The house on the highway, Part 5

My grandmother came out to Arizona around 1967, eventually buying the house we lived in at the time. We moved to a different house in the same neighborhood, then moved again to another one, still not very far away from my grandmother.

In 1972, we took a trip back to Missouri to the town we used to live in, driving there in a new Chevrolet van, green with a white top, that replaced our 1964 Chevrolet station wagon. Unfortunately it was not as car-like as hoped, and my mother hated it. We stayed in Missouri for several days, at a motel a little ways from town. When we went and looked at the farm house, from the road, slowly driving by it, we found that the place was neglected, and the hedge had grown up into trees.

Within a few months of returning to Arizona, we got a 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, light blue with a white top. It was a very large, luxurious station wagon, with a tailgate that electrically slid under the floor and a back window that electrically slid up into the roof. My mother loved that car.


On December 15, 1984, my grandmother died at the age of 90. After a funeral here, my mother took a trip back to Missouri, for a funeral for her there also. My grandmother was buried there, in Missouri, in a place that had already been prepared for her. I just attended the first funeral, in Arizona. My grandmother lay there in the casket, with too much wax and too much makeup on, looking only a little like herself. I felt she wasn't really there, though, that she had left, and this was just what was left behind, almost like a doll, something that wasn't really her anymore. I cried a lot at the funeral, though. I cried a lot.

My mother and brother, and some others too perhaps, flew back to Missouri for the second funeral. The funeral was held a little too quickly though, too soon for a lot of people to find out about it. A lot of people later said they would have gone, if they had known about it in time.

Perhaps some weeks later, I was coming into the house through the carport door, and saw my mother sitting at the kitchen table, her back to me. My grandmother was sitting in a chair beside her, sideways to her, wearing one of her purple dresses, a small peaceful smile on her face. I paused there in the doorway, stunned. I think I blinked and shook my head a bit, and suddenly my grandmother was gone, in her place a large, but much smaller, plastic doll wearing a small purple dress. I remarked on it to my mother, telling her what I had seen. Then, or a few days later, she told me that other people had seen her there too, and maybe she should move the doll. My mother later told me, decades later, though I think she might have briefly said something at the time, that she had seen her out in the backyard, looking at things.


In October of 1997, my mother took another trip back to Missouri with my brother, again by plane. He had offered to take her, and initially she had thought she wouldn't go, but then felt that this might be her last chance. She got to visit with some old friends, and my brother drove her to the area of the first farm, the one she had grown up on. The coal company had dug up the whole area long ago, long before we moved away, and had torn the houses down, leaving just a chimney standing. They never found any coal, though, and went out of business. The whole area had been restored since then, and now looked normal, and my mother could even recognize some areas.

The house on the highway, three miles from town, turned out to be a surprise, though. They found that it had been destroyed, perhaps by a tornado. One had gone through the downtown area, only a few miles away, on July 4, 1995. Perhaps it was that one, or another, or even something else. However it was done, it was completely gone, just boards laying over and in the basement. My mother and brother could see past the boards into the basement, and some of the old equipment and things were still down there. It looked too dangerous to try to get down there though, so she brought back a board wrapped in paper. It was a thin flat board, perhaps four feet or so long, with part of the edges split off. We never unwrapped it, except for perhaps a very small place, but I plan to some day.


She never made it back to Missouri again. My mother's health declined, and it became impossible for her to travel long distances. She was sometimes in the hospital every few months, and had several close calls. Nevertheless, there were times when she felt better, and we continued to hope for the future. She was usually able to get up and do things, but as time passed this became more difficult for her, though she still tried.

One time at my sister's house, probably sometime in the last two or three years, my mother saw her mother, my grandmother, again. My grandmother brought her pink roses, and told her that she couldn't visit her as often now, because she, my grandmother, was going to the next level. I arrived at the house after it happened, but everyone was talking about it. My mother was in the living room by then, but they showed me the area by the kitchen table where it happened, and where the roses were left. Looking at it, I could see an odd pinkness there, in the whole area, and something else, and my glance kept going there, to the pinkness. When I was asked if I could see them, and if they were three dimensional, I looked again and thought and concentrated and realized that I could. Initially it was vague, just a suggestion of a shape, almost like a faint three-dimensional ink drawing, with the suggestion of petals, but then suddenly, briefly, it was fully there.


My mother passed away late on November 8, 2010, at the age of 79. The funeral had an amazing amount of people, most of whom I didn't know, and I doubt she did. I guess they were friends of the other people. As it had been with my grandmother, my mother had too much wax on her. She also had the skin of her face pulled down into folds around her neck, which seemed very odd, and certainly wasn't how she looked in life. Like my grandmother at her funeral, she had lipstick on. My grandmother didn't wear any in life, not while I knew her, and although my mother had occasionally worn red lipstick when she was younger, she had not done so for a long time. The bright red color looked odd against the pale bland color they had made her face, but I think she would have wanted the lipstick on her. She looked in general very nice, and her hands looked very natural.

As I looked at her in the coffin, for a moment, for an instant, another version of her seemed to recede several feet away from me, away from the body in the coffin, through the side and the open lid of the coffin, a version of her that was alive and several years younger, partly sitting up, looking toward me with her mouth open slightly, a slight smile on her face, almost of slightly uncertain expectation. She was looking toward me, seeming very comfortable herself, but looking a little unsure of my reaction, of what my reaction to her might be. I drew back, blinking and shaking my head I think, turning away from her. I looked back a few times, but the vision was gone now. It seemed astoundingly real, though, in the brief instant of its happening.

My brother gave the eulogy. A day or two before I had been asked if I wanted to say anything, too. Some other people were also going to talk, and I could say something if I wanted to. I said no. I was really tired and feeling kind of shaky, and didn't feel like I could. And although I didn't know it at the time, I was only a few weeks away from going in the hospital myself. Over the course of the day I thought about it, though, and decided that I really had to say something. I felt it was my duty, that I was the only one who could say the things I was thinking about. I had to do it. I went ahead and wrote it down in a rough draft on the computer, then printed it out. I went over it some more on the way to the funeral and while I was there, making a few minor changes, just in my head, not writing anything down.

When it came time for the speeches, my brother went up and talked, then a few other relatives, then I volunteered to be next. I went up and got on the platform, and stood at the dais and adjusted the very ineffective microphone to point up toward me. I looked out at the crowd, scanning my eyes over them. I recognized a lot of people, but most of them were strangers. It didn't bother me that I had to speak before all of them, though there was a time when it would have. Now I just felt that I had to give the speech as best I could, and try to speak loudly enough so that everyone heard me. It was a fairly long speech, but I think I succeeded for the most part in what I was trying to do. Several more people spoke after me, not all of them relatives. I couldn't hear most of what was said, because of the poor microphone and my hearing problem. Evidently the other people were having a lot more success in hearing than I was, as evidenced by their reactions. I know I was heard, at least for the most part, because of reactions to what I was saying during the speech, and because of things that were said to me afterward, in one case about a specific thing I said, and in another case word was relayed to me that someone had said that I should be a professional writer.

Unlike my grandmother, there was no second funeral. My mother truly never made it back to Missouri again, for she was buried out here, in Arizona. It was in a very nice cemetery though, a place she had visited before her death, and really liked. After the funeral, at the cemetery, I joked that she finally got to ride in a station wagon again, referring to the white Cadillac that had been modified into a hearse. The people with me turned to look at it and laughed, remembering how much she had loved the station wagon.

It was mentioned to me that it was common for coffins to be buried on top of each other there, and that when my time came I could be buried there in the same grave with her, if I wanted. I agreed to have it done, though it wasn't anything official. I assume, though, that it will be carried out, that it will be remembered and the arrangements made, when it becomes necessary for it to be done. That time is probably quite a few years away. I have reason to believe that, but you never know for sure.

It seems like so much of my life is in the past now, though there are still things yet to be done. So much is gone now, and much exists now only in memory.


Many things from the house on the highway are still here, though many are not, lost forever along the way. We still have the swordfish sword, and the old organ, and the plate with my mother's face on it, and the shelves with the glass doors, and Uncle Doc's bookcase, and the heavy wood table, and many other things. I miss the things that are gone, though, and I miss the farm and the people and the old times there, when I was very young. I long ago knew, even when I was still a child, that the times there, at the house on the highway, and at the house on Morley in town, would be the best times of my life. I knew it then, and I know it now.

