it started out where I was staying someplace that was very hot, in rooms that had no air conditioning. I was staying with heather and karine. they were out and it was the afternoon. karine came back, and had this idea, and got all the screens wet to work sort of like a homemade swamp cooler. it helped a bit.

we were sitting there doing nothing oike one does in such heat and then we saw water come in an soak the couch, what the...? and it turned out to be heather who was also trying to soak the screens, unaware that we had already done so and opened the windows.

I only remember one scene from a complicated dream about the unfolding of events leasing up to a future war. I think the reason I remember it was that my brain chose to replay the scene.

I was an observer and we were observing a beach that ran along the edge of some tropical shoreline. there were a moderate amount of tourists there. I knew this would be the event to kick off the looming war. since this was a replay I had an unknown person that I said, careful watching this, you may not be able to take it.

a girl in her early teens, kinda chubby, in a one-piece swim suit, was walking along an choosing her spot to sun in. she was carrying a towel and maybe some lotion or a drink. she had shortish hair parted down the center and pulled into two stubby pigtails. she picked her spot near where the vegetation began and started to settle.

I've been having a lot of dreams lately, only to have them totally blank out as soon as I am out of bed. today was the first day I remember any of them. although what links it all together is a little shaky.

it started out with a TV show getting filmed about campus life. there were two guys who were the main protagonists, and it was like a cable show so one of them was Arab-American. it was the season opener so the Arab American guy was musing on how there was a freshman starting that he had known as a child, and how was he going to react to her now she was all grown up. of course he didn't look like he could possibly be that much older than her but this is television.

there was a detail in that he now had a short beard and he didn't used to. anyhow, she arrived, and she hated him. she didn't show it too well but he found a book in her things named GEN TRAP, that was all about this sort of generation gap relationship in which one grows up and is hopelessly trapped in a crush on a person from the previous generation.

I had to travel back east, and was staying at some house in the country in north carolina with elena and big mike and some friends. i am not sure what business it was but from there i had to go to new england. i guess it wasn't really boston but it was out in a flat field part of massachusetts.

there were 5 or 6 of us in a house which was sort of a summer house - screen doors, no real insulation. it was either spring of fall though, I think fall. crisp but not cold, anyhow. the house was sort of white - one story - hardwood floors - crowded like a san francisco flat. the back part had a yard and behind there was either a barn or a cottage - some building fairly large and dark. there was a wall from the back house that was the border between the house-property and its associated fields.

big mike and elena were still there and so were some others - these guys weren't visitors like we were. we were planning something, or hanging out, they were all terribly cool in that they were informed and belonged, and I was sort of visiting and so I was not up to date on everything they talked about, and didn't quite fit in with my california self.

there was this big house, like a country manor. lots of people from the Government were gathered there one evening. er, this was like the 18th century. big 18th-century house and lots of men in frock coats and leggings.

outside, other men planned a coup. one of them was Ben Franklin although he was shaky. they had magical help, or maybe it was advanced technology. they were going to go in the house, with their faces blanked so they could not be identified. this required some power source in the basement, which had old-fashioned big breakers.

it was stormy out. four men went to the parlour with their faces blanked, and another team went to secure the rest of the building much like modern warfare. the consternation of the men they surprised was overwhelming. the men in the parlour looked out the window. I could see the blank faces through the window, it was like someone used photoshop blur on them.

I went back to sleep and although karine coming home woke me up too abruptly and the dream faded, I remember it was actually in the same universe as the last one, and it involved a training academy. I think I was teaching this time and not a student.

wish I could remember it all.

in some sort of science fiction universe, I was trying to send messages to our various embassies. however the messages were on "old fashioned" formal paper. this paper was somewhat speckly. the messages had some sort of authenticity stamp/letterhead in the upper left corner. it said something in a big black block caps font, all cracked & stylized. one of the messages I was setting up, which would go very far, to the edge of a black hole or some other anomaly, didn't have the letterhead, but a blank space where it should go. I was trying to use an ink jet printer to put it there after the fact.

it was night; karine came home and we discussed our options. I was remiss with these messages, they just sat and sat there. in their envelopes with lots of stamps. I couldn't send them in a special way lest they be intercepted. we went to the back of the house. there was a room there with the colours and curtains of my grandmother's room when I was a kid. a lamp with a single light bulb was in beside the bed. behind the bed, the curtain was pulled back from the right edge of the windows about a hand span, allowing someone on the outside to see us in the room, if they were in just the right spot.

this dream faded a lot becuase I went back to sleep. but here is what I remember.

I was walking along with Maria (my boss in real life) and we were going to a 10am class. it was some urban wasteland environment possibly in the future. I think it was my first day and she was showing me the way. we went down a street where the buildings got taller. they were all made of bricks.

we got to a T-intersection and the ground began to change. it was no longer concrete sidewalks and asphalt streets. at first I thought it was all just lite-grey gravel, but keeping the shape of streets and sidewalks. it crunched. then I looked closer, and it was a plant like the succulents with pointy leaves my mom used to really like. they were so pale a green that they blended in with the gravel. they were much hardier than I recall and withstood our steps well.