Dream Log

I don't put much stock in dreams as some kind of indicator of the "psyche", whatever that is. I find them amusing auto-generated bits of nonsense.

Enjoy!

10-04-16 I was back in Lowell, Massachusetts [where I was an undergraduate]. I was a student, sharing an apartment with quite a few people. In fact, we were all sharing beds, though the beds were somehow partitions so it wasn't strange. It felt good to be back in that situation again: I was a student, but I was experienced, so I was giving lots of advice to everyone. It seemed my luggage never arrived, so I was without clothing, except for what I was wearing. I reckoned that the next day would be unpleasant as I would have to search for my luggage, and I said as much. The apartment had many young men and women. One woman seemed crazy, and was upset and yelling - nobody knew what to do, but finally another woman took care of her somehow. Then I felt bad: I told them I had a PhD and I didn't know what I was doing there. I said I felt psychotic, but not in a dangerous way, and suggested I might go lie down.

I was outside the apartment building watching a red-haired hippy-type woman wheel her loaded bicycle past. There was a bridge connecting the building across to a nearby hill, and she easily walked her bike backwards across it. When I went to follow her, I found the bridge was fantastically rickety, just some boards nailed together end-to-end. I could not go across.

I was getting ice cream at an ice cream stand. Looking in, I saw two or three men embedded in ice cream, their faces covered and surrounded by white. I thought they must be very cold. One of them came up to me and said I would get 75 cents off if I could hold two forks that he handed me. I thought the forks would be very cold, but I held on to them for quite a while. My right hand became puffy, red, and looked like it was dirty with grease.
10-02-23 I was sitting atop a tall tower of drawers with my brother Ed. There was very little room at the top, and we were rather sitting on top of each other. We were both very sleepy, but we couldn't fall asleep, or we would fall. Ed was saying something mumbly but I couldn't understand him because my left ear [my good ear] was pressed against my shoulder; I was trying without success to change my position and free my ear.

Eventually, we made our way down from the tower and everything was okay.
10-02-02 Many people were coming through a set of doors into an old house. Someone said loudly that they could not get the doors to lock. I bent down and looked into the hole in the jam where the deadbolt was supposed to go: it had a bent key in it, and it was quite wet. I pulled this out and I guess it fixed the problem.

