Dream - Trying to fix tardies at school, and other confusion

On Monday, Memorial Day, May 31, 2010, around 10:00 AM-12:50 PM, I dreamed I was at school, near the end of the term, maybe the end of the whole thing. I had had several tardies, along with some other students. They had gotten very strict about it, to the point where if you weren't there when the bell rang you had to go to the office and get it taken care of. The teacher gave you a tiny thing to take with you, some little paper. Now they even had something where the office gave you tiny little colored things, maybe about an inch and a quarter, mostly gray blue, that had a phone number on it that you had to call to get it settled before you could go back to the class.

It was near the end of the school day. After a class a teacher told me he had fixed some of my tardies. I had had four, but he showed me on the little card, about the size of a vertical business card, that he had taken off three, X'ed them out and fixed it so that they were canceled. I still had to go to the office for the other one. He had done it to some other people, too.

I went to the office. A girl was ahead of me, and the person was explaining to them about the phone number. It was an odd number, given in letters for the last four digits. It didn't seem long enough for a phone number, but I was probably expecting an area code, though I didn't think of that back then. The calling-a-number requirement was something that had been initiated by the corporate people in charge, and apparently covered all the schools owned by that company.

It was getting late and I had to get back to class, but there turned out to be confusion about the class. The two that I had to go to were being held at the same time. Some of the students were in one room and some in the other. The students realized what had happened and a lot of them were joking about it, though some seemed subdued and worried, more in one of the rooms than the other.

I didn't know what to do. I went back and forth from one room to the other, trying to find a teacher I think. When one finally showed up, he started immediately running the class. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wasn't interested and just looked mad, like I had bothered him for something that wasn't his problem. Meanwhile the bell had rung and I was late for two classes being held at the same time. I saw the students in the one I was in bending over their tests, hard at work.

I went back to the office, trying to explain what had happened. The woman gave me the two little colored papers and was carefully explaining about calling the number, and then I had to give them a number off the paper apparently, and maybe explain my situation. She didn't give me a solution about the classes being held at the same time, maybe just saying that she would have to look into it.

I left and hurried down the hall. The place was set up something like DeVry, a big square with a hallway that ran around the edge with rooms on each side. I was trying to find a phone. I think I saw a couple, but they were already in use by other students trying to fix their tardies. I finally left to go somewhere else, that I thought would have phones. I think I left one of the little pieces of paper on something on the covered sidewalk around the school.

I went to the other place and was going through it. It seemed like a hospital, and was laid out like DeVry. Going down the hall quite a ways I came across some phones. They were hooked up to some video displays set into the walls. Some of them were being used. I saw a video game was being played on one, and it had something on the screen that might be important, a little rectangular box with numbers in it, and a smiling and frowning creature standing off to the right, who might have been an ogre but who looked something like the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil character. I couldn't get the person to give up the phone to me. A man was letting his son play the game to pass the time so he would have something to do while they were waiting, someone was having an operation evidently. A phone to the right of it had another video game being played, something with a genie I think. It didn't look useful to me.

I went back and forth between them for a while. There was another phone or two to the left of them, but I think one of them was being used by someone to make a call. I wanted to use the video game with the box on the screen that might be useful too, and I didn't know if I could find it on my own. The person playing the video game that had the box finally stopped and left, with his father, but now the screen was dark.

I started looking at the number on the little piece of paper again. It was not the number I remembered seeing on it earlier, the same one that had been given to the others. Now it was a regular number and it had one of those free area codes on it, starting out something like 1-877-... I was puzzled, but assumed I would have to call this one. I couldn't understand why there had been a change. I wondered if I had to give them a number when I called. I had left one of the little papers back at the school, and wasn't sure if it was still there. It would delay me a lot to have to go back and get it. It was getting late and the classes were almost over now, I thought. I wasn't sure what I could do to fix it, but I would try to explain what happened and hope something could be worked out.

I went off to try to find someone who could explain about getting into the program I had seen on the display, the video game. I started trying to go to the upper stories, hoping to find a nurse or someone who could explain it. I went to one of the corners to take the stairs, but I found that they were being worked on. They were roped off with yellow tape, and a young man and a young woman were painting them. They were maybe eight to ten feet apart, doing different sections. The wood had been kind of a dirty dark color, but was being painted yellow. The stairs themselves were much simpler constructions than I had expected, being simple boards nailed together, even the railing just seemed to be 2 x 4's. It was a very wide open area, much more so than I expected, with the stairs going back and forth beside themselves, at shallow angles.

I reached out and tentatively touched and took hold of the yellow tape, preparing to go under it anyway. I paused and asked the young man if it was okay if I used the stairs, I didn't need to touch the railing and I would try to just walk on areas that hadn't been painted or were already dry. He said sure, somewhat jovially, and said to watch out for the paint, some of it was wet.

I started to carefully walk onto the stairs. Some of the steps were partly painted, sometimes with the painted part not covering it completely, not put on heavy enough to get into the surface everywhere, creating a kind of fog effect, with a lot of the old surface showing through, like the brush or roller had been too dry when the paint was applied, and it would have to be painted over again. While most of it immediately ahead of me was dry, the one I had to step on first was wet, one of the partially painted ones. I stepped on it and quickly on to some dry steps, apologizing. I was touching the railings too, but they were either partly dry or hadn't been painted. I was heading up, at least at the moment. The stairs also led down, to lower levels.

I was talking to them about what I was trying to do, and I think one of them mentioned a way to speed it up. I saw a little wooden boat that had drifted up, outside the railing, floating I guess on air, though it seemed almost like a dark ghost water. The boat was simple in construction, like the stairs.

I climbed over the railing to it, talking now like Clint Eastwood, and maybe a little like Humphrey Bogart. I came to look like Clint Eastwood now, and it seemed to have changed to a mystery, and something about some evil people who had gone upstairs and were waiting for me, trying to stop me. They had been sent by someone. I talked some about that and about what I was doing there. I was confident that I could take care of them. There would be others too, sent to stop me when I was trying to leave, and I also had to solve the mystery of the numbers, and get that taken care of, and the answer to that mystery should be somewhere upstairs.


Earlier in the dream I had been driving to school in the gold 1970 Cadillac. There had been some problem with other cars, about them trying to stop me, threatening to crash into me, but the Cadillac, already big and sturdy, got even bigger and taller, and with even thicker sheet metal, and crashed into them, knocking them away, bouncing them way back or to the side and sometimes even sending them tumbling. I had stopped there on the street and talked to someone about it, and about what was happening, and about what the Cadillac could do, before getting in again and doing it some more. I don't remember much about it, though.

Dream - The policeman, the UFOs, and the long garden hose

On Saturday, May 29, 2010, around 3:00-11:30 AM, I dreamed I was in the Phoenix area, it was dark, and I was driving. I'm not sure what car I was in, possibly the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile 88, but it could have been the gold 1989 Oldsmobile 88, or even something else. I went up a road going to the north-northwest. It seemed to be on the east side of Phoenix. It wound around a bit, going up, getting up into some mountains that were fairly shallow, not very high, maybe a few thousand feet. It was something that doesn't exist in real life, though there are small mountains around Phoenix.

A policeman went up there, too. I was worried that he might try to stop me for some reason, some imagined violation, but he turned out to be friendly. He kept repeating his name, and then sometimes going into a longer thing about what he was doing and what his duties were, something like "I'm Officer such-and-such, ..." (I don't remember what his name was anymore).

Up near the top of the mountain, in a small, slightly lower area surrounded by ground and peaks that were a little higher, an area that seemed to be partly cut out of the mountain, there were some small buildings, and more further on. It was some kind of government thing. They were checking people that went through, and people evidently were supposed to go up there periodically to get their papers updated and renewed. It was something fairly simple. They were asked a few questions and I guess had to fill out some simple forms, not much more than a few things to fill in, including signing it, though the forms were regular paper-sized and had two or three layers with carbon paper between them. While this happened their cars were being looked at by mechanics, put up on hoists, etc. The government was also doing some kind of scientific research, though, at least partly unrelated to the other.

I think my mother also came up, in a separate car. We might have been expecting my father too, I'm not sure. The policeman showed up, and was again saying who he was and what he did, in a kind of loud droning way, like it was a prepared speech he did often, but he was also there giving updates on something. We managed to leave after a while, without having to go through much, maybe fill out a few places on the forms, which I think my mother handled instead of me. The forms were mostly text, giving instructions and explanations I guess, with just a few places to actually enter things. They may have looked at her car some, but I don't think they did it to mine.

I left and went back down a little ways, then stopped at some other buildings, going through a series of large passageways with my car. One of the places I stopped was some kind of garage, and it seemed like we at least partly owned it. I saw a Cadillac from the early 1960s, that had been raised up in the air several feet. I looked under the back, at the underside of the huge trunk (where the gas tank would be in real life, but wasn't here). I marveled at the size of it, and the length of the car. It looked like they had a lot of room underneath to make the trunk even bigger, though I knew that it was huge already. Though I had used to drive a car like that, I didn't think I would be able to drive something like that anymore. It was just too big, and I wouldn't know how to properly get around in it, particularly with the cramped parking lots they had these days. I had also earlier seen another car or two, somewhat newer but still older models.

I finally made my way out and went on, going down the long, somewhat winding, gentle slope in the dark. I passed the policeman again, who was also driving down that road, but stopping in places along the way. I briefly heard him saying, "I'm such-and such....", a little plaintively this time, before I was on and past him.

