(5/12/05) the cheap goodbye; cosmopolitan nation

(Entered in paper journal at 5:52 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was "watching" a movie that I think probably stood for That Obscure Object of Desire. I was also "in" the movie. The scene was some Spanish-style cafe, with the lights dimmed and a woman under a spotlight in a smoky corner of the seating area (not the

corner of the room) doing some Flamenco-style dance in a shimmery, green or elegant, white dress.

I thought, When she's finished, then comes the part where all the girls in peach and pink and red dresses come out and do the much more sexualized dance that makes XXXXX angry and breaks his heart. I can't bear that part. I'd rather keep watching this scene.

But the dance finished. The woman stood in a pose as a thin, shimmery, golden strip of curtain cheaply rolled down from the low ceiling in spurts and interrupted rolls, concealing blocks of the dancer's body one body at a time.

Dream 2

I walked through a Walgreen's. I don't remember why I was there, but I was waiting for someone to leave or stop paying attention to me so I could do whatever I was there for without being watched.

I grabbed a small jar of peanuts that was priced at $1.89. I thought that was a little expensive, but not too expensive for a once in a while thing.

I saw two workers, both black women. I slipped between aisles to be inconspicuous. But they noticed me and talked pretty loudly about me, basically to me, even though it was in the third person, about how I'd never escape their notice.

I walked up an aisle, thinking I'd turn right and go to the beauty section (?) to read surreptitiously the new copy of Cosmopolitan. But when I saw some man at the magazine stand at the end of this aisle I knew there was also a man by the magazine rack at the beauty section. So I stood here to wait for them to leave.

I saw a copy of The Nation. It actually looked like a glossy fashion mag. But on the cover was an old, classy photo of Bob Hope, all surrounded by white background, the title and blurbs in soft, baby blue lettering.

One of the blurbs said, "Harlem, Herbal Center of the United States." I didn't know how that could be. I grabbed the magazine to read it. But I felt two people looking at me again.

(12/3/05) microwave smoke; the living wine containers

(Entered in paper journal at 9:25 AM at Starbucks on 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a small apartment with a bunch of "coworkers." We were "preparing" some holiday meal. I was in a bedroom/office with my boss, a pretty, blonde woman. We were looking for a place to put some food, maybe turkey, which was in tall, plastic containers.

I walked out into the living room. Some girls skittered back and forth, having fun. I couldn't tell if they knew we were preparing, they were having so much fun. I decided not to tell them, to keep the preparation secret if they didn't already know, to make them look silly when I was prepared and they weren't.

I looked in a bookcase for space to put the food into. Then I opened the microwave. Something had been burnt in there. The smell penetrated the room.

All the girls started laughing at me like I had made the smell. My boss came out and was going to tell the girls that the smell was actually lingering from when one of them put something into the microwave. But instead she pulled me aside and made some gesture of our secret friendship. Then she spoke more about finding a spot for the food.

Dream 2

My friend R and I were preparing a meal, or, rather, R was making the meal, and I was getting wine for him. The wine was in the building where I worked, but it was also in the building where he worked, as if the buildings were separate and together, or -- as if my building was also his building, even though his building was actually somewhere else.

On the way to the building I looked at some other building. Somehow I felt my sight was being seen by R and that if he saw me seeing the building I worked in, he would go to my work every day and try to ruin my life.

I had to look at some building, though. So I looked at a small, grey-painted, brownstone-like building. But I thought, How could R think worked in that building? It doesn't even look like offices could fit in there. But I looked "closer" (like I flew up a couple flights or was now walking on a bridge a couple flights tall) and I saw lights extending deeply inward from the windows, like the building was a tunnel of offices. I was satisfied with the building.

Now I was inside "my" building. I had to go down into the basement, into a place like a preschool or after-school or daycare center. The wine was brewing in a huge pot there. I was to bring two containers home with me.

As I walked down the steps, the containers, which (now) I had been carrying with me "all along" were getting very awkward. Both were clear glass. One was a wine bottle shape. The other was an octagonal shape.

They both felt like they were getting heavier, and they would slip almost out of my hands, as if they had a will of their own. I was stumbling and slipping all the way down the stairs, just trying to control the bottles.

When I got down to the basement and fumbled the door open, I got angry -- I could see R's office just down the way. R asked me to do this and made it seem like there was no way he could do it. But he was right down there, just down the hallway -- I could almost see him sitting in his office. I could see the corner of his desk. He had told me to call him when I got the wine and then to carry the wine home and he'd meet me there, too, like I wasn't even allowed to meet him in this building.

I saw a Crock-Pot, like two Crock-Pots, one stacked upside-down on the other. Whatever was inside was burning and making a smell. The outside of the Crock-Pots were caked over with whatever was inside the pot and had exploded out a bit. I couldn't believe that was the wine.

