More light, said Goethe

Wish I could remember all of this one,but what I do remember starts here:
I'm in a shadowy alley talking to three other men. In the near distance there is a group of other people separated from us, and sitting in a lighted area. I'm trying to convince the three men that I should be part of their project? conspiracy? group? I have committed some crime, nature now unknown, that will qualify me to be admitted. I'm explaing that I can't go back to my job as a bookseller. I quote a few lines of some classic poem to illustrate my position. I can't remember the poem, although it was something about how can one go on doing x when y has happened. I do remember that in the dream while I quoted the poem I could see it written on a page, not as in a book of poems, but within the lines/ like this / broken by slashes / the way a poem is sometimes quoted in a text.

I don't know how they received my plea, but I found myself going outside of the shadowy area. I paused at a gate to adjust my belt? zipper? and looked back down the shadowy hallway. I see a young woman approaching,but she sees me fiddling with belt or whatever and turns away. I realize that she may have interpreted my gesture as sexual.

I leave the building, now for some reason carrying a change of clothes in one of those plastic dry cleaning bags over a hanger. I cross a green, well manicured lawn and see that a piece of plastic detritus has caught on the plastic of the clothes bag. I scrape it off with my foot.

I leave the lawn area and head down the street. I see large buildings in the near distance and I think that I'm in London. It happily occurs to me that I could visit some art museums. With that I look up and see that I'm entering a public park. It is crowded with ornate lightposts. But at the top of each one, instead of a simple light fixture, there is a a brilliant yellow plastic tulip, enormous in size. Though it isn't lit (it is midday) the sunlight is making the tulips glow against an intense blue sky.

.....

Amid the clunky clashing of sexual symbols, a transcendant light leads me forward. This is becoming common in my dreams.

In my father's house...

I'm in the top story of a two story house. Night. A few lights are burning in the kitchen. I try to turn on another light but it doesn't work. I try another, same thing. Because the night is stormy I conclude that a fuse has blown and only one circuit is still working--coincidentally the one that the lights I was using was on. I decide to go downstairs, where my father lives (he rents the upper story to me), and find the fusebox. I go into the bedroom to get warmer clothes and find the bed there occupied by a mysterious figure wrapped in the blankets. This is unexpected and a little scary. I touch the blankets at the foot of the bed as the first step to pulling the blankets gently off the figure so I can see who it is. When I do, the figure erupts out of the blankets, feet kicking out and nearly hitting my face. I see that it is myself, violent with fear.

I turn to the closet and find a sweatshirt by touch (the sweatshirts are softer and thicker than the tshirts). Returning to the front of the house I find that all the lights are now out, though I can still more or less see in the gloom. The front door opens and my father enters. He seems in a cheerful frame of mind. I tell him that I was just about to go looking for him so that he could show me where the fusebox is located. He walks over to the kitchen table, which is a picnic table, and sits down. I join him there, but before we can talk I see another figure moving toward the front door. He's hard to make out in the shadows, but seems to be an old man. I walk toward him and see that he is also my father, but a shadowy dangerous version. I'm afraid as I approach that he will shoot me in the stomach with a gun. He doesn't, and I return to the table. The shadow father also comes to the table, so that the three of us--me, father, shadow father--are sitting together. The shadow father is silent, but my father says he wants to talk to me about the aloofness between us. There is the sense that he wants to overcome it. I don't know what to say and I turn to the windows where I see that dawn is breaking and light is now streaming into the room. I wake.

Id as B movie

As in a movie...
We see a heavy car in the middle distance speeding down a winding mountain road. It abruptly veers off onto a cleared dirt area below a rocky cliff. Dust flys and the doors jerk open. Three people get out and quickly set up a chair, where one of them sits. He looks like an actor being prepared for a role as demented preacher in a zombie movie. His hair is thick and curly, afro-like, mushrooming out from his head but it is heavy enough to leave a part in the middle. His clothes are ragged and disarrayed. It is clear that he's being made up to fool someone, someone criminal. As part of the disguise he can make candles appear from spots on his body, as though miraculously. One spot is above his forehead in the part of his hair. When he presses a small device in his hand, secretly, an absurdly phallic candle grows from his head. Less grotesquely, but more interestingly, at the same time three small candles grow from his heart. There is much conversation between the people there about whether the disguise will be effective.

No noose is good noose...

In my house at night. I enter the bathroom and notice that the shower curtains are disarrayed. With a sense of dread I pull them back and see an Indian man hanging from a noose above the bathtub. His skin is sallow and he is thin, almost emaciated, but his face is peaceful. He has dark hair and a small moustache. I recoil in shock, and stagger backwards. Then I see that there is a small Indian boy behind him, that in fact the boy is hoisting the man by the noose, holding him up in the air. His face is gleaming and cheerful. The man opens his eyes and explains to me that everything is ok, that this is surprizingly stimulating and makes him feel more at peace. The small boy is, in fact, his son helping him out. There is an erotic aura about the scene, and in the dream I think about people who get off on being asphyxiated.

Then I realise that there is another bathtub on the other side of the bathroom, also with shower curtains. They open and my own father emerges from the tub, uncharacteristically happy. He hasn't seen what's going on in the other tub. "Did I miss anything," he asks.

I stumble out of the bathroom and back to the bedroom where I get back in bed with Sandy. I wake up confused and in distress, get out of bed and go to the bathroom. No one there but me.

Where did THAT come from?

Pay more attention to the trees in your dreams

I'm in Houston or Chicago, driving along a broad tree-lined street. The street is actually two streets separated by a narrow paved area, and both sides have dark complex oak trees on each side, so that there are four lines of trees. There is little traffic. For some reason I decide to drive across the paved area and switch to the left road. I can see patches of white light shining through the branches in the near distance. I think, in the dream, that I've been here before.

Later I'm in a high school, where I am a new teacher. The halls are dark and students jostle each other. At the intersection of two locker-lined halls there is a massive pile of winter coats on the floor. I go outside, where I stand in an area outside the doors that is overhung by the branches of a large oak tree. Someone, another teacher perhaps, is walking up. He is smirking and making a joke about the coats, something about the school having been 'coated'.

Lois M comes out of the doors. In waking life I haven't seen her in 20 years, and she was never a close friend. I had heard a decade ago that she was suffering from a brain tumor (since recovered). In this dream, she is still young and dark-haired, but obviously ill. Her face is strained and she is sweating. I ask her what she's doing there--teaching?--but she doesn't reply. Concerned, I ask her if she's alright. She indicates that I should follow her to the roots of the oak tree, but she wanders off.

I can't remember now if this part was before or after that scene, but I am in the school gymnasium incongruously camped out in one corner. The gym is full of students preparing for a ball--the prom? I get up from the bed where I've been sleeping, which is in full view of everyone, and look around for my clothes. I find the clothes but realise that my wallet is missing. I see a golden credit card lying nearby and pick it up. It's one of mine but nothing else from the wallet is there. From a sitting position on the floor (the bed is a mattress on the floor) I see two or three women approach. One is large and moving in a stately determined sweep. She is elaborately dressed in a red gown. When she gets near she dramatically opens the gown, which splits apart down the front, to reveal blazing white lingerie.