(1/11/10) a diapered journey into the night

(Entered in dream journal at 6:30 AM on B-train into work from Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I walked out of my apartment. I was wearing only a Pampers Baby Dry diaper. It was night. I walked along a street that looked like Sixth Street between Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan, except that the buildings were taller. A shaded, incandescent lamp shone against a beige painted wall. I was all alone on the street.

I turned right at a corner. The area was much darker, lit only by the purplish glow of the night and possibly a few sparse streetlights. To my right were wide buildings, possibly like warehouses, with grey-painted brick walls. To my left, across a wide, empty street, was a lawny park.

A young, Asian woman was walking on the sidewalk bordering the park. I was ashamed to have been out so visibly before her wearing only my diaper, and I thought I'd better change before anybody else saw me like this. I may have heard or seen a group of bullying boys in the distance, which may have made me even more afraid.

I had my khaki slacks with me, but I was afraid to draw attention to my diaper by putting my slacks on over them in such clear view. But now I walked into a bank of purplish fog. In the obscurity, I put my slacks on. I felt a lot less worried.

But I felt now like I needed to get home. I thought I was on the right block, or that I could wind my way around to get onto the right block. I turned right onto another street. The fog had cleared up a little for a little while. But now it was even thicker than before, and warm, as if coming from steam, like the steam from a building or something below the street.

I was in some Asian part of town, I could see. I saw red and green, rectangular signs with black characters and letters glowing through the fog. The street felt very narrow, the buildings close, their shadows black and spidery. Somehow this all felt very comfortable an reassuring to me, like I was home.

I saw some person to my right, a white man who looked like a clean-shaven, pudgy version of my old friend R in a suit. He was talking on a pay phone in a tiny little niche in a building. When he saw me, he made a weird, hissing, inward breathing noise through his teeth, as if he were annoyed by my very presence. I was rattled by his vehement disapproval of me, but I walked on.

I was in the midst, now, of many Asian people. It was like everybody was out for some late-night partying in the neighborhood. But nobody was rowdy or rude.

I turned right, into a small, residence-like doorway which I thought was to my house. Inside was a Whole Foods, which actually, I think, looked a lot more like a dinnerware and china kind of shop, or like a Pier 1 store.

The place was very low-ceilinged, with a lot of small, oddly shaped rooms full of shelves with brightly colored, mid-priced-looking dishes. The place felt like a series of hallways before the dining area of a place like Furr's Cafeteria. There were a lot of people, mostly young couples and older couples, mostly white. They all made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

I thought that if I wandered through this place long enough, making the correct turns, that I'd find my home. I turned left (?) into a small, diamond-shaped room in the center of which was a table displaying blue bowls and dishes. There might have been only one other person in the room: a man in his fifties (?), wearing a blazer, jeans, and possibly a maroon shirt.

(At this point I stopped writing to get off the train and go to work. I then began writing again at 10 PM, when I got back on the B-train to head back to Brooklyn after work.)

I squeezed between a table and a square, white-plaster column to get out of this room. I was now in a room that almost looked like a museum exhibit. The room was either square or stoutly octagonal. There was a heavy, wooden table in the center of the room. The atmosphere was dim, though the room was moderately lit with small track lights. The floor and at least one wall were carpeted in tapestries with red, blue, purple, and white designs. There was some kind of display (for a product or a museum piece?) of a couch or a big, wooden piece of furniture of some sort.

I now noticed a very tall woman standing before the display. She struck me as powerfully beautiful, just based on her height. I could only see her from behind. She wore a black, sweater-like blouse and a yellowish or tan skirt that went down to just above her knees. She looked young.

I was thunderstruck. I was almost afraid. She was tall, at least a foot taller than I. She was just the kind of woman I wanted, a woman that would be tall enough to make me feel little, like a baby. I had to approach her. I was afraid to sound foolish, but I had to tell her that I was attracted to her and why I was attracted to her.

But as I approached, another woman approached and stood before a couch. The table was now a wooden divan upholstered with blue and purple fabric. The tall woman and I stood behind the couch. The tall woman turned counter-clockwise to face the other woman. The tall woman's position allowed me to see her face as she faced the short woman.

The short woman was blonde, a couple inches shorter than I, a little stocky, in a well curved way, with big, round, blue eyes. She may have worn a blue dress. She looked young but mature. The tall woman now had crimped, shoulder-length, auburn hair, thin eyes and high, flat cheekbones. Her skin was a light coffee color. She looked very rich or very serious. The short woman looked at the tall woman longingly.

The two women began talking about some matter-of-fact thing, such as buying furniture. They were now on a couch on the right side of the room. I stood before the couch, possibly with a row of church-like, wooden seats to my right.

