(4/1/05) don't feed the animals; kissing her thigh

(Entered in paper journal at 6 PM at Starbucks on 110th and Broadway in Morningside Heights.)

Dream 1

I saw an American Egret walking along a small, stone fence or barrier with occasional, small, tower-like posts on top.

The fence or barrier bordered an asphalt road and some round hillside, probably of grass. It was like I saw the egret while recording it and then reviewed the recording because the event shocked me so much. But all I remember now is the reviewed recording.

The egret walked up to the fence, stretched its neck out, and grabbed some white lump of food that looked like an enormous tablet.

This was inappropriate food. The egret walked along the fence to the right and then out of sight.

I continued recording, moving the view to the left, and, reaching another tower, I saw, just on its left side, as I turned around, a small (maybe six-inch-long) fish, which I may have called a shad. I stopped walking and did a close-up on the fish, getting more and more frustrated as I understood that it had left its natural food to eat synthetic food that wasn't even nutritional.

Dream 2

I was in a train station with a Latina woman. She sat in a chair that was something like a school desk. I was on my knees on her right side. She wore some kind of brown and tan, flower-print blouse and white jeans. I was playing some kind of flirting game with her, rather harmless. But then I bent over and kissed her thigh, which was apparently some extremely sexual act.

(9/16/05) quest for hot fudge

(Entered in paper journal at 9:05 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was at a restaurant, probably an all-you-can-eat buffet, with two "friends," a man and a woman who looked like my friend KB's lesbian lover AN. We sat together at a booth table. The two "friends" sat across the table from me. The interior of the place was brown, woody, and leathery.

I asked the woman some question that might have put her in a position to let go of some secret she didn't want to let go of.

Now the friends were finished eating. I got so much to eat that I still wasn't done. I had one more bowl. They headed out. I figured I had enough time while they looked for the car and then brought it here that I could eat my last bowl of food.

But now I was sitting at a line of table booths that were all pushed together so a group of older folks could sit there. I was being pushed out. I hadn't finished my food. I thought I would really quickly make a sundae, then, and eat it out on the sidewalk for my friends.

I poured some not great-looking soft-serve ice cream and put on some toppings I wasn't really pleased with. Then I put on some watery, mucky chocolate syrup. I realized this syrup wasn't what I wanted, that I always make this mistake when I go to buffets. I get chocolate syrup when what I really want it hot fudge. So I looked around the ice cream buffet (which was right by one of the restaurant's yellow-stained-glass front windows) for a hot fudge dispenser.

There was something way up high, but it wasn't right somehow. I pulled my dish back down. It was momentarily a clear, Tupperware jug in which were lumps of ice cream leaning against a glass (?) bottle of some Italian syrup, the name of which was like DeCecco.

I walked along all the buffets, looking for hot fudge. I found one buffet where there were a few containers that looked like they were for hot fudge. I took my dish up there. Some of them definitely looked like they didn't work. Others were empty. I tried another, the nozzle of which was over a tub of what looked like old hot fudge diluted by melting ice cubes.

A few pretty, black waitresses stood around me, talking among themselves. I pressed down the button of the dispenser. A bunch of watery, gross stuff sprayed out of the nozzle. I moved my ice cream out of the way just in time not to get it sprayed, except possibly a tiny bit. The girls all laughed at me. I couldn't tell whether they hated me.

I shyly said, "Uh, I knew that was a XXXXX container. I'm just frustrated I can't find any hot fudge."

One of the girls may have pointed me toward another buffet. I walked toward the buffet, which was closer to the front door. I could see out the front door.

I realized now that I was too late to meet up with my friends, and all because I was obsessed with making a good sundae.

I was now in a frenzy, panicked to get out the door to catch up with my friends, even though I likely wouldn't be able to. Nevertheless, I paused a moment, not really concerned with eating, or staying in the restaurant, but rather with slowing myself down enough so that I could reflect on what feeling it is, what satisfaction I get from hot fudge, that makes ice cream seem less inconvenient to eat, and why I was so obsessed with finding that feeling.

(11/21/08) playing with food; jewelry and drinking water

(Entered in paper journal at 6:56 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a big house. The house was bright and airy, with tall, wide, white walls. I had just walked away from a group of people. I felt very relaxed walking around by myself. I walked past a number of small (six inches by six inches) face mirrors that seemed to be floating from the ceiling and which swayed back and forth like items on a mobile.

