maboroshi

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a classroom. I sat in a desk one or two rows back from the front and a little toward the left of the classroom. The classroom door was on the left side of the wall that the desks faced. The light of the classroom was a greenish fluorescent.

The classroom was probably full of people. Everybody may have seemed about my age. But the class felt almost like a high school class.

I sat twisted in my desk, the left side of my head propped up by my left hand. I was watching a woman or girl give a speech about something. The woman was giving the speech while seated at her desk.

I knew that the woman's speech wasn't popular. She had expressly decided to say something she knew other people wouldn't like. Plus, her speech may have been boring.

I was taking a little bit of a secret pleasure in knowing that the woman's speech was not well-received. She may have acted arrogant toward me in the past. So now I was happy to see people treating her indifferently.

Somehow (maybe because of a bell?) the people all knew that the class period was over. They all got up and left the class, even though the woman was still giving her speech. The woman continued, seeming only a little put-off by being ignored by everybody.

I now felt bad for the woman. I didn't think everybody would be so indifferent toward her. I thought she must feel horrible. So I listened harder to what she was saying, as if I were really interested in it.

At some point, the speech was done. The woman was still seated in her desk. There were a couple other people in the room. One of them was some male friend of mine. He seemed a little bit older and classier than I.

My friend made some criticism of the woman's speech while walking about on the left side of the classroom. He then addressed me as he walked out of the classroom.

I understood the criticism the man had given the woman, though he'd addressed it to me. I tried to respond by adding onto the criticism in some witty way, and by using an accent. I may have been trying to sound French. But my attempt was horrible.

My friend, standing just outside the classroom, told me, in a half-distracted way, that my accent was horrible. I stood up and walked out of the classroom. I told the man that I agreed with him. I told him I thought I sounded like --.

But I couldn't remember the name of the person I was thinking about. She was a cartoon character, from the Bullwinkle show. I might have kept saying "Badenov, Badenov," because I remembered she was Boris Badenov's partner in crime. But I couldn't remember the character's first name.

(Of course, it's Natasha.)

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a classroom, sitting at a desk or a table. The desks, I think, were all joined together for each row, so each row of desks was like a long table. I sat at about the middle of the classroom, and just a bit to the right of the center of the row. The room was lit with a dim, drab, greenish fluorescent light.

I was probably myself, at my age. But I was sitting among a bunch of kids in about sixth grade. Everybody around me was probably Latino.

I turned around to my left and faced the back row. Everybody in the classroom was getting ready to take a multiple choice test. I was telling everybody in the row behind me how important this test was, but how everybody would do well in the test, because everybody was really smart.

The test had now begun. I noticed that one of the kids, a boy sitting more toward the left of the center in the row behind me, was doing his test in a weird way. The boy was kind of overweight. He wore a black heavy metal t-shirt. He had his hair shaved into a style a bit wider than a mohawk.

I remarked to somebody in the row behind me -- either a woman my age or a girl the boy's age -- that the boy was answering all his multiple choice questions with only one letter -- either "c" or "d." I laughed at this, hoping to share the laugh with the woman or girl. I probably implied that only a stupid person would answer all his questions with the same letter.

But now the test was over. I realized what I'd done. After I'd given such a nice speech, telling everybody how smart they all were, I'd singled out one boy as being stupid. I may have caused that boy to lose faith in himself. And I may have made myself look like a cruel kind of idiot to everybody else.

So now, to make up for what I'd said, I started giving some weird speech to some group of kids (and an adult?) near me. It was intended for everybody to hear, especially the boy. But I was acting as if I were just saying it spontaneously, and like I didn't think the boy was going to hear it.

I basically said something about how everybody makes their own choices on a multiple choice test, and how everybody determines the choices that they make based on their bodily rhythms. So whatever patterns a person makes out of the choices on the test, those patterns are good, because they match the person's bodily rhythms.

The boy stood up from his desk. He walked toward the right side of the room, then up to the door of the classroom. I could tell he felt bad about my having made fun of him. And I could tell he thought the speech I'd given in an attempt to make him feel better only made him think I was an idiot.

I called out to the boy before he left the room. I said something to him, but I don't remember what. The boy turned around a little bit, not facing me, really, and said something to me, kind of mocking the way I'd made fun of him.

Dream #2

I was in some building. I had headed away from the first floor atrium of the building, and was now headed up a stairway. The stairway was wide and went up to a second floor or mezzanine area.

Another stairway, a bit narrower, went off to the right, from the second floor to some higher floors. This second stairway looked out onto the first floor atrium area.

As I was reaching the top of the first stairway, a guy stood at the foot of the second stairway, looking down to the atrium area and talking to a woman who stood there. The building was really quiet, even though it was really big, and the woman was the only one down there.

As I approached the staircase, I thought I'd just edge past the guy and let him keep talking. But the guy saw me, so he started walking up the staircase, in an attempt, I guess, to keep moving ahead of me. But he kept talking to the woman.

The staircase had two sides, divided by a railing. At some point, I tried to get onto the other side. But somehow the guy was blocking my way from doing that as well.

At first I kind of liked the guy. He was a white guy with pale skin, a kind of round face, a red beard, and read hair. He wore squarish, thickish eyeglasses, a cap, and a plaid, button-up shirt. He reminded me of a really nice guy I knew in New York, who now lives in Chicago.

But the more I looked at this guy, and had to listen to all the crap he was saying to the woman, the more I realized I didn't like him at all. He even seemed to be getting fatter and more annoying-looking. I wasn't going to be patient with him. If he kept blocking my way, I was just going to push past him.

But as soon as I pushed past the guy and started walking more quickly up the stairs, the guy started walking more quickly up the stairs himself, as if he had to keep up with me, or keep one step ahead of me. The whole time he was doing this, he was still trying to keep up a conversation with the girl down on the first floor.

The staircase got narrower and steeper. Also, somehow, it got twisty, like a helix. I had kept going faster and faster, to get past the guy. But he kept going faster and faster, to match me. At some point, he finally stopped talking to the woman. The guy and I were just in an all-out race.

By this point the staircase was so steep, it almost felt like it was inclining backwards. I had to hold onto the railing just to keep my balance. I didn't even know if I'd make it to the top of the staircase. For the final few steps, I had to close my eyes. The very last step was incredibly difficult.

The top of the staircase was some kind of small area, like an administrative area in a university library. I walked past the balcony that was around a staircase, then through a small hallway, then into a little kind of hallway-like alcove off to the right.

The man who had raced me to the top of the staircase was following me. We both sat down on a bench in the little alcove area. The guy sat to my right. He slumped over on his right side as we sat.

