I woke up, with a single sentence in my head:

The Internet is run by a sequence of GOTOs.

I don't remember much of my dream. there was something repetitive that I kept failing to finish. but at some point I ended up with Clara and someone else, on a threatening-to-storm coast with the ocean to our west. we were up on a small plateau with the water hitting the cliff below. the rocks were that dark-red-almost-black kind that indicated volcanic formation.

nevertheless it was not cold. we were wanting to get in some exercise, and on the edge of this cliff, with a sort of windy paved road leading to it, was an outdoor swimming pool and some tennis courts. the pool was an olympic pool and (I assumed in the dream) taken whole cloth from my memory of the Seabee base public swimming pool I would use as a child. we got in the lap lanes and sort of floated there.

I was naked. it seemed natural for me to be so in the water. I was a bit worried abotu trying to swim lap, though. when I was in the Navy pool as a child, didn't I stay in the shallow end? wait, there is no shallow end of an olympic pool. then I remembered, it was another pool.

along with that memory is the realization the Navy probably wouldn't like it if I was actually naked in a public pool. but nobody else was around, and the fence had that green material they put around public tennis courts and pools to prevent passersby from spectating. I thought about how I ought to shower once I got out, but walking naked to the shower probably wouldn't cut it. I would just have to climb out and get dressed right there.

I have a vague memory of Clara being in a bright yellow bikini and being very tan. but that's about it.

I dreamed my nose was running and running. I am not so sure what was causing it but my breathing passages were definitely inflamed. I could not blow my nose enough to clear out enough space for the air to get past into my lungs.

in dawning horror I realized that even though my lungs were clear, I was going to suffocate while still conscious, becuase there was nothing I could do, between the mucous and the inflammation, to open up my breathing passages enough to get the air I needed. I was aware enough of what was happening to realize there was some sort of terrible irony here...

the start of the dream has faded into the mist. I know part of it was going into some lobby in a hotel where Karine was going to introduce me to her cousin Eli, except nobody pronounced it "ee-lye" but more like "uh-LEE". Eli was sitting in a corner behind one of those folding partition with vaguely asian design on it. he was logged into WoW and didn't want to be disturbed.

I'm not sure how that flowed into the rest of my dream, but it did. we were at some sort of work offsite in the early afternoon. it was in a location that reminded me of where Jack lives - in the east bay, off the beaten path, on a deadend street. the place made me think of a skating rink, the landscaped areas around the parkinglot were unkept and were dry with weeds.

the place was brown. it had, inside of it, an arcade, and some sort of cheesy rollercoaster ride. it was run by some older asian fellow whose English was not so good. the group waited for the rollercoaster train to come into the station thing. the wait was on a room with a concrete floor and levelor-type windows up high that were permamently open, making the place feel not-quite-indoors like a lot of waits at amusement parks. I sat next to Clara on the bench, smoking.

as I exhaled, it suddenly occurred to me that Clara (or anybody else) probably didn't aprpeciate the smoke, which I wasn't bothering to blow away from people or whatever since I didn't really feel like it was the inside. the asian guy saw me and told me you know, I have to make you take that outside, it's the law that you can't smoke in here. I went outside although part of me felt that it didn't really count as the inside if the part where the roller coaster came in and out had no doors and the windows were always open.

I was watching, sort of as a non-corporeal observer, Luke flying over the Death Star, and using his targeting computer. despite his previous boasts, he can't hit the itty target. suddenly he hears a voice. Use the Force, Luke. he puts his targeting computer aside...

I thought about that and wondered if that was the same way the Star Wars video game worked. the one that was the Atari line-drawn arcade game? I went to one where you sit in it and steer and fire and tried it. shot past the towers. went in the trench. no, it's nothing like that.