At a restaurant. I was looking at a card, something like a menu, but it had a lot of Spanish on it not related to food. I was somehow able to use it like a Rosetta stone. Jenni said something and I said "Yun?" based on the words on the card. Jenni was across the table sitting next to the proprietor, a pretty woman with dark hair who I was very impressed by. Jenni asked what I had said (the place was very loud), and the woman said I had said "Ok" or something similar; I had thought I had said "When?" but the woman explained that the words on the card were from a very strange dialect.
09-11-05 I was speaking to Michael from The Office about a calculator-like device I held in my hands. The device had buttons in de-saturated blue, green, red and black on a cream background. It didn't seem to have a display, but finally I managed to pull the device apart a little and a display swung out from it. Michael said he'd like to eat some of the mines from "minesweeper". I said I'd rather eat something edible. Jim (another character from The Office) stopped by, looking rather unkempt, and asked if I'd pay for his lunch. He then ran down the hall a ways and puked in a trash can.
09-09-22 Jenni and I were buying a lot of things at a grocery store, including a box of a dozen doughnuts. Jenni noticed that the cashier charged us for the whole box, but also charged us for each individual doughnut. Jenni pointed this out to her, and with the help of two other cashiers, it all got corrected. The three cashiers all told Jenni that they were in some kind of accountancy or business program, and what a shame it was that they had to work as cashiers. I thought a person, perhaps a store manager, behind me was speaking to me. When I turned and asked him what he had said, he just stared at me and said nothing. I then asked him, "Are you insane?". He said, "No!" quite vehemently. I replied, "Good for you!".
09-09-14 Jenni, my oldest brother and I were checking out a tool, some kind of glass cutter or etcher. My brother was trying to use it on a glass (perhaps an old fashioned glass). He was sqeezing the glass very hard, and I turned my head away, thinking it would break. It did break, and it threw glass shards all over us, but I seem to have gotten the worst of it: many pieces were in my mouth. One was stuck in my throat, and I could only breathe very shallowly; eventually, I coughed it out; it was shaped like a very fine double-ended needle.
09-08-28 I was going on a ride with a bunch of other people with my IF. People were taking their time showing up to the start location, but everyone seemed in good spirits. It was getting late, almost evening. As the people gathered, I realized that I had a flat, of an odd sort: the tire was worn through in a spot in a strange way. I didn't want to hold the ride up, so I started fixing the flat as fast as I could. It was going well until I found dozens of tube patches attached to the tube, as if I'd had many previous flats. I replaced the tube and the tire was fixed. Something then distracted me for a while, and my bike went missing. I was frantic, and ran (or flew) around looking for it. There were a number of bikes that looked like mine, but I could not find my bike. Finally, I got a ride in a car which took me a ways out of town to look for it on a rural road. I decided I'd gone far enough, and asked to be let out. It was raining, I had no rain gear; it occured to me to call Jenni, but I realized I had neither her cell number nor a phone.
09-08-13 I was carrying R.T. up a flight of stair on my back, her arms around my neck. I bit her arm. Later, we were at a table in a restaurant, eating strange food. A waiter sat down and started telling me a story, similar to the Wizard of Oz.
09-08-09 I was in a hospital, having a study done (perhaps ultrasound). The technician informed me that she was going to inject me with something that would make my blood pressure get very high: 380 over something, and it would take a few days to come back to normal. This sounded like a bad idea and I said I wanted her to talk to my cardiologist about it. She left, and I searched desperately for my cardiologist's phone number: in my wallet, where I couldn't find his card, and then in phone books which were in the room, but all of them were very old, one from 1977. I thought I might just be able to call 411, but when I picked up the phone there were already people talking on it, having conversations I didn't understand.
09-07-27 I was out somewhere skating on inline skates, but realized I also had my bike with me. Rather than leave my bike unattended any longer, I decided I'd skated enough. I loaded my bike in my pickup truck [I've never owned a truck]. I was then at my parents house, when I realized I had left my bike in the truck. I went to get it, and found a giant squid in the back of the truck, intertwined with my bicycle. I remembered that one of my brothers had mentioned that my oldest brother had bought the squid. I went back into the house, very agitated, and get my oldest brother to go out and deal with the squid, which I said was crawling down the street.
09-07-26 An elderly couple graffitied my car with spray paint. They were attempting to flee in a tiny car. I was writing down the license plate number of the car, but the number was very long and my writing unsteady. Jenni and I followed them to their house and I wrote down their address: the street number was 39666. We then drove away, and the ventilation system in our car was very noisy: I manipulated a bunch of levers to try to get it to be less noisy.
09-07-21 It was the day after, or before, Christmas, and grand pianos were piled high in dumpsters. I saw them when out walking, and thought I should go tell Jenni, and wondered if it was worth taking one from the trash.
09-07-03
  • I was in line with my parents and brothers at a fast-food pizza restaurant. I was separated from them, and got a slice of pizza and started eating it. When I got to the cashier, it seemed there was some kind of policy against eating in line. I ended up being charged $6.95 for the slice. I gave them a ten dollar bill and told them to keep the change and the remainder of the slice. I walked toward where my family was sitting, but I didn't feel well, mentally, and mistook a young man for my father; his glasses were very similar to the ones my father was wearing. I apologized to him, and pointed out my father so he sould see the similarity. A woman came and sat with me.
  • I was crossing a field and picking up old camera bodies, putting them in a very large plastic bag. I was wearing no shirt.
  • I could see an old red pickup truck driving on a wide bridge. There were many railroad tracks running longitudinally. A voice, like a narrator, said, "...I want to emphasize this: you can write to Congress, not to just to individual Congress members. This can be helpful if your letter gets lost...".
09-06-14 I was teaching a class of young people, but there was an older man in the class, too. For some reason, another teacher was showing me things that the man had brought with him to class: a bunch of tiny jack knives.
09-05-12 I was teaching at a school with a very confusing floor plan. At lunch, I was walking around trying to find my way to somewhere (the front door? my car?) in order to get my lunch. I ran into various people who were all very friendly. One adorable woman was conducting a small orchestra while wearing roller blades. Another nice woman spoke to me at length, I don't know about what. I mentioned the confusing nature of the school's layout and suggested a map would help. This was poo-pooed until I suggested that I could get some kids to do it as a project, saying that there are always certain kids who really get into something like that. Finally I realized my lunch wasn't wherever I was heading, but where I had been, so I had to back track.
08-12-20 A pickup truck wouldn't make it up a hilly road. My dad said something about its suspension. I started pushing it, it rather easily went up the hill. Near the top, I wondered why it was so easy, and turned and saw my dad helping me. He said this was like E. T. going to a hockey game with his brothers, and I said, "Because he never does that?".
08-12-08 There were people sitting on a stoop, including two shirtless guys with turbans. Someone suggested I play a trick on them, and this required me to have a woman walk by wearing gold earrings. Off I went to find such a woman. I found a pretty, happy woman, but she didn't have earrings on. We discussed various possibilities, and I ended up suggesting she wear butterscotch candy on her ears. I held one to her ear, then licked it, which lead to my nibbling her ear.
08-11-28 A couple of snippets: (1) I was surprised that someone I knew had designed some clothes that models on a catwalk were wearing. People didn't seem to like the designs, but I tried to be encouraging. (2) I was going to ride my bike with some people, and I was looking for somewhere to change my clothes. I finally decided to change out in the open, but then was going to change in a room where a woman was sleeping. (3) There were lions out in a public space, a small park, and people were attacking them with shovels and hoes.
08-09-09 I was in a library, but it was also like a hospital (there were injured people moving about, including someone on a curious low-sitting wheelchair that could go down stairs). I was looking at a large format illustrated H. G. Wells book. Then I was outside the library, walking back toward it, and the sky was dark, late afternoon and about to rain. I had a couple of books under one arm that I think I wanted to return, and I had changed my mind about checking out the Wells book, so I was going back for it. As I walked toward the entrance, a young woman - short, curly black hair, freckles, green wool skirt - appeared to have two different shoes on. I told her this, thinking she might be unaware, but she stopped and put her feet together and we both looked at them and the shoes were identical (leather, moccasin-styled shoes). She was carrying a plastic bag with a drawstring in such a way that it swung near her feet, and this had confused me. She looked like she had been crying so I asked her "is there anything I can do" - she said it, too, at the same time, slightly mockingly. I said, "I'm sure there isn't, but if there is...". She said, "I just wish (...something...) from home." (something about dancing). I asked her where home was, and she told me but I didn't know where it was. She looked at me and asked "You wouldn't want to go over phonics, would you?" I shrugged and said "sure" just as we were entering the library, with lots of other people, and now it was raining. She may have taken my arm.
08-07-17 A snippet: a woman dressed in white (a sun dress?) saw me on the street, put her arm around me and kissed me in a very friendly, flirty way. Her name was Lolive (like olive, but with an L prefixed). I asked her, "What makes you so happy and smiley today, Lolive?".
08-06-06 Jenni and I were in Denmark, or Holland [places I've never been]. It was winter. Jenni was waiting for a bus, and I was waiting with her. The bus shelter was actually a large cart on wheels, with a roof, and the whole thing could be folded up for storage. After Jenni's bus came, I found myself rolling away on the bus shelter. Then I was inside a building, pushing the shelter around, trying to figure out what to do with it. People were speaking to me in Dutch or Danish, and I kept replying by nodding and saying "merci". I was then outside, and rolling downhill. I passed a bus stop with no shelter; two asian (Vietnamese perhaps) women were waiting in the cold twilight. I left the shelter with them.
08-05-26 Jenni and I were riding the bus. A man in the seat behind us somehow grabbed my arm to get my attention. I leaned into the aisle to talk to him. I recognized him as someone I'd seen on the bus before, he talked with an air suggesting we'd spoken. He was well-dressed, in a nice coat, and he wore glasses. To talk better, he moved into our seat (which really was not convenient [or possible on any bus I regularly ride]). Jenni and I were smushed together against the side of the bus. Then I noticed that the man's chin and throat had many small sores or punctures. The man began rubbing his throat on the back of the seat in front of us, smearing the seat with blood. Realizing I wanted to get us away from him, I started making up a busy schedule for that day, counting off all the people I needed to see in a loud voice, to allow us a pretense for needing to get off at the next stop. I told the bus driver about the man before we got off.
08-03-07 I was in a library. On a counter was a large art book open to a Can Can painting like one by Toulose-Lautrec. The nipple of a dancer's breast was visible above her dress as she danced. Behind the counter, across from me, a bearded woman was looking at the picture, too; she then pulled one of her breasts out of her dress in the same way, and said something like "Voila!" or "Hey! Just like the picture". A friend made her stop and walked away with her, saying something about her not being well or "all there".