The guy started complaining to me. He was upset that I'd beaten him. (I'd only beaten him by half a step -- if that much.) But he was making it sound like I'd purposely pushed him really hard. Because I'd pushed him hard, I'd injured him somehow. So he was going to get me in trouble for injuring him.

I had stood up at this point, probably because I didn't want to listen to the guy anymore. I might have thought I was going to walk away.

But now the guy stood up in my face. He wasn't wearing a shirt. And he looked a lot different. He was clean-shaven, with a square, close-haircut and brown hair. He had a wide body, like good muscle slowly going flabby. His eyes were, at first, kind of pale blue.

The guy shouted at me that I shouldn't have pushed him so hard, because he had diabetes, and now his body was messed up in all kinds of ways.

The guy's appearance changed a little again. His irises now had a pale, reddish tint to them. I even thought to myself, Is this guy an albino?

And now, on the guy's chest, there was a tattoo. It was like a double-headed "triangle," or an abstract mountain with two peaks. But the left peak was slightly highter than the right peak. And in the body of this "triangle" was a vertical rectangle, solid black, with a wide, diagonal strip of white running across its center.

I felt bad for the guy. I didn't mean to get his diabetes all messed up. Plus -- for some reason, the guy now reminded me of a female-to-male transsexual. Something about this was turning me on, like I was attracted to the part of the man that was still female.

So I decided to be gentle with the guy. I tapped either the guy's chest or back with the back of my hand. The guy's body was still sweaty. We both sat down on the bench. I started saying something nice to the guy.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was with a big group of people. We were in an area that looked like the large reading room of the New York Public Library. But it was also something like a high school gymnasium. The group I was with was probably a church group, though it may have been part of a church-school.

I was up on a balcony level, crouched down or sitting down near the floor. There were a few other people up here with me, including a teacher, who sat behind me.

We looked down on the main area, where a lot of other people were. That area may have been floored with brownish gym mats. There may have been an occasional school desk. There were a decent amount of students down there. Everything felt kind of cluttered.

We had all been given a lesson by somebody who was probably speaking into a microphone from some pulpit at the other end of the room from those of us on the balcony. It was some lesson about Christian history.

We now had to do an in-class exercise based on the lesson. The exercise was some kind of role-playing game. I think we all had to imagine ourselves as some saint, who had been the subject of the lesson. We then had to imagine ourselves into the environment of the saint.

A classmate of mine, a boy maybe eleven or twelve years old, wanted me to come with him on the role-playing game. I was probably going to go along with him.

But my teacher, a pretty, blonde woman, yanked me back from the boy. She told me the boy was distracting me. The teacher told me I was going to come with her.

I looked behind the teacher to the area I knew we were going to: some kind of stage-like area on the left wall of the room, where there were other kids sat out on the floor with papers, studying or doing their lesson exercise.

I was now in some kind of hallway-like space with my teacher. The hallway was like an old, narrow, seldom-visited corridor in a natural history museum.

We sat on the floor -- actually, I think my teacher was laying on her stomach. My teacher had a book, some kind of history of poetry. She may have read some of it to me. She may then have asked me either to read some to her, or to give her a reaction to what she'd read. She handed me the book.

I could see that the text was about the seventeenth century British poet Abraham Cowley. But the pages looked like they were from some kind of illustrated Bible for kids. There was a drawing, almost coloring-book-style, of biblical mountains running across the top half of one set of pages.

I told my teacher a little bit of my own thoughts about Abraham Cowley. I liked him, and I thought it was unfair that he'd fallen into obscurity.

I then read the bottom lines of the left-hand page of the book. It mentioned how somebody in the eighteenth century had "single-handedly" rescued Cowley from oblivion. It took me a long time to read this. But I finally got the idea that the person referenced was Samuel Johnson.

My teacher was now slightly around the corner from me, and up on a very small platform, elevated about 20cm above the floor. I lay on my stomach and stared at a beautiful, Gothic-style, wood wall as I gave my teacher some of my own thoughts on Cowley.

It was hard for me to speak -- my brain was really groggy. But I said, "Well, you know, now that Cowley's rescued from oblivion, everybody thinks he's just great. But I don't think he's free from faults. I love his Mistress poem cycle. But his Odes are kind of flat, in my opinion."

Good morning, everybody.

Happy holidays! The icy Dream Views logo is really fun. And the Santa Claus flying through the moon is cool, too.

Dream #1

It was night. I was either getting into or out of a car with my sister and my brother-in-law. The car was probably my sister's. It was a kind of short car, and it was packed all around by some bigger SUVs.

My sister was drunk, but she was trying to act like she wasn't. She was trying to act nice for my sake.

We now all got out of the car. The parking lot the car was in was in some downtown-like area. There was a really big, ominous-looking, tan-brick building right at the edge of the lot.

We walked out to the road, which felt very old and run-down. This place was like one of those downtowns that shut down completely at night. We were all alone here. The streetlights seemed like in a horror movie -- the light was all grainy, almost sepia-colored.

My sister was now not able to control her drunken appearance at all. She even asked, "Hey, isn't there some place we could pick up some booze?"

I knew there was a store somewhere -- maybe even just across the street and around the corner. I could even see the store, still open, like a chain drug store, its greenish fluorescent lights shining out through a window-wall in a stately, stone building.

But I figured I'd do what I could to keep us from going to that store. I think my brother-in-law felt the same way.

Somehow we decided we needed to go to the bathroom. I knew where there was a free public bathroom. We walked off to our right, toward some park-like area, then along a nice, stone walkway.

The light was just becoming blue with early morning, and there were already tourists out here -- it mostly looked like mothers and daughters.

We went to some area that looked like a fast food restaurant. It had the same color scheme as Dunkin Donuts, but with a lot more brown. And it was shaped like a wide, low public restroom in a park.

I knew that this bathroom had either been sponsored by the restaurant or was the restaurant itself. I probably thought the restaurant was McDonald's or Burger King. I think the restaurant itself was closed, but that the bathroom was always open.

I think we first walked through the restaurant's seating area, which was huge, but completely empty of people. I think we then walked through a concrete-floored, cinder-block-walled hallway that felt like it was a bridge over a road, between two buildings.

The three of us were now in the bathroom, which was a wide, concrete-floored, cinder-block-walled bathroom, like a really nice public bathroom in a park. But it may have had a Dunkin Donuts color scheme.

My sister was still drunk -- kind of wandering around randomly. But I myself was now really distracted. Eventually I decided I needed to use the bathroom. I went to a stall, so I could take a crap.

