(8/3/07) what makes people want this job; catching boxes from the sky; hook, line, and walking papers

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

Dream #1

I sat at a desk on an office floor that looked like a living room. The "office" was dim. In an office room, my co-worker DE was on the phone. There may have been a small, fluorescent light on in DE's office.

DE was praising a few people for always staying late. I felt ashamed for not always staying late.

One of the people DE praised was a tall, fat woman with pale blonde hair. Her name may have been Diana. She sat in the office next to DE and was an Administrative Assistant. DE listed a number of things she did, the last of which was, as DE said, to, "Yell a professors I wish I could yell at."

DE said, "In short, she does everything that makes people want to do this job in the first place."

Dream #2

It was a sunny day. I stood out with a group of people at the top of a wide, lawny hill. There were some office-type objects on the lawn. The group had been performing a task, which I may have had a hand in devising. Now we ran to a different part of the hilltop to perform a different task. I may have been angry that we dropped my project, but I tried not to show my anger.

The leader of the group said, "If everybody doesn't like doing this one task, each person can choose his own task." Some of us went back to our original task, which had something to do with catching boxes from the sky. Others did other things.

I was afraid to go back to my original task: I didn't want my boss to think I was a spoiled sport. But then I felt like she was okay with me doing whatever I genuinely wanted to do, so I stood at "my position" to catch boxes from the sky.

But a woman called out to me, "Watch out if you're standing here that you don't let the boxes fall on me." I looked down to the ground. A blonde woman in cream-colored exercise pants and a backless, black leotard was in a stretching position in which her legs stretched out on either side of her at right angles. The woman had her back straight, parallel to the ground, and her face almost flat against the ground. Even though I couldn't see the woman's face, I could tell it was really pretty.

I was about to step away, but I think the woman said, "You don't have to move; just watch out for me."

I suddenly realized I was really turned on by the woman's healthy, sexy body and her stretching position.

Dream #3

I was in a dim bar, getting drunk with my co-worker CJ and some other people. CJ and I had gotten so drunk that we were now wandering the streets.

CJ had a rusty hanger, probably bent out of shape, into something more like a prong, with a sharp end. CJ would put one end of the hanger in his mouth and then swing the rest of the hanger around by wiggling his head. Then he would take the hanger out of his mouth and throw it down the street. I was worried, each time CJ threw the hanger, that the hanger would hit somebody.

The street was lovely, clean, clean-bricked, and softly lit, all under a dark black sky. We walked some more, then found ourselves in a circle in some suburban-looking area. The circle felt like a street for cars, but it was probably paved with tan-colored cobblestones that seemed to me to be more fit for a walking path.

It was now broad daylight. CJ had a straight, metal rod, rusty and thin, like the hanger had been. CJ was still sticking this rod in his mouth and throwing it around. He laughed, like this was a really liberating activity. I still kept worrying that the projectile would stab somebody.

Now CJ wanted me to throw the rod. I decided that this was the wrong place to be.

I saw a crystal-white, almost fairy-like airplane high in the air. It was diving almost straight downward. It had crystalline contrails streaming back behind it. I thought the craft would crash.

I backed away from CJ. I stood in front of a small shop. I looked into the window. The shop looked like a barber shop. It looked very nice, like very rich people were inside, relaxing before a weekend morning haircut. I didn't want the people inside to think I was some bum, so I walked away from the window. I caught a glimpse, looking down to my right, of a quaint, tree-lined street.

I walked back to the circle. I heard CJ had been fired. I may have been in a dim room and standing behind a nice couch.

(8/4/07) supermarket closet; give your friends a break

(Entered in paper journal at 4:50 PM at Barnes and Noble bookstore at Union Square in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with my boss BS. BS asked me to look through some old issues of the trade rag Supermarket News for a piece of data. The issues were in a closet. BS stood inside the closet. I stood outside the closet. The room was dimly lit with greenish, natural light. The closet had an incandescent bulb deep inside it. It was like there were two roughly two-foot-deep sections of the closet partly divided from one another by little section-walls.

There was a huge pile of junk in the closets. The magazines, the old issues of Supermarket News, were scattered and piled throughout the junk. BS wanted me to help him get them. I was afraid, though, that if I did, we would run across some pornographic magazines I had in there.

I also saw a strange and lurid magazine or picture book about black men who beat up white men. I hoped that BS wouldn't find this publication and think it turned me on in the same way that porno mags did -- I was pretty sure it didn't.

I tried to dissuade BS from looking into the pile. But BS wouldn't stop. So eventually I went in and started helping him.

Dream #2

I was in the office of my co-workers DE and EB. (In waking life, DE and EB, the replacement for our old Associate Analyst ES, shared the same office. I sat just outside their office in a cubicle as, at that time, most of the Assistants and first-year Analysts did.)

I was angry at DE for something. He was fighting against me a little, but I was definitely bearing down on him. I finally tore a book out of DE's hand. I accused DE of having done something against me. EB just sat in her seat, watching.

DE choked up a little bit and grew pale. He then burst out crying. I realized I had been too severe, especially with all that was going on with DE's family at that time. (In waking life, from 2007 through 2009 -- though I was hardly sensitive to the issue -- narcissist that I am -- DE's mother and father both experienced some very serious health issues.)

