(9/29/05) not bad workers; pond analysis; pyramids around the world; weed removal

(Entered in paper journal at 9:55 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop at Garfield Street and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I sat in a large room like a gymnasium with seats and booths like at an exposition. I sat with some people "from my NYC Americorps program," one of whom looked a little like HE. To my left sat a woman I could hear but not see. She was a good worker.

We were talking bad about the bad workers. At some point we said something that seemed to imply something about the workers in HE's group. HE asked who we were talking about. I said her name and another girl's name as if HE wasn't the person asking me the question. HE's eyes got big.

My friend said, "No, no. He wasn't talking about you."

I realized now I had mentioned HE and her group of friends. HE acted like she wasn't HE and told me to continue naming people and saying bad things about those people. I could tell she was going to tell on me to her friends and get my ass kicked.

Dream 2

I stood knee-deep in a wide pond or stream. I was with a lot of people "from my NYC Americorps program." We stood scattered so the wide area looked busy with people. I apparently stood with my back to a cabin that served as a research office. We were rescuing or surveying large water animals, something like fish and eels with bright coloration.

I was wary of standing in the water too much longer. I thought I'd catch some disease, possibly from stuff homeless people and junkies might throw in the water.

I looked back to the office. A couple people, an older man and younger woman, spoke to me congenially about people really getting out in the water and collecting data. They said the data was almost completely collected.

I felt silly now for being in the office instead of out with all the other good people collecting data in the water. But I also felt like I needed to prove myself to the office people, to prove I could do the intellectual and analytical work as well as they could.

To prove this (don't know why) I walked back outside. The water was a lot shallower and there was rock outcropping to my right, and right of that, a lawn or park setting. I was pretty much the only person still in the water.

I picked up a turtle, as if we were now saving turtles instead of surveying strange water creatures. I put the turtle down on a rock. it wasn't moving. It needed a lot of moisture, and I had put it in a dry spot far from any wet spots. I picked it back up.

A few people from the office were coming outside. The area was now totally dry. They were heading to a picnic down a hill to my right. I carried the turtle a few steps and put it down in a spot that I hoped the office people would thing was less stupid. The spot was like a landslide of pumice-like rocks. Down the slope was a lawn with some pine trees. A group of picnickers sat by a pine tree.

The turtle crept down the rocks. I couldn't see any water. I knew the turtle would die if it didn't find water in a short time. But I just assumed the turtle would find water. I felt lazy and stupid.

Dream 3

I was traveling in something like a train's dining car mixed with a science lab or office. We traveled past an area that looked like a pyramid in half-repair. Parts of the walls were smooth. Other parts had a crumpled concrete or uncut stone look like on some brownstones. It also seemed like the pyramid rose out of a quarry or mining area, surrounded with bulldozers and electrical wires.

A woman (who now looks like the mother on Arrested Development) showed me a ground plan having to do with the pyramid and some other sites around the world.

A group of people were around me. The woman liked me and not them. I took some snide pleasure out of this. but I also saw that they did not take me or the woman seriously, and that they thought the projects were bogus. I tried to vindicate the woman by listening to her.

The plan of the pyramid was in blocky-inked design. the pyramid's base was L-shaped with a circle in the upper-right quadrant where a main portion of the pyramid had been replaced with something like enormous pipes. (The image looks like some abstract representation of a Super Mario Bros. game.)

I saw "in my mind's eye," a few other sites all around the world. They were all monumental and somehow mystical, and they all were surrounded by bulldozers and electrical lines or modern technology.

At last I saw a long river, in a site almost identical with the site where the ruined pyramid had been, at the bottom of a quarried-out or mined-out slope littered with ore. Now a long, tall concrete wall stood along the far side of the river, blocking the slope and also concealing a town which seems now like Venice to me.

I called out to the woman, calling from the distances within my mind's eye, "Oh! Look at that hideous wall! What are they doing to all our old structures?"

I noticed that the wall had thick, rusty steel beams at close intervals and was also webbed over with electrical lines. It also seems like running up the tall wall, almost to the top (i.e. an absurd height), were water stains, marking high and low tide levels, but also staining the walls with a beautiful array of dredged, rusty colors.

Dream 4

I stood about calf-deep in some water at the edge of a marsh or bog deep in a forest. My friend and NYC Americorps coworker KB stood up on a dryish hump of land.

I pulled a turtle out of the water. It had a beautiful face, bright green spattered with deep black. I called this turtle a Norway Maple, and I wondered why people couldn't recognize these turtles, even after the people had spent so long out in the field.

I put the turtle back in the water. Now the marsh was dry, the turtle was gone, and a few more people stood on the island with KB. I had planned come out here to remove some weeds myself. But then, I guess, KB had come along. Now it was a project with a few people.

I noticed how few weeds there were for this many people -- just a ten-foot by seven-foot patch. I looked to my left. A few hundred grass plants had been put into a cleared area. I was a little encouraged as well as discouraged that there was so little work left to do.

I pulled a few weeds to show my friends I could work. Then I saw some Phragmites stalks. (Phragmites is a tall, invasive grass that was very common throughout New York City's parks. I can't recall, but it may have had a tough root system, which needed to be pulled out altogether, or else the grass would sprout right back up.)

I thought I should go get some loppers. But I tried pulling by hand first. The plant came out easily. I thought, Well, obviously. The marsh soil is still soggy. But it also seemed dry.