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DreamBank-dreams

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DReAMy 3

I've got to get to work and am late for the bus so I've decided to run to work. I've dressed for it in shorts and no shoes and I'm running along Cedar where the Field bus goes but of course it's all different. I run up on a broken-off concrete strip for a bit, then get down, knowing it's dangerous - next to an apartment building, the ground rises from the sidewalk*. Every now and then I turn and look for a bus. I'm conscious of being late for work this way - if I do get a bus I may as well not bother running, but one doesn't come. I notice I'm running on my toes and try to concentrate on using my heels. I turn toward downtown as the bus does and start through a black neighborhood with a sort of honkytonk bit. I pass a brick shops-block and look inside a window of a place that's a bar, apparently, and it fits, there's stuff like beer ads on the wall but the room is empty. [It's still darkish outside.] Shortly I pick my way over a lot of broken beer-bottle glass in the parking lot, and turn right again; now I've got to get through a sleazier part before I get to where downtown starts being business. I run into an old man who wants me to stop and I sort of dance backwards to hear him. Then he brings out a knife and says he wants my money - I tell him I don't have any and he's not very good at this, he just looks a bit sad and dithers. I say I'm sorry and turn to run on and immediately run into a young man, blondish hair, jacket, jeans, who stops me the same way but gets up close to me. I grab his hands and try to hold them out, but he's stronger than me, he's already got a knife and he works it to point at the back of my thigh and I realize I can't stop him and he's mean. He asks left or right? I don't know what he means and he jabs it at (into?) my leg and says "shall I turn it to the left or right?" Apparently the damage done would be different. I'm scared and petrified.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at sea on a military ship - I'm the captain and I'm nearly in charge but there's this other officer (played by William Hurt) who's capable of interfering with my plans, and a woman officer who's not actually a shipboard officer but something like an investigator or a shrink and she seems to have it in for me. Something's been going wrong on the ship and it's like a mystery-story. Wm. Hurt seems to be well-liked and the crew (there are women among them) like to do what he says. They don't precisely ignore me but I could ask for better cooperation. Actually I like him too but this is awkward. Wm. is trying to repair something in a sort of hole in a wall of electronic equipment; he's had to like jam his whole body inside this small opening to check things out, and there are some crewmen helping him. There's a large Styrofoam cup with something nasty in it (that somehow I acquire) and when I ask about what to do with it I get a snotty reply [from whom?], so I throw it on the floor. Actually somebody jostled me and some spilled first, which startled me and I dropped it. Now I'm really frustrated. I look around for someone to clean it up. There are some crew sitting at some small tables right here around the corner as though we've just been having a tea or something, and some of them get up and leave. I call out, "Is anybody here free to come clean up this floor?" or words to that effect and reluctantly a couple come forward. The stuff in the cup was both oily and caustic, so this requires some special attention. I'm actually embarrassed to have someone else clean it up since it was my fault, and I am fighting the urge to do it myself, but I'm the captain here and I know I shouldn't do that sort of thing. So I set them to doing the job and go back to Wm. Hurt and the "investigator". She's there next to the wall where he is with a plate of french fries and something else - I think she made them herself - that she's feeding him. I comment on this and she snidely remarks that he hasn't had anything to eat in ____ long and he needs to keep his strength up. I sample one of the fries when I think she's not looking, very big and fresh they are. This work he's doing on the ship seems to be sabotage, but I don't know what the results of it would be except to get us off course. The "investigator" says she wants to tell me something round the corner, and we move off. I'm standing, not facing her, expecting her to move around further, and someone starts talking in a voice that sounds mechanical. It says something about now that we're within sight of land, we'll be getting ready to (what? do a proper investigation?) since it was my fault. I don't think I heard right, and I don't know where it was coming from, so I say "Who's that? Repeat that, please" or something and she starts over, it's coming from her, I don't know why her voice sounds like that, and I don't know what she means about "it" being "my fault". Nor was I aware we were anywhere near land, but I can see we are, just barely on the horizon. Also: I'm with a man at a shop or something, looking for a teapot. This tubby little old woman only has 2, one's squattier than the other, both pottery, and she says (or a sign says?) they come with strainers. When we choose one, the squatty one, she digs around and brings out a plastic thing that's not even round and doesn't look like a strainer to me, and we try to fit it into the pot and of course it won't go. We call it to her attention. I think it was just a minor ruse.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

(10/3/87)[Not much retained of larger dream.] I'm with Tree, sort of, but he's big and white like Lick - is it Lick after all? - I don't think so. We're going around the block, sort of [don't remember why]. What I seem to see is an area laid out kind of like a game board, and I started going to the left, or counter-clockwise. I'm passing through yards or houses, whatever's more convenient, and one house in the middle of this side I go into looks empty, but it's not. I step into this room through an outside door, and as soon as I get inside I know something's different. I stand there for a second and suddenly there's this great big power that takes over. It's kind of like a hurricane force, it keeps me standing still and I can just barely move with a great effort. I know this is some kind of entity, it's very agitated but not actually angry - it didn't want to be disturbed, I think, is the problem, and I've just walked in on it without knocking. All the same, if I'm gonna get out of its way I've got to move, and I realize I could just stay here and be paralyzed and frightened, but I know I can handle it if I just stay calm and try to breathe evenly. That's hard - I can't breathe easily under this pressure but I do the best I can and get it under control enough to break loose, get Tree, and lurch across to the other door, which is standing partly open with the daylight coming through it. (The room is old-looking, bare walls and wood floor, no furniture to speak of, and dark.) As I get through the door, I turn and face back into the room, where this force is still raging at me, and I want it to know I mean it no harm and wish it well, so I try to make the Peace sign with my right hand and say it aloud. Takes some effort but I finally do it. Then I go on. [There's no fear in this, but a sense of being able to handle all this force and come out on top. There's a little touch of exasperation at the overreaction, and the "Peace" sign is what I feel the situation calls for. After that, I leave it to its own devices, I'm complete with it.] I go on to round the block, and pass by a house with a family and a litter of kittens. Tree goes across the street while I look at them. We eventually get back where we were.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm with George and several other yoga people including Cynthia, hanging around a street corner, getting ready to go on a yoga trip to the Middle East somewhere (not India, but some unspecified place in the Middle East). Cynthia has some name-tag labels, just narrow strips, and she puts her own on. (I can read "Cynthia" on it.) So we get on a plane and make a trip, landing at a very small airport that turns out to be Indianapolis. That's as far as we got on the first leg of this trip. I've been very worried about the expense of this trip, I'm not sure I can afford it - it'll be several hundred dollars altogether and I'm not sure I want to spend all that. I was worried about it before but everybody said, come on, you'll love it, you'll see, and so I came along. I know I can charge a lot of it to MasterCard, but do I really want to? Now that I'm here, I see this tiny little airport, and I'm not at all sure I want to leave at all. It's a little building on a tree-lined country lane, lovely place [somehow I didn't realize Indianapolis wasn't a big city after all], I'm wondering if I can get a job here, at least for a while. [Note: we came south to get here from where we started.] Actually this is a library as well as an airport terminal. That's very handy, it's a very nice little small-town library with standard modern equipment. I seek out a bathroom, find it down a short hall and have to maneuver amongst boxes and stacks of things, and I do have a bowel movement. But (the same way it is with peeing) even as I stand up I have the same urge and have to go again right away, and I discover I haven't taken my underpants down. I'm disconcerted about this, now I've got shit in my pants, I hope I can deal with it before somebody finds out. I feel very exposed and it doesn't even seem as if I'm in the bathroom now, but out in the building.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm going to a horror movie with Linda and some other people, including my brother and Tim- maybe 8 or 9 of us altogether. We get there after they do, and go into what looks like a standard theater like the Village was. The place is huge and packed. We sit on the end of the row in back of the others, and people are milling about, it doesn't ever exactly quiet down, and the movie starts. It really is a horror film, really gross - lots of people are really disgusted, including Thai and others of my party, and they leave at intermission. It doesn't bother me much, and someone else with us, she's just been closing her eyes, which she thinks is good enough. At intermission we go to the lobby to get popcorn and things - I find peanuts (salted, Spanish) in a basket and sort of try to grab what I can with my hand, wondering why there are loose peanuts at a movie theater, when the guy behind the counter shows me these little bags and a scoop. So I fill myself up a little bag and go back to my seat. Actually things are starting to get raucous now - the movie hasn't restarted and people are standing up talking, some maybe shouting, Linda and I decide to go out for something and come back. [Don't know what for - maybe just a walk.] We go out the regular front doors, then somewhere out in the neighborhood, then come to the end of a street and back to the theater at the other end, but now it's an open-air theater, we're looking up at the rows of seats, facing the people. They really are stirred up now, this is looking more and more like a rally with dangerous people (a lot of black leather jackets) being pumped up by somebody on the stage. As a matter of fact, the whole scene is creepy - that guy on the stage could be Dracula, and we've both got the feeling we maybe shouldn't try to run away since these people can all see us, but we're real reluctant to go back to our seats up through all these people. Somehow, though, we get there, and I take myself into the back of the theater, where there are some corridors (very plain - no doors, nothing on the walls) - I go down them to this open area, not a proper room, exactly, where there's a counter on the left, and a picnic basket. I take some things out of it - I'm fixing a sandwich, I think. [I don't know when this basket was put here - I don't remember bringing it here - and I don't know why it's a secret.] I'm starting on my way back when I get accosted by a little blonde kid with a little bitty knife. He wants to know why I'm not with the others, as if I'm trying to run away, which I'm certainly not, from back here - I don't think you can even get out this way. He's very supercilious and thinks he's real tough with this dinky little knife - probably from watching those other toughs with their big ones - but I certainly know the thing could do plenty of damage anyway, and I grab his hand and hold it away. Then there pops in a little blonde girl about his size, also with a knife and the same bad attitude. I grab her hand too and I'm wondering what to do next when I wake up. I'm holding the image in my mind, experimenting with threatening to poke one of the kids' eye out with his/her knife, and I go back to sleep and find myself captured, I've been taken to a house somewhere where this Dracula and a woman are holding me. [I don't know what for, unless for being subversive to their cause.] One or another of them talks for a while, being very threatening, do-you-know-what-I'll-do-to-you-if-you-don't-talk, that sort of thing. Then somehow I find myself in the back of an RV of some type, with a couple of guys and a little girl or two, their daughter (or daughters?). I know Dracula has sent me here, though it doesn't look like any sort of punishment. But we can't get out of the thing and it's starting to roll toward a cliff. (We're in a forest-campground sort of place, and they were on a camping trip.) It really does look like we're going to go over, though there's a couple of false starts.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

Linda and I are running this movie theater, and showing this big-time, quite long movie by means of a video player. It's not a real big theater, it's oldish, reminds me of the one in Schulenberg that I didn't see, but how such a place might be - got patterned rugs on the floor, globe lamps, velveteen seats, bit of gingerbread - not glamorous, but old-timey. The audience doesn't fit well with the place - a lot of 'em are tough types, and you want to keep them happy. The movie we're showing is this long saga about this young man's odyssey through the world, he gets into lots of very different situations, wars, romances, human interest stuff, learning all about the world, etc. Can't tell exactly when it's set, maybe covers a few hundred years, maybe only an appropriate length of the 19th century - it's got so many locations you'd think he couldn't do them all in a lifetime. But it's definitely historical - not the recent past. The audience is pretty attentive and seem to like it. I have to do something at the video console, which is off to the audience's left, and there's all this equipment in front of me, and lots of buttons. I'm supposed to be setting up a future part of the movie and I push the wrong button. I don't know what I've done for a bit, although something does seem to be wrong; then I realize I've punched in a much later part of the movie, which is now on the screen. I don't really know how to fix it, and I start examining buttons, which doesn't help much. I hit one that (I think) starts a soundtrack from another part, and it's coming across at the same time as the other scenes. Linda comes over to ask what's gone wrong, some of these guys are losing interest and leaving. She says to turn the sound down on the other track and that's harder to do than you'd think, but I got it there eventually. Then we try to fix the scene back and don't get it; Linda says we'll just have to rewind the thing back to where it was. This is awful. The movie is well along at this point and it'll be a long way back - in fact, the rewind goes slower than I thought, and the picture stays on the screen. We see all sorts of things (to "come", in the proper sequence) - sailing ships, a map of the world, people doing different things and wearing different clothes, all sorts of stuff. It seems it'll be forever till we get back to the gypsy camp where we left him, but I guess we do. I get up and go out later - there aren't a whole lot of people here now - and go outside, a few doors down the street and around the corner. [I don't know what for unless to hide.] After a bit, I think I may come back in, though I'm rather afraid to - I think those tough guys may know it was me who screwed the movie up and come after me. I look back at the theater - it's dark on the street and I see the darkened marquee (old-style, rows of light bulbs) and the dark ticket window, and nobody about. As I come closer, I don't hear any sounds either. (There are no doors on the front.) I walk in very quietly - I don't think there's anybody here at all, but then I hear sounds. Somebody's coming up and out of the theater. Since I don't know who it is, I think I'd better hide. There's a parlor off to the left, with old-fashioned chairs and tables, doilies and antimacassars. No place good to hide, though, so I get down behind a chair at the very back of the room in the shadows, figuring I won't be noticeable if they don't look this way. There's a door next to me (kitchen door?) but I don't have time to go through it quietly. As they come into view, though, I see it's not who I was afraid of, but a man and a woman (or so - I don't know who, but one might be My brother; I don't think they're a couple) and 2 little girls, one of whom was in the film. I get up and greet them, explaining why I was hiding, and saying how pleased I am to see them. I talk to the little girl who acted in the film and tell her what a good job she did. (She has dark hair and is dressed in a pretty little dress. I seem to have her be the same as the little girl who was in the RV going over the cliff.)

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a kind of theater watching a sort of improvisational group (all young, eager-to-break-out types) do a variety of, shall we say, experimental pieces. None of them are anything to write home about, and one bit is just plain bad - a girl is doing a dance that might have been meant for ballet, but mostly consists of her moving from place to place and posing. At one point the audience is expected to participate - we get up and sort of march around. (This theater is more like a gym with bleachers in it, only one side, but I do think it's not really.) We go up and then around a bit - this one woman and I (she's older than me, rather housewifely, short middle-class hair, decade-off clothes with a scarf) march all the way around to the front again and by that time they've started doing something else, and we sort of hesitate for a second to walk in front of the other people, but we do anyway - it's not as if we're disturbing anybody. Another time there's a sort of intermission, and some of us go outside. There's a little shop nearby [where I see or find something that I react to - either something I've been wanting, or something I'm surprised at, or something I've got one of and I'm pleased to see another. Don't remember].

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm setting off on a trip in my car [much as I actually plan to do] and I need to stop at Lori's karate school. She and the teacher are going to be late this morning and somebody's got to open it up for some ladies who take an early class. It's a nice quiet morning, grayish before the sun's properly out, crisp. I drive up the semicircular drive where there's a bit of canopy entrance. (Not fabric - it's that the door has a projection-thingy over it, I don't know what to call it.) There are like yucca plants in the landscaping. Looks very homey for a karate school. I'm early, so I wait for a bit, then they show up. I let them in and Lori and her teacher also show up, earlier than they'd figured, and they invite me in for a visit before I go. I stay in the car for a minute or two, checking out the steering wheel, which is giving me a bit of trouble, you know I just had some work done on the front end, I hope there's not still a problem. Well, by Jove, I discover the steering wheel is just barely being held on by one rather "sprung" spring. It has been operating, though, so far, but I know I can't expect to get much farther with it in that condition. I really don't want to delay my trip any further but geez it really looks like I'd better. That thing could just pop off any time. I go inside to see what I can see. One thing about this school is there's a lot of cats about. Actually they sort of raise cats here, and there's one that's blind. I've heard about him but never actually met him. Or her. Now I'm in this room here, and by George here's this cat! He/she is white, shorthaired, has a nice sturdy body, round head, sweet face, and no eyes. Just not there. A slope of fur where the eyes should be. I'm a bit taken aback, but I'm fascinated. I'm also aware that this cat is considered very wise, and now I understand why. He/she just sort of radiates wisdom. I'm glad to be here with it. I get up on the ledge/cushion/whatever that the cat is sitting on - she just came here and calmly situated herself - she doesn't seem to need eyes to see. She makes a kind of trilling sound, and then says, "Come up, ____" (speaking the name of another cat who's come up to the place we're sitting). I can't even see the other cat and didn't hear it come up, but she knew it was there and wanted to come be with the white cat. I'm just a little surprised at hearing her speak at all, but I have such a profound respect for her that it doesn't seem odd at all. I am just amazed and awed, and while I'm surprised at the depth of my reaction to her, I'm enjoying the feelings so much, it doesn't matter.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm with some other people - friends, I'm not sure who, but they were like MT, maybe even my brother, and even Don and Lauren or somebody, and we were going to look at a house. This house was on a residential street that had some very nice large houses on it. We were looking for a house that we might want to rent, and we first went past it to the end of the street, and we looked at the numbers and went back to it. The houses at the end of the street were extremely nice, and looked very expensive indeed, and when we backed up a bit to go back to the house we wanted, it seemed to be at least something less formal, and maybe more likely, but still an awfully nice house. We were surprised that the person we were thinking of renting it from lived there, because it was somebody more or less our age, like us, that wouldn't necessarily be able to afford a big house like that. So we went up to the door and knocked and looked at the outside. The person that answered was female, and she let us in and said she'd show us around, nice and friendly, and what we saw on the inside is not at all what we expected. There was this enormous room, broken up into areas, and it had another level to it as though it were a sunken living room. It was very open - there wasn't a whole lot of furniture. There were people around, and it looked very reminiscent of a "hippie pad" from the early 70's or 60's or more like a commune where a lot of people were living in the same place and just sort of having a good time, and not just being roommates or residents or something like that. And there seemed to be people having a good time around. The girl that was with us just took us on through into the living-room sort of area and straight across to a door that led into a small sort of shed, really, that you're meant to go through and you go outside from. Before we got there, I was looking outside through a plate glass window on the right and saw a kind of little patio or garden sort of thing, it wasn't real small, it had bushes and stuff in it. And there was a cat or two sitting out there [something happened about the cat but I don't quite remember] - it was large and black (if memory serves), and it kinda did something and left. Then we went into the shed and I was bringing up the rear. Everybody went back out again, but I was interested in something that was hanging in the shed. It was kind of like a potting shed, although they had ["been stuck" (?)] certain things as well as plants - it was maybe kind of a greenhouse, I guess, or something in between. I took whatever it was off the wall and went outside with it to have a better look at it. It seems to me that it was like, terracotta [and I don't remember what it was]. After I'd looked at it [and nobody else was ____?] I took it back in and hung it back up on the wall again. NEXT: I am on trial for something that I do not know exactly, but it surely would have had to do with something like embezzlement. What they were questioning was how I had so much money to spend, why I had such nice things. There were a whole lot of people there, it was more like an auditorium than a courtroom - there were people up on the sides, like bleachers or something, and the light in the courtroom was very bright. The prosecutor was very strong and powerful, he wasn't entirely angry - of course he wasn't supposed to be angry, but he was real determined that I should be - examined as thoroughly as possible, in case I had done this. (Whatever it was.) He would ask how I could afford to buy - like clothes, or something, how I could afford to have such nice things, on my salary. During the course of this trial, they had called for a physical examination of me, like an operation, even - they wanted to make cuts in my body to examine something - not going all the way inside to the organs, and so forth, but kinda superficial cuts where you cut the skin in long straight lines down the arms and down the torso. Maybe something to do with bacteria or something, I don't know. I was real concerned about that, but I was not real concerned about the trial in general. There was a place in the back of the courtroom - it was rather more like a dressing room, and I had, of course, my lawyer, and some other people helping me out - I guess they would be like people on my lawyer's staff or something - an older woman, blonde, professional-type woman; my lawyer was a man in a suit, you know, your basic sort of lawyer, certainly not a kid, but your basic yuppie professional. And they were, like, attending on me like I was - oh, dear, somebody like a TV star or something - I would be in the back, getting "dressed", getting my hair done, stuff like that, it wasn't very luxurious, but it was certainly not what you would expect of being in a courtroom. In fact, I wasn't even in the courtroom - I wasn't even paying attention to how the trial was going except for the sound of the prosecutor's voice. He was quite loud and determined - making a "show" for the audience - and most of 'em were my friends, and they didn't want to see me get into trouble. They were interested, certainly, but he was definitely going to have to prove what he alleged. And all of these questions seemed to me to be real obviously geared to getting me into trouble, because everything he was asking could be answered very simply, and he wasn't listening to what - well, it wasn't that he wasn't listening to what I had to say because I wasn't there for him to hear, but I was the one who could clear it up in the first place, and until he got me on the stand where I could tell him these things, it seemed like there wasn't much point in him even asking. Nobody else could tell him that I wouldn't buy anything very expensive unless it was on sale, and I charge things, and pay them out, and sometimes people take me to lunch or something, or I may buy myself meals and not get my hair cut, things like that. I certainly haven't stolen anything, and sometimes I do think I spend more than I need to - or, well, not more than I need to but more than I can afford to, but that's my problem, it's certainly not anybody else's money and I don't know why I should be on trial for it. But this physical examination thing concerned me quite a lot. There's kind of a conflict here. I have the impression that I have already had this examination, and it didn't really work the way they thought it was going to. But I think that isn't logical because that wouldn't have happened and there wouldn't have been any point in me being concerned about it further, but I was - I was concerned about having it done correctly, and fascinated with the procedure itself. And so there weren't actually any cuts on my body, it's as though they had tried to and it wouldn't do it. So I was interested in that, and I just decided I'd do it myself. I got something to cut with - you see, I'm not in the courtroom at the moment, and whoever has been with me in the "dressing room" area - what I mean by that, by the way, is that it's back off of the courtroom, assuredly, but it's not closed off from it - there's a place where you can go, like, to change clothes, but it's just a back room open to the courtroom, all the way in the back where nobody can turn around and look at you, or nobody's doing it, they're not - or, their attention is out in the middle of the court - anyway, so whoever has been with me back there has gone away so I'm alone, and I got something like a razor blade and started to make these cuts myself. [It surely would be awkward if you did that - lying down, and trying to even make the sort of cut I'm talking about with one arm, without looking at it, but it's as though I wasn't doing it that way, it's as though I was doing it from outside my body. And was a little bit ragged and awkward at it at first, but eventually I got the hang of it and - this is how it seemed awkward to me, as though I was doing it from right over my body, and - just like you would a doll, you know - straight down, and I discovered that it was awkward to do - the right-hand side of my body (lying on the ground), which seems to be the left-hand side from the position I'm actually cutting in. So, what I needed to do is to move around, so I moved down to where I was really facing the side of my body to do that. This is all very slow and awkward, but there wasn't any blood or anything. Well, I did that, and I don't know anything more about it - it obviously didn't hurt particularly, I know I kept expecting it to - I kept expecting it to feel at least, you know, like it does when you cut yourself, so I was a little bit surprised that it didn't bleed, but I wasn't worried about there being any real damage or anything because I knew I would heal up. And quite sure that I knew I'd heal up without scars, too. Just didn't seem that big a deal. But now I felt like I had done it, for them. That they would be happy now. It was like I have accomplished whatever it was they wanted me to do for them.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm supposed to marry Michael J. Fox (or Alex Keaton - the whole family is in this) and I'm at their house meeting this young woman who's a bridal consultant or something, she's come to interview us, to plan the wedding. Actually Alleycat's father is a minister, and he's going to perform the ceremony. Part of their house is a chapel - actually it seems to be a separate house, but somehow I think it's used for more than just services. It's a pretty place, lots of trees and green shade, a sort of ranch-style house on one level, and the chapel is higher, you have to walk up a few steps - they both face the driveway and the chapel's on the right as you face them. [It reminds me of that barn-sort-of place in Edom - maybe it used to be a barn.] Very idyllic setting. I've come up to the walkway to the chapel door (which is open and you can see inside - there are family members about, the father and daughters) with the consultant and we've sat down on a bench to talk. She gets out a notebook and asks where we want to have the service, and I tell her about this place, and how Alleycat's father will do the ceremony. She asks me who else is in his family, and I start describing them, and when I'm talking about his sister Mallory, I start to say her age is 20 [which I guess it isn't yet, in "real" life] and then I think maybe I shouldn't say that because then Alleycat's age will come up and she may not like that. But I say it by accident anyway and the consultant [she, by the way, has dark hair, sort of a professional medium-long do, and a suit - she's probably younger than I am] does ask about Alleycat, and I sort of fumble about that and say he's 24, no, 26 I think, dah dah dah. Now she knows how old I am, and does in fact look askance at this, and asks me if everybody's amenable to this. They are, oh yes, I like the family and they like me, and Alleycat and I are really in love. There are some lingering apprehensions all around, but nothing so serious.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've just driven up to a restaurant - a garden-y sort of place, set into some trees, the entrance faces sideways from the street and the parking is in the back. Close to the back of the building, you can drive up to a sign that has on it who's dining there at the moment. [I don't know, actually, why I've come there, but it seems like I meant to meet somebody.] I drive up to the sign and am delighted to see Adam 's name on it, somewhere in the middle. [In fact I clearly see his first name, but the last isn't clear in my mind.] I figure Jane and Ken must be there with him, so I'll get to see them. Hooray! So I'm parking the car, and I go inside. [Whatever happens next, I don't go all the way in and see them, I think - somehow I go through the rear entrance and past the dining room, to the main entrance.] This is a nice place, classy but not snooty, a bit countrified. Lots of windows and air, but not bright lights. A muted, greenish atmosphere. I go out the main entrance and pause for a minute while I do [something or other - something in here about some people greeting me, I haven't seen 'em in a while, all very jolly, happy to see each other, making quick plans to meet later] and set down my purse on a ledge at the top of the step. I go on down the steps and turn toward the parking lot, and somebody calls out to me that I've forgotten my purse (from behind me? where?). I look up to see that a guy is picking up my purse, and it appears he means to make off with it - I shout at him, "Put that down!" and actually he does, but he does it rather casually and he opens it up and looks in it. (It's my regular purse, by the way.) He takes out the cash that's in there, and also (I think) my card case. He looks at me, smirking, and starts to walk off - going across the front of the restaurant's lawn through some trees toward the street. I start to chase after him, and he runs, but hasn't got far, so I catch him and grab his hand. I swing him around, hauling as hard as I can, and twist, and maybe I've even broken his wrist. He falls down and I hit him.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm watching a film - TV, I think - with a bunch of other people, and it seems sort of - oh, teenage-pregnancy-and-why-you-shouldn't-get-married-and-have-kids - or even just have kids - film, and what they're doing is that there's some sort of party scene, it's a large, Latin sort of family, Mexican possibly, and a young girl and young boy and baby, and parents, and grandparents and all that, and they have one scene after another of people interacting with each other; and what you see is this boy and this girl who have got the baby, while they're with each other and with the baby, they look like they might be grownups or something, because you see couples like that - and when you get them with, for instance, her middleaged mother or his father, they are definitely still children. This you can get a sense of, just from seeing how they interact with each other. I'm actually watching them with this same family, and then when it's over with we go into their - I guess, living room - they live in an apartment - I think it's across the street from me; I'm a neighbor and I visit; and so we all sort of file into the living room - we're just talking about things in general, and the talk comes around to taxes. There's a little old woman there - your basic little old woman, short hair, crabby voice, wrinkled face, grey hair - and she's talking about how the new tax things that are going into effect right now are really bad because it looks like you're going to get some sort of a break at first, but then what'll happen is everything will end up being more expensive and you'll end up going backwards. And some of us agree with that [runes? - can't get this] - your general sort of conversation, people nod their heads and say "uh-huh", yeah, it's bad; and I was just there, you know, just being neighborly basically.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

