Dream: City Mashup

Various bits of dream recall:

There was some dream where I was concerned about being cavalier about being naked.  It wasn't that I was worried about being naked in front of various people, it was that I hadn't really cared. 

More clearly.... I was in some sort of steampunk radio play, which I'm sure is a mix up of a Wordo manuscript, Casablanca, and a Victorian murder mystery.

The play ended with the heroine tricking the bad guys into a room, throwing a switch, and locking them in.  The folks producing the play gave the writer an award.  The chair of the production company was kind of goofy, and was making up some sort of goofy award song.  Then everything shut down, and we had to pick our way out of the darkened theatre.  I grabbed my boots or something, and I have a sense that everyone was trying to find various articles in the dark.  (In real life this is very so much like when I turn the lights off at Tsunami Books after a Wordos meeting.)

In another segment, I was  a caretaker at a house.  I was gathering slatted boxes, the kind you keep fruit in, to construct an outside partition or windscreen.  I'd found a whole bunch of them, and I was looking for particular boxes that were old and sun-bleached white.  I wanted to make a long straight partition with two openings  or walking through.   I had a conversation of sorts with an older couple, who might have been the owners.


In the part I remember the best, Mark and I wandered through a small town.  It might have been Northfield, downtown Eugene, or the campus district of Corvallis.

We walked by an old brink church where CC (from UUCE) was presenting.  Surprisingly, MH (from Seattle) had a gay ministry there (he's not a minister in real life), specializing in a gay mens chorus and special burial.   Mark and I commented on the church and kept walking.  

We came to a corner, which in real life reminds me of the five-way intersection of Monroe, Arnold, and 26th street in Corvallis.  The Beanery and Superette there had been remodeled.  The white stucco front was mostly the same, but the new owner, a man, had partitioned off the art curio section with accordioning fabric screens of yellow fabric with a leaf and star pattern running down them.  The store was a pleasant mix of art shop, book store, and cafe, and instantly filled with all ages having discussions.

I think Mark and I bought some food, but we kept touring the small time.  

(I'd woken up some, and the cat was sleeping on my foot.)  I followed Mark around and somehow found myself in an alleyway.  There were some homeless folks there, and a social worker.  The worker said to another woman (who was clinically angry) something about moving her stuff so it wouldn't get rained on, but the homeless woman replied, "Shut up."  There was some more walking, and somehow I wound up back with the homeless.

"Excuse me," said the social worker, "But you'll need to move.  You're blocking the entryway.  This is a shelter and people need to be able to get in and out"  (I had stopped and was trying to eat a take-out meal Mark and I had bought).  The woman was bossy and brusque, but was effectively dealing with the homeless.  I had somehow wandered into a shelter area spanning an alley between buildings.  

The nature of the dream shifted.  I probably was partially awake, because everyone was lying down along the long, narrow edges of the shelter we were in (as if we were in bed) and I was a little stuck under bedrolls (the blankets in real life had gotten bunched up).  'Excuse me," I said to everyone in general and to the angry shut-up-lady specifically, "oh, I need to move my foot." (The cat was using my foot as a pillow).

I got out of the shelter through a square opening in the floor.  It was a kind of styrofoam bridge and cocoon.