Vacation in Hawaii

I've arrived in Hawaii for vacation. I slept the entire plane ride. I'm very happy to be there, I'm with someone who is familiar with Hawaii although I can't tell if it's because they live there or have visited before. I tell them I want to go to the beach and pick a fresh coconut. We travel through an enormous produce section with giant pyramids of exotic fruit, the only thing I recognize are coconuts.

We arrive at the beach, or rather, are walking on a path just beyond where the jungle starts. There are many trees with coconuts and I wonder how the store can sell any when they are free for the picking just a few yards away. I literally skip out onto the beach I'm so happy.

My companion takes me to another beach. We're walking through a convention center of sorts. At one point, we slide down a steep tile slope inside in plastic school chairs. We are out on the next beach and it quickly becomes night. The stars are brilliant. As I'm admiring them, static electricity like balls begin falling through the sky in the distance, coming towards us. Someone behind me yells that a physician says the balls may be harmful and for everybody to get inside. My body will only move in slow motion as I try to make it up a hill to the closest building. The electricity balls are falling around me, breaking into a shower of white sparks over whatever they hit.

Flying a kite

I'm in the driveway flying a kite I've made myself. My parents come home and I bring the kite down, it's a bit damaged. I tape some new wood onto it and take the opportunity to switch the metal chain I've been using as a string - I use dental floss instead.

I launch the kite and it quickly goes up through a large tree and bumps into a neighbor's window - it looks like its a bathroom and the neighbor is shaving. I bring it down and wonder if I should go out on a dock behind the garage to launch it. I launch it again in the driveway and it goes up into the clear.

Darkening my dorm room

I'm back in my high school dorm, which is also sort of a hotel and also sort of a hospital. I'm at a reception desk on which there are pieces of torn letters I think might be to or from me. There's no one around but I can hear someone in the back room. It's dark and I can't read the writing on the torn envelopes. I'm very sleepy and lay down in the hall waiting for the person in back to come out, struggling not to fall asleep.

The man comes to the desk and turns on a light. He's black with a foreign accent. The letters are not to me. I go to my room and shut the door.

I've just moved in and there's a bunch of junk in the middle of the room - brooms, fishing polls, boxes. I'm putting some in the closet and accidentally hit a call button. The man from the desk comes and I tell him I hit it by mistake. He comes in and points out it's odd that I have what looks like a push mower but functions as a cement roller. He leaves. Suddenly a girl with some acne I find somewhat attractive is helping me organize and is much better at it than I. I'm showing her pictures of old friends and trying to pin up blankets over the windows to darken the room so I can sleep.

The blankets don't keep the morning light out very well. As the girl is helping me put up the blankets she tells me she'd like to get to know me better. I ask her what kind of food she likes and I'll take her out to eat if she wants.

Trying to sleep in a garage

I'm in a cluttered garage with an old man, his wife and a young woman. I think everyone is trying to sleep, I can see none of them clearly. The young woman keeps babbling inane things, the old man keeps telling her to shut up, that he wants some quiet.

Finally, the woman shuts up. After a moment, the man makes an impolite comment about the woman and chuckles to himself. After several more moments, he does it again, and again and again. Eventually everyone sleeps.

"Dad, a flying saucer just destroyed our house, you know that right?"

I'm with my parents on a small grassy hill. There's a TV on with the sound off. CNN is covering a speech by the President. Nobody is paying much attention to the TV, but I notice that behind Wolf Blitzer there are objects that look like flattened modern teapots with no handle flying through the sky doing aerial maneuvers.

I make a mental note to check to see what they were in the morning.

I've woken up, it's morning and I'm with my dad in the backyard. I see one of the objects I saw on TV last night - I point it out to my dad and strangers around - everyone sees it but doesn't think it's remarkable.

It flips and flies toward us, stopping just beyond a huge tree with its silver bottom part flush toward us, perpendicular to the ground. It's definitely an alien spacecraft. It's huge, a lot larger that it seemed flying through the sky. My dad isn't even looking at it, but continues to read the newspaper in a lawn chair.

The vehicle rights itself and plows into our house, completely destroying it just yards away from us. My dad glances over from his paper, but just continues reading as some sort of staircase like thing emerges from the craft. "Dad, a flying saucer just destroyed our house, you know that right?" He acknowledges that he heard me with a "um-hmm" and continues to read the paper.

A game in the parking lot

I've recently moved into a new apartment. I have not gotten my deposit back from my last landlord, but can't remember where I lived so don't know who to go to. It's spirngtime and there's a lot of melting snowbanks full of cinders and sand. I throw handuls of the dirty snow which burst into beautiful patterns when hitting the ground.

There are outside video game like things in the parking lot. There are a group of males playing a particular game which takes two players to play. It's like a squirt gun game at a fair. We play a few times but don't win.

