(8/7/07) hot dog stand and coffee pot; my sister's birthday

(Entered in paper journal at 5:30 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked under a wooden door-frame and into a plaza or hallway full of nice-looking, but cheap, mall-like storefronts, mostly for restaurants. Most of the places were closed. I knew from this that this area wasn't getting as much business as had been expected for it when it had first been developed.

One place was open. I went inside. It was like an old hot dog stand at Coney Island: all the surfaces of stainless steel, etc. A father and his twelve-year-old son worked there. The father stood behind the counter and the son beside the front door. (To get into the place I probably had, once again, to crouch under a half-door-frame in a "wood" wall like the wood-pattern siding on the outside of a double-wide trailer.)

I was offered breakfast -- some candies like peanut butter cups. I took them, figuring I wouldn't know where else to get food.

I stood outside at night. I was in a suburban neighborhood. The land, even the pavement, was rolling with roughly four-foot-tall mounds like a carpet with stuff hucked underneath it. I stood by a sleek, black SUV. I stood with some other people, my mom probably among them.

I had a cream-white (ceramic?) coffee pot with a polished silver top. Inside the pot was something like liquid nitrogen. I had to pour the substance on or in some pipe in the SUV's engine to get the engine running.

But I had just run out of the substance. Someone, possibly my mom, took the coffee pot to go fill it again. I stood with the other people by the SUV. I told them that somehow it seemed like we shouldn't need that second pot after all.

Dream #2

I stood with my mom before an electronic piece of machinery. I had to twist some knobs or gears to manipulate the quality of metals. There may have been construction workers nearby, watching us. I think I had done something wrong, and that people were now laughing at me.

I was riding in an SUV with my mom and my sister. We drove on a bridge like the Manhattan Bridge. The sides of the bridge were mostly covered by orange, mesh material, making the bridge feel like an interior. I may have been sitting in the front passenger's seat. I didn't see as myself. I saw as my sister and sometimes as my mother. Either I or my sister sat in the backseat on the passenger's side.

My mom told my sister why this day (my sister's birthday?) was so good. My mom gave a lot of flattering reasons. I, as my sister, giggled shyly while looking at the dashboard. My mom (I seeing as her) said, "But I love this day most of all because I knew" (I seeing as my sister again) "that Preemie was not in New York City during the World Trade Center attack."

I stood out on the bridge. My mom and sister were in the SUV, which was stopped and facing me.

I stood on the right side of the road, before some electronic equipment like an old record player. One knob in particular, which looked like a coppery version of the base of a record needle's arm, was my focus. I had to thumb down a tiny switch inside to make a change to copper. I thumbed the switch down. I heard a sound somewhere like distorted church bells.

(9/10/07) drinking the undrinkable; ang lee's silk stalkings; my neighbor is harassed

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

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with a little, Mexican boy and his father. The room was almost empty but cluttered near the center with a pale grey box and some papers. On the box may have been some cups of water.

The father was trying to explain to me how the child was trying to get water from me. I had cups of water that looked non-potable -- brownish, with a weird, sweet smell. But the father told me this was fine for the boy to drink: he just needed water: he had gone so long without it.

I realized with shame how comfortable my life must be. I was willing to withhold perfectly fine water to a child who was desperately in need of water, just because I thought the water was, in a sense, vulgar.

Dream #2

I was in a movie theater lobby. I stood before a console like an arcade video game which was playing a "preview for" the new Ang Lee movie.

To my right were three cut-out, cardboard displays, each about six feet tall. The one second to my right caught my attention. It had a diorama-like display fronted with clear cellophane. The display was of tiny "film strips" made out of cardboard. Each strip advertised a different movie.

One ad showed a woman's high-heeled foot standing on a map. Something was written about fighter jets. But something else was written, like Silk Stalkings. I couldn't see how either of these film programs (fighter jets or "Silk Stalkings") could be at this theater (not sure why...). Then I realized the ad-strips in these displays were for different movie theaters.

Dream #3

I stood on the ground level in a courtyard of an apartment complex. It was night. I looked up to my right, to a second- or third-floor balcony. The front door of one of the apartments on the balcony was half-opened, with some incandescent light peering through the crack. I knew that this was the apartment building of the old man who had been my neighbor when I'd lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2004.

People in the complex, I knew, had been trying to break into the old man's house because they didn't like him, possibly because he was Jewish. (He had, in fact, in waking life, come from Israel a couple decades previously.) There was silver graffiti on the old man's door. The message was pretty clearly anti-Semitic. I was afraid for my neighbor.

