DREAM JOURNAL -- RON MERRILL

"And telling one's dreams is the last word in egotism."

Dorothy Sayers

Busman's Honeymoon

I did not retain a copy of the dream journal I kept for a month for Monika Relph-Wikman's project. Some later dreams are described in my letters to her. This journal records only the occasional dream that seems significant to me--or rather, that seems as though it ought to be significant to me; usually I cannot guess what it signifies.

The first dream, undated, I had not long after I was diagnosed with myeloma, even before the dream study. The symbolism ("going West") is obvious.

I am at the pier, alone, with my luggage. A large ship, apparently a tramp freighter, is waiting there. There is nobody to see me off, nor is there any crew on the ship. I go aboard and find my way to my cabin by myself. It is on a high point of the ship, with a large picture window facing forward. As soon as I am in my cabin, the ship starts to move, surging over the green waves. As I bend over to pick up my luggage, I am thrown against the door and cut my lip.

Feb. 26, 1995

[fragments; not necessarily in this order]

I am being driven in a strange small car. Either we are going backwards, or the driver's seat is in the rear, because the chauffeur is behind me. He drives fast and recklessly, on dirt roads through a town I know in my dream but not awake. The right side window is down somewhat, and it is raining outside. I am worried that water will be sprayed into the car by the wheels of other cars going by.

I am walking somewhere at night (a college campus?), carrying a book and two fencing foils (one French, one Italian, just as I own). It is dark between two buildings and I wonder if I might be attacked. I hold one foil (the French) in my left hand in case of need. A light from behind me is reflected from its bell, as if it were a searchlight.

I am in a very long building, looking for my wife. I find the mass spectrometer she operates, but not her.

I am walking down the street, considering an offer I have received (or expect to receive?) to become a partner in an analytical services business.

March 1

[I experience this dream as the protagonist, but it is not me but a childhood friend.] I have entered college. After being assigned a dorm room I am subjected to a test. This consists of lying on my back at the edge of the lawn, my head on the sidewalk, so that my head is somewhat lower than my feet. [Comment: This is the position used for surgery to insert a Quinton catheter, a very painful procedure I have gone through several times.] I must catch a football, then throw a pass with it. I do poorly at this and the person in charge announces that I am about to fail. The test changes; now I must catch a piece of meat (a thick steak); this I am able to do. I toss it behind me, where a dog takes it.

[Comment: At around this time I am regularly "asking" for a dream about my prospects with the disease, now that I seem to be relapsing.]

[Comment inserted later: I recently (Nov. 1995) learned that the friend in question, Walter Winslow, is also ill with cancer. He told me he had a catheter in place (not a Quinton, though) to administer a continuous infusion of chemotherapy.]

March 5

My wife and I are in bed in a second-floor room of an old farmhouse with thin board walls. Somebody mounts stairs outside the house to a gallery running down the outside of the second floor and goes past our room, at first alarming me, but apparently he also lives there.

I am in the desert. A young Indian man is undergoing a coming-of-age or initiation ceremony which consists of driving a large truck and trying to run me down with it. An older Indian sets him this task. I am confident that I will be able to dodge the truck. I wake up before the contest begins.

[Comment: Note the connection to an earlier dream in which I refuse to attend a Shinto initiation ceremony. The threat of the truck probably comes from a movie I watched a few days before in which the hero is attacked in this way. Comment: I wonder if the young Indian man represents my son; around this time I had been wondering if my early death might benefit him by increasing his responsibilities.]

March 6

[This is the conclusion of a much longer dream, most of which I cannot remember.] I am held prisoner by a man; a woman is also present, but her position is not clear. I am given my pants, which contain my wallet; in it is a traveler's check (or a personal check? or both?). I'm told to sign it and go buy something. I think this is an opportunity to escape. "It's your last check," my captor says, with the clear menace of killing me. At this point I wake up.

[Comment: On March 7 I receive the news that my tests show the disease did not progress during the past month. I had been expecting much worse results.]

March 9

I am watching (on television?) a competition between American and French fighter planes. The American planes have the designation "F-2". However, the "planes" look like stock cars. Two French cars are competing with two American cars. The Americans pull ahead. Suddenly the French cars become (or are replaced by?) fighter jets. They roll along the ground. They gain on and pass the American vehicles. They rise into the air, but they immediately crash into a wall and are destroyed. There is an instant replay in slow motion; I see that the first jet lost stability due to its reverse-swept wings. The commentator says that the second crashed because its pilot lost concentration because of his comrade's catastrophe.

