(4/8/06) i am a two-faced, back-stabbing butler; not getting paid

(Entered in paper journal at 10:07 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I had a newspaper unfolded before me. There were articles below a series of cartoons, like the editorials page. But the cartoons were actually comics. The main one I saw was Hagar the Horrible. But the cartoons were superimposed on each other, not frames in one strip, or strips in lines of their own, but all the frames/strips cluttered on top of each other.

The Hagar the Horrible frame was one of the larger of the different sized strips. In the comic, Hagar stood on a boat, but like he was on a stage, and a butler-like person in a black robe stood before him. The butler-like person said nice things to Hagar, but with condescending overtones.

Now I saw a crowd of people behind Hagar, like in an amphitheater, just like Hagar was on a Greek stage. The smug "butler" told Hagar something like, "Everybody is happy to have you back, sir."

But Hagar got angry. He asked, "What are they saying? I can't hear all their voices! I know as soon as you can you'll get away from me and make fun of me with all of them!"

I now saw the voices had captions. They were all supposed to be saying, "HA-HA!" And that's what I thought they were saying. But it actually looks now like "HA-SI" or "HI-SA."

I was upset. I didn't want to upset that I, the smug "butler," could have been such a two-faced back-stabber.

I tried to look to other comics, but I kept looking back to the Hagar comic in hopes that I would see at the end of it that the butler hadn't had such a disappointing character.

Dream 2

I sat on a carpet floor, looking at the side of a bed without blankets. A male friend (we may both have been eleven or twelve years old) was somewhere (behind me and to my right?). As I sat there looking at the underside of the bed I heard a woman's voice as if I, the adult I, were talking on a phone (though the "child (?)" I answered).

The woman, older sounding, like a grey-haired operator, told me that I was not going to receive huge gaps worth of my pay. I envisioned my pay schedule like on a calendar, where boxes were weeks.

The dark boxes were weeks for which I wouldn't get paid. I started to get angry. But when I realized there was nothing I could do I got sulky and desperate.

(7/10/06) floods and nuclear bombs; deadbeat and bloody mouth; lifting up my friend

(Entered in paper journal at 7:25 PM on 4-train from Union Square in Manhattan to home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I drove in a car down a mountain to a place like a headquarters or a visitor center. It was a sunny day. I was in the car with someone like my brother. We were halfway through some task. Down by the visitor center we spoke of approaching nuclear bombs.

Then the land was suddenly flooded, as if out of nowhere. Only vegetative stalks were above the ground. But it was still the same same calm, sunny day, and my brother and I were still talking about the encroaching nuclear bombs.

Then I heard my friend M from my Americorps NYC Parks program as if I was talking with her on the phone. M was joking with friends about going "up the river" (to prison?). Then the joke was serious. M asked me why I didn't call her after finding out she had gone "up the river," or why I didn't write her letters or say prayers for her.

I saw a piece of notebook paper with a blue crayon drawing of a wood post fence in the corner of some writing. Then the fence was purple. Then it was some kind of opal or clear color with diamonds or sequins hanging off it.

Dream 2

I was in a trailer home like at my Americorps position at Bandelier National Monument. I may have been a woman. There was some projection of a cartoon figure against the door. I wasn't quite looking at it.

The cartoon figure may have been voiced by the man I was in love with. The voice was explaining why the man was nowhere to be found. He was kind of a good-for-nothing. Now someone else was explaining that this guy had better fall back in line. His job wasn't one of the ones people needed when times got tough and when lazy people got laid off.

I realized the people were talking about me. I was now me/the woman. I looked at the cartoon projection, which was some kind of extra furry Yogi Bear face. I realized I may be out of a job as soon as tomorrow.

Something in my sinuses cracked. A pool of blood poured out of my mouth and onto the table I sat at. Two pieces fell out into the pool of blood. One, like a hook-shaped earring back

and the other like a metallic pill with writing on it.

I felt great relief in my sinuses and more worry about my job than about the blood.

Dream 3

I was on a park hilltop with my friend KB. KB was at a picnic bench doing work. She was ranking tests. Somehow scores in the high 600s were good, then nothing was really good until scores got down into the mid-200s, which, to my surprise may have been slightly better (or worse) than the scores in the high 600s.

KB told me she was through ranking the tests. We walked toward steps down the hill as she told me she had put off a report until now. Did I think that was bad?

I said, "No. It's only a three-hundred-word report, and tomorrow she'd still have one and a half days to do it."

I was now holding her, like I was hugging her and arching my back to lazily lift her enough so that her feet wouldn't touch the ground. We walked through

(For some reason my writing just stops.)

(2/25/09) fort holland; afraid of museum displays; pizza panic

(Entered in paper journal at 9:35 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

A woman and I had been co-pilots, possibly in a fighter jet. The jet had crashed. The woman had died, while I may have lived. I thought back to the event and wondered how I could have done things differently so the woman could have survived.

