(9/6/05) late for class at the club

(Entered in paper journal at 6:25 AM at my friend R's house in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a place like a gym that had been converted into a "dance club." the long sides were sectioned with white curtains and the center had white, tall, long tables going down it.

I had come with some friends, maybe from my NYC Americorps program. They walked away, possibly to go get into a fight. I stood in one of the divisions made by the white sheets.

I heard trouble. I wanted to check it out, but I had some misgivings about my friends seeing me and knowing I had come to a dance like this (even though they had just brought me).

Now some Asian girl walked into my section. My friends walked past, but they stopped at some table and yelled at two black men had just been kissing. My friends yelled at them, "Why are you gay?" or "Why didn't you tell us you were gay?" Then they walked off.

There were a lot of people at the dance now. The light was a fleshy red-orange, dim.

I wanted to have sex with the Asian woman, though she looked slightly pudgy and incredibly nerdy. But now she was a Russian boy, maybe twenty-five years old.

We stood in some moonlit cul-de-sac by the dance room. The boy said he was going out to party with everybody. I told him I wasn't coming. I had had a drink or tow and I could feel the weird thoughts coming on.

The cul-de-sac now had the red-orange color of the dance room, the walls like sheets billowing and, where a window was, a curtain or blanket of incredibly soft translucence and texture and thickness.

I told the Russian guy, "Go on. I want to contemplate the colors as they change."

Now I was in a long room like a small lunch room with very low ceilings, bright but soft fluorescent light, lunch tables on the left side.

I was at a lunch table at first. I was drunk, or at least I was tired from staying up all night. I had a 12-inch or 18-inch glass pane that had words on it. The pane was a sign I'd created for a class.

The words were maybe paint, but they looked like chalk. Some of them were flaking and disintegrating into powder. The lettering was a spaced, slender, Art Deco-style, trim lettering. The biggest words were "SUSAN SONTAG" at the top. Then two phrases, two lines each, interposed each other in a confusing way below them. Just above "SUSAN SONTAG" were two words, in smaller lettering than anything else on the sign.

Nobody, I felt, had wanted to talk to me all night, though a couple people would walk over to me after I had left the tables to sit on the floor on the right side.

At some point I realized I was late for class. I ran outside. I was on some campus lawn. There were trees everywhere. The leafs were falling, tan. It was a sunny morning. I ran past a parking meter with a digital clock. The clock read "8:44." I was already late.

(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.

(12/4/05) road rage; flying is faster

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at some Starbucks.)

Dream 1

There were two cars at a suburban intersection. The front one was to the left of the back one. The front car was very vague, but junky. The back car was very nice, like a mint condition Dodge Duster painted black with a thick, white stripe going down the center of the top of the car. There was a man in the front car and a woman in the back car.

A woman stood by the passenger side, front door of the front car. She was looking at the back car. A license plate was lying on the woman thought the license plate belonged to the back car. A lot of wire looped around and frayed from holes on the left and right of the license plate. The woman thought it was a good sign that the plate had fallen off the back car.

On each side of the car were posts bars in right angles with slopes of bunched wire rounding the inside corners.

Somehow the front woman communicated with the back woman. The back woman had no idea where the license plate came from. She was also annoyed that she couldn't get through this intersection.

The front woman (who was now also me somehow) opened the door to the front car so she could get in. She knew before the back woman even began revving her engine angrily that the back woman would be annoyed that the woman didn't just step aside and let her through instead of opening the door and blocking the way even longer for the back woman. But part of the reason the woman did it was to prove that the back woman couldn't tell her what to do all the time. But now the back woman was revving the engine so fiercely that I/the woman got afraid and closed the door and stood beside the front car.

I was also partly the man in the front car, and I felt ashamed for not defending my female friend, who might also have been my daughter. The back car throttled forward now and screamed around the corner clockwise, stopping after turning the next corner.

We could see it. It just stopped there at the edge of a vacant lot and sat there. But I think both of us/them/I were afraid even to move because we didn't want the thing to start revving and screaming any more.

Dream 2

It was a sunny  day. I walked with a male and female who were older business people, who were my bosses. I was short like a child. We walked in a suburban area full of vacant lots, but it felt like the city was here or just a couple steps away all the time.

