(10/30/07) kidney-shaped table; thursday party; disgruntled clown

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was a grey-blue day. I walked along a city street, like out on a waterfront, or, rather, beside a wide street under an overpass, with a group of friends, one of whom was AT, one of the Directors of my department. AT spoke on a cell phone with one of my co-workers, either about his having advertised that he was quitting his job or else about his having advertised unseemly views about the company.

We walked up a staircase to our right and into a brick row-house. AT was concluding her call as she walked into the house. The house had an empty feel to it. It was dim. I sat at a dining table that backed (on my left) against a weirdly shaped wall of oddly set doorways. There were probably blankets all over the floors. The table itself may have had a weird, kidney-like shape.

AT was down the hallway (behind me). A few people filtered into the room. Among them was my co-worker DE, with whom AT had been on the phone.

DE was mad at me. He had been blamed for AT's anger, claiming that I'd told AT that he had been advertising something against the company. I tried to remember what I had said. It had been on the walk outside. I thought it had been harmless. But now I realized it wasn't. I still tried to convince myself I had said something harmless.

Dream #2

I got done at some social event like a cocktail party for a friend. The whole thing seemed to have been held on a stage, the surface of which looked like a model's runway. I stepped down from it, into an area (like an orchestra pit?) full of technical equipment like hospital equipment or sound equipment. The whole room now seemed like a somewhat large sound-stage.

I stood in front of my old boss and mentor EB and his wife GB. EB and GB sat on tall swivel chairs, like for a breakfast bar. Both EB and BG looked really healthy and happy. They asked me if I was coming to their party on Thursday. I hesitated. I saw, though, that GB had picked up on and disapproved of my hesitation. So I caught myself and said, "Ah... Thursday? Yeah, that sounds good."

Dream #3

I walked, possibly with a group of friends/co-workers, on a desert road on the outskirts of the suburbs. It was a warm, gold and blue day. I had reached some point along the walk and realized it was a long way to walk to my destination and that I might not get there on time.

I was now in a car with a group of friends/co-workers. We drove to a restaurant. We finished eating and headed back outside. As we left the restaurant the interior appeared grey, crowded, and steamy. Even the windows seemed clouded up with steam.

Outside, the area was like a filling station. Everybody else had gone back to the car. I told them I would walk. I probably wasn't in a hurry "now that we had made our meeting."

I walked up a street, 39th Street, which might have been the street from which it was a long distance to the meeting. The intersection I turned right on had a very deserty feel. But now I walked down a street which, on my side, the right side, anyway, was just a long, long suburban street.

I walked past a two-story house of maroon-painted brick with a row of tan-painted brick separating the two floors. As I gazed at the building, a man's shout startled me. I saw, up in the distance, a man walking my way. I tried not to act upset or startled.

I now walked in the shade of a row of very short houses. The man approached me. He looked clownish -- fattish, dumpy, with long tufts of bushy hair on either side of his head. He wore baggy, roundish, hobo-style clothes, a bowler hat, and possibly a beer-drinking hat. There were some bright colors on him somewhere.

The man was going on and on, as if he were ranting at someone on a cell phone. He said, "I told them, Hey! You aren't gonna fire me. You aren't gonna do that to me!"

We crossed paths. But then the man turned and followed me from a distance, continuing to act like he was speaking on a cell phone but now also implicating me in his conversation.

(5/25/09) damaged gift; man-eating bug; mexican gunmen; grandpa's dazed spirit

Dream #1

I stood before a large house, like the house my family lived in with my mom's boyfriend when I was nine years old (we called this house the "mansion" because it was bigger than any place we'd lived in before -- or after!). It was either early morning or early evening, and the sky was dark.

I walked into the house. I stood in a dark room just inside the doorway. The room was shallow, but wide, almost like a "covered porch" might be. The room opened to what looked like a small, run-down kitchen or dining room or pantry area. A light was on in the kitchen. The entry room had no light. It was very dark, as if the kitchen's light couldn't even penetrate the room.