The two guys give up and leave. A girl who I find attractive joins me to play the two player game. I realize the game will accept more than a quarter at a time. I put in a whole lot of change. My co-player is short, I have to hold her up to aim the squirt gun. On the first try we do better than I did with my former teammates. I reach into my pocket for more change and pull out a wedding band I found on the roadside decades ago in waking life while walking the Appalachian Trail which I've since lost. It's very tiny, but I'm able to slide it on my pinkey and exclaim, "I haven't seen this since 1989!"

I put even more change into the game this time. When we look up at the funnel you're supposed to shoot the squirt gun at, it's broken, but we play the game anyway. This time, we win! A door opens up in the game, beyond which is a small tight staircase. I tell my partner to go up into it to get the prize. The dream ends as the perspective follows her up the stair case.

My frogs and I are guests of President Obama

I'm a guest of the President at the White House. I have my frogs with me, they are in a dilapidated attic with a forest floor at a steep angle, parallel to the roof. I'm having trouble keeping them in their tanks and difficulty keeping from sliding down the slope myself. While I'm trying to get a few I've caught back in, they all escape.

A childhood friend is helping me and thinks he saw one go out a window. We climb out onto the roof - which also has a forest floor and my friend catches it, but drops it. Then I catch it and it's not a frog, but a spider. I lose my footing and fall off the roof.

When I try to go back in a security guard asks to see my pass. I tell him I've been staying there several days, he responds that he hasn't seen me check in through the front door. I tell him I've been coming and going as I please through the back door because I'm a personal guest of the President. I'm looking for the pass in my wallet, and find it, but it has had sections torn off it making it no longer valid. I tell him to just go ask Obama, he'll confirm it's OK I'm there. Just then a high ranking official walks by and I ask him to confirm to the security guard I'm a guest, which he does. The security guard says, "OK, I'll let him in but this is sedition."

By then I can find no frogs, they've all found hiding places under leaves. I'm sad but tell myself it will be fun starting another collection of all new frogs.

On vacation with an underground ice cream parlor and amusement park

I'm on vacation with three friends from high school in a city. We're standing on a large area of metal grates with long planks of wood sticking out of gaps in the grates - they make a lot of noise from below when they are shaken. Several people from below tell us to stop making so much noise. I hear a lot of activity below, so we go into the underground room.

I have to go to another part of the city to complete some task. I walk through the series of underground rooms and come upon a restaurant or bar where both the workers and customers are all wearing bowler hats and have faces painted bright primary colors. I walk on through a more upscale but mostly empty restaurant. Beyond that restaurant, the series of underground rooms ends and I'm on the other side of the city and want to get back to my friends.

I try calling one of my friends and a man answers "This is Nexus One," and explains the party I'm trying to reach has had his service cut off because of non-payment, but I can pay his bill and get his phone turned back on instantly. I ask how much he owes: $150. I decline to pay the bill. I don't have phone numbers of any of the other friends and decide to go back to where we parted.

There is an entrance to a Disney amusement park, a long water-slide like chute and streets heading in the direction of where I left my friends. I decide to take the slide, figuring it will get me there quickest. Suddenly, my friends walk up behind me. I suggest we check out the restaurant where everybody had face paint.

We sit at a large table - at this eatery, you always share a large table with strangers. Looking at the menu, I see that it's an ice cream parlor with beer. I ask about an ice cream with an interesting name that doesn't indicate what flavor it is, something like "The Roy Rogers Delight". The waiter won't describe it to me but says that's one of their best selections and tells me with a wink I won't be disappointed. I also order a draft ale.

Almost immediately, the waiter returns with a huge silver platter of a smorgasbord of ice creams, pastries and cinnamon crisps. It's a lot of food, and I realize I didn't have to order anything else. The Roy Rogers Delight ended up being a dark chocolate ice cream with caramel and fudge swirls. I'm sitting next to a girl I'm attracted to, she seems to like me as well.

After our meal, we hail a cab. When I get in the cab, the dream shifts: my friends are no longer in the dream, my family and another party are in the cab with me. The stranger is a male whos body seems to be two people at once. They are talking to one another and one is jiggling his seat belt which makes mine jiggle too. I rather impolitely ask him to stop. The other part of him who was not jiggling his belt tries to pick a fight with me, lightly punching me in the chest. I tell him he's not going to be able to provoke me. The other guy has stopped jiggling the seat belt and I sarcastically thank him.

We arrive at our destination. On one side of the street is a college which is both the school I went to in NC and my brother's college in OH. The amusement park from earlier in the dream is on our side of the street. We have tickets for a show, "Scenes from Cosmo." I tell my family I'd rather see a band and look through the paper to see who is playing, I don't see anything interesting. The show will be on an indoor rodeo field, I ask my family if it's going to be a bullfight and if it is, I'm not going because I'm morally opposed.

The show starts. It is a cartoon, but all the actors are also in the audience as real people. At each audience members' seat is a projector that shows one scene from the movie. Before each scene is started, the character featured in it talks and sometimes plays an instrument. The projectors need a bit of sand put in them for them to work. I'm not paying much attention, being more interested in the odd projectors. When it comes time to play the part from my projector, there are technical difficulties. While the projector is being worked on, someone sitting next to me explains Cosmo is the Indian character from the Simpsons. I become more interested and it ends up my scene is about Cosmo (Apu in the actual Simpsons).

