Dream: Jerry Hammerstein's Contract

Dream 20030819, 5:00 AM:

I’m half-lying, half-sitting in a sort of long bed, kind of shaped like one of those hospital beds that prop you up, at the end of a long dark hallway. It is like a hallway in an office building or a dormitory, with closed doors all the way down each side. Jaime (the maintenance man from my office IRL) calls down the hallway to me, telling me that there’s a situation that he’s not sure how to handle. I decide that I need to get up and take care of it. I walk down the hall. The opposite end is brighter, and Jaime explains to me that there is someone here who is trying to make sure his reservations for a room are good. I walk up to a desk at the end of the hall, where a man is standing waiting. He hands me a long legal-paper contract. Several parts of it have been highlighted, or underlined with a yellow pen. The name at the bottom of it is something like Jerry or George Hammerstein; it’s signed, with a very strong clear legible handwriting.

I explain that it shouldn’t be any problem to use the Conference Room or the Studio (these are rooms in the building where I work in waking life.) I tell Jaime that I’ll take over, and I want to show this man where the two rooms are, so that he’ll know, and also so that I can make sure there’s not someone already in them. People tend to have spontaneous meetings in these rooms sometimes without scheduling them with me. His contract isn’t the right kind, and I wonder who he signed it with; I don’t ask him, though. It’s like he made a formal request, but to the wrong department. It’s just easier to take care of it, than to question it.

At first, I’m leading the man along the hallway, but as we progress, I find myself walking along by myself. I can’t find the rooms I’m looking for. I find myself in a huge complex of office hallways with receptionist desks and brown wood paneled walls. I keep looking for Room 301, but it seems like the numbers on the hallway are wrong – they’re all even numbers, as if I’m on the wrong end of the building. I remember walking by a door that has a nameplate on it with an ordinary woman’s first name, like Susan, but where the last name should be, it says “the Real.” I snicker to myself as I walk past. Inside, she is seated at her desk, explaining to someone that she changed her last name to Lavender, because she loves the herb so much. She had first experienced the scent of it when somebody gave her some as a gift, or something like that. She uses Susan the Real on her name plate so that people will know she is genuine.

I keep looking for 301, and finally go downstairs and outside, and look at the name on the building. It says something like Commons – and I recognize that it’s the wrong building, which is why I couldn’t find the room I was looking for. I don’t remember if I found the right building. I remember floating along through the hallways, still in my pajamas, feet-first, pushing doors open with my toes. I’m surprised that people aren’t more startled than they are, because it’s not every day you see people floating down the hallway in mid-air, let alone in pajamas. I think this may have been my mind trying to shift into a lucid dream – I often turn lucid after realizing that I’m using Special Dream Powers. However, I didn’t, just woke up.