The house on the highway, Part 1
The house on the highway, Part 2
The house on the highway, Part 3
The house on the highway, Part 4
The house on the highway, Part 5
The house on the highway, Part 6 - Some things I missed


Related posts:

What I said at my mother's funeral
Dreams and visions of my mother
The cat that came back
"Until we meet again"
The bedtime prayer
Jumbo Elephant
Finding my grandmother
Red Rover, Red Rover
The shoe salesman's cigarette
Sliding down the stairs
The Idea of a Circle
The broken baby brush
Streaks in the air
The Clarabell Clown doll
Is this really necessary?
Is someone calling my name?
Blood poisoning
My father and the Air Force
Paper airplanes
My mother tries to teach me about God
Perfume
Snakes

Dream - My mother and the cat that came back
Dream - Grandpa and the violins
Dream - My grandmother is voted president of a club
Dream - My grandmother's birthday party, and old cars disappearing into fog
Dream - I meet my grandmother in a hardware store
Dream - With my grandmother, on the bridge
Dream - My grandmother is younger and admires herself in the mirror
Dream - Young self one and two, dreams of different lives
Dream - Through the doorway
Dream - My dead grandfather helps me look for the dogs
Dream - The girl on the mountain

Falling down - An astral visit to the underworld

On Friday, December 17, 2010, at around 10:15 PM, I was laying on my back in bed, trying to sleep. Perhaps I did fall asleep, or perhaps not, but I became aware that I seemed to be coming out of my body some. My head and shoulders were forward from my body a little, with my awareness in more of an expanded, diffuse state. There was a strange feeling too, and an odd sound, like from around the ceiling, kind of a continuous sound, maybe something like a choir note extending, kind of an aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh maybe.

I realized that I was trying to have an astral projection, an out of body experience, and tried to keep it going, tried not to dampen it, but becoming aware of it and concentrating on it can be counterproductive. I tried to keep a light touch on it, tried to encourage it, but I felt a slight sensation of it easing, that it was trying to fade, with me settling back a little, more toward solidity, but just a little. I thought, well, if I can't go up, let's try to go down, and I tried to move my head and upper body below my real one, intending to try to rock it up and down and maybe be able to get out of my body that way. I started falling through my body, though, going down. I wasn't sure that was a good thing to do, to fall into the Earth. I wasn't sure how to get back up again from inside the Earth, or how to move around in it. Straightening up so I was in something of a walking position, and turned some to face the west, I tried to to walk, bent forward a little, but didn't make much headway.

Then I was on my back again, oriented as my body on my bed was, my head to the north, and falling through the Earth, falling fairly rapidly. I saw above me a narrow square tunnel, like an elevator shaft, but much smaller, maybe only four feet wide, much too small for my stretched out body to actually be in. Even my head seemed to be outside it. I looked up at it above me, diffuse bands of light and dark and color on it, rapidly going away from me as I fell, the surface somewhat uneven and indistinct, almost like it was made of fog. It was transparent, too, to some extent. A deep, evil voice was saying, to the left and above me, that it finally had me, and was taking me down, and I would never get away, or words to that effect.

I watched with interest, the shaft as I fell, the many layers going away from me. I presumed that they corresponded to something, some kind of levels, though they seemed more narrow than levels that were actually floors. I wondered if they were levels of another kind, and what kinds they might be. The voice was a little disturbing, but annoying more then disturbing. I figured I could get out anyway, somehow.

I eventually ended up in a vast cavern, falling through the ceiling to the bottom. The top was perhaps eight to ten feet above me, though in places it was more, perhaps even over twenty at times, it varied a bit. The ceiling was vague and translucent, with the same unreal feel the shaft had had.

I walked along, slowly. The cavern was full of pale structures, sometimes with short walls and sometimes with taller walls. The walls never reached the top of the cavern, and were usually short enough to see over. Their tops frequently sloped sharply away from central joining points, almost like a very small house without a roof, a roof that sloped on all sides. They were also frequently missing outer walls, and only enclosed or partly enclosed very small areas. Sometimes they had some furniture, also pale and very small. There was also a pale wall to the left, much too high to see over, with maybe more high walls beyond it. It did seem that there were several walls to that side, some intersecting. High walls also enclosed the lower walls to some extent, like rooms within rooms. There was plenty of room to walk along, though, and I continued slowly walking, going around things sometimes, going more or less forward.

I could sense something over the walls, some kind of presence, up near the ceiling of the cavern and beyond it, mostly over to the left and behind me. Something or somethings seemed to be watching me, seemed to be aware of me, seemed to have an interest in me. As I walked along, sometimes going through the rooms and sometimes past them, I became more disturbed and worried, and more and more anxious. It seemed it might not be so easy to get out after all. I still had no idea how I might do it.

I started praying as I walked, to God and Jesus, to come and save me, to come and take me away. I remembered reading of people who had done this, who had been trapped in Hell or with evil entities, and had been saved by the prayer, taken away from where they were and saved, taken back to their bodies.

Nothing happened right away. I continued on, still hoping and praying. I became tireder, and a kind of dreariness fell over me.

After a while, the way seemed to be getting narrower. A tall wall was beside me, to my left, and not far away another tall wall crossed it, partly blocking my path, though there was enough room to go around. To the right was the cavern wall. Ahead of me, beyond the short section of wall, I could see the way continued, at least for a while, though it was becoming much narrower. The cavern began to get darker, the light dimming, fading at the edges, closing in on me to some extent, along with a feeling of closeness, a little stuffiness. My eyelids turned downward, half closed. Whatever was watching me seemed closer, closing in.

Then something happened, something came, a presence, coming down from above, in front of me. It was a diffuse darkness in the dim light, at least as big as a man, but much more spread out, probably covering four or five or six feet, with a greater solidness within it. Even in the less solid outer parts, there was still some solidity, but a diffuse solidity, like a solidity that had no fixed place. It reached out toward me, wrapping dark arms of cloud around me, hugging me, and I was taken up, through the roof of the cavern. I don't remember what happened after that.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Winner!

I was a winner for National Novel Writing Month 2010, meaning that I managed to write a novel of at least 50,000 words during the month (November). I completed it, at least the rough draft, on November 26, 2010, but didn't get the word count verified by the website until the next day. MS Works, which I wrote it in, put the word count at 53,076, and the website put the word count at 53,077. This was a little higher than last year's novel, which had word counts of 52,110 and 52,111. The book for 2010 was a sequel of the 2009 one. I joined National Novel Writing Month [ nanowrimo.org ] on March 20, 2009, as user Stephen_M_99.

Quite a few winner web badge images were available this year. Last year I showed them and said I would choose one to display in the sidebar, but I never did. I think I will just do what I did last time, and show them here, in the blog post. If forced to make a choice, I would probably choose the long one at the bottom.











My novel is science fiction, and I described it as follows in the Novel Info section:

Synopsis:

A sequel to last year's novel, the man who was forced into being a time and dimension traveler for a mysterious agency goes through many ordeals and adventures in a learning process, and continues to create his own past.


Excerpt:

"Have you any idea where she might have gone?"

Jack looked at the creature, then looked away. "Not really. She left a note saying she was going to the store, but I don't think that's what happened. She's been gone two days, and someone's been bringing in the newspapers and mail."

"She's been gone that long, and you haven't done anything?"

Jack twisted in his seat. "I somehow time traveled, to two days after she left."

"I see. Why don't you just travel back and see who took her?"

"I can't," Jack said miserably, "I can't. Other people, or... things... are doing it for me. Or to me. I have no control over it, and I don't know what's going on."

"You really do have a problem, don't you?"

"Yes."

There was silence for a moment.

"I can travel a bit, you know," the creature said. "I can try to go back and see."

"You can? Can I come with you?"

"Yes, of course. Come, we'll stand over here." It walked over to the area by the sink. Jack shrugged. It seemed as good a place as any. He walked over, and the thing took hold of his arm. Jack flinched inwardly.

