Night of 23rd January 2010

I'm being initiated into a motorcycle gang/club at their clubhouse. It looks like a run down caravan or trailer, but we are up in the air - seemingly on an upper floor of a disused building. The gang are lazy, unkempt, littering layabouts. I can tell from the sheer amount of debris and rubbish strewn about the place. Nothing here has been bought: they steal or scavenge everything.
I never see more than 2 or 3 members of the gang, and waiting for my initiation I only meet two. One is some kind of principal who is making me wait for my sponsor/big-brother to arrive - I can only register in the gang through this character.
He arrives, a huge, slovenly man, and is totally unprepared (typically for the gang as they are all layabouts) for my initiation. He has probably forgotten he had to do my initiation today. We bungle through the initiation, and I'm given some kind of registration which seems totally unofficial, and I can already see the dates, etc., are all written in wrong.
Next I'm having a tattoo done on my left arm. I just want a simple design, some lettering, and am conscious about not overdoing it and having a gaudy unfashionable tattoo. We are in a hotel room, also rundown, and there are three of us: my sponsor and one more. Still in the hotel, it seems to be the next day/morning. The others have trashed the room utterly: sinks are full of crap, and litter is strewn all over the floor. I'm embarrassed, and anxious what the hotel proprietors will do when they find out. But the brothers are not concerned at all, and I recall that we are "off the grid" and there is nothing much society can do to us - we have no fixed addresses or bank accounts, etc., and so nothing to be penalized with. I join in the ransacking of the room.
I notice in one of the mirrors my tattoo is not as I asked for; it's exactly the kind of tacky one I didn't want. Going all the way down to my left wrist - a "sleeve" type - it has more than just lettering, but also other designs and words, and coloring. The biggest letters, the ones I had asked for (but asked to end at my elbow) read "motorcycle" and are set against a purple dominated background (my entire arm has been colored). There is another short, perhaps only four letter, word on my deltoid, but it is lost to me in waking now. On the reverse side of my arm, perhaps just above the elbow, there is a shape, or picture, like an incisor tooth or boat's sail. I see all of this through the mirror in the room, the sink in front of which I have just ruined with refuse. I'm suddenly fully dressed, in a black t-shirt and vest - and to my surprise, the tattoo looks very good.
We descend to breakfast. Upon entering the breakfast room, we see it packed with staff members - all sitting around and eating breakfast. There is only one free table, past the largest group of uniformed kitchen and service staff, and the three of us make for it - though it is nigh on impossible to get past the staff and squeeze through to our table. The the other two have gone on ahead of me, and made it through OK, but I hesitate and am cautious not to be a nuisance to the seated staff - although their obstinance angers me (I'm a customer!).
I seem to get stuck up at the staff table, and here I see that they are not eating breakfast (post breakfast shift) but are in an elaborate training exercise to improve their service. Staff members role play: waiters, cooks, customers; and it seems they each practice a role that is not theirs in normal duty. Back at the table, I see that most of the (role-playing) guests are women, and they seem to have come from the 40s or 50s - not noticed in the way they dress, but a certain esprit de corps among them that alludes to as much.

The others, the staff and my brothers, are nowhere to be seen and I'm having breakfast at a table. I don't recall the meal itself, or eating it, but partway through I feel silly, all alone, and slink off without paying the bill. Paradoxically, my cover escaping the empty breakfast room are the many people moving about the breakfast room. I casually rise and walk away, looking over my shoulder a couple of times, no one has noticed.

As I walk, the indoor surround of the breakfast room has become an outside courtyard. The building walls are sandstone and the ground is grassy and lush. In front of me I see the courtyard open out on to an unkempt lawn surrounding the perimeter of the building. I can see an old person in the distance, cutting the long knee length grass.

I am on my bike. We are three again: myself, the slovenly big brother, and a girl - all on bikes. We are on a road trip, I sense a pan-European trip, and are near our next destination. We're stopped at a t-junction and I'm thinking about my bike. I can't quite recall (in waking) but my bike was supposed to have been a very special, unique, "headless" (or something similar) bike. But as I look down, I see the handles and headlight - it is not literally headless. Yet, still, it does seem true that this is the headless bike, that only I have - or I have one of only a few. The bike is white, with some silver trimmings. It's not a modern bike, but not antique either. It looks like something from the 80s, a bigger version of the bike Schwarzenegger rode as the terminator in the first Terminator film.

Although the road is clear, we aren't leaving the t-junction. I'm furthermost in front, yet it doesn't feel like my fault that we are not leaving - we're waiting for one of the two behind. A car comes past - either the car has a dog in it, or the car is a dog. It is very similar to the dog from the Simpsons cartoon: whippet-like, brown, ditzy. The car overshoots the t-junction, or makes some mistake and has to stop, turn left, reverse, return to the junction, and then turn right before speeding off. As the car is turning left to correct itself it appears as a cart, or the driver is sat that way - with the dog between his legs, and here no wheels, etc., are viewable so it seems that the dog was the car. As the car reverses back onto the carriageway (where we are waiting) it bumps over the ravine between road and pavement. I see that to overcome the bump the driver had to overcompensate on the throttle, but after clearing the bump had to instantly correct or risk speeding off in reverse and hitting something. I'm impressed by his rough skill doing this - very practical and pilot like. He speeds off right out of the junction and we are left still waiting. But now we seem ready to go.

The t-junction is no longer a left or right choice - we can motor straight ahead toward what looks like a huge bridge (huge because it obscures whatever it is bridging). I lead the way, in my black t-shirt, tattoo showing down my arm, on my white headless bike. I sense that over the bridge is our destination.

We have crossed (although I have no recollection of the crossing) and arrived at a park or gypsy ground. The ground is open, but seems to accommodate some structure too. There are brown tracks, in straight criss-crossing lines, a grid, like the streets of Kyoto, running the grassy ground.

