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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream - The complimentary cake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The story behind "The mountains and the road"

The title story in the March 5, 2010 post "Wordzzle 102 - The mountains and the road" was based on something that actually happened. However, it happened long ago, back in the 1960-65 area, and my father was driving, not me. I was just a child, and the whole family was traveling across the desert somewhere in the American Southwest. I don't remember now why we were making the trip, or what state we were in at the time. We made a lot of trips in those years.

My father had been driving for a long time, since before dawn I think. Perhaps we had even been driving all night, with my mother doing part of the driving. This may also have been the time when he was driving into the morning sun, and had the sun shades down on the windshield and partly unfolded maps and whatever else he could find stuffed in along the upper part of the windshield, trying to block the sun's rays. I'm not sure, though.

In any case, we drove along a road through the desert. The road was very straight and mostly flat, with minor dips. In the far distance in front of us were mountains, low and indistinct and gray, and probably partly beyond the horizon. We drove toward them for a long time. Hours passed, slowly.

Sometimes we could see mirages on the road ahead of us, in the distance, looking like dark wet places, but they always melted away as we got closer. We talked about the mirages. My parents pointed them out to us, at least at first, and explained that they weren't real. Traffic was light, but I think it picked up some as it got later in the morning. I think the road was just two lanes, and people occasionally passed other people, including us.

The mountains slowly got larger and closer, very, very slowly. It seemed to be taking a very long time. I gradually began to be able to see some features on them, though they remained purplish and hazy looking. As time wore on they got larger and larger, and I could see a lot of things on them, a lot of details, though the mountains still retained the purplish hazy look. I started to wonder what would happen when we reached them. The road didn't seem to reach the mountains, it seemed to just abruptly end before it reached them. I think I could faintly see in some places on some of the mountains the faint trails of roads, but none of them led to this road. And still we kept getting closer, and still the road just seemed to end at some place before the mountains were reached.

Then finally, we got close enough that I was able to see that the road abruptly turned to the right. I could see cars traveling along that section, some heading toward us and some going the way we were, though they were at right angles to us since they were on the part of the road that had turned. I even saw them reach the turning point, and turn and start to come our way, though that part was initially hidden, either because it was a little lower or because a slight rise was in the ground between us and it.

We finally reached the turn, sometime in the early or mid afternoon I think, and drove along beside the mountains. I watched them go past us and gradually recede. Eventually we reached a point where they started to taper off, and I saw a place that had a big separation between the mountains, with a road that wound through the flat section there, coming from the mostly flat desert beyond, scattered with what I guess were numerous but widely separated little bushes. I watched cars traveling on that road, small and far away, as we came to that area and gradually went past it. The mountains continued on for a little bit past that area, but with smaller isolated mountains rising up out of the desert.

We continued on, to wherever it was we were going, as the afternoon got later. We probably had another day or more of traveling to do. It was a very long trip.

Dream - The uniform woman's birthday and then zombies

Around February 17, 2008, I had a dream in which I was at the radiator shop with my mother and a woman who supplied the uniforms (who looked like Mr. Monk's wife, from the TV show). We were all sitting at a small table, talking. The woman's birthday was today.

Finally it was time to pay her and my mother started looking through her purse for her checkbook, but couldn't find it, and it seemed she might have left it at home. I said that I could go home and get it. I wondered, though, in my mind, if the woman would be able to wait while I did this because she had other stops to make. Nobody responded to my suggestion. My mother continued to look through her purse. The woman was softly crying. I repeated my suggestion but was again ignored.

I came to a feeling that the woman didn't know that I didn't have a checkbook and couldn't pay her either, and that she felt that although my mother normally paid her, that I could make an exception and pay her myself this time, and that I was unwilling to bend the "rules" and do this, even though it was her birthday, it was her birthday and now she wasn't even going to get paid.

The woman drove off in her uniform van crying, with me running beside her for a little while, trying to comfort her, but she drove away. The shop had a large dirt area all around it, with no other buildings nearby. The van had been parked sideways at the front and she drove around the side and around the back, driving off pointed toward the south, with me finally standing there watching her go, unable to keep up with the van any more. It was dark now, though earlier in the dream it was before noon.

I went back into the shop, either through the front or through the back and ending up toward the front. Some people were driving up and coming in. I went toward where the office was in real life, but in the dream the shop extended past the office (which might not have been there at this point in the dream) and into a largish room where various parts were stored, many sealed with plastic to cardboard backs and hanging from hooks. I was going to point out the parts to someone and suggest that they look through them and see if what they wanted was there (and I think I did this).

