Dream Log: Selena Gomez

 

I know what some of you are thinking: another movie star?! Steve, you're delusional! To which I say, Not guilty. I know these are just dreams. I know, for example, that Ms Gomez and I have never met. 

On the other hand, I am rather gorgeous, and I have actually, in real life, dated a couple of movie stars. There's nothing weird about that: I was a professional actor for a brief period of time -- "professional" in the sense of actually being paid to act. Not in the sense of having been paid enough to live on -- and actors and actresses do tend to date each other, just the same way people in other professions tend to see each other socially, and a couple of the actresses I dated were, or became since, movie stars. Names? Haha, Nope!

If all the women I ever snuggled with were somehow together in one place and you could see the whole group of them, you'd have a heart attack and die, that's how literally drop-dread gorgeous they have been. And some of them were also actresses.

So. Anyway. Selena. 

In the dream I was near Wakarusa, Indiana, the small town in cornfield-Indiana where I grew up. I didn't think of it as "cornfield-Indiana" when I lived there. I just thought it was weird when I went somewhere else and there were no cornfields, at all. Or only a few, here and there. I've been dreaming a lot about Wakarusa lately. 

In the dream, Selena Gomez and I actually didn't get to the first date: she asked me out, we made arrangements to meet at 8 that evening, and the rest of the dream was mostly me walking and driving between several small houses among the cornfields and looking forward to the date. It was winter, everything was covered with snow. In one front yard were the stumps of several trees which had been recently felled; in another, as if a series were being continued, several trees had been felled, and then the remaining stumps had been carved into the shapes of angels, not elaborate carving, but not what I would call crude either, rather nice. Rather abstract and merely suggestive of the shapes of angels

Then I was inside one of those houses, and there was a land-line phone with an answering machine next to it, and I was doing something involving a message to or from Selena. A small and nerdy-looking man observed what I was doing, shook his head and said I should just grab her already, or she was going to think I was a nerd and dump me. Actually, he worded it even a little bit more crudely than that. I wondered who he was and why he was giving me advice. Did he actually know Selena, or was his advice based on celebrity-gossip TV, or what? What did he care what went on between her and me?

Presumably, Selena was there filming something on location, but I didn't know exactly what. She showed up around 8, and now that I'm awake I realize that it was still daylight, whereas in reality at 8 in the evening in the winter in Wakarusa it would be night-time (you see? I'm able to discern differences between reality and dreams).

I mentioned to Selena that I had grown up in Wakarusa, and she said, "Oh yeah, that little town next to the county line," and I replied that it had been so long since I had been there that I couldn't remember where the county line was. Then I woke up and looked it up, and sure enough, the county line is just a little to the west of Wakarusa.

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Dream Log: Western Movie

I dreamed I was an actor in a Western movie. Two families were feuding, one headed by Brian Dennehy, the other by Johnny Depp. I was playing Johnny's loyal cousin and number-two in our family's chain of command. 

The two families' houses were very close: sometimes within a quarter mile or so, at other times literally parts of the same building. The fight scenes were often room-by-room gun battles.

For the most part, everything in the movie, countryside, sets, decor, costumes, was classic Hollywood Western, inspired by a notion of the late 19th century. However, my revolvers, instead of the historically-accurate long-barreled single-action variety, requiring that the hammer be cocked before every shot, were double-action snubnosed .38's of the kind seen used by plainclothed cops in mid-20th-century movies and TV. The hammer on a double-action revolver can be cocked between shots, resulting in a trigger which shoots with a lighter pull required -- single-action -- or the shooter can pull harder on the trigger with cocking it first, and the gun will still fire -- double-action. I was packing two of those snubnosed .38's, each about half as long as an authentic single-action revolver of the Old West. 

Partway through the script, Dennehy's character devolved into a plain coward, and the action consisted mostly of us chasing him through his, house, firing enormous amounts of bullets at him -- and always missing, or else the movie would have been over too soon. 

At one point we had him cornered inside a glassed-walled segment of a room in his house. Several of us stood outside the glass-walled compartment, about a dozen feet square, and pumped dozens of bullets at the glass. The glass not only didn't shatter -- it was barely scratched. I felt this to be a particularly unrealistic bit of movie-making, and began to lose faith that this might turn out to be a good movie.

Suddenly all of the actors, those in Dennehy's family and in Depp's, stopped acting, and instead they just sat around and turned into Marxist jerks who were unkindly, and wholly inaccurately, criticizing me. They all agreed that I was the sort of person who would go to Milan during peak tourist season, fetishizing the ultra-expensive cars of the super-rich, and their boats on Lake Como.

Their criticism could barely have been less accurate: I don't like crowds, I like crowds of tourists even less, I don't envy ultra-cars, in fact I find them rather ridiculous, I lost my fascination for them decades ago, and the next time I really enjoy being on a boat will the first time.

But before I could begin to defend myself from this inaccurate Marxist criticism, I woke up.

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Dream Log: 'Game of Thrones' Alternate World

Last night I dreamed I was a minor character in "Game of Thrones." 

 

I was a mercenary, a sell sword, but I didn't want to fight, which meant that I and a couple of like-minded former comrades-in-arms were basically now drifters.

After drifting for a while we came to a large ominous-looking door in a wall. What was most ominous about the wall and the door was how 21st century they looked. This being "Game of Thrones" and all, things were supposed to look about 15th century, at the newest. After a moment of foreboding, we opened the door and walked into what looked like a 21st century university classroom, with an up-to-date professor at the head of group of today's students. 

It was all so completely unfamiliar!

Except... it wasn't. Not completely...

The professor saw us starting to figure things out and said, "Okay, okay," and directed some of the students to sit us down in the midst of them. 

It was the year 2023. Which meant the "Game of Thrones" world we had been living in... 

"Is a computer simulation," the professor said. 

