(10/27/07) slot-machine street views; innocent brownies; caligari's alien; weeding the museum garden

(Entered in paper journal at 9:46 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was at my office. I answered the phone. Even while I was trying to take a message, my boss BS, sitting to my right, on the edge of my desk, was making loud comments, trying to make me do something. I hung up the phone and tried to type a message. But BS was beings so demanding that I finally had to look at him. I lost the last name of the client from whom I was trying to take a message.

I suddenly yelled at BS, "You say you value clients. But why did you just make me forget the one who called?"

BS stood up, upset, and walked away. I tried to recall the client's name. Her first name was Pamela, I thought.

I was now looking at a storage device like a BlackBerry. The device had three screens on it, like slot-machine windows. Below these three screens was a larger screen. The three screens gave three possible "names" for the client -- though these "names" were actually titles for museum or art exhibits.

I thought, That's what the client did -- she was a social artist. I thought that if I could find the correct museum or gallery, I would remember the client's name. The exhibit, I thought, may have been in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.

I looked at the screen below the three screens. The image on the screen was of an empty city street. The image was greenish, like an oldish computer image. I knew I could "steer" through these streets, like on a GPS map program (or like Google Street View, though I'm not sure (???) that was around in 2007), to find each listed museum.

I started steering through the streets. They were all empty. The streets were cobbled, not asphalt. The buildings were mostly redbrick. The day was clear. I steered through a few blocks.

My view faded into a view more like one I inhabited than like one I was looking at on a screen. In the middle of one block there was a huge pool of a clearish, thickish liquid which I called water. I knew that if I touched it, something bad would happen to me. But I was moving automatically, as if the "computer program" were still running me. I knew I would probably touch the poison water sooner or later.

Dream #2

I walked into a grocery store, or I had been there for a while. I had my arms full of food. I was looking for some more food, possibly some meat. I walked into an area like the frozen foods section.

There was a family like a group of European tourists. I had to walk in front of them. I tried to act as mild as possible to prove to the family that I wasn't a hooligan -- not because I felt like I threatened them, but because I didn't want them to start threatening me.

I looked at a non-freezer rack of packaged meats and cheeses. Some of the lunchmeats looked very good, but they had holes, like Swiss cheese. I was looking for just the right meat.

All of the family except one person had walked farther down the aisle. The one who remained was a little scary. He was older, maybe in his late fifties. He was tallish, big, with a bulky stomach. He had dull, grey hair and wore clunky "dress clothes." I had heard him speaking with the rest of the family. His voice was thick and unintelligible. He seemed to me like an "innocent" (???!!!) who could suddenly become dangerous.

I looked at the food. Now it was bagels and desserts like brownies. I tried not to attend to the big man. I was trying to figure out what I wanted. I felt like I was trying to get full, like I needed to eat, but like I had eaten so much already that if I ate any more, I would get fat. Nothing looked like it would fill me up without getting me fat.

The big man moaned something unintelligible. He swung a big, grey cane or walking stick against one of the clear, plastic bagel cases. There was something like a grabber at the end of the man's stick. He grabbed two brownies and then swung the stick over so that the brownies got near my face. It was like the big man had swung the brownies in front of my face in a gesture of offering them to me.

I regarded the brownies and thought, That's what I want, but it's not what I need. But I was kind of afraid to deny the big man. I didn't want him to hurt me.

Dream #3

Black and white film like an old German Expressionist film. An alien with a fat-looking, pale, bulbous head and big, black eyes. The alien wore a big, black robe. The alien's body might have been thinner than its head.

The alien walked down along an inside balcony in a dark apartment complex. Now I only saw the stairwell, which may have been lit from a floor below. I watched some shadows move quickly across the guardrails. I thought, If a natural light was causing those shadows, then time must be moving more quickly than normal.

I felt like there might have been a woman hiding by the stairwell, on the floor below me (the lit floor). I felt like the woman was hiding from the alien.

The "movie" now started over. I saw the woman almost emerge from behind a door, which the woman had slowly opened by only a crack. The woman looked out the crack. her eyes gave off a weird, cat-like glow. At first I thought I was looking at the alien. Then I discerned the woman's face.

I realized the woman was looking at the alien, who was out of my view. The woman was frightened. It seems plain now that the woman knew the alien and was already engaged in some kind of struggle with it.

The woman was now gone. She had either gone to hide from the alien, or else the alien had already taken her away somewhere.

Dream #4

I walked up to a garden, which I was going to weed. The garden (did I realize this?) was indoors. I was pulling, at first, mugwort-like weeds that grew between thin, woody plants like pine saplings.

The place now seems to me (i.e. when I wrote entered the dream in the paper journal) like some kind of museum exhibit. The garden, which was supposed to be a wild, natural area, also took only a corner or half (?) of this exhibit-like room. The rest of the room was silvery, plasticky floor, walls, and ceiling, with gentle, modern-feeling, fluorescent lighting.

The thin "pine-shoots" grew thicker toward the corner until they were too dense to penetrate. I couldn't get into them to weed out the mugwort. But it also seemed like in that section the growth of the "pine-shoots" had actually managed to "beat out" the growth of the mugwort.

So, having finished weeding that area, I moved to the area farther down. This area was full of woody growth, the foliage and flowers of which looked like rabbit brush or rattlesnake weed. This growth was very thick and either needed to be completely eradicated or just trimmed back. It was thick and dense, but some shoots grew so thin that they were green, like herbaceous growth, like aster stalks.

There seemed to be a cliff of black stone like schist somewhere. As I took care of this area I could hear a memory of a co-worker, like my co-worker TC, telling his wife how nice this place was, but in an ironic way. TC's wife was somewhere else, and TC was jokingly pretending like the lousy weather where his wife was was better than the weather here.

