Dream - A massive engine being revved higher and higher

On Monday morning, December 29, 2008, I dreamed about a massive engine being revved higher and higher, with Jeffry from Guiding Light shifting the gears.

In the dream, I was in a small town-type place. A lot happened there, but most of it is forgotten.

Eventually, near some houses in a neighborhood, someone activated a room sized engine and transmission. It was literally in a room, but one without a ceiling. Someone else was called to shift the gears to control the engine. It was someone who looked like the Jeffry character on the TV soap opera Guiding Light, and may in fact have been that character. I think he had also been in the dream earlier. He seemed a little surprised at the size of the task given him, but seemed to believe he could handle it. Indeed, the reason the maker of the device chose him was that he had a lot of prior experience in things like this, and was famous for it.

A long, jointed, slightly bent metal bar, perhaps ten feet long, stuck out of the device at an angle, reaching high into the air. It was used to shift gears. Jeffry reached up and grasped it. The maker of the device was running the engine, making it go faster and faster, and Jeffry would shift to another gear every little bit. No clutch was used, it was just forced into the next gear. Jeffry seemed to know what he was doing, to know just when and how to jam it into the next gear. I was impressed, and somewhat in awe.

The maker kept revving the engine higher and higher, with a kind of maniacal delight on his face. Jeffry got into the spirit too, jamming it into the next gear with tense excitement. The sound of the engine kept getting higher, a kind of massive, deep, highness, and I was getting concerned about the safety of it. Huge chunks of it were flying off, sometimes hundreds of feet. The maker kept winding up the engine, higher and higher, and Jeffry kept shifting the gears. I didn't know how many gears it had, but there seemed to be an awful lot of them.

Dream - In a large building, going through things left by my grandmother

On Saturday, January 3, 2009, I dreamed I was accessing iWon.com after a long time away, then wandering around a huge building that was apparently left to us by my grandmother, seeing dusty piles of old stuff there.

I was sleeping in bed. I dreamed I was in a small room, smaller than a bathroom, that had an opening to each side to much larger rooms. They were very large, especially the one to my left. The one to my right might have been as big, but my awareness was on it much less and I'm not really sure. It did seem to have a lot more in it. The one on the left was pretty sparsely furnished. I was sitting in a chair between the two large doorways, facing the interior of the small room, using a computer that was resting on a deep shelf that ran between the walls. There was another computer, at least one, somewhere in the room to the left. I seemed to be somewhat younger than in real life, perhaps in my late thirties, and slimmer.

I decided to try to access iWon.com. I had not been there in years. I wondered if it would still know me. Of course I wasn't even at my normal computer, so there wouldn't even be a cookie for it to look at.

At first the screen changed to a cloudy coarse gray, white at the edges, then it changed to an irregular globe of the world, done in soft inflatable plastic, with red continents bulging out of a white ocean. It was facing the wrong direction, though, and America wasn't showing. Then it slowly started to turn around, and as America came into view the screen abruptly changed, I think starting to rush toward the surface of the continent and then suddenly fading to something else. I was finally at the site then, and was looking at things. I was also looking at the message boards, I believe.

A woman came in from the room to my left, looking concerned. I was naked, I had been intending to take a shower earlier I believe, and someone was coming now, about something related to her work I think, and she didn't want him to see me naked. I was sitting sideways with relation to the door, and had a big foam rubber bed pillow, I guess I had been sitting on it or had it behind me, and took it and put it beside me. I was sitting in a large but somewhat utilitarian office chair. It could roll and swivel and it had arms on it, but the arms were open structures. I hoped the pillow would hide a lot of my body, so that I wouldn't immediately appear naked unless really looked at. Looking in the room, I could see her talking to him over near the far wall. They were both bent over a little looking at some object on a low table.

Then I was in a huge square building across the street. It was three or four stories. The whole surrounding area didn't have much in it, and I think the street between the buildings might have been dirt. The whole land around was mostly dirt, but the road had lots of tire tracks in it, distinguishing it from the other dirt. I had the feeling the big building was something left to us, that it used to belong to my grandmother, and was passed on to us after she died. It was huge inside, with huge and mostly open rooms. It was dusty and somewhat musty smelling. Old things were stored there, generally in groups and piles. There were a lot of them.

I was walking around the place going to different stories in it, looking at and through some of the groups of stuff. Someone was with me part of the time, perhaps the woman from before, perhaps someone else.

In one of the groups of things, I found an old cardboard 8-track tower, still partly covered in the clear plastic wrap it came in. I remembered years ago being given it as a gift, perhaps at Christmas. I had left the plastic around it so that it would better contain the tapes, without them falling out of the tall slot that ran along the front of it. I was going to take the tapes out at the top or bottom, where I had made openings in the plastic. I think I had gotten a Neal Diamond tape at that time, at least the tower was somehow associated with it.

Now the tower had been on its side, with stuff haphazardly piled on and around it, the cardboard bent and twisted, and the clear plastic partly torn away. I fiddled with it for a bit. I wondered if I should go ahead and just take the plastic off, there didn't seem to be much I could do with it now. The cardboard of the tower was so bent and twisted it was going to be hard to do anything with it, too. It seemed that the tapes would just want to fall out the front of it, that the cardboard would just try to twist back and shove them out. I wasn't sure if I could straighten it enough to work. It seemed a shame.

The whole thing felt kind of sad, going through the old things, seeing them there. Not all were in bad shape, a lot of stuff was just a little dusty. Earlier, in a different pile, I saw some low shelves that looked pretty good, standing upright, just a little dusty and cobwebby. It was sad though, to think of how things had been in the old days, and weren't any longer.

I was still naked, or at least naked from the waist down, I'm not sure. I didn't seem to have bothered to get dressed yet, and it was starting to disturb me a little.

I was in a big room on an upper story, then, at least three stories up. Someone came, a man, and opened the door. He saw that I was naked and was going to come back another time, but I said to stay. I came out and walked around a bit and we talked. At some point I looked different than I had earlier, like a different person, thin and somewhat shorter, with a kind of middle-aged look.

I went out to the side of the building. There was a small balcony out there. I'm not sure I actually went out on it, but I was looking at it, maybe from a window, maybe from the doorway. The balcony had a railing with closely spaced wooden poles or slats. Looking out from where I was, perhaps in the doorway or perhaps out on the balcony some, I saw another large building across the street, set well back from the road, and to the left a cross street went by. There were occasional other buildings around, but not many. Around the buildings were large yards of dirt with scattered areas of low grass. The area had a mostly empty feel. Not many people or cars were around.

In front of me, far down on the ground by the road, I saw a couple of people standing, turned toward each other and apparently talking, looking small in the distance. I wondered if they could see well enough to see I was naked, though they wouldn't actually be able to really see much below my waist, if that far, because of things in the way. If they had even looked up, that is, and I'm not sure they had. I turned away from the balcony and went back in, though, not wanting them to know I was naked and not wanting to take the chance that they might, even if they couldn't actually see anything significant.

Inside, there was a stairway that came up from the floor, ending toward the left, away from me. There was a railing all the way around the rectangular opening, with lathed wooden poles supporting it. A woman and a girl were on the stairs, with the woman being farther up. The woman was probably in her forties and the girl was probably in her late teens, perhaps close to twenty. They were both dark-haired, though the woman's hair had a slightly faded look, like it might have grayed a little. The woman's hair was pulled back, but the girl's wasn't.

The man who had come up earlier went toward them and was trying to distract them and to some extent get between them and me, though he went past that point and to the other side, and was trying to get them to come back later. They went down a step or two but then stopped, while he continued talking to them. Their eyes were lowered a little and they had a bit of a sly little smile on their faces, like they had seen something and were aware of the situation, and were not only not bothered by it but were in no great hurry to leave.

Dream - Writing exercises that affected reality, and the way station to another world

On Tuesday, December 30, 2008, around 1:00-3:30 AM, I dreamed I was with a group of people who were doing increasingly negative writing exercises that seemed to affect reality, and then I went out into the night to a way station to another world.

In the dream, I was in a group that had writing exercises about end-of-the-world scenarios. Life was getting rougher and seemed to be heading toward such a thing. In the weeks ahead it seemed likely to go drastically more downhill, to really desperate times.

The exercises didn't start out as really end-of-the-world things. They were different ways things could go wrong, such as one thing or another going wrong that had a major effect on the economy, or some major disease causing an epidemic, or some war starting somewhere. People were supposed to come up with things on their own, to choose something that could have a major negative effect if it happened and then write about it. Then a new assignment would be given, to find something else, something worse, and write about that. And so the students wrote about more and more grave scenarios and outcomes, heading toward those that were more and more apocalyptic, heading toward those that would essentially destroy the fabric of civilization and perhaps send us back to some kind of dark ages or even worse.

Then the people were told to do one final exercise, writing about a possible end of the world (not that everyone would necessarily die, though that was possible, but that civilization would collapse and we would retreat, those who were left, into some kind of dark ages). The writing seemed in some way to have the ability to influence what would happen, and it seemed to have already had some kind of influence. It could not totally control what would happen. Everyone was, after all, writing their own version of things. But it seemed to have some kind of influence, pushing things in certain directions, and certain elements written about might actually happen.

