I only remember three early fragments of my dream. First, I was in a very modern, hi-tech high school, to either receive or give an award. I can't remember if I was a teacher or student. Second, we had a party in the (also modern and beautiful) dorm room, which involved eating Chinese take-out. Third, my family (parents and sister) and I had moved into a new apartment in New York. As we were eating dinner, we looked out the large bay window and my mom started complaining about ugly the view was. I looked at her, shocked, with my arms out in a questioning way, repeatedly asking her if she was serious. We had a prime view of the entire skyline! I even counted out loud that we could see seven bridges, all from a majestic, sunset-lit angle. But she just kept shaking her head and sighing.

Next, Merry and I had moved into a new apartment as well, and when we looked out the latticed window, we saw that my high school friend Mike and his wife were our next-door neighbors. They were sitting on their patio just outside and we shared some pleasantries. Merry went to take a nap (very realistic!) and I started to play the violin. As I played, somehow I slowly drifted from a standing position into lying on the couch, and the music stand drifted with me. I saw through the corner of my eye that a man was coming out of Mike's adjacent window, and then suddenly climbing through mine and onto my couch! At first it looked like Mike, and he started to rapidly ramble to me in Cantonese. I was shocked that he knew it, and pseudo-remembered that he had started to learn a few years ago. But as I looked at him, his hair grew white and he started to look like my uncle. He was saying something about a distant cousin cheating on his wife, but his voice was so quiet and he was talking so fast that I couldn't catch everything. As he inched closer to me, I got uncomfortable. But then, as I looked at him, his face slowly started to change, including the moles on his face shifting around, until finally he looked kind of like my dad. I was relieved. He told me he was going to go get ready to go out. I exited the apartment first, and looked down the hallway to see a Chinese couple talking at the very end of the hall. I couldn't tell if it was English or Cantonese, but I heard something about Australia.

Next, I was watching my dad have surgery in an OR that seemed to be located in an outdoor tent. The surgeon was a young woman who was working very rapidly. There were three wide strips of gauze on my dad's stomach, each with a hole in the middle for access. She opened a cut in the lowest strip, in the colon and started to suture a hole in the colon wall. I asked her if it was diverticulitis. She evaded my question while giving orders to her team to "put a little happy face" on the end of the middle strip. They did (it kind of looked like "Kilroy was here)", and she said it was so that there would be "a little guy" for my dad to talk to about the surgery. Also, my dad's head was to the right, but his abdomen was oriented up and down - but I didn't notice it as odd at the time. The doctor then repeated the same suturing process in the middle strip, in the small intestine, and I was very curious what my dad had done to need such surgery. He sat up as soon as she was done, and we started to walk over to the cashier. It was now that I noticed we were in a farmer's market, and that the cashier was situated in the middle of a table full of orange vegetables or squashes. The doctor followed us and showed us a chart that there was supposed to be five surgeries: three on the colon and two on the small intestine. Apparently, my dad was supposed to have done initial self-surgery on all the spots, but he had been lazy and only done the two she operated on. He dismissed her off hand, paid, and we left.

I realized that the doctor was a key witness to a crime, and so I Google mapped her and got in my car, which was a large black SUV. I got to a major intersection, where my GPS told me to turn right at the next turn. But I saw a car on the other side, a couple lanes over (but still on this side of median) facing me! I became very nervous, especially as more cars started driving right at me across the intersection, and there was no yellow line and no do not enter sign. However, my lane was still clear on the other side, so I just floored it at the green light and quickly turned right. After a few intersections, I turned left into a beautiful little neighborhood, but the road petered out into several branching sidewalks. It was suddenly night and very dark, so I got out of my car (which disappeared) and approached a woman pushing a stroller and a man nearby. The woman promptly walked off, while the man, who looked very scraggy and homeless, shouted "whadda you want?" at me. I slowly approached him with the doctor's business card in my hand (she had become a dentist in the meantime), and I cautiously asked him if he knew where 1527 (the 2 was lowercase?) was. He shouted "oh yeah! Just go to the left, it's one of those!" I quickly thanked him and turned away towards the row of apartments. It was light again. Unfortunately, all the apartment numbers started with 17 and 16, so I was angry that the guy had pointed me in the wrong direction, as the 15s appeared to be in another section altogether. However, I was encouraged by seeing that one of the apartments was also a business, as I thought the dentist would have her practice there as well. (By the way, the dentist looked like the girl from ZZ Top's music video "Legs," which I had watched in real life just before going to bed).

As I walked back out to the yard, which was now a patchy dirt clearing full of dying grass, I noticed that there were a bunch of people making a commotion at the exit gate (which was really just a hole in the fence). They were women, and dressed like gang members. I quickly walked through them and out to the sidewalk, but then I suddenly decided to ask them if they had seen the dentist. As I turned around, I saw that one of them was my old student Jennifer (who I had just talked to in real life), though she looked about 15 here. I said hi and went up to her. She was very hostile, and started to try to push me into the yard. I looked away for a second, and when I looked back, she had become very fat with a really puffed-up face. She moved to attack me, and I grabbed her arms and flung her against the side of the brick building. The other women moved in against me, but somehow they and I both knew that I knew magic, so they were very cautious. I tried to shoot missiles out of my hands, but nothing came out. Around this time I began to realize it was a dream, so I relaxed. I saw a violin case to the side fall open, and reveal that it was actually a toy duck on the other side.

posted by Larry at 8:19 AM