I went down to Iron Crown's offices on High St., but it's not the two houses. It's a ramshackle set of offices built into some old stables. I don't have any clothes so I walk down the row of offices dressed in two towels. I sling one towel over my shoulder toga style, and I am surprised at how comfy it is. I get to where Coleman sits, but he's not in. There is just an old flannel shirt draped over a ratty wheeled office chair. Bruce's door is closed, but I can tell he is not in. That's fine, I came here for my clothes, not a confrontation.
I turn left at Bruce's office and head back through a storage area to where the offices connect to Monticello. I keep walking back through areas alternating between storage and museum. The path I'm using depends on knowing the right doors to go through, so not many people know about it. The storage areas are dimly lit and dusty, full of wooden boxes painted shades of blue and gray. The museum areas are a little better lit. They're full of fancy chairs that would break if you sat on them and old paintings in elaborate gilt frames, each with a little light attached to the top of the frame. I can see out the windows on my left to a large field with trees and people having fun playing frisbee and bocce ball.
Somewhere along the way I realize I am dressed in my street clothes, which I must have gotten from one of the storage areas. I'm also carrying some heavy, odd-shaped object covered in black vinyl. The museum is closed, but hear some lady walking around looking at the paintings. I get a glimpse of her and her short tan skirt but I manage to sneak past her into a storage area. I come out of that into another museum area and there is another lady walking around. This one has noticed me, so I take a right toward a door to a balcony. I started on the first floor, but the ground has been sloping away and I'm now on the third floor. The woman is old and taller than I am, she has a huge chest with a push up bra that looks like it was built in a naval yard [This is basically Lady Wilburdon from Neal Stephenson's Interface].
Just as she demands to know what I am doing, I jump off the balcony. The vinyl thing is tucked in my left arm like a foot ball, and I grab the second story balcony (which is more like a fire escape) with my right hand to stop my fall. Dangling from the balcony, it's an easy drop to the gravel road running along the side of the building. I start to run toward the front of the building where my car is parked. The woman is trying to figure out how to call security, but she can't figure out what name it is stored under because it is my sister's phone. I know that because my sister has to deal with so many security firms that she would have just stored it under "Monticello," but I keep my mouth shut and keep running.
As I'm coming up to my car I reach in my pant pocket for the keys, but they're not there. I realize that I left them in my leather jacket. But then I realize that I'm wearing my leather jacket. That's why I came here in the first place, right? I reach into the inside pocket and there are my keys. I get in the car and pull up to the exit on Market Street, next to Bob's Wheel Alignment. I need to make a left, and I can see two cars and two motor scooters coming from the right. I've dealt with the security company before and I know they'll pull a bootlegger reverse in their Hummer and block the exit from the parking lot. So I take a left into the wrong lane. I the two cars and the two scooters pass me on the right and then try to merge to the right and out of oncoming traffic. But another car passes me on the right, honking it's horn. Then another and another. I've got my signal on, but no one will let me over. Finally, after Market St. transforms into Avon St., but before it dead ends at Monticello Ave., I am able to pull into the right hand lane. I figure it would be better to keep a low profile, so I take a left onto a side street rather than turn onto Monticello Ave. The last thing I remember is driving around Belmont with a satisfied smile on my face.
This dream was posted a day late.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Kindergarten Tree
My brother and I were walking through the area around Park and High Streets in Charlottesville, although we were in Richmond. I used a key I had so we could take a short cut through a building I used to work in. I was thanking him for giving me a ride down so that I could move to Richmond. I was telling him how it would be nice to be near all my old friends who ended up in Richmond after going to VCU.
Then we walked in to Jefferson Park and my brother was gone, and I was walking with Bill and Mark H. They said, "Let's go to kindergarten and get high." They started climbing up this huge tree. The trunk was at least 15 feet around. They were climbing with their arms and legs bent at inhuman angles, like something out of a Japanese horror film. They were climbing up by gripping the edges of the bark on the tree, which spiraled around the tree like a barber pole.
As soon as Mark and Bill headed up the tree, two random guys appeared and tried to follow them, but the random guys were unable to climb the tree. They yelled up to Bill and Mark, begging them for help, saying that they wouldn't have fun unless they helped the random guys up the tree.
Then I tried climbing up the tree. There was no bark, and I had to grip on to some sticky bumps that were protruding from the tree. At first it was hard but doable, but after about fifteen feet I just couldn't go any farther. I fell down, but landed on my feet staring up at the tree. I woke up wanting to get high.
When I first quit smoking cigarettes, I used to have lots of dreams where I would smoke in the dream. Then I would wake up feeling like shit, thinking I had smoked a cigarette the night before.
Then we walked in to Jefferson Park and my brother was gone, and I was walking with Bill and Mark H. They said, "Let's go to kindergarten and get high." They started climbing up this huge tree. The trunk was at least 15 feet around. They were climbing with their arms and legs bent at inhuman angles, like something out of a Japanese horror film. They were climbing up by gripping the edges of the bark on the tree, which spiraled around the tree like a barber pole.
As soon as Mark and Bill headed up the tree, two random guys appeared and tried to follow them, but the random guys were unable to climb the tree. They yelled up to Bill and Mark, begging them for help, saying that they wouldn't have fun unless they helped the random guys up the tree.
Then I tried climbing up the tree. There was no bark, and I had to grip on to some sticky bumps that were protruding from the tree. At first it was hard but doable, but after about fifteen feet I just couldn't go any farther. I fell down, but landed on my feet staring up at the tree. I woke up wanting to get high.
