::fragments::

My perspective alternated between watching myself and then being myself.

I saw myself wearing an elaborate outfit. It was composed of several red shawls and skirts overlapping one another into a loose dress. The red was rich and beautiful. I kept walking up and down a cement sidewalk in a park--on one end was Melanie and other people who were friends but unrecognizable; on the other was the view of the city.

Melanie had loaned me $5 but wanted it back right away. I showed her my wallet and the lone dollar bill crumpled in it. I walked back to the view of the city with the intention of going further away from the other side of the park.

I was in charge of three cats, one of whom was a large adult cat, and two very tiny kittens. The problem was that we (Sarah, Andy, and I, and occasionally other unfamiliar people) were on a road trip. A vacation by some shore I didn't recognize that also featured a small pier. At one point we had rented a black motorcycle and it was only until after it was rented that we realized 3 people were not going to be able to travel on it, and where would we put the cats? Much of the dream I was chasing them, calling their names, and gathering them to me. The kittens in particular moved very fast and seemed very small.

(1)
I was in some kind of bar where there were four poles. There were wood floors, high ceilings, and party lights. It was in the woods. I was told by a man who owned one of the poles that the set-up was that people rented the space for parties, and whenever a stripper used his pole to dance, he got a cut of the money. Later, we were elsewhere and he was pissed off because he got a page on his pager saying how many dances had happened and it didn't add up. He felt he was being ripped off. I couldn't understand who kept track and who paged him.

(2)
I was fooling around in a bunk bed, top bunk, with Stephen, in my childhood bedroom, though the bed was across the room where it has never been. We were naked, and when he sat up on his knees and smiled down on me, I made him get under the covers and told him, My mom has a very bad habit of knocking on doors and then coming in without waiting for you to respond. A moment later, my mother did just that, and I was thankful we were under the covers.

(3)
Mr. Johnson was conducting an essay test. The subject was how we have evolved and will evolve spiritually. Melanie and other junior high classmates were there. Mr. Johnson handed me a hardbound book, which I understood to be my journal, and I thought that was very clever, to hand us back our own journals to write on such a topic. At some point after writing for a few pages I began whispering back and forth with Melanie and lost my train of thought. She turned her book in. I scrambled to finish up, and wrote very small at the bottom of the fourth lined page. I turned in my book to Mr. Johnson and was free to wander the unfamiliar house we were in.

I went in search of a bathroom. Both were unclean and I decided not to use either.

I lived in an activist compound set in Olympia, only it was surrounded by sand, making it feel like a desert. Our house had statues of safari men holding shotguns on the roof of the house to scare away potential attackers.

Stephen had a framed photo of a women on the windowsill above the sink. I was intensely jealous of her. I told him it was sexist for him to have it there, since it was a photo of her in very short denim shorts, and she had a very ample ass. She was turning to look at the photographer, and her blonde hair, nearly shaved, glinted in the sun. He didn't take down the photo.

Pat and I were going to take a walk. As we walked around one side of the house, it became the sidewalk next to my mother's house. He told me he had a bad knee. I asked why, and he told me it was because he had followed a dog home the night before.

The scenery was unfamiliar, but looked like a run-down hotel with a bar in the middle of a desert.

I was with T. Wang and we were basically talking, laughing, wasting time. Suddenly I received a text message from AQ. I had missed our dinner engagement! I was only 15 minutes late, though, and I tried messaging her back to tell her if she'd wait for me, I'd be there soon. She sent back a mean-spirited message to the effect of "Fuck off" and I was a little shocked and disappointed. I turned back to T. Wang and pouted about this turn of events.

There was also some sort of play I was a main character in, and at the end, I had to admit I had had an affair with a married man. Stephen was there and I hurriedly whispered in his ear that it was just a play and no such thing had really occurred.

I think I saw Pat (who has been there in the night with me over the last week!).

Cast of characters: Shawn, AQ, Melanie, and others.

My friends and I were walking cement paths by lawns in an unfamiliar housing project or condo tract. It was sunny. Don't look that way, they said, meaning don't look at that big picture window we were passing. I knew that Shawn was inside, with a woman, and they were filming each other. They lived there together. I didn't look.

Stephen and I were having dinner in New York, in someone's apartment. The couple we were dining with owned the place--a very luxurious but dark home--and they looked to be in their 40s. The woman had short, straight brown hair and wore red lipstick. They were caucasian and well-off and there was something unusual about eating there. When everyone got up from the table to leave--to go sightseeing?--I pointedly remarked to Stephen that I wasn't ready to go, Can't anyone see that? I said, as I held the gingerbread, or cornbread, in my hands. Their plates were clean. I could tell I had done something akin to a tantrum and everyone uneasily settled back down to the table. I was instantly angered. I barely knew these people, Stephen seemed to side with them, and I wasn't even having a good time.

Most notably, I recall driving up to my mother's house and being amazed at a strange man carrying lots of hanging plants. He had already set some in the rafters of the garage. They were common houseplants in nice dark wood barrel-like containers. On my mother's front lawn, a man and his assistant were working. The man was older, and seemed intuitive, wise. I stood on one part of the lawn as they lifted up the whole edge of it, about a foot or two in. I had noticed that someone had lifted up the lawn near the painted address on the curb, replacing the grass with a strange glass and stone tile. The inlay was glass, the borders were stone. These people were lifting up the grass on the main lawn to continue putting in all this tile.

I stood there, feeling as though my mother couldn't have understood what she wanted out of this. It was pretty, but it seemed like in the summer it would all just bake. The grass seemed a lot more aesthetically pleasing to me than this strange tile.

Earlier, Stephen and I were going to buy a new car. Lots of women in bright pink bikinis milled around as part of the ploy to sell cars. Stephen practically hurt his neck twisting and turning to see the women. I got pissed off and sat in the backseat of the car as we drove off the lot, passing all of these women.

*To see green grass in your dream, suggests that there is a part of yourself that you can always rely on. The dream is also symbolic of natural protection.
To see plants in your dream, indicates fertility, spiritual development, growth or the potential for growth. Alternatively, the appearance of plants in your dreams reflects your caring and loving nature. (from a dream dictionary)