Bad Dream 190 -- Where's My Briefcase?

In my dream, I am back in my childhood home in suburban Baltimore.  I am in the house preparing to leave for an assignment, which is either a presentation for my work or a college-level class.  The dream doesn't make it clear which is the case.  

I'm pretty much ready to go.  All I need to do is retrieve my briefcase, which has documents I will need for this upcoming assignment.

I go to the spot in the house where I normally leave my briefcase and it isn't there.  I can't imagine why not -- I almost always leave it in the same place.  And the time available to get to the assignment is running short, and I really don't want to be late.  

I move around the house looking in each room (which are actual rooms I recall) for my case, with no luck.  As I keep moving, a younger sibling sidles up to me and tells me that Richard -- our older brother -- had taken the case.

I go upstairs to where I think Richard will be and find him lounging on the bed.  He looks up at me, sees that I'm distressed, and gets a smirk on his face.  I explain to him in loud and rapid-fire language the inconvenience that he's causing.  He almost looks apologetic.  Not quite, but almost.  He points to a collection of things against a wall and tells me that the case is in that pile of stuff.  

I go to the pile and examine each and every object, but the case is simply not there.  I look at Richard and tell him that. His face changes and he gets up off the bed and comes over to the pile.  He then assures me that he left it there, and now has no idea who might have taken it or where it got off to.  

I am thoroughly aware that his comments might simply be Richard ratcheting up the prank to a higher level, but there's no way I can be sure whether he's still pranking me or is genuinely unsure what happened to the briefcase.  

He looks as if he's about to start looking for the case himself, but there's no reason I should hang around him when I should simply be continuing the search.

By this time, I am boiling mad and deeply concerned about what my absence at this assignment will mean for me.  The excuse of "I'm late because I couldn't find my briefcase" is just too close to "My dog ate my homework." 

I go back downstairs to repeat my search while trying to think of what else I could be doing to minimize the damage that's being done to me and my career.  

I hear my Dad say softly "Being angry is not going to help."  And I understand that, if I could let the anger go, I might be capable of more rational thoughts and activities, but just then I want to hang onto my anger and frustration.  

Bad Dream 189 -- Spinning Plates

In my dream, I am standing in a field on a nice sunny day.  I have a few friends standing nearby and some other folks a little farther off.  They are visitors to our little gathering.  I am holding a spinning plate in one hand and the appropriate spin stick in the other.  

The deal is that I'm supposed to spin the plate up onto the stick and perform a few tricks to educate(?) impress(?) convince(?) the visitors of my skill with the plate -- but my dream does not inform me as to exactly why I'm doing this.  My friends seem to think it's important, and they are telling the visitors how terrific my skill is with the plate -- "Just wait until he (that is, me) gets this thing going!  It's amazing!"

I toss the plate in the air with a flick of the wrist to give it some initial rotation.  But I misjudge the procedure somehow so that the plate bounces briefly onto the stick and then falls to the ground.

My friends assure our visitors that that happens occasionally.  Not a problem.  Boy, are you going to be impressed!  

I pick up the plate and try again, but the result is the same.  My friends smile weakly at our visitors as I pick the plate up off the ground again.

Third time is not the charm.  Yet another failure.

My friends try to make a joke out of the situation, but it doesn't help much.  The visitors have clearly seen about as much as they need to.

After the fourth failure, the visitors turn and start to walk away.  

One of my friends, Kurt Rheinheimer -- a boyhood best buddy -- walks over to me.  He's quite angry.  Looking straight into my face but talking loudly so that all my friends can hear, he says that I screwed up on purpose.  Why that's the case isn't clear in the dream, but he obviously felt that he had something to gain personally from my success at spinning the plate -- something that now simply wouldn't come to pass. 

At this moment, I become aware of an explanation as to my failures and tell Kurt equally loudly that it made perfect sense for me to fail, given all the pressure I was under as the visitors looked on.  To help make the point, I pick up the plate and successfully spin it on the stick.  I'm not at all sure that my reasoning was honest and true, but it felt good to say.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I just made up the explanation to bring the total event to a conclusion.  

