4 at once

May 24, 2011

Again I was inside a stadium that might have been a valley.  Either way, I was down on the floor and there were lots of people in the area higher up.  These people weren’t sitting in seats, though.  They were up and walking around and some of them were in cars.  Some of them were in some way menacing or were enemies of mine.  I stood in the middle of the floor and spread my arms out and shook my hands once.  A ball of glowing energy appeared in each hand.  I threw it up at the lead enemy group and it landed by them and exploded into flame.  They ran for cover behind a car and I threw another, which exploded on the car and started it burning.  I saw that I had them on the run so I continued to shake out the glowing balls and throw them at the group.  I’m not sure why I was after them because I didn’t feel the least bit threatened in this whole event, but it seemed like I needed to get rid of them, to stop them from something.

May 27, 2011

I was standing with several other people on a big flat rock in the middle of a wide, shallow creek.  It was a beautiful day.  The water was cool and clean and about two inches deep and flowing fast where I was standing.  There were several of these big, nearly flat rocks and we walked along with our feet partially in and partially out of the water.  After several minutes of this enjoyable creek walk we all got out, went into a building, and sat down.  A man stood up front and started telling us about the plans the group had for the area.  There was a young Native American woman in the crowd who asked a question.  I don’t remember what the question was, but the speaker was irritated by the question, and by her presence.  He started in about what kind of people were going to be allowed here and got very specific that “there wouldn’t be any Indians here once it was all set up”. 

I don’t know if I was more irritated at him or feeling sorry for her, but I stood up and said something about how hypocritical it was to claim we Europeans knew how to take care of this land and that involved keeping out the natives who had cared for it much better, or at least used it much more lightly.

May 30, 2011

I was with Scott, Dawn & kids.  We walked across a park-like lawn that overlooked a beach.  We came right up to the edge of the lawn where it became obvious that we were a couple hundred feet above the beach, right at the edge of a cliff.  Scott wasn’t worried about the kids getting too close and within a few minutes, sure enough, a small one playing along the edge went over.  I rushed up to look and instead of a sheer 200 foot drop, there was about a three foot drop to a second ledge.  This ledge was only about five feet wide, so Scott told the child (didn’t catch who it was) to get back up on the main level.

I stood on the edge and looked out for a while and thought about how it might be fun to jump.  I was pondering whether one of those glide suits that parachutists use would be able to give me distance enough to get in the water, but the beach below was pretty wide so I thought it probably would not.  I looked closely at the sheer edge of the cliff I was standing by and realized that it was made of hard packed sand.  I didn’t think that could be very stable and about that time the section where I was standing gave out and a small section fell onto the lower platform.  I was able to step away, but decided to stay away from the edge.

Looking to the left I saw that the lower ledge tapered down along the face of the cliff, so I walked down it and eventually came to a cave/building that was at the base of the cliff.  I was standing in a large archway at the end of the path where an inlet of water went under the cliff into the cave.  I noticed two large sea creatures with part of their backs out of the water swimming into the inlet, one in front of the other.  As they reached the beach and pulled themselves out I saw that they were sea turtles.  They were huge – probably 8 feet long and 3 feet high to the top of their backs and they moved surprisingly fast into the cave and out of sight.

May 31, 2011

I was running through a flat, grassy area with a long hillside off to my right.  As I went on the grass got taller and the ground got wetter.  I had to step carefully to stay on dry spots as there were more and more areas covered with water.  Finally it was mostly swamp with cat tails and similar tall grass and my running was mostly leaping from dry spot to dry spot.  I swerved over to the side of the hill, which by now was steep – not quite vertical, but too steep to comfortably run on the side of.  I continued just leaping and floating long distances in between since there weren’t a lot of good places to put my feet down.

Eventually the hill ended.  Ahead instead of the hill was a long stretch of flat, sandy desert, then another hill continued about a mile away.  On the desert surface there were a couple trucks loaded with people driving along. 

I came down to the flat land, still running, and as I got close to the lead truck the people on it all turned and looked at me with hostile glares.  So at the right time I gave another great leap and soared up over the truck.  I was high enough and the leap had started far enough from the truck that the people riding in the back were able to form a human pyramid several people high to try to reach me.  The very top two or three men strained and even jumped, but were still a few feet below me as I passed over the top.  They were classic desert Arabs in loose clothes and white turbans, and the hostility in their eyes was unnerving.  The truck driver was either unaware or uninterested, though, and never slowed down or changed direction to give them a better chance to grab me.  They kept going to my right and I eventually landed softly and kept running.

