(9/3/06) not allowed in; document museum; author roommate; mattress office

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at Ozzie's coffee shop at Garfield and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I went into a large building at the edge of  a lawn like the Mall in Washington, DC. The first time I went in I wasn't allowed past the lobby, which was huge, like three or four Grand Central Station terminals, and full of people.

I went in a second time and was stopped and led to a room where my friend R was. He was teh boss of this building, or he had an important position in the building.

R told me, "Just tell them I told them to let you in." But I felt like he was making a joke of me, seeing how many times I'd come in and go out.

I was outside again. I went into the building. This time Brooklyn Borough President  Marty Markowitz walked up to me. He grabbed my hands and said, "I beg and plead of you -- please stop coming here!" I tried to keep hold of his hands as he walked away, calling after him that R told me I could come in.

Now some security guards took me up to a nice second-level marble hallway. They were holding me, ostensibly because I was acting suspiciously, but actually because they were sick of me and just wanted to taunt me.

Dream 2

I walked through a museum room. The room was wide and long, lit very warmly, with tall ceilings, and yellow and pink marble columns. There were wooden display cases everywhere, showing old documents. But in particular down the aisles were horizontal displays with rich, beautiful documents inside. There was a pattern to all of it, but I can't remember it now.

Dream 3

In a bedroom with a famous writer. His bed was on one side of the room. Mine was on the other. His headed against the wall, while mine sided against it. A chest of drawers was on the right wall between us, in the corner by the door, which was on the author's wall.

The author had apparently mentioned hating hearing a specific kind of question at author interviews and Q & A sessions. He hated the question, he'd said, because other authors he knew had been compromised by it. I asked the author how he'd react to the question.

I had stood out of my bed to get some clothes. The author now stood out of his bed, which was quite an accomplishment, because he was quite sick.

All I had in all my drawers was women's clothing. As the author stood, talking about his hypothetical response to the hated question, I tried to close my drawers quickly. The author stuck his hand in the last drawer and felt (I don't think he could see well at all) a corset in cellophane wrapping.

The author asked what he had just felt, though he really knew already. He said something like, "It feels awful soft for men's clothing."

I closed the drawer quickly and said, "Don't worry yourself about it."

The author finished his statement on his response, then half-interrupted (after-rupted) himself. He said, "You know, I don't think our living arrangement will work anymore. You seem to have a different lifestyle than mine."

At some point another person had come into the room.

Dream 4

I walked down a dry forest hillside in polarized greyish clear sky sunlight. I was with coworkers who were preparing for another day. I suddenly felt like I hadn't been here in a long time. I walked down to an old square (like a garden!) of tall, wild grass and thin pines.

A woman (like someone from from the NYC parks department I had worked with who reminds me of one of my oldest sister by my estranged biological father) was working in the "garden." She saw me and greeted me. I greeted her but didn't call her name. She smiled and said, "You've forgotten my name, haven't you?" I didn't answer. I walked toward her, possibly speaking cheerily.

As I approached the garden it turned into a pyramidal structure of mattresses in an enormous room. The woman stayed on one of the lower levels of mattresses. I climbed to the top. There was a dark, heavy, wooden railing. My boss EB walked up some stairs, maybe from a basement, to a platform on the other side of the railing.

EB wasn't quite EB. He was very skinny, with longish, reddish hair. He reminded me of one of my first friends in New York City, an Australian boy I met while working for a short time at the New Amsterdam Theater. But "EB" was shorter and more intense-looking.

EB told me, "Man, I wanted to tell you for so long now, How about XXXXX making that $100 million sale of their stock? Pretty good sign, right?"

I said, "Yeah. I've been thinking about that for a while now." (Except I could only slightly remember what EB was talking about, like I was reaching into the history of a "me" that wasn't quite "me.")

I tried to piece together the main question I had had about that issue. I just blurted out, "-- The thing I was confused about, though, was, is it an equity offering or a XXXXX ...? Because one is good and one isn't necessarily good, right?"

I could tell from EB's expression that I both knew a little "ahead" of him (which made him a little jealous) and that I was saying things in a naive, confused way that EB really couldn't answer -- i.e. I had it all wrong. We parted to take care of specific tasks. I headed up to a second level. EB headed back downstairs.

I was now at a desk under the pyramid of mattresses. My desk faced a lot of big, heavy, wooden desks in a large, somewhat dim and factory-like structure. My desk was off to the side, not among the desks or in front of or behind them.

EB (who now looked like EB), came up to me and said, "Don't worry about anything. Your job is fine. You're doing very good work."