I grabbed DE's left hand and held it with both my hands. EB rushed over and stood by us. DE became less pale. DE was yelling at me, asking me why I couldn't ever just give him a break.

(8/22/07) cameras in my room; sci-fi research report; a better position

(Entered in paper journal at 5:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

A man was arranging my family within a wide and mostly empty room, which was apparently my apartment. There was a big, almost featureless rug on the floor. The man would gather my family into groups, usually along three spots, on one of the long ends of the rug.

There were video cameras in one of the side walls. The man also spoke directly to me about a camera that would be in the room. I couldn't figure how the cameras in the wall would be of any use, or why someone would put a camera directly into my place.

Dream #2

I sat in a big room like a high school cafeteria. Two fat, scraggly men stood or sat near me. They had just learned that I had skill as a science fiction writer.

But now the men also saw that I was reading some reports from my job. The men were interested in my job. One of the men began pointing out things I should pay attention to in one of the reports I was reading. One part in particular was a sub-article in a shaded square on one of the pages.

Dream #3

A girl had been living with me or spending time with me because I had been giving her money. At one point the girl and I were decorating Christmas trees, maybe two trees. We were tying strings of green apples around the trees. The strings of apples got thicker and thicker.

Everything seemed like a blur to me, like my vision was sped up or smeared, like film projected at an unusual speed.

I now stood in a close, warm, kind of bright room with the girl. The girl was tall, blonde, very clean and orderly and healthy, but somehow a little boxy-faced.

The girl told me about all the Christmas trees we had made. She showed me photos. The trees were like ceramics or some kind of pastry dough. Some of the trees were more abstract than others. Some had gaps in them while others were whole.

I sat behind some desk as the girl and I spoke about something else. I was afraid my co-worker DE would come up and make the girl more interested in him than she was in me. I thought, Well, get a better position at work and maybe the girl will like you more than she likes DE.

I was walking down a hallway in a shopping mall. It was like a side hallway leading to the main hallways. It was somewhat dim, but full of people. I was on the phone with my mom. I told my mom, "It looks like they're finally talking about giving me a good position."

I now walked into the main hallway, which somehow had an atmosphere like that of a plaza at an amusement park. At the far end, I believed, the hallway opened directly to the outdoors.

I told my mom, "I mean, they're actually being serious and telling me they are going to do this for me." I may have thrown something into a nearby trashcan while saying this.

(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.

(3/14/08) x-acto knife parking lot

(Entered in paper journal at 5:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a mall, possibly with a woman. We got somewhere and then got out of the building through what must have seemed like a regular door at first but was then like a chain link fence crowded over with asphalt. We pushed through the fence. Now we stood out in the night air on a vast parking lot and just outside the small lot we had just exited. (???)

The woman and I stood in a circle with a group of people, probably my boss BS and my co-workers DE and EB. I may have been explaining to BS, DE, and EB that the woman and I hadn't (?) gone through the lot (through which we had, in fact, just gone) because there was a puddle on the other side of the fence.

A black, homeless man now approached us for money. Everybody else softly told the man we weren't interested. But I loudly yelled at the man to go away. Then another man, a tall, pale white man with long, black hair and a long, grey overcoat came up and asked us for money. He might have been more aggressive than the black man had been. I yelled at this man, too.

The man pulled out a yellow-handled X-Acto knife and then dropped it. Either he or I picked it back up. He put it in his pocket and walked away. He yelled back over his right shoulder at me that I shouldn't think I was safe, that he would kill me. He may have been a drug dealer who was trying to lure us into taking drugs. I had stopped him before he succeeded.

I told EB, "People tell me things like that all the time."

EB told me, "You should give me a list of names of people who tell you that. I've been looking for people to kill. You'd be giving me an excuse."

We were all walking across the parking lot and over to another mall. We walked down a couple of steps as we approached the other mall.

DE was talking about having different personalities. Each personality was a different mask. One mask was a veil. Another one was something like a butterfly-shaped piece of cardboard that DE would place over his nose. Another was purple face paint with silver accents and deep, long, black markings over the eyes.

As DE revealed his last mask, we were sitting in something like a restaurant (like a Denny's) overlooking a mall parking lot. It was around breakfast time. DE was making weird, tiny, chirpy, little noises. I realized that each mask DE wore was worn so DE could try to make me like him by showing how weak-charactered he was.

(7/7/08) the last bit of cornstalks

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

Dream #1

I was in a house (possibly like my mom's friend TH's house in Arvada, Colorado) with a person (woman?) r a couple of people. I was acting like an interviewer for a job. Someone, possibly my boss BS, walked in through the front door. I walked through a series of rooms to meet him, continuing to make some speech the whole time like I was an interviewer.

BS and someone else and I were all in a living room like at my great-grandmother's house. BS and the other person may have been sitting on a couch. I may have been disembodied, floating over and just behind them. The people were talking about the characteristics of the person we had been interviewing.

My vision shifted to a view of a car driving through the desert. BS (apparently still sitting on the couch) asked, "You haven't heard anything from DE" (my co-worker and teammate on BS' team) "on whether he plans to leave the company, have you?"

I mumbled, "No..." even though I had heard something like that.

The view of the desert road became red. The land on the side of the road was regularly dotted with roads that sat just on the surface.

