(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.
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