(9/13/07) dismembered; snowboarding; who drank too much; tree corners

(Entered in paper journal at 6:45 AM at Starbucks on 56th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked in a parking lot full of cars. As I did I thought about soldiers who had had their limbs blown off in the Iraq War. I had been walking from the left to the right side of an aisle of cars. Now I walked up a hill. I now stood near the top of the hill and at the end of the dirt lot. I stood between two large objects, possibly buildings. I looked down a steep hill and saw a city, perhaps a desert city.

Dream #2

I saw a man's feet trying to do some kind of footwork on a snowboard in the snow. The man's left foot was near the back of the board and at a right angle to his right foot. The man would lift up his left foot and try to stomp down onto the board in some way. But he would end up stomping down onto the snow.

Dream #3

I was at some party, possibly with a bunch of co-workers. We had been sitting at a long, square table in a long area with a few tables like ours. The area was elevated by a small staircase and overlooked the rest of the "restaurant," like a little balcony.

My memory was swimming, as if I had been drunk. I was trying to convince a short, oldish, Mexican woman that she had drank a lot more than she thought she had. Everybody was disordered, wandering all around our area.

Dream #4

I stood on a street corner. I heard my co-worker MD talking about how our boss DO would always leave right around time for the initiation report presentations for the companies our team was just beginning to cover, leaving MD to do all the work of speaking with the clients.

I stared up. Hanging over me, to my left, beside a telephone pole, were branches of an ailanthus (?) tree, its leafs golden-green from the light of the unseen sun. Below and through the glowing canopy I could see the corner or a pink-bricked building and a square of deep blue sky. Behind me, I knew, perhaps, because I had seen it before, was another redbrick building with a yellow-canopied honeylocust tree in front of it.

It was now like I was flying, sideways, down the street, so that I flew from my right to my left. I saw building fronts like in a small town's main street, glowing in the golden sun.

I could still hear MD speaking. He now said something like, "You should see how DO does it with girls." He then continued with some story of a girl DO seduced (DO, happily married, would NOT have done something like that in waking life) while out on a business trip.

(11/3/07) bedroom; domino bugs; lewd armstrong; funeral truck; the heron pond

(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I lay on "my bed" in "my bedroom," which was in a basement. Light came in from some window above me. The walls were grey concrete, with patches of sea-green paint clinging to it. The room was cluttered with boxes and clothes, but it felt pretty big. The ceilings were high. There might have been a wide, cylindrical column.

Dream #2

I lay stomach-down on the floor, facing my oldest nephew. We had some game like dominoes going between us. The light was on in the room.

A little roach crawled across my nephew's left arm. He didn't know "what kind of bug" it was. He didn't seem too worried about it. I told him not to worry, that you don't usually see things like that.

(I got off the train at this point. I resumed writing at 9:30 AM at the Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #3

An astronaut floated before a camera. Behind him was the blue earth. I couldn't tell who the astronaut was. His face-plate was white like gauze. I hoped the astronaut was Neil Armstrong, and that he would say something inspiring.

The astronaut said something I couldn't understand. Then he laughed and flipped off the camera. I thought, Well, then, it couldn't be Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong would never make a lewd gesture like that. But, actually, I was now even more sure that it was Neil Armstrong.

Dream #4

I stood out at a chain-link fence surrounding the edge of a supermarket parking lot, like the fence around the parking lot in front of the Western Beef grocery store on Empire Boulevard in Brooklyn. The sun was like in the afternoon or morning, low and golden.

A semi-truck pulled around from the road and into the parking lot. Instead of a regular trailer there was something like a "coal carrying" trailer with one side (the right side, facing me) lower.

In the bed of the trailer was a pile of brown-tan soil concealing long stretches of "brick" that were more like walls of Anasazi ruins. Half hanging out of some of the soil was a young Hispanic person. The person looked like a woman but might have been a man. Her hair was blondish. She was definitely dead. This was her funeral procession.

Another vehicle drove behind the semi. It was a big, black pickup truck. It was shiny. The back may have been covered somehow, as if by a tarp "roof." The cab and the bed were full of Mexican people, all smallish, rough looking, definitely workers. The all looked very sad, but quiet and solemn. I turned to watch the pickup truck pull into the parking lot. The parking lot was very full.

Dream #5

I stood out on a lawn. The sky was blue and the sunlight was low and golden. I walked down the lawn and toward a big (?) pond. Along the banks of the pond were birds that were either dead or sleeping. I might have called them herons, though they were as big as golden eagles and somehow had the roughness of vultures. The birds ranged in color from off-white to a whitish tan-gold. They all lay face-down.

There were living herons in the pond. They looked more like black-crowned herons (?).

I stepped into the pond. There were now beds of marsh-grass, which gave the soil some consistency. I thought to myself something like, These are all herons. But no cranes?

I looked to my right. I now saw a slender, white "crane" (egret?). It walked over toward me. I thought, Can it know it's coming my way? Wouldn't it be afraid of me or angry at me for being here?