But now I looked to my right and saw a machine like an eight-foot-tall, all-plastic automatic mixer and mixing bowl, except that instead of mixers coming out o fthe part hanging over the bowl, there was a "blower" shooting a stream of wine into the bowl (which was maybe three feet deep). The bowl was yellow. The rest was white.

I felt like the wine was sweet, almost like Kool-Aid.

In front of the wine-maker was a wooden table. I tried to sit the bottles on the table, but they kept moving off, once again as if by their own will. Eventually the wine bottle-shaped container dissolved from my consciousness. The other container became a small, pail-shaped, plastic container. It crept along the table and fell to my feet defiantly.

But then I realized the wind was actually causing all this movement. I sat the container much closer in toward the center of the table. The container stopped moving.

I had to get the wine into the container(s). I thought I would just dip the containers into the huge bowl. But I think I thought that was too messy.

I lost track of things. I was now looking around the room, trying to figure out what kind of school took place here. A TV was playing. At first it was like whatever was on the TV was a program for the school.

I looked out a window, in front of which was a bookshelf decorated with paper letters that looked like colorful refrigerator magnet letters. I was up, I saw, on the fifth or maybe even the tenth floor of this building.

The TV said, "If you need help, please call ER at extention 6622." (ER was one of my senior coworkers, another VP-level analyst in the department, like my bosses were.)

In a square on the screen was an image of a man lounging at a desk and talking on the phone. Now in another corner another square popped up with another person, and his phone extension. Once again I worried. I thought, I have to stop seeing all this. R's watching everything I see.

The squares on the TV started showing ads for a movie about a woman I really liked. It looked like the movie Barabarella, starring Jane Fonda, but it was "about" some dignified, Victorian society.

(1/26/06) chicken-leg wicker spaceships; murr-duhh

(Entered in dream journal at 6:01 PM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was outside with my family. We all launched off occasionally in spaceships. Something had happened in one of  my launches -- I had been afraid of the speed or height of my trip. I was now afraid to get on the spaceship again. So I let my sister go out on the trip instead of me. But I think I knew that sooner or later I'd have to go out on the trip. I think the accident may have been that my spaceship (or somebody's spaceship) had disintegrated.

There was some kind of different spaceship, though. It looked like a wicker basket. It was like you wrapped your body in yellow/pea-green cloths and got into the wicker basket (which was much smaller than an adult human body) and put a wicker lid on top of the basket. This ship may have been much, much safer. But I was still afraid.

People may, meanwhile, have been taking spaceships nearby (probably the "regular" kind -- which were still like small capsules, except a little bigger and made of "spaceship material"). I'm pretty sure nobody in my family was flying, though.

I "saw" the ship. You had to fly with your legs sticking out through holes in the front of the ship. The legs I saw were "chicken legs." I thought, The legs would get burnt off that way. But then I realized the legs, my legs, were "chicken legs" and could not get burnt off because they were so solid.

Then I saw a skinny, tall, black man in reflective sunglasses that reflected the desert floor and sky. The man grinned gloatingly at me. He had been on a ship and gotten burnt to death, probably. It was like now he wanted other people to die, like he actually tried to make them die. But for some reason I think I knew that because he had died I was safe.

Now I knew I would almost certainly be safe if I rode a spaceship. But I still couldn't move. Worst of all, I'm pretty sure I was still thinking of letting my sister instead of me take what I was still afraid was an unsafe ride.

Dream 2

I was in a big bus like a tour bus for a rock band. I was trying to get some place like a job. A few people were in the bus with me -- possibly my family. I sat at a couch in the back. The windows on the bus were huge and tinted, bluish.

Two black kids, one with a red cap and sunglasses, walked around the back end of the bus somehow.

I hoped they couldn't see me behind the tinted glass of the bus windows. But the kid in the cap and sunglasses saw me. He stopped (on the left side of the bus?) can't be sure), turned slowly, glared in, and said, audibly as if he were right in the bus, "Murr-duhh." He smiled smugly with teeth that may have been capped in gold or silver.

(9/23/06) contact graveyard; task for boss; smashed up blinds; killers in my car; tarot girls

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I made a drop-down menu of names on a weird contact list computer program. One of my boss BS's contacts didn't want to be on the list anymore. But I had to create the drop-down list and put her on it to take her off. The background behind the menu looked like a graveyard drawn in oil pastels. I was confused whether the contact wanted to be on or off the list.

Dream 2

I had to perform a task for my boss EB.

Dream 3

I had just moved into a good-sized, nice apartment in a suburban-feeling area. The apartment was on the ground floor. I sat on the back porch, reading something. I figured I would come inside for some reason. I would read in the living room.

I closed all the blinds, not wanting to be seen by anybody in the complex (kind of townhome style, with a winding road through it and lawns before the apartments). I knew if the people saw me, they'd cause trouble.

But somehow some kids got close to my windows. They smashed up my blinds -- or they actually didn't, but their presence did. I started talking with the kids. Apparently they were nice. They faded out.