Then I had to go out for some reason. It was dark and dangerous and I really didn't want to do it. I think one or two others were also going, maybe even all of them, though we were not together as a group and did not all leave at the same time. I was going north down Scottsdale Road toward McDowell. I may have initially been in a car, or maybe someone else was, but now I was on foot. A lot of other people were on foot, too. I was in the right hand lane. Cars were slowly going by on the other lanes. Initially I had had my left arm stretched out, my hand stretched toward and lightly touching a car going along beside me, perhaps partly going through an open side window of the car. In the car was someone I knew, perhaps from the group, though it could have been a family member, perhaps my father.

Ahead a little ways, a cop had stopped a car and was writing someone a ticket, evidently for speeding. On the sidewalk, closer to me, some toughs were occasionally hassling some people. They didn't seem concerned about the police stopping them. I went cautiously ahead, not wanting to get too close to the sidewalk. I thought the cop, when I got there, could provide some protection by his presence, but I wasn't entirely sure about him either. It seemed unlikely he would give me a ticket though, at least if I moved slow. I had no doubt if I walked too fast I was in danger of getting one.

I crossed McDowell with a lot of other people, moving slowly. The Don't Walk sign was flashing or perhaps was past that point, shining steadily. I went forward anyway, not wishing to take the chance of remaining behind. A short woman in late middle age and evidently without much money was in the middle of the crosswalk, moving very slowly. I hurried past her and many other people, though I tried not to move too fast, still concerned about getting a ticket. I saw a policeman on the other side of the street. It began to occur to me that he could give me a ticket for crossing against the sign, maybe even against the light. I hurried even more, trying to get to the other side and out of the crosswalk, but he was involved with some other people and didn't take any notice of me.

Across the street, I went into some small business that was right on the corner. It was well lit inside and some other people were going in there too. I think a policeman came in at some point too, but I don't know if it was the one I had seen earlier. The people were generally moving on deeper into the building, to other rooms. I thought they would continue and eventually come out somewhere else.

I thought this was someplace to get supplies, but it was also a place of safety. It was not the final destination, though, at least not for some people. For others, perhaps most, it was just a way station along the way to someplace else, to a destination that was a lot better place than where we had come from. It led to a better, mostly empty world, currently bathed in soft daylight, like early morning, a kind of frontier where people could start over. It was a happy place, with much hope in it.

Almost everyone that came in went on through to the back, eventually, I believe, going on to the other world. I think even the policeman did. The building that I was in, though, was the place I had been intending to be going. I'm not sure whether I, personally, would be going any farther than that.


In real life, the radio was on, tuned to Coast to Coast AM. The host was talking with someone about various apocalyptic scenarios, and that probably heavily influenced the dream. Then in a replay of the first hour, probably at 2:00, they were talking about something else, perhaps the economy.

Dream - The young blond policewoman

On Sunday, March 1, 2009, I dreamed I parked my car in a large parking lot, and a young, slim, tall, blondish policewoman, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail and wearing dark glasses, parked a couple of places away from me, on the passenger side. She was looking over at me, and got out of the car and came toward me holding a ticket book. She bent down, looking in at me, and rapped sharply on the passenger side door.

I wearily and suspiciously reached across the car to open it. The window mechanism no longer worked, but it seemed she wanted the door opened anyway. I didn't know what this was about, but I was afraid that it was some kind of a setup, that somebody had put her up to it.

It turned out that it wasn't quite that way, though. She wasn't there to try to give me a ticket or reprimand me about something, instead she was friendly and had been sent by someone, some family member I think, to find me and give me a message. I think I woke up before I found out what the message was, though.

Some more happened earlier that I don't remember, though I think I had been in my house with some members of my family.

Dream - Flying in an old black pickup truck

On Sunday, January 18, 2009, I had a dream about flying in an old black pickup truck with several other people.

In the dream, I was at the radiator shop. It was night. Several people were there with me. I think some of them were relatives, but not all of them. I'm not sure what we were originally doing there, late at night. I don't think it was radiator work. We seemed to be having some kind of get-together and were discussing things. There was a little bit of tension involved, some anxiousness, and a feeling that time was short, that we had to get things figured out soon. I think we might have been eating there also, and one or two of the rooms may have been set up for sleeping. For some reason I seemed not to have any pants on, and this was starting to increasingly bother me.

I went out the front and around to the side entrance, gliding through the air I think. In the dream the side entrance went directly to a large bathroom, but my younger brother, who had not been there earlier, arrived and got there first. He went in and closed the door. I didn't linger. As I saw him going in I continued forward, going toward the alley as if that had been my destination. I was already a ways out, maybe ten or fifteen feet, from the side of the building so it didn't necessarily seem as if I had been going to the bathroom. I'm not sure he even saw me, though he looked s little somewhat in my direction.

Out by the alley it was much darker. The area around the shop had been brightly lit. After drifting around out by the alley for a while, I went back. My brother was just getting out of the bathroom, and went around toward the front. I went and got inside an old black pickup truck that was parked on the pavement beside the shop. I still didn't want it to look like I was trying to get in the bathroom. I was also becoming more bothered by my lack of pants and didn't really want my brother to see me this way. The truck was out a ways from the wall, maybe enough to park a small car beside it. It was pointed toward the alley, away from the street. I'm not sure it was there on my way by the first time, but it was now.

I sat there in the truck considering what to do. I finally decided that I would have to go home and use the bathroom there. Several people came out from the shop, rushed out really, and got in. They were apparently employees, though some of them may have been used for something other than radiator work. I didn't really know any of them, though I guess I knew enough to know they weren't strangers.

Both side windows were down, and I reached out and grabbed the window sills on both sides of the truck, and, gathering my strength, pulled the truck up into the air with me. I flew up and toward the back a little, but the overhead lines got in the way as I tried to go up. I went back down at least some and then back up a bit and tried to go south down Scottsdale Road and then go up higher again, but lines were still in the way. I turned and crossed the road and tried to get up again, and lines were still in the way. There were band after band of them, some bands going across diagonally. Some of the bands had wires that weren't very thick, like they were used for some purpose other than telephone or power. I was thinking perhaps cable. (In reality a lot of those are thick, and some telephone lines are thin, but I didn't think of that in the dream.) When I got past one set of wires there was another set going some way or the other, a little ways higher.

I went back across the road to the shop. I had to get up somehow, there had to be some way, I couldn't just give up. I pulled up on the truck again, spiraling upward, the nose of the truck pointed straight up. I wandered around in the path I was taking, trying to get past the wires, the truck still pointed up, and ended up slightly south near the neighborhood street, trying to work my way around the lines there also. There seemed to always be more going some direction or other.

Finally I was past the last bit, a set of regular heavy black lines, but then I saw more above that, a layer that seemed to cover everything. It looked like little sections of thin grating two to four inches long and an inch to an inch and a half wide, turned this way and that. There seemed to be no way around it, but I felt that we couldn't be stopped, we couldn't allow ourselves to be stopped now.

I had kind of a feeling, and, still wondering if something might happen, if I might get zapped, I reached up with my hand and pushed at them. They separated, moving aside, and with my fingers sticking out past them I pushed at them with my hand, moving it back and forth and to the side, moving them around. They were just a layer of debris of some sort, things that had floated up from the wires and associated devices below, floating on the surface of the water.

I moved the truck up through them, taking it up nose first and then leveling off with it floating half in the water. Water was rushing out of the truck, pouring out. The back of the truck, a dark metal boxlike structure, stayed tilted back, like the bed of a dump truck. A man was still in it. I pulled on it, trying to right it. The man said no, to leave him. I objected and kept trying, but he insisted, saying that he would be alright, so I prepared to leave him floating there with the boxlike bed of the truck, and fly on toward home with the others.


Much more happened earlier at the shop, but I wrote down the dream the following night and had forgotten the earlier part by that time, though some remained for a few hours after the dream.

Dream - I am in a TV reality show

On Saturday morning, January 17, 2009, I had a dream about being in a contest. It was part of a game for TV, some kind of reality thing. A total of at least three people, and maybe four or even five, were in it.

At first we were staying at a place in a neighborhood, at some house, apparently between McDowell and Thomas Roads, maybe between Oak Street and Thomas. We were going through the streets completing the first part of the game, trying to find or do something and get to the goal first, which was some house in the neighborhood. I think we had to bring what was found there, though identifying which house may have been part of the goal. Cameramen were around, recording everything.

Then it was the next day I think, at night, We were doing the third and last part, going through rooms in a big, low building. It was being filmed live. We occasionally went past the host, to at least within a few feet of him. He was standing watching in a hallway or something like that, turning as necessary to keep track of us, though we were not aways together.

We found some small things with wax paper wrappers around them. They were fairly flat and around an inch by an inch and a half, and seemed to be some kind of chewing or bubble gum. The wrappers had printing on them and we thought part of it was a clue to how to complete the game. Somewhere in the jostling and running back and forth I had lost my glasses, and was holding the wrapper and looking at it in different directions in different lights, trying to read it. Though I could read the letters, the light never seemed to be bright enough to easily do so.

Then I was told that the game was over. I had to be told it, I didn't realize it had happened. I thought, "Well, it's over, then, and I didn't win, that's that." I left without my glasses.

I was picked up by my mother and her sister, my aunt. My aunt was in the car in the parking lot, waiting. We were apparently around McKellips and Scottsdale Roads, maybe a little farther south.

I went back the next day and had them look for my glasses. It was not where the game was held, but in a different place on the northeast side of McKellips and Scottsdale Roads. It seemed I was supposed to be there anyway. They were filming a kind of postscript follow-up to the show, and the host was going to have a short interview with me. I'm not sure I actually knew about that part before I got there, but they were expecting me. I think they had already done some of the other contestants.

