Dream: Yellow Jackets

I'm on the narrow path that leads to the parking lot behind the restaurant that used to be a train station. I look down at my feet and see yellow jackets on the path. They take flight as I pass through. I am shirtless -- I hope they do not attack me, and amazingly they do not.

Now I am inside in the basement of my home.  Paul B is in there and I show him the nest. There's a clump of artificial flowers in the spot on the floor, and they spring up as I step on them. He sprays the Bees (as he did before ). At first the spray isn't too effective, but eventually the Bees stop moving.

We pick up a small clump of the plastic flowers, which have several bees attached to it. I marvel at them because their wings are like butterfly wings, colorful with different patterns.

Dream: Debate at the Camp

I'm at a camp in a large cabin. One of the camp counselors, from behind the counter, shouts "who wants to do a debate?" I've got nothing much to do, so I say "I'll do it" and go over to the table where the debate will take place.

The place is just a table that seats four and there are six of us. So we start walking around the table widdershins. I'm carrying a shovel, a spade. The number of people around the table has lessened gradually and now there's just me and another guy. But I've lost interest, so I tell him so and I walk away.

Another activity is starting outside on the deck. I walk to the exit, but it is just a narrow seam between a wall on the left and a huge flat screen TV on the right. Somehow I'm supposed to pry it open.  I still have the spade, so I consider using this, but it's curved, whereas the seam is straight. Besides, with the flat screen TV so close, one slip of the spade could destroy it. So I hesitate, and I hesitate...

Dream: Auditorium Christmas Party

I'm at the place where the company Christmas party will take place. I have a plant stand made of heavy wire that's painted white. There are folks still setting up the venue, bustling about, and I'm in the way. So I put down the plant stand in an out-of-the-way place so that no one will trip on it. Perhaps it will be used as a decoration.

There's a fragile-looking glass sphere, multicolored, the size of a volleyball, next to the place where I set down down the stand. It has holes in it and rods stick out of some of the holes like a Fancy Pencil Holder. Perhaps it can go on the plant stand, but I dare not do that lest I break it.

I move away from all the activity and look around to see what's in the many rooms at this place. They all have tables in them; most have white tablecloths but few have place settings, and no food has been set out. There are no people in those rooms.

I'm sitting in a chair that I brought and I have a stainless steel fork that I also brought. I decide to sit and relax. A young slender woman is nearby wearing black tights. I like that she's nearby. I decide to stay here for a while. Then when I get to the room that has the food, I'll take the last remaining spot so I don't have to decide where to sit.

I'm in the party room. I'm seated with people I don't know. We're all in Auditorium seating. As the food comes out, I'm dismayed -- how can anyone eat in these chairs? There's not even a table to place our meals on! Folks nearby have their plates of food. But someone directly in front of me gets up to walk to a place to get food, and folks in my row do too,  including another young woman that's next to me.

As we stand in line in the aisle of the auditorium, I wonder if we will eat somewhere else or bring the food back here.

Dream: Clumsy at the Convention

I’m in a convention center, making my way from a reception area to where the main event will take place. I realize that I need to put my mask¹ on, so I slow my pace while I pull the mask out of my right front pants pocket. I get the feeling that some other stuff fell out of the pocket, so I stop and turn to look on the floor behind me. And while I do so, someone who was walking behind me tells me that I’ve dropped something and stoops to pick it up. Seeing that it’s one of my used hankies, I tell the person that I’ll get it and thank him.

So, I’ve picked up the hanky and put it back in my pocket. And now I’m standing while trying to hold all kinds of stuff, which includes my mask, a small notebook and pen, another hanky and perhaps a pamphlet about the event. It’s really hard for me to put the mask on without both my hands being free.

---

¹ Face covering to prevent the spread of COVID-19

Dream: Yellow Legged Bugs

I’m outside at a lakeside picnic area.  There are people, picnic tables & benches and flora.

I’m supposed to interact with the wildlife.  There is a bug that’s numerous.  It has four yellowish legs that stick out the front.  It’s about an inch long by ½ inch wide, mostly shiny brown wing covering.

