My wife and I were walking down a city block. THere were a fre community buildings in the area. I started looking at one, the School of The Mind, and was interested. Four year memberships were available for $70. All I saw in the building, through the window, was a hallway and a desk, all white.

“I’ve joined.” She said. “I think you’d like it. They debate philosophy and have classes on a lot of subjects, plus there’s a gym.”

“Sounds good,” I told her. “And I’ve already paid $50 for the School of Cryonics over there.” I nodded towards the buiulding next to the School of the Mind. In a previous dream, in that building, I had signed up for a membership to some cryonics insitute. (This might be why I woke up thinking about Alcor.)

We walkedinto the School of the mind. I went cautiously because I didn’t know what to expect. When inside, I walked towards the desk. Before I got there there was a halway to my right. Along the hallway there were some doors. The hallway was short, but I felt it was longer than it seemed. I put money down on the empty desk and walked into the rest of the building.

Behond the desk, the halway turned 90-degrees to the left, at which point there was a large, blue and black room. There were a lot of people in there and from behind us more came in. From wasking questions and what I gathered, in this place, atheirsts and naturalists met to lear about various subjects together. This included exercise classes (the mechanical bull was a popular option), science classes, and even porn. Then, once in a while, religious folks would come in and have “philosophical debates” with us. Aparently, this debate was part of the appeal to the place.

I walked around for a while, joined in a class, watched a movie, did some exercise, and talked to a few people. Then a flood of people came in, all holding bibles, and talking to everyone. I wanted to avoid these, so I headed towards the back of the building. I looked into a number of rooms as I did, and then saw in one of the rooms a girl, black, very fit, wearing a gymnist’s outfut, doing gymnastics on a moving platform. (I remember seeing her “It’s for abs,” she told me, the proceeded to do a bunch of flips through the platform, off the platform, and right in front of me. She then tells me to try, though I know for a fact I can’t do any of that. But in the back of my mind…

I consider swinging on some ropes available in front of me, but see that they’re not tied to anyting strong enough to sustain my body weight. I walk out of there and am met by one of the Christians arguing with everyone. I remember thinking “I don’t have a problem with their faith or religion. They can believe whatever they want to believe. But once they star demanding that their version of history and “science” be taught, then that’s when I get angry.” (I remember thinking about Neil DeGrasse-Tyson when I thought about this.) The guy, a white, heavy-set blonde with a goatee, starts talking to me saying he’d rather go to the trigonometry room to talk. I tell him I don’t like trig, so that should be perfect; he tells me he does, and agrees. As we walk towards there, I stop off at the bathroom, where I’m hoping something drives them away. I look in one of the bathrooms and there are a number of art canvases on the walls, all which looked like a not-well-defined woman taking off her clothes. I went back out and I guess the Christians were offended because they left.

I then started thinking about life insurance agan, and cryonics. This is when I woke up. I think it’s time I call an insurance company and set up cryonics.

Like usual, I’ll describe this backwards, since it’s the best way for me to remember: I’ve classified this a nightmare because afterward I couldn’t fall back asleep, though it might hve had more to do with the heartburn.

Cindy brought in with her the duck, but it had fairly tiny eggs. I saw them and realized two things: that the duck belonged outside and that the eggs, which were too small to be duck eggs, were hatching. I quickly dropped off the duck at the side of the house, noticing that there were more eggs, all hatching. The family–Cindy’s parents, Donnie, Debbie, and their son, David, all came out to take a look. I looked to the other side and it looked as if the whole town–a town a few miles away, past a fair amount of farmland– was on fire. Ashen clouds arose from a floor of gray and orange. Suddenly a very distinctive cloud grew into our vision, mushroom shaped.

I yelled to the people that hadn’t seen it, “Looks like a nuke!” and ran to the computer to see if there were any reports online. That’s when a seismic wave hit us. It wasn’t bad enough to knock down the house or even walls, but enough to be felt. The second wave came seconds after. Again, not hard enough to knock down a wall, but hard enough to send me flying to the couch. (I jumped, running to the computer and the wave caught me.)

