(Entered in paper journal at 5:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
A woman sat with some men in an otherwise empty theater. She held a gun which changed appearance from metallic silver to a weird, black, futuristic gun. The woman told the men how she had a man in holding. Unless he gave her a gun, which was a piece of evidence proving that she had killed yet another man, she would keep either keep the imprisoned man in holding or kill him.
One of the men reminded the woman, however, that there was a child of the imprisoned man who could somehow prove that the woman had killed a man.
I was in the hospital, walking through the halls as if I were the man who had been imprisoned. I was looking for my child, a little baby. I saw the baby hanging on a door. It was in the room, visible through the glass pane on the door. It had been hung with cords which to me resembled an umbilical cord.
As well as being the imprisoned man, I may also have been a doctor who had taken a special interest in this case. Finding the hung child, I brought it in to a couple of doctors. We figured we could try a special technique which could resuscitate strangulation victims.
I now saw a doctor standing over the baby. The doctor had a big knife in his hands. He cut through all the cords (which were like breathing tubes and other hospital equipment tubes) around the baby's neck. Blood flowed out of them.
Suddenly the baby woke up. It cried, and as it cried it grew into a child maybe ten or eleven years old. The doctor told the baby not to panic, that it was alright. But the baby panicked so much that it rolled out of bed.
The doctor jumped onto the bed and threw his legs over the other side to catch the boy. He then made some weird comment and swung his legs, and the boy, up onto a bed beside the first bed. He then jumped onto the bed.
Both the doctor and the boy were now boys about ten or eleven years old. The bed was huge. It had a wood frame. The boy and the boy-doctor were jumping all over the bed.
Dream #2
I stood at a train station like on the Metro North line of the MTA trains in New York. A small, dark-skinned (Indian?) boy said to me, "I'm happy you came all the way out to Utica to see us."
I was on the train now with a couple friends. The train was going through a deserty area of reddish-tan earth. I thought, I din't know New York had land like this. The sky was bright. The land became much more pale.
The train had been following another train. There were multiple tracks beside one another. Our train got its tracks confused and got lost from the lead train.
It was now like my friends and I were conducting the train. The friend actually conducting, though, hadn't been paying attention to the lead train's movements after we had gotten on the wrong track. Then he stopped paying attention to the tracks altogether. We started moving along on no tracks at all, near some cliff or mound of cakey sand. I told my friend, "Back up! Back up! We need to get back on track!"
We got back on a track, but we were heading somewhere way off from where we'd previously been heading. I told my friend, "If we just go back to where we first lost the train, I can get us back onto the track we're supposed to be on."
We got turned around and were heading back to where we'd gotten lost. We went past one or two large groups of people gathered around a black basalt cliff and overhang. I felt something wasn't right about seeing all these people. But I trusted we were going back to the right place.
We were back in an area that looked like where we'd gotten lost. But now my friend drove the train straight up the side of a hill. At first there were tracks. But at the top the tracks stopped. I yelled at my friend, "You're going the wrong way again!"
Showing posts with label being detained. Show all posts
Showing posts with label being detained. Show all posts
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
(1/4/08) a burger king bathroom; communications and death
(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was walking down a hill of a small street at night. I was looking for a place to go to the restroom. There was a Burger King to my right. The whole street was dark, no lights, except a small sliver of light from the Burger King sign. The Burger King was part of some long row of shops in a stout, decked, wooden building that somehow reminds me of the Old West.
I walked into the Burger King through a side or back door. The place was only half-lit. I was in a small cul-de-sac to the right of the main dining area. In the dining area were a couple workers, probably a man and a woman. I hoped they wouldn't notice me. I had no intention of buying anything. I just wanted to use the restroom.
I went into the restroom. It was kind of barren and trashy. I might have started using the urinal. (At this point I may have woken up. The feeling of anxiety about the workers potentially thinking I was a creep because I hadn't bought anything was still with me. But now I thought, It was just a dream. You get that one for free.)
Dream #2
I sat before a computer, probably in a dark room. To my right, about ten feet away, were some friends of mine, possibly both girls.
My computer might have had two screens. On the bottom right corner of the right screen was a little grey "button" logo that had a right-facing triangle on it, like a "play" button. On the rest of the screen was something like a control panel with lots of virtual touchscreen buttons. The panel was grey like steel, but all over it, and the background of the screen, was a strange iridescence. The background was probably iridescent in bright colors. The left screen may have been much like this.
I believe I had been conducting business on my left screen when I heard a voice come (as if from the play button) from the right screen. It was a woman's voice. The woman said, "Hello?"
I looked down at the play button. I knew this play button was part f some new internet fad, where people spoke to each other by recording short messages via this touchscreen button and then sending them. Sometimes you could send to random people. Sometimes you could receive from random people.
I didn't quite know how to work the system. I pressed the button and said, "Hello. My name is Preemie." But before I could finish my message, I got the "Hello?" again.
I pressed the button and asked a short question. But as soon as I sent the message I got another message back. The woman said, "My name is Maya. I'm a teacher at Princeton University. I can't talk much with you now. I have to get to my next class."
I thought, Are all messages pre-recorded? This woman hasn't yet responded directly to any of my messages. I sent a message again, like, "I hope you have a good day at classes."
My friends in the distance giggled at me. They said, "Don't you know you don't talk to people on things like this? Who knows what kind of wacko that person really is?"
I thought, Well, that's true.
(At this point in my journaling, I got off the train in Manhattan. I resumed entering my dreams in my paper journal at 6:40 AM at the Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue.)
I was pulling away from the building, backwards, as if I were in a car. It was night, on a smallish business street that was fairly well lit. I had to pull all the way around three or four stopped cars, one of which was a police car. I pulled around and then behind them.
I then realized that the two non-police cars had been in a wreck. I slowly pulled up beside one car, on its right side. I had to stop there, as if the cops had the road blocked. I might no longer have been the one driving the car I was in.
Beside the passenger window were a group of middle-aged ladies. The ladies were kind of fat, with feathery, blonde hair. They were talking about the victims of the wreck. I couldn't tell if these women were the victims' mothers or police practicing telling the mothers about their children when the mothers arrived.
I looked out the driver's side window, as if I were looking past someone who sat in the driver's seat while I sat in the back, passenger's side seat. It looked like the black car had been smashed up, crumpled like a can, with its roof torn off.
There were three women in the backseat of the black car, and maybe other people in the front seat. Everybody in the car was dead. But it looked like the women in the backseat were just sleeping. The woman in the passenger's-side backseat was most easily visible. She was palish white, with dark hair.