I see one stuck somewhere in a web not of its own making, and sometimes it sticks to my shirt front.  So then I gently blow it off onto a bush.  I say “hi” to them.

Dream: Custom Calendar / Priest in the Pew

I’m looking for blank calendar paper that I can write the numbers into for a month of days, but all I find are calligraphy paper.  The calendar page that I find online on the computer doesn’t accept large numbers like 620.

I’m in a church.  The priest sits with us in the pews.  I have a drill bit.  When the priest is at my seat, he puts his white-gloved hand on it and then pulls back because of how sharp it is.

He goes to the last pew that’s against the brick wall.  Everyone’s sitting backwards facing the wall instead of facing the altar.  I’m worried about how disrespectful that appears.  But the priest doesn’t seem to mind.

Dream: Neighbor's Backyard Construction

I'm in the house. I hear an helicopter flying low and close by to the West, so I look out my window. I don't see the helicopter, but I do see lots of signs of change on the property of the neighbor and his neighbor, in their backyards.

Then I look out the living room window at our backyard. My attention is captured by a very large Hawk that flies East from the neighbor's backyard to ours and alights on a tree branch. It's missing feathers in a band around its entire midsection. Then I notice the beginnings of a driveway on our neighbor's back lawn.  The grass was removed and filled with a layer of sand or fine gravel ready for paving. It ends abruptly as it abuts our yard. My wife is going to freak.

Dream: Outpost

I'm viewing an Outpost in a wilderness. So I'm sort of there, but I'm really just watching as if separate from the place. Some dangerous, evil creatures have invaded. We don't see them, but we know they're there because they build structures on the land -- huge, skeletal pieces. Someone realized that the creatures could be defeated if the structures are toppled, and so that's what the men are doing. It starts slow with a girder coming down every so often. But then a huge structure is detonated and collapses, which turns the tide. The last structures to be removed are wooden scaffolding and shutters, like saloon doors, that are attached to the concrete Outpost building itself. These are easily removed, and all is back to normal.

Dream: Cow Urine Shampoo

I’m watching a commercial or public service announcement.  It’s saying that cow urine makes an excellent shampoo.  There is a young boy – a big toddler.  He has short light-brown hair cut very short.  He’s suspended horizontally above a bed, although I don’t see who’s holding him.  I’m actually in the room that the commercial is taking place in.

As the male narrator explains the benefits of cow urine, just as I expected, liquid is poured on the boy’s head, spilling onto the bed below him.  The boy is unhappy, but he’s not crying.  Then after a while his expression become neutral.

He is lowered onto the bed.  A young man with hairy arms and dark hair was holding the boy, and now he/s massaging the liquid into the boy’s scalp.

The scene shifts.  The young boy is gone.  The man is lying on the bed, and “Mike” and “Ralph” from the band I was in are sitting in chairs against a wall.  The man pulls something out of his pocket as he lies down, and I recall that Mike told me that he would have a knife on him.  So I realize that the man pulled a knife, but he’s holding it behind his head as if he’s relaxing and resting his head on his head.

The man and M & R are discussing some business that I don’t really follow.  Finally, when it’s over, the man M & R all get up, at which point I whisper to M that the man has a knife in his left hand (even though it’s the right hand).  He nods as if he’s aware of it.

They walk toward the front door, M & R first followed by the man.  He swiftly opens the jack knife and slashes at the legs of M & R and then slashes at R’s upper arms.  He turns to me but makes no attempt to slash at me.  M & R don’t seem to react much.  It was as if this is how they all interact.

And that’s it for the knife attack.

The man is gone.  M & R go into a back room of the house.  I stay near the front, which is more like a store or bar.  There’s a birth certificate posted on the vertical surface of the counter.  But instead of words it has a heart diagram.  At first the diagram looks like two hearts side by side.  But then the heart on the right changes into a schematic / block diagram of a mechanical device.  And I realize that someone in Mike’s family had a heart transplant shortly after birth.