But I was having trouble closing the stall's door. It wouldn't stay closed. I was also trying to close it by twisting the little doorknob using a huge, wadded up piece of toilet paper. It was like I was afraid to touch anything in the restroom. So I was protecting my hands with toilet paper. But it was really hard to do anything with the amount of toilet paper I had in my hands.

Then, at some point, I felt some kind of erotic feeling. It related to the feeling of taking a crap. I thought I was going to do something really bad and gross in the stall. And it turned me on sexually. But I didn't want to get caught doing it.

Then a mother and daughter came into the restroom. I was kind of annoyed. I knew that if a couple of tourists were coming in, then that meant that a whole bunch of people would soon be coming into the bathroom. Everybody would know I was here, and they'd all start harrassing me. So I might as well leave now.

I might have walked back out of the stall, passed the mother and daughter, found my brother-in-law and sister, and walked back out into the long corridor.

Dream #2

It was a nice, sunny day. I was probably in the backyard of the house where my family lived while I was in high school. But the backyard was now three or four times as big as it was IWL, and it was filled with flowers. It was an incredibly huge, English-style garden! Where our garage had been, there was some big, shady kind of pagoda-like structure made of greyish, dark wood.

There were some little kids running around and playing in the garden. I thought of these kids as something like my friends or siblings. They were all angelically beautiful, like the golden-haired children of storybooks. I feel like they were all involved in some task. But I can't remember what it was.

My attention was caught by the huge, stalk-like plants near me. I couldn't put a name to them. They seem, now, to have looked like hollyhocks or foxgloves. But they weren't those flowers, either -- I'm pretty sure. They had a kind of fuzzy look. And some of them had bud-like centers: tight, green bulbs, inside a collar of thin, peach petals.

I was suddenly laying on my back. Our old dog, a cocker spaniel, was standing over me, vigorously licking, or "kissing," my lips. She was actually licking off a bunch of honey that I had on my lips.

Some voice in the distance (or in my head?), probably a child's voice, asked me either if my dog liked honey, or if my dog liked to kiss me.

Whatever the question was, I answered, "No, she's just getting the honey off my lips. She's really excited to go traveling. She loves to go places in the car. In fact, when she ----- (can't remember) -----, we'll probably get a nice car for her. Then she'll be happy to go!"

I now had an image in my head of a white, horse-drawn carriage, like a nineteenth century carriage. But the carriage was very short, proportioned, it seemed, to fit small children or dogs. And there was no top to the cabin of the carriage. It was flat and open, kind of looking like an ornate, white Radio Flyer wagon.

A man in a suit and top-hat sat in a small front area and drove the carriage. He may also have been holding a white, lace parasol.

I could see that there was a main seating area: a small square. But there was also a smaller, back rectangle, which, I now guess, could normally be used for luggage.

But I guess my dog was now dead, because she was stiff and motionless, and we had laid her in the back area, as if it were some kind of coffin for her, or a space that would have fit a coffin for her.

But I'm pretty sure the carriage wasn't taking my dog to a funeral, but to a wedding. And I may have been a part of the wedding. This was probably whatever I'd been referring to when I'd spoken to the voice. But I'm pretty sure this image didn't have anything to do with what I'd actually said.

Dream #3

I was in some kind of huge place, something like an old, French palace, mixed with a museum, mixed with an old, run-down, slummy apartment. The place was filled with all kinds of clutter -- boxes, junk, all over the place.

There were no lights on, and it was night. The only light coming into the place was extremely dim, orange light from the streetlamps outside.

There were a few other men in the structure with me. They were all in one room. The place was huge, but we were all sitting in just one room, which had a bunk bed and a computer desk in it, but which was so filled with junk that we could hardly fit ourselves into the room.

The men may have been Latino, and they may have spoken very little English. They seemed to be in their late thirties or early forties. They were short, a little overweight, and a little tough-seeming.

The men were being nice or indifferent to me. But I had a feeling that, as time wore on, they'd probably start annoying or harrassing me.

My mom now came into the room. I was happy just to have someone familiar to me in this environment. It kind of diluted the bad emotional sense I was beginning to get from these guys.

My mom looked a bit different. She was skinnier, and she had shorter hair. She sent me off to some other room. She told me that we were both getting up early tomorrow morning to take care of some task. She stressed the importance of getting up on time.

I was excited about the event. And even though it was already late, and that I wouldn't get very much sleep at all if I wanted to get up on time, I was really happy and determined to get up on time.

I lay down in bed and closed my eyes. Almost immediately, I re-opened them. I realized that I had woken up an hour late!

I ran out into the hallway to find my mom. It couldn't be true, could it? Had I overslept for the thing I was so excited for?

My mom was at the other end of the hallway. She said, "Yep, you overslept. But I wasn't going to wake you up."

I could tell my mom was disappointed in me. I felt horrible. But my mom now said something like, "Hurry up. If you just get your shit together and get out the door right now, we can still probably make it on time."

I was back in the room with the Latino men. Some of them were sleeping on the bunk bed. One was still up, sitting at the computer desk. The light was still dark. It was still very early morning, before sunrise.

I crouched before the bunkbed and began arranging something on the cuff of my right shirt sleeve for some reason. It was like I was peeling back my cuff and then twisting it back and forth. It felt like I was trying to put some kind of steel band around my wrist.

But I realized that I was just wasting my time doing this. My mom was probably out in the car, waiting for me. If I didn't hurry up, my mom would either leave me, or else she'd wait for me and we'd both be too late to make it to our task.

I stood up to get my shit together and go downstairs. But I was so unfocused. I really couldn't remember what the hell I needed to do. I didn't really know what I needed in order to get the hell out of here. And the Latino men didn't help. It was just like they were waiting for an excuse to distract me.

I now found myself in a car, an old, clunky station wagon, like the one I drove IWL when I lived out in the desert for a couple of years, working for the Park Service. The car was inside -- in one of the rooms of the house. I sat in the driver's seat. One of the Latino men stood just outside the door, looking in.

The car only had AM radio (IDL and IWL ). I had a plastic tub -- like the plastic tubs you get for various purposes during hospital stays -- filled with little, plastic knobs, each about 2cm in diameter. I had to put all of these plastic knobs onto various parts of the radio's face. Only after that would my shit be together enough so that I could leave.

But I couldn't fit all of these knobs onto the radio face! I think I managed to find ways to fit some of them onto the volume and tuning knobs. I also popped some of them onto the set-station buttons. And I may have tried to stick some onto the actual station indicator plate. But I was running out of space. And I had a ton of knobs left!

