I am at a produce store in a ramshackle shed cluttered with a dirty old crates and boxes in addition to the tables of vegetables and fruit. I select a small plastic bag of fresh green beans and another of green fava beans, just enough to have for dinner because we will be going away the next night. As I walk over to the checkout counter I realize I I have also picked up bananas, apparently for Darchelle, but I have too many so I return some of them to the table where I see additional bananas which are discounted because they are completely black. Back at the checkout counter the cashier hands me my drivers license and some folded receipts which I had apparently given her by mistake along with my credit card.

Looking out the open north side of the store we see that a storm is approaching. A ragged black cloud is beginning to pass overhead threatening lightning and as I watch, an oddly smooth bolt of lightning arcs down from the cloud. Sparks are sizzling around the topmost leaves of the trees, perhaps walnuts, in a small orchard behind the store but the trees do not catch fire. A very large lightning strike hits a nearby shed; I do not see the bolt but the shed completely vanishes. The black cloud passes over us without doing us any harm and we all go over to the south side of the store to continue watching it.

Another bolt of lightning like the one which caused the shed to disappear strikes another ramshackle building about 50 yards away. The bolt does not look like lightning but rather like one of those enclosed walkways crossing over a street between two buildings only one end descends to the ground, and it is dull orange rather than bright white. I turned to the man next to me and exclaim "That's your house, isn't it?", but it is not his house. It is a small storage building filled with and decorated with colorful little knick-knacks and the orange bolt/walkway begins to suck the building off to the left, towards some woods. As we watch, the bolt turns into several men with short bodies and oversized heads who continue to drag the building towards the woods, apparently attempting to steal it.

A little girl runs screaming towards us away from the thieves who are stealing the building. As she runs into the store where we are watching, she is pursued by a woman who, like the thieves, is very short with an abnormally large head. We know that we should probably try to rescue the girl but we do not know what to do so we do nothing. The woman, or someone who like her is not a good person, wants to use the bathroom in the produce store. Although we believe she might try to steal something, we feel that we need to let her use the bathroom because it is open to the public. A tall and well-dressed Indian man who is also probably against us either already has used, or intends to use, the bathroom as well and we cannot prohibit him from doing so either.

Ali is with me and she wants to show me something. She holds up a receipt with several items on it and tells me "See, I bought a cookie." and I realize that she wants me to understand that she is not as pure, or maybe strict, as I think she is.

This is my second dream in a week featuring produce, a symbol which has not appeared in previous dreams that I can recall. Not that this is a comprehensive list of my dreams by any means; I think it likely that I come up with at least several and probably more distinct dreams every night, I just don't remember them. Anyhow, in my earlier dream the produce appeared to represent what I am able to do or create (what I produce), and perhaps not just in a physical sense, but also what I feel and think. That dream appeared to consider how my produce is impacted by my disability resulting from ALS. Perhaps this dream does too. The produce in this dream is flawed but mostly usable, perhaps representing how living with my disability feels normal despite the limitations it imposes.
I think the storm symbolizes ALS. It threatens devastation but does not actually cause much harm. In other dreams over the past few years ALS has been symbolized by storms, floods, high surf and earthquakes, none of which have done as much harm as they threatened to. The symbol of trees with sparks at their tips recalls my earliest dream of ALS and may represent how ALS has indirectly brought beauty and healing into my life even as it has devastated my body and stolen much of my ability to enjoy activities and things in my life. That may be the significance of the shed full of knick-knacks and the lightning which turns into a (small) gang of thieves. Thanks to ALS I can no longer create nor handle the beautiful little objects which I formerly enjoyed, polished rocks and paintings among them; I can only look at them. On the one hand I have adjusted to that reality but on the other hand I am that little girl, screaming with terror and rage at the injustice of it all. I have no recourse; nothing can be done about my decline and impending death.
The storm is not only threatening symbol in the dream. The dream appears to compare the threatening storm with people who are different from me and with whom I might for that reason find intimidating or even threatening. The thieves appear as grotesque caricatures of dwarves. The woman who pursues the little girl is also one of the thieves and may also take from us in the store. The man who is well-dressed is nonetheless a person of color and therefore different. These people whom I in the dream regard as other may appear threatening but they merely want to use the bathroom. Like the storm, we cannot prevent them from doing what they want, and also like the storm, they cause no serious harm.
Ali's cameo appearance at the end of the dream seems out of place. She has in previous dreams represented an ideal of a rational approach to life (and death) but in this scene she appears to be emphasizing that she is not as rigid as I think. In my experience ideals have been threatening, not unlike the storm, or ALS for that matter. I have tended to regard ideals as harmful rather than helpful, offering not a pathway to success but rather an opportunity for failure. The dream suggests that view may be overly negative, and that holding ideals may not be as dangerous as I have thought.