I’m walking around school.  I decide to check out the staircase that’s near the gym.  I go up two flights, I find out it terminates into a very tiny space that a temporary teacher converted into an office.


I’m in the basement of R & E from the Buddhism group.  There are little mud houses and trails on the rafters and ants navigating them.  R takes out a fire hose a sprays along the area where the foundation meets the sill plate.  I think that’s a terrible idea, but I don’t say anything.


I’m outside walking a long a trail.  On going construction has been taking pace alongside the trail up higher up the ridge line.  But it’s not visible – it’s cordoned off by a very tall cloth barrier.  I’m thinking how unsafe the trail is because of the potential for large debris to roll down from the construction site.  The cloth barrier won’t stop the debris and it also makes it impossible to see the danger beforehand.

Dream: Boat Service

I own a boat, and I’m waiting to have it serviced.  I’m standing on what appears to be a curb, like the corner of a street intersection sidewalk, but instead of a street, there is the deep water that my boat is in.    And the sidewalk is also slightly submerged in about two inches of water.

I’m trying to hold lots of stuff, but I can’t seem to carry all of it.  So some falls into the water and floats in front of me.  I notice that all of it floats, but I don’t question the impossibility of it, even though there are green, vinyl-coated hand weights among the floating items.  Another item is my checkbook.

The service guy is approaching.  I ask him if I should dive in and swim to my boat.  He vehemently says not to, otherwise I might get chopped up by the propeller blades.

The boat is now a party boat, and I’m on board.  There is a speaker or entertainer standing in the front, and many seated in the audience facing him.

Dream: Shape-Shifting Sensei

I'm at a martial arts demonstration in a gymnasium.  I'm in one of the many seats arranged in a large circle on the floor.  I facing the bleachers.

The Grand Master Sensei is introduced.  He's the one everyone came to see.  I look at him.  He's wearing a red gi and black pants.  He appears to be Italian.  He seems uncomfortable and uneasy as he looks at me.  We know each other, so I smile and nod encouragingly and even give him a quick thumbs up.

He gets up and carefully makes his way to the floor.  Then he goes around to the seated people, one-by-one.

When he gets to me, I see that now he's an older Asian man.  I greet him reverently, with my palms pressed together.  I nod my head in a bow.  He speaks to me.  He tells me that I must get something.  It sounds like it might be an herb.  Goji, perhaps, or maybe Ginko.  I agree, and he moves on to the next person.

He comes back.  Now he's a young boy.  I do not have the herb (or whatever) that he told me to seek.  No matter, we go together to look for it.  I follow his gaze to a dark grey cat lying along a hedge.  It's stretched out, sleeping on its side.  I infer that the cat is the key to our getting the herb.  We approach it slowly.  He's approaching the head end, while I approach its tail end, expecting it to see Sensei and turn and run.  But instead, the cat turns into a small, furry worm or caterpillar, also dark grey.  So I pick it up and hold it in the cupped palm of my right hand, and I present it to Sensei.  Meanwhile, Sensei has also turned into a caterpillar, perhaps twice as large as the cat-caterpillar, and he has dozens of skinny wriggling legs that are about ½ inch long and orange-brown in color.  He begins eating the cat-caterpillar, which is now on the ground.

Dream: Tri-Lingual Squatter

I’m walking in the backyard, carrying a large gray storage bin.  There’s snow on the ground, and I’m walking along the treeline all the way to the back where some branches and pine needles fell due to a recent storm.

Just as I reach a gap in the treeline, the neighbor zooms out of the woods on his snowmobile.  He stops just in time to avoid running me over!  I shake my head angrily and keep walking.  They’re also doing major reconstruction on their property and seem to be intruding into my yard.

Now I’m back at the house.  The owners of the house are selling it, and they’re going away, so I’m house-sitting.  The buyer is there.  He’s from Florida, fit and sun-tanned.  He rode to the house on a racing bicycle.  I’m not sure how someone from Florida will want to live in a place that’s frozen almost half the year, but he seems adventurous.

Now I’m in the house.  I’ve been told that the former owner is still there.  But I’m a bit flabbergasted that he appears to be entrenched there as if he still owns the place.  This is the “complication” I’ve been told about.

