(3/8/09) creative violence; constructive dilemma

(Entered in paper journal at 8:46 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was sitting at a table like a picnic table of heavy wood in front of a building like a concession stand that was made all of heavy, old, dark wood -- like it was part of some Old West theme park. It was daytime, but it also felt like we may have been inside some larger building. A few friends of mine stood in front of the stand. They were all lounging around.

I started talking out loud (possibly having been asked?) about a dream or an imagination or some piece of creative writing. I was giving a broad overview of how some key events in the thing I was talking about matched up with some violent event like a murder or mass murder. My friends suddenly looked a little worried, though they all seemed to be trying to put on a show of still being relaxed and lounging around. Some seemed to want to ignore me.

One man, however, sat down to my left. I may have just continued talking, as if I were delusional or not in control of myself. The man sat listening to me, as if we were carrying on a conversation.The man looked Hispanic, with black clothes on, baggy, a wool cap, and stubble almost grown to a beard.

Dream #2

It was a grey day. I stood with a group of people, about my age or a little younger, before a ditch or a dry creek in a landscape with black (cindery?) soil and full clumps of tan-yellow (leafless?) shrubs. Most of the people I was with were women. We were all led by two or three older women who were dressed in a 1930s businesswoman style (or a style like that of the bordello keeper in Federico Fellini's Roma). At first only one of the leading women was visible.

The group of us were climbing down the slope, which, despite the apparent dryness of our surroundings, was very muddy. The one lead woman who was visible was talking to the other lead woman about how one of the girls in our group was afraid to come down the slope. They both agreed to let the woman alone, that it was regrettable that she was afraid, whether it be of the steepness or of the muddiness of the slope, but that there wasn't time to try and convince the woman to join the rest of the group.

Where we had gone down into the ditch, the slope was maybe ten feet tall. It sloped roundly down to a very narrow bed. We turned left and walked forward. The bed widened out. The slopes may also have become more like the walls of a box canyon. The bed was now maybe twenty feet wide.

To our left, possibly where another river or box canyon jointed into the one we were walking in, there stood a building like a mix between a Native American ruin and a Spanish mission. It seemed to be made of tan-brown stones or adobe bricks. The building belled upwards in two tiers, with two arches on the bottom tier, possibly separated by a square section of building, with another small arch on top.

We were all here to do some kind of work on this building. But one of the group, my co-worker CT, didn't want to do the work. In fact, she now appeared to be gone.

I stood near a woman who was tall, blonde, pretty, and full-bodied (on the verge of being overweight). I was flirting with the woman. When CT was around, I'd flirt with her, but when she wasn't around, I'd flirt with the blonde woman. I was known for always having to flirt with one of the girls.

The blonde girl and I were now driving deeper and deeper underground in a tunnel like the Eisenhower tunnel in Colorado. The woman was driving.

The woman explained to me that CT couldn't do the work on the building because her beliefs assigned a specific meaning to the building as it currently was. She couldn't contribute to changing the building and altering that meaning.

I thought, That makes sense. I had thought that CT had simply been afraid of going into the dark building, which looked a little scary from the outside, or that she hadn't wanted to get dirty by doing the work. I now wanted to be back in the box canyon with everybody, so I could possibly find CT and let her know I supported her.

(5/13/09) insects among friends; my space jet isn't good enough

Dream #1

I was in a room like the dining room of the house my family lived in from the time I was eleven to fifteen years old. My family was there, as were other people, possibly my peers from the job I had just gotten laid off from. It was daytime, and natural light came into the room from a sliding-glass door at the back of the room. There were a few pieces of furniture in the room There might have been a nice rug on the floor.

On the wall to my right was my mom's buffet, one of her favorite pieces of furniture. The left cupboard door of the buffet was missing. A large insect like a roach tumbled out of the cupboard. The insect was maybe an inch and a half or two inches long. It landed on its legs on the floor. It was dead, dried out.

A smaller insect, also roach-like, but maybe only half an inch long, devoured the larger insect before our very eyes, until the larger insect was nothing more than a frame, like legs and a few spindly structures outlining where the body used to be.

I was ashamed that I had let my co-workers, whom I thought of as friends, especially my co-worker CT, see that I had allowed such a large insect into my house.

Dream #2

I was with my family, driving a large jet or new space rocket down through tunnels like walkway tunnels between subway platforms. The corridors had concrete floors and white-tiled walls and were lit with greenish-grey-white fluorescent light.