"Here, here, there's no need to be like that. I'm trying to help you, you know."

Jack stared at the hand on his arm. It was a hand. The nails looked a little funny, kind of like short dark claws, but there were fingers and a thumb. The hand connected to a wrist, which was perhaps a little too hairy, but not much, which connected to an arm, which disappeared up the long sleeved shirt. Jack stared at the shirt. It was wearing clothes. It had always been wearing clothes, he realized, he just didn't want to think about it, and somehow hadn't thought about it. Maybe it made it too much like a man.

He stared at its face. It looked serenely back at him. "Do you have a name?" Jack asked.

"Of course. Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes."

"I'm a bit embarrassed about it, actually. They seem to have had a bit of a sense of humor when they named me. It's Bowser."

"Bowser?" Jack chirped.

"Yes. Technically, Bowser Tiberius Smith. Don't ask."

"Okay."

"I suppose you could call me Mr. Smith, but that seems so formal. Anyway, technically it's Dr. Smith."

"You're a doctor?"

"It's a PhD. Don't worry about it."

"Okay..."

"Why don't you just call me Bozo. It's a nickname they gave me."

Jack stared at him. "I... don't think I can do that."

"Oh? How odd. Bonzo, then?"

"No."

It sighed. "Very well. Just call me Douglas and be done with it."

Douglas the dog? At least it would be easy to remember.



Last years novel:

National Novel Writing Month 2009 - Winner!

The closed doors

Long ago, when I was probably around 12 years old, on a trip with my family in our car, I was thinking about how hard it was to think now. I felt that it should be easy, all these things I was having problems with, and I should know a lot more than I did. I was basically raging against it, mad that it should be that way.

Looking out the car window, I then looked upward, with my eyes but also in my mind, and saw the blue of the sky fade into a grainy darkness. I went into that darkness, and I saw a massive, dimly lit corridor, very high ceilinged, with many sharp zigzags along the left-side wall. The walls of the zigzags held massive doors, on the sides facing me. and the wall on the right also had doors. They were very tall, around twice my height, heavy boards reinforced with heavy metal straps, some of the doors even vault-like, metal with layered metal slabs. They were all either closed and locked or slammed shut as I approached them.

I walked slowly down the tall corridor, looking at the doors. After a short distance the corridor turned to the right, with straight walls and more doors, somewhat wider spaced. It went on a long distance in that direction, too far to really see the end. To the left, in the corner, was another massive door, metal and heavily reinforced. It was open, but each time I approached it it slammed shut, locked against me.

Though I tried a few times, going back into the darkness to them, I could never get through the doors, and I knew that I couldn't, not now and not for a long time, perhaps not until near the end of my life. They had been closed, either by me or someone else, to keep me away from the knowledge and abilities that I used to have.

I felt that it had been a decision made long ago, maybe before I was born, and that several people were involved. There had been discussions of it and the decision was made, and was being enforced by those who were left to do it, who kept watch on it, and made sure that it was done. They appeared in my mind as giant figures, as a very small child might see an adult. They were wearing simple, rural clothes, and were in a small room of a house, similar to what my grandmother's farm on the highway had looked like, though they would have been in one of the bedrooms instead of the living room. They were sitting on a small couch in front of a coffee table, and on other chairs around it, sometimes standing, too. It felt that I was also somehow one of them, or was with them in some way, and was taking part in the discussion, was even one of the people pushing the decision, was in fact the leader behind it.

After the discussion was finished, the others got up and turned and faded through the walls like ghosts, on their way to carry out and enforce the decision. The other me, though, I felt had withdrawn the other way some, and upward through the ceiling. He didn't seem to be an actual figure at this point, more like a mostly unseen presence. Perhaps he had always been that way, though it was a presence that could make itself known, and could carry on a discussion in some way, perhaps mentally. It felt, too, that somehow that presence was still out there somewhere, that it didn't all become me, that the greater part of it still watched and waited on the other side of life.

Although I felt there must have been some kind of reasoning behind it, something that was felt to be valid by my other, greater self, and by whoever else was keeping the doors closed, and though they obviously had greater knowledge about such things than I did, I wanted them open now, and was mad that I was restricted in this way.


This could be interpreted as a sense of a past life or lives when I was an adult and had more knowledge and abilities than a child would have. Perhaps a better interpretation, though, would be a memory of a time between lives, when I would presumably have greater knowledge and awareness, and was setting the goals and the path of my next, now current, life. Other interpretations are also possible.

Dream - The short evil angel, the plastic trash bag, and the big meal

On Saturday, July 31, 2010, in the midnight to 6:00 AM area, I dreamed I was driving back and forth to Nevada, sometimes spending a little time there at work. I was recording what was happening on 11 x 8.5 inch lined tablets, lots of them. I was even doing it at places I stopped along the way. I even stopped at some motels sometimes I think, instead of driving all the way at once.

I was eventually spending more and more time at home, still writing on the tablets. I spent a lot of time in bed, too. The bed was neatly made, with a thin white cover with thin dark random lines and dots. My brother was there sometimes, in my bedroom, talking to me, and sometimes my mother, and sometimes my younger sister, too. Things were generally very pleasant, though there seemed some hurry about it, a need to rush, and so sometimes a bit of a feeling of tension. I got quite a bit of sleep, though.

We were going to have a big meal in a few hours, and had hired some people to do it. I thought of it as catered food, though it probably was not quite that way, as it was going to be cooked here. A big white truck came, maybe more than one, and a lot of cooks and other people were rapidly carrying things in, including huge slabs of meat that needed two people to carry, one at each end, slabs that were six feet long and maybe three feet wide and a few inches thick. They seemed very happy as they rushed back and forth, bringing things in, and sometimes briefly talked to us as they went. It was just starting to get night now, probably around sundown.

We were leaving for now, though, going somewhere. We drove to a place and parked in a lot, somewhere to the northwest of home. We came in separate cars, at least partly. Some of the cars had more than one person in them. The lot was already pretty full, but we found spaces to park, in different areas of it. It's possible my father was in one of the cars, I'm not sure. It was night, now. I'm not sure what the original plan was. It seems we were going somewhere, and that we were only partway there, with a lot still to go, but the rest was delayed somehow for some reason.

Walking back toward home, I came across a woman, on a street near where I live maybe, though it seems it might be further out, who had interactions with a little angel. The angel was around three feet high, and shaped like a human dwarf. He was somewhat sinister, and at least partly evil. He sometimes came to her in dreams, and sometimes at least partly physically, though he always seemed associated with darkness, and was never clearly seen. He predicted death sometimes, and told her that her baby would be deformed, maybe even caused it. Her baby was deformed, and lived for a while, long enough to be a small child, and either then died or was killed, perhaps by her, perhaps by the angel, perhaps by someone else, I'm not sure. It seems the baby might have even been caused by the angel, like he was the father, though it seemed like more in a magical way than in the traditional way, like he simply caused it to happen, by his power. She told me about some of this, and I could see it in my mind, and the rest I seemed to sense, like I was partly there when it was happening.

She had the dead child, plus a severed head of a man, in a dark plastic trash bag. The child was very small, and the head was very large and elongated, with the heavy, muscular neck included. The head and neck seemed to weigh more than the child. The woman seemed sad about it, and was a little disturbed by it, at least some, but seemed resigned to it, as the way things were going to be. I didn't see much of how she herself looked, as everything was very dark, though she seemed to be in her thirties, with longish hair that was partly curly. She gave me the bag, and I took it with me. I was going to take it home, though I'm not sure what I was going to do with it afterwards.

It feels like I might have made it home, but then there was a period of time when I was wandering around in the dark, on foot, on a street a little past my home to the east and in that area, going a little onto some other streets I think. It seems I met some people there, happened across them, and talked to them some. I was still carrying the plastic bag with the head and the dead child in it. The bag kept trying to sag, to unfold and get longer, the objects in it shifting around, which was awkward as I kept trying to hold it up, keep it off the sidewalk and the street, keep it from dragging. I was tired and a bit sleepy and not moving very fast.

