Dream - Iced tea with Paul Newman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream - God of storms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Wordzzle 74 - Judgment

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the eighteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

fair warning,
hormones,
journalism,
philanthropist,
burgeoning,
running the bulls,
saturation,
tossed in the towel,
whine,
indelicate details

"I'll give you fair warning," the psychiatrist said. "This will probably end up costing you a lot. Each session, in fact, is too expensive for most people."

"That's okay," I said. "I'm not wealthy enough to be a philanthropist, but I should be able to handle it, at least for a while."

"We should get started, then, to make the most use of your money. What seems to be your main concern right now?"

"I have had a lot of strange dreams. Sometimes of good things happening, but usually of very bad things. I feel that they are trying to tell me something. In fact, sometimes I am actively looking for things in the dreams. Sometimes I am going down corridors full of locked doors, and I try key after key in them but none of them work. Other times I am in a maze of rooms that I can't get out of. And sometimes it's a maze of mirrors, where I keep seeing my own reflection over and over."

"That is odd, but we all have things we hide from ourselves. What about the other dreams, the ones about the disasters?"

"They tend to be about battles being fought, in what is apparently a horrific worldwide war. I hear the whine of bullets and the sound of explosions. Sometimes I see, from somewhere in the air, saturation bombing. Sometimes I even see mushroom clouds. And sometimes I'm just looking at a vast screen, watching the arcs of missiles going across a map. Sometimes I see refugees gathering outside ruined cities, some dying and the rest facing starvation. All I remember, though, is just fragments. I don't know how it got that way, how things had deteriorated so much that something like that could happen."

"What about the dreams with the good endings?"

"In those, the war never happened. The world is almost like an Eden, with burgeoning greenery, plants everywhere, everybody has enough to eat and all the nations are at peace."

"Very interesting. You do know, don't you, that dreams are normally about us and our situations, and shouldn't be regarded as saying something about the world at large, although sometimes current events can be incorporated in them."

"Yes, I figured that. I used to be in the journalism business, but had to get out. I was afraid I was putting the news in my dreams, or at least fears brought on by the news. It didn't stop after I left, though, and years have passed since then. I really feel that they are trying to tell me something, not just about me but about the world. I do feel that I will be a part of it, though. An important part."

"Hmmm. We are all major figures in our own dreams. Perhaps it's simply that."

"I feel that it's more than that. It's been going on for a long time, and though I don't really remember much of any dream, a sense of things has settled in, and I feel that they're trying to tell me something important, about something that will really happen, and about the role I will play in it, or should play in it."

"What is it that you want from me, then?"

"I want you to help me find out what the dreams really mean, but not in terms of dream symbols, unless they can be translated to show what the dreams are saying about the real world. I also want to know what my part is. You are a trained hypnotist. I want to be hypnotized to find out what they mean. I'm sure my subconscious mind knows more about them, and I could probably remember more of them under hypnosis."

"Yes, I could hypnotize you, but we should have a few sessions first, to give me a chance to know more about you and for us to become more comfortable with each other."

"I understand, but we really need to speed this up. I don't know how much time I have. The war might happen soon, or it might be years from now. The dreams don't give me any indication, except that since I seem to be important in some way, it will be sometime in my lifetime. However long that is."

"I guess we could have a preliminary hypnosis session, then. Probably more will come out in later sessions, though, after we've had more time to establish trust. Okay, now look at me, pay attention, I'm going to put you under..."

I opened my eyes. It didn't feel that anything had happened. I looked at my watch, and found that quite a bit of time had passed. "I guess you really did hypnotize me, though I don't really feel much different. Did I say anything interesting? I hope it didn't include too many indelicate details."

I looked over at him, and found he was asleep. I was unable to awaken him, and finally left. I never received a bill from him, and was unable to contact him for future sessions. He never answered the phone, and wouldn't return my messages. At first I thought he had simply tossed in the towel on me and given up, but later I began to think that it was something else.

There were always people, somewhere, who wanted war. Some just wanted to rule over other countries, perhaps even wanted to rule over everything. Others just regarded it as a game, almost a test of manhood, like running the bulls. Sometimes the bulls won, though. Sometimes things didn't go your way, but they never really believed that would happen. Not unless they simply wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. And sometimes everything would look fine, with the world heading toward peace, and a tiny spark would send everything the other way, with clouds of war quickly burgeoning. Sometimes it seemed that people simply had too many hormones.

I had begun to see my place in all this. Although I didn't remember anything from the hypnosis session at first, as time passed more and more of it came to me. I was remembering more of my dreams, too, and remembering other things. I did have a crucial part to play in all this. And there was a plan. In fact, it dated to before I was born. It was not something that would happen right away, though I did have to get started at it. I had years to go, but I had to be at the right place at the right time, and the world had to be ready for what I had to do. Sometimes, the road taken is more important than the road not taken. It all depends on what you want the ending to be.


Mini Challenge:

hard labor,
lurid,
quick fix,
sizable contributions,
trumpet

"90 days hard labor!" the judge said, slamming down his gavel.

"Wow. Wow. What are the charges?"

"Failure to make sizable contributions to my account, and playing your trumpet late at night."

The man looked at him blankly. "I don't own a trumpet."

"You don't? But then, who..." He peered at the papers in front of him, and shuffled through them, looking confused.

"Um, it was me, Dad, I'm practicing for school, remember?"

"What? But, Timmy, but, but... Well, okay, we'll talk about this later." Turning back to the man he said, "If it wasn't the trumpet playing, what are you here for?"

"I was just passing through town, and I was under the impression I got caught speeding."

"You got caught speeding? How? The place is too small to have a police department, and we're too out of the way for state troopers to bother setting speed traps. It's too small to have a judge, too. I'm normally the mayor, when I'm not at my normal job, running the general store and service station. Where's the arresting officer?"

"I didn't get arrested, and the officer didn't stick around. He just told me to come here."

"Hmm. Do you at least have a ticket?"