Bad Dream 188 -- From Years Ago -- A Car Experience

(I wrote out this dream long-hand, which suggests it's one that occurred to me at one of Renee Crauder's retreats.  That makes it a long time ago.)

In my dream, I am driving a car.  A sedan.  It feels like Deb's (green) Honda.  Martha is in the car with me.    

I pull off to the side of the road and park.  (Don't remember why.)  Martha gets out and tells me she will be back shortly.

The car is parked next to a large green field.  No trees.  On the far side of the field, there is a collection of buildings that loos like an apartment complex with brick facades.

Now, there is a young woman walking around the front of my car.  I think she is standing near another car, but I'm not sure of this.

She is quite pretty -- maybe in her early-to-mid 20's.  Black hair cur in a Page Boy cut.  She is wearing a one-piece bathing suit with the top neck strap untied and the top of her suit draped down her body to her waist.  She is standing with her back to me and I wait until she turns around so I can see her breasts.

She looks very "well cared for," and carries herself with an attitude of privilege.  

She walks over to another young woman who is clad identically.  They hve a brief conversation that I can't hear, since I'm still sitting in the car.  They are in front of my car.  

The second woman disappears and the first woman walks behind my car, removes her slip-on shoes one at a time, and tosses them onto the trunk of my car.  They land with a loud thump and I'm concerned they may have dented the trunk lid.  I've watched them land in my rear view mirror.  

I open the door and call out to her that if she did that again, could she do so more gently.  I realize this is a nebbishy thing to say, but there it is.

(A bit later in the dream, I think that  proper response would have been to get out otf the car, pick up the shoes one at a time and throw them as hard as I could into the grassy field.  As my dream's mind plans out this thought, I "see" that the shoes are the rubber slip-on type that people use for gardening.)  

Martha comes back to the car, gets in, and we drive away.  

We stop again in the parking lot of a rustic-looking store which seems to function as a restaurant and something of a general store.  I'm hungry.  I walk inside.  It smell s tgood and it's crowded.  I realize that getting a sandwich to go would take a great deal of time and I'm not ready to wait that long.

I leave the shop and am standing in the parking lot  when the owner(?) of the place appo=roaches me and clearly wants to explain what's going on and invite me to return inside the shop.  He's speaking gibberish.  (He's a heavy-set man, partially balding, and looks middle European.)  Some of the words he's speaking sound like English but much of it is clearly not.

I'm not convinced to return inside and walk past his shed (away from my car).  The person I'm walking with is Deb.  I feel it's important in a small way to explain to her why I walked away.  (This is something I do in my waking life all the time.  It's a pointless exercise, but i do it all the same.)

We have walked past the shop to what may be another parking lot and I'm standing as I launch into my (unnecessary) explanation.  We start walking back and Deb says "Well, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but..."  She stops talking but continues walking..  This verbalization of hers is well known to me and I know my part.  She wants to tell me her version of the interaction with the restaurateur and is asking permission to say so.  My response is "No, tell me what you think."  It's my way of giving her permission to tell me something I may disagree with.  

I wake up. 

Bad Dream 187 -- Strange Golf Course Experience

 In my dream, I am out on a very strange golf course.  (This may tie in to the fact that I took my golf clubs out of the locker yesterday for the first time in 5 or 6 years.  I found that swinging a golf club would not likely cause any recurrence of my right shoulder issues -- so I could consider trying to get together with my younger brother again to play.)

Normally the maximum number of people in a group to play on a regular golf course is four.  In this case, I am joined by a group of 5 or 6 or 7 other people in the same group.  

We are walking through an area that looks like the sand dunes that you might find at the seashore or a desert.  The group stops at a spot that doesn't look much different from any other place we've seen, but the group seems to know that this is a teeing-off spot for this hole.  There's no grass anywhere, but some desert plants growing here and there.  I feel as if I'm just starting to play, but that this isn't Hole #1.  I don't mind much, as I'm simply out here to knock a golf ball around and get some socializing and exercising.  