I was now by myself in a large hallway, probably inside an apartment. It was night, and the hallway was pretty dark.

I stood near the front door. The door was made of old, worn-out wood. I could feel something like a gentle wind whispering past the door. I knew it was some kind of presence. I partly thought it was a ghost. But I also thought it was some person -- or, a person coming, not a person who was actually there yet.

I knew that I was still a bit early. But as long as I kept aware of the situation, I'd see the person. Then I could meet the person just outside the apartment. I may actually have just thought of this person as only a breeze of wind.

I was now looking out through my door through a small, square window that was maybe 30cm directly above the doorknob. Looking out, I saw the dark sapphire sky of morning. I could see that out there was something like a brambly yard, which may have been something like a big, nice garden.

I was telling myself something very soothing, like the person who was coming to me was a very nice person, and that I had nothing to worry about or be afraid of.

I watched one or two people crossing my field of view. They were walking along some path, I think, that crossed between the garden and some much wider field. They were a man and a woman. A man may also later have crossed by himself.

I told myself, "See? See how nice they are? When they come for you, they'll treat you nicely. You have nothing to fear."

I was now outside. It was a bright, sunny morning. I was drifting up a very, very slight slope, on a long, wide lawn that led up to a sidewalk and an asphalt road.

I saw a man and a woman walking along the road, heading from the right to the left side of my field of view. The man and woman both looked like they were in their late thirties. But they wore clothes and had hairstyles like from the late 1970s. The man's hairstyle was particularly chunky and bowl-shaped.

The man and the woman seemed to be in a kind of peevish argument with each other. It scared me a little bit. I felt like if I got into their field of influence, they'd probably start getting all peevish and annoying with me.

But they were walking pretty quickly. And they were already away from me by the time I got up to the sidewalk.

Now that I was on the sidewalk, I noticed a few handfuls of people, all adults, walking toward a building. I realized that I was near a university campus.

The campus neighborhood reminds me now of my occasional visits to the Princeton campus. But the university building, which I saw off to my left, looked more like an elementary school mixed with a modern, suburban church building.

All the people walking toward the building seemed to be in their thirties and forties. There were men and women. Sometimes people were in groups, talking with each other. Other times they were walking alone.

Some of the people wore suits or formal attire. Others were wearing caps and gowns, like they were attending a graduation ceremony.

I also noticed that a lot of the women had very masculine faces. Some of the women were definitely women, just with very hard, squarish faces. But some of the people dressed as women may have been men.

As I got to the actual building, I realized that it was more like an elementary school. The adults I'd seen funnelling toward this area were actually teachers. They were all now dispersing toward different parts of the building: to their classrooms, I assumed.

I was in a square, concrete-floored courtyard of the building. There were a lot of kids running all about, rushing, I supposed, to get to their classes.

There were some adult women posted here and there, apparently to make sure that nobody was getting out of hand. I figured I'd ask one of these women either where I was, or where I was supposed to be. I didn't really know the answer to either of those questions.

I saw a woman posted just under the covering of the building, at the back, right corner of the courtyard. I figured I'd approach her and ask her what I was here for.

As I walked toward that woman, a girl wearing a pale pink sweater ran through the courtyard with a clear, plastic bottle of water.

One of the other women admonished the girl for some reason or another. The girl thought she was being really grown-up and helpful for doing something. But she was also using her task to avoid having to do some thing that all the girls her age needed to do. She knew this. So when the teacher admonished her, she listened.

But as I was about to reach the woman, some kind of alarm went off. The alarm was the prayer bell. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing, when the prayer bell went off, you had to stop, crouch down on your knees, bow your head to the ground, and start praying to god.

The ritual seems to me now to be Islam-influenced. But the prayer was more like a Christian prayer mixed with something like the United States Pledge of Allegiance.

I bowed, too, because I at least knew what all this meant. I was near a stairwell. A girl wearing a Muslim-style head-covering bowed near me.

As I looked at the floor, I noticed it was tiled in meter-square tiles looking like flecked granite. But this tile was all chipped away in a corner, so that almost a quarter of the tile was chipped into an oily blackness.

During the prayer-pledge, the girl in the pale pink shirt ran out of the doorway of a classroom near me. She had the water bottle again, and she was about to rush off somewhere. But the woman I was trying to approach told the girl to kneel down and pray, like everybody else.

The girl said something like, "Oh, yeah. Right." She didn't kneel down, though. She just sat, in some kind of athletic pose, with her back to the wall, and waited for the prayer to finish.

Something about the girl's face made me think she might have Down's Syndrome. But the girl was really smart and active. I liked her a lot.

When I got up from the prayer-pledge, I approached the adult woman. I had a feeling now that I was here for some kind of volunteer project with New York Cares. So I asked the woman if she knew where we volunteers were meeting. The woman pointed to the stairwell behind me and said that New York Cares was meeting up on the second floor.

But before I could go upstairs, a little girl grabbed my hand and told me to help her with her spelling. She dragged me over to something that looked like folding gym mats stood up on one side and w-folded, to look like a gym-mat version of Chinese screens.

Before the Chinese screen was a long, school-like table that was only 25cm or so above the ground. Both the little girl and I had to kneel to sit at the table. The table had a long sheet of paper across it. The paper was filled with items like multiple choice questions.

For each number, there may possibly have been questions, probably ridiculously inane questions, like, "How do you spell -----?" as if a kid wouldn't know how to spell a word he was looking right at. But there were no answers in the multiple choice spaces. It was just A, B, C, D, with no answers beside the letters!

I think what the little girl actually had to do was choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D, and then correctly spell the word in the space beside that letter. I think the little girl may actually have explained this to me herself.

The little girl was probably learning impaired. But she seemed really smart, as well. She seemed to be doing well enough spelling for herself. And maybe she just wanted me around for the heck of it while she was doing her work.

But every once in a while I'd have to help her with spelling. At some point, I even chose, and circled?, the letter "C" on one of her questions. I also remember something about one of us writing in cursive.

Then the little girl's brother came up. He was also, apparently, learning impaired, though not as much as his sister. He may have been a bit younger than the girl. He was climbing all over both me and the little girl, though he mostly seemed to be climbing all over me. He really wanted my attention, and he wanted to prove, I think, that he was smarter than his sister.

At some point I stood up, as if my lessons for the little girl and boy were over. I told them they'd both done a good job.

But the boy wanted to see my cell phone for some reason. I was pretty sure that that was not a good idea, because I think I'd been looking on some sort of fetish website before I'd come here. The boy didn't need to be seeing any of that kind of stuff.

