Burrs in my flesh, arrested, drugged, tortured by peanut butter and a felt giant

I'm at an outside bar on a mountain top with college friends drinking a beer. A friend gives me beers in tiny, oddly shaped bottles which I don't like, they taste strongly of molasses.

I'm walking on a path on the mountain and fall into a burr bush, many burrs stick deeply in me. As I pull them out, more burrs lodge into my finger tips. Some of the burrs were still attached to branches and just as I get almost all the burrs out, I fall into the branches I just unattached from me. This happens over and over again, the burrs are very painful to remove and they seem to be getting bigger, the size and general shape of a shark tooth. I fall down the mountain into another burr bush and walk into a neighborhood.

There is a lawn party going on and I'm still removing burrs, my fingers bleeding badly with deep cuts. I think a girl I know lives next door to the party and I want to go use her sink to wash, but I realize she lives several streets down.

A police officer approaches me as I'm removing burrs and begins to arrest me, thinking I'm on drugs. I try to explain I'm just removing burrs and need medical help, but he doesn't believe me. I'm not resisting arrest, but they're being careful with me as if I have violent potential. I tell them that if they arrest me, I'll sue them. I ask one officer to keep one of the burrs as proof I was just pulling burrs out of my body. He condescendingly laughs.

They want to restrain me with handcuffs, but don't as they believe I'm on drugs and may hurt myself. I notice I have burrs under my shirt and take it off. I have several wooden hooks piercing my breast, much like one may see someone put in themselves during a religious ecstasy. As I remove them, this makes the cops even more certain I'm on drugs. A cop draws a line in magic marker under my belly button, indicating where they'll put some sort of special restraining device.

A cop is trying to prick my lip with a toothpick with a drug on it which will knock me out. I push him away, telling him to wait until I get the burrs out, then he can knock me out if they take me to a hospital.

They usher me into some sort of holding cell and insert a huge needle attached to tubing near my belly button and start pumping a drug in me. It doesn't knock me out like it's supposed to, but makes me tingle all over which at first increases the pain on my finger tips, but then is rather soothing and numbing like nitrous oxide.

I have the sudden realization that I can call a lawyer. They just laugh at me. Then I ask them to take a blood sample so I can prove I don't do drugs, and repeat that I'll sue them and they'll lose their jobs. One replies, "We'll take a blood sample all right," and inserts a gigantic syringe into my arm drawing out a pint or more of blood which looks like weak cherry Kool-aid.

They keep acting as though they're having trouble restraining me although I'm not resisting. One cop says, "Let's give him the [mumbled] treatment," and takes a spoonful of peanut butter out of a jar and begins to peel an orange with a knife. I wonder if they're going to squirt citrus juice into my cuts, but they put peanut butter on the roof of my mouth and pantyhose over my head. It's supposed to be like water boarding, but it doesn't work on me.

They say, "Let's introduce him to Benny/Beno." A gigantic H.R. Puffnstuff man with an over-sized head walks towards me and begins jostling me around. He's a prisoner and seems to be preparing to beat me to a pulp. He has orange felt skin on his face ans is wearing a hat like my orange fishing hat. I'm talking to him, saying we can be friends. I'm afraid he'll beat me up. He jumps on my and sort of piggy-backs on my side. He sticks out a grotesquely large and long tongue and starts licking my arm. This is supposed to be torture, but although his tongue is disgusting it actually is soothing as he licks the wounds on my arm.

I wake up to a song.

Taking photos, my dad acting crazy

I'm at my junior high taking pictures. There is a flock of sheep and herd of pigs spilling over a giant staircase making fascinating, undulating patterns. Police are arresting members of some religious group all dressed in crimson. There is a glitter-covered dome and an interesting stain on carpet. I'm taking pictures of all of this.

I'm walking in the auditorium and there is a jazz band practicing behind the drawn curtain. I take some pictures from the side of the curtain while the band hams it up for the camera. They want to see the photos and when I show them, I realize I've had the camera on a setting that takes a series of movies and overlays them over one another, exaggerating colors and objects and adds a soundtrack. At first, I'm disappointed but the movie is really cool.

I'm walking behind the school with my parents. We walk by kids playing some kind of soccer behind the bleachers. The field side of the bleachers is now a large body of water, everything is run down and dilapidated. A precarious walkway has been constructed to get over the encroaching water; my dad and I are explaining it to my mom. We cone upon a giant out of commission ship that's been used as part of the walkway.

Suddenly, the dream shifts and we're watching a guided historical fiction tour. I'm still getting pictures of everything. The narrator is explaining that the ship was made "before electricity stopped working" and was powered by "non-magnetic coal." Apparently magnetic coal is the main source of energy these days.

The tour/play is over and we're driving with several of my parents friends back to a hotel. We're on vacation. My dad intentionally runs a red light and we pass a patrol car which my dad derisively mocks. He's driving really fast and pulls into a parking lot saying we're going to all get some drinks. He's acting like an out of control teen. The car crashes into a snowbank and disintegrates, leaving all the passengers unconscious and flattened into the snow. I wake them all up by touching them. I calculate whether I'll have to take extra days off work because of the crash.

My dad is confused and still out of control, walking very fast toward an outdoor bar. "We're going to get some drinks!" I suggest we split a beer while trying to get him under control. I'm asking him if he remembers we just saw a play. I'm trying to think of how to tell him his driving days are over and decide to just say he can't drive for a while. I get across to him that he's been acting crazy and he is full of sorrow.

He's calmed down and we're both crying. I tell him that a photo I took over summer vacation won third place and that since, I've sold one for $4,000. I tell him I'll be able to go to college on a full scholarship anywhere I want and he should be happy because that's what he's been doing for the last 20 or 40 years, raising me.