(1/26/88)(After waking up, resetting alarm, and going back to sleep) Alleycat and Tree are watting for me for breakfast - and I hear noises [I think that actually happened once]. I got up and I'm in the "den" and notice something's missing. It's the bookcase. It's gone altogether. Somebody must have broken in, but I didn't hear anything. I'm stunned. [After a space of time - don't know what happened] I come into the living room and look around. The usual stuff is gone again - TV [not in the right place], tape deck, etc. - the bookcases are mostly empty, there's more emptiness in the room than there should be. And I notice the door's standing open - it's bright daylight, not very cold, I'm surprised Alleycat didn't go out. Now that seems very unusual. Seems to me Alleycat would have gone outside, and probably run away. [That's when things started to get mixed up with reality.] I feel sort of shocked, and a little betrayed. I pull the door shut, wondering if this is real or a dream. [I go back to bed?] When I come back into the living room, the front wall has changed to brick and the room is mostly empty. Now I'm really confused. This is still my apartment, isn't it? It looks like the wall of a hall or clubhouse or something - marks on it, corners of posters, worn red brick. I stand next to it, trying to remember if it was brick before and I just forgot, or what's going on here?

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

Walking somewhere - not conscious of where, but outside in a non-built-up area, where there are trees and a highway bridge - bit of construction going on, I think. But it's been raining and continues to, and it's flooding. There are some other people walking along here - I think we all have the same goal, more or less, but we're not together. At least I'm not part of the others as a group, but I don't think they're all a group. We're aiming under the bridge (there's no traffic on it), and the water is rising. I guess there's a bit of creek here, and there's a good bit of dirty water rising here. It's not so hard to walk in it, and I wouldn't have chosen this, but there's nothing to be done about it, or to get worried about yet. Now the water's up to my neck, but it doesn't seem to be getting any higher, at least. So we'll keep on slogging.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a dress shop, upstairs in an open shopping mall and looking at stuff on sale, particularly a heavy sweater [that's a lot like the ones at Emeralds to Coconuts I looked at Thursday after work]. I hold it up to me in front of a mirror and I think it's likely to be too small, but maybe not. So I try it on over my clothes, and actually it does fit, sort of. Maybe it isn't so great, but okay. By the way, there's bright sunshine outside, the light against the big front windows looks yellow. This sweater is kind of boxy, just hip length on me, and it has two yarn drawstrings around it - I know they're meant to be at the waist, but on me they're in the middle of my stomach. I reflect on how this sweater was meant to look on somebody much smaller than me; it wouldn't look just "okay" - somebody meant it to look really good, I expect, I've got mindtalk - I shouldn't even have this sweater on - I'm too fat - I should be ashamed of myself. I'm on a street, sidewalk, aiming to catch a bus - it'll be coming soon, but I don't have the 25 cents fare, and I've just about got time to dash down the block to this neighborhood bar I've just been in - I know Chris 's in there, he just came in right before I left, he'll have a quarter. The place is [a lot like the Cedar Pub] in an old house, and all very friendly - lots of jolly people, some playing darts, Sunday-afternoon visiting, that sort of thing. I don't see Chris right away, but I go forward and keep looking - there are different rooms - and run into David Rathvon, who is just as pleased as Punch to see me, and makes a big deal. He is roaring drunk (a very unusual state for him) and says, yeah, sure, he has a quarter, come on in here - going around to one of the side-front rooms, where some of his friends are, and he introduces me all around. There's a separate bar-counter in here, and they've got a free "buffet" - which consists of soup (vegetable, I'm sure, reddish in color) and something else in another pot. I figure the object of this is to help calm down the drunks, and somebody does in fact encourage My cousin to have some soup. (It may take 'em a while, from the looks of things.) And he doesn't have a quarter, either, but somebody else offers one and I go on out to make the bus. I'd seen it way down the road when I ran down to the bar, and it's just here now, after I've been inside. [Actually I don't have this clear, but I definitely don't remember missing it.] I'm quite slim, by the way, and I'm wearing a sleeveless yellow flower-print dress, all very spring-y and girlish. I'm not sure I have any shoes on. I've gotten off the bus at some apartments - on my left, they're not new, but quite nice, maybe even elegant. Town-house-y. On my right I see trees, maybe even a park. I'm going to an apartment, I don't know that I live there, but I am at least staying there. A Jeep sort-of-vehicle comes down the street, one of those with sides and trimmings, a removable top. Loretta's in it with a young man, he's driving, he's a lot younger than she is, and very good-looking. Long hair, rather hip but not outrageous. I do think they've got something going on, and I'd like to know more about it. She looks very happy, anyway, and when she sees me, she waves and calls out - they can't stop because of the traffic, and they'll have to drive on a bit and make a U-turn, so they do.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm with a group of people - I know most of them, one's Marcy. It's night, and the place is outdoors, but there are some kind of structures like huge sheds that we're in, quite finished out but still rustic. (The word "manger" comes to mind.) There's straw on the floor - maybe they most resemble the booths at the Faire. We're here to do something, I don't know what, but there are plans being made, we're getting organized for something. There's actually 2 of these sheds that face each other with some space between. Marcy's father is in one of them, he's quite ill, and there are medical people around for him. I'm near him, and he has some kind of attack or seizure, very serious. The medical attendants come to work on him - I'm trying to be some help, but there's not much I can do. I'm wondering where Marcy is, and if somebody's gone to get her. He could die any time now, and I guess she ought to be here. Well, since I'm just in the way, I'll go on over to the other side. There's a table, and some people (most everybody here is middleaged or elderly, but not all, I think), we're mostly just waiting. Next it's morning, and I'm just getting up - I'm in a house - either my house or Mom and Marcy's, it's a nice, neat, sort of 50's house, not a big place or fancy, but very comfortable and homey. I'm coming down the stairs (enclosed) and I run into Marcy - I almost think she's just coming in from last night, and I don't know what she's been doing, but I don't think she knows her father died. Actually I don't know myself, I'm not clear on what I remember from last night, but I do know he was about to die and couldn't have pulled through the night. I don't quite know what to say to her, in case nobody's told her anything.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

Waiting for a bus on a busy downtown street; I have my employee bus pass, homemade like our parking permits, and there's one other thing that I present to the bus driver. I wanted to make a copy of them to use this time, and keep the originals. (The main permit's red like the last parking permits.) There's a copy machine right next to the bus stop, and I see another woman about to use it, which is what reminds me to make the copies. I put my books (and something else) down on the sidewalk to do that. I go ahead of the other woman because she isn't ready (she's kind of a street person - stringy mousy hair, worn face, shabby tan coat) - the machine actually laminates them for you, too - costs a quarter. I go back to the spot where you get on the bus. There's some problem with a pair of my underpants, which I'm carrying in my hand; I drop them and they get mixed up with a small pile of lingerie that belongs to another woman (I don't know why it's there, unless - like my books - she just had to put it down to go do something else, Anyway, the bus comes and I'm fumbling to extricate my underpants, without seeming to be filching her stuff, too, and I have to scramble onto the bus. I put my purse and other things on the sideways seat behind the driver, and show her my copied pass. She's black, looks something like Lynn Moody - she's a little unsure about my pass, and I'm going to show her the original, and discover I haven't picked up my books (and whatever else) off the sidewalk. I say, Oh! hold on a minute, I'll be right back - the doors aren't shut yet - and dash outside to get them. The bus doors shut, and it starts up, slowly at first, almost as if she means to wait for me, then it moves on. I'm stunned - I thought she'd wait for me. I guess she means me to go on to the next stop down the block, but I'm still surprised. I hustle on down, knowing I might still not make it unless I run, and I can't run. But what I find is there isn't another bus stop close by, the bus is heading for the bus shed at the end of the street. I'm really worried, because even if I've got my books, my purse is on the bus, and my bus pass, and there's no way to get home without them. I hurry and reach the shed, which is kind of a main terminal like Union Station was, I guess, and I don't know where the bus is. This end of the place is not where the buses come, and I don't know how you get to the other end. I go through a door that seems to lead further forward, and I pass by what looks to be a locker- and workout-area. A couple of people - bus drivers, I guess, they have that look, like cops and other public servants do, like they have on uniforms even when they don't, who have just come from the showers or are going there - they have towels around their necks. One's a white female, dark hair with a perm, curly top and bottom, not big but physical looking (like bus drivers and cops often are), middleaged. I'm aiming at another door that leads outside and maybe further down towards the other end of the shed.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in the office (old-fashioned, all the desks in one room, more like Texlite was). I keep something in my desk - some papers, a computer printout? - that's a drag to revise - that's supposed to be kept locked up, and Byrdie and I keep the keys (which are shiny new brass keys, bigger like door keys). This other person in the office needs to see this stuff sometimes and Byrdie lends her the key if I'm not here, but the girl who's got that job is new (seems to be Cathy ) and before her there were others - they didn't stay long, and it was quite a nuisance. So now Byrdie's standing here saying "I think I'll give her my key and then I can get it from her when I need in there." I don't like this idea - my reaction is like I usually react to Byrdie - disgust, weary, plagued - another of her lame-brained ideas. There's somebody else here, female, I don't know who, but she has an interest in this and she's understanding of the workload in the office. I want her to know I think that giving the key to Cathy is risky, and I say so. I point out that she probably won't even stay very long. And I say, "I don't mean to actually expect her to leave soon, she only just got here, but after the others I'm just not optimistic." (Or words to that effect.) It's a pain getting keys made, too. I've been called somewhere by some guys in suits, and they're like CIA or something. I'm supposed to be doing some job for them, or providing information, but I don't know what and I'm rather disgruntled about it. One of them tells me not to worry about it, I'll be informed eventually but not right now. Another scene sort of SOCIETY FOR THE CREATIVE ANACHRONISM/Renaissance Fair - I go into a marquee tent on my way outside and Brenda's in there but she doesn't see me - she says to somebody she's been gone 18 months and for some reason she's out of sorts - I'm trying to stay out of her way before I get out.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm visiting Carol Burnett and Tim Conway, who are doing Mr Tudball and his secretary for some reason, sort of as a personal thing rather than for an audience. They're staying in this place, which is sort of like an old office building or a factory or warehouse, not currently in use. They've fitted out a couple of rooms as bedrooms, and fixed up part of it as the "office" set. And they just are spending their time doing the act - not exactly rehearsing, I don't think, but just being the characters. Anyway, I'm here visiting, and for the moment they're occupied and I'm just wandering around. I look into one of the bedrooms - I think it's Carol's - and I'm rather surprised at how it's furnished. It could be fifty years old, but I know they brought in their own stuff. It's a narrow room with plain walls and an institutional, wavy-opaque glass window on the left side of the far wall. No closet, but there's an old wardrobe on the left-hand wall, a bed on the right. And a nightstand, I guess, maybe a chair or a chest of drawers - anyway, there's only 1 or 2 other pieces of furniture. I like looking at it because of the nostalgia, but it's awfully drab. I go back out, and Carol and Tim have knocked off for a while and we (Carol and I, anyway) are going to walk around some. The "office" is left of my perception of the space, and between that and the bedroom is an opening to a hallway and a glass door, where I discover there's a way to the outside. I thought we were on an upper floor, but I guess not. So we stroll outside, and find ourselves in a large city park, at an open space, the sort where people play baseball, or run with their dogs. (The building has disappeared, and Carol Burnett has become Shirley MacLaine.) It's morning, the sun is shining, and there's some people about, not too many. We've been here a while, since early morning and there wasn't anybody here but us. (Counting a man, maybe another, who I can't identify, but who are like assistants - as Shirley MacLaine might even have.) We separate for a bit, just following our noses, and I come up to a large brick/concrete place, some steps, maybe there's a dry fountain, a place to sit or something - terrace-y. Nearer the trees. And suddenly I remember my purse. We left our purses on the ground earlier when we came, since there wasn't anybody around, we just walked off - we weren't going that far anyway, not out of sight. (Though we did spend that time inside the building.) And now here's all these people - I hadn't even realized this was happening. Now I'm scared, and I look for our purses. They're not where we left them - mine's separated from Shirley's - and I get mine, and look into it. It's as I was afraid of, it's all but empty inside. Checkbook, money, coin purse, card case, are all gone. The main section and front pocket are completely empty. I'm horrified and scream, "Shirley! Shirley!" And she and the others come running, and I just scream. (No words, not a shrill sound, but deep and from the gut.) I can't stop screaming.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

(4/8/88)...I'm supposed to be getting on the bus, and I'm just finishing up something - I've been working hard and it's down to the wire and I'm determined not to make a mad dash for it, keep cool, stay in control, don't panic. The front of this place, at least, is a jumble of big things, like it's under construction, and I've left my jacket and purse and one or another things out here, I'd actually almost forgotten that. Everybody else has already gotten on the bus, including George - there's a lot of people I know here - maybe all of them - and we're working here on this big "project", I guess, and it's quitting time for the day. I just considered what I was doing crucial enough to stay to finish. But now I see I can make the bus (I think) if I don't waste any time, but I'm not gonna hurry. I collect my things, one by one, and make it to the bus door just as they're closing it. There are 2 guys at the door, bus uniforms, at least the "doorman" is black, very businesslike. The "doorman" opens the door for me again, and I get on. The bus is huge, and yellow. It's yellow outside and inside the seats might be gold or something, very elegant. This is a new bus, I'd read they were buying new ones, this is a neat thing - the seats are like coach seats, taller, deeper, and the center one of each bank is higher and has some antique-y looking trim. I thought it would be entirely filled up, but there are quite a few seats. I make my way to the back looking for where I want to sit and about the middle of the bus I drop something right next to Eric. As I get down to pick it up I see there's a seat open next to him and I wonder if he'll be disappointed if I don't sit there or if other people will think I should. But I don't want to, I want to sit and be quiet. I go on back - there's a kitchenette/bar on the right - that's neat - nobody doing anything there, though, maybe that's for special events. I find the back seat open (where I usually sit) - there's some litter on the seat, but this is fine. This bus is quite elegant, it's a trip being first ones on it. By the way, as I'm coming up to the bus, just in time: I'm aware that the people on the bus already are anxious for me to make it - there's no calling out or coaching or celebration when I do make it, but I know that they are sort of tensed up, mentally urging me on and there's a feeling of relief when I get there and the man opens the door for me. Earlier: I'm in a house, and there are 2 televisions - a woman and a man are there, and there's a special television show we all want to see. She decides to go to the other TV in another room where she's more comfortable, but (I'm interrupted and come back to find) she hasn't got the channel in clear. I check and discover it's because she changed it by the dial instead of the remote control - she goes to find it and I poke around. I find there are automatic scan switches like the remote has, and try those. It works better, but real slow. I haven't even gotten to that station by the time she gets back. Oh, yes, and in some scene or other I discover that the toe of one of my black boots has come apart - unstuck from the sole, it looks pretty seedy - I will surely have it fixed (it'll cost money, ooh) but right now I'm trying to hide it.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm pregnant as a surrogate mother - I'm maybe going to college, I have a lot of friends around who seem to be more or less my age and we seem to be together for something like college, we seem young but not kids. The mother is a friend of mine and I volunteered for this - it was an artificial insemination. Even with me carrying the baby, things are a bit precarious. I'm in the hospital (at least some of the time) because I'm somewhat at risk myself, it turns out. [Something else happens first, and now] it's night and my mom's here, she's getting ready to leave and the nurses and everybody else have gone. I'm kind of scared. It's dark already, the lights are out and my mom leaves. Now what happens if something goes wrong? It's a small, narrow room, looks real institutional, white, white sheets, white iron bed, high ceiling, and there's some kind of machine standing over the bed. I'm worried, and my body feels like something's not okay. After a while, things have changed - there was a problem, and they've transferred the baby from me to somebody else, another of our friends who volunteered. We're not in the hospital room now, but a place that I'm thinking of as a waiting room - it's large and has like couches and things, the light is dim like early morning or late evening but doesn't feel quite like either. The other girl's boyfriend is here, too, he wants to be close to her, help take care of her. And the first girl and her husband(?), and some other people. Actually more of us are arriving gradually until there's quite a lot of people here - all of us good friends, and we all have an interest in this baby. I'm not altogether out of this thing, it's as though I'm still connected, they didn't quite transfer all of the baby to the other girl, I'm still needing to be attended to and cared for even though I don't have to give birth myself. Actually, gradually it seems that we all - at least the women - are carrying "parts" of this baby. (Not "parts" as in body parts, but some other idea - can't explain it.) We're all quite anxious.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I am somewhere with a group of people, we're working on a project - there are buildings around, but they're farm- or village-type buildings, and we're out in the country. The sun is shining, more or less, it's not beautiful here but ok. The group I'm with is not all together, but we're in one general area and there are other people in the vicinity somewhere. I'm with a girlfriend, close to the end of the space where most of us are, and the buildings are all to the left of my perception, and there's a bit of road going that way. Down the road and past us come some vehicles, one of which is a large piece of equipment, either on a truck or it rolls by itself. It's white and strange-looking. We don't know what it's for, but the whole caravan looks sort of ominous. The people on and in the vehicles seem very somber and serious, not looking round or focusing on anything except going forward. They proceed into (and possibly through) an open building on the other side of the "village". (I guess it would have to be like a hangar or something.) My girlfriend and I are extremely curious about this. We look at each other, and decide to go investigate. We sneak up to the building and try to peek in the windows, then duck into an open door after seeing the coast clear. We're looking around (it's rather like a barn in here) but don't see the machine, just stable-y sort of partitions and the straw. It's pretty clean in here for a barn, not smelly, and very quiet. There must be people around someplace, though, and we're being stealthy. My friend thinks these people are Russians and something shady is going on, they're getting ready to pull some dirty deed. She says we could get into a lot of trouble if we were to get caught. She says if we should get caught, we shouldn't give our real names, and I could say mine is ____. I say that's rather complicated, I won't remember it. About this time we do get caught, by a threatening-looking (though attractive) blonde woman, who wants to know our business here. After first being startled, we stumble over some lame explanation and I say my name is "John". My friend looks rather surprised and so am I, but it was just what came up at the time. She (the woman) says that's a strange name and I start into some song and dance about how I got it as a nickname as a child. But she doesn't care and she's not at all sure about us, so she says we have to come with her, we'll have to straighten this all out elsewhere. Then she does some things and the back wall opens, showing a (truck?) and a lot of open country - not desert, quite, but pretty barren, and we know that nobody good lives that way. We're bundled into the truck (it's like a troop carrier) and driven away, and I start to panic. I know we're being taken to Russia, and nobody will be able to help us and they'll never believe we meant no harm and they'll never let us go.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've come to see Trisha but she's not home - I either need to pick something up or leave something. She's living in this smashing house that's not in a residential area but, as if you were in a small town with a small downtown area, like it was near the middle of that, next to like doctors' offices and that. The house is modern, maybe with stone walls or something, very high ceilings, lots of plants hanging and standing, open spaces broken up by dividers. I let myself in to do what I came for and I also need to pee. The toilet is not in its own room but in the bedroom area, and it has an extra lever - I don't know what it's for, but I pull it just to see, thinking it might have a bidet function or something. What it does is let down this fine mist from above, right in front of you as you sit on the toilet. It's very nice but I still don't know what it's meant to accomplish. There's a cat here, too, a nice gray striped one, who comes up to visit. While I'm still sitting, Trisha comes home. I wonder if she'll be okay with me coming like this, but she doesn't mind. (She actually came in very quietly and I was startled when she appeared suddenly.) Her hair is different - she's let the tail loose and maybe gotten a permanent, it's falling to her shoulders, fluffier and curlier - very pretty - I hadn't realized that so much of her hair was braided into the tail. Also while I'm here, Lynnette comes in - we've seen her park her car and come to the house through the big plate glass windows. Trisha tells me she's changed her name. [Can't remember to what.] She just got tired of the old one.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at a Training, in a house-y sort of place, maybe something else, but fairly old. The trainees are in a medium sort of room to my right, and I'm in a sort of team room, narrowish, no windows, yellowish light from fixtures - counters and chairs and stuff suggest the 30's or 40's. I'm having to do dinner for the trainers - John Boats and another unidentified man - and I'm in a bind because there isn't any food. I don't know how this situation came about, but it is and I'm pretty upset about it. For the last meal (it was just John) I had to cook one of my sweaters, and I don't want to do that again. I've got another one, a light green, I think it has a turtleneck, and I really like it, I don't want to give it up. I'm standing with it in my hands in front of the [cooker?] and feeling real sad. The only alternative is to go out and spend money, which I also don't want to do - I don't have much - but as I stand here I also realize how poor it would be to give them a cooked sweater again. I just can't do it. Damn. So I go to get my purse, which is in another room - the door leads into the back left corner of the room - and dash quietly across the corner to another door. This leads into a corridor, which has a telephone alcove in the middle and a door underneath. I think I had put my purse in the cabinet, but when I try to open it I find another door underneath - I know I haven't seen that before. So I go down to the room at the end of the corridor and retrieve my purse [my real one] where I left it on a table. (There's someone else in the room, and I'm aware that she/he would give me support if I wanted it, but I don't say anything.) I dash back across the training room (it reminds me somewhat of a Victorian parlor, and it's dim - only the trainers and trainees are in here, no staff) and back into the "team room"-sort-of-place. [When I wake I'm feeling really sad and down from all this, can't say why, but the feeling is very heavy.]

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've been on a bus on my way to work and I get put off part way there when the bus breaks down. It's a hill, somewhat south of town, and I can see the space between. I'm late, of course, and going to be later. I'm nervous about that and decide to turn back rather than go in so late. Now I'm at my father and My stepmother's house - I seem to be staying here. It's a regular sort of suburban house. I don't have a key with me and I don't know if I can pick the lock or break the door in - and I don't want to be seen breaking in, but it turns out if I just jiggle the handle a bit and lift sideways, it opens - the lock parts are loose. [I go inside but I don't remember what I do there - something to do with the telephone.]

