I was in Hong Kong, in my family's first-floor apartment, lounging and reading. A white civet crept into the room, which looked like a very large rat with a squirrel's head. It seemed tame, so I scooped it up and held it as I read. I scratched its head while it found a few crumbs of food around me to eat. After a while I got sick of it and opened the door to let it back out. Only a few moments later a girl came around asking if anyone had seen her civet. I let her know, she gave me a nasty look, and ran off to catch it.

My mom and aunt asked me to head to the market and buy a spider plant. There was a market on the apartment ground, though still about a block away. When I arrived, I saw that the shops were just tents, so I headed into a red-and-white striped one. I asked the proprietor, a man in his 50s with a mustache, if he had one. I used English because I didn't know what spider plant was in Chinese. So I followed it up by asking how to say it, and hurried explaining in Chinese that I could speak, just that I don't know very specific words. He laughed and said it was all right. It was only then that I heard an accent in his voice, and looking closer, I realized he was probably Italian. Cool. Well, he had to look around for a good one, so while he pickd one out, I headed out to the open part of the market.

I found a table with a small crowd around it, and the hawker was cutting up large pieces of some sort of melon. It looked great, but as he was starting to offer it for people, I noticed a lot of activity just behind the table which was almost backed up against a tent. I looked down and saw dozens or even hundreds of small spiders and bugs crawling around some kind of mesh, with a few large ones mixed in. I lost my appetite but didn't want to seem rude by suddenly leaving. I was so distracted that only when I looked up did I see that my arm had gone purple at the elbow. I rubbed it, only to have a bit of my skin come off. It hurt, so I yelped and asked around for what happened. They laughed and told me that I was bitten by a bat. One guy suddenly turned serious and said that I should go to a hospital to get tested for rabies. I panicked a bit and ran out of the market.

As I passed the plant shop, I realized I forgot to pick up my order. I headed in, just while they were closing up. The man said that he was relieved that I came back, because they were just telling the police that I was scamming them. Only then did I see two policemen standing in the cramped cashier area. I hurriedly paid and left. The policemen came running out past me just then, and I heard loud sirens down the block. Large gusts of wind were coming now, and I took advantage of them to fly towards the flashing lights. I briefly thought of how interesting it was that I only just swam in real life yesterday, and was now getting to swim through air in my dream tonight. I literally pulled myself along with sweeps of my arm and jumped huge distances with each stroke. I had to keep going further and further down the block, as I was behind the buildings and there was no seam between them. Though I was good at flying/leaping, I didn't think I could make it over even the shortest buildings. When I finally hit a gap, I turned in to see the crossroads I was at. The army was there, setting up for some kind of big fight. But I never got to see it as my alarm went off and pulled me out of my sleep.

posted by Larry at 10:01 AM

I was playing a video game, and controlling my character from a third person, slightly top-down perspective. He was in a fighting arena and had just defeated a number of challengers. Since my character was so powerful, the organizers (who were bad guys) got angry and decided to send a few dozen guys at me at once. As they came, I executed all the maneuvers, watching him tear people in half with kicks and punches. It was all digitized violence, so not very gory; still, I remember thinking at the time that I might have to censor it if I ever wrote down that part of my dream. Ironic.

Turns out he's a superhero who specializes in strength and speed. Suddenly, I'm him and walking inside of an apartment complex. I'm in an open middle section with railings surrounding overlooks to the first floor. There's a small noodle bar in the corner, where the owners smile at me as if they know me. Four aliens pop up around me and I take them out with a futuristic machine gun. I close in on my target apartment and kick the door in, not certain what to expect inside. A supervillain in all black jumps down from the second floor landing and I pull out a sword when the gun is ineffective. We trade blows, but he heals up from any cuts that I land. Finally I realize I have to go for the head, and do a fakeout in one direction while swinging my sword in the other. After his head comes off, a small black spider scuttles out of his body and disappears. The game then goes to a cutscene, where the spider is inside of a lab filled with scientists. It's a very indistinct spider, more sort of a black void with a body and spindly legs. It gets herded into a small pen with a few others, and then it cuts back to me standing inside the apartment.