He’s talking to himself.  He has a German accent.  So I say, “Hallo, wie geht es ihnen!”  Initially he says nothing.  He’s sitting in the middle of the couch, now.  And he notices that I’m looking at him expecting a response, so he pulls out first one earphone and then a second and explains, apologetically, “I’m listening to German in this ear (his right ear) and Italian in this one (the left).  They’re not quite in synch; the Italian is running a tad faster.”

Someone was in the process of making eggs on the stove.  But everyone has been distracted by this man, so the eggs are ruined, again.  Someone picks up  the large, bowl-shaped pan and turns it up-side-down back onto the burner.

I’m so astounded by this man that…

...I wake up.

Dream: The Big Fake Sneeze

I’m sitting in my car in the middle of a parking lot. It is evening, and an old slushy layer of snow covers the asphalt. There are a few police officers dressed in yellow slickers methodically clearing away the slush using snow shovels. I think to offer to help them, except I realize they’re looking for something in the slush.

The parking lot is for a venue that I’m at to help organize a party. I think I should offer to park the hostess’ car, which is now the car that I’m sitting in. So I start it up a drive over to the edge of the lot and begin to head in to a space facing the street. As I apply the brake, I find that I cannot stop the car entirely. It continues to move forward onto the grass regardless of the extreme pressure I apply to the brake. I figure that the car will stop due to the incline of the grass, but even that has less of a stopping effect than I expect. “Huh,” I think to myself. “This is typical of these Subarus.” Eventually I do stop, and from within the car, I’m able to view the car from outside the driver’s side door. I see that the front wheels have gone beyond the curb and are on the grass. This is strange since I didn’t feel such a large obstacle.

I get the car backed up and somewhat straightened out, and then leave the car to go inside the venue.

The woman who has hired us (my brother is also part of the planning team) is not there. But her three daughters are there. Two of the daughters are twins, and the third, non-twin daughter is the most lovely of the three. But I greet them and tell them how lovely all of them are.

They are emceeing the event, and it turns out to be an event for my birthday. “Gosh, I’m the guest of honor!” I suddenly realize. So now everyone’s attention is focused on me. A great cloud of smoke emanates from the emcee’s area from a large amount of incense that was just lit. As it approaches and I smell it, I begin to have the urge to sneeze. So I decide to exaggerate the sneeze to epic, cartoon-like proportion. I start the “Ahh, ahhh, ahhhh, AHHHH, AHHHHHH...” with dramatic crescendo and fight to keep my eyes from fluttering closed. And I really expect that I will sneeze at the end of all this. But just before the very climax, the urge to sneeze diminishes abruptly, and I expel the most pathetic fake sneeze the world has ever witnessed.

“Drat, I’ve let everyone down,” I think to myself.

Dream: No More Room For Drafting Table

I'm in my new apartment.  It's small, but I can get all my stuff into it.  It will do nicely.

New scene: Now my apartment is a large single room that's partitioned into four separate little apartments, like an office space with cubicles.  Still I'm able to get everything important inside.  I have my bed and my drafting table, plus a little space to prepare meals.  So I'm all set.

But now my neighbor shows up, and he decides that the partition between my apartment and his needs to move to make his apartment bigger.  The move seems fair since his space was smaller than mine.  But now my space is too small to fit everything inside.  I decide that my drafting table will have to move out.  I decide to move it into the common area, and I tell the others about it so that they don't get upset.  There's no objection to my moving the table into the common area.

Dream: Blossoming Oak Trees and Flat Tire Service

I’m in the backyard of the house I grew up in, but now my wife and I live there.  The massive oak trees that tower above the house in the backyard have blossoms, like large, solid-colored pansies in lavender and indigo.

I call to my wife who’s indoors.  She comes out to see it.  I suggest that we take a picture from the front of our house and send it to her mother.  The blossoms are too high to take a cutting for indoors.  But I see one that fell on the ground, so I pick it up.  But it’s not a blossom at all.  It’s a weed that’s on top of a load of dog poop.

