(9/10/05) rose arches; pornographic bookmark; whatever god blesses will be blessed; broken cell phone; revenge of the pirates

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

It was night. I was walking with my friend and NYC Americorps coworker KB along a street in a busy part of a desert town. The street was on a hill, sloping up to the street where we were, and sloping up from either side of the street we were on to the point where we stood. We were getting ready to leave "work" for the day, but I wanted to cross the street.

KB and XXXXX (some male coworker) ha dgone to a restaurant I thought was special. I was kind of sad they hadn't invited me. But I looked across to where they had gone. It was just a small place with a white plastic sign, backlit by fluorescent lighting, saying "First Avenue XXXXX." There may have been a rose shape on the sign.

I said, "Oh, it was only there? I don't need to go there." So we turned around.

Before we went home, KB had to show me something on the other side of the hill. As we went down I saw the tops of the arches of an old McDonald's building.

All the lights were off, and the arches might have been smashed.

Dream 2

I was in a room with my friend R. It may have been night. A light was on. R showed me some porno magazine. He showed me the girl he liked. At first I didn't want to see it. I didn't want R to think I liked pornography. But then I looked.

R showed me how he had the page saved with a strand or a few strands of long, metallic-purple hair bound about three-quarters of an inch up by a small string of beads, tan and brown, in an austere pattern.

Dream 3

I walked into a church with my mom. We met a nun who was going to read and pray about a screenplay I had written. The manuscript was huge. I don't think my mom approved of it. The nun was pretty, though old, and a tiny bit pale and chubby-faced.

The nun took my manuscript. We walked along with her through a maze of domed and columned rooms both large and small. The place was dark, but dazzling images like moving stained glass windows were playing against the walls and our bodies. The images were mostly white, grey, blue, and purple, and seem mainly to have featured doves.

My mom kept telling me and the nun how she didn't think she thought the screenplay was very godly and how she would do what she could to make religious people agree. I kept telling her and the nun things like, "We're here to see what God says about my screenplay. If God like it, then this is one time you won't be able to hinder my success."

My mom appealed solely to the nun now. I said to the nun, "It doesn't matter what my mom convinces you about. Whatever God blesses will be blessed, and you will be the messenger of that blessing."

The nun took my statement as pride and said, "Well, I haven't prayed to God yet, so watch how you treat me." She walked away to pray.

I now realized I had given the nun the wrong manuscript. The manuscript I had given her was a novel of the plot, not a screenplay. I had taken the story too seriously in the novel, and it had turned out petty and boring. The screenplay was much more fun. I didn't want the nun to think that I had made such a big deal out of such a bad work.

Dream 4

I was outside during the day. Maybe on some tall bridge. I got a call on my cell phone from my Aunt P. She spoke in a very low and gravelly voice. She said something like, "Since you never call me, I decided to call you. I know you don't care about me and you don't want to hear from me." I was about to tell her that wasn't true and that I loved her. But my phone broke.

I walked to a car where my NYC Americorps crew chief SM sat. My phone was broke in half, like the only thing that had held it together were two black wires which were now snapped.

SM saw my phone and said, "You shouldn't have a nice phone like that! Let me see it." I gave him the phone.

The car SM sat in was short and full of trash and blankets, so that SM seemed to be hiding from everything. I looked away from the car, as if standing below the car door. Like the door opened upward instead of outward.

I saw a T-Mobile store across a parking lot. I could feel the rest of my Americorps crew somewhere. I thought, This time I'm taking my phone directly to the T-Mobile store, and I'll exchange it for something free right there.

SM was doing something I didn't like on my phone. I told him to give me my phone back. He gave me my old phone back. It was broken in half, but it worked. But I wanted my new phone. Somehow I got it.

I checked my bill on my old phone. I was surprised, having gotten my new phone, that my bill wasn't enormous. But I saw that T-Mobile had put the charge on a deferred payment plan. I scrolled down to see what the changes would be for the next few months.

Now I had my new phone. I walked through a street with tall buildings close on either side. I read two text messages I had received, one from my mom and one from my grandfather. The messages were both like goodbye messages.

The one from my mom made it sound like I was dead. It said something like, "I am glad I had the time with you up until 9/10/05, and I'll always remember how you loved us all." I was really upset that my mom thought I was dead. I wanted to call her back, but now I had no reception on my phone.