Stadium

I went into a football stadium and was down on the field throwing a ball around.  One team was on the field but the other had not yet arrived.  They were discussing their strategies and practicing plays.  Gradually the scene changed and the place was no longer a stadium, but was a valley and the seating areas became hillsides.  Now the team on the field was no longer a football team but an army.  They were still discussing strategies, but now it had to do with where the enemy was expected to come from and what type of weapons he would have and how to protect and attack.  Several trees on the hillside had been cut down and the logs arranged into bunkers.  One of the officers showed a group of men how to charge an opening up the hill and he even warned them that some of them wouldn’t survive it.  At one spot on the hillside they had laid rows of plastic wrapped something that looked like bodies, but wouldn’t have been since there hadn’t been a battle yet.  I assumed it was planning for how they were going to handle it when the battle came.  At some point the thought occurred to me that no one defends a valley.  All military strategists know that the high ground is easier to defend, and that there was no enemy here yet, so why were they setting up in the more vulnerable low ground when the high ground was available?

Grandma's house

I was sitting on a bench with a little three year old girl, trying to make her laugh.  Someone who looked like John Frauenhoffer, only bald, came up and kneeled down in front of her and started making funny faces at her.  She enjoyed it and was giggling quite a bit.  I found a hair extension (wig) somewhere and set it on top of John’s head.  Now he really did look ridiculous.  The little girl started laughing so hard she almost fell off the bench.

Later I was in my Grandma & Grandpa Jacob’s house eating rice off a piece of cardboard when I noticed something moving on the cardboard.  There were two little groups of microscopic ants.  They were so small that it would have taken hundreds to equal the size of a grain of rice.  But they were the typical reddish brown color and I could make out ant features if I looked real close.  I didn’t want to eat any more of the rice and I didn’t want to dump them in the trash, so I thought I would take them outside.  I went to the kitchen door and started to open it, but it caught and I looked up and realized there was a chain in a slot that had to be released.  I had to stretch up as high as I could to reach it and there was still a lot of door above it, which was weird enough that I actually looked down at my legs to see if I was kneeling down.  I wasn’t, but for some reason I was very short at the door.

I got the door open and there was about a two foot inter-door space to the next door, which was similarly locked.  I had to push hard on it and it finally creaked open.  I went out and what used to be an open concrete stoop that went down to the driveway was now covered with tall weeds.  I grabbed a big leaf off of one of the weeds and was wiping the ants off the cardboard when twenty or so people coming the other way parted the weeds and pushed by me to go into the house.  I tried to tell them they weren’t supposed to use that door, but they weren’t interested in listening and pushed on in.  I got rid of the ants and went back in and latched the doors behind me.

On campus

I turned south onto First Street next to the former Men’s Residence Halls, currently known as the Six Pack, and there were workers dragging barricades across the street for construction work.  I had to stop, do a three point turn, and head back north.  Other workers had started dragging fence panels out onto the street north of me, fencing me in.  I pulled up to the panels and the workers were signaling me to go back, but I showed them that I was trapped and had to get out.  These panels weren’t locked in place yet, so they reluctantly moved one out of the way and I weaved my way through and got out of the trap.

I went to the Illini Union where there was remodeling going on inside on the north end.  There was a mirror about 4’ by 6’ that workers had taken off the wall to store for safekeeping during the work.  It was in an ornate wooden frame and someone decided it needed to come out of the frame to store properly.  I took the frame off, which surprisingly folded up into a bundle about two feet long that I could carry under my arm.  I was responsible for it, and I thought the safest place for it would be at home, so I headed toward the south end of the Union with the bundle under my arm.

It occurred to me that I didn’t have any proof that I was supposed to have this frame bundle and I might be challenged by someone about walking out with it.  Rather than doing the right thing, getting a receipt or some kind of proof, I decided to try to sneak out.  The south lobby was packed with people and there were several University Police around, so I was nervous.  Then a commotion developed at one of the doors.  Several police rushed there and started pounding on a three or four black students, including one short, round woman.  I didn’t think the police were acting appropriately, but I also thought this was my opportunity to get out without notice, so I went to the doors on the other side and left.

