Camera goes, boat glides

Someone steals my camera and leaves a cheap imitation in its place. All happens in a dark room--restaurant?

Riding a boat or something very like one--canoe shaped--up a road beside a river. I'm confused that the vehicle goes uphill without any apparent motor or energy source. Moves very quickly and smoothly. Across the river is a rich landscape of homes and forest. Some of the homes are very elaborate, like something imagined to be on the hills outside Florence--old, elaborate, beautiful, well integrated into their surroundings.

New York again

Zack and I driving through New York City streets, everything gray and a little sleazy in a light rain. The right hand side of the windshield is obscured. We park in a lot and go inside some non-descript building to transact business of unspecified nature. When we return we find that the car has been stolen. I ask Zack if he left his window open and he admits that he did. Anxiety anxiety anxiety.

Camelflage

All I can remember is a camel, crouching in the darkness.

Fugue States of Amnesia

D again. I meet him outside somewhere. His face is rounder, apple-cheeked, clean-shaven. He is sitting at a picnic table, where we are shortly joined by two other men. One is a German academic of some kind--dressed in a suit and speaking with a thick accent. He makes a conversational reference to some obscure movie and a character in it. D, of course, knows this movie and replies pithily. We move inside and there D opens a suitcase(?) and removes various items, one of which is a painting of a civil war scene.

An unexpected visit from a benign spirit

D. arrives for a visit (highly unlikely in waking life). He is cheerful and energetic. I welcome him as we stand in front of the house and look out at the front yard, which stretches parklike for several acres in the dream. There is a wide semi-circular driveway beneath spreading oak(?) trees. I start to explain that he must see this as we see it--still in development, much work to be done, etc. Essentially I'm being defensive about what I perceive to be the faults on view. He brusquely shrugs me off, a little irritated that I'm so pathetically defensive. I grab his upper arm and force him to turn back and look at the yard again, attempting to explain that I'm not being defensive but just wanting him to know all the great things we've got planned for the place. Looking ahead, not backwards.

We go in the house, where there is much food and he quickly begins preparing some.

Awake after the dream, I feel like it was essentially a positive visit. The night before this one was so wretched, that this dream feels like a welcome visitation by a benign spirit.

More grinding anxiety

I've been arrested for some crime, which I didn't commit, and I'm waiting in a crowded detention center. Unfortunately, I also have a small baggie in my pants pocket. I try to figure out how to get rid of it in the crowd. There is a table next to one wall where there are various small objects--ashtrays, etc. I surreptitiously lift one and place the baggie underneath it. A few moments later one of the police comes by and pokes around on the table, eventually lifting the ashtray and finding the baggie. I affect nonchalance. He hands it to me and asks if it's mine. I'm happy to pick it up, since that means my fingerprints will have a legitimate reason for being on it. I deny ownership.

Nevertheless I next find myself in prison. There are men and women both there, and various disguting things occur--one prisoner shits on the valued comic book of another, for instance. As I look around at the haggard and disturbed faces I realise that they are all crazy, that in fact all prisons are insane asylums.

I wake distressed.

Test your strength

So it's night, and I'm in a gas station. I'm there to try my strength against a machine which looks a lot like the ab machine at the gym--two wings to rest your arms on as you do that painful butterfly motion. The room is at the back of the station, where I've been led by a large black man. Using this machine is something like the carnival booth where you hit a springboard with a giant hammer and try to ring the bell. The black man is concerned that the task will be way outside my abilities, and he is reluctant to let me try. He is finally persuaded and tells me that the cost is $10 a shot. I look at the machine, and at him, and realise that he is probably right. I offer to give him five dollars and just pretend to have tried. He is relieved and takes my money, and refunds also the $1.50 that I paid to get in the station for this. I'm impressed with his honesty and concern.

I leave and walk around the back of the station where I've parked my bicycle. As I approach it I see a dark shape in a small hallway near the bike. Somewhat alarmed, I hurry to the bike and begin to unlock it. The shape emerges from the hallway and is revealed to be a pudgy adolescent boy with his hands handcuffed behind him. He wants me to release him, but I think he must be a criminal of some kind and refuse. I hold the bike in front of me as a shield and in preparation for throwing it at him if he makes trouble, but he is more distraught than dangerous. I jump on the bike and ride away, waking with a start as I do so.

A quality of light issue

I'm in the bedroom listening to Sandy talk with two men in the kitchen. I think she is fixing breakfast for them. One is a photographer and the other is the shaman brother of JP. They're discussing how Native Americans have been reclaiming historical/cultural artifacts--skeletal remains, sacred sites, etc. The shaman remarks that he is surprized by the fact that they are now claiming ownership over the quality of light at their sacred sites, and arguing that the pollution caused by industrial others is degrading that light.

Later that night, I dream that I'm talking to an attractive young woman at a table. As we speak I see projected, as on a screen, a beach scene where various voluptuous young beauties are cavorting in the sand. One is noticeably pregnant. I understand that they are on an island, and that the young woman with me at the table is inviting me to join them there. Then it occurs to me that I'm time traveling , so that I'm talking to her in the past. With a sudden shock I realize that she is there at the island right now, in real time. I blurt out: "You're there now, aren't you?" She nods affirmation. This is complicated, but we're both back in time yet suddenly aware that we are back in time playing a scene from the past. Our sudden awareness lifts us out of that time nexus. Liberating.

B&W chickens

Just an image from last night's dream:
Sandy brought home a flock of chicks, all colored in stark black and white. There was a black goose among them. Then a small dog, perhaps a Chihuahua but also colored in black and white, leapt from a shelf behind my head and ran among the chicks, causing fowl confusion.

From a hole in the ground

First, I find myself in Spain, arriving at an airport. I wander through the place, somewhat amused to see how small the building is in this old world country. The thoroughfare is crowded with people. I'm trying to get out of the airport so I can go somewhere else, but everything baffles me as I attempt to leave. Finally I get outside the building, but nothing makes sense. I walk aimlessly around the outside, unable to find a bus or taxi. Night falls and it is cold as well as dark.

Scene shifts. I'm in our backyard with Sandy. She is sitting beneath a large horizontal tree branch, which is making ominous squeaking noises. I urge her to get out from below it, which she does. Then the branch, which must be two feet or more in diameter, somehow transmogrifies into a rolled up carpet. I grab one end and pull it out like a roll of paper towels (perhaps I should say like a roll of toilet paper) until it covers the back yard. However, once spread out it begins to sink in the middle. I pull it back and there is a giant sink hole revealed beneath it. I can see torn roots and layered dirt descending down into blackness--there is no bottom to it. There's an aura of danger.

Sigh. (B)anal.