(7/5/08) the sandwich bully

(Entered in paper journal at 8:01 AM at Naidre's cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was walking through a building with my family. The building may have been like a building on a college campus. Some of my family members, probably my aunt B, uncle MB, and possibly my mother, my brother, and my cousin AR, were all behind me as we walked through a crowd of people.

We turned a corner and came up to a woman at a table. The table was stacked with cardboard boxes full of sandwiches. The woman was handing out the sandwiches for free as part of some promotional event.

My family started to shuffle past, but I stood to look at the sandwiches. Some sandwiches seemed full, with nice lettuce and tomatoes. Others looked like nothing but bread. All the sandwiches were wrapped in nice, thick, clear, plastic wrappers. I grabbed a sandwich for myself. But when I got back to my family, I handed the sandwich to one of my family members, possibly my brother.

The space we stood in was like an alcove of a gift shop or a bookshop, and was full of natural light. The crowd of people was still pretty busy.

I went back to the table to get a sandwich for myself. But as I did, my cousin AR (in a white dress, and looking maybe like she did when she was twelve years old) stood in front of me (carrying a stroller?) and told me, half-jokingly, "You didn't get a sandwich for aunt B. She's going to be mad."

At first I felt inconvenienced. I thought everybody should be getting their own sandwiches for themselves, not having me get them. Then I felt ashamed. My cousin would think I was so inconsiderate if she knew what I was thinking!

I quickly became jokey and said, " Oh!!! She's going to be mad!!! Of course I was geting her a sandwich right now." I walked behind and past my cousin, massaging her back with my knuckles quickly and vigorously as I passed. I grabbed a nice sandwich. I may have passed it to my aunt B, who may have been standing with a stroller and wearing an orange shirt.

Finally I went to grab my own sandwich. I got to the woman again. She now stood behind a cash register. She would ring open the register with each free sandwich she gave out, laying a one-dollar (or ten-dollar?) bill into the till and then pulling it back out, as if registering a sale. This worried me. I couldn't tell if now I had to pay for a sandwich, and I felt like dealing with money at this point would just clutter me up.

The woman was young, pale skinned, blonde, with pale blue eyes and a soft, roundish face. I asked for one last free sandwich. The woman pulled one out of a box for me, but then stopped. She said, "You've already taken too many free sandwiches for yourself already. The limit is three per person."

I said, "But I haven't been taking them for myself. I've been giving them to my family."

She said, "You can't prove that, and I'm not giving you any more!"

I was discouraged. I kind of slumped away.

I was about to walk through another doorway, possibly to catch up with my family, when a woman standing by a stroller yelled, "You can't do that to him! He did give the sandwiches to his family!"

The woman defending me was in the middle of saying something else when the woman behind the register cut in and yelled at me, "Fine! Here! Take your sandwich! God! But you better remember this in the future, cause I'm gonna remember you!" It was plain to me now that the woman behind the register had withheld the last sandwich simply because she was trying to bully me, and now she was pissed off that someone had called her on it.

She leaned over the cash register and held the sandwich at arm's length. I was ten feet away from her (and possibly standing behind a maroon-colored stroller), but I still leaned forward and stretched my arm out as if I could grab the sandwich from her.

I now held the sandwich. It was one of the ones with nothing in it.

(5/1/09) detained after defending; naked at the florist jeweler's; greedy buffet

(Entered in paper journal at 8:08 AM at home.)

Dream #1

It was a sunny day. I was out on a small lawn, like a lawn between buildings on a college campus. The lawn was slightly rolling. I may actually have been standing on a wide, concrete walkway near the lawn. I may have stood before a small, wood-framed bulletin board.

Two young men stood down the lawn from me, menacing another young man. The two young men were tallish, heavy, thuggish, either black or dark-skinned Hispanic. The two young men held guns on the other young man, who was probably Hispanic, about normal sized, and a little dumb-looking.

The two men were yelling at the young man about a gun he'd had, as if he had personally and purposely gotten it to attack the two men. The young man kept saying it wasn't so, but he was too sheepish to explain his situation.

I remembered the situation (it may actually have been an earlier part of the dream). I yelled at the gunmen, "Leave him alone! He's right!" I told the gunmen how two other men had come along and forced the young man at gunpoint to take the gun.

