(1/30/08) they didn't let just anybody stay here

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

Dream #1

I was in a place like a cabin in the woods. It was supposed to be a hotel. I was in the living room with three other people, two of whom were possibly a young woman and an older man. All three were at a longish table sat against the wall on its short side between two bedrooms.

I wanted to be at this hotel. The people told me that they didn't let just anybody stay here. The people who stayed here had to be quiet and studious like them. I sat down at the table and opened my book, hoping that by reading with the people I could prove I was studious.

I stood outside a house in the mountain-suburbs. I was with my family. I walked just inside the front doorway. An oldish woman with long, white hair, blue eyes, a fattish, dumpy look, and wearing a brightly colored, plaid dress, like my mother might wear, sat on a chair or a box in front of me. The woman was talking to me. I thought of her as my great-grandmother on my grandmother's side of the family. Her speech didn't make much sense.

My aunt B led me inside the living room to a box maybe five feet long and one and a half feet deep. There were all kinds of paintings and drawings inside. My aunt B stood to my left. She wore an orange shirt.

My aunt B pulled some of the paintings and drawings out of the box and showed them to me. She told me they were drawings she'd made when she was a child. I was pretty impressed. The styles and subjects were all different.

My aunt B made a comment, possibly about how maybe the pieces weren't all as good as she thought. I patted her on the back and embraced her to encourage her, but I also did or said something that might have made her feel even worse.

We noticed that on the box flaps were huge swatches of green and blue crayon marking. Either I or my aunt B said that one of my cousins, either AH or B, probably made those markings when they were trying to be artistic.

I sat in a dining room table with a few people from my company. The table was longish, oval, and dark. The room was dim, the only light being that which came in from a lit, probably orange-walled, room behind us.

My senior co-worker, and one of the foremost analysts in my company, DC, was to my right. Her hair was undone and straight. Her bangs came straight down over her forehead. DC was telling me how everybody would like to hire me as a first-year analyst, but how I needed to get all my degrees first. DC called into the back room to my boss BS. BS stuck his head in and agreed with DC.

I walked into a big room which must have been lit by daylight. It was a conference room, but there were folding chairs all over the place, haphazardly placed, as if this were just some big, casual living room. The carpet was like the carpet of a living room, thick and grey. There were tall, dark wood columns running through the room. At the front of the room was a folding table. I sat in one of the folding chairs near the middle of the room.

Somebody introduced ML, my company's main economics analyst. ML got up and presented. But I couldn't understand a thing he said. It was like all his ideas kept trailing of.

We now got up, as if it were a break time, or time for some other presentation. Then we came back. I went to the wall first, as if to gather some of my personal belongings before sitting down. I had to explain to somebody that he hadn't heard wrong, that this was another presentation by ML, picking up where ML had left off before.

I might have stayed standing. ML came back. He was now dressed in a light blue spandex outfit and cape, including a mask (?) that was pulled over his face and covered about the top half of his face. ML said that since it was New Year's, and we were all going to the New Year's party dressed up, that ML would just give his presentation dressed up. Nobody thought this made any sense, but I thought it was fine. ML started talking and not making any sense again. I wondered how we were going to get anything out of this presentation.

Now SC, one of the main analysts for the company's mortgage-backed securities division, got up to speak, as if to clarify everything ML had just said. Everybody cheered as SC got up -- not in contrast to ML, but just because he was so famous. But something about the cheering annoyed me. I thought, Can't we just get down to business? Why does everything have to be just showing off or nonsense?

(3/26/09) exploring a childhood neighborhood

(Entered in paper journal at 9:05 AM at Starbucks at 43rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked away from one situation/location, possibly one that had involved my family. I was now walking down a road like the road bordering the south end of the small town in which I spent a fair portion of my early childhood and my later high school years.

It was a late afternoon in winter. The sky was pale grey-blue with a band of yellow on the horizon. The yards, sidewalk, and road were all covered in a sheet of snow that seemed even all the way across, maybe a couple inches deep, with a slightly icy crust on top. The sunset light was glowing brightly off all the snow.

I turned right, onto a side block. I was walking down the middle of the street, as if there were no worry of cars coming along. The light of the sky was a mixture of pinks, oranges, yellows, golds, and blues. The snow reflected the pinks and oranges and yellows of the horizon so that it seemed the sky blended directly into the snow.

At some point I realized something was weird about this situation. I didn't quite realize I was dreaming, but I knew I wasn't quite in a normal waking situation. I knew that I'd have to find something to remember, to "bring back" from this strange situation -- like one might bring back "evidence" from a vision, remote viewing session, or out of body experience.

I now recognized this block as being the block where my great grandmother lived. I wanted to find something here that I could come back later and verify. I knew that if I went into my great grandmother's house I could find something, which I could possibly verify later on. But there was a good chance I'd already have known about it. So going into my great grandmother's house wouldn't be very helpful.

I decided instead to go next door, into the house of my cousin B and his wife A. I'd never been in there before. So if I could find out a couple characteristics of their house and "bring them back" with me, I could verify later on that I'd been to this place.

I was kind of flying now. It was something like early morning. There wasn't any snow on the ground, though it was still apparently a winter day. The light was bluish grey. I had, before I'd started flying, been walking north, then east, in the bright snow. Now I was flying to the west.

I flew up to my cousins' house, which was white with blue trim. It seemed like the front screen door was closed, but like the actual front door was open. I went into the house, possibly walking straight through the closed screen door. I knew everybody was in the house, but that they were all still asleep.

I immediately noticed that the floor had all different colors of rugs on it. The rugs all seemed to be of a towel-like, terry cloth fabric, except one portion, which may have been regular carpet. One part of the floor was grey (this may have been the carpet), another part green, another part yellow, and another part red. I stood on the grey portion, in a tiny section of room slightly divided somehow from the rest of the living room.

I may also have seen, at some point, a little bird, like a chickadee, hopping around on the floor to my right.

Looking forward, I could see the living room open into the dining room, which itself may have opened into a room with big windows overlooking the backyard, some kind of common sun room. I told myself to remember the carpet: it was strange.

I then flew, just a couple feet off the floor, into the dining room. There was a large window, almost as wide as the wall, on my right. Near the window was a medium-sized, oval-shaped, wooden table with a couple chairs. The table was scattered with papers like mail.

I thought I'd go back outside. I wasn't really interested in this place. I thought I'd have more fun outside. At first I thought I should go back out the door. But I realized I could just fly through the window. I wasn't sure whether I could do it at first. But I decided to try.

I flew downward, at an angle, toward the window. The window was (now) covered with blinds. I may have flown through the window, then back into the house, then back out the window again. At one point I felt how the blinds "clung" to me a little -- how they almost seemed to clatter along with me as I flew outdoors. I flew over the yard, maybe seven or eight feet in the air, over a fence dividing two yards.

But now it was like I was flying over the yards of the house my family lived in during my last couple years of high school and the house next door to it. I had just flown out of the next door house.

In the yard of that house was some animal, maybe a bird or a dog or a bird that had then become a dog. The animal was either barking or chirping at me. If it was a dog, it was like a bulldog.

I was afraid to land. But I somehow felt like the only way I could continue my investigation was by landing.