I looked into a few of the mirrors. Behind me, I saw, was a hallway with doorways opening to smaller rooms. I started getting afraid that if I looked into the mirrors long enough I would see a ghost appear in one of the smaller rooms. But I told myself not to be afraid and to keep on looking.

I was now crouched and sitting on the floor of the kitchen, which was also large and airy and which probably opened directly out to the large room I had just been in. My boss BS and my co-worker DE were in the kitchen with me, messing around with some sort of cheese like parmesan, which, when heated, would melt like a creamy cheese. They were putting it into the microwave and taking it out. Then they said that this wasn't good enough.

BS and DE pulled a take-out-style aluminum "plate" covered with a disc of white paper out of the fridge. The plate had all sorts of things in it, including an aluminum-foil-wrapped sandwich, all covered in a white cheese sauce.

BS and DE were both laughing as they dumped the parmesan into the plate. They knew they were making something really gross. Apparently all this food belonged to BS' wife. BS and DE thought it was hilarious to screw up all this food. But they also didn't want to get caught by BS' wife.

I thought about how if they put all this stuff in the microwave, it might explode because of all the metal. I particularly thought of the sandwich.

Dream #2

I sat in a restaurant with my co-worker SB and someone else from my job. The restaurant was dimmish, with heavy, rough, wood walls. The place was slightly busy. We seemed to be having a good time and also seemed to be discussing business.

Suddenly SB got up and told us to follow him. We went into "the bathroom," which was more like a locker room and a bedroom combined. I handed out mail to everybody. Apparently we were all on a trip, and I was having our mail forwarded to each destination we reached.

But SB, shuffling through his mail and siting by a small window (which looked out at a dark sky), started yelling at me that I hadn't forwarded his mail to this place. I felt bad at first. But then I realized that SB actually was getting his mail. I told SB he had no reason to get mad at me.

I walked out of "the bathroom" and back to our table. SB and the other person followed me. But our table was now taken (or being taken as we approached) by a few Latino people. In particular there was a slightly heavy but incredibly sexy woman in a short, soft, elegant, white mini-dress.

I thought, It was pretty obvious we had this table, wasn't it? But I thought it might be a good idea for us to share the table. It seemed like a pretty easy thing to do. I hoped the two people I was with wouldn't start acting annoying to the other people at the table.

When we sat down, the place changed. We now sat in an enormous, white room. We sat on the floor, which might have been red tile carpeted with a beautiful rug. The room opened out to a deck-like area. Nearby us were also a small table and possibly some boxes or chests.

I was loosely encircled by a group of women who might have been from either Mexico or India. The women's ages ranged from early twenties to late fifties. Some sat on the floor. Others sat in chairs. The women wore modern-cut dresses like skirts, but with fabric that was very old or traditional. Some of the older women may have been wearing traditional robes.

The women were all working at crafts. Some were making necklaces. A woman sitting in front of me made a necklace of purplish, opalescent beads. She finished the necklace and handed it to me. Now the necklace was of small, dark blue (lapis lazuli?) beads, occasionally broken by bands of gold. The necklace was thick with these beads.

The woman smiled to me. I put the necklace on. I showed myself to all the women, asking how I looked. I thought I must look slightly awkward, since I was wearing this traditional necklace against my modern clothing. But I also didn't know whether the necklace itself was just a fake. I was trying to ascertain the authenticity of the necklace through the women's reactions to me.

The women didn't seem too impressed by me, but they all said, "Oh, good, good."

One woman said, "You look okay, not good." Another woman, an older one, told that woman that she shouldn't have said that.

I looked behind that older woman and now saw someone familiar. This person was an older woman, maybe in her fifties. At first she looked Indian or Mexican. But as I looked at her again, she looked like a modern Mexican American woman. She didn't look like she was taking very good care of herself. But she was happy to see that I was getting along with all the younger women.

I stood up to talk with this woman. I was here, after all, to take care of some specific business. But I couldn't tell if the woman was actually trying to cheat me. (???)

We walked out onto the deck. The woman said, "If only my husband were here to see you. He'd be proud to see how you look. But he's away on business."

I walked over to a table. The woman was behind me. She became engaged in talking to some younger people. I walked along the deck. It was wide and long. the flooring was of gravel set in concrete. It looked out over a forested area.

I felt like this place was some kind of special high school. I walked to the farthest edge and stood by myself by a sloping, white, concrete wall. I started to hear some popular music from the 1980s. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. But now I looked down and saw it came, somehow, from the outside (?) of a school building below me. I thought, They always pump music through the halls of the school, and you can even hear it outside. (As if this school were a grocery store.)

