(10/15/04) i'm not really your mother

(Dream only entered in daytime paper journals. No time/place info given.)

Dream 1

I was going to a movie with my friend ML. We apparently hadn't decided on a movie yet. The movie theater box office was like a patio covered with saffron, vermilion, and golden sheets and standing thinly at the top of a pinkish tan desert cliff. It was a warm, lightly breezy, dry day. It seems like as well as being outside the theater was inside.

We walked up to the ticket booth. There was a list of three or four movies. I chose one, which it seems like ML wasn't too pleased to see. But he didn't say anything, so I guess we were planning to see it.

But I got a buzz on my cell phone, as if I had a buzzer when the ringer was off. I seem to have walked away, in front of a curving, grayish, wide, concrete building. There were areas for gardens in front of the building, sloping up and down in between sidewalks and concrete dividers. But there was no garden, just flat sections of deep brown, barren, somewhat overturned earth. The area was huge and I walked all around the sidewalks.

I listened to the phone message. My mom sounded very upset. She told me to call her as soon as I could because she finally had to tell me something she should have told me a long time ago. At first I was annoyed that my mom would bother me. But then I figured that she sounded worried.

I called her up. Crying, she told me, "I'm not really your mother. I never wanted to tell you. You were adopted. It was when you were a child. You had been taken away from your real mother."

(At this point I saw a baby in a dark room, very starkly lit in grey, dim daylight from almost nowhere, like this was a dungeon, and with two redneck-looking men somewhere off in the background. The baby seemed to be being dipped into a clay pot like the Egyptian glyph.)

"Something terrible had been done to you. Two men hurt you. They XXXXX. And your mom allowed this to happen. She stood to the side and watched it. But she wasn't to blame. and the men meant no harm. They were just two gay men."

At this point I tried to get information from my mom as to where my biological mom was. I also tried to get information about what had been done to me. But everything my mom said suddenly became jangled and misshapen.

(10/18/04) white house frames; another place altogether; spilling seed

(Dreams only entered in daytime paper journal. No time/place info given.)

Dream 1

Some white frames for house fronts, all lined up at the top of a hill, fell down forward. I was on a fence, possibly with my friend R's friend KZ. I jumped off the fence and ran to the house fronts, possibly just as they were falling.

Dream 2

I (now) stood outside a building. I looked up to its roof, which was maybe forty feet high, and watched a helicopter descend straight down and out of sight a fraction of a second before it collided with the roof. A bunch of smoke immediately flooded the air.

I rushed into the building. I stood in a dim, long hallway broken at points by adjoining halls or lobby-like areas. Down the hall I saw my friend R, who was in "another place altogether." He had his cell phone. He was trying to reach me by phone to make sure I hadn't been injured in the explosion. I yelled down the hallway to him, even though I may not have been sure that I thought that would work, as R wasn't "actually" in this building. I'm pretty sure R didn't hear me, though he was generally looking in my direction.

Dream 3

Something broke in the window room at R's place. It was like a sleeping back full of grain. It was by the table, as if it had fallen off the table. The room was dark. R and KZ sat at the table, across the table from each other. The room was empty and clean, like my friend CV hadn't been living there.

I felt ashamed of the mess, which was likely my fault. So I lifted as much of it up in the sleeping bag as I could. The rest I figured could mainly be scraped off the floor. But I knew, ashamed, that some of it would not come out at all, as it had soaked (?) into the floor.

(3/2/05) the new family tree

(Entered in paper journal at 6:05 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in an airport or something like it. I was, I think, waiting for a woman to arrive and for my friend R to come by car to pick us up. R's dad kept calling and/or leaving text messages on my phone. He wanted to know just when this woman (who looked like my best friend Y's dad's girlfriend, except in her mid-thirties) was coming.

I was afraid that sooner or later I'd have to give a specific time. But for the time being I kept ignoring the text messages and telling R's dad on the phone calls that I had not yet seen the woman. This may actually have been true.

Now I was in the backseat of a car driven by R. R's mom called me and complained that neither of us was complying very well with instructions and that if we let that woman near her, we, too, were in deep trouble.