This is when I woke up, with heartburn. I thought it would have been near 5AM. The clock reveals it’s 4hrs too early.

Before all of this I had been delivering materials across town. It was busy, probably having to do with my trip to Dunedin and my reading of that 1491 book. The roads were like canals and back streets I took by foot. They were all full of people, most dark skinned. I think I was on a bike or a golf cart most of the time, but near the end there were way too many stairs, so i was on foot. My father was there, too, and I had to wait for him because his leg still hadn’t healed. Near the end, I was going up stairs, being very kind to some lady and her daughter who said despite my reputation as a mean asshole I was actually quite nice. Then I dropped a Smoothie King stamp card to the bottom of the stairs. I went to pick it up and that’s when I was pulled by Cindy (who had been chasing me as I did some kind of deliveries or ran around the town or something, I’m not sure) back to the house, before the nuke.

Can’t remember much before that. I think the dream is mostly unloading from a few very heavy days–people coming over for business advice, my dad’s surgery, getting errands completed, the job, the duck sitting outside my door, etc–combined with my first alcoholic drink in over a year. Note to self: no booze at least 4 hours before bed, preferably more.

Last night’s dream was a strange one, to day the least. It was all about a co-worker, CE. Mostly, the entire dream was about having sex with her, which I’ll admit is pretty nice. Most of the dream took place within areas I’m currently normally in: my shower, my bedroom, etc.

It started with my taking a shower, and she joining me. Or was it the other way around? She took off her clothes, but tried to cover herself with her arms and her back turned to me. Eventually my hands were on her and it wasn’t long before we were…

The next thing I remember, we were in the bedroom. During the course of the dream we came here multiple times. “Came” being the operative term.

Parts of the dream were about our life in different places, with friends, going to parties, surrounded by people. (In fact, I think there were a bunch of people in the bathroom when we first took a shower together.) The whole dream was dark, too, very gray, like a room with light seeping in only through the edges of covered windows. Most everybody wore black or gray. Most everything was black or gray, except us and, I think, Viagra pills.

The weird part is that I hadn’t even talked to CE in weeks. Seen her on Facebook, seen her at the job last time I was in the office, but that’s about it, really. Yes, I’ve always been attracted to her, but it’s a physical attraction, nothing more. Why this dream, why now? Maybe I’m looking for more sex. Maybe I miss seeing her. Maybe I’m… just horny. In either case, I woke up this morning tired. Maybe I was up all night, having imaginary sex, and now I’m paying for it. On the bright side, it wasn’t a wet dream.

In junior high, my history teacher was Mrs. Henderson. (Actually, she was my 9th grade teacher; 8th grade was Mrs. Hummel.) She got a job teaching at my high school the year I moved from Jr to HS. She was young, attractive, had a heavy southern accent that due to her voice was charming rather than grating, and was of course one of the “cool” teachers who’d you’d hang out with after school just because she was fun to be with. Tonight I dreamed of her.

I first remember driving around in a car at night with a few friends. I had been toying around with a couple of music applications, one which allowed me to work directly with sound waves while another allowed me to create tempoed music. My desire was to create music that was hip to dance to and fun to hear: basically, good techno. In addition I also wanted to create music like Bjork. The guy I was in the car with (I was driving) was also a musician, and I think he was someone I knew in real life, in college, a guy who knew his way around the studio. I forgot his name.

Anyway, driving down the road of a mostly empty city at night, some music came on the radio which I liked. “See,” I said, “this is exactly the kind of music I’d love to be able to create.”

“I totally hate that stuff,” he said. “Totally, absolutely hate this stuff.”

“But I’d also do stuff like Karlhe–”

“Totally hate this stuff.”

He was adamant: he wouldn’t listen to another thing I said now that he knew I wanted to use the software to make what I considered to be very good techno.

