(Entered in paper journal at 10:37 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in a library which may have been in a basement. I wandered around through the aisles of shelves. the place had a very drab, grey look to it, like an auto shop or a tech supply shop. Some of the books were piled up at the ends of the aisles, possibly on tables or chairs. All the books looked clean and well cared for, though they all seemed like very old editions of the classics.
I saw a computer somewhere. The computer was linked up to my work. I heard a woman (a senior co-worker KK?), as if she were talking to me on a phone or through the computer, which I wasn't always near, telling me that everything I did was fine, that I was on a list of people who were going to be kept at my job.
I thought, Then I'd better not do anything stupid. I wondered if I was doing something stupid by being in this library instead of being at work.
Dream #2
I was at my mom's house, which looked like the house we lived in from about the time I was in sixth grade to about the time I was in ninth grade. The room was alternately dim, as if it were lit from another room, and light, as if lit with a warm, incandescent bulb.
I was floating through the air, probably backwards, tipping my head backwards. I may have been landing on and bouncing off of furniture in the living room.
My mom (?) had at some point said there was a rat in the living room. I was trying to find it, but I was also afraid to find it. I thought even seeing it would drive me crazy or poison me physically. But I was also trying to convince myself that the rat was actually just a mouse, and that it was actually very small.
Monday, December 31, 2012
(12/30/08) the lion dance; roach apartment; elephant alien
(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM, on B-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I walked down into a stairway into a basement. The basement may have had red walls and may have been lit with incandescent light. Before me at the foot of the stairs was a weird feature like a bottomless pit. The pit was rectangular and was bounded on three sides by "mattresses." The fourth side (the long side opposite me) was the wall. Set into the wall was a square in which sat some kind of shrine, including (?) a clear, rounded vase full of colorful flowers with rose-like petals.
I leaned my elbows atop the long side's barrier and stood watching, as if I were watching a pendulum swing. I thought of a legend of a man (maybe Asian) who had practiced a certain dance. But before the dance it was generally customary for the person dancing to give thanks to a god who excelled at the dance.
This man was a great dancer and did not think he needed to give thanks to the god. So the god came down to earth and challenged the man to the dance. But the god's dance soon became an attack, and the man was either frightened out of the challenge or killed.
I thought that I should give thanks to the god before I began the dance.
I stood in a different part of the basement now, not far from where I was before. The room L'd off to become narrower, and in the narrow space stood a bunk bed. I was right at the corner of the "L."
On the wall to my left, opposite the bunk beds, and on the same wall as the bottomless pit shrine, was another shrine in a square setting. Before me and just to my right, in the corner of the wall, was a "closet space." The closet was made of cheap wood. The shelves were full of all kinds of clothing, but on the top shelf was a TV. Just to my right may have been a doorway into a concrete-floored room like a laundry or storage room. Sunlight may have shone through a window in the storage room.
My propitiation to the god was to play some kind of video on the TV -- something like an anime adventure with a sexy girl swinging around and fighting people. My mom yelled down the stairs to me to shut that show off -- she could hear it all the way upstairs. I shut the show off, like I was clicking off one program on a computer.
There was another show playing "below" this program. This show was like a live-action porno or torture show, shot crudely in a green-walled room. I may have been ashamed that I had been watching this show, and I may have shut it off as well.
My mom told me something about putting some sort of laundry in the wash. I couldn't believe I was back in a situation where my mom was controlling my life like this. I walked out of a room like the the laundry room. I now stood in some room like a common room at a homeless shelter.
There were some boys, black and Hispanic, sitting on the floor, on chairs, and on taller items like ladders. Two white men, dressed nicely and looking like men from the 1950s, had been giving some kind of positive lecture to the boys, who had just entered the shelter.
One of the men left, out a door to my left, possibly because he was going to get something useful for the boys. He might also have made a comment on exiting that he thought the chances were small that he and his colleague could help the boys think positively about this place.
I looked at the windows to this place. It was night. The windows were dark. The windows were about five feet tall and three feet wide, grid-paned, maybe three panes across and four panes tall. The remaining man was continuing his speech to the boys.
I saw how words had been written on the windows, like finger markings in condensation. The statements were positive. I now watched the condensation and markings change color. According to the mood of the statement, the pane on which the statement was written would change to a bright color while the words would change to another bright color. The colors were like shimmery acrylic paint.
I had the idea that the boys had written the statements on the window and that they had colored them. This was part of an art project. Once it was complete, it was thought, the mood produced by the windows would be so positive that the boys would love to live here.
But the boys had lost their inspiration.
The other man may now have been gone as well. Some of the boys were planning an escape. But nobody, even the really violent and rebellious ones, were sure if they would be doing the right thing.
I hadn't really been in the scene, and maybe I still wasn't. But I was knelt on the floor. A big, black boy sitting on a tall stool looked down, at me, I thought, and said, "What do you think, little girl? Should we stay or should we go?"
I now realized the boy had been speaking to a small, Hispanic boy sitting in a chair before me and just to my left. The boy had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore small, round-rimmed glasses and a big, puffy, navy blue jacket. I knew this boy was smart and sensitive, and was recognized for being so, but was always made fun of (like being called a girl) for being so obedient.
I was now being held, romantically, on one of the boy's laps. We were in front of all the boys, in the open space of the common room. The boy whose lap I sat on was black, masculine, but pretty looking. He asked me, "Don't you like this?" My head was tilted backwards. The boy was bringing down three fingers to touch my head.
I thought, I don't like this. I shouldn't be attracted to this boy. But I am.
Suddenly I was all alone. I sat on the floor in a room like the common room. It was dark, with a spotlight or spotlights shining on the floor. The carpet was hard and grey. The room had a classy feel, like in a museum.
Before me was a shrine -- also a clear vase full of flowers, maybe including orchids with white edges that faded into deep-pink centers -- which was spotlighted. There was ornamentation around the shrine, including strewn flower petals and two lion statuettes, one on each side of the shrine. The statuettes may have been green and made of wax.
The statuette to my right may have turned into a real lion. It jumped to attack me. I became horribly afraid. The lion again became the green statuette (i.e. maybe one foot long), but was still attacking me. I knew this fight was nothing but a performance, although if I lost, I would actually die.
The green lion and I wrestled. I threw it off me at one point. It flew down a small set of stairs (three or four steps, in a semicircle, like in the minerals and gems section of the American Museum of Natural History). I may have crawled or slid to the steps. The lion pounced again from the bottom of the steps. I grabbed it and flung myself backwards, to hit the lion's head against the floor.
I was now sitting up. I heard a woman's voice somewhere, maybe in my head, talking about an actress like Sarah Jessica Parker. The voice was talking about how reckless the actress was in public life and how sh'ed eventually just become annoying.
Beside me was a weird, boxlike device which may have held an opium pipe. I was smoking something. Along a ridge of the box-device were scattered tiger's-eye-colored shards, which I knew were the legs of a spider which had been killed.
The voice continued, explaining that in the profession the actress was in (it may have been acting or equity research), there was no need to be such a prima donna. After all, there wasn't as much pressure as say, that involved in rocket science.
I stood up and walked down the steps. I thought to myself, I should actually look into rocket science. I've been wanting to design rockets for a long time now.
I walked into the deep blackness beyond the spotlights. I pushed open a heavyish, metal door with a circle window in the top, like a door in a restaurant or hospital.
I walked into a fluorescent-lit room. Before me stood a group of men, mostly black. I felt like they were looking at me as if they wanted to bully me. I walked away to the left. I heard some people talking somewhere. I thought they were talking about me.
I walked up a long stairway with white, close walls and grey carpeting. I now thought I heard people laughing at me. I tried hard to hear the conversation, to see if it was about me.
At times I felt like I was drifting up the stairwell, as if on an escalator. Along the walls, on my left side, were occasional windows, behind which teams of doctors sat, usually two doctors per team, the doctors mainly being black. The doctors were usually laughing.
I heard the conversation better. It was like a senior co-worker of mine, and the guy who acted as a liaison between the research and sales departments at my company, JB, was talking to one of the doctors as part of a radio interview. JB was speaking, in his usual mellow voice, about the economy.
I reached the top of the stairwell. I walked through one metal door into a tiny "foyer," then out onto a sidewalk through another metal door.
The sky was fully clouded over, but it was colored dim blue, like the color of early morning. There was an orange streetlamp overhead. The ground was wet, as if it had just rained. The wall of the building was white-painted concrete. It felt like I was coming out of the side exit of a movie theater or playhouse.
I held the door open still because I thought I wouldn't be able to hear JB's talk if I shut the door. But then I realized there was a speaker right above me, playing JB's speech. I let the door shut as I heard JB say conditions hadn't been this tough since 1912 or 1913.
Dream #2
I was in a dim bedroom that was lit only by natural light coming from some other room at the end of a long hallway. I was with a group of friends.
One of my friends, maybe my girlfriend H, saw a roach crawl across the wall. She panicked. I was ashamed, but also upset, that roaches were back in my house again, after I'd gotten rid of them. They'd been gone for so long.
But now I looked out into the hallway. It seemed justified for roaches to be here: the floor of the hallway was so dirty it looked like a wet asphalt road.
Dream #3
I lay on "my bed." The head of my bed was positioned so I could turn left to see down the hallway. There were a couple rooms along the right wall and one room at the very end of the hallway. The doors for all the rooms may have been opened. Fluorescent light was coming out of some (?) of the rooms.
I saw two rats run into one of the lit rooms on the side wall. I was so upset to see rats in my house that I called out, "No... no... no!"
I thought I would have to get up right away and kill the rats. But now I saw, as if I were a camera (and all the lights were now off -- only the streetlights from outside providing light), how there was some strange activity happening in my closet. The rats changed (first into mice, then into lions?). I thought, I can't kill an animal that big. Then I saw the head of an elephant emerge from the closet.
I was back in my bed. I thought, It couldn't possibly be an elephant. I thought it would be terrifyingly irrational. But out of the closet walked a roughly six-foot-tall creature, walking upright on two legs, having the body shape of a human (thought the creature was naked and had the skin of an elephant) and an elephant's head, which was huge in proportion to the body. The elephant may have had black eyes like the eyes of a classic grey alien's eyes, except round, not almond-shaped.
The elephant man walked toward me. I thought, It can't come near me. It would be too frightening. But it walked all the way to my bedside. It stood at my left (?) side, as if my bed were now in its regular place. Its breathing seemed very fleshy and real. I was so frightened that I began whimper/screaming. (In fact, I may actually have been crying out loud, the sound of which may have woken me from the dream.)
Dream #1
I walked down into a stairway into a basement. The basement may have had red walls and may have been lit with incandescent light. Before me at the foot of the stairs was a weird feature like a bottomless pit. The pit was rectangular and was bounded on three sides by "mattresses." The fourth side (the long side opposite me) was the wall. Set into the wall was a square in which sat some kind of shrine, including (?) a clear, rounded vase full of colorful flowers with rose-like petals.
I leaned my elbows atop the long side's barrier and stood watching, as if I were watching a pendulum swing. I thought of a legend of a man (maybe Asian) who had practiced a certain dance. But before the dance it was generally customary for the person dancing to give thanks to a god who excelled at the dance.
This man was a great dancer and did not think he needed to give thanks to the god. So the god came down to earth and challenged the man to the dance. But the god's dance soon became an attack, and the man was either frightened out of the challenge or killed.
I thought that I should give thanks to the god before I began the dance.
I stood in a different part of the basement now, not far from where I was before. The room L'd off to become narrower, and in the narrow space stood a bunk bed. I was right at the corner of the "L."
On the wall to my left, opposite the bunk beds, and on the same wall as the bottomless pit shrine, was another shrine in a square setting. Before me and just to my right, in the corner of the wall, was a "closet space." The closet was made of cheap wood. The shelves were full of all kinds of clothing, but on the top shelf was a TV. Just to my right may have been a doorway into a concrete-floored room like a laundry or storage room. Sunlight may have shone through a window in the storage room.
My propitiation to the god was to play some kind of video on the TV -- something like an anime adventure with a sexy girl swinging around and fighting people. My mom yelled down the stairs to me to shut that show off -- she could hear it all the way upstairs. I shut the show off, like I was clicking off one program on a computer.
There was another show playing "below" this program. This show was like a live-action porno or torture show, shot crudely in a green-walled room. I may have been ashamed that I had been watching this show, and I may have shut it off as well.
My mom told me something about putting some sort of laundry in the wash. I couldn't believe I was back in a situation where my mom was controlling my life like this. I walked out of a room like the the laundry room. I now stood in some room like a common room at a homeless shelter.
There were some boys, black and Hispanic, sitting on the floor, on chairs, and on taller items like ladders. Two white men, dressed nicely and looking like men from the 1950s, had been giving some kind of positive lecture to the boys, who had just entered the shelter.
One of the men left, out a door to my left, possibly because he was going to get something useful for the boys. He might also have made a comment on exiting that he thought the chances were small that he and his colleague could help the boys think positively about this place.
I looked at the windows to this place. It was night. The windows were dark. The windows were about five feet tall and three feet wide, grid-paned, maybe three panes across and four panes tall. The remaining man was continuing his speech to the boys.
I saw how words had been written on the windows, like finger markings in condensation. The statements were positive. I now watched the condensation and markings change color. According to the mood of the statement, the pane on which the statement was written would change to a bright color while the words would change to another bright color. The colors were like shimmery acrylic paint.
I had the idea that the boys had written the statements on the window and that they had colored them. This was part of an art project. Once it was complete, it was thought, the mood produced by the windows would be so positive that the boys would love to live here.
But the boys had lost their inspiration.
The other man may now have been gone as well. Some of the boys were planning an escape. But nobody, even the really violent and rebellious ones, were sure if they would be doing the right thing.
I hadn't really been in the scene, and maybe I still wasn't. But I was knelt on the floor. A big, black boy sitting on a tall stool looked down, at me, I thought, and said, "What do you think, little girl? Should we stay or should we go?"
I now realized the boy had been speaking to a small, Hispanic boy sitting in a chair before me and just to my left. The boy had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore small, round-rimmed glasses and a big, puffy, navy blue jacket. I knew this boy was smart and sensitive, and was recognized for being so, but was always made fun of (like being called a girl) for being so obedient.
I was now being held, romantically, on one of the boy's laps. We were in front of all the boys, in the open space of the common room. The boy whose lap I sat on was black, masculine, but pretty looking. He asked me, "Don't you like this?" My head was tilted backwards. The boy was bringing down three fingers to touch my head.
I thought, I don't like this. I shouldn't be attracted to this boy. But I am.
Suddenly I was all alone. I sat on the floor in a room like the common room. It was dark, with a spotlight or spotlights shining on the floor. The carpet was hard and grey. The room had a classy feel, like in a museum.
Before me was a shrine -- also a clear vase full of flowers, maybe including orchids with white edges that faded into deep-pink centers -- which was spotlighted. There was ornamentation around the shrine, including strewn flower petals and two lion statuettes, one on each side of the shrine. The statuettes may have been green and made of wax.
The statuette to my right may have turned into a real lion. It jumped to attack me. I became horribly afraid. The lion again became the green statuette (i.e. maybe one foot long), but was still attacking me. I knew this fight was nothing but a performance, although if I lost, I would actually die.
The green lion and I wrestled. I threw it off me at one point. It flew down a small set of stairs (three or four steps, in a semicircle, like in the minerals and gems section of the American Museum of Natural History). I may have crawled or slid to the steps. The lion pounced again from the bottom of the steps. I grabbed it and flung myself backwards, to hit the lion's head against the floor.
I was now sitting up. I heard a woman's voice somewhere, maybe in my head, talking about an actress like Sarah Jessica Parker. The voice was talking about how reckless the actress was in public life and how sh'ed eventually just become annoying.
Beside me was a weird, boxlike device which may have held an opium pipe. I was smoking something. Along a ridge of the box-device were scattered tiger's-eye-colored shards, which I knew were the legs of a spider which had been killed.
The voice continued, explaining that in the profession the actress was in (it may have been acting or equity research), there was no need to be such a prima donna. After all, there wasn't as much pressure as say, that involved in rocket science.
I stood up and walked down the steps. I thought to myself, I should actually look into rocket science. I've been wanting to design rockets for a long time now.
I walked into the deep blackness beyond the spotlights. I pushed open a heavyish, metal door with a circle window in the top, like a door in a restaurant or hospital.
I walked into a fluorescent-lit room. Before me stood a group of men, mostly black. I felt like they were looking at me as if they wanted to bully me. I walked away to the left. I heard some people talking somewhere. I thought they were talking about me.
I walked up a long stairway with white, close walls and grey carpeting. I now thought I heard people laughing at me. I tried hard to hear the conversation, to see if it was about me.
At times I felt like I was drifting up the stairwell, as if on an escalator. Along the walls, on my left side, were occasional windows, behind which teams of doctors sat, usually two doctors per team, the doctors mainly being black. The doctors were usually laughing.
I heard the conversation better. It was like a senior co-worker of mine, and the guy who acted as a liaison between the research and sales departments at my company, JB, was talking to one of the doctors as part of a radio interview. JB was speaking, in his usual mellow voice, about the economy.
I reached the top of the stairwell. I walked through one metal door into a tiny "foyer," then out onto a sidewalk through another metal door.
The sky was fully clouded over, but it was colored dim blue, like the color of early morning. There was an orange streetlamp overhead. The ground was wet, as if it had just rained. The wall of the building was white-painted concrete. It felt like I was coming out of the side exit of a movie theater or playhouse.