I looked out at the forest landscape and thought I was in India. I now walked through a humid forest, just on the outskirts, I would assume, of a small town. I used a big stick for walking. At some point I was walking through a very shallow stream with coppery soil. The trees around me were in awful shape, all thin and scraggly, so that plenty of patches of light flowed down to me.

I saw (in my mind?) a small native boy in a brown robe walking through the river. I heard someone talking about the awful quality of the water, as if I were watching a narrated film. I knew that even though the water was awful, people were still drinking it. I wondered what kind of water I would drink.

I knew I was part of the Peace Corps. I was now some weird kind of miracle worker. It was night. I stood on a land ledge, looking down as a large group of people worked in a pit of soil below me. All the people may have been white, very modern-looking, but with something scary-looking about them, too, like they were prisoners. They were the "natives" of this land.

The people all now stood out of the pit. I did something, called out some words, and raised my arms. The pit exploded. Earth and rocks and possibly construction materials all flew into the air, maybe even so high that they dissolved into the atmosphere. People thought I had performed magic. Even I thought I had performed magic. But then I realized that I had, earlier on, set something like explosives into the soil.

The pit was now a smooth-walled cube set in the ground. The pit began filling up with water. As it did, the walls and floor of the pit became tiled. A light turned on in the pool of water.

I thought, Now this is the place where people can get their drinking water. At first the water was murky and dirty. But it was slowly clearing and becoming cleaner. At the opposite end of the pool from me it now seemed there was an enormous, but dimly lit, white palace.

I jumped into the pool. The water was still a little cloudy. I thought, What the hell? Wouldn't you just expect something like this? For an idiot white person to make a drinking water pool and then to go swimming in it like some college partier? But now I actually wasn't sure whether I'd intended to make a drinking water pool or a swimming pool.

(2/25/09) fort holland; afraid of museum displays; pizza panic

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

A woman and I had been co-pilots, possibly in a fighter jet. The jet had crashed. The woman had died, while I may have lived. I thought back to the event and wondered how I could have done things differently so the woman could have survived.

I now saw the event again, as if it were just happening. Our jet (definitely a fighter jet now, like an F-16 (?)) crashed into blackish water. The sky was black, or rather a blackish green-blue, but for some reason it didn't feel like night, and the jet was perfectly visible (as if I were looking at myself in the jet from a point in front of the jet) as if lit, not by daylight, but as if in a cartoon.

The woman (although I feel like an F-16 is just a one-seater) sat in the backseat. She was hunched over, but I was pretty sure she was still alive. We wore yellowish-tan uniforms with white sleeves and white helmets.

Our jet had reached a snowy shore. The snow was still falling. I knew we were near an American Air Force base called Fort Holland. I could see a snow-covered sign on a stick saying Fort Holland and some other things (this view was also very cartoon-like).

Our cabin hatch was open -- it had been open all along. I called out, disappointed, like a spoiled kid, "Only Fort Holland?" as if after all our trouble we had only made it this far along.

We now walked from the shore, along a wide valley, and then up a slope, which was between two slightly steeper and taller slopes. I walked in front and led the woman, as if I were pulling her by means of a closed but unfurled parachute. The parachute may have been orange with white bordering.

The woman seemed injured, doubled-over, as if her stomach were in great pain. She hardly seemed alive. In some ways, she also looked like a cartoon, like Jun from the anime Gatchaman.

I knew the base was just over the slope. I saw, as if from very high in the air, the base -- two cartoony, cabin-like structures and possibly a couple other small structures, all broadly spaced in the snow.

On the other side of the hills I now saw myself, although instead of pulling the woman along with the parachute, I was now pulling the entire jet with it -- possibly with the woman inside.

Dream #2

I was in a hallway of some building like an airport or a convention center. The floors were tight, shallow, brown carpet. The wall to my left may have been grey. The wall to my right was a window wall, which opened to a pale blue sky all the way down the hallway.

A group of people (probably like a group of kids and volunteers, with some official-looking people, like airline pilots) and I stood at the top of a small set of escalators and stairs. The escalators were supposed to be a fun kind of ride (like the sledding hill at the Winter Jam festival which had taken place in New York City at the beginning of 2009). I couldn't see how this was supposed to be fun, but I acted like it was, anyway. I saw all of us as if I were viewing from a point at the bottom of the escalators. Now it was my turn to go. I (walked? ran? slid?) down the escalator.

