(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?

(12/7/07) panties for a jealous boyfriend; emotional goodbyes

(Entered in paper journal at 5:05 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I had come into a building to lead a volunteer event. A woman had brought her boyfriend, out of compulsion. The boyfriend was trying to prove that I was either trying to steal his girlfriend, make his girlfriend feel stupid, or expose him personally for some illegal activity. I had agreed to go off somewhere with the guy while the woman did the event -- to prove that I wanted nothing other than for the woman to do the event.

I was in the boyfriend's and girlfriend's apartment bedroom. There were four beds. The boyfriend lay on one and I lay on another. We both lay so our heads were at the feet of the beds. The boy was black, but he may have had his face painted bright white with cracked, caked paint.

I asked the boy what he did as a job. He squirmed off the bed impatiently and sat on the floor. He said, "I'm tired of you always asking questions. What about you? Why are you doing this event?"

I sat on my knees on the bed. The room had been dim, as if it were sunny outside, but as if the curtains had been blocking the sunlight. Now the room was light with incandescent light, and it was as if there were no windows in the room.

I told the boy my personal story. I was about to finish by telling the boy that I worked at New York Cares (I volunteered, but never worked, there in waking life). But I didn't want the boy knowing too much about my life and following me all over the place. So I just told the boy I did volunteer work.

There was now a woman in the room, a roommate to the girl and boy. The boyfriend had often had sex with this girl behind the girlfriend's back.

The boy decided I was fine to go. We were all getting ready to go back to the event. It was like I was getting out of bed. I wore a blue polo shirt and no pants. I wore pink, satin panties. The woman wore similar clothing. I didn't want the boyfriend to see my panties and think I was gay. But I still did, for some reason, want to show off my panties.

I hurried to get my regular clothes, which were by the back wall, piled on top of a duffle bag. As I got them I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I may have looked like an Hispanic woman. My bottom was huge, misshapen, and flabby. I was disgusted with myself. I bent down to pick up my boy clothes, which were possibly black slacks, a dark grey, button-up shirt, and a tie.

Dream #2

I walked up to the door of the office of my co-worker RJ. The door was only half open. I thought that RJ was leaving our company. She was busy, but I wanted to tell her goodbye. I poked my head into RJ's office. RJ was typing.

I said, "RJ, I know you're busy. But I just want to say I was happy to know you, and I wish you the best of luck."

RJ looked up at me and giggled a little. She said, "Uh... okay," as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She looked at a woman who sat behind the door and whom I couldn't see. I could tell they were both acting serious, but that they would be laughing at me soon.

I backed out of the office, feeling foolish, and walked into the next office. Through the walls I could hear RJ say, "Why did he just say that? Why did he act so sad? I'm only going away for a few days."

I now stood on a small bridge over a wide river. It was snowing heavily. Clouds gathered thick over the water, obscuring my view of the left bank as I walked to the right. The water looked almost black. The clouds were reddish pink, possibly from streetlamps of towns on the banks. The bridge was of white stone and done in a classical style, like one of the short bridges between Boston and Cambridge.

In my head I heard a conversation "I'd had" with TO, a person who'd led a volunteer project with New York Cares that I now led. In the conversation I told TO, "I just thought I'd check in, see how things were going."

TO said, "They're fine. What would you need? Do you need me to help you somehow at the park?" TO's voice was sharp. He sounded upset and inconvenienced.

I said, "No. I was just calling to check in and let you know I was still thinking about you. After all, you are my mentor."

TO laughed and said, "Mentor? How do you figure that?"

I looked at a piece of paper for a moment. On it was written dialogue similar to this.

I now saw an old, black, 1940s-style car drive off a short bank and into a river during the daytime. The bed of the river appeared to be shallow and gravely, but the car sunk right down, all the way into the gravel. I thought, That's how it happens: first you go deep into the water. Then you go deep into the mud. The water fills up the car first. And then the mud fills up the car.

After I thought this I saw from the inside of the car. It was now like the car had fallen into the river I stood over on the bridge at night. The car kept falling deeper and deeper into the dark blue-green water, as if it had fallen into a whale's ocean.

In the backseat of the car were a young boy -- possibly Asian -- with whom I identified, and two Asian men, who sat to the young boy's left. The man in the center wore thin-rimmed eyeglasses. Both men were dressed and groomed very well.