When I first quit smoking cigarettes, I used to have lots of dreams where I would smoke in the dream. Then I would wake up feeling like shit, thinking I had smoked a cigarette the night before.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Watching Myself on TV
I was called down south to one of the Carolinas to help work on a murder mystery. I got to the FBI command center for the investigation, which was in an old hotel, the kind with one level of rooms all with doors leading outside, arranged in a row with a covered walkway in front of the doors.
The room that the FBI had taken over for their command center was huge. I wander back through it, chit chatting with various people, many of whom I knew from high school. Most of it was personal stuff, catching up with each other, but a fair bit of it was about the investigation. Eventually I passed a table with two women I didn't know at it. However, they knew me. When I looked at their name plates on the table, I realized that one of them was the woman I was supposed to report to, but I had forgotten her name up to that point. I sat down and handed her the manila folder I had been carrying around with my orders in it.
The other one, who looked like Mary from work, asked me if I had any concealed weapons on me that I needed to register with her. I hesitated, because I had my butterfly knife in my back pocket, and while I was with the investigation I wasn't a law enforcement officer. The Mary look alike went on for some time about concealed weapons, and what a pain it was for her, especially when people held out on her about them, and how we could deal with it now or later, how she (as part of the FBI) could confiscate it now, or she could just turn me over to the Mountain County Police. I asked her if we could deal with it after dinner, figuring I could just stash it in my hotel. She agreed.
At this point, the other woman had come back. She handed me a white t-shirt with several strips of masking tape on it. There was cursive writing on the masking tape done with ball point pen. It had a list of parking spaces that I could use. I assumed it had my hotel room number on it as well, but I didn't read all of the numbers to be sure.
I got up and went back to the interrogation room, where there was a group of people standing together talking over what the interrogation strategy would be for the suspect they were bringing in. They were somehow all managing to stand facing away from me. They had long dark hair, so I couldn't see anything of their heads, and I had the impression they had no faces. I realized that I wasn't quite ready for an interrogation, so I left to go to the bathroom to freshen up. When I got back from the bathroom, I got lost and couldn't find the interrogation room again. I kept walking down the hallway opening doors, but they were all the wrong door. Eventually I realized that I had gotten into the wrong hallway. As I got to the door of the interrogation room, I realized that maybe I shouldn't walk in during the interrogation. I started to open the door, which had two huge stickers on it with lots of warnings using incomprehensible ideograms and lots of fine print. Kathleen, my supervisor, came up behind me in a white lab coat, and reminded me that Lt. Bone was running the investigation, and he was a real hard ass.
We backed out and went next door to the observation room. Inside was Russ, Kathleen's supervisor. It was a very cramped room. It was narrow in the first place, and one whole wall was packed with filing cabinets. The window between us and the interrogation room wasn't a one way mirror. It was dirty, yellowed sheet of thin, clear plastic. Down at the bottom was a small slot for passing notes back and forth. Clearly, the whole thing was improvised.
There was a huge crowd of people sitting and standing at a table. Again they had their backs to me, with long dark hair, and the impression of facelessness. There was one man in a light blue button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, who's face I could see. I figured he was Lt. Bone. The suspect was an overweight black guy with close cropped hair, dressed in an electric blue track suit. He was totally at ease and answering a lot of questions. I could barely hear anything, but I looked down and saw a small black cube, with a screen on one side. I could hear someone typing, and notes about what was being said were showing up on the screen. They were talking about being constructive at the moment. I looked over to see who was typing, and I saw Marishka Hagaritay with a small keyboard. I hadn't noticed her because she had been hidden behind one of the filing cabinets. I remember think that she didn't look nearly as hot in reality as she does on TV.
At this point the show ended. The whole dream up to this point had been a TV show that I had been watching in my hotel room. I was impressed with it too. I was thinking that this was maybe a second TV show that was worth watching on Hulu, along with the Daily Show with John Stewart.
I got up and left my hotel room. The hotel I was staying in had the exact same exterior as the hotel in the TV show, but with new paint on the trim. I walked down the block to a small diner. While I was eating (at the counter) I noticed that the time zone here was an hour and fifteen minutes off Eastern Standard Time. They had these weird clocks with all the numbers rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees, so that fifteen after was at the top. The clock wasn't round, either. At each fifteen minute interval there was a rounded lump sticking out, and each one had another circle of obscure numbers in it.
When I was done with dinner I went back to the hotel. Kirk had been working outside of town, and had just gotten back in. He was wondering if it was time for dinner yet, and I noticed another of those weird clocks in the hotel room. After making some comment about the clocks to Kirk, I suggested we go to the diner for dinner. He wasn't interested, so I suggested the Italian place I had eaten at the night before. But Kirk wanted to go to some weird ethnic restaurant. So we went outside and walked over to the street, which was 355 near the White Flint Metro Station. We jumped on a bus. It was more like a trolley, with an open back with two benches facing sideways away from each other. The whole thing was painted in Rastafarian colors, and the driver was playing Bob Marley's Exodus really loud.
The bus pulled a U-turn and started heading north on 355. It was wobbling back and forth a lot, and there was no way to secure yourself in the seat. Kirk and I were both sitting up on the top of the seat backs, grabbing onto the poles supporting the roof. I was really nervous about it, but Kirk was totally casual, having ridden the bus a lot in Richmond.
When we got to our stop the bus just slowed down a bit. We had to jump off and hit the ground running. Kirk and I got off, and so did a family of black people. The family was really confused, because they hadn't been here before and they didn't know which way to go. Kirk walked over to the shoulder, hopped the guardrail there, and ran down the hill. I looked, but that section of hill seemed too steep, so I went around the guard rail. Here there were strips of mulch with small shrubs in them. I managed to run down the hill without stepping on any of the shrubs, although I did step in the mulch twice.
