(1/30/08) they didn't let just anybody stay here

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

Dream #1

I was in a place like a cabin in the woods. It was supposed to be a hotel. I was in the living room with three other people, two of whom were possibly a young woman and an older man. All three were at a longish table sat against the wall on its short side between two bedrooms.

I wanted to be at this hotel. The people told me that they didn't let just anybody stay here. The people who stayed here had to be quiet and studious like them. I sat down at the table and opened my book, hoping that by reading with the people I could prove I was studious.

I stood outside a house in the mountain-suburbs. I was with my family. I walked just inside the front doorway. An oldish woman with long, white hair, blue eyes, a fattish, dumpy look, and wearing a brightly colored, plaid dress, like my mother might wear, sat on a chair or a box in front of me. The woman was talking to me. I thought of her as my great-grandmother on my grandmother's side of the family. Her speech didn't make much sense.

My aunt B led me inside the living room to a box maybe five feet long and one and a half feet deep. There were all kinds of paintings and drawings inside. My aunt B stood to my left. She wore an orange shirt.

My aunt B pulled some of the paintings and drawings out of the box and showed them to me. She told me they were drawings she'd made when she was a child. I was pretty impressed. The styles and subjects were all different.

My aunt B made a comment, possibly about how maybe the pieces weren't all as good as she thought. I patted her on the back and embraced her to encourage her, but I also did or said something that might have made her feel even worse.

We noticed that on the box flaps were huge swatches of green and blue crayon marking. Either I or my aunt B said that one of my cousins, either AH or B, probably made those markings when they were trying to be artistic.

I sat in a dining room table with a few people from my company. The table was longish, oval, and dark. The room was dim, the only light being that which came in from a lit, probably orange-walled, room behind us.

My senior co-worker, and one of the foremost analysts in my company, DC, was to my right. Her hair was undone and straight. Her bangs came straight down over her forehead. DC was telling me how everybody would like to hire me as a first-year analyst, but how I needed to get all my degrees first. DC called into the back room to my boss BS. BS stuck his head in and agreed with DC.

I walked into a big room which must have been lit by daylight. It was a conference room, but there were folding chairs all over the place, haphazardly placed, as if this were just some big, casual living room. The carpet was like the carpet of a living room, thick and grey. There were tall, dark wood columns running through the room. At the front of the room was a folding table. I sat in one of the folding chairs near the middle of the room.

Somebody introduced ML, my company's main economics analyst. ML got up and presented. But I couldn't understand a thing he said. It was like all his ideas kept trailing of.

We now got up, as if it were a break time, or time for some other presentation. Then we came back. I went to the wall first, as if to gather some of my personal belongings before sitting down. I had to explain to somebody that he hadn't heard wrong, that this was another presentation by ML, picking up where ML had left off before.

I might have stayed standing. ML came back. He was now dressed in a light blue spandex outfit and cape, including a mask (?) that was pulled over his face and covered about the top half of his face. ML said that since it was New Year's, and we were all going to the New Year's party dressed up, that ML would just give his presentation dressed up. Nobody thought this made any sense, but I thought it was fine. ML started talking and not making any sense again. I wondered how we were going to get anything out of this presentation.

Now SC, one of the main analysts for the company's mortgage-backed securities division, got up to speak, as if to clarify everything ML had just said. Everybody cheered as SC got up -- not in contrast to ML, but just because he was so famous. But something about the cheering annoyed me. I thought, Can't we just get down to business? Why does everything have to be just showing off or nonsense?

(7/5/08) the sandwich bully

(Entered in paper journal at 8:01 AM at Naidre's cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was walking through a building with my family. The building may have been like a building on a college campus. Some of my family members, probably my aunt B, uncle MB, and possibly my mother, my brother, and my cousin AR, were all behind me as we walked through a crowd of people.

We turned a corner and came up to a woman at a table. The table was stacked with cardboard boxes full of sandwiches. The woman was handing out the sandwiches for free as part of some promotional event.

My family started to shuffle past, but I stood to look at the sandwiches. Some sandwiches seemed full, with nice lettuce and tomatoes. Others looked like nothing but bread. All the sandwiches were wrapped in nice, thick, clear, plastic wrappers. I grabbed a sandwich for myself. But when I got back to my family, I handed the sandwich to one of my family members, possibly my brother.