I then saw my phones screen, as if it were flickering on, like a TV would, with a bit of vertical hold striping a black screen, as the TV is getting started up and getting a hold of itself. The striping was yellow -- so it seemed to me that this was "effect" for a production, not real vertical hold striping.

There was then, probably, some kind of video, maybe starring Hyde from the j-pop band L'Arc en Ciel. But I can't remember anything about it.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I walked into "my psychiatrist's office," which was actually a house in a suburban neighborhood. I may have walked in through a side door.

I was in something like a side room or a spare room, not a bedroom, but more like a room with random stuff in it. The room was brown, with cheap plywood-panelling on the walls and a scruffy brown and tan carpet.

At first I thought I was all alone in the house. I suddenly became aware that I didn't actually have an appointment with my psychiatrist today. I thought that maybe I'd come into her house while she and everybody else in her family was gone.

But now I heard my psychiatrist talking with a woman. I imagined a woman in maybe her late fifties or early sixties. My psychiatrist was saying goodbye to her.

I now realized that I hadn't had an appointment with my psychiatrist: I'd cancelled it a while back. Now I was just showing up. My psychiatrist would think I was some kind of crazy stalker.

But I was here, and I'd only look worse if my psychiatrist saw me while I was attempting to leave. So I went into the office-room of the house.

The room was in quite a bit of disarray. I might not even have seen my psychiatrist at first. There was a couch running diagonally through the middle of the room, as if it had been pushed away from the wall. There were shelves in various states of dissaray, and piles of stuff on the floor and in an open closet.

Now I saw my psychiatrist. She was pulling some stuff off a set of shelves. I knew that my psychiatrist had decided that since I'd cancelled my appointment for this day, she'd work on cleaning out her office during this period. She was kind of annoyed to see me here, now that she'd set herself to another task. I was afraid she'd even charge me for a session.

But my psychiatrist asked my opinion. She had to think of a Christmas present for some young male in her family. The man was maybe a nephew of hers who was in his mid-twenties.

My psychiatrist had been cleaning out her record collection. To my left there was a wall-width stereo center with shelves filled with records. But my psychiatrist walked to the closet, off to my right. There were even more records in there.

My psychiatrist pointed to a few records. They were in huge plastic security-cases, like compact discs might be in in a store, before you buy them. The record sleeves had yellow backs, like the Deutsche Grammophone CDs of classical music (? - I think). My psychiatrist asked me if I thought her nephew might like those records.

I walked over to the records. My psychiatrist told me that if I liked them I could have them. She said they were by some Asian group (possibly a Vietnamese group). She may have told me how she'd gotten them, and that she wasn't sure whether the music was any good. I may have told her that the group was really good.

I was now watching a music video by the Malaysian pop group A.P.I. I thought I was familiar with the video and the song.

The video was of three members of the band before a white background. But something like a red curtain would often fall down through the middle of the scene. Sometimes it would fill up the whole scene. The curtain had a fabricky look, and it acted like fabric. But it was transparent, like a piece of thin plastic.

At one point, one of the band members, fully engulfed in the orange-red light of the curtain, slid into a close-up shot, either as if he were on some moving platform, or as if the camera, on a dolly, slid toward him. Then he gave a smile to the screen and turned away. The view slid back into a far shot of him.

Dream #2

I was sitting out on the steps of some building, possibly a school. I was with a few other people, "friends" who I don't recognize now. The steps were shallow, maybe only four or five steps up to the top. They were made of an aging, cheap concrete.

I sat on one of the lower steps. An older girl or younger woman sat on a short, curb-like edge to my right. Some more people sat up near the top of the steps. Those people may mostly have been young women or older girls.

Now a little boy ran out the doors at the top of the steps. He saw me and ran to sit by me.

The boy was maybe nine or ten years old. He was really skinny. He had very fair skin, freckles, and pale green or blue eyes. He had hair in a bowl-like, 1970s-style cut, about down to his shoulders. He wore a big, green sweater and dark, slightly loose blue jeans.

The boy seemed to like me a lot. He even seemed to be attracted to me. I may have been attracted to him as well. The boy may have tried to cuddle with me. But I may have been reluctant about letting him cuddle with me. I didn't want to get too aroused by the feeling of his body.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was walking through the hallways of a school, possibly walking faster than usual. I headed into one classroom, off to my right. The classroom was big and bright, partly with morning light and partly with fluorescent ceiling lights.

The front half of the classroom seemed empty of desks. But right at the front were three microphones, spaced about two meters apart from each other.

One or two girls, maybe around twelve years old, may have been standing at the microphones. The girls may have been dressed very primly.

The girls were going to give some kind of presentation for this class, which was a Japanese class. The presentation would be some kind of recital, maybe even a mini-concert.

One of the girls may have asked me about my presentation. I realized I had to give one, too, even though I probably wasn't prepared.

I was now "upstairs," in some room with my sister. The room had furnishings in it like might be found in a bedroom or living room. My sister may even have thought of this room as her bedroom.

My sister was getting ready to go "downstairs" to school. She was going to bring a baby doll to Japanese class, as a kind of show and tell project.

My sister had the baby doll sat up on the floor. The doll's legs were stretched out in front of it. My sister put a diaper on the baby doll. But the diaper was huge on the doll -- so huge that only the doll's head poked out.

I didn't want to make my sister feel bad. I wanted her to feel like she'd done a good job of putting a diaper on the doll. But I may have made some joke about how the doll looked.

I may then have told my sister that she should use a smaller diaper on the baby doll. But I couldn't think of what kind of diaper would be appropriate.

Dream #2

An episode of the 1980s TV show Family Ties. Alex Keaton was in the kitchen. He'd just heard that one of his best friends had died, right after leaving Alex' house. Alex was upset. He made some kind of sarcastic comment in a shaky voice.

Alex was about to leave the house, either to go to the hospital or to go to the funeral. But his family stopped him. Alex' mom Diane told Alex that the family would leave the house together. Diane told Alex he wasn't to blame for his friends death. So he should just relax and go with his family.

Everybody in the family left the house. They were all -- including Alex -- wearing hooded sweatshirts or hooded parkas. The hoodies were all in pale or pastel colors.

The family was now in front of a door to what looked like another suburban house. I knew this wasn't the hospital or the friend's funeral. I was wondering if Alex' family wasn't purposely trying to keep him from going to his friend's funeral.

Diane again, while waiting for the door to be answered, reminded Alex that it wasn't his fault his friend had died. So, she told him, he should just relax and take his time in getting to the funeral.

The family all now walked in through what looked like a mix between a fancy restaurant and a living room, lit by natural light coming in through a big window at the back of the room. They all sat down -- probably at a couple different tables.