We're walking out of the theater and there are two babies kicking each other. Their legs are black with bruises as if they constantly kick each other. My dad asks the mom - who is also bruised - if one of them is a better kicker than the other.

As everyone is watching the babies kick each other, my mom and dad pull out guns and point them at people, making some sort of scene. They are both the same model gun, but one is blue, the other green. They look fake to me and based on that assumption I wrestle the blue one out of my mom's hand and point it at my dad and tell him to drop it. "I don't even think these guns are real." Before my dad drops his weapon, I fire mine at the inside of my arm. The same sand which runs the projectors shoots out of the gun at a high velocity and creates a deep indentation down my arm which slowly morphs back into my normal arm.

I tell my family I'm hungry and ask if they want to go to The Leaning Tower of Pizza. My brother is familiar with it and asks if a certain waitress still works there, I tell him she does, but he describes her as young and gorgeous, I tell my brother it must be a different waitress with the same name as the one there now is near retirement age.

Feeding hungry frogs

I'm looking at one of my frog vivariums. I haven't fed them in a long time and feel bad. As I open the top to put the flies in, I notice there are very large gaps on the sides of the hinged top and wonder why no frogs have escaped through the gaps.

Attacked by arrows

I'm in the Cleveland house and have done something that may have offended a powerful group. I'm young in the dream; I escape with a female friend dodging arrows from unseen assailants as we rush for cover.

I have a ridiculously large black shiny bow and am looking for targets to shoot. I don't see any. We dive into the cover of a pine tree and I think it may be best to wait it out there. I don't express that thought and my friend convinces me we have to run further.

We run, me with by giant bow looking for targets.

Swimming to a dynamite show

I'm on vacation at the beach with my parents. We're staying right by the shore and have tickets for several baseball games each day. I decide I want to go swimming instead of seeing a game. The beach is so steep, I have to climb down it hand over hand. I have trouble finding a place for my towel where it will stay dry - the waves are large and violent - it ends up getting sopping wet.

I take to the water and decide to swim out to a long island parallel to shore. On the way out I pass a Latino man and his son and greet them.

I'm on the island and join a group of people sitting in bleachers on a driveway. A guy dressed like a magician in red satin comes out of the garage and starts his show, talking about how wild and crazy it will be. I walk down closer to him. He lights a stick of dynamite and throws it in the ocean. It hugely explodes, sending water all over the crowd. In a few seconds, a spout of muddy water comes up from a secondary explosion, we're pelted with clumps of mud.

After an intermission, the performer comes back saying he hopes he doesn't get arrested for doing his second act. Laughingly he reassures the audience everything is very safe. "If it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to do this!" He throws two lit sticks of dynamite into the bed of a pickup truck driving by carrying what look like three huge dry wreathes of vines. The truck explodes in a huge fireball. The magician tries to escape in the same direction the truck was going, but is soon brought back, arrested by police. They search his garage and find a cupboard packed with dynamite.

Toenails and a tornado

I'm in a house with my mom's side of the family. My dad is coming down a flight of stairs and recites a satanic incantation. I matter-of-factly wonder if he will actually summon a demon like I've seen him do before or if he's just teasing the kids. No demon shows up.

We're about to eat. My aunt is trying to jam something into a multi-CD carousel with another aunt watching. She's about to break whatever it is so I grab it out of her hands. It's a long piece of silver plastic with three 12" records pressed into it. The records have perforations on them and as soon as I explain it to her, she tries to rip the records out violently, completely ruining two of the records. I again grab it out of her hands and as I start to carefully punch out the third record, my aunt puts one of the cracked and ragged records on the turn table. I start to tell her it will ruin the stylus, but stop.

My dad is sitting at the head of the table at which everyone has just sat down. He remarks that he wishes he wouldn't have told so many people that he hired Tim Pawlenty because it's gotten around and a lot of old friends and colleagues are criticizing him for it. Suddenly, he realizes he's telling even more people and tries to shift what he was talking about, muttering something about Glen Beck.

It's after dinner and time for the youngest nieces and nephews to go to bed. I walk upstairs with a nephew and he climbs into a closet filled with several feet of beans or pellets of some sort which weren't there before dinner.

I realize I have the remains of some sort of prosthetic device on the left side of my body. There is a wire running under my toenails and seem to run under my skin up to my left nipple. Most of the medical device is gone and not needed, I just haven't gone back to the doctor to get it completely removed. I reach down to my big toe which is the size of a basketball. I easily tear the bloody toenail off and am pleased to find a new toenail growing below. The wire is sort of a series of latches, which now come unlatched quite easily and I'm able to remove the whole thing. Watching, my uncle points out that one of his toes is backwards, the toenail near his foot and facing the wrong direction.

