(Entered in paper journal at 6:05 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in a house in my hometown of Denver. I'd either bought or rented this house and had gotten a very good deal on it. My boss BS was there. BS was wearing a plainish business suit. He was talking about what a good deal this place was and that, now that I had gotten it, I could come to Denver whenever I wanted.
I was now in a weird position on the couch, like I was in the middle of a single-handed push-up, but my whole body was parallel with the ground. I thought something like, Doesn't BS see how tough I am?
BS said, "You could stay at the XXXXX (some fancy hotel)." As BS said this, I was filing through a tall chest of drawers, which may have been empty. I didn't realize until now that BS was actually on a business trip in Denver and that he was upset with me for not having invited him to stay in this place instead of going to a hotel. Now he wanted me to stay in his hotel instead of this place.
I was now probably in the house all by myself. The house was dark or dim. The curtains were pulled over the windows. I may have had a flashlight with me.
I saw two books (one wide picture book with a black dust jacket with a colorful photo of a mandala, and a smaller book leaning on top of that book?) on a table before the window. I walked to a stairway that went up into darkness. I had a feeling that upstairs were rooms (in particular, a bathroom?) that were in awful shape.
Dream #3
I was laying in bed in the dark. My girlfriend H stood near the foot of the bed. She may have been wearing only a t-shirt. I said, "Don't you want to lay down with me?" She said she did and she jumped into bed beside me.
Showing posts with label girlfriend H. Show all posts
Showing posts with label girlfriend H. Show all posts
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
(7/15/08) sex with another girl; before i leave
(Entered in paper journal at 6:12 AM on 2-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was with a pretty, blonde woman. We were in a big, kind of plain room that was lit gently with incandescent light. I was kissing the woman's breasts and nipples. The woman was enjoying it. She told me to try and fit both nipples into my mouth.
I kept trying to get inside the woman. Finally she turned around so I could get inside her from behind. I was about to enter the woman, but I stopped and told her that maybe I should put on a condom first.
But, I told the woman, I didn't have any condoms. The woman sat up on the bed, which was just a couple mattresses on the floor, and threw a few small, clear, plastic boxes and bags at me. This was stuff for putting on condoms. There were apparently condoms in one of the packages, as well as lubricant and some tiny, clear, "shovel-shaped" pieces of plastic that were used to apply the lubricant.
I had no idea what I was doing. I told the woman, "I've never gotten this far with sex before. Would you be able to help me out?" The woman had been sitting up near the head of the bed, kind of holding her knees up to her chest.
I now sat in a cafe. My girlfriend H had come in to meet me. She seemed happy to see me. We sat down with two of H's female friends, both of whom may have been overweight. I couldn't see anything very well, like I was always looking down, or like I always had my vision crowded out from above.
H's friends recognized me as having come into the cafe on a previous day with the blonde woman. The friends could tell that I had taken the blonde woman home. Somehow, through their feelings, the friends transferred this information to H.
H now sat down and was drinking some sweet, red drink in a clear glass through a red straw. I tried to talk to H, but she wouldn't listen to me. She kept holding onto her glass and looking down.
Dream #2
I got a phone call from H. She said she had to go back home to Tokyo. Something had happened to her mother and father. But something was wrong with the flights. H was still waiting at the airport. She asked if I could come see her at the airport. I told H I would be there. I hoped to myself that I would actually be able to get to the airport before H's flights left.
Dream #1
I was with a pretty, blonde woman. We were in a big, kind of plain room that was lit gently with incandescent light. I was kissing the woman's breasts and nipples. The woman was enjoying it. She told me to try and fit both nipples into my mouth.
I kept trying to get inside the woman. Finally she turned around so I could get inside her from behind. I was about to enter the woman, but I stopped and told her that maybe I should put on a condom first.
But, I told the woman, I didn't have any condoms. The woman sat up on the bed, which was just a couple mattresses on the floor, and threw a few small, clear, plastic boxes and bags at me. This was stuff for putting on condoms. There were apparently condoms in one of the packages, as well as lubricant and some tiny, clear, "shovel-shaped" pieces of plastic that were used to apply the lubricant.
I had no idea what I was doing. I told the woman, "I've never gotten this far with sex before. Would you be able to help me out?" The woman had been sitting up near the head of the bed, kind of holding her knees up to her chest.
I now sat in a cafe. My girlfriend H had come in to meet me. She seemed happy to see me. We sat down with two of H's female friends, both of whom may have been overweight. I couldn't see anything very well, like I was always looking down, or like I always had my vision crowded out from above.
H's friends recognized me as having come into the cafe on a previous day with the blonde woman. The friends could tell that I had taken the blonde woman home. Somehow, through their feelings, the friends transferred this information to H.
H now sat down and was drinking some sweet, red drink in a clear glass through a red straw. I tried to talk to H, but she wouldn't listen to me. She kept holding onto her glass and looking down.
Dream #2
I got a phone call from H. She said she had to go back home to Tokyo. Something had happened to her mother and father. But something was wrong with the flights. H was still waiting at the airport. She asked if I could come see her at the airport. I told H I would be there. I hoped to myself that I would actually be able to get to the airport before H's flights left.
(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.
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.
(7/26/08) fool in the rain; guard the house; interior design gift
(Entered in paper journal at 8:32 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I walked on concrete walkway before first-floor apartments in an outdoor apartment complex. I was walking with DM, one of the heads of my company's research department. We may have been among a small group of people. DM and I were speaking about something business-related. I was trying to impress DM with my intelligence.
We turned and walked up a stairwell. I was opening up an envelope from the Department of the Treasury. I thought it would be really impressive if I got a letter from Treasury saying how smart they thought I was, especially right in front of DM.
But the contents of the envelope were a packet of forms, with yellow, carbon-copy pages, and a piece of paper (or a Post-It Note?) on the front telling me I hadn't yet filled out a registration that would allow me to trade commodities (which would have nothing to do with my job in waking life, anyway...).
DM asked me why I hadn't gotten my commodities registration yet. She told me to take care of it right away. She told me so gently, but I could tell she was really disappointed that I hadn't done it yet.
We walked into a small office that was almost like a principal's secretary's office space, or a dumpy, small office in a small town. I walked into a small meeting room. The area was very narrow, with a long, narrow table that almost filled the entire room. The light was a bleak, greenish fluorescent.
I sat down at an end of the table. The table was full. All the other people were older, grizzled-looking men in outdated suits and with awful hairstyles.
The men were all talking about who should be able to speak or who should be able to make ideas for this recurring meeting. One man, a black man wearing a green sweater and a tan blazer, and with huge, puffy hair and a fat mustache, was saying that he should do it.
Some other man, an oldish, fattish, white man with a dollop of hair and wearing a white polo shirt, said, "You always suggest that you should be in charge. That shows you aren't mature enough to be in charge yet."
Everybody kind of chuckled. There were two other black people at the table who kind of agreed with the white man. The discussion tended more toward a group of people, rather than one individual, being in charge of these meetings.
One of the black men struck me as very familiar. He had a dull but violent look to him. His expression was almost dead, decaying. His right eye didn't seem to work. It might even have been clouded over with grey. I tried very hard to figure out where I knew him from. I thought he was someone from my neighborhood, following me around town.
The man was sitting near the right, front corner of the table (if I sat at the back, left end). But now he sat at the head of the table, on the left side.
The man said, "And why were you out on the street, standing in the rain in only your underwear, shouting out such weird things? Do you think that makes a good impression for our group?"
I thought this was kind of funny -- someone standing out in the rain in their underwear, acting crazy. I was trying to figure out which person here would have done something like that.
The man said, "Are you paying attention? I'm talking to you." I felt like the man was talking to me. I looked at him. He was looking at me. His eyes looked almost dead. Everybody else was looking at me as well. They were all silent.
I tried to figure out when I had done what the man had said I'd done. I couldn't remember having done it, but somehow it seemed reasonable to think that I had done it.
Dream #2
I was in "my mom's house," which was like the house my family had lived in during my last three years of high school. My family was gone. I was watching the place for them.
It was night. I was going to be. I went into my mom's bedroom. The room was empty except for three beds, which were evenly spaced along the back wall. The floor was tile, grey or white. The beds were all small, maybe two and a half feet across, very boxy-looking, with only white sheets on them. The sheets were all slightly disheveled.
I was about to lay down in my mom's bed. But I suddenly realized that this place wasn't safe. I had to lock every door so nobody could get in -- a lot of people were trying to get into this place.
I first locked the front door. It had a normal padlock on it, but it seemed like there was a lot of junk and clutter in front of the door, so that it was difficult to reach the lock.
The effort made me feel like not going through the trouble of locking the other doors. But then I thought of the backdoor. At first I thought it would be reasonable to think that nobody would take the trouble to go all the way around to the backyard to get into the house. But then I realized that the house had been broken into before just because someone had left the backdoor open.
I walked through the dim kitchen (it seems like the only light on was in the living room, and that the other rooms were dim, catching whatever light they could from the living room) and to the backdoor, which may have been on a side wall. The lock was big and made of dull, silver metal with two thick, black cords looping from top to bottom. It somehow reminded me of a medical device.
I locked the door. But I still felt I wasn't safe. The windows were all unlocked. Plus, people could see me through the windows. If the wrong people saw me, they';d want to get at me, even if they had to break the windows to get into this place.
I was about to lock the windows, but the phone rang. The phone was sitting on the couch. I knelt on the floor and leaned against the front of the couch. I picked up the phone. I was in a really casual posture, like I might be in if I were speaking with a good friend.
The person on the other line was a no-good person. She was a white girl, about my brother's age. She thought I was my brother. I kind of let her keep thinking I was my brother. The girl was talking nice to me, trying to convince me I should let her into the place. I knew the woman was being put up to this by a group of trashy guys (white, hippie-ish looking) who wanted to attack my brother and take his money.
I told the girl something like I couldn't let her into the house because I was leaving soon, anyway. I thought if I could convince the woman I was leaving, I would then sneak through the house without being seen through the windows (none of which had any curtains) and turn off the lights. That way the people would think my brother had left the house, and they wouldn't bother me. I thought I'd lay in bed but probably not sleep, just in case somebody tried to break into the house anyway.
Then I realized my plan might be worthless already. It was so dark outside that nothing could be seen. There may even at this moment have been people outside the windows, looking directly in at me. I felt like I was already done for.
Dream #3
It was night. I stood on a sidewalk corner that was lit by orange streetlamp light. The corner faced a wide street that spanned off straight along to my right into the blackness of the desert, or perhaps over a wide river.
To my right was parked a semi-truck, its back end facing me. An oldish, toughish-looking, black man dressed in clothes like a freight-lifter might wear (darkish blue jacket and pants and a wool cap?) stood to my right.
Somewhere a radio was playing something like the transmission's from my company's morning meeting between the Research and Sales departments. News had come in that one of our analysts, DB, was going to upgrade a stock (a stock which, I believe, I had, within the few months before this dream, lost about 30% on -- the day after having bought the stock).
I suddenly knew why DB was upgrading the stock. The stock, I knew, would finally go back up to the price at which I had bought it. I would sell it as soon as it got there. The reason it was going up was, I thought, and then said out loud, right as the radio said the exact same thing, "Because it's getting bought out by a manufacturer!"
I smiled in triumph and looked up at the man beside me. He smiled back, knowing I'd just been a part of some really cool stock trading event.
The man and I crossed the street. I turned right and started walking up the "Brooklyn Bridge." It was the deep of night, but there were still a few people heading up and down the bridge.
I felt suspicious of all these people, like they'd know I'd had a good trading moment with a stock, and like they'd want to take my money because of it. But I thought, I don't have any money from the trade. I only got myself back to break-even.
The bridge I was on looked more like the Manhattan Bridge than the Brooklyn Bridge, with the walkways on the sides, and with stone arches over the walkways occasionally. But it was incredibly long, like it spanned over an enormous river.
I thought to myself, I didn't know this was going to happen with that stock when I bought it. But I also didn't know the same manufacturer was going to buy that other company, either. (A previous stock I'd bought had, in waking life, been bought by the manufacturer, sending the stock I'd bought up by about 40% soon after I'd bought it. It was luck -- I hadn't foreseen the buyout at all.) I thought, It looks like I'll always just be an accidental buyer of stocks whose prices go way up when they get taken out by this manufacturer!
For a moment I felt like I was psychic. How else could I have been so lucky twice? But then I told myself again, Nothing really great happened to you. You didn't make a ton of money off this deal. You broke even.
I was starting to feel winded by the walk. The bridge was so much steeper than I'd remembered, and it seemed to be so long. But, I thought to myself, I always take the bridge from Manhattan back home to Brooklyn. I seldom take it from Brooklyn into Manhattan. It's obviously more difficult this way because I'm going up instead of down.
I told myself to brace up and cross the bridge. I'd crossed it so many times before; I couldn't not cross it now. Suddenly the way flattened out. The bridge opened out into a wide street full of cars and edged with an area full of lit buildings. It might have been raining a little. I was slightly disappointed taht the bridge had suddenly been crossed so easily.
I was now walking through a building like a furntiture store or a museum of interior design. The front of the place had been like a warehouse, or lie the "ABC" design store just north of Union Square. Daylight came in through wide window walls. The place was full of beautiful items.
I was with a group of people, possibly older, somewhat wealthy, white people, and maybe also one or two female relatives of the people, who were about my age. We all turned right and walked into a small hallway that had small displays that were set into the walls. The displays were of china and porcelain figures and furniture like wood-and-leather chairs.
We stood at the intersection of a few different hallways. The "father" of the group said, "Yeah, we're all a bunch of tourists, or, at least we're acting like tourists right now. Too bad for us if we are, I guess." He walked through a hallway up and to the left.
I hesitated before following. I thought to myself, He said that just to piss me off. I came here to have fun with these guys. But this guy chose this activity because he thought it was something I wouldn't like. He thought I'd think it was too touristy! He wanted to make me feel like I had no control over what we did, that I'd have to so something, even if I didn't like it.
For a moment I thought I'd just leave, just to show the "father" that I could control what I did and didn't do. But then I reminded myself that I actually did like what we were doing. I told myself I should just hang out and have a good time, regardless of how controlling the "father" thought he was being.
I walked into the room with everybody else. This room looked like ABC as well, except smaller. It was also full, with beautiful merchandise everywhere. There were beautiful, clear, colored-glass plates, bowls, and other vessels all over the place. Some items had golden and silver line-drawings on them, something like peacock designs. There wee a lot of red, blue, and black vessels. The black vessels, unlike the other vessels, weren't transparent.
I couldn't remember the name of this place. But I tried hard to recall it. I wanted to ask my girlfriend H next time I saw her if she'd ever been here and what she'd thought of it.
Suddenly I remembered -- the place was called Shiseido. As soon as I remembered the name of the place, I found a little, black, glass vessel, rectangular, about two inches wide and three inches long. I thought this was perfect for H. I decided I'd get it for her.
The people with me (not the same as the people who'd been with me before) made a half-joking, half-positive comment about my buying a present for H. I felt like they thought I was a little silly, a little cute, and goodhearted overall. I felt proud. I may have paid for the item at a crowded counter where I could barely see the cashier.
Suddenly H was here and she had the present. H was a tallish, thin, girl from India (instead of being Japanese). She wore a tiny, purple shirt and thin jeans which may also have had a purplish tint. She was so happy to receive a gift from me. We sat in a big, green chair. She sat on my lap. I kind of cradled her.
Dream #1
I walked on concrete walkway before first-floor apartments in an outdoor apartment complex. I was walking with DM, one of the heads of my company's research department. We may have been among a small group of people. DM and I were speaking about something business-related. I was trying to impress DM with my intelligence.
We turned and walked up a stairwell. I was opening up an envelope from the Department of the Treasury. I thought it would be really impressive if I got a letter from Treasury saying how smart they thought I was, especially right in front of DM.
But the contents of the envelope were a packet of forms, with yellow, carbon-copy pages, and a piece of paper (or a Post-It Note?) on the front telling me I hadn't yet filled out a registration that would allow me to trade commodities (which would have nothing to do with my job in waking life, anyway...).
DM asked me why I hadn't gotten my commodities registration yet. She told me to take care of it right away. She told me so gently, but I could tell she was really disappointed that I hadn't done it yet.
We walked into a small office that was almost like a principal's secretary's office space, or a dumpy, small office in a small town. I walked into a small meeting room. The area was very narrow, with a long, narrow table that almost filled the entire room. The light was a bleak, greenish fluorescent.
I sat down at an end of the table. The table was full. All the other people were older, grizzled-looking men in outdated suits and with awful hairstyles.
The men were all talking about who should be able to speak or who should be able to make ideas for this recurring meeting. One man, a black man wearing a green sweater and a tan blazer, and with huge, puffy hair and a fat mustache, was saying that he should do it.
Some other man, an oldish, fattish, white man with a dollop of hair and wearing a white polo shirt, said, "You always suggest that you should be in charge. That shows you aren't mature enough to be in charge yet."
Everybody kind of chuckled. There were two other black people at the table who kind of agreed with the white man. The discussion tended more toward a group of people, rather than one individual, being in charge of these meetings.
One of the black men struck me as very familiar. He had a dull but violent look to him. His expression was almost dead, decaying. His right eye didn't seem to work. It might even have been clouded over with grey. I tried very hard to figure out where I knew him from. I thought he was someone from my neighborhood, following me around town.
The man was sitting near the right, front corner of the table (if I sat at the back, left end). But now he sat at the head of the table, on the left side.
