(1/26/05) calling 911 for directions

(Entered in paper journal at 10:30 PM at home in Harlem.)

(I'm not sure whether the weird, address-like writing above is from a dream I didn't write down.)

Dream 1

Was in a parking lot, tried to help a carload of black (?) people find some place. Called an info number on cell phone, walked through grocery store. Hung up cell phone, now walked through house in party. Dialed a number again, asked receptionist for directions to place. Didn't know what I meant. Realized now I had dialed 911, not 411. Hung up phone, feared I was being followed by police. ML came up, showed me bedroom with people dancing. I turned away, feeling nobody liked me. Read comic strip of Siamese cat eating hot spicy food, quenching thirst in toilet, realizing it had just eaten shit.

(4/8/06) i am a two-faced, back-stabbing butler; not getting paid

(Entered in paper journal at 10:07 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I had a newspaper unfolded before me. There were articles below a series of cartoons, like the editorials page. But the cartoons were actually comics. The main one I saw was Hagar the Horrible. But the cartoons were superimposed on each other, not frames in one strip, or strips in lines of their own, but all the frames/strips cluttered on top of each other.

The Hagar the Horrible frame was one of the larger of the different sized strips. In the comic, Hagar stood on a boat, but like he was on a stage, and a butler-like person in a black robe stood before him. The butler-like person said nice things to Hagar, but with condescending overtones.

Now I saw a crowd of people behind Hagar, like in an amphitheater, just like Hagar was on a Greek stage. The smug "butler" told Hagar something like, "Everybody is happy to have you back, sir."

But Hagar got angry. He asked, "What are they saying? I can't hear all their voices! I know as soon as you can you'll get away from me and make fun of me with all of them!"

I now saw the voices had captions. They were all supposed to be saying, "HA-HA!" And that's what I thought they were saying. But it actually looks now like "HA-SI" or "HI-SA."

I was upset. I didn't want to upset that I, the smug "butler," could have been such a two-faced back-stabber.

I tried to look to other comics, but I kept looking back to the Hagar comic in hopes that I would see at the end of it that the butler hadn't had such a disappointing character.

Dream 2

I sat on a carpet floor, looking at the side of a bed without blankets. A male friend (we may both have been eleven or twelve years old) was somewhere (behind me and to my right?). As I sat there looking at the underside of the bed I heard a woman's voice as if I, the adult I, were talking on a phone (though the "child (?)" I answered).

The woman, older sounding, like a grey-haired operator, told me that I was not going to receive huge gaps worth of my pay. I envisioned my pay schedule like on a calendar, where boxes were weeks.

The dark boxes were weeks for which I wouldn't get paid. I started to get angry. But when I realized there was nothing I could do I got sulky and desperate.