(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM, on B-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I walked down into a stairway into a basement. The basement may have had red walls and may have been lit with incandescent light. Before me at the foot of the stairs was a weird feature like a bottomless pit. The pit was rectangular and was bounded on three sides by "mattresses." The fourth side (the long side opposite me) was the wall. Set into the wall was a square in which sat some kind of shrine, including (?) a clear, rounded vase full of colorful flowers with rose-like petals.
I leaned my elbows atop the long side's barrier and stood watching, as if I were watching a pendulum swing. I thought of a legend of a man (maybe Asian) who had practiced a certain dance. But before the dance it was generally customary for the person dancing to give thanks to a god who excelled at the dance.
This man was a great dancer and did not think he needed to give thanks to the god. So the god came down to earth and challenged the man to the dance. But the god's dance soon became an attack, and the man was either frightened out of the challenge or killed.
I thought that I should give thanks to the god before I began the dance.
I stood in a different part of the basement now, not far from where I was before. The room L'd off to become narrower, and in the narrow space stood a bunk bed. I was right at the corner of the "L."
On the wall to my left, opposite the bunk beds, and on the same wall as the bottomless pit shrine, was another shrine in a square setting. Before me and just to my right, in the corner of the wall, was a "closet space." The closet was made of cheap wood. The shelves were full of all kinds of clothing, but on the top shelf was a TV. Just to my right may have been a doorway into a concrete-floored room like a laundry or storage room. Sunlight may have shone through a window in the storage room.
My propitiation to the god was to play some kind of video on the TV -- something like an anime adventure with a sexy girl swinging around and fighting people. My mom yelled down the stairs to me to shut that show off -- she could hear it all the way upstairs. I shut the show off, like I was clicking off one program on a computer.
There was another show playing "below" this program. This show was like a live-action porno or torture show, shot crudely in a green-walled room. I may have been ashamed that I had been watching this show, and I may have shut it off as well.
My mom told me something about putting some sort of laundry in the wash. I couldn't believe I was back in a situation where my mom was controlling my life like this. I walked out of a room like the the laundry room. I now stood in some room like a common room at a homeless shelter.
There were some boys, black and Hispanic, sitting on the floor, on chairs, and on taller items like ladders. Two white men, dressed nicely and looking like men from the 1950s, had been giving some kind of positive lecture to the boys, who had just entered the shelter.
One of the men left, out a door to my left, possibly because he was going to get something useful for the boys. He might also have made a comment on exiting that he thought the chances were small that he and his colleague could help the boys think positively about this place.
I looked at the windows to this place. It was night. The windows were dark. The windows were about five feet tall and three feet wide, grid-paned, maybe three panes across and four panes tall. The remaining man was continuing his speech to the boys.
I saw how words had been written on the windows, like finger markings in condensation. The statements were positive. I now watched the condensation and markings change color. According to the mood of the statement, the pane on which the statement was written would change to a bright color while the words would change to another bright color. The colors were like shimmery acrylic paint.
I had the idea that the boys had written the statements on the window and that they had colored them. This was part of an art project. Once it was complete, it was thought, the mood produced by the windows would be so positive that the boys would love to live here.
But the boys had lost their inspiration.
The other man may now have been gone as well. Some of the boys were planning an escape. But nobody, even the really violent and rebellious ones, were sure if they would be doing the right thing.
I hadn't really been in the scene, and maybe I still wasn't. But I was knelt on the floor. A big, black boy sitting on a tall stool looked down, at me, I thought, and said, "What do you think, little girl? Should we stay or should we go?"
I now realized the boy had been speaking to a small, Hispanic boy sitting in a chair before me and just to my left. The boy had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore small, round-rimmed glasses and a big, puffy, navy blue jacket. I knew this boy was smart and sensitive, and was recognized for being so, but was always made fun of (like being called a girl) for being so obedient.
I was now being held, romantically, on one of the boy's laps. We were in front of all the boys, in the open space of the common room. The boy whose lap I sat on was black, masculine, but pretty looking. He asked me, "Don't you like this?" My head was tilted backwards. The boy was bringing down three fingers to touch my head.
I thought, I don't like this. I shouldn't be attracted to this boy. But I am.
Suddenly I was all alone. I sat on the floor in a room like the common room. It was dark, with a spotlight or spotlights shining on the floor. The carpet was hard and grey. The room had a classy feel, like in a museum.
Before me was a shrine -- also a clear vase full of flowers, maybe including orchids with white edges that faded into deep-pink centers -- which was spotlighted. There was ornamentation around the shrine, including strewn flower petals and two lion statuettes, one on each side of the shrine. The statuettes may have been green and made of wax.