I was now in a big room like an animal display room in a museum of natural history (a lot like the African animals display room had been at the Denver Museum of Natural History when I was a kid). The walls were black, and big windows revealed displays. The place was maze-like, almost cavernous. The light was all dim red, like the lighting in the cages for nocturnal animals in zoos. I was all alone.

I now realized that many animals there were standing outside their displays. I may not have noticed this until I turned to look over my left shoulder and saw, in a room slightly separated from the room I was in by walls a little offset from one another, a buffalo, in a reclining position, with its head turned so that it appeared to be looking straight at me.

I suddenly had the feeling that these animals could become alive again at any moment. The buffalo looked huge, even in a reclining position. I didn't want it to become alive again to charge me. I decided to walk out of its sight. But the more I looked around the more I saw all kinds of animals out of their displays. I walked into another room, which seemed to be all displays of animals in the room, i.e. not in a diorama set into the walls. I hurried through the room, not wanting the animals suddenly to come alive and see me there.

Now I was just trying to find a way out of this place, or at least to find other poeple to be with. But I was also getting more interested in some of these animals. They weren't all identifiable. Some of them looked rather alien.

I saw another buffalo, which was posed (?) before a display, as if it were looking at the display, except that it had its head turned so it appeared to be looking at me. Another animal, which had the coat, and maybe even the face, of a koala bear, but which had the body of a small wildcat, and had ears wide enough almost to make an entire cone around the back of the animal's head, stood in the threshold between rooms, almost blocking my way to the next room.

As I walked through the next room, I saw, far in the distance to my left, a humanoid figure, as if it had been pinned against the wall. Its skin was pink and white, like the meat of a crab, or the scales of a large goldfish. It was tall and muscular. Its head was powerful. It had pale green (?) eyes. Around its head extended a flap of skin, like the lower body of an octopus, except without extending into legs. This flap of skin was also expanded and pinned to the wall. I thought that this was the creature most likely to come alive and attack me.

I really hurried now to get somewhere familiar. I heard voices behind me, coming from a space to my right, as if there were a small, dark hallway at the end of which were two middle-aged women, something like curators or librarians for the museum, speaking mildly about some plans they had for an exhibit or something else that needed to be organized. I felt very reassured when I heard them talking, more like I was suddenly re-connected with reality.

I caught a glimpse of daylight to my right -- daylight reflected off the plexiglass of some of the display cases. The displays all now seemed to be of astronomical or geological objects. They largely seemed to be photos, or mock-up photo-models of things like nebulae or galaxies or asteroids.

I now saw the exit. I walked leisurely to it -- I was now kind of disappointed in myself for not having been able to keep calm while I walked through all the displays of the strange animals.

Dream #3

I was in a conference room with a group of people. The conference room was long and narrow, with drab, beige-yellowish-tan (beige-olive?) walls and drab, fluorescent lighting. There was a group of people about my age or a little younger, all in dress suits, standing by a long cabinet, possibly grabbing paper plates, napkins, etc.

I was laying out a table full of pizzas. There were all kinds of pizza, but three boxes of pepperoni pizza looked particularly fresh and good. I was apparently on the same level as all the people in the room, but I had ordered the pizzas and was laying them out, as if I were the assistant to all the people.

There may have been an attitude on the part of all the people, as if I had only gotten the usual selection of pizzas, instead of getting anything new and unusual. I was also now disappointed, and I wondered if I hadn't done it on purpose -- the pepperoni pizzas looked so good; perhaps I had ordered more of those because I wanted good pepperoni pizza like that so bad.

Now some other group of people brought in three boxes of pizza. They looked like business people, probably older and farther along in their careers than the people in this room. At first I thought they were bringing fresh pizzas. I laid them out. The table was completely full with pizza boxes. People were now taking pizza. I called out to everybody, as I looked at the new pizzas, that the pizzas the other people had brought in were new and unique, if anybody wanted to try those out.

One of the pizzas seemed to be topped entirely with green stuff like spinach. Another seemed to be topped entirely with ground sausage, possibly having no sauce and just a tiny bit of cheese holding the sausage together. I can't remember the third box.

But when I looked at these three boxes, I realized the pizza was all cold, as if it were already a couple hours old. The pizzas weren't full -- they were all three missing at least a couple slices. The people who had brought them in now said, "We just got out of our meeting and thought you guys might be hungry, so we brought these pizzas in."

I was panicked. I thought, First my co-workers thought I was an idiot for not having ordered a good enough selection of pizza. Now they'll think I'm an idiot for having all my selection be stale!

I called out to everybody, "Guys, these pizzas are cold. But they're different, f you want that. And the pieces we have are untouched. They haven't been tampered with."

