November Dreams, December Dreams

11-28-2003

I ride my bicycle downtown and lock it. I meet a woman for a date. It's our first date, so although it goes well, it doesn't go very far. I kiss her goodnight, and as we part ways, I muse on the "three date" rule and its implication for someone who is looking for a partner: Is it socially acceptable to interleave lots of first and second dates with lots of women before that crucial third date?

I return to my bicycle and unlock it. As I'm doing so, a car pulls up to the curb and men with guns get out and go into a building. It's a mob hit. The point of view shifts to an office foyer where the hitmen are firing submachineguns into an office door, and follows them out again.

Meanwhile, I have ducked into an alley and taken cover. The scene transforms. These aren't mafia hitmen; they are guerillas, and I am now a regular army officer. From my concealed position, I fire at the band of guerillas; they return fire and take cover.

The scene has entirely transformed into a rocky river valley, the ground covered with boulders and scree. I am now engaged in a prolonged firefight with enemy guerillas concealed among the boulders. I'm unsure how many opponents I'm facing, and I'm unsure of their locations. I am able to pick a couple of them off with single shots; then I engage in a prolonged exchange of fire with one guerilla, who has a large-caliber gun. I find myself staring down its barrel as I shoot at my opponent. But eventually I take him out.

Then, all is quiet. Are there any guerillas left? Maybe; but if there are, I'll just have to face their taking shots at me as I get out of there.

The setting is urban once again. A sergeant, who had been on guard detail, is wounded, having taken a bullet in his knee. I pick up his telephone and call headquarters to arrange for him to be picked up and taken to a hospital. The emergency room, I muse, is suddenly getting lots of experience handling gunshot wounds and similar trauma. My call gets transferred to my commanding officer, who chews me out for how I handled the firefight. "What do you expect from me? It's the first time I've seen fire in thirty years!"

11-29-2003

(1) I've just been hired for a new job at some kind of technology company. I'm unsure of how to do the job, or even whether I'm actually qualified for it. The nature of the job involved collating together various computer-generated weather reports and forecasts and generating a summary forecast, using my presumed weather knowledge and intuition, with the idea that this would be the best possible forecast. At my interview I promoted myself, saying that my physics degrees made me good for the job, that I had taken meteorology courses from experts, and so on. I've got my copy of Atmospheric Science by Wallace and Hobbs to put on my desk.

But I feel like I'm really unqualified. All I know about forecasting is that "persistence" is one of the best forecasting methods known ... but that it by definition is lousy at predicting changes in the weather.

On my first day on the job I fall asleep at my desk, and wake up late in the day. There are a bunch of full-color weather maps and satellite photos that need sorting, and I spend some time sorting them. But I realize that no one seems to care. My boss is nowhere to be found. I leave my desk and wander around the building. The ground floor is dark office cubicles and machine rooms. The upper floors are well lit, gleaming with chrome and plexiglass. I wander through a training area where customers learn to use the company's products. I talk with the CEO, who doesn't know who I am or who my boss is.

At last, for a relief, it's time to go home. It's a long way home, like a two-hour commute through the mountains. I hop onto my new motorcycle and get on the road. But it is beginning to rain, and I don't feel safe as a newly trained motorcyclist, so in the next town I pull over to wait for the rain to end. There is an older Indian casino there, and I go in, looking for the poker room. The interior of the casino is peculiarly dark and cramped. I find the poker room, but there are no games going (although they claim that a 1-5 stud game goes around the clock.)

(2) I'm spending lots of time in a hotel with a range of partying people. Some are very bourgeois, wealthy, materialist, and others are young hipster types. There is a rivalry going on between two older yuppie couples. The women in both couples seem to have taken a sexual interest in me, with the knowledge and consent of their male partners. But the rivalry is nasty. One couple is merely greedy and materialistic. The other couple, I'm sure, is a pair of scammers, perpetrating some kind of con. I suspect that they want to get me involved in some kind of rigged poker game, either to fleece me or to use my skills to fleece other rich people.

I get away from the yuppies and hang out with the younger people. I go to the communal bathing area and find a group of lesbians there, who invite me to join them. I'm minding my own business, getting clean, but they are engaging in sex play and without warning include me in their play: sensually caressing my arms and back. I reciprocate, but I'm wary of pushing boundaries: I caress arms, hands, and backs, but I stay away from obviously erotic touch.

One woman has had too much sun, and the sunburned back of her neck is peeling. I caress that, and brush away flakes of skin. At once, this is obviously a relief to her, and it is also painful. I try to be as careful as I can.

The materialistic yuppie couple comes in. The woman takes hold of me and holds my head between her breasts. She says we should spend some time alone together now. But then the other couple, the scammers come in. I break free, and the scammer woman takes me by the hand, leading me out of the room. There is a poker game going on, and they want me to play in it. Okay, it's the moment of truth: am I the one being conned here?

