(5/17/09) searching for a cleft palate

Dream #1

I was on a black iron platform like an above-ground subway platform. I probably had just gotten off a train. I walked down a black-iron staircase. I stopped halfway down, possibly at a landing, and looked out at the view.

It was early evening. The sun had just set, and a pink band of sky below the deep blue dome was reflected off a calm lake (?) to the right of which was a gently rounded hill of grasses, all in shadow. The whole area looked a lot like the view from a bridge running between Pelham Bay and City Island in New York.

Two businessmen, somewhere to my right, just behind me and out of my view, were speaking back and forth about a project that one of the men was having a little difficulty with. This talk may also have spilled over into a talk about the man's family. The overall situation wasn't awful, but it was a difficulty that the man was glad to be able to work out with another person.

I also felt like the two men were involving me in the talk. It was like they wanted to get me interested in their business.

I decided to remain aloof. I stood outside of a deli. The street was like one of the more main streets in a residential area in Brooklyn or the Bronx. It was either night or early morning, just before sunrise. Fluorescent green-white light flooded out onto the sidewalk from the deli's window. I had been inside the store, discussing business with someone. I don't think things had been going well.

Something made me think of a cleft palate. I pulled out my BlackBerry and did an internet search for "cleft palate." I found a Wikipedia-style page talking about cleft palates and, possibly, how they affect people's relationships.

There were a few photos of people with "cleft palates." One photo showed a man who looked normal, except that his eyes and possibly nose, or some other part of his face, were digitally blanked out with green circles. I assumed the man had suffered some disfigurement there which was blanked out digitally. There was another photo of a person who had a log of bubble-like protrusions on his face. They were red, like boils or sores, though I knew they were the result of something like elephantitis.

I kept thinking there would be a photo of someone with a "cleft palate," which I envisioned as a harelip on the person's top lip, splitting to reveal a fleshy split in the roof of a person's mouth.