I finally got back home, still with the bag. There was some problem with the driveway. A slot had been cut in the dirt beside it, on the left side of it, as viewed from the street. The slot was a bit wider as it went toward the house, getting perhaps over half a foot wide. I'm not sure of the purpose of it. It seems there might have been some thought about finishing it up and filling it in, though there was also some thought about using it to enlarge the drive, finishing it up and pouring concrete in it, but this seemed to be a consideration after the fact, after it was already dug. It feels the city might be associated with it in some way, like maybe it was something to do with the pipes. My mother's car, maybe the station wagon, was parked in the driveway beside it, with her and my sister by it, and I talked with them for a while. They seemed concerned about the slot, and whether they should continue on into the carport. I think some dirt and other things were a little in the way, too. There also seemed to be some concern about the engine, or something under the hood, and I sat the bag down in front of the car and spent some time looking under the hood and fiddling with things there. We finally decided to go ahead and put the car in the carport, that it was safe enough to do that, that there wasn't any real reason not to. She drove it in and then they went on ahead into the house. I lagged behind a bit, peering at the slot by the driveway, then I gathered up the bag, which I had picked up again before the car was moved, and went in.

Inside, the house was much larger than in real life, and the people who were fixing the food were almost done. A huge table was set up with food on it, and waiters and other preparers were rushing around with big trays, bringing more food to the table, and chefs were still working with getting the final things cooked, the final things ready. I went into the living room, but had to pause as a man carrying a big tray was trying to rush through from that direction. He abruptly stopped, in front of me, as he realized I was in the way. The head caterer, the person in charge, came in from the other entrance to the living room, with another tray I think, and was frowning at me from the other side of the room. I gathered up the bag and moved slowly off to the side, letting the man through, though I think I took a little of the food from his tray. I know I got some from somewhere. I was eating it, enjoying it, and thinking of the big meal to come.

I got some krill, too, from someone on the other side of the living room. I think my mother, and maybe my sister, and perhaps even the waiter, were talking about how good it was for you, and how good it tasted. Even though the krill was supposed to be good and very healthy, I was a little hesitant about it, though I was interested. I took some and started eating it and some other family members tried some, too. After a while, though, some of them, maybe me included, started to get reactions from it. The backs of one or both of our wrists and hands had swelled up hugely and turned a dull red. We were a bit concerned about this. One of the girls had it happen to her, and maybe my mother, and they were wondering what to do about it. We were in the hall/kitchen area now. I said that it might be the krill, and to stop eating it. I wasn't sure how long it would take the reaction to go away, whether it would be better by the time things were ready to eat or not. They were talking about calling a doctor and asking what to do about it, and I think they did, using a phone hanging on the wall.

I was looking forward to the meal to come, though. It was going to be a big family meal, with a lot of people there. Perhaps even some non-relatives, I'm not sure. It seems, though, that there was something else to be prepared, something else to be cooked and put on the table, before the meal could be considered ready to serve. I had to get the plastic bag with the head and the small child to the cooks. They were going to be put on the table and eaten, too.


I kept thinking that I was writing the dream down, typing it in the computer, and was going over and over it in my mind, putting a lot of it down, sometimes wondering if I had written a certain part, or thinking of the parts I still had to write, that I still had to finish. It seemed very important that I get it all down, and I kept coming back to it. I kept doing it over and over, but I would finally start to wonder if it was real, or if it was just a dream and I was just thinking I was writing it down. In the end it always turned out to be a dream. When I did wake up, the dream tried to slip away, and I had to grab at it, and bring it back, grasping at bits and pieces and filling more of it in, and then grabbing again the parts that wanted to slip away. I finally got it written down, starting probably less than an hour after waking up, or at least waking up and moving around, as I spent some time initially just sitting in the chair, trying to rest some more. I got pretty much all the major parts down, I think, though some of the details were forgotten, particularly in the first part of the dream.

The radio was on, and while I had been sleeping, the Coast to Coast AM show had been playing, including replaying the first two hours. The show had a guest and callers talking about near death experiences, which probably influenced the dream. There was also a show several weeks ago that I had been thinking about, where a man told about meeting a three foot high person with red skin and I think yellow eyes, who said, in a gravelly voice, "I've been in Hell all morning and I can't wait for you to die so I can urinate on your grave." The part about the krill probably came from a later infomercial, with the krill being a source for an Omega-3 health supplement.

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 - The out of body experience and the egg-shaped soap that might be my soul

On Sunday evening, June 6, 2010, I had a dream in which I was at home, but it was different, with a lot more rooms. My mother was also there, and maybe somebody else too. I talked to her a little, but didn't actually see her much, as she spent most of her time in other rooms. Things seemed strange, and everything, even the air, had a kind of grainy feeling. As we talked, I wandered through various rooms, ending up in one that didn't normally exist. It was mostly bare, with pale walls.

I was carrying what seemed to be a bar of very large soap, maybe seven or eight ounces. It was vaguely egg-shaped, but with sharp, almost square, edges, with flat sides and just a little rounded on the top and bottom. I had been intending to take a shower at some time, I think, when I got around to it. Something was going to happen later, it seemed, or somebody was going to come, maybe the next day, in the morning. It was late at night now, and things seemed bleak. I held the heavy soap in my right hand, and glumly looked at the bare, grainy walls.

Suddenly I was drawn away, back to my bedroom, flowing through the air, my body stretched out and distorted, still hearing the voices from the other rooms. As I settled into bed, or my spirit did, I felt a return to more solidity, and became aware that I actually was in bed and had been sleeping, but was now waking up. I still held the large bar of soap in my hand.

Then I felt a change, a kind of coolness, and like my body was changing to bright points and shifting forward, my head and upper body moving partly out of my physical body, moving upward a little, but still not fully out. As it was doing this, my perspective also shifted, the ceiling becoming closer. I recognized what was happening, from the feeling and the shift in vision, the going closer to the ceiling. I was trying to have an out of body experience, an astral projection, and was already partway out of my body. I wanted to have one, and tried to concentrate on making it happen. The ceiling seemed to loom much closer for a moment, like I was right underneath it, so close that I drew my head back some in surprise, squinting at it. I didn't feel too much different, but there seemed to be an increase in outside noise, a kind of muffled roaring and murmuring.

Then I was back where I had been, still on the bed, partway out of my body, but less so than before. I was still holding the heavy soap. Amused, I dumped it out of my hand, to let it fall back over the side of the bed, on the side toward the wall. It didn't seem important now.

I thought, still with amusement, that it might be my soul, like in the book by Roger Zelazny, "Jack of Shadows." In the book, on the dark, magic-controlled side of the earth, a person's soul was contained in an egg-shaped rock that he found he held in his hand, when he died and was resurrected and found himself laying on a mound at the south pole.

If it was my soul, I had just dumped it. Oh well, I could always come back and get it later, I thought, and went back to trying to have an out of body experience. I don't remember much after that, though it seems that something did happen. Maybe even quite a bit, which brings a certain uneasiness to thoughts about it. Thoughts about beings I might have met, and contracts entered into and broken, and struggles with the beings and struggles about them, and an opposing side that helped me, and that I helped, and some difficulty in getting my soul back after all. It seems like something like that might have happened, it feels like it might have, but there's no way to know for sure. I have just the briefest of memories. There was never any soap, though, it was all part of the dream. I know; I looked for it after I woke up.

Dream - Getting fast food and taking my aunt to a restaurant, then going to my brother's house and when I return to the restaurant my food is gone

On Saturday, January 23, 2010, I dreamed I had been at a small shopping center I think, and then went and picked up my aunt, my mother's sister. My mother had wanted me to. I had a big, white, fast food bag in the car with me. I had a big sliced meat sandwich, either beef or ham, ham I think, on a large hamburger bun, and I got it out of the bag either before I picked her up or after, and was eating it. I also had a very large iced tea in a paper cup, all of it from Arby's I think.

My aunt got in the car. There was a lot of stuff in the car for some reason, and it was fairly crowded. She was fussing a bit, and started saying she was hungry too and hoped I had gotten her something. I said that I had and picked up the bag from the floor, near the central hump and slightly on the passenger side, and next to the seat. I opened it and got her sandwich out. It was huge and vaguely squarish, as big as four slices of bread made into a square, but on a kind of hamburger-bun-like thing, mostly square but with broad rounded corners. It might have had some folds on the top. Inside it at the front it had two small hamburger patties and at the back two huge ones, and like mine was wrapped in white wax paper.