I had trimmed a fair amount of the vegetation. I reclined on some stumps and against the trunks of some still standing growth. I looked at the area I had taken care of. It looked pretty nice. The "rabbit brush" growth that stood looked like trees, with plenty of space between each plant. I thought, I couldn't have done all that needed to be done. It was too easy. The soil between the trees was rich and brown.

I saw a rabbit. It skirted around me, but it stopped to regard me. It was small but healthy, with soft fur. It had big, round, pure black eyes. I hoped it wasn't threatened by me, that it didn't feel like I was invading its space.

I looked forward again. Now rabbits climbed up on me. There were two or three of them. They had emerged from the trunk on which I sat, as if the trunk were now as wide as the trunk of a tree like a maple tree that was around ten years old.

I didn't know if the rabbits were going to attack me or if they just liked me. One of them nestled against the left side of my neck. I didn't know whether it would bite me.

(7/8/08) are you alright?; selling operations or vehicle

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

Dream #1

I was on a bus. The bus was moderately full. I sat near the back. A few people from my work sat nearby, behind me. They seemed to be from sales. They involved me in their conversation. One of my co-workers from the Sales department, DF, came out, possibly from the bathroom, and sat down.

Now we had arrived at our destination. I got off the train and walked a few steps behind DF. We were in a broad area of stout, featureless (though chipping), concrete buildings. The ground was also concrete. The sky had an eggshell blue and pink look to it, like after sunset.

I looked at my BlackBerry. I had gotten an email from DF. DF asked if I was alright. This email was, I knew, more in response to an email he'd sent me before we'd gotten on the bus than it was to the conversation we'd had on the bus. We both stepped into a building, the interior of which looked like the living room of a trailer home. I told DF I was alright. I may have been a little teary eyed.

Dream #2

I was talking with my boss BS about some company. The company was selling one of its operations or one if its vehicles (?). But I kept having the feeling that the vehicle (and/or operation?) was still useful to the company.

BS said, "Oh, well. If they're still keeping their operation in Philadelphia, this vehicle would be great for continuing to transport things around this area."

I now knew that the operations may have been something like a waste-to-energy plant, and that the vehicle was a "garbage truck" (looked more like a coal or gravel truck). I drew the back end of the truck, but only partly completed the drawing, so it looked something like:

(2/9/09) amphicletes' treasure; a vanful of lesbians; whose hours are longer?

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Starbucks on Thirty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in "my office," turned away from my computer, to a portion of desk to the left of it. My desk was somewhat cluttered. I was writing on a piece of printing paper which was turned sideways.

A word had been printed on the paper. I was tracing that word in pencil. The word seemed foreign, like it was written in a non-Roman style of lettering. The word started with a "p"-like letter and had a lot of "o"- or "a"-like letters following.

My senior co-worker and sometimes supervisor SK got my attention. I turned to see him standing by my cubicle, to the right of the computer. He asked me if I had a second to help him. I said yes and got up. We walked down a few cubicles to his desk.

To break the silence, I asked SK how everything was going for him. He said, "Oh, good. Just trying to get this" (initiation? launch?) "out." He said it like he was being nice, even though he didn't have to, and that he'd much rather stop talking with an idiot like me and just get down to business.

SK's desk was completely cluttered, and in the bright light, the pages all seemed so sparkling white. SK sat down. I stood behind him, to his left, as he sat facing the screen.

SK turned a little toward me and said, "I'm gonna ask you to do something a little different from what you're used to doing for me." For a moment I wondered if I hadn't performed well enough on the things SK had been asking me to do.

I saw a view under dark blue water, apparently in the ocean. My view was following directly behind someone, possibly me, in scuba gear.

I heard SK say, as if he were still in the office, "There was a man named Amphicletes (?). I am going to ask you to go down to the bottom of the ocean (?) and retrieve his treasure." I could see a giant, golden ring and a pink, Venetian-style corset.

Dream #2

I got into a big van, like the van used by the crew I'd been a part of when I'd worked for the New York City Parks Department. The inside was icy, pale blue-grey, and the light coming in was grey like mid-morning on a cloudy winter day. I sat in a row of bench seats two rows back from the front seats. There was plenty of aisle space and leg space. I sat on the aisle side, the right side.

To my left sat a tomboyish girl. The whole van may actually have been full of boyish-looking lesbians. Either I or the girl who sat next to me (or both) started playing on a phone (or phones) that looked like the new thin BlackBerrys, or else like the LG Gravity phones.

My parks co-worker and good friend KB now got into the van. I may have seen her at first as she'd walked in front of the front windshield as she'd approached the van. I was surprised to see her. I didn't want her to think I'd been ignoring her all this time, but I also didn't want her to think I had come to this meeting (apparently this was a meeting of some kind!) because I was stalking her or something.

KB seemed a little negatively surprised when she saw me. She acted nonchalant, but also a little cold, as if sh'ed rather pretend I didn't exist. She may have sat in the row in front of me, in the space just to my left. I hoped she wouldn't think I was at this meeting just so I could hang around a bunch of lesbians, like I had some kind of lesbian fetish.

I myself wasn't sure why I was here. I tried to break the ice by saying something to KB. But I may have ahd the feeling that she didn't want me to talk with her at all.

Dream #3

I was at the top of a staircase and looking into a room like a large classroom or a lunchroom in an early-twentieth-century building. I stood huddled with a group of people who were about my age and a little bit younger.

The crowd around me was pretty active, moving here and there and standing still, talking with each other, and trying to talk to the same person I was trying to talk to: an Asian-American man who was a little heavyset and square-faced, with short hair, a slightly receding hairline, squarish eyeglasses, and possibly wearing some kind of uniform.

