(2/6/05) the self-esteem tree

(Entered in paper journal at 8:10 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I walked out of some building and onto a busy street with BW, a ranger from Inwood Park. We walked toward a stadium-like building that was painted sea-green on the top two-thirds and off-white on the bottom third, all apparently made of cinder block or a porous concrete and at the end of a canyon of large buildings.

BW had been speaking about a woman I pictured as JN from Morningside Park. He thought she was arrogant. Some man, whom I pictured as a turtle-thick-headed, bald, old man, had really yelled at JN.

BW said, "But she just sat there and took it, can you imagine?, like she was such a badass that she could take all that abuse. Don't you think that's cocky?"

I was now paying most of my attention to the patterns of the columns and angles shifting against each other on the green building as my viewpoint changed relative to them; and on one single stalk, a limbless, branchless tree trunk maybe eight feet tall, small before the building.

But I said, "Well, maybe she just has such low self-esteem that she feels she deserves to be treated badly, so she just takes it when she gets it." I felt like in some smug, transparent way I was walking about myself.

"Nah," BW said. "She thinks she's a badass. She's pretty stuck-up."

I think that after this BW and I went into the stadium.