"Just this," he said, handing the judge a paper.

The judge took it and stared at it. "This isn't a regular ticket. It's just something written on paper. It doesn't even have the officer's name. Rather childlike lettering, too." He stared at it for a few moments, rubbing his chin. "What did this officer look like?"

"I don't know. He kept his hat pulled down low and wore big dark glasses. He was pretty short, though."

"Dang. I knew we shouldn't have gotten Billy that police uniform for his birthday."

"But he was driving a car, with lights and a siren."

"That doesn't mean anything. Everybody around here can drive, as soon as they're tall enough to look over the dashboard, and usually before."

"But the light and siren?"

"There's a junkyard a few miles off. All kinds of things there."

"I'm, um, free to go then?"

"Well, there is the matter of speeding."

"But he wasn't a real police officer! And that's not a real ticket!"

"Doesn't matter, you've pretty much admitted to it."

"Actually, I didn't. I just came here because I thought I had been given a ticket for it, but the person who gave me the ticket was impersonating a policeman and in any case couldn't be relied on to give correct information regarding that. He was just play acting."

"Are you calling my son a liar? Maybe you deserve some hard time after all."

"For speeding?"

"For speeding, reckless driving, wasting the court's time, whatever else I can add on."

"Wow, this is really great!" a woman said. The man turned and looked at her, and saw she was busily writing on a pad of paper.

"Oh, no," the judge groaned. "Not another lurid headline!"

"Yes, but this one will really fit the story," the woman said.

"You have a newspaper?"

"Just a newsletter she mails out every few weeks or so. It's usually full of ordinary things with fantastic headlines."

"Well, I have to make it sound like something people want to read! But I don't have to try very hard with this one! How about 'Judge Throws Book at Imaginary Speeder'?"

The judge groaned. "Look, maybe we can just do a quick fix on this. Mow my yard and we'll call it even."

"'Judge Sentences Crazed Speeder to Quick Yard Work'"

"Alright, alright! Go ahead, you're free to go."

"Um, there is one other thing."

"Oh? Well, what is it?"

"He confiscated my car."


Mega challenge:

fair warning,
hormones,
journalism,
philanthropist,
burgeoning,
running the bulls,
saturation,
tossed in the towel,
whine,
indelicate details

hard labor,
lurid,
quick fix,
sizable contributions,
trumpet

The sign shone luridly through the smoke and fog. It was only a gas station sign, but I couldn't even tell that until I got close. I thought of using the pay phone and trying to find directions, but it wanted a sizable contribution to use it, more than I had with me. It was probably for the best anyway. I felt too exposed at it, even with the dim visibility. It could have been just the general mood of the place, I guess, the overall foreignness of it. I picked a damp newspaper out of the trash and tried to read it in the dim light. It didn't have anything useful in it, except showing how much journalism had slipped since I stopped reading them.

I heard the whine of a car approaching and hid behind the trash bin till it passed. No point asking for trouble. The last incident hadn't worked out well, and I had learned to be a little more cautious. I decided to sit down there for a while and try to get some sleep, even though I really didn't have the time for it.

I had been on the run for days, and I wasn't used to such hard labor. Not anymore. The wound in my side was hurting, too, the one I told the girls I got from running the bulls. I had never done such a thing, but it was a better story than the real one. I had a lot of things like that in my past, with plenty of indelicate details that no one needed to know.

The sound of a trumpet woke me up, but it turned out to be just a kid on a bike with a fancy horn. I started to get up, and a burgeoning pain spread throughout my body, and I fell back on the pavement. I had to get up, though, and finally did, gritting my teeth.

I had to get some money, too. I needed to go out and search for a philanthropist, but the bums along the street had probably passed the saturation level. I wouldn't blend in with them, though, and would stick out like a sore thumb, which could be good or bad.

It felt like almost anyone else would have tossed in the towel, but I knew that I couldn't. Not yet. There would be no quick fix for me, and no quick fix for this. I had been given fair warning before all this started. Quite detailed warnings, in fact. My head was in the clouds, though, and I didn't think of them. Not really. I never thought it could be like this. Never thought it could get this bad. All I could see was the celebrity and the money, or the possibility of it. It was like an injection of hormones. If so, it had pretty much worn off now.

I looked at the ever-present cameraman, and wondered how my partner was doing, wherever she was. I had never known that "The Amazing Race" could be so rough.

The second Great Imagination Award

On Sunday, July 26, 2009, I was given the second Great Imagination Award by Akelamalu on her blog Everything And Nothing. This is also the second time I've won it.



She had written a short story for a Portrait of Words, and wanted readers to leave comments supplying the ending. She then had people vote, in another post, by leaving comments saying which one they liked the best. The ending I wrote received the most votes.

The post below is the one in which the winner was revealed and the award handed out:

Everything And Nothing: Who won....

I made a comment there thanking everyone, which I'll repeat here:

Thanks everybody. And thank you, Akelamalu, for having the contest and for the beautiful award. I am very happy to accept it.


This is my winning entry:

Dolly continued to work at the diner, waiting for Geoff to return. He sent her an occasional letter, which she cherished. She wrote him back, and sent letters much more frequently than she received them. He spoke about the strange places he was visiting, and about how much he missed her. She spoke about how nice it was to hear about such things, places and customs that she never dreamed existed, and told him about life there in the hills and about how much she missed him.

Although he had said he would be back in a short time, months passed and then years, and still she waited. The hill people were starting to feel sorry for her, she knew, but she still kept waiting. She even turned down the men who wanted to date her. As time passed, her brothers and sisters grew up and all got married. Still she waited. Finally a man came in, a stranger, who still looked somehow familiar. Then she realized it was Geoff, years older, his hair streaked with gray.

"I'm sorry it took so long," he said. "I meant to come back earlier, and almost did several times, but I was afraid that if I did I couldn't bear to leave again. I was trying to save up enough money so that I could retire and stay here with you. We could still travel sometimes, but then it would be for fun, and we could go wherever we wanted."

