Night of 30th November 2009

I'm playing football alone on some empty ground (like an empty field used as a car-park, or such). There isn't much grass underfoot, it's rocky/clay-like soil; and there are two tall trees (I think). I boot the ball high up in the air, very high, and it gets caught in an eddying wind current. The ball is whisked away like a kite, I don't see its path away from me this happens so fast. And losing it is a real shock.
I'm distraught about the lost ball; but my father appears to help me find it, his presence gratifies me instantly - I feel transported back to childhood, reassured by the protection of my Dad. We go together looking for the ball, and are on the other side of some barrier facing a choppy shore and pebbled beach. Walking along a raised (about a meter up from the beach) storm wall we're looking for the ball, I sense my father is behind me but he is somehow leading the search - showing me where to look. He makes me feel upbeat, he jokes and encourages me as we walk. I see the ball laying still on the raised walk out in front of me. Upon discovery my father congratulates and reminds me that everything was going to be alright; I'm ecstatic, I pick up the ball, turn, and while running back toward my father consider doing a reverse somersault off the wall on to the beach below.

The scene changes. I'm in a crowd and we're watching the live performance on the outdoor stage. The vocalist is a James Brown type figure, older than us, representative of a soul/funk generation, however he is hispanic - mexican, or latin american. He is wearing a black hat, like a fedora, and black clothes, and sings one of his classics, which is very very good. The song ends and he is in different clothes and a different hat - both this time grey - and he begins to speak. He rambles on about something and unsettles the crowd and the management. We think that his music is great; but his philosophies are crackpot and marginal - in the end they undermine his image as a great musician and I think he'd be so much more successful if he just kept them private. But then again, like James Brown, etc., he wouldn't be him if he didn't go off he rails like that. I notice his eyes set in the deep coffee colored face; the black pupils are very prominent against the bright whites of his eyes. They are subtly-but-strangely large (in proportion to the rest of the eye) and their appearance is like that of a snake's or big cat's - perhaps more a snake's. His eyes are drawing and I look at them for a while - impressed by the scary beauty.
The security guard who was unsettled by the singer's monologue and unobtrusively tried to restrain him, is, I think, the same person now posted in front of the elevator I'm waiting for. The outdoor stage was outside the entrance, part of the entrance, to a great tower block or skyscraper, and it is this building's elevator that I now wish to board. I'm going down. It's a short journey, only a floor or two. Having done what I wanted to do downstairs, I go back for the elevator - I think the guard is there again. Two men in suits, about my age, enter the elevator with me, they are chatting to each other in good spirits. As the doors close another two men run for the elevator. I don't do anything; but the two men inside cheerfully make a lunge for the doors to keep them open. I think the guard is inside also, he's helping them. The lift had just begun its ascent and is not flush with the floor, etc., and the two latecomers struggle to get in. They make it and exchange jokes with the two helpers. I'm not involved in the camaraderie.
I'm at the top of the tower. It's night time, or everything is black; there are many polished, glassy, surfaces and they reflect city lights. (I had done something at this juncture, but unfortunately I couldn't note the dream down upon waking and the information is lost to me now.)
With whatever it was done, I'm going back down in the elevator. The elevator doesn't take me all the way back down to the ground floor; it stops part way, and I have to lump it and use the building's grand stairwell to complete the descent. Exiting the elevator, I see the floor's interior is again different: not utilitarian and unadorned like the basement; not modern and glamorous like the top floor; but red brick and steel, lit by tungsten lights - like a multi-story carpark level, or the interior of a train-station. It's busy, people flow like a river through the wide channel (the hallway?) and weave through the brick columns. The floor plan must be a regular design as the columns, walls, walkways are all laid out in a geometric pattern. The elevator shafts are central veins running down the middle of the building, whereas the pedestrian spaces are located further from the centre. Thus, around the exit of elevators there are narrow corridors of calm - no one is walking there. The people seem to be all going the same way, a squared version of the Coriolis effect. It must be home time.
I'm in a rush leaving the elevator and want to work my way into the other rushing bodies flowing round the corners toward the stairwell in orderly fashion. I have hastily turned left (90 degrees left, as everything is geometric) out of the elevator, left again, around the corner, on my right there is a colonnade of brick columns. On the right side of the colonnade, traveling parallel, is the flow of people; on my side of the colonnade no-one. The colonnade stretches out in front of me for about 5m, where there must be another turn, or the entrance to the grand stairs, as the people are no longer parallel, but perpendicular to my view, i.e., as I look down the colonnade, at the end, they are moving from my right to my left. I rush down the vacant corridor created by the shielding colonnade to join the current of people as they enter the grand stairs.
I don't remember the journey but I'm back at the ground floor, or near it - I know just by a feeling of normality. I'm either at a cafe, or a large display: there is a counter with lots of products on it. It feels festive (in waking life it is now the Holiday season) like a special display or seasonal promotion, etc. On the large crescent shaped counter there are some products that look like luxury chocolates - yet the brand marks/logos make me think of luxury tobacco (before sleeping I had been looking at luxury brands of tobacco - I'm thinking of changing brands). The products are free. I can't believe this as the boxes they are in are luxurious and big (a significant loss to the producer/seller), and besides they are luxury brands - nothing this good is just given away. An old lady tells me that, yes they are free, really, take one... and I make my way over.
Lifting the lid of a gold box (either circular or crescent shaped) I see only a few chocolates left over - the offering has been ravaged by freeloaders - there is cocoa powder, a mud brown sand-dune, and on it the last few chocolates. I take some and move onto another box, on the lower shelf of the display counter. It too has been almost emptied - it seems I'm too late, but I'm not saddened. Conversely, I'm very happy that these luxury chocolates, these luxury brands are all here for me to take. I see more brand logos on the boxes (I recall a YSL logo - I saw YSL on a black packet of "YSL" cigarettes found during the pre-sleep research mentioned previously). Helping myself to the free luxury, these new brands of chocolate I had never heard of, I'm ecstatic. I wake.