A photo album of cats and a monkey carrying bag

I need a gift for a recent girlfriend. Among things I've not looked at for a long time is a photo album open to the first page. I decide this will be a good gift. There are black and white pictures of cats including what I think was my only cat, but it's not because it's an all black cat. I try to remember the cats in the pictures because I know the album is of pictures I've taken of my own pets.

Pictures of cats in front of parallel mirrors reflecting off into infinity are on the next page. As I turn the page, the angle between the mirrors changes. I'm really impressed with the photos and am surprised I still want to give it as a gift. On the next page is a picture, still black and white, of a pet monkey in a childhood bedroom. I';m trying to remember if I ever had a pet monkey, but can't remember any of the animals in the pictures. When I look at the picture from a different ankle, I see a monkey shaped monkey carrying bag hanging on the wall over my bed.

Aluminium piano, an amusement ride through an Asian family's house

I'm playing a single piano with a friend, we're writing music for a performance. We have a disagreement - I think we should switch sides sometimes, my friend thinks I should always sit on the right.

I'm riding a bike on a bike path through a marsh, pulling the piano behind me. The piano is made of aluminum and looks like a Jettson's style baby grand. I have to pedal very slowly and deliberately to keep the piano on the path behind me. I stop in the middle of the swamp and start playing - I'm improvising and amazed at what I'm coming up with - beautiful melodic stanzas and abstract percussive ones. A group of black men dressed like Depression era farmers stop and listen to me. They really enjoy the music too.

I'm volunteering for some sort of charity event that involves hauling truckloads of stuff from one place to another. Several coworkers and friends are there. Three huge trucks that we'll use arrive and an organizer decides that instead of making three trips with three tucks we'll make nine trips with one.

I'm the driver of the truck when it's full. The truck is actually like a combination of as truck, a train and an amusement park ride. One has to be careful to steer it so it stays on the rails. The route we take is along the side of a mountain and at one point, there is a particularly tricky stretch that goes in through a Southeast Asian family's home.

On the way back down, we drive on the side of the road that has the steep drop-off. I wonder whether I should be driving as I'm a better driver. There doesn't seem to be any loading or unloading to be done, it seems to happen on it's own, everyone is just stand around on a loading dock, then gets in the truck when it's ready to go.

A blond girl is sitting on the floor. I ask if I can "get in her bubble", meaning enter her personal space. I sit next to her and neither one of us says anything, I'm attracted to her. I roll over, across a guy laying next to her and I say, "There, I was in his bubble too."

Now I'm walking around naked, nobody seems to notice and I'm only a little uncomfortable. I wonder why I'm naked and realize I'm starting to get an erection. I put pants on.

On this loaded trip - the last one - someone else drives. I am sitting next to the new driver as I have experience. It's an open-air cab - as explained before, the vehicle is more like an amusement park ride in ways - like the a ride through a haunted house or magic land at a fair. As we slowly wind into and through the Asian family's home, the family tries to give us Christian literature and sell us Christian books. The driver is distracted and we go off the rails immediately after exiting the house. I see we'll roll over into some large trees and hope they stop a fall all the way down the slope.

Back to school, need crayons

I'm in a classroom with stadium-like seating. It's a few minutes before class starts, I think it's the first day of class. I'm getting my supplies ready, I need crayons and find some in my desk. I walk around the room and an attractive blond girl asks be where she can find crayons. I tell her to look in the desks near the walls.

I'm standing next to an attractive dark Mediterranean looking college aged girl. We're exchanging small talk. While we're talking, I caress her back under her blouse. She puts her hand on my other hand. I take my hand out from under her shirt and tell her I hope she enjoyed that as much as I did. She smiles and seems to like me.

Gardening, growing nail plants

I'm waking up. I'm living with my parents in a completely square stucco building. I get out of bed - it's still dark and I'm not sure whether it's morning or evening. I'm very thirsty and go outside to drink from a garden hose. I turn it on slowly, being careful not to make noise so I don't wake my parents up. The water tastes like a hose and I would like to drink out of a device next to it which filters the water, but it has been covered with stucco.

I go back to my room to visit my indoor chili pepper garden and frog terrariums which in the dream, I'm keeping side by side under the same lights. Next to the wall but within the light from the frog/chili pepper area, I've started a bunch of vegetable seeds to grow outside. I've just thrown tons of them them into labeled plastic cups and added water. They're all sprouting and I take them outside to transfer into soil. It's dawn now. I dump the sprouts into terra cotta cups and cover them with soil. I realize I've lost track of which seeds are which and am disappointed in my sloppiness, but decide it doesn't matter because usually, as in waking life, I don't label my seedlings anyway.

The house is in a downtown area with no yard. I intend to grow my plants in containers. I'm thinking about all the other places I can plant my seedlings and as I have many more seeds than I can put in good places, I'll plant some in small patches of soil by the sidewalk and even in the middle of the intersection immediately in front of the house. If they grow, they grow, if they don't, it's no loss.

There are several friends and coworkers around the patio now. My boss has a container of "nail plant" seeds - the produce of the plants is nails. Some of the seeds have already started, others are still in what looks like hard chocolate chip cookies, the seeds being the chocolate chips. They are packaged this way, with two or three bean sized seeds in each cookie so gardeners are assured at least one plant will start from each cookie. I decide to grow some and pick out enough to grow six or 8 plants. I choose a combination of cookies and seedlings that have already started and hope my boss won't think I'm taking too many even though he said everybody could take what they want.

I'm transplanting and planting the plants and seeds into more terra cotta cups, thinking the unfamiliar plant looks like it will be a vine and I'm thinking about what I'll use to support the vines. A friend asks my why I want to grow nails, and I reply that I don't have any need for nails, but it won't hurt having them on hand and I'm sure I'll eventually find a use for them. And it will be cool having nails I grew myself.

