Mezzanine

11/15/2009

Slots with Chris Tucker

So, let's start from as far back as I can remember. I'm in a department store. There is a sale and there are tons of people in the store, but the only thing anyone is looking at is jeans. But they're really horrible jeans. Old, stone wash, like 80's hair band jeans. And everyone is trying them on in the middle of the store instead of going into fitting rooms. And none of the jeans fit anybody! They're all way too tight, but everyone thinks they look so good in them. I think about telling everyone they look stupid but think better of it.

I leave the department store and walk out into the mall. I suddenly realize there is a casino in the mall and head for it at full speed. I head left and see the fountain in the middle of the mall. I'm on the second floor and I see the escalators. I go down the one escalator and at the bottom almost run into a wall. I've got to make an immediate u-turn and go right back up another escalator. I remember thinking this is a most ineffective way to get to the first floor.

After I get off the escalator I walk to the left again and see some slot machines. On the end of a row of machines is Bill Murray. He's walking away and has left the machine running with some money in it. I go to his machine and discover that it's a penny machine. Instead of putting money in it, you have to put tickets in it like the kind you get from winning skee-ball. Bill Murray has left a big line of tickets so I run it into the machine. A slot attendant comes by and looks at me funny because the machine is rejecting some of the tickets, and I tell him they were left here and they aren't mine.

So I sit down and finally just start hitting the max bet button over and over again mindlessly. Then some kids walk up and want to see what I'm doing. They have pizza, so we're now having like a pizza party at my slot machine. I look down and it's not like a touch screen like slot machines usually are, but it's not an old school reel slot either. It's strange because I know it's a slot machine, but I've never seen one like this before. It's just like a plastic surface with lights embedded in it that light up and make numbers appear in a bunch of different colors. There's no real rhyme or reason to how you make winning combinations. So while trying to figure this out, a female slot attendant comes up to me and hands me $200 in one dollar bills. I keep playing.

The next thing I know, the kids and the pizza party are gone, but they left behind all the empty pizza boxes. Now there's a guy with his face right next to mine and he's got a cell phone to his other ear talking to someone. I don't even look to see who it is and I ask him to please take his nonsense elsewhere. (!) He starts to walk away and says I'll regret that and then I realize it's Chris Tucker! I scramble to tell him, no no, he can stay if he wants, my girlfriend loved him in the Fifth Element and would want his autograph. He says "we'll see" and walks away.

After a while, he comes back and says he's changed his mind and would love to hang out, where do I live, and what's my number, so he can put it into his cell phone. I tell him I live in Richmond and he says, "no shit, I live like seven minutes away from there!" Then Andrea walks up and I cash out of my slot machine and we walk towards the cashier. Suddenly everything is in slow motion as I see that behind the cashier is the biggest stockpile of fireworks I've ever seen. I'm taking very slow steps at this point and I finally make it to the cashier and ask her if I can cash out in fireworks. She says "of course" and I turn around and ask Andrea if she'd like to pick some out. She says, "you know I don't care about that shit!" and then I turn back around to the cashier and wake up.

My dreams haven't been as vivid as they usually are over the past few days. I don't know why. I'm not stressed out or anything, I'm getting plenty of sleep. I hope my body and my brain figures it all out.

Car Wreck Cops

I'm at a post office I think. I'm in line behind a man at the counter who has sheets and sheets of stamps. Just like a huge stack of them. All different designs and different values. He's just trying to mail three letters and put some stamps on them. I pointed out to him that he should use the smallest denominations first to get rid of them.

He leaves and it's almost my turn at the counter and four police officers walk into the building. I look down at the floor and see that I have a grocery bag full of fireworks at my feet!!! I'm sure I don't want to get caught with this. The cops point at me and tell me to come with them. I leave the bag of fireworks and go out the door with them.

We get outside and we're in the covered entry way to the building. It's maybe thirty feet long and the parking lot is to the side and at the end of the entryway. I see a couple of guys walking towards the parking lot. It's night. I look into the parking lot and don't see my car where it was parked. The cops tell me that my car got wrecked and they took it away on a tow truck. I ran to the guys walking away. I grabbed one of them by the collar and demanded he tell me what happened. He didn't understand English and he was Asian. I was mostly mad because my camera and my ipod were in the car, along with the rest of the fireworks.

The Amazing Christmas Lights

I was driving down the street leaving my parents' house when I look up and notice there is a tree that's about 400 feet tall with Christmas lights all over it. They're LED lights, not just your normal old school lights. I know this because I drove into the neighborhood and found what street it was on. All down the street there were more trees like that one, just not as large. I must have gotten out of the car somewhere along the way because the next thing I know I'm in someone's backyard on their deck overlooking a lake sitting in a chair talking to them telling them about the lights. Then I look up in the sky and there is a beautiful fireworks display. I told the people I was with to look out on the lake to see the reflection of all the fireworks.