12-10-2003

(1) I'm in a political planning meeting with two of the characters from the play I saw last night. [The play was Continental Divide: Mothers Against, by David Edgar, mounted by Berkeley Rep.] The characters were Lorianne (the thin blonde [!] pundit) and Vincent (the black speechwriter). We are planning the campaign of the candidate, whom I really don't like (although I'm concealing this).

A beggar, a black man in ragged clothes, makes his way onto the estate where we are meeting, and accosts me: can I help him? He isn't asking for money or food. Instead, he wants me to help give him an injection. He proffers a hypodermic syringe filled with a clear yellow liquid. He explains that he is diabetic, and needs his insulin shot.

I realize that this is some kind of trap, a setup. The candidate has a hard line on drugs. I don't want to get involved in something that will tarnish my image in the campaign. I tell the beggar that I cannot help him. He drops the syringe on the ground in front of me and leaves. Now I know it's a setup – a real diabetic would have taken his insulin with him, and a real junkie wouldn't let his fix go to waste. It is imperative that I not get my fingerprints on the syringe.

I summon Lorianne and Vincent. I fear that one of them is responsible, having a knife out for me, and I want to let them know that I'm not that easy to knife. I show them the syringe and explain why I don't want to touch it. I don't explain that for the same reasons it would be unwise for either of them to pick it up, but they are both smart enough to figure that part out, and neither of them does. With them as witnesses, I call for one of the estate's security guards, and the three of us watch as the guard disposes of the syringe.

(2) There are five women, clones, who are involved in some covert scheme that might or might not involve world domination and might or might not involve travel to other worlds. They appear to be interested in me as a pawn for their scheme. I don't want to be a pawn.

One of the clones has a daughter, and it's not clear to me whether the daughter is her mother's womb-daughter or else is herself a clone.

The daughter seeks me out for conversation. She tells me that her mother and her clone-sisters are dying, that their scheme is failing. All their hopes rest in her, the daughter, and depend on her reproducing and building up the family's numbers. She wants me to father her children.

As she is explaining this to me, a cat appears and asks for attention. It is Rocky [who died, in waking life, last Sunday]. I pet him while we talk.

I explain my decision: that although I like her, I do not trust her mother and her clone-aunts, and I would not want my children to be part of their schemes.

(3) The city of London faces the conflict between the old and the new, between English tradition and American money. One of the great old townhouses has just been bought by an American oil company, and its tradition-laden name (something like Waterford House) has just been changed to that of the oil company: the Mobiltron Building.

While I am crossing Trafalgar Square, someone falls from a high window into the street below. It is a Hungarian aristocrat. Amazingly, he survives his fall. His body is stiff, as if made of plaster. I talk with him while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. He tells me that he did not jump, but slipped and fell from his balcony.

Later, I am riding a crouded trolley car, trying to get somewhere. One of those weird dream transitions takes place, and I lose the place in the book I'm reading about what is happening. I leaf through the pages of the book to find my place: the name change of the building – too early. Unrecognized, unremembered activity – too late. I try to find the page about riding on the crowded trolley.

12-11-2003

Debbie and I are hiking on a mountainside, roughing it, with camping gear in our packs. We are going downhill, and we are also trying not to be seen by others.

We descend down some tricky steep slopes and walk under tree cover. Then we pass through an open field. There are three sets of railroad tracks dividing the field, which is actually quite flat. Because of the traffic on the tracks, we need to choose the right moment to get across safely.

There is a pause between trains. I run across the field and cross the first track. I look to my right and see another train approaching. I crouch down between the tracks, but after a few moments the train isn't any closer. Debbie crosses the field and joins me. We decide to chance the rest of the crossing. We hop across the tracks and get to the other side of the field.

Here there is a mass of low, thick bushes growing in our way. It is the most formidable obstacle to our journey we have yet encountered. We start to make our way through it, pushing thickly leafed branches out of our way. I notice that the really thick shrubbery in front of us is really shrubs growing on a limestone brick wall. I follow the wall for a few paces and find a breach, which is quite easy to walk through.

We can hear traffic noises – cars driving on a street – below us. In front of us, at our feet, are the roofs of buildings lining that street. I turn around and look back, and notice how high the mountain rises above us. It appears that Debbie and I have descended a lot further than I had realized. There is a great waterfall flowing over a cliff. I hadn't noticed either the waterfall or the stream that ran down from it during our climb.

I think about how to get down to street level, and in a dream transition I am there, following the street back to the main highway. This is not the road we came in on to get to the mountain, but one further along the highway. I move along the highway, and see a sign: "28% grade ahead – steepest grade in Washington".