I held the door open still because I thought I wouldn't be able to hear JB's talk if I shut the door. But then I realized there was a speaker right above me, playing JB's speech. I let the door shut as I heard JB say conditions hadn't been this tough since 1912 or 1913.
Dream #2
I was in a dim bedroom that was lit only by natural light coming from some other room at the end of a long hallway. I was with a group of friends.
One of my friends, maybe my girlfriend H, saw a roach crawl across the wall. She panicked. I was ashamed, but also upset, that roaches were back in my house again, after I'd gotten rid of them. They'd been gone for so long.
But now I looked out into the hallway. It seemed justified for roaches to be here: the floor of the hallway was so dirty it looked like a wet asphalt road.
Dream #3
I lay on "my bed." The head of my bed was positioned so I could turn left to see down the hallway. There were a couple rooms along the right wall and one room at the very end of the hallway. The doors for all the rooms may have been opened. Fluorescent light was coming out of some (?) of the rooms.
I saw two rats run into one of the lit rooms on the side wall. I was so upset to see rats in my house that I called out, "No... no... no!"
I thought I would have to get up right away and kill the rats. But now I saw, as if I were a camera (and all the lights were now off -- only the streetlights from outside providing light), how there was some strange activity happening in my closet. The rats changed (first into mice, then into lions?). I thought, I can't kill an animal that big. Then I saw the head of an elephant emerge from the closet.
I was back in my bed. I thought, It couldn't possibly be an elephant. I thought it would be terrifyingly irrational. But out of the closet walked a roughly six-foot-tall creature, walking upright on two legs, having the body shape of a human (thought the creature was naked and had the skin of an elephant) and an elephant's head, which was huge in proportion to the body. The elephant may have had black eyes like the eyes of a classic grey alien's eyes, except round, not almond-shaped.
The elephant man walked toward me. I thought, It can't come near me. It would be too frightening. But it walked all the way to my bedside. It stood at my left (?) side, as if my bed were now in its regular place. Its breathing seemed very fleshy and real. I was so frightened that I began whimper/screaming. (In fact, I may actually have been crying out loud, the sound of which may have woken me from the dream.)
(1/1/09) the hound went through the hole
(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
A movie which was like a Disney cartoon and real life together, as if the cartoon (not computer animation) had the weight and dimension of real life.
I (?) sat on the lower bed of a bunk bed. On the underside of the top bed was a hole maybe three inches in diameter. It was all black inside, like in cartoons.
A little dog that looked like the hound off of The Fox and the Hound jumped out of the hole and attacked me. It would dart at my shoulder and then disappear, immediately reappearing in the hole, then darting at my shoulder again.
The dog and I had once been friends, as if I were the fox. But the dog had gotten mad at me for some reason and was now attacking me. I wasn't really hurt by the attack, but I wanted to resolve whatever misunderstanding was causing the hound's anger.
Now the main character of the movie was a hound character. I wasn't in the movie. The hound had gone through a few different size transformations.
The hound was now something like human-sized. It sat against a wall in a strange cave like a sewer tunnel which also had the look and feel of the bunk bed on which I had been sitting. The hound was afraid of making his next transformation. He thought he might get too big.
But now the walls all grew over with reddish material like flesh. The reddish material also pulsed with clouds of purple and veins of blue. The reddish material had become a smallish room around the hound, possibly with an opening to a tunnel off to his right.
A hole opened above and just before the hound, on the curving "ceiling." A woman's voice told the hound that it needed to go through the hole and into the world as its next transformation. The woman's voice said not to be afraid, that the hound's fears would not be realized.
The hound went through the hole. As he pushed through, he found himself in another room, something like a dim living room with various deep green tones of furniture. He may have had the body of a human baby. (And now the movie was in live-action, not a cartoon.) But it seemed like the baby was enormous compared to everything around him.
The baby yelled, possibly just in his mind, to the woman, "You said my fears wouldn't come true! But they have!"
The woman's voice came back and said, "Don't worry. This is just part of your perception. As the light hits the room, the objects you think you see right now will show themselves to be something else. Then you'll see what everything really is, and how everything is the right size, including you."
This seemed to be proving true. For instance, beside me (as if I had now taken on the character of the hound/baby) I had something like a cup and a book. They seemed miniscule. But I knew that when the light hit them they'd either grow or show themselves that was naturally that small. I was feeling much calmer as the woman spoke to me.
I was now reading a book that may have had typed-out, but bluish, lettering. The writing was divided into numbered paragraphs, like some kind of technical manual. The left page spoke about the phenomenon the woman's voice had been telling me about. The right page spoke either about a chemical process which happens during dreaming or a chemical process which is aided by dreaming. There was a series of abbreviations that looked like LCFO or LFCO.
This was a book my girlfriend H had given me. It was something like an instruction manual for being a good businessman. The book had a soft, white, laminated-feeling cover, and had bluish or purplish, very plain lettering on the front.
Dream #1
A movie which was like a Disney cartoon and real life together, as if the cartoon (not computer animation) had the weight and dimension of real life.
I (?) sat on the lower bed of a bunk bed. On the underside of the top bed was a hole maybe three inches in diameter. It was all black inside, like in cartoons.
A little dog that looked like the hound off of The Fox and the Hound jumped out of the hole and attacked me. It would dart at my shoulder and then disappear, immediately reappearing in the hole, then darting at my shoulder again.
The dog and I had once been friends, as if I were the fox. But the dog had gotten mad at me for some reason and was now attacking me. I wasn't really hurt by the attack, but I wanted to resolve whatever misunderstanding was causing the hound's anger.
Now the main character of the movie was a hound character. I wasn't in the movie. The hound had gone through a few different size transformations.
The hound was now something like human-sized. It sat against a wall in a strange cave like a sewer tunnel which also had the look and feel of the bunk bed on which I had been sitting. The hound was afraid of making his next transformation. He thought he might get too big.
But now the walls all grew over with reddish material like flesh. The reddish material also pulsed with clouds of purple and veins of blue. The reddish material had become a smallish room around the hound, possibly with an opening to a tunnel off to his right.
A hole opened above and just before the hound, on the curving "ceiling." A woman's voice told the hound that it needed to go through the hole and into the world as its next transformation. The woman's voice said not to be afraid, that the hound's fears would not be realized.
The hound went through the hole. As he pushed through, he found himself in another room, something like a dim living room with various deep green tones of furniture. He may have had the body of a human baby. (And now the movie was in live-action, not a cartoon.) But it seemed like the baby was enormous compared to everything around him.
The baby yelled, possibly just in his mind, to the woman, "You said my fears wouldn't come true! But they have!"
The woman's voice came back and said, "Don't worry. This is just part of your perception. As the light hits the room, the objects you think you see right now will show themselves to be something else. Then you'll see what everything really is, and how everything is the right size, including you."
This seemed to be proving true. For instance, beside me (as if I had now taken on the character of the hound/baby) I had something like a cup and a book. They seemed miniscule. But I knew that when the light hit them they'd either grow or show themselves that was naturally that small. I was feeling much calmer as the woman spoke to me.
I was now reading a book that may have had typed-out, but bluish, lettering. The writing was divided into numbered paragraphs, like some kind of technical manual. The left page spoke about the phenomenon the woman's voice had been telling me about. The right page spoke either about a chemical process which happens during dreaming or a chemical process which is aided by dreaming. There was a series of abbreviations that looked like LCFO or LFCO.
This was a book my girlfriend H had given me. It was something like an instruction manual for being a good businessman. The book had a soft, white, laminated-feeling cover, and had bluish or purplish, very plain lettering on the front.
(1/2/09) looking at porn and doing the wrong work
(Entered in paper journal at 8:54 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I was in a room with my brother. The room was like a living room, but I may have been thinking of it as an office. The room had a wood frame around it, like the framing for a loft bed. There may only have been two solid walls, while the other walls were like the section of frame where the walls would eventually be put up. The floors were piled under with multicolored quilts and blankets.
My brother sat or lay on his stomach before an entertainment center which had two or three bright-screened computers on it. I thought, I shouldn't check what he's doing. I'll get in trouble for not working. I looked at the computer screen.
I knew that my brother was typing a lot of random-seeming, almost humorous, words into an internet search engine to pull up pornographic websites showing fat, black women in lingerie. I could see a page like this in my mind's eye: photos of women dispersed throughout a white page, with faded borders around them. But when my brother actually pulled up the web page, it displayed a photo of a few really beautiful, black women, skinny, wearing really elegant lingerie.
I was now "upstairs," on a floor of desks like a trading floor. Only about a quarter of the lights on the floor were on. It was night. I was walking toward "my desk." I was trying to remember the user ID and password for my computer.
I was going to do some work. But I thought to myself, What kind of work am I supposed to be doing? I thought I would pull some earnings conference call transcripts off the internet, to keep my mind fresh on how companies were doing. I wondered whether this would be considered work or whether this would be considered something I wasn't supposed to do.
Dream #1
I was in a room with my brother. The room was like a living room, but I may have been thinking of it as an office. The room had a wood frame around it, like the framing for a loft bed. There may only have been two solid walls, while the other walls were like the section of frame where the walls would eventually be put up. The floors were piled under with multicolored quilts and blankets.
My brother sat or lay on his stomach before an entertainment center which had two or three bright-screened computers on it. I thought, I shouldn't check what he's doing. I'll get in trouble for not working. I looked at the computer screen.
I knew that my brother was typing a lot of random-seeming, almost humorous, words into an internet search engine to pull up pornographic websites showing fat, black women in lingerie. I could see a page like this in my mind's eye: photos of women dispersed throughout a white page, with faded borders around them. But when my brother actually pulled up the web page, it displayed a photo of a few really beautiful, black women, skinny, wearing really elegant lingerie.
I was now "upstairs," on a floor of desks like a trading floor. Only about a quarter of the lights on the floor were on. It was night. I was walking toward "my desk." I was trying to remember the user ID and password for my computer.
I was going to do some work. But I thought to myself, What kind of work am I supposed to be doing? I thought I would pull some earnings conference call transcripts off the internet, to keep my mind fresh on how companies were doing. I wondered whether this would be considered work or whether this would be considered something I wasn't supposed to do.
(1/3/09) murder exam; asset classes; room 256; finally in trouble
(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I was in a car in a parking lot at night. The car may have had a dirty windshield. I was also taking a test, which may have "produced" the imagery I was experiencing, or which I may have been going over in my head while driving in the parking lot.
I may have done very well on the previous questions. The current question may have been the last question. I was worried whether I would do well. The question was something about a man who had killed a woman, possibly by poisoning her. The man was known as dangerous.
As the situation was being explained I drove up before the left side of a parked car. The car was black, styled like an old hearse (?) or Rolls Royce.
The question was now asked: "What would you do" (implying "in a professional position") "if you knew this information?" A list of choices may have been stated.
As the choices were being stated, I saw the speedometer of the black car, as if I were looking at it from a hunched or low position just to the right of the driver's seat -- which may have been the middle seat. I saw the "70" very clearly.
I chose the option of letting things be as they are and not telling anybody anything. In this way I would avoid all possible violence. The test answered that I had made the right choice.
I was now trying to drive out of the parking lot. I either couldn't find a way out of the parking lot or I was afraid to use all the exits I saw because I was afraid there were cops waiting for me at all the exits, ready to arrest me on any possible excuse they could give.
Dream #2
I was in a room like a classroom laboratory. A few wide, rectangular tables filled the room. A partition of tall bookshelves stood just a few feet before the doorway to the hallway. There might also have been a doorway to another classroom to my left as I sat facing the hallway doorway. The atmosphere was very nice and relaxed. The only light in the room was gentle, goldish-yellowish light coming from the windows, which may have been behind me. The whole feeling was very warm.
I sat with a few people from the institutional sales department and my boss BS. It was like a meeting we had just had was slowly breaking up. A salesperson (who actually looked like an assistant, AP) knelt down to talk to BS about a strategy idea BS had hinted at.
The salesperson discussed (in a voice so vivid I could feel it in my ears) how certain asset classes were becoming less attractive while others were becoming more attractive. In particular the man mentioned municipal bonds. He was giving numbers like three hundred or four hundred, which I can no longer remember.
Dream #3
I was walking through a high school hallway. I was there as part of a New York Cares project. The hallway was very busy. I didn't want to be mistaken for a student.
I knew what room number (256?) I needed to get to, but I couldn't find it. I may have walked through a number of hallways or classrooms as classes were getting settled in. I walked through a large area like a cafeteria that was full of kids and activity. There seemed to be bookshelves standing up at random intervals.
I looked at my watch. I seemed to be ten minutes early to my event. I thought I would have plenty of time, although I also felt like I was already late.
A female teacher, tall, young, and beautiful, asked me where I was trying to go. I may have showed her my New York Cares directions. The teacher pointed me to a doorway to another hallway.
I walked into the hallway. I was all alone. The setup was more like for an elementary school, with small bookshelves everywhere.
I came to an area of the hallway with a few doorways. The doorways were almost all cluttered together. The doorways seemed to open directly to classrooms. But I could tell just by looking into them that at least some of them only led into even more confusing hallways. Nevertheless, I thought room 256 was definitely reached through one of those doorways.
Dream #4
I was at work. The office was bright white and full of people and activity. All of the cubicles may have been scattered over with piles and piles of paper. People were all rushing, as if they were quickly getting all their things prepared for a move from one building to another.
I sat in my cubicle, listening over the phone to my co-worker and teammate DE talking to one of our clients about a stock. At some point, the client started criticizing DE's argument, showing that DE's outlook was too positive. The client started asking DE very specific questions, which DE couldn't answer.
Finally the client asked a very difficult question. But DE didn't answer at all. It was like he wasn't there. Suddenly even the client seemed to fade out.
I stood up to see what was going on. I looked to my left. DE's cubicle was a few down from mine, maybe thirty feet away. Through all the rushing of people I saw a group of three shortish, oldish men who looked like movers escorting DE out of his cubicle.
I may have hard someone explain that DE had been talking about things he shouldn't have been talking about in a period of time when we were expressly prohibited from contacting clients at all. I hoped the people would also be taking my boss BS away.
I was walking toward DE's cubicle. I saw BS' office. There were also a large group of people like movers in BS' office. I thought, Finally he's gotten in trouble for doing things he wasn't supposed to do.
I walked back to my desk. I thought, But I was listening in on the whole thing. Doesn't that mean I'll get in trouble, too? I tried to convince myself I wouldn't get in trouble. But I couldn't.
Dream #1
I was in a car in a parking lot at night. The car may have had a dirty windshield. I was also taking a test, which may have "produced" the imagery I was experiencing, or which I may have been going over in my head while driving in the parking lot.
I may have done very well on the previous questions. The current question may have been the last question. I was worried whether I would do well. The question was something about a man who had killed a woman, possibly by poisoning her. The man was known as dangerous.
As the situation was being explained I drove up before the left side of a parked car. The car was black, styled like an old hearse (?) or Rolls Royce.
The question was now asked: "What would you do" (implying "in a professional position") "if you knew this information?" A list of choices may have been stated.
As the choices were being stated, I saw the speedometer of the black car, as if I were looking at it from a hunched or low position just to the right of the driver's seat -- which may have been the middle seat. I saw the "70" very clearly.
I chose the option of letting things be as they are and not telling anybody anything. In this way I would avoid all possible violence. The test answered that I had made the right choice.
I was now trying to drive out of the parking lot. I either couldn't find a way out of the parking lot or I was afraid to use all the exits I saw because I was afraid there were cops waiting for me at all the exits, ready to arrest me on any possible excuse they could give.
Dream #2
I was in a room like a classroom laboratory. A few wide, rectangular tables filled the room. A partition of tall bookshelves stood just a few feet before the doorway to the hallway. There might also have been a doorway to another classroom to my left as I sat facing the hallway doorway. The atmosphere was very nice and relaxed. The only light in the room was gentle, goldish-yellowish light coming from the windows, which may have been behind me. The whole feeling was very warm.
I sat with a few people from the institutional sales department and my boss BS. It was like a meeting we had just had was slowly breaking up. A salesperson (who actually looked like an assistant, AP) knelt down to talk to BS about a strategy idea BS had hinted at.
The salesperson discussed (in a voice so vivid I could feel it in my ears) how certain asset classes were becoming less attractive while others were becoming more attractive. In particular the man mentioned municipal bonds. He was giving numbers like three hundred or four hundred, which I can no longer remember.
Dream #3
I was walking through a high school hallway. I was there as part of a New York Cares project. The hallway was very busy. I didn't want to be mistaken for a student.
I knew what room number (256?) I needed to get to, but I couldn't find it. I may have walked through a number of hallways or classrooms as classes were getting settled in. I walked through a large area like a cafeteria that was full of kids and activity. There seemed to be bookshelves standing up at random intervals.
I looked at my watch. I seemed to be ten minutes early to my event. I thought I would have plenty of time, although I also felt like I was already late.
A female teacher, tall, young, and beautiful, asked me where I was trying to go. I may have showed her my New York Cares directions. The teacher pointed me to a doorway to another hallway.
I walked into the hallway. I was all alone. The setup was more like for an elementary school, with small bookshelves everywhere.
I came to an area of the hallway with a few doorways. The doorways were almost all cluttered together. The doorways seemed to open directly to classrooms. But I could tell just by looking into them that at least some of them only led into even more confusing hallways. Nevertheless, I thought room 256 was definitely reached through one of those doorways.