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm watching a film or tape taken from a helicopter, I suppose, of a city skyscraper all the way up to the roof where a singer - maybe an opera singer - is performing, singing to the sky in an evening dress. The "camera" passes over her and continues, showing the tops of other high buildings. [Some other things happen.] Now I'm in a car on a hill - it's night, been night all along - and I'm crying because I'm afraid to go up that high, I couldn't do what the singer was doing. The person I'm with hugs and consoles me.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm living in this little cabin-y sort of house with the cats, and Linda's coming over later to go out [just as we'd planned] but I think I'll go for a walk or something, even though I have doubts about leaving. I live near a park sort of area with a creek and trees and people come there for fun, but it doesn't have facilities or signs. I go up this way and spend some time before I run into this girl. She's got short dark hair and is wearing slightly butch clothes - reminds me of Renee. She starts a conversation about the time I decide to go back, and keeps on asking me questions about myself. I think she wants me to say I'm gay but won't ask directly, and I'm just not volunteering the information. She follows me almost all the way back home before giving up (or I shake her, however it was). I'm a bit late getting back and Linda is already there with some other people, maybe a sister of hers and the sister's kids (teenagers), something like that. Something seems to be bothering them and I suddenly get scared that somebody's broken into my house again. I open the door carefully and look around, but everything's in place. They bustle around the way families will and I try to get it together so we can go where we're going. One thing is to get a bunch of stuff out of my purse that I've accumulated. This includes 3 different kinds of Band-Aids in tins, which fall over in the back compartment and the Band-Aids fall out. I'm real annoyed at this and the more I try to get them out easily without getting all mixed up, the more mixed up they get. I keep whining, "Damn" or "Shit" every time something shifts - not very entertaining for the guests but I'm pretty frustrated and don't care. To add to the problem, somehow I spill water into my purse, which will ruin everything. ----I get organized finally and we leave - we go somewhere like a museum, where we've seen something and there are attendants around and on the way out we get sort of hung up talking to them - I have some sort of problem getting my shoe or some part of my clothes caught on something on a man who's with us. There are more of us now, including Lynn and Dan - we're actually doing something besides visiting, we're using what we've just seen in some way. The blonde daughter is trying to hurry us up so we can get started with our project, which involves portable computers - we're setting them up in the lobby, sitting on the couches there and working at something - but mine isn't working right. It's taking some of the numbers I've put in and repeating them elsewhere on the screen at odd angles, where they fade and drift off the screen. I clear it and start again, but it does the same thing - I tell the others and they share my concern that if it's the computer that's doing it, it could damage my disk. One more try - it gets worse, finally putting all sorts of random numbers on the screen. Later I'm at Lynn and Dan's house with Tree - we've gone into the back yard (it's night) and Tree gets out of the house and runs across the yard and I run to catch him.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm coming up to a sort of rocky ledge with a low (natural?) wall - all around there's sky, huge and beautiful. There's a mountain range in the distance. The colors are all yellowish and there's a sort of early-morning feel. It's not warm, but it's not real cold either. Somehow I know this either is Tibet, or we're coming to it. Down beneath the wall are a couple of flowers growing. They're very sturdy, thick-leafed, the kind of petals that start out green first, and shaped something like hyacinths. I think I'll eat one but I see it isn't fully developed yet. There's another, though, with a wider shape to it and quite thick (you might say meaty) rather than made up of lightweight petals, and I pull that and take bites of it. As I do (it doesn't really have much taste, by the way, but it's substantial) I find that buried in it is a small saucerlike bit of pottery, standard white-glazed with a flower pattern round the edge, much like diner dishes - I pull it out and see that it's the foot of a sort of vase or stemmed dish we'd found around here shortly before and we'd wondered where the foot was. It seems that the flower just grew around it. We go on. Soon we get to civilization of a sort. We're in a stairwell of a building I can tell is massive, and the scene is mostly dark, as if it were night, and we were seeing outside through windows, but we're not - on the left (facing down the stairwell) is a huge wall, and it shows a magnificent scene [although right now I can't remember what of, or even what it looked like - it may have even been an outdoor landscape, as if there were a window there. I halfway think the wall in front, on the stairwell, was indeed a window. But I'm not sure.] To the right is an open door into a lighted room, and people - not in large numbers - keep moving up and down the stairs and into and out of the room. They're all Orientals, these people, dressed in native clothes, the long coats, the hats with round stand-up brims, the slipper shoes. I'm aware that this place is equivalent in some respects to a shopping mall - of course, plain and simple, it is one, it has lots of vendors selling things that people want and need, all under one roof; but there's some fundamental difference in it, too. These people are taking the thing more seriously, for one thing. And it isn't set up intentionally for fun - though there are some neat things about it. The left-hand wall, for instance: at first I thought I was looking at (something, whatever it was!) really magnificent and elaborate. But now something has shifted - either it's done this on purpose, or my viewpoint has changed, but I see now that the whole thing is painted, an illusion. A bloody good illusion, but nevertheless not what I thought it was. Now that I know that, it bothers me - the whole situation bothers me. I'm not sure what to do next. At the same time, what's occupying my mind is the observation of this "shopping-mall" business. The idea of the mall is sort of "new" to us here, but when you think about it, there's nothing unusual about it except that we started building malls in places where there were already plenty of stores to be found. Elsewhere, stores are still grouped collectively for the convenience of the shoppers, but they have to come from farther away and do more business at a time. That's why there were fairs and street markets. It wouldn't be any sillier to build a regular mall in Tibet than in Texas, for heaven's sake. If people want to buy things, why wouldn't they do it in a mall just as easily as from rickety booths on the street? I'm on a city bus with several people from yoga class - I guess we've just left a class - including George and maybe Cynthia. I've got my purse and something else with me, which I stow on the seat. This is [another] "funny" bus - has its seats placed differently from regular buses, and it's up high like the out-of-town-coaches. We're all in a pretty fun mood, and we bowl along through a pretty part of town, with big trees and nice streets, older houses and occasional stores and offices. At one point the bus is diverted by road works from its regular route, and we turn to the left. Then, because of the diversion, we have to drive through a building - actually it's a lot like the Central area Pharmacy except it's got a garage attached. There's 2 sections to it. You can pull in the front or the back - the front is a bit more finished, with matching red brick to the store - you can enter the store from there. The back is different, with painted walls, a little more garage-like. The bus stops in the front; it's going to wait there to catch up to its schedule, and we all pile out of it to stretch our legs and look around. This is a place we know anyway, but it's neat. There's a sort of art exhibit in the back section, various things stuck up on the wall as if a children's school class had done them. Sue S is here (suddenly - I don't remember her being on the bus) and she's looking at them with us. And Tree is here, too - this place is only a short distance from where I live - on the street in back, matter of fact - and he's been exploring down here, I guess. He's come in the back door (both are open), and I pick him up and show him to the people. Actually I'm surprised he's letting me do that, and I'm keeping a good strong grip because he's beginning to get twitchy - but Sue and some others say, oh, what a pretty kitty, and I make up my mind to just go on home with him from here since we're so close, without waiting for the bus. I have to go back in to get my stuff, though. [And I suppose I put Tree down because he wasn't with me for the next part.] I climb up and go to get my purse and things, but while I'm here the bus starts to move. I guess it must have been left in gear or something because it starts going right on out and across the street (the entrance faces another street), and carries on for a couple of blocks. It stops eventually because it runs up against something, I guess, but it's a bit precarious. I can see that the street is going a bit downhill and if it starts to roll again it'll be hard to stop. I get out very carefully and go around to the front, thinking I might push it backward off of the incline, if I can (it's not such a big bus at the moment, you see - it seems like a possibility). But it's just barely starting to move again, and I give it a push, but no go - oh dear. I leap out of the way and remember I still haven't got my things, so I jump back on. The bus gathers momentum and rolls onward, down a street and around a curve and finally comes to rest somewhere, no particular damage done. I am joined now by a little guy in a rather exotic outfit - he's not quite midget-sized, but definitely well below average. (Rather good-looking though - dressed up sort of like, you might say, a warrior-elf. Maybe that's what he is. He's got on some sort of blue loincloth affair, and boots - dark hair, not too long - looks tough but still cute.) (I don't know where he comes from, but I'm not shocked to find him there - maybe he was hiding inside or something - I'm sure he didn't come in from outside.) We discuss the situation, which is more involved than it looks - we need to contact somebody for help. We can't handle this bus on our own (it's become something more like a spaceship now, and much larger), we know there's normally a crew of 2 men to run it, and we can't just leave it where it is and go. (I don't know why.) We poke around some, and find the radio to call the central-whatever with, and send a message to send help. That done, we banter around some more - this all seems like a rather fun adventure - and sort of get cozy. He proposes having sex, right there in the cabin, and I think it sounds like something of a lark, and say yes - I've never had sex with an elf before, for sure, and it might be very different, who knows? We've got nothing better to do till the rescue party gets here, although we don't know when that'll be. [Actually a fair amount of time has passed already.] Suddenly, as he moves over me lying on the floor, he gets bigger - much bigger. He sort of stretches out till he looms over me, and I don't like it. I say so, and next he reaches beyond me over my head to a shelf where he's put something to be handy. It's a kind of face-mask, only it's made of beads (not fine little round beads but cylindrical mostly, they're white and red, maybe orange and yellow too) and it fits over his chin loosely, like a beard. The look on his face has gone very serious, the way you do when the playful part of sex gives way to the other feelings. At that moment, the "crew" sent out from the central office arrives. We break apart in a hurry, as you might imagine, and explain who we are, and what happened. There are 2 men and a woman, they look very cold and matter-of-fact, but ask us to help (by doing something, but I don't remember what - it involves looking around the "ship"). I go "downstairs" - toward the front of the place we're in - you might call it a cockpit - it no longer looks like a bus, there's a wall behind, very "ship"-like - there are stairs, or a ladder to the next level. I hadn't even realized this was here. There's a bathroom down here, good, I need one, and go across the room towards it, but a man goes into it before me, so I have to wait. Now I'm confused. Who is this guy, and how did he get here before me? Is he one of the Tree that just arrived, and got here by another stair? Or has he been down here the whole time? If so, why didn't he say anything? Is he hiding? Oh, well, I'll just wait.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

With MacGyver and a little girl - she's in danger, we're all escaping from the bad guys. Went through a church at one point, like the back hallways, passed by at least one clergyman, typical black suit - just sort of said hi on the way downstairs. Outside on the street, there's some kind of festival going on, and we're dodging the bad guys by disappearing into the crowd. We wind it up, finally, getting away altogether or something, and we're in a room in what I think is a little house. There's a window and a couple of beds, we're tired and emotionally exhausted. Turns out the kid doesn't actually have anywhere to go, and we've all bonded in this whole thing; MacGyver says he wants her to stay with him, and she wants to, they'll be like father and daughter. I'm feeling very left out since I don't fit into this scene - I'm not Mother, and I'm not his girlfriend or lover, that's not what I want from him. What I want is for him to be my daddy too - I really hurt at the idea of being on my own with no one to love me. I go over to the bed he's on (sort of just relaxing back, not sitting sideways or actually lying down) and kneel by it - I can't speak, I'm so full of longing and sadness and pain I don't even know how to say what I want, so I just stay there looking at the floor.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

On a trip, I think - possibly England, with My ex and a couple other people driving up a country road to one place and it's either not the place we thought it was, or we can't go there and get, or we can't go there at all,...so we return back down this road, to I guess the place that we're staying, and the other couple go somewhere else and My ex stays with me, at least for a while - it's as though I need taking care of in some way - either (I'm) tired and being tucked in, or I don't feel well, I'm being _____ up to sort of lay back and rest, or something - I have a sense of it being not feeling well, but I do have this being taken care of...The next thing is that I go out from there and there is a string of libraries around here - it's a very interesting setup - there's this large "grounds" and it's being revitalized, refurbished anyhow, and they have had libraries on this spot for a while, but they've been building even more of 'em. This is the library system, in these several buildings - why you'd have all the branch libraries in one place is quite beyond me, but that's how it was - basically, they'd taken all the branch libraries and moved them to this spot and they're set out in a string, very much like a train; they're different styles; some of them are - there's at least one under construction right now, and some of them are quite new, a few of them are oldish, but none of them are very old - and what with all of the remodelling and new building being done, I'm just wanting to have a look at them and I've nothing better to do at the moment, and that's what I'm doing. So I go, I guess... it's a little bit across from this string, and - it's got something in it, luggage (there's something about that that rings a bell), and so I go like to the first one on the left end, and beyond that, across the field (because this is all grass there aren't paths that go up to it - to my left, there's the entrance to something like an amusement park, that is also being remodelled and refurbished - and I go on in - you have to go up some steps or something (it gets more like a train as I think about it), and I just wander through, and look at different things, and in fact, what I've got here is not really much like a library - there aren't a whole lot of books here, and I'm even aware that this is unusual, I mean having a library without so many books, or is it just an illusion that that's what I'm in? It's... very comfortable, there's lots of lounge-type seating around, and it reminds me of a hotel, or a train, again; people are simply here to relax rather than to do research or anything like that - largely gentlemen sitting around reading the newspaper - not really a library... there are rooms that have nothing whatsoever to do with libraries - there are bedrooms, - kitchens (of course we do have kitchens, but not like this) - and about the 3rd room or so, I run into Byrdie. I didn't expect her to be here, and she's kinda doing the same thing I am, just checking things out...and she allows as how we should continue our tour together, or end it - I hadn't planned to stop here, but she says... so, I can't really say no, so we get off... I get myself separated from her, without any special effort to - just sort of drift off - and then I run into Lyn , and he offers me a ride home - or a ride back to wherever he's staying anyway - and I accept, and we get into the car and drive off, and once again I realize I don't very much want to be with Lyn. And also I'm aware that I left my car behind, and this is gonna be pretty awkward tomorrow. He'll have to bring me back out here to get it, which is not real practical. And I spend a few minutes deliberating on whether I should annoy him by telling him we have to go back, when he's already got me this far, and then I decide it just isn't workable anyhow, and so I tell him,... and he drives me back to it. And he's not mad - quite reasonable, after, and I get back in and I drive back to where he's staying - and there is, I think the original 4 of us, and the house actually belongs to an old woman, and she's staying there too and she's kind of in charge (I'm not sure which). It's late when we get back, everybody's asleep by now, and this woman is not the friendliest person in the world... but there's something about her that's not so much fun and I don't want to wake her up... I decided I'm gonna watch a movie on video, which seems to be "Willow", but isn't really - I'm sure there are some elements of it - [I seem to have some images of the real characters that are on it, but] the way the movie ends up, I think that there is a Darth Vader in it, somewhere, and actually the space capsule, being shot up - I keep thinking of explosion - in a city, specifically, there's a bridge over a river, and you see the skyscrapers and whatnot in the background, and on the left bank as you're facing... there's a round space-capsule type of thing, and he shoots it up into space - or into the air, anyway, I'm not sure where it's actually going - it's not actually meant for space travel, but... here on earth; and that's where the movie ends. And then they start rolling the credits. Now, before the movie gets to this point, a bunch of people wake up; and I have - this is a kind of parlor in front of the house, and there are lots of bedrooms - and it turns out that there is, like, a band of gypsies actually staying there. This was a sudden kind of arrangement, and the woman that I was talking about, and everybody else, practically, in the house has been waked up. And it's not by the movie, I don't think, maybe just the continuing sounds of somebody coming in and having the movie on and they're all gradually waking up and coming to investigate what it is, what's going on, finding it's me and go back to bed. One of 'em, a woman, doesn't; she - these people may be gypsies - I think they're also part of the circus - and they're not all dark-gypsy-stock sort of people. This woman's blonde (not very - she's a kind of mousy, dishwatery-blonde sort of person) and she seems to have a kind of German accent, maybe? And she's wanting to talk. [At the moment I'm not remembering what she wants to talk about.] She's asking me these "chatty" questions, in a sort of Slavic accent, and I'm really not wanting to talk to her, I'm wanting to watch the movie, and I answer a couple of her questions, you know, polite and all that, and then I notice - I've noticed the music continuing for a while now, and I've noticed the movie is over and the credits are rolling, which kinda ticks me off, and so I say to her, "Look, actually, I wanted to see the end of this movie", and I reach over and push the buttons to rewind it and it starts rewinding visibly on the screen, and so she goes away and actually it's as if somebody else comes in, I'm not really sure. And the same kind of thing happens, another time, although quite briefly and I get distracted again, rolling the movie forward; I realize I've missed the explosion again. I wanted to see the space capsule shoot up in the air, and so finally, (he) goes away or it quiets down and I get to actually look at it, and I see that happen, then the credits roll, and it's just credits - names rolling across the screen, and so forth, and then hearing the music, [and at this moment I can't tell you that it was the actual music from "Willow", but it was nice,,... movie music, and that's what my mind says it was, and then I wake up.]

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've been at the Fair, it's a bright sunny day outside of town, and Jenny is driving us home - I think there's 1 or 2 other people with us (maybe 1 male, 1 female). We're going down a road near the freeway, eventually to meet up with it, but we run into a lot of construction vehicles. It's only the very beginning stages of something, but these large vehicles are over and around the roadway, the land all around has been flattened; but there are no Keep Out signs or barriers, so Jenny just drives straight on up. We're thinking maybe this isn't such a good idea, but the majority of them are moving off the pavement, you can see that it isn't busted up, there's no reason we can't drive on it - but is the end of the road clear, to the next street? I'm sure we're not supposed to be doing this, but as soon as the last vehicle moves out of the line of vision, we see the rest of the road is still ok, and Jenny drives on through. I'm looking at my arm (right forearm). There seems to be something written on it, but on the underside and I can't quite get a look at it yet. We did get our hands stamped at the door, but that was the left hand; now what's this? I remark this to the others, who look, and we finally see it's a map of the fair, colorful, with humorous stuff on it. It's actually a T-shirt transfer that I seem to have gotten stuck on my arm, presumably leaning over some of them. I'm back at home now - I live in a house with my father and stepmother (I'm still pretty young, maybe 18 or 20), and they're not home. I go out in the back yard, which is phenomenal - it's big, and all dug up like an excavation. There are mounds of red earth and little cliffs, and open pits. One of my friends comes to tell me there's a kitten out here in trouble - it's lost and found its way in here and can't get out. We find it - it's not in too good shape - and take care of it. Back in the house, I'm in the kitchen (right end of the house as you look from back to front) and going toward the den-living-room areas when I pass by a small room glassed in like a listening booth, and one of my friends is in there. He's telling me my parents are coming in, warning me not to go into the living room. (This is not a major thing, just information - what emotion there is is not a big fear, but it's as though I'm used to it. "Oh, yeah, right, you don't go in there if your parents are coming in, you stay out of the way.") I did see them come through the door, My stepmother in her big red wool coat with a head scarf and Dad looking like he used to. I just faded back to my bedroom (left side of the house). My room is sort of shadowy. The outside light is fading now, and the sky graying over too. There's a big long window with drapes here, over my dresser, on the front wall of the house, and I open the drapes to look at the view. There's all of downtown right smack in front of the window, all these tall buildings and skyscrapers. We seem now to be high up in the building, as if this is an apartment. As I watch, I see several flying cars, oh boy! Flying cars are quite new, and expensive of course, and you don't see so many of them. These must have been at the Renaissance Fair. They're all pretty big - one of them is a very substantial-looking station wagon and one's a Jaguar (white, not real big but not a D- or E-type either). I rush around to tell the others to go look at them, and they all go to other windows to see, and the sun's even broken through again, a lovely golden sunset on the rooftops and shiny buildings and the cars. Back in my room, the sun's gone in again, but the cars are still pretty neat. There's even a little San-Francisco-type cable car. They all look so grand, drifting easily through the sky. Now I'm outside, some of us are driving through town, still looking up at the flying cars, and there's a white bus or something off to my right, I can only see the top of it, though it's higher than we are - there are trees around it. I was thinking that's awfully big to fly, and then it becomes clear that it isn't, it's on the ground, just higher up on a hill. We get to another apartment, and we're there for a Training. Lloyd's here, this may be his place, and the trainees are here too, sitting in the living room. I talk to Lloyd for a bit - he sure is talking funny, very animated and enthusiastic, not like usual. I go into "my" bedroom. I'm not sure if I've just switched houses, or if I'm moving in here, but I do have my jewellery and other things here. They're not all organized, dumped on the bed, and things need to be sorted and put in the closet (just to the left of the bed - a real standard bed; in fact, both of these bedrooms are very motel-sort-of furnished, nondescript dressers and low metal-frame beds without headboards, dark industrial bedspreads, no ornaments). [I go back out and come in again for a rest; I mean to lie down on the bed.] Sherry is in here, with an older woman. They're chatting. Sherry says to me, "I don't know how you find anything with your stuff all scattered around like that - we just sorted all your jewellery for you and put it away." I say, "I was gonna do it soon, you know I've only just moved in here, and I haven't had time."

