Dream - I go to a bookstore in a small town and meet an author, then go back again when his book is out, but they are having a mystery game and I have trouble finding the book, and then a man rides through the sky on a bicycle with a parasol, and floats down on an inflatable mattress beside a woman

On Monday, June 21, 2010, around 9:30-11:30 PM, I dreamed I went to a little bookstore in a small town outside of Phoenix, maybe Wickenburg, though it felt like it was more to the north rather than northeast. I was at the counter talking to someone, telling the person about a book I had bought by one author, and then another book by another author, I think Robert Heinlein. I was holding the books in my hands, first one then the other, then a person to the side suddenly perked up and said it was him. I was surprised he was there, and glad to meet him [in real life he has been dead for quite a while, but I didn't think of it in the dream]. He had another book that was going to be out soon, "The Green [something or other]" I think, and I was going to come back then and get it.

Then it was a few days later, and I was going to go to the radiator shop. My father had already left. He looked a lot younger, like he was in his early forties. My mother looked younger too, by a similar amount. I decided to stop by the bookstore first, and drove out to the little town. I got there before 8:00 AM, maybe around 7:45. I parked in the street beside it, alongside the sidewalk, parallel parking. I thought it was too early, that it probably wasn't open yet, and I would have to wait awhile. I thought about sleeping a little in the car, and worried some about being told to leave by a policeman if I did that, or even sat too long in my car. Then I looked over at the window of the store, peering at it, and saw its hours, and it was open already after all, or seemed to be.

I got out and went in and looked around. It was different than it had been, with a lot more rooms, and a lot less books. They were doing some kind of game now too, evidently for the special occasion of the book coming out, though it was evidently something they did periodically anyway. It was some kind of mystery story thing, where the participants were supposed to solve a crime. A series of fake murders were going to happen among the guests, or apparent guests. I wandered around through the various rooms, sometimes going outside too. Some of the rooms had books along one side, others didn't have much in the way of books, sometimes some back in cabinets or on little tables, or small open shelves, or displays of other things. Sometimes another body was found, sometimes inside and sometimes outside. There was some worry too over whether it was a real murder or whether the person was just pretending. I know there was talk about waiting for the sheriff to come, but it might have been part of the game, even if it was the real sheriff.

The place had an upstairs now too, with more rooms to look through. In one room, I'm not sure if it was upstairs or downstairs, one of the owners was cooking something in a kitchen area that was set along one wall. I think I talked to her a bit. In one of the rooms I looked through, a small room, I saw some children talking to each other. They paused when I opened the door. I also found some in a closet that had a floor a couple or so feet higher than the floor of the room.

This was taking a long time, and I worried about getting back to the radiator shop, that I would be needed for something and not be there. It got later and later, getting into the afternoon. I was having trouble finding the book, and wondered if they had actually gotten any copies of it yet.

At one point, late in the afternoon I think, I stepped out on the wooden railing of a balcony that overlooked the first floor, actually floating up to it as I reached my legs up to it, and floated just over it and then stepped off, floating over the balcony and down to the first floor, and I think even then to the outside, to some landscaping against the building. I was happy and amused. I wanted to impress the people around me, and it felt enjoyable to float like that, but they were initially concerned about it, afraid I was going to go over the balcony and fall and get hurt.

I might have gone back inside then, but I'm not sure. It seems I wandered around a bit outside then, but it's possible I went back in later. The outside was not as it had been earlier, even earlier that day. There was a lot more room around the building, which was a lot bigger than it had been. I'm not sure I ever found a copy of the book, though it seems I might have.

It got later, getting toward night. A person went up in the sky, sailing with fireworks going off around him, right next to him, and riding a bicycle and carrying a parasol I think. Then he was coming down very slowly, to cheers from the watching crowd. The man, who had originally been dressed, was now laying on his back naked on an inflatable mattress, a smiling naked women beside him, completely revealed, turned slightly to the side, her legs up slightly. The man was also smiling, like the woman. They almost seemed like animated ink drawings at this point. They drifted in the air on the inflatable mattress, like a leaf, the crowd cheering. They finally got to the ground, and I think then wrapped something at least partly around themselves, still smiling, the crowd still cheering.

I had been watching it with someone, a small group of people actually. We had been commenting on it. It was almost dark now. We left, on bicycles I think, and went toward the edge of town, which was not far away. There was a railroad yard there, with some tanker cars. Someone was also there, maybe more then one person, and it felt more sinister now, like they were plotting against us, planning to get us. I think they ran though, not wanting to confront us directly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Dream - The woman with the wooden station wagon

On Tuesday, September 15, 2009, in the morning, possibly very early in the morning, I dreamed I was driving in Nevada in the Fallon area in the dark, later driving in the rural outskirts to the south with a few other people. Someone with me, a girl I think, wanted us to sing an old Sonny and Cher song, but with vulgar language added. I didn't sing the vulgar language, though. There was something earlier about going to a room or rooms I was staying at too, and other things, maybe a car lot or junkyard. I think my father was there at times too and maybe my mother. I think it was a fairly long dream, generally pleasant.

Then I was in a big house with big some rooms. Two very large, very long tables had been set up, almost filling portions of two rooms. The tables were covered with various food dishes, fairly simple ones, mostly in plates or shallow bowls. The tables themselves were dark and simple. My aunt, my mother's sister, was there, and I think my mother and younger sister, and possibly my brother. I was trying to find something that my aunt would eat, making various suggestions. I think I found something like soft pretzel sticks and something else, and then a little later some small bananas, then I left to go home. The place was some distance from it.

I had gotten paid now and it was easier to buy things. I was going to get gas and pick up some more groceries. I bought a bunch of groceries at the service station, a paper sack of them. I was tired and operating mostly on nervous energy. I quickly threw a bunch of things in the sack, sweet rolls and maybe some more bananas and some other things, maybe some kind of meat too. I saw a loaf of Rainbow bread, but it had a small tear in the bag. I examined it closely and worried about it a bit, but decided to go ahead and get it. I intended to go to a real store later, but I wanted to pick up a bunch of stuff to keep us going for now. I was very tired. I took it to the counter and paid for it, then went back to the car. I had parked it at the pumps without thinking, since I normally get gas, but I just wanted to grab some groceries this time. I had stopped and looked back at it, but decided to just leave it, and hurry up and get the groceries. I felt bad about blocking the pump and hoped they wouldn't be too mad. I was too tired to get back in and repark it somewhere. It seems I did take the groceries home, and my mother and some other people were there. She was glad to see me, but then I left again and went to a different service station, somewhere in Phoenix. It seemed I was getting gas this time. It was a small station.

When I got back to my car, I saw a woman at a nearby pump who had a wooden car. It was large and boxy and very simple. It sat high off the ground on wooden 2 by 4 inch boards that acted as legs. At first they didn't seem to have wheels, but later I saw tiny dark rollers under them. The car was roughly a tall station wagon configuration with a short hood. It was mostly empty inside. The seats were just a wooden platform. It didn't seem to have an engine. Though sometimes it did seem to go under it's own power, other times it used foot power. I started talking to the woman a bit. She got finished and went to get in her car, and asked if I wanted to go with her. I finally decided to get in. I noticed a police car a little ahead and to the left, at another pump, and worried about it a bit. The car didn't have any seat belts, and he might decide to give us a ticket for that. The car was kind of odd, and potentially noticeable because of that, but since it was obviously a homemade thing I hoped he would give us some slack. He came back to his car and finished up, and mostly seemed to ignore us. The woman kept talking in a somewhat tired, matter of fact way about various things.