I was talking to the man through the intrusive crowd, asking him about a job opening he had. I said, "How do the hours sound compared to this? When I was in my Americorps program with the New York City Parks, I worked from" (10 to 5? 8 to 10? 8 to 5?) "Monday through Friday and then from 9 to 5 (?) on Saturday and Sunday." I thought the amount of hours I worked per week would really impress the man.

But now a tall man, maybe five years or more younger than I, Asian-American-looking, wearing a puffyish, black jacket and thin-framed eyeglasses, with fuzzy hair, like he'd shaved his head a couple months ago but wasn't styling it now that it was grown back, interrupted me. He said, as if he were already familiar with the older man, "Hey, like I said, man, I worked from XXXXX to XXXXX on Mondays through Fridays and from XXXXX to XXXXX on Saturdays and Sundays. I'll see you later, man." The young man then walked away through the crowd and down the stairs.

I was completely at a loss. The hours this man just said beat my hours by three hours a day on Mondays through Fridays, and his Saturdays and Sundays were just as long as his Mondays through Fridays. I thought, This guy has the job. There's no way I can beat him at those hours.

(2/11/09) the book of blackberry

Dream #1

I was somewhere like a hilly park, almost like Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The light was like blue afternoon, when the sun has gone down. There were a bunch of people about my age or younger all walking around. But the atmosphere was also relaxed, as if we were all just hanging out together, even though we didn't necessarily seem to interact -- outside of groups of two or three who hung out together.

I started walking up a hill after having just come down a hill. I was sure I hadn't completed the task correctly. I opened a little, black, leather pouch with a zipper on it, which I may have thought of as a BlackBerry case. The pouch was like the leather carrying cover people have for their Bibles, except that this one was small enough to carry one of the Gideon's New Testaments.

My "BlackBerry" was a really just bundle of small papers, white and yellow, which may have been laminated. As I fingered through these, I said, "Now let's take a page from the Book of Bart." (An actual quote I liked a lot from the TV show The Simpsons.)

I was at the top of the hill. The lawn on either side of me (I walked on an asphalt path) was full of poeple relaxedly lying around. Some may have slept under small, tent-like structures wide enough to fit one or two people and about half the length of a person, so that their feet would be sticking out.

Somebody I had just passed called out to me. I turned to see it was my old friend R. He lay on the left lawn. He lay with his head in a structure like a tent-like structure that was stood vertically (horizontally?). But the structure looked like my "BlackBerry" case.

R said he knew the person passing him was me even before he'd seen me because of my having said, "Now let's take a page from the Book of Bart." I thought, I really don't want to see R again.

R then asked me a company about the homebuilding company Centex. The question had to do with a calculation a boss of mine had put together to determine impairments the company would sustain, etc.

(3/4/09) the crumbling edifice; uncle steals my phone; where we really wanted to go

(Entered in paper journal at 8:42 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was night. I was with a group of people from "my job" (i.e. the job I'd just gotten laid off from). The group of people may have been my boss BS, my teammate DE, and someone else.

We had just gotten out of a meeting, and we were probably going to go to another one in just a little while. Both of the meetings were possibly with the same person: a tall, pretty, blonde woman. The woman may have suggested that there was a place in the building where we could get some good coffee. But for some reason BS wanted to go outside the building.

The building faced something like a vacant lot, as if the building were somewhere in a desert or an undeveloped business complex. The sky was black and flashing as if with lightning. But we could see everything around us, as if it were lit for a movie. It may have started raining a little. The building was as big as a New York skyscraper.

We got to a corner (we had turned right going out of the building) and turned right. We now walked up a slight slope. We were under a structure like the walkway overhang seen on some shopping plaza buildings (and on some skyscrapers). The columns were square and may have been made of a conglomerate material, like concrete full of round pebbles. The ceiling was concrete.

We had gone a long way, just to find some coffee, and now our meeting would start in just a short while. BS now said we should go back to the place the woman had suggested to get some coffee. But I knew that by the time we got back there, it would almost be time for the meeting to start. We wouldn't have time to get the coffee. We were about to emerge from the overhang. We'd have to run through the rain to get to the next overhang.

But now the ceiling of the overhang cracked. I heard it and looked up. The ceiling was divided into large squares. The square directly over us had a crack through the center. The square in front of us, the last square of the overhang, now cracked very loudly. A few cracks in it caused that section of the ceiling to sag downward. It looked like there was earth above the concrete. I don't now how thick the concrete was. Possibly not very thick at all. I called to everybody to get away from the building altogether because the whole thing was going to go down.

I ran up the slope and across the street or into the street. I looked down to the overhang. There were a lot of people there, all people I knew from work. In particular I saw my senior co-worker, mentor, and friend ES, who may have been wearing a vivid, darkish blue, v-neck sweater with a white undershirt. I yelled to ES in particular to get away from the building. But everybody, including ES, was standing still under the overhang, as if they were waiting for the rain to stop.

At some point the building may have collapsed. Everybody was huddling over by the (other?) building, sitting, maybe, under blankets. It may not have been raining, or else the rain may not have mattered.

ES sat somewhere to my left -- or I simply may have heard/felt her in my head. ES said something like, "Even when you were gone, we all knew, It'll be like this with Preemie: buy side, buy side, bam, Preemie right here on the sell side." As ES said this I saw glowing rectangle outlines (like gun-sights in a video game). As ES spoke, it was like she was referring to rectangles farther and farther to the left.

Dream #2

It was night. I was in a house with my family. It was more than just my immediate family. There were members from my dad's side of the family as well.

The house was dark. There may have been some light somewhere, but not much, and I couldn't make out the source (possibly outdoor streetlamp light coming in through curtained windows). It was like this place was on a floor in an apartment building. The apartment may have been very large.

The main room, the living room, was very large, maybe thirty feet by thirty feet. There were occasional chairs and other pieces of furniture. But most or all of the space was taken up by people, my family members, sleeping under sleeping bags and blankets on the floor. It seemed like most everybody was asleep.

