(8/20/07) bad business and crystal balls in a lingerie boutique

Dream #1

I was in a women's clothing store at night. I was looking at some panties that were on sale. Some panties looked really affordable.

A couple women behind the counter asked if I needed help. I got embarrassed and panicked and picked out something for my friend R's fiancee L. I thought, I'll come back later for the stuff I want to wear.

As the cashier was ringing the piece up, she told me what a shame it was that business was so slow. The cashier said that the world had become so business-oriented that nobody thought about doing fun things like wearing sexy lingerie anymore.

I was afraid that if I told the cashier I hadn't really come in to get this thing for L, but that I'd come in to get something for myself, she would think that I, too, was trying to make business bad. She'd think that I was using transvestism as a ploy, a way to disgust any customers who might come into the shop, to scare them off.

The cashier finished ringing me up. I went back over to the table of panties, thinking again that I might pick up something for myself. I also walked over to some central display of decorative items like glass globes.

(10/13/07) drugstore tranny

(Entered in paper journal at 9:40 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked into a store like a drugstore. I wore men's jeans and a girls' t-shirt: maybe a pink tank-top made of a satiny fabric, more like it was a pajama top or a camisole. I was going to work or going out to meet some people from my work. I had come into the drugstore first, though, to buy a different shirt to change into. I could only find a polo-type shirt, short-sleeved, with blue and dark blue striped and a white collar.

I walked up to the front counter. The woman at the register was tall, thin, and pale white, with short, brown-red hair. Behind the woman the window showed night sky. I stood maybe five or teen feet away from the register. As I took off the one shirt and put on the other I told the cashier my story.

I noticed now that I wore dress pants, not jeans. The polo-type shirt didn't match with these pants at all. The girl said, "Well I think both of your shirts were a good choice. They show you have style."

I saw in my reflection in the window that the back of the blue shirt was pink. I thought, Is this a girl's shirt, too?

The girl said, "In fact, could I wear the pink shirt while you're not using it?"

I said yes. I was going to hand the shirt to the woman. I was eager to see her wearing it, as if it would connect us sexually or arouse her sexually toward me in some way. But instead, I turned right and walked to a clothing rack that stuck out incongruously maybe fifteen feet from the register. I rifled through the clothes, possibly looking for a boy's shirt.

(12/22/07) the fleshy tree; put it all on red!

(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on a sidewalk by a tall wall of black-grey, granite rocks. I was clipping vine-like weeds which had grown from the park, a hill of which crested at the top of the fence. I noticed, though, to my right, where the fence was lower, that as I clipped the weeds there grey fleshy, peach-colored, vine-like tendrils. They grew with speed and direction, something almost like will.

I thought, How can I stop these things from growing? I then thought, If these things have a will, are they angry at me for clipping them? I was afraid that the peach-colored weeds would do something like strangle me. But I kept clipping the green weeds around me because the wall really needed the cleaning.

I looked to my right again. The stone wall was gone. There was only a black-iron fence showing a lawn level with the sidewalk. On the lawn was a smallish (maybe fifteen-foot-tall) tree. I realized the peach tendrils hadn't been weeds, but the roots of this tree.

The tree grew a huge, peach-colored limb out of itself, as willed and flexible as the tendrils had been. I thought again that the limb was angry at me and wanted to do something awful to me by touching me. The limb grew into a shape like a phallus.

I stepped backwards, across the street. But then I thought, Wait. You've seen a tree like this before. It was in a dream. This is a dream, too. I was still afraid. But I thought that if I was having another dream with a tree like this, I might as well risk an encounter with the tree to see what it was all about, even if it did something bad to me.

I walked across the street again, toward the tree. As I did, the scene (and my consciousness of the dream) faded out.

I was now walking into something like a parking lot with a group of friends. I wanted to show my friends the tree, to see what they made of it. But the tree was now just a metallic pole, like the perforated poles for street signs.

A woman thought I was crazy for having called this thing a tree. But I knew the tree would reveal itself, mainly once prey had gotten close enough for it to attack.

I was mad that the girl thought I was crazy. I wanted to show her that I wasn't lying. I told her to go smack the pole. So she did. Something invisible smacked the girl on the arm. The girl was now interested, but not really concerned.

I got even angrier. I really wanted the girl to feel how afraid she should be. So I told her to bite the pole. The girl bit into the pole and growled like a dog. Then she stood up. She said, "See? Nothing happened."

But suddenly the girl's eyes went blank. The girl was trying to move, but it was like something was holding her head. Something pressed in on the girl's head. The girl got slapped around a couple of times by some invisible force.

Now the girl was kneeling before the group and directly in front of me. The girl was dressed like an old, Mexican peasant woman, with a dark shawl over her head. The girl was making a weird, hooting, pained noise.

The girl looked up at me. Her eyes had been poked out. But the tree was still attacking her, and now something even worse would happen. I thought, Why did I put her into that kind of trap?

Dream #2

I stood before a conveyor belt cash register in a grocery store. A skinnyish, baldish, white man with a prim attitude stood behind the register. The man had rung up my food order. But a person (an older man?) behind me pointed at a painting on the wall to my right. He said, "I'm intersted in buying that."

The cashier hadn't wanted to help me much in the first place. But now he took the occasion to ignore me completely. I had handed the cashier my money. He'd now dropped it onto the conveyor belt and walked slightly backward from the register, looking over at the painting. I tried to get the cashier's attention, so I could pay and leave. But the cashier wouldn't pay attention to me.

