I got a 30-something percent on my test. A really bad grade, worse than I expected.

Accidentally kicked Lars in the balls while going to TA. Didn't want to have memories implanted (for some reason I needed to have memories implanted to work as a TA).

There was an empty retail space in this building that Zoey and I worked at. We'd work at whatever shop was there at any given time. First it was like the Instagram headquarters or something. We worked in tech. Then the next day, that was gone and it was Firefox HQ, which I liked a lot better. I hoped it wouldn't go under. I was shocked at how quickly the Instagram headquarters had just left.

For Firefox, we had to get our pictures taken as employees. We had to do this before we left for the day. The line was super long. I turned to Zoey and asked if we couldn't just leave and have them taken tomorrow. She gave me this look like “suck it up and stop trying to weasel out of stuff.” So I did just wait, and the line moved really fast, actually.

A girl asks to see my sneakers, orange sneakers. At first she's a little kid, then she turns into this older fat woman. She's with her family.

I was driving with Mom. On the aux she put on the Awkwafina show—like just the audio of it. It was an episode we'd already watched, so I was like, “why don't we listen to music instead?” and she was like “ok, but only if it's my “work playlist.” I inferred from that that she was sick of hearing the same songs and wanted to hear different music.

We drove past the Cub strip mall and I saw there was a new store at the end. Mom told me it was a new Zumba studio. As we drove past it, the guy at the front desk yelled out to Mom loudly. Mom seemed to get mildly upset by that, like not angry at all, but startled and exhausted.

Then we went to this store. We were looking at necklaces. (I needed to buy one for some reason, like I needed to buy beads or something “calming” to touch, but I don't remember why.) I went around this circular table and looked at all the necklaces. I just wanted the cheapest one, so I was looking at the prices, mainly. They were all under $10, with the cheapest one being like $4.50. A sales guy came over and started talking to us. He told us something (I wasn't really paying attention) about how you need to have a consultation with an employee to purchase a necklace, because you have to set your intentions or something weird and new-age-y like that. His explanation had something regarding “reporter” and “recorder” in it too.

Then a group of people came in, so the guy was going to give his schtick about the necklaces again. I got impatient during this reiteration and raised my hand to interject. I really thought the “necklace-meeting-with-an-advisor” thing was ridiculous. I wanted to just buy a necklace and leave. The guy saw my hand raised and told me to wait, then kept talking. Finally he looked at me like, “ok, your question?” so I started going off about how stupid it was to have to talk to an associate. I said something like “is this Claire's?” (the cheap jewelry store) which was supposed to be an insult. The people around me seemed to think my tirade was funny. The guy really didn't, though. I think I decided to just not buy a necklace.

The next thing I remember is walking with a group of the people from the necklace place down this huge flight of stairs. None of us had our shoes on. We thought they were at the bottom of the staircase, but also, I couldn't remember. I thought I might've left mine at the top. I was debating cutting my losses and going back up the stairs to check before I went all the way down, but I didn't. I kept going down the stairs and banked on them being there. It started raining as we went down and everything got kinda slippery, so then going up wasn't even an option anymore. We continued to descend. I turned a corner and saw my sock sitting on a stair, then a little further away I saw another sock and a shoe so I was relieved.

Then we got to this area where a bunch of people were gathered around. Zoey was there. She was wearing a hat that said “menu” on it and was going through a pile of menus she had laid out on the floor in front of her. There was a lady next to her who was (I learned) training her for a new job at some restaurant I think I'd gone to earlier in the dream. Somehow the topic of skateboarding injuries was pertinent and the lady asked me to show my bruises to the people there and explain what happened. So I lifted my pant leg and was like “sorry this is gross,” then explained some of the bruises. I started talking about the one on my toe. I was trying to explain how it hurt the most. Ryan from last semester's proofs class said something about how it was the complex vector—like the force of the complex vector of the skateboard—that came down on my toe and caused it to be the particularly painful injury it was. I asked him what the complex vector was and he said it's like the normal vector only it “rotates around to anywhere on the board” or something like that. While I was explaining the toe injury everyone was listening to me intently and it felt really good to have my words cared about and be totally paid attention to—that was a strong feeling.

Anyway, after that I sat back down. I sat along the wall near Zoey and next to coworker R. Initially I sat pretty close to him, but then scooted away a little, so he wouldn't think I was coming onto him or anything. I talked to Zoey a bit more, I asked her some question about the place she was working at, only I called it “menu” instead of the restaurant name, like as a Freudian slip.