She looked at him, wanting to hug him, wanting to throw her arms around him and never let him go, but somehow reluctant to make any move toward him. She said, softly and with a little sadness, "Did it really have to be so long? Couldn't you have come back at least sometimes? You did get vacations, you know."

He looked back at her, then turned his face to the side. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't. I couldn't bear to come back and then have to leave again. I thought of you almost constantly, though." He turned his head toward her again, fear and pain showing in his eyes. "There isn't someone else, is there? Someone who has taken my place?"

Several seconds of silence passed between them. She almost started to say something, but then stopped. Her face was unreadable.

Then she finally said, "There is someone else, but he has not taken your place. Come in Tommy, and meet your father." A little boy came in, who looked like both of them, and they all hugged each other, tears of happiness running down their faces. He had come home, and he would never leave them again.

A dog without a... toilet paper holder?

We have a tan and white Pekingese, large for that type of dog but still small as dogs go, and a Boston terrier. One day the Pekingese found something out in the yard and started chewing on it. I went closer to see what it was and found it was an old wooden toilet paper holder, painted black with most of the paint gone. It was the part that goes inside the roll of toilet paper, with a spring inside so it could be pushed in to fit into the holes and then pop back out to lock in place.

I thought it might not be a good thing to chew on, so I decided to try to take it away from him. He knew I wanted to get it, though, and kept looking at me while he softly crewed on it. Every time I started to get close he got up and ran to another part of the yard. Finally he was back by the cedar tree, laying down under the edge of it. I slowly got closer to him, talking softly while he eyed the hand I had way out in the air, slowly moving it closer to him. His mouth opened slightly, ready to bark or bite, his eyes looking to the side and upward at my hand. Suddenly I grabbed the toilet paper holder with my other hand, and flung it toward the side of a large bougainvillea bush.

He gave a startled yap and walked over there to try to find it. He nosed around the tall grass there for quite a while, looking disappointed but hopeful, and perhaps a little embarrassed at having fallen for the trick. He didn't find it, though. A while later I looked for it too, but didn't find it either. Over the years since then I've kept an eye out for it as I've cleared the grass away and raked the area, but I've never seen it. Maybe it got raked up with some grass and leaves, and was hidden by them. Or maybe it's still out there somewhere, in a place I haven't looked.

Several days ago I was telling the story again to my mother, and she suddenly looked very interested and said she was thinking about that toilet paper holder a few days ago and wondered what had happened to it.

Dream - The computer in the sky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream - An angel beside me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Dream - Space aliens are coming to get us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wordzzle 73 - Life on the river

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the seventeenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

riverboat,
procrastinaton,
drank,
demons,
invisible,
candle,
enough,
film stars,
summer job,
computer

The film stars on the riverboat drank heavily, haunted by demons visible and invisible. The movie was supposed to take just a few weeks to film, just a short summer job, but it was dragging on forever. The director kept reshooting scenes, and having new ones written, and then demanding the rewrite of half the script, but it never seemed to be enough. When it came time to shoot the scenes, though, many times he would just sit there, looking like he was afraid to do anything. It was starting to seem like it would never be finished. Even the stars were getting late to show up now, not caring much about it any longer. Procrastination was rampant.

Then the computers and all the electronic equipment got flooded when the riverboat hit a rock. The movie was being shot digitally and all the scenes that were shot were lost. Even the latest versions of the script were lost. All that remained were paper copies that were largely outdated.

The scriptwriter sat on a rock on the river bank in the darkness, frantically trying to write down all he could remember. Beside him, a few candles burned, giving off a dim light. Nearby, the director paced. Every now and then he would say, "Why don't we do this instead..." and the scriptwriter would write down the new suggestion, then try to come up with a way to work it in that seemed halfway believable. From somewhere in the darkness, surrounded by a greater darkness, a hand, or something like a hand, reached up toward the sky.

It began to rain. The candles went out. The scriptwriter began to weep, silently, the tears mixing with the rain. The director continued to pace. "You know, we could work something like this into the script. I can just see it. The riverboat hits a sandbar, and they all have to get off, to lighten the boat and make it easier to get it unstuck, then a big storm comes up..."

The rising water washed over the scriptwriter's feet, and he got up and moved away from it, clutching his soaked pages, when he tripped over a root and fell, then slid into the river. The pages floated away. He floundered around and finally caught a projecting root and pulled himself back on the bank. It came to him then that the pages were gone. He had been writing on the latest printed copy of the script, which meant that that was gone, too. He felt his pockets. Even his pens were gone. All he had left was a strange little idol his cousin had given him, something he had picked up in South America.

He sat on the bank and wept some more, than got up and cautiously made his way back through the darkness. The director was still talking. "They heard the distant sounds of banjo playing, and they went toward it, hoping to find shelter..."

In the darkness something laughed, silently, unheard.


Mini Challenge:

general demeanor,
surprisingly,
masked man,
reach,
standards

The general demeanor of the invisible masked man didn't reach the standards of most people, but he figured, not surprisingly, who could tell?


Mega challenge:

riverboat,
procrastinaton,
drank,
demons,
invisible,
candle,
enough,
film stars,
summer job,
computer

general demeanor,
surprisingly,
masked man,
reach,
standards

I drank some more, and watched the riverboat go by. I hadn't been much for procrastination before, but I seemed to be getting a handle on it. Not too much had happened lately. Calling it lately may have been optimistic, as it had been going on for years.

Film stars walked by, pretending not to be film stars. Some kids went by on skate boards. No summer jobs for them, I guess. A bum walked by, talking animatedly to an invisible friend. I thought of saying something to him, but he seemed far enough gone already.

Then a masked man came by and pointed a gun at me, and demanded all my money. I told him I would have to get back to him. He hesitated, but evidently sensed something, or saw something in my general demeanor, and surprisingly turned around and left. I had plenty of money of course. More than enough for me and anything I wanted to do. I could have created an interesting little situation with the would-be robber, but I couldn't seem to get up much enthusiasm for it. Maybe next time.