The next part I remember, I was in a school, about to graduate. I know I’m a senior and exams are coming up in a couple of weeks. I walk around from classroom to classroom, hall to hall, running into people I know. (This is probably due to my recent addition of people I knew from High School via Facebook, particularly Jenna, who was in the dream, on the periphery.) At one point a guy kept handing me dollar bills and two dollar bills which were fake and had pictures of pyramids with garages underneath and other items in them. (The pictures also seemed to move.) He gave me a $1 bill and $2 bill before I told him to simply make them $1,000,000 bills so I can tell they’re fake. Sitting next to me (and walking around, taking care of her own business) was Ms. Henderson. (I don’t know in the dream whether she was married still, so I’ll simply call her “Ms.”)

She looked as young as I remember her looking 11 years ago, so right about my age now. Beautiful black hair, radiant white skin, and very red lipstick. As we talked, she kept pinching my cheeks, and I sort of made fun of myself by saying that before all my weight loss she would have had to grab a whole handful. This kept her laughing. We talked about various things, including school and what I would be doing after it ended. (In the back of my mind I was scared because I didn’t know anything about any of the other classes, but I didn’t let this bother me. I knew I’d been through this before and would continue on with flying colors; something about this didn’t sit right. I guess I knew it was a dream, but didn’t at the same time.) I remember having a strong urge to kiss her, and I think she wanted the same. (It was my dream, of course she did.)

I dn’t know where this all came from. I hadn’t thought about her in a long time. But if I were to have had one schoolboy crush it would’ve been Mrs. Henderson, though I didn’t really think about it that way at the time.

I woke up that morning a bit… well, in the mood, and tried to get back to sleeping. I hoped that maybe later in the dream she and I would end up going to dinner, then maybe to her place, but that never happened: I couldn’t go back to sleep.

At the same time, I remember a college teacher of mine–I forgot her name–who led an aerobics class. She was married at the time I took the class, but divorced when I next met her. I just wish I’d been attractive enough then to attract her. Blond, fit, active… yeah, but it was purely physical. Not that it matters in a fantasy, right?

I don’t know if I still worked for them or whether I was there for some other reason. I think I still worked for them, but it didn’t feel like it. In any case, it was John at DS, going out of business. And I couldn’t be happier.

Towards the end of the dream, it was evening, around 7:30pm, according to my watch. I was in what looked like an apartment, or small office. Ther was no electricity, but surprisingly the sun hadn’t set. “It’s kind of late for the sun to be up this high,” I thought. “Maybe the Earth is standing still.” It was windy, and that would have explained all the wind. Maybe the Earth used that to kickstart its rotation.

I was trying to light the apartment by way of mirrors, so I had some girls who where ther with me gather a few in order to reflect the right from the outside in. One of the girl suggested solver gift bows, which floated, but I didn’t think it was a great idea.

Looking around the apartment, I found what I had sought: a notebook containing notes on DevShed’s situation. It was bad: Rich had taken a paycut, and the company was in dire straights. I laughed to myself. At the same time, I was scared because I was about to be fired. “Maybe,” I thought, “I should just quit. But then I won’t get unemployment. Oh, but it would be so much better to just walk in tell him I quit whenever he needed something, and leave.

The dream gets a bit mixed up in these parts. Maybe I’m having memories or some other kind of flash back, but at the same time I’m talking to Cindy–who appeare there–about quitting, I also see John and Rich arguing over money owed. I look at the black book and see plans to ban GMail in the office, as well as video. (All of these are indicative of not DS, but my company now in real life. I’ve been worried about the company, and woke up thinking I need to have that updated resume.) I laugh because I’m working from home and they can’t stop me, but maybe they can block my unemployment check if they find out I haven’t been working but instead browsing sites.

Like always, it was busy at DS, but the content had come down because just about everyone had been let go, including myself, I guess. Of course, I couldn’t help but be happy that DS was failing.

Why I dream of DS, I don’t know. Maybe for the same reason I dreamt about my current company during the vacation, about them failing and me trying to finish the FMS manual so quickly. That’s maybe why I’ve been having my panic attacks. Again with the money, which seems to be at the root of all my panic.

Like every other dream, I’ve forgotten the details of the beginning so I’ll start at the end and maybe move backwards, if I can.