I'm separated from the other two again, but the girl seems to have been taken, kidnapped, or otherwise in distress, and I'm searching her out, slowly cruising along the brown tracks looking for her. I'm careful on the throttle, controlling my speed - and my attention to this, suggests I'm not at one with the bike, or experienced a rider enough yet. I start down one of the tracks and see the girl in the street (the track) ahead of me. She's a young girl, perhaps just a teenager. I wake.

Night of 9th January 2010

The shed is a roomy workshop like space, just like Doc Brown's workshop in Back to the Future III. And just like Back to the Future III we are in an historic western frontier setting/time. There are a few of us in the shed, and I'm aware that the others are shunning the negro. They are arguing about how to complete what it is that's to be done, and I, characteristically, decide I will go it alone. I position myself, however, close to the negro, moving away from the others - sending a passive signal that I'm happy to do what I'm doing with him (the negro). Although I'm not really sure what it is I'm supposed to do, or achieve - it is not initially apparent at any rate.

I'm then pan frying something. The negro is standing to my right, and I seem to be including him in the task although his participation is, at best, passive. The first pan fry is unsuccessful - the contents of the pan look like an omelet: circular, yellow - but somehow I haven't cooked the dish right and have to start again. I don't, however, discard the first attempt: I keep it on the worktop close to the cooking hob. The next attempt is a similar dish, but this time I'm using tomatoes, tinned plum tomatoes; I realize this as I'm shown an image of the completed dish in the pan. The same circular, yellow appearance is there, however, mixed in is the red of the tomatoes, which I can see have been crushed and appear, not as chunky pieces, but thinned strands. (this image seems to me as very similar to the painting in the museum dream some months ago)

I sense the negro is closer to me as this second attempt is completed, in fact, he is right next to me, shoulder to shoulder. I can't (in waking) recall his help, but I feel as though I want to credit him with having contributed (in the dream). I slide the completed dish out of the pan and onto the worktop. It overlaps the previous attempt. It seems like a pizza (strong enough to support its own structure, unlike an omelet which would fall apart if you picked it up). I realize the first attempt, which I now say was a cheese dish, or cheese infused dish, of some sort would pair up well with the second, and over lay the first on top of the second. It's this point that I credit the negro and tell him he can have, or be a partner in, the successful invention. In fact, I go further, and say that we could have a hamburger in it, wrapped in the middle. One appears there.
This being the old-west, we have created the first ever cheeseburger (I realize the creation in the dream is not, properly, a cheeseburger) and are set to be extremely rich and secure forever from the invention. I'm glad to have given this gift to the (hard done by) negro.

I have to go and see Darrell (an African-American acquaintance from waking life) at the hospital. I want to take him some gifts and wrap up the new culinary invention in a plastic bag which has some other items (forgotten) in it. I must take care to carry the bag carefully, so as not to destroy the cooking, and carry it like a waiter does a platter or round serving tray. The setting has become futuristic; but not futuristic as we'd imagine now, it's what "futuristic" would have been imagined to be by people from 30/40 years ago. I've come around a corner and I'm walking down the hill it turned onto. There are no cars on the streets and it seems like dusk. I'm on the right hand side of the two way street. I must be in a rush, or behind schedule, or eager to get there as soon as I can - as I think that I must take a cab to the hospital. There is a taxi pick up point just ahead, mid way down the hill, and what seems to be a car waiting there. I approach the car and lean down and intend to board it, only to see it is not a car but some kind of novelty or gift store fashioned out of a car chassis. It's purple and the the stock seems to be small gaudy flowers; there's an old Japanese man tending the store, but I don't talk to him, and he doesn't seem to respond to my presence. I realize the gift store was not exactly the pick up point and see the actual one just ahead. I arrive there, but still there are no cars on the road, no sign of any coming, and I notice the foot of the hill is actually very close. I decide to continue on foot, and can see people, hustle bustle, at the urban area the hill leads on to.
I'm in the urban area, which seems like downtown west-Shinjuku, a CBD area of Tokyo, and I'm waiting at a crosswalk. There are many people around, all waiting for the lights too. The lights change and we spill onto the road; as people pass the other way, I notice a couple of western women, who seem like up-market mothers in their late 30s, in the group. As we pass I over hear them talking in American accents - they speak of healthcare, insurance providers specifically, and the talk seems topical as America is currently trying to pass healthcare reform legislation.
I'm close to Darrell's hospital. I go in one of the big buildings (all the buildings are more or less skyscrapers) and people are coming this way and that - it seems like a busy shopping night or something - most of them are female. I'm now unsure if I've got the right place, and want to sit down and get my bearings. I see some cafeteria style seats and tables in a corner and make my way over.
There's an ashtray on the table with some stubbed out cigarettes in it. I'm a little shocked and relieved - shocked because most buildings are now non-smoking, and relieved because I'm a smoker. The seats look like ones you'd see on a tram or train: plastic moulded unibody attached to the floor/wall, with velour fabric. The body seems to be cream plastic, and the velour purple; although I also have an image of cream plastic with green velour (which makes me think of the Japanese bank SMBC) which may have been another building I mistakenly went into before this one.
Behind the seats + table, in the wall, there is a thin, oblong, hole or slit, with rounded edges (in fact they curve into each other) under which a card is slid - just like name card arrangement on the spine of ring binders, etc. I can't however recall what was written (or recall if I could actually read it in the dream). After seeing this slit, I sit.
At that moment another group of women has approached my position, and I think they are approaching me. However they stop just before me and seem uninterested in my presence. They are waiting for the elevator - which I now see is behind/next to the little corner of seats and tables where I am. This must be the way to the clinic where Darrell is. I wake.