This dream, which occurred on February 11, 2004, opened on New Year's Eve. I was running north on the sidewalk of SW 1st Avenue in Portland. The street had suddenly become very long, and parts of the sidewalk were missing as if due to construction, leaving sections to jump over. On several occasions there were pieces of garbage to step on: an empty butter container and a dirty rag acted as nice Lilly pads. Other sections were obviously made from fresh concrete. I remember stopping at one point and writing my initials into the sidewalk: BJF. As I left the tag I regretted not putting the date next to my initials, but I was having trouble remembering what year it was.

As I approached SW 1st and Burnside I noticed many buildings were missing from the area, along with the Burnside Bridge. In reality this is the area of town I work in, and in my dream the two buildings owned by the organization I work for, the Portland Saturday Market, were still standing. In reality these buildings are actually rather interesting: the one flush with the bridge, an extremely thin pale building four stories tall, is said to have been built in the 1920s and cut in half in the 1940s to make room for the expanding Burnside Bridge. The other building, the Skidmore Fountain Building, was built in the 1870s, and is an awkwardly shaped yet monolithic red block with a large painting of an elephant on one side. In the dream I remember walking to the basement entrance of the thin building, and noticed a new entrance to the left of it that resembled the entrance to an expensive hotel. The new entrance was flanked by security and service workers, leading me to believe part of the building had been rented out for a New Year's Eve party. It should be noted that at this point in the dream I was condensing the two building owned by my employers, that is, the thin building was taking on attributes of the Skidmore Fountain Building. In reality, the thin building simply doesn't have any floors to rent out for such an event.

I entered the thin building and it felt as if it had no ceiling, while a bright light descended from where the ceiling should have been. Not only was the interior of the building much brighter than in reality, it was also cleaner and newer: the rough concrete had been replaced with white and soft pastel colors. Inside the building I met with my boss who, in a panic, asked me to find a bottle opener. Frustrated and looking around at the floor, he shouted out some vulgarities. He then turned to me, handed me a bottle of beer, and asked me to search for the opener. At this point I ask him where the party was and, still frustrated and scanning the ground, he simply pointed up.

As I began to look for the opener I noticed one of the service workers from the new entrance sneaking into a mysterious hallway that I somehow knew went to the tool room, in reality an actual room filled with tools and used by workers for lounging. I walk down the hallway, which took the shape of an L, and at the corner I found an animal carrier that would probably have accommodated a cat or small dog. The door to the carrier was open, and there was a blanket inside. As I reached the tool room at the end of the hall, I quickly found the bottle opener inside a vase along with several obscure tools. The room then shrunk, and was absorbed by the hallway, shoving myself, a small writing desk, and the vase into the hallway.

I looked down the hallway, and noticed a large animal standing at the turn of the hallway where the carrier had been. I immediately identified this creature as a gibbons-koala. It should be noted that this animal does not exist in reality. Standing around 5'10'' this animal had a chicken?s body, yet it was covered with fur rather than feathers. It was round and husky with the feet of a bear, and it had a very small head that resembled a monkey's sitting at the end a bottle-like neck. Its eyes were black and blank. I remember specifically thinking that "these animals are known to be docile" and that my boss wouldn't release one in the building without this being true, so I tried to casually walk past the animal. As I approached the animal it walked towards me and eventually into me, like someone with bad vision trying to read a newspaper. Its large neck and chest thrust into me, and forced me against the wall. I put up my forearm to protect myself, but was overwhelmed by the strength of the animal. It was at this point, being thrashed up against the wall, that I finally woke up.

On the morning of January 27, 2002, I dreamt that an individual I can only identify as MK Shibek and an unnamed girl I met at a gathering the previous evening were seated in front of a computer located on my parent’s back patio. Both Shibek and the girl were staring at the monitor, which displayed a picture of a nude female. The girl’s right leg was resting on the computer table and she was masturbating. I walked into my parent’s house through a sliding glass door, and not long after Shibek also came inside, stopping in the living room to make a brief comment about the girl’s sexual behavior. At this point an odd feeling of resentment overcame me, and I rushed back to the patio to see the girl, where I discovered she had removed her clothing. She informed me that she wanted to go swimming, so we walked a short distance to a neighbor’s pool, and found it covered with a plastic blanket. As she walked across the blanket I cautiously informed her she might damage it, causing her to lift up part of the blanket and plunge into the water. Her body swiftly sank to the bottom of the pool looking remarkably lifeless, and then return to the surface as quickly as it had descended. Her backside appeared first, and as she reemerged I put my hands on the small of her back. While I did this I made some kind of remark, as if trying to wake her from sleep. This caused her to turn around and look at me in an accusatory manner, but now she had become someone else—my friend Jessie. This part of the dream was followed by a brief moment of blackness, which was subsequently followed by a very peculiar pendant:

I was lying on a bed in what appeared to be a small bedroom decorated with stuffed birds, and with walls coated by plastic wood paneling. The door to my right was open, and across the hall I could see my friend K who was lying on a bed in another room. Her door was also open, and aligned perfectly with mine. Due to the flashes of light on her face I assume she was watching television. I got up from my bed and decided to shut the door to my room, consciously fixated on avoiding eye contact with her, but before I had the chance to get the door entirely closed she gave me a cold stare. I remember seeing a white light glaze over her eyes like some cheap Hollywood special effect. Following this I vaguely recall looking at my legs and seeing a petrified and somewhat comical gray cat attached to one of them by means of its claws.

Most of the events in these two fragments were influenced by the dealings of the previous week, and many of the uncovered explanations are either too tedious or too embarrassing to reiterate here. However, I did discover one particular note of interest: After telling this dream to one of the involved individuals, K, I was informed that she had previously used the pseudonym “Jessie Raven” while doing environmental direct action.