She took it, kind of bothered, and was looking at it and was saying it was too big. I had been wondering some about that too now. When I bought it I had intended for it to be that size, and thought that she might give the large hamburgers to her cats. I took back the sandwich, frowning and talking to her, saying alright, I would fix it. I tore off one of the sections with a small hamburger and gave that to her. She accepted it, still fussing some, and started eating it.

I took her somewhere, another eating place. The place was fairly crowded, and I went to a round table, big enough for four people. It had a lot of stuff on it, left behind by other people. I put the bag and my drink on it. My aunt said she had to leave, and put what was left of her sandwich back in the bag. I had intended for her to take the rest of the sandwich, but I hadn't said anything to her about feeding the hamburger she didn't eat to her cats, and she hadn't really seemed interested in it. Oh well, it felt like it was too late to bring it up now anyway.

I started going through the bag, thinking I would go ahead and finish off what she hadn't eaten. I think the rest of my sandwich was in there too, along with something else, maybe some fries, maybe some dessert, I'm not sure. The big hamburger was broken up into sections now, and separately wrapped. To my surprise I found that part of it looked like it had been eaten too, maybe part of both of them. I found the small one she was eating, that was mostly gone, just an arc of it left, so I couldn't have confused them. I wondered if part of the big ones had been torn off instead of eaten. I couldn't be sure, and decided to just eat the part away from the part that looked like it might be eaten. I went ahead and did so, though I don't think I quite got finished. I got distracted by something.

My brother and his wife came, and he was showing me something, in a place he had nearby, that was actually attached to the eating place I think. It seemed to be a combination business and home. His children were there, younger than they are now, still in their teens. There was a big section with long counters, partly in rows and partly in a box shape. They were a kind of grainy pinkish tan, and they had little computers and other small electronic devices on them, widely spaced. At least some of them were things he had developed for his artwork. He pointed them out and showed them to me a little, then went off to the living room, which was an extension of this one, to watch TV with his wife. His daughter showed me around some more, pointing to the devices and talking about them while I occasionally asked questions. At some point the devices changed quite a bit to other things, still small electronic devices though, just different designs. I was given something to eat at some point, maybe when I was talking to my brother, some kind of big puffy bread thing, maybe an over-sized dinner roll, that I carried with me and ate.

I decided after a while that I had better get back and check on the food I had left at the table. I found, then or a little earlier, maybe before I had gone to my brother's place, that another family had come in, and was going to use the table. It seemed like they might just want to use some of it though, and I had hovered around, moving my drink some I think, and moving the bag to a slightly different section of the table. The table was already crowded with other stuff, from before I had first come there. The father, a tall, fairly thin man, was talking and making some room on the table, saying that this one looked alright and part of them could sit here. A worker or two, women, came and were carrying away part of the old stuff.

When I came back later, to check on my food and maybe get a drink or two of my iced tea, I found that though the table still had a fair amount of stuff on it, the bag of food was gone, and though my iced tea initially seemed to still be there, when I moved around the table looking for things, sometimes going toward the counter of the restaurant and back, I eventually found that it was gone too, and I couldn't find it anymore. I was disappointed that it was gone, too.

I eventually left, maybe going back to my brother's place, but then leaving again in my car, still crowded with things. I needed to go somewhere, maybe home, though I think I was going somewhere else first, maybe to a shopping center, perhaps the one I had been to before or another one.


I think the dream had a lot more, particularly in the beginning, more at the shopping center and maybe even some at home. Somewhere in the dream, maybe earlier, maybe in a different dream, I was out with my car, and stopped at the base of a tall dirt cliff. I had something with me, some item I was holding, maybe something I had found there, and was talking to someone, maybe my mother, who maybe was still at home. I might have been on a phone, though I was also holding something else, and someone was with me. I initially forgot all of it, but some started coming back within a half hour or so.

Dream - Shopping at a hardware store, then riding on top of a train while someone tries to shoot me

On the night of January 19-20, 2010, Tuesday-Wednesday, I dreamed I was in a very big hardware store, shopping for something with some other people. We had to leave, then. It was almost time to close, but we had to leave anyway. I wanted to look at things one last time. We were trying to find some stuff as part of something we were trying to put together for a gift for someone. I was trying to find some kind of small mirrors and silvery pipes, maybe one and a quarter inches wide. I convinced the others to let me try one last time. Only a couple of them or so were with me, near the exit. My brother was there too, either with me there or still back in the store. The others were still back in the store somewhere.

I went along the front to the other side, then back into the interior of the store. At the back I raised up in the air, to the top of where some tall ladder-like things were stored, maybe 8 to 10 feet high. I tried to get above them, to a shelf they were leaning against, but it was hard. I was pulling myself up, trying to get on top of them. I had been intending to quickly fly along over things, looking down on them. As I pulled myself up, the ladders kept growing, getting higher. They were very high, maybe 14 feet. By the time I finally got on top of them the shelf had grown too and was a few feet wide now, and seemed to be aluminum with some small narrow ridges running down it.

A store manager had been keeping an eye on me, from maybe 10-15 feet away. I was also an employee now, a fairly new one, who had gotten into a little trouble before because of something, and I was a little worried about being reprimanded again or even fired. I walked along the shelf for a little ways. The manager had gotten up on it too, and was fiddling with something on the wall. Besides the pipes, which were smaller now, maybe half or three quarters of an inch thick, and the small mirrors, which were round or oval, I was also carrying a small screwdriver and pretended to be doing something with it, tightening some screws up there.


The scene changed, then, and we were on top of a train, going away from the city, going east. We were quickly out in the countryside, for the most part. Another train was maybe 20 or 30 feet away to the left, to the north. The manager stayed ahead of me, to the east, for the most part, though sometimes we were close to each other, and sometimes talked a bit, and sometimes we were 5 to 15 feet away. We went past occasional crossroads. Someone was trying to get us now, shooting at us sometimes, sometimes from below.

A few superheroes showed up, to try to help us. The man trying to shoot us had actually hit someone, me I think. I was wounded in some way, though I'm not sure how.

I got off the train onto a road that curved in from the north and then went east. The manager or somebody else also got off, maybe more than one person. I think at least one person got off before I did. The bad man got off, too. The train was still moving, but was not going very fast, probably less than 20 miles per hour, maybe less than 10. I don't think it ever went terribly fast, perhaps 30 to 40.


I went off the road among some small hills at the curves. Sometimes I was in a car and sometimes on foot. The hills were mostly dirt, sometimes with a reddish tint. There were two other roads here, being built through the wilderness, parallel to each other, sometimes going across or along gullies and small canyons. I went along the road for a while. Other people were there too, trying to make their way east. Some others were on the road going back west. I made my way back to the main road.

The scene repeated in part a few times, and I went off a long exit ramp to a road that the previous road went underneath, deeply recessed at that point. A few other people did, too. It seemed to be night now, but not very dark. I went left, and got to a road to the north, maybe the main one, and headed back west.

I got back to the curve. I could see where the car swerved earlier and went off the road into the hills. The heavy skid marks were there, and then it repeated and the person was actually the villain, disguising himself as me, or at least pretending to be me. He didn't actually look like me, and seemed to be wearing some kind of minor costume. Some superheroes flew in, to check on what was happening and to help. The villain talked to them, talking about what happened, telling some false story, pretending to be me. I stayed back among the hills, but finally came out, and exposed him. He went off then, trying to escape and hide. I left, too. The superheroes were looking for him, but there was some concern on my part about him going after me.


I was going away from the city again now, apparently on the main road going east, but after a while it seemed to actually be going north, and maybe even northwest, maybe toward Wickenburg or maybe even past it. I pulled off the road at a place with a few buildings, set back from the road a bit, with a parking lot in front and some tall bushes in front of the road. It didn't seem to be too far from the city, at the edge of it. It felt more like a road not too far from Central Ave., maybe even Central itself, though probably not, since it didn't actually go too far out of the city. My brother was out driving too, along with some others. I'm not sure how many cars were in the group, but he had at least one other person with him in the car. I think my father was in one of the cars, too. It was still night, and darker than it had been earlier, though there were some lights along the road, and by the buildings. It was a place I had been to before in other dreams. I talked to some other people while I was there at the buildings, some of them from the group. I'm not sure my brother got there before I left.