I reached for the bottle and poured another drink. There was a time when I had better standards, but it was in the receding past, becoming a blur of memory.

The day was fading into evening. I lit a candle and gazed into it for a while. It didn't tell me anything new. Out in the river, another boat went by, mostly invisible in the darkness. I didn't have any trouble seeing it, of course. There wasn't much I missed, if I cared to take the trouble to notice it. I was caring less and less about taking the trouble, though.

A man came to a table, then, not far away, and started working on something on his laptop computer. I raised my glass in a toast to it, and took a sip. The computer screen turned blue and a cryptic error message appeared. The man cursed, and slammed it closed and threw it in the river. I grinned, and had another drink. The day wasn't a total loss after all. I had managed to do at least one good deed.

At least good as far as demons went.

Red Rover, Red Rover

We moved back to Missouri in late 1965, and moved back to Arizona in the summer of 1966. While we were in Missouri, in the spring or summer, one time the kids in the neighborhood got together and played a game of Red Rover.

The game is played by choosing up sides, which then stand in two opposing lines, holding hands, with two or two and a half feet of space, more or less, between each person. The two sides stand a good distance apart. Then one side, after some discussion about who to pick, calls out to the other side, "Red Rover, Red Rover, send [chosen kid's name] right over," and the chosen one would then leave the opposing line and run across to try to break through the line that was asking for him {or her}. If he broke through, running into the hands that were being held and causing them to separate, his side won, if the line held and didn't break then that side won. Beyond that, I'm not sure now what the rules were. It may be that a score was kept, and it may be that if the person broke through the line, his side could keep sending people over until someone failed to break the line. I don't know anymore.

In the game, the neighborhood kids were of various ages, with two long lines of them. I was near the left end of my line, perhaps two or three kids from the end. I was in the seventh grade and tall for my age, and overweight. I was bigger than all the other kids, much bigger than almost all of them. Nobody tried to break through where I was, which was understandable but a little disappointing. I had been kind of hoping someone would try to break through where I was, but at the same time a little unsure about it, since there was a chance that I could lose.

Then one of the larger kids, somewhat athletic looking but a few inches shorter and much lighter than I was, was called. He looked at me with kind of an evil grin and started running toward me, toward where my right hand held the hand of a much smaller kid. If anyone on the other side could break through where I was, it was him, and he looked like he regarded it as a challenge he might win. As he got closer, though, his assured grin faded somewhat and his eyes looked uncertain, even fearful. He kept running determinedly, though, coming toward us very fast. I was worried, myself, and held very tight to the hand of the little kid beside me, and even closed my eyes briefly at the very last instant.

I hardly felt anything, just a slight bump.

I opened my eyes and looked. My hand still held the hand of the person by me. A wave went down the line, with the people swaying backwards and then forward. Near the other end of the line, it got so bad that one kid had to let go, to stop from falling forward. I didn't see the person who ran at me, though. My hand held, but he wasn't in front of the line, or behind it either.

Then I looked down and saw him, lying on his back on the ground, with his neck under my hand, which was still clasped to the other person's. His whole body was on the other side, with just his head on this side. He was rubbing his throat and moving his head back and forth, looking distressed. The game stopped for a while, to give him time to recover, and the kids gathered closer together, in groups, talking to each other. Perhaps the game even ended. He was eventually alright, though.

Dream - The vampire who loved me

Late in the evening on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, I had a strange dream about a vampire woman who loved me very much.

In the dream, there was something about a large low building. A few people had been there earlier, but most had left. It was dark. Earlier the dream had been about other things, but that part is almost entirely forgotten.

Now, a woman with dark hair stood in the building, wearing a grayish purple dress that went straight across the front with the shoulders bare, and a lighter colored small jacket that was mostly open at the front. She was a vampire and was in love with me. The others had found out who she was and she was afraid that they would try to kill her because she was a vampire. Apparently I hadn't known, either, and may still not have known.

She decided to take a thick round wooden peg, maybe eight inches long, and push it in her chest. I wasn't there but watched as a bodiless dream observer. She was trying to make herself into a sympathetic character and show that she really loved me and wasn't going to do me any harm. I wondered if she was faking it, if she was really shoving it into her heart. There was an earlier version of the scene, where she shoved it in and then pulled out the top of her dress a little and looked and you could see a little blood between her breasts.

Now, she had pushed it in some, looking upset and worried, her lips sometimes trembling a little, then she would shove it in some more. She pulled out the top of her dress and looked, but there was no visible blood, just an little area of thick clear fluid between her breasts, like seepage from an injury. She pushed the stake in some more, until only an inch or two stuck out, her head tilted back a little. She didn't die, though. It seemed she had a few minutes, in spite of the vampire legends. She was strong enough to last that long, maybe even over half an hour. I needed to show up soon, though.

The other people were somehow aware of what was done, or maybe it was just people in general, or the collective unconscious, with almost murmuring thoughts, what will he do, will he save her? There was a sense of great expectation, as people or whatever it was waited to see.

About that time I woke up, either by myself or by my mother, who asked about me feeding the cats, though I think I woke up a little before she came.

I lay there and thought about the dream, and replayed it in my mind, and then seemed to drift back after a while to where I was at least partially back in the dream, and I came to her and found her standing with the stake in her, and seeing the situation I immediately pulled it out, working it back and forth with my fingers until it was loose enough. It replayed a few times, and I wondered if I had obtained a pair of pliers and initially used that to loosen it, though if so it was not shown. In any case, I got it out.

She put her left hand softly over the hole, not trying to stem the flow of blood, as there wasn't any. She stood there quietly, softly looking up at me. I looked at her as if to say, how could you doubt me, how could you think I would do anything else?

Dream - Superman and the two Superboys, and the superhero hideaway in another dimension

On February 21, 2009, I had a dream about Superman and two Superboys, and a superhero hideaway that was created in another dimension.

