(2/26/05) two lingerie departments; the place of glass; crash canyon

(No place/time info for paper journal entry.)

Dream 1

I was at some clothing store. I walked past some lingerie I wanted to try on -- I think it was a bra and panty set of pink satin lined with black lace. I only eyed it peripherally as I passed, thinking people would laugh at me for wanting to try it on.

I passed into a cluttered, eclectic area of the store. A woman came up behind me and told me I should try things on if I wanted to. So I headed back. But I couldn't really find my way back.

Eventually I found my way to another lingerie section. I must have thought it was the same one, because I looked for the bra and panty set. I couldn't find it.

The whole store was very busy. Here there were three or four bustling women edging and shoving in front of me and pulling panties off high upper shelves in shelf-casings that looked like closets or dressing rooms in a Victoria's Secret.

The panties were mesh-fronted or -backed with fluorescent (or, rather, just bright, beach-colored, like cyan or bright green) solid-fabric fronts or backs. I really wanted to try these on. But I didn't even know if they'd work with my body shape.

Dream 2

It was night. I had walked out of a building, perhaps where a party was being held, though it now looked like a combination of a Barnes & Noble and a Victorian-style, heavy-wood house now used as some kind of classy restaurant. It was also something like an airport. The parking lot in front of the building was only one row, sloping down to the curb at about a seven-degree angle.

I looked in one of the windows in front of "my" car (I stood by the passenger side door) and saw a book by Stephen King. It looked like a paperback version of The Waste Lands VI, except with a red color scheme instead of a purple one, possibly no crystal ball, and a slightly different animal skull.

I had been excited by the sight of the book. I thought it was a new release. Now I thought it was just The Waste Lands IV. But when I scrutinized the differences on the cover I got excited and looked again. Its title, which ran in wide, slender letters down the cover between the images, was The Place (or "Land"?) of Glass, not Wizard & Glass.

I had wanted to get out of the gathering as soon as possible because I felt socially awkward. But now I wanted to go back in to see the book close up.

(At this point the various sections of the dream are confused to my memory. They don't stay in the same place. I'll just write them out as I "construct" their order.)

I went into the bookstore, which was nice, with beautiful (green?) carpet and heavy, rich wood for walls, bookcases, etc., and warm, soft light. I tried to get to the Stephen King books without being noticed. I didn't want to be ridiculed for liking Stephen King.

But some worker came up to me and asked me where I was headed. I don't know if I answered, but the worker led me, anyway, down to a basement area, which, though somehow being my mom's basement, was also a huge, desert-like landscape with a brimstone-purple, clouded-over sky. It also seem to be held all up by mine shaft posts.

Now something like a quaint, wall-less train flew down out of the sky and "belly-landed" softly, almost cartoon-rubber-like,on the dusty ground. There were a bunch of old tourists, all rich and intelligent. They all waved at me as they landed. I told myself, Don't make yourself look more stupid than they already think you are.

The tourists all piled cheerfully out of the train. I asked them as they passed me where they were going. They said something and pointed to another "flying train," which looked like a commercial plane and an Amtrak train. They then said something like, "And if you, too want to take this journey, simply go XXXXX."

I planned on going XXXXX. So I walked upstairs into the kitchen with a female bookstore worker who also served as a tour guide to where I needed to go. The kitchen was brighter and cleaner and wider than my mom's kitchen. It was also stark. It ended in an open, airy, spiral-like staircase going down, maybe thirty feet, steeply, to the living room, which was bright, clean, spacious, softly carpeted, though stark, almost slicing, once again. There were one or two tallish, thin bookcases along the kitchen wall.

I was hiding some kind of panic from the worker. We passed the bookcase which held Stephen King's books. I saw that The Place of Glass was a sequel to some previous book like "CAT DNA" or "GAC DNA." I thought of the manga DNA2.

Right next to this book was a brand new (as if The Place of Glass was now old) release -- something like, I Always Remember You as Standing. It was about the World Trade Center. The cover was of a couple Empire State-like buildings in a grey, grey night. The illustration was textured and silvery.

I couldn't believe that this book existed. Its existence presaged, I believed, some new attack. I cried to the woman, "Is it already time for another attack?" The woman wouldn't answer me.

I had a copy in my hand. I threw myself to the ground, bashing my fist and my book-holding hand against the ground. I bawled and bawled, "This can't happen!" I was crying. I tried to get control of myself so the woman wouldn't see me in such a pathetic state. But now she was gone.

JH, one of my old supervisors from my Los Alamos Americorps program, walked into the kitchen. I stood up and pulled myself together instantly, in a snap.

JH said something like, "I'm sorry I'm late. I've really wanted to address these issues. Excuse me for a moment. Then we'll take care of everything right away." JH walked out onto the staircase landing to speak on his cell phone.

I looked down to the floor. Right by a stairway barrier (the space doesn't make much sense) and still inside the kitchen was some kind of plastic mock-up of a campfire: a circle of plastic stones, charred newspaper, and plastic wrapping inside the circle, and around the circle, trashy-looking "logs" of mottled plastic. The whole scene was very small, like a child's indoor imitation of a campfire. A dog like a Springer Spaniel colored black, white, and copper-brown lay before the "fire ring."

I crouched down. I realized JH camped all over the country. He had a life separated from mine. I was really looking forward to seeing him. But I couldn't make my anticipation appear too great, because JH would feel too obliged for being so important to me. If I could be free and easygoing about things, he could remain cheerful and unperturbed. I felt I shouldn't even have called him up again to meet, after all.

JH came back in. He said, "Let's discuss those issues."

I said, "Oh, you know what? Let's not worry. We both have to get going pretty soon. I have to finish my camping and you have to head to the next place. But it was good to see you." JH was pretty relieved.

I apparently lit "my" "fire." It only smoldered at a high temperature. The dog, who was now "my" dog, kept sniffing at the fire, thinking something was cooking on it. There may have been a pot of boiling water.

The dog itself was soaking wet. This surprised me (even in the dream!), and I tried to figure out what it meant psychologically. I mainly worried about keeping the dog away from the fire, partly because I didn't want the dog to get burnt, but also partly because I didn't want JH to think I was irresponsible with the dog.

I kept waving and swatting the dog away from the fire. But it kept nudging back, like a buzzying fly. Finally I tossed a little (boiling water?) on the dog's nose to give the dog a little pain and show it why it should stay away from the fire. It backed away.

I thought, Well, I'm good enough for now. But once the water boils enough, the smell of the food will break open, and the dog will lead straight at it all again.

Dream 3

I don't know where I was. I heard (wherever they were) two older folks. They spoke about a plane that had run out of gas and crashed on its belly right on the runway of the airport in Denver.

This running out of gas was considered (somehow) to have been a terrorist attack. One old man said, "So they're starting again, are they? Isn't there any safe place? When are they going to crash into the Grand Canyon?"

I now saw a bend in the "canyon." The wall of the bend had different strata of rock: orange and orange-red and peach-red. Purple grey clouds loomed low into the canyon. The sky was dark amethyst-grey.

I was trying to figure out whether I was about to see the crash. But mainly I was just amazed at the fact that I was having such a clear (!) vision of the canyon, as if my "mystical vision" was finally starting to work.