The man said, "And why were you out on the street, standing in the rain in only your underwear, shouting out such weird things? Do you think that makes a good impression for our group?"
I thought this was kind of funny -- someone standing out in the rain in their underwear, acting crazy. I was trying to figure out which person here would have done something like that.
The man said, "Are you paying attention? I'm talking to you." I felt like the man was talking to me. I looked at him. He was looking at me. His eyes looked almost dead. Everybody else was looking at me as well. They were all silent.
I tried to figure out when I had done what the man had said I'd done. I couldn't remember having done it, but somehow it seemed reasonable to think that I had done it.
Dream #2
I was in "my mom's house," which was like the house my family had lived in during my last three years of high school. My family was gone. I was watching the place for them.
It was night. I was going to be. I went into my mom's bedroom. The room was empty except for three beds, which were evenly spaced along the back wall. The floor was tile, grey or white. The beds were all small, maybe two and a half feet across, very boxy-looking, with only white sheets on them. The sheets were all slightly disheveled.
I was about to lay down in my mom's bed. But I suddenly realized that this place wasn't safe. I had to lock every door so nobody could get in -- a lot of people were trying to get into this place.
I first locked the front door. It had a normal padlock on it, but it seemed like there was a lot of junk and clutter in front of the door, so that it was difficult to reach the lock.
The effort made me feel like not going through the trouble of locking the other doors. But then I thought of the backdoor. At first I thought it would be reasonable to think that nobody would take the trouble to go all the way around to the backyard to get into the house. But then I realized that the house had been broken into before just because someone had left the backdoor open.
I walked through the dim kitchen (it seems like the only light on was in the living room, and that the other rooms were dim, catching whatever light they could from the living room) and to the backdoor, which may have been on a side wall. The lock was big and made of dull, silver metal with two thick, black cords looping from top to bottom. It somehow reminded me of a medical device.
I locked the door. But I still felt I wasn't safe. The windows were all unlocked. Plus, people could see me through the windows. If the wrong people saw me, they';d want to get at me, even if they had to break the windows to get into this place.
I was about to lock the windows, but the phone rang. The phone was sitting on the couch. I knelt on the floor and leaned against the front of the couch. I picked up the phone. I was in a really casual posture, like I might be in if I were speaking with a good friend.
The person on the other line was a no-good person. She was a white girl, about my brother's age. She thought I was my brother. I kind of let her keep thinking I was my brother. The girl was talking nice to me, trying to convince me I should let her into the place. I knew the woman was being put up to this by a group of trashy guys (white, hippie-ish looking) who wanted to attack my brother and take his money.
I told the girl something like I couldn't let her into the house because I was leaving soon, anyway. I thought if I could convince the woman I was leaving, I would then sneak through the house without being seen through the windows (none of which had any curtains) and turn off the lights. That way the people would think my brother had left the house, and they wouldn't bother me. I thought I'd lay in bed but probably not sleep, just in case somebody tried to break into the house anyway.
Then I realized my plan might be worthless already. It was so dark outside that nothing could be seen. There may even at this moment have been people outside the windows, looking directly in at me. I felt like I was already done for.
Dream #3
It was night. I stood on a sidewalk corner that was lit by orange streetlamp light. The corner faced a wide street that spanned off straight along to my right into the blackness of the desert, or perhaps over a wide river.
To my right was parked a semi-truck, its back end facing me. An oldish, toughish-looking, black man dressed in clothes like a freight-lifter might wear (darkish blue jacket and pants and a wool cap?) stood to my right.
Somewhere a radio was playing something like the transmission's from my company's morning meeting between the Research and Sales departments. News had come in that one of our analysts, DB, was going to upgrade a stock (a stock which, I believe, I had, within the few months before this dream, lost about 30% on -- the day after having bought the stock).
I suddenly knew why DB was upgrading the stock. The stock, I knew, would finally go back up to the price at which I had bought it. I would sell it as soon as it got there. The reason it was going up was, I thought, and then said out loud, right as the radio said the exact same thing, "Because it's getting bought out by a manufacturer!"
I smiled in triumph and looked up at the man beside me. He smiled back, knowing I'd just been a part of some really cool stock trading event.
The man and I crossed the street. I turned right and started walking up the "Brooklyn Bridge." It was the deep of night, but there were still a few people heading up and down the bridge.
I felt suspicious of all these people, like they'd know I'd had a good trading moment with a stock, and like they'd want to take my money because of it. But I thought, I don't have any money from the trade. I only got myself back to break-even.
The bridge I was on looked more like the Manhattan Bridge than the Brooklyn Bridge, with the walkways on the sides, and with stone arches over the walkways occasionally. But it was incredibly long, like it spanned over an enormous river.
I thought to myself, I didn't know this was going to happen with that stock when I bought it. But I also didn't know the same manufacturer was going to buy that other company, either. (A previous stock I'd bought had, in waking life, been bought by the manufacturer, sending the stock I'd bought up by about 40% soon after I'd bought it. It was luck -- I hadn't foreseen the buyout at all.) I thought, It looks like I'll always just be an accidental buyer of stocks whose prices go way up when they get taken out by this manufacturer!
For a moment I felt like I was psychic. How else could I have been so lucky twice? But then I told myself again, Nothing really great happened to you. You didn't make a ton of money off this deal. You broke even.
I was starting to feel winded by the walk. The bridge was so much steeper than I'd remembered, and it seemed to be so long. But, I thought to myself, I always take the bridge from Manhattan back home to Brooklyn. I seldom take it from Brooklyn into Manhattan. It's obviously more difficult this way because I'm going up instead of down.
I told myself to brace up and cross the bridge. I'd crossed it so many times before; I couldn't not cross it now. Suddenly the way flattened out. The bridge opened out into a wide street full of cars and edged with an area full of lit buildings. It might have been raining a little. I was slightly disappointed taht the bridge had suddenly been crossed so easily.
I was now walking through a building like a furntiture store or a museum of interior design. The front of the place had been like a warehouse, or lie the "ABC" design store just north of Union Square. Daylight came in through wide window walls. The place was full of beautiful items.
I was with a group of people, possibly older, somewhat wealthy, white people, and maybe also one or two female relatives of the people, who were about my age. We all turned right and walked into a small hallway that had small displays that were set into the walls. The displays were of china and porcelain figures and furniture like wood-and-leather chairs.
We stood at the intersection of a few different hallways. The "father" of the group said, "Yeah, we're all a bunch of tourists, or, at least we're acting like tourists right now. Too bad for us if we are, I guess." He walked through a hallway up and to the left.
I hesitated before following. I thought to myself, He said that just to piss me off. I came here to have fun with these guys. But this guy chose this activity because he thought it was something I wouldn't like. He thought I'd think it was too touristy! He wanted to make me feel like I had no control over what we did, that I'd have to so something, even if I didn't like it.
For a moment I thought I'd just leave, just to show the "father" that I could control what I did and didn't do. But then I reminded myself that I actually did like what we were doing. I told myself I should just hang out and have a good time, regardless of how controlling the "father" thought he was being.
I walked into the room with everybody else. This room looked like ABC as well, except smaller. It was also full, with beautiful merchandise everywhere. There were beautiful, clear, colored-glass plates, bowls, and other vessels all over the place. Some items had golden and silver line-drawings on them, something like peacock designs. There wee a lot of red, blue, and black vessels. The black vessels, unlike the other vessels, weren't transparent.
I couldn't remember the name of this place. But I tried hard to recall it. I wanted to ask my girlfriend H next time I saw her if she'd ever been here and what she'd thought of it.
Suddenly I remembered -- the place was called Shiseido. As soon as I remembered the name of the place, I found a little, black, glass vessel, rectangular, about two inches wide and three inches long. I thought this was perfect for H. I decided I'd get it for her.
The people with me (not the same as the people who'd been with me before) made a half-joking, half-positive comment about my buying a present for H. I felt like they thought I was a little silly, a little cute, and goodhearted overall. I felt proud. I may have paid for the item at a crowded counter where I could barely see the cashier.
Suddenly H was here and she had the present. H was a tallish, thin, girl from India (instead of being Japanese). She wore a tiny, purple shirt and thin jeans which may also have had a purplish tint. She was so happy to receive a gift from me. We sat in a big, green chair. She sat on my lap. I kind of cradled her.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
(10/16/08) salvation army lingerie; avoiding a neighborhood
(Entered in paper journal at 6:45 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in a small, probably cheap, department store. I walked in there like I was familiar with the place. I felt like the place sold a lingerie that I was turned on by -- a cheap kind. There were a few people milling around in the aisles. The aisles looked like they were from a Salvation Army. I walked into an aisle where I saw something that looked like lingerie. There were a few lower-middle-class women (mothers?) around me.
I pulled a couple items off the rack. They looked like one-piece swimsuits. I was really eager to try them on. One was a white suit with fading or pale blue waving through it. Its back was a thong. I was trying to think of how I could try it on without getting the thong-string in between my buttocks. I looked at another item: a two-piece, red and white striped piece that seemed to be put on a black, velvety mannequin torso.
A few people I knew now came by. They were mostly people from my work. I think some of them knew what I was doing. Others (men?) mostly seemed oblivious. Those ones walked into an area like a hallway of dressing rooms.
I and the people around me took care of some task, which likely involved us going away from the store. We now finished and were back at the store. I still wanted to try on the things I had been looking at.
I was with my co-workers K(?) and TJ. They both lay on some bed or table that was piled with papers. I was going to go to a dressing room, but K wanted me to stay. She kind of bent over the "table" to show off her bottom. I grabbed K and pressed myself against her bottom I wondered if this was okay.
Dream #2
I stood outside a rowhouse or townhouse that stood before a wide road. My girlfriend H stood in the doorway. I was talking with her.
But then I saw that a few doors down, my old friend R was walking into a place. I was pretty sure that he spotted me. I thought that, now that I'd been spotted by R here, I could never come back here. I didn't want to see R. But if R knew I was here, I probably wouldn't be able to avoid speaking with him eventually.
H and I were walking away from the townhouse. We walked through a very small parking lot, then around a fence. We walked on a sidewalk along the busy road. I might have been telling H how I could never come here again.
Dream #1
I was in a small, probably cheap, department store. I walked in there like I was familiar with the place. I felt like the place sold a lingerie that I was turned on by -- a cheap kind. There were a few people milling around in the aisles. The aisles looked like they were from a Salvation Army. I walked into an aisle where I saw something that looked like lingerie. There were a few lower-middle-class women (mothers?) around me.
I pulled a couple items off the rack. They looked like one-piece swimsuits. I was really eager to try them on. One was a white suit with fading or pale blue waving through it. Its back was a thong. I was trying to think of how I could try it on without getting the thong-string in between my buttocks. I looked at another item: a two-piece, red and white striped piece that seemed to be put on a black, velvety mannequin torso.
A few people I knew now came by. They were mostly people from my work. I think some of them knew what I was doing. Others (men?) mostly seemed oblivious. Those ones walked into an area like a hallway of dressing rooms.
I and the people around me took care of some task, which likely involved us going away from the store. We now finished and were back at the store. I still wanted to try on the things I had been looking at.
I was with my co-workers K(?) and TJ. They both lay on some bed or table that was piled with papers. I was going to go to a dressing room, but K wanted me to stay. She kind of bent over the "table" to show off her bottom. I grabbed K and pressed myself against her bottom I wondered if this was okay.
Dream #2
I stood outside a rowhouse or townhouse that stood before a wide road. My girlfriend H stood in the doorway. I was talking with her.
But then I saw that a few doors down, my old friend R was walking into a place. I was pretty sure that he spotted me. I thought that, now that I'd been spotted by R here, I could never come back here. I didn't want to see R. But if R knew I was here, I probably wouldn't be able to avoid speaking with him eventually.
H and I were walking away from the townhouse. We walked through a very small parking lot, then around a fence. We walked on a sidewalk along the busy road. I might have been telling H how I could never come here again.
(10/19/08) the cat in the trap; is my girlfriend a man?
(Entered in paper journal at 4:20 PM at home in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I was in an apartment, probably not mine. It was night, and all the windows were uncurtained, exposed to the black sky. The apartment may have had two rooms, though it felt somehow cluttered and cramped, like an overstuffed studio. The light inside was dim, yet warm and soft.I was with a couple other people. My old friend H was either in the room or else we were possibly waiting for him to arrive.
I now noticed that in the room down from me, a window along the shared wall (to my left) was actually open. An animal like a squirrel scurried in. I and a woman (?) ran to the room to try to chase the animal out. The animal had become like a small mouse. It was running toward a corner of the room, to my right. As it did it became larger, like a cat, and began moving slowly, almost leisurely.
I had been happy that the animal was running toward the corner of the room, where I knew there was a mouse trap. But now that I saw the animal was a cat, we tried to hurry and get the animal away from the corner so it wouldn't step in the trap.
But we were too late. The cat stepped in the trap. The cat made a nose like a sucking-in sigh combined with a hiss. It turned toward us and walked toward us with a sorrowful, tortured look on its face. I noticed how the cat's tail looked like a different animal's tail -- maybe like the tail of a ringtail or a raccoon. And the face of the animal now looked like that of a bobcat or lynx.
I knew I'd have to take the trap off the animal's foot (its front right foot?). I hoped the animal wouldn't feel more pain as I removed the trap. I didn't want the animal, in greater pain, to react violently toward me. I resolved to be as quick, and, yet, as gentle, as I could.
The trap was now off the animal's foot. The animal now walked toward the window by which it had entered. It hoped the animal would like us now and want to stay with us, since we had done such a nice thing for it. But, although it seemed to bear us no ill will, it now seemed almost indifferent to us. It walked out the window.
Dream #2
I was in a cluttered but very warm-feeling bedroom with my girlfriend H. The walls of the room may have been of dark wood. H and I were on the bed. The bed may have had richly colored, pink sheets. The bed was also probably cluttered with other things.
H and I had worked out way into a strange sexual position. H was almost standing on her head. I was over her, almost floating over her, apparently perpendicular to her, but almost upside-down myself. I had an enormous penis, which I was slowly lowering into H. I had no other point of contact with H, the bed, or anything.
As I slowly lowered into H, she asked me if I loved her. I said yes. But she continued to ask me. As she did, it seemed to me (not that I could necessarily see) that her face was tightening up, becoming smaller, almost like some weird, shrunken version of a man's face. I wondered if H was actually a man.
Dream #1
I was in an apartment, probably not mine. It was night, and all the windows were uncurtained, exposed to the black sky. The apartment may have had two rooms, though it felt somehow cluttered and cramped, like an overstuffed studio. The light inside was dim, yet warm and soft.I was with a couple other people. My old friend H was either in the room or else we were possibly waiting for him to arrive.
I now noticed that in the room down from me, a window along the shared wall (to my left) was actually open. An animal like a squirrel scurried in. I and a woman (?) ran to the room to try to chase the animal out. The animal had become like a small mouse. It was running toward a corner of the room, to my right. As it did it became larger, like a cat, and began moving slowly, almost leisurely.
I had been happy that the animal was running toward the corner of the room, where I knew there was a mouse trap. But now that I saw the animal was a cat, we tried to hurry and get the animal away from the corner so it wouldn't step in the trap.
But we were too late. The cat stepped in the trap. The cat made a nose like a sucking-in sigh combined with a hiss. It turned toward us and walked toward us with a sorrowful, tortured look on its face. I noticed how the cat's tail looked like a different animal's tail -- maybe like the tail of a ringtail or a raccoon. And the face of the animal now looked like that of a bobcat or lynx.
I knew I'd have to take the trap off the animal's foot (its front right foot?). I hoped the animal wouldn't feel more pain as I removed the trap. I didn't want the animal, in greater pain, to react violently toward me. I resolved to be as quick, and, yet, as gentle, as I could.
The trap was now off the animal's foot. The animal now walked toward the window by which it had entered. It hoped the animal would like us now and want to stay with us, since we had done such a nice thing for it. But, although it seemed to bear us no ill will, it now seemed almost indifferent to us. It walked out the window.
Dream #2
I was in a cluttered but very warm-feeling bedroom with my girlfriend H. The walls of the room may have been of dark wood. H and I were on the bed. The bed may have had richly colored, pink sheets. The bed was also probably cluttered with other things.
H and I had worked out way into a strange sexual position. H was almost standing on her head. I was over her, almost floating over her, apparently perpendicular to her, but almost upside-down myself. I had an enormous penis, which I was slowly lowering into H. I had no other point of contact with H, the bed, or anything.
As I slowly lowered into H, she asked me if I loved her. I said yes. But she continued to ask me. As she did, it seemed to me (not that I could necessarily see) that her face was tightening up, becoming smaller, almost like some weird, shrunken version of a man's face. I wondered if H was actually a man.
(10/25/08) video game with gender surprise
(Entered in paper journal at 8:45 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I was part of a video game. I may possibly have gone into a room and grabbed a metallic bust out of a case that was set in a wall. This was the reward for passing the level. I wasn't sure how I'd gotten to this level at all. I didn't know if I'd make it through the next level.
I now saw a screen like an old spaceship battle video game, like Galaga. I seemed to be getting along alright, but then more and more enemy ships came, until I was completely surrounded for layers and layers. I might have continued fighting. But it was clear that I was losing.
Suddenly my ship began to spin and glow. It became light blue. I spun all the ships around me in a circle. Somehow I destroyed all the ships.
I was part of the video game again. I stood in a room like a mix between a castle and a museum. I opened a heavy (green?) door with a long, clear (plastic? glass? quartz?) handle. Some voice may have told me that since I had passed the previous level, I could enter the room and retrieve the elephant's head as a reward.