The tall woman had been standing on the couch. The short woman sat on the couch with her knees drawn up to her chin. The tall woman knelt down to embrace the short woman. The two women curled up with each other. The tall woman kissed the short woman lovingly.

I stood and watched. At first I thought I should feel ashamed to look on like this. But then I thought that it wasn't a big deal. After all, the woman had seen me in the room. They knew I was there, alone with them. So if they kissed so obviously in front of me, they must have wanted me to see. I watched. It was very nice. But it made me feel sad, like I wished I could be a woman like the short woman.

I rubbed the right side of my face, the hairs of my sideburns, absently, like a baby might hold a blanket to his face while he sucks his thumb.

The women stopped kissing. I worried that they'd snap out of their attention to each other and get mad at me for something. So I acted like I hadn't been paying attention.

I looked around and wandered into a room through a wide entrance before me. The room was dark, like the old stalactite tunnel at the Denver Museum of Natural History. There was also some fragmented feeling to it, as if a curtain of clear strings dotted occasionally with blue, pink, and purple beads flowed down before me.

Something about this was very uncomfortable to me, so I exited back into the room were the women were. I again acted like I didn't want to bother or intrude upon the women's time together.

I quickly and shyly darted through another entrance. I may have crossed a short, dark corridor or room. I was now in a short-ceilinged, wide room. The room appeared to have been done in the medieval style. There was probably a big, long, oval dining table in the center of the room. At the back of the room, to my right, was a wide, bench-like seat set into a window sill. The walls may have been of wood. The floor was carpeted in another medieval style tapestry, with an image, very basic and "pixellated" looking, of a unicorn on the back right corner.

I walked along the right wall to the back of the room, then to the left wall and down toward the front of the room. I could hear the women talking in the other room. They may have been mentioning a movie they had watched. But they mentioned it in a way that was somehow supposed to call my attention to the fact that they were aware of me. But I didn't know whether they wanted to welcome or insult me.

I walked toward a wide dresser at the front of the room. I imagined something about a conversation with my old friend R. I may possibly have seen the image of a balding businessman in my head.

(1/28/10) dance how you want; hungry or not?; uncle not getting better; her first lesbian lover

(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 AM at the Starbucks at 49th and Madison Avenue, in Manhattan, right across the street from where my office was at the time.)

Dream #1

I was in a park-like area, like the plaza area like the MetroTech Commons park in Brooklyn, except hillier, with the rolling ground covered with Belgian blocks or stone tiles.

I was listening to music that I was playing on a boombox. I danced to the music in a slow, backward and forward "locomotion" movement. I smiled and cocked my head up and down like I was happy with myself, like I thought I was smooth and impressive. I suddenly got afraid that I would go crazy if I allowed myself to act like this, or that, at the least, people would think I was crazy.

My great grandmother appeared before me. She was short: she stood up to about my chest. I may have told her what I was doing, as if I was uncertain whether I should be doing it. My great grandma told me, "Well, keep doing it! Enjoy! Have a good time!" My great grandma walked away. I think we were planning to meet each other again at some point.

The boombox was now playing either classical music or an NPR-type show. I jumped around among Belgian blocks which had been pushed upward like little stubs. I may have thought of myself as a little bird while I did this. I was moving my way around a little planting bed with a small shrub-like a boxwood in the center.

A couple of girls sat at a green-painted, metal table to the right of the planting bed. They may have been talking about something having to do with their job. I was hopping around naively, as if I were oblivious, like a child, to what the women could were talking about. But I actually was connecting to the things they were talking about.

Dream #2

I was at my great grandmother's house, in the kitchen. The light may have been a bit brighter and warmer than usual. I stood before or sat at the tall stool before the kitchen counter. My great grandma came (from the dining room, to my left?) and stood across the counter from me. She told me that I must be hungry. She asked me if I wanted something to eat. She may have offered a grilled cheese sandwich.

I was indecisive. I thought that I was hungry, but that I'd possibly be smarter waiting to eat until some dinner that I was heading to later.

My great grandma got a little annoyed with me and asked me, "Are you hungry or are you not hungry?" She was now mixing something like oatmeal in a big, black pot. The oatmeal looked gooey, like it already had milk in it, and i had red strips in it, which I thought of as something sweet, like long strips of stuff like the pink pebbles in Pebbles cereal. But the strips also looked like long strips of tomatoes or red peppers or even meat.

I told my great grandma that I was hungry. My great grandma may either have spooned some oatmeal into a bowl or left the iron pot in front of me. She then walked into the living room. I thought that I really didn't want to eat the oatmeal if it had tomatoes or meat in it.

I walked into the living room. A couple of my family members, at least my mom and brother, were in the living room. My mom sat in my great grandma's usual favorite chair. My brother was farther back in the room. Looking out the front window, I could see that it was night.