Then I was talking to R. about the [last name]'s apple orchard. He said he'd been to somewhere like that before, then there was kinda a pause—like he was figuring out how to explain to me what he meant, and he was like “why can't I find the words I'm looking for” or something like that. Then I felt him grab my hand, which was up near my face between us, and he kissed it and I was surprised, but only for a second. I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder and like, affectionately touched his arm for a second, then kinda shook my finger to let him know “not now” and leaned away from him again. Because there were people all around and I didn't want to be all PDA-y in front of them. Then I woke up.

I was watching a train go by. The train had land on it, like it was a moving chunk of land as well as a train. The guys who worked on the train started gliding on like an open-air gondola thing or something in the opposite direction that the train was going. It was really cool. I was obsessed with the train. I screamed, “you guys are my Goku!” out to the train guys as they passed, as a joke, and Julia laughed really hard at it.

Before this, I was at Amy's. I had to go to the bathroom, so I had to crawl to this tiny little room and Grandma Dona was sitting in front of it and she let me in. It was a very strange house. The room was all dark. It was out the window in this room that I saw the train for the first time (before the mentioned-above scene).

At the end of the dream, I was with Luke and Lauren, and Lauren was reading out loud the numbers 1-10 in German, and quizzing me and Luke to see if we knew them.

I was at some restaurant or something. An arcade maybe? There was a fortune teller woman. I talked to her and, as far as I can remember, she didn't even give me a fortune. She kinda just spoke nonsense. Anyway, she wanted to talk to me again after my paid time was up, so I went over and talked to her. She could see me entirely naked although I was wearing clothes. Like I had the knowledge that she could see me naked as we were talking. She talked for a long time again and I remember her talk being broken up into two parts with distinct tones, but I don't remember the tones or what she was talking about.

A couple came into the restaurant and wanted to sit together, but it was busy so they had to sit at a shitty table. Then, another couple came into the restaurant and requested to be seated in a room in the back or some weird spot like that, and the wait staff was making a big deal about it. Not a big deal, actually, just like they were talking about it amongst themselves and I overheard. The first guy heard too and I think he was a little pissed because he would've liked that table, but he didn't know it was an option.

I was walking along the beach. Not really “along,” but on a path kinda near the beach in New Jersey, I think. I kept passing people, like women who were dressed kinda scantily clad and I took note of their outfits. There was one girl wearing a really cute tennis dress that I wished I owned. I saw another girl with a dress where her dress's cup size was too big and I felt bad because I know how uncomfortable that feels. I think I saw Emmy Rossum too.

I arrived at a bus stop. Mom, Charlie, Cindy, Catherine, Nick, etc. were all there. It was busy and busses would come and go. I saw a bus down at the end that said something about New Jersey on it and I assumed it was our bus, so I went down the line to get on, but I couldn't make it in time. The bus only moved forward a tiny bit, though, then stopped again to let more people on. Again, I didn't make it in time. But I wasn't really trying hard. I was meandering because Mom and Charlie were behind me and I was waiting for them.

The bus moved forward a bit, then stopped again. I missed it again. Then again it began to move forward, only this time rather than going forward a few feet and stopping, the bus left. We'd missed it. This upset me a lot. I didn't want to wait for another bus. I had this idea that another bus would take a very long time to come.

I'm in a theater with Julia, maybe others. We're there to see Charlie perform in a play. He's the lead. As we're walking into the theater, Julia and I see a severed finger in the corner by the door. The play begins, but instead of Charlie, there's a mentally handicapped boy in the main role. He's dressed up like Winnie the Pooh. I look to my right and Charlie's there in the audience. Apparently for this particular show they were letting the handicapped boy be the lead.

Julia and our section of the theater—like all the people I'm with—are all making a lot of noise. We're talking while the play is going on and being generally disruptive. I'm a bit uncomfortable by their noise and am subtly trying to get them to settle down when a guy in front of me and to my right turns around and tells us to be quiet. I'm feeling contrarian I guess, so I start defending their disruption. Being told what to do by the guy pissed me off. Then the guy says something about eating the severed finger that was by the door. This takes me by surprise. I check and sure enough the finger is gone. I immediately do a 180 and start talking to him excitedly about that—so we're friendly now. After this, everyone settles down and the play starts again. The Winnie the Pooh kid starts to recite his lines from exactly where he stopped, like in the middle of the sentence, but then he stops. He seems unable to remember the rest because we messed up his flow or something. I feel really bad about that.