I thought, This is my first time seeing freshly dead bodies. I felt like I should be ashamed for actually wanting to see the dead bodies. But I also felt like I would put myself in a dangerous situation by looking at the bodies for too long. I thought, Well, regardless, I'll have plenty of time to look at them. We aren't going anywhere for a while. The cops won't let us move.
Dream #1
I was walking down a hill of a small street at night. I was looking for a place to go to the restroom. There was a Burger King to my right. The whole street was dark, no lights, except a small sliver of light from the Burger King sign. The Burger King was part of some long row of shops in a stout, decked, wooden building that somehow reminds me of the Old West.
I walked into the Burger King through a side or back door. The place was only half-lit. I was in a small cul-de-sac to the right of the main dining area. In the dining area were a couple workers, probably a man and a woman. I hoped they wouldn't notice me. I had no intention of buying anything. I just wanted to use the restroom.
I went into the restroom. It was kind of barren and trashy. I might have started using the urinal. (At this point I may have woken up. The feeling of anxiety about the workers potentially thinking I was a creep because I hadn't bought anything was still with me. But now I thought, It was just a dream. You get that one for free.)
Dream #2
I sat before a computer, probably in a dark room. To my right, about ten feet away, were some friends of mine, possibly both girls.
My computer might have had two screens. On the bottom right corner of the right screen was a little grey "button" logo that had a right-facing triangle on it, like a "play" button. On the rest of the screen was something like a control panel with lots of virtual touchscreen buttons. The panel was grey like steel, but all over it, and the background of the screen, was a strange iridescence. The background was probably iridescent in bright colors. The left screen may have been much like this.
I believe I had been conducting business on my left screen when I heard a voice come (as if from the play button) from the right screen. It was a woman's voice. The woman said, "Hello?"
I looked down at the play button. I knew this play button was part f some new internet fad, where people spoke to each other by recording short messages via this touchscreen button and then sending them. Sometimes you could send to random people. Sometimes you could receive from random people.
I didn't quite know how to work the system. I pressed the button and said, "Hello. My name is Preemie." But before I could finish my message, I got the "Hello?" again.
I pressed the button and asked a short question. But as soon as I sent the message I got another message back. The woman said, "My name is Maya. I'm a teacher at Princeton University. I can't talk much with you now. I have to get to my next class."
I thought, Are all messages pre-recorded? This woman hasn't yet responded directly to any of my messages. I sent a message again, like, "I hope you have a good day at classes."
My friends in the distance giggled at me. They said, "Don't you know you don't talk to people on things like this? Who knows what kind of wacko that person really is?"
I thought, Well, that's true.
(At this point in my journaling, I got off the train in Manhattan. I resumed entering my dreams in my paper journal at 6:40 AM at the Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue.)
I was pulling away from the building, backwards, as if I were in a car. It was night, on a smallish business street that was fairly well lit. I had to pull all the way around three or four stopped cars, one of which was a police car. I pulled around and then behind them.
I then realized that the two non-police cars had been in a wreck. I slowly pulled up beside one car, on its right side. I had to stop there, as if the cops had the road blocked. I might no longer have been the one driving the car I was in.
Beside the passenger window were a group of middle-aged ladies. The ladies were kind of fat, with feathery, blonde hair. They were talking about the victims of the wreck. I couldn't tell if these women were the victims' mothers or police practicing telling the mothers about their children when the mothers arrived.
I looked out the driver's side window, as if I were looking past someone who sat in the driver's seat while I sat in the back, passenger's side seat. It looked like the black car had been smashed up, crumpled like a can, with its roof torn off.
There were three women in the backseat of the black car, and maybe other people in the front seat. Everybody in the car was dead. But it looked like the women in the backseat were just sleeping. The woman in the passenger's-side backseat was most easily visible. She was palish white, with dark hair.
I thought, This is my first time seeing freshly dead bodies. I felt like I should be ashamed for actually wanting to see the dead bodies. But I also felt like I would put myself in a dangerous situation by looking at the bodies for too long. I thought, Well, regardless, I'll have plenty of time to look at them. We aren't going anywhere for a while. The cops won't let us move.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
(4/3/08) between china and america; you can't just think he's alright
(Entered in paper journal at 5:19 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I may have been in a nice ballroom with a lot of other people. I heard that a ship was in danger nearby and wasn't being allowed to dock. The whole situation struck me as very sad.
I could see the ship on tumultuous waves. The ship must have been large. I could tell that the passengers were Chinese. They weren't aware that they weren't going to be allowed to dock.
I was now on the ship. I was trying to be as cheerful as possible, to make the news less harsh when it was finally discovered.
We were now all on a bus (? -- still felt like we were walking in the cabin of a ship) in China. I asked someone a question like, "Have you ever read any Chinese law?"
Someone said, "Oh, yes. The five-year plan. Everybody reads that."
The bus stopped in front of a structure like a tollbooth mixed with a library desk. We had arrived back in China, having had to turn back from the United States because of some danger. But now that we had arrived in China, we were heading back to the US.
But something had happened to our passport, which was a piece of paper shaped like a foot. I got out of the bus to see if the women at the desk could issue us a new paper. I pulled our old one off the dry, dusty ground, as if the thing had fallen out of or off the bus.
When I handed the paper to the women and requested a new paper, the women convened among themselves. They told me they would get back to me soon. I knew they wouldn't. There was something my group had done to break the rules. My group was now not going to be allowed to leave China.
We were told to wait. We all milled around in a big living room that was probably lit with fluorescent light. Soon there were only a few people, all of whom were probably American.
One woman stood before a Chinese map (brown and tan, showing something like provinces) and spoke about the Falun Dafa. She said that at first the protests were very impactful. But now they had gone too far. The woman didn't feel bad that the Falun Dafa were no longer allowed in China.
The woman then told the story of the man who had organized the bus trip. I turned and saw the man behind me. He was tallish, of average build, maybe in his thirties, possibly of Asian descent. He wore a white t-shirt and glasses and stared straight forward, as if thinking of something great.
The man had arranged yearly trips for impoverished people in China, possibly for them to visit family members in the United States. The trips had been running smoothly for years. But now the man had to fight to keep them going.
I thought, Well, he should be able to do that. I remember working with him in the very beginning, when he had to fight tooth and nail to get the project off the ground at all. I thought back to then. I had been a kid. The man had been very skinny.
Now the man's daughter ran into the room. She was maybe a teenager, dark-brown skinned, with long, black hair. The man laughed and said to her, "You probably won't remember him" (me) "It's been such a long time since we've worked together."