I'm standing just outside of the backdoor looking at the sky. I see a tornado quickly form, touch down and come in our general direction. I yell up into the house, "Tornado! Everybody get in the basement!" A few people respond that I shouldn't worry. As I try to run to the basement, I realize I can't use my left leg without the remnants of the prosthetic. The tornado passed and I can walk fine.

I watched it go by just over the ridge and walk to look at the damage, but can't find any damage at all.

Fixing breakfast in a house with an old girlfriend

I'm living in a large house with several other people. It's Sunday morning and I'm up before everyone else. I'm in the kitchen taking these things which are sort of like crumbly raisin English muffins out of the refrigerator. I decide to crisp them by frying them in oil. A girl I dated a short time in the 90s comes into the kitchen. She also lives in the house with her old band. I ask her if she wants a muffin, she does, I put another one in the pan and put them in the oven at 250 degrees.

We're chatting; I know she needs a guitar amp for a show and think about offering her mine to use, but don't figuring she'd ask if she wanted it. I find a plate of pancakes and sunny side up eggs in the refrigerator. I ask my friend if she thinks it would be OK to heat them up and eat them, and as I start to mention that nobody would likely cook them for later as it takes about the same time to cook them and heat them up, she says the exact same thing.

I'm in my underwear and go to my room to put on clothes. I'm trying to not dress too similarly to my ex girlfriend. I feel intoxicated and clumsily put on a pair of shorts as a jacket. I return to the kitchen and realizing I put on shorts as a jacket look down and it's turned into my winter jacket. She asks what day it is, I tell her Sunday and I joke she probably didn't know because she works in a museum which is closed on Mondays.

I have been drinking a glass of milk and am finished with it. While going to refill it, I can't find the plate of pancakes and eggs I was going to heat up. There's no more milk except for a little bit in the bottom of a jar which looks old. I return to the room where my friend is and find she's heated up the pancakes and eggs while I was getting dressed. There are many people in the kitchen now, including her parents. I sit a bit further away from her, feeling awkward that suddenly I'm the person she knows least in the room. My dad comes in and asks if he can get me more milk, I say sure.

The kitchen area suddenly has no ceiling and you can see trees and power lines overhead. There's a young girl walking on one of the power lines like a tightrope. To call attention to others in the kitchen, I yell to her, "Hey, Marceau!" People then notice she's up there but don't think it's remarkable. There's now two younger kids also walking on the power lines.

A friend of my friend who I don't know comes in and sits next to me. I'm attracted to her, we seem to like each other. She asks, "It's the Olympics and all, what do you want us women to do for you special?" I ask her what kind of pies she knows how to make. She responds that she was thinking of something much bigger than that.

I realize it's been a while since my dad went to refill my milk. Worried that he's getting forgetful in his old age, I go to the kitchen to try to find him. He's not there. I return to my area of the house - my parents live in the room next door. My mom is in my room and all my furniture is gone, replaced my my mom and dad's furniture. My mom is angry, "The church light went on between our rooms at about 1 o'clock! How could you get any sleep?" I run to my mom and dad's room and see all my furniture there, just pushed in at odd angles and there are heaps of clothes all around.

Finding a dragon in Canada, children executed

I'm on vacation in Canada at the Lake of the Woods cabin. I'm with people I don't know but am friends with in the dream. I have my frogs there with me and there is also a pet python. The frogs have been escaping and I'm having trouble getting them back in.

While out on the boat, I find a baby bird swimming through the water that looks much like a prepared chicken. I catch it and want to see if the snake will eat it. Everyone discourages it, saying it's mean. I respond that if I let it go, it might get eaten by a snake anyway. I let it go.

I'm back inside the cabin and see a bright green lizard with wings. I'm very excited once I realize how much it looks like a dragon - long neck and everything - and think maybe I've discovered a new species. I catch it and it bites me as I'm taking it over to show the others. It struggles free and flies around the room. It escapes through a window.

We are traveling in a vehicle that is a car, boat and plane at the same time. We're going to a party or something. I'm looking at pictures and movies I took the night before and realize I had been really drunk. We take a shortcut across the water and stop in front of a mansion. There are three men sitting atop a steep hill in the lawn and someone from our group greets him as a famous politician. I tell my friends I'll catch up with them in a bit and climb the hill and sit with them but they're not particularly interested in talking to me. I approach the mansion, at which some small political fund raiser is going on. There are many cats and I pet and play with them.

Someone gives me a pastry and I leave the mansion, walking across the street to the only other building in the area, a convenience store. As I'm looking for something healthy to eat, dozens and dozens of people, mostly children, form a line to the checkout. I get angry and am very vocal about it, saying I'm hungry and don't want to wait in line. A cashier says, "Hey, I like this guy, he's honest," and invites me to the front of the line. I go there, but realize I haven't found anything to buy. I hold up the remaining bites of my pastry and ask if they have any of them. He says they do, but when he turns around to the shelf, he tells me they don't, they just have a pastry shaped like them. I buy a piece of jerky and a glass of water.

