(6/1/05) misbehaving crew mates; waiting for rejection; bullying is cute

(Entered in paper journal at 5:40 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a garden behind some building where a training had just taken place for my NYC Americorps program. The building was made of cinder blocks that were painted deep blue. The garden was rough, desert-like, almost weedy looking, with tall spires of thing, glaze-fuzzy plants popping up everywhere. I was kneeling, maybe tying my shoes, below an open grate/window.

I heard my crew chief SM and my crew mate MH speaking. I knew they were going home together, but I wanted to hear them say it right out.

I walked away from the grate to the back of the garden and knelt in some rolling depression by an old wood fence. Behind the fence was a stretch of greenish, scrubby, desert-like hills. The day had been grey. Now it had also gotten a little drizzly.

I could still hear SM and MH. I stood up and then knelt back down to avoid them seeing me. Then they were gone. I stood back up again, happy to be alone.

Now I was on some road. I was with a crew of workers. A skinny-looking, black girl stood at the back of an open pickup truck and giggled shyly like she had done something bad. She knew I (?) should punish her. But she was going to try to trick me into not punishing her. I didn't talk to her. I just walked away. I had a twig of elm leafs in my hand.

Dream 2

I was in an office space which also seemed like a hotel. The space was long and narrow. At the end of the sapce was a small area of closed offices. The rest was cubicles which actually resembled lunch tables with dividing walls.

I sat at one of these tables with a bunch of papers and unmarked computer disks. I was waiting for a beautiful, blonde woman to come out of one of the closed offices and give me a rejection letter for a book I'd written. Everybody around me joked briefly about me.

The lady called me back. I now thought, Since she called me back, there's no way she'll actually reject me. I brought all the disks into the office. Half of the disks were a dull blue; the other half, a vivid blue.

The woman asked me which disk had the file she was looking for. I told her, but neither she nor I was sure I was right. She left the office to find some book or paper that would say the right disk. I divided the disks by shade, hoping this division would prove I was correct.

Dream 3

I looked at two picture frames, each with multiple snapshots. Somebody spoke while I looked at the photos. The photos were of my two oldest nephews (my only two nephews at this time in waking life), D and J.

D and J were naked in all the photos. In the second picture frame the photos depicted (J) being tripped and shoved down, possibly by D, though D was unseen. (J's) genitals were all pixelated, like they were censored for a photo or TV show. But the pixelation made it llok like the genitals were actually a morbid exaggeration of female genitals covered in feces.

My mother now said something like, "Isn't XXXXX" (D?) "a bully? He knocked XXXXX" (J?) "right over. But I guess it's cute.

(5/14/06) my roommate the black ghost; screenplay microorganisms; my boss's calendar

(Entered in paper journal at 10 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop on Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in the bathroom. I turned on the shower and heard one of my roommates walk out of his bedroom. I looked through the peephole in the bathroom door (?). I saw the roommate like a black ghost. He walked to my bedroom door. I heard a clicking or shoving. The roommate was trying to get into my room, but he couldn't. He walked back to his room.

Dream 2

I was at work. I received a manila envelope somehow as I was walking down the floor to meet someone. I didn't think about it at first. I mulled over the label and realized the sender, "ADM" (?), was a place I had submitted my screenplay to. I believe the sender's label may also have been in the recipient space.

I walked back to my desk to open the envelope. I thought, It will only take a second, and then I can get to my meeting. I walked over to my boss EB's office, perhaps to tell him about the response I had received. But when I walked to the corner with his office, the light outside his office went out. I took this to mean something bad, and I walked back to my desk. I figured if EB walked out of the office he would see me, but that he probably wasn't in his office. The place felt very busy, but I felt all alone.

I opened the package. Out spilled a typed copy of my screenplay, the notebook in which I had written my screenplay, and a slew of other papers of all sizes, from regular 8 1/2 x 11 to some hotel paper in dimensions like 6 x 9 to scraps and Post-it notes, with all different styles of writing.

