June 11th, 2002 CE

I dreamed I was once again in high school, and on a field trip to Toronto. As of the point where the dream began, I had missed the bus, I think (there's that recurring bus theme again...), and was walking there from my hometown of Rockwood. Even by car, taking the highway, it's an hour long trip, so this was an exceptionally long trip. As I walked, there seemed to have been some sort of time-lapse thing going on, as a very long period of time seemed to be passing fairly quickly, day turened to night, night turned to day, etc. By what I think was the second day of the trip, I was surrounded by buildings I don't and didn't recognise at all. The way that buildings were laid out arround the street was odd; everything was a ways back from the street and far away from one another the way you'd expect to see in the countryside where space isn't at a premium, but there were cables running densely over the street, like for cablecars and busses to make use of, like you would expect in the downtown core of a city.

At around this time, a bus pulled up beside me, and it was the bus I was supposed to have been taking all along. Perhaps I didn't miss it, but instead left a day or two too early. Who knows? This point was not elaborated upon. I went to get onto the bus, and found that they were asking for bus fare, which I was unprepared for; I don't think I had any change on me. At any event, some kind of arrangement was worked out, and I was on my way.

When we arrived in Toronto, I immediately went offf my own way, and soon found a little convenience store where I picked up a bunch of food for the duration of the trip, which was supposed to last for a few days. I got a pretty odd mix of food, whicch I remembered included bread and chocolate syrup. I went up to the counter with the food already in four plastic bags for some reason, and tried to pay for the food with my bank card, but found out that I had insufficient funds. The clerk, a small oriental woman, gave me some kind of a challenge in order to pay for the food. It involved a pair of rubix cubes which were sitting on a stand at the back of the store. One of them was broken, missing a few cube parts. Both of them seemed to have solid colors on a few sides. Perhaps due to a language barrrier, or perhaps just because my dreaming mind was incapable of producing the complex nuances of manipulating a pair of rubix cubes, I was incapable of grasping what the challenge being given to me actuallly was. After a minute or two of my trying to grasp it, the clerk gave up, frustrated, and just told me to go. I took the food and left.

I went to the home of one of mmy mother's friends: Howard Brenner, who we'd visited frequently when I was a kid. I hoped I'd be able to stay with him for the duration of my trip. When I got there, I was a bit taken aback. The place had always been sort of run-down looking, but the place barely looked habitable now; most of the windows of the appartment building were boarded up, and the paint only existed on the walls in flaking chips. Horribly, though, a few windows were still in place and there was light and movement inside; people were still living there. In reality, I seem to recall having heard something about a fire there some years ago. Perhaps this has something to do with it.

As I stood on the sidewalk accross the street from the building, I saw Jourgan Voler; German army deserter, long-time illegal immigrant, former Torontonian, and friend to both myself and my parents. He was walking out the front door of Howard's appartment building, saying something like "No room for Freddy, eh?" (Freddy being one of his non-german aliases). I called him over accross the street to where I was standing, and he was pleasantly surprised to see me. "What are you doing here in Toronto" and all that. I explained my situation and how I'd hoped to stay with Howard for a few days. He said he'd hoped to do the same, but Howard had become a terrible crab in his old age, and there was no chance. I began to consider instead going to the home of another of my mom's friends; Lorraine Darling.

As Jourgan and I were talking, he asked me why I wasn't just staying with the rest of my class. "With those people? Fuck that", I said. "Besides, I don't even know where they're spending the night". He then told me they were staying at the YMCA. I didn't question how he knew that, for some reason. I told him I couldn't remember where that was. He told me just to look for the tallest building around. I told him that that would be the CN Tower, and as I did so, I saw some sort of a vision of a giant YMCA building standing alongside the CN tower (though it was no more than a sixth of the height of the tower, it was still amazingly tall), which looked sort of like a tombstone (See my amazingly crude sketch, left). At around this point, we dropped the topic.

We went into the building we were standing in front of, accross the street from Howard's place. It was pretty run-down looking, too; it was made entirely of deep-stained wood, and was dark and poorly-lit. We went down two flights of stairs, and found a public bathtub set into the wall. That I know of, no such thing as a public bathtub exists anywhere, but we accepted this thing's existence, and we agrred that I would take a bath there while Jourgan stood guard for me around the corner, and then we would switch. I took a bath, without incident, and then dried myself off, got dressed, and went upstairs to fetch Jourgan. He was standing sentry there, arms crossed in front of him, and I told him I was done. By the time we got back down to the tub, someone else had claimed it, though, and in fact, there seemed to be a bit of a lineup. We decided to forget about it.

