Fear the Crab

I was back at the U of Puget Sound, in the basement of the Student Union Building. I was in some office, for reasons which I do not know, and I was actually not supposed to be there. I was sneaking into this office as a favor to someone else, who required a paper or file from the back rooms. I felt highly paranoid as I conducted my business, but I was able to leave without being stopped.

As I left the building, a professor came up to me and said I needed to come with him to the Fiscal Office. The reason was because he had forgotten to tell them that I was now living in a special house-dorm with a few of my friends, and we needed to correct it if I wanted to remain there. As we were walking to the office, I noticed that the professor was accompanied by a few other faculty members, and I came to realize that they were all sycophants and hung around him merely to leech off his fame. I could overhear their whispers, and they said amongst themselves that I was the teacher’s pet, though I had no recollection of even taking that professor’s classes.

On the way to the office, I received a phone call from Jumi. We engaged in idle talk, and then she made mention that she was still working at the sheriff’s department. That conversation seemed to twist the dream into a “daydream” within the dream, because I was then thinking about a fictional time when I worked at a television station, helping their broadcasts by positioning lights, and I even began to think about the fictional time that I had to apply make-up to these actors and actresses.

My dream returned to “normal,” and we made it to the fiscal office, which turned out to be a mock-up of the Customer Service Counter at DFS. The line was long because the person working the counter was slow and did not do things in a timely manner. I realized that after we had all approached the counter, we would have another wait for the fiscal office cashier’s window, and I began to worry that I wouldn’t have time to get my next class. Yet I couldn’t leave, because I needed the professor’s help in telling the office where I was living and why I was living there (I think he had to vouch for me and sign some papers). I remember thinking that maybe if I at least made it past the CR counter, I could skip out and go to my next class. A foolish thought, but it was the last one I had before I woke up.

I was back at the Univ of Puget Sound, visiting the old dorms. However, I wasn’t going back as an alum, but rather as a student. And the dorms were all underground bunkers that were surprisingly “sunlit” inside. I say underground because the front door to all the dorms was accessed down a stairwell, and there were no floors above ground level. It was raining very hard, where I could feel the water drumming the top of my head.

I know I had a roommate, but I don’t know who it was, and all I really remember from that part is that the desks were falling apart and I had no idea where to put all my stuff.

I was at my grandmother’s house with the whole family, and I remember having to go next door to take violin lessons. However, things kept coming up and delaying my departure. I would forget my socks, I would forget my violin, I would have to use the bathroom and then forget my underwear. Until finally, I’m ready to go, when I see a girl in the front lawn using two laptops as well as my own. For some reason she is supposed to be there, because I walk over and ask if everything is okay. She says yes.

Then we both notice that there are these men who are standing around, looking at the small stone fence that separates my grandmother’s house from another neighbor. Suddenly, then walk around the wall and start looking around on our side. The girl and I walk over and we ask what’s going on. It appears there was a problem with the gas line, and the men were trying to fix it before it got dark so people could have gas for whatever reason they wanted to use it.

The girl and I go to tell everybody, when suddenly I remember that all those laptops were still in the front lawn. I rush back and discover that two of the laptops are missing! I look around, and I see, far away, this woman carrying the tray the laptops were on. I go to chase, and suddenly it feels like I’m running through molasses. I’m not getting any closer, and despite trying to use my hands to “pull” my way forward, the lady just keeps walking. I yell that she’s a thief, but everybody around isn’t paying attention or something, because no one helps. She takes a left turn, and heads into a park and disappears from view. When I get to the park, I realize to my horror that it’s full of people having picnics. Everybody’s walking around, making it very difficult to see where the lady went.

I would have begun to panic, but suddenly the dream changed and I was riding on a train with a bunch of musicians, all of whom were trying to find some new way to play their instruments, because they were so bored. It was amazing, because not only did they successfully play their instruments in new ways and create new sounds, but they had some of the weirdest instruments I had ever seen. For example, a cello that was in the shape of a rectangle and had eight strings from top to bottom. A trumpet that looked like it cross-bred with a trombone. You get the point.

I don’t remember much else, after the alarm clock woke me up.

I don’t remember too much about this dream, except for the fact that I was at a birthday party at some restaurant or convention hall. It wasn’t my birthday, and neither was it any member of my family, but for some reason my entire family was in attendance.

I also remember walking Titan, but that’s about it.

I remember walking around Pearlridge Shopping Center with a friend from Japan, Nana. We were at Phase I, or what’s known today as Uptown. On the second floor near the escalators, I saw George, who was the one that first introduced me to Nana, sitting in front of Software Etc. She went over to say hi, and the first thing that popped into my (dream) mind was that George was going to be very upset that Nana was here and he didn’t know about it. I also began to think that he would become further upset with me because I was hanging out with her, even though in my dream nothing had occured and there was nothing that was going to happen. Nana had come down and I just happened to be there, but would George come to that conclusion?