I went into the bank at night. It was late, they were closing. (It was too late for a bank to be open. I had hoped no one would be there.) The bank was a local one, one I went to all the time, one where I knew the people there somewhat. As I walked in, I saw myself in the TV they had showing people that they were being recorded. I walked up to the teller who asked, “What are you doing here this late?”

“Robbing the place.”

“Excuse me?” She looked confused, and somewhat amused. She was a short girl, fat, but not unattractive. Spanish with dark hair. Not my type. I handed her a stack of various stapled packets. The cover letter of each described that I was sory, but I had to rob the place, and they were to give me not all their money, but just a few thousand.

The manager, Jamal, who I knew well, stepped into the back room. I was being as civilized as I could about this, and he walked stunned and humored. I had no gun, no weapon of any kind. I was just there, hoping they would give me the money. Behind the teller counter was a large block of money in boxes. The girl there–another one, this one blonde, a bit thinner, and much more attractive–began ripping the boxes open in order to get the cash. She started pulling out $20’s and $100’s, asking me how much I wanted. That’s when I started thinking about going to jail. After all, these people knew me, I came here all the time. One even had my phone number. If was to rob a bank, the least I could do was to go somewhere I wasn’t known in, somewhere not close to my house.

I repented, and told them not to worry about it. Going to jail over a few thousand dollars wasn’t worth it. And being this stupid was without excuse.

“Then why did you do it?” Jamal asked.

“I don’t know… I have a bunch of debt that I need to take care of, credit card debt, and I thought this would be a quick way to do it.” I apologized profusely, walking behind the counter and telling each of the girls that I was sorry for what I had done. I never wanted to hurt anyone, just to take care of my family.

I got all my stuff together, everything I could, then walked out. It was near morning by now. In the parking lot, I turned around then went back into the bank. “Where are my packets?” I didn’t want to leave any evidence, witnesses and video cameras not withstanding.

At first they were hesitant to give them to me, but Jamal walked to the back office and got the packet. They had placed it in a clear plastic bag that held cash before, the number written on the front reading, “$300M”. As I saw the number, I thought about how that money could cure the debt. But the price wasn’t worth it. I grabbed the plastic bag and left, hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with police.

This dream was a a2-parter, including a dream within a dream.

The first part that I can remember involves a broken violin. I was trying to show someone–my sister, I thnk–that just because a violin is old doesn’t mean that it only plays old music. I started playing a piece for her, then the thing broke on the left side. Not shattered, mind you, but broke enough so that it was almost unusable. The thing is, this violin had plastic pats inside the neck (white). “I don’t understand”, I said. “I’ve put this thing through a lot more.” Maybe I pressed to hard, maybe it was crappy, I don’t know. “I thnk this will be my next purchase,” I said. “And it’ll be a pricey one, that’s for sure.” I’m not sure if I said or though this, by the next statement was a pricepoint: $3-4000.

Sometime during all of this, I was watching movies (or maybe I was participating in both, or maybe this was another dream within the dream, I don’t remember). Both were with Keannu Reeves acting more like a gay Jim Carrey.

In the first movie, I only really remember the ending. On top of a fortress surrounded by snow were the three kids. Reeves was looking for them. They saw in the distance a light, which maybe was a dead relative. Their mother? Grandmother? And their eyes, when looking, shifted from normal looking to large and camera-like. Kennu turned around and knew he had reached his questi, whatever it was.

As for the second movie, I don’t really remember it. Maybe it’ll come back to me.

During the next part of the dream–and I think it happened after the iolin broke–involved me driving in a car. After the violin broke, I woke up and realized it was a nightmare, that my violin hadn’t really broken. I remember I had to do a lot of writing, but I also had to drive home, so I ended up driving. I had a brand new (futuristic, even) Nissan Altima. One of its features was the ability to do something else on the glass while driving. (I know, totally reckless.) What I wanted to do was write, so I tried, but the screen was too opaque, and I couldn’t drive. I think I kept hitting bears and people, though I was tyring to be careful about not doing either. The windshield had another feature, which displayed electronic images of what was going on outside, which just happened to be me hitting people. THis is when I decided to put the computer away: i had to configure it still.