I get in the car and start it so I can drive to the front of the house.  But then I realize how silly that is, so I park the car, backing in against the house under the master bedroom window so I can walk around to the front.  But I notice that when I put the car into park, the transmission doesn’t lock.  The car continues to roll.  I point this out to my wife.  As well, I hear a grinding sound from the rear at the end of the maneuver.  So when I get out of the car I circle around to look at the rear passenger side wheel.  A thin rim of rusty metal is sticking out al around where the tire meets the rim.  I try to pound it back into place with the back of my fist.  But I also notice that the tire is flat.  The other rear tire also is flat.

Since it’s Saturday, I decide that I’ll have to hurry and remove both wheels so as to drive with them in the other car to have them repaired at the Honda dealership before it closes.

But as I start to remove the wheels, the car slowly transforms into something a lot smaller and resembling something like a carpet cleaner.

I’m at the Honda dealership now.  The “car” is in a carpeted office rather than a repair bay.  I explain the problem to the manager of the repair department.  He calls in a mechanic who takes a look and then goes away.  [This part is a bit foggy.]

Now a female mechanic has been assigned to the car.  She asks me where the car is, so I point in the direction of the office.  She doesn’t believe me that it's in an office.  So she goes looking in the direction of the repair bays.  I decide to bring the car to her.  Although the car is easily picked up like a consumer-grade carpet cleaner, it’s in several pieces, so I can’t carry all of it in two hands.

I pick up the main part of it as well as the front wheels.  Now the mechanic and I are in a reception area of the dealership.  She’s blonde and wearing a white uniform.  I also see my wife’s best friend Lisa there.  Lisa is talking on a landline telephone that has an extremely long coiled cord.  She’s also wearing white.  She has a small, glittering, heart-shaped sticker on her left check.  She does not see me or acknowledge, and I refrain from saying "hi" because she's on the phone.

Dream: Visiting the NYC Work Location

I’m in New York City visiting an office / residential building.  One or more floors of the building is occupied by my employer, an international company that I just started to work for.  The IEEE occupies the fifth floor.  I’m primarily here for work, but I also think I should visit IEEE and meet some people while I’m here.

I’m walking in a hallway of the building, not really paying attention to where I am.  I go through a glass door and a large blue parrot with white or light grey underbelly flies through it in the opposite direction.   I suddenly realize that I'm in the hotel / residential part of the building, and I assume that the parrot is someone’s pet that escaped.  There are glass doors at the end of the hall – the entrance to the gift shop.  I turn around and head back to the office areas.

I walk out the main front doors and see a cellphone on the pavement of the parking lot.  It has separated from the fall, so I pick up the pieces, which include the back cover, the battery and the SIMM card.  I know I should probably bring it back inside, but having just left, I don’t feel like going back in.  So I continue walking toward the street where there’s an open-air cafe.  Fortunately I see a high-level administrative assistant walking briskly away from the building, so I show it to her.  She wants to know where I found it.  She draws a diagram of the parking lot on a piece of lined parper.  I show her on the diagram how it was in the main aisle of the parking lot, behind the third car.  She identifies the parking spot as JP’s, a “Chief” executive, so she seems willing to take the phone in case it’s his.

I start wondering about the long drive back home, especially about what time I should leave in order to avoid lots of traffic.  (There’s really no traffic-free time to leave NYC, but any time close to “rush hour” would be especially bad.)  I keep seeing a large analog clock that reads 6pm, an especially bad time to leave.  It’s puzzling because it appears to be midday.  But then I notice that the clock appears on a very large TV screen, and it’s part of a commercial for a medication called Xarelto.  So it’s really much earlier than that.