We started going and pulled out onto the street. I was sitting at what would normally be the driver's area, and she was on the passenger side, but she did most of the driving, though at some point she suggested I take over, and I drove from where I was without having to move. At some point she joked about having taken a Republican position on something, and hoped I wasn't mad about that. She was apparently a Democrat, though. We eventually got to a house somewhere, apparently hers, but then started to pull out in the street and leave again. It was morning now, though it was night when we started, and the light was still fairly dim. She was driving now, and was driving earlier when we got here I believe. I was still worried about getting stopped by the police, this time more because the car was so odd, and they might think it didn't meet regulations and was somehow unsafe. A police car was starting to come by at the left, as we waited to pull out onto the street.

The dream faded into multiple scenarios then, with us getting stopped by that car or another one, and the officer calling in and asking about it, and another car coming in from the other direction, and another officer on the radio saying that he had stopped some other car that was similarly odd at an earlier time, and the judge threw the case out, so it probably wasn't worth getting involved in, to just let it go.

Dream - Past and future pirates, the struggle for the throne, and visiting Rachel Maddow

On Monday morning, June 7, 2010, I dreamed a long dream. There was a long part of the dream, not much remembered now, in which there were carnivals, and people in rooms discussing what to do politically, in what seemed to be a couple of hundred years ago, someplace in England, but it also switched back and forth to the modern day. Sometimes it seemed the people were just wearing period pieces, costumes from long ago, including powdered wigs, though sometimes it also felt that we were really back there. There was some trouble with the opposing side, and trying to get rid of people who might be a problem, and who might be in line for the throne. There was also something about piracy taking place, that some of the people, or maybe the people they were trying to get rid of, were associated with pirates or actually were pirates sometimes. There was some acceptance of it now, but it was something they would have to take care of later, stop it and probably kill the leader of the pirates.

Somebody came back, from Africa I think, perhaps from a ship that had been in that area. He was someone they had caused to be sent out there for a while, through trickery, some kind of military pretense, to get him out of the way temporarily. Now he had returned, becoming aware of recent events, of the deaths of so many relatives, but perhaps also purposely drawn back. After his return they began trying to get rid of him, too, poisoning him so that he appeared crazy. He was evidently the last big obstacle left, before they could move forward with their plans.

Outside, in an empty area near the carnival, just outside and partly under a tent, I met up with him. I saw him there and went to him, feeling a bit sad for him, and wondering if I should warn him. He talked agitatedly and walked around. Other people had been killed and he knew it. They were even trying to blame it on him, though he knew he didn't do it. He seemed to suspect, too, that they were somehow poisoning him, trying to make him seem crazy.

He had a big knife and he waved it around, talking about what was happening and complaining about things, waving the knife in the area of my face and chest sometimes. We finally got into a struggle with it, and though I think I was injured, I finally managed to get it away from him, and we were laying on the ground, struggling, with me mostly on top, with my face very close to his, but off to the side, and my arm folded about as far as it could go. I started to slowly saw through the side of his neck with the knife. He paused, and his eyes were turned my way with a little surprise and apparent acceptance. He talked for a while as I sawed through his neck, getting almost all the way through. I hadn't initially intended to kill him, or wanted to, thinking that I could just stop him, restrain him, but in the end there seemed to be no other way I could be safe. If I had stopped him now, without killing him, he might come after me again later, especially in his crazy state. I stood up, then, wondering what to do next, what I would say. Though I had been defending myself, it seemed possible I might still get in trouble.

A couple of the people who had planned it came, and were talking about it, looking at the body. They got the head all the way off, or maybe I did, and they took it away to a room. I stood there in the room while they walked around discussing it, intending to use it somehow in their campaign. I think his death had come a little earlier than expected, and now they had to revise things a bit. Their campaign wasn't quite at the proper place yet to proceed. The general population wasn't yet set up for it, wasn't prepared to accept them as the leaders without a proper transition of some kind. Some way to prepare the people was needed, so that they would understand and accept them as the proper rulers, accept that theirs was the proper claim to the throne and to the proper advisers to the throne.


Then, later, I was somewhere else, in more modern times, and I was looking at Rachel Maddow, who has a TV talk show on MSNBC. She was in a large room, sitting at a heavy circular glass desk, leaning forward and talking to someone else on the other side of it, someone she was interviewing, possibly a reporter or someone who did opinion pieces. She was hit by a car, then. It was very sudden, the car crashing through the heavy glass outer wall of the room, apparently intentionally. I saw it on TV and they kept replaying it, but it seemed that I was also somehow initially there, off to the side, watching it. She was doing her show, sitting down at the big glass desk, leaning forward and talking to the person, and a car suddenly came in from her right, crashing into the big open room, and crashed into her. She turned toward it as it came, in the fraction of a second before it hit, then she was turning away, her face grimacing as it hit her and the glass desk, breaking the edge of the desk and knocking it and her over.

I looked for her in the hospital, for a long time, through huge rooms filled with beds, separated into little areas with lots of space between them, on different levels of the now uneven floor. Though in the other rooms the floor had been more normal, here, on the third story probably, and in the inner part of the hospital, this big room had ups and downs, with smooth transitions, like it was an outdoor landscape, with hills and depressions, with the low carpet smoothly covering everything.

I finally found her, toward the back, but still a ways from it, in a section out in the middle, with temporary walls partly enclosing it, like office room dividers. She was larger than expected and had a huge head and face, mostly normally proportioned, though her forehead was too large, and she had her hair roughly shaved going back from the middle across the top to near the back, because of the operation she had had to have. The hair was too long to have actually been shaved that way, it must have grown out some, and though I wondered about the length of it in the dream, I didn't think about it having grown out some and the time passing that that would imply. She was smiling and happy and sitting up, wearing pajamas with a sheet wrapped around her from the stomach down. She was talking to someone else, a woman who was also in the hospital. They were evidently playing cards on a little table that was between them.

I got her attention and explained a little of why I was there. I had seen her getting hit by the car, and wanted to see if she was alright. She was leaning forward and smiling broadly at me, and said, "And you came to see me? Awwww, that's nice," and she turned her head and went back to happily talking and playing cards with the woman. She was scary to look at, with her head so big. Her body was a little too big too, like she was a giant, in a mild way, but her head was way too big, especially the upper part of her head. I didn't see any scar on her head, even within the shaved area, though I didn't peer all the way back, and didn't try to. I didn't want to know, it was just too scary, especially when she had her focus on me. It wasn't too bad when she was talking to the other woman.

I had the feeling though that she had a mental deficit of some kind now, that might or might not get better, that might heal completely or might not. She seemed to be doing alright in her talking and playing cards, and seemed very happy, but I still felt that the problem was there. There had felt an underlying blankness in her, like something was missing.


I left her and wandered around the huge room some more, going back the way I had come but on the other side of the room. Someone came and said I shouldn't be there. I was happy enough to go by then, being very tired and trying to find the way out. He went with me. I found I was crawling on hands and knees, slowly. He was looking concerned and finally asked if I needed help, if I wanted him to get someone, meaning emergency personnel, to examine me and try to treat whatever was wrong. I slowly assured him I was alright, trying to smile a little, saying I was just tired, and slowly made it to the door and through it. He watched me go, still looking concerned. I was in fact injured, from the fight before, and it was bothering me, but I didn't want to say anything to him about it.

