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

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

Dream 1

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

Dream 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

(7/31/06) fungeling or yuenlueng; wearing only thong panties to college; tom osborne and lake surfing

(Entered in paper journal at 6:08 AM on 4-train from Utica Avenue in Brooklyn to 59th Street in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was in a subway station that had something like the look of a stage to it. At the back end was a brown-painted wood wall with four doors. Across the wide way were staircases leading down to subways. I was looking for a certain train, but I couldn't find the right staircase.

I walked back out the doors. I "saw" somewhere, in some room like a security room or control room, maybe three black teenage boys. The boys were laughing at me because they had changed around the trains and tricked me.

I walked back through the doors, to the staircases. I went to a staircase down to my right. It went down a number of stories. A group of black kids came tumbling down toward me, trying to race me and beat me down the stairs. I began jumping over the railings until I even flew down through the openings between the cases and landed on the bottom floor.

I walked into a classroom where a few kids were waiting to be taught. I couldn't stop flying. I jumped from empty desk to empty desk. Eventually I was bounding, ten feet in the air. I made a half-circle around the large classroom and landed by the right wall midway through the classroom, looking up to the front, to a child by the chalkboard.

The child (a girl?) had written on the chalkboard about the technique I had just been practicing. She said the class already knew all about that. The technique was called something like "fungeling" or "yuenlueng."

Dream 2

My grandmother P drove me up to my new college dorm room. The room was at the top of a building, in a complex surrounded by a parking area. Some guys who lived next door to my new room saw me and started making faces with each other like they were plotting to give me trouble. The sky was grey, heavy, and cool.

I was about to get out of the car, but I saw I was only wearing blue thong panties. My grandma was about to drive off to find a parking space. I told her to wait for me and got back in the car, into the backseat.

As I changed my clothes, my grandma drove around the entirely empty lot to find a specific parking space. The space was numbered 35 or 53. I had such a feeling of awe as we pulled into that space.

Dream 3

I was in a room with a woman who was something like a screenwriting teacher to me. The woman was telling me that she didn't treat everybody as special as she treated me.

She said, "Everybody else is pretty normal, except XXXXX." (Tom Osborne?) "He actually has screenplays published."

Now "Tom Osborne" came in, very well dressed, looking a little like a young version of a person, CJ, who was on the board of a parks foundation I volunteered with in Brooklyn in waking life.

"Tom Osborne" shook my hand and asked, "When are you going to let me see your screenplay, Preemie?"

I stood up to get a copy out of my backpack. As I did, Tom disappeared and the room filled up with people, one of whom was my brother. He had bought Tom a lot new David Bowie CDs. When I saw that he'd bought Pin-Ups, I was impressed. But when my brother held the case up for me to see, it changed to a CD I'd never seen before. It looked like Magical Mystery Tour.

I was now outside, by a swampy lake. It was small, but it had big tides, and people were surfing in it. I got in and felt the pull of the tides.

I was now among a lot of people and piles of what eventually became Chex cereal. I was looking for a person or waiting for a person whom I was almost in love with -- he was almost like the "Tom Osborne" character again.

Another guy was waiting for Tom. The guy was black. He may have been a woman at first. He and I started "pretend kissing" -- then I kept trying to "real kiss" him, but I just ended up putting my tongue in his mouth in a lot of weird ways, eventually pulling out Chex with my tongue.

I was now sitting on a pile of Chex and chocolate Teddy Grahams. I stood up, saying I had to go, and that I was sorry I couldn't have seen Tom.

I saw a cemetery. I thought I really needed to go there. There were thick, granite crosses behind an iron fence. I walked toward the cemetery.

I was back to the swampy "beach." There were a lot of people surfing. I found a surfboard and floated it out with a group of girls to where "they thought" the tide was good (?). My surfboard was red, with a white fin, all flimsy like hollow plastic in a big-wheel tricycle.

I stood on the board (in this murky lake water, filled with moss!) and was surprised by how easy it was. Now a wave came. I rode with it into a swampy area full of young, whitish-barked trees. I was disappointed by my inability to direct myself to shore like everybody else.

I turned my surfboard around near an iron fence and was surprised by how easily the tide drifted me back out of the woods. But there were webs full of tiny, white spiders. I didn't want them to bite me or get on me. I drifted back out.

I was on shore. I went somewhere and talked to somebody and then headed toward home. I looked at the lake again -- this time a corner of it. Most of the people here were just standing in the water and enjoying the rushing of the tide. The water was full of moss.

I figured that if everybody else was having so much fun in the lake, I should get in, too. I got in. I was alone. But then XXXXX's wife (kind of like my coworker BK's wife, AK) was with me, teaching me about the tide. We were by a bridge. All the water sucked out under the bridge. XXXXX said she had made a boat.

We were in a room. XXXXX showed me the boat. She was pulling it out of a bag. The boat couldn't have been more than four feet long.

XXXXX said, "I made it out of the bark of an ancestral tree."

At first it was shaped like,

then when she had it all the way pulled out, it was like,

all polished wood and with gold embellishments and ornate designs. I was impressed but also flabbergasted (jealous) that XXXXX could create such such a beautiful piece of art that was also practical.