I walked into the room. It was a small room, possibly with deep blue walls. The lighting was very dim and elegant. There was a doorway to a much bigger room on the back wall. I went to the left wall, where I saw a silver bust in a case set in the wall. The bust may at first have looked human. Then it ma have looked like a bull's head.
A tall, black man opened the heavy door and walked in. He told me that the head was his. It was the bull's head he was to receive as a reward. The man was kind of thin, with long dreads. He wore a long, loose, tan, denim jacket and pants that may have matched. I let the man take the bust. He left the room.
I now walked around, looking for the elephant's head. I thought, Did I just let that man take my reward?
I saw a couple empty, grey plexiglass cases on stand-alone pedestals. Some or one of them may have said something about the elephant's head. But I couldn't find the elephant's head.
I walked into another room, which was like a mix between a living room and a Mexican restaurant. Two women sat on stools and behind a cash register counter. I asked the women if they knew where the elephant's head was. They didn't answer, but they were nice to me.
One of the women was round and fat. She was probably Mexican. The other woman was pale-skinned and thin. She wore a white tank top and a long, dark blue skirt. She was faced away from me, toward the wall. I walked up to the second woman. Now it was like I knew her. I was cuddling up to her. She was somewhat indifferent to me.
There were now more people around, like we were at a party. Time had worn on, and the girl and I now decided we would go home with each other. "Going home" just meant going down the hall and to a bedroom.
As we "went home," the woman became a skinny, pale, white man with long, straight-up, pale blonde hair. But I still thought he was a woman.I was thinking about how "she" would have sex with me. I knew "she" would penetrate me. I was trying to figure out how that could be.
We were in the bedroom. "She" stood behind a set of shelves and drawers. Suddenly I realized "she" was a man. I was trying to think of a polite way to tell him that I couldn't have sex with him.
I now sat at a desk, "typing" on a keyboard that looked more like a phone keypad. I was somewhere like a living room in a low-income house. To my left was a doorway to a room like a kitchen, where a job interview may have been being held. The person interviewed may have been my girlfriend H.
I put on some music, probably something by KT Turstall. I could tell the interviewer was British. I thought it would be impressive of me to play music by a British person.
The interview finished. H walked out and away. The interviewer walked out. I couldn't see the interviewer, but I think she was beautiful. She might have been standing behind me. I told her that I thought H was really good. The interviewer said, "Yes. He is."
I said, "He? Isn't H a woman?"
The interviewer smirked and said, "Oh, sure. A 'woman.' But you can tell right away she's really a man, right? I could. But I stayed polite during the whole interview and called him a her."
I was very confused. I had no idea what to do now that I knew H was a man.
(10/26/08) musical in a fast food restaurant
(Entered in paper journal at 6:10 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I walked into a fast food restaurant. I was just going to get a coffee so I could sit down and write. The cash register had a square of open space before it, possibly marked by barriers The counter itself seemed large and tall. A young woman was behind the counter. Two older, grey-haired men stood before the counter, ordering something. Both men looked dignified.
When I got up to place my order, the two men told me I should try the soup and XXXXX. I went ahead and ordered it. On my tray I had a coffee, a paper cup of soup, and some weird, pastry-like object as long as a small hero sandwich. My order came to eleven dollars. I was a little disappointed. I thought, And all I wanted was a coffee.
I looked for a place to sit. The seating area was open and sunny. There seemed to be plenty of seats. I might have seen an attractive woman. I might have thought that I should sit by her. But then I somehow got distracted. When I looked back, all the seats were full.
I looked to my right. The seating area was now enormous. To my right was an area with no windows, with dim lighting. I saw a few seats there. I walked over to that area. But as soon as I got there I couldn't see any open tables.
There was an open seat at a table for four people at which only one woman sat. I sat down without asking the woman if it was okay. I tried to take up as little space as possible, and I didn't talk to the woman, so as not to bother her. The woman was tallish, wearing blue jeans and a grey sweater, and with brownish, crimped hair.
There was a TV blaring somewhere. Everyone was watching TV while they ate. The show was a musical.
Now the musical was taking place right inside this restaurant. The room was enormous and opulently lit. There were nicely dressed people dancing all around. Green things like leafs fluttered through the air.
Now the show was over. I saw as if from a high point in the room. The room was enormous and tall. the walls and floors were of marble. The floors were extremely polished, with either a striped or checkered pattern of pink and beige or brown and beige marble.
The green, leafy material that had fallen during the show was now strewn all over the ground. I got a "close-up" view of it. It was like I was talking about it with a woman, possibly my girlfriend H. We suddenly saw that the tattered, green matter that looked like leafs was actually tattered, green wings that were still attached to dead birds which looked like seagulls with tan patterns on them. The woman expressed sad surprise.
Seeing the room from the high view again, I watched an old, white man blowing the green matter off the floor with a leaf blower. The matter all flourished upward in an elegant pattern before disappearing. I thought, Now the dance has gone from being human to being abstract. But all this is still part of the musical.
Dream #1
I walked into a fast food restaurant. I was just going to get a coffee so I could sit down and write. The cash register had a square of open space before it, possibly marked by barriers The counter itself seemed large and tall. A young woman was behind the counter. Two older, grey-haired men stood before the counter, ordering something. Both men looked dignified.
When I got up to place my order, the two men told me I should try the soup and XXXXX. I went ahead and ordered it. On my tray I had a coffee, a paper cup of soup, and some weird, pastry-like object as long as a small hero sandwich. My order came to eleven dollars. I was a little disappointed. I thought, And all I wanted was a coffee.
I looked for a place to sit. The seating area was open and sunny. There seemed to be plenty of seats. I might have seen an attractive woman. I might have thought that I should sit by her. But then I somehow got distracted. When I looked back, all the seats were full.
I looked to my right. The seating area was now enormous. To my right was an area with no windows, with dim lighting. I saw a few seats there. I walked over to that area. But as soon as I got there I couldn't see any open tables.
There was an open seat at a table for four people at which only one woman sat. I sat down without asking the woman if it was okay. I tried to take up as little space as possible, and I didn't talk to the woman, so as not to bother her. The woman was tallish, wearing blue jeans and a grey sweater, and with brownish, crimped hair.
There was a TV blaring somewhere. Everyone was watching TV while they ate. The show was a musical.
Now the musical was taking place right inside this restaurant. The room was enormous and opulently lit. There were nicely dressed people dancing all around. Green things like leafs fluttered through the air.
Now the show was over. I saw as if from a high point in the room. The room was enormous and tall. the walls and floors were of marble. The floors were extremely polished, with either a striped or checkered pattern of pink and beige or brown and beige marble.
The green, leafy material that had fallen during the show was now strewn all over the ground. I got a "close-up" view of it. It was like I was talking about it with a woman, possibly my girlfriend H. We suddenly saw that the tattered, green matter that looked like leafs was actually tattered, green wings that were still attached to dead birds which looked like seagulls with tan patterns on them. The woman expressed sad surprise.
Seeing the room from the high view again, I watched an old, white man blowing the green matter off the floor with a leaf blower. The matter all flourished upward in an elegant pattern before disappearing. I thought, Now the dance has gone from being human to being abstract. But all this is still part of the musical.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
(11/23/08) feast of the final christmas
(Entered in paper journal at 5:05 PM on Q-train from Manhattan to Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I was in a big room like a cafeteria in a high school. The place was full of people. I stood with a group of people by a green wall. We were all relaxed, and we seemed to be having a good time, but we were also engaged in some task.
I watched a boy who was maybe in his teens, push his hand through the wall. The wall became penetrable in that spot, like mist, due to some power the boy had. The boy then took a power cord and pushed it through the wall.
Everybody (?) now understood what they had to do. Each person used their own individual power to reach through the wall and plug a cord into a power outlet. One person may actually have simply busted a hole in the wall.
I had been walking along the wall, watching people do these things. But now I had to stand in my own spot and accomplish the task myself. I was a little afraid. But nobody was really paying attention to me except the guy right next to me, who relaxedly gave me encouragement.
I knew that I would hit my hand against the wall. The wall became a little gooey-looking in the section where I would hit (flat-palmed). It looked like there was a little writing on the wall. But I couldn't (and, partly, was afraid to) get my hand all the way through the wall.
But suddenly I decided to walk through the wall with my whole body. I walked through very easily. I stood in what looked like a cave of basement columns and pipes. I felt like I had gotten into a secret place.
I knew the group I had been with was trying to find out some plan an evil group had. Now I knew the evil group was going to be in this cave. I didn't want to be caught here, but I wanted to go on and see what was happening.
I wandered into a smooth-walled tunnel, into darkness (and momentarily saw a Transformers logo before my eyes (the good guy logo)). The walls of the tunnel dimly glowed striped colors like in a 1980s style video game.
I walked into an opening where a group of people stood and sat. Most of the people were women. All of the women were scantily clad. The clothing was all like costumes of children's cartoon characters, like Strawberry Shortcake, but extremely skimpy and sexy-looking. The girls were all built like tall, thin models.
The few men were dressed up so that their bodies were almost entirely concealed in futuristic armor, like the armor that would encapsulate Darth Vader or other characters from Star Wars. The men's costumes buzzed with the same electronic, striped colors with which the hallways I'd just walked through had buzzed.
The leading man said the plan was to steal Christmas from everyone.
I was only half-listening to what the leader said. I was cuddling with two women. One of the women wore a cartoony outfit. But the other one, whom I knew, wore just a tiny white t-shirt and a pair of white panties.
Everybody was sad that there wouldn't be anymore Christmas. The leader said, "But that doesn't mean we have to stop celebrating now. We won't be able to carry out our plan until after this Christmas."
The leader now looked like a camp leader or a motivational speaker. He said, "In fact, I've gotten all of you a special gift for this Christmas. You all get as much food as you want to make your own special Christmas breakfast!"
We all stood and walked through the tunnel. The tunnel opened to an enormous street that looked like two suburban streets separated by a wide field, about the width of a football field, full of tables. The day was bright, and the area was full of people, mostly young people. I knew we all had ingredients for making whatever we wanted.
I had split up from the rest of the group and was walking with my girlfriend H. We came to our residence, which was like a little house, about one-fourth the size of a normal suburban house. All the houses in this area were white.
There was a stove in front of our house. Skillets covered all the burners. The skillets were empty and the burners were off. I thought H an I could make pancakes. I wanted to grab a skillet and get started before the stove got taken over by other groups of people.
H went off to "get ready. I walked toward the stove. I saw some other people also heading for the stove: white boys with a kind of fraternity-house look to them.
I hustled up to the stove and grabbed a skillet before the boys could. The boys were a little caught off guard by how forceful I was being, especially for such a cheerful occasion. I even felt ashamed of myself.
I walked away and noticed that one of the tables was entirely filled with skillets. Also, all the residences had stoves in front of them. Everybody would probably just use the stove that was at their residence.
I went into my residence. I knew flour was outside. I would get that there. But food had also been placed inside the house. I would find the other ingredients for the pancakes inside.
But I had to think what went into pancakes. I couldn't figure it out. I opened my fridge. It was completely filled with butter and cheese -- nothing else. I knew this wasn't nearly everything I'd need for making pancakes.
My view of the fridge became strange, as if I were sitting on the floor and looking sideways into the fridge. I hoped H wouldn't come back soon. I would be ashamed to have her see all this cheese in my fridge.
Dream #1
I was in a big room like a cafeteria in a high school. The place was full of people. I stood with a group of people by a green wall. We were all relaxed, and we seemed to be having a good time, but we were also engaged in some task.
I watched a boy who was maybe in his teens, push his hand through the wall. The wall became penetrable in that spot, like mist, due to some power the boy had. The boy then took a power cord and pushed it through the wall.
Everybody (?) now understood what they had to do. Each person used their own individual power to reach through the wall and plug a cord into a power outlet. One person may actually have simply busted a hole in the wall.
I had been walking along the wall, watching people do these things. But now I had to stand in my own spot and accomplish the task myself. I was a little afraid. But nobody was really paying attention to me except the guy right next to me, who relaxedly gave me encouragement.
I knew that I would hit my hand against the wall. The wall became a little gooey-looking in the section where I would hit (flat-palmed). It looked like there was a little writing on the wall. But I couldn't (and, partly, was afraid to) get my hand all the way through the wall.
But suddenly I decided to walk through the wall with my whole body. I walked through very easily. I stood in what looked like a cave of basement columns and pipes. I felt like I had gotten into a secret place.
I knew the group I had been with was trying to find out some plan an evil group had. Now I knew the evil group was going to be in this cave. I didn't want to be caught here, but I wanted to go on and see what was happening.
I wandered into a smooth-walled tunnel, into darkness (and momentarily saw a Transformers logo before my eyes (the good guy logo)). The walls of the tunnel dimly glowed striped colors like in a 1980s style video game.
I walked into an opening where a group of people stood and sat. Most of the people were women. All of the women were scantily clad. The clothing was all like costumes of children's cartoon characters, like Strawberry Shortcake, but extremely skimpy and sexy-looking. The girls were all built like tall, thin models.
The few men were dressed up so that their bodies were almost entirely concealed in futuristic armor, like the armor that would encapsulate Darth Vader or other characters from Star Wars. The men's costumes buzzed with the same electronic, striped colors with which the hallways I'd just walked through had buzzed.
The leading man said the plan was to steal Christmas from everyone.
I was only half-listening to what the leader said. I was cuddling with two women. One of the women wore a cartoony outfit. But the other one, whom I knew, wore just a tiny white t-shirt and a pair of white panties.
Everybody was sad that there wouldn't be anymore Christmas. The leader said, "But that doesn't mean we have to stop celebrating now. We won't be able to carry out our plan until after this Christmas."
The leader now looked like a camp leader or a motivational speaker. He said, "In fact, I've gotten all of you a special gift for this Christmas. You all get as much food as you want to make your own special Christmas breakfast!"
We all stood and walked through the tunnel. The tunnel opened to an enormous street that looked like two suburban streets separated by a wide field, about the width of a football field, full of tables. The day was bright, and the area was full of people, mostly young people. I knew we all had ingredients for making whatever we wanted.
I had split up from the rest of the group and was walking with my girlfriend H. We came to our residence, which was like a little house, about one-fourth the size of a normal suburban house. All the houses in this area were white.
There was a stove in front of our house. Skillets covered all the burners. The skillets were empty and the burners were off. I thought H an I could make pancakes. I wanted to grab a skillet and get started before the stove got taken over by other groups of people.
H went off to "get ready. I walked toward the stove. I saw some other people also heading for the stove: white boys with a kind of fraternity-house look to them.
I hustled up to the stove and grabbed a skillet before the boys could. The boys were a little caught off guard by how forceful I was being, especially for such a cheerful occasion. I even felt ashamed of myself.
I walked away and noticed that one of the tables was entirely filled with skillets. Also, all the residences had stoves in front of them. Everybody would probably just use the stove that was at their residence.
I went into my residence. I knew flour was outside. I would get that there. But food had also been placed inside the house. I would find the other ingredients for the pancakes inside.
But I had to think what went into pancakes. I couldn't figure it out. I opened my fridge. It was completely filled with butter and cheese -- nothing else. I knew this wasn't nearly everything I'd need for making pancakes.
My view of the fridge became strange, as if I were sitting on the floor and looking sideways into the fridge. I hoped H wouldn't come back soon. I would be ashamed to have her see all this cheese in my fridge.
Monday, December 31, 2012
(12/30/08) the lion dance; roach apartment; elephant alien
(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM, on B-train from Brooklyn into Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I walked down into a stairway into a basement. The basement may have had red walls and may have been lit with incandescent light. Before me at the foot of the stairs was a weird feature like a bottomless pit. The pit was rectangular and was bounded on three sides by "mattresses." The fourth side (the long side opposite me) was the wall. Set into the wall was a square in which sat some kind of shrine, including (?) a clear, rounded vase full of colorful flowers with rose-like petals.
I leaned my elbows atop the long side's barrier and stood watching, as if I were watching a pendulum swing. I thought of a legend of a man (maybe Asian) who had practiced a certain dance. But before the dance it was generally customary for the person dancing to give thanks to a god who excelled at the dance.
This man was a great dancer and did not think he needed to give thanks to the god. So the god came down to earth and challenged the man to the dance. But the god's dance soon became an attack, and the man was either frightened out of the challenge or killed.
I thought that I should give thanks to the god before I began the dance.
I stood in a different part of the basement now, not far from where I was before. The room L'd off to become narrower, and in the narrow space stood a bunk bed. I was right at the corner of the "L."
On the wall to my left, opposite the bunk beds, and on the same wall as the bottomless pit shrine, was another shrine in a square setting. Before me and just to my right, in the corner of the wall, was a "closet space." The closet was made of cheap wood. The shelves were full of all kinds of clothing, but on the top shelf was a TV. Just to my right may have been a doorway into a concrete-floored room like a laundry or storage room. Sunlight may have shone through a window in the storage room.
My propitiation to the god was to play some kind of video on the TV -- something like an anime adventure with a sexy girl swinging around and fighting people. My mom yelled down the stairs to me to shut that show off -- she could hear it all the way upstairs. I shut the show off, like I was clicking off one program on a computer.
There was another show playing "below" this program. This show was like a live-action porno or torture show, shot crudely in a green-walled room. I may have been ashamed that I had been watching this show, and I may have shut it off as well.
My mom told me something about putting some sort of laundry in the wash. I couldn't believe I was back in a situation where my mom was controlling my life like this. I walked out of a room like the the laundry room. I now stood in some room like a common room at a homeless shelter.