R became sullen and agitated. (It was like we were driving in the parking lot with the Starbucks on San Pedro and Montgomery in Albuquerque, New Mexico.) I told him, as I saw a thin, cartoon-style family tree in my mind's eye, to be positive about this family tree of his -- that the good thing about each family tree is that each branch tip --

R interrupted, "Yeah, I know, I know! Just leave it alone."

But I couldn't put into words or get a clear view in my mind's eye what I was trying to say or what it was I was talking about. Then, after a second of struggle, it all came into place. I saw a branch tip clip off from a tree and lilt down into the ground, where it took root and became the trunk of a new tree.

I didn't say anything. R calmed down. He said, "Oh, I understand that each person in effect starts his own family tree. But I'm too grumpy right now. I don't even care."

(6/6/05) office asylum haters; y was back to stay

(Entered in paper journal at 5:55 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I got a text message on "my" cell phone, which was pretty nice. The message was like a news article. A man had jumped off a cliff and into a crowd or some large object and had ruined some big event. He had been attempting suicide. But he was still alive. Somehow the article, as if written by my mom, insinuated that my brother had been the person in question.

I now stood in my mom's living room, before the couch on which she lay resting. The room was dark. My mom, tired, said, "We do things and do things for him. We think he's okay. Then he does something like this. I think it's the pressure of his new living situations."

I said, "You mean, they won't let him live with my great-grandmother A anymore?"

She said, "He has to live in a group home with people like him. But he gets plenty of space. They get their own beds. And they even get their own office desks to perform tasks at."

I now saw, as if it were down a crooked hallway, a room full of office desks. I could sense that a bunch of wiry, muscular, bald, white guys were pressuring my brother to go insane.

Dream 2

I met R and CV somewhere. They had run into Y. They told me something pathetic about Y, like she had a dog in a cage and was getting all fussy over a small thing someone had said about it. They laughed. I tried to laugh. But then, thinking about Y, I was angry.

But then I realized that this was New York and that Y was back, living with R. I tried to speak, to ask if Y was back to stay, but I couldn't. And I really didn't want to hear R and CV say yes.

(9/18/06) recruiting floyd bowie; can't reach my grandmother; the vanishing stealth bomber

(Entered in paper journal at 7:35 PM at home in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was on a subway train at night. I might ahve gone some stops too far. I was with my Americorps coworkers VT and SM. The train went underground through enormous, fluorescent-lit tunnels and then up above ground through an area like a mountain town. During that time it was like there was lightning and snow.

It was Christmas Eve. I was trying to find someone from our crew who wouldn't mind working. If I could find one person, everyone else would fall into place. VT suggested "Floyd Bowie." The next train stop got off near Floyd's house. But VT warned me that perhaps the parents wouldn't want Floyd to work.

I apparently got off the train to go to Floyd's But I didn't really physically get off the train. I just kind of floated down around through the small, snow-covered city that was nestled between some mountains in purple night light.

I stood at the base of the bridge on which the train ran -- a beautiful, long, stone bridge (thought also not unlike the bridge dividing Park Avenue in East Harlem). Down a slope under one of the arches and on the other side of the bridge was a tree bathed in orange streetlamp light.

A black man stood against the tree as if embracing it, urinating. I thought, Don't let these guys see you. This neighborhood's tough at night. They'll all gang up on you.

It was like I was floating around again. I ended up on the corner of a small hill where "Floyd Bowie's" family's house was. The house was a tall, cubic structure, with white walls on the left, right (and back?), and a glass front wall (and glass ceiling?). A second story like a balcony stood high over the first story living room, which was ample and spacious but with plenty of furniture.  The entire house glowed a uranium green, as if lit from the inside.

I was captivated by the beauty of the house. But I didn't want to get too close. I was afraid the parents would think I was exploiting Floyd and pressuring him to work on this day. I thought I would just call and let Floyd's family know I was in the neighborhood. I could see if I could stop by (even though it was probably 2 or 3 AM).

As I was calling I was walking by the bridge again. Under the arches and down the hills, in orange streetlight, were tough kids. Finally they saw me and slinked along after me. I wasn't getting Floyd's phone number right, and I wasn't leaving the right message. I had to call again and again to try and get things right.