Outside I met a group of people I knew, including David Hodge.  They were all heading southwest, which was the direction I needed to go, because I was planning to walk home, so I walked with them.  They suggested we should walk in the steam tunnels rather than on the streets.  I said I had been in those tunnels forty years ago and I didn’t like them much then, so wouldn’t be going back now.  David was really excited about going, though, so he and the rest of the group headed off anyhow and I started walking home.

Camping, glass blowing

I was at some kind of campground that was full of people sitting around campfires, talking, and enjoying being outside.  There were several young men with lots of energy who were organizing various competitions.  In one, the contestants walked on their hands as fast as they could across the grass.  I was surprised to see Chris Sokolowski, all 6’-8 of him, do a quick handstand and take off at a good clip.  He beat the 3 or 4 other guys in his race.

I saw an interesting building across an open pasture and started walking towards it.  Someone passed me at a jog and I realized it was Dennis Melvin, my high school classmate who I haven’t seen in 30 years, so I started jogging after him.  He seemed to know someone was chasing him and he picked up speed.  By the time we were ¾ of the way across he was at a full sprint and I couldn’t catch him.  He went inside the building and I did too. 

Inside there were coal fires burning in fire boxes around a big room that was set up for blacksmithing and glass blowing.  Dennis had picked up a blow tube that had a blob of glass on the end of it and was twisting it around as he held it over the fire.  He was very focused on his work, and I realized that he was running to get there before the glass dropped in the fire, not to get away from me.  I wanted to talk to him, but his work was too time sensitive and he was too focused to communicate.

Later I was in a large room with a crowd of people like at a graduation or some social gala.  Everyone was well dressed, carrying drinks in their hands and talking in small groups.  I spotted Roland White and came up behind him and squeezed the back of his neck with my thumb and two fingers, kind of like the Vulcan death grip.  It apparently sent shivers down his spine because he twitched and turned around looking very surprised.

Mexico and Weird Houses

May 14, 2011

I was in Mexico walking across a field of wheat that had just been harvested.  Ahead was another field of soybeans that were also golden colored, but had not been harvested.  In the first field was a group of soldiers who were looking away from us and appeared to be shooting at a group of people who were standing on a bridge that spanned across the valley the fields were in.  They continued firing, including tracer rounds that looked like they were going toward the people on the bridge, but the people on the bridge were leaning against the railing watching the shooting, not the slightest bit alarmed.

I was concerned enough about it that I didn’t go to investigate, but walked a different direction.  After the dry fields there was some open scrub ground, also dry and then a town.  The town had a wall around it and I could see a large concrete grain elevator inside the wall.  At this point I was walking with another man about my age and a young couple, all Mexican.  When we came to the wall there was a closed gate, which deterred me, but the older Mexican man just went up to it and it opened, so we went in. Everything was covered with dust, which wasn’t surprising considering how dry everything was. 

We walked along the empty street and came to another wall that my compatriots thought we needed to climb over.  They found an aluminum step ladder that was about 15’ tall and managed to throw the back legs over the wall.  It was easy to climb up, but getting down meant we had to jump from one cross brace to the next, about a three foot step each time.  We made it over and were now in a yard.  We went up to the back door of a house and rang the doorbell.  A woman came to the door and some discussion in Spanish occurred that I couldn’t follow.  She didn’t seem to want to let us in, but my friends pushed past her and went in anyway, so I went with them.

We walked down a narrow hallway and came to a big room where there was loud music playing and people lounging around the sides and a dance floor in the middle.  Somehow I knew that one of the people lounging on the side was some kind of bad character in charge, like a mafia godfather or a drug lord.  For our right to come in he wanted to see us dance.  The two Mexican men froze and looked scared, so I grabbed the young woman and took her out onto the dance floor and started to dance with her.  Her boyfriend didn’t look too happy about it, but I figured he was less dangerous than the guy on the side.  Apparently he was satisfied with our dance because we seemed to have passed the test and were welcomed in.

I went out the front door and onto a busy street in town.  There were lots of vendors along the sides of the street and mostly pedestrian traffic, with a few donkeys and trucks.  At one point I had to duck under a low archway and there was a crowd of kids who had just pickpocketed a policeman.  They had his wallet that had his badge and they were dividing up his money.