Possibly part of the same dream, there was news of a tsunami and an imminent earthquake in Seattle.
A burning Cleveland skyscraper on the TV, a la 9/11/01. The news show kept showing clips from a movie that apparently had the same plot (i.e., the burning of that very building) and involved the giant, ghostly disembodied head of Sylvester Stallone.
08-03-05 I had just passed several other cyclists on a hill, and was slowing down at the top of the hill to let them catch up. I could hear The Clash's version of Pressure Drop and I said to one of the other cyclists, "This is the second time today I've heard this song. What are the odds of that?"
08-02-16 Near a wide city intersection, a big cloud of white dust: snow. A snowball fight between a crowd and the police. The police were firing teargas and throwing snowballs. People running everywhere, and I was engulfed in the crowd. Running through a neighborhood, trying to escape, I stopped and sat on the front step of a house, hoping I would be safe from the tumult. A woman spoke to me, it was clear that it was her house and she didn't want me there. I apologized and ran. Eventually I was away from the fight and was trying to find my way home. It would be a very long walk, but I thought, "I've walked that far before." Then I was in a house, in the living room with some people I knew slightly. We were sitting on chairs and sofas in a circle, with a television on a stand in the middle, so I couldn't easily see who was seated across from me. A woman next to me was very friendly and kissed me. She was happy that I found her attractive, and she said, "I'm still alive!"
I was trying to get somewhere on an unfamiliar subway with an upright bass. Accented-voiced people were giving me suggestions.
I was sunburned, but otherwise in good health, after drifting to shore after bailing out of a plane over the ocean, apparently out of boredom.
07-12-26 I was at a fancy party, sitting across from a flirty woman, when I realized I had swallowed something inedible that was stuck in my throat. I got up and went to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I could see something flat against the back of my throat. I managed to pull, or cough, it out: it was a square piece of mirror, about an inch on each side. I was relieved to have not swallowed it.
07-11-15 I was at an outdoor market that sold folk/hippie instruments. They had very expensive flutes for sale. I was wearing pants that I had in college: military surplus paratrooper pants, very baggy, and too large for me so I wore suspenders to hold them up, and they swam around my waist. Then I was walking in a crowd with our friend E. and her sister (though it wasn't really her sister). Her sister was quite tall and had black hair streaked with grey - her hair was in large "loaves" on either side of her head. She was very pretty, with a large round face. She was wearing high heeled shoes, and when she started talking to me, she took them off to be not as tall. We were walking behind an elephant, and people were climbing over the elephant from back to front; E. and I both joked to her sister that she was next, and we both leaned forward with our hands enmeshed, as though we were going to give her a boost up onto the elephant. Then we were inside somewhere, and I was drinking something clear and alcoholic. E. and her sister had gone to take a nap somewhere, and J. was around somewhere, too. I started to get drunk, and it made me nervous, so I stopped drinking.
07-11-10 At my parents' house, at night, I thought the wall in the hallway was covered with spots of mold. I started telling my brothers this, but then in the morning I saw that the spots were actually fish-shaped stickers. It looked pretty good, though a few were starting to peel off the wall.
07-10-30 Jenni and I were walking back to where we were living/staying. There were threatening clouds, and then it started raining very hard. I pulled the hood of my "hoodie" over my head, but Jenni had nothing, and was getting very wet. We stopped under the eves of building to wait for the rain to stop. But then it seems we were actually in a restaurant, at a table with other people. There was a large dish of food in the center of the table that people were serving themselves from. I tried to eat some of it, but there were long black hairs in it (there was a woman at the table with long black hair). I tried to take the hairs out but I didn't want people to see me doing it, and then I noticed that there were small lobsters or crayfish in the food, so then I just laughed: this was clearly about the worst food I could imagine.

I was riding my bike on a trail, and came across lots of junk: the trail was crowded with stuff people might throw away after a garage sale, or perhaps donate to charity. I had to "jump" my bike over the junk, and was pretty pleased with my jumping.