I was walking through the room, as if I had just gotten into it, as if I had just come to whatever this gathering was. There were a few people awake, some in the center of the room, kind of arranged as campers might be around a fire (except with just empty floor between them, and not fire) and some people standing at the other end of the room, as if in the doorway for a kitchen.

As I walked through the center of the room, a man, my uncle R, called to me. He asked me what my phone was. I told him it was a BlackBerry. He asked me if he could see it. I handed it to him.

Someone from the doorway to the kitchen was also talking, either to me and my uncle or just to my uncle. The people around my uncle all lay around talking about things, possibly technology. There may have been small lights before them, like the lights from small electronic devices.

I now stood in the room in the daylight. There were still blankets and sleeping bags throughout the room, where everyone had slept. But now there was nobody around.

I walked to the circle of blankets where my uncle R had been, so I could grab my BlackBerry. I knelt down and picked the BlackBerry out of a messy pile of electronic devices. I now saw that my BlackBerry was missing its back, and that the battery was also gone.

I was panicked. I had trusted my uncle and let him look at my phone, and now he'd taken stuff out of it. I tried to see if the SiM card was still in it, but I didn't have enough composure. I sifted though all the other stuff on the ground, but I couldn't find either the back or the battery.

I now got pissed off. I turned around and yelled toward the kitchen, to someone, to my mom or anyone, "Somebody took the battery out of my BlackBerry! If anybody sees my battery and back lying around, let me know!"

On the wall to my left was the front door of the apartment. (Just to the left of that door?) was a small hallway to a couple of bedrooms. My uncle now ran out of that hallway. He had the battery, which was hooked directly to a thick, coiled cord, as if the battery were being charged directly instead of through the device.

The charger wasn't mine, but my uncle hurriedly handed me both the battery and the charger. He had obviously stolen my battery. Now he wanted to get rid of it as soon as possibly, even if that meant losing the charger as well.

My uncle looked worn out, dried out. He may have had purple sacks or even pale bruises under his eyes. He was trying to explain something to me, either how he'd made a mistake in taking the battery, or how he had taken the battery to charge it for me as a favor. I could tell just by the way he was acting (and by the condition in which he'd handed me my battery) that he was lying. I was't even trying to listen to what he said.

Dream #3

I had driven to some place with my mother and brother. It was dark outside, but we could see everything fine, as if it were lit for a cartoon or a movie. We were in some place like an asphalt lot with a cinder block wall, which was directly before us, and a chain-link fence, with barbed wire on top, which was to our right. We stood outside the car, which may have been something like an old Ford Gran Torino, maybe goldish colored.

We spoke about directions to where we really wanted to go. I may have "seen" something in the wall, like a display rack of red clothing, up about ten feet on the wall. We knew we had to turn around.

(3/9/09) blackberry confiscated; transvestite work meeting

(Entered in paper journal at 8:29 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a place like an airport terminal, in one of the joining areas between concourses or hallways. There was a small crowd of people, all watching a group of executives from my old company giving a presentation or press conference. I stood at the back of the crowd. The area I stood in was open and somewhat bright, with light coming from a large window-wall.

Closer toward the stage area, the ceiling got lower and the lighting got darker. The executives all stood in a somewhat constricted area, like a small seating area for special passengers, behind waist-high, plexiglass gates. One or a few podiums lined up at the front of this area, before the crowd.

The company's CEO stood at the podium, possibly with a moderator-like person. The CEO was trying to justify something about my company's business.

I was trying to justify it myself at the same time. I started looking up articles on my BlackBerry to prove that my company wasn't bad. I did a Google search, using my company's name and then some specific type of business (can't remember what).

As I did this -- noticing that someone just to the right of me was using a smaller model of BlackBerry than the one I was using -- the CEO interrupted himself and said, "I am confiscating all handheld devices." The reason, I knew, was that the CEO thought we (I?) were trying to trade the company's stock instantaneously with the news the CEO was giving.

A black man, a few inches taller than I, round-headed and somewhat round-bodied, wearing a nice, black suit jacket and slacks and a muted, maroon or red shirt and tie, came up to me and took my BlackBerry right out of my hands. He didn't touch the other person's phone.

The presentation or conference continued on for a couple more minutes. The man had walked over to a wall to my left. He had put my BlackBerry in the left breast pocket of his suit jacket.

The conference cleared out a little. Most of the executives had headed out. This was, I thought, a break time between presentations. I thought I could wait for the next set of presentations. But I was so upset that the man had taken my BlackBerry, and I was so nervous that he wouldn't ever give it back, that I wanted to leave right then and there, just so I could go up to the man and get my BlackBerry back.

But I was afraid to go up to the man at all. I was pretty sure his intention had from the beginning been to steal my BlackBerry, and that now he'd find all kinds of excuses to keep it from me.

I thought, If only one of the executives could help me. I looked at the stage area. Of the few people who remained there I recognized only one: MB. MB sat in a comfortable chair, holding a bottle of water and stretching out his legs. I was pretty sure he wouldn't even recognize me.

Dream #2

I walked into an office. The office was maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. It was really dumpy. The light was an almost green fluorescent.

The person whose office this was (my old boss BS?) sat in a desk that was set maybe two-thirds of the way back into the room, and oriented so that the back of the person seated at the desk would face the door.

A black man sat across the desk from BS (?). The man was supposed to be a transvestite or a drag queen. But he just looked like an effeminate man. He was dressed in regular clothes, although they were possibly casual, like a grey t-shirt.

I sat down to the left of the man. The man and I spoke with BS. Another person walked in. I hoped this other person wouldn't think that I was a transvestite, too, just because I was getting along with this other guy so well.

