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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream - The landlady, the prediction, the tall can of Coke, and the last time there

On Thursday, February 17, 2011, around 4:30-7:20 AM, I dreamed I was in Nevada in rooms I rented. It was the middle of the night. I was walking around. There was a big bed sideways near big windows with blinds and/or curtains, near the front door which was to the right of the windows, as viewed from inside.

I walked to the right, to the big living room. It had a big structure like a salad bar without food, a cloudy plastic cover on top. Lower down under a broad shelf was a big container of water all across the bottom. It had been slowly filling up due to a drip. I had forgotten to dump the water for a while, and it was now full. There was a pink plastic rectangular tub, like from the hospital, floating in it. I reached down and got it and dumped some of the water into a huge ceramic drain near the window, partly hidden behind the curtains. It had its own tub to be dumped, but it was only partly full. I might have dumped another tub's worth from the big water thing in the room. I had already dumped several from somewhere in the bedroom, walking in the bedroom holding the tub, in my underwear. I had earlier been in bed trying to sleep.

I heard outside a couple, perhaps in their twenties or thirties. They had a room to the left, as determined from the inside. They were taking things out and putting them in their car, finally leaving. It seems the woman was in a little bit of a huff.

Then I realized that the window was fully uncovered, the blinds up and the curtain drawn and pulled up and/or back, and the door fully open, with just the screen door closed and hooked, I had been walking around in my underwear and they probably saw me. I couldn't understand how I had gotten so sloppy, even leaving the front door open when I had been trying to sleep. It wasn't safe. In actuality, though I didn't think of it, earlier in the dream everything had been shut.

A man came in who it seems was a roommate, though I hadn't been aware of one earlier. He was tall and had dark hair. Talking to him, I wandered back to the living room and reached under the broad shelf, but instead of the water there was cushioned vinyl with a big pack of papers, and there was also a tall, tall can of Coke, maybe a foot and a half long, slightly thinner than normal, and straight all the way up and down. The sides bent easily, and it didn't feel tight like an unopened can normally would. The papers and Coke were left by the landlady, a little gray-haired woman slightly overweight. I opened the Coke and started drinking it. The top was bent a little and bulged up on one edge, and I wondered if it leaked a little. The man stared at me. We wandered around and continued talking, going further in to another big room behind the bedroom.

The landlady showed up and started explaining about the papers, taking them and unrolling a somewhat flattened, big, simple, line-drawing map of Nevada, and talking about earthquakes. Then she took a much bigger paper and unrolled it to a huge map of most of the US. There was still a lot to be looked at, and she started unfolding the other papers. There was some text and some tall columns. tables, of figures. She didn't seem to be getting to the point very well. Whatever she was trying to tell me she said had happened before, years ago, and came in cycles.

We had wandered to the room to the side, and I saw a few big fat spiders on the wall. I finally mentioned them and she said to kill them, they're poisonous. I think I did make an effort to hit them with something, maybe a book.

We went back to the other room. Some young people had shown up and were talking with each other. They were other tenants, in rooms further back. I saw a long spiderweb from the ceiling, like a narrow funnel, long tapering point up. It had several spiders on it, maybe three feet from the floor. They were the same size as the others, but thinner and grayer. I finally pointed them out to the woman.

At some point I got a second tall can of Coke. It seemed that it was May, on the edge of summer. It was getting toward dawn now, but still dark. The young people were getting ready to leave. I had to get ready to go to work soon.

I didn't know if I was going to continue this, to keep coming out here. I didn't really have the money and they didn't pay me. Maybe I should say something, ask them to, that if they want me to keep coming out they should pay me. On the other hand I had simply been doing it, without asking, even going in without a badge, the guard at the gate cheerfully waving me on through. I had been at work earlier in the dream, had sometimes even seen my boss, and though he looked at me I don't know if he said anything to me. I should just give this up and stop coming. I didn't have the money to keep doing it, in fact I didn't really have much money at all. Could I afford to give this up though, to give up the money from it if I didn't have another good source? But then I realized I wasn't getting money from it anyway, it was just an expense. It didn't matter if I stopped, I wouldn't lose anything.

I realized this was probably my last trip, that I wouldn't be back. It seemed sad. The landlady was still talking. She had gone to so much trouble telling me this, and getting the papers, though she had probably done this for all the tenants, and she had given me the Cokes, an award for something a few months ago, at a picnic, and although it still wasn't clear exactly what she was trying to say, she had spent a long time at it. Now I might never find out what it was, if I said I was leaving, and I would disappoint her too. She would miss me.

I started to say something about it, but I only got out a little. She started cheerfully talking about something that happened or would happen, in October I think. I couldn't think what month it was now. I tried to think of it while she talked on, and I finally said, jokingly, a little in desperation, "What month is it? I don't know, maybe it's October now."

It seems there was more later, but it may have been another dream. I can't think of it right now.

Dream - My mother and grandmother are at the store, my mother, though dead, has been eating too much, then I'm a child running across the water of the lake

On Saturday January 29, 2011, around 9:40 AM-1:20 PM, I dreamed I was driving. It was a rural area, partly developed, mostly undeveloped. It was daytime. I kept going by a place that had horses, some out by the road even, that came out by the road. The hooves of one was even making cloppity noises, as it raised up on its hind legs and was waving its front hooves, bouncing them along something, making the noises. Though I really only saw air, it seemed sometimes it might be hitting the car side window. It had a worried, upset expression on its face. It was being urged to do it by the owner or trainer. It seemed to be on Miller Rd., a little south of where the shopping center at Camelback Rd. would be, though in the dream it was much less developed, with a lot of open space and occasional trees, seeming to have a rural, small town, out in the country feel.

My grandmother and mother were nearby in something that was like a large Woolco. It was near where the shopping center on Camelback and Miller would be, just south of it. It seemed they were staying there too for a while somehow. My grandmother, near the entrance, wanted me to go get my mother, they had to leave soon for some reason. I don't remember anymore just what it was, but it was some event they had to be at I think. I went back further in the store to find her. She was basically straight in, maybe 50 feet or so, from where my grandmother was, off to the north side of the store, like my grandmother, but maybe 10 or 15 feet out from the wall, among some short aisles. She seemed young, maybe in her thirties. She had a partial smile on her face, and her eyes looked back and forth a little. She was trying to get dressed, but couldn't get her blouse, a flannel-like affair, down over her stomach. She had gotten very fat, and her stomach and sides stuck out a lot. I pulled on it and finally got it down. I cautioned her about it, mentioning that since she was dead she evidently decided to eat a lot, that she thought it didn't matter, but though it didn't affect her health, it did have an effect. I thought that it might be partly because she expected it to.

Later, I went back to the house with the path to the lake, the one in the previous dream, written about in the previous post, but I was a little kid, maybe 8-10 years old. I ran down the slope. People, a lot or most of them kids, were cheering and hooting and urging me to run into the water. Though uncertain about it, I continued running, and ran out into the lake. The water was shallow at first. I hoped it would continue to be, but I didn't know if it would. I continued running, while the shouts continued, having turned more to ones of amazement, that I was actually doing it, while continuing encouragement, though with less certainty than before. The water had only been a couple of feet deep at first, and I was running through it, splashing through it as fast as I could. I started going so fast, in combination with my power, that I was able to run then partly on the water, only going a couple or so feet down even though the water got deeper. I kept running all the way to the other side, where it had a much sharper slope and somewhat deeper bottom, and threw myself into the thick trees and brush there, which caught me like a wall and bounced me back some. I landed on my feet near it, on the sharp slope in the shallow water near the shore. The people on the other side were still shouting, in amazement. I went around the lake back to the other side then, back to where I started.