I was now a person like Uma Thurman's The Bride in the movie Kill Bill. I stood before a cornfield on a steep hill. The cornfield was just a strip of land on the hill, not the whole hill. Some people like criminals were hiding in the cornfield. I had to get to them. They were Mexican.

The cornfield was being erased, almost like it had been mown down in patches without my having been aware of it. From still-standing patches beside the now cleared areas, the "criminals" would run out, running down and beyond the hill.

The soil was brown and rich. The "cornstalks" were more like shrubs: tangled and knotty, almost root-like or wooden near their bases.

Now the cornfield was in a huge room with white or silver walls. I/The Bride was eating the final space (like a very back row) of cornstalks away, with my bare teeth, in huge, absurd bites, like I was a lawnmower or a tractor. The rest of the field was now clean soil.

Suddenly I heard the voice of a person (like David Carradine?) say that he was somewhere nearby. The person may have said that I shouldn't put the effort into trying to find him. I had a feeling that he was in the last bit of cornstalks that I hadn't cleared away yet.

(8/3/08) the murder report

(Entered in paper journal at 8:36 AM at Heights Coffee shop in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was out on a neighborhood street with my boss BS, my co-worker DE, and maybe somebody else. We all looked up a a big, concrete wall that was in the sunlight and was topped with a street and houses.

The day was warm. DE and I may have been sitting in a car. We were typing up a report. A computer screen was before me. The report was about a company, but it was also about a murderer.

BS and DE were accusing me of not checking my facts. I got really mad, because I had checked everything. I started to say so to BS and DE, but they immediately acquiesced, as if they didn't want to hear me. But I couldn't help myself. I yammered on and on about all the steps I had taken to check my facts. As I was saving the report file to the computer I messed up and started talking about saving the file instead of  talking about checking the facts.

Now I was fumbling under the driver's side car seat, trying to find some last piece of evidence that would prove the murderer's guilt. I pushed a few books out from under the seat. One book may have had a purple cover and white lettering.

BS was somewhere, possibly in the backseat, but not visible. I told him I couldn't find the evidence. BS told me, in a voice almost like that of a good female cop, "Don't worry about it. I just went by his house. There's plenty of evidence. There are ten dead women's bodies on his basement floor."

(9/3/08) i get lost calling 911

(Entered in paper journal at 6:04 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was at a party with a group of co-workers. We all sat by a pool in the backyard of a big house. It was probably night. My co-worker DE had disappeared, but now he had climbed back over a tall, iron gate to m right. He stood on a box like an electric power box. His hair was long, but upright and frizzy, like he had been electrocuted. His hair was pale blonde, almost like a bad dye being washed out to white.

DE was plainly drunk. He loudly called attention to himself and then plowed himself face first off the box and onto the ground. Everybody shouted as he did it for him not to do it.

At first I wasn't too worried. I thought he'd be okay. But now everybody was screaming.

My view of DE had been blocked by something. I stood up and saw DE lying face down in a pool of blood. DE's body was quivering.

I ran out to the front yard, grabbing my cell phone. I yelled back, "Does anybody know the address to this place?" Nobody did. I looked at the house number, then, as I dialed 911, I ran up to the corner of the street to find the street name.

An operator had answered. I said, "I'm calling from..." (I looked at a sign.) "... Boulder County."

The operator said, "Yes."

I said, "I am on XXXXX." I might have said the street name and number. But I soon began whether the operator would understand me at all, and whether I was giving the right address.

I walked back to the house. I walked around inside. But nothing looked familiar to me.

I remembered that the people who owned the place I had been in before were a husband  and wife. The husband was named "Erin." Both the husband and wife may have been illustrators. They had invited all of us over for a party.

I kept walking through the house, hoping to find something familiar. I came upon a man, who asked what I was doing here. I may have told him.

I continued going through the house. I was on a second level. A Mexican woman asked me if I was looking for Erin. I said I was. She said, "His house is right next door."

The woman pointed to what was first a slight opening in the wall. The opening then appeared to be a balcony looking into the next house.

I looked over as the woman continued talking (probably about how Erin was an illustrator). That place didn't look like the place I knew, either. The walls were painted with a strange design, like red, black, and white Native American pottery. The walls were enormous.

I looked further over the balcony. There stood a tall sculpture. The layout of it was like Rodin's Six of Calais, but all the characters were papier mache, in color. They were modernish, all old, white, skinny-looking, with big noses, and big, blue eyes. They wore colorful clothes, blue and red shirts, etc.

(9/10/08) co-worker quits; christopher street lingerie; annoyed by people

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

Dream #1

I sat on a large office floor. The lights were off, but some natural light came in through the windows. The light was grey and top-dim, like in a warehouse. Only my co-worker DE and I were here.

DE was talking on the phone about how he was going to quit, and something about how it had to do with me moving up. He hadn't told me anything yet, and I felt bad that I hadn't been kept in the loop regarding his actions. But I thought back a little and realized that he actually had said a lot of things in passing that had implied what his plans were.

DE now called to me. We were sitting in a small room, like the room of TM, one of my best friends from childhood. The room was dim, with just a purplish light (like from a fish tank) glittering somewhere. There were long desks against both walls, so that DE and I sat across the room from one another, our backs to each other.