The water had filled up the car. Now I saw traces of mud curling up through the water. But suddenly there was no water in the car. I thought that the passengers would run out of air and die of suffocation. The older men were dying first, since the young boy was smaller and needed less oxygen.

The men were in a state of delirium. At first they were panicked. Then they acted drunk. Now they were calm and still.

The man on the far left said, "It's cold, so cold here."

The man in the center said, "We'll come back here on November fifth."

The man on the left agreed and spoke in slurred speech. Both men began talking in a mix of an Asian language and some other language, very slurred.

I thought, Why can't these men regain their composure around a child? Aren't they worried about panicking the child?

But the child was the first to notice that the car was moving back up, as if something were rescuing it. The child didn't want to stir the men up too much, so he didn't say anything.

There was some turbulence as the car lifted further up and up. Then there was a huge amount of turbulence, which finally got the men's attention.

Now, out of the windows, we saw a submarine. It sat on the floor of the ocean. The captain (?) stood halfway out of the hatch. He wore a grey uniform. He was old, strong, with blue eyes, white hair, and a white mustache. He held a black book like a Bible in his hand.

We floated around the submarine, as if we were actually driving the car around underwater. I thought, We've finally been rescued! But then I thought this didn't make sense. I thought, How can the captain be standing out of the hatch underwater as if he were in open air? And how can we see everything as if there were spotlights all around us?

(12/8/07) natural-looking zombies

(Entered into paper journal at 8:15 AM at Heights Coffee in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in an "office" that looked more like a small apartment. I was waiting to do a volunteer event. I sat in a seat like a folding lawn chair.

The light in the room was yellow. There was another room next to mine. This room was more like an actual office than my room was. The head volunteer person sat in there. I was waiting for the head volunteer person to be ready. I had arrived at 6:30 AM. The event wouldn't begin until 8 AM.

I had brought a couple plastic bags full of food with me. I figured since I had enough time, I would go back home and drop this stuff off. I walked into the office to tell the head volunteer person so.

The head volunteer person sat at a desk with a computer. She had short, black hair. Beside her was a tall, fat man -- the man she had been waiting for (???). I told them I would be back soon.

I walked out the door. I didn't really feel like I as actually leaving. I felt like the leaders didn't feel that way, either. I felt like in some way this place was really a place for crazy people, and that even though I could leave, I'd have to come back.

I was in a long hallway with tall, white walls and clay-red floors. The hallway had tall, arched windows that let in a lot of light. On the wall opposite the windows a group of people sat in a circle of folding chairs.

Some people may also have been sitting in hospital beds. This was a psychiatric session. I sat down, but I didn't feel like I belonged here. I tried to remember why I was here. If someone asked me, I didn't want to be unable to remember. But I still couldn't remember why I was here. So I stood up to leave.

As I was leaving, my senior co-worker TCR called out to me. I turned and saw him sitting with everybody else. He tried to explain to me why I did belong. I might have gone back to sit in the circle.

I was now with a group of people on an empty city street, like a warehouse district. It was yellowy sunny but cold. The group of us were hiding from zombie-like people. They would either attack and eat you or turn you into one of them.

We had gotten to a slight slope, with possibly a fenced-off schoolyard. We hid behind a white car by the curb. Across the street from us were a gang of zombies. They disguised themselves (instinctively?) to look normal.

One of our group fell for the zombies' trick. He was a tall, thinnish, blonde man, kind of dumb, wearing a white, knit hat, a white, puffy jacket, and faded blue jeans. Snow had begun gusting through the street, somehow making the air orange-red-pink. We tried to call the man back.

I stood on an empty city street corner, with tall, redbrick buildings all around me. It was a clear day. I stood before a car full of zombies. The zombies looked like average people of all types. The car was so full the zombies could barely move. I was surprised the zombies were smart enough to drive the car.

My group was somewhere behind the car. I thought perhaps my group was, now, the zombies in the car. I thought they'd been turned into zombies while I'd been away. I thought they'd tricked me into thinking they were still normal until I'd gotten close to them. Now they would attack me.

I turned to run. The zombies weren't driving after me yet. I believed their plan was to smash me into a building. But they were having a hard time coalescing enough -- putting all their will together well enough to move as a group -- to come after me.