It got to be a little lighter, and I was going along a portion where the road turned west for a while, a portion that was almost level and that could be described as simply higher ground rather than a mountain. Beyond the flat stretch of ground, the road would turn left again, and though relatively flat, would turn more downhill, and would be going again among and through some mountains.

While still on the broad flat stretch of land, I saw ahead what looked like a flying saucer parked in the road. I stopped and got out and walked partway around it. It was possibly 20 feet across and 10-12 feet high, and had no windows or doors that I could see. It was a dull silvery color with a slight sheen, and went down in broad folds, like a giant mass of soft ice cream that had been dispensed from a nozzle. In some places it also had some kind of framework sticking out from under it and to the side, large metal tubes at various angles, painted white.

I had no doubt that it was man-made, and not something from outer space. I didn't know what it was doing there, but suspected it was part of some promotion that was being set up. It took up a large part of the road, mostly my side of the road, but the road was wide enough here, with wide shoulders and flat land beyond, that it could be driven around. While I was there, a few cars went by going the other way, in the gray light. Their lane was squeezed a little but not much. They slowed as they went by, though, both to look and because of the lane restriction. I got back in my car and continued on.

I had brought a long garden hose with me, very heavy duty, with a heavy crisscross outer casing of stiff fiberglass cloth. It had had to be cut at some point earlier, before the trip, and was in two pieces, with the short end perhaps 5 or 6 feet long. It was something from the house. It had been awkward trying to coil it up, it was stiff and had lots of places where it had wound about itself, sometimes in long twisted loops, where it repeatedly turned around, like it was trying to weave itself into a rope. I had tried to coil it up into loops, but at some point all I could do was gather it up into long folds. It was extremely heavy too, and tiring to have to hold. I think part of it had dragged behind the car on the way up, and I had had to try to re-coil, re-gather it up on the mountain. I had needed to take it up there for some reason, though I'm not sure what that reason was, and it wasn't too clear even in the dream. Going back down the mountain, a lot of it had trailed out beside and behind me, several car lengths.

Now, after the UFO, I continued on, and the road wound through some small mountains, not much more than hills, and turned back toward the southeast. I was finally coming down a gentle slope, leaving the Phoenix area, with a car or two behind me. It was dark again, and I was very tired. The hose was still dragging and bouncing along behind me. I was coming down alongside a shopping center to the left of me, a strip mall. It was apparently where Woolco used to be in the old days, but the roads in the area in real life have been redone and rearranged, and the road there no longer goes off through the hills, which in some cases no longer exist.

I noticed another flying saucer in the parking lot, similar to the other one. This one had a few banners that had been partially set up, and there was something else set up nearby, some kind of square roped-off area, with small curtains set up along the ropes, blocking off the interior, and maybe a second roped-off area too. It was going to be some kind of Halloween thing. I think one of them was eventually going to be a haunted mansion and the other was an area for judging costumes. I think I stopped there briefly, and tried to do something with the hose, get more of it gathered up and back in the car. The next road, bordering the shopping center, was Rural Rd., which would turn into Scottsdale Rd. as it went north. I got on it, turning left, going north.

After a while I got to the radiator shop. It was still dark. At least some of the employees had come already, and were out front, near the road, tiredly digging. There were several large holes. One of them had to do with the sign tilting and partly falling over, and the others had something to do with various pipes. They had been at it for a long time. It seemed to be a long term project, to have to keep digging, fixing and working on things. Although I came in from the front, it feels that there was also a version where I came in from the alley.

I stopped there, in front of the shop, and got out and tried to undo the hose and rewind/gather it up, undoing some of the tangle, but it was difficult. I tried to find which end was the shorter one, and finally ended up just pulling on one of the ends until I found one that could be pulled out. My father was there, and was sometimes talking to customers that brought their cars in. One of them was a short woman, in her thirties maybe, very slightly overweight, who stood there smiling brightly as she talked about what was happening with her car, and my father talked to her about it and about other things, and I tried to get something done with the hose.


The dream had a lot more at the beginning, but I don't remember it anymore.

Note: I had another dream, relatively close in time to this one, where a woman was smiling brightly, and a dream about the radiator shop sign being at a tilt (the shop was in a different location, though, not matching any in real life).

Dream - Harry Potter, Mr. Monk, and the pizza of appreciation

On Sunday, August 29, 2010, around 7:00-10:30 AM, I dreamed it was daytime, and I was driving to the other (west) side of Phoenix, in the 1970 Cadillac. My mother might have been with me. I went to an open place, not much development, with dirt and some desert vegetation, bushes, and small trees. The ground was rising up some, in a roll. Before that it seems there was a small canal running across the land, a few scattered buildings, not much. I spent quite a bit of time there, in the beginning of the dream, but I don't remember much about it.

Then I was in Tempe, it seems around the Mill Ave. area, more or less. It was late afternoon, evening, or might have been very early morning instead. I might have stopped in a small store of some kind. There were lots of small cross streets. It wasn't really as it is in real life, though it's possible it might have more of a resemblance to it as at was decades ago, combined with other things. It's possible my mother was with me, I'm not sure. I went back there a few times, and possibly she wasn't initially with me, but I know she was later.

We went to an area that had recently been constructed, still under construction in places. A major road went north/south, and on the east a smaller road looped out from it, more curved on the south side but with a sharper corner on the north, before it went back straight to the main street. Pale stucco buildings and walls lined the loop road; some of the buildings were right at the sidewalk and some set back some, with low stucco walls in front. It was a narrow, residential-sized street, with parallel parking, some in indents. Some cars were parked there now. I got the Cadillac in a narrow space, somehow, by force of will it seems, magic, somehow lifting it sideways, mostly with my mind. Later, I would make several trips there, and collapse the car to a small bundle of things, letting me park it wherever I wanted.

There was a house in the loop formed by the road. It had a broad front yard going to the main street, and a much smaller back yard, hardly anything at all, with a very small asphalt paved parking area at the back, with curbs, and a lane that ran through under the house, like a driveway. The back yard, with its parking area, ended at the loop road. Sometimes the front yard was much larger, especially at the beginning. A family lived in the house, mother and father and several children, of varying ages. The house seemed somehow reminiscent of my grandmother's house in Arizona, at least some of the interior of it, even having an old organ in the living room, but the outside of the house didn't look anything like it.

I went in it and talked to the people a bit, and it seems that the Harry Potter kid did also at some point. I think they were all excited and happy to see him. A new Harry Potter movie series was being made, with a new person playing him. It had been a long time since the last one, maybe a couple of decades, and the previous actor was middle-aged, too old to play him. They were doing a search for a new boy to play him. What seemed to be the favorite was a shy, slim, quiet boy with a crew cut, pale light brown, almost blond hair. As I kept looking at him, it sometimes seemed that he was older, and that the hair on the sides, very short there, was actually gray or white. I kept seeing him on a street corner, in a mixed residential/commercial area, where I guess they first discovered him. I had a feeling he could do real magic, or could be trained to. Sometimes, too, I seemed to be him.

Mr. Monk (from the TV show Monk) showed up sometimes, and was apparently interchangeable with the boy playing Harry Potter. He went to the house in the loop, where he had found that he was accepted and the people liked him. He kept going back frequently, sometimes more then once a day. He was very happy and smiling, that he had found some people who liked and accepted him. He got in the habit of always bringing them a pizza, to show his appreciation with them.

I got the flat pile of things that represented the car, which we left in the small parking area of a business, behind a low stucco wall, in the straight area on the north that led west to the main road. I had left it on the trunk of another car. There was a small medallion, too, that I used in the process of restoring it. It was a lot easier to do it this way than to try to park the car. I could just carry it and find some impossible parking space and then restore it there. We were leaving now, going away from here for the time being. I worried about losing the medallion, but then had it again. I thought I could probably do it without the medallion, that it might just be a prop I was using to help me do it, but I still worried about it.

My mother had walked on, to the street where my car was parked, the main street. It was perhaps a hundred feet or so down the road from the loop, to the north. This seems contradictory, but I had no problem with it in the dream. I went after her, carrying the flat bunch of things that was my car, its layers of flat things, loosely connected. It seems it might have been clear plastic sleeves, maybe 29 x 18 inches, connected on the end sometimes, with papers or even flattened cloth sheets inside them, with some other things, and maybe 4 to 6 inches high.

I went out to the car, in spite of actually carrying the car in the form of the bundle. I noted the contradiction in my mind. It seemed a little amusing, but that seemed to be the way it was, and I had no ready solution for it. This section of the street didn't have too much built up along it, it had a little bit though, perhaps more on the other side of the street. A few other cars were parked on the street here, but not many. A pale stucco wall ran beside the sidewalk. Several hundred feet ahead, to the north, the road ended where it intersected a major cross street. It late in the afternoon I think, getting toward evening.

My mother had already gotten in the car. I laid the bundle on the trunk momentarily, then opened the trunk and put it inside, the medallion with it I think, then closed the trunk. I was distracted for a bit by someone who had come up on the sidewalk, a woman in her thirties maybe, and talked to her for a little while from several feet away. There were also one or two other people, at least one of which might be associated with her, but I talked to her. It seems the Harry Potter character might have been there too, a little farther away maybe. We might have been talking about him.