Dream #2
I stood in a bedroom with grey carpet and natural light. "My psychiatrist" lay on an enormous, messy bed, at the foot of which I stood. "My psychiatrist" may have been an old, pale, fattish, woman. She shifted beneath the covers of her (pale pink?) blanket in a kind of slimy way. I was trying to tell "my psychiatrist" things. But eventually I felt like I was talking to no purpose.
"My psychiatrist" started telling me really awful, ugly, stupid things. I got mad and began yelling at her like crazy. She now wrote in a notebook and showed me the page. She now looked like my psychiatrist A. She said, "We can't work together anymore. I have to find someone else to work with you."
The page A showed me was a list of requirements for my new psychiatrist. The page was full, written in smallish, very precise lettering. There were some small drawings or diagrams. The ink was blue, and wide, like from a gel-pen.
The only requirement I remember being written on the page was something like, "He's very intelligent and requires intelligent work. He may seem alright, but he's not. You can't just think he's alright and let things go. He will explode in a rage if you do."
Dream #1
I may have been in a nice ballroom with a lot of other people. I heard that a ship was in danger nearby and wasn't being allowed to dock. The whole situation struck me as very sad.
I could see the ship on tumultuous waves. The ship must have been large. I could tell that the passengers were Chinese. They weren't aware that they weren't going to be allowed to dock.
I was now on the ship. I was trying to be as cheerful as possible, to make the news less harsh when it was finally discovered.
We were now all on a bus (? -- still felt like we were walking in the cabin of a ship) in China. I asked someone a question like, "Have you ever read any Chinese law?"
Someone said, "Oh, yes. The five-year plan. Everybody reads that."
The bus stopped in front of a structure like a tollbooth mixed with a library desk. We had arrived back in China, having had to turn back from the United States because of some danger. But now that we had arrived in China, we were heading back to the US.
But something had happened to our passport, which was a piece of paper shaped like a foot. I got out of the bus to see if the women at the desk could issue us a new paper. I pulled our old one off the dry, dusty ground, as if the thing had fallen out of or off the bus.
When I handed the paper to the women and requested a new paper, the women convened among themselves. They told me they would get back to me soon. I knew they wouldn't. There was something my group had done to break the rules. My group was now not going to be allowed to leave China.
We were told to wait. We all milled around in a big living room that was probably lit with fluorescent light. Soon there were only a few people, all of whom were probably American.
One woman stood before a Chinese map (brown and tan, showing something like provinces) and spoke about the Falun Dafa. She said that at first the protests were very impactful. But now they had gone too far. The woman didn't feel bad that the Falun Dafa were no longer allowed in China.
The woman then told the story of the man who had organized the bus trip. I turned and saw the man behind me. He was tallish, of average build, maybe in his thirties, possibly of Asian descent. He wore a white t-shirt and glasses and stared straight forward, as if thinking of something great.
The man had arranged yearly trips for impoverished people in China, possibly for them to visit family members in the United States. The trips had been running smoothly for years. But now the man had to fight to keep them going.
I thought, Well, he should be able to do that. I remember working with him in the very beginning, when he had to fight tooth and nail to get the project off the ground at all. I thought back to then. I had been a kid. The man had been very skinny.
Now the man's daughter ran into the room. She was maybe a teenager, dark-brown skinned, with long, black hair. The man laughed and said to her, "You probably won't remember him" (me) "It's been such a long time since we've worked together."
Dream #2
I stood in a bedroom with grey carpet and natural light. "My psychiatrist" lay on an enormous, messy bed, at the foot of which I stood. "My psychiatrist" may have been an old, pale, fattish, woman. She shifted beneath the covers of her (pale pink?) blanket in a kind of slimy way. I was trying to tell "my psychiatrist" things. But eventually I felt like I was talking to no purpose.
"My psychiatrist" started telling me really awful, ugly, stupid things. I got mad and began yelling at her like crazy. She now wrote in a notebook and showed me the page. She now looked like my psychiatrist A. She said, "We can't work together anymore. I have to find someone else to work with you."
The page A showed me was a list of requirements for my new psychiatrist. The page was full, written in smallish, very precise lettering. There were some small drawings or diagrams. The ink was blue, and wide, like from a gel-pen.
The only requirement I remember being written on the page was something like, "He's very intelligent and requires intelligent work. He may seem alright, but he's not. You can't just think he's alright and let things go. He will explode in a rage if you do."
Saturday, December 29, 2012
(2/24/09) two parades; movie theater fight; impressing family; girlfriend's family emergency
(Entered in paper journal at 10:35 AM at Housing Works Used Bookstore Cafe in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in a car with my family. I'm not sure what seat I was in. It was daytime. We backed out from my great-grandmother's house, as if she had a driveway in front of her house (though I'm pretty sure that in the dream she did not), curving the back end of the car to my left and then driving away to my right.
My brother was making some complaint, possibly about how XXXXX (can't remember) was driving. But I saw that at the end of the block (would have been the south end of the block, not the north end) there was some large blockage of traffic, almost like a parade procession.
My brother now said something like, "That damn dog -- it always scares people like this." My brother meant that a dog was somehow scaring all the cars and blocking up the traffic. I might have seen a dog like a border collie running back and forth in the intersection.
Since that area was blocked, we decided to leave via the north end of the block. That end of the block was also crowded, this time with horse-drawn carriages. By this time, the car I was in may have disappeared. I and my family members walked along a cobble sidewalk (?) which may have been moderately busy with people. Some or all of the carriages were driven by dogs. The dogs seemed to have human personalities and would look over their shoulders at the crowd and possibly even wave to us.
My family (maybe just my mom, my great-grandmother, and I?) continued walking. We were now at the top of a stairway and plaza area like the stairway and plaza area for the Angel fountain in Central Park, except that it was slightly smaller and felt a little bit restricted, either by the streets of a small town's main street or by a bit of virgin or undeveloped land which was too precipitous or muddy (?) or tangled to be traversable.
The day was now very hot an bright. I thought it had been fun to walk like this, but now the weather was too uncomfortable. I seemed to be huddled together with my family, as if we were all looking over a map to decide our action.
We decided to walk down the stairs. We (now my mom, my sister, some of my nephews, and I?) entered a tan-painted cinder-block building like a park bathroom. The inside was also "like" the basement of a house. But really the interior was just a wide, open concrete space with a fountain in the center, and maybe a few sinks along the wall.
The fountain in the center was just a small, metallic fixture, like a shower head. It shot long, thick (half-inch?) streams of water which arced up maybe ten feet in the air and reached out almost to the walls of the interior. There were a stable, strong-looking father and his child playing in the fountain. The father was tan, with darkish, blonde hair. He may have been wearing a pale grey sweatshirt and pale blue jeans. His child was maybe eighteen months old, wormy-white.
