I was on vacation in Hawaii with Rahul and some other friends, and we were standing on a street near the beach when suddenly we saw the water rise up into a wall–maybe 50 feet high–far back from the beach. We began running for our lives, and eventually made it into an office building, where we pelted up the stairs in an attempt to escape the tsunami.

I haven’t remembered many of my dreams lately. I had a vague memory of a dream from last week of a dormitory where Minnie Mouse was living, but not much else.

However, last night, we watched an episode of Masterpiece Theater on PBS–the case of Sherlock Holmes and the Silk Stocking. Clearly not an adaptation of a classic Holmes mystery, the story dealt with a pair of twin brothers, murderous foot fetishists who would strangle young girls with one silk stocking, stuff the other stocking into their mouths, and then dress them in the clothes of another victim.

Most likely as a result of watching this just before bedtime, I had a terrible nightmare in which I was being chased by a rapist. I had a Chinese meat cleaver in my hand, and I turned and hacked off his erection. It lay on the ground, bloodless; I cut off the tip, and then chopped the shaft in half. The horrific part of the dream was that I then looked up at him and realized he was not perturbed by this in the slightest; he was smiling slightly, and came after me again. Cutting off his penis was the worst thing I could think of to do, the most extreme and violent way to stop him, and it wasn’t enough. Somehow, he raped me anyway; there was no physical penetration, but he violated me in my dream.

When the alarm clock went off, I was exhausted–I thought the alarm clock had malfunctioned because it felt like it was about four in the morning.

I had a three-part dream.

I don’t remember the first part.

In the second part, Rahul gave me an iPod because someone at Sacred Space gave him some at a discount ($45-59).

In the third part, I was getting ready to fight for freedom in a Tripods-like world ruled by machines–we blew out the bottom of a giant robot machine and climbed in.

I was walking around Germany with Rahul and we only had three days left before we went home. I wanted to go see Heidelberg, but also wanted to make sure we went to see Pei. We were walking down a Chinatown-like street on an overcast afternoon. There was a table by the street displaying huge knives. I went into a pet shop and there was a cage full of hoatzins. They were covered in gray wool and looked just like monkeys or lemurs–I looked at the way they were clinging to the cage with their claws and remembered that the babies were wingless. The cage was very much like a Cubes & Coroplast guinea pig cage, but the top part of it swung down, so that if the hoatzins climbed to the top of the cage, they would swing over upside down and be unable to climb all the way out.

I came back home and found that my mom had paved over the entire front yard with big pink pavers, widely spaced, with pebble-studded concrete filling in the gaps. It was hideous.

I was walking around Germany with Rahul and we only had three days left before we went home. I wanted to go see Heidelberg, but also wanted to make sure we went to see Pei. We were walking down a Chinatown-like street on an overcast afternoon. There was a table by the street displaying huge knives. I went into a pet shop and there was a cage full of hoatzins. They were covered in gray wool and looked just like monkeys or lemurs–I looked at the way they were clinging to the cage with their claws and remembered that the babies were wingless. The cage was very much like a Cubes & Coroplast guinea pig cage, but the top part of it swung down, so that if the hoatzins climbed to the top of the cage, they would swing over upside down and be unable to climb all the way out.

I came back home and found that my mom had paved over the entire front yard with big pink pavers, widely spaced, with pebble-studded concrete filling in the gaps. It was hideous.