Then we started to ask questions which were clearly more embarrassing, such as, What exactly were we doing roaming around a non-existent quasi-Medieval world, carrying swords, trying not to get into fights, thinking it was real and forgetting the present?

They seemed distinctly disinclined to answer any questions of those kind, instead trying to turn everything around on us, demanding to know just exactly what right we thought had to barge in here and interrupt them, and insisting that we return tomorrow at precisely one in the afternoon for processing.

I was having none of that, telling them we weren't guinea pigs and what kind of cold-blooded monsters were they, and pretty soon everybody was shouting, and one of them said she was calling security, and security was better-armed than just swords. I unbuckled my scabbard and threw my sword away, saying I did not want to be violent and hadn't threatened anyone. In the end we just walked out through a different door than the one we had come in, and we were in the middle of a present day university campus.

Dream Log: Cats and the Multiverse

 Last night I dreamed I was playing with George, a cat I used to have. I can't seem to find a photo of George, but he looked somewhat like this:

George was being very affectionate and purring a lot, just like he did in real life. But then he went to my laptop, pushed a few keys and showed me how to switch from one to another of the infinite number of universes which exist according to some theories of physics.

In real life he NEVER did that. 

As soon as he touched the keyboard with his paws, we began to communicate telepathically, and I now also understood how to use my laptop to "browse" universes, as it were. 

The universes ranged from horrific to boring to wondrous. We found one in which cats were flying around everywhere in little cat-sized flying cars. The humans were all artists and scientists, and the distinction between artists and scientist which had begun in Earth's Western civilization in late Renaissance did not exist. Finance existed only as the means of equitably providing an abundance to all sentient beings. Burning things as a source of energy, and war, were in the very distant past. It was a lot like "Star Trek"s version of Earth, except with many more cats in tiny flying cars. 

George was understandably eager to try one of those kittycat-cars, and away he zoomed, but he was back again before lunch, more affectionate than ever. The two of us became a well-known sight, mostly together, sometimes with George walking beside me, sometime with him luxuriously stretched out across my shoulders, so relaxed that he often fell asleep there. Before long George was working as an information technologist and I was a well-known poet. 

Neither of us was in any particular hurry to get back to Earth.

To repeat: the science-humanities split so familiar to us did not exist. Exhibitions, lectures, conferences, projects couldn't have been identified as one or the other, as STEM or humanities. The widespread disdain for one half of intellectual and aesthetic achievement, or the other, did not exist. It was as everyday and accepted for a mathematician or physician, in presenting their latest findings, to refer to a famous painting or opera, as for a book of cultural history to include differential equations. George and I, coming from Earth, described Earth's science-humanities split as being as if cats and humans could not telecommunicate with each other.

Dream Log: "Friends" with Money

Money money money money. Moolah. Skrilla. Cabbage. Cheddar. L'argent. Clams. Lucre. Currency. Simolians. Smackeroonies. You know what I'm talking about.

I dreamed that the characters from "Friends" were real, and that I knew what had happened to them since the show. I was not a friend of theirs. Not really even an acquaintance. More of an observer of the Friends. 

 

Ross and Rachel stayed married for 61 years! What happened then? Divorce? Death? I don't know. But somehow, I do know that they made love to each other 5 times during those 61 years. They made love to OTHER people much MORE than that. For example: on their wedding day, Rachel said something, and Ross, not for the first time, over-reacted. But during their wedding reception was the first time he had a 3-way with Rachel's sisters, played by Reese Witherspoon and Christina Applegate, and Rachel got really mad -- it was sort of like what happened over and over again in the show.

Don't feel too bad for Rachel, though; she had lots of sex, just, not with Ross. They got along pretty well with each other, just, not in that one way. Like in the show.

Chandler quit his job in advertising, and became an actor. Monica was doing better and better as a chef so they didn't need Chandler's income anymore. They never said in the show what sort of business Chandler was in, but in the dream, I knew it was advertising.

In real life, at least in the US, lots of people go from advertising to show business. I don't know why, but I do know why a lot of show business sucks so hard: all those assholes from advertising. You thought you were going to spread your wings, but you're still a weasel. And weasels don't have wings. 

Phoebe stayed on guitar and vocals, but Mike joined her on air piano -- yes: air piano -- and they made it big. Multi-platinum albums all over the world. They became billionaires. Air piano.

You may recall that Joey went out to Hollywood after having been in a huge blockbuster movie with Gary Oldman. In my dream, he kept making blockbusters. He starred in like twenty hugely successful movies in a row, it made him a billionaire. Then he started directing and producing and made some REAL money, and the first thing you know, Joey's head of Paramount Studios.

But he missed his Friends. So he re-located Paramount HQ from Hollywood to Manhattan, bought a huge townhouse in Greenwich Village, just a block away from where Joey and Chandler and Monica and Rachel lived during the show, with Central Perk downstairs. And he gave the townhouse to Chandler and Monica and moved in with them.

Dream Log: Climate Activism in a Billionaire's Mansion

I dreamed that a billionaire had donated his mansion to be used as offices by an organization fighting climate change. I was one of the many volunteers working there. All around me people were bustling, appearing to be working very efficiently and effectively, but I was distracted by the house. It was very fancy. I kept staring at the floors, which had a very great variety of surfaces. I was especially fascinated by some granite squares bordered by strips of matte-finished metal which appeared to be a nickel-copper alloy.

 

Eventually I shook myself into somewhat greater alertness to the task at hand. Someone pointed out an impressive-looking white-haired gentleman in a very handsome suit, and suggested I offer to join his team. I walked up to the white-haired man and said I wanted to work with him. Right away he asked me whether I had been in the military. I said no, and he waved me off, dismissively, clearly considered the question settled.