I went back toward the city, and stopped at a place that felt like it was on the northwest corner of 68th St. and McDowell Rd., or maybe 64th St. It was a convenience store, a place I had been to in other dreams. I'm not sure it was actually at that location now, though. While it felt like it was there, it also felt like it was further north. I talked briefly to some people there, and went back to my car, which I think I might have parked near the road. I was expecting my brother and/or father to come, but I'm not sure whether they did before I left. I drove back out onto the street, heading south.


I became more and more aware that I was also laying in bed in my bedroom, laying on my back with my legs apart a little. The radio was playing somewhere, in the next room I think, though it was still clear. I would go back to the dream and then back to being aware of being in bed. Sometimes I was doing both, in bed while the dream was distantly happening.

After a while I was more and more in bed, then was becoming aware that it wasn't real either, that I was actually sitting in the chair in front of the computer, with the radio nearby. I figured that I was laying back some in the chair with my head back. It's an office chair and doesn't recline, though it can tilt some. I thought that I must have my left leg on my briefcase, which was sitting upright on the floor, and my right leg on my plastic lunchbox. This would mean that the chair was turned to the left, with the computer and its desk on my right. It felt very much like I was laying in bed, though. It was a very convincing illusion.

My right leg was tingling more and more though, my calf, and was hurting near the ankle and some on my foot, places where I had sores. The other leg was starting to tingle some, too.

Eventually I was just outside the dream, feeling like I was laying in bed still, and listening to the radio. This went on for a while.

I finally decided that I needed to move, to get my legs off the things and back on the floor. I wasn't sure I could still easily do it, though. I finally opened my eyes and raised my head in a smooth dreamlike motion. I was a little surprised, I wasn't sure I would be able to. I then took my legs off the things, one at a time, my left leg first I think. My calves had been laying on them with my heels hanging over. They still felt funny with my feet on the floor, deadened some, almost half asleep. It took a while for me to really recover. I stumbled out of the room. It was hard to see properly, and hard to keep my eyes open. It had been a fairly long dream.

Dream - The Clark Kent-Superman movie, and the superpowered actor who portrayed him

On Tuesday morning, January 26, 2010, I dreamed a house was being moved, on a street a little to the south of where I live, lifted up, on a giant forklift-like device. My father and my younger sister wanted to do it for some reason. It was put in the street next to the sidewalk, in front of another house a few houses down the street to the east. I figured they probably didn't appreciate it being there. We were staying in a house a few houses to the west of the house that was moved. I'm not sure who owned the house, it seems like it might be my grandmother or my sister. I knew a little more about it in the dream. It had been moved at night, I think, but time passed and it became the next day. I wondered if I should try to move it back myself, but didn't really feel I should. There was a question, too, of where I should put it.

I flew around in the air, looking at the houses nearby in the neighborhood. I saw a house on a street a little to the east, a street that went north-south in a slight curve. The house had a small auxiliary house directly beside it, filling up the side yard. It looked ancient Greek or Roman, and had files of columns, and appeared to be made of concrete, with a peaked roof of concrete. I flew on, then looked at it again as I came back. I found another place with a small auxiliary house the size of the other, but it was slightly more normal looking, darker in color, with pale tube-like things going along the corners and roof edges, and as designs in other places, still with some columns out front, possibly with a flat roof, unless I've got the roof style switched with the other one. It was out in the front somewhere instead of in the side yard, maybe even in the street. I thought of how I would tell my mother about them, as examples of what other people had done, to make fancy buildings to store stuff in, even if we didn't have the money to do it right now.

Scenes from the new Superman movie that was going to be released (in the dream) kept breaking in to my consciousness. It seemed fairly lighthearted, with a lot about Clark Kent in it. The person playing Superman didn't look like anybody who had played him, though perhaps closest to the one in "Superman Returns." He looked more like the comics' version by Curt Swan, though perhaps a little slimmer.

The scene that kept being advertised as a kind of title picture, showed Clark Kent looking almost like he had just tripped, on his side, just above the ground, his feet separated and a little higher than the rest of him, making it appear that he was actually flying and had just swooped in. His long light gray coat was flaring out around his legs like a long cape, and his head was lifted a little and turned back looking past his feet. He was holding the hand of another Clark Kent, who was on his knees I think and leaning forward, his back mostly to the camera. Past him was Lois Lane, standing, her arms out slightly, leaning forward slightly, her back also mostly to the camera, but like the second Clark Kent with some of her face showing, appearing to be somewhat surprised.

I saw briefly also that scene as it came to be, the few seconds leading up to it, and it did seem that he had flown in. Other scenes also showed sometimes, sometimes fairly long versions of them, several seconds, maybe even minutes. I eventually became him in a way, although it was still a part, and he was still somehow a separate figure, and I had his powers, or at least some of them, and the movie was in some way based on my life, or something about me.

I went to find my mother, to tell her about the movie, that they had finally made it, that I had finally got something done. I think I might have written it, or had a hand in writing it, or it had been based on something I had written. I went to where she was working. She had a job behind a counter in a big building. Another person, a man, was also there. They were separated by several feet, talking to different people. A lot of what they did was apparently help people out who came and asked questions. There was a very large, mostly empty room in front of the counter. I think it had some things, but I'm not sure what.

My mother looked a lot younger, maybe in her fifties. I talked to her about the movie, happy and a little excited. She acknowledged me and talked to me a little, but seemed distracted and generally didn't look my way. There were some other people back there too, in a back room. I could sometimes see them briefly. There were also a few scattered people in the large room, coming and going. Talking to people wasn't all she did. She seemed to also be concerned with something on or just behind the counter, some papers that were laying down, maybe in a file.

I moved off a bit out into the room, still talking to her. Though the room was mostly empty, there were a few long things, sales racks and shelves, with small merchandise on them. One was sort of parallel to the counter and one was at right angles to it.

I moved to the one that was sort of parallel to it and then went around it to the other side. I raised up my lower legs and glided along beside it, talking, demonstrating to her, even if she generally wasn't looking, and even though I had moved now around to the side of the display where she couldn't see that part of me, what I could do. I had starting gliding though, I think, while still on the side where she could see it. Part of me was concerned that other people might also notice, and part of me saw that a woman in front of another counter that was some distance away, and by a wall that was at right angles, more or less to the first counter, had turned to watch what I was doing, and a woman behind the counter there who was helping her also seemed to be looking. I felt that they would probably discount what they were seeing, that it couldn't be true, though part of me wondered if they might try to follow up on it.

I left the building, and went out into a kind of winding alleyway that went along beside the buildings there, which seemed to be the lead-in to a park. It had a tall concrete block wall lining the passage. Behind me I saw or sensed some people from the store starting to follow, including the woman who had been in front of the counter. I went down the alleyway toward the park, then came back. Some kids, teenagers or a little younger, were following me, both ways. Evidently they had seen something.

I came to a section where there was another partial concrete block wall inside the other, in the passage, off to the side with just enough room to go behind it if you wanted to. It had a sloped top, slightly rounded but not much, with the tops of the blocks cut to make the slope, and a layer of cement on top I think. It wasn't as tall as the walls, getting to almost six feet at the highest point. I went along quickly behind it.

Then it replayed, and replayed again I think. I seemed to be watching it now, with the person doing it no longer me but a separate figure, an actual Superman figure, though not dressed as Superman. As he went along the partial wall he ran his hands along the top, accidentally putting too much pressure on it and pulling some of the top blocks, or partial blocks, as they were cut down versions, off. He slapped them back on quickly and somewhat roughly, acting like they made a mistake when building it, and rushed on. The kids were staring open-mouthed at it and looking at it and at each other, and going closer to examine the blocks better. He was going to repair it later I felt, when people weren't around, or have the real Superman come and do it. I felt that he was somehow just another person portraying him, though he seemed to have at least some of his powers, though reduced versions of them. I wondered if the real Superman would be mad that it was done, and if he would be mad that other people were going around portraying him.