There was a parking lot at the bottom of the hill. Kirk had already run across the lot and ran into a cave that went under the next parking lot and led to the restaurant. I ran across the lot after him, but when I got there all the cave mouths were really small, and I would have to crawl through them between the narrow gaps in the stone columns. I wanted to go further to my right, to try and find a larger cave mouth, but I figure that by the time I did that Kirk would be so far ahead of me that I would get lost in the caves. I was thinking what an asshole Kirk was being by running ahead like that when I woke up.
I haven't had a good dream memory like this for a while. I think the key is to remember as much of the dream as possible while still in bed. When you wake up from the dream, try to remember as much as you can right then and there. Then as soon as you can after you get up, write it all down.
Connections with reality: Kirk is thinking of coming up here this weekend. Brad Warner is planning on moving to North Carolina.
The room that the FBI had taken over for their command center was huge. I wander back through it, chit chatting with various people, many of whom I knew from high school. Most of it was personal stuff, catching up with each other, but a fair bit of it was about the investigation. Eventually I passed a table with two women I didn't know at it. However, they knew me. When I looked at their name plates on the table, I realized that one of them was the woman I was supposed to report to, but I had forgotten her name up to that point. I sat down and handed her the manila folder I had been carrying around with my orders in it.
The other one, who looked like Mary from work, asked me if I had any concealed weapons on me that I needed to register with her. I hesitated, because I had my butterfly knife in my back pocket, and while I was with the investigation I wasn't a law enforcement officer. The Mary look alike went on for some time about concealed weapons, and what a pain it was for her, especially when people held out on her about them, and how we could deal with it now or later, how she (as part of the FBI) could confiscate it now, or she could just turn me over to the Mountain County Police. I asked her if we could deal with it after dinner, figuring I could just stash it in my hotel. She agreed.
At this point, the other woman had come back. She handed me a white t-shirt with several strips of masking tape on it. There was cursive writing on the masking tape done with ball point pen. It had a list of parking spaces that I could use. I assumed it had my hotel room number on it as well, but I didn't read all of the numbers to be sure.
I got up and went back to the interrogation room, where there was a group of people standing together talking over what the interrogation strategy would be for the suspect they were bringing in. They were somehow all managing to stand facing away from me. They had long dark hair, so I couldn't see anything of their heads, and I had the impression they had no faces. I realized that I wasn't quite ready for an interrogation, so I left to go to the bathroom to freshen up. When I got back from the bathroom, I got lost and couldn't find the interrogation room again. I kept walking down the hallway opening doors, but they were all the wrong door. Eventually I realized that I had gotten into the wrong hallway. As I got to the door of the interrogation room, I realized that maybe I shouldn't walk in during the interrogation. I started to open the door, which had two huge stickers on it with lots of warnings using incomprehensible ideograms and lots of fine print. Kathleen, my supervisor, came up behind me in a white lab coat, and reminded me that Lt. Bone was running the investigation, and he was a real hard ass.
We backed out and went next door to the observation room. Inside was Russ, Kathleen's supervisor. It was a very cramped room. It was narrow in the first place, and one whole wall was packed with filing cabinets. The window between us and the interrogation room wasn't a one way mirror. It was dirty, yellowed sheet of thin, clear plastic. Down at the bottom was a small slot for passing notes back and forth. Clearly, the whole thing was improvised.
There was a huge crowd of people sitting and standing at a table. Again they had their backs to me, with long dark hair, and the impression of facelessness. There was one man in a light blue button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, who's face I could see. I figured he was Lt. Bone. The suspect was an overweight black guy with close cropped hair, dressed in an electric blue track suit. He was totally at ease and answering a lot of questions. I could barely hear anything, but I looked down and saw a small black cube, with a screen on one side. I could hear someone typing, and notes about what was being said were showing up on the screen. They were talking about being constructive at the moment. I looked over to see who was typing, and I saw Marishka Hagaritay with a small keyboard. I hadn't noticed her because she had been hidden behind one of the filing cabinets. I remember think that she didn't look nearly as hot in reality as she does on TV.
At this point the show ended. The whole dream up to this point had been a TV show that I had been watching in my hotel room. I was impressed with it too. I was thinking that this was maybe a second TV show that was worth watching on Hulu, along with the Daily Show with John Stewart.
I got up and left my hotel room. The hotel I was staying in had the exact same exterior as the hotel in the TV show, but with new paint on the trim. I walked down the block to a small diner. While I was eating (at the counter) I noticed that the time zone here was an hour and fifteen minutes off Eastern Standard Time. They had these weird clocks with all the numbers rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees, so that fifteen after was at the top. The clock wasn't round, either. At each fifteen minute interval there was a rounded lump sticking out, and each one had another circle of obscure numbers in it.
When I was done with dinner I went back to the hotel. Kirk had been working outside of town, and had just gotten back in. He was wondering if it was time for dinner yet, and I noticed another of those weird clocks in the hotel room. After making some comment about the clocks to Kirk, I suggested we go to the diner for dinner. He wasn't interested, so I suggested the Italian place I had eaten at the night before. But Kirk wanted to go to some weird ethnic restaurant. So we went outside and walked over to the street, which was 355 near the White Flint Metro Station. We jumped on a bus. It was more like a trolley, with an open back with two benches facing sideways away from each other. The whole thing was painted in Rastafarian colors, and the driver was playing Bob Marley's Exodus really loud.