I walk in the direction my friends went but soon realize I don't know where they were going. I continue on down the road. It's getting dark and I decide the best thing to do is cut back across a farm to the mansion. I stop to take pictures of lemon trees. I can fly and do so to make better time, but it's tiring. It's become winter and is completely dark and I worry I might get stranded alone outside. A woman dressed like Bo Peep and a child walk up to get water from the well by which I've collapsed. The woman gives me directions as to where I need to go.

I'm back at the cabin, having made a complete circle. I decide to try to remember how we got to the mansion and return there.

I stop at a bar I had been at the night before. Everybody is watching some sort of ceremonial announcement taking place outside. The U.S. Army has selected the area for a new munitions factory and will also be building a base close by to protect it. There is one representative of the Army there and after he makes the announcement about the base, a large military propeller plane swoops in and a faster moving wingless capsule docks with it right before it lands. As people get out of the plane, the Army representative flies down to the plane and kills a person who was a spy.

I walk/fly on towards the mansion and stop at what seems to be a permanent fair and wander among the crowd. There is a parade of sorts going by. Groups of non-English speaking foreign children march by chanting, "I love Hitler!" "Kill the King and rape the Queen!" and all sorts of outlandish things. I remember that a woman who looked like a young Margaret Thatcher was talking about this at the mansion the last time I was there, that you could get anybody to say or do anything.

Eventually, I arrive at the mansion again, there are news crews around reporting on the parade from the scene. All the children are in the house. As I walk up the hill, bright incendiary explosions light up all the windows. The children have been executed as part of the political event. Everybody outside is frozen in horror. My mom is there and tries to say something to me. I tell her I didn't hear her and I'm having a hard time processing things as I'm trying to wrap my head around what just happened.

My hands are dirty in a Cambodian restaurant

I'm at a talent show with my brother. A guy is doing a very abstract version of "Stairway to Heaven" accompanying himself on organ. When he gets to the "and as we wind on down the road" part he gets up from the organ, walks across the stage, picks up a folding chair which he uses like cymbals.

When the next performer gets on, I tell my brother I've seen him before and it will be really good. The guy intentionally sings out of tune and is intentionally horrible. The judges gong him off stage and I realize the whole thing is a planned production.

We're outside the theater and I need to wash my hands - there's sticky crumbs all over them. We enter a Cambodian restaurant - I don't immediately see a bathroom. I wander through the dining area dipping my fingers in bowls of water on the unoccupied tables. I'm not sure if the bowls are for washing or eating so try to do it without anyone noticing.

I find a bathroom near the entrance. There's an odd urinal type thing that has a second toilet one could only reach if you climbed down through the first urinal. A sign reads, "There are TWO toilets. Please don't use the first one when the one below it is occupied." I wash my hands.

Outside the bathroom is a small standing bar. My brother explains that Cambodians always each standing up, so if you want an authentic experience, you'd have to stand at the bar. I look at the menu which has the Cambodian names for the dishes in phonetic English. The menu doesn't say what's in the dishes, the descriptions just praise how good it is, say what city is known for the dish, etc. I make a mental note to try eating there sometime with someone who knows Cambodian food well.

Hosting a party on a bridge

I'm near my junior high school with a lot of high school friends. We're by an overpass under which I used to fish for minnows. Some of my friends have fishing poles and are fishing in the water, which in the dream is 100 meters below. Before the dream started, I turned on something for each pole down by the water which made the fishing polls work. I discover I didn't do it for one of my friend's pole. I slide down a ridiculously steep path to fix the problem.

It seems I'm hosting some sort of party there by the road. I'm walking around making sure everyone's having a good time. After I flirt just the tiniest bit with a blond girl, she kisses me hard and deep. In the dream, she's supposed to be someone I knew in high school. We start making out. She asks me if I want to "be neighborly" by which she means "have a committed relationship". I'm taken aback and don't answer, we continue messing around. She turns into a friend I actually knew in high school but with grotesquely large eyes - beautiful blue and brown irises the size of saucers. I'm distracted by something else and get up to wander around the party more.

A very beautiful dark girl I'd met earlier in the dream is perched on the edge of the bridge, her toes on the bridge, the rest of her body hanging out over open space. I walk on and see another person precariously balanced. I look toward the very steep path I slid down earlier and a friend slips and falls through the air all the way down. He lands in grass between huge rocks and I wonder if he's dead. I also wonder if he did it on purpose and is playing a prank.

An alien ship causes a tidal wave and ruins civilization

I'm in Wilmington at the college. The coach figure I can never directly see tells four of us to go take cold showers and come back naked. On the way to the shower, a girl falls into a huge dirty toilet and as I'm hesitating to reach in and help her out, somebody else does.

I take a cold shower and return. The coach tells us to sleep directly on the floor with our heads pointing north. I suspected this was what he was going to have us do. He thinks north is a bit of a different direction than I do, I correct my position and ask why we're doing this. He tells me it will bring "good fortune to our ambassador."

Suddenly, a gigantic smokestack - miles and miles long - arches up and falls again over the ocean beyond the horizon. A second later, an even larger and more rocket shaped object does the same. Someone asks, "should we worry about a shock-wave?" I yell, "Tidal wave!"

