Dream - I try to fix the station wagon but it just gets worse, it's towed away, I look for it and the man who towed it, a friend gets poisoned, and I come across various things, including a tractor-like vehicle, a robot, and a device left with an old woman

On Sunday, June 20, 2010, around 8:30-11:45 PM, I dreamed I went to my sister's house with my mother. I think my sister was planning to go somewhere soon for a while, out of state. My sister's house looked nothing like it does in real life, and wasn't where it is in real life. It had very large rooms, but not many of them, and some were partly open to the outside. My sister also had a woman visiting her, slim, probably in her twenties or thirties. I think we might have been going to eat supper there, but I'm not sure.

We were finally going to go back home, then. We got in the car, which was in one of the rooms that was partly open to the outside. The light was dim there, though it had been bright in the other room. We were driving the light blue 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon.

I started the car, and it was making a light tapping noise. It seemed to be the fan. My mother wanted the fan shroud adjusted, and didn't want to leave until it was done. She had fiddled with it before we came for some reason, and it was making a little noise now from the fan blades tapping it. I was loudly begging her to just please, please let it be and let's go home and worry about it later. She kept insisting, saying that we couldn't drive it while it was like this, that she was surprised that I would want to, that it wasn't safe, or something like that. She got out of the car and opened the hood herself and started poking at things.

I finally got some tools and took things loose and was trying to work on it. My mother was talking and I was complaining, and my sister was making remarks, sometimes teasing and sometimes looking insulted, depending on what I said. Her woman friend looked on, amused. I had a couple of tool trays, mine I think, and my sister also had a tool tray, on one of the long tables, that I sometimes looked through. I also looked through the car for tools, especially in the front, in the glove box and on the dashboard. The tools tended to be old and dirty, and sometimes strangely shaped. I kept fiddling with things. I would get part of it done and then couldn't find the right tools again, and then was trying to find something that would work.

I finally had the whole engine out, and then one of the heads off. I set it on a very large table with a tablecloth, next to the car, then it got moved to another very large table, also with a tablecloth. I was loudly talking to my sister about it, irritated that I kept getting constantly interrupted while I was trying to do this, saying that I had the whole engine block out, and it probably weighed 500 pounds, and I could lift it, see, and I picked it up and held it in the air and then held it up and out with my left hand. I had been concerned that it might be too heavy to lift, but it wasn't actually too bad. Then she was going to meet my challenge by lifting it, and I had put it on the other table, and she was smiling and grinning and lifted the head up and held it, and then she was going to put it back and then lift the rest, or maybe the rest without it, but then it was missing and we couldn't find it anywhere. It turned out she had hidden it on a chair by the head under a big cloth, and had made it seem that the cloth was just covering the head. It was something she had done to fool me. A man friend of hers came then to try to help, supposedly. At least I got the engine back.

My mother kept wanting to go, trying to hurry me up. My sister wanted us to go too, so she could finish getting ready and go on her trip. I had only gotten the thermostat housing partly tightened and I couldn't find the right tools now to finish it. The top hose wasn't even on yet, and the radiator had to be refilled with antifreeze and the fan shroud adjusted. I was going to just dump antifreeze in and fill it up and hope we had enough to get at least partway home before it overheated. The antifreeze level would drop after the engine warmed up some, and so would be too low then and would have to be refilled.

We got out of the house and out from it to a large dark parking lot. A man was coming though, trying to get us, wanting to get the car and tow it away. We had someone else with us I think, maybe my niece. The man was going to tow the car, or try to, or a man of some kind tried to.


I think it did turn up missing, and I was trying to find it, going through a series of rooms in a large building, relatively nearby I think, within a few blocks. I found a large tractor-like vehicle in a room there. I thought it had something to do with it, maybe was used for the towing. I cut the main electrical wire to the engine, to the distributor or whatever the equivalent was, and was holding it out to the engine, which was now running, and zapped the engine with it. The engine was completely open on the sides, no covering over it, and was a straight something or other, probably a large straight six.