My mom is now up and around. I'm planning on growing my plants in containers and tell her I think having some tomatoes on the roof will be great because they'll get a lot of sun. My mom warns me that the roof is made of paper and I reassure her I'll be careful to just step on the supporting wood beams. I've been on the roof and ask her if she has. She says she has, but I wonder if she really has as you can only access it by climbing a precarious ladder with rungs very far apart.

Hanging out with a friend, thirsty

I'm with a recent girlfriend in a basement bar. We're lounging on the floor, which is a grass slope, waiting for the first of several bands I know to play. Someone asks me to help set up for the first band. I'm surprised all I had to do was plug in an amp. I'd wanted to do a sound check. My friends' band is really good, very minimal, with judicious use of some sort of analog sampling box that plays sounds of her breathing backwards with reverb.

We're suddenly in church with my parents. As in other dreams, the altar and stage is in the middle of the sanctuary instead of in front. We go up for communion. I wonder if I should tell my friend that you can cross your arms to indicate you don't want communion, but I don't; We only get the bread and my parents, in front of us, just stand there, waiting for the wine.

Suddenly again, the dream shifts and we're checking a rented mailbox that in the dream I had several years ago. It's carved into a mountain I've dreamt of before with a wooden Hobbit-like entrance. I look for my old mailbox but can't find it. All the box numbers are very low, the greatest being 450 something. The proprietor helps me, leading me to where my box has been relocated and renumbered with a five digit number starting in "12". He explains that they don't have any mail I might have received.

Again the dream shifts - the mailbox store is now also a food market and I'm very thirsty. I tell the proprietor I want a piña colada, he doesn't understand my request. After a bit of back and forth, he understands and tells me he can't make it. I settle for coconut milk he tells me I can get from a coconut. There are many rooms in the store and dark, dingy maze-like halls with bare cement floors and walls. The produce room is excellent and busy with exotic and over-sized fruit, but no coconuts. The whole room is refrigerated, with two freezer doors going in to it. I make a mental note to shop there soon.

On the way out, we stop in another room with bulk products. It's busy too, everybody is picking up a lot of items. It's mostly unhealthy stuff, like extremely long cellophane wrapped tubes of Pez candy. We leave without buying anything.

Detachable tricycle, new friend

I've moved back to Wilmington, to "Eden Prairie" which in the dream is just north of Wrightsville Beach. There's a girl already living in the house, I like her and ask her to visit a friend in Wrightsville Beach with me. We stop in front of her old apartment next door, she says she has to go in for something. I tell her I need to go back home too and say I'll meet her back there in four minutes. It takes me longer and when I'm back she's not there. I worry she may have left, but in a short while she comes out with her old roommate who is a midget. She has a tricycle type contraption that separates into a unicycle and a vehicle with two wheels side by side that I awkwardly ride.

On the way to my friend's we stop at a concert of bands in which my friends from Minneapolis are playing. I'm laying with my head on my date's stomach and two girls I don't know undo my pants and perform oral sex on me. I feel awkward, but don't stop them and my date doesn't seem to mind. Eventually I get up and play along with my friend's songs quietly from the audience on a violin and trumpet I find.

I'm a Chinese soldier with burning skin

I'm aware through news reports that Chinese soldiers have been catching on fire. The dream shifts into a narrative of what was happening.

I'm a a Chinese soldier in the lower half of a bunk bed in the barracks. We are at war with the Canadians and I'm trying not to worry that I'll be a victim of a Canadian attack that's been causing soldiers to catch on fire. I think some sort of powder has been thrown on the parts of my limbs sticking out from under the covers. There is a commotion outside, people running, a single gunshot. I wake the soldier next to me and we get out of bed. Cinders fly through the air close by, I try to avoid them thinking the powder on my limbs may be some kind of Greek fire. I'm touched by some of the sparks and my skin starts to burn and smoke, but I'm able to put out the flames with a blanket. It's still smoldering though.

We escape from the barracks and are in the home of white people. A sympathetic woman takes me into the shower with her to try to completely put out the fire on my limbs. I'm not sure if it's working or not, but I have to quickly escape because enemy rednecks are pulling up into the front yard. The soldier I woke up and I run out the back through more showers of sparks and jump into a river. We climb onto a large wooden raft and float down the canal.

The narrative jumps several days into the future and we're still on the raft. We're hungry and I'm fishing. I catch a fish and as I'm bringing it in, a boat approaches. We hail down the boat for help. The occupants think we're Islamic terrorists and I can't communicate that we're actually Chinese because I don't speak English. There seems to be some disagreement as to what to do with us, one man wants to set me on fire, one woman is unsure. There are several books on a table and I try to indicate I'm Chinese by reading one written in Chinese. The woman understands and explains the situation to the man, but just as that crisis is resolved another of an vague nature arises and we have to jump into the water and escape.

I have the idea that we have to swim out of Canada to America through a canal system. As we cross into the U.S., we get out of the canal and start walking up a rural two lane highway. A vehicle approaches and again, we can't communicate the situation because we don't speak English.

Sleeping in a cot outside and carrying around a formica tabletop

It's nighttime near the Ohio house and I'm going to bed in a cot on the sidewalk at the end of our street. I know there's a new neighbor I've not met in the house next to the sidewalk. I can't sleep. My mom wants us to meet, he's the son and about my age. While I'm trying to sleep, he comes out and introduces himself, giving me a gift of three pill bottles. I open one and spill all the sleeping pills out into a puddle of milk on the sidewalk. As I put them back in the bottle, I take several pills that have begun to crumbles in the milk. I worry I might have taken too many.

I wake up in the cot which is now on the side of a parking lot. There is a computer game I've been trying to play - the object of the game is to press a button as soon as a squiggly line on the screen changes. I make a version of the game out of a pile of white powder by dividing the pile in half and dropping a penny to complete an electrical connection between the two piles in lieu of pressing the button. There are people getting into their cars to go to work and I hide my game so I won't have to explain what I'm doing.