Dream #4
I was at work. The office was bright white and full of people and activity. All of the cubicles may have been scattered over with piles and piles of paper. People were all rushing, as if they were quickly getting all their things prepared for a move from one building to another.
I sat in my cubicle, listening over the phone to my co-worker and teammate DE talking to one of our clients about a stock. At some point, the client started criticizing DE's argument, showing that DE's outlook was too positive. The client started asking DE very specific questions, which DE couldn't answer.
Finally the client asked a very difficult question. But DE didn't answer at all. It was like he wasn't there. Suddenly even the client seemed to fade out.
I stood up to see what was going on. I looked to my left. DE's cubicle was a few down from mine, maybe thirty feet away. Through all the rushing of people I saw a group of three shortish, oldish men who looked like movers escorting DE out of his cubicle.
I may have hard someone explain that DE had been talking about things he shouldn't have been talking about in a period of time when we were expressly prohibited from contacting clients at all. I hoped the people would also be taking my boss BS away.
I was walking toward DE's cubicle. I saw BS' office. There were also a large group of people like movers in BS' office. I thought, Finally he's gotten in trouble for doing things he wasn't supposed to do.
I walked back to my desk. I thought, But I was listening in on the whole thing. Doesn't that mean I'll get in trouble, too? I tried to convince myself I wouldn't get in trouble. But I couldn't.
(1/4/09) science parking lot; missing 2-train; boss' new reports; panties at ross; stopping a death
(Entered in paper journal at 8:20 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I may have been driving a car in a gravel and asphalt parking lot in the mountains. It was daytime. I tried to park the car in a space, but I stopped just before the space. The lot had seemed relatively empty before. Now it was slightly full. There may have been cars in line behind me, also waiting to park. At some point I was on a bicycle instead of in a car.
An old man was directing us into spaces. The old man looked tallish. He was slightly wrinkled, with a slick, bald head and tanned skin. I was directed into a specific space which may have been in a cobble-filled section of parking lot. But I looked around and saw that the space I had wanted to park in was still open.
I pulled my bike out of my current space and rode in some kind of clockwise ellipse to get to the desired space. As I did I rode over a patch of cobblestones littered either with long shards of bottle glass or long shards of the hard shell of some fruit, like a coconut. My tires may have gotten slashed.
I tried again to park in the space, but was once again directed into the space I had been directed to before. This time some of the parking spaces may have had signs, like white signs with black lettering on wooden stakes. The signs may have had professions on them, many of which had to do with the sciences.
As soon as I got into my directed space again I pulled right back out of it. I ran over the long shards again and thought again how I must have ripped up my tires. I looked to the opposite side of the parking lot. There were a couple open spaces there. One space with a scientific title looked particularly interesting to me.
I may have started to head over that way. But now I realized that I hadn't been taking care of my bike. I thought to myself that I really should take care of my bicycle. I either stopped myself or I was stopped by someone else.
A woman somewhere, dressed like a stereotypical Greek goddess, but with weird spikes of pale wood in her hair, reprimanded me. She told me that I kept injuring my bike because I wouldn't stay in my own space. She told me that I neglected my bike all the time, and that the next time I did it, she would take it away from me.
Dream #2
It was night. I got off of one subway train and was walking along a platform to another. I was outside, in an area like the platform for the NJ Transit trains from the Newark airport.
I was looking for a 2-train. I was on an upper tier. I needed to walk down a series of steps to get to the 2-train platform. As I walked down the steps I saw the 2-train pass, but on a center track, not stopping at this platform. I wondered if I was in the right place to catch this train.
Another train may have stopped here not long after. The train seemed much taller than usual, and the entrance to the train seemed to be too high for me to step into comfortably.
Dream #3
I was at the office. It may have been night. The office was fully lit. I was laying on an enormous, thick bed, possibly with pale grey-blue sheets and no blanket. The pillows seemed to be fitted into the bed. I may have been eating something like pasta in a chili sauce.
A trader from my company, B, walked up to the right side of my bed. I lay on my right side. B asked me how everything was going. I tried to be positive, and I spoke about how I was excited for how my BS' launch was going to go.
(In waking life, I had, by this point, been removed from my boss' research team, although I was still coming into the office every day. I helped my boss out with little projects here and there. But I was not directly involved in the post-merger re-launch of all his previous research coverage, nor in the launch of the research of any of the companies he would be doing new research on. At this point in time, my boss was also going through the approval process on his reports with the heads of our department.)
As I said this, BS passed my bed and walked into his office, off beyond the head of the bed and to the right. I asked B how BS had done on his presentation. B said (maybe just judging by the rushed, annoyed manner in which BS walked to his office) that there was probably a lot BS had to work on for his reports.
Dream #4
I walked down out of some ramped hallway like in an airport or a hospital. I ended up in a plaza area that had the spatial feel of the Coney Island subway stop. It may even have opened directly onto a beach. But it was actually the entrance to a large discount clothing store, like a Ross Dress for Less.
I at first walked past the store, thinking it was nothing. Then I realized what it was and quickly turned around to enter. I had to walk though gates that were like subway turnstiles. I scurried through a wide open space that was moderately busy with people, possibly mainly Hispanic families.
I was searching for the lingerie section. I thought I would go get a lot of cheap lingerie. I found the section. It was enormous -- there was section after section. I looked around every once in a while to make sure nobody I knew was here. I couldn't find anything in particular as I passed through the different sections quickly. I was currently just trying to figure out how many sections there were in this whole place. I was really just glancing at all the racks.
I may have grabbed a couple really big pairs of cotton panties. I may have thought to myself how my mom would fit into these panties better than I. There may have been two pairs: one dull blue and the other dullish white-grey, both with a speckled pattern like mini leopard print.
I walked into a smaller section, which had satiny-looking items, darkish pink and other vivid colors. There might have been a few Hispanic girls or women looking around here. I hoped they wouldn't think badly of me because I was looking around here.
Dream #5
I may have been at a party with my co-workers CT and CL. I may have gone to sleep and woken up. I was somewhere like a living room, with the front door open to the bright daylight outside. The room itself was very narrow. There may have been a (half-empty?) bookshelf along the wall to my left. I was sitting on the floor, as if I had pulled myself up from sleeping on my back.
There were a couple people before me, maybe including CT. They were explaining to me how CL had died the night before. After the party, CL had left CT. CL had already been extremely drunk. But he had apparently gone somewhere else and had had even more to drink. He might have collapsed on the street before getting home, later dying of alcohol poisoning.
While this was all being explained to me, I felt like there was some way I could go back in time and stop it, as if, if I could just hear what had happened and visualize it strongly enough, I could "pull" myself back into the situation and go with CL wherever he went after the party, keeping him from getting too drunk.
Dream #1
I may have been driving a car in a gravel and asphalt parking lot in the mountains. It was daytime. I tried to park the car in a space, but I stopped just before the space. The lot had seemed relatively empty before. Now it was slightly full. There may have been cars in line behind me, also waiting to park. At some point I was on a bicycle instead of in a car.
An old man was directing us into spaces. The old man looked tallish. He was slightly wrinkled, with a slick, bald head and tanned skin. I was directed into a specific space which may have been in a cobble-filled section of parking lot. But I looked around and saw that the space I had wanted to park in was still open.
I pulled my bike out of my current space and rode in some kind of clockwise ellipse to get to the desired space. As I did I rode over a patch of cobblestones littered either with long shards of bottle glass or long shards of the hard shell of some fruit, like a coconut. My tires may have gotten slashed.
I tried again to park in the space, but was once again directed into the space I had been directed to before. This time some of the parking spaces may have had signs, like white signs with black lettering on wooden stakes. The signs may have had professions on them, many of which had to do with the sciences.
As soon as I got into my directed space again I pulled right back out of it. I ran over the long shards again and thought again how I must have ripped up my tires. I looked to the opposite side of the parking lot. There were a couple open spaces there. One space with a scientific title looked particularly interesting to me.
I may have started to head over that way. But now I realized that I hadn't been taking care of my bike. I thought to myself that I really should take care of my bicycle. I either stopped myself or I was stopped by someone else.
A woman somewhere, dressed like a stereotypical Greek goddess, but with weird spikes of pale wood in her hair, reprimanded me. She told me that I kept injuring my bike because I wouldn't stay in my own space. She told me that I neglected my bike all the time, and that the next time I did it, she would take it away from me.
Dream #2
It was night. I got off of one subway train and was walking along a platform to another. I was outside, in an area like the platform for the NJ Transit trains from the Newark airport.
I was looking for a 2-train. I was on an upper tier. I needed to walk down a series of steps to get to the 2-train platform. As I walked down the steps I saw the 2-train pass, but on a center track, not stopping at this platform. I wondered if I was in the right place to catch this train.
Another train may have stopped here not long after. The train seemed much taller than usual, and the entrance to the train seemed to be too high for me to step into comfortably.
Dream #3
I was at the office. It may have been night. The office was fully lit. I was laying on an enormous, thick bed, possibly with pale grey-blue sheets and no blanket. The pillows seemed to be fitted into the bed. I may have been eating something like pasta in a chili sauce.
A trader from my company, B, walked up to the right side of my bed. I lay on my right side. B asked me how everything was going. I tried to be positive, and I spoke about how I was excited for how my BS' launch was going to go.
(In waking life, I had, by this point, been removed from my boss' research team, although I was still coming into the office every day. I helped my boss out with little projects here and there. But I was not directly involved in the post-merger re-launch of all his previous research coverage, nor in the launch of the research of any of the companies he would be doing new research on. At this point in time, my boss was also going through the approval process on his reports with the heads of our department.)
As I said this, BS passed my bed and walked into his office, off beyond the head of the bed and to the right. I asked B how BS had done on his presentation. B said (maybe just judging by the rushed, annoyed manner in which BS walked to his office) that there was probably a lot BS had to work on for his reports.
Dream #4
I walked down out of some ramped hallway like in an airport or a hospital. I ended up in a plaza area that had the spatial feel of the Coney Island subway stop. It may even have opened directly onto a beach. But it was actually the entrance to a large discount clothing store, like a Ross Dress for Less.
I at first walked past the store, thinking it was nothing. Then I realized what it was and quickly turned around to enter. I had to walk though gates that were like subway turnstiles. I scurried through a wide open space that was moderately busy with people, possibly mainly Hispanic families.
I was searching for the lingerie section. I thought I would go get a lot of cheap lingerie. I found the section. It was enormous -- there was section after section. I looked around every once in a while to make sure nobody I knew was here. I couldn't find anything in particular as I passed through the different sections quickly. I was currently just trying to figure out how many sections there were in this whole place. I was really just glancing at all the racks.
I may have grabbed a couple really big pairs of cotton panties. I may have thought to myself how my mom would fit into these panties better than I. There may have been two pairs: one dull blue and the other dullish white-grey, both with a speckled pattern like mini leopard print.
I walked into a smaller section, which had satiny-looking items, darkish pink and other vivid colors. There might have been a few Hispanic girls or women looking around here. I hoped they wouldn't think badly of me because I was looking around here.
Dream #5
I may have been at a party with my co-workers CT and CL. I may have gone to sleep and woken up. I was somewhere like a living room, with the front door open to the bright daylight outside. The room itself was very narrow. There may have been a (half-empty?) bookshelf along the wall to my left. I was sitting on the floor, as if I had pulled myself up from sleeping on my back.
There were a couple people before me, maybe including CT. They were explaining to me how CL had died the night before. After the party, CL had left CT. CL had already been extremely drunk. But he had apparently gone somewhere else and had had even more to drink. He might have collapsed on the street before getting home, later dying of alcohol poisoning.
While this was all being explained to me, I felt like there was some way I could go back in time and stop it, as if, if I could just hear what had happened and visualize it strongly enough, I could "pull" myself back into the situation and go with CL wherever he went after the party, keeping him from getting too drunk.
(1/27/09) meet you at the food court
(Entered in paper journal at 10:52 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
My boss BS and I were coming out of something like a meeting. We stood just to the side of a big, plaza-type area, like in a mall. The area was empty and a little dim, like we were catching light coming through a ceiling window over the central plaza-area, but not reaching us. BS was talking to me about something business-like or serious. We were walking very slowly or not walking at all.
I saw TB, a friend of mine and a woman who provided data services for my work team. TB was walking with a young man. Both TB and the man wore longish, white t-shirts and pale blue jeans. TB seemed happy to see me. She and the man stopped to talk with me.
As we spoke, my attention fixed on a small restaurant booth at the other end of the food court. The food court plaza probably had an octagonal shape, with the diagonal sides small, and with columns just past the edges of each of the corners. BS and I had come from the "southwest" part of this area and were heading up toward a shop at the "northeast" part of the area.
Dream #1
My boss BS and I were coming out of something like a meeting. We stood just to the side of a big, plaza-type area, like in a mall. The area was empty and a little dim, like we were catching light coming through a ceiling window over the central plaza-area, but not reaching us. BS was talking to me about something business-like or serious. We were walking very slowly or not walking at all.
I saw TB, a friend of mine and a woman who provided data services for my work team. TB was walking with a young man. Both TB and the man wore longish, white t-shirts and pale blue jeans. TB seemed happy to see me. She and the man stopped to talk with me.
As we spoke, my attention fixed on a small restaurant booth at the other end of the food court. The food court plaza probably had an octagonal shape, with the diagonal sides small, and with columns just past the edges of each of the corners. BS and I had come from the "southwest" part of this area and were heading up toward a shop at the "northeast" part of the area.
(1/30/09) a portrait of the lennons; screwed and loving it
(Entered in paper journal at 8:30 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I was in a very grimy and messy, unfinished basement, like the basement of the house my family lived in in my last three years of high school. I was coming out of the basement as if I were coming back from a long trip. I walked through a plastic (?) curtain to get into the stairwell. The stairwell was also grimy, like the basement, but had white walls and white-tiled stairs (with reddish and brownish grime all over the place) and was yellowed with sunlight from a door-window at the top of the stairs.
As I walked up the stairs I said, as if speaking to a camera, "I know I'm being watched, so I'd better behave." I may have turned around to see a small surveillance camera on the wall over the doorway at the foot of the stairwell. I might have been or thought of myself as a pretty girl with dark, tan skin and long, black hair.
I was now somewhere upstairs with my mom. She had gotten me a camera, since I had expressed my frustration over not having been able to take photos of things recently. But, she told me, the camera had only a XXXXX memory, so I could only take (five? ten?) photos at a time. But the medium was also film, not digital memory. So I knew I'd have to get the photos developed. The photos were also only in black and white, although they apparently had the most desirable resolution quality imaginable.
I saw a few photos that had been taken, as if I were holding onto them crookedly, in a disordered pile, as if I couldn't put them in order at all in my hands. The photos looked like crime scene or car crash (or punk rock) photos: very jangled, with people lying or standing in awkward, wild poses, with their mouths wide open, and with objects scattered all over, maybe broken.
I then saw a photo of John Lennon and his family, possibly standing in Central Park. There were a lot of people in the photo. The photo stood before all my vision, as if I were seeing it on a movie or television screen. At first I could only see a small fragment of it, like pant legs, then a section of face. But eventually the whole photo became clear to me.
Julian Lennon, as a boy, caught my attention first. He looked exactly like John Lennon. He wore a pea coat that went down to his knees. He stood just about in the center of the photo, a little to the left. Just to the left of him and behind stood Yoko Ono. Farther to the left and farther back stood John. He and Julian may have been making the same kind of expression: a complacent, but somehow sad, tucking upward of the right corner of the mouth, with a bright, but blank, almost depressed, look in the eyes.
Farther to the left stood people like my brother and sister. To the right of Julian, beside him, stood one or two of his brothers/sisters by John and Yoko. The children were all the same height, and they looked somewhat the same, thought the brothers/sisters may have looked like children who had more "personality."
Behind Julian stood a tallish, blonde, teenage girl. Whereas everybody so far (except John and Yoko?) had a kind of dressed-up casual, late 1960s look, this girl looked like a fashionable casual girl from the 1980s. She wore a patterned sweater and had short, loosely curled, blonde hair. She was looking to the right, to a woman who looked just like her, except that she was more formally dressed, though still in the 1980s style. This was the girl's mother, who was also (i.e. at the same time as Yoko) John's wife.
To the girl's immediate right were a couple of the girl's brothers/sisters, who were slightly shorter than she, and were dressed more in the 1960s style. I may have been in the photo as well, somewhere far to the right.
Dream #2
I was in an office, which actually looked more like a theater or auditorium, talking with my boss BS about my having gotten fired. The place was bright and grey with window light -- probably high windows on a sunny day. The place was also full of young people, mostly men, who were very active and happy. They all looked like business people, but they were dressed in t-shirts and jeans.
One of my friends caught my attention. He had let his seat move back into its upward position. He then sat on its edge and moved back and forth on it. He said something like, "Now I can feel what our company did to us is really like!" This was supposed to mean he felt that we had gotten screwed. But then he said, "It kind of feels good. I can tell by your look that you think it feels good, too. Don't tell me you're one of those guys who likes it up the ass."
I looked away and I thought, It couldn't be. I thought the swaying back and forth on the seat edge was fun. But could that mean I liked anal sex? I then moved away from my chair, not standing, but crouching. I let the seat cushion spring back up, like a normal seat in an auditorium or movie theater might do. I then started scratching my back against the seat edge. Everybody around me said, "Now that's a great idea!"
