maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an office. The office was like a hallway of big, heavy desks, rather than a big floor full of cubicles. There was some kind of dull, greenish, fluorescent light. But daylight flowed in through windows, giving the atmosphere more of a gold-white feel.

I stood before some desk. I had probably been given some task by "my boss," who then walked away. There was a stack of papers on the desk. I picked it up and turned away from the desk, as if I were going to walk to my own workspace.

But the hallway was now blocked all the way across by the desk of one of my old senior co-workers, RW. RW sat at his desk. In the usual mild manner he took with me, he asked me if I was happy with my new position. Apparently I was doing research on semiconductors.

I bashfully giggled and told RW it was okay. RW said, "Well, I certainly don't think I could do something like what you're doing. It would be too much for me, just picking up on semis like that. That's really hard."

I just giggled and smiled. I couldn't do anything else. RW, who does research on diagnostic equipment and PBMs, had a reputation for being extremely witty, incisive, and self-assured. He could cut anybody down. But he'd always been gentle with me. Even now, I didn't want to spoil my unique relationship with RW by getting over-confident.

But RW said, "Now, come on! You have to admit that what you're doing is pretty good!"

I didn't know what to say. I think I might have started to talk about how I thought RW's research was really cool. But before I could say that, I think RW started talking about how his reseach wasn't so difficult.

Dream #2

I was in an auditorium full of high schoolers or college kids. There was a group of high-level officials on the stage. The stage was really high up, compared to the seats. I was in the third or fourth row. But I often saw as if I were a video camera, closed right up on the group.

The group all stood in a kind of random fashion. There weren't any podiums. I'm pretty sure there weren't even any mics. There was no decoration on the stage, either. It was just a bare stage.

The people on stage were from all over the world. There was some kind of major announcement being made. It had to do with some decision of President Obama's.

But the main person, who was to make the bulk of the announcement, was alternately Obama and some tall, bald, white, slightly overweight man. But even when the man was Obama, he spoke of Obama in the third person.

The man first asked a woman to leave the room. The woman's name was something like Piti or Peetee. She looked (to my reflection now) Iranian. She had short hair in a kind of Jackie-O cut. She had pale, olive-colored skin, and a healthy, round figure. Her dress was pale blue-grey. But the fabric was really strange, like a mix between terry cloth and cashmere.

Piti left through a door to a stairwell, on the right (my right) of the stage. After she left, the man said that Piti had already determined that if Obama's decision was unfavorable to her, she would take some kind of action against him. Apparently Obama had already done something to Piti, basically barring her from making any appearances in the United States.

But Obama's decision was going to go against Piti's desires. The man explained to all of us that Piti basically had control over all of Southeast Asia. She could bar (I think the man called it "sanction" in the dream) Obama from Southeast Asia, just as he'd barred her from the United States.

It was pretty obvious (I don't know why) that it was a lot worse for Obama being "sanctioned" from Southeast Asia than it was for Piti to be barred from the United States. But it seemed pretty obvious, as well, that Obama wouldn't tolerate this sanction. So we were all basically told to prepare for a conflict.

The man had now, apparently, handed out paper presentations to all of us. The presentation was, I think, an argument for why we should aim for some kind of compromise, rather than heading into a conflict. But the presentations were all in Chinese.

A boy asked the man (who may now have been alone on the stage) if he could give an English translation of the presentation. I turned around so I could see the boy. The auditorium was huge! And it was packed -- full of high school or college students!

The boy sat at a folding chair along the right wall. He was an Asian boy with a squarish, shortish haircut, squarish glasses, and a dark blue winter jacket.

The man may have voiced a little disappointment that the boy needed translation. But there was a girl, also Asian, sitting with a female friend. This girl actually yelled back to the boy, "Why do you need a translation? Didn't you study your own language, like everybody else does?"

The boy said something like, "Well, yeah, I studied. But I just thought if we got a little translation here and there, it could help us get through the rest of the text faster on our own."

The girl sighed at the boy, like she couldn't believe what a lazy excuse-maker he was. I turned back forward and looked at my text as the girl said, "It basically says that China believes, if the whole world cooperated, we could reach the ends of the universe, with the energy we have right now."

I looked at the presentation in the hands of the girl to my left. There was a screenshot printed on the page. The shot was of some YouTube video, showing some view of the universe. The sky was mostly black, with just a few faint dots of stars.

For some reason I was now running to the bathroom. I was somehow involved with some meeting with President Obama. But it also had to do with some branch of Satanism. The branch was named something like Gen Schele. But "Gen" may have been "Glen." And "Schele" may have been "Shell" or "Schnell."

Obama had possibly already explained something to me about the government, this cult, and some decision being made in international affairs. I really disapproved of it. I thought it would end with a lot of people dying. But I thought it would be weak to voice my disapproval. And I acted like it was perfectly natural.

But now I needed to go to the bathroom so bad! I was running toward a restroom. I was wearing khaki shorts for some reason (great way to meet the President, right?). And now I couldn't hold my pee anymore. The inner thighs of my shorts were all soaked.

I didn't think it was so bad. If I got to the bathroom and to a urinal, I could pee the rest of the way in there. Then my shorts would likely dry quickly.

I was in a bathroom now, peeing in a urinal. But my pee was coming out so much, so forcibly, that I was still spraying all over my shorts, making them even more and more soaked. Plus, I just wasn't stopping! I had peed so much that the urinal was completely full. A huge puddle was already forming on the floor.

At some point Obama saw me. He asked me, with a bit of disappointment and disdain, what was bothering me so much. I didn't want to tell him what was bothering me. I didn't want him to think I was weak. But I'm pretty sure he knew what was bothering me.

I just wanted, really badly, to finish peeing, so I could go into one of the stalls, crouch into a fetal position, and just lie there until my shorts finally dried.

(When I woke up, I seriously expected to find that I'd wet the bed, my dream was so vivid. But, thankfully, I did not. Also -- just as a side note, the "Gen Schele" might be a mix-up of the name of the artist Egon Schiele, and also of the name Rothschild. I've been reading about the Rothschilds lately.)

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was walking up the stairs in a fire escape stairwell in an office building. The walls were white and the light was either incandescent or a warm-feeling fluorescent. There may have been one or two people ahead of me, guiding me. One may have been a pretty, young woman.

I was told something about the office where I was being taken. It had something to do with the difference between this place and my old office. I felt like probably nobody would even know me here.

The door opened to the office floor. Colorful Christmas lights were glaring somewhere at the periphery of my vision. The two people guiding me either disappeared or walked really far away into the office.

I was by myself in a corner of the office. It felt kind of like an elevator bank. But it was open to the rest of the office. I wasn't even sure why I was supposed to be in this office in the first place.

A young man came up to greet me. I knew him! (I don't think I really know him IWL.) I was so relieved to know somebody.

But the man didn't quite want to acknowledge that he recognized me, as well. Some people didn't like me, and the man didn't want to be seen by them as liking me. So he just treated me politely, but indifferently, like he'd treat anybody who came into the office.

The man may have told me that my old boss would be here to meet with me momentarily. In the meantime, the man said, I could visit the museum on this floor. The man walked me to the wall behind me -- the wall with the doorway to the stairwell.

Off to the left of the doorway was something that looked like a display. It was about the size of an animal display diorama in a museum.

The "display" was of something like a space station. It looked fake, like one solid, plastic piece -- almost like a Star Wars toy! But some part of it, I knew, opened like a door. From there, you would walk into the museum. The museum would, I think, be about the size of a hallway, or the size of one exhibit room in a large museum.

Off to the left of this "museum" was a long hallway. On the right wall of the hallway, from the waist up, were windows letting in a lot of yellow-white sunlight. The floor of the hallway was blue.

I was now in "my apartment," which was rather large. The living area, which may have included the dining area, was three or four rooms long, with all the rooms opening into each other, only distinguished from another by the varying widths of their rectangles.

The place was empty of furntiture. But there was stuff everywhere on the floor. Nothing was cluttered, and maybe everything had some kind of order. But it mostly felt like I just had all the stuff I liked just laying around everywhere.

I'm not sure, but at this point, I think I looked like Lance Loud, from An American Family.



(In this photo, Lance is standing, to the far right. The mother, Pat, is seated, in the center.)

I had my phone to my ear, and maybe I was waiting for someone to pick up on the other end. I was looking down to the floor as I stepped over all the stuff I had laying around on the floor.

I think I walked over some vinyl records, in their sleeves, and over a really old cassette tape player, the cassettes for which were bigger than eight-track tape cassettes.

I probably started thinking about music. I thought of something that I really wanted to hear. I was going to play it. The music may now already have been playing. I still had the phone to my ear.