There were two large glass doors, actually thick plastic, to the side near the parts area, and someone came in, perhaps through them, and warned that something bad was coming. I don't remember how it was worded, but some kind of evil people were coming. I went toward the clear plastic doors, which were each perhaps six feet wide. The doors sometimes had small metal frames and sometimes they didn't have any. They came together without any post or door frame between them, joining to each other. I went out through them and some people, perhaps five or six, were starting to gather, coming from different directions.

I went back in and got a battery-powered electric drill that had a huge drill bit on it and threatened one of them, pointing the drill at the person's chest. The end of the drill was still a foot or two away from the person. He smiled and looked amused, saying, "You don't really think you're going to stop me with that." I came to realize that they were all dead, like some kind of zombies.

I went back inside and closed the doors, but all they had to lock with was a short (perhaps a quarter inch long) rod that stuck out of a small bar that swung over and went into a slot or opening attached to the door on the left, the rod/bar thing was heavy duty metal, perhaps cast bronze, but it was too small and as the people outside started to come against the doors, mindlessly but increasingly insistently bumping against them, the doors shifted up and down and the rod kept coming out of the slot.

I was pushing against the doors with my shoulder, going along the length of the seam between the doors trying to find other places to join them together. The person who came to warn me was at the other door, helping hold it closed. I found toward the bottom where two metal tabs with openings were attached, one on each door, where something could be stuck through them, and higher up I found where two eye-screws were attached, one on each door, and also set so something could be put through them. One was on top of the other, but they were not quite in a vertical arrangement. I found a drill key in the parts section somewhere and stuck it through the screw eyes.

The pushing and bumping from the other side kept getting worse, and I had also been hearing a kind of muffled grumbling, almost groaning sound from them that was growing more insistent. I kept telling the other person to get some padlocks. I knew there were some hanging in the parts room to the side of us, hanging in the their plastic-sealed cardboard (I don't think I actually said much about where the padlocks were, just to get them). At least some of them. I knew, had loops thin enough to go through the openings. The person wasn't bringing me the padlocks, though, and I kept asking for them, as I desperately continued trying to keep the doors from opening.

The bike that failed

When I was a kid, my father bought me a used bicycle, from some people in the neighborhood. I already had a bicycle. but it was smaller. The new bicycle was large and heavy, and had a small chrome coil spring on the front, almost horizontal, and narrowing sharply at both ends. The new bike was a blue-green color, while my previous bicycle was red. It was a Schwinn, and like the previous bike was a single speed, and braked by pushing the pedals backward. It was much harder to ride than my old bike, though. It took a lot of effort. I think my father wanted it for me because I was tall for my age, and overweight, and he wanted something that fit my size better. I rode it for several years after that, and it was, in fact, the last bicycle I ever owned.

I put rectangular metal baskets on the back, on either side, so I could carry things in them when I bought something at a store. I also put a headlight on it, battery operated, with a white exterior that was a rounded square at the front and widened slightly as it went back, before tapering to a cone shape. Beside it on the right I put a horn that looked like a much smaller version of it, except that it was chrome and tapered more at the sides than the top and bottom, and had a grill in the front instead of a lens. I used the bicycle quite a bit, even going at least once to the Woolco store in a town that bordered ours.

Years passed, and I learned how to drive a car. I drove the car sometimes, but also made an effort to sometimes ride the bicycle. I could see the time would come when I would not ride the bicycle at all, but I wanted to put it off as long as I reasonably could.

Sometime when I was 17, I think, and probably in September 1970, or near there, I decided to go to the local drugstore on my bicycle, to see if they had gotten any interesting books or magazines in. It was probably on a Saturday or Sunday, and it feels more like it was Sunday, though I can't be sure now. I had intended to go earlier in the afternoon, but I kept putting it off, reading probably and maybe watching some TV. Finally, as it was getting close to sundown, I told my mother what I was going to do. She objected, saying it was too late, but I insisted on going.

I got on the bicycle and went down the driveway into the street. The street is slanted slightly downhill, so that helped, though it would make it more difficult when I returned. I started standing up on the pedals and pushing hard, to build up a lot of speed, because it would still be a fair amount of effort to pedal it, even going slightly downhill. I intended to sit down and glide for a while, after the bicycle was going fast.

