Shaved off my beard

I'm waking up, realizing I drank so much I blacked out the night before. I've done a horrible job of shaving my beard off while I was blacked out.

A polar bear with the neck of a dragon licks my face

I've arrived back from vacation and have returned to a pet store that was keeping my frogs for me while I was away. They've multiplied and there is a new frog with blue and white rock patterns the same color as blue and white China dishes. There are also salamanders and another kind of amphibian with identical coloring. They are crowded into a small Tupperware box and some escape when I lift the lid. I'm trying to catch one of the salamanders which was very fast.

A pet store employee lets a polar bear out of a huge Pyrex container. It has a long serpentine neck and teeth like a dragon. It's barking and snarling, the young man is having trouble controlling it on its leash. It escapes.

The polar bear has fallen asleep and snores gently on top of me. The employee says he'll call the police, who I assume will bring a tranquilizer gun. I successfully try to relax, thinking the beast will sense it if I'm tense or afraid. The employee starts balancing empty beer bottles on me. I'm upset and tell him to stop, thinking the police will think I passed out drunk.

The polar bear wakes up and licks my face. The employee is amazed we're friends and a small boy wants to pet the bear but is afraid of it. I am glad the bear likes me, but am also wary because we have not been friends very long and am worried it might turn on me. It has very long sharp teeth.

Beer tasting

I'm at a beer tasting at my junior high school. Several brands are showcasing their beer and I start with Summit. There are six full size bottles of beer in my sample and I drink four that are new to me very quickly. Among the two remaining beers are their India Pale Ale, my favorite beer they offer all year around. I want to drink it but realize I'm getting too intoxicated to drive. I realize I don't have to drink the whole thing and start to sip it slowly.

Moving from school

My parents are coming to help me move after finishing college. It's pre-dawn and I've been drinking, but don't feel drunk. I need to load up my car before my parents arrive but I've no idea where I've left my car As I'm searching, I realize it could be anywhere within an area of many square miles so I start running, thinking this way, I'll get some exercise too.

The sun comes up and I'm still running, looking for my car. I've become lost myself. I'm surprised I'm not at all fatigued from running, lack of sleep and drinking.

People are starting to be out and around. As I'm running up stone steps towards a large marble building, I'm stopped by a young man who asks me if I'm going to take care of his friend's truck. Suddenly, I remember that months ago I'd borrowed someone's red pick-up and lost it while using it. I'm aghast that I've completely forgotten about losing someone's truck and feel a great deal of anxiety - I was never able to remember where I had parked it so couldn't even say whether I thought it was stolen or not. The young man can't answer any questions I ask about the situation. I get the truck owner's telephone number and leave a message. I continue running. The truck owner calls me back right away and tells me he reported the truck stolen and the police couldn't find it, but he's purchased a new truck and is not concerned. He tells me he's paying for the truck with money he earns by working overtime. I'm more upset about the situation than he is. I continue running.

I'm still lost and think it must be well past noon. I worry that my parents have been waiting for me for hours.

I come upon a large parking lot with large household appliances and stand-alone wardrobes parked in the spaces instead of cars. I recognize a group of objects as the thing I've been looking for, but it's not a car, rather two wardrobe closets and a large machine of some sort. The contents of the closet are in disarray and contain a lot of junk I'm not interested in keeping. I decide to move what I want from the closets to the side of the parking lot, hoping to avoid allowing my parents to see the mess. As I'm carrying come clothes to the side of the lot, I come upon my parents. I'm surprised to find it's only 10 am and they haven't been waiting at all.

My parents start helping me sort through all my junk. There are a lot of cigarette butts and partially empty cigarette packs. Eeven though I've stopped smoking, I want to keep the cigarettes and try to gather the unsmoked cigarettes while trying to make it look to my parents as though I'm just cleaning up the butts. My mom shows me some clothes I've forgotten I owned.

As we're carrying things from the closet, I realize my mom has started to disassemble the mysterious machine and is carrying what seem to be a pair of telescoping arms. The arms are dangerous and I tell her to stop and not move because they may hurt her. I run back to the machine to try to find some instructions or documentation. As I'm trying to read a piece of paper glued to the side I notice the entire parking lot is clear of all appliances and wardrobes other than mine. There is a menacing redneck driving a red truck. He gets out of the truck and starts walking toward me. I arm myself with telescoping arms I've removed from the machine.

A letter and gift from Julia Child

I'm walking down a street on my childhood paper route. I see two men knock on a door and pull out guns when the resident answers. I'm many yards away, but suddenly I have one of the men's gun in my hand. I point it at them, my hands shaking. A dozen or so other people with guns show up and hold the men at gunpoint. Police officers take away the two men and I overhear something about a $60,000 reward.

There's a concert going on at my junior high. The junior high band is practicing a Christmas carol, I walk out of the practice room into a large hall when an all black orchestra is giving the concert. I talk to one of the musicians and someone in the audience, telling them that Julia Child once wrote a letter to me about my fanzine - which interviewed musicians about food.