In the dream, I was with some other people, in the parking lot of a large shopping center. I think some of them were relatives, family members. My mother and father might have been there, not necessarily together, and perhaps a brother or sister. The light was dim, either evening or very early morning. A lot had already happened, but only vague impressions of it remain.

I went across to the other side of the shopping center, past a road going through the parking lot to the shopping center, past the landscaping along it that had small trees, into a smaller area of the shopping center that was surrounded by landscaped areas with small trees. Perhaps trees were even being sold there, maybe even Christmas trees. Some other people were there.

We had been about to leave earlier, but I felt called over to this area, that I had to go there. Maybe I felt I had to check on something or there was something I had to somehow do there before we left.

It seemed then that they were doing some filming there for a new Superman show or movie. I watched, but also became associated with the Superman character. He probably looked more like the one in the new "Superman Returns" movie than any of the others, though he didn't look precisely like him. I think I might have said something to the people there, or at least one or more of them that I was with earlier, or tried to do so or at least thought about it, about the Superman scenes they were filming.

They lifted the Superman actor straight up in a standing position with a bunch of strings attached to him, then he turned so that his body was more face down and flew around a little bit, but the area was criss-crossed with low power lines and they kept getting in the way. He had trouble and kept having to go lower to get under them. Sometimes he was beside them, even sometimes touching them, even sometimes with his hand resting on them. I was concerned, but he seemed to be unaffected by them.

Then the strings weren't attached anymore to the equipment, but just trailed off behind him as he flew, streaming back from his fingers and probably other parts of his body. They were thin and light in color, almost transparent, almost ghost-like. They seemed to be magic somehow, and were helping him fly that way. He flew off over and partly through the trees to the other side of the road that went through the parking lot. Though earlier the shopping center had seemed to be in another state, perhaps Nevada, it now felt like it was in Arizona.

There was a Superboy then, not looking like movie or TV representations of him but probably something like depictions of him in comics in the early 1960s. He was probably mid-to-early teens and was evidently Superman's son. Superboy flew up but had trouble getting past the trees and the parking lines, and had more trouble flying. Superman watched, sympathetic but with a little amusement, hanging in the air. Superboy finally got past the trees, tending to fly low and then back close to the pavement when he got past, maybe ten or fifteen feet above it. He was flying with the pale strings pushed in front of him, in somewhat rumpled streamers, apparently maintained in that position by his will. There was also a smaller Superboy, perhaps around ten or younger, who also then flew up from the same place in the parking lot as the others, and more or less joined them, going to their approximate area.

The teenaged Superboy flew off away from the shopping center, crossing a main road, perhaps twenty or thirty feet in the air now, sometimes more, and headed across relatively undeveloped areas toward another shopping center, approximately where Woolco in Tempe used to be. He was dipping down and flying much lower now, going over some cars and then back up some and over and through another clump of trees in the parking lot, nervously trying to remember to keep the strings up and ahead of him, to help him fly. Superman and the younger Superboy had flown out some distance behind him and to the side. Superman had gotten a little ahead of him now and hung in the air, watching.

They came across Lois Lane, coming out of the shopping center, where she had been shopping or doing some assignment or maybe even worked there. She had had a break-up with Superman some time back, and was still somewhat mad at him, mad enough that she hadn't forgiven him. She looked something like the newest Lois Lane, but also some like the earlier Lois Lanes. He tried to talk to her but she rebuffed him, talking only briefly, basically keeping her nose in the air, though she had to anyway to even look in his direction, since he was probably twenty or thirty feet above her and a similar amount away from her, though sometimes he was closer. She tended to purposely look away from him, though.

Superboy flew off to the side, going across the road again and off to some place else. Superman finally did the same, though the scene repeated a few times and finally ended with him flying off too close to the shopping center, scraping the edge of his hand along the upper edge of the building, leaving a long dark line of damage in the pale stucco, perhaps over a hundred feet long. Then he turned more and went out over the road, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet up, flying under some low power lines but going too low, seeming to have trouble maintaining elevation but also seeming not to care too much, and crashing through the upper part of a stuccoed wall that was either a tall ornamental wall enclosing another area, perhaps another shopping area, or was an actual part of a building, an ornamental edge projecting up. Then he came back and was going down the road between the two areas and past them. It was darker now.

He came to an odd pale elevator set low over the road. The road either was blocked by it or that part of the road ended there or the road went under it. The elevator went to another dimension. It was where superheroes went when they were not out doing things. It was a place of safety where they could be away from the world and no one could get them. Lois Lane followed after him down the road, evidently having second thoughts.

At least a couple of other people were already in the elevator, people from the other dimension, acting as operators for the elevator and escorts to the dimension. They were dressed casually in normal, inexpensive clothes, darkish pants and pale shirts, perhaps with open vests or jackets. Superman got in the elevator with them. Lois Lane came up to the open door of the elevator and wanted to get inside, but they kept turning her down.

The door finally closed and the elevator started going down, but one of the men's fingers got caught in the door, along with some cloth, and the finger was stretched as the elevator went slowly downward. They halted the elevator and finally had to go back up at least part of the way and then open the doors, at least enough to get the finger out. They then went back down. At some point, either when they reopened the doors or at another time, Lois Lane got on.

The other dimension was a strange place, looking like it was an entirely manufactured place, like it was initially lacking everything, maybe even form and substance, but was forced into its present configuration. Things were mostly gray, and the light was pale, almost sourceless. The area was a large space perhaps hundreds or more feet across, with a concrete floor and with walls of what looked like huge heavy pieces of canvas sewed together, that went up maybe fifty feet or so and turned to form a distant ceiling. I got the impression that beyond this area, on the other side of the walls, was basically nothingness, like a formless fog, that what I was looking at was the whole dimension, and that as it was worked on and expanded, it was done by working with the formless possibility that existed there. I was there also, sometimes as Superman and sometimes as a watching presence, and was told, perhaps through explanations to Lois, that the area was still under construction, evidently continual construction, and that the walls got pushed out as the area grew.