I walked away, but then a moment later I approached him again, and told him that the reason I had not served in the military was that I had been raised in a very strictly pacifist Pietist Protestant denomination, and that although I was no longer strictly pacifist, the Pietists among whom I had been raised had for centuries bravely faced various forms of persecution for sticking to their beliefs, and that it was a heritage I could be proud of. I said that it his business who he wanted in his crew, but that he shouldn't get the idea that I was some sort of coward.

The old guy thought for a minute, then smiled, nodded, shook my hand and welcomed me aboard.

I followed the boss around the mansion as he busily networked with others. He and I and most of the other volunteers were wearing suits. I could see that the boss' suit and his shoes and watch were all much more expensive than mine. Likewise, the others in this particular crew, and most of the people we were meeting with, were very expensively dressed. I felt self-conscious. I wondered what the others thought about my appearance.

The boss got handed many pieces of paper. He handed some of them to me. Soon the stack of papers I was carrying was so big that I needed a backpack to carry them. Getting that backpack was as simple as calling out, "Hey, anybody got a backpack I can use? Big and roomy would be perfect." And just like that, a big and roomy backpack was tossed my way. 

Was the entire organization, everyone in the mansion, wired that tight? I wondered. Or just this boss' crew of a half dozen men and women quite a bit younger than he and I?

Most of the pieces of paper I was carrying contained color photos of people. "Hey Boss," I asked, waving some of the paper at him, "who are all these people?"

The boss laughed and replied, "Few people would recognize them. Few people have heard their names."

I took a guess: "So these are the 'fools' names and fools' faces' crowd?"

"That's right. They pull strings behind the scenes. And the ones in those pictures are profiteering from pollution. They're death merchants, no two ways about it. And we're going to take them public in a big way."

Dream Log: Cats are Aliens From Outer Space

I dreamed that cats were aliens from outer space. Most people didn't suspect anything. They just continued to treat cats as nothing more than beloved pets and companions, while the cats continued their scientific observations of Earth. 

I was allowed onto one of the cats' concealed spacecraft. I was one of the few humans who so far had been allowed to come aboard and look around. 

On board the spacecraft, the cats weren't dressed in white lab coats and speaking scientifically-inflected English. They still looked and sounded and acted exactly like cats, except that now it was a bit more obvious that they were interacting with the machinery.

I looked around and around and was unable to understand anything about the equipment, until, to my great surprise, I saw a familiar-looking computer terminal, with the number 448,000 in big numerals on a screen. 

The cats were mostly communicating with each other with silent psychic messages, and I felt them silently urging me to sit at this terminal and work on a problem.

I could see easily enough that 448,000 is 7 times powers of 2 times powers of 10. I thought maybe I should just keep multiplying by 2 and by 10. So I typed 896,000 on the keyboard, 896,000 appeared in big numerals under 448,000, and I got strong psychic messages that I was doing well, that I was being helpful. 

So I entered 8,960,000, and it also appeared on the screen, and I felt clearly that the cats were doing the equivalent of losing their straight faces and laughing at me. The whole thing had been a practical joke which had amused the cats cats very much. I wasn't angry, and even if I had been, several of them jumped up onto me and began to snuggle and purr.

The rest of my visit was very pleasant, with lots and lots of conventional Earthling-cat interaction. As I was getting ready to leave the spacecraft, I felt bad that I had been so utterly unable to figure out what the cats were doing and thinking, but I got a very strong positive psychic message that I had done just fine, and had no reason to feel inadequate. Several of the cats reinforced this message of positively and goodwill by jumping up onto me and patting my chest above my heart with their paws.

Dream Log: Office Drama

I dreamed I was working in an office. I have no idea what sort of work we did, or were supposed to do.  Nothing appeared in the entire dream which resembled work which people do for a living. 

 

Regular readers of this blog know that my age varies greatly from one dream to another. In this dream, my age varied greatly from one moment to the next, as did the age of one other employee in the office. 

In the dream, I was very depressed. I'm not depressed now, in waking life, but in the dream my depression had become so severe and so obvious that everyone in the office was concerned, and was trying to cheer me up. There were 8 or 10 of us altogether. Our boss was a woman, possibly in her 40's (I'm no good at guessing people's ages). I was significantly younger, mid-20's perhaps, and so were most of the others. There was also one man who was in his 60's or perhaps older.

The other person in the dream whose age was going to changed looked like Keanu Reeves. In real life, Keanu Reeves is 57, but he looks a bit younger because he's in very good physical condition. At the start of the dream, this guy looked the way Keanu Reeves looks now. He had long hair and a full beard, both streaked with grey.

In real life I'm 60 years old.

The others in the office kept reciting platitudes to me, of the sort that seem to thrive in corporate culture. The things they said just made me feel worse because they were so trite, so stupid. But I didn't want to say that. These people were being nice, trying to help me as best they could. I didn't want to verbally slap them in the face for their trouble.

Then they had gathered in the office of the man who was in his 60's or older, and they called me to join them. Grinning foolishly, they gestured at the other man's desk, and pointed out what a contrast it made to mine. My desk was huge and heavy, made of hardwood. It was old and darkly lacquered. This guy's desk, by contrast, was pretty much just a tray table. My colleagues all made statements about how "efficient" it was that this guy used such a tiny desk.

I was completely unimpressed by this, and I was afraid that I might not be concealing how I felt.

Then, suddenly, I was no longer in my mid-20's, but my real age, 60. I was talking to the guy who looked like Keanu. He still had long hair and a full beard, but suddenly he was much younger. Not a grey hair in sight, no wrinkles. That gaunt look which older athletes have about the eyes and throat was gone.

He was looking at an entry in the index of a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. "This has got to be a misprint, don't you think?" he asked, and showed me the entry: "Wittgenstein, Jeanemmanuel." 

"Shouldn't Jeanemmanuel be hyphenated -- Jean-Emmanual -- or two separate words?"