I'm in another room at my junior high with coworkers. One has received a musical keyboard he ordered from eBay. I play a console organ with him. I notice the organ is damaged in a corner, but the damages although severe seem to be only cosmetic.

I'm in a hall, still in the junior high but there are lines of people waiting in grocery store checkouts. A young man gives me a small cheap fabric badge for assisting is arresting the criminals earlier in the dream, the award I understood to be $60,000.

A coworker and I enter a room that's supposed to be my bedroom with the understanding we're going to have sex. We're naked. There's a vinegary smell in the room but the window is open. As I'm thinking the vinegar smell will soon clear out through the window, my coworker closes it, saying she feels cold. I don't feel comfortable with the situation and to avoid sex, I suggest we put sunscreen lotion on our inner arms and armpits.

I'm at a dinner party in an opulent mansion. I'm again telling the story of how Julia Child wrote me, when I discover she's actually at the dinner party. She shows me different sets of fine wines that I can order for $0.69 because I know her. When she asks me which set I'd like I tell her I'm appreciative, but can't really judge that any wine is a higher quality than another once the price gets over $20 a bottle so maybe she should chose for me. She seems a bit condescending but polite as she walks off to find a collection of mustards she says I'd probably prefer.

A friend's wedding

I'm at school in North Carolina. It's near graduation and I can't remember if I had a required class that I stopped attending or not.

A friend is getting married extemporaneously. The ceremony will be on the border of North Carolina and Virginia on the coast - a four hour trip. My friend's father is giving several of us a ride in his pick-up truck. I complain that it's a bad idea that my friend is getting married - I say that he can get away with staying in a hotel a few nights and not paying for it, but he won't be able to get away with skipping out on all the bills related to a wedding.

I realize I'm very uncomfortable sitting in the bed of the truck and dread the four hour ride. I have my friends dad stop the truck as we are entering a highway on ramp. He meets me on the driver's side in the middle of the road - there's a cop with it's lights on coming and we're blocking the police car's way. I explain that I don't want to ride all the way in the bed of the truck and am going home and riding my bike up.

Walking back to my house to get my bike, I realize there's no way I can make it to the ceremony in time. I think about stopping by the liquor store.

A gondola ride along a river

I'm in a stadium carved out of rock with my family. We're under a ceiling of rock - there is no event going on, but jumbo television screens are showing a sports ceremony similar to the Olympics opening or closing ceremony. Suddenly, a security guard to the side of our section starts firing into the crowd. Nobody panics, not even everybody takes notice and those who do don't see it as unusual that the crowd is being fired upon. I leave.

I'm driving down a steep hill in an unfamiliar car. The brakes don't work well and I'm unable to make a turn at the bottom of the hill. I crash through a guard rail into overgrowth. I've had a few beers and don't want to call a tow truck or have the police find out. I fold up the car like a tent and carry it through the woods by the road. The road runs parallel to a river - the area between the road and river is a public park. I walk over a large hill of gravel and see an area of the park beyond a fence which requires a ticket to access. I crawl under the fence, nobody notices.

There is a roller coaster/train/gondola type ride running parallel to the river. There are grapples on cables passing by - passengers/riders are attached to most. I take a place on a line and immediately realize I've gotten on a line intended for small children. I have t6o switch to the adult size quickly as the line is approaching a narrow vertical chute - the child chute isn't large enough for me.

I get off at the end of the line and meet a friend walking toward me on a path through the woods. The dream shifts - my friend and I are the engineers responsible for keeping the ride in working order. My friend wants a cigarette - they are sold in packs of four at concession stands along the route. They're very poor quality and my friend complains. We grumble that if we quit our jobs, the owners would have to pay a lot of money to get someone who could figure out how the contraption works.

Riding my mom home from the hospital on the handles of my bicycle

I'm looking at my frog vivariums. There are a lot of other animals in there - a ball python I owned in college, baby birds, large and small insects. I realize I must have forgotten I owned the snake for decades and it must be very hungry. I go out to buy it some mice to eat.

The pet store doesn't have any mice. They have a lot of mushrooms to put into tanks but not much else. They are brightly colored and stacked symmetrically. I think about getting some bird seed for the baby birds, but the store doesn't have that either. I return home to find my mom lying on the kitchen table. She has a notebook over her face with large indecipherable letters on the cover. She says she's sick - I see sweat beading on her throat and feel she has a fever. I say we need to go to the emergency room.

At the hospital, there is a doctor assigned to us, but he stays behind a fast-food like counter. He is preoccupied with paperwork and other tasks as he says my mom's symptoms are too general for him to do anything. I'm angered and unsuccessfully suggest he could at least prescribe something to make her feel better.

We return home, my mom riding on the handles of my bicycle.