I'm at "work" which is more like a high school. I'm carrying around a formica tabletop. There is a new employee, an attractive redhead. She is talking to me about how she's disappointed that I don't trust her and I'm trying to explain it's only because I just met her and she can't expect me to trust someone I don't know. We part and I go to an underground cafeteria where I realize I've left my table top. The new neighbor is there and as I look for the tabletop, I explain the encounter with the new employee to the new neighbor I'd met earlier.

I see two women examining my tabletop along side an almost identical tabletop. I explain to them that one of them is mine and they ask how they can know it's mine. I have them look at the under side where there is writing and geometrical figures drawn in magic marker. I'm looking for where it has my name on it and I find it, but my name is spelled wrong. Instead of pointed out my misspelled name, I point to the name "John", which is my dad's middle name and tell them, "That's my dad's name." They accept my explanation and I walk away with my tabletop, telling them I intend to spray paint over all the writing and write something on it that clearly indicates it's mine.

River tsunami engulfs my parents' house

I'm in my mom and dad's house which is a big sprawling thing set into a steep riverbank painted the color of a battleship inside and out. There are a lot of indie rockers around and slowly, I discover my Dad is financing some band's releases. I wonder why he's not putting out my music.

The kitchen counter is full of food and I pick up a roast beef sandwich to eat. It's sloppily cut into many pieces and I complain that one slice only has mustard in it. The kitchen is at water level, with picture windows and a deck. There are three waterspouts that develop on the river; initially everyone is alarmed, but they dissipate. A few seconds later, one reforms right outside of the house and creates a series of progressively larger waves. I realize the water will come into the house, the dream goes into slow motion. I yell for everybody to get back and away from electrical appliances. A wall of water completely submerges the room as everyone is pushed back into a narrowing crevice at the end of the room away from the water.

Pool party, fire in a nursery and waking up in my car

I'm walking into the back yard of our Ohio house from the rear. My brother's family is just starting to swim in the pool, which has gathered quite a bit of debris. Someone is vacuuming it, I rush into the garage to get the net to remove an area of leaves and scum before the kids break it up. I can't find the net anywhere. Someone is playing an acoustic guitar on the steps and a string comes unwound. I deftly wind it up and am given a raise at work in reward.

Coming out of the garage, there are many ambulances arriving from all directions - from the street and over the grass. There are dozens of young kids running out of our neighbor's house and some but not a lot of smoke coming out the door and windows. There's a big sign "Nursery and Infirmary" on top of the house and "infirmary" is spelled wrong. There's a van that belongs to the nursery with raised letters. All I can see is the last few letters which are all Zs, each getting smaller and going up such as cartoonists indicate sleep. A cop is explaining to a neighbor that the final Z should be lower and is suggesting a sort of "business for dummies" book.

A younger female member of the neighbor's house, about my age, is in our front yard. She asks me, "Don't you know what happened?" I tell her I don't, but she says nothing more. There are commercial airliners flying through the air, camouflaged or cloaked in a way so the sky appears through them in most places.

Suddenly, I'm waking up in my car in the driveway. I don't remember going to sleep in it.

Suddenly again, I'm waking up in my therapist's driveway. I get out of the car and walk to his door, dizzy and disoriented. He answers the door in a bathrobe and invites me in. I tell him something must be wrong because I don't remember driving there and I'm dizzy. I notice my parents' cordless phone is in my pocket and take it out. Written on it is a number for a "Colleen" or "Claudia". My therapist says that's interesting because he once saw me call that person. I don't know a person of that name.

Tube girl, walrus-tiger, mescaline and a talking bull

I'm on vacation with a lot of friends. It's a bus tour. There are a line of coves in a wall, each with a woman inside. One of them starts talking to me. She's black, grotesquely thin and her torso and limbs are tubes - bendable like Gumby, with no joints. She has an attractive face. We want to have sex, she tells me if it works, she'll love me forever. This makes me uncomfortable, but I say nothing. She bends her head down to her vagina and spits a bunch of hair conditioner like fluid into her vagina. It's very hard to get my penis in her, and when I do, her torso is like a sheath around it as my penis is grotesquely large. I have me hands completely around her "chest" and can feel my penis moving under her skin. It's too painful for her and we have to stop.

I'm staying in a huge room with many beds in a hotel near a college in Michigan with many Minneapolis friends. I leave to go record shopping and there are hundreds of people around as I flip through endless outside bins of records and CDs. Many friends and acquaintances from throughout my life are around. I realize I've lost both my wallet and cell phone. A high school classmate finds part of my wallet, but the part with money has been separated from it. I find four or five cell phones on the ground, - none of them are mine, but some belong to friends. I carry them with me.

I meet a childhood friend who wants to give me a blow job. I tell him I don't want him to, but he's very persistant and talks me into it. On the way to his house, I stop in front of a yard packed with people. There's a violent cross between a tiger and walrus being controlled in a net by a man. I take pictures of it. We try to find somewhere else to go, but there are people everywhere we go.

I'm back in my hotel room and it's time to go to bed. I'm sharing a bed with a friend and his wife. I can't sleep. Before everyone wakes up, I eat half a cactus I've been carrying around with me. People had told me it contains mescaline, but I didn't really believe them. I'm washing in a large communal basin and accidentally trip some sort of overflow pipe which causes a lot of water to quickly drain outside onto the sidewalk. Walking out the door, a bull without horns has come to look at the water and tells me he was just checking to see if I'd filled their water trough. I tell him I just accidentally let some water out of the tub inside. "Oh," he dejectedly replies and walks around the corner to rejoin his herd. I realize there must have been mescaline cactus and follow the bull to talk some more. I tell him I wanted to talk because I'd never met a talking cow and we make small-talk.