I stood on or just behind the threshold between rooms. To my left was a wall, behind which I may have half-hidden. My old co-worker JR stood in the kitchen. I held up a bench, which I was giving to someone from the job I'd just gotten let go from as a gift. When I showed it to JR, he just chuckled to himself, as if I was silly to think I could give something like that as a gift. The sentiment, JR implied, was so half-hearted.

I took a look at the bench. It was about six feet long. It looked like it was made out of material that would usually go into making a cheap office desk: veneered plyboard, chromed metal, and some thin, black metal or plastic for legs.

But now I noticed (I held the bench upside-down and diagonally, so that an end was near my head) that the right leg of the bench (the end near my face) was missing. I realized I was about to give someone a broken bench as a gift. I also felt like I was in trouble: JR would definitely spread a bad word about me because of what I'd done.

I walked away from the kitchen (and possibly out of the house altogether). I thought of giving another co-worker, BT, a call on my cellphone, to put in a few kind words and show myself as being a good person, in hopes that my own good words could buffer opinion against the words of bad opinion that JR, I feared, would soon be sending out.

Dream #2

I was in an office with a man and a woman. The man was in a managerial position. The woman and I were about on the same level professionally. We all stood in a thin hallway. All around us were walls the bottom half of which were wall and the top half of which were window-walls, opening to views of "offices."

The views may sometimes have been of areas like manufacturing areas or loading areas. The areas looked empty, porbably shut down, as if the working shifts were through for the day.

The man then pointed out a couple "offices" which were more like strange areas full of canisters with no lids. The tops of the canisters were covered with a white, thin, softish, plastic material, under which things, which were apparently alive, were moving, like piles of worms. Either the man said or I understood that the things in these canisters would probably devour a human being if one fell into their environment.

The three of us stepped outside the office building, almost unintentionally, as if the momentum of our movement down the small hallway couldn't be stopped. We stood outside, by a fire escape door, on  wooden landing at the top of a wooden staircase. It was night.

As if realizing that we had come outside, we walked back into the building through the door, which was still open. The man walked far ahead of the woman and me. The woman walked a few steps ahead of me.

I looked into another "office." This was also a storage area of canisters. The canisters in this room had no lids or tops at all. There were organisms in these canisters like snake-sized meal worms. They had a brownish-red color, very dry and rough looking.

I was slightly disappointed. I thought that being eaten by these organisms would be far less "smooth" (and, thus, far less enjoyable) than being eaten by the organisms under the white covers.

But then it occurred to me that the organisms under the white covers might be the same as these organisms, or even, that it was possible  that the canisters with the white tops no longer existed. I thought, Then if one is going to be devoured, it would have to be by these organisms. This seemed awfully disappointing to me.

But, I thought to myself, I probably won't be devoured. The man, I now recalled, had mentioned his disappointment with the woman's job performance. Whoever performed poorly would likely be the one to get eaten. So I assumed the woman would be eaten. I was relieved.

But I also felt bad. How petty of me! I didn't just feel relieved: I felt smugly satisfied to think of the woman being eaten. I even thought, with pleasure, of her falling down into the room of open canisters.

Dream #3

I stood out in an open area. It was a slightly hazy, blue day, with the sun glowing white in the sky. The land was mostly barren, like a dirt parking lot, except with thin patches of small grass and weeds. I walked to the foot of a hill which was all of barren, tan soil. I looked up the hill. Near the crest were a few smallish, sandstone-like rock formations, one of which was like a natural arch.

Two Mexican men stood near the rock formations. Both looked like Indians: they had coppery-tan skin, were shortish and stoutish, and they wore blue jeans and t-shirts. The man on the left stood near the natural arch. He had a squarish face and hair waving down to just below his shoulders. He wore a tight, nicely colored, but faded, purple t-shirt.