A tidal wave hundreds of meters high approaches and engulfs everybody. I time holding my breath. Everybody is pushed miles and miles inland, the coast is flooded. We appear to be in a series of large underground rooms.

There are groups of aliens, which have heads like dogs and bodies like fish and swim through the air like fish. They are not very intelligent and mostly a nuisance because they always want to nip at you, half aggressively and half playfully. Civilization is ruined and we'll have to exist on canned goods, etc.

I decide to befriend one of the aliens and am surprised at how little effort it takes. I ask him if he can help us rebuild civilization. "No, but we can un-flood the coast." A men overhears this and excitedly asks what the alien needs. The alien says he just needs to go back to the ship.

A party of us return to the coast. We're waiting while the alien is off beyond the horizon. Suddenly, another tidal wave comes. Again, I hold my breath and everyone is washed back to the underground room. Someone expresses anger that the alien just caused another tidal wave and only made things worse. The alien gives me three film canister sized containers with a little moist black sand in the bottom of each. Everyone somehow suddenly knows, or thinks, that the sand is a cure for our predicament. I get some of the sand on my lips by mistake, it's uncomfortable.

A woman says, "The dose is is two grains!" Everyone starts eating two grains of the sand. I'm alarmed because I don't know what the sand will actually do and decide to wait to see what it does to others as I try to wipe it off my lips without getting any in my mouth.

A Henry Rollins movie

I'm sitting in a bedroom with Henry Rollins and a couple girls. There is a Black Flag cassette playing and the girls don't know who Henry Rollins is and one of them is teasingly saying she doesn't believe that's his band. I think about saying, "Nope, that's him" but Rollins says he can prove it to her.

I notice he's very young - like 17 or something - and I realize that this is a movie. I wonder if it's a movie Rollins was in before he was famous or if it's a biography. His hair is really funny - short with a shaved strip above his neck, then braided hair extensions below the shaved part. I think about telling him a funny story about how a friend's boyfriend drove a few hundred miles to see a show by "H.R." from Bad Brains, thinking he was going to see a Henry Rollins show. But I don't and just watch events unfold.

The group stops in a field on the way to school. One of them says he has some heroin and pulls out a huge bag of needles, tourniquets and other heroin paraphernalia from his sock. The group sits down and shoots up. This seems to happen several times, as if different takes of the scene are being filmed. Every time one of them goes to get more heroin, it comes in something that looks like a small firework and he gives it to his preschool age brother to carry, because no one would suspect a preschooler would be carrying heroin. Every time before that character shoots up, he digs a a hole in the mud and paints his face with white mud.

I follow the group to school, which seems be in a hill with many entrances. The characters go into the school and I walk to the top of the hill. It seems to be man-made - like a huge bridge made of solid dirt. There are over-sized strawberries and other fruit growing among the grass along the top. There are many people and we all seem to be graduating from a training course and female teachers are sending everyone off.

I'm wearing some sort of knickers and a teacher tells me she can turn them into baseball pants so I can be a baseball player. I'm hungry and try to find a big strawberry to eat, but they all seem to have disappeared.

At my aunt and uncle's in the North suburbs

I'm staying at my aunt and uncle's. My mom has prepared a stack of beef and squash which will cook in an open fire. Everyone else is in bed and the feast is done. Seeing that it will be burned to a crisp before anyone is up, I eat. It's very good.

I'm sleeping on the couch and am awoken by four strangers getting into a shower on the far side of the room. They're doing an adult baptism in the shower, fully clothed. I pretend to remain asleep.

I'm up before everyone else and wander back behind the house. There's a long alley of interesting stucco houses and vegetable gardens. They are all abandoned and for sale. The last house, about six back is both a house and a wheel store. It's an over-sized cab of a semi-truck with two stories. I think I may want to live there, but then notice it's too small.

Walking back, a stranger suspiciously confronts me. I say my full name and he wanders off, uninterested. I meet a second stranger and mention the odd truck/house. He directs my attention to a car hanging and bobbing in a tree in the alley, saying it's been there for years.

I go back to the end of the alley, and this time, I come upon the rear entrance of what seems to be a hotel. There is a sign on the door which reads, "Maximum hall capacity is 17." I turn around and walk past a building with a band practicing in it. There is an outdoor bar. Someone gives be a bottle of cheap local lager. I don't drink any of it, but continue on back to my aunt and uncle's house.

I become lost. There are unusual upscale stucco houses I don't recognize. There is no one around to ask directions.

Wanting to visit a public school classroom

I'm on vacation with my family in my mom's home town. I decide I'll visit a classroom. I arrive at the school as the school day is about to begin and approach a security guard, not having formulated what I'll ask. At first, I think I'll simply ask where the homeroom for my name would be, but worrying he may think I'm a student I instead ask if I need to see the principal to get permission to sit in on a class. He directs me to the principal's office.