The room was relatively small, living room size, and the host was sitting on a tall stool in the middle of it, with a cameraman or two around him. When I mentioned my glasses, he sent some people to check to see if someone had found them, and to look for them if they hadn't been.

When he was done with the interview, he referred me to a woman standing on the other side of a counter back toward the door. I went to her and she sent someone off to look. I guess they were basically asking around or maybe going through a lost and found section. The person came back then, and I think they might have found the glasses and given them to me but they needed to be fixed, I think something was wrong with an earpiece, or maybe something other than the glasses needed to be fixed. Could it have been my watch? My billfold? Maybe two things? Whatever it was, it had to be dropped off at a place near McKellips and then I had to go back to get it, and I think something else at a nearby place.


Somewhere in there, maybe earlier, I was going through a big department store at the northeast corner of McKellips and Scottsdale Roads, through door after door, starting from the east side. I eventually got to a big center section with rows of seats and some vending machines, where I couldn't find a door that went forward.

At the southwest corner of the room was a window opening with a woman behind a small counter, apparently both selling tickets and acting as a monitor to keep people out. Apparently the section where she was also opened as a door.

On the north side the room opened up into a big viewing section, like for movies or theater, with lots of more rows of seats, some of them in elevated roundish platforms, vaguely lima bean shaped, suspended above the floor at different heights. The seats were pointed toward the north, and the floor in that section had a gradual downward slant. I think the rows of seats in the room itself might have pointed in a different direction, maybe toward the west.

None of the doors I could find led forward, or if they did were blocked to me in some way. Sometimes when I opened one it was filled in on the other side with wood, other times access was restricted and I was either forbidden or the door had a lock, possibly a combination one, and though I saw other people able to go through it, I couldn't. I had to go back through the door I came through and go around. I finally got to the front. I think maybe that's where I met the TV people again for the interview and where I asked about my glasses.

Dream - Gangsters, and a red blotch in the air

On Sunday morning, March 29, 2009, I had a dream involving gangsters, and later a strange red blotch in the air.

The earlier part of the dream is forgotten, but at some point I incurred the wrath of gangsters. I was in the back lot behind a business, perhaps the radiator shop. Most of the lot was dirt, but I was on a concrete portion. One or two of the gangsters left, leaving one behind with a gun pointed at me.

I was told to get in my car, which was parked at an angle on the concrete, with the front pointed to the southwest, partly toward the alley. The car was an old Cadillac, I think. It was a little small for a Cadillac, and was probably built after they started downsizing them. It was not a car I ever owned in real life.

Before I got in, I had to put the driver's side front inner fender back on the car. I had removed it or loosened it earlier for theft protection. It was falling down now as I tried to get it secured, including some black plastic panels and pieces along part of the front.

I was somewhat bemused, but the gangster person was a little impatient. I think someone dangerous was on the way and he wanted me gone before he got here. He sent someone into the shop to get the keys, a shop employee, I think. A couple of them came back out, looking uncertain and a little scared, holding a bunch of keys on a ring. Someone was going to start the car, then, but looking through the keys found ones that looked like Chrysler ones. The person was going to try them anyway.

I was in the back seat of the car, having been told to get in, then suddenly I was holding the keys, startled. The other person was going swiftly out the passenger door, leaving the place by a different car I guess. I was still in back, but was going to drive in that position anyway. I reached forward and put the key in the ignition. It seemed to go in anyway, despite being apparently the wrong key. I seemed not to be myself now, and was someone younger and smaller instead.

I drove to a counter somewhere, somehow drifting to the driver's seat along the way. I seemed to be a different person, with a different history, though I felt much like myself. Still in the car, I talked to someone behind the counter, and then the car faded away and I was standing there, still talking to the person. The person warned in a mild way that when such things are done they don't forget, talking about the gangsters. I'm not sure what things the person was referring to, though I seemed to have an inkling in the dream.

I went through some large rooms, then, and came to a smaller one off to the side. The room was still of reasonable size, perhaps twelve by eight feet, but was small in comparison to the others. Some other people were in the room, also.

While in the room, at some point, I saw a red area in the air against the light gray of the walls, hanging in the air like a vision. It was perhaps a couple of feet or so wide and twelve or fifteen inches high, and was about five feet above the floor and a similar distance from me, and a little to my right. I worried at first that some problem had happened with my eyes, since it looked something like blood, though a little lighter, some type of crimson. An area thinned out in the middle of it and whirling and turning thin lines formed in various patterns, sometimes like something a toy Spirograph would make, other times more like a turning horizontal wire spring.

It was beautiful and enjoyable to watch, though at the same time I was listening to other people in the room talk, or trying to, which was very distracting. It was a slow conversation and my eyes kept going back to the patterns, looking mostly at them, but it was ending now, slowing down, tending to fade some into indistinctness. I couldn't seem to bring it back, though the red remained, though a little duller and smaller.

I was looking back and forth from the red area to the people. I found I was reluctantly paying more attention to them, and a feeling of greater reality was settling in. I had to leave soon. There was a doorway to my right that sunlight was pouring through, a doorway that led out into the day, and I started to turn toward it and woke up.

Dream - The mobster restaurant and the Cadillac

On Friday morning, May 22, 2009, I had a dream where I drove my 1970 Cadillac down an alley and eventually came to a mob restaurant, a place where there had been some trouble in the recent past.

In the earliest part of the dream that I can remember, I was with some other people. We were outside and one of them was giving a talk on something. There were maybe six people or so, including me. We were behind some business, maybe near the radiator shop, maybe slightly south of it. It seemed to be sometime during the day.

Then the leader wanted to show us something. I didn't really like the idea, but went with them anyway. I had the 1970 Cadillac, and apparently some of them went with me in it. The remaining ones, if any, either walked or took another car. We went south past several businesses, going along near the alley. We stopped some place that sometimes seemed to be still in Scottsdale, perhaps somewhere between McDowell Rd. and Oak St., though sometimes it seemed to be around University Dr. in Tempe.

The alley had changed to a broad sandy area. The sand was deep and rose slightly as it headed away from the alley area. At the other side, on the west, was a long block wall. Perhaps homes were on the other side, but I'm not sure. It was evening now.

We got out of the car and I went to get something out of the trunk, or perhaps put something in it, I'm not sure. This was just a temporary stop before continuing on, a break for refreshments. For some reason I took off my shoes. I then walked over toward the block wall. It had some trash cans in various places along it. There were two or three of them where we were, and some dark things were piled by them. The leader continued talking.

I walked in the deep sand by the trash cans, looking at things. Something had run out of something there, making dark, dirty green pools, like old thick antifreeze, and I walked in it before I realized it was there. I was just wearing socks, and quickly walked in the sand afterwards trying to clean some of it off. The sand soaked some of it up, but there was still quite a bit left, and I didn't want to put my shoes back on while my socks, especially one of them, had a big soaked area with whatever the chemical was, plus the sand caked on it.

We went away from the alley and toward the road that ran parallel to it, toward where a restaurant was. Between the restaurant and the broad sandy area was a concrete wall that began about where we were, and between it and the sandy area may have been a long trash bin, then between the concrete wall and the business was a long parking area that was partially paved with old thin sandy asphalt.

The restaurant was kind of a fast food place, with ice cream. It appeared to be owned by some short Italian people with mob connections. Toward the front, it had a fairly large area to eat inside. It had some hamburgers that looked good, but I didn't have much money with me and decided to just get a blocky rectangular ice cream bar, chocolate covered with a few colored sprinkles. I also asked for some water, and they gave me a big paper cup of it with a little bit of ice in it.

The eating place was divided for some reason, like for smoking and non-smoking, but I'm not sure that was the reason. The other area seemed more for people who ate more expensive dinners and/or for more favored patrons, and was fairly full. It seemed to occupy most of the restaurant, leaving a relatively small area along the side and some toward the cashier.

I walked about two thirds of the length of the restaurant, going away from the cashier and toward the road, and sat down at a table, facing away from the road, with the area for favored patrons to my left. I ate my ice cream bar and looked at the menu, back at the counter where the cashier was, and watched the people around me.

I wasn't sure if I should be this close to the other section, or even near it at all. I could see some of the people there looking at me. One or two of the people I was with were nearby, but the others went somewhere, out to the back I think, probably looking for a restroom. There was a bit of tenseness. I was told by someone about some kind of mob trouble that had happened recently. I worried some that we might be associated with it in the minds of the people there. We were strangers and seemed to be looked at by some of the people with suspicion.

I finally left, and as I was going out the door in the side, near where people ordered the food, I met one of the owners, a short skinny guy, who was coming in. He looked up at me solemnly and slightly irritated, though his expression became more neutral. I think someone told him that we didn't have anything to do with the earlier trouble.

I went out toward the broad sandy area. I was worried about leaving my car out there for so long. I hadn't intended for it to be this long, I thought it was just going to be a quick stop.

I discovered that someone had covered the car in a coating of an oily substance and then set it on fire. I was afraid it had been destroyed. It seemed it had burned off quickly, though. The outside of the car was kind of sooty and still a little oily. Evidently it had been done when they still thought we might be some kind of enemy, or have some kind of connections to one, or maybe they just didn't like it parked there. The police were there and a big flatbed tow truck, ready to take my car away, apparently to the junkyard. The interior seemed to be okay and it would probably still work alright, but I accepted that they were going to take it. I hoped that I could get it back later.

I went back north, on foot. It changed to daylight again as I went. I began to glide in the air in short bits, going from object to object, going along down the alley.