"I don't know," I replied. "The only person I can ever remember hearing about who was named Wittgenstein was Ludwig. As far as whether that name is 'correct' as it's printed on that page... Hmm. Well. you see, there's some controversy over the topic of 'correct' language. Some people, most definitely including me, don't believe that there is such a thing as 'correct' language use. There are conventions of use, and when these conventions are broken -- well, in the opinion of those like me, it's not the end of the world. 

"That leaves the question of how Jeanemmanuel himself spells, or spelled, his name. If he spells it as given there on the page, then I'd say the index entry is correct, period.

"Except that it's also not even that simple. Because, some people spell their own names differently on different occasions. and even then, I'm not inclined to insist that a mistake has been made. 

"Do you know the most famous instance of a person writing their own name differently on different occasions? Shakespeare. These idiots who insist that Shakespeare didn't exist, sometimes their Exhibit A is the different spellings in different Shakespeare-autographs. But these idiots don't know that a lot of people spelled their own names differently from one occasion to the next 400 years ago. It wasn't uncommon at all [...]"

And I went on and on, feeling better, talking about something at last which I found so much more interesting than anything usually to be found in the usual corporate culture of that particular office, wondering whether the now-young Keanu lookalike was also sincerely fascinated, or had only been trying all along to cheer me up...

Dream Log: Small-Town Politics and Autism

I dreamed I was in a small town on the west coast, in Oregon, Washington or British Columbia. The town's population couldn't have been as much as 50,000. It had many restaurants, bars, hotels and clubs which did a flourishing out-of -town business. Two men were among those struggling for control of the town's money and politics, one who looked and acted like Elon Musk and one who looked and acted like Mark Zuckerberg. 

 

But they weren't world-famous billionaires. Their business was concentrated in this small town. It was speculated that they both might be autistic.

Like the real Elon Musk, the local businessman who looked like him lied all the time, about absolutely everything, so that being autistic appeared to be just one more thing he was lying about. Like the real Mark Zuckerberg, the businessman who looked and acted like him really did seem to be autistic, and like Zuckerberg, and unlike, say, Daryl Hannah, he definitely could not be said to be glamorizing  the condition, except perhaps for hardcore Brent Spiner fans,

I was little-known in this town and wanted to stay that way, but video and audio of me looking and sounding strangely -- for example, I sing. Sometimes I sing intentionally badly, to amuse myself -- began showing up in the local media and on the Internet. This led to my becoming enmeshed in the business struggle between the liar who looked like Musk and the creepy dweeb who looked like Zuckerberg. I wasn't sure I trusted Not-Zuck, but he was definitely better than Not-Musk, so by default I ended up on Team Not-Zuck. (In the dream these two were called by their names, but I don't remember their names.)

Then the whole dream shifted to something resembling the TV series "Alias." Not-Musk now did the majority of his business  from local clubs, sending his minions out to physically fight with Not-Zuck's minions. 

At one point I and two other members of Team Not-Zuck were racing through town in an Audi e-tron at dusk, heading toward the beach. There was a Chase bank on the beach. One of the exterior walls of this small bank building was completely covered with video screens and neon stock tickers, and buried somewhere within all of that was the clue to our next move.

We slammed to a screeching stop in the parking lot, poured out of the car, and soon one of the other guys was howling with glee. "Chase is going to give me $225 to open an account," he yelled. 

This guy had ADD. We got his head back in the game, and eventually we found the time and place where Not-Musk and Not-Zuck could secretly meet, out of the eye of the extraordinarily-vigilant local business journalists.

At this point I made up my mind to face Not-Zuck, and tell him that I had had enough, that I was out.

Dream Log: Climbing a Skyscraper's Stairs

 Last night I dreamed that my brother and both parents and I were visiting a skyscraper in downtown Indianapolis for some reason. It seemed there were stores, restaurants ans other public businesses open on every floor of the building. My brother and I climbed a staircase to the second floor which was open to the retail space, not closed off in a stairwell. 

My brother paused to look at something a in a store. I looked around, found the staircase to the third floor, and kept climbing stairs. Each stairway between floors had been made different from the previous one. Some were in enclosed stairwells. Others were in the open space. 

The stairs and the stores tended to get more posh floor by floor. On some flights I was the only person around. On others, there were some exercise-oriented people. A couple of men were particularly overweight, but somehow it was apparent that they had recently lost a lot of weight, and were determined to continue doing so. Something about the ratio and position of muscle and fat in their bodies made this clear. Their sweatiness and enthusiasm made it even clearer. They did not seem the slightest bit pathetic to me. Also, their good mood and apparent high-self-esteem seemed invulnerable to anyone's opinion. 

In the dream I seemed to be in better condition than I really am, because I climbed up dozen of flights of stairs, hundreds of vertical feet, at quite a rapid pace, without stopping for longer than it occasionally took to find a drinking fountain and drink some water. I regretted having left my brother behind, but I was also exhilarated by the exercise.

On the 74th floor there was a door, very ordinary-looking and marked simply "EXIT," which led to an outdoor balcony with a railing that didn't look like it would reach my waist. I'm not good with high open places, and wouldn't have been tempted to step outside even if it hadn't been raining.

I don't think there are any buildings in Indianapolis with as many as 74 floors. But in the dream, the building kept going up higher and higher. At one point I saw a sign saying "110th floor."

And the businesses kept getting more upscale. This didn't necessarily mean that they kept getting more attractive to me. On the contrary, I felt a very unattractive atmosphere of ruthlessness among both the store keepers and their customers. I felt that my clothes became more and more out of place. I was pouring sweat, too. I assumed that everyone could see that I had been stair-climbing. I also assumed that they were used to seeing ambitious stair-climbers. People weren't lining my route and cheering me on. I assumed I could buy some hydration if I chose. Probably for somewhere over $10. Not a friendly atmosphere. 