Suddenly I am hanging on with my arms underneath a large jet (a B-52?) flying high above the track. It dives in order to aim the TV camera in its nose at the track, which frightens me even more. I hear an announcement that a Russian plane is carrying two atomic bombs to drop on Portland (apparently the track is located there?). Then I find myself inside the plane (which is now flying level), in a cargo or equipment section toward the nose. I am lying down, confined (strapped?) into a small space. I make a noise (grunting), but nobody comes. I think that the sound may have been taken for noise made by an animal, but I am unwilling to call for help in words because this is a military plane and I would be thought a weakling. I can move only my right arm. I search for a call button, but there is only a pair of wires grounded to the metal partition above my head. At this point I wake up.

March 10

I am in line on the lower steps of a staircase to adopt a baby sister. It is important to stay close to the man directly ahead of me in line (whose car I followed to this place), because he will provide the baby. I hand in some sort of ID card to the bureaucrat, and also give her a full paper bag (clothes for the baby?); she puts it with other bags sitting on the stairs. I mount the stairs to the foot of a sort of bridge, where another line stretches. Many boys in white tang soo do uniforms, wearing red belts [like my son] are standing in this line. At this point I wake up.

March 14

I have come to live among homeless people in a tunnel (a subway tunnel?) with a dirt floor. I lie down on a board wrapped in blue cloth. There is a woman sleeping next to me but raised on a ledge. I have with me a cotton travel bag, and a tiny camera. I am worried that the camera will attract thieves; I put it in the bag. There is a strong sense of rightness about being stretched out on the hard board. [I have the impression that I merge into sleep from this dream instead of waking up immediately.]

March 15

I am outside a restaurant or store of some sort. Inside the glass windows there are large cartoon figures which seem to be robotic. I am lying on my back on the ground under a flat surface like a board that projects out from the wall. Only my right hand is free; otherwise I am held down. Somebody (a woman?) has promised me that I will be released, but nothing is done. I have drawn some sort of cartoon, which I intend to be expressive of my plight, above me. People look at it and are amused, but they do nothing to help me. When one person (a child?) wants to release me, he is stopped and told this would be disrespectful to me.

[In the dreams of March 9 and March 15, why is my right arm free? (I am left handed.) During kidney dialysis, the needles are placed in my left arm, leaving my right arm free.]

March 19

[End of a much longer dream that I cannot remember.] I am with someone who is retarded or childish. We are searching for an address; we are in the military and I am concerned that I am going to be blamed for some sort of mistake, but my companion is sure I can somehow get out of trouble. He spots the address he is looking for--we have gone past it--and goes back. I take a different route, going around a small lawn, thinking as I do so how I am going to explain this to a court-martial. (I have the impression that I am an officer.)

Our destination turns out to be a small store. I am carrying two small throw pillows (one is dark blue, the other--purple? dark brown?), which I throw on a bed. We wait behind another customer. Then I return the pillows (which had been bought for Christmas) for a refund. At the right side of the store there are some toy pianos; a white cloth or towel has been thrown over them, and two (or three?) cats are sleeping on them. I comment on their choice of such an awkward and uncomfortable place to lie, and the shop clerk agrees. She finishes at the cash register; I have a five-dollar bill in my hand. (It's not clear at this point whether I am paying her or she is paying me.) This apparently is inadequate, whichever way the transaction is running, because, as I point out to her, an additional $4.17 is shown on the cash register as being owed by me.

March 20

I am in the National Guard, and have just arrived at summer camp. My unit has been placed in a newly renovated building; headquarters is in a large, luxurious room painted yellow. I comment jokingly that it is better than the Pentagon. I am, apparently, Training Sergeant [the assignment I actually had when I was in the Guard]; I expect to be assigned a place here, but a sergeant senior to me instead escorts me to another room, where a bed is placed for me next to the piano. I am concerned that this will interfere with my sleep.

I put away my clothes and gear in a closet that is actually a hi-fi cabinet. Some people (men and women; not military, but senior to me in some way) are waiting for me to go out to dinner. I feel I must shave first, but the battery charge is low on my electric shaver and it runs very slowly. I plug it in next to the hi-fi cords to recharge.

