In the Virtual Bank Line

It's been a while, but I've had some pretty mundane dreams lately.

Last nights' dream was a little disturbing and I don't even really understand why.

I was jogging through my old neighborhood, back in Phoenix. There's a maze of condos there called "Concord Village," and in the dream, it had been given over to some sort of military training complex. As I was jogging along, I turned down a path and came upon some guys showering under an upturned hose. They weren't in a camp shower or anything - just hanging out in the middle of a public pathway, naked as could be. They started to laugh as I jogged through, but I told them they didn't have anything I haven't seen before and kept running. It was kind of funny, I thought.

As I jogged, I realized I was holding someone's towel. I slowed down as I came to a house that I remembered seeing as a kid. I looked at the front door, and it was open, so I went inside. The place was two stories and filled with rustic-looking antiques. There were three cradles that looked as though they were made from bark, and three trundle beds and three high chairs. They looked at least a hundred years old. I managed to walk all through the house without seeing anyone. It looked like a tiny little museum of old pioneer artifacts, but when I came out the other side, I realized I had left my towel inside somewhere. I put my face to the window and saw it on the stair railing. Just then, a woman in her mid-thirties came out of an upstairs room and saw me. I was going to run, but she opened the door and led me inside, telling me all about how her grandmother had collected all these things, and how she and her two brothers had been the babies who had used them.

I left the woman's house and went back toward my own place. As I neared my condo, a little kid came running toward me, showing me some treasure she'd found. She was babbling on about it, holding my hand as I went toward my place. As we got nearer, I realized that this was a kid who belonged to the daycare just across the passageway.

I went to my place and changed clothes, and the minute I was done my best friend from grade school showed up. She wanted to go shopping for something, but she was being really mysterious about it. We went to a strip mall that had one shop with no sign outside. Inside, the whole place was full of huge chests of tiny drawers. The drawer fronts were all carved wooden filigree with tiny elephants on them whose trunks served as the drawer pulls. I looked inside a few of them and found carved wooden rings, bracelets and necklaces of various sizes and colors. There were tapestries in back, black hangings with bright weaving through them depicting various Latino left-wing heroes. My friend was looking around with her nose wrinkled.

I had no idea what she could have been looking for or how she knew about the place, but it was obvious that she was disgusted by what she'd found. I realized that she was just checking the place out. She was going to report back to someone else, who would then take some action I couldn't begin to predict. I told her that I thought she was a bad person and walked away back across the parking lot.

On my way home, I went through an open-air market. I started going up and down rows of market stalls filled with all sorts of things - food, clothes, housewares, auto parts - and I was looking for something specific, but I couldn't remember what it was.

I was still looking when I woke up.