The family was waiting for some kind of social engagement, possibly having to do with someone who would give the family money. I knew this had nothing to do with Alex going to see his dead friend at the hospital or funeral.

Dream #3

I walked into a school bathroom. The walls were a brown-painted concrete, and the walls were of glossy, pale-tan, wide bricks. The light was a greenish fluorescent. I had to walk through a tiny passage to get to the main area of the bathroom.

I felt like I was all alone. But then I heard somebody's voice. It sounded like the person was annoyed that I was in the bathroom, so they were trying sigh and breathe out loudly to make me feel bad for being around.

Out of nowhere some faucet on the wall to my right sprayed me with a bunch of water. It only hit the outside of my right leg. And it was only on for a second. But the force of the water was so strong that my pant leg was soaked.

I was a little afraid. I didn't know how the water could have turned on and off, all by itself. For some reason, I assumed that only a poltergeist could have done something like that. (???) So I now thought the bathroom was haunted.

I walked back into the main area of the bathroom. There were toilet stalls on the back wall, to my right, and either urinals or sinks on front wall, to my left.

I heard the man's voice sighing, like the person was annoyed that I was here. Suddenly one of the bathroom stall doors slammed violently shut. I had been looking toward the urinals or sink. When I looked at the bathroom stall doors, they all looked equally shut.

The slam of the stall door, though, had been so violent that I was sure the person wasn't just annoyed, but was really angry that I was around. I was pretty sure I was going to get attacked. I thought the person had hid in one of the stalls so that when I went to a stall, I would get surprise-attacked.

I looked under the doors of the stalls from a distance. But I didn't see any feet. I thought the person may be hiding from view by standing on the toilet seat. But I suddenly felt like there really wasn't anybody here after all.

I thought I would use the bathroom. But I felt like if I went to the urinal, I would get surprise-attacked while my back was turned. So I just decided to leave the bathroom.

I walked into a school hallway. I was walking really fast. My pants leg was still wet from the faucet spraying on me. I didn't want to be seen like this. I wanted to get to wherever I was supposed to be, so I could just sit down and hide my leg.

A black man, who I guessed was a teacher, came walking down the hallway. He was a bit taller than me, skinny, with long dredds covered in a hat and wearing a white t-shirt. As I walked past him in the hallway he seemed to try to indimidate me in some way or another.

I got toward the end of the hallway. There were a couple of fat, black women, who I also thought of as teachers, gabbing with each other in the hallway. They saw me and seemed to peer at me, as if they were thinking of some way to bother me.

A really pretty black woman, also a teacher, I thought, in a purple tank-top and tight blue jeans, walked down the hall. She got directly in my way, so I moved all the way to the right, out of her way.

But she got back in my way. I walked really fast, figuring I'd just have to bump into her if she didn't move. But she got out of the way just in time so that we only brushed against each other.

I was kind of turned on by how smooth, and slightly muscular, the woman's arm was. But the woman only seemed to be annoyed that I didn't try to get even further out of her way. I had been right up against the wall as it was!

Dream #4

I was in a National Park with my family. We were at the visitor's center, which was a complex of one-story buildings and a long, narrow-parking lot surrounded by a Southwestern kind of forest of pine trees. It may have been late afternoon -- the sky was dim and silvery grey-blue.

My mom's old boyfriend, N, oversaw this park. He was, apparently, going to be busy doing some stuff with my mom and the rest of my family, like showing them around the park. So either he or my mom asked me to take care of something for him.

My job was to take an urn with the ashes of somebody who had just died to a cemetery in the park. The person who had just died may have been a friend of N. But it may have been N himself. (???)

So I took either the park-owned pickup truck or N's personal pickup truck and drove it down some wide path in the park to get to the cemetery.

The pickup truck was really big. But the path was wide enough to accommodate two of these trucks, like a two-lane road. I kept to the right side of the road, as if I were driving on a regular road in the US.

The path was asphalt, but it also had a coppery, gravel- or cinder-strewn look to it. On either side of the path were dense stands of tall, leafy shrubs.

A white mother, tall, blonde, and pretty, though with a kind of worn-looking face, was walking back down the path, back toward the visitor's center.

The mother's little girl, maybe two or three years old, had come toddling up ahead of her. The little girl wore a black dress that didn't go much farther down than her waist, and exposed a big diaper. The girl's blonde hair was done up in a top-knot, or a ponytail on the very crown of her head.

I had to brake fast to avoid hitting the little girl. But I stopped in time. The little girl ran off to the left side of the road. The mother called to the little girl and seemed grateful that I politely stopped and didn't make a big deal about the little girl running all over the road.

I drove on a bit more without encountering anybody else. I was proud of myself (???) for not having hit the little girl. But suddenly a gnawing suspicion came into my mind. What if I'd actually hit tons of little girls with the pickup truck so far -- but the truck had been so big, and the girls so little, that I hadn't even noticed?

I now came on a group of black people, mostly fat women. They were spread all over the road, talking and laughing with each other. I kept to the right side of the road. But now they all veered over into the way of my truck!

I pulled as far over as I could -- there was now a shoulder of grass to the side of the road, and I was trying not to hit that. But the women seemed to be trying to "spook" me into driving into it, by getting in my way.

I decided to just stop the truck altogether until the women passed. As I did, I twisted the truck (or else the truck slid as it braked) so that it took up half the road.

The women saw that I wasn't going anywhere. So they'd either have to walk onto the grassy shoulder or move over to the left side of the road. They all moved out of the way of the truck. I started driving again. But as the women passed me, they all gave me the evil eye.

I drove on a bit more. I was now kind of worried that those women would sic some men on me to "pay me back" for having made them move.

I just wanted to get to the cemetery and take care of my job. But I realized that I didn't really know where the cemetery was. I hoped it was close. But I didn't know if it was going to be far down the path, deep into the forest.

And, I thought, once I got to the cemetery -- if I were even able to spot it -- what would I do there? Would someone be waiting to take the urn from me? What was I supposed to do with the urn?

I thought I might even have to "bury the body" myself. I imagined myself having to dig a six-foot-deep grave. But then I imagined that there was already a hole dug in the ground for me, and that all I'd have to do was fill it after I'd put the "body" inside.

I came up to a fenced-off area to my right. I could tell this was the cemetery. I stopped the truck on the side of the road.

I looked at the cemetery through the pickup truck's window. The area was a well-groomed lawn about the size of a football field. Through the middle of it ran a concrete path, about the size of an average sidewalk. In the center of the cemetery was a huge, concrete column. The lawn was dotted with flat, plaque-like grave-markers, most with colorful bouquets placed on them

I opened the car door, as if I were getting out to go into the cemetery.

