night of 09/27/09

i am in a group of people whom i know but among whom feel i do not belong, as we are slightly antagonistic. we are sitting in a darkened movie theater and they begin to complain because i keep changing the channel and volume with the remote, fiddling around. i and one of the others to whom i am a little bit closer leave, and jump out--we had been in an airplane. we have various supernatural abilities, and we can fall from any height with no detriment. we land on my mother's back yard, beside a large pond. there is a duck in the pond. the person i am with confesses that he is tired of his previous existence. he takes out a pill and swallows it. we had all had access to these pills, of which there are four possible effects. this one changes you into an animal, irrevocably. some other inanimate object, possible a stufed animal, also takes one of those pills. so now there are two more ducks on the pond. i explain this to the others when they arrive. later, my mother arrives at the pond, which is simultaneously in the back corner of the yard and the back corner of the basement, and the ducks have gone. we theorize that there is a fan vent they could have gotten out through. [note: the pond is not where it was in real life, as in an old photo I saw recently of me and my brother as kids standing in front of our backyard pond. the basement corner is where my father would sit and watch TV.]
my father lives next door; i have visited recently. i am walking around the front of my mother's house in an ill-fitting suit; i keep pulling at the shirt sleeves to get them to fit properly, although they remain hanging out too far. coming around the side of the house i see my father through the window of his house. he is dressed in a suit that fits him impeccably and is talking on the phone using a headset. [note: much like the headset i use for work; he never used one.] i hurry around the corner to the back so that he won't notice me. he has, though, and as i reach the back door is suddenly coming up the walk behind me. i go in, and my mother is there, noticing my father coming in. she bumps into me trying to walk into the dining room, trying to avoid my father.

night of 09/17/09

I am among the survivors in a zombie outbreak. They don't stumble around mumbling for brains; rather they are ordinary people who have become infected with malevolence; they are mostly hidden and only glimpsed. We had been employed in a group of buildings in a wide open area, as if we were counselors at a summer camp, except that our job was something technocratic; earlier in the dream we had been working in front of a massive glass wall to the outside as it was assailed by giant storms. We can fly, though with some effort and difficulty in maneuvering. The buildings are not safe, so we attempt to escape by working our way up laboriously through the tree branches and telephone wires along a road (which closely resembles the road in front of my childhood home) but find that we are actually within a giant room, with the only exit other than the buildings a small door near the celing into the next chamber, which is guarded by the infected. I need to return to a couple of the buildings for some belongings. We observe a group of the infected gathering in excitement. My wife is among them. She gives birth. The child presumably is infected. The group converges gleefully to consume the placenta.

night of 09/14/09

I am a policeman with my partner in a subway car on the way to the scene of an alarm. An ambulance is weaving between and around the subway cars, and in one attempt to pass slams into a wall. My partner and I think this is funny. Later we are running through a subway tunnel--but it is very well lit and clean, like an underground mall without shops, with no tracks or trains--when an officer screeches to a halt in his car and radios for permission to pick us up. ("Permission to pick up ____ and ____"...) Later the three of us are on foot again and scouting in opposite directions. Foreboding; pressure of air. We turn a corner and see a distant torrent thrashing in the tunnel, rushing toward us. We run the other way. We meet the officer running the other direction--there is water that way too.

night of 09/09/09

I am at college. The dream is very extensive and there are snatches of episodes with cars, navigating the campus, talking with various students and faculty, and so on. I meet an advisor regularly at a table at Sam's Club. I find that A-- Ho--  a good friend from elementary school, does as well. Someone is cutting some embedded object out of the middle of a door with a flat chainsaw-like tool; he need only cut two sides, as two were cut previously as I had witnessed.

I have failed to notice that classes started already on Tuesday; it is Wednesday or Thursday. Around lunchtime I am sitting at a table with A-- Ho-- trying to find my class schedule among all the stuff in my backpack. I am emptying out various compartments, which are filled with papers, notepads, wires.

Earlier in the dream I have met with my biology teacher (who resembles a poetry teacher of mine, who is quite a good poet) to discuss how I will progress in the course. I may either take a test or do a project. (There is some resemblance of the test choices to the O-levels and A-levels discussed in the 7-Up series of documentaries we had been watching; the smart (and/or privileged) kid had taken a lot. Also, in my Master's at Buffalo, I had such a choice. I ended up merely taking the [PhD-qualifying] test instead of doing a proper Master's project, as my intended idea got no support from my advisor and I quickly gave it up.) I suggest that I do a project (which seems the more honest, or serious, or legitimate route) and am quickly urged to take the test instead; I tell someone about this later.

I discover that my biology class started at 1 pm. I look at my watch and it is 1:07. In a panic I start furiously cramming my things back into the backpack, shouting and cursing in frustration. It takes quite some time. When I am finished I look at my watch and it is past 5. I am dumbfounded. Alex Hoffman is sitting there and I ask how this could have happened and he doesn't know. (It is strange that in this single case I don't accept the dream logic.) I stagger backward with my hand to my head and ask aloud if I am insane. Finally I recover somewhat, cram everything into the backpack, and rush off to find the biology teacher.

She meets me walking through a great hall full of students. I am chagrinned because it will now seem like a lie that I was on my way to see her. I beg for a moment to explain. I say of the Tuesday class that I overslept, and then beg to be taken seriously as I prepare to explain the events of the afternoon.

However I am interrupted. She explains that I rely too much on improvisation in my work, and I am overwhelmed with the sense that this simply will not do, that I am simply unable to meet the basic requirements of the field. (Apparently I have been to class, or done a homework assignment, at least once.) She gives the example of my explanation of osmosis, portrayed by frogs suspended in sacs that are migrating along a river. (The image is vivid. Apparently osmosis has something to do with the frogs gradually darkening in a spreading blotch and then transferring this condition to other frogs.) I don't understand her explanation of the true phenomenon. (I am awakened by the cat.)

9/17: The most memorable (because it is unusual) part of the dream is where I didn't accept the dream-logic of accelerated time and feared myself insane. The dream is also unlike my usual college dream of having to take the final exam after having already forgotten to attend the whole of the course.