I now saw the event again, as if it were just happening. Our jet (definitely a fighter jet now, like an F-16 (?)) crashed into blackish water. The sky was black, or rather a blackish green-blue, but for some reason it didn't feel like night, and the jet was perfectly visible (as if I were looking at myself in the jet from a point in front of the jet) as if lit, not by daylight, but as if in a cartoon.

The woman (although I feel like an F-16 is just a one-seater) sat in the backseat. She was hunched over, but I was pretty sure she was still alive. We wore yellowish-tan uniforms with white sleeves and white helmets.

Our jet had reached a snowy shore. The snow was still falling. I knew we were near an American Air Force base called Fort Holland. I could see a snow-covered sign on a stick saying Fort Holland and some other things (this view was also very cartoon-like).

Our cabin hatch was open -- it had been open all along. I called out, disappointed, like a spoiled kid, "Only Fort Holland?" as if after all our trouble we had only made it this far along.

We now walked from the shore, along a wide valley, and then up a slope, which was between two slightly steeper and taller slopes. I walked in front and led the woman, as if I were pulling her by means of a closed but unfurled parachute. The parachute may have been orange with white bordering.

The woman seemed injured, doubled-over, as if her stomach were in great pain. She hardly seemed alive. In some ways, she also looked like a cartoon, like Jun from the anime Gatchaman.

I knew the base was just over the slope. I saw, as if from very high in the air, the base -- two cartoony, cabin-like structures and possibly a couple other small structures, all broadly spaced in the snow.

On the other side of the hills I now saw myself, although instead of pulling the woman along with the parachute, I was now pulling the entire jet with it -- possibly with the woman inside.

Dream #2

I was in a hallway of some building like an airport or a convention center. The floors were tight, shallow, brown carpet. The wall to my left may have been grey. The wall to my right was a window wall, which opened to a pale blue sky all the way down the hallway.

A group of people (probably like a group of kids and volunteers, with some official-looking people, like airline pilots) and I stood at the top of a small set of escalators and stairs. The escalators were supposed to be a fun kind of ride (like the sledding hill at the Winter Jam festival which had taken place in New York City at the beginning of 2009). I couldn't see how this was supposed to be fun, but I acted like it was, anyway. I saw all of us as if I were viewing from a point at the bottom of the escalators. Now it was my turn to go. I (walked? ran? slid?) down the escalator.

I was now in a big room like an animal display room in a museum of natural history (a lot like the African animals display room had been at the Denver Museum of Natural History when I was a kid). The walls were black, and big windows revealed displays. The place was maze-like, almost cavernous. The light was all dim red, like the lighting in the cages for nocturnal animals in zoos. I was all alone.

I now realized that many animals there were standing outside their displays. I may not have noticed this until I turned to look over my left shoulder and saw, in a room slightly separated from the room I was in by walls a little offset from one another, a buffalo, in a reclining position, with its head turned so that it appeared to be looking straight at me.

I suddenly had the feeling that these animals could become alive again at any moment. The buffalo looked huge, even in a reclining position. I didn't want it to become alive again to charge me. I decided to walk out of its sight. But the more I looked around the more I saw all kinds of animals out of their displays. I walked into another room, which seemed to be all displays of animals in the room, i.e. not in a diorama set into the walls. I hurried through the room, not wanting the animals suddenly to come alive and see me there.

Now I was just trying to find a way out of this place, or at least to find other poeple to be with. But I was also getting more interested in some of these animals. They weren't all identifiable. Some of them looked rather alien.

I saw another buffalo, which was posed (?) before a display, as if it were looking at the display, except that it had its head turned so it appeared to be looking at me. Another animal, which had the coat, and maybe even the face, of a koala bear, but which had the body of a small wildcat, and had ears wide enough almost to make an entire cone around the back of the animal's head, stood in the threshold between rooms, almost blocking my way to the next room.

As I walked through the next room, I saw, far in the distance to my left, a humanoid figure, as if it had been pinned against the wall. Its skin was pink and white, like the meat of a crab, or the scales of a large goldfish. It was tall and muscular. Its head was powerful. It had pale green (?) eyes. Around its head extended a flap of skin, like the lower body of an octopus, except without extending into legs. This flap of skin was also expanded and pinned to the wall. I thought that this was the creature most likely to come alive and attack me.

I really hurried now to get somewhere familiar. I heard voices behind me, coming from a space to my right, as if there were a small, dark hallway at the end of which were two middle-aged women, something like curators or librarians for the museum, speaking mildly about some plans they had for an exhibit or something else that needed to be organized. I felt very reassured when I heard them talking, more like I was suddenly re-connected with reality.

I caught a glimpse of daylight to my right -- daylight reflected off the plexiglass of some of the display cases. The displays all now seemed to be of astronomical or geological objects. They largely seemed to be photos, or mock-up photo-models of things like nebulae or galaxies or asteroids.

I now saw the exit. I walked leisurely to it -- I was now kind of disappointed in myself for not having been able to keep calm while I walked through all the displays of the strange animals.