I run a bit on the way back to the hotel room and the ground tilts below my feet. I realize I'm really tripping and wonder if I'll be OK on the bus ride home. Everybody else is up now packing for the bus. I remember that mescaline lasts a long time and ask people whether they know. Nobody really believes I'm tripping. My friend picks up the rest of the cactus and runs out with it. I follow him across a courtyard of the college where many students are playing some sort of lawn-bowling game that I interrupt as I run across their lanes which are divided by ribbons. I like the way the cactus is making me feel and my friend is teasing me that he's throwing the rest away. He throws a chunk near a building. Retrieving it, I come across a table selling "mushroom cookies" - cookies with hallucinogenic mushrooms baked inside. I want to buy some, but have lost the money part of my wallet. I talk to the people behind the table about them, asking about the many varieties. The main woman says this is her 11th week there and she'll be back each week other than for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I discover I know who one of the people behind the table is, but he's not there at the time. It's the guy who makes Miniml fonts and components for Flash, someone goes and finds him so we can meet. We shake hands, and he's not at all like I imagined him, large and oafish. He's heard of me too, through my old fanzine Gourmandizer.

I return to the hotel room and almost everybody is gone and getting on the bus. My friend and I make a last pass through the room to make sure nothing is being left behind. I realize I don't have my baggage. I run toward the bus, frantic that it will leave begore I find my bag.

Crashing

My mom is driving a van down a long, straight mountain hill. Some people who are friends in the dream and I are passengers. As soon as I comment it's a good it's not slippery, the road becomes very slippery and we go into a spinout, crossing into the oncoming lane. I don't have my seatbelt on and fumble to put it on while trying to look for oncoming traffic. We come to a rest halfway in the ditch.

The van is stuck in the ditch and for some reason we have to wait for police to show up. During that time, I buy some burgundy hair dye and tell everyone I'm dying my hair. My mom tells me I can't and I indignantly reply that although she might have once had that kind of authority over me, now that I pay rent she doesn't.

The police still haven't showed up. A car coming up the hill stops and two men with rifles or shotguns rush out of the car and try to start to fire upon us, but one of my friends immediately shoots them both. I walk to get the police while everybody else leaves the scene.

I arrive back at the scene before the police get there are there are many people around the vehicles and bodies, a young girl taking a picture of a body and a man taking a picture of her taking the picture. Lots of people are touching the vehicles and I yell to stand back, complaining everybody is getting fingerprints all over a crime scene. I pretend to be a cop by saying, "Another police officer will arrive shortly." Everyone backs away.

When an officer finally shows up, I angrily ask why it took so long to show up at a murder scene. As soon as I say it, I realize nobody saw what happened but me and I worry that by referring to "murders," the police may think the men were murdered instead of killed in self-defense. I notice there are two more bodies with gunshot wounds in the back of the car.

Talking some sort of class

I'm back at my junior high school auditorium in a class for adults. It's the first day of class, I'm unsure what the subject is, but it seems to be acting or something like yoga. We're watching demonstrations, half a dozen of us perched on a hanging girder very close together. I put my arm around the girl next to me and try to make small talk.

The instructor ends the class a few minutes early and has us listen to a really bad rapper/singer guy in a wrestling mask. He sings a verse then puts the microphone towards me i a call/response type way, but I am coming up with my own stuff to sing, which I think upstages him. Sometimes he puts the microphone towards the guy next to me, but I feel greedy because I feel like I'm doing so well.

After the bell rings for the next class, everybody leaves. I'm on the stage which is tilted severely toward the seating, trying to climb up and grasp my books. I tell the musician, "That's was pretty cool."

"Yeah it was cool, but it's the love that matters," he corrects me.

A self-transforming scooter gets jammed up my pants when I fall in the river

I'm on vacation, babysitting a sister and brother with a male I don't know. We had let the kids do something the parents wouldn't approve of and it had caused a mess; the kids were cleaning it up before their parents arrived home.

My brother is with he parents arrived home along with when they get back. I need to make arrangements with my brother to return from vacation. He is standing right in front of me in the back yard when begin to call him on my cell to make the arrangements. When I realize I didn't have to call him because he was standing right there, I think is very funny and tell the others what I was about to do but no one laughs.

I'm walking down a steep and wooded embankment towards the Mississippi and lose my footing. I slide down the embankment into the water. "Was there barbed wire in there?" my brother asks. As I feel a shooting pain on my left leg, I tell him there was. I can't see a way out of the river until I entirely cross it. I swim back and pull myself up onto a gravel area by a patio with people grilling on it.

Something very large has wedged itself all the way up my left pant leg. In extreme pain, I rip my jeans to get it out. It's a Razor style scooter! My leg is severely injured and I have to pull myself with my arms. There are many people around, in bleachers and on the sidelines of several races. Two of the races have to be stopped so I can pull myself across the tracks, carrying the scooter along with me. I pass a few people who remember me from high school, I don't remember them.

Unlike other injury dreams, it doesn't seem like anybody should be helping me, I'm just making my way back to where my brother is. When I make it back, the scooter has transformed into something also sort of like a roulette wheel and marble game, except there's only one roulette slot and an non-rotating catapult for the marble in the middle.

For some reason, I again swim across the river. There are still lots of people around everywhere. A girl, who owned the scooter in the river approaches me. I tell her there's no way I'm giving the scooter back, I got really injured and ruined an expensive pair of jeans. By now, the scooter has transformed again: now it came with a carrying case and an enormous self-inflating mattress. A male wants to borrow it to smoke pot out of the catapult part; I let him. The girl who owned the scooter tells me she only wants the inflatable mattress. I give it to her.