[The dream, or my memory of it, becomes confused.] There is a house on fire; I prevent a teenage girl who wants to go inside from doing so, telling her it is too dangerous . . . I am at home and my wife brings me a white cat. We have some discussion of whether it is safe to leave it outdoors. [Comment: We are considering getting a kitten. I am reluctant, though I love cats, because of sanitation problems and resulting health risks. The incident of the girl and the fire comes out of a novel I was reading the preceding evening.]

March 21

[Fragmentary memories; sequence is unclear.] I have organized, all by myself, a tiny scientific meeting to which I have invited nine American chemists who work in my specialty. But I have forgotten about one of the sessions and arrive late. [Comment: The preceding day I had forgotten a medical appointment.] I am dressed, to my discomfort, imformally, wearing a yellow shirt with an open collar and the sleeves rolled up. I go out to lunch with some of the other scientists . . .

I am walking along a dark street, in a hurry to get someplace (the meeting?). I call ahead (on a cellphone?) to warn that I'll be late, and note that I am now at the intersection of Aviation and Art. A pickup pulls up alongside me with two men in it. They say something indistinct but threatening; one says he has a gun. I refuse to be robbed and I begin to run, the truck chasing me. Suddenly I turn left into--the hall under the Great Dome at MIT! It is crowded with pedestrians and the truck cannot get through them. I go to a place where a ferry of some sort has stopped; the front opens on the hall and discharges passengers. I am trying to meet my children; I can hear their voices, but can't see them.

March 24

[Fragmentary memories.] I am driving fast (50 mph) down a city street; worried about getting a ticket, I slow down . . . I pass a Catholic seminary or nunnery and look at it. It has a very extensive library, which I envy; it is easy to see, because the bookshelves are on the outside of the building. Inside I see an office, where a young woman who wants to become a nun is being rejected by an older nun. Across a courtyard I can see a cathedral . . .

I am leaving my home on foot, going down a hill so steep that steps are cut in the street. My family is with me. There has been a war against invaders from outer space, in which I played a major role. Somebody close to me (my son? my aunt? it seems to keep changing) was killed in the war. Now the conflict is starting again, and the citizens of the town have come out to see me off. We end up at the beach, where I meet other family members, including my mother and my uncle, who is dressed as a beach bum.

[Comment: Note the appearance, for the third time now, of the symbol of an initiation ceremony, with rejection or failure associated with it.]

March 25

I am a visitor at a university chemistry lab. I have two tasks to perform: in the morning, distilling a liquid; in the afternoon, synthesizing HMBA [an experimental drug for myeloma that I am trying, in waking life, to arrange treatment with]. I set up the distillation, and the liquid is refluxing, but I cannot find the piece of glassware I need to arrange the apparatus to collect the product. I go around the lab, searching benches and drawers, but I cannot find anything that can be used for the job, though the lab is stuffed with old glassware. Some of the graduate students are present, and the girlfriend of one student is sitting at his bench listening to the radio, but for some reason I may not ask them for help. From time to time a woman comes in to check on me; she reminds me that I must finish the distillation so I can work on the HMBA. I think to myself that she doesn't understand that it is already too late, I have lost too much time and will not even be able to start the HMBA. But I am more upset about not being able to finish the distillation.

I am in a large modern building at the seashore. Through a window I see a huge wave breaking. I go to the window and see another huge wave. I am in no danger, safe inside the strong building (made of white marble?), but my wife and children, I know, are visiting the beach. I worry about the children, but decide my wife will keep them safe.

[Comment: The building resembles strongly the mausoleum where my father and brother are interred.]

My wife has gone insane and is trying to kill me. She chases me up some stairs, through a building, across a lawn. (This seems to be the Willamette University campus. I attended there as a teenager before going to MIT.) I am not particularly frightened; I'm more concerned about her than about myself. Finally she catches up with me and confronts me with--a fishing pole. I am able to calm her down and talk her into going with me to see her cousin [who is a psychiatrist]. On our way there we stop on the street while she goes off to take care of some errand. It is cold and I try to put up the hood on my jacket. It comes up in front, not in back, and covers my face. I detach it and try to put it where it belongs, but am unable to do so. My wife returns and I ask her to fix it for me.

[Comment: My wife says the fishing pole suggests she is dragging me to the appointment she has made for me with a Korean doctor the following day.]