Then I went out to the back, to another section or another building. A couple of people were there. One, a thin man, had been in the hospital and had gone crazy it seemed, and got something like a knife and started trying to kill the other man and then me, though I seemed to have become someone else. He stabbed the other man or cut him somehow, then was coming after me. He was talking, rambling, looking very nervous and tense. I backed away, into a place where a lot of sheets were hanging around, some over portable room divisions. The area was cramped and a lot of things were there, including, I think, a hospital bed behind me. The other man was back in the short narrow hallway, wounded, maybe dead or dying.

I kept moving around, while I was also somehow a little ways off, watching. He sometimes tried to stab me, but usually got the sheets. He finally did manage to stab me, though, I think on my chest near my left shoulder, or maybe my side. I was bleeding, dark blood getting on my shirt and running down, dividing into several streams. It didn't seem to reach my waist, though. I was struggling with him, and finally another person or two showed up and got control of him. The other man who was stabbed earlier also showed up and helped. It looked like he was going to be okay.


Then the group of us had to get out of there. The detectives were closing in on us because of what happened earlier, the murder of the man who was dressed in 18th or 19th century garb. We went out into a kind of parking lot, a huge one that extended way out, but it contained all kinds of things, including strange futuristic planes and maybe spaceships. It seemed to be mostly a place where old ones were left, though I saw some taking off and coming in, coming down out of the sky in a swoop, going over the water and then into the lot. The parking lot ended in a docking area, with a vast expanse of water, perhaps the ocean, beyond. The lot seemed to be mostly industrial, though there also seemed to be some military presence.

We had to go out further in the lot. The detectives were going to come out, I could hear them talking about it. A police inspector in late middle age was in charge, a short British man of medium build with faded dark hair and mustache. After they came out into the lot, we then went back inside for a while, in one of the rooms. We talked for a while about things, and maybe stayed until the next day, but then I said, getting suddenly increasingly nervous, that we really had to leave.


We went back out to the parking lot, far into it. The girl who was with us was supposed to have prepared a getaway vehicle. She led us to an old Ford Mustang, that was sitting several feet high, above the pavement. It was crowded in with a lot of other things. She had done something with a panel that was put on under the back, under the gas tank, hidden a key there I think, but also something else, something that had to be done to start it, something with the wires I think. She folded the panel down and was looking in the space there, under the gas tank, her head stuck partly in and one of her arms, which went in and out as she tried to do whatever she was trying to do. I stood there with the other man, sometimes talking to him. I was starting to get a little nervous, a little impatient. They were out in the lot looking for us, we had to get going soon. I tried to hurry her up. I noticed too that it was an automatic transmission, which I found odd, as we usually got a manual one, because we usually had to push them to get them started. This was going to complicate things. I didn't think pushing would work with an automatic, and now we had to get into the wiring under the dashboard.

I was rolling my eyes and remarking on it, and the inspector and his men slowly walked up, talking to each other. They paused when they got to us, but then eventually started up again and moved on, still looking for the people, not realizing it was us.

I felt better now, and less in a hurry. We were going to steal one of the big flying ships, one of the freighters. They were odd looking things, like huge worms that were flattened some in the middle, with paneled wraparound front windows. The body was perhaps 40 or 50 feet long, with a small bend in the middle and the back slightly raised. The car was just to get us down the lot to where they were. The police would probably see us take off, and realize it was us and try to stop us, and send other ships after us, but by then it would be too late, we would have too much of a head start. It was like piracy, I thought, and that's what we were, modern day pirates, and we were going to use the ship to carry out more piracy, stopping vessels and forcing them to give us their goods.

Dream - Working as a policeman, mistaken for a black woman, and the pie-slice shaped books that I took without paying

On Friday morning, September 12, 2008, I dreamed I drove to Fallon, Nevada, and parked on a dirt lot in front of apartments where I was or had been staying (in the dream), more in the area of the first place I had stayed in real life rather than the second. A woman joined me and kept part of her stuff in the vehicle I was driving. It might have been a car at first, but later it was more of a little pickup with a camper shell or maybe a small station wagon, though it just seemed to have two doors. I seemed to be sleeping in it, at least part of the time, maybe laying down in the back. She slept in it too, at least sometimes, sleeping in the passenger seat sitting up. She also had a dog of some kind, something like a cocker spaniel or a little larger. She seemed to have to wait for me for some reason, I'm not sure why now, maybe I had to unlock the entrance to the apartments for her, maybe she just wanted to check in with me, but it seems like something more.

Then I somehow got a temporary job as a policeman. Someone who was a policeman wanted me to do it. I think it was only part time at first, but then it changed to full time. I was a little uncertain about it. I'm not sure my normal boss was even told about it, it might have gone through higher channels. I would walk around town on foot, normally with another policeman, the one who wanted me I think. Sometimes another policeman or two were there also.

There was some kind of a problem with crumbling concrete or cement. They were massive blocky supports for something, though in some cases there may only have been a partial structure above them, like a small overhang. In some cases the concrete may have been part of a building, maybe a corner. The concrete, looking like stucco, crumbled like dried mud when poked at. I was showing someone who I think was supposed to be a detective. He looked like the Range Manager at a place I used to work, a medium size man with reddish hair and a mustache. He poked at the concrete too when I showed him. In some ways he was a little in his actions like Captain Stottlemeyer on the "Monk" TV show. We were near and at a corner where a shopping area started a little beyond.

At a bookstore in the shopping center, I took two copies of a sequel, a collection of very short anecdotes and advice and recipes. The books were triangular, like wide pie slices. At first I think they were hardcover with slipcovers, but later they were softcover. I simply took the books without paying. They were sitting outside with others on a table and I just swooped through going from south to north, looking at them briefly and then taking them with me. I thought at first that it was okay because I had the earlier book in the series, but later I started to worry about it. I thought that I probably wasn't entitled to them after all and worried about getting them back somehow, maybe just walking in and dropping them off and walking out. I continued carrying them around. I walked out and back down the street, going east, and then turned right at another street going south, gradually circling back toward the shopping center.

Halfway along I met some black women who were visiting from somewhere else. They were fascinated by me and almost acted like they knew me. I was partially disguised as someone else and as they talked I was slowly changing, becoming more disguised, finally seeming to be a black woman, though I think they thought I was from the beginning. (Normally I am a white man.)

I finally managed to leave them and continued walking, turning right at the next road and going west. I turned right again, then, onto the road that headed back toward the shopping center.

Reaching the shopping center, I went through a small eating place and picked up a very small double or triple sundae. I don't think it had bananas. It was in an elongated paper cup type thing with a stiff paper wrapped around it. I was holding it in one hand and the books in the other. I worried about getting ice cream on my fingers and then on the books. I was eating the ice cream by sticking my mouth down on it. I finally wandered off and left the shopping center again. In some ways the area seemed a little like the area in part of Reno.

I wandered way back toward not too far from where I was staying and was sitting at a small rectangular table near the sidewalk. I was on the other side of the main road, which went east and west, and the small neighborhood road cross-street was a little to the north. I was with one or two other people.