I turned back to the car and saw that my mother had gotten tired of waiting and had driven away in it. I hurried after her, calling out, pausing frequently, uncertain what to do, how to proceed. It seemed I could use magic to get to her, zoom through the air somehow, and though it seemed to me that I could do it, I wasn't sure how. She reached the main cross street and turned right onto it. I followed after, sometimes making long hops covering a broad area. Another car was there too, that might have come up from the west. It felt kind of like the road that used to run by Woolco, going to Phoenix, before they changed it. My mother turned left at Rural/Scottsdale Rd., going north. I continued after her. I kept trying to catch up with her, kept trying to reach the car, but was unable to, and mile after mile went by.

I finally caught up with the car, getting a little frantic by this time. It was daylight, I'm not sure what time, but it seemed to be an odd hour, and maybe Sunday. I was in what looked like the downtown, business area of a small town, lots of streets with businesses on them, cars parked at a slant along the streets. I got in the car and talked to my mother, and found that she still wanted to drive. She sat there in the driver's seat, and stayed there. I couldn't convince her to let me drive. I finally got in on her side, and made her move over, though she was actually sitting on top of me at first. She moved over, then, complaining. We were stopped in the street, and had been for a while, but there was no traffic at the moment. I worried about the police seeing us and possibly complaining. I thought I had seen a police car on a nearby street, but nothing happened. Maybe he didn't see us, or maybe we got done fast enough that he decided to let us go. My mother wanted me to drive back to the other side of Phoenix again. I had been trying to go back there too, but it kept getting later, things were taking a long time.

Sometime later I went somewhere, it seems alone, to what felt like somewhere in Scottsdale, possibly in the Hayden Rd. area, possibly somewhere between Indian School and Thomas Rds. I went into a small shopping center, into a room there, a small store maybe. Several people were there. It seemed to be a fan kind of place, maybe a comic book store. There were several people there. I saw a Star Trek fan. He played a character in the store there, and maybe some other places, probably Spock or another Vulcan, as they looked in the original series. He seemed slightly Asian. He looked at me with an amused smile and talked with me a bit. He then gave me a shiny business card, with a broad crosshatched shiny area, the streaks going different ways in each little square/diamond. He wanted me to use the card to contact him later. He apparently had some other place he worked at, too.

Mr. Monk went back/I went back to the residential neighborhood, in the area where they found the boy to play Harry Potter. Three or so other boys were there. They were also hoping to be chosen to play him. I was surprised that the movie people were still looking, I thought the choice had already been pretty much made. The boys were still hopeful. I didn't think they had much of a chance, but didn't say so. One of them was larger than the others, a bit pudgy, with an odd looking head. He was disturbing to look at. He did most of the talking though, more than the other kids. It seemed to be mid to late afternoon, with lots of shadows, and the temperature was pleasant.

It was daytime, then, on a different day maybe, and a person in the house by the loop road, a young man, maybe a teenager, was talking to reporters, from inside, through the window. He said they were getting tired of Monk coming back, and bringing the pizza with him each time. They were getting tired of the pizza, and of him coming all the time. They liked seeing him at first, but they had gotten tired of it, of him coming all the time. The reporter was interested, and was busily writing it down in a notebook. He seemed more of a gossip reporter. Then the kid changed his mind, and didn't want them to say it about the pizza, he felt that it might be giving away too much. He told the reporter to write down a particular soup instead. It was a vegetable/grain soup, gazpacho maybe, but I don't remember the name. The reporter quickly changed what had been written and put down the soup name instead.

Monk went to a small fast-food pizza/Italian place in the outer portion of the road loop. Businesses were packed together there now. It was a lot different from what it was earlier. There was a huge crowd of people on the sidewalks and street. The business was largely take-out, but there was a small dimly-lit inside section. It was the place that the Star Trek person worked. Monk, holding the shiny card and using it to find the address, had decided to get pizza there now; he had been getting it somewhere else before. He/I hoped that it would still taste okay, and that they wouldn't mind the difference. There was a bit of excitement there. The employees, seemingly amused, but intent on doing good service, did some rushing around, but something else seemed to be going on, too. Monk finally got the pizza and headed back over to the house.

He had a lot of trouble getting in. The family didn't want him anymore. It had become too old, and too much of a media circus. He wandered back and forth, going past it on the backyard side and down the driveway to the street, and looking at it from the front side, over the long sloping lawn, from near the street, then going back to the loop street by the back. It seemed to be mid to late afternoon. Sometimes a member or two of the family came out across the back yard to talk to him, with one or two large dogs, maybe cocker spaniels or retrievers, sometimes running ahead of them. But frequently, especially at first, the family just looked out through the windows, sometimes telling him to go away.

After a lot of difficulty, he finally managed to get them to agree to let him in. The pizza seemed acceptable, though some of them looked at it a little curiously, with slight smiles. The kids just seemed to want to mostly play, sometimes sitting on the floor. The adults talked to him casually, with little smiles, but seemed much more distant than before. Monk tried to act like it was like the other times, seeming to be happy, and smiling, and he was happy to be in there, but he wasn't certain he would be let back in again.


My mother and I were out driving again. I drove for a long time, and we talked to each other a lot. It seemed to be mostly in the Phoenix area. It was getting late, around dusk, and we eventually came to near the Tempe area, from the west. As we got closer to it, the road turned right, to the south, and not far from that, on the left, the east, was a squarish old building, dark brick, several stories high, that had a broad opening in the lower floor, basically the whole side of the lower story. I had seen the building several times before, as I drove around in the dream, even been in it.

I debated with myself whether to go into the building. If I drove into it, it would be a shortcut to getting home. When we came out, on the other side, we would be closer to home, and there would be less driving involved. I had done it before, without any real problem, but it was tricky doing it. It involved going up a square spiraling ramp at high speed, and the car shooting through a wall, the north one, fading through it, the wall acting like a dimensional gateway. I felt uneasy about it now, and it didn't feel like it would be quite so easy as it had been. I was tireder now, and it would be more difficult to react that quickly. I discussed taking the building with my mother, briefly, but she basically said that it was alright if I wanted to do it, leaving it up to me.

In the end I turned into it, and we were going up the ramp. It twisted around in a broad spiral, with straight sides, and became much narrower and finally almost vertical, going up boards that were nailed across a slightly sloping wall. It became too hard to drive the car, because of the steepness. We got out and I carried it, or what had become of it, leading the way. Other people or cars were also going up. The passage became the size of a narrow hallway. A few stories up, as we reached the east wall again, we got to something like a small landing, with a door beside it, to the left. Past the landing, the slope was more gentle. Cars whizzed past us, evidently not needing to stop there. Some seemed to disappear through the door like ghosts, at an extreme angle, without slowing at all, while others continued on, to some other destination, some disappearing through the north wall. I used the shiny card given to me earlier, giving it to someone at the window at the landing I think, to finally get out. I worried about getting the card back, but I did, in a room on the other side, at a small counter that was on the other side of the window at the landing. I needed the contact information on it, and was glad I got it back.

The room was at ground level, in spite of my having entered it from a few stories up. The door acted as a dimensional gateway, allowing the attachment. The room was fairly good-sized, about the size of a small store, and had a lot of people playing video or arcade type games. It's possible some betting took place, too. There was also a long counter by a wall, at the front, where people could get food and drinks. I couldn't see it from where I was, because it was beside me and a wall was in the way, but I knew it was there, from when I spent some time there early in the dream. I was basically at the entranceway to the room. A few people, young men, stood in and by the entranceway, casually, but looking at me, seeming to guard the entrance. Apparently I wasn't too welcome anymore, perhaps because of what happened last time, or maybe it had something to do with the recent trip up the long sloping ramp. When I had been here before, I had used the normal entrance, not come through the gateway. When I had used the gateway before, driving at high speed into the north wall, I had sailed through the darkness, and landed on a road somewhere, closer to home.

We went outside, and it was daylight. The building was just one story. It felt a little odd, going in a multistory building and coming out a one-story one, but the passage through the long sloping ramp, and then the door, had been dimensional travel of some kind, and the multistory building with the ramp was elsewhere, somewhere to the west, not even visible from here I think. We were in the area where Woolco used to be. The building was across the parking lot from it, at or near the northeast corner of the lot, near Rural Rd. We went home then, or maybe somewhere else.

Dream - The redwood pool in the back yard that became a pool in the Cadillac

On Saturday, December 18, 2010, around 12:15-2:45 PM, I dreamed there was a tall pool of water with sides of redwood fence material, vertical boards, at the southeast corner of the back yard, near and adjoining the alley. It was something I made. I was inside the house with my mother and some other family members, other people too, I think.

I went out to the pool, fully dressed, and got in it. I wore my glasses too I think, and had a bubble of plastic over my head to protect my hair and ears. The plastic stuck out like a cloud around my head. Other people came out from time to time to check on me. It was late afternoon and we were going to have supper soon. Eventually it came to be that the pool was built onto the back of the gold 1970 Cadillac.

I would bounce around in the water, sometimes going under then coming back up. It was too small to really swim in, maybe seven or eight feet square. Sometimes I looked out to one side or another. There were little kids in the alley sometimes, walking around a bit, playing there I guess. They tended to be to one side or the other of the pool. I don't think I talked to them much, maybe not at all.

Sometimes I would stay with my head above water for quite a while. Some people from the house started coming out again, and I started going under water some more. I realized that the plastic over my head was gone, then. I had taken it off and forgotten to put it back on. I was a bit concerned about it, but my hair seemed unaffected, the water just seemed to roll off when I came up, so I decided to let it go.