There were some boys, black and Hispanic, sitting on the floor, on chairs, and on taller items like ladders. Two white men, dressed nicely and looking like men from the 1950s, had been giving some kind of positive lecture to the boys, who had just entered the shelter.
One of the men left, out a door to my left, possibly because he was going to get something useful for the boys. He might also have made a comment on exiting that he thought the chances were small that he and his colleague could help the boys think positively about this place.
I looked at the windows to this place. It was night. The windows were dark. The windows were about five feet tall and three feet wide, grid-paned, maybe three panes across and four panes tall. The remaining man was continuing his speech to the boys.
I saw how words had been written on the windows, like finger markings in condensation. The statements were positive. I now watched the condensation and markings change color. According to the mood of the statement, the pane on which the statement was written would change to a bright color while the words would change to another bright color. The colors were like shimmery acrylic paint.
I had the idea that the boys had written the statements on the window and that they had colored them. This was part of an art project. Once it was complete, it was thought, the mood produced by the windows would be so positive that the boys would love to live here.
But the boys had lost their inspiration.
The other man may now have been gone as well. Some of the boys were planning an escape. But nobody, even the really violent and rebellious ones, were sure if they would be doing the right thing.
I hadn't really been in the scene, and maybe I still wasn't. But I was knelt on the floor. A big, black boy sitting on a tall stool looked down, at me, I thought, and said, "What do you think, little girl? Should we stay or should we go?"
I now realized the boy had been speaking to a small, Hispanic boy sitting in a chair before me and just to my left. The boy had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore small, round-rimmed glasses and a big, puffy, navy blue jacket. I knew this boy was smart and sensitive, and was recognized for being so, but was always made fun of (like being called a girl) for being so obedient.
I was now being held, romantically, on one of the boy's laps. We were in front of all the boys, in the open space of the common room. The boy whose lap I sat on was black, masculine, but pretty looking. He asked me, "Don't you like this?" My head was tilted backwards. The boy was bringing down three fingers to touch my head.
I thought, I don't like this. I shouldn't be attracted to this boy. But I am.
Suddenly I was all alone. I sat on the floor in a room like the common room. It was dark, with a spotlight or spotlights shining on the floor. The carpet was hard and grey. The room had a classy feel, like in a museum.
Before me was a shrine -- also a clear vase full of flowers, maybe including orchids with white edges that faded into deep-pink centers -- which was spotlighted. There was ornamentation around the shrine, including strewn flower petals and two lion statuettes, one on each side of the shrine. The statuettes may have been green and made of wax.
The statuette to my right may have turned into a real lion. It jumped to attack me. I became horribly afraid. The lion again became the green statuette (i.e. maybe one foot long), but was still attacking me. I knew this fight was nothing but a performance, although if I lost, I would actually die.
The green lion and I wrestled. I threw it off me at one point. It flew down a small set of stairs (three or four steps, in a semicircle, like in the minerals and gems section of the American Museum of Natural History). I may have crawled or slid to the steps. The lion pounced again from the bottom of the steps. I grabbed it and flung myself backwards, to hit the lion's head against the floor.
I was now sitting up. I heard a woman's voice somewhere, maybe in my head, talking about an actress like Sarah Jessica Parker. The voice was talking about how reckless the actress was in public life and how sh'ed eventually just become annoying.
Beside me was a weird, boxlike device which may have held an opium pipe. I was smoking something. Along a ridge of the box-device were scattered tiger's-eye-colored shards, which I knew were the legs of a spider which had been killed.
The voice continued, explaining that in the profession the actress was in (it may have been acting or equity research), there was no need to be such a prima donna. After all, there wasn't as much pressure as say, that involved in rocket science.
I stood up and walked down the steps. I thought to myself, I should actually look into rocket science. I've been wanting to design rockets for a long time now.
I walked into the deep blackness beyond the spotlights. I pushed open a heavyish, metal door with a circle window in the top, like a door in a restaurant or hospital.
I walked into a fluorescent-lit room. Before me stood a group of men, mostly black. I felt like they were looking at me as if they wanted to bully me. I walked away to the left. I heard some people talking somewhere. I thought they were talking about me.
I walked up a long stairway with white, close walls and grey carpeting. I now thought I heard people laughing at me. I tried hard to hear the conversation, to see if it was about me.
At times I felt like I was drifting up the stairwell, as if on an escalator. Along the walls, on my left side, were occasional windows, behind which teams of doctors sat, usually two doctors per team, the doctors mainly being black. The doctors were usually laughing.
I heard the conversation better. It was like a senior co-worker of mine, and the guy who acted as a liaison between the research and sales departments at my company, JB, was talking to one of the doctors as part of a radio interview. JB was speaking, in his usual mellow voice, about the economy.
I reached the top of the stairwell. I walked through one metal door into a tiny "foyer," then out onto a sidewalk through another metal door.
The sky was fully clouded over, but it was colored dim blue, like the color of early morning. There was an orange streetlamp overhead. The ground was wet, as if it had just rained. The wall of the building was white-painted concrete. It felt like I was coming out of the side exit of a movie theater or playhouse.
I held the door open still because I thought I wouldn't be able to hear JB's talk if I shut the door. But then I realized there was a speaker right above me, playing JB's speech. I let the door shut as I heard JB say conditions hadn't been this tough since 1912 or 1913.
Dream #2
I was in a dim bedroom that was lit only by natural light coming from some other room at the end of a long hallway. I was with a group of friends.
One of my friends, maybe my girlfriend H, saw a roach crawl across the wall. She panicked. I was ashamed, but also upset, that roaches were back in my house again, after I'd gotten rid of them. They'd been gone for so long.
But now I looked out into the hallway. It seemed justified for roaches to be here: the floor of the hallway was so dirty it looked like a wet asphalt road.
Dream #3
I lay on "my bed." The head of my bed was positioned so I could turn left to see down the hallway. There were a couple rooms along the right wall and one room at the very end of the hallway. The doors for all the rooms may have been opened. Fluorescent light was coming out of some (?) of the rooms.
I saw two rats run into one of the lit rooms on the side wall. I was so upset to see rats in my house that I called out, "No... no... no!"
I thought I would have to get up right away and kill the rats. But now I saw, as if I were a camera (and all the lights were now off -- only the streetlights from outside providing light), how there was some strange activity happening in my closet. The rats changed (first into mice, then into lions?). I thought, I can't kill an animal that big. Then I saw the head of an elephant emerge from the closet.
I was back in my bed. I thought, It couldn't possibly be an elephant. I thought it would be terrifyingly irrational. But out of the closet walked a roughly six-foot-tall creature, walking upright on two legs, having the body shape of a human (thought the creature was naked and had the skin of an elephant) and an elephant's head, which was huge in proportion to the body. The elephant may have had black eyes like the eyes of a classic grey alien's eyes, except round, not almond-shaped.
The elephant man walked toward me. I thought, It can't come near me. It would be too frightening. But it walked all the way to my bedside. It stood at my left (?) side, as if my bed were now in its regular place. Its breathing seemed very fleshy and real. I was so frightened that I began whimper/screaming. (In fact, I may actually have been crying out loud, the sound of which may have woken me from the dream.)
Dream #1
I walked down into a stairway into a basement. The basement may have had red walls and may have been lit with incandescent light. Before me at the foot of the stairs was a weird feature like a bottomless pit. The pit was rectangular and was bounded on three sides by "mattresses." The fourth side (the long side opposite me) was the wall. Set into the wall was a square in which sat some kind of shrine, including (?) a clear, rounded vase full of colorful flowers with rose-like petals.
I leaned my elbows atop the long side's barrier and stood watching, as if I were watching a pendulum swing. I thought of a legend of a man (maybe Asian) who had practiced a certain dance. But before the dance it was generally customary for the person dancing to give thanks to a god who excelled at the dance.
This man was a great dancer and did not think he needed to give thanks to the god. So the god came down to earth and challenged the man to the dance. But the god's dance soon became an attack, and the man was either frightened out of the challenge or killed.
I thought that I should give thanks to the god before I began the dance.
I stood in a different part of the basement now, not far from where I was before. The room L'd off to become narrower, and in the narrow space stood a bunk bed. I was right at the corner of the "L."
On the wall to my left, opposite the bunk beds, and on the same wall as the bottomless pit shrine, was another shrine in a square setting. Before me and just to my right, in the corner of the wall, was a "closet space." The closet was made of cheap wood. The shelves were full of all kinds of clothing, but on the top shelf was a TV. Just to my right may have been a doorway into a concrete-floored room like a laundry or storage room. Sunlight may have shone through a window in the storage room.
My propitiation to the god was to play some kind of video on the TV -- something like an anime adventure with a sexy girl swinging around and fighting people. My mom yelled down the stairs to me to shut that show off -- she could hear it all the way upstairs. I shut the show off, like I was clicking off one program on a computer.
There was another show playing "below" this program. This show was like a live-action porno or torture show, shot crudely in a green-walled room. I may have been ashamed that I had been watching this show, and I may have shut it off as well.
My mom told me something about putting some sort of laundry in the wash. I couldn't believe I was back in a situation where my mom was controlling my life like this. I walked out of a room like the the laundry room. I now stood in some room like a common room at a homeless shelter.
There were some boys, black and Hispanic, sitting on the floor, on chairs, and on taller items like ladders. Two white men, dressed nicely and looking like men from the 1950s, had been giving some kind of positive lecture to the boys, who had just entered the shelter.
One of the men left, out a door to my left, possibly because he was going to get something useful for the boys. He might also have made a comment on exiting that he thought the chances were small that he and his colleague could help the boys think positively about this place.
I looked at the windows to this place. It was night. The windows were dark. The windows were about five feet tall and three feet wide, grid-paned, maybe three panes across and four panes tall. The remaining man was continuing his speech to the boys.
I saw how words had been written on the windows, like finger markings in condensation. The statements were positive. I now watched the condensation and markings change color. According to the mood of the statement, the pane on which the statement was written would change to a bright color while the words would change to another bright color. The colors were like shimmery acrylic paint.
I had the idea that the boys had written the statements on the window and that they had colored them. This was part of an art project. Once it was complete, it was thought, the mood produced by the windows would be so positive that the boys would love to live here.
But the boys had lost their inspiration.
The other man may now have been gone as well. Some of the boys were planning an escape. But nobody, even the really violent and rebellious ones, were sure if they would be doing the right thing.
I hadn't really been in the scene, and maybe I still wasn't. But I was knelt on the floor. A big, black boy sitting on a tall stool looked down, at me, I thought, and said, "What do you think, little girl? Should we stay or should we go?"
I now realized the boy had been speaking to a small, Hispanic boy sitting in a chair before me and just to my left. The boy had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore small, round-rimmed glasses and a big, puffy, navy blue jacket. I knew this boy was smart and sensitive, and was recognized for being so, but was always made fun of (like being called a girl) for being so obedient.
I was now being held, romantically, on one of the boy's laps. We were in front of all the boys, in the open space of the common room. The boy whose lap I sat on was black, masculine, but pretty looking. He asked me, "Don't you like this?" My head was tilted backwards. The boy was bringing down three fingers to touch my head.
I thought, I don't like this. I shouldn't be attracted to this boy. But I am.
Suddenly I was all alone. I sat on the floor in a room like the common room. It was dark, with a spotlight or spotlights shining on the floor. The carpet was hard and grey. The room had a classy feel, like in a museum.
Before me was a shrine -- also a clear vase full of flowers, maybe including orchids with white edges that faded into deep-pink centers -- which was spotlighted. There was ornamentation around the shrine, including strewn flower petals and two lion statuettes, one on each side of the shrine. The statuettes may have been green and made of wax.
The statuette to my right may have turned into a real lion. It jumped to attack me. I became horribly afraid. The lion again became the green statuette (i.e. maybe one foot long), but was still attacking me. I knew this fight was nothing but a performance, although if I lost, I would actually die.
The green lion and I wrestled. I threw it off me at one point. It flew down a small set of stairs (three or four steps, in a semicircle, like in the minerals and gems section of the American Museum of Natural History). I may have crawled or slid to the steps. The lion pounced again from the bottom of the steps. I grabbed it and flung myself backwards, to hit the lion's head against the floor.
I was now sitting up. I heard a woman's voice somewhere, maybe in my head, talking about an actress like Sarah Jessica Parker. The voice was talking about how reckless the actress was in public life and how sh'ed eventually just become annoying.
Beside me was a weird, boxlike device which may have held an opium pipe. I was smoking something. Along a ridge of the box-device were scattered tiger's-eye-colored shards, which I knew were the legs of a spider which had been killed.
The voice continued, explaining that in the profession the actress was in (it may have been acting or equity research), there was no need to be such a prima donna. After all, there wasn't as much pressure as say, that involved in rocket science.
I stood up and walked down the steps. I thought to myself, I should actually look into rocket science. I've been wanting to design rockets for a long time now.
I walked into the deep blackness beyond the spotlights. I pushed open a heavyish, metal door with a circle window in the top, like a door in a restaurant or hospital.
I walked into a fluorescent-lit room. Before me stood a group of men, mostly black. I felt like they were looking at me as if they wanted to bully me. I walked away to the left. I heard some people talking somewhere. I thought they were talking about me.
I walked up a long stairway with white, close walls and grey carpeting. I now thought I heard people laughing at me. I tried hard to hear the conversation, to see if it was about me.
At times I felt like I was drifting up the stairwell, as if on an escalator. Along the walls, on my left side, were occasional windows, behind which teams of doctors sat, usually two doctors per team, the doctors mainly being black. The doctors were usually laughing.
I heard the conversation better. It was like a senior co-worker of mine, and the guy who acted as a liaison between the research and sales departments at my company, JB, was talking to one of the doctors as part of a radio interview. JB was speaking, in his usual mellow voice, about the economy.
I reached the top of the stairwell. I walked through one metal door into a tiny "foyer," then out onto a sidewalk through another metal door.
The sky was fully clouded over, but it was colored dim blue, like the color of early morning. There was an orange streetlamp overhead. The ground was wet, as if it had just rained. The wall of the building was white-painted concrete. It felt like I was coming out of the side exit of a movie theater or playhouse.
I held the door open still because I thought I wouldn't be able to hear JB's talk if I shut the door. But then I realized there was a speaker right above me, playing JB's speech. I let the door shut as I heard JB say conditions hadn't been this tough since 1912 or 1913.
Dream #2
I was in a dim bedroom that was lit only by natural light coming from some other room at the end of a long hallway. I was with a group of friends.
One of my friends, maybe my girlfriend H, saw a roach crawl across the wall. She panicked. I was ashamed, but also upset, that roaches were back in my house again, after I'd gotten rid of them. They'd been gone for so long.
But now I looked out into the hallway. It seemed justified for roaches to be here: the floor of the hallway was so dirty it looked like a wet asphalt road.
Dream #3
I lay on "my bed." The head of my bed was positioned so I could turn left to see down the hallway. There were a couple rooms along the right wall and one room at the very end of the hallway. The doors for all the rooms may have been opened. Fluorescent light was coming out of some (?) of the rooms.
I saw two rats run into one of the lit rooms on the side wall. I was so upset to see rats in my house that I called out, "No... no... no!"
I thought I would have to get up right away and kill the rats. But now I saw, as if I were a camera (and all the lights were now off -- only the streetlights from outside providing light), how there was some strange activity happening in my closet. The rats changed (first into mice, then into lions?). I thought, I can't kill an animal that big. Then I saw the head of an elephant emerge from the closet.
I was back in my bed. I thought, It couldn't possibly be an elephant. I thought it would be terrifyingly irrational. But out of the closet walked a roughly six-foot-tall creature, walking upright on two legs, having the body shape of a human (thought the creature was naked and had the skin of an elephant) and an elephant's head, which was huge in proportion to the body. The elephant may have had black eyes like the eyes of a classic grey alien's eyes, except round, not almond-shaped.
The elephant man walked toward me. I thought, It can't come near me. It would be too frightening. But it walked all the way to my bedside. It stood at my left (?) side, as if my bed were now in its regular place. Its breathing seemed very fleshy and real. I was so frightened that I began whimper/screaming. (In fact, I may actually have been crying out loud, the sound of which may have woken me from the dream.)
(1/1/09) the hound went through the hole
(Entered in paper journal at 9:45 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
A movie which was like a Disney cartoon and real life together, as if the cartoon (not computer animation) had the weight and dimension of real life.
I (?) sat on the lower bed of a bunk bed. On the underside of the top bed was a hole maybe three inches in diameter. It was all black inside, like in cartoons.
A little dog that looked like the hound off of The Fox and the Hound jumped out of the hole and attacked me. It would dart at my shoulder and then disappear, immediately reappearing in the hole, then darting at my shoulder again.
The dog and I had once been friends, as if I were the fox. But the dog had gotten mad at me for some reason and was now attacking me. I wasn't really hurt by the attack, but I wanted to resolve whatever misunderstanding was causing the hound's anger.
Now the main character of the movie was a hound character. I wasn't in the movie. The hound had gone through a few different size transformations.
The hound was now something like human-sized. It sat against a wall in a strange cave like a sewer tunnel which also had the look and feel of the bunk bed on which I had been sitting. The hound was afraid of making his next transformation. He thought he might get too big.
But now the walls all grew over with reddish material like flesh. The reddish material also pulsed with clouds of purple and veins of blue. The reddish material had become a smallish room around the hound, possibly with an opening to a tunnel off to his right.