March 27

There is a party in our home; other families are visiting; and I am assembling five atomic bombs as part of the festivities. They are very small; in fact they look like scoopulas [a simple piece of metal shaped for spooning out solid chemicals] with fuses. The fuses are aluminum wires, though they are meant to be lit with matches. Four of the bombs have two wires twisted together; the fifth has just one, which is thicker. I carefully place all five in a dish. One of the visiting children comes by, playing with a beach ball, and I demand that he be told to play elsewhere lest he get hurt. When the bombs are ready I am to place them in the microwave oven for two minutes to explode them; I announce that everyone must move to the next room . . .

I am sitting outdoors at a table on a pleasant day with my mother and grandmother. I have five paper packets of salt; I open one and put a little salt on some food which is on my tray. My grandmother is saying something about gardening problems, possibly due to too much salt in the soil.

March 28

A close friend has taken me shopping at a record store. As we browse there, he finds and gives to me some sheet music, saying, "This will interest you." I open the first piece of music. It is by Rachmaninoff, but clearly a simple popular piece, not classical. I read music badly; for some reason I try humming a melody (Gershwin's "Love Walked In") but it clearly does not fit the notes . . .

A woman has been brutally murdered (her head bashed in?) and five men who were somehow involved with her are discussing something over her body. One of them straddles the body; suddenly I am in the dead body and I speak, frightening him. At this point I wake up.

[Comment: On March 28 my test results show that the disease has resumed its progression, though it is only slightly worse.]

March 31

I am driving somewhere at night, thinking about a book I intend to write. There is a point I want to make about stealing keys. I stop at the house of a close friend and go in. He is asleep; his pants are on the floor. I take out the keys from the front left pocket. He wakes up. I show him one key, which looks very peculiar, more like a pocket multi-tool than a key, and suggest that this is his most important key because it is disguised. He is not particularly pleased with what I am doing and takes back his keys. He asks me about a French scientific term referring to peptides that he has run across. It sounds something like "Malibu (malleable?) rocks". I suggest that it has something to do with crystal size, but this is guesswork. I find it curious he would ask me; his wife is fluent in French, whereas my French is atrocious. However, his wife is not there. I ask him to give me back his keys, and I put them back in his pants and hang them up. As I do so I joke that I ought to demand a receipt from him to prove I didn't steal them.

[I stop keeping this journal at the end of March. During April I several times have dreams, but they fade so quickly from my memory that I would have difficulty recording them even if I tried. During April I take a course of Chinese herbal medicine. My test results continue a slow creep. A vivid, detailed dream that sticks in my memory occurs on May 4, inducing me to resume this journal.]

May 4

I am in a large building (sometimes it seems like a mall, sometimes like a university science building) and I have to go to the bathroom. I am on the third (top) floor; I remember that one of the men's rooms is located in the basement. I get into an elevator, but it goes only to the second floor. I get out and take the stairs. When I get to the basement, I cannot find the place I am looking for. I look for signs and find one on the door of a small boutique. I go inside.

Somehow my wife is now with me. I leave her shopping for clothes, and at my request the store personnel escort me to the men's room. There are two (or one person who changes?), a woman and a fat man. They show me to a small dark room and ask me if I know how to operate it. I see what seems to be a light switch by the door (a white hemisphere with two small square buttons) and try to turn on the lights. Instead the door closes and the bathroom begins to sink. It stops briefly, drops again, then starts to move horizontally and out of the building.

The bathroom-elevator has now become a vehicle driving through the town. I find various controls, including a dial that controls the speed. I reduce it from about 30 to 20. A voice (the fat man) asks if I am all right (by radio?) and explains that I am under treatment because I took "a lot of acid." I ask if that means this is a hallucination; he hesitates, then says no.

Somehow I have returned to the boutique and leave the bathroom. The woman reappears, as the person in charge of my case; the fat man shows up, and comments that both my wife and I have got new partners now. This does not bother me, as I know it will be temporary. In any case, my wife is now present again, and the four of us sit down in a small room. We eat (or have eaten?) a meal. The woman hands me a piece of green hard candy. I give it to my wife, who has not yet been served, hoping also for a flavor I like better; but the woman says it is for me.

[Comments: I have never taken LSD, or drugs of any sort. The fat man and the woman are suggestive of some old friends of mine; she visited us at about this time. Note the reappearance of the "runaway elevator" motif.]

May 6

I am on a train that is crossing the U.S. from west to east. Another train is traveling on a parallel track. I walk to the front of the train, looking for something to eat, but there is no dining car. At the front of the train there is no engine, only a flatcar. A woman is there, one of the train's crew. We come up on a string of freightcars and connect with them.