I ran into a corner -- a wall jutting from the bridge. I had missed the stairs leading up to the train. I turned around.

An Asian boy stopped me. Some of his friends stood in the distance. He was tallish and fattish. He wore glasses, darkish blue hospital scrub pants with clownish designs, and a plain blue hospital shirt. The left shoulder of the shirt was held together by a safety pin.

The boy did something to bully me. I "fought" him weird, so I ended frozen with my feet kicking his left shoulder (?). I pulled the safety pin off the guy's shirt. The guy was just laughing at me. He grabbed my legs or arms and taunted me. He told me I couldn't get out of his grip, that I wasn't tough enough.

I was going to shove the safety pin into the guy's neck. I got close. The kid took a silver lighter out of his pocket. He said, "You did just what I wanted you to do."

The guy put the lighter over my head. I stood back (apparently back in control of my legs). The guy put his lighter away. I was about to go at the guy again. But he said, "Ah, ah, ah... You might want to do this." He tapped his head.

I tapped my head. I had a flame coming out of the crown of my head. I patted it out. I was furious. I knew all the kids were going to attack me now.

Dream 2

It was like I was under a table in a house with no front wall or a huge, open front door showing the wide view of a small, mountain view on a sunny, crisp day.

I was on my cell phone, trying to make a call. I had heard my (grandmother P?) was in bad shape, maybe even dead. I had somehow missed a call from her, out of carelessness and not wanting to talk to her. Now each time my call failed to connect seemed to prove more and more what an awful person I was.

I could almost hear my (grandma?) scolding me for being such an awful person, to let her die like that. It was almost like she died partly to teach me a lesson.

Dream 3

I stood with a friend (can't remember who) on open ground on a clear day. (Now it seems obvious to me we were on an asphalt strip next to an airplane hangar. But this was not obvious in the dream -- I simply felt like I was somewhere near a forest.)

I looked up. I saw a "Stealth Bomber." I pointed it out to my friend. The bomber flew over us once and then slowly a second time, fling upside down and low so we could see the two pilots waving at us.

I shouted to my friend, "Did you see that? They waved!"

We looked away. But I couldn't believe it. Why would anybody wave at me? It must have been my friend they were waving at.

I looked back up. The jet seemed to be frozen in place. I saw the pilot in back "waving." Then I realized he wasn't waving. He was signaling. He was trying to get me out of the area where the jet was trying to land!

Now I meandered all over the place like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get out of the way, looking up at the jet the whole time. The jet lost its body, as if it had never existed. When the "jet landed it was just a cockpit on wheels. But it still looked cool. I knew it was still an important vehicle. It had landed so slowly, gently, and quietly, though, that I wondered why the back pilot had made such a big deal about me getting out of the way.

(9/19/07) the community meeting place

(Entered in paper journal at 6:45 AM at Starbucks on 57th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was on a cell phone with my brother. I stood in a building like a community meeting place. I told my brother that when I first looked into the place, from outside the doorway, I thought the interior of the place would be intricate and of Asian design. My first view had been of an Asian screen or barrier which was black, possibly lacquer, not solid, but branching out and around in cloud patterns. The black might have been lined with or accented by gold.

But when I had gotten inside I saw that the screen simply enclosed an empty, open space. I told my brother, "It's kind of modern inside. The walls are white plaster. There's a small folding table at the front of the room. A couple people are sitting at it." The people were, I think, a Native American mother and her children.

The front of the room (the back of the building) was like a speaking area: some design (?) on the wall made this fact understood. Three was no platform or elevation of the floor: just this design on the wall.

I looked to my right and told my brother, "There's even a TV." It was like I was trying to convince my brother to come to this place, but he was afraid that the place wasn't modern enough, that it might be boring.

The TV was a little TV. It looked a few years old. But now I saw a big, plasma-screen TV. I told my brother, "Wait. There's two TVs!" But now I looked again and saw three TVs. I couldn't say anything. I was hoping the TVs wouldn't multiply anymore.