My nephews and I played on the opposite side of the fountain from the father and his child. I played as if I were a child. At some point I closed my eyes and stuck my face right under one of the downward-arcing streams.
My mom now called from the doorway. I realized I had been acting silly and childish, as if I were trying to be a child of the many, or as if I were trying to attract the man sexually. Looking around, I also realized the man was now gone. I felt foolish. I walked out to meet my family, but possibly also to look for the man.
We may have walked up the set of stairs. The stairway and the level areas now looked different. They seemed more walled in. The walls also seemed to be bordered, on the opposite side, by stout-looking pine trees. The ground may have been covered with red bricks, which may have been the same as before.
Dream #2
I sat at a booth-table in a restaurant with my co-worker and friend FA. I was playing with plastic items like the non-Lego accessories (mainly little fences?) that would come with a Lego scene-kit. In particular I played with a plastic or putty disc (grey or brown?) around which had been wrapped a ring of (grey or brown) plastic "fence" or "train track."
FA and I spoke about some movie she and I had seen separately. She knew I'd have picked up on certain elements that she knew I'd know she'd like. She was now telling me about the elements, trying to be exact, as if she wanted to impress me. For some reason I couldn't help correcting her, with a brief interjection, in two instances.
For the first instance, I may even have felt a slight offense, as if I thought her inexactness showed she didn't really care, that she was actually just pretending. In the second instance she got the character's name wrong, just slightly, even though the character's name was FA's name exactly.
As I interjected FA's name, FA and I were suddenly in a "movie theater." The "theater" looked more like a nice cafe or restaurant, or even a living room, except with seven or eight one-aisle rows of (purple-fabric?) movie theater seats, and a black, curtained wall up front, with a small movie screen on it. The floors were wood. The walls were rustic, red-brick, like in a pizzeria. There were cheery, block-style flower paintings on the wall. Along the wall to my right was also a small, columnar chest or pedestal of dark, purplish varnished wood, with a slim vase of yellow (?) flowers on top.
FA and I sat in seats, maybe one seat apart from each other, as if we each had our stuff in the seats directly to our right (?). FA and I sat on the right side of the theater, just a couple seats in from the aisle -- there were maybe six or seven seats on each side.
A young man, maybe Hispanic, kind of wide-built, wearing a big, puffy, tannish coat, similarly colored denim pants, and a wool cap, walked in front of us. He first stood in front of me, his back to me, and plaed on his BlackBerry, as if he were going to stay there and play on his BlackBerry as long as he wanted, to test my patience. When the man saw I didn't seem to care, he kept moving along.
The man now stood in front of FA. He would step back, really trying to get into FA's space. At first FA and I just talked, as if it didn't annoy us. But then I finally got angry and told the man to get out of FA's face. The man just kept pretending like we didn't exist.
I stood up and tried to push or pull the man out of FA's space. I was in a weird position, as if I were one row behind the man and FA, and as if I were trying to grab him by reaching my arms backwards over my head. My body didn't seem to have any power, not even power to move with any speed.
I gave up on this method, and now, sitting near the aisle, in the row in front of FA and the man, probably sitting on one of the seat arms, with my left arm slung over the seat back, and again kind of looking backward to the two of them, I yelled at the man, "Get the hell away from FA!"
The man had taken off his hat. His hair was puffy, with medium curls. He had a round face but kind of lean-looking eyes. He gave a quick, loose-throated chuckle like a fit high school basketball player might give in place of talking trash when he knows he's good.
Again I tried (somehow) to force the guy away. FA said, "It's not worth it, Preemie."
The man and I now stood at the back wall, near a wooden chest, also dark and purplish colored. I was wildly angry, and I was trying to fight against the man, but once again I had no power in my arms at all. The man and I were wrestling with our arms.
I kept shouting threats at the man until they or one of them finally hit a nerve. The man said, "Oh, yeah? Well, how about this?" He reached into his left pocket. I knew he was going to pull out either a knife or a gun. I was afraid, but I kept still not wanting to give the man any satisfaction of knowing my fear. The man pulled out a knife as long as a keychain Swiss Army knife and as sharp as a butter knife.
Again FA told me to forget about it to ignore the man. The man and I "fought" by wrestling arms again. I was completely overpowered, but somehow I had managed to grab the knife an throw it away, into the empty movie seats.
The man and I now stood apart. The man made some threats about how he would really hurt me now. I was afraid, but I was still so mad that I knew I'd start fighting again. I also knew that if the man got the knife again, he'd kill me.
Dream #3
I sat in a bedroom with my mom. The bedroom served as a living room. Natural light came into the room and was very bright. The walls were harsh and bright. There was a buffet along one of the walls, and possibly a big pile of junk, possibly burying some shelves, along another wall. I and my mom sat on a bed against the wall across from the buffet. There were no sheets on the bed. There was probably a television blaring away on top of the buffet.
It was like I had been back in my hometown, on vacation. My mom was telling me something like she wasn't going to take me to the airport to go back home. I immediately got angry. I stood up and yelled at my mom about how she was destroying the trust i had for her and how I would never have the same kind of relationship with her ever again. I yelled that she absolutely had to take me to the XXXXX so I could go home. But my mom just kind of lounged on the bed (as if it were a couch) and watched the television. She looked like she couldn't care less about anything I said.
I now shouted at my mother, "I know you think I'm of no consequence, and that I've never done anything. I know you think I can't back up anything I ever say. But don't you know what I've just gotten done doing? I was a stock researcher on Wall Street! That was a pretty important job!"
My mom suddenly perked up. She said, "Is that what you've been doing? I've never understood that." She stood up and (somehow) told my brother and sister that she and the two of them needed to make up for the way they'd been treating me.
My mom now came into the room (as if she'd been gone) carrying a brown, paper grocery bag. My sister may have done the same. My mom now pulled out a couple of apples. She may have offered me the apples. But she also just set them on whatever little bits of shelf she could find under the piles of stuff along the wall.
Dream #4
I stood on a sidewalk on a bright, sunny day. The street was wide and busy. The sidewalk was also wide, but not very busy. On the other side of the sidewalk may have been a large (?) vacant lot bordered by a chain-link fence that was in bad shape, probably bent over, into the lot, at a forty-five-degree angle at one point. However, the vacant lot may also have been only a small, unkempt space on a small triangle island near the larger sidewalk. Either way, to my right there was also a subway entrance, which I may just have come up from.
I was on the phone (right ear?) with my girlfriend H. She was hesitant in talking to me, but then she finally burst out, saying that her father and everybody on her father's side of the family had just died. She was now terribly upset, crying and screaming.