The guys were all starting to act rowdy. They were all scratching their backs against their seat edges, but they were also standing and joking with each other, having a lot of fun. I had previously felt like they were making fun of me. Now I realized that all their joking had been to make me laugh, and that they were largely looking for my approval.
Dream #1
I was in a very grimy and messy, unfinished basement, like the basement of the house my family lived in in my last three years of high school. I was coming out of the basement as if I were coming back from a long trip. I walked through a plastic (?) curtain to get into the stairwell. The stairwell was also grimy, like the basement, but had white walls and white-tiled stairs (with reddish and brownish grime all over the place) and was yellowed with sunlight from a door-window at the top of the stairs.
As I walked up the stairs I said, as if speaking to a camera, "I know I'm being watched, so I'd better behave." I may have turned around to see a small surveillance camera on the wall over the doorway at the foot of the stairwell. I might have been or thought of myself as a pretty girl with dark, tan skin and long, black hair.
I was now somewhere upstairs with my mom. She had gotten me a camera, since I had expressed my frustration over not having been able to take photos of things recently. But, she told me, the camera had only a XXXXX memory, so I could only take (five? ten?) photos at a time. But the medium was also film, not digital memory. So I knew I'd have to get the photos developed. The photos were also only in black and white, although they apparently had the most desirable resolution quality imaginable.
I saw a few photos that had been taken, as if I were holding onto them crookedly, in a disordered pile, as if I couldn't put them in order at all in my hands. The photos looked like crime scene or car crash (or punk rock) photos: very jangled, with people lying or standing in awkward, wild poses, with their mouths wide open, and with objects scattered all over, maybe broken.
I then saw a photo of John Lennon and his family, possibly standing in Central Park. There were a lot of people in the photo. The photo stood before all my vision, as if I were seeing it on a movie or television screen. At first I could only see a small fragment of it, like pant legs, then a section of face. But eventually the whole photo became clear to me.
Julian Lennon, as a boy, caught my attention first. He looked exactly like John Lennon. He wore a pea coat that went down to his knees. He stood just about in the center of the photo, a little to the left. Just to the left of him and behind stood Yoko Ono. Farther to the left and farther back stood John. He and Julian may have been making the same kind of expression: a complacent, but somehow sad, tucking upward of the right corner of the mouth, with a bright, but blank, almost depressed, look in the eyes.
Farther to the left stood people like my brother and sister. To the right of Julian, beside him, stood one or two of his brothers/sisters by John and Yoko. The children were all the same height, and they looked somewhat the same, thought the brothers/sisters may have looked like children who had more "personality."
Behind Julian stood a tallish, blonde, teenage girl. Whereas everybody so far (except John and Yoko?) had a kind of dressed-up casual, late 1960s look, this girl looked like a fashionable casual girl from the 1980s. She wore a patterned sweater and had short, loosely curled, blonde hair. She was looking to the right, to a woman who looked just like her, except that she was more formally dressed, though still in the 1980s style. This was the girl's mother, who was also (i.e. at the same time as Yoko) John's wife.
To the girl's immediate right were a couple of the girl's brothers/sisters, who were slightly shorter than she, and were dressed more in the 1960s style. I may have been in the photo as well, somewhere far to the right.
Dream #2
I was in an office, which actually looked more like a theater or auditorium, talking with my boss BS about my having gotten fired. The place was bright and grey with window light -- probably high windows on a sunny day. The place was also full of young people, mostly men, who were very active and happy. They all looked like business people, but they were dressed in t-shirts and jeans.
One of my friends caught my attention. He had let his seat move back into its upward position. He then sat on its edge and moved back and forth on it. He said something like, "Now I can feel what our company did to us is really like!" This was supposed to mean he felt that we had gotten screwed. But then he said, "It kind of feels good. I can tell by your look that you think it feels good, too. Don't tell me you're one of those guys who likes it up the ass."
I looked away and I thought, It couldn't be. I thought the swaying back and forth on the seat edge was fun. But could that mean I liked anal sex? I then moved away from my chair, not standing, but crouching. I let the seat cushion spring back up, like a normal seat in an auditorium or movie theater might do. I then started scratching my back against the seat edge. Everybody around me said, "Now that's a great idea!"
The guys were all starting to act rowdy. They were all scratching their backs against their seat edges, but they were also standing and joking with each other, having a lot of fun. I had previously felt like they were making fun of me. Now I realized that all their joking had been to make me laugh, and that they were largely looking for my approval.
(1/31/09) blind ticker
(Entered in paper journal at 7:20 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was walking with my old friend R, who may have looked like my co-worker CL, in the lobby of a big and modern, but old-looking, movie theater. R was talking about some cartoon, like a Don Bluth cartoon, that he was going to use as a part of some community meeting he was going to attend later this afternoon.
R asked me if I was going to come along with him. I said I didn't think so. He said he thought I had told him yes before. I felt bad, and I tried to remember if I had told him yes.
We were in the theater now. The theater was dark. Even the movie screen seemed to be dim. The place was full. R had been walking with me, but now he was gone. I turned and saw he had headed into one of the rows quickly, to throw me off guard. The row was far back from the screen, where I wouldn't be able to see. I knew that R had also done this on purpose. I walked into the row. There were three seats open. R took the one in the center. I knew he took it so I couldn't sit by his wife L. I took the seat to R's left.
There was either a preview or a fake preview playing (or possibly just the beginning of the film). A big, muscly man with oiled skin, long, rocker-style hair, and wrestling shorts, was sliding down some kind of ice-passage on a snowy mountainside, like the luge. He may have pulled himself up onto the edge of this thing. He grabbed a man who was now in the slide with him. He threw him out. The man fell to the snowy ground, ten or fifteen feet below.
I started laughing. It was like I wasn't even in my chair now, bu kneeling on the floor by R. I said, "This is just like the fake preview they had in that other movie! This is a serious movie, but it's just like the fake preview in..." I couldn't remember the name of the movie. I said, "In... not Tropic Thunder. What was that movie?"
R said, "Blind Ticker."
I said, "Yes!" and started laughing again.
We were now sitting at a table like in a pizza restaurant. The lighting in the area was very red-pink, and there were mirrors on the wall. I sat on the edge seat. R sat to my right. A man, who looked like an oldish military man but who may have been wearing only a diaper, came up and spoke to R in a friendly, relaxed tone about some business the two of them had to take care of together. The man now stood in his military outfit, which was of a pale sea-green color, and shook R's hand.
I had been picking wax out of my ear with my right hand. The man, saying goodbye to me, offered me a high five. He apparently hadn't noticed that I had been picking my ear. I tried to wipe off my hand quickly and without the man noticing.
But when the high five was done, the man wiped his hand and looked at me with a little polite disgust. He told me something like I should wash my hands carefully before getting into social situations with people. I bashfully agreed.
Another man came up and shook hands with me. Again, I was afraid that the man would be put of by my hands. But he didn't seem to notice. This man was younger, with a greyish military suit, wavy, black hair, and an olive complexion.
I now sat as if by myself at a table full of people. A group of kids came in and sat at the row of tables across from us. At first the kids were teenagers. They were all slightly rowdy. It was obvious they had just come from some kind of educational event.
The group of kids in the table to the right started making fun of one of the people they saw. They called him a "transsexual, transgender, cross-gender, or whatever." I now noticed one of the boys, who was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and was small but very beautiful. He had straightish, flowing, black hair, and smooth, olive skin. He wore a nice, grey pea coat.
The children all seemed now to be six or seven years old. I sat at the far left end of a booth/bench now, instead of a table. A group of people my age sat to my right. We were like a volunteer group. The kids still sat at the table, like we were at the pizza place. But the red-pink light was gone, replaced with white fluorescent, and the atmosphere was like a Mexican food restaurant in the East Village.
The kids all seemed to be having some kind of mental problem or some weird manner of speaking to each other. Or perhaps they were playing a game. Many of them held overshirts or knit jackets over their heads like shawls. They were all mumbling to each other, almost whispering. But then they would point out a couple people in particular and say they were whispering, as if that was a point of their character showing they should be either pitied or treasured. The volunteers all looked on in a cherishing, pitying way.
The girl currently pointed out was a Mexican girl with dark skin and long hair. She wore a green shirt with black stripes and black jeans. Somehow I caught the girl's attention. She was singing and somehow crawled across her table, onto the bench, then onto my lap.
It was now like a lot of the volunteers and students were gone. I asked the girl how to sing a song in Spanish. I hummed and thought I was humming a Gloria Estefan song. But I was actually humming the Norah Jones song "Don't Know Why." The girl sang the song in Spanish.
We had a blanket pulled over our heads. I rocked the girl back and forth. I thought of the girl as autistic, and I thought, I'm really making a breakthrough with her!
Now some skinny, but bully-like, Mexican man with very short hair and a bushy mustache, wearing tan clothes or a military outfit, was sitting to my right, right next to me. He smiled and said, "Beautiful song. Gloria Estefan, isn't it?" By the way the man was smiling I could see that he was trying to take the girl's attention from me.
I saw a very pretty woman off to the left, at the front of the store, behind a cash register. I thought, Is this man sticking close to me because he wants to take this girl's attention away from me or because he doesn't want to seduce the cash register girl while I'm not looking? I wished that if the latter were true, the man would just go talk to the woman and leave me alone. I didn't care about that stuff -- I was trying to heal somebody! But the man did get up and walk over to the woman.
The girl lay down to my left, on some weird structure. Her head was on a wooden box, like a cigar box or a small food box. She was singing a different song in English now. She had a different look, like an Hispanic girl in Victorian costume. She looked like she was going to die. But her song was very powerful. It may have ended in Spanish.
The girl may now have been the first girl again, in the green shirt and black jeans. She may have gotten up to stand with the Mexican man and woman. I stood up, probably to leave. I saw a small newspaper stand to my let, just beside a small cooler for drinks. The stand held the New York Times.
There was a cartoon on the front page. It was in an Orozco-esque style, with very drab colors. There were two priests, probably from two different Christian denominations. One of them held a big, white cross between them. Both priests had scars and stitch-marks on their necks, like they had been decapitated and had their heads sewn back on. Behind the men and to the right was a gigantic white cross that lay down, almost completely smashing a house. The ground was barren and brown. The sky was black.
The newspaper article below the cartoon was accusing Wall Street of a ton of awful things. The article claimed that the crimes everybody on Wall Street had committed were tantamount to murder, and had, in fact, led to many people's deaths. The article also accused people on Wall Street of being some kind of cultic priests.
I felt ashamed, like I didn't want anybody to know I had worked on Wall Street. But I also thought the article was ridiculous. I thought, Nobody's as bad as this. This is obviously written by somebody on the outside, who immediately thinks everything that happens on the inside is strange and evil.
Dream #1
I was walking with my old friend R, who may have looked like my co-worker CL, in the lobby of a big and modern, but old-looking, movie theater. R was talking about some cartoon, like a Don Bluth cartoon, that he was going to use as a part of some community meeting he was going to attend later this afternoon.
R asked me if I was going to come along with him. I said I didn't think so. He said he thought I had told him yes before. I felt bad, and I tried to remember if I had told him yes.
We were in the theater now. The theater was dark. Even the movie screen seemed to be dim. The place was full. R had been walking with me, but now he was gone. I turned and saw he had headed into one of the rows quickly, to throw me off guard. The row was far back from the screen, where I wouldn't be able to see. I knew that R had also done this on purpose. I walked into the row. There were three seats open. R took the one in the center. I knew he took it so I couldn't sit by his wife L. I took the seat to R's left.
There was either a preview or a fake preview playing (or possibly just the beginning of the film). A big, muscly man with oiled skin, long, rocker-style hair, and wrestling shorts, was sliding down some kind of ice-passage on a snowy mountainside, like the luge. He may have pulled himself up onto the edge of this thing. He grabbed a man who was now in the slide with him. He threw him out. The man fell to the snowy ground, ten or fifteen feet below.
I started laughing. It was like I wasn't even in my chair now, bu kneeling on the floor by R. I said, "This is just like the fake preview they had in that other movie! This is a serious movie, but it's just like the fake preview in..." I couldn't remember the name of the movie. I said, "In... not Tropic Thunder. What was that movie?"
R said, "Blind Ticker."
I said, "Yes!" and started laughing again.
We were now sitting at a table like in a pizza restaurant. The lighting in the area was very red-pink, and there were mirrors on the wall. I sat on the edge seat. R sat to my right. A man, who looked like an oldish military man but who may have been wearing only a diaper, came up and spoke to R in a friendly, relaxed tone about some business the two of them had to take care of together. The man now stood in his military outfit, which was of a pale sea-green color, and shook R's hand.
I had been picking wax out of my ear with my right hand. The man, saying goodbye to me, offered me a high five. He apparently hadn't noticed that I had been picking my ear. I tried to wipe off my hand quickly and without the man noticing.
But when the high five was done, the man wiped his hand and looked at me with a little polite disgust. He told me something like I should wash my hands carefully before getting into social situations with people. I bashfully agreed.
Another man came up and shook hands with me. Again, I was afraid that the man would be put of by my hands. But he didn't seem to notice. This man was younger, with a greyish military suit, wavy, black hair, and an olive complexion.
I now sat as if by myself at a table full of people. A group of kids came in and sat at the row of tables across from us. At first the kids were teenagers. They were all slightly rowdy. It was obvious they had just come from some kind of educational event.
The group of kids in the table to the right started making fun of one of the people they saw. They called him a "transsexual, transgender, cross-gender, or whatever." I now noticed one of the boys, who was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and was small but very beautiful. He had straightish, flowing, black hair, and smooth, olive skin. He wore a nice, grey pea coat.
The children all seemed now to be six or seven years old. I sat at the far left end of a booth/bench now, instead of a table. A group of people my age sat to my right. We were like a volunteer group. The kids still sat at the table, like we were at the pizza place. But the red-pink light was gone, replaced with white fluorescent, and the atmosphere was like a Mexican food restaurant in the East Village.
The kids all seemed to be having some kind of mental problem or some weird manner of speaking to each other. Or perhaps they were playing a game. Many of them held overshirts or knit jackets over their heads like shawls. They were all mumbling to each other, almost whispering. But then they would point out a couple people in particular and say they were whispering, as if that was a point of their character showing they should be either pitied or treasured. The volunteers all looked on in a cherishing, pitying way.
The girl currently pointed out was a Mexican girl with dark skin and long hair. She wore a green shirt with black stripes and black jeans. Somehow I caught the girl's attention. She was singing and somehow crawled across her table, onto the bench, then onto my lap.
It was now like a lot of the volunteers and students were gone. I asked the girl how to sing a song in Spanish. I hummed and thought I was humming a Gloria Estefan song. But I was actually humming the Norah Jones song "Don't Know Why." The girl sang the song in Spanish.
We had a blanket pulled over our heads. I rocked the girl back and forth. I thought of the girl as autistic, and I thought, I'm really making a breakthrough with her!
Now some skinny, but bully-like, Mexican man with very short hair and a bushy mustache, wearing tan clothes or a military outfit, was sitting to my right, right next to me. He smiled and said, "Beautiful song. Gloria Estefan, isn't it?" By the way the man was smiling I could see that he was trying to take the girl's attention from me.
I saw a very pretty woman off to the left, at the front of the store, behind a cash register. I thought, Is this man sticking close to me because he wants to take this girl's attention away from me or because he doesn't want to seduce the cash register girl while I'm not looking? I wished that if the latter were true, the man would just go talk to the woman and leave me alone. I didn't care about that stuff -- I was trying to heal somebody! But the man did get up and walk over to the woman.
The girl lay down to my left, on some weird structure. Her head was on a wooden box, like a cigar box or a small food box. She was singing a different song in English now. She had a different look, like an Hispanic girl in Victorian costume. She looked like she was going to die. But her song was very powerful. It may have ended in Spanish.
The girl may now have been the first girl again, in the green shirt and black jeans. She may have gotten up to stand with the Mexican man and woman. I stood up, probably to leave. I saw a small newspaper stand to my let, just beside a small cooler for drinks. The stand held the New York Times.
There was a cartoon on the front page. It was in an Orozco-esque style, with very drab colors. There were two priests, probably from two different Christian denominations. One of them held a big, white cross between them. Both priests had scars and stitch-marks on their necks, like they had been decapitated and had their heads sewn back on. Behind the men and to the right was a gigantic white cross that lay down, almost completely smashing a house. The ground was barren and brown. The sky was black.
The newspaper article below the cartoon was accusing Wall Street of a ton of awful things. The article claimed that the crimes everybody on Wall Street had committed were tantamount to murder, and had, in fact, led to many people's deaths. The article also accused people on Wall Street of being some kind of cultic priests.
I felt ashamed, like I didn't want anybody to know I had worked on Wall Street. But I also thought the article was ridiculous. I thought, Nobody's as bad as this. This is obviously written by somebody on the outside, who immediately thinks everything that happens on the inside is strange and evil.
(2/1/09) who'll get fired?; the shooting game; a new religion
(Entered in paper journal at 8:22 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I walked through an office hallway. The hallway was narrow, with harsh, white, fluorescent light, grey carpet, and greyish walls. It was like a maze, or it was like this hallway would break off into other maze-like hallways.
I came to a small room, like a pantry, to my right. The head of my department, MR, stood before a tight circle of people, mostly low-level workers like me. He was talking about planning something out, like who would still be working here. He asked the people around him not to say anything.
