(12/10/05) the gun and the drinking glass

(Entered in paper journal at 9:10 AM at Starbucks at 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was at my friend R's house. I lay in bed. I heard a noise outside, in the hallway or stairwell. I went to the door and opened it just a crack. Three black men stood outside. I didn't know who the men were. But I acted cheerful, like I was happy to see them again. The man on my right had a gun. The one in the middle spoke, and I replied, but I don't know what we were saying.

I had a feeling the men had just robbed the people upstairs, but I didn't want to let on that I knew. I was sure the guy with the gun really wanted to shoot me. At some point the guy in the middle may have told the guy to put his gun away.

My friend R's dog growled a bit. The middle guy pushed the door open a little and asked, "Who was that?"

I said, "Oh -- it's my dog. Our dog. I don't live here alone." I was trying to find the right way to sound like this apartment was too poor to rob. I pushed the door back to the point where it wasn't so open that the men would have a chance of spotting the dog.

The guy on my left now handed me a drinking glass with fish patterns on it, like my friend R actually had at his place. But the glass was from upstairs. The guy said, "You'd better take this. It might do you good."

I took the glass, but I immediately tried to figure out how to get rid of it. I didn't want the people upstairs to see this glass and think I had been the one to rob their house.

(5/21/08) fear of the well-known; future of the french press

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom in a house like the house my family lived in from the time I was in sixth grade through the time I was in ninth grade. I may have been surrounded by a bunch of clutter or junk. I may have been lying on a bed.

I heard a noise coming from the front door. I became afraid. It sounded like someone was breaking into the house. There was a shattering and jangling, like breaking glass and metal.

I stood up and ran to the front door. The front door had something like a black-painted metal, folding bed frame (with clear white Christmas lights on it?) leaning against it, keeping it from opening. Someone was pushing and pushing at the door to get it. I thought, or imagined, that the person was a big, overweight, Italian (?) man.

I was angry that anybody would try to get into this place. (It might have been my place.) But when I looked behind the door -- the person had managed to open it slightly -- I saw that the person on the other side was one of the heads of my department, DM.

I was relieved. DM walked in, as if the door were now wide open. I realized my mother had put this huge bed frame in front of the door simply to get me into a scared condition  whenever anybody came to the house. DM and I may now have been speaking about something.

Dream #2

I stood before a coffee counter in an office space. The counter wasn't separated off into a pantry room. Instead, it was right in front of a bunch of cubicles. I stood to the left of one of my senior co-workers, DS, who was making some coffee. Before me and off to the left (my left) of the counter was a doorway to a dark room

DS was complaining about the coffee in this place. I joked about how we should get an office-sized french press coffee maker. I imagined a large, stainless steel vessel shaped like a futuristic version of an old-style coffee pot, and how awkward it would be to hold such a thing.

DS said something about how that wouldn't work. I laughed and was about to joke again (although I didn't believe what I was saying (???!!!) ) that a french press would be too classy for my company. But as I was in mid-sentence, looking to my right to regard DS, I saw the department head, DM, sitting on the floor in a dark, smallish closet space. I stopped saying anything. I didn't want DM to think I was seriously insulting the company.