I asked H if I could come over. I told her I'd be over as soon as possible. But I couldn't quite figure out where I was. I didn't know if I should get back on the train or just walk. I also didn't know if it would take me fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, or even longer for me to get to H's house.
Dream #1
I was in a car with my family. I'm not sure what seat I was in. It was daytime. We backed out from my great-grandmother's house, as if she had a driveway in front of her house (though I'm pretty sure that in the dream she did not), curving the back end of the car to my left and then driving away to my right.
My brother was making some complaint, possibly about how XXXXX (can't remember) was driving. But I saw that at the end of the block (would have been the south end of the block, not the north end) there was some large blockage of traffic, almost like a parade procession.
My brother now said something like, "That damn dog -- it always scares people like this." My brother meant that a dog was somehow scaring all the cars and blocking up the traffic. I might have seen a dog like a border collie running back and forth in the intersection.
Since that area was blocked, we decided to leave via the north end of the block. That end of the block was also crowded, this time with horse-drawn carriages. By this time, the car I was in may have disappeared. I and my family members walked along a cobble sidewalk (?) which may have been moderately busy with people. Some or all of the carriages were driven by dogs. The dogs seemed to have human personalities and would look over their shoulders at the crowd and possibly even wave to us.
My family (maybe just my mom, my great-grandmother, and I?) continued walking. We were now at the top of a stairway and plaza area like the stairway and plaza area for the Angel fountain in Central Park, except that it was slightly smaller and felt a little bit restricted, either by the streets of a small town's main street or by a bit of virgin or undeveloped land which was too precipitous or muddy (?) or tangled to be traversable.
The day was now very hot an bright. I thought it had been fun to walk like this, but now the weather was too uncomfortable. I seemed to be huddled together with my family, as if we were all looking over a map to decide our action.
We decided to walk down the stairs. We (now my mom, my sister, some of my nephews, and I?) entered a tan-painted cinder-block building like a park bathroom. The inside was also "like" the basement of a house. But really the interior was just a wide, open concrete space with a fountain in the center, and maybe a few sinks along the wall.
The fountain in the center was just a small, metallic fixture, like a shower head. It shot long, thick (half-inch?) streams of water which arced up maybe ten feet in the air and reached out almost to the walls of the interior. There were a stable, strong-looking father and his child playing in the fountain. The father was tan, with darkish, blonde hair. He may have been wearing a pale grey sweatshirt and pale blue jeans. His child was maybe eighteen months old, wormy-white.
My nephews and I played on the opposite side of the fountain from the father and his child. I played as if I were a child. At some point I closed my eyes and stuck my face right under one of the downward-arcing streams.
My mom now called from the doorway. I realized I had been acting silly and childish, as if I were trying to be a child of the many, or as if I were trying to attract the man sexually. Looking around, I also realized the man was now gone. I felt foolish. I walked out to meet my family, but possibly also to look for the man.
We may have walked up the set of stairs. The stairway and the level areas now looked different. They seemed more walled in. The walls also seemed to be bordered, on the opposite side, by stout-looking pine trees. The ground may have been covered with red bricks, which may have been the same as before.
Dream #2
I sat at a booth-table in a restaurant with my co-worker and friend FA. I was playing with plastic items like the non-Lego accessories (mainly little fences?) that would come with a Lego scene-kit. In particular I played with a plastic or putty disc (grey or brown?) around which had been wrapped a ring of (grey or brown) plastic "fence" or "train track."
FA and I spoke about some movie she and I had seen separately. She knew I'd have picked up on certain elements that she knew I'd know she'd like. She was now telling me about the elements, trying to be exact, as if she wanted to impress me. For some reason I couldn't help correcting her, with a brief interjection, in two instances.
For the first instance, I may even have felt a slight offense, as if I thought her inexactness showed she didn't really care, that she was actually just pretending. In the second instance she got the character's name wrong, just slightly, even though the character's name was FA's name exactly.
As I interjected FA's name, FA and I were suddenly in a "movie theater." The "theater" looked more like a nice cafe or restaurant, or even a living room, except with seven or eight one-aisle rows of (purple-fabric?) movie theater seats, and a black, curtained wall up front, with a small movie screen on it. The floors were wood. The walls were rustic, red-brick, like in a pizzeria. There were cheery, block-style flower paintings on the wall. Along the wall to my right was also a small, columnar chest or pedestal of dark, purplish varnished wood, with a slim vase of yellow (?) flowers on top.
FA and I sat in seats, maybe one seat apart from each other, as if we each had our stuff in the seats directly to our right (?). FA and I sat on the right side of the theater, just a couple seats in from the aisle -- there were maybe six or seven seats on each side.
A young man, maybe Hispanic, kind of wide-built, wearing a big, puffy, tannish coat, similarly colored denim pants, and a wool cap, walked in front of us. He first stood in front of me, his back to me, and plaed on his BlackBerry, as if he were going to stay there and play on his BlackBerry as long as he wanted, to test my patience. When the man saw I didn't seem to care, he kept moving along.
The man now stood in front of FA. He would step back, really trying to get into FA's space. At first FA and I just talked, as if it didn't annoy us. But then I finally got angry and told the man to get out of FA's face. The man just kept pretending like we didn't exist.
I stood up and tried to push or pull the man out of FA's space. I was in a weird position, as if I were one row behind the man and FA, and as if I were trying to grab him by reaching my arms backwards over my head. My body didn't seem to have any power, not even power to move with any speed.
I gave up on this method, and now, sitting near the aisle, in the row in front of FA and the man, probably sitting on one of the seat arms, with my left arm slung over the seat back, and again kind of looking backward to the two of them, I yelled at the man, "Get the hell away from FA!"
The man had taken off his hat. His hair was puffy, with medium curls. He had a round face but kind of lean-looking eyes. He gave a quick, loose-throated chuckle like a fit high school basketball player might give in place of talking trash when he knows he's good.
Again I tried (somehow) to force the guy away. FA said, "It's not worth it, Preemie."
The man and I now stood at the back wall, near a wooden chest, also dark and purplish colored. I was wildly angry, and I was trying to fight against the man, but once again I had no power in my arms at all. The man and I were wrestling with our arms.
I kept shouting threats at the man until they or one of them finally hit a nerve. The man said, "Oh, yeah? Well, how about this?" He reached into his left pocket. I knew he was going to pull out either a knife or a gun. I was afraid, but I kept still not wanting to give the man any satisfaction of knowing my fear. The man pulled out a knife as long as a keychain Swiss Army knife and as sharp as a butter knife.
