(12/5/04) changing and missing flights

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

Dream 1

I was in some airport. I had had an argument with a woman who was my girlfriend. I was leaving town before she was, heading back to the town where we both lived. But then I found out she'd changed her ticket to a later time.

I decided that I wanted to make up with the woman. So I would take the same flight she was taking. When I went up to the ticket booth my "girlfriend" was standing there. I acted like I didn't see her. I asked if I could change the seating on my flight.

The ticket lady looked at my ticket and told me my flight was for 2:50, and that the flight had already left. I looked at a clock atop a computerized cash register on the counter. It said 3:38. I sighed, sure I had just lost the money I'd put on that ticket for having missed the flight.

The ticket lady said, "I can get you a booking on the 4:10 flight if you'd like." I was relieved , but I also felt bad that I'd have to be on the same flight as my "girlfriend." I didn't want her to feel like I was stalking her.

(7/23/07) ill-timed illness; hotmail at work; radio interview; changing flight; slow liftoff; variations on jk rowling

(Entered in paper journal at 5:50 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I lay on a couch in the dark. I was covered in blankets. I spoke on the phone with someone who asked if I could cover the phones for the Analyst MH as well, since he would be out. I saw his extension, 3431 or 2431, in my had. The person said, "MH got sick at a really bad time. When he gets back in, we'll have to have a disciplinary discussion with him.

My boss BS and another Analyst, SM, stood at my feet, on my left, i.e. facing the couch. They walked around to my right and then up past my head. They pulled open some blinds and let in a lot of daylight.

Dream #2

I was in the office, which was different from waking life. The entire floor was only half-lit. There were two aisles of cubicles that went in long rows of six or seven cubicles. Beside that were probably more aisles of cubicles. At the end of the aisles was a little bit of empty floor space and then a brightly lit, tiny elevator bank. My cubicle was at the front right corner, facing the elevator bank.

I turned my computer on. Then I remembered I had an appointment with my psychiatrist A this morning. I told my boss BS, "I know it's spur of the moment notice, but can I leave?"

BS' face turned kind of weak and muttery. BS said, "Well, yeah, go..."

I said, "It's on the spur of the moment, I know. So said no if I can't go."

BS said, "No. I'd rather you didn't go. I'm gonna need you here today."

BS walked away as I said okay.

I spoke with a couple people and then went back to my desk. I had vines like grapevines growing over my desk. My computer was a laptop. It was only about halfway open. I saw Hotmail up on my screen. I couldn't figure why that would be there: employees weren't allowed to use personal email accounts, like Hotmail, in the office.

I tried to shut the Hotmail off. BS walked by and asked what was wrong. I said, "Somehow Hotmail came up on my screen."

Dream #3

I sat in a brightly lit basement. It was a radio station. I was going to be interviewed as a part of my job. At present some outside correspondent was doing something like a traffic report. In the station, we may have seen the man or the stuff he was talking about on a TV screen. The view was of a straight road in a green field on a grey day.

I thought, Am I going to be late doing this interview? It was as if, on some level of reality, I wasn't really in the studio yet.

Dream #4

I stood before the counter at an airport. The counter and room looked more like an old, cozy hotel. A tall, gaunt, white, bald man with a grey mustache and heavy eyebrows stood behind the counter. The man said, "I don't recognize you. Do you have ID?"

I showed the man my ID and said, "You can ask people if you like. I come here all the time. All I'm trying to do is see if I'm late for my flight. I was scheduled to leave at 12:20 PM. And now it's --" (I craned my neck forward to look around at the man's computer screen) "-- 1:02 PM?! Oh, no!"

I started crying. I said, "I missed my flight! Is there any way I can get a ticket for a different flight?"

Two or three people, maybe two guys and a girl, roughly twenty-five years old, walked around the old man cheerfully. They spoke happily about my problem and how it could probably be fixed. They walked away. The old man started wandering off.

I asked, "Aren't you going to see about getting me a new flight?"

The man said, "We have other things to do. We'll get to you." He left.

The young men and woman were now bringing out plates of food from a bar and grill that was off to my left. One of the plates was big chunks of meat covered in sauce that looked like ranch dressing.