The gunmen listened to me and let the young man go. But they now walked up to me and stood before me with their guns drawn. They told me they wanted to see my ID. Then they told me to put my hands in the air (or behind my head?). They then made me lie face down on the concrete walkway (or on an unfolded cardboard box that lay on the concrete?).

I may have handed the gunmen my ID while I stood, but now, as I lay down, I also handed the gunmen my ID. The gunmen, who had previously seemed to me like thugs, now, without any change to their dress seemed to me like police officers.

I thought about having guns pointed on me. I had always thought I'd be really afraid. But now, even though I felt like I could be killed at any moment, I also felt calm and composed. I did what I had to do for the men. I thought compliance would get me out of this situation more quickly.

We were now in some place like an airport or bus station hallway. The place was full of people. It had a concrete-grey and window-green atmosphere. I lay on the ground while one of the men (or maybe the two men were now only one man?) sat against a wall just beyond my feet. I had a bunch of things -- papers, backpacks, etc. -- all laid around me.

The man was now lighter skinned, maybe black, Hispanic, or Italian. He was dressed in ragged clothes, a big, black, puffy jacket, and a baseball cap, which he had tilted at a sloppy angle. He was reading a paper copy of my screenplay. He got to a really wordy metaphysical passage. He read about halfway through it, then laughed lightly to himself. He told me, "Okay, you can go now."

I pulled some of my stuff together, then stood up to leave. The man also stood up. We were both about to leave through a wide, sliding-glass door, like the automatic exit doors to the covered parking areas at Denver International Airport. But right before we exited, the man said, "Only, could you tell me where you did the research for your book?"

There was a cheapish looking, office-style desk before the door. On the desk was a white, cardboard box. I took something like a Rolodex card out of the box to write down the places where I'd done research for my screenplay.

But I found it difficult to explain. Everything in the screenplay, I thought, was a hybrid of different sources. And some of the more metaphysical passages, which may have been the man's chief area of concern, were largely based on things I'd picked up over the years, or through texts related only little, if at all, to the subject matter of my screenplay.

I then thought that the man was only trying to stall me or distract me. He had no intention of letting me go. He was just trying to buy time while he was thinking of a way to keep me.

Dream #2

I was naked, floating down a cobbled street, like in Tribeca, Manhattan, on a misty, grey day. I may have been in a "bad neighborhood," but all the buildings looked clean and freshly painted. The buildings were like taller than normal row-houses, with their entrances right off the sidewalk instead of elevated atop a stairway.

I saw the buildings to my left, as I floated along, down a slight slope. Some of the buildings to my left had shops in them. To my right, the road may have been wider than usual, with the right side of the street bearing the backs of tallish, wide, brick buildings, like small factory buildings or warehouses.

I noticed a couple women standing out in front of the shops. I hoped the women wouldn't see me flying around naked. To make things even more embarrassing, I had a huge erection. I tried hurriedly, floating past the buildings, to remember which one I was supposed to go into. I wanted to get inside as soon as possible. But none of the buildings looked familiar to me.

At some point I thought, elliptically, how the paint jobs on these buildings reminded me more of England than America.

I looked into some of the buildings. Inside, they looked like run-down, kind of scuzzy, apartments. I figured they looked like the kind of place where I was supposed to be, but that they weren't the actual, specific place. I got frustrated, suddenly thinking I had gone down the wrong block. But all the blocks looked so similar here, it was only natural that I'd make a mistake like this.

I was at the bottom of the block. The slope leveled off, and the road widened out, taking a circular shape, in which was an octagonal or circular building, quaint-looking, with large windows from about two and a half feet up to the roof of the building and red brick from two and a half feet down. The roof was black shingles, sloped up to a point or a weather vane.

As I floated past the building a black woman, young, in shape, with straight, brown-blonde hair, ran after me. She, too, may have been naked, or she may have been dressed in a business style pantsuit of purple material.

The woman yelled at me that my appearance had distracted her, that it had kept her from thinking of something very important to her job, which she had to go to right now. I felt like the woman was accusing me of sexual harassment. I didn't want to be seen as that kind of a person, so I turned to speak with the woman and try to clear up the issue.

But the woman had gone into her workplace, which was the quaint-looking building. I opened the door and looked inside, not wanting to come all the way in, since I was naked. The woman and another pretty, black woman stood behind a cash register. The place looked like a jeweler's and a florist's shop.