(2/9/09) amphicletes' treasure; a vanful of lesbians; whose hours are longer?

(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Starbucks on Thirty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in "my office," turned away from my computer, to a portion of desk to the left of it. My desk was somewhat cluttered. I was writing on a piece of printing paper which was turned sideways.

A word had been printed on the paper. I was tracing that word in pencil. The word seemed foreign, like it was written in a non-Roman style of lettering. The word started with a "p"-like letter and had a lot of "o"- or "a"-like letters following.

My senior co-worker and sometimes supervisor SK got my attention. I turned to see him standing by my cubicle, to the right of the computer. He asked me if I had a second to help him. I said yes and got up. We walked down a few cubicles to his desk.

To break the silence, I asked SK how everything was going for him. He said, "Oh, good. Just trying to get this" (initiation? launch?) "out." He said it like he was being nice, even though he didn't have to, and that he'd much rather stop talking with an idiot like me and just get down to business.

SK's desk was completely cluttered, and in the bright light, the pages all seemed so sparkling white. SK sat down. I stood behind him, to his left, as he sat facing the screen.

SK turned a little toward me and said, "I'm gonna ask you to do something a little different from what you're used to doing for me." For a moment I wondered if I hadn't performed well enough on the things SK had been asking me to do.

I saw a view under dark blue water, apparently in the ocean. My view was following directly behind someone, possibly me, in scuba gear.

I heard SK say, as if he were still in the office, "There was a man named Amphicletes (?). I am going to ask you to go down to the bottom of the ocean (?) and retrieve his treasure." I could see a giant, golden ring and a pink, Venetian-style corset.

Dream #2

I got into a big van, like the van used by the crew I'd been a part of when I'd worked for the New York City Parks Department. The inside was icy, pale blue-grey, and the light coming in was grey like mid-morning on a cloudy winter day. I sat in a row of bench seats two rows back from the front seats. There was plenty of aisle space and leg space. I sat on the aisle side, the right side.

To my left sat a tomboyish girl. The whole van may actually have been full of boyish-looking lesbians. Either I or the girl who sat next to me (or both) started playing on a phone (or phones) that looked like the new thin BlackBerrys, or else like the LG Gravity phones.

My parks co-worker and good friend KB now got into the van. I may have seen her at first as she'd walked in front of the front windshield as she'd approached the van. I was surprised to see her. I didn't want her to think I'd been ignoring her all this time, but I also didn't want her to think I had come to this meeting (apparently this was a meeting of some kind!) because I was stalking her or something.

KB seemed a little negatively surprised when she saw me. She acted nonchalant, but also a little cold, as if sh'ed rather pretend I didn't exist. She may have sat in the row in front of me, in the space just to my left. I hoped she wouldn't think I was at this meeting just so I could hang around a bunch of lesbians, like I had some kind of lesbian fetish.

I myself wasn't sure why I was here. I tried to break the ice by saying something to KB. But I may have ahd the feeling that she didn't want me to talk with her at all.

Dream #3

I was at the top of a staircase and looking into a room like a large classroom or a lunchroom in an early-twentieth-century building. I stood huddled with a group of people who were about my age and a little bit younger.

The crowd around me was pretty active, moving here and there and standing still, talking with each other, and trying to talk to the same person I was trying to talk to: an Asian-American man who was a little heavyset and square-faced, with short hair, a slightly receding hairline, squarish eyeglasses, and possibly wearing some kind of uniform.

I was talking to the man through the intrusive crowd, asking him about a job opening he had. I said, "How do the hours sound compared to this? When I was in my Americorps program with the New York City Parks, I worked from" (10 to 5? 8 to 10? 8 to 5?) "Monday through Friday and then from 9 to 5 (?) on Saturday and Sunday." I thought the amount of hours I worked per week would really impress the man.

But now a tall man, maybe five years or more younger than I, Asian-American-looking, wearing a puffyish, black jacket and thin-framed eyeglasses, with fuzzy hair, like he'd shaved his head a couple months ago but wasn't styling it now that it was grown back, interrupted me. He said, as if he were already familiar with the older man, "Hey, like I said, man, I worked from XXXXX to XXXXX on Mondays through Fridays and from XXXXX to XXXXX on Saturdays and Sundays. I'll see you later, man." The young man then walked away through the crowd and down the stairs.

I was completely at a loss. The hours this man just said beat my hours by three hours a day on Mondays through Fridays, and his Saturdays and Sundays were just as long as his Mondays through Fridays. I thought, This guy has the job. There's no way I can beat him at those hours.