The train stops at a station. I know I am in the wrong place, with the train crew and other railroad employees rather than with the passengers; but the train people are friendly to me. I walk through the station, looking for at least a candy machine, but there is nothing, just a cleaning room of some sort for the employees.

I encounter the passengers from the train; Eve and Martha are among them. We go out into the city to eat, though the train will be leaving after a while. Eve insists on going to a movie first. I am concerned about missing the train, and I am not interested in the movie. We are very early for the movie; they have not even put up the poster for it yet. We sit down at a table in the theatre lobby . . .

July 2

[Confused memories of a lengthy dream.] I am part of a group of people waiting for some sort of meeting or activity. For a while I am in the army, loaded down with a large duffle bag and something else (a briefcase?), waiting in a hallway in some sort of government building with many other soldiers. I put down my duffle bag to go around and search for someone who knows what's going on; when I come back, unsuccessful, the bag has shrunk . . . I am outside a large brick building. Many black people, including children, are climbing up the walls and going into the upper windows. A black woman earnestly explains how Martin Luther King taught blacks to hate. I consider correcting her but decide it would be no use to try . . . I am with a group of people in a hallway again, but now it is some sort of scientific or business conference. We have slept in the hallway all night. A homeless man advises us where we can get breakfast. I am given a handout about the conference, but it does not say either what it is about or what the schedule is. Everybody is now moving, on their way to the meeting presumably, but I do not know where to go or when to get there . . .

I get into my car in the parking lot--on the passenger side. A man in a grayish-tan suit starts to climb into the driver's seat. I think this rather cheeky and say, "May I help you?" He says, "Can I use those trees?" I ask, "For what?" He says, "I don't know; that's the good thing about it." He gets out of the car.

I look across the street. A headless dinosaur is bashing its way through a concrete wall into a parking structure. As I watch, its butting breaks a large hole and it goes inside. A couple of teenage girls or women come running out, but they are giggling, not screaming.

[I have been dreaming a lot in recent weeks, but only "dog dreams," as the Koreans call them, which seem to have no significance and quickly fade from memory. I put down this dream because of the striking image of the headless dinosaur. This is not a decapitated animal; it has a blunt knob where its head should be--rather like the Rigellians in the E. E. Smith space operas I read in my youth, but unlike them this creature is hostile and aggressive.]

[At this time I am waiting for the monthly test results. I am involved in a consulting job that requires me to travel to Europe. This task is important and lucrative, but very difficult; because I am rusty, not having worked for a long time, and still not very strong, I am worried about whether I can perform. I am also planning a trip to France for a myeloma conference. There are difficulties about the travel arrangements. The incident with the man in my car may be associated with a recent offer by a guy who wants to buy some palm trees out of our yard.]

September 12, 1995 (while at the Myeloma Workshop in France)

I am looking out a window at a bird sitting on top of a pole. There is the sound of a helicopter and I find that I am in a moving vehicle. Intentionally I imagine it is a helicopter. I am looking out a side window initially, then forward. The vehicle rises off the ground and drifts to the side. We seem about to hit the tops of the shops along the street, or telephone poles, but somehow there is no impact. We return to the street--there are many pedestrians--we seem about to hit a young boy. The vehicle slews around with a screech of tires, slowly flips upside down, now floating again. I notice I am seeing clearly despite having my reading glasses on, and take them off. The vehicle (now more carlike?) is right side up again but moving backwards. I am now facing to the rear, though. I wonder who is driving and twist around to the left. I can barely see the top of his head over the high seat back. I call, "Who's driving?" It comes out as a croak and there is no answer. I try again, and then try to touch his head--my hand moves with great difficulty--I notice he has gray hair and I become convinced the driver is myself. This frightens me. With a surge of effort I get my hand over the top of the seat, but it touches only my pillow. I am awake.

May 25, 1996

I am a man, apparently some sort of businessman but with political or espionage connections, in an office in a skyscraper somewhere in the south of France. His operations have suddenly gone wrong and he knows his arrest is imminent. To evade those who are watching him he goes into the hall, takes the elevator almost to the top of the building, then goes to the ground floor. Expecting to be taken any minute, he walks out of the building. Nothing happens. He thinks there is only one safe place now for him--Israel, where he has connections. He will go there.