I faced toward the back of the room (front of the building). The people behind me were now my co-workers. They were talking and having a good time. Before me and maybe ten feet away was another folding table.

From about twenty feet away and to my right, my co-worker RJ walked in front of me and sat at the table. RJ spoke as she walked and sat, saying something about how she and I had been planning to take trips (probably separately) to some place like Connecticut. RJ asked me if I would like to start going to the gym with her. I sat near RJ's feet, in front of the table. I was putting shoes on RJ's feet.

It was a winter day outside. It was a vacation day for us, as if we were in college. I suggested we go in the morning, and then we could do something like eat breakfast. RJ said, as if I should have realized, that that idea wouldn't fit her schedule. She suggested we do something in the afternoon instead.

(10/30/07) kidney-shaped table; thursday party; disgruntled clown

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was a grey-blue day. I walked along a city street, like out on a waterfront, or, rather, beside a wide street under an overpass, with a group of friends, one of whom was AT, one of the Directors of my department. AT spoke on a cell phone with one of my co-workers, either about his having advertised that he was quitting his job or else about his having advertised unseemly views about the company.

We walked up a staircase to our right and into a brick row-house. AT was concluding her call as she walked into the house. The house had an empty feel to it. It was dim. I sat at a dining table that backed (on my left) against a weirdly shaped wall of oddly set doorways. There were probably blankets all over the floors. The table itself may have had a weird, kidney-like shape.

AT was down the hallway (behind me). A few people filtered into the room. Among them was my co-worker DE, with whom AT had been on the phone.

DE was mad at me. He had been blamed for AT's anger, claiming that I'd told AT that he had been advertising something against the company. I tried to remember what I had said. It had been on the walk outside. I thought it had been harmless. But now I realized it wasn't. I still tried to convince myself I had said something harmless.

Dream #2

I got done at some social event like a cocktail party for a friend. The whole thing seemed to have been held on a stage, the surface of which looked like a model's runway. I stepped down from it, into an area (like an orchestra pit?) full of technical equipment like hospital equipment or sound equipment. The whole room now seemed like a somewhat large sound-stage.

I stood in front of my old boss and mentor EB and his wife GB. EB and GB sat on tall swivel chairs, like for a breakfast bar. Both EB and BG looked really healthy and happy. They asked me if I was coming to their party on Thursday. I hesitated. I saw, though, that GB had picked up on and disapproved of my hesitation. So I caught myself and said, "Ah... Thursday? Yeah, that sounds good."

Dream #3

I walked, possibly with a group of friends/co-workers, on a desert road on the outskirts of the suburbs. It was a warm, gold and blue day. I had reached some point along the walk and realized it was a long way to walk to my destination and that I might not get there on time.

I was now in a car with a group of friends/co-workers. We drove to a restaurant. We finished eating and headed back outside. As we left the restaurant the interior appeared grey, crowded, and steamy. Even the windows seemed clouded up with steam.

Outside, the area was like a filling station. Everybody else had gone back to the car. I told them I would walk. I probably wasn't in a hurry "now that we had made our meeting."

I walked up a street, 39th Street, which might have been the street from which it was a long distance to the meeting. The intersection I turned right on had a very deserty feel. But now I walked down a street which, on my side, the right side, anyway, was just a long, long suburban street.

I walked past a two-story house of maroon-painted brick with a row of tan-painted brick separating the two floors. As I gazed at the building, a man's shout startled me. I saw, up in the distance, a man walking my way. I tried not to act upset or startled.

I now walked in the shade of a row of very short houses. The man approached me. He looked clownish -- fattish, dumpy, with long tufts of bushy hair on either side of his head. He wore baggy, roundish, hobo-style clothes, a bowler hat, and possibly a beer-drinking hat. There were some bright colors on him somewhere.

The man was going on and on, as if he were ranting at someone on a cell phone. He said, "I told them, Hey! You aren't gonna fire me. You aren't gonna do that to me!"

We crossed paths. But then the man turned and followed me from a distance, continuing to act like he was speaking on a cell phone but now also implicating me in his conversation.

(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.

