Alien Flight to Taiwan Dream

My girlfriend and I are trying to catch our flight to Taiwan. In the beginning I’m holding a duck head umbrella, but as we ran up the escalator it gets caught and I have to leave it behind. We rush around, checking to see how much time we have left, and we only have 19 minutes before the plane takes off.

We rush into an elevator and I thought we were supposed to go to the 18th floor, so I press 18, and then I realize that the building only has 16 stories because the elevator flies up past the roof and into the air before falling, vomiting my friend and I out. I think, “Crap, I hope my mistake didn’t kill her,” but she’s holding onto a lower part of the roof, as am I. A worker comes and helps us down. I tell him we are in a hurry to make our flight. He tells us to go to the 5th floor.

We take the stairs this time to the 5th floor, and when we walk out of the staircase we realize that we are in some kind of padded, bright blue martial arts arena. Some men in bright blue and red uniforms are sparring. I ask them where we can get our flight and they point to some lines that are separated by strings attached to movable metal poles.

“C,” he says.

We walk to that line and the sign says “C, interstellar Taiwan.” We walk into the line and by the time we walk to the end we disappear into another dimension, where our plane will take off. An alien woman who looks human is waiting for us. Turns out we are the only two people going to Taiwan, so there are two long, black armchairs she gestures for us to lie down on. We know that as soon as we lie down, we will be teleported to Taiwan.

Library Elevator to China Dream

My dad and I are in a fancy public library trying to get the head librarian to buy/shelf my poetry book. The head librarian says he will give me what I want if I help divide out a section of the library for "poetry, astrology, and fengshui." I ask him why poetry is going to be shelved with astrology and fengshui--they don't seem related. He told me that was his decision, and I agree to separate out poetry, astrology and fengshui books in the catalogue to put in the new section.

My dad and I leave and go to another library. We wait for a long time for the glass elevator, and when we get in, we notice that we need to get to the 80th floor. The elevator is moving very, very slowly and we can see the sky and birds outside. The elevator begins to move horizontally instead of vertically, and after a long time we realize that we missed our stop--when the elevator lets us out we find ourselves on the street, like we'd just gotten off a bus, but we are in China. We are in the middle of a Chinese military base somehow. A female officer in uniform, complete with a hat, salutes us as she marches by, legs stiff and knees locked.

Psychokiller Striptease Dream

For some reason I am buying sheet sets from Ross late at night. The store is closed and all the lights are off, but an old manager with white hair is making me fill out a lot of forms to “make” that day’s inventory before I can pay for my sheets and leave.

When I get home, I see that my tutor is already there. I know that he is a psychokiller, and at the slightest provocation he will go crazy and attack everybody in my family, so I hide a paring knife underneath my notebook and approach him carefully. I’m posed to pare his heart out before he can make a move.

He tells me that I should take all of my clothes off item by item as a demonstration of deconstruction and that he would grade me on this assignment. I argue with him that he’s wrong, that when Barthes talked about the striptease, he was not talking about anything like this.

Faceless Monster Dream

I’m in a very sanitized-looking, hotel-like dormitory. A man comes and delivers my food. I’m not supposed to look at him. It’s also my understanding that I am being held captive by the state government for some reason and any contact with the outside world is restricted. I don’t know what they are going to do with me.

Next time a man comes down and I open the double gates for him, he does not call my name. Instead, he says, “Come.” He says that my file has been mixed up with the file of a faceless monster and they need to talk to me in person to sort things out.

“I’m not a faceless monster,” I say to the detective I’m speaking to.

“I have a name, it has the character 鐵 [iron] in it,” I add, “I am not a nameless, faceless monster.”

But he flips open a magazine and shows me an advertisement of a woman offering sex for money. She is wearing a bikini, lying sideways in a provocative pose.

“You financed your facial reconstructive surgery with an ad just like this,” he said. “You’ve had surgery to fix your face many times.”

What he says sounds familiar but I really don’t remember doing these things, the sex ad or the reconstructive surgery.

“Does it still count if I don’t remember?” I ask.

“This is the 27th time we’ve caught you,” he said. “I can’t let you go anymore.”