I was now part of some movie about a young man who was a fashion brat and who only wanted to hurt people.

Dream 5

A movie or TV show of which I was somehow a part, in which a group of pirates or criminals were trapped in some brown-metal, mushroom shaped building and stalking out of the ocean. "I" handed the people some kind of sweet food through prison bars. They may not have received it, or they may have dropped it.

Now the focus was on a canal-filled town in the "17th" (18th?) century. A group of rich people were on a big ship just outside the town. The air and sky and water all had a coppery tinge. The prisoners had escaped, and they were all coming on a rowboat to attack the ship. They would succeed if they reached the ship. They were all dressed in rich, beautiful clothing, and that showed they had been mistaken as something lower than they were by being kept captive. They were coming to avenge themselves.

But "I" knew some of us on the ship had actually done something to help them. If I could convince them of that before they attacked, I might be able to save us all. I didn't know if i could. Their plan was to begin killing as soon as they got on board.

(9/11/07) my dad the murderer; gnear thalk; we really want to talk

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

My dad may have been accused of a murder. He was now coming to take me, my brother, and my sister to dinner. I lived in my own house, so they would pick me up. I sat in a room of my house, which was empty except a little clutter, a box of which I sat on.

I spoke on the cell phone with my mom. I told my mom, "I can't sit in a restaurant with that guy! Everybody'll be staring at us and asking us questions the whole time!" I imagined big, fat faces crowding all around my dad, my brother, my sister, and I at the restaurant. The faces all looked like obese versions of a mid-twentieth-century, cruel stereotype of Chinese faces.

I pulled the phone away from my left ear. The display was so colorful and bright. The main colors were blue.

My mom (or sister?) asked through the phone, "Your phone hasn't worked in all this time. Why is it working now that you need to tell us you don't want to see your dad?"

I thought to myself, Wow. They're right. How did my phone start working again?

Dream #2

A woman had gone missing, and two men had found that she had killed herself. They found her in a vacant lot of pale tan soil on a clear, blue day. She was a black girl, tall, thin, with brown skin and shortish, spiky, dark-blonde hair. she had slit her throat and lay in a big pool of blood. She lay in a fetal position on her right side.

The men now stood before a camera (still in the lot, still on a blue day) talking about how it was to find the body. The men were both oldish, a little dumpy, white, with big, round eyes.

The scene of discovery happened again, like for the first time. This time the woman was completely decapitated, her head lying three or four feet from her body. The view panned back up to the two men, who said, "Imagine our shock. Even if she had survived, what kind of life would that have been? Her arms were chopped to the elbows, her legs were gone..."

I now crouched in a library, in between a shelf and a wall. The space was narrow, about three feet wide at most. I had a big book held directly in front of my face. I crouched, relaxed, with my knees against my chest. My sister sat to my left, leaning against my legs.

My oldest nephew came walking from right to left along the aisle and stomped on my sister's legs. It hurt my sister.

I felt helpless to retaliate on behalf of my sister. But I didn't want it to happen to her again. So I told her to sit a special way. She sat pretty much the same way as before, but now she was naked.

I heard a weird story narrated now, by my sister -- not voiced from her physical body, but from a narration in my head. My sister said, "I wouldn't let anybody kiss my boobs before him. But this was very important to him." I had a feeling that the "him" was me. I thought, How could that be? Why would I do something like that to my sister?

My view floated all around the library, slowly, as if some disembodied I were walking around the library.

I heard myself and a friend, like my old friend R, speaking in my head. We were trying to decipher a phrase: "gnear talk." It was in a series of new phrases young kids were using nowadays. I saw the list of new colloquialisms before my mind's eye for a moment.

I thought, Well, "thalk" is a hot walk -- so hot it thaws you. And "gnear" is what you say when a girl is so close you can feel her loveliness. It's as if you were saying, "Gee, she's near," or "g-near," to make "gnear" (except that the "g" was pronounced hard, not soft).

Dream #3

I had a dinner or a breakfast at a place that was supposed to be the apartment of my old friend R and his fiancee L. We sat at a huge table that was littered with items like vases. Everything seemed very disordered. I was surprised to have been here. I thought, These guys aren't mad at me anymore! I felt relieved.

L said, "Come back soon. We really want to talk with you again."

