(12/15/05) agoraphobia; the pillow book pants

(Entered in paper journal at 1:46 PM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a house with six or seven other people. It was daytime, and there was no electric light in the house. Outside was a road-like, gravel slope. We had all run into the house, escaping, either from police or from bad people whose faith we had broken. But one by one the people in the house were leaving, or, rather, one by one they were deciding to leave, though they would actually leave in groups of two or three. But I also really can't say whether anybody actually left.

Eventually everybody except I had decided to leave. I didn't want anybody to leave the house. The people outside were like monsters that would devour people. But everybody told me that sooner or later we had to leave, or else the people outside would come in here.

Everybody told me to stay inside as long as I could, maybe until everything blew over. I was some innocent bystander, apparently, who had eventually just come with these people out of sympathy.

I wasn't going to leave. But I felt bad. I didn't want anybody to leave. But if they were going to leave, I thought I should, too.

Dream 2

I was in a dark, candlelit room with a woman. I had given the woman a comic book to read. I don't know whether the woman had read it yet. But I was now formulating questions for her. But I couldn't keep something, either my comic book or the aim of my questions, straight in my mind. I visualized a list written in comic book-bold letters. But the list kept changing or starting over.

I was now writing questions on a velvety pair of women's pants. The pants either lay flat on a bed or were on the woman as she lay on the bed. They were golden-tan in the amber light.

First I wrote something on the left leg, near the hip. It was almost a full paragraph, in purple fabric paint. It was more a declarative statement of some plain thought in my head rather than questions about the comic book. I looked at the statement and was puzzled. Why the hell had I written that? So I went to the right leg. All down it, starting from the hip, I wrote numbered, simple questions.

But as I wrote, the woman's boyfriend came in. We were all friends, but the boyfriend was a little superior, standoffish, and jealous.

I stopped writing on the pants (and now the woman was probably not in them). I looked back at the man. I tried to explain what I'd been doing. But even though I was calm, my mind was like I was nervous. I couldn't get my thoughts straightened out enough to tell the man what I was doing. It was more like I was depressed and being drained of energy rather than being afraid and full of unfocused energy.