Dream #5

I was somewhere -- possibly in bed! -- eating a chicken drumstick. I was eating it in some weird way, like taking swiping bites off of it, so that I'd bite down at the tip of the meaty part and then tear down all the way to the bony tip.

But in one bite I'd rubbed the greasy joint of the bony tip against the left corner of my mouth. I was disgusted. I could feel that the corner of my mouth and a good section around it were now all gross and greasy.

I got really panicky and decided I needed to go wash my face off right away. I couldn't seem to get enough motion into my body, though, to do this, and I just got more and more panicked.

Suddenly I "woke up." I sat up in bed in the dark. I knew the whole "chicken leg" scene had just been a dream. But I still felt really gross, and I still wanted to go wash my face.

But all I could manage to do was thrash around in bed, going from a sitting position to one where I was half-crawling and half-laying, facing the bed.

I somehow managed to look at my alarm clock. I saw that it was only 2:37 AM. I told myself I should really be getting back to sleep.

Dream #6

A view of my old co-worker, DC, possibly as he stood over me while I sat at a desk.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was sketching out notes on a piece of notebook paper for some blog entry I was getting ready to write. I had a few odd lines scribbled out, and some scratched out lines. I either wrote down or had already written down the letter "W," and put a circle around it.

Dream #2

I was out on some concrete walkway in front of a building like a college dorm. It was daytime. A girl who I probably looked up to and had a crush on was in front of me, doing some stretching exercises.

The girl had dyed-auburn hair and slightly tan, really smooth skin. She was fit, but not skinny, with full, smooth arms. She wore a pink and blue exercise shirt and grey, tight exercise pants.

The girl went into a low lunge, with her left leg stretched way back behind her and her right knee tucked under her chest. But then she did some weird kind of twisting motion with her torso so that her left (?) arm was stretched out forward and flat on the ground, and her head was twisted so that the right side of her face rested on her left arm.

As the girl was doing this, she was telling me how she was thinking of quitting the pilates lessons she was either giving or taking. She was giving me some reasons for this. It may have had to do with money. She was telling me all this as if I were kind of a little kid.

Dream #3

I was in an apartment. All the lights were off, except in the bathroom. The bathroom light shone into the otherwise dark living room, where I was sitting.

I must have walked into the bathroom. There was a woman in there who was somebody like a fast food worker. I was going to ask her for some kind of help. But an Asian guy butted in front of me and started asking for stuff.

I pushed past the Asian guy, trying to knock him over to let him know I was mad at him just butting in front of me. In the living room there was now a counter, like for a coffee shop. I knew the woman would eventually come back to the counter. So I just sat on the counter, waiting to be helped.

I was then sitting in something like an elementary school desk. There may have been a book and backpack on the desk. I appeared to be studying.

The Asian guy walked up to the desk. He took a look at the book I had on the desk. It was some kind of paperback of an Arthur C. Clarke novel. The cover art was of a dragon, with a red and a blue wizard on either side of the dragon, probably in a forest.

I told the Asian guy that the book was by Arthur C. Clarke, and that the guy could read the book if he wanted. The guy looked a little shocked at my kindness. I told him that he could read any of the books I had. My bookshelf was right in the living room.

But as I said this, the guy just grunted at me like I was an idiot and walked back into the bathroom.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a big room like a school gym. But there were bookshelves on some of the walls. The floors were covered with something like different-colored exercise mats. The exercise mats were maybe 1 meter long, 500cm wide, and 3cm thick. They seemed to fit with each other like floor tiles. I stood right inside this room, on the right wall, right near a door.

I walked out of the room. I was now in a smaller room. There were a good amount of people in the room, all engaged in a number of tasks with each other. The room was lit only by greyish natural light from windows somewhere.

I sat down in a school-type chair in front of two girls who also sat in school chairs. The girls looked very serious, as though they were giving me a job interview. But they were really cute and couldn't have been more than 13 years old.

As part of whatever interview-like process this was, I began showing the girls how I could sing a song. The song sounded like "Drops of Jupiter," by Train. But it was an older song than that one. I'm pretty sure it was a real song, but I don't remember the song. As I sang the song, I heard/felt it pretty vividly.

I sang lyrics that I'm pretty sure didn't match the actual lyrics of the song (if it was real and it wasn't just "Drops of Jupiter"). I pretty much had the lyrics memorized. But I wasn't sure I was getting them right.

So I pulled a newspaper page out. The page had the song lyrics printed on it. Some of the lyrics were printed in bold, possibly to highlight really important parts or really smart words in the song.

I think there was a point when I realized I didn't have the song fully memorized. But if I looked just a little bit at the paper, I could sing a long string of words. So I felt pretty sure I'd have the song memorized soon.

When I woke up, I actually remembered the tune and a couple small phrases. But they all melted away.

(Side notes: I actually spent part of yesterday evening walking through town and memorizing the song "Kurumi," by Mr. Children. I've listened to and sung along with the song enough times that I almost had it memorized, anyway. I actually thought I did have it memorized. So I was a little frustrated to see how many times I actually had to look at the lyrics.

Although, whenever I get frustrated, I also wonder why I'm my age and still getting frustrated over a rock song. Ugh... immature?)

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on a subway with my friend H. We were riding above ground. It was night.

At some point we had had to switch trains. I missed the train, while H got on. I had to wait for a while to get another train.

I was then on the second train. We were high up above the ground, on some elevated platform that seemed to be a conjunction of a few different tracks, somewhere between stations. The tracks seemed to be on a floor of light beige or white plastic slats.

I got a call from H. She was at some cafe or restaurant. It may have been our original intention to eat there. But I might now have been much too delayed to meet her there. So she might have decided to eat there herself.

Dream #2

It was daytime. I had just come into a house. Outside, snow may have been covering the groud, although it was a sunny day.

I was in a huge room, which was like a mix between a living room and a study. There was a huge, wall-sized bookshelf along the left wall. There were nice chairs and couches everywhere.

I may have put something like a jacket down on the back of one of the chairs. I walked toward the back of the room, to a doorway on the left wall.

I apparently had to get to school. I had arrived home after doing something. Now I barely had time to take a shower and get dressed. Apparently the door I was walking toward was the door to a bedroom and bathroom.

But I stopped and stood right at the threshold of the door. I looked down, possibly to some book or piece of paper I was holding. I think it was a white piece of paper with sharp, scrawled writing on it in heavy, black lettering.