But suddenly I realized -- I'm almost all out of money! It's totally wrong for me to stay in this place with no money. I can't sit here listening to music. I need to get all my stuff reduced and organized, so I can get the hell out of here!

I may now have started putting together a plan for how to throw out a bunch of useless papers I didn't need, so I'd have less stuff to take with me once I left this place.

I was now in a house which was supposed to be the Loud family house. At this point I definitely looked like Lance Loud. The house had two stories. I was up on the second floor, in a bedroom which had been converted into an office.

I wasn't a member of the family. I was like a friend of some member of the family. But I had also been doing some kind of work for them. I had had tough times, and I needed to stay at their house. I think I had been staying at the house a couple of days, but now I was getting ready to leave.

Pat, the mom from An American Family, came into the room. I was reclined -- somehow -- either against an office chair and some small filing cabinets, or on a bed.

Pat sat down on something and told me that she knew I was planning on leaving the house. But she said she didn't think I actually had enough money yet to go out on my own. She said she was going to talk with the rest of the family about seeing whether I couldn't stay here a little while longer.

Pat stood up and left. I looked through the doorway. There was a short, balcony-like hallway, with the stairs on the end closer to me. Again, I'm pretty sure I saw the colorful glare of Christmas lights somewhere.

I was kind of relieved that Pat had asked me to stay. But I knew that I couldn't accept the offer, anyway. I didn't want any of the manlier men in the family to think I was just being a waste by sticking around here. I knew that if Pat made a good case for me, none of the men would say anything to my face. But I'd always have to deal with them showing me how they felt in other ways.

I figured that what I would do, then, if Pat got the okay for me to stay, was just act like I was going to stay here, after all. Then, when nobody was looking, probably when everybody was gone from the house or asleep at night, I'd just pack up all my stuff and sneak out, leaving a letter saying why I'd gone.

Dream #2

I was walking down the hallway of some movie theatre. I was in a huge line either for tickets or to get into the theatre itself. The wall to my left was just a plain, beige-colored wall, possibly with some kind of wallpaper that looked like thickly-threaded linen.

To my right was a wall that occasionally had narrow, tall windows, letting in the grey light of late afternoon. There were also occasional arcade games positioned along this wall. And somewhere there was a feeling of faint, flashing, multi-colored lights.

There were a couple of people, probably a man and a woman, directly ahead of me, talking about a movie. The woman was doing most of the talking, and she sounded kind of arrogant and pretentious.

Apparently the film the woman was talking about was a short film. The woman was speaking about the director of the film. The director may also have been a character in the film -- a comic kind of character who, even though he wasn't the main character, was supposed to "steal the show."

I may have had an image of this guy in my head. He may have been a white guy, kind of rich-looking, wearing a really garish, multi-colored tuxedo, and a hat that looked either like a wizard's hat or a dunce cap, which was also multi-colored.

I then looked off to my right, to a part of the right wall of the hallway that bent diagonally toward us, making the hallway narrower. On the sloping part of the wall was a poster for the movie the woman had just been talking about. The man was on the front, in his costume. He may have been waist-deep in popcorn.

I realized that the film wasn't a short film. It was feature-length. And it was the film we were all heading in to see (or buying tickets for?) right now.

I had been telling myself that I really didn't want to see the movie. I really didn't like the director. But now that I'd seen the poster, and now that I realized the movie was feature-length, I decided that I actually would like to see it.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room like a preschool classroom, although the room was supposed to be an office. The room was dark, except for the glow of a TV, which I was sitting on the floor and watching, (though my view seems to have been from slightly outside my body). The room seemed pretty empty -- no desks or tables; just chairs and short bookcases lining the walls.

Someone came into the room and pulled one of the chairs out of the room. The person was all in shadow, but he seemed to me to have been a young, male office worker. The chair he pulled out was an office- style swivel-chair. All the chairs in the room may have been like that.

I knew the guy wasn't supposed to take the chairs. And I knew he knew it. He basically just wanted to steal. But I was too afraid to stand up to him and stop him.

Now I was in the room with "my co-workers." The lights were on in the room, and there were desks in the room. But there weren't enough chairs for all the desks. In fact, there were hardly any chairs at all.

The boss (I think) said, "Someone from another office has been stealing our chairs! How the hell are we all gonna sit down?"

I knew who stole at least one of our chairs. But I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to betray that I'd been too afraid to stand up to the guy.

So now I and another guy were going out looking for chairs. The boss had told us, I "knew," that we should go to all the rooms in this building. And room that looked like it had way more chairs than it needed had obviously been stealing chairs from us. So we were to "take the chairs back" out of that room and to our room.

The man and I wandered through the hallways, which were kind of narrow, short, and grey. We went into some smaller rooms, which were apparently multi-office rooms or single offices. Some of them looked like classrooms.

Then we ended up in a pretty big conference room. The room was dark, with our only light coming in through the hallway. The room was empty, with just a few school desks and chairs here and there, overturned, not in any real order. But it looked like there weren't more chairs than desks, so we couldn't take chairs from this room.

But being in the conference room made me think. If the man searching with me thought we should be looking in conference rooms for chairs, then we should probably be looking in the conference room closest to our office. Something about the way the guy had stolen the chair had made me think he wouldn't go far with it.

In my excitement at thinking I knew where we should go, I gasped a bit and lifted my left arm up, almost like I was raising my hand to ask a question in class. I then put my hand to my lips. I said, "We should go to the..."

But I had to strain to remember the name of the conference room. Finally I got it. I said, "We should go to the Goshen Room!"

The man said, "That's right! I was just about to say the same thing!"

We were now in the Goshen Room. There were chairs all over the place, as well as school desks. Everything was overturned and disordered. But it seemed pretty obvious that there were too many chairs in here.

The man spoke to me (although I seemed to be seeing from his viewpoint) as if we were looking at a grisly murder scene. He said, "Go. Get the others from the office. We need to gather the chairs quick. These people will be back soon."

The man himself now seemed to have been heading for the door, to get the other people from the office. I was deeper in the room, looking at the chairs. The swivel-chairs' seats had been completely unscrewed from their bases, kind of like a bolt screwing into a hole, or a bottle cap screwing onto a plastic bottle top.

I stood staring at a few swivel chair bases. I figured we'd all have to carry this stuff back to our office in awkward armfuls, then screw everything back together there. I wondered if we'd be able to get everything of ours back to the office, and if we'd be able to put it all back together.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I had quit my job. But now I had come back. I was in "my office," which was mostly grey, with dim, greyish fluorescent light. My seat was a cubicle off to the right from a long hallway.

I was coming in for the day at the same time as another man. The man had dark, red-brown skin. He had frizzy, red-black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a dark blue dress shirt and dakr grey slacks. The man and I spoke casually for a moment. The man had a gentle, slightly high-pitched voice, with a flattish, American accent. He seemed really nice.

The man went into the office across from my cubicle. I figured that he was going to be my boss. I was trying to think of all the ways I could help him. After all, I knew all about this office, and apparently, today was only the man's first day.

I didn't sit in my seat. I also didn't turn my computer on. I'm pretty sure I just stood up, shuffling through papers, trying to figure out things like what kind of data I needed to get for the man.

The man and I were then heading down the hallway beyond my cubicle. This hallway was featureless and empty. We ended up in the office of the head of my department, DR. DR sat at his desk, which was kind of cluttered. DR had already given the man instructions. The man had left.

I stood beside DR and just to his left, as if I were going to look at something on his computer screen. DR turned a little bit and then relaxedly turned his head a bit more so he could see me. His eyes looked kind of sleepy, and it looked more like he expected me to ask him something, rather than that he had a plan for me.

I asked DR, "Is there a cover list you'd like me to start out with?" This, I assume, meant a list of companies for which DR would like me to gather data. Usually my boss would be the one to discuss this kind of list with DR. I'd be the one to pull the data.

But DR said that he did have a list for me. He pulled out a piece of paper that looked very much like an electronic Excel spreadsheet with marker or thick pencil scrawlings in the cells. He told me to get started on this list.

I was ready to get started on the names, and I was even trying to plan out how to put together some financial models for the companies on the list. But I was also surprised. I hadn't quite known I would be asking for a list. And I didn't know DR would just give me one.

I knew this meant that I had been "promoted" to the position my boss had. That would mean I'd be on an equal level with the man I'd walked into the office with this morning.

I was now back at my cubicle for a brief moment. I was considering what kind of work I needed to get started on.

But then I was out walking on a sidewalk, going up a steep hill in a residential area. It was a clear sunny day, and I was walking under the shade of trees with thick canopies. I had my phone to my ear and I was listening to a conversation between my boss and our HR person, LS.