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

First scene: I'm at an SOCIETY FOR THE CREATIVE ANACHRONISM event somewhere outside, but with buildings, smallish, like park buildings; the ground is not level where I am - this may be a tournament, probably is, but I'm not where the event is currently happening. I'm actually returning from it, walking away from whatever the action is, back to fetch something from (my own cabin? or tent? or elsewhere?) or maybe not. There's an element of leaving but it not being public knowledge. I may be with someone else, another female. On the way I pass by a couple of gentlemen (we're all dressed up, these two are quite fine, the one who seems to be superior is dressed mainly in black, quite Renaissance with puffed sleeves, white shirt, puffed hat and pants). We don't say anything to each other beyond "Good day" or something. I'm going uphill. Second scene: A large resort/summer camp, lots of people here, lots of each, visitors and staff. Staff are like graduates or something, who've been here a lot, and act a lot like seniors in high school, sort of superior, swaggering, smart-aleck, but not too serious. I'm new, with a bunch of girlfriends, just checking in and getting oriented. We walk across to this building that might be a dining hall, with a screened porch/entry. (The sun is shining, quite bright, it's nice here, a beautiful summer day in the woods - there may be a lake in the distance. The place has rather large buildings for a camp, typical white-sided wooden.) Inside we run into Bruce Willis, who is on staff here - he's doing his familiar smartass number, trying to impress us, and he talks particularly to me, and asks me for a date. I'm not sure I heard him right, and he says, "Yeah, right, I mean it, you and me (something or other)". I'm surprised and pleased. Third scene: Perhaps an extension of the last one - I've left the camp in a car with a couple of other people, a man and a woman. We may be returning to the city on purpose, or maybe we're just out for a ride and decide to come this way, but withal we're aiming at downtown Dallas from the west, across the Trinity [the names were not used in the dream], and find our way blocked. At first we find the road we're on doesn't go through; then I suggest going on north a bit, where I know we can get through. But as we do that, we come to another dead end. At some point in this, it becomes a chase. Someone is after us, I don't know who. We have to stop at this old building that might have been a plant or any number of other things, it's brick, institutional-looking. I've gone to schools with aspects like this. The back of it is where we are, with no door at ground level, but there's one down below, where there's a (former) set of concrete stairs from ground level and a retaining wall. Except that the stairs have been covered up to keep people from coming down here. It looks as if they poured concrete or something to fill them up, and smoothed off the top. Then there's something black and tarry/greasy on top of that. But it looks like the only thing to be done, get down there and try to get in the door. The guy goes down first, sliding down like on a ramp. He has now turned into Bruce Willis. The other woman goes, and now it's my turn and I don't want to; I have my white dress on and that black stuff will ruin it. Oh, hell. But there's no help for it, so down I go. We get inside, it's a match for the outside, dark, dirty, old, unused. Fourth scene: (Continuation) I'm with Bruce in this place, [we don't seem to have any plans except to hide out] and a bunch of college students come in. I can't say what it is, but there's something not right about them, like sinister, and some of the time they refer to college in terms that better describes a church. In fact, one of them says "the church" instead of "college" once. Bruce is suspicious and wary, wound up in case something happens. I'm nervous and wanting to be held and comforted. I snuggle up against him [wherever it is that we're sitting together], wriggling as if to get behind him. He doesn't like it.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm on top of 2 square tables, way up in the air. The table tops are like the ones we have in the staff rooms at the library - only they're on these long poles, I guess they're embedded in the ground but I can't see. [Estimating in real time, I may be 3 stories or more in the air.] I'm outside, what I can see is lawn and there are some trees nearby but I'm not looking around. Down below is a living-room chair upholstered in a print of some sort, and Donald from the Water Department is sitting in it. What's going on is some kind of test, or teaching-thing, like part of a workshop, where this is a physical challenge like the "ropes" or something. I'm the last one to do this, out of a group of people I mostly know. They've mostly gone, [I don't know whether they've gone home or inside somewhere - this seems like a huge backyard, or the grounds to a large house or building] and I can only see Donald and one other girl, who's finishing something up and getting ready to leave. [I don't know how I got up here, but I'm laying down on the table tops on my stomach.] I'm in that sort of repressed-panic state, where I know I'm scared but I'm not allowing myself to scream or express it; just wide-eyed stunned apprehension. I'm mostly on one of the table tops and I roll over to sort of straddle the center and hold onto both equally. I'm looking down at Donald and he's looking back at me - he's not actually saying anything right now, but what he's there for is to be my partner, or support, and I'm not sure what that means but he'll definitely be here while I'm up here. That helps. [I'm not aware of anything I'm supposed to do while I'm here except stay put, but I'm pretty sure I'm expected to do something besides just wait it out.] Just now I'm beginning to wonder if these tables will sway (like you might expect them to), or maybe separate under me and I'll be in a pretty awkward position.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm standing in front of a pantry [?]...as opposed to the kind you walk into, I think I meant...small closet in the kitchen, in a small house. The cat food is supposed to be at the bottom, on the floor of this pantry, in a rubber container, kinda like the cat litter**. What's here, at the moment, is there's cat food scattered on the floor where it's been left, as a mess. But dry cat food is stacked, if you will - really - on the right side next to the wall, as though, you might imagine, there would be a dispenser or something - but the dispenser isn't there any more, and it's in the same position. And I'm scooping up the bits, just to neaten things up, and I also notice some yellow liquid on the floor. [?] And I check it out, I'm assuming that it's cat pee, and I'm assuming that Alleycat did it, and I'm taken aback. When I check it out, touch it, it turns out to be oily and it doesn't smell, and what it turns out to be is dripped oil from one of the bottles on a lower shelf, on the floor. Things are generally kind of messy here. Now, the reason this is unusual is that in the other room, Bettye is talking to a guy that has just cleaned this place. He's kind of on the dark and swarthy side, kind of stocky, burly. He has just taken over from the guy who was doing it before, and his price is in question. It was kind of like George's thing; he had a price, raised the price, somebody else came in and lowered the price. It was like $25 to $35, and $30; and now this guy wants $33, and Bettye is hesitant about it - she's not wanting to give him 33, and there's something in it about she doesn't actually have it - I mean, she does have it, but we're kind of stretching around here. And he's explaining to her, you know, how things are, and that he needed the extra $3, and he's sort of implying that it was more work here, or something. But then in fact what I'm seeing is that he's not doing as good a job. There's like, what I'm seeing in this pantry, and elsewhere. I'm in the pantry, overhearing this, feeling kinda guilty, because of the cat food and stuff, thinking that it's my fault and that I ought to be taking part, you know, kicking in for the money - or more, anyway - I'm not actually sure how we distribute it. Bettye is kind of the head of the household, and in some respects she's running this particular thing. I kind of think Bettye is a substitute, too. And where we are is something on the order of a college neighborhood and I have just previously been in @ a scene in a place that's something like a dorm, only it's not in a building, it's like a cabin, more-like arrangement, where you're on the ground floor anyway, and have a porch, and I'm outside on the porch trying to communicate with my mother through one of those wooden necklace-things that I got from the Library Store, the Philippine things. We discovered that we could talk to each other over them; and I may be looking at this place wanting to rent it - maybe even for both of us. (Not real sure about that.) But I go out on the porch, and I seem to be facing a big group of buildings, they're kind of like Fair Park, or a college - THE UNIVERSITY just crossed my mind, too - and the atmosphere is interfering, or something; I speak to her once, and we make connection, and then I'm talking and I realize that she's not answering back, and then I can't hear the same sound that I had, and I try to get her back, and it's not working. There's a guy here, present, and I don't know what his involvement is right now, but he's part of this. He's a young, nice-looking guy, tall, dressed casually. (I don't know what I'm doing with him, exactly.) ***There was also another communication problem earlier; I kept trying to call this other [Elsa's? offices?] extension, I think it was my mother, on the office phones - there's even a switchboard here of some description, and I keep getting a wrong number. I haven't looked it up to verify what it is, and I keep being absolutely sure I've got it, and I call, get the wrong number, hang up immediately, and the person on the other end of the line is very angry. Or somewhat angry, anyhow - and the last time, even starts to threaten that she's going to call somebody to investigate. She names a party - not the police, and not the telephone company, I don't think; but in any case I'm certainly alarmed about this - not that logically, she can actually trace a call that was like that, when all it is, is just a brief connection and then hanging up - so, I don't know what that's about.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm sitting in a cafe with a couple of other - I think women - yeah - and we're next to the window, on the street - we're in a booth. And there's a factory, or some sort of plant, across the street (it's not a very wide street). There's an alarm going off in the place across the street, and somehow I know that the thing is gonna blow up - or something's gonna blow up over there, and it's all very ominous. Nothing is actually happening right away, but [...?...] then suddenly there's a light in one of the sections closest to the street, really not precisely where I thought things were gonna be happening from, and - it's funny, it's as if I can see this happening even though I'm getting under the table - we decided it would be the better part of valor to duck. The light starts out small, and then grows to a flash, and then something goes boom, and then we say "Uh-oh", and crouch down under the table. And we cover our heads with our arms, like we did when we were in school, anyhow, and I'm not entirely sure this is gonna do the trick 'cause it's liable to be a pretty big explosion.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm talking to Wayne, we're at work but it looks neither like the real office or the real library. The whole place is open and people bustle around - though it's not crowded - I'm reminded of a newspaper. Anyway, I've caught him for a moment and explain how I'd like to combine the parking lists into one file (it seems he does something with parking himself and that contributes to it being awkward) so it can be a lot more efficient and easier to use. He's dubious about this, but says, yes, well, okay, I guess, we can do that...other kids, one girl, one boy. The girl was sitting at the desk before, (we're close to the left-hand wall) but got up a while ago, and I'm working with some stuff off to the left of it. It's awkward, and I move it up to the center of the desk and sit up at it. She's coming back, and I ask her if she needs to be here, but she says no, and I ask some question about what I'm doing and she helps me out. [She is or reminds me of somebody but I can't place her - I keep thinking of Gail , but it's more than that - probably a combination of people but there's something nagging at me about it. A particular name that should be there.] There's a computer here, she's been using it, and I think I'll poke at it a bit, but I can't get the hang of what she'd been doing. She shows me, it's something like, hit "a", then "b", then "a", "b" again, etc., then maybe "c", but I don't get it right. I'm frustrated. [ - the way I was over the dBase the other day, when I was wanting to do something with the parking lists.]I'm in a car, with a couple of other girls, on our way to a "fair" - seems like a State Fair, and we're going to be on "team" rather than just going to it. As we pull into the parking area for participants, we meet some others and get out of the car. Shortly a group of other vehicles shows up and blocks us in on all sides - the car, I mean - and when I want to get something out of it I can't get to it without climbing through a truck - I look all around and get thwarted each way, then climb through. Shortly after, I'm with several others in a place a bit beyond the cars, where we're hanging out and sitting around on various things. I'm on something suspended like a swing from some structure - it's not really supposed to be a swing but it moves like one and I'm just perched on it and getting it to move back and forth, it's fun - I keep going higher, possibly not a good idea - liable to knock into something. But I keep doing it, using body English to get it moving the way I want, and now I jog a little bit and start swinging in a wide arc to the left. I certainly didn't mean to be going this far, but I don't seem to be able to stop. I'm not going all that fast - as a matter of fact it's almost like slow motion - but I'm rather high up and there's nothing to grab onto or jump off onto. As I swing backward, I have to be careful not to slam into some screens that are on the back of where we are - there's a fence, but the screens form some sort of structure that would be quite awkward to explain if they got busted up. I can reach out and slow myself down and keep out from them, but I keep on going and bump into some other stuff all the way behind, and I come to the apex of the swing and go back the opposite direction. Coming back to the front, I go past where I started and swing over to the right, where I bump into a piece of furniture, it's like a sideboard/hutch or something, old, weathered, and I don't knock it down, but stuff on it, and maybe something next to it. Glenda is standing at it, she's doing some chore there or other, and she doesn't get excited or even react, but I know she doesn't approve. I just look at her sheepishly. Otherwhere [this may have been on the way to the fair, maybe not], I'm in a car, the place is in a town, an old place, very close in, very ethnic, a lot of adobe or some such substance. We get stopped by a cop* on some technical thing, and he lets us off with a warning after we explain it was something we didn't know or couldn't help. I can see across the intersection the tail end of a small parade, going down a sort of alley - walls on each side. What I see is some people dressed like Middle Eastern types, robes, turbans, sandals, and a donkey or two, with leaves or something hanging off of them. Later on, I'm in the car, next to the passenger door, somebody in between, my father's driving, and there's a couple of others in the back seat. We get stopped again by the same cop, he's tall, male, and black, a nice guy, sort of a park ranger type. (Probably not the same thing we got stopped for before, but also a technicality.) However, he's got to be someplace else, and he turns us over to another cop, who is a white, blonde woman with curly hair.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a sort of lobby, or part of a store, an old-looking place (I can't see what furniture there is, but there is something in the space - not high, but lower than waist level anyway - probably some chairs) - maybe as old as 100 years, but could be anything up to the Forties - darkish, daylight outside - as if it were hot outside and you leave the lights off to keep it cooler? Anyway, I've come in here to use the pay phone, but it either isn't working or I can't make the connection for some reason. I find somebody's wallet; I ask somebody about it who's nearby (salesman? don't know), and he says Michael Dukakis was just here, with some other guys (attendants), it's probably his, maybe you can catch him. (Actually I don't go after him, but) he and his entourage come back through the inside door - it's like an opening to another store or restaurant or building, etc. I tell him about the wallet, and he says it isn't his. I'm puzzled now.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've got to go somewhere, and I'm undecided whether to go on the bus or not. I drive my car for a while, then decide it would be better to go on the bus. I stop - this is an urban area, but not downtown - and think I'll pick up the bus here. But then I realize this isn't a good place to leave my car that long, they'll tow it away. So I go back to where I started from, where I know I can leave the car, but now I realize I'll be in trouble getting back to it. The bus goes to the garage on the return journey, and it's halfway across downtown from here (which is, like, the edge of downtown, the outskirts - I guess I work around here). I'd have to walk a pretty fair distance, and it'll be late. Yuck. Now I'm thinking maybe it would be better if I go back where I stopped before. But the bus will be here soon. Can I make it there before the bus does? I have serious doubts. I mean, what if I get held up? I'd miss it altogether, and if I stay here I know I'll get it.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've just come through a house [I've forgotten whose - a man, someone we know well and work closely with, we're close to him, a relative?] and come to the bathroom, a tiny one with a shower stall. In it is a friend of mine, who I call by name [Greyraven? Bill W? Somebody on the slender, and I think shortish, side - I'd previously been dreaming of Harry Anderson, may be a variation on him, but he's taller] and I announce with glee, "Guess what? I've finally used up all the water in the shower - that is, I've run all the water through that shower head, and now we can get a new one!" Hooray. This is neat, you know? You see, the old shower head is somehow unsatisfactory, it's old and worn, won't put out a steady stream of water or something, and we've been wanting to improve on it. So now we can get a nicer one, brand new, that'll work better. And (the guy I'm talking to) he says, you know what else? We could actually extend this bathroom, just by moving the wall out - we could double its size. So we go look out the window in the shower stall [by the way, he was just in there shaving at the sink or something] - outside there's a pretty big parking lot, with the sort of carports you see at old restaurants and other places, corrugated roofs held up by steel posts, for 2 cars to park nose-to-nose. It extends from this 1st row just across from the window to the front of the building, with lots of space between. This is a part of town where you might find such things, reminds me of down Lamar where Automotive used to be. The house is old, and while it's not ramshackle, is no showpiece either. Comfortable, though, and a lot of people come here. Actually I think a goodly number live here. I'm concerned for a minute about this extending the bathroom out into the parking lot, it would come almost if not all the way to the 1st parking slot there, then how would people walk by to the front? [The building makes a bit of an "L" beyond us to the left, the back of the building, and the back door's used all the time. By the way, beyond the carport - it's maybe eight cars deep - there are trees, maybe there's a creek down there. Forward, to our right, you see the other couple carports, then a bit of sidewalk and street - probably dead-ends; there's a car-parts-looking place across the street.] But then I think, no, really, it wouldn't be any big deal to give up one parking space on the end [2, actually], since the whole lot is seldom filled up anyway. This 1st strip usually is, though. Like I said, there are always a lot of people in and out of here. Anyhow, we see how it would be a very workable thing to extend the bathroom, very nice, we'd like it a lot.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

This place is very mixed up between work and home. Pat is here, there are people here that I work with, but also I have a little apartment here with 2 other girls, one of whom [I think] is Trisha. I've just come back to this apartment, it's very small, and Pat is with me, and I see that Trisha has just furnished the place suddenly. This is great, I don't know how she did it, but we certainly needed the stuff, and she's even got a Christmas tree! A small one, already decorated, it's by the big front window. I'm very pleased and excited, and I'm saying, now what can we do to add something to this [by the way, I'm also very grateful to Trisha], and I suddenly think, Oh boy! Yeah! Sure, neon! We'll put (blue) neon lights in the window! (I'm thinking of sort of a frame, it'll make the tree real noticeable. Pat is also pleased with all of this, well, you girls are sure getting along well, glad to see you so enthusiastic, really getting into it. [Whatever "it" is.] [Actually the place is seeming like a dorm now.] (Another scene:) I'm looking at a piece of paper that I've found on the ground - it's a receipt, or something related to something I've been doing, outdoors here, it's something like a fair, and this has to do with jewellery. Perhaps it's a pickup slip or something, and the girl who lost it will need it to get her thing, whatever she bought. (I think she's black.) I know it relates to some things on this bulletin board, here at this booth I'm standing next to. It's one of a row of booths, all facing a sort of grassy mound and an open space, on the other side of which is something else, perhaps the stage in the 1st dream. I take down this bulletin board from the counter and look for the list (of purchasers?). Meanwhile, there's an announcement about something from across the field. I'm not finding what I'm looking for, and getting distracted by the noise. There are a couple of paper pockets with a lot of slips of paper in them, in the middle of the board slightly right of center. It should be in here if it's not tacked up by itself, and I don't see it. I'm getting a little frustrated now. I've leafed through them several times. Finally I take out the whole batch of the ones on the right and see that some have been crumpled down in back, and the one I want is there. There's been some kind of crime, theft probably. I'm not on (the grounds?) and there are a lot of people about, when this announcement is being made about it. The fact that I'm the inventory clerk is of interest here - I'm explaining to a girl standing nearby (she's got long dark straight hair, I don't know her) that I deal with the furniture and equipment. I'm with Lori, we've been doing something (working) together in this building that's a cross between work and home, and she's about to leave (for the day, I think). She says Renee wants to talk to me, she'll be along shortly, and I say ok, but I've got to do something first. I go down this open passageway to a sort of office. When I get down to the end of the passageway, I see Lori and Renee through the window - or opening, it's not a window with a frame and glass - and they're going away, I guess Lori's going home and Renee will be back. In the office I talk to this woman, she's got short curly blonde hair and is a sort of police officer. She asks me some questions and my answers confuse her. I was asked to come here and was a little apprehensive about it, but I see there's nothing much I can do to help. [This situation blends into the next one, I think - the policewoman may even be the shop owner or manager.] While I'm talking to the blonde woman, Renee comes up, waiting, and I tell her I'll be here for a bit and come along shortly, why doesn't she wait in my room? I notice her hair is rounder and fluffier than usual - still short, but a sort of bubble-do, she looks "cute" and girlie-er. I see that where we are there are toys, novelties, cute little things (this seems to be taking place in a little bitty gift shop) - I'm finished with the blonde woman and I start to look at these things. I'm having a good time looking at these toys, one of them is something I already have, too. After a while it occurs to me that Renee is still waiting on me, I'd better get back.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

In a big building - church, library? - with a lot of people dressed up - church, I think. Right now I'm walking with some people - couple of friends, maybe - and I've got on a red outfit that I just borrowed from somebody. Someone notices up near the ceiling a bird - real high ceiling, the place is stone or whatever, not wood - we look up and it's a cardinal. Well, it doesn't need to be in here, for sure - I decide to take it outside, I climb up on something and hold out my hand. It comes down to perch on my hand and I very carefully take it down and walk out with it, my friends coming along. We come to a more open space with more people, it's the church proper and just before or just after service. Once or twice the cardinal flies off my hand and I hold it steady and it comes back. I'm talking gently to it. I see my grandfather and some other people I know, we stop to let them look at the bird briefly. Then we carry on as the building widens out and opens up, then there's no more walls, then no roof and we're almost, then all the way outside, and the bird sees it and flies away. It's all green trees and lawn here, pretty. All very Sunday morning, even Easter-y. Anita lives out in the country somewhat - has she retired, or is she commuting? She has a metal box, jewellery or notepaper, and it's maybe aluminum, like those ice buckets and tumblers from the 40's and 50's, all ornate, flowery things on top like a candy box. There's some driving involved, from this little house way out here down the road a piece to somewhere else - I'm wondering if I'd like to live out here and drive to work this way - could I make a living out here?

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I come into a small room (small for this purpose, anyway) to a board meeting. The board table is at the far end, raised a bit, I guess it's on a stage or riser, and takes up almost all of that space. The rest of the room has folding chairs in it and they seem to be all filled. This room is pretty crude, as though it's in one of those temporary buildings you see at churches and schools. Flimsy siding and panelling, cheap doors, etc. I'm supposed to be at the table though I'm not at all comfortable about it - perhaps I'm a sub for somebody else. I make my way up to the table - it's rectangular and set shortwise on the stage.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've just arrived at schoold-typical-looking schoold, could have been elementary, junior high, or high school, old building, large schoolyard, chain-link fence, trees. It's morning, daylight, I've just gotten out of a vehicle and stepped onto the sidewalk, ready to walk across the grounds to class. Someone has just started off before me and I see he's veering right a bit, and as I start to take a step I suddenly realize the yard is all mud. It apparently rained last night, and everywhere I see is all smooth mud. I look for the best path and notice that the footprints are all pretty shallow, so it seems it must have dried up rather a lot. Well, okay, I'll go on across. I'm very much concerned about my clothes, though - I'm wearing white running shoes, and I realize they can be wiped off. But I also think I'm wearing white pants, and all my clothes are neat and clean, and I'm quite anxious not to get spots on them. As I walk across, carefully, I think about those little spatters you get from the tips of your toes, so I try to turn my toes out a bit. And now I've made it across. By the way, I'm not actually a student here. I'm undercover, pretending to be a student to investigate something (I don't know what). I have a partner - I'll be getting in touch with her later on. Now that I'm across, I realize I'm late. A number of us are, and there are two kids at a casement window on the 2nd floor hauling kids up through it so they won't have to go in the door and run into the principal or other teachers, going through the halls. I'm not sure I can do this. You have to go head-first through a fairly small space, and I was never much for climbing. But the girl in front of me did it okay, very fast, so I figure if she can do it, I can. It's not all that high up, actually [it couldn't actually be a 2nd floor, but that's what the dream says it was) - I just clamber up on the stones of the wall and they grab me by the arms and I slide on through into the hallway. [The guy, on my right, reminds me of Brooks - roundish, medium-light brown hair, nice guy, fun-loving. The girl, on my left, is black, I think.] I'm right in front of my class now, and I can just slip in the back when the teacher's back is turned (it's a large room, with a lot of kids, and 2 doors, both of which are open), but I need to go to the bathroom first. This room is at the end of the hall, and the bathroom is just a few steps to the right, on the near side of the hall. I go on in. It's a large, open place, with stalls that just have partitions, not high walls. They're also not set in the usual straight rows; some face one way, some are perpendicular to that, and I go looking for the "right" stall. It seems I'm concerned about being seen, and I'm actually waiting for some other girls to leave. First, though, I'm looking in a mirror at my hair. There's a black girl in front of me and I'm sort of leaning around her. My hair is black, or very dark brown, and curly, very much like black women do their hair when they get it straightened and then "done" - that quality of stiffness in the curl, not bouncy and springy. It's a bit messed up from being outside - I fluff the top a bit and look at the back. The back is separating - there's a stray curl sort of stuck in limbo while some of the rest has gone straight. I don't have time to do much for it now. Also, I look down at my feet and legs - I'm not wearing white pants after all, they're black! Wonderful! My shoes are not too messy and there's only a few spots on my pants. I'm glad. Now, looking around for a stall, I wander to the right a bit and gradually realize I'm looking at the boys' section. This is a big bathroom, and the right half is the boys'. That's why it looks a bit different. I turn around; a couple of other girls leave (blondes, by the way), and I pick a stall. I'm at a sink first, though, and I'm interested in this little sponge dispenser on the right-hand side. It's a coin-op thing, I guess, though I don't see how much it is. But it seems to be saying you get 6. I don't know why you'd want 6 sponges at the same time - I also wonder if they come out dry and squashed like the French ones and then expand when they get wet. That would make them pretty portable, after all.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a sort of hotel, in a room with My ex. We may actually live here, this is a bedroom, rather close, I'm not sure if there are any windows, but there are 2 beds (or one big one) and a low table with a lamp on it, it's lit and the rest of the room is in shadow - it's quite late at night and I've either already been asleep or I'm trying to get to sleep, and My ex is mad at me. He's really quite mad, and this is not unusual for him, but frankly I've had about enough of it. I get up and go out, taking my blanket with me - I'm gonna find someplace else to sleep. I go down through the hotel - the place is quite open, the room wasn't on an enclosed hallway, and there's like a gallery around a staircase, some lounge areas, an opening into maybe a restaurant or ballroom over there. I look into this side area that's got banquettes around part of it, I'm thinking I could curl up there and sleep, but everywhere seems to be occupied. This is a nice place, maybe not the very finest hotel, but pretty plush, and has flowered carpet everywhere and rose wallpaper. Looks a little Edwardian - dark wood railings and little round tables, Queen Anne chairs. Not overdone or overstuffed though. However, the place is quite busy tonight. Not crowded, but enough people about that I can't find anyplace to sleep. [Note that I consider it perfectly ok to be walking around dressed for bed, with a blanket bundled up in my arms, prepared to curl up in a chair for the night with hotel guests around.] Well, poop. I go on down to see Loretta. She's in a room/suite/apartment in another part of the hotel, a lower floor, maybe, or at least down a level. She's about to move out of this place, but I'm not sure if she's leaving the hotel or just going to a different part of it. She's happy to see me - as always. Loretta's one of my best friends, I can always count on her.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm visiting a house somewhere, that belongs to a man, and there's some other people visiting him; it's a really nice visit. He lives by some water; a lake - I don't think it's the ocean, but it might be - in a sort of a lake-house, very large and comfortable - the sort of place that has a big window that looks out over the water, and I think he's just a friend - he's a middle-aged man, kind of a friend of the family, not a real close personal friend of mine, but he's somebody that we all like. We've gone to visit him and it's daylight - nice day - and we go outside, for a bit of a walk, to look around. Where he lives is nearby to some other houses, buildings, various kinds, a proper little wharf, even - and next door is this neat little house that is almost all glass, all the way around - it's got windows on all four sides, and you can see in, and there's furniture, and I know that somebody lives there, a man lives there - I'm looking at it, thinking how cute it is, even though I assume some awkwardness from living in such a place, where people can see inside all the time. It crosses my mind that people might break in, they can see what you've got and it's hard to do certain personal things, with people being able to see in the windows - but it sort of reminds me, in a remote way, of that dream Lori had with the glass room, and also reminds me a little of that sunken conversation pit at the apartment party room at Lynn and Dan's, that we had our party in, it was really a very comfortable, nice [area?] and this place has couches, lounge-y places in it. There is something in the middle of it - it's not just one open room - there's something in the way of wherever you are and the place you can see out, it's really nice. And while we're looking that direction, I see this man come walking up, into the room, from underneath it, somewhere. I had not realized that there was an underground to this house - and that is obviously where he does his private, personal stuff; I'm presuming the bathroom and the bedroom are down there, and there's a small staircase that leads up into this room, of course - and that's even cuter. The man comes up and into the room (I don't know precisely what happens next, what we do, but we do talk to this guy - I don't believe we go into this house - he must come outside and it's him as the image that I remember precisely about the dream. He's large, he's a burly, big man - you might think he was a logger, or a woodsman or something - he has very dark hair, a - not a big beard, but a very black, heavy beard, and mustache, and dark, bushy eyebrows - you know, that kind of person - he even has on your basic sort of woodsman outfit - flannel plaid shirt and all that - but he is not a rough man at all - he's very nice, but kind of - well, almost gruff, in manner, and he sort of glowers around - he's not actually angry at anything, it's just his manner.) And it does strike me that there is something about me or about us he disapproves of. I think it's mostly us. And the fact is that he is part of a group of people who live in this area - his house is next to some other houses that belong to these people - and they're kind of like Amish, only different - [I didn't give a name to them in the dream, they are not specifically Amish people, but they're a little like that] and there is at least one other person from this group visible in this scene. I don't think of her actually doing anything, but she's a lady, and is wearing your basic image of Amish or Mennonite lady's country-type clothes, and a cap - the kind of cap that's fitted at the back and has straps, and what's funny about that is that as soon as I notice her cap I realize he's got one on too, and I find that a little strange, but I realize that it must just be one of the things that they do, this group of people.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