As I got higher, the staircases just kept getting showier, and less likely to be hidden away in stairwells. And they became more crowded. I jogged up and up among crowds of strolling people, wealthy people and people trying to look wealthy. And then those making no effort to look rich, and therefore seeming much more likely to be very rich. I laughed out loud at the thought that someone might mistake me for a billionaire. 

Above the 110th floor, ramps tended to replace the stairs. Huge broad ramps, narrow steep curving ramps, ramps in between. The height of individual floors kept increasing. More and more of the outer walls was glass, letting us see for many miles.

Before I got to the top I turned around and climbed down, taking my time, full of endorphins. 

A golden eagle had landed on a table in an open-air cafe. A crowd of people, giving him a decent amount of room, stared at him. He stared back at us, seeming as curious and leisured as we were.

Then I woke up.

Dream Log: Difficulties in Communication on a University Campus

 Last night, as I have many times before, I dreamed I was wandering across a university campus. 

In this dream, I was trying to find my way somewhere. Where, wasn't exactly clear. Maybe back home, maybe to someone else's home, maybe just to somewhere familiar, where I had my bearings again. I was about to say that the university looked unrealistic. But I haven't spent much time on university campuses lately, so for all I know, many of them may have come to look this way, with most of the buildings glass-walled, 

 

with much space devoted to huge indoor lounges where students energetically socialized. I walked and walked, in and out of the buildings. Repeatedly I got too cold, then comfortable again, because, in real life, I was slipping out from underneath the covers, and then getting under them again.

Although I was lost, and there were throngs of students all around, I didn't ask anyone for directions. In fact, I didn't speak at all. I was concerned that my absolute muteness might make me seem even more strange to these young people than I already did. But I worried that if I said something, I might make things even worse. And I was finding it very hard to get a feel for how these young people thought. I was worried that they might be somewhat right-wing. I was worried that they might not wish me well.

At one end of one of these glass-walled buildings, a bank of monitors and consoles rose well over ten feet high. I couldn't figure out how to work any of it. And I looked at the videos playing silently on the many monitors, looking for a clue to the students' orientation, and/or the orientation of other people who might be trying to shape their minds. I couldn't tell whether there were ports somewhere, where the students could pay, or scan their ID's, for greater levels of access. 

After a while I turned away from this wall, about as clueless as when I had gotten there.

I saw that PC's were wired to tables throughout the building. There didn't seem to be any charge or ID verification to use them. I was almost broke, and didn't want to spend money on a computer session which I might soon need very badly for a sandwich. 

I sat at a table next to a PC and fumbled through some videos, uncomprehending. A cheerful-seeming young man leaned over me and pressed the lower Left hand corner of the screen of the computer I was using, several times. It seemed to work like changing channels on a TV. 

My first reaction was anger, taking the young man's action as aggressive and/or disrespectful. But then I noticed that I was suddenly much better able to understand the video content on my PC, and that it was politically progressive. I nodded in silent thanks to the young man. He certainly seemed to be progressive, and perhaps he wasn't alone in that. I suddenly felt much safer. I felt on the verge of speaking, and explaining my situation. It was around then that I woke up.

Dream Log: Keanu Reeves/Siddhartha/High-Powered Lawyer

I dreamed I was Siddhartha, the prince in India who was going to renounce his wealth and become the Buddha; and also Keanu Revves;

 

and also a high-priced lawyer in Manhattan. I moved back and forth from the prince's ancestral palace in ancient India to present-day Manhattan, but after a while I stayed in Manhattan. The ancient prince was about to leave his family's palace to wander and seek enlightenment, and the attorney was about to leave his wealth and position behind to do the same. Ray Liotta was also in both realities: in ancient India he was one of the prince's most loyal servants, and in present-day Manhattan he was the attorney's loyal assistant.

The differences between the two times and places seemed unimportant. In both, Ray was very upset that Keanu was about to leave. "Let me come with you," he asked, not for the first time.

"We've been through this," I/Keanu/Siddhartha answered. "I need to go alone."

"I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you, too," I said. "But, to some extent, we can choose whether missing someone is painful. We can choose to be happy thinking about what was good in that other person." (I have no idea whether any part of this post resembles Buddhism in the slightest. I have no wish to offend Buddhists with this post.)

I also reminded him that Maura Tierney, another attorney in the firm, was staying. Ray liked her a lot.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was/was playing a defendant represented by the firm, a whistleblower who had exposed very bad things done routinely by a very big company, charged with criminal theft of documents belonging to that company. It was late afternoon, the jury was about to return. The other attorneys were already in the courtroom. Almost the entire firm was in the courthouse except for me. I was going to set out on my quest for enlightenment after the verdict. I rushed over to the courthouse, and then realized that I had neglected to put on a shirt.

Maura Tierney had a car and drove me back to the firm. By the time I was properly dressed, multiple texts had infomed us that Philip Seymour Hoffman had been declared innocent, so instead of rushing back to the courthouse, Maura and I waited for everyone else to join us at the firm for a party. Caterers began to arrive and set up shop. It was getting dark. It was one of those old Manhattan offices with a lot of exposed hardwood.

I said to Maura, "You know, Ray's crazy about you." By the way that she blushed and looked away, smiling, it seemed that the feelings were mutual. Which in turn made it seem that right now, with a party in celebration of having won a good fight about to get underway, would be an excellent time for me to go. I slipped out via the stairs and the alley. It was cold, my breath billowed out in big clouds. On the sidewalk and out in the street people were in a big hurry, typical for Manhattan. I, on the other hand, didn't know where I was going, so it made sense for me to just stand there, except to jump up and down when I needed some warmth. After a while I decided to turn left. Left was east. I started walking east on 42nd Street.

Dream Log: Economic Mediocrity in Manhattan

I dreamed I was in a department store in Manhattan when my G-Shock alerted me that a package had been fired at the store like a bullet from far away, and was about to fly through an open window. Quickly I grabbed a drone from a shelf, took it out of its package, assembled it, and got it into the air where if deflected the package, knocking it to the ground and avoiding injury or collision with other goods.