LS was talking about what a good job I was doing in my new position, and what a good fit I was for the job. My boss got mad and he yelled, "Of course he is! I've been telling you people that all this time! But nobody ever listened to me!"

Dream #2

I was sitting at church, probably near the front. The place was so crowded that all I could see were people. Everybody seemed older, and everybody was dressed up. A shaft of bright, white light from a high-up window lit the area around me.

I turned my head to the right and looked down. In an aisle (that had only been temporarily formed?) a little girl came walking toward me, possibly coming away from an older woman. The little girl had frizzy, curly, light brown hair. The may have worn a tank-top like smock and slacks.

The little girl seemed to want to sit with me, so I lifted her up and sat her onto my lap. I sat forward, apparently to listen to the rest of the sermon. But I was mostly thinking of how happy I was to have the little girl sitting on my lap.

Dream #3

I was walking on a sidewalk somewhere. A black and white ferret ran up from behind me, passing me on my left side. It ran up to my mom.

I said something to my mom like, "Wow, I see what you mean, after all! Ferrets are really nice!"

Dream #4

I was out in some kind of barren landscape, less like a desert, more like a natural area that had just been plowed over for a construction project. I stood just before some short hill or mound of brown soil, possibly with clumps of grass or vegetation growing on it. It was a sunny and pale day.

I was planning to go out on some kind of trip. I had two books with me, but I could only take one. Both books were paperbacks. One books was a regular sci-fi book, possibly from an older author, like Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov.

The other was called "The Joy of Sex." But it wasn't The Joy of Sex. Instead, it was some kind of semi-sci-fi novel mixed with porn. But the porn segments were supposed to be very well-described, like for educational purposes, to teach people how to have good sex. The book itself was a Penguin Classics paperback, and on its cover it had that French painting of the two girls in bed, with the one girl between the other's legs.

I felt a little grossed out at the thought of reading all the sex descriptions in the book, so I decided to take the regular sci-fi book with me on my trip. After that, I felt a little guilty. Hadn't I always felt like I wasn't that great at sex? Didn't I always feel like I should learn how to be better. The "Joy of Sex" novel could have taught me how to be good. But I had decided not to take it.

Dream #5

I was in some dark bathroom, peeing. I just kept peeing and peeing. Eventually I started peeing all over the toilet seat and floor. Apparently this was some public bathroom. I started to pity the guy who'd have to use the toilet after me. I was really messing it up! But I had no intention of cleaning it.

Dream #6

A young man, who looked really familiar to me as some kind of movie or TV star, sat before the big desk of some TV executive. The executive sat behind his desk. The office was pretty big, very nice, and dimly lit.

The young man had just auditioned for the role of Joey in the TV show Friends. But he didn't make it. The executive, who really liked the guy, had to break the news to the guy. This whole scene in the executive's office appeared as if it had been filmed, and filmed for an episode of Friends, like a kind of "History of Friends" episode.

I knew that it wouldn't matter that the guy didn't get to play the role of Joey. The guy looked very familiar to me (even though I can't place him now -- he looked like a mix between Joey and Ross, with stubble), and I knew that he would end up as a cast member in another successful TV show or movie.

The young man now stood up at the left side of the executive's desk. The executive stood before the young man. He was gradually, obliquely telling the young man how he hadn't made the cut.

Finally, in some weird display of sympathy, and to show the young man that the executive liked him, the executive lifted up his head and smiled. Apparently the executive had been wearing a baseball cap the whole time, because his face was revealed from under the bill. The man was apparently famous, and this strange reveal was meant more for the sake of the filming.

The executive was tall, kind of thin, balding, and maybe in his late 40s or early 50s. He reminded me of a famous TV person, but I couldn't place him. In another way, he kind of reminded me of Ron Howard.

The youn man was now going to a restaurant to meet his friends. There were two men who sat waiting at a small, circular table for the young man. Both the men were older than the young man. They were tall, skinny, and they had kind of frizzy, blonde hair, like Art Garfunkel.

Before the young man came into the restaurant, the two men had actually been holding hands over the table, like they were lovers. But when they saw the young man come into the restaurant, they quickly let go of each other, as if to hide the fact of their being lovers from the young man.

The young man hugged the two men and then sat down at the table. He was wearing a pale, pink shirt and a brown, cowboy-style vest. He threw his hands up in the air and said, "Well, I didn't make it! I was close, but I didn't make it!"

The young man had apparently had two parts to his audition. The first part had just been him playing the role of Joey. He had done better at that part than everybody except the guy who had actually gotten the role. But the second part was some kind of test, maybe even a written test. The young man was now explaining to the two men that the executive had explained to him that he had only gotten a 70 on that test.

The young man said something like, "A 70! Can you believe it? A 70! That's all I got!"

Dream #7

No vision. Just words. Something like: "Aeon -- aeon in the mind. The mind in man."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a fast food restaurant. The place looked a bit drab, with brightish, green-grey fluorescent light and kind of dirty, red-tile floors. There might not have been any seats.

I stood over by the drinks dispenser. I was really hot, and all I wanted was a 32-ounce cup of some kind of fake fruit juice. The sign over the drinks dispenser indicated that the drink was some kind of pink "fruit" juice. This sounded just right to me.

I pushed a plastic cup (possibly with a blue Pepsi design on it) against a lever like a soda dispenser lever, although both it and the dispenser were kind of big, like for an ice dispenser. The fluid poured out.

I took a sip. As I did, I noticed that the color of the drink was kind of pale brown, like watered down soda, or like tea, more than like any kind of fake fruit juice. I held the drink a little way away from me. I looked at it and thought that maybe it was iced tea after all.

I was kind of disappointed. I wanted something that had taste. But I couldn't quite believe that I had poured tea instead of fake fruit juice. So I took a really big drink now, to get as much flavor as I could. This time the drink definitely tasted like lemonade.

So I figured that I had been thrown off by the color of the drink. I'd thought it was going to be pink. So when it was yellow, I thought it was brown. So I'd mistaken it for tea. (WTF???)

I felt bad that I'd taken such a huge drink of the lemonade. There were one or two Latina girls behind the counter. They were both kind of pretty, and I didn't want them to think I was a big pig for drinking so much before paying.

I wanted my drink to stay extra cold, because I was really hot. I put some ice in the cup. I then filled the drink the rest of the way up.

I was walking in a big city, as if I'd left the fast food place and was heading back to work. I seemed to be in a big hurry. I crossed a smallish, triangular plaza in front of a big skyscraper.

A man called out from behind me. I turned around. The man looked black and Latino. He was holding out a bag of fast food and a big drink. The man told me I'd forgotten to take my stuff with me. I was kind of surprised that I had done so.

I now walked into a small building, which was like some kind of community center or some kind of hospital for underprivileged people. There was a yellow sign with lettering in red italics on the wall to the left of the door. It said something about how the cafeteria here makes its own chili. It was really proud about this, and it boasted that it wasn't like other cafeterias, which buy processed chili.

I had a little time before the meeting I had to go to -- some kind of community support meeting. I didn't like going to the meetings, because I felt like people were always assuming I was poor or stupid because I had to come to them. But I also felt like they were important to go to.

The cafeteria was just across the hallway from the front door. I walked into the cafeteria. I was really hot, and I wanted some kind of fruity drink.

I looked around at the cafeteria for a moment. It looked more like the kitchen area of a dining hall rather than a cafeteria. The place was really small. There were no seats. There was a stainless steel counter, probably where all the food was served up, buffet-style. I may have known the workers behind the counter.

I walked out of this room and across the hallway. There was a smaller room, basically just a little nook in the wall. There was a small, glass-doored refrigerator with drinks inside it. I saw something like a Nestle peach-flavored ice tea. I didn't think this was exactly what I wanted. But I figured it would be good enough.

But for some reason, I didn't grab it. I felt like maybe the workers in the other room would think I was being mean or ungrateful if I bought a drink from this room instead of from their room -- even though I had to go to their room to buy the drink from them, so that technically I was buying this drink from them, anyway.

Dream #2

I was "at work." The space was like an office space in a small office complex. Sometimes the area seemed big, with no offices or cubicles, just a big space with desks. At other times, the area seemed like a big office, with possibly two big desks inside of it.

The place didn't have any lights on, but there was a decent amount of daylight coming in through the windows, giving the place a gentle, greyish kind of atmosphere. The place seemed slightly cluttered, and it also seemed like there were potted plants all over the place.

I was going to quit my job. This may have been my last day at work. My boss was preparing for me to leave. I think a young woman was coming to take my place. My boss was putting some stuff in order so the woman would know how to do the things I did.