Suddenly, though, after I had gone past a few houses, I found myself lying in the street, halfway over the handlebars. I was still holding on to them, with the end of one of the handlebars, probably the right one, jabbing hard against my ribs near my side. I didn't know what had happened. I think one of the wheels, it had to be the back one I guess, was still slowly turning. I had a faint impression of just coming to a stop, sliding there, just the last few feet.

After a few tries I managed to get off the handlebar that was sticking into me. It was awkward, because I had to let go with one hand to find a better place to push at, and without the support of both hands my weight fell much more on the handlebar that was jabbing into me. I finally did it though, and got to my feet. I felt kind of banged up, but seemed to be alright. I was wearing a light jacket, blue in color, and I found that one of the sleeves, the left one, had a small triangular tear, about an inch long, in the upper part of it. That was a little odd, since I had been laying in the street on my right side.

I felt totally betrayed. To be going down the street and everything seeming to be alright, pleasant even, and then to end up laying in the street on my side with no transition. It didn't seem right.

I looked up and down the street, but didn't see any cars driving on it, just the ones that were parked by the sidewalk and in the driveways.

I put the bicycle back on its wheels. The shaft the handlebars was on had gotten twisted around, and the handlebars were no longer aligned with the front wheel. I think I had noticed that while it was still laying in the street. I put the front wheel between my legs and twisted the handlebars around until they aligned again with the front wheel, then started walking the bicycle back home.

I was significantly farther down the street than my last memory before the accident. There are two slight bends in the street, one going one way and the other the opposite way. My last memory was before the first bend, and I was quite a ways past it now, perhaps five or six houses. The street was in a light shadow, too, meaning the sun had either gone completely down, or far enough that it was hidden behind the houses, maybe because of the bend in the street causing this section of street to not be pointed directly west, and putting more houses in the way of the low sunlight. Or perhaps some unknown period of time had elapsed while I was laying in the street. I had no way of knowing, though it couldn't have been long, as it wasn't really dark yet. And there was that wheel that had still been turning, even if just a little.

I still didn't know what had happened, and felt betrayed, just betrayed, that the universe could allow something like this to happen, with no explanation for it. I walked on with the bicycle, feeling very bitter.

As I walked, I eventually noticed something laying in the street, a few houses back from where I had fallen. It was something small and dark and flat. As I got closer to it, I saw that it was a bicycle pedal in the street. I looked at my bicycle and noticed that the right pedal was gone. I realized then that it had fallen off the bicycle while I had been standing on it, and that that was what had caused the accident. I had no memory of it happening, or of the struggle I must have gone through, fighting to keep from falling over while I went that distance down the street to where I finally fell. I pictured then that I had fallen back on the bicycle seat, and pushed out with my right leg over and over trying to keep the bicycle from falling, and ended up halfway over the handlebars when the bicycle fell over.

I think now that, since I was leaning forward, I probably fell forward when the pedal came off, and may have missed the seat entirely. My foot would have hit the street and instantly been dragged back, the impact and extra drag trying to tilt the bicycle, along with me leaning to that side. I would have been partly sticking out past the handlebars, low over them and maybe even with my upper body actually resting on them, with my leg well to the back, with my foot, probably mainly the toe, jabbing against the ground trying to keep the bicycle from falling over. I had apparently gone past three houses like that, before finally losing the battle. Since I had been going fairly fast, it would have just taken a few seconds, though. The impact had been great enough that it wiped out my memory of it, along with a little more, to account for the missing memory of going around the slight bend in the street and what happened after that.

I picked up the pedal and continued home.

After I got home, I told my mother, who was there in the living room, what had happened. As I told her, I noticed one time a sharp pain in my side, when I turned my body a particular way, but I straightened my body and continued talking. My mother, who was sitting at the opposite corner of the room from the front door, was mad at me for tearing my jacket, and said that I couldn't wear it to school now, and we didn't have the money to buy a new one, and probably said something like "I told you not to go." She also said, "I hope you're not hurt, we don't have any money." I assured her I wasn't, just banged up and bruised a bit.

I sat down by the front door, and started working on a jigsaw puzzle I had been doing. I did a lot of jigsaw puzzles in those days. After a while she said, more conciliatory, "You're not really hurt, are you?" Again I assured her I wasn't, just beat up some.