(7/17/08) flirting with boss' girl; irreparable damage

(Entered in paper journal at 5:32 AM on 2-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a place like an empty cruise ship bar with my boss BS. BS stood behind the counter, which was made of material like a fake-leather seat (an orangish light brown). Behind BS was a wide window with a view of a harbor (?).

BS had been trying to push me into doing something, maybe seeing a specific movie. But when I was visibly annoyed with his insistence, he apologized and said he wouldn't push me.

BS handed me a "cutout from a newspaper," which was thicker than newsprint or normal paper, maybe even as thick as a piece of kraft board, like the paper that makes cereal boxes. The clipping was maybe two inches wide and six inches long. It was an ad for a new movie theater and a movie BS thought I should see. I walked away, as if we were done talking.

Now the place was a bar with a strange harbor motif, all made out of grey, old wood, with thick line strung about as railings. BS stood on a level slightly above me and before the bar. He held a pretty, brunette girl loosely around the waist and told me goodbye, and to have fun volunteering. The girl BS was embracing was apparently furtively flirting with me. But I tried not to notice.

I knew BS and the girl thought I was leaving the building completely. A line of folks piled behind them. I stood at a distance, taking care of writing something in my notebook before I left. I stood hidden behind a thick column. To my right was a zigzagging line before a register counter that looked like the counter at a fast food restaurant. That area was empty.

I could hear the girl with BS say about me, "Yeah, Preemie's gay. For sure he's gay. He reminds me of one of my gay friends who would always do volunteer things, too. Whenever he would see me and my girlfriends he would say, 'Have fun, girls!' in the gayest way, and try to get us to go volunteering with him."

I was now sitting at a silvery table and writing down information from posters over a doorway (like a hallway to the kitchen and restrooms) to my right. To my left was the bar and line of people, slightly elevated from my level. BS and the girl were at the front of the line. The girl was now younger. She wore a pink shirt (I think her shirt had previously been black).

BS caught a glimpse of me and asked why I was still here, in the same annoyed tone of voice he might use if I were to stay at work too long in waking life. I told BS, "I'm just writing stuff down from over there. It's the only place that has it. Then I'll leave, definitely."

I couldn't make out what one of the posters said, so I asked the girl if she could read it for me. The girl had a different look, and her shirt, still pink, now had a pale or washed-out look. The girl bent over and whispered the phrase in my ear, but using a very intimate voice.

I thought this girl was really flirting with me, but I tried to believe she wasn't. But now she bent down and embraced me while whispering the phrase. She embraced me again and pulled me into a standing position. BS looked slightly annoyed and put-out by the whole situation. I decided to leave before I ended up taking BS' girlfriend (???).

I was out on a walkway that was surrounded by water. The walkway was concrete, but there seemed to be wooden docks all around me. There may have been a few boats as well. It was possibly late afternoon. I was on the phone with my girlfriend H. I told H where I was and that I thought I could meet with her if she liked.

I came up to a calm river where a few people were kayaking. My view of the people was obscured by a small bridge that seemed to break in the middle. The bridge looked like the walkway-bridge over the road near the Intrepid aircraft carrier and museum. I thought I would cross the bridge and join the people kayaking. But I realized it was time for kayaking to close for the day, so I couldn't join them.

The light was now cool and blue grey, though there were still a few faint glimmers of golden sunlight. I was on the phone with H again. She was excitedly telling me about something. But suddenly she stopped. Her line went completely silent. I thought I had been disconnected from her.

I may now have been in a bedroom. I tried calling H back. But the phone just kept ringing.

Dream #2

I was with a group of people who were about my age or a little younger. We were all out on a wide lawn or field near some big house. We were all part of some nature project. A group of folks had dug up a hole in the field and pulled out some kind of concrete structure. Now a group of folks was digging up another hole.

An instructor, a kind of dumpy-looking, shabbily dressed man, gobbled at the people that they shouldn't have dug the holes. They had mistaken destroying a species' habitat for doing research. They may now have done irreparable damage. The only thing that could be done now was to cover up the holes before the boss came by. Hopefully the boss wouldn't notice what had been done.