I was by a side window, boarding it up and putting a blanket over it to keep people from seeing me. I was talking (in my head) to someone, a friend. I thought perhaps I should unlock my window so I could see my friend. But I became absorbed by the sliding configuration of the white boards I had used to block my window.

Dream 4

I walked down a suburban street, in the road, on the right hand side. I was walking past nice houses, but they were also like the backs of apartments or business buildings, with short staircases leading up to heavy, dull-painted doors.

Two Mexican kids (one of whom I never saw and who eventually faded out of existence (?)) were following me, annoying me. I tried to pretend they didn't bother me. They would run up to the doors, pound on them, and scream. The one kid I saw would beat on the door with a red balloon. Then he would charge at me, bouncing the red balloon in my face and growling.

I turned the block to see an incongruous, stately building made of stone, in a very classic style, i.e.

except somehow very smooth and seamless. It didn't fit in with this semi-upper-class, suburban neighborhood.

The kid with the red balloon was nicer to me, hugging me and talking.

In the distance I saw a hill with a lot of buildings. I thought to a block there with some nice restaurant. But I couldn't figure how I would get there.

I was in a big house. There were windows all around, showing a mountainous scene under a greyish sky with maybe a little snow. Some other houses were here and there.

There was a road. Two teenage Mexican guys were taunting me and trying to break into my house. But I did something that got them to leave.

I knew the cops were now following the Mexican guys. I knew the Mexican guys were mad at my mom and were going to kill her. They had gone to her house before coming to mine. But she had sent the police to follow them. The police, coincidentally, caught up with them after they had come to attack me.

I was in front of my mom's house as the guys pulled up -- both in the backseat. They had come to do a drive-by shooting on my mom's house. But I ran to the car (a dull gold, 1980s-style car) before they could do anything.

I challenged the guys to a fight. They wouldn't get out of the car, so I jumped in through the back passenger side window. The guy on the left pulled out a beautifully polished, silver "switchblade" that reminded me of a curling iron or a comb (though now it obviously seems like a shaving razor with no blade, only a hinged, silver casing).

I put my neck right where the black should have been, wondering why it wasn't sharp. I wanted to take a cut to prove I wasn't afraid and then fight back.

My mom was driving the car. I sat on the driver's side, beside the two guys. We drove through a nice, mountainous area. We were all laughing.

I told the guys, "I like you both. But sometimes you, you in particular," (to the one to my right) "can be assholes." The one to my right was sweating. We all laughed. I was a woman for a second, making flirtatious glances to my right and left.

My mom sat in the front passenger seat. A blank "chauffeur" drove. The two people beside me were a man and a woman, both naked. They said, "Well, we'd better be going now. We'll see you later." They pulled up a blanket over themselves to go do sleep.

But the woman, who sat next to me, first making sure the jealous man was asleep, turned to me and hugged me warmly, saying, "I'm glad you visited. It's always nice when you make us laugh and make us feel special."

Dream 5

Two women sat at a table, battling with something like tarot cards. One woman put down a card of a brown, orange, and gold landscape and said to the other woman, "Do you have anything to match that?"

(10/10/06) museum & backpack; dropping my dream journal

(Entered in paper journal at 12:20 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was waiting for some kind of solar planetarium show to begin. I stood in a big lobby -- glass walls, grey day -- chocolate/maroon bricks. I saw there was a lot of time before the show. I would eat at a McDonald's and then walk through the museum.

I walked into a room that somehow resembled a huge sauna. In one corner, very far left (i.e. 10 PM on the direction clock) I saw a bearded fellow who was "Stephen King." I looked again at my cell phone watch. I had less time than I had thought. I would only eat/walk through the museum and would save walking/eating for after the show.

The lobby had been crowded before. Now it was somewhat empty. I walked up the staircase and into other parts of the building, then across a bridge to the other building. I barely saw most of it. It was darker inside -- something like a space exploration section of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

Before I headed in I realized I had left my backpack with security in the first building. A security woman by the door told me not to worry -- that bags were transferred to this building once visitors switched over to it.

Dream 2

I came to a wide complex of staircases before a building. It turned into something like the seating area in an auditorium.

A lot of black people milled around, looking mischievous. I waited until some of them sat down. One guy in particular sat in a couch-like structure and sucked on a 32-ounce cola. By him was a downward staircase.

I tried to stay unseen or unnoticed. I got to the staircase and fumbled my dream journal. It fell down the steps -- where I was going anyway. So I didn't do anything odd to pick it up. but on the lower floor I kicked it along, and it accidentally fell down the next staircase as a group of mean black kids was watching. (It was much darker in this level -- a lot of cold steel.) I was going down, anyway. So I didn't worry.

Down on the lowest level, which was very dark, there were interesting undulations in the floor. At the bottom of the staircase a woman was crowding the way. I gently brushed past her but felt guilty for doing so. I saw my dream journal and tried to kick it to a point where the woman would not see me lifting it up.