We went deeper into the building, and found a movie theatre that apparantly didn't charge admission. It dipped very low down very steeply. Jourgan just sort of disappeared at this point. I don't know how or why, but he didn't appear at any point later in the dream. I went to the front left corner of the theatre, nd there saw my old best friend Steve Zago, and I had a seat with him. The movies were playing already. It seemed this theatre only showed little indepenndantt films, and I thought we might be able to get the Drifter films to play here when we finished them. I kept thinking to myself, "I can't wait to tell BJ about this place".

After every few films, a trio of bizarre looking monsters would come out in front of the movie screen. They looked like cartoons; utterly non-threataning. One was red, one was blue, and one was yellow. They would put on a little show, which involved a lot of shapechanging and slapstick, followed by them judging the best of the last few films. We sat there for a while, watching films, and the only one I can remember was pretty incomprehensible. On-screen, there were various tall, narrow windows which were moving about independantly of one another, each one displaying a different scene in stark black and white, while a colorfull landscape lay behind them, clouds drifting by a red sunset with mountains in the near-distance. If there was any story to it, I can't recall, though it was nice to look at.

As the movies were playing, I noticed a girl sitting on the far side of the theatre, wearing a mask which was nearly identical to one which I made, myself, some time ago. I resolved that I had to speak with her. When I saw her leaving, I asked Steve to watch my stuff for a few minutes while I go and talk to her. I bounded accross the theatre, and caught up with her right outside. there, I struck up a conversation with her about her mask, and the similarity between hers and mine, and what were the odds and all that. She said that painting all the little stars onto hers was her favorite part, and I siad I knew what she was talking about. She was a pleasant-looking girl, and when she took her mask on, I saw that she had short, light blonde hair and slight features, with blue eyes. She was wearing an ankle-length blue dress, cinced at the waist. She doesn't remind me of anyone I know in real life.

As the movies were playing, I noticed a girl sitting on the far side of the theatre, wearing a mask which was nearly identical to one which I made, myself, some time ago (see photo, right). I resolved that I had to speak with her. When I saw her leaving, I asked Steve to watch my stuff for a few minutes while I go and talk to her. I bounded accross the theatre, and caught up with her right outside. there, I struck up a conversation with her about her mask, and the similarity between hers and mine, and what were the odds and all that. She said that painting all the little stars onto hers was her favorite part, and I siad I knew what she was talking about. She was a pleasant-looking girl, and when she took her mask on, I saw that she had short, light blonde hair and slight features, with blue eyes. She was wearing an ankle-length blue dress, cinced at the waist. She doesn't remind me of anyone I know in real life.

Just then, my real-life friend, Cassie Norton, came out of the theatre and told me that I should go and get Steve; the theatre staff were kicking everyone out of the theatre, because the film show was over. I told her and the mask girl to wait there for me; that I'd be back in a minute.

I practically flew into the theatre, jumping about with great force and acrobatics. I actually bounced off the far wall and did a forwards flip before landing on my feet next to Steve, who was surrounded by the staff, including the three monsters. They didn't seem so much hostile as grumpy. I thanked Steve and told him we ought to go. As it turns out, somebody was already going through my stuff, who reminded me of an older, taller version of a guy I knew in high school named Andrew MacLaren. He had a bunch of comic books of mine spread out on the floor, and as I watched, he took a copy of the second-to-last issue of Major Bummer out of the pile and put it in with his own stuff. I asked him what he was doing, and he said I'd told him I would pay three times the value of the comic book to him, but had only paid him cover price. Crossly, I said, "Fine. Just give me something worth what I've already paid you". He shrugged and starrted going through his stuff looking for something of that value.

Meanwhile, I was looking through my own stuff to make sure everthing else was still there. While I was doing so, I came upon a comic book I didn't recognise, entitled Major MoreBummer, which, aside from it's odd name, is bizarre because I could actually read the title, I think,, which I can't recall ever having been able to do so before. I think it's because the title was a painted element of the artwork of the cover, and so existed as more than just words in my mind.

If anything else happened before I woke up, I can't remember it.