My bosses were mad at me because I took them on a walk that was longer than I'd thought it would be. My bosses were now late to and hurried for a meeting.

I tried to make them happier by walking faster, but they were still mad. So I grabbed their hands, and we all walked up into the air. Once we got about fifty feet up in the air, we moved a lot faster and cut corners and blocks. But neither of my bosses quite new they were flying. I decided it was better to let them think what they wanted to think.

Now it was just the woman and I. We flew over some nineteenth century London-style buildings and into a dumpy yard made by the hind ends of some dirty buildings. We were going to meet the man there.

I told the woman, "Now you'll see how much faster my flying was, and you'll be less disappointed in me."

But as soon as we landed, the woman, who was now my boss PG, forgot that we had been flying. The man (now George Bluth from the TV show Arrested Development) walked out in an undershirt. He, too, forgot that we had flown. I tried to prove it.

I said, "Look at the time. Now, when did we leave XXXXX? It's not too long after that, is it? And we even had a meal at XXXXX." (Some restaurant.) "Doesn't that mean something to you? How fast we got here?"

I couldn't say anything more. I didn't want directly to tell the man and woman that they had flown. I did want to show them I did get them here soon enough to show up for their meeting. But they were both, the male more so -- the woman was kind of dissolving -- sullen, and now they didn't want to go to the meeting. Neither of them even believed we had gone to a meal.

I said, "I'll show you." We held a meeting. There were rows of tables before a television.

The people were now kids. But the "meeting" was now on a television.

The male stood up and said, "Where was I at XXXXX time?"

A little girl stood up and said, "You were having breakfast at XXXXX."

The male was very disappointed. He cried, even, and said, "I've been wrong. I'm sorry. I should have believed you had things under control."

(1/6/06) good but not incredible

(Entered in paper journal at 7:11 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and 7th Avenue.)

Dream 1

I was supposed to meet my old boss PG, with a few other ladies, for breakfast. But I think I was late. I stood in a sunny park, on a cement path going up a slight but big hill. I was almost at the top.

Now I saw PG and her coworkers/friends coming. I stood by a bench. PG came up first and handed me a bag of "gifts," like I was leaving. She made comments about how I was a good worker but also how I wasn't incredible because I always let small stuff slide, such as being on time for this breakfast. Now I wasn't invited to the breakfast because I had been late for it.

I looked in the bag. There may have been a bag of potato chips. The biggest item was a can of paint with a wooden cap rounded like a polished gem and with three stripes of darkish mint-green paint. I wondered why I'd get a can of paint -- it seemed to reflect too bluntly (for a gift, anyway) the faults PG had pointed out in me. Plus, I didn't want this color on the walls of any place I moved to.

(11/1/06) one of the most beautiful of all places; lying to prove innocence; moldy feet; clean dirty face

(Entered in paper journal at 5:34 PM on Q-train from 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan to Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in an airport. I was supposed to pick up luggage which my maternal grandfather had sent. I would send the luggage to him so he could go on a flight. The pickup room was wide, small, grey, with grey carpet and full of folding tables. It was busy, but I didn't have to stand in line.

The worker (behind a folding table) gave me three bags. He said, "So I see your grandfather is going to XXXXX." (Czechoslovakia? The Czech Republic?)

I was surprised by this. I said, "It couldn't be."

I looked at the tags on my grandpa's luggage. Each tag named a place my grandpa had been approved to go to. One piece had a tag saying Russia. Another had a tag saying Prague. The one in the middle had a tag saying, "One of the most beautiful of all places." I was happy that my grandpa got to go there. I also thought when I saw the Prague sticker, Well, there you are -- XXXXX (the Czech Republic?) after all.

The worker told me, "It seems like you waited too long for this -- look at the dates."

One of the tags had my grandpa approved for travel for November 22nd. I realized that it wa November 23rd or that I wouldn't be able to get the bag to my grandpa until November 23rd.

I was in a large area or hallway full of restaurant tables. A wide window showed a few airplanes. I fell backwards, possibly over a seat, full of grief that I had missed the shipment date for my grandpa's luggage. I thought, There still has to be a way he can go.

Dream 2

Somebody at work had done something bad. The only or the key way to prove it was by using my acquaintance with my co-worker AB as evidence. So AB and I had to act like we didn't know each other.