As I was zapping the side of the engine, a man came from around the counter, on the other side of the vehicle, and was concerned about what I was doing. He said something about the man coming back soon I think, and he didn't want it damaged, though he seemed smugly doubtful I could damage it. I moved the wire over to the distributor, and tried zapping that for a while. The engine kept on running, kind of ragged and irregular, not much of a change from when I was zapping the side of the engine though, maybe a little worse. I finally stopped and left, going to another area, still trying to find the car.


Sometime later, I was at a restaurant somewhere in the place. It was the middle of the night I think. I was with someone, a man I knew. He was concerned somehow with helping me get the car back, and fighting the people, though he wasn't there earlier in the dream. He seemed an important part of it now, though. We had been at the bar, talking with each other and with another person or two, eating there. We started to get ready to go, and he turned to get his coat, which he had put on the back of a chair at a table near the front. The coat, a jacket, had a greasy area on the back of the neck, on the inside, maybe a couple of inches long. It was poison. It was something that had been tried earlier on me I think, and on him in earlier versions of the scene. He went to put it on now, talking to me.

I nervously tried to stop him from putting it on, without saying anything about the poison I think. It seemed like it would be altering the scene with knowledge that I wasn't really supposed to have. Then I took him home, or tried to. He was poisoned by the greasy substance on the back of his coat neck, and he was immediately feeling dizzy. Trying to hurry and get him home, I took the wrong way through the building and its tunnels, having to go back and try a different direction, sometimes without him coming with me, with him still back in the other tunnel, with me waiting for him and finally going on, and then trying again. I finally got him home. I wasn't sure if he would survive, but I left him with his family, and hoped for the best. In an earlier version, or a history hinted at, he didn't make it, though it seems we actually lived through at least one prior version in the dream, and the last one redid it.


I went back and attacked the machine, or tried to. Going back to the big building with the series of rooms, I came across a mostly bare room, concrete-floored, maybe the room where the tractor-like thing had been. I saw a device there like an air conditioner condenser, but thicker. I thought it was connected to the man we were having trouble with, who was trying to get us, and had taken the car. I poked at the grill of it, actually just fins and tubes, poking with a screwdriver-like thing with a bent tip, trying to damage it. It hissed but didn't leak liquid. I wondered if it had air in the tubes or maybe something like a air conditioner has, freon. A man came from around the counter objecting, and a strange little robot, like a thick mobile air conditioner condenser with skinny metal legs and arms. I poked at it with the tool, too. It had been talking, and now its voice sounded funny. It talked somewhat quicker and irregularly, and seemed to be making less sense. It awkwardly rushed off to the side and threw up a little, while the man was talking concernedly at it, then it rushed off in a different direction and tried to throw up again. I left, still looking for the man.

I went outside, and eventually to a place ran by a short skinny woman in late middle age, heavily wrinkled. It was a large outdoor room, out near the road, by the parking lot. The area seemed relatively isolated. The room had a roof but no walls, at least not complete walls. It had a low dark wall running around it, maybe three feet high, with dark screening over the rest, at least in most areas. It was sometime during the day now. She had several devices, lots of them, set out on old long wooden benches. I started poking at one I felt the man had left there, trying to damage it. The woman seemed saddened but a little resigned to it, and talked to me about it. She was obviously concerned about the damage, she was trying to sell them or do something else with some of them, maybe repair them and sell them, or maybe repair them for the owners, and damage would mean a significant loss of money for her. I felt sorry for her, but still felt it should be done, to try to get back at the man. I think I tried to damage a few other things, too. Other people sometimes came and went, men, cowboy-like, who were concerned with other of the devices, maybe dropping them off or picking them up.