Dream #3

I was in a conference room with a group of people. The conference room was long and narrow, with drab, beige-yellowish-tan (beige-olive?) walls and drab, fluorescent lighting. There was a group of people about my age or a little younger, all in dress suits, standing by a long cabinet, possibly grabbing paper plates, napkins, etc.

I was laying out a table full of pizzas. There were all kinds of pizza, but three boxes of pepperoni pizza looked particularly fresh and good. I was apparently on the same level as all the people in the room, but I had ordered the pizzas and was laying them out, as if I were the assistant to all the people.

There may have been an attitude on the part of all the people, as if I had only gotten the usual selection of pizzas, instead of getting anything new and unusual. I was also now disappointed, and I wondered if I hadn't done it on purpose -- the pepperoni pizzas looked so good; perhaps I had ordered more of those because I wanted good pepperoni pizza like that so bad.

Now some other group of people brought in three boxes of pizza. They looked like business people, probably older and farther along in their careers than the people in this room. At first I thought they were bringing fresh pizzas. I laid them out. The table was completely full with pizza boxes. People were now taking pizza. I called out to everybody, as I looked at the new pizzas, that the pizzas the other people had brought in were new and unique, if anybody wanted to try those out.

One of the pizzas seemed to be topped entirely with green stuff like spinach. Another seemed to be topped entirely with ground sausage, possibly having no sauce and just a tiny bit of cheese holding the sausage together. I can't remember the third box.

But when I looked at these three boxes, I realized the pizza was all cold, as if it were already a couple hours old. The pizzas weren't full -- they were all three missing at least a couple slices. The people who had brought them in now said, "We just got out of our meeting and thought you guys might be hungry, so we brought these pizzas in."

I was panicked. I thought, First my co-workers thought I was an idiot for not having ordered a good enough selection of pizza. Now they'll think I'm an idiot for having all my selection be stale!

I called out to everybody, "Guys, these pizzas are cold. But they're different, f you want that. And the pieces we have are untouched. They haven't been tampered with."

But now one of the people to my left (he may have looked like my co-worker DE) opened one of the new boxes, as if I hadn't opened them all. He pulled out a crust that somebody had thrown back into the box after having eaten the rest of the slice of pizza. The person (DE?) said, "Look at this. This doesn't look untouched!"

Now a woman to my right (and she may actually have been one of the group who had brought the new pizzas in) pulled a crust out of the box next to her. She told DE, "I know. I don't think we should eat anything out of these boxes." She said this in a tone implying I had done a really lousy job by suggesting anybody should eat these pizzas.

Again I called out to everybody, "The pepperoni pizzas are extremely fresh, and they look really good, if anybody wants to try those."

Whatever meeting these guys were all going to have was probably about to start. A couple of guys said, as if to imply that I should also be heading out now, "Why don't you grab some pizza, man?"

I thought I'd really like some of the pepperoni pizza, but I also thought it was a little too early in the day to eat pizza. So I just laughed a little and headed out of the room.

I walked down a long, narrow hallway and was in a weird room. It was just as drab as the conference room had been. It didn't look like it was any kind of room in particular. I took care of some kind of business somewhere.

Some time had passed. I now thought I should go pick up some pizza before the next meeting (the "lunch meeting?") started. I walked down the hallway and saw through the window of the conference room. All the pizza was now cold, but it still looked delicious to me. But for some reason, I still decided that it was too early for me to have pizza.

I turned around quickly and headed back to a desk, which was "like a receptionist's desk" (even thought it was just a dumpy, flimsy, standard work desk) at the upper right corner of the weird room, before the room turned into another sterile hallway.

I was now busily doing some nothing-work, possibly having something to do with a roll of (duct?) tape. I was scurrying through this work, as if I thought it would help me forget my appetite for pizza.

Some older man walked up from the hallway to my right, standing in front of and just to the left of my desk. I kept scurrying through my work, thinking the man would be really proud of me for staying so busy that I didn't want to eat pizza.

But now the man called down the hallway behind me, i.e. to the conference room. I looked up at the old  man as he continued a conversation with a man down the hallway. The man before me looked like Mick Jagger, except that he was about thirty pounds heavier. He looked about the same age as Mick Jagger (which would leave me to believe this man was in his mid-fifties (his mid-fifties???)). He wore a dull blue, long-sleeved, casual shirt, which showed a slightly round belly, and slightly aged blue jeans. His hair was about jaw-length, red-brown. He sounded very American, not British, almost like JH, a boss of mine from a National Park in New Mexico where I'd been part of an Americorps program.

The two men continued a quick conversation about the details for the meeting. I could tell that the guy before me thought I was cool, like someone from his "good old days," and that he wanted to strike up a conversation with me. But, for some reason, I was so upset by how out of shape the man looked that I didn't want to talk to him -- I didn't want any of his slackness to influence me.

But I also felt like I should talk to the man, to remind him of his "good old days." I felt sad. I could see the man in his younger days, and I thought he must have looked really cool. I thought it would be really nice if I could humar the man into thinking that he was that cool once again.