May 16, 2011

I went to an old house that was way out in the country in the woods.  It had been converted from a barn.  It had wood slat sides and a big space inside open to the rafters, with exposed support timbers through the middle and living spaces on various levels that had been built into it.  The people who lived there were old hippies or rockers.  I went inside expecting to have a fun tour seeing the interesting architecture and the eclectic accoutrements, but when I got in I was very uncomfortable. 

I realized the place was heavily demonized.  A couple different times when I looked at an object the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up.  There was a series of decorations hanging from a beam separating the kitchen area from another room.  It was sort of like a bead curtain, but the decorations were bigger than beads.  They were white shapes, mostly round, but some oblong and some angular.  I got a strong vibe of evil coming from them, so I looked at one of them and said, “Be gone in Jesus name”, and that strand moved back about a foot like a wind had blown it.  I repeated it looking at the next strand and each one did the same thing.  I wasn’t sure where the things had gone, so I decided to leave.

Later I was in a house that was recently built and I was looking for the way to the attic to put something in storage.  There was a hallway that ran just outside of the main attic where the ends of the ceiling beams that made up the attic floor sat on a wall on the side of the hallway at about waist level.  Each beam was labeled with a letter of the alphabet.  I realized that the letter system was set up to assign attic space to various people or things so I had to figure out what the code was to be able to store the box of stuff I had. 

I walked along the hallway to the far end where there was an opening in the floor with a row or round bars across it the short way about a foot apart, so instead of just walking down a set of stairs, you could walk out on the bars and let yourself down through to a platform below.  I let myself down and went outside the house, which happened to be inside a much bigger building.  Apparently there was a group of people in the hallway behind me who all came to the opening at the same time and when they did it overbalanced the house and it tipped over onto its end with a lot of crashing and banging.

When the dust settled three or four kids came climbing out windows looking all disheveled and a little banged up.  One of Walt Farchman’s sons was in the group and he had a bad scrape on the side of his head.  We went over to the house that was now standing on one end with the roof toward us and grabbed the end that was on the ground and lifted it to flop it back into place like it belonged.  Without much difficulty it tilted back and we let go as it flopped back into its original position. 

Bridge plans

I walked into County Engineer Jeff Blue’s office carrying a set of plans.  Jeff was coming in at the same time I was and his hands were full of more stuff than I was carrying.  He was trying to get into a conference room that had a door that was supposed to open like a cabinet door, where you push on it and let go and it springs back unlatched, but it wasn’t working for him because his hands were full.  I had a free hand and gave it a try and got it to open.  I hadn’t made an appointment so I realized there was a chance he might not have time to look over my plans right then, but he said he did, so I opened them out on the table.

It was a full sized set and over an inch thick when I laid it out flat.  I wanted to get directly to the layout of a bridge, but the first several pages were full color cartoons – Goofy, Donald Duck, and all sorts of nonsense.  I tried to flip them out of the way quickly, but I’m sure he saw them and wondered what they had to do w/ the project, as did I.

The plans showed a bridge on

Mapleturn Road

in Morgan County that had partially collapsed and was now open to one way traffic.  Stop signs and signs that said, “TAKE TURNS” were posted on either side of the bridge.  We discussed that it was unfortunate that this bridge hadn’t been replaced when we built the federal aid bridge right next to it several years ago.  The creek the bridge spanned ran along the south side of the road until it came to the bridge, then crossed under and continued along the north side.  The new bridge plans had a 27 degree skew and we both agreed there needed to be more skew.

I went back outside and it was raining.  I walked to the edge of the sidewalk where there was a hole about 4 feet in diameter that had rock and brick sides and provided access to a lower level.  I jumped down and stepped a couple times off the rocks jutting out that worked like steps and came to a lower level and went inside the building.  I noticed for the first time that I was wearing a raincoat that was made of 2 inch cut Astroturf.  The floor of the room was covered with puddles where the rain had leaked in.  There were bunches of kids playing.  Some were running around trying to stay out of the water and some were specifically trying to get in it.  I jumped over a puddle and realized that if I turned horizontal while I jumped I could float across the room.  So I jumped and floated to the far side where Jon Reichard was sitting.  I stopped and talked w/ him a minute about the bridge and the rain and then went outside.

