The Post-Gazette asked five local residents to share their dreams over a two-week period in September. Here is one volunteer:

John Beale, Post-Gazette Robert Brust in his Penn Hills home. Click photo for larger image. Related stories Dream Journal: Jocelyn Hillen Dream Journal: Peter Baynes Dream Journal: Jean-Jacques Sene Dream Journal: Tara Deringor Insights from a decade-long dream journal Dreams: From falling to failing, it's the same old stories The 12 universal dreams How to keep a dream journal Readers' dreams: Reader submitted dreams from yesterday and today.

Robert Brust lives in the Penn Hills home in which he grew up. A visual artist and writer, he's a vivid dreamer who recalls great detail.

He says he paints what he can't write and writes what he can't paint, working with computer graphics, photography, sculpture and most kinds of painting.

Brust, 58, who is single, had a heart attack three years ago and has been participating in the low-fat, low-stress Dr. Dean Ornish Heart Disease Reversal Program. ("Once in a while I have a food dream in which I'm eating something I'm not allowed to have, and it's really, really good," he says.)

A former member of Mensa, the international high IQ society, he participated in a special Mensa dreaming group during the 1990s. Since 1999, Brust has attended a biweekly dream workshop in Oakland hosted by Point Breeze dream journalist Cynthia Pearson.

In September, he often dreamed of Kali, his 11-year-old calico cat that had disappeared. He frequently dreams about his father, Gus, who died seven years ago, and mother, Peg, who died three years ago, both of whom he called by their first names.

I'm seeing an unfamiliar young woman who's striding along outdoors. She seems about my height and well built -- slender but with a nice, shapely figure -- and has a pretty if not smiling or particularly happy looking face. Her light blonde hair is cut short (almost like a man's haircut) and pulled up on top of her head and partly forward in an odd way that's sort of punk looking. I wouldn't expect to like that, but on her it actually looks good. She's wearing tight, slightly worn and faded blue jeans with no belt and some kind of ordinary looking shirt. The overall effect is surprisingly attractive and sexy, and I feel quite attracted to her, but somehow I feel that she'd be difficult to approach or get anywhere with...

I'm supposed to hang an art show at a gallery in what seems like a small town. I'm there with my paintings and a friend is along. We're in the town, across the street from the gallery, which is a storefront with large front windows, is a row of similar storefronts in low, old-looking buildings.

I see through the windows that an artist friend whom I rarely see anymore is there, and is busily hanging a show of his own paintings in the same place. Apparently, somehow he's sneaked in and replaced me. I feel quite annoyed at that, but just watch and don't do anything. He's dressed all in black. He's put on weight again and his belly is big and protruding, looking almost like a pregnant woman's under his shirt. But he's moving around more briskly than I've seen in a long time, and looks like he feels well. I resent how he's sneaked in and replaced me and don't understand how that could have happened. But I'm really glad to see that he seems better physically.

Peg and I are living together in a really bad, small apartment somewhere. Place was completely unfamiliar. This is a scruffy, ratty looking, slumlord kind of place. Despite the walls being painted white, everything is in dilapidated and in dirty condition, ill-kept and poorly equipped and furnished.

Outside some of our windows is a mostly flat area that seems like the roof of another part of the building. But it, too, is all white, and there's a sense that it's actually the ruins of another former apartment that's fallen in, and the walls fallen down, leaving just the floor and some remains sticking up, in total disrepair.

A young man and woman are out there, arguing and generally making lots of noise. I go out on the "roof" to see what's going on and try to get them to be quiet. They look maybe early middle-aged, and neither looks at all well -- as if they may be drunk or on drugs -- but don't seem violent or dangerous. The woman has sort of curly long blonde hair, looks as if she was very pretty once, but has gone downhill and put on weight and is dressed in scruffy and dirty white. The man who looks tough, but isn't much larger than me, has short dark hair and is wearing a white T-shirt and black pants.

The woman is doing something with a toilet that's sitting there in the middle of the "roof", while complaining loudly that it isn't working right. She seems to be in some pain, but it isn't clear why. I wonder what in the world a toilet is doing there and who would ever use it right out in the open. Then I realize that it must have been inside the bathroom of an apartment once, and that it may be all these people have.