I'm going through a box of my old papers and find a folder I don't recognize. It has color photo copies of me in my football uniform and has many official looking certificates in it, with many signatures. It seems to be an honorary or gifted membership in an elite club. Many famous people are listed including President Reagan and retired governors. It seems to be a membership packet to some sort of beer tasting salon. It's dated two years after my high school graduation, but I just don't remember it at all. I show it to my dad, asking him if he knows what it is. He indicates he does, but doesn't tell me in detail, just says he knows who the people who signed the certificates are. I'm frustrated he won't explain the packet to me.

A drug gang in my neighborhood

I'm watching a movie scene that starts with a car stopping in front of a school and the three occupants sharing what seems to be a joint, then continuing on. I see it several times in a row.

The dream shifts and I realize that I'm the person in the back seat of the car in the scene I was just watching. The two not driving hand me the joint before moving on. One of them places a bag of marijuana in my pocket and I think he's going to ask me for money, but they both explain that they're in a drug gang in my neighborhood and they wanted me to be friendly, in other words, keep quiet.

The driver is almost completely turned around and not paying attention to the road. I implore him to watch the road because I've seen this movie before and it doesn't end well. As I'm trying to remember exactly what happens, we collide head on with a blue car - the impact pushes us back onto railroad tracks. A train is coming.

What happens next is not entirely clear, but a teen has a weapon which looks like a shotgun microphone - there are many people around and he wants to kill all the witnesses to the crash, or something that happened after the crash. Everybody runs, I avoid a spray of bullets.

Large angry dogs are chasing me as I run through fenced-in front yards. There are dogs from the yards which run the other way to confront the dogs chasing the crowd as they are arch enemies. Someone explains that the dogs chasing us are "from The Vatican" so the other dogs will surely want to fight them. I see a dog that can't decide whether to run towards or away from the Vatican dogs.

I make it to my apartment which is the last in a row-house. The two gangsters from earlier in the dream are hiding in the apartment next to me.

The dream shifts and now I'm watching two youths approach the gang, wanting to sell drugs for them. There are a dozen or so men sitting in a row of folding chairs, ranking from low-level to leaders from left to right. The youths talk to the ones on the left, who are the two from the car earlier. They pass the question down and it is translated through a few languages before it gets to the leaders, who are the oldest. The answer they pass back is "No, you are too young." The final translators don't translate accurately, they say the answer is that they'll think about it. The final translator also tells one of them to point a broken wine glass at the leaders and say, "You think about it!" The youth does so.

I'm back in my apartment and someone has alerted the two hiding next to me that the police are coming. They exit through my apartment, climbing out the window. They speak in a foreign language to someone warning them as they run off.

I watch a large procession of children follow them slowly. The last in line is pushing a wagon filled with a lambic-like beverage, which I figure must be some tradition of the culture.

A Christmas party at my grandparents' house

My mom and I arrive at my grandparents' house in the middle of the night. It's Christmastime. We start making Christmas treats. One kind is some sort of candy my mom hands me and I wrap it is waxy paper which I light on fire to mold it around the candy. The other kind is chocolate nut cups which I put in paper cups.

As dawn breaks, people start waking up. The whole extended family plus strangers of all races are there. Everyone is sitting around eating and drinking. I explore the house which now rotates like a rotating restaurant on the top of a skyscraper, but only the inside rooms move. I'm particularly interested in two rooms which are large with ornate wallpaper and have ornate non-functional bathtubs in the middle.

I return to the party and sit on the floor by a table. I pick up a two liter plastic bottle and drink directly from it. I'm surprised it's wine - I remark I thought it was Mountain Dew or something, but I might as well drink it.

People begin leaving even though it's early in the morning. I walk to the next room. There are children putting on a show with elaborate homemade instruments.

Psychedelic bus and boots, wine tasting class

It's the first day back at college.

I'm driving a school bus full of students to get it painted purple, I drop it off at the painting station. Everybody gets fitted for shoes while we're waiting for the bus to be painted. When it's finished, I see it's been painted purple and orange in a tie-die psychedelic way. Everybody's shoes are soft ankle high boots with purple and orange animal hair.

As I'm walking back towards town in my new boots, I meet girl I'm attracted to. We like each other. As we walk along and talk, we realize we're stepping on a bee hive in the ground. As we run away, I realize all the ground has beehives under it. I can't find the girl. Someone gives me part of the casing of cell phone I lost. I find other half on the ground nearby.

I get a ride back to my dorm from a redneck; he's horsing around driving with one wheel over a cliff. "Please don't," I implore him. I get out of the car at first chance and walk the rest of the way.

It's dark when I get to dorm and I'm very sleepy. I go to my old dorm room and step on people sleeping on floor. I apologize and explain this is my old dorm room and I just walked into it without thinking. I fall asleep right away among the pile of sleeping bodies on the floor. When I wake up I find the insides of my lost cell in the closet.

I have schedule of classes on something that looks like a tri-fold menu. I don't know where the buildings are that my classes are listed as being in. I have a wine tasting class that's held off-campus at 7 a.m. and I'm late.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.