(4/6/09) room 430; lost luggage; asking for a book

(Entered in paper journal at 8:10 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was outside a large apartment complex. I had been sent out to get something for my mother. I was now trying to get back to the apartment as soon as possible. I ran to a glass door (like a hall-end entrance door at a hotel) and hit a buzzer button, probably buzzing my mom's apartment. My mom buzzed the door open.

I knew the room I was looking for was number 430. But I was in a hallway with rooms numbered in the 200s. The rooms all had their numbers engraved on large, oval, gold or brass plaques on the doors. I ran down this hallway to get to the hallway numbered in the 400s. I ran through the 300s hallway.

I thought I'd wasted time by coming in through the 200s hallway. I also wondered why my mother had let me into the 200s hallway instead of telling me to go to the correct hallway.

I now ran into a large atrium or lobby-like area. A few different hallways converged here. There were some little garden- or fountain-triangles set into raised brick-structures. The ceiling was glass, and gentle daylight flowed through. Some apartments stood within this area. I could see room 430 just beyond and between two garden triangles.

I saw my co-worker BT walk away from the apartment, as if he'd possibly just left the room. I didn't say anything to him -- I was too hurried. I approached the door.

Dream #2

I stood on a two-sided subway platform. I may have had a lot of baggage with me. A train pulled in on the other side of the platform. I suddenly realized this was the train I was supposed to catch. I ran across to catch the train. But I realized I had left all my baggage on the other side.

I was trapped in the train door, half turned out of it. The train doors opened. I ran to where my baggage had been. It wasn't there. I thought of it. It was now like another train had come on this side, and like my baggage had somehow gotten on that train.

I thought, Now I have nothing. There's no way I'll get all that stuff back. People have probably stolen it by now. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I now had nothing. I looked at my BlackBerry to try and figure something out.

A group of subway workers, black men and women, were joking about me, how stupid and lost I looked now that I had nothing, and how stupid I was for thinking that I'd get anything back. But they might also have been saying that if I looked serious or honest or skillful enough, they might help me. They may even have had my baggage, so that they would give me a piece back as I successively (not successfully) proved my identity.

I looked in my book bag to see if there was some way I could either get started back up in life without all my missing baggage or else prove my identity to the subway workers.

But now I thought, Wait -- I have my BlackBerry. I have my book bag. I have access to my money. I hae my identification. Everything else is just extra stuff I don't need. Why was I thinking I had nothing?

Dream #3

I was in an office space. I walked into an office, behind which my old co-worker IA stood. His desk was cluttered. Before the desk stood a woman who looked like my old boss JT, except that she looked thinner and had blonde streaks in her hair. IA was trying to impress JT professionally (he would have had no need to do so in waking life, JT being a supervisor over people other than IA) by showing her how organized he was.

I had come in to get a set of books like a mix between the FINRA Series 86 course material and some kind of large numbers-book like a book full of market data. I had done this, partly, to help IA n a project in a very important way. When IA handed me the book he was quick and curt, but also polite.

I walked out of the office, back into the larger office space, which was like a bunch of tall filing cabinets and short, wide work spaces that could be used for things like stapling documents together.

As soon as I left the office, I could hear IA talking bad about me to JT. IA said something like, "See the silly kinds of demands he makes? What kind of a person needs a book?"

I now realized either that I was finished with this book already or else that this wasn't the correct book. I knew I'd have to take the book back to IA right away so I could start getting the work done as soon as possible. But I was also afraid to go back into the office. I didn't want to give IA another reason to talk bad about me behind my back.

(4/25/09) building on fire; confronting rude man; boss draws my dreams; message from interviewer

(Entered in paper journal at 8:20 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car with a woman like DK (a director of the department I worked in at the job from which I had been laid off in waking life). I may have been laying in the seat somehow, while DK drove. We were driving through a large city full of skyscrapers. I could see up to the sky as if through the roof of the car. It was early morning. The sky looked dim blue, like just a skein of grey clouds were floating below it. The sky was visible in small sections between the buildings.

We were talking about the weather. DK mentioned the forecast, which was somewhat at variance with what I was currently seeing. But then the sky grew deeply clouded. I wondered how the sky could get so cloudy so quickly. It worried me a little.

We then passed a building maybe "seven or eight stories" tall (i.e. there seemed to be seven or eight window-rows, though the building may have been more than seven or eight stories tall. The building was on fire, or, rather, there were huge stacks of black smoke erupting from certain windows. But through the other windows I could see people walking around through undamaged, undisturbed work spaces. The people may actually have been worried, but they seemed to be taking care of their business, anyway.

The office building was maybe hexagonal or octagonal or oddly four-sided and was build on a smaller base. Its top sloped out mildly, so the whole thing was almost cup-shaped, like something Eero Saarinen (?) might have built, but also like a black building I was familiar with from my trips to Boston (???). But I could see everybody in the building as if they were in a row house or a small shop on a small town's main street.

The smoke that came out of the building was quickly making the sky as black as night. We drove past the building.

I noticed that the other buildings were also on fire, in the same sporadic, smoky way as the first building, though fire was visible in some of these other buildings. The streets somehow seemed filled with panic, with people rushing around. The air was filled with smoke, to the point where we couldn't see in front of us. The smoke was tinged orange, as if lit by streetlamps. I got panicked and wondered if the whole city were going to be destroyed.

We drove down another street, like a pristine office park. There were wide, redbrick plazas all around us, lit as if from sparkling white ground lights. The sky was black as night. People were also bustling around in this part of town, though less people were around.

DK turned left (she may actually have turned right onto one of the redbrick plaza walkways) to drop me off at an office. I said, "How can people be working right now? Who knows what's causing these fires? The whole city could be under siege. We don't know what building is going to get it next!"

But DK didn't seem like she was listening to me at all. She was still driving to drop me off.