The visiting black woman and her friends came by, then. They still thought I was a black woman. She sat down and happily talked to me, but she seemed increasingly upset about the books. I'm not sure why. She kept looking at them. They were stacked upside down and nothing was printed on the bottom. She may have wanted one or she may have wanted a look at one. She finally got up and left, looking very upset.

I left shortly afterward, and walked back toward the shopping center and the bookstore to try to give the books back. The books were starting to look less new after all the carrying around. I thought about trying to get someone else to do it for me, maybe the detective.

I changed to stealth mode, where people simply didn't pay attention to me, and I became or was represented as not much more than a pair of dark shoes surrounded by a round shadow, though in reality I may have simply been there but unnoticeable. I was going through a downtown area, crossing streets, trying to stay out of the way of people and cars.


A couple of months or so previously, in July 2008, I had another dream where I took books from a bookstore without paying.

Dream - Shaking hands with a ghost

On Thursday morning, June 12, 2008, I had a dream in which I met someone, then later shook hands with his ghost.

A lot happened earlier in the dream. At some point, I was at a mall that sometimes seemed to be a school, or partially a school.

Someone came there who I think was a former senator or representative of some kind. He was there, I think, to make a speech as part of some school event. At some point, either he or I was leaving. I shook hands with him. He was concerned more with someone else, but turned to me and shook hands. He had a firm handshake. He was perhaps around 60, with dark gray thinning hair on top and whitish hair on the sides. His face was somewhat thin and rectangular and his hair was slicked down and combed to the side.

I left and went out to the parking lot and then went back in. He was talking to someone. Other people were around coming and going. He turned slightly and looked at me and frowned a little, no doubt wondering why I was back. I'm not sure now exactly why I did go back.

He left not long afterward, getting into a car with some people that were with him, a car that had pulled up by the curb. A few days later I heard that he had a heart attack and died.

Sometime later, perhaps a week or two, maybe less, we were outside somewhere at some school function, a picnic or something like that. Some kind of game or dance started where people held hands in a circle and went around in stops and starts. A photographer was there, and now he was in the middle of the circle taking pictures. I came to realize that the person taking pictures was the dead politician. Although at first he didn't really look like him, he looked more and more like him as time went on.

I shook hands with him again. It was firm like before. He smiled at me, leaning into the handshake. The circle of people had dissipated and I was telling someone from the circle, then, a man who was a school administrator of some kind, about the photographer being the dead politician. The photographer was gone now, apparently having faded out after going a few feet to the side.

The administrator kept asking about it, going through some papers that were stapled together, trying to find who was assigned to be the photographer, asking was I sure. I took him to the camera, which was sitting on the ground now, an odd device with a broad back that had an LCD display low on it. When activated, the name of the photographer crawled across it, with some letters between them, perhaps three, that were evidently a company name. The first name was ANDY. I don't remember what the last name was, it was perhaps ten or twelve letters. It was the name of the dead politician, though, though I don't think I ever knew it before that point.

I was then going toward a car parked at the street in the city. Everything was gray. Some people were standing by it in dark clothes and long coats, talking and looking around somewhat furtively. The dead politician was there. I was seeing something that had happened earlier. He had been tainted some by association with people who had some underworld connections. I realized, though, that the situation was not as it had appeared and was not as it had been portrayed. The politician was not aware, or at least not aware much, of the underworld connections, and was just trying to do his best for the people. The dream then seemed to blend into the next part.

It was cold. I was going back toward something. A cold rain was falling, perhaps snow even. Everything was gray. I went across the road to an area where nothing was built. In the middle distance across another road was a low building with a large yard around it, a yard that extended a very large distance toward the back, blending in with the land, the land going finally toward a low rise and then back down again. Then a much smaller yard and then a row of small darkish buildings, perhaps houses or businesses, leading away from me.

Everything was shades of gray. I walked on gray grass, flattened down, wet with rain and slushy ice, and headed toward more of the same. Two figures were going from the direction of the large low building across the land behind it, heading toward the low ridge. There seemed to be a fight or struggle going on between them, as every now and then one would turn, the one slightly in the lead, and attack the other somehow. I don't think it was usually hitting with fists. I don't remember now exactly what was happening, but one was hitting the other with something, maybe a coat sometimes, though I think something else was used too, maybe the slushy ice, picked up and loosely packed together. I think the one attacking kept trying to take something the other had and was wearing, a coat or shirt, perhaps a T-shirt.

I was dragging a thick hose along with me and turned it on them when I was still quite a distance away, several hundred feet. It didn't do much to stop the fight. It rained a large quantity of cold, large, heavy drops on them with some force. I hoped to break the fight up, but it only slowed it a little. I thought it might melt the slushy ice used as ammunition, but it didn't seem to be having enough of an effect. I think the person attacking got the article of clothing he was after and the one attacked was not able to get it back and finally went down.

I reached the area past the rise in the ground. There was a bit of a dip behind the rise and then the ground rose back up to a normal level. It had stopped raining now, but everything was still wet. It was a little warmer and the slush had melted.

A man came from the small building or around there, and was talking about the fight. I told him I had the hose and could spray them with force. A person came over the ridge then and down the other side, wearing a T-shirt that was not in good shape. He was grinning and denied knowing about the fight, though he seemed to be the person from the fight.

I went back to the road or near it and went toward the big building, going by the side at a distance and around to the front. It turned out to be the radiator shop on Scottsdale Road. I think the man from the small building might have gone with me, but I'm not sure. There were a few cars out front. I went into something like a large van or maybe a trailer and was talking with someone, perhaps the man from the small building, and then someone showed up at the back grinning, evidently the man in the T-shirt. It had big holes in it and strange markings in different colors, like they had been put on with markers.

He gave various stories when pressed on where he had been. He had been somewhere else, he had been to WalMart, he had been to some other place, the story kept changing. He kept changing, too, sometimes seeming slimmer and sometimes more muscular. He pulled his shirt up, apparently trying to show us evidence of some sort. He had more markings across his stomach and chest, across his head and face even, at least one of them changing from a marking to a scar, going in a shallow zigzag across him, a scar that got bigger and raised up, a 3-D pinkish line.

I finally got out and went toward the front door, going in I think and looking around briefly and then going back out, and continuing on past the front and around to the side. Other people were around and I could hear them talking [the radio was on in real life]. My father was somewhere, perhaps inside or perhaps not. I got down by the window by the repair tanks and got inside somehow, I think maybe by peeling back a section of wall. The main worker, an Hispanic man, was somewhere nearby, but I don't think I actually saw him, or if I did it was dimly and not directly on.

I needed to make my way back and find the other guy, the one who had fallen, to see if he was alright. I needed to take someone with me, I wasn't sure what situation I would run into. I think someone was actually urging me to do that.

I went out back and got someone, a young employee who worked on cars I think, and we continued on going back and in a short while reached a building that stretched across the way. It seemed to be some kind of garage run by some rural types, a large number of people, apparently all or most related to each other, suspicious of outsiders. I had somehow acquired a third person and I think a local deputy or sheriff had somehow come and was directing the search. A somewhat paunchy middle-aged man ran the place and was showing us around, at the sheriff's continued insistence. The employees/relatives kept trying things, like going for baseball bats or crowbars and tools of some kind that were laying around, to try to attack us with them, and had to be dissuaded.