Before any of that could come into play, however, the dream changed and I was now wandering through a department store with Maile. It is unclear what we were looking for, or perhaps it was Maile’s intention to shop, because I never felt like I was there to actually buy something. I believe the store was Macy’s, still in Pearlridge, and it seemed we were in a department that sold ashtrays and other knick-knack paddywhack goods. I picked up a small item and held it fully within my closed fist, then turned to Maile and, showing her both fists, asked her to guess which hand the object was in.

She never got around to guessing, because I woke up with both my arms and hands tingling from the lack of circulation. I hate when that happens.

This dream seemed to be a mix of images all blended together. It first started with me spending time in jail, and I was on a work crew. Except I had a pair of needle-nosed pliers. I had to sit in the bed of a pickup truck with a bunch of hardened cons. Then the dream switched to that of a man running down the street eating a package of uncooked spaghetti, or linguine.

There was an image of me playing a solitaire game with actual cards, and a scene of me standing.. somewhere.. to do.. something.

None of it made any sense, and already I find it hard to remember details.

I was sitting in some sort of cafe, only instead of being there to drink coffee and eat food I was there to take some sort of math class. There weren’t enough seats for people to use, so many were sitting on the floor. I don’t know what kind of math it was, for there were strange symbols like (0 0) + -0/-0, which I think stood for a weird twist on boolean logic; true and true + minus true over minus true. We had some kind of test to take, but sitting behind me was a girl who was supposed to be smart, but she never seemed to cut a break from the professor. She would ask me to look over her work to see if anything was wrong, because the professor would just jump all over her case if there was even the slightest mistake. This was strange, because the professor only treated her this way. Finally the test we were taking was over, and to my horror I realized that while helping this girl, I had neglected to fill in my own results. Thankfully the prof didn’t approach me for my answers, rather he went straight to the girl and confronted her. She spoke an answer that was correct to everyone’s opinion, but the prof wouldn’t accept it. There was some trivial detail that was wrong, like she hadn’t written in one of the ( signs in the right place, and so he flunked her completely. This time the girl got fed up and ran out of the classroom crying, which at this point had transformed into a giant bus. Going against my better judgment, I decided to go after the girl, taking with me my girlfriend. Except we couldn’t catch up, because I was driving her car, which wasn’t the car she has now, but rather an older model used years ago. I was having trouble driving because, as I said in my dream, “The gas and brake pedals are right next to each other, not separate on other sides of the drive shaft like my car.” Every time I wanted to press the brake, my foot would reach over and hit empty air, causing the two of us to momentarily panic before resuming a normal state.

So we got lost in a parking lot, and all the while my girlfriend is shaking her head and sighing at my ineptitude. Finally we get out, and we’re at this big college party. We step onto this wooden deck where three guys are playing basketball, only they’re not playing it with a hoop and net but rather giant fruit and a giant vending machine. Don’t ask me how that game worked, in my dream it felt like it was commonplace. My girlfriend and I asked around for the girl that ran out of the math class, and everyone seemed to have their own idea of where she went.

Then to my horror one of the guys at the party starting to make the moves on my girlfriend. He looked.. well, right now I can say he looked like Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. At this point in my dream, I started to treat it like a rewind/fast forward videotape. I first went up to the Booger impersonator and punched him in the left eye, hard enough to shatter his sunglasses. Then it seemed like the dream rewound itself back to the moment I caught the guy trying to kiss my girlfriend. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, and my dream was giving me a second chance to do the right thing. So I ran over and started yelling and doing the macho bump-your-chest thing. Then I grabbed him and THEN punched him, this time in the stomach, and pushed him down the stairs that were magically placed next to us. The dream fast forwarded to a weird scene where I’m standing on the sidewalk of a two lane road in the middle of the night, watching cars edge slowly forward in rush hour traffic. The only significant thing I remember from that is a taxi parked on the side of the road suddenly pulling out into the lane and nearly getting T-boned by a limousine.

Thanks to a bunch of inconsiderate people, again I do not remember my dreams. I thought by closing the door to my room, it would give me some quiet, but that illusion was shattered when I woke up to loud talking and the sound of scratches on the wall. It seemed someone was trying to plug something in, and not doing a very good job of it because it took them a few minutes to do that simple task.

This time there’s nothing of my dream that I remember, except for the barest trace of a baseball field and a bus.

I wanted to keep a log of my dreams now that I’m using LiveJournal, but unfortunately, the first day awakens with me forgetting what I dreamt. The only thing I remember is a bunch of hazy amorphous people shouting incoherent and illegible things. Likely my failure to remember is because of my sleep interruption towards the end, when I woke up midway through.