My boss was sitting at one big desk, and I was sitting at another desk. I got out of my desk and walked over to my boss. At first, my boss was doing something like filing through cards that had the consistency of business cards but a size maybe about between that of business cards and that of playing cards.

But then my boss was paging through some of my old notebooks. He found verses of poetry by Homer. There were three or four passages that I'd transcribed into the notebooks. Each passage was about half a page long.

My boss asked me why in the heck I'd transcribed Homer into a work notebook. I felt that the transcriptions had had something to do with work, but I couldn't explain it.

I kept stuttering in my explanation. But eventually I said something about instinct and how reading Homer provided me with some kind of abstract understanding of things, which then melted into my instincts and helped me make better choices.

Later on, my boss was trying to make some kind of weird deal with me. I can't remember exactly what it was. He wanted to keep me working with him, but on one project, so that my time would be free for doing other things. I can't remember what the project was, but it sounded like a terrible deal that my boss was trying, half-assed, to dress up.

At another time, my boss walked away through the big office. I may have kind of hung around in the huge office all by myself, kind of spinning my wheels and getting bored.

I was now outside. I was out on a flat, open field mostly of dark-tan soil, with little patches of grass here and there. The soil may have been a tiny bit damp, as if from a dewy morning or a recent rain. It was a clear day, with a cold, blue sky marbled with thin cirrus clouds.

There seemed to be a chain-link fence and some kind of structure somewhere. There were also a few vehicles, including a couple of big, black pick-up trucks.

I found my boss before a small, hatchback car, which may have been really shiny and cobalt blue, maybe even with glittery flecks in it, like on the car of an amusement park ride. My boss stood before the opened hatchback. The interior of the car just seemed to be stuffed full of papers.

I conferred with my boss a little bit about something. I was getting ready to leave work for the last time. My boss understood this. He said, "Oh, I still have your phone. I'm listening to some of the songs on it. I'm not done with it yet. But I'll meet you upstairs" (as if this outdoor area were really the "basement" of the office!) "and give it to you as soon as I'm done."

My boss now seemed to be wearing huge, Skull-Candy-like earphones.

I was really frustrated with my boss. First of all, I hadn't even known that he had taken my phone to listen to stuff on it. Second, why was he telling me that he was holding onto my phone and not giving it back until he was done with it? It was my phone! Third, I just wanted to get out of here once and for all, but it seemed like my boss just kept trying to find ways to keep me here. And this was another one!

Dream #3

I was watching some kind of commercial or infomercial. It showed the woman who played Uhura on Star Trek. The commercial seemed to refer to the woman by her real name, but only using her first name.

In some kind of haughty, "she-knows-better-than-you" fashion, the male announcer said that Uhura always heeded her table manners, and that she'd never make the mistake of forgetting them.

The screen showed a kind of red-and-white photo of Uhura, which faded into an actual view of her. She responded to the male announcer by saying, "Yes, I never forget my table manners. My daddy taught them to me a long time ago."

There was now a view of a family in a nice dining room. The family was apparently Uhura's family. The family all gathered around the left end of the table. Some sat at the table, while others stood. All the people in the family seemed to be adults, maybe from their mid-30s on up.

The head of the family was some man, who may or may not actually have been there. He was rich and very classy. He seemed to have grey and black hair and mustache. He wore a very nice suit with a cream-and-red striped tie.

The rest of the family seemed to be dressed in a kind of middle-class style. One woman was dressed in a nurse's outfit. Her hair was really nerdy-looking, about shoulder length, light brown, kind of oily, with a bit of a tight, gerry-curl style. She also wore clunky, but small, kind of round glasses.

The woman seemed to be speaking for the family. She said something like, "A lot of families teach their children table manners when they're young. But then they don't follow up on it as the children get older. So the children forget what they learned about table manners. But not our family. We were taught table manners all the time. So we never forget."

Uhura seemed to be sitting in a big chair, either at the other end of this room or else in some other room, but visible by a big video screen. The woman and Uhura seemed to be having some sort of conversation with each other about how important table manners were.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. Two male cops stood in the threshold of a back door in some alley. In the alley stood two other men. One man was like a Chief of Police or an even higher up law enforcement or civil defense officer. The other man had been a police officer.

All the men had a 1950s kind of look. They were all white and overweight. The police were in their usual blue uniforms. The Chief was in a similar uniform. But the former cop was wearing something like a white t-shirt and a cap that looked somehow plasticky and boyish, almost like a mix between a milkman's hat and a propeller cap. The former cop was also a bit fatter than the other men.

The two cops had caught the former cop in some kind of really terrible act. It wasn't just criminal: it was disgusting. The two cops thought the former cop would be taken out of the force or thrown in jail. But the Chief announced that the man had been hired into some even higher security position. The clothes the man wore indicated this position to the men.

The two cops seemed to have asked, in a kind of veiled way, why the man had been promoted into an elite security force rather than arrested or fired altogether. The Chief said something like, "Well, I guess the higher ups just thought he was good at something."

The Chief walked the man away from the door and through the dark alley to something like a big van.

I was now walking with the man through a dark hallway and into a big, dark bedroom. There was just enough light for me to see what was going on in the bedroom. But I don't know where the light was coming from. It was like a dim flashlight.

Before our walk down the hallway, the man had been poisoned somehow. He was uncomfortable at first. But now he collapsed.

The man lay face down on the floor with his head and shoulders under the mattress of what may have been a bunk bed with a pretty thick, but kind of plain, wood frame. The man was completely naked.

For some reason I had to start massaging the man's back. It may have had something to do with getting the poison out. I massaged by making my hands into a fist and then pounding on the man's back with the underside of my fist.

I wondered if this was really necessary, or if the man weren't somehow tricking me into giving him a massage because it turned him on to have "younger" men give him a massage. I felt kind of violated by that thought, but I thought it couldn't be true.

But then, for some reason, I imagined being his "maid," but still as myself, as a man. I wore some kind of short, pink, iridescent dress with a fluttery skirt. I thought that eventually, after I massaged the man, the man would want to have sex with me. In my kneeling position, I moved up and down as if to practice the sexual motions I'd use while straddling the man.

I figured that it wasn't worth it to massage the man, and that he really didn't need me to massage him to get the poison out. I stood up and walked out of the room.

As I left the room, the man turned a little onto his side, so that his rear end was still facing me. He called to me, saying my name quite audibly. I turned to look down to him. He showed me the index finger of his right (?) hand.

Apparently the man had either crapped himself or just had a lot of crap in his colon. He had stuck his finger up or near his butt and got a load of crap heaped onto the finger. He was showing me this, as if to turn me on somehow.

I walked out of the room and through the hallway. The hallway was even darker than the room. Two Latina girls came walking from some pitch black room at the end of the hallway. They both looked kind of the same: very skinny, maybe in their early teens, with long, wavy hair, and wearing dark, v-necked, sleeveless or almost sleeveless t-shirts.

The Latina girls passed me. I thought that the girls must be going to have sex with the man. I wondered if there weren't two girls because one of them was originally meant for having sex with me.

But, I possibly thought, it didn't seem like having sex with the man so I could have sex with one of the girls would be much of a trade-off. And, given the way the man acted, I didn't think the sex with the girls would be untainted by whatever kind of nasty acts the man wanted to pull.

Dream #2

I was at my office, which was dark, as if it were night and less than half the lights in the office were on. There were a few other people in the office with me. Among them was my co-worker JM, and probably some of the people in his department, none of whom I recognized.

We stood in some area that seemed like a mix between a reception area and a conference room. The place seemed kind of open, with a bit of an L shape, but with both parts of equal size.

There seemed to be a reception desk as well as an executive desk in the "top" part of the L, while the "bottom" part had a kind of conference table. Off to the right side of the L, there was the wall of a cubicle, as if a long row of cubicles (with no lights on over them) started there.

There was also a weird decoration somewhere between the executive desk and the conference table. It looked like a wagon wheel. But it seemed to be made completely out of black iron. The spokes of the wheel also had a twirled look, and they may also have had knobby, node-like ornamentation along them.

There was some small discussion among some of us. Some people, including my boss, may then have left the room. JM remained. I had quit my job, but for some reason I was talking to JM about future tasks I'd be taking care of, as if I hadn't really quit my job.

But JM knew I'd quit my job. He didn't confront me directly about it. Instead, he started talking about all the people around him who had a lot of work to do and who would have really benefitted by having someone like me around.