I tried to ask the woman how I had offended her, and I tried to say I really hadn't meant to cause any discomfort because of my appearance. But I wasn't saying that at all. Instead I was stutteringly asking confused questions about the nature of this shop.

The woman wasn't listening to me. She was visibly eager for me to leave. But the second woman was very kind. She kept inviting me in, though I kept saying I couldn't come in. She also kept telling me all sorts of things about the shop. She asked if that was what I'd had in mind when I'd asked my questions.

Dream #3

I walked into a large, dim room, like a convention room or a high school gym with little or none of its lights turned on. I had a big, green stick of bamboo, which I was eating.

I looked at a cross-section of the stick, as if my teeth had cleanly hacked the stick in a straight line. The inside was a tan circle, like a tree's wood, with three kidney-shaped cavities evenly distributed at the circle's edge. The cavities were filled with a speckled, yellowish substance which I may have called marrow. I licked this substance. It was sweet.

I thought, This is what the koalas eat bamboo (?! - not eucalyptus?) for -- the sweet marrow, not the leafs. I tried to pull the marrow out of the shoot so I could eat eat alone. I pulled a big chunk out by using my fingernail. The chunk was solid and had the consistency of a candy bar. It was vanilla yellow, with speckles in it like chopped nuts.

I nibbled the pieces. It was only mildly sweet. I was somewhat disappointed. But I suddenly felt worried. What if this marrow was actually poisonous to humans? I thought, It couldn't be poisonous: it tastes so good.

I imagined myself as a koala in the trees, eating bamboo.

Now there were other people in the room, maybe twenty or thirty people. But the people all huddled in one small part of the room, an entrance area which had a much lower ceiling and much tighter space, but which was actually lit (by incandescent light).

I walked over from where I was (it now seemed like a few rows of long, church-style pews) to be with the people. They looked like a church group. They were of varying ages, but all dressed nicely.

Everybody in the group held paper plates filled with food. They motioned for me to go get some food. I walked over to a kind of cluttered, smallish buffet table. There were serving trays filled with different kinds of food. But for some reason I felt like I had been "assigned" to one plate which already had food on it.

As I approached the plate a boy, maybe in his early teens, light-skinned, black, thin, with close-cut hair and wide eyeglasses, also approached the plate. The boy looked mild and gentle, but I could tell he was just waiting for a chance to annoy me.

I tried to start eating from my plate, but the boy now started reaching for anything I'd reach for. I now understood that the boy and I had been "assigned" to share this plate. But any time I'd reach for anything the boy would quickly grab it first. The only thing I could grab was something I didn't want: a bland, white fold of  a corn or wheat flour tortilla. The boy may have been eating, but he was also occupied in piling at least some of the stuff he grabbed (eggs, cheese, bacon) all on top of each other in a little wedge-shaped area, which he protected closely.

I looked around and realized there was food in serving trays all around me.I didn't have to eat from this one plate. In fact, I now wondered why I had been so focused on just this one plate. I thought, I'll distract the boy. I'll make him so proud of his little pile of food that he doesn't pay attention to me while I go get food of my own.

The boy's pile of food now just looked like a warm, greasy wedge of eggs and cheese. I told the boy something like, "Wow, that's a lot of food. Are you really going to eat all of that? Have you started eating any of it yet?"

The boy made some comment about how he didn't really care about the food and how he really didn't want to talk to me, either.

(11/2/09) hard times grocery store

(Entered in paper journal at 7:40 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a grocery store. I was near the back of the grocery store, which was dim, as if only a few of the lights were on somewhere near the front of the store. The grocery store was large, but it had a little bit of a run-down small store feel, like an old bodega or deli in Brooklyn.

Something had happened in the world so that food was now running out. The food supply in the world might eventually be replenished, but there was definitely going to be a period of time where the only food we had would be the food that was left.

I was hopping along the tops of the shelves, from aisle to aisle. The shelves were all half-empty and filled largely with bags of dry goods, like cereal. I realized that a lot of the good food in the world had already been taken, and that all that was left was this second-rate food that nobody wanted and which wasn't really nutritious.

I was running around on the top shelves at the back of the store. A man and a woman, a couple, either Hispanic or black, now walked around near the shelves I was on. They were talking back and forth, probably about the food they'd buy. I didn't want them to see me. I was afraid that once they noticed me they'd start acting really annoying.