As I got close to Thomas Rd., I met up with the others. We crossed Thomas and went to an area a ways on the other side. There were rows of long pale buildings containing businesses and shops, with old broken concrete parking lots, with some areas dirt and some areas asphalt.

The leader took us to a small doctor's office in the middle of one of the buildings at the northern edge of the area, talking about how we should stop in quick and get some particular thing checked, that it was a good idea to have it done. He seemed to be using it as a teaching exercise, showing us that this particular test, or it might have even been a couple of them, was something that was important to be done, and something important to have done after exercising, as we had been doing walking around.

The waiting area was very small. A few people sat in it, waiting. At least one looked up at us. There was a short, slightly curved line of people that led to a door and through it. Apparently the doctor was somewhere on the other side. We got in the line. A few other people were ahead of us, but I didn't know how far the line extended on the other side. Presumably the tests were something that could be done quickly. This was just a brief stop and then the leader was going to continue on, showing us things.

He kept happily talking while we waited in line, but I became increasing disturbed. I hadn't intended to see a doctor. We had been out all this time, and I was kind of sweaty and had been wearing the same clothes for a while, and didn't really feel presentable. I finally asked if we were really going to see the doctor. The leader happily said that we were. I said that I didn't want to and started to leave. The leader looked disappointed, and said "Awwww" and tried to talk me out of it. One or two of the others also briefly tried to, but I left anyway.

I went back to an earlier row of the buildings and stopped in a little shop of some kind, run by an older woman, then went toward Scottsdale Rd. I started flying and gliding from object to object, heading south. Sometimes I got fairly high. Some of the people along the way looked at me funny. I got across Thomas Rd., sailing high above the pavement. It was late afternoon, and the light was somewhat dim. It was cloudy, sometimes raining.

I eventually made it to the edge of the neighborhood where I lived. I met my mother there. She had walked out there, to one of the neighborhood streets, and was near Scottsdale Rd. She was having some kind of trouble with her health, and the medication or the device she had been given had not been working right. She was having some kind of odd breathing problem, and was taking long, not very forceful breaths, almost constantly. Someone from a nearby business had noticed her problem and had helped her with it. I think maybe two or three people had come to help, maybe from more than one place. A doctor or ambulance had apparently been called, but nothing had shown up, and it had been going on for hours.

I took her back home, which seemed to be the place we normally lived, though the appearance was quite a bit different, and the house was quite a bit bigger in the north-south direction. I finally got the device or medication to work better, I figured it out somehow, though it was just temporary and her doctor still had to look at it, if for no other reason than to confirm that it was doing all it could.

Dream - The new timeline and the psychic lecturer

Tuesday, April 21, 2009, in the middle of the night or early morning, I had a strange dream about getting killed and then the timeline changing so that I was alive again.

In the dream, I was driving in Nevada. I had traveled there from Arizona. Earlier in the dream, there had been some time at home, and something about packing the suitcases, in my bedroom I think, and talking about the trip. In this trip, I went far to the north of where I usually go. This was intentional, and I had a specific place I was going to. I think it was something I had talked about with my father, some place he had business dealings. It was a little town in a relatively high area, probably 4000-5000 feet or more, with mountains around it. I had gotten in the general area, but still quite a ways from it.

It was late at night, approaching morning I think, and I was very tired and it was hard to drive. I was going along in an area where the road had been cut out from some little mountains, going fairly straight, with broad areas of loose dirt on each side for shoulders. There were places beyond the shoulder where the cutout area of the mountains could be seen, a sloping wall of hard dirt, and also some places between them where the dirt had been used to fill in gaps to make the shoulder. I was going west now, and had just turned off onto the road a little ways back. I had been going north. I was driving slower here, looking for a good place to pull off and sleep for a while. Traffic was very light.

Then I was waking up, sitting in the car, parked in the soft dirt, several feet from the road. It was very early morning, around sun up or maybe just before. I had the strangest feeling, that something had happened that night, and then things had been completely changed. It felt like I had actually been killed, hit by another car going the other way, either when I had been going slower, looking for a place to pull off or after I had pulled off and was slowly going along the shoulder for a ways, deciding where I wanted to stop, and that then it had been redone, and I was moved to a timeline where it didn't happen. I think it was partly done by myself, but a great deal of it, maybe most of it, was done by outside agencies, perhaps angels, though I'm not sure. It could have been UFO-type people, or people who were from alternate timelines or other universes, or even time travelers. It was the strangest feeling. I felt kind of airy and light-headed.

I continued on to where I had been going. I had actually been going, intentionally and temporarily, in the wrong direction earlier, looking for some place to pull off and sleep. It was an area I had been in a few times before, in dreams, so I knew generally what it was like.

Now I turned around and headed east. Traffic had picked up a bit. I think I went to a little town where some small businesses were, garages or service stations, to talk to some people there. I think my father joined up with me. He may have been driving a large white pickup truck.

Someone was visiting there, passing through, giving brief talks. I think it may have been a route he regularly traveled, but months passed before he returned to a particular place. He talked about psychic stuff and the paranormal. (In real life, the radio was playing and the Coast to Coast AM show was on. That night, Bruce Goldberg was a guest. I'm not sure if he was still on when the dream happened. It might have been when the show was replaying the first hour of his time, or the dream might have happened afterward. In any case, the person seems to have been based on him and sounded like him, and was a fast talker.)

I think I had been wanting to see him, and although I was already in the area for something else, I think I particularly went to this place at this time to try and catch up with him. I got to talk to him briefly as he was heading for the door after his talk, and continued to talk to him briefly outside. He seemed interested and agreed that what I thought happened could have happened, and even talked a little about such things, but seemed to be in a hurry and I didn't feel that what had happened to me was really properly sinking in to him. He left then and drove off to the next place in some other little town. I felt I had to try to catch up with him again, either in the next place or somewhere else in his tour.

I went off with my father to the next town he was going to be at, I think after finishing up our business where we were. It was a some place to the east, some distance away apparently. It was late at night when we got there, not far from morning. We parked outside of town and made our way forward on foot. I'm not sure why. I think we may have been worried for some reason about being trapped or caught there, like we felt it wasn't quite safe.

Going west, we made our way along on the south side of the road, going along by some businesses. For a while on this side of the road the area was elevated a bit, rising up maybe ten feet or more in places, with the road cut through it. The places on the other side of the road were more level, though sometimes were also elevated a little.

We came to a place, well above the road, that seemed to be used for storage for things that were delivered. The ceiling was fairly low and it was open all along the front, and we were on a raised up area in it, kind of almost like an open attic or loft. A bunch of little cans were there, most of them tuna cans I think, though a few cans held something else. We were talking about taking some with us to eat, not so much to eat now as when we got finished and left. At times it seemed the other person was more like my younger brother now instead of my father, and at times it seemed like a different person entirely.

It was getting lighter now as we made our way along. We soon crossed the street to the other side, cautiously going along, keeping close to businesses, away from the road, though the businesses went alongside next to the road. Hardly anyone was out now, and the road was practically empty. A lot of the businesses were elevated six to eight feet up, but it varied as we went, going up and down, and some were fairly close to the road in height. I didn't know if we were in time, or would have to catch him in one of the other towns. I was under the impression, though, that somehow this little town was a major base stop on his tour, that he had some kind of connections here.

We did manage to get to the place he was at. He was still there. We talked to some of the people there before we found him. We still had to search a bit. One of the people was a black woman, probably in her thirties, full-figured but not heavy, who was very attractive. She had a kind of easy-going, amused smile, and helped us some in our search. She was one of the people who worked in the place that he had kind of a base at, and I guess one of the places in town where he was going to be talking or had been talking. She didn't go with us, though we kept coming back in our search and running into her. Apparently the person we were looking for was moving around quite a bit and it was hard to catch him.

Finally, toward night, we managed to catch up with him. He was about to go someplace else again, another town on his tour. I got to talk to him for a little while. While we walked, the black woman went with us for a ways, and maybe another person or two, then we said goodbye to them, until next time, and continued on with the person I had been trying to find. As we talked, he remarked after a bit how nice looking the black woman was, in kind of an aside, a smile on his face. It was dark now. We were approaching the end of town again, the same end we had come in on. The person had to go on and we said goodbye to each other.

I went back to the place with the cans, along with the person I had come with, whoever it was now, and we were going through the cans, which were stacked up in a broad area along the edge of the loft, out toward the road. The stacks weren't very high and were just a few cans deep, and were partly turned over and scattered, especially after we had been through them. We were going through them again now. I was trying to collect a few cans of tuna. The other person wanted something else too, and said he really wanted to find some salmon. He was having trouble finding it, though. I said in kind of a loud sharp voice that he was looking at the wrong ones, that they were in these little tiny cans, showing him some that were really small, maybe half-size, like some gourmet cat food cans are.

The cans were just sitting out there, not locked up, and we had been considering just taking a bunch of them, but we started to wonder now whether we should make some effort about paying for them. The black woman had come back, still across the street and still maybe fifty feet away, and still with a big smile. She suggested that we could send the money to her and she would pass it along, so we decided that we would go through what we had gotten later, and either send her the money or send her a letter telling her what we had gotten, and she would tell us how much it was.

Later that morning, probably around 6:00-7:00, I had another dream about driving, in Arizona I think. I don't remember now what was happening in it, but I woke up with the same airy, light-headed feeling, somewhat a feeling of wonder, as I had in the dream after the timeline had been changed.