I couldn't tell whether that were true. I looked at R. He looked unpleasantly surprised to see me here. I could tell he was already trying to find a way to keep me from coming back.

(10/16/07) where the new building was; emergency party; like a worm made out of brains

(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I watched, from the back passenger seat, a car pass a field with trees like cherry trees. Somehow I thought this was where my company's new building would be (in waking life, my company was in the final planning stages for moving into a new building -- we would be fully moved in, if I remember correctly, by about July of 2008 -- only to be moved into another building in January of 2009!)

I thought, This would be a nice area to take runs. There was a path running through the field. We passed along a creek or river at the bottom of a slope of rocks. The creek itself was rocky. An empty boat, with two paddles, clanked along some of the rocks.

I thought, But this is New York City. The roads are bad on (my boss) BS' knees. We really couldn't come up with a running route that would be good for BS. I also thought of asking my co-worker CJ if he wanted to run.

We passed another river, which ran at the bottom of a waterfall. The waterfall gushed over huge, round, coppery rocks and flooded the river.

We passed a building that was built in three sections. I saw it from the back. The two back sections were roundish with green, metallic framing for the windows. The front section rose slightly above the back sections and was octagonal, probably of pink stone, with a shallow, a-frame roof. It was in a field of dry, yellow-tan and orange-tan grass.

Now it was like I sat backwards, looking out the back window, in the backseat and on the driver's side. My mom was driving the car. My brother and sister were also in the car. We drove on a straight road, through slightly rolling stretches of flat plains -- yellowy-tan grass with some hints of green and orange and some glimpses of rich (?), brown soil beneath. There were occasional, thin clumps of trees, the green of their leafs as pale as floating clouds.

Then I saw a white tree. It was de-limbed, so all it was was a white trunk with four limb-stumps coming off of it. It looked like a wild, raging horse to me.

I thought my mom would be impressed by how much I liked looking out the window. I asked my mom some question relating to telling her about the things my siblings and I had done. My mom surprised me by answering something like, "I don't care. Don't tell me anything." I tried to change that statement into something more positive in my mind.

We passed a stand of thin aspen trees that edged before some tall, redbrick buildings like apartment complexes.

Dream #2

I sat in my desk at work. There was an alarm. A man's voice came on over the alarm's intercom speaker. The man announced a party (?) in XXXXX's office.

When the alarm had first come on, I had been afraid, wondering if the announcement would be for an actual emergency. I had worried whether I would do everything alright and help everybody effectively through the emergency. Now I was a little disappointed. It was just a birthday party?

For some reason I wasn't wearing shoes. But my shoes were sitting right next to me. I picked up my shoes and walked to the cubicle in front of the office where the party was. The party was, somehow, both in the office and down the hall.

The party was for one of my co-workers, AR, who was, like myself, an Administrative Assistant. Someone told AR, "You could be head of GM (i.e. Global Markets) one day! You throw parties so well!"

I was disappointed. Hadn't my old co-worker and mentor ES, now herself an Analyst like my (and, before, her) boss BS, said to me once, "You could be CEO of this company one day"? (I'm pretty sure that in waking life ES never told me that, although she has always complimented me on my "abilities" -- whatever those abilities are/were!)

I now reflected, Maybe you just said all that stuff to kind of puff up your assistants, make them feel more important than you really think they are, just so you can keep them working. How else, I thought in my jealousy, could someone make such a kind statement about AR, who, I peevishly thought, scarcely worked as hard as I worked?

I didn't even want to go into the room now. I was too ashamed. I took my time putting on my shoes.

AR called, "Preemie, get in here!"

I said, "I'm coming."

She said, "I've been making decisions to be nice. But pretty soon I'm going to have to stop making decisions!"

I thought, Nobody's going to talk to me that way!

But now both AR and ES were out in the cubicle with me. They were both saying nice things to me.

Dream #3

I sat watching a movie. I walked out and then back in. I walked up to my seat as the movie was ending. There were shots of blue sky and power lines, vistas of plains, and other shots I loved. The narrative of the film ended, a song began playing, and the credits began to roll.

But as the song started, a voice (of some Hispanic boy?) called out, "Hey, uh... The film is pretty much ended, everybody. We would appreciate it if you got up and left."

