I'm touring a university campus unfamiliar to me.  I'm with a few other people I don't really know, and the tour guide is a professor at the university who is new to me, but I know he has a reputation for brilliance and being difficult.  He's showing us around and he and I are getting on quite well.  We finish the tour and he walks us to a large car parked outside on a field.  The sunlight is very bright and suffuses the field.  All around us there are other people walking on their business but there also are many small children running happily about.

The tour guide gets us into the car and leans into to the window to speak to me.
"Do you enjoy having all the children around," he asks.
"Yes," I reply honestly.  "I don't get to see many little kids any more and it's fun to see them, especially so happy.  (Or something very like that.)
"You know," he says  "the man who plays the violin for the university is retiring."
"He's Ray Bradbury," one of my companions says.
I look at the tour guide, who is walking away.  I realize he is suggesting I take the position of violinist for the university.
I call after him:  "I don't play the violin!"
He turns just enough to say, quietly:  "I think you can do it."
I turn away from the window, instantly tormented by this.  My chest is convulsed with sorrow and physically knotted up inside.
"Go ahead," I cry  "Stab my heart with an ice pick!"
And I fall into the lap of one of my companions and weep harsh painful tears.
I wake with my heart pounding and chest heavy with distress and sadness.

Missed chances in life?  Very intense dream.

Long dream culminating in this scene:  I'm in a large, dimly lit room where many people mingle (I attended a poetry reading last night, which is probably the resource for this).  Standing against one wall, her back to the room is my mother.  She's dismally unhappy.  A young girl stands beside her, also with back to the room.  Both have very long strait hair, unlike my mother in life.  I approach and put my arms around my mother's back, trying to say calming and reassuring words.  Finally, I say "I love you, mom."  Immediately her body pops like a soap bubble, leaving me holding her empty skin for just a second.  But I understand that my declaration of love has freed her, and ended her suffering.  Now she can go on to some other place. 

Very positive dream.  I really felt like I was making some kind of astral plane communication of something that needed to be said.  

Sometimes A Great Notion?

Dreamed I wandered into a banjo workshop taught by Ken Kesey and Paul Newman.  Kesey seemed irritated about something, but Newman was gracious and charming.  They were parents? custodians? guardians? of a miniature adult, an old man about a foot tall. 

Here comes the train.

Northern Arizona, maybe.  Rocky, mountainous landscape, no trees.  S and I are in a car traveling somewhere for fun, for a good view in the mountains.  Sky darkens.  We're heading back southwards, and the road parallels a railroad track.  I'm about to turn right onto a short bridge that goes over the tracks, when I see that a train is fast approaching and the bridge has collapsed.  Dream ends as I'm trying to stop before driving onto the collapsed bridge and being hit by the train--which anyway will crash as it hits the bridge ruins.  No idea what's happening here.

Elephant talk

Chatting with an elephant about something.  We were both reading a poster on the wall.  Then today I saw three pictures of elephants online on separate sites.  Ganesha?