(9/25/06) yin yang pisces rats; happy sick dog; lutheran codex of the dead

(Entered in paper journal at 7:20 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in the doorway to "Ben & Jerry's" "at Times Square." Apparently I was volunteering on some project. The inside of the place was dim, as if it were night or early morning, and only a light or two in the back of the store was on, lighting solid, rich-colored walls of maroon and goldenrod and other similar colors.

The volunteer manager was telling someone working for them (my Americorps co-worker JS), "He's just here as a volunteer. Don't make him go back down into the garbage room."

I said, "No, don't worry about that. I've been there before. I can go there again. It won't bother me."

I thought about all the roaches and rats in that basement. They had grossed me out (i.e. when I had actually worked for Ben & Jerry's in Times Square in 1998 and 1999), but I had generally been okay with them.

I walked down the basement steps with JS. One or two steps from the basement a rat scurried up to the steps, then away. I was shocked, but I kept steady. Then another ran, and a few more. A couple started running up the steps. I got grossed out and ran back up the steps. JS continued down to the garbage room.

There was a girl at the top of the stairs. The girl asked, "What are you afraid of? The diseases? The grossness? That they'll bite you? I can't blame you, although I'm used to it."

The girl held out her right (?) hand, on which two rats (palm-sized) scurried around like the "pisces" (?) or yin yang style.

They actually crawled all around her hands -- like roly-polies! But I strongly remember them making the "pisces" (?) or yin yang shape at one point.

Dream 2

I sat or lay on a couch. My friend R lay in an odd position on the floor by the arm of the couch at my feet. I called for my friend's dog. The dog was sick somehow, but she jumped up on the couch and flapped around happily while I pet her.

I felt dog's hyperactivity in reaction to my petting was the result of her sickness and would lead to more sickness. But I also felt R was jealous that I was petting his dog. So I think I made the dog calm down and made her jump off the couch to appease R.

R was almost bluish skinned, greasy -- it was like he had been strangled and was now decomposing. But he was still alive. I think we even spoke about about how good I was with animals.

Dream 3

I was with a woman in a room. The woman spoke to me about a catechism I had in my hands as I read the catechism. She said this was what the Spaniards used to convert the Aztecs.

There were two columns, I saw, of glyphs, and then a column (in English) of text. Most of the glyphs were shaded out by diagonal lines over the squares. The catechism followed the normal Q & A format. It spoke of the brown wood of the cross and the pink (comb? knife?) that drove the nails into the Christ.

The Aztec ("A"nswer to the "Q"uestion) said something like, "That imagery alone should denote in an aware mind the greatness of Christ. Destiny brought him to those two symbols, which even alone mean greatness."

I "remembered" now that the woman in the room (Mexican-looking, youngish) had been holding brown wood and a weird, pink, plastic knife/comb/mirror before. She had been trying to tell me something -- about herself?

(10/8/07) perverted hand-washing church; NYC tranny in denver; aztec chess

(Entered in paper journal at 6:04 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was with my family in a house. We had finished eating or preparing dinner. We were washing our hands. The room we were in was dim. I mentioned that one of us, a man who appeared to be tall and pale with dark hair and eyes and wearing a kind of nice suit, had a different religion from us and so had to wash his hands in a sink at his church.

My brother and I walked down a suburban road in dark blue night. We came to a Catholic church. I said, "I can wash my hands here."

There were a lot of black people coming out the front of the church, like a service was just ending. My brother and I had to sneak into the church through the back so nobody would question why we were there. We went in through a back door and into a dim hallway that was pitch black at the far end.

The bathroom was near us, just to our right as we entered the hallway. When we got into the bathroom it was light as day. I looked into the stalls. I saw a pale white man's legs. I thought, But didn't we just turn on the light? (???) Then this man has been sitting on the toilet in the dark all this time.

I thought the man may have been a pervert, lurking in wait for prey. I didn't want to be here long enough for the man to attack me and my brother or to have us be associated with him.

My brother had a box of all kinds of fruit. We might have been washing it off in the sink.

Dream #2

I sat on two beds that were arranged in an L-shape in a dim room. I faced three mirrors. This room was an office for my company, but in my hometown of Denver instead of in New York. I had come back to Denver to work.

In the mirror I saw that I had long hair. As I arranged my hair I realized how much I looked like a woman. Each mirror gave me a different reflection that made me look like a different woman. Each reflection was the image of a woman I actually knew. The women were all girls I had gone to school with or worked with. They were probably all Hispanic. I hadn't liked them a lot, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to be them. But I was impressed with how good I looked. I may have been wearing a black dress.

Now some women walked down the hallway and past the room I was in. They didn't seem to see me, although they looked into the room.

One of the women said, "He's here from New York." I knew the woman was talking about me. I couldn't let the women see me this way, not while I looked like a woman. I was lucky they hadn't seen me already.

I reached forward and slowly closed the door. When the door clicked closed I worried that the women, hearing the door close, would feel alienated, like I had shut them out of the room for no reason other than my not wanting to see them. But, I thought, as soon as I changed back into looking like a man I would open the door again.

Dream #3

I was playing checkers or chess with my brother or my oldest nephew. The board was tan with brown squares. My brother/nephew made the opening move, some specific move he always liked to start with that somehow effectively "finished" the game in his favor. I would usually make normal moves from there on out and eventually lose the game.

But this time I stepped back and thought out how I could move. Apparently the move would always force me to bring out my front pieces, which would leave my back pieces defenseless. This time I moved one of my back pieces in a way that caused my brother/nephew to have to move again, thus taking himself out of the spot where he could constantly take out my front pieces.

Around this point the port had switched back and forth between a real board and a touchscreen computer board. When the board was the digital board, I found it hard, from my angle, to see which piece I was actually touching.

My brother/nephew was at a loss for a moment. I explained to my brother/nephew how I had come up with that move. As I did I saw one of the pieces on my brother/nephew's side of the board, in the lower, left quadrant. It was a big, tan square, like an Aztec glyph. I imagined it clicking two moves to the right. I tried to remember what role this glyph played in the game.