I tried to run as fast as I could, while also trying to keep my balance on occasional patches of ice that slicked the road. I ran down a wide street with small buildings on either side. Only a few blocks down was a beach and then the ocean.

I ran down to the beach. I ran along the beach, trying to keep my speed up in the soft sand. The farther I ran, the more the coastline narrowed. Home properties fenced off more and more land, eating more and more into the beach. The fenced-off areas were like lawns -- just lawny backyards.

Eventually I an half in and half out of the water. Then it was like I ran through a muddy river. Even still, I worried that I might get arrested here for trespassing. Probably, I thought, the sections of water I ran through also belonged to the people who owned the fenced-off properties.

I came to a weird-looking, almost suburban, city area. A lot of people were around. A few people in a group were near the banks of the river (or sound?). The fenced-off areas disappeared. It was just open lawn, like a park, with a town square and houses in the distance. The group of people seemed normal and seemed to welcome me.

I stood up onto the lawn. I thought I would join the people.

(7/17/08) flirting with boss' girl; irreparable damage

(Entered in paper journal at 5:32 AM on 2-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a place like an empty cruise ship bar with my boss BS. BS stood behind the counter, which was made of material like a fake-leather seat (an orangish light brown). Behind BS was a wide window with a view of a harbor (?).

BS had been trying to push me into doing something, maybe seeing a specific movie. But when I was visibly annoyed with his insistence, he apologized and said he wouldn't push me.

BS handed me a "cutout from a newspaper," which was thicker than newsprint or normal paper, maybe even as thick as a piece of kraft board, like the paper that makes cereal boxes. The clipping was maybe two inches wide and six inches long. It was an ad for a new movie theater and a movie BS thought I should see. I walked away, as if we were done talking.

Now the place was a bar with a strange harbor motif, all made out of grey, old wood, with thick line strung about as railings. BS stood on a level slightly above me and before the bar. He held a pretty, brunette girl loosely around the waist and told me goodbye, and to have fun volunteering. The girl BS was embracing was apparently furtively flirting with me. But I tried not to notice.

I knew BS and the girl thought I was leaving the building completely. A line of folks piled behind them. I stood at a distance, taking care of writing something in my notebook before I left. I stood hidden behind a thick column. To my right was a zigzagging line before a register counter that looked like the counter at a fast food restaurant. That area was empty.

I could hear the girl with BS say about me, "Yeah, Preemie's gay. For sure he's gay. He reminds me of one of my gay friends who would always do volunteer things, too. Whenever he would see me and my girlfriends he would say, 'Have fun, girls!' in the gayest way, and try to get us to go volunteering with him."

I was now sitting at a silvery table and writing down information from posters over a doorway (like a hallway to the kitchen and restrooms) to my right. To my left was the bar and line of people, slightly elevated from my level. BS and the girl were at the front of the line. The girl was now younger. She wore a pink shirt (I think her shirt had previously been black).

BS caught a glimpse of me and asked why I was still here, in the same annoyed tone of voice he might use if I were to stay at work too long in waking life. I told BS, "I'm just writing stuff down from over there. It's the only place that has it. Then I'll leave, definitely."

I couldn't make out what one of the posters said, so I asked the girl if she could read it for me. The girl had a different look, and her shirt, still pink, now had a pale or washed-out look. The girl bent over and whispered the phrase in my ear, but using a very intimate voice.

I thought this girl was really flirting with me, but I tried to believe she wasn't. But now she bent down and embraced me while whispering the phrase. She embraced me again and pulled me into a standing position. BS looked slightly annoyed and put-out by the whole situation. I decided to leave before I ended up taking BS' girlfriend (???).

I was out on a walkway that was surrounded by water. The walkway was concrete, but there seemed to be wooden docks all around me. There may have been a few boats as well. It was possibly late afternoon. I was on the phone with my girlfriend H. I told H where I was and that I thought I could meet with her if she liked.

I came up to a calm river where a few people were kayaking. My view of the people was obscured by a small bridge that seemed to break in the middle. The bridge looked like the walkway-bridge over the road near the Intrepid aircraft carrier and museum. I thought I would cross the bridge and join the people kayaking. But I realized it was time for kayaking to close for the day, so I couldn't join them.