The bus pulled a U-turn and started heading north on 355. It was wobbling back and forth a lot, and there was no way to secure yourself in the seat. Kirk and I were both sitting up on the top of the seat backs, grabbing onto the poles supporting the roof. I was really nervous about it, but Kirk was totally casual, having ridden the bus a lot in Richmond.
When we got to our stop the bus just slowed down a bit. We had to jump off and hit the ground running. Kirk and I got off, and so did a family of black people. The family was really confused, because they hadn't been here before and they didn't know which way to go. Kirk walked over to the shoulder, hopped the guardrail there, and ran down the hill. I looked, but that section of hill seemed too steep, so I went around the guard rail. Here there were strips of mulch with small shrubs in them. I managed to run down the hill without stepping on any of the shrubs, although I did step in the mulch twice.
There was a parking lot at the bottom of the hill. Kirk had already run across the lot and ran into a cave that went under the next parking lot and led to the restaurant. I ran across the lot after him, but when I got there all the cave mouths were really small, and I would have to crawl through them between the narrow gaps in the stone columns. I wanted to go further to my right, to try and find a larger cave mouth, but I figure that by the time I did that Kirk would be so far ahead of me that I would get lost in the caves. I was thinking what an asshole Kirk was being by running ahead like that when I woke up.
I haven't had a good dream memory like this for a while. I think the key is to remember as much of the dream as possible while still in bed. When you wake up from the dream, try to remember as much as you can right then and there. Then as soon as you can after you get up, write it all down.
Connections with reality: Kirk is thinking of coming up here this weekend. Brad Warner is planning on moving to North Carolina.
Friday, January 29, 2010
CSI: My House
I was having a party at my house. One of my coworkers went out into the back yard with some hip surfer dude. They didn't come back, and when we went outside we found her strangled to death. She'd been zipped up in a big mesh bag with a coffin sized mattress. The mattress was on a wooden bench next to a camp fire. The mattress was supposed to catch fire and burn up all of the evidence. Kirk and I walked carefully around the crime scene, crouched low with arms and legs curved out, looking for forensic evidence.
I had this dream Tuesday night, but didn't post it because it disturbed me so much. It wasn't like a nightmare. During the dream it was just like an episode of CSI (without the inevitable gross out scene). But the second I woke up I was totally freaked out by it.
I had this dream Tuesday night, but didn't post it because it disturbed me so much. It wasn't like a nightmare. During the dream it was just like an episode of CSI (without the inevitable gross out scene). But the second I woke up I was totally freaked out by it.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Country, Color, Object
This dream was posted a day late.
I'm staying with Coleen and her family in a large house full of college students. There was a big party the night before, and the place is a total mess. Every surface is covered with garbage or a spill of some sort. Coleen and I are surveying the damage when she tells me that my job is to help Benjamin with his Blues Clues book. I'm confused. I thought she would need help cleaning up the mess.
So I go and find Ben in a back room. He starts giving me instructions on how I have to write my sentences. David is there, and he's chiding Ben for insisting that things have to be so exact. I open the book, and each page has blanks for a country, a color, and an object for me to fill in. Then Benjamin has to guess what I wrote.
Somehow, the three of us end up in the bathroom arguing about it. Something jumps up from behind the toilet and start to climb the walls.
At this point I woke up and rolled over. I kept doing that all night, with little snatches of the dream in between. The only one I can remember is that everyone was standing around talking. Everyone had fractals growing out of their faces, except for one person who had smooth skin that everyone was treating like a weirdo.
I'm staying with Coleen and her family in a large house full of college students. There was a big party the night before, and the place is a total mess. Every surface is covered with garbage or a spill of some sort. Coleen and I are surveying the damage when she tells me that my job is to help Benjamin with his Blues Clues book. I'm confused. I thought she would need help cleaning up the mess.
So I go and find Ben in a back room. He starts giving me instructions on how I have to write my sentences. David is there, and he's chiding Ben for insisting that things have to be so exact. I open the book, and each page has blanks for a country, a color, and an object for me to fill in. Then Benjamin has to guess what I wrote.
Somehow, the three of us end up in the bathroom arguing about it. Something jumps up from behind the toilet and start to climb the walls.
At this point I woke up and rolled over. I kept doing that all night, with little snatches of the dream in between. The only one I can remember is that everyone was standing around talking. Everyone had fractals growing out of their faces, except for one person who had smooth skin that everyone was treating like a weirdo.
Sporty New Car
This dream was posted a day late.
I have a sporty new car, and I'm showing it off to people at Walker Middle School. Somehow Kara gets a hold of it, and I have to drive out of the parking lot in her car. I drive up to Dairy Rd., and she squeezes in beside me on the right, even though I'm making a right turn too. She zips around and down to 250, but loses control and slides out into traffic. Cars keep coming and smashing into her, spinning the car around like it's on ice. I end up being the one who has to explain everything to the cops.
I have a sporty new car, and I'm showing it off to people at Walker Middle School. Somehow Kara gets a hold of it, and I have to drive out of the parking lot in her car. I drive up to Dairy Rd., and she squeezes in beside me on the right, even though I'm making a right turn too. She zips around and down to 250, but loses control and slides out into traffic. Cars keep coming and smashing into her, spinning the car around like it's on ice. I end up being the one who has to explain everything to the cops.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Toys and Airports
I drove down from Maryland to Virginia to see the people who were designing the new toy. When I got to their offices, it was like the corner of Preston and Mad Ave. in Charlottesville, but Preston and Mad Ave were major multi-lane roads, and the small apartment building on the corner was a 15 story glass box office building with a huge parking lot. I got out of the car, but it was a bright sunny day, and I was covered in layers and layers of clothes because it's so cold in Maryland.
