42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

I’m hanging out with Heather at her apartment. We’re not roommates yet or perhaps she hasn’t moved out yet. It’s not her old apartment, but a small, dingy apartment. The carpet in the bedroom and livingroom are a beaten down orange nubby carpet. The kitchen has nasty orange linoleum which is very worn and hard to clean.
The kitchen is covered in dirty dishes (probably related to guilt that I need to do dishes here), with pots and pans piled high on each other on the dated formica counter.
Someone from Heather’s bank comes over to talk to her, and I politely try not to listen as the woman sits at ths small kitchen table.

Perhaps this is where moving in real life comes in. Later in my dream, I’m living in a huge, historic mansion with coworkers, many from my present job, but a couple from the old job too.
We begin learning about the history of the mansion, who it belonged to, and its problems.
It seems to have some ghostly elements to it. We coexist peacefully with whatever spirit seems to inhabit it. We’re mostly keeping the place happy, with having lots of people. I think I encounter some force once, but now it is just a ghost of a memory of the dream instead of a ghost or poltergeist.
We clean the mansion and explore its vast rooms. One of my favorite rooms is a huge ballroom or perhaps living area; it’s as big as a school gym.
One room I’m not so fond of is a smaller study, with lots of hideous wooden paneling. It looks very much like the cheap paneling from the 70s.
I object to it, and wonder if it was from misguided attempt to redecorate. Surely this isn’t original to the house. I want to look closer at the paneling and see if it really is that cheap, prefab stuff or perhaps people had been in a previous cycle of bad taste when this mansion was built.
But my dream doesn’t allow me to get closer, and instead, the next time I’m in the room, I notice the paneling has been painted white, and not very well, either, because you can still see streaks of the brown underneath. Which irritates me even more.
I look at a website we’ve set up. It is amateurish, and I want to make it look better, but first I have to learn more about web design.

I’m in a room on one end of the house. There’s a large bank of windows and a desk. One of my fellow residents is cleaning the desk. I’m shutting blinds on the windows, which also don’t fit in well with the mansion. And I’m having diffculty pulling them down as I often do with horizontal blinds. As I close the blinds, I see a SUV pull up. I wonder what they’re doing here. And as I peek through, more and more vehicles pull up.
They’re tourists, wanting a tour.
We’re not officially open to tours right now, since we’re still in the process of restoring some of the building. But we’ve all been there long enough to have absorbed much of the history of the mansion as well as have experienced some of the odd but nonmenacing phenomena that have no doubt drawn some of the people here.
Our group of coworkers/residents gathers together while our nominal chair, my boss at work, says that since the people have come, we can go ahead and give them tours. Even though right now they’ll be informal. We have no set tour script yet.

One room is just a huge bank of windows, uncovered, and letting light in. It faces a coast. I go out exploring, walking up and down hills, and once, wandering somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, slid down a sandy cliff bank. I’m in danger of falling to my death, hanging on by just my hands. I don’t think I’m strong enough to pull myself up, but I somehow make it. I look down, and see that if I’d fallen, I would have died.

In another part of my dream, I’m supposed to be recording a broadcast of the Star Wars movies for a reporter. Somehow, the reception is really staticky, and barely watchable. I know the reporter will be disappointed, so instead I decide to donate my Star Wars special edition tapes, since I now have the movies on DVD. I give the tapes to his wife to give to the reporter, and she’s grateful.
(Star Wars enters in another fragment where people are waiting in line for the new movie, and the line is full of young people. But I’m not allowed to wait in line because I’m not cool enough. As if Star Wars people are cool.)

More of my coworkers gather in one room to play some odd game show, somewhat like Jeopardy, but where anyone can answer. And I know most of the answers, but I’m never allowed to answer; someone else always beats it to me. I’m frustrated because one of the people who always beats me to the answer is always wrong. I know these answers, but instead of being allowed to chime in, we move on to the next question.

Someone is telling me her cousin is on an island, and she must not be having a good time right now. Why? I ask. Look outside, at the weather, the person says.
The light is a peculiar sea green. And then I realize why. A huge tidal wave is heading for us, heading toward the huge bank of windows.

RUN! I tell everyone. Run. A few people whip around their heads, but most do not pay attention. Tsunami! I yell.
People listen. The wave is coming in oddly, very slowly, so we all have time to bolt, presumably for higher ground. I know I don’t want to be anywhere near these windows when they break under the pressure of all that water.
The coworker I give the tapes to has left them on a table, and I’m hoping that she’ll remember them when she bolts. She does, snatching them up. Though they’ll probably be wet and ruined in our escape.
We’re all running.

Most of us make it to higher, rocky ground that become islands in the flood of water.
I’m not a very strong swimmer; I’ve always said I could maybe swim to save my life, maybe. I have to do it now.
I follow my coworker, and beg not to be left behind. I know I can’t swim very fast.
The water, oddly enough, is now very calm, and warm. The wave is over, but we still have to find a place of safety.
I will myself to swim just a little bit longer, to make it to a small outcropping where three or four 10-year-old boys have made it.
I arrive panting at the rock, feeling lucky to be alive, to have made it. I’m feeling very weak after the exertion and just want to rest a while when the little boys start screaming, this is our rock! You can’t stay here. And then they all work to toss me back into the water. I don’t know where I can go. The next outcropping of rock isn’t far, but I don’t have the strength to swim there.
I see the boys toss other survivors back off. Most of them make it, disgruntled, to the next little island.
But I can’t swim any more, so I get enough strength to pull myself back up on the rock, and start tossing the boys into the water.
How do you like that? I yell at them. How do you think other people feel. And I feel powerful, even if only because I know I’m bigger and smarter than those boys. Nice victory, huh, throwing over a bunch of boys.
One of them gets belligerent with me, comes back on the rock and starts pushing me.
I’ve had enough of this little bastard and so I stick his face in the water, holding him down there long enough till some of the fight goes out of him. Draw him back up, still belligerent. So I dunk him again.
I go to far, and I worry that I’ve killed the little jerk. But he’s OK, just tired by the effort. He’s stopped fighting me, at least, and just gasps with effort, stretching out on the uncomfortable rocks.

I look at the nearby, larger outcropping of rock thas has more right to the label island, and there’s an anarchic revolution going on over there too; almost like none of these people remember what civilization was like, only a few minutes before. I’m of course guilty of losing some of my civility too.
One woman is arguing with another about cheating with her husband; she throws the offending woman off the rock, down about 10 feet onto more rocks below.
The woman just lays there, unmoving. I can see her, and instead of looking like someone dead, she looks like a broken doll. She is a broken doll, instead of a real person.