I walked farther, stepping off the bed of grass and into lower, softer soil. My legs sunk in a little. I looked down and realized the bird was coming in my direction because I was stirring up food (fish, I believed) with my steps.

The pond was now different, and I was in a different part. It was like the pond edged into concrete walls on the back and left sides. I stood in this corner, under the shade of trees and perhaps chest-deep in water.

There were beds of grass to my right, but the water didn't seem to lose any of its depth. The crane was still to my right. It was approaching me, as if it hadn't gotten any closer.

I looked down again and saw that my footsteps were stirring up little bugs, not little fish. I was a little disappointed that the crane would eat these bugs. I thought I could imagine eating little fish, but not bugs. I thought, Well, maybe the crane will have to eat bugs until I stir up some good fish.

I was talking with a woman on my cell phone. She was some famous ecologist or naturalist. I was trying to get an interview with her. I was also excited to tell her I was in this pond (I might have called it a "heron pond" or "crane pond"), that I was finally working in a pond again. I thought, after telling the woman, Well! -- maybe she'll be impressed enough to give me an interview!

The crane now swam close to me. It was swirling under the water with the agility of a snake. It might have curled to my breast for a moment.

The woman said she couldn't do the interview XXXXX (soon), but asked if we could do it XXXXX (later). I thought and said that that would actually be really convenient.

I hung up. I swam (the water all over was now so deep that I had to swim) back to the back concrete edge, which now was like steps instead of a concrete wall. I lay my cell phone on the steps. One or a few woman stood at the edge. They were like partners in whatever task I was currently completing. It was also like they were calling for me but I couldn't hear them or understand them.

I swam back out into the water. The yellow and green leafs glittered on the surface of the water.

I heard myself having a conversation with my co-worker MD. There was some management meeting I wanted to go to. But MD told me I couldn't go because I wouldn't understand it anyway.

I saw a black and white comic strip, drawn in the style of Beetle Bailey. It had five frames. In the first frame a young "soldier" was being nagged by his wife (who looked like an old, grey-haired woman, a "mother"). The soldier imagined his boss (Sergeant?) nagging him. In the second frame the soldier was in his boss' office and his boss was nagging him. He imagined his wife nagging him. In the third frame the solder was at the dinner table with his wife, who was nagging him as he imagined his boss nagging him again.

In the fourth frame the wife and soldier were in bed. The soldier was almost out of the frame. The two may have shared the same imagination, of the Sergeant standing calmly. In the fifth frame the soldier lay sleeping, the covers pulled up halfway over his face. He imagined himself as a boy, sleeping the same way.

(11/15/07) five year plan; fire escape; shell game

(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I sat in an audience. My view was partly like I was there and partly like I was looking at a photograph. The audience was to see something like the presentation of the new five-year plan for China. This presentation was in China. The auditorium was modern, softly lit, and had white, scalloped "panel" ornamentation on the ceiling. I noticed a lot of blonde, white people in the crowd. I thought, They like the Chinese culture, so they move over here. Then they get involved with the policy, like they're part of Chinese society.

 A group of Chinese officials, maybe three men, sat down at a table on stage to begin. A woman in front of me began singing. At first I thought the sound came from somewhere else. Then I saw the woman singing. She looked white, with long, red-brown hair with streaks of grey in it, like my mom's hair. She had a strange look, like she was tall and skinny, but also fat. I could never see her face.

At first I thought the woman was singing a Chinese song to begin the ceremony. But the song soon became raucous, like an American country song. I thought the woman was disrupting the presentation as a protest and that she would be arrested. But now everybody was standing up, as if standing to revere the song.

The auditorium was all dark except the stage, which was lit very harshly. The woman moved to my left. As she did, a black businessman, in my row, came up to me from my right. He wanted me to move, but he wasn't asking to be excused, or saying anything at all, really. I moved forward, but he edged me out of my seat. I thought that was fine. Maybe he just really needed to get away from the woman's singing. (I didn't consider that he had moved left, in the same direction as the woman.)

There was an empty seat just to my right. With telekinesis, I moved my bags over to this seat and the bags in this seat over to where I had previously been sitting (as if the businessman had now disappeared). I thought, Now the Chinese officials are going to think I'm Falun Dafa because I've used telekinesis. They'll persecute me.

We were all sitting. The auditorium was greyish, with wood seats and lit with bland light or daylight through dirty windows. A tallish, slightly overweight, bald, Chinese man with blue jeans and a too-big striped shirt spoke. At first he stood in the front row. Then he stood a few rows back from me.

The man said, "We are purposely losing the bank money. We want the bank to feel a loss of five billion dollars now so they will be prepared for the loss of ten billion dollars in the future. We are purposely doing bad jobs to make this happen."