I finally made it home, with the car I think. My mother was there, too. It was late afternoon it seemed. I was out in the side in the front, by the carport, near where the round circle of garden border blocks were. I had a shovel I think, and was trying to do something, maybe something with the side yard, but there was also a large device of some kind there I was trying to do something with, and also maybe still trying to do something to the car. For some reason I was not wearing anything from the waist down. I was talking to her, but she didn't seem somehow to really be my mother now, she looked much younger and looked different, and maybe wasn't actually my mother now, it seemed she was actually someone else. I didn't know who she was, though it felt that I did seem to know her, or should know her. I said I thought this was something we had agreed to do, being naked, and you were going to take your clothes off, too. She talked back to me, not looking down, and was saying something like yes, but she had changed her mind, and was wanting me to get dressed. Her eyes looked partly blind too, partly clouded. She seemed tired, and while she did seem bothered some by my being naked from the waist down, she seemed only mildly bothered, and just slightly concerned, almost like it was an afterthought. Some other people were going to come, she reminded me, we were concerned about it, and in a hurry to get things ready. She left, went in the house I guess, probably through the carport door.

Some other people did come, while I was out working, generally one at a time, thin cowboy-looking figures, middle aged. I was becoming more and more concerned about being naked, and was sometimes trying to hold something in front of me, to partly cover me. Nobody mentioned it though, or seemed to pay much attention to it.

Dream - I am at a school, but can't find my class again, and I had left my backpack and briefcase there, I go outside, but they have a new tardy policy and I am too late getting back

On Monday, February 21, 2011, around 11:00 AM-12:20 PM, I dreamed I was in school. Though I think initially the place may have been something else, it was school now. It was apparently something like DeVry, though it was laid out more like my high school, but was still different from either one. It had some landscaping out front, with a short slope down to the parking lot. The buildings were long, and set up in two rows. I was in the building on the far left, around the middle, but not quite that far. My sister was there for a while, and we talked for a bit, but she then left, having to go somewhere. There were very few people around when she was there.

We were initially in one of the empty classrooms, and then wandered across the hall, more to an administrative area, which was also pretty empty, and maybe to a restroom there briefly. As she left, more people were showing up, students. It was almost time for classes to start. The place became busier and busier. I wanted to find a restroom, looking for one on the original side of the hall, where I knew a couple were. I had trouble finding them, but I think I did eventually find one somewhere, maybe back on the right side of the hall, though it seems I did find something on the left. I had trouble then finding the class I was in before. The rooms seemed different, some of them bigger even, with unfamiliar students and teachers. The students, sitting in their seats, turned and stared at me as I peered in the rooms, or glanced in the windows as I went by. I had left my backpack and books in there too, maybe even a pale brown briefcase.

I kept going back and forth, sometimes over in the administration area too, and classrooms past and behind it, and also way back toward the front. The rooms in the front half on the administrative side were mostly offices, with a few at the very front on the other side also offices, but I glanced in them too, just to be sure. Sometimes a woman, generally wearing glasses, looked up at me from behind a large desk, at the back of the room. The rooms on the classroom side tended to be much larger than those on the other side of the hall, with some of those on the other side being very small indeed. Though the administrative area in the middle had large open areas with the offices, they were small themselves, and had only partial walls, perhaps only four feet high sometimes, and were largely open to the very large carpeted highway in that area. As I went back and forth in the hall, some of the offices did seem to change to classrooms, but at the same time some of the classrooms enlarged to be partly offices, sometimes with rooms joining together with big open areas between them, though closed off with doors to the hallway, except for the middle of the building, where a very broad hallway went through, and they became open rooms with short four or five foot walls.

Classes ended and there was a little break until the next ones. I went back in the rooms around where I had been. Most of the students were gone now. I looked among the chairs but didn't see my backpack or anything else I had left. I hoped that it was given to the teacher, that someone had noticed it and said that someone had left them, or the teacher had noticed them, and perhaps the teacher had put them behind his long desk, or maybe had them put in a lost and found somewhere, though that would mean they would be more trouble to get. A teacher was still there, but though he looked at me like he wondered why I was there and what I was doing, he continued talking to the student in front of him, from perhaps ten feet away from me.

