osaraba | ゆめがたり：Chibi Ganryu! and other weirdness...

I was in this meadow/clearing, behind the ruins of some old manor or something, and adjacent to a lake or large pond of some sort, which had black marble blocks along its shore for people to sit on. I was with Liz, and we went into the manor ruins, going deep underground, and discovered that it was the site and design of the new Tekken 5 game. (Which makes mostly no sense, since there are random backgrounds, but if you think of the "Devil Within" minigame, it fits better.) It was like we were playing, and exploring at the same time -- Liz was using the controller, but we could also see "live" what the character was doing. And it was Anna, of course, in her red dress outfit. Well, there was one part where Anna jumped too far and died (like a Tomb Raider game, I guess) and we were going to restart the level or something, but then I realized that when Anna fell, she broke some breakable blocks that were hiding a stairway. So I told Liz to wait and we both went down to explore. All the passageways were really narrow in there. We got down to the "hidden" stairway and saw that at the top it went nowhere. It just stopped. But you could see past it, and there were a countless number of other stairways, going in different directions, that all just stopped at some point or another. I used somthing above me to hold onto and go feet-first into the space and land on one of the stairways below, double-checking that the stairways all did just stop at some poing going up. They did. But they all did go down somewhere. I went back to Liz and she was all ready to follow the stairways down, but I really wanted to stop there 'cause I was getting scared and claustrophobic, so I made her "save" so we could return to that point.

When we went outside, there was a brief interruption in this part of the dream. I was dreaming about a famous photographer who had taken photos of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, and Lucille Ball. He looked kind of like Baek Doo San looks in T5, with a dark brown suit and shaggy gray hair. And, of course, this being a dream, he'd taken photos of Marilyn Monroe before even having met -- and married -- Lucille Ball. And by the time Lucille Ball was pregnant with their child, he was almost 90 years old -- and having bouts of memory loss. (Please, don't ask where the hell this came from. I can explain the video game parts, but I have no idea about this.) In this particular episode(?) he had lost his memory of something in particular -- I think the fact that he was married to Lucille Ball and that they were expecting a child -- but he'd left himself clues to figure it out/jog his memory. I don't know why he didn't just write it down in a letter for himself or something. But anyway, he left himself clues, and with each clue he found (I don't know what the clues were; I didn't see them), he would have a memory flashback. Most were of when he first met Lucille Ball on the set of I Love Lucy, which also flashed into a scene of pages in a photobook they apparently did using the photos he took -- kind of like a biography, but just of that particular time in her life. So there were pictures of her, and the other actors and actresses, like the one who played her best friend Ethel. And it was like in the movies, when they begin a scene from a still photo; it was cool, and completely in black and white (maybe some shades of brown, too). So every time he turned a page of this book, I was able to see more. By the way, Lucille Ball, Ethel's actress (who looked a lot younger in this dream), and another young actress on the show were totally getting it on behind the scenes, and I think the photographer/husband was sort of intrigued by this. So anyway, eventually the guy remembers that he's married to Lucille Ball and that they're expecting a baby, but he's almost 90, and won't be around to see his child grow up. It's really very sad, and his realization wasn't as abrupt as I'm describing it. So he starts crying, and someone else is there, I think his best friend (who seems to be a guy in his 30s-40s), who tries to comfort him, but what comfort is there, when you know you won't be able to be part of your child's life for much longer? (Reminds me of that excellent Michael Keaton movie, My Life.)

So then it switches back to the video-game part of the dream, but now I'm with Maryann in that clearing and I know that we're at a convention. I can see someone near those marble blocks by the shore who I know is a woman who works for the con, and with her is the Tekken 5 game designer (a 5'9"-ish, slightly nerdy-looking Asian guy in his late early 30s). I went over to them and asked him what a particular thing from the game said, in Japanese (because it was half in kanji, so I couldn't read it), and in an English translation. At first it seemed like he didn't understand English too well, but then he said he'd write it out for me in hiragana so I could read it, and he spoke English like an American, with no trace of accent at all. He had some rolled up scrolls/posters with him, and he whipped one out to write the thing out for me. I caught a glimpse of it as he unrolled it and it was a painting of a chibi version of Ganryu lying on his back with bugged-out eyes like he'd just been KO'd in this very meadow where we were standing. Apparently he'd just been painting. (Amazing that it was already dry, but this is a dream.) He took out a clean brush and black paint. But I wondered what he would wet his brush with because it was stiff and dry, and he dipped it into the water of the pond/lake. LOL. Then he wrote out in beautiful calligraphy the thing that I had asked him about. And I still don't know what it is except that it had a　ぬ　or a め,　and a る in it. =(

As he'd been doing this, other people started coming into the meadow -- maybe they'd heard that the T5 designer was there, I don't know. But Maryann had gone to another end of the meadow -- I think

louiex was there; they were intensely discussing something and then when I looked up she was coming toward me with a hand-truck that had three big boxes stacked on it. I don't know what was inside but she was helping Louie bring them somewhere, or something like that. I'm not too clear on what she was doing or why.

I finally got my SD Ganryu painting from the designer guy, who I found out was from Hong Kong, and thanked him profusely. I started walking across the meadow with Maryann (and Louie, possibly) and the hand-truck. But the crowds of people going in the other direction prevented me from staying next to her. I was walking a few paces behind her when Heather (A close-ish "friend" from high school who I don't really consider to be a friend! Of all people! Why do I keep dreaming about her?!) came up to me with many things in her hands. As is typical of her, she's always in a rush and is juggling several things at once. She had an army-greenish messenger bag in her hands and was taking out her cell phone (which looked like the light blue Motorola phone my parents used to have) while asking me if I had my Zen Micro with me. I was hesitating in answering, and realized she wanted to somehow plug her cell phone into my Zen to charge her cell phone. (Hah. If this was only possible in real life.) In the dream, I felt a huge sense of guilt in lying about having my Zen with me, so I ended up saying yes. (This baffles me because IRL, I'd have no problem lying about that, especially because she was going to steal my charge, and more especially because it was her.) And as she was still fumbling to disentangle her cell phone wires from other things in her bag, I realized -- as I got a huge flash of nipple -- that she was naked! O_o;

I was thinking about asking her why she was naked, but then all of a sudden I was in my kitchen at home. Except it didn't look like any kitchen I've been in, in any place I've ever lived (or visited). And I got the feeling that we were on an underground level. It was a long, but very narrow kitchen, definitely no room for two people to stand back to back, only next to one another. There were two sinks, but separated by a certain amount of counter space that one could put a dish-drainer thing there. I was at the sink farther inside, washing something that was very rusty. But the spout was oddly shaped -- it looked like a squiggly arrow -- and the water kept splashing on me, and I realized I was wearing my new green button-down-like shirt. I looked to my left, and Frank! (my boss's husband -- a very tall, thin, black man with glasses and a funny smile) was standing at the other sink washing vegetables or something. Then he started talking to me about shoes, and how there's this really good discount shoe store just a few blocks over (they live at 96th & Amsterdam, so I think this is where I was). And I knew the place he was talking about, and decided I should definitely head over there.

Then I had to get up to go to the bathroom, and decided I'd write this one down. It was mostly Heather's nipple that convinced me that I had to share my trauma with at least one person who'd freak out, too (Angelica).

Oh! And one last thing! At the end, when I was on my way to that shoe store, I had that stupid song Joe's been going crazy about (from the one of the On Demand channels) stuck in my head and I was humming along with it! Gah! Here's the song -- get it out of my head! It's icky!