I was now in a big, warm swimming pool in a room with warm, tan tiling on the walls and floor. The water in the pool was clear and green with depth. I swam before a weird "computer," like an old television with wires connecting in tangles to a rough set of units below it.
My old boss BS swam somewhere behind me and to my left. He said, "Well, I wonder who it's going to be who stays. Well, anyway, it's gonna happen soon." BS stepped out of the pool and told me he'd see me later.
Dream #2
I was in a big room like a mix between a studio and an inner courtyard. The room probably had black walls and columns, like a small theater, and probably had a big window showing blue sky out front. There were a few people with me.
One person and I were having something like a gunfight. We were both climbing up and down aluminum ladders, possibly trying to get up to a balcony level. The man shot me in my ribs, on my left side. The shot was like a puff of air. I don't think the shot hurt, but it made me flinch and it scared me somehow. I was disappointed in myself for having been so weak.
The scene replayed, or else the man and I, as if we were rehearsing, started our actions over again. The man was long-haired, possibly Asian. He was explaining to me how this whole thing worked. He showed me that we shot little, neon-green pellets out of our guns. The pellets were soft, like Styrofoam. They didn't hurt at all. They were really fast, but their impact was like it had no speed.
The man shot me again in the ribs, and I flinched again and got scared.
Dream #3
I was with either my old friend R or my brother. We were in a gigantic structure which may itself have been an entire city, an ancient city. The structure was all made out of huge, tan blocks of stone, and warm, soft light flowed into the structure, possibly from windows high up on the walls.
I had gone out of one room and into another. I had been speaking with R/my brother, and was now considering whether to change my religion. The room I was in now may actually have been like a library with grey stone walls. There may have been a long, maroon, velvety banner hanging down from a narrow wall, like one would expect to see draping down behind a throne. I tried to consider the differences in the religions I was deciding between.
I went back into the tan room. All along the walls were doorways to different churches. It was now like I was flying past, and just over, all the doorways, focusing in particular on three doorways. One was to a Catholic church. There may have been a statue of a church official before the door and to the left. I thought there was something I did like about this church, like the monks, but that the overall view of this church didn't match mine.
The next doorway I focused on was something like a Lutheran church, but with some kind of new-age ideology combined with it. I thought this was my church. I felt some kind of familiarity with it, and thought this must have been where I should go. But then I realized there was a lot of stuff in this church's ideology that I didn't feel comfortable with intellectually, and that I felt might actually make me soft or unhealthy. Before this doorway, to the left, was a sculpture, maybe five or six feet tall, of a palm branch.
These first two doorways had been along the left wall of the building, both toward the middle of the wall. The next doorway I focused on was on the right wall, near the top corner, and off to the right of it may actually have been an altar. This doorway was for the Lutheran church. I may have headed directly for this doorway after the previous doorway, as if I needed to convince myself that this doorway actually existed, that the stable church I was looking for was real, not just existing in admixture with things I didn't believe.
I may have been standing on the ground now, not flying. The room itself may also actually have been a sanctuary, with dim lighting, dark walls, and purple carpeting. But the stone doorway to the church still stood in the wall.
Dream #1
I walked through an office hallway. The hallway was narrow, with harsh, white, fluorescent light, grey carpet, and greyish walls. It was like a maze, or it was like this hallway would break off into other maze-like hallways.
I came to a small room, like a pantry, to my right. The head of my department, MR, stood before a tight circle of people, mostly low-level workers like me. He was talking about planning something out, like who would still be working here. He asked the people around him not to say anything.
I was now in a big, warm swimming pool in a room with warm, tan tiling on the walls and floor. The water in the pool was clear and green with depth. I swam before a weird "computer," like an old television with wires connecting in tangles to a rough set of units below it.
My old boss BS swam somewhere behind me and to my left. He said, "Well, I wonder who it's going to be who stays. Well, anyway, it's gonna happen soon." BS stepped out of the pool and told me he'd see me later.
Dream #2
I was in a big room like a mix between a studio and an inner courtyard. The room probably had black walls and columns, like a small theater, and probably had a big window showing blue sky out front. There were a few people with me.
One person and I were having something like a gunfight. We were both climbing up and down aluminum ladders, possibly trying to get up to a balcony level. The man shot me in my ribs, on my left side. The shot was like a puff of air. I don't think the shot hurt, but it made me flinch and it scared me somehow. I was disappointed in myself for having been so weak.
The scene replayed, or else the man and I, as if we were rehearsing, started our actions over again. The man was long-haired, possibly Asian. He was explaining to me how this whole thing worked. He showed me that we shot little, neon-green pellets out of our guns. The pellets were soft, like Styrofoam. They didn't hurt at all. They were really fast, but their impact was like it had no speed.
The man shot me again in the ribs, and I flinched again and got scared.
Dream #3
I was with either my old friend R or my brother. We were in a gigantic structure which may itself have been an entire city, an ancient city. The structure was all made out of huge, tan blocks of stone, and warm, soft light flowed into the structure, possibly from windows high up on the walls.
I had gone out of one room and into another. I had been speaking with R/my brother, and was now considering whether to change my religion. The room I was in now may actually have been like a library with grey stone walls. There may have been a long, maroon, velvety banner hanging down from a narrow wall, like one would expect to see draping down behind a throne. I tried to consider the differences in the religions I was deciding between.
I went back into the tan room. All along the walls were doorways to different churches. It was now like I was flying past, and just over, all the doorways, focusing in particular on three doorways. One was to a Catholic church. There may have been a statue of a church official before the door and to the left. I thought there was something I did like about this church, like the monks, but that the overall view of this church didn't match mine.
The next doorway I focused on was something like a Lutheran church, but with some kind of new-age ideology combined with it. I thought this was my church. I felt some kind of familiarity with it, and thought this must have been where I should go. But then I realized there was a lot of stuff in this church's ideology that I didn't feel comfortable with intellectually, and that I felt might actually make me soft or unhealthy. Before this doorway, to the left, was a sculpture, maybe five or six feet tall, of a palm branch.
These first two doorways had been along the left wall of the building, both toward the middle of the wall. The next doorway I focused on was on the right wall, near the top corner, and off to the right of it may actually have been an altar. This doorway was for the Lutheran church. I may have headed directly for this doorway after the previous doorway, as if I needed to convince myself that this doorway actually existed, that the stable church I was looking for was real, not just existing in admixture with things I didn't believe.
I may have been standing on the ground now, not flying. The room itself may also actually have been a sanctuary, with dim lighting, dark walls, and purple carpeting. But the stone doorway to the church still stood in the wall.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
(2/2/09) not worried about zombies; afraid to skydive
(Entered in paper journal -- somewhere -- at 9:01 AM.)
Dream #1
I was in a big house with a group of people "my age" (probably in their mid-twenties). Some disaster had happened, in this house or throughout the entire world, which had caused certain people to become zombies. We were investigating this house, either to find clues about what had made the people here become zombies or else to find additional zombies. The main group of us was sitting in the kitchen. Some of them may have been playing with "high-tech" devices.
I went upstairs. The downstairs had been small and tight. The stairwell also seemed small, flimsy, cheap. The upstairs was large. There seemed to be three high-ceilinged rooms. I only went into the center room. The room was dim, with natural light coming in through the tall windows along the long wall opposite the stairwell entry. The room felt empty, but I also felt a cluttered atmosphere somewhere. I might have seen something like an Othello game board with pieces on it.
I felt like I was now in danger of running into zombies. I knew if I saw them they'd attack me quickly and make me a zombie.
I was floating in the air, up near where the tops of the doorways would be. I was now floating downstairs, just above the stairwell and just below the ceiling of the kitchen. There was a pretty girl sitting at the table. All around was clutter. The place was bright with natural light.
The girl was either reading a newspaper or looking at some technological device. I may have been trying to get the girl and maybe some other people to come upstairs with me for protection against he zombies. I may have seen the zombies in my head -- a mother and two or three children, huddled together in some corner of the left room, clothes in robe-like garments, looking very poor and tired, but ready to spring like wild animals.
But the girl didn't seem to care about my urgency. She gave me a blank, almost annoyed, stare. For some reason I thought this was an example of why the fight against the zombies (or "zombie-virus") would be lost.
Dream #2
I was talking with a group of people. We were all getting training on skydiving. we may actually have been inside the plane, which may have been pretty empty inside, just the frame of the plane, metallic, slightly dusty, greyish or whitish. We may have been preparing for our first jump.
I wondered if I'd have the courage to make the jump. I thought there was only a slim chance that I'd live, anyway. I thought I was such an absent-minded person that I'd probably forget everything I was supposed to do on the way down, even though the process was actually pretty simple. I thought for sure that I'd get sidetracked by thoughts or looking around and totally forget to count down to the opening of my parachute. I also thought that perhaps the sight of the ground would scare me so bad that I'd lose track of everything.
I thought perhaps I should tell the instructor that I really couldn't do this jump. But then I thought the instructor would call me a coward and laugh me to scorn in front of everybody else. This really seemed awful -- most of the group were girls, and I really didn't want them to think of me as a coward. I thought I'd just go through with the jump, and let happen whatever would happen.
I could imagine myself descending from high up. Then a weird vision of a pinkish-orangish V, laid on its left side, with the base longer than the upper part, now appeared before my imagination. It may have slid into wholeness before my eyes, as if it were a changing measure of speed.
I now stood on the ground in a wooded area with a small group of women. One woman and I stood before a few large, red coolers that were stacked up by each other. The woman was sorting through some of the coolers, pulling stuff out and putting stuff in, making sure we were each prepared for our flight and first jump. I hoped the woman would find something missing in my cooler, so that I wouldn't be allowed to go up.
Another woman came into the scene from off to our left. She was carrying small coolers or boxes wrapped in clear, plastic wrapping. As this woman entered, the woman at the coolers had me help her pull some stuff out of the coolers. She was handing me items like white, plastic half-cubes (like bookends, almost), wrapped in clear, plastic bagging. Some of the items may also have been like plastic cubes with no top and like styrofoam coolers with removable tops.
At some point while I was handling all this stuff, the woman at the coolers may have reproached me, saying something like, "Don't even try to hope that something of yours is missing. You're going to do this just like the rest of us." I felt ashamed for having been called out as a coward before the other women.
Dream #1
I was in a big house with a group of people "my age" (probably in their mid-twenties). Some disaster had happened, in this house or throughout the entire world, which had caused certain people to become zombies. We were investigating this house, either to find clues about what had made the people here become zombies or else to find additional zombies. The main group of us was sitting in the kitchen. Some of them may have been playing with "high-tech" devices.
I went upstairs. The downstairs had been small and tight. The stairwell also seemed small, flimsy, cheap. The upstairs was large. There seemed to be three high-ceilinged rooms. I only went into the center room. The room was dim, with natural light coming in through the tall windows along the long wall opposite the stairwell entry. The room felt empty, but I also felt a cluttered atmosphere somewhere. I might have seen something like an Othello game board with pieces on it.
I felt like I was now in danger of running into zombies. I knew if I saw them they'd attack me quickly and make me a zombie.
I was floating in the air, up near where the tops of the doorways would be. I was now floating downstairs, just above the stairwell and just below the ceiling of the kitchen. There was a pretty girl sitting at the table. All around was clutter. The place was bright with natural light.
The girl was either reading a newspaper or looking at some technological device. I may have been trying to get the girl and maybe some other people to come upstairs with me for protection against he zombies. I may have seen the zombies in my head -- a mother and two or three children, huddled together in some corner of the left room, clothes in robe-like garments, looking very poor and tired, but ready to spring like wild animals.
But the girl didn't seem to care about my urgency. She gave me a blank, almost annoyed, stare. For some reason I thought this was an example of why the fight against the zombies (or "zombie-virus") would be lost.
Dream #2
I was talking with a group of people. We were all getting training on skydiving. we may actually have been inside the plane, which may have been pretty empty inside, just the frame of the plane, metallic, slightly dusty, greyish or whitish. We may have been preparing for our first jump.
I wondered if I'd have the courage to make the jump. I thought there was only a slim chance that I'd live, anyway. I thought I was such an absent-minded person that I'd probably forget everything I was supposed to do on the way down, even though the process was actually pretty simple. I thought for sure that I'd get sidetracked by thoughts or looking around and totally forget to count down to the opening of my parachute. I also thought that perhaps the sight of the ground would scare me so bad that I'd lose track of everything.
I thought perhaps I should tell the instructor that I really couldn't do this jump. But then I thought the instructor would call me a coward and laugh me to scorn in front of everybody else. This really seemed awful -- most of the group were girls, and I really didn't want them to think of me as a coward. I thought I'd just go through with the jump, and let happen whatever would happen.
I could imagine myself descending from high up. Then a weird vision of a pinkish-orangish V, laid on its left side, with the base longer than the upper part, now appeared before my imagination. It may have slid into wholeness before my eyes, as if it were a changing measure of speed.
I now stood on the ground in a wooded area with a small group of women. One woman and I stood before a few large, red coolers that were stacked up by each other. The woman was sorting through some of the coolers, pulling stuff out and putting stuff in, making sure we were each prepared for our flight and first jump. I hoped the woman would find something missing in my cooler, so that I wouldn't be allowed to go up.
Another woman came into the scene from off to our left. She was carrying small coolers or boxes wrapped in clear, plastic wrapping. As this woman entered, the woman at the coolers had me help her pull some stuff out of the coolers. She was handing me items like white, plastic half-cubes (like bookends, almost), wrapped in clear, plastic bagging. Some of the items may also have been like plastic cubes with no top and like styrofoam coolers with removable tops.
At some point while I was handling all this stuff, the woman at the coolers may have reproached me, saying something like, "Don't even try to hope that something of yours is missing. You're going to do this just like the rest of us." I felt ashamed for having been called out as a coward before the other women.
(2/4/09) i look awful; athletic heroes
(Entered in paper journal at 9 AM at Starbucks at Thirty-seventh Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was sitting in a car in a parking lot that may have been partly asphalt and partly dirt. The parking lot was wide and empty. It was a sunny day. I was on the phone with my old boss and mentor EB, who may have been talking to me about how I needed to shape up in some way or another. I stood out of the car and was walking around, toward the front of the parking lot.
Coming into the parking lot were a few people I knew (and possibly some others I didn't know). At the front of this group was my old friend PD, who looked very good. She was tanned, thin, with good muscle tone and rich, blonde hair. I hoped PD wouldn't recognize me, and that if she did, that she'd think I was awful and want to avoid me. I didn't want PD to mention me to my old friend R.
I thought to myself, Well, thankfully, I do look awful. I looked down at myself. I was wearing an awful, old, orange t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts (what I, at this time in my life, was wearing for pajamas). I could tell I had lost a lot of weight, and that my hair and beard looked terrible. Continuing my phone conversation, I started scratching my ribs. Looking at my pose in the shadow on the dirt, I was satisfied that I really looked horrible -- I looked just like a drug addict or a diseased person.
I scuttled off toward my left, toward the chain-link fence boundary there, working my way back up toward my car. I was still talking with EB. I got back to my car. I few people I knew, including PD, were gathered around a picnic area near the car, as if we were in a national forest or in front of someone's house. My car, which had previously been exposed to sunlight in the parking lot, was now shaded over by a few trees. People were carrying things into the picnic area.
I had stepped into my car again. I was now ashamed for the appearance of my car (which was a very old Eagle that, in waking life, I'd owned while living in Arizona and New Mexico about seven years previous to this dream). The car looked okay. It was pretty empty. The back seats were pulled down so there was plenty of laying-down space. There was "car-trash" near the edges -- little scraps of paper, old scum, small change.
But I thought of the car as being extremely messy (in waking life, that car did end up being extremely cluttered, even filthy, as, toward the end of my stay in New Mexico, I began living in my car to save up money to get back to New York, and I had no other place to store all of my books, notebooks -- and the piles of cheap lingerie I would compulsively buy). I didn't want PD to see the car and know I lived in such an awful place.
I was somehow able to stand up completely straight inside the car. I now walked back out of the car, still speaking on the phone with EB. I agreed very loudly with something EB had said, so that PD would see I was talking with someone very important, like EB. PD didn't seem to pay me very much attention.
I was now in the back of the car. EB was telling me something about how I should really take better care of my clothing. I agreed with EB. I really wished I could take better care of my clothing.
From one of the hooks or seat-belt fixtures in the ceiling of the car, down diagonally to the window (?) on the left side of the car, were strung a neatly arranged bundle of scarves. The scarves were of different colors, all solid. One scarf was a creamy white. Another was an elegant maroon. The scarves all looked like women's scarves.
I thought I would look better if I wore these scarves, but I didn't think that was practical or reasonable, possibly because I couldn't wear so many scarves, or possibly because the scarves were women's scarves.
Dream #2
I was in a crowded bar with my old boss BS. The bar was a big square in the center of the room. The place might have been a sports bar. The floors, bar, and walls were wood. There might have been a second level around three walls of the fir first floor (?). There were neon signs on the walls and a large television screen covering most of the back wall.
BS and I were walking around the bar counter-clockwise, easily, as if the crowd were there but had none of the "push" of usual bar crowds. I was telling BS about a high school cross country runner who'd been one of my idols when I was in high school. I told BS that the runner hadn't been as famous as Adam Goucher (who actually had been a cross country star and and idol of mine when I was in high school), but how on a number of occasions he'd actually given Adam Goucher a good run for his money.