I forgot that I had visited India, and then remembered. I thought it was funny that I could forget such a trip. [I've never been to India].
07-09-03 I was gathering a bunch of six-sided dice together to take to a class. Some of the dice had melted cheese and spaghetti sauce on them, so I was wiping that off many of the dice. I was putting the dice in a shoebox-sized clear acrylic box. I was running late. I was going to use the dice to have students do some kind of sports simulation, of baseball or basketball, for some statistics or probability work.
07-04-11 It seems I was at a conference on an island. I was walking down to the front of an auditorium, laughing at and mocking the speaker, who was saying very unscientific things. Then I was outside the auditorium, walking in a hall. A woman stopped me and asked if I was missing anything. I said no, it seemed a silly question. She walked away, and I realized that my wallet was gone. I went after her. She had picked my pocket: she was drumming up interest in her seminar on pickpocketing. I told her I often kept my wallet in my courier bag. I tried to show her, but when I went to close the bag, I found the clips had been switched so that both pairs were the same "gender". There was to be a talk soon on underwater chickens that Jenni and I both wanted to see. Somehow, she ended up going to it, but I couldn't figure out how to get in. I found a sort-of food court area that had televisions showing the talk, but all that seemed to be happening was people playing pool. I saw Jenni taking a few shots, and checking her watch like she was waiting for me. I ended up outside, it was windy and there was shallow water everywhere, as if the whole place had been flooded. There were boats that had run aground. I was with a few people, and we all tried to get back to where the talks were, since that seemed like the highest and dryest ground.
07-03-?? At a restaurant in a big old house, with columns and a large porch in front. I was with people, not sure who. My watch said 10, but it was not morning and it was light outside. I wasn't hungry, but we were told we had to order an appetizer and a dinner. This made me rather angry, and I got up and left in a huff. I walked back to where I was staying. I tried to run, but I think I can never run in my dreams. I was glad to leave the restaurant to go back to her, a cute lady whom I was in love with. When I found her, she was talking to "Bob" about a party she wanted to go to so that she could "show you off". I said "you mean show Bob off" and we all cried, me mostly. A woman come from the downstairs, with long dark hair, and she tried to comfort me saying "You like to look things up, but there are some things that can't be looked up." [or something like that].
06-12-11 I was at a meeting with Nathan Lane or David Grant in a fancy hotel. After the meeting, I was trying to follow him, but he was walking through the hotel very fast. The carpeting was a complex pattern with lots of blue in it. There were a bunch of people, one of whom looked like Hillary Clinton, but dressed very casually, and then there were a lot of secret service types in suits. One grabbed me from behind, maybe twisting one of my arms behind me, and started leading me somewhere. I saw a lot of syringes or tranquilizer darts on the floor and realized that I'd been shot or drugged and was getting sleepy. The agent led me to a room where secret service agents were just sitting around and I figured I'd fall asleep but didn't. I grabbed someone's ukelele and started playing "Now I ask you very confidentially...". I told them that "maybe I should join the world of espionage: some of those agents are cute" and one cute woman looked at me and then around at her fellow agents.
06-11-30 I was talking to someone famous, possibly a politician, and had to excuse myself as my teeth starting crumbling in my mouth. I went to the bathroom, and found lots of hardware in my mouth, such as two retainers with pieces missing, and a thing like a retainer with a long handle that must have been extending down my throat. I finally was pulling a tongue out of my mouth, and had to pull rather hard to get it out, while making sure that it wasn't actually my own tongue.
06-08-13 I was in a large open public space, like Grand Central Station, and up on the wall was written something like "There are millions of crows watching over us, and it costs us nothing.".
06-07-01 I was at a country/western bar with my brother Ed. I was telling him that there was a guy there who was our half-brother. I couldn't quite remember his name, but went up to two guys that I thought one of whom was the half-brother. I asked them their names. One said "Ford Prefect" and he was embarrassed to tell me [for obvious reasons - what a terrible name!]. But I thought that the half-brother's first name was "Ford" so that was probably the guy. The other guy's name was "Disney Mountain Hollow".
06-06-05 I was at a meeting of some kind, in a large rectangular high-ceilinged room (like a warehouse). I'd taken off my courier bag [which I have with me most everywhere I go] and placed it somewhere in the room, along with another black bag. Water started pouring in through the roof, and people scrambled to leave the meeting, but I couldn't find my bags. I was looking everywhere for them. Somehow one end of the warehouse changed to more like an office space, and I ran around looking for my bags. I was "skating" around the smooth floor wearing just socks.

I still hadn't found my bags and I was looking for them at what seemed to be a mall. I had to go back and forth from one end of the mall to the other. Stores were closed, or closing, and nobody was helpful. I was very upset, and my legs were getting really tired from all the skating.

At some point Jenni found me, and we were headed somewhere in a bus driven by our friend Janet. We were high up on a cliff above the beach, and as we drove down the steef cliff side toward the ocean, I couldn't look as the bus tilted precipitously downward.

Then I was in a home I didn't recognize, and there were many people I was unfamiliar with. I had been crying a lot, and a child tried to cheer me up by giving me a hat to wear.
05-12-09 I was out on a ride. It was sunny. At some point I stopped because I saw a jersey on the ground. I picked it up, and noticed another one. I kept picking up jerseys and a jacket or two, but then realized that I didn't have my jersey on anymore.

I was at some kind of fancy hotel or resort. An old lady had somehow insulted me, and I was having a hard time not acting pissed off. She knocked some things on the floor under the table where she was sitting, and for some reason I stooped to pick them up. People were waiting to see what I would do, but I just curtly dropped the things onto the table in front of her and walked away. I was then in the suite of rooms (I guess) where I was staying with my parents and my three brothers. In addition my brother Ed's wife and daughter Alexa were there. There were also two young women who I was led to believe were our sisters [I don't have any sisters]; my brothers knew them, but I didn't. It seemed odd for us all to be sleeping in the same hotel room, even if it did have four or five separate beds. At some point Alexa had this clump of brown soggy material on her back. I thought it was fecal matter, but it turned out to be just the stuffing from a toy animal. Then I was outside of that room, and I saw one of the "sisters" behind a large glass wall. She was trying to say something to me by pantomiming it. I think she was trying to indicate C.U. for "see you" but she kept indicating S instead of U, and it made no sense. At one point she switched to sign language, but I don't know sign language, and I indicated this as well as I could with shrugs, and she stopped.
05-07-11 I was trying to play a harmonica. A man was instructing me on making a sound in the back of my throat (not completely unlike the sound Felix made in the movie "The Odd Couple" to clear his sinuses) before putting the harmonica to my lips. I was getting somewhere, but then my throat/nose got all clogged and I couldn't get any sound out of it. I was handed the harmonica, wrapped in wax paper. It was like a swiss army knife, but it only had one "blade" attached to the harmonica. The blade was a very small, plastic measuring cup. It was quite messy, as though it had been recently used to measure peanut butter. The plastic part could be removed from the little metal hinge that attached it to the harmonica, and I removed it for cleaning. Then I was making this sound, an interval, in the back of my throat. It wasn't really the harmonica sound I was trying for, but I was really impressed and went around poking people to notice me, like a child would do.