A hole opened above and just before the hound, on the curving "ceiling." A woman's voice told the hound that it needed to go through the hole and into the world as its next transformation. The woman's voice said not to be afraid, that the hound's fears would not be realized.
The hound went through the hole. As he pushed through, he found himself in another room, something like a dim living room with various deep green tones of furniture. He may have had the body of a human baby. (And now the movie was in live-action, not a cartoon.) But it seemed like the baby was enormous compared to everything around him.
The baby yelled, possibly just in his mind, to the woman, "You said my fears wouldn't come true! But they have!"
The woman's voice came back and said, "Don't worry. This is just part of your perception. As the light hits the room, the objects you think you see right now will show themselves to be something else. Then you'll see what everything really is, and how everything is the right size, including you."
This seemed to be proving true. For instance, beside me (as if I had now taken on the character of the hound/baby) I had something like a cup and a book. They seemed miniscule. But I knew that when the light hit them they'd either grow or show themselves that was naturally that small. I was feeling much calmer as the woman spoke to me.
I was now reading a book that may have had typed-out, but bluish, lettering. The writing was divided into numbered paragraphs, like some kind of technical manual. The left page spoke about the phenomenon the woman's voice had been telling me about. The right page spoke either about a chemical process which happens during dreaming or a chemical process which is aided by dreaming. There was a series of abbreviations that looked like LCFO or LFCO.
This was a book my girlfriend H had given me. It was something like an instruction manual for being a good businessman. The book had a soft, white, laminated-feeling cover, and had bluish or purplish, very plain lettering on the front.
Dream #1
A movie which was like a Disney cartoon and real life together, as if the cartoon (not computer animation) had the weight and dimension of real life.
I (?) sat on the lower bed of a bunk bed. On the underside of the top bed was a hole maybe three inches in diameter. It was all black inside, like in cartoons.
A little dog that looked like the hound off of The Fox and the Hound jumped out of the hole and attacked me. It would dart at my shoulder and then disappear, immediately reappearing in the hole, then darting at my shoulder again.
The dog and I had once been friends, as if I were the fox. But the dog had gotten mad at me for some reason and was now attacking me. I wasn't really hurt by the attack, but I wanted to resolve whatever misunderstanding was causing the hound's anger.
Now the main character of the movie was a hound character. I wasn't in the movie. The hound had gone through a few different size transformations.
The hound was now something like human-sized. It sat against a wall in a strange cave like a sewer tunnel which also had the look and feel of the bunk bed on which I had been sitting. The hound was afraid of making his next transformation. He thought he might get too big.
But now the walls all grew over with reddish material like flesh. The reddish material also pulsed with clouds of purple and veins of blue. The reddish material had become a smallish room around the hound, possibly with an opening to a tunnel off to his right.
A hole opened above and just before the hound, on the curving "ceiling." A woman's voice told the hound that it needed to go through the hole and into the world as its next transformation. The woman's voice said not to be afraid, that the hound's fears would not be realized.
The hound went through the hole. As he pushed through, he found himself in another room, something like a dim living room with various deep green tones of furniture. He may have had the body of a human baby. (And now the movie was in live-action, not a cartoon.) But it seemed like the baby was enormous compared to everything around him.
The baby yelled, possibly just in his mind, to the woman, "You said my fears wouldn't come true! But they have!"
The woman's voice came back and said, "Don't worry. This is just part of your perception. As the light hits the room, the objects you think you see right now will show themselves to be something else. Then you'll see what everything really is, and how everything is the right size, including you."
This seemed to be proving true. For instance, beside me (as if I had now taken on the character of the hound/baby) I had something like a cup and a book. They seemed miniscule. But I knew that when the light hit them they'd either grow or show themselves that was naturally that small. I was feeling much calmer as the woman spoke to me.
I was now reading a book that may have had typed-out, but bluish, lettering. The writing was divided into numbered paragraphs, like some kind of technical manual. The left page spoke about the phenomenon the woman's voice had been telling me about. The right page spoke either about a chemical process which happens during dreaming or a chemical process which is aided by dreaming. There was a series of abbreviations that looked like LCFO or LFCO.
This was a book my girlfriend H had given me. It was something like an instruction manual for being a good businessman. The book had a soft, white, laminated-feeling cover, and had bluish or purplish, very plain lettering on the front.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
(2/23/09) antigone-stic boss; manga duckling; panties at kmart; feet hard as shoes
(Entered in paper journal at 9:07 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in "my office," which was something like an office space at the World Financial Center buildings in lower Manhattan. I sat at a long desk. My "desk" -- a part of the long, grey table, was to the left of a square column. There were no computers at the long desk I sat at, although there may have been computers at the long desk behind me. My desk, and possibly even the whole floor, was almost completely empty.
Off to my right, a woman, maybe in her mid forties, white, with auburn hair, wandered along the aisles of desks. To my left, at the end of the long desk (maybe fifteen feet away from me) and on the opposite side of the table, sat my co-worker, and a person who had stood up a lot for me to help move me along in my career, CL.
CL asked me how something was going. It was like we were doing business together. She may have been scribbling on a piece of paper (although the long desk was otherwise empty of papers). I told CL, very politely, that everything was going well, even though it probably wasn't.
My boss BS walked into his office, which was in view of the long desk at which CL and I sat, separated from us by another two aisles of long desks. All the offices (along the wall) were dark. I may have been afraid that BS, having seen me talking to CL, would pile a ton of work on me, to keep me from talking to others.
The scene seemed to have changed. I was now "somewhere else," -- maybe "at home," maybe in BS' office. I got a phone call from BS. He said, "Hey, Preemie, I was wondering if you could help me with XXXXX." (I may have seen the word "Antigone" before my eyes.)
I thought, Yeah, I have plenty of time for that. I said, "Absolutely."
I now saw BS' computer screen in his dark office. I saw through his blinded window walls and his open door to the floor of desks outside. I thought to myself, Wait a minute. I don't have time to help him. I'm busy doing something else right now. Right?
Dream #2
I sat in a bedroom, on a bed. The bedroom was smallish. There were two beds across the room from each other. To my left was a light of some kind. The room was harshly, but palely and gently, lit. There may also have been a feeling of iridescence. I may have figured that I had to go somewhere. I stood up and took a small book with me. I held the book open and was reading it like one may study a catechism.
To my left, at my feet, was a tiny, strange animal. It seemed to want me to pay attention to it. I kept turned slightly away from it, like I was still heading toward wherever I had to go, but I knelt, so my knees were heading up toward my chest -- almost like a girl might kneel when wearing a business skirt.
I held my left hand out, ramping up from the ground so the animal could walk up onto it. My hand was twisted at an unnatural angle -- something I thought was supposed to help the little animal. The animal climbed up onto my hand.
I stood back up, still half-looking at the small book I carried. But now, on a closer look, the small animal looked like a little duckling. But its eyes were big, round, blue, like a cat's eyes, except with a teary or gummy look to them. The "duckling's" covering (not feathers?) was yellow with tinges or a halo of blood-red, as if the duckling had blood vessels even in its "feathers."
The duckling seemed to have human feelings. It didn't want me to go wherever I was going. It was nudging my hand somehow to prove this point. I sat down now on the other bed. I may have set down either the duckling or the book on the floor (if the book, then just before my feet; if the duckling, then just to the right of my feet -- or maybe I set both down).
The book, which had before been something like a catechism, now became something like a manga comic about schoolgirls. The duckling (although still to my mind a duckling) was now a girl in the costume of a manga schoolgirl. Her uniform was solid navy blue with a small red sash/bow across her chest.
The duckling/schoolgirl sat on the bed, to my right. I put my arm around her waist. She leaned her head against my shoulder. I continued reading the book.
Dream #3
I was in a store like a Kmart. I stood among racks of women's clothing. The racks were the round-display style, and widely spaced from each other. The store seemed relatively empty. I held a few items of women's clothing that I wanted to try on: some khaki shorts, a cream-colored top of some sort, and some pale aqua bikini briefs with pink stitching or trim.
I must have gone to try everything on. I saw myself in the mirror with the panties on. My body looked good. I was thin again, and my stomach was nicely muscled. I didn't care about the other clothes now. Now that my body looked good again, I wanted to try on other lingerie.
I was back where I started. I left the shorts and top on some shelf-island of jeans. I held on to the panties. I took a glance from side to side to see if I could locate the lingerie section. But it wasn't in sight. I now walked, clockwise, through the store, looking for the lingerie section. I walked through a few sections, but none of them seemed to register to my perception.
I now exited the store -- almost without noticing that I'd done so. (I may have been walking through the store, when I'd realized that I wouldn't have enough money to buy lingerie, so that I'd have to go to an ATM to pick up some money first. So I may have walked out of the store without noticing, while looking for both the lingerie section and an ATM.)
I stood in the hallway or walkway of a shopping mall. The light was dim. The floors were brown tile, and the walls were brown brick. There were island gardens with little palm-like plants. All the shops had their lights on, but some had their gates down.
I suddenly realized I had walked out of the store. I still had the panties, and I hadn't paid for them. Someone would come after me for shoplifting. I thought, I have to get back into the store.
I saw the storefront, which may have had a sign in the style of a Walgreen's sign over it: the cursive writing in red, plastic lights. I knew this was the other entrance to the store -- the one I must have used to get into the store in the first place. (In fact, I might not even have noticed that I'd left the store until I saw this storefront.)
I held a book and the panties in my left hand. I tried to cover the panties completely with the book. It looked like a couple guys were pulling down the gates for the store. I was worried for a second, but somehow I got in anyway. I crossed the security gate and breathed a sigh of relief.
I now took a look, from this point, for the lingerie section. There were a few people, kind of poor-looking, stout-looking, white men, milling around near me. I looked behind me and saw a whole panel of ATM machines. They were all fixed into a display counter, looking like something you might see at an airport. The panel was light brown. The whole place also had the feel of a McDonald's. I walked over to the panel and started playing with the touchscreen to get some money.
Dream #4
I was in bed with a good-looking, tan boy with longish, blonde hair. The boy was wearing dark blue, satin panties, a garter belt, and possibly black, thigh-high hose. We were both under a thick blanket. The room was dim, as if a small light came from some other room like a bathroom.
The boy positioned himself over me, preparing to lay on me. But as he lay on me (I think we were going to play that I was a girl and that he, as a girl wearing a dildo, was penetrating me), he knocked his feet against my feet. He suddenly got turned off. He rolled away and asked me (in the voice of my girlfriend H?), "Could you please take off your shoes?"
I thought, I'm not wearing any shoes! But I said, "Sure."
I thought this wouldn't work out for us after all. I'd taken so little care of my feet that now they'd become as hard as shoes. There was nothing I could do now, and if it turned the boy off, then I was just out of luck for the night.
Dream #1
I was in "my office," which was something like an office space at the World Financial Center buildings in lower Manhattan. I sat at a long desk. My "desk" -- a part of the long, grey table, was to the left of a square column. There were no computers at the long desk I sat at, although there may have been computers at the long desk behind me. My desk, and possibly even the whole floor, was almost completely empty.
Off to my right, a woman, maybe in her mid forties, white, with auburn hair, wandered along the aisles of desks. To my left, at the end of the long desk (maybe fifteen feet away from me) and on the opposite side of the table, sat my co-worker, and a person who had stood up a lot for me to help move me along in my career, CL.
CL asked me how something was going. It was like we were doing business together. She may have been scribbling on a piece of paper (although the long desk was otherwise empty of papers). I told CL, very politely, that everything was going well, even though it probably wasn't.
My boss BS walked into his office, which was in view of the long desk at which CL and I sat, separated from us by another two aisles of long desks. All the offices (along the wall) were dark. I may have been afraid that BS, having seen me talking to CL, would pile a ton of work on me, to keep me from talking to others.
The scene seemed to have changed. I was now "somewhere else," -- maybe "at home," maybe in BS' office. I got a phone call from BS. He said, "Hey, Preemie, I was wondering if you could help me with XXXXX." (I may have seen the word "Antigone" before my eyes.)
I thought, Yeah, I have plenty of time for that. I said, "Absolutely."
I now saw BS' computer screen in his dark office. I saw through his blinded window walls and his open door to the floor of desks outside. I thought to myself, Wait a minute. I don't have time to help him. I'm busy doing something else right now. Right?
Dream #2
I sat in a bedroom, on a bed. The bedroom was smallish. There were two beds across the room from each other. To my left was a light of some kind. The room was harshly, but palely and gently, lit. There may also have been a feeling of iridescence. I may have figured that I had to go somewhere. I stood up and took a small book with me. I held the book open and was reading it like one may study a catechism.
To my left, at my feet, was a tiny, strange animal. It seemed to want me to pay attention to it. I kept turned slightly away from it, like I was still heading toward wherever I had to go, but I knelt, so my knees were heading up toward my chest -- almost like a girl might kneel when wearing a business skirt.
I held my left hand out, ramping up from the ground so the animal could walk up onto it. My hand was twisted at an unnatural angle -- something I thought was supposed to help the little animal. The animal climbed up onto my hand.
I stood back up, still half-looking at the small book I carried. But now, on a closer look, the small animal looked like a little duckling. But its eyes were big, round, blue, like a cat's eyes, except with a teary or gummy look to them. The "duckling's" covering (not feathers?) was yellow with tinges or a halo of blood-red, as if the duckling had blood vessels even in its "feathers."
The duckling seemed to have human feelings. It didn't want me to go wherever I was going. It was nudging my hand somehow to prove this point. I sat down now on the other bed. I may have set down either the duckling or the book on the floor (if the book, then just before my feet; if the duckling, then just to the right of my feet -- or maybe I set both down).
The book, which had before been something like a catechism, now became something like a manga comic about schoolgirls. The duckling (although still to my mind a duckling) was now a girl in the costume of a manga schoolgirl. Her uniform was solid navy blue with a small red sash/bow across her chest.
The duckling/schoolgirl sat on the bed, to my right. I put my arm around her waist. She leaned her head against my shoulder. I continued reading the book.
Dream #3
I was in a store like a Kmart. I stood among racks of women's clothing. The racks were the round-display style, and widely spaced from each other. The store seemed relatively empty. I held a few items of women's clothing that I wanted to try on: some khaki shorts, a cream-colored top of some sort, and some pale aqua bikini briefs with pink stitching or trim.
I must have gone to try everything on. I saw myself in the mirror with the panties on. My body looked good. I was thin again, and my stomach was nicely muscled. I didn't care about the other clothes now. Now that my body looked good again, I wanted to try on other lingerie.
I was back where I started. I left the shorts and top on some shelf-island of jeans. I held on to the panties. I took a glance from side to side to see if I could locate the lingerie section. But it wasn't in sight. I now walked, clockwise, through the store, looking for the lingerie section. I walked through a few sections, but none of them seemed to register to my perception.
I now exited the store -- almost without noticing that I'd done so. (I may have been walking through the store, when I'd realized that I wouldn't have enough money to buy lingerie, so that I'd have to go to an ATM to pick up some money first. So I may have walked out of the store without noticing, while looking for both the lingerie section and an ATM.)
I stood in the hallway or walkway of a shopping mall. The light was dim. The floors were brown tile, and the walls were brown brick. There were island gardens with little palm-like plants. All the shops had their lights on, but some had their gates down.
I suddenly realized I had walked out of the store. I still had the panties, and I hadn't paid for them. Someone would come after me for shoplifting. I thought, I have to get back into the store.
I saw the storefront, which may have had a sign in the style of a Walgreen's sign over it: the cursive writing in red, plastic lights. I knew this was the other entrance to the store -- the one I must have used to get into the store in the first place. (In fact, I might not even have noticed that I'd left the store until I saw this storefront.)
I held a book and the panties in my left hand. I tried to cover the panties completely with the book. It looked like a couple guys were pulling down the gates for the store. I was worried for a second, but somehow I got in anyway. I crossed the security gate and breathed a sigh of relief.
I now took a look, from this point, for the lingerie section. There were a few people, kind of poor-looking, stout-looking, white men, milling around near me. I looked behind me and saw a whole panel of ATM machines. They were all fixed into a display counter, looking like something you might see at an airport. The panel was light brown. The whole place also had the feel of a McDonald's. I walked over to the panel and started playing with the touchscreen to get some money.
Dream #4
I was in bed with a good-looking, tan boy with longish, blonde hair. The boy was wearing dark blue, satin panties, a garter belt, and possibly black, thigh-high hose. We were both under a thick blanket. The room was dim, as if a small light came from some other room like a bathroom.
The boy positioned himself over me, preparing to lay on me. But as he lay on me (I think we were going to play that I was a girl and that he, as a girl wearing a dildo, was penetrating me), he knocked his feet against my feet. He suddenly got turned off. He rolled away and asked me (in the voice of my girlfriend H?), "Could you please take off your shoes?"
I thought, I'm not wearing any shoes! But I said, "Sure."
I thought this wouldn't work out for us after all. I'd taken so little care of my feet that now they'd become as hard as shoes. There was nothing I could do now, and if it turned the boy off, then I was just out of luck for the night.
(2/24/09) two parades; movie theater fight; impressing family; girlfriend's family emergency
(Entered in paper journal at 10:35 AM at Housing Works Used Bookstore Cafe in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I was in a car with my family. I'm not sure what seat I was in. It was daytime. We backed out from my great-grandmother's house, as if she had a driveway in front of her house (though I'm pretty sure that in the dream she did not), curving the back end of the car to my left and then driving away to my right.
