Dream Log: September 9, 2000

fragment 1

. . . I am holding to a balloon. I am floating over the campus of some university. There are no short ways to anything. There seem to be walls, and fences, and long way arounds to everywhere. . .

fragment 2

. . .Arriving at my residence, I don't quite know the way around the halls. They are narrow and dirty. I find a room I think is mine. I open the door. Inside it is bare. The kitchen part is bare and curtained. There are lights, and muffled sounds coming from that part. Then I remember--my room is on the other side of that. And I know--I am being watched. . .

fragment 3

. . . Before I get to the door of my room, I am picked up by the chief of police. He beats me in a dreamy, cartoony sort of way.

I say, to anyone who happens to be around me, "The cops can do anything they like, so I will hit him back. . . "

I go into a telephone shop to buy a new telephone because I have broken the old one: I have never been into a shop like this before and I can't figure out how things work. I can only find one phone on display and it's way too expensive; eventually, by this time angry, I get the attention of the owners and ask to see both their cheapest phone and one other... then all of a sudden it's not about phones anymore and I'm going hiking with them, we're all packing up, comparing gear and figuring out how to distribute the weight fairly. Cruising across the top of the mountain we see a small Spanish village ahead of us, one narrow street flanked by tall stone houses. It's a dream so I don't waste time wondering how a Spanish hill village got to Africa. There is a large sign on the approach path saying "Onion Festival today!" Cool, I think, I must be sure to node this. The festival seems to consist entirely on one long conga line which is going up and down the street, up and down, so I join it...

I am standing in a long line of strangers, outside. It's not hot, so why has ice become a commodity? My name is called and a boy comes to collect my three dollars. I fumble for it, feeling nervous about the man watching. He can see I have more money. I know he will do something and I want to get away before it starts. It does not occur to me that this is selfish.

He scoops up the boy and whispers in his ear that it's only a game. The boy is uncomfortable but does what he is told, does not struggle to get away. I realize that the boy is a hostage, that this man is desperate and crazy. He looks at me and reaches for me and I back away. He steps closer but I know he cannot run holding the boy and I know he will not put the boy down and I take off, holding the bag of ice against my chest as if it were a baby, freezing my breasts and drenching my shirt, numbing me.

I enter the dream on the toilet. In the next stall over is Sharon Stone, who's just won an Oscar. I guess she doesn't know the male rule about not talking to your neighbor, because we're having a fine conversation about the role she played to win. I ask her to hand me the statue, and she does, telling me, "This is only the dummy one they hand you while the real one is getting engraved."

That's a relief, because the award she hands me is a piece of crap. It's made of plastic, and while I'm looking at it, Oscar himself snaps loose from the base. Sharon is still talking to me, covering the sound, and I scramble to find a way to repair the thing.

All of a sudden, a head pops up over the door of my stall. It's my dad's office manager (he works alone irl) and tosses me a paperclip, which, somehow, I use to join the two pieces. I ask Sharon if the real award has a base made of marble. She replies, "Are you kidding? That's only done in Australia."

I hand the statue back to her, sliding it under the partition between the stalls.

My dad's office manager then tells me I have to fix the Aptiva, so I'd better hurry up. Then my dad's voice (it's at this point that I realize that the bathroom itself is just sitting open in my dad's office) booms "Oh, sure, right ... he couldn't fix his boyfriend's computer. Why didn't he just take the battery out?"

This enrages me. "Dad! That was seven years ago, why can't you just let it go and let me do my job?" I scream.

I leave the stall and hand my dad a Bic pen. He asks, "What the hell is this for?". I reply, "Your ass, dad ... your ass."

He fires me.

I storm out of the office, and get into my car. I drive to River Oaks Elementary School, where I spent fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in Houston.

It's lunchtime, but all the kids are eating in the main hallway instead of the cafeteria. It's incredibly loud, with some kind of horrid thrash metal music being played.

I sit down at the teacher's table, next to Will Riker, my spanish teacher from high school, and my sixth grade math teacher. I'm shocked by how old she looks.

We try to talk, but the kids drown us out. So, unbeknownst to the other, me and my math teacher both covertly cast a cone of silence spell. Whoops. Since two people cast the spell, we've also muted ourselves.

Since no one can hear anyone else speak anymore, I sigh, and wake up.

Dream 1:

Our dog, Jettah, was gone, apparently. I don't know if she had died or if she ran away or what happened, but I was way past the mourning stage. We had decided to get a new dog. The dog was going to be a half Black Labrador half Cocker Spaniel like Jettah. Here's where things get a bit weird:

When we bought the dog, we didn't buy a little puppy, and we didn't buy a full grown dog. We bought a pregnant dog. Our dog was to be one of her puppies. In the dream it only seemed that the dog would only give birth to one puppy, even though that's rare in dogs, so that's how it went.

Dream 2:

The setting was a bit dark. I was in someone else's house and I'm not sure if it was raining outside, but it was night time.

Dream 1.5

I was in some sort of a fast food restaurant. I had bought some tortilla chips because I was hungry. I was with my girlfriend--Liz. All I can sort of remember out of this mess is that for whatever transaction I was making, they wanted some sort of photo ID (which is odd because they also said a credit card would be acceptable). All I had to offer was my school ID. I took out my wallet and began looking for things. I had to dump the contents of the wallet out, which meant dumping half of my bag of chips out as well, because, in this universe, my wallet and my bag of chips were some how tied in this fashion. So I remember the manager coming and asking angrily what was going on, etc, and then helping the next customer behind me although I was still in front.

Dream 2 (cont'd):

In much the same manner that I was dumping out my wallet and in the process, also dumping chips, I was dumping something out (I can't remember what) and also dumping out lots of coins at the same time. Most of the coins were normal US currency--quarters, dimes, nickels. Not that many pennies. A few of the coins though, were really small, and some golden. Some were like 25% the size of a penny, but golden.

All of a sudden some sort of a religious man appears, perhaps a bishop. He held in his hand some sort of device (it looked like a $1 KMart compass) mounted on white cardboard. Without question, I passed some of the odd coins across the top of the compass. No reaction. But I found -one- I was sure would provide some sort of reaction. In order for the coin to be authentic, it would need to cause the needle in his device to move toward the coin. It worked!

The coin was about the size of a quarter, but golden. It was thick, but inconsistent--some parts were thicker than others, and it wasn't very round. Pseudo-round. I was excited. It was some sort of old European coin. On the back the date was 1492 and instead of saying (c) (but, what kind of coin has a copyright mark on it?) it had a (4). I'm not sure why.

I then realized that I was in my friend Don's house. Well, he's not really a friend but I've known him for awhile--he's a part of the highschool band. So I showed him the coin, and he became real excited. He went upstairs and checked on it while I stayed downstairs. I went next to a computer and on ICQ, I read a message from him, saying something to the effect of, "Shift yourself into Taurus and come upstairs." Now, I'm an Aries with Taurus tendencies, supposedly.. I'm not sure what this has to do with the value of coins and what not but--

End of dreams.

You're in a diner... you look around. The guy next to you is being served a turkey sandwich with too much mayonnaise. You look up and realize that he's Elvis.