I could see two runners in a track race. Adam Goucher may have been wearing a red outfit, while the other person wore a blue one. The other person may have had an olive complexion, wavy, brown hair, a little stubble, and a lot of chest hair, and may have been a little more strongly built than Adam Goucher.
I then spoke with BS about Adam Goucher, and how he was really good in college, but how I really didn't know how he ended up professionally. Now the television screen was showing a high school (?) track race in which Adam Goucher was running. At least Adam Goucher, but possibly also a few other runners, had their running shirts' bottoms pulled up over their chests, exposing females breasts.
Dream #1
I was sitting in a car in a parking lot that may have been partly asphalt and partly dirt. The parking lot was wide and empty. It was a sunny day. I was on the phone with my old boss and mentor EB, who may have been talking to me about how I needed to shape up in some way or another. I stood out of the car and was walking around, toward the front of the parking lot.
Coming into the parking lot were a few people I knew (and possibly some others I didn't know). At the front of this group was my old friend PD, who looked very good. She was tanned, thin, with good muscle tone and rich, blonde hair. I hoped PD wouldn't recognize me, and that if she did, that she'd think I was awful and want to avoid me. I didn't want PD to mention me to my old friend R.
I thought to myself, Well, thankfully, I do look awful. I looked down at myself. I was wearing an awful, old, orange t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts (what I, at this time in my life, was wearing for pajamas). I could tell I had lost a lot of weight, and that my hair and beard looked terrible. Continuing my phone conversation, I started scratching my ribs. Looking at my pose in the shadow on the dirt, I was satisfied that I really looked horrible -- I looked just like a drug addict or a diseased person.
I scuttled off toward my left, toward the chain-link fence boundary there, working my way back up toward my car. I was still talking with EB. I got back to my car. I few people I knew, including PD, were gathered around a picnic area near the car, as if we were in a national forest or in front of someone's house. My car, which had previously been exposed to sunlight in the parking lot, was now shaded over by a few trees. People were carrying things into the picnic area.
I had stepped into my car again. I was now ashamed for the appearance of my car (which was a very old Eagle that, in waking life, I'd owned while living in Arizona and New Mexico about seven years previous to this dream). The car looked okay. It was pretty empty. The back seats were pulled down so there was plenty of laying-down space. There was "car-trash" near the edges -- little scraps of paper, old scum, small change.
But I thought of the car as being extremely messy (in waking life, that car did end up being extremely cluttered, even filthy, as, toward the end of my stay in New Mexico, I began living in my car to save up money to get back to New York, and I had no other place to store all of my books, notebooks -- and the piles of cheap lingerie I would compulsively buy). I didn't want PD to see the car and know I lived in such an awful place.
I was somehow able to stand up completely straight inside the car. I now walked back out of the car, still speaking on the phone with EB. I agreed very loudly with something EB had said, so that PD would see I was talking with someone very important, like EB. PD didn't seem to pay me very much attention.
I was now in the back of the car. EB was telling me something about how I should really take better care of my clothing. I agreed with EB. I really wished I could take better care of my clothing.
From one of the hooks or seat-belt fixtures in the ceiling of the car, down diagonally to the window (?) on the left side of the car, were strung a neatly arranged bundle of scarves. The scarves were of different colors, all solid. One scarf was a creamy white. Another was an elegant maroon. The scarves all looked like women's scarves.
I thought I would look better if I wore these scarves, but I didn't think that was practical or reasonable, possibly because I couldn't wear so many scarves, or possibly because the scarves were women's scarves.
Dream #2
I was in a crowded bar with my old boss BS. The bar was a big square in the center of the room. The place might have been a sports bar. The floors, bar, and walls were wood. There might have been a second level around three walls of the fir first floor (?). There were neon signs on the walls and a large television screen covering most of the back wall.
BS and I were walking around the bar counter-clockwise, easily, as if the crowd were there but had none of the "push" of usual bar crowds. I was telling BS about a high school cross country runner who'd been one of my idols when I was in high school. I told BS that the runner hadn't been as famous as Adam Goucher (who actually had been a cross country star and and idol of mine when I was in high school), but how on a number of occasions he'd actually given Adam Goucher a good run for his money.
I could see two runners in a track race. Adam Goucher may have been wearing a red outfit, while the other person wore a blue one. The other person may have had an olive complexion, wavy, brown hair, a little stubble, and a lot of chest hair, and may have been a little more strongly built than Adam Goucher.
I then spoke with BS about Adam Goucher, and how he was really good in college, but how I really didn't know how he ended up professionally. Now the television screen was showing a high school (?) track race in which Adam Goucher was running. At least Adam Goucher, but possibly also a few other runners, had their running shirts' bottoms pulled up over their chests, exposing females breasts.
(2/6/09) dying customer; storm at the panty shop; you aren't funny; lesbians and rituals; breaking to pieces; swarm of bees
(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Starbucks on Twenty-ninth Street and Park Avenue.)
Dream #1
A television show with a group of people, possibly teenagers, like a cartoon, except possibly live action. The kids had been drawn to a place that looked like a beach-view balcony deck on a sunny day. I may now have been in the group of teenagers. We stood before a glass double door, the doors (or one door?) of which were swung inwardly open.
A little person or creature had lured us this far. I now felt like he had tricked us into coming here so his master could do something to us. The little creature walked halfway into the left side of the threshold, pushing the door even more open.
The boy leader of the group of teenagers (maybe I was the leader) was now to follow the creature. The creature magically shrank the boy. I could see the boy's (my?) shadow on the ground. As the boy shrank, the shadow stayed the same size.
The creature had the boy floating in the air. He levitated the boy over to a chair inside the room. The room was slightly dim, as if all the curtains were closed but there were still plenty of natural light coming into the room.
The chair at first had thin, wooden legs and green, plush cushioning for the seat and back. But for a moment the whole scene became a cartoon. At this point (and possibly even when the scene changed back into live action) the chair was wooden, like the chair for a school desk. The room, which had previously been like a room in a resort, was now more like a mix between that room and some kind of mountain-roadside grocery store.
The creature had told the shrunken boy that he would find shoes for the boy. The shoes would, of course, be enormous to the boy, who was now perhaps an inch tall at most. Nevertheless, the boy would have to pay for the shoes. This itself was some kind of torture for the boy.
Behind the chair was a wall of grid-like shelves or cubby-holes, with shoes in every cubby-hole. To the left of the chair was the cashier's counter, which also somehow looked like a concierge's counter. A rough-looking man, perhaps a little stout, Hispanic looking, with a dark blue winter jacket and a wool cap, stood behind the desk. Behind him may have been wooden shelves stacked with old-looking canned and boxed food.
Another man leaned on the right side of the counter. Before him were two open boxes of shoes. A man stood across from him. Both men were rough-looking, both wearing winter clothes. The man on the left was huge, at least a head taller than the other two men, and pretty heavy. The man on the right was also big, though not as big. He looked a little tougher and more cunning. He wore a black, leather jacket, a little big on him. The man on the left wore a slightly padded black jacket with a grey, hooded sweatshirt underneath.
The man on the left was a customer. The man on the right was the boss of the store. The boss was trying to rip off the customer. I could see the shoes (in the right box?) he was trying to sell the customer. The shoes were too small. At first they were like dark brown leather loafers, the kind with the chunky seams and cords of leather binding the seams around the toes. But then the shoes became wood. They looked like clogs.
The customer said, "I don't want these. These aren't what I asked for at all."
The boss sneered, "What do I care? What do you want me to do about it?" I could now tell the boss was some kind of crime boss.
The customer said, "You can give me my money back!"
I knew the situation was going to get dangerous. The boss said, "I'm not gonna do that."
The customer said, "Alright. Have it your way, then."
The customer reached into his left pocket. He was about to pull out a gun. But with lightning speed the boss pulled a gun from his right pocket and fired a few shots into the customer's gut. For a moment I could see the customer's font as if his skin were transparent. I could see the customer's torn intestines.
The customer was dazed, as if shock had already caused him to forget he'd just been shot. He stood like a robot as the boss said, "Now what are you gonna do? Come back tomorrow and give me trouble?"
The customer said, "I just might."
The customer turned and walked out the exit (which was another double-door of glass to the left, with the doors open). Outside was a grey stone courtyard, in bright grey light as if it were a cloudy day.
The customer got a few steps outside and then fell over, to a hunched or kneeling position. Blood had just now begun to gush out from his abdomen. The customer might also have started throwing up blood. The customer was now in a position like a "weak man's push-up," i.e. on all fours, with the legs together and arms out about shoulder-width, but with the body bent in the middle so that the man's bottom was poking up in the air.
The customer's abdomen would plop out a bloody mass, then hold off and then plop again.
The customer called to the boss, "Hey, XXXXX, I don't think I'll becoming back next week or next month or even next year. In fact, I don't think I'll ever be coming here again!" He was saying this as if the boss were his friend, a superior friend, like the boss of a crime gang in which both men had been involved. It was also like the customer had just realized he was dying and he was now imploring the only nearby person who knew him at all to give him sympathy as he was dying.
The boss just looked on as if the customer's whole situation was just silly and pathetic.
Dream #2
I walked into a discount clothing store. The store may have been set up into tiered or stair-stepping levels, going higher and higher farther back into the store. I had come in here to find some sexy panties at a cheap price. The store was full of wife-like women in their thirties or forties. They were mostly overweight. Some were Hispanic, some were white. I was relieved that I didn't see anybody I knew or any rough-looking men who might make fun of me for being a man and shopping for panties.
I went a few rows back. I saw a few different displays of lingerie. Some looked either too small or strappy in the crotch for me to fit into. Other stuff looked too boring or to large.
I found a few racks or displays of stuff that looked like it might be really nice. But I would see it too late each time, as I passed it. I would try to turn around and go back to it, but the aisles would either be blocked by people standing fully in the middle of the aisles or charging forward so aggressively that I was afraid to move against them; or else I wouldn't want to catch the eye of a remotely pretty woman or someone who might even possibly know me.
Eventually I thought I saw a way to charge straight back to all the places I missed. I walked quickly and aggressively through a tangle of women, carts, even half-broken or skewed-over racks of clothing. I didn't care who I rushed through.
But I eventually just rushed down a ramp and into a line for the cashier. I wasn't in line. I stood just to the side. But I stood waiting as if I were standing in line. The front of the line was a huge mess of people and carts and cluttered merchandise.
Most of the people in line were women, but there was at least one man: a skinny, scrappy, chicken-shit-looking black-Hispanic boy dressed as a worker in a blue polo shirt and tan khakis, like a Best Buy worker might wear.
This guy was flirting with one of the women. I felt like this guy was standing around right here because he wanted to make sure that I wasn't flirting with any of these women and that he was. But I didn't want any of these women -- they all looked like worn-out housewives.
I wanted to get out the door and away from this guy. But now I saw that outside it was starting to rain. The rain got harder and harder very quickly. Now it was storming riotously. The sky was dark grey, and the pounding of the rain against the windows was deafening.
A young, black woman, a little overweight and plain-looking, with darkish orange hair, and also wearing an outfit like that of a Best Buy employee, held me back, pushing me into a huge crowd of fat mothers, from the front of which I'd just emerged.
The girl told me, "You can't go outside. The news just said the weather is a disaster situation. Everybody has to stay inside wherever they are, and the workers have to make sure that everybody stays put." The woman said all of this to me with motherly concern, as if I were a cute boy she felt she had to take care of.
The weather got worse and worse. The girl assured me that everything would be okay, that the storm was getting to its most intense point, and that it would then stop immediately, and that everybody would be alright.
Now the building itself was rocking, as if there was an earthquake. I might have closed my eyes in terror. Suddenly everything was swept away. It was like the building and all the people had been ripped upward by a cyclone. For a moment I stood in the whirling rain. Then all the grey was like a calm, impenetrable fog. Suddenly all was dark.
I saw a house, or a cartoon image of a house, with a red walkway leading up to it. I might also have seen myself as a cartoon, with the house behind me, a small image behind me, with everything else being a black background.
Dream #3
I stood in a place like a bathroom. The room was nice, and it had some of the length and narrowness of a hallway, which I may have thought it was. The walls and floors had a color and shine like finished wood.
I walked past a woman to my left. The woman was short, overweight, white, with shoulder-length black hair and black-rimmed glasses (like a woman I'd occasionally spoken with at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, a young teacher who lived in Brooklyn but taught way up in upper Manhattan).
The woman sat on a low seat and had her legs up, possibly on a footstool or a wicker box. Before her was a sink. But the sink (it seems now) was so close to the woman's seat that the woman couldn't possibly have stretched out her legs the way she was stretching them.
I handed the woman a stack of pages (typewritten?). I also told her about ideas I was having, as if they were the ideas on the pages, i.e. as if I hadn't yet typed the pages. The woman said, "Those are really good ideas! You and I should work together. We could even get a show on the community television channel! I think you and I would work together really well."
I sheepishly said, "Yeah, that sounds cool!" But I really didn't want to do anything like that at all.
The woman said, "If I had a little boost from your enthusiasm, I'm sure I could really show what a creative and hilarious person I am."
I said, "Yeah, that sounds true." But in my head I thought, You really aren't funny at all.
Dream #4
I was walking on a park or greenbelt path in the sun. It was a nice, warm day. I may have come from some office building. I may also have been carrying a stack of papers in my hand. Oddly, in spite of the heat, I may have been wearing a long, grey, tweed trench coat.
I may have felt a slight twinge of embarrassment from the social situation I had just come from, as if I had pitched a creative idea which was thought o as impractical or eccentric, so that I'd even had to laugh at myself.
But somehow, most of the embarrassment, which had been kind of goodhearted, anyhow, melted away in the beauty of the day. There were tons of people all laying out sunbathing on the strip of lawn, which sloped up, on my left, gently to the street level. To my right may have been a river. I felt happy to see all these people as I walked along. Many of the people were beautiful. The light was at times dim and golden like winter afternoon light and at other times bright and colorful like an unseasonably warm spring day.
A couple of beautiful women caught my eye. The two girls were spooning with each other. The girl in back also had her hand on the front girl's bottom. This turned me on.
The two girls may possibly have been half-covered by a brown blanket. They were both blonde and tan and they both wore two-piece swimsuits. The girl in back wore a neon pink, full-bottomed two-piece. The girl in front wore a thin, white bikini with pink decorations on it like you might see on a pretty pair of cotton panties. The bottom of the girl in back really turned me on.
But the girl in back turned her head and saw that I was looking at her and her girlfriend. She may have covered herself and her girlfriend up even more with the blanket, although I feel like what she actually did was take the blanket off altogether, exposing herself and her girlfriend to me altogether, as if to make the point obvious that the two girls were together and happy and that they didn't care at all about me, even if I was looking at them. I felt as if I had been tricked, as if the girls had half-exposed themselves to turn me on, only to fully expose themselves and jilt me, getting pleasure out of being wanted but unattainable.
I looked out at the rest of the people, half out of wanting to show the girl how quickly I could put her and her girlfriend out of my mind, and half out of sheepish shame, like feeling sorry that somebody -- anybody -- had felt their privacy invaded by my having looked on at them for too long.
I was suddenly annoyed by the crowd of people, possibly as if I realized that I couldn't find a place to lay down here, and that even if I did, I'd still have to contend with all the people who were elbow-close with me. I sped up my walk. Now there were also people walking along the path. I had to doge all of them. Suddenly I came to a walkway that went down a steep slope.
I had just now been thinking to myself about a group of people who had come here from across the seas to perform some kind of religious ritual. I thought, Perhaps there are so many people out here because they all want to see the ritual. But then I realized that the ritual had been over for at least a day. I thought, It's possible the people have gotten back on their ships to go home.
The path I was on was very steep. It was made of asphalt. It worked it was way around the bend of a grey rock face.
I was now descending a grass slope. I had to get onto a thin, dirt path, as if I were on the edge of something, and if I didn't get onto the dirt path with jet-like precision, I'd fall off the edge. I was suddenly giddy with a fear of heights and worry over my aim.
Down below, in a valley, were a thin group of people who looked like Indians or Native Americans. They were running form the shore, planting flag-like stakes of gnarled branches (with bright rectangles of fabric at their tops) into the ground, then running back to the shore.
I thought, Well, they still have more ritual to perform, even though the official ritual is over. But people must only care about the official ritual. The rest isn't famous enough for them to want to be a part of it.
I now came to a tan and orange stone, maybe sandstone, land feature that was like the entrance to the cave, but that also looked like a Utah-style stone arch. It was like this land feature appeared out of nowhere -- my view below had been unobstructed before. It seemed like the land feature was just a shallow tunnel, which would be pretty easy to get through and rather beautiful to look at. Plus, I thought, with this thing blocking out all the scenery, I won't be as afraid of the steepness and height of this path (which was asphalt again).
But as I approached the mouth of the cave, a tiny, black, bee-like insect flew out. I knew the little bee's sting could be rather irksome, but I thought the insect was such a cute, little creature. I turned backwards to look at it.
Behind me were natural walls, all of this tan and orange stone, thought which the path I was on snaked upward. The bee hovered in a pool of sunlight. I greeted the bee and said a few kind, happy words to it. Then I turned forward again.
Now the tunnel was very shallow, a few feet only, like the turning of a corner. I could even see the people in the valley again. But now the dirt path was either unseen or in a different place than I had previously been aiming for. I may have thought to myself how I had screwed up by having turned around instead of continuing forward when the bee had come out of the cave.