I felt like I didn't really need to go to school after all. I thought I would just take it easy at home. After I thought this I felt kind of guilty.

Not long after this another person may have come into the house. The person may have asked me when I was going to school. I was probably thinking of some way to skirt the question, not have to explicitly say I wasn't going to school.

Dream #3

I was in some dark room. I may have seen an old man or old woman walk past me. I follwed the person and found myself in a small theatre.

The theatre was all black. The seating area was three or four rows of moveable chairs set up on some tiered, wooden structure that had been painted black. There were two long aisles of chairs. I sat down in the front row, in the very far right.

The play was already running. The stage was just the floor, which was black, and black walls, with perhaps a black velvet curtain against the back wall. The only set piece was some kind of long sign, like a display of text for a museum, set up to run from about waist to head level on square, thin, black metal poles. Everything was lit with gentle incandescent lights.

An older woman stood in front of the sign. She had red hair and wore a long, slim, but flowing dress made out of some kind of crepe fabric. She looked a little like an older version of the mom in the 1970s version of Freaky Friday.

The woman may have given a speech and then left. Then the old man came in. He was healthy-looking, but very fat, with tough, tan skin, a bald head with grey-white hair on the sides and some rough, long sideburns. He wore a white toga that left his left shoulder bare.

Somehow I had gotten the idea that the man had killed the woman, possibly by stabbing her, but also by using some weird kind of remote technological device.

After the revelation that the man had killed the woman, there was an intermission. During the intermission I walked up to the sign-like set piece on the stage. I watched it really closely. It was like the sign was a video display playing a commercial. One image on the commercial was a red, eye-like object with grey wings, surrounded by darkness.

Apparently the second part of the play had begun. But it was now like a movie. The view was of a bedroom window, from the outside. The whole scene was lit in a deep blue light.
The old man climbed into the bedroom through the window. He was holding a knife with a 25cm, wavy blade. He crawled into bed with the woman. Apparently this was when he had stabbed her.

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 a young, white boy, maybe in high school. I had a mustache, and, instead of shaving it off I would try to trim it down to size. But each time I thought I had it right, I would somehow, while going about my usual business, realize I had a few really long hairs in my mustache.

At one point, possibly while in school, talking with a male classmate, I suddenly realized I had a few long hairs in my mustache. In panic, I ran down a long hallway to a bathroom to get the hairs off my face.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I was short, skinny, with fair skin, and greenish eyes. I had shaggy, red-brown hair, and I wore a blue sweater.

I put my face really close to the mirror. I noticed that my "mustache" was just a few stray hairs above my lip, some of which were very long. I trimmed some of the long hairs. But I thought, in a panic, that this still wasn't enough. Why didn't I shave my mustache off altogether?

Dream #2

I walked away from talking with a male friend of mine. I walked through a city street of cobblestones and nice, old buildings about four or five stories high. It was daytime, clear, and sunny. The streets were almost completely empty.

Looking back over my right shoulder, I saw a young, black man in casual clothes walking down the street. I must have looked forward again. I may have been looking for one of my friends, as if I were meeting him somewhere.

I looked behind my right shoulder again. I saw a black man, maybe 10 or so years older than I, walk into what looked like a bar on the corner of the street. The man looked like one of my old friends, M. I hadn't seen him in such a long time, and he is such a great person. So I thought I'd run after him and say hi.

The place was a cafe rather than a bar. It was kind of narrow, and crowded with people. But it was full of a warm cheerfulness, as if everybody were happy to be out of the cold (even though I don't remember it having been very cold outside). The light was warm but and pale, as if the walls were painted a pale yellow.

I saw the man. But as I got closer and closer, he looked less and less like my old friend. Nevertheless, I still patted his shoulder to get his attention. I was about to say, "Hey, M!" But now I saw for sure that it was not M. I said, "Oh --sorry."

I was about to walk away, possibly toward a table. But the man stopped me. He asked me, "Did you want to say something? Why did you need to get my attention?"

I didn't want to tell the man I'd thought he was my old friend M. I thought that would make me look like an ignorant jerk.

I looked a little more at the man. He had dark skin, a round face, a little bit of grey and black stubble, and short dreads. He wore a pale blue and white striped button up shirt, dark, cuffed blue jeans, and sandals. He also wore a weird, metallic necklace with a huge dragon with open wings.

I thought I'd tell the man I thought his necklace was cool. But I didn't say anything.

The man told me that he made jewelry. He showed me a pair of silver earrings that looked really cool. The man then explained that he sold jewelry at this cafe, and that he came by every now and then to check on his sales.

The man walked me over to a wooden counter atop which were a few rotating displays of the man's earrings. The earrings were mainly long, narrow, and silver, with stones set into the ends or in the middles. I may have seen the man's name or the earring line's design name. The name started with "Bh."

Dream #3

I was in a big movie theatre. The theatre was dim and mostly empty. The theatre seemed huge, much larger than a normal theatre. The screen was high up on the wall. I sat in the front row.

I was here to see a Frederick Wiseman documentary, but I couldn't remember which one. I thought it had to do with kids in a tough situation.

A film now appeared on the screen (though, somehow, the screen appeared partly blocked by a tall potted plant or some pipes or wires or something).

The screen showed two boys, maybe about 8 and 10 years old. They were sitting in one of the front rows of the balcony of a theatre. The older boy was sharing popcorn with the younger boy, who wore huge glasses. The younger boy leaned his head against the older boy's shoulder.

Some young boy, about the age of the boys on screen, called from behind me, "Oh, Wiseman does this kind of thing all the time." I agreed with the boy's critique, although I didn't think it was a bad thing, just characteristic of Wiseman's style.

I wondered what the heck this documentary was about. I wondered if it was in fact a preview for the documentary I had actually come to see. I had come to see a film about kids in a tough situation. But here were these kids in a theatre. I thought that maybe the kids were in some kind of acting school for kids in a tough situation. But these kids looked like they were from a comfortable, if not rich, family.

I realized this documentary was about some kind of elite acting school. The second scene showed the parents as they were dropping their students off at the school. The parents all sat in a fluorescent-lit room. The room of folding-chairs was about half- occupied with parents.

The camera panned from the left to the right of the room, from the front, almost as if behind a pane of glass, as if from another room. But you could see (from what I could see behind the stuff partly blocking the screen) that a lot of these parents were themselves celebrities.

At one point, Shelley Duvall, in an Annie Hall like suit, was complaining about the way one of her kids was being treated at the school. Everybody in the audience (my audience) laughed at Shelley Duvall's speech, as if her ideas and mannerisms were so characteristic of her.