Back on the other side, I went up the broad aisle with the strange, smooth, grayish brown dirt surface, back up to the top, and then along a lane back toward the back of my house. It was different than in the other dream, though, the surface of the side lane was flat and seemed to be similar to the broad one, though in large segments, with close seams. Some other people went with me, tagging along, some little kids, and an older teen. I might have been following the older teen.

Then we were going back, back toward the broad aisle. He had some large cloths or paper towels or something, I think he had a large whisk broom too, and I and some some other kids were helping him to clear the broad path. It had gotten some sand along the edges, creeping in in irregular ways. Now it also had broad flat railings, and I was also rubbing them, cleaning them, though I started worrying about marring the surface, rubbing at it with the cloths, getting the fine sand off it. In a few areas it did seem marred a bit, the shine muted. I kept polishing it, hoping to make it better. As I made my way down, the railing started to change too, into strange elongated car fenders in places, that also had to be cleaned, and some of them went off into the side aisles, and I worried about marring them too. Some kind of event was going to happen here soon, tonight. It was already night now, though it had been light when I arrived, though not very bright. Some people were already filling the rows. I think my father was going to be there tonight, too.

The dream had a lot more earlier in it I think, back when I was driving back and forth.

Dream - My mother, the old food, the monkey, the sandwich cookies, and the lake with people around it

On Saturday, January 29, 2011, around 4:15-5:30 AM, I dreamed I was driving the 1970 Cadillac, doing pick up and delivery for the radiator shop on Scottsdale Rd. It was a little after noon now, maybe a little after one. The temperature was pleasant, perhaps a little cool, and the light wasn't very bright, like it was a little cloudy. I had had to make a few pick up and delivery runs that day, but it wasn't too busy, enough to get a reasonable amount of work.

I stopped at the house, after going further, into the Tempe area, maybe past the river bottom, and then coming back. I wanted to get something to eat, some lunch. My mother wasn't there, she was out somewhere. I got some food out of the refrigerator, and put it on a plate and was eating it. I went in the living room to eat and watch a soap opera, Guiding Light I think, something with Kim Zimmer in it anyway, the actress who played Reva, though it may have been another soap. She had resumed an old role on one on another network, but I don't think it was that. It was supposed to be a regular one hour show, plus they were doing a special thing of an additional one and a half hours of the show, showing deeper insights into the characters and situations, but not adding to the storyline, so that the next day would pick up where the regular show left off. I didn't have enough time to watch all of it, but hoped I could see part of it. Even staying for the regular show was a little long, because Chuey, the man in charge at the shop while I was gone, didn't know where I was, and we might get something else that needed picking up.

While I was eating, my mother came back, and we talked for a while. She seemed to be in her forties. She was chewing something after a while, and then I noticed that the side of a bookcase, about four feet high, had a splatter on the side of it, kind of gray-violet, with the splatter pointing at an angle away from her. She was grinning, occasionally talking to me. I was looking from it to her and back again. I finally asked her if she did it. She was grinning, and I don't think she ever said directly that she did, but she said something about her getting something to eat. I think she finally agreed that she did it, without actually saying much.

I was tired, and wanted to take a small nap, though I really didn't have time for that either. I hadn't seen all the extra part of the show either, just a little bit, and would miss the rest or at least part of it. I was concerned about being away from the shop for so long, and wondered if I should call Chuey, but I didn't want him to know where I was, I didn't want to admit that I was at home.

I went into my bedroom and lay down. My mother came in after a while, and I got up and talked to her. She was still chewing something, evidently she was still eating, or snacking. She spit again. It was kind of involuntary, accidental, it just squirted out of her mouth. though I don't think I actually saw it happening. It got on the floor a few feet inside the room, I had been concerned that it might get on a bookcase or other furniture there, or even on me. She said she had been looking through the refrigerator and started cleaning it out some. She found some food that had been there a long time, and said I should see it, or maybe said that I shouldn't. I looked at her grinning and chewing, and I got the impression that she was actually eating it, or part of it. I pictured in my mind, something like a large rectangular glass pan with some kind of gelatin dish, or jelly dish, though it wasn't only that, something else was on the bottom, some kind of cake or maybe brownies, that and some other smaller things. She was getting rid of it but still eating it, even though it had been in there a long time. I was surprised and somewhat dismayed. She seemed to be enjoying it, though.


I was still tired, and wanted to get some more sleep. I tried to go back to bed, but didn't get to stay there very long it seemed. I was still concerned about the time, too. Then other people started showing up, including the girls, my sisters, who were still children, and my brother. It seemed to be in the early 1970s I guess, maybe even earlier. My father also came home. It somehow seemed to be the next morning. A lot of other people had come, too. We seemed to have somehow merged with another, larger family, and a lot of little kids were around. There were also some people, another family, who just seemed to be staying with us. A few of the kids, including one or more of my sisters, came down the hallway to my bedroom and talked to me briefly. I tiredly got up and talked to them. There weren't many, generally one or two at a time, but my sleep, or my attempting to sleep, was interrupted.

Then a small animal, a tiny one, jumped off the narrow bookcase by the door, jumped off onto the floor, screeching a little. It was a tiny monkey. It jumped on things in the hall a bit. Then I finally started walking down the hall, softly talking to it, including asking if it wanted some food, while it occasionally screeched a little, and went down the hallway, too. I saw that someone had already gotten it some, and had put it on the floor near the other end of the hallway. It was a line of soft sticky-looking meatball-like things with gravy, lined up at an angle, directly on the floor, with some other stuff in front of it, maybe on a little dish, though it didn't seem to be shaped like it was, just a jumble of stuff in a rounded triangle against the line of meatball things. The monkey went to it and picked up one of the meatball things and started eating. I didn't really like it to have its food directly on the floor that way, but I thought, oh well, it'll get it all eaten up anyway, and went on into the kitchen.

The house was a little different now, bigger. The kitchen was larger, and the dining area was much larger, and now seemed to extend all the way behind the kitchen and behind the bathrooms, and I had the impression that we had an extra bedroom or two. My mother was at the kitchen table, which was now in the extended dining area behind the kitchen, even further back, actually behind the bathrooms, though when I initially came in from the hallway it was still where it normally was, beside the kitchen. A lot of kids were around.

My mother had the stuff she had taken out of the refrigerator on the table, and was eating it a little as she worked. Some of the kids were snacking on it, too. She was evidently going to serve it as a means of getting rid of it. I guessed that even though it was pretty old it must still be alright. The table was still where it normally was at this point. She was talking, and the kids were also saying things.

She had a very large cellophane package of cookies, sandwich cookies with one side vanilla and the other side chocolate, not a major brand. It was probably four or five pounds, and was partly eaten. She was going to put it somewhere, I think in a different package, to try to seal it up and preserve it. She went toward the cupboards to get something I think, then the table was in the new position in the now expanded kitchen/dining room. She got another package of the cookies, again partly eaten, from somewhere, maybe the refrigerator, and was looking around for something to seal it with or to put it in. I was saying please, please, don't put it in the refrigerator, remembering how things ended up there, damp and soft. She paused and looked distracted and uncertain, and a little flustered. I suggested I think that she just dump them in a plastic bag and then seal that.