At a movie with Chris - indoor theater, lot of kids around - there's the arcade-sort-of-things out in the lobby area (to the left of the theater proper, though, not before it, the way a theater usually is - this arrangement has been in another dream). It's a horror movie, but frankly it's pretty poor, and I am just not interested, and I leave. Somehow I get hooked up with a group of old folks on a tour bus - I think Chris and I were on this tour, but I'm not at all sure what the sequence of events is here - and all I know is the movement from the theater to a kind of roadhouse. There's a place where the bus stops, anyway, and we get off the bus and something happens. The bus leaves without me, if memory serves (I'm not sure that's right), but I don't mind - I don't mind any of this, as a matter of fact - I'm a little bit concerned because I haven't gotten in touch with Chris and here I am far away, and I don't quite know where I'm going, but I'm not worried about it. Next, I've come to a large house of a fairly large, wealthy family [I don't know how I got here, that is, consciously - in the dream it was part of the sequence of events; either I got there on the tour bus or some bus, or I got there naturally, another way] - several brothers and sisters, very nice people, and somehow I get to be acquainted with them. This is sort of out of the ordinary, but I do - there's a younger daughter who's real nice, and we get along very well - she shows me the house - particularly I've noticed a kind of sitting room/family room, with windows on the street, and there's games and things around, craft projects and things, this is where they spend a lot of their time, just in recreation, and it's not like a room with a lot of equipment in it for recreation - this is where they come to be together and just - you know, play. And there's, like jigsaw puzzles, I think - games that you put on a table. Maybe somebody's working with clay, I don't know. But it's a really very close, comfortable, friendly atmosphere, and I get to know one of the younger sons - I don't know how much younger he is and I don't think of him as a boy and me as older than him, so either I am his age (or younger) or he is my age - just the same, he's a nice, unmarried, younger son, and he falls in love with me, and buys me a Corvette. The whole production is rather neat, he has his assistant, or footman, or somebody - servant - butler - along with him, and he makes this announcement that I should come and see something, he has something for me, I think, is how he puts it, and I'm very apprehensive about this, I don't want him to have bought me something extravagant, by any means, and he drops these hints and says it's outside, and I'm suddenly figuring it's a car. "Uh-oh, what has he done?" And he even drops these hints about the color, and I'm saying, "As long as it's not [I think I may have said] orange", and it turns out that the thing is in fact half orange, it's red and orange, painted all these very fast colors, you know, with very shiny chrome, but the front part is red and the back part is orange, or the underneath part is orange and the top is red, something like that. And it is a hot car, any way you look at it, and it's in a crate - a funny kind of a crate, it doesn't exactly cover the whole car, it's kind of like you packed a car in molded plastic, and partly crated some of it, it's funny. Anyway, he shows this to me, and I'm very excited, and very pleased. Actually, I'm quite willing to have it. Part of me thinks that I ought to turn it down, and some of me also thinks that I ought to not keep it, I ought to sell it and take the cash, because that is what I normally say that I want to do with such things - I always say that "if I ever won a contest or something..." But this is a gift from him, for one thing, and it is really a neat car, too! A Corvette! for me! And of course I'm very surprised that he wants to do this, and I tell myself, "Well yes, he can, so why not?" and I'm very grateful to him. He is a very nice guy, and I think I may very well marry him, I don't know.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at the Center, and at the office at the same time, it seems. Bonnie is here, she's kind of in charge; there was a time when she got mixed up with Sue, but I'm not sure at all where Sue is. The office is a lot like our own, and - at least Bonnie's desk looks a lot like hers, in an alcove, and there are some desks down the middle, kinda like we have 'em now, and there are a few people there doing some phoning or something. Bonnie is doing something with some money, and there's something about Lori in this. Maybe somebody's trying to get in touch with her, I don't know - that's not at all clear, but I'm looking through some pictures in an album, and I was wanting to describe Lori to somebody, and in the pictures of her in this album that I find, her hair is two radically different ways, and both of them are different from the way she normally wears it, which I think is startling - one of them is particularly unattractive, with heavy bangs and kind of longish in the back to a flip, as it were - it really does not look good on her at all. At some point Bonnie goes somewhere and I've got to leave some money on the desk, and I didn't want to just set it in the middle - I looked around for the safest place to put it. I ended up just sort of putting it up towards the wall and putting something over it. Then the office sort of transforms into the library proper - I don't think there was an actual [dream] change. It might have been that way all along, but the fact is that they're wanting to change the furniture in our office and we need to get up and let the people who are moving the furniture around do this. There are a lot of people about - it's a busy sort of day, but it's not a normal day - maybe we're closed to the public or something, I'm not sure - but there is something about us not being dressed up for a normal workday, or prepared to do our normal work. There's somebody I'm looking for. Millie's here, I'm pretty sure; I'm not identifying anyone else except Bonnie, she's around somewhere, and Ted; and we go out of the office for a while. I'm not conscious of what we do, out, but when we come back, not only have they taken all of our office landscaping out, for the moment, but they've brought in all these fancy, shiny, well-taken-care-of antiques - they're really gorgeous pieces of furniture. A lot of them not office furniture by any means - like a dining table and chairs, there's a credenza, a drawer-thing (I'm thinking there are dressers) - they're walnut, maybe, or mahogany - dark, anyhow. They have been somewhere else, maybe in storage or some such place. I think it's in a place where they had been in use, but they needed to be moved out of there, and the only place to put them is in our office (or at least the only place where someone decided to put them was in our office). We don't need the things, and they are radically changing the look of the office, and I don't know how they're gonna get our desks and things back in there, but what they're doing is setting these things up in a sort of a room-arrangement, and their plan is to put our office landscaping back in with 'em. This is gonna be kind of fun for us, because it'll make things a lot more attractive and niced-up, and I can see where with this dining table and chairs, we can actually sit down and have meals, which is a very strange concept, but, well, it is for the moment kind of a nuisance, especially disrupting the work for a whole day by taking up all the time moving furniture. The next room (I'm not sure if that's part of our office or not) is also being temporarily occupied - by the Library Bookstore, apparently - and they have shoved all these shelves in there, and all these volunteers (you know, the stranger types?) wearing the aprons, who think that they know everything that's going on, and they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing - but what they don't know is, the people who occupy the room don't know what they're doing there and there's a conflict of interest going on. Just the same, there's nothing better to do than wander around and look at the books. And a lot of the other staff, from other places, are doing that, we're pretty much together. I don't know why we're being allowed to browse around and look at these books - I guess that they're going to actually be selling from this point (although it doesn't seem like a place to do that) and they've allowed the staff to come in and have a look even as these volunteers are filling up the bookshelves. The light in this room is yellow, rather on the dim side; the office light is very shaded - there's no direct sources of light on. Matter of fact, it's dim enough I should think they would have wanted to turn a light on to work in, by this time. But there's not just a door-size opening, it's at least a double-door-size opening that leads into the book area, that you can see this yellow light through. A lot of people are milling about and they're about to get finished setting up the antique furniture - all these wonderful Queen Anne legs, fancy drawer pulls, neat stuff, it really is. I don't know where it came from - we certainly have nothing like that in the "real" world.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm with a nice young man that I've just met, and he's walking me back to school/the library/home? (I work there, and the rest of the people there are familiar library people, but it looks like an old school, very well-used, with glass windows in the doors, long tiled hallways, lockers and that.) He's being very nice to me and we've been having a nice time. He's tallish and blonde, with shortish, trim hair - I think he's wearing a suit, too. [I forget where we've been, but] he's being very nice to walk me back here - we're going through a nice old neighborhood, with cute little houses and lawns, quiet, nice little families live here. Now that we're about to part company, he's asking if he can see me again, and I'm a little shy, but I say yes. Golly, he's actually asked me for a date! I have a date with this guy! I'm befuddled and elated at the same time. Ooh. So, I go on in the building, and I'm in the hallway where we have our lockers, and I'm supposed to be putting something away for a group of us (teachers? library staff?) - some money or something, we always keep it in locker #5. The lockers are small ones, set in an alcove of sorts in the middle of the hall, rather like post office boxes, only larger, and they can be moved. And it seems that locker #5 has indeed been moved; there's some boys who were supposed to be moving some lockers, but I didn't think they meant to move this one, and they must have been early anyway. Wayne is here, he's quite anxious that these things should be put away, and I'm saying, "But I don't see #5 - where is locker #5? did they move it? why would it be moved?"

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in London, out looking for the place where a friend lives - I've been staying with another friend and she's gotten a map for me over the telephone. I've come most of the way, but now I'm not sure where the turn-off is. I'm on a small, slow motorbike or Moped and it's really pretty tedious, but at least it's better than walking. But I feel kind of silly, perched up here. This street is quite long and straight, out in the suburbs, and the one I want to turn on is at right angles to it - it's quite open here, slightly rolling land, small houses and some open space between streets and the streets are wide. I make the turn but I'm not utterly positive it's the right one, and go some ways down. I get some way and decide this must not be the right street - so I turn around and go back up - it is uphill, and it takes a while. Part way back, something occurs to me, that maybe this is the right street after all, so I'll go back. But rather than turning around again (which is rather troublesome - this thing doesn't steer well), I decide to coast backwards downhill. In the rearview mirror, I see a truck coming across a vacant lot at right-angles to the street, and the lot is full of high grass and the ground is certainly not even. It's coming at a pretty fair clip and dives over a deep drop-off, sending it nose-first into the ground, and it flips over, curling up just like a truck wouldn't and back out again as it hit the ground on its back. I'm going down past it and wonder if I should go to help, but I figure people will be coming out soon anyway. As I coast down, a boy on a (bike? skateboard? something else?) is coming up the street, towards the left side, and I'm more or less on the right, but I'm finding it hard to steer and I keep veering left. As it is, I'm thinking that I'm correcting for it and I'm still veering, and he's moving left to get out of my way, and thinking surely I'll be steering to miss him, and we almost crash. I'm quite relieved that we don't, and stop a bit further down. All this has rather been enough for me, and I'm going to give the whole thing up and go home. So I ride back up the street to the one I turned off of, and look around for a telephone, thinking I'll let people know what I'm doing. [I'm not clear on whether I meant to call the person I was staying with or the person I was going to visit.] I'm no longer outdoors, now, this is a large apartment building and there's a door ajar right across from me, so I look inside. It's a sort of storeroom, no telephone, but there's another door on the left wall and a voice calls out "What do you want?" in a gruff English accent. I say I'm looking for a phone, do you know of one in this building, and realize from the sound that he's on the toilet. No wonder he's annoyed. He comes out quickly, fastening his trousers - looks like your olde-English gardener or villager, white hair and beard, hat, scarf, boots. Says there's not a public phone, I'll have to go outside.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

With a group, friends, on motorcycles - in a neighborhood, we've stopped. Getting ready to leave again, I'm going to ride the motorcycle myself (I haven't before) - it's one of those strange ones with a long front, I'm not sure I can handle it but I think so. We're like in somebody's back yard, it's got muddy patches and a few trees (rather scruffy place) - I get it stuck in the mud - first the front end, and I get it out, then the whole back end. It's very easy to pull out, as if it doesn't weigh anything, but I feel stupid and clumsy. I try to pretend it's ok. There's a place where we go into a small office building and get into an elevator that takes us up to another outside - when you get out, it's like a parking lot next to a marina (on the small side - basically I just see a red and white striped canopy, cars, some fences, the ground isn't level, it goes downhill like it does at a marina - I don't actually see any water). I'm at this place more than once. Last time, I'm with a little old woman - maybe she's even in a wheelchair - she's grumpy and crabs a lot, and when we get on the elevator I keep saying, "Do you want me to push Express?" but she won't listen. I guess that means the elevator has an Express function that lets you go from bottom to top without stopping - but since we do that anyway before she ever pays attention and answers me, it's ok anyhow. So remarks a man who's on the elevator with us. There are quite a few people here. I didn't want her to be making a scene, but nobody seems to mind. Michael J. Fox is my boyfriend and there's a scene somewhere, where we're french-kissing - I'm really sucking on his tongue and one of us is suggesting something, but I don't remember who or what. Blonde teenage girl - just met - went somewhere with - she's got to go - home, maybe - green grassy hill, near water I think, lots of trees - man (David Ogden Stiers?) with hatchet, I'm very nervous, want him to put it down but he wants to show me something, all very innocent but I don't trust him - I'm in car, he's outside - I try to get hold of the hatchet.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a big building, a school, library, or something else, don't know - maybe mixed up with a resort? There's a group of us girls, we've been doing something; whether it was work or not, we're having fun, and we're on a rest break, heading for the bathrooms. There are guys around, too, and their bathroom is next to ours, I can see the door at a right angle to the women's. Where we are, on our way there, is away from the main area, where we'd been doing whatever it was - it's inside but very large and open, high ceiling, maybe like a convention hall. The color is all, maybe, peach? Goldish? Sand-y? There's no furniture or anything but panels, or something in high stacks at least, that make it necessary to go through from where we came here, to the bathrooms. Now, I don't know why, but I've stopped to use some mouthwash. I have my mouth all full of it when I see that there's a boy here, with a companion - girlfriend? aunt? - and he looks familiar. I think of Billy , and there's that sudden flash of silly thoughts - "How could it be Billy? He's dead!" - "How can he look so much like Billy? But he's too young" - "Something's wrong, he doesn't look quite like Billy" - et cetera. But I hear some other girls talking to him and understand what's going on - this is actually Billy's son, and he's come to collect some things of his father's. We didn't exactly realize that he had a son, one of those peripheral things you don't really grasp about people. The other girls are talking to him, saying sympathetic things, and I want to but my mouth is full of mouthwash. I make a gesture or two and point to my mouth, take his hand (or something in the way of touch), and smile at him. He's just finished up anyway and he's leaving. I feel a little stupid, but there's nowhere here I can spit the stuff out. Now I'm gonna go on into the bathroom and find a sink. I go through the door, it's in a dark sort of alcove, and on the other side is a surprise. For one thing, the lights aren't on, there's dim daylight coming through the windows - either frosted glass or they have curtains on. But it's not just a bathroom, it's a lounge, and it has showers (all the fixtures and decor harks back to maybe the Forties, at least the Fifties, maybe earlier, hard to say - but everything's in pristine condition) and chairs and now I'm turning a corner and here's a bed - with someone sleeping in it. Everything looks very comfortable, peaceful, quiet - I realize they've really set this place up for us to relax in. I keep going and find another bedroom, differently decorated, rather flouncy and fluffy - someone's in this bed, too. I wonder how far this goes - maybe I'll find an empty bed and go to sleep myself.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm part of a space mission - we're military, I guess, because we have a captain and officers and uniforms - and we're on some planet in a hostile situation. There's this group of people in charge, they're like a religious sect. A group of them wear priests' robes rather like Tibetan monks and they're sort of "enforcers". There's also a high-priestess-type, young and beautiful, dark blonde, wears a sarong, maybe there's a high priest, too - there's a pretty fair number of 'em and they keep the people under their thumbs. They have a crystal that gives them power - you hold it up opposite something and it generates this powerful beam that does something, I'm not sure what - maybe it can blow things up. Anyhow, they sure don't like us and we're trying to get away from them and keep from getting killed - also in the meantime to help the people they're oppressing. Right now we've escaped their clutches and we're running through this place that may be underground or in an enclosed city - it's dark (rather like a warehouse, dim lights) except for where there are rooms with people in them. I'm about to get separated from my group and have to get in somewhere - I dash in a door and down some narrow spiral steps. There's a young boy here, maybe 13 - I grab him by the collar (perhaps metaphorically?) and tell him they're coming, he has to help me - he shows me another way out. We all meet up again shortly and head for the outside. There's a big chase across some open terrain; we're firing at each other and ducking and going around things (very typical movie SF stuff), but then suddenly we get caught. We sort of run smack into some more of them and we're stopped in our tracks. We know when we're beaten - there's no way we can fight this many if 'em - there's only about 6 or 8 of us. They take us the short distance to where they're all gathered and they're all turned to look at us - there are various ranks of them; the "priests" are sitting back-to-back along a stone or concrete block - others are arranged in some rows, rather like an audience facing away from us, toward a sort of altar - really just an arrangement of stones, and the crystal is up there somewhere. (I can't say if it's just on one of the stones, or being held by someone.) I can see it. The high priestess, turned toward us in the front row of this "audience", is making dire pronouncements about what's going to happen to us. Suddenly, the priests and some others start coughing and choking and holding their throats, eyes rolling up (your typical reaction to poison in the movies) and then keeling over. All the others look amazed and/or horrified, and we seize the moment. (Actually this is the result of something we tried earlier, not precisely poison but something to thwart the priests, to interfere with their systems - we put in the water, maybe, I don't remember - and we were disappointed that it hadn't worked. That was one of the reasons we had to escape. Apparently it just had a delayed reaction, and now it's killing them off, at this wonderfully dramatic moment.) We leap into action, while they're all goggling at the priests - the others don't have weapons, or any other power to stop us, except with the crystal. The captain and the other guys go for the guns they took from us; I make a dive for the crystal. This upsets the high priestess, but I stand on the stone and hold it up the way I saw her do. I have it in my right hand, trying to hold it straight up and keep my fingers off the front of it. I'm having a little trouble holding it - it's not oily but it keeps slipping down. I'm really terrified of dropping it. It appears they can't get it away from me while I hold it like this, but if I drop it they'll get it - and I certainly don't want it to be damaged. Finally I get a good grip on it, and focus it forward and down, aiming it at something (I don't know what it is - a sort of mirror? A round thing, maybe brass - down where the high priestess is). Something starts to happen. I can feel vibration, then energy flowing through my body up to my hand - then the crystal glows and shoots out a bright, wide beam of light down to the mirror-thing, where it makes a big bright glow. Everybody's marvelling at it - they're surprised that I can do it. The high priestess is watching carefully in case it screws up. Where the glow is, a picture starts to form, an oval shape as though it were in a frame of light. I see myself, like a film, looking at someone and listening (by the way, "I" am a beautiful, slim blonde with long hair) - then (my image) I react in surprise and joy, and say, "A captain? Really I'm going to be a captain? Oh, thank you sir! Thank you!" And I realize the crystal is showing me the future - that sometime I'm going to be promoted, and I'm thrilled. Everybody else is pleased, too, even the high priestess, who smiles at me as if I were an innocent young thing who's just learned how to do something for the first time. There are nods and smiles all around and everybody's happy. I guess we've actually liberated the captors too.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a smallish, slightly crowded room - I think it's a living room, don't know whose. I'm with 2 others, an old woman and a girl younger than me. The room has lamps on, it must be night - the drapes are closed. We're engaged in some project, I can't say it's actually LT processing, but before we can get rolling, the old woman gets very deep into grief for her late husband. He was in the Navy, or went to sea for some reason, and was lost at sea. She hasn't cried about it in a long time. Actually she has trouble showing her feelings, and it's difficult for her to really let go and just cry. She reminds me of Nina from Park Forest, and also Martha, who covers everything up with a joke or a "pleasant" attitude - always be polite, never offend anybody, or disturb them. We're encouraging her, though this isn't what we planned to do, and of course she's letting her trained behavior override her feelings mostly - she keeps apologizing and getting out of her body. I have her bend over from the waist and I'm rubbing the small of her back to help her release. I don't feel any special warmth toward her, I just want her to get on with her work. I don't like people behaving this way.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in high school, first day I think, and we're getting our schedules and finding things, getting organized. I'm with a girlfriend or 2, and maybe a boy. The halls are crowded, kids moving all over the place. We find our lockers on the first floor, near the entrance. There's an open space here, it's all tiled. My locker is in a corner next to a wall, the upper one (these are half-lockers). I put something on a shelf, just one thing. I don't want to leave much in there yet because we don't have our locks. There's a group of boys, slightly tough-looking, nearby, and they're making some snide audible remarks about us (or one of us? or just me?). The boy with us says to ignore them. We consult our schedules - among other things, I'm taking algebra. The others go off ahead of me to class, and I stay behind for a minute, then follow. I go around the corner into the main front hall [arranged something like Kimball] where I can see the daylight coming through the open front door, and start for the stairs. Just then I realize (from the feel) that I'm not wearing any underpants. Oops! I dash back around to my locker (I don't remember putting them in there) and grab them, then go back, thinking I'll get an opportunity to jam them back on, on the way to class.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm off on a weekend with some people, we've been having an event, sort of like the SCA having a tournament, lots of fun - we've had to bring a lot of things to set up (in that way it's more like LT), and this woman is driving some of us back to town in her very large car. We've been out in the country, it's beautiful, all green trees, flowers, sunshine, wonderful. We had a good time. The woman is older than we are, rather sophisticated, good-looking and well-dressed; she's new to all this and in a way, since she's older (we're still kids, really) she's - not precisely a mother-figure but maybe a sort of mentor. We like her. The others and I go through some of the stuff we've brought back so that they can take theirs when they're dropped off. I'm thinking about some peacock feathers and some blue artificial flowers that I brought - we've used these so many times now, they're getting to be a fixture - we really ought to find something else next time. Well, they get dropped off, and it's just me and the woman. For a bit I go all the way to the back of this very long car, to see what it's like to ride back there. The car now has an aisle down the center. We're coming back into town now, onto my street, which is lined with old apartment houses and occasional business buildings - lots of green trees, very Austin, comfortable neighborhood, everything all integrated. We pass by a new Supermarket I didn't know was there. Very nice, that'll be great, I've been going to the Kroger a few doors away (and only a few doors from me) and I prefer Supermarket. Both of these stores are, like I said, integrated with the neighborhood. They're almost on the street, no big parking lots, narrow side to the street, a simple neon name sign each, very unobtrusive. Anyway (I'm coming back up to the front of the car) a few doors down is my place, a nice old frame building with a side driveway (the sort with two paved strips) and a porch and there are people outside doing things, like the old guy on the porch next door. I like it here.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I live in a little house on a suburban street with my family - I've got at least one brother, and Phylicia Rashad (from the Cosby Show) seems to be our mother. It's a very cold winter morning, and there's been a freeze overnight. I go outside to see how things are and I discover the driveway, which slants downward a little to the street, is frozen solid. A smooth, slick sheet of ice. I kneel down by it and give it a rap - it cracks a bit, underneath. Looking around, I can see the ice on everything - no cars are moving on our street but it's still very early. Farther, where I can see the bigger cross-streets and bits of main road, there are cars moving, and pretty normally. I go back inside and tell "Mom" that we can't get out of our driveway, at least I'm not going to try to drive on it. (I don't come in the front door - I go around to the back and come in through a sort of side room to the kitchen - maybe it's a laundry or storage room, there are a lot of things stacked around, probably some gardening equipment, outside things. The lights aren't on. I scrape my boots before coming into the kitchen.) I'm pretty sure "Mom" means to go to work anyway, that she expects us to keep on getting ready to go. [I don't know if I'm going to work or school.]

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in India, on an extended visit with some other people. We seem to be doing business. We have quarters and an office in a sort of self-contained bazaar or arcade, all indoors. [You could think of it as a crude Apparel Mart.] I am about to have a class in some physical discipline with a very distinguished teacher - it's not yoga or karate, but it has elements of both yoga and martial arts. I'm arriving at the "gym" - they wouldn't call it that, but this room is for this kind of stuff and it does have some fixtures like bars installed. I'm wearing a dress and daytime gear, and my big black wool cloak with the pointed hood with a tassel. [My real one has a round hood, no tassel.] The teacher is there wearing draped robes, he's on the small side and looks like you might picture such a person who's a master of an Oriental discipline - serene, calm, still, inscrutable, eyes that you know are watching your every move - wiry, looks slight but can move like a cat and real strong. He has a couple of guys with him, much larger - I'm thinking of them as his bodyguards, but they're probably not - just his entourage, I guess. Anyway, I bow and say hello to him and get ready to change clothes. Not wanting to waste any time, I've taken off my cloak and draped it over this structure (It's part of the "gym" equipment but I don't know exactly what it is), and I take off my shoes and a couple other things when I realize I'm not wearing any underpants. I'm shocked. I'll be putting on shorts and a T-shirt [the same navy and red I wore yesterday] and I can't not have underpants on. I hesitate for a minute, then say "I'll be back in a minute" and run out. Around a corner is our "shop" - Bonnie is there, sitting behind the counter/window, adding up figures, I think, and I say, "Where's the key to the house? I need to get in, quick." She doesn't respond. Or, rather, she says, "Just a********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ht add, there must be a large community of them here - they're not permanent residents, I know that, but on long visits, perhaps with businessman husbands. Most of these women look like typical suburban mall shoppers; various ages.) They're all grabbing things off long racks, holding them up and saying what-do-you-think? to their friends, then dashing off to dressing rooms. Someone even tosses something at me, saying, "Isn't this great? It would look good on you!" It's a sort of straight dress, white with polka-dots or a similar pattern in navy, with wide straps squared onto the top. Frankly I can't see it on me, but maybe she's right... I toss it over my shoulder and think about looking for a dressing room, poke my head into a workroom and realize it's too much of a hassle, and it's already half an hour past the time for my lesson. I toss the dress somewhere and get back to the "gym". [I had grabbed my cloak back and put it on when I left.] I'm standing there in my cloak, apologizing to the teacher and saying I can't do it today and I hope I can have another appointment, and am very curious to find I've got my shorts and T-shirt on now. I don't remember changing, I didn't have time. Still don't have underpants on, though. I realize this all looks very peculiar, but I just don't see how I can do this class without underpants. [I am, by the way, worried that the teacher may not let me have another class.]

