dream

i am in a dorm
much like the one i stayed at at camp this summer
i am surrounded by artists
much like the ones i was surrounded by this summer

they are all hurting themselves

i dont remember the specifics

only a vague image of a androgenous face lying on the ground close to my own...
in some sort of self induced agony.

i decide to leave

there is some logic behind what they are doing to themselves...
some excuse for it like... art or self discovery
so my dream self cannot bring herself to tell them to stop...
she understands why they cannot so she leaves

she (i) take an elevator down from the dorm
the mall... the palisades mall is under the dorm...
the mall is sort of like the lobby or common area of the dorm...
where everyone hangs out when they are not in their rooms or on thier floor

so i wander around the mall.
it is huge... like a realistic mall
i end up on the other side from where i came down in the elevator when i decide i can go back upstairs now.

on the otherside (where i am) there is another elevator.
much the same as the one that i came down in
but
i know that if i go up in it i will have a difficult time finding my way back to the dorm
i know that my dorm is on the fifth floor
but apparently the fifth floor is very large because if i take this other elevator there i will not know how to get to my side of the floor.

so
i know all this but
i decide to take this elevator anyway
there is a man guarding the elevator door and i have to pay him a ticket which i have to get from a ticket machine near the elevator.
so i am getting my ticket thinking that if the elevator comes down and the doors open i can get in without paying...
which apperently is allowed
because the doors open and i get on right infront of the elevator man and he doesnt care...

once inside i hit the botton for the fifth floor and the doors close and the lift goes up
we go to the seventeenth floor.
a beautiful thin tall black woman gets on

the she hits the lobby botton and the elevator takes her down...
as she gets off at the floor that i just left from she calls back to me something about the elevator not choosing floors in the order that the bottons were pressed.

we go to another floor that is not my floor and a girl gets on
i know her
she is from another group...
not my group...
she is not from this side of the building
but she is not from my side of the building either...
she takes a different elevator to her dorm...
not this one but not mine
but i know her

she asks me why i am on this side
i say i thought it didnt mater and that i would end up on my floor anyway
she points to the elevator buttons with the numbers on them and i notice
that there are a lot of different sets of numbers
there are multiple fifth floors

now i know i am lost

the girl who i know and i get off at some random floor

we leave the building

there is a blank spot in the dream now

next thing i remember is that we are lost
outside of the building at the top of a hill and we are on bicycles.
we ride very fast down the hll and end up through the glass doors of a building... (they open and we ride through)
the lobby we are in is the lobby with the elevator to the girls dorm
and from there i know how to get to my dorm

the other people from the girls group run to meet us and want to now how we got lost and why we left and how we found our way back
they put quarters into our hands to pay for the elevator and then tell us that it really doesnt matter
and then take our hands and we all get in the elevator and then
i woke up...