Dream #5
A vision of the walls of a library (the "New York Public Library"). The walls were a porous white stone, like the sidewalks and walls of the Grace building. They broke into vertical panels, which clattered more and more apart form each other. As they did this, I saw an old, skinny, wise-looking man beside me (and looking down to me) talking to me. But the sound was muffled and tinny, like my perceptions were blurring or dissolving. Somewhere else there was a solid wood wall, which was also breaking into pieces.
Dream #6
A swarm of tiny, tight, dull yellow and black-grey bees stopped me from walking around a curve (and to the right) of a tiny path in a little, green-lawned park. Somewhere near me may have been a group of my friends, who may have laughed at me for being afraid and stopping at the swarm of bees.
Dream #1
A television show with a group of people, possibly teenagers, like a cartoon, except possibly live action. The kids had been drawn to a place that looked like a beach-view balcony deck on a sunny day. I may now have been in the group of teenagers. We stood before a glass double door, the doors (or one door?) of which were swung inwardly open.
A little person or creature had lured us this far. I now felt like he had tricked us into coming here so his master could do something to us. The little creature walked halfway into the left side of the threshold, pushing the door even more open.
The boy leader of the group of teenagers (maybe I was the leader) was now to follow the creature. The creature magically shrank the boy. I could see the boy's (my?) shadow on the ground. As the boy shrank, the shadow stayed the same size.
The creature had the boy floating in the air. He levitated the boy over to a chair inside the room. The room was slightly dim, as if all the curtains were closed but there were still plenty of natural light coming into the room.
The chair at first had thin, wooden legs and green, plush cushioning for the seat and back. But for a moment the whole scene became a cartoon. At this point (and possibly even when the scene changed back into live action) the chair was wooden, like the chair for a school desk. The room, which had previously been like a room in a resort, was now more like a mix between that room and some kind of mountain-roadside grocery store.
The creature had told the shrunken boy that he would find shoes for the boy. The shoes would, of course, be enormous to the boy, who was now perhaps an inch tall at most. Nevertheless, the boy would have to pay for the shoes. This itself was some kind of torture for the boy.
Behind the chair was a wall of grid-like shelves or cubby-holes, with shoes in every cubby-hole. To the left of the chair was the cashier's counter, which also somehow looked like a concierge's counter. A rough-looking man, perhaps a little stout, Hispanic looking, with a dark blue winter jacket and a wool cap, stood behind the desk. Behind him may have been wooden shelves stacked with old-looking canned and boxed food.
Another man leaned on the right side of the counter. Before him were two open boxes of shoes. A man stood across from him. Both men were rough-looking, both wearing winter clothes. The man on the left was huge, at least a head taller than the other two men, and pretty heavy. The man on the right was also big, though not as big. He looked a little tougher and more cunning. He wore a black, leather jacket, a little big on him. The man on the left wore a slightly padded black jacket with a grey, hooded sweatshirt underneath.
The man on the left was a customer. The man on the right was the boss of the store. The boss was trying to rip off the customer. I could see the shoes (in the right box?) he was trying to sell the customer. The shoes were too small. At first they were like dark brown leather loafers, the kind with the chunky seams and cords of leather binding the seams around the toes. But then the shoes became wood. They looked like clogs.
The customer said, "I don't want these. These aren't what I asked for at all."
The boss sneered, "What do I care? What do you want me to do about it?" I could now tell the boss was some kind of crime boss.
The customer said, "You can give me my money back!"
I knew the situation was going to get dangerous. The boss said, "I'm not gonna do that."
The customer said, "Alright. Have it your way, then."
The customer reached into his left pocket. He was about to pull out a gun. But with lightning speed the boss pulled a gun from his right pocket and fired a few shots into the customer's gut. For a moment I could see the customer's font as if his skin were transparent. I could see the customer's torn intestines.
The customer was dazed, as if shock had already caused him to forget he'd just been shot. He stood like a robot as the boss said, "Now what are you gonna do? Come back tomorrow and give me trouble?"
The customer said, "I just might."
The customer turned and walked out the exit (which was another double-door of glass to the left, with the doors open). Outside was a grey stone courtyard, in bright grey light as if it were a cloudy day.
The customer got a few steps outside and then fell over, to a hunched or kneeling position. Blood had just now begun to gush out from his abdomen. The customer might also have started throwing up blood. The customer was now in a position like a "weak man's push-up," i.e. on all fours, with the legs together and arms out about shoulder-width, but with the body bent in the middle so that the man's bottom was poking up in the air.
The customer's abdomen would plop out a bloody mass, then hold off and then plop again.
The customer called to the boss, "Hey, XXXXX, I don't think I'll becoming back next week or next month or even next year. In fact, I don't think I'll ever be coming here again!" He was saying this as if the boss were his friend, a superior friend, like the boss of a crime gang in which both men had been involved. It was also like the customer had just realized he was dying and he was now imploring the only nearby person who knew him at all to give him sympathy as he was dying.
The boss just looked on as if the customer's whole situation was just silly and pathetic.
Dream #2
I walked into a discount clothing store. The store may have been set up into tiered or stair-stepping levels, going higher and higher farther back into the store. I had come in here to find some sexy panties at a cheap price. The store was full of wife-like women in their thirties or forties. They were mostly overweight. Some were Hispanic, some were white. I was relieved that I didn't see anybody I knew or any rough-looking men who might make fun of me for being a man and shopping for panties.
I went a few rows back. I saw a few different displays of lingerie. Some looked either too small or strappy in the crotch for me to fit into. Other stuff looked too boring or to large.
I found a few racks or displays of stuff that looked like it might be really nice. But I would see it too late each time, as I passed it. I would try to turn around and go back to it, but the aisles would either be blocked by people standing fully in the middle of the aisles or charging forward so aggressively that I was afraid to move against them; or else I wouldn't want to catch the eye of a remotely pretty woman or someone who might even possibly know me.
Eventually I thought I saw a way to charge straight back to all the places I missed. I walked quickly and aggressively through a tangle of women, carts, even half-broken or skewed-over racks of clothing. I didn't care who I rushed through.
But I eventually just rushed down a ramp and into a line for the cashier. I wasn't in line. I stood just to the side. But I stood waiting as if I were standing in line. The front of the line was a huge mess of people and carts and cluttered merchandise.
Most of the people in line were women, but there was at least one man: a skinny, scrappy, chicken-shit-looking black-Hispanic boy dressed as a worker in a blue polo shirt and tan khakis, like a Best Buy worker might wear.
This guy was flirting with one of the women. I felt like this guy was standing around right here because he wanted to make sure that I wasn't flirting with any of these women and that he was. But I didn't want any of these women -- they all looked like worn-out housewives.
I wanted to get out the door and away from this guy. But now I saw that outside it was starting to rain. The rain got harder and harder very quickly. Now it was storming riotously. The sky was dark grey, and the pounding of the rain against the windows was deafening.
A young, black woman, a little overweight and plain-looking, with darkish orange hair, and also wearing an outfit like that of a Best Buy employee, held me back, pushing me into a huge crowd of fat mothers, from the front of which I'd just emerged.
The girl told me, "You can't go outside. The news just said the weather is a disaster situation. Everybody has to stay inside wherever they are, and the workers have to make sure that everybody stays put." The woman said all of this to me with motherly concern, as if I were a cute boy she felt she had to take care of.
The weather got worse and worse. The girl assured me that everything would be okay, that the storm was getting to its most intense point, and that it would then stop immediately, and that everybody would be alright.
Now the building itself was rocking, as if there was an earthquake. I might have closed my eyes in terror. Suddenly everything was swept away. It was like the building and all the people had been ripped upward by a cyclone. For a moment I stood in the whirling rain. Then all the grey was like a calm, impenetrable fog. Suddenly all was dark.
I saw a house, or a cartoon image of a house, with a red walkway leading up to it. I might also have seen myself as a cartoon, with the house behind me, a small image behind me, with everything else being a black background.
Dream #3
I stood in a place like a bathroom. The room was nice, and it had some of the length and narrowness of a hallway, which I may have thought it was. The walls and floors had a color and shine like finished wood.
I walked past a woman to my left. The woman was short, overweight, white, with shoulder-length black hair and black-rimmed glasses (like a woman I'd occasionally spoken with at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, a young teacher who lived in Brooklyn but taught way up in upper Manhattan).
The woman sat on a low seat and had her legs up, possibly on a footstool or a wicker box. Before her was a sink. But the sink (it seems now) was so close to the woman's seat that the woman couldn't possibly have stretched out her legs the way she was stretching them.
I handed the woman a stack of pages (typewritten?). I also told her about ideas I was having, as if they were the ideas on the pages, i.e. as if I hadn't yet typed the pages. The woman said, "Those are really good ideas! You and I should work together. We could even get a show on the community television channel! I think you and I would work together really well."
I sheepishly said, "Yeah, that sounds cool!" But I really didn't want to do anything like that at all.
The woman said, "If I had a little boost from your enthusiasm, I'm sure I could really show what a creative and hilarious person I am."
I said, "Yeah, that sounds true." But in my head I thought, You really aren't funny at all.
Dream #4
I was walking on a park or greenbelt path in the sun. It was a nice, warm day. I may have come from some office building. I may also have been carrying a stack of papers in my hand. Oddly, in spite of the heat, I may have been wearing a long, grey, tweed trench coat.
I may have felt a slight twinge of embarrassment from the social situation I had just come from, as if I had pitched a creative idea which was thought o as impractical or eccentric, so that I'd even had to laugh at myself.
But somehow, most of the embarrassment, which had been kind of goodhearted, anyhow, melted away in the beauty of the day. There were tons of people all laying out sunbathing on the strip of lawn, which sloped up, on my left, gently to the street level. To my right may have been a river. I felt happy to see all these people as I walked along. Many of the people were beautiful. The light was at times dim and golden like winter afternoon light and at other times bright and colorful like an unseasonably warm spring day.
A couple of beautiful women caught my eye. The two girls were spooning with each other. The girl in back also had her hand on the front girl's bottom. This turned me on.
The two girls may possibly have been half-covered by a brown blanket. They were both blonde and tan and they both wore two-piece swimsuits. The girl in back wore a neon pink, full-bottomed two-piece. The girl in front wore a thin, white bikini with pink decorations on it like you might see on a pretty pair of cotton panties. The bottom of the girl in back really turned me on.
But the girl in back turned her head and saw that I was looking at her and her girlfriend. She may have covered herself and her girlfriend up even more with the blanket, although I feel like what she actually did was take the blanket off altogether, exposing herself and her girlfriend to me altogether, as if to make the point obvious that the two girls were together and happy and that they didn't care at all about me, even if I was looking at them. I felt as if I had been tricked, as if the girls had half-exposed themselves to turn me on, only to fully expose themselves and jilt me, getting pleasure out of being wanted but unattainable.
I looked out at the rest of the people, half out of wanting to show the girl how quickly I could put her and her girlfriend out of my mind, and half out of sheepish shame, like feeling sorry that somebody -- anybody -- had felt their privacy invaded by my having looked on at them for too long.
I was suddenly annoyed by the crowd of people, possibly as if I realized that I couldn't find a place to lay down here, and that even if I did, I'd still have to contend with all the people who were elbow-close with me. I sped up my walk. Now there were also people walking along the path. I had to doge all of them. Suddenly I came to a walkway that went down a steep slope.
I had just now been thinking to myself about a group of people who had come here from across the seas to perform some kind of religious ritual. I thought, Perhaps there are so many people out here because they all want to see the ritual. But then I realized that the ritual had been over for at least a day. I thought, It's possible the people have gotten back on their ships to go home.
The path I was on was very steep. It was made of asphalt. It worked it was way around the bend of a grey rock face.
I was now descending a grass slope. I had to get onto a thin, dirt path, as if I were on the edge of something, and if I didn't get onto the dirt path with jet-like precision, I'd fall off the edge. I was suddenly giddy with a fear of heights and worry over my aim.
Down below, in a valley, were a thin group of people who looked like Indians or Native Americans. They were running form the shore, planting flag-like stakes of gnarled branches (with bright rectangles of fabric at their tops) into the ground, then running back to the shore.
I thought, Well, they still have more ritual to perform, even though the official ritual is over. But people must only care about the official ritual. The rest isn't famous enough for them to want to be a part of it.
I now came to a tan and orange stone, maybe sandstone, land feature that was like the entrance to the cave, but that also looked like a Utah-style stone arch. It was like this land feature appeared out of nowhere -- my view below had been unobstructed before. It seemed like the land feature was just a shallow tunnel, which would be pretty easy to get through and rather beautiful to look at. Plus, I thought, with this thing blocking out all the scenery, I won't be as afraid of the steepness and height of this path (which was asphalt again).
But as I approached the mouth of the cave, a tiny, black, bee-like insect flew out. I knew the little bee's sting could be rather irksome, but I thought the insect was such a cute, little creature. I turned backwards to look at it.
Behind me were natural walls, all of this tan and orange stone, thought which the path I was on snaked upward. The bee hovered in a pool of sunlight. I greeted the bee and said a few kind, happy words to it. Then I turned forward again.
Now the tunnel was very shallow, a few feet only, like the turning of a corner. I could even see the people in the valley again. But now the dirt path was either unseen or in a different place than I had previously been aiming for. I may have thought to myself how I had screwed up by having turned around instead of continuing forward when the bee had come out of the cave.
Dream #5
A vision of the walls of a library (the "New York Public Library"). The walls were a porous white stone, like the sidewalks and walls of the Grace building. They broke into vertical panels, which clattered more and more apart form each other. As they did this, I saw an old, skinny, wise-looking man beside me (and looking down to me) talking to me. But the sound was muffled and tinny, like my perceptions were blurring or dissolving. Somewhere else there was a solid wood wall, which was also breaking into pieces.
Dream #6
A swarm of tiny, tight, dull yellow and black-grey bees stopped me from walking around a curve (and to the right) of a tiny path in a little, green-lawned park. Somewhere near me may have been a group of my friends, who may have laughed at me for being afraid and stopping at the swarm of bees.
(2/7/09) bad secret santa
(Entered in paper journal at 7:40 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in a classroom, probably with a few elementary school students and a few people around my age. The classroom was cluttered. There were tables of different shapes all around, and bookshelves randomly placed.
I sat on a table or a bookshelf and handed a wrapped present to an Hispanic girl. The girl had darkish tan skin and black hair. She was a little overweight. I told the girl, "This is your Secret Santa present." The girl said thank you and seemed happy.
I was now in another classroom, like a computer room, with my old friend R and my friend Y's little brother. The computer room was cluttered, with tables everywhere, all piled up with books. The only computer visible, buried under a pile of papers, was one that R sat at. It looked like an old Macintosh, one of the very first.
I was talking with R and Y's brother when I realized I'd forgotten to give Y's brother his Secret Santa present. I ran out into the hallway area, which was wide, much less cluttered, but of an odd shape and still with odd-shaped tables and bookcases everywhere.
I called to Y's brother, "Oh! I forgot to wrap it!"
Y's brother replied, "Oh, that's okay," as if he'd have liked to have it wrapped, but just having a present was nice enough.
I found the present after looking around, possibly even wondering if I'd actually remembered to buy it. It was, I knew, the new Grand Theft Auto video game. Y's brother now stood behind a waist-high bookcase to my right.
Both I and R were walking toward Y's brother with a present. R had come from a room behind the staircase and to my left. R was closer to Y's brother than I. He handed Y's brother the present first. Then I handed Y's bother my present.
Y's brother hadn't paid much attention to R's present. He was more interested in what I'd given him. He said, "I really wanted this game!"
I looked at the cover and saw that all the lettering was in big, bold Japanese." Y's brother said, "That's better. The Japanese game has more content."
I now saw the price tag on the game. $49.99. I grabbed for the game again, hoping Y's brother wouldn't see the price tag. I said, "Would you mind if I took that off really quick?"
Y's brother said, "No, no." I took the price tag off the game and gave the game back. I saw that R's gift had been $39.99. R had also seen that I had bought a more expensive gift, and he was visibly jealous.
For some reason I was holding R's gift as we all three walked back into the computer room. R's gift was a board game version of Grand Theft Auto. It came in a thinnish, rectangular box, almost like a box of chocolates. The box was tan and had brown letters like Chinese characters in a calligraphic brushstroke style. I commented, hoping to soothe R's jealousy, that this board game looked really fun, and that I've always thought board games were a lot better for people's health than video games.
The box had popped open, and the inside was filled with little, circular, plastic figures, possibly colored orange and tan. These were the game pieces. They looked like cute, little aliens. But for some reason they began overflowing the box. I couldn't put the top back onto the box.
I now remembered that I had a third, final present. I had forgotten to give it to a girl student. I'd also forgotten to wrap it.
I went to my bag, which might have been one of the many bags I had with me. The bag was a computer bag that was filled with disorganized papers. The present, a wide-paged, thin book, like a children's book, was mingled among these papers.
I was about to pull the book out and try to figure out how to find the girl, when I realized I had been going about this all wrong. I was supposed to give all the presents through the Secret Santa program. I wasn't supposed to give them directly to the kids. I realized that I'd now be marked as having cheated the first student and Y's brother, and that I'd also probably never be able to get my present through to the third person correctly.
I became desperately depressed over my irresponsibility, disorganization, and inability to follow instructions. I thought that I'd always been this way and that I'd possibly always be this way. I started moaning and crying.