I wondered though, to myself, about the pain I had felt. It wasn't like anything I had felt before. When I finally stood up again, I tried twisting my body again, and the pain was enough to take my breath away. It was a very bad pain somewhere internally, low in my chest toward the side, sometimes it seemed more toward the back. It was hard to be sure exactly where it was, and I didn't know what was actually injured. I realized that I had to keep my body fairly straight from now on until it was healed. If it healed. If I made it for a week without it getting worse, or maybe killing me, I thought it might heal on its own.

From then on I was careful to keep my body straight. When I had to talk to someone who was off to the side, I turned my whole body to face them. When I got into bed, I started at the foot and went in on hands and knees, keeping my back straight, before carefully laying down and then carefully turning my body to the position I wanted to sleep in. After a week or so I checked to see if the pain was still there. It was, perhaps just slightly diminished, just slightly duller. A few weeks later I checked again. It was quite a bit less but still there. I forgot about it for a while, and then after several more weeks remembered and checked again, and it was gone.

Several years later, I had lost quite a bit of weight, and was laying on my left side in my bed, leaning on my left elbow, reading. I had been noticing, from time to time, that the ribs on my left side seemed to bulge out at the bottom when I did that, but I assumed that it was because my left side was stretched out in a curve, emphasizing the lower part of my ribs there. It bothered me though, that it should look like that, and now I finally decided to check it out further, to test it, to see if the explanation was correct. I laid on my back, and found that my ribs on that side still stuck out too far, and the ribs in general on that side stuck out in a rounded shape, sticking out farthest at the lower edge. On the other side, the right, the ribs actually had a section in the lower half that was depressed some. I turned onto my right side and right elbow, to see how the ribs looked when stretched like the left ones, but the right ones hardly stuck out at all, just a little bit.

This upset me quite a bit, to think that something was wrong with me like that. I eventually told my mother, and talked about it with her. I knew I hadn't been that way back when I had lost some weight back in the early to late 1960s, and I hadn't been that way when I was much younger and also a more normal weight. It must have been hidden by a weight gain that had occurred during high school, and for a couple of years afterward, before I started losing it again. I finally figured out it must be the bicycle accident that had caused it, having no other possible explanation for it.

It bothered me to have to be like this, to be deformed in this manner, though it was not noticeable to others unless I pointed it out. I also noticed, later, on rare occasions, that when laying on my left side reading, when I shifted position some it felt like one rib grated against another, and shifted to a new position slightly on top of the other one. It was another annoyance, but it didn't usually happen, and after a few more years it didn't seem to happen at all.

My mother worried about it a lot, and still sometimes does, even saying that I should have an operation to fix it. I keep turning her down though, saying that it's not causing any problems, and they probably wouldn't have done anything for it if we saw a doctor at the time, other than maybe putting tape on it. And although my mother worries about it, it long ago stopped being a worry to me, becoming just a curiosity, and a bit of a mystery over exactly what damage was done.

I never did see a doctor for it, but one time, maybe 15 years or so after the accident, I mentioned the ribs to a doctor while being checked for something else. He said that injuries to the breastbone could cause the cartilage to scar when it healed, twisting the ribs. I accepted that as a possible partial explanation, but not a total one. I still felt that it didn't explain everything, though I didn't say so to the doctor. To me, the ribs seemed to have too much deformity to be totally explained by something like that.


Sometime after the accident occurred, perhaps weeks, I'm not sure now, I went to a bicycle store and looked over the pedals on the revolving rack they had of them. I found some that looked like the ones on my bicycle, but I may have gone home and checked to be sure before I bought one. I don't remember now. In any case, I did buy one, and put it on my bicycle, still feeling somewhat bitter about it.

I rode the bicycle several times after that. I never quite felt confident when I was standing up on the pedals, pushing at them, and I tended to do that less than before, and not as vigorously. There was always the thought that, though unlikely, it could happen again. As time went on, though, I drove a car more and more, and I eventually just drove a car to where I wanted to go, wherever that might be, as I had known would happen, and never rode the bicycle again.

Dream - The choice

I had an interesting dream on the morning of Friday, April 18, 2003, involving an important choice in my life. I'm not sure what was happening in the first part of the dream, perhaps something about school or work. Then the direction of the dream slowly changed.