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm leaving work - going to be picked up by a boyfriend, who will go with me somewhere, where we'll be wearing VKian costumes. I've got on this rather nice outfit and I'm really looking forward to seeing him in his - he's good-looking, and I'm really fond of him. I work downtown and the office is in a building, upstairs, and I can't say it's the library, but I've just realized that I've left my keys there, and some other things as well, that I ought to have, and now I can't get back in since I've left my keys. I've gone down a side street - it would be near the library, at least, might be Field - so I turn right, I'm going there anyway and I keep looking out for this boyfriend, he should be along pretty soon. There's a truck of some kind there, maybe a large van, a bus, something like that, the kind of vehicle that you have to sort of climb up into. I'm up in there [I'm not sure why - maybe to wait], looking at something [that's kinda like the dashboard, although I can't say that that's what it is], and I rearrange something on it - I also am wondering if I shouldn't just go in what I've got on - somehow (this outfit) doesn't seem complete to me anymore.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at Warrior - it is dinnertime, and I've been staying in this other room, finishing something - we were all sitting in our chairs, and something was happening at the very end that I didn't finish. So instead of staying to finish that, I'm now coming into the room where everything is out on the tables - it's a long table with picnic-sort-of benches along it. There's a number of us (certainly not as many as there were at Warrior last year), and everyone else has been eating for a while. I'm rather concerned about getting enough to eat. I go around the table with this dish that I have [picked up or been handed, I don't know which] - everybody was taking something with them that they'd been handed by the cook or somebody. This was vegetable-puff things, or little bitty things that look "grassy" - definitely an attractive arrangement on the oblong dish, but it looked like sort of tufts of grass, which was not particularly appealing. I take it around the table with me, glancing at the other dishes as I go and think there's not much left, put my dish down and I'm talking to someone down at the end there - we get involved in talking about something and it's still a little while before I get to put anything on my plate. I go down to the other end of the table and pick up a dish or 2, sort of scrape what's left on it together and get some meal-for-me. Most everyone else has already left, it's just me and a few other people. Now we're going into another room, with Brad, and I am feeling very guilty, apprehensive, that Brad is going to find me out. He will know that I haven't managed my time very well and this is the result of it: I have not gotten myself fed because of my own indulgences. I'm very concerned about that. He's talking. There's a clump of us at one end of the room and it's almost as though we're lying down; not quite. Jenny's right next to me, and Brad is talking about something, and his voice fades out, a little now and then - I'm almost ready to say, "I can't hear", but I hesitate. Then I hear Jenny say - and not very loud or strong either - "John, I can't hear", and I repeat, almost with her, "John, I can't hear you", which, as soon as I say it I realize isn't quite the way we're "sposed to say it" - I should say, (firmly) "John, I can't hear!" and stick my hand up, very clearly. I also realize right after that it's not John, it's Brad - and we both said John. An interesting situation, I don't know quite what to make of that, but Brad doesn't say anything about it (at least not before I'm out of that scene).

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at Susan house - she lives in this house with her parents, and I'm with someone else, someone bigger than I am - can't say male or female, known or unknown, older or not - all I know is bigger than me. We are engaged in something that Susan knows about and is part of, but this particular exercise she isn't taking part in and is in the house asleep. So are her parents. She wouldn't mind if she knew we were out here in the middle of the night; just the same we don't want to wake her up. We're out on the lawn at the left-hand front corner of her house. There's a tree or 2 in the yard, lots of green grass, sturdy green grass. I'm wanting to turn the water on, and for some other reason I have to go inside of the house. To do this I go out and around to a side door of some sort (that part is not entirely visible). I go from the outside to the inside bathroom. I'm moving very carefully through the house - we both are, at first, but the other person goes off and does something else. I go into a bathroom to do something there. It's necessary for what's going on outside for me to be doing something in here. I get into this bathroom and I do turn a light on, not a very bright one - there's something like a clothes hamper that I have to kneel down by. I want to get something out of the door, and when I do - I'm trying to pull something out of this cabinet - I'm hearing a funny noise; kind of a growly noise, and I think I'm making this noise with whatever it is I'm doing. After it happens 2 or 3 times, I have a look in there, and discover a cat! It is the family cat, I know this cat, kind of, not real well, but still - he's curled up in there and I guess he's doing whatever cats wanta do in cabinets, and whenever I'm trying to pull on the thing he's making this kind of perfunctory growl at me. Not mad or anything, he's not going to attack, but I think that's kind of cute.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I live in an apartment building - kind of one, I'm not real sure what it is - very open, has an open walkway with a railing, in front of the door that I've come in and out of. I'm not sure if I live alone or with some other people, but there's others around, they're all my age - once again I'm younger (or seem to be younger) than I am - I'm thinking of all these people in their twenties, a lot of camaraderie, lot of "youthful" palling-around is going on around here. I'm waiting for an old friend to come visit me - it's your typical week (or weekend) visit, and I'm getting ready for that. There has been a big mess made outside somewhere, for some reason. It involves tape - stuck to the railings of this outside bridgework, and it's the "guys" who have put it there - I go along and take it off, kind of when they're not looking. They were going to do it anyway, but I decided I'd just go ahead and do it. Then my friend arrives. Turns out she's a girl, and I do not know her in waking life - she's nobody in particular - and I also don't feel very close to her. Like I say, she's an old friend, I haven't seen her in a long time. This is not your warmest possible greeting. We're just curious to see how things are gonna go. I introduce her around.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at a LT event - probably WOW - a resort, somewhere a place out in the woods, anyway. I've been in a room with some old people and we've gone down to a room where another thing is going on (this is very disjointed). Not everybody who's attending is in this room - this is not a set part of the program, precisely; it's not like anything we normally do. There is someone leading; it's night, probably quite late, and there may be 30 or 50 people in here (I'm not sure - maybe not that many, but there's a lot). Something is finished, which is the reason that not everybody is together, and the guy who's leading decides to try something - it's a kind of meditation, we're going to lie down on these benches that are here, and do something; I did not quite get that at first and so I'm standing up, doing something, talking to somebody, for a bit while everybody else is rearranging themselves. Then when I see that they're all lying down, it turns out that there isn't room for me on any of the benches that are here. I go into another room to find something. I kinda thought there was a bench of this sort in the room I just came from. We go down there and somebody's there - it's not precisely a bedroom, but there is a bed in here, and somebody is there talking on the phone, I think - I look around, look beside the bed and the wall and don't find the bench that I thought was there - I think somebody's already thought to get it and take it down there. Come back down the hall, and I go into the room that's opposite the one where everybody else is, and poke around there. There's a number of kinds of things in here, and one of them looks as though, if you folded it right, it might be a bench that you could lie on. It's kind of like water skis or something - it's definitely sports equipment. The pieces are narrow, long, have markings on them like sports equipment does, stripes, numbers, etc. They're attached end to end and there's some hinges, like you could fold the things some way or other. I fool with it for a bit and get it to stand up, the way a bench would, and discover that the hinges are the wrong way to do this - or at least I haven't figured out how it is - so it won't stand up if you were to try to lie on it. I go back into the other room, then, to see what I can do - maybe just lie down on the floor.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at the library - a library, it's more like a branch library than Downtown. There's a large staff here, and the staff is a sort of a school as much as just working here. I am sort of a senior in the school; there are a number of us who have passed through what grades there are to get to - we're the top of the line, anyway, and then you become full-fledged library clerks. I think Sue S runs this school (or library, or business, or whatever it can be called). And this is the day that we "graduate"; it really has not come upon us yet that we are actually going to stop being employed here, until now - and the fact is that people keep coming into this program - they're getting trained, and moving up the way we've done, but there's only so much room, you can't continue filling the place up with staff, so the people who finish up have to go. I am not enjoying thinking about this at all. I like it where I am and certainly don't want to go out in the cold, cruel world on a job, however well-trained I may be... As I say, this looks like a library - has a brick exterior, some trees and things, maybe more like X town than not, but it's certainly bigger than an ordinary branch, and dark inside - not all the way dark, but it's mystery-movie dim, I might say - not properly brightly lighted as it would be if this were the real world. Those of us who are "graduating" are talking together, wondering what we're going to do - I decide I want to get off by myself to talk to someone - it's a guy, he's tall, can't say that he's employed here, but is a regular person, mainly, comes around on a regular basis - can't name him; older than me, a middle-aged man, I'd call him blue-collar, he seems to have on a white overshirt (or light-colored anyway) and some sort of nondescript pants. I'm not crazy about him, but he's a friend and he seems to want to talk to me - he's got something to say. We're discussing my situation. [Somewhere in here, it occurs to me: "Oh, yeah, I work in the Business Office - that's right, they probably can't let me go, because after all I am unique here. Ted needs what I do, and we've already been through some short-staff periods - he can't use these (old? other?) people, so I'll probably stay! Oh, great!] Anyway, my spirits are rather up again, and we go off - I guess you'd say down the hall, though that doesn't really compute. We go into a room that's not only unoccupied but there's nothing there; it more resembles a building than it does a room - imagine that it's isolated - call it 4 walls out in space, even an independent roof to it. We go in there [there's somebody else involved here, but I can't say that it's someone with us at the time] and start talking; he is, like, psychic, and he tells me some things that I didn't know - but while this is going (actually I have been noticing before) that I have got these tattoos all over me - rather, not tattoos, I was born this way, and while I'm in here right now I'm looking at them again. There are symbols all over my body; they're not like tattoos, properly, they're not pictures. A number of these things are words, even signatures, as though there was like a short form of some kind, and while I'm looking I've noticed for the first time in my life that these things are signed with my name in different ways (some of them - some use my name in other places than a signature but still) - in one place I have actually - it is actually my signature, "Althea C.S. Webb", which I was not born with, and which shocks the hell out of me to notice. I start exclaiming about this, and I explain it to him; there are also other things on my body that are not just straightforward graphic representations - a couple of them look kind of curly, as though somebody had tried something and wasn't very good at it, it's fuzzy - there's a circular form that's like that particularly, here in a couple of places - there are lines going through it, more like brush-strokes than pen-marks. I had been thinking how nice they were, that I had all this decoration and didn't even need to go out and get tattoos, and I really rather like the way it looks. And it does make me unique. But this guy is telling me some things about myself that I didn't know, and he's getting it from another source, another entity - channeling, I guess - and then when I start becoming quite concerned about this he starts talking in a different voice - and, indeed, he's now the other entity that's talking. He's beginning to even look different, I could almost see a definite change in his features come about. He starts telling me some things about myself that I rather like, they're rather encouraging. [I'm just not remembering what they are, and can't repeat them here.] The atmosphere changes - oh, my, yeah - it's as if a sort of Twilight Zone has descended upon the place, and for a minute or 2 I can see the universe, the stars, and I ask him, "Isn't this kind of sad to be in the dark all the time?" Not living here on earth you must be living out in the universe, is my line of thinking - where all it is, is dark and the little tiny points of light that are the stars. And he says, "No, indeed, it's not dark at all, because the light comes from you - it's all quite bright around where you are, and there's nothing dark about it." A bit later, sometime during this particular scene, someone has to go over to this place that I had come from before - is a house, it's all deserted, and there's something Greek about this place - it's all open, and there's a verandah or porch or something like that, with trees around it, all rural-looking. I had been there with this - I'd even call it an entity - kind of like a fairy, smallish entity and it didn't want to come along. Somebody has to go back to see how she is. Also while I'm in the room with this guy, somebody from outside tries to come in, to check to see if there was anybody in here, and our idea is to keep other people out while we're talking, but nothing comes of it.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've come into a bedroom, where there's mainly a double bed and a TV - there are windows, it's bright daylight coming through filmy curtains. There's somebody in/on the bed, I think male, young, he's just watching TV game shows. I get on the bed and join him.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm on an almost-empty street in a small town. There are shops, etc., and street lamps. I'm walking down the street, about to turn a corner, and I'm confronted by a loud man in a raincoat - he's really mad about something but I don't know what. He just stands and yells at me, sometimes shoving with his elbow and shoulder - he's got his hands stuck in his pockets. I retreat up the street a bit - there are some people out watching. I guess they think I had something to do with this guy. He follows and keeps yelling at me - some of the time he yells around in general but it's mostly at me - I don't know him and definitely didn't do anything to start this, it seems he's just picked me because I'm handy. ("THE ANGRY, ANGRY, MAN")

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm still in bed, just normal, trying to sleep - I get up, I guess I'm going to the kitchen or I'm checking on the cats, did I hear a noise? I see through the bedroom door that something is very, very wrong - the left hand wall (with an incorrect door in it) is lying on the floor, part of it anyway, and there's daylight coming through. I know that Julia planned to have some work done on the place, but I certainly didn't think it meant taking the walls off. This is terrible - I wonder if the workmen have done this by mistake, or is it really necessary? I can't see any way it would be. It's awful, it's dangerous, the cats could jump out or fall out the hole - I'm quite nervous about that, and I make sure they're in the bedroom so I can shut the door, but that's not great, there's no air conditioning in there. I go toward the bathroom - I'm planning on getting dressed and going to find Julia or call her and find out what's going on here - and suddenly the bathroom wall falls out. There's a couple of guys out there that I see through the hole, I suppose they're on ladders - they're wearing khaki uniform shirts and look like nice clean guys. I'm just standing there horrified. I've got to go out and do something about this. I pull on some pants and go out the front door. There's a concrete landing and stairs outside the door (which is on the south wall) that lead forward rather than backward. They're still working away at something out here, but I don't know what.

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Alta: a detailed dreamer

I am with a bunch of people who are friends or family, somewhere out at the edge of town or perhaps in the country. Across the road are fields - someone's working over there. Where I am is a kind of courtyard, it's largish and open - one side has an eave or awning over a walkway. There's an opening into another part of whatever this building is (up at the inside corner of the walkway-covered side). We've been doing something that was tough and hot and tiring. Earlier the people across the road had turned on a giant fan, and we had all cheered and clapped and jumped up and down. (I don't remember what we were doing at that time.) Something is happening to shrink a dog that I am with - I'm with part of these people, and one of them is James Garner (but not quite), and something dramatic is happening. I'm very worried about this dog - his body's getting smaller and smaller. (It seems to me that his head is not.) I'm asking him to jump up, and he does that, and licks on my face, and I hold on to him real tight. This is overcoming something, but I'm not sure what - I'm relieved that he can do this, or will do this, and I've gotta do something for him really quick. (The James Garner character) is encouraging me and patting me on the back and giving me support. We go through that opening, back to the outdoors, with this group of people. Suddenly we hear a noise, thundering - we look around, and from the back part of this courtyard, through another opening to an outdoors area, there comes this stampede/chase - what I think is happening is horses are being chased by some predator or other and there is a horse in the lead, big brown horse, looks lovely, and I'm saying, "Run, fella! Run! Run!" But what comes behind him is in fact deer, like proper forest deer. I don't see any predators like wolves or anything. They are moving at a pretty fast clip. They go around the courtyard and toward the left side, not straight across, and around the semicircle before they run off out of sight and they kick up a little dust. The people across the street turn the fans on again, and this is some cause for cheering again. (I think I've still got this dog in my hands - he seems to be sitting in a bucket - the bottom part bucket and the top part head - he is getting smaller.) Now, for some reason, I run around to the far side. There are bushes and things in the middle of this courtyard, some of which have thorns (and I don't know what it is that I'm running for), but I fall down and slide under one of the thorn-bushes. Nobody has seen me do this because they've all gone back through to the inside. When I come to rest I realize that I've got a buttful of thorns from the branches and some in my face; they're stuck there pretty good, and if I move I make it worse, which is scary and painful. I call for help - I call "Please come help me" - and at first no one hears me, but I try to call louder. I think somebody sees me through the opening and they're going to come, but in the meantime a car pulls up from the road, a convertible - very fast-looking Corvette type, and 2 boys get out - not real young, they may be college students or slightly older, nice young men, both very good-looking, wearing short-sleeved shirts. They see what's happened to me and come to the rescue right away. I didn't have to ask them and they didn't have to look around - nobody had to call for them. They just literally saw what was going on and came to help me. They start working with the branches, getting the thorns off me so I can move, especially getting them off my face. The worst part about my face is that if I try to turn my head the pressure gets worse and it hurts, a whole lot, and I keep my eyes squeezed real tight so I won't see anything and try to move my head. They haven't doctored it up or anything yet, but they've got me out of the brambles and so I'm just laying there flat.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

Driving away from somewhere, on a side street - either I just got in the car and it won't go, or I've just driven around the block and it stopped. Can't get it to go, so I get out and start to walk back for help. A few steps away, I wonder if I've set the brake. I look back, and, sure enough, it's rolling. At first I think it'll only roll a little bit, but just as I start to go on, it picks up speed. I try running after it a few steps, but I'll never catch it and if I did I couldn't stop it. So now I need help even more. I suppose it'll roll down to the end of the street and bump into something and stop. Like the curb. I hope. A little way further along the sidewalk there's a big hole - actually it goes down and then up, the sidewalk continues on the other side several feet above me. It's not natural, this hole - it's something to do with construction. The dirt is all red and sandy or clay, relatively clean, and I've got to go past it. It's lumpy, craggy, so I can step and climb up, but it's also slightly treacherous. It could break off if I grab an insecure bit. I sure don't want to fall and hurt myself, and I wish I didn't have to do this - but there's no other way if I want to get help. I can do this. I'm strong enough, and it isn't so big or hard as all that. I remember the raft trip, walking on those rocks, doing whatever I could do at the time. So up I go, stepping here and grabbing on there. There's one particular place I think might break off if I grab it, but it doesn't.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm staying in someone else's house in another town, I'm here with a group - it's probably LT. Alleycat is with me, and I'm rather worried about him climbing on things - right now he's walking on some built-in bookshelves. There are books and knickknacks on them, and while he's being quite genteel, you know how easily these things turn to messes. If I disturb him, he might make a sudden move and knock something off. There's nobody else here at the moment, and I want to go into the bathroom just off here and take a shower, but I wonder what to do about Alleycat.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

