(9/24/05) a woman i didn't like; jumping down steps; girl with red-blonde hair; the institute of pagan sciences

(Entered in paper journal at 9:10 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

There was a woman I didn't like. I was walking past an assembly of desks or school tables. I noticed each table had three compartments underneath (its writing surface?). I thought this solved some organization problem a lot of "students" had been having lately. I thought it was a clever idea and wondered who'd had it.

I walked to the back row (I think I passed from row to row by straddling the desks) and saw the woman, a black, very thin woman who looked like a transvestite, hiding her face shyly behind a sci-fi (?) novel. I felt bad I had made her feel excluded.

Dream 2

I walked up some tall hill or something. Now I was coming back down. I came down a path of steps that was alternately like a winding mountain road and a staircase of metal painted red. As I headed down more and more high school kids headed up.

I wanted to go down the steps my own way, which was to leap a few steps at a time. But it took a lot of focus and I thought the kids would wreck it and trip me up if they thought I was doing something cool.

But I still jumped down the steps, even thought on some level I thought I wasn't doing it. I jumped down four or five steps at a time at first. Then toward the (bottom?) I made a jump of about twenty steps.

Dream 3

A pretty, bronze-skinned girl with thin eyes and red-blonde hair and a pink shirt was flirting with me. I thought she looked a tiny bit heavy, but I was just happy that somebody wanted me. So I asked if I could take her home.

Dream 4

I was in something like a canyon mixed with a suburban street. The floor of the "canyon" was at first a wide road and then a wide asphalt footpath. I looked in front of me to see a cathedral. I only had a partial view of the cathedral. But even that portion seemed huge. I knew the cathedral must be enormous. I could even sense, feel, the immensity of the whole cathedral.

I was afraid to look at the cathedral. But I forced myself to look. The cathedral seemed to grow as I looked higher and higher up. It had a very pointed and thin, spire-like effect, like Imre Markovecz's churches, except it was made out of some new, cheap concrete, grey, painted white and maroon. During the whole dream I feared the cathedral would fall on me.

To the left and right were annexes, just as tall and much wider (like canyon walls), but rather plain, modern, and nondescript. The annex to the right housed a rather ordinary religious complex, possibly a religious high school, around which I felt nervous and unacceptable. The annex to the left, slightly more decorative than the annex to the right, was for a place called The Church of Pagan Institutes or The Institute of Pagan Sciences. I realized the church had demarcated spaces for many religions.

At some point one of my friends (R?) said, "Yeah, I let Americans think this church is big. But the religious centers like this in Europe are colossal."

I then heard or saw something which made me walk toward the front cathedral.

I was now "somewhere off to the side," looking at a bunch of wooden models, life size, set up in a square, or like on a chess board, of different Asian characters and animal representations. At first it was like they were behind glass. But now I wandered among them.

I stared into the right eye of a very ornate house and was about to see whether a male character was a soldier or a god when I saw a couple boys carrying a guitar like somehow they were going to use it to taunt me. But when I headed to see them they were gone, and the guitar was "left" leaning against some entertainment center or case for audio tech equipment.

I picked up the guitar, an acoustic-electric with a purple-stained wood body. I slung it over my shoulder (right shoulder?) and walked into a room to my left. The room was a cross between a guitar store and a CD store.

I was looking for the spot this guitar had come from. But I was also looking for a guitar I could actually play on. I told myself, This place is like a Guitar Center. Isn't it kind of awful that even in this religious place the Guitar Center looks exactly the same as all the other Guitar Centers?