A terrifying floating witch

In waking life, I was in my bed between 3 and 4 a.m., having trouble returning to a night of light, unrefreshing sleep. Each time I started to drift off, I sensed a terrifying female presence in the room - a witch, an old hag. Each time, I fought to wake myself up. I believe I was sometimes successful in calling out or waking myself up, although the whole thing may have been a dream. It seems like I did once actually cry out, "Just un-plug it all!"

I was confused as to where my bedroom was, sometimes I thought I was in a childhood home, sometimes I placed it correctly in Saint Paul, but at those times I thought my bedroom door opened into the common hall.

The witch was usually floating horizontally between my bed and the door, sometimes standing, always more of a sensed presence than a clear image. This went on for a very long time, long enough for my conscious mind to try to come up with ways to deal with it. I thought about walking towards the door and about the apartment to convince myself there was nobody there, but this didn't seem to make sense as I already knew I was just dreaming things. I pretended my parents were in a room next door, but this didn't help: I was in no real danger, just imagining a terrifying thing.

Finally, I decided to try to draw the presence in close to me and embrace it. She floated closer to me and this seemed to work as I found the specter more repulsive than terrifying. By drawing it in instead of trying to shrink away, I demonstrated control over it and was able to fully fall asleep - or stop the dream if I was dreaming the whole thing.

A fantastic fantasy organ

I was walking north through backyards in Uptown. I came unto a garage with a sod roof. After climbing down into the front yard many people showed up all at once in cars or on foot. It seemed they were gathering after they had been together at another event, and they assumed I was part of their group. They went inside, I continued orth.

I was inside a keyboard store about where Heartbreaker's or McDonald's actually is on Hennepin. There was a preposterous organ with hundreds and hundreds of square keys arranged in a 3D sculpture that resembled a miniature rendition of the Alps or a microscopic view of some sort of bacteria - the pattern was almost like a Mandelbrot set. Some of the keys stuck up higher that their immediate neighbors and I found these sounded right when played together as I tinkered with it.

Sleeping

I was sleeping and meeting my friend for dinner later.

Don't Fear the Reaper

I'm watching a band practice. The bass player starts to play the main riff of "Don't Fear the Reaper" on his bass but nobody else in the band wants to play the song.

On vacation in Canada

I'm in a van, going on vacation to Canada with three high school friends. I am drinking iced coffee and tell the driver how it's the first coffee I've had since I quit caffeine and it tastes wonderful. My friend is driving with his feet and weaving a bit. I put my hand on the wheel which makes us go off the road through someone's yard. When we get back on the road, a hotdog stand-type cart rolls out onto the road. we swerve but it hits us anyway - the van flips as it rolls down a hill on the opposite side of the street and into a stucco house.

Nobody is injured. The owner of the cart retrieves it and I confront him, yelling. He acts like it was our fault. He packs up his cart in a ling string of trucks and takes off. I run after him and he weaves his vehicle so that the railroad-car like trailers almost pin me to cement blocks on the road. I try to get his license plate number, but it's bent and I can only see the top half of the letters. I tell my friends, "I knew there was something fishy about that guy."

We resume our trip, but we're now on bicycles. At an intersection, a cop stops and is trying to give a ticket to someone who has set up a TV showing a commercial in the middle of the road - the cop is talking to the TV as if it was two-way, but it doesn't seem to be.

The resort is immediately across a river. I check everybody in, asking for a room with four singles or two doubles and the clerk inquires about the sexes. I tell him there's two other guys and a girl and joke that we all sleep together like ABBA. It's $520 for the four of us and we pay with four credit cards. While the clerk is telling a long story about ABBA my phone rings but I don't answer it in time. It was a friend who I accidentally called while trying to call 911 after the accident. I call her back but get her voice mail. Her outgoing message is severn minutes long and includes an argument with her mom and a song from her boyfriend's band. I leave a long message while we walk to out room, which ends up being a platform floating on a canal parallel to the river. The resort is jam-packed, hundreds of people on similar platforms. Still leaving the message, I describe, "And now there's a delivery truck that's going to crash." The delivery truck is flying like an airplane and does crash into the river. Some people immediately jump in to assist, but it's crashed closer to the American side. People are trying to get a child out of the vehicle.

A man across the river shoots a large blue cellophane arrow towards the crowd on our side of the river. Everyone panics and starts running inland. I think he's shot the arrow to get everyone to clear the way for emergency vehicles which will be coming up the canal, but he keeps shooting at us. I retrieve one of the odd arrows as a souvenir and as I do, the man starts rapidly shooting arrows at me, but I easily dodge all of them.

Once safely out of range, we're sitting at a long long picnic table. A South Asian man is explaining what it was like adapting to our culture, "Everything's different, they even change the unit of time."

I tell my friends I want to go swimming.

Stumped by an English test

I am back at the Asheboro high school. I have to take an English final I never took. I never went to class either. The class is a requirement to have graduated. There are two other students that are also being allowed to make up the test. The teacher gives us the tests in a classroom, but we have to take the tests in desks sitting in the middle of an otherwise empty parking lot.

I have no idea how to answer the questions. One of them is "Give an example of an R.R.S.S.I." Frustrated, I think about guessing it means a dialogue between two people where one learns something from the other. It seems futile for me to be taking this test because even if I didn't technically graduate, I've been working in the real world for decades.

It's the last day of school and students are mulling about on the sidewalks around the parking lot. A binder blows to my feet. It has an English final exam in it and I think about looking at the answers, but don't. After I decide not to, I notice it's for a different grade anyway. I just sit there and don't write anything down on the test.

I have to walk up a steep snow covered embankment in the woods to turn it in. The teacher is grading tests across a table. I lay down my untaken test and just as I formulate the words, "You know, if you ever want to have sex with a student, I'd be up for it," she turns into a more beautiful and younger woman. I reach across the table and touch her arm. Everything turns to slow motion. We lean across the table and kiss.