It was a big building and had divisions running across it as we went further through it, dividing it into different sections. We got finally to the last section and were looking through it.

The sheriff was still questioning the owner, the employees/relatives were still trying things. At least one time one of them slowly sneaked out from under a bed toward something on the floor. Someone stepped on his wrist, I think, and kicked him back under the bed, it might have been me. They were continually trying things and there was someone every few feet.

The sheriff was talking to the owner and there were people continually sneaking up on both sides that had to be continuously taken care of in various ways, sometimes by knocking the weapon out of their hands or their hands or arms away from the weapon, sometimes attacking them, sometimes just moving threateningly toward them.

The owner seemed unwilling to control them in any way. The owner himself picked up something from somewhere, some kind of shiny tool and was talking, looking slightly past the sheriff in a distracted way, seemingly ignoring what the sheriff was saying.

The sheriff bent down and picked up a heavy dark pencil that the employees had been trying to use and stabbed the owner in the stomach, toward his right side, pushing it all the way in, then pulling it out and stabbing him again and little way from the first, slightly more toward the center but still toward the side, and then pulled it out and stabbed him again, either this one or the one before being a little higher. It was like pushing the pencil into clay. Sometimes it seems I was the sheriff now and sometimes I was watching.

The owner fell down backwards and then got back up, still holding the tool and talking some more but glancing now toward the sheriff and then away and then back again, some concern showing on his face. The sheriff stabbed him again, this time in the center and higher, just under the breast bone.

I started to protest, thinking it was too high, that he had actually stabbed him in the heart. The owner frowned and had a "Hey!" type of expression, and his head turned down then and he folded, falling backward. He didn't get back up.

The scene jumped to a little in the future, then, and the place was full of law enforcers, federal agents I think. The various employees were under control, but they seemed to lose interest in fighting after the owner was killed. The place was being thoroughly searched. The fear was that the missing person might be hidden somewhere, perhaps still alive.

I went toward the north side. A lot of small, low, upholstered chairs were there, with burlap type cloth, set up along the walls and in rows across the narrow space of the long room. Others came with me. I was looking through the chairs, picking up the cushions and looking and feeling under them, pulling the chairs back and looking behind them, etc. Others were doing the same. A time or two some odd things were found, like a pair of children's shoes set neatly under a seat cushion, along with a belt. It might be ominous or it might not be. Finally we had them all pretty much searched. I was by a door that led back toward the front. We had to look somewhere else now, working our way toward the front.

I looked along the wall behind the chairs. It was bulging out with, I think, a thin sheet of paper-like stuff pulled across it. I pulled the furniture, low couch-like stuff, away from it and we started looking, other people doing most of the work. The paper covering was pulled away and behind it were rows and rows of record albums, staggered rows, getting thicker toward the floor and blending in with the wall about mid level, then going back inside the wall, sticking out more toward the corner. A few were found toward the corner that seemed to be homemade ones, showing pictures of a couple of the employees/relatives kissing each other with love and affection.

The sheriff looked sad and uncertain and said there was no way to know what was on them. I was beginning to worry that the owner had died for nothing, that the people here might have had nothing to do with the disappearance of the person, that they might just be strange people, it was hard to know yet and it might be that we would never know.

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 - 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 - Being Batman

On Saturday, April 26, 2008, I had a dream about crooked cops, and changing to Batman to fight them.

In the dream, I drove around, in Arizona going toward Nevada. I was stopped by cops, or perhaps some other people, who were checking for something. It seemed some kind of road work was going on. There was a small, narrow, raised strip to drive over.

There was a cop in a booth, but he was not paying much attention. I could have gone on, but I stopped anyway. The cop seemed bored and somewhat amused. He finally said I had to take the car over to someplace else. I may have started to drive it, but I ended up carrying it, a new 1996 Oldsmobile, dark gray-blue. The cop seemed amused.

More people joined us. The situation became more suspicious, but I kept going along with it. I finally got to a building where I was to store the car, possibly for weeks or longer.

I felt that something was wrong, that something would happen to the car, that they planned to take it. They turned much more threatening. It seemed that I might not make it out alive now. I think they were initially planning to let me go, but I had been asking too many questions, been too persistent about it.

I was back in the car now. I was worried that the new car would be damaged. I also worried that it would be taken apart and sold. The cop was in the back seat with a gun. Others were outside.

Suddenly I fought back, becoming in the process or being replaced by Batman. I pulled the guy in back over the seat, possibly into the dashboard, possibly into the window. I think I also hit him with the armored side of my glove. I pulled a person at the side window through the partly open window into the car, breaking the glass. I then drove the car slowly forward, apparently to hit another person and confuse or get out of the way of others with guns. I hit a car in front, intentionally. It was part of a big parking lot of cars, maybe junked or maybe just parked. The hood of the car was badly dented in the collision.

I watched, as Batman, with grim amusement. It doesn't seem important at all, let the insurance company pay for it.

Dream - Tomorrowland

On Wednesday morning, April 23, 2008, I had a dream about seeing a place called Tomorrow or Tomorrowland, and then getting robbed, or at least I initially thought I was.

In the dream, I was driving. It was dark, and I was going to Nevada, or already there and somewhere out in the Reno-Carson City-Fernley area or something like that.

Then it was daylight, and I was going toward Fallon from the direction of work, but I thought of it in the dream as a small unnamed town. I was going too fast and the speed limit dropped abruptly. There was a person on a bicycle nearby. A cop was parked facing the road not far in front of me. I braked sharply and got below 25 mph, but the speed kept creeping upward and got up to 30 a time or two. It was worrisome, but the cop didn't do anything.

I parked somewhere in town and walked around. A person who was my lab partner was there. Maybe he came with me. He was going to work there again for a while. I was, too. I guess he was going to work for however long he was there.

I left him at a building with some other people for a while and walked around. I thought I would have to find a place to stay again for the time I was there. I didn't want to have to stay in a place with other people again and wondered if I would find a separate place on the other side of the main road. Both places I had in mind were places from other dreams.

I wandered back to try to find my former lab partner. He was still at the building or had returned to it, still with some other people. I think he had gone off with them for a while.

There was a nearby building, two or three story, that was made of dark brick-like blocks. I thought I saw something along the side of it, a way up. We started walking along by it, looking. There was just a faint representation of a stairway on the wall, though, like something carved in relief, though initially it had seemed like more. I believe it was faintly labeled "tomorrow." We couldn't get up that way. I turned and looked at him, uncertainly.

We went back around the front and went inside. It seemed he was only going to stay a couple of weeks. I thought maybe I could just rent a room for that time, maybe even in this building, which was apparently at least in part a hotel, also part a restaurant and part something else.

We went along one side of the inside. A lot of other people were there. There was some exhibit, perhaps upstairs, called Tomorrow or Tomorrowland or something like that.

We were going to visit it, but then a woman came and said somebody had attacked her and shoved her out of a line and against a wall. It had apparently happened some time ago, perhaps weeks ago. She was looking for the man, trying to find him. It wasn't clear what she intended to do with him, but it seemed that she wanted to get him into some kind of trouble.

She peered closely in my direction, briefly looking at me and then was satisfied that it wasn't me, which was a bit of a relief because I knew I wasn't the one. She talked mostly to my lab partner.