I started to wonder if I should leave. It seemed late in the school year, and I only had a few days left. Did I even have any more classes today? I wasn't sure. It seemed I might have missed a couple trying to find my stuff. Were they important, was there anything in them that I had to know, or to do? It seemed there might be an economics class. I thought they were sometimes in the afternoon. They didn't happen every day, just two or three times a week. Thinking on it, I realized that I hadn't attended one for a long time, maybe missed most of the classes. There was still supposed to be a final I thought, maybe today, if I hadn't missed it already. It might have been on a previous day, or maybe was going to happen today or tomorrow. I didn't know just when the class was going to be. It was possible I had already missed today's. I couldn't even remember where it was supposed to be, or what room it was in. I thought it was more to the back, maybe on the other side of the building, or on the hallways leading there.

I walked through that area, back and forth. It seemed to be late in the afternoon now, and there weren't many students in this area. Sometimes I saw teachers looking back at me, from their classrooms, looking concerned, and sometimes they looked something like what I thought my teacher looked like, but not quite. I wasn't sure what good it would do me to take the test right now anyway. I had missed most of the lessons and hadn't read most of the book. I really needed to study some before I took it, as much as I could in the day or two before the test, if I could put it off that long, if I could convince the teacher to do so, or to give me the test if I had already missed it. I went back toward the other side of the building, still looking, still hoping to find my stuff. The hallway through the middle was carpeted and very large.

At the corner, on the far side and the left from where I currently was, was a four or five foot wall partially enclosing what looked like a bar, and in some sense was, with a long counter and stools, but though it served refreshments, and liquor I believe, it also acted as a lab bench, where advanced genius students worked on special projects with, I think, military significance. I wondered if my stuff might be behind the counter/lab bench. A couple of teacher's assistants were behind the counter, and they and the students were talking in low voices. The teacher's assistants had small smiles. I wandered through the area and looked at the bookshelves against the wall on the other side, and wandered back toward and into the classrooms, through the large open connecting areas. Classes were still being held, but there were fewer students than before. I eventually went toward the back, toward the exit. It seemed now to be between classes again.

Outside, I looked around. It seemed to be early afternoon now, and there was bright sunshine. The building had wide concrete steps leading down to a broad plaza that ran between the buildings. Though earlier in the dream I was in the building at the far left, now it was the second over from the left. I started wondering if I was in the right building, and should check the one at the left, though I thought it was just used by non-seniors. They had recently started a crackdown on people who were late to class, and had put monitors at the outside doors, and if you were caught you had to go to an office somewhere and get a special pass. It was mostly about humiliation and inconvenience, and it seemed to me that it would inconvenience the teacher to have the students, with their special pass, come in really late after having to go through all that, and the teacher then having to stop what he was doing and take the pass. I started heading off toward the other building, while some of the students looked worried at me, like they were wondering what I could be thinking, to do something like that, go away from the building, when there was so little time left.

I went inside the other building and down the hall a ways. It was as I thought, something used by younger students. I turned around and headed quickly back toward the exit, and then out into the broad plaza, and started making my way quickly back toward the other building. There were still quite a few students heading for the entrance there, clustering around it, trying to get through. Some teachers or other representatives were slowly going up the steps, sometimes looking a little amused, and some came from the inside too. The people doing this were in a rotation, with different ones assigned at different times. The ones going to the building went through the glass doors. One of them looked something like a younger version of Mr. Gatti, an artist who had been the art teacher at my high school.

I tried to hurry, but I was getting tired, and my legs were too tired to move fast enough, unable to go up the long steps fast enough. The Mr. Gatti lookalike came slowly back out, talking a bit, holding a short skinny dark pole in each hand with a triangular white flag on each one. He carried them to places in the concrete marked with pale X's and placed them in holes there. If you hadn't made it past that spot by now, then it was too late. I was almost there but not quite, coming in from the far side. I hoped I might be able to convince them to just let me in. Several other students were trapped there, too. It seemed silly to have to go through all this, especially for me and because of who I was.

They finally got to me, but there some trouble for some reason. I was finally given a paper, that was wider than it was tall, a form with things jotted on it, and told to take it somewhere to my left, into a side entrance from where the part of the building there formed a slight arc here, but the people I saw didn't seem able to have anything to do with this, and the few who did know something about it weren't able to help me, and in any case the thing I was given was incomplete and actually had some wrong information, a bad case number I think.

