A plan to kill me

          I was staying in a hotel for a conference. Before leaving I had to mount some fluorescent lights in the van I was driving. I had to get them from the maintenance shop. I went to pick them up, and saw that someone had written on them “film of (my name) killing 05/08” I carefully wiped the writing off. I brought the van into the shop and went about installing the lights, which became a matter of threading a complicated seat-belt harness. It had to be threaded through a number of eyelets like laces on a boot. I got one wrong, and the whole thing didn’t work, so the woman who was to use the room after I left said I should just leave it like that, but if I did that the belt wouldn’t hold me in. Even so, I was frustrated and late, so I just dropped it.

          I went back to the room to finish packing. There was a man there who was also getting ready to leave. The minute he saw it was time to leave he just packed up and went. I had all sorts of trouble finding all my stuff and getting it packed. I had a lot of bags. I couldn’t remember why I had so many. The woman who was coming in to the room arrived, and I saw that I was twenty minutes late, but I still wasn’t ready. I still had another rack o lights to install, so I went out to go to the shop. I saw a muddy footprint on the light colored rug, and worried that I had done it, but was sure I hadn’t. Going outside, I saw that there was a huge swath of mud in the parking lot, so I knew the woman had made the muddy footprint.

          I passed through the lobby and spoke with an employee. I said something about how I had reserved a room for four people, but when I got there, there was no reservation, so they had put me in a room for two. The clerk was evasive about that, and I got the impression that there had never been a reservation, or they didn’t take reservations, or I had called, but didn’t complete the reservation process. There was something they weren’t telling me; some implied slight or distaste. All the employees I passed  could have been the ones who wrote about my killing.

          I got my bike and slung some of my bags over it, and with the woman following me, I rode across the lot, swerving hard to miss the mud. When I got to where the shop should have been it was gone. In its place were a number of customer service rooms, where people were checking in or milling around. I walked around looking for the shop. I saw Beth, and went to ask her, since she worked there, but she got caught up helping a customer, and I didn’t want to bother her. I looked around and saw Shelly, whose name I had trouble remembering, but I did remember, and asked her where the shop was. She acted as if it was a secret. She had me walk into another room and asked me if I knew my password.

          I asked her which password she meant, and she said the one I’d give Dave, the head of maintenance on the phone if I called him. I knew that password, so she led me to another room with some computers. The one she led me to was strangely old-fashioned and at the same time futuristic. I sort of knew how to use it, and was getting along, and then I realized that all this was going to allow me to do was email him. I turned quickly to Shelly who was about to leave, and said ‘Shelly, this will only let me email him! I need my car! My car is in the shop!” She smiled and looked slyly at me, then backed up to what looked like closet doors, banged on them and yelled “hey Dave”. I guessed that the shop was hidden in there.

 

I’m not remembering the sequence of events properly, because the “first” part of this dream actually came somewhere in the middle. Nevertheless it seems to be an anxiety dream. I’m late, I can’t get it together, simple things become complicated, and they want to kill me. I’ve had quite a few dreams about being in hotels, and even about checking out of hotels lately. I wonder if the hotel is a symbol of a psychological state which I’m passing through. If all the characters are aspects of my psyche, them killing me would be suicide. Or would it be killing off an aspect of myself. What happened in May of 08? May of 07 was significant because I started a huge, life-changing project.