We didn't go toward the Tomorrow section then, and went somewhere else in the building. A long line of people wrapped around the inside, going from the back toward the front. We were waiting to get into the restaurant section now, probably in line with the others. I was wearing a long, light gray lightweight coat, almost like a trench coat but simpler and plainer.

Someone went past me and bumped into me hard and struggled for a moment to get past, then did and ended up going partly the other way, toward the side and back, heading out of the building in that direction.

I suddenly felt for my billfold and couldn't find it. I cried out that he had stolen my wallet, that man had stolen my wallet. I made some halfhearted, uncertain attempts to go after him. I was uncertain I could even catch him now. I kept feeling for my wallet. I couldn't understand how he had even gotten it because I had such a long coat on, and I finally felt it there, still in my back pocket. It was so thin that I had missed it before. Usually it was a lot thicker, having lots of cash and various papers. Now it seemed almost empty.

Dream - On the run

In the morning of April 2, 2008, I had a dream or combination of dreams. Though initially the dream was not too unusual, it changed and became increasingly strange, finally becoming a long story where I ended up running from the law and able to change reality.


In the earliest part of the dream that I can remember, I was driving the 1970 Cadillac, but there was also another car, perhaps dating from the sixties or seventies. There was something about checking or perhaps changing the oil or looking at the waterpump seal. The engine had a lot of space around it, and it was easy to see things.


Then I was back home, in bed. There were some crumbs on the blanket, partly on top, partly underneath. I think that my brother and mother showed up at separate times and then left. I got up, tired. I may have gotten up more than once.

I went toward the hall, then, thinking I was alone but evidently hearing something. The house was filled with a dense fog. I went cautiously forward. I could definitely hear someone then, faintly, at least two people.

Becoming acutely aware that I had just gotten out of bed and was not fully dressed, I fell to my knees, going back into almost a sitting position, doubled over somewhat. I was wearing just a shirt and underwear, what I had been sleeping in. I pulled my shirt down as much as I could, in that position covering my underwear and part of my legs.

A little girl came into the hallway, appearing out of the fog. She was not someone I knew in real life, though I seemed to know her in the dream. She happily talked to me, saying that someone (perhaps my mother, perhaps another person) had brought her, and she had been sent to me to help me. I was a bit uncertain about this, but I kept my reservations mostly to myself, and generally only made brief responses, mostly acknowledgements, to what she was saying.

Though she took no notice of my current situation, I still felt uncomfortable and decided to go back to bed and get back under the covers so I wouldn't be so exposed. I got up, trying to keep my shirt pulled down onto my legs, and somewhat nervously walked back to my bedroom. She followed along and we continued talking, though she was doing most of it.

When I reached my bed, I looked down at it, frowning. Though I had been about to get back under the covers, the crumbs were still there. It seemed unpleasant, now, to get back into bed with the crumbs there, and somewhat embarrassing to have someone see my bed this way. I started brushing the crumbs off the covers, but a lot of bugs were there now, also, and the more I brushed the more appeared. They were mostly pale, fragile, skinny-winged things, and most of them seemed to be dead or dying already, even before I started brushing at them. New ones kept flying in or even falling from above, and it was hard to get them adequately brushed off. Pieces seemed to stick to the covers and stay behind, too.


Later, perhaps in the same dream or perhaps in a different dream, I went outside, dressed in dark work clothes, to the backyard and then around to the side yard. A fence ran around the backyard, extending partway along the side yard. There was a gate in the side yard in the part of the fence facing the street, and then more fence ran along by the driveway. The fence was much higher than in real life, perhaps eight or ten feet. A chain was attached to the top, somewhere back along the fence, perhaps even back close to the backyard, and I used it to do something, though I'm not sure what now. I think I stretched it to the end of the fence that is toward the street but I'm not sure what the purpose was. It seemed important and/or useful at the time, though.

At some point it came to be that a rough wooden stairway went down from the top of the fence in front of the gate. I don't think it stretched all the way to the ground. Someone was with me and had been for some time, and I think they went down the stairs first, and then I went. It seems we were supposed to go inside now. Perhaps a meal was about to be served, but I'm not sure now.

I went toward the carport and got involved with doing things there. The carport kept expanding and lengthening, and turned into a garage, a business. There were several people there, and a sliding garage door that opened toward the house. There was some problem near the door, some loops of cable or something like that, that were on a square hook up high beside the door. For some reason the people needed to have them taken down so they could reach them, it was for some reason important.

At the far end of the garage near the street, some chain was attached to the wall. I went and got it and somehow stretched it out all the way across the garage to where the loops of cable were, pulled the chain tight, and then holding it more or less tight used the tension from it to walk up the wall and take the loops of cable off the hook. In real life this would not have worked, because the chain was to the left side of me, not in front of me, but in the dream it seemed that it should. As I got the loops down, someone started going through the garage door opening, as though I had to get the cable down before this could happen. The people were happy that it was taken down and someone was reaching for it even as it was coming down.


I was in a nearby house, then, perhaps the first house over toward the main street. I heard sirens that got louder and louder, and I saw, through some narrow window openings (curtains or perhaps cardboard were blocking most of the glass of the windows), an emergency vehicle go past. It went past my house and to the house on the other side, or perhaps the house on the other side of that. I wandered over to see the emergency vehicle, and went out back and to the front and back again. I started to feel that I was reliving to some extent a horror novel (a specific one), the mood was getting darker and somewhat scary and menacing. It seemed to be very late afternoon, almost twilight, sometimes after sundown, sometimes earlier. I started going around a big building toward the street, a little nervous.

Partway toward the street, I met a mostly black dog, medium size. The dog seemed friendly, but I felt it was there for a purpose, left there to guard that side of the building and perhaps a nearby side entrance. I went by or around it, but it wanted to follow me at a little distance, with its mouth open and its tongue hanging out. I didn't know how long it would follow me and I kept worrying that it would suddenly attack.

I went up the side of the building, pulling myself up on little pieces of metal sticking out, sometimes in the form of little skinny bars almost flat against the building, sometimes as just odd flat pieces of heavy metal. None were very big and none stuck out very far. Going up the building, working my way back some, following where the metal was, I got pretty high, perhaps ten or twelve feet up. The dog was still down there, looking up at me, happily waiting. I took a piece of metal off the building and dropped it on it. The metal fell on its back, close to the hips. The dog yelped but didn't leave. I felt a little bad about dropping the metal on it, and was now afraid that the dog was more likely to be mad at me and more likely to attack.

I came back down and went down the street a ways, keeping back in the front yards, trying to stay somewhat hidden. The dog seemed to stay behind, at least for now. I felt I was being searched for by somebody, though. I think some police or police detectives were also looking for me. It was dark now, and it had been dark when I was with the dog. The area I was in seemed to be small town/rural, no longer the suburban place where the dream started.


I came to a more open area and turned right into it. I seemed to observe someone, and thinking about his situation and storyline, then became him. The person wasn't too bright, at least at times. The street I was now on went downhill, sharply at times. There was some situation with a car and a tow truck. Then there was something hanging from a tree, a long chain or perhaps initially a swing. I took the chain and pulled it way back, and I was in the air over the tow truck and car then, going back, back, back, the chain seeming to play out from the tree an enormous distance. The road was dirt, somewhat sunken, with slanted, sometimes steeply slanted, shoulders. I was high in the air, perhaps twenty or thirty feet, going back up toward the more main street. Then I was going back toward the tree, going through the air, the road slanting downward in front of me. The chain kept playing out and I kept going forward more and still more, somehow staying above the now steeply downward-slanted road.