I got to the receptionists area of the toy designers, but they weren't ready for me yet, so I had t sit in a corner while people filtered in and out, having end-of-the-day type conversations. Then I went through a door into a conference room. There was a oval table with a bunch of people sitting around it talking about the new designs.
The toy was going to be a freedom and mobility toy for little kids, so they could drive around and see their friends. The idea was to get a jump on the teenage desire for a car. It looked like a complicated rocket on wheels, with all sorts of pipes running around the outside. At one point I was passed designs for two pieces of safety equipment. The one I remember was the seat belt, which looked like one of those complicated weight-lifter belts, but it was made out of red plastic. I was thinking that I should have talked to the engineers back at my job at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to find out what the latest in safety technology was. I knew I was going to be coming down to look at safety designs, so it was really stupid of me not to have thought ahead.
I got up to get something to drink, and there was a ton of noise from the reception area like a bunch of people leaving for the day. When I turned around it was night and the offices were dark and empty. I wandered around for a while trying to find people, but the modern high-tech offices were now some huge old house. Every office I looked into still had a big old bed in it. Eventually I ran into two of the women working on the toy. They were on the floor above me coming down. One of them was really pretty, and had on two tight white tank-tops. There was a light coming in one window and perfectly lighting up her breasts, just like a shot from American Beauty. The other woman with her was wearing a loose black skirt, and I had the impression she was very pretty, but I was just entranced by the woman in the tank tops, and never even really looked at her.
They came down the stairs to show me the toy, which was a light brown Zhu Zhu pet. They put it down on the floor and it drove around running into the walls. Eventually I realized there was a guy following us around with a remote control, and he was the one driving it. He wasn't intentionally driving it into the walls, he was just having trouble controlling it.
But then it was time for me to go to the Metro and catch my train to the airport. I went outside with my luggage slung over my back. I was running through the streets, and my sister Kara was running along side me. But I outpaced her by running through the gutter of a right turn lane. Then I was running side by side with a banker down the street. The banker had on a grey suit and a red tie. The light hadn't changed yet, so the street was empty, but we could see the cars behind and in front of us getting ready to drive down the street. I was running at an easy pace, but the banker was really panicked and running full out, although he was going no faster than me.
We jumped through gaps in the hedge on the median and made it across to the Medical Center stop on the Red Line. There was a huge circular drive to get up to the Metro station, but I took a shortcut around the right side. I got down into the concrete canal where the train ran, and then all of a sudden I was at the airport, walking through the parking lot. The airport was like a huge version of White Flint shopping mall, and I walked in through an Indian shoe-repair store. It had a bright red sign just like this Vietnamese Restaurant on 355, but instead of Pho 97 it was Mo Der 85. And it was in some weird font with bent lines. [I think "Mo Der" is a refernce to Mohinder Singh, a character in the novel Interface by Neil Stephenson and J. Frederick George.]
Inside was like a shopping mall, but instead of a wide open area between the stores it was a huge waiting area of rows of armless chairs, packed full of people. I wandered around for a while before I found my way to the departures area. I had to go down this long tunnel to get there, all cinder block and overhead pipes. Whenever there was a turn in the tunnel, huge signs had been made out of orange construction paper. They all said "Hey Kid" in three foot high letters, with a huge arrow pointing the way. The signs were in various states of disrepair, with the individual sheets of construction paper falling off the wall.
When we got to the security check point I panicked. I was searching through my backpack looking for my baggage claim check, because I knew they wouldn't let me through the security screening without it. As I'm going through all of the junk in my backpack, I realize that I haven't put it all into clear plastic bags for the screeners. Then I saw my utility knife, which I obviously forgot to put in my checked bag. That's when I realize that I never checked my bag, and I left it in the trunk of my car. I'm so panicked I can feel my heart pumping in my chest, vibrating my whole body like a jackhammer.
A helpful guy with curly hair in a white t-shirt comes over and we head back to the parking lot to get my bag. He asks me when my flight leaves, and I pull out my ticket and see that it leaves at 4:00. Then I take out my Droid cell phone to check the time. I turn it on and it says 4:40 and I freak out because I'm late by 15 minutes [apparently I'm not so good at math in my dreams]. But then I realize that 4:40 isn't the time now, it's just something from one of the apps. But I can't get the phone to tell me what the time is. I keep pressing buttons and changing apps, but all I can find is a lengthy definition of time in some fancy script. Eventually I force the phone to shut down and reboot, and find that it's 12:40, and I have tons of time to get my bag and check back in.
Me and the curly haired guy exit the concrete tunnels and walk out onto a grassy area. By the time I get to the actual parking lot the curly haired guy has disappeared. The section of the parking lot I'm in is completely empty of cars. However, the land is curved in a bowl, and I can see the rest of the parking lot going on for what seems like miles, and it is packed full of cars. I'm walking down toward were my car is, and there are a bunch of black teenagers in the parking lot. They're walking around in a way that's almost like a dance routine and singing. Most of them wander off, leaving one guy behind. He's balancing on a rock the size of his foot and singing. I get to my car and get my huge black bag out of the trunk.
I start the long walk back to the baggage check, which is near the Mo Der 85 place on the other side of the mall. When I get there a woman is sitting in the chair with one of those old beehive hair dryers over her head. I reach down and push the button on the front of the chair near her ankles, and out pops a baggage claim check. I turn around and leave, and as I'm walking out the door I can hear the woman behind me saying "Oooh, that was the last one."
