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[somnovitam]

I woke up every two hours last night: at 12:40, 2:50, 4:50, and finally at 6:08. I dreamed between each wake. Each dream was a continuation of the one before.

I dreamed I had an important job trying to save a company with hundreds of thousands of workers, but no one would help me. The other employees fought even the tiniest changes, making it impossible to move the company in the positive direction. In fact, everything I did made the situation worse.

I tried all the usual team-building props, but everyone already knows those and refused to participate.

Employees started getting openly hostile to me, to the company, and to the idea of a good outcome. There were a few "ring leaders" of the "Bitter Brigade" that instigated most of the failures through snarkiness and mockery. They were also some of the most valuable employees and couldn't be fired. Successes of the company depended on them; they knew it and used that to manipulate the situation more. I had to find out why they were behaving that way. What was the catalyst that precipitated their problem?

Interviewing the culprits didn't work. They were angry, surly, arrogant. One told me the others were planning a coup against the director. Another told me they were all getting ready to leave and take the customers and suppliers with them. They all had an agenda that would destroy the company but bring them no success; they had underestimated the work and overestimated how easy it is to conquer through destruction. I could see they were carooming toward failure and taking the company with them. But no one would tell me why they hated the company so much. What happened to make them feel this way?

I turned to the non-rebellious employees. They told me that 6 months before, the company had stopped including these managers in a biweekly strategy meeting.

[somnovitam]

I'm walking along a rugged coast, rocky like Maine, with periodic flat sandy beaches, like pearls on a chain. I'm barefoot, but the jagged rocks aren't cutting my feet. In places, the water laps up on my feet. It's cool, but not frigid. A slight breeze tickles my skin. I'm wearing a thin sundress. I'm enjoying the walk. I love beachcombing and the weather is perfect for it. I walk for many miles but don't get tired. No one else is around for miles. I can't hear or see any traffic and there are no planes, or boats in the ocean near enough to see. I turn a bend in the shoreline, and up ahead is another person. I can't make out any details of their face, nor their age or gender. They are walking slowly. I can't tell at first if they are walking away or toward me. There's a house off to my left. To get there, I'll have to leave the shore. It's about 600 feet off the path, over untamed ground. The house is very inviting. It looks unoccupied, like a vacation home off-season.

[somnovitam]

I have quit my job to find work that is more fulfilling. I want to do something to help the community that also leaves me alone so I can meditate while I work. I'm offered a job with a local city doing odd jobs. My first assignment is picking up papers around a school. Then I am sent to use a swiffer-like wet mop to clean a white tile wall that is 100 feet high and 500 feet long. I have to scrub off mud, food stains, and graffiti. I stand at the bottom of the wall and swipe across the glazed tiles. The work goes surprisingly fast, and I am done in about 10 minutes. Somehow, I can extend the handle of this mop out so I can reach clear to the top to erase the unwanted marks, and almost everything comes off on the first wipe. A few small patches need to be wiped another time to get them off. At the end, the wall is sparkling stark glossy white. I feel a sense of accomplishment, and collapse the mop and carry it away. I'm not even tired, not even sore from holding the giant mop over my head so long. I board a train back to the office. My boss is on the train. He asks me if I'm done already, and I point out the window to the white wall. It's still spotless. He tells me the crew goes to lunch at a little diner and invites me along, his treat since it's my first day. I agree. I look out the window to admire my work, and the bottom 40 feet of the wall is again covered in brightly-colored railroad-style graffiti. I'm shocked that it could happen so fast! When we arrive at the diner, the whole crew is there, they are all men are in their 20s except my boss, who is in his late 50s, early 60s. The menu is full of foods like liver, pork brain; foods I won't eat. It's a southern US themed diner! Everyone orders but me. The boss gets mad and says he'll order for me, and if I eat everything, he'll give me $40. I refuse, figuring he'll order something gross. He orders anyway, and when the food comes, it's covered in a white napkin, real cloth, although the other eaters all have brown paper napkins. He dares me again, and I uncover the plate to find a steak dinner. It looks good, but the team is leaving to go back to work, so I don't even have time to ask if it's kosher (really? Do I think it might be kosher?) Since I didn't eat it, I am forced to pay for it, and I don't have enough money. The crew walks out the door without even trying to help me out of this predicament. I am just about to beg for time to pay when the boss comes back and pays the check, but tells me I now owe him big time.

[somnovitam]

Torah Man again.