I crossed an intersection and eventually another, gradually getting closer to the ground while the ground kept falling away from me. I passed a restaurant on the other side of the road and seemed to be coming in for a landing a little ways past it on that side of the road, on a long pile of trash and large collapsed boxes. A woman saw that I was coming down and pulled a very large flattened box into position for me to land on. The box had a lot of oil or grease on it, but I managed to land past at least part of it, trying to keep to my hands and knees to get as little on me as possible.

Behind me, the chain falling across the intersection had caused some trouble, at least with the first intersection. The chain was or had been in the air, going across the intersection, and one or more cars hit it and had gone on to hit other things. The police were investigating and would eventually be tracing the chain to see where it went.

I left, following the street downhill in the dark, and after a while came to another intersection and more houses, houses that faced the intersecting street. The dog was back, and the house on the right side of the street had another dog. This second dog was smaller and paler, with somewhat longer hair, though I think initially it may have been almost a twin of the first. The second dog was in the front yard, inside a low white stucco wall that ran around the front yard of the house. I think it had just come from inside the carport, perhaps somehow also coming from inside the house. I was on the other side of the wall, on or near the street I had come in on, the street that ran between the houses.

I did something to the second dog, and changed it into a small stuffed toy and put it on top of the low white stucco wall. The first dog had left, moving on before I changed the second dog into a toy. I knew the toy would change back into a dog before very long, and it did so just before I left. It seemed that it might be an even smaller dog than before, and it seemed nervous and somewhat frightened and wasn't really interested in me.


I went back toward the downtown area, trying to avoid the tree holding the chain and the investigators, going in a bit of a zigzag, taking different streets. I think at some point I met someone and talked briefly, and they may have given some advice. In the downtown area, I went past an intersection and saw someone, a man in late middle age, looking at me through the windows of a very small corner store, windows that were mostly blocked by cardboard, leaving just a long slit or two open on each side.

Looking in through the slit as I passed, I saw him looking back readying a bow and arrow. The arrows were primitive, homemade like the bow, and had no heads, just roughly broken-off ends. I had been warned about him and others, though perhaps only in a general way. I quickly hurried across the intersection at an angle, going away from him. He fired at me, though, and I could see the arrow, with its splintered end, coming for me in slow motion. I batted it away with my hand, perhaps even turning it back toward him, though if so, it didn't do any damage, perhaps not even reaching him. I continued to move quickly away from him. He fired again at me. I was a considerably greater distance now, but it still reached me. I batted it aside again.


I came to a room. It faced the street, a side street to the one I had been on and going the same direction as the one with the tree, now far behind me. I had continued to go forward in a zigzag, and the room was on a far corner, with the cross street intersecting another street. I think someone was urging me to go in, to hide for a while.

There was someone already in the room, an older man. I went into the room anyway, through a door that led to a room beside his. I think someone may have come in with me, someone who had joined me somewhere along the way, but I'm not sure. Some other, much younger people were there in other rooms, sometimes coming in or talking from where they were. There didn't seem to be a real hallway, just rooms opening to other rooms. The old man seemed to stay mostly in bed, though he was at least partially sitting up or leaning on his side at times. He showed me and the others various things he had made, some no doubt from long ago, that his room was full of.

Through the window, I could see people outside looking for me and questioning people on the street. I think some of the people looking for me were police detectives and policemen, though I think some of the people were criminals, organized crime figures.

The old man took a very small device and showed it to me. It seemed to be a small piece of metal bent into a V shape with one of the sides longer and curved inward and a long skinny bolt going through the two sides away from the fold, toward the outer edges, tightened just enough to hold them in the elongated V shape. Inside the V, there seemed to be some more stuff, including perhaps some wires. The whole thing, including the bolt, was pale metal. It was intended to be held with the hand almost in a fist and the V part between the fingers, with the thumb inside partly holding on to it, partly pushing the trigger. The trigger seems to have been partly the end of the bolt and partly intention.

Although I described it as the two wide halves of the V being held together by the bolt, it now seems that the bolt somehow also went through the point of the V and down its axis, and that the V was actually a piece of metal bent to form a narrow triangle, with the V formed by the ends closing against each other. One side was still curved inward. The side facing out had a narrow flat area formed by two bends, with a tiny pinhole in it and an open slot below it where the flat area disappeared, leaving just the edges of the sides, and the end of the bolt, I don't know which end, sticking out.

The man demonstrated its use against the window, holding the device and pressing it close to or against the window. He moved it slowly down the window, cutting a narrow line. The window was thick, and had shapes or designs molded into part of it. I felt that it might have been something he had made, and I felt kind of bad about it being damaged. I felt too, though, that he probably didn't have much longer to live and knew it, and that he was no longer overly concerned about preserving physical things, having felt that they had largely already served their purpose.

He had me try it myself then, cutting more into the glass of the window (which may have been plastic instead), making a line from top to bottom so that a section of the window could be removed. It was intended that I should leave through the opening. It would be a narrow opening and awkward to get through, but I felt I could somehow do it. I would also be taking someone with me. Although I seemed to have come in with someone, one of the young people there, a girl, would be going with me. It was her decision, but there was at least some discussion about it. She may have also been the one that came in with me, but there's some doubt about that.

Looking outside through the opening, I could see the people across the street trying to find me. Perhaps a couple of them were questioning people. Associated policemen were also scattered around the area. It would be difficult or impossible to escape through the narrow opening without being seen. I pointed the device at them and fired it. It was difficult to do real damage at that distance, although if I kept it trained on one spot it might eventually start going through. A very faint mist was at times visible from the beam, though not usually in the beam itself, just mostly around the impact area.

The person I was aiming at, a man who had been questioning people and seemed to be a leader, turned partly toward me, his mouth open, his eyes mostly closed, a look of discomfort and annoyance on his face. His head was partly forward and his body was getting progressively wetter as it was hit from the beam. He was pushed back some and I think he might have eventually fallen. I might have also pointed the beam at another person, before the first one fell, if he did. Meanwhile the old man warned me, in an almost conversational style, as I first started to turn the beam on the men, "You know, if you do stuff like that, you'll have to keep on doing it."

When it seemed that I had created enough trouble, I went through the opening in the window and the girl followed. She seemed to be in her thirties, perhaps late thirties, though she had seemed a little younger earlier. She later seemed to resemble a little the full-figured woman on the latest Big Brother (Big Brother 9, with people divided into couples). She was blonde and smiled a lot, with big dimples on her face. Sometimes, though, she had a more subdued appearance, perhaps even approaching that of Adrian Monk's assistant, Natalie, from the TV show Monk.


We went back toward the direction I had come from. We had to keep looking out for the police and the detectives and whoever else might be after us. I was in a more open area now, away from the downtown. I went ahead cautiously, slowly going around corners, staying mostly at or toward the backs of buildings. The ground was sloping away now, sometimes leaving open areas at the backs of buildings, where the building was supported on boards, stilt-like. I came around to one area where some people were underneath the building. I was scared for a few seconds, but then realized that they were just bums. I stayed with them for a few minutes, then continued on. Oddly, they seemed to be at least partly aware of my situation.