I went back to the big desk there outside, on the concrete, and waited again and then tried to get it straightened out. I started to irritatedly wonder/worry if they were going to bring up something that had happened quite a while back, maybe over a year, a mistake people had made that had quickly mushroomed into outrageous accusations with people looking suspiciously at me, even after I had explained it all and hopefully straightened it out. Someone did start to bring the earlier paper in though, coming from the right, from back behind things, and another person frowned and started saying, "Hey, aren't you the one?" I started irritatingly explaining it again, how I had met with someone who came on school grounds, who had been a speaker I think, and some people had seen me, and misunderstood who he was, and thought he was a radical communist, terrorist even, and it grew to where I was a member of a radical communist organization, and trying to get a situation where an atomic bomb could be set off, near the school, and it was all garbage, or something to that effect. I looked at their faces now, still with frowning suspicion on them, though that was lessening into an unhappy acceptance, like they still weren't quite sure about me. The Mr. Gatti character looked calmer and not quite as suspicious, though he still looked like he wasn't sure he believed me, but was willing to let it be someone else's problem, if it turned out to be one. He was looking different now, heavier, changing even as I watched, then becoming less overweight again. He looked less like Mr. Gatti though, and I wondered if he might be a relative, perhaps a son or nephew.

I got the pass, or rather the precursor to the pass, a paper that I had to take inside somewhere and get the real pass from. It seemed kind of a waste of time now, and I wondered if I should even bother or just go home, and come back again tomorrow. Still, as I went toward the middle of the building, and the administrative area, I kept my eyes open for someone who might help me. Looking up at times, with my head still down looking at the paper in my hands, I saw a woman standing up behind a desk, in the middle area, behind a low wall. She was looking my way, and looked a little like someone I knew, from the time I worked in Nevada, the red-haired woman in the Supply department, in the Purchasing section. I wondered if she could help me.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream - The vault

On Thursday, October 30, 2008, I fell asleep around 12:30 PM for about ten minutes, and dreamed I was in a large dimly lit vault. In the dream I felt it was something like a bank vault, but in retrospect it seems more like a mausoleum. Along the left wall were large polished black granite panels, perhaps 16 inches high and 30 inches wide. They were in rows along the wall, which was the same color, and extended perhaps an inch from the wall. They had a little space, perhaps an inch or two, between them. I was probably six or seven feet from the back wall, facing the left wall and examining the panels, brushing them a little with the fingers of my left hand, barely touching them.

Behind me, shadowy people in dark suits occasionally came and went, one or two at a time, presumably on business of some kind. Sometimes they were not much more than just faint blurred figures, with occasional flashes of a white shirt and the suggestion of a face, looking like pictures taken with a camera that was unable to properly freeze the motion, with the ends of the arms and legs almost fading out. Sometimes they barely felt physical at all.

They never tried to talk to me or interact with me, always going past me toward the back, sometimes then turning toward the right and going somewhere away from me and out of my awareness. I felt that money was stored somewhere behind me and perhaps a little along the back wall, presumably in something like safe-deposit boxes and maybe safes, though I didn't see anything and didn't try to look for it. I was mostly concerned with the panels.

Feeling the panels with my fingers, I had found that some of them were a little rough or uneven, some much more so than others. Some of it seemed to be in the rock itself but some of it, particularly on some panels, was mostly accumulated grime, like it had been a long time since maintenance on them had been performed. I curled the fingers of my left hand and started rapidly scratching at the surface of the panels, starting at an upper one, sending tiny thin pieces of the surface off, so tiny or thin they were hard to see properly, like ashes or the memory of ashes, like the ghosts of ashes and the ghosts of powdery dust.

As the surface of a panel got smoother I moved to a lower one, and then a lower one. The third one down from where I started, the second one up from the floor, was a lot rougher, feeling like slightly smoothed-over dried soap scum. This one was going to take a lot longer.