Dream #5

Black and white, grainy view like old film footage. A narrator spoke about the first space flight, which had been made by the Russians.

I watched a "space shuttle" launch, then travel parallel with the ground, maybe only a couple hundred feet above the ground. The "shuttle" looked like a sci-fi spacecraft, or a child's drawing. It was like two cylinders in the back which ended in rockets and which joined in the front to one cylinder which pointed at the front.

The craft began lifting as it flew over the ocean. It lifted so slowly I at first thought that it was getting ready to lose control and crash. The view was momentarily from behind it as it rose above a patchy plane of clouds. I knew now that the craft wouldn't crash. But watching it rise (view from in front of the craft, looking back at it) so slowly, at such a gentle angle, I doubted the craft could ever actually leave the earth.

The craft slowly increased its angle and speed. I now wondered if the view was going to catch the craft traveling so quickly and steeply. I didn't think the view would actually be able to travel with the craft.

Dream #6

I was in a bedroom (?) with a few people of different ages (probably up to my age). Everybody was in a slighty frenzy, not angry, just unsettled. They were all talking about the new Harry Potter book. At the same time they were passing around the previous Harry Potter books. The covers of these books looked weird, like cheap second editions -- or rather like the old sensational film posters (i.e. L'enfant de Paris) that were (at the time I entered this dream in the paper journal) on display in the MoMA film center.

I got a good enough look at all the volumes, as they were rapidly passed from hand to hand, that when someone called out, "It's too bad we don't have all seven volumes right here," I could shout out, "But we do!"

Someone yelled at me, "No, we don't!"

I said, "Yes, we do! Look!" As I pointed to each book as it transferred from hand to hand, I counted out the volumes. "One, two, three, four, five, six. And there's seven!"

I now saw a copy of the book like a wide-opening coffee table book. The right half of the cover was the cover of the new Harry Potter book. As I "heard" some TV or magazine story about J.K. Rowling my view slowly moved to the left side of the cover.

I thought, I've heard a lot of people talk about how much of a bitch (???!!!) J.K. Rowling is. I wondreed what she looked like. On the left side of the cover was a photo of Rowling. She looked like an Italian mother from Brooklyn -- black hair, blue sweater, kind of no-nonsense expression. In the photo, "Rowling" was painting some huge, abstract mural, looking back and smiling at the camera.

Now there was a view of her (not on the book, but like in life) standing behind a glass-paned front door. The view was in front of the door, to catch the glass' reflection of a field of flowers, bands of color -- yellow, purple, and white, with a vague green band -- and a feeling of mountains and sky in the distance.

In this view "Rowling" looked a lot older. Her hair was cut short and was reddish-brown, very tough. "Rowling's" face was round; her nose, nubby; her eyes, pale blue. I think I felt a wish in her that she could become young again.

(11/13/07) missed the flight

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

Dream #1

I stood outside on a clear day, possibly with a large group of people, and possibly by a large body of water. I saw a large, grey aircraft like a B-52. Attached to the underside of the aircraft, near the tail (?), were an X-15 and an SR-71. The SR-71 may have been blue like a Blue Angels jet. I excitedly pointed the jets out to the rest of my group.

We were down on some concrete walkway. The large craft (which now had a strange, thin-bodied appearance, like an aircraft carrier) stood above us. I thought I might get into the X-15 or the SR-71.

But now the craft rolled away. I knew it had stopped taking passengers and was now getting ready to lift off. I had missed my chance.

I traveled up to a nearby hilltop with the people around me to watch the jet fly away. The hilltop was largely dark, clumpy, basaltic rock, with some patches of grass.

(1/21/08) not an airport; yo-yo kiva; a real hole in the wall

(Entered in paper journal at 9:15 AM at Starbucks on Christopher Street in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in a bus or van being driven to the airport. It was a grey, drizzly day. I sat near the front of the bus. The bus was empty except for me, the driver, and another man. The other man was slightly nervous. He told the driver, "I hear that when bad weather makes flight delays, they sometimes reroute you through different cities on different planes."

We drove along a group of planes that looked weird. One was a small jet with a very sleek face, like a Concorde mixed with a fighter jet. Another was an enormous plane with a very tall bulkhead (?).