I went out back then. It seemed to be afternoon again, somehow. It was raining. The house, where we were living, was located somewhere else now. It seemed we had recently moved there, and it felt like it was the mid to late 1960s. The house now had a long metal overhang out back, and the water was hitting it and running off the metal in a small stream. The surface of the roof was wavy, at least on top, though it had panels underneath. It didn't seem to fit together very well, and the seams were crooked. Ahead, there was a slope, though it had paths winding back and forth, and bushes. Other houses were around to the sides and below. We seemed to be in a big basin, with sharply slanting sides heading down to a lake. Some other people came out, kids in their teens I think, and we talked a bit.

I was still concerned about the time, and getting back to the shop, even though a whole day had passed now. I guessed I would have to brush my teeth too, though I was still tired and it seemed like a lot of effort. I could feel with my tongue that I was getting a film on them, though. I was concerned about the rain some too, but then it didn't seem to be coming down as hard as it initially seemed, then it was stopping. It felt like it was a place we had only stayed at for a week or so, and then had to move on, that it was, in the dream, another place we had been. I seemed to be looking back at it from a perspective of much later in the future.


My brother came out, smiling, and we started walking down the paths, going to the right because it led that direction. We got to a main aisle that led straight down toward the lake. A lot of people were out now, including a lot of children. The main aisle had an odd surface, a kind of grayish brown dirt that was very smooth and even, and spongy feeling. I had been concerned about it after the rain, and I felt that I was leaving footprints behind, with small ridges of muck sticking up around them, but it didn't feel bad to walk on. I stepped briefly on a small section that felt that it had a broad board, maybe a foot and a half wide, just under the surface. It was very stiff and hard there.

We continued on, going downward toward the lake, talking. My brother seemed very happy. The area was crowded with people and especially kids, to both sides, though not many were on the broad path, and those on it were mostly to the sides. On both sides small aisles met the path, like for rows of seating in a movie theater, and they did seem to have some kind of low seats in them, maybe like folding lawn chairs, with the seats almost on the ground. They were crowded with people, on them and around them, a lot a of them talking. Some of the little kids had pails and toy shovels, and were digging. All around us, in the distance, houses were on the slopes, vegetation around them. Some of the houses weren't too far away, but the area we were walking down now had mostly the broad path with narrow aisles going off it. Eventually we turned around and went back toward the house. We needed to get back for something. Maybe lunch was supposed to be ready by then, or maybe my brother thought that it should be.


After I woke up, I lay in bed for a long time thinking about the dream. Oddly, sometimes I heard and felt little shifts in my mattress, near my head, sometimes feeling it. It was kind of a deep abrupt sound, like cloth moving under a weight and stress. It was alarming at first, as I wasn't sure what was happening, and even when I realized what it was, it bothered me because I didn't know why it was happening, and why it was suddenly happening now.

I eventually drifted back to the dream at least a couple of times, without actually going back to sleep. In one of them, I was out front, with several other people from the house, and we had a very large broad wheelbarrow that was filled to the brim with the odd dirt from the broad aisle. I don't know where we actually got the dirt from, it may have even come from a place out front, or perhaps we got it for a place out front somewhere. It was a surprise to me, though. My brother might have been out there too, I'm not sure. Most of the people were kids, some in their teens. We were talking about it, among other things. We were near the bedrooms, with a line of tall bushes separating us from the main portion of the yard, which was still largely gravel. Like the dirt in the aisle, this dirt too was flattened and very smooth, and was very slightly rounded and curving down slightly at the edges, to the inner surface of the wheelbarrow bin. It filled it, the middle of it going a little higher than the top of it I think.

I had gone around behind it and was holding onto the handles. I now picked it up and started to slowly wheel it toward the other side of the house, intending to put it somewhere else, where it wasn't setting out in the yard. It was evidently something my mother had done, getting the special dirt and then leaving it out there, for some thing she had in mind. It was a little awkward wheeling it through the dirt and small rocks, though the area had narrow places where the rocks had been swept to the sides, leaving little irregular lanes maybe ten or twelve inches wide, almost like ruts, though they were mostly level. I stopped a time or two along the way and rested. The kids continued to talk, sometimes to me and sometimes to each other, and sometimes just making comments in general.

Later, I had another continuation of the dream, where a person like the woman in the movie "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" showed up, dressed like her even, with a short wide skirt that barely went beyond her hips. She came inside and was talking to some of the people there. She talked rapidly, and was apparently one of the people staying there now, even apparently a relative.

My mother died on November 8, 2010. The part of the dream about my mother finding food in the refrigerator that had been there a long time and needed to be thrown out, but then eating it, apparently refers to the food she had that I saved there, a little tub of partly eaten mashed potatoes from a fast food place, and the paper plate with her fish sandwich from Burger King, with a few french fries and onion rings. She has a few other things in there too. It may be her way of saying that it's time to throw them out, that it's okay. I had finally thrown out a few things, long ago now, and though I thought about what remained frequently, I couldn't quite bring myself to throw any more out yet. Maybe it's time now. I had been intending to throw some out soon, maybe even today. (It didn't happen, though. I kept the food in there.)

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Novel Writing Month 2011 - Winner!

I was a winner for National Novel Writing Month 2011, meaning that I managed to write a novel of at least 50,000 words during the month (November). I completed it, at least the rough draft, on November 21, 2011, but didn't get the word count verified by the website until the next day. The Open Office word processor, which I wrote it in, put the word count at 60,973, and the website put the word count at 60,977. This was quite a bit higher than 2010's novel, which had word counts of 53,076 and 53,077, and 2009's novel, which had word counts of 52,110 and 52,111. The book for 2011 was a sequel of the 2010 and 2009 ones. I joined National Novel Writing Month [ nanowrimo.org ] on March 20, 2009, as user Stephen_M_99.

Less winner web badge images were available this year, and they were more uniform in appearance. If forced to make a choice, I would probably choose the wide one at the top, though the long one under it is also good.









My novel is science fiction, and though I did not put a synopsis or excerpt in the Novel Info section this time, here they are for this post:

Synopsis:
The time traveler-in-training's life takes a sudden drastic turn, and though he learns much more about time travel, it's not enough to keep an old enemy from confronting him in a most disturbing way.


Excerpt:
Outside the room, he heard screams and commotion. That was odd. He normally didn't hear anything from outside while he was in the room. He turned and saw a big hole in the wall, with glowing, burning edges. He remembered he had seen it before, when it was forming. Outside it was the hallway. As he looked, someone rushed past. He heard a rumble, and then a distant screech of twisting metal, and the room shook. There was a muffled whump and a glow went down the hallway, then faded, and he felt a pressure wave go through him. There were more screams.

He went to the hole in the wall, and careful not to touch the hot edges, put his head through and looked out. In the direction of where the glow had come from, he could see a strange, churning, blue-gray mass, still softly glowing. In the other direction he could see a few people, men and women, going toward a door, gathering around it, trying to squeeze through it, everyone at once, which wasn't working out. Maybe it was an exit. He quickly but carefully stepped through the hole, and rushed toward them.

As he reached them, the last one was going through the door. The person, a man, looked back and saw him. His eyes widened, and he started to push the door closed. Jack pushed back, putting his shoulder to the door, and for a moment the door opened wider. Jack saw then, through the window in the door, that some of the others had seen what was happening, and turned back to help. Despite Jacks' efforts, the door started to slowly close. "Please," Jack said, "I just want to get out."