Again FA told me to forget about it to ignore the man. The man and I "fought" by wrestling arms again. I was completely overpowered, but somehow I had managed to grab the knife an throw it away, into the empty movie seats.
The man and I now stood apart. The man made some threats about how he would really hurt me now. I was afraid, but I was still so mad that I knew I'd start fighting again. I also knew that if the man got the knife again, he'd kill me.
Dream #3
I sat in a bedroom with my mom. The bedroom served as a living room. Natural light came into the room and was very bright. The walls were harsh and bright. There was a buffet along one of the walls, and possibly a big pile of junk, possibly burying some shelves, along another wall. I and my mom sat on a bed against the wall across from the buffet. There were no sheets on the bed. There was probably a television blaring away on top of the buffet.
It was like I had been back in my hometown, on vacation. My mom was telling me something like she wasn't going to take me to the airport to go back home. I immediately got angry. I stood up and yelled at my mom about how she was destroying the trust i had for her and how I would never have the same kind of relationship with her ever again. I yelled that she absolutely had to take me to the XXXXX so I could go home. But my mom just kind of lounged on the bed (as if it were a couch) and watched the television. She looked like she couldn't care less about anything I said.
I now shouted at my mother, "I know you think I'm of no consequence, and that I've never done anything. I know you think I can't back up anything I ever say. But don't you know what I've just gotten done doing? I was a stock researcher on Wall Street! That was a pretty important job!"
My mom suddenly perked up. She said, "Is that what you've been doing? I've never understood that." She stood up and (somehow) told my brother and sister that she and the two of them needed to make up for the way they'd been treating me.
My mom now came into the room (as if she'd been gone) carrying a brown, paper grocery bag. My sister may have done the same. My mom now pulled out a couple of apples. She may have offered me the apples. But she also just set them on whatever little bits of shelf she could find under the piles of stuff along the wall.
Dream #4
I stood on a sidewalk on a bright, sunny day. The street was wide and busy. The sidewalk was also wide, but not very busy. On the other side of the sidewalk may have been a large (?) vacant lot bordered by a chain-link fence that was in bad shape, probably bent over, into the lot, at a forty-five-degree angle at one point. However, the vacant lot may also have been only a small, unkempt space on a small triangle island near the larger sidewalk. Either way, to my right there was also a subway entrance, which I may just have come up from.
I was on the phone (right ear?) with my girlfriend H. She was hesitant in talking to me, but then she finally burst out, saying that her father and everybody on her father's side of the family had just died. She was now terribly upset, crying and screaming.
I asked H if I could come over. I told her I'd be over as soon as possible. But I couldn't quite figure out where I was. I didn't know if I should get back on the train or just walk. I also didn't know if it would take me fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, or even longer for me to get to H's house.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
(5/1/09) detained after defending; naked at the florist jeweler's; greedy buffet
(Entered in paper journal at 8:08 AM at home.)
Dream #1
It was a sunny day. I was out on a small lawn, like a lawn between buildings on a college campus. The lawn was slightly rolling. I may actually have been standing on a wide, concrete walkway near the lawn. I may have stood before a small, wood-framed bulletin board.
Two young men stood down the lawn from me, menacing another young man. The two young men were tallish, heavy, thuggish, either black or dark-skinned Hispanic. The two young men held guns on the other young man, who was probably Hispanic, about normal sized, and a little dumb-looking.
The two men were yelling at the young man about a gun he'd had, as if he had personally and purposely gotten it to attack the two men. The young man kept saying it wasn't so, but he was too sheepish to explain his situation.
I remembered the situation (it may actually have been an earlier part of the dream). I yelled at the gunmen, "Leave him alone! He's right!" I told the gunmen how two other men had come along and forced the young man at gunpoint to take the gun.
The gunmen listened to me and let the young man go. But they now walked up to me and stood before me with their guns drawn. They told me they wanted to see my ID. Then they told me to put my hands in the air (or behind my head?). They then made me lie face down on the concrete walkway (or on an unfolded cardboard box that lay on the concrete?).
I may have handed the gunmen my ID while I stood, but now, as I lay down, I also handed the gunmen my ID. The gunmen, who had previously seemed to me like thugs, now, without any change to their dress seemed to me like police officers.
I thought about having guns pointed on me. I had always thought I'd be really afraid. But now, even though I felt like I could be killed at any moment, I also felt calm and composed. I did what I had to do for the men. I thought compliance would get me out of this situation more quickly.
We were now in some place like an airport or bus station hallway. The place was full of people. It had a concrete-grey and window-green atmosphere. I lay on the ground while one of the men (or maybe the two men were now only one man?) sat against a wall just beyond my feet. I had a bunch of things -- papers, backpacks, etc. -- all laid around me.
The man was now lighter skinned, maybe black, Hispanic, or Italian. He was dressed in ragged clothes, a big, black, puffy jacket, and a baseball cap, which he had tilted at a sloppy angle. He was reading a paper copy of my screenplay. He got to a really wordy metaphysical passage. He read about halfway through it, then laughed lightly to himself. He told me, "Okay, you can go now."
I pulled some of my stuff together, then stood up to leave. The man also stood up. We were both about to leave through a wide, sliding-glass door, like the automatic exit doors to the covered parking areas at Denver International Airport. But right before we exited, the man said, "Only, could you tell me where you did the research for your book?"
There was a cheapish looking, office-style desk before the door. On the desk was a white, cardboard box. I took something like a Rolodex card out of the box to write down the places where I'd done research for my screenplay.
But I found it difficult to explain. Everything in the screenplay, I thought, was a hybrid of different sources. And some of the more metaphysical passages, which may have been the man's chief area of concern, were largely based on things I'd picked up over the years, or through texts related only little, if at all, to the subject matter of my screenplay.
I then thought that the man was only trying to stall me or distract me. He had no intention of letting me go. He was just trying to buy time while he was thinking of a way to keep me.
Dream #2
I was naked, floating down a cobbled street, like in Tribeca, Manhattan, on a misty, grey day. I may have been in a "bad neighborhood," but all the buildings looked clean and freshly painted. The buildings were like taller than normal row-houses, with their entrances right off the sidewalk instead of elevated atop a stairway.
I saw the buildings to my left, as I floated along, down a slight slope. Some of the buildings to my left had shops in them. To my right, the road may have been wider than usual, with the right side of the street bearing the backs of tallish, wide, brick buildings, like small factory buildings or warehouses.
I noticed a couple women standing out in front of the shops. I hoped the women wouldn't see me flying around naked. To make things even more embarrassing, I had a huge erection. I tried hurriedly, floating past the buildings, to remember which one I was supposed to go into. I wanted to get inside as soon as possible. But none of the buildings looked familiar to me.
