Chinese Shrine
Begin: I was in a (Chinese?) restaurant where I had eaten quite a few times before. At this particular time the proprietors gave to me a gift in appreciation of my continued patronage. This gift consisted of a small decorated basket with something in it, and a set of several polished wooden blocks that pinned together into a stack of about three or four blocks. Each block was rectangular with very rounded edges. They were all of different lengths.
I told someone about the gifts and how the owners of this restaurant were not so cold and unappreciative as I had thought, but added that I had no idea what the stack of blocks was for. My comments were overheard by an elderly (Chinese?) gentleman with a long narrow white beard, just like in prints of aged Chinese scholars. He told us that this set of blocks was part of a set that made up a semi-abstract little wooden man with a spear, who guarded the household shrine. Apparently the theory of the gift was that, if I was interested, I would look into this and get the other blocks to make up the set. The blocks were of a standard size and fit that people of this persuasion would buy one at a time until they had a set to make up the little shrine guard.
The elderly gentleman showed us his own little shrine, which consisted of a little structure of four corner posts with a floor suspended from them half way up, and with a Chinese style roof at the top. This little house-like structure was on a platform, and the little guard made up of blocks stood in front of it. He held a spear made from a dowel with a red conical point at the top end. On the shelf half way up stood a squat pottery jar with handles on each side and a shallow conical lid with a ball at the top. The color was natural light brown, like a jar that has been bisk fired. There were eight dark brown beads hanging on short strings from the neck, two to a string, two strings by each handle. The old gentleman explained that the jar symbolized tranquility and peace.
Scene shift: I was in an old frame house in some disrepair on a cluttered lot. I went to use the bathroom. the facility appeared to be a small porcelain tub with a drain in the bottom, which seemed to open on daylight. I peed into this tub for quite some time. Dreams of this sort are usually (but not always) warnings that my bladder is overfull and about to let go, so I had to wake up and take care of the problem before it got out of hand.
End.
(2022) One thing I have noticed about needing to pee in dreams, is that the facilities are always nonfunctional, backed up, really weird, or difficult to find. A real funny: I woke up during the night, and evaluating, I decided I didn't really need to pee yet and went back to sleep. My body thought otherwise, and I woke up standing at the toilet.