"I'm sorry," one of them said. "We can't take the risk. You're one of the actual operatives. We're just low level workers. No one cares about us. If you came, though, we'd become a target." The door inched closed, then, and he could hear the click of a lock. He tried the knob, tried desperately to turn it, but it was no use. He watched them through the window in the door, as they left, moving quickly away, some of them turning back occasionally to look at him. Jack yelled and pounded on the door, but it was no use.

A gray-blue glow started to softly fill the hall, and a ripple flowed through it, seemingly through reality itself. Jack pulled frantically on the knob, as if he was trying to pull the whole door out of its frame, as the walls slowly faded away.



The previous years' novels:

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Winner!
National Novel Writing Month 2009 - Winner!

Meeting Whitley Strieber at The Poisoned Pen bookstore

On Saturday, March 7, 2009, I met Whitley Strieber at The Poisoned Pen bookstore. He was supposed to be there for a book signing for "Critical Mass" at 2:00 PM, but I got there around 2:30. I was already late when I got to where the store was, but I noticed it too late and passed it and had to make my way back to it, coming in from a side street. When I pulled into the parking lot behind the bookstore, most of the spaces were filled. Some people were outside in small groups of one or two people.

As I quickly went toward the store, looking at the doors to see if there was any access there or if I had to go around to the front, two young men who had been talking paused, and one of them asked if I wanted to see "Mr. Striber", with a long "I". I said yes, and he told me how to go around to the front of the store. I thanked him and quickly did.

I found Whitley was around the middle of the store, sitting with his back toward a wall, and people were in semicircular rows of black padded folding chairs in front of him. He was giving a talk, talking about his experiences. Another person or two had just come in before me, women I think, and were placed somewhere in the back. Various people were standing around, in the room at various places beyond the chairs, that were apparently store employees.

I was waved toward an empty seat in the front, which was good because without a microphone he was not very loud. As I went to the seat, a short woman sitting in a chair a couple of rows behind it quickly got up and sat in a chair a couple of spaces over to her right, probably because I was too tall and blocking her view. A lot of the audience had kind of a hippie look about them. A few were relatively young, but a lot of them seemed to be in late middle age.

Whitley was wearing what looked like a light suit and coat, light brown and somewhat tweedy looking. Sitting there, his right pants leg was pulled way up showing maybe half a foot of skin between the pants leg and the relatively short white sock. He had a light colored shirt, maybe a pale yellow, and I think it was open at the top, without a tie. He had short white hair, and his mouth and lower face looked a little enlarged and pulled forward, like what happens with some people when they get older.

His wife, Anne, was off to my right, at the edge of the audience, sitting facing some shelves of books, which she sometimes looked at and sometimes seemed to be falling asleep. She had odd glasses, relatively large and with clear pieces at the sides and bottom, with curved dark lines joining them, almost like stained glass divisions.

He talked about the night he got his ear implant and the things that happened then, and about what happened when he tried to have it removed, tugging sometimes at his left ear, where the implant was. He also took some questions from the audience, but I couldn't hear most of them.

I could hear the girl sitting beside me to my right (the chair to my left was empty), but only because I was so close. She talked very softly. She said she had read "The Path", which meant she was probably a member of the unknowncountry.com (his website) message board, as he didn't sell very many copies of that book. She asked him, I think, about how to get past the fear. She was thin and maybe 30-40 years old, with long dark hair.

Someone asked him about the Communion movie. He paused and said he was glad it was done. He said he thought that the person who played him, Christopher Walken, initially thought that he was someone who liked to be in front of the camera all the time. Whitley told us it was just the opposite. When he started out as a writer, they didn't have book tours and all he had to to was stay home and write.

He finally got through talking and quickly went toward a table at the back that he was led to and the people quickly arranged for him, clearing it I think of anything on it, and a few people got in a short line, carrying old books of his that they wanted signed, some of them with a lot of wear. Most of the people simply left, though. It seemed like everyone was short, some especially so, even Whitley seemed short (though I later found that he says he is 6'2" on one of his social site main pages; perhaps he shrunk some since that measurement was taken. I saw him for the most part sitting down, though, so I may have misjudged his height some.) Anne was also very short and seemed almost elfin with her short haircut.

I grabbed one of his new "Critical Mass" books from a table near the front that had a bunch of them, and went to the back and got in line. Someone from the store went and grabbed all his books and put them in a pile on the table, to his right. When I got close to him I could see that he had a big bald spot on top that covered around half the top of his head.

When I reached him, which wasn't too long as the line was relatively short, though the people tended to talk a little bit with him, I told him I was a member of the message board. He looked up, smiling, and said "Oh?" and seemed interested.

I said I was "Stephen ... in ... AZ."

His face fell some and he looked thoughtful and to the side and said he wasn't familiar with...

I tried to explain further and said. "Stephen ... in i-n ... AZ. Like Arizona, it's Arizona." He looked confused and asked what my handle was.

I lowered my head to where it was pointing at the table, with the top of my head toward him, and then a little slower raised it back up. I said I was the one that kept all the old threads alive, that when they got down I just went in and...

He was saying "Oh. Ohhhh...." He then said, "You know, they're archived, they never really go away" and said he regarded them as very important, that they were a record of people's experiences.

I asked if there was a way to search for them.

He said, "It must be very hard... if there's a way... I'll have to check on it." and said if they were being deleted they shouldn't be.

I spelled my name for him and he happily and quickly opened my book and was writing it down, and then he paused and looked up and said "a-n or e-n" and I said e-n, and he went back to writing in it, and then putting in his signature. My name was clearly written, but his name was very vague and hard to decipher.

He said he would check on the board and I nodded, smiling, and said "Thanks" and he brightened up considerably and said something and I held my book out slightly and said "Thanks" again, and he brightly said something in response and I turned and went away. It's hard for me to hear things, and I sometimes miss what's said. Asking people to repeat it, especially frequently, can be annoying and disruptive. I sometimes do it, but not this time.

I think there was a person or two behind me, and then when there were no more people Whitley immediately started signing the books from the pile on the table. I hope I wasn't the only one that bought a copy of his new book.

I went and looked at the shelves, seeing if they had any other books I might be interested in, including looking to see if they had any copies of "Dandelion Wine" by Ray Bradbury, which they apparently didn't (I had recently left a favorable comment about a review of it on one of the store's websites).

At the register, the girl wanted to know if I had filled out something so they could notify me when writers were coming, and explained they just needed my email. I decided to go ahead and do it. The card just wanted my name and email, and there was a drawing for a $50 gift certificate for the store.

When I got back to the car, the time was around 4:20. Almost two hours had passed.

Much later, looking at what he wrote in the book and trying to puzzle it out, I finally decided that he probably wrote, "To Stephen from Whitley Strieber".

Dream - Beating the Devil, maybe

On the night of Wednesday-Thursday, August 19-20, 2009, I dreamed I was in a large dark house, probably two or three stories, squarish. It was night. It was a huge house, but simply made, with a fairly stark interior, probably concrete or tile floors, and sparse furniture. It was similar to houses in some other dreams. Some other people were there, probably less than ten in all. Perhaps some were family members, but probably most were not.

I went from a room at one corner to deeper into the house, but a few other people came and got me, wanted me to see something, some kind of strange old book I think, maybe with a little dark box of some kind, perhaps eight to ten inches across. It was about something that had happened in the past, maybe 100 years ago. Somebody had either sold his soul or gotten in so deep into evil magic that it was hard to get out. Near the end of his life, which evidently occurred when he was middle-aged, he was having some regrets and didn't want to go to Hell, but the Devil was coming to get him.