I drove around for a while in the mostly empty city. It was Christmas time, I think, and it was a southern city. I keep thinking Richmond, but am unsure. There was a lot of brick and empty road.

Eventually, I drove into a dark, one-way street next to the police station, parked, and started setting up the car computer so I could write: I wanted a translucent screen with red text near the top, only a couple of lines, so I could both type and write without putting anyone in danger. At that time, I notice a bunch of guys (black) dressed in “gangsta” clothing. One of them, a small, skinny guy, is coming my way. i know what’s about to happen and either ignore it or don’t go fast enough. The guy pulls a gun, then all of his friends do the same. “Get out of the fuckin’ car.” He tells me (shouts at me) this before looking over his shoulder and saying, “Keep an eye out,” or something the like.

I step out of the car and give him the keys. “The rest of the garb,” he says. I give him my wallet, which I know contains my cash and credit cards. At the same time, I’m thking about the violin in the car, thinking about the irony of the violin being broken in the dream, and now stolen in real life. Maybe insurance will cover it.

“What do we do with him,” one says. They start discussing the merrits of letting me go versis killing me right there or holding me hostage.

*****

This was the second time in about a week I’ve had a dream about guns and possibily getting killed, the first being the dream with the hicks. I don’t know what this is supposed to mean right now, but I do believe there’s something here I should explore. Do I feel I’m living under a gun? Maybe: I’m always nervous about my job. Is there something else, maybe something health related? My heartburn’s been worse of the the last few days, though I think the breakthrough episode is subsiding. Or maybe it’s the medication: I think one of its side effects is nightmares. (Or am I thinking Reglan?) I doubt it’s this, but it’s still within the realm of possibility. (I just blew my nose and my chest hurt, probably my now pretty raw esophagus. Reminds me WHY I need to take the meds.)

Anyway, I’ll see if I can figure out what my mind is telling me.

That’s when I wake up.

I don’t remember how it started. One second my brother, father and I were having dinner at a restaurant, a little barbeque-style place with wooden picnic tables and benches, posters on the tables and walls, and wooden planks on the floor. The next second, my brother and I were standing, pointing our fingers in a gun fashion to three guys in front of us. My brother and the two other guys started arguing about what type of guns they had. I simply said, “A gun that kills just the same as yours.” Before we knew it we had a duel scheduled.

We got home–a home I then recognized but don’t now–and started taking care of regular daily chores, waiting for the time of the duel. It was getting late in the day, and the guys still hadn’t shown up. I went to make myself a liquid meal of some sort, something made out of chocolate, remembering that I had to be careful about my diet (although I didn’t know why: part of me knew about my stomach issues, the other part thought it was about the wait). Then I thought at the absurdity of being about to die and worrying about that. Was this my last meal?

I remembered that before this all started, the water in the house was black, as if it had tapped into sewage or something. While waiting for the hicks, the same occurred: the water turned black.

I hoped that because it was getting late the duel wouldn’t happen, that everyone realized they wanted to live more than they wanted to be right. It was late, about 6 pm. If the duel was going to happen, it should happen now.

That’s when the phone rang. It was the furniture company, scheduling the delivery. I had woken up. This is when I realized I had been dreaming. Or had I been looking into another life, a me from an alternate universe?

Like almost all my dreams, I’ll have to remember this one backwards, since it is that which will give me clues about what happened before:

We sat listening to a talk by the group leader, the guy sending us to some old Nazi concentration camp and paying us a huge amount for it. Beside me, leaning against me sat a beautiful, buxom woman who looked to be in her mid to late 30’s. She held my hand and leaned against me. While nothing was supposed to be going on between us, I knew I desired her, and she me. Her brown skin and dark hair were an asset to her European facial features. The white, flowing robes she wore, much like a very stiled, translucent Indian sari, revealed more about her than just her shape: they revealed the fact that she was special somehow, special enough that we were paid $50,000 just for finding her. (Unfortunately, this was $50,000 for the four of us looking for her, not a piece.) At one point she got up, and soon her daugher, in her early 20’s, sat next to me, taking her place, and leaned to me. I put my arm around her and listened to the instructions from the leader.

