Dream 1
It was a rainy day. I was in a courtyard of building with people like my family, who may have been dressed like nineteenth century European peasants. The courtyard was square, entirely enclosed by the tall, wide-sided building. The building itself was thin, like the outline of a square. The courtyard was in bad shape, the cobbles knotting up everywhere.
There was some kind of epidemic, and now it seemed my "family" had caught it. But my "family" may also not have been my family, but a group of people who were trying to accuse me of having the disease with a trick involving them claiming they had the disease. But I knew the disease was loose in this building.
There were rats hiding. I could tell. I had to escape to a place in the building the rats had not yet reached. I "flew" along the walls, like I was walking an air-staircase which spiraled up.
The brick (?) walls were sloppily painted in strips of black and swatches of white. I made a couple huge steps near the top and at the ceiling came to an office that looked like an exaggerated rooftop stairway shelter of modern, silvery alloy and glass. It was some environmentalist office.
I went inside, hoping to find someone I knew, just to communicate on the same level with, to escape the feeling of my "family" below. But the place was a mess, huge, with tons of space, but with old stacks of paper everywhere. I thought the rats must either be here or not far from here, since they loved dirty places like this.
Now RL, one of my senior coworkers from my NYC Americorps program, walked out from a hallway lined with posters like the Central Forestry division's posters of different garden flowers. We spoke, but I was always focused on some calendar showing pictures of the mountains.
Dream 2
I was at a performance with a female friend, who sat to my right. The theater was dark and large. A man somewhere was talking about how the place was finally being reopened. He was now at the left end of the theater, by an exit and a tall iron tech stairway. He stood on some white pedestal that moved upward slowly. He looked like a bald version of Rip Taylor. He said he'd always hated how the elevator in the old place never worked, but he thought now he'd be just fine.
The podium was so high now that the man's head hit the ceiling in the center of a white bull's eye. The podium bounced down a bit. The man said something like, "Whoops! I guess I haven't gotten it quite figured out yet." Everybody laughed.
Finally I realized the whole "reopened theater" thing was part of the act, not real.
Dream 3
I sat in a room of a big house and heard my friend R and his girlfriend L talking as they made breakfast. R was going on and on about how he didn't think anybody should admire workers from the old days. He didn't think their work situations could have been all that touch. And even if they were tough, he said, he could have handled them better than they had. So people should really admire him for his job.
I walked into the kitchen. I told R, "I'm so tired of hearing how incredible everything you do is. Just because you work at ConEd doesn't mean the people in the old days didn't struggle. And it doesn't mean they weren't really good workers. They do deserve admiration because they went through a lot and they did it for everybody."
I had a plate in my hand, full of some starchy, cheesy substance which I was soaking up with vegetables. I reached into the fridge, grabbed a Coors Light, popped it open, and began drinking it. It tasted like a fruity soda.
R said, "I was unaware I said the workers didn't deserve admiration. Why are you blaming me for saying it?"
I said, "Don't play the getting indignant trick so I ask your forgiveness for the asshole thing you said."
I was going to continue about the workers, but R said, "Ah -- ah -- stop it. I get it. I get it. You know that trick too well now."
I walked to the table. I sat the beer down on some videocassette. I wondered why I was drinking a beer for breakfast and why it tasted fruity. I wobbled my beer and made some gestures at R like, Isn't it weird I'm drinking a beer for breakfast? But I didn't say anything, partly because my mouth was full of food and partly because I didn't want to say anything and be condescendingly interrupted by R again.
Dream 4
I stood before a goldenrod, velvety curtain, possibly in a dim living room. I heard my friend and old NYC Americorps coworker KB like I was talking on the phone with her. She said, "I told the people you'd be interviewing with that you were a brilliant person but that you get very nervous around judgmental people because you feel you deserve bad judgment. But when I told my mom, who hates you, that I told the interviewers that, she yelled at me and told me to stop giving you help all the time."
As KB spoke, someone was pulling up red bands around my legs. It was a harness, like the harness you use when you go rock climbing.
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