But now I can't remember where I put my luggage. I'm wandering around the outside of the mall, looking into stores, trying to find the one with the locker that I put my luggage into. Eventually I get back to Mo Der 85, but as I'm walking in the door I wake up.
I got to the receptionists area of the toy designers, but they weren't ready for me yet, so I had t sit in a corner while people filtered in and out, having end-of-the-day type conversations. Then I went through a door into a conference room. There was a oval table with a bunch of people sitting around it talking about the new designs.
The toy was going to be a freedom and mobility toy for little kids, so they could drive around and see their friends. The idea was to get a jump on the teenage desire for a car. It looked like a complicated rocket on wheels, with all sorts of pipes running around the outside. At one point I was passed designs for two pieces of safety equipment. The one I remember was the seat belt, which looked like one of those complicated weight-lifter belts, but it was made out of red plastic. I was thinking that I should have talked to the engineers back at my job at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to find out what the latest in safety technology was. I knew I was going to be coming down to look at safety designs, so it was really stupid of me not to have thought ahead.
I got up to get something to drink, and there was a ton of noise from the reception area like a bunch of people leaving for the day. When I turned around it was night and the offices were dark and empty. I wandered around for a while trying to find people, but the modern high-tech offices were now some huge old house. Every office I looked into still had a big old bed in it. Eventually I ran into two of the women working on the toy. They were on the floor above me coming down. One of them was really pretty, and had on two tight white tank-tops. There was a light coming in one window and perfectly lighting up her breasts, just like a shot from American Beauty. The other woman with her was wearing a loose black skirt, and I had the impression she was very pretty, but I was just entranced by the woman in the tank tops, and never even really looked at her.
They came down the stairs to show me the toy, which was a light brown Zhu Zhu pet. They put it down on the floor and it drove around running into the walls. Eventually I realized there was a guy following us around with a remote control, and he was the one driving it. He wasn't intentionally driving it into the walls, he was just having trouble controlling it.
But then it was time for me to go to the Metro and catch my train to the airport. I went outside with my luggage slung over my back. I was running through the streets, and my sister Kara was running along side me. But I outpaced her by running through the gutter of a right turn lane. Then I was running side by side with a banker down the street. The banker had on a grey suit and a red tie. The light hadn't changed yet, so the street was empty, but we could see the cars behind and in front of us getting ready to drive down the street. I was running at an easy pace, but the banker was really panicked and running full out, although he was going no faster than me.
We jumped through gaps in the hedge on the median and made it across to the Medical Center stop on the Red Line. There was a huge circular drive to get up to the Metro station, but I took a shortcut around the right side. I got down into the concrete canal where the train ran, and then all of a sudden I was at the airport, walking through the parking lot. The airport was like a huge version of White Flint shopping mall, and I walked in through an Indian shoe-repair store. It had a bright red sign just like this Vietnamese Restaurant on 355, but instead of Pho 97 it was Mo Der 85. And it was in some weird font with bent lines. [I think "Mo Der" is a refernce to Mohinder Singh, a character in the novel Interface by Neil Stephenson and J. Frederick George.]
Inside was like a shopping mall, but instead of a wide open area between the stores it was a huge waiting area of rows of armless chairs, packed full of people. I wandered around for a while before I found my way to the departures area. I had to go down this long tunnel to get there, all cinder block and overhead pipes. Whenever there was a turn in the tunnel, huge signs had been made out of orange construction paper. They all said "Hey Kid" in three foot high letters, with a huge arrow pointing the way. The signs were in various states of disrepair, with the individual sheets of construction paper falling off the wall.
When we got to the security check point I panicked. I was searching through my backpack looking for my baggage claim check, because I knew they wouldn't let me through the security screening without it. As I'm going through all of the junk in my backpack, I realize that I haven't put it all into clear plastic bags for the screeners. Then I saw my utility knife, which I obviously forgot to put in my checked bag. That's when I realize that I never checked my bag, and I left it in the trunk of my car. I'm so panicked I can feel my heart pumping in my chest, vibrating my whole body like a jackhammer.
A helpful guy with curly hair in a white t-shirt comes over and we head back to the parking lot to get my bag. He asks me when my flight leaves, and I pull out my ticket and see that it leaves at 4:00. Then I take out my Droid cell phone to check the time. I turn it on and it says 4:40 and I freak out because I'm late by 15 minutes [apparently I'm not so good at math in my dreams]. But then I realize that 4:40 isn't the time now, it's just something from one of the apps. But I can't get the phone to tell me what the time is. I keep pressing buttons and changing apps, but all I can find is a lengthy definition of time in some fancy script. Eventually I force the phone to shut down and reboot, and find that it's 12:40, and I have tons of time to get my bag and check back in.
Me and the curly haired guy exit the concrete tunnels and walk out onto a grassy area. By the time I get to the actual parking lot the curly haired guy has disappeared. The section of the parking lot I'm in is completely empty of cars. However, the land is curved in a bowl, and I can see the rest of the parking lot going on for what seems like miles, and it is packed full of cars. I'm walking down toward were my car is, and there are a bunch of black teenagers in the parking lot. They're walking around in a way that's almost like a dance routine and singing. Most of them wander off, leaving one guy behind. He's balancing on a rock the size of his foot and singing. I get to my car and get my huge black bag out of the trunk.
I start the long walk back to the baggage check, which is near the Mo Der 85 place on the other side of the mall. When I get there a woman is sitting in the chair with one of those old beehive hair dryers over her head. I reach down and push the button on the front of the chair near her ankles, and out pops a baggage claim check. I turn around and leave, and as I'm walking out the door I can hear the woman behind me saying "Oooh, that was the last one."
