JUST ANOTHER WEIRD DREAM

We all dream a lot.  Most of us can't remember them.  I would say more than not that my dreams are troublesome.  Thus, it's a good thing I don't have much recollection.  

Every so often I do, and there might be one or two/year that are truly memorable.  I summarized a few of them two years ago, and, one in particular, was published in The Huffington Post:  Suicide Dreams.  My dreams are usually gloomy and dark.  This one could have been problematic, for suicide is in the title.  However, I was smart enough to counter that potential.   The setting was a future Waikiki where the Sheraton was ten times larger, with music everywhere.  Interestingly enough, not Hawaiian, but more Caribbean and Roaring 20's.  Instead of darkness, there was color everywhere, even a rainbow.

Last night I had one of them.  I tend to have a recurring dream where I'm on the Stanford University campus, and find myself mostly lost in a large and extended building which leads to the Quad.  

Sometimes this structure is part of a hotel with a tall tower, and when I get off at a floor to walk to where I'm supposed to go, I have all kinds of difficulty.  A couple of times I am able to get on campus, which is like a fantasyland of some sort.  Once, I could see a huge scoreboard with the names of people and how the top ten were doing, with changing scores.  The point was to interact with people, where an omnipresent force kept track of how everyone was doing and showing the results.  Thus, people were as friendly as they could be.  This was a positive dream, yet disconcerting.

Back to my latest, this was no doubt a reaction to all that cuisine I've lately been enjoying, for I came upon a section of this building where there were restaurants and social gathering rooms.  The first was a party of some sorts where a few people were eating salads.  I asked someone where I could get a drink, and everyone in the room suddenly stared at me aghast with someone stating no drinks are served here. 

Okay, so I left and saw a large dining room, but the host said you needed a reservation.  I passed several unopened ones, with portions only devoted to breakfast and snacks, which were closed.  I wasn't quite sure if this was lunch or dinner, but it must have been the latter because it was getting towards evening.  A huge room specializing in BBQ meats looked abandoned.  I asked why are so many eating areas closed, and was told this was November when activity was low.

I then walked into a room which looked like it served food, with the instruments of some kind of jazz band in the corner.  Then I looked to my right and saw the Stanford campus, which was straight down a mile or so away.  I quickly dropped to the floor because if I had stood, I could have fallen over with no parachute.  There was no window, as such.  I've sometimes seen something like this view when a plane approaching San Francisco Airport flew over the school.  It occurred to me that on a map, this building would be adjacent to the the Quad.  I got my camera out and took a few shots, one a photo of Hoover Tower.  But when I looked at the image, it was of the Wailua Sugar Company boiler stack.

Then, in the next scene I'm still lying down, but I'm on a long table, with people ready to eat not particularly noticing me.  So I crawled down and asked a staff member if a table was available.  He said, almost surely, for the previous night this place was only half full.  However, all the tables suddenly seemed taken.

During this dream I saw a hundred individuals, none of them looked familiar.  The ethnic balance was similar to my freshman year there:  99% Caucasians and a few Chinese, plus me, Japanese.  The Chinese connection was most probably because I had just last night saw Falling for Grace, a film mostly with a Chinese cast.

So, anyway, it occurred to me that I should get back to the campus, where doing so would be the equivalent of trekking down Haleakala to Kahului at night, for it was dark outside.  I was then outside the building and asked a couple if they knew where I could catch a cab.  The male said sure, follow me, and he ran, first dropping his pen.  I picked it up and tried to follow him.  Interesting that I had no knee pain in my dream.  We got to an open area except for several more long tables where a half a dozen people were waiting and just staring at each other like zombies.  He then disappeared seeking water.  Yeah, doesn't make any sense.  I wondered if there was a queuing system when I woke up.

Not a particular memorable dream, but the whole thing took a long time, something rare for me.  The above is a simplified crystallization of a more complexed series of encounters.  If nothing else, I'm beginning to think that my brain attempts to summarize my recent experiences and jumbles them up to create a story of some sorts.  Weird.

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Super Typhoon Hagibis' death toll is now up to 73, with 47 overflowed rivers and 140 landslides.  678 schools were damaged. Half the shinkansen Hokuriku line were damaged. 133,000 households are without water.

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