear (which towered over him), repeating the words, "Don't move, don't move." He may also have been stroking the bear's right arm.

The bear didn't move, and it only seemed to be slightly annoyed by the zoo worker. The zoo-worker then said that this was all a matter of training, and that on some days the training still didn't work. So it was kind of a dangerous thing to do.

The bear now turned toward us in the audience. I was now in the very front row, on the very far right side, very close to the front polar bear. The bear, turning to us, made a weird motion with his arms, like a magician's gesture, and made a "sshha!" sound, which was also supposed to be magic.

Nobody reacted to the bear. I don't think anybody knew or cared what it was doing. But I understood. The bear wanted to hypnotize and freeze somebody else. He wanted the hypnotizing relationship to be reciprocal, so that he could feel he had a little control over the situation. So I did my best to act hypnotized and frozen, to make the polar bear feel good.

The worker was now over at the left side of the stage. He lifted a baby polar bear out of something like a cradle or one of those clear hospital beds for newborns. The baby bear looked like an actual animal. But it was long and greyish, like a seal, with arms and legs like a polar bear.

The worker said the baby bear was just at the beginning of its training, so that the worker's ability to freeze the baby bear would be less predictable. But the worker thought he could do it. But as soon as he tried, the baby bear took a swipe with his sharp claws at the worker's mouth.

The worker said, "Whoa!" and put the baby bear back in its bed. He then told the audience, "Yeah, I don't think we can do it today. The baby bear isn't being agreeable."

Dream #2

I, possibly as someone else, was in a small boat in something like a Venetian (?) canal at night. I saw myself as if from behind and separated by ten meters or so.

The canal was much wider than usual, and it was in the midst of a town that looked almost as if it were made only of wooden frames and scaffolding. The whole thing was very still, and it was lit from above with something like stage lights.

My small boat was close to a small, wooden dock, at which knelt a kind of young, handsome, Arabic man. The man had a moderate mustache and a slightly stubbly face. He wore robes and a small, wrapped headdress. He had given me some kind of advice, which I accepted. I was now rowing, or simply drifting, away in my boat.

I was now in an airplane, possibly with my brother. The plane was crashing into the ocean, not far from some small island.

There was some kind of narration over the event, possibly as a memory from a female passenger. She said something about how everybody was acting okay as the plane crashed. But, she said, once the plane flipped upside-down, it was extremely difficult for everybody to stay composed. It was even painful.

I hadn't remembered the plane flipping over. I thought, Is that really how it's going to happen? I don't know if I can take it!

But the plane flipped over and crashed into the water. As it flipped over and crashed, I seemed to be separated from the whole situation, as if only imagining in my head all the different painful possibilities of being flipped upside-down in an airplane, crashing my head against the ceiling, etc.

There was a lot of panicked feeling, but it all kind of faded away. The scene faded into my brother and I floating in the boat on the canal. We had drifted out toward the center of the canal. We sat up and began rowing our way back to the sides.

There had been some huge storm and flood in the canal. My brother and I had barely survived. But the water levels were now back to normal. Things were calm.

We were rowing our way to a portion of the canal that was light with morning light, not dark, like the previous portion of canal (still) was. We rowed in the water between two long, wooden docks. On the platform at the end of and between the two docks stood the Arabic man. I realized that the advice this man had given me had saved me and my brother.

I somehow left my brother on the front end of the left dock. I rowed back toward the end.

I approached the man. He either reached out or bent over to help me up to the dock. He also had an object in his hand. It looked like some kind of NERF toy. It was a hot-pink circle outline against a black circle of fabric, like some kind of pad for catching velcro balls.

I was very grateful for the man's advice. I wanted to prove it in a really personal way. So I asked the man, "How do you say 'thank you' in Arabic?"

The man asked, "Arabic?" He stood up and looke a little confused, maybe even uneasy. I noticed that a couple other men were with the Arabic man. They were all doing some kind of work in the city behind them. The city may have been white stone buildings or more of the wood-frame structures. The whole scene was bathed in gentle, yellow sunlight.

I was worried the man wasn't Arabic. But he finally answered something like, "Meretas," or, "Muhretas."

I was still in the boat, rowing back toward the front of the dock. The man walked alongside me, or a little behind, on the left (as I had approached them) dock. The man and I were discussing something.

I was working a little too hard to make the man feel at ease. I still felt like I had somehow offended him by asking him how to say "thank you" in Arabic. I felt like he now also regarded me suspiciously. I was trying to prove I wasn't suspicious.