The area was mostly covered with rows of widely spaced long tables. It was very thinly populated with people, some workers and a few other superheroes. The tables had shelves underneath them and sometimes a little ways on top of them. The shelves held various strange artifacts, not generally very big. They seemed to be made out of some kind of copper alloy, at least in some cases, though I think some looked a little more like stone or even wood. They seemed to be very old and had a rough, light grayish tan coating on them, though I wasn't sure that they hadn't been made recently and had been created that way.

It seemed sometimes that they had in fact have been of recent creation, at least some of them, though I'm not sure that it was a case of faking something. It may have been more like creating exact copies, indistinguishable from the originals even at the atomic level, and actually at least partly pre-aged, like the aging was really aging done by time that had somehow been placed upon them without them actually having to have existed throughout that time.

I got the impression that some of them were supposed to be from Krypton, or rather made new as objects from Krypton. Some of them appeared to be single-piece machines or parts from machines. A lot of them had strange markings, evidently Kryptonian, though they looked like runes.

Superman, showing them to Lois, picked one up and bit into it, leaving marks on the soft metal. Superman seemed to have lost a lot of his powers here, though it seemed initially that he hadn't. He seemed now though to be only a few times stronger than a man, at most, and could fly a little and was evidently still hard to hurt.

Then Lex Luther was somehow there. It felt like he had been there for at least a little while. He may have been taken there earlier by Superman or one of the other heroes, or he may have made at least part of the way there himself. I got the impression that he had wanted to get into it, thinking that he could get something from it, some kind of power maybe or technology and maybe do something while he was there. I was under the impression though, that someone had to take him the rest of the way, that he couldn't actually get in himself or even come close to it, that all he had done was just get into the general area of the elevator. Once here though, he was helpless, he couldn't do anything and I don't think he was even restrained in any way, he was trapped simply by being here.

He talked in a hard, angry voice to Superman, perhaps from fifteen or so feet away, aware that he couldn't hurt him and intimidated by his power. He got a little closer, perhaps half that distance. I'm not sure whether he moved or Superman gradually made his way in that direction. Superman had been moving along and among the tables with Lois, showing her things. Finally he picked up both Lois and Luther, Luther still complaining, and flew with them to the other side of the area, to where it narrowed to a smaller room that was almost an offshoot, where he landed and set them down.

It felt like the section was newly built and was still unfinished, and not quite as solid as the rest of it. There were a few tables here, and an occasional worker. The canvas walls, not far away, hung a bit loosely, without much tension. Superman sat down at a bench in front of one of the tables, with Lois sitting to his left and Luther sitting several feet to the left of them.

Superman quietly talked to Lois, with periods of silence. The area felt quiet, and seemed to promote silence. Luther, still somewhat angry, still sometimes talked, but in a lower, more subdued voice. Voices tended to be more hushed here anyway, and paler, like they were partially lost in the vast nothingness that lay nearby, just beyond the canvas.

Dream - I meet my grandmother in a hardware store

On January 30, 2009, I had a dream in which I met my grandmother in a hardware store. She had died long ago, and I was very happy to see her, and managed to get a hairpin from her as a keepsake.

In the dream, I was at a shopping center, looking at toilets and toilet repair parts, including hinge pieces. My mother was there, too. She wandered off looking at other things, though we sometimes met up again. It was mainly two big stores with a doorway between them. Both had hardware, but the one on the right was an actual home improvement/hardware store.

After looking for a while in the store on the left, near the doorway to the other store, I went through the doorway and looked some there. There was a high counter near the doorway, back in the store a ways. One or two people were behind it and a bunch of people were in front. There were also a bunch of things on display around the area by and on the counter and on the shelves that formed a somewhat narrow aisle leading to it. I looked at things for a while. A lot of stuff was in boxes, but some little things hung from wire racks.

Suddenly I saw my mother's mother, my grandmother, who died in late 1984. She was in the crowd around the doorway, leaving, trying to work her way through it to the other side. I called out to her and quickly tried to make my way toward her. She turned and looked back at me, head lowered slightly, with a very sad and slightly guilty look on her face. I followed her through to the other side, talking to her, saying how glad I was to see her again after so long, thinking not of the time since her death but the time since I had a significant interaction with her in dreams. She didn't respond, but kept trying to turn away from me. We were in the other store now, having crossed over, and were in a little aisle near the doorway.

She was carrying something like a long hairpin. It had a big square plastic head perhaps half an inch across, a very light purple in color with molded designs like flower petals in it, with two long wires maybe three or four inches long sticking out of one end. The wires looked fairly strong, what was visible of them, and I guess it could have been a very long safety pin. I don't know if I ever actually saw the other end of it, because it was usually being held in someone's hand. However, she wore long hairpins in life, though with more subdued ends on them, so it's more likely to be a hairpin, and I'm not sure what use she would have for a safety pin that large.

I got around to the front of her, facing out now toward the central lane of the store, the one that leads to the doorway. I reached for the hairpin. She gave it up somewhat reluctantly, holding on initially and looking up some at me, but after a second or two she let go. I wanted to keep it to have a remembrance of her. I hugged her. She felt solid, but didn't respond, and continued to look sad. After a while I realized that a slight coldness was radiating from her. I could feel it across my front, seeping into me, though it didn't reach very deep. Eventually I released her and she turned and walked away, still sad, and seemed then to rapidly melt away, in sections, not like a candle melts but more like water evaporating from a hot surface, some parts going faster than others, but all of it quickly gone, and she was quickly gone, in just a second or two.

I took the hairpin home to show my mother, who was now somehow at home, and somehow it did not take long to get there, as if it was just a few rooms away. She was in the living room with my younger sister. They both looked much younger than they are now, and were sitting on the couch, which was along a different wall than it is now, but where a couch used to be decades ago.