There was a smaller office desk right next to the conference table. I either sat down at that desk or looked at it (it may have had a smaller, wooden "wagon-wheel" ornament on top of it). I said to JM that maybe I didn't need to quit after all. I thought that if all those people would like me to be around, and if I could do work that they'd appreciate, I could probably stay.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I stood before my closet hallway. There were a lot of boxes in there. I had a lightbulb box in my hand. It was empty, so I figured I'd just throw it out to make space.

There were some other boxes in there, possibly including a box for diapers. I threw them out, too. Suddenly I had only one box in my closet. It was the only box that had anything in it. It was white cardboard.

I thought I could start stacking stuff up on this box. But I was a little afraid to. The box looked a little dirty, like it had bugs crawling on it. I didn't want to put more stuff on this box and get everything else all buggy.

Dream #2

I was in the gift shop for a museum. The man there basically owned and ran the gift shop. The gift shop was closing down, and a lot of its shelves were empty. I remember one particular wall of light-beige wood shelves that were completely empty. The walls behind the shelves were grey, like a dark concrete or cinder.

The owner came up and smiled at me. He was white, bald, with a grey-white mustache and a kind of friendly look. He also seemed to be a little bit muscular. He spoke to me in some friendly way about some of the discounts he had throughout the store.

I was now alone in the store. I somehow heard my boss talking with a woman, or possibly with a woman and a man. I had apparently left my job for good. This had been somehwat planned. But now my boss was being urged to get me back. My boss was told that I should try to be tricked into believing that I was actually obliged to stay on for two more weeks.

As I heard this stuff, I had kind of been floating around on my back throughout the store. I had floated up high for a little while. But now I was floating at about the level of the checkout counter.

I looked at the green, digital numbers on the display of the tan, plastic cash register. They said "4-17." I knew that meant that today was April 17th. This was, I thought, about two weeks before I was scheduled to leave work. But I really didn't want to have to go back to my office, and I was trying to think whether this story these people would be feeding me about how I needed to go back was actually true.

Dream #3

I woke up. The lights were on in my room. My eyes were really blurry. But, I knew, because of my half-sleeping condition, I could see things that I normally wouldn't see.

I looked at my walls. There were black spots all around the room, at about waist height. The spots were set in pairs, and the pairs were spaced with about one meter intervals. The pairs of spots were set so that two spots were right next to each other, one set up a little diagonally to the other. The black spots were little spy cameras.

Up near the top of the wall were much more widely spaced, much bigger devices, which may have been colored like rusty metal. They looked like small versions of the horns for old phonographs.

I knew people were spying on me by using all this stuff. But I didn't know who was spying on me. There was suddenly a high-pitched ringing in my ears. It got more and more intense.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an office with my boss and the head of our department, J. J made a comment about the conditions of our company. He then said, "Well, your boss will tell you more about that." J then walked out of the office, through a doorway that may possibly have been to a stairwell.

Only my boss and I were now left on the office floor. The space was kind of narrow. There was some kind of long counter or reception desk running along the area where my boss and I stood.

My boss stood a few feet away from me. He looked a little different than IWL. His hair was cut short, and he was wearing really nice eyeglasses with no frames on the bottom of the lenses and nice, thin, black frames across the top. He was also wearing a pale, lemon-yellow shirt that looked very clean and pressed.

My boss said, "Well, I guess I should tell you it's going to happen to me next. But don't say I told you."

I understood this to mean that my boss was going to leave the company. But he'd said it so quietly and mumbled, and he'd told me not to talk about it. So I acted like it wasn't a big deal, like I almost hadn't heard him in the first place. I actually may also have hoped he'd say whatever he'd said again, since he'd mumbled and been so quiet that I wasn't quite sure I heard him correctly.

My boss was annoyed by my reaction, as if he thought what he'd said hadn't sunk into my skull at all. So, as I walked closer to him, he took out a plastic pen, kind of fatter than normal, and poked me at the top right side of my chest, and said, "Au revoir."

It was now clear that my boss was leaving the company. My boss had given me a parting gift. It was a huge book by Marguerite Duras. I don't remember the title. It was a fat paperback. It had a yellow cover, possibly with some kind of painting inside a circle on the center on the front.

My boss and I stood at the far end of the counter now. Just beyond us was an unlit area that looked like a living room, or even like two decent-sized living rooms separated from each other by some kind of partitions. The rooms were visible only by the fluorescent light of the office area and the deep blue morning or evening light coming in through the wall-sized windows.

The counter looked now more like an alcohol bar made out of office materials. My boss wandered around to the other side of the bar. As he did I told him, "Well, I'm really thankful to you. You took a chance on me when nobody else would..."

But my boss waved me off, as if to say, "Don't start with all that modesty stuff again." He came back around the bar and handed me another book. It was also by Marguerite Duras. It was much thinner than the first book. It had the same kind of yellow color. This book was titled Abe Diem----- or Abe Dies----- (can't remember the rest of the word). I figued the title was German.

Dream #2

I was walking on some concrete path with two other people. One was probably my sister. The other was a kind of fat man maybe my age or younger, maybe in his mid 20s.

It was a bright, sunny day. The path we walked on was like a sidewalk, and it was in a suburban neighborhood. But it was actually crossing some area between two grassy fields on either side of which were blocks of houses. The area we were walking through at first was narrow, as if there were some kind of construction trailer to our right.

At least my sister and I were carrying something. We both carried the objects slung over our shoulders. My sister carried one bag of something and a huge, black-metal frame almost like a bed frame. The frame had a bunch of figures molded into the empty space. The figures looked like toys, like army figures, or little toy-wrestling figures. The thing looked extremely awkward and heavy to carry. I may actually have felt this from my sister's point of view.

I was carrying a plastic bag with a huge pack of Huggies diapers in it. It wasn't very heavy at all.

I felt kind of guilty for carrying something so light and easy while my sister carried such a big, heavy frame. At some point either I or the other man suggested that we stop a moment, ostensibly to give my sister a break. The man stopped. I slowed down, unsure as to what our plan was. My sister kept going. She said she didn't need a break. And before long, she was altogether gone.

We were finally now just past the trailer or series of trailers that had made the place seem so narrow. We were in a grassy field, like a litte park. The guy had stopped right past the far end of the trailers. I'm pretty sure he hadn't been holding anything before. But now he set down a white, cloth bag and a black frame like the one my sister had.

I set down my bag with the huge pack of Huggies diapers. I was also carrying a small, black bag which had something square in it. I set the black bag on top of the Huggies bag, hoping that I could conceal the fact from the man that I was carrying all these diapers around with me.

The man now explained the black frame to me. He said you painted one side of the figures and then pressed them against a canvas. In this way you created some kind of big painting of all these figures.

There was also another frame, which may have been of copper or bronze. Not everybody had this second frame. But it produced a second layer on the paintings, which gave the figures "moveable arms." The arms really weren't moveable on the painting. But I guess what was meant was that the torso, legs, and head of the figures were one color, while the arms were another color.

In my mind's eye I saw a brownish-copper color canvas or paper dotted with gnarly, little paint-figures. The legs, torsos, and heads of the figures were black, while the arms were either white or a very pale, bright shade of purple.

Dream #3

I was in a movie theatre with a few other people. The movie theatre was huge, but there were only a few of us, all scattered through the first three or four rows of the theatre. Two people I was aware of were an older man with big, clear glasses and pale, blue eyes, and a young, pretty, blonde woman.

We were all here as part of some audition. Or we may actually already have been performing. But as part of this audition or performance we had to watch whatever movie was playing.

I may have been second row. Something felt very weird just to my left, as if the seats were gone, or as if something or someone was crowding me almost to the point of pushing against me.

The old man was in the row behind me. He tapped my left shoulder. He said to me, "See over there, in the front row? That boy? Even though he's a star, he wanted to be part of this thing, too. Heh, heh! He called his agent up directly and asked to be given a space down here today!"

I looked to the boy the man had pointed out. He seemed to look like Frankie Muniz from Malcolm in the Middle. But he wore a round-brimmed hat and big, thick eyeglasses. He sat in the front row, in one of the far left seats. He had seemed a little standoffish to me, though I'm not sure when he had seemed this way. But now he seemed shy, kind of fragile, and in need of a friend.

I was now sitting at a table, apparently in some kind of restaurant. The table was for four. To my right was a window wall which revealed the pink-peach light of early sunrise or late sunset, possibly over a body of water, like a huge lake.

The "star" sat caddy-corner from me at the table, eating something like cereal or oatmeal. I may have been eating or only drinking a cup of coffee. I suddenly recognized the "star." It was a man named Aki, a guy who DJ'd at a relief concert that had been held at the Japan Society.

I was excited to see him again, as I'd lost contact with him. But I remembered how shy and fragile he'd seemed as the "star" kid in the theatre. So I didn't speak too enthusiastically to him, or even let on that I knew who he was.

