anyway, i was at the service station up the street from my parents’ house, having some minor repairs done to the enormous behemoth (a “juggernaut”?), which was taking a much longer time to complete than they at the service station had originally told me, so i decided that i would make the repairs myself – changing the oil, replacing a hose, and something else relatively minor – but the guys at the service station were not into letting a “big” job like that go without a fight, so two of the service station guys actually got on the “bus” as i was driving it out of the parking lot, and refused to get off until i went back to the service station. they were actually acting as though they owned the bus, and i was “taking” it without their permission. i was driving through the neighbourhood near my parents’ house – i knew that if i went directly to my parents’ house that they would know where to find it, and just come back at night to “repossess” it – and somehow i convinced the two guys to vacate the bus relatively far away from where i was going to end up, but that is where the dream took a really weird turn.
somehow, after “dropping off” the guys from the service station, i found myself in a part of town with which i was completely unfamiliar, although it was a place i knew i had been before. and, somehow, the bus sort of faded out the more unfamiliar/familiar the streets became, until i was in front of this large residential house which was in between the road and the beach(?) near the end of the road through a very rich neighbourhood of extremely large residential houses, which i recognised as a sufi(?) spiritual centre/school. i went in without knocking, as though it was my own house (because i knew i would be welcome?), and was immediately greeted by a tall, middle-eastern man with a long greyish-black beard and a plaid button down shirt (majid? it would make the whole dream even weirder if it was, but who knows…) who welcomed me as though they had been expecting me. there were a large number of people in the house, doing various tasks the details of which were out of my view, and there were a fair number of small children (it was a school as well as a spiritual centre). they said that they were muslim, but i got the impression that they were not “normal” muslims, in very much the same way that sufis say they’re muslims, but are, in fact, quite different, in many significant ways from “normal” muslims. eventually i began to see signs that disturbed me, like a hook on a wall that held many whips, and a whole “classroom” of children being taught the right way to do “penance” which involved the teacher (who was a guy i recognised, although at this point, i don’t remeber who he was) whipping himself, while the children watched. it was at this point that i decided to leave, but there was something unspoken that gave me the impression that it was impossible to leave. nevertheless, i somehow escaped from the house, and was climbing over rocks on the beach, heading for the very-rich-looking house in the very-rich-looking neighbourhood when i realised that i had somehow found myself in bellingham, on the south side – which, i figured, would be a good way to hide the bus (remember?) from the people who wanted to take it from me.
but then i couldn’t find the bus, and i couldn’t find my way back to where i had last seen the bus (in bellevue) because i was in bellingham. and the tall middle-eastern guy (who might have been majid) was there, saying something i don’t know, because i was deliberately not hearing what he was saying… and somehow it transformed into the neighbourhood around lake sammammish, near my parents’ house, which frustrated me so much that i woke up.
i distinctly remember, at least twice, trying, and succeeding to a certain extent, to go back to sleep and pick up the dream where i left off, but i always seemed to pick up on the dream in the middle, where there were signs that disturbed me in the house, and i couldn’t change the dream, which disturbed me even more.