I turned to face DE. His computer looked very old. DE told me he was quitting. He said something like, "I've known this for months now. Isn't management going to be surprised about that?"

Dream #2

I walked into some kind of store run by an older Asian woman. It was in an area like Christopher Street in the Village. The shop was very nice, with brick walls and wood floors. It was moderately busy. There may also have been a laundromat somewhere in the store.

I had to leave the store and get to work (?). But as I was heading out I found myself in a lingerie section. There was a lot of stuff there that I liked. The place was just a small alcove or room. I had to get out of it by crawling under my hands and knees under some cinder-material "board" that was being propped up by a pale wood bookshelf, which was to my left, and edging against the doorway, which was to my right.

As I did this I thought about how I'd seen this place before, possibly in a dream. I wondered what it could mean that I'd found such a place in real life after having dreamt it.

Dream #3

I walked into a cafe. A man, who may at first have been my old friend R, held the door open for me, but treated me in some annoying way as I crossed the threshold. The interior of the cafe was kind of cheap, almost like a fast food Mexican restaurant. The floors were red tile and the walls were thin, white plaster. The light was dim, with only a couple windows toward the back. The cash register was at the back, too, beside a stainless steel, cafeteria-style display counter that looked like it wasn't being used at all. There was a belt-barrier stretched around and away from the register counter.

As I walked toward the register, the man behind me acted really annoying. I looked back at him. He was a rich-looking, white man in a white t-shirt and some long shorts. I decided to fight back against him. But I only managed to lean back into him and push him backward.

The man smiled a queasy smile. I knew I hadn't annoyed him at all. I wondered what was making me let myself get annoyed so easily. Then I remembered: I had seen R again. Our last meeting had been awful. It ended so badly that R had asked if we could meet again to come to a better resolution on things. But I hadn't really wanted to see R ever again.

I was sitting at a table. R came in. He was wearing a gas mask. He may have had long, shaggy hair. He walked toward the cash register. Eventually he may  have come and sat at the table with me, at which point we may have had a really creepy, tense conversation.

(10/20/08) special meeting

(Entered in paper journal at 6:25 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was "at work." I had either just come from some other meeting or was just getting into work. I walked down a hallway and saw a group of my co-workers all huddled in a glass alcove before a conference room. I realized that a special meeting was probably being held. I huddled into the glass alcove as well.

I poked my head into the conference room through the half-open glass door. The room was wide but short. The walls were kind of orange and pale tan. The light was bland fluorescent. The furniture was like on a trading floor. People "attending the meeting" were all milling around as if doing some busy work. Some guy near the center of room instead of at the front, stood near a projector screen and was talking about a series of slides.

At first I thought this meeting was going to be about our jobs. But now I thought the meeting was just about some legislation news that would be related to us through our Washington correspondent, EH. The person presenting, who looked like the head of my department, MR, except without MR's usual power of presence, forgot some statistic. My co-worker DE called the statistic out from behind me. The presenter gratefully repeated the statistic and continued his presentation.

(11/21/08) playing with food; jewelry and drinking water

(Entered in paper journal at 6:56 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a big house. The house was bright and airy, with tall, wide, white walls. I had just walked away from a group of people. I felt very relaxed walking around by myself. I walked past a number of small (six inches by six inches) face mirrors that seemed to be floating from the ceiling and which swayed back and forth like items on a mobile.

I looked into a few of the mirrors. Behind me, I saw, was a hallway with doorways opening to smaller rooms. I started getting afraid that if I looked into the mirrors long enough I would see a ghost appear in one of the smaller rooms. But I told myself not to be afraid and to keep on looking.

I was now crouched and sitting on the floor of the kitchen, which was also large and airy and which probably opened directly out to the large room I had just been in. My boss BS and my co-worker DE were in the kitchen with me, messing around with some sort of cheese like parmesan, which, when heated, would melt like a creamy cheese. They were putting it into the microwave and taking it out. Then they said that this wasn't good enough.

BS and DE pulled a take-out-style aluminum "plate" covered with a disc of white paper out of the fridge. The plate had all sorts of things in it, including an aluminum-foil-wrapped sandwich, all covered in a white cheese sauce.

BS and DE were both laughing as they dumped the parmesan into the plate. They knew they were making something really gross. Apparently all this food belonged to BS' wife. BS and DE thought it was hilarious to screw up all this food. But they also didn't want to get caught by BS' wife.

I thought about how if they put all this stuff in the microwave, it might explode because of all the metal. I particularly thought of the sandwich.

Dream #2

I sat in a restaurant with my co-worker SB and someone else from my job. The restaurant was dimmish, with heavy, rough, wood walls. The place was slightly busy. We seemed to be having a good time and also seemed to be discussing business.

Suddenly SB got up and told us to follow him. We went into "the bathroom," which was more like a locker room and a bedroom combined. I handed out mail to everybody. Apparently we were all on a trip, and I was having our mail forwarded to each destination we reached.

But SB, shuffling through his mail and siting by a small window (which looked out at a dark sky), started yelling at me that I hadn't forwarded his mail to this place. I felt bad at first. But then I realized that SB actually was getting his mail. I told SB he had no reason to get mad at me.