I explain I want to sit in on a junior high science class to another security guard in the principal's office. He tells me he doesn't think I'll be allowed because there's a lot of Tea Partiers around these days and they don't want them making trouble. He directs me to some other official who is not the principal, but in administration. This official declines my request. I think about arguing that I'm a taxpayer and have the right, but instead say I'm not a journalist but work in public relations and that this has been a very negative experience for me. I think about dropping my mother's maiden name, the family is the well respected and well known owner of a farm implement business in the small town. Instead, I tell him I want to talk to the principal. He directs me across the hall.

The reception room for the office is very lavish and modern, but nobody's there. I wander around the school, which is very modern as a whole and surprisingly large. It's lunchtime by now - the cafeteria is a large room with stadium seating. There's a special room with beds where students can take naps. I realize I'm sleepy and decide to give up and take a nap at my aunt and uncle's house.

Pet rabbit

I have some sort of semi aquatic pets in an aquarium that has just a little water in the bottom. I find a baby rabbit and put it in the aquarium. Later, I fill the aquarium full of water. A while later, I come back and am surprised the rabbit is still there, swimming around and eating. I decide I'll put it's food in a dry trough attached to the back of the aquarium to make it easier for it to eat.

Reubans with chicken

I'm eating dinner with my parents. Each of us has a bucket of chocolate milk that we dip wine glasses in. I ask if we're having Cuban sandwiches. We're having sandwiches which are Reubans with a breast of chicken instead of corned beef. I'm sitting awkwardly far from the table and my dad tries to push the table closer to me but pulls it further away by mistake. I tell them that I visited an old friend who showed me his six handguns and lots of ammo. They shake their heads in disappointment. A black cat I own is hiding his head under a napkin.

I'm walking around in a crowd of people playing my bass hoping someone will ask me to join their band. A friend suggests we have short hair as longer hair is now cool. I point out that I already have short hair and have a haircut scheduled next week. I remember the bass line I was playing.

Stereolab and surgery

I'm in a a record store that's supposed to be Oar Folk. It has cruddy cement floors - I'm in the basement part with my parents. There were no records or CDs upstairs and very few downstairs. They are arranged more or less alphabetically, but there's a lot out of order and the CDs are interspersed with LPs and folders of paper so it's almost impossible to browse through.

I ask my dad to help me find Stereolab. He finds a shelf that is generally the Ses, but says there's no Stereolab. On the way out I ask the clerk if they're closing or just reducing inventory. From behind the counter, a clerk I'm familiar with gives me a snotty answer as if I should know already.

It's morning and I'm checking into a hospital for surgery. I'm very dizzy and feel like I'm heavily drugged. I stumble into things and slur my words and I'm afraid people think I've been drinking in the morning. I wonder aloud if I took more than one tranquilizer that morning by mistake. I have to fill out a form - I'm using a pencil but can barely write. I look at what I've written and it looks like I was doodling curves and waves.

I don't want to have the surgery, I'm afraid to die. I'm thinking that I don't have to worry about dying, only going under anesthesia as I wouldn't know the difference.

A watch, fire, flood, boat crash, party and decapitation

I'm in the North Carolina house, on vacation from my current job in Minnesota. I'm admiring a watch my dad had given me some time ago. I realize I've never wound it up and there's no battery nor a way to wind it, although there's a ring around the face that rotates. I tell my parents it doesn't have a battery, but they don't believe me. They are leaving for an evening church service and I wonder if it's Christmas Eve but look at my watch and see it's still two days away.

I'm still admiring my watch after they leave, while I'm tinkering with it, the crystal face breaks and a liquid leaks out and catches fire on Christmas decorations. I frantically but successfully put all the flames out. As I'm ensuring I didn't miss any flames, the front door opens and a torrent of water rushes into the house which rapidly floods. I run to the kitchen and am suddenly on the roof trying to unclog drains to stop the house from flooding.

All of a sudden it's dark throughout the house and the flooding hasn't happened. I'm looking for lights to turn on and a broom and dustbin to clean up the ashes from the fire. I can't find light switches. I'm looking in the garage and pick up a bicycle wheel and roll it down a flight of stairs. It rockets back up as if someone has thrown it. I'm terrified and find the button to open the garage door. As I run out, I see that the stairs have been sealed off half-way down by a wall of newspaper.

There is a red convertible parked in the driveway. I approach it to tell them to leave and find five rednecks in it. I decide to be suave and reason with them. I bum a cigarette. One of them asks me if I have any [garbled word]. I ask him to repeat and he repeats the word, which I hear but don't know what it means. Seeing I still don't understand, he says, "I'm asking you if you want any speed." I tell him I don't like speed. Headlights approach and I tell them it's my parents and they'll call the cops. The rednecks peel out of the driveway.

It wasn't my parents. I walk back towards the garage, the door is now closed. A vehicle comes barreling down the driveway and crashes into the garage door. I run to help the occupants of the vehicle which is a blue fiberglass sailboat with wheels. I try to yell at people on the street for help. At first I can't yell, but eventually cry out for someone with a cellphone. A woman emerges from the wreck, dazed but apparently unhurt. She has a toddler with her. She sits down on lawn furniture and I ask her what happened. She says they were rolling down the hill and lost control.

