(4/24/05) grandfather and airport; a little joke about hoes like her

(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 PM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a living room with my mom and sister. It was small and cluttered, like an apartment living room, with brown and tan shag carpet. Yellow, sticky light came in through the windows. I sat almost cross-legged on the floor. My sister (?) sat in front of me while my mom (?) sat to my left on a couch.

We all spoke about going to visit my grandfather. I thought that would be a fun visit. But suddenly I remembered I had to catch my flight back to New York. I'd incorrectly remembered my departure hour.

I interrupted the conversation and said, "Could one of you drive me to the airport? Do you think we could get there by 8:00?"

My mom said yes, though she was a little taken aback. I produced my trip itinerary, which had all the flight times highlighted. My departure time was 9:20.

Dream 2

I was with a group of friends or some fellow classmates. We had been doing some strange project involving a vat of boiling frying grease. Now one of my friends had a mannequin. My friend was black, young, a bit fat, with a round, smart aleck expression, and dressed like a chef. The mannequin was headless, female shaped, white, slender, wearing a white satin and lace teddy.

My friend said, "So that VT's" (my crew mate) "got you down? Well, here's a little joke about hoes like her. They let themselves get dipped in too many times and..."

He dipped the mannequin into the vat of frying grease all the way up to its bellybutton and pulled back up. The legs were pretty much gone. But I couldn't see that: my friend had lifted a black, plastic bag up with the mannequin. The bag was around the mannequin's waist, covering whatever remained of the legs.

I did think the joke was a little satisfying. But I didn't dislike VT so much that I'd want something like that to happen to her. And I didn't want to stand for her being so insulted. So I just said, "Whatever," an turned away, walking into a room which people sat in like in a waiting room.

All the chairs were lined along the walls, but some groups of people had turned in their chairs to sit around TV dinner-style folding tables with trays with flowers in them. I walked to the one on the back wall. One person  had a flower in his lap. It was a yellow marigold. It had a little title card, like a green 3 x 5 card with a stake-point going into the soil.

The printed card read:

Pot Marigold

Kot (XXXXX) "Ninja" Ninjaiensis

I can't remember what word was in the parentheses. 

(9/25/06) yin yang pisces rats; happy sick dog; lutheran codex of the dead

(Entered in paper journal at 7:20 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in the doorway to "Ben & Jerry's" "at Times Square." Apparently I was volunteering on some project. The inside of the place was dim, as if it were night or early morning, and only a light or two in the back of the store was on, lighting solid, rich-colored walls of maroon and goldenrod and other similar colors.

The volunteer manager was telling someone working for them (my Americorps co-worker JS), "He's just here as a volunteer. Don't make him go back down into the garbage room."

I said, "No, don't worry about that. I've been there before. I can go there again. It won't bother me."

I thought about all the roaches and rats in that basement. They had grossed me out (i.e. when I had actually worked for Ben & Jerry's in Times Square in 1998 and 1999), but I had generally been okay with them.

I walked down the basement steps with JS. One or two steps from the basement a rat scurried up to the steps, then away. I was shocked, but I kept steady. Then another ran, and a few more. A couple started running up the steps. I got grossed out and ran back up the steps. JS continued down to the garbage room.

There was a girl at the top of the stairs. The girl asked, "What are you afraid of? The diseases? The grossness? That they'll bite you? I can't blame you, although I'm used to it."

The girl held out her right (?) hand, on which two rats (palm-sized) scurried around like the "pisces" (?) or yin yang style.

They actually crawled all around her hands -- like roly-polies! But I strongly remember them making the "pisces" (?) or yin yang shape at one point.

Dream 2

I sat or lay on a couch. My friend R lay in an odd position on the floor by the arm of the couch at my feet. I called for my friend's dog. The dog was sick somehow, but she jumped up on the couch and flapped around happily while I pet her.

I felt dog's hyperactivity in reaction to my petting was the result of her sickness and would lead to more sickness. But I also felt R was jealous that I was petting his dog. So I think I made the dog calm down and made her jump off the couch to appease R.

R was almost bluish skinned, greasy -- it was like he had been strangled and was now decomposing. But he was still alive. I think we even spoke about about how good I was with animals.

Dream 3

I was with a woman in a room. The woman spoke to me about a catechism I had in my hands as I read the catechism. She said this was what the Spaniards used to convert the Aztecs.

There were two columns, I saw, of glyphs, and then a column (in English) of text. Most of the glyphs were shaded out by diagonal lines over the squares. The catechism followed the normal Q & A format. It spoke of the brown wood of the cross and the pink (comb? knife?) that drove the nails into the Christ.

The Aztec ("A"nswer to the "Q"uestion) said something like, "That imagery alone should denote in an aware mind the greatness of Christ. Destiny brought him to those two symbols, which even alone mean greatness."

I "remembered" now that the woman in the room (Mexican-looking, youngish) had been holding brown wood and a weird, pink, plastic knife/comb/mirror before. She had been trying to tell me something -- about herself?

(9/15/07) diseased ruins and marshy river; yelling at brother; psychiatrist baggage

(Entered in paper journal at 8 AM at Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn Heights.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I stood out on a city street. On my left side was a rather busy city scene. It felt separated from me somehow, as if I stood at the opposite end of an empty lot from the scene. The buildings were mostly redbrick.