Dream - The auction of the lion-thing

On Sunday morning, April 19, 2009, I had a dream about being at a place where something partly hidden was being auctioned, something that looked something like a lion.

In the dream, I was in a place with long white tables or counters, that occasionally had computers on them. The main area was a very large room, but it had smaller offshoots. I wandered around, sometimes fiddling with the computers. Sometimes a few people were there, and sometimes not. Time passed. My mood was glum.

Then an auction started in the middle of the room, in the rows of white tables or counters. I went forward and looked at what was happening. The thing being bid on was mostly hidden behind a white curtain or sheet, but the curtain was pulled back a bit and a little of the object showed. It seemed to be something at least partly like a lion, very large and probably life-size, with its mane showing, but with a long narrow structure extending upward from the area of the neck. I'm not sure what the lion-thing was made of. It was colored a bright shiny reddish color, tending toward blue in some places, with the color looking like part of the material and almost translucent. It looked like it might be some type of fiberglass or plastic, but a fairly heavy kind. I wondered about its age. It didn't really seem like it could be too ancient if it was made out of that, though I supposed it could date from the early 1900s.

I wondered what the bidding would be, and if it would go fairly cheap. It started out, though, around 600 or 650 dollars I think. Then someone bid 1500, but the auctioneer didn't seem to be acting on it. He was still referring to the earlier bid when asking for a higher one, and someone bid 750, which he accepted and then started trying for more. I was getting really confused. Why wasn't the other bid being recognized? I heard, then, some people referring to it, but they treated it as less than the other bids, that it was somehow something like 150. But the man had said fifteen-hundred, could fifteen hundred be less than seven hundred and fifty? I was getting more and more confused and couldn't make it work.

Finally the curtain was pulled back and the whole thing was revealed. To my surprise it seemed to be some kind of ostrich, and instead of a mane it had the round body with its wings and feathers, and also a pale, faintly violet series of large drooping panels around its neck and over the top of its back, apparently for riders to sit on.


At the time I had the dream, the Wordzzle game for next week involved the term "auction block," and I had been working on the stories. That's probably where the auction concept came from. I didn't have any lions or ostriches in them, though, just polar bears.

Dream - My grandmother is voted president of a club

Sunday, February 1, 2009, I had a dream in which I was traveling with the rest of the family, and then I went to a place where a small election was held.

In the dream, in the first part I can remember, I was in a bathroom, with another, larger, room of some kind attached to the back. It was a white wooden structure with a concrete floor, outside away from things. It had a big dirt area around it with patches of short grass. No other building was close. I was trying to clean the toilet some. I think my father had left me or brought me there. The whole family was traveling, me with them. The rest of the family, and my father, were in another place right now, perhaps at least partly separately, some place in the town.

I went to a place in town, then, apparently where we were going to meet. It was composed mostly of a very large, open room, maybe around a hundred feet on a side, with a long room at the back with rows of people like a smallish movie theater, or like the inside of a large airplane. I think it was an eating place, though it may have sold some things, too. The attached big building was entirely open, with just pillars holding it up. It was white painted stucco, with low walls in various places, including along the edges, and some areas were different levels. It was landscaped inside and out, and had some eating areas inside and out.

We had to vote, then, in a place in the big room. It seemed mostly the people in the place who were voting, though perhaps some others also went in there to vote, too. A woman was taking the votes out of the ballot box and reading them. Other women were gathered around her, watching. The votes were just little pieces of paper, maybe three by five inches.

She was also happily saying something about a code that was used or was now being used. It was three or four letters long, the first part of a much longer word, which she also gave. I don't remember now what they were. I wasn't sure what importance it really had, it just seemed to be a handy word that was associated with their business or business goals in some way, and that they were now using the first part of the word as a code to put on a lot of things and communications, as a kind of reminder.

When she got to my votes, I had put in a few, this was evidently allowed, she looked up and starting kidding about my ballots. Evidently people had their own names on their ballots too, along with the person they had voted for, identifying themselves. She was saying something about how she knew these were mine, that the 3's had fancy curlicues.

I was standing about twenty feet away, and frowned as she was saying this. I didn't know exactly what she was talking about. I didn't remember writing a 3, and could only assume that she was referring to the letter E, my middle initial, which looks something like a backward 3 when written, though I don't make any fancy curlicues on it. I guessed she was trying in some way to kid me about it looking like a backward 3, which didn't make much sense to me since that was what it was supposed to look like.

When all the votes were counted, my grandmother was elected, apparently as president of a club, or something like that. I'm not sure exactly what it was. In real life, she died in late 1984.

Dream - The creatures in the basement

On April 7 or 8, 2009, I had a dream in which I apparently killed something that turned out to be a baby dragon, and when I tried to escape I went into a basement filled with strange creatures.

The first part of the dream, except for some vague impressions of driving back and forth doing pickup and delivery, is largely forgotten.

Then, at some point, I came to a place like the front parts counter of a local Chevrolet dealer, as it was back in the 1970s and '80s. There was someone behind the counter and also someone outside it. There were also a few other people nearby. It was sometime in the morning.

After a while, my mother showed up. I think she went there to tell me something, perhaps to remind me to come home for lunch, though I'm not sure. I talked to her for a while, and sometimes to a person or two in the area. We started slowly drawing away, then, preparing to leave, but though she took a step or two away, my mother kept on talking to someone at or near the counter, her body turned partly back toward them. I waited, not saying much myself, and getting a little impatient.

While waiting, I noticed a dark, roundish, hazy-looking thing, like a large bug, near the counter along where a small side wall was, where the floor met the wall. It looked like a small dustball, with a long, thin, neck-like structure sticking out of it. I threw something at it, breaking the neck-like structure off. It was brittle, like a thin piece of meat that had been burned almost to ashes. My mother objected, too late, saying, "Ohh!...," disappointed. It was going to grow up into a dragon. Well, too late now.

There was some question about the dragons getting mad, and something else was happening where the thing was, something growing out of the dustball, a small totally black dragon, looking two-dimensional, like a dark, impenetrable shadow, except for an eye, like a cutout in the shadow, looking mad.

Some things were coming, somewhere out there, somewhere to the west. Someone came and told us and some others. Looking out, you could sense them, feel them coming, though nothing was visible yet. The day seemed darker, as faint clouds partially obscured the sun, which seemed to be getting low in the sky. A faint, slightly cool wind blew in from the west, the direction from which they were coming. I'm not sure exactly what they were, but we were told that the dragons were notifying a lot of the other strange, fantastical (and generally large) animals, which had then notified others, etc. They were now headed our way, converging on us. We had to get away before they got here.

There was a narrow doorway beside the counter, with old chipped paint on the door frame and short hallway beyond, light blue paint showing though the white outer paint so much that it was mostly blue. It led down some old grimy short steps to a dark sunken room, maybe six to eight feet down. Some boxes and things were in the room, mostly near the walls. Strange things hid among the boxes, fantastic creatures.

I went a little down the stairs. A wizard, standing outside near the doorway, told us we needed to hide, to go to our secret places as planned, as we had rehearsed. A bunch of people, some outside and some inside, did as instructed, disappearing, going under the layers of reality, like burrowing under layers of cardboard, disappearing like bugs scurrying away from the light, and the place was suddenly almost empty. I went away too, going through layers that were like stacked cardboard, reaching a place beyond like a little niche.

The creatures were surprised, puzzled, not sure what to make of the sudden activity and then the emptiness. I came out, though, and went through the darkened sunken room, the things watching from the shadows, interested but still slow to move, slightly cautious after the strange happenings. They were generally not very large, probably mostly in the two to four foot high area, but they tended to be on the thick side, particularly their upper bodies and heads, and could be very dangerous. They started to get a bit more bold, slowly coming out of their hiding places.

I went up the stairs on the other side of the room and out to the back yard, which appeared to be the back yard of my grandmother's house in Arizona, although her house there didn't have a basement. There were more strange creatures out there, different from and not connected with the creatures inside, like they each had their own dimension or universe. There were various objects in the yard and back by the house. It was night now, out back, though when I had killed, or apparently killed, the bug creature it had been morning, perhaps near lunchtime. Now, out back, it was late at night, perhaps ten or eleven, and the creatures were sleeping, not expecting anything. Someone came up the stairs after me, perhaps my mother or maybe another relative, I'm not sure now. Some of the creatures from inside were starting to follow us, heading for the stairs to come up after us.

I went to the right around a corner, to where part of the house was set back a bit. There was a stack of the creatures there, sleeping. I woke them up. They were a little slow to wake, and puzzled at what was happening, surprised too. Some of the things from inside were getting in the yard now. There was an old round piece of cardboard, like an oversized plate, that I half tossed, half pushed toward a creature or two. There was also a largish crumpled ball of old cardboard that I rolled and tossed.

The creatures were slowly murmuring to each other and milling around, dim forms in the darkness. We all started playing with each other, like children, a kind of slow motion playing, and the mood became happier and lighter.

Dream - Chased through a forest of giant stalks into another dimension by the robot

A few years ago, perhaps in 2006 or 2007, I had a long dream that seemed interesting and important, but I didn't write it down until a year or two later. By that time, I had forgotten most of the beginning and the rest had become somewhat condensed.

