Bad Apartment

I was in an apartment which was falling apart. The landlord was arguing with another tenant who had bluntly refused to pay rent - "I dislike to pay, prefer not to pay" while I noticed that the television antenna had fallen over. I dragged it inside to take it to the dumpster out back, realizing midway that dragging it through the apartment rather than taking it around was foolish and only served to alarm the other tenants.

In another portion of the dream, there was a community center. I don't remember exactly what happened there. I have the image of people exchanging food or clothing, my intrusion on events which had nothing to do with me, a back door and a back room.

Estate Tour

I was on a tour of someone's estate in Germany. The estate had been turned into a kind of tourist attraction. There was a train which would take you all over the estate (which was nice enough that I considered just staying in it for a while), and also games were set up. We might realistically suppose these were augmented reality games with goggles or some such, but in the dream it was just as if you were able to play video games in real life with no boundary. In a swampy area, the game had to do with catching insects which were infected with the spirit of an evil witch; this was a scavenging hunt game with no violence, intended for younger children. (The connection of the witch to the story of the estate was not made clear in the dream.) In a large building which I take to be the central estate, there was a monster-slaying game. While playing this, the view became more abstract, as if I was playing an actual video game. The interface was somewhat confusing and I accidentally went up the stairs many more floors than I intended. The monsters grew more difficult with each floor, so on the floor I ended up at, the monsters were far too high for my level and kept simply killing me. (I would respawn on the same floor.) I was quite surprised at how many floors there were, given that I thought this building used to be the living quarters of the estate. I eventually found my way back down. Someone (plausibly my brother) was playing with me and we were chasing a cat (a real cat, I think) around the place.

Riding the train around the estate, I viewed many German houses and buildings out of the window. (These may have been on the estate as well, or simply near its borders.) All the buildings were painted bright colors, often primary colors, in dazzle-paint style. I felt somewhat surprised by this, but thought that it was typical of Germany, and so was a little puzzled why I should be surprised.

There was another part of the dream which I remember less well; this included a room with a console and tube which accessed a spaceship? Maybe an alien trying to get home?

Meta-Punk'd

I've just awoken from a nap. In my dream, I had just awoken from a dream and was talking to my brother, telling him that I just had a really awesome dream, but I knew I wouldn't be able to remember it to tell him. I also talked with him about whether I had briefly spoken with him a while earlier and then gone back to sleep. I thought I had, but I was wondering if I had dreamed that as well.

So, I was extra-surprised to wake up and find out that both conversations were pure fabrication.

Alien Settlement Bookstore

We were leaving a planet after an unsuccessful settlement attempt; forced out by the harsh wildlife, which took the form of an underground tentacle that would come up and destroy things, hurt/kill people. I was worried the tentacle had already grown into the ship somehow, but not too worried.

The whole thing was more like a game than a serious settlement: I had the feeling that we were waiting for the other "team" to show up, and part of why we had to leave was because they didn't show (rather than because of the harsh wildlife). It seemed like it would only be a short trip to the next star.

There was a rummage sale going on while we picked up camp, since some people had things they didn't care to keep. I was looking through books and trying to decide on a couple to take. There was a weirdly complex price system where some items would be free. It's likely that there was no coherent version in the dream, but it was something like: buy an item with a yellow ribbon on it and you can turn in the yellow ribbon to get a free item, but only from a specific category of freebie items.

In any case, I found two graphic novels and was trying to figure out the price system (as well as thinking about how I'd need to pack my own items and shouldn't be taking too much time going through other people's discards) when I woke up.

Left Behind

My brother and I were at some kind of event, which was in an unfamiliar town. The person driving us was acting impatient, in a way which I took to be non-serious. It turned out to be totally serious: when my brother got out of the car to get something forgotten (like a cell phone or cell phone charger), he started the car and left. I thought at first he was still joking and would turn around, but when I figured out that he wouldn't, I got out of the car. I was a good distance away from the starting point already, and had to walk back through the unfamiliar city (including walking on some roadways not intended for pedestrians, because I needed to retrace the route taken by the car to avoid getting lost).

I also remember another part of the dream, which had to do with getting food in a greatly distorted version of my hometown school. (Too distorted to identify as middle school / high school / elementary school.) I think this was the event we were going to (despite the unfamiliar town). There were people there who had gone to school near when I did, but different enough that they were several grades below me and I had never heard of them while in school.

There was a detail about a kid who was universally shunned by the people in his grade while in school.

Meet Joe Black + Police Training

I watched the movie Meet Joe Black last night, and it had a large influence on my dreaming. However, I also combined it with the following movie premise:

"Imagine a family so skilled in the art of disguise that it's normal to question which relative you're really talking to."

(In the dream, this was a much more dramatic speech describing the situation... I couldn't replicate it properly.)

So, the family in Meet Joe Black was involved in a number of double-twists involving removal of masks and finding out who people really were.

The father (Bill Parrish) mentioned now and again some life work which he had kept secret. In the most important scene of the dream, Susan (who is the favorite daughter in the movie) convinces him to hand it over to her. (The implication seems to be that previously, he did not think she was up to the task.) Mr. Parrish removes some dusty papers in a binder, from an old box of toys left over from before the children grew. He gives these to Susan. She takes off her mask and it turns out that she is really the mother, who everyone thought to be dead for many years.

In the dream, I had joined the police force as a side job to make spending money while finishing school. There was a scene at the firing range, learning to use a gun. The chief demonstrated several types of guns, showing us that with the most expensive gun, it was much easier to hit bullseye every time; he lamented the fact that the police department didn't have the budget to buy that gun for everyone, saying that it would save lives.

It seems that I was taking a city bus every day in this life, between two very different parts of the city. I would regularly be in the neighborhood of Bill Parrish and his family during part of the day.

There was a scene where our rights as police were explained to us. We were told that we had no right to violate the law, and so in many situations we were dependent on the compliance of the criminals we were trying to catch. There was a scene illustrating this, with one of my fellow police-in-training talking to an uncooperative youngster who looked like he may be trying to break into a house, but had not yet violated any law, and was waiting for the policeman to be on his way.

Hopping Trucks with Justin

Justin (friend at work) was teaching me the unlikely art of travelling around by hopping in the back of trucks (without the owner's permission). We weren't trying to get anywhere, just doing it for it. My brother and some other people (unclear) were at a school, after-hours, which also seemed to be a "sneak in" kind of situation; but this was home base, which Justin and I would come from and try to return to via ill-gotten truck rides.

A couple of times, I thought that I lost my cell phone or wallet in one of the vehicles. I would eventually find them. This is surprising, since often in dreams you can never find what you're looking for. There was a scene where I was outside the classroom where everyone else was, after Justin and I returning from a truck-hopping journey, and I was looking for my cell phone in several pairs of pants I had. I found my old cell phone first, which confused me; it had the new cover that my brother put on it. (In hindsight, this makes perfect sense, since my brother was there.) A person then wandered by while I was changing pants, which surprised me. It turned out that this person had just come from another group using classrooms after hours; a music remix club. They came and met our group, and we discussed remixing (displaying our ignorance).