(11/3/09) old friends and new; retrieving the troublemaker

(Entered in paper journal at 8:30 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was out on some walkway, like a promenade, but not a boardwalk (?), before a beach. The walkway was bordered by a large apartment complex, like a housing project building. I stood on something like a wheelchair ramp by the building with my co-worker and friend AR. We stood in the glare of pale, breezy sunlight. There might have been small pine trees nearby.

AR and I were talking about something like getting haircuts. AR might have just finished my hair, and now it was my turn to cut his hair. I had electric clippers in my hand. The clippers turned on and began vibrating to a worrisome degree. I looked at a dial on the body of the clippers. The clippers had a black, plastic body and silver, almost plastic-looking shears. The dial was silvery plastic, and it looked like the dial of an egg timer or an old clothes dryer.

I made some jokey kind of gestures, mocking panic about the clippers going out of control. Somebody's hair seemed to be falling to the ground in wet, black squares about an inch long. I may have seen a paper plate somewhere, for collecting the hair. AR and I were now both laughing at what was apparently a pretty good joke.

Now either my old friend BC came up, or else my old friend R came up and later on turned into BC. BC looked older, more grizzled, with a full beard. He wore a faded, green shirt and a faded, blue undershirt. He was walking away, as if he lived in the apartments and was heading out for the day.

I was surprised to see BC. I called for him. He stopped and turned so he side-faced me with his left side. He turned his face all the way toward me. I couldn't quite remember BC's name, and I kept trying to call him by his last name, never quite saying it because I never quite had it right in my head.

BC spoke with a kind of scruffy-western character to his voice. He said he was going to meet R somewhere. I worried that R might come here. Here I was, I thought, having a good time with a friend, and now R would come and wreck this relationship. But, I though, maybe that's not true. After all, AR was a guy. R wouldn't be jealous of me because of a friendship I was having with a guy, would he?

Dream #2

I was out on something like a dirt road near a vast field like a sports field. It was black night, and the road was lit by a string of dimmish, orange streetlamps. I stood with a group of men. A couple of the men were my age. The other was older, kind of like our leader or teacher.

There had been some kind of conflict between us and some other man who was about my age. The man had been proven wrong in one of his actions. He was thought, now, at least by me, to be a kind of wild, mean-spirited person.

But now that everything had been settled, the older man wanted us to get the young man back into our group. The man had run off down the road, to my right. I went in search of the man. I ran to a portion of road lined on either side by hills about thirty feet tall. The hills were covered with shortish, widely spaced pine trees.

The orange lights seemed to light this area a bit more fully than they had lit the section of road by the playing field. There were a lot of people wandering about on the road and a little way up the hills -- small groups of people spaced somewhat widely apart, yet all together, as if having a picnic.

I saw the young man. He might have looked like my old friend R. He was talking in a kind of mean voice, but he sounded more hurt than angry. He sounded like he might want to be back with the group, but he didn't know whether he could trust them.