Dream - Traveling, carrying engines, and the building in the grasslands with the old woman and the folding luggage

Sunday, May 25, 2008, sometime after midnight, I had a dream about traveling, and walking and carrying engines, and near the end having some strange folding luggage demonstrated to me by some old women in an isolated building in a grasslands.

In the dream, I was traveling back and forth to Nevada. I stopped at various places along the way for food, etc. I was driving a little car. I think I switched cars at some point. The second car was also small, though they weren't exactly the same size, and one was definitely a little larger. One of them was a much darker color, also.

I think I met my father at some point, maybe around Las Vegas somewhere, maybe somewhere else.

At some point I was going back to Arizona, going east. I started walking rather than driving. I think I had left my father not long before. It was daylight. I had a very small car and was going along a small curved lane that left the road and then curved back to meet it a short distance later. Cars were parked at places along the lane and by the main road. There was some building nearby, perhaps a rest stop. I started carrying the car on my back. I was initially carrying the whole car on my back/shoulders, but then just the engine, an aluminum four cylinder. Then I decided I should try to carry two engines on my back and not just one. I was a little doubtful, myself, at the prospect. It proved much harder to carry two engines at once. Not only was the weight burdensome, the engines took up too much room and it was hard to keep them both in place.

I walked along a road in the dark through a vast grassland. The grass was pale and dead, about a foot or so high. Occasionally I ran into mountains or other obstacles. It was similar to a way I had taken in other dreams. I was going back to Arizona but I was initially going east a long distance before intending at some point to turn south.

Going east, at some point I went through or past a building where an old woman was, a building with a big room off to the side with long tables with equipment on them, a place I had been in other dreams.

Continuing east, at some point I came to a large shopping mall. I went through it and I think I was looking for some place to get some food at while I was there. I came to the end of the mall and an entrance that faced south. I was going to go out the entrance into the parking lot and then turned east again. I was concerned and feelingly somewhat guilty about the mall, that going through it had delayed me too much.

Then the dream seemed to replay itself a little bit, and at some point before the mall the CIS Manager at the place I used to work had joined me, a man with gray-white hair and beard. Someone was with him, but I'm not sure who. Perhaps it was the short person who worked on various things in the computer department. I think I had phoned the CIS Manager from the mall or from an earlier place I had stopped.

Now we were at the end of the mall and about to leave it, when I realized that I only had one engine on my back. I must have dropped the second one somewhere along the way. I had to go back and retrace my steps to try to find it.

I was kind of sick at heart at the prospect. It was going to delay things quite a bit, and the CIS Manager and the other person would have to wait while I did it. There didn't seem to be any way out of it, though. I assured them that I would hurry, but they seemed kind of surprised and disturbed at what was happening.

I left the engine I had been carrying there at the mall and went back the way I had come, moving fast now without the weight of the engine. I didn't know how far I would have to go, maybe all the way back to when I put the engines on my shoulders.

I traveled back past the pale dead grass shining in the darkness. At some point I tried calling people with some kind of handheld device, it seemed only partially a phone. I think I got it from the CIS Manager. I might have started calling before I even left the mall. It was hard to make good contact, and the time of contact seemed to be limited. Someone on the other side was asking how to contact the people I left behind, and I said that I didn't know, maybe by the phone booth I used at the mall. I gave them the number for it, or what I thought was the number. I think it was mostly composed of 2's. I had to repeat myself, it seemed that they weren't understanding me or somehow weren't getting what I was saying. I think I talked to them more than once, but part of the time they might have called me rather than me calling them.

I ran into my mother along the way, who came after me from Arizona in a car. She was much younger than she is now. We drove around in a town or city somewhere in Arizona for a while, but at some point we were going north on a two lane unmarked road away from the city, with mostly undeveloped land around. Some kid on a bicycle came in from the right and went more or less along or by the road. I was a little worried about him, that he might get in the way of the car, but when I got to where he was he had moved far off to the side. We got to a traffic signal (I think) at a road crossing ours. Our road might even have ended at that point, meeting the other road at a slight angle or at least widening at the intersection. We turned to go east. I didn't know how far back on my path we had gotten.

We got to a place I had passed on my journey earlier, a building with a large room to the right side of the smaller front one, a building that had an old woman that looked similar to the woman landlord who (along with her husband) I rented an apartment from in Fallon. There was also a second woman who might have been a little younger than the first. She had hair that was dark gray and the first woman had light gray hair.

I had a very simple digital camera, and the first woman was interested in it and wanted to see it. I finally held it out to her on a long thin chain. I was standing in the first room, in the doorway to the large one. They were in the large one, and the floor there was lower by a few feet. I banged the camera a little on some things as I held it out toward her, including directly banging the part that held the lens. I worried a little about the camera getting damaged a little, but at the same time it seemed to be pretty sturdy and it didn't get banged very hard. They seemed more impressed by the utter simplicity and lack of options on my camera than about anything else. Their cameras were very large and very complicated. They seemed to be looking for a button on my camera that made copies, but my camera had only the simplest of controls, just enough to take pictures.

While this was happening, they were also wanting to know how to move a neoprene rubber panel from a camera or camera case to another one. It didn't seem possible to me, but I didn't say anything.

Then, while I watched, a thing that consisted of carpeted panels with sewn edges with a strip over them and sewn down was set down on a very long table that ran by in front of the door. The second woman activated a handheld device and the panels folded up, making a boxlike structure that was apparently a piece of luggage of some kind. I said that would have been scary twenty years ago, and after a brief pause the first woman agreed.

I left then through the first room and then had to go back. I had forgotten to pick up the keys on a long thin chain that I had given them to look at. A little girl was on a table that ran along the wall. The table was on both sides of the door, with a gap for the doorway, and had various objects on it, a lot of them odd devices or machines. The little girl had apparently been hiding among them and had come out after I had gone. She was to the left of the doorway.

The first woman was where she was when I left, and was surprised to see me back again. If the second woman was around, she was probably somewhere to the right and didn't say anything. I don't remember noticing her and she might not have been there.

I got my keys back and then left again through the first room. I'm not sure I ever got the camera back or even remembered it, the keys seem to have replaced the camera.

Someone was also coming out with me, a few steps behind me and a little to my right, coming to the front room from the side somewhere. It was a woman who was much younger than the other women. I don't know who she was. I was somewhat worried at first, first I think about who it was and whether they might try to do something to me, and then when I saw who it was, whether she was scared of me or if I worried her in some way, and then I was worried that the people after me would get her in the process. I tried to warn her as we came out of the building and onto a small paved courtyard with a low wall acting as a planter. It was daylight now, and as we walked I put out my right arm back toward her, trying to wave her back and saying something to her as a warning.

I went to the street, and it had cars and vehicles parked on both sides now, leaving enough room for a car to pass between them. There was some delivery van-type vehicle, maybe more than one, and a person or two was walking around. I found something, some type of coin maybe, on the sidewalk I think, and was talking about it to someone. It was an old coin, very odd and apparently valuable, though it had more importance than just money. It was not overwhelmingly important, though.

I was moving on, looking I think for where the car was parked with my mother in it, but I don't think I found it and I think she might have left to go somewhere, maybe without the car. I don't think she had gone too terribly far, though it might have been over a mile. I was just starting to go into the street, looking for my car, with some concern about the people there, when the dream ended.