But now one of the people to my left (he may have looked like my co-worker DE) opened one of the new boxes, as if I hadn't opened them all. He pulled out a crust that somebody had thrown back into the box after having eaten the rest of the slice of pizza. The person (DE?) said, "Look at this. This doesn't look untouched!"

Now a woman to my right (and she may actually have been one of the group who had brought the new pizzas in) pulled a crust out of the box next to her. She told DE, "I know. I don't think we should eat anything out of these boxes." She said this in a tone implying I had done a really lousy job by suggesting anybody should eat these pizzas.

Again I called out to everybody, "The pepperoni pizzas are extremely fresh, and they look really good, if anybody wants to try those."

Whatever meeting these guys were all going to have was probably about to start. A couple of guys said, as if to imply that I should also be heading out now, "Why don't you grab some pizza, man?"

I thought I'd really like some of the pepperoni pizza, but I also thought it was a little too early in the day to eat pizza. So I just laughed a little and headed out of the room.

I walked down a long, narrow hallway and was in a weird room. It was just as drab as the conference room had been. It didn't look like it was any kind of room in particular. I took care of some kind of business somewhere.

Some time had passed. I now thought I should go pick up some pizza before the next meeting (the "lunch meeting?") started. I walked down the hallway and saw through the window of the conference room. All the pizza was now cold, but it still looked delicious to me. But for some reason, I still decided that it was too early for me to have pizza.

I turned around quickly and headed back to a desk, which was "like a receptionist's desk" (even thought it was just a dumpy, flimsy, standard work desk) at the upper right corner of the weird room, before the room turned into another sterile hallway.

I was now busily doing some nothing-work, possibly having something to do with a roll of (duct?) tape. I was scurrying through this work, as if I thought it would help me forget my appetite for pizza.

Some older man walked up from the hallway to my right, standing in front of and just to the left of my desk. I kept scurrying through my work, thinking the man would be really proud of me for staying so busy that I didn't want to eat pizza.

But now the man called down the hallway behind me, i.e. to the conference room. I looked up at the old  man as he continued a conversation with a man down the hallway. The man before me looked like Mick Jagger, except that he was about thirty pounds heavier. He looked about the same age as Mick Jagger (which would leave me to believe this man was in his mid-fifties (his mid-fifties???)). He wore a dull blue, long-sleeved, casual shirt, which showed a slightly round belly, and slightly aged blue jeans. His hair was about jaw-length, red-brown. He sounded very American, not British, almost like JH, a boss of mine from a National Park in New Mexico where I'd been part of an Americorps program.

The two men continued a quick conversation about the details for the meeting. I could tell that the guy before me thought I was cool, like someone from his "good old days," and that he wanted to strike up a conversation with me. But, for some reason, I was so upset by how out of shape the man looked that I didn't want to talk to him -- I didn't want any of his slackness to influence me.

But I also felt like I should talk to the man, to remind him of his "good old days." I felt sad. I could see the man in his younger days, and I thought he must have looked really cool. I thought it would be really nice if I could humar the man into thinking that he was that cool once again.

(4/13/09) an unpopular dinner party

(Entered in paper journal at 10 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I had come in from some area like a mall parking lot. I was now in a building like a big-box store that had been converted into an office space. The entrance foyer or lobby was like a small corridor of cheap, greyish, plaster walls, with a couple of glass doorways.

I now walked into a large room like a meeting room. The room looked cheap and only half-built, like a makeshift room for exhibition. The room had a strange, almost pentagonal shape (something like a pentagonal version of the room housing Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum of Art). The walls didn't reach all the way up to the ceiling. They were grey-white.

Throughout the room long folding tables were set up, possibly with an outer triangle or pentagon of tables set up around the other tables. This was a "meal party" set up for New York Cares volunteers or team leaders. The tables already had plates of food set on them. The food didn't look very appetizing. It looked like brown mole poblano sauce and some small discs of food.

There was a front table near the door by which I entered. A tallish, pale-skinned, frumpy-looking, red-haired woman sat at the table, apparently signing everybody in. I walked up to her. She may have been wearing a floppy, black, knit, beret-style (but large) hat. For some reason the woman stuck me as someone I just didn't want to speak to at all.

The woman asked me what I thought about something, possibly the quality of events, etc. I may have said something nice.

The woman told me about how events like this one had such low turnout nowadays. I looked around the room. Barely anybody was here. I thought, If we keep getting low turnout like this, we'll have to stop having this kind of event.