My brother was making some complaint, possibly about how XXXXX (can't remember) was driving. But I saw that at the end of the block (would have been the south end of the block, not the north end) there was some large blockage of traffic, almost like a parade procession.
My brother now said something like, "That damn dog -- it always scares people like this." My brother meant that a dog was somehow scaring all the cars and blocking up the traffic. I might have seen a dog like a border collie running back and forth in the intersection.
Since that area was blocked, we decided to leave via the north end of the block. That end of the block was also crowded, this time with horse-drawn carriages. By this time, the car I was in may have disappeared. I and my family members walked along a cobble sidewalk (?) which may have been moderately busy with people. Some or all of the carriages were driven by dogs. The dogs seemed to have human personalities and would look over their shoulders at the crowd and possibly even wave to us.
My family (maybe just my mom, my great-grandmother, and I?) continued walking. We were now at the top of a stairway and plaza area like the stairway and plaza area for the Angel fountain in Central Park, except that it was slightly smaller and felt a little bit restricted, either by the streets of a small town's main street or by a bit of virgin or undeveloped land which was too precipitous or muddy (?) or tangled to be traversable.
The day was now very hot an bright. I thought it had been fun to walk like this, but now the weather was too uncomfortable. I seemed to be huddled together with my family, as if we were all looking over a map to decide our action.
We decided to walk down the stairs. We (now my mom, my sister, some of my nephews, and I?) entered a tan-painted cinder-block building like a park bathroom. The inside was also "like" the basement of a house. But really the interior was just a wide, open concrete space with a fountain in the center, and maybe a few sinks along the wall.
The fountain in the center was just a small, metallic fixture, like a shower head. It shot long, thick (half-inch?) streams of water which arced up maybe ten feet in the air and reached out almost to the walls of the interior. There were a stable, strong-looking father and his child playing in the fountain. The father was tan, with darkish, blonde hair. He may have been wearing a pale grey sweatshirt and pale blue jeans. His child was maybe eighteen months old, wormy-white.
My nephews and I played on the opposite side of the fountain from the father and his child. I played as if I were a child. At some point I closed my eyes and stuck my face right under one of the downward-arcing streams.
My mom now called from the doorway. I realized I had been acting silly and childish, as if I were trying to be a child of the many, or as if I were trying to attract the man sexually. Looking around, I also realized the man was now gone. I felt foolish. I walked out to meet my family, but possibly also to look for the man.
We may have walked up the set of stairs. The stairway and the level areas now looked different. They seemed more walled in. The walls also seemed to be bordered, on the opposite side, by stout-looking pine trees. The ground may have been covered with red bricks, which may have been the same as before.
Dream #2
I sat at a booth-table in a restaurant with my co-worker and friend FA. I was playing with plastic items like the non-Lego accessories (mainly little fences?) that would come with a Lego scene-kit. In particular I played with a plastic or putty disc (grey or brown?) around which had been wrapped a ring of (grey or brown) plastic "fence" or "train track."
FA and I spoke about some movie she and I had seen separately. She knew I'd have picked up on certain elements that she knew I'd know she'd like. She was now telling me about the elements, trying to be exact, as if she wanted to impress me. For some reason I couldn't help correcting her, with a brief interjection, in two instances.
For the first instance, I may even have felt a slight offense, as if I thought her inexactness showed she didn't really care, that she was actually just pretending. In the second instance she got the character's name wrong, just slightly, even though the character's name was FA's name exactly.
As I interjected FA's name, FA and I were suddenly in a "movie theater." The "theater" looked more like a nice cafe or restaurant, or even a living room, except with seven or eight one-aisle rows of (purple-fabric?) movie theater seats, and a black, curtained wall up front, with a small movie screen on it. The floors were wood. The walls were rustic, red-brick, like in a pizzeria. There were cheery, block-style flower paintings on the wall. Along the wall to my right was also a small, columnar chest or pedestal of dark, purplish varnished wood, with a slim vase of yellow (?) flowers on top.
FA and I sat in seats, maybe one seat apart from each other, as if we each had our stuff in the seats directly to our right (?). FA and I sat on the right side of the theater, just a couple seats in from the aisle -- there were maybe six or seven seats on each side.
A young man, maybe Hispanic, kind of wide-built, wearing a big, puffy, tannish coat, similarly colored denim pants, and a wool cap, walked in front of us. He first stood in front of me, his back to me, and plaed on his BlackBerry, as if he were going to stay there and play on his BlackBerry as long as he wanted, to test my patience. When the man saw I didn't seem to care, he kept moving along.
The man now stood in front of FA. He would step back, really trying to get into FA's space. At first FA and I just talked, as if it didn't annoy us. But then I finally got angry and told the man to get out of FA's face. The man just kept pretending like we didn't exist.
I stood up and tried to push or pull the man out of FA's space. I was in a weird position, as if I were one row behind the man and FA, and as if I were trying to grab him by reaching my arms backwards over my head. My body didn't seem to have any power, not even power to move with any speed.
I gave up on this method, and now, sitting near the aisle, in the row in front of FA and the man, probably sitting on one of the seat arms, with my left arm slung over the seat back, and again kind of looking backward to the two of them, I yelled at the man, "Get the hell away from FA!"
The man had taken off his hat. His hair was puffy, with medium curls. He had a round face but kind of lean-looking eyes. He gave a quick, loose-throated chuckle like a fit high school basketball player might give in place of talking trash when he knows he's good.
Again I tried (somehow) to force the guy away. FA said, "It's not worth it, Preemie."
The man and I now stood at the back wall, near a wooden chest, also dark and purplish colored. I was wildly angry, and I was trying to fight against the man, but once again I had no power in my arms at all. The man and I were wrestling with our arms.
I kept shouting threats at the man until they or one of them finally hit a nerve. The man said, "Oh, yeah? Well, how about this?" He reached into his left pocket. I knew he was going to pull out either a knife or a gun. I was afraid, but I kept still not wanting to give the man any satisfaction of knowing my fear. The man pulled out a knife as long as a keychain Swiss Army knife and as sharp as a butter knife.
Again FA told me to forget about it to ignore the man. The man and I "fought" by wrestling arms again. I was completely overpowered, but somehow I had managed to grab the knife an throw it away, into the empty movie seats.
The man and I now stood apart. The man made some threats about how he would really hurt me now. I was afraid, but I was still so mad that I knew I'd start fighting again. I also knew that if the man got the knife again, he'd kill me.
Dream #3
I sat in a bedroom with my mom. The bedroom served as a living room. Natural light came into the room and was very bright. The walls were harsh and bright. There was a buffet along one of the walls, and possibly a big pile of junk, possibly burying some shelves, along another wall. I and my mom sat on a bed against the wall across from the buffet. There were no sheets on the bed. There was probably a television blaring away on top of the buffet.
It was like I had been back in my hometown, on vacation. My mom was telling me something like she wasn't going to take me to the airport to go back home. I immediately got angry. I stood up and yelled at my mom about how she was destroying the trust i had for her and how I would never have the same kind of relationship with her ever again. I yelled that she absolutely had to take me to the XXXXX so I could go home. But my mom just kind of lounged on the bed (as if it were a couch) and watched the television. She looked like she couldn't care less about anything I said.
I now shouted at my mother, "I know you think I'm of no consequence, and that I've never done anything. I know you think I can't back up anything I ever say. But don't you know what I've just gotten done doing? I was a stock researcher on Wall Street! That was a pretty important job!"
My mom suddenly perked up. She said, "Is that what you've been doing? I've never understood that." She stood up and (somehow) told my brother and sister that she and the two of them needed to make up for the way they'd been treating me.
My mom now came into the room (as if she'd been gone) carrying a brown, paper grocery bag. My sister may have done the same. My mom now pulled out a couple of apples. She may have offered me the apples. But she also just set them on whatever little bits of shelf she could find under the piles of stuff along the wall.
Dream #4
I stood on a sidewalk on a bright, sunny day. The street was wide and busy. The sidewalk was also wide, but not very busy. On the other side of the sidewalk may have been a large (?) vacant lot bordered by a chain-link fence that was in bad shape, probably bent over, into the lot, at a forty-five-degree angle at one point. However, the vacant lot may also have been only a small, unkempt space on a small triangle island near the larger sidewalk. Either way, to my right there was also a subway entrance, which I may just have come up from.
I was on the phone (right ear?) with my girlfriend H. She was hesitant in talking to me, but then she finally burst out, saying that her father and everybody on her father's side of the family had just died. She was now terribly upset, crying and screaming.
I asked H if I could come over. I told her I'd be over as soon as possible. But I couldn't quite figure out where I was. I didn't know if I should get back on the train or just walk. I also didn't know if it would take me fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, or even longer for me to get to H's house.
Dream #1
I was in a car with my family. I'm not sure what seat I was in. It was daytime. We backed out from my great-grandmother's house, as if she had a driveway in front of her house (though I'm pretty sure that in the dream she did not), curving the back end of the car to my left and then driving away to my right.
My brother was making some complaint, possibly about how XXXXX (can't remember) was driving. But I saw that at the end of the block (would have been the south end of the block, not the north end) there was some large blockage of traffic, almost like a parade procession.
My brother now said something like, "That damn dog -- it always scares people like this." My brother meant that a dog was somehow scaring all the cars and blocking up the traffic. I might have seen a dog like a border collie running back and forth in the intersection.
Since that area was blocked, we decided to leave via the north end of the block. That end of the block was also crowded, this time with horse-drawn carriages. By this time, the car I was in may have disappeared. I and my family members walked along a cobble sidewalk (?) which may have been moderately busy with people. Some or all of the carriages were driven by dogs. The dogs seemed to have human personalities and would look over their shoulders at the crowd and possibly even wave to us.
My family (maybe just my mom, my great-grandmother, and I?) continued walking. We were now at the top of a stairway and plaza area like the stairway and plaza area for the Angel fountain in Central Park, except that it was slightly smaller and felt a little bit restricted, either by the streets of a small town's main street or by a bit of virgin or undeveloped land which was too precipitous or muddy (?) or tangled to be traversable.
The day was now very hot an bright. I thought it had been fun to walk like this, but now the weather was too uncomfortable. I seemed to be huddled together with my family, as if we were all looking over a map to decide our action.
We decided to walk down the stairs. We (now my mom, my sister, some of my nephews, and I?) entered a tan-painted cinder-block building like a park bathroom. The inside was also "like" the basement of a house. But really the interior was just a wide, open concrete space with a fountain in the center, and maybe a few sinks along the wall.
The fountain in the center was just a small, metallic fixture, like a shower head. It shot long, thick (half-inch?) streams of water which arced up maybe ten feet in the air and reached out almost to the walls of the interior. There were a stable, strong-looking father and his child playing in the fountain. The father was tan, with darkish, blonde hair. He may have been wearing a pale grey sweatshirt and pale blue jeans. His child was maybe eighteen months old, wormy-white.
My nephews and I played on the opposite side of the fountain from the father and his child. I played as if I were a child. At some point I closed my eyes and stuck my face right under one of the downward-arcing streams.
My mom now called from the doorway. I realized I had been acting silly and childish, as if I were trying to be a child of the many, or as if I were trying to attract the man sexually. Looking around, I also realized the man was now gone. I felt foolish. I walked out to meet my family, but possibly also to look for the man.
We may have walked up the set of stairs. The stairway and the level areas now looked different. They seemed more walled in. The walls also seemed to be bordered, on the opposite side, by stout-looking pine trees. The ground may have been covered with red bricks, which may have been the same as before.
Dream #2
I sat at a booth-table in a restaurant with my co-worker and friend FA. I was playing with plastic items like the non-Lego accessories (mainly little fences?) that would come with a Lego scene-kit. In particular I played with a plastic or putty disc (grey or brown?) around which had been wrapped a ring of (grey or brown) plastic "fence" or "train track."
FA and I spoke about some movie she and I had seen separately. She knew I'd have picked up on certain elements that she knew I'd know she'd like. She was now telling me about the elements, trying to be exact, as if she wanted to impress me. For some reason I couldn't help correcting her, with a brief interjection, in two instances.
For the first instance, I may even have felt a slight offense, as if I thought her inexactness showed she didn't really care, that she was actually just pretending. In the second instance she got the character's name wrong, just slightly, even though the character's name was FA's name exactly.
As I interjected FA's name, FA and I were suddenly in a "movie theater." The "theater" looked more like a nice cafe or restaurant, or even a living room, except with seven or eight one-aisle rows of (purple-fabric?) movie theater seats, and a black, curtained wall up front, with a small movie screen on it. The floors were wood. The walls were rustic, red-brick, like in a pizzeria. There were cheery, block-style flower paintings on the wall. Along the wall to my right was also a small, columnar chest or pedestal of dark, purplish varnished wood, with a slim vase of yellow (?) flowers on top.
FA and I sat in seats, maybe one seat apart from each other, as if we each had our stuff in the seats directly to our right (?). FA and I sat on the right side of the theater, just a couple seats in from the aisle -- there were maybe six or seven seats on each side.
A young man, maybe Hispanic, kind of wide-built, wearing a big, puffy, tannish coat, similarly colored denim pants, and a wool cap, walked in front of us. He first stood in front of me, his back to me, and plaed on his BlackBerry, as if he were going to stay there and play on his BlackBerry as long as he wanted, to test my patience. When the man saw I didn't seem to care, he kept moving along.
The man now stood in front of FA. He would step back, really trying to get into FA's space. At first FA and I just talked, as if it didn't annoy us. But then I finally got angry and told the man to get out of FA's face. The man just kept pretending like we didn't exist.
I stood up and tried to push or pull the man out of FA's space. I was in a weird position, as if I were one row behind the man and FA, and as if I were trying to grab him by reaching my arms backwards over my head. My body didn't seem to have any power, not even power to move with any speed.
I gave up on this method, and now, sitting near the aisle, in the row in front of FA and the man, probably sitting on one of the seat arms, with my left arm slung over the seat back, and again kind of looking backward to the two of them, I yelled at the man, "Get the hell away from FA!"
The man had taken off his hat. His hair was puffy, with medium curls. He had a round face but kind of lean-looking eyes. He gave a quick, loose-throated chuckle like a fit high school basketball player might give in place of talking trash when he knows he's good.
Again I tried (somehow) to force the guy away. FA said, "It's not worth it, Preemie."
The man and I now stood at the back wall, near a wooden chest, also dark and purplish colored. I was wildly angry, and I was trying to fight against the man, but once again I had no power in my arms at all. The man and I were wrestling with our arms.
I kept shouting threats at the man until they or one of them finally hit a nerve. The man said, "Oh, yeah? Well, how about this?" He reached into his left pocket. I knew he was going to pull out either a knife or a gun. I was afraid, but I kept still not wanting to give the man any satisfaction of knowing my fear. The man pulled out a knife as long as a keychain Swiss Army knife and as sharp as a butter knife.
Again FA told me to forget about it to ignore the man. The man and I "fought" by wrestling arms again. I was completely overpowered, but somehow I had managed to grab the knife an throw it away, into the empty movie seats.
The man and I now stood apart. The man made some threats about how he would really hurt me now. I was afraid, but I was still so mad that I knew I'd start fighting again. I also knew that if the man got the knife again, he'd kill me.
Dream #3
I sat in a bedroom with my mom. The bedroom served as a living room. Natural light came into the room and was very bright. The walls were harsh and bright. There was a buffet along one of the walls, and possibly a big pile of junk, possibly burying some shelves, along another wall. I and my mom sat on a bed against the wall across from the buffet. There were no sheets on the bed. There was probably a television blaring away on top of the buffet.
It was like I had been back in my hometown, on vacation. My mom was telling me something like she wasn't going to take me to the airport to go back home. I immediately got angry. I stood up and yelled at my mom about how she was destroying the trust i had for her and how I would never have the same kind of relationship with her ever again. I yelled that she absolutely had to take me to the XXXXX so I could go home. But my mom just kind of lounged on the bed (as if it were a couch) and watched the television. She looked like she couldn't care less about anything I said.
I now shouted at my mother, "I know you think I'm of no consequence, and that I've never done anything. I know you think I can't back up anything I ever say. But don't you know what I've just gotten done doing? I was a stock researcher on Wall Street! That was a pretty important job!"
My mom suddenly perked up. She said, "Is that what you've been doing? I've never understood that." She stood up and (somehow) told my brother and sister that she and the two of them needed to make up for the way they'd been treating me.
My mom now came into the room (as if she'd been gone) carrying a brown, paper grocery bag. My sister may have done the same. My mom now pulled out a couple of apples. She may have offered me the apples. But she also just set them on whatever little bits of shelf she could find under the piles of stuff along the wall.
Dream #4
I stood on a sidewalk on a bright, sunny day. The street was wide and busy. The sidewalk was also wide, but not very busy. On the other side of the sidewalk may have been a large (?) vacant lot bordered by a chain-link fence that was in bad shape, probably bent over, into the lot, at a forty-five-degree angle at one point. However, the vacant lot may also have been only a small, unkempt space on a small triangle island near the larger sidewalk. Either way, to my right there was also a subway entrance, which I may just have come up from.
I was on the phone (right ear?) with my girlfriend H. She was hesitant in talking to me, but then she finally burst out, saying that her father and everybody on her father's side of the family had just died. She was now terribly upset, crying and screaming.
I asked H if I could come over. I told her I'd be over as soon as possible. But I couldn't quite figure out where I was. I didn't know if I should get back on the train or just walk. I also didn't know if it would take me fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, or even longer for me to get to H's house.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
(3/21/09) roundup for a meeting; girlfriend on the bus
(Entered in paper journal at 9 AM at Starbucks on 17th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I may have been in an office building. The place was dim, grey, emptyish, with stray clutter. I may have spoken with PD (one of the heads of the company I had recently been laid off from) or seen her as she passed by. I knew PD was holding a meeting for the department I worked in.