I was also carrying a small thing that I had picked up somewhere, maybe four by five or five by six inches, which was a detailed representation of a scene from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis, with tiny plastic figures on a raised scenic background, with clear plastic forming a rectangular dome over it. The display had a place in the bottom, where the bottom would be when the scene was hanging on a rack, where the top of a cane could be screwed on, at which time it would act as the cane handle for a cane that was just straight without a curved top.

I was saying that I thought it was something my great-uncle used (my mother's father's brother), but my sister immediately spoke up and said it was something they got for my grandfather, meaning my father's father. I frowned, still feeling it was something we had gotten for my great-uncle, but since she seemed so sure I realized I would probably have to accept her version.

I peered at it closely, trying to find a date on it, hoping that the date would help settle which person it was for. I thought that it was a tie-in to a movie that was made, not the more recent ones but something that was done earlier. I looked it over for quite a while, and thought sometimes that I could see a 98 on it. That was a few years later than I had pictured, in fact it was long after either one had died. Even the earlier dates I had pictured were far too late; my great-uncle died in 1960, and my grandfather on my father's side died around 1982-83, though I didn't think of any of it at the time.

Dream - Vanquishing the beast

On Monday, April 21, 2008, I dreamed I was at a place that was partly like a grade school I used to attend, with long rows of buildings, and partly like a mall. I was a Spider-Man-like character, but generally or always dressed in Peter Parker fashion with brown clothes and white shirt. I went up and down a corridor like the grade school had between buildings, but which had stores in the dream. It seemed also to be some kind of school. It was night.

I turned into a broad aisle going through the buildings, and around the middle of the school found some silvery metal horizontal fins set in a square high in a recessed corner. They disturbed me in some way, and I kept going back to look at them. Someone I knew came by, a man, and talked to me a bit, saying something about a meeting in the multipurpose room. I said something brief and quickly turned away, not wanting to talk and not really wanting to be seen. I quickly walked back over to the high square of fins and looked at it some more. I had thought that something was hidden behind it, but it just seemed to be composed of layers of fins.

I had a general sad feeling, then and earlier. I also had some feelings of worry about people, about doing something, and a need to be partly hidden, at least as far as powers and maybe my true nature went.

I went forward then through the aisle under the building, then turned back to a restaurant about halfway down the aisle. A man there remembered me from earlier, out in the countryside, far away where I fought a strange Nessie-like beast and killed it. He had the beast again and it wasn't dead.

A flashback showed that the original beast was killed by me, along with others like it (though the dream originally only featured the one beast), but he found a baby or juvenile one and took it and raised it to adulthood. It was now in the restaurant and was used as an attraction. People rode it, trying to outlast it or beat it in some way. Business was down for some reason.

He wanted me to ride it and try to beat it. He hoped it would attract customers and hopefully save his business. I rode it. It was like a killer whale on land, raised a little up from the ground. There was some doubt about the outcome.

The next day or night, the scene returned to the restaurant and a figure slowly rose straight up from the floor, like it was being created as it rose. It seemed at first to be the beast, but then it became apparent that it was just a suit made from its skin, with broad, light chocolate-colored collars and black otherwise. The figure wearing it seemed at first to be someone else, but was apparently supposed to be me, though I still seemed to be separate from the person, who seemed younger and smaller.

I went deeper again into the restaurant where people were sitting in groups at tables by a broad aisle running deep into the building. They seemed to be mostly mobsters. Another aisle ran to the right. It led eventually to a place deep in the building where people were gathered, watching something. It was some kind of magic figure and the people, some of them, were wizards from Discworld, little old men with long beards and pointed hats. One of them was talking to a much older one, who managed to answer after a pause, mainly just a nod of acknowledgement and agreement and perhaps a few words. It seemed somehow that my father and his father were among them and part of the wizards. The wizards didn't resemble them, but sometimes seemed to be a projection or overlay over them.


The dream had much more earlier in the mall/school, and before that out in the country where near the end of that portion I vanquished the beast. I vanquished the original beast just before or as we were leaving.

The country was somewhat hilly with broad depressed areas and some higher areas with lumpy red dirt walls with rounded holes where large stones had fallen out at some earlier time. It was desert with some vegetation, but seemed to have more moisture than a real desert. There were dirt roads and some kind of gate near the end of one, before a main but probably still dirt road. The gate was at the end of a dirt road that led up from a broad depressed area with another dirt road or two crossing it before getting to the gate. At the other side of the gate was the road that went past and led away. It was daytime.

Some other people were there. We may have been trying to lead them out or may have been at least partly trying to get away from them. If they were threatening, they didn't seem very threatening. I'm not sure what we were originally doing there, but a large part of the dream, perhaps most of it, took place there.

Wordzzle 72 - Horse play

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the sixteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

corn pone,
delegation,
nectarines,
happiness,
12 going on 13,
prancing horses,
magenta,
butterflies,
fragmentary,
arthritis

I was eating corn pone and nectarines, when magenta prancing horses, accompanied by a cloud of butterflies, came up. They weren't young horses either, maybe 12 going on 13, and some of them seemed hampered by arthritis. Nevertheless, they continued prancing, radiating happiness.

After a time they finished, and one of them, evidently their leader, came toward me. He began to speak, in broken, fragmentary English. It was hard to interpret what he was saying, and I had to ask him to repeat it several times. He kept eyeing my food, too, which made me nervous. I finally gathered that they were a delegation of some kind, on their way to something, though I was never able to determine what. The horse was looking more and more upset and frustrated.

Finally it backed up, its eyes looking strained and a little wild, and rejoined the others. The others gathered around him and he talked to them, evidently about what had happened, though I couldn't hear anything from where I was. Some of them turned toward me, though, giving me hurt looks. Then they all galloped away, to wherever else they were going, I guess.

One of the butterflies came and settled on my shoulder. "You could have at least offered them part of your food."

"I don't have enough for a herd of horses. Divided up that much, there wouldn't even be enough to taste."

"You could have offered the leader something. There would have been enough for him to taste."