I walk over to the outdoor dining area of a pub, which is behind the large building.  At one round table I see three young folks that I know because we once took a class together.  I’m happy to see them, and the table seats four, so it looks like a great place to sit for a while.  But I see that they’re done with their meals, so I decide to just say “hi” and walk on by so that they don’t feel obligated to stay with me when my food eventually arrives.  After all it’s lunch time, and I’m sure they’re on a lunch break from their jobs, so they won’t be able to linger.  I see an older man who’s alone.  (He’s older than those folks, but about my age, I suppose.)  I sit down at his table, and we start chatting.  He mentions that he used to turn his garden over every Spring before planting, but now he no longer does so because experts say it’s bad for a garden.  I agree with him and say that I, too, used to turn over my garden, but I stopped.  Then I go into an explanation of why it’s bad.  It has to do with fungi.  There’s a huge underground network of mycelium that gets damaged by heavy-handed shoveling.  (But I can’t think of the word “mycelium” and I either mumble it or say “mycology”.)  I explain how the mycelium process the minerals in the soil and provide plants with nourishment (as I’ve read in an excerpt of the research of Paul Stamets).  I wonder if I’m annoying or boring the other man – I seem to be monopolizing the conversation.

Dream: Double Broadsword

I'm at the karate studio.  My Sensei is there.  Two young malevolent Asian men show up and challenge Sensei to a fight.  He agrees.  But then the guys say they want to use weapons.  Since he already agreed, Sensei doesn't renege.  I was confident he would beat them before.  But now with the weapons, I'm worried for him.

I see the weapon he will use.  It's a double broadsword whose blades are thin and lightweight.  Each blade is uniquely shaped, as if a sai had been completely flattened.

Dream: Soul Mate

My wife and I are walking together on a gravel path after dark.  We are with a group, but walking separate from the group.  The path leads to a church, and because it's late, we decide to walk to the church and go inside.

Once inside, we see a square, walled-off cut out in the floor.  I can see down into the room below.  There is some ceremony or rehearsal involving choir boys.  My wife has climbed the wall, but she has turned into a young blond man with cat-like moves.  He is on hands and knees as he peers down into the room below as if stalking the choir boys.

Now my wife and I are in a large classroom.  In the center two long folding tables are positioned side-by-side.  Craft materials litter the table top.  There are about eight people sitting at the table working on projects.  I sit down to do the project.  I'm supposed to think of an object that would calm me during a crisis or an emergency.  I think of a tree.  I imagine a small green plastic tree, about one inch tall and nearly as wide, with a circular base.  I imagine it so well it's as if I'm actually holding it.

Now I'm in a dark corner of that same room.  I'm aware of the person next to me.  She has short dark hair, and she is giving off a great deal of heat.  I'm very drawn to her, but I hold myself back from getting very close to her.  I'm aware that my wife is still in the room, but I don't know whether she can see us in this dark corner.  The woman drops her hand, placing it into mine.  I immediately lean over and kiss her on the lips.  The sensation is exhilarating – I have found my soul mate.

Dream: Tree Attack

I'm at home / retreat in the front yard driveway.  Suddenly I notice a rogue tree in the distance to the north.  I'm scared, and I feel personally threatened as if the tree is sentient and intends malice toward me.

I think that this is unbecoming of one who is training to be Enlightened.  The other Buddhas in this retreat would not be afraid, and I should not be either.

Forget that.  I walk quickly around the garage side of the house to the little corner formed by the porch and the garage.  I hope that the tree will attack the other Buddhists and somehow not find me.

Dream: Soured on Car Mechanic

I'm at the car mechanic's shop.  He located a used car for me and is in the process of prepping it.  The owner's son tells me about a pipe that needs to be replaced.  I'm thoroughly dismayed – I don't want to have to do any work on the car.  But I remain stoic.

He takes me into the back and shows me some license plate samples, asking me to choose a color.  The first plate is extremely gaudy, with sunburst / peach on the left side that transitions to blue on the right with a dividing arc near the center.  A second plate is less brilliant.  It's also smaller, less tall.  I pick a blue from the first plate and a letter from the second, which I call blue, but he calls it slate.  With that decided, I make my way out of the place.

I see a large number of cars parked in the lot and a very long table with a white table cloth and stacks of folded cloth napkins.  It looks like a huge dinner party is being set up.  “Why wasn't I invited?” I wonder.  “I'm his biggest customer!”  Oh well.  I shake it off.