But now I can't remember where I put my luggage. I'm wandering around the outside of the mall, looking into stores, trying to find the one with the locker that I put my luggage into. Eventually I get back to Mo Der 85, but as I'm walking in the door I wake up.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Ed's Books
I had this dream on the same night as the previous dream post.
I was sitting in my bed room at a house on W High St. that I have dreamed about before. The room I'm in has a hidden door to a secret room. You have to take a few steps down into the room, but it is bigger than my bed room. The room is full of shelves and boxes, and has two old metal desks in it that used to belong to police detectives. I have a lot of storage in the room, mostly mine, but also my parent's art collection.
While I'm poking around in there Ed Gatewood comes in. He's looking for his copy of Catcher in the Rye and some other book of the English-class variety. He has to do perform a play later based on the two books, and he'd left them in the secret room. We start searching for them, and as we do more and more searchers start showing up until the room is full of people looking for Ed's books.
Eventually Kirk turns on a light I didn't know about. It not only helps the search but illuminates the shelves of African statues nicely. At this point I remember seeing the books in a rectangular container with a bunch of other books. So we start searching all of the boxes and drawers. My girlfriend comes in and gets mad at me, because I'd told her the door to the secret room just lead to a closet.
Eventually, we find Ed's books. But when we leave we realize that the door to the secret room is broken. There are two sliding panels, but we can't figure out how to slide them so that they blend into the wall, and the two steps going down into the secret room are getting in the way. Finally Virginia helps us fix it.
Afterwards we are all sitting around in my bed room talking about it. Someone says to me that now all my wishes can come true. I emphatically state that I wish I was out of "this goddamn town." Jane laughs and says "Now that's a wish!"
I was sitting in my bed room at a house on W High St. that I have dreamed about before. The room I'm in has a hidden door to a secret room. You have to take a few steps down into the room, but it is bigger than my bed room. The room is full of shelves and boxes, and has two old metal desks in it that used to belong to police detectives. I have a lot of storage in the room, mostly mine, but also my parent's art collection.
While I'm poking around in there Ed Gatewood comes in. He's looking for his copy of Catcher in the Rye and some other book of the English-class variety. He has to do perform a play later based on the two books, and he'd left them in the secret room. We start searching for them, and as we do more and more searchers start showing up until the room is full of people looking for Ed's books.
Eventually Kirk turns on a light I didn't know about. It not only helps the search but illuminates the shelves of African statues nicely. At this point I remember seeing the books in a rectangular container with a bunch of other books. So we start searching all of the boxes and drawers. My girlfriend comes in and gets mad at me, because I'd told her the door to the secret room just lead to a closet.
Eventually, we find Ed's books. But when we leave we realize that the door to the secret room is broken. There are two sliding panels, but we can't figure out how to slide them so that they blend into the wall, and the two steps going down into the secret room are getting in the way. Finally Virginia helps us fix it.
Afterwards we are all sitting around in my bed room talking about it. Someone says to me that now all my wishes can come true. I emphatically state that I wish I was out of "this goddamn town." Jane laughs and says "Now that's a wish!"
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Dice Club
I was hanging out with a teenaged Edward Norton in a high school. It wasn't any particular high school, more like a generic high school from some movie. We were trying to get into the locked corridors that that janitors used to move secretly around the school. We had managed to hack the computer security system, and enter in a fake PIN for a short period of time. As we were trying it out we heard some people coming, but we punched in the code and got into the room before they saw us.
I could hear the people talking, and realized it was the principal (an overweight fellow with dark hair) and the new janitor (who I'd never met, but somehow knew was a pretty-but-plain blonde lady). The principal was giving her a job orientation, and mentioned what her pass code for the locked corridors would be 2-0-3-6. This was great, because Ed and I now had a permanent code for the corridors, but it also meant they were coming in to the corridors so we had to high tail it out of there. We snuck through the secret corridors and out into the woods behind Charlottesville High School.
The next day in Algebra class at Walker Middle School we started organizing an underground student rebellion. Some other kid (an overweight pompous type) challenged us for leadership of the revolution, so we went down to the cafeteria to fight it out. The challenge was resolved with some dice game, which involved throwing the dice at your opponent. I beat the guy in the challenge. Norton and I were leading an angry mob of students into the locker area when I woke up.
But I was still dreaming.
I was in Jason McLeod's old room on Locust Ave. (East side), but it was my brother Kirk's apartment. I was waiting for Kirk, Mom, and Ryan to get back, and to kill time I was reading Cerebus #9, although the comic otherwise looked like Cerebus #51. After a while I stopped reading it and put it down on top of the plastic bag it had been stored in.
When Kirk and the others got home he noticed that the tape from the plastic bag had stuck to the cover of the Cerebus comic, and peeling it off stripping the ink from that part of the cover. He was really mad about it, and wanted to know who had been reading his comics. I owned up that I had done it, and promised to buy him a new copy of that issue. He pointed out that the issue is rather hard to find, especially since most of the comic shops have closed because of the recent economic downturn. He thought the comic shop near me might be a good place to try, though.
