(1/4/08) a burger king bathroom; communications and death

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was walking down a hill of a small street at night. I was looking for a place to go to the restroom. There was a Burger King to my right. The whole street was dark, no lights, except a small sliver of light from the Burger King sign. The Burger King was part of some long row of shops in a stout, decked, wooden building that somehow reminds me of the Old West.

I walked into the Burger King through a side or back door. The place was only half-lit. I was in a small cul-de-sac to the right of the main dining area. In the dining area were a couple workers, probably a man and a woman. I hoped they wouldn't notice me. I had no intention of buying anything. I just wanted to use the restroom.

I went into the restroom. It was kind of barren and trashy. I might have started using the urinal. (At this point I may have woken up. The feeling of anxiety about the workers potentially thinking I was a creep because I hadn't bought anything was still with me. But now I thought, It was just a dream. You get that one for free.)

Dream #2

I sat before a computer, probably in a dark room. To my right, about ten feet away, were some friends of mine, possibly both girls.

My computer might have had two screens. On the bottom right corner of the right screen was a little grey "button" logo that had a right-facing triangle on it, like a "play" button. On the rest of the screen was something like a control panel with lots of virtual touchscreen buttons. The panel was grey like steel, but all over it, and the background of the screen, was a strange iridescence. The background was probably iridescent in bright colors. The left screen may have been much like this.

I believe I had been conducting business on my left screen when I heard a voice come (as if from the play button) from the right screen. It was a woman's voice. The woman said, "Hello?"

I looked down at the play button. I knew this play button was part f some new internet fad, where people spoke to each other by recording short messages via this touchscreen button and then sending them. Sometimes you could send to random people. Sometimes you could receive from random people.

I didn't quite know how to work the system. I pressed the button and said, "Hello. My name is Preemie." But before I could finish my message, I got the "Hello?" again.

I pressed the button and asked a short question. But as soon as I sent the message I got another message back. The woman said, "My name is Maya. I'm a teacher at Princeton University. I can't talk much with you now. I have to get to my next class."

I thought, Are all messages pre-recorded? This woman hasn't yet responded directly to any of my messages. I sent a message again, like, "I hope you have a good day at classes."

My friends in the distance giggled at me. They said, "Don't you know you don't talk to people on things like this? Who knows what kind of wacko that person really is?"

I thought, Well, that's true.

(At this point in my journaling, I got off the train in Manhattan. I resumed entering my dreams in my paper journal at 6:40 AM at the Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue.)

I was pulling away from the building, backwards, as if I were in a car. It was night, on a smallish business street that was fairly well lit. I had to pull all the way around three or four stopped cars, one of which was a police car. I pulled around and then behind them.

I then realized that the two non-police cars had been in a wreck. I slowly pulled up beside one car, on its right side. I had to stop there, as if the cops had the road blocked. I might no longer have been the one driving the car I was in.

Beside the passenger window were a group of middle-aged ladies. The ladies were kind of fat, with feathery, blonde hair. They were talking about the victims of the wreck. I couldn't tell if these women were the victims' mothers or police practicing telling the mothers about their children when the mothers arrived.

I looked out the driver's side window, as if I were looking past someone who sat in the driver's seat while I sat in the back, passenger's side seat. It looked like the black car had been smashed up, crumpled like a can, with its roof torn off.

There were three women in the backseat of the black car, and maybe other people in the front seat. Everybody in the car was dead. But it looked like the women in the backseat were just sleeping. The woman in the passenger's-side backseat was most easily visible. She was palish white, with dark hair.

I thought, This is my first time seeing freshly dead bodies. I felt like I should be ashamed for actually wanting to see the dead bodies. But I also felt like I would put myself in a dangerous situation by looking at the bodies for too long. I thought, Well, regardless, I'll have plenty of time to look at them. We aren't going anywhere for a while. The cops won't let us move.