I went back and forth with this a second time. watched Luke with the targeting computer, then tried the video game UI, then went back to my dream, and watched Luke send the photon torpedoes or what ever down the exhaust shaft using the Force.

then I woke up with the revelation thundering in my head: I'd always assumed he'd hit some sort of kinesthetic state of zen oneness with the universe that allowed him to recognize the precise moment in which he had to fire. but here, in my dream, it just meant he made them go where he wanted.

I waited too long to enter this dream and it has faded considerably. but I dreamt that I had to move. Clara and I both. we were looking for a house in the nearby environs. but somehow, I ended up in Portland, OR.

the house I looked at was wonderful, in my mind. it was clearly addon after addon and had no cohesive architecture. it was next to a park. I was looking at it in the morning, and the air had that quality it gets when the rain has just cleared and it is time for the sun. not warm at all, nor crisp, but sunny and wet. the grass in the park was green and shaggy.

the house was next to a river on the other side. southwest. not a big river, but enough of one to have a dock. spun off from there was the garage. but the garage was sort of a split-level floor and only one car would fit in.

I walked out to the park and looked,. it was full of so many birds. raptors! they were hunting. the weather I guess had forced the rodents out of their holes and they were in the shaggy grass. I was so excited, becuase Clara loves birds. well, in my dream anyhow. there was a big bald eagle.

now that was the weirdest. the bald eagle was hunting. in my dream that mean it was actually floating sideways, in a distorted position that looked like what a real bird would look like if it tried to assume the position in a US Federal seal. back and forth it went, and it caught something.

i have dreamt twice this week of murder and mayhem. it fades out quite rapidly when I wake up. but what i'm left with is - as a visual concept - a block of code roughly 20 lines long, that is lolcats code. it's a solid 3d block, and it is tied in with the murder and mayhem.

maybe by writing this down i will remember better if i dream more. they were different dreams, and this was a sideband of information.

we were going on a family vacation - Clara, me, Clara's sister, and parents. in the dream, the parents kept switching between mine and Clara's.

we were driving up coast of Maine and slightly inland to Nova Scotia. sometimes we were sailing in a little metal sailboat. we were west of what was the Bay of Fundy on the map. however it didn't look like fundy.... it looked like a bay shaped like the SF Peninsula, with the square end and the farthest inland portion. I kept indicating, and trying not to obsess, that we should go there. I was ignored.

we stopped at this large not very populated mall. there was a place like a food court... maybe like a chuck e. cheeses. one could get food and sit in the middle and along the edges, near the window, there were arcade games and such. it was grey outside. one of the arcade booths was a love predictor. that was closed. there was some other love thing. I went there and got a coupon to redeem it later since they were taking their time eating.

I was going to give it to Clara, but then we were leaving and the booth wasn't quite yet open. I considered how that was wasting my money - the though only counts for so much - and how this always seems to happen on family vacation.

the backdrop for this dream was very hard to describe. also, events of the waking morning have conspired to fade this out considerably. anyhow I guess it was standard modern fantasy - there was a war of magic going on behind the modern world that most people were unaware of. I was on one side...

there were three of us that I knew of, and the person we counted on most was sick? anyhow, to face what was going to happen, I had to become a paladin. the guy explaining this to me explained; being a paladin is not, actually, a question of faith, holiness, etc. it was a question of having an ability already, something to do with your own electric field, and drinking this little vial to activate or amplify it. the vial was about the size of a 4" test tube. we were having this discussion in a dark room in a building, lit by various electronics. it takes about a night, he said, for it to activate.

so I took the vial, and slept on a cot. I had fevers and dreams, but I don't remember the dream-in-a-dream. I woke up, and found it was not just a cakewalk, I had to learn to use my brain differently. I also found as a side effect, the digital time display on the control panels sort of shorted out and flickered the number 1.

I don't remember any plot or story, but the image dominating my dream was that of a christmas tree, possibly 5' or 6' tall. it had lots of glass ornaments, on it, but no tinsel. it had no 'top' ornament either.

I would look at it, and be sad. the needles were dull, becuase it was not healthy; this was the christmas tree after christmas was over.