The space we stood in was like an alcove of a gift shop or a bookshop, and was full of natural light. The crowd of people was still pretty busy.

I went back to the table to get a sandwich for myself. But as I did, my cousin AR (in a white dress, and looking maybe like she did when she was twelve years old) stood in front of me (carrying a stroller?) and told me, half-jokingly, "You didn't get a sandwich for aunt B. She's going to be mad."

At first I felt inconvenienced. I thought everybody should be getting their own sandwiches for themselves, not having me get them. Then I felt ashamed. My cousin would think I was so inconsiderate if she knew what I was thinking!

I quickly became jokey and said, " Oh!!! She's going to be mad!!! Of course I was geting her a sandwich right now." I walked behind and past my cousin, massaging her back with my knuckles quickly and vigorously as I passed. I grabbed a nice sandwich. I may have passed it to my aunt B, who may have been standing with a stroller and wearing an orange shirt.

Finally I went to grab my own sandwich. I got to the woman again. She now stood behind a cash register. She would ring open the register with each free sandwich she gave out, laying a one-dollar (or ten-dollar?) bill into the till and then pulling it back out, as if registering a sale. This worried me. I couldn't tell if now I had to pay for a sandwich, and I felt like dealing with money at this point would just clutter me up.

The woman was young, pale skinned, blonde, with pale blue eyes and a soft, roundish face. I asked for one last free sandwich. The woman pulled one out of a box for me, but then stopped. She said, "You've already taken too many free sandwiches for yourself already. The limit is three per person."

I said, "But I haven't been taking them for myself. I've been giving them to my family."

She said, "You can't prove that, and I'm not giving you any more!"

I was discouraged. I kind of slumped away.

I was about to walk through another doorway, possibly to catch up with my family, when a woman standing by a stroller yelled, "You can't do that to him! He did give the sandwiches to his family!"

The woman defending me was in the middle of saying something else when the woman behind the register cut in and yelled at me, "Fine! Here! Take your sandwich! God! But you better remember this in the future, cause I'm gonna remember you!" It was plain to me now that the woman behind the register had withheld the last sandwich simply because she was trying to bully me, and now she was pissed off that someone had called her on it.

She leaned over the cash register and held the sandwich at arm's length. I was ten feet away from her (and possibly standing behind a maroon-colored stroller), but I still leaned forward and stretched my arm out as if I could grab the sandwich from her.

I now held the sandwich. It was one of the ones with nothing in it.

(12/27/09) home in the woods; follow that mom!

(Entered in paper journal at 8:24 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was with someone, maybe my brother, in the woods. We were near our/my car, which was stopped on a dirt road. The weather was cold. It was nearing night.

Now the night had passed. I had spent the whole night here, in a tent. The other person had "gone back." I stood near the car and looked at the woods around me. I was proud for having camped here all night.

Now I had to go hiking through the woods. But the light was still dark blue-grey, pre-sunrise light. I felt afraid to go into the deep woods in the darkness, or even in the light. I worried that a wild animal would attack and eat me. The area around me was grassy with the occasional shrub or pine tree dotting the landscape, and edged by a deep forest of pine trees.

Suddenly I noticed a coyote hiding behind a shrub and looking at me. I got afraid and made some aggressive kicking move at the coyote, scaring the coyote out of the shrub, which was maybe fifty feet away from me. The coyote trotted away, looking at me shyly. I felt bad, thinking I'd scared away a perfectly innocent coyote. I may have seen a domesticated dog off to the left as the coyote wandered off to the right. I may also have seen another, unrecognizable animal.

I was now back "at home," which was a house like a double-wide trailer at the head of the trail I'd taken into the woods. I stood with a group of people in my family, including my Aunt B and Uncle M. I stood at eye level with a tangled bunch of different, tall-stalked wildflowers. The morning was bright, sunny, and kind of warm, and the flowers and stalks glittered with dew.

Somewhere in a little clearing amid these flowers, I knew, a tent stood up on an oval of lawn. My little cousins (even though in waking life they are no longer little) had camped there the night before. Either my Uncle M or Aunt B was telling me that the kids had camped out here for a little while, but that they had gotten scared or cold and that Uncle M had to bring them in.