Dream #2

I was walking down a hallway with a man and a woman. We had come from another hallway and had turned left into this one. The hallway was somewhat wide, somewhat short with dull, white walls, grey floors, and fluorescent lights.

The woman was like an older authority figure. The man was a slightly scruffy, medium-height man. He may have been Indian. He had a stuffy face and short, tightly disarranged hair. His body was a little wide. He wore jeans, a pale tan blazer, and a red and pink, button-up shirt.

The man made some comment about how incompetent I was at my job. The woman made a slight comment, not really regarding the man, to let me know I was alright. The man had turned and walked back down the hallway, as if by walking away after his comment he could make it irrefutable.

I rushed down the hallway after the man, to force him into a confrontation. I caught up to him. He turned away from me whenever I tried to face him. He was almost to the end of the hallway, about to turn down it, which would somehow mean I'd lost the argument with him. So I grabbed the man and forced him to face me.

The man gave me a sour-looking face, like a constipated person might show. I thought the man looked like an idiot. I made whatever comment I'd needed to make to justify myself. The man kind of smirked in acceptance.

The woman, the man, and I were again walking up the hallway. We were heading to a celebration or convention. We walked up to a large event room. There was a cluttering of people near the entrance to the room, like a disorganized group of people trying to get in. I stood near an older woman who seemed to have a huge sense of propriety, who lightly regarded me, like I was an idiot.

I now got into the celebration. At first it was just a large, harshly fluorescent-lit event room lined with folding tables, with people at the tables passing out literature. Large groups of people flocked at all the tables. At one of the tables I saw my old co-worker JM, a person whose intelligence I admired greatly. JM was wearing a light brown suit which fit his slim body a little too loosely, and a cream-colored, button-up shirt. JM was with an Asian woman who was his wife, but not his waking-life wife EC.

I tried to catch JM's attention. But JM walked away from the table, almost as if he were trying to avoid me. I followed JM closely, trying to tag him to get his attention, so I could say hi, but apparently also talking on and on as if JM had already acknowledged me.

We walked through a series of rooms that were organized like a museum exhibition, though they felt more like mock-ups of rooms in a cheap apartment. There were tables everywhere. The tables were cluttered with paper and with people trying to hand out literature.

At one point I may have given up on JM. I walked, possibly with someone with whom I was talking, into another exhibit room. This artwork in this exhibit room was a sculpture of two gigantic books, opened lying pages-down, one loosely piled on the other. The books were maybe six feet long, three feet wide, and one and a half feet thick, with chunks like little cheese wedges, carved out of the pages at certain points. This may have reminded me of something else, which I may have mentioned to the person I was walking with.

Dream #3

I was trying to explain the burning building (from my first dream) to my old boss BS, who was then trying to draw the building. BS was drawing on a horizontal surface, which was alternately a chalkboard and a cardboard or brown-paper surface. BS wasn't quite understanding my spatial description of the building. At one point I may have tried to draw the building for BS. But I realized I couldn't get it quite right, either.

Dream #4

I was working on a computer. Apparently I had a bunch of visual-artistic programs opened. I saw an email from BT, (a person I'd interviewed with for a job in waking life a couple months previous to this dream). I saw the email as if it were on my BlackBerry.

I tried to open the email, but my BlackBerry's screen suddenly started getting flooded with the artistic programs I had open. I had to plow through all the programs to get to the email. I'd close the files but I wouldn't exit from the program. I plowed and plowed through the screens, slowly feeling more and more like I'd never actually get back to BT's email.

(5/17/09) searching for a cleft palate

Dream #1

I was on a black iron platform like an above-ground subway platform. I probably had just gotten off a train. I walked down a black-iron staircase. I stopped halfway down, possibly at a landing, and looked out at the view.

It was early evening. The sun had just set, and a pink band of sky below the deep blue dome was reflected off a calm lake (?) to the right of which was a gently rounded hill of grasses, all in shadow. The whole area looked a lot like the view from a bridge running between Pelham Bay and City Island in New York.

Two businessmen, somewhere to my right, just behind me and out of my view, were speaking back and forth about a project that one of the men was having a little difficulty with. This talk may also have spilled over into a talk about the man's family. The overall situation wasn't awful, but it was a difficulty that the man was glad to be able to work out with another person.

I also felt like the two men were involving me in the talk. It was like they wanted to get me interested in their business.

I decided to remain aloof. I stood outside of a deli. The street was like one of the more main streets in a residential area in Brooklyn or the Bronx. It was either night or early morning, just before sunrise. Fluorescent green-white light flooded out onto the sidewalk from the deli's window. I had been inside the store, discussing business with someone. I don't think things had been going well.

Something made me think of a cleft palate. I pulled out my BlackBerry and did an internet search for "cleft palate." I found a Wikipedia-style page talking about cleft palates and, possibly, how they affect people's relationships.

There were a few photos of people with "cleft palates." One photo showed a man who looked normal, except that his eyes and possibly nose, or some other part of his face, were digitally blanked out with green circles. I assumed the man had suffered some disfigurement there which was blanked out digitally. There was another photo of a person who had a log of bubble-like protrusions on his face. They were red, like boils or sores, though I knew they were the result of something like elephantitis.

I kept thinking there would be a photo of someone with a "cleft palate," which I envisioned as a harelip on the person's top lip, splitting to reveal a fleshy split in the roof of a person's mouth.

(9/16/09) old friends and sex; college girls' lingerie

(Entered in dream journal at 7:54 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I walked down a sidewalk of brownstone buildings in the daytime. I was going to meet my old friend R and his wife L. I saw them sitting on a staircase in front of a brownstone. I may have been looking at my BlackBerry as I walked up to R and L. I put my BlackBerry down and then looked up at R and L.