In the dream, it was daytime. I went down into a low, wide place, something like a dry sunken riverbed. The surface was mostly dirt, mostly firm but a little soft, perhaps looking like a mostly dry mud flow, mostly flat but a little uneven, a little wavy. It was filled with tall pole-like plants. They each had at most a couple of stalks, six to ten inches thick, narrowing slightly as they rose. The stalks had occasional large leaves, perhaps a foot or a foot and a half long, set close to them. I crossed the riverbed to the other side and climbed back out onto normal land.

On this side were some old abandoned wooden buildings in disrepair, perhaps two or three of them. I walked slowly among them for a while, looking at things. A time or two I kicked the debris around them a little with my foot, just nudging it a bit. I may have briefly gone inside one or more of them, but I'm not sure. At least one or two of them seemed to be places I had known in the past, places that had been owned by my parents or had been in the family somehow, though they didn't exactly correspond to anything from real life. I think someone may have been with me for a little while, perhaps my brother. If so, he came separately, and possibly from a different direction.

Earlier, on the other side, the side I had come from, I had been with a few people, but I don't remember what was happening then. I had some concern about someone there who was trying to get me, some concern that he might realize I was here and come over, or send someone over. I think I might have come over the dry riverbed, past the tall pole-like plants, to escape. It was a distant concern now, though, a worry, something to be aware of. I seemed safe here for the moment.

After what seemed like a few hours, I could see out in the riverbed the distant figure of someone coming after me. He was sent by the person who was trying to get me.

He made it across to the buildings, and there was a period of time when I tried to escape him there, going back and forth and hiding behind the buildings and other things. I may have also sometimes gone inside the buildings.

At some point I went back into the broad, dry, sunken riverbed with the stalks, to try to get away. I think I made it most of the way to the other side, but I couldn't get away from him, and I turned back at an angle. He may have been around fifty or sixty feet behind me, though the distance varied somewhat, and he tended to get closer over time. Trying to better escape, I went up the plant stalks, getting perhaps thirty or forty feet up, and then went directly from plant to plant. Unfortunately, the person chasing me also climbed the plant stalks. I was also now distantly followed by a second person, who also climbed the stalks.

I went back across the riverbed to the side where the old buildings were and then back down in the riverbed, going along it, still going from stalk to stalk. They continued to follow me. The riverbed eventually became an actual river. The first person fell behind and the second continued.

I eventually turned to the left, to a small side channel at right angles to the main one, and landed at a small dock or pier, where it turned out I had crossed to another dimension. There was green grass, and beyond that a ways was a house. I met a few people at the dock. Some children were playing there, and one or two adults were standing there, though they seemed unconnected with the children. They were all dressed in old fashioned clothes, like from the 19th century, though the adults were dressed somewhat formally, wearing greenish brown pants and vest with perhaps a slightly lighter shirt.

The children took me to the house, where some more people were outside, and a few more came out to join them. The adults here were dressed more casually, in frontier style clothes. The children who had brought me and the people at the house were related to me somehow, or perhaps most of them were. The people were glad to see me, though a little surprised. I think I might have originally come from there, long ago, or at least that was my impression.

I had some adventures there, including at a nearby small town, but I kept worrying about the people chasing me and if they would catch me. I thought they might have a hard time finding me in the other dimension, though.

Finally I had to leave, even if they were still out there. I'm not sure now why I had to leave. It may have been some trouble that had happened to me there, perhaps somebody there chasing me now. The family members were sad to see me go.

I went back through into my dimension, and was in the water in the middle of the river, it seemed without anything to float with or on. There was someone in front of me a ways off, but he seemed harmless, somebody who had gotten in from the other side. He seemed happy, and there was a feeling that I knew him from somewhere, or that he knew me or knew about me. To the left side, in the distance, I saw the second figure that had been chasing me. He was on a small raft of some kind, maybe a rubber raft. He had passed the entrance to the other dimension and had now turned around and was coming back toward me, rowing.

The second figure was now clearly the robot with the fixed smile, a figure that has appeared in other dreams, and I had the feeling it was on my side now after all. In this dream it was normal sized, although in some dreams the robot was giant.

Dream - Iced tea with Paul Newman

On Wednesday, October 29, 2008, I dreamed I was at Los Arcos Mall, a place that was torn down several years ago. While there, near the end of the dream, I had iced tea with Paul Newman.

In the dream, I was in the parking lot at Los Arcos Mall, on the side toward McDowell Road. I was talking to someone and looking toward the mall. A lot had happened before that that I don't remember. I then entered the mall. Going down the aisle I found that lots of stores were boarded up. Various little displays were set up in the aisle, generally offering various kinds of food, maybe sometimes selling it and sometimes giving it away. The aisle got to be more of a hallway size in places because of the boarding up that had happened, and the path through it was sometimes irregular.

I came to an area near the middle of the mall, close to where another aisle crossed this one. A very large squarish table had been set up, with a room constructed on the far corner at the side toward the middle of the aisle, and several people were around the table, widely spaced, eating some food. Some kind of presentation was being given, and I felt it was some kind of thing where something was being taught or promoted. A middle-aged woman was in control. She wanted me to stay and eat something with them.

I looked at her but didn't say anything. I kept on moving, still looking toward her part of the time, while she looked back still looking hopeful. The offer was somewhat attractive but I was unsure of the situation and didn't feel that I should.

The corner of the table toward me and on my right had a wooden keyboard with long light oak-colored keys. The keys were perhaps a foot long and tightly packed together, with the group of them perhaps a couple of feet across. I felt they were some type of musical instrument, perhaps something like a piano, though I didn't know if they sounded like one. I wanted to get past the table and to the other side of the aisle, and to save time I quickly walked over the corner of the table and across part of the keys. My feet were bare at the time. I think I was carrying my shoes in my hand, having for some reason taken them off earlier in the mall. I felt a little bad about getting my bare feet on things, but I didn't have any shoes on right now so there didn't seem to be any help for it.

A little past there I went through a blocked off area in the middle of the mall and found a large open area on the other side, to the right of where I had come from, where several tables had been set up and people were eating a holiday dinner. Some of the people were relatives and some were apparently friends of them, while others were evidently just other people. The tables were widely spaced and there seemed to be plenty of room left at them for more people. Some other tables to the left had food on them.

I was greeted happily, like they were expecting me, and taken to the tables where the food was, to get a plate filled for me. Some thick juicy slices were cut off the side of a very large, somewhat flattened and looking almost boneless turkey and made into a sandwich for me. Some other food was being put on a plate, too. I was given the sandwich and taken to a wooden booth to one side of the room.

The booth had big windows along the front and enough room to comfortably fit two people with plenty of space around them. The windows had a bench in front of them, attached to the booth like a broad shelf. Two tall stools were set in front of it. One stool was empty. On the far side of the booth and sitting on the other stool was Paul Newman, looking younger, like he was in his early sixties. I was surprised to see him, since he was dead. I guessed this a little was before he died. I wondered if I should tell him he was going to die soon, but I decided against it.

I bit into the sandwich and found that it was actually a ham and hash sandwich, with the ham in medium thin slices with black edges. I wondered about that and thought that I still had to get the rest of the food that they were putting on the plate for me, somewhere outside in the room. I hoped they were holding it for me.

The man who brought me in then brought a big bottle of iced tea, though it wasn't actually iced, just slightly cool. The bottle was heavy glass and contained maybe about a quart, maybe more. It was stuck in a holder on the wall on the other side of Paul Newman. The holder held it upright at a slight angle, and a long curved metal spout was stuck in the neck, which was slightly larger than normal, having maybe an inch and a quarter opening. The spout also seemed to be stuck right through a cork in the bottle. In spite of the spout being stuck in the top, a large glass was put underneath the bottle and somehow filled with iced tea coming out the bottom of the bottle. The glass was given to me and I drank some.

I told Paul Newman that I thought he had done a lot of things in his life, all the things he had done while making the movies. I was a little uncertain and thought that what I was saying sounded kind of lame, but I tried to say it as positively as I could. I felt I had to say something to him.

He looked a little amused and replied, in a somewhat hoarse but loud and firm voice, that he had done just about everything. Then he took the bottle away the holder and the spout, which stayed where it was, apparently attached somehow to the wall, and took a drink directly from the bottle through the large hole in the cork while looking out the window at the scene outside. At that point I was awakened by my mother.

Dream - God of storms

Sunday morning, November 23, 2008, I had a dream in which I displayed godlike powers and attempted to control the weather, and received retribution from above for my daring to do such a thing.

The dream was a lot longer than what is written here, but the first part of it has been forgotten. There seems to have been something about superheroes and superhero comic books and dolls, but it may have been part of a different dream.

At some point I was with a group of people. It was night and we had traveled across some areas like broad fields or yards with a few trees and bushes bordering them, perhaps in part across the area around a school, a school similar to an elementary school I used to go to, and then into some countryside beyond. My impression is that we flew through the air under our own power.

After going a few miles we landed outside a large building, in the parking lot near some wide steps leading into the building. It was still night but the area was well lit, particularly near the building. Some other people were nearby. They were scattered a bit, though some were within a few feet of each other.

They were discussing among themselves some task they had to perform there. It was some kind of hush-hush thing, involving secretly getting into the building, or fairly secretly, and taking some things from there, enough that several boxes were involved, which were being loaded into a big truck. I don't think it was quite like stealing, it felt more like it was some kind of secret mission, though I don't know if it was actually sponsored by the government. I was a little distance from the others.