My mother came out one time, talking to me, and got in the water with me. She seemed much younger, in her fifties maybe. She then got out of the water, still talking, and made her way over the back seat of the Cadillac, and over the back of the front seat, going along by the windows, and got into the front seat and then out.

A friend of my sister's came over, a tall man with dark hair who seemed to be in his twenties. I didn't know him much, maybe not at all. He got in the water on the east side, and talked with me for a while. He talked gently and tried to be friendly, but I was uncomfortable with him being there, and tended to give short answers to his questions. One time he somehow misinterpreted something I said, to be a remark putting him down, and though he chided me about it a bit, he remained friendly. I think I tried to tell him that it wasn't what I meant, but he didn't accept it. He finally got out.

My sister came after a while with several of her friends, and got in the Cadillac and started it, over my continual objections, and backed it out, pulling the pool loose from the yard. Then she started slowly driving west down the alley, trying to reassure me, saying that I didn't understand.

Partway down the alley, a few houses down, heading west, my sister paused and stopped. She seemed to have gotten bogged down somehow, I think. We were near a chain link fence, to the right, perhaps a little over it, by or partly in a yard that was in disrepair, with uneven and raw dirt, dug through areas of grass. A thin man, perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, was out in the back yard there, or came out there, and was standing there looking at us and talking to us. I don't think he was mad, though, mainly just interested. People were getting out of the car, Sharon's friends maybe. Quite a few people had been in there, a lot of them fairly young. I headed back toward home. I think I may have gone out there through the air, along by the trees, watching the car from above, instead of being in the car with her, and may have gone home the same way.

There were drinking glasses and other things, in heavy clear plastic bags, in the side yard on the west, over by the old, old bush near the side fence, in the grass, partly hidden there. The bags weren't large, just able to hold a few gallons. They were similar to the bags the hospital gives to patients to put belongings and things in, heavy plastic with a built-in cord for a drawstring. They were in a few places, in the same general area, some of them close by each other, even touching, but none of them very far from the others. They were sometimes in layers, going down some into the ground, into a hole there. I'm not sure there was originally a hole, but one seemed to have formed around them as more and more stuff got added, the lower layers sinking down into the earth. I had put them there when cleaning up the yard, different things at different times, some of it long ago, some of it more recent, perhaps even today.

I was trying to save what I had put there, at least some of it. The glasses were generally old glasses of some kind I think, perhaps some of them some kind of commemorative glasses, perhaps tourist type things, or they could have been something from fast food places, or perhaps some combination of that. It's possible that the tall bumpy green glass with the stem was in there too, the big green goblet, the one my mother got, as a free gift, when subscribing to a book series. She used to let me use it, and bring me drinks in it, such as orange or cranberry juice, and perhaps iced tea.

Other things were in the bags too, I think, that were just trash, papers and things, though some of that I might want to save too, if it turned out to be something that shouldn't be thrown away. It would all have to be gone through, sorted out, with the stuff I wanted to save, including a lot of the glasses, taken inside.

I spent some time digging through them, seeing what was there, before kind of loosely putting them back. This seemed like a really bad place to store them, but I didn't have a lot of time now to do anything with them. I hoped that no one would throw them away before I got it done. I hoped, too, that I would be able to get it done, that I wouldn't pass away and leave it unfinished. If I did, I hoped that someone would go through it, though it seemed a wistful feeling. I took some with me, some of the bags, and carried them around with me, as I wandered around in the yard, sometimes going all the way over to the other side and back, before finally setting them down somewhere, maybe back by the bush. I sometimes went back to the bags by the bush, looking down at them at times, sometimes going through them again a little, worrying about them. There was a lot more trash now, and papers and things, mixed in with them, even outside the bags, some on top, some down in the layers, stuff I hadn't realized was there before, and was surprised to see now.

My mother brought some plates of food out to the back yard, and gave me some, while talking to me about it and about what was going to happen. She was getting dinner ready, there was going to be a family get-together, and some other people were coming, too. The food needed to be tested, before she served it, and she wanted me to try it out. I think it was something she had had in the refrigerator for a while, or had set out too long, or some other thing. It's possible some may have come from suspicious cans, but I'm not sure now. It was odd food, maybe uneven pale green lumps, like some fancy marshmallow type salads. She needed to see if they were actually alright, that nothing was wrong with them, that they weren't poisoned or spoiled. I had some hope, I think, that they might be sent out for testing, but it looked like I was going to have to do it for now, even if they were sent out later.

I stood there, eating some of it, with some distaste and worry. I think she was going to feed some of it to the dogs, too, as well as the people at the dinner. I didn't want to have it served to other people without me at least trying it, to see if it was still good. I would rather it be me that was the Guinea pig instead of the others. I wasn't even really comfortable with serving it to the dogs.

Quite a bit of time passed, as I stood there with the plates of food, sometimes eating a little of it, sometimes talking to my mother, when she was there. She also held plates of food at times, but I think she was saving them for me, or just holding them until doing something else with them. We walked some into the side yard for a while, looking some in the direction of the front, as she talked about the food and the people coming. Sometimes we were in other parts of the yard, and sometimes I was alone. The sky seemed at least partially overcast. It had been afternoon, but as time passed it got closer to night.

We had been going to have something like a picnic, out in the back yard, the family and whatever friends were coming, but it seems to have been reconsidered, and we were actually going to eat inside now. I could see some people in the house already, members of the family, and some other people who had come. They were in the dining room, standing there, talking, not far from the table, which seemed to have been set up with food. My mother went back into the house, leaving the plates of strange food out. They were set near the fence on the west side, perhaps on the ground, though there may have been something there she put them on. There were quite a few of them. I looked at them for a while, from some distance away, considering.

Dream - I find an old car I had forgotten about, with plants growing in it, and a woman superhero dressed in white comes, who I know

On Friday, February 25, 2011, around 10:30 AM-12:20 PM, I dreamed that I went out behind the radiator shop. It was night. The shop seemed to be someplace I was living, and there were some other people inside, some family members. Before I went there I was someplace else, to the south.

Out behind the shop, out closer to the alley, pointed mostly to the south, was an old car I had forgotten I had. It was evidently a Cadillac Eldorado, from the mid 1970s, though it was more rounded, less a chiseled look. The paint was old and faded. Sometimes it seemed purplish, and at other times much lighter. The sheet metal was a little battered, a little wavy. The light outside was kind of dim and gray. Some lights were on in the building, and some lights reached out here, way in the back.

I was glad I still had the car, and was glad I found it. I opened up the hood and looked around inside. I had some food and other things hidden under layers of thin cardboard in the front, in large open spaces behind the headlights and to some extent the grill. There were also pieces of a blanket-like cardboard that went along the sides, flexible and a little wrinkled, and some kind of thin strange plants with broccoli-like ends.

Some little kids came out from somewhere, neighborhood kids evidently, and happily wanted to watch what I was doing. I fiddled with the layers of cardboard over the food and things, putting them back and acting like I was rearranging and straightening things, then started trimming the cardboard and plants some with huge scissors. The kids were excited to watch, but also disappointed that I was trimming things, and wanted them left as they were. I finally stopped, deciding to go ahead and leave it. The cardboard blanket had been getting loose and out of place, but it wasn't really all that important, and the plants weren't either, might as well let them stay. They seemed to be part of the car's character. After a while the kids left.

A woman came from somewhere, that I knew. She was a superhero in a mostly white costume. She looked something like Dinah on the TV soap opera "Guiding Light." She was a bit larger than life. We talked softly, and she lay down inside the hood. I undid the front of her costume, while she talked. Her left breast was damaged and scarred and uneven and flattened quite a bit, just an uneven shapeless mounding on that side, that covered most of her ribs, though the central part of it looked about as it should, and was approximately where it should be. Her right breast was normal. I massaged her some while she softly talked, looking more up than at me. Then I laid down on her for a little while, hugging her while she hugged me. I was still leaning over the front of the car, and it was almost like she had no legs. Sometimes we looked toward the building, wondering about the people there. We didn't really want them to find out, and supper was being fixed and someone would probably come out for me soon. I finally got up, and she sat up, partly pulling her clothes around her, though they remained undone for now and one side or the other seemed to always be exposed. She got up after a little bit, swinging her legs up over the passenger side fender.

I started to move back along the car some, trimming some things with the huge scissors, while we talked. I trimmed some things in the interior, and moved back toward the trunk. There were a couple of openings inside the trunk, back by the back window, with clusters of thin dark grass coming through them, and I started to trim it. I was talking to her and clipping it, when I abruptly paused, pulling back, staring at it. Eyes were looking back at me, huge eyes. They were her eyes, two or three times the size of normal eyes. Her head and body had grown to match, and she was stretched out through the car, her eyes looking through and up against the holes in the sheet metal, and I was clipping her eyelashes and eyebrows. I looked at it in horror. I was glad I hadn't hurt her eyes. As she talked, I started to awkwardly apologize, saying I seemed to have cut her eyelashes a bit. She passed it off quickly, seeming a bit amused, and continued talking. A couple of people started to come out from the shop, small in height, women or children probably, to come and tell me it was time for supper, time to go.


Earlier, it seems I had been somewhere concerned with things that were somewhat similar. I may have been at the house for a while, but it seems I was also somewhere else to the south most of the time, perhaps outside a shopping center or even in a partly undeveloped area, sometimes talking to people. I think my brother might have been there, and I think a couple of other cars that I had, also old cars, but in better shape than the one behind the shop. There also seemed to be something about superpowers, or perhaps people with them, but I'm not sure now what. I remembered a little more immediately after awakening, but it soon faded, and I'm writing now at 4:42 PM 2/25/2011, a few hours after the dream.

