(4/12/05) can't go to the show; swimming to my friends

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I sat in something like a waiting room or an airport lobby or some second- or third-floor cafe. It was daytime. Daylight streamed through the window-wall before me. A "familiar"-looking woman sat by me somehow, either at a table or in a close row of chairs. She had puffy, wide pale auburn hair with undertones of black, and a longish, puffy face caked with not-so-smooth makeup. But it was something in her face or in her eyes that made  me think she was familiar.

She asked me if I wanted to go with her to some event or play with which she had something to do, though her going to it had something to do with my friend R and his girlfriend L. I now slowly realized that this person was L, that some kind of trap or practical joke was being laid for me. I didn't let on, though I said I couldn't go.

L's face shifted slowly back to her own as L began telling me all the different good things about this event which had to do with her. She couldn't figure out why this wasn't good enough incentive for me.

Dream 2

I was with a group of folks "my age," which might have been high-school-aged. We were at some kind of wide pond or marsh or wetland of some sort. Two groups were separated by the large body of water, or perhaps one group was not all the way across the water but on an island or bar of land in the middle of the body of water.

Something happened so that I felt obligated, as if against petty jokes about my personal character, to swim across to the island group to make sure they were okay. We were all okay. This was just some fun, day-long project. So I don't exactly know what I meant by "making sure they were okay."

I knew there was an alligator in the water that could swim up and rip my belly open. But I just felt it wouldn't happen.

I reached the island. I now looked back to the shore. I could feel that the first group of people were now making jokes about my personal character because I wasn't swimming over to them "to make sure they were okay."