Then I'm outside the house with Charlie and the guy from the theater. It's drizzling rain. Charlie and I are doing yard work, he's raking and I'm going to get a rake. The guy wants to help, but he doesn't know what to do. I give him a metal-unscrewer or some mechanism. I tell him to go in front of the house and do something, like take down some metal things we have or something (I don't remember). He does it wrong, so I go out and do it instead.

At some point, a big semi comes through carrying one of those huge garbage container things that people use for renovations. It goes up the street and I think it's going to stop in front of [neighbor]'s house, which gives me this feeling of relief—for some reason the garbage thing stresses me out. But then I see it's actually getting dropped off in front of our house.

In another scene from the dream that I remember but can't put into context the guy from the theater is in a swimming pool. He has a red snapper and another fish in there. He kills the red snapper and I watch as he releases it from his hand and it sinks to the bottom of the pool. He does this with the other fish too. Or the fish were already dead and he just made them sink, I don't remember.

I'm sitting on my floor sleeping, I have a blue marker without a cap in my hand. I hear Mom talking on the phone with Diana downstairs. I think to myself that it must be early because Mom is still home, but I also think to myself that it seems like I've been sleeping in, so why is Mom here? Then Mom comes into my room and I wake up and ask her why she's home. She says it's Friday, which means she gets to be home. I say, “no, it's Thursday.” She's like, “no, it's Friday.” So then I freak out because I'm in [town] and need to be in Minneapolis for class if it's Friday, but I really genuinely thought it was Thursday. (It's Tuesday.) I frantically search for the cap to the blue pen.

I was sitting in a car with Mom and Pope Francis. Biden was going to be arriving via airplane any second. He was going to get in the car and then we were all going to be transported somewhere. The Pope, Mom, and I all needed to use the bathroom, but Biden's security people wouldn't let us leave the car, even though Biden's plane hadn't even landed yet.

The security people were being really rowdy and I had some sort of knowledge that it was a poorly rated job, like people had low job satisfaction. I watched as one of the security men pointed the backside of his gun at another one of the security men.

Next part of the dream I remember, there was a kid wearing a cardboard Biden mask. heard him tell someone to “get Patricked.” Then I heard another guy say that his favorite Patrick Bateman bit was “misquoting Bible quotes” because of “muh pop.”

In another part of the dream, Amy's car got graffitied and we had to wash it off. Mom was really good at scrubbing the graffiti off, but Amy and I weren't. We could see the guy who did it, but we couldn't do anything about it. I asked Amy if I could eat a lollipop.

I saw “the Joker movie” (a new one) with Zoey and Mica. Initially I was buying tickets for it with Cassie. The line was long. We waited for it to die down a bit. Eventually there was only one guy in line. I overheard him talking to the ticketcounter lady. She asked him why he was seeing the Joker movie; “it's a movie for white boys” she said. He and she were both Black, but he didn't look Black at all.

We got the tickets and went further into the building. It looked like the ruins of Ancient Greece in there. The theater we were going to was underground. There was another huge line to get into it. Now I was with Zoey and Mica instead of Cassie. When we finally got into the theater it was so packed, Mica and Zoey were not optimistic we were going to find seats. The room was enormous, though. There was a huge auditorium area where the main screen was along with this area with benches and small TV screens, for overflow, I guess. We went to the main area and managed to find three consecutive seats next to a group of Asian girls.

Mica started giving a speech about something, like a rallying cry and the whole auditorium was listening, but she was joking. Like she ended it with a call for people to just start going out and killing other people. The auditorium clapped when she was done, but it was obvious they'd missed the entire joke of it. I turned to Mica and told her, “you're literally the Joker!” and grabbed her hand and squoze it, then apologized for squeezing so tightly. I said, “I do that to everyone and hurt everyone.” Then Zoey was curious how it felt, so I squoze her hand too.

Then someone stood up nearby and asked if anyone in the crowd wanted to switch seats. Zoey raised her hand and the girl switched with her. I got super angry at that. Like we'd all gotten seats together, I couldn't understand why Zoey would switch. In a little fit, I moved away to the front of the theater, but then I changed my mind and went back. I'd brought my skateboard over to the new seat, though, and forgot it over there when I went back, so I had to walk down once more to get it and come back. After doing that I was worried I'd missed the movie, but I hadn't. I'd only missed like two seconds of it. Zoey was sitting behind Mica and I at this point and I think by the end of the dream she was sitting next to us again.

