(2/1/09) who'll get fired?; the shooting game; a new religion

(Entered in paper journal at 8:22 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I walked through an office hallway. The hallway was narrow, with harsh, white, fluorescent light, grey carpet, and greyish walls. It was like a maze, or it was like this hallway would break off into other maze-like hallways.

I came to a small room, like a pantry, to my right. The head of my department, MR, stood before a tight circle of people, mostly low-level workers like me. He was talking about planning something out, like who would still be working here. He asked the people around him not to say anything.

I was now in a big, warm swimming pool in a room with warm, tan tiling on the walls and floor. The water in the pool was clear and green with depth. I swam before a weird "computer," like an old television with wires connecting in tangles to a rough set of units below it.

My old boss BS swam somewhere behind me and to my left. He said, "Well, I wonder who it's going to be who stays. Well, anyway, it's gonna happen soon." BS stepped out of the pool and told me he'd see me later.

Dream #2

I was in a big room like a mix between a studio and an inner courtyard. The room probably had black walls and columns, like a small theater, and probably had a big window showing blue sky out front. There were a few people with me.

One person and I were having something like a gunfight. We were both climbing up and down aluminum ladders, possibly trying to get up to a balcony level. The man shot me in my ribs, on my left side. The shot was like a puff of air. I don't think the shot hurt, but it made me flinch and it scared me somehow. I was disappointed in myself for having been so weak.

The scene replayed, or else the man and I, as if we were rehearsing, started our actions over again. The man was long-haired, possibly Asian. He was explaining to me how this whole thing worked. He showed me that we shot little, neon-green pellets out of our guns. The pellets were soft, like Styrofoam. They didn't hurt at all. They were really fast, but their impact was like it had no speed.

The man shot me again in the ribs, and I flinched again and got scared.

Dream #3

I was with either my old friend R or my brother. We were in a gigantic structure which may itself have been an entire city, an ancient city. The structure was all made out of huge, tan blocks of stone, and warm, soft light flowed into the structure, possibly from windows high up on the walls.

I had gone out of one room and into another. I had been speaking with R/my brother, and was now considering whether to change my religion. The room I was in now may actually have been like a library with grey stone walls. There may have been a long, maroon, velvety banner hanging down from a narrow wall, like one would expect to see draping down behind a throne. I tried to consider the differences in the religions I was deciding between.

I went back into the tan room. All along the walls were doorways to different churches. It was now like I was flying past, and just over, all the doorways, focusing in particular on three doorways. One was to a Catholic church. There may have been a statue of a church official before the door and to the left. I thought there was something I did like about this church, like the monks, but that the overall view of this church didn't match mine.

The next doorway I focused on was something like a Lutheran church, but with some kind of new-age ideology combined with it. I thought this was my church. I felt some kind of familiarity with it, and thought this must have been where I should go. But then I realized there was  a lot of stuff in this church's ideology that I didn't feel comfortable with intellectually, and that I felt might actually make me soft or unhealthy. Before this doorway, to the left, was a sculpture, maybe five or six feet tall, of a palm branch.

These first two doorways had been along the left wall of the building, both toward the middle of the wall. The next doorway I focused on was on the right wall, near the top corner, and off to the right of it may actually have been an altar. This doorway was for the Lutheran church. I may have headed directly for this doorway after the previous doorway, as if I needed to convince myself that this doorway actually existed, that the stable church I was looking for was real, not just existing in admixture with things I didn't believe.

I may have been standing on the ground now, not flying. The room itself may also actually have been a sanctuary, with dim lighting, dark walls, and purple carpeting. But the stone doorway to the church still stood in the wall.