The dream was mostly very dimly lit. I was in a large house or other building, with several rooms, some of which were oddly shaped. I went into a large dark room with an audience seated, waiting for me. Some sort of initiation was to be performed, but it was almost like a coronation. I was the honoree. The room was also filled with people moving about in a large central area with a broad, relatively short aisle leading to it. I saw a glimpse of a young woman and some other people who greeted me. I was led into the room by an older man, and maybe one or two other people. The young woman initially appeared to be largely undressed, wearing a light-colored small poncho-type garment, tapering to a point between her shoulders, and nothing else. I noticed as she moved quickly away toward the front, though, that she was actually wearing some tights made out of some shiny, relatively heavy, material.

I followed after her and was presented with a choice. Both the young woman and a small boy, perhaps three or four years old, were placed before me. I understood that I was to choose one of them. I realized that it was to be a very important choice, determining the future course of my life. I felt it was also in the nature of a test.

Everyone was waiting expectantly for me to choose. I started talking, analyzing the situation. I said that the boy was symbolic of various things, the last one of which was the future. As I said each thing, the audience nodded expectantly and seemed to become more pleased as I named each additional symbol. I turned to the woman momentarily, having temporarily exhausted my symbols for the boy, and said that she was also a symbol of the future.

Wishing to postpone my decision as long a possible, as both choices seemed desirable in their own way and I didn't wish to exclude one and choose the other, I kept talking. I asked if I could ask other people for their opinions. Everyone nodded expectantly while continuing to smile and watch. I asked if I could choose both of them and they nodded and smiled more deeply, seeming to be pleased.

Though I did not choose then, and seemingly never did actually choose, it seemed to lose its urgency after that and the dream moved forward to a new situation. I became aware that people were happily cheering and the initiation was over for the moment. I felt that I was actually some figure of ancient royalty that had just passed the test, fulfilling some ancient prophecy for the return of the prince.

As I moved away to exit through the way I had come, I noticed the CIS Manager, the computer person from Fallon, Nevada, a tall man with gray-white hair and beard, in the crowd that had been sitting but was now moving toward the exit with me. I didn't get close enough to speak with him. Outside the room, I felt that there was some enemy approaching, but I had passed the test successfully and was filled with power. I even flew about, leaving the building and coming back. I talked briefly with the young woman, at one point asking her what she thought my choice should be. Her personality seemed happy, but somewhat respectful, perhaps because of my rank. She seemed to be willing enough to talk, but she seemed evasive and somewhat quiet on this subject. Both she and the boy seemed at times to be somewhat foreign, perhaps Mexican, although this was much more prominent with the boy.

I left again and then came back in through a small entrance way/hallway that immediately branched in all directions. My mother was there and I talked to her briefly. She seemed to be cautioning me about something. She was also one of the people that were with me when I originally came there. I then went back in, and woke up shortly thereafter.


In looking back on the dream, although in the dream I was definitely leaning toward choosing both the woman and the boy, I never explicitly made the choice, which seemed very attractive and seemed to represent a family and the continuation of the family line, through the boy, into the future. The choice of either one separately would have meant other things. The woman, of course, would have been an attractive companion. Choosing the boy instead of the woman, though, would have meant companionship on a different level, that of childhood. In a way, in real life I chose the boy instead of the woman, as I did not wish to grow up. I felt the best time in my life was when I was too young to go to school, and I viewed growing up with great anxiety, feeling a great foreboding regarding it. In a way, this foreboding was correct, though some would argue it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. (I have had, though, many psychic experiences, including correct predictions of the near and far future.) In the dream, even if not implicitly, I chose a different course.

Wordzzle 102 - The mountains and the road

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 my entry number 46, for Wordzzle week 102.


Ten Word Challenge:

sugar daddy,
page,
Copernicus,
liquid,
craggy,
trapezoid,
milquetoast,
blizzard,
food cream,
dental problems

The milquetoast ate a Sugar Daddy
And turned another page
Would craggy curves and trapezoids
Become all the rage?

Was Copernicus a good guy
Or a villain in his day?
With history's revisions
Will nothing ever stay?

Numbers fell in blizzards
And as liquids ran away
Is food cream the answer
Or just a step along the way?

Would dental problems be included?
He really couldn't say
So much still to study
And the test would be today!