I continued to work while the shadowy presences came and went behind me. It looked like it would take a long time to do all the panels. I wondered what would happen if everyone left and went home for the day and I got locked in. I thought that surely they would have some janitorial service that would come during the night and clean the vault, at least sometimes, so I would get out eventually, and might not have to spend a whole night or weekend there.

Scratching near a lower corner of the panel, trying to smooth out the final irregularities in that area, I noticed that I was making a shallow depressed area diagonally across the stone. I decided to leave that area as it was rather than try any more there, as it seemed like the irregularities at that point were caused by the inclusions in the rock being of different hardness from the surrounding matrix, and it didn't look like I would be able to smooth it there any further with just my fingernails. Someone would have to use real equipment to get that area any smoother, if they cared enough to go that far.

I considered whether to work on another area of that panel, which was still mostly unsmoothed, or to move to a different panel, perhaps one to the right. I was starting to wonder, also, if this project, a task I had undertaken on my own, without any prompting from anyone, was something I should continue to do. Nobody appeared to notice the condition of the panels, and they would probably not notice even if they were smooth and clean. There was also the question of whether they would mind me doing what I was doing, as I had no authority to be doing anything. It was just something that I found, something that I felt needed correcting.

Fears

What am I afraid of?

When I was young, there was a time when I was very afraid of the dark. Sometimes I could even seem to see things in it. The closet was a worry, too, in the dark, at least when it was left open.

Oddly enough, I don't seem to recall being afraid of the dark when I was very young. The memories I have of this are from later childhood.

I don't have a fear of clowns, though I know they can be somewhat disturbing at times. I recently wrote about a problem that developed with a Clarabell Clown doll that I had (Clarabell was a character on the Howdy Doody TV show).

I don't have a fear of cloth in my mouth. Indeed, I seem to remember chewing my shirt and chewing the sheet on my bed. They both tasted pretty good.

I used to be afraid of bugs, spiders and praying mantises in particular. I'm still wary of some spiders, but this is only common sense. I don't like bugs touching me, though. Or me touching them.

I used to be afraid of change. I wanted things to always be the same. Some of that is still with me.

I used to be afraid of meeting new people and doing new things. This faded fairly quickly, of necessity, but an aversion remains. In other words, I am more reluctant than afraid, though something of the fear still exists. I can be difficult to know on a personal basis.

I have gone through times when I did a lot of checking locks and things. To some extent it seems to go in cycles, perhaps influenced to some extent by events.

I used to be afraid of heights. It was a fear of falling, of somehow being almost pulled off the edge by the distance. It called out to me in some way, and reached out for me. I had to resist that call, and was afraid to go too close to the edge, or of being in a position where there was an edge.

Somewhere in childhood I developed a fear of failing, of somehow, and maybe in spite of all appearances, not being good enough. Some of that remains, though it is somewhat muted now with time and experience. Still, there is a concern that I could have made or could make a difference. Depending on what I do or don't do, things could go a different way.

I used to be afraid of the Biblical End-of the-World, and of somehow not being Saved. With time, though, I came to a less-than-traditional view of such things. Though I still consider myself a Christian, I do not subscribe to a fundamentalist viewpoint, and many Christians would, in fact, probably disown me.

I used to be afraid of growing up. I could see the future ahead of me, the years stretching away, and it would never be as good as it was before. I also knew that the best times had, in fact, already passed, as my life before I entered school contained the best times I would ever know.

I developed a tendency to worry about the future to the extent that the present could not be sufficiently enjoyed. I used to look forward to getting out for school for the summer. Then I started worrying earlier and earlier in the summer break about returning to school when it was over. Eventually, I started worrying about returning to school before the break even started.


Time changes things. I am over 50 years old, and some of the worries are more distant, now. I'm not afraid of the dark anymore. Too much has happened over the years. The dark can contain dangers, but it seems less important in the face of what has already happened. Changes and new things can also hold dangers, but I am less afraid of them, though I do retain, at times, a suspicion of them and even an aversion to them.

But things are not as bad as they were, or as they could be.