I felt that I had to show them my power, I had to show them what I could do and what was possible. Happy and smiling broadly, I called out to the others to look and I pointed my arm at the sky, my hand holding high a large stick or scepter/wand/cane, pointing it at the sky as an extension of my arm. It something dark and made of wood and smoothly varnished, with a wider section eight to ten inches long fitted onto it toward the end, like it was something that could move back over the thinner part I was holding, to make a shorter object. It also had some rings, probably made of brass, at the edges of the sections. I was moving it and my arm in a large circle. A thin overcast was moving across, lit partly by the lights below and partly behind it by the stars and maybe the moon. The sky was faintly visible through it, though the clouds were thicker at the edges.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but I kept it up. Then the thin overcast slowly started to turn in the area of the circle. "See, see!" I cried, jubilant. Then, still smiling, I started to wonder about consequences, what might be required of me as payment for the energy I was using.

Then suddenly a thin smoky bolt came out of the sky at an angle and hit a heavyset man about a hundred feet ahead. He was wearing bulky clothes that had an ornamental feel to them, and was just a dark silhouette. The man was a leader of the group, maybe even my father. A burst of smoke or fog or cloud appeared at the spot the beam hit, like an explosion, and then the beam retreated and took him with it back into the sky.

"No! No! Take me instead," I cried, bending over double in guilt and anguish, still looking toward the spot where the man had stood. The sky gave no response, and I was no longer concerned about making a twister.

After a bit of a pause, the other people in the group mainly continued what they were doing, if anything. Perhaps some looked toward me and what had happened. If anything, I felt they were very slightly amused, perhaps also with a feeling of life goes on and to continue what they wee doing as best they could without him. The project seemed mostly done, though part of it now seemed to have been abandoned and they were getting ready to leave, and some were already leaving.

Dream - My grandmother's birthday party, and old cars disappearing into fog

Saturday morning, November 15, 2008, I had a dream in which I was at my grandmother's house in Arizona, but it was much bigger, and she was having a birthday party. It's hard to say for sure what time period the party would be in, except that it was probably somewhere in the 1970s or early '80s. The family members there generally seemed younger than they are now, though maybe not always by the full amount that would be required.

There were a lot of plants at the far wall and on the walls that joined to it. Some of the plants were very small and some average-to-large in size. Some of the pots were the size of little Styrofoam cups and others were large. All were overflowing or filled near the brim with water. My youngest sister was watering them and just went along them with the pitcher, pouring it out, getting some on the floor.

My grandmother, a little later, was given two books. She was sitting in a chair just on the other side of a wide doorway that led into the kitchen area. They were medical books of some kind. One was much smaller and thinner than the other. She was looking through the larger one, which was a tall, thick, oversized paperback that evidently dealt with herbal remedies. The other book was on the floor near her. She had evidently already looked through it some. She seemed fascinated by the one she was reading and asked me which one I bought for her or something like that. I had been out of town working and didn't actually buy them. I leaned over forward to be down near her. Though I faced her, my eyes went to the right and I was saying, "Uhhhhhhh........" My mother came up and rescued me, saying it was time to eat or something like that.

My brother brought in something like a pale cake that was partly composed of pudding, almost like a soft bread pudding except that it was uniform inside and didn't have any visible seams or components. Whatever it was I thought of it as cake. My grandmother seemed to have somehow moved a few feet into the family room, still in her chair. Both books were now on the floor. My brother had a big spatula and was using it to cut a long thin rectangular piece of the cake, which was in a rectangular glass pan. I worried about the cake dripping as it was a little wet, especially on the bottom. He was talking in a slightly loud sarcastic voice with an edge in it, and was getting the piece of cake out for my grandmother while holding it over one of the books. I went over to the book and moved it aside, whereupon he immediately turned and held it over the other book, which I also then moved. I complained to him about what he was doing, holding it over one of the books and then when I moved it holding it over the other one. He continued to talk in the sarcastic voice, ignoring me, though I think his eyes turned from side to side a little.

We went into the kitchen area to eat, to kind of a second smaller family room that corresponded more with how the house was in real life. My aunt, my mother's sister, came down to serve part of the food. I think someone had to go and coax her. She had wild hair that stuck out all over in long thick tapering curly light brown tufts. I think she had a big bowl in front of her that she was scooping portions out of for people, some kind of vegetable I think. There was also a second cake as well as other things. She talked while she worked, I think about something fairly matter of fact, but the way her head and mouth and eyes moved it was evident that she was a little upset about something and tears were in her eyes.


Some time passed then, and I came back what seemed like a couple of days later, though it may have been a week, to care for the plants. The house was dark. Everyone seemed to be gone, though I wondered if someone, maybe my aunt, was in the back to the house, in one of the bedrooms. I looked out the window at the back, standing a few feet away from the window I think, not really looking closely at things, just wanting to look some out there for a while.

I went over to the kitchen table and sat there, reading a technical book. The book was at least partly about cars, but it also seemed to be about science, maybe even physics or astronomy, and was in small print. I was maybe two-thirds through. I decided to skip through it some and see what it looked like further on. I was looking at some pages near the back, and then leafed through to the back and found that the back of the book had some of the pages damaged. Some were torn off vertically, some near the seam and some both near the seam and near the edge, with most of the middle missing.

I had the pages that had simply been torn off near the edge. They were still in the book and could be taped back together. The ones with the missing middle still had the outer edge, a strip of the page with a black plastic strip running down the outer edge. The plastic was perhaps 3/8 of an inch wide, with a slight ridge running down it near the inner edge. I didn't know why the book was made with plastic strips on the edges of the last few pages. It seemed awkward and they would be in the way. There wasn't much I could do with the pages with the missing middle. I decided to tape them to the back cover for now, in the hope that someday someone might find the missing middle sections and then be able to properly repair it.

I was afraid I was a little too late in coming back to care for the plants, that they had suffered from lack of water, and I felt a little guilty because of it. At the far end of the family room was a black upright piano, with plants across the closed keyboard cover and on both sides of the piano. Water was dripping on the black wooden keyboard cover, from a hose or perhaps even some kind of thin copper pipe with a small shutoff valve. Because of the plants it was hard to see exactly what the water was coming from, particularly from the other side of the room.

At some point a psychiatrist showed up. He felt something like the one I once had, though he seemed a little older and didn't really look like him. I don't recall him coming in. It seemed like he was just suddenly there and the assumption was that he had come into the house and sat down, in the kitchen in a chair near the door to the carport. I was on the other side of the table from him, still fiddling with the plastic strips, trying to get them secured to the back cover. I finally gave up on it for now and just closed the book. The pressure of it being closed would have to be enough hold the strips inside. The psychiatrist sat there frowning and we talked back and forth. I talked to him about the house being dark and how I was supposed to care for the plants, and about the general situation.


Then the situation changed, and I went back to Nevada and to the place in the desert where I worked. I talked with some people for a while, at various places in Building A, going probably from the north end toward the south end, and probably spending the larger part of my time in the south half of the building. At some point someone came and kept telling me, maybe more than one person telling me, that I needed to go to the conference room, that there was something important there. It seemed to have the force of an order, that it was an order from a manager that was being relayed to me. I think it was a general thing, that other people were also supposed to come, and that it was something that had been planned. I didn't feel a great sense of urgency about it, perhaps because I no longer really worked there. I finally went to see what was happening, though.

Going with a few other people, maybe including some who had made the request, I went down the long hallway, going north, away from the south entrance to the conference room, heading for the north one. When we got to the northern entrance, the doors were either already opened or were opened as we arrived. A few people were there, evidently waiting for us, perhaps especially for me, though I think they were also talking to each other when we came up. They were managers, I think, and directed our attention to inside the conference room.

There were a few cars in the conference room, on the side near the hallway, and one or two even outside the room. Some were owned by relatives, I think, but some weren't. They were small cars mainly, though some may have been midsize.

Just beyond the cars, running the length of the conference room, was an impenetrable fog. The cars were already dimmed by it and some were moving sideways into it, fading into the fog and disappearing. The cars were too old now, they had been cared about and cared for, but now they were too old and needed too much work, it was too expensive to keep them. It was sad but it was time now to move them on, maybe to car clubs or collectors or something like that, and people needed to realize that and should accept it, but I didn't know if all of them would.

Dream - The computer in the sky

Around June 7-8, 2009, I dreamed I was sometimes outside or in an open area, and I accessed at least twice some kind of computer or computer program out among the stars. It was night and the scene expanded to some stars and gas clouds/nebulas and/or large galaxies that spread across a significant portion of the sky, and the computer or program or web site was somehow encoded in the information there, in the arrangement of things, which were not quite static, but had a slow movement.

I was smiling and pointing at it, showing it to people standing near me, and I was talking about it. I think my mother was there and maybe my sister, but I don't remember who else. There might have been maybe four or five people in all.

Other times in the dream I was inside a mostly empty dimly-lit building, a medium large building probably, probably not more than two stories and maybe only one. There was some sadness at times, something to do with accessing things on computers, old sites or places I used to go to years ago but didn't much anymore, maybe something about old radio shows, too. A lot more happened but I've forgotten most of it.

Dream - Driving back home and also following the car in a small plane

On November 29, 2008, Saturday morning going into early afternoon, I had a series of dreams. In one of the later ones I was driving back home, and later in the dream was also in a small plane, following the car.

In the dream I was on a freeway, apparently in the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile, driving back home from Nevada. I was in a city, or on the outskirts of one. I think I had already gotten to Arizona and was somewhere in the Phoenix area, somewhere on the north side.