At some point I thought, elliptically, how the paint jobs on these buildings reminded me more of England than America.
I looked into some of the buildings. Inside, they looked like run-down, kind of scuzzy, apartments. I figured they looked like the kind of place where I was supposed to be, but that they weren't the actual, specific place. I got frustrated, suddenly thinking I had gone down the wrong block. But all the blocks looked so similar here, it was only natural that I'd make a mistake like this.
I was at the bottom of the block. The slope leveled off, and the road widened out, taking a circular shape, in which was an octagonal or circular building, quaint-looking, with large windows from about two and a half feet up to the roof of the building and red brick from two and a half feet down. The roof was black shingles, sloped up to a point or a weather vane.
As I floated past the building a black woman, young, in shape, with straight, brown-blonde hair, ran after me. She, too, may have been naked, or she may have been dressed in a business style pantsuit of purple material.
The woman yelled at me that my appearance had distracted her, that it had kept her from thinking of something very important to her job, which she had to go to right now. I felt like the woman was accusing me of sexual harassment. I didn't want to be seen as that kind of a person, so I turned to speak with the woman and try to clear up the issue.
But the woman had gone into her workplace, which was the quaint-looking building. I opened the door and looked inside, not wanting to come all the way in, since I was naked. The woman and another pretty, black woman stood behind a cash register. The place looked like a jeweler's and a florist's shop.
I tried to ask the woman how I had offended her, and I tried to say I really hadn't meant to cause any discomfort because of my appearance. But I wasn't saying that at all. Instead I was stutteringly asking confused questions about the nature of this shop.
The woman wasn't listening to me. She was visibly eager for me to leave. But the second woman was very kind. She kept inviting me in, though I kept saying I couldn't come in. She also kept telling me all sorts of things about the shop. She asked if that was what I'd had in mind when I'd asked my questions.
Dream #3
I walked into a large, dim room, like a convention room or a high school gym with little or none of its lights turned on. I had a big, green stick of bamboo, which I was eating.
I looked at a cross-section of the stick, as if my teeth had cleanly hacked the stick in a straight line. The inside was a tan circle, like a tree's wood, with three kidney-shaped cavities evenly distributed at the circle's edge. The cavities were filled with a speckled, yellowish substance which I may have called marrow. I licked this substance. It was sweet.
I thought, This is what the koalas eat bamboo (?! - not eucalyptus?) for -- the sweet marrow, not the leafs. I tried to pull the marrow out of the shoot so I could eat eat alone. I pulled a big chunk out by using my fingernail. The chunk was solid and had the consistency of a candy bar. It was vanilla yellow, with speckles in it like chopped nuts.
I nibbled the pieces. It was only mildly sweet. I was somewhat disappointed. But I suddenly felt worried. What if this marrow was actually poisonous to humans? I thought, It couldn't be poisonous: it tastes so good.
I imagined myself as a koala in the trees, eating bamboo.
Now there were other people in the room, maybe twenty or thirty people. But the people all huddled in one small part of the room, an entrance area which had a much lower ceiling and much tighter space, but which was actually lit (by incandescent light).
I walked over from where I was (it now seemed like a few rows of long, church-style pews) to be with the people. They looked like a church group. They were of varying ages, but all dressed nicely.
Everybody in the group held paper plates filled with food. They motioned for me to go get some food. I walked over to a kind of cluttered, smallish buffet table. There were serving trays filled with different kinds of food. But for some reason I felt like I had been "assigned" to one plate which already had food on it.
As I approached the plate a boy, maybe in his early teens, light-skinned, black, thin, with close-cut hair and wide eyeglasses, also approached the plate. The boy looked mild and gentle, but I could tell he was just waiting for a chance to annoy me.
I tried to start eating from my plate, but the boy now started reaching for anything I'd reach for. I now understood that the boy and I had been "assigned" to share this plate. But any time I'd reach for anything the boy would quickly grab it first. The only thing I could grab was something I didn't want: a bland, white fold of a corn or wheat flour tortilla. The boy may have been eating, but he was also occupied in piling at least some of the stuff he grabbed (eggs, cheese, bacon) all on top of each other in a little wedge-shaped area, which he protected closely.
I looked around and realized there was food in serving trays all around me.I didn't have to eat from this one plate. In fact, I now wondered why I had been so focused on just this one plate. I thought, I'll distract the boy. I'll make him so proud of his little pile of food that he doesn't pay attention to me while I go get food of my own.
The boy's pile of food now just looked like a warm, greasy wedge of eggs and cheese. I told the boy something like, "Wow, that's a lot of food. Are you really going to eat all of that? Have you started eating any of it yet?"
The boy made some comment about how he didn't really care about the food and how he really didn't want to talk to me, either.
Dream #1
It was a sunny day. I was out on a small lawn, like a lawn between buildings on a college campus. The lawn was slightly rolling. I may actually have been standing on a wide, concrete walkway near the lawn. I may have stood before a small, wood-framed bulletin board.
Two young men stood down the lawn from me, menacing another young man. The two young men were tallish, heavy, thuggish, either black or dark-skinned Hispanic. The two young men held guns on the other young man, who was probably Hispanic, about normal sized, and a little dumb-looking.
The two men were yelling at the young man about a gun he'd had, as if he had personally and purposely gotten it to attack the two men. The young man kept saying it wasn't so, but he was too sheepish to explain his situation.
I remembered the situation (it may actually have been an earlier part of the dream). I yelled at the gunmen, "Leave him alone! He's right!" I told the gunmen how two other men had come along and forced the young man at gunpoint to take the gun.
The gunmen listened to me and let the young man go. But they now walked up to me and stood before me with their guns drawn. They told me they wanted to see my ID. Then they told me to put my hands in the air (or behind my head?). They then made me lie face down on the concrete walkway (or on an unfolded cardboard box that lay on the concrete?).
I may have handed the gunmen my ID while I stood, but now, as I lay down, I also handed the gunmen my ID. The gunmen, who had previously seemed to me like thugs, now, without any change to their dress seemed to me like police officers.
I thought about having guns pointed on me. I had always thought I'd be really afraid. But now, even though I felt like I could be killed at any moment, I also felt calm and composed. I did what I had to do for the men. I thought compliance would get me out of this situation more quickly.
We were now in some place like an airport or bus station hallway. The place was full of people. It had a concrete-grey and window-green atmosphere. I lay on the ground while one of the men (or maybe the two men were now only one man?) sat against a wall just beyond my feet. I had a bunch of things -- papers, backpacks, etc. -- all laid around me.