I walked to some place outside. It was like a street sidewalk that had a waist-high concrete barrier and chain link fence over the right side. My old boss BS and some of my co-workers stood out by the barrier. The co-workers all looked young, like people who would have been at about my level professionally. Stray office clutter lay around all of them.
I told BS, "If it's okay, I'm going to head over to PD's meeting at 12:15." BS sighed, like he supposed he and everybody with him should go, too.
As we all continued along the street to get to the office, I said that it was almost time for the meeting. BS smirked and said, "That is, if PD doesn't get arrested beforehand."
Dream #2
I was on a bus. It had a kind of nice, grey interior. There were some smart-looking people on the bus. There were seats open, but I stood. I stood near the front of the bus, on the right (not driver's) side, looking toward the back of the bus. At some point, I was surprised to see my girlfriend H sitting in the seat next to where I was standing. H was also surprised to see me.
The bus came to a stop. The stop stood in a beam of golden sunset light. The light filled the bus. The bus emptied out a little more. There were plenty of seats, but I still stood.
H stood up. She looked like she wanted to change seats, so she wouldn't be near me, but that she wanted to do it in a polite way. She walked a few rows away and sat in a seat on the left side of the bus. When she'd stood up, I'd noticed that she looked nicer than usual. She was a little skinnier and had a softer face. She wore a long-sleeved shirt with horizontal stripes of pink, blue, white, and possibly purple (and other colors?) and a long, blue khaki skirt.
All the seats were faced away from me, as if I were now at the back instead of the front of the bus, or as if all the seats were faced away from the front of the bus.
Dream #1
I may have been in an office building. The place was dim, grey, emptyish, with stray clutter. I may have spoken with PD (one of the heads of the company I had recently been laid off from) or seen her as she passed by. I knew PD was holding a meeting for the department I worked in.
I walked to some place outside. It was like a street sidewalk that had a waist-high concrete barrier and chain link fence over the right side. My old boss BS and some of my co-workers stood out by the barrier. The co-workers all looked young, like people who would have been at about my level professionally. Stray office clutter lay around all of them.
I told BS, "If it's okay, I'm going to head over to PD's meeting at 12:15." BS sighed, like he supposed he and everybody with him should go, too.
As we all continued along the street to get to the office, I said that it was almost time for the meeting. BS smirked and said, "That is, if PD doesn't get arrested beforehand."
Dream #2
I was on a bus. It had a kind of nice, grey interior. There were some smart-looking people on the bus. There were seats open, but I stood. I stood near the front of the bus, on the right (not driver's) side, looking toward the back of the bus. At some point, I was surprised to see my girlfriend H sitting in the seat next to where I was standing. H was also surprised to see me.
The bus came to a stop. The stop stood in a beam of golden sunset light. The light filled the bus. The bus emptied out a little more. There were plenty of seats, but I still stood.
H stood up. She looked like she wanted to change seats, so she wouldn't be near me, but that she wanted to do it in a polite way. She walked a few rows away and sat in a seat on the left side of the bus. When she'd stood up, I'd noticed that she looked nicer than usual. She was a little skinnier and had a softer face. She wore a long-sleeved shirt with horizontal stripes of pink, blue, white, and possibly purple (and other colors?) and a long, blue khaki skirt.
All the seats were faced away from me, as if I were now at the back instead of the front of the bus, or as if all the seats were faced away from the front of the bus.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
(4/2/09) killing the spider; anime library; chasing the ceo
(Entered in paper journal at 8:30 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
It was night. I lay in a wide bed like a hotel bed, with a synthetic-feeling coverlet over me. To my right was a sliding-glass door, which was messy with soild and showed pale, electric blue light, like from a car's headlights, somewhere in the distance (though the door opened to a backyard, not to a front yard with a road).
I looked over the right side of the bed and saw a spider crawl under the bed. The floor was a mess, cluttered with dusty items like cushions and boards. The spider was like a daddy long legs with a metallic, blue-purple body.
I "remembered" my psychiatrist A having told me at our last session, "Now, don't you kill any spiders." (In waking life, my psychiatrist had actually told me to make sure I didn't get another job until my "inactive" period with my current job -- where I was technically still an employee, though I was already basically laid off and no longer coming into work -- was finished and I was finally unemployed, i.e. about mid-April.)
But for some reason I thought, Well, killing one spider isn't all that bad. I couldn't stand the thought of having a pest in my room. I rolled off the bed and looked under it to see where the spider was. I saw it near the wall, near the head of the bed
I stood up and walked to the bathroom to grab something to smash the spider with. I came out with something, probably an unwieldy, dark square of material (when I'd meant to get a bit of toilet paper).
I turned on my bedroom light. The light was just a table lamp, dim, at the opposite end of the room from me, at the head of my bed, on its left side. Most of the room was still dark. The place was cluttered and dusty. There was another bed to the left of my bed. That bed was cluttered with stuff, including a foam mat that lay half on and off the bed. But the left side of my bed was also cluttered.
I was afraid to step in the space between the two beds. I thought the floor under the left bed was so dirty that mice probably lived under it. I was afraid that if I caused any vibrations in the floor, the mice would come out, which would be really annoying and would dissolve my sense of "having a clean room."
I walked between the beds, anyway. I kneed my way up onto the right bed. I thought the spider would eventually crawl up the wall, at which point i could smash it. But looking at the head of my bed, I now saw that the right pillow, on which I had laid my head, had a blanket of cobweb from its corner to the wall. I knew this cobweb was the spider's web, and that it had been here for a while.
I couldn't stand the thought that I had lived so long with the spider so close to my head while I slept. I thought something like, Well, it's too late now. But I still tried to convince myself that somehow I hadn't slept with my head so close to the spider, and that the web couldn't have been there for very long.
I thought that I should at least pull the web out, now that I saw it. But when I reached at it (parts of it now looked like a web), I noticed that the spider, now smaller and greyish, was posed in the bottom half of the web. I was afraid that by pulling out the web I'd make the spider angry. But I knew I had to do it, anyway, to start to make my room clean again.
I pulled the web off the wall. It now hung down off my pillow. I might have pulled the web the rest of the way off my pillow. But I now saw that the spider was angry. That was enough to scare me. But now I also saw that the spider was thing and long-legged, like before, and that its body was jet black with a red hourglass on it. I thought, It's a black widow!
I stood off my bed and backed away from it. The spider now charged down the bed and onto the floor, coming after me. The spider had stubby legs and a squarish, crab-like body, black with red mottling. It had red jaws and two big, round, black eyes. It was maybe three-quarters of an inch wide. I backed all the way back to the bathroom doorway. The spider and I may then have been at a standstill.
Dream #2
I was in something like a library or bookshop that had a cafe in it. The place had a very "strip-mall" feel -- white-walled, tall, wide, with thin carpet and wide-spaced shelves. The cafe area was just a few tables spread out in an open space among shelves. The place was moderately busy.
I stood at a revolving carousel of books. The shelves were clear and plastic. The carousel was about seven feet high.
My girlfriend H sat at a table with a friend. They may have spoken back and forth in both Japanese and English. They were talking about me and the books I was looking at. I was probably looking at manga novels, though I may also have been looking at anime DVDs.
I was looking, H and her friend said, at some classic manga, but also at some manga that either H or her friend was not familiar with. One of the two began to explain to the other what this anime/manga was all about. The person then sang the theme song, which sounded like a song from a recent (in 2009) anime about a boy who dresses up as a girl so he can go to a girls' school. I was ashamed that H and her friend liked this anime. But H and her friend didn't seem to worried about the fact that I liked the anime.
The top shelf of the carousel had tiny books, maybe two and a half inches tall and one and half inches wide, and maybe a quarter of an inch thick. The rest of the shelves were now filled with DVDs. A couple of DVD cases were patterned with orange and black tiger stripes. These cases were for DVDs of an anime show I really liked.
H and her friend now spoke about this show and how much they liked it, mostly because they wanted to sound like they were interested in me, so I would get interested in them. The more H and her friend spoke, though, the more, I noticed, the DVDs for the show filled the carousel. Now almost all the DVDs on the carousel were DVDs for that show.
At some point H and her friend were discussing specific words in the show's theme song. I felt weird, again, about what the two girls were discussing, as if those particular words would reveal something about me that I didn't want known.
Dream #3
I was in a restaurant with a friend. We sat at a booth table which was like a large car's interior set into a very small bedroom. The room had white walls and a window on one wall, almost the height of the entire wall. There might have been blinds over the window.
The table area had no table, but something like a grouping of gear-shift knobs and levers encased in black plastic and slightly metallic, green imitation leather. The booth seats were like bench seats, although somehow it was also possible to sit and look forward out the window, as if sitting in bucket seats.
I sat across from (or, sometimes, beside) a pretty, young woman who possibly had olive skin and brown hair. We were waiting for guests for a business meal, probably breakfast or lunch. In particular we were waiting for the CEO of the company from which I had recently been laid off.
Through the window I could see beyond the "restaurant's parking lot and across a street to a tan-bricked office building in a business park. There were green mounds of grass before the building and blue sky over it.
I saw the CEO outside the building. I explained something to the woman about how all the guests would be late, but how a lot of them would make it. I was particularly sure that the CEO would make it. I didn't feel like I sounded too convincing. I now sat "forward" in my seat, like I would sit in a bucket seat.
I now saw the CEO walking just outside the window. I said, "Ha! The CEO is just outside! That means he's coming really soon." I got up and ran outside to meet the CEO. I knew he was with a group of tall, young, strong businessmen, who accompanied him just about everywhere.
But when I got outside, I couldn't see the CEO anywhere. I was with a group of people outside. The parking lot was like a strip of asphalt road among dusty desert hills, dirt roads, and chain link fences, all under a clear, blue sky.
We all looked up and down the road for the CEO. Now the CEO came speeding down the road, from our left, heading toward the "restaurant" in a pale, metallic blue, Porsche-like car. We were all happy that the CEO was finally here. We all started walking back toward the building. I may have been at the back of the line of people walking back.
Now the CEO sped away from the building. I realized that the CEO couldn't find a parking space, which was equivalent with not being able to locate where our group was meeting. I ran after the CEO so I could tell him where we were.
But now the CEO's car sped back toward the "restaurant." I ran back to the "restaurant" so I could find the CEO and lead him to where our group was meeting. I ran through the building, which was now like a mix of warehouse space and office hallways.
I opened one of the doors in a hallway. The whole group was sitting at the booth table. I asked everybody if they'd seen the CEO. They said they had, but that he'd walked past this booth as if he hadn't recognized that this was where he should be.
I ran back in the direction I had come from, to catch the CEO before he got back in his car. I ran through a large warehouse space (actually like the loading dock area at the Manhattan Houston Street UPS building, where I worked for a while in 2000 in waking life).
I now saw one of my friends or co-workers running outside the gates. The man was tall and tan, with flowing, red hair and a short beard. He wore a green t-shirt and jean shorts. He was muscular.
The man "told" me (as if he was speaking from just behind me and to my right) something like "I guess we're in this together if no one else wants to look." But I felt like the man was running "with" me only to compete against me. I ran even faster and was now outside. The man was just ahead of me, but I was catching up. But then I really started to lose my breath.
We ran along a dark, black asphalt road. We saw the CEO run or drive over a large, lawny hill before us. The man easily ascended the hill. My lungs felt shot, and my legs were barely controllable. I kept going, just out of determination. But the man easily gained ground over me.
(The next part may possibly be a loose imagination after I woke up.)
The man got up to the top of the hill. A football hit him from the right and knocked him over. I knew that the CEO had thrown the ball from down the hill.
I stopped, still a little distance behind the man. I now heard the CEO joking with the man, saying, "Well, sounds like you couldn't stand being in that meeting, either, huh?"
I felt like the CEO was kind of, but not really, including me in the conversation. After all, I hadn't made it to the top of the hill first. But I also thought, like I was speaking to the CEO, It's not that we couldn't stand being in the meeting. We were looking for you, to try to get you into the meeting!
Dream #1
It was night. I lay in a wide bed like a hotel bed, with a synthetic-feeling coverlet over me. To my right was a sliding-glass door, which was messy with soild and showed pale, electric blue light, like from a car's headlights, somewhere in the distance (though the door opened to a backyard, not to a front yard with a road).
I looked over the right side of the bed and saw a spider crawl under the bed. The floor was a mess, cluttered with dusty items like cushions and boards. The spider was like a daddy long legs with a metallic, blue-purple body.
I "remembered" my psychiatrist A having told me at our last session, "Now, don't you kill any spiders." (In waking life, my psychiatrist had actually told me to make sure I didn't get another job until my "inactive" period with my current job -- where I was technically still an employee, though I was already basically laid off and no longer coming into work -- was finished and I was finally unemployed, i.e. about mid-April.)
But for some reason I thought, Well, killing one spider isn't all that bad. I couldn't stand the thought of having a pest in my room. I rolled off the bed and looked under it to see where the spider was. I saw it near the wall, near the head of the bed
I stood up and walked to the bathroom to grab something to smash the spider with. I came out with something, probably an unwieldy, dark square of material (when I'd meant to get a bit of toilet paper).
I turned on my bedroom light. The light was just a table lamp, dim, at the opposite end of the room from me, at the head of my bed, on its left side. Most of the room was still dark. The place was cluttered and dusty. There was another bed to the left of my bed. That bed was cluttered with stuff, including a foam mat that lay half on and off the bed. But the left side of my bed was also cluttered.
I was afraid to step in the space between the two beds. I thought the floor under the left bed was so dirty that mice probably lived under it. I was afraid that if I caused any vibrations in the floor, the mice would come out, which would be really annoying and would dissolve my sense of "having a clean room."
I walked between the beds, anyway. I kneed my way up onto the right bed. I thought the spider would eventually crawl up the wall, at which point i could smash it. But looking at the head of my bed, I now saw that the right pillow, on which I had laid my head, had a blanket of cobweb from its corner to the wall. I knew this cobweb was the spider's web, and that it had been here for a while.
I couldn't stand the thought that I had lived so long with the spider so close to my head while I slept. I thought something like, Well, it's too late now. But I still tried to convince myself that somehow I hadn't slept with my head so close to the spider, and that the web couldn't have been there for very long.
I thought that I should at least pull the web out, now that I saw it. But when I reached at it (parts of it now looked like a web), I noticed that the spider, now smaller and greyish, was posed in the bottom half of the web. I was afraid that by pulling out the web I'd make the spider angry. But I knew I had to do it, anyway, to start to make my room clean again.
I pulled the web off the wall. It now hung down off my pillow. I might have pulled the web the rest of the way off my pillow. But I now saw that the spider was angry. That was enough to scare me. But now I also saw that the spider was thing and long-legged, like before, and that its body was jet black with a red hourglass on it. I thought, It's a black widow!
I stood off my bed and backed away from it. The spider now charged down the bed and onto the floor, coming after me. The spider had stubby legs and a squarish, crab-like body, black with red mottling. It had red jaws and two big, round, black eyes. It was maybe three-quarters of an inch wide. I backed all the way back to the bathroom doorway. The spider and I may then have been at a standstill.
Dream #2
I was in something like a library or bookshop that had a cafe in it. The place had a very "strip-mall" feel -- white-walled, tall, wide, with thin carpet and wide-spaced shelves. The cafe area was just a few tables spread out in an open space among shelves. The place was moderately busy.
I stood at a revolving carousel of books. The shelves were clear and plastic. The carousel was about seven feet high.
My girlfriend H sat at a table with a friend. They may have spoken back and forth in both Japanese and English. They were talking about me and the books I was looking at. I was probably looking at manga novels, though I may also have been looking at anime DVDs.
I was looking, H and her friend said, at some classic manga, but also at some manga that either H or her friend was not familiar with. One of the two began to explain to the other what this anime/manga was all about. The person then sang the theme song, which sounded like a song from a recent (in 2009) anime about a boy who dresses up as a girl so he can go to a girls' school. I was ashamed that H and her friend liked this anime. But H and her friend didn't seem to worried about the fact that I liked the anime.
The top shelf of the carousel had tiny books, maybe two and a half inches tall and one and half inches wide, and maybe a quarter of an inch thick. The rest of the shelves were now filled with DVDs. A couple of DVD cases were patterned with orange and black tiger stripes. These cases were for DVDs of an anime show I really liked.
H and her friend now spoke about this show and how much they liked it, mostly because they wanted to sound like they were interested in me, so I would get interested in them. The more H and her friend spoke, though, the more, I noticed, the DVDs for the show filled the carousel. Now almost all the DVDs on the carousel were DVDs for that show.
At some point H and her friend were discussing specific words in the show's theme song. I felt weird, again, about what the two girls were discussing, as if those particular words would reveal something about me that I didn't want known.
Dream #3
I was in a restaurant with a friend. We sat at a booth table which was like a large car's interior set into a very small bedroom. The room had white walls and a window on one wall, almost the height of the entire wall. There might have been blinds over the window.
The table area had no table, but something like a grouping of gear-shift knobs and levers encased in black plastic and slightly metallic, green imitation leather. The booth seats were like bench seats, although somehow it was also possible to sit and look forward out the window, as if sitting in bucket seats.
I sat across from (or, sometimes, beside) a pretty, young woman who possibly had olive skin and brown hair. We were waiting for guests for a business meal, probably breakfast or lunch. In particular we were waiting for the CEO of the company from which I had recently been laid off.