He went toward the front door, through the dark living room. Someone who was apparently the Devil, though he looked like a man, was there, and took him outside, to a large square room with open walls, like a picnic area. It was some distance away, but it's hard to say how much, it might have been a few hundred feet or it might have been much more. It had low walls and a roof held up by pillars. The walls were of ornamental brick along the top, which might have been three feet or so, with either stucco under that or more brick or even stones cemented together. The pillars were probably of brick, and were set at wide intervals along the walls.

The Devil spent a long time on a cell phone, talking to someone. The man wandered around the area. There was some thought of trying to escape, climbing over the wall when the Devil wasn't looking, but the man didn't; it didn't seem likely to work in the end.

There was a broad lake to one side, pale brown, dead. Eventually the Devil took the man and was flying out over the lake. It was me living it, though, I had become the man, or was in his body. The change had happened earlier, back at the picnic area probably.

Then it was my grandmother flying me, but a disembodied voice, maybe two or even three, was saying to me that it wasn't really her, that it was really the Devil, and to poke out her eyes. It seemed it was important to inflict as much damage as possible, that it hurt the Devil somehow. As they told me to poke out her eyes, I had a vision of my thumbs going in and black goo squishing out, and I recoiled from it. I didn't want to do it, it might somehow really be her, and even if it wasn't I didn't want to do it. I felt that the Devil was trying to trick me, too, that he was trying to tempt me into doing something terrible.

A little later, we landed on a narrow spit of land sticking out on the other side of the lake, where it divided into two other lakes. Before we landed, it was no longer my grandmother but the Devil again. He went off a few feet and was talking to someone on his cell phone again. He came back and I somehow managed to shove him into the sand up to his neck. The voices were saying again to hurt him, to do various things to his head. The Devil kept on talking, to someone off somewhere far away that I couldn't see I guess. I hit and/or kicked him a few times, though I didn't do what was suggested. The Devil ignored me and kept on talking. I kicked his head off, which had momentarily shrunk quite a bit. It went a few feet off and returned to normal size. I went and stomped on it, smashing maybe half of it to dust, then started to try to smash the rest, but I turned around and the head had grown back, looking slightly younger, still talking.

The Devil then took me back to the picnic area. He went back to talking on his cell phone, wandering around a bit. It seemed the man tried to sneak out then, going under a pale net curtain, on the side away from the lake. The scene seemed to be condensed a bit, like it was more something in memory, and I was some varying distance from it, watching it.

After a while the Devil noticed that he was gone, but the man, some distance away now, said that since he out gotten out that the Devil didn't really have him anymore. Apparently there was something in the rules about things like that. The Devil seemed to accept it, but objected that he was still dead, and couldn't go back to his body, and apparently not to Heaven either, which was off somewhere in the direction of but alongside and past the lake.

The man went back to the house. There was some ritual that could be performed with the book, or a book, that could free him from his connection to Hell. He would evidently be alive, at least for a while, once he got inside the house, but the ritual had to be performed to solidify it, to make it permanent, though I had the feeling it wouldn't be a terribly long life extension, just a brief one.

Then I was back in the present day, and got caught up in it. The Devil came and got me; apparently just being associated with it had drawn him. I was taken to the picnic area for a while, then he flew me out over the water. I think he tried briefly to fool me with my grandmother, and even my mother, but it wasn't working and he didn't try very hard. Then we were at the spit of land for a little while, and then he flew me back. He wandered around the picnic area, then, talking on his cell phone.

I finally sneaked out under the curtain, and was a little ways off, perhaps eight or ten feet, when he noticed. He came and told me I couldn't do that. I went around the corner of the picnic area, getting on the side toward the house, and getting perhaps half the distance from the picnic area that I had been. I told him that since I had gotten out, then I was no longer under his control. The situation was the same as before; I couldn't go to Heaven and the Devil couldn't take me, but I wasn't really alive either.

The Devil took me back to the house, while explaining about the book and what had to be done. He seemed to be trying to be genuinely helpful. I think he was hoping that he would still be able to get me after I died, that though I might be temporarily saved from him, he could eventually degrade me enough that he could come again and take me when I was dying.

I went back in the house and told the people there about what had to be done. Not as many people were there as before, but some may have been in other parts of the house. Probably most of the ones left were women, young women I think. There was some talk of trying to get a priest to do it, but it was felt that there wasn't time, so the ceremony was somewhat nervously begun. I was lowered to the floor, or mostly so, my head and shoulders were held up a little, and a man began nervously reading from the book. It was in another language, Latin perhaps. As he read, the atmosphere seemed to change a little, with drifts of fog inside the dark house and unseen, but felt, presences. It seemed to be vaguely like an exorcism, but more of a dark ritual, one that was in some sense drawing spirits. Whether they were good or evil or something else, I couldn't yet say.


The dream seemed to end around there. It had a lot more earlier, but I don't remember it anymore. I had been listening to the radio that night, to the Coast to Coast AM show, which was on both before and after the dream. The show had something about lucid dreaming, and also something about spirits and maybe astral projection. Though I missed most of it, probably some of it got incorporated in the dream.

Dream - Dreams, synchronicities, grandparents, the radiator shop, the wedding, and the autism tour

On Saturday, July 26, 2008, late in the afternoon, I dreamed I was driving on McKellips or a street farther out, going way to the east. It was night. I was thinking about, even experiencing, strange dreams I had had in the past, some about my grandfather on my father's side and some about my grandmother on my mother's side. It seemed that at some point my grandmother was with me in the car. I had dreamed (in the dream) that she came to visit me in an astral projection, maybe I was in an astral projection too, and I had taken her around to a lot of places, showing her things, and we had spent a long time doing it.

Now I was going back toward Scottsdale and was almost there. I had picked her up somewhere or she had somehow joined me, and she was talking about how she had had a dream where I had taken her all over the place and showed her things. She was happy and seemed amazed at it. I was agreeing with her as she talked.

Then somehow it was a later time, and I was going back toward Scottsdale with my father, on the same road. I'm not sure who was driving, sometimes it seemed to be him and sometimes me.

I was telling him about strange dreams I had about my grandfather (his father), and my grandmother. I didn't remember much now about the dreams with my grandfather, but I assured him I had them written down. I didn't have it with me, though, which made me feel a little disturbed or bad, though I kept a happy air.

I told him briefly about what happened with my grandmother. I thought sadly to myself that I should have told her more about it. She was dead now, though, she had died maybe a few months afterward and had been dead now for several months, maybe more (in real life, she died in December 1984).

At some point we stopped and were no longer in a car, though he was with me for a while. It was daylight now, morning.

I walked along looking for synchronicities, trying to show him how this and things like it were happening with me now. We went along lanes lined with tall green bushes, almost like hedges except they were not trimmed. I saw a newspaper laying on the ground and leaned over and peered at it, looking for synchronicities. Nothing popped out at me, but I still thought something might be there. I hadn't the time or inclination to examine it closer right now, though. I was going to the radiator shop on Scottsdale Rd., and it was getting late, like it was taking too long.

I finally came out of the bushes to the side and back of the radiator shop, coming from the south. I was alone. I met Scott, a worker at the radiator shop, out there. Someone else was also out there working, some lesser worker. It seemed I had to go somewhere now, I don't remember why, perhaps it was to get something. I left with someone, a woman.