A store manager saw this, assumed that I was already an employee, and set me to work deflecting more packages which flew in through the store's one open window.

I quit this job and got a delivery job, delivering bags of candy from a storefront. However, I felt sure that the commissions for these deliveries must be very low, so when I saw a bunch of people going onto an office to start a day's work on another delivery job, and they said they were always hiring, I tagged along. 

In this job, every single package delivered by anybody contained one Three Musketeers candy bar. We were each given a bag of packages and a list of addresses and sent out. 

I found myself walking in Upper Manhattan looking for 176th St. Other delivery people from the same company, each with a bag of Three Musketeers, were walking along beside me. The streets were filled with a mixture of sea salt left by evaporation from the nearby Atlantic, and toxic waste. There were no sidewalks in this region of warehouses. We dodged speeding semi trucks. The salty poison piled high in the streets was beginning to melt the rubber in the soles of our sneakers. We were afraid it would burn right through our shoes and burn our feet. 

We managed to get out of that area uninjured. But I still hadn't found a single address. I was beginning to wonder what kind of commission I could possibly expect from such a job. I had neglected to ask how much I was going to be paid. 

The boss of my previous job, where I had been delivering bags of candy, and where I had also not asked about the pay, spotted me walking along and yelled at me angrily for disappearing. However, he also made it clear that I was not fired. He was a big burly guy with black handlebar moustaches.

Then things became much more abstract. For example, I was holding a tennis ball inside a steel protective case. Then, I was inside a beauty shop, and a women held my head between her hands as she murmured incantations which I didn't understand. Then, I was in Wisconsin for just a moment. I don't know how I knew it was Wisconsin. It was a rural area, autumn, and the trees were full of firy-bright red and orange and yellow leaves. Very few leaves had fallen yet from the trees. Then I was back in the department store were the dream began, and the store manager was yelling at me for pretending to be an employee. Then I was sitting on the ground in African grasslands among some lions, and I wasn't afraid of them and they weren't afraid of me. Then I was back in NYC, on the sidewalk, with some people I've only met on Facebook. Then I was playing basketball in what appeared to a comfortably-old NYC YMCA or school gym. Then I was testifying before a legislative body in favor of massive expansion of public funding for rooftop-solar, and also in favor of 100% net metering. Then I woke up.

Dream Log: Married to Jennifer Lopez

 I dreamed I got married to Jennifer Lopez.

But in the first part of the dream, I was a small-time criminal in a gang in a city. Or maybe it was more just a group of friends in a poor neighborhood, than a gang. Don't know what city. Some friends and I learned that another friend of ours was being chased by plainclothes police, so we went to help. 

The chase seemed to be more of a tense stand-off. As long as we just stood there around our friend and didn't budge, the police weren't able to arrest him. Then one of the policemen drew a small automatic pistol. One of our group pointed out that there were a lot of witnesses around. Finally the other police convinced him to put his pistol away, and the standoff ended with no injuries and no arrests. 

We were going to celebrate our friend's escape from trouble by having dinner in a restaurant, but I got separated from the others on the way there, and the next thing I knew, Jennifer Lopez, who was part of an ambulance crew, was threatening my cat. I was poor, but I had a cat. I yelled that if anyone hurt my cat, I'd kill them. 

Apparently my angry but empty threat impressed Jennifer Lopez, because the next thing I knew she and I got married. And now she was no longer an EMS worker, but approximately the same huge movie and music star she is in real life. Approximately, not exactly. For example, in the dream she had a lot of children, including one who was still a toddler. In real life, as I learned this morning while researching her in preparation for this blog post, Jennifer Lopez has two children, with her ex-husband Marc Anthony, twins, a boy and a girl, now 13 years old. 

In the dream, we were living in Jennifer's modernist mansion somewhere in southern California, with her numerous children and even more numerous entourage, plus a domestic staff, and a photographer who was taking photos of me with the toddler, and various agents, managers, movie-studio and music-company personnel, etc. Just a huge crowd of people. The mansion was large, but it was quite crowded at the moment.

Gradually I formed the impression that Jennifer was always testing me. For example, when we had first met, when she was an EMS on that ambulance crew, she was pretending to intend harm to my cat, to see whether I would vigorously protect it. I passed that test, which got our relationship started. 

Now we were married, and there was always a huge crowd of people between her and me. Eventually I became sure that Jennifer had intentionally set things up this way, and wanted to see me become more assertive and insist on being alone with her. Which was very much what I wanted too. I was about to start yelling at everybody to clear out, when I woke up.

Dream Log: Lost on Sunday

I dreamed that I and some friends were in a car together, and we pulled into the parking lot of a Catholic church in an area somewhere on the border between suburban and rural. Mass was about to begin. The others went inside, and I decided to take a walk until Mass was over. 

There was a tall, steep hill near the church, and I climbed it. The hilltop was very broad and flat. Even though I was in church clothes, I felt like running. After I had been jogging along for a while, a man zoomed past me, wearing the Chariots of Fire running outfit: white T-shirt tucked into white shorts, white socks, black shoes. 

I took the difference between his speed and mine as a challenge, and sped up. He soon disappeared around a bend and I never saw him again, but I enjoyed running fast. For a while I was self-conscious because I was running in a dark red shirt under a dark red sweater, dark red corduroy pants, white socks and black shoes, but then I told myself to worry less about what people thought and enjoy myself.

I ran so far that when I stopped I didn't know where I was, and couldn't find my way back to the church where my friends were. The area had become much more urban. 

I walked through a plaza lined with Renaissance-style apartment buildings which, I felt sure, many connoisseurs would disparage as absurdly gaudy and over-the-top. But then I told myself that I didn't have to let some hypothetical snobs stop me from enjoying the view. 