The driver assured the man (as we dove around a large building with passenger drop-off areas for passenger for some airlines) that even if his flight got rerouted, he most likely wouldn't have to get on a flight that he didn't like.

I thought to myself, noticing that the driver was making a second round around a large building, that my flight was set to leave at XXXXX. It was already 12:19. Most airlines liked you to be present one hour early. But here I was, less than half an hour from my takeoff time, and still on the bus (which now seemed a lot like a plane).

I noticed that instead of airline signs in front of the building we presently drove around, there were signs for supermarkets (Albertsons?) and drug stores.

The driver said, "I don't see why I haven't found your airlines yet."

With some hesitance, not wanting to tell the driver how to do his job, I replied, "You drove the wrong way off the highway. This isn't the airport. It's just a shopping center." I pointed to my right and said, "The airport is back over that way and on the other side of the highway."

Dream #2

I and a small group of people looked down on a cylindrical hole dug in the ground. The hole was about eight feet deep and twenty feet in diameter. The floor and walls were smooth, probably soil. In the center of the floor was a small square dug out of the soil. There was also a rectangular niche of soil dug out all the way up one section of wall. Near the square on the floor was a pile of soil.

A blue toy like a yo-yo had been buried at a precise spot under that soil. Now we would fill the entire cylinder with soil, thus immovably fixing the blue toy in its spot.

But now we heard that GPS or satellite measurements showed that we had placed the toy in the incorrect space by just a few feet. We would have to unbury the toy, get rid of the soil, relocate the toy, then bury it under a pile of soil again, and again confirm our location.

I suddenly felt like all this activity was a joke, or that the people who were telling us how to do the job were laughing at us for actually taking such pains with the job, since it was all pretty useless, anyway. But I couldn't let myself believe that the job was useless, and I couldn't let myself believe that we were off in our burial location of the toy.

There might have been a white "X" somewhere on the ground, which had determined my choice. I felt like the "X" proved that I had put the yo-yo in the correct spot -- though the "X" was not under the pile of soil (i.e. it was not in the current location of the toy) and was almost on the opposite side of the circle. I was going to tell the people with me to fill the hole up as things were, that we were fine.

Dream #3

I was in a bus driving down a city street at night. I was a beautiful, rich woman. We drove down a street full of shop fronts and hole-in-the-wall bars. I thought wistfully about just relaxing and going into hole-in-the-wall bars. But I knew I couldn't. As the beautiful, rich woman, I had elevated myself to a position where I could no longer just pop into places like that. I could only allow myself to go to high-class places and events, like the one I was going to right now.

I saw one particular bar, which seemed to have no front wall at all. I stood in front of it, possibly as myself. The place was small, dimly candlelit, with a few tall-backed, black chairs, a couple tables, a small register-counter, and a long, black bench along the right wall.

Two women and one man walked around inside, talking about some way they had managed to trick somebody into giving them a good deal with something. One of the women, probably wearing a tiny, fluttery, pink skirt and a white tank-top, looked at me as if she were sexually attracted to me.

I walked into the bar. The two girls sat on the bench, the man in one of the seats. I thought I would sit between the two girls, to sit next to the girl I thought liked me.

But now Mexican man wearing a baggy, black, button-up shirt and black jeans, with long hair in a ponytail, sat down between the two women and held the girl in the pink skirt. The woman was obviously the man's girl. She had only been acting like she liked me in order to trick me into liking her. The man sitting in the chair now sat next to the other girl, so that now each woman was already with a man.

The four people continued talking about how they had gotten their way, how they'd tricked someone into giving them a good deal. The four of them looked at me and spoke with me as if they wanted me to be their friend. But I thought, There's no reason. There's nobody here for me to be with.

(3/22/08) airport; sister's wedding

(Entered in paper journal at 9:41 AM at Starbucks on Astor Place.)

Dream #1

It was night. I walked into a building that was an airport. I knew I had missed my flight, but I hoped I could get another. The front counter looked like the ticket counter at a bus station.

Dream #2

I was in a smallish house with my biological father's side of the family. My younger sister from my biological dad's family was sad and asked why I hadn't come to her wedding.

I walked from the kitchen into the living room. The living room was dim, lit only by the light from the kitchen.