We can't tee off because there's a young man in front of us who is looking to his his second shot.  His ball is located in the sand close to and directly behind a tall weed of some sort.  The plant would seem to be right in the middle of the fairway, given how he's addressing the ball, but there's no particular physical evidence that's true.  He just has a plant directly in front of his ball.

Now, golf course rules might allow him to move the ball sideways around the plant without taking a penalty.  If not, the sensible shot is to hit the ball sideways to the plant so that his next shot would be clear to the target.  But he doesn't seem to know or care about either option.

He's walking around in small circles, gesturing rather wildly about his bad luck in having the ball where it is, and trying to figure out what the best plan of attack might be.  

My golfing partners are starting to get a bit peeved at the young man's histrionics, but they're ready to wait until he resolves the issue.

The young man finally decides just to blast the ball directly into the plant, hoping it will break through the foliage.  It doesn't.  The ball hits the leaves and stems and then bounces directly backwards.  

There is a rather large sand dune about 50 yards or so in front of us.  As the young man's ball stops rolling backwards across the sand, a pair of camels show up at the top of the sand dune.  They are running quickly.  One of the camels is much larger than the other -- and it appears that the larger one is either Mom or Dad (I think Mom...) and the kid.  And the parent is teaching the kid how to best to run across loose sand.

Bad Dream 186 -- Getting Into My Bed?

In my dream, I am in bed.  Wearing pajamas.  Having recently woken up.  I am, however, fully functional mentally and am sitting up in bed.  I'm past the "still sleepy" stage.  

So I must be on the verge of getting up out of bed.

I think there's another person in the bed with me. Likely that would be Deb, but she doesn't enter into what happens in the dream.

At the foot of the bed, there are two or possibly three men.  They are wearing business suits.  They don't seem to be interested in me so much as they are interested in the bed.  They talk to each other in short sentences -- something about the bed or the bedclothes (sheets, blankets, etc.).  They point a bit at the bedclothes and chat with each other.  

They then move along the side of the bed, thereby getting closer and closer to me.  They're still chatting with each other.  There seems to be a question about something about the bedclothes, and they occasionally point to one of the sheets or the blanket or maybe the pillows.  

I watch them, first with curiosity and then with growing concern.  I haven't a clue why they are there or what they're doing.  

One of them reaches over the bed and pulls down my blanket so he can better see something about the cover and/or what's beneath the cover.  He turns to his partner and says something I can't quite hear.  

They get closer to me and more intense in their looking at the bedclothes.  When one of them climbs onto the bed and seems to be ready to pull the sheet and covers over him.  I don't think he wants to take a nap, but discover or display something about the bed and the bedclothes.  

I raise a strong objection to what they're doing, but they are ignoring me completely.

 

Bad Dream 185 -- Where Is My Car... and

In my dream, I have finished with some project or obligation and am looking to find my car so I can drive home.  

I begin by looking up and down the street where I'm standing.  The street is a nice small-town kind of street lined by a few trees and a number of parked cars.  It reminds me of West Chester.  Traffic is light -- just a few cars passing by.  So it should have been easy to spot my car, if it were located on this street.  But I can't see it anywhere.  

The scene changes to a parking garage, and I'm pretty sure my car is located somewhere in here but can't recall a parking space number or a row location or even which level I parked on.  

I start on the lowest level, looking right and left, but quickly decide that my car isn't here.  I think there's an elevator somewhere in the garage, but decide to use the stairs to get to the next level up.  I'm concerned that, given the fact that I know so little about this garage, that the elevator could skip over one or more levels without my knowing about it.  And that could complicate the search a great deal.  

I am getting confused as to how many levels there are in this garage.  I get off the staircase from time to time to look at this level or that one.  Something tells me that there are only two or three levels, but every time I go back to the stairs that number seems to change.  Sometimes it goes up and sometimes down. 

