(9/23/08) long wait for a train; the fancy restaurant

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

Dream #1

I was on a subway platform that may have been much larger than usual. There were a lot of people walking around. Behind me the platform may have gone up to a larger waiting area. There was a feeling that something was wrong with the timing of the trains. The power might have been out, we all thought.

I saw a group of kids take some stairs down a ways off to my right. I decided to follow them, thinking they knew of some other train where the power wasn't out. And, after all, I really wasn't sure where I was going. Maybe they knew the right way.

I walked down the steps. At the end of the steps was a tunnel. The tunnel led straight into darkness. I thought, Perhaps there's a light at the end. It still seemed plausible that the kids knew where they were going better than I did.

There was a woman behind me. She had followed me, thinking I knew where I was going. I stood before the darkness. The kids called to me from somewhere within the darkness. As they did, they also chuckled to one another. I knew now that the kids had drawn me into the darkness in order to get me alone and hurt me. I might still have gone on, but now I thought of the woman behind me. I didn't want to mislead her and get her hurt, too.

So I went back up the steps to wait for the train. At this point I don't think the woman was with me anymore. I stood at the end of the platform which would have been for the last car on the train. There were a lot of people standing all around me. They all looked like middle-aged business people.

A train pulled into the station. But I saw that it was a D-train. It was an express. But this was a local stop. So the train wouldn't stop here. It was a huge inconvenience, I thoughtl, to have waited all this time for a train, and to have this one just pass us by.

The train seemed to be on tracks two or three feet above the level of the platform. I looked up into the windows as the train passed by. I might have seen a lot of middle-aged business people.

Dream #2

I walked into a restaurant to sit down and do some writing. The restaurant was actually a "fancy" one -- although another memory also comes through: as if at first I had walked into a grimy cafe at night, and as if all the electricity in the place were out except behind the counter, where one waiter may have stood. After this, the cafe may have changed into the "fancy" restaurant.

But even though the restaurant was "fancy," it looked more like a cheapish set of living rooms strung together. The "sunlight" coming into the place seemed like light from a TV studio set. There was a kind of scuzzy-looking family sitting by the front door. In spite of all this, I still thought the restaurant was fancy.

I was afraid to sit down for a long time to study. I didn't know if such a thing was proper in such a fancy restaurant as this. Nevertheless I went to find a seat. I went into a room where the chairs and tables were cluttered all over the place. There might also have been paper strewn on the floors.

I sat at a table against a wall or waist-high room divider that was topped with lattice. The light seemed to fade out behind me. There was a waiter who wandered about through all the rooms.