The light was now cool and blue grey, though there were still a few faint glimmers of golden sunlight. I was on the phone with H again. She was excitedly telling me about something. But suddenly she stopped. Her line went completely silent. I thought I had been disconnected from her.

I may now have been in a bedroom. I tried calling H back. But the phone just kept ringing.

Dream #2

I was with a group of people who were about my age or a little younger. We were all out on a wide lawn or field near some big house. We were all part of some nature project. A group of folks had dug up a hole in the field and pulled out some kind of concrete structure. Now a group of folks was digging up another hole.

An instructor, a kind of dumpy-looking, shabbily dressed man, gobbled at the people that they shouldn't have dug the holes. They had mistaken destroying a species' habitat for doing research. They may now have done irreparable damage. The only thing that could be done now was to cover up the holes before the boss came by. Hopefully the boss wouldn't notice what had been done.

Some time went by. Both holes (although the first one may not have been a problem to begin with) were covered over with a grass matting that was underwoven with a lightweight cable material, like for industrial electrics. I could see the matting from below, as if I were in the hole. The place I was in was like a basic living area.

(1/30/10) space attack - brazil!; family on east side; fruit punch pop-tarts

(Entered in paper journal at 8:35 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

A view of a space shuttle lifting up into the sky. The view was grainy film footage. The shuttle was viewed, from perhaps one hundred meters away, lifting up through a blue sky and then into a thin layer of scattered, tan and white clouds. The shuttle left huge, tightly billowing clouds trailing behind it. There may have been only a tiny bit of propulsive flame visible under the shuttle -- it may have had a raspy flare to it, like fireworks. The boosters never came off the shuttle.

My view of all this may have started from below, as if from the ground. From there it may have pulled up to a level with the space shuttle, traveling along with it up into the clouds.

As the shuttle traveled, I heard a news reporter talking about how a crazy man had been stopped from getting onto the shuttle and sabotaging it. I couldn't quite keep in my mind that the man had been stopped. I kept feling like I was watching the shuttle moments before the man sabotaged and destroyed it.

The news report now played a recording of the man who had aimed to sabotage the shuttle. He was a kind of crazy-looking, older, Japanese man. He spoke in a distracted, grating, slighlty high voice.

The man first spoke about having come from Hawaii. Then he spoke about why he chose to sabotage the shuttle. He explained it in an analogy, a joke about a New Jersey dentist, or a joke about a dentist told to him by a friend of his from New Jersey?

As the man told this joke, the shuttle topped over the layer of sunrise pink and tan clouds. The shuttle began flying horizontally. The trail of smoke behind the ship was dark grey. The view stoppped moving along with the shuttle. The shuttle cruised forward into the distance. The view, which may eventually have become me, personally, flying, continued moving slowly forward, eventually descending through the clouds again.

I tried to figure out how the shuttle was going to get to space while traveling horizontally. I figured that somehow the shuttle would go tangentially with the earth, winding out into space that way.

I heard the news report discussing how the crazy man's origins were being tracked. The man was, I believe, going down somewhere in South America, although I think the report said he was going to Portugal. There apparently was some kind of overall conspiracy in the location where the crazy man had come from.

I was now descending toward land. The ground below me was a thin, patchy field of grass and dusty soil. It seemed to be slightly rolling and rounded. There may have been a couple children playing on a kind of barren playground. An apartment complex may have stood in the distance.

When I landed I was in some South American city. I stood in a narrow, European-looking street full of shops. The weather was very warm and sunny. I walked down the narrow street, which was positioned in shade, toward a wider, sunny street running crosswise to this one.

As I walked I could sense that two tough men, possibly wearing beige trenchcoats, were following me from about a block away. I could even hear them discussing me, their voices as close and intimate as if they were right over my shoulder. I may have felt like they were following me to prevent me from finding the origins of the crazy man.

I tried to walk nonchalantly, figuring I'd go about my business, whatever it was, and lose the two men somehow. I approached the sunny street. It was full of shops, and it seemed lively, though there weren't many people around.

I turned right and faced a dead end at the head of which was a wide, stout, cobblestone building with brand new-looking windows. The building looked like it used to be a hotel, though it now seemed to be closed down.

