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January, 2017
1 5 17 22 31I have a small nest egg and am investing it in stocks, researching how to do so at a local library branch, but am new to it, and this is an uncertain way to make a living. It may not be sufficient. I may have to go to work too. I talk with an older man who makes suggestions about my investing. He apparently knows what he is doing and can be a mentor for me as I start more serious investing. Still, there is the feeling that, for security and/or more social contact, it will be better if I am also working.
Title: "It's Starting to Stink"
I am living in my mother's house with at least two other people, a brother and my mother. (There's a vague impression my father and/or other siblings may be there too, but no confirmation of this, and, if so, they have little bearing on the situation.) It is an older, one-story residence, perhaps in a style common in about the 1960s or 1970s. Someone dead is lying under a mattress of one of the extra beds, dead long enough that the body's starting to stink. I don't think any of us killed the person, but we also did not promptly report the death, just concealing the corpse instead. (For some reason it is not evident from the contour of the bed, as though there are enough blankets or mattresses that it doesn't appear lumpy, or maybe the body's actually under the bed.) The stink will very soon give it away if we do not do something. My brother, who seems more proactive and realistic, goes away on an errand or to his job, but as he's leaving tells Mom in my hearing that we must do something soon about the body. I agree, but am glad it is Mom's responsibility, even if she's reluctant to exercise it, for I have no idea how we can remove and dispose of it without being caught. Will we actually be able to load it into our vehicle, drive it away and dumb (dump) it somewhere, maybe into a body of water, without being seen? It seems very dangerous and far-fetched to me. The stink left in the car alone, or residual in our house, would give it away. A body floating in a river or lake is bound to prompt an investigation that might lead back to us. (As I wake up, it is still with a sense of foreboding that there's no way we can conceal the body much longer and that any attempt to remove it, as seems necessary, will also lead to investigation and to our likely being questioned and found guilty.)
1/5/17 - Title: "Close to Dangerous, Powerful Feelings"
It is night and dark inside my house, and I am in bed in my room, under covers. A very big, powerful rattlesnake somehow is also inside my house, but I do not know just where. It might even be coiled up under the covers in the bed with me. I think my sister is also here, somewhere else in the house. I need to get up. I yell to someone (my sister, I think) to watch out for the snake, turn on lights, and close the snake up in a room if she sees it, but there is no answer. Probably she did not hear me. I start to get up but detect movement from under the covers with me, likely from the snake. I try to hold it, through the covers, but unsuccessfully. This big snake is getting out of the covers with me, and now it is alert and angry. I do not have a light switch immediately at hand and expect to be struck at any moment.
1/17/17 - Title: "Good Enough?"
A long, detailed (evidently anxiety) dream in which I am taking a final exam for the last course I need to get my undergrad degree. I have already been working (on a set of three bullshit essay answers) for far too long, and time may be called at any moment. There are still one or two personal history or biography essays to complete plus the whole multiple choice section yet to do. I have not studied the big text well at all, optimistically hoping I could somehow, like this, bluff my way through to a passing grade. I am sitting at a chair-desk and writing with my left (usual) hand as quickly as I can, at least as I can come up with maybe barely adequate things to say. I believe I am about the last person still trying to finish.
There is also a part, or a separate dream, in which I am having to admit I won't be able now to get a big section of garden to produce as intended. It is dying and overgrown with weeds. I donate it to my wife, Fran, and my mom to do with as they wish, and they are pleased at this new gardening opportunity. I look out over the area, though, and realize that there is almost nothing left of things that originally were mine, though I do at least have other, mostly indoor pursuits that as yet occupy me and are fruitful.
1/22/17 - Title: "He's Back!"
I am a volunteer at a warehouse being converted into a big campaign enterprise. I know a thing or two and make good suggestions and am energetically contributing to the positive outcome. We are close to ready for a bold new initiative. I find a big mass of ice cream (like a gallon, except outside the carton) but a bag of poison was open near it and poison granules got scattered across its surface. I'm tempted to lick them off, but do not, or to ignore them, but somebody else might eat the ice cream heedless of (not noticing) the poison. So I rush off, minutes before our new operation is to get started, and look for a place to wash off the poison from the surface, hoping afterward to then also find a good working freezer where the ice cream can again be refrozen till hard. When I get back, apparently successful, I'm finding other ways to help out in the warehouse area. It is semi-dark from not much electric lighting back here. I am surprised to bump into Barack H. Obama. I say I'm sorry and start to walk away, but then I realize, hey, this doesn't happen every day, and I go give him a big hug, and he laughs and hugs back, but says he's hurt, his back is hurt, and not to hug him too tightly.
Title: "The No-Teacher Teacher"
I'd been doing something else and, in that capacity, I was a sort of teacher of adults, but the conditions were not good. The environment was way too noisy and there was no supervision to assure interruptions and too much noise did not happen. Apparently I left. Now I am working in a sort of greenhouse-warehouse operation, on a grand scale, where we are getting large quantities of growing plants ready to sell, still in their growing containers. These are bigger than pots, more like 3x3- or 3x4-foot wooden containers holding the dirt and roots. Industrial (or lift) trucks can move them about. I help look after the plants, trim them, water them, etc. Christine is there with a bunch of people. They are evidently looking for guidance or teaching (education), and she recognizes me while I am working with the plants and loudly tells the people with her that I could teach them. A couple people remember me from before and object that I had not answered their questions when I was their teacher. I tell them I do not remember that but do recall there had been way too much noise to hear what students asked and not enough supervision there for good teaching. Here it was better, and I was just keeping growing things healthy, not trying to give anybody advice.
1/31/17 - Title: "Choices and Put-Downs"
I am in a large, mostly open outside area, then am with a young boy whom I'm holding by hand and showing various interesting but dangerous industrial operations that are hot, fast, mechanical, and noisy. Next the child is not with me and there is something about mowing the grass with my power mower under the entrance to a chamber or other place where someone(s) famous and powerful (maybe a Supreme Court justice or several of them) will be. Something is to be decided. There's a question (since for the officials' security I had to leave the mower under the porch at the entrance) how and when to get my mower back. Next I'm in an area near an aircraft maintenance and refueling area. My brother Pete is talking to my brother Horace, asking for advice about investing. Horace is telling him to do risky trades and schemes that, if they work out, will show big profits, but could very well result in big losses. Horace is also learning from some big guy in risky trading. Horace is feeling very good about himself and is bullying, taunting, or baiting of others, especially given new knowledge plus income from working close to jet engines in airplane maintenance and refueling, as well as his better family relations (several kids and grandkids who adore him and having a wife who, like him, believes in dividing the world into us vs. them). Horace sees his and his wife's current status as proof they are on the right side of the divide. He spots me there and, flush with his present success, is gloating and so yells derisively at me "You pathetic, little man!" I find myself wondering what to say in response, how to convey that my successes may be more subtle but are nonetheless real, or just to keep silent as Horace is publicly putting me down. I hope Pete will not be misled into following Horace's advice.