My apartment is part of a complex, and it has a side door from the bedroom that opens onto a wood walkway, and there are bridge walkways to other parts of the building. (Seems to be redwood - it's quite pretty, there are green trees and flowers, nice place.) Gail Bialas is showing me something she's quite pleased about, and we talk. I go back inside. I don't have any lights on, and it's a bit gloomy. [Something] warns me that something is wrong, and I quietly go through to the living room and find that the place has been broken into. Turning toward (where the kitchen usually is), I see two girls just coming out (of what must be a bedroom - ?) with handfuls of my stuff, mostly jewellery. They don't seem to be especially big or especially tough, and while they're not particularly intimidated they do drop the stuff when I say "Hey - that's mine - what are you doing here?" (Or words to that effect.) They leave, but still look very self-confident and insolent. They're both blonde, by the way, pretty but a little trashy, wearing black leather jackets and jeans. (Actually they remind me of Kelly Bundy.) Outside, I can see there's more of them - at the front door, my apartment is on ground level and there's no deck - what I see are little hills, sort of dunes, hardly any grass, a bit of road - like I lived out in the boonies. Actually there's a whole gang outside - motorcycle - and they're just hanging around out there, milling around, some of them watching me. I wonder what they're planning. I'm afraid to go out there. They'd probably beat me up. I expect I should call the police.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm living in a very interesting apartment on top of a little building in the middle of town (probably a very small town) - it's got several rooms and was quite cheap for the space. Actually I'm living with somebody else, and also the other person's younger brother. I'm not sure who's temporary here - I think he's looking for a job and just staying for a while, but it might be me. I've only recently broken up with My ex, and I'm storing some of his stuff for him. [Actually, I don't see any actual evidence of anyone else in this place - all the furniture seems to be mine.] The others are gone off this morning, and I'm poking around, wearing a pink satiny nightgown and robe set, short - I'm a normal size - and I go from the back through to the living room. Has a lot of nice antique pieces, but doesn't look "done". Then I go back to this middle room where there's no furniture, but some extra plants that are just stored here. One of them is a kind of tree that's been growing a lot, and needs a new pot rather badly. It's been in a small black plastic one, and as I handle it, it falls out. I fiddle with it some to see how it'll stand up and what sort of pot it might need, and I think I'll go look round the corner. There's an alcove (this place is a lot like an attic) where some odds and ends are "stored" (they're just sitting out) that either I don't have a place for or they're My ex's. I haven't looked over here much lately, I've come to sort of turn a blind eye, and now that I'm looking, I'm surprised. There's a few bits of furniture and some ceramic urns and figurines, and also here's a stack of glasses, tumblers, rather fancy ones with a shaped bottom and gold/red trim. Then there's some others I see nearby, just as I'm thinking, "Gee, I could have used these at the Christmas party and wouldn't have to buy plastic ones at all" - I'd forgotten all about them. Most of this stuff I'd gotten at garage sales. I'm looking at a tall urn, narrow, white porcelain with flowers on, that might be good for the plant. I'm wondering if it's heavy enough not to be knocked over. I reach for its top and lift, not looking directly at it, and I'm surprised it's so light until I look and see it's a small urn I've got, it was inside the bigger one. I lift the bigger one and find it's quite heavy after all - good. On my way back to the other room I find a brochure lying on a couch that's on the opposite wall - it's for this auction or estate sale of My ex's other, larger, furniture, which is elsewhere. I sit down to look at it, but it's still too dark to read, so I stand up and switch on the overhead light. Just then, I hear something at the door. Someone's coming in, probably the younger brother - he's probably forgotten something. I have that traditional reaction of not wanting to be seen, so I decide to hide. I switch off the light again, gambling that he isn't far enough into the room to see it go off, then quickly step through into my bedroom. I pause, then decide to go all the way outside on the terrace/roof. (There's some plants and furniture out there, and also gravel rooftop. You can see the town around the building, a little urban setting - looks somewhat 50's - and if people on the street are looking up, they can see you.) I hide around the edge of the door, listening. There is some movement nearby, but it turns out to be Tree - he just comes out through the door, looking very elegant. He's just been in a TV commercial, advertising some recordings, I think - I remember some blurb written about him, in the papers or TV Guide, maybe, about how he's the "finest illustration of Bure, ('somebody', and 'somebody')" there's ever been, this is just great. I think it's very sweet and funny. My Tree, a TV star. Great.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've gone to a party at Lorren's house. Lori and Renee are there, but for the most part I don't know anybody. There's particularly a group of nice-looking young men, who are having a pretty good time but sticking together. Little by little people are going away, and I figure they must be leaving. Eventually I have no clothes on [though I don't know why I took them off, except I know I think it's the thing to do], and I wonder if somehow people don't want to be around me because of it. I decide I might as well leave - I know Lori and Renee are in another room watching TV, and I suppose I ought to say goodbye to somebody, so I go that way and find there's a lot more people in there than I thought. Maybe half the party's in there, just watching TV. I'm really at a loss now. I put my clothes back on and leave.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've come back into this house where someone I know lives and teaches dance [is she a personal friend? - don't know]. She's a little like Amanda, leaning toward the dotty side, older but won't act like an old woman. Her living room is smallish, a little dark with only a couple of table lamps lit (it's night-time) - flowered couch down the side, coffee table piled with books and notebooks. [Seems like this is a college town or neighborhood, and everybody is either attending or teaching or something. She's a regular fixture herself and has a kind of professor-status.] I've come in a bit late. The class she's been teaching is just leaving, they're milling a bit. The teacher's not visible, she's probably in another room. One kid (tall, reddish-blonde, swaggery) says she's through for the night, too late, or words to that effect, but I know she needs to see me (or vice versa? or mutual?), so I'm gonna stay. She'll be out. Meanwhile I pick up a book off the coffee table to look through. I thumb through it and light on a particular page. It's a kind of who's-who, and has little bios of people. This one is describing Alan Nagy and has a picture. At first I only glance over it idly, noting the expected, that he has a degree in psychology, went to such-&-such university. Then I look closer, because the picture doesn't seem to fit, and realize that he was actually only noted for psychology on the side. His main focus was art, and this picture shows a huge sculpture being lifted upright with scaffolding. It must be bronze - looks it - and the caption says it's eight feet tall. There are a couple of men in the picture. I expect one's Alan; I'd like to see it closer, I want to see what he used to look like, but I'd need a magnifying glass and more light.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a sort of police station, I think - a very plain room with plain desks and chairs, gray colors - and a woman is interrogating us, or maybe only the man I'm with. I'm paired with him [for reasons unknown] and James Dennehy is paired with another woman. The man is rather short, middleaged, wearing a suit - I think the interrogation is about him, and his wife beating him or something. It's a pretty cut-and-dried business, and over soon. James and the woman leave first, then us. We don't go the same places, and on my way home I decide I should go check on him, so I go to his apartment, which faces out over the sea on a hill, with a lovely terrace down below the long row of doors. His is right above the terrace, but I'm not positive which one - they all look alike. I know exactly its angle from the terrace, though, because I've sat there. But the terrace is overgrown with some sort of vines or long stick-like plants that have grown up from below - how could this happen in only a few hours? They're about halfway up the steps and over the floor of the terrace. I start down the steps, thinking I can get by them, but then realize I can't. Hum. So I go back up and pick a likely door. It seems like a good choice, because as I stand in front of it, I see it's shorter than the other doors - I would actually have to duck to get in. Even the building is shorter than the apartment next to it. I knock on the door, and to my surprise, James answers, "Who is it?" He lives next door to the man, so it must be the next apartment I want. It turns out James has just now gone to bed after talking to the little man - he just left, seems to be all right. I say how sorry I am for disturbing him (he hasn't opened the door, we've been talking through it) and that he should go back to bed. I'm in a prison, visiting with another woman. We're in an open area where a couple of very wide corridors meet and a sort of terrace begins. It must be late afternoon, the light is getting dim and yellow-gray. We sit down on a couple of long park benches. (Seems like we read or study for a little while.) After a while the men (inmates) start coming, and they gather around to talk to us, and we talk to them. (We're here for some educational purpose, I'm not sure what - it's as if we're teaching them something, like sages or something.) They crowd us a bit, and a few of them hold out things they want us to take, and I'm saying, "Guys, you know I can't take this - you know better than that!" (Because of the rules.) Gradually they go again. I'm smoking a cigarette, and I've been flicking the ashes on the floor. I'd just done it automatically, and now I see that there are no other ashes or butts anywhere, except mine. I'm about to crush it out on the ground, but I'm feeling very self-conscious about being so messy, so unthinking. I could have found (asked for) an ashtray, after all.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm on my way home - where I live now. I've been where I used to live, I think it's my family home and my mother or stepmother was there. I've been moved out for some while, but I'm finally moving out the last things. Right now I'm pulling a piano behind me. I don't have any other way of getting it home, so I've rigged a harness so I can pull it on its casters. It's not big, maybe it's a baby grand - black, curvy shape, definitely not an upright. Fairly easy to pull, but still quite a chore to get it all the way there. I have to pull it on the street, of course, and it's causing somewhat of a traffic problem. Especially, I have to go up some stairs, fairly steep and rather long. [Never mind that the cars couldn't go up steps - they're still there.] Part of me says I can't do this, but little by little up we go. It's hard but not as hard as I thought it would be. I'm worried about losing it altogether and it falling back, but at least there are cars behind me (I'm concerned about that - they're lining up and I'm so slow) and the one behind me would stop it. Actually, I kind of wish it would help me by pushing. But finally I get it up to the top, very slowly, very slowly, bit by bit. As it gets on level ground one wheel at a time, I'm more relieved. I pull it off to the side so the traffic can get past and rest. This isn't exactly outdoors any more, by the way, it's some sort of department store. I think about what I need to do to get it the rest of the way home.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in London, having been here on a vacation, and getting ready to go home. I'm travelling on an "alternative" airline, it's got stewardesses and a regular plane and all but it sure isn't as professional and organized as, say, Pan Am, or any other one I know for that matter. I'm with a group, like a large tour group or charter, though I haven't been with them in England, just the flight. We're just getting on the plane, bustling with luggage and all, the stewardesses are trying to get it all organized, and it's not coming together very well. They have uniforms - dresses - but they sure aren't very attractive, quite dull. And they seem not especially nice - not rude, but detached, a bit frustrated, not sharp at all. We, the passengers, are helping to get the luggage stowed, and some of us are instructed to go up to the top of the plane (outside), where we hand luggage down a ladder - well on the side. It's bright daylight, getting to the tail end of the afternoon. I'm talking to an older woman about my trip, and telling her how extraordinary it was that I had run into 3 - was it 3? - well, 2 at least - people I knew. I started to tell about one of them and then remembered Elizabeth. Oh, yes, I said, it was 3! I forgot Elizabeth Hilbish! And proceeded to describe her situation with the guy she met in Hawaii, but somehow the woman I'm talking to isn't paying attention. She keeps on misunderstanding and I keep saying, no, it was this... There are others up here, and crew on the ground doing things, and there comes a box or something being passed through that the older woman says she won't touch. She's already done that before, and it's just too heavy, and why are we having to do all this anyway? So we're just watching. Eventually, things seem to be complete and the rest of us are waiting for instructions, when there's some sensation of the plane moving, and we suddenly wonder, what if the pilot forgot to check whether we were off the roof and took off? Given the level of competence of the whole crew, it's possible. (By the way, on this roof are large round - shoulder-high - barriers around the edges, we've been leaning against them; they're soft, like hard rubber or something.) Just as we're reassuring ourselves that nothing like that can happen, it does. The plane moves a bit forward and starts to nose upward. We start screaming for help, "No! Stop! We're still up here! You can't take off!" et cetera, and we're joined by people on the street below, mostly kids. This plane is sitting right in the middle of a neighborhood with nice houses and lots of green trees. Somehow it doesn't need to taxi, but just goes straight up to take off, nose first, which apparently bends, because it's going up but we're not. There are all these kids shouting at its nose as though it were an animal, like a horse or cow, and they were trying to get its attention. They're trying to communicate to the pilot, there are people on the roof. It does stop, just in time, and I'm starting to fume. I swear I'll never use this airline again as long as I live. The panic was awful, I was trying to hold on to the rail and knowing there was no way I could hold on in flight - no question about it, I'd be dead. I pictured us just flying off the roof one by one, and this asshole pilot not even caring. Apparently the crew thought it was our own lookout for us to get back inside.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I have these white mice, 5 or 6 at least, and I need to get them into their little separate containers. They've got these boxes, plastic I guess, that they need to be in, I guess so they can be moved somewhere. I've been trying to make them nice for the mice, and I've put some stuff in the bottom, and also a layer of white stuff that mostly looks like salad dressing, so they can have something to snack on. I get one of the mice and put it in its box, but it looks like I got too much of the salad dressing in there because it just slips and gets submerged in it. I take it out, and my word it's just all over salad dressing, how awful. I certainly didn't mean for this to happen, he must be feeling just awful being covered with salad dressing. I'll have to clean him up, but how do you clean a mouse covered in salad dressing? I'm sorry. How stupid.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a bus (school-bus type) with Jimmy - he's driving - it's dark and the road is wind-y, goes by a creek, with a nice bit of green bank and trees between, lower than the road. It's been raining, and might again. We're not travelling so fast as all that, but the turns are coming faster and tighter, so Jimmy's having a time keeping up. Well, here we go anyway - off the road, there's a turn he knows he can't make, so we're off onto the grass, and he's trying to keep from running us into the creek. This bus has a lot of momentum, so we have to do quite a bit of swerving and changing to keep the sucker out of the trees and the creek and maybe come to a stop or get back on the road.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm on a bicycle, in a hurry to get somewhere. I decide to cut through to another street by going down a side street I haven't been on before. This street - it's only a block's worth, really - is just lovely. It's got big, arching green trees with huge ivy-covered trunks, and cute little houses. Because of the trees being so big with such interwoven branches, it's rather dark, but cool, gentle, lovely. I'm really surprised, how come I don't know about this street? Does anybody? The residents probably are very careful to keep it nice. Anyway, at the end of it, it goes into a sort of park. It's connected to a school, and I can cut through the grounds this way. I weave my way on my bike through various schoolyard paraphernalia, including a football game. I get the impression the coach is not too keen on this, so I hustle and duck into a building - a gym or something - still riding - until I can make my way out the other side to the street.

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Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm driving in somewhat of a hurry, and stop at the light. There's a car in front of me, and it doesn't go when the light changes. I honk & yell but nothing happens, then a barrier arm comes down and blocks the road as if it were a railroad track. Now I'm really mad, and when the thing lifts and everybody else drives off, I basically just do a No process, wave my arms and yell and even get out of the car and pound on the side. Finally I get back in and drive off. It helped some. Where I go is some kind of institutional building - I have an appointment for consultation, I think with Ted Danson. He's tied up at the moment, I'm waiting. There's a flight of stairs in the center of the floor with no railing. Also a dog or cat here that I'm very glad to see, an old friend. [A nice friendly feeling is part of this - I am liked here, I feel wanted.] I'm in a room with at least one other person when a guy pops in looking for a different room, he's come to apply for a job. I can see there's something unusual about him, then realize he's handicapped. [The actual nature of the handicap isn't specified.] He's wearing a suit and he's very insecure, almost bumbling. He has a musical instrument with him, and it has various parts to it. I tell him where he needs to go, and after he leaves I see he's dropped one of these parts. I take it down to the room - it's a classroom, and the teacher is up front, he's already had the guy go into his office. I wait at the side (like we do at the Training with Trainer notes) and he nods and beckons me over. I show him the part and he says he'll take care of it. He makes a joking remark about the guy, not quite disparaging but close. He (the applicant) hasn't made a very good impression so far.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in an office, I think, or some place that's not a house - it gives onto the street. There's a man here attacking someone I'm with, he's trying to rob us, I think. I have a spray bottle of water (like the one I use on Rouse) and while they're grappling I spray the attacker with it. At first it's hard to hit him anywhere that counts, but then I get him right in the face and throw him off balance. I keep spraying him, and he tries to come after me, but I keep just barely out of his reach. The struggle ends up going outside into the street. (It's a business district, a sort of minor street, no traffic but there are people about, who gather and watch. Smallish brick stores and office buildings.) The man keeps making lunges, but I keep from being grabbed solid and get in another spray. At last he gets turned around just right, and we can grab him and pin his arms. All over. Now we can call the police. I'm with a number of other people outside a barnlike building on the grounds of a rather country-looking house - it's not out of town but in an old section, this is more like a tiny farm than a big back yard. Big trees, weathered wood, everything all green and overgrown. There's a sort of deck outside the barn with small tables and chairs on it. There are also wood rail fences around the property. It's not a sunny day. We're here as a sort of meeting, not formal but to discuss something, a project, it's somewhat political in nature. I'm not actually part of this group but they want me to discuss this business with them. I don't feel adequate to that, frankly, I don't know that much about it, but they seem to think it'll be worthwhile. Lori's supposed to be coming too, but she's late if she's coming at all. I'm bothered about that, impatient. There's food here, we're having sort of a picnic, and the others are going inside but I want to stay outside for a bit, sit in the air and collect myself. I've come to a place where there's a big open wood building, kind of a cross between a garage and a barn. You can park head-in on dirt right in front, and I've brought the Toyota here to pick up this white truck (small, like the Toyota). Someone was supposed to come with me but didn't. I meet somebody inside and settle things up, but now that I'm leaving I get on a bicycle and start to ride away. The road goes around a stand of trees in front, and just as I go around the curve I stop, realizing I've got to at least take the truck back. So I go back, put the bike in the truck and go. I'd rather have ridden the bike, but at least this'll be faster.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've just come home from work - I live in a house in a place a lot like where we've lived in suburbs - Tree and Alleycat live with me, but the 3rd is a fluffy white cat. When I come in I'm in very good spirits and think about getting outdoors, maybe go for a walk right away like I used to (only I never used to, but the memories are in my mind). I figure I'll at least go to the mail box, which is for some reason far away. I could have stopped by in the car but didn't think about it. So, inside this nice-looking suburban house, I've come in the back door, gone through the kitchen, and realized Alleycat is outside - has been all day, he got out and wouldn't come in. So I go to the front door through a sort of dining room or den - it doesn't actually have furniture in it, but that's its location. It has a ceiling fan, which I turn on. At the front door, the other 2 cats go out, I guess to do their business, and there's Alleycat, along with something on the ground, it seems to be a present for Alleycat. It would appear he has an admirer, and he's been getting these notes. [I'm not positive, but it may be that she took him away in the morning and brought him back just before I got home.] Anyway, it's dinnertime, and the idea is we all should come in now, please, and it takes a couple of requests. Tree comes in first, then the white cat, then Alleycat. (There's a screen door, so it's okay that the front door is standing open all this time.) I gather up Alleycat and his presents and go inside. I turn off the overhead lights - there are 4 buttons, dimmers, and I hit them wrong a couple times before I get it right. Then I'm gonna turn off the fan and forget where the switch is for a minute (it's on the opposite wall, into the kitchen). I can see out the glass back doors (sliding) the nice green hill beyond - I used to live a few streets over that way, there's a creek between, too, and I'm wondering if there's a passage over the creek without going all the way around. That's where I still get mail.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a living room of sorts with 2 other people, at least one is male, and they're friends, but I can't name them. We're sitting talking. Somebody may be just moving in here, but I'm not sure it's me who lives here. Outside on the deck - very like my real one, but not obscured by the trees - is a great deal of stuff, mostly if not all electronics, stereo equipment, some quite large. It's not night, but it's either overcast or twilight, rather dim outside, and inside we don't have any lights on so it's barely enough to see by. I get up, and go into the front room to check the deck through the window, and lo and behold, there's actually somebody taking things away! I see 2 men carrying something between them. For a second I freeze, then go right back and say, "There's somebody on the deck - call 911", meaning to go do something else myself, but the others don't move - instead they look perplexed, like "Who, me?" So I do it myself, at the phone right in the middle of the room. I'm not actually sure I've pressed the buttons right because I don't hear a ring, but a voice comes on the line - and I'm not sure what she said. I hesitate, then ask if this is 911. She says it is, but she doesn't quite believe I'm serious. She says am I sure, and do I really want the police, something like that - she seems to know who I am, and is really dubious, as if she knows something about me that makes me unreliable and she shouldn't take the call too seriously. But in the end she says okay, and I put the phone down. I go through the room [It's as if there's no opposite wall, and it continues into another sort of building] and come to a steep place where it's darker and rather like a great marble hall, the upper reaches - or at least middle - and a series of very narrow, steep "steps", are cut into the space. I need to tell somebody here about the robbery, and I do - there's somebody taking a message to somebody else - and now I'm climbing back down. (You can't walk upright on these steps.)

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I've just arrived at this place where Jenny and Cathy and I are going to do Bio-Energetics - it's a living room, with a couch and TV and all, but it's part of a place where people come, like a club or the Y or a local rec. hall, maybe. We've never come here before. When Bettye and I arrive, we get started talking, and Jenny is looking at us funny - then she says something like, "Are we going to exercise or what?" I'd actually forgotten, I'm quite comfortable just sitting on the floor talking. (I'd asked Bettye if she'd seen something on TV - maybe Twin Peaks.) So we get started, though not in our usual circle of up-and-down pumping. Jenny is experimenting with that yoga pose where you stand with one leg over your head and you grab your foot. I tell her that the trick is in the standing leg. I was going to say the hip, too, but forgot. For demonstration, I do it myself and find that it's actually easier than I remember. I touch my foot to my head, and then reach it higher and over; then, because it seems like fun, I bend forward and reach the foot all the way to the ground. I didn't realize I could do that, a very interesting feeling - not a real pose, of course, I haven't really stretched and placed everything, and didn't stay in the pose, but fun. I point this out to Cathy, who's watching. Shortly some other people come in, a couple with 4 little kids. They're not part of our group, and we don't know why they're here, but we figure we can live with them being here if they're quiet enough. We'll see. But then some more come, an even larger family, and they're not as quiet. Apparently they don't know we've reserved this room, and have come in for some meeting or whatnot, and now there's just too many of them. (The room has gotten a lot bigger, by the way - now it's the size of a meeting hall or small gym.) We're going to have to tell them we've reserved the room and please leave. I'm in a little apartment that a male friend lives in, and he's taking a shower before we go somewhere. I'm poking around, looking at his magazines and books, and his sister comes in. We don't know each other, so we introduce ourselves. She just popped in for a visit, and I tell her he's in the shower; we go over to the bathroom door and try to get his attention. We wave hands in front of the door and call, but it takes a few tries. She finally stands in front of the door herself to talk to him. She's nice, I like her. Dark brown hair like his, both good-looking, she's well-dressed, friendly, comfortable to be around.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at work. (Looks nothing like the library, it's a rather dim place with yellow light and nothing is recognizable except that it does seem to have open-office landscaping.) I've remembered the orange electrical cord I lent Ted for his meeting and didn't get back, and I ask him where it is. He says he let Theo take it away, he doesn't know what she did with it. So I ask Theo, and she's getting ready to go out of the office with this group of people on some errand, but they will be going near where she put the cord, so if I want to come along and fetch it I can. Even though she says this, she looks and sounds uncomfortable, as if she feels guilty, or shouldn't be asking me to join them. I get the distinct impression I'm considered a liability. But I want that cord, and I'm already pissed at it having been passed around, especially to Theo, so I go. We walk quickly, and go into the back part of the building, where the "works" are - boiler room, mechanical stuff, storage, etc. On one of the lower floors is my own storeroom where I keep that orange cord. We walk on concrete floors, sometimes they amount to wide catwalks because they're open to the lower floor, and there's many turns - it's like a maze back here. We seem to be walking faster, gradually, and I'm not appreciating it. I'm having to work to keep up and I have the feeling they're trying to lose me. (There's one guy that's really in charge of their group, and I can tell he doesn't want me along.) At one point I get stuck and have to stop for a minute. (Shoelace untied, or caught on something, or drop something, I forget.) They don't stop, but keep right on plowing ahead. I see them at a distance go through an outside door. As I get loose and go after them, I'm getting really mad. I go through the door, and see the group ahead of me, and call out "THEO" in my yelling-at-Rouse voice, very authoritative and imperative. I have to do it twice before they stop and I can catch up. I point out that I was held up back there, and it's hard to catch up when they've gone on ahead so fast. I'm looking fierce, and Theo's nervous. We continue around to the front of the building, where there's a driveway and parking lot. They go across the rows of medians, where there are hummocks and puddles because it's been raining. Now it's starting to rain again, even. People are out here waiting for buses, including Linda Thomas. I stop and she comes up to me and tells me about some other interesting new thing she's just gotten into, or hold of, or something. She tells me Jenny's been using this one particular thing (a fruit or vegetable) with this, it really works. While I'm out here, a girl comes up to say hello - she looks familiar, and just as I've got her placed as a LT graduate (who used to come and do things with us, but we haven't seen her in a long time) she says I bet you don't remember who I am, and I say her first name's Norma (right) but I'm sorry I can't remember your last name - she says that's ok. She's very friendly.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I live in an apartment that's almost exactly like the one that I left, and there are at least 5 cats here. Tree, maybe Alleycat, and Rouse, for sure, but in addition there are some others, of various sizes, and they're quite recent, they've just come to live here for reasons unknown - they're not babies, but they're special, I don't know why. The fact is that some Arabs want them; they want them a lot - I don't know how I know that, except that it's a done deal, and it's up to me to try and protect them from being kidnapped. [I'm not sure abt. the sequence of events, so I'm gonna say one thing, and then another, and if it doesn't seem to work out, so be it...] Gary S. is here with me, he's just arrived, I guess, and I have just discovered that the Arabs have stationed themselves outside, sort of unobtrusively, but quite visible just the same, and I'm thinking I'll call the police. I'm trying to show them to My cousin through the window, but they're not that easy to see without also showing yourself. He's not entirely convinced of this, but just the same he can see one of them and there isn't any earthly reason for an Arab dressed up like that to be leaning against a tree down on the ground. So he - like My cousin will - admits (that it seems) this is true. I'm wanting to call the police, but for some reason I guess I don't, because they don't come - I think that we thought that they wouldn't, because after all it's just cats, and why would they want to kidnap a cat? See, I don't know precisely what they want to do with them. They may have some special use for them that they don't normally, but I can't gamble on that. They may even be wanting to sacrifice them for some reason, or do something terrible to them (and I won't sit still for that, because I like them). So I'm worried about what's going to happen here. Another thing is that I'm out in the car with my mom, and we stop at something on the order of a 7-11 for something to drink, and I'm needing to get back home because of the Arab situation. Something happens there, at the 7-11, that worries me - I don't remember what it is - but we have to get back in the car in a hurry and go on back. Lo and behold, when we come back, there they are, visible this time, and in fact I'm not living in an upstairs apartment now - this is a house, and there's a porch, and there they are sort of hanging around the front door. Now, the fun part is, they are just sort of idling there - my mom and I walk up to the front door, and I don't know what the hell they're going to do. I can't afford to be too scared about it, and it's important to get in the door, you know - so we just march brazenly through them (there's about 4 or 5), and they don't do anything at all. I get to the door, and move very quickly - we get in through it, and slam it shut, but don't get it slammed shut quite fast enough, because I guess what they were waiting for was for me to open the door, because they now try to force their way in the door. I can't hold it real hard, but there is a post - an upright, right behind the door, which is very convenient, because what it means is I can get up and brace my back on the pole and hold the door shut with my feet, which I do. I get the door all the way shut and locked, and they have to give up, which is great. Now, I don't know what the point was in them waiting for the door to be open, because after I look around, it's quite clear that they have gotten in and taken the special cats, which is a worry, and the next thing is that I'm worried about them coming back and also grabbing my cats. I don't know quite what to do about that at the moment, and what's also clear is that I have to try and rescue the other cats. I'm gonna have to find out where they are, and go and get 'em back. This is scary - but the fact is, that I don't know how dangerous it is, so it seems important to me that I might as well try. Maybe it's not as hard as it seems, and I cannot give up without a fight, basically. By the way, the setting for all of this is as though it were late afternoon or early morning - the light is not bright, though it is daylight, and there's that sort of mild gloom that you get when it's one of those times you don't have the lights on inside. You can see, like to talk to each other, or move around; you'd want to turn a light on to read by if you wanted to do that - it might even be trying to rain outside.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I am in a neighborhood, where all the houses are different and they're all old, and really interesting-looking - there's a lot of green, tall, overarching trees - you can barely see the sunlight. It's really gorgeous. I am looking for a house, and I think I know what street it's on, but I'm not exactly sure which - I know which street it's on, I'm not exactly sure where the street is placed in this little area here. If I can find it, I know what it looks like. There is a large, mean, dog in the area; I'm wanting to avoid it, but I can't be sure exactly where it is, because of not knowing which street is which. I seem to be walking, but part of the time I'm riding, because my mind is telling me all these things about how I'm gonna handle this dog business - I am afraid it's just going to come up and rip me to shreds, is the main thing - another is that I can handle this - this is what I keep telling myself; the dog will not necessarily attack me, even though it may bark a lot, especially if I am riding on this vehicle - this may be enough to keep it from coming too close to me. It's not inside of a car, by the way, it's more like being in a jeep or something where I am exposed, but there is a moving vehicle under me. I think about the mastery that some people have over dogs and animals, whereby if you retain confidence and show them that you are not afraid and you order them to stop, or sit, or something like that, they'll stop attacking you, which is nice. Basically I haven't run into this dog yet, and I've come to the end of the street, where there's a cross-street, and decided to turn left, because I think the street I want may be parallel to the left and I go a couple of streets further and find that I'm coming to another dead end where it makes a right angle with the last street of this part, and that's definitely not it, I know that one is not it, especially since I can see the building at the end of the street, which is not a house - maybe a hotel, something like that - small place, and I know that I must be going in the wrong direction, so I turn around. But while I'm there I run into somebody that I know - friend of mine, I guess, who's with somebody else who's got a couple of big dogs - this is not the mean dog - I should call these mastiffs, or something that size that type, very big, stolid, dogs, and this person is not necessarily Dirk, but is like Dirk - he's just gonna ramble on here, as I join them to walk the other direction, and I listen to him go on and on about how these dogs are going to make his living - in hunting, in some capacity. I don't really know in my own mind while I'm there, where it is he means to hunt them, or what precisely he means to hunt - I think it's a fur-bearing animal - that seems to be the upshot of it - but while I'm listening to him go on about this I'm thinking, this is ridiculous, get yourself a real job, these dogs don't want to do all this for you - and he's talking as if these dogs are real "killers", _____ dogs, tough dogs, and I'm thinking, this is pitiful - they just want to be petted! They're really nice-looking dogs - I think they might be fun to have around, they don't look like they mean to be tough at all. I'm thinking about getting an opportunity to pet one of 'em - the great big black _____ thing that's walking next to me, actually. Frankly, I'm getting a little bit bored doing this in the first place, and I have got my own place to get to. So I sort of duck away from them after a while. However, before I do that, we have turned right and gone down one of these streets - having not found the house that I was looking for on it - this hotel seems to be where the business district starts right away, and the opposite side of it is more nearly city street. We have come through the kitchen, where there is this counter-thing running along where some cooks are working, it's a butcher-block type of thing, and I know that they cut meat and whatnot there, and prepare a lot of food. We have come up to this, and they're asking questions, like directions, or information, and I'm just waiting there. I've got this binder in my hands - in my arms, actually, a small stack of things - notebooks, etc. - and I lay them on the counter - as it were, you have your arms crossed in front of you holding these things, and just to rest my arms, I lay them on the counter, and then a minute later I snatch them up again, realizing, "Oh hell, these things have got germs on them and this is a food preparation area - somebody's food's gonna be contaminated with this stuff, whatever it may be." I'm really quite embarrassed about that - nobody has noticed it particularly or said not to do that, but I'm wanting to clean it off so that everything will be ok again, and they're still talking. This is where we part company, the guys with the dogs, and I'm gonna go on through the hotel here. I'm looking for Arsenio Hall - I'm supposed to have a visit with him. Maybe it's an interview (though I don't know what I would be interviewing him for), and I'm supposed to meet him somewhere - and the fact is that I run into him in the front hallway. This front hallway is kind of like a lot of little hotels that I went to in England. It's certainly no big flashy hotel - it's got this comfortable little lobby and a tiny service desk, and he is out there. I'm guessing he's staying here, and has just come down to do something at the desk. There's another person there, probably the desk clerk (or someone else associated with the hotel), and they're just chatting. It's night now, in this hotel, and there's this laid-back sort of attitude going on, where you just sort of stand around and chat. So, since I have run into him, I'm telling him what it is that I want, and we fix up that he's going to come along to the house that I'm staying at overnight, and visit with me there after a while. So I go out the front door, down some steps, and then I come to the house I'm staying at, which is my grandmother's house. (It's not the real Bigmama's house on Vanderbilt, but the street is something like it, and the house something like hers, only my grandmother is really like Grandmom, and later on that is exactly what I call her.) She is old - not especially decrepit - and forgetful and a little silly, maybe, but not helpless by any means - slow. We're upstairs, she's dithering over something or other, and I'm just helping her do something, and chatting. The reason I'm here, I think, is maybe because it's convenient for me to do something else, being here. I'm living in the apartment I have now, very satisfactorily, and I don't think that I'm in Grandmom's house just to help out - I think it's something to do with me. Now my brother comes along, and he has got a deal to say on the subject of Grandmom and me and the situation. She's gone downstairs, and he is telling me that I am going to have to move in here and take care of her. Apparently they have got this all worked out ("they" being my other relatives, such as they may be), and I guess there's even a lawyer involved, that they've fixed this all up, that I'm to move in here, and take care of things because she is no longer able to take care of herself. Which is what they say. And I'm going along with this for a bit, feeling sad about it, and hurt, without really paying any attention to it. Until it dawns upon me a few minutes later, "Wait a minute! Num - ber - one: I don't WANT to move in here! I have my own place; that is where I live; I want to live there; I like it; I have my life there, and I don't wanta move in here, and I don't see why you should tell me to do that. Number two: I don't even see how come she needs to be taken care of so bad. I don't think she's done anything all that drastically bad, maybe you think that she needs help, and that's all very well, but why do you think you need to tell me to do this? Number Three: I have you, and a cousin (and maybe another brother or sister or two - but I don't know - it's in my mind there's other siblings here), and just what is wrong with any of you coming to live here? What do you think it has to be me for? And I'm not gonna do it! How's that?" He seems to be a bit disappointed, and to think that this is an idle protest, and it's not gonna do me any good at all, because it's a done deal - of course I'm gonna do this. The more it goes on, the more I'm aware that I am not. I am simply not gonna stand for being pushed around like this.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a dressing room (or locker room, or a large ladies' room) putting on makeup, getting ready for a date. I've been by myself for a while, or with a friend, and a group of other girls comes in. They line up at the counter with their gear, and this one crowds in on me where I am at the left side of the counter. They seem to have just come from an aerobics class or something. (I haven't - I've just been at work all day.) She says something snotty and I don't actually reply, but it's also true that I was just finishing, and say that all she had to do was ask. I pick up my stuff - a whole makeup kit and large bag of gear - and go. This date is a set-up thing, sort of blind date, with Prince. He doesn't know who he's going out with.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at a LT - not sure if I'm in it or on team, it might be a focus course or not, but it's being held outside in a nice place with trees. The trainees are all on folding chairs. I'm going for a bathroom break, and 2 or 3 other girls follow me. The bathroom is in a rickety little building next to this open space where the trainees are, and the whole place seems to be fairly old, dates at least from the 40's, very country, may be (or have been) a farm, that sort of construction and fixtures. As I go into the bathroom, the others are not far behind, and I'm figuring we'll all come in together though I'm not keen on that, and as I step in I push the door to behind me, a bit harder than I planned on, because it almost shuts, and they stop outside, presumably because they think I want to be alone. I feel uncomfortable about that - I don't want to shut anybody out. Actually, I'm not alone anyway. Bill Cosby is in here, and he's being very talkative, telling me about his family, asking how mine is and how I am, all while I'm sitting on the toilet. It's in a partial stall without a door, so he can see me, and I keep my skirt (the big ivory one) pulled down around me. This is rather awkward, too, but it doesn't seem to bother him - actually he takes no notice and just goes right on talking. I have my pee, but that problem starts again, where I can't quite get finished - as soon as I think I've stopped, the urge comes back and I can't get up till a few more drops come out and then it starts over. I get wearier and wearier, all the while knowing the girls outside are wondering what the hell I'm doing.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm going to a kind of flea market with Mom and Marcy. It's a bit of a drive out of town, and we got started late, so there's not a lot of time left. It's at least partly in a building, with corridors, and alcoves and rooms where people have set things up. I'm seeing some nice things, doilies and artificial flowers and china and even some sculpture, all white. Antique furniture, ladies in ruffled gowns. Odd sort of place. There's a larger space with a lot of empty tables, it looks like a lot of people have gone already. That's a little disappointing, but mostly we just think we'd better hurry to look at the rest.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