Dream - My mother, the old food, the monkey, the sandwich cookies, and the lake with people around it

On Saturday, January 29, 2011, around 4:15-5:30 AM, I dreamed I was driving the 1970 Cadillac, doing pick up and delivery for the radiator shop on Scottsdale Rd. It was a little after noon now, maybe a little after one. The temperature was pleasant, perhaps a little cool, and the light wasn't very bright, like it was a little cloudy. I had had to make a few pick up and delivery runs that day, but it wasn't too busy, enough to get a reasonable amount of work.

I stopped at the house, after going further, into the Tempe area, maybe past the river bottom, and then coming back. I wanted to get something to eat, some lunch. My mother wasn't there, she was out somewhere. I got some food out of the refrigerator, and put it on a plate and was eating it. I went in the living room to eat and watch a soap opera, Guiding Light I think, something with Kim Zimmer in it anyway, the actress who played Reva, though it may have been another soap. She had resumed an old role on one on another network, but I don't think it was that. It was supposed to be a regular one hour show, plus they were doing a special thing of an additional one and a half hours of the show, showing deeper insights into the characters and situations, but not adding to the storyline, so that the next day would pick up where the regular show left off. I didn't have enough time to watch all of it, but hoped I could see part of it. Even staying for the regular show was a little long, because Chuey, the man in charge at the shop while I was gone, didn't know where I was, and we might get something else that needed picking up.

While I was eating, my mother came back, and we talked for a while. She seemed to be in her forties. She was chewing something after a while, and then I noticed that the side of a bookcase, about four feet high, had a splatter on the side of it, kind of gray-violet, with the splatter pointing at an angle away from her. She was grinning, occasionally talking to me. I was looking from it to her and back again. I finally asked her if she did it. She was grinning, and I don't think she ever said directly that she did, but she said something about her getting something to eat. I think she finally agreed that she did it, without actually saying much.

I was tired, and wanted to take a small nap, though I really didn't have time for that either. I hadn't seen all the extra part of the show either, just a little bit, and would miss the rest or at least part of it. I was concerned about being away from the shop for so long, and wondered if I should call Chuey, but I didn't want him to know where I was, I didn't want to admit that I was at home.

I went into my bedroom and lay down. My mother came in after a while, and I got up and talked to her. She was still chewing something, evidently she was still eating, or snacking. She spit again. It was kind of involuntary, accidental, it just squirted out of her mouth. though I don't think I actually saw it happening. It got on the floor a few feet inside the room, I had been concerned that it might get on a bookcase or other furniture there, or even on me. She said she had been looking through the refrigerator and started cleaning it out some. She found some food that had been there a long time, and said I should see it, or maybe said that I shouldn't. I looked at her grinning and chewing, and I got the impression that she was actually eating it, or part of it. I pictured in my mind, something like a large rectangular glass pan with some kind of gelatin dish, or jelly dish, though it wasn't only that, something else was on the bottom, some kind of cake or maybe brownies, that and some other smaller things. She was getting rid of it but still eating it, even though it had been in there a long time. I was surprised and somewhat dismayed. She seemed to be enjoying it, though.


I was still tired, and wanted to get some more sleep. I tried to go back to bed, but didn't get to stay there very long it seemed. I was still concerned about the time, too. Then other people started showing up, including the girls, my sisters, who were still children, and my brother. It seemed to be in the early 1970s I guess, maybe even earlier. My father also came home. It somehow seemed to be the next morning. A lot of other people had come, too. We seemed to have somehow merged with another, larger family, and a lot of little kids were around. There were also some people, another family, who just seemed to be staying with us. A few of the kids, including one or more of my sisters, came down the hallway to my bedroom and talked to me briefly. I tiredly got up and talked to them. There weren't many, generally one or two at a time, but my sleep, or my attempting to sleep, was interrupted.

Then a small animal, a tiny one, jumped off the narrow bookcase by the door, jumped off onto the floor, screeching a little. It was a tiny monkey. It jumped on things in the hall a bit. Then I finally started walking down the hall, softly talking to it, including asking if it wanted some food, while it occasionally screeched a little, and went down the hallway, too. I saw that someone had already gotten it some, and had put it on the floor near the other end of the hallway. It was a line of soft sticky-looking meatball-like things with gravy, lined up at an angle, directly on the floor, with some other stuff in front of it, maybe on a little dish, though it didn't seem to be shaped like it was, just a jumble of stuff in a rounded triangle against the line of meatball things. The monkey went to it and picked up one of the meatball things and started eating. I didn't really like it to have its food directly on the floor that way, but I thought, oh well, it'll get it all eaten up anyway, and went on into the kitchen.

The house was a little different now, bigger. The kitchen was larger, and the dining area was much larger, and now seemed to extend all the way behind the kitchen and behind the bathrooms, and I had the impression that we had an extra bedroom or two. My mother was at the kitchen table, which was now in the extended dining area behind the kitchen, even further back, actually behind the bathrooms, though when I initially came in from the hallway it was still where it normally was, beside the kitchen. A lot of kids were around.

My mother had the stuff she had taken out of the refrigerator on the table, and was eating it a little as she worked. Some of the kids were snacking on it, too. She was evidently going to serve it as a means of getting rid of it. I guessed that even though it was pretty old it must still be alright. The table was still where it normally was at this point. She was talking, and the kids were also saying things.

She had a very large cellophane package of cookies, sandwich cookies with one side vanilla and the other side chocolate, not a major brand. It was probably four or five pounds, and was partly eaten. She was going to put it somewhere, I think in a different package, to try to seal it up and preserve it. She went toward the cupboards to get something I think, then the table was in the new position in the now expanded kitchen/dining room. She got another package of the cookies, again partly eaten, from somewhere, maybe the refrigerator, and was looking around for something to seal it with or to put it in. I was saying please, please, don't put it in the refrigerator, remembering how things ended up there, damp and soft. She paused and looked distracted and uncertain, and a little flustered. I suggested I think that she just dump them in a plastic bag and then seal that.


I went out back then. It seemed to be afternoon again, somehow. It was raining. The house, where we were living, was located somewhere else now. It seemed we had recently moved there, and it felt like it was the mid to late 1960s. The house now had a long metal overhang out back, and the water was hitting it and running off the metal in a small stream. The surface of the roof was wavy, at least on top, though it had panels underneath. It didn't seem to fit together very well, and the seams were crooked. Ahead, there was a slope, though it had paths winding back and forth, and bushes. Other houses were around to the sides and below. We seemed to be in a big basin, with sharply slanting sides heading down to a lake. Some other people came out, kids in their teens I think, and we talked a bit.

I was still concerned about the time, and getting back to the shop, even though a whole day had passed now. I guessed I would have to brush my teeth too, though I was still tired and it seemed like a lot of effort. I could feel with my tongue that I was getting a film on them, though. I was concerned about the rain some too, but then it didn't seem to be coming down as hard as it initially seemed, then it was stopping. It felt like it was a place we had only stayed at for a week or so, and then had to move on, that it was, in the dream, another place we had been. I seemed to be looking back at it from a perspective of much later in the future.


My brother came out, smiling, and we started walking down the paths, going to the right because it led that direction. We got to a main aisle that led straight down toward the lake. A lot of people were out now, including a lot of children. The main aisle had an odd surface, a kind of grayish brown dirt that was very smooth and even, and spongy feeling. I had been concerned about it after the rain, and I felt that I was leaving footprints behind, with small ridges of muck sticking up around them, but it didn't feel bad to walk on. I stepped briefly on a small section that felt that it had a broad board, maybe a foot and a half wide, just under the surface. It was very stiff and hard there.

We continued on, going downward toward the lake, talking. My brother seemed very happy. The area was crowded with people and especially kids, to both sides, though not many were on the broad path, and those on it were mostly to the sides. On both sides small aisles met the path, like for rows of seating in a movie theater, and they did seem to have some kind of low seats in them, maybe like folding lawn chairs, with the seats almost on the ground. They were crowded with people, on them and around them, a lot a of them talking. Some of the little kids had pails and toy shovels, and were digging. All around us, in the distance, houses were on the slopes, vegetation around them. Some of the houses weren't too far away, but the area we were walking down now had mostly the broad path with narrow aisles going off it. Eventually we turned around and went back toward the house. We needed to get back for something. Maybe lunch was supposed to be ready by then, or maybe my brother thought that it should be.


After I woke up, I lay in bed for a long time thinking about the dream. Oddly, sometimes I heard and felt little shifts in my mattress, near my head, sometimes feeling it. It was kind of a deep abrupt sound, like cloth moving under a weight and stress. It was alarming at first, as I wasn't sure what was happening, and even when I realized what it was, it bothered me because I didn't know why it was happening, and why it was suddenly happening now.

I eventually drifted back to the dream at least a couple of times, without actually going back to sleep. In one of them, I was out front, with several other people from the house, and we had a very large broad wheelbarrow that was filled to the brim with the odd dirt from the broad aisle. I don't know where we actually got the dirt from, it may have even come from a place out front, or perhaps we got it for a place out front somewhere. It was a surprise to me, though. My brother might have been out there too, I'm not sure. Most of the people were kids, some in their teens. We were talking about it, among other things. We were near the bedrooms, with a line of tall bushes separating us from the main portion of the yard, which was still largely gravel. Like the dirt in the aisle, this dirt too was flattened and very smooth, and was very slightly rounded and curving down slightly at the edges, to the inner surface of the wheelbarrow bin. It filled it, the middle of it going a little higher than the top of it I think.