I walked out of "the bathroom" and back to our table. SB and the other person followed me. But our table was now taken (or being taken as we approached) by a few Latino people. In particular there was a slightly heavy but incredibly sexy woman in a short, soft, elegant, white mini-dress.

I thought, It was pretty obvious we had this table, wasn't it? But I thought it might be a good idea for us to share the table. It seemed like a pretty easy thing to do. I hoped the two people I was with wouldn't start acting annoying to the other people at the table.

When we sat down, the place changed. We now sat in an enormous, white room. We sat on the floor, which might have been red tile carpeted with a beautiful rug. The room opened out to a deck-like area. Nearby us were also a small table and possibly some boxes or chests.

I was loosely encircled by a group of women who might have been from either Mexico or India. The women's ages ranged from early twenties to late fifties. Some sat on the floor. Others sat in chairs. The women wore modern-cut dresses like skirts, but with fabric that was very old or traditional. Some of the older women may have been wearing traditional robes.

The women were all working at crafts. Some were making necklaces. A woman sitting in front of me made a necklace of purplish, opalescent beads. She finished the necklace and handed it to me. Now the necklace was of small, dark blue (lapis lazuli?) beads, occasionally broken by bands of gold. The necklace was thick with these beads.

The woman smiled to me. I put the necklace on. I showed myself to all the women, asking how I looked. I thought I must look slightly awkward, since I was wearing this traditional necklace against my modern clothing. But I also didn't know whether the necklace itself was just a fake. I was trying to ascertain the authenticity of the necklace through the women's reactions to me.

The women didn't seem too impressed by me, but they all said, "Oh, good, good."

One woman said, "You look okay, not good." Another woman, an older one, told that woman that she shouldn't have said that.

I looked behind that older woman and now saw someone familiar. This person was an older woman, maybe in her fifties. At first she looked Indian or Mexican. But as I looked at her again, she looked like a modern Mexican American woman. She didn't look like she was taking very good care of herself. But she was happy to see that I was getting along with all the younger women.

I stood up to talk with this woman. I was here, after all, to take care of some specific business. But I couldn't tell if the woman was actually trying to cheat me. (???)

We walked out onto the deck. The woman said, "If only my husband were here to see you. He'd be proud to see how you look. But he's away on business."

I walked over to a table. The woman was behind me. She became engaged in talking to some younger people. I walked along the deck. It was wide and long. the flooring was of gravel set in concrete. It looked out over a forested area.

I felt like this place was some kind of special high school. I walked to the farthest edge and stood by myself by a sloping, white, concrete wall. I started to hear some popular music from the 1980s. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. But now I looked down and saw it came, somehow, from the outside (?) of a school building below me. I thought, They always pump music through the halls of the school, and you can even hear it outside. (As if this school were a grocery store.)

I looked out at the forest landscape and thought I was in India. I now walked through a humid forest, just on the outskirts, I would assume, of a small town. I used a big stick for walking. At some point I was walking through a very shallow stream with coppery soil. The trees around me were in awful shape, all thin and scraggly, so that plenty of patches of light flowed down to me.

I saw (in my mind?) a small native boy in a brown robe walking through the river. I heard someone talking about the awful quality of the water, as if I were watching a narrated film. I knew that even though the water was awful, people were still drinking it. I wondered what kind of water I would drink.

I knew I was part of the Peace Corps. I was now some weird kind of miracle worker. It was night. I stood on a land ledge, looking down as a large group of people worked in a pit of soil below me. All the people may have been white, very modern-looking, but with something scary-looking about them, too, like they were prisoners. They were the "natives" of this land.

The people all now stood out of the pit. I did something, called out some words, and raised my arms. The pit exploded. Earth and rocks and possibly construction materials all flew into the air, maybe even so high that they dissolved into the atmosphere. People thought I had performed magic. Even I thought I had performed magic. But then I realized that I had, earlier on, set something like explosives into the soil.

The pit was now a smooth-walled cube set in the ground. The pit began filling up with water. As it did, the walls and floor of the pit became tiled. A light turned on in the pool of water.

I thought, Now this is the place where people can get their drinking water. At first the water was murky and dirty. But it was slowly clearing and becoming cleaner. At the opposite end of the pool from me it now seemed there was an enormous, but dimly lit, white palace.

I jumped into the pool. The water was still a little cloudy. I thought, What the hell? Wouldn't you just expect something like this? For an idiot white person to make a drinking water pool and then to go swimming in it like some college partier? But now I actually wasn't sure whether I'd intended to make a drinking water pool or a swimming pool.

(1/3/09) murder exam; asset classes; room 256; finally in trouble

(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car in a parking lot at night. The car may have had a dirty windshield. I was also taking a test, which may have "produced" the imagery I was experiencing, or which I may have been going over in my head while driving in the parking lot.

I may have done very well on the previous questions. The current question may have been the last question. I was worried whether I would do well. The question was something about a man who had killed a woman, possibly by poisoning her. The man was known as dangerous.

As the situation was being explained I drove up before the left side of a parked car. The car was black, styled like an old hearse (?) or Rolls Royce.

The question was now asked: "What would you do" (implying "in a professional position") "if you knew this information?" A list of choices may have been stated.