The man was now lighter skinned, maybe black, Hispanic, or Italian. He was dressed in ragged clothes, a big, black, puffy jacket, and a baseball cap, which he had tilted at a sloppy angle. He was reading a paper copy of my screenplay. He got to a really wordy metaphysical passage. He read about halfway through it, then laughed lightly to himself. He told me, "Okay, you can go now."
I pulled some of my stuff together, then stood up to leave. The man also stood up. We were both about to leave through a wide, sliding-glass door, like the automatic exit doors to the covered parking areas at Denver International Airport. But right before we exited, the man said, "Only, could you tell me where you did the research for your book?"
There was a cheapish looking, office-style desk before the door. On the desk was a white, cardboard box. I took something like a Rolodex card out of the box to write down the places where I'd done research for my screenplay.
But I found it difficult to explain. Everything in the screenplay, I thought, was a hybrid of different sources. And some of the more metaphysical passages, which may have been the man's chief area of concern, were largely based on things I'd picked up over the years, or through texts related only little, if at all, to the subject matter of my screenplay.
I then thought that the man was only trying to stall me or distract me. He had no intention of letting me go. He was just trying to buy time while he was thinking of a way to keep me.
Dream #2
I was naked, floating down a cobbled street, like in Tribeca, Manhattan, on a misty, grey day. I may have been in a "bad neighborhood," but all the buildings looked clean and freshly painted. The buildings were like taller than normal row-houses, with their entrances right off the sidewalk instead of elevated atop a stairway.
I saw the buildings to my left, as I floated along, down a slight slope. Some of the buildings to my left had shops in them. To my right, the road may have been wider than usual, with the right side of the street bearing the backs of tallish, wide, brick buildings, like small factory buildings or warehouses.
I noticed a couple women standing out in front of the shops. I hoped the women wouldn't see me flying around naked. To make things even more embarrassing, I had a huge erection. I tried hurriedly, floating past the buildings, to remember which one I was supposed to go into. I wanted to get inside as soon as possible. But none of the buildings looked familiar to me.
At some point I thought, elliptically, how the paint jobs on these buildings reminded me more of England than America.
I looked into some of the buildings. Inside, they looked like run-down, kind of scuzzy, apartments. I figured they looked like the kind of place where I was supposed to be, but that they weren't the actual, specific place. I got frustrated, suddenly thinking I had gone down the wrong block. But all the blocks looked so similar here, it was only natural that I'd make a mistake like this.
I was at the bottom of the block. The slope leveled off, and the road widened out, taking a circular shape, in which was an octagonal or circular building, quaint-looking, with large windows from about two and a half feet up to the roof of the building and red brick from two and a half feet down. The roof was black shingles, sloped up to a point or a weather vane.
As I floated past the building a black woman, young, in shape, with straight, brown-blonde hair, ran after me. She, too, may have been naked, or she may have been dressed in a business style pantsuit of purple material.
The woman yelled at me that my appearance had distracted her, that it had kept her from thinking of something very important to her job, which she had to go to right now. I felt like the woman was accusing me of sexual harassment. I didn't want to be seen as that kind of a person, so I turned to speak with the woman and try to clear up the issue.
But the woman had gone into her workplace, which was the quaint-looking building. I opened the door and looked inside, not wanting to come all the way in, since I was naked. The woman and another pretty, black woman stood behind a cash register. The place looked like a jeweler's and a florist's shop.
I tried to ask the woman how I had offended her, and I tried to say I really hadn't meant to cause any discomfort because of my appearance. But I wasn't saying that at all. Instead I was stutteringly asking confused questions about the nature of this shop.
The woman wasn't listening to me. She was visibly eager for me to leave. But the second woman was very kind. She kept inviting me in, though I kept saying I couldn't come in. She also kept telling me all sorts of things about the shop. She asked if that was what I'd had in mind when I'd asked my questions.
Dream #3
I walked into a large, dim room, like a convention room or a high school gym with little or none of its lights turned on. I had a big, green stick of bamboo, which I was eating.
I looked at a cross-section of the stick, as if my teeth had cleanly hacked the stick in a straight line. The inside was a tan circle, like a tree's wood, with three kidney-shaped cavities evenly distributed at the circle's edge. The cavities were filled with a speckled, yellowish substance which I may have called marrow. I licked this substance. It was sweet.
I thought, This is what the koalas eat bamboo (?! - not eucalyptus?) for -- the sweet marrow, not the leafs. I tried to pull the marrow out of the shoot so I could eat eat alone. I pulled a big chunk out by using my fingernail. The chunk was solid and had the consistency of a candy bar. It was vanilla yellow, with speckles in it like chopped nuts.
I nibbled the pieces. It was only mildly sweet. I was somewhat disappointed. But I suddenly felt worried. What if this marrow was actually poisonous to humans? I thought, It couldn't be poisonous: it tastes so good.
I imagined myself as a koala in the trees, eating bamboo.
Now there were other people in the room, maybe twenty or thirty people. But the people all huddled in one small part of the room, an entrance area which had a much lower ceiling and much tighter space, but which was actually lit (by incandescent light).
I walked over from where I was (it now seemed like a few rows of long, church-style pews) to be with the people. They looked like a church group. They were of varying ages, but all dressed nicely.
Everybody in the group held paper plates filled with food. They motioned for me to go get some food. I walked over to a kind of cluttered, smallish buffet table. There were serving trays filled with different kinds of food. But for some reason I felt like I had been "assigned" to one plate which already had food on it.
As I approached the plate a boy, maybe in his early teens, light-skinned, black, thin, with close-cut hair and wide eyeglasses, also approached the plate. The boy looked mild and gentle, but I could tell he was just waiting for a chance to annoy me.
I tried to start eating from my plate, but the boy now started reaching for anything I'd reach for. I now understood that the boy and I had been "assigned" to share this plate. But any time I'd reach for anything the boy would quickly grab it first. The only thing I could grab was something I didn't want: a bland, white fold of a corn or wheat flour tortilla. The boy may have been eating, but he was also occupied in piling at least some of the stuff he grabbed (eggs, cheese, bacon) all on top of each other in a little wedge-shaped area, which he protected closely.
I looked around and realized there was food in serving trays all around me.I didn't have to eat from this one plate. In fact, I now wondered why I had been so focused on just this one plate. I thought, I'll distract the boy. I'll make him so proud of his little pile of food that he doesn't pay attention to me while I go get food of my own.
The boy's pile of food now just looked like a warm, greasy wedge of eggs and cheese. I told the boy something like, "Wow, that's a lot of food. Are you really going to eat all of that? Have you started eating any of it yet?"
The boy made some comment about how he didn't really care about the food and how he really didn't want to talk to me, either.
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