Watching a TV show

I'm in my bedroom at the North Carolina house. My mom is cooking dinner. I get out of bed and climb on a diamond shaped piece of polished wood which glides me to the kitchen as if it were gliding across ice. I watch my mom a bit, then watch TV. The rest of the dream is the TV show:

A gang has hijacked a truck from a warehouse. One character left in the warehouse asks another what the cargo was. "About a trillion tiny pencils." The audience laughs because these will be worthless to the thieves.

We're now at the gang's hideout and the leader asks what they got. They open the rear of the truck and it appears to be full of hotel towels. The pencils are wrapped in the towels. The gang is unloading them, the leader angrily kicks them around. I think that's how they'll get caught: the good guys will find a pencil outside their hideout.

"Let's see what else it can do," the gang leader says. There are valves on the side of the truck. I'm watching the show from inside the show and fart a little. Somehow, the combination of my fart and the valves on the truck make a super-weapon - it's a huge jellyfish shaped ball of fire that flies through the sky. It has my name on it and I'm embarrassed that everyone watching the show will know I farted. Then I notice the middle initial is wrong and am a bit relieved. The last few letters of my name are also wrong.

The scene shifts back to the warehouse. One of the thugs is holding someone up with hooks through the nostrils demanding "Is there a name?" The suspended guy says a name but I don't hear it. The gang then takes off with a second truck and the scene shifts back to the gang's hideout.

A scientist type character is fiddling with instruments at gunpoint. I'm watching from the back of the room with a group of men who I and the audience know to be good guys, but the thugs don't. The scientist puts a small black foam slab into a slot in an instrument which spits it back out in four strips with some red lights on it. He steps away from the instrument which starts whirring loudly and sucking all the bad guys and evidence into the slot. The second truck was a set-up.

Lost on the way home from vacation

I'm on a two week vacation with my mom and dad. We had first gone to Georgia and are now visiting aunts and uncles. We are at a particular aunt and uncle's house and everybody is there. I am able to fly and carry my aunt around the house. I joke that I want to show the Pope how I can fly and that will be one of the miracles needed for me to become a saint.

There is a lot of eating and bustling about going on. My uncle catches an enormous fish in a river in front of the house. I am flying around throughout the dream but few pay attention and some, including my mom, don't want to believe I'm flying. My cousin who is a stylist in the dream agrees to give me a haircut, but decides not to once we sit down to do it. My other cousin says he'll do it and as he's cutting my hair I'm afraid he'll give me a mullet. When he's done, I discover he's braided dozens of white thin pipe-cleaner like wires into my hair but only on half of my head.

We are sleeping on cots in the living room. I wake up at sunrise and become concerned that I'm using too much of my vacation tim on this trip. A chirping frog wakes up my mom and dad and I ask them when we're going back home. A family of migrant workers picks vegetables from a field which comes right up to the back of the house. I realize that this aunt and uncle live in the same city I do and I rhetorically ask, "So I could get my car now and go to work tomorrow if I wanted?"

We are leaving, walking on foot. Two of my aunt and uncle's dogs follow us. We walk through a shopping mall with the dogs. A few blocks on the other side of the shopping mall, we send the dogs back. I admire how disciplined they are. My mom or dad notices they're going down the wrong street, I run to catch them, but they are lost around a corner. I run back to the mall looking for them.

I'm in a densely populated area of large stone walk-up apartments on streets laid out like a snowflake. I lose track of where the mall is. I'm having to climb high up on gutters and railings to get to the direction I think the mall may be. Nobody will tell me where the mall is. Throughout the honeycomb-like development there are many kinds of neighborhoods - some run down and some upscale, but all very old. I get glimpses of what I think may be the mall through the rooftops, but I can never get to it.

Matt Damon from Damon & Naomi

I'm arriving at a Pavement concert with a recent girlfriend who I'm still with in the dream. The venue is a combination of First Avenue and a small outdoor baseball stadium. We're very early, few people are there and the opening band is awful. I remember that I won a 12 pack of beer the last time I was there and ask a bartender about it. He tells me it might be in the basement, but it might not be there as one is expected to drink them sooner than I have.

I go to the basement and remember where I put it, but it's not there. I'm not upset. The basement is a used instrument store and it occurs to me I might want to get an oboe. I find a gazzoo-like instrument with an oboe reed and play with it a bit. I can't find an oboe and start to walk upstairs, peeling the 74 cent price tag off the small instrument. I consider not paying for it, but decide against it. When I try to pay for it, the bartender accuses me of trying to steal it.

The awful band is still playing and my girlfriend has purchased a can of Pepsi. We decide to go for a walk. On the way back, there's an area where the sidewalk has given way in front of a house and a stream with koi in it is cascading down into the street. I remark that that's kind of neat. Immediately beyond the stream is a swinging bridge we must cross to get back to the concert.

When we arrive back another band is playing, "Matt Damon from Damon & Naomi". I buy a beer. I can't see the stage because a huge soundboard and trampoline with dancers on it are in the way. My girlfriend wants to go home. I get frustrated as we'd been planning on attending the concert for a long time and argue we have to wait for Pavement because the tickets were $15.

A noisy new sex partner

I'm at a small party among a group of friends I just met. They all know each other, I know none of them. Someone asserts that I don't have any "real" friends. I protest, but can't think of any friend's name. I think about saying my parents are really good friends, but realize that answer would be met with derision.

I start making out with a skinny blond girl, I wonder if she's someone elses girlfriend, but decide she's not as it doesn't seem uncomfortable to anyone there. We go downstairs, which is suddenly the basement of the Ohio home. I take her to the laundry which has a cement floor. I find a blanket and we lay down on it and begin to have sex. She makes some sounds and I tell her to try to be quiet because my parents are right upstairs and I don't want them to wake up.