I asked him something about his life. He responded in a kind of quiet tone, like he was a little depressed. I thought I wouldn't press any more conversation, although it looked like he was probably getting ready to say a few more things on his own.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was sleeping on the floor of some room. A phone's ring up. I had one blanket below me and one blanket above me. I picked up the phone, my head still under the blankets.

A man's voice, happy, raspy, and a little squeaky, asked, "Is your boss around?"

I told the man my boss was in the next room. I felt like I knew who the guy calling was, but I couln't quite place him. So I didn't want to just hand over the phone.

The man said, "Well, tell your boss that I've been thinking about what he said, and I'm gonna take him up on that K.I.S.S. offer after all. It sounds like a really good deal."

I knew that the offer was some kind of monthly subway pass offer. It was like part of a package of benefits that people would receive for work. You could get a special deal on your monthly subway pass price.

I didn't know exactly what my boss had to do with that, but I decided to get out of bed and tell him that the guy wanted it.

I walked into what looked like a very large living room that had an interior much like that of a double-wide trailer. The carpet was yellowy beige, and the walls looked like wood paneling in some places. My boss sat on the floor. Before him was a small table or desk with a computer on it. My boss may also have had some blankets wrapped around his lap.

I told my boss about the man. My boss didn't seem to have any idea what I was talking about. I had started to figure out who the man might be, possibly one of my co-workers from an office out of town. But it also seemed like it was some guy who had recently left the company.

I kept trying to tell my boss who I thought the guy was, but I couldn't say it correctly. My boss stood up and walked away, to a little eating area, which was apparently the "office cafeteria."

He sat down at a cheap table, among some other cheap tables set along the wall. Another co-worker, R, sat at another table, her back turned to us, eating some cereal or oatmeal.

I told my boss, "This guy might be related to that girl. You know, the girl who was an assistant here for a while?" I my mind's eye I saw a pretty, but slightly overweight, Latina girl.

R, eavesdropping, grunted at me, as if I were slacking off by thinking about this whole issue.

My boss told me, "Here. Go out and find that guy. Tell him I said okay. Then come back and tell me what he says."

So I left the building. I walked along a concrete path, around some small buildings, and possibly through moderate crowds of families. I ended up at gates to some kind of recreation area. I don't know whether I ended up finding the guy, but I turned around with some sensed of accomplishment. I also had either handed off or picked up a manila envelope with a lot of papers in it.

Walking back toward "the office," I realized I was walking through a zoo. I walked past one building which seemed to be round, with wooden slats for walls and a conical roof of wooden shinges. The building was to my left. To my right was some tall fence with green netting strung behind it to block the view.

A couple young families walked past me. Some moms and dads were pushing babies in strollers.

Then these kids came by, one a little after the other. A girl rode a bike. But the side of the bike had a strange particle board or cardboard cut-out on its side. The cut-out was made to look like some kind of animal, possibly a polar bear, riding a bike. After the girl, a boy came along on a skateboard. Again, a cut-out of a polar bear was set up on the board to make it look like the polar bear was riding the skateboard. Both the girl and boy were little, and they fit behind the signs really well.

To avoid one of the kids I had had to walk off the concrete path, onto a stretch of soil for planting, and possibly behind a stationary cut-out, probably also of a polar bear.

I now walked with or thought about walking with a young child. The next building looked a little like an animal nursery or animal hospital, but it was actually a church. I may have justified a church that would allow zoo animals to the child.

The church was some kind of Christian denomination, like Lutheran or Methodist, I could see from gold lettering on the glass panes of the door. I may have thought it was unfaird that the only church the animals had was a Christian one. I may have wondered about Buddhism.

I then saw "the office" just past the church building and off to the left, up a small staircase. It looked just like a one-story, suburban house, except maybe with a little bit of a jungle feel.

Good morning, everybody. My sensation of the first dream wasn't quite like any other dream sensation I've had, although the dream itself seems kind of usual.

I had the dream in something close to a waking state. Upon "coming to" and realizing the dreamlike quality of the perception, I could feel the "dream," as if it were sticking to the back of my head.

I took NyQuil last night, as I've had the flu. I think I've had a similar "back of the head" sensation after taking NyQuil in the past. But not the weird "awake dreaming" sensation.

This may partly be because of the book I'm reading, The Measure of Madness, which includes stories of people who committed crimes due to hallucinations or delusions.

I've wondered how a delusion or hallucination would feel different from a dream. I think my brain was trying to accommodate me to some degree by showing me an "awake dream."

Dream #1

I was in some kind of restaurant that looked like it was part of Lever House. There were glass walls on my left side, showing mild daylight. The floors were stoner or concrete. Something about it now feels to me like the lobby of the UN as well.

I sat at a table with someone like my boss. I was told that the reports I had put together provided weird instructions. The result was that people ended up making a weird structure. The structure was now behind me.

I now stood at the back end of the structure, looking along it. It was a weird sculpture made of black iron or some kind of black-painted metal. The metal was made to have the rounded shapes of things like cartoon trees and shrubs. But it was all featureless and black, and it was all tilted 45 degrees on its side. There was also some kind of garbage all over the place, like white packing-styrofome sheets.

Dream #2

I was out in the city very late at night with a group of rich people. The people were all a little bit older than I. There was one pretty girl. The people all felt a lot classier than I.

We were walking near my office. We might all actually have been heading to my office. At least I was. It was like I had to go to work.

As we walked down a side street, some apparently random guy got in my way. He was tall, pale, and white, with a short, red beard. He was slightly overweight. He wore dark jeans, a long-sleeved, striped t-shirt, and a baseball cap. The shirt and cap were some kind of dull green-brown.

The man would walk really close in front of me, slowing me down. I would try to get out of his way, but he would move back into my way. I would try to slow down, hoping he'd just forget about me. But he would walk a certain distance ahead, then constantly look back at me over his shoulder.

The group of people were about 10 meters behind me. They were talking and laughing. I realized they knew this guy, and that they found the game he was playing on me kind of amusing.

I knew the guy was "reverse following" me. I didn't want him to know where my office was. I arrived on the corner with my office. I needed to turn left to get there. The man had already turned left. So I turned right and walked a ways. Then I turned back around and headed to my office. But when I got to my office, I saw the man standing right in the revolving door, waiting for me, staring at me.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was out with a group of people, possibly at the edge of a building like a school building. There were shrubs, possibly euonymous, just behind a short fence. I, and maybe some of the other people, may have been trimming these shrubs. But this was also like some test, like some kind of paper test that was being taken indoors.

Something happened with time. As I was walking past the shrubs, which were like a classroom, I realized I had forgotten about a class, and that I had been counted as absent. I thought, Well, now it'll just snowball down from here, and I'll start missing all kinds of classes.

I walked past a young woman, maybe college age or a little older, who was the leader of this group of people out trimming the shrubs. We may have spoken for a moment. I then saw a few other women as I walked along. Two of the women were girlfriends. They both wore jeans and dark blue hoodies. One of the girls looked boyish and had short hair and pale skin.

At some point I had decided that I was going to quit this work, which was now something like a volunteer position. I was in something like a dorm room. All the curtains were pulled down. I was either getting into or out of a pair of khaki work slacks for the office. I worried that the woman in charge of the project would be disappointed in me for quitting.

Dream #2

I was in a dorm room that was full of stuff like manga books and anime DVDs. There was a TV somewhere, and I was trying to watch some kind of hentai anime. But there was something wrong somewhere in my dorm room. I couldn't quite pinpoint it, but it sounded like a problem with the water. It was really distracting.

I was about to walk out of the dorm room. But as I opened the door to the hallway, I saw two young men, both kind of tall and fat, one Asian. I tried to close my door really quickly, because I didn't want the boys to see me or know that I had been trying to watch a porn anime. But one of the boys saw me and greeted me cheerfully.

Somehow the boys came to understand my problem. Apparently I had come outside to find out where the water problem was coming from. The Asian boy, who I actually didn't know, knew exactly what to do. We went to the dorm next door from me, which was unoccupied. There was a toilet in the dorm. The Asian boy jiggled the handle and the water noise stopped.

As I was walking out of the empty dorm room, leaving the boys in the room, I thanked the Asian boy. He explained something to me, as if he were experienced with noise or plumbing.

Dream #3

I had come back to "my psychatrist's office," which was a lot bigger and messier than IWL. I had apparently not been able to fill out some kind of form before, because I couldn't remember the words to a Japanese pop song.

When I'd first come back to the office, it had been empty. But then my psychiatrist was there. I was really proud of myself as I told her I remembered the words again. I tried to fill out the form, while standing before a table that was full of clutter. But some other woman kept edging under me, trying to get to some waste basket under the desk so she could clean it out.

