(8/4/07) supermarket closet; give your friends a break

(Entered in paper journal at 4:50 PM at Barnes and Noble bookstore at Union Square in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with my boss BS. BS asked me to look through some old issues of the trade rag Supermarket News for a piece of data. The issues were in a closet. BS stood inside the closet. I stood outside the closet. The room was dimly lit with greenish, natural light. The closet had an incandescent bulb deep inside it. It was like there were two roughly two-foot-deep sections of the closet partly divided from one another by little section-walls.

There was a huge pile of junk in the closets. The magazines, the old issues of Supermarket News, were scattered and piled throughout the junk. BS wanted me to help him get them. I was afraid, though, that if I did, we would run across some pornographic magazines I had in there.

I also saw a strange and lurid magazine or picture book about black men who beat up white men. I hoped that BS wouldn't find this publication and think it turned me on in the same way that porno mags did -- I was pretty sure it didn't.

I tried to dissuade BS from looking into the pile. But BS wouldn't stop. So eventually I went in and started helping him.

Dream #2

I was in the office of my co-workers DE and EB. (In waking life, DE and EB, the replacement for our old Associate Analyst ES, shared the same office. I sat just outside their office in a cubicle as, at that time, most of the Assistants and first-year Analysts did.)

I was angry at DE for something. He was fighting against me a little, but I was definitely bearing down on him. I finally tore a book out of DE's hand. I accused DE of having done something against me. EB just sat in her seat, watching.

DE choked up a little bit and grew pale. He then burst out crying. I realized I had been too severe, especially with all that was going on with DE's family at that time. (In waking life, from 2007 through 2009 -- though I was hardly sensitive to the issue -- narcissist that I am -- DE's mother and father both experienced some very serious health issues.)

I grabbed DE's left hand and held it with both my hands. EB rushed over and stood by us. DE became less pale. DE was yelling at me, asking me why I couldn't ever just give him a break.