(1/10/08) gathering from the aisles; the donnell library closes

(Entered in paper journal at 6:05 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I stood in front of a church with my mom. The church must have been enormous, but it felt like a small-town, white-sided church. My mom and I were supposed to be heading somewhere. But my mom wanted to stop to do one last thing. She said she wanted to gather soda cans out of the garbage basket at church.

The door of the church was now open. There were people inside sitting at desks, like they were studying in a library. Three older women stood before the door. My mom was telling them loudly what she was going to do. Some people inside looked up from their "studies." I got ashamed and told my mom, "Control your voice!"

My mom now leaned to each woman one by one and whispered to them very exaggeratedly, either as if she were afraid of disappointing me or as if she were making fun of me. Eventually she lost control and started yelling again.

We were now in the sanctuary. There were all different configurations of aisles. The aisles were probably all filled with people. A service might have been taking place.

My mom and I and possibly my brother were going to garbage baskets near the ends of the aisles and collecting soda cans. My mom had a "map" like a board game, which was guiding us around. We had the "map" placed on a beam at the end of an aisle.

My mom also had latex "gloves" for picking up the cans. The "gloves" were just for individual fingers. The "gloves" all seemed to be in weird animal shapes. I searched through the piles and boxes of "gloves" stacked up on the beam. But I couldn't find an animal shape I liked. Eventually I found something. But they were gloves for all five fingers. I thought, If I wear these, my mom and brother will laugh at me.

We were now on a train. The light flowing in was very bright and gold. The seats were arranged along the sides and in the center of the train, so we sat perpendicular to the forward motion of the train. I sat in a seat along a wall. My mom sat in a center seat, across from me and to my right.

My mom looked very depressed. I could tell I had made her sad by being ashamed of her gathering cans from the trash baskets. My mom's hair was disheveled, like it had been in dread locks but was now not taken care of at all. My mom may have been wrapped up in blankets.

I felt awful for making my mom feel bad. She seemed to wake up a little. She looked over at me. I smiled as much and as gently as I could. My mom smiled back. I knew she now understood that I loved her.

My brother sat to my right. Beside him was a woman, maybe a Hispanic woman, with a baby. My brother took the baby by the hair and held it out at arm's length. My mom looked at me as if to say, "Stop him!" I thought, Well, if I'm going to be tough with my mom, I should be tough with my brother, too.

I think I managed to get the baby out of my brother's hands. I told my brother to stop acting this way. Somehow he continued acting violent. So I threw him off the train. The train was at a dead stop. My brother rolled down a short, dusty slope.

I watched my brother walk up a street to my left, where the path of the train would have been. He seemed to be wearing my clothes: my brown slacks and blue, grid-style dress shirt. It was like late afternoon. Now it was like night.

I was in a car outside a house (but as if my position/time had not changed). My mom had gone in. I followed after her, hoping she would take care of what she needed and not get distracted.

I walked to a half-open side-door by a covered driveway. Inside were a few fat, old women. The door opened to the kitchen.

One woman stood over a machine on the counter. She spoke like she thought an infomercial person would, about how healthy eating was hard for her. She said, "That was before I found the Brrr-ito!" The product the woman made reference to was the machine she was standing over. But I could barely see the machine through the half-opened door. From what I could see, the machine looked like a salad shooter filled entirely with fruit glop.

I was disgusted and embarrassed. I thought, How does she think this machine or that food is doing anything except clogging up her life even more?

Another woman now asked, "What do we need to make this?"

A regular-looking woman, about my age, was now before me, walking toward the door. She held a few fruit-like objects in her arms. The objects were colored like cantaloupe skin, and their shape was something like cantaloupe and starfruit mixed. The regular-looking woman said, "You need this: the aorta."

Somehow I got into the house. The goal had been to retrieve a little girl from the house and take her to live with us. I managed to do this.

I saw a black and white photo of the girl. She was maybe nine years old at the most, very thin, with  long, stringy, blonde hair. The girl's eyes were different-colored, so that in the photo one eye looked black, and the other, grey. The girl was sitting at a table and putting a spoonful of cereal in her mouth.

I thought, How did I manage to get the girl past the women?

Dream #2

I was in a living room (which might also have been an office) with a bunch of people who were my co-workers. A woman who looked like Nancy Reagan asked me if I had watched the presidential presentations last night, to see how "that senile Nancy Reagan gave a whole speech about 'pops' concerts." I laughed to think of that, but I hoped nobody would think I was an idiot for not having watched the presentations on TV.

Everybody started talking about some corporation, like U.S. Gypsum, that sponsored a lot of the presentation and controlled a lot of it but was masking its presence by denoting a lot of its influence to "public groups" whose acronyms were much like their own. Everybody spoke about what a dirty trick that was. But I had always liked that company. I hoped nobody knew that about me.

Somebody then mentioned that on some email system every email was sent with a signature-footer that made it look like it came directly from the corporation that controlled the email system (like Microsoft for Hotmail). I could see an image of this in my head, at the bottom of a long email.

I was now sitting at a computer by the window. To my left was another computer. Someone, a woman, possibly my mom, sat at the left computer. We were both going onto the computer to test whether the signature-footer rumor were true.

But instead of testing the rumor, I went onto a website where some guy was talking about things you should and shouldn't do in certain social situations. The guy was dark, Asian, big, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap.

I was in a bathroom. A man and woman stood in the shower. The man was making love to the woman from behind. The "social situations" internet guy called from the other side of the shower curtain, "Stop! That's not something you do in the shower!" I had thought it was nice to see a man and woman in love. But now I was ashamed.

I stood before the sink and medicine cabinet. I was wondering what kind of toiletries it was correct to use, what kind the internet man would approve of.

I walked from outside (on a sunny day) into a library, possibly the "Donnell Library." I had stopped here for only a second, after having finished up some job like a volunteer event. The library was almost empty of books. The library was closing down permanently, and most of the books had been sold. There were small piles of books on occasional shelves. The library itself was very small, only one room, with a dark backroom. There were a few different types of bookshelves.

I knew the library workers were eager to wrap up and get out of here for the day and for good, even though it probably wasn't the end of the day quite yet. I knew exactly what I wanted, though, so I told myself I would be quick.

I was looking for a big magazine, like W magazine's size, that was a fashion, or fashionable, magazine from the 1970s. But now I couldn't find it. I knew all the copies had probably been sold already.

I was heading out the door. I thought I would try to be friendly with the librarian, to show her that I hadn't come in here for no purpose. I didn't want her to think I was just some jerk trying to waste her time. I told the woman, "Sheesh! This place really --"

"-- Cleared out pretty quick?" the librarian interrupted. "I know. Everybody's been saying that."

I walked over to the counter. In the dark backroom there was another librarian moving stuff around. I told the librarian, "It's hard to believe this place is closing. This place means a lot to me. I've come in here pretty much ever since I moved to New York. I wonder what the first book was that I checked out here."

I searched my mind for a second, trying to remember the first book I'd checked out from the Donnell Library. But the librarian stopped me. She said, "Don't go there. You might give me a heart attack." I knew she meant that if I got nostalgic she might start crying. But I thought "heart attack" was a weird expression to use in this instance.