I was in a front row. I had my stuff sitting against the railing in front of me. I stood to pick it up. I had forgotten that I had brought a coat. I had actually brought a lot more than I had remembered.

I walked out into the hallway, which was like the hallway in a city building, just off from the reception lobby. I stood in a weird junction of hallways and right by a garbage can. I stood talking with two black girls.

The girls mentioned a young man, one of their co-workers (they all worked at this movie-house), who did a lot of other stuff. I wasn't sure what the "other stuff" was. I asked, "Does he work somewhere else, too?"

The girls got upset, like I had insinuated that all the boy could do was work in places like this. One of them said, "No. He goes to school. He's studying to be a scientist."

We talked a little more. Then I had to leave. One of the girls walked with me out into the dark, blue-grey evening. The girl smiled and said, "I've always wanted to see the car you drive."

We stood in a mostly empty shopping mall parking lot. The movie-house was now more like a restaurant. I saw my car in the distance. It was an old, beat-up car, like one I drove in my last year of high school -- except that the paint job on the car was now all new and shiny.

I thought, I can't let the girl see that thing. Besides, this girl wasn't the girl I wanted. Both girls were pretty. But the girl I liked, the other girl I'd been talking with in the movie-house hallway, had rounder eyes, not thin eyes like this girl.

The girl with me stopped to talk with a mother and her kids, who stood by a van. I thought, While the girl's not paying attention I can drive away. That way she won't see my awful car.

I turned to tell the girl goodbye. But I saw her from behind and was too surprised to say anything. The girl was now short, ugly, and poor-looking (???!!! -- I'm sometimes shocked by the things I've said!). She wore a blue t-shirt and tight blue jeans which showed off her big bottom. Her big bottom really turned me off.

A black man who was about my height and a little bigger than I, smart-looking, with thin-rimmed eyeglasses, walked past me. I must have thought this was the friend the two women had been talking about in the movie-house hallway.

I thought, Now's my chance to prove I don't think the girls' friend is capable only of working in a movie theater. I apparently thought I could do this simply by making small talk with the man in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I said, "Hey, man, we'll see you later."

The man walked past me without even regarding me. I thought, Okay -- you show kindness and it isn't returned!

I walked toward my car. My mom walked beside me and to my left. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. The phone (a regular, old-style flip-phone -- as I remember it from waking life, a black Nokia) was cracked. I thought, Maybe it's just cracked on the surface. But I opened it to see that the crack ran across all its surfaces. I looked at the sides. They were messed up, too.

I almost started crying. I thought, What did I do to make this happen? Can't I take care of anything I own?

It was now more like daytime. The car was by the entrance to the mall. My mom and I were at the end of the parking aisle, maybe twenty feet from the car. We passed a needle-leafed tree in a planting island.

I had been speaking with my mom and barely attending the stout tree. But, reflecting on the tree after we'd passed it, it struck me that the tree had weird, tiered, pink and white flowers on it. I told my mom, "Let's go back. That tree looks weird."

We went back. I looked at the branches. There were strange, but somehow sensible, tan-brown, brittle, cone-shaped things standing atop the thin branches. I thought, Maybe I just mistook these things for flowers.

But then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the pink and white flower. I hadn't seen the flower because it was on the periphery of the tree, not in the center, where I had focused my gaze.

The trunk of the tree seemed to end about two feet up from the ground. From the top of the trunk came an agave-like plant with spiny, yellow, purple, and green leafs. I said, "That's what I thought I saw! Isn't it odd?"

I reached out to touch the plant, to make sure I was seeing leafs and not more cones. The plant felt odd. And when I pulled my hand back, I noticed the top leafs moving, as if of their own volition. I thought, That can't be real. I have to be seeing things.

My mom and I were walking away. But the plant really bugged me. I had to look at it again. I told my mom, "Something else didn't make sense." I didn't want to tell my mom what didn't make sense -- namely, that the plant seemed to be moving on its own.

We went back to the tree. Now I saw that the plant grew out of a hollow in the top of the tree trunk -- although it was a part of the tree. I saw steady, directed movement from within the trunk. I knew the movement wasn't volitional, but that it was growth -- life.

I saw a spiky (like a sea-cucumber), worm-like appendage emerge from beneath the leafs. I shouted to my mom, "See?! I wasn't imagining! This thing is growing quicker than normal!"