We were now in a large restaurant, somewhat fancy, with tall walls. The walls and fixtures were all made of wood and brass. Natural daylight probably came in through windows. We walked up to a table that had booth seats on one side and chairs on the other, with the booth seats' back serving as booth seats' backs on the other side as well.

I may have been standing there by myself, looking at my BlackBerry. I walked over to a much larger booth table, where a lot of people were sitting. These people were all my friends. R and L may have been among them. Behind the people were two tall windows, letting in a dim view of a tallish, brick row building and a deep, clear, blue sky.

I watched a group of women walk out of the row building. The women were all young adults, with short, pale blonde hair and bronzed skin. They wore tight, sleeveless or tank-top shirts and carried boxes or plastic crates with them, as if they were moving out.

Among the women was my old friend PD, who looked odd with short, pale blonde hair. PD seemed to be looking in through the window and into the restaurant. I waved to PD, trying to get her attention. But she didn't seem to notice. She continued with the girls down to a vehicle, maybe a van.

I told everybody at the table (I was still standing), "That was PD! I tried to get her attention!" I wondered whether PD and the other girls were all lesbians. For some reason their hairstyles seemed lesbian to me. PD was now among the people at the table. The people at the table were all conversing casually.

I walked away, reading my BlackBerry. I was now in a room, which was still in the restaurant. The room was about twelve feet by twelve feet, with gentle, yellowish, natural light coming into the room. But the room felt run-down, like the paint on the walls was chipping and the wood floors were unpolished. Three chairs of tall, old wood stood side by side.

Behind the chairs stood a young, Japanese man. The man held a cloth bag and a black, cardboard box like a shoebox. The box had dimmish, silver-grey writing on it. The bag had a Takashi Murakami flower and logo on it. I realized, from the bag, that I knew the man.

As the man and I conversed laughingly about how we knew each other (by speaking about how we knew Murakami), either R or R and L walked into the room. I thought, If R knows I'm friends with this man, he'll try to destroy the friendship. I walked out of the room.

I was back in the main area of the restaurant. I sat down at a booth seat in a half-booth table, behind which was dimness and a bar up at the top of a roughly seven-foot-tall tier.

A woman sat next to me. She was pretty, maybe ten years older than I, with long, blonde hair and a red dress. We spoke for a while and then were home at the woman's apartment. We were in bed. I was on top of her, moving against her. The woman looked like Cindy Crawford: thin, with dark-tanned skin and brown-blonde hair. She wore black panties and a black bra. As I rubbed against the woman, she opened her mouth in a wide "O" of pleasure.

I was now walking out of a large apartment complex with my old co-worker BK. It was probably early morning, the clear sky a dim silver-blue. BK and I walked under some scaffolding near some tall buildings.

BK told me, "When I was first looking for jobs, I used DO" (an old boss of mine) "as a reference. But I then realized that was a mistake. DO always gives the most restrained, least positive opinion about anybody he has to give a reference for."

BK may then have asked whether I used DO as a reference. I felt bad for telling BK yes. So I went into some long speech about how at first DO had promised me he would give me a good reference.

We were now walking through a wide, vacant lot of asphalt which was worn and cracked, with patches of grass growing through in places. We crossed a street, probably to a large, clean parking lot at the end of which was a clean, tan and pink shopping mall lit in watery, white light. We then crossed the street, back to the asphalt lot. Across the lot was a tall, wide apartment complex atop a tall, torn-looking hill. BK And I walked down the vacant lot, to another set of buildings and scaffolding.

BK started jumping around with excitement, all fluttery, like a girl. He started talking about how excited he was about some party he was throwing. He asked me if I was coming. I may have wondered whether BK was gay. I then began whether I had had sex with the blonde woman or with BK.

Dream #2

It was black night. I walked (counter-clockwise?) around a square of dwellings like very small rooms separated from one another by thin walls. The rooms had ceilings like thatch or wicker. This square of dwellings was in the center of a lawny field.

The rooms were all dimly lit, some with fires, some, probably, with electric light. The rooms were all filled with colorful objects, mainly swatches of fabric for clothing. The rooms were all for college aged people. I didn't see a lot of people (maybe none, at first), although there was an atmosphere of people being around, a feeling of liveliness.

I started looking into each of the room-units. I occasionally saw women's clothes lying on the beds. I took looks through all the clothing, seeing what I might like to come back to and try on. I now came to a room, brighter than the others, lit by electric light, with a few people all lounging around, mostly on the bed. The people may have been members of my college comedy performance group, although I think they may all have been women.

The people told me they knew I'd been looking through all the women's clothing. They told me I'd be welcome to try on anything I liked. I may have spoken with them a little, partly trying to justify my habit, about how I chose the clothing I would try on. I may have seen myself trying on a classical pair of thick, satin panties by the light of a fire.

(9/24/09) currency problem; flying vampire snake

(Entered in paper journal at 7:25 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I may have been in an office with a man about my age or a little bit younger. The man was thin, with longish, frizzy hair, possibly some stubble, and deep, brown eyes. Hey may have been wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He sat at a desk, leaning far back in a chair that had a flexible, reclining back. I may also have been looking at my BlackBerry, possibly at the Financial Times website.

The man laughed casually about me about my old co-worker TB because TB had a subscription to the Financial Times. But even though I laughed and thought it was one of TB's quirky-classy things, I also thought it was probably a good idea to have a subscription to the Financial Times myself. And it was a pretty good deal, I told myself: only twenty dollars a month!

I walked (out from under an open-air, sheltered, makeshift "office," like a field lab?) through a park-like area, possibly down a slightly long slope in coldish, blue shade. I was still looking at my BlackBerry, possibly at an advertisement showing that a subscription to the Financial times was only twenty dollars a month.

I then came under the shelter of a makeshift office, basically a complex of tarp-like roofs supported by branches and limbs. There may have been desks and computers in this "office," but there was also a lot of cluttered, random stuff.