Elsewhere, someone used the word "bitch" and I got very upset at them and it made me cry [that word does actually bother me very much].
05-06-15 I was leaving a nice, old hotel that I'd been staying in, in the country somewhere. Everyone was leaving, like it was the end of a season, or something. As I was collecting my things in a hallway, a cute young lady approached, and said something friendly. I said it was the best hotel I'd ever stayed in. She said "Really?". I said, "No, but I can't think of any better at the moment.". I think I was trying to be funny, though I was trying to think of the Roger Smith hotel in Manhattan, though it really wasn't that great a stay. We hugged and I kissed her near her ear and on her neck, in a friendly way, though I was very sad to be leaving her and the hotel and everyone who was staying there. I asked where she was going, and she said somewhere in Canada.
05-04-27 I was in the hospital to have an operation, and I was walking in a hallway. I learned that the night before the operation, Groundhog Day was going to be on TV. Just then, Bill Murray walked by. I followed him and caught up with him in the hospital cafeteria. I was just about to ask him a question, something like "If you were about to have an operation, and you were watching Groundhog Day, which part would you pay particular attention to?". But, I was distracted by the sight of R., whom I had an intense crush on in grad school. I pointed her out to Mr. Murray, and he said I should go talk to her, or, uh, ask her out. I said no, and before I could explain, he said something like "Oh, it's because you're married, right?". I said, no, it was really that I'd already tried and failed.
05-04-12 I was at some sort of carnival. Dee Dee was singing with a group of about a dozen people, some sort of doo-wop music. They seemed to be in a kind of carnival booth. Singing too were two young ladies, former students (in the dream anyway), who were topless and giddy about it. I made a serious effort to not look at them. Then, the booth was closed up. There was a door on the front wall of the booth which was closed. Two people's lower legs were somehow extended under the door, and I remarked how huge their shoes were. They were much larger than my own. I put my foot next to their's and then noticed that I was wearing shoes that were not my own, and were in fact several sizes too large for me.
05-03-31 There was something not quite right about the action on my acoustic guitar [which I've just had work done on], so I was taking it back to Chris, the luther. When I got to the shop it was closed [earlier in the day I walked to TiCycles only to find it closed at 6:10 despite the fact that on their website it says they're open until 7:00] but I got them to let me in anyway. Musicians were setting up in the shop to practice or record, it was very crowded, and I had a lot of difficulty making it to the counter where Chris was. When I opened my case, it contained a banjo [which I used to own], not my guitar.
05-03-18 I was taking a test and I was very nervous about it. It was a mathematics test of some kind, and I was taking it with just a couple of other students. The pages of the test were interespersed with pages of a magazine, and I was very confused. As time went on, it seems that there was less and less test, and more and more magazine, until, ultimately, I couldn't find the pages of the test. Time was up, and another group of students were coming in. One sat in the seat next to mine, and said to another student "Hey look at me - I'm doing number theory!" and he had a book that looked a lot like Richard Guy's Unsolved Problems in Number Theory, but across the cover it said simply Braids, or Plaid.
05-03-16 Another tooth dream. I was on the right side of the back seat of a car with my Dad and my oldest brother in the front. My back right upper molar started to disintegrat [as my teeth occasionally do in reality]. It seemed to contain a bolt and washer arrangement, and a small drill bit. Somehow I got to a dentist who worked on another of my teeth without any problem. The dentist resembled Ken Jennings. I pointed out the back right upper molar and he went to work on that one. It was very unpleasant. At some point I thought I would vomit, but instead I found my mouth filled with a doughy, brown, perhaps peanut-buttery substance and various metal objects that I had to remove with my hands. There was an audience, and lots of yelling going on.
05-02-18 Jenni and I were in a mall. We had to take a long slide to get from one part of the mall to another. It was very swoopy and Jenni felt rather woozy when we got to the bottom. I turned around and then couldn't see her, and then saw that she was buying a large fountain drink. I figured she was okay, but then she disappeared again. I was looking for her for a long time, and then I saw her coming out of a restroom. She looked very strange: sort of birdlike, with an elongated face (stretched nose and chin) and skinny legs. It seemed as if she had just regained consciousness, she was not steady on her feet, and she had a very bloated abdomen. Around her neck was a printed paper collar that read "Don't resuscitate this addict". She also had a sphygmomanometer cuff around her neck. It was all very unpleasant.

In another dream, J. was having an arrhythmia. I took his pulse and agreed that he was arrhythmic. I offered to go to the hospital with him. Throughout I could't remember his name, thinking that he must be either K. or D. when he was visibly J.
05-01-17 I was at a concert by some punk guy. He was playing alone in the audience in a theatre full of fixed chairs. He had some kind of electric piano that he played some of the time. The crowd got rowdy and violent and beat me into unconsciousness (very quickly, I just passed out). When I woke up, my shirt and shoes were gone, and the theatre was empty except for one guy sitting in a corner. He said he had my stuff. He held up my swiss army knife, and I said "You've got my swiss army knife". He said "I don't like that phrase - I'm Assyrian.". I said, "It's Swiss - from Switzerland, not Assyrian." I got my shoes back, but I had to wear a Descendants t-shirt (with the Milo Goes to College graphic on it) that had been spray painted with gold paint.