Dream #2

I was riding in the backseat (?) and passenger side of my grandma P's car.  My grandma P drove, and either my brother or sister was also in the car. It was a golden, sunny day. We were driving up a steep hill in a residential neighborhood, but we were also near either a busy road or a highway.

Suddenly my mom pulled up from behind us to our right. She yelled out her window at us that she had to go to XXXXX (either a hospital or a jail or both), possibly to see my brother, and that she couldn't stop, she had to keep driving there. So, she said, she would meet us back at home, but she didn't know when, maybe not even today. She said it in such a nonchalant and yet urgent manner that I at first thought all was completely fine.

But suddenly I realized I was headed for the airport, to go back home to New York, pretty soon. I had to get back home. But my mom had all my luggage, including my airplane ticket, in her car. We were going to meet at her house so she could give me all that stuff. But now she wanted to have all of us sit there and wait while she went off and did whatever! I knew the only reason she was doing this was to make me miss my flight.

I told my grandma, "Follow my mom's car! We're going wherever she's going. I'm getting my ticket and getting out of here!"

My mom was already out of sight, but I think we had an idea of where we were going. We drove toward some facility, hoping we were going to the right place. But I wasn't sure we were.

(2/9/10) flying to the intrepid; long, diseased lives

(Entered in paper journal at 6:20 AM, on B-train to work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I walked down through a park like Madison Square Park. It was a sunny day. I saw two gardeners working on a ground-level flower bed at the south side of the park. One was a man; the other, a woman. The man stood while he worked on the flowers. The woman lay on her left side, possibly digging in the soil. The soil was dark and rich.

The man told me, "She's here, KB (an old friend of mine) is here." I now saw that the woman working the flower bed was KB. I may have bent over her to wave hello. She sat up and greeted me. We started talking. I had told her at some point that I was going to go to the Intrepid Museum. We walked away from the flower bed and now faced a wide river.

It may have been like I had now come back from the museum. KB spoke as if I had invited her to come with me, though she had declined. She now said she was sorry she hadn't come, since she'd always wanted to go there. I may have said it had been fun. But I didn't want to talk about it too much -- I felt like I was starting to sound obsessed.

As I spoke, I watched the river, which seemed to be moderately active. I now saw the Intrepid, which was partly like an aircraft carrier and partly like a gigantic pier. I pointed it out excitedly to KB, even though I was again afraid that my being so excited would make me sound obsessed, or like a know-it-all (against which KB would react by saying a lot of things she knew).

But KB said, "Oh! How great!" in almost a motherly tone of approval. I pointed out one jet, which looked a little like a Falcon jet. I pointed out how the plane was propped up on a ramp that seemed to lean against the control tower.

I said, "That jet hadn't been that way before." But then I thought about it and said, "Well, maybe it had." KB seemed interested in my statements.

We were now moving across the river, as if we were floating in the river up to our chests, but moving as quickly as if we were flying over the river. We saw the SR-71 Blackbird, which was enormously long, and which I also didn't quite feel was in the right place.

We now stood on a walkway of wooden planks and metal just a couple of feet above the surface of the water. The sides of the aircraft carrier towered (straight up, not curved over) over us. There was some series of metal walkways over us as well. We were alone.

At some point KB may have put her arms around the underside of the nose of an older plane, clapping her hands against the surface for a moment. We spoke a little more. Then KB told me, "I'm broke." She said this as if she were also a little bit panicked about her future.

I said, "Do you need money? If you need money, we can go get you some right now. I'll lend it to you, no problem." KB looked at me with a stunned expression, her pale eyes blank. KB was unable to say anything. Finally she accepted.

Dream #2

I was in a small living room which was dim, with only natural light flowing into it from behind thick curtains. The room was narrow and slightly long. I sat on a couch on the right side of one end of the room. My mom and my aunt B sat on either a couch or chairs on the left side and other end of the room.

My aunt spoke with my mom and me about how people live to a certain age even with certain diseases or health problems. My aunt said something to the effect that my great grandmother lived with her disease until she was 80 years old -- and that was an old age to live to with that specific disease.