We went back out through the bushes, but then we quickly got past them and I saw with surprise that we seemed to have somehow taken a different way. It appeared to be a little to the east of the way I had come, though it also appeared to be the other side of 68th St., near Thomas Rd., which would have been to the northwest. The light was dimmer now, like later in the day.

We saw a big Chevrolet car, like a Caprice, maybe something from the 1970s. We were not far from the back of some eating place, it was a perhaps a couple of hundred feet away. A crowd of people were off near the back of the eating place, but no one was around the car. I thought the car must be the one I had left, which was a big white Chevrolet, though I didn't know how it got where it was. A part of me that was just mind was off a ways and slightly above and watching, and kept raging in frustration, "Don't they see the 'Just Married' sign on the back of it, don't they see that this is a wedding and this is the car the bride and groom will go away in, the car isn't even white, it's actually a pale blue, can't they see that?"

We went toward the car, talking wonderingly and looking it over. I finally decided that it was a light blue color, almost white but not white, and so it couldn't be the car I was looking for. We went toward the back and I finally noticed the sign. At first it seemed to be on the back window, but now it was mounted on a long, squarish, heavy metal tube going from a very small trailer, just two wheels perhaps two or three feet apart and a metal frame, toward an attachment low on or under the bumper of the car. It was a huge sign, and going back to the other side of it we could see that it said "Just Married". I was pulling at it to get a better look and I think the woman was some, too. The sign bent back and twisted some under the pressure. It was firmly mounted, though, and was not damaged, just showing a little flexibility. It was of some fairly stiff white material, shiny, with black letters. We left then.

I ended up going toward Tempe on foot. The woman was with me, I think. We were eventually going up someplace along or around University Drive, but it was like a wide winding passage with uneven, somewhat soft looking walls, like it was made of some type of fiberboard and paper-mache. We were going east, toward Rural/Scottsdale Rd.

We met a woman with a group. She was apparently giving a tour. She was talking about autism (in real life they were talking about autism on the radio, on KFYI, with host Jan D'Atri). There were posters on the uneven wall about it. I had been looking at them before we met her, and at a newspaper in a vending machine, trying to find some evidence of synchronicities. I didn't notice any, though. There may have been some, but if so they were not immediately evident.

The woman led the group into and through a large art/poster/book store, that was completely open to the passageway and blended into it. She was still talking about autism, and stopping at various things to show them to the people, as part of the talk/lecture.

Celebrities, or not

In the late 1960s, my family was visiting a town in northern Arizona, and while in a restaurant we saw a celebrity, an old man, sitting in a booth not far away. My father didn't know who it was, but recognized him enough to think it was someone he had met, and was one of his customers or potential customers. My father went over to his booth and sat by him and talked to him for a long time. I think the man was Ed Begley, Sr., and had been in some westerns.

A few years ago, while standing in line at a grocery store, a man a few people behind me thought I was a celebrity. He mistook me for Michael Grant, a man who used to host a local PBS news/talk show, Horizon, and he kept insisting I was him. I finally convinced the man that I was not Michael Grant, at least enough for him to say that I looked a lot like him and stop insisting that I was him.

Michael Grant (television)

A picture of me taken in November 2010

Dream - I meet Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, and then later, my lab partner

On Saturday, July 18, 2009, around 9:15-11:15 PM, I dreamed I was driving to Nevada. I stopped a few places along the way, and got to somewhere up north, perhaps beyond Fallon and several miles to the side, and was staying in a small town. A lot of mountains were around, covered with pine trees.

I had some device with me, that I had picked up somewhere along the way, that I sometimes put on my left shoulder. The object as a whole had a somewhat flattened thin-walled steel tube look, bent a little, and rounded some at the ends. It was steel colored, but darkened and maybe a little grimy or greasy, and was maybe ten inches long and two inches wide. When I had it on my shoulder it was literally laying over it, with most of it down the front but part of over my shoulder to the back. On the side that was underneath was a seam, where one side of the metal overlapped the other. On the part that was on the back of my shoulder, the end of the device slanted sharply, was kind of laid down partway along the underneath part of the device, and had something like a bolt or tube encircled at a distance by the metal of the walls of the device, that stuck out a little, with the area between the walls and the thing in the middle being black, perhaps from a heavy coating of grime or grease, though I think it might have been that color regardless. On the other end, the one that hung down the front, the device was apparently just sealed off by the metal walls being folded together, in a smooth even way, and was somewhat rounded, something like the toe of a sock.

I went outside and put the device on the ridge of the mountain beside the house, for my mother to see the small thing on the end. I normally kept that side facing down, along the back of my shoulder, out of sight, hidden from people, but I had placed it in plain view now, sticking up in the air. I think that the end I was trying to show her might have had some electronic function, and could maybe somehow be used for signaling, but also had a more special significance. It was something important, something that could be used to give us some kind of power over other people, maybe even something like magic, and I wanted her to know that I had it, was successful in getting it. The device was small, and she was far way, beyond mountain after tree covered mountain, that went all the way to the horizon, but I thought it might be visible to her, especially if she used binoculars, as I thought she would. There was something about it, about the magic of it, that somehow magnified it in your awareness, when you focused on it.

I went back inside. Ivan T. Sanderson came in from what used to be my sisters' bedroom, talking to someone, giving him or her a reading or answer to a question. I was hoping to ask him about me. He was dead so would probably be able to give correct information. He kept talking to the other person, though, as I tried to get his attention. We were in what was my bedroom now, larger than in real life and shared with other people. Two largish beds were low on the floor, side by side with space between them. The dark green cover on mine kept lifting up in a big wave, which moved from the far top corner down the sheet. It did it over and over at slightly irregular intervals. I was trying to point it out to Ivan. I finally got his attention and he made a surprised comment on it. I asked him what it was and he was saying it might be a ghost, or maybe he attributed it to some other supernatural entity. I noticed that air from a fan seemed to be coming all the way from another room and was wondering if that could do it, but I'm not sure how much I said about it, if anything.

Two or three other people came in and were talking, one of them a blond woman. I noticed that someone had put a pillow to the left of mine, with a person's name on it. I hadn't expected to have to bunk with someone so soon, and had been hoping I could avoid it. I noticed the name on the pillow was the name of Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz. She was the blond woman, and was now in the space between the beds, turned mostly away from me, talking to someone. I kept trying subtly to get her attention, saying, "Look who is sleeping next to me," or "Look, someone is already sleeping next to me," or some similar thing.

She finally turned around, and realized I was the one she would be bunking with, and said in a forceful, somewhat insulting manner, "Oh no I'm not, I wouldn't sleep with you," or something like that, and took her pillow back and got her bag of stuff, which was by the bed, and moved off to a bed that I guess was on the far side of the room, though I didn't really see. I was glad she was gone, though I had some mixed feelings about it, and wondered if the replacement, who might be a guy, would be any better.

I went back to work. It seemed to have a bit of a shopping center combined with it. I picked up a snack that was basically a thin, breaded skin over a tiny ribcage that had bones like fragile wires, with a long half loop of something, perhaps white plastic, that went over the top and down the sides and beyond. It had some extra breaded skin at the top. I ate at the top while Ivan talked to someone who was apparently Bernard Heuvelmans. The thing I was eating had a brownish string loosely tied around it, in a loop from the top to the bottom, and I pulled it up, which easily broke through the ribs, breaking through and crushing the whole structure and pulling it up, and I ate the skin and crushed ribs, crunching them. Bernard looked at me disapprovingly, not liking the noise and thinking it denoted poor manners, though he initially didn't comment. Later when prompted about it, in a kidding remark by Ivan, he did say something about it being bad manners, and not done where he came from (which was France). I didn't say much about it.