I move the blanket to various places in the laundry room and she very quickly has an orgasm in each place and each time makes noise. "OK, I'm sure that one woke my mom up, she's a light sleeper. Shhhh!" I move the blanket again; I really want to have an orgasm.

The girl puts on a full body corset which makes her abdomen not much larger around than my penis. "Try this!" she says. This time, she makes some noise but it's a brief expression of pain/discomfort as I enter her artificially small vagina.

Shards of glass in my throat and hands, no one will help

I'm watching a Little League baseball game with my family. There's a controversial call which I don't understand. Interested, I get involved in some pushing and shoving of the umpire. In the tussle, I get carried off to a liquor store beyond the outfield.

My dad and I want to buy some tequila. He picks out something I think is too expensive and then I realize it's a three-pack of large bottles and think it's too much liquor and not expensive enough. I ask if they have Cabo Wabo or el Tesoro - the owner says they do, but it will take a half hour for him to go get it. My dad buys his bottles, I follow the owner, "The platinum, silver, blanco, whatever they call it."

I'm carrying my bottle back towards my family and game, open the bottle and trying to take a swig directlty from the bottle, the bottom shatters and I get slivers of glass in my throat and all over my hands. I gesture for help. People think I'm just drunk, I gesture that I'm not by standing on one foot and touching my nose with my eyes closed. Still no one will help me and I can't talk because of the glass in my throat.

I'm furious and in great pain. I have a baseball roster listing the names of people around me - I gesture at individuals while tearing up their name trying to indicate that I'll kill them if they don't help me.

I start to pick out the shards from my right hand - they are the shape of germinating seeds with the roots growing into me and are in a perfect grid. I tear a good deal of flesh off while getting the shards out and realize I can't do it myself.

I'm looking at a back-lit map such as are in shopping malls listing the area hospitals wondering which can best deal with my injury.

Transforming into an aliens so we can be rescued from Earth

I'm at a resort with a dozen or more people who are friends in the dream. The setting moon looks exactly like an Elmer Fudd face and I rush to take a picture, but it doesn't look as good by the time I get outside. I watch as parts of the moon fall away and rush off into space. Everyone gathers on the porch to watch. An alien approaches and sprays everyone with foam from a fire hose. I ask him what he's doing. "When you die on Earth your body decomposes, but we're not leaving it here."

Nobody is alarmed by any of this, it seems quite normal.

The alien explains they're are evacuating Earth and to do so they have to turn everyone into aliens first. A woman who is an impostor alien trying to foil the rescue effort rapidly pumps herself up with a bicycle pump through her anus, but the alien wraps her in a plastic bag before she explodes, containing the attack.

As we're turning into aliens, we slide down a thin chute past underground machinery aliens have had running for years. Our faces look like Devo in Jocko Homo - the video where they have pantyhose over their faces and goggles.

We are in an orientation room, Bill Gates is playing chess with pairs of everyone at once, he just draws spaces on a whiteboard and remembers what pieces are where. I'm not very interested but my partner in playing him is very enthusiastic. I'm unsure whether Gates has always been an alien or not.

Everyone from the group gets on unstained wooden bicycles that fly. I pick the only one that fits more than one person - it fits three people - but only one other joins me. Flying off and merging onto a highway, we encounter another group of aliens flying the wrong way. We stop to explain the custom of driving on the right side of the road. We encounter several other groups of humans transformed into aliens. Each group of transformed humans is in the style of alien invaders from different book or movie. Most look like some sort of Teletubby, all uniform in color.

Everybody is following along with events as they happen in a book and two people in our group have earlier editions of the book where different races of aliens were used. Confused, they had stopped reading and just went along with what was happening.

It's explained that a certain type of insect spray is irritating to our new bodies, but it's actually good for us and a little bit is put in everything we consume. A few sprays are put in the air so we can feel its slightly irritating effects. As an example of how it's actually beneficial, the alien sprays a great deal on a man/alien with a plaster cast on his leg. The swollen leg begins to heal before our eyes, but then his body begins to decompose and all that's left is his skeleton. A human woman who has not been transformed is being prepared for decapitation with a sword execution style so the aliens can merge her with the man who just decomposed. They will be both people in the same body. The woman either doesn't seem to mind or doesn't really believe she'll be beheaded, but she is. He head flips around and lands perfectly back in place on her body.

Astronomy tour and finger shadows in the sky

I'm traveling in a car to somewhere in Georgia with my dad. We're going to something like a guided fishing tour except the guide will give us an astronomy tour.

I'm waking up from a nap in the back seat as we stop to take a break. We're in the mountains and looking at the setting sun through a small natural stone arch. I discover the stone arch allows me to do finger shadows across the entire sky if I get the angle just right - it's difficult because the angle changes along with the setting sun. For a brief moment, my reflection fills up the whole shy but I wonder if it was an illusion caused by a glass pane which covers the whole opening in the stone arch.

I look out over the mountains admiring their beauty - there are lots of people who have come to watch the sun set at this spot we seemed to choose at random. There's a young kid pitching a baseball in a crowded area. He's throwing wild pitches and I make him stop, afraid he'll hurt someone. A grotesquely giant man with no torso from the kid's group stands up and silently intimidates me. I tell him, "So great you're really big. I'm just trying to make sure nobody gets hurt."

The giant seems satisfied and sits back down, but there's a bad feeling coming from the whole group. Someone is throwing baseballs and hitting golf balls at me from somewhere down a mountain path I can't see. None of them hit me and I pretend not to notice. I maliciously kick several golf balls over a cliff.

Walking toward the cliff, I suddenly realize it will be difficult to climb back out. It's suddenly snowy and icy. My dad comes along and I try to warn him to stop because he'll get stuck too if he keeps walking towards me. He slips and I grab him. I try to pull him towards me but he slips even closer to the cliff. I wonder if he's going to go over the cliff and if he'll die.