As the choices were being stated, I saw the speedometer of the black car, as if I were looking at it from a hunched or low position just to the right of the driver's seat -- which may have been the middle seat. I saw the "70" very clearly.

I chose the option of letting things be as they are and not telling anybody anything. In this way I would avoid all possible violence. The test answered that I had made the right choice.

I was now trying to drive out of the parking lot. I either couldn't find a way out of the parking lot or I was afraid to use all the exits I saw because I was afraid there were cops waiting for me at all the exits, ready to arrest me on any possible excuse they could give.

Dream #2

I was in a room like a classroom laboratory. A few wide, rectangular tables filled the room. A partition of tall bookshelves stood just a few feet before the doorway to the hallway. There might also have been a doorway to another classroom to my left as I sat facing the hallway doorway. The atmosphere was very nice and relaxed. The only light in the room was gentle, goldish-yellowish light coming from the windows, which may have been behind me. The whole feeling was very warm.

I sat with a few people from the institutional sales department and my boss BS. It was like a meeting we had just had was slowly breaking up. A salesperson (who actually looked like an assistant, AP) knelt down to talk to BS about a strategy idea BS had hinted at.

The salesperson discussed (in a voice so vivid I could feel it in my ears) how certain asset classes were becoming less attractive while others were becoming more attractive. In particular the man mentioned municipal bonds. He was giving numbers like three hundred or four hundred, which I can no longer remember.

Dream #3

I was walking through a high school hallway. I was there as part of a New York Cares project. The hallway was very busy. I didn't want to be mistaken for a student.

I knew what room number (256?) I needed to get to, but I couldn't find it. I may have walked through a number of hallways or classrooms as classes were getting settled in. I walked through a large area like a cafeteria that was full of kids and activity. There seemed to be bookshelves standing up at random intervals.

I looked at my watch. I seemed to be ten minutes early to my event. I thought I would have plenty of time, although I also felt like I was already late.

A female teacher, tall, young, and beautiful, asked me where I was trying to go. I may have showed her my New York Cares directions. The teacher pointed me to a doorway to another hallway.

I walked into the hallway. I was all alone. The setup was more like for an elementary school, with small bookshelves everywhere.

I came to an area of the hallway with a few doorways. The doorways were almost all cluttered together. The doorways seemed to open directly to classrooms. But I could tell just by looking into them that at least some of them only led into even more confusing hallways. Nevertheless, I thought room 256 was definitely reached through one of those doorways.

Dream #4

I was at work. The office was bright white and full of people and activity. All of the cubicles may have been scattered over with piles and piles of paper. People were all rushing, as if they were quickly getting all their things prepared for a move from one building to another.

I sat in my cubicle, listening over the phone to my co-worker and teammate DE talking to one of our clients about a stock. At some point, the client started criticizing DE's argument, showing that DE's outlook was too positive. The client started asking DE very specific questions, which DE couldn't answer.

Finally the client asked a very difficult question. But DE didn't answer at all. It was like he wasn't there. Suddenly even the client seemed to fade out.

I stood up to see what was going on. I looked to my left. DE's cubicle was a few down from mine, maybe thirty feet away. Through all the rushing of people I saw a group of three shortish, oldish men who looked like movers escorting DE out of his cubicle.

I may have hard someone explain that DE had been talking about things he shouldn't have been talking about in a period of time when we were expressly prohibited from contacting clients at all. I hoped the people would also be taking my boss BS away.

I was walking toward DE's cubicle. I saw BS' office. There were also a large group of people like movers in BS' office. I thought, Finally he's gotten in trouble for doing things he wasn't supposed to do.

I walked back to my desk. I thought, But I was listening in on the whole thing. Doesn't that mean I'll get in trouble, too? I tried to convince myself I wouldn't get in trouble. But I couldn't.

(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.

(3/4/09) the crumbling edifice; uncle steals my phone; where we really wanted to go

(Entered in paper journal at 8:42 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

It was night. I was with a group of people from "my job" (i.e. the job I'd just gotten laid off from). The group of people may have been my boss BS, my teammate DE, and someone else.

We had just gotten out of a meeting, and we were probably going to go to another one in just a little while. Both of the meetings were possibly with the same person: a tall, pretty, blonde woman. The woman may have suggested that there was a place in the building where we could get some good coffee. But for some reason BS wanted to go outside the building.

The building faced something like a vacant lot, as if the building were somewhere in a desert or an undeveloped business complex. The sky was black and flashing as if with lightning. But we could see everything around us, as if it were lit for a movie. It may have started raining a little. The building was as big as a New York skyscraper.

We got to a corner (we had turned right going out of the building) and turned right. We now walked up a slight slope. We were under a structure like the walkway overhang seen on some shopping plaza buildings (and on some skyscrapers). The columns were square and may have been made of a conglomerate material, like concrete full of round pebbles. The ceiling was concrete.

We had gone a long way, just to find some coffee, and now our meeting would start in just a short while. BS now said we should go back to the place the woman had suggested to get some coffee. But I knew that by the time we got back there, it would almost be time for the meeting to start. We wouldn't have time to get the coffee. We were about to emerge from the overhang. We'd have to run through the rain to get to the next overhang.