I moved along to the park-like section and went to the right. I seemed to be going along now in front of a school. I was moving along an area in front of rows of buildings. The ground was sloped some, going up and then leveling off and maybe even back down a little before the buildings. There was a concrete curb before the grass, with a paved area that ran along beside it. The ground where the slope was had some dips now and then, making it look a little like hills. I stopped at one, but I also seemed to be watching the Superman figure again, who again wasn't dressed like Superman. He reached down to one of the dips, where a pipe stuck up, and water started shooting out. There was also a pipe and faucet back at the nearby building, with a hose I think that ran to the dip. I thought it was another thing that had broken and would have to be fixed, and someone from the building was wailing now, about it and about something else, something to do with me, and the Superman figure looked a little upset, and sometimes looked toward the building.

I woke up when the phone rang. I had been sleeping in a chair, by the computer, making the phone closer and easier to hear.


Earlier, maybe before 6:00 AM, I had a dream about school, and going there, and having to take a test I hadn't studied for, something with a lot of math and equations. I'm not sure I had even read the book once. I had intended to at least go over it some, but time ran out and now I wasn't sure I could remember anything. I had trouble finding the room for the test then too, and it seemed to keep replaying. The test became less important, though, as it went along, until there was some doubt it was ever actually given, or if it was it wasn't really anything that mattered, almost like it was some minor advertising thing, some kind of minor survey the teacher was doing for some clients. The dream was fairly long.

Dream - The superhero emulators, the stolen object, and the dog with the toy train

On Sunday, May 23, 2010, in the morning, I dreamed I was in my grandmother's house in Arizona. It was different, though, larger, and had a room-size basement near the kitchen. I became a couple of comic book heroes, particularly Spider-Man, though I wasn't really them, just emulating them, with reduced powers. At the same time I was apart from them, watching.

Time was repeating itself with something getting stolen or not stolen, something just outside the front door, something small, like a hardcover book with some little object on top of it, and a strap around it all, only it wasn't a book.

In the basement room, a couple of bad people came, and attacked one of the sometime heroes. I intervened and beat him up. The other one was holding back, partly hidden near the doorway, and higher up than the floor, near the ceiling. The Spider-Man person was still out in the back yard exercising, swinging around with the webs and climbing on things. He wasn't in costume, I think he was shirtless and just wearing pants. He eventually came back in, and was attacked by one of the men, I think the one I had beaten up. The man was fighting with him and I was watching incredulously; didn't he know he was trying to fight Spider-Man? Though he wasn't really as strong as the real Spider-Man, he seemed to be stronger than the guy he was fighting. The other man crept out and was trying to attack him too, and I beat him up, then joined in and beat up the man the Spider-Man figure was fighting, quickly ending it. Then I threw the bad guy out into the back yard, just gave a quick casual toss and out he went. The Spider-Man figure had turned and stared at me, somewhat surprised by it suddenly being over. The two people had been sent by the enemy, a man who was against us, and who was trying to steal the object outside the front door.

I had finally managed to save the object, after several times of having it stolen. As time repeated itself, I had found it there in time and retrieved it, and was happy and somewhat triumphant about it, though I knew it wasn't over, and I would have to keep watch, because time would repeat itself again.

I went out from the basement into the front room, and was talking with my mother, who looked younger, maybe in her early fifties. While talking I noticed to the left side, as determined while inside facing toward the front door, still in the front room, there was a dog something like Spats, a dog we used to have, large and shaggy, but with some gray in its hair instead of mostly being white. It went over to the right and began playing with an electric train engine, which was on a couch out in the floor not far from the front window. A lot of things were on the couch, it was pretty much covered with them.

At first it just seemed to be a small dark electric motor mounted on a small board, along with a few associated things, but it later changed to become a little train engine. I wondered if it was a good idea for the dog to be playing with it, and remarked on it to my mother. She seemed interested, but discounted the idea that it could be a problem.

I looked toward the door and saw that it was time already, as the incident kept repeating itself, and someone had come up and was snatching the thing again, which was laying down just outside the front door. I saw it through the door screen. I said something and got up and ran outside, accosting the perpetrator on the edge of the porch, although he was not the actual thief, just the mastermind.

As I went up to him I had been more my normal form at first, normal at least for the dream, as I was somewhat younger and slimmer than in real life, and still at least somewhat tall. Then I was gradually assuming the form of, or taking over the body of, a short, proper old man in 19th century clothes, with a large upturned collar.

At first I was standing there as I normally was, taller than him, holding him by the face and neck, angrily threatening him, demanding that he give the object back. He was smugly refusing, saying he didn't know what I was talking about. Of course it hadn't been him personally, I knew that, it had been one of his men, but he was responsible and knew all about it.

Then the police were coming up the walk or beside it, talking, trying to calm things down, talking like they knew me, dressed like police in the early 20th century. I found then I was gradually changing to another persona, an angry old man, the owner of the house, dressed in 19th century finery, and my hand drew back until it was just holding onto his neck or face a little bit, and then back further till it was not even that, more touching the lace sticking up around his neck, while he, slightly taller than me now, another old man, looked back at me smugly and haughtily.

The policeman, about to give a more stern warning, and maybe take me in, now looked uncertain, and was saying, "Well, if nothing really happened... Come on Mr. so-and-so," referring to me, I don't now remember the name he gave, trying to calm me down to let the other man go.

The policeman was leading him away, then, to the man's carriage, down the wide concrete steps at the edge of the concrete porch, and into the yard, which was partly paved and partly dirt with a little low grass.

I shouted, "What if I have proof!" in the sharp snappish voice of a cranky old man.

The other man, the enemy, halfway or more to the carriage now, turned and sneered at me and said, "You have no proof."

The policeman, down by the carriage, rounding to the other side of it, sounding somewhat distant now, said, "When you have the proof, call me. Until then...."

I watched him help the man get in the carriage. It was a horse drawn carriage, and it had to go over a swimming pool to get out. It was in the way, a small narrow swimming pool with brick along the edges, an outer row and a slightly sunken inner row. I watched as the driver slowly, carefully moved the carriage over it, the tall wheels going along on the slightly recessed row of bricks like it was on rails. I watched, fascinated.

Then as it neared the end it speeded up and turned to the left, the two wheels on its right going over empty space over the swimming pool, without any problem. The carriage continued on into the street, through the wide opening in the tall, black, iron fence, going away.

I turned and went back to the house, returning to my more normal appearance, for the dream figure. I went back into the house and resumed talking to my mother, hoping that when the scene replayed we could catch it and stop the thing from being stolen. The dog began to lay down train tracks from the couch, on little slabs that it joined together. The tracks went from the couch down onto the floor and turned towards the door, then going out the door and down the short steps immediately beyond it, onto the concrete front porch.

Dream - The complimentary cake

Sunday morning, May 23, 2010, I dreamed I was in Nevada, driving off to work and then, after work, driving back to town. I was in the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile, I think. I had recently come back from Arizona, maybe the previous day.

When I left for work, I was worried about having enough gas, but I thought if I had to I could stop at a couple of places before I got back to town, particularly the service station on the corner where the road turns toward town. I didn't want to, though, and besides I was a little suspicious of the service station on the corner's gas, and probably more so of the other one. I did have enough gas to make it back, though, and didn't think about it after that.

I had read something in the previous day's local newspaper, in the want ads, about someone giving out free cake tonight. They didn't say free, it was some other word meaning that, maybe complimentary. They were doing it because of something else that was happening, maybe a special occasion, maybe a fund raiser, maybe something else, I don't remember now. I thought I would stop and get some on the way back from work. I thought about it off and on that day at work, sometimes looking at the ad again, and sometimes wondering if I would really go ahead with it, but I kept reminding myself of how I had wanted to do it. I also thought if I should mention it to other people at work.