"Perhaps, but then he would have eaten it in front of the others. I wouldn't have had anything to offer them."

"Well, I'm here. Are you going to refuse to offer me part of your nectarines, because you're afraid that you can't feed all the butterflies?"

I sighed. "Alright, would you like to have some of my nectarines?"

"Why, thank you!" the butterfly said, and flew off my shoulder and landed on one, and began to eat. Suddenly, the butterfly transformed into a beautiful woman. She snuggled up to me and said, "Now, isn't that much better?"

I drew back a bit, still in shock, and said, "But, how? How did... How was I supposed to know?"

She began to kiss me. "Why, silly, you were told over and over, it came straight from the horse's mouth, you just refused to listen."


Mini Challenge:

lavender cowboy,
over the moon,
preparation,
zebra,
area rug

I was out walking one day and had stopped, making preparations to eat, when a lavender cowboy rode up on a zebra, with an area rug for a saddle. He took off his hat and began singing, "Oh bury me not, on the lone Serengeti..." The zebra rolled its eyes. The cowboy finished the song and started another. "As I walked down the streets of Nairobi, as I walked down Nairobi today..." The zebra looked at me, its eyes pleading. The cowboy finished and started yet another. "I'm back in the Sahara, again, back where an oasis is your friend..." The zebra wept openly, then suddenly turned and galloped off a cliff. I went over and looked. Beyond was an almost vertical, ragged slope, with a distant river at the bottom. I saw no sign of them.

That night, over the moon, I saw a cloud that looked like a horse and rider. The wind carried to me sounds of "Ghost riders in the Olduvai...." accompanied with a mournful wailing. I guess some things are just meant to be.


Mega challenge:

corn pone,
delegation,
nectarines,
happiness,
12 going on 13,
prancing horses,
magenta,
butterflies,
fragmentary,
arthritis

lavender cowboy,
over the moon,
preparation,
zebra,
area rug

A delegation of prancing horses went by. On each horse was a lavender cowboy. On each cowboy's hat was a nectarine, and on each nectarine was a butterfly. Each cowboy also had a magenta leather bag containing corn pone, and they kept reaching into it and getting another piece to eat, occasionally sharing one with their horses. Though it was daytime, the moon shone faintly in the sky, and over the moon a few bright stars could be seen. The wind brought to me fragmentary bits of song. Happiness seemed everywhere.

The zebra, standing beside me, said, "I'm 12 going on 13, but I'm tempted to join them. My arthritis has been better lately."

"I don't have much in the way of preparations," I said, "but I could put this area rug on you for a saddle."

The zebra looked at me doubtfully. "You're not going to sing again, are you?"

"Don't worry, I'll change the songs to make it seem like they're about Africa."

Elongating shadows

Perhaps 25 or 30 years ago, I went back to the grade school I used to attend. Someone was with me, most likely my youngest sister. I don't remember now what the purpose of the visit was. The school had gone through quite a bit of changes since I had been there, especially to the playground, and perhaps the visit was to look at those changes. The school wasn't open at the time. It was either a weekend or during summer vacation, or both.

We were leaving then, slowly walking back in the broad aisle that ran between the buildings. The school was set up in long rows of buildings, with classrooms on each side. Between the buildings were wide aisles, with broad sidewalks by each building and large square blocks of landscaping in the middle, with walks that crossed over to each side. Halfway along the buildings was a large opening, allowing a wide walkway that went from one side of the school to the other.

We were leaving, but were still closer to the back than the front. We walked along, talking, separated by a bit, sometimes as much as 15 feet or so, with me lagging behind. As I walked, I looked at the shadows cast by metal structures, lattice-like, that periodically crossed by overhead from building to building, and at the shadows cast by the objects in the planter areas, and at the shadows of the thick brick pillars that supported the roofs over the sidewalks. It was late afternoon.

I noticed that as the shadow of my head approached the other shadows, frequently just before they contacted each other the shadow of my head would elongate out in a bump, usually on the left side, just before the shadows merged. When they did merge, they rounded into each other, at least for a while.

It seemed much more common if the shadow of my head was about to contact the shadow of something slanted, like a metal bar in the lattice. It was probably more often on the left side of my head because that was the side that tended to be closer to the shadow being crossed.

I thought about why it could be happening, but the most I could come up with was that for some reason the shadows pressing on both sides caused the light between them to become dimmer, but I wasn't sure if that was correct. With something like that happening, I would have just expected the light to become dimmer between the two, not for one shadow to elongate toward the other. It didn't seem to explain, either, why most of the elongating occurred with my head and not the other object. I suppose it could have something to do with the different distances to the pavement.

It all seems very strange, though, and not what I would have expected.

Dream - The small town and the huge Joker-like figure

Maybe four years or so ago, I had a strange dream about traveling to a small town with a dense downtown area with a lot of things to do there, some of it touristy stuff. There also seemed to be some kind of festival going on in which costumes were worn and people were walking around in them, in the streets even, no big crowds though.

There was some kind of movie theater on one side, that had a big plastic flattened 3-D internally lit-up clown face with a big exaggerated smile on it, the face sticking out high above the sidewalk. There was some kind of competing business across the street and down a little ways.

I think one or more of the businesses might have been satanic. I think even part of the people wandering around were controlled by people who ran the town and were sinister in some way and sometimes out to get us.

I was staying at a motel with someone else, maybe my father. It was dark outside, night.

It seemed that the whole town was enclosed in something, some kind of curved ribbed structure where the part between the ribs was some kind of flexible plastic, maybe even clear plastic, that was high up and had lower branches going to and covering side streets. The structure blended into a kind of gray fog and was mostly hidden by it, especially the lower portions.

There was also a gigantic figure sometimes seen leaning over, face and shoulders above the ribbed covering, peering down at us, a clown figure, Joker-like, the mouth open in a big exaggerated smile, the eyes interested. I'm not certain if the figure was actually alive, at least at times it seemed to be a robot.

I think I was there a few days.