But now the ceiling of the overhang cracked. I heard it and looked up. The ceiling was divided into large squares. The square directly over us had a crack through the center. The square in front of us, the last square of the overhang, now cracked very loudly. A few cracks in it caused that section of the ceiling to sag downward. It looked like there was earth above the concrete. I don't now how thick the concrete was. Possibly not very thick at all. I called to everybody to get away from the building altogether because the whole thing was going to go down.

I ran up the slope and across the street or into the street. I looked down to the overhang. There were a lot of people there, all people I knew from work. In particular I saw my senior co-worker, mentor, and friend ES, who may have been wearing a vivid, darkish blue, v-neck sweater with a white undershirt. I yelled to ES in particular to get away from the building. But everybody, including ES, was standing still under the overhang, as if they were waiting for the rain to stop.

At some point the building may have collapsed. Everybody was huddling over by the (other?) building, sitting, maybe, under blankets. It may not have been raining, or else the rain may not have mattered.

ES sat somewhere to my left -- or I simply may have heard/felt her in my head. ES said something like, "Even when you were gone, we all knew, It'll be like this with Preemie: buy side, buy side, bam, Preemie right here on the sell side." As ES said this I saw glowing rectangle outlines (like gun-sights in a video game). As ES spoke, it was like she was referring to rectangles farther and farther to the left.

Dream #2

It was night. I was in a house with my family. It was more than just my immediate family. There were members from my dad's side of the family as well.

The house was dark. There may have been some light somewhere, but not much, and I couldn't make out the source (possibly outdoor streetlamp light coming in through curtained windows). It was like this place was on a floor in an apartment building. The apartment may have been very large.

The main room, the living room, was very large, maybe thirty feet by thirty feet. There were occasional chairs and other pieces of furniture. But most or all of the space was taken up by people, my family members, sleeping under sleeping bags and blankets on the floor. It seemed like most everybody was asleep.

I was walking through the room, as if I had just gotten into it, as if I had just come to whatever this gathering was. There were a few people awake, some in the center of the room, kind of arranged as campers might be around a fire (except with just empty floor between them, and not fire) and some people standing at the other end of the room, as if in the doorway for a kitchen.

As I walked through the center of the room, a man, my uncle R, called to me. He asked me what my phone was. I told him it was a BlackBerry. He asked me if he could see it. I handed it to him.

Someone from the doorway to the kitchen was also talking, either to me and my uncle or just to my uncle. The people around my uncle all lay around talking about things, possibly technology. There may have been small lights before them, like the lights from small electronic devices.

I now stood in the room in the daylight. There were still blankets and sleeping bags throughout the room, where everyone had slept. But now there was nobody around.

I walked to the circle of blankets where my uncle R had been, so I could grab my BlackBerry. I knelt down and picked the BlackBerry out of a messy pile of electronic devices. I now saw that my BlackBerry was missing its back, and that the battery was also gone.

I was panicked. I had trusted my uncle and let him look at my phone, and now he'd taken stuff out of it. I tried to see if the SiM card was still in it, but I didn't have enough composure. I sifted though all the other stuff on the ground, but I couldn't find either the back or the battery.

I now got pissed off. I turned around and yelled toward the kitchen, to someone, to my mom or anyone, "Somebody took the battery out of my BlackBerry! If anybody sees my battery and back lying around, let me know!"

On the wall to my left was the front door of the apartment. (Just to the left of that door?) was a small hallway to a couple of bedrooms. My uncle now ran out of that hallway. He had the battery, which was hooked directly to a thick, coiled cord, as if the battery were being charged directly instead of through the device.

The charger wasn't mine, but my uncle hurriedly handed me both the battery and the charger. He had obviously stolen my battery. Now he wanted to get rid of it as soon as possibly, even if that meant losing the charger as well.

My uncle looked worn out, dried out. He may have had purple sacks or even pale bruises under his eyes. He was trying to explain something to me, either how he'd made a mistake in taking the battery, or how he had taken the battery to charge it for me as a favor. I could tell just by the way he was acting (and by the condition in which he'd handed me my battery) that he was lying. I was't even trying to listen to what he said.

Dream #3

I had driven to some place with my mother and brother. It was dark outside, but we could see everything fine, as if it were lit for a cartoon or a movie. We were in some place like an asphalt lot with a cinder block wall, which was directly before us, and a chain-link fence, with barbed wire on top, which was to our right. We stood outside the car, which may have been something like an old Ford Gran Torino, maybe goldish colored.

We spoke about directions to where we really wanted to go. I may have "seen" something in the wall, like a display rack of red clothing, up about ten feet on the wall. We knew we had to turn around.

(9/24/09) currency problem; flying vampire snake

(Entered in paper journal at 7:25 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I may have been in an office with a man about my age or a little bit younger. The man was thin, with longish, frizzy hair, possibly some stubble, and deep, brown eyes. Hey may have been wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He sat at a desk, leaning far back in a chair that had a flexible, reclining back. I may also have been looking at my BlackBerry, possibly at the Financial Times website.

The man laughed casually about me about my old co-worker TB because TB had a subscription to the Financial Times. But even though I laughed and thought it was one of TB's quirky-classy things, I also thought it was probably a good idea to have a subscription to the Financial Times myself. And it was a pretty good deal, I told myself: only twenty dollars a month!