Dream #2

There was a fire announcement at my office. I didn't quite understand it at first. When I finally reacted to it, two people (my co-worker SV and another person) were already running down the fire escape stairwell. They yelled up to me, "Can't you smell the fumes? It's dangerous!"

I yelled for them to come back, that we all needed to leave together. But they continued running away. I did smell fumes, as if the danger were some gas being released in the air from some structural breaking or disintegration in the building, not from fire.

I ran around on my floor, trying to get some people together so we could get out of the building. The floor looked a little bit nicer than usual and was lit very nicely. The people I saw weren't paying any attention to me. But eventually everybody was in offices, with their curtains pulled. I ran around, not panicked, but trying to get people organized, yelling for them to come out of their offices.

I was in a lobby that for some reason looked like a department store.

Dream #3

I stood in an old, dark-wood-walled room with an old, fattish, tired-looking man. The room was small and emptyish, but it felt dirty and dusty. It felt like a high-up floor in an old Manhattan apartment. The carpet was probably deep green.

The man told me about a woman who led some organization, which perhaps we both worked for. At some point during the man's talk, the woman (who looked like my psychiatrist A) moved in and out of the room, carrying items like old wood boxes in and out, and also into and out from a hole in the wall behind either a set of shelves or a grandfather clock.

The man said, "Do you smell that?" He breathed in. I did, too. There was a dusty smell. The old man continued, "Don't fool yourself. It's part of what she doesn't want to tell you about. They have a whole system down there, and they do bad things. Have you ever wondered what she does on her trips to XXXXX?" (Some tropical place.)

At this point the woman (A?) was working behind a curtain dividing this room from another room, to our right.

The man said, "They take boxes there. And, going in, the boxes look very innocent. But do you know what they do with those boxes?"

A interrupted. We now stood near her, possibly as if she had pulled open the curtain between the two rooms. A said, "Do you know that these boxes are just the right size to fit old Turks who don't know how to keep their mouths shut? Maybe books can fall out of one box and a Turk can fall into it -- and then fall underground! -- if he doesn't shutup."

The old man was shocked into silence. I watched A stack old magazines into the dark wood box on the table before us. The box was large enough to fit a person. I was fascinated by all the old, beautiful magazines.

We now stood at something like a bar in a big, empty, dark wood room which was dim and quiet. It was me, A, and my co-worker MD. We were looking at seashells, which may have been in an open drawer before me. I pulled out one seashell that had a narrow, spiral shape. It had stripes of maroon accented with stripes of bright pink.

MD and A commented on a shell that had the shape of a river cobble. The shell was white and smooth. It had red material like glitter all over it, punctuated by little diamonds. (So... white and smooth, eh? How so?) MD and A wanted me to take the shell. But I thought touching the shell would do something bad to me.

MD said, "It's not dirty. It's clean and smooth. Touch it." So I did.

I was at the end of a long hallway, heading back to the room where MD and A were. I held two small shells. The shells were all white, but on the inside of the shells were things written in blue and green magic marker. The shells were thin. I kept trying to hold the shells in the right like so the magic marker wouldn't show through. But I couldn't.

I could hear MD and A talking about where they had found the big shell. Now I was back with them. I had an interesting though about one of the shells, but I didn't say anything: I didn't want A and MD to think I was obsessed with the shells.

I now saw a shell, also like a big river cobble, which had been drawn over with a picture of flowers blooming below a blue sky. The drawing was a gift from the people at the New York City taxi-cab art project called Gardens-in-Transit. When I touched the drawing I got paint (?) from the picture all over my fingers.

(8/7/08) pushed out of unused desk; lingerie roach

(Entered in paper journal at 6:25 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was at my desk at work. I was watching something like an earnings presentation on my mini-DVD player. My old boss DO walked around on the floor. I suddenly felt like I wasn't working hard enough. I tried to concentrate on the earnings presentation even harder.

Suddenly the angle I was sitting at was is if I were sitting at my co-worker (on DO's team) MD's desk at the building we'd previously worked at. (In waking life, my company had recently moved from one building to another building.) I wondered if DO might stop by and say hi to me.

I felt someone pushing down on my left elbow. It was MD, wearing a casual, white button-up and some khaki shorts. It was like he was trying to elbow me out of his chair.

Dream #2

I was in "my bedroom." I was pulling some nice dresses out of a bag. One dress was white with pinkish-red designs. I was going to hang it in my closet.

I walked to my closet and noticed how easily I could see up to my top shelf. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was a few inches above the top of my head.) There weren't many articles of clothing there. (In waking life, the top shelf of my closet was where I horded all of my lingerie and women's clothing -- mostly cheap articles I'd bought from discount stores.) I thought something like, I'm really cleaning up!

But something toward the wall caught my eye as I was looking away. I looked back. The thing was a "roach." It was maybe two inches long, and fat. Its back end was covered in white, as if it were casting off skin or as if it were developing a shell around itself to undergo metamorphosis. I couldn't tell whether the thing was dead or alive.