I found a (handwritten?) letter which told me the screenplay had been reviewed by three different people, and their criticisms and comments were in the following bundles of papers. I believe the letter also said the screenplay had not been accepted.

I grabbed random papers. One said the screenplay was very good, that it flowed smoothly. Another few papers actually gave sketches for characters in my screenplay. They all looked weird like microorganisms. One was kind of like this.

I fumbled through the papers, trying to figure out why the people would put so much work into a rejection, down to sending me character sketches. I also waited for people in the office to walk past my desk so I could tell them about the response.

Dream 3

I sat at my coworker DE's desk, watching DE do something on the computer. Now he was on Outlook, showing me my boss BS's calendar.

DE said, "Look how much BS is going to be gone this month. That's why we have to XXXXX while he's here, to make sure everything is in good working order."

Looking at the calendar I couldn't see how DE thought BS was going to be gone so long.

Now BS walked down the floor past us without even noticing us. He stood in the corner by my desk. The floor where DE and I were was dim, like ceiling lights had gone out. But by my desk it was bright.

BS looked for me, then, not seeing me by my desk, said something like, "Where did that guy go now?" implying that I was lazy.

I stood up at that, a little annoyed to be thought of as lazy. I called for BS and raised my hand. BS saw me. I walked toward him, saying, "What did you need? I was just over here doing what you said DE and I had to do."

(9/7/06) landlady discovers my transvestism; friends don't invite me places

(Entered in paper journal at 7:34 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I ran out of my apartment. I was running after my landlady. I believe I had made a complaint about my neighbor always making noise. My landlady sided with my neighbor and decided to kick me out.

It was showering, steel grey, and lighting outside. My landlady headed to a beige SUV in a driveway right by my door. I tried to throw her to the ground, but I myself fell to the ground and pulled on her dress a little.

I yelled, "Look at how things really are!" I said, "I just paid for a month. You can't kick me out now unless you wnat to give me my month back!"

My landlady ran back into my house, which was about twice as big as it was in waking life. She went to my closet (she had originally come into my apartment through a door in my closet (which existed in waking life)). She saw some of my girl clothes.

My landlady grabbed some of my girl clothes. She yelled, "What is this? I didn't know about this when you moved in! I can't let you stay!"

Dream 2

I was in a dining room and then a kitchen in the dark. Somewhere my cell phone was buzzing. Finally I picked it up. But I had missed the call. I felt like the person I had missed would make trouble for me as a payback.

Dream 3

I was in a dim dining room with my friend R. It was a lightless room with a kind of cold light coming from somewhere else.

R was panicking. He had missed a phone call from the members of the improv comedy troupe we'd been in together in college. R told me, "Now I won't be able to go to the show." (The show was some kind of "competition" where they invited people from the audience on stage.)

I started to tell R he could go anyway. But then I realized R was making a big deal of the situation, not because he was worried about being able to go. He seemed pretty sure he would be able to go. Instead, he wanted to call attention to the fact that he had been invited by our friends to go while I hadn't.

I yelled at R for gloating over getting preferential treatment from our friends. R underhandedly responded, "Well, you can go, too. Nobody's stopping you."

(11/15/09) the job isn't mine

(Entered in paper journal at 7:35 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I stood with a woman in an office space. The space may have been on a second floor or so, with its edge somehow making a balcony over the ground floor below. I stood before a wall that was lined with couches. I was on the right end of the wall.

On the left end of the wall were a line of people, all heading down a hallway. I could tell the people were going in to interview for the job I thought I already had. I started getting really angry. I thought I would complain to the person I'd thought I was going to be working with.

But the woman I stood with pushed me into a big office, the door to which we had been standing right in front of. The woman lay on a long, leather couch. I stood before the couch, possibly looking at a blind-curtained window on one of the walls.

I told the woman how angry I was. Everybody had made it sound like I was hired. And now I was, it seemed, just another person coming in for an interview.