Dreams 10/1-10/7/2003

10-3-2003

As a treat, I've bought myself a fancy cigar, and I'm smoking it in my room. It's fairly large, and the nicotine starts to get to me as I reach the end. I wish that I had a container in which to keep the remainder for later. I put the cigar out and throw it away.

Then I realize that I do have a tube to store a cigar in, but it has a cigar in it already. I go find it, and discover that there are two: one which is unopened, and one which has a cigar butt saved in it. I open up the second, and observe that I had very carefully placed a scrap of tobacco leaf over the end, sealing it, to keep it fresh. (The cigar was white, and the tobacco scrap was a translucent pale sheet.)

I think about smoking the butt, but I am still feeling slightly nauseous from the first cigar.

10-4-2003

Debbie and I are in New Zealand, walking in the countryside. In the course of some unremembered dream hugger-mugger, we find an interesting rock formation that serves as natural shelter: It is a kind of table, a flat rock supported around its edges by other rocks. We climb under it and stay there for a little while.

Later we're walking along the edge of a small valley, its floor flat, covered with grass, its walls steep cliffs. I think that this place and the table-rock are just the sorts of things that Peter Jackson would want to know about for exterior settings for shooting THE LORD OF THE RINGS. A dialogue in my mind takes place between Jackson and I, Jackson explaining that yes, although shooting is over, he does want to know about such places.

Then we are captured by a monstrous creature: tall, grey-skinned, with long arms which it flails around in circles. I recognize it as a troll. The troll takes us to its camp, where there are a few other trolls, and many other smaller creatures, also manlike but short and squat. These are "mice".

We are afraid that the trolls wish to kill and eat us; but they have other plans. They want us to run an errand, to carry a message for them. The message is to be delivered to an address in New York City, in upper Manhattan. The location is at the intersection of 94th Street and Ocean Avenue. We use Yahoo! Maps to locate the precise address, and discover that on Ocean Avenue in that part of town there is a wide median strip where there are buildings, and the place we are to go, a bar, is on that median strip.

There is a stack of papers beside us. I look at it, and on the top there is an issue of The Nation with a full-color cover: a night-time street scene in black and blue, with a lurid neon sign. The sales copy on the cover promises an expose of strippers and scandal.

One of the mice sees me looking at the magazine and asks me if I want to take a copy. I tell him, "Thanks, but no."

10-5-2003

I have gotten involved in a magical, metaphysical, world-saving venture with two other people, a man and a woman, who are a married couple and also physics professors at Caltech, as well as being sorcerors. In the outward, worldly expression of our venture, they are the founders of a start-up company in Pasadena, and I am an employee.

The offices of this start-up are located quite close to the Caltech campus, right near what is labeled in my dream the Quantum Gate, one of the entrances to campus.

I find I need directions to get around, so I look at a map of campus in a university guide. Here is the Quantum Gate, here are the Physics Department buildings, here is the campus's Main Gate, and here (not shown on the map, but I know where they are) are the offices of our venture.

I walk along the arcade along the outside of the wall around the campus that faces the harbor. I think about my relationship with my two partners. They are equal partners in the magical venture, but to the outside world they are my superiors in the start-up.

I decide that what I need to do is re-enter the graduate program in the Physics Department and finish my PhD, so that I can be my partners' peer. I consider the relative advantages of working with one of them as my advisor (understanding of my magical duties relative to the degree program requirements) versus someone else (having one of my partners as an advisor would at least temporarily accentuate the difference in rank between us).

10-6-2003

Fragment #1: I've been playing no-limit hold'em against some tough opponents. One of them is a player who never loses big pots. But I've just doubled through him, and not by getting lucky, either.

Fragment #2: A best-seller list for software. The page shows the packages' weekly sales figures and ranks, as well as their desktop icons.

10-7-2003

(1) The dream is about some sort of SF convention, a Worldcon. Sometimes it seems like I'm involved in getting ready for it, sometimes helping tear it down, and sometimes while it's going on. There is a bunch of fanhistorical memorabilia, lots of it relating to the history of LASFS. (Is the convention being held in Los Angeles?)

(2) The convention dream segues into a dream recapitulation of the original Star Trek series episode about Zephraim Cochrane and his disembodied alien lover. We need the alien's assistance to repair our damaged shuttlecraft (whose cargo bay is loaded with fanhistorical memorabilia). Can we get it, while hiding from it our intention to escape with Cochrane?

(3) Late in the day I'm walking along 40th Street from the MacArthur BART station to the Oaks Club. Ahead of me, moving slowly, are two women, black, pushing large baby carriages. I catch up with them, and walk with them for a little while. I urge them to move faster, saying that the sun will go down soon, and when it does the street won't be safe.