Dream 1
I was in a grocery store with my mom and some younger boys, who were very skinny, maybe Hispanic, and very lively. I hadn't wanted to come to this store because I had been involved in an awkward situation here.
My mom had a food product in her hands. She didn't want it because it had gone bad. She was angry that the employees kept this food on the shelves long enough to go bad. She even took it as a personal affront.
I tried to encourage that feeling in her, partly because I didn't think this was a good store, but also because I wanted this to be the focus of our trip here, to lower the possibility of having whatever awkward situation I had been involved with being dug back up.
But my mom said, "Well, I'm just going to buy this one thing" (a vegetable, possibly leafy) "and then we'll go to the other store for the rest."
I now ran along in front of the checkout stands with the little Hispanic boys, who may have been my brothers, or maybe just my friends. We were throwing and kicking balled-up wads of tape. We started with a loose wad, then, disappointed with that one, kicked and threw a fuller wad. But both wads of tape were so light that the wind resistance always messed up their trajectory.
We stopped playing for a moment and walked outside. One of the boys (the older boy?) pulled a tape ball out of his pocket. He had it, and it was like it was his. But it seems now that I had felt stupid for the cheap way we had been playing our game, and that I had been looking for, and had finally found, the ball the boy just pulled out of his pocket, like I had vindicated myself. The ball was tape tightly wrapped around a rock and then pulled over with rubber bands. It bounced like a rubber ball.
We were about to start playing a game again. But I thought about how when we threw the ball at each other, in order to tag each other (?), the rock in the center would hurt us (especially me). I thought, It simply won't do to have such a big rock in the center.
I "saw" an x-ray image of the construction of the ball and watched the rock slowly melt to almost nothing. The rest of the tape ball pulsed. It was like a sack of living gel, a clear egg, woven through with red and amber veins.
A group of businessmen pulled up in a van. I got into the van with them. It was night. We drove through a big city. As we drove, a man told a story of a girl he knew who had died from a long illness or a big injury. The man remembered the girl fondly. He was old enough to be her father.
I tried to change the subject of the woman because we were going somewhere where the man would have to be positive. He caught my intention and got sugary and happy, exasperatedly "hopeful."
We drove past a new building of pink and green stone, the doors to which were set back under a corner columned around by polished columns of cubic, octagonal-faced blocks.
I was walking in a subway station, simultaneously (but not in the same space/time) accompanied by BA, the leader of the Americorps NYC Parks program I'd just finished, and "a girl from the second year" of the Americorps NYC Parks program I'd just finished. (The year I had been involved with had been the first of three funded years for this program -- which I think had been funded for additional years after its first three "pilot" years.)
There were a lot of people in the subway. We were all heading in the same directions. First we went down a long ramp from one platform to another. It was like beside us was a greasy, metal track that was constantly behind us, though it was really to our right.
As we went down this track, I asked BA/the girl if the second year Americorps folks were nicer to BA than the first-year folks had been.
BA said, "Oh, they act nicer on the outside. And there's less problems. But even still I run up against tiny hostilities, subtle ones. And I know even now that they don't like me and that they talk bad about me."
The girl said, "We don't like BA. I try to make sure he knows that whenever we see him."
We (the whole crowd) were now walking along a platform that turned left at the bottom of the ramp and didn't level off but continued downward less sharply. We walked forward, but it was like we were facing the tracks and moving sideways toward the end of the platform. The sign for the stop hung over the tracks, like it hangs over the platform in waking life. We then went down a long series of ramps and steps. The well was wide and steep and full of people.
I thought about BA's and the girl's comments. I wondered, Why do leaders give people such a hard time? BA can't be that bad a guy. But, then again, I'd never really stood up for him, either. If I were in BA's position, how would I react to all these women constantly tearing into me just because I'm a male and all these guys tearing into me just because I'm their boss?
When we got down from the long series of steps I looked back. The staircase seemed as large as a mountain. There may have been a time when we had ridden down a couple levels in a mine-shaft elevator-like vehicle (i.e. like in Neon Genesis).
I wondered if all this downward travel really was necessary.
We were at another platform. A lot of people stopped here to find standing spaces and wait for the train. But I turned right after the stairs and continued along the platform. I had, after all (?), only been going into the subway station because it was the only way I could get from one sidewalk to another nearby sidewalk.
The platform was still sloping downward. I thought, It's been a long walk down. Do I have to do all of this going back up?
The platform and tracks got wider and wider, like the train was in an 1800s-style station, a depot, or some iron-skeleton industrial warehouse. Occasionally there were columns of stairwells.
Then the platform sloped up a tiny bit and got a lot darker (as the size of the platform had increased, the light became dim, like in a big warehouse). It was as dark and purple as night. Now the platform opened out onto a hillside. It was a purple, starry night.
I thought something like, So that was the point of it all. I didn't have to go all the way back up. I'm already on the right level. I just went deeper in to get to the correct exit point.
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