(4/3/08) between china and america; you can't just think he's alright

(Entered in paper journal at 5:19 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I may have been in a nice ballroom with a lot of other people. I heard that a ship was in danger nearby and wasn't being allowed to dock. The whole situation struck me as very sad.

I could see the ship on tumultuous waves. The ship must have been large. I could tell that the passengers were Chinese. They weren't aware that they weren't going to be allowed to dock.

I was now on the ship. I was trying to be as cheerful as possible, to make the news less harsh when it was finally discovered.

We were now all on a bus (? -- still felt like we were walking in the cabin of a ship) in China. I asked someone a question like, "Have you ever read any Chinese law?"

Someone said, "Oh, yes. The five-year plan. Everybody reads that."

The bus stopped in front of a structure like a tollbooth mixed with a library desk. We had arrived back in China, having had to turn back from the United States because of some danger. But now that we had arrived in China, we were heading back to the US.

But something had happened to our passport, which was a piece of paper shaped like a foot. I got out of the bus to see if the women at the desk could issue us a new paper. I pulled our old one off the dry, dusty ground, as if the thing had fallen out of or off the bus.

When I handed the paper to the women and requested a new paper, the women convened among themselves. They told me they would get back to me soon. I knew they wouldn't. There was something my group had done to break the rules. My group was now not going to be allowed to leave China.

We were told to wait. We all milled around in a big living room that was probably lit with fluorescent light. Soon there were only a few people, all of whom were probably American.

One woman stood before a Chinese map (brown and tan, showing something like provinces) and spoke about the Falun Dafa. She said that at first the protests were very impactful. But now they had gone too far. The woman didn't feel bad that the Falun Dafa were no longer allowed in China.

The woman then told the story of the man who had organized the bus trip. I turned and saw the man behind me. He was tallish, of average build, maybe in his thirties, possibly of Asian descent. He wore a white t-shirt and glasses and stared straight forward, as if thinking of something great.

The man had arranged yearly trips for impoverished people in China, possibly for them to visit family members in the United States. The trips had been running smoothly for years. But now the man had to fight to keep them going.

I thought, Well, he should be able to do that. I remember working with him in the very beginning, when he had to fight tooth and nail to get the project off the ground at all. I thought back to then. I had been a kid. The man had been very skinny.

Now the man's daughter ran into the room. She was maybe a teenager, dark-brown skinned, with long, black hair. The man laughed and said to her, "You probably won't remember him" (me) "It's been such a long time since we've worked together."

Dream #2

I stood in a bedroom with grey carpet and natural light. "My psychiatrist" lay on an enormous, messy bed, at the foot of which I stood. "My psychiatrist" may have been an old, pale, fattish, woman. She shifted beneath the covers of her (pale pink?) blanket in a kind of slimy way. I was trying to tell "my psychiatrist" things. But eventually I felt like I was talking to no purpose.

"My psychiatrist" started telling me really awful, ugly, stupid things. I got mad and began yelling at her like crazy. She now wrote in a notebook and showed me the page. She now looked like my psychiatrist A. She said, "We can't work together anymore. I have to find someone else to work with you."

The page A showed me was a list of requirements for my new psychiatrist. The page was full, written in smallish, very precise lettering. There were some small drawings or diagrams. The ink was blue, and wide, like from a gel-pen.

The only requirement I remember being written on the page was something like, "He's very intelligent and requires intelligent work. He may seem alright, but he's not. You can't just think he's alright and let things go. He will explode in a rage if you do."