College crowd

I was on a college campus and there was a huge crowd of mostly students heading up a wooded hillside for a drinking event.  Drinking students were everywhere – hanging out of windows, up in the trees, playing games out in the open grassy areas.  I wasn’t interested in being there so I was walking against the traffic.  I got on a highway overpass where most of the traffic was pedestrians heading the other way, but there were a few of us walking against the flow and there were a few cars going with the flow.  As I walked along the right side up against the barrier wall a big white Lincoln pulled over very close to me, barely giving me enough room to get by.  Apparently his goal was to stop those of us who were walking against the flow and force us to go the other way, but while he squeezed me he hadn’t stopped me.

There were two older men walking behind me and the Lincoln by this time was so close to the wall there was no room for them to stay along the wall.  The Lincoln kept moving forward at a walking pace and the men had to stop and then it bumped them and pushed them back the other way and they had to scramble to keep their feet and eventually moved out away from the wall and the front of the car and into the crowd of pedestrians walking the other way where I lost sight of them.

I got off the overpass and went into a parking area with chain link fence around it where I thought my car was parked.  I saw Cameron Alden who said he had two cars parked there that he wanted to get moved.  I offered that I could drive one of them to where he wanted it if he would bring me back afterward so I could get mine.  We walked off together looking for our cars.  The further into the lot we walked the less it was a normal parking lot and the more it was a scrap yard.  There were a few drivable cars parked here and there but between them were piles of car parts and other kinds of scrap.  One pile looked like old printed circuit boards and for some reason I thought my car was under that pile.  I started scraping them back, but never found the car.

Mud & a dinner w/ music

I had to cross a ditch and the surface of the ground was wet and muddy, which shouldn’t have been a problem because I was wearing shorts and had bare feet.  But at the far side of the ditch was a wall and to get through it I had to go through a two foot square opening that was on the ground.  Since the wall was right at the top of the ditch slope I didn’t even have the option of going through on hands and knees.  I had to get down on my belly to wriggle through and when I got up my whole front was covered in mud.

I went back to the Lincoln Avenue Treatment Plant to clean up and when I got there I was surprised to see that the whole building had been set with tables and was full of workers from the Water Company plus police, firemen, & Public Works workers.  The shop sinks where I was hoping to clean up had been shut down for the event – their valve handles had been removed.  There was a sink in a small side room that had operable valves, but a table had been set in front of it and there wasn’t room to get past it.

Finally Jim Brown showed up by one of the sinks with a valve handle.  We put it on and I washed up.  I asked Jim what the crowd and dinner was all about.  He said they do it every week and that I should plan to be there next week because they always need someone from management to attend.

I heard some drumming and noticed that against one wall, sitting on a counter were four men - two black, one Latino and one white.  They had pipes and sticks and random pieces of equipment and were doing a great rhythm band.  I noticed they had an album lying by them.  It had a black background with white outline photo of the four of them and the title was “Los Lobos”.

Memorial Stadium

I was walking into Memorial Stadium with Jon Reichard when he stopped me and said we can’t get in from here.  We turned around and walked toward the south end of the stadium.  From there I could see over the top of the bleachers that there was a steel truss bridge being built all the way across the top of the stadium.  It was not just a light pedestrian bridge, but was made of thick, heavy beams and girders already painted silver.  The workers were up on it pounding and pulling and welding.  I was impressed by how hard they were working.

I went in a door that took me into the Illini Union, which was also being rebuilt.  I walked around through several of the rooms and big open spaces.  I found a stairway that I wasn’t familiar with so I climbed up it.  At what looked like the top regular floor there was a smaller, steeper set of stairs that went on up, so I climbed them.  At the very top they ran out of room before it came to the floor and I had to make a large step from a short tread to get to the floor. 

There was only about a 10 foot square space and a small opening just above the floor at one end.  I went up to it and there was a zippered cloth covering the hole in the wall.  I zipped it open and crawled through.  Inside was a big room with hardwood floors.  There were lots of kids running around playing games and dancing.  I thought that it was great that they had a kids’ room like that in the Union, but they really needed a better entrance.  I noticed there was a large, all glass wall at the far side, but I couldn’t see through it because of the reflection.  I walked over to it and looked out and I was right at ground level of Memorial Stadium, looking out at the astro-turf!  Not sure how that could be.