I had gone around behind it and was holding onto the handles. I now picked it up and started to slowly wheel it toward the other side of the house, intending to put it somewhere else, where it wasn't setting out in the yard. It was evidently something my mother had done, getting the special dirt and then leaving it out there, for some thing she had in mind. It was a little awkward wheeling it through the dirt and small rocks, though the area had narrow places where the rocks had been swept to the sides, leaving little irregular lanes maybe ten or twelve inches wide, almost like ruts, though they were mostly level. I stopped a time or two along the way and rested. The kids continued to talk, sometimes to me and sometimes to each other, and sometimes just making comments in general.

Later, I had another continuation of the dream, where a person like the woman in the movie "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" showed up, dressed like her even, with a short wide skirt that barely went beyond her hips. She came inside and was talking to some of the people there. She talked rapidly, and was apparently one of the people staying there now, even apparently a relative.

My mother died on November 8, 2010. The part of the dream about my mother finding food in the refrigerator that had been there a long time and needed to be thrown out, but then eating it, apparently refers to the food she had that I saved there, a little tub of partly eaten mashed potatoes from a fast food place, and the paper plate with her fish sandwich from Burger King, with a few french fries and onion rings. She has a few other things in there too. It may be her way of saying that it's time to throw them out, that it's okay. I had finally thrown out a few things, long ago now, and though I thought about what remained frequently, I couldn't quite bring myself to throw any more out yet. Maybe it's time now. I had been intending to throw some out soon, maybe even today. (It didn't happen, though. I kept the food in there.)

Dream - The strange visitor, the march of the dinosaurs, the rejected loan, and the company picnic

On Wednesday, December 30, 2009, around late morning, I dreamed I traveled to the Midwest. I lived in street apartments maybe, though they seemed like homes crammed together. I went around a curve and saw my home, my home in the dream, not in real life. It was multistory, part of it used by other people, crammed next to similar houses/apartments. The street was a residential one, large enough for cars to park on both sides and for a car to go between them. The cars that were occasionally parked there were very narrow, with a squeezed look.

There was some kind of trouble with parking, though. It seemed important to park right against the sidewalk, and close to the other cars. Although I evidently walked there, I had to park the 1970 Cadillac, which was both shorter and narrower than in real life, and also had a squeezed look. I managed to get it between two other cars, evidently by picking it up and putting it there, first on one side of the street and then the other. A skinny little old man, a neighbor, came out and cheerfully helped me. He still had dark hair, and resembled Pete, the man who used to live next to us before he died. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was low in the sky and gave things an orangish cast.

I went to my home briefly. My mother was there and some other people, some of the family I think, maybe including my little sister. I think there was some time before dinner, and I decided to go for a walk or was maybe told to get something. I walked back the way I had come, back toward where there was a section with stores. It was around sundown, perhaps slightly after now. I worried a bit about someone mugging me. I was going somewhere I really didn't have to be going, and it would be one of those accidents of fate, that didn't have to actually happen.

As I approached a place where the road turned right, or perhaps where it joined another road, already walking along beside stores and businesses, somebody gently came at me from behind, putting his arms around me, apparently as a beginning of trying to rob me. I shook him off somehow and went around the corner and down a ways, then crossed the street to a store on the other side. A lot of them were already closing, small town hours I guess. He came after me again, before I crossed the street and again afterwards I think. After a bit of a struggle, starting on the other side of the street, and then picking up again on this side, during which I bashed him against the windows, bending them in temporarily, almost breaking them maybe, trying to break them and shove him at least partly through them, but also concerned about doing so, both because of the damage to the store, which maybe couldn't afford it, and because it might seriously hurt him. He was a soft, gangly figure, maybe around six feet tall, which would make him a little shorter than me.

My brother came partway through the fight and helped me some, and I think another family member or two also eventually showed up. We took him in with us, to the house. I was not entirely happy with this. At first it seemed we were just trying to help him, but then it seemed they actually knew something about him. He was someone who had come out here to visit, some distant friend of some kind evidently, maybe even a distant relative. He appeared to be from some Eastern European country, and looked slightly like the Borat movie character. He was milder and less talkative, but seemed equally clueless.


There was an old fashioned mall, around the middle of town I think. It was laid out like a plus sign, two long streets crossing with a large open area in the middle. It wasn't covered, everything was outside. The small stores and kiosks out in the road may or may not have had any individual coverings, though the stores along the street were normal buildings. There also seemed to be one corner that led to some water, perhaps a small stream that went across it in front of a building, a small stream that nevertheless had a tiny wharf on it, apparently more decorative than actually needed, as the stream was very shallow, maybe a foot or two deep in places, less so in others, though it may have gotten deeper further on.

The mall was blacklisting some people. A tiny open-air bookstore in the center where the aisles crossed was handling it. It was night. The mall was very crowded. I had gone back there again, to talk to them about it.

The person who was being blacklisted this time was evidently the Eastern European person. It seems he had tried to shoplift a few times, mainly because he was clueless, but I think he did know it was stealing. I tried to change the bookstore person's mind, a short, slightly overweight woman around forty or so. She looked a little like the producer on David Letterman, though I didn't realize it at the time. (I realized Thursday night, 12-31-2009, that she also looked like a cashier at the Fry's grocery store, who I had argued with (though she was cheerful about it) the last time I was there, the previous Tuesday.) She didn't seem interested, though, she felt like she gave him enough chances, and she had had complaints from other people. I thought that he was really going to try to do better, but it seemed to be too late.

There was also some trouble with some small dinosaurs that sometimes came out late at night. It was some kind of local legend. I briefly saw them crossing the middle of the mall. They were multicolored and small, in the three to four feet tall area. At least one was on two legs, a long-necked slim one, probably of the egg stealing type. The others were mostly four legged, with short heavy necks, maybe little triceratops and ankylosaurs, perhaps even stegosaurs too. There were not many of the dinosaurs, I saw maybe six or seven, most of them together, different types mixed together.

I left and came back again later. It was late at night, and perhaps a day or two had passed. There was still talk about the little colorful dinosaurs sometimes coming out at night in the mall area. I saw them again, going at an angle across the center of the mall area again, and talked to some people at a store near one of the corners about them. We talked in somewhat hushed tones, watching them with wonder. They didn't seem dangerous, but you never really know.


Sometime later I went along a side aisle and down another to a small business. It seemed to be daytime now, maybe early afternoon. They were wondering how to get around the blacklist. A guy caught me before I got there and gave me something. He was from a nearby town, and had some kind of column he writes on the Internet. He gave me an award for them. It had an arc for the face of a clock, and projecting plastic clock hands, one of which had the award attached, at least the part naming who got it, and a stiff rectangular flap/ribbon sticking out and bent to a particular position, with a short double bend near the end, like a step, with his watch attached to it, the back of it stuck on it somehow, with the straps hanging down. It was a thin black watch. It was supposed to be a symbol of something and show it was really him. He gave the award to the people in the office, or to someone they were representing in the fight. His column, which just came out, was supporting them.

I took it to them and told them about it, and sat it on the counter, and set it up. The clock hands were moving now, as I pulled them out some from the arc that was the face. The people still didn't know what to do, other than going to nearby towns and trying to get past the boycott there, and hoping to somehow convince the people here to undo it.


I went walking to a different area, back across the main road that leads to and goes through the mall. I reached an office area, and went through a hallway that wound around over a floor that was uneven and slanted, like a forest path, and the walls were also uneven and rounded, this way and that, just some kind of plasterboard evidently, oddly cut and set at odd angles, or maybe possibly something like cubicle dividers, though solid, I'm not sure now, though I lean toward the plasterboard. There were generally no windows, just occasional notices or posters.

There was a room that my father had there. I went in and I think my mother was there, maybe someone else too. My father wasn't there right now, he went somewhere else. I went back along the curved irregular hallway, winding along until I got on a section where the hallway had turned in a U shape from where I had been, well past the short section of hall I had used to connect with this one.

I came to a room where I thought he might be, and somewhat slowly and carefully opened the door. People inside were talking, one in particular, saying something to the effect that "What do you want us to do?" or "What would you have us to do?" and maybe "You can understand." I seemed to be interrupting something, some kind of business meeting. I apologized for interrupting. I was confused initially about what was being discussed, but then I realized that they were actually saying that they have no real choice in the matter. By signs or posters on the wall I saw that it was some kind of MasterCard place. There was a fairly good sized group of people, maybe 12 to 15, mostly men but some women, laying and sitting on the floor in a rough oval, on pillows, bed pillows I think, with my father with them to the right. They were actually telling him that they can't do it anymore, that they can't wait anymore for him to pay them, and can't loan him anything anymore. They have looked at the company and have seen that it was no use, it wasn't going to get any better, and they were going to foreclose and take whatever was left of the company, which wouldn't be much.

My father was saddened, and perhaps a little bitter, but I could see he understood and accepted it. He looked somewhat younger than he does now. The people seemed sympathetic, or gave the appearance of it, but at the same time felt that they were just doing their job, it was something they had to do sometimes, and they had done it before with other people, though I could sense this more than them actually saying it. They continued to talk some though, sympathetically.