I am in charge of a music venue. A famously unstable performer and his family with endless needs and demands, Adults with their spa days, children with a massive portable playground that has to be assembled. I wake up in my bed where the performer is touching me, coming on to me, trying to convince me that intercourse was part of my job. I insist he not cross my boundaries and eventually he agrees. Concert went well, all left happy.

The backstage area is architecturally complicated. So many rooms and common areas, it's almost as big as the front-of-house auditorium. Many levels, hotel-like rooms, practice stages, meeting rooms. It's separated from the performance area by a big wall and tall gray curtains.

Next concert was Sheryl C. Huge family-and-friends entourage with her; dozens of people with big demands, everything from letting the children play on the stage where the band was trying to setup to getting cute dresses for the little girls and having them pressed. Girls were all happy with their clothes, boys with their toys, etc. Sheryl is nice, but demanding, babysit the small children personally, keep track of where everybody is, feed the crowd. Several newborns in the group. One was laying in a new kind of infant bed on a track and pulleys that kept moving randomly. It kept the baby from getting bored and crying. Someone calls out, "Have all the children been fed?" They hadn't, so I go out to find food for all the kids and realize I don't know where all the children are. So many rooms and hiding places! The concert is about to begin and I realize the garden beds inside the amphitheater need to be tidied, so I start ripping off dead foliage and pulling out dead plants. People are distracted from the music, confused about why I would be landscaping now, during the show. But I just shrug it off because if I do it during the concert, I can go home as soon as it's over and get some sleep which I badly need.

Torah Man is up on stage, alone. Sheryl C. is nowhere to be seen. He's setting up for his own concert. No entourage, no crazy demands. Quietly going about his work. The cool distance of last night's dream is gone. A feeling of affection, admiration, friendship.

It's the first time I can remember any dream about venue management or interaction with actual famous performers.

[somnovitam]

Dream #12

I'm in a darkened room with just a little bit of indirect light. Everything is in tones of gray. A young woman steps out of the shadows and starts scratching at a bump on my shoulder that is so small it's invisible. I brush her hand away. She scratches at my shoulder again. I turn to look at her. She's young, but dirty. Her skin is whitish gray and sickly. I get scared because her hands are so dirty and her filthy nails have drawn blood. I am worried the filth has infected my body. I turn back, and more people step forward out of the darkness. One of them tells me to write down the word douth. I think I've misheard and write drought. She grabs my hand in annoyance and repeats douth. I scratch out drought and write down douth. I've never heard the word. I know I will have to look it up later.

[somnovitam]

I dream about a park. A woman is playing with a shaggy dog with fur the color of ripe wheat. The dog runs up to me to play and get cuddled. His collar has a metal tag. The name on the tag reads "Haben Mancir" then an address.

[somnovitam]

New neighbors moved into the house across the street. The moving trucks had barely pulled away from the curb when they started to put little pieces of painted furnishings out in the lawn. Pretty soon, it became apparent that the were setting up a decor sale in the front yard. Tons of painted furniture, country knickknacks, books for filling shelves, not for reading, barrels of gingham fabric, farm animal and crow garlands. The yard kept expanding to accommodate more merch zones. Women were bunching up at the curb waiting to get in to buy stuff. I slipped around the barrier to get a preview of the items and none of it was anything I wanted. I started to realize they weren't planning to live in the house, they were opening a store! Alarmed because I lived across the street and didn't want the traffic, noise and crowds, I started trying to talk to the people I now recognized as employees, including my best friend in sixth grade and that I sometimes see in dreams that I call Torah Man. I always think I'm in love with him. Heather sits next to a huge pile that I think she has purchased, but she informs me it's mine and I must find a way to take it home, which oddly is now half a block away. I climb over the porch rail to try to get away from the stuff, and jump down several feet to an asphalt driveway. Torah Man has left and I can't find him. The crowd at the store has gotten boisterous and is getting out of control. I try to find the Torah scholar, who in this dream is in his early 20s, younger than he usually is in dreams.

Torah Man is dressed like a mechanic, dingy bluish-gray shirt and pants, with a red and white name tag above the right chest pocket. He sees me and recognizes me and says he'll talk to me later. I wait and wait, hoping he'll spend time at my house before he leaves for Richmond. I see him helping to control the crowd, keeping people from driving into the crowd to collect their purchases, like a flea market. The sky is turning dark, and I realize he'll have to leave for Richmond soon if he is to get to his job on time. I know I won't see him anymore today, and I wonder if I ever will again.

