Hmm? 28 August 2000

11:22 PM: Very strange dream last night. Not surprising, since I didn't go to bed until 4 AM and had to get up at 9:30 to go to work early, for a meeting and a dentist appt later that day. There was a new star in the sky, quite suddenly and quite bright, but not fitting any known spectral pattern, definitely not a supernova. Then it got bigger and bigger, until it was a visible disk, and wasn't really a star at all but something else. We could see a face in it, a smilling face in a red disk.

I was at some kind of fair, trying to get home. It was very difficult to cross the street because the street kept being itself over again. There were a lot of winding corridors of some kind - not buildings, some kind of temporary fairground curtain-like things. I was behind an old lady with a baby carriage. She got into a traffic jam in front of her, and this girl that was in the intersecting lane reached into the baby carriage and pulled out the baby. This didn't seem very helpful to me. But the old lady said, "Oh, could you help us here?" So I guess she thought it was all right. I picked up the baby carriage and carried it over to the side out of the main flows of people. The interfering girl had her own baby carriage. "See? They're almost exactly the same age, I'll bet!" Both babies were in these head-to-toe dark blue fuzzy outfits that made them look somewhat uncomfortable. The interfering girl was kind of cute, but a little too intense looking. She said something like thank you, most people wouldn't help out. The old lady said, "Oh yes, but he's a very different kind of young man you know. He's a didactic reader and very aware of his environment."

I thought, wtf? First, that doesn't make any sense, third, how does she know that? Oh damn, she must be reading my journal. Now here she is, trying to set me up with this strange girl, and I'm not available. My fault. I want to be polite and all. The interfering girl is very intense. She keeps grabbing my arm to tell me things with this kind of grimace on her face.

People are pointing up in the sky, where you can see the new red smiling star-like thing. Then it happened.

As if fingers came out of the sky, not real fingers, like just red ribbons with a kind of rough graphic equivalent to a finger, an infinite number of them and they touch each of us in the forehead.

The boy comes flying down from out of the sky. Some conversation ensues which I can't quite remember. The boy - who is the star-thing - says something about feeling very happy to see us all I think, and people all around are saying, "We know! We know!" Then he says something else, asks a question, and someone says "Well we know that you were assuming that we would be interested." and everyone agrees in that hubbub kind of way. The boy says, "You knew what I was feeling? You knew what I was assuming?" Everyone nods and says, Yes, yes! It's very exciting to us, you see, we do feel everything that he's feeling and we know that we're all feeling it because that sharing is part of the feeling. Which makes his questions a bit odd.

Then he says, "Do you all know what each other feels, what each other thinks?" And we all say No, no, no. And we're kind of waiting, thinking that he's going to Touch us again, and then we'll all know each other as well as we know the boy and how exciting and Childhood'sEnd that'll be. But the boy doesn't do anything. He says, "What do you think it's like to have so many people knowing what you feel and what you think?" And of course as soon as he says that we all know how he feels, which is a little odd and hard to grasp. Then we start imagining ourselves, not being able to understand any of the people around us, but being understood by them.

So the boy who is the star-thing has made us all feel kind of bad and guilty about understanding so much about him. He says, "It was very nice meeting you all!" or some such, and flies off into the sky. And it all stops.

It's been an intense experience, like some kind of super-mentallo Ecstasy or something. I realize that the girl and I are clinging to each other, and we both break away at about the same time, and it's very awkward. I don't know what to say, really. "Well, nice seeing an alien superbeing with you, take care, maybe I'll see you around." Right. But I don't want her to think that I want to start something because I can't because I'm already involved. But I'm not saying anything about that because it feels weird, and she is kind of cute. Although her nose is getting bigger. But she definitely looks like the kind of girl that goes crazy and makes your life crazy and then it's your fault. Her friend comes up to her, and she looks at me and starts to say something like "Well, etc." and I actually say, "I'll call you." Which is terrible. I don't want to call her, but now I have to or I'm a jerk, but she obviously doesn't think I will because she can probably tell I don't want to, so I'm a jerk already. "No really. Or - or - come back here on Thursday. I'll meet you here Thursday evening, this time. OK?" Skeptical. "OK." Great.

The next morning I expect this to be the big story, of course, but the radio comes on and all they're talking about is the traffic. Someone jokes about hey, maybe they should tell those scientists, I think we've found their missing time.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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