I wanted to find something else to eat now, I was still hungry. I think I went to Engineering for a while, then back toward the other end of the building. I stopped in a small conference room that was where the men's restroom was in real life, and maybe was part of the restroom in the dream. The Engineering people were there, perhaps most of them standing, but a few were sitting on various things. I picked up a canister that was left there, that evidently had some more dried breaded skin in it. It was something left by someone in management. The other people had things too. They appeared to be similar, the ones I glanced at, but I didn't know if they were actually all the same. They were gifts of appreciation, left there for us; apparently the entire department was being rewarded.

I was nibbling at mine, and I think had it mostly gone, when a manager or supervisor I think, someone in power, came in from somewhere in front. I don't remember who it was now, but I knew him in the dream. He looked at what I had, then thanked me for it and put a large cookie on top of it and left. The people nearby were looking at it and at me, at least one with a little smile on his face. I was a little uncertain about what had happened. I hadn't brought him anything, this was something he had given out. I was feeling a little guilty now, though, about not bringing anything. As I picked the cookie up to eat it, the others were getting up and leaving. A little while later I went back toward town, which was Fallon, not the town earlier in the dream.

The way was somewhat different than in real life, with a much longer rise to the mountain going from town, and a more uneven surfaced road. I went back at least part of the way on a little stiff bar with rounded corners and a flat bottom, that had some mechanism, like a few tiny wheels underneath it, that could be used for travel. It seems it had to be pushed along, like a skateboard, to get it started, and then it would go for a while. It was much narrower though, only a couple of inches wide and an inch high.

It was only around two or three in the afternoon. It was cold and the road was wet in places, maybe with some partially melted snow in places too (in real life it was extremely hot that day, around 115). We were on the road leading to the service station, where it would turn and head toward town. The people around me thinned out. There were two or three places along the way that had some connection to work, that we needed to stop at or some people needed to stop at.

I went around the corner, going toward town, but then came back. Someone from work was with me, who wasn't too bright. I cautioned him that we had to go slow, that police might be hiding. He nodded a little, his eyes big, his jaws spread apart but his mouth closed. We went back around the corner a ways, to a nearby place, that was by the service station but on the other side of the road, the east side. It was evidently a bar, and the area in front of it was thick with people from work. I mostly stayed outside, though he went in. He eventually came back out, and slowly walked and drifted through the air in a big arc around the corner, taking my advice to heart about not going very fast. By all appearances he was drunk, though. I stared at him, and some other people did too. I felt that the police were also staring at him, from their hidden location, not sure what to make of this.

I then had to go back to work. I was starting to feel that I might have left too soon. A few other people were also heading back. One of them was the person who had invented the little device to ride on. He seemed to have suffered from hard times, though. He had been unable to get a patent for some reason, and was now being laid off from work. He talked to me a bit about it as we went along. I was having trouble getting it to work now. He seemed to having trouble, too. The device had shrunk to just a few inches long, and I was stretched out pushing it along with my hand, through what remained of the cool wet slush. It had resistance to movement, as before, when I pushed at it to speed it up, but it didn't seem to reach a point where it could travel on its own, and kept slowing down when I stopped pushing.

I stopped at a place along the way, where the road was still going beside the Navy base, though the base was quite a ways to the side, and the place was on the opposite side of the road from it, to the east, on the left. A short, dumpy middle-aged woman there talked in a somewhat critical manner about things, sometimes to other people and sometimes to me, then abruptly softened and reached toward my face with a crumpled ball of tissue, wiping at a sore that was apparently between the corner of my mouth and my nose, on the right side. I had been unaware of having one. She seemed satisfied about getting it clean, then turned away with the tissue, continuing to talk, in a softer and more matter of fact way, about things and work and what people were doing and what they expected of her and what they thought she was doing with her checks and tests, which were not really what she was doing as they had misinterpreted why the tests were needed.

I went on toward work, but then went off to the side to the right, somewhere after the road turned to the left. I went into a wilderness area, with occasional small trees. I found my lab partner there, looking the worse for wear, though he was happy to see me. He had been assigned to this out of the way place, evidently because they didn't want him anywhere and didn't know what to do with him, though he didn't talk much about it, just saying something about being assigned out here now and comically indicating his surroundings. He didn't seem to be too upset about it, just a little confused. There was a large, rough, light grayish basin there, like it had some kind of coating, that had an old book in the middle of it, some papers too I think. He went off somewhere for a while, evidently to do whatever he was assigned to do out here. I knew that people could rate him by marking along the rim of the basin and lower down, with the markings closer to the edge being more favorable, and markings along the inside, along the sides of the bowl, being more unfavorable.

I got something like a pale yellow pastel art crayon and started going along the inside wall of the shallow basin, rubbing the crayon back and forth as I went, making a broad blurry line along the middle there. Different places were supposed to denote different areas being evaluated, but I didn't pay any attention to that. Some other people had left earlier evaluations in different colors, in clearer narrower lines. Many of them, perhaps most, were little marks on the rim itself, but in some places the markings were clearly unfavorable. I came to realize, as I went along, that I should have been going more toward the outer edge than the middle. I hadn't wanted it to appear that I was just giving him a maximum grade, thinking it would look too much like I was just showing favoritism, but it had turned out to look more like a so-so grade, or worse. I had most of it done, though. I went back over it, trying to spread the color out more to the outer edge. I didn't know how this would be checked out by someone, I guessed they would have to come out here on occasion to look at it. My lab partner came back, and then a person came to look at the basin. I don't think they were very happy about it.

I went back to the woman I had met earlier, to complain about it and try to set the record straight. Someone else was already there, though. After talking to me very briefly, apologetically, saying that she had to talk to the other person first, she went off a ways with him. While waiting, I found a little old book or manual, with soft darkened pages, that also had evaluations. It had a section that had a dark red line going around the edges of the pages, a line that had been left there earlier as an evaluation; perhaps part of it was left there at an earlier time by me. I tried to add to it now, going along the edge, making the line darker and more noticeable. The woman came back. I talked to her, trying to defend my lab partner, and she got irritated. She said that people didn't understand, that she didn't care about what grades they got in school, it didn't mean anything, what she cared about was the ability to actually do the work. I was trying to reply, but somewhat stumbling over it, that he really knew things, and really knew how to do things. She looked back at me, her head lowered a little, frowning, but seeming to have softened, just a little.

I finally went back toward work then. It was getting later, though, perhaps close to five, and I was starting to wonder if it was really worth it, and how I would account for the time spent away, but decided to count it as really part of work, since it seemed to deal with work at times. I think I met someone important from work, a man, perhaps a military person of fairly high rank, with gray hair and who stood stiffly erect, and spoke in a very businesslike manner. He seemed at least partly in favor of me, though. I'm not sure I actually made it all the way back to work, it seems he was at some place along the way, somewhere off the road to the right.


Note: Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans were friends in real life. Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973) was a naturalist who used to spend a lot of time collecting animals, and became interested in reports of animals that were unknown to science. He became interested in UFOs, too. Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001) was a zoologist. He was also interested in unknown animals.