(I have been in this character, knowing his thoughts and feeling his feelings, yet somehow aware that I am not him. Now, at this point in the dream, I become a separate person, an observer or narrator.) I have lost track of the man. I am on a sort of esplanade by the Mediterranean, at night, and I walk down it looking for him. I see a man in an old Army uniform on what seems to be a motorcycle, laden with cargo. He turns to hide, facing away from the street. I go closer and look at him. He is not the man I am seeking; he scowls at me angrily, a black man with an almost skull-like face. He is actually a legless man, homeless; what I thought was a motorcycle may be actually a wheelchair, though I cannot see this clearly.

I walk on, but the homeless man suddenly is transformed. His legs reappear. He bounds into the bushes between the road and the sea, then back on to the road. I know (somehow) that the gods have restored his legs and charged him to seek out and destroy the fugitive. He is exuberant--"They came a long way to find me!" he yells--but still angry; not so much specifically at me but just generally destructive. He comes after me (I am now riding a bicycle, I think) but I am almost more alarmed at seeing the moon. There is a dim half moon in the sky and somehow I know that this is magically dangerous to both of us. "The moon! The moon!" I warn him, but he keeps coming. At the moment when his body slams into me the moon suddenly surges in brightness and I wake up drenched in adrenaline.

February 7, 1997

I and my family are trying to find some animal that is in a mess of old stuff in a big storage cabinet (the back of our garage?) My friend Dave Kloepper uses a broom to get it out. It is (apparently) a snake coiled in a cardboard box. When the box is pulled all the way out I see it more clearly and find it is a lizard. A kitten (not Cinnamon) jomps in the box; the lizard bites it. The lizard comes out, jumps on to Yoon, and climbs up her to her head. This alarms me very much, but the lizard has turned into a sort of stuffed animal, almost like a teddy bear.

I am inclined to think this may be a message dream because I think it really was a snake I saw, and that my subconscious turned it into a lizard because a snake would have been too frightening and woke me up. I have been dreaming very actively the last few weeks (including some mild nightmares), but they seem to be "dog dreams" and fade quickly from my memory. I have "asked" my subconscious for a message dream several times.

I am in our garage; a number of other people, not relatives or friends, but somehow junior to me, are there. I am opening a locked box which is part of a larger container (originally a vending machine of some kind, but later a car, I think). It contains some change, but something more valuable has been taken from it. I know (is there a note?) that this was done by an enemy of mine as a demonstration of his power. I take the coins, putting the dimes in my pocket. The quarters (there are no other kinds of coins) are too heavy, so I take them into the house to put them into the safe, which (in my dream) we have but have never used. The combination is still on a slip of plastic attached to the door of the safe. I have some difficulty opening the safe [not surprising, as the combination keeps changing every time I consult the slip], and this seems to merge into the different sort of problem in the next dream.

I am in a sort of electronic bordello. (I know, by sort of a flashback, that I have previously discussed this with Yoon.) One chooses the act and the characters one wants to see on a long paper form, and the results are displayed on the wall in something like LEDs. While I am struggling with the complexities of the form, with the aid of one of the personnel, another customer comes up and interrupts her with questions. In explaining the options to him, she mentions the number 5,000 with regard to the option I am using. Thinking this means $5,000 per hour, I am alarmed; I have already been there about 40 minutes. Yoon will certainly scold me if she sees such a charge on the credit card bill. The woman says she knows nothing about pricing and sends me to another room. There I am told that I have chosen the most expensive standard option (there are custom options that are far more costly) and that it costs nine dollars and something per minute. This is a relief but still strikes me as rather expensive, and I decide to leave. The woman from the pricing room (?) comes with me. She is a musician, on her way to play for one of the custom parties. She likes the job.

It is interesting that I am able to do simple arithmetic (calculating that nine-and-a-fraction dollars per minute is around $600 per hour) in this dream. I have frequently noted that I cannot read in a dream; I perceive words in the text, but they are not organized into phrases or sentences, they are just nonsense sequences.

August 29, 1997

I am at a summer camp somewhere, and I am encountering some sort of problem. My grandmother reassures me that I have only one more day at camp and then I will be going home, so don't worry about it.

I thought this might be notable not only because of the ominous symbolism, but because, though I remember this dream very poorly, I am pretty sure it was continued through a waking episode. I was dreaming about this camp; woke up and went to the bathroom; went back to sleep and returned to the same dream.