I looked at a news alert email on my BlackBerry. It said something like, "Great Britain and Spain Decide to Unite in Business." For some reason this didn't seem very profitable to me. I thought of investments I needed to get out of before all this stuff happened. I was reluctant to get out of the investments. I had hoped for so much from them.

I was out of the shelter again and walking down a long hill in the sunlight. TB and some other of my old co-workers (DE and CJ?) were talking casually and laughing with each other about the Great Britain/Spain news. They were down at the bottom of the hill, but I could hear them as if they were right next to me.

But soon I was near my friends (though I couldn't actually see them anymore). They, seeing me, told me their problem. One company they (we?) did research on was British or Spanish but made a lot of its sales in other nations. My friends were trying to figure how to model and forecast sales and operating profits from these nations in both British and Spanish (?) currency.

To my friends this was an unsolvable problem, or one that required too much work. They wanted me to confirm that for them (???). TB, whose face I could now see, in closeup, with a tight sky behind him, joked, "Say we have the Chinese currency, the Yemibi or Yemimi or whatever you call it. How can we put that into British and Spanish currency? I don't think there's a practical way to do it."

We now walked toward my left and into an office which first was just a couple of desks and computers outside and then actually was like offices indoors. TB sat in one desk and DE sat in another desk at the opposite end of the room, slightly behind me, so I couldn't quite see him, and almost like he was in another room altogether.

TB sat back in the chair relaxedly, pushing the flexible seat-back backward and either stretching his arms out or holding them behind his head. I could see now that TB and DE had been looking to me for an answer, and possibly also to work to put something together for them, but that they had been afraid to ask me.

I now tried, as casually as possibly, to explain how I would translate the currencies by using the U.S. dollar as a common point. I tried to sound, as I explained, like I was happy to help. (During this explanation I woke from the dream. But I continued to try and work this problem out.)

Dream #2

I stood out in a field, possibly something like a farm field, with two women. The sky was yellow, like in a van Gogh painting. We stood on a path or a road of deep brown soil. On our right and left the land mounded up, slightly obscuring what lay on either side.

One woman (a park worker, DR, from volunteer projects I'd done) pointed things out for us, making it somewhat clear that this place was like a farm. She now pointed out, on the left field, a snake. Somehow I could see over the mound, getting a pretty clear view of the left field, which was bare, brown (and furrowed?) soil with one smallish tree (possibly with red fruit hanging from it) standing in the distance.

A red and black striped snake, like a coral snake or a king snake was moving away from under the tree, not slithering, necessarily, but inching along, like a caterpillar might be seen to do, by scrunching up its body and then pushing back outward. But the snake made two scrunches in its body. The snake also looked somewhat plastic or polished, not quite scaly or real.

DR and the other woman (my mother?) began talking about other things about the field, when I suddenly noticed the snake stretch itself upward diagonally, so that its body was taut and its head stood high in the air.

The snake now also seemed a couple times larger than it had previously been. The snake was now lifted, by the momentum of its erection, up into the air. It leaped a long distance. I cried out to DR and the other woman, "Look! The snake is flying!"

The snake repeated the process, this time becoming even larger and leaping even farther, coming closer to us. The women said, "Oh, that's silly. Snakes can't fly. The snake isn't flying."

The women turned away from the left field to divert our attention as I saw the snake leap again. Now I saw the snake fly over the right field, hovering in the air, in a somewhat random coil, almost approaching a figure-eight shape. The women had turned their attention back to the left field, standing a ways away from me.

The snake was now green, with a light green, pale belly and a pine-green back. It had "spots" along its back, more like chunky crescent shapes. These spots changed color, bright colors, changing like color stripes in the title screens of old arcade games.

The snake flew down and bit my left arm, on the inner side, at the elbow, sucking the blood from my vein. It may also have wrapped itself loosely around me. I stood there without being too worried, although I wondered why a snake was sucking my blood. Wasn't it supposed to be injecting a poison into me?

I now started worrying a little, thinking that once the snake had received all the blood it wanted from me it would stop being nice to me. It would turn on me, then, and inject me with its poison.

But now the women came back to me. They noticed the snake around me and made a remark about how that was inappropriate. Somehow the snake was removed. I saw, down on the ground, a couple splashes and splatters of blood which, for some reason, I couldn't quite believe was my own.

(2/8/10) attacking a mountain lion; internet during power outage

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM, on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was out in the woods, possibly with a group of people (my family?). It was night. I was thinking (and possibly talking) about the dangerous creatures in the woods. At one point I may either have been thinking about or actually walking around in a large circle maybe thirty feet in diameter, in the blue light of the moon.

A mountain lion (which I may have called a wolf) may have come near me or tried to attack me. I jumped on its back and attacked it somehow, possibly by jamming my elbow into the vertebrae between it shoulder-blades. I was still talking/thinking (as if in narration) about encountering dangerous creatures in the woods.

Dream #2

I was in my room, laying down. I looked up from the head of my "bed" and saw, in the dark, "my dog" (possibly a Cocker Spaniel, like my family's dog had been). The dog seemed to be afraid of something. She scurried away and hid behind some boxes at the corner of my room.

I wondered why the dog would be afraid. I sat up to look at her. I suddenly realized it was dark in my room, even though I always kept the lights on in my room at night. At first I thought that maybe I'd started turning off my lights. But I knew that wasn't so, and that something was wrong. Somehow I knew that a power outage had occurred.

I may have been holding a PDA of some sort, or a mobile phone like a G1. It was turned off. I thought I should check the internet on my BlackBerry to see what it had to say. My BlackBerry, I knew, was battery powered. So I should be able to get some news from the internet. But even if I couldn't get news from the internet, I could at least use the screen for light.