I got to where several sections of freeway were coming together, crossing in a mess of lanes. The road rose up and the car slowed down. I hit the cruise control button a couple of times to give it more power and increase the speed, seemingly reaching down and hitting it from way up in the air outside the car. Indeed, it was like I was watching the whole thing from high above. I wanted to get past some other cars in the right-hand lane, some of which were turning off to the freeway to the right, but some were going or might be going to merge with my lane. I got past them, or some of them. My speed, which had earlier been around 57 or 58, and had been dropping to near 55, now increased to near 60 as I approached the top of the rise in the road. I worried some about getting caught by the police, but it didn't seem important or likely.

Suddenly I saw where booths had been set up in the lanes, with policemen in them. They were there to catch speeders, but in fact people couldn't get past them without slowing way down, whether they were speeders or not, and they seemed to be checking and processing almost everyone. I slowed way down. They were talking to each other and though I think I stopped there for a while, they didn't seem to be concerned with or care about me so I went on, still wondering about the situation and whether they would decide to come after me. I was not alone in the car now. There was at least one other person there, maybe another, too. I'm not sure if they were there before, but it seemed normal.

The road turned left, then, and went into some ornate tunnels. There were many lanes, some going the other way, with high walls going to the ceiling every couple of lanes. The ceiling was not very high, barely enough room for a tall truck.

I was also flying a small plane with someone, watching over my car. After the car went into the tunnel we discussed whether we could follow it, whether it was safe and whether there was room in the tunnel. I finally decided to go and do it, we had to follow the car. Apparently we couldn't be seen by anyone.

We somehow slowly swooped in, the wings somehow getting a little smaller, contracting enough to barely fit inside the tunnel. We got over the car, or almost over the car, and then saw something ahead. It was a tall truck filling the lane to the top. At first it seemed to be the back of the truck, but as we got closer to it, and it got closer to us, I could see that it was somehow coming our way, in the same lane we were in. It seemed very ominous in the dream, but it didn't quite sink in that the truck was going the wrong direction.

The dream scene seemed to flash several times, both at the time we initially saw the truck and as it got closer, and as the truck and the car and the plane got closer in things seemed to move in slow motion, and finally I saw that there was a huge ornate projection to the left that protruded way into the lane just above the cars, going almost to the ceiling. The plane wouldn't be able to get past it, and the truck couldn't either.

Everything was slowing to a stop, it was almost as if time was slowing down, and I slowly woke up. As I woke up or just after, while I was still a little in the dream, I decided that among my other powers I now had the power to shrink the plane to the size of a toy (why not?), and the tiny plane now flew high and to the side among the ornateness of the ceiling, out of danger of being hit by the truck.

Dream - An angel beside me?

Late Tuesday afternoon, December 16, 2008, I fell asleep while sitting in a chair, and had a nightmare about driving while sleeping, unable to stay awake, with a presence in the passenger seat driving for me.

In the dream it was night and I was in Nevada, driving back toward Arizona. It was late, perhaps the middle of the night. Earlier in the dream I had been driving more normally I think, and I think some other things had happened, maybe something in small rooms. Now, though, I was very tired and kept falling asleep. I was driving while sleeping, trying hard to wake up, but my eyes would close almost immediately and my head would fall forward and to the side, and I would droop over to the side.

In a bend of the road where it curved sharply to the left and then back out again, I came across, on the left side, at the innermost part of the bend, two women in a very small open room sitting at a table. The room was an opening in a very large dark wall that went by that section of the road. The wall partly followed the contours of the road, but in straight, slightly angled sections. The road curved in close to the wall here, so I was right by the room where the women were.

As I came up to them, they turned to each other and giggled. They seemed to be giggling at me and my situation. As I drove by, I leaned my head out of the window, my eyes pleading, and spoke to them. Even though I said only a few words to them, asking for help I think, I got the impression that they were already aware of me and had been following my situation, monitoring me in a way, though I'm not sure for what purpose.

I was quickly past them, then, and turned my attention back to driving, trying desperately to wake up. For a while, a thick ridge a couple of feet high ran by the side of the road. I sometimes reached out my hand and hung onto it, my hand rapidly sliding along its rough, lumpy surface in the darkness. I was able to see the wall-like ridge but not much else, and was driving almost totally blind.

At some point, I became aware that someone was in the car with me, on the right, driving. The person shouldn't be there and was not always visible. I thought it must be an angel or a ghost. I guess I was glad it was there but I didn't feel that I could or should trust it to continue driving for me. I didn't know who or what it was or what it was capable of doing and under what conditions, and how long and reliably it would continue to do it. Perhaps it only operated temporarily or in emergencies, and couldn't continue doing it for long periods, especially if I simply gave up control and let it go on unattended.

I thought of how I must have gone around the terrible curves of this section of road in the darkness, not even realizing it, just following one curve after another without realizing where I was, picturing in my mind now a point in the trip in mid Nevada where the curves were. I was afraid I was headed for them again and tried to open my eyes but they kept shutting again. I was going very fast and just getting glimpses of things. It was light outside now, but it was very hard to keep my eyes open for more than a second or two at a time.

I could see some giant forklift-like thing ahead moving slow, evidently some kind of farm machinery. I was coming up very fast on it. I swerved around it at the last second, but it wasn't me doing it, not my current awareness. Though I seemed to be at the wheel sitting up straight with my eyes fixed on the road ahead, I wasn't actually in my body, I was just a dim, dark, foggy, reeling presence behind and to the side, with maybe my hips and legs partly overlapping my body.


I woke up and thought I heard the phone ring, but it evidently didn't. If the phone rang, it was important to answer because my mother was still in the hospital. She was going to have the operation today, Tuesday, to deaden the part of her heart that had been racing. The day before, Monday, they had put in a pacemaker.

Dream - Space aliens are coming to get us

Early on Sunday, December 7, 2008, I had a strange dream in which we were invaded by aliens from outer space.

In the dream, it was night and I was at home. The rest of the family was there, including my father and everyone else, as far I can remember. Some other people were there, too. We were about to be invaded by extraterrestrial aliens. It had happened earlier and somehow we had gotten out of it, or it was perhaps just a preliminary thing, but now they were coming back and it was going to be very difficult, almost impossible to escape them. We were going to be totally controlled by them. They had machines to control our minds, and I think drugs too.

I was loading boxes of stuff from the back yard into the station wagon, which was parked in the side yard by the fence. Other cars were there, too, and the rest of the family was also working at loading things. The other people were, too. We were also loading food. Time seemed to be getting desperately short. We were going to my younger sister's house, because they were expecting us to be here instead and it would give us a little more time until they figured it out. We were going to make our last stand there at her house.

Then we got word they were coming. They came before we had totally left, though I think some of the cars were gone. They were strange figures that seemed to be part of the darkness, that would partially melt into view. They didn't seem to understand about the leaving. Cars could drive away right in front of them and they didn't understand what was happening. They seemed to be just concerned about what was there. I went around to the opposite side yard, toward the back, and hid. It was getting light now. The back yard was much bigger now than in real life and was huge, though earlier it had been the same size. The house was much bigger now, too, and might have even been two story.

There was an electrical line that went to a house evaporative cooler out in the yard, a line that was taken down by someone, perhaps even me, to try to delay the alien takeover. It seemed an important part of blocking the electricity use. I was hoping to sneak out before the aliens got their own stuff set up there, but now I saw that a thick light gray rubbery cable had been attached to it, with shallow light gray rubber collars at each end. The cable went through the air between the two attachment points, sagging some between them.

I went forward into it. It seemed that part of getting away was getting past it for some reason, or maybe I just had to take it down to delay things some more for them, as well as hampering their capabilities, and to increase my chances of escaping. I was a little nervous about doing it. I didn't know if I would get zapped by electricity or how hard it would be to break it loose, and I also worried about being seen.

Surprisingly though, when I pressed against it, it easily came loose at the end toward the house. The line wasn't very long, perhaps six to eight feet. It didn't attach directly to the house but to some intermediate structure. I went past it and eventually got to Scottsdale Road and then to Thomas Road, though I went back and forth from the shop to the Thomas Road area.

The aliens were out and about now, and now looked, in the daylight, like humans, though somewhat on the short side. A lot of them looked something like Keanu Reaves (probably because in real life I had recently been seeing ads for the new "The Day the Earth Stood Still" movie with him in it). I was trying to avoid them and stay out of their reach. If they got too close, especially if they could grab you, they could take you over.

There were various structures by the road and in the median, things like huge tall shelves, frequently with things on them, generally metal things I think. There were also stacks or structures of tall metal boxes. The various things were usually painted white or light gray.

I went back to Thomas Road, going there above the ground. I was partly climbing up things along the way and partly just using them as aids in hovering. I guess I was eight to ten feet up, trying to keep out of the reach of them. There were quite a few of them, but they didn't really seem interested in chasing me. They mainly just tried to get me when they happened to be close, though they did seem to be in the process of slowly tracking me, as well as anyone else not yet taken over.

Then some much taller ones appeared. I became aware that these were the real rulers, the real people in control, the others were just workers. These seemed much more intelligent, to the point that they were even a little bored by the whole thing. They were making their way down to Thomas Road now.

One of them, maybe ten or more feet tall and looking again like Keanu Reaves (I marvelled that he could be so tall and yet only look slightly more heavily built), kept absent-mindedly reaching for me while he talked to someone else, some other alien. I had to get much higher but it was very hard to get high enough. I seemed to lack the power to get that high. He was reaching up, looking up at me now and then, his hand almost able to get my legs, sometimes even slightly brushing my feet. I kept trying to get higher.