I wrote these just after waking up this morning, so if it seems like I say some things that don't make sense in a matter-of-fact way, that's why. I slept for almost 11 hours and although these dreams weren't particularly psychologically taxing, I felt very mentally fatigued when I woke up.
at summer camp: it is parent's visiting day. Mine are here. It is time for the big softball games. I seem to be part of Lipsky's Lancers. We go sit in the stands, and I remark about how lazy we are, that we're just sitting here chatting. None of the parents seem to have made it to this game. Eventually a counselor shows up, and some people seem to be playing on our field. The counselor starts talking about how the guy in charge of the game next to ours is an asshole. I go over to see what's happening. The guy in charge is pitching. He is standing in the outfield and throws a pitch so hard that it bounces off the backstop, off the ground and then right back to him and hits him in the chest. Unfazed, he picks up the ball and continues. Now he he proceeds to throw a series of pitches standing closer and closer to the batter, and instead of really pitching he is simply dropping the ball in front of the batter. After about three pitches like this the batter manages to hit one, and hits it right into the guy's chest and starts running. I find this whole display hilarious. The guy in charge of that game has looked dead serious, yet completely out of it, during this whole time. I go check out some of the other games (all the fields are adjacent) and they all seem to be pretty normal. Then I go back to chatting on our field.
Later in the games the guy in charge of our game tells me the guy on the other field has been replaced. I go over to see what it's like now, and the whole game is now taking place inside a glass case, something like an ant farm. The new 'guy in charge' is actually a series of tubes that deliver the ball to the batter, who is also inside the tubes. The batter is complaining that the tubes are designed badly and the ball is being delivered in a way that it's impossible to hit it, it never actually gets close enough.
Later there's some ceremony involving the parents, where some of the parents go up and talk about their kids. It takes place at a strange part of camp, a large field that contains models of the world's largest buildings. Among these is a model of several of the main Mormon Church buildings, which I find intriguing. I remember seeing the real things and wondering about how one of them was among the world's largest buildings, since it didn't look that big. Also these buildings look nothing like the real, real things--they are alien domelike things with a purple/pink color scheme. I start to approach these models to see if I can find out more. The models are actually pretty large, and have actual Mormons walking around them. The Mormons have robes with the same color scheme, resembling the Stonecutters from The Simpsons. The buildings have some strange names, like the "doctrine building" and the "building building." As I get closer, the patrolling Mormons start to eye me suspiciously, and I realize this is not a friendly place. They may just be waiting for their chance to grab me and pull me in somewhere and indoctrinate me. So I back off.
The parent ceremony is starting, so I take a seat near the makeshift stage. Pretty soon my parents go up, and my mother says some really embarrassing parent-type stuff about how great I am and such. I should be very embarrassed indeed since the whole camp is there, and I'm aware of that, yet somehow am able to really not care. It's actually not clear whether this occurred before or after the softball games.
at high school:
in the school's library (which doesn't look much like the real thing) I am having a little nap, leaning back in one of the chairs. I start to hear a few girls chattering; I am aware that they are the girlfriends of some guys that I hate, and are trying to get my attention and make fun of me a bit. I ignore them. Their chattering and giggling and taunting grows a bit louder. I stil ignore them. Then one of them comes up and kisses me. I open my eyes to see hers, quite beautiful. Then she draws away. The girls begin talking in a giggling way about how they'd like me to find for them a book, it's some kind of a combination English-Russian Dictionary, and history book about Stalin and the Cambridge spies. I know it well, having recently gotten it from this library, and I now feel strangely compelled to obey their request. Somehow I feel that they are holding me hostage here. So I go looking for it, but cannot find it this time. I spend quite a while looking, but all I can see is a version of the book that's German-Russian instead of English, and some other strange dictionaries. While I'm looking I see some videotape that I want, so I grab it. Finally convinced that the book I'm looking for has been taken out by someone else, I emerge from the shelves and find several of my high school friends sitting on the floor. They greet me. I tell them about how these girls are tormenting me and such, and try to see if they are still in the library by sneaking around various corners. They don't seem to be there anymore. I'm both relieved and disappointed, still wondering at heart why that girl kissed me, and go back to talking with my friends. They laugh off my talk about the girls, it's just another crazy thing I'm involved in. As we leave the library I become aware that it's the end of the semester, and everyone is getting all the books they need. Since I know they don't check out videos at this time, I leave my video on the ground right before the exit. Then I see that the guy in charge of checking things out is so concerned about people's desperation to get their books that he has an airport security-type setup. I worry that he saw me put down the video on his infrared or x-ray camera, but he didn't.
As we are about to leave the school we see something big going on. It's the annual book sale, a treasure trove of valuable and old books, and we had nearly forgot about it. As we go in there is some incredible frenzy going on near the cash registers, and we assume we must have missed the most valuable stuff already. Most of the books sitting on the tables actually look pretty new to me, but I trust my friends that there's good stuff to be had. Someone in our group keeps talking about how they'd like to have some cocktails; apparently that's another part of the book sale tradition. Then we pass one table and my friend Thom starts silently and frantically pointing at a stack of books, actually more like pamphlets made from a rough parchment paper, apparently by a cartoonist named Mark Meiske. It seems he's one of those well-known classic cartoonists like Hirschfeld, and this could be a valuable thing. I have an extremely hard time figuring out the price this is being sold for. First I see $89.83, and think wow, the sellers must be pretty well aware of its value. Then I see something like $3.89 elsewhere on the cover, and then a whole table full of prices like $31.89 and $29.something. I figure out that it is some kind of puzzle, and it says like something like, "if you subtracted the value on the left from the value in the table, you'd have the book's real price." As I'm figuring it out I wake up.