My "sight" was now steering around like a video camera. I had a low view, close down to some barren ground with dark soil. This view was close to the walls of the school, maybe in a barren patch of ground between two wings of the school building. I might have had a body of some sort, but I was mostly sight. I would keep running into rough, but upright, grey rocks, then plowing through the soil once again.
I could now see inside the school hallways from the outside, through a window or two that were at the corner of the building. I sat on the ground.
I saw E, a teacher from a school project I used to volunteer at through New York Cares. Her face was wet with tears. She said, "I don't know if I can go on like this anymore. I try my best, but I always do an awful job."
TB, a woman who was a client representative for a data service my team received at my old job, said, "No, no. You always do a great job. Don't be so upset."
TB stroked E's head. E looked at TB thankfully and then romantically, as if she were starting to fall in love with TB. They both walked out of view, to the right. I tried to follow them, now curious to see if they had actually become romantically involved with each other.
I might have seen E and TB in another room, a classroom, now very businesslike and preparing something at a sink, like they were getting ready for a science class. All the windows were very dusty. The inside of the classroom E and TB were in looked like a cluttered or disorganized greenhouse.
Dream #1
I was in a classroom, probably with a few elementary school students and a few people around my age. The classroom was cluttered. There were tables of different shapes all around, and bookshelves randomly placed.
I sat on a table or a bookshelf and handed a wrapped present to an Hispanic girl. The girl had darkish tan skin and black hair. She was a little overweight. I told the girl, "This is your Secret Santa present." The girl said thank you and seemed happy.
I was now in another classroom, like a computer room, with my old friend R and my friend Y's little brother. The computer room was cluttered, with tables everywhere, all piled up with books. The only computer visible, buried under a pile of papers, was one that R sat at. It looked like an old Macintosh, one of the very first.
I was talking with R and Y's brother when I realized I'd forgotten to give Y's brother his Secret Santa present. I ran out into the hallway area, which was wide, much less cluttered, but of an odd shape and still with odd-shaped tables and bookcases everywhere.
I called to Y's brother, "Oh! I forgot to wrap it!"
Y's brother replied, "Oh, that's okay," as if he'd have liked to have it wrapped, but just having a present was nice enough.
I found the present after looking around, possibly even wondering if I'd actually remembered to buy it. It was, I knew, the new Grand Theft Auto video game. Y's brother now stood behind a waist-high bookcase to my right.
Both I and R were walking toward Y's brother with a present. R had come from a room behind the staircase and to my left. R was closer to Y's brother than I. He handed Y's brother the present first. Then I handed Y's bother my present.
Y's brother hadn't paid much attention to R's present. He was more interested in what I'd given him. He said, "I really wanted this game!"
I looked at the cover and saw that all the lettering was in big, bold Japanese." Y's brother said, "That's better. The Japanese game has more content."
I now saw the price tag on the game. $49.99. I grabbed for the game again, hoping Y's brother wouldn't see the price tag. I said, "Would you mind if I took that off really quick?"
Y's brother said, "No, no." I took the price tag off the game and gave the game back. I saw that R's gift had been $39.99. R had also seen that I had bought a more expensive gift, and he was visibly jealous.
For some reason I was holding R's gift as we all three walked back into the computer room. R's gift was a board game version of Grand Theft Auto. It came in a thinnish, rectangular box, almost like a box of chocolates. The box was tan and had brown letters like Chinese characters in a calligraphic brushstroke style. I commented, hoping to soothe R's jealousy, that this board game looked really fun, and that I've always thought board games were a lot better for people's health than video games.
The box had popped open, and the inside was filled with little, circular, plastic figures, possibly colored orange and tan. These were the game pieces. They looked like cute, little aliens. But for some reason they began overflowing the box. I couldn't put the top back onto the box.
I now remembered that I had a third, final present. I had forgotten to give it to a girl student. I'd also forgotten to wrap it.
I went to my bag, which might have been one of the many bags I had with me. The bag was a computer bag that was filled with disorganized papers. The present, a wide-paged, thin book, like a children's book, was mingled among these papers.
I was about to pull the book out and try to figure out how to find the girl, when I realized I had been going about this all wrong. I was supposed to give all the presents through the Secret Santa program. I wasn't supposed to give them directly to the kids. I realized that I'd now be marked as having cheated the first student and Y's brother, and that I'd also probably never be able to get my present through to the third person correctly.
I became desperately depressed over my irresponsibility, disorganization, and inability to follow instructions. I thought that I'd always been this way and that I'd possibly always be this way. I started moaning and crying.
My "sight" was now steering around like a video camera. I had a low view, close down to some barren ground with dark soil. This view was close to the walls of the school, maybe in a barren patch of ground between two wings of the school building. I might have had a body of some sort, but I was mostly sight. I would keep running into rough, but upright, grey rocks, then plowing through the soil once again.
I could now see inside the school hallways from the outside, through a window or two that were at the corner of the building. I sat on the ground.
I saw E, a teacher from a school project I used to volunteer at through New York Cares. Her face was wet with tears. She said, "I don't know if I can go on like this anymore. I try my best, but I always do an awful job."
TB, a woman who was a client representative for a data service my team received at my old job, said, "No, no. You always do a great job. Don't be so upset."
TB stroked E's head. E looked at TB thankfully and then romantically, as if she were starting to fall in love with TB. They both walked out of view, to the right. I tried to follow them, now curious to see if they had actually become romantically involved with each other.
I might have seen E and TB in another room, a classroom, now very businesslike and preparing something at a sink, like they were getting ready for a science class. All the windows were very dusty. The inside of the classroom E and TB were in looked like a cluttered or disorganized greenhouse.
(2/9/09) amphicletes' treasure; a vanful of lesbians; whose hours are longer?
(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Starbucks on Thirty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in "my office," turned away from my computer, to a portion of desk to the left of it. My desk was somewhat cluttered. I was writing on a piece of printing paper which was turned sideways.
A word had been printed on the paper. I was tracing that word in pencil. The word seemed foreign, like it was written in a non-Roman style of lettering. The word started with a "p"-like letter and had a lot of "o"- or "a"-like letters following.
My senior co-worker and sometimes supervisor SK got my attention. I turned to see him standing by my cubicle, to the right of the computer. He asked me if I had a second to help him. I said yes and got up. We walked down a few cubicles to his desk.
To break the silence, I asked SK how everything was going for him. He said, "Oh, good. Just trying to get this" (initiation? launch?) "out." He said it like he was being nice, even though he didn't have to, and that he'd much rather stop talking with an idiot like me and just get down to business.
SK's desk was completely cluttered, and in the bright light, the pages all seemed so sparkling white. SK sat down. I stood behind him, to his left, as he sat facing the screen.
SK turned a little toward me and said, "I'm gonna ask you to do something a little different from what you're used to doing for me." For a moment I wondered if I hadn't performed well enough on the things SK had been asking me to do.
I saw a view under dark blue water, apparently in the ocean. My view was following directly behind someone, possibly me, in scuba gear.
I heard SK say, as if he were still in the office, "There was a man named Amphicletes (?). I am going to ask you to go down to the bottom of the ocean (?) and retrieve his treasure." I could see a giant, golden ring and a pink, Venetian-style corset.
Dream #2
I got into a big van, like the van used by the crew I'd been a part of when I'd worked for the New York City Parks Department. The inside was icy, pale blue-grey, and the light coming in was grey like mid-morning on a cloudy winter day. I sat in a row of bench seats two rows back from the front seats. There was plenty of aisle space and leg space. I sat on the aisle side, the right side.
To my left sat a tomboyish girl. The whole van may actually have been full of boyish-looking lesbians. Either I or the girl who sat next to me (or both) started playing on a phone (or phones) that looked like the new thin BlackBerrys, or else like the LG Gravity phones.
My parks co-worker and good friend KB now got into the van. I may have seen her at first as she'd walked in front of the front windshield as she'd approached the van. I was surprised to see her. I didn't want her to think I'd been ignoring her all this time, but I also didn't want her to think I had come to this meeting (apparently this was a meeting of some kind!) because I was stalking her or something.
KB seemed a little negatively surprised when she saw me. She acted nonchalant, but also a little cold, as if sh'ed rather pretend I didn't exist. She may have sat in the row in front of me, in the space just to my left. I hoped she wouldn't think I was at this meeting just so I could hang around a bunch of lesbians, like I had some kind of lesbian fetish.
I myself wasn't sure why I was here. I tried to break the ice by saying something to KB. But I may have ahd the feeling that she didn't want me to talk with her at all.
Dream #3
I was at the top of a staircase and looking into a room like a large classroom or a lunchroom in an early-twentieth-century building. I stood huddled with a group of people who were about my age and a little bit younger.
The crowd around me was pretty active, moving here and there and standing still, talking with each other, and trying to talk to the same person I was trying to talk to: an Asian-American man who was a little heavyset and square-faced, with short hair, a slightly receding hairline, squarish eyeglasses, and possibly wearing some kind of uniform.
I was talking to the man through the intrusive crowd, asking him about a job opening he had. I said, "How do the hours sound compared to this? When I was in my Americorps program with the New York City Parks, I worked from" (10 to 5? 8 to 10? 8 to 5?) "Monday through Friday and then from 9 to 5 (?) on Saturday and Sunday." I thought the amount of hours I worked per week would really impress the man.
But now a tall man, maybe five years or more younger than I, Asian-American-looking, wearing a puffyish, black jacket and thin-framed eyeglasses, with fuzzy hair, like he'd shaved his head a couple months ago but wasn't styling it now that it was grown back, interrupted me. He said, as if he were already familiar with the older man, "Hey, like I said, man, I worked from XXXXX to XXXXX on Mondays through Fridays and from XXXXX to XXXXX on Saturdays and Sundays. I'll see you later, man." The young man then walked away through the crowd and down the stairs.
I was completely at a loss. The hours this man just said beat my hours by three hours a day on Mondays through Fridays, and his Saturdays and Sundays were just as long as his Mondays through Fridays. I thought, This guy has the job. There's no way I can beat him at those hours.
Dream #1
I was in "my office," turned away from my computer, to a portion of desk to the left of it. My desk was somewhat cluttered. I was writing on a piece of printing paper which was turned sideways.
A word had been printed on the paper. I was tracing that word in pencil. The word seemed foreign, like it was written in a non-Roman style of lettering. The word started with a "p"-like letter and had a lot of "o"- or "a"-like letters following.
My senior co-worker and sometimes supervisor SK got my attention. I turned to see him standing by my cubicle, to the right of the computer. He asked me if I had a second to help him. I said yes and got up. We walked down a few cubicles to his desk.
To break the silence, I asked SK how everything was going for him. He said, "Oh, good. Just trying to get this" (initiation? launch?) "out." He said it like he was being nice, even though he didn't have to, and that he'd much rather stop talking with an idiot like me and just get down to business.
SK's desk was completely cluttered, and in the bright light, the pages all seemed so sparkling white. SK sat down. I stood behind him, to his left, as he sat facing the screen.
SK turned a little toward me and said, "I'm gonna ask you to do something a little different from what you're used to doing for me." For a moment I wondered if I hadn't performed well enough on the things SK had been asking me to do.
I saw a view under dark blue water, apparently in the ocean. My view was following directly behind someone, possibly me, in scuba gear.
I heard SK say, as if he were still in the office, "There was a man named Amphicletes (?). I am going to ask you to go down to the bottom of the ocean (?) and retrieve his treasure." I could see a giant, golden ring and a pink, Venetian-style corset.
Dream #2
I got into a big van, like the van used by the crew I'd been a part of when I'd worked for the New York City Parks Department. The inside was icy, pale blue-grey, and the light coming in was grey like mid-morning on a cloudy winter day. I sat in a row of bench seats two rows back from the front seats. There was plenty of aisle space and leg space. I sat on the aisle side, the right side.
To my left sat a tomboyish girl. The whole van may actually have been full of boyish-looking lesbians. Either I or the girl who sat next to me (or both) started playing on a phone (or phones) that looked like the new thin BlackBerrys, or else like the LG Gravity phones.
My parks co-worker and good friend KB now got into the van. I may have seen her at first as she'd walked in front of the front windshield as she'd approached the van. I was surprised to see her. I didn't want her to think I'd been ignoring her all this time, but I also didn't want her to think I had come to this meeting (apparently this was a meeting of some kind!) because I was stalking her or something.
KB seemed a little negatively surprised when she saw me. She acted nonchalant, but also a little cold, as if sh'ed rather pretend I didn't exist. She may have sat in the row in front of me, in the space just to my left. I hoped she wouldn't think I was at this meeting just so I could hang around a bunch of lesbians, like I had some kind of lesbian fetish.
I myself wasn't sure why I was here. I tried to break the ice by saying something to KB. But I may have ahd the feeling that she didn't want me to talk with her at all.
Dream #3
I was at the top of a staircase and looking into a room like a large classroom or a lunchroom in an early-twentieth-century building. I stood huddled with a group of people who were about my age and a little bit younger.
The crowd around me was pretty active, moving here and there and standing still, talking with each other, and trying to talk to the same person I was trying to talk to: an Asian-American man who was a little heavyset and square-faced, with short hair, a slightly receding hairline, squarish eyeglasses, and possibly wearing some kind of uniform.
I was talking to the man through the intrusive crowd, asking him about a job opening he had. I said, "How do the hours sound compared to this? When I was in my Americorps program with the New York City Parks, I worked from" (10 to 5? 8 to 10? 8 to 5?) "Monday through Friday and then from 9 to 5 (?) on Saturday and Sunday." I thought the amount of hours I worked per week would really impress the man.
But now a tall man, maybe five years or more younger than I, Asian-American-looking, wearing a puffyish, black jacket and thin-framed eyeglasses, with fuzzy hair, like he'd shaved his head a couple months ago but wasn't styling it now that it was grown back, interrupted me. He said, as if he were already familiar with the older man, "Hey, like I said, man, I worked from XXXXX to XXXXX on Mondays through Fridays and from XXXXX to XXXXX on Saturdays and Sundays. I'll see you later, man." The young man then walked away through the crowd and down the stairs.
I was completely at a loss. The hours this man just said beat my hours by three hours a day on Mondays through Fridays, and his Saturdays and Sundays were just as long as his Mondays through Fridays. I thought, This guy has the job. There's no way I can beat him at those hours.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
(2/11/09) the book of blackberry
Dream #1
I was somewhere like a hilly park, almost like Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The light was like blue afternoon, when the sun has gone down. There were a bunch of people about my age or younger all walking around. But the atmosphere was also relaxed, as if we were all just hanging out together, even though we didn't necessarily seem to interact -- outside of groups of two or three who hung out together.
I started walking up a hill after having just come down a hill. I was sure I hadn't completed the task correctly. I opened a little, black, leather pouch with a zipper on it, which I may have thought of as a BlackBerry case. The pouch was like the leather carrying cover people have for their Bibles, except that this one was small enough to carry one of the Gideon's New Testaments.
My "BlackBerry" was a really just bundle of small papers, white and yellow, which may have been laminated. As I fingered through these, I said, "Now let's take a page from the Book of Bart." (An actual quote I liked a lot from the TV show The Simpsons.)
I was at the top of the hill. The lawn on either side of me (I walked on an asphalt path) was full of poeple relaxedly lying around. Some may have slept under small, tent-like structures wide enough to fit one or two people and about half the length of a person, so that their feet would be sticking out.
Somebody I had just passed called out to me. I turned to see it was my old friend R. He lay on the left lawn. He lay with his head in a structure like a tent-like structure that was stood vertically (horizontally?). But the structure looked like my "BlackBerry" case.
R said he knew the person passing him was me even before he'd seen me because of my having said, "Now let's take a page from the Book of Bart." I thought, I really don't want to see R again.
R then asked me a company about the homebuilding company Centex. The question had to do with a calculation a boss of mine had put together to determine impairments the company would sustain, etc.
I was somewhere like a hilly park, almost like Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The light was like blue afternoon, when the sun has gone down. There were a bunch of people about my age or younger all walking around. But the atmosphere was also relaxed, as if we were all just hanging out together, even though we didn't necessarily seem to interact -- outside of groups of two or three who hung out together.
I started walking up a hill after having just come down a hill. I was sure I hadn't completed the task correctly. I opened a little, black, leather pouch with a zipper on it, which I may have thought of as a BlackBerry case. The pouch was like the leather carrying cover people have for their Bibles, except that this one was small enough to carry one of the Gideon's New Testaments.
My "BlackBerry" was a really just bundle of small papers, white and yellow, which may have been laminated. As I fingered through these, I said, "Now let's take a page from the Book of Bart." (An actual quote I liked a lot from the TV show The Simpsons.)
I was at the top of the hill. The lawn on either side of me (I walked on an asphalt path) was full of poeple relaxedly lying around. Some may have slept under small, tent-like structures wide enough to fit one or two people and about half the length of a person, so that their feet would be sticking out.
Somebody I had just passed called out to me. I turned to see it was my old friend R. He lay on the left lawn. He lay with his head in a structure like a tent-like structure that was stood vertically (horizontally?). But the structure looked like my "BlackBerry" case.
R said he knew the person passing him was me even before he'd seen me because of my having said, "Now let's take a page from the Book of Bart." I thought, I really don't want to see R again.
R then asked me a company about the homebuilding company Centex. The question had to do with a calculation a boss of mine had put together to determine impairments the company would sustain, etc.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)