Jenni and I were at an RV dealer far from home, perhaps in Arizona. We actually seemed to be interested in buying an RV, but they didn't have the model we wanted. We were going to buy a curtain or awning kind of thing, and something else, perhaps a radio. When we went to pay, the salespeople were all excited, because they thought we were buying an RV. When they asked for our information, Jenni gave a made-up name and a made-up alma matter. They tried to verify this with their computer, and could not. There was a bit of a sticky situation, but I pointed out that we weren't buying an RV today, so what difference did it make?
05-01-16 A little girl came to see me in a house I'm not familiar with. She was very glad to see me and reached up to kiss me over and over [like Ebenezier's sister in A Christmas Carol?]. It was a bit excessive. Then the wide doors of the room slid open and there were lots of children running around. One started leaving puddles on the floor and a sibling dragged him away. Then the children were gone, and two extremely rotund ladies were there, talking about the house. I explained that Jenni and I had recently moved in. One of them made some suggestions for intererior decorating, and I retorted that the thing I'd really like is not to have puddles of piss all over the floor (one of the ladies was the mother of the pissing child). She said "Alright, alright, I'm getting to it!". After that was cleaned up, I was in a room of the house with a number of other people. We were looking at a very large appliance, like an oversized oven. It was apparently a spice dryer, with numerous openings labelled in elaborate letters for each spice. If you pushed a button, all of them would open simultaneously. I suggested that having such an appliance made me nervous because it was the kind of thing people who did a lot of pot might have. I clarified that I had nothing against people who did pot, but that the thought of owning a house previously owned by pot dealers made me a little uncomfortable. At this point I noticed a nearby tall, skinny closet opening due to the contents falling out. It was over-full with rain boots filled with pasta with tofu chunks. People were rather grossed out.
04-12-12 I was teaching a class I was unfamiliar with. I was in a small classroom in a basement, with windows high on the wall, with afternoon sun shining in from my left as I faced the class. I was in from of the class, and my notes were all messed up - I didn't seem to have the right notes. The class was very disrupted and weren't really paying much attention. I turned to the blackboard and after a few moments I noticed a large armoir behind and to my left. It was in front of some of the front row students so I pushed it to move it out of the way. Instead of sliding it tipped over and I had to struggle to keep it from crashing down. I suggested sarcastically that someone might help me, and one person did. I noticed that to the left of the blackboard there was a glass case with tall, thin books in it. They were apparently library-bound sheet music books. The case was locked but the glass was broken and missing in many places. [It would appear from this dream, and the one below, that my teaching has been more stressful than usual this quarter.]
04-11-17 A complex dream. I was split into two people: there were two of me. One of me was going to be a substitute teacher for a fifth grade class. I couldn't find the note on my bulletin board which told me where the school was. I was furiously looking for it. Eventually that me went off to teach. The other me went to a sort of cycling academy. It was quite unpleasant, with people yelling all the time, and, since I was new, I didn't know the procedures for anything. I forgot the comination to the lock on my locker. I was late for a meeting of all the students/cyclists and all of them were looking at me. The teacher/coach gave them each instructions of some kind, but just ignored me. So I quit. I went outside and climbed over a fence to leave the school grounds. I thought people were chasing me, so I hid in bushes and then in an old house. It was a retirement home, with a fancy parlor with a couple of musical instruments that were like pianos, but had short, maybe two octave, keyboards. The instruments were as wide as a piano, but only about two feet deep. They were ornate, sort of lumpy, and gold. I spoke to a nice woman in the house. She seemed to be not entirely human, maybe half cat. She had a large head covered in matted hair.

I made my way home, and found that the other me had sent mail from the school. The mail was artwork that the kids had made, so apparently it was all working out for that me, though one of the art pieces was a drawing of me looking rather stern. I was glad to know that tomorrow both me's could go to teach, and I wondered if the class would like this me, too.
04-10-14 I was in Manhattan. I was walking down the middle of a very wide boulevard, and people began throwing fist-sized rocks at me. I had to fly (by flapping my arms as I often do in dreams) to avoid being hit. I kept looking for a taxi but never saw one.

I got to what had been a familiar bicycle shop, but it was now a dry cleaners. There was a window display case that still held the display the bike shop had: some old bicycle components. The case was unlocked, and I was afraid someone might steal the components, so I took them out, planning to return them to the owners. The components were in something like a velvet lined glass topped box. I thought I'd take them to a nearby bike shop, but the only ones I could find were closed. I realized eventually that it was Sunday. Then, I found an open shop, but it turned out to be an antique motorcycle shop. The man working there was drunk or had some kind of nervous system disorder that made him quite wobbily. He asked me to do him a favor: to fill the tires of one of the antique motorcycles (tricycle?). He showed me where the air compressor was. I took one of the wheels off the bike and held it in my hands; the tire was soft, like suede, yellow and black; the writing on the sidewall indicated that it was for track racing. I was really impressed and saddened by the excellent antique quality of the tire, wheel and bike.
04-10-08 I was riding on a sunny day near the Mediterranean when I got a flat. As I was fixing it, I found that it was caused by a very large, flat, extremely sharp rock about the size of my palm. There were lots of people around me and I tried to show them the rock. They spoke a language I didn't know (Greek? Italian?) but one guy seemed to understand me. He wrote a note on the rock that included what I think I thought was his phone number, but I wasn't sure what phone numbers in europe look like.

I was in a mall with lots of people, and then in a smaller space with a circle of people. Everyone was very tired. Jon Stewart was there, and then we all had these huge (toilet paper roll sized) poorly made joints, though the marijuana looked more like tobacco.
04-09-17 I was in a meeting of some sort and made a joke that only the people seated near me could hear. They laughed, and the person speaking at the front of the room looked at me indignantly.

I was then riding a bicycle with the people from the meeting. We got to a very steep hill - so steep, in fact, that I fell over. A young woman stopped to help me. I asked her if she'd like to go for a ride some time. She agreed, and she said she knew a place where we could meet up, but she was unable to say where. I asked her to get me a piece of paper; I intended to draw a map, and repeatedly point at it and say "Here?" until I hit upon the right place. While looking for a piece of paper, she somehow lost most of her clothing. As I was looking at her in her underwear, my teeth all started falling out.
04-08-28 I was staying in a hotel in Greece or Italy. From a window I could see a building like the Colliseum, though it looked rather colorful and Simpson-esque. I asked an attractive, dark-haired woman if she would like to go visit it; she was quite hesitant.