The family that lives there starts to open the door, and I dash upstairs to hide. Just to the right, there's a small closet, with just enough room for me to sit down in. I hear them outside, just the mom and two kids at the moment, and wait for things to calm down before I make any movements. But as I look around me, my curiosity and wonder widens. There's a ton of stuff in there, and I love nothing more than to poke around for loot in a game. So I start rummaging through bags, literally scrutinizing every single item I take out to see if it's worth taking. I'm working systematically from the right to the left, and the first dozen bags just hold clothes, makeup, and various other boring daily items. When I reach the left, I see a bunch of books lying on the floor, and I wonder whether the game designers bothered to code anything inside them. So I open a particularly thick one up at random, and am amazed when I see not only text that makes sense, but also figures when I flip through all the pages! I even see a book from a series that I recognized, on Chinese folk lore. I thought about how much time it must have taken for the programmers to scan in real books; I also fleetingly thought about how it was possible for me to generate all these detailed writings in my dreams. Finally, in the last place I look, right next to where I had started of course, was a snug rectangular black bag that held a futuristic yellow Nokia phone, a headset, and two AA and an E battery. I grabbed them, knowing that this was what I must have been looking for in the first place.

Finding the phone triggered the game to send home the dad, who came upstairs right outside the closet. I could see through the slats that he was talking to his wife, who was sitting at the family computer in a den-like area. They both started looking at my direction, because I couldn't keep totally quiet. As they started approaching, I had no choice but to run out and jump down the stairs as fast as I could. I literally jumped the entire flight in one go and was just about to open the door, when I heard the dad call me by my name and say that he's going to call the police. I realize that if we know each other, there may be a better way to do this. So I reload the game and I'm back in the closet from a few seconds ago. This time, I walk casually out, and both of them greet me. The dad says hey neighbor, just let us know ahead of time when you're coming over next. I wave goodbye, we laugh, and I head out the door.

Outside, the area had broadened into a large bar and dance club. I was running out quickly to make sure I escaped with the phone, when I ran past three superheroes with their arms crossed, trying to talk to me. As I tried to slow down and turn around, four supervillains burst in through a door on my left, and time slowed down to let me pull out my sword mid-lunge. My friends leaped into action, and I faced the first guy, who had one gigantic eye that took up most of his face. Figuring it was his weak spot, I cut it off, only to see the slice drip off as ooze and his eye unharmed. I remember thinking that I had very little time before hitting the guy to decide what this guy's superpower was going to be, seeing as how the dream depended on my creativity. In any case, I kept the eye-man distracted while one of my allies hit him from the back and took him down somehow. The next guy had a hook on top of his head, but I don't remember what superpower I gave him. I tried cutting off his head, but it took more than that to get him down. I looked around and the other two bad guys were being trapped in place by my friends. Suddenly, they dissolved and once again we saw the spiders come out and disappear to the lab. We had won, but we knew they were just waiting for new bodies to come back again.

posted by Larry at 10:30 AM

I had just gotten out of some kind of church service in Hong Kong with my mom and sister, and I walked alone to the subway. As I stepped on board, everything went blue and I was transported back in time about 30 years. Two of my uncles and and an aunt were standing there talking to me like everything was normal. They looked so young and healthy, with bright eyes and smiles. The uncle who'd passed away in real life was in his prime. I talked to them in Cantonese, something I rarely do in my dreams, but it felt so natural. I almost cried at how handsome and full of life they were.

We got off at a stop, and it was current again. Now I was with two other of my uncles, and we headed over to one of them's favorite bar. I was surprised and curious since they're a bit conservative, but didn't get a chance to see much as it was closed. We walked down a long narrow hallway inside a minimall, and a teen popped his head out from a door to flag us down. Seems like my uncle knew him and he quickly let us know that this was a great noodle place. They shut down the shop, and only certain customers could get in past closing time.

For once, I actually got to eat my meal, which was vegetables and ground beef with thin egg noodles. It tasted all right, until I lifted up a part that seemed to be stuck together with green goo. I stopped eating then. One of my uncles took out a small sheet of paper that looked like part of a chinese chess board. The other uncle got excited and they both pulled out some small markers that looked like miniature playing cards. After setting down some face cards, they ran out and had to substitute with coins. They played really fast, moving up and down and stacking their pieces in confusing ways. One of the waiters came over, and the staff started asking each other if they'd ever seen such a game before. Turns out the board really was a torn-off piece from a chinese chess set.

I think this was my first ever dream that was entirely in Cantonese.

posted by Larry at 6:31 PM