And the dream went on like that for quite a while: I walked through many different architectural styles which I liked although, somehow, I was sure that there were many experts who would laugh at them, and over and over, I was able to overcome my self-consciousness and like what I like. None of it was Sylvester Stallone's sort of thing. I don't like architecture that's THAT gaudy. (And there's no reason that Sylvester Stallone should be upset about that.) One of the buildings was a mall which included a shop whose wares included some of those old books which are as tall and wide as a man, which often appear in my dreams, or, more likely, new replicas of those old books.

Dream Log: Hollywood vs the Aliens

Last night I dreamed that the Earth was being invaded by violent extraterrestrials, and that Hollywood saved the world from the attack. I was a part of the Hollywood effort which saved the world. 

Now that I am awake, the details of how we saved everybody are rather vague. It involved a lot of scary costumes by special-effects experts. I think this was less to try to scare the aliens away, as to try to blend in with them. They were scary-looking. We would get into scary alien costumes and lead the real aliens into traps. Something like that. 

For most of the dream, I had less contact with the aliens, than with Rob and Sherri Moon Zombie.

 

 

That is to say: I was working with a bunch of Hollywood people, and I didn't recognize any of them except the Zombies. 

Pretty soon they figured out I had a crush on Sheri (who doesn't?), and they both teased me about that a lot, but in a nice way.

The alien invasion was scary at first, but soon it was evident that the humans had the aliens on the run. Rob was in charge of our group. There were hundreds of such groups operating all over the world. Ours was based in Phoenix. Several of us, including me, would be made up to look like the aliens, and then we would go out and -- as I said, the details are vague to me now. Most of the action of misleading the aliens occurred on city streets. We would run along in traffic, and the aliens would follow us, and then -- something. Something bad for the invasion and good for the safety of the Earth. Apparently we were luring the aliens into some kinds of traps, where they were incarcerated. And then we would go back to headquarters, have our costumes repaired, and repeat. 

Soon the alien invasion was all over with and done. Rob was going around shouting into any news microphone he could find that he hoped, FINALLY, that horror-movie people would get a little more respect, since they had just literally saved the world.

Dream Log: Australian Uncertainty

I dreamed I was out in the countryside in Australia,  walking over green wooded hills, looking for some sign of other humans. Eventually I found a dirt road, which led to a paved road, which led to a bus stop. I boarded a bus which I thought was headed toward Brisbane, but I wasn't sure. There were two other passengers besides me, and they both were dressed as if they might be off-duty bus drivers. 

 

One of them said something I didn't understand, looked at me and asked, "Eh?" I said I didn't know, and walked to the back of the bus to get away from them. Gradually the bus began to fill up with passengers. A couple of times I saw what looked like it might be Brisbane's far-off skyline, but I wasn't sure if it was Brisbane. 

As the area we drove through became more and more urban, the bus got more and more full. As far as I could see, everyone on the bus was white. I was completely unsure whether the other people were left or right wing. I was completely alone and almost completely broke, and, generally speaking, left wing people would be more likely to help a stranger in need, because he needed help, and right wingers would be more likely to mistreat him, because he was a stranger. So I was unsure whether speaking up, drawing attention to myself, would improve my situation or make it worse. I felt my best bet was get to downtown Brisbane and take things from there.

We got downtown, and went into a place filled with buses. Everyone stood up. I assumed this was because they knew we were coming to the end of the line. I stood up, kept my mouth shut, tried to blend in. The bus stopped and everyone got out. 

I hadn't walked far when I saw a basset hound puppy standing still on the sidewalk amid all the hurrying people. It was obviously lost or abandoned. I picked it up and did my best to comfort it. I went to a store, found that I had enough Australian currency in my pocket to buy a half pint cartoon of milk, sat down on a curb and started to feed the puppy. It had been crying, but very soon, after a few gulps of milk, it was in a much better mood, wagging its tail and jumping around. 

Then, very suddenly, a large Australian woman was hugging me and crying, and the rest of her family was all around, jumping up and down and exclaiming. I couldn't make out more than one word in five, but, obviously, I had rescued their lost puppy. Suddenly my own problems didn't seem so insoluble. Then I woke up.

Dream Log: Rich, Unpleasant Family

Last night, I dreamed that my extended family were completely different people than they are in real life, different names, different appearance, different people altogether, and that they were much more rich than my family. How rich? Well, some of them, I suspected they might be the dreaded b-word. 

 

I also dreamed that I didn't particularly like them, which is also different than reality. 

Also: in real life I and a few others of my extended family are very, very much interested in show biz, and have been in plays, in bands, on TV etc. But most of them aren't. In the dream, almost everyone in my extended family was very, very interested in show business, except for me and one of my uncles.

Almost the only thing I had in common with any of these dream-relatives was how much this uncle and I both loathed every aspect of show business, and how much we hated constatly being bothered about it by everyone else. It would be an exaggeration to say that this uncle and I bonded, but our hatred of show business brought us closer to bonding than anything else did -- a couple of seconds' worth of shared complaining now and then.

This particular uncle was even richer than the rest of us and was probably a b-word (billionaire). He was the patriarch of our particular neolithic tendency. We would gather several times a year at his huge mansion near Detroit.

In this dream, I was poorer than most of my extended family, but I was much richer than I am in real life. My relatives were always pestering me about why I didn't grub constantly for even more money, as they did (when they weren't doing show-biz stuff). They were appalled when they learned that I paid taxes, and tried to get me use the same crooked attorneys and lawyers they used. They kept trying to get me in on the investments they were cashing in on, in things like coal mines and arms trading.

I felt that I was happier than they were because I was not behaving as horribly as they were. But I knew they would not believe me that I could think I was happier than they were, Because they had more money than I did.  This is how crude and capitalistic their mindsets were.