I eventually let the woman through and apologized. She said something nice. The room now was more like a psychiatrist's office. It had a couch and a chair, and it felt very calm. But it was still really big.

I sat down with my brother and sister on the couch. My psychiatrist asked, "So you can remember the words to the song now?"

I said yes and tried to start singing. But I was already forgetting the words. I was now on the opposite side of the room from the couch, which seemed so far away. My brother and sister were gettin bored with hearing me try to sing. They got up and left.

I was eventually sitting either very close to or on the arm of my psychiatrist's chair. I was still trying to sing the song, only haltingly getting through bits of lyrics. Something about iit may have had the "aeru no ii na" lyrics from L'arc en Ciel's "My Heart Draws a Dream."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom that had a window wall revealing a hallway like an office hallway. My boss may actually have been in or just beyond the hallway. Some thick, grey curtains were mostly drawn over the window. But there were still some places where people could peep in.

The bedroom was huge and it had a really big bed in it. I had a pillow that was as long as my body. I sat with my back to the foot of the bed and my knees drawn up to my chest, cuddling the pillow. I came up with a sexual fantasy with two lesbian women. I thought I'd act out the fantasy with the pillow.

For some reason my boss and a colleague of his came to the door. I opened the door a crack and said something or other to them. They walked away, but I wasn't sure they weren't coming back.

I got in bed with the pillow. I may have had some small device on which I could watch lesbian porn while I was acting out my lesbian fantasy on this pillow. But I was kind of afraid to get started. I didn't want my boss to come in and see me.

Dream #2

I was in a place that was like a college bookstore, a supermarket, and the children's section of the library all mixed together. The area was crowded with young people who were sitting at tables. I was sitting with a couple young guys.

This was something like the first or last day of classes of some kind. If it was the last day, we were also being prepared for the following year of classes. A woman was engaged in calling each of us out. She was on some kind of speaker system. She sounded nice, kind of young as well.

The woman called out some guy who sat at a chair and used a grocery store conveyor belt as a table. The guy was skinny, with pale, olive skin and a shaved head. He wore a grey and white striped hoodie. The woman said something about how the guy had gotten his last mark of development in 1999.

The guys at my table groaned a little. One of them said, "1999? What's that guy been doing for the past ten years?"

I looked down at the floor. I thought, Well that's not too different from my situation. I can't criticize the guy.

Dream #3

I was in a grocery store. I may have been with a couple of my "friends," who were Latino. One of them may have been wearing a red hoodie.

I went off by myself to find paper cups and plastic sipping lids. I seemed to have a lot of trouble finding them. I ran into a cute, blonde worker who wore a 1960s style store mini-dress and wore her hair up in a loose, 1960s style. I told the woman I couldn't find the paper cups. She said she'd help me find them.

We walked left down one aisle. Halfway down the aisle I saw the paper cups and plastic lids. I ran to them. There was only one sleeve left for each thing. I pulled them off the top shelf. Each sleeve appeared already to have been opened, and half the stuff was missing. But I figured this was good enough.

I thanked the girl, who was now Bridgette Bardot -- and naked (?). We had apparently worked on some films together, so we walked along the store aisles, talking about the times we'd had together.

As we walked along some back aisle, which opened out to more of a department store area, like a display of furniture, I started having touble with dates. It seemed like I was trying to pinpoint the start of Bardot's career, as if I had been there. But Bardot's career "had started" in 1967, which was a decade before I was born. It didn't make sense.

Dream #4

I was an attractive, blonde woman. I was naked and in a hotel room with a black man who was maybe in his forties. We had probably just finished having sex.

I walked out of the room. I was dressed and was with "some of my girlfriends." We were in some small, fluorescent-lit room, like a coffee break room. I was laughing with the girls about how I would have to break up with this guy now, and how I was afraid he would just think I was playing around with him.

I was back in the hotel room, naked. There were two beds, and only one table lamp was on. I lay on one bed, drinking from a bottle of Coke. It was a 20 oz., but I had for some reason also gotten a 16 oz. bottle. I lay on my stomach. The man was somewhere else, maybe in the bathroom, at first. But he walked into the room as I was talking.

I was trying to tell the man as nicely as I could that I didn't think we were made for each other. I eventually sat down on the floor between the two beds, trying to drink from both Cokes. The man sat down on the other bed. He was probably wearing boxers and big, nerdy glasses. He had black and grey hair.

The man already seemed to understand what I was getting at. He chuckled a little bit. He took both Coke bottles out of my hands. He stood them on the bed with him. I realized I hadn't shared any Coke with the man. The man looked at the bottles for a moment, then handed me the 20 oz. bottle, because it had less soda remaining in it.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a kitchen in a small suburban house at night. The kitchen was dim, as if lit only by a small fluorescent light from some place like over the counter or the sink. A small oval table filled up most of the kitchen. The kitchen opened directly to the living room and gave a straight view to the house's front door, which was open.

I seem to have seen everything from a point of view as if I were sitting on the floor or as if I were a small child standing near the table.

There were a lot of people in the kitchen. Some of them were probably my family members. Others were possibly friends of my family members, but I'm pretty sure I didn't know them. We were celebrating some kind of Asian ceremonial dinner.

My old friend L stood up and said that her husband was in the bedroom. Apparently he was too sick to come out into the kitchen with the rest of us. But he was still going to celebrate the Asian ceremony. I could see him in bed, wearing pale blue, 1950s style pajamas, sitting in a big, fluffy bed, possibly even with an old style ice pack on his head and a thermometer in his mouth.

L had prepared a whole tray of dinner items for her husband. The tray was silver, and there was a tall, thin, silver coffee pot on it. L herself was dressed in an "Asian-style" (???) black, silk mini-dress. The dress was sparsely adorned along the chest with gleaming squares of red and green glass or jewels. At the waist there were squares of diamonds (?) which were arranged to look like a thick belt.

L looked so beautiful, and her dress' adornments gleamed so brightly that everybody was stunned into silence as she walked out of the kitchen. In the living room she turned left and walked out of sight. One guy in particular, possibly a fattish, oldish man, had his mouth wide open in arousal.

There seemed to be much fewer people in the kitchen now. In fact, it may have been just my mom, one other person, and I. I now saw a line of older, Asian men walking into the house and filing into the kitchen. There were three or four men.

The men wore long, slender robes of a thin material like bed sheets. The robes were kind of neutral colors, like pale, light brown. They had kind of standard, paisley-like designs, like you might see on a bandana. The men also wore headdresses that seemed to be made out of something like wicker or twisted twigs. The headdresses were like three or four tall loops that tiered upward to look something like crowns. At least one of the men also wore eyeglasses.

Despite this kind of drab appearance, something about the Asian men seemed to be iridescent and gleaming, as if just a thin patina of some kind of purple, pink, and blue material were coating the crowns and possibly also the robes. I didn't know whether to be impressed by or disappointed by the men.

I ended up walking away from the table and into the living room as my mom began speaking with the men, possibly doing something like making arrangements for whatever kind of ceremony they might be performing for everybody at the house. As I walked away from the table I was probably seeing from the viewpoint of a small child.

I could hear my mom talking as I walked into the living room. When I got into the living room, it was daytime. The living room was kind of full of bright daylight. I turned left. I now saw from my adult height. One of my uncles possibly sat in a recliner chair at the left side of the room.

My mom was still in the kitchen, talking with someone like my uncle. I could hear her as if she were speaking from within the back of my head. She was complaining about my uncle (as if she weren't speaking to him!). She said, "I have a lot of energy to do things. Not like him. Because I don't do all those things he does, like listen to rock music and write weird stories on the internet."

I felt guilty because I listen to rock music and write stories on the internet. So I felt like maybe I was wasting my energy instead of doing useful things. I may have started looking at a tall, thin bookcase which was near the front door.

I now had a view of a scene like from a movie. There were two male police officers. They were plainclothes detectives, and they were dressed in suits, possibly 1970s style suits. One cop was black. The other cop was Mexican, and may have looked like a fat, worn-out version of Jimmy Smits.

One of the cops got shot in the stomach. The other cop seemed to be really surprised by this, and he opened and puckered his mouth as if he himself had gotten shot in the stomach.

Dream #2

I was in a room that was like a copy room in an office. But it also seemed to be part of some building in the woods, like a ranger center in a national park. There was a window letting in a moderate amount of natural light. But there were no lights on in the room, I think. The room itself may have been pretty cluttered. There was even a cot-like bed near the door into the hallway of the office.