Mini Challenge:

Hersey kisses,
pregnant,
scarring,
cadet,
grist mill

Grist for the grist mill
They stand at attention, then march along
Cadets without number
Though I suppose a number is recorded somewhere

I sit here, watching them on TV, eating Hersey kisses
Too many can make you look pregnant
But I'm not female, and never wanted to be a cadet anyway
And it hides the scarring of the mind


Mega challenge:

sugar daddy,
page,
Copernicus,
liquid,
craggy,
trapezoid,
milquetoast,
blizzard,
food cream,
dental problems

Hersey kisses,
pregnant,
scarring,
cadet,
grist mill

The land lay like liquid food cream
Under a strangely empty sky
The road disappears into a point
That I must travel by

Craggy mountains in the distance
blurring into haze
Took forever to come closer
Though I traveled all the day

Sodas caused dental problems
Or so the dentist said
So Sugar Daddies and Hersey kisses
Were what I had instead

Problems without answers
Occupied my mind
Pondering the mysteries
Finding what I'd find

Should milquetoasts be beaten into cadets
To make the world go round?
And would the world stop spinning
If no more cadets were found?

Should blizzards fall in summer
To cool the hottest days?
And if they did would we complain
And wish for the sun's rays?

If Copernicus looked through his telescope
And found scarring on the lens
Would he give up and walk away
Or start over again?

Pregnant pauses proliferate
And bring forth what they bring
But sometimes what they deliver
Is not much of anything

The grist mill grinds so slowly
And grinds so very fine
The particles like dust all float
And clutter up the mind

Pages dance and flutter in the wind
And decorate the day
Recording all that man has said
And all he couldn't say

Through trapezoidal glasses
The world looks clear again
It seems to keep on spinning
Without going round the bend

The mountains stand before me now
And seem to fill the sky
The road still disappears
And its end I cannot spy

No road leads up the mountains
None that I can see
There seems no way for me to cross
To get where I must be

I see the end ahead now
The road turns right for me
And I drive along it
Past where the mountains be

The mountains gradually lessen
And behind me all recede
And I go on without them
To the place where I must be

Favorite posts, Part III

These are some of my favorite posts, from the third hundred posts.


291. Fun with the DOS prompt
275. National Novel Writing Month 2009 - Winner!
261. My time at GeoCities
231. My head under me, trapped in darkness
217. Finding my grandmother

297. Wordzzle 96 - Pixie party
294. Wordzzle 95 - Other realities
283. Wordzzle 93 - Food fright
279. Wordzzle 92 - The Scarecrow and the King of the Turtles
276. Wordzzle 91 - No telling
273. Wordzzle 90 - Passing inspection
269. Wordzzle 89 - Sugar-coated
265. Wordzzle 88 - Who done it?
250. Wordzzle 87 - Impractical nurse
243. Wordzzle 86 - Past times
237. Wordzzle 85 - Puppetry
232. Wordzzle 84 - Breaking through
228. Wordzzle 83 - Exit, laughing
218. Wordzzle 81 - Under the sun
213. Wordzzle 80 - The alligator people
209. Wordzzle 79 - Shadows and smoke
206. Wordzzle 78 - The wall
202. Wordzzle 77 - The silent majority

295. Dream - Crashing the car, then saved, then a woman who was drinking
293. Dream - A game with superheroes and a villain
290. Dream - Band of brothers
286. Dream - A car with the Golden Girls, and I become a giant and move my car by hand
285. Dream - Working as a policeman, mistaken for a black woman, and the pie-slice shaped books that I took without paying
282. Dream - The Old West town in another dimension
281. Dream - Hidden areas under the ground covered with a layer of hard dirt
280. Dream - Using a computer that shows a list of news stories
274. Dream - Finding my brother's apartment and trying to get ready for work
270. Dream - The long line and the door with no return
266. Dream - The small buildings in the lake, some with red liquid and some with blue
244. Dream - The tornadoes and the dinosaur tree branch
240. Dream - Summoning the Grays
239. Dream - Attacked by a giant Phillip from Guiding Light
238. Dream - Oh how high the shadow grows
234. Dream - Captured by miniature golf playing mobsters
233. Dream - The plane like a fly, and as Spider-Man I am captured and taken deep under the ground
230. Dream - Getting strange powers, running from people as a woman
229. Dream - Traveling, carrying engines, and the building in the grasslands with the old woman and the folding luggage
225. Dream - Finding an old schoolmate, Sally Field [not really]
221. Dream - A massive engine being revved higher and higher
219. Dream - Writing exercises that affected reality, and the way station to another world
214. Dream - I am in a TV reality show
211. Dream - Gangsters, and a red blotch in the air
210. Dream - The mobster restaurant and the Cadillac
207. Dream - The new timeline and the psychic lecturer
204. Dream - The auction of the lion-thing
203. Dream - My grandmother is voted president of a club