The thing emerged, as huge as a boa constrictor, and wove its way through the thin branches of the tree. It was like a worm made out of brains, with a head like a gigantic breast. It hung over a branch above us. I knew if it touched us it would incorporate us.

I told my mom, "Run to the car!" We ran and got in.

The thing was growing. It had taken over the tree and spread toward us through the parking lot. I didn't know if we could get started and drive away quickly enough.

I saw a car coming from an underground parking garage to the left of the tree. Now the parking garage was like a car wash. It sprayed water all over the car. Jets of water flew outside the garage. They hit the plant-thing. As soon as they did, the thing dissolved into yellowy, thickish, soapy-looking water.

I hoped that more cars would come through the garage to get washed. The thing was dissolved now, but I felt like it would regain its consistency. I thought that more water needed to hit the thing before it would lose its ability to re-stabilize.

(1/5/08) sonic boom stadium; pregnant little girl

(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 AM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

It was daytime. I walked through a sports stadium the diameter of which was maybe four times greater than normal. The bleachers may even have rolled up and down like hills. The field was minuscule compared to the bleachers. I walked with a man who was somewhat unseen. He was probably taller than I, white, with tanned skin, long, brown-blonde hair, and a beard.

We had been walking toward the edge of the gigantic stadium. Now we stopped and turned back, toward its center. I looked along the edge, counterclockwise, and almost mentioned that sometimes over this area I had seen B-2 bombers. Bu then I thought not to mention it, hat that was a special occurrence I should keep to myself. Instead I mentioned that we might see jets in this area.

Suddenly two jets flew over us. They flew low before us, over us, and behind us. They each made a "sonic boom," which was a kind of mellow sound. The jets looked like F-86s with stubby, X-15-like wings. The bodies were silver. The wings were a shimmery blue and purple.

A group of jets passed over our heads again, this time from behind us. They made the sonic booms. Then it seemed like a lot of jets flew overhead. As the sonic booms continued, my vision went out. The sonic booms became like a constant, soundless, brittle spasm in my ears.

Dream #2

I was with my brother at a picnic table at the end of a gravel driveway for a big, wood house in the middle of a foresty area. My brother had possibly been coming here to see a doctor or to get some medicine. I had been waiting for him out at the table. I might have had a bunch of random stuff with me, some of it in plastic bags.

My brother had come back to tell me he couldn't find the doctor. I went to the house. There was a side entrance leading down to the basement. I walked down the cement-walled stairwell and into the threshold of the basement.

I stood staring into the room. It was filthy. I didn't even want to step inside. In the opposite corner of the room from me was a TV, which was on. I stared at it, as if hypnotized.

A young, black man walked down the stairs. I got a little out of his way and asked him how he was doing. He nodded his head, as if being polite, but he gave me a smirky kind of look, as if he wondered why I was here.

It was now like I had taken my brother here because he was looking at a place to live. It would be a shared room in this basement. I thought, There's no way he's living here. If he lives here it will just be trouble with this guy.

I had already resolved that my brother shouldn't live here. But the way the guy had looked at me, s if he already suspected me of something, made me call out, "I don't think I'll take the room here. This was just a visit. I think I'll look at other places."

I went back to the picnic table. I told my brother we were ready to go. I pulled out my phone to call my mom and let her know we were coming back. But my phone was somehow broken. The screen on its back was blue, as if some bluish liquid had made up the electric screen but was no completely de-activated. The blue liquid had sloshed down to the bottom half.

I had somehow dialed a random number from my phone book. A woman answered. I tried to explain that I had called her accidentally. I was just sending out some signal to determine whether I could reach anybody.

I was in a room like a waiting room in a doctor's office. I might have been leaving. I was speaking with a nurse.

A black man walked in. He looked familiar. I thought perhaps we had been part of some group hospital thing. But I also felt like he was here just to follow me, as part of a group of people who suspected me of something.

The nurse asked the man, "Do I know you from somewhere?" The man didn't say much. It was the man's turn to be treated now. But I couldn't let the man go without knowing for sure that he wasn't following me.

The man and the nurse were down in some nice basement with tall ceilings, talking and laughing. I asked the man, "Where are you from? You didn't start coming here until I did. Are you following me?"