My great grandma opened the front door and walked out. She may have been bundled up in a padded, beige jacked and a wool cap, so that she looked like a little kid. She said she was going somewhere. The TV was near the door, instead of farther back, on the left side of the room, as it would have been in waking life, when my great grandma was alive.

The TV started showing a program about my cousin N, who had done a lot of really good stuff, apparently, with cars or a car company. I and my family members were very proud of N. We wanted my great grandma to see.

I called to my great grandma to catch her before she headed out the door. But she didn't seem to hear. She kept moving, very slowly, apparently, out the door. I called louder, but she still didn't hear. Finally I just walked up to her, grabbed her, pulled her back into the house, and forced her to look at the TV.

As I held my great grandma, I was kneeling down, so that I had to reach up to get my arms around her waist. I basically had my great grandma pinned in place. I was holding her so that her arms were pinned to her sides.

Dream #3

I was at "my dad's house." I sat at or stood before an oval dining table of dark wood. The table was covered over in cluttered papers. The floor around the table was similarly cluttered. The carpet was grey. The room was dim. To my left may have been either a large window or a sliding glass door.

My dad sat before me on a stool before something like a breakfast bar. The breakfast bar was kind of incongruous in its setting, being nowhere near the kitchen, and kind of serving to separate the dining table from the living room.

My dad started talking to me about some football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. I laughed and listened, as if I knew what my dad was talking about. But then he started asking me about specific players. I didn't admit that I had no idea who they were, but my kind of blank responses to his questions gave me away.

My uncle R came into the room. My dad and uncle may have decided that it was time to go. We left. My uncle R was much taller than usual, and thin. We walked through a hallway, which had glass walls on the other side of which were restaurants and shops.

My dad asked my uncle how he was doing, if he was getting any better. My uncle said he didn't think he was. My uncle said he needed to stop and go to the restroom. We stopped outside a restaurant which may have been a Chinese or Indian restaurant.

My dad and I stood in a little alcove before the door. Two small steps led up to the glass door of the restaurant. The alcove was just a little square, maybe six inches by six inches. The walls of the alcove were yellow and stucco-like. There may have been a small table with a potted plant on it. Just inside the door of the restaurant were a curtain of little red lights.

My dad and I stood silently for a moment. Finally I asked my dad, "Do you think Uncle R will get better?" My dad had possibly been looking at the wall, his left profile to me.

We now stood in a different hallway. One wall was still a window-wall to the restaurant. The wall across the hallway was possibly, however, to the outside. My dad shook his head sadly, to tell me that no, my uncle R would no get better.

My dad still looked "like" my dad, but he was much shorter, white, with pale blue eyes and pale, grey hair. He now acted like a little kid, or even like a little puppy. He began cuddling with me, hopping all over me. He was, I thought, trying to make it clear that he was happy to see me.

(At this point I stopped my paper journal entry so I could head into work. I then restarted my paper journal entry at 8:30 PM, when I got back on the B-train into Brooklyn, after work.)

Dream #4

A woman sat in a restaurant ora cafe. Something suddenly reminded her of a former lover of hers. She caught her breath as if thinking how silly it was to have forgotten. The woman was a fair-skinned, white woman with slight, chestnut-brown hair. The restaurant she sat in was dim.

After recalling her lover, the woman remembered a scene with her lover. The scene took place in a dark room, lit only by a candle or two. The two women were on a bed. The woman's lover was an Asian woman with long, silky, black hair. She wore a pink teddy with black lace trim. The teddy may have been pulled down below her breasts. The lover knelt on the bed, her legs wide apart, and arched her breasts up in ecstasy. The woman may not have been visible.

The woman was now in a bookstore with another woman. The bookstore was lit with fluorescent light. The store was wide, with high ceilings. The shelves were all pretty close together. They were tall, made of a kind of cheap wood, dented or chipped a little, or with the finish kind of wearing off. The place had a run-down feel, like an old public library.

The two women were far back in the shelves. They spoke with one another either in French or in English with French accents. Their words were palpable, very soothing, as if I were haring them from under a blanket while I had a cold.

The women walked up to the front desk. A very tall man walked up and stood beside them, across the counter from the cashier. The man was possibly overweight, a little pear-shaped, with long, scraggly-curly, grey hair. He may have worn drab, green and black clothing.

The man tried to strike up a conversation with the women, ostensibly about the books they were buying. But the woman asked her fiend, loudly enough to make it understood she wanted the man to hear, but also with an intonation of mock-embarrassment, "Oh, do you think I should tell him about this book?"

The friend said, "Oh --  you mean that it was the book you read with --"

The woman interrupted, "The book I read with my first --"

I knew that the woman would next say, "With my first lesbian lover."