Through the window I could see beyond the "restaurant's parking lot and across a street to a tan-bricked office building in a business park. There were green mounds of grass before the building and blue sky over it.
I saw the CEO outside the building. I explained something to the woman about how all the guests would be late, but how a lot of them would make it. I was particularly sure that the CEO would make it. I didn't feel like I sounded too convincing. I now sat "forward" in my seat, like I would sit in a bucket seat.
I now saw the CEO walking just outside the window. I said, "Ha! The CEO is just outside! That means he's coming really soon." I got up and ran outside to meet the CEO. I knew he was with a group of tall, young, strong businessmen, who accompanied him just about everywhere.
But when I got outside, I couldn't see the CEO anywhere. I was with a group of people outside. The parking lot was like a strip of asphalt road among dusty desert hills, dirt roads, and chain link fences, all under a clear, blue sky.
We all looked up and down the road for the CEO. Now the CEO came speeding down the road, from our left, heading toward the "restaurant" in a pale, metallic blue, Porsche-like car. We were all happy that the CEO was finally here. We all started walking back toward the building. I may have been at the back of the line of people walking back.
Now the CEO sped away from the building. I realized that the CEO couldn't find a parking space, which was equivalent with not being able to locate where our group was meeting. I ran after the CEO so I could tell him where we were.
But now the CEO's car sped back toward the "restaurant." I ran back to the "restaurant" so I could find the CEO and lead him to where our group was meeting. I ran through the building, which was now like a mix of warehouse space and office hallways.
I opened one of the doors in a hallway. The whole group was sitting at the booth table. I asked everybody if they'd seen the CEO. They said they had, but that he'd walked past this booth as if he hadn't recognized that this was where he should be.
I ran back in the direction I had come from, to catch the CEO before he got back in his car. I ran through a large warehouse space (actually like the loading dock area at the Manhattan Houston Street UPS building, where I worked for a while in 2000 in waking life).
I now saw one of my friends or co-workers running outside the gates. The man was tall and tan, with flowing, red hair and a short beard. He wore a green t-shirt and jean shorts. He was muscular.
The man "told" me (as if he was speaking from just behind me and to my right) something like "I guess we're in this together if no one else wants to look." But I felt like the man was running "with" me only to compete against me. I ran even faster and was now outside. The man was just ahead of me, but I was catching up. But then I really started to lose my breath.
We ran along a dark, black asphalt road. We saw the CEO run or drive over a large, lawny hill before us. The man easily ascended the hill. My lungs felt shot, and my legs were barely controllable. I kept going, just out of determination. But the man easily gained ground over me.
(The next part may possibly be a loose imagination after I woke up.)
The man got up to the top of the hill. A football hit him from the right and knocked him over. I knew that the CEO had thrown the ball from down the hill.
I stopped, still a little distance behind the man. I now heard the CEO joking with the man, saying, "Well, sounds like you couldn't stand being in that meeting, either, huh?"
I felt like the CEO was kind of, but not really, including me in the conversation. After all, I hadn't made it to the top of the hill first. But I also thought, like I was speaking to the CEO, It's not that we couldn't stand being in the meeting. We were looking for you, to try to get you into the meeting!
Thursday, November 22, 2012
(5/4/09) bathroom flood
(Entered in paper journal at 7:41 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
It was night. I was probably in my apartment alone. But then I was in my apartment with my girlfriend H. I was in the bathroom. I was possibly sitting on the toilet at first. But then I was standing before my bathtub. The light in my bathroom was off. The shower curtain was open just a little.
I saw a couple little, black shapes darting around in the bathtub. I thought they were roaches. I was upset that I possibly had roaches in my house. But I wasn't sure what I had seen. So I pulled back the shower curtain.
There were little, black shapes darting around in the bathtub, some apparently two inches long, others of smaller size, down to tiny specks. These shapes didn't seem like roaches at all, now. They were formless, little blots. I thought they were products of my own sight, physical perturbations on my own eyes.
But I thought that, regardless of what the visions were, I had let my bathroom get too dirty. I thought that if I didn't clean my bathroom, real roaches eventually would show up. So I started sweeping my bathroom floor. As I cleaned, I could hear H talk about how she couldn't study unless her house was clean.
Some of the dust seemed caked on the floor or sticky. There was now sudsy water washing up and down the floor, around the toilet. It started sloshing back and forth so violently that I had to back out of the bathroom.
It seemed to be lightning and thundering outside. There didn't seem to be any lights on in the house. The water sloshed back and forth through about half the length of the bathroom.
H may have said something, worrying about the water staying or attracting more roaches. I said, "Don't worry. We just have to wait for it to drain away."
I could now see a drain-grate. Water was sucking down into that grate, leaving milky foam behind. The water made a foamy, violently gurgling sound as it went down the grate. I felt ashamed that this mess was keeping H from studying, or that it might keep her from studying if she were to stay at my place.
Dream #1
It was night. I was probably in my apartment alone. But then I was in my apartment with my girlfriend H. I was in the bathroom. I was possibly sitting on the toilet at first. But then I was standing before my bathtub. The light in my bathroom was off. The shower curtain was open just a little.
I saw a couple little, black shapes darting around in the bathtub. I thought they were roaches. I was upset that I possibly had roaches in my house. But I wasn't sure what I had seen. So I pulled back the shower curtain.
There were little, black shapes darting around in the bathtub, some apparently two inches long, others of smaller size, down to tiny specks. These shapes didn't seem like roaches at all, now. They were formless, little blots. I thought they were products of my own sight, physical perturbations on my own eyes.
But I thought that, regardless of what the visions were, I had let my bathroom get too dirty. I thought that if I didn't clean my bathroom, real roaches eventually would show up. So I started sweeping my bathroom floor. As I cleaned, I could hear H talk about how she couldn't study unless her house was clean.
Some of the dust seemed caked on the floor or sticky. There was now sudsy water washing up and down the floor, around the toilet. It started sloshing back and forth so violently that I had to back out of the bathroom.
It seemed to be lightning and thundering outside. There didn't seem to be any lights on in the house. The water sloshed back and forth through about half the length of the bathroom.
H may have said something, worrying about the water staying or attracting more roaches. I said, "Don't worry. We just have to wait for it to drain away."
I could now see a drain-grate. Water was sucking down into that grate, leaving milky foam behind. The water made a foamy, violently gurgling sound as it went down the grate. I felt ashamed that this mess was keeping H from studying, or that it might keep her from studying if she were to stay at my place.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
(5/13/09) the uncertain threat; bitter candy
(Entered in paper journal at 7:15 AM at my house in Brooklyn. It's also interesting to note that the dream journal entry following this one was listed as 5/13/09 as well. I'm not sure whether it was a mistake, or whether I'd remembered another couple dreams later on.)
Dream #1
I was in a small movie theater, probably with a couple of my family members, in particular, I believe, my oldest nephew and my brother. The theater felt cramped, almost seatless, as well, as if we all sat on blankets or makeshift chairs. An older, tallish, but flabby, bald man, may have been in charge of the movie projector. The old man was getting ready to play, for my personal enjoyment, the movie Kill Bill.
The movie now started. I hoped everybody else would like it as much as I did. It now seemed like the movie had already been started, like we had previously seen the movie to a previous point: a scene where the David Carradine character had been talking (at a campfire at night?) with Uma Thurman; but that we now had to start the movie from the very beginning.
The scene we had just been watching didn't even seem familiar to me. But I thought if we watched the movie from the beginning I might be able to remember having seen the scene (in my previous viewings of the movie) by the time we got back to it.
But the movie started differently than I remembered. There was a bright opening scene of blue sky with a row of white, lotus-like flowers trailing downward into the distance to the right. The whole view was very overexposed and very colorful. There was a scene after the lotus scene which was dark, probably with some faces slightly fading into view.
This still didn't seem to me like the Kill Bill I could remember, but at least I could now start to remember how to anticipate the plot to this movie. It had something to do with a large group of people who were out to kill the Uma Thurman character. The people were like zombies.
I was in a room. There might have been a man in the room with me at first. But now the man was gone. The room was connected to another room. A hallway joined the two rooms from the outside. The rooms were doth dim, as if lit only by a dim night-light. The hallway was unlit and was very dim.
Both rooms were strewn with fabric, mostly blankets, possibly also clothes.The left room had an old TV, on a TV tray, standing at a crooked angle near the middle of the room.
At first there had been an atmosphere of a dangerous presence, as if the attackers were coming, it was known, and some kind of solid action could be taken against them. But when I (as the Uma Thurman character?) found myself alone in the room, the threat itself became very abstract or ethereal. It was like the attackers lurked in the shadows at the edge of the hallways, or as if the weren't really there right now, but that they would materialize and attack me when I least expected it.
I (or Uma?) began running around in the circle of the two rooms and hallway, possibly determined to fight if need be, but outwardly a frightened wreck, with tears streaming down my face, and crying out to my friends who had disappeared. I didn't want the zombies to approach. But, I thought, the only thing that would drive them off would be a living presence.
I didn't think anybody was around. But I still had the TV. I turned on the TV. The screen blared a bright blue, and a news show came on. I immediately felt comforted, just to have a human presence in the house again.
I was in a similar room. It was morning. There were windows on all the walls, and a glass door on the wall to my right, all revealing a chilly, grey morning of misty clouds outside.
A woman like a nurse or a police officer stood behind a rocking chair in which sat a tall, heavyset woman with shoulder-length, curly black-brown hair, smoke-colored eyeglasses, wearing a grey tweed sport coat and pale blue jeans. The woman at the rocking chair may also have had some blankets on her lap.
At the feet of the woman at the rocking chair lay another woman (the lying woman's head at the rocking woman's feet). The lying woman was short, stocky, with long hair, pale skin and glasses. She was mostly covered over with blankets. I was likely myself at this point.
The nurse, who was probably short, stout, and squarish-bodied, said, "Well... gentlemen, I'll be off then. Have a good morning." She then left.
I knew the nurse had called us all gentlemen out of uncertainty. In the nurses eyes, the two women had such a masculine appearance that the nurse thought they might have wanted to be thought of as men.
I thought of calling after the nurse, "Hey! These are women!" But then I thought it didn't really matter much. The women seemed fine, and the nurse, who looked rather mannish herself, had a good heart.
I now had a slightly clearer view of the woman lying under the blankets. It was an old boss of mine, JK, from an Americorps program I worked on in 2005. I called to JK a couple times, but she didn't seem to wake up. The rocking-chair woman told me, "She's very weak. She's resting to build back her strength."
But now JK seemed to be waking up. I knelt before her. JK turned her face to me. JK's face was bloody inside, like her flesh was just a thin membrane underneath which a thin sheet of blood had pooled. JK seemed a little forgetful, but she seemed to recognize me. We may have spoken a few words back and forth, possibly about JK's injury.
Dream #2
I was in a wide, sparse living room with my girlfriend H. The walls were thin and white. The place was lit with a stark, cold, incandescent light. The floors were carpeted, probably with a tight, dirtyish, dark grey carpet. H sat at a desk against the back wall. I sat on the floor, to H's left, almost all the way on the other end of the room. Behind me may have been some furniture, like an entertainment center or a buffet.
H started talking to me about some stuff she had gotten. She then pulled out a white, plastic bag which had a white box of sesame seed candies in it. H offered me some. The candies sounded good, and I was about to take some.
But before I could take a candy, H told me about how she had gotten these at a party she had gone to the night before. She had told me about this party before. She hadn't really felt like going. At that time she had been thinking of inviting me. But then she told me she wasn't going to go. But she had gone, after all, and she hadn't invited me.
H now told me how she had met her female friend K at the party. H looked at me a little weird. I understood what had happened. H hadn't invited me because she had wanted to meet K at the party by herself. I understood that H was having a romantic relationship with K, and that she didn't want to tell me.
I stood up and said, "Well, I'm getting out of here."
H may have tried to protest my leaving, but I didn't listen. I had an image of the sesame candy in my mind: a long "bar" of sesame seeds caramelized together, broken into rectangles, which were themselves bisected into triangles. I thought about what it would be like to break off a triangle and eat it.
Dream #1
I was in a small movie theater, probably with a couple of my family members, in particular, I believe, my oldest nephew and my brother. The theater felt cramped, almost seatless, as well, as if we all sat on blankets or makeshift chairs. An older, tallish, but flabby, bald man, may have been in charge of the movie projector. The old man was getting ready to play, for my personal enjoyment, the movie Kill Bill.
The movie now started. I hoped everybody else would like it as much as I did. It now seemed like the movie had already been started, like we had previously seen the movie to a previous point: a scene where the David Carradine character had been talking (at a campfire at night?) with Uma Thurman; but that we now had to start the movie from the very beginning.
The scene we had just been watching didn't even seem familiar to me. But I thought if we watched the movie from the beginning I might be able to remember having seen the scene (in my previous viewings of the movie) by the time we got back to it.
But the movie started differently than I remembered. There was a bright opening scene of blue sky with a row of white, lotus-like flowers trailing downward into the distance to the right. The whole view was very overexposed and very colorful. There was a scene after the lotus scene which was dark, probably with some faces slightly fading into view.
This still didn't seem to me like the Kill Bill I could remember, but at least I could now start to remember how to anticipate the plot to this movie. It had something to do with a large group of people who were out to kill the Uma Thurman character. The people were like zombies.
I was in a room. There might have been a man in the room with me at first. But now the man was gone. The room was connected to another room. A hallway joined the two rooms from the outside. The rooms were doth dim, as if lit only by a dim night-light. The hallway was unlit and was very dim.
Both rooms were strewn with fabric, mostly blankets, possibly also clothes.The left room had an old TV, on a TV tray, standing at a crooked angle near the middle of the room.
At first there had been an atmosphere of a dangerous presence, as if the attackers were coming, it was known, and some kind of solid action could be taken against them. But when I (as the Uma Thurman character?) found myself alone in the room, the threat itself became very abstract or ethereal. It was like the attackers lurked in the shadows at the edge of the hallways, or as if the weren't really there right now, but that they would materialize and attack me when I least expected it.
I (or Uma?) began running around in the circle of the two rooms and hallway, possibly determined to fight if need be, but outwardly a frightened wreck, with tears streaming down my face, and crying out to my friends who had disappeared. I didn't want the zombies to approach. But, I thought, the only thing that would drive them off would be a living presence.
I didn't think anybody was around. But I still had the TV. I turned on the TV. The screen blared a bright blue, and a news show came on. I immediately felt comforted, just to have a human presence in the house again.
I was in a similar room. It was morning. There were windows on all the walls, and a glass door on the wall to my right, all revealing a chilly, grey morning of misty clouds outside.
A woman like a nurse or a police officer stood behind a rocking chair in which sat a tall, heavyset woman with shoulder-length, curly black-brown hair, smoke-colored eyeglasses, wearing a grey tweed sport coat and pale blue jeans. The woman at the rocking chair may also have had some blankets on her lap.
At the feet of the woman at the rocking chair lay another woman (the lying woman's head at the rocking woman's feet). The lying woman was short, stocky, with long hair, pale skin and glasses. She was mostly covered over with blankets. I was likely myself at this point.
The nurse, who was probably short, stout, and squarish-bodied, said, "Well... gentlemen, I'll be off then. Have a good morning." She then left.
I knew the nurse had called us all gentlemen out of uncertainty. In the nurses eyes, the two women had such a masculine appearance that the nurse thought they might have wanted to be thought of as men.
I thought of calling after the nurse, "Hey! These are women!" But then I thought it didn't really matter much. The women seemed fine, and the nurse, who looked rather mannish herself, had a good heart.
I now had a slightly clearer view of the woman lying under the blankets. It was an old boss of mine, JK, from an Americorps program I worked on in 2005. I called to JK a couple times, but she didn't seem to wake up. The rocking-chair woman told me, "She's very weak. She's resting to build back her strength."
But now JK seemed to be waking up. I knelt before her. JK turned her face to me. JK's face was bloody inside, like her flesh was just a thin membrane underneath which a thin sheet of blood had pooled. JK seemed a little forgetful, but she seemed to recognize me. We may have spoken a few words back and forth, possibly about JK's injury.
Dream #2
I was in a wide, sparse living room with my girlfriend H. The walls were thin and white. The place was lit with a stark, cold, incandescent light. The floors were carpeted, probably with a tight, dirtyish, dark grey carpet. H sat at a desk against the back wall. I sat on the floor, to H's left, almost all the way on the other end of the room. Behind me may have been some furniture, like an entertainment center or a buffet.
H started talking to me about some stuff she had gotten. She then pulled out a white, plastic bag which had a white box of sesame seed candies in it. H offered me some. The candies sounded good, and I was about to take some.
But before I could take a candy, H told me about how she had gotten these at a party she had gone to the night before. She had told me about this party before. She hadn't really felt like going. At that time she had been thinking of inviting me. But then she told me she wasn't going to go. But she had gone, after all, and she hadn't invited me.
H now told me how she had met her female friend K at the party. H looked at me a little weird. I understood what had happened. H hadn't invited me because she had wanted to meet K at the party by herself. I understood that H was having a romantic relationship with K, and that she didn't want to tell me.
I stood up and said, "Well, I'm getting out of here."
H may have tried to protest my leaving, but I didn't listen. I had an image of the sesame candy in my mind: a long "bar" of sesame seeds caramelized together, broken into rectangles, which were themselves bisected into triangles. I thought about what it would be like to break off a triangle and eat it.
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