The room was dark, and we sat on benches along the room’s wall. As we sat listening, someone knocked on the door. I guess we were done because everyone got up and started walking out. As soon as the door opene, my cousin Liza was there. Crying, she held me and asked, rhetorically, whether her son, Joshua, would be OK. (He has muscula distrophy.)

Before all of this, the mission was to find the dark-skinned lady. I think her name started with an A. Alana? Adrianna? I’m not sure what it was. We were in a dark, Spanish-looking village with lots of stairs and doors, and lots of corridors in which she could hide. She kept running from us, like a dog hiding from an angry owner. Her daughter, a fair skinned, thin, dark-haired girl led the way. Eventually, after much searching, we found her. I guess she didn’t want to go to the concentration camp, though it was already empty, and had been for years. Something else was there, however. Ghosts? Armies? I couldn’t say.

I think the dark skinned lady was based on a few images, one of a girl in my martial arts class, the other of a lady I had recently seen “modeling”. Both are especially busty, both beautiful in an exotic way, and both pique my prurient interests. But what of the daughter? I don’t know, maybe another style of girl I like.

I wonder of dreams like this would have occurred to someone living my life, but in 1947?

Dad and I were riding down a road. y family was commenting on the werid weather. It was cold, colder than usual. My sister had just returned from Tenneseee and commented that the snow there was nothing but slush, but it had been 14-degrees. I told her of the time we went to New Yersey (It was snowing there, too).

We drove down a road and then went to an airport. I took the car to run some erands and drove past a hangar where there seemed to be an accident. I ignored it because I was in a rush, and figured someone else cold handle it.

Later on I came back, and the accident was still there, so i called 911 and swent to it to see what I could find. here were a couple of people within the cars, trapped. I stared working at getting people out, then within minutes a bunch of people had joined me.

We first got a lady out of a smashed up car. Then, in another car, there were two ladies trapped, one old – 80’s – the other younger – 60’s. The 80 year odl wasn’t moving, but the 70 year old was, so we got her out first. Turns out her family – 40 year old daughter and 5 ear old granddaughter – were there, helping us with the crash. I had to punch out a window, so I wrapped my shirt around my first, then my dad gave me his, so I wapped his, too, and I punched out the window.

The old lady was gone. Dissappeared.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but the family said that this was their grandma, and that this just added to the end of a strange, mysterious life.

A few minutes later, as we were all conversing, one of the toys we had in our car – a little snow-white figurine – stared talking witih Josephine’s voice. It was telling me “I can’t seem to move, can you help me?”

I took her out of the package and explained to her what was going on. She was trapped within the body of a doll. I also started writing some of this down, for future reference. In fact, I took video with my phone to record this, then stared playing handball with Sugeet and my brother. I took down some scant notes, then we went to the hospital.

I took her to go see the doctor – Stephen Franklin, actually – and showed to him what was going on (interrupted him during a meeting, actually, where they were measuring the realistic viability of Mario Brothers). He’d never seen a case like this.

As I got out of the hospital, I noticed one of the rooms (an elevator? ) had a bunch of stuff that needed to be “sent back”. It had a picture of a ship on it, drawn on crayon. So I dropped off the doll and something else I had which somehow didn’t belong. I went into the room after dropping the stuff off, to make sure that the people there – trapped in cars and dolls – would be able to make it out. That’s when I got a glimpse of the future.

In the future, a tornado, a big one, was coming to Miami. People were scared. I saw an aging Raul Castro damning Josephine (I thought this was funny), older people taking their meds then praying, and other things. I figured that maybe the old lady was from this time, too. Apparently, a tornado hit their time, one so big it threw people to our time, which explained a lot of the odd incidents that had been happening to us over the past years (because we started seeing strange things even then, but very seldom).

That’s when I woke up. I was left with a sense of wonder and foreboding. Wonder because of the dream – what a great story it would make! Foreboding because it was pretty scary towards the end.