Parting of the Young Crowd

In an old building - maybe an old hotel. I walked up 2-3 flights of stairs. As I leave the stairwell, I see a White woman with a her toddler in a jogging stroller. She eyes me suspiciously. I hear her say to the child, "We have to take the stairs because the elevator is so slow." Just as I leave the stairwell, I hear the ding of the elevator and think to myself, "If she had only been patient." I hop on the elevator and take it up to another floor. There are lots of people standing in the hallway. It is hot and the building has no air conditioning. I see a Black family - mom, dad and two teenagers - standing outside a door (from now on the rest of the characters are Black). They are locked out of their room and waiting for someone to come and open the door. I was with my friend, CC and two other people. A small crowd gathered behind us. We had to walk through the other side of the building (the east side) in order to continue going up. The buildings were connected via a covered glass walkway with two sets of glass doors. I could see through to the other side of the building - a larger crowd of young people were on the east side waiting to pass through to go downstairs. The east side crowd outnumbered the people behind me on the west side of the building. I looked back to see if there was an exit sign pointing to another stairwell. I asked the mom of the locked out family if there was another stairwell. She said something like, "I wish. That would be too easy."

I looked ahead of me at the crowd of youngsters on the other side. There was no way both groups could pass through the hall at the same time. Since our group was smaller, I thought we could pass through first and then they could be free to walk through to the other side. I pushed my way forward to the west side glass doors and pressed a button to talk through a speaker. I asked the kids on the other side to stand back and make room for us to pass through first, and then, we would return the favor. I saw the kids move to the sides of the hall and make a pathway in the middle for us to go through. Before I went through the doors, I asked the mom to make sure the other group had space to walk through the hallway like they were giving us, but when I looked behind me, I realized that may not be necessary since there weren't many people on our side of the hall and we could pass through easily to the other side. I started my way down the walkway to the east side. My nephew (or another kid) was with me. The rest of our group stayed behind the west side glass doors to see what would happen. The glass door on the other side opened automatically as we approached. At first, the kids were making room, then a few of them started spilling back inside the middle. I paused and then moved back to the other side of the door. I had to press a button to force the door to close. I looked behind me - the people on the west side were still behind the doors, watching to see if I could get through. I turned around and spoke into the speaker at the east side doors. I told the kids I was going to give them time to settle down and regroup - to make space for us again. The kids calmed down and then made a path for us to walk through. I hit the button again and the doors opened. My nephew and I walked through the crowd. The kids looked excited, though not to see us. We walked through the crowd to the top of the hill, and then, turned around to look down on the others as they passed through. My friend, CC and the other people in our group, walked through - waving to the crowd. The kids were jumping up and down as if my friends were celebrities that they had been waiting to see.

Cleaning, Searching, Seeing, Accepting

At the beginning of the dream, I was riding the bus. I had gotten off the express bus from work and got on another bus to go to tango class. My friend, SO, got on the bus and sat nearby. I suddenly remembered we were going to get out of class very late. At first I thought I should have driven, but then thought maybe another friend, JH, or SO's husband could drive me back to my car. We got to the studio, but the class hadn't started. It took a while for the teacher to arrive. When he did, I realized that the room (which looked like a bedroom) was very messy. I had to move things back in place. There was a small table in the middle of the room that had to be moved back behind the bed. I also pushed the bed to be flush up against the table. I was trying to move things back in place and two other tango students, KS and CC, came to help. I apologized for things being such a mess, for not cleaning up before class started.

I went out of the room into the kitchen to get a drink of water. I ran into two women I knew from college. I was surprised to see them there. We hugged. They asked me where the bathroom was. I knew the place had a bathroom along one of the hallways. I walked them down there and saw my freshman college roommate, JJ, coming out of a room. I said half-jokingly, "JJ is in Raleigh, North Carolina and she didn't tell me?" JJ looked guilty, but didn't say anything. I realized if JJ was there, then the AKA sorority must be having a meeting in the house. I continued to walk down the halls. I remembered the house having two bedrooms on the floor, each with it's own bathroom inside - but they were not open to the public. I thought the public bathroom was one of the doors at the far end of the hall, but the doors I opened were not the right ones. I finally found the bathroom when I walked back to the beginning of the hall.

I walked back to the other side of the house and saw Rev. L, the campus chaplain from college, from across the room. I felt compelled to talk to him. In the dream I knew he was already dead (died at least 10 years ago in reality) and had been sent to talk to me. I walked over to him and he led me to his office. While following him I saw my hands, my body, and my feet in the dream. I made a point to touch my body. I named each thing aloud as I looked at it in the dream, "I see my hands. I see my body. I see my feet." (Saying it aloud seemed more conscious than the rest of the dream). Rev. L and I walked into his office. It was a small room, with a desk that took up most of the room. The desk was cluttered with stacks of paper. The room had a large window, a small whiteboard/chalkboard, and two chairs. We each sat in a chair - the window was to the right of me. (I saw my knees and my hands again.) Rev. L showed me transcripts of people whose names I did not know/remember. He told me these students started with me and needed to graduate. I asked him what he wanted me to do. He asked me to read their papers. He explained they started the research so long ago that many of their ideas have already been made into laws. I got the impression I wasn't supposed to critique the papers too much - just read them. I said I would do it. I said told him I would do whatever it is he would have me to do.