I was driving back into town now, into a neighborhood. It was night, early evening I guess. I didn't take the turn I normally did in the neighborhood, I went the other way. One of the cars from work went by, turning in the normal direction, the people in it looking back at me, probably wondering what I was doing. I took a few more turns, and the street itself turned back to the left, the area beyond it a broad dirt area. A lot of cars were parked along the curb. It was difficult to see the numbers painted on the curb because of them. I went on for a short while, just a few houses, then decided, based on the numbers and my feeling about the matter, that I had gone too far, and the house I was looking for was way back, maybe near the corner. I picked up the paper from the seat beside me and peered at it in the dark. It was supposed to be number 75.

I parked back at the corner, in the dirt area, and walked up beside a house and looked in the front window, from a distance. The kitchen table had a lot of stuff on it, including some large odd shaped un-iced white cakes, apparently in the shape of animals, maybe rabbits. A woman was there, slightly overweight, and a couple of kids. This looked like it was probably the place. I thought I should probably ask them.

One of the kids, a boy, went out back to the swing set. I went out there too, at a distance, staying out of the yard. The mother came out the back door, and I saw that what she was wearing was a pink flowered house dress or nightgown. She called to the kid to come back inside, that it was time to eat, and the kid said something and started to head for the house. The woman turned around and started to go back in. The soft rain falling on what she was wearing looked oddly slick and shiny, and I realized that she was wearing a transparent raincoat over her dress. I also saw that the dress had a seam down the back which had separated in the area of her rear, maybe two or three inches. Nothing was visible through it right now, though, it was just a dark line in the seam. I wondered about the advisability of actually asking them about whether this was the place with the cake, and wondered if I should just leave and forget about it. I really wanted some cake, though.

I went back to the front, and the sidewalk, and wandered there for a bit and among the cars, thinking I would try to find the house numbers on the curb I guess, and maybe getting some courage to knock on the door, when I saw an old woman out there, dressed in fancy clothes and heavy makeup. She was smiling, grinning, and asked if I was looking for the cake. I said that I was, and she took me in the house. The younger woman and the kids were at the kitchen table, the woman standing. The kids might have been, too, or might have been sitting down, and the woman was talking to them. I looked over at them as we went into the house, but we didn't go into the kitchen with them, and they ignored us, paying no attention.

The old woman took me instead to the left, to a table in another room. A huge rabbit-shaped cake was sitting upright, with light brown icing in heavy swirls. It didn't seem to have anything cut out of it yet. She talked to me, still happily grinning, as she went to it and made a cut up on the head, not quite enough to get the piece loose, as it still needed a cut down from the top. Then she reached down to get something to put it in, a piece of plastic wrap. She asked where I was from, and after a slight pause I said Arizona. She was asking something then about that, some nice conversational comment maybe, and apparently forgot where she had started to cut the piece earlier, and put the triangular serving blade under the bottom of the cake, where the bunched legs of the rabbit were. Still talking and distracted, she lifted up and tried to take the piece out, which hadn't been cut at all, and a big section broke off the cake, going up about eight inches, slanting to an edge at the top. She looked at it, startled, and said, "Ohhh!" Then, grinning again, said that I would just have to take the whole thing, referring to the large piece she had broken off. She put it in the plastic wrap, somewhat awkwardly, got it sort of cradled in it, and gave it to me. I thanked her and left.

I went out into the night and the soft rain, holding the cake that was awkwardly set into the somewhat bunched plastic wrap, which went around the bottom and up the sides some like a bowl, and not too much at the top. I was eating the cake as I went, and slowly walked back to the car.

I found it was the old green 1970 Chevrolet El Camino, a mid-size car that was half pickup truck. I had left the window most of the way down too, in the rain. I hadn't intended to be gone this long. Trying to find where the door lock was, I saw that it was in an odd place on the back fender, a foot or so from the wheel. I put the key in and turned it, and a window started to rise up from the fender that formed the side of the pickup bed. I think the window in the door also rolled up. I was startled, not expecting this, especially the window in the fender. I guessed it was some kind of automatic thing that had been built in, in case someone put a roof over the bed.

I got in and tried to shut the door, but it wouldn't latch. I wondered about that, thinking about a car I had that kind of trouble with, but it hadn't been this one. I wondered if this one had developed it, too. I seemed to be too crowded also, that might be part of it, I was too close to the door. I tried to scoot over some, without much success, and turned and saw to my surprise that my father was sitting there, and on the other side of him was one of my nieces. They were both younger than in real life, and she was still a child. Then I realized that this was one of the car models with a back seat and four doors (which didn't exist in real life), and I was in the back seat. I got out and went around to sit in the front. I had a lot more room, there.

I slowly backed off the dirt into the street, and turned so the back was pointing down the street. Another car was now trying to come from around the turn, and had paused. I put the car in drive, feeling tired and sleepy, but the car was still rolling backwards a little. I looked at the transmission markings and wondered if I had moved the lever enough, whether it might be in neutral instead. It was hard to tell. I moved it over some more, and after a pause, because of its age I guess, it suddenly caught and the car started slowly moving forward.

I drove around the curve and started looking for a way out of the neighborhood and back home. I sometimes ate my cake as we went. They were both somehow in the front seat with me now. My father suggested I share it with my niece, and, I guess, with him, but I had been looking forward to eating it and didn't want to. My niece started whining about wanting some, and started to cry a little, and my father was saying I should give some to her. I said, somewhat irritated, that I would find some place that was open and get her something there.

I went to the left and found after a little bit what seemed to be a main road, though it was just two lanes, and got on it, going left. We drove away, the neighborhood on our left, and very little our right. Soon we were driving through a long area that was largely empty, seeming to be on the outskirts of things. After a while, I found what seemed to be a very small shopping center and turned left onto it. A few other cars did too, not many. It was closed, and I think I was just looking for a place to rest, to sleep for a while, though I'm not sure I did.

Then it was getting lighter, toward morning. I started the engine and began slowly driving along the shopping center parking lot, trying to find a good place to get back on the road. There was a break in the curb, but it was raised too high from the level of the parking lot, which was mostly gravelly dirt in that area, and I thought the car would bottom out if we tried it. We seemed to be somewhere in Arizona now, on the outskirts of things, though it didn't feel that we had gone very far.

I finally got out somehow, turning right, going back the way we came. After a while I stopped at another small shopping center. It seemed to be in the afternoon now, on Sunday. I carefully drove through it with my car, through the entrance and into the building and then out into a large open area, a kind of large outdoor plaza, with the shopping center forming a big rectangle around it. Some kind of local celebration was going on, some kind of Indian-themed thing, with pots and ceramics and other things on display, and various minor games set up for the kids.

I drove slowly and carefully through part of it, along the edge of it. They had some little pots and ceramic figures set up in a partial ring in the way, though, a little ways into it, and I had to carefully thread the car through them. I turned right, then, and headed slowly into a space between buildings, heading out of the shopping center, but then turned around and headed back. My father was asking why I didn't continue, they might have had a shop somewhere on the other side where I could buy something for her to eat, but I said no, I wanted to try somewhere else. I didn't say any more, but I just didn't want to try searching around this place any more, it seemed too much work, and it bothered me to be in there with all this activity going on.

I tried to go back the way I came, but found that the ceramic stuff on the ground was now too much in the way. There was enough room to walk through, but not drive a car. I stopped and stared at it for a while, and started to go and then stopped again. There wasn't any way I could safely drive through it. Like before, it curved around an area with a tall thing in the middle, maybe a statue and fountain, but now there was just no opening big enough to get through.

I finally reached down the outside of the car door with my left hand, my right hand still holding what was left of the cake, and, still inside the car, picked the car up. With my feet sticking out through the bottom of the car, I then walked on through the display, and went through the entrance to the inside of the shopping center. I found though, that the way out was narrower than I remembered. Instead of double doors set together, they were now set apart from each other, with maybe eight feet between them. They were also being locked by some women. It had evidently gotten too late and the place was closing. It was still afternoon, but might have been around 5:00 now, and I guess the place, not being in an area with a large population, closed early on Sunday.

They saw I was trying to leave and one of them went toward a door to unlock it, the one on the left. I stared it it. It seemed awfully narrow, just intended for a person to go through. I finally headed for it, thinking it would have to work somehow, that I would make it work, somehow. While the woman held the door open, I went toward it, and I found the car was narrow enough now that I could walk on through, and I walked on through, happily.