The Lucid Beach

I was at the beach looking out into the ocean. There were people there in the water and I see sharks coming. I thought to myself that's unsafe. So I changed the sharks into dolphins. The waves were crashing and the dolphins were jumping in and out of the waves. I raised my hands above my head and the waves grew really tall! I put my hands down and it wasn't like my other beach dreams where they get out of control when they crash. They just kind of shrank back down to normal. I raised my arms again with emphasis this time and the wave grew as high as the sun was up in the sky. I put my arms back down and the waves went back down again. That's when it hit me... I'm making this happen... I'm dreaming this!!

So I thought of everything I had read on DV and tried to stay calm. The first thing I did was rub my hands together. I could actually feel myself rubbing my hands together. It was bizarre. Such a different feeling than anything I had dreamed before. I had never felt something like that. I looked around and I was still on the beach, it looked a little bit more stable and a bit more clear. I really felt like I was standing on the beach. I wanted it to feel even more real, so I said, "Clarity now!!" Never before in a dream had I felt and heard myself say something. I just kind of felt dialogue, but this felt like I was awake hearing myself say something. But, it didn't make anything that much more clear. I think I was too excited about how it felt to be lucid. I remembered one more thing I wanted to do. I tried to spin. I closed my eyes and thought not about being somewhere else particularly, but just not being on the beach anymore. The first thing I came up with was kind of a construction site, but I didn't want to be there, so I tried to spin again and I ended up back at the beach. It was then that I lost lucidity. I think I was either too excited that it was actually working or frustrated that I ended up back at the beach. I probably should have just stayed there anyway. I can't wait to try again!!

I just remembered.... I felt at some point like I had woken up and Andrea came into the bedroom from the living room where she said she was looking up recipes. I was sleeping at the bottom of the bed instead of at the top. When I actually woke up I asked her if I said anything in my sleep and she said she didn't hear anything and I was never at the bottom of the bed. I wonder if that's a false awakening. I'm going to read about that now.

One: I'm working at Target. Stacking liquor bottles into a pyramid shape in the middle of an aisle of other alcohol products. They might be champagne bottles because the tops of the bottles are wrapped up in foil. I guess my supervisor came by and said I was doing it wrong. Well, no one really told me where to put these bottles anyway. My supervisor tells me to look out the window at the fireworks for the Washington Redskins vs. Baltimore Ravens game. So now I'm in a hotel room on one of the top floors looking out the window. I see a ferris wheel and what looks like a state fair or something. But my supervisor was right, there are tons of fireworks going off... but no football game. Next thing I know I'm at that fair. I sign up to play a game and I think my sister's with me. The game is like this: a post in the middle of the ground, and everyone has to attach a string to it and walk around in a circle holding their string. I have no idea what the object of this game is or how you win. And it doesn't matter because as soon as I start walking around, my string breaks. With me there were eight people playing this game, and I crawl underneath the other strings to try to tie my string back together because it broke near the post. Now I can't get back out because of the other people playing the game. I have no idea how I got out, but the next thing I know, I'm by a pond and someone is chasing miniature frogs out of the tall grass around the pond into the pond. I decide to help and end up slipping on the wet grass and falling right on my ass onto a frog. I then fell into the pond, which was only knee deep. I felt like I needed to get out of there before I killed anymore frogs.

Two: Something about a broken water slide at a water park.

Three: I'm performing in a skit or show or something at school or in an auditorium. I get yelled at for doing my part wrong. Everyone had big stuffed animals almost person-sized and they were dogs. We were all acting like cats trying to convince the dogs to have sex with us. Then we were all lined up in a hallway watching a skit on tv that I think we're supposed to mimic. Me and the girl next to me are trying to keep up with what's going on on the tv and then realize no one else is acting out the moves. Some girl walks by and says that the two "yogurt girls" on the end can't be in the show anymore. So the girl next to me and I look at each other so confused because we didn't know what we did wrong. Next thing I know everyone's out in like a courtyard with picnic tables and this guy comes up to me and asks the other yogurt girl if she was ok with him having the same partner as last year. He's wearing roller skates, and so are a lot of other people in the courtyard. She says that's fine and he grabs me around the waist and spins me around and we start going in the other direction. Then she comes up from behind and asks, "what about your class ring?" to the guy. And he said he found it in the trash at home. Then something happens behind us and there's like a fight about to break out. This guy hands me his GPS because he's planning a getaway and he thinks his GPS has a tracking system in it. It is now that I realize that I am wearing only socks and I ask the people around me if I should go put some shoes on.