On one occasion, I find another staircase. All metal and all painted green.  As I start climbing the stairs, I see that there are low gates installed across maybe every third or fourth step.  The gates are maybe knee high.  I can't imagine why anyone would install these, as they represent a challenge going up and a serious obstacle going down.  While I stand there trying to figure out what it is I'm looking at, a woman speaks up from behind me telling me to keep moving or get out of the way.  I allow her to move past me, and somehow, she manages to climb the stairs without any interference from the low gates.  

The scene changes again, and I find myself in a much larger stairway and as I move up or down (I forget which) I come across a young woman -- certainly not the one I met on the other stairway.  She is very slender and gives the impression of being under fed.  She looks like she's missed a considerable number of meals.  She also looks tired and cold -- clutching her light jacket closed.  I pass her by and continue to look for my car -- level after level.

Going down a staircase, I come across the same young woman, who is now accompanied by a young man.  Something tells me they are brother and sister.  But he looks quite healthy and well-fed.  She leans up against him seemingly for safety but also for warmth. But I understand that they are both essentially homeless and looking for a place to stay and a job for him.

I take out my wallet and find that I have two $20 bills and a couple of singles.  I'm tempted to give them all of my money, but I may need a 20 to get my car out of the garage and possibly fuel to drive home.  So I hand him a 20 and try to say something supportive.  He pockets the money without saying "Thank you" or any other acknowledgement.  But the young man's pride requires him to adopt a "We are getting along just fine.  We've only recently arrived in the US, and we're not settled yet, but where we are much better off here than where we've been."

I would like to provide additional assistance to the two of them, but the young man's attitude -- coupled with the fact that I still don't know where my car is -- suggest I should simply move on.  

Bad Dream 184 -- Where's the Functional Drawing?

One of my favorite jobs was being a Technical Instructor for Leeds & Northrup.  I taught a two-week course in control systems for utility power plants.  My students were all competent to excellent electrical technicians already but their plants were getting an upgraded controls system that was considerably more efficient -- but more complicated than their existing system.  My dream takes place in one of these power plants just as I begin the course.

In my dream, I am standing in an equipment room in one of these power plants getting ready to begin the course.  

The drawings that describe the system are twice the size of an ordinary piece of copy paper -- and there are typically 300 or so drawings that describe the overall system in detail.  Fortunately there is also a set of drawings twice as large as the details that provided a flowchart-type description of each part of the system.  And looking at the system (wires and electrical components) itself without understanding the drawings is absolutely useless.  

So understanding the details of the system design is essentially impossible without a clear understanding of this overall design.  With that understanding, all the detailed drawings are easy to follow and thereby allow the technicians to troubleshoot the system should a problem develop.     

I have grown somewhat complacent about preparing for these courses, as  the overall system design is repetitive.  The critically important details about any particular system, however, were unique.  So if I don't have either set of drawings -- the overall or the detailed -- immediately to hand, I can't teach the course.

In the dream, my students are now gathering in the room to begin the class.  I look around at the students, hoping to find a copy of the drawings that might have been sent to the customer prior to my visit.  No luck.  

I look on every table and in every closet.  I move from room to room without finding anything useful  In essence, the course couldn't begin in earnest until I found the drawings.

I described what the drawings looked like and asked some the students if they had seen anything like them.  No luck.  

In continuing to look, I come across other drawings from my company, but had no idea whether they described an earlier set of controls or this newly installed set.  So I didn't dare consider using them.  

I consider getting in touch with my factory to generate copies of the new system and FedEx them to me -- but I know that would likely take most of a week for the drawings to get to me.  

I think that, at least, I might provide the students with a high-level overview of the new system and introduce them to some of the new vocabulary they would need: terms like "Pressure Ratio," "Energy Demand," and "Heat Release Computation."  But then one of the system designers from my company appears from nowhere and said: "No!  You can't do that.  There are special considerations for this installation that require a unique approach to understanding."

Understandably, some of my students begun to drift off.  They had other projects that they could work on -- and they promise to check back with me later.  

I wake up.