Later (another dream?) I was talking to a short, blind woman with short, fair hair who was following me around. I took her to a house that I guess I was familiar with (though it doesn't seem so now). She fell asleep on a couch. I found a book made of vinyl flexi-discs and colored plastic filters (I think this dream was influenced by the opening pages of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, which I had read just before falling asleep).
04-08-12 Jenni and I were having another wedding, and after the wedding we had to pay for a limousine. The driver wanted $800 for an hour and a half. This seemed excessive to me, but he was willing to hang around while I investigated it. I actually dreamed of googling "+weddings +limousine" or some such search. The reply I got back was not like the google of today, but instead had embedded live video advertising throughout. At some point I leaned over and stomach acid rose in my throat and I thought I might puke.
04-07-10 I was going to a wedding, and in the car on the way there with a bunch of other people I noticed that there were chocolate stains down the front of my shirt. I considered just hiding it with my jacket, but then decided to go back to my hotel (apartment?) to get a new shirt...
04-05-17 I was teaching a large class. Instead of math though, I was going to lecture on socialism, specifically some famous socialists of history. The room was split into two pieces, like two facing classes with a wide doorway between them. I couldn't teach both classes at the same time, so I asked a colleague to help. The class was very unruly, and eventually the students started to physically attack me [I haven't been having a very good time with one of my real-life classes]. The lights went out and I was swinging a duffle bag around to defend myself. I hit somebody with it, and then threatened that the next time there would be a horseshoe in it.
04-05-15 At the dentist, and my bite was remarked upon. The dentist wanted to take an impression of my teeth to record it. When the mold was removed from my mouth it pulled one of my teeth out (the right upper tooth just in front of the incisor). The dentist was going to replace it with something, but I would have to come back. He wanted me to wear a retainer, but since I would have to come back for a properly fitting one, he suggested I wear a "fits-all" retainer, much too large for my mouth. I refused.
04-05-14 A tiny bird (the size of a thimble) attempted to fly away with, or just eat on the spot, a normal-sized earthworm. I laughed hard.
04-05-10 Very spotty: chemistry class(?)/lockers/fear of not remembering the combination/a bat in the locker to defend myself against bullies
03-11-2
  • I was in a bookstore trying to have a very old leather bound book of mine mailed to another bookstore (in New York?). The clerk claimed that I'd been in there twice already today. I disagreed, and asked her to explain why she thought this. She opened the book to the back cover and pointed out some pencil lines (like in an old library book, crossing out previous due dates) and the date Nov 1 1965. I explained to her that it was not 1965.
    Then we were watching the book on a screen and it seemed to involve some grotesque ripping apart of bodies. I think I then woke up.
  • I was on a farm in the middle of some kind of historical romance kind of film (maybe something Jane Austen-like). An older guy and I were just hanging around the farm, doing nothing, and the Sean Connery-esque head of the farm really disliked us. I was in a barn and found a scythe (similar bladed instrument) and thought it would be interesting to try it out so I was asking Mr. Connery where there was farming to be done. He instead indicated that in one of the bathrooms ("loos") there were some seeds and I could plant something in one of them. I had a very hard time understanding his accent, and he had to repeat himself a few times.
03-10-11
  • Someone left my VOM in the gutter outside the house where I was living. At night I had to go outside to get it, but it had been snowing and there were a few inches of snow on the ground. I was wearing shorts, and I put on a pair of slippers to go outside, but a shoe salesman stopped me on the way out the door and started talking to me about my foot problems. It seems I was complaining of plantar fasciitis.
  • I was in the lobby of a small hotel in another country (England?) with some of my family (my mom and dad, and my younger brother). I'd been sleeping in a chair and wasn't really dressed. I had to keep myself covered with a blanket. There was a woman in a wheelchair in the lobby, but I couldn't see her directly.
  • A bunch of tiny dogs had been cooped up in a room all day and I was getting them a bowl of water. At some point one of them bit my hand and was hanging from it suspended by its tiny teeth.
03-07-20 I was working at a place like Fluent [where I did work for a time]. Some guy in my office set up a fake login shell (or some similar juvenile CS kind of thing) and I got pissed off at him and left the office in a huff without my shirt on (perhaps I was changing after riding my bike to work, as I did at Fluent?). Then I got lost and couldn't find my way back. I kept trying to not be seen by people in the hallways and that made it harder to get back. Than I ran into Maura Tierney who offered to help me. She asked about the scar on my back and I explained, incorrectly, that "There is a piece of an animal in me: guess which animal?" I seemed to suggest that there was a rigotoni-sized piece of buffalo artery inside me. Meanwhile on a large TV people were watching the Vuelta. There was an ad in which someone suggested that since comas are like dreams, if we can control our dreams we can get ourselves out of comas.
03-06-17 At a book sale, the book Formalized Music by Xenakis was selling for $11,254. [a copy that I got for free has been sitting by my bed for a while]
03-03-11
  • Jenni and I were working in a warehouse kind of place crowded with friendly people. It seemed like a good place to skate and I took off my shoes and skated with my socks, following a woman doing the same thing around the grocery store-like aisles.
  • Somehow I found myself near l'Alpe d'Huez with a couple of friends who tried to get me to ride up it. I convinced them that that wouldn't be a good idea, but we should go see it. Somehow we didn't, and then we were looking out over an open space (ocean?) at a Space Shuttle on its launching platform.