Heather is still talking. We haven't seen or spoken in decades, but I'm not interested in what she is telling me, mostly about people I don't know or can't remember. I simply keep scanning the crowd for my missing Torah Man who is nowhere to be found. I say goodbye to Heather and ahead home, the direction I saw Torah Man headed in last, hoping he's there waiting for me. But I know he's not. He would have gone back to control the crowd or left for his regular job by now. I don't take any of those unwanted purchases with me.

The colors in the dream are all the dark shades of blue, red, green as in the early 1990s for home decor. I dislike country decor. And crowds.

[somnovitam]

Dream #4

I dreamed I was attending a synagogue in the middle of a cemetery. The graves surrounded the structure, hundreds, maybe thousands of graves, ancient and recent. The synagogue was busy, active, people of all ages, coming and going because the congregation was alive with classes and events. The cemetery was active, too, with descendants visiting their departed loved ones. Kosher food was available from a stand near the structure. It was always busy. I loved the classes, and pretty soon I made friends. People thought I was born Jewish. They asked me where my people (ancestors) were buried. I said I wasn't sure. I didn't want to say, "mostly in Catholic cemeteries." I was walking through the cemetery looking at the marker stones, but of course none of them resonated with me. Mariska Hargitay, the actor, was kneeling down near a grave and when I said hello, she said the grave was a relative, and that she had many loved ones here. We walked back to the synagogue together, but someone had built a grid structure over the entrance doors. I was too big to get through the structure, so I climbed to the next level, where there was also a door that I couldn't squeeze into. No matter how high I climbed, I couldn't get into the building. Mariska had no trouble getting in and kept calling me and motioning for me to come in the ground floor door, but I couldn't.

[somnovitam]

I live in a town near a monastery with a small cathedral. A friend has joined the monastery as a prospect, someone who might join the order someday. I walk to the complex to see how he is being treated and how he is fairing. I see him only briefly. Before the conversation even gets started, he is sent away by a stern-looking old man in a long pale brown robe. I have to use the bathroom, so I find a restroom and go into a stall. The room is very dark, but there is enough light coming in through a very small weak skylight that I can find the toilet and the paper. On the right, the partition is solid, a grayish-pinkish-brown, painted over many times in thick layers. On left, the partition is mesh. The darkness obscures whatever is on the other side. I go to flush, and somehow flick a switch that turns on an overhead light. I see a young monk sitting on the toilet in the stall on the left. He is momentarily surprised to see a woman in the men's room. Then he holds a finger (left index) to his lips to let me know to remain silent. On the right, a man's voice calls out something like, "We all do that the first time." The monk on the left tells me how to find the handle to flush. And there is a second switch built into the partition wall, an old-fashioned white "click" toggle, but I can't remember what it does right now. Oh wait, the second switch IS the handle to flush the toilet.

I leave the restroom and look for my friend. A great deal of construction seems to have gotten underway in my absence. Earth is mounded in long rows as if a long, deep trench is being dug. I look around but can't figure out what they are building.

I turn toward the cathedral. They are setting up for an event. There are men stringing garlands of twine decorated with toy farm machines - tractors, combines, etc. The vestibule of the cathedral is very bright with artificial light, a warm yellow tone. Mosaic floors, yellow stone walls, arched doorways. I can't see into the worship room because the doors are closed. A small (knee height) statue of Mary is also about to be decorated with thin (about the thickness of a pencil) fuzzy red garlands and a handful or two religious medals. The religious medals are scattered on the floor in front of the statue and I start to gather them up. My instinct is to steal them and throw them away later. But as I swept them into a small pile, an elderly priest comes and thanks me for gathering them. He says the pile was starting to spread out. I ask him what they are celebrating, and he says they are preparing to welcome the fathers of the monks, who are all farmers. I want to ask more questions, but everyone is bustling about getting the work done. I go back outside where it is now very dark, but I can see the mounds of soil have grown. There is no sound of machinery, so what is doing the excavation is a mystery. I walk out to the road and see the large piles that reach all the way back to town. I can't see any holes or trenches that explain the large piles. Grassy ditches line the road, nothing more, and there are turf fields on the left and woods on the right. The piles, illuminated by the weak light of the night sky give me the feeling that a large number of burials have suddenly taken place. I wonder with dread why this celebration for farming fathers is taking place in the dead of night. The low glow of the town is ahead of me. I start to walk home.