Dream 1
A shark had attacked a ship like a freight ship. It was now on the ship, in some pool-like area. I and a crew were discussing who would deal with the shark. I was horrified by it, but I also wanted to kill it -- so much so that I was certain the plan was to go into the pool and kill the shark.
A woman volunteered to go in. She wore a spacesuit-like outfit. She brought down a ball I called a mine. It was heavy and metal, but small, maybe ten inches in diameter, and instead of spikes, it had handles jutting out of it.
She went down. I saw her from a close point of view. The shark came up to her. She stuck the mine in her own mouth. The shark came up to the mine and bit the other side of the mine gently. The woman now walked up to a ladder and up onto the deck. The shark somehow came with her. I wondered how the shark didn't die in the air, but it seemed to have a deep sea helmet now.
The woman was going to jump into the ocean with the shark and deliver it to safety. I was concerned about the shark now, but I still didn't like it too much. I was also joyfully proud of the woman, but also jealous of her.
a group of people and I stood in a smallish corner on deck. A guy like my old cross country coach from high school, BST, except with long, long hair and a beard and sunglasses, lectured me for not being as brave as the woman. The man told me that the least I could do was donate $1 and send it down below the ocean to help the woman on her mission.
I said, "Of course I'll donate a dollar. I've been wanting to give for a long time now."
The man turned away. I turned to a friend to my left. I said, "It's not like it costs me anything big, like I'd have to say, 'Stop. let me call my broker.'"
When I said this, the man turned around and looked at me, angrily puzzled. I fumbled with my words to explain that I hadn't been talking about him, that I had just been making an ironic joke that was especially ironic since I don't have enough money even to worrant a broker.
Dream 2
I sat in some place like a desert plateau at a dinner table with two or three women. There were some white bowls with candles on the table. It was approaching sunset.
The woman across from me told a story of a time she had been at dinner with her boss. The woman had taken some empty, white bowls from which they or somebody nearby had eaten. (At this point I knew she was going to say that she had done something so impressive and creative that her boss put her into a much better paying, more creative position. I controlled my jealousy.)
The bowls had some dense gas or fume in them from the used contents. The woman had lit a match over the bowl, she said, and the flames created tiny, dimly glowing bubbles of fire that would last for a long time. She then arranged the bowls on the table and in front of the door.
The boss had told her, "I brought you here to talk about one thing. But I'll be right back, and I think we'll make a different plan."
The woman paused, for a few seconds, as if she were right now, telling the story, actually waiting for the boss to come back.
I said, "So did he come back and say, 'Let me shower you in beautiful riches?'"
The women were all offended. They stopped eating.
The woman asked, "What did you mean by that? I'm an independent woman. I wasn't using him to get money or someone to take care of me."
I said, "No. That's not what I meant. He promoted you, obviously. And you have a lot of money now. I was just using a metaphor" (???) "for how impressed he was. I was just trying to show you I thought you were doing well."
The meal quieted down. Soon after, the woman and another woman got up, saying they'd be right back.
I sat with a woman like my old friend AL from my Americorps program in Los Alamos, who sat to my right. I thought, Now's the chance to lighten the mood again before the other women come back, so they can come back and feel comfortable.
I looked over the plateau, down the slope, across the desert plain, to a series of spire-like, lichen-encrusted, red sandstone "mountains." I said to the woman, "It's nice once you've been here a while and you can actually recognize the mountains, some of them even by name." I was glad that I sounded so cheerful.
The woman said, "That's nice. What are their names?"
I sudden realized that out of the roughly thirty formations in front of us I could only recognize three or four, and that I wasn't even sure of two of those names. I stuttered as I thought, Well, perhaps if I take a long time describing the two mountains I can name, I'll get out of having to talk abou the rest. But I couldn't remember any of the names now.
Six small mesas stood before the now enormous formations. For some reason I chose the mesa on the far right as my starting point. I said, "W-- w-- well, for instance, that mountain, right there, the one that uh... has the uh..."
Now we were driving down a hill and were close to the formations, all rubbled with rocks and boulders of barren, red sandstone on a humid, yellow-grey day.
The woman had been saying all this time, "No, I don't see it. Which one do you mean? Describe it to me. Name it."
I now realized and said, "Well, you can't see it now. We're right at the foot of it. I can't name any of the mountains. We can't even see them. What would be the point?"
She said, "Well, I saw them before. I have them in my mind pretty well. What were their names?"
We now drove down to and past a chain link fenced area holding hundreds of fighter jets. The jets' wings were folded down, as if the jets were (though they weren't) suspended in air. All the jets seemed compact and fragile.
I thought, I could have been a fighter jet pilot. But I got too afraid at some point. I love those jets so much I should be flying them. But I gave up my chance. Everybody must know that. That's why they think I'm so worthless.
My mind wandered, and I thought to a story of two Japanese fighters in World War II. They were both training to be kamikazes. One made a promise that he would go with the other to see the other's family on a certain day. But just before that day, the one was called to go out on his suicide mission.
The other was angry. He said, "You promised you'd go to see my family with me! Tell them you mush wait! Our deaths are a certainty. They will be here today or tomorrow, and we will go to them proudly. But if you die now you'll never see my family!"
The one answered, "Our deaths call us when they call us, and we must face them. We must show we can give everything for them. A life is full of promises. We cannot postpone our deaths for these promises."
I now saw a lock on a plane. A padlock-latch, actually. It was shaped so that there was no way a padlock could actually hold the latch shut.
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