Some time went by. Both holes (although the first one may not have been a problem to begin with) were covered over with a grass matting that was underwoven with a lightweight cable material, like for industrial electrics. I could see the matting from below, as if I were in the hole. The place I was in was like a basic living area.

(7/27/08) store without workers; safety lesson; take it with you?

(Entered in paper journal at 7:45 AM at Starbucks on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in an enormous grocery store all by myself at night or in the very early morning. The store had a few different sections, all of which were large, but some of which felt like convenience store aisles, small-town grocery store aisles, health-food store aisles, or regular grocery store aisles.

I was near the back of the store. There were wide window walls looking out at a black, empty parking lot. This section of the store had a strange shape, trapezoidal, almost, and there were checkout lanes set at an odd angle facing the window wall.

There were no workers at any of the checkout lanes. I wondered how I could buy the food I wanted. I walked up to one of the lanes and looked onto its conveyor belt. A couple folds of cash and receipts had been left on the belt. I figured people must have paid by leaving their money here for the workers eventually to pick up.

I threw some of my own money on the belt, as if I were paying for the food. Then I picked the money up again, hoping I could find somebody in here to pay, or not wanting to be accused of shoplifting if I'd walked out of the store after having left my money in the wrong place. I'm not sure I even had any merchandise with me at that point.

I wandered through another area of the store, through some dry goods shelves and past a packaged meat cooler. I was now holding a few items, including a bottle of Gatorade.

I was now outside the store, in the big parking lot. The parking lot was empty. I saw a fully lit grocery store. I walked toward it. I hadn't left any money for my merchandise. I thought that the lit storefront was the front part of the store I had just been in. There were people inside: I could see them. I figured I could pay them.

But it didn't quite make sense to me. The store I'd been in, it seemed, was on the other side of the parking lot. Plus, the piles of money I'd seen on the conveyor belt seemed to be payments left by people who'd been in the store before me. Nevertheless, I wanted to pay an actual person, so I would have a witness in case anybody tried to accuse me of not paying.

When I got to the front of the store I saw one kind of small checkout lane a few feet back from a metal detector. The store itself was huge, clean, and harshly white-lit. Everybody at the checkout lane was from the company I worked at.

One of the liaisons between the Sales department and the Research department, MA, stood leaning against the shoplifting scanner and facing the doorway. I said hi. He began complaining about things at our company, and possibly particularly about the bad quality of our company's research.

Dream #2

I was with a group of folks in the mountains. We were being educated on safety for some big project that used heavy machinery. It was day. We lay stomach-down with our heads over a steep cliff.

Our teacher mentioned people who weren't being safe. She told us the consequences those people would suffer. As an illustration an enormous tractor-shovel came tumbling over the cliff to our left. We watched as it crashed down below. The cab of the vehicle was dull silver. The shovel was dull blue. The cliff was rocky, with ledges or shelves coated lightly in snow.

Now another giant tractor shovel fell off the cliff. Our instructor spoke about in the first vehicle there had been no survivors. The second crash hadn't been so bad.

I saw one of the people in the first vehicle. He was a bald, white man, kind of punk-looking, very tough and fleshy. He might have been laying in the cab, covered in blood. He didn't look quite dead to me, even though it had been understood that all the people in the first vehicle had died immediately.

Now I was rushing through a hallway with a group of people, alongside a bed carrying the man. The bed and the man were very clean. The man may have been wearing an oxygen mask. His eyes were open. I thought, Perhaps what the instructor meant was that the man died not too long after having gotten to the hospital.

The man started nodding his head. I could hear the instructor say, "The man's brain was so damaged that he could respond to every stimulus only by nodding his head. He was in this frenzied condition until he died." For some reason I couldn't believe this was so. It seemed to me like somehow he was regenerating.

The hospital hallways were wide and elegant, with tan, polished, gravel-patterned (?) floors, glass-green walls, and slanted, glass ceilings. I stood in the hallway as the man was wheeled into a glass-walled room just out of my sight. Before me were windows warm with sunlight. Outside was a view like an enormous airstrip in the wintertime.

Dream #3

I was walking in a place that half looked like a backyard and half looked like an area around a building like a church or a small community center. I may have been speaking on my cell phone with my mom.