Ivan T. Sanderson wrote a lot of books on unknown animals and some on UFOs. Some of the books are:

* Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life
* Uninvited Visitors: A Biologist Looks at UFO's
* Invisible Residents: The Reality of Underwater UFOs
* Things
* More Things
* Investigating the Unexplained: A Compendium of Disquieting Mysteries of the Natural World

He also wrote books on known animals, including:

* Animal Treasure
* Living Treasure
* Caribbean Treasure
* Living Mammals of the World

Bernard Heuvelmans wrote several books too, including:

* On the Track of Unknown Animals
* In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents


Wikipedia entries on them:

Ivan T. Sanderson
Bernard Heuvelmans

Dream - Cars and fake cars, rock displays and fountains, and barking, painted, seal-like creatures

On Friday, July 31, 2009, around 2:30-6:25 AM, I dreamed I was at some place a little like my old elementary school, and perhaps where the school is, though it and the surrounding area were a little different in the dream. I was in something like the multipurpose room, but it was laid out the other way, north-south, and was some kind of grocery store, an older style one, with simpler shelves and displays. It also sold other things, and had a long tall counter, with a few people behind it, along the east side of the room. I was there a long time, with someone else, perhaps two people. My mother might have been one of them, but someone else was also with me. I mostly wandered around the store by myself. There was some worry about rain and flooding, and it became important to leave soon.

A little later, not long before I left, I went to a wooden replica of a sports car, apparently a Lamborghini or Ferrari or something like that. It was made of two rough, somewhat splintery, light brownish orange wooden halves, put together around the bumper level or just above, so that it had an upper half and a lower half. It was nearly life-size. I pulled the halves apart, pulling the top one up some, doing it a time or two, then a little later started taking the top section apart in small splintery sections, though it had appeared to be carved from a single piece of wood. I was a little surprised that it was coming apart. The pieces almost seemed to be breaking/peeling off, but they were fairly regular in shape, like it was intended to be that way. I had been trying to show someone the car before we left, perhaps my mother, perhaps someone else, then I was outside trying to walk home.

I remember earlier going to the place, walking up there toward it in the dark, with someone with me, perhaps 15 or 20 feet to the right, and us talking some. It was still dark when I left. One or two people were out there with me, some distance away. We sometimes talked. I was trying to walk home through the neighborhood, but they wanted to go a different way and were in more of a hurry. They left, though I'm not sure they went together. I think one or more of them might have ultimately used a car.

I wandered back and forth a bit, without getting very far west. The houses were small with small yards, in rows that ran east-west. They got much smaller then, with the alley between them not even wide enough for any but the smallest cars. I started going west, then down a street that was almost aligned with the school, a little north of center. Things expanded again and the yards became huge.

Several houses down, on the left side of the street, I came across a small car parked there. I think it was initially empty, and I looked it over and fiddled with it some, even looking inside it and feeling things inside it and fiddling with them. Someone else was nearby and it was bothering them, and they were trying to talk me out of it. I don't know if the person was one of the people who had come with me or was one of the people who had been in the school/store. I think it bothered them that I was doing this to some stranger's car.

Then a young dark-haired woman, who long ago was one of my teachers, came out of the house to the left and got in the car. I'm not sure what school I knew her from, it could have been my elementary school or high school or even DeVry, where I went to college. Perhaps she was even a combination of some teachers. She got in the little car and fiddled with things, trying to get it ready to go and started up. She had a smile on her face and seemed only vaguely aware of me, then she talked to me about what she was doing in a somewhat absent minded way. She seemed to age a little after a few moments, perhaps becoming around thirty or in her mid thirties, and had a little bit of a hassled look, though she was still smiling. At this point she may have looked a little like Mr. Monk's dead wife, Trudy (from the "Monk" TV show), though with dark hair, but she still looked more like one of my teachers. She finally got everything like she wanted, I guess, and left.

I wandered off, going some to the west and then turning to the south and going through the neighborhood, partly between houses I think, getting to a minor cross street that looped up and ran north-south for a while before turning back to the west. I felt that some people were after me now, in a small way, maybe disturbed by my wandering around and through the neighborhood.

I came across an area that was more open, with wide spaces between buildings, which didn't always seem to be houses. I was going south still. Not far to the east, a little ways behind the buildings, the land went into a rounded slope heading down to a creek or ditch or canal. The land here seemed to be mostly rock, though some places had dirt. At least a couple of places had rock displays, flat, somewhat irregular rocks stacked on top of each other in a rough square, perhaps six or eight feet on a side and perhaps a couple of feet high. The displays had a few buildings between them and were to the back, with old, worn, colored walks leading back to them from the main walk that ran in front of the buildings. They were wet, either from rain or an associated small fountain or both. I think I went back to the first one and then back to the second. I started picking up some of the irregular decorative slabs, cleaning water off of them.

A young relative came up, perhaps a cousin, a teen-aged girl, and I talked with her about about the displays. She helped with cleaning the water off some. We weren't just wiping water off, a little bit of wet dirt and grit was also being wiped off. Then she went off somewhere, perhaps to a car to go somewhere else. I think she had originally came in a car with some other people, with someone else driving. The car was parked maybe one or two hundred feet away to the southwest, though I think it moved closer, more directly west.

A little later, a car pulled up beside and a little behind a building a couple of buildings back to the north, and one or two people got out to do something in the buildings. Some kids were left in the car, maybe with one or two adults. One of the kids pointed toward me and was saying, "Say, isn't that the person people were looking for?" After continuing a bit with it, the kid was finally able to get the adults' attention and the car came closer, I guess after the people in the building got back in, though I'm not sure all of them did.

Then a young woman in the car started throwing things at me, sometimes hitting the rocks and sometimes hitting me. I think one of them hit me on the left temple/cheek area. They seemed to be rags or paper towels that had been wadded up and dipped in a small can of white paint. It was drizzling rain too, and the paint was running off in thin diluted streaks. I started wiping it off the rocks. I recognized her as a former girlfriend, not of mine, but of the character I was now playing, which seemed separate from the real me. It seemed ironic that she was doing this. She obviously hadn't recognized me, and I wondered how long it would take until she did. The car came much closer, pulling up beside me perhaps only six to ten feet away, and she was still yelling at me and saying how she was going to contact the authorities, and was still throwing wadded, dipped in paint things at me and was about to throw another one, when the cousin came back and quickly went over to her and explained the situation and told her who I was. The woman stopped, then, looking at me a little uncertainly, but with recognition. We talked briefly, then, though I don't think I got too close to the car.

Then I went further east, to where the dark rock went in a sharp rounded slope downward. It was still drizzling rain. The slope turned almost vertical, then mostly flattened out, though it continued downward in a shallow irregular slope, apparently eventually leading to a lake or perhaps the sea. Beginning on the sharp slope, and in a huge mass on the more level area below it, were large, very fat gray seals or perhaps manatees (though they had seal-like heads). A small can of white paint had been thrown out on them, perhaps a more tan one, though I'm not sure. They were making almost continual barking sounds and moving their heads and upper bodies this way and that, sometimes moving to different positions, milling around a bit, and moving the small can from one animal to another with their noses, the can moving downhill from one animal to another but also going back and forth to the sides. A lot of the animals had white streaks of paint running down them, mixing with the rain. It finally seemed like almost all of them did. They were a protected species, whatever they were, and there was concern in the town about their welfare. I could even hear a distant discussion, people far away somewhere, closer to the downtown area I guess, talking about them. I hoped the paint was nontoxic and wouldn't hurt them.