I'm back in the house. There's a lot of people I don't know having a party all throughout the house. They are giving brief political opinions which are met with cheers and jeers. A man says the most important Amendment to the Constitution is the 12th and when asked, he explains the 10th. He reaches under our kitchen table and asks rhetorically, "What do you think about my illegal gun?"

He aims the over-sized machine gun at people behind me and opens fire. A old professor type man on the other side of the house fires a bazooka at the man. When the smoke clears, I see that the barrel of the first man's weapon has bent in a U back towards his face. He knows it's going to fire and there's a look of shock on his face. The gun fires and the spray of bullets neatly decapitates him.

Listening to my iPod

I'm listening to my iPod. The song has two lead synthesizer melodies alternately intertwining and and uncoupling in rhythm and melody, a breathy sine wave in the left ear and a sharp square wave in the right. The connection between the headphones and iPod is poor for the right channel, I'm trying to plug it in well. Instead of crackling, becoming silent or quieter, the lead synth line in the right channel descends in a portamento each time the connection is lost.

Poor grocery store, on top of a pile of mostly cabbage

I've recently moved back to Cleveland to go back to school. My mom has a job at a grocery store, I'm there buying for for the week. At first, I only see processed and frozen foods, but discover a huge room of fresh produce near the back of the store. I can't find much stuff I want, there's a lot of cabbage everywhere. All the produce is placed directly on the cement floor. I pick up some apples, but they have soft mushy spots on them. I pick up some fresh baked bread but it crumbles in my hands as I try to put it in a plastic bag.

I explore the store more and find maze like hallways of what appear to be abandoned windowless offices. I have to step over where someone has peed on the wall. I can't find my way back into the store, so turn the other way, thinking I'll eventually exit the building and be able to reenter the store through the parking lot.

I emerge in an overgrown field. I'm on some sort of sleigh or wagon as I make my way towards the parking lot. I have to climb a huge pile of produce - mostly cabbage - to get down from the field, which is higher than the lot. The produce is laid out symmetrically and I knock over prism-shaped piles of peanuts and hope no one minds. I pause at the top and look out over a girls softball game being played below. A batter hits an easily fieldable ball, so poor, she doesn't even try tom make it to first base, but the first base player and pitcher fumble it around and although they do tag the base the umpire says the ball is still in play. The crowd groans at this awful call and I yell out "ASSHOLE!" Everyone laughs.

I make it back into the store, knowing by now I'm going to be late for class. I quickly find something to eat and wonder how much of a discount I'll get because my mom works there, but I'm told at the checkout that she's gone home for the day and they have no idea who I am.

Gathering frogs

My frog tanks are outside, I haven't tended to them in a long time. There are many frogs outside the tanks, both kinds I keep and kinds I'm unfamiliar with. I'm gathering all of them into tanks, unsure if I'm gathering up my frogs which have escaped, or new frogs.

Stove

All my burners on the stove are removed, I'm having a difficult time putting a burner back in so I can light a cigarette off it.

Gall bladder surgery

I'm driving out of a hospital parking ramp with my parents. I drop them off and take another way back to the hospital.

I'm being prepared for surgery - I'm getting my gall bladder taken out. I'm anxious and afraid. In an attempt to calm myself I repeat to the surgeon the reason for the surgery, "There are risks with the surgery, but the risk of leaving my gall bladder in are greater." The surgeon relies that they're taking it out because I told them I really wanted it out.

Odd overalls, projected into the future

I'm in Washington DC on vacation. In the dream, most of my high school friends live there and I'm staying with one of them. She measures me for clothes she intends to make me as a gift.

I leave her apartment for some reason and have to go up and down a series of confusing stairs to get to the door. I try to call my parents to tell them where I'm staying, but my cell is broken and waterlogged and falling apart. When I return, I can't figure out how to get back to her apartment through the maze of stairs so I climb a tree outside, bend a branch back and let it catapult me through an open window. There is a party going on. A childhood friend is playing piano for everyone and as part of the song, he hypnotizes me and has me do things I don't remember when the song is done.

My friend has made me over-sized overalls where the legs of the pants are only about six inches long, the crotch six inches above my ankles. She's made one for herself too and she puts it on. When I put mine on, the legs are normal length, it's just a very over-sized pair of overalls. She is disappointed in her work.

I'm wandering through the city alone. As I walk through distinct neighborhoods, I become disoriented, day turns to night and back and the seasons change.

I realize if I say my name in a certain way, I can somewhat control the rate at which I'm being propelled into the future.

I enter a basement bar with mostly Hispanic customers and a traditional Mexican band. The band finishes and I am to play next. I'm restringing a grotesquely large four stringed guitar, unsure what order the strings are supposed to go in. Some sort of altercation breaks out, some customers or maybe the last band is trying to incite violence with me. I whirl the unusually long guitar string around me like a jumping rope forming a protective field. I say my name in a special way which phones 9-1-1 into the past.