[Now this is interesting. The comic shop he is talking about is not a real comic shop: it's one that has shown up in several other dreams of mine. You get their by catching a bus at the corner of Monticello and Altavista in Belmont, which goes a few blocks out of Charlottesville and ends up in Rochester, NY. It's a big and wonderful comic shop that takes up several buildings, completely in contrast to the actual (sucky) comic shop in Rochester (at least when I was there)]
Ryan was confused and didn't understand what the problem was. We explained how the tape that hold comic storage bags closed often adheres to the comic itself, damaging the cover. By that time we needed to get ready to go to the rock concert at the bat perserve in Gainesville, FL. I put on my punk skull T-shirt that Kirk had made for me, which was drawn in a Southwestern Voodoo style. Mom was running around with a mesh bag full of orange onions, trying to make sure we had enough food.
That's when I really woke up.
I could hear the people talking, and realized it was the principal (an overweight fellow with dark hair) and the new janitor (who I'd never met, but somehow knew was a pretty-but-plain blonde lady). The principal was giving her a job orientation, and mentioned what her pass code for the locked corridors would be 2-0-3-6. This was great, because Ed and I now had a permanent code for the corridors, but it also meant they were coming in to the corridors so we had to high tail it out of there. We snuck through the secret corridors and out into the woods behind Charlottesville High School.
The next day in Algebra class at Walker Middle School we started organizing an underground student rebellion. Some other kid (an overweight pompous type) challenged us for leadership of the revolution, so we went down to the cafeteria to fight it out. The challenge was resolved with some dice game, which involved throwing the dice at your opponent. I beat the guy in the challenge. Norton and I were leading an angry mob of students into the locker area when I woke up.
But I was still dreaming.
I was in Jason McLeod's old room on Locust Ave. (East side), but it was my brother Kirk's apartment. I was waiting for Kirk, Mom, and Ryan to get back, and to kill time I was reading Cerebus #9, although the comic otherwise looked like Cerebus #51. After a while I stopped reading it and put it down on top of the plastic bag it had been stored in.
When Kirk and the others got home he noticed that the tape from the plastic bag had stuck to the cover of the Cerebus comic, and peeling it off stripping the ink from that part of the cover. He was really mad about it, and wanted to know who had been reading his comics. I owned up that I had done it, and promised to buy him a new copy of that issue. He pointed out that the issue is rather hard to find, especially since most of the comic shops have closed because of the recent economic downturn. He thought the comic shop near me might be a good place to try, though.
[Now this is interesting. The comic shop he is talking about is not a real comic shop: it's one that has shown up in several other dreams of mine. You get their by catching a bus at the corner of Monticello and Altavista in Belmont, which goes a few blocks out of Charlottesville and ends up in Rochester, NY. It's a big and wonderful comic shop that takes up several buildings, completely in contrast to the actual (sucky) comic shop in Rochester (at least when I was there)]
Ryan was confused and didn't understand what the problem was. We explained how the tape that hold comic storage bags closed often adheres to the comic itself, damaging the cover. By that time we needed to get ready to go to the rock concert at the bat perserve in Gainesville, FL. I put on my punk skull T-shirt that Kirk had made for me, which was drawn in a Southwestern Voodoo style. Mom was running around with a mesh bag full of orange onions, trying to make sure we had enough food.
That's when I really woke up.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Dirty Check Chashing
My sister Coleen and I went to a check cashing place together. It was a really dirty place. We didn't want to wait in line so we watched two TVs that were hanging from the ceiling. They were showing a news report of an earthquake that happened somewhere in South America.
We got tired of standing there watching TV, so we went back into the waiting room. It reminded me of the lobby of the hotel the Kurgan stayed at in Highlander. I got the comfy chair, or what would have been the comfy chair if it hadn't been ripped to shreds, with stuffing poking out and holes going down to the wood frame in places. Coleen got a folding chair that was a weird combination of a plain metal folding chair, a beach chair, and those canvas folding chairs people always take to outdoor events.
In front of us was the door to the bathroom, and to our right was a bed. There were two homeless guys on the bed. One was sitting up in bed, with a watch cap pulled down over his eyes. The other one was curled up under the covers at the foot of the bed. I was talking to the watch cap guy about the guy under the covers, and watch cap said the guy's name was Frankenstein. I thought that was odd because Frankenstein wasn't the guy who was there last time Coleen and I went to the place. Then Frankenstein poked his head out from under the covers. He had curly, light brown hair and a full beard.
I looked back and Coleen was gone. I leaned over and looked into the bathroom. Coleen was on the toilet in underwear and socks, but it looked like some badly manipulated video putting Coleen's head on someone else's body. She stood up and jumped to grab an overhead pipe so she could swing over an especially dirty part of the bathroom floor.
We got tired of standing there watching TV, so we went back into the waiting room. It reminded me of the lobby of the hotel the Kurgan stayed at in Highlander. I got the comfy chair, or what would have been the comfy chair if it hadn't been ripped to shreds, with stuffing poking out and holes going down to the wood frame in places. Coleen got a folding chair that was a weird combination of a plain metal folding chair, a beach chair, and those canvas folding chairs people always take to outdoor events.
In front of us was the door to the bathroom, and to our right was a bed. There were two homeless guys on the bed. One was sitting up in bed, with a watch cap pulled down over his eyes. The other one was curled up under the covers at the foot of the bed. I was talking to the watch cap guy about the guy under the covers, and watch cap said the guy's name was Frankenstein. I thought that was odd because Frankenstein wasn't the guy who was there last time Coleen and I went to the place. Then Frankenstein poked his head out from under the covers. He had curly, light brown hair and a full beard.
I looked back and Coleen was gone. I leaned over and looked into the bathroom. Coleen was on the toilet in underwear and socks, but it looked like some badly manipulated video putting Coleen's head on someone else's body. She stood up and jumped to grab an overhead pipe so she could swing over an especially dirty part of the bathroom floor.
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