On my right were half-torn-down buildings, also of brick. I was right by these buildings, maybe even standing in the rubble. The buildings were long and tall, even though they only seemed to have two stories delineated by their structure. Some steel beams were evident underneath the brick.

I saw occasional people walking in and out of the "floors" of the building. For some reason this unsettled me. I thought, People are actually living in these torn-up buildings. I thought that somehow these buildings and this rubble were sure to be diseased. I had to get out of it all before the disease overtook me, too.

I flew up and over the complex of two or three buildings. I was about to land when I (saw or realized?) that on the other side of these buildings were other buildings that were also diseased. So I couldn't land here, either. I didn't know how much "flying energy" I had. I either imagined or saw that these diseased ruins spanned all the way to a river. Across the river was a bar of deep green, deciduous forest.

I flew up as high as I could, hoping that when my "flying energy" ran out I would be able to control my descent and steer clear of the diseased ruins. I was a little disappointed, though. I couldn't believe that the diseased ruins spanned to the very edge of the city. I tried to figure whether there were any areas with wholesome buildings left in the city.

I came crashing down in a shallow body of water on the other side of the bar of trees. I was surrounded by cranes -- white cranes were near me, but maybe fifteen feet back and to my right were weird, fleshy-looking, black and white cranes. Their white parts, which were more like accent or striping, like on a skunk, were feathers. The black parts were knotty flesh, like on a lizard or rhinoceros. There were about three or five. They stood in a line, side by side.

Also in the water were little "birds" that looked like dull yellow and black cotton balls. In some way their colors remind me (i.e. at the time I entered the dream in the paper journal) of ducklings or goslings. But they had no features: they were just puffballs. They were all over the place. For some reason I thought this was a good sign.

To my right were a couple groupings of tall, green leafs, like for cattails. They gleamed in the sun and the reflections of the water. The water itself came up to my knees at the highest.

Also to my right, enclosing some of the tall leafs was a "chicken wire" and wood fence. I may have thought the fence was being used to block of a transect area for research purposes. The fence probably enclosed a small space and didn't come up much higher than the surface of the water. Some of the puffball birds congregated on the wooden fence-tops, like, I imagined, dragonflies might do.

In front of me, and off to my left, the water spanned pristinely, dark, with a blue skin of sky-reflection.

I thought, I need to get back to the city. For some reason I walked outward, to where the leaf-groupings ended, then to the right, around them, to head back to the "river's" banks. (I find it (as I wrote in the paper journal) weird now that I didn't just turn around from where I was to head back to the banks.) I faced a corridor of water between two groupings of tall grass -- which seemed a lot thicker than it had been at first.

I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was in relation to the city, or how possible it would be for me to get back to the city all by myself. I began to hope that somebody would show up to help me out. Even just to know that there were people around would comfort me.

A white motorboat appeared in the distance of the corridor. I tried to flag it down at first. But I realized that it was going too fast to stop for me. Plus, it was throwing up so much spray that my visibility of the front of the boat was very limited. I thus assumed that the people piloting the boat wouldn't be able to see me at all.

I now realized that the boat was heading straight for me! If I didn't do something it would hit and kill me! I dove down into the water, which couldn't have been much greater than chest-deep. I suddenly thought, looking down at the soft soil of the "river," Why have I been walking though this? Why don't I swim through the water? I might move more quickly.

Dream #2

I sat in a chair in a bedroom. My brother lay at the foot of a bed. A window behind me and at the top of the wall (as if we were in a basement) let in a lot of sharp, white morning light. The chair, an easy chair, maybe pale blue, faced the right side of the bed. The room was good-sized, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, empty except the bed and the chair (?). The bed was strewn with all kinds of quilts.

My brother lay with his right side along the foot of the bed, so his feet faced me. He woke up. He stretched his right hand down to an ashtray, possibly on a little nightstand, which may have been draped in a black street.

My brother may have done something to cause a mess in my room. It took me a moment to realize this. I thought, Why is my brother messing up my room, as if it were his own? (Although I should say that in waking life, my brother keeps his room very clean.)

I stood up and walked over to my brother. I then stood over him menacingly. As I did this I said, "What the hell are you doing?" My brother looked shocked, not that I had made such an angry statement, but that I was here at all.

Dream #3

My psychiatrist and I sat down to start our session. We were on a stage (like the stage in the gymnasium of my old high school). We sat by a rectangular table. She sat at a short end, with her left side to the edge. I sat on long end, facing her, my seat a little diagonal to the edge of the table. There may have been some stuff on the table.

A said something nice as if she cared what I had to say. But she was holding a big (blue?) garbage bag -- full, almost half A's standing height -- in front of her. She cradled it like it was a security blanket. She mumbled through it.

We began speaking about Bruno Bettelheim. A began speaking clearly, unobstructued. We had some excited, fun interaction regarding Bettelheim's work. But then I tried to move on to some other subject, more pertinent to my personal psychological life. Now it was like A was surrounded in clear, full garbage bags. Only her head was visible, though her mouth must have been covered: she was mumbling through the bags again.