I used to have these long, vivid dreams every night. Then I became a stoner and they went away. Now that I’m not really stoned any more they are back.

I have always had a consistent theme about having to find my way through big, complicated, multi-story buildings. This time in the dream I started out having to get from this small town garage to a nearby big city. I don’t know where or why. I was alone. A nice older man offered me a ride. I didn’t have much of a choice so I said thank you.

We drove down the freeway and I could see this sprawling huge monstrosity of a building in the distance. I said, “Whoa. I can’t imagine wanting to live that close to that many people.”

He kind of glared at me and said, “I live in the hive.”

We didn’t talk for the rest of the ride. In the next “day” of the dream I was once again stranded at the garage for no obvious reason I could discern. Someone else told him to give me a ride again and it wasn’t so gracious the second time.

After that I found out that my good friend K had ended up living in the hive. So I had to go see her/it. I had a hard time finding my way in. In the process of trying to find her apartment (neither of us were married with children in this dream) I discovered that the hive was hosting a conference.

I suppose it was an “unconference” which I have heard about but I’ve never attended one. It was an anarchist/revolution sort of meeting. I kind of wandered near the edge of it but I’m not real comfortable at conferences even when I know that technically I am invited and part of the target demographic.

I ended up in the apartment of a woman who had three little kids. I had the vague sense that there was something missing that we couldn’t talk about our mutual experience of being parents. She lectured me a lot and was really pretty out there. She had her kids building all kinds of complex equipment and she talked about how stupid people were for not putting their children to work.

Then I found the old man’s apartment. I tried to be friendly and get to know him but he abruptly turned away from me and went to bed while I was still in his apartment. I let myself out. Then I tried to get out of the building. I wanted to go up this long slanted hallway but my male companion (kind of vaguely Noah like, but not Noah) said that we had to take the stairs.

A female resident of the hive pushed past us to go up the stairs first. After about five steps I could see why. My male companion and I were ridiculously slow because they weren’t normal stairs. Each step rise was about 40″ so after a few steps we had to rest. We got to nearly the top of the stairs and the woman was sitting there to put her shoes on. She yelled and cussed at us for stepping around her. She said we were disgusting pieces of shit for not waiting our fucking turn.

Okay then. We stepped past her anyway and got into a parking garage. Then we discovered that we couldn’t get back into the stairwell because it locked and we didn’t know how to get out of the garage.

Then I woke up and had to go to the bathroom.

I’d like to return to not dreaming now, thanks.