(12/11/04) garden columns; no new word

(Entered in paper journal at 9:30 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was parked in a car or van with some other people, one of whom was a long-bearded, tallish, pudgy man who showed the rest of us some kind of map. The car was parked behind a column in something like a courtyard or a public garden. There was a sidewalk and a long row of columns on each side of the sidewalk. The columns were all concrete, squared, with something that looked like a leaf bud on top and a short crossbar at the top part of the column. The vegetation was all thick, green, and rough, like some kind of classical garden overrun by time though preserving its classical dignity.

Dream 2

I stood behind a juniper overlooking a lake. Two people were with me. One was a male, a boss or leader or teacher of some sort. The other was my peer, either male or a female.

My peer and I had been given a spontaneous assignment. For the last question we had to give a newly learned word, the word's definition, and a sentence in which the word applied.

I and my peer had always worked together. But, for this question, though I'd asked to cooperate with my peer at first, I now didn't want any help. I wanted to show that my word power was great. But when I looked down at the paper I realized that though I knew a ton of words, I hadn't learned any new words lately.

I ran through a couple words in my head that may have been new words I could use. But they seemed more like already simple words which served as titles for scientific concepts I had recently learned. Yet I could also hear a couple new words sliding back and forth somewhere. I just couldn't grab onto them.

I looked down to the ground. There was a strangely shaped pan, made of material like that of a paint roller's paint pan. It was red on top and blue on the bottom. Its shape was like a wide, short rectangle funneling off into a pointless triangle on the lower left side, like a McDonald's fry scooper, except with the texture and material feeling of a paint roller pan.

I was sure the "teacher" would think I was lazy and stupid.

(11/26/07) email in power outage; the laziness of paat

(Entered in paper journal at 5:20 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

Something bad had happened in my office building. All the power had gone out. I couldn't see anything. It was like some portions of the building had been ruined. I could imagine some of my co-workers working under iron beams and among clutter.

I was sending email notices to people. One of the higher-ups in my company emailed me back (though I couldn't see my emails or anybody's responses) that she already knew what I had told her. I emailed somebody else that I should probably stop sending out notices. Another of my co-workers replied, "No. Keep sending them. We appreciate them."

Dream #2

I sat down to watch a movie. I was in a back row. The movie screen was far down, but still clear. The movie had begun. A nice-looking husband and wife sat down to my left, with maybe one seat between us. The woman was directly to my left and her husband to her left.

The woman asked me, "What film is playing?"

I replied "Paat."

She said, "Oh."

The husband got mad and said, "I told you we came at the wrong time. We could have seen The Guru from the Mountains. Now we have to see Piat!"

I felt bad for having wanted to watch Paat.

The movie started. A fattish, balding, bearded man was talking about some of his mystic friends in India. The man was a little intimidated at the prospect of seeing his friends. They had all moved to New York. He hated New York. It was a place that exposed his laziness.

(3/23/09) friends among zombies; basement of the lazy

(Entered in paper journal at 7:50 AM at home.)

Dream #1

I was at a checkout stand in a large supermarket. The store was dark, with just a couple of bands of fluorescent ceiling lights turned on. Outside it was pitch black. Some other people, maybe black people, stood by the checkout stands, as if we were all waiting to pay for our items. But there were no workers.

I looked at a tabloid rack to my left. The papers all spoke about something having happened to the President. There was no specific idea of people who may have been involved in any of the related events.  But there was an implication that, because of these events, a war would be started. It seemed like all this news was of a trivial, gossipy nature, fit only for the tabloids.

I stood outside with my dad. It was still pitch black night. We stood out on a wide, concrete lot. Somewhere to my left there may have been a tall, wide, stable, stone building, like for a university. There were a few white streetlamps lighting the lot.

Something dangerous was happening. Zombies may have been attacking the area. My dad was sending me out on a small, ATV-like vehicle to retrieve something. I was afraid to go, even though I knew I had to. The zombies (?) had stopped attacking, but nobody knew where they were. I thought that, riding on such an unprotected vehicle, if I accidentally met a group of zombies, I could easily be "gotten" -- attacked by them.

I started off, possibly driving through a fog. I rode through a few places, like back roads, suburban residential neighborhoods, places that looked like secret bases (with chain link fences and barbed wire), something like university campuses, and a shopping mall's parking lot.

At some point I met up with a group of people. We were all riding in a van now. We were riding down a long, straight, slightly graded slope. We were all talking somewhat cheerfully about where we were going next. We were apparently going back to my dad. But I was worried that we really weren't headed that way. It didn't look like we were headed in the right direction at all.

Dream #2

I may have been laying with a large group of people, all of us laying close together, as if we were in a gigantic basement in a gigantic suburban house.

A woman knelt down and tapped me to get my attention. The woman looked like a gardener CA, who worked at a park at which I'd led volunteer groups through New York Cares -- she was shortish and had tan skin, blue eyes, and shortish, squarish, silver and grey hair. The woman said, "I'm not sure, with you young people, what time I should be getting you up."

I felt bad, thinking I should have been up a while ago, and that I was getting lazy.