People started filing out of the building. They all looked like business people. I noticed that one of the people was Mayor Bloomberg. He wore a black polo shirt and whitish khakis. I was pretty impressed and turned as he passed me, thinking I might go say hi to him.

(Oddly enough, a very similar thing happened to me in waking life one early morning in the winter of 2011, right in front of Radio City Music Hall. In waking life, Mayor Bloomberg was, of course, wearing a suit, and he'd come out of a black SUV, accompanied by a small retinue of attendants.)

I turned around. In the group of people was another famous person I couldn't quite place. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, since I thought that would make me look suspicious somehow. So I just kept walking.

I was now in an enormous building which may have been a loading dock or an airplane hangar. Warm sunlight flowed into the building, giving the whole place an airy, yellowy feel.

Before me and at a small distance was a pile of boxes and furniture. I recognized this as being all my possessions. One of the boxes was broken open. Inside were books. Looking at the books I realized I was interested in a lot of them. I had originally packed this stuff away thinking I didn't want it anymore. Now I thought I did.

I thought I would try to carry all this stuff with me wherever I was going. But I knew that if I even took time getting everything all put back together I'd risk being late wherever I was going. If I tried to carry this stuff with me (and likely it would break and scatter all over the place as I was going), I would definitely be late and miss my flight or whatever was taking me wherever I was going.

I was talking with my mom on my cell phone again. My mom told me there was a post office or UPS right near where I was (I was at an airport). I could take all this stuff to the post office and they would box it (?) and send it to wherever I was going.

This plan didn't make sense to me. It seemed like I'd be wasting time trying to pack the stuff up and leave it here or trying to pack the stuff up and carry it with me. Nevertheless, I figured I would end up doing what my mom told me to do.

(3/2/10) einstein gives me a lesson

(Entered in paper journal at 6:15 AM on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I stood before a folding table (?) outdoors, possibly under the shade of a tree, with a girl who was taller than I and possibly my age or a little bit younger. We were working on some kind of science project. There might have been papers and books strewn across the table.

The girl either had a screw (or bolt) or held a paper showing a diagram of the bolt. She asked me what the threads were called. There was something about the distance between the thread-windings that was not exactly right for our experiment (possibly because of the way they would conduct electricity). But the woman couldn't remember what "threads" were called.

I "went" to inquire -- by turning around and walking, through the driver's side window, into a car. Albert Einstein sat in the front passenger seat. He may have been studying something or scribbling something, as if he sat at a desk. I stuttered, "Uh... uh... Professor?" I wasn't sure whether it was correct to call him "Professor."

Einstein, not looking away from his papers, said, "Yes?"

I asked, "What do you call the winding protrusions on a screw?"

Einstein and I were both now out of the car, walking toward the woman, who stood before the table. Einstein said, "Zose are called ze Crotons."

I now looked at a yellowed piece of parchment on the table. The parchment showed a draftsman-quality drawing of an upturned bolt with the word "CROTON" printed above it.

Albert Einstein now warned me and the girl about our work together getting out of hand. He said he'd really wanted each of us to partner with someone else for this project. But as the girl and I agreed and then started walking away, Einstein muttered something to himself about how happy he was, and how auspicious it was, that the girl and I had started working together.

The girl and I were now inside, in a place like a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The girl had walked off, talking on her cell phone. I felt like it was time to start working again, so I went to find the girl. She was a few display-shelves away. (There were no aisles, per se, but rather display bookshelves all set at odd angles to each other, creating a nice sense of space.) As I approached her, I heard her talking about her personal affairs. So I decided to walk away and let her have her private space.

I found a couple shelves with modern-looking picture books on them. One book may have had a pink cover with a silkscreen black-paint print of a woman's face on it. Another book may have had a mirrory-silver cover with blocky, black capital letters printed on it. I thought I might look at one of those books.

But now the woman, possibly still speaking on her phone, walked toward me to "pick me up" so we could go back to work. She may have said something about doing so to the person she was on the phone with. We may have walked over the back of a couch, which may have served as the barrier between the bookstore and our work area.