Peg comes out to join me and we're sort of circling around this situation and studying it. At some point the "roof" sort of shifts or feels soft under my feet. I tell Peg to be careful because I'm afraid it's falling in, and we could fall through into whatever space is below at any time.

Then the man is holding the woman in his arms and, as she's turned at a different angle than before, I can see that something terrible has happened to her right arm. It seems to have been torn right off somewhere around or below the elbow, so that the flesh comes to a ragged end with rough edges and the smashed rough end of a broken bone is sticking out. But there's no blood at all, and it doesn't look fresh, but like something that she's somehow survived with for a long time -- so this doesn't seem as urgent as if she'd just been injured and was bleeding. She doesn't seem to be in acute pain or shock, but obviously doesn't feel well either. She seems sick and maybe delirious. The man goes away and Peg and I take over the woman, though we don't know what to do. There's some discussion of taking her back to her own building. Somehow we know where she lives and I go ahead to look at it. It's a low red brick building nearby but it looks even worse than ours, and the outside is so overgrown with trees and bushes that I can't even see how to get in the door. So we give up on that and keep her where we are. We have her lying down and resting, and I check her temperature with an oddly designed little ear thermometer. A long thin part that pops into her ear is connected by a thin wire to a small rectangular box. But the temperature reads on a gauge that looks like a short mercury thermometer. I stick this in and just seconds later the box makes a loud clicking sound and I pull it out. I make out her temperature as being either 104 or 105 degrees. I remember that 106 degrees causes brain damage so this is dangerously high. I feel worried and excited. Between that and the mangled arm Peg and I decide to call 911 and have the medics come and take her away to be treated properly, even though neither she nor we can pay for it.

(Note: Brust awoke from this dream with a pounding heart. Sometime earlier he had fallen asleep face down with his arms under himself and awoke with them partly numb and painful, which may have influenced the dream of the mangled arm.)

I'm here at home, downstairs at night. It's late enough to be pitch dark out, and we're in the living room, which is mostly dark and shadowy despite most of the lights being on. I'm with a man who's visiting, a childhood friend not seen or heard of for years.

For some reason, we're each working separately on an artistic project. We have record album covers, and are decorating them further by drawing right on their faces (not something I'd ever do) ...

Now both of my parents are on the couch (alive and well, they looked considerably younger -- perhaps like old photos from well before my birth). Peg was wearing a long, old-fashioned dress in vague pale color. Gus was wearing an old-style suit of heavy dark fabric, white shirt and tie, something he never did more than briefly at home.

My friend and I go over to talk with them...Initially Gus is lying down in his suit (which looks doubly strange) with his head on a cushion at the end toward where I was working, and Peg is sitting by him on the edge. Later they change places, so Peg is lying there and Gus is sitting by her.

We chat socially, then I quietly tell Peg and Gus that they're dead. They look a little bit disconcerted, concerned and perhaps annoyed at this news -- not as if they believe it or are concerned about their health -- but more as if they wonder why I'm saying something so strange and perhaps rude with a guest present.

As I'm getting ready to go out somewhere in my car, I happen to notice that one of the tires looks really low. It's soft looking and badly distorted and looks like the inner rim is about to pop off the wheel. Obviously, I can't drive on it as it is. I get out a hand pump and laboriously pump it up. I check the other tires and they're all low, too, to a lesser extent. So I pump them all up to the optimal level, testing with a gauge. I'm not at all happy about doing that, as not only was it time to go, but I was all dressed and ready and now am getting sweaty and dirty as well as running late ... When I'm done, I return to the first tire and am disconcerted to see that it looks almost as bad as when I started. I poke it with my hand, and it actually feels somewhat soft and I hear air hissing out. Obviously there's a leak somewhere and I have no idea how to fix that. So I'll have to take it somewhere to be repaired and won't be able to get to where I was going.

(Note: Weeks later, the right front tire (the first low tire in his dream, he says) repeatedly becomes low, probably from a slow leak. "The dream was the first warning of this," he says.)