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Morning of October 7, 2015. Wednesday.



Walking in an unknown town, my wife Zsuzsanna and I go into an unfamiliar grocery store. The store’s entrance is directly adjacent to the public sidewalk and city street. Firstly, I am looking at jars of pickles that I contemplate buying for Zsuzsanna. The lid somehow comes off one jar when I tip it to try to find the label. There does not seem to be one and I get the impression it is from an individual who sells wholesale to the store. Two pickles fall to the floor. I consider buying the jar out of a vague sense of responsibility to the store owner, as no one else would buy the jar if they knew, but I instead put the pickles back and pretend that nothing happened. Instead of a shelf, the large pickle jars, about five of them, are in a wooden display as in the vegetables section. Each pickle is about as high as the jar, about five to a jar, arranged vertically.

I start pushing a shopping cart through the aisles of the store. An unknown girl who works there is standing in one aisle, the last aisle on one side of the store and the most distant from the entrance. We talk for a short time as I soon realize that instead of shelves, the sides of the aisle feature random pieces of plywood nailed up, all similar in size, some yellowish and some white, at least one piece looking like it was borrowed from a sign. Looking around, I do not see any shelves or areas with any food and become annoyed.

Zsuzsanna and I leave the store without buying anything. A few unfamiliar people, seemingly homeless, start following us. They are friendly but somewhat sickly looking. A female of perhaps fifty asks me if I can help her. I put my hand near her forehead, though not touching it, moving my hand about as if to “detect” anything that might be wrong with her.

She starts to faint, though I push her back so that she does not fall in my direction. After a short time, I tell her that she needs more Vitamin A. I tell her that she needs to start eating tomatoes to become healthier and fix whatever problems she may have. She seems very happy after I tell her this. A friendly cheerful male smiles upon hearing my suggestion and then adds to our conversation by talking about lentils, which is what he thought I had been talking about (rather than tomatoes). I am annoyed but I decide not to correct him as that might make him feel embarrassed by his inattentiveness. Zsuzsanna and I walk to a larger grocery store without them following us as I begin to wake.

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• Why jars of pickles? It seems to be phallic symbolism and a feature being in water is a real-time indicator of being asleep. I may be subliminally contemplating sexuality, which is otherwise inactive in this particular dream segment.
• Why do two pickles fall to the floor? Either superfluous redundancy or an association with two adult males living in our house; our oldest son and me.
• Where is the preconscious factor? I could not find it until I realized that looking at the jar of pickles made me think of Vlasic Pickles, and the mascot is a cartoon stork (flight symbol that “drops a baby from its beak”; subliminal anticipation of the hypnopompic mechanism)
• Why does the unfamiliar homeless female begin to faint? Because she is The Sleeper in this particular dream; a real-time indicator of being asleep.
• Why tomatoes? Tomatoes are associated with the color red and red represents waking priority. It is curious that my dream self (personified subconscious) subliminally initialized it rather than the preconscious.
• Why lentils? Lentils can look like the lens of the human eye, which is possibly a subliminal REM indicator.
• Why vitamin A? This may be a literal factor in the unfamiliar female being symbolic of Zsuzsanna, a possible precognitive thread of when Zsuzsanna is older and may need more vitamin A (though through normal food, not vitamin pills, which many consider dangerous).
• Is there any additional real influence? The unknown empty grocery store area with the plywood nailed up is based on the closure of a small local grocery store in August 2014. It had a similar unusual mood and there were areas of the store eventually blocked in a similar unlikely way while it was still open to the public. Also, Zsuzsanna remains on my left throughout this dream, the same orientation that we are in bed at the time.

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