They were lounging around, dressed very casually, almost like a pajama party, though it was not a phrase that occurred to me at the time. A lot of them were dressed in sweats, or partial sweats, a lot of them with just sweat shorts, hairy flabby men with legs and stomach and chest and sometimes shoulders showing, though they usually had some kind of soft open shirt, completely unbuttoned and opened up. They looked really unattractive, flabby and with large amounts of hair. The women were better covered up, and generally sitting upright on the pillows, but seemed kind of medium to slim, bookish and with glasses, with unremarkable figures. The people seemed to be generally in their twenties or thirties, perhaps a few in their forties.

One of the men eventually suggested that it was time for their normal Friday afternoon barbecue, that they had every week, and why didn't he join them, attempting to lighten the situation and cheer him up some. He agreed to do so, and they wandered out onto a very large lawn, park-like, that had widely scattered tables and largish barbecue grills on legs and wheels. Other people were there too, from other parts of the company I guess, but also from other companies, and even families that happened to be there on their own. I followed along for a while. My father started doing something with one of the grills. I think some of the family was supposed to show up in a little while.

I wandered off after a while, back to the office where my mother was. I told her what happened. We tried to see if anything of the business was left, we and/or the company had some kind of investments, online I think, in the company itself and in some other things, but when my mother looked, it all seemed to be gone too. Either the investments went bad or they were seized, differently depending on the investment I think, though I think most of them simply went bad. There was something to do with the sea too, some of the investments involved it in some way, and I was seeing old bearded sailors in my mind, in yellow raincoats, holding pipes to their mouths. I think we went off toward the sea then some, partway there. We were going there to see something, to check on the investments personally maybe, going to an old weathered wharf, which was not far away and which the building seemed to slowly blend into.

Dream - I go to work for the last time, then step off into empty space, drifting through the air to the other side

On Friday, June 12, 2009, late in the morning, I dreamed I was taking a shower, in some kind of business area or maybe shopping center. It was in a very large shower stall, probably twice as big as normal, with heavily textured sliding glass doors, I think, very large ones. Other people were around, walking past, this way and that.

My slippers were outside the shower, but after a while I brought them in, I think because I was worried about leaving them out there, but I'm not sure. I was hoping they wouldn't get too wet in the shower, but they ended up getting more wet than I was comfortable with, and dark dirt was washing off them, from the soles I think. I put them back out of the shower, but then changed my mind and brought them back in. I was concerned now about the dirt, that once wet it could be a problem and come off and leave tracks, maybe get on the tops of the slippers too, so it had to be washed off even if they got a little wet. I was tired and sleepy, and everything seemed to be moving slow. It seems I might have even sat down or kneeled at some point, too tired to continue, wanting to rest for a while.

I was sitting down, putting the slippers on, and I still had to finish with my shower, when the shower room shrunk around me, and I became aware I was sitting in a car and had been taking a shower there, inside it. The windows were slightly fogged on the inside and damp, and sometimes seemed much taller and flatter than the windows on a normal car.

I seemed to be parked by the edge of a broad sidewalk that ran along the side of a mall. People were walking back and forth along it, but not great numbers of them. Ahead of me, at the far end where the mall turned a corner and went in front of me, a few more people were walking, and I saw what appeared to be a guard, an overweight person in blue pants and a light blue shirt, with some kind of tag sewed to his shirt. He was frowning in my direction and talking into a little handheld device.

I still hadn't finished my shower. I wanted to finish it, but decided I wouldn't be able to. It was not a good place to be taking a shower, and though most people just walked on by, sometimes looking at me, sometimes not, it seemed I was attracting enough attention to get the guard notified, or at least I assumed that might be the case. I couldn't be sure he was actually talking about me, but I couldn't take the chance that he wasn't. I was somehow now partly dressed though, wearing some odd pants and shirt that I wouldn't normally wear. They seemed soft and almost flannel-like.

Another guard was on the sidewalk not far from me, and seemed to be receiving communications from someone, maybe from the first guard, or it could have been relayed from someone else. I thought it might be about me but I didn't know, and he wasn't paying any attention to me. He was looking in the general direction of the first guard but not at him, more just a general look down the way of the sidewalk.

I got out of the car, which might have been the 1970 Cadillac, though it's hard to be sure, it seemed to have a darker interior and so might have been the 1987 Oldsmobile. I walked down the length of the shopping center toward the first guard, probably walking on the asphalt instead of the sidewalk. I went by him and through glass doors into the shopping center. I think he turned slightly my way, still frowning and talking into his radio, but didn't say anything to me.

Inside, there was a dimly lit room, large and seemingly open at the ends to the shopping center or to other rooms, like it was something set up in the aisle without any walls beyond what were already there. A few people were there at computer workstations on dark table-like surfaces. The computers were dark and oddly shaped, with extensions going up square pillars.

I went to my computer, my workstation, and the table that was my desk. The computer was separated into various odd components, it was made that way. It had a small flat screen mounted on the square pillar, with dark wires going down to odd dark little devices, then to more devices on the table. A few people were passing through the area, in both directions, and a few people were at the computers. It seemed sad and bittersweet. I had come back now, after I'd left, but it was really all over.

I tried to log out, but then I found that the keyboard was separated into several dark rectangular pieces, with a couple of them on the square pillar under the monitor, which was mounted high on it. None of the keyboards had many keys. "Oh, that again," I thought. There didn't seem to be nearly enough keys to do anything useful, and I didn't see how I could log out. It would be bad to leave it that way and have people find it like that in the morning. I looked at it, somewhat amused, and decided to just turn it off. As I reached toward a small dark button toward the upper right corner of a keyboard on the pillar, perhaps the second one away from the screen, I noticed that I had somehow managed to log out anyway. I saw the white letters on the black, DOS-like screen, saying so. I continued to reach for the button anyway, and pushed it with my fingers. I pushed two buttons, actually, as there were two grouped close together, and when I pushed the one I wanted I also partly caught the one beside it to the left. The computer immediately turned off, with maybe a small chirp, and the screen flashed and went dark.

I picked up my giant plastic space shuttle model, that I had in the dream. I didn't want to leave it behind. I wrapped my left arm around it, holding it next to my body, sometimes also holding the end with my right hand. The model was probably about five or six feet long. Some people were coming in for the next shift. I recognized some of them from Nevada. Some of them looked at me a little funny, but they didn't want to really look at me. They knew I was going away and would not be back.

I walked back out through the glass doors and found I was now on a tall concrete platform with a lot of stuff on it, some in big dark boxes. I was on the level of a second story. It seemed to be late afternoon, though earlier it had been more toward the middle of the day, maybe late morning. Water was running off the edge of the concrete platform, just little shallow puddles of it, making tiny streams and drips as it went over. Far below, a middle-aged woman stood a little to my left.

I decided to move to my left and step off and glide down, as I could sometimes do these things, though I was intending this time to somehow just step off and stretch my foot down, not really letting go until I was standing on something. The water increased, and was coming out from more places. A lot was coming out from under the boxes and stuff, so it was hard to see what was happening. There was just a narrow space left open along the front, with occasional breaks in the stacks of boxes and things, and it was hard to find a dry spot to step in. I tried to carefully swing around and move to the left, trying to step in a dry spot, and accidentally splashed some water out over the edge where the woman was. I looked and she had quickly moved off, going under the overhang I think. I wasn't sure if she was hit, she might have been but I hoped not. It couldn't be helped now anyway.

I stretched my right leg out far over the edge, hanging there in space, partly holding onto something, but I was so far out that I essentially made a commitment to it, it was too late to turn back now. I swung my leg slowly around, trying to find someplace to put it, but there was too much water now. Most of the platform had water pooled out on it, running off in shallow little streams and dribbles. I finally swung slowly farther and farther toward the other side of the platform, and went all the way over to the corner, where there were some small dry areas, but was still mostly covered by thin sheets of water slowly dribbling off of wet spots around them. I was probably still standing at least partly in wet areas. From there I looked out again on the sunken broken concrete far below me. It rose away in a very gentle slope to where it became level with the ground. On each side were rough, irregular dirt cliffs with thin, half-dead yellow-green grass and areas of broken concrete.

I swung my leg far out and drifted through the air, going across the open space very slowly, the broken concrete of the ramp passing slowly under me. It seemed like a slow, peaceful process. As I went, I looked for a place to land, finally deciding on the top of the dirt cliff on the far side, about halfway along the ramp. I found my brother there, looking much younger, a few feet from the edge. He seemed to be waiting for me.

Dream - The pickpocket

On Thursday, April 16, 2009, around 5:30-8:00 AM, I dreamed I was going back to a store, somewhere in the Phoenix area I guess, maybe toward Tempe. It was night, fairly late. I had been there not long ago, maybe hours or less, but had to go back. I guess I had gotten the wrong thing or missed getting something or had to talk to my mother about what I found, but whatever happened she wanted me to go back.

I was driving down a long, almost empty street, not going terribly fast. The street was fairly broad, but didn't have any markings, and seemed to be residential on one side, though a wall separated whatever was there from the street. The street was lit by occasional street lights. I think I was a little concerned about a police car possibly going by or even following me, as they sometimes seem to be looking for something to do late at night. It's possible one may have passed going the other way, but I'm not sure.

Far ahead, in a patch of darkness where a tree or bush hung out over the wall, there seemed to be something. I wondered if it was somebody on a bicycle. I slowly angled the car to move further away from the side. As I grew closer, I could see that it was someone on a bicycle. I don't think the person was aware of me until I was very close. I passed him or her at a wide distance.