The statuette to my right may have turned into a real lion. It jumped to attack me. I became horribly afraid. The lion again became the green statuette (i.e. maybe one foot long), but was still attacking me. I knew this fight was nothing but a performance, although if I lost, I would actually die.
The green lion and I wrestled. I threw it off me at one point. It flew down a small set of stairs (three or four steps, in a semicircle, like in the minerals and gems section of the American Museum of Natural History). I may have crawled or slid to the steps. The lion pounced again from the bottom of the steps. I grabbed it and flung myself backwards, to hit the lion's head against the floor.
I was now sitting up. I heard a woman's voice somewhere, maybe in my head, talking about an actress like Sarah Jessica Parker. The voice was talking about how reckless the actress was in public life and how sh'ed eventually just become annoying.
Beside me was a weird, boxlike device which may have held an opium pipe. I was smoking something. Along a ridge of the box-device were scattered tiger's-eye-colored shards, which I knew were the legs of a spider which had been killed.
The voice continued, explaining that in the profession the actress was in (it may have been acting or equity research), there was no need to be such a prima donna. After all, there wasn't as much pressure as say, that involved in rocket science.
I stood up and walked down the steps. I thought to myself, I should actually look into rocket science. I've been wanting to design rockets for a long time now.
I walked into the deep blackness beyond the spotlights. I pushed open a heavyish, metal door with a circle window in the top, like a door in a restaurant or hospital.
I walked into a fluorescent-lit room. Before me stood a group of men, mostly black. I felt like they were looking at me as if they wanted to bully me. I walked away to the left. I heard some people talking somewhere. I thought they were talking about me.
I walked up a long stairway with white, close walls and grey carpeting. I now thought I heard people laughing at me. I tried hard to hear the conversation, to see if it was about me.
At times I felt like I was drifting up the stairwell, as if on an escalator. Along the walls, on my left side, were occasional windows, behind which teams of doctors sat, usually two doctors per team, the doctors mainly being black. The doctors were usually laughing.
I heard the conversation better. It was like a senior co-worker of mine, and the guy who acted as a liaison between the research and sales departments at my company, JB, was talking to one of the doctors as part of a radio interview. JB was speaking, in his usual mellow voice, about the economy.
I reached the top of the stairwell. I walked through one metal door into a tiny "foyer," then out onto a sidewalk through another metal door.
The sky was fully clouded over, but it was colored dim blue, like the color of early morning. There was an orange streetlamp overhead. The ground was wet, as if it had just rained. The wall of the building was white-painted concrete. It felt like I was coming out of the side exit of a movie theater or playhouse.
I held the door open still because I thought I wouldn't be able to hear JB's talk if I shut the door. But then I realized there was a speaker right above me, playing JB's speech. I let the door shut as I heard JB say conditions hadn't been this tough since 1912 or 1913.
Dream #2
I was in a dim bedroom that was lit only by natural light coming from some other room at the end of a long hallway. I was with a group of friends.
One of my friends, maybe my girlfriend H, saw a roach crawl across the wall. She panicked. I was ashamed, but also upset, that roaches were back in my house again, after I'd gotten rid of them. They'd been gone for so long.
But now I looked out into the hallway. It seemed justified for roaches to be here: the floor of the hallway was so dirty it looked like a wet asphalt road.
Dream #3
I lay on "my bed." The head of my bed was positioned so I could turn left to see down the hallway. There were a couple rooms along the right wall and one room at the very end of the hallway. The doors for all the rooms may have been opened. Fluorescent light was coming out of some (?) of the rooms.
I saw two rats run into one of the lit rooms on the side wall. I was so upset to see rats in my house that I called out, "No... no... no!"
I thought I would have to get up right away and kill the rats. But now I saw, as if I were a camera (and all the lights were now off -- only the streetlights from outside providing light), how there was some strange activity happening in my closet. The rats changed (first into mice, then into lions?). I thought, I can't kill an animal that big. Then I saw the head of an elephant emerge from the closet.
I was back in my bed. I thought, It couldn't possibly be an elephant. I thought it would be terrifyingly irrational. But out of the closet walked a roughly six-foot-tall creature, walking upright on two legs, having the body shape of a human (thought the creature was naked and had the skin of an elephant) and an elephant's head, which was huge in proportion to the body. The elephant may have had black eyes like the eyes of a classic grey alien's eyes, except round, not almond-shaped.
The elephant man walked toward me. I thought, It can't come near me. It would be too frightening. But it walked all the way to my bedside. It stood at my left (?) side, as if my bed were now in its regular place. Its breathing seemed very fleshy and real. I was so frightened that I began whimper/screaming. (In fact, I may actually have been crying out loud, the sound of which may have woken me from the dream.)
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