Things That Turned To Dust

L. is working on a presentation of some kind that involves marine photography. We are going through the photographs in a book, and then standing in the water on the shore we are discussing transitions (as if it were powerpoint)--is the music (a Yo La Tengo song) loud enough to cover the ambient noise from the water. I listen carefully and opine at first that it does. Then there's a strange rumbling, I look up and see downtown Seattle across the bay. A huge white cloud is billowing out from around the Queen Anne area, and then I realize it's from collapsing buildings--then I realize all of the skyscrapers are crumbling before my eyes. I hug L. to me, and then a shock wave hits us and sweeps us off our feet. We are momentarily bouyant in the water, and then I wake up, still hearing the Yo La Tengo song in my head.

Things Missed While Sleeping

L. and I are sleeping on a mattress in the backyard of an unfamiliar house. The backyard also contains a baseball field, and a game is going on while we are in the bed. Apparently we have taken part (though I can't remember having done so): the next morning L. shows me a scorecard that indicates that I played in the game until about the sixth inning or so when I fell asleep.

Fragments

Series of images of the Titanic, one flying high above looking at the ship's entire route across the Atlantic, wondering if from this vantage, I can steer it out of the way of icebergs.

The displayed descriptions of the line items in the code I'm currently working on (in reality) come up in all sorts of strange fonts and sizes.

In a music store with L. and some friends, I am offered the chance to buy a short necked, 8 stringed lap slide guitar (like a Weissenborn) that was played on some important album. The guitar looks to be in terrible shape: it's got a terrible, chipping paint job, and the neck doesn't look right. But it sounds fine, and they only want $50 for it.

Common Threads

In dreams, guns don't work.

In dreams these days all my anxiety dreams are school; I am in college again even though, in the dream and in reality, I already have a college degree. I am always doing much more poorly than I did last time.

Big House

L. and I are exploring some sort of old, run down farm house. We seem to be following some sort of path, into the main house, out back, into some sort of old kitchen building, climbing through boarded up and plastered over walls, out into some sort of back garden. We become stuck and aren't sure where to go next. I remember we're playing a computer adventure game and we get out our laptops for hints.

L and I are living in an enormous, modern windowed house. I walk around exploring it, passing a child's car seat--I guess we have a child now, I think (though I never see one in my tour of the house). I go through the upstairs, then the lower floor, and I think, huh, we have all this space now and there's no music room or anything? Where are my guitars? I'm back at the front door, and I realize I ignored a set of steps just off the front entrance that go up to some kind of loft. I dash up the stairs, and arrive in some sort of recording studio with a booth and huge sound board and demo'ing room. Wow, this life is totally cool, I think.

Schooled

We're walking out of class on Wednesday (a WWU-like school again); a student tells me the Friday exam has been cancelled. We decide to walk across campus to see a movie. On the way there I stop and help a young girl who's sitting at a picnic table trying to figure out how to multiply and divide with fractions.

L and I are playing chess. The board, instead of being made up of large black and white squares, is made up of many smaller ones--it's still a checkerboard pattern, but the squares are only a few millimeters wide, and a piece will overlap many of them. The rules seem to be that pieces move roughly as they do in normal chess--a castle, say, will occupy a space that's 8 x 8 checked squares, and can move side to side or back and forth in lines drawn out by those 8 squares. A piece can take another piece if it overlaps it on even one square, so in the first move I take L's queen with a pawn or something. I think (smugly) that I will surely trounce her in this game, but as it goes on she seems to be taking as many of my pieces as I am of hers.

As Seen On T.V.

Mental fervor/brain lock manifested as computer coding problems, something about interlocking squares and software solutions.

In a hospital, first in the TV Show Scrubs, and then Grey's Anatomy. In the latter I am one of the new interns. A gurney rolls by with a crashing patient and they ask me to help, but I beg off saying I'm not actually a doctor. There is a roll call as one by one physicians call off various specialties, and the interns interested in that specialty line up and go off with that instructor. First is surgery, and half the interns follow. Then pediatrics and another half of so move off. Finally I'm left with three other students, having chosen nothing so far. Apparently the last physician leads the remainders--he asks me what I'm interested in and I say, "immunology." This seems to be a reasonable answer, and I'm going to go off on rounds with him, but while putting on gloves I get my hands wet and contaminate myself, and they leave me behind.

Deep Shame

I am in the Brandt's living room in Bellingham, playing large, deep bodied, guitar-like instruments. As with most dreams, I am able to play the instrument with minimal effort or knowledge of its workings.

I standing in the shower and the water comes up to my ankles. I step out and start masterbating. I realize I'm standing in front of a window, and the light is on but it's dark outside. I draw the shade and look outside--a family of three has seen me and is snapping pictures, even now that I've drawn the shade. Can they still see me?

Repeated thoughts, quasi-dreaming, of how I might parse a particular string to get only the portion of it that I need for display.

Nightmare

I board some sort of passenger ferry that takes me to a bombed out city. Soon I'm being chased by unseen pursuers who are hunting some other band of people through the city. I hide, inside an abandoned store front under the sash of broken window. I hear gunshots and a woman's voice shouting. After they've passed by I run, eventually reaching a truck loading dock in some kind of warehouse. I search frantically for the ferry terminal so I can get back on and leave. I wind up in another loading dock. I try again. This time I find the ferry and jump on deck just as it's pulling out. I resolve next time I will observe the correct rules and ratios, just as the end of the dream is waking me up.

Out of body experience, walking on the street outside our house, through the front door (without opening it) and back to the bedroom. Vision is not very clear, I stop on occasion to try and make it clearer, with limited success.

I have a tiny pet chihuahua that I can hold in my hand. I'm worried about the responsibilities of owning such a dog.

I am reading a book for class. It is a famous work of literature, but it's mostly gibberish, until I realize that the key to reading it is to hold the page up to the light--some of the words on each page are printed backwards, and if you read them from behind, you can read the story.