I finally got to the store, which was a large low building on the left, with a cross street on the other side of it. I pulled off into a little lane that ran by the parking lot, with a low wall separating it from the parking lot, then turned right a short distance and then right again into the entrance to the parking lot. There were still cars there. There were a couple that I noticed in particular, near where I was going to park. They were parked facing toward the wall that ran by the little lane. One was some kind of Cadillac that had been modified to have a huge trunk that stuck way out, maybe ten feet or so. The car I was driving wasn't terribly large, maybe around the size of an Oldsmobile Delta 88, as they were in the late 1980s, or perhaps even a little smaller. However, it was growing smaller still, and as I swung it around to park near the entrance to the lot, actually holding onto the car and picking it up, the wheels ran over the long trunk of the Cadillac. I carelessly let it happen, being too tired to bother worrying about it I think, thinking that the car was too small to really hurt the Cadillac. Indeed, the wheels were now so small they could have been on a golf cart. I did start to worry now, though, that maybe it really did do something to the trunk, that maybe the metal was too weak and thin to withstand it. I went and looked closely at the trunk. It was a pale whitish green, with some variation in color. Though I feared there might be a slightly depressed track along it, and initially there seemed that there might be, I found that there was just a slight tread mark, a slightly dirty area where the tires had gone.

I put the car, which now had shrunk to just a small platform, on the edge of a broad raised area that was evidently part of a speed bump, near some other cars and almost behind one, and next to a small dumpster. The platform had two very long wooden poles attached, that I folded on hinges at their base, and put them along in front of the dumpster, where I thought they would be out of the way. I went inside the store, then.

It seemed to be a kind of hardware/home improvement store, at least the section of it that I was in. It may have had other things further on. There was a room in the front part, partly closed off from the rest of the store, that had particular things in it separated from the rest of the store by tall windows. It had big glass double doors on each end leading on into the rest of the store. On the end I went through, the one farthest from the road and closest to the entrance to the parking lot, the doors led through into a broad hallway that ran along the side of the building for a distance. On the right, doors opened into rooms where various things were being taught. Some kind of how-to type of instruction, I thought, though I think classes of a community service nature were also taught, I supposed. I wanted to get past this area, to where I could access the main part of the store. A few people were in the hallway. As I walked along, I could see some people in the rooms through partly open doors. Some of them looked back.

Then suddenly a short man, with a somewhat frantic look on his face, rushed up behind me and started rapidly patting my back pockets all over. I quickly drew away from him, feeling my back pockets myself, trying to see if my wallet was still there. The pockets seemed enormous, much wider than normal, and at first there didn't seem to be anything in them. I was quickly feeling along the outside, and there just seemed to be me underneath. Getting further back, though, I finally found the wallet, much smaller than normal, half-sized really, practically lost in the huge pocket. Already half-turned from him, I turned more and threw him back, away from me. He looked at me, his arms partly sticking out at the sides, standing with his legs apart and his knees bent a little, looking uncertain and kind of guilty, maybe about six to eight feet away from me. I turned and was walking away, when he rushed me again and was again frantically feeling my back pockets. I again threw him off me and again checked to be sure my wallet was still there, and started loudly calling out for guards, for security people to come, that the man was trying to rob me. Some people came and held him, and looked at me in a calm and reassuring way, saying that they would take care of him.

It turned out, though, that he had been in one of the classes, something about protecting yourself from theft, and he had been assigned by the teacher to go out and do to people what he had done to me, I guess to see how it was when real thieves did it. He didn't seem to be very good at the job, it seemed to me, as normally those people are much more careful, and don't want their victims to know they are being robbed.

I went into one of the classes then, in one of the little rooms, being directed there by the guards I think, and listened to the teacher talk about something for a while. I don't remember now what he was saying. He sat on the edge of a tall chair or stool, while the rest of us had smaller, normal size chairs. I think they were of light colored wood, like school chairs. I wanted to finish this up and go on to what I had been doing. I wasn't intending to stay for the whole thing, just enough to get through the particular thing he was talking about, and then leave.

Dream - Finding my brother's apartment and trying to get ready for work

On Wednesday morning, September 10, 2008, around 4:00-5:00 AM, I had a dream where I was staying in a giant apartment house with hospital-like corridors, and my brother and his family had a huge apartment there with large numbers of relatives visiting, and I had to go to work in the morning and was very tired and trying to get to a shower.

In the dream, I was in a fairly large place, living there. Some relatives and their children had come to visit. I had to go to work in the radiator shop in the morning. It seemed it wasn't a normal thing, but I had to do it and maybe for several days afterward. One of the relatives was going with me to help out. The relatives were actually staying at my brother's house, which was not far away in the dream, in fact the places were connected in the same building. Later, I had to walk through corridors to get to it. I kept going back and forth. It was the middle of the night, but getting toward morning. When I went to his place I went through a large common area and then along wide corridors. The walls had numbers on them for the different apartments. Every little bit would be an opening where there were chairs and tables and where people could eat, along with one or more people who acted as supervisors or helpers. This was similar to how the nurses' stations in the hospital were in real life, but much more deluxe and expensive looking.

At my brother's place people were doing various things, working at various tasks, helping to get things ready, helping to fix things to eat. My mother was there too, looking much younger, helping out.

I laid down on a couch there in the family room, which was similar to my grandmother's house in Arizona. The couch had a few things on it already, including a few folded-up small towels and dish towels and things. They were mostly on one end, though there were a little along the bottom cushion near the back and up on top of the back. I had brought a folded up old T-shirt that I had been using as a pillow. I tried to lay down for a while and sleep, but I wasn't able to with all that was happening around me. I worried, too, about the folded up T-shirt being mistaken for something clean and I thought I should probably crumple it up instead of having it neatly folded.

I got up and went back to where I was staying and laid down on the couch there. Someone was saying something on the radio, something about crime I think. My 1970 Cadillac was parked outside on the enormous lawn, a lawn that had low cut, partly yellow grass, probably Bermuda grass. I think I looked out briefly at the car and was glad that it was still okay. It was getting around 5:00 AM and I had to get started getting ready. I still had to take a shower. I didn't know how easy it was going to be with all the people there. Some might be wanting to take one, too. The man who was going to help was already ready, I saw him now and then. I was already dressed, though not in work clothes, and I would have to get undressed for the shower and then dressed again.

I started over to my brother's place. I was so tired that I ended up leaning against the wall of the corridor, pushing at it with my head. My eyes kept closing and wanting to stay closed. I managed to somehow get moving and kind of slid around the corner, still pushing forward though I should be going to the side. People were staring at me. I was basically slowly stumbling forward. It was hard to stop it. I managed to turn to the left and go that direction, but now I was in the far corridor, not the one I was usually on, and I had to go through one of the small eating areas to get back to the other corridor. One of the supervisor women in the eating area was looking at me uncertainly, like she was wondering if she should ask me if I needed any help. I managed to turn away fairly quickly, considering, and get to the other corridor.

I made my way along it looking for my brother's apartment number. Somehow I went past it and the apartments ended in another open section that apparently went on to an area of small shops. Everything looked different than it had, older and cheaper, like an old section of town. I looked back and saw that the people's names and maybe numbers were now on round signs that stuck out above the doors. The numbers were also on the walls or doors. The number I was looking for was 280 or 281. I found my brother's name, or it seems it wasn't exactly his name, though it seemed to be at first, but was instead some slightly humorous business name he was using. I don't remember now what it was. The apartments were all pretty close together, but when I went in it was enormous and extended a great distance, and went out quite a bit to the sides as well, particularly a ways in. There was a kitchen/eating area to the right and something leading off from it further in, maybe a bar and/or dancing area. The bathrooms and family room were somewhere to the left.

I walked on ahead into a huge area where a lot of people were watching a huge television, maybe more than one, somewhere in the distance to the left. Some of them were sitting on chairs of some kind, maybe webbed lawn chairs, and a lot were sitting or partly laying on the floor. They tended to be in small groups, sometimes only two or three in the group, separated with areas of space that might be five to ten feet. They tended to be grouped by sections of wall that were only about five feet or so long. (This is a little like the dream "In the Matrix," where a dark cloud came down and then I looked out on people that were widely separated and each had their own spike that went up high into the sky, and also a little like other dreams of huge outdoor entertainment complexes.) A lot of them were children. I think most of the people might have been visiting relatives.

I had a huge plastic glass partly filled with water or some other drink and somehow I threw it, kind of a combination throw-shove. I'm not sure now what I intended or where I intended for it to land, or if I even intended to throw it, it seems that it might have been accidental. I remember somebody coming from the left and getting in the way, maybe bumping into me, and I might have been trying to save the glass from spilling or from being knocked over, and so I threw/shoved it trying to get it to a safe place. It went forward a long distance, maybe twenty feet, and came down on the low rug standing up, bumping gently against a young girl, part of a small group of children on the rug in that area. She turned and looked down at it. I went and retrieved the drink, glad that it didn't hit her hard.

I went off to look for the shower. I realized I hadn't brought any soap with me. I hoped there was some in the shower I could use. In the dream I was picturing Caress, which I used to use but don't any longer. Then I was abruptly awakened by Bruce Jacobs. a local right-wing radio host, ranting on the radio in a loud voice. It was a little after 5:00 AM, maybe five or six minutes or so.