I turned around to head in the other direction. But I came to a side street on my right hand side. I turned down the street. The street was dim. I approached another sunny street, which seemed to have a couple of dead ends. I ended up wandering through a maze of streets in this fashion. The place I was in seemed less and less like a city and more like a courtyard in a castle or passageways within or behind a complex of buildings.

Finally I came upon an apartment complex. It was kind of modern: a lot of "raw" concrete and concrete-and-pebble designs. The levels over each other were sloped and jangly. Walking through the place I barely saw any sun, though the ground level felt open to the air and light somewhere.

I could hear families, mostly children, with some mothers, and not too many men, running around, talking, and playing. I was trying not to be noticed. I felt like some or all of the people here would inform on me or even attack me if they saw me.

I was trying to get out  of this place. But, I thought, once I got out, how would I know where I was? I thought I should get a good vantage point, so I could see where I was and where I should head. I started floating upward, in the narrow gaps between the staircases, still avoiding being seen by people.

I ended up in a complex of stairways and balcony-like walkways that were much more exposed to sunlight and sky, and seemed to stand before a downward hill slope and, possibly, over a somewhat large complex of apartments. The sunlight was bright, pale, possibly cold, like winter light in the afternoon.

I walked, across a black-painted, metal walkway?, toward the hill. As I did, I was called to by a boy and his father. The boy asked me why I was here. Somehow I slowly came to understand that I was in Brazil. I spoke with the boy and his father, mainly the boy, about where I was and what I was doing.

We walked through a narrow set of staircases that seemed like staircases in a playground playset. The stairs kept going higher and higher, tracking up the hill, but also towering more and more over the ground of the hill. We were approaching the top of the hill. I thought I would have a good vantage point from the top of the hill.

We continued walking. The boy may have spoken a lot of Spanish and a little English. The father spoke neither. The boy translated for the father, either into Portugese, or into a native Brazilian language. As we spoke, I could see the Brazilian flag in my mind's eye. The flag seemed to lie rumpled on the ground.

I had to speak with the boy mostly in Spanish. I said very basic things. I tried to express myself plainly with the Spanish I could muster. My Spanish was rudimentary, but passable. Upon waking, I could even remember what I'd said, thought I can now no longer remember it.

We approached the top of the hill. We stood on the ground. The ground was red, patched, and clumped with grass and possibly even yucca. I looked out across the field, which spanned out shallowly before me. At the other end of the field was an apartment complex. There may have been a few tiny groups of people dotting the field, people out playing around and lounging around.

This scene may have felt familiar to me. But it seemed very different from the city through which I had been walking and to which I was trying to return. I felt slightly discouraged and burdened, like I would in waking life when I go on a long, random walk and find myself somewhere where I know I'll have to do a lot of walking and back-tracking to get to a subway or some reference point from which I can easily get home.

Dream #2

I was walking down a city street at night. I turned right. I walked down a street that became increasinly dark. The darkness even seemed to plunge into my ears, possibly even against my skin, giving me a feeling of being deep under a blanket in the midst of a sickness. The feeling became even more intense, so that I felt like I was losing my equilibrium

Now I was walking out on a street which was very dark but which had a couple of streetlights, as wells as the slight, deep blue glow of sky to illuminate some things. A brambly tree or shrub crowded over me at first -- a barren tangle of what seemed to be pale, brittle, thorny branches.

I continued along. I saw that I was in a neighborhood full of single-family homes and well-spaced yards. I was surprised to see such a neighborhood in New York, especially Manhattan -- which was apparently where I was.

I even wondered whether the darkness weren't distorting my vision altogether, making me think that I was seeing single-family homes where there were really multi-family buildings. But then, I told myself, this was the East Side, the Far East Side, and there was a lot more space out here. People kind of didn't even want to come out here, I told myself.

I noticed that the houses were small. But, I told myself, the space in these houses would be enough for me. Plus, I would have a yard and a lot of separation from my neighbors.

I had been looking at houses on the right side of the street. I may even have stopped and looked straight at one of the houses. I now turned and looked to the left side of the street. There seemed to be a thick layer of darkness, then a long yard, at the end of which I saw the back end of a tall house.