    Then I was riding my bike home along the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California. I was riding my bike that I've recently crashed so I was kind of concerned about its condition. Sure enough, the front tire began to unravel, as though it was knitted from yarn. I had to stop and walk. I shook hands with two friendly people walking in the same direction. Suddenly, the ONCE team was there, all running around near the beach. They were running in groups of three with two men hanging off the shoulders of a third man to make it harder for him to run. One guy ran close by, and I thought it was [Mikel] Zarrabeitia. He thought this was very amusing. I guessed, "Kivilev?". [This is perhaps the strangest coincidence I've ever had in a dream: at about the time I was dreaming this, Andrei Kivilev crashed in stage 2 of the Paris-Nice stage race and suffered severe head injuries. He died 16 hours later, a very sad and fortunately rare thing in professional cycling.]
03-02-28
  • I was going to go on a hike in the mountains but I needed a hat. I stopped into a store with lots of South American clothing items. They had a strange hat that had some sort of fringe. I tried it on and the fringe got caught in my teeth.
  • I was working for a Nazi officer. I was trying to sabotage his operations by somehow modifying his tiny mimeograph machine. He caught me taking it apart and I had to make up a story about trying to repair it. It was hot and it melted the pen I was using to poke at its insides.
03-02-17 I was acting in a Great Gatsby-like period piece. Went to a restaurant with the rest of the cast, still in costume. Felt a lot of anxiety; had a hard time placing my order with the surly waitress. I spilled a lot of black pepper on the table and collected it into a mound the size of a golf ball.
03-02-02 A hawk holding two dead cranes by their necks.
03-01-28 Several bits:
  • I was on the ocean with some friends on a very large ship, possibly a ferry. We were moving rather rapidly, and then the ship unrealistically quickly turned 180 degrees, and then we were moving very rapidly.
  • Three cats had grabbed hold of my arm. I had my eyes closed and I was in a room with my family and a lot of strangers. The cats were biting and clawing my arm. It was very painful and I was crying and asking people to help. Someone said, "Don't move". Eventually the cats were removed and I had lots of cuts and holes in my arm and hand. My thumb was very painful and I went into a bathroom (the house was laid out like my parents') to run it under the water. I found I had a very big hole in my thumb with a black wire or swab stuck in it. I thought it might be a nerve. The end that protruded from the hole was bulbous. I pulled it out very painfully and found that in fact it was a whisk (see picture). I figured I must be hallucinating, so I asked my brother Bill to ask me a question that we would know the answer to but was generally not known to people. He asked me whether medieval castles had doorknobs. I said they didn't. My brother Ed pointed out that they had things like doorknobs.
  • I was on a bus with a bunch of people I didn't know well, like a group I'd just joined. We went to a store or mall and marched in. Most of the group dispersed and a subgroup I was in gave me a birthday party even though it was July. I felt very touched.
03-01-23 I ran into someone who said they went to the elementary school [Dutile] that I did. She said she knew my name from all the library books I'd checked out: "You read a Hemingway book from 1941!" [which is at least a little odd, since I've never read Hemingway]
03-01-22 There was a tornado in Seattle. I took shelter in a basement with a bunch of people. At first the basement had no windows. As the tornado approached, a narrow window appeared in the ceiling and wall and we saw the tornado pass right over us. It was a very narrow tornado.
03-01-21 Bits:
  • I was grabbing a whole slew of drawing/drafting supplies from a box or drawer: protractors, metal rules, compasses, straightedges, etc.
  • I felt very embarassed about my performance on a test in one of Eric Stade's classes.
03-01-20 I somehow got shot in the stomach, then waited around for a week before going to the ER. When I did go, it was really crowded, so I left and went back later.
03-01-18 Several different scenes, possibly all the same dream:
  • On the beach taking pictures, the beach was covered with strange white objects, like foot long styrofoam peanuts. The water came in and I had to run but the water went right up to a cliff so I had to climb it. There were bent and twisted carabiners everywhere.
  • I was outside a theatre with all of my possessions in some kind of cart. I started giving everything away to passers-by. I gave a pair of strange binoculars (they appeared to have a giant central crystal that you looked through instead of two separate sets of lenses) to a man, then realized that they were Zeiss binoculars and really quite valuable.
  • I was hurrying to a friend's house. She was on the second floor at a window in the front of the house and I flew from the street to the window and went in that way. We were waiting for her husband or boyfriend. There was some kind of crisis going on, and we all needed to talk about it. She was sitting with her back to me wearing a black silk shirt. Two large beads of sweat were on the shirt in the middle of her back.
03-01-12 ...on a powerboat in the ocean...
03-01-03 I was trying to do something with a Fat Cat distortion pedal attached to the ceiling.

A woman was holding a small child who was vomiting, but the vomit came out like whole tortillas.
02-06-11 I had an open safety pin in my mouth, like a fish on a hook. [similar to a scene in The Tin Drum]
02-06-09 Swedish dress-making comics?
02-05-29 Pieces:
  • Running away from people in a mall, maybe a "food court"
  • At a conference with Scott Ahlgren and a guy with brain surgery scars that looked like worms
  • I couldn't get my car started; some biker-type guy offered to pee on the engine.
02-04-04 Was at a Johnny Cash concert with rain pouring in through the ceiling. It seemed like the audience was in bleachers, with a roof over it, and Johnny Cash was at the top so everyone was looking backwards as he played.
02-03-27 I picked up a custom frame at a bike shop. They'd painted it perrywinkle blue without asking me. I left the store with it and ran into someone I knew, sort of [ex-girlfriend]-like. We went to some restaurant and we were each bored with the other's conversation. At some point I got on a bus, like a very small school bus. I didn't know where it was going or how to signal the driver to stop. I didn't have the frame anymore - I'd lost it somewhere and was rather upset about that. On the bus I made a really good pencil drawing of a bicycle from above with shadows.
02-03-17 Jenni and me and Mom and Dad were driving in a station wagon eastward from Alberquerque; we crossed the Mississippi on a long two-lane bridge that seemed like it was over the ocean. The water rose up and crashed over the bridge. Scary as anything, but M&D treated it like no big deal. I felt silly. There were people riding bicycles on the bridge and they crossed okay, too.

Later, in some house after gift/tourist shopping somewhere, lots of people around a table on which was a red velvet zippered book cover, like someone might use to cover a diary. I took a knife and sliced most of the way through the left edge of it. I realized then that it was Mom's and felt ashamed. I thought maybe she wouldn't notice. Then I was with the people in the house, on a couch in a sort-of living room. Dad was there. I asked him how much does a point in the middle of the sea move up and down? I was trying to figure out why that bridge over the Mississippi river just wasn't made higher. He started to give some values: a few feet in calm weather... Then I was looking at a book about seafaring. It had many pictures in it that projected out of the book onto me and the wall behind.
Doctor Matt >> Bio