I had to take public transit home to [town]. I pulled the wire to request a stop, which caused the bus to exit onto “Ashanti” street. The exit led the bus onto this, like, shipping freighter or something, and we were all to get off. Then we had to wait for another bus to come get us. This caused me to feel guilty for doing the stop request. I felt like it was my fault we were all going to be waiting for so long, but these two girls assured me that that wasn't the case.

Then Katarina's mom was there in a car to pick up Katarina and drive her home, since I guess Katarina took the bus a lot, so this was like a routine for them. I wanted to get in the car with them, since it would take me directly home and cut a lot of time off my trip, but I didn't because I thought it'd be awkward.

Luke and his mom and brothers were sitting in lawn chairs on top of a floating piece of ice. Everything was all dark. Kjell was there too, but he was with me, not the [last name]s. The piece of ice was floating in a body of water in the middle of a mall. They were holding a bunch of dogs on leashes. I walked onto the ice on accident and started slipping. The dogs were coming at me, so I was trying to stay away from them, but also, the entire block of ice was lined with lawn chairs, so I was trying to avoid knocking the lawn chairs into the water. I couldn't help it though, and I ended up knocking some in, despite my best efforts. I leaned down and fished out a couple of the chairs then walked the rest of the way off the ice block.

I was at a bus stop with Natural Hypertrophy. It was like a multi-floor bus stop and I didn't know where my bus got on. I was following Natural Hypertrophy because I thought he knew where he was going. He was explaining bus stops to people. I asked him where my stop was and he said it was downstairs, which embarrassed me because I'd followed him upstairs. I'm not sure why this was embarrassing to me, but it was.

Kolya was over. I was sleeping in the same bed as him.

I was buying a pillow to skateboard on or something. A guy at the store was helping me choose. I was inclined to choose a flat pillow, but he said actually that the puffier ones are better.

I was in this building. The building held Transcendental Meditation classes in it, and other things too. There was this big, open lobby area surrounded by doors that went to other business areas—pretty typical of an office building, actually, just it was one floor only and really vast. Anyway, there was a situation going on because someone dropped a hot dog on the ground. People were surrounding the hot dog and investigating it.

I went over to a gas station with some people. As I was walking to the front to check out I saw that I didn't have my wallet. I freaked out and I remembered that I left it on a counter in the lobby area of that other building. I ran back there. My phone and other items were there, but the wallet was missing. I asked the people in the lobby if they'd seen it or knew what happened to it, but no one answered. I felt like I must have violated some unwritten social rule by addressing them.

I left the building again and went for a walk with Luke and someone else, maybe Lauren or Ava. Luke was walking a dog. We walked for a bit, then wound up back at the building. I went in to look for my wallet one last time. Luke couldn't come in because he had the dog. I went back over to the Transcendental Meditation area. They were wrapping up for the night. People started filing out of the room. A couple of them were holding skateboards, which I thought was odd because they were all kinda fat people. This huge Black guy came out—somehow he was familiar to me. He was holding a skateboard and the tail was gnawed down super far. I wondered how he could ride it, given being so big. I enjoyed our conversation, but I don't remember what it was about. In the other room the hot dog situation was still being investigated.

Walking and some dude does a huge 360 shuv in front of me like 1440 shuv or something. I go up to talk to him and find a rabbit stuffed animal on the ground. I want to pick it up, but I'm worried he might find me juvenile for doing so and not like me. I do it anyway and it turns out he thought it was cool.

I'm in a house somewhere arguing with Dad. We're sitting at a table, but his chair is back, so I can see his entire body. I air the grievance regarding Victoria being excited for his parents to die so that they'll inherit money. He tries to give some defensive explanation for that.

Then we're walking around the neighborhood as a nuclear family. It's night. We walk past Stephen Curry's house, which is located down near the [last name]'s house.

Then we get in a car and are driving somewhere. We're driving on a straight road, it's daytime and the sky is blue—not vibrant, but a kind of dull blue. Dad is driving. For a split second, I get this intense feeling that Dad is going to muder-suicide us all. I make him pull over to a parking lot on the side of the road and argue with him.