I stood by the copier, waiting for some printing job of mine to come out. Apparently I was waiting for some kind of series of pages of charts or tables for a report that my boss was putting out.

The job itself was four pages long, each page with two tables. The tables themselves may have consisted of a title section and a body. But both the title and body were just empty rectangles. There were paragraphs of description between each table. A number of copies were being printed out, but they were interspersed with two other jobs that some other people at the office were printing out.

Both of the other jobs were being printed in color. They had green lettering. One just appeared to be the print out of a Power Point presentation -- although it seemed like it was only the back pages of the presentation: all the legal disclosures "fine print." The other report seemed to be written all in Arabic. It may have been a full report, including maps (of Africa?), but it also included a lot of "fine print" pages, also in Arabic.

The jobs were all being printed out so randomly that I had to sift through all the pages just to find my pages. I was getting so tired that I actually sat down in a small, cot-like chair right next to the copier's feed area and slouched far back while shuffling through the loads of paper that kept coming out.

I was apparently wearing khaki shorts and no shirt. My pale blue shirt, which I wear to bed at night, was laying somewhere, as if I had been wearing it, but I had taken it off. Also, at some point, bright, fluorescent lights were on in the copy room.

As I shuffled through the loads of paper, I became really interested in the report written in Arabic. I couldn't understand any of it, obviously, but it seemed to be about something really interesting.

Suddenly my boss opened the door. The chair was so close to the door that my boss couldn't open the door all the way. He looked in and saw what I was doing -- looking through all these other reports. He started to ask me about something work-related. But, disgusted with me, he stopped talking and just shut the door.

I felt bad for having been looking at the other reports. But I then wondered why I should feel bad. My boss had set me to the task of retrieving all these pages. And that's what I was doing. They were just all coming out so randomly that I had begun to occupy myself with other stuff in the meantime.

But, still, feeling guilty, I stood up and walked around in the copy room, as if walking around would somehow prove that I was actually working. The lights were off again in the copy room, and only natural light from the window came in.

I could now hear my boss complaining to someone, possibly one of his bosses, about how he had discovered me in the copy room, wearing shorts and no shirt. I suddenly became conscious of the weirdness of my attire, even though I had been aware of my attire before. I wondered how I could have worn my night time shorts and shirt to work, and what would have made me take off my shirt altogether.

There was apparently a back door to the copy room now. It was open. I looked out. There was something like a forest scene: pine trees, and grey, kind of chilly light.

I looked back into the copy room to find my shirt. I may have found it on the bed. I walked over to the bed. The bed was now full of food. A lot of the food was stuff like snack bars and yogurt-covered fruit and nuts and stuff. Some of the snack bars were like oatmeal with red jelly. There were also Ziploc bags and brown paper lunch bags on the table. There may also have been some kind of padded carrying bags.

I realized that I had to put together a few lunches, at least for myself. It wasn't quite like I was going on a hiking trip, but it was like I was going away for a while, and possibly into the woods. I may have been going with a group of friends. I started to focus on the task of putting the lunches together. I wondered if I would do a good job.

I was now standing next to my sister. My sister's best friend A was also in the room. My sister may have said something. I may have made a really careless comment that made my sister feel really bad about herself. I realized as soon as I'd said it that I shouldn't have said it.

My sister made a weird comment, in a cheerful tone, regarding the way people feel when people make bad comments about them. It was like my sister wasn't acknowledging -- maybe didn't even realize -- the bad thing I'd said. But she was expressing almost exactly my guilty feelings after what I'd said.

I looked at my sister. She was really short and really fat. She had a scrunched in, extremely solid-looking face, which looked like the face of A's mother, except that it was deep red and rock hard. I felt really bad, because I felt like my statement may have made my sister look like this.

It was now like the room was just a bedroom-sized room with just the bed in it. The back door still opened out to the forest. The floor was white tile. My mom now came into the room at some point and began complaining about my sister. I walked out of the room at some point. I walked into a hallway which may have led to a living room. I then came back into the room.

For some reason my sister and A had taken over the task of putting the lunches together. But they may actually have stopped making the lunches. We were still going away into the mountains. But it was also like we weren't going into the mountains. We were no longer going outside.

My sister explained. She said she'd heard some kind of siren-like or buzzing noise outside. This noise was something like either a man-made alarm or some other kind of indicator of a dangerous situation. My sister said, "It sound like there's going to be a lot of radiation outside. I thought we shouldn't go out there. I even think this might be the end of everything for us. There might be too much radiation in the air."

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some big apartment. It felt very light inside the apartment, as if almost everything were white. There may have been people in the apartment with me. We may have been standing before something like a drafting table.

I or some other man was talking about something like dinosaur bones. Some of us people were trying to get another person interested in whatever field of study we were engaged in by showing the person that dinosaur bones were actually a lot older than he'd thought.

The person may have been a young man. One of my "colleagues" may have been kind of tall and skinny, with olive-colored skin, a stubbly face, and bushy hair and a bushy mustache.

But at some point something happened with the one of the windows of the apartment. A big blast of wind came up and blew against the window, popping it out of its socket. But it didn't pop inward; it popped outward.

I ran to grab the window to keep it from falling down to the street. There were at least three different pieces to the window: the outer pane, a screen, and some other kind of pane. The window seemed to be one of many lining the wall. There also seemed to be a big fire escape outside, lining most of the wall.

After grabbing all the pieces, though not very securely, I saw as if from outside the building. It seemed like the outer pane was actually connected to the window frame. It also looked like it could open and shut by means of a little hand-crank inside the apartment.

Dream #2

One of my co-workers, HS, was walking out of some office. He didn't want me to see him because he had his left pants leg hiked up to about his knee, revealing a pale blue sock. I told HS not to worry. I'd always thought he was a hard worker. His mishap with his pants and sock proved he was working so hard that he'd gotten absent-minded.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at "my office," which was basically two cubicles set in one of the product islands at a discounter store like a Kmart or a Wal-Mart. I sat in the left cubicle. My co-worker S sat in the right cubicle. There was an aisle for a walkway between us.

I had been doing some kind of work, but now I stood up from my cubicle and walked into the main part of the store. I had probably been thinking about my bad handwriting.

I looked in the distance. Hanging on the wall or hanging from the ceiling were two signs, as big as the signs that might usually advertise products, like in a Target. The signs may just have materialized as I watched them. They mimicked my handwriting, making two whole pages out of little scrawls. The two pages seemed to be slightly curled and almost touching each other back-to-back.

I thought that described my handwriting really well. I was now walking back toward the cubicles. I walked past some sort of exchange counter, which was just a smallish, fake wood counter which may possibly have stood before a dressing room. A kind of big-framed, kind of muscly woman with very short hair stood before the counter. She wore a white tank top and blue jeans.

The woman was trying to exchange something that looked like a classical statue of a chest and head of a man. The sculpture was in some kind of grey, slatey material. The back of the sculpture was completely flat. It hadn't had any features carved into it, but there were all kinds of apparently accidental scratches made in it.

As I headed back to my desk, my co-worker CB, a peer to my boss, walked up behind me. He had completely shaved his head, and he looked a little more tan than before. He wore a green shirt with white woven in, so that it looked like it was inside-out, and some blue jeans.

I was afraid that CB hated me. I also knew that my boss wasn't around, so I figured CB would try to make trouble. So I tried to hurry and sit down at my desk. But, for some reason, CB kissed me on the head. He said something nice to me. He may have asked me to help him with some issue he was having with a project. I was relieved that he didn't hate me.

(Although in waking life I don't think I'd appreciate it if he kissed me on the head.)

Dream #2

I was in a dark hallway that was made of big, stone blocks. The hallway was tall, somewhat wide, and almost completely dark. I was apparently taking a break from studying.

Just for fun, apparently, I decided to bounce upwards off the walls. I bounced from wall to wall, bringing myself higher and higher. I was finally almost to the ceiling. At this point my body was horizontal, as if I were floating and laying on my left side.

I thought I should probably get back to studying. But I figured that what I was doing now was also educational, as well as fun. So why not keep doing it? I decided that since I was basically floating, I might as well fly through the hallway.

I flew through the hallway and into some dark room that was kind of like some classical study in a mansion and a messy, suburban living room. My mom may have been sleeping on the couch.

There was a sliding glass door at the back of the room. It had a thin, light brown curtain on it. As I flew toward the door, I thought, I can only fly in my dreams. I thought, Well, I don't think I'm dreaming, even though I'm flying. But I thought, Well, if I'm dreaming, I should be able to go straight through the closed glass door. I should try.

So I flew at the door. I may have felt myself pushing through the curtain and the glass. I may have thought, Well, I guess I am dreaming.