The man looked at me blankly, as if he thought I was a piece of trash who had no right to ask him a question. He then stood close to me, as if to scare me with the threat of fighting. He started telling me about his line of work. He sounded something like a manager for music groups. I told him so. He was kind of surprised. He seemed less angry at me.

I was getting reading to leave this place. My mom had dropped me off here. She had gotten back a while ago to pick me back up. But my appointment had been delayed, and now I needed to take a shower to wash off something like radioactive material. I felt bad that I had made my mom wait so long. I wished I could hurry.

I was now flying all over the room wherever I was. It was like the last basement, except it faced at a different angle. It was also more like a ski lodge. It was night. My nephews sat on some ledge by the stairway, waiting for me.

I descended and picked up my youngest nephew. He said, "I saw a snowman! I saw a snowman!" I was surprised to hear my nephew speak at all, let alone speak so well: he was only six months old. I asked my nephew about the snowman. In my mind I saw a plastic snowman figure.

The scene shifted to the backseat of a vehicle like a van. My "nephew" was now a little girl like my cousin B had been. She wore a pink dress and a pink sweater. She was telling me how she wished she could have kids. She was straddling me as I lay back, my head against the back of the driver's seat.

The girl said, "The only thing I'm worried about is people finding out I'm pregnant. If I get sick, I'll give myself away." But now she was getting sick. She tried to hold it in, but she unintentionally leaned over my right shoulder and threw up.

My aunt M, who had been driving, got mad and yelled, "My ex-husband sucks! My ex-husband sucks! My husband sucks! My husband sucks!"

My aunt's three daughters were now all in the car. I understood that my aunt was angry at the little girl for having gotten pregnant. But, instead of getting mad and yelling at the girl, was yelling about how bad their dads were, to make the girls feel bad.

(3/3/08) pilots proving innocence; mad broke

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1p

I saw a view high up in the air of a vehicle like an enormous helicopter. I thought to myself, How did I not tell those people in time? It was as if I knew that the helicopter-like vehicle was firing on a jet far in the distance, as if I had pre-cognized it. I hadn't gone to warn the jet, even though I knew it was in danger.

I now saw the jet. It was thin, long, and dull grey. It had four tailfins (?) and carried four people. I was now in the jet. At first I was afraid to be in the jet because it was moving straight up. But then I told myself I had to be brave and bear the movement.

I was now piloting the jet. But it was like I was also remembering this flight. I thought to myself, My commanding officer is angry because I lost two copilots in that flight. It was due to my bad flying. Or was it due to their parachutes? I remembered myself going in a huge loop and then possibly using my parachute.

I stood in an area like an old lot of strange buildings mixed with a backyard. I stood with a woman before an iron-poled gate. We were trying to get past the gate, possibly to find some evidence to prove that we weren't at fault for the lives of our copilots.

There was a huge puddle behind the gate, otherwise we would have jumped the gate. I followed the fence left and found a hole in it. I thought to myself, I wouldn't have found that hole if I hadn't developed my eyes as a pilot.

The woman and I walked to the area beyond the gate. It was like a series of backyard gardens that were all fenced off from each other by small, wire fencing. The woman had climbed into the garden that had the hole in its fence. She stood a ways away from me, waiting for me.

A little dog had run up to me and was barking at me and licking my hand. I thought, See? There's no reason to be afraid of this dog. Just go in. But I felt if I went in, a much bigger and meaner dog would come out of hiding and attack me.

Dream #2

I was with a group of kids in front of a doorway and under the shelter (like a patio) of a building. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, probably to look at the time. One of the kids was impressed by my phone and asked to look at it. Thinking, though, of the photos I had saved on it, I told the kid no.

I clicked the phone shut by pressing a button on its side and folding it closed. But as I put the phone in my pocket I felt like I had broken my phone. The top half was now only loosely clinging to the bottom half.

The kids were all saying, "Yeah, yeah. That's cool. He'll show us his phone next time. He knows what he's doing."

One of the kids, the oldest/tallest one, said, "You're mad cool. You speak intelligently. And you make things clear for us. Like when you told us about XXXXX."

The kid then tried to quote a rap verse he thought related to where we'd just been. He couldn't get it quite right, but he summarized it, apparently by saying there were three kinds of people who went to the event. One group was trying to sell (drugs?). Another group was trying to arrest people. And another group was standing over it all, like the whole thing was just another part of their business.