I came to the back of a building, then, an open back, that had a bunch of policemen and detectives there waiting for me. They seemed triumphant that I had fallen into their trap. The girl who had come with me remained nearby, lagging a bit behind me, perhaps ten or fifteen feet away and to the side. I pointed the device at what appeared to be the main person and fired it. It was almost like pointing a ring, like Green Lantern, the DC Comics superhero, except that I had to push inside with my thumb, though it may have still been mostly intention that did it. The man's body moved back a little with the impact, his arms going out to the side some, his mouth open and his face in an expression of pained and somewhat angry dismay. His body became very soaked with the mist, though don't remember any hole appearing in his clothes from the beam.

Another man came forward, perhaps to protect the first. He wore pale clothing. He turned his back to me as he came, and I fired into his back. His back arched and his head came back, partly turned, and his mouth opened crying out in pain. His clothes became completely soaked and a tiny hole appeared in the cloth. I think he finally fell over, either before or after I moved on to someone else. They seemed to be mostly frozen watching what was happening to the others, until I turned the beam on them. I didn't spend as much time with the later ones.

I tried to leave, going away down the dirt road that was a little ways behind the building, but there were two other people there, a man and a woman, seemingly waiting for me in case I escaped the others. They came from the direction I had been going away from. I fired at the man for a while. He either finally fell or was incompacitated enough that I could get away from him. I fired at the woman, then, but she kept on slowly coming toward me. She was in late middle age, an expression of sadness and pain on her face, tears in her eyes, looking at me accusingly. She got closer and closer, her dress, somewhat lowcut and medium dark, completely soaked, until finally I was firing the device directly against the bare skin of her upper chest. As she came she spoke to me, about what I was doing to her, and the thought came through, whether directly spoken or just implied, that I shouidn't be doing this to her, it was wrong, and maybe someday I would realize that.

I wondered if she was actually involved in going after me. Perhaps she, along with the man, had only a slight involvement, or perhaps even none at all, and that I was essentially firing now on what might be innocent bystanders, though it didn't seem somehow as important as perhaps it should be, as by now I had to fire simply because they were there. I finally stopped firing, though, and turned away, and took the woman who had come with me, and flew away to another place. I don't know the fate of the woman I shot, whether she recovered or not. I don't know what happened to any of them.


We ended up on what was apparently a ship for a while. It seems that we had both at some point had gotten shot, though I'm not sure now which one I first realized had gotten shot. We were in a lounge area, on big roomy stuffed leather chairs with arms and sides. We were naked but had magically sunken in and blended with the chairs, even taking on their coloring, with mostly just our heads and shoulders and arms and legs sticking out, with just suggestions of other things, so it was hard to see much of our bodies. A suggestion of her chest showed, but her hip region was hidden, as was mine. I had a different body than I do normally, young and muscular, though my body was almost completely hidden. We were leaning back and smiling and talking, not seeming too terribly disturbed by our wounds. Some of the nearby people frowned at us, both because we were wanted criminals and because we were sitting there openly naked. Frowning at us because we were basically flaunting our wickedness.

That night we went out on deck, dressed now, looking for someplace to hide for the night. We were somewhat quieter and more thoughtful now, and our wounds bothered us more, though we didn't talk about them. She found someplace on top of something, perhaps a rowboat, and slid down into something laying on top of it that fit her like a sheath, leaving just her head and shoulders sticking out. I was worried about her and asked if she was alright. She assured me that she was. I was afraid, though I didn't say anything, that I would find her there dead in the morning. There seemed to be nothing more I could do though, and, still worried, I left her to find someplace for myself.

In the morning I went looking for her and calling out for her, but I didn't get a response. I finally found the place I left her, and there she was, her head and shoulders sticking out as before. She lay there still, and I think her eyes may have even been open, staring upward. I thought she was indeed dead, as I had feared, but then she turned her head slightly and smiled and looked at me.


Another time, probably before we got on the ship, perhaps after we left it, we were running from the law and came to the end of a building, toward the back. I paused, and saw in my mind that a large number of people were back there, waiting for us, ready to gun us down. I saw also a future in which I had not paused and they succeeded. I did not see them as people but as vague blobs and swirls of yellowish energy. I changed the furure then, and the present, and created a situation in which they were not there. I then cautiously looked around the corner, confirmed that it was empty, and then led the woman through and past the area.

Another time, perhaps before or perhaps after the other one, I got somehow careless or perhaps thought it didn't matter enough, and went into a similar situation where men waited for us behind a building. There were much fewer men this time, and even though I was looking right at them instead of sensing them, some of them still appeared as energy forms. We were fired at and I guess I fired back, but I think at least one of us was wounded then. Perhaps we both were.


Later, after we had left the boat, we were in some region of the Southwest. I believe we still had our wounds, but they seemed unimportant now. I think we had stolen a car to get where we were. We were in the desert near a freeway, not far from access ramps. The place was a complex containing one or more large service stations and one or more restaurants. We were aware that the police were still tracking us, and would eventually get to where we were. It was night. We were walking, and passed a couple of cars that were parallel parked, with the first one, a convertible, having the whole back section full of food.

I reached out and grabbed one or two of the items, probably individually packaged turnovers, and was just going to take them. The woman who was with me turned around and was saying "No," though, and took out some very crisp bills and gave one of them to a man who was with the car. I don't know where she got the money or what denomination it was. I was somewhat surprised to see that she had any. A couple of other people associated with the car were nearby. I think they were people on a vacation, perhaps retirees.

We went looking for another car at some point, wanting to confuse the pursuit. There were a lot of cars getting gas, so there were a lot of possibilities.

I also wanted to get rid of the device. I felt I had had it long enough and that we would continue to have trouble as long as we had it. I was getting tired of all the running and trying to evade the law. I recognized that the magic would go with it and that I would be losing a lot of power, but I still felt that it had to be done.

There followed a lot of confusion and activity, a lot of which I've forgotten. I remember driving around the parking lot, looking for a distant exit to the street, though I think I went back toward the pumps after finding it. This may have been before I took the food, perhaps even at a different complex at a different offramp. I also remember trying to get away from people who were after us.

In any event, I did locate a woman at a pump and gave her the device. I went with the woman who had been with me to steal a nearby car, then. A bit of confusion followed, though I think I did succeed in stealing a car. Some people were after us though, and I think were even after the woman that I gave the device to. The woman I gave the device to didn't really understand what was happening, and she didn't understand the device very well, though I tried to explain it some to her. She seemed to like the device though, staring at it and looking it over.

At some point, with people running around and trying to get me and probably her too, she pointed the device at some low mountains, including a section of Monument Valley-type mountains, that lay beyond the freeway. The mountains were being used as an earthen dam to hold back water, and water started to come through the rock now, coming diectly out of the rock as well as over it. A huge wave, very tall but more as a burst then having a continuous structure, came forward and over us. More water came, and kept coming. Water was even coming out of the rock high in the mountains, well above the level of any water held by the dam, coming out of rocks that should have been dry.

I realized somewhere in there that I still had the magic, even without the device. I looked out at what was happening from near the edge of the pavement of the service station area, the woman who had come with me standing by me. The water was lessening, now, and I began to think that it was getting time to go down the freeway and leave, with the woman who had come with me. I'm not sure now if we would be walking or taking the car I stole, but I was confident about the future.