August 2003 Dreams

8-19-2003

(1) I'm walking through a casino, and I see Benny Behnen, the casino owner's son [so the casino must have been the Horseshoe in Las Vegas, but it seemed pretty generic in the dream]. I say, "Hey, how ya doin'!" and Benny nods in return. I muse to myself about the conceit of having a nodding acquaintance with casino owners.

(2) I'm supposed to meet people for lunch, so I sit down at a Japanese restaurant counter in a food court. The food is a little expensive, but I'm hungry. I order a shrimp combination plate.

Debbie and Liz Lynn join me, Deb sitting on my right and Liz on my left. Across the walkway at the left end of the counter, someone we know has sat down at another restaurant counter, and begins to talk loudly to a companion about some kind of spiritual experience she has just had. Liz covers her face in her hands in exasperation; she's completely fed up with this sort of thing.

(3) For the group picnic in the park, Debbie and I have spread our bedspread on the lawn right next to where David and Cathy (Deb's brother and sister-in-law) have spread theirs. I'm wandering around, seeing things. An unfamiliar woman approaches me and apologizes for encroaching on the family space. I tell her not to worry, it was nothing. Then I come back to our bedspreads and discover that the woman's pickup truck had backed up onto Deb's and my bedspread. The truck moves off again.

Continuing to wander around, I observe on the grassy ground that there are caterpilars – larval monarch butterflies – crossing the lawn. I also see candies scattered about on the ground. This immediately reminds me of the silly physicist who published a paper arguing on thermodynamic grounds that solar sails can't work [this really happened in waking life]. I think for a moment on what kind of analysis is needed to show the clueless git what he did wrong.

It's time to go, and everyone is packing up. Cathy Tuttle folds up their bedspread. I help out. Here is a stack of neatly folded T-shirts. They look like they could be mine, but they could be David's or Cathy's as well. Whose are they? I guess that they are mine. Then we fold up the bedspreads as well.

8-25-2003

(1) I'm driving in a small car through woods, the road narrowed and choked by banks of leaves. I come out of the woodsby a river. I look for a grocery store, walk across the shallows of the river into a grotto with tiled walls. Water runs across the tiled floor.

(2) Debbie and I are walking in a meadow at the bottom of a narrow mountain valley. Petroleum oil seeps out of cracks in the cliffside and flows down, the flow growing from slight trickles into more and more flow, and eventually becoming a solid sheet of oil flowing down the cliff.

It is beginning to rain. The ground begins to get wet. But parts of the ground are remaining dry – I notice that the dry spots make patterns, like crop circles. The patterns comprise a sort of evil writing that evokes Lovecraftian horror.

(3) A recapitulation of the delivery of fanzines to Richard Bergeron, except that it is I doing it rather than Gary Farber and Patrick Hayden. I get past the doorman and into Bergeron's apartment. He isn't there. The apartment is furnished like a Victorian men's club – dark atmosphere, teak and mahogany furniture, overstuffed chairs, oriental rugs, etc. I light a cigarette, and tip its ash into an ashtray. I find Bergeron's cigar humidor.

A woman is in the room! She sees me. She offers me a cigarete, but it's a Marlboro, too strong for me.

9-1-2003

(1) I'm talking with Delia Sherman. She is very drunk. Smiling at me, she leans over, collapses into my arms. I gently lower her to the floor.

She needs to be gotten to her hotel room. Where is Ellen Kushner? Here are some safety monitors to help. they take Delia and carry her to her room. One of them thanks me.

It must have been some party in the SFWA suite. Here's another woman passed out on the floor. She has blond shoulder-length hair, and she's built chunkily. I don't know her.

(2) While traveling through the woods in the snow, the young king's party meets an accident. The king is rescued by a bandit. The two travel through the woods to the king's castle. The bandit disappears into the woods.

The king now has a problem: The bandit knows him as he really is, and likes him. As king, nobody sees the real man who is king, and he's lonely. He wants to find the bandit again.

I, the dreaming self, think that this would make a good premise for a book, while I look at stumps and logs sticking out of the snow.