I looked at the painting. It was maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. The scene was a Seurat-style "park," but the painting style was very much like that of Gauguin, with deep and pale blues and deep and pale purples. I looked down at my money on the conveyor belt.

Now an Hispanic (or light-skinned black) woman, another worker, walked up to the register, possibly with another female worker. The woman took my bills off the conveyor belt. She asked me, "This is what you gave him?"

I said, "Yes."

She said, "You gave him way too much." She handed me back all my money. I probably kept $150 (???!!!) and handed back the rest. I tried to make a joke about having thrown down so much money.

There were a few people (friends?) around me. We were all laughing at something, I don't know what. I tried to make a joke along the lines that I had thrown down all that money because I thought we were at a casino. But my vision was cloudy and my brain was blurry, and I couldn't think of what to say or do. On top of that, nobody was paying attention to me. My friends were all laughing at some random thing. The cashier and her friend were talking to each other and not paying attention to me.

I threw my money back on the conveyor belt again, as if I were throwing chips on a roulette table. I felt stupid, first because I had thrown the money so messily and violently, and second because my mind was so cloudy that I couldn't think of what to say next.

I cried, "Put it all on red!"

(1/8/10) jumping in the hay: a novel

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

Dream #1

I was walking down a street in a city which was probably supposed to be New York. The streets were clean and calm, though there were a moderate amount of people walking along them. The whole area had a small town feel. It was afternoon, and the sky was a placid silver-blue.

I had been walking from a place far uptown -- possibly 125th Street -- and possibly even across a bridge. I was now down on what was supposed to have been 86th Street. I was looking for a place to have coffee. I was going to have coffee and write or read for a little while, then head back uptown. It was like I had gotten some kind of break time from a large training event or conference.

I found a coffee shop in a building hat looked very small-town like. I walked inside. There was a lot of space. The floors and tables were of pale wood. The tables were as wide as dining tables. The place had two areas. The "back" area, to my left, was set slightly lower than the "front" area.

I thought I would sit in the cafe and read for a while. But for some reason I felt pressed for time. I worried either that I would have to get out of here before sunset or that I would have to get out of here in time to get back to the event uptown. I thought to myself that it would be much smarter for me, in the future, to walk down somewhere, have coffee there, and then walk back uptown (as if that were different from what I had just done!). That way I could avoid getting out of here after sunset.

The place was empty except for two old, heavyish ladies with square, grey haircuts. The ladies sat across from each other at a table near a divider-screen which set apart the back area from the front area. The ladies wore slightly oversized t-shirts, probably blue and red, and pale jeans. They spoke like two grandmothers, with a deadpan, but patient and cheerful tone of voice.

I had to squeeze past the two ladies to get into the back area, where I thought I'd sit because it had so much space. I may have seen two more people enter the shop: a man and woman about my age. This may have made me a little anxious.

I wanted to buy some coffee or tea, but I hadn't seen a cashier yet. I saw a stairway that went down to a basement. It was narrow, with clean walls and pale wood steps. It looked newly built. I knew the cashier was actually in the basement.

I went down into the basement. It was huge, like three or four living rooms put together. The place itself seemed to be set up like three or four different living rooms. The whole place was cast in a bluish light, which I think came from the ground-level windows, high up on the walls. The floor was covered in thick, white shag carpet or rugs of the same material. There were couches everywhere. There were square pillars of dark wood near the center of the room. There were other household items, like bicycles, etc., scattered about.

Bookshelves lined most of the walls. All the books on the shelves looked like popular novels. What mostly caught my attention as I gazed at the bookshelves from the center of the room were books whose spines looked like those of the old V.C. Andrews books.

I saw the cash register, but nobody was there. I knew the cashier was in the restroom. I tried to be quiet, almost invisible as well. I was afraid that if I was too "forward" about my presence, I would cause the cashier to dislike me, which would, I feared, make my future visits here really stressful.

I pulled back my personality so much that I became like a ghost. I "walked," moving my legs, but not moving because I was moving my legs. I was actually moving by cruising forward while floating about an inch above the floor. I crept-floated around the corner of a pillar and possibly squeezed between the space between the back of a chair or couch and the pillar. I floated toward a bookshelf and reached out for a book.

The cashier walked out from the bathroom, which, I saw, was near a smallish, concrete-floored laundry room. The cashier was a tallish, skinny man with a slight, stubbly, black beard and glasses. He may have worn a wool cap.

The cashier, seeing me, at first seemed hesitant to interact. Then he said, "Beautiful night."

I said something in response, but my words were drowned out to me by my thoughts about what I should say. I knew the man had said what he'd said because he didn't want to go through the whole "how are you doing" or "how can I help you" kind of thing.

But I thought that since he'd said it was a beautiful night, I'd sound like I was an idiot if anything I said implied I would be staying inside reading. I thought I'd say something about the long walk I'd just taken to show that I hadn't wasted the beauty of the day by being inside.

I may have asked the man about a book to read. The man told me that I should read XXXXX (can't remember). I thought to myself, Who does that guy think he is, telling me what book to read? I won't read it!

I walked up to a bookshelf to the right (as I faced it) of the cash register. This bookshelf had previously been along the back wall, but now it was on the right wall. I looked up at one of the top shelves, to a row of Stephen King books with the "new style" white bindings with blocks of color across the bottom of the page, where the titles are. I focused on one book called something like Jumping in the Hay.