At first the jet we drove in looked (in my mind's eye?) white and like a hybrid of an SR-71, a Concord, and a space shuttle, with a radar disc on top. The vehicle may have had a grid pattern on it, as if it was tiled.

There was a young boy with us, somewhere, as if behind me and to my left, and not quite inside the vehicle. The boy was short, of medium build, bratty looking, a little tan, with longish, golden-brown hair, wearing a cocked backward, blue baseball cap, a longish, navy blue t-shirt, and baggy blue jeans.

The boy was making fun of the vehicle in a bratty way, like the vehicle wasn't good enough. In some way I felt like the boy was right. But I alsy felt like I just needed to ignore the boy. We were doing just fine in this vehicle. At some point the vehicle become more like an SR-71, black and tall.

We stopped in a wide opening, like there area before the turnstiles at subway stations. We may have gotten out of the vehicle, as if we were going to walk through the turnstiles and onto the subway platform.

(10/10/09) foolish at the farewell party

(Entered in paper journal at 8:30 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was at a party with a group of friends, possibly co-workers. We were at a smallish apartment which was lit by a slightly cold-feeling, incandescent light. The party was quiet and calm. We might have been saying farewell to one of our co-workers, who looked like my old co-worker CT.

CT was at the other end of the room from me, possibly with a group of other people. I was upset with her because she'd made me feel like she liked me romantically, but now she'd somehow made it clear either that she liked someone else more or that she altogether didn't like me romantically. I felt like I had been made a fool of in front of everybody.

I tried to act like I didn't care about CT, almost like I didn't even know she was at the party. I began walking around the whole periphery of the main room, counter-clockwise. I figured that I'd go around the whole periphery (the room was now much larger), and then either leave or find that CT had left. This way I would prove, I thought, that I could ignore CT as much as she could ignore me.

But when I was almost all the way around the room (I imagined a map, like a floor plan, that showed the room to be large enough even to include a library), I realized that CT was not only still here, but that she was having a good time with everybody else. CT had even started to follow my idea of walking around the periphery of the room.

I thought that now I was for sure going to leave. I may have seen an old, rich-looking, white-haired, beautiful man by the door.

Somehow I got sidetracked by a male friend of mine who convinced me to sit in a different room with him. We were going to discuss something very important to me. We went into an unlit room that was joined to the main room by two open glass doors. The room was narrow and appeared to be something like a library, with a few wall-height bookshelves, some armchairs, and some unopened boxes. There was also a desk with a computer on it.

The man sat us down in two folding chairs before the doorway to another room, which may have been a bedroom but which looked like some kind of classroom half full of folding chairs. The light was on in that room, and the walls may have been a warm color, like orange.

As the man and I began to discuss things, CT went into the bedroom with a man and a few other friends. The man had told CT earlier on in the party, I now remembered, that he would draw her portrait. Now CT sat in one of the folding chairs in the back of the room. The man sat in a chair in the row before CT and turned the chair a bit to his left so he could twist around to see and draw CT. The friends sat around CT and the man.

CT And the man began discussing something, possibly something I'd done but shouldn't have done, but how I couldn't be blamed because I really hand't known any better.

I now realized that this party was a funeral for a young man we'd known. The man had been Latino, tallish, thin, with a closely shaved head of hair, and maybe a little stubble on his chin.

I now stood outside on a city street. It was a grey, slightly cool morning. I could see my breath, mostly because of the humidity, not the cold. I stood next to a brown velvet rope barrier that went along the edge of the sidewalk, leading, toward my left, to what was either the loading dock for a big building or the back of a semi-truck's trailer. A few other people stood along the velvet rope. A couple people stood inside the loading dock area, apparently waiting to carry out the coffin of the man whose funeral it was.

As I stood waiting, I began to think that the people who also stood along the rope were beginning to look at me funny. I started to remember having done something distasteful at the party last night, something along the lines of being completely drunk and shouting out how awesome I thought the deceased young man was.

Apparently the young man was now still still alive. I could see a black and white photo of him. He looked like my cousin N. I knew he was going to walk out from the loading dock at any minute. I also worried that, at any minute, somebody in the groups of people by the rope and in the loading dock would make a loud comment about my foolish behavior, and that everybody else would laugh me to shame.