Then we're at a 50s-esque diner. It's Dad, Mom, Julia, and some other lady. We're all sitting in a booth. I start arguing with Dad again. I also start yelling at this young girl who's sitting at the table (she appears there like halfway through the scene). I lay into her about something like how I'm a mirror of her and all of her insults toward me are projections. I'm very passionate about this “mirror” point. To my right, I see Mom sign the check that the waitress brought over. I think the waitress wanted us to leave and I think Mom was embarrassed.

I say, “wow! look at the sunset!” and go outside. Mom and Lola come out too. Immediately Lola runs into the Kurisak's backyard, which worries me a bit, like I wish she'd just stay with us. Anyway, the sunset you can see over the hill, but in the opposite direction, like coming from down past the Moore's house, there's this huge black cloud—or smoke plume—or something billowing upward. I ask Mom what it is. She says, “it might actually be vespers*” (or some word that starts with a V). I don't know what that is. I keep staring then it really dawns on me, I have no idea what could be creating something like that, which creates this uneasy feeling. Looking closer, I see that there are perfect rings coming out of it, so it's this big cloud of smoke, almost like it came from a huge fire, only the smoke is pitch black, and at the top, the smoke transforms into rings. The rings move toward the park. There's this ringing sound and Mom and I drop to the ground. I look into the sky and see a UFO flying out in front of the rings. It takes a second for me to process before I'm like yes, wow that is a UFO.

I'm at a carnival on a boardwalk. There's a show going that begins with a Native American boy doing some dance, then progresses into a play with all these hockey-type high school or college age white guys dressed up like Native Americans. It isn't racist per se, it just feels like history being completely swept under the rug, like to an absurd extent. More than racism or any perceivable ill intention (it really didn't feel like there was any), the absurdity of it all just left me in awe. After the play finished, the boys went and took silly pictures of themselves in their outfits.

I was late to something. When I got there, they needed to take all forms of payment off my person and stick them in this bin. Like, before I could enter the facility. The lady at the front desk also asked to see my Health Partners card and she took a picture of it. That made me nervous.

After that I went in. The room was a classroom and I was late to class. I was handed a quiz. I looked around at the seats, wondering where to sit. I asked some people if we “still had to do alternate seating” meaning sit with a desk between us, because of covid. I don't remember whether it was or wasn't. I sat down and started the quiz. It was a math quiz and I didn't know how to do it at all. The teacher came into the room. Then the quiz morphed into this big map with no words on it. That's a bad description, but I can't articulate it another way. I asked the teacher what I was supposed to do. There were no instructions on the paper and her response was incredibly vague, so I still couldn't understand. At that point I became frustrated and decided to just turn in a troll paper, so I started writing “pog” on it and other nonsense.

The quiz continued to degenerate toward more and more abstract objectives. Ultimately, the “quiz” was for me to paint a cop car. It started raining as I hurried to finish painting it (my time was up). I was just dumping paint on it at that point with the guy and girl next to me helping.

I get to the airport. I have to lug around this huge duffle bag rather than a nice rolling bag. I make it to my gate and slump down against the wall near some other people. I go on my phone and take a snapchat of the NYC skyline to send to Jordyn, since I know she's visiting the city too. I get told I have to take a quiz in order to get on the flight because it's a “no-diapered flight,” which I interpret as being one without flotation devices. The quiz is like, I have to watch a safety video then fill it out. The counter lady tells me it'll only take me “like 45 minutes,” which unquestionably will make me miss my flight. She tells me that I can find the quiz in the “ungulate” section, or some weird word that starts with a “u”. She says it will be around the corner from “the rotating pirate.”

I go down a hallway away from the gate and can't find it. I get to this area that's sort of decorated for Halloween. There's a narrow area between the walls—like in libraries, the area between shelves, and I have a feeling it might be down there, but I'm scared to go. I instead go around the wall to look from the other side, but I see a guy in a monster outfit coming toward me—like a haunted house worker. I say, “no, please, I'm lost.” The guy can tell I'm distressed. He takes off his mask revealing his own face, which is incredibly wrinkled and worn (like a sea pirate now that I think about it, I didn't catch that in the dream). I tell him about the quiz and he tries to help me find it.

I was sitting at a table with Mom and Grandma. I left for a second and when I came back, Peyton was there (he'd been kind of following me I think). Mom and Grandma and him apparently hit it off and they gave him one of Pops's books. This irritated me a little bit.