An outside room or porch, windows all around but shaded, a screen door, concrete steps outside, driveway, lawn, trees, next-door house, very suburban neighborhood, in here porch-type furniture, dark, crowded. There's a sort of refrigerator in here, has compartments, meant for a specific purpose to do with freezing things including live animals. I discover a kitten in here, I think it's not supposed to be here and I ask this guy that's around if I should take it out - he says yes. (He's in his 20s, blonde, husky - no scientist, but he's in charge of whatever it is we're doing.) So I get it out and help it thaw, and it comes to life just fine (as if this was a really normal thing) and starts to poke around. It finds the door and wants to go outside but it's not quite up to that yet, so I grab it - I need the guy's help - he's outside the door and he helps me get it back in and latch the door.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm working in a plant where there are all these chemical-storage things and all sorts of safety precautions need to be taken. It's not a real big place; it's rather old, and the plant part is fronted by a little house - used to be a house, now it's a sort of large office with tables and files, etc. Reminiscent of the 50's, all rather dreary. Nobody's English, but the place seems to be in the center of London (well, if not the actual center, then at least well into urban stuff), and I've just changed apartments, and that's where I live. This place is mostly staffed by men, probably union men, who are very clubby and don't like management telling them what to do, or any interference in the way they do things, which is none too careful or efficient. I'm not management, but part of my job is safety control, and they don't like me already because I'm a woman. I've been trying to talk to this guy in charge about something that I've seen. It has to do with a yellow powder that's highly toxic, and I suspect it's leaking. He won't listen to me, keeps putting me off and evading. There are some others who know what I'm talking about, but they won't or can't get involved. I'm feeling very frustrated, with that nagging, foreboding feeling in my stomach. The day has worn on, and there's a sort of cocktail party after working hours, so everybody's stayed over. (Rouse is here with me, by the way, there was some reason she had to come along and I couldn't take her home in the middle of the day. There's also a stray dog I'm looking after.) I'm trying to work out how to get to talk to people about this problem while they're a sort of captive audience, I'm really concerned. A girl who works here beckons me over to a corner of the room and behind a door where nobody can see us. (The outside door is in the middle of the far wall - it actually faces north - and the door to the factory/plant is up here in the southwest corner; it's propped open.) We talk about this leakage problem a bit, but she doesn't think there's anything we can do, and warns me that I'm liable to get in trouble if I keep after it. I'm arguing that dammit, I have to - somebody has to, or something really bad is going to happen. We go into the plant to look at things, and Rouse comes along. Just inside the door there's this big thing all iron and great big nuts and bolts and suchlike - the whole place seems to be boilers and steel vats and stuff - this thing is maybe 4' high and has a bolted-down cap on it. Rouse jumps around it and I want to get hold of her, when I get a good look at this thing and see, not traces, but quite a lot of that yellow powder has oozed out of the lid. This is terribly dangerous. The stuff is positively deadly if it gets loose. While it's sitting still it's not too bad, but it can't get airborne. (I don't know if it's deadly to inhale or to get it on you.) We look at each other, horrified, and run back inside. I start yelling for everybody to get out, and they hesitate at first, but they do go. There is some question about whether I have the authority to do this, but I really don't care - it's in the back of my mind, and part of me wonders what will happen, but I go on yelling and herding people out. Finally they're all gone and I'm rounding up Rouse and the dog, getting ready to go myself. Down at the end of the room where the outside door is, is a bed and a television set. (Don't ask me why - it just seems like they're part of my personal furnishings, as though this were my "office", and I can lie around and watch game shows when I want to.) Under the bed is a small suitcase I've brought in to change from my outside clothes to work clothes because of my move (something to do with the reason I brought Rouse). I fetch it out and get on the bed to change clothes, which is basically from a big sweaty T-shirt to a cleaner one, and (put on? take off?) my big black boots (with heels). I lay there and watch TV for a bit, then realize I'd better get the hell out, so I round up everybody and go out the door. There's a little vestibule here, and it's night now, and now that I'm here I realize we've got more passengers than I thought. In the shadows of the vestibule is another cat, and now by George there's another dog too. Not the same kind, and I don't know where he came from, and I'm wondering how I'm going to deal with all these animals. My new landlady may not take kindly to 2 dogs and a 4th cat. Also, how am I going to drive the car with all this lot?

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at a camp somewhere - it's not just a resort, I seem to be learning something, doing practical things. All I know about it is the outside is nice; I'm kind of liking it here, but I've had about enough of it now. There are a lot of people here, some of them I know, some I don't. If it's not Sunday morning right now, then it's Sunday afternoon, and this guy who is like a counsellor - at least he's not just a participant either (we seem to have some official capacity, let's put it like that - we're not running the place, but we're not altogether guests, either) - and he has come back from somewhere. I expected a friend of ours to be with him; a young man who's kind of like Javier, in a way - he has that place, he's about the same age - sort of the new guy who's really good and everybody likes him and he's always around. And he's not with him and I'm wondering where he's gotten to. He's been off somewhere like to the store or something, on an errand into town, maybe. So I ask about him, and he says that he got called away, there was something he needed to go back for, and mentioning that it's about time I went back, too. He has a Sunday paper or there are some Sunday papers just now brought in - one of them is the Herald, of course, it's nice and clean and new and fresh, like Sunday papers start out - and of course I want to see the Lottery number, so I get hold of the paper and start looking in the front section. There's the comics the way they usually are, but usually for the weekday pages, inside the section, and they're also black and white (which the Herald's aren't at the moment) - anyhow, I don't get to the number before something else happens. This paper has a sort of a bug stuck to it - it falls out, and it's not just a bug; it's a ball of bugs. It's as though a bunch of these beetle-y sort of things have clubbed up together - maybe they've done this to hibernate, or something (I don't know why they would do such a thing, but they have), and they look dead; they look all motionless and dry. But just the same, even dead, I don't want to mess with bugs, so I figure I had better get rid of it. And it's a real challenge to scoop it up - the thing is maybe almost baseball-sized, real big bugs; they're orange, and shiny, and they literally are sort of side-by-side grouped together, making, mostly, a ball. There's a lot more than 5 or 6 of them, I should think. Now, I've decided I've got to take this thing away, of course, and so I scoop it up on the paper. The thing is, I don't do it quite there - for some reason, I have now decided to carry it to my mother's - so the next thing I'm aware of is being at her house. She isn't there; I'm curious about that and wondering when she's going to get back. [This is not my mother's house as it is in the real world] - this is more nearly like my grandparents' house - it's middleaged-old and has this "rustic" garage to it, that has your basic up-and-down door - it's cobwebby and musty in there, and somewhere along the line I've become aware of another ball of insects. This must have been at the house - I don't know where it came from. I've been into the garage, thinking I was gonna go into the house through it, and realizing they weren't there, went back outside to see what I could see there, and gone up on this sort of little porch, maybe to a side door of the house - it's right next to a large bush/tree - there's lots and lots of plants all around the house, in this nice summery sunshine, hot and all that - and this is where the other bug-thing comes into play. It's definitely alive - although I might have suspected that it was dying. I decide I had better get rid of it altogether, so I'm going to get a shovel and pound 'em apart. I go into the garage again, and first I see a short spade and pick that up - realize it's kind of small, look around again a little bit, find a real shovel, a long one with a good-sized blade on it, go back outside, and I find these things, and when I start pounding on 'em, it seems that I've got the short spade in my hand after all. Well, that's silly. So I put it down, pick up the shovel - which I have in fact got with me - now one of these things, that was up on the porch, seems to have been coming to life, sort of. That is why I got disturbed and dropped it. It was like it was giving birth to another bunch of bugs, which may have been in fact the case; on the bottom of the ball something looked like it was trying to break out of it, and I decide, "We got enough bugs!" (Don't ask me how I know that these were undesirable bugs, but that was my conclusion.) I am back here, starting to find the thing and pound the snot out of it, which I do. I'm sitting next to Nancy Gaines with a young girl who is sitting in front of us - we're with another bunch of people - she doesn't know us - we're visiting (and we may be sharing the LT, I'm not sure - but it's something we're there for that's new and unknown to these other people) and we haven't been entirely accepted yet. She's so far been nice to us, that's good - she's blond, looks like a nice kid. Nancy is (doing something like tying her shoelace) and talking about Kathy Carson - her name comes up in some way, and the girl says something like, "Who's Kathy?" We say one or two things about her, and I say, "...and Nancy's gonna marry her!" And Nancy says, "Yeah! (something something) we're going to get married." The girl is looking at us askance - she doesn't say anything, and I realize that this may not have been the most opportune moment to say that. But we did say it, and I go on to say something about what the girl has been talking to me about earlier. She has perhaps written a letter or something, - maybe it was poetry - maybe she was telling me something - all I know is, I know something from her that the others don't know, and I'm talking about her and how this is so interesting, and I quote from her a bit. The 2nd thing that I say from her that's a quote, I suddenly realize, "Oh, hell, this is a direct quote of something that's privileged information, that's real personal, and I have not asked her permission to talk about this." I am breaking confidentiality, and I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. I feel myself getting hot, and I'm sure I'm turning red, and I just feel mortified; looking at her, I'm saying, "I am really, really sorry - I did not mean to do that." Of course, she not realizing that I have a code of confidentiality at all, looks to me like she doesn't really understand what I'm so disturbed about, and that it really was okay with her. And she doesn't know that it might not have been okay with her - it hadn't occurred to her. I am really, really sorry about it.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm with my family in the family house, an old, slightly ramshackle place [about the caliber of Melanie's mom's house in age and construction, but the neighborhood is more suburban], not great big - though we're a pretty big family, most of the kids are grown and don't live there. I'm the next-to-youngest (I'm about 18 or 20). Patrick Duffy is my older brother, and he's been kidnapped and just been rescued and brought home, so all of us are here and having a sort of family reunion. Most of us are outside, getting ready to go someplace, and he's on the porch [ground level - small]. I've just come through the door, and our younger sister (she's maybe 9 or 10) behind me, and seeing him there, flesh and blood, alive and well, and I just have to hug him again. I'm feeling very emotional - we all just adore him, and we're a close family - I just want to hold onto him for a bit longer. So does my little sister, she joins in, and another one or 2 from the other side. Letting go after a bit, now I'm going back in the front door into the living room. [It also has a lot of the qualities of Melanie's mom's house - tacky brown/yellow flowered couch, fringed lamps giving off dull yellow light, tacky coffee tables, tacky knick-knacks.] There's a few other people in here - particularly, on the couch to the right of the door, is a fat old woman - she's from some European country, and I think she's Patrick's mother-in-law. She's a grump anyway, and she's glowering across the room at [Kathy ?] one of my other female relatives, who's standing talking to an older man (or 2), and she has a section of the newspaper in her hand that the old bat wants to read. She thinks she's supposed to be catered to, of course, though nobody else does, and she's spending a lot of her time pissed off. She looks up at me and I get the very clear message that she expects me to fix this for her, and for a moment I look from one to the other, askance. I find it rather amusing but I sure ain't going to look it where she can see me, so I just give a sort of polite half-smile and go on my merry way. I go through into another room, which is dark, and then to the kitchen, ditto. Outside it's almost dark, and the back of the house has that gloomy light. Somehow I know that something's wrong. It's just a creepy, "off" feeling, as if I know somebody was watching me, or something was moved that shouldn't have been. I start to worry that maybe this whole business isn't over, that even though my brother is back home, the bad guys may still be plotting something - maybe they're even hiding in the house, maybe they'll kidnap him again, or another one of us, maybe even me. Suddenly I'm uncomfortable being by myself. Now I'm in a neighbor's house [a rather basic suburban-type house] with a friend - we're not buddies, but our families have known each other a long time - and I'm waiting to see what happens next. This woman is grown, but she still lives with her mom and dad and kid brother; she's a little bit simple - maybe retarded, but could be something else. She keeps changing who she thinks she is, not her real name and where she lives and that, but she plays new roles every now and then as she changes interests. She'll suddenly latch on to something new and exciting, and pretend to be somebody else. Right now she's trying to be Robin to my Batman, sort of. (I actually am a detective - or something like it - but I'm more nearly Sherlock Holmes, I don't do Batman stuff.) We were out having some sort of adventure just now - she showed up while I was working on a case and she actually did help some, I figure I can be tolerant and let her indulge herself for a while, she'll change to something else anyway after a while. Meanwhile she's got herself a detective trench coat and detective slouch hat and looking very Bogart-like. So I'm sitting on the couch while she's telling her mom and brother all about it - her mom's been doing housework [she's pretty much of a drudge] and she's just going, "Uh-huh" ("big deal") ("oh, sure"), "uh-huh." The daughter gets up to go into another room, and I call something after her, using her name, and her mother corrects me, saying, "Oh, she's not (that) any more, now you have to call her (?)." And I say, oh, I see, sure.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a bus, just got on, and I'm choosing a seat toward the back. This bus is rather old-looking, and broken up into sections (actually it's not a lot like a bus, but more like a train, with cars & rooms, but not separated). I want a seat in the back because it's nicer there, more sunlight. Before I get settled, though, I want a drink of water. Around a corner there's a concession stand - actually a large counter, wood base and glass front, right out of the 30's or 40's, with a middle-aged man and his (wife? daughter?) running it. I thought there'd be a water fountain, but no such luck, and I don't want a Coke or anything, that they're selling. But I see that there's a dispenser bottle on one end of the counter - a black girl is using it (she's from a whole troop of ghetto-type kids that are occupying this side of the bus, bustling around the counter and being noisy) and I figure if you could get a cup without paying for it you could get some water.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in a hotel with a woman and a boy (my mother and brother?). We're moving, and staying here while our belongings are in transit - this is the new town we're in. It's a nice hotel, quite formal. We're going into the restaurant for lunch, which has a maitre d' and snooty waiters and tablecloths and stem water glasses. Mom is being officious, she's a little anxious about something, and keeps reminding us of things. (She's blonde, by the way, sort of your TV career-mother; the boy is a nondescript typical young teenage boy.) I go in with them, but I have to go do something - I'll come back later. [Where I go isn't clear, but it involves My brother, my real brother, who gives me some reassurance about something. We're in what I think is an attic-room, at least it's definitely upstairs in a building, and we're standing next to a window - all through, the time is midday, nice weather, bright sunshine.] When I come back, mom and brother are gone, but I'll stay and eat lunch anyway. I get seated next to this nice-looking man in a suit, also dining alone, who says "hello", and we have a pleasant conversation. I look at the menu - a fancy-restaurant menu, tall, with elegant script and no prices, heavy vellum stock, tied at the back - and order a pasta dish, something cheesy and unspectacular. It's good, but afterward I get the bill and gasp. This is a lunch price? I thought I was being conservative. The man next to me agrees that it's rather high, but he's used to it. I need to go out for an errand (I may have done this before finishing my meal), so I go into another part of the hotel through a side door. There's an area in the back with some offices, and I go past some elevators and around a corner, and there's a small office with a glass front tucked back here. Two people are standing in it, a man and a woman. There's some colorful waiting-room lounge furniture and plants, and a wall or partition behind them. I go in and talk to them for a minute - we agree on something, and I go back to the restaurant. Having settled the bill, I have a copy of the menu in my hands, which is odd because they took it when I ordered. (Perhaps it was on an empty table and I picked it up to look at it again.) Well, I think I'd like to take it with me, but I suppose they'd rather I didn't. My "companion" points out that perhaps I could leave by the back door, and I agree. So I do, and go quickly back through the corridor I was in before, and to the office. There's a back entrance just before the elevators that I could have used, but I'd rather not be that conspicuous. Now that I'm at the office, I see they've left and closed it up. I look around, and just opposite is an exit door, the sort of "emergency" exit that has a bar to push. I don't know if it will set off an alarm or not, but I'll be long gone before anybody gets there if it does. I step out, and I'm at the back corner of the building, next to the parking lot. I walk that way and go look for my car.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm on a bus in the morning, got to get school - I'm late. School's just started and I don't want to be late, it's a bad way to start off. I look at my watch and see that I only have 10 minutes to get there - this bus won't do it, we've got to get off. The bus stops, and we're going to walk (or run), but we have to go through this house. For some reason it's the only way to get there. It's not occupied at the moment, I think - at least nobody's home - but there is "someone" there. I'm not sure if it's a human. This "person" has a riddle or question we have to answer before we can get through the house. It's on a sort of flip-chart that he shows us, lifting up the top page to show what's printed on the next. I feel frustrated, but I know this is the only way so I look at it and try to think. It shouldn't be hard. But we're running out of time.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm at the office, checking the mail. I have an envelope, it's squarish, about the size of a greeting card, and thicker than usual. I look at the return address, which is Penny's, and I realize she's written me, and I'm thrilled. I also think that the thickness must mean that she's enclosed a copy of her jewellery price list - oh, boy! I'm just overjoyed. To think she'd be writing me already! How nice!

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm motivating down the street on this weird little cart. It's kind of a cross between my "back" chair and a railroad pushcart: very low, made of wood (could almost have been made from an orange crate), you sit on it and pump this bar and it sort of scoots forward. It doesn't exactly have wheels but it goes, or at least it usually goes - just now I'm having trouble with it. I've come up to this corner to meet with my group - we're sort of entertainers, like street musicians (but I don't know what we all do) and Fred is our leader, more or less. We're just gathering together here to get ready for something, but I'm not staying, I've got errands and I'm letting them know. So I go on down the street on my little cart, and it won't "roll" - it just drags along most of the time and then sticks. I have to get up and pull it. I think I look real stupid doing this, and the others are probably wondering why I don't give it up, but I keep it up anyway. I go a bit further, very near my apartment, and run into Sandie, who's just coming this way. She's been staying in my apartment for a while - I've been gone, and I've just come back. She's saying to me that everything's been okay, she got along great, no prob, and she hopes that the landlady didn't mind that the rent check was a little bit short because she was real tight for money right now and she'll make it up later. This surprises me but not a whole lot because Sandie does actually pay her debts, and it should be okay - I'm thinking she only means 3 or 5 dollars. I ask her how much short it was, and she says a hundred dollars. Now I am horrified. A HUNDRED DOLLARS? You've got to be kidding! That is it. That is absolutely the last straw! You have taken advantage of me and I will not stand for it. You get your stuff and get out. You will not do this to me ever again. Et cetera. She's kinda surprised, and says she's sorry, but looks more bewildered at my reaction than anything else. We go inside (this is a complex, and has interior hallways), and pass by the next-door apartment. The lady who lives there has the door open and greets me as we pass by, she's a friend. I go inside, but I can't go all the way in - the entrance is through the kitchen and Sandie's moved a couple of tables into the middle so you can't get by. This apparently is because they're cleaning the carpet or something. Afterward, I go in my car to a friend's apartment - I have something to deliver to her. I knock, and there's a slight delay before she answers, and when she opens the door she doesn't look like I remember her. She's short, a bit stout, has medium-light brown hair. She's been asleep or something and isn't wide-awake, but shortly she remembers me, and says ok, bring the stuff in. I go back to the car - parked on the street across from her door - to get it. (This is some sort of printed stuff.)

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer

I'm in my office building, having left the office for a break or an errand, and I'm on my way back. This place bears more of a resemblance to where Lori works at the museum than to the library, it's sort of a maze of offices and walls and steps and corridors, but nice anyway, there's light and air. I'm scooting along on my chair (my back chair, only with wheels), and I think people are going to think I'm crazy. I pass a couple of people in the drafting area who turn and look at me. I'm going through some unfamiliar offices because I took a wrong turn somewhere. I'm in my own kitchen, trying to trap a scorpion on the floor with a wad of paper towel. I'm really determined to get it because scorpions are so dangerous, and I've got to be real careful. I'd take it outside if I could, like the cockroaches, but I don't believe I can. It escapes me for a while but I get the paper towel over it and squash it - not very hard, but when I lift it up to see if I've killed it, there's nothing left but goo mostly. I didn't think they were that fragile.

alta

Alta: a detailed dreamer