We were in a big, empty room like a classroom, with hard, concrete floors and a bleachers-style stepping up of concrete towards the back wall. I sat on the steps.

Our department director JS walked in to investigate. AB came up and introduced herself to me as if we had met for the first time. When she did this, JS was satisfied. She walked out, excusing whatever bad thing had been done.

Dream 3

I got out of the show and saw my ankles were covered in a dark, dull, pine-green mold. I couldn't believe it. I looked again. A lot of places on my feet were patched with quarter-sized spots of this mold. I wondered how I could let myself get so dirty.

Dream 4

I sat on a weird, tall couch with my co-worker FA. I was flirting with her. She was going to let me seduce her. But when I looked at her again, her face was somehow very dirty -- it was like she had acne, but the acne wasn't really there. Her face wasn't dirty -- but it was.

(10/30/07) kidney-shaped table; thursday party; disgruntled clown

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was a grey-blue day. I walked along a city street, like out on a waterfront, or, rather, beside a wide street under an overpass, with a group of friends, one of whom was AT, one of the Directors of my department. AT spoke on a cell phone with one of my co-workers, either about his having advertised that he was quitting his job or else about his having advertised unseemly views about the company.

We walked up a staircase to our right and into a brick row-house. AT was concluding her call as she walked into the house. The house had an empty feel to it. It was dim. I sat at a dining table that backed (on my left) against a weirdly shaped wall of oddly set doorways. There were probably blankets all over the floors. The table itself may have had a weird, kidney-like shape.

AT was down the hallway (behind me). A few people filtered into the room. Among them was my co-worker DE, with whom AT had been on the phone.

DE was mad at me. He had been blamed for AT's anger, claiming that I'd told AT that he had been advertising something against the company. I tried to remember what I had said. It had been on the walk outside. I thought it had been harmless. But now I realized it wasn't. I still tried to convince myself I had said something harmless.

Dream #2

I got done at some social event like a cocktail party for a friend. The whole thing seemed to have been held on a stage, the surface of which looked like a model's runway. I stepped down from it, into an area (like an orchestra pit?) full of technical equipment like hospital equipment or sound equipment. The whole room now seemed like a somewhat large sound-stage.

I stood in front of my old boss and mentor EB and his wife GB. EB and GB sat on tall swivel chairs, like for a breakfast bar. Both EB and BG looked really healthy and happy. They asked me if I was coming to their party on Thursday. I hesitated. I saw, though, that GB had picked up on and disapproved of my hesitation. So I caught myself and said, "Ah... Thursday? Yeah, that sounds good."

Dream #3

I walked, possibly with a group of friends/co-workers, on a desert road on the outskirts of the suburbs. It was a warm, gold and blue day. I had reached some point along the walk and realized it was a long way to walk to my destination and that I might not get there on time.

I was now in a car with a group of friends/co-workers. We drove to a restaurant. We finished eating and headed back outside. As we left the restaurant the interior appeared grey, crowded, and steamy. Even the windows seemed clouded up with steam.

Outside, the area was like a filling station. Everybody else had gone back to the car. I told them I would walk. I probably wasn't in a hurry "now that we had made our meeting."

I walked up a street, 39th Street, which might have been the street from which it was a long distance to the meeting. The intersection I turned right on had a very deserty feel. But now I walked down a street which, on my side, the right side, anyway, was just a long, long suburban street.

I walked past a two-story house of maroon-painted brick with a row of tan-painted brick separating the two floors. As I gazed at the building, a man's shout startled me. I saw, up in the distance, a man walking my way. I tried not to act upset or startled.

I now walked in the shade of a row of very short houses. The man approached me. He looked clownish -- fattish, dumpy, with long tufts of bushy hair on either side of his head. He wore baggy, roundish, hobo-style clothes, a bowler hat, and possibly a beer-drinking hat. There were some bright colors on him somewhere.

The man was going on and on, as if he were ranting at someone on a cell phone. He said, "I told them, Hey! You aren't gonna fire me. You aren't gonna do that to me!"

We crossed paths. But then the man turned and followed me from a distance, continuing to act like he was speaking on a cell phone but now also implicating me in his conversation.