(11/17/04) chocolate vanilla wisteria; changing observations

(Entered in paper journal at 7 PM at Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch.)

Dream 1

I was in some area, now forgotten, full of tarp-covered booths like at a street fair in Manhattan. But all the booths were close together. I walked into a booth. I was supposed to help some group of people either make things or take things out to use as some kind of research tool.

But as I got into the booth it started to rain. Our leader was some hippie guy. He told us not to go back outside. I heard a few people say something like, "Preemie's so lazy. He won't work outside."

I turned around. Now the area was a barren clearing between rocks and a path leading down a slope. A line of folks came up, carrying blue sleeping bags or mats over their heads. They folded these up in tossing gestures.

Our leader was explaining how the natives who used to live here lived on three types of food: XXXXX, beans, and chocolate, which they learned how to make out of vanilla beans.

I looked at a rock face (we were now outside, on a narrow path between two rock faces) to a Wisteria hanging over. I asked what a vanilla plant looked like. The leader told me, "You're looking at one."

I said, "But is there one of those plants you were talking about, that make vanilla beans?"

He said, "It's right there. It's right in front of you."

I was now agitated with myself. I kept repeating to myself, "It's right here. Right in front of you."

Dream 2

Some dream in which I either met up with or "non-presently" observed two women looking over something. Apparently there was only darkness around them.

Then a man was there. He was injured or disabled somehow, possibly in a huge cast. He was olive-skinned, a little pale, with long, kind of sloppy dreadlocks. His presence may have caused the thing looked at to become somewhat textual, or transformed or elucidated by a page of text.