(10/12/07) bergman's submarine sisters

(Entered in paper journal at 5:35 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked into a movie theater. The lights were still on. A man stood up front, giving a brief discussion of the film that was about to play. I had come in from the left side of the theater. I walked across in front of the front row and over to the right side. I headed out the door. I was looking for the ticket-taker. I wanted to get my ticket torn, but the movie was about to start.

As I walked out the door, I saw a black man. I was about to hand him my ticket: I assumed he was the ticket-taker. But I saw that he was heading in to watch the movie as well. The man had his son, a ten-year-old boy, with him. The father was discussing the importance of Ingmar Bergman to the history of cinema. Apparently the movie Cries and Whispers was showing, though I may have called the film Smiles of a Summer Night.

I walked up a short stairway outside the door and looked left and right for a ticket-taker. The father called to me, "I don't think we give our tickets. I think we just head on in."

I said, "Oh. Okay." I turned back toward the door. The man and son were gone. A ticket-taker, tall, white, with a broad, bald forehead and wearing a suit like a security guard might wear, stood before the door. He took my ticket. I went into the theater.

The theater was now dark. I ran as quickly as I could to the front row -- my favorite area for sitting in a movie theater -- while the theater was still dark, hoping not to impede anybody's view by searching for a seat after the movie came on. I also hoped that once I found a seat, nobody would come along later and accuse me of stealing a seat that they had somehow saved for themselves. But then I remembered (?) that I had sat my stuff in a seat in the front row before I had headed out the right door. I sat beside and older man and woman.

The movie began. Liv Ullmann was walking beside a huge, black-hulled ship with a man and possibly another woman. The time period of the movies was probably the 1970s. The man was olive-skinned, tall, with dark black hair. He looked strong and suave. He wore a long, tan peacoat. Liv Ullmann was fattish and wore a blue, velvet-like (terry cloth?) jumpsuit. Her hair was frizzy and bright and enormous.

The man was telling Ullmann why she wasn't good enough for him. He said she was afraid of everything and that she could never go anywhere with him. Ullmann couldn't take the criticism. She ran of the end of the dock. The man would get on his ship and leave her, I knew. Then Ullmann would go with her sisters somewhere.

I thought, I don't remember this film (Cries and Whispers) being set in modern times. But, I thought, perhaps the village where Ullmann visits her sisters still observes traditions from the older days. Perhaps that's why I remember the style of the movie being that of an older time.

At another part of the docs a person in a huge, thick, old-style diving suit climbed up a ladder and out of the water. Having undone the spherical, metallic diving-helmet, the diver now revealed herself as Bibi Andersson. Andersson was "the tough sister" of the film, with the job of being an underwater explorer. She had come here to meet Ullmann so the two of them could go to the village together.

But now both sisters were in the water together. Ulmann looked a little healthier, less pale. She had short hair (like Andersson's typical short hairstyle), and her hair had a more subdued tone. Neither Ulmann nor Andersson had put their diving helmets on yet.

Near the sisters was a glass sphere. This was the exploration vehicle they would use. Apparently Bibi always took Liv on "one last exploration" before the sisters went to the village together.

The water was murky and brownish. There were a couple large vessels surrounding the sisters and the exploration vehicle. Liv had looked down into the water and was afraid. She had seen a large creature. She asked Bibi (both sisters still treading water) what the creature was. Bibi said, "I'm not sure. It didn't look like a shark or a whale. I guess we'll find out." In my mind's eye, I saw the silhouette of a shark passing over the silhouette of a whale in murky, brown water.

Liv got even more afraid now and started hyperventilating a little. I wondered if she would even get into the exploration vehicle.

(1/1/08) garbage pack

(Entered in paper journal at 2:20 PM on the 1-train in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I walked down a city street at night. Lights like incandescent lights shone on the street. The area looked a little rundown. Two men, each with a child, stood on a sidewalk. They stood by a garbage truck, which also looked  rundown, like paint was chipping off of it. One man was black, with long hair in dreads. The other was white, looking perhaps upper-middle-class.

I walked through the garbage cans. The black man's child (white or Asian?) looked at me as if he wanted to ask me questions. The man pulled him away and yelled at the child not to talk to scummy people like me. I hadn't intended to stop to talk to the boy. I continued walking.

I walked past the second man and child. I was wearing a big backpack or carrying a big, rolling suitcase. The child (white, blonde, with blue eyes and glasses) asked me why I had such a big backpack.

I saw the kid was wearing a red (?) backpack that was almost as tall as he. I said, "Well, why do you wear your backpack?"

The boy said, "To go to school with."

I said, "Well, I carry my backpack for a similar reason."