I wandered through the yard and ended up before windows that looked down into the low-set first floor of what felt like a playhouse or guest house near the larger house which I had previously seen. It might have been early morning.

I looked into the window. The lights were on. My brother was inside, possibly sitting wrapped under a pile of blankets. The room seemed like a very large living room, cluttered all over with blankets and sheets.

My brother looked up and saw me. He may have called out to me, but he also called out to my mother and possibly also my sister. He said to them, "Hey, guys, it looks like Preemie came here after all, after such a long time."

I was now inside the house. It was my whole immediate family -- my mom, my brother, my sister, and myself. We were possibly supposed to go to the large house. But we were waiting for something. At some point in time, my great grandmother may have come into the room.

Everybody was happy to see me. But everybody was kind of holding back emotionally from me, trying to keep me from feeling intruded on and upset. I was acting polite, but I didn't exactly want to be here. I was especially uneasy about having to wait before going to the larger house. I really felt like we wouldn't ever be able to go there after all.

Dream #3

I was with a group of people in the line for the concession stand at a movie theater. The people may have been a group of high schoolers, with some teachers. I may have been there in the role of a volunteer.

I, and some of the students?, decided to head into the theater ahead of the group. We went into the theater, which looked more like a university auditorium than a movie theater. The lights were bright, fluorescent white with a slight tinge of green. The floors were carpeted in a pale pink-tan, very thin carpet. The rows of seats were very wide, with more than enough space for seats and desks, and a lot of leg room. The aisles were also wide, with wide, small steps.

The place hadn't yet filled up. I was walking down the right aisle. At first I thought I was by myself. But as I turned my head left to look for a good row of seats, I noticed that three of the students, some black boys, probably in their late teens, were behind me.

I was about to walk down to the very front of the theater, where I usually like to sit, but the boys turned down a row about halfway up the aisle. I wanted to be accommodating to the boys, so I turned down the row, too. I said, "Got it! Let's get our seats!" like I was pretending to be some kind of cartoon military person. As I said this, I wondered if I sounded confident.

I walked along the edge of the row, which now seemed like a broadly curving ledge, maybe six feet down to the lower row of seats. I may have been afraid I might fall.

I thought that if I had sounded too confident as I had given my pretend command, the adults (a bunch of squeamish white men and women) would think I was challenging their authority. The adults would then all try to pile into this row -- which the boys and I were trying to stake our for our entire group. So I now tried to sound very meek.

The boys took seats. I was going to sit by the boys to talk with them. But I saw that the boys all sat a few seats apart from each other. I realized they were doing this to save seats for the whole group. So I did the same thing, sitting near the aisle.

I watched the screen, which was set high above the "stage" area at the front of the room. The screen must have been enormous. The room itself seemed enormous. The room seemed to be filling up now.

I was watching advertisements on the screen. They all seemed to be for Pop-Tarts. There was a weird trivia series: two slides, the first of which mentioned Pop-Tarts' "classic" SGGB campaign, and the second of which said what the letters in the acronym stood for.

The acronym may have been SBBG, now that I think of it. The first three letters, I'm certain, stood for strawberry, blueberry, and bland. The last letter stood for some special "multi" kind of flavor, the pastry of which was also flavored to match the weird, tropical (?) fruit of the filling and frosting.

The trivia question about this "classic" advertising campaign probably filled me with nostalgia. After the trivia slides came either some slides or actual video commercials about new Pop-Tarts, which were, in some ways, a lot like the "multi" Pop-Tarts. These Pop-Tarts were, I gathered from the commercials, marketed toward young women in the business field.

The commercials showed youngish women dressed in suit-dresses walking through clean, but crowded, city streets in glimmering sunlight. The women were athletically fit, strong, healthy. In one of the ads, a woman sat at a bench like at a bus stop while eating the Pop-Tart. The whole campaign was supposed to provide a sense that these Pop-Tarts provided health for women with an active lifestyle.

The Pop-Tarts, including the pastry, were colored in pastel, "feminine" colors, like purple and pink. The entire Pop-Tart was one solid color, so that it looked like some kind of Easter candy. The women would hold the Pop-Tarts in weird ways -- loosely, by the corner, as if they were cigarettes or newspapers. This product line had a weird name, like Fruity Punches. The flavors were also odd, mixed-tropical-fruit flavors.