One evening when we were gathered at my uncle's mansion, there was a huge, sudden downpour. We -- several dozens of us -- were in a huge courtyard at the time; we fled to colonnades at its circumference. Everyone else was across the courtyard from me. The heavy rain made the night so dark that I couldn't see any of them. I could only occasionally hear a snatch of one of their voices above the roar of the deluge. 

The next morning, we were all at a luxury hotel in downtown Detroit. We had several floors of the hotel all to ourselves. I woke up on the floor of the ballroom. Everyone else was dressed up a bit, but I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. 

We called such events "social occasions," but, it occurred to me as I shook off my sleep and stood up, nobody was here except family and hotel employees, so that it would make much more sense to call them "anti-social occasions." I thought that was fairly funny: "anti-socials occasions." But then I got sad again, as I reflected that probably none of my relatives had a strong enough command of English to understand the joke. 

Someone saw how I was dressed, and rushed me off to the hotel staff to get me dressed up. A pleasant, bright young man led me into a room packed with suits and accessories. I told the young man that I was putting myself into his expert hands, that all I needed was to blend in with that crowd out there, and that I'd like him to estimate my size and select a few items for me while I took a shower. 

It turned out, unsurprisingly, that there was a bathroom adjoining this room of suits, with a ridiculously large marble shower. This hotel was the sort of place where, if you saw something which looked like it might be marble, or granite -- or gold, for that matter -- there was no need to wonder whether it was genuine, or solid.

I was looking forward to a few minutes of luxurious solitude in that shower when I woke up.

Dream Log: Beautiful, Unsuccessful Hollywood Actress

I dreamed I was an actor in Hollywood. I was the same age and appearance as in real life, and just as poor, and I was writing this blog same as in real life, but I was living in Hollywood and auditioning. I knew many actors and actresses who were much more successful than I. 

 

It was afternoon, and Ryan Gosling and I and several other actors were hanging out at some tables on a sidewalk. Ryan was wearing a tuxedo. I was wearing a cheap suit. It was uncomfortable and I was self-conscious, worried that others could see how cheap it was. 

George Clooney showed up, also wearing a tuxedo. He asked me what I had been doing lately. I started to talk about the blog, and the conversation died. It didn't seem to me that George was being rude. Rather, it was extremely difficult for him to sustain an interest in something which, from his point of view, had so little to do with movies.

It became evening, and we went inside the theatre outside of which the tables had been the entire time. I felt miserable, and was at the free bar, searching for something with alcohol in it among the soft drinks and snacks, when a very beautiful actress approached me, wearing a man's-style white shirt, black skirt and black stockings. We had known each other for a long time, but had lost touch.

I don't know whether she was someone who exists in real life. She was a little under medium height, had green eyes and straight chestnut-brown down to her shoulders, was a little over 40 years old and looked essentially the same as she had when she was under 20. I was confused about why she wanted to talk to me. After a little while she said she had to go, but that she wanted to hang out with me some more, and, the way she touched my arm and looked into my eyes when she said it, it seemed like she meant it. 

Eventually I gave up my search for booze, concluding that this must be a health-conscious event. Many actors and actresses are extremely meticulous in choosing healthy refreshments. The incidence of veganism is very high in Hollywood. This is one of the reasons why some actors and actresses look very much the same over age 40 as they did under age 20.

Across the room I saw the beautiful actress talking with a man wearing a tuxedo. From their body language, he looked to me like a boyfriend or ex-boyfriend. 

I had conversations with several people similar to the one I'd had with George Clooney: they asked what I'd been up to, I answered honestly, describing the blog, they found it impossible to feign interest. 

Then I heard the voice of the seeming boyfriend over the PA. Somehow, although I hadn't heard his voice before, I knew it was the same guy. And now it was clear that he was her boss, because he was telling her to put on an apron and bus the area. And apparently the reason I hadn't heard anything about her recently, was that her acting career had not been going especially well. Earlier, she had easily supported herself by acting.

She went behind a curtain to the service area to get an apron. I took off my suit jacket and followed. Even though I really hate food service work, I was going to put on an apron and tell her I wanted to help her bus the area. But before I got there I woke up.

Dream Log: Bicycle Racer in Japan

I dreamed I was in Japan post-WWII, when MacArthur's troops were occupying the country. But I was not an American soldier; I was a professional bicycle racer, quite a famous one. I would change from one moment to the next between being European-American, Chinese or Japanese. My appearance changed greatly, so that it would have been impossible to mistake me in one of the nationalities for me in another nationality, but I remained the same famous bicycle racer in all three. 

I had been invited by some Japanese people to visit the country. Japan was in a state of great upheaval, and some people wanted to improve the country's overall mood with interesting distractions, such as professional bicycle racing. So, depending upon your point of view, my presence in Japan could be seen as an important cultural event, or a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinions, or something in between or something else.

 

The various opinions about my presence in the country would have been obvious to me to some extent in any case, but because I kept changing from an American to a Chinese man to a Japanese man, they were unavoidable to me, because some people said very different things to me depending on my nationality. Other people treated me exactly the same whether I was American, Chinese or Japanese. These latter people were by far my favorites.

Besides traveling around from city to city, being photographed with local notables from both the Japanese population and the American military,  and standing in front of cheering crowds, I also actually competed in some bicycle races. I came to a very cold region to participate in a race on the surface of a frozen lake. 

I had never ridden on ice before, let alone racing on it. I was riding on some icy city streets, trying to get used to it, being followed around by crowds as I was during my entire time in Japan, when a local gangster approached me and told me in a very loud voice that he was very impressed by the progress I was making in such a short time in riding on ice, and that he was going to bet very heavily on me to win.

When the gangster had said his piece and left, another man said that the gangster was actually going to bet very heavily against me, and that his little speech here had just been an attempt to raise the odds in my favor. This man spoke just as loudly as the gangster had, which struck me as rather brave.