(4/23/06) unfamiliar food; truck crash is my fault

(Entered in paper journal at 10:45 AM at Starbucks on 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I walked into my room late at night. The room was big but a little like a hospital room. My bed was a lot like a hospital bed. The floor had a black and white octagon tile design (like in the bathroom of a place I'd lived in in waking life Harlem in 2005). I had a sink at the back end of the room -- like a hospital sink.

I wanted to go to bed. I kicked my foot against my fridge. It popped open. It looked disgusting, but not as disgusting as I'd thought it would. Plus there was food in it, packaged food, mostly like plastic bottles in which one might find milk or yogurt drinks.

I closed the fridge but then thought I'd open it again to see the food, none of which, on reflection, was anything I remembered having gotten recently. But I opened a fridge to the left of the first fridge. This was a tall fridge with two vertical doors, like my mom's fridge.

I had thought before that someone had come into my room and put weird food in my fridge. In the tall fridge was a note, written in capital letters with red marker, explaining everything. The note said that my landlord had brought this new stuff into my room because he didn't want me to leave. He wanted me to feel more comfortable right here.

I couldn't believe it. I reached into the fridge to see if it -- and the food -- was real.

Dream 2

It was daytime. I was out by a huge road. The road curved away to the right. On either side of the road were big, mangled-looking buildings. In the center of the road ran a concrete barrier.

Big vehicles, enormous trucks, mostly, sped by, going at a frightening pace. But I needed to get across the road. I need to deliver something from my bosses on one side of the road to a boss on the other side. There was a smart, safe way to do it. But the trucks scared me, so I wanted to get past my fears by going straight through the traffic.

I got to the barrier, maybe even straddled it, when something bad happened with the trucks. Either they crashed with each other or they crashed into buildings. I had failed and caused this crash by not doing the safe thing.

One building across the street could no longer be used for work -- it may have been being built, close to being done, but now it would take much longer to finish. One of my previous bosses, PG, was very angry.

A woman to my right, walking with me back across the now empty street, told me not to worry, that the present building was fine for at least another year or two. We were now inside the building, which had a tall atrium. We walked from one side to another and then back to the front of the lobby, to a reception desk.

As we went around the told me that we would be covering (doing investment research on) a new sector -- something to do with hospitals. I said, "Oh, isn't RO in that sector? He's a pretty smart guy, and pretty cool. But for some reason he's always scared me."

I sat down in the reception desk. There were stacks of books and journals and papers all over. I knew I had a lot of studying to do.

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

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

Dream #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream #2

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

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

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

(2/12/09) assignment from boss; guns make zombies

Dream #1

I sat in an "office" with my old boss BS. The office felt more like a bedroom with a desk and messy piles of paper everywhere. The room's atmosphere was like that of the room I'd had in a double-wide trailer I'd lived in at a National Park in New Mexico. It had bluish-grey light, thin, fake-wood walls, and a cold feeling all over.

BS asked me either to help him take care of something only I could take care of or to look at some of his most recent reports. If BS asked me to look at his reports, it would have been because he'd finally used some of the ideas I'd had about the stocks we were doing research on, but he didn't want to tell me that directly.

Dream #2

A lot of scenes I don't remember, involving a group of masculine, kind of redneck-like, lesbian women. The scenes took place on bright, hot days, like in the summer, possibly somewhere down south. They largely took place in or near trailer-houses with yards full of neglected, overgrown, tangled vegetation, garbage, and mechanical scraps. There may have been some apocalypse which killed people or turned them into zombies, or else there would soon be an apocalypse like this.

Now there were three women in a house. They were in a bright-walled, extremely cluttered room. They were apparently training on how to use some new guns they'd gotten. I wasn't in this scene at all. It wasn't like I was watching a movie, but more like everything was just there without me.

One of the group of three may actually have been a man. He/she wore a drab, green t-shirt, a similar trucker's cap, and eyeglasses. Another girl wore blue jeans and a white, ribbed tank-top.

Some other girl (a fourth) said she didn't want to learn to use guns. For some reason I agreed with her. I felt like using guns in this situation would also turn people into zombies.

The girl walked out of the house. The boy/girl in the green called after her as the three girls walked out of the house. He/she said, "Have it your way! Who knows? Maybe once we've learned how to use these guns we'll just come shooting you!"

The other two girls said, "No, no," to the girl/boy in green, as if to calm her and stop her from saying foolish things.

The boy/girl now shouted, "Or, I mean, maybe we'll come shooting zombies to protect you!"

(5/5/09) the penguin was also trying to do research

(Entered in paper journal at 7:45 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a house with my family. I was in a hallway between two or three bedrooms. The bedroom doors were all open, and the bedrooms were harshly lit with white daylight. The bright living room was just down the hall to my right. I was trying to get into a bedroom right in front of me, on the right side of the hall (facing away from the living room). But there were a couple of people in the doorway, including my mom.

I was trying to get into this room to do research on something. There were magazines and a computer with data that I wanted to look at. But my mom (possibly talking with her best friend) stood in the doorway and wouldn't let me in. She said that she was getting ready to have a meeting in here. She acted like I was being really annoying by wanting to be let in. I tried to explain that there were images and data I needed to see in there.

My mom through a computer bag (my computer bag?) out into the hallway. Something like a sketch pad may also have tumbled along with it. The laptop may also have been something like a video game system, probably a Famicom.

My mom said, "There! That has all the data you need in it, doesn't it? And you can take it anywhere, so you don't need to stay here!"

I disagreed. I thought I'd try to explain that I still needed to see all the magazine images. But I figured it was useless to try and argue. I left.

I was on a hilltop in some kind of desert wilderness. It may have been late afternoon. The sky had an orange and purplish, silvery tinge to it. The landscape was like basalt boulders, maybe six feet in width for most of them, piled on each other like outcroppings. The boulders were all fringed with a whitish material like salt.

I was probably in an oldish car which was full of junk (like the car I drove was full of junk when I lived in the southwestern United States and worked for the Park Service in waking life). I was trying to work on my research.

There was a penguin in the backseat. Apparently the penguin was also trying to do research. The penguin looked a little strange. He had a silvery sheen, and he had silvery rings around his eyes and silvery "eyebrows" that were thick, but long and limber, like cat's whiskers.

There was a group of girls on the rocks. They all called to me to let the penguin out of the car. The girls said the penguin would be happier out in nature, and that a lot of female penguins would come to be with him.

I opened the back, passenger side door (not sure how, seeing how I was sitting in the driver's seat) to let the penguin out. The penguin was now a tallish, slightly overweight, grey-haired man (like some version of my aunt M's husband). The man got out of the car and stood in the road.

The car door was now closed. But the man was speaking with me (and I could hear him clearly, just like I'd heard the girls clearly, through my closed door and window). As the man spoke he shrunk and transformed back into a penguin.

I had been looking at the man/penguin through the passenger side window from my vantage point of the driver's seat. The man had now shrunk completely out of my view. I knelt over onto the passenger seat to look out the window for the penguin.

The penguin was clucking and warbling, almost like I would expect a rooster to do, except a little more gently, "lipidly."  I knew that a flock of female penguins would soon gather around him.