I walked (out from under an open-air, sheltered, makeshift "office," like a field lab?) through a park-like area, possibly down a slightly long slope in coldish, blue shade. I was still looking at my BlackBerry, possibly at an advertisement showing that a subscription to the Financial times was only twenty dollars a month.

I then came under the shelter of a makeshift office, basically a complex of tarp-like roofs supported by branches and limbs. There may have been desks and computers in this "office," but there was also a lot of cluttered, random stuff.

I looked at a news alert email on my BlackBerry. It said something like, "Great Britain and Spain Decide to Unite in Business." For some reason this didn't seem very profitable to me. I thought of investments I needed to get out of before all this stuff happened. I was reluctant to get out of the investments. I had hoped for so much from them.

I was out of the shelter again and walking down a long hill in the sunlight. TB and some other of my old co-workers (DE and CJ?) were talking casually and laughing with each other about the Great Britain/Spain news. They were down at the bottom of the hill, but I could hear them as if they were right next to me.

But soon I was near my friends (though I couldn't actually see them anymore). They, seeing me, told me their problem. One company they (we?) did research on was British or Spanish but made a lot of its sales in other nations. My friends were trying to figure how to model and forecast sales and operating profits from these nations in both British and Spanish (?) currency.

To my friends this was an unsolvable problem, or one that required too much work. They wanted me to confirm that for them (???). TB, whose face I could now see, in closeup, with a tight sky behind him, joked, "Say we have the Chinese currency, the Yemibi or Yemimi or whatever you call it. How can we put that into British and Spanish currency? I don't think there's a practical way to do it."

We now walked toward my left and into an office which first was just a couple of desks and computers outside and then actually was like offices indoors. TB sat in one desk and DE sat in another desk at the opposite end of the room, slightly behind me, so I couldn't quite see him, and almost like he was in another room altogether.

TB sat back in the chair relaxedly, pushing the flexible seat-back backward and either stretching his arms out or holding them behind his head. I could see now that TB and DE had been looking to me for an answer, and possibly also to work to put something together for them, but that they had been afraid to ask me.

I now tried, as casually as possibly, to explain how I would translate the currencies by using the U.S. dollar as a common point. I tried to sound, as I explained, like I was happy to help. (During this explanation I woke from the dream. But I continued to try and work this problem out.)

Dream #2

I stood out in a field, possibly something like a farm field, with two women. The sky was yellow, like in a van Gogh painting. We stood on a path or a road of deep brown soil. On our right and left the land mounded up, slightly obscuring what lay on either side.

One woman (a park worker, DR, from volunteer projects I'd done) pointed things out for us, making it somewhat clear that this place was like a farm. She now pointed out, on the left field, a snake. Somehow I could see over the mound, getting a pretty clear view of the left field, which was bare, brown (and furrowed?) soil with one smallish tree (possibly with red fruit hanging from it) standing in the distance.

A red and black striped snake, like a coral snake or a king snake was moving away from under the tree, not slithering, necessarily, but inching along, like a caterpillar might be seen to do, by scrunching up its body and then pushing back outward. But the snake made two scrunches in its body. The snake also looked somewhat plastic or polished, not quite scaly or real.

DR and the other woman (my mother?) began talking about other things about the field, when I suddenly noticed the snake stretch itself upward diagonally, so that its body was taut and its head stood high in the air.

The snake now also seemed a couple times larger than it had previously been. The snake was now lifted, by the momentum of its erection, up into the air. It leaped a long distance. I cried out to DR and the other woman, "Look! The snake is flying!"

The snake repeated the process, this time becoming even larger and leaping even farther, coming closer to us. The women said, "Oh, that's silly. Snakes can't fly. The snake isn't flying."

The women turned away from the left field to divert our attention as I saw the snake leap again. Now I saw the snake fly over the right field, hovering in the air, in a somewhat random coil, almost approaching a figure-eight shape. The women had turned their attention back to the left field, standing a ways away from me.

The snake was now green, with a light green, pale belly and a pine-green back. It had "spots" along its back, more like chunky crescent shapes. These spots changed color, bright colors, changing like color stripes in the title screens of old arcade games.

The snake flew down and bit my left arm, on the inner side, at the elbow, sucking the blood from my vein. It may also have wrapped itself loosely around me. I stood there without being too worried, although I wondered why a snake was sucking my blood. Wasn't it supposed to be injecting a poison into me?

I now started worrying a little, thinking that once the snake had received all the blood it wanted from me it would stop being nice to me. It would turn on me, then, and inject me with its poison.

But now the women came back to me. They noticed the snake around me and made a remark about how that was inappropriate. Somehow the snake was removed. I saw, down on the ground, a couple splashes and splatters of blood which, for some reason, I couldn't quite believe was my own.

(9/28/09) everybody plays the fool

(Entered in paper journal at 9:04 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was on a subway train with a group of friends, including people from the job I had been laid off from at the beginning of the year. The train looked like the dream-train from Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was very classical looking. It may have been flooded with sunlight at the beginning, but eventually it was lit by a whitish fluorescent light.

I spoke with my old co-worker DE for a couple of minutes, probably apologizing for something. But DE told me I didn't need to worry about it. He may have told me that whatever I was apologizing for was something everybody did. To prove his point, he may have told me a story about when he had done something very similar.