I had probably planned to climb the hill. But when the two men noticed me, they sent out a definite signal that they didn't want me around, or even looking at them. They were calm and composed, but something in their body language indicated that they were already harboring violent intentions toward me. I turned and walked away from the hill.

I stood now in an area with a field-office trailer on my left side and a freight trailer or shed-trailer on my right side. A few other people stood around me. They were dumpy-looking, official-looking workers.

The Mexican men on the hill could still see me easily. I knew they were planning on opening fire on me soon. I was trying to get out of their sight, hoping that they would forget about me if I stayed out of sight and out of attention long enough.  I decided to hide behind the shed-trailer, which was now more like a simple wall of thick, corrugated metal, probably painted grey-white.

But as I hid, one of the workers started talking to me. He stood before/beside the shed-trailer, so that he was in plain view of the Mexican men. I thought, His talking like that is only going to keep the Mexican men aware of my presence. Then soon they'll open fire.

But, I thought, relieved, they'd probably open fire on the worker instead of me, just hoping that they'd be able to attack somebody. I felt ashamed about this, but I almost felt a grimy pleasure to think of the worker being shot full of holes instead of me. Finally, I thought, I'd see a sucker get what was due to him.

Dream #4

I stood in a busy room. The room was full of activity, people rushing around, taking care of business.  I was and was not in the room. It was like I was watching a past that someone, or some television show, was telling me about.

The room was tall, with pumpkin-colored walls. There were windows high up on the walls, letting in plenty of grey-white daylight, although incandescent lights also lit the room. The room was a tall, but narrow square. It was probably a room in some kind of TV studio. I stood near one wall. I saw a doorway on the opposite wall and a doorway on the wall to my right. The doorway to my right was possibly ten or twelve feet tall.

 I suddenly saw my maternal grandfather (who, in waking life, had died a little more than six months before this dream). He sat on the shoulders of a very thin, tall man. My grandpa looked like he did before he got cancer. But he was wearing a cowboy hat, which I don't remember him doing very often in waking life.

I "remembered," or heard a narrator say, that my grandfather had been a cast member of some local children's show in Colorado. He did this in addition to being some kind of executive businessman. His work on the TV show was something like a charitable activity. He did it for free. The TV show itself was somehow a means of gathering funds for a charity. Nevertheless, my grandfather was something of a star among the local children who watched the show.

This whole scene had been "shown" to me to not only to prove that my grandfather had been a lot more professionally active than I had known or would acknowledge, but also to illustrate that he was more active in the community, did more things with his free time, cared about people more, and had more artistic ability, than I had ever acknowledged.

My grandfather had a really vacant, smiling look on his face, as if he were blissfully close to being brain dead. I realized my grandpa's role in the show had been that of a gentle, good-natured, stupid clown-villain character. But my grandpa's vacant expression was too genuine. It didn't look like he was acting. It looked like this stupor was his real condition.

As part of the comic act, though none of this was being filmed -- or even on stage! -- the tall man walked through the doorway, and my grandpa, just tall enough, knocked his head softly (although it was supposed to be perceived as a rough bump) against the top of the doorway. The tall man then backed up and gave my grandfather a few seconds to utter his catch phrase, which, I knew, was, "I'll get you yet!"

But my grandpa said the catch phrase very softly and vacantly, half like he was playing a gentle character, but half like he no longer had enough brain power to say anything with any sort of emotion or character. The tall man then walked my grandfather through the door without my grandfather knocking his head against the doorway-top.

I saw my grandfather a few moments later. He was walking back into the room I stood in. He walked with a group of businessmen who were all about his age, i.e. around seventy years old. My grandpa was obviously a part of the group, and he walked within the group. But he wasn't attending to the group at all: his eyes drifted off vacantly into space. He still wore a gentle, brainless smile, partly like he was playing his clown role and partly like he was genuinely brainless. I felt very uneasy watching him.